TCTE Short Fiction Contest

Not Yours

by Hannah Argiloff             

They’re  not  your  hands.  Your hands are smooth,   the skin  on  them  made of stained glass.   Your  hands  are  decorated  with  red polish  at  the  fingertips,   but  the  ones  that swim   in   your   vision  are  decorated   with jagged stubs for nails,  and red lightning-bolt cracks   on   the   knuckles,   where   the   skin parted and bled.   The wet cement you lay on is not your bed.  The skyscrapers, unblinking from where  they  line the alleyway,  are  not your pink bedroom walls.  The sky, though a comparable  colour,  is  not  your ceiling.  The needles  that  litter  the  ground mere metres away are not the assortment of lipsticks that litter your bathroom counter.

                     Who did this to you?     

Whoever  left  you  here  to die behind this dumpster,  in  the  back  alley of  what looked to  be  a  night club,    took    your    briefcase,   your  blazer,  your  phone,  and  your  wallet, too.   They  put  you  in  an  over-sized parka, salt-stained, stale-smelling, and empty-pocketed.       The other pedestrians part around you as you stand and wobble down Adelaide Street, leaving in their path a wake of empty cement around your feet.  Their eyes are wary,  their steps  quickening  as  they  split  to  opposing edges of the sidewalk.  You  had no idea your trauma could be so tangible. It hung in the air around your body,  visceral like the humidity hanging in the air  before a summer thunder-storm.      

“Where’s the police station?”  you  plead. 

        Four  people  pretend  as  if  you  hadn’t spoken  at  all.     Only  one  man,  pushing  a trolley  of boxes and clad in a blue jumpsuit, points  straight,   right,   and   then   straight again. The  ground  lurches,  and the  clouds  above your head twirl themselves back and forth  with  such  fervor  that  your stomach churns in tandem with them.                         

What did they do to you? 

      “Help,”   you  choke  as  the  police  station doors slide open. The officer at the front desk eyes   you   and   mutters  something  into  his walkie-talkie.   Another  officer,  tall and well- built, enters the foyer.       

“Officer,  please!  Someone did something to  me,  I  don’t  know  what.    They  took  my clothes and my money.  I woke up in an alley and I don’t know how. Please.”  

      The tears are warm and sticky when they spill down your cheeks, and you swipe at your eyes in fear that they’ve started bleeding, too. The officer’s eyebrows furrow, and his eyes darken.   

      “We’re not doing this again.”  

      “O-officer, I don’t understand. 

      “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”      

“No, Officer, please, I need help. I NEED HELP!”      

Your wrists, dwarfed by the officer’s hands, are being pushed behind your back. The sliding doors shut behind you, with the distinctive click of an automatic lock, as he careens you outside. The skin on your knuckles splits once again as you pound at the glass,  and  the  walls  of  your  throat  constrictwith each mounting plea.

      You decide, after your voice succumbs to the grip of winter air and the blood on your hands becomes lines of brown crust, to go to work. You’re late, and Bryan would be requesting an excuse for your absence that wasn’t “another TTC delay.” You also welcome the white noise of incessant fingers clicking at keyboards for its thought-suppressing qualities; an auditory  levee  to  subdue the currents of breakdown until at least 5:00 PM.      

There’s no way to explain the feeling of 34 necks turning to stare at you in unison, as you later exit the elevator and enter the office. 34 sets of eyes harden and 34 mouths simultaneously thin into lines, proclaiming you other.       

Claire, the receptionist, stares from behind her desk. In that moment, it doesn’t matter that she was your closest friend in the office, because her once-understanding eyes are indistinguishable from all the other sets in the way they stare: unabashedly, from behind a metaphysical pane of glassy resignation.      

“Um… Can I help you?”      

She says it with no resentment. The unfettered fear in her voice instead carries the kind of weight that sinks to the bottom of the stomach, and lodges itself there permanently.  

      “Claire, you’ll never believe it. I think I got robbed, I’m not sure how, but I woke up in an alley and all my stuff was gone… how’s that for a TTC delay?” you supply as a joke. Her inhale cuts.          

“I’m sorry but I’m not Claire… I’ve never seen you in my life.”       

It splits the air in front of you. The contents of your stomach force themselves into your mouth, and the acid dribbles down your chin, making a watery pool on the grey carpet. 

      “You can’t tell me you don’t fucking remember me Claire.”         

Your hands are clawing, slapping at her desk of their own volition.                                               

They’re not your hands. 

      There’s a man at her shoulders, speaking to her softly.       

“Sandra, are you okay?      

“Yeah,” she sniffs. “I’m gonna call the police.”      

Your feet escape your control. Your legs follow suit, and then you’re running outside, screaming with a voice that’s not yours as your feet beat themselves against the concrete.                                          

They’re not your feet.  

          Your lungs are rattling with breaths that aren’t yours.         

A man stops to glare at you sprinting down Yonge Street. He’s wearing a fluorescent coat, and he carries disembodied teeth in a plastic sack. He’s sprinkling them on the ice that coats the ground, made iridescent from the cacophony of lights that are Dundas Square. His own teeth begin to fall out along with them, one by one as he blinks. A molar hits the ground, then an incisor, followed by a canine. A little girl turns too, her baby teeth landing on the sidewalk below, her lips stretched into a toothless grin. Soon there’s a crowd. Men. Women. They all stare at you as their own teeth hit the concrete. They stare because you’re shouting with a force that makes you retch, but they’re impassive to the growing white mound that collects at their toes.       

