Jacob Spencer

Highrise

“Hey-hey, get over here, Limpy!”

Ragleg with that ratty little voice of his–maybe it’s more mousy, not quite ratty. Lot of people don’t make the distinction between rats and mice. Rats are a lot bigger and scarier. They’re the ones that carry diseases. And cats don’t go after rats, that was something people always said when I was little; but cats don’t go after rats, because rats are too big and they can fight back. Mice are itty-bitty things: tiny, good targets, good for fun and food.

“You’re not thinking again, are you, Limpy? Come on-come on, I got something here for you, you’ll like it.”

Goddamn Ragleg always goes on about how I think too much. Says it’s unhealthy for me, best to use instinct, use the vessels and nerves in my fingers and toes. My brain is too wily and rily he says. Rily? Can’t remember if that’s a word or not. Sounds like one.

I can hear Ragleg going on again about something, so I finally open my ears to the slizzy fellow and wander over to him. The wraps around my feet are starting to get old; need to head to the hill to find new ones. But these’ll do for at least a few more weeks. I don’t really want to go to the hill for new ones. The hill’s a long walk from town, and usually others are there, so you have to wait a long time to find a good set, because you know the good ones’ll be long gone by the time you’re there. Unless you show up early, which I always try to.

“Goddamnit, Limpy, you’re gonna miss out!”

“I’m coming.”

I start trekking across the glass and scrap mounds towards that bastard. I can hear the railyard starting up; there’s a train coming slow, scraping up every bit of metal hanging down from its belly against the ice. Ragleg’s gnawing on that old sandwich he digged up from the bin earlier. It’s got bits of ham and lettuce and tomato. They’re all covered in frost and snowflakes and whatnot. That slizzy hair of his is damn lucky it’s cold and the sun’s not out, because otherwise it would be frying.

He smiles, keeping his mouth closed, as always, and points to something on the ground. It’s a handheld mirror. And not like the others–this one’s completely, perfectly intact, not a single crack or smudge on it.

“See the color around it?” he says.

I have to squint to try and see any sort of color. A lighter tone of white it seems.

“It’s pink,” says Ragleg. “This is a girl's mirror. And it’s got gold lining around it.”

“Looks grey to me.”

“That’s because you’re fucked up.”

“You’re the one that’s fucked up,” I growl.

Ragleg howls, or does whatever such sound that a rat or rat-like creature would do. Maybe a possum, though I’ve never seen one of those.

“Hey-hey, Limpy, smell it. Does it smell like a girl?”

I bring it to my nose and take a big whiff. It has that oily and coppery smell like scrap metal, and ice crystals all over it that make it prickle when you bring it to your skin. “Hardly.”

“That’s a pity,” Ragleg whines. “Well, anyway, why don’t you keep it?”

“Are you serious? You found it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Keep it.”

Ragleg can really get on me sometimes. He says things, he laughs when nothing’s funny. He can be a real hypocrite. But kill me if Ragleg isn’t the sweetest creature I’ve ever known.

I want to tear up. I kneel, grab the mirror’s handle, and hold it up. There I am, with grey eyes, black hair, a white, pale face. I never notice how chapped my lips are till I look in the mirror. But I hadn’t ever even noticed before that there’s a little scar on my left cheek.

“Where’d that come from?” I mutter and bring my hand to my face.

“You’ve always had that,” says Ragleg.

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

He shrugs. “Whatever.” Ragleg gasps and pushes my shoulder. I slip back like I’m sliding on a slimy rink and fall right on my ass. “Look, Limpy, look!”

“I can’t look at nothing now, you bastard.”

Ragleg cackles. “I got you good, didn’t I? But look, look!” He’s pointing to the highrise at the corner of that intersection for “Flo” and “Red” streets. The other corners have got nothing but ruins and rubble, but that highrise has been there, more or less straight and proper, as long as I can remember.

Up on the ninth floor is a roaring light, like a bonfire. But so high up, away from the precious metal down here? That rules out scavengers. Could be people burning pictures. I always hated the way people do that, and the way they scold you when you don’t do it too.

“I’m going up there,” Ragleg says and starts limping his way towards the highrise.

“Hey! What’s with you? It’s dangerous up there.”

Ragleg grunts as he steps over a rusty old beam and gets his footwraps caught in a sharp bit of scrap metal. But he’s a veteran of this stuff, so he makes it over easy enough without getting cut.

Well, damn it. Gotta follow him. So I step over that beam, taking care to avoid the sharp bits of scrap metal, and start hopscotching between the broken mirrors that litter the way to the highrise. By the time I’m halfway there, Ragleg is already taunting me, jumping up and down, at the entrance to the building.

Ragleg’s waiting across the threshold for me. The threshold is marked by tiny bits of broken steel like shattered swords and spearheads. 

“Come on, Limpy, what are you waiting for?”

It’s not the smell of gasoline or the graffiti that I can see along the shadowy hallways. Neither is it the photo at the check-in window of a gypsy woman with the head of a cat. Those things aren’t making me nervous. It’s some gut feeling telling me not to go inside.

“Come on!” Ragleg whines. “If we find another girl mirror you can keep it too!”

Well, that’s a lie. Any time he lies, Ragleg snorts and wipes his nose.

“Fine,” I say, and step over the shattered steel.

The doors on the first floor are all shut up tight. There are scratch marks and health inspection notices plastered all over them. We turn right towards the stairwell. The walls are all lined with words in different languages, graffiti of faces of people, monkeys, dogs. One of them is quite strange. It’s like a Jewish wedding band, but their bodies curve and twist surreal-like. They don’t have proper faces, more like black holes where their eyes, nose, and mouth should be. They’re playing fiddles, drums, clarinets.

As we head up the stairwell, Ragleg points out all the stuff that could slice and dice our poor callous feet. “Hey, rusty screws there. Ooh, and that bit’s slippery. Tastes like motor oil.”

“You gotta stop drinking that crap, Ragleg.” That stuff is no good for him; makes him very loopy.

“Oh, don’t you try to say that you don’t like the warmth.”

“Let’s just keep going, yeah? You’re the one who wants to do this!” He’s not wrong about the warmth though, I’ll admit.

“Yep-yep,” he chitters.

We keep going. Ragleg’s got his eyes always up, but I like to glance down the hallway of each floor we pass. Each one has different graffiti and murals on the walls. The second floor has trees, flowers, grass, and deer. The third one shows people all kneeling down in front of a big table with roasted animals on it.

The fourth one has a bunch of people walking through a graveyard carrying a coffin. Their faces are realistic, like in old paintings. They don’t seem too sad, funny enough. A few of them are sitting on benches bored. Those poor souls carrying the coffin are scrawny like me and Ragleg, so they’re not at all concerned about the dead; their shoulders are a bigger worry.

All the rest of the floors show the same stuff: people fighting. At first they’re punching each other with their fists and wacking each other over the head with logs. Then they’re gulleting each other with spears and dicing each other with swords. Then it goes to the ancient guns, then the slightly less ancient guns, then we finally, on the eighth floor, get to the stuff that was around when I was a kid, that could shoot hundreds of bullets a minute.

The ninth floor doesn’t have any hallways or apartments. There’s just a big, closed space with no windows, lit only by a few cracks in the ceiling.

“Where is it?” Ragleg says.

That bonfire and its glorious warmth are nowhere to be found. We press our heads against the floors and the walls, but there’s nothing radiating from outside. It’s all just that cold concrete and steel.

“Goddamn it!” Ragleg howls. He’s rubbing his whole body and stroking his hand up and down the wall.

“There’s nothing,” I say.

“How can you be so damn soulless? This doesn’t bother you one bit, does it?”

“Of course it bothers me.” It bothers me a lot, but what else can you expect from the world? “Hey, it was probably something bad anyway. Scavengers or something. You can’t expect anything good from people, and people must have made it. This is good! We’re gonna survive today.”

Ragleg coils down to the floor, breaks into a cry, and curls his body towards the wall. “It’s unfair!” He tries to stomp his foot, but those wraps keep him muted and soft. He tries to stand up, but those heavy coats and scarves keep him down and he has to plop onto his knees first, then push himself up. Finally Ragleg smashes the wall with his fist. “Awww!”

There’s a big metal bang when he hits the wall. And that wail of his sounds like a wounded dog. Ragleg holds his knuckles. “Limpy…I think I got something.”

“No doubt!” I leap over to him and press my hand against the wall. It’s a lot colder and smoother here. I spread my fingers and start feeling all over with both my hands. There’s an edge where the wall gets to be rougher again. “We got a door here, Ragleg.”

There’s still no warmth coming through, but if that bonfire’s there then to hell with whoever made it! It’ll be ours! I keep on feeling the door, in the middle, on the edges, up top. Then finally, at the bottom, I get hold of a lever. I shake it, like old housewives did to their children, to get rid of the ice crystals. It creaks and groans and moans, but finally the bastard goes all the way up, and I can pull the door to the left.

It screeches like a train pulling into the station. There is some light coming through now. Ragleg’s watching. I can’t see his face; it’s still too dark. “What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing yet.”

I pull harder. More creaks, more screech. Now my hands start heating up, and I can see tiny sparks dancing around on the hinges at the bottom.

“Keep going!” Ragleg squeaks.

“Why don’t you come and help?” That squeak of his gets on my nerves, makes more nerves in me. I jerk this damn lever, and the door flies open, knocking me flat on my ass. “Goddamn it,” I hiss.

Ragleg’s standing there silent. I pant and lean against the wall. He’s not smiling, he’s not laughing, he’s not jeering or cheering. He’s just got this blank look on his face. His head has craned down so that his eyes are forced to look up to see in front of him. His shoulders are pushed forward into an arc surrounding his chest.

“What is it?” I say.

Ragleg’s silent.

“Ugh.” I scramble to my feet and walk over to him. “What’s gotten into you?” I slap his chapped, stubbly cheek. He doesn’t speak or wince, just keeps staring ahead. A cold, biting wind blows against me.

I turn. That bonfire is nowhere. There’s a room, the size of a small apartment, but the entire wall facing the world has been blown out. There are mannequins everywhere along the edge of the room, their eyes painted over to make them look real and glossy. They’re like in a ring surrounding the center of the room. But there’s a single rocking chair at the precipice, and if someone were to knock it just a bit forward it would tumble all the way down and shatter on the rubble that lines the bottom of the highrise.

That room is cold. The wind is vicious in it, and the mannequins and rocking chair are shaking and chattering like in a tornado. I reach one hand in and touch the neck of a lady mannequin wearing a black garland around her neck and a grey scarf over her head. “Ooh!” I jump back and hold my finger. Her cold makes me forget that I’m even wearing gloves.

Ragleg steps away from the door, turns, and starts walking back towards the stairwell. His head is pointed at the floor.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I say. Each of his steps echoes like a thousand voices lamenting in a canyon. They get softer and softer, turning into whimpers, then hushed hisses, gradually fading away into nothingness. And all that’s left is the wind, its muffled howls carrying these sharp, eternal snowflakes against my cheeks.

Jacob Spencer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, as well as a TEFL Certification. He minored in English with an emphasis on creative writing. In addition to history and creative writing, he also plays piano and studies classical and folk music. Major literary influences include Anton Chekhov, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, love of music, and his knowledge of history.