Out of Home – Joshua Pantano
Moonlight traveled through every crack and crevice of the city as dogs howled in the streets and people moaned through every open window. Life reached through the city’s fissures yet nothing substantial came out the other sides. The ones who had moved away said that people came here to die, years after their brothers, sisters, husbands, or wives faded away. There was nowhere else to go. At least nobody bothered each other.
Joe stood by his bedroom door, fully dressed. His backpack sat on the floor, filled with half-eaten foods shoved into old plastic containers and resealable baggies. He looked around his room, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and spotted his favorite stuffed animal, a beaten-up rabbit, sitting on the bed by itself. Joe looked down at the backpack and a frown tugged on his face. He had already filled it to the brim. The rabbit watched sullenly as Joe walked forward, threw on his backpack, and left him behind. With a twist of the doorknob that seemed too small for its lock, he slipped out of his dark, bare-walled bedroom. The rabbit’s face disappeared as the closing door cut off the light beam from the hallway.
The apartment echoed with silence. It had only a kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom, so sound traveled easily through its tight corridors. His mother’s snoring, which emanated from the living room, had become a part of the silence that reached around every corner or doorway. At one point, it had lulled him to sleep, but it only burdened him now. He couldn’t stand to sleep near her anymore, even if he didn’t understand exactly why he felt that way about her.
He made his way toward his mother’s bedroom and slowly pushed open the creaking door. He slipped inside, wedging his foot into the door’s gap to keep it from slamming shut. The room only had a mattress and a dresser but both were organized haphazardly in the room as though they had only been used on a few occasions, forever untouched. Joe couldn’t imagine how his mother ever used the mattress anyway, considering the random pieces of garbage, fast-food wrappers, and old t-shirts that covered it. The clothes in particular practically buried the mattress under their monstrous quantity. He tried to remember the last time he had ever seen his mother do the laundry or bring someone else in to do it. His memory failed him with the first option, but he recognized that the second option had never been an option to begin with. They barely got by with stolen scraps of food from his mother’s work, let alone a maid coming in to do his mother’s work for her.
His little sister laid down on the floor surrounded by dust bunnies, her only companions. She twitched and fidgeted in her sleep, bundled in an oversized t-shirt instead of a diaper or a pair of footie pajamas. The shirt probably came from one of his mom’s friends, but he didn’t know which one. They came and they went, never calling him “sport,” “champ,” or “buddy,” like one of his mom’s old boyfriends did. They came and they went.
Joe carefully picked up his little sister and cradled her in his arms. She felt heavier than he remembered, slowly getting bigger and bigger, but he still could feel her ribs against her skin. They felt fragile, easily breakable. His sister grumbled in his arms, nesting against his side and her small, fleshy hands squeezed his forearm. For a moment, he stood there and cradled her, staring blankly at the wall as he ran his hand down her back. His eyes felt heavy.
A voice cascaded through the silence.
“Joe…?”
His muscles tensed up, and a shiver ran up and down his spine. A lightning bolt had cracked through his body. He leaned toward the doorway of the room, listening for more.
Nobody spoke.
He tiptoed out of the bedroom and made his way to the living room. His footsteps magnified in his head until they sounded like bricks collapsing onto the ground. A single, cold droplet of sweat dripped down the side of his body as the sounds rumbled in his ears. His sister murmured in his arms, seemingly undisturbed. She hardly made a sound during the day and seemed to hinge on muteness during the night.
When he finally caught sight of his mother sleeping on the couch, a twinge of doubt flashed through him. A light graced the edges of her face and she looked beautiful for a moment. The weight of his sister, which had almost become natural, suddenly felt out of place. He could barely balance her in his arms. His entire plan had fallen to pieces in that instant as he remembered the woman who had raised him from day one, reading him stories and taking him to the park. He remembered when she had told him that she was going to have another kid and he could hardly believe that
His mother rolled over onto her back, and the light that graced her face vanished. Dark streaks lined her cheekbones and rested underneath her eyelids. Her mouth hung open, and her teeth jutted like shattered pieces of glass in a broken window. Her fast-food uniform, stained with food, burned his eyes. The old memories vanished. All he could remember was the bruises that he had discovered on his sister’s chest after his mother had tried to make her stop crying. He could hardly bear to look at her for a second more. A mumble on Joe’s arm took him away from his mother. His sister felt weightless again.
He turned away from his mother and walked toward the front door of the apartment. His hand reached up to the doorknob, completely frigid, and slowly turned it. The door silently opened and the darkness from the apartment hallway poured inside. It never ended. As Joe slipped away, his mother shifted in her sleep, turning her back to him. He left with everything, closing the door behind him.
Their apartment sat on the ground floor. Number 18. He trudged away from it, dragging his feet on the shaggy carpet flooring underneath his feet. He moved down the hall, counting which lights were broken and which ones were not. Some shards of glass still laid on the floor.
When he finally reached the lobby, Joe realized that it was hardly a lobby at all. He hadn’t considered it until now but he had never intended to leave before. Somehow, things always felt different when you viewed them for the last time. Regardless, he gazed in near amazement at the sheer emptiness of the front desk. The wood of the desk had rotted away like the bark of an old tree and the vending machines that sat parallel to it had been ransacked a long time ago. An empty space sat where a night clerk would have sat. It didn’t stare back, taunt, or ridicule. It only sat there, nothing more.
The front door was shut, but unlocked. As he walked toward the door, the moonlight that glimmered and danced through the door’s glass quivered in Joe’s eyes for a moment. He pushed the door open with a single hand and huffed under its immense weight. Immediately, the cold air swarmed all around him, but it wasn’t much different from the air inside. The door began to close behind him. Lights echoed through the darkness of the city, and distant animals wailed in response. A single car rumbled a few blocks away. Finally, the entire city unlocked itself, like a chest that had somehow matched with an old key. He saw this view almost every day, but it had never felt this way before. There were no restrictions. He felt like he could leap into the air and never come back down. In celebration, Joe took one step forward, then another, then one more. He stopped when his foot bumped into something. In that instant, everything plummeted.
A woman laid on the sidewalk. She wore a white dress, torn, ripped, and covered in blood across her chest and stomach. Old blood caked the scars that ran down and across her neck like raindrops. She faced up toward the night sky with closed eyes that never trembled and a closed mouth that refused to be etched into a scowl. A circle of red, still wet, remained on the pavement around her head and stained her dark black hair. It glowed under the streetlights, like a halo above an angel.
Joe almost slipped backward for a moment, instantly feeling shocked and disgusted that his shoe had touched the woman. He wanted to throw up, run away, and scream all at the same time. But as he watched the woman’s face and noted the silently gentle expression forever etched onto her face, he felt strangely familiar with her.
She never opened her eyes, but Joe continued to watch her, waiting for her to stare back. He wanted her to open her eyes and tell him that everything would end up okay, even if he left everything behind. He wanted her to at least wake up, so if his sister ended up like her someday, he would know that she would at least survive.
He stared at the woman for a long time and he didn’t shield his sister’s eyes. They both needed to see it even if his sister would refuse to look. He walked away from the woman, feeling the insurmountable weight in his arms that ached his muscles and wore away at his mind. The light of the streetlamps dissipated as he withered into the darkness of the city with his sister. He swore he saw some lights in the distance.