As my illness worsens, I get sleepy during the day and more alert at night. From the bed, I become mesmerized by the lampposts in the parking lot, their bulbs shimmering like tiny suns. Some nights, just before dawn, it's as though the lights are at their brightest and I swear I can hear them buzzing, a constant electric hum from up here on the seventh floor.
I lie in darkness now, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The window to my left is shrouded in black. Normally, through slatted blinds, I see the Kovner maternity wing. But now I see nothing; it's too dark. Perhaps someone draped a towel or sheet over the window. I can't hear anything either. I close my eyes.
The candystriper passed my room again last night. I wanted her to come in, or at least stop near the doorway so I could get a better look. She's a little younger than me, about fifteen. She's thin, too thin, and has smooth mocha skin with long black hair and a high forehead. Her lips are full and dark. She never smiles. I've never heard her speak, but I imagine her voice to be deep and husky.
The dreams began soon after I noticed her. The first one was short. She approached the bed, dunked a washcloth in a steaming basin and placed the washcloth on my shoulder. It scalded my skin, but didn't bother her. She squeezed the cloth, allowing the excess water to drip down my chest and stomach.
Soon after, I dreamt I was standing in the middle of my hospital room. She was on the floor at my feet. She kissed my toes, then my ankle. As the kisses rose to my calf, my knee, my thigh, so did her entire body, hovering in the air as straight and stiff as a stretcher. When she reached my upper thigh, her head disappeared beneath my flimsy hospital gown. Then she turned, as if on a spit, her toes facing the ceiling. She lifted my gown from her face, looked up at me and smiled. Moonlight streamed through the window, showing the dark pupils of her eyes.
Last night's dream was the same one I've been having for two weeks. We’re hanging naked by our feet from the ceiling of my hospital room. Facing one another, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. Our faces perfectly linked in the crooks of our shoulders. Playing with each other's necks with our mouths, licking, nipping, kissing. Two months here and the dreams keep coming. But I welcome them. I would rather sleep than be awake; the hope of being with her for real stirs my blood.
I'm thirsty. My throat feels raw, as if rubbed with sandpaper. A drink would feel good. Not water, though. Something thicker, chocolate milk maybe. I wish one of the doctors would come in now with a milkshake instead of their medical charts and befuddled grins. They don't know what the disease is, only what it isn't. It isn't leukemia. It isn't any of the dozens of anemias they keep mentioning.
My mother is usually with me when the doctors come, each gray and black hair on her head a weight, pushing her down, helpless, into the green-cushioned chair. I think of her as she must be now, alone in bed, unable to close her eyes without thinking of me slowly dying in this cold cement building.
She was here yesterday. I think it was yesterday. As with every visit, she slid the corner chair to my bedside and settled in. I was too weak to talk, so she carried on our conversation alone, doing her best to soothe me, remain cheerful. " … so that makes work more enjoyable. Imagine, he gets me coffee every morning. He's so nice. Sometimes … "
I drifted in and out, hearing bits and pieces of her day. The letters she wrote late into the evening, to her cousins and friends, to her Aunt Irma in Denver; her trips to the post office, the bakery, the pharmacy. She took a paperback from her handbag and read aloud. I don't remember the title or what it was about, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was her voice, drifting through my head.
At some point she stopped reading. I shifted my eyes to her. She looked deflated; time to go, leaving me for another night. She reached for my arms as she stood, could barely muster the courage to look at my drawn wasted face.
Oh God, my throat; the pain is worsening. As though thousands of tiny pins are pressed against it. I look to the side of the bed for the nurse's button. I can't see it, but I know where it is by heart. Reaching for it, I notice my clock is gone. Its numbers should be glowing in the dark. Perhaps a nurse turned it around, or bumped into it accidentally when taking my blood pressure or temperature.
I move my hand to where it should be and my fingers bang into some kind of wall. They must've lifted the guardrails. I reach again, this time higher, and again my hand strikes the rail. I keep my fingers pressed against it. It's hard, but there's some sort of slippery material over it, like satin. My hand traces it toward my knee and it's the same all the way down. I sweep my hands upward to see how high the guards go, but they're stopped suddenly by an overhanging only a few inches above my nose. The satiny material also runs along the roof, billowing down like a small canopy, and the solid surface above it rounds outward in a cylindrical dome. It meets the sides at hard sharp angles.
