Waiting to be Taken

Abstract

Waiting to be Taken Carrie Hall (bio) Elysium lay sprawled on the couch like she was waiting to be taken, but nobody seemed to notice. The swooning forearm thrown casually over her brow and her knock-kneed legs falling wide apart barely caught anyone's attention. It was hard to tell if she was passed out or just weeping. Suddenly, she opened her eyes, looked around long enough to register shock and disbelief, then fell to the ground in full wail. She buried her mouth in the long red carpet and screamed. She leaned back again, her face, though dark, visibly reddened by grief. She ran her hands through her dreadlocks, now dyed blue; cheap mascara ran down all the way down her face to the two tattooed lines, like the hollows of a fiddle, on her throat. Another gutter punk, Little Bob, his head shaved bald, sat on the floor with her and cried too. When she went down for her next screaming sob, he tapped her on the shoulder and as she got up he handed her a drink—straight vodka. "Hey!" I yelled from across the room—the area partitioned as the kitchen, "put some orange juice in there!" I'd brought orange juice because I wanted people to ingest something with nutritional value and I knew I'd never be able to get anyone to eat. As one of the slightly older crowd—nineteen—I felt I had to act responsible. For punks in the early nineties, nineteen was practically middle-aged. Even still, my own drink had some juice in it, but the amount was purely symbolic; you'd have to hold it up to the light to see a thin wisp of yellow floating through the thick clear liquid. I hadn't added ice. "What the hell is she so sad about?" Max asked me. Max was Markus's wife. I mean, not wife-wife, we weren't the type of people to actually marry—not with a wedding and all that. Imagine us at a wedding; this was the way we threw a funeral. But they had a baby together, they'd just bought a house. Markus's ashes were in a plastic bag on the coffee table so everyone could come by and pay their respects. The vodka and orange juice were sitting right next to the bag. In a few hours, we'd go scatter those ashes in the river. We lived in Minneapolis, at the Mississippi's neck. "Was he fucking her?" Max said, nodding toward Elysium. Max wore black leather pants and a black tank top. Her arms were pale and strong. Her red hair, which, unlike the rest of ours, had never been dyed, was the brightest in the room. My posture was—I looked like I was going to bend in half and break under the pain of it all. Max looked like she was going to tear apart everyone in the room limb from fucking limb with her teeth. I have never seen anyone more beautiful. "Anyway he's dead now," she said. She sipped her drink (half juice) like she was at a cocktail party. I guzzled mine like water and when it was gone I was desperate for more, but I didn't dare leave her side. Everyone gave us a wide berth even though we were leaned up against the counter by the fridge, which they probably wanted to get into, but they weren't about to bother the widow— and me, whatever I was. The ghost. [End Page 325] "No really. Was he fucking her?" she asked me accusingly. In truth, I saw more of Markus than she did, because my boyfriend Johnny (where the hell was Johnny? I hadn't been able to find him all day. I'd barely seen him since Markus died) and Markus were best friends. Markus was always with us, and she was always at home with their kid, Matilda. Oh Jesus, Matilda. So I was a lot more likely to know if he was getting into trouble with that little runaway, but honestly, I didn't know for sure if Markus was sleeping with her...