‘Chiye-Tanka; or Big Brother’
Photographer - Imraz Fathima
Chiye-Tanka; or Big Brother
At the edge of campus, twin fireflies danced a dervish against the night. The bursts of fall color that enhanced the beauty of Pithole University by day were muted in the eerie light of the waning crescent, and the first hint of ice laced itself through the autumn air. The buzzing, writhing insectoid soup of summer had gone—everything that buzzed and flitted and crawled had slipped into their deep, deathlike slumber or met their end at the threshold of winter. Everything, that is, except those twin fireflies. They whirled and danced in defiance, casting an eerie red glow into the darkness, as they drifted out of the trees, across the campus—as if in search of other lost souls.
Lee Rowan first saw the fireflies when he opened the windows of the overheated classroom before his Gothic Literature course. At first flash, he wasn’t sure what the lights were; the embers of cigarettes flaring in the distance, perhaps? Then the lights moved, whirling, weaving, wafting--higher, drawing nearer to where he loomed in the second-story window. He pressed his face against the screen and cupped his hands around his eyes to shield them from the harsh, artificial lights that hummed overhead. He stared out at the lights.
The lights stared back.
“And what were your first impressions of Zofloya?” Professor Meera asked.
The question pulled Lee back into his seat under the windows. He pushed the fireflies from his mind, extracted the battered, second-hand copy of the book from his pack, and started to take notes.
“God, I need a pick me up,” Lauren said, tucking her thick, raven locks into her hood and cinching it against the night. “Anyone feel like going to Ginger Hill?”
“I don’t know,” Pete answered. “It’s trivia night there and after all that Zofloya bullshit, I’m not sure I can deal with any more noise.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I mean all that Victoria is the embodiment of the ideal woman. This book exposes the dangers of female oppression—blah, blah, blah. Don’t make me puke.”
“Come on, Pete,” Tashanna said. “You’re just pissed that Professor Meera didn’t buy what you were peddling.”
“Like what?”
“All that misogynistic garbage about Zofloya being the real the victim?”
“He was,” Pete said. “Just because you can’t admit it doesn’t make it not true.”
“I don’t know how you could possibly see it that way. I mean, Zofloya was a literal demon. He was manipulating Victoria the whole time.”
“No. That’s a fucking metaphor and you know it,” Pete said, his voice growing louder with every word. “He only becomes the demon after the crimes of his temptress leads him to ruin. She forgets what a woman is, tries to assume a man’s role, and ends up corrupting him.”
Pete finished in a near yell that drew glances from a clutch of undergraduates smoking near the dormitories on top of the hill.
“Whatever you say,” Tashanna scoffed. “How about you write that in your midterm and see what happens.”
Red-faced, Pete was about to respond, but his buddy, Goodman, cut him off, redirecting the conversation to the point at hand.
“Hey, The Brewery should be pretty quiet,” Goodman said. “Plus, it’s Tuesday--$5 pitchers.”
“I could go for The Brewery,” Lauren agreed.
“How about you, Lee?”
Lee flinched at the sound of his name. He was just trailing behind them as they crossed the walkway that connected the second floor of the World Cultures building to a sidewalk running along the nearby hillside. Lee looked up and was surprised to see Lauren stopped in the middle of the walkway, her dark eyes focused on him. They had been in class together for a month and he was quite sure that she had never said one word to him before. In fact, until she said it, he wasn’t even sure she knew his name.
“Huh?”
“The Brewery, Lee,” Lauren chuckled. “You know. That place on the corner—big silver tanks in its windows? Smells like fermented cat piss?”
“Fuck you, Lauren,” Pete said. It smells like beer. You know why? Because that’s what a brewery makes. It makes fuckin’ beer and it’s fuckin’ great!”
“Dude,” Goodman said, placing a placating hand on Pete’s shoulder. “Some of the cheap stuff does smell a little pissy, to be fair.”
Pete shook his head, turned and walked ahead, muttering, “Children. I’m surrounded by fucking children.”
Lauren grinned then and turned her full attention back toward Lee. “So, you in?”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Lauren dropped back behind the group and locked her elbow with Lee’s. At her touch, Lee’s heart quickened. A rush of warmth shot through his body and his hands began to tremble. What was happening? First, a girl who had never spoken to him—someone who barely knew him—invited him out for drinks after class. Then, she locks arms and starts walking with him down the sidewalk, like they were best friends.
