In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  …Or had it?

  I cried uncontrollably; I laughed so loudly I lost my voice, ripped my throat. No, I had never lost it; God had been there all along, watching everything unfold and dictating it all, even this very moment. Even after I left His side, God kept me swaddled in His arm like a baby, one who was too young to know the harm of what they were doing.

  He still loved me; I could feel it. He was holding my gone hand and walking me to the abyss.

  My breath left—I felt my body come down and turn into nothingness as the last air that held me up was taken away. Yes, back to energy, space, nothingness…

  And maybe, just maybe, into air that would one day be used for something more worthy.

  Thirty-five

  As Daylight Dies

  I gasped so hard that my head flew into the drywall.

  I groaned, holding my brain and rolling onto my back, already feeling the headache. I blinked, tried to remember. The old walls, stuffy and blank… My hard mattress moaning with every turn.

  Urg… Another nightmare… That had definitely been the worst one…

  “Eero!” A fist hit the wall from the other side. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night! Shut your lids and get to sleep!”

  My frown suddenly hurt worse than my head. It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying…!

  I turned onto my side, staring at the empty bed across from me, at the unturned calendar beside it with my 8th birthday still circled from two years ago. The clock in the living room ticked and tocked, its clicks faintly hitting my ears; a sprinkle of water tapped the window; the warm syrup of the nighttime, summer air let little specks of green and black grow on the white curtains beside them.

  My arm shook and rattled the picture frame against my chest. The feeling of the familiar glass stabbed my eyes and made them swell. I wanted to look… I wanted to see their faces and calm down, hear Mama’s soft voice and imagine her brushing the tears away, but my arm wouldn’t budge. I squinted harder to fight it, the emptiness that filled my body, but it came oozing out my eyes—the tears my father yelled at me for, that the kids laughed at me for, that everyone screamed at me for. I had no right, no place to cry; everyone else did, but not me: “The kid who caused it all.”

  My legs melted into the bed; my whole body thumped, a broken machine, a broken heart. My puddle of a body felt numbingly trapped again. The welts on my back were getting so swollen they had finally found a pulse of their own. My crusting scalp cracked and burned with every twist of my hair—I was afraid to wash it, to have the scabs come off and feel the scalding vulnerability in the form of heat. I was never allowed to go into town after that fateful day, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking away and trying to get some friends, some sort of life—and it certainly didn’t stop the beatings from the other kids, even adults, when they saw me.

  Every day was getting harder. There was no one. No one listened. No one cared. I couldn’t even have a pet; I would have liked a dog… I tried to snag pups from liters too many times, only to make too much noise or somehow mess up, caught every time. I had even tried pet crickets—many types of bugs, actually—but Father always threw them to the chickens—the chickens that I couldn’t get within a foot of or else feathery choppers would fly. I finally tried rocks, but it wasn’t the same; they just shot everything my heart vomited back at my face.

  My vision tunneled aimlessly. I let it see through the shut door and into the bathroom.

  My body reformed just for that thought. I pushed the picture away and laid it flat down on its face, hiding theirs. A string attached to my head swung my legs over the bed and made me use my feet, though it still struggled to lift them, my heels scuffing against the floor the entire way from my room to the bathroom. I didn’t have to be quiet passing Father’s room; his throaty snore proved the alcohol had done its work. Knowing he was out, I opened the squealing door without a care, gently shutting it behind me.

  I leaned against the unstained wood with a sigh. The bare, buzzing bulbs above the medicine cabinet reached through the room with their yellow-stained rays, giving everything a sickly glow. What I remembered white while Mama lived was better described as brown now—I didn’t even want to pull aside the curtain to the shallow tub. I hadn’t used it in years. Once the bugs started up the drain and began burying themselves in the thickening slime, it was just easier to not look. Even the mirror was stained: old, crusted acne heads, toothpaste splatters, and some beard stubble. Father had tried to clean it before but had since left a film of murky white, uncleanable streaks, creating a permanently clouded image—one suspended so high that I could only see the hill of my hair. I pulled out the wooden stool from beside the toilet and used it to get a better view.

