Smoke between the beams

The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve do not have names. They are the hollow days, a stretch of time where the calendar holds its breath and the world feels composed entirely of leftovers and grey light.

It was late afternoon on the twenty-seventh. In the apartment on the forty-second floor, the light was failing, not with a dramatic sunset, but with a slow, bruising resignation.

Gullin lay on the sofa, body curved into the shape of a question mark. In their hand, the phone was a glowing anchor. The screen was cracked - a spiderweb fracture over the volume button - and the battery indicator was red, but Gullin didn't move to charge it. They were watching a video on loop. A woman with teeth too white for winter was explaining the sacred geometry of smoke.

“The veil is thinnest now,” the woman whispered. The audio was tinny, distorted by the phone’s dying speakers. “You must clear the space before the new year fills it.”

The video froze. The WiFi in the building was terrible. It always had been. The building itself was an architectural lie - a Fachwerk-Skyscraper, half-timbered beams and plaster stretching up into the clouds, a medieval village house elongated into a monstrosity that defied physics. The beams groaned in the wind. The floors slanted just enough to make a marble roll into the corner. It shouldn't have existed, but it did, held together by stubbornness and the high cost of rent elsewhere.

Gullin tapped the screen. The white circle spun. They watched it with the devotion of a saint staring at an icon.

The front door opened. The sound of the latch was heavy, iron against iron.

Wider entered from the stairwell. They brought the cold in with them, clinging to their coat like a second skin. They had been down to the lobby for the mail, a journey that took twenty minutes in the slow, rattling elevator, or ten on the echoing stairs. Wider preferred the stairs. They preferred the exertion to the waiting.

Wider placed a package on the dining table. They didn't slam it, but the placement had a specific density. It was a silence that demanded to be heard.

Gullin looked up, eyes glassy with blue light. "Is that it?"

"It's addressed to you," Wider said. They didn't look at Gullin. They began to unbutton their coat, hanging it on the rack with precise, militaristic movements.

"It's the herbs," Gullin said. They sat up, the joints of their knees popping. "For the Rauhnächte. The twelve nights."

"It's the twenty-seventh," Wider said. "You missed the first two."

"It doesn't matter. You can catch up. The intention is what matters."

Wider made a sound - a short exhale through the nose. It wasn't quite a scoff. It was a punctuation mark, a period placed at the end of Gullin’s sentence to signal that it was nonsense.

Gullin felt the familiar prickle of heat behind their ears. They stood up, leaving the phone on the cushion. The video had resumed; the woman was burning sage now, smiling as if she knew a secret that would save them all.

"It's just fumigation, Wider. It's traditional."

"Like the crystals?" Wider asked, moving to the kitchen to fill the kettle. "Like the dropshipping course?"

"It's not a course. It's just... cleaning."

Gullin picked up the package. It was wrapped in brown paper, stamped with postmarks from somewhere deep in the Black Forest. They tore it open. Inside were bundles of dried plants, bound with twine.

Juniper. Mugwort. Pine resin.

And a fourth bundle. This one had no label. It was dark, the leaves nearly black, wrapped so tightly it looked like a shriveled limb. It smelled of wet earth and something metallic, like a penny held under the tongue.

"What's that one?" Wider asked. They were leaning against the counter, arms crossed. The kettle sat cold behind them; they hadn't turned the stove on.

"I don't know," Gullin lied. They felt a sudden, sharp desire to protect the bundle. "A bonus, maybe. A blend."

"You don't know what it is, and you're going to burn it in a sealed apartment."

"I'll open a window."

"It's minus ten degrees outside, Gullin."

"Then I won't open a window."

"So we suffocate."

"It's just smoke!" Gullin’s voice cracked, a high, thin sound that seemed to disappear into the high ceiling. "Why do you have to make everything so hard? I just want to do something. I want to clear the air."

The double meaning hung between them, heavy as the timber beams. Clear the air.

There were things they weren't saying. The email Gullin had received yesterday - the rejection from the data entry job they were "manifesting" - was one. The letter Wider had hidden in the stack of bills - the denial of the housing subsidy - was the other. They were two people drowning in the same small boat, but neither would admit the water was rising, because to admit it would mean acknowledging that the other person’s paddling wasn't working.

Wider looked at the herbs, then at Gullin. The look was a mirror. It reflected Gullin’s desperation back at them, stripped of its magic, leaving only the raw, pathetic need.

"Fine," Wider said. "Burn it."

They walked to the armchair in the corner, sat down, and picked up a newspaper from three days ago. They snapped it open. The wall they built was made of newsprint.

The ritual required a bowl. Gullin found an old ceramic one, chipped at the rim. They placed it on the coffee table.

The room was dimming. The grey light outside had deepened to charcoal. The Fachwerk beams seemed to draw closer, the shadows pooling in the corners where the geometry of the room failed.

Gullin crumbled the juniper first. The dry needles snapped satisfyingly. They struck a match. The flame flared, startlingly bright in the gloom, and caught the dry tinder.

A thin ribbon of white smoke rose. It smelled sharp, clean, like a cold morning in a forest Gullin had never visited.

"Juniper," Gullin whispered, reciting the lines from the video they had memorized. "To banish the old."

Wider didn't look up from the paper. They turned a page. The rustle was deafening.

Gullin added the mugwort. The smoke grew thicker, the scent sweeter, muskier. It drifted toward the ceiling, curling around the heavy beams.

"Mugwort," Gullin said, louder this time. "To invite the new."

Wider sighed. It was a long, weary sound, the sound of a parent watching a child try to fit a square peg into a round hole for the hundredth time.

Gullin’s hand trembled. They reached for the pine resin. It sizzled as it hit the coals, sending up a blacker, stickier smoke. It stung the eyes.

