The Assignment
Within the corners of a dark room, there is a man. He sits as if staked down to the chair, his glum expression accentuated by the dull blue light of a computer monitor. His name is Rupert, age is 30; Too young to have fully lived his life, too old to want to experience it. Soon, the assignment must be done. He knows this is the case, and yet, he holds it off, staring blankly at the screen in front of him. Colored blocks fall down into a square container, organizing themselves before the box fills, before disappearing and repeating the process. His eyes strain from staring at the process.
A notification covers the screen, a large black and white box.
The Assignment
Due in 12 hours
His eyes widen, then collapse back shut. A few more blinks to soften the blinding white light he’s been assaulted by. The bulbs of his scleral tissue nested in their flesh-made sockets dart to the upper right-hand corner of the screen to the large red “X” button. A split second later, the notification had closed, and the blocks had returned to the screen. Once again, the blood vessels in his eyes made themselves apparent as they strained against the cold blue light.
“It has to be done on time,” he thinks, “Who knows what will happen if it isn’t.” He knew the answer. Everyone did. They just didn’t like to think about it, to entertain it. The possibility itself felt too grim, a hell of permanence made for those who felt so strong as to disobey. Regardless of the job that was missed, each company employed the same method of punishment. Delaying their schedule, disrupting their profit margins, now that was a crime that took priority above all else.
The will to rebel against the corporations themselves had long since left the people. Fifty years of propaganda and governmental support had all but crushed any inkling of revolt in anyone’s mind and those who still possessed it had already been sent into the Aether. The families they belonged to had had their time to grieve them. Sure, they were still alive, but everyone knew that they were essentially dead. One microscopic implant given to them through an apparatus no larger than a needle by a seemingly normal person on the street bumping into them had made sure of it. One microscopic implant, and their body had been hijacked to live in a world of nothing for the rest of eternity. No sickness, no pain, no walls, no floors. Just oceans and oceans of white, for the rest of eternity. At least in hell you can burn.
Just as soon as the key to eternal life had been found, they found a way to make it a punishment. It was well known the same fate lay waiting for anyone who dared to express dissent. Even if the system they are in is commercial hell, at least there are things around them, at least there is still a promise of death. Of some sort of end.
His eyeballs twitch, and an asynchronous blink is forced upon them. A block of blue, a block of red, a block of yellow. A block of yellow, a block of blue, a block of red. Another row descends, causing the box to clear itself and his dopamine receptors to fire. He didn’t want to do it. Not again. Seven years of bi-weekly Assignments had left him tired and guilty. Seven-hundred eighty-three. Seven-hundred and eighty-three people. He rolls the number around in his head as if a cherry stem being tied into a knot by a tongue. All this time he told himself he was helping them. That he was saving them. Deluding himself into thinking what he was doing might even be an ounce heroic. He wonders what all seven-hundred eighty-three of them would say about that. If they had the chance to tell him what they thought of what he did for them.
“To them.” he corrects himself.
The HIVE unit sat next to his arm on the desk. A headset so incredibly bulky seemed archaic in this day and age, but its old-fashioned looks were out of a sense of practicality, not style. Every millimeter of space in the brick shaped HMD contained a piece of technology carrying twice as much power and efficiency as anything you could obtain in the consumer market, if not more. A CPU too powerful to not be bulky, a GPU the size of a fist. A motherboard connecting hundreds of miniscule cameras to both processing units. An advanced gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass to track the movement of the head as accurately as possible. A cord connecting the fan to the battery and the battery to the motherboard and the motherboard to the position communication and manifestor units. A small pin sits at the back of the head-strap, ready to stab into the flesh of the HIVE host’s head, piercing the skull to enter their cranial cavity in order to track the movement of the host’s body directly through their pulsing neurons. After all, precision and accuracy was a necessity for the HIVEs. Anything less hurts their bottom dollar.
His glare shifts to the HIVE unit for a split second. The blocks disappear, but he doesn’t see it happen.
“Seven years and some change,” he thought. Seven, nearly eight, long years of donning the HIVE unit that now weighs heavy on his mind. He knows he strikes fear into people when he puts it on, when all they see of him is the HIVE’s lavender physical manifestation. The body that simultaneously is his and isn’t, is absent of life yet somehow walks. The avatar that provides him with the only degree of separation he can acquire from his job. It isn’t him that does it, not technically at least.
The HIVE unit seems to mock him, knowing he will have to put it on yet again soon if he doesn’t want to be sent to the Aether. White hell staring at him through the lenses of a headset he had yet to put on. He couldn’t decide which would be better, the mundane hell that his Assignments had become, or the infinite nothingness of the Aether. The rest of a life continuing to do the same job he had committed himself to when he had barely become an adult. The job that with each coming week he had to commit. The one that with every passing day he questions more. That weighs heavy on his mind, and heavy on his soul.
“Maybe nothingness wouldn’t be so bad.” He thinks, before swatting away the thought. Nothingness for some time would be nice, but the lack of an end scared him more than the promise of death after decades of Assignments. How many more people would it be, he wonders. Five-thousand two-hundred and some change, give or take a few years? Maybe the guilt would kill him sooner. Maybe another seven-hundred. It could be less. Maybe this is the one that kills him. The guilt finally breaks him down, causes his psyche to dematerialize as easily as the blocks on his screen do. Despite his guilt, he hopes it isn’t the last one. He doesn’t want to die, he reassures himself, he just wants to lack the responsibility, the weight of working for the faceless corporate elites of CDE. Maybe it was just the weight of the specific job he did for them. He would’ve been fine living like this had he been part of the spyware department, developing the smallest possible microphones and cameras, able to pick up a sound so small that you fear they might even be able to hear your thoughts. Instead, his 23 year old self had decided to join the HIVEs. He thought he could handle it, he thought that the HIVE itself would give him enough mental separation that he wouldn’t have to be bothered by his work. Plus it meant he didn’t have to leave the house.
“One stupid decision,” he scolds himself, “One stupid decision, and I damned myself to this life. Who cares how much you have to work a week when you have to–” A screen of black and white interrupts his train of thought.
The Assignment
Due in 9 hours
Has it already been three hours? It certainly hasn’t felt like it to him. The colored blocks had ordered and disappeared no more than 2, no 3, wait no it was…
“My god,” he feels the words in his mind so vividly they almost manifest on his lips, “it has been.” He couldn’t lose track of the time again; if he did, he might not have enough time to complete The Assignment. Unfortunately for him, they did usually take a sizable chunk of time. Three, sometimes four hours, and yet he couldn’t help but resist starting before he absolutely had to. Despite knowing the consequences of missing The Assignment, he can’t force himself to undergo the consequences on his own mind of completing it, at least until it becomes a more pressing threat. He’s always been this way.
“My god,” he feels the words in his mind so vividly they almost manifest on his lips, “it has been.” He couldn’t lose track of the time again; if he did, he might not have enough time to complete The Assignment. Unfortunately for him, they did usually take a sizable chunk of time. Three, sometimes four hours, and yet he couldn’t help but resist starting before he absolutely had to. Despite knowing the consequences of missing The Assignment, he can’t force himself to undergo the consequences on his own mind of completing it, at least until it becomes a more pressing threat. He’s always been this way.
He feels his stomach grumble. For the first time in at least the last 6 hours, he rises from his chair, and leaves the computer. He walks to the pantry unit sitting in the leftmost corner closest to the door of his box shaped room. Everything he could possibly need, all contained in a convenient cube. He barely even had to venture away from his desk with the HIVE unit, CDE gave him the perfect room for his work. Nothing but the essentials, everything else an empty space made for the HIVE unit to be used in ideal conditions. A few large strides, and he was directly in front of the rows and rows of ready-made meals, a small benefit of his job. Everyone else just got nutrient pills. It was quicker for returning to work, and hurt the bottom line less. For them, however? The HIVEs got the best treatment. They needed to be in the best physical condition possible, and that meant getting better meals. Nutrient pills kept someone sustained, not nourished.
He wonders if the trade off is really worth it. If any of this is worth it. Why did he have to pick this job, sure he lives comfortably in theory, but he’d take any mundane, menial task to this job. He has to tell himself he is helping these people, that without his job, they would be fated to much worse.
“Do you really believe that?”
No, he decided, he didn’t. It’s always just been about the separation. He knew he didn’t help people. That he…
He didn’t want to think about it right now. Soon, he’d have to, but now he can focus on eating. He picks up a package off of the stack. He doesn’t care which “meal” he gets, it won’t actually change anything. He brings it back to the desk, his strides growing longer and more apprehensive the closer he is to the HIVE unit. He sits down, the weight of his conscience seeming to drag him down even faster than usual. His fingers touch the plastic covering on his meal, and pull it off, revealing the chunky slurry it contains. A slop of dull reds and greens, with the occasional reedy fiber strewn throughout greets him. A white plastic container filled with the only food better than nutrient pills. He pulls off the spoon attached to the container, and begins to eat. One spoonful of the meat and veggie concoction, then another. It’s cool against his lips, and goes down like vomit being swallowed. Uneven chunks set in a meat and veggie smoothie.
He eats until it’s gone, and checks the clock. It’s been another hour. Another hour closer to his deadline. Another hour closer to a decision.
And for once, that decision is not made easier by that knowledge. His hesitation is not made any lesser when confronted with the threat.
“I can’t do it again.” he tells himself. He’s always prioritized himself, though. He knows he won’t stop now. What choice does he really have? If it’s between doing his job and being sent into the Aether, he’ll choose his job every time. But that begs the question, is it even really a choice that he’s making? If the punishment for not doing his job is eternal, expansive nothingness, anyone with even an ounce of self preservation would essentially be cornered into doing the same thing, wouldn’t they? Maybe there are people out there with stronger will than him.
What of his life did he really choose? The question stabs at his skull like the neural needle of the HIVE unit does every half a week. Even thinking back to his childhood, he never really got much of a choice over the course of his life. His parents had been assigned to him by the government, he never had a connection to the person who birthed him, hell, his birth was just another Assignment for them. Was his assigned parents’ Assignment to raise him? He wasn’t entirely sure, but he knew that they were seemingly always there when he was growing up. When would they have had time to do anything else?
Was anybody in his life there for anything other than obligation? Other than out of the same fear that drove him to do his Assignment twice a week, was his childhood just a job to everyone else? His early adulthood, even? He couldn’t know for sure. Even if everything was a lie, it didn’t really matter in the present. He is where he is because of the single choice he had been given. He had just made the wrong one.
A wrong decision that yet again greeted him with a monochrome warning.
The Assignment
Due in 6 hours
Six hours left. He needs at least four, maybe three if he’s pushing it. The familiar feeling of cool metal haunts his hands, anticipating the sensation they would soon have to endure, the same one they have endured for the past seven years. It was amazing how the HIVE could communicate the signals from nerve endings that weren’t even there back to his own body, he realizes he hasn’t even truly held that metal in his hands once in his life, only the HIVE body he inhabited has.