  Tired. I looked tired. Tired and dead, but if I was already dead… Why did their words and hits still hurt so much?

  I put my hand to the mirror and swung it open. The razors were staring again; they looked softer each time they got me this far. Last time, they even made me hold one. I remembered being surprised by how light it was. I had practiced the slashes first in the air and then my shirt. The village children told me down, not across. If I was going to do it, it had to be right.

  I reached, but my hand locked up. I didn’t want to bleed anymore… I did that enough; they did that enough.

  But Mama… What would she think? Father wouldn’t care, but Mama… Would she cry? Maybe at first, but wouldn’t she be happy to see me again? I was sure she missed me… I definitely missed her…

  I looked slightly to the side at the medicine bottle—some gibberish that only adults understood, but I knew that they were supposed to make you better… At least, Father said so. I don’t know why he never let me have one… It was as though he couldn’t see how I felt. I knew I didn’t do a good job at hiding it…

  The weight of the bottle felt heavier than me. I unscrewed the child-proof lock with a quick snap of the wrist and looked inside. Little sugar pellets. I knew that wasn’t what they were, but they looked so harmless. The light that made everything else look like puke seemed to make them glow inside, jelly beans of sunshine.

  I tipped the container and let one fall into my hand. No, I didn’t need to run away; I couldn’t hurt Mama like that. But there wasn’t anything wrong with wanting to be happy.

  I knocked the faucet on and grabbed a glass, filling it with water. It wasn’t supposed to be chewed, but how did I just swallow something? I thought hard, trying to remember how Father did it. Like this…?

  I put the cup close to my lips and dropped the pill inside, chugging it as soon as it hit the water. The puck smacked the back of my throat; a spray of water shot from my lips, gags and coughs following as I slammed the cup down and tried to save myself, feeling the pill crawl down my throat. Oh my God, I did it wrong, didn’t I?! I was supposed to chew it! I was going to die! “D-DAD—!”

  Gone. I suddenly couldn’t feel it. I could breathe again! But that little act I had just put on…

  I kept quiet, tried to silence my racing breaths in hopes I didn’t wake him up. For a minute or so, I only heard the humming of electricity, and then, his gurgling snorts returned. I almost collapsed in relief.

  Now, I just had to wait.

  I closed the seat of the toilet and sat, eyes shut and legs swinging. Just the thought of being happy again made me smile—I even managed a laugh. It was so strange that I stopped myself for a moment, like it was some kind of poison, but then, I remembered it wasn’t. No, this lightness in the chest, that used to be an everyday.

  I thought of Mama and I planting flowers together; the cheese sandwiches for lunch; the art classes on the dining table. She drew much better than me, but for some reason, she always threw her beautiful sketches away and pinned up my sloppy ones. Sometimes, I thought of my drawings as wallpaper because she put them up in so many places.

  A brick crashed through my fuzzy heart and into my stomach. My face fell back into set, and everything was normal—empty and blank. “Mama…?” I moaned ques
tioningly, staring up at the blinding lights. Was that it? That little glimpse into the past was all I got? And that quickly? Maybe I had just imagined it. It happened so fast that I wasn’t even sure it really happened.

  “M-Mama…” I was starving for more, hungry for that foreign happiness. I looked back at the bottle; my legs and heart stopped dancing. No, that had to do it! I hadn’t felt like that in so long…! I wanted more!

  I half-tripped scrambling back to the counter, hopping back on the stool and filling the glass so quickly that half of the cup was bubbles. I dumped the bottle into the glass, cubes of ice floating at the top and tumbling below. I watched their magic begin to melt and turn the water white. I panicked, I squealed, and gulped it down as quickly as I could. The pebbles launched into the back of my throat; I drank and drank, half-spitting, half-choking, and trying to save my future. I only got some of them down, a seabed of white shells left in a shallow pool. I threw the glass under the hose again and repeated. I gained pounds in seconds, inhaling everything within the cup even as an unsettling, water-induced vomit tried to come up. It hurt…! My stomach was about to burst, but two more…! I just had to get two more down… One more!

