Thunder on the Horizon, there’s a Storm in my Head

We lived a good life, nothing lavish or anything, but good.

That all changed when my mom died in a car wreck. She was going seventy down the highway and a car on the curb tried to merge too soon without a blinker. Mom was going to my aunt’s baby shower. She had asked me to go with her, but me in all my sixteen-year-old glory had thought it an unbelievable request. I had yelled ‘NO MOM, I don’t want to go!’ complete with an eye roll and scrolling on my phone. All momma said was ‘Okay, Bethy, love you. See you after a while.’

‘Yeah, bye.’ I replied.

I don’t blame the driver who caused the wreck. Insurance found him 100% responsible, his reputation was ruined in our small town, he was charged with involuntary vehicular manslaughter and spent a year in jail. Probation for five years. License suspended for
fifteen. And, worst of all, he has to live with it for the rest of his life.

I watched the interview tapes. The man had been in a full blown breakdown, red faced and hysterical. All he could say was ‘I didn’t see her. Swear to God, I just didn’t see her.’ So no, I don’t blame the man. I don’t hate him. But I do hate my dad.

He fell apart, after… after. Shattered, actually, would be a better word. “Falling apart” gives the impression of some old, concrete monolith left abandoned and crumbling over time.
Shattered is abrupt and jagged, like a twelve year old throwing a rock through the parlor window of an old lady’s tea party.

That’s understandable, right? I shattered as well. Early on, we found solace in stepping through the broken pieces together, our path of blood and glass and grief.

But I moved on, dad didn’t.

He had worked at the local Take 5 for twenty-five years, made okay money there too. The day of the wreck he walked away and didn’t return. Didn’t return to any work, really. He fiddled around with people’s mowers, there for awhile, but the spray-painted plywood sign in our overgrown yard has been turned to CLOSED for the past four years and the only work he’s done since is getting up from his recliner to grab a beer, though he usually allocates even that
task to me.

Occasionally, thoughts will curl a finger in my hair. Maybe I just hated the thousand little reflections of myself I saw in the glass at his feet. Maybe I didn’t like the idea that we were both zombie’s rotting in our trailer and I only hid it better. But I push those thoughts away, when they come. I have a job. I keep the lights and water on. I have moved on with my life.

Sometimes, I will turn the window unit down, down, down in my room until it’s an ice box. Fuck the blow to my paycheck. I’ll draw the curtains, and pull my quilt over me, and cinch my eyes shut until the world is nothing but cold and that red-black-green-pink kaleidoscope of color behind the eyes. Wondering if this is what mom must be experiencing, now and forever, cold and alone in the dark.

Probably not. Because mom isn’t shivering and the only color behind her eyes now is black.

Before I knew it, with both major sources of our income gone, the insurance money had dried up along with my aspirations of a swimming scholarship, and I quit the team to work at the Sonic drive-thru full time in addition to school. As you can imagine, the Sonic drive-thru kept the lights on and the water running (barely), but left little room for other important things like groceries. So I picked up odd jobs around town.

One of those odd jobs was taking care of old Mrs. Rosemary Wilkerson.

Mrs. Wilkerson had been the town biology teacher, decades ago. She’s probably in her late seventies – early eighties, though I know better than to ask, with a shock of gray hair and librarian glasses. The old lady has me feed her two cats, Apple and Bartholemeow, mow her lawn, move the furniture she can’t and sweep the floor.

(“Why Apple?”

“I’s walkin’ through da Home Depot parkin’ lot when ‘dis little screamin’ kitty-cat fell outta a tree and–” Hands smacking together, “-BAM! Right on my head like I’s Issac Newton or some shit.”

“Why Bartholomeow?”

“Why not?”)

That might give you the image of a frail bag of bones but the woman was surprisingly athletic, tending to her not insignificant garden and even going out boating to sight-see gators. Since she was, as she had told me, ‘too old to go shooting and frying up the old bastards anymore.’

I like Mrs. Wilkerson. I had actually known her since I was twelve or so and walking up county roads, hauling a push-mower and gas can in my red wagon looking for yards to mow. She paid me twice whatever price I asked and usually had ice cold lemonade in the fridge.

I won’t say my life was good, anymore, or that I particularly enjoyed it. But I was… complacent. Content. Enough so, anyway. I had wanted to go to college, had dreams of being some important marine biologist, but then my world narrowed to making enough money to keep the lights on and I was just so tired, all the time. And, really, what is the point of all that mess if we all end up in the ground just the same?

Anyway, I’m sorry. Sometimes the malady comes on no matter what. Let me get into the nitty-gritty. For starters: the old-lady’s a kooky bitch. She hangs faux stained glass and real pearl necklaces from the cedar trees and rubs coconut oil on her teeth as opposed to brushing. But the strangest thing the old lady does – and what initially compelled me to write this – is drink her tea out of a human skull

Yes. A full-on freaking human skull. It’s real. I asked. Repeatedly. Back when Mrs. Wilkerson was teaching Bio. artificial skeletons were difficult to produce and thus very expensive — hardly a worthwhile investment for Bum Fuck Egypt where we live. What was much more handy (and cheap, can’t forget that) was a real human skeleton. So the BFE school board acquired one for Mrs. Wilkerson’s classroom.

It was male, and that was just about all Mrs. Wilkerson shared with me. ‘Probably some poor bastard from India. Donated his body to science.’ She had said.

But then, time’s changed and the artificial model was made more accessible. Concerns were raised about the morality of using real skeletons. So, Mrs. Wilkerson said she would take the skeleton and bury the man under the great pecan tree in her backyard.

And she did. Well, most of the poor bastard. All but the skull, mandible and all. Why, you ask? Well ya ‘Don’t bury ‘em with the noggin’ and they spend the rest of the next life looking for it, rather than haunting your ass.’ Apparently.

Mrs. Wilkerson added a clay handle and sealed the inside of the cap with the same. Due the kindling process and repeated microwaving’s it was a deep yellow color, like sunlight shining on the jar of oil you use to cook french fries, with dark brown accents. She mostly used it to prepare tea with enough sugar to kill a horse, though she did grace the noggin’ with a Pepsi once and a while. No Coors or Budlight though. Alcohol’s a sin, she says.

Yes, alcohol was obviously the problem.

I couldn’t help but think Mrs. Wilkerson was participating in some light cannibalism. I mean, weren’t little particulates of the skull flaking off, even if you couldn’t see them? You’re swallowing that, right? But then again, don’t sometimes you swallow that bit of dead skin that builds up on your lip? Ain’t that kinda the same?

Something to think about I guess.

***

Now, here’s some fourth wall breaking shit, dear reader: I wasn’t going to continue writing from here. I like Mrs. Wilkerson, her and all her little eccentricities. She is someone I care about, so I figured I’d tell this one little anecdote about a crazy old woman living in her little house in a creepy-ass swamp drinking her sugared tea outta a human skull without a care in the world. Just one of a million anecdotes. One of a billion. Keep her memory alive somewhere besides my skull.

But that isn’t quite right.

The rest of the story is personal. Very personal. I was in a dark space. But plenty of people are trapped in that same dark place. I’m not a role model, and things aren’t perfect but maybe… maybe sharing everything will help someone. Help light a candle in the dark.

Just be aware, my writing capabilities aren’t top-tier.I don’t even know when to use a fucking semi-colon, so good fucking luck finding one in this entire document.

***

Like I said, I like Mrs. Wilkerson, but I don’t often go to her house ‘less there’s a job to do. Though she says I’m welcome at any time, I can’t help but feel sorta like the Kool-Aid man crashing through a wall all Ahhh-YEAH!, whenever I quietly open the front door to her little house for no real reason… i.e. large, annoying, and unwelcome.

The night the shitshow curtain raised was one of those “don’t oftens”

Dad and I had been fighting. It had started with ‘Shut your damn mouth Bethy and get me a beer’ and ended with ‘Go die in a fucking ditch, old man’ and I couldn’t stand being in the trailer with him, less I pull out my own teeth or punch out his. There wasn’t really any question of where to go. So, this time I wasn’t at Mrs. Wilkerson’s there to feed cats, or mow the lawn, or sweep the floor, but for the comfort of a friend.

When I came through the door, shaking myself off against the rain that had begun to fall outside, I was immediately hit by a wall of warmth. Mrs. Wilkerson was making dinner – fried chicken strips. The smell was mesmerizing. I didn’t really care to cook, food was a means to an end. Something that quieted the hurt in my stomach, if nowhere else. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had anything more than my daily free meal from Sonic (as long as it was under $9) or cans of Spagetti’Os.

The old woman didn’t seem surprised to see me and she quickly took it upon herself to
teach me the, what I thought, was the pretty basic process of battering a dead bird and
dumping it in liquid fat. Particular attention was paid to the caring and feeding of your pet cast iron skillet.

“Now girlie, all this new hodge podge stainless steel shit ain’t got nothin’ on good ‘ol pure cast iron. The spices are ingrained, I tell you. Ingrained. Ain’t nothin’ like it, ain’t nothin’ make yard bird taste better.” Her fingers were coated in a thick layer of flour and egg yolk. “You don’t go wershin’ cast iron now with no DAWN or shit. You do dat and I’ll done find yer ass and slap yah silly. Das da one time my mamma try spankin’ me, chased me through the house with a fly swatter and now I done wish she’d succeeded…”

“Uh, how ya wash it then?”

“Yah don’t, girlie.” She said gravely, “Yah werpe it out w’ a napkin ‘den ya sprinkle eh with salt ‘n slice up a lemon, ‘n use da slices to werpe it out ‘gain.”

The rain abruptly got louder, from a gentle mist to sounding like rocks were falling onto the tin carport roof. Mrs. Wilkerson harrumphed.

“Golly, it sure do be comin’ down, don’t it?”

I hummed in agreement. “Sure is. The weather man didn’t mention a storm rollin’ in. Wasn’t we ‘posed to have five straight days of sunshine?”

“Yes ma’am we was. I’m sure its just a stray thing ‘o storms. Dah weather man’s only right ‘bout ‘fity percent ‘o dah time. Flippin’ a coin, I done say.” Mrs. Wilkerson tutted.

Mrs. Wilkerson washed her hands, then we went outside. The old lady lit a cigarette. The smell brought tears to my eyes, though I turned away so the old lady wouldn’t see
.
We didn’t have a lot of money, so for fun Momma and I would pile into her 1998 faded red Ford F-150 and cruise around on county roads listening to Poison or The Steve Miller Band. Mom with a cigarette in hand and a Coke in the console. She would ask me, every time, if I wanted a drink before we went out and I would confidently say ‘no I’m not thirsty’. Of course, that just meant I was the one slurping down her Coke, but mom never seemed to mind.

***

Momma is cooking at the stove. Chicken. My favorite. I’m young, with a Dora the
Explorer apron on, tottling around the kitchen, then climbing on top of a chair to “help”. Mom doesn’t let me near the popping grease but lets me stir the Kraft Mac’N’Cheese. She is telling me something, but I can’t hear her.

I turn my head to look at her, and she is nothing more than a fuzzy outline. I can’t make out her face. Momma? I say, afraid. A stray kernel of grease pops me in the arm and I start crying. She reaches out to me and dissolves like smoke. And then I’m screaming but it doesn’t sound like a child screaming, it sounds like screeching car breaks. The sound gets louder and louder and there’s a CRASH–!!!

***

The thunder is deafening, echoing for a small eternity. As I jerk awake lightning streaks the sky, illuminating everything for less than a second with purple-white light. Right. Right. I was at Mrs. Wilkerson’s, sunken deep into the plaid couch that seems to haunt the living room of every person who lived through the 70’s.

The rain hadn’t let up as the evening deepened and I commandeered the couch, deciding I’d leave in the morning. I got up to go to the window as another roll of thunder rumbled – so strong the glass shook in its frame.

What I saw in the dark made my still pitter-pattering heart freeze in shock.

Mrs. Wilkerson’s house had been built on a gentle hill, a strategic position to avoid the rise and fall of the fickle swamp, and this seemed to be a continuing saving grace. From the light of a
single sulphur-orange streetlamp I could see heaving black water dragging at the low limbs of cedar trees with its current. Lightning flashed again and I caught a purple-white split screen of
horizontal sheets of rain and of the swamp’s depths. It was more like a river.

The current had to be three feet high, at least.

Five straight days of sunshine, my ass. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Standing there at the window, in that dark, a hunted feeling came over me, one man must have experienced since he first conquered fire — with darkness at his back and the knowledge that there were things in the wood that did not wish good will upon him.

But hey, we had something those ancient fuckers didn’t, I had just a moment to stupidly think: Man, I can’t believe we still have-

Then the street lamp went out and the blackness was absolute.

Like a little child I rushed back to the couch and covered up with the quilt, shoving my nose into the space between the cushion and the back to get wisps of fresh air. I used the wisdom of a little child as well: If I do not turn to face the dark it cannot get me.

