The Day the Air Thief Choked

My mask was suffocating me more than allowing me to breathe. The modifications I made must’ve been interfering with the filtration system. I tongued the metal remote inside my cheek as a secret sort of fidget.

The auditorium was empty save for the two of us. Arbor offered me a cigarette, which I refused. I never understood how he could still smoke when the very air we breathed was poisonous. The vice seemed redundant.

“It is comical—cartoonish, even, the way you smoke through that thing.”

He removed the cigarette sticking out from his mask, dropped it onto the stage, and stomped it out. I realized I shouldn’t discourage him, all things considered.

“I didn’t mean you had to stop, I just—”

“Calm down, Damia,” he said. “It’s stupid, I know. I’m just… a bit edgy.”

I’d never seen him so subdued the day before an auction. He played this one up to be the most important yet, but I didn't understand why. He wasn’t selling “the last known oak tree sapling,” or “the last known beehive.” This time, it was only flowers. Sure, they were the last of their kind known to exist, but they seemed no more or less vital than any of his other “last known” commodities.

“Yeah, you’re one to smoke after defeat, not before.”

He scoffed. “If you must know, we’ve got everything figured out.”

He eyed the cigarette on the ground, wondering if he could revive it.

“You’re scared the Air Thief will show his face tomorrow?” I asked.

“Or her face. Could be a her. Who knows…” He added.

We fell quiet for a minute, both processing the notion in different ways.

He continued. “You know, I see that mask in my dreams sometimes?”

I couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. The Air Thief wore a mask with a skull symbol on it. Most people didn’t realize, but the skull’s eyes created the Lewis Structure diagram of Oxygen. I wasn’t going to point that out to Arbor, though.

He shook his arms. “Sorry, I… ergh, I don’t know. Do you think the Thief will come around tomorrow?”

I eyed the flowers. There were seven of them, each on its own pedestal and floating in a canister of bioluminescent growth serum. They were tiny and frail, but their pedals appeared strong and bold regardless.

“They’re very pretty. If I were the thief, I’d…”

I stopped myself, but his gaze was fixed on me.

“Continue,” he prompted.

“Right. I was just saying, I’d want to plant them somewhere.”

He nodded, and started pacing back and forth across the line of flowers, gliding his hand across their containers with each pass.

“What do you think of when you look at them?” He asked.

I had no shortage of answers. They’ll never see real sunlight ever again, I thought. They’ll stay in their jars, and sit on the shelves of rich men’s personal collections. Or, if they are allowed sunlight, it’ll be in private greenhouses that cost an average person’s yearly salary just to spend five minutes in. If they’re reproduced, their offspring will be sold off to more rich men, and the cycle will continue forever unless someone were to…

I kept my true thoughts quiet, and forced myself to answer cordially.

“I think of mom, and the flowers she kept on the kitchen counter in the vase full of those weird orb things.”

He laughed. “And Skip would always get in the jar and eat the orbs, and petals and orbs would just get everywhere…”

We laughed together. He stopped pacing and bent down to stare at one of the canisters. The serum’s light fell over his face like an emerald veil.

“I thought of that, too,” he said with a sad smile, and suddenly, I felt guilty. I retrieved that memory for the sake of being uncontroversial, but he retrieved it innocently and naturally. He held our childhood in higher regard than I did, clearly, which made sense, because he was spoiled. They left him the Kastellanos estate, and they left me a letter saying I “still had a lot of growing to do”.

He walked by me and held his lighter out one last time.

“Last chance,” he murmured.

I pushed it down with my hand and swallowed hard.

“No, thanks.”

“Alrighty, then.” He continued walking, but stopped himself once more. “Oh, hey, if you decide to attend tomorrow, wear white. We’re going for more wedding than funeral, kay?”

“Thanks, but I won’t be there. You know how I feel about—”

He disappeared offstage before I could finish. My airways opened back up in his absence.

The next day, I stepped into the auditorium wearing a white suit, undershirt, and tie. Everyone around me wore masks gilded with diamonds, jewels, and feathers. It made my own modifications feel clunky, practical as they were. I tongued the metal in my cheek again as I wandered through what felt like a twisted mutant aviary. I was a dove surrounded by crows; everybody else was wearing black. I figured there must have been some serious miscommunication somewhere along the way. My body tensed up the further I ventured into the swarm of people.

Suddenly, Arbor’s voice bounced around the auditorium. Strobe Lights followed him across the stage, where he held his arms out wide as he welcomed his elite audience.

“Good people! Today is a very special day. Of course, the reason you are all here: the beautiful, the fragile, the last known marigolds!”