Once again, the HIVE unit enters his vision, still communicating its silent mockery to him. His hands grip the lukewarm plastic body of the unit, remembering how its weight and form feels to hold.
“I could destroy it, smash it into tiny pieces. Never see the inside of it again.” The image delights his mind, the plastic casing chunking as he slams the headset violently against his desk, pieces flying everywhere, exposing the circuitry inside. The fish-eyed lenses shattering, spraying every surface with twinkling shards of clear crystal, reminiscent of the pictures of stars he had been shown in his youth. Over and over and over again, hammering the beast of machinery into his desk under the dour blue light emanating from his monitor. Cracking the motherboard, exposing the copper of the wires, turning the wretched thing into a pile of rubble before him, a distorted amalgam of its former self. Do to it the same thing it has already done to him. The only thing that stops him from indulging in his urge is the ever-present reminder of the Aether.
Still, the hunger for destruction lingers in him.
The want to obliterate burns in every inch of his flesh.
An hour elapses as he holds the HIVE unit in his hand, waiting for the feeling to dissipate. The desire, however, has not. Destroying the headset is just as good as killing himself, he thinks, leaving only one option left to quench his thirst.
One of his hands grabs the back of the head strap. The other raises the unit to his face. His grip on the elastic is removed, and a sharp pain enters the back of his skull. He presses a button, and his view leaves that of his room. A feminine voice lacking any emotion speaks.
“Welcome, Rupert, your Assignment must be completed in five hours.”
The gun feels cold in his hand.
He now stands on the blue-gray streets of the city in which he lives. A bit unusual, but not unheard of. In his seven years on the job, he has had more than his fair share of targets that share the same city as him. It’s rare at all for him to walk these streets anyways, so he sees it as a bit of a nice treat. The degree of separation that he once pretended exists between him and the lavender glowing HIVE that he inhabits is gone. It was never there to begin with, he decides. It was just a way of coping. He couldn’t keep doing this forever, one day, maybe soon, it would break him. Hiding behind excuses won’t delay it anymore. The least he can do is accept that what he is doing are actions he himself has taken. Just because his physical body isn’t the one doing it doesn’t mean he isn’t making it happen.
A purple man walks down the street, gun in hand, ready to complete his Assignment. Passing flickering street lights, tracking faint, digital footprints the headset has highlighted for him.
The faint footprints stand out to Rupert, they aren’t usually this difficult to see. These footprints are at least two weeks old. They were never this old.
“Why would somebody so reclusive be a target?”
It doesn’t make sense to him, how can they be a threat to a company’s bottom dollar? If they barely even leave their house, what could they know? What grudge could they even hold?
The footprints turn into a building. He looks up, and realizes it’s the same ration hub he always goes to when he runs out of food. A crawling sensation rides up his back, but he tries to push it to the far reaches of his mind. Maybe the mark just goes to the same ration hub, thousands of people live in this city, it isn’t that strange. He tracks the footprints further, following the prey’s path. Each structure he passes becomes more and more familiar. CDE Headquarters, a bridge crossing the small river running through the city.
An alleyway that he uses as a shortcut to get back to his building.
“This is my route.” Was someone following him? That must be the explanation. Someone followed him, and found out something as they stalked him. Someone who wanted to hurt CDE. Of course, he knows this isn’t the only possibility. It is just the only one his mind would like to entertain. Quickly, he turns around. There’s no one there, no new footprints. He laughs to himself. Maybe it was someone who just uses a similar route to him. Won’t he feel even sillier when the path diverges.
He wants to move quicker, find the divergence sooner, but knows he can’t, if he does, he might lose the trail for good. This needs to be slow, and methodical, or everything falls apart. The trails were never long, but the time you have to take to make sure you kept them is what really extends the process. Slow steps forward to find the target who would be gone in an instant.
He has already been in the unit for an hour. He guesses he’s barely walked a third of the trail.
The footprints continue along the streets in even strides, and the steel of his gun chills him even more than usual. His purple glow illuminates the gray concrete beneath his feet. The sense of deja vu plaguing him only worsens, the path must diverge, it has to, why hasn’t it split yet?
Suddenly, it hits him: the footprints. If he just checks the print that has been made against the ground more carefully, actually inspects the pattern, he could prove to himself once and for all that the prey he hunted was not himself. All of his clothes had been standard issue to HIVEs, including the boots.
He bends down to inspect one of the prints, its faded orange glow casting light akin to that of dying embers across his face. He doesn’t have to look at them long. Their honeycomb-like hexagons are more than familiar to him. Rupert’s face coils in on itself in quiet horror, but the face of his HIVE avatar doesn’t mimic it. Emotion of their host is the one thing they were programmed to not parrot near one-for-one. Their purple complexion only ever holds one expression, that of cold pragmatism. Its actions were not personal, only business.
He isn’t satisfied with the answer the footprints have given him, maybe they’re just a similar pattern, not exactly the same, he tells himself. He lifts his foot so he can check the bottom print of his shoe, and is greeted by the exact same honeycomb pattern that strides across the ground in front of him. He prays he is hunting another HIVE host. Even though deep down he knows he isn’t, he has to tell himself he isn’t going to be the seven-hundred eighty-fourth human life he’ll have to take. How could he complete his Assignment otherwise?
He relents to continue following the footprints, what else can he do? What choice does he really have? The trail snakes and snakes down his same route he travels every month. Past the buildings of nearly every client he had ever had, past the feeble square of grass with a singular bench that the city dares call a park. The door to the entrance of his apartment complex, the stairs that lead to his floor and the hallway that leads to his door. The purple form of a man ventures past all of them, retracing the exact steps its host had taken no less than two weeks ago. Standing in the doorway, about to open the door he never locks, a monotonous voice yet again speaks to him.
“One hour remaining.”
The purple figure twists the handle and throws open the door. It sees its target, and lifts its pistol. In mirror fashion, Rupert, too, lifts his arm, and aims his non-existent gun at the HIVE. Faced with himself, the HIVE hesitates. Rupert hesitates. The avatar wraps a lavender finger around the trigger, but its host can’t pull it. He is too distracted by the fact that his actual arms are shaking, but those of his HIVE are not. Has this happened every time? Is his body’s response always this visceral, and he just never noticed because the body he inhabits during his work doesn’t mimic it? Slowly, he lowers the gun, and shuts the door behind him. His purple form walks over to his bed and sits, while his true one sits in his chair.
In opposite corners of the dark room sit two men who are truly one in the same. The HIVE a violent killer, Rupert a remorseful one. The HIVE a remorseful killer, and Rupert a violent one. In this moment, the distinction between them, if there even is one, is inconsequential at best. The actions they commit are the same, and they always have been. He wonders to himself if this is a small act of retribution from the seven-hundred eighty-three souls he had separated from their bodies over the course of his career. A sick, twisted joke where he has to stare down the barrel of a gun and decide if the so-called mercy he gave them truly was one.
Outside of the sense of poetic justice, something still bothers him.
“Why?”
Why did CDE want him gone? He has never outwardly stated his growing discomfort with his job, the quickly burning desire to do something about it that has turned the moldable putty of his mind into a hard, oven-baked clay. Maybe their spyware can hear thoughts, it wasn’t that far fetched. After all, the headset he wore had a small needle that can directly interface with his neurons. The Aether chips could directly hack into a person’s nervous system and change what their senses detected. It isn’t especially out there to assume that CDE’s spyware division could store and read the thoughts of anyone they needed to, and if they have that capability, why wouldn’t they use it on their most dangerous units, the people most capable of fighting against them?
He decided that whether or not their spyware could read minds, they likely have the next best thing through tracking heart rates and hormone and stress levels. It didn’t matter how they found out he was starting to feel guilty about his work, the consequences had already been put into play. Now he has a choice to make. Die, or be sent to the Aether.
“Just as good a choice as any other choice I’ve been given.” he thinks to himself. An impossible question with an obvious answer. Certainty or eternity, vast nothingness with perception or vast nothingness without. A hollow point, or no end point.
“One minute remaining.”
Both Rupert and his avatar rise to their feet. The purple figure lifts the gun and steadies its aim on Rupert’s head. In return, Rupert’s shaking arm raises to the same level. He didn’t want to die, but what choice did he have?
“Thirty seconds.”
Seven-hundred thirty-three soon to be thirty-four. At least he knows one of them deserved it. He feels a tear stream slowly down his cheek. He isn’t sure if it’s from remorse or fear.
“Ten.”
A finger wraps around the trigger, gaining the courage to squeeze.
“Nine.”
The tears are coming harder now.
“Eight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Seven.”
The words feel foreign to him.
“Six.”
The only time he ever apologized to someone he has done this to, and it is to himself.
“Five.”
“How pathetic.”
“Four.”
The trigger finger starts to pull.
“Three.”
A sigh of resignation.
“Two.”
A gunshot rings out in the apartment. The gun clatters to the ground.
Within the dark corners of a room, there sits what once was a man, body slumped motionless against his desk. In its limpness, there is a final sense of peace it could never experience in life. His name was Rupert, his age was 30; too old to want to experience the world, too young to have left it. Despite his brain matter covering the wall behind him and a fist-sized exit wound in the back of his skull, the headset he wears does not fully recognize its user’s lifelessness. In the silent room, celebratory music blares from the HIVE unit, and the screen simply displays two words.
Assignment
Complete
Lilac Syrup
The sand flowed between the gaps of his small, child-sized fingers. He felt the tiny grains roll along the dainty crevices of his hand, flowing like a liquid into the large, sand-filled playpit below him. The joyous screams of the other playing children filled his ears as he tried to focus on the silky smooth sand he currently kneeled in, pushing around a tiny yellow toy digger, its treaded wheels leaving behind two parallel, patterned lines imprinted into the sandbox. He pushed down the digging arm on the toy and lifted a hunk of sand , taking with it a small, two-leafed sapling of some unknown plant in its trough-like bucket.
Adrian had just crested his fourth birthday as of last week, and today, his mother and father decided to treat him to a trip down to the neighborhood playground, ostensibly so he could play, but truthfully so he could spend some much needed time outside and socializing. Although Adrian could talk about the things he loved for hours, it seemed he was never able to find any other kids to share that with. Unfortunately for his parents, their plan had faltered in the aspect that they didn’t expect him to spend all his time in the sandbox, nor did they expect that he would be the only child playing in said sandbox. It looked like to them, all the other kids were swinging around on the monkey bars, going down slides, or playing tag. Not one decided to sit down and play Indiana Jones with the one kid sitting there, digging through the sand.
“We should have just brought him into our backyard, he would’ve had the time of his life.” Joked Adrian’s father, Clay, to his wife through the side of his mouth. “We didn’t need to take him all the way down to this specific sandbox for him to dig around in.”
In her firm, but soft-spoken voice, Hope chuckled and replied to her husband’s wry comment.
