A Flood of Posies
Page 22
She found Rob and Mijo at the back of the boat. Mijo draped a makeshift fishing pole over the rail, tugging at it a little too vigorously. Rob calmed him with a hand to his shoulder but snatched it away the second he heard her coming. They’d been at it awhile from the looks of it—tangled fishing line clotted the deck.
Rob must be high or dying or some shit, because he would have kicked her shins out if she’d been the one to waste all that line. And although it was a good thing the two of them had finally broached their callous distrust of one another, it panged her to see how seamlessly they’d done it in her absence.
Moonlight shone against Rob’s patchy baldness, turning his skin gray. Scars creased his skin. Her own hands were unrecognizable—cracked and sallow and missing a fingernail or three.
Only Rob faced her.
“You look like dog shit,” he said.
“Well, I feel like a million bucks.” She scratched at a rash on her arm, shaking off a couple of scabs. “Catch anything?”
“Problems, I suppose.”
“Well, I hope you threw them back. We’ve got enough of those.”
He nodded and looked away.
“Where’s the water jug?”
“Gone.”
Fuck. “Gone?”
“Lost it.”
Lost it in their game of Twister with a sea monster. The latent accusation of those two little words wriggled at her feet.
Lost it because of you, you fucking sea harpy.
Mijo glanced at her, and immediately back to the water when she met his gaze. While Rob’s lips were chapped to hell, Mijo’s were the pinnacle of smooth hydration. One of those sneaky fuckers had water. Or at least they used to.
Wouldn’t do a whole lot of good to press them about it now.
“Too dark,” Rob said. “Dark and empty.”
Only then did she realize that the lights in the water were gone, and it panged her in a way that she didn’t dare admit. Even the goddamn monsters were tired of her.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, it meaning distracting themselves from their shitty, inexorable death with homemade fishing poles.
Choosing a spot as far away from the pair as possible, she hunkered down, cross-legged, just how she and Mijo used to do.
Agua. That’s a whole bunch of agua, kid. El sol. Sun. Caliente as fuck.
She stared at the dark water rolling endlessly around her, groggy as hell but unable to sleep. She watched for lights while listening to the blooping noise of Mijo’s fishing line tugging hopelessly at the water. None of them would find what they wanted.
They must have assumed she was asleep, and to be fair, she hadn’t budged in a few hours. Maybe they thought she was dead.
She might never have known they were talking about her if not for deep timbre of Rob’s voice that made it impossible for him to keep quiet. Nothing at all like Mijo’s, so slight and wispy a gentle breeze would snuff it out.
Rob was offering assurances. “I know. I know. We’ll figure it out.”
Then the absence of noise indicating Mijo’s turn, and Rob would be at it again. “I know. I don’t want to either.”
The exchange was brief, and no matter how much she strained, she never could pick up anything more than that.
She kicked the rail, for no other reason than to be a bitch.
It had been two more days, and the cleave between them had been thoroughly salted. Nothing would ever grow back.
She passed her days at her end of the boat and they at theirs, occasionally hurling pleasantries when passing the canteen—the one Mijo had kept hidden from her until now—between them.
The totality of everything that had happened loomed over them. No rain, drinking water reduced to drops, and no food for days. Things were souring rapidly.
Sestra hadn’t given much thought to what she planned to do about it. Crappy things happened all the time; what was there to do besides add it to the agenda and continue about your day? That was the plan until it became clear that the plan was terrible, which occurred about forty-five seconds after concocting the damn thing.
She was getting stir-crazy and restless, and by the second day began pacing.
“Would you just stop, Ses?”
“I’m staying on my side, okay?”
“What do you mean, your side?”
Then she remembered that she never actually explained the whole side thing to him. “Just…nothing.”
“Then stop pacing. It’s making me insane.”
Sestra stopped, but only so she could yell more effectively. “I’ll walk however I want.”
Niceties were out the window at this point, and Rob squared off as if he’d been living for the day. “You’ll stop or I’ll make you stop!”
Mijo positioned himself within their sight, yet far enough away to avoid an altercation. He leaned back and watched, perhaps hoping they’d throw each other overboard and shut up for good.
“You aren’t going to do shit, Rob. And you know it.”
“I’ll throw your ass in the damn floor if I have to.”
She could tell he meant it, and so stomped down the stairs with him at her heels. It didn’t take much effort, what with the sea-rotted hinges and aged wood, but even so, she felt badass ripping that door out of the floor and tossing it against the wall.
“You’re losing it,” he said, calmly yet loudly.
She stared at him. “I know.” Because she did. Although she’d argue that she never had it to begin with.
Sestra didn’t follow Rob as he marched up the stairs. She just fell to the floor as her resolve left her, staring at the hole in the floor and the door she’d just destroyed.
She spent the rest of the day down there, and sometime in those few hours she decided what she was going to do. There was no epiphany, no master plan, just a subtle knowing that this was her best course of action. It may as well have been laid out for her like a storybook, big baroque letters spelling out her doom.
And then she flung her crazy ass into the sea and lived happily ever after.
