The first half of our journey through Honaw was long. The second half was separate from time entirely.

Now and then the fog offered a glimpse of town. Torn power lines flicked blue sparks. Concrete slabs jutted from the sidewalk. Buildings leaned on tilted foundations, like ships in a frozen and storming sea. We passed the gas station. The pumps were still burning. At one of them sat a car, its tires melted into dark puddles, its windows blackened by soot.

"No," Ash said as a pair of empty, smoking boots came into view beside the vehicle. "No, I am not seeing that. No."

I did not respond. There was a cold knot in my stomach, in the very core of me. Every second fed it. Every breath and throb in my legs, and God did my legs throb. I sat with my hands clenching my thighs, fingernails in my skin. Don't think, don't think, don't think. Sweat popped on my forehead. DON'T THINK, DON'T THINK, DON'T THINK. But I kept seeing the deer. The first deer. The deer my dad left dying on the highway, its head rising and falling as its guts steamed the air. He should have run it over. He should have put it out of its misery, but he didn't, and don't think about what came next, don't think about the bear, DON'T THINK DON'T THINK DON'T THINK.

The shadows alongside us became trees instead of buildings.

The road began to wind.

Ash turned onto a dirt lane leading into the woods.

DON'T THINK, DON'T THINK, DON'T—

♫

A wide rut split the lane, forcing Ash to drive with two tires off the road. When we finally reached Aunt Sandy's driveway, she braked. "That's no good. Nope. No sir. No good, no good, no good."

An enormous fallen tree blocked the way. The headlights burned red against its bark.

"Get my chair."

"Way ahead of you," she said. But she wasn't. She was still sitting in her seat like Nip and Billy, not doing a damn thing.

"Ash."

"What?"

"My chair."

"Yeah. Right. Okay."

Ash stepped out onto the road, her mouth rolled up into itself. She shut the door behind her, cutting off a few wisps off fog that had wandered inside the van. I waited. I don't know how I did, but I waited. When she came around with Bitchmaster, I let myself carefully down into its seat.

Ash turned her head to the back. "You two. Dingleberries. This is our stop."

"Where are we?" Nip said.

"You don't know?"

A pause. "Aunt Sandy's?"

Hearing her name out loud brought a wash of bile up my throat. I crossed the space between the van and the tipped juniper in three slow pushes. Bitchmaster's wheels bumped to a stop against the trunk. I leaned forward and gripped the bark. It was damp, slippery. Bit by bit, inch by worming inch, I pulled myself up onto the tree until I was staring into the pink nothing that surrounded my aunt's house.

A door slammed. Billy had gotten out of the van and was moving after Nip and Ash, his head raised for the first time since leaving his house. Hurry, I wanted to shout at them all. Use your goddamn legs, and hurry! Instead I nodded down at Bitchmaster and spoke in the most even voice I could manage. "Pass that up to me. Someone."

Billy surprised me by hoisting the chair and placing it on the trunk. Something inside of me came loose then, unraveled like a fragile knot. I let Bitchmaster roll forward off the tree and heard it clatter, heard Ash shout my name as I shoved myself off after it. The hard-packed dirt hammered nails into my palms. I groped for the chair, yanked it upright, and dragged my body into the seat. The throbbing in my legs traveled up through my hips and mated with the knot inside my belly.

"Wait," called Ash.

Go, shouted the voice inside my head.

Go is what I did. I pushed on the wheels. I jammed on those suckers, and I raced my pain and worry up the path.

I almost won.

Almost.

A tall jaggy silhouette formed into my aunt's house. The cottage had collapsed, dragging the pitched roof down with it. Amidst the splinters the doorframe stood upright and empty. Pink curled in and out of caved windows. Red droplets leaked steadily from a hanging rain gutter and watered the garden.

No.

The fog began to glow beside the house. A slim figure stepped forward, cupping a light. "Joel?"

There are moments that feel like they last forever, and there are moments you wish could last forever. This one was a bit of both. Aunt Sandy dropped her candle and ran toward me, and I pushed toward her, and we crashed into each other, no words, nothing to be said, nothing in the whole aching world but the two of us.

♫

Remember when Nip dropped out of nowhere, poof, and landed next to me at lunch? Well, he pulled the rabbit out of the hat again in front my aunt's crippled home. Sandy and I were still holding onto one another when I became aware of something skinny wrapped around my neck. I turned my head an inch and there was Nip, squeezed in close to us, smiling with his eyes closed like someone dreaming the good dream.

"We made it, Aunt Sandy," he said.

She included him fiercely into her grip . "I thought—I was so—thank you, thank you."

I stared at Nip. "You're back."

He opened one eye. "Back from where?"

"Never mind, dingus."

Aunt Sandy hissed. "Joel."

"What?"

"Don't call him that."

"But Nip is totally a dingus," came a fourth voice, and then Ash's body collided into our group from the other side. "He might even be the original dingus."

Aunt Sandy made this tiny squawking sound and planted a trio of smacking kisses on Ash's fuzzy blond skull.

"Guuuh." Ash twisted away from her, toward me, and I ended up with one very small and very firm breast squashed against my face. That might have been an accident on Ash's part, but when it comes to their boobs and where they put them, I have doubts that girls ever make accidents. Strong doubts.

"Does dingus mean wiener?"

"Shut up, Nip."

"No, seriously. Does it?"

"You should know. Dingus."

