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Double Yellow Lines

by J. M. Bueno

Wednesday

We sit on opposite ends of the table, Charles’s beautiful breakfast spread laid out between us. He wears his distinctive ear-to-ear smile, and his eyes, beady, like those of a dead fish, never once stray from mine. I keep my own gaze downturned towards the silver cutlery and the perfect omelet on my plate, slowly cutting it open to reveal the runny inside.

“Why so stiff today, Raleigh?” Charles chirps. “Is the food not to your liking?”

I snort. “Charles, the one thing you’re always good at is cooking.”

“You wound me. I’m certain I have other good qualities.”

Proudly displayed in the table’s centerpiece, all rich mahogany and sharp steel, is a large carving knife. I remember the way it gleamed in Charles’s hand last night. From the head of the table, Charles smiles.

“It’s a wonderful piece of artistry, a knife. As you would know.” He walks over and gently pulls it free from the wood of the table. Charles offers it to me, handle first.

I pause. “You feel comfortable giving this to me?”

He laughs, and it sounds like the background hum of the tide. “Me? Scared? Because you killed me last night?”

The house smells of salt and seaweed, and the rug where it happened is clean today. After it was done, when I’d stared at the peonies on his windowsill, they had been in full bloom. Today, the peony plant is little more than a bud. Perhaps, in a few minutes, when I glance at the plant again it will be flowering, or crowned in dead, shriveled leaves.

I keep a straight face and stare into his cornflower eyes. “I could do it again.”

He knows too much. “I don’t know about that.”

---

Monday

The first thing I hear is that his name is Charles. That’s how he introduces himself as he gathers me into the house —as if I didn’t already know— with a sweet, teenage naïveté that he never got to outgrow. He’s the only one in the town who seems fixed in his own time, not simultaneously young and old and already a corpse; the ocean still around him.

The second thing I hear is the creaking of the house itself. Today it is gothic, flying buttresses lining the inner chamber of the living room. The floor is made of asphalt and the white lane line glistens even in the faint morning sun. Between the cracks, grass and flowers bleed through.

Charles stops at the edge of the dinner table. “You know why you’re here?”

The house groans and contracts like a pulsating thing. There’s a mirror beside me now, and when I look into it, I see my eyes in the face of a child, and she is me and I am her, and she knows.

“Yes, I know why I’m here. I think you do, too.”

He smiles at the spite behind my words. I wonder if he remembers everything that happened, and the house is a reflection of his mind. Perhaps, it’s a reflection of mine.

“I’ll leave you to put your things away,” Charles says, pointing to a hallway on the first floor. “Your bedroom is the first to the right down this corridor. I’ll be upstairs.”

With him gone, the house almost seems to breathe in new space, morphing beneath my wandering touches. Windows spring from walls, dragging in the morning light, and in the center of the living room now stands a small coffee table, crowned with a thick, leather-bound book. The words Guest Notes are carefully engraved in gold lettering across the front. As I peel back the first pages, I catch a glimpse of the entries left behind by those who came before, writing themselves as if the pen were still sliding over the paper.

January 4, XXXX

Beautiful house! Loved the view and the adventure. The way the house responds to my thoughts and feelings is so unique. It’s truly life changing. Everyone has to experience this at least once to truly understand themselves.

May 12, XXXX

Though I enjoyed what I learned while here, the Red Tide ruined the beach, and the smell was awful. But the town was super cute, and everyone was very helpful.  I’ll definitely be coming back to finally let some things go.

As I flip the page, the consistency of the paper shifts, turning into the same cardstock from my childhood journal. There are lines now carving their way through cream, paving the image of a highway disappearing into oblivion. Beside it, scrawled in that familiar, youthful handwriting: Are you ready to begin?

I pick up the pen that’s now on the table and, after a moment of consideration, write Yes.

---

Friday

The smell of dead fish and rotting seaweed is shackled to each heavy gust of wind. The fading sun paints the crash of the tide in red, hiding the poison growing just beneath its surface. Charles is knee-deep in it, hunting for shells.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask him.

He’s still hunched over as he responds. “What would bother me? It’s a beautiful day.”

“What part of this is a beautiful day, Charles?”

Cornflower blue eyes scan the turbulent horizon. “It’s sunny, and the water’s warm. There are fish swimming between my toes. Everything smells of fresh salt air.”

There’s a dead fish close to Charles’s feet being pushed to shore by the tide. It stares at me with a murky gaze. “How do you not see this?”