“Well, the hope was that he would play with the other kids, or that the other kids would try to play with him. You would think that at this point, we would’ve realized our kid would find a way to do just what he wanted, and nothing more. It baffles me how perfectly content Adrian has always been to be on his own. He really doesn’t seem to have gotten either of our social sides.”
“Well remember, before you approached me, I was like a turtle eternally in its shell. Then one day you came out of nowhere and ripped me out of it. I had one, maybe two friends before that point?”
But Adrian heard none of this, for he was preoccupied with turning the bucket of his Tonka digger into a pot for this neat plant he’d found. It truly was nothing special, just a hopeful little sapling, but its verdant green juxtaposed against the mottled beige of the sand was intriguing to his childhood mind. And then, as quickly as it had stolen his attention, Adrian became bored of this seedling, picked up his truck, and stood up; letting the sand, and the now uprooted plant, fall back into the sandbox. He then walked over to his parents, still having a lively conversation with each other, and with the candor that only a child is capable of, promptly interrupted them with a simple “I’m ready to go home now.”
His parents turned to look at him, slightly puzzled. After a moment, his mother spoke.
“Well don’t you want to have fun with the other kids? I’m sure they’d love to have you join in tag!” She said this with the lovingly patronizing cadence that only a mother could pull off, trying to push her son to do what she had actually brought him here to do. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t work.
“No, I want to go home.”
His father let out a stifled laugh. And turning to his wife, said “Welp, you heard the man, Hope! The boss wants to go home!” with the jovial tone that comes naturally to a white-picket-fence father
The dark of night had set upon the household, and it being nine pm, Adrian had been in his bed for an hour now, pretending to be asleep but actually playing with his stuffed toys until he inevitably tired himself out enough to fall asleep at an unreasonable hour for someone his age. His parents were still awake, watching tv in their living room, enjoying their alone time together without having to worry about looking after Adrian.
“How much do you want to bet he’s actually asleep right now?” His father said with the dry, sardonic tone that Adrian’s mom had fallen in love with all those years ago.
“I’m not willing to make a bet I know I’ll lose.” Hope wryly responded.
Clay chuckled, after which they returned to their silent companionship.
But Adrian heard none of this, he was too involved in the story he constructed in his mind about his bed being a boat on the high ocean, and his stuffed animals kept falling off of the boat and he had to save them from drowning. One stuffed animal — a small blue elephant — launched over the side after a particularly large wave had hit his boat; but when Adrian leaned over the bed to try and grab the stuffed elephant he had affectionately named Elephanty, he saw as the beloved elephant plush was quickly pulled under the bed.
The fun was over. There was no more boat, there were no more rogue waves trying to sink the ship. There was only Adrian and his stuffed animals, cowering on the bed, while a faint lilac scent suddenly seemed to fill the room. In that instant, every child’s worst nightmare had been confirmed to him. In the inky blackness of the night, a monster lay in waiting below him, and it had taken Elephanty. He wanted to call for his parents, or even better, run out of the room entirely and cuddle up next to mom or dad where it was safe; but he wasn’t about to set foot onto the floor, where the monster would have free reign to grab at his ankles. Horrifying images of what the monster could possibly be rushed through Adrian’s head: A fuzzy, slobbery beast with large claws? A slimy, oozy blob of an indescribable protoplasm ready to slurp him up? Or was it a scaly reptile waiting to gobble him whole? His fears drove his mind wild, until he couldn’t suffer in terror any longer.
“Mama!” he screamed, tears running down his cheeks. With inhuman speed, his parents were already at his room, door open, light on.
“Adrian? Is everything alright?” His mother questioned worriedly.
Through his tears, Adrian relayed to his parents the whole story of Elephanty, sobbing that there was a monster under his bed.
“Do you want me to check under the bed and get Elephanty back for you?” His father said in the most understanding and fatherly way.
Adrian responded with a quick nod. His father then walked over to the side of the bed, got down on his knees, and leaned down to look under his child’s bed. Adrian watched in slow terror, waiting for his dad, too, to get pulled under by the monster. Instead, he watched as his father re-emerged with Elephanty in hand, and in a goofy, stuffed elephant voice, said “Look at me Adrian! I’m all okay! I just rolled under there for fun! There wasn’t a monster under there!”
Adrian reached out and hugged Elephanty close and then politely asked his parents if he could sleep in their room. They of course obliged him, and he spent the rest of his night in his parent’s bed, holding his stuffed elephant tight to his chest.
The cool Autumn air blew through the screen of the opened window in Adrian’s room with a particularly biting chill on the early Sunday morning. It had been about a month and a half since the frightening ordeal had taken place, and (as children are prone to doing) Adrian had all but forgotten the events of that night. If not for the furtive aroma of lilacs that still sat in the room, he certainly would have forgotten about it altogether, but the ghost of the smell served to arouse the faint memories in him. By this point, the images and actual events of the night were lost to him, only the emotions felt then could now be stirred. The shocking cold of the breeze offered a queer sense of calm to Adrian’s freshly awoken body. His nostrils filled with the sweet scent of sauteed bell peppers and freshly toasted rye bread from the kitchen below.
The heightened senses of a recently roused brain afforded Adrian the ability to hear the gentle ceramic clatter of plates being set, no doubt by his mother, accompanied by the metallic muttering of silverware being grabbed together, and the singular clink of each fork and knife being set to the left and right respectively of each plate. He could hear the scraping of a spatula against a cast-iron pan, the snap and subsequent sizzle of an egg being cracked into said pan, then another, then a final one.
He could hear the conversation between his parents, not specific words, rather just the indistinct sounds that followed the distinct forms and speech patterns of the English language. He could hear… what was it, exactly, that he could hear? It was closer to him than the other sounds had been, but strangely was much fainter than them. It was almost like ⎯ no, it couldn’t be, could it? A scratching, coming from inside the closet? It sounded as though it was joined by some sort of soft body sliding alongside the interior wall. Adrian again became acutely aware of the saccharine ghost of lilac that still made his room its home; And, like clockwork, the memory of that fear came rushing back into his head, and gripped his heart once more. The lilac scent somehow seemed to be grinning maliciously at him, its invisible mouth letting out an inaudible, devilish cackle. The detestable odor managed to always fill him with an inexplicably intense sense of inexorable dread. The stench of lilac seemed to only get more and more intense with each passing moment, the scratching and rubbing from the closet getting louder and louder with each pound of his fear-stricken heart. In an instant, the rubbing and scratching ceased, leaving the lilac as the only thing assaulting Adrian’s senses. With cautious terror, Adrian pulled himself out of his bed, and crept slowly over to the closed door leading into his closet. Putting out a trembling hand, he reached for the handle of the door, the smell of lilacs the strongest and most nauseating it had ever been. Right before his hand finally took hold of the door-knob, Adrian froze. Out of the corner of his eye, from under the door, what looked like a smooth, lime-green tentacle slowly slithered out. Adrian stared at the writhing mass, which was seemingly scouting and feeling out the area in front of the door.
“Breakfast, Adrian!” Yelled his father from downstairs. Adrian started, and let out a loud yelp, and by the time he had looked back down at the tentacle, it was gone, and the lilac smell had toned back down again. He found that his appetite had vanished, leaving an empty pit behind in his stomach.
That morning passed by with a gentle uneasiness stirring in the air. Adrian sat silently at the kitchen table with the knowledge of that thing that was in his closet weighing on him. Clay noticed the uneasy nature of his son while he ate, not finding it out of anything he said or did, but rather what he did not do. His usually joyful and talkative demeanor had hidden in its shell, being replaced by a reserved silence.
Although he noticed this, Clay decided to not press his son on it.
Adrian poked and prodded at his food. He pulled out each and every bit of green he saw in his omelet, out of a sense of nausea that the color green was spreading in him at present. The pleasant and savory scent of the omelet was tarnished by an inexplicable lingering of that detestable lilac smell, which currently Adrian could somehow taste as well. All the pleasure of Sunday morning breakfast had been torn away from him by that one, smooth, green tentacle that slithered its way outside of his closet and into his heart to strangle his soul. No matter what his parents told him now, he knew he was right. There was a monster in his room, and he wouldn’t regain his comfort until he knew it was gone.
Adrian tried his best to forget about the events of that morning, but it stayed firm in his mind, no matter what he did. His parents had gone out for a quick errand, not to be longer than 35 minutes, and had left Adrian on his own. This was one of the first times they had ever left him alone, and as such had set some ground rules before they left.
First of all, don’t answer the door for anybody you don’t know. This one seemed pretty simple and understandable to Adrian, why would he let someone in that he didn’t know? As far as he was concerned, they should be much more concerned about whatever had already managed to get inside the house than those that hadn’t yet crossed that threshold.
Second, if anything went wrong or he needed help, call them immediately from one of the many landline phones that dotted the rooms of the house. Again, this one was quite obvious to Adrian. He would call for mommy and daddy if they were in the house and he were in trouble, so it simply followed that he would do the same if they were no longer in the home.
And finally, don’t go outside when they’re out. Now, this one Adrian didn’t really understand. What if he had wanted to go outside to play? His parents had wanted him to be an active child and to go outside frequently, why did that suddenly change when they were gone? It made no sense to him. He didn’t understand why adults were so easily able to change their opinions and thoughts. That being said, Adrian was a good child, so he obeyed regardless. No reason to get punished over something as small as not being able to go outside for less than an hour.
Adrian presently sat in the back of the upstairs entertainment room, what his parents and him affectionately referred to as the “playroom”, that sat almost directly across from his bedroom, separated only by a staircase. He was playing with his vast collection of LEGO, building whatever he fancied out of the tiny little bricks. While building, Adrian pondered what the rest of the creature that the tentacle was attached to looked like. It wasn’t like an octopus tentacle, if anything it was more so a tendril, a smooth, round, green appendage. Adrian couldn’t think of any animals that he knew with appendages like that, save for things with tails, but none of the animals he knew with mammalian tails were green. No matter how much he wracked his brain, Adrian could not think of any animal that could have that kind of appendage.
“But this thing is a monster,” thought Adrian, “so it may not be any animal I could ever think of.” Adrian began to get into his mind, thinking and thinking more of whatsoever the monster’s true form could be. He was so in his head, he didn’t pay much mind to the soft aroma of lilacs that curiously began to hit his nostrils yet again. A low, droning sound of slithering and sliding along carpet became apparent to him, although again, his postulating on the nature and form of the creature made it only a passing observation to him. But then there was something that caught his attention. The wet, slimy, mucusy sound of lips parting mixed with the sound of someone splitting a celery stalk right down the grain assaulted his ears with an intensity and voracity so strong he could not ignore it, even through his imagining. The sound came from the direction of the staircase, and as such Adrian turned to look at what caused the noise, but when he looked at the staircase, he saw nothing.