Jesus, God, a box! I pull at the loose material and it tears loudly from the sides. Above the cloth, the texture is cold, hard and smooth. I slam my palm upward and the roof dents, snapping, splintering. I try again, this time with my fists, and the wood explodes. Shards split down on my chest and face, but I continue, my arms jerking and pulling like piston rods. Wood tears my knuckles and wrists. There's a hole in the lid now and dirt dribbles in. I latch my hand to the outside of the roof and yank downward. It cracks and breaks. More dirt spills, quicker now. It falls into my lap, over my shoulders.
My fists pummel above me. The earth smells. Like the roots of trees buried for centuries, like garbage breaking down, decomposing. The hole in the roof is large enough for my head to pass through. I grab the edge of the lid and hoist myself out of the box, burrowing upward. I keep my head down as I climb, but grains of dirt fall beneath the lower lids of my eyes. Chunks of mud and rock work their way into my mouth.
I claw upward, ripping at the earth above me.
Keep climbing. Keep grabbing, keep stepping up, inching.
The tips of my fingers are suddenly free. I move them; they spread easily. There's space, real space! I drive my left hand up through the earth to meet the other. It breaks the ground. They're both sticking out of the earth. There's a breeze, coolness.
My head squeezes through the dirt. My eyes open. Stars! The moon, huge, white. I can almost touch it. The earth surrounds me like a straightjacket and I slam my body from side to side, loosening the dirt and rocks, feeling them tumble against my hips. The ground is grassy. Each blade a ribbon of silk against my skin. I raise my arms and ram my hands to the ground. My fingers dig into the grass and dirt like tines of a rake. I wiggle out slowly, an inch at a time, shoulders, chest, torso. I'm bent at the hips, my legs still in the pit, my face pressed into the ground. My left knee is free, now the other. I roll to my back and face the sky. A beautiful black; not like down there. I want to fly up into it, soar to the stars.
The pain. My throat. It's back. Dry heat sears it up and down, a bristling, painful thirst. I swallow, try to make saliva, but it's no good; I'm empty. I sit up and smear away the grime that seems suctioned to my nose, cheeks, forehead, like a latex mask. Reaching for my shirt, I discover I'm in my blue suit. My only suit. I take off the jacket and rub my face with it, hard, up and down and across, my neck, the back of my neck. I loosen my tie and undo the top button of my white shirt that's no longer white.
I look up. Â My God, look at that! Less than six inches from my face. The familiar letters engraved to sharp points. On my haunches, the stone slab is at eye level, a little over two feet high, black marble, shiny, new. A headstone. My headstone.
What's happening to me? Am I dead? How can I move, and breathe?
I look past my gravestone. Hills of monuments — some only plaques, others calf-high, knee-high, some four feet high and just as wide — extend beyond my vision for hundreds of yards, to where a black wrought-iron fence stands ten feet high. I know this cemetery, out behind the McAllister farm.
I get to my feet, but stumble to my knees. I grab a headstone, not mine, I don't want to touch mine, and stand up. I bend, my legs weak and unsteady. I bend again, then again, and take small steps, still holding the stone, circling it. A car door slams. An engine starts. Fumes, gas and oil, jab my nostrils, as though exhaust pipes are right in front of me. I walk toward the sounds and odors, my legs still stiff but able to carry me to the black fence. I'd never been able to climb it before. Too high and nothing to hold on to. But I’m atop it now, as easily as skirting a puddle.
Three homes dot the small dead end street, their lights out. I walk along the road. Only trees, leaves and sky in sight for several minutes until I reach a 7-Eleven that lights up the tiny intersection like a garish lamp. A decrepit light blue Dodge Dart is parked outside the glass entrance. Stepping into the store, the fluorescent lights blind me and the pain in my throat worsens.
