Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  Ahead, the course of the wash curved slowly, arcing toward the northeast. Lidia picked up her pace, anxious to keep Jason in her sights. As they maneuvered the long curve, a tunnel was revealed ahead. “There we go,” Jason said, pointing.

  Confused by his statement, feeling an inexplicable dread as they neared the black tunnel mouth, Lidia asked, “What?”

  “That tunnel showed up when I Googled the wash. That’s where the concrete begins; on the other side, it’s still natural creek, going up into the hills.”

  It was hard to believe. The tunnel mouth was situated beneath a major street; a shopping center lay on the other side. “So the wash passes under a strip mall?”

  “Yeah. But there’s just vacant land behind that strip mall—it backs right up against the foothills.”

  As they approached the mouth of the tunnel, light and sound seemed to dim, while the odors of rot and stagnation intensified. There was something else, too, something meaty but rank, like the odor of a sick man who’d stopped bathing.

  “What is that? God, that shit is rank.” Jason uttered a disgusted laugh. At their feet more water flowed, yellowish and dense with sediment, trickling out of the tunnel mouth ahead.

  “We’re not going in there, are we?” Lidia hated herself for even phrasing it as a question.

  “Yeah—don’t you want to see the other side?”

  “Let’s just go up, through the mall…”

  They had almost reached the tunnel mouth now. It was big—probably six feet in diameter—so they could easily walk through it without even bending over. But it was also long, dark, thick with that odor that wrenched Lidia’s gut.

  Jason pulled out his phone, punched up a flashlight app, and used the beam to penetrate the tunnel’s murk. It didn’t go far, but was enough to reveal a rounded floor covered in several inches of oozing filth, the occasional plastic bag half-buried to one side.

  Lidia started to pull away. “I’m not going in there.”

  Jason placed one foot on the concrete lip. “C’mon, we got light. It’s not that far.”

  “What if somebody’s living in here?”

  Jason waved the light, shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He stepped all the way in, crouched over slightly. He took a few steps before turning to look back. “C’mon, it’s solid. I’ll lead the way.”

  He pushed forward.

  It would be so easy to go back. Let Jason go ahead, report back to her that he made his way through a filthy pipe to find a muddy, dull creek bed. She didn’t even have to go back—she could just wait here, a few feet back, where the smell was lessened. Wait in the sun, the heat, the air…

  But something drew her. Whether it was fear of being abandoned by her friend, or the need to know, or something more indefinable, she couldn’t say. As she entered the dark mouth, she felt panic—but it didn’t last, replaced by calm she’d never known before. It was warmer than she’d expected, the smell something she no longer noticed once there was no escaping it. She had one uncomfortable instant when she saw how far off the end was (a hundred feet? More?), but that also passed quickly.

  Jason heard her coming, waited, smiling. “Attagirl.”

  Lidia said nothing. Instead she pushed past him.

  “Hey, hold on…” Jason tried to point the light beam in front of her, but the darkness veiled it within a few feet.

  Lidia didn’t care. Something about this place reassured her, even as it pulled her on. Whatever awaited her, it lay ahead.

  She picked up her pace, not noticing the soft, almost fleshy feel beneath her feet. Something brushed her face, but she didn’t flinch or cry out. Instead, it excited her, like a lover’s tickling stroke.

  “Lidia, wait—!”

  She didn’t look back, not even when Jason cried out, not when a wet, slurping sound stifled his screams, not when the sound of something large being sucked down died out.

  Lidia paused just long enough to wait for the silence to return before continuing on.

  She reached the end of the tunnel and hesitated, blinded by the return of Southern California’s sunlight. Squinting, she stepped out, felt moist dirt beneath her feet. When her eyes adjusted, she saw natural desolation, free of human mark. The creek, a clear stream between rocky sides, flowed beneath scrub and sage. The sky overhead was a cloudless, painful azure, arching above blissful solitude.

