And you never got them back?

My fairy godmother shook her head. Never do business with a debtor, she said. You’ll never hear from them again.

***

Dad and I used to live on Rachel Street but moved to an apartment in Saint-Michel after Mom died. A nurse at the hospital held up her phone so I could say goodbye over FaceTime. She had so many tubes attached to her nose and mouth that I expected to see a hamster scurry out from inside her.

Dad barely left their bed after that. He kept the blinds down and watched YouTube on his laptop all day. I’d bring him peanut butter sandwiches and bottles of Diet Pepsi for lunch and dinner. He’d pee into the empty bottles just so he wouldn’t have to get up to go to the bathroom. 

At the end of the month, I heard Dad come out of his room and take a shower. His hair was still wet and he had a beach towel around his waist when he told me we were moving. We needed someplace smaller. Smaller meant safer. Fewer doors. Fewer windows. Fewer ways for the virus to get in. That’s what happened to Mom. Dad told me some people catch it and don’t stand a chance. It’s not their fault, it’s something they’re born with. Mom had a condition that made the symptoms worse. He said I had it too. And that’s why we couldn’t take any chances.

We packed a rolling suitcase each and waited until the sun was down to walk to our new apartment. It wasn’t safe to take cabs or ride the bus anymore. The driver could be infected. Even though the streets were empty, Dad still made me wear my mask.

We walked for hours. I was tired and my eyes were dry and itchy. Every few minutes Dad would turn around and complain that I was dragging my feet. In Baldwin Park, a man was swearing at the water fountain and trying to plug up the jets with an old beach ball. Dad whispered crazy asshole under his breath. Mom didn’t like calling people crazy. Once, we passed a man outside the library sleeping on a bed made from hundreds of city maps. Mom said he must be a brilliant method actor who got caught up playing King Lear. 

People were told that fresh air could clean the virus from their homes, so that summer everyone slept with their windows open. Neighbourhoods smelled like everyone’s supper. Saint-Zotique in Little Italy smelled like copper pots with burnt-on tomato sauce. In the centre city, the sidewalks were perfumed with cinnamon. In the daylight, I bet the air swirled with a nut-brown haze, everything looking like those old-fashioned Western portraits you could pose for at the Old Port on Canada Day.

Before Mom got sick—before the pandemic and before anyone wore masks—she brought me to the Biosphere. There was an exhibit of dioramas, little worlds built up in shoe boxes or old dresser drawers. Cowboys of the Old West stacked right on top of a gondola ride in Venice. Each box held an entire corner of the world. Afterwards, we shared a plate of pastries and cheese from the cafe outside the gift shop. Mom drank white wine while I had chocolat chaud. When I asked her about the dioramas, she said they were cultures boiled down to their skin and bones. She sometimes said things I didn’t understand, promising they would make sense when I was older. No need to rush it, she said. As she sipped her wine, she left rings of peach lip balm on the glass. 

***

When a man came to install the internet at our new apartment, Dad told me to stay in my room underneath my bed. The man showed Dad how to watch Netflix, then told him he was giving us three months of free cable for being new customers. I listened as he switched between channels, catching snippets of explosions and laughter and the news. Dad interrupted the man and told him to turn off the TV. He said he didn’t want cable and that the man had better get rid of it.

When it was just the two of us, I asked Dad about something I’d heard while under my bed. Someone on the news was saying the virus was going away. Dad turned his eyes to the ceiling and pressed his fist against the worn Montreal Canadiens flag he’d stapled over my bedroom window. After clearing his throat, he told me that the pandemic had gotten so bad that even the news was showing reruns.

Because things were only getting worse, Dad said there was no point in me going to school in the fall. He took away my iPad, but a few days later he brought home a Nintendo Switch. We spent that night playing Mario Kart and eating Cool Ranch Doritos and sour keys. That night I cried myself to sleep because—even though I hadn’t meant to—I hadn’t thought about Mom all day.

My fairy godmother showed up the next morning.

She stayed with me whenever Dad left the house. Dad doesn’t have the same condition that I do, that Mom did, so it’s safe for him to run errands. When he comes home, he’s always careful to leave his mask and gloves by the door. My fairy godmother doesn’t wear a mask because she’s protected by magic.

Sometimes my fairy godmother stays over. She doesn’t like to cook but helps with the cleaning. Once I asked why she didn’t just make the furniture come alive and clean itself. Or cast a spell on the mice in the apartment and have them do all our chores. She said real fairy godmothers don’t actually do those sorts of things.

Mostly we just keep an eye on kids, she said. It’s my job to make sure nothing bad happens to you.