I need the drink, something to cool the burning. As I run to the dairy cooler, I hit a rack of paperbacks; it spins and topples. There's a "Hey" behind me, but I don't care. An old wrinkled woman blocks the glassed-in milk. I push her aside, gently I think, but she slams into a shelf of canned food. She garbles in pain. Sorry, lady. I want to call her a doctor, but a plastic two gallon jug of chocolate milk is staring at me from inside the glass case. I open the door. The top hinge busts. Glass cracks. I claw the top of the jug and the whole spout rips off. Lifting the container to my mouth, the jagged plastic edges poke at my lips. The milk flows down my throat; it's coasting, swirling … it’s sickening! It’s too cold, tastes vile. Not at all what I crave. Tiny pockets of pain explode inside my stomach. My body wants to expel what I’ve drunk. I need something richer, saltier. Something hot.
I run toward the door. A tall beefy man leaps from behind the register. He raises his right arm level with my neck and braces for the cross-arm. I bat his arm away and shove his chest. His torso snaps backward and his feet leave the ground. He crashes into a display of candy bars and gum. I rush toward the exit. A round convex mirror is bolted to the wall above it. It mesmerizes me, terrifies me, something about it. But the pain is overwhelming and I rush into the night.
I'm in the woods behind the store, leaping over fallen trees, ducking branches and limbs, moving as fast as I've ever moved, like a panther. I find myself in an open meadow. My stomach is in agony, as though it’s being twisted, probed. A flood of heat and moisture pours out of my ass. It collapses my legs. I can't control the liquid; it spills out, soiling my underwear, my pants, my skin.
Nausea now, rushing, rising through me, as if a vacuum cleaner has been inserted into my mouth, dislodging bits of my guts, chunks, lifting them up and out. My mouth erupts in a giant sour heave. I feel like a faucet, tapped from both ends. A hot wire is threaded through me, mouth to rectum, pulling one way then the other, back and forth like the rope of a tug-of-war, my innards being pushed out, spilling around me, my fluids, membranes, organs, tendons and muscles, all waste, seeping into the mud.
* * *
How long have I been here? Did I pass out? My stomach feels like it’s been ripped from my body. The vomit and shit are still here, inches from my lips, in thick globs and small streams, trailing away and disappearing under a carpet of dead leaves. I'm drenched in diarrhea, my pants clinging to my legs and hips. I sit up, kick off my shoes, peel off my socks and wiggle out of my pants. My underwear sticks to me like another layer of skin.
The pain awakens in my throat. Everything around me stinks, sharp and acidic. I'm contaminating the air. I get to my feet and step away from the stench. Clemson Pond's down here somewhere. If that's right, just east of here is Duke Street. My street. Only ten minutes through the woods. I run, dirt, moss and leaves kicking up behind me, spraying the back of my bare legs. Rocks, too. But they don't poke the soles of my feet. It's as though my skin is a hide, thicker than skin, tougher. I'm moving faster, my feet skimming the surface of the woods, barely brushing the twigs and stones.
My house, there it is. Set back from the cluster of other homes around the corner on Sapphire Street. I’m standing across the road, shrouded by trees. There are three cars. The one in the driveway is my mother's — an old beige Chevy Impala, Big Betty, she calls it. The two others parked along the edge of the front lawn I don't recognize. I step out of the woods, my puke and mud-soaked shirt hanging stiffly against my thighs. I'm in the middle of the dark road, thirty feet from my yard. I'm overcome with a sensation that I must stay away from the house, that I don't belong there anymore. Imaginary shackles keep me in place.
The blind along the front window moves. Light from the living room spills out onto the low shrubs that line my home. The blind lifts and the window is suddenly a movie screen. An old man, stooped and pink-skinned, struggles to crack open the window. I recognize him from our church. He lifts his arm to his right and my mother appears holding a coffee cup with two hands. I take a few steps, stopping at the border of the yard, hidden by a high brown fence that separates our property from the Anderson's. Wrinkles etch the skin around her eyes and mouth, and although it's a trick of shadows and darkness, her flesh seems to be slipping from her face like wax from a candle.
I see her vividly, as though she’s standing inches from my face. She walks like an elderly woman, her bones supporting her like pretzels. Finally, she reaches the man and he guides her into the overstuffed red chair. They're both in black. A woman comes from the kitchen, Ginny O'Neal, a colleague of my mother's — pudgy body, curly light brown hair down to her shoulders. She carries a muffin on a plate. My mother takes it, but rests it on the sill.
