Rise of Ember Quin

11

Ember is running, but the ground keeps moving, a slanted treadmill lined with the faces of everyone she’s ever known. They are stitched edge to edge, mouth to eye to mouth, open and gaping, a living carpet that squishes under her bare feet with every stride. She is running but not going anywhere, running in slow motion, her legs the wrong shape, slow and heavy as sandbags.

The sky above her is not a sky. It is the ceiling of the party, the low popcorn plaster she remembers from Rae’s friend’s house, but stretched across infinity, hung with banners and sticky with the sweat of a hundred bodies pressed in too close. The LEDs are turned up past pain, ultraviolet burning holes in her eyes and leaving afterimages of words she can’t quite read: LOSER, LOSER, LOSER, scrolling in blue and red.

She is clutching something. She looks down—her hands are fists, nails digging in, but they are empty. Her dress is the red one, the one Rae picked. It is smaller now, shrunk in the dryer of the dream, clinging to her skin like a bandage. The punch stain has bled out, leeching through the fabric and down her thighs, sticky and cold. She can feel it even in the dream, the way cold sometimes becomes pain.

A voice over the PA—there is no PA—announces, “Welcome to the main event!” and the sound is Jackson’s but not Jackson’s, familiar and then stretched, like a tape played at the wrong speed. The crowd parts and there he is, in the center of the room, not moving but pulsing, his outline flickering like an old CRT screen. His face is perfect, every feature rendered in HD, but his eyes are empty, two black holes sucking in the color.

She tries to speak but her throat is glued shut. Her mouth works, tongue flapping like a fish, but the sound is sucked out by the crowd. They are laughing, all of them, even the ones who are not supposed to be here. She sees her mother’s face, then her sixth-grade gym teacher, then a looping reel of classmates, all mouths and teeth. She tries to duck, to turn away, but she can’t. Her body is on rails.

Jackson is holding out his hand. She thinks he wants to help her, to lift her up, but when she reaches for him his arm elongates, rubber and boneless, and his fingers wrap around her wrist with a vice grip. She tries to pull away but can’t. He grins. There is something inside his smile, something sharp. The crowd is silent now, holding their collective breath.

He whispers, but the words are louder than the music: “Why are you even here?”

Her mouth opens, a last hope, but all that comes out is a squeak, the sound of a kicked puppy. She tries to say Rae’s name, but it comes out as a string of vowels, pathetic and broken. Jackson’s grip tightens and he yanks her forward. She stumbles, trips on the runner—why is there always a runner?—and goes flying, arms out, bracing for the floor.

Time slows. The punch in her hand (it was empty before, it’s never empty) explodes upward, an arc of red that floats in the air, suspended. Every drop is a perfect sphere, refracting her face in a hundred globes, each one more distorted and monstrous than the last. She is falling but she never lands.

Instead, she finds herself in the bathroom, knees bruised and palms stinging. The room is the size of a gymnasium, the walls mirrored on every surface, reflecting her from a thousand angles. She is alone but multiplied, each version worse than the last. Her reflection ripples, then starts to peel away from the glass, climbing out like a girl from a cursed videotape.

The mirror-Embers circle her, closing in. They hiss, they laugh, they point to the punch stain, to the smears of mascara, to the way her legs shake. “Nice one, Quin,” they say, one after another, “Classic Ember,” “Why are you like this?” Their voices layer, high to low, forming a chorus. She puts her hands over her ears but they only get louder, burrowing in.

A door appears behind her, too small for a person. She crams herself through it, shoulders scraping, and emerges in the hallway. The party is in the hallway now, bodies packed so tight she can’t breathe. The smell of sweat and plastic cups is suffocating. She sees Rae at the end of the hall, waving, but when she calls out, Rae turns and walks away, arm in arm with someone Ember can’t identify. She tries to follow, but the bodies press closer, blocking her path. Their faces blur, running together, but their mouths are always visible, always open.

Somebody spills a drink on her—she can’t see who, but it is cold, colder than before. The liquid runs down her back, into her socks, pooling at her feet. She looks down and the carpet is gone, replaced by standing water, black and oily. Her feet sink in, and the laughter echoes over the surface, each ripple a new insult.

Jackson appears again, at the far end of the hallway, beckoning. His varsity jacket is huge now, swallowing him up, making his head look tiny and cruel. She tries to run to him, tries to ask him why, but her legs are cemented in place, knees locked. Every step is an agony, the tendons stretched to snapping. She screams, but nobody hears.

He comes closer, grinning. His face is different now—his nose too long, his eyes too close together. He opens his mouth and the sound is not words but a howling wind, cold and sharp. The wind knocks her off her feet and she falls backwards, arms flailing. She lands in the grass by the roadside.

The party is gone. The houses are gone. It is only her and the asphalt, and the cold, and the night. She looks down—the red stain has grown, now a wound, leaking through the dress and into the earth. She is bleeding out and there is nothing to stop it.

A car approaches, headlights flaring. For a second, she thinks it will stop, that someone will come for her, but the car just passes, sending a shower of gravel over her body. The dust stings her eyes and she rubs at them, leaving muddy streaks on her face.

Another car, then another. Each one faster, louder, lights blazing and then fading to nothing. Nobody stops. She tries to stand, but her feet are stuck, rooted to the dirt. She pulls and pulls, but they won’t budge. The cars get closer, closer, until the sound is deafening, a tidal wave of engine and wind. She braces herself for impact, but it never comes.

Instead, she is back at the party, a never-ending cycle. Each time, the humiliation is worse. The spill is bigger, the laughter sharper, the punch colder. Jackson’s face splits and reforms, sometimes her father’s, sometimes a teacher, sometimes a stranger. She is always on display, always the joke. She tries to wake up, but the dream won’t let her go.

Her hands shake. She tries to cover herself, to find the hoodie, but there’s nothing to hide behind. The crowd chants her name, over and over, “Quin, Quin, Quin,” and she wants to disappear.

She screams, but her voice is silent. The sound is all outside her, none inside. She feels herself shrinking, getting smaller, until she is just a point of consciousness floating above the crowd, invisible and unimportant.

Jackson looks up at her, smirks, and mouths, “See you there.”

She falls.

The last thing she feels before the dream spits her out is the cold of the punch, soaking through, and the knowledge that everyone saw.

Everyone saw.