Chapter Text
"I wish / for winter.
The will to bear it."
—Chelsea Dingman
Gemma thinks about fear.
Jokingly, Mark and her used to say how they were afraid of illiteracy, of the lack of critical thinking of younger generations; of the human tendency to revisit the error of our ways. Privately, they agreed they were terribly afraid of Ricken going off on a soliloquy during their strange gatherings. With a painful dose of reality, they used to be scared of mass shootings happening at schools, at college campuses—of the terrifyingly possible twists of luck that could arrive any day while giving their lectures. They used to be afraid of the policy making in their state, regarding gun control and social rights and freedom of speech. Broadly, they used to be afraid of things like carbon emissions and the ice caps melting and the decline of the Amazon rainforest.
There was the natural fear of illnesses and a plethora of misfortunes; and, of course, the fear of losing one another.
But these are only the most civilized, most theoretical edges of it, and fear is a prism: comprised of enough faces that each person might only get to know this or that corner in their lifetime, the surfaces familiar beneath their hands.
Before this, Gemma was privileged enough to be completely unfamiliar with those other sides.
Until her car swerved unexpectedly.
Until her breath was knocked out of her lungs and bent metal closed in around her.
Until smoke engulfed her and strange hands pulled her out of it.
She got her first glimpse of terror when she jolted awake during surgery—exposed, powerless, dispossessed—her eyelids taped together so that she could not see, only infer what was being done to her. There was an icy kind of cold, like she’d never felt before, as every muscle in her body went rigid. There was sheer, piercing horror in the sounds of drilling and metal clinking, and in the edge of a quiet, unfeeling voice: “She’s conscious”.
It doesn’t much matter; dread is a permanent fixture now.
There is no mystery, no unknown faces left in the prism. Gemma knows, with every shred of lucidity—the reality, the acuteness, the aftertaste, and the remainder of fear. It does not fade and it does not lessen, not even when the weeks stretch into months, and the months into mountains of time too big to comprehend.
Gemma looks at her own two hands, but cannot feel the water falling, trickling down them, and for a second she fears that they belong to someone else. This, she finds, is another consequence of dread: a growing distance between the outer and the inner, a slow, painful curling into the innermost part of her shell. She finishes rinsing a plastic mug—safer than glass—the one labelled to use specifically for infusions, and even this mere gesture is worthy of ridicule.
Here she is, delaying insanity by washing a mug that isn’t even hers.
A loud buzz erupts, cutting across the fog behind her eyes.
Mechanically, she completes the actions: turns off the tap, places the mug upside down beside the cutlery, dries her hands against the fabric on her thighs and moves towards the door.
She looks into the intercom’s screen. A granulated vision of static, black and white. And the fish-eye projection reveals him as he always is, deformed and grotesque and clinically dressed.
The wolf freed of the sheep’s clothing.
Mauer quickly adjusts his attire, smooths down his white coat, one hand hidden behind his back.
Something is different.
He looks… overeager, entirely too confident and pleased with himself; but then again, that’s habit in him, so she tries to tell what exactly differs about this time. Her life, her integrity, may very well depend on it.
She lingers longer than she should’ve before pressing the button and letting him in.
Another buzz. There is a wolf in the room now, and he greets her with the usual protocol. Exchanges: questions, inquiries, detours and refusals that pass as answers. Afterwards, he leisurely takes several steps around the living area, making show of an ease and a liberty she can only dream of. He makes sure to keep his back to the wall, and it is only in that moment that Gemma does realize he is concealing an object between his clasped hands.
If this visit diverges from the previous ones, that is certainly the key.
“I see your collections still have no new additions,” he muses, like he has all the time in the world to waste.
So he came here to talk. That’s actually worse. It is when Mauer steers away from the strictly professional that he is at his most dangerous.
Gemma measures her breathing, cautious. She stands as tall as she can be, head held high in a vain attempt to solidify what little dignity she has left.
