Bottled Abyss

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Faye straightened her shoulders. “Okay, I’ll tell you then. I lied about the doctor’s appointment. It didn’t go well. It isn’t good Evan… it…”

  He looked about ready to spring out of his skin. “What the hell, Faye? Tell me.”

  She swallowed and let the words roll forth. “The baby, if it even survives to term and then delivery, will not survive more than a day or so. A miracle would be a week or so, on life support, but the heartbeat is already faint.”

  Evan rounded the table. His horrified face was sincere and it almost made her cry. He put a quaking hand on her stomach bump. She let him keep it there and stare down, as though he had x-ray vision and could see what mayhem oxygen-deprivation could inflict on a fetus.

  Evan’s voice shook. “No…”

  His eyes filled and he bowed his head. “Faye,” he said sadly. “What do we do?”

  “It’s not your problem.”

  His face snapped up. He wasn’t used to her not kissing his ass and it took him off guard. “Are you going to… what are you going to do then? Without me? What will you do?”

  “I can figure it out without you.”

  Evan flushed with humiliation and resentment. He stood over her, muscles going taut in his neck. He appeared to her like a man about to throw down, but she knew he wouldn’t hit her. He would take a drive to clear his mind and then he would return to plead his case again.

  “I’m going to take Lester for a walk.”

  Or that.

  He grabbed the leash off the water cooler and plowed through the back door.

  Faye waited there, feeling cold and alone in her little unhappy home. She glanced up from her glass of water to the water cooler. The fluid glub-glub-glubbed and still sloshed around from Evan’s hand bumping it.

  That water, so sparkling and crystalline, curative…

  Faye got up from the table and went the guest room, where she knew Evan had hidden the bottle.

  Evan tugged fiercely at Lester’s choke chain and came to the end of the sidewalk. He could go east or west or north. Too many damned decisions. He couldn’t be certain which to take. Supposing he walked too far and hit the main boulevard, he could always come back and try down this other street.

  He had no damned sense of direction.

  He started going north. Lester kept fighting him.

  “Hey, you’re lucky I came back for you, pal. You’d be dead in a hotel room without me.”

  Lester whined and continued on reluctantly.

  “Fuck this, I don’t feel like walking.” Evan turned around and headed back for the house. He’d just wait in the guest room and let Faye get through this phase. She was probably trying to scare him off because of how hurt she was. The baby would be okay.

  “Excuse me sir?”

  A car pulled up along the curb. An attractive Hispanic female police officer leaned over a polite looking little boy in the passenger seat.

  Evan had to tug at Lester to approach the car. “Yes, is there a problem?”

  “Oh no, well, I’m looking for Faye Ledbetter’s house?”

  “I’m her husband, Evan Ledbetter.”

  But we’re probably getting a divorce, so can I maybe get your number?

  “Oh hi, my name is Rebecca Davis. I got this address from Janet Erikson. I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. After what happened recently with her husband and then the hospital…everything.”

  Evan nodded.

  “I just wanted to check how she was doing and let her know that we’re still trying to make some connections for her daughter’s case. We were hoping to get something from the tapes at the hospital the day Ramirez was killed, but they seem to have been hacked somehow.”

  “Hacked? Really?”

  “All video feeds from that day were somehow copied over with footage of something that looks like oil…”

  “Really?” Evan asked again, sounding dumb.

  Davis made a flowing motion with her hand. “Running across the screen, on and on. It’s very weird.”

  “Some kind of brilliant person to pull something like that off.”

  “Yeah, well, if my son weren’t here right now, I’d tell you exactly how I feel about that person.”

  Evan gave her a fake laugh.

  “So has Janet been by?”

  He didn’t want to sound too much like a dick, but he really wasn’t in the mood for talking about Janet. “I think, you know what, I haven’t seen Janet in a couple days, but I think she isn’t really talking to anybody right now. After Herman and all.”

  “I completely understand, but would you mind giving her my contact info if she ever does?”

