Rowan Sharp

Bottled Empathy

“Don’t use more than a quarter of it in one night. If you want it to end early, vomiting won’t help. It’s all in the lungs. Don’t go anywhere quiet, either; they’ll just get louder.” Sofia pauses. “Enjoy meeting the city.”

The glass bottle she hands over is small, almost smaller than her hand, but heavy. Vapor dances inside of it, shifting from one color to the next. The girl Sofia hands it to looks frail, her eyes already wide, fingers trembling a little. The man sitting with his arm around her tries to give a reassuring smile and hands Sofia a small stack of banknotes. Thin red paper, small denominations—the face of the Interim President looks back at her.

Sofia pockets the notes, feeling the absence of bottles in her bag. Only one left, and it’s not for sale. She ducks out of the room with its damp wallpaper, peeling sofa, and people breathing anything but air.

The hallway outside is a riot of voices, another offshoot of the squatter party. They’ve lined the walls with random pieces of furniture to sit on or lie across. There are gas lights on the wall, left dark, and the space is illuminated by kerosene lamps. The window on the far end of the hallway is broken, only a nailed-in tarp keeping out the snow, and Sofia sees people’s breath mist in the cold. They don’t seem to care. Sofia picks her way through the tangle of legs, broken drawers, and discarded bottles. She eavesdrops as she walks.

Two students, university-aged, are perched on a wooden dresser. One of them is talking loudly about some ancient religion, and she seems too drunk to notice that the other girl doesn’t care. Is she letting her talk out of politeness, Sofia wonders, or affection? It was so much harder to tell when she couldn’t hear their thoughts.

Sofia rounds the hallway and turns down a staircase, also lined on either side with people. It’s slow going. She keeps her ears open as she descends.

“It was the last war, man, has to be. No country will want to fight after that.”

“No. No, I think they still will. Except next time there’ll be nothing left but mustard gas and bomb craters. You hear what happened in the north of Atelán? Last cavalry charge, they’ve been calling it. Whole regiment was wiped out by machine gun fire. My dad was there. Said it was a meat grinder…”

The conversation is lost as Sofia makes it to ground level. What was once a grand foyer is now filled with a crowd, milling atop a floor of old debris and fresh trash. Sofia turns sideways to push through them, dodging held drinks and stepping over passed-out partygoers. She reaches the door to the outside and pushes on the cast iron frame.

Cold air washes over her. The drunken shouts bouncing between cramped walls fades and is replaced by the howl of snow-laden wind. It’s dark, well past the city’s curfew. The electric street lamps lining the street are left off. Most of the light came from upper-story windows. Sofia did some calculation in her head—her apartment was about a mile and a half away. If she didn’t get arrested, she’d probably get mugged in the dark walking there. Better to find a friend’s place to crash. She doesn’t like sleeping in her place, anyway. A small part in the back of her mind knows that’s why she stayed out so late.

Sofia pulls the last bottle out. It feels warm to the touch, but that might be the anticipation. She runs her thumb along the glass, feeling the letters “Haliogen A50B” across it. Medical grade, with a label to match. Any serious user just calls it voza.

She brings it to her lips, flipping the small rubber valve at the top open. She takes a shallow breath that drains half the bottle. It tastes like a mix of ethanol and burnt hair. There’s a brief, terrible moment when the shouts of the crowd indoors are too muffled to pick out words, and the visions don’t start, and she’s left with her own thoughts. Then voza works its magic. Sounds first, then whole experiences.

It begins with a voice raw from anger. “I love you...I miss you. Fuck you for leaving.”  Next a tired, careful voice. “He died, ma’am, on the overnight train.” Then the images: A lightbulb burns out as she sits holding back tears, in an empty theater. There’s dust on the seats.

Flashes of lives across the city of New Lliroma. Other thoughts, other feelings, other people that she can inhabit, if only for a few minutes.

Snow dusts her hair, now. Sofia starts walking towards a nicer neighborhood, with fewer abandoned buildings. It’s more for warmth than any sense of direction. Who would let her stay the night? Right now she doesn’t care. She wants to walk the empty streets and wait for more visions.

