The alarm was buzzing and he put the water heater on the stove. As his eyes blinked out the sleep, he saw a picture of a man holding a piece of paper. He carefully stepped around the broken chair and gripped the sticky doorknob. Lauren had put the mirror up that was placed over the sink; his heart jumped and his hands felt cold as he realized that he could no longer remember how long ago that was. Adam started shaving the last few of his prickly, black hairs before looking over his shoulder to check that everything was just as he had left it.

Starting from when Adam was seven, he checked the three faucets in the house five times to make sure that no water was dripping. If he woke in the morning to faucets dripping, he was sure that the universe would be punishing him that much quicker, and he had been there with nothing to show for it and no way to stop it. Sometimes when he stared out the window and the buildings didn’t look the same as he had left it, there was a black curtain up instead of a green one, or the car that had always parked on the left was suddenly parked on the right, a sense of doom came over Adam—one that was inconsolable, without words, leaving him to witness it alone.

He pulled the curtains quietly, being sure not to disturb her breathing. The curtains were dark and stained and made the house feel small and tucked in. Lauren had always wanted them to be open, always talking about letting more of the world in and tried to encourage him to talk someone other than her. A couple of times she had muttered the word, “family,” in a way that he didn’t understand. Maybe she had imagined little kids, sitting around the tiles and ugly carpet. He inched the curtains closely, tightly, counting until he saw 5 wrinkles above the rod. He looked above her earlobe and counted 5 gray hairs. He watched the freckles on her face jump from wrinkle to wrinkle and when he counted five, he made sure that her pillow was in the same spot where she had always positioned it. He looked at the clock. It was five minutes to midnight. This felt significant and goosebumps rose on his forearm. Maybe Adam was not meant to be there with her. Maybe she had told him to go and he hadn’t heard.

Adam pulled the curtains tighter. He closed his eyes and splashed the cold water on his face. 5 minutes to 1 now. He found that the thoughts got worse as the hours approached. He watched her mouth move and counted five little lines on her bottom lip move in a way that he never knew a human could. He thought about all the times he had watched her move, how much time he had spent admiring her arms, eyes, legs, and lips as he watched the five black hairs on his arm stand straight up. Adam felt scared and suddenly he counted five short breaths as he placed his five fingers on his bare chest.

He watched his sister’s eyes with an intensity that made him question what was real. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning to the same buzzing sound he thought he might be going crazy. The alarm buzzed five after eight. He checked the cabinet for an expiration date. He couldn’t find a five on the label. He felt defeated and began to tear the inside wall of the cabinet with his thick, dirty nails. He stared at the sheet he had made from the curtains. The goosebumps came back in five. He watched her face and how her eyes twitched in tens, which were symptoms of five, and how her breathing had shortened at intervals of fives in waves of tens.

He pulled the blanket down in five movements. He counted the hairs on her legs in series of fives. Adam placed his hand on her fifth toe and tugged as hard as he could. A buzzing sound could be heard from the nightstand. His eyes blinked five times as he stared at the nightstand, confused about what he should do. Adam searched Lauren’s face for answers and all he could find were five more hairs on her upper right lip.

He took the afghan their grandmother had crocheted for them when they were children and inched it up in five harsh movements until it almost reached Lauren’s chin where he could still see the scar from when she had fallen in a ditch. “You might be getting cold,” he whispered in Lauren’s ears as he counted the five deposits on her inner lobe, “you were never all that good at taking care of yourself, too busy worrying about other people.” His eyes felt misty and he viciously scratched his nose and bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He placed her thin hands in his cold ones and vigorously rubbed her fingertips. When he let go, they dropped with such swiftness it startled him, and he couldn’t tell if the small yelp he heard had come from him or her. He placed his head next to hers and stared into her black eyes. He placed his ear on her chapped lips, “What was that?”

Adam walked with five deliberate steps to the kitchen to retrieve the hot water. He placed two green tea bags in identical black mugs and watched the herbs swirl in the cloudy murkiness. His thoughts got lost in what could have been and he slumped down, staring at the tiles in groups of five, for the fear was creeping through his veins as he realized he couldn’t remember how long he had been in the house or when was the last time Lauren had spoken even a word to him. From the floor he looked over down the hall towards the bed. He waited for her leg to move in those five twitches the way it did when they would take their evening naps. He closed his eyes so hard as if he was trying to push something out and began to hit the sides of his head with his fists in five, hard punches.

