The Grip of It

by Jac Jemc

like me, he is excited about the secret passages, this being one of the places where we are seamed together, just one instance where we twist in the same spot, mirroring each other and meshing at once.

A sameness, of one mind -ness, that's sweet but foreboding. Can this be foreshadowing already?

We fit together effortlessly.

They are wonderfully into each other. I fear by the end of this, they may no longer be.

I hear a louder humming up here, as if the light were trying hard to reach the hallway. I see a shadow fall through the doorway of one of the guest rooms and feel a surge of fear.

The first funny feeling. The relief that it was nothing. The first warning sign? (James experiences this)

The stain has pulled itself wider. I ask Julie if she thinks so, too, and immediately regret it. We stare. The spot seems to inhale a little, lungs expanding.

warning sign number two? (for James)

Could I have set it there and forgotten? Could I have had it in my hand on the way to the kitchen and put it down? This seems like the only answer, so I accept it. “I don’t remember doing that at all.”

Another warning sign. (first warning sign for Julie)

I am feeling unusual, not in a way that I can explain,

I love this line

I sense a secret in the misses of the conversation. Something hides beneath her skin. Like a mouse running under a fitted sheet.

Jemc is a wizard of words.

I feel a face right in front of my own, but I am alone, and I know that if I am not alone, it is just some other version of myself that is nearby.

Answers can be right there in your ears, unheard.

so true

I walk through our front door and straight out the back and realize it is not our home I’ve passed through, but Rolf’s. I pause at the newly planted hedges and look at one house and then the other and ask myself if what I think just happened really did, but I talk myself out of it.

When you're willing to disregard something because it makes no sense, rather than deal with the sheer fear of whatever it means if it really DID happen.

The inability to trust ourselves is the most menacing danger.

There are times when saying nothing means nothing, and then there are times when nothing holds an answer.

I hope to transfer the questions I want to be asked into her. I hope they permeate from my open pores into hers.

I know how it feels to speak a lie to make it sound more true.

We’re so certain of our fear that we don’t think in those binaries anymore: inside outside, good evil, known unknown, fact fiction. There’s nothing to eliminate.

I recognize that our awe has tattered, as we buck and shatter against the tedium.

We can lose ourselves behind a trapdoor, whether in our mind or in the house.

We are many people. We separate. We tangle. We relock.