“Your contributions this past quarter have been of the most useful kind,” he continues. “Invaluable, even. And so, frivolous as it may be, I thought a small recompense would be in good order,” and it is upon that last word that he gives her a smile with too many teeth.
Her whole body steels itself—although for what exactly, she cannot be sure; every instinct telling her to fight or to flee. Both things doomed to failure.
She grips the edges of the counter, ready for anything—and Mauer reveals a vinyl disk tucked inside a thin square envelope.
Well. She lets out a breath, but the tension in her body remains.
So, a record. If that is all, this will be her fourth. It sickens her, but the frequency of these rewards is the only thing that signals the passage of time. Her third, a Billie Holiday one, was bestowed upon her two quarters ago, give or take. Beyond that, it is impossible to tell how long it has been.
The doctor’s face twitches, almost imperceptibly, and he starts manipulating the record player. If he wants to play it for her, there is nothing she can do about it. She will listen whether she wants it or not.
Inside the plastic case, a button is pressed, the needle falls into place and the vinyl begins its maddening turn. There is a strange sound, then, one that registers belatedly in her ears as a ringing bell, accompanied by a swelling chorus—before the unmistakable voice of Frank Sinatra starts soaring high and fills the room.
I'll be home for Christmas… You can plan on me… Please have snow and mistletoe… And presents on the tree… and the doctor hums, actually hums, in a blatant mockery to her. ...Where the love light gleams… I'll be home for Christmas… If only in my dreams…
The music—beautiful, tasteful elsewhere—rings artificial and false and empty underground. Such is the nature of this place: it leads everything to ruin, to rot, to senselessness. And every ensuing note only furthers her sense of unease. Because she has every reason to believe they know her tastes—the singers she preferred, the ones she praised and the ones she disliked—but there is also something more disturbing this time. Because the melody has a theme: Christmastime; a particular season of the year. And any hint of a season is an allusion to time—time that has passed, time she has missed, time she is cut off from; time that ebbs and flows only aboveground.
He presses a button again, and the turntable stops. Then, silence.
Gemma shifts her weight from one foot to another. “Is it Christmas?” she asks flatly.
As expected, there is no answer. There will never be answers again.
Simply, Mauer awards her poignancy with an eerie grin, skin pulled by strings. “What do you think?”
Gemma swallows, thick worms of saliva pooling in her mouth.
This was a spear, then; a bullet, a poisoned arrow. Meant to make her bleed, but it might just conjure up a storm instead. Fuck it. There are too many words inside her to keep them stagnant and docile; there is a hate in her bones she thought she was not capable of. Bitterly, she thinks of the last months, the past quarters of ‘progress’ where she quietly adhered to their routines, their rules without a mention of the outside world; without a single mention of them. She regaled them exactly with what they wanted to hear, and she is about to undo all that in a single second—funnily enough, she finds she does not care. There is no point in dancing around it.
“I have not forgotten, you know,” she ventures, and her voice gives it all away, that rehearsed, careful neutrality replaced with a sharp bite. “My family. My mother, my father. Mark. Our relatives, our friends. No matter how many rooms you send me to, I will not forget. And I’m sure they-”
Mauer clicks his tongue. It is the vicious sound of a snake, a serpent—a stirring monster.
“Oh, Gemma,” he chides, as though she is four instead of forty. “I’m afraid you overestimated yourself. You have been living under false impressions,” he tilts his head in her direction, narrowing his eyes. “You are sure that they… what? That they think about you too? In that case, I would like to invite you to envision the following image. I assure you, you’ll find it most enlightening: right at the end of Two Rivers Road stands a house,” that throws her off balance. Even though she knows no fact can be hidden from Lumon, moments like this send chills up her spine every time. The address. The address. They know Devon and Ricken’s address. “-and inside said house an ornate, richly decorated table, and your so-called family sitting comfortably around it. And there is cheer all around. They’re drinking, and better yet, they’re laughing. They’re exchanging anecdotes and good news and good wishes and other pleasantries. There is no seat at that table left unoccupied. Because you are not a part of it. You aren’t even in their thoughts. I feel it is my duty to remind you, to uncloud your delusions, because in this moment, we are the only ones who care about you.”
