Paper Tigers Read online

  Alison pulled her hand back from the page and the images drifted away. The tips of her fingers tingled again, the disconnect between brain and dead nerve endings teasing her with the memory of sensation. She dropped her hand onto the sofa, and her breath caught in her throat. Smooth fabric played beneath her skin, soft and real and warm, not phantom. She pushed harder; the sensation melted away, leaving her with the familiar nothingness and tears burning in her left eye. But she knew she felt it.

  The red coiled tight. Liar, it said. Fool.

  It wasn’t the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. It could happen for years, her doctor had said. When she asked how many years, he’d glanced away. Obviously, more than two. Then he resumed his pep talk about living in the here and now. Easy to say, and even easier to do, for a man with all ten fingers, two eyes, a full head of hair, and unscarred skin.

  A dull, uncomfortable ache nestled in the pit of her stomach.

  Let me out, Monstergirl, Red said.

  She closed her eyes, counted to five, and let it all go. Nothing more than spilled milk. Not worth the tears. Not worth the hope.

  She grabbed the next page in the photo album. A triangular piece of the paper ripped, disintegrated to parchment confetti between her fingers, and spiraled down to the sofa. She slid her finger under the opposite corner of the page and lifted. The corner split; she gave a small growl.

  Flipping the album on its side, she fanned the page edges with her fingernail. A brittle yet musical rustle danced up, but all the pages, save the first, held fast together despite no visible sign of water damage darkening the thick paper. She tried sliding her finger between two pages. They wouldn’t budge. At least George’s photo, his face, made the album interesting enough to keep. Behind the spectacles, his eyes gleamed with an intense light, like the look of a caged animal with dusky stripes pacing past the walls of its prison, waiting for a chance to be free.

  Or to attack.

  CHAPTER 2

  Three quick little raps of knuckles against wood announced her mother’s arrival, and Alison closed her laptop before opening the door. Her mother bustled through, wrapped in a comforting cloud of gardenias, all smiles and shopping bags. She set down the latter before she pressed her lips to Alison’s unscarred left cheek.

  “Wait until you see the sweater I bought you,” she said, stepping back. “It might convince you to change out of your pajamas once in a while.”

  “Please. You don’t have to buy me something every time you step foot in the mall,” Alison said. “And my pajamas are perfectly fine. You’re the one who bought them for me anyway.”

  “Hush. I can buy my daughter a present if I want to. Are you sure I bought those?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Remember? I asked you to after I saw them online.”

  “Hmm,” she muttered. “Monkey pajamas. What every well-dressed twenty-four year old woman is wearing these days.” She glanced over at the laptop. “How are your friends?”

  “They’re fine,” Alison said.

  A shred of guilt wormed its way in, turning the words bitter. For a few months after her release from the hospital, she belonged to an online forum for survivors, but once her friends started discussing their reintroduction to society, she deleted her account and all the subsequent emails. And in the year since then, she’d avoided any website that even hinted at human interaction.

  They never spoke of the other friends, the old friends and coworkers

  pushed away

  long gone.

  Her mother stopped in the middle of the living room and sniffed. “What is that smell?”

  “What smell?”

  “It’s dreadful. Can’t you smell it?”

  “I can only smell your perfume. Too much, like always.” She let out a fake cough, hiding a smile behind her hand.

  “Hush.”

  Her mother pointed at the album. “It’s that, I think.” She fanned the air in front of her face. “Oh, Alison, it’s horrible. It smells like dead, wet leaves. How can you stand it?”

  Alison shrugged. “It doesn’t smell that bad to me. A little musty, but it’s old. I bought it last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Well, technically this morning, but yes, I got it from a new shop on 36th Street, one of those places with a handful of antiques and a lot of junk. This was in the window.”

  Her mother stopped with her hand in mid-air. “You went in the shop?”

  “I did.”

  “Oh babygirl, I’m so proud of you,” she said, taking Alison’s hands in hers.