Adrian couldn’t shake the fear that had gripped him earlier this morning anymore. The monster must have been getting bolder, more confident in what it could do to play tricks on Adrian, to play with its food. At this point, Adrian considered calling his parents and telling them he just heard a monster, but he stopped himself. If he called his parents home now, what if the monster grabbed them, and ate them before him? He just couldn’t bear the thought of sentencing his parents to their doom as well. And so, he just stayed there, and waited, praying that his parents wouldn’t return before the monster went away.
Every second felt like minutes, each minute an hour, Adrian could do nothing but sit and wait for the monster to return. For the first time he could think of, he wanted more than ever to smell that monster’s chilling lilac scent again, at least then it would be retreating. At least then his parents would be safe.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the lilacs taunted Adrian once again. He looked with courageous fear at the stairwell, waiting to see the monster crest its way over the dividing wall that separated him from it. He heard the slithering, the disgusting sound of mucus and celery, but saw nothing. Either the monster was smaller and laid closer to the floor than he had thought, or it was clever. Maybe it knew Adrian heard it, knew that Adrian was waiting to see its unknown, amorphous form that could only truly be in his head, and crouched and slithered to taunt him, to let him know I’m as smart as you are.
Adrian heard the garage door opening below him. At the same moment, he heard as the slithering on the carpet became quicker. And then it was gone, but the lilac scent still lingered.
The door chime rang.
“Adrian! We’re-” Clay yelled, before catching himself as he looked at the ground in front of him, grocery bags in hand. Hadn’t he told Adrian not to go outside? He and his wife hadn’t asked much of Adrian, why did he find now of all times the perfect time to go outside, the one time he wasn’t allowed to?
“Adrian!” This time was more forceful, more disciplinary. “Get your ass down here right now!” as the words left his mouth, he wondered to himself if he really should have used that language. Of course he was angry, but was he really ass angry? Nevermind that, it had already been said, there was no taking it back now.
Adrian heard his father’s yell, and with confusion at his anger, got up and started to walk to the stairs. As he stepped on the white carpet before the stairs with his bare feet, he was struck by a sense of confusion brought on by two separate things. First of all, the lilac scent grew ever-stronger. Second of all, where he stepped, there was a sort of sticky, white liquid, with the consistency of maple syrup that had soaked into the carpet, and was currently attaching to the sole of his foot and seeping between his little toes.
“Adrian! Get down here this instant!” his father yelled from below.
Adrian was in no hurry though, he was confused and intrigued by the substance he now stepped in. Sticking his finger into it, he raised it to his nose and smelled it. The pungent smell of lilac ripped through his brain like it never had before, with an intensity and viciousness that could never be matched to him. With the blissful ignorance of a child, he then touched his finger to his tongue to taste it. His taste buds registered the taste of that same lilac scent. It was almost like a lilac syrup that the monster left behind.
“Adrian, I’m not gonna ask again, get down here or so help me God!”
Adrian finally rushed down the stairs, his feet still sticky from the syrup. As soon as he got downstairs, he was met by his father’s face.
“I thought I told you not to go outside while we were gone, Adrian.” This he said with more love and understanding than the yelling.
“You did! I didn’t go outside! I was in the playroom the whole time!” Adrian answered with childlike innocence and confusion.
“Then why is there dirt all over the house?” his father was raising in volume, clearly being more upset than his first question.
“I… I don’t know!” Adrian stammered out. “There… there was a monster and… and it…”
“Adrian, there wasn’t a monster! Monsters don’t exist, no one else was in this house but you when we were gone, right?”
Adrian began to tear up. “I promise I didn’t do it, Dad! It wasn’t me!” he said through sobs now.
“Adrian, if you didn’t do it, who else did? It couldn’t have been a monster, Adrian, who did it? You were the only one here!” Adrian’s father’s patience had waned and met the end of its rope.
“Dad, please, it wasn’t…”
“You’re grounded for the rest of the night, Adrian.”
Adrian’s heart was gripped by fear as he realized that, until tomorrow, he would be stuck in his room with that. Thing.
It had been 7 hours since Adrian had been left alone in his room, and in this time the creature had laid in silent wait. The smell of lilacs now showed its true face to Adrian. He finally understood. It wasn’t the scent of the monster. It was a lure. It was meant to lull its prey into a false sense of security, begging them to approach the source of the saccharine aroma. This creature had to be a predator, had to be a hunter laying down traps, it was the only explanation that made sense to Adrian.
While laying in bed, Adrian could barely see more than the bare outlines of the objects in his room, the dresser drawers in front of his bed, the odd, sloping wall that defined his closet, the two doors that led out of his room, one to a bathroom, one to the hallway that he saw the monster leave from earlier in the day. Fully under the covers at this point, Adrian was slightly shaking and shivering, despite being amply warm. His eyes stayed locked onto the closet door, prepared to not let this demon catch him off guard.
The lilac lure began to become more clear, trying to pull him towards the door, but he refused, and stayed planted in bed under his covers. Adrian’s eyes widened as he watched the closet door inch slowly open, a crab-like claw affixed to the end of one of the tendrils curling out from the entrance of the door and around the edge of the doorframe. The tendril soon revealed the body that it was attached to, displaying that what Adrian thought were tentacles were something much more odd. Adrian saw that these tendrils were what looked like vines and stems, covered in white sap and mucus, all intertwined into a horrendous bramble of a body, leaving four vines dropping down to the floor to act as something akin to legs, as well as two vines reaching out and moving on their own as arms, ended with the crab-like claws. But this was nothing compared to what made up the head of this creature. The creature’s head was the mouth of a venus flytrap, mucus stringing between the two pads that layered on the inside of the outer-shell. Affixed within the bottom of the inside of the flytrap, was a singular, human-head sized eye, with a vertical eyelid made of a green, wrinkled, skin-like material. This eye affixed itself onto Adrian in his bed, as the horrible creature slithered its way over to its foot. Turning to him, the creature thrust out a claw towards Adrian’s face, stopping around a foot away from it. With the odd sensuality of a predator who has its prey cornered, it drew the claw down the length of Adrian’s leg.
Adrian stayed laying in his bed, frozen in fear, as the monster’s head opened and shut with the same horrendous sound and ferocity that he had only heard for the first time earlier today.
The morning came in with a distinct lack of weight. It being a school day, Adrian needed to be up early in the morning, so his mother went to wake him up so he could eat breakfast. Clay was awoken suddenly when he heard the terrifyingly loud screams of agony that left his wife’s mouth from the other side of the house. Jumping up from the bed, he rushed to Adrian’s room where his wife was sobbing in pain. Entering the room, he noticed two things.
The smell of lilacs was gone.
And so was his son.
Squirm
The withdrawals come to me in waves. Rolling, anxiety-ridden waves, crashing into me, making my skin crawl. This house no longer seems to be my own, its once warm-tinted beige walls being replaced by an unctuous tinge of green and navy blue. My now ochre (previously bluish-gray) couch sits beside a small, sticky-from-countless-spilled-drinks side table with an adequately sized lamp atop it. The brown (I think it’s always been that color) coffee table that lays in front of it is covered in used dishes and unread magazines. The amount of days that have passed by since I last took it is as much a mystery to me as to a stranger. My clock stopped working years ago, and I have yet to work up the energy to set it again. I will get to it. Some day, that clock will be right again. But that day is not today.
I wish I could peel off my skin right now. Honestly that sensation sounds more pleasant than the one I currently experience. Like a hundred, tiny, skittering little bugs all creeping just beneath the dermal layer of my skin, it pulls at my very psyche, each little imagined legs’ step reminding me that if I just took it, then this misery will all be over. But I can’t depend on it anymore, I can’t keep on living that life. Going to the pharmacy is just another task that I need to do, another chore that needs to be done, another nagging anxiety to cripple me with panic until I can no longer do it that day. Until the next day, when the cycle begins anew. Even if I wanted to take them, I couldn’t. I ran out, days ago. Or was it months? The days all seem to flow together in a torrent of anxious mundanity. Every day consists of me watching this place fall into disrepair, knowing I should clean it up, bring it back to its former glory, then never doing anything with this knowledge.
Sitting on my couch, the stench of death and decay hanging in the air (from where it comes, I know not), I watch whatever may happen to be airing on my film-covered television’s one working channel at some time hours after sundown. I felt a slight wriggling in the back of my right hand, not dissimilar to the skin-crawling sensation I’ve been feeling for the past however long it has been. But this is different. This feels like my skin is being stretched, and moved around. A sharp pain shoots into the nerves on the back of my hand. A closer inspection by touch reveals what feels like a writhing mass. The pain insists, gnawing at my hand. I rush to turn on the lamp next to me. The textured knob twists and twists, but the persistent clicks that come from the turns yield no light. I feel like the pores of my hand are being forced open, a persistent, violent, anchored push against my skin. In a panic, I quickly run up to the still on television, a blinding white ad for Cymbalta playing. In the light, I watch in pained horror, as through the back of my hand, that terrific, wriggling mass emerges through my skin. With my unaffected hand, without a second thought, I grip this mass with my thumb and forefinger, and pull on it as hard as I can. A blinding, searing pain rips through my nerves as this object is removed from my hand.
Still gripping the mass between my thumb and forefinger, I hold it up in the light of the television. As I lay my eyes upon the creature that I currently held, a distinct pang of nausea hits my stomach. If you throw up, you’ll have to clean it up later. The thought quiets my uneasy stomach, but does nothing to quell my uneasy mind. In my grasp, from my own body, still moving, and dripping with my blood, was a singular, writhing maggot. Blood gets flung across the room with its movement. The hole from whence it came oozed with the same ruby liquid, which then proceeded to flow down my hand, and pour down onto the carpet to join the other mystery stains upon it. In my shock at seeing the grub that still writhed between my fingers, however, I barely even noticed.
It’s amazing how given enough time, even the most unpleasant sensations can become scarily mundane. It has to have been days, maybe even weeks by this point, where I have felt this writhing unease seemingly spread through my body. It’s become nothing more than another withdrawal symptom to me. I’ve become acutely aware of the buzzing of flies around this God-forsaken apartment. Regardless of how normal the sensation has become, I can’t help but think that to them, I’ve become that of a pincushion for their young, a ripe, decaying bed for them to feast on.
The necessity of going to visit a doctor is not lost on me, but despite that knowledge I find an odd difficulty in actually acting upon it. Who’s to say they even believe me that I’ve become a womb for these insectoid beasts. Who’s to say that when I go, all they speak to me becomes nothing more than doubts and questions?
“Have you been taking your medication? What you’re describing sounds much like the symptoms of withdrawal of this one, or possibly a result itself of letting your mind run as itself without anything to reel it back into reality.” They’d say. I’m not crazy. Yes, maybe taking my medication would possibly quell my current panic and fear over my situation, but the fact of the matter is that I have become infested. Horribly, horribly infested by these terrible worms that undoubtedly feast of my flesh like a child to her mother’s teat.