And this is perhaps what Gemma fears most of all—succumbing to false, vile words, falling for elaborate lies; being so utterly lost that any tether is a mercy, even if it’s a flaming iron. Perhaps one day she will lack the strength to resist. Today, though, she does not.
Mauer makes to leave.
“Fuck you,”
He turns around, barely looking at her. She knows these verbal hits might not even graze him; it is possible, in fact, that he enjoys them. It is all worthless anyway.
“I am feeling particularly lenient this evening, so I will let that impertinence go unpunished,”
Gemma lets out a dry huff, bitter and exhausted.
The doctor straightens, hardens. “Is that all you have to say?”
Silence weighs impossibly heavy on her shoulders—threatening, dangerous, lapidary. The walls close in around them as though they were living things.
Rehearsed words find their way back to her mouth. “Thank you, Dr. Mauer.”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she thinks; tomorrow she will kill him. She will snap the vinyl into lethal shards and hide a couple of them inside the waistband of her trousers. She will boil water and throw it to his face. She will lift the plastic chair as far as her arms can go and crash it against his back. She will drive his head into the singular corner of the table. She will strangle him with her own two hands.
The door clicks shut, and something cracks.
Violently, she throws the plastic mug against the wall and it does not break.
In here, down here, Gemma is the only breaking thing.
To her surprise, she finds herself replaying the song one more time. It is unwise. It is almost suicidal. The impression of something genuine and real only furthering her sense of loss, sharp as a razor blade. I’ll be back at like, ten. These are all pagan festivities, anyway. It’s paganism all the way down. Actually, it’s the winter solstice that deserves all the celebration. So true, I can’t wait for days to get longer. Halfway through the dark, or at least that’s what they say. I think Devon got you that candle-making kit, but don’t tell her I said that. Have you seen these postcards? They’re ridiculous. Will you drive me to my parents’ tomorrow? Of course. Will you come to bed? Will you hold me for a while?
Gemma sinks, and tries not to think of home.
I'll be home for Christmas… If only in my dreams…
***
Devon pulls out a chair by the bathroom. She’ll set up camp if she needs to.
Back when Ricken and her bought this house, even the address had seemed serendipitous: Two Rivers Road, meanwhile her brother and her best friend had made a home at Riverside Road. Too fantastically cosmic to be brushed off as mere coincidence; too funny not to buy the house. It resulted in a fair number of inside jokes between them. And how did those go? Which were the words that made them laugh?
Devon can hardly remember.
She is so afraid now, of things like that slipping between her fingers. She wants to encapsulate memory, but she is not sure how.
She knew, even months ago, that when this day came there would be nothing to celebrate. There might not be anything worthy of celebration ever again. At least, she knows, that much is true for Mark. Every attempt to keep it lowkey was markedly futile: the sparse tinsel and the small, sickly-looking tree only drawing more attention to the silence, the empty seat. Even Ricken had seemed at a loss about what to say.
Everything had developed more or less in this fashion when, halfway through dinner, Mark excused himself saying he was not hungry.
And he’s been here ever since, locked in the bathroom.
Devon looks at the wooden floor for a long time—she hears hints of sniffling, the tap running.
When he reemerges, nothing about him belongs to this world.
Too-pale skin, vacant stare, the blue veins under his eyes the starting point of an unending streak of tears. His clothes do not seem like his own, and somehow she is not surprised, since he packed the majority of his wardrobe when Gemma died. The person before her is both familiar and terrifyingly unfamiliar, and Devon’s heart breaks.
When she holds him, he feels thin like wet paper. A discarded newspaper crumbling in a puddle: breaking apart, bleeding ink. He does not resist her touch, but does not lean into it either. The only sign of life in him seem to be the clammy hands that come up to hold her in return, slowly, sluggishly.
“I know,” she says, hiding tears of her own. “Mark… I know…”