A rush of warmth shot through him, and suddenly Lee didn’t trust himself to speak. For the last month, he existed in exactly three places—the classrooms of the World Cultures building three nights a week, the one-room efficiency where he ate and slept, and the Office of Career Services, where he worked as a graduate assistant, publishing internship information on the university’s website and helping students to revise their resumes and cover letters for applications. Since he started graduate school, he lived a life of seclusion.
At first, Lee didn’t think much about how lonely he was. After all, wasn’t that just a part of graduate school? Didn’t all graduate students bury themselves in their studies while focusing on the one task that had brought them there; completing a degree? He hadn’t noticed until recently how the rest of his classmates milled about campus, cloistered together in small groups, sucking on cigarettes, and laughing at inside jokes before class. When he finally did notice, he felt excluded, as if he were on the outside of something, looking in.
Lauren tightened her grip on his arm. Lee felt it, recognized the weight of the loneliness he had been carrying, and finally felt it ease. He had cracked through the invisible barrier that kept him apart, and the self-pity that he had harbored for so much of his life, finally, began to melt away.
When Pete and Goodman parted the front doors of The Brewery, the yellow light spread over Lee and Lauren like a blanket. Pete and Goodman stepped to the sides, held the doors open, and let Lee pass.
For a bar, it was uncharacteristically quiet inside. Music murmured on the digital jukebox and only a few tables were occupied. Sparse clusters of college students hunched over their books and laptops in the booths along one wall. At the center of the space, an uneasy couple sat stiffly at a table, the awkward tension of a first—or perhaps last—date palpable.
As lee stepped up to the bar, his mind was focused on the comforting pressure of Lauren’s arm against his. So much so, that he barely noticed the bleach-blonde dreadlocked woman walking in the door behind them and pulling up a barstool in the corner.
Lauren slowed, surveyed the space and nodded to their companions.
“We’ll go find a table. How about you grab a pitcher and bring it over?”
“Sure,” Lee answered, his face slightly flushed.
With a knowing smile, Lauren released his arm, and slinked off into the shadows of an adjoining room. Pete, Tashanna, and Goodman followed without acknowledging Lee.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked.
Lee spun around, smiled nervously at the well-tattooed, 20-something brunette wearing a black halter top, then noticed the grease board hanging on the wall that listed the specials. He rarely drank and knew very little about beer, but a seasonal brew called “Appalachian Autumn” caught is attention.
“What’s that one like?” he asked, nodding at the board board.
“Oh—that’s my favorite,” the bartender said. “It’s kind of like if a light beer and spiced cider had a baby.”
“Could I get a pitcher of that?”
“You bet, but just so you know, that’s not part of the draft special,” the bartender said. “The seasonal brew is full price. Is that alright?”
Lee’s hand drifted back to where Lauren had locked arms with him before, felt her warmth ebbing away, and considered the situation. Class was over and for once he wasn’t headed back to his apartment to heat up a frozen dinner before bed. He was out with—classmates? Colleagues? Friends?
He wasn’t exactly sure yet, but was thrilled tonight just to feel included. So, he smiled and passed his credit card across the bar. The bartender opened a tab and a few minutes later, passed Lee a pitcher of amber liquid. As he gathered it up, he was struck by just how much it did seem to resemble the pungent pee of a dehydrated diabetic. Yeah, pissy, he thought and laughed dryly to himself.
He carried the pitcher and five glasses over to the round high-top in next room where Lauren, Tashanna, Pete, and Goodman were all sitting.
“Um, napkins?” Lauren asked, as he slid the glasses onto the table.
“Oh,” Lee said, taken aback. “Right. Just a minute.”
He retrieved a stack of cocktail napkins from the bar, but when he returned to the table, he noticed that there were only four chairs. Lauren, Tashanna, Pete, and Goodman were leaning in, chatting, and joking. The pitcher had already been drained evenly into four of the pint glasses, leaving one lonely glass empty at the center of the table.
Lee slid the napkins onto the table between Pete and Lauren. Pete reached took one, but Lauren shifted slightly in her seat, turning her shoulder on Lee, as if he weren’t even there.
For a while, Lee hovered in the background like a ghost, eavesdropping on their conversation about school and their lives beyond the boundaries of campus. Pete was still arguing that Zofloya was the true victim and that the character’s demonic transformation was caused by his relationship with Victoria—her pursuit of witchcraft, her infidelity, her mariticide.
Lee groped at his arm, trying to find the warmth that Lauren had left behind when she linked arms with him, but it too left him.
When Pete drained the last of his pint, he belched and gripped the pitcher by its handle.
“Anyone else need a refill?” he asked.
There was a murmur of agreement and Pete passed the pitcher to Lauren, who finally turned toward Lee with a smile.
