She leaned forward and slid open the drawer in the coffee table, pulling out the glass vial and the plastic McSpoon next to it with the little arches at the end of the stem. Fucking Stephen took the ivory one. Selfish prick. She unscrewed the cap and dipped the spoon in, scooping out enough to take the edge off. Just a bump. She didn’t get paid until Friday and this had to last.
A thump in the back of the house made her fumble the nearly weightless spoon as she inhaled. Carol replaced the bottle and spoon in the drawer and got up to take a look. Maybe Harlow hadn’t gone to a friend’s at all. She’d stayed home and, what? Gone to bed early? Not my daughter. It wasn’t like her daughter to turn in before midnight, or to leave any room in the house dark for that matter. The girl was anxious about everything. Unlocked doors, the dark, silence, sleep itself. If Harlow was home, the place was ablaze with light and sound.
She stalked toward the bedrooms, feeling the numbness in her sinuses extend down into her throat, a touch of it tingling ever so slightly in her face. Billie always got her good stuff. Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
She felt a breath of cold air on her skin at her daughter’s door, like standing in front of an open freezer. The little shit left her windows open when she crawled out. Carol decided she’d close and latch them. See if the little criminal remembered her key when she finally dragged her ass home. Carol reached for the knob and hesitated. She blinked, trying to clear her mind. Her head felt blurry and was getting blurrier. Standing in the hallway felt like a dream. Like she’d fallen asleep and woken up outside her daughter’s bedroom. Something about the door. The darkness. Deeper here, like shutting herself inside a box. She turned and flicked the light switch. A dim illumination cut through the obscurity, but everything remained imprecise. She looked at Harlow’s door and for a moment it seemed to blend into the wavering walls, like a shadow itself before resolving into a sort of solid clarity.
Carol rubbed her eyes. She’d overdone it. A little drunk and high as fuck. Not even ten and she was spent. Well, it’d been a day. She’d go shut and lock Harlow’s windows and go to bed. She reached forward and opened the door.
The darkness on the other side pooled and eddied in front of her like water. It drifted down and out of the room swirling around her feet, chilling her ankles. Oh my god! Fire! But the smoke was cold—so cold—as it touched her. She took a step back. The darkness resisted her. It was thick and stepping back felt like walking in water. A small shriek escaped her lips and a booming noise invaded her mind like a sudden migraine. It pushed outward from inside her skull and she pressed her hands to the sides of her head trying to hold herself together against it.
SHHHHHHHHH.
Her scream died on her tongue and she struggled to take a breath. Tendrils of darkness reached out for her face. She batted at them with a hand and they broke and dissolved like smoke, but her hand came away a little blacker with each wisp she touched. She wiped her dirtied hand on her pants and the darkness smeared in a streak across the fabric. Not smoke. Where was the heat? Where was the crackling sound of it?
“Wha— what’s happ—?”
SHHHHHHHHHH.
Carol dropped to her knees and the charcoal mist swirled around her legs, lapping up against her thighs and hips. Chilling her in intimate places she preferred to be warmed with breath and body. She shivered. It cascaded out of the room letting the light from the hall strengthen and enter slowly, touching the familiar shapes in the room tenderly, bringing them out of the shade. A dresser covered with girlish things—a music box, a stuffed mouse—the chair beside Harlow’s desk with a leather jacket draped over the back, and the desk itself, lamp and cassette tape player atop it, books and albums on a shelf next to the record player. She saw the walls adorned with posters and clippings from magazines stretch away from her like she was backing out of a dark tunnel, until the posts of her child’s bed emerged from the darkness, and beyond them Harlow lying on top of the covers, black boots, black tights, a white shirt and her bright crimson hair, face nestled up against … it. Another scream rose up from her lungs and threatened to emerge from her mouth, but died before it reached her lips and the black mist was reaching up from the floor and smothering her.
YOU’LL WAKE HER.
