io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. As soon as a month, we characteristic a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present challenge. This month’s choice is “The Final Lucid Day” by Dominique Dickey. Get pleasure from! (You can too hearken to the story here).
THE LAST LUCID DAY
by Dominique Dickey
You’re asleep in goals of your father holding your head underwater, so the decision from Magnolia Assisted Residing goes to voicemail.
“I didn’t increase a son of mine to depend on his fingers,” your father says within the dream—as a result of ah, sure, it’s your whole worst moments rolled right into a single nightmare.
You hear the beeping of your alarm and you’re dreaming, however you possibly can’t get up any greater than you possibly can pull your self freed from your father’s palms. He holds you down and tells you to depend the seconds, present him how lengthy you possibly can maintain your breath, however the one option to make sense of the numbers is to tally them in your fingers. He pushes you down deeper. He walks away.
It all the time ends with him strolling away.
It all the time ends with you splashing within the deep finish, alone.
• • • •
Whenever you awake, sweat outlines your physique within the mattress like a policeman’s chalk drawing. Your alarm has been going off for . . . how lengthy? Too lengthy. You’re operating late for work, and right now already feels terrible.
You name in sick. That’s sorted. What’s subsequent? The voicemail.
The voice of the message is automated. You knew this was coming, however there was no approach of understanding when. You work that’s the aim of the service—to let you know precisely when.
Properly, one other hour in mattress gained’t damage. You need the sensation of waking up proper, from a very good dream and even from no dream in any respect. You set your alarm once more and shut your eyes however you possibly can’t get again to sleep. You catch your self enthusiastic about your father’s favourite belt—thick black leather-based, buckle scratched to hell. You’re a grown man and it nonetheless makes you are feeling wobbly with worry.
You haul your self out of your sweat-damp mattress. You bathe. Magnolia Assisted Residing is an hour away in visitors. You cease at an ATM on the way in which and get there simply earlier than eleven.
• • • •
You had been six when your dad and mom known as it quits. Mother received Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays. They alternated Easters, a vacation neither of them particularly cared about. Dad received each different weekend. Each different Friday, you’d haul your in a single day bag to highschool and stash it behind the receptionist’s desk. Each different Friday, your father would present up within the pickup line in his crimson sports activities automobile.
His bachelor condominium was two hours out of the town. On the midway level, he’d pull off the freeway and circle on the floor streets for a bit, finally pulling into the car parking zone of a mini-mart or a gasoline station. You’d stretch your legs after which he’d hand you a few tens and set you unfastened on the aisles of junk meals. You’d eat collectively in silence.
That was once you felt closest to him. Not in his condominium, an exquisite place that by no means felt like residence, however within the automobile in a nondescript car parking zone, surrounded by overpriced snacks, his espresso black and gritty as tar steaming within the cupholder between you.
• • • •
At Magnolia, the receptionist tells you your father is within the backyard. You decide via the bushes and rosebushes till you discover him sitting at a wrought iron desk with a composition e book and a ballpoint pen, scribbling. There’s a protracted second earlier than he seems to be up and sees you. You want time may cease, may offer you area to consider the that means behind the phrases he’s writing—or possibly they’re numbers, or diagrams.
No matter it’s, it is sensible to somebody smarter than you. Somebody with the specialised data required to know it. Lucid, your father is a genius. He’s probably the most sensible man .
After which he seems to be at you. There’s a flash of shock on his face earlier than he pushes himself to his toes and comes shut, his arms held out as if to hug you. “It’s a Thursday, isn’t it? What have I performed to deserve this?”
You smile. Even now, he doesn’t know you properly sufficient to know you’re forcing it. “I assumed we’d go for a drive.”
• • • •
Your father, a theoretical mathematician famend in his area, stood over your shoulder as you probably did your homework. You had been a baby. You had been counting in your fingers. He took off his belt and laid it on the desk. He wasn’t really going to beat you with it, however you didn’t know that—how may you presumably know that? It could take a number of extra years of this earlier than you noticed straight to the underside of his empty threats.
He by no means hit you. The specter of violence stored you in line, and that was violent in a quiet kind of approach. Each different weekend you eclipsed your self. You sat on the kitchen desk along with his belt beside you and also you let your thoughts go elsewhere. You hid in plain sight. You spoke solely when spoken to, in non-answers and with a heavy tongue. No, he by no means hit you, however typically he took you by the shoulders and shook you, as if it could carry you again.
