The Chrysalis

by Deneen, Brendan

  Had he really just slapped a glass out of Jenny’s hand? It didn’t seem possible. Tom cradled his head in his palms. He missed the chrysalis so fucking much.

  “Here you go,” the bartender said. Tom looked up and found himself staring into a glassful of amber liquid. It filled his vision and then, within seconds, his empty stomach. But his brain hardly noticed it. “Keep them coming,” he demanded.

  “Your funeral,” the obnoxious, long-haired hipster responded.

  Tom could feel the crowd behind him but wondered, were they really there? Was he? Or was he in the basement? As he drank his second, then third glass of bourbon, he realized that he was sobbing, tears and snot rolling down his face. Which was especially confusing because he felt nothing inside.

  “Hey, FNG, what the hell is going on with you?” Malcolm was standing behind the bar, in front of Tom, arms outstretched on either side of him, a familiar pose, a concerned smile on his face.

  Tom wiped a sleeve across his face, tried to smile back, failed. “Malcolm, maybe … better to leave me alone.” Tom was surprised at the sound of his voice. Clear, no slur whatsoever. It was as though he’d been drinking water.

  “Fuck that. Hold on, I’m coming around.”

  Malcolm appeared next to Tom seconds later, then led him to a two-person table at the back of the bar. The crowd parted for the bar owner and the haggard man he was dragging after him as if they recognized that a rescue operation was under way. Malcolm nodded at the two guys currently occupying the table, and they understood his silent command, vacating the area for the establishment’s well-liked owner.

  “I forgot my drink at the bar,” Tom mumbled as he dropped into the uncomfortable wooden chair.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere,” Malcolm responded, pushing a bowl of peanuts toward Tom. “Here. Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Eat.”

  Staring at the older man, Tom grabbed a handful of the nuts and shoved them into his mouth. Though they tasted like sawdust, he chewed dutifully. He had to swallow several times before the disgusting paste went down.

  “Happy?” he asked.

  “Over the moon,” Malcolm answered gravely, returning Tom’s hard stare.

  “I told you, just leave me alone. I’m … not right in the head anymore.”

  “Bullshit. To all of that. If you wanted to be alone, you wouldn’t have come to my bar. You know what I think? I think you came here for help. We haven’t been friends all that long, but you’re almost like a son to me. No matter what kind of a shitty day or month you’re having, I know you. There’s nothing wrong with your head. You’re struggling with some heavy shit—big house, new job, kid on the way. Maybe a bit too much alcohol. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there.”

  Tom swiped the wooden bowl of peanuts off the table, sending it clattering onto the floor. Several of the bar’s patrons looked over.

  “You don’t know anything about me!” he shouted, leaping to his feet. “Leave me alone, you old fuck!”

  Malcolm stood, too—slowly, looking sad. He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I know you don’t mean that, Tom. Come on. I think the diner’s still open. Let’s go get some greasy food and talk. This place can live without me for a couple hours.”

  Stepping forward, Tom violently grabbed Malcolm’s shirt in a fist and shoved him, hard, against the wall. “I am not your dead fucking son.”

  The older man looked surprised, then visibly deflated. Tom didn’t care. He felt the anger radiating off his body, could feel it infecting the entire bar. He reveled in it.

  He heard angry shouting and wondered vaguely if it was all in his head until a bunch of arms grabbed him and someone shouted in his ear, “Get the hell off Malcolm!”

  Tom fought against the arms, but there were a lot of them. Blazing-hot rage continued to bubble inside him, and he fought harder, an unnatural strength swelling through his body. More people rushed forward, smashing Tom against the wall.

  Blood burst from his nose and he laughed, feeling a blast of emotion for the first time in months, a kind of twisted happiness, loving every second even though he still wasn’t sure if it was actually happening. Was it possible that he was still at the party? Maybe he was in the basement, pressed up against the chrysalis. Maybe he’d wake up on the floor with Jenny calling softly from the kitchen, imploring him to come to bed.

