by Weston Ochse
The nurse produced a keycard from her pocket and swiped it through a reader on the door. It beeped, disengaging the lock, and the nurse moved to open it. Vorstadt was assaulted once more by a surge of briny air, only this time it was strong enough to make him flinch. The spray dappled his face and sent gooseflesh skittering down his spine. When the initial blast of air had subsided and Vorstadt was able to open his eyes fully, he saw framed in the doorway a darkness so thick, it was more an absence of matter than light.
Wasn’t the Rod of Babylon open to the sky? How else could the breeze find its way into the antechamber? And more importantly, wouldn’t the drab daylight filter down? Why, or more precisely, how could this utter blackness be possible?
A headache started to pulse at the base of his skull. He averted his gaze, looking up at Maikawa, who said, “You will be lowered into the pool beneath the facility. Treatment will take anywhere between four and eight hours. When enough time has elapsed we will examine your condition and proceed with additional treatment if needed. Please be aware that that once you have been lowered into the pool, you will have no way of communicating with us. Treatment cannot be interrupted if you expect to see results. Do you understand?”
Vorstadt’s mind was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions—confusion, fear, doubt and wonder—all vying for dominance, but none of them winning, and so he was left in a state of total bewilderment. All he could muster was a weak nod.
“Very well,” Maikawa said.
A quick glance at the nurse and Vorstadt was lifted out of his chair and into the nurse’s arms. She carried him to the threshold and lowered him into a sitting position, with his legs dangling over the edge of the abyss. Looking down, Vorstadt saw that the darkness cut his legs off at the knees. He blinked the illusion away.
“We will see you in a few hours. Godspeed, Mr. Vorstadt,” said Maikawa.
From behind him came the grinding of old machinery. Then the nurse nudged him over the precipice, into the devouring dark.
***
He didn’t know how long he was suspended, weightless, in that void; time was useless here, an artifact of the lighted world Vorstadt feared he would never see again. His ears were filled with the mournful cries of the wind. Sea spray kissed his naked flesh and set him shivering. He smelled the sea, the rotting stench of exposed algae, and the occasional whiff of fish guts.
Vorstadt closed his eyes and thought about Darren. He remembered his lover’s reaction upon stepping into the critical care unit. If only his mind hadn’t chosen consciousness at that precise moment. Never before had he seen a face transform so dramatically. The sheer horror and heartbreak that pulled Darren’s formerly slack features apart was so surreal as to resemble a cheap prosthetic effect. Vorstadt would never have thought, never dreamed, that Darren’s facial muscles were capable of such a sickening distortion. Unable to move due to being so tightly bandaged, Vorstadt could do nothing but stare, realizing in that moment that his pain was not exclusively his own. Darren, whom he loved more than anything, shared it too. Which meant that his sojourn at the clinic wasn’t a selfish pursuit. Darren would be undergoing the same treatment by proxy.
The image of the execution device returned again to Vorstadt’s mind. It occurred to him that should the treatment fail and the shotgun empty its load into his skull, he would be confronted one last time by Darren’s horrified expression before plunging into death: his own brief moment of hell.
Cold, black water engulfed his toes. Vorstadt jerked violently, the movement sending a cataclysm of pain through his entire body. The water crept up his legs, washed over his thighs and swallowed his midsection. The pulley mechanism halted just as the sea lapped against his chin. Vorstadt let out a deep, startled breath. It was lost in the roar of the wind.
The long wait began.
He kept his eyes closed, cleared his mind, and tried his best to relax. Eventually the wind receded to white noise and he lost all sensation below the neckline. He was a disembodied head floating in space.
Doubt frequently tried to force itself into his mind—how can this possibly work? It’s a scam. There’s no hope you—but Vorstadt was easily able to push it back. He entered into a state of deep relaxation, becoming one with the water, a liquid being who swayed to the rhythm of the ocean. It entered into his awareness in the same way a truth is known in a dream that he was suspended over a trench several miles deep. The emptiness impressed itself on his brain, provoking feelings of reverence and wonder. He remained in this state of sublime gnosis for what seemed like hours then, over the noise of the wind, began to hear a faint music from somewhere below.