You’re running once again, his time feeling the pile through the rubber soles of your shoes. Hard, pointed, chunks of bone. It grows bigger, and each passerby crunches them under their boots with increasing indifference.      

“STOP. You’re breaking them, STOP.”  

      No one pays you any mind. 

      Those boundless feet are off again, and the subway station they drag you to has dirty walls. The man by the turnstiles who says “miss, you have to pay a fare” sounds like he’s underwater when you shove through them.       

Everyone on the train you get on is intent on staring at their phones, or the ground. They pointedly avoid looking at you. One man scrunches his nose as if he’s smelled something rotting. A teenage girl shifts minutely in her seat, ramrod straight, as if afraid her movement will disrupt the slumber of a great beast.                          

Arriving at St. Clair, St. Clair Station.      

You choose to ignore the tension that you see leave her body when you exit the subway doors.  

      The houses on the street above the station are big, their windows soft, topaz rings that spill into the night outside. You knock on the door of one of them. It’s mahogany, with a Christmas wreath made out of white lights that look like a smattering of stars, and the knocker is shaped like a metal dragonfly. Welcome, reads the mat that sits on the stone porch.          

“Probably a Jehovah’s Witness,” your mom scoffs. Her speech is muffled by the wood.  

      There’s a man in khaki pants and a sweater vest. Your dad. His voice is warm in timbre, and the folds around his eyes are kind. “Hello,” he starts as he opens the door. It was the greeting he always reserved for telemarketers and strangers: polite, and always accompanied by a Mona Lisa smile.       

His eyebrows crumple when he registers you. His voice is still warm, but it’s overshadowed by a fresh hoarseness. He swallows. His eyes are grey-blue puddles of parental remorse.       

 “Alice,” he chokes out, addressing the woman behind him.  

      Your mother is a strong woman; her voice is cold and unwavering in what it wants.     

   “Tell them we bought cookies last week,” she calls as she walks over. You hear her signature footfalls, confident and rhythmic. Her eyebrows do not crumple when she sees you. The dark arches don’t soften as they furrow together. Her charcoaled eyes narrow from almonds into slivers. Her arms are crossed, and the navy fabric of her blazer slips up to reveal articulate wrist bones. She pushes in front of your dad, who’s sewn to his spot on the carpet.  

      “I told you never to come back here.”     

  “Mom, you don’t understand, it’s me.”      

She gestures to a collection of photos on the ledge above the fireplace, just behind the couch. In the first one there’s a gap-toothed toddler, and she’s beaming around a wad of cotton candy. She has glittery blue eyes that are framed by thick, childish lashes. In the next photo she’s five or six, and she’s grinning down at red-faced bundle of blankets. In the next picture, the bundle is a crawling boy. He plays with her and his father in the grass. The two kids grow together in each frame. There are separate photos, backed by school green screens, and there are many of them together, silhouetted in front of the beach, the snow, and the house.       

The girl grows until she’s sixteen, before her photos disappear. She’s thin, with dark hair that reaches her waist, and she’s grinning goodbye through a pair of lips coated in cherry-coloured  gloss; one of many from the collection that her mother used to gripe cluttered the bathroom counter. The boy goes on to become a teenager. He grins in his cap and gown in the next photo, but stands in front of his high school alone.      

Your mom looks back at you. Her eyes are still slivers, but they’re wounded, and her teeth are clenched as though you’ve said something unfathomable.     

  “I knew her. I don’t know you.”      

The boy from the photos, your brother, comes down the stairs to investigate.      

  “Mom? What’s—”      

  He cuts himself off. He’s frozen halfway down the stairs, unblinking. His hand is olive, just like the ones that belonged to the girl in the pictures, when it curls over his mouth.       

  “Spencer, go back upstairs.”       

“But, Mom—”       

“I SAID NOW!” 

       Your dad’s eyes glisten at you before they’re blocked by the slamming of the mahogany wood. 

       As you wander off of the porch and onto the street, you catch a reflection in the greenish glass of a bus shelter. It’s not you. The eyes that stare back at you aren’t yours, because these ones are red-rimmed and hollowed in by purple circles, but yours are sparkly blue, framed by dark lashes. That mouth in the glass isn’t yours, because yours is soft and shiny with red gloss, but this one is pale, made rough by cracked and dead skin. It’s not your skin that covers your face either, because yours is your brother’s and your mom’s healthy olive, but now it’s a washed-out yellow parody, and your mom and your brother don’t know you anymore.  

      They weren’t your feet when they took you into that office building, or when they brought you here. The girl in the glass isn’t you, because her hands are not yours. They were never yours; not when they spread that cherry gloss on your lips all those years ago, and not when you watched them pull your first joint to your lips in an alley that summer. Not when they started hiding packets of white powder in your pockets, or started shoving needles into your veins, in the formation of train tracks that lined your arms. They were never yours, because your hands would never do such a thing.