Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  “It will not be a gallows,” you reply, but there is a sharp edge around your words, a brittle frame and all the gilt flaking free. “Indeed, it will be little more than a quick glance stolen through a window before the drapes are drawn shut against you. So, dear, you do not stand to earn some final coddling, not this day, and so I would not hear that tale repeated, when I know it as well as I know the four syllables of my own beloved’s name.”

  “You will hear me,” I say, and my fingers twine and knot themselves tightly in your hair. A few flaxen strands pull free, and I hope I can carry them down into the dark with me. You tense, but do not pull away or make any further protest. “When I was a girl, my own brother died beneath the wheels of an ox cart. It was an accident, of course. But still his skull was broken and his chest all staved in. Though, in the end, no one was judged at fault.”

  I sit on my stool, and you kneel there on the stone floor, waiting for me to be done, restlessly awaiting my passage and the moment when I have been rendered incapable of repeating familiar tales you do not wish to hear retold.

  “I held him, what remained of him. I felt the shudder when his child’s soul pulled loose from its prison. His blue eyes were as bright in that instant as the glare of sunlight off freshly fallen snow. As for the man who drove the cart, he committed suicide some weeks later, though I did not learn this until I was almost grown.”

  “There is no ox cart here,” you whisper. “There are no careless hooves, and no innocent drover.”

  “I did not say he was a drover. I have never said that. He was merely a farmer, I think, on his way to market with a load of potatoes and cabbages. My brother’s entire unlived life traded for only a few bushels of potatoes and cabbages. That must be esteemed a bargain, by any measure.”

  “We should begin now,” you say, and I don’t disagree, for my legs are growing stiff and an indefinable weight has begun to press in upon me. I was warned of these symptoms, and so there is not surprise, only the fear that I have prayed I would be strong enough to bear. You stand and help me to my feet, then lead me the short distance to the vivarium tank. Suddenly, I cannot escape the fanciful and disagreeable impression that your mechanical apparatuses and contraptions are watching on. Maybe, I think, they have been watching all along. Perhaps, they were my jurors, an impassionate, unbiased tribunal of brass and steel and porcelain, and now they gaze out with automaton eyes and exhale steam and oily vapours to see their sentence served. You told me there would be madness, that the toxin would act upon my mind as well as my body, but in my madness I have forgotten the warning.

  “Please, I would not have them see me, not like this,” I tell you, but already we have reached the great tank that will only serve as my carriage for these brief and extraordinary travels—if your calculations and theories are proved correct—or that will become my deathbed, if, perchance, you have made some critical error. There is a stepladder, and you guide me, and so I endeavor not to feel their enthusiastic, damp-palmed scrutiny. I sit down on the platform at the top of the ladder and let my feet dangle into the warm liquid, both my feet and then my legs up to the knees. It is not an objectionable sensation and promises that I will not be cold for much longer. Streams of bubbles rise slowly from vents set into the rear wall of the tank, stirring and oxygenating this translucent primal soup of viscous humours, your painstaking brew of protéine and hæmatoglobin, carbamide resin and cellulose, water and phlegm and bile. All those substances believed fundamental to life, a recipe gleaned from our dusty volumes of Medieval alchemy and metaphysics, but also from your own researches and the work of more modern scientific practitioners and professors of chemistry and anatomy. Previously, I have found the odor all but unbearable, though now there seems to be no detectable scent at all.

  “Believe me,” you say, “I will have you back with me in less than an hour.” And I try hard then to remember how long an hour is, but the poison leeches away even the memory of time. With hands as gentle as a midwife’s, you help me from the platform and into my strange bath, and you keep my head above the surface until the last convulsions have come and gone and I am made no more than any cadaver.

  “Wake up,” she says—you say—but the shock of the mercury and iodine you administered to the vivarium have rapidly faded, and once more there is but the absolute and inviolable present moment, so impervious and sacrosanct that I can not even imagine conscious action, which would require the concept of an apprehension of some future, that time is somehow more than this static aqueous matrix surrounding and defining me.