***

It rained for three days.

Power never returned. We ate the rest of the chicken and Mrs. Wilkerson lit her little charcoal bar-be-que under the patio to not let that deluxe package of ballpark hotdogs go to waste. At one point the sky went this dark gray-green one one end and black and the other – the rain came so violent that it’d looked like we’d get our footsies wet after all with water lapping at the front door for several tense hours.

I wondered if a state of emergency had been declared, yet. Bum Fuck Egypt was flooded, absolutely, the surrounding towns to. Hell, the surrounding counties. Borders at least. This storm was some other beast.

People were injured, people were definitely dead, I thought with apathy. Despite being in the middle of it, all that suffering seemed so far away.

Nevertheless, by evening of that third day, the water did recede, somewhat, the storm seemed to be weakening. Our little vay-cay would have to end soon. Re-building would commence. Roads cleared. Injuries tended to. Dead buried. I’d have to go back to Sonic, to that shitty little trailer, to dad–

Then I went cold.

Dad.

God, I was such a little bitch a God-awful stupid fucking awful kid why, why awful awful fucking awful–

I twisted fingers into my hair, knuckles tight against my scalp, pulled, PULLED– PULL–

Mrs. Wilkerson noticed from where she stroked Apple on the couch. “Bethy?” She asked in concern.

What if dad was dead?

Digging my nails in, gouging.

“Bethy?”

I thought of ‘Yeah, bye’ and ‘Go die in a ditch, old man’ and swayed on my feet.

Our trailer was a dingy old thing in a sump surrounded by other rotting things. A stiff breeze would rip it from the ground.

What if dad was lying dead in a ditch somewhere? His last moments fear and pain and the terrible knowledge that he was completely alone?

“Bethany! Damn it, five things ya see–”

I heard a distant keying noise and wondered if Bartholomeow was chirping back at the Barn Swallows again. Mrs. Wilkerson was always knockin’ their nest down but she couldn’t ever get rid of ‘em. Then I realized, no, that was me and I wasn’t making some little sound but full on wailing.

“What you hear? Bethy? Three things, Bethy– what–”

“Chirping.” I gasped. Focus. God, focus. “Apple chirping, and rain, and your dimestore psychology.” When Mrs. Wilkerson didn’t respond, I continued, she had to understand, she had to.

“Dad, oh God, dad, what about– about–”

“He will be fine, girlie.” Mrs. Wilkerson replied. Her hands carefully guided mine from my head. There was a thin skim of blood under my nails.

“I- I gotta go.” Stumbling around her, shaking, sweating, desperate to get away from here and to the trailer for the first time ever.

“Girlie, the best thing you can do is stay right here.”

“No, no. I gotta fucking go.” I ripped open the door and stopped.

The water had receded, yes, but in the same way a mid-life crisis aged white guys’ hairline did. In inches, maybe not completely decimating physically but completely destroying mentally. The road was still a river.

I was no longer twelve and walking to Mrs. Wilkersons with my little red wagon, though it may have been more reliable transportation. My truck was a 1996 emerald green Chevrolet I bought off a crackhead for $120. It got the job done, and that’s all I asked for. But even those big F-3 whatever-the-fuck-50’s, that only served to show the owner had a small penis, wouldn’t stand a chance against the current.

I wasn’t going anywhere, probably for another week at least. According to Mrs. Wilkerson, anyway.

I was swinging back around to hysterics “I’ll fucking swim there if I have to!”

“This storm ain’t nothin’ I ever seen girlie. You be swept away the second you stepped off ‘da porch. Besides,” Mrs. Wilkerson said simply, “if yer daddy’s done dead then there ain’t shit yah can do to help ‘em now, can yer?”

That stopped me.

“No.” I replied, cold.

Mrs. Wilkerson sighed, lit a cigarette in the house – something I had never seen her do before.

“Naw,” the old lady echoed. “Naw there ain’t nothin’ you can do. But if we gon’ do this we gonna do this damn right.”

***

A jute rope tied around my waist and the rotten porch railing was all that tethered me on my perilous journey to reach the boat, undo the lock, and slowly tug it from the Skull Mug Dude’s pecan tree to the porch. The water only went up to my knees but nearly swept me away a half-dozen times. Still on the hill, by the way.

The supplies:

Big ass umbrella (swallowed the entire back of the boat). Gas can (half full). Zippo lighter (only one). Blankets (faded and covered in cat hair). Two changes of clothes (Mrs. Wilkersons. Also faded, also covered in cat hair). First aid kit (i.e. bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a tiny yellowing tube of antibiotic ointment, all-but empty, and three loose Ibuprofen pills). Mrs. Wilkerson’s shotgun and a chainsaw.

The remaining hotdogs, three four pound jars of peanut butter, four sticks of regular butter. Enough saltine crackers to kill a Victorian child. A twenty pound bag of cat food (hey I guess it would make a good last resort).

I looked over to Mrs. Wilkerson as she cooed to Bartholomeow about going on an adventure.

Well, maybe not a last resort.

Sugar packets, a little gas powered cooktop stove and a pot. Lipton tea packets. Skull mug. The important shit.

(What about water?

We’re surrounded by water, girlie.

There’s a fucking forty-pack of Great Value right there.)

I grabbed Apple and sat her princess little ass in the boat as well. Once we left there’d be a good chance we wouldn’t be able to return for a long while, so taking the cats as well.

***

We shucked off that morning. It wasn’t raining and the clouds were a brilliant gold.

We followed the river, formerly County Road 2545, and what I now deemed River County Road 2545 or RCR 2545 for short. Simplicity is grace, as they say.

RCR 2545 (I’m gonna use it every chance I damn well get) was winding and narrow and choked with mounds of debris, half-ass and whole-ass trees that were never meant to withstand this sort of extended storm.

The journey was incredibly rough, the current of RCR 2545 ran through the former white-rock strip of County Road 2545. More than a handful of times we were slammed against the remaining treeline. Mrs. Wilkerson used a PVC pipe to carefully push us through the mess, while I used a curtain rod to feel ahead for anything that would sink us and the chainsaw to cut through the hefty-er stuff.

“We’re good, we’re good, ope left left LEFT–”

“I gotcha girlie, okay, now–”

“Big bitch here, lemme, you got–”

“–sure do you want me ta–”

“Yeah, over, I’m gonna– Over– AH-! SHITFUCKDAMN-!

It took us until noon to travel two miles.

I wanted to keep going, but Mrs. Wilkerson was exhausted, really, I was too, but filled with that same squirrel-on-crack energy where your body is tired while your mind is going a mile a minute. I wanted to see dad right now.

Mrs. Wilkerson tied the boat to a tree and we drifted in the current until it pulled taunt.

She handed me a jar of peanut butter before settling with her own.

I broke the silence. “It’s hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock.” I had just downed my fifth bottle of water. “I ain’t even pissin’, that’s how much I’m fucking sweating.”

Mrs. Wilkerson laughed. “Ah, like a whore in church. You da one who wanna go, girlie.”

“Yeah, yeah, I fuckin’ know. I done made this bed and I’ll lie in it but I’m damn well gonna complain about it too.” I ate a spoonful of my fucking peanut butter, shooing Bartholomeow away as he tried to stick his fat little face in my jar.

After about fifteen minutes, Mrs. Wilkerson jammed the spoon deep into her jar. “All right, girlie. Cut us free would’ja?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Eager to get going, I revved the chainsaw, cut through the rope, and we went back to work.

***

The sun was setting, no longer gold but red, when we came to what should have been the intersection of RCR 2545 and County Road 2546.

Instead, we came out into open water.

“The fuck?” I wondered out loud. “Is this the fucking reservoir?”

Mrs. Wilkerson just hummed, her eyes darted to-and-fro.

“I imagine the damn thing’s flooded, but it’s a hot minute from– didn’t we just– we– this– “ I made a frantic side-to-side gesture with my hand “–was 2546 we wouldn’t be spit out here…?” I ended my questioning with another profound observation. “The fuck?”

The old lady didn’t respond to me for a long time, before she snorted like a horse and put her hands on her hips. “Well, I done don’t know da whole logistics of the thing but storms are fickle. Makes the landscape unrecognizable. My minds old and you couldn’t find yer way outta a cashew without yer Google Maps–”

“Hey,” I protested halfheartedly.

“–And that’s without this whole clusterfuck. We got turned around, that’s all. We know we on the reservoir, so we go from there.”

Despite her confident proclamation, Mrs. Wilkerson cautiously started the engine. The sound was ugly in the otherwise quiet landscape. Then, we were off.

Skimming across the open water, Bartholomeow slept through the gutter of the engine while Apple perched on the very apex of the boat, so close to the white cut of water I feared she might go tumbling off. Her tail elegantly curled around her paws, with her head held high.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds all spooky and otherworldly and oh-look-the-cats-a-sacred-guardian-shit until you realize I also got to watch that same cat take shits off (and sometimes on) the boat during this excursion.

***

The reservoir just kept on going.

Now don’t get me wrong it was a fucking reservoir, it wasn’t supposed to be a puddle you put your little yellow galoshes on and splish-splashed through. But it wasn’t particularly wide – it used to be a river before the place was flooded way back when – so it shouldn’t have been but a handful of minutes before we saw sign of civilization, but hours went by, and once the land had disappeared it didn’t come back.

Things weren’t looking good. Night was falling and an off-gray wall of storm clouds, with the look of a rain-wrapped tornado, marched ominously towards us from the distant horizon.

Things actually began looking pretty fucking bad when the engine began to cough, though Mrs. Wilkerson killed it only when a concerning burnt toast smell started to emanate from it.

“Damn things just fixed up last weekend, hunk ‘a junk, knew I done given’ Dave too much for the shoddy repair, brand new motor my ass–” She groused.

“Ah shit.” I said, eloquently. What else do you say? I wasn’t a mechanic. Dad never bothered to teach me. Couldn’t even change a tire.

“You got a paddle?” I asked, digging through the tangled tackle under the boat seat.

“‘Course, girlie. Ain’t never needed it doe ‘cause I ain’t never had no skimpy-as-a-stripper so-called boat-man ‘fix’ da engine ‘fore, son’a’va’bitch–” Several more curses even I won’t repeat. Concerning screeches of metal-on-metal.

The paddle I found was a plastic shovel meant for a seven-year old.

“Yeah, ain’t gonna work.” I said to myself.

The waves were picking up, slapping against the side of the boat. Thunder booming again. Dying gold light in the west. Shivering with the cool wind that suddenly cut through the humidity, I took the single life jacket and did my best to tie the straps to the curtain rod, something to provide drag in the water. I did a test dip and it didn’t immediately float away, which let me run a little victory lap in my head. I put it back on my lap, watching Mrs. Wilkerson.

She was banging on the engine with the PVC pipe, cursing.

I heard a low growl, I turned around to see Apple, she had come behind me from the apex of the boat. Poor lady’s tail was bushed to three times it’s size. Eyes wide and ears pinned back. She was an indoor-outside (mostly outside) cat, but even this was a bit much for her, it seemed.

I didn’t reach out to pet her, because I valued my skin, but I did speak to her. “Go under the seat with Barty-Bart, honey.” I said. “It’s okay.”

Apple just continued to stare at me with her big-ole eyes.

“C’mere honey,” I continued. I placed my hand near the boat seat and began to make a kissy noise. “Smooch smooch smooch smooth smooch– OH SHIT!”

Suddenly the cat and I were thrown across the boat as it nearly tipped over. A headwind had come out of nowhere, buddied with freezing rain. The storm twisted so suddenly around us it seemed a waterspout formed right where our boat sat stranded.

“Mrs. Wilkerson, we gotta go, go now!” I gasped, wiping the curtain of water from my eyes.

“Tryin’ girlie!”

I started to paddle. The kids shovel probably would’ve been more effective.

Apple slinked back to my side and growled, low, in her throat. Furious at being drenched.

Yeah, you and me both, little lady.

“Comin’ down now!” Mrs. Wilkerson said. She got up to position the umbrella more over the engine.

“Yeah, no shit!” I replied.

Apple growled again. Hissed. Pressed against my side. Swiped out a paw at the rainwater.

I had half a mind to grab my jacket and toss it on top of the furball, wrap her up like a little burrito and stick her under the seat. I feared she would bolt or, again, that my hide would be deemed worthy of her claws in her agitated state.

But just as I got up, scoffing at the storm, I saw what she was actually hissing at.

Brave, brave kitty.

That off-gray wall of clouds had been hiding something.

As they rapidly drew closer, a great pair of eyes, bright yellow – like floodlights, like rattlesnake venom – coalesced high, high above us. Several stories above us, in fact. They must’ve been the size of those massive satellite dishes used to image galaxy-far stars.