It was unlike any music he had heard before, and could only be distinguished as such because it had a melody. Slowly it grew louder and more distinct as whatever made it approached the surface. At first Vorstadt thought he was imagining the whole thing, but when something heavy brushed against his leg and the music swelled to a crescendo, he realized it was all too real. Whatever it was moved with fluid grace, its fleshy net-like body fanning his calves. Long strands of hair coiled around his toes.
He kicked in vain, his nerves flaring with agony, but the thing maintained its orbit around him. The music was almost deafening now. He lifted his head to the invisible sky and screamed. At that moment a stinger pierced the sole of his foot and flooded his bloodstream with warmth. His scream subsided into a drooling moan. Abruptly the music stopped and the wind resumed its howling dominance.
***
Winter receded into spring and then early summer. Vorstadt took advantage of the weather and decided to take lunch outside the office. The sidewalk was beautifully firm under his feet. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and walked fast, feeling the sultry breeze palm and caress his face.
At the café, he ordered a sandwich and coffee. As he extended a handful of coins across the counter, he noticed the cashier staring at the patch of discolored skin across his knuckles. It looked like an early manifestation of vitiligo. He smiled at her, completed the transaction and stepped out into the street.
His phone buzzed. It was Darren.
“Will you be home tonight?”
“Yeah. Why? Do you have something in mind?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “I just want to see you. Ever since you recovered you can’t seem to sit down for longer than five minutes. You’re always busy doing something.”
“I’ll be there. In fact, if you want—”
A sharp, searing pain tore across his thigh and then the sidewalk was rushing up to meet him. He managed to break his fall with an outstretched hand, and as soon as he recovered, moved into a sitting position with his knees drawn up to his chest. A bicycle lay on its side several feet away, the rider in the process of getting to his feet.
“I’m so sorry, man,” the cyclist was saying. “Are you okay?”
Vorstadt glanced down at the tear in his dress pants, the ragged edges dark with blood.
“I’ll be fine,” he said and allowed the biker to help him to his feet.
***
In the office bathroom, Vorstadt locked himself in a stall, unhooked his belt, and carefully shimmied out of his pants. The cut was at least an inch deep, but it had already stopped bleeding. He sat on the lid of the toilet seat and, using the pointer finger of both hands, pried open the laceration to examine it more closely. His mouth went dry.
Instead of muscle, fat and bone, the inside of his thigh was filled with rows of short, nubby teeth. When he prodded one of them with his finger, it retreated deeper into his body like a startled worm. In its place came a gush of yellowish brown fluid reeking of dead fish, and a black fingerling that landed on the bathroom tile and started thrashing around. Its skin was featureless and slick, lamplight eyes glowed with bioluminescence above a set of human-like teeth. Vorstadt calmly crushed it under his heel. He wasn’t alarmed. This was the price of his treatment, the only way he could have avoided the kiss of the shotgun.
He opened the cut wider, hissing through
gnashed teeth. A fish’s eye became visible at the bottom of the wound and rolled to look at him. The pupil was large and inquisitive. He stared back, impassive, then yanked his hands away as the wound clamped shut like a mouth. The skin knitted itself back together, leaving behind a strip of bleached, colorless skin.
Vorstadt stood up and pulled up his pants, making a mental note to have them mended if possible. He turned and stared into the toilet bowl, its waters calm and sending back a mirror’s clear reflection. Movement deep inside his thigh made his leg twitch. They were getting restless. Soon the full price of his miracle would have to be paid. The flood was coming.
