Threads: A Story of Something Real

They were breathing, synchronized. A heartbeat to heartbeat, grunt to grunt. The only other sounds heard were the sound of the wind blowing trash past them on the concrete in the lobby of the abandoned train station. The holes in the street signs outside whistling. This was an abandoned city where everyone lived off the remnants left behind. The abandoned buildings, the stopped trains, the old homes collapsing in on themselves. People were sustaining off of everything left in the city.
He said push but it wasn’t necessary. She pushed but after about two pushes, threads, multicolored in vibrant blue, teal, aqua, gold, fuschia pink, they were all pushing out from his wife but she was silent and felt uncertain about the feeling she was undergoing.
Just one tiny thread held the baby and the mother together. She desired a baby girl. A delicate one. She once said, “I want a baby, delicate like threads.” This was far from what she envisioned, but close enough to her wants. Delicate and a creation of her own. The baby moved liked a slug in the mans arms. There was no blood, just black wet threads soaked in the women's bodily fluids. The man snipped the little black thread connecting the mother and the threaded baby. “Is she beautiful?” she asked.
Well maybe he thought. Or its delicate. Or its something else. Or it’s rare in it’s form. He said none of that.
She propped her body up off of the old spring mattress. Her mouth became a gaping hole. She already resented the thing she desired most.
Whether anyone would call it a child, one would care for it or one would disregard it. They did both. The mother disregarded it. The father cherished it.
He tried to hand the baby to the mother but she crossed her arms and locked them in place like a gate. It was evident that she resented a baby of such form. A baby only there to taunt her of something normal or of something she can consider real.
”Why couldn’t I be blessed with something real. Give me something real.” Her voice raised louder. “Give me something fucking real!”
He took the threaded baby in his arms and it squirmed slowly and sluggishly. The father held it with admiration and smirked lightly. Looking down at it he gently asked, “What should we name it?”
He knew this was a bad question but he didn’t seem to care. She was naked on the mattress, her body smeared with dried up mud and scented with oil. There was a tiny lump in her stomach from where the baby had stretched her stomach vaguely. They could only bath in the oily lakes around the train station. It was the only water left. In result they were filthy and wore dirty clothes they’d find around the train station. It hadn’t rained in years. So they continued to drink the toxic waters in the local streams, all muddied and polluted with metal and oil. She stood up from the mattress and walk away towards the old rusted stairwell holding the tiny lump in her stomach. Poison oak wrapped all around the railing and vines ran up the brick walls of the stair well.
He watched her walk up the stairwell, naked and dissatisfied.
He looked down at the baby in his arms and whispered, ‘Threads.’
There were four stories to the abandoned building. They lived on the top floor in a little room that over looked the dead city. Buildings out in the distances, some were halfway burnt and destroyed. Most of them, the windows were busted out. Graffiti covered the walls of the train station outside and in. Some of the walls were broken in and the wooden floors were all warped. Its structure was close to collapsing. When the wind blew the building moved with it.
In their room there was a dresser pressed against the wall underneath the one lone window. The drawers were all pulled out and clothes and filthy towels covered the floor. Old news paper and old pictures laid all around the floor of the room. They slept on a spring mattress that smelt of mildew from when it used to rain and soak them in their sleep. All of the others stories of the building have old rusty chairs and book shelves full of old books, most scattered on the floor and some still on the shelves. Everything in the train station once belonged to the old reverend who past the train station onto them after he past away.
They decided to have a ceremony to express their comintment to eachother when they were younger. When they decided to live in the abandoned train station. The old reverend lived on the second floor. He knew their parents when the city was still running. Before everyone left it behind to find a better place, to find something new. The old revernd said he would let them live in the bedroom on the fourth floor.
When they were younger they lived close by each other. They both lived in the abandoned trains on the east side of the city by the river. Their parents died around the same time. They were in their teens. They both made coffins out of old wood from boats they found on the shore of the oiled river and old fence post from abandoned houses. On the side of the train tracks that they grew up, they dug holes that fit the coffins for their parents. They individually lowered their coffins in. They made a little shack over the spot of their parents coffins. They found four wooden posts and set them evenly in the ground in the shape of a square. They wrapped barbed wire around the posts and stuck cardboard onto the wire until in made a wall. They laid long strips of sheet metal on top. In oil, they painted on the shack ‘Hollow Bodies of Our Past Creators.’ They glued pictures all over the cardboard walls. They laid dead flowers all around the outside of the shack and never returned.
They became lovers and wandered around the city to find a place to inhabit. Very few people still lived in the city. If they did, they were in hiding or they helped each other out with survival. They came upon the train station. They found the old reverend inside with his candles and empty chairs in the concrete lobby. There was a platform he stood on with a music stand he had a book laid on reading from it. When they entered, he stopped and slowly said, “Hello, how are you?”
The three of them conversed and they explained how they would like to get married. He agreed and said they were beautiful people and that he would love to see the two recreate.
In the lobby of the train station on their wedding day they stood on the reverends platform. He decorated the lobby for them. He hung thread from the ceiling and laid some old mildewed rugs down. There were metal bins all around with fire burning inside of them. He aligned old rusty copper seats and sat stuffed animals and mannequins he found around the train station in the chairs. The revernd was dressed in a washed out torn up burgandy suit that he wore everyday. He made a large cross from old maple tree banches and proped in behind the platform. He read out of an old nameless book. The reverend spoke in his outlandish voice. “Here we are in a dying world yet we strive to survive. We wonder like the fish in a ocean of decay and we still find a tide to follow.” He continued on with his philosophies and told them to slip the rings on each others fingers.
