You guys ever received a phone call from yourselves? It happened while I was barefoot, wandering the streets of downtown Denver with a friend. I remember a balmy morning, the perfect bike weather. But Bruno wanted to “ground himself to the earth” on foot or whatever, and I was tired from dancing anyway.
I turned to him in alarm, holding my phone out to show him my name - INCOMING: CORDELIA MADHOUSE - on the caller ID. I asked, “Am I dead?”
Bruno rolled his eyes and laughed.
“Answer it.”
He said it like a challenge, arching one of his expressive eyebrows at me. I was drawn to that musical theatre kid energy in him. He was ferocious, all animation and performance, big gestures and big laughs. Until I met him, I’d never had so much fun, even just aimlessly roaming the Mile High together at dawn.
“Shut up,” I said, half-laughing, half-moaning in despair. I was coming down from all the toxins I’d been pumping into my body, and Bruno’s curly hair was a disheveled goblin’s nest. “You look like a lunatic, you know that?”
He was still working his jaw, wild-eyed, the soles of his feet even blacker than mine. We had been to a rave, then an after-rave, then kicked our shoes into Cherry Creek while the sun came up. What is it about being 22?
“Fine,” said Bruno, “gimme.”
He snatched for the buzzing phone in my hand, probably because he knew my reaction would be to answer it myself out of spite.
I picked up the call. There was ringing from the receiver, then it went to voicemail, a woman—
“Hi! You’ve reached Cordelia—”
I dropped the phone to the pavement. “What the fuck? It’s my voicemail.”
Bruno chuckled. “Calm down,” he said, bending for my phone. When he handed it back to me, the screen was a shattered web.
“It’s obviously a glitch or something,” he said, linking his arm through mine. “You did enough drugs to take down a horse, and now you’re paranoid. Let’s get pancakes.”
Our friends were taken aback by how quickly Bruno and I became enmeshed when we met. I didn’t know it was co-dependent at the time. I just knew we had fun and did everything together, which mostly entailed a lot of partying.
At one point, some old friends from high school cornered me at a birthday party to express their concerns over our fast friendship. I didn’t listen; all it did was drive me further into Bruno’s world, the underground events, the chaos, the music. We’d stay up all night, drinking and talking. He opened my mind, you know? Helped me see things from a new perspective. I got really into dubstep, the way it drowned out the racing thoughts in my mind. I quit my job and sold my car for a Burning Man ticket. We were moving to California together.
The day I called myself, we ate lemon pancakes at Root Down afterwards - our favorite, a high-octane cafe with club vibes - then walked home across the 19th Street Bridge, a pedestrian walkway in the Lower Highland. The sun was all high-noon and wild west, blazing us with dry heat.
Bruno stopped on the middle of the bridge. He faced me with a sly grin. His teeth were immaculate, though he claimed never to brush.
“Wanna try something?” he asked.
I lived for that mischievous twinkle in his eye. It was a dopamine hit for me. Gold glitter dazzled his cheekbones. What didn’t my friends see in him?
“Depends,” I said, side-eyeing him with faux suspicion. “What is it?”
Bruno moved to the edge of the bridge. I followed. We both leaned over the metal rail. Below, the South Platte River was calmly streaming.
Still gazing into the water, Bruno asked, “Do you trust me, Cordelia?”
I had to think about it, but I nodded. “Why?”
“I’ll hold your ankles.”
“For what?”
“So you can go over.”
“Go over what?”
“The railing.”
“Over the— are you crazy?”
“Do you trust me?”
My heart leapt into my throat. I swiveled between Bruno and the river.
“You want me to… You want to dangle me off…”
I assessed his biceps. Was he flexing?
“Wanna do me first?” said Bruno, hopping up to sit on the railing with his back to the river, hands in the air. He kicked his playful feet at me.
“Get down,” I hissed, dragging him back to the concrete while he laughed. Vertigo tingled in my feet at the stress of him falling backwards. “Do you see how shallow the river is? We’re in a drought. If you dropped me…”
“I won’t drop you.”