I asked her if she ever used fairy dust and she said that she did. She opened the cupboard underneath the sink and pointed to a pile of green powder. She told me not to touch it but that she was using it to keep the mice away. When I asked if she owned a magic wand, she opened her windbreaker to show me a pocketknife inside.

***

Dad still spends a lot of time in bed but he doesn’t pee in Pepsi bottles anymore. He bought a weight bench at a garage sale and says he needs to rest his body now that he’s working out every day.

He and my fairy godmother carried the bench back to our apartment and set it up in the living room. Dad wrapped the bar in black hockey tape to keep the rust from getting on his hands and into the carpet. My fairy godmother said that Dad should set a goal of being able to lift her weight. Dad said if he was going to do that, she should commit to losing a few pounds. I knew they were both joking but neither of them laughed. When no one spoke for a while, I asked my fairy godmother if she wanted to play Mario Kart. We both chose princesses and I pretended not to notice the tears on her cheek.

Dad used to work for the city. He kept big, heavy boots and a neon-orange coat in the closet of our old apartment. He stopped going to work once people started getting sick. Now he works for himself. He says he likes not having to get up and leave the house every day. Now he only leaves for groceries or to bring my reports to the doctor.

Because of my condition, I need weekly checkups. But since I can’t go outside and since we can’t bring anyone in who isn’t protected by magic, Dad gives me my checkups himself. He takes my temperature and measures my height against the living room wall. He has a clipboard where he keeps track of all the numbers. After taking a bath, before putting on my clothes, he’ll take pictures of me to show the doctor. It’s not perfect, he says, but it’s the best we can manage. Doctors are reporting new symptoms every day so we need to be sure we aren’t missing anything.

 

My fairy godmother stays in the kitchen while I get my checkups. She says she doesn’t understand Western medicine so it’s best she stays out of it.  

***

When Mom was alive, I wasn’t allowed to play video games. She said they were bad for my brain. Instead, we would go to Parc La Fontaine and lay in the grass playing Would You Rather.    

She’d ask, Would you rather spend a year in a cabin in the woods or a hammock on the beach?     

Cabin.

Really?

It might rain.

Would you rather be a duck or a dog?       

What kind of dog?      

Your choice.       

A Dalmatian.      

Okay. A duck or a Dalmatian?       

A duck.     

Would you rather be the smartest person in the world or the happiest?       

The happiest. Smart people have a lot of worries.      

I once asked my fairy godmother if she’d rather be the smartest person in the world or the happiest. I watched her pick a fly out of her gin, dragging it up the side of her glass with her fingernail, before saying she was already both.     

***

Our apartment doesn’t have air conditioning. Dad is out getting groceries and I ask my fairy godmother if she knows any magic spells to stop the backs of my knees from sweating. She says she doesn’t and that she’s out of fairy dust anyway. I ask if we can take down one of the flags and open a window.

Not a chance, she says. The virus is everywhere. We can’t risk it getting into the apartment.

Isn’t fresh air supposed to be good for us? I ask.

My fairy godmother laughs. There’s no such thing as fresh air anymore, she says. The air is one big toxic cloud.

I ask if people are still dying.

Thousands. Every day. Without me, you and your dad would be much worse off. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe my being here is the only thing keeping you safe?

When Dad gets home, his arms are full of plump paper bags. He stumbles into the living room like a pirate crossing a ship deck in a storm then drops everything onto the coffee table. The apartment fills with the scent of fried chicken and soy sauce. He takes a big breath before shouting, Happy Birthday!

Without my iPad, I lose track of the days. I hadn’t even known it was my birthday. I wouldn’t even know the seasons if it wasn’t for the way Dad dressed before heading outside.

We eat cross-legged on the floor, the coffee table blocked with oily Styrofoam trays and cans of beer. Dad is laughing and keeps dropping chicken balls from his chopsticks onto the carpet. 

After dinner, Dad brings out a cake covered in pink icing roses. On the cake, someone has written, Happy Birthday Evan! Dad tells me that he got into a fight with the bakery owner when he saw that they wrote the wrong name on my cake.

My fairy godmother and I are smearing icing onto our mouths like lipstick when Dad tells me it’s time for my checkup. Before getting my bath, he gives me a present: a pair of clip-on butterfly earrings with big shiny emeralds in the wings.

When I get out of the tub, the living room has been tidied but there are still beer cans on the coffee table. Dad measures my height against the wall before we take pictures. Because it’s my birthday, he tells my fairy godmother to come in so he can get one of us together. She doesn’t hear him, doesn’t say anything, so Dad gets up and leaves the room. The weight bench rattles and there’s a loud thump as something hits the floor. A few seconds later, they both come into my room and Dad tells me to sit on my fairy godmother’s lap. 

That night I fall asleep wearing my new earrings and in the morning my earlobes have turned green.