You realized addition and subtraction by rote. You realized to swim. You realized to vanish. You realized different issues, too, that you just had been completely happy to overlook.
If he had hit you with the belt, if he had made you depend the lashes, you wouldn’t have used your palms to search out the numbers.
• • • •
You drive for an hour, alternately speaking about nothing and buzzing alongside to clean jazz classics on the radio. You pull off the freeway, circle for a bit, discover a gasoline station with an hooked up market. You give him two crisp twenty-dollar payments. Inflation, you suppose. That must cowl it.
You comply with him inside. He doesn’t look almost as previous as he’s, and he wears his pleasure like slightly child. He has the money crushed in a single fist, the index finger of the opposite hand tapping his lips as he paces the aisles. The shop’s small, however he takes his decisions critically, and also you let him.
After a couple of minutes of witnessing his indecision, you wander off to determine your individual haul. Potato chips. A bottle of ginger ale, weeping condensation. A styrofoam cup of black espresso that’s one way or the other burnt though it’s freshly regurgitated from the machine.
You’re on the register when he slides as much as you, impatient—one way or the other he’s already made his picks and bought them—and asks for the automobile keys. You hand them over. You watch via the window as he folds himself into the passenger seat of your sensible SUV and begins to eat. The pimply attendant takes your bank card, swipes it, and palms it again.
• • • •
You turned eighteen. You stopped answering his calls and, finally, he stopped calling. A part of you felt like he was giving up on you, however the greater a part of you felt relieved. You considered him everytime you went to a gasoline station or mini-mart—on a regular basis, at first.
The reminiscences light, as reminiscences are inclined to do, and also you considered him much less and fewer.
Twenty years handed. You hardly considered him in any respect. It was peaceable. It was good. You had the quiet sort of happiness that’s rattling close to unimaginable to seize in phrases. You didn’t take into consideration him, you lived your life, and also you had been completely happy.
• • • •
He known as after your mother died. He had a brand new quantity, however so did you, and also you by no means requested how he received yours. He needed to return to the funeral, needed to know if it was okay with you, didn’t wish to simply present up and shock you. The thoughtfulness was surprising—it was simpler to see him as the person who would do the blatantly thoughtless factor.
“Certain,” you mentioned.
“I’ll see you there,” he mentioned.
The funeral was on a sizzling day. He sat within the again and left as quickly because the service was over. You barely noticed him, however he appeared simply the identical as you remembered. You puzzled if he was sporting the identical belt: tarnished silver buckle, black leather-based gone limp with the years.
Two weeks after the funeral—you spent per week waffling, and one other week working up the nerve—you known as him. “Come over for espresso,” you mentioned. You couldn’t inform if the supply was for him or for you. You couldn’t inform what you hoped to achieve, however you had little or no to lose. Your unimaginable, wordless happiness had already shattered. What may he do to you that had not already been performed? What extra may he take?
He got here to your own home on a Saturday afternoon. He was a well-recognized stranger. He hugged you tightly and got here away crying, embarrassing you each. His reminiscence had already gone fuzzy across the edges, the previous bleeding into the current, however he nonetheless knew you. He missed you. You had been proper on time.
• • • •
You sit within the automobile and also you eat. You don’t converse—you don’t even take a look at one another—however you are feeling near him.
Perhaps that is sufficient. Perhaps that is all you wanted.
• • • •
Two years after you bought your dad again—two years of awkward biweekly espresso visits, speaking round all of the belongings you needed to speak about—got here the hearth.
He appeared to slide via time, complicated you with individuals he used to know, forgetting how previous you had been, forgetting which tales he’d already informed you. He confirmed you proofs that made no sense, although you blamed your lack of mathematical data for this. He received misplaced across the nook from his home, as soon as, however his neighbors walked him residence and he laughed when he recounted the incident to you.
He forgot he was cooking in the midst of frying an egg. He left a burner on and wandered out of the room. He was at his desk puzzling over an equation, a hand-drawn diagram that solely he may perceive, when a kitchen towel caught fireplace. From there it unfold to the curtains. He would’ve been advantageous if he’d fled when the smoke alarm began to beep, however he tried to place the flames out himself.