  I saw the pill pass by my nose and then vanish; I didn’t feel anything, it must have dropped, and a final swallow proved that it had finished its journey.

  A relieved, chilly breath rattled my teeth and curled my tongue as I set the cup down, trying to settle my bass of a heart. I retook my seat, knees racking with excitement. My legs started to kick again; I could feel my heart beating through my eyes.

  My smile came back, so did that lightness that lifted every curse sitting on my shoulders. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes; my legs swung higher and faster, happier. All of that water put a strain on my normally hungry belly, but the jittering of my limbs drowned the discomfort. I almost felt like singing! I even felt tears rising, but I didn’t tell them to stop. It was a new type of crying—no, an old one, but I couldn’t remember the last time the tears came out like this.

  My palms slipped while clasping the edge of the toilet; I almost fell back into the tank, catching myself with a surprised gasp. Whoa… What was that?

  The sway came again, but I caught myself—just barely. My back and arms turned to jelly; they were suddenly having a hard time staying steady. My legs even felt weird; the air brushing over them squished, slimy and cold. What’s going on…? I moaned, leaning forward and holding my head to my knees. The bubbly, empowering heat and tingle in my body was fading quickly; everything felt slushy and cold like a slip into an icy lake. I don’t feel good… I think I need to…

  The icy slosh of air swam over me, and I hit the floor. A distant pain rushed over my chin and knees, but it felt so far away even though my stinging eyes were against the wood. I tried to get up, but my body didn’t seem to be responding. Just get up…!

  It was hard, but I was finally upright—slumped, hunched, but up.

  But then, I wasn’t. I was in the same position on the floor.

  Huh?! Did I not move?!

  I kept repeating the action that only got harder and harder, but then, I realized I had not moved an inch. I did it again and again, all with the same result; mentally, I did it, but physically, I could not. I stayed kneeling on the chilly floor, chin smushed, stomach ready for take-off, with a cringing warmth running down my legs.

  My heart ran everywhere it could, through my eyes, stomach, ears, bladder, wherever, faster and faster in a sprint for its life. My gut slapped and smacked around; hot and cold clashed, sweat flooded down my face and arms, but I still couldn’t get out of my bow.

  “D-Dad…!” I cried out, praying that I was actually yelling. “DADDD! H-help! Daddd! Please! S-something’s—!”

  My mouth opened, and acid spewed out, a red-brown sea foam with bloody roots floating on the surface. My breathing spiked; the pooling vomit was trying to come back up my nose while a menacing blackness crept into the room, cracking like ice crystals.

  “DAD! HELP! HELP ME—!” The vomit kept cutting me off, and the more that left, the darker it got; there was more blood, more roots, and then, little misshapen blobs of what looked like gum. It swept under me and made me slip onto my stomach, but I felt no different. My arms and legs were still just as useless.

  No, no, no…! What was this?! What was happening?! MAMA! DADDY! PLEASE, PLEASE HELP! DADDD!

  My eyes continued to break; pieces of my vision fell away into black, shattering as I flopped around without ever standing. The door swung open, and I saw the familiar hairy legs. They took one step in and then jumped back before tearing through the spreading bog and falling beside me. I saw shaky frames of his hands reaching for me and my father’s worried face; he was screaming, but I didn’t know what—I wasn’t in control of myself, I was just a bystander. I tried to tell him what I did, to call for help, but the thoughts didn’t seem to get to my tongue.

  I just… Wanted… Why… Daddy… Help…

  My vision shattered, the glass knocked completely out. It was dark, silent. I had no body; I didn’t even feel like I had weight. I just had my jumping, mushing thoughts that didn’t even feel mine.

  “He won’t recover…” a clouded voice came.

  “But he has a heartbeat!” The panicked response was my father’s. “He’s alive!”

  “His body is. Not his head. It is all he can do to perform the basic functions without giving out.”

