We Dream of the Quiet Dark

I crawl. Thirsty. Bitter. So bitter, but I must eat them. The things that grow. They came here in a recent time. The growths are bright. They have a neck, and there is a ball on top of that neck, and one two three four five six seven round fans attached. Is this light? This light… this… colour? I don’t know. It makes me think of algae slime and moss.

I approach a patch of growth and my feeder splits open. They dance when I wrap my tongues around them and rip them out. Bitter. Burning. Did they come here because they hate me? Why? I don’t understand, but I feed.

When I am finished, I crawl back down from the ceiling and lie down in a trickle of wet. A stream. The rocks are sharp and bumpy but my skin shapes to fit, and my bones shuffle around so they can fit too. Pores open. I drink, and I flush. The vines must hate me, because they still hurt me after I eat them. They claw at my insides, but I relax and let my tubules slacken and droop out from my pores. They fan their plumes into the stream and I can feel the hurt of the vines drain from my body.

Then, I eat again. I drain, eat, drain, and eat until my membranes are swollen and full. After that, I can leave the bright, and go back into the calm and the soft.

I found a toy today. I did not bring it into the bright, but it feels hard, and round, but also hollow. There are two round holes on the front and a row of dull pegs at the bottom. I think it’s missing a part. I will bring it back to mother and see what she thinks.

It is a challenge to scuttle back down to where I sleep when I am so full. There is nothing else to be done though. The pointy tips of my legs strain and shiver and my joints ache. Stop. Smell. Send a pulse. I am at the deep well, and I am relieved. The hard cuticle plates on my back pop and release, letting me curl into a ball. It is a strain to fit my swollen organs inside but I do, and I roll forwards, off into the shaft.

It hurts to hit the ground again but I am okay. I uncurl and follow the path home with sound and smell. Now, it is easy, because mother has started to smell very strong, and she hasn’t moved in a long time. That makes me happy. My pedipalps sense a membrane ahead, which I carefully slice through, and when I am inside I excrete from my glands to seal it back up.

‘Mother,’ I ask, ‘why won’t you come and help me?’

…

‘And my sisters? I cannot hold off the bright all by myself.’

…

She is sleeping. I hope she will be okay. I nestle the new toy in her tail and curl up beside her. My sisters must still be outside. They will come back, I know it, so I sleep. We sleep.

***

The growths do not taste good. They do not make me less hungry so I still have to find food, for me, for mother. My sisters are probably doing the same, I know, but the hunger is bad and the vines are bad.

Below. Must go down. There are spiders and worms and curly bugs in the dry but not many. Better to go below, into the wet. I don’t know how far down the world goes, it is filled with the wet because all the streams go there and I can only breathe the wet for so long until I start to choke and drown.

It is worth the risk. I catch lots and lots of crunchy bugs that can live in the wet, big or small, slender or stout, they are all very tasty. Sometimes they pinch me on the inside with their little claws after I have swallowed. They do not bother me like the vines do but I get scared of getting stuck down in the wet. Not even mother would know what happened to me.

Mother. Yes, I hold some of the crunchy bugs in my feeder and carry them back home for mother. I leave them by her and I start to feel bad because I know where I have to go next. Up.

Climbing the great well is always easier when I have eaten. I am up in no time and can already see the bright, like steam from the warm vents but cold.

There is more. It doesn’t make sense. I eat as much as I can and when I come back, there’s always more than the time before. I’m trying to stop it but I don’t know if I can and I do the only thing I can think and eat, rip, and tear until I am unable.

Flush out my pores, hurt is gone. Eat some more. Flush. Full. I go home again. Roll into the shaft and all the way down. I get half of the way back home to mother but the hurt has come back. I don’t know why. Why is it hurting? I flushed them out.

A pressure builds inside me. Up my foregut until I can feel it pushing out against my feeder. I cannot hold it. Feeder splits and bile and bubbling acid comes flooding out all over the ground. Bits of chewed vines float around in the puddle. I don’t think they are dead yet, not all of them. They are still bright. Oh no. The bright it’s, it’s trickling down. Down the steep tunnel and down towards home. No, no, no. What if my sisters run into it? Will they hate me? Maybe they will help me. Maybe… need to get… home…

***

I wake up. Where am I? Not home. I cannot smell mother. It is so bright and– oh. No. No please no no no. The bits of growth that escaped me are still there but there are more of them. They are spreading and they keep going in a line down the tunnel. I spring to life and claw my way up the walls and onto the ceiling, and I crawl towards home. I do not want to touch the growths. I can’t anymore. They are scary.