  “Sure, I’ll tell her to call the department for you.”

  “I meant my home info. Melody and my son here went to the same daycare. It’s kind of close to home for me, you know?” The woman gave him a slow smile. It was a disarming smile and Evan took it as genuine.

  “Next time I see her, I’ll give it to her.”

  “Great. Let me just…honey, can I use your book?”

  The little boy nodded and picked up a Sesame Street hardback picture book from the door slot and put it over his lap. Davis took out an old faded receipt from her center console, along with a ballpoint pen. She carefully wrote a cell phone number and her address on the paper.

  Evan took the paper from her and smiled at the little boy, who looked down at his book, embarrassed.

  “Thanks so much,” said Rebecca.

  “No worries,” replied Evan.

  “That’s a beautiful dog.”

  Evan glanced down at Lester, who sat on the sidewalk calmly. “He’s not too shabby.”

  They laughed and said goodbye as the car pulled away.

  Feeling in a somewhat better mood, Evan put the paper in his pocket and walked to the house with Lester. Talk to one pretty lady and the world became brighter. He’d almost forgotten the awful thing Faye had told him not ten minutes ago.

  He stopped.

  In fact, he would have that walk after all.

  “Come on, beautiful dog,” he told Lester and they headed south.

  Faye braced herself on the edge of the bed. She’d never been more scared. How could she enjoy her new life if she was alone? How could a mother not do everything in her power to protect her young one? Was her baby not worth saving?

  She lifted the bottle to her lips and drank until there was nothing left.

  3

  Janet was torn from the breast and shoved into soupy mud and detritus. She knew this time had been coming. Nyx had forced the oar in her hand countless times before, always showing patience when Janet would throw a fit. The God explained that the journey back into the world would be harsh. It would resemble life in reverse, first quick, then slow.

  She used the oar to dig through the muck. As she unearthed a large chunk, a battalion of those fish things bustled around her. They would not injure her now. She was of the River and the things once taken for fish revealed themselves as time-frozen wails of agony. There was so much! Thousands, millions, billions of the scarlet creatures flooding around her. All these people had paid for their passage and crossed at some time recently!

  “No,” said Nyx into Janet’s mind. “These are all from your and the Fury’s work. Imagine what it will be like to open the River to the souls already awaiting passage?”

  Just from the coins she’d given away? Not even ten souls!

  Janet answered her excitement with renewed swipes of her oar. Her progress was incredible; she could feel the atmospheric pressure lessen and her eardrums nearly shattered in response—everything about the water felt thinner, freer, more real, like how she remembered the mortal world. It went on this way until she hit a collection of rocks. She scraped them away and continued on. A few coins fluttered down in the gloom with red laces of blood.

  The next series of rocks became denser. Even though the oar had sufficient structure to beat them away from their muddy foundations, Janet had to work harder
and the passage up was indeed slower. She unearthed a fairly large rock and a cascade of heavy coins dropped through the water, pelting her in the forehead, bruising her shoulders and the back of her neck. Again she spooned out another small boulder. Mud fell around her and blood tickled her nostrils like the tips of iron snake tongues.

  Coins continued to fall and the onslaught pressed down. Valiantly she fought at the torrent, swiping her way up with the oar and making little progress in the terrible bronze wave. She started screaming. This was the first time she’d heard her voice since being pulled into the waters. It was shrill and deafening and foreign sounding to her. She wasn’t the same woman. Its unfamiliar tone startled her. She was leaving everything she’d become down in the muck, down with the patient God of Tragedy, not a River God, it turned out, not at all…

  Forced open, her mouth widened as coins flooded in. She swallowed them down in an attempt to relieve the pressure on her jaw. Still she swung the oar, fighting. Blood had turned to gore and it painted the bronze avalanche in vermillion. Janet’s mind raced. Has this all just been a game then? Am I meant to die, after all the time I spent with Nyx? Why wasn’t the God aiding her?

