Within and Without

The following is a work of fiction and not meant to represent any person's ideas, beliefs, wills, and past acts. All characters involved are above eighteen (18), and anything close to real persons or places is entirely coincidental. Copyright Reign Loveridge 2022.

*****

They walked each other down the aisle, clean and worthy.

Savannah wore cream-peach and Kylie wore ice-white.

They both cried, mascara threatening to run down cheeks already sore with smiling, veils hiding what I already knew to be true, wanting, and prepared for a lifetime of scorn.

No one but the open-minded were in attendance and an extremely radial priest cleared his throat and mumbled his altered lines behind me.

In the eyes of a forgiving God and the witnesses who risked everything to be there with me, I married both of my sisters.

*****

I kept waking up at four-thirty. Something about the time sat right with my body-clock. It was an entire hour before I had to leave for work anyway, so I supposed it wasn't entirely bad.

I awoke to the sound of a bottle smashing. The preconditioning meant I was wide awake anyway; checking the clock, it was four-twenty-six. My room was a mixture of blacks and sea blue. The window was open and from the breeze-less curtains I heard talking - very close to the house. I rose from the bed and listened, relaxing a little when laughter followed. Warm and familiar yet the second voice was totally foreign. It was too light and easy-going, I guessed it was not from around here.

I heard the laughter slowly drift with the morning frost, the world outside shadow and cobalt. I heard some banging and giggle cut short with a yelp. I put my head out the window and strained to hear. My heart stomped. Tearing away from the window, I ran down the hall. On the way out the front, I picked up the metal pipe from beside the door and hopped down the precarious flight of pallet-stairs. Out on the road was mine and Kylie's sedan, and in the carport was Savannah's hatchback. Looking over the deathtrap to the back of the carport, I saw shadows moving and rolling around on the couch. A grunt. A gasp. I charged in and hit one of the support poles with the pipe, roaring. 'Get off of her!'

The two figures leaped apart, screaming. A familiar silhouette leaned for a bag and brought out two objects. 'What the fuck! Who are you?'

'Who is you?'

'Who...'

A phone-light flickered on and a cone of vision arced across myself and the car. My eyes trying to adjust to both dark and a beam of light, I readied myself.

'Oh, for fuck's sake!' The familiar said.

'What?' The other said. The light examined the figure. A flash of skin, a loose bra, a leg, underwear bunched at the ankle. Everything clicked in my head and I turned it half-away.

'Fuck, I'm so sorry!'

'You ought to be, Dad!' Savannah shot and flicked on a noisy mechanic's lamp above them. There lay my sister and another girl, Savannah only topless with a phone in one hand and mace in the other, but the other only having a bra on by one strap. My foot snaked into a pair of jeans and I kicked them up to Savannah who slung it across the other girl.

'That's your Dad?' she asked, feeling with her toes, looking like the most embarrassed person on planet earth. 'How old are you again?'

Savannah smacked her lips. 'No, it's my little brother.'

Still looking away, I waved back at the newcomer with my free hand. With the other, I let the pipe clang to the cracked concrete. 'Hey.'

'What the hell are you doing?' Savannah hissed as the other girl got dressed, the openness in her broad movements made me look away even harder, focusing intensely on our mother's old garden gnomes.

'What am I doing?' I threw back. 'I thought you were in danger!'

'As you can see, I'm not! Look, just leave!'

'I'm going to leave too,' the other girl said, pulling her jeans up around her waist. I looked back at the scene, it smelled like perfume and alcohol. 'This is too weird knowing your brother was in earshot of us nearly fucking. I thought you said you didn't live with anyone. Who's sedan is that?'

Savannah lowered her eyes. 'It's my little sisters.'

'Fuck,' the other girl breathed. 'You spun a whole badass story and everything.'

I looked at Savannah, it was the first time in a long time I saw her look hurt. 'I-...'

'Look,' the other girl said, packing up her things and bent to put a hand on Savannah who didn't even look her in the eye. 'If you're ever up my way, maybe we can try this again.'

Savannah took a long time to answer. 'Yeah,' she said, shrugging. 'Maybe.'

The girl straightened as much as she could and gave me an awkward nod and moved by me. She smelled amazing and watching her leave, how straight she was, I knew she wasn't local. She didn't have that meandering to her.

'Do you want me to drive you somewhere?' I called, remembering the hour. No answer came. The girl turned into a shade and strode into the darkness.

