Permeable Boundaries

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.