Fists clenched, Nick stared at the sky. His fingernails boring bloody grooves in his palms. Him standing there, shoulder blades flexed, the cables of his forearms bulging, that body big and erect like an alpha predator—he’d scare the shit out of you. His eyes reflected the sun; that whole body reflected the sun. Maybe I was still tripping, but the rays were literally spouting out of him and the wind that suddenly kicked up in the valley was an echo of the storm breaking inside him. What was standing there was no longer human. What was standing there was a Sun God. A Storm Maker. Furious. Mad. Deranged. A stranger, not my boy, not my boy.
The drone sped closer to the chalet to shoot it from a different angle. We were now fully in view to any controller with FPV goggles or a phone app, and the aircraft actually swerved a bit as if it was startled. Then it began climbing at breakneck speed.
And then. And then and then and then and then.
I heard the shriek first. Saw the flash first before I realized what was happening. A shadow eclipsing the sun. Flapping sound, like sails. Suddenly, he was there. Ethon. The Thunderbird. No, a golden eagle. It shot out of nowhere, as all birds are wont to do, and screeching, swooped down on the drone. Grand. Gracious. A bullet. Fearsome, the eagle of my nightmares.
I know it’s impossible, maybe it was the confusion of the moment, but I’d stake Nick’s mom on it that the bird had a wingspan of at least sixteen feet when, at the last second, it spread its wings and looped almost upside down to grasp the drone from below and pluck it out of the sky with outstretched talons, before the propeller could transmogrify it into a dark brown aerial pillow fight.
Poor drone didn’t know what hit it.
The clawed remains of the lens flashed in a golden shower of falling glass.
Talk about efficiency.
With the drone in its claws, the eagle flapped southward over the valley. Its triumphant screech echoed against the slopes. It climbed higher and higher and disappeared off the face of the earth beyond the mountain chain.
And me, I cheered. “Amelia fucking Earhart!” Soon as I could muster it, soon as I’d regained a smidgeon of control over my voice: “MH fucking 370! Eat that, motherfuckers!” My arms in the air, I whooped, “See that, Nick?”
But as soon as I looked at him, I knew he didn’t only see it.
He’d done it.
Like every mountain rules over its ecosystem.
Like every mountain rules over its valley.
Like every mountain rules over the weather.
Nick, he was sheer light and heat. Under those rolling muscles, his lungs pumped life into that body. Under the earth’s rolling crust they pumped life into Castle Rock. Pumped life into the valley, into the creek, into the wind, like the Maudit pumped life into Nick. He stood there, serene and elevated, indifferently determined to rise above everything, higher and higher, locked in a constant battle with the elements that wanted to bring him down. This was Nick, throwing off his civilized identity, embracing the implacable, darkly alluring force of the wilderness.
And me, this is who I was. My past and my future, full circle. My hands clawed at his face, clawed at the strips of bandage and started pulling them off like a lover’s clothes. Good or bad, I didn’t care anymore. I peeled them off him like a skin.
I had a boyfriend who’d evolved into a god . . .
And I had fallen . . . and fallen . . . and fallen . . . and fallen.
Head over heels.
The Metamorphosis
Passages from Nick Grevers’s digital diary
But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?
—Franz Kafka
1
October 28
I’m disappearing.
It happened again this morning. Had a blackout and came to in a field above the village, alone and shivering from the cold. No bandages, of course. When I got home, Sam was in a state. He’d searched for me everywhere, said I was gone for a day and a half. A day and a half. And I couldn’t recall any of it. Brushed him off, took a long, hot shower and scrubbed my mutilated face obsessively. The scars were throbbing and pulsating. It’s alive behind them. I can feel it. It’s pushing; the pressure is almost unbearable. The bandages helped some, but not much.
So started writing. Need to get my thoughts together, because time’s running out. The moments when I’m myself are getting scarcer.
Now, as I type this, I’m in a constant state of anxiety. Any minute it could strike again. I’m hypervigilant for any sudden draft, any thought that doesn’t feel like mine. Every time, the pressure seems to increase. I’m sick of it. It’s getting stronger, and if I don’t do anything about it now, soon I won’t be there anymore. But what can I do? When it comes, it hits me with the force of a hurricane and blows my consciousness into the glacier’s deepest recesses. It’s like I’ve never escaped. I’m frozen, stuck in eternal cold—till I’m suddenly myself again, somewhere, not knowing how I got there, how much time has gone by, or what I did in between. It’s awful. The total loss of control is awful . . .
And it’s good too. In some depraved manner, it’s good, and I let it happen.
It awakens urges that . . . No, I won’t write that down. But I’m not the only one who can’t resist it anymore.
Sam has gotten hooked on it.
And that’s when it really becomes dangerous.
Since that day on Castle Rock, he’s constantly setting it free. He comes up to me and starts tugging on my bandages, craving what’s behind them. Apparently, my mutilation no longer bothers him. I should be pleased, but I’m not. Because it’s not me he desires. It’s the other. He wants the wilderness. He wants the Maudit. And I try to stay away from him, say we’re playing a lethal game because its force is constantly building, but S. gets all hostile. The look in his eyes is the look of a junkie. Calculating. He sees in me only something he needs, and behind that sly face you can see him thinking how he can wheedle it out of me.
I have no idea what Sam sees when he tears off the bandages and allows himself to be overpowered by the Maudit, but it’s probably the same as when an addict shoots the needle in his vein. You know it’s a path that leads you to the abyss. You know it’s only a matter of time before you OD. But you do it anyway, because the liberation of the fix makes you forget all of that. Sam has a past of shit he’d be better off staying away from. So why am I being his dealer? Because I let it happen. The pressure behind my face gets unbearable, and then I have to rip off the bandages. I have to let it loose! It’s manipulating me into letting it loose. But I want to, get it? I want to, and before I know it, I find myself with the strips in my hands, and then I don’t know anything anymore.
It’s not lust that’s driving Sam, even though sex is a part of it. It’s not love, either. It’s something more fatalistic. Day before yesterday, he came to me in the evening and grabbed me tight. He looked a mess, and his whole body was shaking. He pressed against me and sucked the air all the way in like he was inhaling me. Pretty creepy, actually.
What he whispered in my ear got me all queasy: “When you go, please drag me down with you into the darkness.”