“Dude, you know I hate heights. Why do you do this to me?”
“Girl, you climbed that peak at Red Rocks and we did DMT under the stars.”
I chewed my lower lip. That was a magical night.
“We never would have made fireworks with our eyes,” Bruno continued, “if you didn’t face your fear. Remember every time we blinked, there were shooting stars?”
He winked, the dimples lighting up his face. He loved to speak like this, like a coin-operated poem. Though he spoke the truth about that DMT trip.
Our dynamic had been forged long ago, when we first stood in the bathroom line at that house party, exchanged names, and ended up going in together, railing molly off the sink, joking around.
I was anxious about disappointing him, and regretful to miss out on an experience, so I said yes.
He patted my back and sniffed. “Atta girl.”
The breath trembled from me, but I let him lift me up. I’ll admit he made me seem weightless.
“Bruno. Do not drop me.”
“You got this,” he said. “Trust me.”
Seated on the cold metal rail, my hanging feet no longer touched the pavement. Bruno steadied me with his hands on my hips.
“I got this?” I repeated, stunned. “No, Bruno. You literally have my life in your hands.“
“Are you ready?” He rubbed his nose on his shoulder. “I’m gonna slide you backwards over the railing.”
“Why do you keep sniffling?”
He put his head down and I chased him with my eyes, saying, “Man, you did not just do a bump of K.”
Bruno gave me his most reassuring smile, really popping those dimples. “Relax. It picks me up, remember?”
I felt lightheaded. I refused to look down and face the 70-foot drop that loomed below me.
“What-why would you do that?” I searched for signs of intelligent life in his eyes, which were enormously dilated now. Did he seem glazed or was I just panicking? It was enough to change my mind.
“You know what, no. Get your jelly arms away from me. I’m coming dow—”
My hands get clammy when I’m nervous. As I scrambled to dismount the railing, too quickly, I went swoop and flailed over the side. The river was rushing right up to meet me and I couldn’t even scream, I just squeezed shut my eyes and braced for impact.
A hard yank. My head didn’t smash into the riverbed. I cracked open an eye. I was swaying rapidly from side to side with Bruno up on the bridge, hugging my feet to his chest.
“Woohoo!” he shouted.
“Don’t woohoo!” I cried back, hoarse, tears falling straight from my eyes into the river.
“You did it! Exhilarating, yeah?”
It took several rounds of deep breathing to believe I was alive. I found the courage to squint into the sunshine, drinking in the gentle Platte, the quilt of clouds, verdant trees. Blood rushed to my head, and my fingertips stretched for the water.
Suddenly, a familiar voice broke the serenity, so close to my ear I jerked away from it and almost caused Bruno to lose his grasp.
“Hi!”
Bubbly and feminine.
I waited a beat.
Hesitant, I called out, “Bruno?”
Silence.
“Hey,” I shouted, “space cadet. Bring me up. My head is starting to hurt.”
“Hi!”
The greeting came from further away now, just off the riverbank, though all I could see were bushes and trees.
Over there, in the brush. The leaves rustled. Someone was fucking with me.
“Dude!” I shouted up to Bruno, scanning the trees with my dry, useless contact lenses. “Pull me up, seriously.”
“Hi! You’ve reached Cordelia.”
I gasped, held my breath. I’d always hated my voice, the vocal fry that meant I’d never be a singer; now it freaked me out, it was too fucking upbeat — and it was my voice, yes, but crispier, extra fried, like a physical scratch on my brain when I heard it.
You know the primitive spider that crawls along your neck when you feel someone watching you?
“I said, pull me up!” I was nearing hysterics.
“You’ve reached Cordelia. Please leave a— please leave— please leave—”
I covered my ears with my hands.
“Please leave— please leave a—”
“This isn’t a funny fucking prank,” I yelled. My temples throbbed.
When Bruno finally responded, I had to strain to hear him.
“C’delia? There’s… someone up here.”