"Pine," Gullin said, their voice tight. "To... to seal the protection."

"Protection from what?" Wider asked. They hadn't lowered the paper. "Bad credit? Gravity?"

"From negativity," Gullin snapped.

"Then you'll have to leave the room."

Gullin froze. The hurt was a physical blow, a punch to the solar plexus. It was the same hurt as when they were twelve, and Wider told them the magician was just using mirrors. It was the same hurt as when they were twenty, and Wider told them that crypto would crash. The worst part wasn't the cruelty. The worst part was that Wider was always right.

Gullin looked at the fourth bundle. The unlabeled one. The dark one.

They didn't want to be wrong. Not today. Not in the hollow days.

They tossed the dark bundle into the bowl. Whole.

It didn't catch fire immediately. It seemed to sweat. A low hiss filled the room, like a kettle boiling over. Then, with a sound like a cracking bone, it ignited.

The smoke that poured out wasn't grey or white. It was darker than the room, thick and oily. It didn't rise. It spilled over the rim of the bowl and flowed across the floor, seeking the lowest points, curling around the legs of the furniture, around Gullin’s ankles.

The smell hit them both at once. It wasn't herbal. It smelled of wet fur, of iron, of old blood and deep, damp burrows.

Wider lowered the paper.

"Gullin," they said. "Put it out."

"It's working," Gullin said. They were coughing, but they wouldn't move. To move was to lose.

"It's not working. It's choking us. Put it out."

"No."

The smoke rose, filling the space between the floor and the beams. The room blurred. The angles of the Fachwerk seemed to shift, the wood groaning not from wind, but from weight.

Gullin looked at Wider through the haze.

Wider’s face was changing. The features were the same, but the smoke acted as a lens, distorting the familiar. The shadows caught in the hollows of Wider's cheeks, making the jaw look sharper, the teeth brighter. The stubble on their chin looked coarse, like bristles. Wider sat very still, watching with eyes that reflected the embers, looking less like a sibling and more like something that waits in the dark to correct errors.

Wider stood up. The paper fell to the floor. They looked at Gullin, and they recoiled.

"What is that?" Wider whispered.

Gullin didn't know what Wider saw. But they felt it. They felt their own posture shift, their head lowering, their shoulders bunching. They felt the heavy, stubborn weight of their own body anchoring them to the floor. They felt their jaw clench, something hard and sharp pressing against their lips.

"You want me to fail," Gullin said. The words didn't sound like English. They sounded like impacts.

"I keep you alive," Wider spat back. The smoke swirled around them. "I pay the rent while you burn weeds."

"I'm trying to change!"

"You're trying to be someone else! There's a difference!" Wider took a step forward. "You think if you buy the right prop, if you say the right spell... you think it fixes you? It doesn't fix you."

"And you," Gullin shouted, the smoke coating their throat, "you love it. You need me to be stupid so you can be smart."

"I need you to stop," Wider said. Their voice was shaking. "I just need you to stop."

"Because if I succeed - "

"You never succeed!"

"Because you won't let me!"

They were close now. Face to face in the swirling dark. The smell of fur and iron was overpowering.

Gullin saw the fear in Wider’s face. It wasn't the fear of the smoke.

Wider saw the hollowness in Gullin’s eyes, and for a moment, they looked away.

The window was three steps away. Either of them could have opened it.

Gullin could have smothered the bowl. Wider could have poured water on it.

Neither moved.

To stop the ritual would be to admit it was a mistake. To open the window would be to admit the smoke was real.

"I hate you," Gullin whispered. It wasn't true, and that was why it hurt.

"I know," Wider said. "I know."

The building groaned. A sound from the stairwell - a heavy, rhythmic thud - vibrated through the floorboards. It might have been the radiator pipes expanding. It might have been footsteps.

They both looked at the handle. The iron latch.

If they were together, really together, they could open it. Or lock it.

But they were not together. They were just adjacent.

The smoke burned their lungs. Tears streamed down their faces, hot and stinging. They stood in the haze, staring at each other, waiting for the other one to break, to die, to leave, to apologize.

The fire went out.

Not because of a decision. The fuel was simply exhausted. The dark bundle burned down to a grey, powdery ash, and then the ash cooled.

The smoke didn't clear so much as settle. It coated everything - the sofa, the table, the newspaper, their skin - in a fine, gritty film. The smell of the burrow faded, replaced by the stale, cold scent of a room that has been closed too long.

The thumping in the hall was gone.

Gullin stood by the table, hands black with soot. Their throat felt like it had been scrubbed with wire.

Wider was by the window. They were looking at the glass, at their own reflection ghosted against the night.

Silence returned to the apartment. It was the silence of the hollow days, heavy and grey.

Gullin looked at the bowl. There was nothing left of the mystery bundle. Not even a stem. It was as if it had never been there.

"It's out," Gullin croaked.

Wider nodded. They didn't turn around. "Yes."

"We should... open a window."

"It's too cold," Wider said.

"Right."

Gullin picked up their phone. The battery was at 4%. The video had ended. The screen was dark. They wiped the soot from the glass with their thumb, leaving a smear.

They sat back down on the sofa. They curled their legs up.

Wider walked back to the armchair. They picked up the newspaper. The soot on the pages made the headlines harder to read, but they didn't brush it off. They sat down.

The algorithm refreshed on Gullin’s phone. A new video started. A man in a bright kitchen was talking about the benefits of raw milk. “They don't want you to know,” he said.

Gullin watched.

Wider read the same sentence they had been reading an hour ago.

The air between them was still hazy, a physical testament to what had just happened. But they looked through it, past it, into the safe, familiar architecture of their resentment.

The building creaked, settling into the wind.

Seven more nights until the new year. They would wait them out together.