  No, not complete solitude—Lidia looked down as the ground shifted beneath her feet, a slow, earthen vortex. She stepped back, not out of fear but out of respect for what was happening. A hand appeared—ebon, clawed, scaled—followed by the top curve of a wing that glistened darkly.

  All at once, Lidia understood this place that had baffled and frustrated her. She knew that the concrete channels had not been built to direct, but to guard. To protect the City of Angels.

  Like her, they were broken.

  She knelt, reaching out. The grasping hand found hers; it felt reassuring, even loving, as it wrapped long fingers around her wrist. It pulled her down, toward the pure earth. As her arm was submerged, a last, conscious part of her tried to scream, but then the rich clay filled her mouth and she let it.

  It’s so beautiful, she thought, as she left the anxious world of air and light.

  JUST WATCH ME NOW

  by Jodi Renée Lester

  THREE

  A three. They tell me that’s what I am between drag after drag after drag off their cigarettes.

  Three sheets to the wind. Three strikes. Third degree. Third child. Third place (always a bridesmaid, never a bride). Third in line. Three times a lady. Three for one (a bargain, a steal). One-third the person I should be. The rule of three—three minutes to die of suffocation, three days to die of dehydration, three weeks to die of starvation.

  I stare ahead to a fixed point between and beyond their heads. My eyes blur.

  “Threes don’t go outside.”

  I feel them probe, sniffing me. Categorizing and assessing me.

  Smoke after smoke after smoke.

  I drop my head and vanish behind the thick curtain of my hair.

  They bide their time and soon I would be biding mine.

  Ashtrays overflow. Whose turn is it anyway? Argument ensues:

  “I did it last.”

  “No I did it.”

  “No I did.”

  “No, it’s me!”

  I pick up and balance in my hands three plastic ashtrays, black to better camouflage the melted burn spots hidden beneath all that ash. Cigarette butts jut out at angles, bony remains of the dead. A wisp of smoke slithers from the peak, snaking lazily upward, snuffed by the stagnant air.

  Head down, watching my feet, my snug-treads whisper across the linoleum floor and shuffle me once around the lounge. A coffee table surrounded by two sofas and two chairs that cordon off the smoking area within a larger room, a lobby of sorts. I circle them, a solitary procession, careful not to spill.

  It takes forever but I reach the can beside the bank of payphones. Three of them. With the ashtrays upturned the debris falls and I clack them together. Stale powder wafts up in my face.

  I pause, completely still and silent, prolonging the moment, seeing how long the fiends will hold out. I smother the urge to return to my room with them. Instigate a riot. A hidden smirk surfaces on my face.

  I shuffle around once more and return to the sacred circle. Fingers and cigarettes reach over the ashtrays before they even touch the table. Long stems of collapsing ash, drooping, hanging on for dear life, finally tapped and released. Everyone falls back in their seats. Sighs of relief cut the tension.

  People enter the room, one by one by one from all directions, converging on the lounge, cigarettes drawn, lighters at the ready, greedy eyes focused on one thing only. The empty seat. My seat. At the last second, just as a challenger was about to stake her claim, I flop down in the chair. The action stops.

  All eyes on me.

  The pace in the room slows a bit as they step into the circle, resigned to s
tand or perch on the edge of a couch or chair.

  “Who’s got a light?”

  “Lay some fire on me, will ya?”

  “Got a light-light-light?”

  The first drag is communal, sacred. A vacuum, a temporary void in space restored as everyone but me exhales a cloud of smoke.

  My head still down, I feel the challenger staring at me.

  Dings and pings and callers, anxious and antsy, eager and apprehensive, listen to the sound of coins dropping, waiting for someone to pick up the phone. Mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, anyone who will answer. Whoever will stay on the line. Muffled voices, stifled sobs.

  A short line has formed, pressing forward, willing the conversations to end.

  A three, they say.

  As time closes in, the more suspicious they become. A wave of people ebbs back out and a chair is opened. The challenger takes it, glaring the whole time at the top of my bowed head. Staring at me and the empty spaces between my fingers. She firmly tamps the top corner of her cigarette pack, popping one out.