Eat it, Ma. The thought of eating it myself makes my stomach retch again.
She’s weeping. She gestures to the churchman to hand her something, her fingers beckoning, long and pale. He steps out of view and reappears, giving her a thick silver frame. I know the picture. Of us on a beach in Newport, with me holding a green Coleman cooler with both hands, her fingers wrapped around a huge umbrella, both wearing cheap sunglasses bought in the parking lot minutes before. She clutches the frame and brings it to her chest. She weeps.
Please, Ma, don't cry.
Her sobs are choked off suddenly by a harrowing fit of coughing. Her friends bend to her. Ginny offers her a glass of water. My mother hasn't the strength to take it, only to pat her chest repeatedly with the frame.
Stop it. I'm alright. Don’t cry.
I rush across the lawn toward the window. I want to hold her. Tell her I’m okay. Halfway there, I hear a sound from the woods. I turn to look. The candystriper. Partially hidden by trees and bushes. She lifts her arm out in front of her. Her index finger points upward, then wags from side to side. I’ve been warned.
I ignore it. I don't care who she is or what's happened to me or why. My mother's crying and I can help. Almost at the window, I cave in. Pain gushes in waves, crushing me, funneling through my arms, legs, penis, like a fireball seeking oxygen to become stronger, fiercer. I'm on my belly, crawling back toward the trees . My elbows as oars. Off the grass, to the other side of the street, an injured snake seeking shelter. The woods are swallowing me, as if I'm in quicksand. I look back at the house. My mother still in the window. She's shrinking, though, losing shape. Becoming a gray line, a speck, then no more.
* * *
I'm at Clemson Pond. It's quiet. I lean over the water and lower my hands, the clear liquid soothing my skin. No sign of the candystriper. I place my foot in the pond and rub my heal and toes. The same with the other foot. It's good. Clean, comforting. I splash my thighs, my groin. Kneading my skin, I see the trees reflected in the pond, their branches and remaining leaves gently brushing each other in the wind. I make out shapes that the limbs form on the water, disjointed airplanes, demolished houses, stick figure families, mommies, daddies, children.
Where am I? I plunge my hands into the surface. I part the water looking for myself. I'm not there!
The mirror at the store. I recall how it had frozen me. That’s it - my reflection wasn't in the mirror.
My hands continue to slap the water, but it's no good. I touch my legs and chest. I'm here. I'm solid, flesh and bone. I feel my face. Thin, sunken from illness, but certainly real. My forehead, cheeks, mouth…
Ow, fuck! Goddamn it. Pain in my thumb. I look. It's ripped open, the skin and flesh of the pad parted and bloodless. It's deep, but as I pinch at it with my other hand, the pain subsides. And the wound seals. I remember the pain in my knuckles from ripping through the coffin. Not a scratch now.
I touch my mouth again, slowly this time, carefully, tracing my lips with my index finger. Then my teeth. They're sharp, like heads of thick needles, two rows of them, one up one down, the upper incisors the longest, shooting downward like two icicles at the opening of a cave. An animal's teeth. Fangs!
There's a noise, a scurrying sound. It's louder, getting heavier. Footfalls. Coming toward me. A person, alone. A male. I smell his sweat, the beer and salt on his breath. Tangy. My mouth is opening, my tongue out. My eyes close. I imagine the taste.
I see him now. Dark hair and tall, blue jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. Clean shaven. My eyes focus on his neck, that vein, pulsing, hypnotizing me. I need to bite it, feel it pop, taste what's inside, salty and thick and sweet. Like spicy honey.
I hug a tree, plant myself to the ground. Try to dig in. I want to tell him to turn around, flee. But I can't. The pain's too much, my throat too scorched. I leap. I'm three inches away and he still doesn't know. I'm too fast, soundless. Flying. I have him pinioned between myself and an oak tree. He struggles against my chest and arms, begins to shout, but I clasp my hand over his mouth and push his head aside. Need to keep him alive as long as possible; keep the blood warm.