  The heaviness in her throat and stomach threatened to slow her efforts even more. She’d vomited several large wads of coinage, only to have the bile covered coins returned into her mouth. Janet twisted away and the coins pushed like the thumb of a sadistic giant. She rammed with her feet and had the surprising sensation of breaking through. The coins still fell, but the number was fewer now. She made another attempt and oared harder through the impossible mass.

  It was warm and greasy farther up and Janet still heard screaming. Maybe this was out of joy or maybe her mind had become permanently locked in an endless scream. She ignored it and went on, stronger, harder, pushing. Soon there were no more coins, just more gore, more blood, one metallic scent replaced by another. Janet ripped through it with the oar and then with her free hand. The pathway had become so narrow, but she jammed her head up and felt air blow down on her moist scalp. Something separated in the wall, like a beam breaking, and then something similar happened on the other side, another beam breaking.

  Screams. So many screams.

  Janet jutted her shoulder out, writhed her body upward with the oar’s help, and then her other shoulder popped out of the opening.

  Gravity took her quickly—and she fell to the floor covered in gore and snotty strands of dead seaweed.

  She tried to catch her breath, but retched instead. Her skull felt near to collapse from all the pressure it’d endured. Putting fingers to her temples sent twisting knives into the fiery center of her brain, so she let her head be for the moment and concentrated on focusing her vision.

  The screams had faded in her ears to a labored breathing that slowly thinned to nothing. Janet saw the bloody confusion surrounding her. All this time, she realized, the screams had never belonged to her.

  Evan unlocked the door and set his keys on the couch. Lester padded inside, wagging his tail, invigorated by the brisk walk around the neighborhood. The Border Collie made for the kitchen and before Evan could even stretch, the dog was hungrily lapping at his water bowl. Faye made no sounds in the kitchen. He assumed she’d either gone to the laundry room to fold clothes and sulk, or into the backyard to pull weeds and sulk. He thought about approaching her again, but that’s exactly what she expected him to do. He needed to let her simmer again.

  He noticed the guestroom’s door cracked open. As he was anal about closing all doors, this got him hurrying across the living room. A voice inside Evan chided him for not taking the bottle along for the walk. He’d found it after all. Faye had no right to it, especially if she was serious about leaving him.

  Evan pushed open the door and his heart gripped to a fist. The macabre scene before him could not be processed at once. Faye, or part of Faye anyhow, had been on the bed. Her face was stationary in anguish and horror, a torture like no other, and flecks of blood and black fluid showered her skin. The blue jeans she’d been wearing had split at the seams as her legs had folded backward. Two vivid white hip bones flared out of the grim red channels opened there. The place between her legs was a catastrophe of biology and it had Evan gasping for breath to look on it.

  Something hard slammed into Evan’s shoulder.

  The door jam.

  He hadn’t fainted properly, but the jarring of the door frame made him snap to.

  A naked woman dressed in his wife’s bodily fluids struggled on the floor, a long wooden paddle in her hand. The woman looked out of it, drunk almost, coughing and gagging, trying to right herself with the oar.

  Her head turned. Evan wanted to move out of the room before she could lay eyes on him, but his legs went watery underneath him.

  The woman’s face had a clear patch where she’d dragged some blood away.

  Janet.

  The room spun around and his vision darkened. He was going to pass out again.

  “She’ll be okay, Evan,” said Janet. Her eyes were the same shape and color, but so different in the intensity to which they held light. She wasn’t human anymore; she couldn’t be. “I’ll take Faye across myself. She’ll be at peace once she reaches the other side. She’ll live forever…”

  Her eyes went to the bottle sitting on the nightstand. Janet grasped onto the bed and used the oar as a crutch. “I need to take that with me,” she told him.

  Evan seized the bottle. It was full to the brim and made a sucking sound inside like a bong. “The hell you are.”

  Janet gingerly stepped over a lump of shredded intestines. “That isn’t yours. Hand it over.”