  I didn’t understand… What any of that meant… Where was I? Was it me they were talking about? What were we having for dinner?

  “…He has to,” my father replied. “He’s all I have left…”

  “I’m sorry… There’s nothing we can do.”

  Beef maybe? Was that guy a chef? How did we even afford that? Maybe Mama made him a quilt.

  “…So, what happens now?”

  “…You can pull it and let him pass peacefully… It will be a few days at most—”

  “PEACEFULLY?!”

  Ouch! Did he have to yell?! That really hurt my head.

  “You call starving to death peaceful?! Unable to cry for water or food?! Just lying there, unable to fight?! No! I won’t!”

  “Sir, he’s brain dead as is… He won’t feel a thing—”

  “How do you know that?! If he has a heartbeat, he can think! I know it! Eero! Come on, wake up! Please, wake up! I’m sorry! I promise I’ll do better!”

  Better…? How do you do that? This felt funny but not bad…

  “…I’ll give you two some time…”

  Nasally sobs and sticky gasps echoed around me. I didn’t understand why. What was so bad? Why was my father crying? I was alright. I was clearly alive. I don’t even know why he was so upset.

  Something touched what didn’t exist, and I reeled, screeched, the bridges connecting for that second. That was my hand he was squeezing; my body was lying down—at least, my back was straight—and something was crawling down my throat… Food maybe? It didn’t have a taste, though. It didn’t…

  No. I… That was what was happening…? I was…? No. I was alive! The fact that I realized I was was proof enough. Those pills, what had they done?! Why had they trapped me?! What happened?! I just wanted to be happy…!

  The paths crumbled. I was back floating, hearing my father cry.

  But why was he crying? Had something happened? He was crying like I was dead.

  ***

  So that was it…

  It was the burning, unanswered question that finally revealed itself. The one I had wondered about from the moment Calla took my blood. How would I have died had Calla and Kevin never interfered?

  Unlike the others, I didn’t really die, but I was as good as that. All because Shamu never came… All because I was desperate to be happy. No, it had never happened to me, but it had happened to another me, one from another world—one where I hadn’t made it past ten years.

  Everything was still a swirling pot of questions and uncertainty. I didn’t have a desire to move;
I floated, lying back in the unseen arms of the void, set up against a face that I had never looked at directly but had known too much about. I had gone back and forth for so long, wondering if that interference in the dimensional rift had been Calla or my mother, perhaps Gannon; but I then knew that every guess I ever had, both those expressed and internalized, had never even come close to the real answer.

  He dominated my vision, residing in his own world lifted by his governance. His elderly purple face built from space matter and the burden of reality was expressionless, though the unearthed holes of his humming eyes were searching me with frayed, overlapping paths of lightning that grew from a single eye. His hair flew as the aura of the north, the lights of the spirits, split at the center by his invaluable crown of gold and starlight that speared individual roman numerals. A cosmos of blending and clashing blues created his shapeless torso, one only existing for the purpose of supporting his gaseous head. Slow, lax, and all-powerful, a spiraling galaxy swung through his chest linked by a braided chain of stars, in rhythm with a resting heart. The beat of the swaying pendulum thundered in nothingness. A single tick was eternal, but its waves came in soft and then deadly rolls, giving the expanse its own sea that he grew from—an ocean that was all his.

  I found it strange that I instantly knew where I was, stranger that he was the cause of it all. The last thing I could claim had happened for certain was the raid of the Encryption base… Afterward, everything pumped its way into me in bits and spurts, but it was all highly unreliable. Another duel with Satan, something about the Mark… Activated Bots, raids, fire… And then, the misty faces of my friends, again and again, faces I knew so well that never seemed to come back in the flesh.

  But now, I was here, bathing amidst his world. I had plenty of questions to ask, but I wasn’t sure how to form them. So I just said what I thought was his name: “Time?”

  A justified, relieved moon curled his lips. Eero. His voice resonated everywhere; it came from the universe, not from his sealed mouth.