  “It was no big deal. I was out walking, and the woman was going in. She saw me looking at the album and said I could come in. She wasn’t open, though. There weren’t any other customers, I mean. Just me.”

  “But you went in?”

  “Yes, I did.” Tears glittered in her mother’s eyes. Alison gave her hand a small squeeze. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to go out in the middle of the day. I wanted the album.”

  “But it’s a step in the right direction. The next time you go out will be easier and soon—”

  “Enough, okay?”

  “Okay. Well, show it to me.”

  “You don’t even like them.”

  “I’ve never said that. I just think it’s morbid. All those dead strangers. Of all the things you could possibly collect…”

  Alison rolled her eyes but flipped the front cover open. “You’ve said that too, more than once. What can I say? I like them. This one isn’t much, though. The pages are all stuck together. You can only see one picture.”

  Her mother fanned the air again. “From the smell, I can believe it. It’s like someone dipped it in manure and rolled it in mud.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Sorry dear, but it is. I think you have so many of them you’ve become immune. I wish you would collect something…more aromatic.”

  “Like perfume? Sorry, you have the market on that one. Do you want something to drink? I can make some tea.”

  “Tea would be wonderful, but I can—”

  “Nope, you stay put. I’m not crippled.”

  In the kitchen, Alison filled the teapot and set it on the burner before she turned the knob, hiding the tiny blue flames from her sight. She normally used the microwave to make tea for herself but it made her mother happy when she used the stove. Another check mark on her “Alison is making progress sheet.”

  Alison clenched her jaw. It was hard enough to make progress; knowing her mother was always taking notes made it harder still.

  “Mom, are you hungry?” she called out. “If you want, I can make something.”

  Her mother came into the kitchen and fetched the sugar bowl. “No, I’m fine. I had a little something before I came over.”

  “You couldn’t sit and wait, could you?”

  “Oh you know me. I get itchy feet when someone else is in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll come over next Sunday and make you dinner.”

  “You don’t have to do that. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll make you dinner.”

  “But I like doing things for you.”

  Of course she did, but did she have to try so damn hard? Alison wasn’t going to shatter into pieces. She’d made it this far, hadn’t she? She held her tongue, said only, “I know you do.”

  “I’ve been thinking. I can add a cell phone to my plan at any time and since you go out walking now, I’d like to get you one.”

  “I don’t want one. I’m fine with the phone here.”

  “But what if something happens? What if you fall—”

  “Mom. Please? If I decide I want one, I’ll let you know.”

  Her mother held up both hands. “Okay, okay.” Her nose wrinkled. “You’re not really going to keep that album, are you?”

  “Sure, why not? I might be able to get the pages unstuck and get to the other photos.”

  “I think you should throw it away. The man in the picture is horrible.”

  Alison turned
away so her mother wouldn’t see her smile. “It’s just an old photo, and he’s just an old dead guy. He’s perfectly harmless.”

  “Still, it’s unsettling. Please, don’t keep this one.”

  Alison turned back. “Okay, fine. I’ll throw it out.”

  The tea kettle rang out with a high-pitched whistle, and they jumped in unison.

  After her mother left, Alison took a butter knife into the living room and sat on the floor beside the coffee table. She slid the blade between two of the photo album’s back pages and wiggled it from side to side, wincing at the sound of tearing paper and pulling it out when it met resistance.

  She flipped it to George’s photo. Despite her odd daydream of broken glass in a slammed fist, his gaze held only a middle-aged man, dark of eyes and hair, from a forgotten time, his name lost everywhere but her own imagination. Nothing visible anchored the photo in place, and the edge of one corner bent out. She tapped the knife against her palm, set it aside, and slid her finger under the tiny separation. The paper crackled in protest, but the photo stayed intact. When the edge came up a little more, she poked and prodded the opposite corner until it lifted as well. The third corner wouldn’t budge, so she traced the edge of her fingernail around the last one, and with a tiny, brittle creak, it gave way. As her fingertip slipped under the picture, a white crack appeared at the edge, breaking through the sepia tones in the shape of a lightning bolt. She pulled her hand back, and two drops of blood dripped onto George’s shoulder.