“Hey, you don’t mind, do you?”
Lee surveyed their expectant faces, then took the pitcher with a resigned sigh. “No problem.”
Passing between the rooms once more, the last dregs of hope for his evening drained away. How could he have been so naïve? Lauren’s invitation wasn’t to include Lee, but to exploit him. She had brought him along to see what she could get. To see how much she and the others could take from him. Well, he not going to play that game.
“Refill?” the bartender asked, as he passed her the empty pitcher.
“No thanks,” Lee replied, his voice hollow. “Just a sixpack of hard cider and I’ll settle up.”
With the bill squared away, Lee didn’t look back. It’s not like he needed to thank them for anything. There was no call for farewells. Afterall, they hadn’t even thanked him for the pitcher of beer that he didn’t even get to taste. He felt his eyes beginning to burn and swallowed the lump in his throat. At last, he clutched the sixpack and made for the door. In the corner, the dreadlocked blonde watched him with sad eyes, as Lee pushed through the door and disappeared out into the unforgiving night.
The autumn chill swept across his face, staying the tears that he knew would inevitably come. Hands shaking and heart seething with embarrassment, Lee turned toward the stairs, when he detected once more, a pair of lights, flashing and flitting out of the corner of his eye.
Lee’s neck snapped in the direction of the quiet patio. The shadows enveloped the wrought iron tables, umbrellas stowed at the center of each. It was deserted. There was nothing there. Nothing to move. Nothing to concern himself with.
“Excuse me, but are you alright?”
Lee whirled around. The woman with the bleach-blonde dreads was standing behind him, illuminated by the warm light spilling through The Brewery’s open door.
“Who? Me?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes drifted in the direction of the patio as another flicker of flashing light hovered in the periphery of Lee’s vision. The woman’s lips split into a genuine smile.
“That depends,” the woman asked. “Are you the only one out here?”
Curious, Lee followed her gaze back to the patio just in time to see a pair of fireflies swirl in the air, then blink once more out of existence. His eyes raked the darkness as he turned back.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Then, I must be talking to you.”
Lee glowered at the woman and she held his gaze.
“I’m good,” he said.
“Really?” Her eyebrows raised. “Because if my friends pulled something like that, I’m not sure I would be.”
Lee glanced at the bay window beside the front door. Through it, he saw the high top where his classmates sat, laughing. He drew a deep, shaking breath.
“Yeah, well. I shouldn’t have expected anything different.”
The woman too looked in the window and nodded sympathetically.
“Yeah, people are hard,” she said. “I’m Skye, by the way.”
For a moment, Lee wasn’t sure how to reply. Who was this woman? Why’d she follow him outside? Was she just coming to check on him, or was there another motive?
“It’s Lee, isn’t it?” Skye asked.
“Um—yeah,” he said, surprised. “Wait, I’m sorry. But do I know you?”
“Not yet,” she said, smiling. “But you will. You’re—friends—weren’t exactly discrete, though, were they?”
Lee nodded. He supposed that the situation must have been obvious to the outside observer. If he hadn’t been so close to the situation, if he had observed this happening to someone else, maybe he would’ve recognized the signs.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Skye.”
Skye smiled, still staring at Lee’s classmates through the window. “You don’t need them, you know.”
Lee felt heat rising to his ears and he looked at his feet. “I don’t need anyone.”
Skye nodded. “Strange how you can be surrounded by people and feel more alone than if you were somewhere by yourself.”
“Yeah. This’ll though.” He raised the sixpack. “And tomorrow should be better.”
He turned and started down the stairs.
“This may sound a little forward,” Skye said, “but it’s not too late. I know a place that’s quieter and a lot friendlier than this one.”
Lee paused at the bottom of the stairs and peered up at her suspiciously.
“You’re asking me to go somewhere with a stranger? After the night I had with people I know?”
Skye shrugged. “Do you really think, when you’re feeling this way, that you should go off and drink alone? Besides, I could use the company, even if you don’t need it.”
Lee’s eyes drifted unseeing up to The Brewery, then back to Skye. “And what makes you think that I’d be good company?”
“Because I’ve been where you’re at,” Skye said. “And I know that if you come, we’d all feel a lot better.”
“I don’t know,” Lee said.
Skye slid her hands in her pockets and descended the stairs. “It’s up to you, of course, but what have you got to lose?”
Lee wasn’t sure why he didn’t just leave, but as Skye started walking away, he drifted beside her, unaware of the fireflies, dancing along behind them.