The lamp swung in the breeze.

The cold climbed into my breath and I held out a hand to Savannah, as she packed up her things and reached for it, I retracted. She looked at me. 'Wanna wash that thing first?' I asked.

Savannah huffed out of her nose and a look of mischief came about her lips, which I only noticed then that she had lipstick on. Strange. 'I use the other hand,' she said and slapped that hand around the back of mine and with me trapped, she massaged. It was a little wet.

I walked inside after Savannah who immediately went to the heater in the living room and switched the third-hand machine to half-life. It popped every ten seconds and smelled of burned lint and old stove tops, yet within minutes the entire living room was washed in comfortable heat. The glow of the rods lit Savannah's face as she hugged her knees, rubbing her toes and wriggling them into the carpet that was always slightly dusty. Around her were clothes horses, loaded with all of our damp and musty washing that began to steam.

'I really am sorry,' I said, wiping my hands dry on Savannah's singlet that was hanging up.

'I know you are. I do. It's just that this was my rare chance to cut loose.'

'Not too much of that happening these days.'

Savannah shook her head. 'Not since Kylie was offered those scholarship classes, or courses, or what ever the fuck they are.'

'She worked hard for those.'

'She did! Don't get me wrong, she deserves it, but there's more pressure on her now because of that, she needs all these extra textbooks, course readers, and a laptop and video camera. Fuck, I spent half of last week earning the shipping money. Apparently, we count as a "rural community".'

'I know that more than you do,' I said, prodding her shoulder gently with my knee. She shuffled aside and I sat down beside her, staring into the buzzing orange. 'I do work at the postal office.'

'We don't even know if she'll make it big.'

'We're not worried about big,' I said. 'We're worried about an escape. Shit, I'll be happy just moving out of this corner of town. Like we keep saying, w-'

'Don't start. Please.'

'What's wrong?

'I just don't think dance can lift all four of us out of this.' She gestured high to the bare walls that rot in all corners but four. The packed-in feeling it gave always made me feel nauseous. The two rooms, Kylie's and our mother's, were no bigger and Savannah and I made our beds on the couch and our father's favourite chair.

'I think I'm getting sick,' I said.

'Like, Grandma-sick?'

'No, you idiot, just fed up. There's something up with the air and the smell.'

'Open a window then.'

'No, I mean, can't you smell it? It's like this... tang...'

'Tang? Like a lemon?'

'More like that girl you had over.'

'Key word: Had.'

'Key word: you nearly had.'

'Yeah, if it hadn't been for you!'

'I thought you were in danger!'

A hand started rubbing my arm. 'Look, you don't have to go charging in there every time you think we're in trouble. I know you see yourself as the man of the house, but you don't need to arm up every time we're just having a little fun.'

'At half-four in the morning, in the dark, near the car that put us into debt? It's not that I'm worried about you, I'm just worried about-'

'About a car, wow!'

'Oh, don't give me that shit. You know what I mean, we have what we have and when we lose something it's a big deal to all of us. You have no room in your piggy bank for a new car if someone fucks with that piece of shit.'

Savannah went quiet for a while. 'Did you say "piggy bank"?'

'Did you say "we're" having fun? As in, Kylie and Mum also getting down and dirty?'

'Wouldn't you like to know, sicko?'

'Well,' I said, puffing my chest and lowering my vocal chords. 'As the man of the house, I-'

'Jesus fuck...'

We both laughed until we heard a door open. Gentle footsteps came to the corner until Kylie put her head around, her blonde hair in a side ponytail. 'What are you two conspiring about?'

'Conspiring?' Savannah considered. 'That's a big word for a Dancer.'

'And major is a big word for a mechanic,' Kylie shot back.

'Woah,' I drew, holding my hands up.

A pause. Then all three of us laughed. I looked at my sisters, seeing in their eyes we were all too tired to take each other seriously. And the year hadn't even fully started.

I saw lights blare through the blinds and swing to the left and a motor not stop but die brutally. Heels clicked the pavement and then the pallet-stairs and a key was slotted in. Our poor mother opened the door and jumped when she saw us. 'Jesus! What are you all doing up?'

'Wanting to wish you a happy Friday, Mama,' Savannah said.

'Well, happy Friday to you all too. But, Kylie, what are you doing up? You should be in bed, finish the week strong, and start the year right.'

'I'm pretty sure I'm in, anyway, Mum, all the kids that get into scholarship classes get the scholarships automatically, pretty much.' I saw her eyes half-close.