“Bruno, your fingers are slipping, do not let go. Bruno? Tighten your grip.”
“She’s old. She looks… unwell.”
He was slurring.
“You’re scaring me, Bruno. Please!”
Everything went deathly quiet. The birds stopped trilling. Wind stilled in the branches. When I swallowed, it sounded so loud by comparison, a river rushing down my throat.
“Hi!”
The voicemail. It came from above me now. From the bridge.
“FUCKING BRUNO.”
How was I so stupid? Of course it was him. I’d been enthralled with this guy from the start, a puppy following him from one escapade to the next. I liked escaping with him. It was destructive, adrenalizing.
Now I would pay the price of admission for all those wild rides.
Bruno’s fuzzy, confused voice floated down to me.
“I don’t think…”
He cleared his throat. His voice still cracked when it came out. I craned my neck to look up at the bridge, blinded by the sun.
He said, “I don’t think that was ketamine.”
“Bru-Bru-Bru-Bruno don’t let go your fingers are don’t let go please pull me no no NO BRUNO!”
The phone in my pocket began to ring.
I was mid-scream when Bruno grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. He was repeating my name, touching my hair, worry furrowing his brow.
What the fuck?
“Jesus. Cordelia. What is it?”
My bare feet were on the ground. Clouds above. In the near distance, I saw the bridge arched like a feral dog over the South Platte.
Disoriented, I locked my frantic eyes onto his.
“The bridge,” I said weakly.
“Oh. You wanna take the bridge? We can go that way. Cordelia, you were screaming—”
“No!” The word exploded from my chest. I snagged his shirt collar in my fist. “No fucking bridge, do you hear me?”
Bruno watched me with weary, red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he wanted to laugh at my intensity but it also unnerved him, too.
Carefully, he peeled my fingers from his shirt, saying, “Okay, okay,” like he was soothing a spooked beast.
Then he said, “It just keeps ringing. Are you gonna answer that?”
It took me a moment to register what he meant. I pressed my palm to the phone buzzing in my jean pocket.
“Think I’m gonna jog home,” I announced, feeling heavy and exhausted, yet needing to get as far away as possible. “Sweat the demons out.”
“Nooo!” Bruno took my hand in both of his, petting it, idly playing with the rings on my fingers. “I’m too full to run. Let’s smoke a spliff by the river.”
“Bruno, you need a boyfriend. I gotta run.”
It was the most liberating run of my life. I’d never been more grateful to have two filthy feet slapping the sidewalk, and an unsmashed skull, and working legs. The streak of self-sabotage had to end. That terrible daydream was a wake-up call. I must get my shit together. Maybe my friends were right. They were just looking out for me. They saw me crashing and burning down a path that led to a bridge.
When I got home, I thought everything was normal. I scrubbed the day away in a hot shower, cooked potatoes for lunch, watched some HBO. I didn’t bother putting on clothes. My jeans were discarded on the hallway floor; I heard them buzzing away from the living room, but I ignored it, eventually falling asleep to The Sopranos on the couch. I slept hard.
I remember it was 4:20am because that was every 22-year-old stoner’s lucky number. I sleepily tumbled off the sofa, wiping the drool from my chin while I zombie-crawled to my bedroom. On my way there, the phone in my jeans began to vibrate as soon as I stepped over them.
I mumbled, “Not today, Bruno,” and kicked the jeans further down the hall.
Still luxuriating in the nude, I stepped in front of my bedroom vanity to pin up my hair. I had plenty of hangover left to sleep off, and my sheets were going to feel delicious on these naked limbs.
Gazing into the mirror set off a bomb inside me. I screamed so loud I hurt my own ears, dropping to the floor as if dodging gunfire.
What the fuck what the fuck—
The reflection peering back at me, it was me, but it was… it was mangled and ancient. She was, I was, everything was broken and put back in the wrong place.
My heart drilled against my rib cage. Slowly rising up from the carpet, my knees quaking, I braved the mirror once more. Nausea consumed me in another torrid wave.