The night sky felt somehow bigger, the darkness denser in the quiet patch of woods that Skye called home. She lived at the edge of town in a thick tract of second-growth forest that ran between Pithole University and the grounds of the Storm Harbor Bird Sanctuary.
Her house was an old Shasta camper, that over the years had sunk up to its axels in the soft earth and deadfall. It rested at the end of an unassuming dirt path that wound its way through the trees to a tiny clearing. There, Skye seemed to have everything that she needed. There was an outhouse, a firepit, and two bench seats that were made by sawing an old log in half lengthwise. The stars and waning crescent moon threw little light upon them, but this didn’t seem to hinder her sense of direction. She glided seamlessly through the trees, as if she were guided by an unseen homing signal.
Skye fetched a few pieces of wood and started to work on the fire. Before long, Lee found himself, sitting on one of the hewn logs, the sixpack resting untouched beside him. The warmth and light of the fire pushed back everything else, and thoughts he would have dwelled on if he had simply gone home were almost forgotten.
“So, how long have you lived here?”
Skye shrugged. “Here? Almost a year. About two years ago, I was going to stay in the dorms, but when my financial aid fell through, I had to figure something else out.”
“You’re a student?”
“Not anymore. I mean, the university is nice and all, but they don’t let you go to classes for free. Someday—I’ll find a way to go back though. Give it the old college try, so-to-speak.”
Lee nodded. “How did you find this place then?”
“A friend found it for me,” Skye replied. “I used to sleep in a tent not far from here, but it got all torn to hell at the start of last winter. That’s when my friend showed me this place. Took a little effort to clean it up, but its livable now, and the roof of the camper provides a bit more cover when the weather turns.”
“So, you’re—”
Lee hesitated. He couldn’t quite figure out how to ask the question in a way that wouldn’t come off insensitive or rude. Skye saved him the trouble.
“Homeless?” She added. “No. I have a home. Its right here.”
She spread her arms wide and gazed around the trees.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “Not too long ago, I learned that you can’t really count on people. Half of them will let you down. The other half just break your heart.”
“What about your friend? You know, the one that lets you stay here?”
The firelight danced in Skye’s eyes and her grin widened. “Oh, he’s—something else. That’s for sure.”
“How so?” Lee asked.
Skye let out a little laugh and stared off at something in the trees. “See for yourself.”
Lee followed her gaze. Behind him, a pair of red lights flashed and dimmed—flashed and dimmed against the night
Fireflies? Lee wondered. Red fireflies?
Where he grew up, fireflies glowed mainly with a yellowish-green light. Occasionally he caught a glimpse of one or two that appeared almost blue—but red. In all his life, he’d never seen red fireflies.
The fireflies darted and swirled together. Then, inexplicably, they hovered in place and they stopped flashing. Side-by-side, the fireflies glow grew steady and brightened. Behind the shine, shadows coalesced into a corporeal form—tall and shaggy—and Lee finally realized that they weren’t fireflies at all, but eyes.
A musk, like unwashed gym clothes soaked in wet earth, thickened in the air. With each step the figure took, the sour scent grew more pungent.
Lee tried to speak, but his voice failed him. He tried to move, but was anchored to the spot by some unseen force. He stared in horror as the shape stepped forward until the firelight washed over the face of the shaggy figure. It towered over Lee—at least eight feet tall—it’s large, sharp teeth barred in the parody of a smile.
“It’s alright,” Skye said, her voice calm and kind. “He just wants to say hello.”
The shaggy face tilted to one side and one eyebrow—if it was an eyebrow—raised. Lee’s heart pounded in his throat and his bladder felt suddenly overfull. A vibration filtered through the clearing, but it wasn’t quite like a growl. More like the rumbling purr of a giant, contented cat. Just when Lee thought that he might pee himself, Skye started to laugh.
“Is that what he really thought?” she asked.
This jarred Lee enough that he was able to survey Skye with a slow sideways glance. Skye just laughed, her thin, smiling eyes locked on the hairy beast that had just wandered into the clearing.
“Fireflies?” she asked. “You really thought that he was a couple of fireflies?”
Lee’s gaze passed between Skye and the beast. Finally, he managed to swallow back the lump in his throat.
“What?” he croaked.
“He said that you kept thinking that you were seeing fireflies,” Skye said. “But it’s way too late in the season for them.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Plus, how could you look at him and think fireflies?” Skye continued. “There is a bit of a size difference.”
“Oh. . .Um. Skye. What is it?”
“Him,” she corrected. “He’s a him.”
“Oh. . .Um. What is he?”