The road beside her is narrow, built with cobblestones. Not meant for cars. The tenement buildings are skinny, three stories high, and crumbling. The sidewalks are deserted. Should she just walk back, deal with the risk? But there was no one to come home to. No one who would make stovetop coffee with cinnamon and cloves every morning.

She’d already thrown out his pan and all the bags of spices. She sprayed the apartment down with lemon juice, and bleach. The smell is still always there.

Sofia closes her eyes. Ringing, from a fogged-up phone booth. The bartender calls home to his mom, and is asking for help without being able to say it. He hangs up before he can form the words.

The vision helps, but it’s not enough. Her thoughts still spiral around the smell. She needs something more. A stronger pain to immerse herself into.

Sofia stops, and turns west. She can just make out the glow of floodlights on the clouds. The demilitarized zone and, beyond it, the Democratic Confederacy of Atelán. It’s worse there, on the other side, with enough suffering for a hundred lifetimes. Sofia concentrates and hopes she can tap into it.

Flashes of experiences. A child waits in a bombed out school—barbed wire fences and machine gun nests—soil too frozen to dig a proper grave—a soldier looking inwards, more to keep his own people in than the “enemy” out. Then something longer.

There’s a fire in the hearth. A black iron pot over it. The gas stove nearby is cold, pipes long empty. The smell of cooking onions and bone broth winds around the room, a faint tang of woodsmoke behind it.

“Will this be a long winter?” His sister asks, wrapped up in blankets. He looks out at the dark outside.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

The snow batters their window. It makes the fire warmer, somehow. He smiles. “No, I guess not.”

Sofia shivers, feeling the fireless chill she walks in. Maybe the pain isn’t what she needs right now, she thinks. It’s time to find someone to take her in.

She remembers her own shared meals. He was there, and sometimes his sister, too. Sofia pictures all three of them in a cramped kitchen, each trying to make dinner the “right way.” It was long past time to reach out…but no. Too much history. Not tonight. Better to find someone else.

She had five friends near her apartment, three of whom still trust her. Too far. A couple friends near the city center, a mile away. A couple dozen half-friends in the tenements who’d let her stay, but only if she had something to sell them.

An idea comes to her. She takes out the bottle of half-used voza. Breathing anymore would be enough to hospitalize a new user, but she’s built up a year-long tolerance. She’s also gotten better at directing her attention. Sofia inhales around half of what remains. While it hits her throat, she thinks about old friends, and focuses on the area around her.

An unfamiliar face brewing herbal tea. Next, a coworker from long ago, reading her son’s article in the newspaper and smiling with pride. Then Rafi, tinkering with a military surplus radio. He’s focused but not frustrated. Tools are laid out in a neat pile on the floor.

Ah, Rafi. He’s close by, barely a five minute walk. He’ll probably take her in—if he doesn’t realize she's on voza, at least. They hadn’t been that close. No matter what, he won’t appreciate being interrupted. Better to find somewhere to wait for a while. She heads towards his apartment block.

Sofia wonders if other people use the visions like she just did. She entertains herself with the idea of government spies in the basements of Atelán, lungs filled with pure voza, tracking possible enemies of the state. It doesn’t seem that unlikely, once she thinks about it for a while.

A thick column of light, street level, shines in the distance. Sofia could make out Rafi’s building nearby. As she approaches, she realizes it’s from a corner store.

The metal grate is open, and there are a few customers milling inside it. Completely illegal under curfew, of course. Still, it’s a nicer place than the street to wait while Rafi finishes tinkering.

A girl with too many memories, little thought for the present, and no plans for the future. She leans over a body, gone cold, with red marks crawling up and down its arms. She takes money from its jacket pocket. She wants to say a prayer for the dead, but doesn’t know how. When she leaves, the door is left open.