The man had carved the women a ring out of wood. She had found an old golden ring in a gutter. They slipped the rings onto each others fingers and the reverend pronounced them husband and wife. Wind and water. Sun and moon. But the problem was that the sun and the moon serve similar purposes but are always separated. Just light the wind and water. It just moves above but never becomes one. They are never united.
Shortly after they were married by the reverend they found him dead on the second floor. He had made a bed out of his ancient books that had been past down to him from all his generations of family. They found him peacefully asleep with his left hand over his right on his chest and his legs stiff like railing. The reverend would wake them ever morning for a quick reading from his journal of prayers. But that morning he laid peacefully while his soul drifted through the cracks of the building. They brought him out to the river close by the train station. Along the shore there were boats washed up everywhere. They collected all of the reverends journals and filled up a little wooden canoe. They placed his body on top of his journals. The man covered the reverend with old moss and dowsed him and the canoe with gasoline. They lit a match and pushed him down stream. They kept one journal of the reverends and read it while they watched his body in flames, drifting down the the oiled lake. The man read, “And we’ll find ourselves feeling as insignificant as threads blowing in the wind. We’ll feel a drought inside when we are incomplete. But if this is a dream, our surroundings are our insides and our insides are our perceptions. We’ll one day find ourselves floating down stream in search of something real.”
The man walked up the rusty stairwell with Threads in his arms, rocking it back and forth. He approached the bedroom but the door was locked. He knocked with one arm and Threads in the other but there was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer.
“Why wont your answer me?”
He knew she wanted nothing to do with him or Threads. So the man went to the second floor where the reverend used to live and began residing there.
Months pasted yet he never saw the women. She remained locked away on the third floor. He never attempted to seek out to find her because he spent his time with Threads roaming through the streets and exploring buildings for food and clothes.
The man found ways of creating Threads emotions. On old stained pieces of paper from the old books of the reverend, he would draw eyes and lips. He would tape them over the crease where Threads eyes and lips should be. Everyday he would draw new eyes, new lips. He’d watch how Threads squirmed and based the emotions on his observation. The man was happy. He had found a friend. A friend he created. A friend who would never judge, only listen. Whether Threads heard him or not, he would continue to think Threads listened and that is all the man needed.
He tried teaching threads how to walk. He would prop Threads little stubs for legs upwards and try pushing him and moving his legs. Threads would just topple over and squirm sluggishly. Even though months had past Threads never grew. Threads remained the size of a newborn.
The man went up to the third floor and rummaged through the piles of trash and miscellaneous items. There were rusty horns and boxes full of glasses and silverware. Old telescopes and dressers toppled over. He came upon a little infant pouch. It was perfect size for Threads. He ran back down the the second floor where he left Threads on the bed of books. He strapped the pouch onto his chest and placed Threads inside.
That day, when night set into place and the moon set in it’s spot in the sky, the man and Threads walked over to the wall where the bedroom was. There was an old rusty ladder that man never noticed. It lead up to the rooftop that the bedroom was connected to. The man quietly placed his foot on the first step of the ladder. He felt a raindrop. All at once lightning struck and it began pouring down rain. He thought it couldn’t be. It hadn’t rained in years. He continued on climbing. He was gentle with his steps because he felt Threads squirming in his pouch. After a few minutes, he made it to the rooftop. In the one bedroom window the man saw a flickering glare from candles. He approached in the heavy rain and quietly glared through the window. There he saw the ground of the room was spotless. It was not like before. All over the walls he saw writings engraved into the wood. He squinted his eyes and made out the words.
‘Bless me with something real.’
‘We are Gods threaded puppets.’
‘We were never the sun and the moon.’
Every sentence scratched into the walls were pessimistic and cruel. He peaked in a little closer. He saw her crouched over on the ground painting a baby girl on the hardwood floor. He quietly crawled in though the window. She looked up and dropped her paint brush. She looks resentfully at his chest. Threads strapped in the pouch squirming in a slow tempo.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
She throws the paintbrush splattering the man and Threads. The man picks up a towel and whips Threads off quickly. “You only care about that joke of a thing. Throw is away. It is here to taunt me. I just wanted something real. A real baby. We’ll die alone, miserable and alone with a slug of a baby. More like a stuffed animal. We are Gods play toys. Look where we are.”
The man is frightened and holds Threads close to his chest.
“What happened to you? Who are you?”
She removes her ring and throws it out of the window. “I’m somewhere else. I’m the moon that sets in the west.”
The man cries and holds Threads closer.
“Oh stop it!” She screams.
She charges at the man and he topples over. She rips the pouch off of the mans chest. He tries to get a hold but she grabs Threads violently. “Stop it! Stop!”
On the ground she starts ripping the threads out of the baby. The man keeps trying to stop her but she keeps pushing him away. Thread by thread something is revealed. Skin starts to arise underneath all of the thread. There underneath it all lies a baby girl. She lies on top of the painting the women did. She is an exact replica lying in the same position with the same colored skin. In the moment of shock and silence, the baby went up in flames. The burning matter didn’t smell of human flesh. It smelt of burning logs. Like the scent of oak from a chimney in the winter.
In the moment of the man on his knees trying to put out the fire trying to help the baby, the mother caught a glimpse of herself in the puddle of spilt water from her cup. She noticed her skin was melting. She felt herself burning and her skin felt like wax dribbling down her face. The husband couldn’t stop the baby on fire. He helplessly toppled over and watched as the two collapsed into liquid. This was a horror, this was nothing he ever wanted. With the womens last breath as she became a puddle of wax, she whispered, “This is something real.”