Michael’s fiction has appeared in professional journals including the 2011 grand prize winner of Albedo One’s Aeon Award and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. Although he has only dabbled in short fiction so far, he is looking forward to cutting his teeth on novels in the near future.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Michelle Lockamy never fit the classic Jersey girl description. As a kid she was a bit of a recluse, drawing on any paper she could find and reading books in lieu of attending parties. She grew up in many towns before finally settling in Browns Mills, where she can now commute to Philly.
Throughout her childhood, Lockamy found that art was always her favorite subject in school, and it just became her path. In high school, she got her first Wacom tablet and was introduced to digital tools as a medium. In 2011, the choice to go to Moore College of Art and Design for a BFA in illustration was a clear decision, and before she knew it, the tools she had taught herself to use gave her an edge in her artwork.
Her work has made it into CRED Philly, and onto a few indie book covers. Having her work included in Illustrators of the Future has been a most memorable experience.
She is determined to hit the ground running after she graduates in 2015. She wants to make the transition from student life to work life as simple as possible, which means working now to reap the rewards later.
Michelle is eternally grateful to her parents and professors, who encourage her to keep going. They remind her that hard work indeed pays off, no matter how rocky the road gets.
Wisteria Melancholy
Kessington House, the sign read. Dorm and Counseling for the Psychomorphically Unstable.
Psychomorphically Unstable. Unstable.
It looked rather plain, really, just a narrow slice of brick townhouse wedged between a barbershop and a deli. Self-effacing, even. I puffed out my chest, reached for the doorknob like I was shaking its hand and …
… put my ear to the door instead. Voices, I could hear voices. Kids laughing or crying—muffled yelps that could have been either. The brochure certainly hadn’t mentioned kids.
Well, now or never, I pushed open the door and said one word: “Hello.”
Pandemonium ensued. An Asian boy took one look at me and burst into a cloud of blue smoke, billowing out the neck and armholes of his tee-shirt and effusing through the room. His clothes plopped to the ground where he had been standing. Another boy screamed and disappeared, so that all I could see was a striped polo shirt, khaki shorts, and pair of socks running frantically around the room, stirring eddies in the smoke. “Who are you?” demanded a third boy, both visible and solid.
I had yet to budge, and the door swung back on its hinges and gently clicked shut between us. I had to actually reach out to open it again. I almost didn’t.
“Hey! Come on now!” called a girl’s voice from a back room. “What’s going on here?”
I opened the door, fanning blue smoke out of my face. It was already thinner around the edges, concentrating in the center of the room. Flesh color bled back into it, until it finally condensed into the shape of a naked boy who gasped and hunched over himself and hobbled out of the room.
A girl strode in past him. “You guys! What in the world … oh! Oh, jeez, you scared me—hello there. You must be Mr. Fuller?” She clapped her hands together and smiled at me. “Welcome. Sorry about all that. Come in, come in.”
In, I thought. It sounded so fatalistic. In.
I crossed the threshold and stood holding my duffle bag full of clothes. The girl looked maybe seventeen at first. Then I took in her black cherry lipstick, her swoop earrings and shoulder-length brown hair and mentally subtracted a year. She looked like a sixteen-year-old trying to look twenty.
“They told me to expect you next week,” she explained. “I would have warned these guys. Not,” she added, eying the two remaining boys, “that that’s any excuse.”
“I didn’t disappear!” said the visible boy. The other one rocked on his heels—still just a pair of socks, shorts, shirt, and nothing else.
Something suddenly clicked for me. “You’re not the, uh … psychologist, counselor, whatever they call it?” I asked the girl. “Are you?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Uh, yup. I’m Megan. Nice to meet you.”
No, I thought. Really? This was what I’d signed up for? Dorming with grade-schoolers and counseling from a girl a whole decade my junior?
It was too much. That was exactly too much. I needed to sit down. I dropped my bag at the door and took four steps to a wooden chair. But the moment I set my weight on it, it creaked ominously.
Oh no. I should have known better. I tried to pick myself up but not quickly enough: my body had grown heavier than I could lift. The creaking descended an octave. There was a violent crack and a muffled thump, and then I landed on the carpet, watching a broken chair leg roll away.
“Oh,” exclaimed Megan, with the satisfaction of making a diagnosis. “You’re a plumbeo!”
Leaden. Indeed. As if it couldn’t get any worse, the visible boy snickered, and for some reason, that was the nail in the coffin.
I became heavier than lead. My hands thumped to the ground and my head rolled onto my shoulder. Not five minutes into counseling, and already my disorder was taking over. What had I gotten myself into? With a tremendous deal of effort, I heaved myself up onto my knees.
“Oh no,” protested Megan, “you really shouldn’t …”
My breath came in labored gasps. My lungs felt stiff as tree bark, but once I got them going, they pumped like bellows. Apparently this girl expected me to just lie there like a sack of potatoes. Very slowly I pushed myself up onto my feet and, as an embarrassing groan tore out of me, straightened my legs to standing. Megan grimaced for all she was worth.
