Page 6 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
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The small house is quiet after Tristan leaves. He hits the gym before work most mornings, then showers there, ceding our bathroom to me and my morning routine.
I putter around, taking my time. Dry my hair and pull it back. Moisturize my face and apply sunscreen, although odds are, I won’t set foot outside today. I perch on the edge of the bathtub to rub thick lotion into my feet, paying particular attention to my dry, cracked heels.
Then it’s into the bedroom, where I paw through my dresser drawers to find just the right pair of soft yoga pants and an oversized long-sleeved top. I select a pair of fuzzy socks to complete the day’s writing uniform and, finally, head downstairs with my empty coffee mug to start my pre-writing ritual.
A seated meditation in front of the living room windows to center myself in the story. A series of stretches. A few minutes spent writing in my journal, keeping my pen moving across the page even as my hand cramps. By the time I pour a fresh cup of coffee, light my grapefruit-rosemary scented candle (said to improve focus), and cue up my playlist of writing music (for this book, it’s instrumental pieces from the soundtrack to a fantasy video game), I’ve somehow frittered away two hours before I set foot in the cozy sunroom in the back of the house that serves as my workspace.
Time to get serious about writing all the words. I raise my desk to standing height, roll my neck, and open my manuscript document. The cursor blinks at me in expectant anticipation. I blink back at it, summoning the story. The story doesn’t come. My fingers hover over the keyboard. My mind is blank.
After an endless moment of suspended animation, I sigh, close the file, and plunk myself down on the armchair near the window with my story notebook and a pen. I scan my notes, chew on the end of the pen, stare out the window. Then I repeat the process. Scan, chew, stare. Nothing. Frustrated, I toss the pen onto the side table with a loud clatter.
I’ve been stuck like this for weeks, and I don’t know why. The source material is rich and full of promise. In the Brothers Grimm version, Maleen and her lady-in-waiting are locked in a tower for seven years by Maleen’s father, the king, after Maleen defies him. She’s in love with a prince who wants to marry her, but the king refuses. He’s chosen another prince for Maleen, but she digs in her heels. So it’s off to the tower with her and her unfortunate handmaiden. Eventually, the two escape the tower and make their way to the kingdom where Maleen’s true love lives. Through cunning and luck, Maleen gets her happily ever after with her prince. It’s a riches to rags to riches, entombed princess story. A contemporary romance would be the logical choice for my version.
Instead, my story focuses on the seven-year imprisonment, the friendship between Maleen and her lady-in-waiting, and their dramatic escape. When I told Jillian and Sam about my idea, they both squealed with excitement. Jillian assured me that even though most of the writers involved in A Year of Fairytales are romance writers like her, not everyone is. There’s going to be at least one mystery, a space opera, and a historical fiction book.
She encouraged me to write what I wanted, declaring, “All that matters is the story.”
I say the words aloud to myself now as a reminder. “All that matters is the story.”
As I make this quiet pronouncement to my reflection in the window, there’s a flash of movement behind the hedge of scarlet firethorns that screen our backyard from the Simmons’ yard next door. A deer, maybe? I jump up for a better look.
Nobody’s home over there. Tyrone and Lashina Simmons are snowbirds—retirees who spend the winters at their place in Lakeland, Florida. Every winter while they’re away, Tristan goes over and starts their car a few times, checks on their water softener and alarm system, and shovels their walk if it snows. This year, though, Lashina specifically asked me to keep an eye out for deer in their garden because I’m home all day.
Before they left, right after the new year, she came over with a bag full of perishable food–eggs, bread, milk, a fruit and cheese tray from the game night they’d hosted–and pressed it into my hands. She leaned in so close that I could see the individual specks of glitter in her shimmery face tint and stage whispered, “Ty keeps complaining about the deer. The bushes are all trampled, but none of the leaves are eaten. Something’s gallivanting around in the garden, but it’s no deer.”
My pulse ticked up. For days, I’d had the unshakeable feeling that someone was watching me. I’d pushed it away, tried to convince myself it was my imagination. But Lashina’s whispers opened the floodgates, and panic crashed over me in a cold wave.
“A person?” I croaked.
She gave me an odd look. “I was thinking more like a bear.”
It probably says something about my mental state that the prospect of a bear standing ten feet from my house came as a relief.
Now, I race to the back door, Maleen forgotten. My heart hammers against my breastbone as I pull on my running shoes and fly outside. No coat, no phone, no plan.
I sprint to the hedgerow and peer over into the Simmons’ yard. My pounding feet and loud breathing will certainly have frightened off a deer or a person. I guess all I have to worry about now is a bear. When I reach the bright red bushes, I almost wish a black bear were there to greet me. What I find is far more terrifying.
A set of boot prints is sunk into the soft earth of the Simmons’ mostly dormant vegetable garden. Men’s boots, large. I whirl around, searching the row of backyards and the alley that runs behind them. Whoever was here is long gone.
I wriggle between the tall firethorns, line my feet up with the prints, and stare straight ahead. My throat closes when I process the view from this vantage point. The man who stood here had a clear view of the sunroom. I can see my glazed coffee mug on the side table and the chair I’d been sitting in moments ago. He was watching me.
Chilling as that is, it’s not the worst of it. A familiar scent lingers on the still, cold air. Sandalwood. I’d know it anywhere. My stomach lurches and then turns over completely.
I lean over the garden fence and vomit into my bushes.
January 2017
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I was already running late for my Modernism in American and British Literature class when I walked through the kitchen and spotted yet another mouse.
“Thank God Cassie’s not here,” I muttered.
The mice freaked me out—a lot—but Cassie’s reaction was over the top. Lots of screaming and standing on chairs while ordering me to catch the spotted rodent without harming it and take it somewhere else, preferably across a body of water, so it wouldn’t find its way back.
I didn’t have time to catch the rodent and, truthfully, didn’t want to deal with the implications of trapping it and going on a field trip with it. But I could take out the overflowing trash and pull the bedroom doors shut. Finding mouse poop in your dresser drawers is not a fun experience.