  No. This was definitely real. He was pressed up against the same wall that he’d just pinned Malcolm to, people shouting at him to calm down. The old man was nowhere in sight.

  Blood poured from Tom’s nose into his open mouth and he realized that he was still laughing.

  “Is that all you got?” he shouted.

  “You want more, motherfucker?” a man yelled into the side of his face. “Let’s drag this asshole outside!”

  Tom felt power running through his veins, and shoved himself backwards. His attackers stumbled back, but this time Tom threw out his elbows, again and again, faster than he would have imagined possible, and smashed several unseen faces. He took pleasure in their screams.

  Released by his opponents, he spun to face them, grinning widely beneath the blood coating his face. One of his attackers had fallen; Tom loomed over her. The woman looked up at him, blood streaming from her nose, her face a red-streaked mirror of Tom’s own, minus the smile.

  It was Hannah. His sister. Wait. No. He was an only child.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you,” she snarled.

  Tom abruptly felt the fight go out of his body. His vision seemed to clear, and the noise of the room rushed back to him as he fought to control himself.

  “Hannah? I … I didn’t mean … I’m sor—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish. Fist after fist struck him everywhere—cheeks, stomach, back, ribs. He raised his hands to protect himself, but there were too many of them. He couldn’t see their faces, could barely see the bloody, cracked knuckles coming at him from every direction as his world was once again swallowed by darkness.

  There was no pain, not really, but his body was failing to respond to his brain’s commands. Something in his fractured mind was making him smile, which was apparently driving his attackers into a frenzy. Tom collapsed to one knee, feeling something crack there at the impact. Still he felt nothing. People were bellowing, pounding on him; the entire place was whipping itself into an animalistic fury.

  As if in a dream or hallucination, he was lifted and carried on a forest of human limbs like a latter-day savior. The comforting darkness shrouded his mind completely as Tom laughed maniacally. Blood ran from his nose, dripped from his ears, streamed from a nasty cut on his lower lip.

  He was dumped unceremoniously into a pile of snow; the intense cold, after the heat and violence of the bar, was a shock to his malfunctioning system. Someone kicked him in the gut one last time for good measure. Then they abandoned him, disappearing back into the bar on a cacophony of shouting and vicious laughter.

  Tom barely heard any of it. New flakes fell from the sky, coating his exposed skin in a thin, freezing sheen. He raised a trembling hand to the dark, cloud-covered sky, blinking several times as his vision returned, and watched snowflakes land on his raw, pink fingers.

  “Unique…,” he whispered. Blood and tears started to freeze on his face as he sank into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Sometime later, Tom stood shivering in the doorway of his completely dark house. He could barely feel his fingers or toes. How long had he been lying out in the snow? How had he gotten home? What time was it? What day was it?

  “Jenny!” he shouted, but there was no response other than the creaking of the old house and the occasional clank of the radiators. Otherwise, the house was utterly and painfully silent.

  He made his way through the dining room and living room. Signs of the abandoned cocktail party were everywhere, like a stage play suspended in the middle of a scene, with the characters hiding offstage, rea
dy to step out in faceless masks and shredded, bloody clothes, and stab Tom with sharpened knives.

  Shaking his head, Tom forced the images away. He went to the door that led upstairs, opened it, and shouted his wife’s name again. No response. As far as he could tell from the bottom of the stairs, it was pitch black up there—no sign of the bathroom light she always left on for him. He called her name again but knew in his gut that she wasn’t there.

  He needed to focus. His wife was missing.

  Closing his eyes, Tom tried to separate the real memories from the imagined ones.

  They’d been throwing a small party, and something had happened. He knew that much. He also had a vague memory of getting his ass kicked at Nick’s. But why?

  What the hell was going on?

  In the kitchen, he turned on the lights; one bulb popped quietly and went dead. Two things immediately caught his attention: a note on the counter and the door to the basement, which stood open, beckoning to him. His palms were immediately slick with sweat, heart thumping with excitement. He was alone in the house with the chrysalis. Finally.

  He stepped toward the basement, then, with a huge effort, stopped himself and turned to the note.