  “Damn,” she muttered. “Sorry, George.”

  She cleaned off the blood from the photo with her thumb, leaving behind a small smear. Crimson welled from the small gash on her finger, a wet mouth within scarred lips, and she pressed her thumb on the cut, longing for the sharp sting. This wound would scab over and gift her construct of ruined flesh with yet another mark. As if she didn’t have enough.

  Yellow rushed in, sunshine bright belying the ugliness it contained. It spoke of Monstergirls and broken things, useless fingers (and not quite enough because two little finger-piggies went away and never came home) and fractured images in a mirror, wrapping her in a blanket of familiar hurt. She closed her eyes, and tried to find the nothing-place, but the scars crisscrossing her palms and fingers and the back of her right hand didn’t care about closed eyes.

  They all stare at the Monstergirl. They stare and point and make faces because you’re the sideshow freak, and they can’t resist the horror. Come, give up a tear or two, you poor, poor thing. So young, so trapped in your unmistakable destruction. Save your prayers, your hopes, swallow everything you ever thought you wanted. This is all you have now. Take it, choke it down, drown in it—

  A heady scent of tobacco pushed through the voice, and her eyes snapped open. A grey wisp of ribbon-thin smoke hung in the air. Then it vanished. She held out one hand, touching the space where the smoke had been.

  She wiped the blood smear again. Tingles raced up and down her thumb and she hissed in a breath. Under the pins and needles, the exterior of the photo changed from a dull pressure to rough against her skin, not the slick, slippery feel of a new photograph, but parchment, textured and warm. She traced the outline of George’s face; when she slid her thumb from the picture to the surrounding paper, a cool heat like icemelt on a hot pavement radiated from its pebbled surface. Spreading her fingers wide, she set her hand down, half-covering George’s photo, half on the paper, but the coldhotcold touched only her thumb. The rest of her skin remained an insensate landscape of alternately ridged and smooth scars. The tingle intensified, a creeping, insectile buzz beneath the skin. She blinked and the sensation ceased, like the phantom smoke. With a sigh, she stuck her finger in her mouth, tasting the metallic tang of blood.

  A paper cut from a paper tiger.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Remember, Alison. Breathe.”

  Tiger teeth bit into her right shoulder, and agony lanced down to the small of her back. Alison inhaled, shut her eyes, and turned her head to the side. The teeth gnawed again, a whole pack of beasts taking their time, savoring every moment.

  Meredith’s hands stopped. “Are you okay?”

  Alison nodded. Meredith smiled, and in spite of the lines feathering the corners of her eyes, she appeared little older than Alison. She was tall and broad shouldered, her arms wiry with muscle. The first time they’d met, Meredith had crossed those arms, cocked one eyebrow, and said, with her slight Southern accent, “You’re not going to give me any trouble now are you?” Alison had said no, but she didn’t think she’d said another word to her for months. The silence didn’t deter her, though. As both a physical therapist and masseuse who worked exclusively with people with traumatic injuries, and had for over fifteen years, she was accustomed to nearly every emotion brought to her table.

  “I’m going to move a little lower.”

  “Okay.” Alison said. She took another deep breath, trying to clear her mind, but it didn’t work didn’t work, so she thought of George in his study, recounting the day’s events in his journal. Dipping his pen into the ink—

  Meredith reached the scar tissue near the base of Alison’s spine, where it twisted thick and knotted, and the tigers ripped into her skin with a frenzy, all claws and teeth, and the thoughts of George vanished.

  “Alison, stop holding your breath. You know it makes it worse when you do.”

  “I know.”

  “So why do I have to remind you every time?”

  Alison opened her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Better?”

  “Yes, now don’t stop.”