Starting from as far back as Adam could remember, Lauren had been the central focus of his life. He became debilitated when trying to make any decision on his own; he had always hated going to the little store down the street without her near. She was so much stronger than him, and she knew how to talk to people in a way he had never learned how. Her quick smile and comforting laugh that made her eyes shine had put him at ease in such a powerful way that for those moments when she was talking with him he felt at peace and like nothing could hurt them. She was patient with him. She could understand and know what he was thinking just by looking at his face, and she would touch his arm and lead him back to safety. Sometimes they would just sit in their twin bed and she would cradle him, letting him cry into her. Once the weeping ceased he would tell her all his inner thoughts about the demons that had chased their family and how one day he would turn their house into a mansion filled with all the beauty the world had to offer so that they would never have to leave and they could finally be left alone with only each other. During one of these evening naps, his fingers reached her lips and he touched her leg and whispered that he loved her and she laughed in a way that scared him before slapping his hand away five times.

Adam lifted himself from the kitchen floor and laid himself down next to his sister. He touched her right arm and stared at the freckles on her right shoulder. You could always see the veins in her hands and her hands were often sweaty. She was wearing a simple black dress that had once belonged to their mother which her and Adam had found long after she had left the house. It fit tightly around Lauren though she had always told Adam that it was the most comfortable piece of clothing she had ever worn. He put the fabric between his fingers and it felt sticky, wet, and worn thin. His fingers glided up her left leg in five swift movements and the dark hairs felt itchy. Her legs were his favorite part of her body; they were long and thin, but strong, in a way that reminded him of a horse. Her big breasts frightened him, especially when he watched them move up and down as her breathing shortened in her sleep. They seemed detached from her body as if they were separate beings that moved on their own. He watched them now and they just seemed to stick straight up in the stillness of the dark room. The fan was the only sound he heard as he waited for her to say something.

Every night seemed to end this way. Adam getting the house ready for her awakening until he couldn’t take it anymore and would crawl in bed next to her, watching her body so intensely that he found himself lost in her, almost believing that the more he did this, the better chances of their bodies melting together into one. His eyes blinked as he watched the dawn shoot through the dark curtains in five rays. He placed his arm across her stomach and buried his face in her stiff armpit. He knew the inevitability of someone finding them and taking Lauren away. When they came, he would speak for the first time to someone other than her and tell them to take him along to wherever she might be going.

The shortening of breath with legs shifting and rapidly anxious heartbeats seeping into the walls is deafening.

A middle-aged woman with greying hair crawls into the twin bed and pulls the blanket as quietly as she can manage.

“What happened?” a small voice yawns. The eyes of the five-year girl have widened and are searching in the darkness.

The older woman gets up and searches for something on the shelf.

“There’s nothing the matter, go back to sleep, I just need to stay here for a little bit.”

She is staring at the wall, her mind completely blank, her lungs are tightening, and she can’t keep her eyes off the door.

The young girl lies looking at her mother’s back and hands that she’s planted on the shelf. She wonders what her mother could possibly be running from as she wraps her Minnie Mouse blanket closer around her.

“Mom?”

The exhausted woman crawls back in and turns over, the little girl gently puts the small blanket over her body.

“Don’t worry, honey, just go back to bed.”

The daughter stares at the back of her head and listens to her mother’s labored breathing until she can’t remember falling asleep.

As the sun rises, the daughter gets up with a start and lets out a little yelp. Her mother is gone. Was that what people meant by dreaming?

The shortening of breath at night comes back. Her legs shift against each other and sometimes against or towards another. She continues to pull the blanket closer around her. She clutches her anxious heartbeat in desperate hope that it won’t stop.

The memory refuses to stop unfolding.

Wayne woke up in the closet. He looked around at the Alice in Wonderland books and wondered how much longer he was supposed to sit there in silence. He remembered Laurie saying something like, “Wayne, don’t you dare move a muscle,” and the sound of shutting and locking the small door.

His eyes focused on a small square patch of green in the corner. He realized years later it was a tiny portion of his father’s thermal shirt. Wayne would try to hold his breath for one hundred seconds and start the counting all over again. He usually could make it to 54. Sometimes Laurie would come home and say something like, “Dear Wayne, you can come out now,” and laugh the loudest of laughs that made his teeth hurt and he would run out to the bathroom, feeling like he was about to shit himself. He could never tell if he actually was and would reach behind to check.

This memory popped in his brain as he was eating ramen noodles, looking across the wooden bar, for a second not knowing what was real and he asked his friend Suzie if he looked the way he normally looked.

“Do you like this place?”

“Of course I do, Wayne, I like almost anything you suggest.”

He thought about Texas and the dry air that came with it. He put his finger to his mouth and ran it along his teeth to make sure that he was still there. He walked slowly to the bar, he wanted rest more than anything else, a text from Tom flashed across the screen: “Will this be the night you finally stay in bed for the entire night?”