Wet Texas
Max Booth III
“Where does all the rain go?” a guest wanted to know, struggling to keep his balance in the lobby as he prevented the night clerk, Jose, from returning to his movie in the back office. The guy’s breath hit Jose as soon as he entered the hotel. Some kind of liquor combination the man must have invented tonight in the spur of the moment. Exotic, repulsive, nauseating. Somehow the smell broke through Jose’s clogged nostrils, penetrated his already raw lungs. Struggling not to wheeze and cough, he nodded along to the guest’s ramblings. “The rain, it must go somewhere, anywhere.”
“I think it just soaks into the earth.” Jose had never studied rain, had never paid attention in science class, but hell, even a night auditor could answer some questions, and this was a question that seemed fairly simple. The rain didn’t go back up into the sky, after all. Reality wasn’t a video that could just rewind at a moment’s notice. Then he glanced down at his hand, at the strange webs of skin that’d grown between his fingers over the last few days, and debated the accuracy of how he’d define reality.
“What, you’re saying the Earth is a sponge, is that it?” The guest’s face grimaced, all screwed up, too complicated of a concept to comprehend. “What are humans then, huh? You saying I’m a sponge, too?”
“Man, I don’t know.”
“What about now?” The guest gestured outside, at the rain that fell in sheets rather than drops. “It’s too much rain. Where does it all go? The sewer? The sewer ain’t infinite. The—what, the ocean? Ocean ain’t infinite, either! This fuckin’ planet ain’t infinite, but this rain sure is, this rain is fuckin’ forever. So where. Does. It. Go?”
Jose didn’t have an answer, didn’t care enough to stress his brain, couldn’t stop thinking how in twenty minutes he’d need to start preparing the hotel’s breakfast, and he still had a good half hour remaining of his movie, couldn’t stop thinking about how his lungs were on fire and all he wanted to do was go home and sleep for eternity, stop thinking about the skin growth on his fingers and embrace the dream-void.
“I feel it already.” The guest raised his arms up, as if preaching. “We’re all gonna drown, that’s how it’s gonna end. It’s just gonna keep on raining until this whole fuckin’ planet overflows like a plastic cup under a beer keg. And what then? Huh? What then?”
“I...I don’t know.”
“Nothing, that’s what. Absolutely fuckin’ nothing.”
The hotel’s power blinked off and on, as if to serve as an exclamation mark to the guest’s statement. The guest grinned, nodded at Jose, then turned around and stumbled down the hallway toward the elevator. Jose thought about warning him against it, seeing how the power couldn’t make up its mind, but decided fuck it, he’d already wasted enough time for one night. He had a movie to finish, breakfast to cook, reports to go through. In a few hours, he’d have two nights off. Someone else could worry about the rain.
And sure enough, it was still raining after he clocked out and drove home, still raining as he slept all day, still raining when he woke up later that night to the sound of his phone ringing. How the fuck hadn’t it slowed down yet? It’d been days since it first started. Texas rain typically didn’t last long—it hit in sporadic blasts, like machine gun fire—but no, if anything, it’d started coming down harder.
Jose should have known better than to answer the phone. He saw the caller ID. He knew what Javier was going to say. He should’ve just ignored it, turned it on silent, gone back to sleep. But of course he answered. He always answered.
“I can’t come in.” No ‘Hello?’, no ‘This is Jose, how can I help you?’. Straight to the chase. He wasn’t fucking coming in. It was his night off. It was the only thing he ever looked forward to and he wasn’t going to throw it away.
Javier didn’t seem to understand. “Trenton called off. There’s nobody else.”
“There’s you.”
“I don’t know how to run the audit.”
“What kind of manager doesn’t know how to run the audit?”
“Please, Jose, I don’t know what else to do. Everybody’s too sick. This bug going around is awful. Taylor’s still at the hotel and she’s blowing up my phone about abandoning the front desk if someone doesn’t come soon.”
“It’s my night off.”
“You can have tomorrow off.”
“I already have tomorrow off.”
“You can have the night after that, too.”
“And what’s stopping Trenton from calling off again?”
“Well, I’ll tell him he’s fired if he does.”