“Chiye-tanka,” Skye said, finally regaining her composure. “There are a lot of names for his kind, but chiye-tanka is the one that he likes the best. I think it means big brother—something like that, anyway.”
“Ah.”
“Relax, Lee,” Skye said. “He won’t hurt you.”
“Good. That’s—that’s good. Then—um—what did he—”
“He’s lonely,” Skye said. “He just wanted to say hi. Make friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yeah,” Skye said. “You are familiar with the concept, right?”
The shaggy creature, chiye-tanka, drew slowly toward the log where Lee was sitting. He felt gripped by the desire to run, but he was still frozen in place. Two steps and the chiye-tanka was standing so close that Lee could have reached out and touched him.
Another deep purr shook the air around him.
“He’s asking if he can have one,” Skye said.
Lee blinked and glanced at Skye.
“One what?”
She nodded at the sixpack at his feet. With the visitor looming over him, Lee had forgotten all about it. Hesitantly, Lee reached down and picked up one of the bottles. With a shaking, sweaty palm, he offered it. There was another purr.
“Do you mind?” Skye asked. “Sometimes he has trouble with the screw tops.”
Lee twisted the top, then extended his arm with the open bottle. The shaggy figure looked at Skye, who nodded encouragingly. Then accepted it. As he grasped the glass neck between thumb and forefinger, the thick, leathery palm of his massive hand brushed against the back of Lee’s hand. On contact, something stirred in Lee’s mind.
Another purr came, but this time, within it, Lee sensed a word.
“Alone?”
Skye smiled. “He’s asking why he’s drinking alone.”
Something clicked and Lee realized that he was starting to understand Skye’s friend? He reached down and grabbed two more ciders. He twisted off the tops, and handed one to Skye. Then he raised his up, as if he were making a toast, and together, they drank.
The next evening, at the end of Literary Theory and Criticism, Lee strode confidently out of the classroom and was halfway across the bridge when he heard Lauren shouting after him.
“What the hell, Lee?”
Lee stopped, drew a deep breath, then turned to face her. Behind her, Goodman, Pete, and Tashanna glowered at him.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “Just decided to leave us hanging last night?”
“Leave you hanging?” Lee asked.
“That’s what I said. I thought you were going for a refill, not just leaving us without saying goodbye. That’s a shit move, you know.”
Lee sighed. “I don’t get the problem?”
“The problem is that we went there together,” Tashanna added. “You go somewhere together, you leave together.”
“Exactly,” Lauren said. “I think you owe us a round after that.”
Lee shook his head, but as he did so, he glimpsed two red pinpricks along the distant tree line. Twin lights that he knew now were not fireflies.
“I don’t think so,” Lee said. “Besides, I have someplace to be.”
He turned and continued across the bridge, heading for the lights flickering in and out of the tree line.
Pete stormed after him. “You ever wonder why nobody in the program likes you?”
Lee continued on as if he didn’t hear.
“It’s because of shit like this,” Pete continued. “That’s why you don’t have a life or any friends.”
Lee stopped as he approached the tree line and turned to face Pete. “Who needs friends if when you have a big brother?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
The twin lights danced out of the trees. Lee grinned as he watched them circle behind Pete and drift into the shadows behind him. Then, without warning, the deep purr shook the air around him, and Lee recognized the word in it a “Friend?”
At that Lee laughed.
“No.”
Pete blinked.
“No, what?”
Another rumble swelled in the air around them. This time, Pete’s eyes went wide and they drifted up—up—up. They locked onto something in the shadows behind Lee.
The purr turned growl and Lee understood the word “run.”
Pete’s mouth fell open and his face appeared a bit paler in the moonlight.
“You know, Pete,” Lee said. “I think you should go.”
For a moment Pete stared into the trees behind Lee and the low guttural growl filled the night, harsh enough that it drew glances from his classmates who were still perched on the bridge of the World Cultures building.
“Now,” Lee said. “You should leave now.”
Pete whipped around, tripping over himself as he staggered back onto the dimly lit sidewalk. Once there, Pete glanced behind him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he saw a shadow wrapping around Lee’s shoulder as he vanished into the trees, four red fireflies dancing on the spot where Lee last stood.
Daniel Ruefman is a widely published poet and emerging author of speculative fiction. His poetry and prose has appeared in more than 100 periodicals to date, including THE BARELY SOUTH REVIEW, BURNINGWORD, CHAPTER HOUSE JOURNAL, HAMILTON STONE REVIEW, SHEEPSHEAD REVEIW, and THIN AIR MAGAZINE, just to name a few. When not writing, he teaches the craft at the University of Wisconsin--Stout.
