Malachi

A Story by August

Nora and Mason's roommate has been gone for several weeks. Mason has not been the same.

    He has always wanted into Malachi’s chest. This wooden chest sits at the end of Malachi’s simple frame bed. The detail down the chest is that of Arabic, scrawling and intimately carved by the man himself. Following the language of flowing lines are the bold moon phases and the star networks. Malachi has been in his life long enough to carve a corner and flourish.

   “Malachi’s been gone a while, hasn’t he, don’t you think?”
   “Good,” he grunts, head in the beat up fridge of their house. “I have a life.”
   “So does he.”
   The fridge yields nothing his stomach is interested in. He travels to their cupboards. They are in the sketchy weeks between pays where they can no longer afford to be picky about what they eat. It has been ramen and sandwiches for a week.
   “Not really, if you think about it.”
   “You’re not being fair to him.”
   She sounds exhausted with him. Malachi has been gone for a week. Malachi was clockwork before this.
   With Malachi gone him walking out of the kitchen hardly has the same impact. Malachi can pull an exit that’s brilliant and obvious.
   “He’s just as stuck as you are!”

   “Eat more. You’re losing weight,” Nora says behind him in the mirror.
   He looks at her over his shoulder. She fits beside him in the glass perfectly as she struggles to tame her flyaway hair to leave.
   “I’m fine.”
   She looks at him a moment longer but walks away with her comb in her teeth and her hands tying her hair back. She doesn’t argue with him because she can’t. She’s late.
   He waits until after she’s gone to slide the belt over another notch.

   When full moon passes without Malachi he feels sick. The new moon previous he had woken to find the remnants of Malachi strewn like cave work paintings. The room across the hall had been edged open still. The old smell of smoke and candles filtered out in a drift with spring air through the open window. Feeling like an intruder in the room he had stepped in further to admire it all the same.
   Last new moon he had gotten to see Malachi’s altar after work. The curiosity had gotten him finally.
   Nora yelled at him when she came upstairs. She demanded to know if he’d appreciate Malachi going through his room. She wanted to know if he’d go into her room while she was gone one day just to see her intimates laying around.
   The answer was no.
   This full moon he does the same and Malachi’s room is untouched. It is pristine.
   Nora turns immediately from the kitchen sink.
   “I didn’t hear Malachi last night,” Nora says, voice dripping like an accusation.
   “He could have been here.”
   “You looked, I know you did. You’re fascinated by him but you won’t admit it.”
   “I’m not, he’s a visitor in my life. Maybe he’s gone.”
   “And we’d have an empty room upstairs like a shrine to a dead man. Would that make you happy?”
   He doesn’t face her.
   “One of the rooms is always empty. Would you prefer it be mine?”
   “You know I don’t prefer him over you.” He knows the architecture of her face when he turns again. He knows this look. He knows the twitch in her mouth as she struggles to be patient. “You know in a picture perfect world we’d have both of you. I live with both of you. This long of an absence of Malachi is alarming.” Nora, with her serene attitude of someone who will be a mother, reaches forward to hold him by his elbows. “This is not me saying I would rather have him here instead of you, but he has been gone too long. It’s concerning.”
   “Maybe he’s finally gone.”
   “You’re irrational.”
   She is disappointed in him.

   He throws the pen to the paper that night. He glances down at the chest. Malachi’s room still smells of nothing and he feels nothing for moving the chest to his.
   Piles of scratched paper weigh down the corner of the desk.
   He can’t match the flawless Arabic.

   “He didn’t want to leave. This wasn’t planned.”
   “Maybe he changed his mind.”
   “Maybe you said something to him.”
   He throws new jeans in their shopping cart. He does this while looking her in the face so she maybe won’t see the size difference on the tag.
   “The idea of actually saying anything to him is impossible.”
   “You’re - Just because you don’t want him here doesn’t mean you can act like this about him. He has every right to be here as much as you do. You’re not even shopping for him. Can you at least act like you want him here?”
   “Why the hell would I want him here? He’s nothing but a visitor.”
   She throws him a look he can’t quite read as they leave the clothes in Walmart for food instead.
   “But you’re curious about him. You moved his chest out of his room. I saw that when I took his laundry up to his room.”
   “Do we have to pretend and call it his room?”
   “It’s his room. You moved his chest out of his room into yours. Let’s call it what it is. You’re curious about him but you don’t want him here.”
   “I can’t believe you’re acting like this,” he sighs. “He doesn’t belong in my life. He’s the one that needs to leave. That room up there is a joke.”
   “Is it a joke when he uses it? Is it a joke when he actually sleeps in that bed? He was there to pick it out, you know. He picked the sheets out. God knows you don’t have that kind of taste.”
   “You’re so keen to remind me that we’re not the same person.”
   “What is it about that chest that bothers you so much?” She counters.
   “What about it doesn’t? You know I don’t know what’s in it, right?”
   “I don’t know what’s in it,” Nora argued. “Listen, what was it you needed for that class? Skim milk?”
   “Almond. Almond milk. I know the days he worked on it. I woke up with the - “ He breathes deeply, reminding himself they were in a store. “I sat up there and tried to match the Arabic. Did you see that too? I can’t. I literally can’t get my hands to move like that and he can.”
   “Tell Malachi to come back.”
   She says it deadpan as she slams the milk into his chest.
   “No.”

