UnderTow

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Zoe Andrews is a pen name of a very good friend and very talented writer. The things her young mind could perceive and understand and then communicate on paper were wonderous. She moved a couple of years back and unfortunately we've lost touch. This short story she left behind on my computer and its special to me because I watched the process and we talked and discussed as this remarkable piece unfolded.

I know she's still writing because it would be literally impossible for her not to. I just hope others are seeing her work. If by some happy chance you see this Mel, I love you and I hope you're still writing.

Stories

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The kitchen is dimly lit, blighted by the weak and sickly rain outside it. The oven encrusted by some strangers meal dying and burning black, the slender fridge standing sentry beside.

He watches her over the top of the table. She meets with his gaze and is instantly ashamed. He watches far too intently for her liking, peeling back a dozen layers with those sharpest of pupils and tasting all beneath. She is a naked child before this man. An impotent rage blooms from the core of her shame. She looks away to the streaked windows a hundred miles away, knowing he is still watching. The edge of the table is damaged and worn, the polish long gone, destroyed by the wandering fingers of adult and child alike over many years. She traces her fingertips over the many grooves and scratches as she waits.

She is relieved to realise that his gaze has lifted from her, not caring how long this has been so. Those eyes are windows to a soul that has crossed over and come back too many times to count, to a mind that remembers worlds and dreams that she cannot comprehend. Are you entirely sane after so much? How many more times can you do this? Why can’t I see through you, as you see through me?

A cough, artificial and short-lived. She looks up, and there are the eyes again, but this time touched with amusement - simply one part of an odd, half-smiling face. She smiles back with a tinge of genuine warmth in her heart and the amusement on the Face swells into affection. The small flame from the burner lights the eyes and makes them human, fallible and warm

He reaches across the scarred tabletop and she offers up her arm, sleeve rolled up to the elbow already, having anticipated this moment without realising she had done so.

He holds the wrist with a strange reverence, a priest sacrificing a lamb in his own home. She disconnects herself from herself and watches the ritual with something like disinterest.

The point of the needle quivers ever so slightly and she follows with her own eyes as the tiniest droplet plummets to shatter itself against the pale flesh inside of her elbow (look, something in this world is softer than I am...) Then the point splits the skin - she is conscious of the sting, of the bruise it will leave her with tomorrow. (nothing, nothing in this world is softer than I am). She imagines her veins filling as the man depresses the plunger, deft as any doctor.

She takes back possession of her arm and smiles once more but again, the face across the table is unreadable.

She watches the ritual repeated, resting his long arm in his own lap, pulling the belt tight with his teeth as the room recedes and the rain starts to drip through the windows. Small talk is made but the words barely register - they are merely passing time in this great waiting game.

The man rises to his full height, crosses the kitchen and switches the lights on, the bare bulb exploding light into every corner of the room. She hadn’t realised how dark it was outside.

The woman does not move, simply watches the rain as it launches a fresh assault on the house. He stops behind her chair.

The rain blocks out the sound of his breathing as he slides his hand over her shoulder, along her forearm to weave his long fingers between her smaller ones. Two hands curl over to form a single fist, one swallowing the other in its size and warmth. The man buries his face in the back of her neck and laughs softly. The woman is oblivious to him. Something stirs. The air begins to throb and hum with something just beyond her grasp as she stares out across the vast emptiness of the bruised sky. The room, her heart, the world is suddenly richer, more intense - a hundred times more real than she has ever known.

Somewhere deep in the universe a planet explodes to dirt and rock, spinning into oblivion. Choirs sing in Heaven, souls are tormented in Hell while on Earth, the raindrops continue to shatter themselves against the dirt, against the house that rose up from it.

She feels the chrysalis break, tearing through the walls of her tiny embryonic world, taking her first breath all over again.

She finally smiles back at the man behind her, tipping her head back, feeling the skin on her face stretch as she looks up at him. A kiss and a question. Everything, she tells him. I can see everything.

She rises from her chair and follows the man down a damp hallway where the air ripples and shines. She closes her eyes and her mind leaves her. She will take it back when she needs it.

---

The woman awakens in the dark. The sheets are damp and cold, clinging to the thin film of sweat on her body. Walls, ceiling and floor emerge from the darkness as her eyes slowly clear and the clouds burn away from her thoughts. Her skull feels strangely hollowed.

The man is sleeping, his face a mask of light and shadow - curves of flesh, crescents of bone. She watches the way his eyelids flicker, listens to him softly snoring. As the woman watches, he whimpers like a child, turning his head away from her, twisting the rest of his large body around after it. She wonders what he is dreaming. Maybe she will ask him in the morning, if she remembers. The man begins to snore again.

Silver light swims through the open window as a car drones past on the street below. The woman sits up, the sheets whispering among themselves as she pulls her knees up to her chin, hugging them to her breast like twin children. She bites her lip and frowns, trying as hard as she can to catch a thought which has already escaped her and fled. She feels so terribly guilty, wracked by a sickening empathy for the babies in her knees.

