Maggie's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

The visitor left before Maggie could reach him. He sat on the melting couch for six minutes, drank half a glass of something pink, and walked out with his shoulders still locked around his ears. Maggie watched from the far wall, where her arm had gone the color of the paint behind her. She had wanted to show him the way the ceiling breathed. He never looked up. This was the fourth one this week. Maggie had lived in the lounge so long her skin now took the color of whatever she leaned against. She had promised herself, back when she still had edges, that every soul who walked through the door would leave seeing the world the way she saw it — as one long, kind, spinning thing. Instead they came in tired and left tired. The room was not doing its work. She found Marlow crouched by the ribbon of river that ran along the east wall. The bright blobs that usually rolled through the current were bunched at the bottom, dull as wet pennies. He was not touching the water. He was just sitting with it. "They stopped moving three days ago," he said, without turning. "The light in the room is thin. They feel it too." Maggie sat down beside him. She had blamed the guests. She had blamed her own fading. She had not thought to blame the room itself. The lounge was supposed to hum — colors sliding, air warm, something in the walls pulling a visitor open like a slow knot. Tonight the walls felt like walls. She pressed her palm flat to the floor and felt nothing answer back. At the center of the room stood the old glass lamp on its brass stand. Its pulse had gone slack. Maggie remembered when it beat so hard the couches rose and fell with it. She walked over and put both hands on the glass. It was cool. She pressed harder, until the color under her skin drained into the lamp in a thin bright line. The lamp took it. Then it took more. Her fingers went gray to the knuckles before the glass finally kicked, once, like a heart remembering. Light climbed the channels inside the lamp and spilled outward. The couch behind her softened and began to drip upward. The river brightened. One of the dull blobs lifted, then another. A single butterfly she had not seen in months uncurled from behind the lamp's base and opened wings full of moving color. Marlow stood up slowly. "It's feeding again," he said. Maggie looked at her gray hand. The lamp would need more of her to keep the room awake, and the room was what she needed to reach anyone at all. She heard the front door open behind her. A new visitor stepped inside, and for the first time in weeks, the ceiling above him began to breathe.