  “Do you hear me? Can you not even hear me?”

  All at once, and with a certitude almost agonizing in its omneity, I am aware that I am being watched. No, that is not right. That is not precisely the way of it. All at once, I know that I am being watched by eyes which have not heretofore beheld me; all along there have been her eyes, as well as the stalked eyes of the scuttling crabs I mentioned and other such creeping, slithering inhabitants of my mind’s ocean as have glommed the dim pageant of my voyage. But these eyes, and this spectator—my love, nothing has ever seen me with such complete and merciless understanding. And now the act of seeing has ceased to be a passive action, as the act of being seen has stopped being an activity that neither diminishes nor alters the observed. I would scream, but dead women do not seem to be permitted that luxury, and the scream of my soul is as silent as the moon. And in another place and in another time where past and future still hold meaning, you plunge your arms into the tank, hauling me up from the shallow deep and moving me not one whit. I am fixed by these eyes, like a butterfly pinned after the killing jar.

  It does not speak to me, for there can be no need of speech when vision is so thorough and so incapable of misreckoning. Plagues need not speak, nor floods, nor the voracious winds of tropical hurricanes. A thing with eyes for teeth, eyes for its tongue and gullet. A thing which has been waiting for me in this moment that has no antecedents and which can spawn no successors. Maybe it waits here for every dying man and woman, for every insect and beast and falling leaf, or maybe some specific quality of my obliteration has brought me to its attention. Possibly, it only catches sight of suicides, and surely I have become that, though your Circean hands poured the poison draught and then held the spoon. There is such terrible force in this gaze that it seems not implausible that I am the first it has ever beheld, and now it will know all, and it shall have more than knowledge for this opportunity might never come again.

  “Only tell me what happened,” you will say, in some time that cannot ever be, not from when I lie here in the vivarium you have built for me, not from this occasion when I lie exposed to a Cosmos hardly half considered by the mortal minds contained therein. “Only put down what seems most significant, in retrospect. Do not dwell upon everything you might recall, every perception. You may make a full accounting later.”

  “Later, I might forget something,” I will reply. “It’s not so unlike a dream.” And you will frown and slide the ink well a little ways across the writing desk toward me. On your face I will see the stain of an anxiety that has been mounting down all the days since my return.

  That will be a lie, of course, for nothing of this will I ever forget. Never shall it fade. I will be taunting you, or through me it will be taunting your heedless curiousity, which even then will remain undaunted. This hour, though, is far, far away. From when I lie, it is a fancy that can never come to pass—a unicorn, the roaring cataract at the edge of a flat world, a Hell which punishes only those who deserve eternal torment. Around me flows the sea of all beginnings and of all conclusion, and through the weeds and murk, from the peaks of submarine mountains to the lowest vales of Neptune’s sovereignty, benighted in perpetuum—horizon to horizon—does its vision stretch unbroken. And as I have written already, observing me it takes away, and observing me it adds to my acumen and marrow. I am increased as much or more than I am consumed, so it must be a fair encounter, when all is said and done.

  Somewhen
immeasurably inconceivable to my present-bound mind, a hollow needle pierces my flesh, there in some unforeseeable aftertime, and the hypodermic’s plunger forces into me your concoction of caffeine citrate, cocaine, belladonna, epinephrine, foxglove, etcetera & etcetera. And I think you will be screaming for me to come back, then, to open my eyes, to wake up as if you had only given me over to an afternoon catnap. I would not answer, even now, even with its smothering eyes upon me, in me, performing their metamorphosis. But you are calling (wake up, wake up, wake up), and your chemicals are working upon my traitorous physiology, and, worst of all, it wishes me to return whence and from when I have come. It has infected me, or placed within me some fraction of itself, or made from my sentience something suited to its own explorations. Did this never occur to you, my dear? That in those liminal spaces, across the thresholds that separate life from death, might lurk an inhabitant supremely adapted to those climes, and yet also possessed of its own questions, driven by its own peculiar acquisitiveness, seeking always some means to penetrate the veil. I cross one way for you, and I return as another’s experiment, the vessel of another’s inquisition.