***

My fairy godmother is late. She was supposed to come over so Dad could go to the hardware store and buy grout for the bathroom. Instead, he’s pacing the floor, staring at his phone. He’s not texting or swiping. Just staring. I ask him if he’s sure that fairy godmothers can’t catch the virus and he tells me to go to my room and stay under my bed.

I watch the shadows of his feet pass my doorway. I hear him lay down on his weight bench, lift the bar a few times, then go right back to pacing.

An hour later, I come out of my room to tell him that I’m hungry. Only he isn’t there. I eat the last cheese slice from the fridge then empty a packet of OXO beef broth into a glass and boil the kettle.       

The sink is already bubbling when I go to rinse my dishes. The water is hot and smells like vinegar. There’s an empty box of baking soda in the dish rack. Letters float like Scrabble tiles on the surface of the water. I take a deep breath and blow away the bubbles. Beneath the water, I see Dad’s laptop all smashed to pieces.

When my fairy godmother arrives, she’s wearing big, heart-shaped sunglasses that cover her face. She slumps against the kitchen wall. Her skin is dry and her lips are bleeding. She looks like a crumb of strawberry mille-feuille on the end of my finger.       

Dad was waiting for you, I say.

Is he gone yet? Your dad? She lurches off the wall, falling into a kitchen chair in one fluid motion. Her head lolls into her palm and she stares at me with such focus that I can’t be sure she is even breathing anymore.       

He left for the hardware store, I say.     

My fairy godmother opens her windbreaker and pulls out a wax paper bag. I clap my hands in front of my mouth in anticipation. She places the pastry on a plate then pulls out a tiny plastic pouch. Inside is an emerald green powder.

Is that fairy dust? I ask.

That’s right, she says. Her voice is raw, like she’s doing an impression of a very old man. I’m getting you out of here. The world is—       

She takes a big gulp of air and I notice the plate in her hands is trembling. I worry my pastry will fall onto the floor so I move to steady her with a hug. A second later I feel her fingers moving through my hair. I hadn’t even realized I was scared until I’m comforted by her touch. When I open my eyes, my mille-feuille is all topped with fairy dust.       

Will this keep me safe? I ask.

My fairy godmother runs her sleeve beneath her face. It’s time to fly somewhere new.

Like the duck, I say, breaking the pastry sheets with small karate chops.

My fairy godmother watches me lick the back of my hand. What duck?

A second later she tells me she’s forgotten to pay the cab driver. Tells me to finish my pastry and she’ll be right back.        

The fairy dust is dry and bitter. It tastes like a nosebleed. I lay my plate on the kitchen table to get a glass of water. When I come back, a tiny mouse is sitting on my plate.

*** 

There’s blood on the kitchen floor. I’ve had a nosebleed. I’ve had diarrhea. My puppy pyjama pants are dark and wet and freezing cold. I open my mouth to hiccup only I throw up instead. When I feel strong enough to stand, I slip out of my clothes, wiping my mouth with my shirt. I leave a neon streak between the puppies like an acid-yellow rainbow.

I spend the next two days on the couch. I play Mario Kart. I drink water but I never have to pee. I wonder if my fairy godmother mixed up the spell. Instead of growing wings, maybe I’ll never need to pee again for as long as I live.

I hear gunshots outside. The world is ending. Even though I’m not supposed to, I pull the corner of the flag covering the living room window. The night sky is erupting with fireworks. There’s a deafening crack before glittering blue feathers tumble down over the city. When someone dies in the movies, millions of tiny sparks will rise off the body to let you know their soul is heading to heaven. I can’t shake the thought that I might be watching that scene play out in reverse—flecks of someone falling back down to Earth, flaring one last time before burning out between the broken bottles on the sidewalks. 

A young couple walks arm in arm through the street below. They are laughing, pointing skyward with each explosion. Neither of them is wearing a mask.

When I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth, the floor is covered with dozens of dead mice. Their small bodies are twisted and stiff. Their dark skin is pulled back at their mouths and they have blood on their teeth and at the ends of their noses. Hard BMs cling to their tails. Between the bodies, the linoleum shimmers with powdered sugar and pastry crumbs.

Joshua Goudie‘s short stories have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. His novel manuscript, The Last Portrait, was awarded the 2021 NL Arts and Letters Percy Janes First Novel Award. In 2023, he was the winner of the Riddle Fence fiction contest. Joshua lives and writes in St. John’s, NL.

Marium Zahra is an artist, poet and journalist working from the Frontera in El Paso, Texas. She has worked with magazines, exhibits, non-profits, and organizations that protect social justice. Her work uplifts marginalized communities and deals with identity as a child of the diaspora.