  “Smoke?” She holds the pack through the part in my curtain of hair, making sure I see the one little soldier poking out. A challenge rather than an offer.

  I move my head slowly, the curtain swings side to side. No.

  She shrugs, a false front, and retreats. Grabs the cigarette between her lips and draws it out. Striking a match, she lights her own and those of two others.

  Three on a matchstick.

  Again I shake my head.

  “What?” she demands.

  Silence.

  “What the fuck?”

  “‘What the fuck.’ Now what does one say to that?” The first words to escape my mouth since I entered this place. No one, including myself, really sure that I spoke at all.

  I rise, slowly, and turn out of the lounge, begin my shuffle across the big room.

  “Hey!” she calls after me, the last word. The alpha conveying her status.

  My head still down, I watch my snug-treads scuff down the hallway of industrial-strength carpet.

  A grin spreads across my lips that no one can see and only I can feel. Queen Bitch agitated into a state of rage.

  A three-dollar bill in a room full of stooges, playing to an easy crowd.

  There are worse places I could have ended up; I am well aware of that and, yes, even grateful. In my repeated fantasies, I drive off a cliff and soar down to the ocean. All these years living on the coast, so many opportunities. So many times I’d find myself gripping the wheel, fighting the urge to jerk it hard to the right. Yet here I am, in this place that sits atop a bluff overlooking the sea, and for some reason I find it calming.

  No roommate as of yet, but rumors abound that the Canadians are coming.

  Tomorrow it starts. Assessment, medication trials, groups.

  But I’m a three. Threes don’t go outside.

  I curl up in bed. Try to ease the pain my own way, knowing full well they will only allow me to go so far on my own. At some point I would have to give in, let them help me or play the game.

  My door is ajar, a soft knock, entry. A woman in scrubs, surgical tray in hands, phlebotomy kit laid out neat, piece by piece by piece.

  I offer her my arm without resistance, veins collapsing on first poke.

  “You should use the butterfly. I’m a tough draw,” I tell her, pointing out the vein that is usually the easiest to tap.

  A second poke, still going commando. I look at her, bored. They never listen.

  Nervous now, she slides a butterfly needle into the vein I picked out especially for her. Nice and snug. The blood flows. Relief flushes across her face.

  Third time’s a charm.

  I’m having my after-lunch smoke as a herd of teens pass through the lobby. They wander to the cafeteria, taking their time. A girl catches my eye. A ghost, a focal point. A frozen moment. Something familiar. A photograph in which she is a blur and the rest of the group, in full relief, fades into the background. The air before her ripples, as though she is in a pool of water, peering out from beneath the surface.

  I wake up on a padded leather table, wrists and ankles bound in thick sheepskin straps. Four-point restraints. Other than me and the table, there is nothing but white walls and fluorescent lights, humming. I have no idea how I got here and am not sure I want to find out.

  “Heyyy. Hey!” I call out weakly. I let a few seconds pass, but as long as I am conscious, there’s no way I can stay pinned down like this.

  “Hey! Hey! Heyyy!”

  I hear a fumble at the doorknob, see a face in the window looking in on me. A male nurse enters, talks to me, makes sure it’s safe to set me free.

  “Yes, I’m calm.” I will ask questions later. My goal is to get out of this trap.

  “Well, you weren’t so calm last night. Just need to be sure.”

  “I am now,” I tell him without a hint of malice in my voice.

  He releases my ankles, then my wrists.

  “Thank you. Cigarette?”

  He walks me out to the lounge where the others are having their first cigarette of the day.

  All eyes on me.

  The nurse stays close.

  Queen B offers me a cigarette. A reward. This time I take it. Eyes no longer cast to the floor, but not looking at her either.

  “Boy were you nuts last night.” She lights the cigarette for me.

  No response. I knew she was dying to tell.

  “You were flipping and flopping like some wild fish. It took eight motherfuckers to get you into isolation.”

  “Something must not have agreed with me.”

  “I’d say. I’ve never seen anyone buck and twist like you did.”

  Nervous laughs around the table, everyone but me.