My reflection was seated in a wheelchair. She looked older than dirt. I only recognized her by all our tattoos, though she had even more than me, she’d filled in the gaps.
The contraptions encasing both her legs were made of mismatching scrap metal pieces. Or had those become her legs? These rusty bolts, hammer marks beaten into the dingy panels. She was topless and hunchbacked, breasts sagging into her metal lap.
Half my reflection’s head was shaven, her scalp lumpy, dotted with violet ink and blue stitches. She wore a black eyepatch on that side. Her other eye had pooled with such deep, eternal crimson the color was practically black. If that was the uncovered eye, how badly did the one behind the patch fare?
I whispered, “This isn’t happening,” grinding my fists into my own eyes. It was a horrible spirit vision. A psychotic break. I went too far this time. I don’t think that was ketamine…
This couldn’t be real. It would break me.
But she was still there when the spots cleared from my vision. Glaring at me.
I’d throw a blanket over the vanity — except my feet wouldn’t cooperate. Fright had frozen me in place.
“Why?” I managed to croak out. Once I really set my sights on her, now it was like I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. Lightly, I grazed a fingertip across the glass. “Who did this?”
My elderly reflection tilted her head to the side. She scanned me up and down, examining me the way I had her. I hooked a self-conscious forearm over my bare waist, yet she didn’t so much as twitch a muscle when I gaped at her like she was a monster.
Finally, she spoke. It was that extra crispy version of my voice I’d heard in the daydream.
“We blame him for a long time,” she said. Her wrinkles were entrenched, hair white and brittle. She pressed two fingers to her shaved temple as though it pained her — the nails were long and twisty. Yellow witch’s talons.
“Bruno,” she explained. “I mean, we really blame him. Cut all ties, block him. He heads to the Bay Area with some lover boy. We end up moving to New York so they can experiment on us. It’s how we make a living.” She rattled one of her clunky legs, lips pursed with bitterness. “What happened on that bridge, though… it’s not actually his fault, is it?”
It dawned on me, the first seedling of depression.
“He dropped us,” I said. It hollowed me out from the inside.
“How did we find ourselves in that situation, I wonder?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“He lived a charmed life,” she said, the wickedness creeping in. “We envied that. He made us feel alive, and seemed like he could never die. So we gave him consent, carte blanche.”
Slowly, I shook my head again. That wasn’t true. Was it?
“And why is that?” she went on. “Why would we? Because we were taught at a young age to play the victim.”
I winced. She was talking about our father, the sacrificial lamb. Being compared to him ached in the pit of my stomach.
She continued in a mocking tone, rapping her talons on the rotten wheels of her chair.
“Always looking for ways to hurt ourselves so that someone would show they cared.” A cruel pout doubled her meaty lips in size.
“That’s enough therapy.”
Flushed with embarrassment, I’d meant to bark the words instead of the pitiful squeak that came out. I felt small. Infinitesimal. No one can tear you down like yourself.
She trained her cold, bloodshot eye on me, her breathing so vengeful and dragon-like I had to avert my gaze before it scorched me.
“Bruno was the bad influence we’d been searching for all our lives,” she said.
Indignation flamed in one last attempt to assert myself.
“He dropped us off a fucking bridge, for fuck’s—”
“And we loved it,” she snarled, white-knuckling the armrests of her wheelchair, making me jump. She leaned forward, readying her stance to lunge at me. Her seething breath fogged up the mirror. I had to swipe my hand across to clear the glass.
“And it didn’t happen to you,” she snapped. “It happened to me. You have your pretty green eyes, you have leg bones. You don’t feed from a tube because the artificial voice box rattling in your esophagus would choke you if you so much as swallowed a spoonful of quinoa!”
She said it all in one vicious breath and sat back, panting, wrathful.