“What the fuck! What the fuck IS THAT–!” I yelled. Apple finally darted under the boat seat.

“What’s what, girlie–” Mrs. Wilkerson did a lazy turn from where she knelt, but when she saw that… thing… she froze.

“Mrs. Wilkerson!”

“Oh shit.” The old lady finally tuned into the right channel, “Oh, oh shit! You ain’t supposed to be– Oh shit!” She lunged back to the dead engine.

A great twisting of her torso, muscles bunching in her arm, Mrs. Wilkerson pulled the starter cord. It wound out with a thin screech, and gave only a rattly SHHHNNNNNNNNN when it retreated.

“I’m gettin’ the gun!”

“Ain’t gon’ do nothin’ girlie!” Mrs. Wilkerson shouted. “Just stay down!”

The great yellow eyes moved to be directly above us. They pierced through the storm clouds, glowing brighter than a hundred full moons. I took my shitty paddle again and frantically started to slap it at the water.

“C’mon,” Mrs. Wilkerson gritted, pulled the starter again. SHHHNNNNNNNN.

The waves were absurd. With each swell the boat nearly went vertical. My paddle was quickly made useless. Clouds wreathed us, and in them I could see things moving.

A man on a horse rode right by my nose.

Dozens of figures darted by. A dark pilgrimage. Most looked human. Some were on horses. Some were running for dear life. I think I heard crying, I definitely heard laughing. Others were not human, and these were tall willowy things lumbering through the fog, or short and squat like little toddlers. I made out hints of their forms: too many arms, too many teeth.

“Go go GO GO GOGOGOGOGOG!” I screeched.

“I’m tryin’! C’mon C’MON DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU!” Pull. SHHHNNNNNN.

A great flash of lightning lit up the veil and now the outline of the yellowed-eyed beast was shone in all its terrible entirety. The body was a dozen horrors shifting all at once: Cthulhu, Gorgon, antlers and hollow cheeks, plague mask and the scent of clove, Hydra, a gray child with black hair and crying eyes, older horrors that died with ancient man.

A great roar echoed above the storm, then, one that must have started from the bottom of hell.

Pull. SHHHNNNNNN.

I screamed and flung my hands outwards. I could see the outline of a massive claw swing back, surely to rip the boat apart, rip us apart. I was cursing and yelling ‘fuck it and fuck you, and fuck off, fucking shitfuckerdamn–!’ to the sky, just the foulest things I could think of. It wasn’t gonna change anything but I was sure as shit gonna let Mr. Uglier-Than-An-Anglerfish know that his mother was a whore–

Pull. Pull. PULL–!

A rumble, as the engine revved to life.

“YES!” Mrs. Wilkerson bellowed. “YES! DAMN YOU, YES!”

The engine belched out a sour cloud of exhaust, then we were flying through the water. I scrunched my face against the icy rain. The ghostly horsemen ran alongside us, briefly, before we cleared the wall of fog.

The beast’s eyes followed us for a long time until they were finally swallowed by the storm.

***

Eventually, we found land. It was nothing but a dark line on the horizon visible with each lightning strike. We went towards it, settling the apex of the boat against the root-thick bank. Mrs. Wilkerson and I dragged part of it onto land. It still was drizzling and I was ankle deep in mud, overall it was a pretty miserable time.

‘All this for you, dad.’ I thought unkindly. The thoughts seemed to come from far away, like there was a waterfall between myself and reality. Kinda floaty. I didn’t feel entirely there, after seeing that… thing.

“Well,” Mrs. Wilkerson said, as she tied the boat to a tree while Apple, fur spikey with rain water, darted a paw out to play with the loose end. “‘dat was bit o’a doozy, now I done know where ‘ta go now, don’t chu worry girlie,” She chuckled, “ guess my mind ain’t too far gone, now…”

I wasn’t in the fucking mood. I whipped around to face the old woman and we locked eyes.

“You seemed like you knew what that bastard was,” I said, quietly, more to myself. “What the fuck was that? Just what the fuck is goin’ on, Mrs. Wilkerson?”

“C’mon now, girlie, don’t worry ‘bout it none, let’s done gon’ go find yer daddy–”

“DON’T BULLSHIT ME!” Bartholomeow ran back under the boat seat. Damn cat had slept through all the earlier shitshow and had just come out.

Mrs. Wilkerson sighed, crossed her arms. Seemed to be really torn fucking up about it. Well too fucking bad.

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Wilkerson said, “‘da line ‘tween ‘da livin’ n’ ‘da dead ain’t so much a line as is a suggestion. We wanna think it ain’t but it is. You draw a line and ‘da line there, you erase ‘da line and ‘da line gone. But sometimes, ‘da ‘raser’s shit n’ don’t make it all go away. Sometimes a mark’s left, fainter, ‘doe s’still there. Art class in 6th grade, Mrs. McFarland called ‘dem ghosts. Ruin’s da whole fuckin’ picture.”

She continued, “‘sometimes ‘dey hang ‘round, make the land ‘da opposite o’ livin’ and dey get a smell o’ yer lifesblood and dey wanna take it. Get da’ livin’ turned around in ‘der playground.”

Listening, I had begun to smile. A little upturn of my lips. I stood there, hands on my hips, and waited for the punchline.

None came.

“Don’t bullshit me, Mrs. Wilkerson,” I said, quietly. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I ain’t bullshittin’ you, girlie.” Mrs. Wilkerson said, exasperated now, like I was the crazy one. “I ever been one to run circles ‘round you? I ever been one to do any’ding but tell it straight? I ain’t never been accused o’ being a peach.”

“You got pretty screwy earlier, tryin’ to sweep all this under the rug and mosey on like nothin’s the matter!”

“Yeah and you saw through it like a pane ‘o glass.”

I quieted at that. Then:

“If what you sayin’ true, Mrs. Wilkerson, I could find my ma, couldn’t I?” I asked, quietly.

“NO!” Mrs. Wilkerson said, and I jumped at the old woman’s shout. “No, Bethany. You can’t.”

“But– but–” I stammered, hedging, “Not to bring her back or anythin’ I know I can’t do that but just to… to… to…” I didn’t even believe myself, saying it. If I there was any chance to bring her back, why wouldn’t I take it? A suggestion, Mrs. Wilkerson had called it the edge of life and death. “Tell her I’m sorry.” I finished lamely. That part was at least true.

“‘Der’s good chance she ain’t even gonna be ‘der, girlie. Only sermtimes ‘da ghosts stick ‘round, most time ‘da ‘raser is fine premium PaperMate,” Mrs. Wilkerson said, “Gone first go round. You ‘live, you dead, ‘da’s it. Now, I don’t got no evidence for ‘dis, ‘dis just a hypothesis but ‘da one’s I seen ain’t too happy. I ain’t never seen no friendly ghost, no Casper or shit. Only one’s dat stick round ain’t too glad ‘bout stickin’ round.”

“You sayin’ my momma was- was- happy when she was slammed into going seventy down the highway? That she was content?” I asked, incredulous and growing angry again. Volatile. “That’s why she wouldn’t, oh what? ‘stick around?’ Mrs. Wilkerson. Momma didn’t die quick. When she’s hit, she got seven broken ribs ‘n three fractured. Right femur, tibia, fibia, greensticked. Every bone in her face crunched in. That’s just dey tip of da iceberg. Right hand holding on by a few ligaments. Internal bleeding ‘n organ failure. She held on for three-hours-and-seventeen-minutes when she shoulda died on impact. No. No. Momma FOUGHT she– she had stuff to come back to! If you say that– that– no she’s here! HERE!”

“Girlie, everyone got stuff when they dying, ain’t nobody ready for it, it ain’t–”

“No, no you don’t fucking get it you fucking–”

“My mamma died when I’s twenty-nine.” Mrs. Wilkerson said, almost dream-like, and my mouth closed with a click. “Came as a shock, went ta the doctors for a headache and two weeks later she’s dead. I’s a mammas girl too, every little thing I’s all ‘well I’m just gonna go tell my mamma.’ Suddenly, der ain’t nobody to tell nothin’ to. I’m planin’ ‘er funeral, takin’ care of my brothers callage, ain’t no one to bitch and moan about my man not doing his own damn laundry… made me wonder… did I ever do anyt’ing for ‘er? Anybody ever do anyt’ing for ‘er? ‘Seems all I did was bitch ‘n bitch ‘n bitch. But mamma just go to ‘da store for PayDays whenever I’s on my blood”

Mrs. Wilkerson came closer, hand outstretched, like I was some feral animal.

“Couldn’t understand it. Guess I never gon’ to now with no brats ah’mah own. Why would’ja give so much of yerself for such selfish little shits? For nothin’ in return? Nah, I don’t understand at all. I’m sorry girlie, cain’t imagine losin’ her any sooner, cain’t understand what you hadda endure, what’chu endurin’. But I understand this, mamma loved me girlie, she loved my brothers, even Michael who couldn’t pour water outta fucking boot with instructions on the heel, God love ‘em. Mamma loved us.”

She tried to hug me, but I shrugged away.

“You see what I mean, Bethany?” She finished.

I wiped my eyes. “No, no I don’t. Mrs. Wilkerson,” I tried to paste a smile onto my face, it felt frail and crooked, and held my hand out in a shaky gesture. “Let’s– let’s hey, how about it? We gon’ on an adventure ain’t we? You help me find my momma and I help you find yours?”

Mrs. Wilkerson smiled at me, it was a tired look but more genuine than my own. “Already tried that, girlie. Sides’ what happed to findin’ yer daddy, huh? Let’s get outta–”

“Fucking forget about him!” I yelled, the flames of anger fanned again, “He ain’t ‘live, you said it yourself he’s probably deader than a doornail! Even if he ain’t I don’t– I don’t fucking care, just like he ain’t givin’ two shits about me since ma! He wouldn’t even hang on as no eraser-mark.”

“You do care, girlie, don’t say that.”

“No,” I said, going into hysterics “No I fucking don’t, quit putting words in my mouth, you old fucking coot. How could you, huh? HUH? You make this grant fucking declaration that we’re in fucking Hades or some shit, how– how– WHY WOULD YOU GIVE ME HOPE THAT MOMMA’S HERE AND THEN SAY I CAN’T FIND HER? IF I COULD FIND HER–”

“Den what? You both live happily ever after, girlie? Huh? Huh? Nah, c’mon you know ‘dings don’t work like ‘dat. You ain’t stupid. Deaf, sure as shit, but ain’t stupid. You done say yer daddy’s dead too, but we don’t know dat. Yer mamma’s is, and she ain’t coming back. I’m sorry for that, girlie, I am. But she ain’t. She gon’ be beneath that cold red clay for eternity and there ain’t nothing–”

“SHUT UP YOU– YOU BITCH!”

“Oh c’mon now, why you yelling, girlie?” Mrs. Wilkerson asked, terribly frank, “only you’ins afraid of hearin’ the truth gotta yell.”

That was fucking it.

I lunged at the old woman and we felt to the ground, I was crying and yelling and my blows were sloppy, but I felt the pain in my knuckle lance up my arms when they did connect. I didn’t think of Mrs. Wilkerson’s hip and how easily it could crack, the shoulder she broke falling off the roof while putting up Christmas decorations that still gave her trouble with rainy days. I didn’t care.

I went to grab at the old woman’s shoulders to maybe slam her head and upper torso on the hard ground until, instead, pain exploded in my head, accompanied by a great white starburst in my vision and an all-encompasing silence in my ears. I was shoved away and I curled up like a pill bug for several long moments. When the strobe lights stopped flashing behind my eyelids I looked up.

Mrs. Wilkerson had hit me with the butt of the shotgun, not hard mind you, ‘else I’d have a cracked skull, but my right ear was still ringing and felt hot and wet.

The gun was leveled at my face.

Blood ran from the old woman’s nose, “Girlie.” She said, softly.

We stood there for what felt like an eternity. “I’m–” I felt warmth at my crotch as I pissed myself in deep, lancing fear, a fear that had nothing to do with the gun pointed at my face. “I’m going to– to– go. Find– yeah.”

I backed away, like– like– oh, I was a feral animal, looked at my hands in fear. A smear of blood, knuckles blistered, swelling and sure to bruise. What had I done? What the fuck had I done?

I was crying now, but for entirely different reasons. I need you to understand, I didn’t used to be like this. I didn’t. I had always been an angry kid, riding the highest highs and the lowest lows but– but, it was manageable. I wasn’t this. But then Mom died and everything fell apart and– and–

Excuses, fucking excuses. Just like dad in his lazy boy all ‘I ain’t fixin’ no lawn chompers today Bethy, s’posed to rain and I don’t float.’ Every-fucking-day it was raining, aparently.

This is what I am now, ain’t I?

I turned, grabbed my bag from the boat, and fucking ran.