A bell jingles as Sofia steps inside. It’s warmer than the snow, but not that warm. The clerk behind the counter is about Sofia’s age, with the kind of short haircut that women had to get when they started working war-time factory jobs. She waves at Sofia, and then continues organizing something. The other people inside ignore her. Sofia decides it’d be rude to stay in the store for free. She picks out a carton of cigarettes from the half-empty shelves, and approaches the counter.

“Oh, you don’t have to buy anything. I know it’s cold out.” The store clerk says.

“No, no, I needed these anyway.” Sofia smiles at the store clerk as she rings up the carton. “How do you stay open this late? Most places at least pretend to be closed.”

The clerk shrugs. “The militia needs to buy gum, bad coffee, and smokes as much as anyone, I guess.”

“Even in this neighborhood?”

“Especially in this neighborhood! They even complained, one time, when I turned off the lights.” A little laughter creeps into the clerk’s voice.

Sofia tries to hold on to the conversation as voza drips other lives into her brain. He looks at a foreclosed storefront, rubbing at the key in her pocket until his finger bleeds. He decides that he still has enough days left to build something, world be damned.

Sofia busies herself handing over money and taking the carton while the vision plays. She speaks once it’s over. “You mind if I smoke inside?”

“...I’d prefer it if you didn’t.” Some part of the clerk’s look tells Sofia that the militia aren’t considerate enough to step out.

“That’s fine. I’m alright outside, anyway.”

Sofia emerges into the snow, again, and has to shield her lighter’s flame from the wind. Tobacco smoke and voza mingle inside her lungs. She coughs a little. She focuses on the burning in her lungs, making the visions come indistinct, just emotions. Flashes of others’ nostalgia, grief, and lounging.

Half the carton and a few minutes go by. Sofia decides it’s time to talk to Rafi. She leaves the store’s column of light and makes her way to the side door of the apartment building. It’s unlocked, as she had hoped, probably as part of building codes. There are no fire escapes in the tenements.

The staircase is made of splintered wood, but at least there are lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. Sofia starts her way up. Unit 402. Her breath comes up short when she reaches his door. She knocks on it.

“Who is it?” Rafi’s voice is clear through the thin walls.

“Sofia!”

“Sofia?” There’s quick footsteps, the sound of a metallic object falling, and then the door opens. Rafi leans against the doorframe, lanky, curly hair looking overgrown, with bags under his eyes and oil staining his hands. “What are you doing here? And, well, it’s good to see you again, also. Sorry.” He still blocks the door.

“Had a late night, Rafi. I’d walk home, but curfew already started. I know it’s last-minute, but I was wondering…could I sleep on your couch tonight?” Sofia wonders if he’ll be able to tell. The pupils don’t dilate on voza, there’s no twitching, or stuffy nose, or needle marks. Just distracted attention.

Rafi’s eyes narrow. “You haven’t gone back to working at the chemical plant, have you?”

“No.” She searches for an explanation, an excuse, a lie, anything. “The war’s over, it’s hard finding work there.”
        “You’re still selling, then, aren’t you?”

        Sofia goes quiet.

Hundreds of New Lliromans in the seconds before they reach for the fumes. Vain individuals seeking ego death. Selfish students ready to philosophize about the death of the Individual. The lonely people who want a connection, any connection, a hundred thousand connections all at once, the ache so familiar it hurts. Then they inhale, and their thoughts merge with the chorus.

“Shit, Sofia.” Rafi says. “You're still using, too. Are you high right now?”

“No!” She can’t quite meet his eyes. “Not really. It’s not a real high, Rafi, not really.”

“Bullshit.”
        “It's medicine! They use it to treat soldiers with shell shock. It’s not like I’m—”

“That’s what you’re doing? Treating shell shock? That’s what all those fuckups in the derelicts are doing? No, I can’t deal with this. I’m not going to enable you. Go pass out in an abandoned tenement, with the other junkies. Goodnight, Sofia. And sorry.” He slams the door closed.

The sound of the door is like a gunshot. Sofia jumps backwards. She thinks about pounding on the door, screaming at Rafi, yelling every curse she knows. Instead, she lets herself go numb. She half-expected this, at least.