That wasn’t exactly how it went. It happened sometime after her argument with Rob and before nightfall—a calmness floated over her. It reminded her of the first blush of heroin as it hit her bloodstream. It draped over her, heavy and thick. Her chin dipped; she was nodding off just thinking about it. The serenity of it. That’s all she ever wanted anyway, just a little bit of peace. A moment to not think, because thinking is what got her into trouble.
She reached for her back pocket, a habit she’d developed that only appeared in her more desperate moments. Maybe she forgot something there? After Rob had picked her up, all that time ago, she’d reached back to that pocket in search of her sister’s ketamine. It was gone, lost after so many dives underwater. She’d spasmed and cried at the realization. Maybe the others thought it was because of Doris, about the flood, about literally anything that had happened to them, but it wasn’t. It was about the drugs, how just when it didn’t matter if she was high or dead or what, they were gone. The drugs were gone. The sheer hilarity of it was too much to bear.
It was all so tiring. Existing was tiring, but she didn’t want to die. Drugs would have helped immensely, but there weren’t any. Being left to her own devices was worse than anything. Having Mijo and Rob surgically extricate themselves from her was more than she could bear. That was always the worst of all the things—being alone. And somehow on a boat of only three, she managed it again. If the others had to choose between nothingness and her, they chose nothingness and locked her in the cabin.
She was stir crazy, probably delirious, but the sensation of having to do something, having to go somewhere or be somewhere, anywhere other than here, consumed her. She used to wander the streets in search of a cure for it, but it always returned. The desire to wander, to not be pinned down by anyone or an
ything, is what made her. She was never comfortable, never satisfied, and never calm. She had that feeling now but had nowhere to go. She could go up and face the stares and whispers or stay down here in the dark alone. Those were the options.
She hated those options, and she hated the way Mijo stared at her. She hated her own behavior, too, but that wasn’t anything new. The time for bettering herself had long passed, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t change. It dawned on her sometime during the twilight hours, after catching herself gripping the skin of her chest every time Mijo slunk by. At first, she wondered if Rob had instructed him to check on her, knowing that if he did it himself they’d start shouting again. But after the tenth or so time of him pretending to stretch his little legs, Rob called to Mijo, asking him what he was doing. Each time Mijo grazed by her, he’d sneak the smallest of glances, only daring to meet her eyes for the briefest moment before scuttling back to Rob.
And then it struck her. Her wasn’t checking on her, he was wishing for her. From the moment that boy leapt from the floor he’d been at her side, and now they were drifting. He was afraid of her. He wanted her, but was terrified of her.
The realization crashed into her, more painful than she thought possible at this point in her existence, because she knew exactly how Mijo felt. She’d been that kid, wide-eyed and innocent and needing someone to hold her. She understood the ache it created when no one came. She was well-versed in longing stares, in being surrounded by people she was too terrified to approach.
Mijo came around again, braving a longer look this time. Sestra held it, and the two sized each other up. His chin jutted out, defiant. He wanted to come nearer, but now that he had her attention, he didn’t want her to know that. Sestra couldn’t help but make comparisons to herself. Desperation and loneliness had a way of shaping people that way. It left people scarred.
She flashed an easy smile at him, and he grimaced. She knew he would. A smile isn’t what he came here for, but a smile was all she had to give.
It was night again by the time Sestra decided to enact her plan. It had been creeping up on her for a while now, but she’d always found a reason to ignore it. Until now. Until Mijo. She’d been running away from things for so long that she wasn’t sure knew how to do anything else, and the thought made her ill. A new type of exhaustion had seeped into her, released by Mijo’s frown. She felt more anxious than she had in years, maybe decades. She had to act before time and starvation and thirst and insanity acted for her.
Sestra waited until she was as certain as possible that both Rob and Mijo were asleep. As if sensing a wrongness, Mijo had decided to sleep below deck with her, although still more than an arm’s length away. It was the first time they’d been this close in days. She wanted stroke his hair but thought better of it.
Taking the door she’d ripped from the hinges, Mijo’s hidey hole now destroyed, she emerged topside both triumphant and terrified. Rob slumped against the wall, seemingly unconscious. Tiptoeing to the bow, she glared at the watery horizon. It was moments like these that people in movies comment on the beauty of things, but to her it still looked like an evil, black swamp.
For once in her stupid life, she thought about what she was about to do. There wasn’t any turning back. There wasn’t any coming back. The sea and the sharks and the sun were all deadly on their own, but that’s not what scared her. Nor is it what motivated her.
She was going to find a posy, and she was going to kill it.
Or die trying.
Or just die.
But if that was her fate, she wasn’t about to do it quietly in the dark, letting little Mijo help toss her corpse overboard. If she was going down, she was taking a fistful of flesh with her.
So she flung herself in the water.
If she’d bothered to look back, she’d have seen Rob on his feet, watching silently as she fled.
The water was repugnant. It itched at Sestra’s skin, but she was determined anyway. She found her posy. She floated her happy ass out here on a damn door and she found it. Arms ahead of her, she dove deeper down until she could no longer see. Still she kept her eyes open. That fucking posy was waiting for her, and even if she couldn’t see it, it could see her, and she was going to face it with her eyes open. It was easy to get disoriented; open eyes brought with them the expectation of seeing. As long as it stayed dark, she knew she was going the right way.