Branches caught at my shirt, lashed my face. It didn’t matter. I could hear her. I skittered down a rocky embankment, almost rolling an ankle. Faster, further, go go go– God, shut up!

Mrs. Wilkerson was calling out to me and what she was saying was the worst of all, because it wasn’t curses or even pain, it wasn’t anger or hurt. It was my name, and it was thick with worry.

“Bethany! No, Beth! BETHANY!”

***

I stumbled blindly through the darkening woods. I was crying and knowing I shouldn’t be. I was the stupid, selfish bastard who had started it all this– who had thrown a tantrum (a little more than a tantrum, of fucking course) not dissimilar to when I was six and wanted a plush horse from Walmart that mom wouldn’t get me.

(I got it a few months later at Christmas. I still feel bad about that.)

Worry and regret and guilt about Mrs. Wilkerson circled through my mind.. An unending litany of ‘So stupid, so stupid, selfish, why, why. what about her shoulder? it was a mistake just a mistake I didn’t mean– shut the fuck up, yes you did you aren’t two you’re an fucking adult– hip? – stupid, stupid, stupid, and it won’t happen again. ha won’t it? no it won’t. sure. the thud of knuckles against flesh– selfish’

I almost welcomed the guilt, after so long of not feeling much of anything. Then came the guilt for enjoying the first guilt. Guilt squared.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and ho boy I sure did, didn’t I?

‘stupid. stupid. selfish. hip. shoulder–’

(knees and toes (knees and toes))

I was drenched to the bone. Smelled like sweat and piss and rotting-fish-mud. My head was pounding. My flashlight cut through the woods, highlighting the little drizzles of rain. It was pitch black, now, and I decided I needed somewhere to settle for the night.

Coming upon an overhang of rock, I dragged over some large cedar branches that had broken off from the storms before curling in a ball using my backpack as a pillow. It was uncomfortable, but thankfully the night wasn’t cold.

It was a long time before I drifted off into an uneasy sleep, waking intermittently, every time convinced I heard a car door closing somewhere in the woods.

When I woke, I half expected Mrs. Wilkerson to be standing over me, but she wasn’t. The woods were barely light enough to see my hand in front of my face. My head was still hurting terribly, but now due to dehydration. My scalp and ear were sore where I was knocked upside the head, but that had faded to more of an irritability, and the shield of sleep was dulling the edge of guilt, for now. I just really needed a drink.

I got a water bottle from my bag.I tipped my head back and was disappointed with the little trickle I was met with. That disappointment quickly transformed to worry. Was that all that was left? I dug around, surely there was another bottle in there?

There wasn’t.

I licked my dry lips. The sun was coming up and it was getting hotter. This was alright, I’d just find a puddle or some little creek or the fucking reservoir again. We were in a fucking swamp and the ass had fallen outta the sky for the last several days. I’d just strain it through my shirt. Sure, it’d probably make me sick as a dog and shit my pants, but it wouldn’t be the first time either of those things happened.

That could wait through. Things weren’t dire yet. I’d stay here, staying put was the best way to be found in a survival situation and I guess that’s what I was in now, wasn’t it? Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs and all that.

Yeah, I’d stay put. Mrs. Wilkerson, she’d find someone and get help. I by no means thought our friendship would continue after the… the argument, or that I deserved any grace, but the old lady wouldn’t leave me alone in the woods.

Even if my dumbass ran off like a 6-year old at Walmart with no water or food or any true supplies.

Sitting there, in the light of day I really felt foolish. The whole argument felt just downright stupid. A great big nothing-burger. I couldn’t believe all that– that– Heebie-Jeebies-Ghost-and-Phantoms-Bullshit that Mrs. Wilkerson had been spouting. She had always been a woman of science to me, so maybe her mind really was going after all. The whole thing must’ve been just some mass hallucination only instead of a whole town and aliens it was two ladies and Godzilla.

Yes, I’d just sit. Right. Here.

A literal bump on a log. Every second increases the chance of rescue, or even more likely, Mrs. Wilkerson herself, finding me.

Having to face her, after the argument.

(hip, shoulder–)

Maybe I was wasting time, just hanging around. I mean, how far could civilization be?

For all I’ve called it Bum Fuck Egypt, the swamp had been industrialized to hell-and-back. The entire place was pocketed with highways and farm-to-market towns, old coal mines and the reservoir generating electricity. Mrs. Wilkerson’s talked about when she was young how hundreds of Great Egrets would line the swamps inlets, how she once saw a gator take one clean outta the air. You only see one or two occasionally now, around here, due to habitat fragmentation. And if the storm had damaged things as bad as it seemed, then the whole place would be swarming with rescue personnel as well.

Point is, if I got moving I would come across people soon and then I’d go back home into my room and never leave it again. Yeah I know we hadn’t been the most successful at finding civilization before but that was during the whole mass hallucination, yeah?

No, no, I should stay here. Not move. Wait to be found.

I put my hands on my knees, stayed for a moment more, before I took a deep breath and got walking.

***

I never found any water.

Bum Fuck Egypt felt as though we were in actual fucking Egypt. I was sweating terribly, great rings beneath my armpits. Dribbling down my forehead to run over my neck and chin like a toddler trying carrot puree for the first time.

God, I wanted a drink so bad.

“Sure wish it would rain,” I said, out loud for the hell of it.

It didn’t. There were no puddles, no little creeks, I never came upon the reservoir again.

An entire day passed, not a single cloud passed over the sun and not a single drop fell from the sky.

“Fair enough,” I said, again for the hell of it.

Dusk descended again. I didn’t bother making a shelter. Just curled up under a tree and slept fitfully.

***

I woke up the next day, desperate, and stumbled more than walked through the woods. Cypress trees arched overhead, but they were yellow and curled with heat. I clawed across rocky crevasses where water clearly once flowed but not now. Pale gray dirt flitting beneath my heels. Oily squiggles of heat rising in the air.

In the midafternoon, when I came upon a rickety little structure – rusted tin siding and the door long gone, dry weeds choked amidst the metal bars that once held animals – it woke me up from my daze.

A building! Maybe at the back of someone’s property or something–

Crashing through the crackling foliage, I came upon it.

Like everything else, the town was dry. Tree’s cleared, allowing the full exposure of the burning sun. Wood so bone pale it seemed petrified. I didn’t even question the place’s choice of theme. I couldn’t feel my tongue. My head was pounding, a thick syrupy THUD THUD THUD, vision swirling. Maybe it was the outskirts of Varra, or Wheaton, those towns leaned towards the whole wild west aesthetic despite being in the middle of a whole-ass fucking swamp.

I turned and almost ran into a man coming around the corner of a little grocery store, a sack of onions in his hand, if the smell was any indication.

Even when a little more than half-dead with dehydration, rather than expressing shock or surprise or asking for help, I moved quickly out of the way and said, “Excuse me sir, I’m so sorry, go right ahead.” So funny how water was all I could think of before, until southern manners took precedent.

(Why does the aptitude to hurt those we care for most come just as easy as being pleasant to strangers we’ll never see again?)

The stranger did go right ahead, all right. Didn’t even see that I was there, just kept walking.

“Sir,” I asked, suddenly aware again of how thirsty I was. “Sir, do you maybe have–”

I stopped, my foggy mind finally taking in the man’s appearance. Golly, he was dressed so odd. White shirt tucked into brown trousers and suspenders. Old timey. There were little red buttons on his back. How funny. I chuckled, even, when those buttons began to run down that nice, white shirt. Not even buttons were spared from the heat.

Then, I finally realized, it was blood. The man had been shot several times.

“Shit.” I gasped. My dry mouth suddenly the least of my worries. “Uh, sir, are you– what the fuck.”

He never turned around, never made any indication he even knew I was there or that he was hurt. The blood had reached the waistline of his trousers and begun staining around his hips.

Right, Hades. The river Stix. I-see-dead-people-shit. Ghost-and-Phantom-Bullshit. Only it wasn’t bullshit.

Oh, God. It wasn’t bullshit.

Suddenly, I heard the tinny voice of a radio far off in the distance, utterly impossible, but there. A crawling, droning voice that echoed over the birdsong. The heat was terrible, and it made my blood going cold all the starker.

(Da blue bus… is calling us… Da blue bus… is calling us…

Oh, driver where you taking us…?)

And then, they were everywhere.

Three young women gossiping, my age, two with sallow complexions and bloodshot eyes and thick mucus dribbling from their mouths. The third holding a bloody, crying bundle.

A man with his head caved in, maybe from a horse.

Miners missing limbs passed right by me, their skin cracking and black and smelling of pork and I gagged at how it smelled good and my stomach fucking growled. One holding a pickaxe in his remaining arm.

An old woman holding hands with a line of children, five toddlers and one a teenager. Going on, smiling, laughing. Blissfully unaware.

Dead people in a dead town in a dead age.

I cried out in shock and fell against the entrance of a building. Palming at the doorhandle I threw myself inside and came face to face with a spectre playing cards in the corner. The room was dark, I could only see the whites of their baleful eyes and gnarled hands.

At that moment, I knew those eyes saw me and they hated.

I was frozen for a small eternity, even the southern manners had all dried up, until I finally turned my ass right back around the way I came.

I stepped out into ankle deep water, the dry husks of buildings now bumpy with scaly layers of freshwater mussels and meadows of algae. Rain was falling, the sky rolling and gray. Every dead thing was staring at me.

I caught something out of the corner of my eye on the building I had just left.

There was a sign above the door, it read:

NO WAY OUT.

Rain coming down so hard it drowned out everything else, water up to my knees. I started to force my way through it as the dead things began to come towards me, their mouths opening wide and wider and lolling with blood and blackness and hate. Jealousy.

One of the young women lunged at me, eyes sunken in sockets and the only light in left them the fox-gleam of desperation.

“My baby!” She gasped, “Give– Give, my little BABY! Please, please PLEASE, oh God God PLEASE–!”

A boney hand closed around my upper arm while the other clawed at my face, digging bloody furrows from scalp to chin.

I lurched away and turned, water up to my hips. Ragged intakes of air through my scratched throat.

“Get away,” I gasped, “You stay the fuck away from me!”

Blinded by blood I stumbled around foolishly, having to get my bearings where before my direction was so simple: whatever way got me the fuck outta dodge.

I was nearing the end of the town square when another person blocked my way. Because why not in this merry house of horrors? I fucking think they were a person, at least. Unlike the others this one was calm and grinning and had no blood or burns or broken bones or crying children. No, it was somehow so much worse.

The body was bloated to three times its original size, probably in the water for weeks and weeks, eyes so far inside its sunken sockets that they only appeared to be twin black abysses. Gray and molten, pocked skin sloughing off the purple muscle. Stinking sweet to high Heaven and Hell.

The radio continued to croon amidst the chaos–

(c’mon baby take a chance with us…)

–and the things’ mouth opened like a puppet:

“Hi hi, graveyard-man, how you likin’ our little town? We pride ourselves on a warm welcome. Reginald in the grocery gots deals for days! The little inn keeper, names’ Susanna, can get you settled real nice for a long stay.”

“I don’t wanna be settled.” I said,

“Now, you best trod careful, we don’t like liars ‘round here. Besides, you already settled, graveyard-man, you already been settled. You pay the bills, don’t’cha? You keep the lights on. You gotta job. Dry-rottin’ in that two bedroom, one bath coffin, lined with linoleum instead of velvet. Ain’t gone nowhere, ain’t gonna go nowhere. Sweet Susanna just helpin’ you along. So. Stick around. Have a chat. Play a game ‘o Solitaire. I’d love the company.”

“No fucking thank you, creep!” I snarled,

(c’mon baby take a chance with us…)

The things cold face creased deeply in red-hot anger, “No manners, no manners, no GODDAMN MANNERS! No respect for the hard-working man, just like those suits. Didn’t matter our pleas, they built that God-damned dam and damned us with it. Didn’t matter one. Damn. Bit. A reservoir is more valuable than a dried up mining town. They tried to make us leave. But I stayed, oh, I stayed. And I don’t regret it.”

(c’mon baby take a chance with us and meet me in the back of the blue bus, you know–!)

The dead thing reached out for me and it’s skin sloughed off with the grip it took on my shoulders, muscle squished between my fingers like playdough when I tried to pry it off of me, unbreakable.

“Let… go!” I gasped. “Let go, let go, let–”

It leaned towards me and for one horrible moment I though it was going to kiss me, but it simply said, eels spilling from its black gullet:

“What do you think, graveyard-man? You regret it?”

(oh yeah you know the blue bus! OH COME ON GIRL!)

Then he pushed me under the water. Panic immediately set in and I dug my nails deep and tried to kick, but the water made my blows as ineffective as a kittens’. The inability to breathe came steadily, in no special hurry, first with the lungs spasming and water burning up my nasal cavity, water trying to make its way where it wasn’t welcome – no concern for my thoughts on the matter.