  Meredith’s hands pressed again, and hot tears blurred Alison’s vision. The pain didn’t compare to debridement, the savage slicing away of unhealthy flesh, but the sweet anesthetic of drugs had dulled that torment. Meredith’s massages and the stretching exercises came with no such mercy. Alison breathed in and out, long and slow, and stared at the bookcases lining the walls. The one directly in her line of sight held photo albums, including George’s, all containing stranger’s faces and lives captured, kept, and then discarded. She’d found most of them on online auction sites, sold for trivial amounts by people who’d discovered them tucked away in attics or basements. George’s album sat on the top shelf, next to her favorite, an old one she called The Lions because everyone in its sepia world had thick, unruly hair. She thought it fitting the cats kept company.

  Meredith’s hands pushed at a spot above her tailbone where the results of three skin grafts overlapped and tucked into each other, a basket weave of skin harvested from other parts of her body, and Alison sucked air through her teeth.

  “Okay, let’s turn you over. Almost done now.”

  Alison did, keeping her eyes closed, hating the way it felt to have Meredith’s eyes on the scar tissue on her chest, where her right breast should be, the underlying muscle too damaged to support reconstruction. Not even her nipple survived. Once, she half-joked to her mother that they should’ve removed the other breast in the interest of symmetry, and the wild, panicked look on her mother’s face, like that of a snake-startled horse, was something she’d never forget. Her mother didn’t understand that the removal would have made little difference; Alison’s entire right side, from head to heel, was damaged.

  Blinking back tears, she focused on the photo albums. Her first album, purchased on a whim not long after her release from the hospital, sat on the other side of George’s, its cover a dull shade of twilight sky as viewed through a camera lens spotted with grime. She’d been compelled to buy it after seeing the auction photo of the first page, a photo of a young woman in a lace wedding dress, holding a bouquet of flowers. A woman who would’ve been pretty, save for the large kidney-shaped birthmark on her cheek. In spite of the mark, someone found her pretty enough, or at least suitable enough, to marry, but the wistful look in her eyes struck a deep chord.

  Before Alison gave it too much thought, she’d placed a bid, tapping her fingers on the table while the minutes wound down. No one else bid.
Once she received the album a few days later, the small smile on the woman’s face, a detail not visible on the auction site photos, told a story of hope and happiness far more compelling than the wedding dress, the flowers, or the mark on her cheek.

  The rest of the album contained more photos of the woman and her husband, a sharp-jawed, handsome man. In the last photo, the woman held a baby in her arms. Regardless of the birthmark staining her cheek dark, she glowed with a halo of contentment and secret beauty.

  The second time Alison viewed the album, she left it open on the last page and let her mind wander. She gave them all names, breathing imaginary life into their snapshot stillness by inventing more children, happy smiles, days filled with laughter, and nights filled with love. All the things she’d never have.

  If only she’d—

  “Done,” Meredith said, lifting her hands away. “Ready for some stretching?”

  Alison sat, wiping her cheek. Her back tingled, as though a mild electric current ran under the skin, a sensation that would last for hours before fading. The stretches would leave her sore for days, but they allowed her to bend over and put her shoes on without pain. And they helped take away the fear of her skin splitting apart at the scarred seams, turning her into a broken doll of disfigurement all the reconstruction in the world couldn’t stitch back together.

  Alison slid George’s album off the shelf and carried it into the living room with slow, limping steps, her hip crying out the entire time. She balanced it on her knees and ran her fingers over the front page, yearning for a tiny flash of sensation, whether tease or phantom.

  Not fair.

  The words hovered deep inside, urging sorrow, urging her to curl in a tiny ball and bury—hide—the right side of her face in the cushion. She took a deep breath, then another, but notfair lingered, a sweet darkness asking her to put on her victim shoes and dance into its warmth. To keep company with thoughts of small, slippery pills chased with wine, or the sharp edge of a razor sliding across skin dead to the sting of the metal kiss. The words found shape and substance.