When the lights went out, the eyes retained their faint green color for a moment.
Just when I thought that brief color would fade, the lights came back on.
She never blinked.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said.
“I know. It’s not something I like to think about. That’s where I fell in. Right there.”
I didn’t have a response to that, and she didn’t bother to elaborate.
The dull roar of the drain and the faint rattle of debris against debris took on an imperceptibly different tone, in light of her words.
As if the sound of the water was now a great machine, grinding, scouring.
I could smell her, and she smelled faintly of ammonia, joining the smells of rich mud and the damp, mildewy smell of the drain itself.
“You were like me, then,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re like,” she said. A pause. “But I was human.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Not anymore. Only other person to talk to me couldn’t speak anymore. When I think of who I am, my old name gets mixed up with underwater sounds in my head, I guess.”
“Well, my name’s…”
“It’s okay. It’s hard to remember names here.”
“No, I remember. My name is Blake.”
Another pause. “I knew a Blake once. You don’t look anything like him.”
Having conversation was nice, even if I couldn’t shake the notion that she could lunge at my any moment, and drag me to a watery grave.
“You seem so calm,” she whispered.
“I don’t know enough yet to be properly afraid,” I said. “Makes it a bit easier, and I guess, I dunno, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
“You’re supposed to fear the unknown.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I used to think that too.”
A loud crash spoiled my calm act, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. My left foot skidded a half-foot on smooth, water-slick stones.
The crash didn’t stop. It sounded like a one thousand car pileup, vaguely muffled.
“That’s the sluice,” she said. “Further down. If you see lots of little snails and things stuck to the ground, it means the sluice is right above you, and it could open any time.”
“I can’t see much at all,” I said.
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot. Then if you hear them crunching underfoot, like you’re walking on… on… what’s that cereal called?”
“Cheerios? Rice Krispies? Corn flakes?”
“Yeah. Corn flakes. You can’t figure out the big sluice unless you’ve been down here a bit. Stay away for now, or it’ll wash you over the edge.”
“I appreciate the advice,” I said.
Somewhere along the line, I’d jammed one of my hands into my armpit for meager warmth. It didn’t work, but I maintained the habit. Now I shifted the plank to another hand.
“It’s okay. You get used to it,” she said, and I imagined she was trying to sound soothing with that thin voice of hers. “The dark, the cold, not being on the top of the food chain, always being worn down…”
“That doesn’t sound the least bit like I want to get used to it,” I said. “No offense.”
“Haven’t you ever looked at wild animals and envied them a little? Their simple existences?”
I thought of my bird watching, not long after I’d gotten my own place, with…
With a friend’s help.
Alexis’s help. Right.
My heart started pounding a little harder at that near miss. The noise here, the rushing water, the pressure and the need to focus my senses elsewhere, it made it harder to remember.
“I guess I have,” I said, before I could get too lost in thought. Let’s not disturb the creepy Other.
“I don’t think you find your way down here without dealing with something bad. That’s how I think about it. There’s- there’s a relief in all this, Blake. Putting it behind you. Whatever was burdening you, it’s gone by the time you come this far.”
Whatever was burdening me.
Karma? That was… I had to assume it was on my successor’s shoulders now, on…
…on Rose’s shoulders. Right. Why had the name been so hard to conjure up?
Well, I was assuming Rose wasn’t cast down here along with me, that her role in things wasn’t screwed up by the screwed up way I’d gone down.
All the rest of it? The threats, the pressures, the worries and conflict?
I’d wanted to get away from it all, to put it behind me. Now, well, I had my wish.
Be careful what you wish for.
“You might be right, but how do you get out?” I asked.
“Only way I know is to go further in. In here, you are what you eat. It’s easy to- to let yourself go.”
“Let your Self go,” I echoed her. Her thoughts seemed to have a thread to them, but I was having trouble connecting the dots.
“That’s what I said, yeah. I… it’s hard to remember the details, but I arrived, and I wandered for a long while in the rain. I found this big store, you know the kind, one of the huge ones you could spend half a day inside, but the parking lot was fenced in, and I tried walking around to find the front door, but it was like every side of the store was the back of the store. That’s when I first realized something was wrong, because I’d just left this… this place, and found a city and I somehow found myself-”
“There. Here,” I said.
“Yeah. I found a group of people, and they told me that there was nothing there. That it’s just landscape, for show. They laughed at me and took what little I’d brought with me. I ran before they could hurt me, and I got here, after a couple days. Except I didn’t get far. I stepped onto that broken bit of ledge right there, and I fell. Just like you almost did. Water pushed me down, and I wasn’t strong enough to swim against it. Someone saved me. He wasn’t strong enough to lift me up, either, so he pressed his lips to mine, and breathed for me.”
“Breathed?”
“He could breathe like I can now. For hours, he breathed for me. And he’d stop, making me hold my breath, then start again. Until I could hold it for a couple of minutes. He left me, holding my breath, and came back with raw fish. Tore it with his teeth and regurgitated it for me, kept breathing for me… for days. Weeks. Pressed his sandpapery skin against mine, and we… yeah. I wanted to, and I dunno if that’s that syndrome or whatever from that movie with the bookish girl and the big horned ox guy-”
“Beauty and the Beast. You’re thinking of Stockholm syndrome,” I said. I didn’t elaborate, arguing for why it wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome. That would have been assholish, arguing when she was sharing her story.
“Yeah. I forget words sometimes. Somewhere along the way, my skin came apart, because his skin was rough and the water just kept coming down so hard. But I healed and everything back together in scars and tougher bits, and then I could breathe underwater, and I have teeth and claws to hunt fish with, and I can see better in the dark and…”
“…And the other guy?”
“I was in a state where I couldn’t swim. He went to get food for- for me, and one day he didn’t come back. Eventually I had to swim, and I did. Now it’s just me.”
“Waiting at that same ledge?”
“I thought I’d save you if you fell in, like he saved me,” her voice was a thin whisper. Almost reluctant, abashed.