  What the fuck is wrong with you? he thought.

  Tom forced himself to grab the small piece of paper.

  Tom, I’ve gone to stay with Victoria for a while. I don’t know what’s going on with you … if you’re on drugs or terrified of our new life and having some sort of breakdown or trying to get rid of me without coming out and saying it … but I can’t be with you right now.

  I’m afraid of you. But I also love you and I know you are a good man. I just don’t know where that man is right now. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Maybe some marriage counseling might even be a good idea.

  Love, Jenny

  Tears were running down Tom’s face, but he felt almost nothing other than an overwhelming desire to go down to the basement.

  An intense pain shot through his gut, and he turned to look at the refrigerator. The one up here, the one that worked, that wasn’t hiding the only thing he wanted right now. When was the last time he had actually eaten something? He couldn’t remember.

  But he didn’t have an appetite. Even the thought of food made him feel nauseated.

  He crumpled the note into a ball and dropped it to the stained kitchen floor, all the while staring at the basement door. The darkness beyond was so complete, so inviting. An inadvertent giggle leaked out of his mouth and he surged forward.

  * * *

  He pulled the refrigerator away from the wall.

  A sigh of relief escaped him when he saw the chrysalis. It was larger than ever, its dark veins glistening in the multiple colors from the string of Christmas lights. The overhead fluorescents had burned out weeks earlier, which was fine. Tom welcomed the warmth of the shadows down here.

  He could hear the ice-cold snowflakes tapping against the paint-covered windows, an almost gleeful sound, a drum roll to his reintroduction to the dark, growing mass clinging to the wall.

  Gently, Tom placed both hands on the pus-covered thing. It didn’t shiver against his touch, as usual. That’s odd, he thought, but closed his eyes, waiting for the rush.

  Waiting.

  After a minute, Tom opened his eyes. There was no burst of pleasure. Instead, his mind was becoming clearer, horrible memories of the party and Nick’s filtering into his consciousness.

  “No…,” he said, pushing his hands harder against the chrysalis. Nothing happened. Maybe it was … mad at him? Angry that he hadn’t fed it any animals in more than a week? “Come on.…”

  The breathing sound continued to fill the basement, but it was softer and thinner than before.

  “Please…,” he implored. Still, nothing.

  Frustrated, he pulled his hands away, eyes brimming with tears. Images flooded his mind: his corpse hanging from a noose, the rope tied around the basement rafters; his hand wrapped around the handle of a kitchen knife, slicing open his wrists, then up along the veins; his body, bleeding to death on top of the still-present bloodstain on the kitchen floor.

  “No!” he insisted, clenching his fists but feeling his will to live leaking away.

  A small glob of gelatinous goo ran down his wrist and onto his forearm. Without a thought, he leaned forward and licked it off his skin. The taste exploded on his tongue, simultaneously horrible and amazing, like dog shit caked in powdered sugar. He gagged but managed to swallow.

  A painful warmth spread out from his stomach, inching through the rest of his body. When it hit his brain, stars exploded into his vision. He staggered away from the chrysalis, crashing into a pile of water-stained boxes and rolling to the floor, his shoulder slamming into the ground. Between the impact and his earlier beating, he should have been in agony. Instead, his body was racked with waves of euphoria. Rolling onto his back, Tom inhaled deeply, smiling, each breath kick-starting a new vision of the infinite. Nearby, the chrysalis expanded slightly. The breathing grew louder as Tom writhed on the dirty basement floor, awash in ecstasy.

  MONTH SEVEN

  Tom woke with a start and blinked several times, clearing grit from his eyes, then slowly sat up, swallowing nausea. He tried to remember what day it was but couldn’t. It’s December, he thought. He’d been living alone for weeks. But was it a weekday? Weekend? He had no idea. He was in the basement; that he knew.

  He looked down at himself. He was wearing a rumpled, dirty suit and one shoe. No help there—he might have gone to work that day, or simply not taken off the suit he’d worn a day earlier. Or days earlier.