“Yeah, right. You’re gonna fire the owner’s son? Fat chance.”
“Look, I don’t know, okay? I need you down there.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I guess you’re the one who’s fired.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be?”
“That’s the way it’s going to be.”
“Then I guess I’m out of a job. Peace.”
Jose hung up and tossed his cell phone on the bed. He turned on his Playstation, played for twenty seconds, thought about how much he preferred having electricity and water over being homeless, thought about all the bums outside drowning in the Texas rain, then paused the game and called Javier.
“Okay, I’ll come in.”
“I love you.”
“Whatever.”
Besides, it wasn’t like he could play video games tonight, anyway. His fingers felt too weird, made him lose focus. Tomorrow, after work, he’d need to get this checked out. Assuming the rain had stopped by then. He thought about googling “webbed fingers” but couldn’t muster the courage to face what was almost certainly warnings of cancer. Instead he tried to call the hotel to let Taylor know he was on his way, but no one picked up. Maybe she’d already said fuck it and left. He wouldn’t blame her. One look outside his apartment and his body tensed, nearly paralyzed. Absolute darkness interrupted briefly by sparse lightning bolts. Cracks of thunder drowned out the rain slapping against his living room window. Somewhere in the distance—sirens. And lots of ’em.
He owned an umbrella, but he never figured out how to open it. He gave it another try now, praying to god it’d suddenly decide to play ball. Instead it just stared at him and laughed and asked, “What kind of man can’t open an umbrella?”
Jose threw it across the room. “Fuck you, too.”
Once he was dressed, he locked the front door and booked it across a soggy front yard toward his parking space. He practically dived behind the wheel, already soaked. Pneumonia whispered its inevitable arrival and he tried to shake it off. Even on full blast, the windshield wipers did little to clear his vision. He glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed two vertical columns of tiny holes spread across both sides of his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut until his brain hurt, then looked again. Still there. Maybe not holes. Some kind of intense acne. Something to further investigate in the hotel bathroom once he made it to work. He attempted to touch one of them and flinched at the anticipation of pain, but none came. He probed a finger into one of the holes and felt a dull numbness. Jesus Christ, he was in no condition to work. He was clearly dying from some fucked-up disease. He should be driving to a hospital, not a hotel.
His tires fought to maintain traction as they spun out of the parking lot. He gripped the st
eering wheel with his webbed fingers until his knuckles whitened and muttered the word, “Fuck,” over and over, turning it into a mantra, linguistic fuel to guide him onward.
The roads were empty save for his own piece of shit car. And for good reason. He refused to even slow down at stop signs lest the water’s current drag him into a ditch. The flood wasn’t yet deep enough to prevent him from moving, but another couple hours and he’d be doomed. He should have packed better before leaving, in case he found himself trapped at the hotel for a few days. It didn’t seem likely, but Jose didn’t exactly have the best luck. Sometimes he had to listen to his gut, and his gut told him there would be no relief come 7:00 A.M. Housekeeping wouldn’t show up. The breakfast lady would be MIA. Even Javier wouldn’t answer the phone. His gut told him that he was driving into a certain shit-show, that this rain, this flooding, it was only the beginning of an impossible headache.
His leg started vibrating, a sensation he figured belonged to the car bouncing over puddles and tree debris. Except then his leg started singing, too. One hand on the wheel, he dug out his phone from his pocket and answered it. A photo of the hotel glared at him from the caller ID.
“Yeah?” Jose shouted. Needed to shout because he couldn’t hear, couldn’t concentrate, the rain was so goddamn loud who could even think?
“You almost here?” Taylor sounded desperate and he knew why. If he didn’t make it soon, she’d be stuck.
“Maybe five minutes away. Ten at the most. I’m trying, but it’s terrible out here.”
“I don’t know what to do. Javier won’t answer the phone.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
“A guest is sick.”
“What?”
“A guest, he’s sick or something, I don’t know. I tried calling nine-one-one, but it’s just a busy signal.”