“Cool!” enthused the invisible boy.
“Are you okay?” Megan asked.
I rolled my shoulders forward in a shrug. My head wobbled uncertainly on my neck. “Where,” I grunted through gritted teeth, “… room?”
“Oh! This way.” She hopped over to grab my bag, then led me, alternately grimacing and smiling encouragement, down the hall. Picture frames rattled with each step I took. “Right here,” she informed me and dropped off my bag.
I laughed when I saw the room, although it escaped my lips as a moan. The bed sheets were bubblegum-pink and the ceiling was decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars arranged into the shape of a heart. The walls were bare but specked with putty stains, remnants of the posters from the dozens of children who’d stayed here before me.
I stomped in and Megan shooed the two boys away. “Go ahead and take your time,” she offered, shutting the door behind her. That was good of her.
I forgot myself and sat on the edge of the bed, which groaned savagely and deposited me onto the floor.
So this was my new home. I’d admitted myself into daycare, and the babysitter was going to teach me how to live my life again.
About half an hour later one of the boys from earlier poked his head in, knocking after he’d already opened the door. A real Dennis the Menace type—flop of fair hair, Dumbo ears, and roguish green eyes that wouldn’t stay still. He looked sheepishly down at his feet, but I could tell it was an act.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
I nodded from my vantage point on the floor.
“You’re still heavy.”
I waved my arms around to demonstrate that they were light.
“You’re not?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Then why’re you still on the floor?”
I shrugged.
“It means you were sad, right?”
“Oh. Sure, yeah.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I guess I—” Words died in my throat as my eyes snagged on a shadow, like a dimple in the air. It deepened as I watched and sluiced into the shape of a
boy. Suddenly there were two of them, mirror images of each other… except that the one who’d just materialized out of thin air was buck-naked.
The first boy followed my gaze, then jumped and smacked his forehead. “Dave! I can see you!”
“Huh?”
“I. Can. See. You.”
The boy named Dave looked down at himself, patting his chest. “Crap.”
The other one moved in front of him and grinned innocently. “Sorry about that. It’s just that Dave here was a little nervous about meeting you, so since he was invisible already, he had the bright idea of taking off his clothes and tagging along. In-cog-nito.”
“Ah,” I looked around the clothed boy to address his brother, “but you must not be shy anymore. You’re not invisible.”
“I’m trying to be!”
His brother spun and poked a finger at him. “Go! Get out of here! Put some clothes on before Megan sees you, fergodssake.”
Dave grabbed onto his brother’s shirt and peeked over his shoulder at me. “That was really cool before,” he said, “how you picked yourself up all heavy like that.” Then he fled the room, his brother kicking at his retreating butt.
I laughed under my breath. I had this raw feeling inside that I couldn’t shake, but still I laughed. I felt strangely disconnected, invincible, unconcerned.
The remaining boy turned on his heels and sighed theatrically. “So,” he said, “where were we?”
“Twins?” I asked.
“What? Oh, yeah. I’m Nate and he’s Dave. But you’ll never keep us straight, so most people just call us Nave. Get it? Like, Arr, ye knave!”
I nodded … slowly.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like I’m crazy! Sarah came up with it. Anyway, I’ll go let Megan know you’re ready.”
“No,” I started, but he was already out the door.
I followed him through the common room and into the conjoined kitchen. It was a room with a personality disorder. Its linoleum floor tried to match the exact shade of gray of the common room rug, the wall tiles gleamed bathroom-white, and its functional sink and stovetop area cowered behind an unnecessary column. An island countertop crowded the center space like an afterthought. Megan was perched on a barstool at the counter, leg folded under her, munching granola and studying some notes in a purple binder.
“Megan!” called Nate. “The new guy’s—oh! You followed me.” He scratched the back of his head. “Well, uh, here he is.” He backed out of the room, arms extended as if presenting me.
I spread my own hands, a wry here-I-am gesture. I still couldn’t believe what I had signed up for. A moment passed where I genuinely wondered whose life I was living, and why I was taking it so seriously.
“I see—mmm …” Megan covered her mouth, bobbing her head apologetically as she finished chewing and swallowed. “I see you’ve met Nave. Or at least half of them.”
“Both.” I hopped onto the last stool in the row. Megan’s gaze drooped to the countertop. An awkward silence.
“We’re alone, right?” I hazarded. “No naked, invisible boys hanging about?”
She laughed, which came out as a snort. “If you had any idea how much naked boy I’ve seen in this place. But no, I don’t think so.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Uh, sure. I mean, of course.”
“Is this the right place for me? You don’t think I’d be better in a group more …” I shrugged, “my age?”
“Ah. Well, there’s Sarah you probably haven’t met yet, she’s eighteen. Guess that’s not really … But actually, the truth is you’re not going to find many adults in these places. Partly because they don’t like to put their lives on hold for live-in counseling, you know? But mostly because the problem’s usually cured by then.” She shrugged apologetically.
“This only started a few months ago,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself.