Inevitably, my restraint broke. At the first inhale of water into my chest the dead thing dipped under and held me down in a parody of an embrace, and it’s face sloughed off in a complete sheet, scarecrow-mask. With the second inhale I was doing my best to scream but no bubbles even broke from my mouth. With the third the water wasn’t brown anymore but black, beetle black, night black, velvet black and I thought oh, oh this is it this is–

Suddenly, I was yanked above water.

I didn’t even think, I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe and just as I thought that I vomited. Then again, and again. My ears were ringing, deaf, head one giant bruise.

Finally, a breath. I almost immediately vomited again. Then another breath. Another. This one actually felt like it settled into my lungs and I finally stepped back from that precipice from which there is no climbing back up.

Vaughley, I knew I was being dragged away, when I opened my stinging eyes I caught a glimpse of my rescuer.

It was a man. A man who looked completely whole, if not for the black band of bruising around his throat and the limp dangle of his head. He had an arm around my torso and was dragging, nearly jogging, with me limp in the water. It was an impressive feat, the tide reached our lower ribs. I could hear the animal-yowling of the dead things and did my best to help us along.

We cleared the town a few minutes later. The man dragged us up a hill barely above the gray water. When he stopped I was hardly able to stand on my own, but I tried to thank him. He didn’t even acknowledge my attempt, simply took me by the shoulders and shook me hard, nose to nose.

“You have to leave.” He said, whispering, so quiet amidst the chopping water, “Whatever they told you, I didn’t do nothin’! To the wolf at the moon and every pearly-damn fang in a gators’ mouth I didn’t do it! But they gon’ hang me doll, they gon’ hang me and if you stay, the whoresons ‘ill hang you too, so best get on outta here like the fires of the devils’ at your heels!”

Then, unceremoniously, he shoved me backwards.

I expected to hit water, but I didn’t. I just kept falling– falling– falling–

And my body hit solid ground. Hot ground. The sun glaring in my face.

I was still gasping, my lungs hurt. Blood poured from the lacerations on my face. My shoulders felt sore and bruised. None of that really bothered me, though.

I was still so thirsty.

***

I lay there for a long time. The most basic tasks were monumentous. I was telling myself ‘Put your left leg under you Bethany. Put your right leg under you Bethany. Stand up, Bethany. Put your hand on the tree so you don’t tip over, Bethany.’ Mom’s voice in my head when I threw a fit having to fold laundry: One thing first. Then the other thing second. Before you know it you’ll be to the third.

I stood there for a long time. Dazed, distant. Unfocused out into the woods. I considered laying back down and not getting back up. Yes, laying back down just sounded wonderful. The warm sunlight, the birds chirping. Just… drift off away from it all. No more worry and no more emptiness. Well, maybe death would be empty but I would be dead and not know anything at all.

Really, what was the point of all this mess if we all end up in the ground just the–

But then something moving on the ground caught my eye.

I crouched back down.

It was a bee.

A giant queen bumblebee.

Or, she had been a queen. She was crawling slowly on the ground and made no move to fly away when my shadow covered her. And I quickly understood why: Her wings had been removed. Ripped off more the like. Patches of her fur pulled away.

Mrs. Wilkerson had talked about this. To bees the integrity of the hive was everything. Usually it was workers who were maimed and banished when they showed up drunk after consuming fermented pollen. But it also occurred to the queens themselves when they grew too old or were usurped.

I put my hand out and she made no move and I feared, irrationally it was just a fucking bee, that she was dead. Then the primate in me went ‘well if she’s dead she won’t mind being eatin’ all Simba Lion King style’, but when I carefully pinched my fingers at her middle I felt a gentle buzzing. She was alive, with this revelation I felt a brief bit of jitters – panic that she would sting me or something but she didn’t. She just sat there, her little antennas moving.

“Well hello there, little lady.” I said. Her fur was ticklish and I could feel her feet. Gently, I stroked my finger on her back.

She buzzed again, almost as if to say, ‘That’s Your Highness, to you.’

“Of course, Your Highness,” I amended, in all seriousness. I even did a little bow. “Looks like I’m not the only one in dire straits.”

(Hah! Money for nothin’–)

Holy moly fuck, dehydration and shock and… really fuck, the whole sha-bang in a shit-ditch of these last few days was really starting to mess with my mind huh? Amazing what the human brain will do to stay sane.

Case in point, I received an indignant buzz buzz due to my little comment, a ‘No I’m the fuck not,’ if I had ever heard it, and continued right on with my rant.

“You kinda are,” I argued. “You might be royalty but even big wig people are just people at the end of the day, and you’re just a little bee. Ask Marie Antionette, it didn’t turn out well for her and she got hot chocolate or some shit every morning in the fucking seventeen-nineties. You know how crazy that is? Maybe you do, royal jelly every day and all that. Not anymore, of course.”

She weakly crawled on my hand, my disrespect had roused some fight left in the corpse her daughters had meant to leave behind. I got tired of imagining a conversion and said, in a post accent, “You’re not exactly in the best state, yourself. You were going to eat me.”

First I guffawed, because what the fuck even was this? Then, second, I ignored that comment because it was true. “This life’s some shit, ain’t it. Gave you everything and took it away just like that,” I snapped my fingers, my voice cracking on the next line “I know the feeling.”

I gently sat the bee on the ground. I took one of the sugar packets intended for Mrs. Wilkerson’s tea and got a single drop to fall from my bottle. I pushed the cap under the bee’s mouth and after feeling it out, she began to eat. I watched her.

“I can’t just call you ‘Bee’ in my head. And I ain’t gonna call you Your Highness either, the entire time. Sorry, but that’s just kinda silly. ” I said. “What should I call you? Wilson? Hah, nah. Queenie? Fuck no, I see myself sayin’ ‘Queen Queeine’. Yikes. Queen Buzz? Queen Bumble? How about Queen Anne? I mean you lost your wings, and she lost her head so… sure it works?”

The bee finished her food as I finished the evening’s hallucination. I put my hand down and she eagerly climbed onto my palm.

“Sure,” I said, “Queen Anne.”

***

Having someone to talk to helped. I will repeat: To. The bee didn’t talk back, of course. Unless I did the other half of my bastardized one-man play. I like to think I wasn’t that far gone. Besides, the things I had experienced were pretty damn hilarious in hindsight. Or maybe I had to laugh about it ‘else I would break down into hysterics. Maybe I was just going insane, or this was all a hallucination due to dehydration. Though, to think about it, I was never a fan of only this and only that. I am, as you could put it lightly, a filthy fucking moderate. Why should only one of those things be true?

“–I mean, this town was dead, dead as a doornail. Dead as Detroit. Maybe a little less, actually.”

“–And, and then some Lovecraft-fanboy-Michelin-tire-man-wanna-be tried to drown me, like bitch I didn’t–”

I figured the wounds from Anne’s maimed wings hurt. I had taken the little yellowed tube of antibiotic ointment and smeared some on her back, hoping it would help. It was so old, would it even be effective anymore? I got a glob too close to Anne’s antennas and she spent a good twenty minutes of our travels fussily combing it out.

She started crawling all over my arm, though, when before she just sat exhausted on my shoulder. I took that to mean she felt better, at least.

I wish I could say the same for myself.

“I mean.. I mean, “ I had to pry my lips apart like strips of velcro, “Oh, oh, uh–”

A deep, cramping pain rolled through my stomach, then, my vision went a whirling yellow-gray, no sound, skin icing over but no sweat oh that’s not good I’ve been sweating for fucking ever remember when I wished to stop sweating? Ha, ha, everything swirling– swirling–

(Mom, I don’t feel so–)

Then.

The first thought: Why am I asleep?

The second thought: I shouldn’t be asleep.

I open my eyes, nothing but a blur.

The third thought, the most terrifying: Oh, I should know where I am, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where that is. Where am I? Why am I here?

No matter how much I reached, I couldn’t find the answer.

“Beth? Bethany?”

(I’m Bethany, right, now who the fuck is calling–)

Stomach, head still cramping. Darkness again, for a split second.

I open my eyes. Everything is terribly in-focus. I’m hurting, still, but now but more aware though I kinda wish I hadn’t cause it feels like a fucking sledgehammers been taken to my fucking skull.

I had passed out.

“Well shit,” I croaked, “That’s not fucking good.”

In a great, drunken swoop I sat up and another fuzzy wave of blackness went over my vision. I almost went right back to the ground. I forced my eyes open, my shaking muscles to prop myself up.

Mulch fell from me in a cascade, I could feel the sting of a dozen pinpricks on my face and hands. I hadn’t bashed my nose though, during my make-out session with the ground, or fallen on the side where the dead woman’s claws had almost gone through my cheek.
“Look on the bright side!” I cackled, like I was three sheets to the fucking wind. God, I could really use a fucking drink.

Something suddenly crawled on my face, and my heart lept in my throat, all I saw was little fuzzy insect feet and heard buzzing and had a split second a flashback to that fucked-up part of SpongeBob where they kept a worm as a pet only it grew into a butterfly and the showrunners showed a frame of a real-ass butterfly–

The cogs in my brain finally got some WD-fucking-40 on them and started moving again. Right. It was just Anne.

The hand I had raised in defense turned to a salute. “Hey there,” I said, lethargically.

(You’re a rockstar!)

“You– you fell.” Anne said. Oh, the bee was who was calling me. Oh, the bee was talking now. Oh, the bee was concerned, if the little shuffle of her antennas as any indication.“You almost crushed me.”

“Shit, you yappin’ at me too, now? Hell of a thing to first tell a lady, commentin’ on her weight–”

A furious buzz, louder than a whole hive. “This is serious!”

“Eh, for you, yeah. You can’t open sugar packets with those little– little– feelers you got all on your lonesome.”

“You’re gonna die!” God, the buzzing was so loud.

I only laughed.

Anne crawled onto my shoulder. She looked as about as stubborn as a bee could be. “Get up, I got an idea.”

Getting up didn’t go so well. I made it to all fours, but my stomach turned, my vision whited out, and I vomited a pitiful foamy little puddle of what felt like the last of the liquid in my body.

That damn buzzing. That damn voice. “Get up Bethany! Damn you, get up! You are not dying here!”

I wavered on my feet, fell against a tree, breathing dry air through my dry lips and dry tongue.

Then, I started to walk. It was hardly graceful or efficient. I left a zig-zag trail through the gray dirt as I stumbled. I don’t think I walked far, but nevertheless I missed periods of time where suddenly I would wake again, still shuffling.

The buzzing was getting louder and louder. Though, I didn’t realize it wasn’t in my head until I came upon the hive.

It was a massive thing, encasing the near-entirity of a tree fall, looking all the more sinister for how branches seemed to be trying to claw out of it. Choked with debris and moss, at the edge of the hive where it’s bulk thinned I could see the ribcage of some unfortunate creature whose skeleton was in the process of being assimilated.

“Go on,” Anne said. “Go up there Bethany.”

Maybe I should have given more of a fuck about why I was within five-hundred yards of Stinger Central, but I was so far gone I didn’t care. Just mindlessly following Anne’s instructions because my brain was so fried it hurt less to not think.

Besides, I was probably a goner anyway. The sun wasn’t too long from setting, the dusk of the second day without water was coming and once I sat down it was very likely I wouldn’t get back up again.

I was within feet of the mass and from this angle, the entire thing seemed to be moving, its hide was so thick with bees. Several dozen flitted around me. One landed on my arm. Absently, I swiped it away.

The buzzing drowned out everything, so loud it was like a fighter jet revving up right beside me, and a great wave of pain went through my head. Another bee landed on my arm. I swiped it away. Another. A dozen. Oh shit! OH SHIT! One-hundred. A thousand. Over my eyes, in my nostrils, in my ears–

I tried to yell and, well, you can imagine how that went.

I flung my arms out, swiping a hundred bees from my arms only to have twice that replace them. I couldn’t breathe, night had come early everything was just a shifting kaleidoscope of black and yellow, Anne you filthy fucking liar! Bull– oh the buzzing OH GOD the BUZZING–!

Abruptly, all went silent.

The army of fuzzy creatures stopped dead, suddenly, then they crawled – didn’t fly– they crawled away. Down my face, slipping through my matted hair and down my torso and legs, passed my boots that were held together with duct tape and Gorilla Glue. I hunched over and dry heaved and around a dozen of the fuckers splattered from my mouth onto the ground, I picked a couple from each ear and nostril, and they all just waddled away

Long dotted lines of little crawly creatures, making their way back to the hive.

All except one.

“That wasn’t too bad.” Anne said. Bullshit, I thought. Bullshit. My heart was galloping in my chest, everything felt tight and itchy and I wanted a shower. I wasn’t stung though, I noticed from somewhere far away. Not a single time.