The pain of the voice in her mind made everything blur and dim before her vision resolved again and she saw the thing on Harlow’s bed, her daughter on top of it, clutching it like a … like a …
“Mother?” the girl said, stirring. An onyx hand caressed the back of her head as she turned to face Carol. “That you?”
Carol struggled against the wisps. She brushed at her face and tried to push up from the floor. The mist held her down. Darkness reentered the room and shifted against the walls as the thing under her daughter extended its great wings, stretching them in the confining room. Harlow pushed up on its lap, and looked at her mother.
“G-get away … from it.”
The girl didn’t move, except to turn and look into its face. “That’s her,” she said. “My mom.”
The dark thing shifted and wrapped an arm around the girl. It whispered from a red mouth like a gash torn by a dull knife. “Your mother.”
Carol’s bowels felt tight. Her head ached and fear peaked in her, making her heart pound. If the thing spoke again, in her, the way it had shushed her, she thought she would die.
The dark thing sat up, heavy breasts and broad shoulders shifting as it righted. It cocked its head and a spill of writhing, inky hair obscured a shoulder. Its eyes were darker than anything Carol had ever seen. As black as not existing at all. The gash in its face opened again and it said, “Caroliiiiiiine.” Her name oozed in the air like oil.
Harlow nodded. The thing pulled her back to its body. Harlow wrapped her arms around it. The girl turned her head and said, “You should get some sleep, Mom. You have work tomorrow.” Her voice sounded like it came carried on the wind from a mile away. Everything was wrong in the way that dreams are. A gross distortion in a familiar setting, like being in her office but also out to sea. Her real daughter in the lap of a nightmare. Carol was too heavily embodied, too delicately conscious. Nothing was real, though everything felt it.
Another tendril of charcoal mist reached up and left a streak on the side of Carol’s face. She felt the thing looking into her. Seeing through her to blood, bones, and organs—She felt it exploring her being, experiencing all the boundaries of her from the inside out.
And she despaired.
~
Carol awoke in bed, lying on top of her covers, still dressed in the clothes she wore the night before. She felt dizzy and her head throbbed. A queasy feeling in her stomach threatened revolt. Her daughter’s record player blared shrilly from the far end of the hallway, making her head ache to a beat. Identity! Identity! She forced herself to sit up, and swing her legs over the end of the bed. After a moment to adjust, she stood, holding on to her nightstand for support while the room seemed to pulse before setting into fixed reality. Creeping to the door, she opened it a crack and peeked out expecting to see … what? The memory was hazy and all she could recall was that deep black mist.
And the woman-thing inside of it that was the darkness.
The bright morning and loud music assured her it was only a dream. A nightmare. Mercifully, in the way of dreams, mostly extinguished from her mind. By the time she finished her second cup of coffee, it would be all gone, except maybe the lingering unease.
Light shone from her daughter’s open door, reflecting brightly off the polished hardwood floor. Carol squinted against its offense. She smelled breakfast. Eggs and toasting bread. Harlow was cooking. Her stomach alternately growled and lurched. She dragged a palm across her moist forehead and worked to keep her gorge down. She’d never had a nightmare like that. It had been so much more vivid than a normal dream. Someone must’ve spiked her drink at the bar. Bad trip. That was it. That guy with his friend—the one fl
irting with Bobbie—he’d dropped something in her glass and she peaked when she got home. Probably intensified it with the bump. She wanted to laugh, but felt like she might vomit if she took anything but short, measured breaths. Stick to blow, Carol. It’s safer.
She stank of cigarettes and sweat. She shed yesterday’s work clothes and wrapped up in her bathrobe. First, a shower and then a cup of coffee. If her stomach would take it, maybe she’d try to eat some of the toast Harlow was making too.
Carol stepped out into the hall holding her hands against her ears to deaden the song playing on Harlow’s record player. It was familiar and despised. Too much for a rough morning. She fought against her disorientation and ducked into the child’s room, slipping in the candle wax melted in a mess on the floor, kicking something solid and glass sounding across the room. It stank. What the fuck was that? God she wanted something to take the edge off. Get her to baseline. She staggered across the room and lifted the needle from the groove.
