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Bugs
Mel has always kind of sort of believed in the paranormal. It was more than a passing thought, but rather something that slinked in her brain waiting for a moment to take over her thoughts. She blamed her mother. She used to tell Mel stories about the things that live in the dark. She used to tell her about the scaled creatures with hungry eyes, witches with a penchant for blood magic, and the demons with rotting flesh waiting for little girls who made the mistake of not being careful. It is in the dark that things come alive. Where the things that you don’t let breath during the daylight hours suddenly cannot be held back. Without the light to scare away the things that go bump in the night, they come out ready to play and take and ravage. Mel believed all of these stories, her mother believed a lot of them too. It was all a part of the lore. It was part of what religion could protect them from. And so her mother taught her how to properly be afraid of the night. That fear was just a part of the way she functioned, and she could not truly outgrow that seemingly childish worry that a monster is hiding in the closet, or under the bed, or perhaps is inching it’s way closer just beyond her fingers in the black.
Perhaps Mel shouldn’t have tried to push that fear away. Perhaps it was better to hold that fear and treat it as a friend. But that is not what adults do. They grow and they are unafraid and that is why Mel was working towards being a writer. If she had fear to nurture, she might have picked a different path, or at least that's what she told herself. She wasn’t sure what was scarier: being vulnerable or the job market, but here she was trying to perfect her poetry for masters programs that could outright reject her. And if they did what would she be then?
A glitter of something caught her attention as she leaned back in her chair. A black beetle with a green, blue sheen was skittering across her desk, not caring about the printed sheets scattered here and there. Mel cocked her head, watching the little thing move quickly, with purpose, toward what, she didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. Her finger found the tissue box on the other side of her laptop as she continued to watch the beetle scurry along.
Mel felt the crunch of the beetle’s death beneath the tissue, the body giving way under the pressure of her finger, the juices pushing through white and reaching her hand. She grimaced but she let herself breath again. She thought about what it would be like to feel that crunch in her mouth. A shiver crept up her spine. Mel crumpled the tissue quickly, the crunch continuing as she squished the dead body in her fist. She threw it away, the feeling of it lingering in her hand, the juices sticking to her fingers. Mel felt the need to apologize to the poor dead thing but the more she thought about the way the sound it made as she pushed down and through the hard shell, the more she wanted to move on. She quickly grabbed another tissue and wiped the area on her nightstand she had found the beetle before going to her bathroom sink.
Mel slowly washed her hands, annoyed at the way the water fluctuated from warm to very cold. She sighed audibly, the noise breaking the quiet. She suddenly became attuned to the silence filling her apartment. There was nothing but static filling the air. Somehow it made everything feel thicker, heavier. From the corner of her eye she saw something black flicker. She dismissed it, mounting it up to her exhaustion. After all she hadn’t had a good night's sleep in months, or at least it felt that way. Mel looked up from her now clean hands and up at the too low mirror above her sink. Her light brown eyes bordered on hazel, the swirl of honey colors highlighted by the tinges of red in her eyes. The purple bags under her eyes were sunken in soft pieces of skin and made her usual bubbly expression seem sickly.
Maybe that’s why no one compliments her eyes anymore.
Angry red veins are turn offs, she figured. She rubbed her nose and sniffled as she accepted the sunken curves of her face, thinking about how much she disliked her nose. It was too big; just plain awkward. But maybe that was just her ex-girlfriend talking. She pulled her long brown curls up, tired of having strands of hair falling in front of her face. She quickly got ready for bed, muscle memory taking over; remove makeup, exfoliate face, brush teeth, face serums, acne treatment. She was so concerned with routine that she didn’t notice the blood she left behind in the sink after brushing too hard. The red spatter arrayed, like glitter. She looked at herself once more in the mirror, her mind fuzzy, her reflection faraway from what she knew herself to look like. God was she tired. Her day was long and her mind had made it seem even longer.
The silence and darkness worked together, taking their time to settle into the space, filling crevices that Mel herself had forgotten about. Warping the normal room she had surveyed moments ago into uncomfortably crowded space. Breathe in. Mel counted to 7 and then let go of her breath, letting her chest collapse back down. She pushed against the heaviness that was building in her chest, willing the movement of air through her body. Mel’s sister taught her how to do this. Lu taught her how to control her breath and to find relaxation when she was younger. It doesn’t seem to work quite that well anymore. Breathe out.
Logically, she knew that this was supposed to be relaxing, helping her let go of stress and worry, but she just felt like she was getting smaller and smaller with every exhale. Her body caving in on itself, ready to give up space to the shadows that were starting to come out and play. Breathe in. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed some particularly dark patches on the wall on the other side of the room. The dark patch moved, a shadow maneuvering slowly, taking it’s time as it moved closer to her. Breath out. The skin on her arms began to raise, forming pimples all down her arms. Silence and darkness are the best team to play cruel tricks on you. Before anyone can flip a switch, adrenaline will rush through your body, a cold flush of fear, and you will be convinced of just about anything.
