Through a Tangled Wood by Jamie Campbell, Katie French, Ariele Sieling, Sarah Dalton, Marijon Braden, H. S. Stone, & Zoe Cannon
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They arrived at Samuel's shack when the moon was high. Nolan drew his arms over his thin shirt and shivered. Samuel threw him a tired look. “It'll be warm in here, lad,” he said, pushing open the door.
Samuel's shack was much like his own. The one room home had been constructed out of boards, chipped concrete blocks and a corrugated metal roof. Inside was a single bed roll where Nolan's had two. (He thought again of his dah. He'd be worried sick.) The few possessions Samuel had were tucked neatly in a wooden crate—another pair of boots, a comb, a fraying towel, a jar of some sort of balm. On one side hung two spare sets of tan work coveralls, worn through on the knees. Nolan smiled at the sentimentality of it. The hospital always gave a new set when the old wore out. Most men traded the old coveralls at the bazaar, but Samuel hung his up neatly like paintings in a twenty-first century museum.
“Sit down,” his supervisor said, gruff again. Tiredness had leached into his step after they'd slipped past the bazaar lights. Now the old man fumbled for his package, drew it out and pressed the paper to his nose. “Whatever you've got to ask, better do it quick 'fore I can't answer anymore.”
Nolan wondered what Samuel meant, but he obeyed, folding Indian-style onto the bed roll. He watched as Samuel carefully opened his package. The dried plant inside threw a spicy scent into the air.
“I wanted to ask you, sir, about the girls.” Nolan's voice wavered again. He clenched his hands together. Could this get him fired? Get him kicked out of the city? He didn't think Samuel would turn him in, but coldness encased his heart.
“Don't call me sir here.” Samuel drew out a square of rolling paper from a box in his crate. “It's the Plan B girls you wanna talk about.” He lifted tired, red-rimmed eyes to Nolan. “It's about Plan B?”
Nolan nodded, shivering. He hugged himself and leaned back against the far wall. The wood dug into his spine. “Are you sure those girls are brain-dead? I mean” —he paused and swallowed— “have you ever heard one…say something?”
Samuel looked up from the cigarette he was rolling. Not tobacco though. The smell was much stronger, and tangy like the cayenne pepper Chef Cartegena used in his chilies. “Did one of the girls say something?” He narrowed his good eye and leaned in.
Nolan leaned back, his head beginning to spin. “Yes.”
Samuel pushed out a breath, nodding. He went back to rolling his cigarette, drew a match and lit the end. The paper flamed, throwing a smell into the air like burning sage or was it…devil's spine. Rumors of its addictiveness, its hallucinations had given it that moniker. You only smoked it if you were crazy or wanted to die slowly, sucking on the devil's teat as the saying went. Why would Samuel, who had a good job and enough barter slips to live fat and easy, do a dumb thing like smoke devil's spine?
“I'll say my piece and then I'll ask you kindly to step outside while I finish this,” the old man said, blowing smoke away from Nolan. Still, the boy’s head felt heavy and his legs weak. He tried not to breathe too deeply. “I've heard girls mumble too. Dreamlike and far-away. Doesn't mean they're alive, lad. It just means some part of them is still…reaching. But they're vegetables. Rocks.” He kicked a heavy toe at a rock resting by the base of his crate, the motion already sloppy. “You can't think they're alive, or it'll eat you up. It'll make you wanna do this.” Samuel took a big drag of the spine, the tip flaring red in the dark. Samuel coughed and peered at Nolan through the smoke. “You should leave now. Sleep outside by the door ‘til I'm done and the smoke's cleared. Then you can sleep here.” He pointed to the bedroll. “I won’t mind the ground by then.” He voice was sad, resigned as if he had no choice in smoking. As if he’d already handed over his life.
Nolan's smoke-filled brain felt caught in a whirlpool, but he waited a moment longer. “If you really believe they aren't alive, then why smoke? Why slowly kill yourself over it?”
Samuel slumped against the wall, the smoke ringing his head. His eye patch had shifted, revealing a bumpy, red scar running toward his socket. His good eye had grown glassy and it drifted closed. “’Cause I failed.” His fist clenched and released just like the girl's. Samuel's voice drifted out in a dribble of smoke. “I can't make myself believe.”