“Hey! I was listening to that,” Harlow yelled from the kitchen.
Carol didn’t care. She didn’t like punk music without a hangover, and she really hated it with one. She stomped toward the kitchen, her reprimand about how rude it was to play obnoxious music before everyone in the house was awake already half out of her mouth. The thought went unexpressed when she saw the strange woman standing at the stove, cracking an egg into a skillet. It wouldn’t do to yell at Harlow in front of another parent. Oh Jesus. How long has this woman been in my house? She blushed deep red at the thought that another mother had brought Harlow home and decided to linger until Carol returned. And then she, what? Stayed the night until Carol sobered up? Was making breakfast for her child. Who was this woman inserting herself into their lives as if she had the right to judge, let alone interfere? Carol held down her rage and said, “I’m sorry, but who—”
The woman turned. Carol lost her breath. The woman stood assured and steady, spatula in hand and wearing a cooking apron like some TV reflection of the woman Carol had never been. Never wanted to be. Hair, height, figure, face, even the clothes she wore. Everything about her was the same … but better. All except her eyes. They absorbed light. They stole her breath. Those flat black eyes drove Carol back. Being seen by them felt like being captured, stolen from herself. The woman had to be blind, but Carol was beheld.
Harlow stood from the table and skipped over to the woman. “I’m going to be late for school. No time! Sorry.”
It said, “That’s okay, honey. Take this.” The creature that was not Carol handed her daughter a paper sack, the bottom bulging with the weight of a can of Coke or an apple. The girl got up on her tiptoes and the too-familiar thing bent down and they kissed. A chaste motherly kiss that smacked loudly and echoed against the Formica countertops and tile floors.
The girl turned to look at Carol. Her wide eyes narrowed. Carol wanted to shout that Harlow didn’t get to judge her. That she wasn’t the one who paid the rent and put food on the table and who gave birth to her. Her work, her money, her body. She didn’t say a thing. Her legs felt weak and bile burned the back of her tongue.
The girl snatched up her skateboard from against the wall and skipped out of the room calling back over her shoulder, “Love you!”
Before Carol could process the sound of her daughter saying those two words, so rarely spoken or heard, the thing at the stove said, “I love you too! Don’t be late.”
“I won’t.”
The door slammed and the world darkened. The black char mist of Carol’s nightmares cascaded off the thing like waterfalls, filling the room, eating light. Stretching out from her back like great black wings. It turned. An abomination in a silk wrap top blouse tied at the waist and a tan skirt. It still wore her face. But its mouth was redder. Lips crueler.
“What are you?” Carol managed.
It tilted its head and looked at her with its shark’s eyes.
It spoke.
“I’m what she wants.” The voice, which had a moment earlier held a sing-song lightness, deepened to an unutterable depth that made Carol’s bowels slack.
Carol bolted from the kitchen. She snatched her purse off the front door knob, whipped the door open, and flung herself out into the bright morning daylight. She flailed and stumbled as she expected to run through the open door, down the front steps and into the soft grass outside. Instead, she plunged into the growing shadow of the thing filling the kitchen. Her panicked mind tried to comprehend where she was. She dropped to her hip to avoid running into the thing’s swirling darkness, kicking and trying to backpedal away.
It smiled.
Carol’s bladder emptied.
“Why?” she sobbed.
“Because she loves you.”
Deep in its words, Carol heard something she knew was as true as morning and appetite and fear. Her daughter had summoned this thing to what? Love her? To steal the love Carol deserved, that she earned. And be loved in return?
“She’s my daughter. You don’t get to love her!”
“I do love her.”
The thing in the swirling darkness seemed to take a moment, and looked up at the ceiling as if searching its damned mind for what to say. It looked back at Carol and a chill penetrated her. It gestured to its face, her clothes. Its smile was cruel and mean and red. “Though I don’t love you.” It reached for her.