The flies seem almost deafening, swirling around my overflowing trash. God, why did they think I could handle being on my own? Why did they trust me to fend for myself when they know oh so well how horribly irresponsible I was! Now I live in this horrid sty of my own making, a hell of personal responsibilities I was never prepared for, and expected to understand and take them all on when before I had them I could hardly take care of myself when my only worries were eating and sleeping. Now, expected to fend for myself, I sit surrounded by my incapabilities. My carpet of mystery stains, my furniture that has become filmy and discolored, my utter lack of ability to even remember to feed myself. My sink, piled full of dirty dishes, the pantry full of rotting and stale food, the piles of dirty clothes that only cease to grow due to my constant re-wearing of the same weeks-old garments. My hair, growing greasy and stiff, my teeth slowly becoming rotten and black, my body’s horrendous odor only covered by the ever-present stench of death and decay that fills this horrible apartment. The deafening buzzing of the flies only serves as a reminder of my own personal failures. Maybe I do deserve to rot like this.
Faint swirls of light make their way through my time and grime tinted windows. It must have been some time near mid-day, as this is the only time that the light that streams through the window communicates more than that of the pale moonlight. I don’t know how long it has been since I’ve slept. The crawling grubs throughout my skin have made sure that I get as little sleep as possible. I can’t risk the danger of leaving my body open to becoming an egg-sac to even more of the flies. I can feel them pushing against my skin. I’ve become used to the crawling sensation as just another part of the misery that envelops me, but they had been so kind as to not attempt to escape me as that first writhing maggot had. It appears I took their kindness for granted.
The distant siren-song of sleep calls to me. I can’t help but hear its melody.
The hours pass and the fight becomes more and more intense to keep my eyelids from shutting. Surely if I just keep up the fight it will go away and I’ll be safe for longer. I’ve never been known as one to fight back, though.
Fuck.
How long was I out? The sun is no longer out, I’ve either slept for six hours or 30, if I’m being as generous to myself as I can be. I roll around, falling off the couch and smacking my head on the coffee table in front of me. Blood seeps from my temple, but I barely even notice at first. The first thing I notice is the distinct squish of undoubtedly hundreds of maggots being crushed under my body weight. The shock of hitting my head then falling to the floor, and all my weight ramming into my right shoulder on the thankfully carpeted ground was enough to jolt me awake. As I bolt up from the ground to stand, I feel the warm liquid streaming down the side of my face. I can hear the flies again, but now, they’re closer. Are they..?
I feel a tickle inside my ear accompanied by the ear-splitting buzz. I let my guard down. They’re inside of me. I lost. They’re inside of me. I can’t swat them away, I can’t expel them, I can’t do anything to stop them from using my still-walking-corpse as a feeding ground, THEY’RE INSIDE OF ME!
And suddenly, The buzzing disappears. It doesn’t gradually go away, it doesn’t fade, it just. Stops. I feel a wriggle in the back of my right hand. Without a single thought, I scratch at the horrible itch it creates. I can’t stand it anymore, no matter how familiar with the feeling I’ve become, it’s just too much. I feel my nails dig into the unfamiliarly squishy flesh, and before I fully recognize what I’ve just done, I scratch that itch. I feel the visceral pain as my skin easily separates from my body. I see the back of my hand, and as if instinctually, I puke.
My tendons are exposed, as my hand curls in pain I see them move. Blood-drenched grubs crawled and inched around within the disheveled flesh that the tendons gripped onto desperately. What used to be muscle now looked more akin to something like ground beef. They seemed to burrow and swim in the crumpled muscle, like worms through dirt. The surrounding skin began to pop and open as the maggots pushed through the decaying leather. With a mixture of awe and horror, I watched them emerge and then re-enter like dolphins jumping from the waves. Inconceivable pain shooting up my arm, I furiously grabbed at every maggot I could, hoping this desperate attempt may finally rid my body of these creatures. I know that it’s a foolish endeavor, I know by this point I’m too far gone to expect to be able to escape. I am nothing but a host for these parasites.
My body is no longer my own. I don’t know how much longer I truly have left before I just keel over and die. Maybe I won’t, maybe they’ll leave my brain and vital organs alone and just leave me as a small husk of my former self. I’d rather they kill me, but I have no further choice in the matter. I am at the mercy of them.
There’s barely anything left of my right arm now, save for the pure minimum I need to still use it, only strips of muscle, tendons, and bone. I’ve given up on expelling these demons from my body. I no longer know if the ever-present stench of death that surrounds me is from my home or from my own decomposing body. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, the consumption is at an agonizingly slow pace. I still live yet, and the maggots have stayed localized to my limbs. I can tell they are slowly becoming impatient, though. Aside from the fly that flew into my ear, I haven’t felt anything outside of my arms yet. But I venture to guess it won’t be long before I do.
Looking around my apartment, I began to feel angry. I did this to myself, didn’t I? Sure, I didn’t put the grubs inside my body myself, but I can’t help but think about the moon-lit disaster that surrounds me. My infestation was nothing more than a symptom of a larger problem. The piled dishes in the sink, The unwashed clothes, the un-set clock, it was all me, wasn’t it? I let it get like this. My passivity allowed me to get walked over by even my own self. This mess was at the very core of it, my fault. I don’t like that. I don’t like any of this, but I especially hate that there really is no one to blame it on other than me. I didn’t reach out for help, I didn’t do anything to stop it. I just watched as I let myself collapse. And it led me straight to my death march. I can’t fix that. But I can fix everything else, maybe? I can try, at the very least.
I march over to my laundry cabinet(cruelly enough the only place I’d managed to keep clean and organized, on account of me never opening it), and grab a rag and whichever cleaning product looks like it’ll do the most against the strong grime that pervades this entire place, and I get to work. First order of business is windows. Then I move on to non-fabric surfaces. Then on to cleaning the carpets. I used a vacuum cleaner, which didn’t do much, but it felt good just to try. Even as I could feel those infernal worms inching into my torso, crawling down and up to pick at the rest of my body, I kept at it. I’m not going to let them take even my smallest victories from me. I won’t let them win, even if in some way they already had. From this point on, I’m going to fight for every win I can get against these horrible, incurable parasites. I look out one of the now clean windows, and see the sun, for the first time in what seems like years, high in the sky. I gaze at my work. It’s still a fucking mess, but it’s better. It’s a step in the right direction that I haven’t been able to make for God knows how long. There’s just one last thing I need to do, while the sun is still at its highest point in the sky. Someday, that clock will be right again. Today is that day.
I’m not ready to die yet. Not now. I’m not ready to stop getting those small victories. The rooms have gotten cleaner, and I finally have the want to improve. But even still, the inevitability of my coming death looms over me. I can’t seem to shake it, but I somehow know. It’s over. I’ve won and yet, I can’t live to hold on to that victory. They’ve begun to gnaw at my stomach, devouring my innards. I’d like to think I’ve come to peace with it. I know that’s a lie, though. My organs can only be food for so long before they fail me.
I feel the wriggling in my face now. I go to the bathroom mirror, and look upon my sunken face. There are patches of skin that are now missing, I can see some of the maggots swirling around in the patches. I no longer am horrified by this. It has become normal. It has become my life. It has become my death. I see a wriggle from under my eyelid. I already know what to expect, but I still am hesitant to pull at my eyelid. Because that would make the end real. I don’t know how to confront it. I don’t want to, I don’t want to accept that I won’t be alive soon. If they’ve made it to my eyes they’ve made it to my brain. And that’s too much for me.
The skin of my cheek stretches and pulls around my fingertips, and my eyelid pulls down in turn. Reflected back at me, I see what I know all too well is what means the end is coming. A single maggot starts squirming to escape my eyelid, now revealed. One last time, I recoil in a final fit of unready terror. I start to feel my thoughts become foggy. My life doesn’t flash before my eyes because they’ve already taken the memory center.
It.
All.
Goes.
Dark.
Like Clockwork
Waking up today felt… different; like a television that had stopped working, only for somebody to slam their fist down on it, suddenly jolting the aching cathode ray tubes awake against the will of their death throes. The pills hadn’t worked. Hell, I didn’t even feel groggy; not even an ounce of nausea coursed through my veins. Maybe 40 or so Benadryl just wasn’t enough. Even if that was the case, you’d think I would’ve felt something, anything, from that much. But alas, here I am; alive and awake, on a morning where neither was expected.
The gentle, insistent tick tick tick of my clock almost mocks me, letting me know that time is still passing, that I am still here.
“Tick tick tick, your time isn’t up yet.” It seems to say, “Can you even kill yourself properly tick tick tick?” I can’t tell whether the voice I’m hearing is the one in my head or not. It seems so… real. So viscerally there. Those words ring true in my ears, regardless of the actual presence of them.
In spite of the looming words, I try to pull myself out of bed. Like a woman possessed, I rise from my deathbed in stiff, mechanical movements.
The clock stares down at me from the wall, a reptilian eye piercing my atrophying soul, making clicking ticking threats to me. And yet, in its pendulum's steadily slowing swinging I find an odd kinship. My mind will keep on moving until my heart’s beat slows to a crawl, or until somebody opens my chest cavity and stills my being with a firm and steady grip.
Tick tick tick.
Swing swing swing.
Thump thump thump.
Away from my room, divorced from the sound of the clock, I find that the ticking has not stopped. The faint tick tick tick seems to be coming from no place in particular, as if every single point in the surrounding area is emitting the noise in unison. Across the kitchen island sits my mother, unbothered.
“Do you hear that?” My voice comes out soft and meek as I pull out a package of microwave bacon.
Mom’s paradoxically soft but gravelly voice cuts deeper into my psyche than the tick or stare of the clock ever could. “Speak up, you sound like a girl.” I’m not sure which hurts more, the words that exited her mouth, or the fact that she chose to say it to me despite there being absolutely no way she couldn’t hear what I said. Her refusal to acknowledge the question is intentional, and she knows I know that. I think she takes joy from the idea.
Making my voice more masculine and loud, I restate myself. “Do you hear that?” When the words leave my lips they instantly feel wrong. My question, from my mouth, with the voice of someone else.
“Hear what?” Her denial lacks any hint of resent, being taken over by pure confusion. She genuinely doesn’t know. She can’t hear it, she can’t feel it softly vibrating her skeletal system with each tick.
“I… don’t know.” I can feel it. The sound is real. Why can’t she hear it? And for that matter, why can I? What is so special that is letting me hear this?
I put the bacon into the microwave, the cold package smooth against the tips of my still living fingers. The disappointment of the failed suicide attempt had largely subsided, having been replaced by numb anger at my current life. At the uncaring wench who decided to become my mother.
Around and around the bacon spins, illuminated by a tiny yellow bulb. The turntable twists with mechanical smoothness. The wheels roll around, spinning, spinning, never going anywhere, moving in circles. Always ending exactly where they started. Never letting the glass turntable escape its radioactive cage. At least the radiation doesn’t hurt the glass.
I stand, transfixed by the rotating glass as the minutes tick down.