  I finish my smoke and get up. The nurse walks me to my room, makes sure everything is copacetic. I reassure him. I’ll be seeing my doctor in a couple hours anyway. He stays with me until I fall asleep. Whatever they gave me last night is still in my system. I drift into a deep sleep.

  I am a little girl and have not yet learned to swim. Pauline carries me on her back, telling me the story of the mermaid and her prince. “Down there,” she says, “Do you see the lights from the kingdom?”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  We dive into the water, and I let go of her shoulders. I am swimming on my own now…down…past a strange reef of twisted coral. I enter a dark forest of undulating seaweed that gropes my legs as I swim through, toward the kingdom’s lights, feeling the shadows upon me, ancient, watching eyes allowing me to pass. I see the castle in the distance, and beyond it, darker shadows still—stone ruins rising above the majestic kingdom, and I am struck by the beauty of it all. I look through one of the windows of the castle to get a peek of the mermaid and the prince, but all I see is a reflection of myself, and as I push away from the castle wall, something among the shadowy ruins begins to move and I can no longer swim.

  Now I start choking, gasping for breath, but only swallowing water. I try calling for Pauline to come and get me, but I ingest more water. I look up and see her legs treading. I reach for her foot to pull me out of the mire, but it is just out of reach. It is always just out of reach.

  I wake up gasping.

  That afternoon the three-ring circus resumes and carries on into the night. More of the same, with a tide of uncertainty. Everyone jockeys for position, making room for the new girl. In an act of good faith, I join the ritual of the community smoke.

  Calmer, quieter recreational activities available in other parts of the big room I hadn’t noticed before. A large table where a giant jigsaw puzzle is being assembled by the few surrounding it, kneeling on chairs, hovering, each with their own method, searching eagerly among hundreds of pieces, thousands, dispersed across the tabletop. Quiet concentration, an occasional gasp of success, every so often the eruption of a minor dispute. Mild rote bickering.

  “This piece is missing. I know it.”

  “It’s not missing. You alwa
ys say that. If you don’t like it, get your ass out.”

  Somewhere a piece of the jigsaw is deftly swiped and tucked into a pocket.

  On a flagstone bench surrounding a large fireplace, a few sit, recently deposited there, faces slack, medicated.

  It is about ten o’clock when I extinguish my last cigarette and turn in. The bed is comfortable, but sleep does not come easily. Irrelevant thoughts race through my mind until they become whispering voices, criticizing me. I had hoped I would be safe from them here. But once again, I am dragged through the mud of my entire life. Words and actions I barely recall are twisted around and used against me. There is no verdict other than guilty in this court.

  It is an inevitable, relentless, excruciating pain so deep that I understand why cutters cut. Not to punish themselves, but to distract them from the pain that really matters.

  I go to the nurse’s station and ask for that sedative the doctor ordered. The nurse on duty makes a note in my chart.

  Back in bed, I close my eyes and imagine I am driving late at night on a long dark highway, focusing on the intermittent white lines in the road as they pass beneath me. I let them hypnotize me until I fall asleep at the wheel.

  I pray for a new intake. A new specimen to shift the attention away from me. Maybe the Canadians will get here soon.

  Instead my prayers are answered with a distraction. Amy—MANIC-depressive psychosis.

  Fortunately, Amy is a happy manic. No, an elated manic. Her blonde hair and sunshiny face brightens the room. All treatments thus far have failed to bring her down to a happy medium. Lithium. Thorazine. Lamictal. Seroquel. Depakote. Abilify. Nothing. She spreads laughter, biding her time, afraid they’ll opt for a last resort. ECT. None of us want this for her. No one wants her sunshine eclipsed. Maybe just a dimmer switch so we can turn her down a notch.

  Afternoon in the empty dining hall, a woman sits in an empty booth. She tries to shrink into anonymity by easing into the general population as quietly as possible. She is an actress whose most recent standout role was that of an aging, narcissistic Hollywood star. A simple line delivered with such palpable ferocity it immortalized her: