by Alec Kissoondyal
Shadows On the Wall
“I’m never drinking again,” Sara says, her head in the toilet. Her voice echoes off the inside of the bowl. “Never, ever again.”
I believe she believes it. And she’ll still believe it when she wakes up with a hangover tomorrow, and she’ll keep believing until five in the evening when she starts feeling better, and then she’ll start all over again.
Sara missed the toilet when she started throwing up, and there’s an orange pool of vomit on the floor by the sink. Chunks of chicken and pickles float atop an orange slurry. Earlier tonight, she thought it was a good idea to DoorDash a buffalo chicken sandwich from the sports bar down the street from her apartment.
Sara sits up and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m such a shitty friend.”
“Come on,” I say, “let’s get you to bed.”
I sling Sara’s arm over my shoulder, and we hobble over the dirty clothes piled on the floor and her Starbucks apron, still stained from work, wraps itself around my ankle. I shake it off and lower her into bed, roll her on her side, and rest a pillow behind her back and another against her stomach to keep her in place.
“I’m never drinking again,” Sara says.
“You already said that.”
“Thanks for taking care of me,” she says.
“Always.”
I begin to ask if she wants a glass of water, but she’s already asleep. A lock of her brown hair falls across her face and flutters as she breathes softly through her mouth. I tuck the stray lock behind her ear, turn off the light, and return to the bathroom. I retrieve a pair of rubber gloves and a bucket of cleaning supplies from under the sink and start scrubbing the vomit off the tiles.
Two years before I met Sara, I looked after my younger sister, who was eighteen years old when she developed chronic migraines that left her bedridden. The pain often got so intense it drove her to nausea, and I sat on her bed and held the trash can in front of her while she threw up. After her stomach emptied and the pain lessened to something approaching manageable, I dabbed her forehead with a damp cloth and whispered that everything was going to be alright. And in those moments, beneath the concern and the sorrow, I felt a sense of singular purpose, like taking care of my sister was all that mattered, like it was the only thing I was meant to do.
Once the floor is spotless, I put the supplies back and head to the balcony. Outside, the air is humid, and the steady buzz of cicadas splits the air. I rest my elbows on the railing and look out at the parking lot where dew-draped cars shimmer under the full moon’s silver-dollar glow. I light a cigarette, take a drag, and snatch the vodka bottle off the wooden table in the corner. There’s still a bit left; Sara’s stomach betrayed her before she could finish it. I drink the rest. The harsh odor lingers on my upper lip and reminds me of the hand sanitizer used in hospitals.
I became familiar with the smell shortly after my sister was diagnosed with brain cancer. By the time we found out, it was already too late; she only had a few months left at most. When my parents and I heard the news, Dad shouted at the doctors while Mom howled until her throat bled. I stayed silent; anything I said would have sounded as hollow as I felt.
My sister remained at the hospital, but I visited her every day. Too much light made her migraines worse, so I sat at her bedside with the lights off and we spent hours talking about movies, music, the universe, hospital food—everything except her cancer. One day toward the end, when she didn’t feel like talking, I turned on my phone’s flashlight and leaned it against the tissue box on the nightstand. I folded my hands together, and a rabbit-shaped shadow appeared inside the circle of white light my phone threw against the wall.
We hadn’t made shadow puppets since we were kids. Still, my sister smiled, sat up, and conjured a wolf’s head. I raised and lowered my hands, and the rabbit jumped. She leaned forward; the wolf pounced. Our shadows fused, and the rabbit melted into its devourer. I hooked my thumbs together and unfurled my fingers, and shadowy wings fluttered from the wolf’s maw.
My sister hummed “Amazing Grace” as I slowly lifted my arms and the rabbit’s soul ascended. We both laughed until a sudden rush of pain crushed her joy and left her teary-eyed. She lay down and squeezed my hand as reality set in.
A month after my sister passed, I met Sara at the local rec center during a support group for grieving siblings; her older brother died of a heroin overdose around the time the cancer took my sister. We started talking after the meeting and continued the conversation over drinks at her place. We both knew the score—there were no ulterior motives, no romantic intent—just the need for someone to drink with and discuss painful things wholly alien to those who hadn’t experienced them.
A few hours later, Sara was curled up on the living room floor, sobbing into the carpet, calling me by her brother’s name. I put her to bed and spent the night on her couch. When she woke up with a hangover the next day, I nursed her back to health with chicken soup and Excedrin. It all felt familiar, like I had rediscovered a sense of meaning I hadn’t felt since my sister passed.
Sara and I haven’t attended a support group since the evening we met. Instead, we spend most nights at her apartment, drinking and talking until she passes out, and every morning after, I nurse her back to health. Still, her hangovers have gotten worse recently, something her manager has noticed too. A few weeks ago, he cut her hours as punishment for showing up late and preparing drinks with the speed and enthusiasm of a zombie. She barely has enough money for rent this month, so I’ve taken it upon myself to buy her booze.
She says, “Thanks, I owe you,” but I know she’ll never pay me back, and I don’t expect her to. We know what we are to each other. She’ll keep drinking, I’ll keep taking care of her, and we’ll keep existing in our symbiotic relationship, like the one between a crocodile and the bird that picks carrion from its teeth. The jury’s still out on which of us is the bird or the crocodile; that’s a mystery reserved for the day one of us snaps.
I take one last drag and drop the rest of the cigarette into the empty bottle. I place my thumb over the opening and raise the bottle to the moonlight. Blue smoke swirls around inside like a genie trying to escape. I lift my thumb and watch the smoke slip from the neck and vanish into the air. There are no genies in this world. No wishes, no magic, just a slow, forward lurch and the need to cling to anything and anyone that makes the journey bearable. Everything else is just shadows on the wall.
Author Alec Kissoondyal is a writer based in Gainesville, Florida. His work has been published in Bacopa Literary Review, The Bookends Review, Roadrunner Review, The Centifictionist, and The Los Angeles Review. He is currently working on a short story collection about the lives of second-generation Guyanese immigrants. You can find more of Alec’s published work on his website, alecauthor.com
Artist JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review and Vassar Review. They are also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work after the style of Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
Gulf Stream Magazine 