“Oh, you’re a late-case! Okay, well, that’s usually less serious, actually. We can have our first session tomorrow. Finding the trigger is half the battle.”
“Oh, I know what caused it,” I said. “My sister pushed me off a cliff. I’m fairly certain that was the trigger.”
Megan coughed. I could see her trying to decide whether I was making a crude joke. Well, why hold back? This was the point of counseling, right?
“She snuck up behind me,” I explained, “invisible, but for some reason she appeared just as she was about to push. Naked, because, well … can’t turn clothes invisible. So I saw that it was my little sister who did it. And instead of being surprised or scared, I was just incredibly sad as I fell and … Did you know that someone with my condition can survive a drop from a cliff with only cuts and bruises? Because …”
The stool creaked dangerously under me. I stood quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh dear. Here, uh … why don’t you sit on the floor for a second?”
“No. I’m okay.” I supported myself on the counter and walked rigidly back toward my room.
“Be careful!” Megan piped, but I waved her away. “Please, be careful. That’s very bad for your knees, you know.”
“He’s doing it again!” yelled one of the twins, appearing at just the wrong moment. Suddenly I had an audience as I lumbered back to my room.
That night, I dreamt of my sister. She stood over me, naked, dead-pan. I was falling yet not getting farther. “I would have given you the money,” I said. She just looked down at me. Then I really was falling and my sister shrank to a pinpoint above me until I hit the ground. But even that failed to stop me. I continued to fall, earth piling around me, past layers of rocks and fossils, through a pool of magma—
I woke up. The bed dipped in the middle, cradling me. I dragged myself to the side and rolled onto the floor. The bedsprings hissed and rattled with relief.
It turned out that Megan attended vocational school during the day and only worked here between the hours of four and eight. A personal tutor made the rounds for a few hours each morning and they called that the children’s education. Parents made cursory visits to coddle their children and then abandoned them again. Basically, we never had to leave this place.
I watched in a half-stupor as Nate and Dave played their fifth game of Jenga on the carpet.
The tower collapsed in a river of blocks. Dave froze, holding the inciting piece in the air. “Oh, I know!” he said. “Let’s show him the book.”
Nate incorporated a shrug into his victory dance. “Okay. Come on.”
“You know which …”
“Of course I know which book. Come on.”
I watched them retreat down the hall. One of them banged on a closed door. “Sarah!” he called. “We’re coming in!” Without any response that I heard, he opened the door and they scampered inside.
I followed around the corner, then froze, gaping, as I saw a teenage girl garbed funereally in black, lying on her bed reading a book. The twins rummaged through her bookcase, unconcerned. I hovered in the doorway, muttering things like “Uh, hi,” and “Sorry …”
“She can’t hear you,” explained Dave.
“What?” I said. The girl’s black hair fanned over her back and her even darker gown draped over the side of the bed. She shifted to turn a page, causing all those layers of black to drift over each other.
“That’s her condition. Half the time she can’t hear or see you, although sometimes I think she’s faking.”
“Got it.” Nate emerged, brandishing a hefty hardcover which he dropped onto a corner of the bed that wasn’t claimed by black. “Page three-eighty-four. Three … eighty-four …”
“Wait,” I said. “Seriously? Can’t we do this somewhere else?”
“Why? She doesn’t care. Here we go: ‘When the id and the super-ego become
inextricably’ … blah, blah, boring … ‘such conditions exist that’ … la, la, la … ‘in the extreme case one may not become merely invisible, but also insubstantial, leading to such case-studies as Chelsea Becker, age five, who was able to walk through walls.’ That, I want that! So cool!”
I reached over to snatch the book from him, but froze as the girl in black looked at me—or rather, through me. She might have been studying a speck on the wall. She had a plain face and surprisingly blue eyes.
I shivered. “I’m going to borrow this, okay?”
“No, wait,” Nate said, “there’s more.”
“I’ll be in my room.”
The four levels of psychomorphism: Projection of self upon others; Perception of self; Perception of others; Projection of self upon self. A psychomorphic disorder occurs when any one of these levels becomes unstable.
—excerpt from Human Circuitry, by Marcy J. Sellers
The physical body is a mere projection of the ethereal self, as is evidenced by the class of disorders known as psychomorphic. Furthermore, this projection occurs in the unconscious portion of the mind.
—excerpt from The Psychomorph’s Paradox, by J.J. Bosque
Curiously, there are even a few members of the kingdom plantae which demonstrate psychomorphic properties. The most notable is wisteria.
—excerpt from Unexplained Science, by Julie Ng
Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Megan propped a notepad on her crossed legs, trying to look professional as we sat at the kitchen counter sipping cranberry juice. Her hair was braided today, showing off her daisy-shaped earrings, and her lips were merely glossed. The result was that she actually looked more mature than when she was trying too hard to be an adult.
I sighed. “It all started when Jessica had a baby.” Well, who could say when it started? Jessica was always Jessica. “She was sixteen. About five years ago, I guess.”
“Jessica, your sister? So what happened?”