l a p s e

the murk

The first thing you told me after I'd opened my eyes to the blazing sunlight is that the lawyer was dead. The second thing you told me was that my wound looked much better. I was more concerned with the first piece of information, and jolted quickly out of whatever sleep still held me in its grip to hurry out of the room.

"Easy," you said, wrapping your arms around my shoulders from behind. "It's okay." My body went limp in your hold, and you led me back to the bed to lie down again.

"I don't want to," I whispered weakly as you tried to help me down. The bed was sticky with grime and the damp, and sharply scented with the remainder of alcohol. Touching it made me feel disgusting. The constant bedrest was taking its toll, too: my head pounded, my jaw sagged. My arms and legs, once lithe with muscle, were slack and weak. My limbs wanted to move. They ached for energy.

You froze at my words, and met my gaze – a moment passed, the smallest of moments, where I noticed the bags under your eyes and the emptiness within them – and immediately I felt guilty. All this time I had been resting, and you had taken care of all of us. Gratitude and shame, a potent mix of chemical, coursed through me. I broke our eye contact. You didn't insist again, though. Instead you brought me over to the rocking chair you had slept in the past few nights, and I sunk down into it, feeling rather like I had been swallowed up.

"Stay," you said quietly, resignedly. You left the room. I moved the rocking chair back and forth. Back and forth. It stuck. I pulled it free. Soon my back began to protest. I only moved faster. A gasp let itself from my throat as my muscles coiled and cramped.

Slumping forward, I braced my elbows on my knees. The joints jabbed painfully into my thighs, but I ignored it. Water. I needed water. Not wanting to bother you, I slid off the chair and placed my weight onto my feet – lightly at first, then all at once. My vision slipped as I grasped wildly for the rose-papered walls. Steadied myself on the sticky surface. Made my way to the bathroom, where I wrenched open the faucet, thirst pulling me apart in one sudden burst. The water was peppered with small specks. I flushed it down my throat.

Unable to stay still again, I tentatively exited the room. The hallway stood coldly, bereft of movement. Its end beckoned, where the slim staircase that lifted into the widow's walk was sheathed in a beam of sunlight from the open trapdoor. Getting up the stairs was hard enough a feat. I had to stop every few feet to yank the air back into me again. Pulling myself through the door was harder still – my arms strained, protested. I must have made noise because I quickly felt two broad hands grasp my shoulders, gently heaving me chest-first on the warped wooden deck. I scrambled to my feet with your help. There was something like disappointment – no, worry – in your eyes, but it quickly segued back to solemnity.

The deck where I'd danced for you the other night looked so much smaller in the daytime. Cramped, the floor peeling, the railing eaten by insects and moisture. The lantern that you had lit now hung dead, too small, on the chimney. Sunlight showed things too harshly.

Both the botanist and the professor waited, the same silence in their eyes, by the far railing. A lump of cloth, inconspicuous at first, lay bound at their feet. It was stained the same crusty brown as my own sheets. Only then did I realize it was the lawyer's corpse.

Seemingly wiped of the night's mania – or had it been real at all? – the botanist was an image of grief as he, with your help, hefted the bundle over the railing. It swayed even with the slight load.

I took the smallest step forward. Another. An image of the lawyer in her perfectly pressed sepia suit, heels pristine, makeup impeccable – materialized at the professor's side. She cast her eyes upon me, then turned away. Hands curling around the rails. I thought, absently, of the wedding band around her finger. Her black hair tumbled from its knot into the wind as she watched her body slide gently into the bracken-water below.