'Well, you won't pretty much know until you pretty much know,' our mother said and hurried over and turned Kylie by the shoulders and guided her down the hall. 'You two, in bed!'

'We are,' Savannah said.

I smiled. 'Night, Mum.'

'Night, loves,' our Mother said.

'I said night!' I called.

'Mm-mm,' we heard a grunt.

'What was that?' Savannah called.

'Mm! Goodnight!' and a closed door.

'Stop teasing your sister and get to bed, one of you has to be up in... oh, thirty minutes.' Then another door closed and a shower blurted to life.

'Let's sleep together,' Savannah said, rising.

'About time you asked,' I said. 'I knew that kiss made an impression.'

'What kiss?'

'At Tory's birthday party.'

'What? Fifteen years ago?'

'That's the one.'

'That "one" was a dare and second I was told later on Tory actually liked you.'

'What's that got to do with anything?'

Savannah paused before crawling onto the couch. 'What?'

'What's that got to do with anything? Her liking me, what's that got to do with you?'

We stared at each other in the low light, her silhouette barely separated from the clothes horse arms in front and the seventies wallpaper behind. I settled into our father's chair, my flesh disgustingly finding last night's grooves.

'It doesn't,' she said.

'What?'

'What-what?' She asked.

'I'm confused.'

'So am I, shut up.'

'Jesus, what the fuck is with you today?'

'I want more!' She blurted.

A door opened down the hall. 'You two!' Came a hiss. 'Go to sleep!'

We waited. The classic scolding sneak. Another door closed and we heard the same angelical humming from childhood.

Savannah let out a sigh that shook her throat, followed by a sniff. 'At twenty-seven, I'm told to go to sleep. I sleep on the couch in my own home, two feet from my little brother. I work for my ex who treats me like a dog because I dumped him. His dad wants to fuck me and until I do he makes me work completely alone and for long hours. I smell, I'm pretty sure I'm losing my hair, my hands are never clean, and I-' There was a long pause to the point I thought she had gone to sleep. 'I was going to have sex with a girl from the city.'

'Big deal,' I said. 'We all know you're bisexual, fuck, even Mum knows.'

'It's not that... It's just that's all it was. I was so desperate I went to the waterfall looking to fuck someone I knew I'd never meet again. Truth is, I didn't even care about her. I was fully prepared to fuck under a shelter on a bug-ridden couch just to feel something.'

'So... it was supposed to be a one-night-stand?'

'Yeah.'

'And that's wrong because?'

'I'm tired of being alone afterwards. I've got you three, the cabin, and my job. Aren't I supposed to have something more by now?'

'What? Like a house?'

'I don't know. More than this, I guess. The same reason why you came storming onto the scene, to protect the car.'

I grunted. 'I didn't just want to protect the car, like I said, it's to protect all we had.'

I heard her covers shift and felt her stare intensify. 'But do you really think the car is all we're entitled to?'

'It's not, I know what you're trying to say. We deserve more than the car. But it's just not the reality right now. Right now, I said. Soon. We just have to wait for Kylie.'

'To do what? To hope she gets hundreds of auditions, none of us have actually seen her dance until she took it up last year. We're working our asses of just so she can twirl?'

'It's better than what we had planned with Dad.'

Savannah stayed silent.

'That fuck left us with dreams. Least we can do is help Kylie achieve hers and maybe she'll remember us.'

'You know she will,' Savannah mumbled. 'She's not going to forget us.'

'We don't know what will happen. That's the gamble. She could be so much of a rising star we get left behind or she could go nowhere in which case we're dying at our workplaces for nothing. Either way, I'm standing my ground. I'm not going to be like Dad.'

Savannah went silent again. 'You did remind me of him tonight.'

'Yeah?'

'Well, I wasn't trying to bang city-hotties on our old couch, but the stupid gung-ho attitude, definitely.'

'I don't want to talk about him.'

'Why?' She asked, as she always did to my always statement.

'Because it gives him life in a place he's dead.'

'That's such a "man" statement.'

'How is wanting to not talk about someone a "man" statement? What do you want me to say?'

'I don't know,' Savannah said. 'More than this, I guess.'

'All I know is that I want to be more. You want more, I want to be more.'

'And what do you want to do? Really. If you're the man of the house now, what do you want to achieve with us?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'More than this, I guess.'

*****