“That’s awful,” I replied in a small voice. Tears welled. “It sounds painful when you speak.” This apparition from my future had experienced a lifetime of torment. Even as I prayed this was another vivid daydream, I began to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Tears only galvanized her fury. There was something self-satisfied about it, too, her anger. Like she planned to weaponize it.
“I’ve been waiting for you, little Cordelia.”
She gave me a closed-lip smile that made me shudder. Too strained, too curvy. You know when you make eye contact with your reflection while pulling the scariest face you can in the mirror? Just to see if you can freak yourself out? This is the one I used to make at myself when I felt silly or masochistic. She knew it got under my skin because she was me.
“I looked everywhere,” she said, eyeing me hungrily. “It’s taken decades. You’re the only one of us who didn’t take the bridge home that day. Can you believe that? Surely there’s more out there. An infinity of Cordelia. But of the thousands, the thousands that I’ve encountered through this wretched fucking looking-glass… You’re my unicorn.”
“What do you need?” I asked, sniffling, naive with guilt and anguish. “How can I help?”
“I’ve been biding my time in this shit hole. I wish I could say I’m leaving the place homey for you. There’s a mouse problem, and a roach problem.” She sighed. “But that’s New York.”
“What are you talking about?” Alarm bells and flare guns were bursting in my brain. What was she up to?
“Sweet dreams, young Cordelia.” She grinned and blew a kiss, her teeth juicy red as though she’d been drinking blood.
She disappeared in the blink of an eye. It startled the shit out of me and I nearly collapsed to the floor again.
I yelled, “What the FUCK?” into the mirror and slammed my clammy palms to the glass, going after her. They left wet prints.
There I was on my own two legs, looking young and tender and terrified. I refused to meet my reflection’s gaze.
So she’d be coming for me, then, that old fucking crone. I banged on the vanity and hollered profanities before dragging it downstairs to the curb. I fought sleep for days. I avoided my reflection at all costs. I avoided people, too humiliated to tell anyone. They wouldn’t believe me anyway, and besides, for Bruno? I had alienated myself from the world I knew. And my reflection, that bitch was right: he didn’t make me do any of it. I had to take accountability for my choices. I wished I could tell my friends and family goodbye.
It only took three days for me to faint from exhaustion, and that was that.
I woke up paralyzed from the waist down in a home that wasn’t mine, and a body more machine than flesh. The looking-glass used to contact me had been thrown to the floor beside the bed, shards sparkling along the sunny hardwood.
Tentatively, I slid two fingers under the eye patch. To be met with the sensation of wriggling worms and ground meat, that’s what propelled me from shock into grief.
When I finished sobbing into a pillow, staining its pale case with blood and pus, I set to work. There’s no shortage of mad doctors in Manhattan, though I’m running out of organs to trade them. Everything in my decrepit body now ticks like a clock. It pays the bills.
It’s been three years. No one visits, no one calls. Not even telemarketers. My parents are long dead. There’s a bathtub in my kitchen and an expiration date on my heart, which keeps rejecting its new host. My studio apartment is a one-room house of mirrors, each one getting its fair shot at a summoning before I buy another, stoop another, thrift another.
I have to find her. I call myself routinely — one of these days, it has to amount to more than a busy signal. I’ve glimpsed flashes of her here and there when the mirror is right, or maybe it’s something to do with the moon; but she’s wily, she’s cunning, she has legs now to run away and the years of life experience I’ve been robbed. She has brunch with my loved ones. She stole my life and aged me right up to death’s door.
I have to catch her, and I’m beginning to think I need bait. I’m wondering, is there an old man Bruno still alive in this world? Do I have time left in this withering corpse to hunt him down?
And as I’m wondering that, and typing this, I’ve nearly burst out of what’s left of my skin, because for the first time in three years, the phone on the table is buzzing. It’s face-down.
I’m crazed and I have cabin fever, and phantom itches on my calves that don’t exist, and I can’t help a sinister, tight-lipped smile that’s fallen over my leathery face. It’s too curvy and quite strained.
I mean, who else could it be, right?
Hold on. I’m picking up.