Shawn Proctor’s work has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Podcastle, and elsewhere. This is his first appearance in Galaxy’s Edge.
The sun doesn’t rise; the sun doesn’t set—it hangs in the sky like a memory of her face: a lace of beer across her top lip, a diamond on her ear, a wisp of hair at the base of her neck.
The last living part of her, my daughter, rushes to me from across the living room, and I expect her to ask again. Where is Mommy? Instead, she reaches her hands under my arms and digs with her small fingers. “Tickle, tickle!”
“I thought I was the tickle monster.”
“Mommy was. Now Shelly’s the tickle monster,” she says, pronouncing the I’s as E’s. Teeckle, teeckle.
I pretend. For Shelly, I will always pretend. I laugh and squirm and carefully shoo her away; I wipe my eyes, as if tearing. There’s joy in me, somewhere. I search my heart, search somewhere in my mind. Fear is not all that’s left, I think. Dig deeper.
I study her face, almost exactly like her mom’s. It will always be like her mom’s.
Except for me, this moment is perfect, and this moment will never pass. It will not change. For Shelly, I won’t let it.
* * *
A drop of blood on a tissue.
An earring.
A lock of hair.
I carried this detritus—pieces of my wife—in a small velvet pouch and sat with her at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At her grave. When I wanted to talk to her, I whispered to the earth. When I wanted to feel her, I traced the etching of her dates—her beginning and her end—feeling the smooth curve hard against my fingertips.
One morning, Shelly came with me to the cemetery, and as she pulled at the hem of her dress—the way her mother used to when she was nervous—I saw it for the first time. The essence of her, still here, still with me.
A chill started in my shoulder blades and stopped at the base of my neck. Shelly can be taken away. I felt myself drop, the earth slamming against my knees.
Unmovable.
I dug in my pocket and made a wish upon the relics of her that I carried every day. I wished with every piece of myself.
And something—something far in the distance—heard. The earth was unmovable. And I made time unmovable too.
* * *
Shelly shakes her head.
I take back the cookie. “Potty?”
“No.”
I should know better than to ask by now. We have not eaten nor drank nor slept—not since that wish. I miss the gifts that came with days passing. Tucking in bed. Baths. Cleaning up her milk spills from the kitchen table.
“When I grow up, I want to live in San Diego. Or California,” she says.
I catch myself smiling. “You’re the perfect age now. You should stay like this.”
Shelly frowns. She comes to me and lifts my chin with her forehead. “I can’t do that, Daddy.”
I can, I think. I should tell her. Would she understand? Would she understand why?
Shelly kisses my cheek: peck-peck-peck. “I’m going to win field hockey trophies and write a hit song. I’ll go to space when I grow up.”
“That is a lot of dreams.”
She twirls and looks up at the ceiling until she loses her balance. She rolls across the floor; she opens her too-big eyes. “Maybe it will help you remember how to smile. I miss daddy smiles.”
* * *
The day continues, unending, the sun through the windows steady, draining the color from the floor. The coffee maker used to blink 12:00 in steady green LED light. It is stopped between flashes. My phone used to buzz and beep, nagging me to give the world my attention.
The weight of her in my pocket twists my insides. The weight of her in my mind. I cannot keep myself from seeing all of the places she once was. Feeling her absence, sharp, fresh. The pajamas that no longer smell of her. Her stack of folded underwear on the dresser. A new bottle of ibuprofen in the drawer near the nightstand. They will always be in the places where she was not.
I take Shelly to the park and watch the kite hanging in the sky, unmoving like the clouds. Like the boy holding the string.
“Is he sick?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I did this, baby.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to lose you.” I reach up and touch the kite string, firm, ready to catch a gust and crash to the ground. “I can’t.”
Across the field, I see two women in running tights and Lycra shirts. One has her arm extended in mid-throw, a stick frozen as it cartwheels across the dirt. A dog sprints in pursuit, his jowls sagging under gravity.
“I’m thirsty.”
“Are you sure?” I know it can’t be. She must be remembering the feeling, longing to thirst and longing to satisfy thirst.
Shelly moves close behind me and reaches her hands under my arms. Teeckle, teeckle. Fingers digging. And I know that Shelly will always be the tickle monster, never the astronaut/field hockey star/pop musician.
“You’re silly,” Shelly says, and it sounds like selly.
“Sometimes, daddies are.”
“I want the kite to fly. Can you make it fly?”
“If I make the kite fly, you will be thirsty, Shelly. Then the world,” I say. “The world will go on.”
She nods. “I know.”
I take the blood, the earring, the hair from the pouch. These locks that hold everything in place. I hold them out, between us. “But how can you want that?”
She cups her hands under mine. Lifts them closer to me. I know that as hard as I am holding Shelly, I’ll lose more of my daughter. I’ll never see her grow apart from me, become her own woman, make her own choices, break someone’s heart, have her heart broken, and survive all of the wonderful-terrible-unexpected things that will come.
If only I will let them. If only I can.
“For you, Shelly,” I whisper. “For you—yes.”
“No, Daddy. For you too.”
One by one, I open them.
One by one, I set everything free.
Copyright © 2018 by Shawn Proctor