"And who is this?" My aunt had lifted her head and was staring over me at Billy, who stood a ways back, looking like he wanted to shuffle off and disappear. She clicked her tongue softly on the roof of her mouth. "Another . . . freak?"

"More like a stray," said Ash.

"Young man," called Aunt Sandy. "Come on over here. Don't be shy."

Billy took two steps, glanced up at Sandy, and stopped dead in his tracks. Then he came the rest of the way forward, his eyes taking a sudden interest in the area around my aunt.

"What's your name?"

"Billy." Not looking at her. Not quite.

"Billy . . . ?"

He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. The guy was a fish on land. I unhooked him. "Rascoe. He lives up near Ash's place and hangs around with us sometimes. His parents work down the mountain, too." As soon as I finished, I wondered if I had taken a misstep. But either my aunt hadn't read the paper or she had forgotten about Rascoe Senior.

"Well, Billy. Welcome to my home." She gave a grandiose wave at the husk behind her. "Sorry about the mess. Haven't had a second to clean all day."

Something trickled down the back of my neck. I wiped at it and my palm came away streaked in red.

Sandy grimaced. "Let's go inside before this—whatever this is—soaks into our clothes."

It had already started to, judging by the damp look of her left sleeve.

Nip glanced at the remains of the house. "Inside where?"

My aunt turned the way she had come, motioning us after her. "You can't tell from up front, but there is some inside left. Somehow." She paused to pick her candle up from a pool of cinnamon-scented wax. "I was out in the garden, trying to salvage my rooties. Stubborn, stupid me. Never able to let go of anything. And then it happened. God, the noise. Like the planet was tearing itself open from the inside. Like, I don't even know what. I got away from the house before it shook itself down, but I took one bitch of a splinter." Aunt Sandy gestured at her sweater sleeve, and I realized with a start that the dampness there was her blood.

"Jesus, Aunt—"

"Don't Jesus me," she said. "I'm lucky. Really. It could have been so much worse."

My mind went to a pair of empty smoking boots. Ash's mind must have gone there too (or somewhere similar) because her face closed in on itself.

Sandy turned on us. "You. The four of you. You drove through town. How—how bad is it?"

I think I answered, or maybe Nip did. "Bad."

She nodded once, gravely. "I tried to leave, to come look for you, but the tree . . . I couldn't get out of the driveway." She shook her head like a horse shooing away a fly. "At least—at least down the mountain all of your parents are safe."

In the corner of my eye I saw Billy stroke his bitten knuckles.

"Come, come." Sandy continued walking. "We'll hole up, that's what we'll do. We'll hole up until help arrives."

"The radio," said Nip, flinching to a brief stop. "On the radio, they talked about military activity. On the highways around town."

"I didn't think you heard that," said Ash.

"Of course I did." Nip shot her a duh. "I was in the car, wasn't I?"

"Debatable."

"Anyway, anyway, if the military was on the highway, that means they've got to be here soon. Right?"

I felt a spark catch inside my chest and warm my heart. Help. Help was coming.

"Right," said Ash, a few beats late.

Aunt Sandy slipped around the corner of the house. I had been so focused on the conversation I hadn't noticed that there was a corner. Behind us the outer wall was nothing more than broken sticks. Up ahead the wall remained a wall—as long as you ignored its slight inward lean.

Aunt Sandy waited for us at the glass back door, which was not really a door any more considering its windowpane had blown to pieces. She swept at the shards with her foot, clearing a space for us on the concrete. "Watch your step."

"Sure will," I said.

"And your sarcasm."

I hung back to let the others inside first. The inner screen was still intact, and as they pushed through it they left handprints on the reddened mesh. Billy slowed before passing and stole a thirsty glance at my aunt, who went on like she hadn't noticed.

"That boy," she mumbled when it was just me and her on the patio. "You'd think he hadn't seen a woman in a month."

I thought that was likely, but I didn't say so.

Aunt Sandy closed the door behind us with supreme gentleness.

What remained of the house was lit by candles, all burning different flavors. Caramel apple. Chocolate. Marshmallow. The sweetness was overpowering after the fog. I scraped my tongue clean on my teeth as I took in the space before me.

The living room had lost any sense of geometry. Its walls tilted in to various degrees, held up by or holding up the cracked ceiling. Every article of furniture stood at a slightly different angle than before, or in a slightly different place. The end table sat too close to the chair, which sat too far from the potted lilies, which had tipped over and spilled mud onto the carpet. The Nile Goddess lay on her back. Above the couch the photograph of the burning house hung slanted, its crooked face screaming smoke.

I made myself look away from it.

"Shitski," Ash said, staring at the plaster-dusted wall of debris where the kitchen used to be. "Do you think it's safe in here?"

"I think so. But save your jumping jacks for later just in case." Aunt Sandy flinched. "Get away from that."

Nip pulled his hand back. He had been about to touch one of the long splintered beams poking from the rubble. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be smart." Aunt Sandy walked over to the end table and picked up the box of matches there. She lit her candle and carried it down the hall, the only other part of the house still standing. A minute later she returned with pillows and blankets. She dropped them on the carpet. "Here. We all stay right here. Together."

If only.

____ ____

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Poor Things, please consider hitting the vote button—it will help other readers find the story. Comments are always appreciated, too. Seriously, I love them.

Coming up on Tuesday, Ash takes Joel out into the woods for a little chat . . .