Wayne woke up and opened his closet door. He crawled out and the bright sun aggressively hit his face. He tried to get the strength to close the purple curtains that Suzie had put up for him. He walked across the room, noticed the soiled jeans on the floor, and felt better once the purple folds were closed together. An image of Suzie with her head back laughing flashed by. His eyes had focused on her crooked cigarette stained teeth at the time. He wondered how much she knew about his relationship with his closet.

He turned back towards the closet and studied the contents inside. He hated all of his clothes. He picked the subtlest colors and tried to match it with his stained pants. “Fuck, this life.” He took a short breath and realized that he wasn’t feeling well.

He thought of him and Tom in the grocery store. Looking at Tom’s full head of hair and young eyes, realizing he was falling in love. They had met at a mutual friend’s coffee shop. Both talking to the friend, Tom feeling extremely attracted to Wayne’s grey hair and comforting voice, Wayne feeling attracted to Tom’s playful eyes and fast mouth, both knowing the attraction was mutual and playing the game of ignoring it.

They had spent the day talking, eating, fucking, and starting the cycle all over again. The sun had been down for about an hour and Wayne felt his chest tighten. He didn’t want to take his arms off of Tom or leave the white comforter, but he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to stay.

“I really would love to stay, but my friend Suzie, who I’ve known for years, she’s got terminal cancer and on chemo. I like to be there, especially at night, she’s fallen in the shower a couple of times, and as you can imagine, it’s just hard for her to be alone.”

“Oh fuck, Wayne, I’m so sorry, that’s awful.”

Wayne hadn’t even thought of the lie before speaking, it naturally tumbled out. Tom hadn’t even asked him to stay. Wayne panicked and could feel his entire body stiffen.

“You know, I’m really all she’s got. She’s been estranged from her family, the gay shit you know how it goes, and we’ve both been bad at relationships. Shit. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. I just met you. I don’t really talk about it. I apologize, this is really intense, maybe I’m just an intense person and didn’t know that about myself because I’ve been alone for so long.”

He felt Tom’s concerned stare as he shuffled into his loose jeans. He resented the sincerity in Tom’s voice. Wayne kissed his tight mouth and got out of there as quickly as he could.

The memories came in huge waves as he put his hand on the closet door. Every night ended the same as every morning began the same.

The memory Wayne fell asleep to that night included walking the long stretch to school and how he had trouble smiling as a child. He thought about the sketchy sex he had with Wendy in the bleachers. He could touch her leg without feeling bad about himself and no one seeing. He noticed her brown hair and her pearl necklace. He remembered wishing that he had felt more in that moment. Her body responded with such intensity which made his mouth immediately shut. Something wasn’t right. But he had to move through the motions to prove that he was alive.

The next night he looked around the bar and thought that maybe he had truly never known anyone. He thought about all the conversations he had heard over the years, and how it always left him envying the people who seemed to know each other in the way where you were able to see and understand all their layers. He had ignored Tom for over a week now. Tom began to verbalize his frustration with how guarded and far away Wayne always was. Wayne's mind went blank when he thought of Tom now, there was nothing for him to say. He chuckled to himself and pretended that the cooler needed restocking.

When Laurie opened the door once in the middle of the night she had asked Wayne what he was thinking about.

“I imagined the world as a flat piece of ice and I was floating on top of it with a blanket made of feathers.”

“Oh baby, that’s so pretty, don’t ever let that go.” She gave him a wet kiss on his mouth and her breath smelled of gin.

The phone kept flashing. Another text from Tom: “What the fuck Wayne? You’re a 54-year old man and you’re acting like a fucking child. PICK UP THE PHONE.” Three more phone calls from Tom. Wayne watched his name blink over and over again. He rubbed his hands together to try and feel something.

He walked up the brown steps to the apartment he had shared with Suzie for twenty-two years. He walked in to see Tom’s piercing, angry hazel eyes. Wayne had loved those eyes. There were tears streaming down Suzie’s face. “I’m so sorry, Wayne, I didn’t know. He started asking all these questions, and all the anxieties and worry started coming out. I love you so much, Wayne, oh fuck. Please don’t push me away.” Tom was yelling, but Wayne couldn’t make out any of the words. It was as if Tom was shouting at him from the other end of a tunnel. He started to walk across the white and blue tiles of their small kitchen when he suddenly lost his balance. He reached for Suzie’s legs and buried his head in her lap and let the tears start to fall. 

She stroked his grey hair, rubbed his back, and whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, Wayne, you’re safe here. As long as we’re together, we’ll be safe.”