And she fell into darkness, lost and thoughtless, loveless and alone.
Resurrection Points
Usman T. Malik
I was thirteen when I dissected my first corpse. It was a fetid, soggy teenager Baba dragged home from Clifton Beach and threw in the shed. The ceiling leaked in places, so he told me to drape the dead boy with tarpaulin so that the monsoon water wouldn’t get at him.
When I went to the shed, DeadBoy had stunk the place up. I pinched my nostrils, gently removed the sea-blackened aluminum crucifix from around his neck, pulled the tarp across his chest. The tarp was a bit short—Ma had cut some for the chicken coop after heavy rainfall killed a hen—and I had to tuck it beneath DeadBoy’s chin so it seemed he were sleeping. Then I saw that fish had eaten most of his lips and part of his nose and my stomach heaved and I began to retch.
After a while I felt better and went inside the house.
“How’s he look?” said Baba.
“Fine, I guess,” I said.
Baba looked at me curiously. “You all right?”
“Yes.” I looked at Ma rolling dough peras in the kitchen for dinner, her face red and sweaty from heat, and leaned into the smell of mint leaves and chopped onions. “Half his face is gone, Baba.”
He nodded. “Yes. Water and flesh don’t go well together and the fish get the rest. You see his teeth?”
“No.”
“Go look at his teeth and tell me what you see.”
I went back to the shed and peeled the pale raw lip-flesh back with my fingers. His front teeth were almost entirely gone, sockets blackened with blood, and the snaillike uvula at the back of the throat was half-missing. I peered into his gaping mouth, tried to feel the uvula’s edge with my finger. It was smooth and covered with clots, and I knew what had happened to this boy.
“So?” Baba said when I got back.
“Someone tortured him,” I said. Behind Baba, Mama sucked breath in and fanned the manure oven urgently, billowing the smoke away from us toward the open door.
“How do you know?” Baba said.
“They slashed his uvula with a razor while he was alive, and when he tried to bite down they knocked out his teeth with a hammer.”
Baba nodded. “How can you tell?”
“Clean cut. It was sliced with a blade. And there are no teeth chips at the back of the throat or stuck to the palate to indicate bullet trauma.”
“Good.” Baba looked pleased. He tapped his chin with a spoon and glanced at Mama. “You think he’s ready?
”
Mama tried to lift the steaming pot, hissed with pain, let it go and grabbed a rough cotton rag to hold the edges. “Now?”
“Sure. I was his age when I did my first.” He looked at me. “You’re old enough. Eat your dinner. Later tonight I’ll show you how to work them.”
We sat on the floor and Ma brought lentil soup, vegetable curry, raw onion rings, and cornflour roti. We ate in silence on the meal mat. When we were done we thanked Allah for his blessings. Ma began to clear the dinner remains, her bony elbows jutting out as she scraped crumbs and wiped the mat. She looked unhappy and didn’t look up when Baba and I went out to work the DeadBoy.
~
DeadBoy’s armpits reeked. I asked Baba if I could stuff my nostrils with scented cotton. He said no.
We put on plastic gloves made from shopping bags. Baba lay the boy on the tools table, situating his palms upward in the traditional anatomical position. I turned on the shed’s naked bulb and it swung from its chain above the cadaver, like a hanged animal.
“Now,” Baba said, handing me the scalpel, “locate the following structures.” He named superficial landmarks: jugular notch, sternal body, xiphoid process, others familiar to me from my study of his work and his textbooks. Once I had located them, he handed me the scalpel and said: “Cut.”
I made a midline horizontal and two parallel incisions in DeadBoy’s chest. Baba watched me, shaking his head and frowning, as I fumbled my way through the dissection. “No. More laterally” and “Yes, that’s the one. Now reflect the skin back, peel it slowly. Remove the superficial fascia” and “Repeat on the other side.”
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