  “Breathe, goddamn you!” you will scream, screaming that seems no more or less disingenuous or melodramatic than any actor upon any stage. With your fingers you will clear, have cleared, are evermore clearing my mouth and nostrils of the thickening elixir filling the vivarium tank. “You won’t leave me. I will not let you go. There are no ox carts here, no wagon wheels.”

  But, also, you have, or you will, or at this very second you are placing that fatal spoon upon my tongue.

  And when it is done—if I may arbitrarily use that word here, when—and its modifications are complete, it shuts its eyes, like the sun tumbling down from the sky, and I am tossed helpless back into the rushing flow of time’s river. In the vivarium, I try to draw a breath and vomit milky gouts. At the writing desk, I take the quill you have provided me, and I write—“Wake up,” she whispers. There are long days when I do not have the strength to speak or even sit. The fears of pneumonia and fever, of dementia and some heretofore unseen necrosis triggered by my time away. The relief that begins to show itself as weeks pass and your fears fade slowly, replaced again by that old and indomitable inquisitiveness. The evening that you drained the tank and found something lying at the bottom which you have refused to ever let me see, but keep under lock and key. And this night, which might be now, in our bed in the dingy room above your laboratory, and you hold me in your arms, and I lie with my ear against your breast, listening to the tireless rhythm of your heart winding down, and it listens through me. You think me still but your love, and I let my hand wander across your belly and on, lower, to the damp cleft of your sex. And there also is the day I hold my dying brother. And there are my long walks beside the sea, too, with the winter waves hammering against the Cobb. That brine is only the faintest echo of the tenebrous kingdom I might have named Womb. Overhead, the wheeling gulls mock me, and the freezing wind drives me home again. But always it watches, and it waits, and it studies the intricacies of the winding avenue I have become.

  She rolls through an ether of sighs—

  She revels in a region of sighs…

  —Edgar Allan Poe (December 1847)

  TO TAKE THE WATER DOWN AND GO TO SLEEP

  by Frazer Lee

  “The tank is a safe space in which to heal your psyche, Mr. Roberts.”

  Roberts looked at the gunmetal gray cylinder, and frowned.

  “It doesn’t look all that safe to me.”

  “Senz-dep is state-of-the-art, I assure you,” the white-coated doctor boasted. “Admittedly, we had a few acoustic issues with the second-gen, but this is the third. You’ll feel like you’re floating in space—without the inconvenience of actual space tourism.”

  “Not to mention the expense.”

  The white-coat just smiled. Whatever his clients had paid, Roberts guessed it might equal the price of a return ticket to the outer atmosphere.

  “Your profile is not uncommon. You are at mid-life. Even high-functioning staff have a blip on their record somewhere, and the mid-to-late forties are the usual co-ordinates.”

  “A mid-life crisis barely accounts for the shakes, does it? For the insomnia and the night sweats? For the recurring…dreams.” Roberts shuddered. It felt cold in the lab.

  “That’s all this is—a blip. Your employers wish you to continue unabated. To go back into the…corporate world and close those deals.”

  Roberts felt movement at his side and looked down to see his hand shaking again. His limb felt distant, adrift somehow. He reached across with his other hand and gripped his wrist, ever tighter until the shakes subsided.

  “One step at a time,” the white-coat said, making a quick note of something on his tablet. “If you’d like to remove your robe, we’ll help you into the tank.”

  Roberts had to peel his hand away from his wrist, he was gripping it so tightly. The sensation returned to his palm then spread out, pins and needles pricking his flesh all the way to his fingertips.

  He tried not to tremble when they helped him up the metal steps.

