The Roof

The Roof

Going to the roof had become less of a way of coping, and more routine for Tessa. The leaves that had once occupied the rooftop alongside her had been blown halfway across town by the time that she had arrived. Soon enough, the cold night’s air began to snake between brightly-lit buildings and down towards the girl whose legs dangled loosely above a nameless alleyway whose lonely occupant stood quietly in the night.

The roof had not always been a place of solitude for Tessa. When the dull gleam of the city’s streetlights had been more patient, pairs of empty beer cans would often clatter into the lonely dumpster from several stories above. Tessa tried to forget about those nights, in all honesty, she didn’t even know why she still came here. She always tried to dissuade herself from coming back, but deep down the temptation to submerge herself back into the whirlpool of self-loathing always triumphed. The rooftop was where she could warm herself on cold nights with thoughts of what she could have done differently, and what a fool she was.

She was engulfed in one of her hindsight-fueled hypotheticals when she heard the heavy flap of the dumpster jerk open. She thought that the dumpster should have been open already since that had been their target back when they-- dammit, she had forgotten her Bud-Lite in her fridge at home. Nevertheless, Tessa peered past her legs down into the ill-lit alley below. 

 The sky in the city never shone particularly brightly at night, but thick clouds had shrouded what slither of the moon would have been shining high above. Tessa could barely make out the vague outline of the dumpster, one flap of which was unusually still closed. In her mind, Tessa dismissed it as simply a roaming cat, or a raccoon or something of the like. Some part of her, however, was affixed to the large bin so she stared down towards the metallic box with a childlike sense of curiosity. A small movement in the shadows next to where the garbage should have caught her attention before the passing sweep of a car’s headlights divulged a sight that Tessa could not believe.

For as long as she could remember, Tessa’s favourite season had been winter. She loved the feeling of wearing a warm winter jacket in the cold, and she had fond memories of making little snowmen in the yard when she was younger. The man’s face was as white as that snow. She had seen him for only a moment, but she could only see his misplaced face, lilting away from the strained neck in such an odd direction. 

Tessa scampered away from the edge, not sure if she should puke or cry. She kept on thinking back to his face, his pale, drained face. His eyes like cheap beads strung across a child’s necklace. She was sweating profusely, she wanted her mother and she wanted to be back home in her bed. The buildings towering above her seemed to grow and shrink, like angry waves during a warm summer's storm. She toppled backwards onto the stiff concrete slate, the clouds above her finally parted but the sliver of moonlight that greeted her was soon replaced by a blindfold of black. 

The drums jolted her awake, beating and pounding on bone that felt as thin as paper. The clouds had returned to shelter the young moon, but at that moment Tessa was more interested in whose car she was in the back seat of. The walls held a colour like that of a wolf’s hide, and gashes in leather seats streaked across the chairs like a spider’s web. A terrible smell had been stalking her nose since she had stirred from her sleep; it smelled like the carcass of her neighbour’s old cat that she had found rotting under her deck several years ago. It had fallen victim to some sort of weasel or fisher-like animal, and as she became more aware of her surroundings, Tessa realized that whatever that smell was had likely met a similar fate.  

A pair of zip ties bound her hands, and she felt another digging into the skin at her ankles. She had worked her way from the floor to a sideways position on the bumpy backseat, twisting and contorting her body like a fisherman’s worm to achieve whatever praise of victory rising a foot off of the floor would bring. The outside of the car remained mostly a mystery to her. The windshield was cracked and had a crumpled tarp covering it, but some persistent rays of light had found a way to smuggle themselves through thin slits and holes. The other windows revealed only suggestions of naked trees through the frost-coated panes of glass. 

The windows had thawed when Tessa saw the first sign of movement outside of the car. She had grown used to the wretched smell and the liberation of the windows from the cold had only confirmed the trees as the figures that had loomed past the blur of the frost. The girl was beautiful, Tessa thought, her hair was ashen as the frozen tree bark, her eyes a frozen pond on a night where friendly stories would be told around a warm fireplace. Tessa hadn’t noticed the lumberman’s axe that had made a thin trail through the snow behind the girl, nor had she seen the many thin lines of stitches that ran from her ear to her neck. The girl glanced at her for a moment before continuing on to a spot behind the car where Tessa could no longer see her. She heard the trunk open and felt her skin start to prickle as a cold breeze swept over the back of her neck and flowed past her into the rest of the car. Tessa felt the suspension of the car shift towards her as something heavy thumped against the ground behind the car, crushing some stray leaves and dry sticks beneath its weight. The girl’s face appeared next to her in the window. She seemed to be studying Tessa, searching her face for any potential risks that she might pose. Tessa looked back at her, curious about who this girl was, and what she was doing in the woods all by herself. She couldn’t have been much older than 17, but something in her eyes suggested that the girl outside the car was not the same person whose eyes were so deeply occupied in searching Tessa’s.

Not a word was uttered when the girl cracked the rigid door open. Tessa’s eyes didn’t waver from the girl’s face, and she soon began to trace the vast network of scars and stitches that segmented her face into factions of fractured skin and vivid veins that pressed against fine fields of flesh. She shed no tears but her eyes still cried. Slowly, Tessa moved her feet over the step of the door, and onto the cold forest ground. The girl made no move to loosen the bands on Tessa’s wrists, instead, moving again to the back of the car. Tessa’s eyes followed her until she saw his face again.

The snow around his hair was unmelted still, his skin somehow paler than it had been in the yellowish glow of the car’s headlights. Her feet still bound, she peered around the edge of the car and saw the rest of the man who had no name. The girl stood over him, her intentions not clear. In her left hand, she wore a warm winter glove, in the right, she readied the axe. As the girl raised the weapon, Tessa heard the faint call of an owl. She found it perched on the branch of a barren maple tree, and watched it take flight as the axe cleaved itself snugly into the man’s skull. 

The once solid pond had begun to melt in the midday sun. Her tears eroded into rivers that flowed through a landscape of scars and scabs as she loosened her clasp on the wooden handle of the axe. Her knees dug holes into the light layer of snow, as her hands clasped firmly like magnets to her eyes. Tessa watched in silence as the girl’s mouth started to move, slowly at first, like a clock smith's creation, whose gears begrudgingly started to turn. 

“He killed her, he deserves it, he killed her, he deserved it.” She kept repeating those words under her breath, the phrase sending clouds of condensation into the cool forest air. The wind had stopped for a moment and high above, the owl flew back to its nest, a shadow against the sun’s paling glow. 

“You’re beautiful, you know.” The words seemed to come from nowhere, Tessa remained silent, wondering if the words were meant for her. After a short pause, the girl spoke again.

“You remind me of her, of the way she would never know what to say. I just miss her so much.” Tessa wanted so badly to just open her mouth and talk to this girl. She wanted to know so much more. Her mouth never opened.

“We were in this car, she was still next to me.” Her voice was starting to break, her eyes had dried up and her hands fell away from her face. Her eyes darted nervously towards the man laying unblinking next to them. 

“He turned the corner so fast… I ca-- I...” she reached a hand into her pocket and fumbled around with something there for a moment. 

“I loved her.” They lingered in their silence for some time. 

The girl's pocket was slowly becoming damp, Tessa only noticed after the snow beneath the girl had begun to discolour. She was about to take a step toward the girl when her hand withdrew from the sopping pocket and flashed quickly over crimson snow. 

The sun had set, and the car was gone but the axe remained, accompanied by the girl who had put it there.