by Elena Sichrovsky
I come in to find you hanging from the ceiling fan.
The wooden blades squeak back and forth in half-inch steps, as if hesitant to make the full pirouette. Clusters of black feathers curl around the second and fourth blade. Your feet are bare; your shoes have slipped off. One shoe is lying awkwardly on it’s side and the other is halfway under the couch.
I move closer, quietly. I place my left hand on your ankle. Slow and deliberate, like a prayer.
Then I flick my wrist and send you twirling in a circle. The rest of your feathers unfurl in a midnight spread. You stretch both wings and arms wide as you spin, squealing in shrill delight.
“Shhh,” my finger bridges my smiling lips. “Mom will hear you.”
“She’s not hoooome,” you sing, sacrilegiously off-key. As the rotation slows you pull your knees up to your chest and attempt a backflip that only succeeds in kicking the fan in the face. You go crashing to the ground in a flurry of obsidian.
I stare at the ceiling fan, now with a broken blade like a busted lip. “She’s gonna be so mad.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t hang off the chandelier this time.” You stumble to your feet and brush the dust out of your crumpled hair. “It’s just a fan, Margery. And it’s my room.”
I come in to find you hanging off the ceiling fan.
The wooden blades whimper under your sweaty fingers. Your elbows wobble as you straddle the metal ladder with both legs. Two men with yellow hard hats are trying to pry you off but you hold onto the fan like gum stuck to a bench.
“They’re trying to take it down,” you shout at me. It’s a cry to arms. Immediately I run over and grab a hammer from the toolbox and start brandishing it at the workers like a flaming sword. Their baritone hollers and our tenor screams clash in unholy harmony.
“You promised,” you wail when Mom finally arrives to disband the choir of protest. “You promised you wouldn’t change my room, you promised.”
With a jerk of your knee Mom has you pulled down and cowering down on the floor. Stray feathers come fluttering down like rotted snowflakes. She silences me with a single pronunciation of her twisted lips. Shhh. The flat of her hand lightly cuffs the back of your head. “Grow up, Jared. You don’t even live here anymore. See if you can get a fan up in the dorms if you really want it.”
“It’s not my room,” you whimper, crooked wings sheltering you like a turtle’s shell. “I can’t, I can’t, it’s not my room.
I come in to find you hanging onto the ceiling fan.
Your roommate is slumped over the textbooks on their desk, snoring rhythmically. And you. Even half-buried under the wool blanket I can still clearly make out the tip of the old broken fan blade clasped between your folded hands. You must have snagged a piece before the construction workers cleared the house. Probably kept it wrapped in a t-shirt at the bottom of your bag, all the way from the bus station to here.
Kneeling down in front of the bed I put two fingers on the scrap and gently tug on it until your grip loosens and you release it to me. The misshapen piece of wood is delineated in blood. Every splinter has been tucked under your skin.
You don’t open your eyes. “Give it back.”
“Jared.” I take your hand and rub the hem of my sleeve over the shallow cuts in your palm, as if they can be erased. “Get up. Come with me.”
Sock-footed, eyes half-lidded, you follow me outside and down to the basement of the dormitory hall. There’s a small room with a metal door and I use one of my earrings to pick the lock on it. Inside there’s a desk, a roll out bed, a coat hanger with a faded janitor’s uniform, and the blessed shadow of a ceiling fan above us.
The fan is not much more than five feet off the ground. When you unfold your wings and hook the ends of your feathers around the blades your toes barely hover an inch off the ground. I move to give you a starting shove, but instead you shake your head and extend your arms.
I step into the embrace, my head on your shoulder, my arms a seat belt around your waist.
“This is our room.” The words are released from your lips in a faint murmur. “Shhh,” you hum even though there’s no other sound in the room. You hold me close to your heartbeat, fingers moving through my hair. Your hand is still bleeding. Drops of blood fall onto my scalp.
When you count down to three I squeeze my eyes shut and promise not to peek.
With a twist you lay your foot flat against the floor and then jump for the take off, sending us spinning away from the earth itself.
If I open my eyes it’s only to catch a glimpse of the halo glitching above your head.
Elena Sichrovsky is a queer writer currently living in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in Mud Season Review, Barren Magazine, Honey Literary, and Nightmare, among others. She’s interested in exploring queer themes through the lenses of body transformation and horror. You can read more on her work on her website (elenasichrovsky.com) or follow her on Twitter (@ESichr).