The strobe lights panned to the flowers. The auditorium shook with excitement. Bidders hollered, stomped their feet, and waved their signs all around in the air. Despite the containers being no bigger than soda cans, they were clearly visible even from deep in the crowd. Arbor knew how to sell a product—how to make it shine in such a way that you couldn’t help but want to lay your hands on it and claim it for yourself. I could feel my palms tingle.

“Thank you! Thank you, millions. Now, I know you’re all very eager. But, before we get to bidding, there’s someone very important I want to welcome onto the stage. Damia, could you come up here, please?”

I tried to shrink down in the crowd, but the strobe light was already on me, as were all eyes in the room.

“We all see you. You kinda stand out. Come on up!”

The sea of people parted before me. I took a step forward, and another, and with each, it seemed like I was getting farther and farther away from the stage, the flowers, and my brother. Then, all at once, my mind snapped back to reality, and I arrived at the stage. Arbor reached down and hoisted me up. He spun me toward the audience and draped his arm around me before I found my footing.

“Folks, this is my sister, Damia Kastellano. You probably don’t recognize her. She doesn’t really ‘believe’ in what we do here.”

The faceless crowd booed and shouted for me to get off the stage.

“Hey now, calm down,” Arbor continued. “Let me finish. I was going to say, regardless, I appreciate her for coming today, even if she doesn’t quite get the whole color coordination thing.”

Laughter filled the space. Arbor was speaking so nonchalantly, it was like he was introducing me to an old friend, not a room full of billionaires he wanted to sell a product to.

“I appreciate her, despite all our differences. Sure, she’s a pain in the ass. Always has been. Always taking my stuff. Always arguing about something-or-other. But hey, that’s siblings for you.”

A few heads bobbed in agreement. His informality enthralled the crowd more than his showmanship did. They reacted in all the desired ways upon all the right queues.

“I appreciate her, because without her, I wouldn’t be in this position right now. I love her, and I want that to be known. She’s the only family I’ve got left. She’s my only real friend.”

My body eased, and my breath steadied for a moment. I looked at Arbor, and he looked at me. We could see each other’s faces through the masks. He was wrinkled, but still full of youthful excitement.

Then he announced, “She’s also the Air Thief."

The audience was overcome by primal rage. They flailed and screamed like a feral, furious ocean, crashing their arms against the stage like waves.

Before I could struggle, he snatched my mask from my face and threw me to the ground. The unfiltered air tasted like fire. He clicked a switch inside the mask and held it up high, showing off the skull symbol that blinked into view across the visor.

He took a knee beside me.

“I’ve known for a long while. You wanna talk cartoonish? You and the Thief have never been seen in the same room at the same time. That’s some superhero alter ego shit, right there. But then I realized, I wouldn’t exactly know one way or another if you were because everyone’s always wearing the same thing. So now, here you are, radiant and noticeable and... well, you’re here. And now I know.”

I wanted to respond, but I couldn’t. The air was descending into my lungs and filling them to the point of bursting. It was like I was drowning.

Arbor stood back up and spoke like a showman again.

“And so, whether or not you leave here today with a marigold in hand, may you at least remember this as the day the Air Thief choked!”

The crowd roared, but the sound was muffled somewhere between its origin and my ears. Everything was blurring fast. I bit down hard on my cheek repeatedly until I felt the metal snap between my teeth.

The remote worked as intended. A barrage of smoke burst forth from my mask in a bright flash of white light. Arbor dropped it in shock. I grabbed it off the ground and returned it to my face. The relief was not instant, but in a short time, I could breathe again.

When I stood up and poked my head out of the cloud onstage, I could see the audience fleeing with fervor. The capsules of gas I lined the mask with were almost empty, so I hooked the device up to the reserve tanks hidden in my suit. It sputtered and resumed spurting vapor out of its edges. My modifications worked. Shrouded in an ever-expanding smokescreen, I got to work.

As I removed each canister from its pedestal, I could hear Arbor scream through the haze. He was shouting all sorts of obscenities at me, and they kept growing more and more meaningless until soon I paid them no mind at all. I considered responding, but I didn’t know what to say. Maybe that he was a hypocrite. Maybe that he was more of an “Air Thief” than I ever was. I don’t know.

I walked out of the estate without opposition, streaming a trail of thick smoke through the corridors in my wake. I took a glance back up at the sprawling castle, out of which smoke billowed from the windows. I pictured Arbor as I walked away.

He’s getting tired of sprinting through the halls. He’s slumping down against some wall, breathless and trembling. He’s reaching into his coat pocket for a cigarette and his lighter. He’s fumbling with them awkwardly, swiping his fingers at the metal switch until, finally, he gets a spark. A spark is all it takes.

The last time I looked back at the estate, fire was pouring from its windows. I kept walking. I couldn’t waste time looking back again. I had flowers to plant.