   New moon passes this way as well. He wakes up smelling like the Axe he washes with that Nora hates. The door across the hall is the way he left it, slightly ajar and the chest still at the foot of his own bed. If Malachi had come he would have taken the chest back. There is no smoke drifting from the doorway of leftover candles. Malachi’s behavior follows the moon. It used to be a joke. They used to joke about werewolves when it all started and then Nora met Malachi. He hasn’t watched a werewolf movie in years now.
   Malachi is and was pagan. He isn’t sure what tense is now appropriate but Nora shoots him a dirty look when he crosses to the stairs the next morning so it’s not like it matters.
   “I know I’m not the one you want to see.”
   “You both belong here. I’m tired of arguing that with you. Yes, I miss Malachi. I miss having conversations with him. I miss the real conversation with you. He comes around for a reason.”
   “So I need him to even function?”
   She looks too flustered to answer. She walks away and after a moment reappears in the stairwell.
   “Obviously! You don’t even understand any of it!”
   “And you do?” He yells back at her. “He uses me!”
   Her jaw drops. In other circumstances he would find this comical. Maybe in a few weeks he will.
   “He uses you? This- I can’t- The guy hasn’t been around in weeks and yet he’s using you? You’re breaking down without him and here you are saying your condition is his fault. Unbelievable. Without him you break down, you’ve done it before, you did it without him. This is what you do every time you push him away.”
   “He doesn’t belong here!”
   “Yes, he does!”
   “If it wasn’t for the accident he wouldn’t even be here! You’re attached to a man that doesn’t belong here!”
   Nora looks like he struck her and she won’t look at him for the rest of the day again.

   “You need to let Malachi come back.”
   “No.”
   She shoves a plate at him. Nora has the stare of a mother. He knew this when he met her and he remembers this now. He knows she’s stacked the plate higher than necessary- she’s seen the change in the sizes.
   “You told me I’m so keen to remind you that you and Malachi aren’t the same but it’s the truth. You’re not, you know. I don’t know why it bothers you so much, but you’re not the same person. I would...it would relieve me to not be so utterly alone.” Her voice is quiet, she isn’t looking at him, she’s looking at the table. “I know I don’t have the room to talk, I don’t have your life, but can’t you look at it better?”
   “You’re right, you don’t know what this is like.”
   He does not hold the same tone of anger that he did when he yelled down the stairs at her a week ago. He is angry but he is tired more than anything. Weeks without Malachi has done this.
   “But, Mason, can’t you take comfort in it? If you can’t handle something Malachi can. I mean, sure, Malachi is around for more than that,” she said softly. “He’s around for the moons and he hasn’t missed a Halloween yet. He hasn’t missed a release of any of his favorite books yet, so you don’t get a lot of rest sometimes. That’s no different than the nights he gets carried away. He is...he is a person. Sure, he has his own life and that isn’t easy, but has he ever done you wrong? After the incident with your grandfather he has always been here.”
   “What if he’s finally gone?”
   “He’ll be here until he no longer serves a use. You’re losing weight, you are having those nightmares again. Your grades are slipping. I’m not saying it to be an a*s, but it’s hard not to notice, hon.”
   He forks around his food and feels sick.

   He feels more than sick.
   He’s irritable and he doesn’t know why. Nora looks after him with a knowing eye whenever he snaps at her or anyone. He sees her trying to be patient with him and he knows it. He sleeps but it’s not enough. He’s almost always sick. He can count the full meals he’s been able to have in the last week on his hands.
   He misses classes. Nora tries to get him to go but can’t. Nora tries to get Malachi to come back but can’t. He is the gatekeeper to when Malachi is in the house. He hasn’t caved so Malachi hasn’t come.
   He doesn’t miss Malachi.
   He misses the ability to think.

   Mason caves.