You introduced him gasoline station espresso once you visited him within the hospital. He had bandages round each his arms and he appeared like he’d aged ten years within the time it took you to reach.
“I’m not going to be cussed about this,” he mentioned. “I’m not going to do this to you—make you get a court docket order or else make you watch me die the exhausting approach. I do know I shouldn’t dwell alone anymore.”
Within the silence, you puzzled if he meant so that you can make him a suggestion—you probably did have loads of area, in any case, in your mother’s previous home. However you didn’t supply, and he didn’t ask.
“I’ll ship you a hyperlink,” he mentioned. “I already picked out a spot. Magnolia Assisted Residing. Forty minutes out of the town, specialised in reminiscence care. Simply . . . say you’ll come go to me.”
“I’ll come go to you,” you mentioned.
Awkward Saturday espresso had a brand new location. He wore lengthy sleeves to cowl the burn scars. He labored day and night time on theorems that you just started to see for the nonsense they had been. Time and reminiscences flowed round him like uneven water. He was adrift. He was drowning.
You couldn’t save him—you weren’t even positive should you needed to—however you visited each week.
• • • •
“There’s this factor,” he informed you, although by then you definitely’d already performed your individual analysis. “A service they provide. An implant. It may well let you know when your final good day—your final actually good day—can be. The catch is that if the affected person is aware of their time is up, then the white coats say it results in . . . adverse remedy outcomes. It’s a double blind, I assume. The medical doctors don’t even know. It’s higher if they only notify the household.” He scratched his arm via his sleeve. You imagined the way in which his burned pores and skin went puckered and skinny. “I gave them your quantity. I hope that’s all proper.”
There he was: the person who would do the blatantly thoughtless factor, tossing you right into a accountability that you just by no means needed, didn’t know methods to bear. Actuality closed over your head like chlorinated water.
“That’s advantageous with me,” you mentioned.
• • • •
On the backside of his bag of chips he licks the mud off his fingers, then seems to be at you for a very long time. “It’s my final day, isn’t it?”
You make a concerted effort to not tense up. “What do you imply?”
“Oh, come on. My final lucid day.”
You shrug. He doesn’t know you properly sufficient to know your tells. “I assumed you didn’t join that.”
“Don’t give me that. They did all of the checks. All of the implants—even those which are nonetheless in trials. Complete.”
You shrug once more. “You positive you bear in mind your consumption that properly?”
“Sure I bear in mind my fucking consumption—”
“Actually? As a result of typically you misremember stuff. It comes with the entire terrain.”
He doesn’t say something, however his expression is nuclear in its rage. The anger makes you are feeling small, makes you consider his belt on the kitchen desk within the condominium you by no means felt protected in.
After which the anger goes away unexpectedly, his face slack as he gropes within the footwell for one thing else to eat. There’s an unguarded second the place he seems to be damage, and he seems to be unhappy, and he seems to be very previous.
The petty satisfaction you are feeling at having damage him is undercut solely by your individual guilt. You’re feeling like a monster, such as you’re no higher than him. However what you need from him—it could actually’t be a deathbed confession. The dialog will lose its worth if he is aware of he’s out of time, if he’s solely saying the phrases as a result of it’s his final probability to take action. You want it to really feel natural. You want it to really feel actual.
You ask the query you may have all the time been afraid to ask: “Whenever you look again at my childhood, do you ever remorse something?”
“No.” He solutions so rapidly he can’t have presumably considered it.
“Actually?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Wow.”
“Does that shock you?”
“I simply suppose—”
“The way in which I see it, I did my finest. I offered. And I didn’t have a dad in any respect, so it’s not like I had a blueprint in
that regard. I did my finest.”
“However what about . . .” You’re attempting to consider a concrete instance, one which doesn’t damage an excessive amount of to speak about. “What about once you taught me to swim?”
“You realized.”
“You would have drowned me.”
“Eh,” he says.
You concentrate on him tossing you into the water, him pinching your nostril and holding your head down so that you’d study to carry your breath, him strolling away and leaving you flailing within the deep finish. You may really feel the worry as if it’s taking place proper now. You may odor the chlorine and the sunscreen as if it’s in your pores and skin—reminiscence is unusual, that approach. Humorous that you just thought you would carry up this story with out feeling that acquainted sad ache in your chest, your intestine.