Sofia turns around, walks down the stairs, and leans against the outside wall of the building. She takes out the half-empty carton, and smokes again, slower than last time. Not trying to keep the visions away, not inviting them, either.

Sofia stands there, waiting for a vision, or maybe for a militia car to run away from. Then, in the distance, some figure walks out of the darkness. She wears a white hooded tunic, bordered in red, the crisp uniform at odds with their surroundings. She must be a nun of some local order. Dedicated to abandoned children, Sofia thinks, based on the colors. The nun notices approaches with steady steps, until she’s within arm’s reach.

 The nun asks Sofia, “Do you mind?” gesturing at the carton. Sofia hands over a cigarette, and the nun mutters a quiet, exhausted “thank you.” Sofia thinks she could probably use something stronger. 

“It’s nice.” He said, as she leaned into him. The apartment really was nice. Small, but cozy. Close to the garment district, far from the demilitarized zone. She let herself relax, a little. They could make a life here. 

That one hurts, more than the others. Sofia realizes she let the cigarette burn down to her fingertips, too wrapped up in the vision to notice. The nun is looking at her with kind but knowing eyes.

“What do you see, child?” The nun asks. Sofia wonders how many far-off voza stares she’s witnessed.

“A happy couple.” Sofia flicks away the cigarette butt.

“You look too angry for it to be that.”

“I don’t want to…” Sofia trails off. The nun just keeps staring at her. Sofia sighs. Hell, if not a nighttime nun, then who? “Alright, okay. I’ll tell you. It’s about my husband.

“He proposed to me during the war, while he was on leave. We were engaged by the time he had to go back. Every day I worked in the factory, mixing the chemical  precursors for bombs and grenades and bullets, and it was impossible not to think of him out there.

“By some miracle, he came back in one piece after the ceasefire. He’d gotten shot in the leg, but it wasn’t serious. More importantly, he’d been spared from shell shock. We had the wedding as soon as we could. I was married at twenty-two; five years older than my parents had been. I thought we were so progressive. So old. A real couple, fit for the modern age. I was even going to go back to school, once we had the money. Learn about the future. Electricity, phones, cars, anything.

“But he had a dry cough. It was normal, nothing serious; that’s what we told ourselves, anyway. We had three years together, and then he started coughing blood. He had spent months ducking bullets and artillery shells and canisters filled with mustard gas, and then he comes home and dies of tuberculosis.” Sofia swallows, trying to keep her voice steady. “His name was Arlo.”

A grey haired man cooks dinner alone, a picture set on one side of his table. It’s old; his husband stares out. So young, then, but there’s still sickness behind his eyes. Candles burn around it.

The nun reaches out and puts a hand on Sofia’s shoulder, her touch light, and then she pulls back, a little awkward. How do you console an adult?

“Do you have somewhere to sleep tonight? The temple—” The nun begins to say.

“No. Thank you, but I have a place to stay.”

The nun has the same worried expression. “Where?”

“With Lucía.” The answer slips out of Sofia before she can think to stop it. “Arlo’s sister. My sister-in-law.”

The nun holds eye contact a moment longer, then nods. There’s a silence between them, for a while. Sofia finally says, “I should go,” and starts walking.

The nun just says “Thanks for the cigarette.”

Sofia walks then, when out of sight, runs. She goes down a few blocks at random. Left, right, right again. She stops. Memories of Arlo and Lucía push up to the surface, too powerful for even voza to hold down.

Lucía had stayed with them for a couple months, about a year after the wedding. She’d been laid off, and didn’t want to have to pay rent. Sofia was annoyed, at first. Now she’d do anything to go back to those weeks.

The arguments filled with laughter, late at night, over empty plates. They’d joke and yell about politics and art until their neighbors pounded on the floor with brooms. Arlo claimed that the new film cameras would cause painting to become obsolete. Lucía argued that the old masters already figured out how to paint the world, and the rest of history would be filled with talentless artists turning their canvases into masses of colored blobs. Sofia defended the impressionists, saying they captured emotion in every brushstroke, and that no camera would replicate that. None of them ever changed their minds. She wouldn’t recognize herself now.