Anne noticed my confusion. “They liked you, Bethy, go on up, they said you can take some.”

I was about to go no fucking way, Harold, but I tasted a bloom of blood, then, as my lips split with red-hot pain along every dried wrinkle. I should have had blood pouring down my face, but the wounds remained raw red canyons, bone dry with no rivers running from them. No tears ran from my face because I had nothing left to cry.

I went up to the hive.

Gently, I pulled a small wedge of the hive wall away, and while a few workers scattered none of them so much as fluttered in agitation. Revealed was the inside, a complex mass of neat little angular pockets filled with honey. Some alcoves were so large it looked as though I could have crawled inside like a child in one of those faux-plastic caves.

I took a chunk about the size of a large potato from an inner wall and did my best to replace the outer shell I had removed.

I sat for a long while and ate the piece in its entirety, comb and honey and bits of moss, ignoring the pain in my face. It wasn’t water, far from it, but my throat no longer felt like sandpaper and the fuzzy heat retreated from my head, somewhat.

At that moment I was feeling better than I had in days. More lucid. Sure, the bar was in Hell, but I would cry later when I had an IV in my arm and air conditioning and a fucking pepperoni stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut. For now, not being actively hurt and eating pure sugar was luxury.

I stumbled away from the hive, still shaky but no longer with Death’s boney hand around my ankle. Anne was smug after this encounter. “Looks like I still have my royal touch. Consider that repayment for helping me.”

I was as shocked as anybody at my response. “What?” I laughed, laughed! That was surprising, ‘cause even the back of my mind was idly going ‘man, maybe I should throw a bit of bitch-fit.’ “Nah, sorry Anne that– that wasn’t you. That was some straight up magic shit. It’s the Voodoo-Swamp-Black-Magic-Shit that’s been happening since Mrs. Wilkerson and I shoved off into the swamp. You’re just a bee.”

“Those were just bees.”

“Magic bees.”

“Hmm. Am I not a magic bee?”

“Nonono, don’t Uno-Reverse me, we both know this talkin’ ‘n shit is all in my head to keep me sane. But okay, fine, fine, those little bastards were Influenced-By-Voodoo-Swamp-Black-Magic-Shit, so they were still just bees. Somethin’ to do with the swamp. All kinds of shifty-shit been happeningt. You know the whole lockness-monster Godzilla lives in the middle of Bum Fuck Egypt? Besides, Anne, you done been run over by the struggle bus. What happened to you was very not voodoo swamp black magic shit. So, you ain’t magic ‘cause then real-life stuff wouldn’t’ve happened to you.”

“I think the real-life stuff happens to everyone, magic or not.”

“Ah shush-it,”” I said, “Let’s not get into philosophy. Was that yer peoples?”

“What?”

“Yer family? Da ones who…” I waved a hand in her general direction. “Did that? They feel bad or somethin’?”

“Oh no, no,” a bit of pomp entered Anne’s voice, “Just a hive that owed me a favor. If I may brag, mine was much larger than that little thing.” I gave a strained chuckle at the thought of a larger hive, “it is in a wonderful location though, plenty of marigold and milkweed all around…”

We stumbled through the woods together, I still felt terribly shaky but my spirits were high.

Look, hear me out. Anne was really funny to talk to. Like a bee, she didn’t know shit about humans. But like a bee, I quickly learned, she knew a shit ton about family, I guess that was on account of having thousands of kids and them deciding that murdering you was preferable to putting you in a nursing home. That kinda thing really gives one plenty of time to ponder, think of what could have been done better and that maybe giving Chelsea the last chrysanthemum instead of Stephanie was the beginning of an elaborate Butterfly Effect to eventual matricide.

I hadn’t had nobody to bitch about since, well, even before ma went her way. She wouldn’t never let me say nothin’ negative ‘bout no-one.

“Hey- hey– listen to this shit though. My Auntie has five kids, all run around like the Little Rascals if the Little Rascals did cocaine behind the middle school. Five. Kids. Back-to-back. Little stairstep babies. Gosh, can you imagine?”

“I cannot. I have had thousands of children, my sympathy to her for her inability to have more.”

“Ah, well, that’s not, nevermind. ‘Dey ain’t so little anymore ‘course, da baby, Skyliegh’s, shit, sixteen now? Course I ain’t seen ‘em in years…”

“I’m sorry, Bethany, I know how you feel though, I miss my–”

“I don’t fucking miss none of ‘em.” I snapped, sharper than usual. “They’re da uppity types, yeah? Despite the house bein’ so covered in cat piss da walls ‘er yellow. Auntie and her hellions think ‘cause they go tah church they done- done- absolved of all da shit they do.”

Anne listened silently now, I was rolling into a rant. “Like, like da shit that grinds my gears? I’m thirteen; oldest cousin accuses me of stealing a piece of jewelry ‘n auntie called the cops. Said I ought to pay her back and then some. Tried to get me arrested. It was a whole thing. Two weeks later the neighbors’ Cockatoo gets taken to the vet for an intestinal blockage and I’m cleared of all charges. Ain’t been back since, ain’t gotten an apology. I’m still fuckin’ bitter over it. Ma goes– Ma went over there to try and keep a semblance of connection with her only family left.”

“Oh my.”

“So, no. I don’t fuckin’ miss ‘em. Better part? ‘Was a plain-Jane stainless steel chain from Wally-World you can get for $12.”

“This makes my family seem saintly. And my daughters ripped my wings out and left me for dead.”

This put things into more perspective, and I immediately felt a rush of guilt for my selfishness. “Well, maybe not that far. I mean, I guess they ain’t that bad. Lookit you.” Oh shit not any fucking better, Bethany, abort fucking abort! “You listening to me, yeah? I’m a walkin’ shit-show, ringmaster and all. I love talking shit. Feels good to go ‘ah well, lest I ain’t them.’ ain’t nobody like to admit it but it does. I ain’t hardly standing on a soap box.” I chuckled. Then, without even a blink of thought, apropos of nothing, the confession: “I’m a hellion, too, and– and– not the fun kind either.”

“Ah, well, all children hurt their parents, Bethany. My wings just about fell out on their own with all the antics my sweet Suzy pulled, she tried to run off with a Yellow Jacket. Said she hated my guts and wish I’d go on and sting myself in the ahem, ass, so they’d spill, all because I said she couldn’t go over to his hive.

“My momma died in a car wreck when I was sixteen,” I said, flatly. “And the last thing I did was yell at her on her way out the door. She had made me a grilled cheese, earlier, cause I didn’t want to get up off the couch, like I was still a five-year-old. She had folded my laundry the day before. And I still yelled at her. Just about as ungrateful a shit you could be.” I had started crying and oh hey, I could make tears again. Yay. “I’d say that’s a lot worse than a $12 necklace.”

“A child’s duty is to hurt their parents. From the agony of birth to the constant fear of friendly strangers to the horror of teenage pimples and the quiet despair of what will happen to them when you are gone.”

“Naw, you– you don’t know,” I yelled, “You don’t know what I did, how I was. See you’re the victim, you all the more– more saintly or shit, the bigger man, it’s easy! To say ‘I forgive you!’ you can only come out on top! Toppa the shit cake!”

I snorted, ugly and full of snot, “God, this is such bullshit. Yeah, you would say that. I mean, c’mon! This shit– You ain’t real! I’m makin’ you up, You’re just a figment of my imagination, you said you ain’t but you are! YOU ARE! Why else are you– you– absolving me. Something I’ve made up to agree with me ‘cause I need validation or whatever. ‘Cause I’m selfish and can’t handle the guilt. I mean, I’m talking to a fucking bee!”

“Bethany, honey–” My sobbing turned into near-screaming-hyperventilating. Honey? HONEY? Ha. Hahahahahahah–!

“She should hate me! HATE ME! I hate me. I feel she hates me and I can’t even ask her…” I moaned in agony. “You– you know in my prom dress I walked down to her grave. Twirled my skirt, asked if she could see me and if she thought I was beautiful. I thought a miracle would happen and I would turn around and she’d be there with her arms open to help fix the God-awful lipstick job I had going on but she didn’t. ‘Cause I was just talking to dirt and what was her but wasn’t her anymore and it wasn’t gonna be her ever, ever, ever again.”

“You didn’t cause the wreck, Bethany. You’re mother… you’re mother was gonna die that day whether you yelled at her or not. I’m not your imagination Bethany. Even if I am, even if I’m not real and this place isn’t real even if you’re not real. I need you to know this, because this is real. Maybe the one thing in the entire universe that is: Your mother loves you, Bethany. She doesn’t hate you. Do you know why? A parents duty is to love their child. I still love my children though they hurt me. I can’t imagine not loving them.”

“I can,” I said sulky, toddler-like in my misery. “I know what hate is. I know ‘cause I hate my dad and I know he hates me too. He should.”

“Why?”

“What’cha mean ‘Why?’”

“Why should he hate you?”

I laughed without any amusement. “You didn’t glean it from this whole- whole fucking breakdown?”

“Humor me.”

“Even my imagination is being a bitch. You’re supposed to just agree with me.”

“Funny how that works. Maybe your imagination knows things you won’t accept.”

“Didn’t you just say you weren’t my imagination? God you really are a royal-ass.”

“I agree with you. I agree you do not have a soap box to stand on.”

“Y’know I was gonna lay down and die before I found you. Really wish I’d just done that about now. Maybe I should right now. Wouldn’t be hard. Been practicing for years. Won’t you feel bad, Anne? When I’m gone? Get a bit of what I feel. Now that you wouldn’t be the victim. You be comfy taking that silver spoon from your mouth?

“Don’t say that, Bethany. You’re trying to make me hate you as much as you hate yourself. You don’t get to do that.

“Oh, cut the bullshit! I mean,” I laughed then, “ I mean, you don’t really like me, do you?” Getting up, I took the remaining sugar packets from my bag and dumped their contents into a little pile in the detritus. I was getting louder. “What’s there to fucking like? HUH? Besides that I just give you fucking bee-crack or whatever. Welp, here’s all my usefulness.” All the sugar melted into a sad little sludge..

“Bethany–”

I picked up my empty water bottle and threw it, suddenly, into the brush.

“BECAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!” I screamed in a voice so hoarse I didn’t recognize it.

I was angry, and this anger felt familiar and horrible. I kicked at the ground, stomped and screamed. I saw Anne, sitting on my jacket next to my (empty, fucking EMPTY) water bottle–

“Bethany! Whoa– what’s Bethany?”

I didn’t even realize I was reaching for Anne until she shouted at me. I was going to grab her, I realized, and squeeze and squeeze and– and– it would feel so good and nothing really felt good anymore and– I was so angry and I had to let it out somehow. But– Anne wasn’t a person, she wasn’t Mrs. Wilkerson who– yeah a shove and a few punches would hurt like a bitch but they wouldn’t kill– though really that doesn’t make it any better does it? Since when did the bar become ‘oh it won’t kill them?’

Since when did I become a bomb waiting to explode?

(Bullshit. You know the answer to that. Bullshit. Bullshit. Don’t bullshit me.)

I jumped away from Anne like I had been burned. God. Grief doesn’t do this to people. Being a horrible fucking human being does.

I twisted my fingers into my scalp, dug hard enough to immediately bring blood to the surface, “I’m sorry.” I said, lamely. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorrysorrysorrysorrysorry–”

“Bethany.”

My eyes cut over to her.

“It’s okay.”

I managed to remove my fingernails from my scalp, curling them tight in my hair instead.

“Just.. why… why wasn’t it me?” I asked, bleakly, “Momma didn’t deserve none of that, I wasn’t never gonna get no scholarship, never gonna make nothin’ of myself. I ain’t made nothing of myself. Dad… dad was always a hardass but I could tell he cared and momma… momma. She was, she was so nice. Why is this,” I gestured to myself, “This thing that doesn’t know even how to be nice anymore… why is this all that’s left of something so good?”

“…I can’t answer that Bethany, because I don’t know.” Anne said, somberly. “But I do know this, yeah? You’re a good person, but you’ve done some bad things, and you aren’t in a good place. Besides, right now, you ain’t doing much to change that. In fact, you’re just digging yourself into a deeper hole. But you know this a little too much already, don’t you?”

I nodded, miserably.

She continued. “But you have the choice to change all this, to become better and I think that’s worth something. I think it’s the choice to make things better. Isn’t that what you humans are so crazy about? Choice? There is nothing special about anything if it isn’t decided.”

“I don’t know how make things better, anymore.” I replied. My voice cracked and I could feel the beginnings of hysteria well up in me again. God, there was so much–

Anne’s voice brought me back to the conversation. “Maybe you just need a little bit of help, yeah? Your father isn’t helping you; you, well, you ain’t helping yourself too…”

“You’re right,” I said, lighting up. “Oh, God, you’re right! That’s– God, I’m such an idiot–”

“Well, we can start by letting up on the self-decrepitation–”

“I’m sittin’ here jawin’ and glum when I could have found momma by now!” Anne didn’t respond and I didn’t notice.