  Slowly, he stood up, fighting to retain his balance. He stumbled over to the chrysalis and stared at it for a few moments. Saying goodbye to it in the mornings had become increasingly difficult. He considered scooping some of its mucus into his mouth, but he knew he’d overdone it the night before, could still feel the effects reverberating through his mind and body.

  He pushed the refrigerator back into place, hiding the dark mass once again.

  In the kitchen, in the blinding light of morning, Tom staggered to the counter and grabbed his phone, checking the date: December 18th. He’d lost a full week to the basement, surviving on what the chrysalis gave him.

  Had he been down there the whole time, in the same suit? He had no idea.

  Outside, birds were chirping and the sun was shining. Tom remembered vaguely that the Northeast was going through an unseasonably warm phase. Putting his phone down, Tom squinted into the light. All the snow was gone. Naked tree limbs danced gently in a breeze that he could practically see, the day awash in surreal colors that throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat, which increased as the colors started cycling faster.

  Gripped by abdominal cramps, Tom violently vomited what looked like black tar into the kitchen sink. His stomach heaved over and over again, an impossible amount of opaque, viscous liquid pouring from his aching throat. A horrible odor wafted up as it began to overwhelm the drain and fill the bottom of the sink.

  When the spasms stopped, he remained hunched over, his face hovering next to the gleaming metal faucet, trying to catch his breath. Dappled sunlight played against the back of his neck, causing sweat to break out there. At last he managed to straighten up long enough to grab his phone, turn around, and slide down along the cabinet, away from the sunlight and the sludge he had just purged from his body.

  He focused his eyes and started scrolling through his phone.

  It was 6:20 A.M. on a Monday. He had several dozen unread emails and a handful of missed calls, voice mails, texts. Tapping the button for voice messages, Tom put the phone against his ear, resting his head back against the wood and staring blankly at the open basement door. His stretched-out feet barely touched the faint bloodstain in the center of the kitchen floor.

  The first message was from five days earlier. It was Jenny.

  “Hi, Tom. Um. How are you? I’ve called before but figured I’d actually leave a message this time. I
don’t really know what to say. Other than I love you and I’m not giving up on us. I saw Dr. Miller last week and pretty much cried the entire time because you weren’t there. I told her you had to work and that I was just emotional because of the hormones. But it sucked to be there without you, to see our beautiful little baby by myself. And don’t even get me started on the birthing classes.” She laughed bitterly. “Those suck to do alone, too.”

  Tom looked over at the refrigerator, but the sonogram they’d so lovingly placed there was gone. Had she taken it? Had it fallen off at some point during her absence? He had no idea and hated that he didn’t know.

  “I … miss you,” Jenny’s voice continued. “A lot. I’m not saying that I’m going to automatically forgive everything you’ve done, but I really want us to talk. It’s been a few weeks since the party, and I’m not so upset anymore, though Victoria is and says I should be. Anyway, I’m still teaching at my studio in Springdale, but I’m living in the city. With Vic. For now. Who ever thought I’d be doing a reverse commute?” She laughed; it sounded bitter.

  “Just feel free to come by the studio sometime. I mean, give me a little notice. But maybe we can go grab a coffee and talk. It’s weird to be so close to you every day and not talk to you or see you. Yeah. Okay, so … bye. Take care of yourself, Tom.”

  The next couple of calls were spam and he deleted them. The last message was from Kevin, three days earlier.

  “Tom, it’s Kev. I hope you had a good week off. I know how much you needed it. And I’m sorry to call today, I realize it’s Friday and technically you’re still on vacation, but I thought you’d want to know that the deal you somehow managed to close last week before you left, the Bessecker account?

  “Based on the numbers you gave us and the projections we ran, it’s going to pay off big-time. Kroll is freaking the fuck out. Dude is in love with you right now. We just need to verify some of the details that you left out. Let’s grab a drink on Monday? Or we can even talk at the office holiday party next week. I know things have been … um … complicated lately. I can only imagine what you’re going through, with Jenny and what not.…