Sofia’s breath makes small clouds as she leans on her knees, panting. There’s no escape from the past after that. Well, not unless she does something stupid. Sofia pulls out the bottle one last time.

A quarter left. In the darkness of the street, she can’t see the shifting rainbow of color inside it. It’d be risky, using the rest. She’d done it once before, though. Whatever she saw that time wasn’t real. A real hallucination, not a vision. Well, fuck it, Sofia thinks. She inhales the rest of the voza.

Her feet give out beneath her. Her vision twists in vortices of light. She tries to breathe in, but it’s as if the air rushes just out of reach around her. And then—

Streets flowing, turning radiating outward. The wind flows between rows of buildings, placing snow on gutters, tree branches, the shoulders of those still walking at night. The hum of radio waves permeates the world, words, music, coded language mixing with a waterfall of emotions. The thoughts are tangible. They deflect snow drifts, scare off small birds. They’re beautiful. They fade in seconds.

There’s a militia motor carriage coming. From the north. Your left, Sofia.

She jolts upright, then falls onto her hands and knees. She still can’t stand up straight. From around a corner, to the left, the glow of a headlight emerges. Sofia crawls into a subbasement’s staircase, hidden from view. The motor carriage swings around the corner, covered in militia insignias, and Sofia waits for it to pass.

“Is someone there? Do you know me?” She's speaking aloud, her voice scratchy and low.

The snow-capped trees, the broken glass scattered on street corners, the drunks and dreamers have all seen you walk home with him, and alone. And I’ve seen you.

Sofia thinks through the haze of voza and oxygen deprivation. That first vision didn’t feel like a person. It felt like the city. “New Lliroma? Is that…”

Four major religions have tried to convert me. Seventeen minor ones. All failed. Amateur spiritualists sit in basements and hovels and staircases and gutters, all trying to piece people back together, failing to for themselves. Now fresh visionaries are lightheaded with the fumes you sell. They see a new world built with love and understanding, one inhale away. It won’t be enough, no matter how many bottles you push. All utopias come to die here. And yet you love me. New Lliroma. You hear me with or without the voza. It pauses, for a moment. He loved me, too.

Sofia searches for words, and then the right question with them. “Is there some part of Arlo still alive—some portion of his soul? He can’t just be memories.”

There’s nowhere else, Sofia. This is it. Frosted windows and broken people. The snow, the barbed wire, the lamp-lit evenings. Lungs red from anything that will dull the pain.

She stays silent.

You still have breath left. It can be enough. It has to be.

Sofia manages to stand. She sees a phonebooth, in the distance. She limps towards it. The door is almost too frozen to open.

She has just enough coins for a single call. She dials by instinct. She doesn’t even know what she says to the switchboard operator, only registering when the other end is picked up.

“Lucía? Are you there?” Sofía’s voice is small.

“Oh, God.” There’s a kind of choking sound. “Sofia, is that really you? Where have you been? All we’ve heard is rumors. Why haven’t you talked to us? To me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know how to share it. To talk about his death. And the rumors you’ve heard are probably true.” There’s only interference on the other end for a few seconds.
        “Are you okay? You sound sick.”

“No, I’m not okay.” Sofia says. “Can I sleep at your place tonight?”

“Yes, of course. Where are you?”
        “I can get there in a few minutes, don’t worry. Hey, Lucía?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m high, right now, on voza. Will you still let me stay?”

“Yes, Sofia. God. Of course. You’re sure you don’t want me to come get you?”

“It’s fine. I’ll be there soon.”

Sofia sets the receiver down. The city only spoke to her in the language of rustling tree branches, of the wind making gaps in the phonebooth sing. There were no voices in her head, despite the voza in her blood. She let herself cry. She’d almost forgotten what tears felt like on her own face, what it was like to breathe for her own lungs, to hear the world and realize that it was enough.