The four of us stood there, taking turns staring at each other, then back at the wolf, while the door slowly and softly closed behind us. No one tried to catch it, and in hindsight I think it’s because even at that point in the timeline we knew we knew trying to leave would be pointless. The inside of the hangar was dimly lit, and I thought I’d figured out how: we were mostly surrounded by thousands of long, white, taper candles, heaped in waist-high piles along the side of the warehouse—
“Es un Clearinghouse, cabron.”
I stopped my thought, incredibly confused. “What?” I hadn’t finished describing the setting to you yet when the wolf interrupted my thoughts.
“You told them it was a depot, a chinga Walmart, a hangar, and now a warehouse. If you’re going to spend four years here, you should know what it’s called.”
“Mitch, are you talking to the fucking wolf?!?” demanded Neri.
“No, I think…I think the wolf is telepathic and also… a temporal distortion? He’s talking about the readers.”
“The who?”
“The readers, the people reading the story I’m going to write about this in — wait did you say four years??”
“Si.”
“Wait, why wasn’t that italicized?”
“Nearly anyone who reads this will know what it means. Can I give them the explanation, or not?”
Sam jumped in at this point with “Them meaning us, or — ”
“I think it’s a simultaneous understanding type deal.” I wrote.
“Only certain souls stop at one of The Clearinghouses, souls overflowing with emotions — elation, anxiety, depression, volatility — and you seek a place to deposit your feelings, if only for a —
“This sounds sort of tropey.” I cut in.
“It is. But you’re writing it.” The wolf grinned, and the light in the room got slightly brighter.
“If only for a little while. You manifest a nook with your curiosity for those feelings to be processed and stored when you are hypnotized.’
“Hypnotized?”
“Many people experience it driving. The conscious mind takes a backseat, ja ja, and the subconscious takes over and you are more open, como hypnotherapy. However long it takes you to process these feelings is how long you remain at the Clearinghouse. The candles absorb the color from your feelings, and when they are all done, I, or another of us, will be back to retrieve them. Then, your souls can go.” (It was, eventually, the wolf who came back.)
“Our souls? Why can’t we just… like not die and eat trail mix or be in suspended animation or something?” I asked.
The wolf was about to answer, but he was interrupted by two soft sobs. They’d come from Sam. He hadn’t said anything (nor had Aaron, and he wouldn’t until minutes later) to that point; we heard him say “Life is what gives things color,” and then continued sobbing. The wolf looked at him knowingly, with pity, as a white tapered candle began to slowly turn a sad, deep blue.
©2020 by Saladin Thomas. All rights reserved.