   He wakes up with the sense that Malachi has been around.
   He opens his eyes and sees the door across the hall snapped wide open. He tilts his head up a little and he sees that the bed has been slept in.   There is nothing but the smell of old ritual work. It’s not the morning after a moon, courtesy of Malachi they both know the moons, but he knows the smells all the same. He knows this is Malachi attempting to ground himself after so long adrift. This is Malachi attempting to get a grip on everything. Distantly he knows how panicked Malachi must have felt.
   This is life with Malachi.
   He is gone and Mason never sees him, but he wakes with the distinct sense and after effects of Malachi’s presence. He wakes with the room across from him lived in and the downstairs bearing the after effects of Malachi. He knows without going downstairs that if Malachi ate last night, and ate his usual, the bread is on the table with the tie across the room or in the fridge. He knows this because this is Malachi. He knows that if Malachi was feeling horrible last night, and likely was, Dexter is in the Xbox drive should Mason look.
   He knows everything without looking.
   He knows last night, likely, Malachi went running after his ritual.
   He knows everything.

   “How are you?” Nora asks.
   “Better. I feel less-” He makes a gesture that words can’t frame. “I’m going to classes today. Do you know where Malachi put the jacket?”
   “Didn’t wear it. It’s wherever you left it last. He was nothing but fire last night. Glad to hear you going though. How’s the body?”
   “Don’t think you need to ask. What did he do last night?”
   “Ran two miles,” she speaks over cereal as she pours. “Like I said, nothing but fire. Please don’t keep him away that long again. You have no idea what he is like when he gets that restless.”
   “Didn’t leave you alone did he?”
   “Ritual, ran, and then ran his mouth the rest of the night. Most of done all of his work after I fell asleep. He kept me up until two. Said as long as you don’t lock him out again he’ll be back tomorrow night.”
   “Hm well.”
   “You aren’t, are you?”
   He shrugs and leaves for the jacket.

   He is surprised to find the chest still in his room at the end of his school day. He hesitates in his doorway, wary. He feels like maybe he’s been handed a snake for a pet. Malachi had to know that the chest had been moved.
   He hates to admit, but the chest is beautiful. Malachi put in tremendous effort and care when he carved every letter and symbol, the hours over the years that he slowly waxed every inch of it.
   He kneels in front of it. He runs his hand down the door of it.
   He feels a distant headache start but doesn’t think much of it. With his life he has had more headaches than most. He has learned to regard them as a constant state of being.
   When he swings open the catch he blacks out.

   He comes in to find himself standing in front of Nora.
   “You’re an a*s.”
   It takes him a moment of looking around to realize what happened. He leans up against the wall in their hallway, his head is still light.
   “It’s been a while since he’s yanked control like that,” he says. He feels stupid, of course Nora knows this, how could she not? “Why am I an a*s? Me or him?”
   “You. You actually hurt him. Why do you insist on touching things that aren’t yours?”
   “I don’t- You don’t understand what it is about that chest.”
   “Neither do you.”
   “He- He can- It’s not even what is in it. I mean it bothers the hell out of me, but - it’s the fact that he can do that. It isn’t fair. It’s just- He can do that Arabic. He literally can make my body do things I can’t!”
   “You tell me you’re the same person. He has interests you don’t, and vice versa. You’re not the same religion. Hell, you don’t even have the same sexuality! Sure, you both like girls, but he likes guys too! The only reason you can’t understand him as a person is that you won’t learn how to talk with him. People in your situation do it all the time! He told me what’s in that chest, you know.”
   He stares at her, unsure how to react.
   “Why would he tell you?”
   “Because he actually trusts me. He actually can talk to me. It’s the whole reason he’s here. What’s in there is. He wrote- I- Mason, I can’t tell you exactly what is in there. He wrote down- it’s the record of what happened with your grandfather. The details,” she fumbles out.
   Everything goes black.

   He comes to this time sitting in front of the chest, firmly back in Malachi’s room. He can’t explain why his head feels the way that it does. He is not familiar with this.
   There is a note attached to the chest. He knows this is Malachi’s writing. He has seen it on the bridge of paperwork assignments Malachi once had to do for him when he was sick.
   Mason,
   I think it’s time we tried to talk.
   I told Nora what’s in the chest. I have not shown her. When you are ready you will be able to read it. I’ve written all the details of what happened. It’s what the chest was made for. When you’re ready I am giving it to you.
   Until then trust me.
   Sincerely,
   Malachi
   There is a pad of paper beside his knee. He looks at that but looks at the chest again.
   He thinks of all the care of which the chest was made. He remembers all of the days he woke up smelling like wood and his hands ached from carving the Arabic. All of the days Malachi put his time into when he could have been doing anything else.
   Solely for his memories of his grandfather’s death.
   Solely so they could lock them away so he could function in the meantime.
   Malachi,
   I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I think it’s time we tried.
   Mason.
   There is no rushing black. Malachi is not there waiting to take him back. He looks at the chest again.
   He looks at it from the doorway too.
   Everything he ever forgot is in that box.

   Malachi will be back tomorrow night, he tells Nora.