“Watching it ain’t gonna get it done faster.”
“I know, it’s just the—”
“Why don’t you do something productive to pass your time instead?”
One minute left on the timer.
I feel every second.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I’m in the basement, hiding in a curled ball in the closet. It’s safe down here, it’s quiet. At least usually it is, but the ticking followed me here, too. Regardless, here I’m protected. No ridicule, no ocular clock, no mom. Just me and my thoughts and the soft, steady tick. Its volume hadn’t changed, neither had its direction, although it was much easier to ignore once it had to fight against the sounds of my stifled sobs. I’m not quite sure why I’m crying, only that I am. It feels—right. Like what I’m supposed to be doing. I wish I understood myself more. Understood why I did things like I do. Why I keep wanting to hurt myself. I wonder if I ever will understand.
My breath feels hot against my tear-soaked knees, it now growing ragged and desperate. The ticking, increasing in volume and tempo, mirrors the pace of my own heart. My mind is overcome with an inescapable sense of overwhelming dread. The ball I am uncurls and widens. I need space, I need room. It’s hot in here, the closet is small, breathe in breathe out, your gasps too small to take in air. Short of breath, hard to breathe, help help help help help me PLEASE, how do you suffocate in open air? Hell hell hell I am in hell; the ticking is insistent, relentless it won’t fucking stop tick tick tick tick tick tick shut up shut up SHUT UP! I want to scream, to yell, but can’t, my lungs don’t have the air. My hands go to my chest, as if to force myself to breathe properly.
I feel my heart.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
My hand vibrates hard with each one.
My breathing calms.
My heart tick slows.
Sitting silently on my bed, I find myself in a state of calm yet horrified understanding. The steady ticking of my heart now sings with the clock in cardial harmony. The ticking serves to calm me, to reassure me of who I am. The vibrations that travel through my chest into my hand, down and up around my elbows, and circle back around serve to root me; grounding the newfound electricity that now pulses through my being. For one of the first times in my life, death doesn’t seem appealing.
Alive. I finally feel alive. The tick tick ticking of gears in my chest is freedom. For once I feel like I have even the slimmest, smallest clue of who I am. Of why I am the way I am. But even with that, something still feels like it’s missing. Within my mechanical heart, there is still a distinctly motherly-love-shaped hole.
Maybe if I told her, If I let her know that I finally figured out who I am, then she would realize I am my own person. Maybe she’ll finally see me for me.
“You’re still my son.” were the first words to exit her lips. Just as bitingly simple and cruel as anything else she’d ever said to me. “You’re still my son.” But I’m not, am I? Maybe I never was, and maybe that’s okay.
I want to yell, to scream, to push back against her. Scream that “Maybe I’ve always been like this, and the way you see and raised me never let me even consider there was any other option! I’ve spent so long being unhappy forcing myself to be your perfect daughter because you’ve made it clear that that’s the only thing you would ever accept me for! My whole life, all you’ve seen me as is a blank mannequin for you to project your regrets on! No room to grow, no space to learn, no knowledge to let me escape. I’m not a doll, Mom! Whatever the hell I am, human or automata, you still decided to be my caregiver. I’ve been bending over backwards my whole life to be your daughter, the least you could do is try to act like a mother!”
But I don’t. Instead, I grab her hand and place it right over my heart.
“Listen.” My voice leaves my mouth as soft and feminine as ever, but Mom doesn’t say a word. “Feel it. Please.”
For one of the first times in my life, I can tell what my mother is thinking. I can see it in her eyes: she can feel it.
And she.
Is.
Horrified.
She pulls back, recoiling in terror. Her next words come out stuttered and fearful.
“S-something’s wrong with you. We-we need to-to fix your, g-get you help.”
She doesn’t get it. She heard it, but she didn’t listen. I d0n’t want help. I don’t want to change. I know now that no matter what I say, she will never understand that I am finally slightly happy.
She stares at me, not as her child, but as a monster. I look back at her, tears starting to stream down my face.
“GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” She screams, accentuating each syllable by slamming her fists into the door. The door flexes with each beat, the hinges squeal, the wood screams for release.
“No…” is all I manage to sputter out through my tears. I can’t stay in my room forever. Eventually the door will break. Why does she insist on taking the only thing I have? I can’t go back to living without knowing anything about myself. My bed isn’t safe enough, nowhere, not even the basement is safe enough as long as she can get to me.
BANG BANG BANG!
“I WILL BREAK DOWN THE FUCKING DOOR!”
“Please stop…” I manage to loudly sob. She won’t listen. Asking anything of her always means she will do the opposite, spite me as much as possible. Even her daughter’s terrified sobs won’t sway her. Up until this point, Mom had never scared me. Sure, she was dismissive, and neglectful, and antagonistic, but never scary. This isn’t her trying to make me feel bad, it’s her trying to break me, trying to hurt me, and I have no avenue of escape. I’m trapped in a second story room by a woman who wants me to rip part of myself out and pretend like it never existed.
BANG BANG BANG!
Through the sobbing and the ticking and the banging I hear wooden splintering.
BANG BANG BANG!
I look up and see a foot through a splintered hole in the bottom of the door.
“MOM!” I’m shrieking now.
BANG BANG BANG!
The door’s center caves, but the lock holds.
“STOOOOOOP!” My voice is shrill and high, I’m fucking terrified.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The banging stops. I thought the pseudo-silence would give me calm, but it only makes me more scared. Why did she stop? Why did she listen? What changed? I hear a heavy sigh from the other side of the barely standing door. The most perfect, calm rage oozing from every word that she lets out.
“We’re going to the hospital. I am going to wait downstairs until you leave this tiny fucking room of yours. When you do, we are getting in the car, and leaving to get you fixed.” Each word seeps hellfire and vitriol. Not a request, not a demand, but an order.
But I don’t care.
She won’t take this from me.
Mom grabs my arm the second I’m in reach coming down the stairs. She pulls me towards the garage door, but I hold onto the banister, rooting myself in place.
“We’re going to the hospital.”
“No.” My voice comes out as feminine as ever, but this time it’s firm, the most confident I’ve ever heard it. “I’m not seeing a fucking doctor. This is part of me, mom, and I’m not going to let you take it. You may not like it, but you can’t fix what isn’t broken. Why can’t you just pretend like you give a shit about what I want for once?”
I see the anger in her eyes, each of my words seeming to chemically burn her insides. Her grip tightens harder on my arm, fingernails digging into my flesh. She’s not letting go, and she’s still pulling. I wrench my arm, trying desperately to escape her vise-grip, I won’t let her do this to me. I can’t let her. A liquid warmth pools around where her fingernails clench, shortly followed by a stabbing pain.
But I don’t quit fighting. For once in my life, I’m desperate to fight. She’s already taken enough from me. I am not getting in that fucking car. No matter how much she hurts me, no matter how much I live by, I know that getting in that car will be worse than any of it.
My flesh gives way like a zipper, exposing the muscle to the open air, but the sudden give causes her grip to loosen. A simple twist, despite causing the instruments of torture to rip in a new way, frees me. I don’t look back to see her reaction, and I don’t care to. I just run, run as fast as I can to the basement door.
Before I know it, I’m down the stairs, and into the closet. I use whatever I can to barricade the door, before crawling into the corner.
I think I hear her screaming my name from upstairs, but it’s too muffled by the walls to really be certain.
I can’t help but imagine what my life would be like given a different mother. One who let me flourish, one who let me be who I wanted to be, regardless of what she wanted. Maybe I would understand myself better, maybe every day wouldn’t feel like a chore, walking on eggshells to make sure I keep her happy, only for it to not matter. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting in a basement closet hiding from her, for the sole purpose of keeping the tick tick ticking of my heart alive just a little bit longer. It’s gentle thrumming is the only thing to give me comfort right now.
She doesn’t realize it, maybe she never will, but taking this from me will kill me. Maybe not directly, but losing my only ounce of self-realization will end in my death. Although in that case, not much of a person would be lost. Just a hollow, unknowable husk.
The bright crimson seeps out of the gash in my arm. I try to hold the wound closed with my other hand, but it doesn’t work, the blood keeps on coming. Large drops fall onto the carpet, hugging each fiber’s curves before bleeding into them. My tears do the same. I don’t want to die, not like this, not now, bleeding out in the basement closet of a woman I hate before I ever got to escape her and experience the rest of the world. I could’ve made friends. I could’ve fallen in love. I could’ve felt the warmth of somebody, anybody who loved me. But now I may never know the beauty of those moments, all because she had to take it away from me.
I have to live. Even if it’s just to spite her, I have to stay alive. I need to live a single ounce of my life outside of this suburban cage I’m kept in. I take off my shirt, and start biting at the threads halfway down it. I just need a big enough hole to start tearing it. The threads start to snap between my teeth. My vision is starting to blur.
Please. Just stay awake a little bit longer.
Mom is still shouting unintelligibly. A hole forms. I move the shirt so the bottom seam is in my mouth, and put two fingers from my good arm into the hole I’ve made. I pull. The shirt starts to separate. My eyes want so desperately to close, forcing themselves down, but I force them back in return. I liberate the bottom of the shirt from its upper half. My heart continues to tick, desperate to circulate blood, not realizing that in its attempts to keep me alive, it only kills me faster. I start to pull at the seam that joins the lower loop of fabric that used to be my shirt to itself. The stitches slip out of their place. All that's left is to… to…
No. Wrap it around your arm, hun. You’re so close.
I start to wrap the wound. My vision is blurring, like the camera shutter of my eyes are closing in slow motion. The cloth makes tight, concentric circles. I just need to pass the end back under thetttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
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Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
My eyes flutter open. I feel like a television that had stopped working, only for somebody to slam their fist down on it, suddenly jolting the aching cathode ray tubes awake against the will of their death throes. The make-shift bandages worked. Sure, I feel loopy, and barely conscious, but I’m still alive. A fact that would’ve disappointed me any day before today. I don’t care that my back is soaked in blood, or about the vile, brackish black-brown stain permanently etched into the carpet. I’m still here, at a time that I never expected to be.
I can’t hear mom’s muffled screams anymore. Maybe she gave up. I hope she did. I get up, putting on what is left of my shirt before opening the closet door. I stumble out, still feeling light headed. The room feels like it’s spinning around me, but I think I’ll be able to stay conscious.
At least for the time being.
My hands trace the wall, slowly guiding the rest of my emaciated body to the stairs. I’m barely in control of my own movements, a side effect of the lack of oxygenated blood entering my brain. I can feel my consciousness returning to me. A small circle of clarity gradually radiating through my blurred vision here, a steady step there. My brain is still foggy, but I need to at least get to the ground floor. I need to know if mom is still waiting for me. If I still need to hide.
But first I need to get up the stairs. The first step I take, I miss the stair entirely, while my opposite leg decides to give out. Out of instinct, my arms shoot out in front of me. A pain rips through the one that’s been lacerated, before it too, gives out. The searing pain threatens to make me pass out again, the small circle of clarity in my vision instantly shrinking to a miniscule size. I fight it. I will live.
