What if never was…
My head reels. My eyes drift around the nursery and now I can see black mold swelling from every corner. The rot moves on its own. There are letters. Names forming on the wall and then sliding across the floor, toward me.
GENEVIEVE IS HERE JOHN IS HERE CORRINE IS HERE REBECCA IS HERE MATTHEW IS HERE ANA IS HERE CRAIG IS HERE NOAH IS HERE HANNA IS HERE WALLACE IS HERE DEB IS HERE MATTEAS IS HERE VANESSA IS HERE IVY IS HERE JOSHUA IS HERE MAC IS HERE DANIEL IS HERE LUNA IS HERE CHEYENNE IS HERE PIKO IS HERE SHAUN IS HERE CALEB IS HERE KENDRA IS HERE MARCUS IS HERE WINSTON IS HERE MARGARITE IS HERE…
The black mold expands over my hand. First my fingers, then my wrist. The words work their way up my arm, my chest. They wrap around my neck. I try to scream but nothing comes. There’s no sound beyond the hiss of the words as they release their spores into the air. The black mold grows over my eyes and everything goes dark.
So this is what death feels like.
Waves of black. An endless ocean of shadows. The water reaches as far as the horizon, met by gray clouds. The sky is ash. The dull glow of what could be the sun barely penetrates the ozone.
There is no land in sight. Nothing but ink. The cold water boils over and forces up massive summits of waves that crest and crash into one another before collapsing.
I can barely stay afloat. The water is so cold, I can’t feel my limbs. I try to swim, forcing my legs to kick, but they are so numb, I don’t know if they’re even there anymore. My head slips below the surface and the black water works its way down my throat.
I push with all my might until my head breaks through, gasping for air. I can’t do this for much longer. Already my muscles ache, weak with fatigue.
Something silvery shimmies before my face. It drifts across the water’s surface before plunging back into the sea. It’s long and slender. An eel. No—not an eel. Larger.
I feel something brush against my leg. It startles me. More water slips past my lips. It doesn’t taste salty like the ocean should, but of charcoal. The lining in my throat feels as if it’s covered in wet ash, clumps forming along my esophagus.
There it is again. That flash of silver. Not a fish or an eel—an arm. A back, the nodules of a spine. Long black hair, like kelp. It’s a woman. Was a woman. Her glistening gray body circles around me like a shark closing in on its prey. The next time she brushes against my hip, I kick, struggling to force her away while keeping my head above water.
Another body breaks through the surface. There are more of them. The woman lifts her head above the water and stares back. Her eyes are nothing but black. She lets out a hiss. Her gums have gone gray, barely holding her crooked teeth in place. She licks her lips, gliding that maggot of a tongue across her jagged teeth, then plunges her head back into the water. She swims toward me. This time I kick her straight on, lifting my knee and making impact with her skull. It’s soft. Her cranium collapses under the force of my kick, sending a cloud of ink across the surface of the water. Rings of iridescent color pour from the woman’s fractured skull, shimmering on the surface of the water like an oil spill.
Others thrash at the woman’s body, pecking at her flesh. They’re eating her, devouring her in a frenzy. They tear through her in seconds as their limbs kick up a froth of gray, summoning more. The water all around us is alive. There have to be hundreds—thousands.
One grabs my ankle and pulls me under. I kick free and find the surface again, but there’s another hand grabbing at my leg, my waist, my arms. They’re pulling me under the surface. Into the black. I barely take a breath before I’m dragged below. The darkness of the water makes it impossible to see anything beyond the vague gray shape of bodies churning in the water, thousands of silverfish swarming the sea. Whatever air is in my lungs burns as I’m pulled deeper down. I feel myself plummet into the endless depths, until there’s no light from above.
Nothing in my lungs. No feeling anymore. There’s nothing left of me at all.
“Hold up.” Someone’s voice pierces through the darkness. There’s a grit to it, like crumbling plaster. “Shit, she’s still alive. How the hell is she still alive?”
“You said she was dead.” Their voice is faint at first, gaining depth. Luring me back.
“I couldn’t find a pulse. She wasn’t breathing a second ago, I swear.”
“Won’t be alive much longer.” I feel their hands now. All their reaching hands, grabbing me. Pulling me in separate directions, wolves fighting over carrion. “What happened to her?”
“ODed. Look. She took, like, ten doses all at once. What the fuck was she thinking?”
“What about the other one?”
“Bring her down to the basement.” That voice. I know that voice. Tobias—but not Tobias. The intonation is off somehow. “I can still use her.”
“What about the car? It’s still out front. Do you think the cops—”
“Would you shut up and let me think?” Tobias leans forward. I can feel his breath spread across my face. “I want her out of my house. Now. Grab her legs.”
The disembodied voices surround me. I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see. Their hands, so many hands, fingers wriggling over my body, like maggots. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout…
“On the count of three,” Tobias says. “One…two…three.”
My body lifts in the air.
“Where are we going?” That’s Adriano’s voice. I recognize it now.
“Over there. Careful.”
I throw up. I can’t stop myself, can’t control the muscles in my stomach as they pump out all the charcoaled water I swallowed. “Jesus!” Adriano shouts as he lets go of my leg.
“Don’t drop her!”
I feel myself listing, about to slip from their hands and hit the floor.
“The hell is this shit…”
When they lay me down, I hear the sharp crinkle of plastic at my back.
A clear plastic tarp.
“Roll her up.”
Hands grab my shoulder and flip me onto my stomach. The sheet follows my rotations, spinning with me until I’m mummified in plastic. I’m a present, gift wrapped and ready to go.
I crack open my eyes. Their faces are blurred through the other side of the sheeting. I can’t see their features anymore. Their skin is gray, sallow. Their heads spiral around me.
I feel my body being lifted again.
Light as a feather—
I am in the air, hovering.
—stiff as a board.
They’re taking me away. My breath mists over, clinging to the clear plastic.
“Watch the steps,” Tobias warns.
“Stop pushing,” a woman—Melissa, probably—says.
“I’m not pushing!”
“Do you want to trade places? Slow the fuck down.”
I hear a door open. We must be leaving the house. The light changes. The air feels cooler. My spirit is flying much faster now. Where are they taking me? Where are we going?
“Hurry…”
I hear the squeal of a door opening—no, not a door. Something else.
Gravity finds me. I fall, landing inside a cramped, confined space. There’s no room to move. My shoulders press against the walls. A coffin. Oh god, they put me inside a coffin…
“Pick a house,” Tobias says. “Just put her in the basement and I’ll deal with her later, then get rid of the car. It can’t be anywhere near here, okay? This can’t come back to us.”
“We should just dump her, man,” Adriano says. “She doesn’t deserve to—”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her!” Tobias shouts. “Just do as I say and hurry back.”
I can smell the reek of rubber. My head must be pressed up against a spare tire. They’ve stuffed me inside the trunk of a car. Not a coffin—it’s Amara’s car.
“Goodbye, Li’l Deb,” Tobias says as he slams the trunk. “See you on the other side…”
rock bottom