The woman frowns harder, until her face feels about to split open and swallow itself. No, she thinks, that wasn’t right. Nothing in her head is right anymore. The contents of her skull were taken out and twisted beyond recognition long ago. She looks down at the warm body lying beside her, his skin bathed in the pale light filtering through the thin curtains over the head of the bed.

She watches the way his chest rises and falls in time with his breathing, the small shadows created by the bones of his hips. His face is as strangely beautiful as Christ at his moment of doubt. The woman feels a sudden rush of love, so intense that it hurts. It overwhelms her, shocking away her breath, yet filling her with a warmth beyond definition, with something so much more valuable than mere breath. She feels almost ashamed to stare at him too long and lowers herself beside him again, resting her head against his chest. She listens to the blood pumping through his heart, breathing the smell of his skin and thinks about his strange eyes and his rare and beautiful laughter. The woman lets his warmth lull her back towards sleep, humbled by gratitude for the new life he has given her. The world is warm, dark and perfect.

The man whimpers again, grinding his face into the pillow. The woman is startled back into wakefulness by the sound. It is not the sound of a grown man but of a little boy who is afraid. It disarms and unbalances her, shattering the pleasant bubble she had been floating in. He’s having a nightmare, the woman realises. The man twitches like a crippled animal, clenching his hand into a fist around the corner of his pillow.

The woman wants to tear out her hair and scream. He shouldn’t be suffering, not when I feel so damn high! The guilt returns again, this time tenfold. You are what made me feel this good. You deserve to be happy, even in your dreams.

Inspiration dawns, as slow as the sun, as the man gives another tiny cry and the walls swim in, then out of focus. I can take the dream away. I can fix everything for you, and make your dreams as happy as mine.

The thought touches the corners of her mouth with a smile. Everything is going to be fine.

She disentangles her feet from the twisted covers they were lost inside of and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. The world swims as she stands, the carpet rolling and echoing along the hallway in waves - a blue and green acrylic tide. The woman catches the edge of the dresser beside the bed and breathes slowly until her vertigo subsides. She straightens her back and leaves the bedroom, wandering down the hallway. The air is very cold.

The rain has stopped and every surface gleams silver in the kitchen. The moon streams through the window behind her, lending the woman a halo. The tiles are cold and gritty under her bare feet, like the sand of an island.

The table gleams dully, still littered with the mans gear - burner, syringes, dirty silver teaspoon. She admires the pale glow of her hands - like the hands of a ghost- as she finds the tiny foil package and sets to work, performing the ritual again. It requires little thought, after so long spent as an apprentice.

A thought trembles just beyond her reach as she walks back down the hallway, syringe dangling between her fingers. Something terrible, demanding her attention like a screaming child. She draws to a halt, struggling to concentrate. But she cannot find the thought again and soon it is completely gone. She continues down the hallway, back into the warmth of the bedroom.

The man has sunk back into his dreaming. She pauses for a moment and watches him, his sleeping face still troubled. Her throat grows tight with concern and love. It’s all right. I’m here.

She crawls over the crumpled sheets and kneels beside him, holding his bony elbow in her small hand, supporting the weight of his arm. She pulls the tiny plastic cap from the head of the needle with her teeth, opens her mouth to let it fall into the sheets beside her knee.

She finds the large vein on the inside of his elbow, then hesitates for a moment as the sense of urgency returns. The woman frowns, still unable to catch the right thread of thought. It’s probably nothing.

The woman pushes the point of the needle through the tender flesh, watches a tiny bead of blood well up as she depresses the plunger.

The mans eyes flicker open as she removes the syringe from his arm and places it upon the windowsill. He stares up at her face in confusion, sharp eyes now dull, bleary and weighted down by sleep. He tries to sit up, opening his mouth as if to speak. She traces her fingertips gently over his cheekbone. You just had a bad dream, that’s all. Everything will be all right now. Go back to sleep.

The woman kisses his forehead softly and curls up beside him, basking in the warmth of his love. There is nothing but the sound of two mouths drawing oxygen from the air. She feels herself falling back into the dark arms of sleep. Everything is still.

---

The sheets are cold and damp, clinging to the woman’s skin like grief. The rain is falling softly outside, barely whispering against the windowpane. The wind speaks in the street below with the voice of a vengeful spirit. Somewhere in the world a clock is counting the minutes and days to come.

The stench of vomit shocks her into a foetal mindlessness - floating in an empty, grey space, only half aware of the guilt and sorrow seeping into her bones. The woman is an astronaut, cut adrift and wearing nothing but a damp bedsheet. She has found the thought which had eluded her, found it in the cold body lying beside her the moment she opened her eyes.

He’s gone.

She is an empty, drifting husk. Her soul is crushed beneath the weight of forever, swimming in the thin, drying film of tears over the pale, glasslike eyes of the man.

He is gone...

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