l a p s e

the trap

Walking was a strange thing, after being bedridden for as long as I had. My legs felt like they were each separate entities, moving in different directions, falling over themselves. I had to reach out to steady myself every so often, and soon enough my fingers were dusted and grey.

From the utter silence of everything that surrounded me, I concluded that it must have been the wee hours of the morning. I had left you in the room, sprawled vertically on the bed, and ventured into the hallway that ran the length of the upper floor. We were all forced into rooms by the rising water downstairs. I could feel the dampness of the wood flooring. A rotting smell wafted up through the floorboards. Ash collected between my toes from the weaned fire that you had lit earlier, its remains forming a barrier between me and the spiral stairs that led into a watery oblivion.

Only three rooms were occupied – mine, the one the professor and the botanist shared, and the third, which kept the lawyer's stagnant form separate from the rest of us. I took a glance into her room. The moonlight showed everything in stark silver relief. Everything felt dead, yet I knew she was still alive. The shivery, unstable sound of her breathing, like the hissing of a great snake, stole the air in the room and returned it in great gusts that stank of infection. Slowly, I pulled the door closed with a creak and a rusted click that resonated through the house and bounced off its wet, rubbery wood walls.

Though I knew only one other room should have had an occupant, a door near the far end stood ajar, leaking light into the rancid darkness outside. Tentatively, I made my way towards it and slid my face through the gap – the room, obviously a storeroom of some sort, was filled, end-to-end, with the sound of a very frantic mumbling. I sorted through the picture in front of me. Furniture, crates. A cracked vase. A shattered television. A swirl of discarded cloth. In the corner, the upended corpse of a rat.

And there, in the center, was the hunched form of a man. More specifically, the botanist. Squatted between a broken rotting chair and a large, split pillow, he rocked spastically back and forth, his bony fingers tracing manic lines in the dust of the floor. His eyes, pure white-and-black in the barren lighting, trained straight on me.

Slowly, he rose. The mumbling did not cease. He lurched towards me, one step only, then closed the rest of the distance rather smoothly. I noticed that the closer he got, the more distant became the voice...

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" I asked quietly, rasping the words, my tongue trapping them behind my teeth. He did not reply. Only then did I cast my gaze down, down at the jolting, jerking of his hands at his sides, and then I slowly brought it up to his eyes. Even though he was only feet away from me, his eyes did not seem to notice me in the doorway. They bored through me and out the other side, as if I did not exist.

I closed the door, latched it from the outside, and scurried back to the room.

You sat upright in the bed, clutching the covers tightly and watching the door. When I stepped through it your face crumpled in relief and you swung your legs onto the floor, about to stand – I motioned for you to stay, and then I stepped over to you, my oversized shirt billowing in the night wind. Slowly, I eased myself onto the bed next to you, careful not to bend my injured side, and placed my head lightly on your shoulder. Immediately I felt your hand brush the side of my head and travel down my neck, my arm, to join my hand where it rested on the sheets that, like everything else in the house, stank of mold.

"I found some rubbing alcohol," you said finally, after the silence had gone on long enough. "I don't know how sterile it is, but it's a full bottle, and..." You trailed off, and your hand left mine to ghost the faintest of touches over the bandages at my side. The only response was a quickening of my heartbeat. "Do you think we should...?"

I turned my head up to face you and nodded, once. You smiled wanly in return and then walked, still slow with sleep, into the bathroom, where I heard the creaking of hinges and the clattering of bottles against each other. A minute later you emerged; a stout brown bottle clutched in your hand, and shut the door behind yourself.

"Lie down," you said quietly, and I obliged, even though my heart thudded heavily. You shoved the pile of sheets aside, sat so that my back was to you, and slowly pushed up the side of my shirt to expose my bandages, stained flesh-pink and pus-yellow and reeking of more mold and sweat. Then you untied them and the interior of my wound went ice cold as it met the brush of air.

I looked down for an instant at my bloated, pale belly, at the bluish pallor of the skin where it surrounded the injury. I closed my eyes. There was the brush of your hand on my skin, pushing my hair away where it collected in the sodden fold between my neck and shoulder. "Are you ready?"

I managed one nod. In response, I heard the seal of the alcohol bottle snap open. And then you poured.

There was cold fire rippling up and down my side. I arched my back and it only tore the cut open further. I swirled into something white and blinding. My throat sundered.

Vaguely, in the distance, came your voice as you comforted me. But I had again sunk into unconsciousness.