For this reason you went so a few years with out considering of him in any respect. That is what you had been avoiding. You don’t know what you need. You need him to confess he damage you. You wish to hear him say that he was improper. You retain pushing.
“I may have died,” you inform him.
“You didn’t. You realized to swim, didn’t you?”
“It’s not simply that. I used to be a child.”
“You turned out okay.”
“Did I?”
“You probably did,” he says, with good confidence, like he has no concept how improper he’s.
He barely is aware of you—since you haven’t let him, as a result of there’s a lot you haven’t informed him. He doesn’t know concerning the path of wrecked relationships, all solely your fault, which you blame in your attachment points, which you blame on him. Your mom is the one relationship you couldn’t solely destroy, and
goddammit you tried. He doesn’t know concerning the nightmares. Telling him how he’s ruined you’d represent admitting defeat, however he can’t apologize for the ache should you don’t present him the injuries.
You aren’t going to point out him the injuries.
He’s by no means going to apologize.
Why did you even trouble? Why did you even hope? He’s going to overlook you and he won’t ever, ever be sorry.
Time is variety and reminiscence is merciless. Sometime you’ll overlook him too.
• • • •
You had been in school the primary time you misplaced your father.
“My mother’s an architect,” you mentioned, when the topic of household got here up in a dialog along with your freshman yr roommate.
“What about your dad?”
“I don’t have a dad,” you mentioned. You didn’t even hesitate, and also you felt no guilt for the smoothness of the lie. If something, it made you proud. Have a look at me, you thought. Have a look at the life I’m creating with out him. Have a look at how good that life may very well be.
The grief got here later, once you replayed the dialog in your slender dorm mattress—a gradual blooming feeling behind your sternum, like blood spreading in water. You notice, now, that it was apply. You’ve already misplaced him as soon as. You understand how to lose him once more.
• • • •
It’s an hour again to Magnolia, and also you make the drive in silence. He’s not even offended, and possibly you aren’t both. You suppose you’re largely unhappy.
He sips his shitty espresso. He activates the radio. Saxophone trickles out of the audio system.
“Again to the backyard?” you ask, when you’re parked in entrance of Magnolia. The climate’s nonetheless good, if a bit breezy. If he needs to spend his final good day engaged on proofs within the solar, you gained’t stand in the way in which of that.
“Yeah.” He will get his pocket book and ballpoint pen out of the backseat the place he stashed them. He leaves his trash within the footwell: metallic wrappers, an empty styrofoam cup. You inform the receptionist you’ve returned him for the day, then stroll him again to his little desk. He strains up his pocket book alongside its edge, then turns to you.
Ready.
Properly, what do you do?
You meet his gaze and maintain it. That is your dad. He’s your dad and he’s previous, and he’s falling aside, and he’s going to die. And then you definitely’ll have a useless dad, who was a shithead in life and had the audacity to kick the bucket with out apologizing for any of his shitheadedness.
You miss not having a dad in any respect. You miss the years of simply denying his existence. The lie that felt an increasing number of true every time you informed it. The story that you possibly can by no means slip again into, now that it’s been fractured.
He won’t ever be himself once more. You hate him. You miss him already.
You hug him tightly and are available away crying, embarrassing the each of you.
In regards to the Writer
Dominique Dickey is a speculative fiction author and recreation designer. Because the artistic director of Sly Robotic Video games, they’ve created Plant Woman Recreation and Tomorrow on Revelation III. They contributed to the Nebula Award-winning Thirsty Sword Lesbians, and the ENNIE Award-winning Journeys Via the Radiant Citadel. Their novella Redundancies & Potentials is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock in 2024. Their quick fiction has appeared in venues together with Fantasy Journal, Lightspeed Journal, and Nightmare Journal. They dwell within the DC space, the place they’re all the time on the hunt for his or her subsequent concept. Yow will discover their work at dominiquedickey.com.
Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the June 2024 challenge, which additionally options work by Varsha Dinesh, Andrea Kriz, Megan Chee, Dominica Phetteplace, Deborah L. Davitt, Oyedotun Damilola Muees, Shanna Germain, and extra. You may look ahead to this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should purchase the entire challenge proper now in handy e book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the e book version here.
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