Inhaler Discharger for Dead Batteries by Rebecca Gransden

INHALER DISCHARGER FOR DEAD BATTERIES


        The skin you stacked inside me is talking, and has turned into an asshole. Gestated, it grew before I knew what it was, then it was too late. It waggles its limbs around and scrapes me at night, all those hours spent in the murky dark of that room you’ve not seen since you died back then, my will enslaved to the cheek of your cute spawn, like you sent me a sick joke as a wreath. I’m not laughing—it tickles too hard, with its moxie.
        It’s more triumphant now, banging out taps for yes, taps for no, changing its mind what means what and when. My hunch is that it’s angry it will never see the sun casting light over the world, so in the day I stare at the richness of sun rays as they fall and cover, and take special notice of the beauty of light on the mundane, like the path I so happen to take, with its bits of curled up dead grass slowly blowing across shadows made by branches. The turmoil it feels paralyses it for the light hours of the day, and I know I’ve antagonised it because its retributions in the dark take on a viciousness that responds in direct proportion to my experience of the beauties of my day. I played with this at first, my own resentments of the skin you gift me taking prominence.
         So many times I’ve been tempted to starve you out, thinking my food is what is keeping your skin alive. Truth is, I don’t know what state it’s in, what constitutes its life, or if it is alive in any sense that I recognise. I may deny myself nourishment only to have your skin turn its attentions to my insides to feed on me, gaining its strength as I waste away. Bet you would’ve appreciated that, the numbing prettiness of such an event, the atrophied elegance.
         When you died I stole some stuff from your house. You were there, dead in the living room like a pauper lying in state, and while your endless relatives filed past you I climbed the stairs to your childhood bedroom and smashed the china money-box moulded in the shape of ALF. No one heard the sound of me breaking it, as one of the aunts—who had only met you a few times and not since you were a kid you told me—wailed histrionically downstairs somewhere. Wonder what’s happened to her to make her bawl at the lifeless flesh of a distant relative like that.
      You hadn’t saved much, or if you had you hadn’t stored it in ALF, him holding a few pounds and some dog-eared cigarette cards featuring various cacti. I did cut myself on one of the shattered pieces though, blood dripping onto the undersized desktop. The crying from downstairs died down and I took my throbbing finger over to your bed, where you must’ve slept almost every night until you went to university, and squeezed as hard as I could until every drop of my red blood formed a viscid circle inhabiting the centre of the plain grey pillow, where your head had been.
          An antenna stuck me in the foot, peeking out from underneath the bed. I leaned down and dragged it out. A black walkie talkie, not a cheap child’s one, this was more advanced, looked like it could have a far travelling signal. Behind it sat its pair, which I grabbed, smearing them both with my blood. Then I left without saying goodbye and never went back, and your family did what I wanted and ignored me in return.
         My room doesn’t make me feel better anymore, only worse. Stains suctioned onto every hint of you, though you weren’t here very often.
           That time the inhaler wouldn’t work at first, the smell.
          I wasn’t the exclusive girl to make you breathe hard, but you said you only used the inhaler because of me. Did you think of me then, sucking at it, at the end? The air sits among the tastiness of remembering in maximum doses, lolled over my tongue stickily. Since you stopped living you mean a lot more to me, to everyone. I saw your neck most of all, because of how you placed me, because of where I was the most. Indiscreet, the switch to afterwards, all the fuss blooms in square rooms. Cut the stems, wash the feet, bow to some imagined onlooker, curtsy to love.
        The pens dropped like divining sticks onto the carpet, as I needed the jar quick. That night of the day you died, when I spasmed wholeheartedly because I’d not had the nerve yet to tell you, and now mootness fell and rocked until all was physical anyway, and I couldn’t avoid it anymore. It didn’t look like a kid yet, at least I don’t think so, but I put it in the jar very fast on purpose, because I didn’t really want to see, you know? The pens and their pattern. I’m still trying to figure it out.
          Deep in my neck of the woods this time. I took the climb to where I buried the jar, a place from when I was really young, means nothing to you. It glints from the earth, winks and runs scarlet underneath, like it wants a trade. I found some batteries at the back of a drawer in the basement, for the walkie talkies, so they work now, for how long I don’t know. They hiss. I’ve left one with the jar and sometimes I think I hear things, but it’s probably just animals. I wonder if I scare them with my voice. Dried blood flecks off on my thumb, my blood from your house.

​

Bio: Rebecca Gransden lives on an island and writes sometimes. She can be found on Twitter @rlgransden and online occasionally at rebeccagransden.wordpress.com

---