I start using my good arm to pull myself up onto the next steps. The strain doesn’t help my body in its current state of atrophy, but anything is better than death.
Twelve steps to go.
Seven.
Three.
Two.
One.
Once at the top of the stairs, I get myself up off the ground and back onto my feet, still unsteady, but much easier to maintain on flat ground than a crawl. My hand yet again finds the wall, which I use to guide myself to the kitchen. With the much lighter task my body has been given, my vision begins to clear up again. There’s a small square of paper sitting on the kitchen counter. Upon closer inspection, it’s a note.
“I went out to the store to buy some ingredients for dinner. We’ll talk about this once we’ve eaten.
-Mom”
-Mom”
A sigh of relief escapes my pale lips. Freedom, for a small moment, freedom.
I hear the door open, and the respite leaves my body.
Mom walks in with grocery bags in each hand.
“What are you doing just standing there? Help me get them out of the car!” Her voice cuts me harder than usual. She doesn’t even mention my arm.
But I listen, my brain still too foggy to think for itself, and walk out to the garage. I hear mom set down the bags with a metal and plastic clatter.
There are three bags left in the car, and I grab two with my good hand, and start to walk back. Mom stands towering in the doorway.
“You too good to use both your hands?”
I know she won’t move until I do.
Mom told me I wasn’t to go anywhere other than the living room, so she could keep an eye on me while cooking. One of the two bags she brought in still sits undisturbed on the countertop. The food smells good, though. For some reason, she decided we were going to have beef wellington tonight. It feels too fancy, too much effort when we’re fighting. I can’t get myself to look at her, though. It hurts too much. So I just watch the blank television screen, and listen to the sounds.
A can crinkles open. My heart ticks. My arm throbs. Bringing in the extra bag with it had caused a small part of what had healed of it to tear back open.
Why beef wellington? Why did she want to try for me, for once? Why wasn’t she yelling at me right now, screaming at me to get into the car so we could go to the hospital? Why put in the effort?
Mom had never taught me exactly the process of how to cook anything. It was one of the ways she made sure I would never be independent. I can barely feed myself, how would I live on my own? Her solution was to not prepare me. All I know about the dish she’s making now is that it’s time consuming and expensive.
A plastic lid is unscrewed. The tick pulses. My mind wanders. She said we’d talk after dinner. About what? She never has listened to me and never will. I don’t know what she hopes to achieve by just telling me again and again we need to get me help. It wouldn’t be a discussion, it would be a lecture at best.
The blood that soaked my back during my blackout has crusted and began to flake, covering the couch in flecks of sanguine black. The light gray fabric is muddied by the flecks, clouding its bright possibilities with restrictive realities.
A clove of garlic smashed. Something dry gets crushed. The grandfather clock against the wall ticks. A single chime warns of the coming hour’s end. Only thirty minutes left.
The life I haven’t gotten to live flashes before me. Happy birthdays, hugs from mom. Playing basketball with friends I’ll never know from the school I never went to.
The gentle, rhythmic thack of a knife against a cutting board. Slicing a whole into small, easily manipulated pieces. Permanently separating it from itself.
I see the life I will get to live. The one I’ll get the second I’m free from her. Friends who accept me for whatever I am. People I can share my life with. A girlfriend, maybe. My mother so far away she couldn’t get to me if she tried. A child that gets to live their life, with a mother that loves them no matter what, regardless of the example that was set for her.
The noises stop with a closed oven. My thoughts stop with them.
“Hey!”
I turn around to look at her. The plastic bag is gone.
“Dinner will be ready in 20 minutes. Set the table and get ready to eat.”
I can’t bear to look at her, yet I’m forced to. She just had to sit across from me. She peels the puff pastry off of the wellington with her fork. Picking it apart. Looking for the flaws she can exploit. She scrapes off the filling around the steak. Scraping away anything she doesn’t like, that doesn’t suit her. Making it perfect in her eyes. She cuts away the edge of the steak, trimming off what she sees as unimportant.
“Are you just going to sit there and stare, or are you going to eat?”
I get a bite with every aspect, to taste each flavor as it was meant to be tasted. The savory flavor of the steak with the buttery flake of the puff pastry, and of course the earthy that separates them. It tastes wrong. The tastes are undercut by a severe bitterness that overwhelms my senses. I don’t let mom see how much I hate how it tastes. It would probably only make it worse. I push through the bitterness.
Mom hasn’t touched her puff pastry. Or the mushroom layer. Only bites of steak from the center. Why would she go through the effort of making all this just to only eat a small part of it?
“Do you not like it? It’s been a while since you’ve had your last bite.”
“No, it’s great.” I manage to choke out. I’ve never been a convincing liar. Mom stares daggers into my soul. I force myself to eat another bite. It’s just as, if not more bitter than the last one. I keep on going. One bite after the other, bitter, bitter, bitter.
I start to feel my heart tick slow.
“Mom, can we just talk about…” A yawn interrupts me. My eyes start to force closed. My muscles begin to relax. I can’t seem to keep my head up.
“I’m sorry, hun.”
I know she’s n—
From the second my eyes open, I feel a searing pain running down my chest in a line, accompanied by an emptiness I have never before felt. My mom is looking down at me. I can see the terror filling her eyes even more than when I first told her. The pain is becoming unbearable. I have to know what’s causing it. My eyes shift down to the source of the pain.
My eyes grow wide.
An incision almost a foot and a half long runs down the center of my torso. The skin and flesh have been pulled open like an old coin purse. I can see into my chest cavity, and now know it is where my mother’s gaze lies. Directly focused on where my heart is. The scalpel is still in her hand.
I can’t help but cry as my blood slowly leaves my body.
I watch helplessly as mom reaches into my chest, and grabs where my heart is. When her hand retracts, it is holding not a heart, but a fist-sized box of gears and mechanisms of brass. Her hands shake as the veins and arteries that feed into the box slowly de-couple from their fittings, spraying more blood over my mother’s already viscera covered hands. I hear the tick of the box start to slow. The one thing that I understood about myself. I try to scream, to say anything to her about how she’s killed her daughter. But in my mix of sorrow and heartbreak at seeing the woman who was supposed to love and care and provide for me holding the essence of my life in her hands, I can only let out a single word before I fade away.
Tick.
Tick…
“Mom…?”
Gaea’s Womb
The walls of the tight squeeze dug into his body as he shimmied and pushed his way along its narrow passage. The biting chill that ran through his nervous system had nothing to do with the depth or claustrophobic nature of what the caving community affectionately referred to as the Birth Canal, but rather the slightly damp stone that made up the squeezing passageway. The Birth Canal sat comfortable at three-hundred fifty meters below the surface. Coming up upon an even narrower part of the canal, he expelled all the air from his lungs, and pushed forward, gritting his teeth as his ribs scraped against the limestone below him and his spine pulled across the roof above. Looking ahead of himself, he could see what looked like the exit of the Birth Canal. His headlamp had stopped lighting up any surrounding walls somewhere around 2 meters in front of him, only ending in an inky blackness, twinkling with small, shimmering lights.
Unconsciously, he took in a breath. With the inflation of his lungs, he felt as his body lodged itself tightly into the space he had pulled himself into. He didn’t panic, though. He instead stayed calm and after taking in this breath, slowly and easily let it back out, and felt as his body loosened away from the walls of the cave just enough to keep going. Trudging along further, he could finally reach his arms outside of the Birth Canal. With a final, careful pull, he pushed himself outside of the passage and dropped maybe 2 feet to the ground below it. The area he had just entered was called Gaea’s Womb by the locals ⸺ most of whom were Grecian immigrants. They considered entering into it a deeply spiritual experience, getting closer to being one with nature. In the caving community, the experience had been said to be unparalleled, its walls having been smoothed by hundreds of thousands of years of water streaming down through the cavern, to an extent that seemed almost unnatural. Around the eroded cave, magnificently large crystals of quartz sprouted out in beautiful, glistening edifices that sparkled and diffused the light from a headlamp in the most beautiful way. Along with these were large, thick columns, stalactites and stalagmites joined together in a way that framed the cave to any viewer like a picture. It seemed that in the limestone of the cave were these mysteriously shimmering specks embedded into the rock face, a beautiful night sky of stars, burrowed deep beneath the earth.
All this he encountered as he entered Gaea’s Womb. What he didn’t expect to find was that about a foot to his left lied a large, inconceivable pit of black, tunneled straight down into the beautiful cavern, only leaving behind the stunning geometric pillars of quartz poking out perpendicular to the walls, but still no bottom in sight. He almost believed that he could hear a faint whispering coming from the depths.
The unease of how close he was to the drop-off moved like a wave through his cold body, before he quickly reoriented himself to explore the rest of the cave to his right. He walked further down the cavernous maw of the hollow, following the winding and wandering of the cave’s pathways. Looking down at his map, he realized that the pathways he was venturing down were not charted on it, in fact he saw no indication that the caverns he was in even existed. Of course, Gaea’s Womb was mapped and charted, but the mapping didn’t follow the pathways in the cave that he currently walked down. He hadn’t brought anyone else or told anyone where he was going. He had gotten overzealous no doubt, and was paying the price for it. Still, he tried to keep a cool head. Though the constant dripping of water from the stalactites didn’t help with that.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
He wasn’t imagining that, right? He couldn’t be! It had to be an actual, consistent drip of water falling from the stalactites. But that made no sense. The dripping was consistent, as if it was only coming from one, singular stalactite. But the other stalactites had to have water coming off of them too, right? It couldn’t just be one. And on top of that, the volume was louder than to be expected from a single drop of water dripping from the roof of a cave. It must be the walls of the cave, echoing and amplifying it, certainly it had to be! But then why wasn’t there an echo, why was there one consistent sound that had no reverberation? It didn’t make sense, it just didn’t make sense, how could it make sense when it was inherently illogical? The noise grew ever louder.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
Why was it getting louder? How could it be getting louder? He had stopped moving, hadn’t he? It was all so infinitely wrong, so ineffably strange. Was the noise even coming from the cave, or was it just sitting in his head, an auditory hallucination? It certainly seemed like it was coming not from anywhere around him, but from right next to his eardrums. All around him, the drip drip drip commanded his thoughts and bent his ear, pulling him ever closer to losing his grip on reality. But he had done this before, he wasn’t an amateur. He knew how to keep himself calm and collected, even in an admittedly bad situation. He just had to stay focused, it couldn’t get the better of him, because that could only make his situation worse.