  From his vantage point atop the metal walkway, he felt as though he was looking at an aspect of some black ocean through an observation window. He jolted, recalling the last time he had looked down at the sea. Nausea swam over him, making a clammy jelly of his body. His knees gave way and he reached out for the handrail. The white-coats caught him, shouldering his body weight.

  “I…I don’t like the look of the water.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It looks cold.”

  “It’s not. I assure you it is calibrated to the ideal temperature for relaxation.”

  Roberts found the prospect to be less than relaxing. He shivered again, uncontrollably now.

  “Easy breaths now, Mr. Roberts. In through the nose, and out through the mouth.”

  The breathing helped balance his equilibrium, though he still felt sick to his core.

  “Ready now?”

  He wasn’t. But neither was he going to give the white-coats any excuses to patronize him further.

  The water was lukewarm and pleasant as he stepped inside. His attendants instructed him to stand still for a few moments while they attached little suckers to his skin at strategic points on his forehead, upper body, and chest. The suckers were anchored to wires, which would data-mine his body while he was in the tank. They felt invasive—almost as though they would be probing his physique for weaknesses.

  The lid closed. Roberts watched the white-coats’ faces disappear behind the tank’s outer shell. He focused on the little glass observation porthole set into the lid just a couple of feet above his face. Then that too went dark as the white-coats activated the electronic window-tint. He lay in now total darkness and listened to his breath. All other sounds were absent, so each inhalation and exhalation had the volume and intensity of an oncoming freight train. He blinked, and the afterimage of the little observation window made a halo of light flicker before his eyes.

  He breathed. And, drifting into darkness, he felt his body descend.

  Opening his eyes he saw that he was back at the porthole in his cabin aboard the Serendipity.

  Raw emotion washed over him, burning hot and freezing cold; then back again. He was trembling, and knew now that exact moment was when the shakes had really set in. He could see the moonlit ocean through the porthole, could smell the brine and the rum in the plastic cup on the sill beside him. His face was wet with sweat, and from the tears that would not stop coming. His chest ached from the mere act of breathing and his mouth was dry from longing for the taste of her. He remembered reaching for the drink, and how he fumbled, knocking it over. It splashed against the occasional table beneath the porthole.

  Cursing, he stumbled to the en suite and turned on the lamp. It flickered momentarily before bathing the black-and-white tiled space in sickly yellow light. He caught sight of his clammy reflection in the mirror and qui
ckly looked away, unable to make eye contact with himself. He crossed to the sink and opened the faucet labelled Salt‑Cold. He ran his finger under the salt water, thinking all the while about how the pumps below decks would be bringing the water up from the ocean beneath.

  He vomited then.

  Barely able to close the faucet, he staggered backwards into the cabin and slumped onto the bed. Closing his eyes he heard the deafening roar of the ship’s foghorn, blasting through his skull like—

  Roberts opened his eyes in the dark and heard the thunder of his flailing limbs. Numb, he could not even feel the impact of his hands and feet against the extremities of the isolation tank. He could only hear it.

  There was a hiss, and the sound of muffled, panicked voices. Rubber-gloved hands were around him, lifting him from his dark cradle and out into the artificial light. It was like being ripped from the womb.

  He screamed.

  The Serendipity was vast—more like a floating town than a mere ocean liner. Navigating its labyrinthine corridors and decks would test the orienting skills of even the most experienced traveller. Roberts had once again found himself deciphering one of the wall-mounted schematics when he became aware of another lost soul, standing beside him.

  “Third time I checked this thing, and I’m still lost.”

  Her voice was warm, with that effortless East Coast delivery. A country girl who had become a city woman. He made eye contact and found her smiling at him. Her eyes were bright blue, her pale face framed by wisps of scissor-cut hair. Her dress was on-trend but with an edge that was all her own.

  “Where were you headed? Maybe we can work it out together?”

  “Nearest bar. I’m parched.”

  “Me too. Now we simply have to work it out.”

  She laughed. A shrill, honest sound.

  Roberts leaned closer to the map, tracing his index finger of his right hand along the corridor marked YOU ARE HERE.