It was only seconds before her lungs faltered, too weak to hold her breath much longer. She feared she’d lose the thing having to surface for air—as if it would know she was weak and turn away in disgust. Soon there wasn’t much of a choice as her chest seized, struggling to find air. Up she went, letting her natural buoyancy carry her. The water thinned, navy to cerulean to aquamarine to the yellow of the sunny surface.
Up she arrived, and down again she dove. Light to dark and back to light again once it became too much. Down and down and nothing to show for it. It was fucking insane. Others were snatched and stolen and were just gone. Even this she had to work for. She was tired of the sun and the way it flayed her skin. The door she’d arrived on was gone. Up and down, up and down again.
She’d been at it enough and was becoming quickly accustomed to the idea of just drowning and calling it a day when a burst of coolness blasted against her bare feet. The surface churned and settled again.
“Finally. Goddamn.” She spoke slowly, but inside her body melted at the thought of a posy being so close to her. But this was what she came for. This was what she fucking came for. She wanted to rip it to shreds, to defile it somehow, but the pressure encapsulated her. Her arms didn’t have the range, and like all her well-laid plans, this one too imploded before it even got started.
There was no fighting here. She couldn’t even give the fucking thing a paper cut.
So down she went.
Down and down and down.
It had snaked a tree-trunk tendril around her torso. In the water, no one could see how much she cried. It felt like electricity, like a shock up and down her body, and it clamped on with exposed-wire tenacity.
Water slid up her face and into her nose as it pulled her down. Pressure pounded at her temples until her head felt ready to burst.
Her lungs filled up. She choked and gagged, but there was only more water to choke and gag on. She did this until the urge to try faded and she was content, just going to ride it out. Maybe she’d died? It was okay if she had.
Then it stopped. There were shadows here where before it had been a wall of ink. Things moved in front of her. Fine hairlike strands grazed her cheek.
She was delirious from the struggle, her body shutting down part by part. She shouldn’t be able to see so far down, and yet she could. She couldn’t feel her fingers but was aware of every ounce of water crushing into her. The shadows moved too much, flicking up and down, side to side, closing in on her face and then pulling away. Tendrils slipped by her again, this time snaking around her shins before disappearing again.
Shadows were getting darker—no, wait, there was light. The tentacle gripping her midsection began to glow. The posy itself was glowing. Faint at first, but soon it lit up like a cheap glow stick. Blue-green shimmers rolled up its body, sending cracks of light along its massive tentacles. She searched for the head, the mouth, imagining a beak bigger than her head ready to snap her in two, but only a tangle of tentacles was visible, coiled together like a nest of twigs.
That tickling sensation grabbed at her again, reaching down her arm. When it hit her palm, she grabbed at it, caught it between her fingers.
It came easily as she pulled it closer. It felt like hair . . . closer . . . and fuck, it was hair. She’d grabbed a body. Caught around its middle was another tentacle. The face was female, and if Sestra could have, she would have screamed, instead of kicking the thing away with her one leg that could still move.
It should have been rotted away, but und
er the glow, the lady appeared to be only sleeping. A great sweep of water brushed against her as another tentacle unfolded itself from the mountain of knots. Brighter than the last, in its grip was another body. The glow crawled all over it, painting its skin blue. Even at a distance, it too looked as if it was asleep. A male this time.
More and more, it unwrapped itself, presenting her with claimed souls. She never got much of a good look at any of them, each one resembling someone she used to know while still being a total stranger. Never again did the posy allow one to fall within arm’s length of her, breezing them in front of her, taunting her with their existence.
Sestra assumed she was dead now. Her lungs no longer stung; her temples no longer throbbed; her skin was loose around her bones instead of wrinkling at the edges. She was one of them now, she guessed. Another trophy. Another soul.
But her eyes weren’t closed yet. Unlike the others, she could still see.
More and more tentacles unraveled until there was more posy than not. It overwhelmed her vision, like standing too close to the television as a kid. The glow brightened as its center was slowly exposed.
Through a slew of fingers and hair and blue-lit skin, she saw a new tentacle pull itself free. It was smaller, thinner at the base, and tucked closer to the middle of the beast. It held its body by the neck. A male.
She didn’t realize it at first, but she was moving toward it. It was pulling her in.
How quickly she recognized him once she was close, though she shouldn’t have. Bloated and purple as he was, rotted with water before the posy could claim him, Sestra still noticed his long chin and the horrible paisley tie that he always wore. It was James. She imagined him stuck in his car on the freeway as he tried to get home to his wife. Or maybe he’d been trapped in the office and drowned pressed up against a window overlooking the parking lot. How had it found him? Why did it bother?
Is this why it chased her? Following the tendrils floating in all directions, she searched each of their faces. Were these all people she’d once known or fucked or fucked with? A conglomerate of her bad decisions all stuck together until it had no choice but to become a monster.