He turned another corner, trudged forward as calmly as he could walking into yet another unmapped area of the cave. He had gone in the right direction, he should be on a charted course. At any moment he would figure out where he was, his nerves would return to him, and the dripping would stop assaulting his ears. But it never did. Each pathway was new and suffocating, no matter how wide and open the cave had been, it was never enough, it was too strangling. These pathways weren’t supposed to exist. They physically could not, they were overlaid on top of where he was supposed to be, of where the charted pathways were. It wasn’t right. He decided to press onward, though. No need to turn back. He’d kept note of where he was in the uncharted pathways, writing the ways he had turned and when. It hadn’t been his plan, but he would make the most of it. His headlamp flickered, then returned to full brightness, and he saw as the cave in front of him seemed to become closer and closer to him. A wall was coming into view, closer and closer, with an absurd pace. Instinctively, he took a step back as the cave wall came rushing towards him.
He felt his foot slip over a ledge.
A sense of weightlessness overtook him, and everything in his perception began to slow. He couldn’t catch himself, he couldn’t regain his footing. One foot had already gone off the edge, the weight bearing foot at that. The instant of realization that he’d made a mistake, perhaps a fatal one, overtook him. His eyes widened, his heart skipped beats, but no one was around to see it. Looking back in front of him, there was no wall speeding at him, there was only the opening maw of the cave he had been at around an hour ago. But how? Had he not moved an inch since he exited the Birth Canal? Did he just imagine everything that had happened to him in the past hour? The map was still in his hand, although now it was being released in slow motion. The events must have happened, they had to have!
Time began to move normally again, and the ceiling sparkled and glowed from the embedded gems being lit by his headlamp. The air rushed around his body, watching as the quartz crystals flew by his head. Falling back and back and back, watching his life flash as he fell. He felt a dull crack against his skull, a lurch forward from the impact, the loud split, before everything went black.
Pain was the first sensation that greeted him as he regained consciousness. Splitting, searing pain from the back of his skull, right arm, both legs, and the left of his torso. How he was even still alive baffled him, he had fallen at the very least 100 meters, given the length of his headlamp. He already knew the back of his skull was split open. Everything else that hurt was most likely broken.
Moving himself back to a wall to rest against, he felt the bones shift in his ribs. Raising his good arm, he pressed it into his left side, trying to feel how many were broken. The pain was excruciating, the flesh freakishly tender, but he was able to feel what felt like 3 ribs broken, somewhere between his 6th and 10th, all in a row. An attempt to move his right arm was made, but the pain was too unbearable. The broken humerus made sure of that. He assumed a transverse fracture, though he couldn’t fully know without an x-ray. Moving to look at his legs with his headlamp, he saw his right femur had snapped and pierced through his thigh about halfway up the bone. He was filled with shock at how white the exposed bone still was, despite the sizable amount of blood coming up from the wound. Looking over to his left leg, there was thankfully no visible break. He assumed that both his legs took the brunt of the force from the fall, and that his right leg only had the compound fracture because it had broken obliquely before the final impact.
After assessing his injuries, his mind stopped being analytical, and focused (as much as it could, anyways, given that his body had run through all his adrenaline while he was still unconscious) on the pit he had just fallen down. He looked up at the pit, and just as when he was at the top, he could not see its end. All that greeted him were the quartz pillars that jutted out from the perimeter of the pit, now evoking a mouth rimmed with rows and rows of crystalline needle-teeth. He didn’t have the tools to climb back out, and even if he did, he was in no physical condition to do so.
Gaea’s Womb had swallowed him, and at present he was in a cavern that looked alien in reference to the area he had previously been in. The walls of the cave had changed from limestone to a mysteriously amethyst-tinted stone, unlike any he had ever seen before, much less in a cave made up of it. The area was dotted with deposits of geometric, bismuth-like crystals of a deep violet color, each deposit being at least a meter in height, with a taper similar to that of an egg at the top and a mirror shine. The caverns and tunnels were tighter than the ones that were at the entrance of Gaea’s Womb. There were no more columns or stalactites or stalagmites framing and shaping the caverns, no more odd, glittering stars embedded into the cave’s surface. There was still the occasional quartz pillar peeking through the uncannily smooth rock face, but they seemed few and far between. In his view that currently showed him three separate tunnels laid out in front of him, he saw a total of 4 pillars, as opposed to the numerous deposits of that strange purple mirror crystal. Running the floor of the caverns were tendrils of that same purple rock that made up the walls of the cave, with an oddly bubbled and cancerous formation that seemed eerily like flesh. They grew from the rock like burls on a tree.
His ears perked up as he heard what sounded like an ethereal, genderless voice with an ounce of gravel, in a whisper. It was unintelligible, faint. It was more like sounds mimicking the patterns of human speech rather than speaking it. It was just sounds from the cave, right? It certainly had to be, nobody was down here but him. There were no ropes that lead down the esophageal tunnel he had fallen down, there was in no way anyone other than him down here. It was just the echoes of rocks and the creatures that call this place their home moving and creaking so far down the corridors of the cavern that the sounds became immeasurably distorted until they just vaguely sounded like human voices. Maybe he was just so desperate that somebody, anybody could help him that he was just looking for the sound to be a voice. After all, if you’re looking to hear something, you’ll hear it, just like a spirit box, it's just confirmation bias. But no matter how much rationalization he did, it didn’t change the fact that he was still hearing the whispering.
“Hello? Is anybody there?” He screamed with as much intensity as he could muster. Inexplicably, the unintelligible speech-forms turned into words. Slowly, methodically, it spoke with the same steady beat of the water drops.
No…
One…
His heart was gripped with a paroxysm of fear. Had the cave itself spoken to him? Surely it didn’t but who else? The voice didn’t seem to come from any one direction, it was at once all around him yet nowhere near him. If not the cave, if not himself, then who? What exactly had he heard speaking?
No…
One…
Here…
And still he sat, what more could he do? After all, the most he could do was crawl along the floor using his good arm, on his horribly shattered ribs, slowly inching further and further into the cave that he now knew he could never escape, all he could do was sit still or move forward, descend further. He decided to stay put.
His mind flashed to his mother, his father, back when he was no older than 3 years old, when he could barely think and do for himself. How they loved and cared for him, how they doted on his every whim. Flash forward now, at the ripe age of sixteen, an argument. He had gone to a party and drank, then drove home. His parents, he remembered, were rightfully mad at him for driving home drunk. He remembered being surprised by them only being angry at him for driving home, not the drinking itself. He didn’t get it back then. Now he finally fully understood. They hadn’t cared that he drank, they cared that he put his life at risk. They didn’t want to lose him. He looked at his mother, the tears streaming down from her emerald green eyes, rolling over her slightly pudgy face. Her anger was juxtaposed with relief when she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly, with the grip of a vice. His dad, too, had cried terribly, although he tried to hide it through his pride.
He was 23 now, just out of college, and had gotten a job at a magazine writing a column on cave exploring. It was a hobby he had, he had the materials, had the equipment, had the knowledge to write informative columns about it. His parents had protested when he first got into the hobby. They were scared that he would get trapped under the ground and would die, cold and alone, away from them. They didn’t quit protesting. Ever since he got the job, they had begged him to quit. But he was making good money, and the travel expenses were covered by the company, how could he say no? He loved doing it, what more could he want?
He had come here to write a piece about the beauty and local mythology of Gaea’s Womb. Everything he found in his previous research indicated the general safety of the cave as opposed to some other caves of a similar caliber. The columns were expected every month, no one would come looking for him in Gaea’s Womb for at the very least 2 weeks from now. He couldn’t even imagine how long it would take for people to look down the pit for him. This was where he would die. He was sure of it.
You..
Are…
Alone…
The whisper taunted, played with him, pulled him into despair. It sounded as though the cave struggled to make the sounds of the English language, as though it were not their native tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn that he saw the writhing, tumorous root system of purple rocks growing. Moving, impossibly so, in a horribly organic fashion it twisted. He turned to see it, but it had stopped now. Had he even seen it move? He didn’t even know anymore. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. It didn’t even truly matter. The voice was right. He was alone.
He resolved to shout, unsure of what else to do.
“Help!” but unsurprisingly, there was no one there to hear.
He… re…
You…
Are…
Mi-ine…
The last word was spoken with a sing-song pleasure that grated against his ears. What did it mean by “mine”? Who’s exactly was he? What monstrous thing did he now belong to?
“What are you?”
There was no answer. He sat there, still in horrible pain from his injuries. With his left arm, he forced his right arm up through shooting pain, and positioned it so he could look down at the wrist where he had his watch. The glass on the watch face was broken, and the hands were frozen in place, the ticking of the gears had stopped altogether.
Crrrrrrk…
His attention shifted above him as he heard that noise of shifting stones. Looking up, he saw as the vicious pit that he had fallen down was slowly moving, closing itself together like a circle vice, growing ever smaller, ever tighter, ever choking. No matter how little sense it made to him, the cave was sealing itself, closing him in. It wasn’t a cave-in, the rock was moving organically, as if by its own free will. The cave really did seem to have a mind of its own, like a geological macro-organism.
With a final shunk, the esophageal passage sealed itself completely, leaving no sign it had ever been there to begin with. He cursed, loudly, knowing no matter how hard he screamed, no one would be able to hear him. Following this was another curse, this one was softer, under-the-breath, a curse said only to oneself in utter, horrible understanding of one’s own predicament. Not a cry of agony, but a whimper of knowing despair. He knew, now, in no uncertain terms, that he was trapped. Most likely until he died. And that after that, no one would find him, much less be able to retrieve his body.
He was almost sure he saw the cave’s three passages slowly morph together into something of a hideous, malicious smile. Uncertainty was only introduced due to his possible delirium from massive blood loss. He couldn’t be sure how long it had been since he fell, how close he was to death. How long he had left.
He laughed to himself with a slight crack, marveling at his current situation. Of course this was how he would die. Found by no-one in an impossible cavern that seemed to have a hostile mind of its own, hell-bent on making sure he would never escape. It was almost cartoonishly cruel.
The cave, in a mocking echo, laughed back at the stranded man. It seemed to tease him, treat him as a dog treats a stuffed toy, thrashing his sanity to-and-fro until it broke. Reassessing his surroundings, he came to the conclusion that, yes, the previous three caverns now were only one, beautifully malignant corridor, shaped into that of the devil’s grin. The veins of the rock pulsing, the lips of the maw puffed and waiting for a new meal to pass through them, the violet mirror-teeth ready to chomp and grind. The cave was undoubtedly alive, absurdly and inexplicably so. All at once the mysticism that surrounded this place was not unfounded, the existence of a power or being beyond our comprehension was confirmed to him. Never once in his years had it seemed he would encounter something as such. But here he was, faced with the impossible, right before his wide-open eyes.
The mouth began to speak, the lips to move, the teeth to gnash. With each word the cave suffered a horrible vibration, as if the whole of the cave was acting as its vocal chords, shaking his body along with it. This time when it spoke, it was no longer in the English that he could understand. This time, it was made up of syllables and sounds that he had never before heard, but somehow was able to comprehend.
It has been quite some time since a sacrifice has been offered unto me. Our names yet be forgotten, our influence yet not.