I keep going. The bright shows me something at the side of the tunnel. I think it’s one of my sisters but she isn’t moving and she is very, very thin. The bright must have frightened her terribly, I cannot get her to move and come home with me. I will leave her for now.

‘It is good to see you.’

Finally I reach the end. They haven’t reached my home, and when I pass them and go around a few corners I cannot see the bright anymore. Mother is still here. Mother is okay. It’s okay. For now it is okay.

Don’t worry about the bright, mother. I will hold them back.

***

Sleep. Wake up. Dive into the wet and catch food. It is much easier to catch the crunchy bugs, they aren’t fighting back as much. I don’t know why. They just feel weaker and they have a sour taste.

Climb out. Eat. Bring food to mother then climb back up, up the tunnels, up the great shaft, to the bright. When I get there I see the bright hasn’t grown much further, and I feel better. Still, I have to keep going until they leave my world forever.

Before I start ripping them up, I freeze. A noise. I’ve never heard this noise before so it frightens me. It sounds loud and heavy and–

What is that? Oh, no, no, NO! Please no. The above has broken apart, smashed through. Something’s up there. Strange creatures I’ve never seen before. They look terrifying. All fleshy and moving on two legs, hard colourful shiny shells on their heads and bodies lined with silvery strips that blind me. I have to get away, run away, get away.

But I can’t move. I’m too scared. The big pointy spiral is ripping apart the rock above me, the above, the world is broken and collapsing, and the creatures are pointing down at me. They’re going to eat me, GO!

I whip around and scamper away and the hard clacking of my legs has never been so loud. The ground shivers again, a sound like the world exploding and I am showered in rocks and boulders. Faster. Nearly there. I am nearly at the shaft and then I can go home and rest with mother and–

A big heavy rock lands on my lower body. So heavy and with a crushing force. It hurts, it hurts so much, so much worse than the vines ever hurt me. Luckily it rolls off me and I disappear into the tunnel, fast as I can. I am terrified. It hurts so bad but I want to live. I don’t want to get eaten.

I don’t remember how I got home. Six or maybe eight or nine of my back legs won’t move. They won’t listen to me. It does not matter though, they are broken and twisted and my spine is crooked. I remember falling down the shaft but I couldn’t roll into a ball and it hurt even more. I’m leaking.

‘You still won’t help me. Please mother, it hurts. Stop it hurting.’

…

‘Sisters?’

…

Sleep, yes. The sleep will make it go away. Sleep heals. Sleep…

***

I do not wake up. No, it is something else that wakes me. Something that isn’t me. I’m not sure what it is at first until I roll my joints and look to the door of my home. Not the bright, but the suggestion of it. It is near.

I try to get up on my feet. Instead, I crash back down. That’s right. My back legs are ruined. So I drag myself to the door and cut through membrane. The second I exit I collapse from fright. The bright is here. It’s right outside, grown all the way down from the tunnel up. No. What did I do to them to deserve this?

I can’t remember a long time after that. Panic. Rip, tear, scream. When I am back I see that most of the bright is ripped up. I don’t know if it’s dead though so I scoop up as much of it as I can and slide down to the wet. I dive in, down as deep as I can go, and dump the vines. I’m too weak so it isn’t very far into the wet where I dump them. Everything hurts. I hurt. The water hurts, it burns.

I climb back out of the wet. Hard to breathe. My spiracles are blocked with pus and lifeblood. I’m so tired and I want to sleep forever. When I get home, I freeze again, and start to cry out. There are echoes from up the tunnel. Bad noises. The two legs monsters are coming with their giant claw or tooth and–

Another rumble. A loud blast. They are closer than I thought, I can see dust falling from the above. I can’t let them– I WON’T let them take mother. How to hide? How? I know. I move up the tunnel a bit and start secreting out of my neck glands. First, a membrane from side to side, up to down until the membrane blocks the tunnel. Then I do it again and again and again until it is so tough I can’t slice through it. When my glands run out I crawl around the membrane, licking it with all my tongues so it can start hardening. It’s hard. I can only move with my front legs but I do it anyway. When I am too tired to go on the membrane is already looking and feeling stony, just like the walls of the tunnel. I still sense the bad noises but I can’t hear them, and I can’t see the bright on the other side.

‘We are safe now, mother.’

She is still sleeping. So tired. I will sleep next to her.

***

I think I slept for too long. At least the bright didn’t wake me this time. Hungry. My body is pulsing and it’s hot, my legs, my spine, swollen and stinking, smelling more like mother. So hungry. I ache with the hunger. I have to go into the wet for food. I don’t have a choice so I go. I catch the crunchy bugs. They don’t fight back. Maybe they are all sleeping but they are… limp, and floppy.