  As he backed away, he pulled his eyes from the gore and found Faye’s dead stare. His eyes flooded, his body tautened. “Why did you do that to Faye?”

  Janet’s bloody breasts swayed as she crutched along. “This wasn’t my doing.”

  “You’ve ripped her into fucking pieces!”

  Evan grabbed Janet by the throat and slammed her down on the bed. Faye’s corpse rocked behind her. Janet lifted the oar but he locked his thigh against it, pinning it. Her eyes bulged in surprise as he tightened his hold. Instinct wanted him to drop the bottle and go at her with both hands, but he wouldn’t let the bottle go for a second. He leaned in and put all his weight on her throat.

  Janet wasn’t breathing and yet that didn’t seem to matter. Under all that crushing weight, she smiled. Evan caught his breath in disbelief.

  “You want inside me, don’t you?” said Janet. “Come on then. Put it inside me. I want it. Put the bottle down and give it to me good.”

  Evan wanted to rip her apart like she’d ripped Faye apart. “What are you?”

  Janet frowned.

  Evan let go of her throat and drifted back. His voice caught in his throat as he looked again to the savagery on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Faye. Baby—so sorry. God!”

  Janet picked up the oar, swung it—Evan slammed the bedroom door and the paddle sounded a hollow note against the wood.

  Lester barked wildly as he fled into the front room. Leash?

  Fuck it.

  Evan picked up the large dog under one arm.

  He fought to push the button on the front door’s handle, Lester writhing in his grip like a caught tuna.

  Without any sound, Janet ran for him across the living room, oar lifted overhead. He ducked, just as the front door popped open; the oar struck the wall and flung paint chips across the threshold. Janet clawed for the bottle. Evan dropped Lester. The dog hit the ground running and Evan barreled down the sidewalk.

  Shit! The keys!

  Evan turned. Janet’s momentum caught her unaware and he clotheslined her. She dropped solidly on the sidewalk, the sound of her head making a sickening smack.

  Evan raced inside, swept the keys of the couch and ran back around Janet, who had begun to regain herself. He got to the Accord and Lester waited there, turning circles and barking. He clicked open the doors and let the dog inside.


  Janet limped around the corner. Sunlight made the blood on her body glitter like gems. “Wait!” she cried. “Stop!”

  Evan got in, put the bottle safely on the passenger’s side floor, and started the car. He reversed into the street just as Janet stumbled into the driveway.

  “You’ll pay for this,” he yelled at her. “I’ll find a way, you goddamned bitch!”

  Janet stood there with fixed eyes, a statute to be hated and admired. Evan hit the gas and Lester quickly curled up on the back seat, looking anxious.

  Fresh tears formed up. Evan took off his glasses and knuckled them hard until it hurt and blurred his vision.

  My Faye…my little Faye.

  It had been several hours since Evan had seen the atrocity in his guestroom but the memory stabbed into his mind every ten minutes or so. He was driving aimlessly through Riverside, getting upset at the stoplights and the constant Southern California traffic. Why do you care? You have no place to go.

  He’d thought about calling that lady cop he’d met today, or calling any cop for that matter. That path made sense in the real world, but not in this new one he’d stepped into with Janet and her bottle.

  He checked the floor and sighed in relief when he found the bottle still there. He could do great things with such power. He could heal the sick. He could be a messiah.

  Can’t heal Faye.

  (Shut up).

  That’s right. He could be the world’s new healer, and he didn’t even have to use those coins and have that Fury thing turn up. He could buy a bank vault. Shit, he could buy a thousand bank vaults and fill them with all those death coins.

  Or he could even sell the coins to different governments or unsavory types— (Faye’s stomach had been pushed up against the wall with her liver and the dull green bulb of her gall bladder).

  Evan shook his head frantically to end the reenactment.

  “Fuck you, Janet,” he whispered.

  (Janet smiled; white teeth cutting through the red face.)