“Anne, Anne, I’m gonna find my momma! Momma! Oh isn’t it wonderful? This whole hero’s journey’s– it’s all meant to be! Mrs. Wilkerson’s wrong about the whole thing bein’ a folly, but, but I’ll forgive her, ‘course,” I giggled like a little girl. “Momma always helped me through my lows, my– my rages, through the little school insults, don’t know why I never thanked– Golly, I miss her. She will help me and I will thank her and tell her I love her and she’ll know…”

I stopped talking, when Anne hadn’t responded.

“That… isn’t what I mean Beth–” Anne’s voice suddenly died out and she fell from her perch on my jacket, where before she had graced it like the most extravagant of thrones.

“Anne?” I asked, blood going cold, “Anne?”

I crashed to my knees beside her. I had a flood of relief when I saw her antennas moving.

“Well,” The bee said, “‘guess my clock is about to hit midnight.”

“You– you– no, you were fine Anne, you were- you were–”

(C’mon now. You ain’t stupid. Deaf, sure as shit, but ain’t stupid.)

“I’m not a magic bee, Bethany. You said so yourself. “

The acceptance in her voice made angry, not the red hot nuclear bomb from earlier, but something quieter and colder and upset at the unfairness of it all. Didn’t stop me from yelling though.

“And you said so yourself that you aren’t my fucking imagination. No, no no,” I said. I wasn’t even crying, I was in complete fucking denial. “No no no, you talk, you got those bees to be all chummy, you- you- YOU CAN’T FUCKING LEAVE! Do something, God-damn you! You can’t fucking leave!”

Her antennae weakly fluttered.

“Bethany… the magic one’s go the same way too.”

“No,” I said, curling my fists into the black soil, “No. No you can’t you–”

“Shut up, Bethany.”

I did.

“Shut up and… tell me about your human-life. The little things… the sweet drink? Drink you said s’sweeter than a whole field of flowers…”

“Coca-Cola.”

“Yes, tell me about that.”

“Okay, Anne.” I said. Oh, now I was crying. “Okay.” And put her on my shoulder, with my hair as a blanket. I talked to her about prom dresses and Coca-Cola, rock N’ roll stars and sunlight when it hits the old jar of cooking oil kept in the kitchen window.

Anne faded with the sunlight until she was too weak to respond to me. But I knew she was listening, despite the silence. I felt when that silence, too, changed. When something is lost that can never be found again.

“Anne?” I said, lump in my throat. Knowing she was dead but choosing not to believe. I gently, gently go to the fuzz on her back, but Anne rolls off my shoulder like a pebble, when her body hits the ground it doesn’t even make a sound.

I need you to tell me, you, the reader: how can the destruction of worlds not be graced by even a sigh?

Eventually I stopped crying. I packed away the water bottle, ointment, my coat. Turned on the flashlight cause it was dark as the grave but I wasn’t dead yet. I dug a hole about a foot deep and covered her with dirt then covered that dirt with some flowers nearby (marigold and milkweed, good real-estate) and by the time I finally found the will to move they were already wilting and that just seemed appropriate. Dead things on top of a dead thing.

“I’m gonna change, Anne.” I said, to that black soil. “I’m gonna find her, and I’m gonna change.”

One thing first. Then the other thing second. Before you know it you’ll be to the third.

I walked into the woods.

***

It started to rain an hour later. I didn’t react to this, just mechanically tied the sleeves of my jacket between two trees and collected the drip-water that ran along the zipper into my water bottle. I drank. Filled it again. Repeated the action twice.

Continued.

I knew where I needed to go, now.

***

The journey to the end took another day of stumbling through woods and storm. The landscape became like some old detective noir film, grayscale with harsh shadows. Nothing soft or sweet here. During my travel I was accompanied by shapes on the edge of my peripheral, shadows that were a deeper black than the harsh lines of the landscape, a different blackness. These shadows whispered from behind trees and kicked rocks and tried to hold my hand.

They didn’t alarm me, I didn’t look at them, I just felt very numb. Very far away, I thought “Ah, well, more spooky shit.” I knew my journey was almost finished when I came upon a craggy path, the neatness of it something alien in the wild. Great arms of cypress trees formed a tunnel over the bumpy line of rocks and I had to sweep thick curtains of hanging moss away.

The woods thinned, the shadows slinked along the tree line, and I found myself on a small cliff, only a foot or two above the water, looking out over the wide black expanse of the reservoir. Always back to the beginning, huh? It used to be a river ‘till the suits flooded it. Nothing of use there but an old mining town, might as well set up a big ass fancy dam… make some money for those that matter, right?

Initially, there was nothing but heaving gray and black. But then… then I saw it.

A light.

A light in the black water, ringed by gray. It wasn’t the moon because there was no moon, wasn’t the reflection of someone’s house windows or a spotlight. Nor was it great yellow foglamps, that gleamed like gold coins.

Just, a light. Under the water.

My heart started to pound then. Maybe… maybe mom was here? I imagined this great artificial reservoir as a modern-day river Stix. This was the land of the fucking dead, wasn’t it? If anything, my mother – my wonderful mother – would be pure light in this darkness.

I stood there for a long time. I had some half-assed expectation that if I didn’t look then the light would rise from the water and mom would appear. Like the Lady of the Lake, wrapped in a sparkling fog, a fairy tale with a picture book happy ending.

I tried to make that very scenario happen several times. I’d turn to the woods for several minutes before leaping around in a 180-spin, throwing my arms wide, and making my features exaggerated and shocked, like I was the unwitting star of a surprise party.

But mom never appeared.

It was so quiet. The kind of quiet when you go to the bathroom during such a surprise party. Or the seconds before everyone jumps out and the lights flash on: you weren’t expecting it but then again that is the point of a surprise party, ain’t it? You go red and you kinda gape and you’re just so thankful for the love of your friends and family who would go through all this work for you–

But, nevertheless, the heat and loudness eventually gets suffocating, so you go to the bathroom and all of that is replaced by cool marble, blessed quiet, a candle, perhaps, burning on the counter. At that moment, you just want to stay there forever, dreading having to return to the chaos. You always gotta go back, though.

I hadn’t been to a party in a long time.

I cried, then. Put my face right in my hands and cried like a little baby in those gray and dead woods. I walked away from the water in shame, feeling very much like when I was eight and some snot-nosed little shit said I should stop eating so much chicken and cake when we were on the see-saw. Or when I was the last one to be picked in dodgeball. Or when Mrs. Parkers yelled at me in front of the entire class for not writing down notes in fourth grade. My pencil had fucking broke and she said we couldn’t get up for anything without asking her and she wouldn’t call on my raised hand. What was I supposed to fucking do?

Mom had always comforted me, while I threw a tantrum over these little injustices.

Shame. An awful daughter. An awful friend. An awful athlete. An awful employee. An awful person. Awful. Awful. Awful.

I looked up from my hands, I felt something around me, and then, in the corner of my eye: it was another shadow lurking behind the tree next to me, whispering.

A sudden white-hot rage took over me. I spun fully around and used my entire weight to slung my fist into that tree. Bark splintered.

“LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!” I screamed. “SHE’S FUCKING GONE SO WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!”

Nothing darted from behind it, so the thing must’ve just been another figment of my imagination. Speaking of imagination: Anne was gone. Slugged it again, like how I wanted to break that little shit’s snot-nose. Again. Mom was gone. Again, again, blood. Dad was dead and if he wasn’t fucking dead he was fucking drunk. Again, like how I wanted to bash out his teeth. Mrs. Wilkerson lost to the swamp. The poor bastard whose ultimate purpose in life was for his chrome-dome to serve as a container for hot fucking tea, that creepy-ass drowned town and all its poor people. Everything. Everything. What was the fucking point?

My fist was shaking, a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. The only color in this washed out farce of a land was my blood. Good. Some proof I was here, at some point.

Mom wasn’t going to come to me. I had gone this far, what was a little farther?

“Fuck it.” I said, and turned.

“Fuck it.” I said, walking.

“Fuck it.” I said, mantra, jogging, then running, then–

“Fuck it,” Full sprint, head back yelling to that dead sky. Arms swinging in great arches, tendons of my hips creaking

“Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, FUCK YOUUUUUU–!”

In a great, leaping bound, I threw myself off the cliff into that dark water.

***

Oddly enough, for a few moments, everything was… was normal. Like it hadn’t been since I was sixteen. It felt like being in high school and diving to the bottom of the 12ft pool or holding your breath for three-and-a-half minutes to show off.

As my hands hit the slimy mud bottom, doing some version of a hand-stand, things quickly
changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t underwater. Well, not exactly. I don’t know. The entire situation was silent, there was no ringing in my ears or the sound of my own heartbeat just– silence.

My movement was sluggish the entire time, like I was – you guessed it – under water, no shit there, Sherlock, but then, I could breathe. No, that’s not right. You know when someone says some shit like ‘hey you know how we’re always tasting our own tongues’ or ‘hey you know you never stop seeing your nose’ or ‘hey’ – and this one is really important kiddos – ‘hey your breathing is now a conscious action’, and right then you become really fucking aware of your breathing and you wonder how you’re ever going to go back to being blissfully unaware of the fact that your body just kinda unconsciously is working to keep you alive and–

The point is, I was no longer uncomfortably aware of my breathing. I was uncomfortably aware that I no longer needed to breathe.

That wasn’t the only thing. The first couple of times I peaked open my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of that glow, I was met with blackness and burning. Again, under-fucking-water. On the third, I kept them open. And open. And open. And then I was not-breathing, and seeing underwater. I bent my torso and touched my feet to the bottom and was walking, simple as a troll through the park.

I didn’t see that light immediately, everything was pitch black. So very black my mind made up colors to cope with the darkness. A red-black-green-pink kaleidoscope in front of my open eyes. I sifted forward as if through a dream.

Skirting down an in-bank, I saw – SAW – a wave of silt and the tilting of little pebbles.

There it was. The glow. Headlights, broken and cracked, banded yellow beams of light.

It was a car.

A faded red 1998 Ford F-150.

I had seen the car on the news after the accident, before dad had even gotten to call
me, and it looked the same. The entire driver side of the car was crunched in like a piece of
paper. Hood ripped to expose the engine, all the moving parts. Windshield and windows
nothing more than thick spiderwebs of mottled white glass, though somehow miraculously intact so that the view was obscured from the live audience.

I stared at the car for a long time. A broken, faded red monument to my mother. After the scene had been processed, it had been scrapped. Paid the electricity for a month. Crushed into a cube and melted down and made into other cars for other mothers.

I gripped the mangled door handle. It shouldn’t have opened, but the motion was easy. As easy as it must’ve been the day it was driven off the lot.

I was met with glinting teeth and a hard, armored body barreling into mine. Bubbles erupted
from my mouth and nostrils. Through them I caught a glimpse of the beast– a writhing, twisting
shadow in the headlights. Alligator! My mind supplied. Holy fuck! Alligator! Gator! GATOR! The illusion broke, suddenly I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. I dug my heels into the silt and tried to rocket to the surface

Get away, get away, get–

I didn’t get away though. Just as I broke the surface, I caught one beautiful croaking breath,
before being dragged back under. Crushing pain exploded along the entire width of my torso as
The beast closed it’s jaws around me and shook me side-to-side like a dog toy. In those split-seconds of eternity I waited for the death roll. The water wasn’t black anymore but red, my hands were red, my vision was red, everything was red red red.

I broke the surface again, clawing at the water, clawing in vain.

“Mom! Momma! Help me! Please! MOMMA! MOMMAAAAA!”

Suddenly, a sharp, clear CRACK! cut through the chaos of the attack and chopping water, following a violent explosion of pink bubbles. The jaws released me and I threw myself to the shoreline and there was Mrs. Wilkerson, holstering her shotgun. She grabbed my collar and helped to drag me onto land, a trail of dark red and black ichor followed me.

“Oh God,” I sobbed, “Oh God, Oh Goooooooood–”I held my hands to my torso but they did hilariously little to stem the flow of blood. Despite the humid air, and the hot blood (oh blood, blood, my blood, oh God, oh God) I was terribly cold.

Cold, wrinkled palms squished my face between them, shook me side-to-side.

“Girlie!” Mrs. Wilkerson screamed, “Bethany! Listen to me. Listen! Breathe.”

“Mrs.– Mrs. Wi-i-i-i-lkers-s-s-son… She wasn’t… you– she ain’t’–”

“Breathe, girlie. Breathe.”

I did, focusing on my rapidly rising chest, rather than the terrible pain that radiated from my abdomen. My breathing slowed, but my vision needled and I thought I would just pass out right there.

