Three Thousand Dreams

The door creaks. It's the worst thing Belinda's ever heard. 

"Shit," she hisses, taking a few steps back to survey the estate she's been tasked with selling. It sits at the very edge of a cozy residential street full of sprawling two and three-story homes, but instead of their bright white shiplap and wraparound porches it towers, narrow and dark, with bone-thin columns and roofing tiles black as the crows who flock to it. 

It's a classic cartoon haunted house. 

And the front door creaks. 

River Falls isn't a gated neighborhood, gates are Old World, but it's pricey: refurbished, refinished, and relocated away from the river it was originally named for. (Noise complaints). Rarely do properties go up for sale here and rarer still does Barry give her such a stellar assignment. Only, he failed to disclose a few key points. Namely, an image of the property. 

Barry's such a fucking asshole. 

Belinda closes her eyes, thinking. The open house is today. The property is historical, if a bit eclectic, built before River Falls moved in around it. She might be able to spin the history angle. A bit of museum-esque charm, a je ne sais quoi, good for showing off. And a fat Christmas bonus if Belinda can get the lease signed today. 

So the door creaks like an axe dragged across concrete. So what? 

Belinda inspects the house one last time, straightening fake plants and bedazzled tablecloths and knock-off replicas of famous artworks. She adds silicon spray to her online shopping cart for the awful little hinge and, frowning at her wristwatch, splurges on SuperShipping. 

So what if it cost an arm and a leg? This house could be worth a kidney if she plays her cards right. 

She reads through her notes again. 

The property was built over two hundred years ago, back when #BuryMe caught traction and national parks nationwide were re-purposed for cemetery overflow. New burials needed somebody on standby to dig and the digger obviously had a sense of humor. The bodies, of course, have since been exhumed. No one in River Falls settles down there to think about the dead. They're supermodel-executive-CEO's tucking into suppers suffused with youth-extending nutrients, no crude pills or injection sites needed. No cancer, no hunger, no nuclear fallout. No, the residents of River Falls are flourishing, riding steadily at the peak of their physical bodies—modded, tucked, and upgraded—and then pinging their DigiDoctors for more. So of course the river grew too loud for their third-gen cochlear implants and the dead beneath too rancid and worm-infested for their soft, glowing feet. 

Maybe a rug, then, for the entrance. 

Seal-skin is popular these days; genetically modified baby-skin the cheaper, faster alternative. Prospective residents never could tell the difference, and they only ever used the babies who had died already so it was all ethically above-board. Belinda adds one to her order, pacing. 

The second floor has a beautiful, deep, clawfoot tub. A real selling point. Belinda makes sure to fill it with hot water and a brand-name ForeverWarm stone, pouring in her last half-bottle of lavender bubble bath to hide the dark splatter stain she couldn't scrub from the porcelain. She tugs at the curtains until the rose window is fully exposed, spilling soft, autumn light over the herringbone floor, the claw marks gouging the canary wallpaper at desperate intervals artfully hidden.

She could imagine herself leading people up here with an indulgent grin. Nothing to see but the gentle sway of crisp, orange PlastiTrees and regular, red-roofed homes, this property like a stoic tower overlooking it all. The house's quirks are just…superficial. Changeable. Who in River Falls hasn't altered their nose a time or two? (Long-flat is in right now).

It's the same thing, really. 

She answers her phone on the stairs leading down, righting each portrait she passes. Dukes, maybe. She could spin dukes. 

"Hey, are you using the credit card right now?"

Belinda smiles. "It's open house day, darling."

"It's tuition day. I- Mom I thought we agreed-"

"Don't worry about it, Maxy. I increased the limit, remember?"

"Yeah. I remember. But-"

Belinda flicks through her notes again while he chatters. He's such a smart boy, her Maxy. Frugal, too. But it costs money to make money and Barry let a big fish slip today. Belinda intends to catch it. Her attention snags on a sticky page, prying it loose from the back of the property blueprint. 

Ooh. That's an idea. Total creative freedom, she'd say, if you just knock out a few walls here and there. Paint. Gut. Replace the odd, industrial oven with something more practical. Honestly, a whole child could fit in that thing as it stands now. 

"Oh, Maxy, do you remember when I took you to my first open house? I swear the Michaelson's bought that property just because of how cute you were, counting out the cost of all your school supplies. Gosh, they paid you a mint for mowing their lawn, didn't they?"

"You're not listening," Maxy complains. 

"Of course I am, honey. You're talking about your tuition. I have it covered." She fingers the edge of her manila folder, gnawing on her bottom lip. It tastes like copper but the lavender wafting down the staircase is confusing, coating her nostrils with petaled perfume. The guests will love it. Lavender is such a luxury these days. Old World chic. "I- I will have it covered," she promises. "Just you wait." 

There's a heavy silence. Just his breathing and hers, mingling the same way it did when they shared a pillow in his orange racecar bed in Emergency Housing, singing each other to sleep beneath all the coughing and shuffling. Belinda closes her eyes. It sounds the same, a hundred miles apart and connected only by a fragile, metal brick that's starting to grow too hot in her hands. 

WARNING, her phone buzzes. INCOMING AIRBORNE PROJECTILE. 50 MILE RADIUS. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.

River Falls has a dome.

"I'll be waiting," he says. 

Like he always does, on the curb outside of his elementary school bunker and in the chair outside of Barry's awful office and in his blue-postered scholarship dorm room, watching the Amount Due glow red as the clock ticks towards 11:59EST. 

The posters came from Newcastle. A little property with a teenage boy moving out to become an astronaut and taking his parents with him to the moon. She doesn't know if Maxy ever even thinks of space, capital S. Just the trembling, tightrope gap between paychecks and yellow evacuation alerts. Just the pockmarked, empty craters of Old America where people used to live. 

Belinda closes her eyes.

They're a team, her and Maxy. From the very first night he lay breathing beside her hospital bed in a plastic bassinet and she lulled him to sleep with a song made of fees, one hand rubbing over the bill and the other gently crawling up and down his ribs. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand dreams. 

"The Michaelson's were nice," he says.

She can imagine him slumping into his hand while his sneakers drag over old carpet. The room is small, but good. Underground. The Michaelson's were exhumed with the rest of the bodies in River Falls and Belinda doesn't know where they went.  

"Yeah," Belinda says, swallowing. She tips her head against the wall. The ceiling seems to go on forever. There's blood on the chandelier. "They were."

It's a note—the sticking page. 

The door creaks on the way in.