He sighs. “Don’t you understand? For you, time is fluid. It moves in all directions, just like the sea. For me, time is fixed. I will always exist at one point.”

“Why?”

“Because you are alive, and I am not.”

Here is the anchor for all the memories, where I am dragged all the way down to those dark, lonely depths. There is an icy road, leading to oblivion. Charles smiles amongst the algae.

“I’m sorry, Charles. I really am.”

He wades out from the sea and holds out a hand. When I reach out to touch him, I see a beach bathed in early morning light, forever beautiful. Forever his. I jerk my hand away.

“I shouldn’t,” I say.

Charles sighs. “You are worthy of being happy.”

“I’m really trying to believe you.”

“Well, hopefully this last part will help convince you. Let’s go back to the house. It’s time.”

---

Tuesday

“Will that be all?” the store clerk asks, handing me a newspaper and the crinkled paper bag with the supplies Charles asked me to get.

I nod at her. “Yeah. Have a nice day.”

She gives me a smile, the wrinkles on her face deepening and almost disappearing with each second that passes.  I’ve been here for a few days already, but the tidal movement of time still feels abnormal. I wonder if this is what keeps calling people to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, the allure and the mystery of something so foreign. I wonder if these townspeople will live forever.

Charles himself can’t leave the house. The plot of land, the invisible lines where the property ends, are the boundary of his existence. I asked him at the start  how good an imitation of the real Charles he is, and he said that he doesn’t know. Usually, people coming into the house have years of memories for it to use, but in my case I only have about five minutes of staring on the side of the road. He says it doesn’t matter, that the face is enough.

The convenience store is close to the house, and it only takes a few minutes of brisk walking to make it back. The houses I pass  morph colors in a dazzling sunset display, blues to reds to pinks, and the palm trees lining their yards can never seem to decide where they want to grow.

As I unlock the front door of the house, an uncomfortable whisper kisses the back of my neck in the wind. I turn around, and meet my eyes staring back at me from behind the window, placed in a face that I only ever see in my baby pictures. She smiles and waves. I push down a feeling of guilt that I can’t quite place.

Inside the house, the air is stagnant. “Charles?” I call. “Where are you?”

There’s no reply. I leave the paper bag on the dining room table and take the newspaper with me to a sunroom in the back, facing the beach. As I sit, I flip to the second page, glancing over the headline.

Fatal New Year’s Eve Crash Leaves One Dead, One Injured

I slap the newspaper shut, but not before I see Charles’s face plastered underneath the headline, all in black and white except for the cornflower blue of his eyes. When I look around, the newspaper has suddenly multiplied, page after page covering the windows and bathing the room in sticky yellow light. I push at the door but find it locked.

“You need to face it, Raleigh,” Charles says suddenly from behind me.

“I don’t want to,” I say, turning to face him.

He’s covered in snow, and the tips of his nose and ears are black with frostbite. He makes a strange picture with the sea behind him.

“You will never move on unless you face what happened,” he says.

“I am facing what happened. You’re literally right in front of me.”

Charles sighs. “Your feelings of guilt? The nightmares that the house keeps picking up on? What about them?”

“Shut it, Charles. I’d much rather just forget about it all.”

“I know you’re trying to protect yourself from reality, but it doesn’t work like that. When you leave this house, you need to be willing to sit down and work through whatever it is that you just can’t let go of from that night.”

“I do not need a corpse telling me that. Especially not a reanimated one.”

When I push at the door again, it’s no longer locked. Charles follows closely behind me as I stalk back into the living room.

“Come on, Raleigh, there’s a reason you’re here.”

“Have you ever considered that I didn’t want to come here?”

“Of course I have,” he says, following me up the stairs. “I just hoped that somewhere behind your facade is someone who wants to move on.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to have to deal with all of this. And with you.”

He reaches out an arm out to lead me back downstairs. I’m not completely aware of myself when I slap the hand away, pushing him back down the stairs with too much force. Charles loses his footing, and before I can do anything to steady him, he’s rolling down the steps with a sickening crunch as he slams into the mirror at the foot of the stairs. It shatters into little pieces, sprinkling around him like flakes of fallen snow.

A memory pushes up behind my eyes: that same body crumpled beneath the wreckage of a car, the snowflakes dancing around him just as the shattered glass does now. But before the house can morph itself into a reflection of my mind, Charles is back up again, gripping a long shard of glass. It ripples and dissolves into a gleaming carving knife before my eyes.

