Tamara Rogers
1. THE DISPATCHA Small Violence of Breath
The pieces of us ripple in the air, souls split like the seeds of a dandelion clock bursting in the breeze.
* * *
The doorbell doesn’t ring because I took the batteries out of it before it ever had chance to chime. Instead, the sound of the letterbox rattling alerts me to your presence, and I peer from the upstairs window to see if today is the day I might answer.
I see your greasy hair, dandruffed coat, and the bulbous, glooping shadow looming behind you. I deliberately avoid looking at the features of your face. Considered reflection confirms that I have no desire to meet the baggage of me that you insist on bringing. I watch as rain presses dark fingerprints across your shoulders, then let the curtain fall back into place.
* * *
It’s still a strange sensation, to know that there are multiple versions of me in the world.
There are the facets of me that come into and out of focus dependent on mood and sugar levels. A professional face to colleagues, a clown and confidante to friends. Twelve years old and awkward to the people I knew in school and lost along the way. I’m sure some will know me as the harsh words I’ve long since forgotten, and others as the broken candy for their own cutting tongues. They hold versions of me in their memories that have long since been rendered obsolete but never fully overwritten.
And all these are scattered to the wind. But where I should feel empty, I feel largely at peace. I did not feel grief on their leaving—where others wept and clutched at the coat-tails of their disappearing selves, I shut the door quietly and drew a long, hot bath.
Then there is you, with your clipboard, up and down the street, every day bringing a different version to offer. I do not like many of the versions of me, so I try to meet them only fleetingly. Once I met myself in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket. I watched myself buying frozen scallops and wondered who I was intending to feed them to, given my own violent allergy to seafood. I left with wine, and drank alone at a table set for two, imagining the ghosts of the person that might keep my other self company.
I shop online now.
* * *
You scribble on your clipboard, tear off a strip of paper and push it through my door, before continuing on your circuit of the street. Tomorrow we shall not meet again, like clockwork. I can tell you already that I won’t want whoever it is that you bring me. The strip of paper, Sorry I missed you, we’ll call again with your delivery, will fall onto the pile in the porch and I’ll leave it there until I have cause to leave the house. I do not expect that to be any time soon.
You must, I suppose, have a warehouse filled with the returns of myself. Unless you release them into the wild. Perhaps there is a forest filled with naked versions of me, labels trailing from their ankles; Damaged goods, Manufacturing defect, Not fit for purpose. Sometimes I dream of being there, surrounded by myself, but I cannot see if the faces are smiling or howling, and the sounds of hunting dogs shiver me from sleep.
* * *
The day I stopped answering the door to you, you’d brought a grey version of me that flickered in and out of focus, edges playing nebulously with the crumpled outline of a linen suit and a wan smile. Your face, in contrast, was crisp, sharp edges. I was half way through my apologetic refusals—not today thank you, I haven’t ordered any, it’s not what I expected, it seems to be broken—when you blinked. A crease formed across the bridge of your nose and your forehead flopped forwards, striking your chin with a thwack. The space underneath revealed another layer of you that winked before your eyes swung forwards and slapped down a second time. Then again, again, your expression cascaded in thin strips of spinning charcuterie with a flip-book smile.
I was used to you changing between visits. Sometimes you’d wear the face of a distant uncle or niece or forgotten school friend. You’d been twelve different versions of my mother, and fifteen of my father. Twice you’d been my brother and once the blurred recollection of a one-night stand. Once you’d been the face of a child I do not think about. But in that moment you were all of them, an undulating sack of face, squirming like maggots shifting under the skin of roadkill. Face upon face, turned inside out and upside down, dancing to a chorus of white noise spilling from your insides, the sound of a thousand familiar voices, screaming over the wet grinding of relocating features. Your eyes my mother’s, your nose my father’s, your lips my lover’s, shuffle and repeat.
I slammed the door, slid the deadbolt, and vomited over the tiles, my slippers and the shins of my jeans. The letterbox jiggled and a postcard flopped to the floor, the edges sopping up the sick but not the stench.
Sorry, I missed you.
* * *
So I do not answer my door to you, but let my other selves keep you company which eases the guilt of snubbing you and your many faces.
I am tired of finding apologies for things I never wanted.
Instead, I wait until night falls and open the curtains to the bleached light of the moon. I sit in the soft dark, flesh seeping into the cracks between the floorboards, and through the window I watch myself float away. I raise my hand to wave, but I am already gone, the last promise of a dandelion clock stolen by the small violence of my own breath.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYDiesel the cat
Tiny robot
Teddy bear with teeth
Harmonicas
Model alien
Plants
Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk, and other books
3. BIOGRAPHYTamara writes mainly dark, surreal tales with a touch of science fiction. Her stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, The Molotov Cocktail, and other publications. Her pre-apocalyptic dystopian novel GRIND SPARK was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award 2014. She is interested in all things weird in the world of psychology, artificial intelligence and armageddon.
You can find her on Twitter @tamrogers, or at www.thedustlounge.com where there’s a strong possibility she’ll be talking about cats.