I dive further and find out why.

It doesn’t matter what I do. Everything, anything I do, the bright does not care. It has seeded again and overtaken the wet. It’s bursting with the bright and it’s so much worse seeing it through the wet, split and bursting into my eyes, so bright I can still see it through all my closed eyelids. I can feel them in the wet around me, their hurt, their hate. It burns more than I have ever felt, even more than my legs and my spine.

I nearly don’t make it out. The hurting bright makes my limbs go numb and my eyes sting and blur, but I crawl out of the wet, clicking and whimpering, dragging my useless legs behind me. I choke on the food as I eat it. Useless useless useless, bad noises, bad bright, two legs, giant teeth, giant mouth. I can’t bear it. Inside. Seal the membrane. Go to mother. Bring her the food I have caught for her and leave some for my sisters. To mother. My sisters. Just need to eat… to live… that is all. I never should have gone away from here. Never should have climbed up. Nearly there, mother. Nearly…

***

I am woken up again and I know why. Before I even look I know the bright is right outside. So much, so many, I can see it through the membrane. It’s not fair. I don’t have the strength to fight it now, not anymore. There is no point. Even before the rock fell on me I couldn’t fight back. Not really.

The bright is growing, I can see it growing in front of me. I trace the vines and they go back down to the wet, the wet, the wet is just a tangle of bright and vines now. My barrier in the other tunnel is still there. Still protecting. But I can hear the bad noises. The two leg things. They know where I am and they are coming. Why does everyone hate me? It isn’t fair. I am trapped, both sides, walls, no walls, closing in, falling down.

I just go back inside with mother. With the bright outside the door, I can see her. And I can see my sisters too. They’ve come back. I must not disturb them, they are sleeping, healing, yes. Still thin, still gooey but healing. They are still.

Wait… mother isn’t healing. Why isn’t it working? The sleep? She is so thin and the… colour… her skin is covered in patches of bad colour and she hasn’t eaten any of the food I brought her. I try to take care of her and clean her with my tongues but the taste is awful. Pressure inside me comes back and pushes out of my feeder in a gush of fluid and chewed up bugs.

‘Mother.’

She doesn’t move. I am scared.

‘MOTHER.’

Am I alone?

No, stop it. Help mother. I have to. Without her I will get hungry and sad. I try to help her. I try to put her head back on her body but it keeps falling off and rolling away. I try to slot her scales in tight and join her bones back together. Moist and brittle under my pedipalps and smelling worse than ever before.

‘Why won’t you talk to me? Why? If you are hungry, then eat. Mother? Sisters, are you there?’

***

It feels like a long long time before I can think again. Did I sleep? Am I awake now? It’s hard to tell. I hear the noises, the bad noises, except they aren’t bad anymore. They don’t scare me. I just listen to them. Wonder what’s making them, and where the two legs creatures came from. They broke through the above, but from where?

Itchy. Tail, legs, spine, itchy and pulsing and swelling so much they are going to burst. Maybe the two legs already found me and are eating me. I can’t tell. No, wait, there are curly hundred leg bugs and spiders nibbling at my legs. I feel them but don’t see anything. Do I see? I don’t know what I see. The bright? The dark? I don’t understand the difference anymore.

My thinking… thoughts… outside of me. Still mine, but not in me. There is one that is not mine. I hear it, or think it.

“The dark is all she has ever known.”

I call out, because it could be mother. It couldn’t be anyone else but mother. I can’t see her. The bad sounds are louder. I can’t see the bright but I know it is growing over me now. Growing into me, into my pores and spiracles. Can’t breathe. Hurts.

“The child was never meant to see the light, but perhaps this was inevitable. She blames herself.”

I did. Not now.

At least I don’t have to fight anymore. I can’t. There is nothing I can do now and that feels good. The bright can have everything, if it wants.

“Let go, little one.”

The itching won’t stop. I thought I would never see again but I see one more thing. I see it sharp and focused, lying on the ground in front of me. It is the toy, the gift I brought back for mother. Round and hard. Pale and cracked. I stare and blink into its one, two empty sockets, and they look back into every one of my eyes. Is it a face? Mother’s? Mine? A blanket of warm dark and quiet wraps around me and the itching is gone but I keep staring into the face and its empty eyes, lying there next to me.

I think… it’s still missing a piece. Like me. My eyes start to close one by one, and in my head, I smile.

Because I am not alone.

Credit: A. K. Kullerden

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