“Now, now,” he purrs, “that’s not how we’re going to do this.”

“Did I just—” I can’t bear to finish the sentence.

He shrugs. “Yes, but don’t worry. The house will protect me.”

I’m rushing down the stairs before I can command my legs to do so. “I didn’t mean it, Charles. I swear, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

I’m rushing up the stairs before he has a chance to reply.

---

Thursday

When Charles calls me down for dinner, the first thing I notice is the chill. Despite the stifling humidity of the summer heat outside, the inside of the house feels as cold as nights in the dead of winter back home. The grand swell of the buttresses has melted away into a smaller space almost entirely overtaken by the imposing facade of the dinner table. The food glistens beneath a new-found chandelier, each light a twinkling car headlight.

“Our last dinner together,” he says, handing me a plate. “I wanted to make sure it was something memorable.”

“Thank you. Your food is always delicious.”

“It is my job as your host, after all,” he says, carving the whole chicken, a strange sort of centerpiece, with the knife that was once the staircase mirror.

“Doesn’t it bother you to use that knife?”

He shrugs. “Not particularly. Maybe tomorrow when this is over I’ll give it to you. A reminder of the accident, to remind you that it was just an accident.”

We eat in silence for a few moments, before I speak up again. “What happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow you face the truth, and after that, it’s up to you. I’ve done what I can, as has the house.”

“At the very least, you’ve successfully gotten me used to looking at your face.”

He smiles then, full of teeth and the dimples I hadn’t noticed earlier. He looks much younger than he did on the side of the road. I wonder what happens to him after I leave.

“It’s a nice face,” I say.

“It’s nice to see you smile, too.”

---

Friday

When I push open the door to the house, Charles disappears. The beach fades away as the door slams shut behind me, a long hallway stretching in front. There’s a door at the end. As I walk towards it, the house once again groans and contracts around me, the living thing kept at bay by Charles’s apparition.

I reach towards the knob. There’s the old hesitation that used to fill me like a cup at the beginning of the week, and for the weeks before coming to the house; a part of me that desperately wants all of this to stay buried, where everything is easy and the corrosion will only come slowly. I think about the beach through Charles’s eyes, the time he is trapped in.

The hallway melts away as I touch the doorknob. I know the scenery that morphs around me, the icy road and the wreck of a blue convertible that have presided over my nightmares. My car is somewhere off to one side of the road, but it’s Charles, peeking out from the dented windshield of the convertible, that drags me sliding across the black ice.

He smiles at me as I approach. There are cornflowers all around him, growing from the dents in his skin and the cracks in the asphalt.

“You died instantly in the crash,” I tell him.

It seems like he wants to laugh, but the tight embrace of metal keeps him in place. “That’s the wonderful part of the house, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if I’d call this wonderful.”

“It’s an opportunity. A chance for you to stand here again and interact safely with what happened.”

I sit down on the icy concrete and let the cold seep in. “I lost control of the car on the curve. I couldn’t get it out of the way of your car.”

“Were you speeding?”

“No. I’d just gotten my license. I didn’t want to get in trouble with it.”

“Then how are you to blame for what happened?”

The snow paints across his lashes and the youthful curve of his shoulders. “Because I killed you, Charles. I crashed the car, and you were the one who died.”

“I am not your fault, Raleigh,” he says, reaching out a hand from the wreckage. “The ice killed me, just as it could’ve killed you.”

I carefully reach out and run my hands across the soft hair on his head. Flowers peek through at the back of his nape, corresponding with the dent in one of the support beams of the car.

“I wonder who you would’ve become, Charles. I wonder about all the places you would’ve been.”

“What ifs are pointless,” he says. “You can only play with the cards given to you. But you can live for the two of us.”

There are cornflowers everywhere now, spreading across the space between the two cars, between me and this Charles who looks so much like the real one. He’s holding one in his hands now.

“Life isn’t like the movies, Raleigh,” Charles says. “After this, it isn’t going to be easy. But at least you have somewhere to start, to work towards that future that was stripped from both of you.”

A morning sun rises over the edge of the mountains in the distance. A new year. “Will I get to see you again?”

He shrugs as best as he can around the metal. “I don’t know. But you can always come back.”

I imagine the beach that Charles always seemed to love, and I wonder if he can see it now, in the ebb and flow of the blooming buds around us; the soft current of time, fading out with the tide.

“Thank you, Charles.”

He smiles with the eternal sunrise and sunset. “One day, we will all be forgiven.”