“Nonono girlie, c’mon open yer eyes,. There we go girlie, you’re doin’ good, you’re doin’– HEY DON’T YOU COME BACK HERE! YOU FUCKING DON’T!” I jumped at the old woman’s shout. Suddenly I was very awake.

A hiss responded. Mrs. Wilkerson fully turned back to the shore and I struggled to look over her shoulder.

The alligator was half in and out of the water, it had to be fifteen, sixteen feet long at least. The little beady eyes glittered, yet were somehow flat, like beetle’s wings. Somehow so much more terrifying than the great foglamps that had started this whole mess. The beast’s mouth opened and the pale gullet was accented by my blood. Was it grinning?

It took a step forward.

“You leave here!” Mrs. Wilkerson screamed. “You leave here, devil! You ain’t taking this one.
YOU AIN’T!”

I let out a long, involuntary keen of terror and clutched at Mrs. Wilkerson. All the while, the alligator’s jaws opened, closed, opened, closed. Waiting. I buried my head into the old lady’s
shoulder. If I do not turn to face the dark it cannot get me

Quiet, for a long moment. Then, there seemed to be some conversation I wasn’t privy to because Mrs. Wilkerson breathed out and said:

“Okay, okay you rat bastard. Yep, sure. Hear ya loud n’ clear– I ain’t that old. We all gotta pay. Death and taxes, har-dee-fuckin’-har-har…”

That must’ve been a good enough answer because I heard the dragging as the beast heaved it’s massive armored body around back to the water. Older and wiser and knowing that eventually the jaws of death closed around us all.

Once it was gone Mrs. Wilkerson tried to get me to my feet.

“Up ya go girlie, cain’t stay here, c’mon ope–”

My vision grayed and then I did pass out.

***

I fully came to consciousness as Mrs. Wilkerson was getting me into the boat with Apple curiously sniffing me all the while. Once I became more cognizant I tried to help the process though “Help” is an exaggeration. More like “the old lady dragged and heaved while I flopped around like a fish” was much more accurate. What happened to that frail old bag o’ bones who had me shoving around solid mahogany bookshelves, shit, what happened to me? This was fucking pathetic, even for me. I laughed, looney.

Mrs. Wilkerson heaved herself into the boat with me. She reached over and grabbed the first aid kit. Helped me down all three Ibuprofen and dumped the entire bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide on my torso before wrapping it with the clothes and blankets. I screamed like a little bitch and slammed my fist repeatedly onto the bottom of the boat.

“Momma always said it didn’t hurt,” I forced out as tears ran down my temples into my hairline. “God, what a bunch o’ bullshit.”

“My ma said the same thing when I’s nine and got bit by a snake.” Mrs. Wilkerson nodded, like this was a completely normal conversation. “‘Poured some peroxide on it said I’s right as rain. And you know what? I right was. You be right as rain too, girlie.”

Bartholomew butted his head against Mrs. Wilkerson, absently she scratched behind his ears, saying “Hey there Barty-Bart.”

“Yeah I gonna be right, all right, I gonna be right so I can tell my kid peroxide don’t do jack shit, tellin’ some poor little bastard that just ain’t… ain’t right.” I had to stop to take a deep breath, it felt like bigfoot was sitting on my chest, “That– that’s done like when ma said if I eat all my broccoli I’d get special sugar broccoli and she just gave me fucking cauliflower instead.”

“Don’t be too hard on yer ma, girlie, those little lies are more for us than anything else. You youngun’s always digging our early graves. ” Mrs. Wilkerson said. “I bet you ate the shit outta that cauliflower.”

“You’d be sure as shit right.” I shakily chuckled.

We were both quiet for a minute. Bartholomew came over to me now, wanting pets. When none were forthcoming he settled into the groove between my arm and torso.

Mrs. Wilkerson shifted the shotgun to the crook of her elbow. “This talk o’ food has gotten me peckish. Think I’m gonna go get us some dinner.” Mrs. Wilkerson said lightly. “Been a long, long time since I had some fresh-caught gator ‘n the bastard that took a bite outta you could hurt someone else. Cain’t have dat now can we, girlie?”

“No,” I said, mouth suddenly so dry it gave that drowned town horror show a run for its money. I don’t mention the abundance of food in our little survival stash. “You– you, no no no you shouldn’t hafta– sacrifice yerself ‘cause a’ my fuck-ups– let me.” I begged. “Let me go back.”

“Naw, cain’t do that girlie. Naw, naw quit yer blubberin’. Shush up, I said!” Mrs. Wilkerson said, against my repeated protests. Ludicrously, she sounded fond. “I’m gon’ tell you somedin’ you already figured out. I done been here before and it was as much a shitshow then as it was now.”

The old woman got very somber. “But I wasn’t alone.”

“Michael, my littlest brother, came on here wid me to find mamma.” Mrs. Wilkerson said, gently. Stroking my hair. “He didn’t come back. I said pretty shitty things to ‘em before we even done come ‘ere, anyway. Da one dat stick wid me was sayin’ mamma’s headaches’ his fault ‘cause he’s a stupid sack’o’shit makin’ ‘er worry worry worry. All he do is take take take and can barely keep ‘is shitty little part-time antique job and, really, where he ever gonna go wid dat? Mikey, you cain’t even graduate highschool, you ain’t never gon’ run no museum or noddin’.”

Mrs. Wilkerson bent over her knees, back a painful looking arch.

“Dat don’t make no sense I know, da cancer was already there like some dragon, but da brain ain’t got nothin’ over the heart… hah… Oh, you stupid old fool… Uh, then, we get up shit creek wid no fuckin’ paddle and Mike… saved me. Never went nowhere with dat antique job afterall…” She laughed now but it was dry and crackling and clearly forced. “Now you understand, girlie? Huh, do you?”

“I… I understand.” I said, finally. And I did. I did.

All the old woman did in response was carefully pop open my ruined knuckles one by one where they had stiffened in a fist around her shirt, before gently laying the hand over my chest. She gave it a couple of pats.

“Mrs. Wilkerson…” I said. One of her eyes was blackened.

The old woman hummed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Mrs. Wilkerson said. “I’m sorry too.”

She got up, knee’s cracking. “Nof’a’da doe’” She picked Apple up and the cat immediately went onto her shoulders. “I gotta meetin’ to attend. I gon’ take Apple wid me, girlie, leave Barty-Bart with you. Lazy-ass cat.” She chuckled, it was still sombre but filled with more life.

I laughed too. Shakily, I tried to pet Bartholomew. I was afraid he was scared, God, I was. My blood had dried, tacky, my entire abdomen was black with it. I could taste it. Metal. I was still laughing but then blood started coming outta my mouth so I shut that down real quick.

A little worry wrinkle appeared between Mrs. Wilkerson’s brows. “You’re gonna be alright, girlie.” She repeated, as though she had to convince herself.

Course’ I was going to be alright, I tried to say, but hell, maybe I wasn’t because I couldn’t get the words out and a ringing had started to overtake all other sounds. I felt nauseous, suddenly, and ho boy I was cold cold cold but I was also sweating and shaking and burning everything burning. Buzzing. A smoked-out hive. The old lady said something else but I couldn’t make it out.

Mrs. Wilkerson looked around briefly, before her mouth thinned. The boat jostled when she climbed out of it into the shallow water. Apple perched on her back, gracefully shifting to accommodate her movements. Both hands on the boat Mrs. Wilkerson shoved, muscles in her arms bulging. Then she headed towards the shore. I did my best to watch her as the boat lazily swirled out into the swamp.

Not once did she turn around. (Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t–) Mrs. Wilkerson’s shoulders were straight and her head held high, the tips of the cats ears and tail just visible around her head. I saw her clearing the shotgun’s chamber. My eyes followed her silhouette as she went between the trees, just another shadow, then the sharp slice of the flashlight, until the shadows swallowed that too and she was gone.

***

Salt and lemon. Salt and lemon. Ya werpe it out girlie, don’t go using no DAWN or shit…

***

Everything is bright and white and pink and warm. Momma is driving aimlessly down country roads. The windows are down. The freshly cut hay is sweet. Sweat runs down my hairline, it’s hot as hell and the A/C doesn’t work.

Rock N’ Roll is playing on the radio though I couldn’t tell you what the song is. At the moment I knew, knew it deep in my soul, but it’s long gone now.

I look at momma, just a blurry figment of there-not-there. Run my hand on the stained fabric of the seat. Lots of things are long gone now.

Eventually the car comes to a stop. I know it’s time for me to go. I click open the handle and sit there for a moment.

The journey’s gonna be a hard one, angry and hot and boiling. There’s a Coca-Cola in the cupholder, and I know I’m going to be thirsty and I know Momma wouldn’t mind if I took a drink, but it’s the last sip and I leave it to her. Momma got me this far. I gotta go on my own from here.

I get out. I start walking towards those golden hay fields and I don’t look back.

***

There’s a flash of bright highlighter yellow, rivets of water down a wrinkled face haloed by flashlights and darkness at the corners. Thunder, in the distance. I don’t feel the weight of Bartholomeow– Where–

Where–

***

My first thought upon waking was ‘Someone had best turn the FUCKING lights off right this–’

Those must be my first words too, because the lights dim immediately.

I open my bleary eyes, well, one eye – the entire left side of my face is thickly bandaged from dead-woman claws and man the infection is probably nasty – and see a young looking nurse by my bedside. She fiddles with the I.V. (which is fucking uncomfortable. Water up the nose or in your ear uncomfortable) and leaves without a word to me. Fair enough, I would have pinned myself as “Raging Bitch” too.

“Bethany.”

I have to exaggerate the turn to see the person sitting on my left side. Lighting up the wounds barely held together by stitches and gauze and compression bandages that blanket my torso.

“Dad.”

He looks like he’s aged a thousand years, deep wrinkles under his bloodshot eyes. He smiles and then he’s crying.

When I throw myself at him in a hug the stupid I.V. rips right out of my arm, every wound lights up and maybe one or two start bleeding and a dozen monitors start beeping and oh that poor nurse is going to be pissed–

But I don’t care, dad holds me and says “oh, my girl, my girl” and then we’re both crying.

“‘Love you dad,” I say, sobbing, “I love you.”

***

A massive storm, hurricane without the hurricane. Completely unexpected. The Weather Channel was, you could say, taking a piss to the West when the wind turned East. Twelve counties had declared a state-of-emergency. Couple thousands injured, several dozen dead. Tolls rising everyday.

One of those injured? Me.

One of the dead? Mrs. Wilkerson.

The short and sweet of it goes like this: WC drops the ball. I go over to Mrs. Wilkerson’s house and it starts storming whole-ass cows and monkey-shit and we get stranded. We get in her boat to try and find help and get lost in the swamp for a week-and-a-half. At some point, I get attacked and Mrs. Wilkerson is lost to the wilderness. They found the boat wedged in some tree’s, they never found Apple and Bartholemeow.

Mrs. Wilkerson’s body was found, mangled, floating in the middle of the reservoir.

Mrs. Wilkerson’s house, the shed on the side, the tin carport, the great pecan tree in her backyard, all of it, I later learned, had been completely blown away.

***

All I’ve got to show from this experience is Mrs. Wilkerson’s skull mug (and a few scars but besides being metal-as-fuck I just consider them me and I didn’t get me from the whole chicken-coop-cluster-fuck – you’re always you).

My roommate finds the mug odd, but I keep it on my desk, holding pens and pencils now rather than tea. Whenever I’m feeling down, I think about mom long gone and dad rotting in his recliner, Anne under the wildflowers, Mrs. Wilkerson lost to the swamp or the poor guy who’s skull now functioned as a pen reservoir, and remember that there is still so much to life left to live, even though it hurts.

Life hurts, it hurts damn bad sometimes, just ask a college student after midterms. Ask me, I’m writing this from my dorm room. Bachelors’ in bio.

Life fucking hurts but it’s also so fucking nice, too. You can’t let that hurt strangle out the good that’s there. Between the cracks of concrete wildflowers can bloom and all that cliche bullshit. It ain’t bullshit though, ain’t it? There’s a reason it’s a cliche.

I’m learning those feel-good mantras in therapy. Got me a counselor and a psychiatrist who got me on a couple pills; dad still scoffs at that when I visit him every couple of months or so but it’s all for show. I feel better. I know it, he knows it. He wants me to be happy, even if he can’t be, despite all the punches life has thrown.

I don’t throw punches at anyone, anymore. Don’t dig my fingers into my scalp until I bleed, well, most of the time. That kind of pain isn’t so great anymore. Doesn’t feel deserved.

The choice to make things better. Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve got to go now, I have a class on invertebrate physiology and taxonomy in fifteen minutes. Riveting stuff, I know. Is it weird to say I’m excited for it? Cause I am. I am so very much.

Thank you all for listening.

Bethany

Credit: Stephanie Wilkerson