I rip his sweatshirt open and bite down. Blood dribbles from his wounds and I lap it with my tongue. But it's too slow. I want it to gush. I tear the neck with my teeth and suck hard. My tongue is tingling and vibrating. It's charged! So is the inside of my mouth, my throat, my eyes and my lips.
He's losing strength, no longer jerking his body. His blood is flowing now. I want every drop, but can’t capture it all. It pours around my lips. My insides are absorbing it, like parched earth sucking up water. It's more than chocolate milk, more than honey. It's milkshakes and sundaes; it's prime rib and chicken and scallops; it's biting into a cantaloupe and letting its juices dribble down your chin, licking its sweetness and stickiness. The food drips down my cheeks. I lick up what I can, then lower my head again, probing my tongue in his wound, wrapping my lips around chunks of meat to suck out every bit of juice.
His neck is mangled. I let his head go and it lolls backward like an infant's.
Oh, Jesus, what have I done? God, please! I lower him to the ground, gently. My fingers try to pinch his skin back together. Maybe the flaps will heal, maybe he'll be alright. Laying on the ground, I hold him in my arms.
* * *
Asleep? For how long? The body's still in my arms. It’s cold. My cheek is pressed against one of his. Our legs are intertwined, my arms around his chest and back. I separate myself. His skin is white and chalky. Eyes glazed with some kind of film, lips dry and blue.
My legs and face itch, as if the hairs on my arms have turned into tiny scurrying bugs. I'm hot, sweating. It's hard to breath. The heat is coming from above. A pink line splits the sky over the eastern side of the pond.
"Move away." A voice from above, girlish and commanding at once.
I look up. The candystriper is hanging by her feet from a low branch of a nearby tree. The skirt of her uniform has fallen toward the ground, revealing muscular brown legs. Should I run? Probably, but I remember the pain she’d inflicted when I ran toward my house, so I get up and step away from the man. She releases one leg from the branch, then the other, and gracefully lands on the ground.
"I hurt him." I point.
"I know."
"I … I drank. . . ."
"I know." She cradles my face in bony fingers. "You have nothing to be ashamed of. You were hungry, that's all. You have to eat."
"I'm hot." I begin to weep, but no tears flow. "I'm burning." My head rests against her shoulder. Her hand caresses the back of my neck, motherly, leaving a cool trail against my feverish skin.
My mother. I suddenly imagine her here, standing above us, gawking at the body, bits of the corpse between my teeth. And she flees, screaming as she runs, as she realizes what's become of her son. "My mother … " A whisper, the words die on my lips. "My … "
"Sshhh." Her hold becomes tighter. "I'm your mother now."
"You're too young."
She chuckles. There's sadness in it, helplessness. I smell her breath. It's dirty somehow, ancient. Like the earth from my grave, the tunnels of rot. “Your ties to her are strong. But they’ll fade.”
I push out of her grasp. “I don’t want them to fade.”
“But they will.” She presses her lips against the side of my head, then under my eye and lovingly rests my head on her shoulder.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone again.”
“You need to eat.”
I shake my head. “I’ll go far away, where there’re no people. I’ll starve myself.”
She lifts her hands to the sides of my face. “You won’t. You’ll feed. And you’ll get stronger, smarter.”
The heat is surrounding me, seeping into my pores. The sky brightens, grey into blue. She takes my hand and we're off. Not through the woods, but over them. I see the tops of trees, branches spreading wide. Rooftops and chimneys, tar shingles and regimented plots of grass.
The cemetery. She's guiding me downward. The sunlight wraps its talons around my chest and neck.
I'm at the side of my grave. I belong down there. In my own dirt, where I was buried. To get out of the heat, to stay alive. My mind fills with fear of tomorrow night. Will there be a tomorrow night? Will I awake hungry … thirsty? More questions stir, but my skin is bubbling, about to split open. I'm head first in the hole, my arms out in front of me, pushing the dirt aside as I submerge. I'm burrowing through the ground like a worm, deeper, the earth enveloping me, ingesting me whole.
BIO: Jonathan Curelop is a writer and editor living in New York City with his wife. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in several print and online magazines, including UMass Amherst Magazine, apt, Raging Face, The Melic Review, The American Book Reivew and Aura.