She clenched her jaw as thoughts trickled into her brain, a slow invasion of potential impossibilities, or so she told herself. Still, she closed her eyes, unable to face the darkness that had engulfed her room whole. She felt as if it was waiting patiently to engulf her too. Like it stopped just shy of her skin, playful, waiting, but desperately wanted to steal her away. She thought about that for a minute, trying to imagine what it would feel like, where she would end up. She figured it would feel cold, perhaps painfully so. Maybe she would end in a ditch or even some alternate dimension. Mel took a deep breath desperate to get rest for once, to maybe even dream about something happy. She tried to think of other, less malevolent things, but she couldn’t stop the way her room was changing now that light was absent.
The dark made the room cold. It always starts there. Then the cold begins to signal more sinister things hiding just beyond what she can see. Her mind wandered and the computer chair opposite her bed piled with dirty clothes became a cloaked man ready to take and paint his madness out on her body and walls. The slow creak of floorboards become the calculated footsteps of some unknown creature ready to snatch and devour her bit by bit. Suddenly, it becomes impossible to be alone.
No, there is no being alone in the dark.
Something about it, the disappearing of harsh light, the stillness, that invites things in and invites them to stay. There is a sense of being surrounded not just by darkness but everything that thrives without light. It’s claustrophobic. Not to the point of a panic attack, but to the point of curiosity and wandering thoughts. However, there was no bravery in the dark, even if the threats weren’t real. Mel remembered being a child and being especially attuned to this kind of claustrophobia. The way the air seemed almost taken from her lips, something cold grazing slightly. A ghost of a fear.
Her mother had told her so many stories when she was a child. Stories of witches and dark spirits and the inhuman things that filled the world. Like any good mother, she instilled a deadly, almost poisonous fear of the world into both her daughters. She was preparing her young girls for the world, and not just any world, a world that was cruel, that swallowed up young girls and took what it needed before discarding what remained. Mel’s mother knew that world. Mel’s mother had to learn what it felt like to be in this world. Mel’s mother had to learn through the pain what it meant to live somewhere that would only take and leave everything else to rot.
She wanted to save her daughters from that pain.
It was commendable in some lights. But fear turned into something just as detrimental as the pain she would have experienced. Mel was afraid of most things. But she wasn’t always. She loved the night as a child. She would stay up light, creating stories in her head, and taking the darkness that filled their small house into something akin to magic. Her mother, seeing such light in her child, knew she had to warn her child, had to prepare her for a world that would snuff out that light.
So every night from the age of 3 to that age when children refuse to be tucked in (in Mel’s care it was around 12), her mother would braid her long brown locks on her twin bed and tell her stories. The one that always scared Mel to her very core, were the stories about the duendes that lived in the walls of houses. These were spirits of unbaptized children who would get trapped in the spaces they grew up. They would torment children day in and day out, making them go mad.
Her mother told Mel a nasty story about a girl who had just moved into an old house with her parents. Her younger brother had died a few months before they moved. The girl began to hear voices. Whispers. Humming chatter. She ignored it at first. Figured it was her parents.
Then the voices got louder. Eventually they realized that the girl wouldn’t say anything to her parents and so they took advantage of her silence. They stole her clothes. Pulled on her hair at night. Made her trip and fall. Told her lies and made her feel small. The girl suffered in silence for years.
It made Mel sad to think that someone could just accept all of that torment without so much as a question. Mel never wanted to go through something like that and she was sure that she would tell someone if duendes started to torment her. She was sure of it. She even told her mom that after she first told her that story. Her mother smiled and braided her hair, anxiety and fear, braided in with every weaving motion of her hands.
It was this fear that she had grown used to. It was this fear that she had accepted as a part of life. She couldn’t say it was her mother’s fault. But it did start somewhere after that story about that girl. Mel remembered that eventually that girl went crazy. Legend has it she tried to kill her father.
They blamed it on the insects in the house.
That's the thing about bugs. They stick around, acting up, getting worse, the bug in the system burrowing deeper every time it gets scared. But those glitches and bugs brought up thoughts and images that she wished could stop but instead would simply multiply in her brain; a brand new infestation every night. It was hard to ignore the movement of legs in between the folds of tissue, the feeling of being burrowed into, the idea that you were losing control, it was all too much. Mel closed her eyes again, her blood pulsing with a bumpy electric current, and soon those bugs turned to thoughts of deformed humanoids with bones piercing skin, crawling towards her with an agency she had never seen before began to fill her mind.
The pitch black was starting to get more and more full and there seemed to be less air. Despite the slow flood of cold in her chest she couldn’t help but indulge these thoughts. Right now they were the only thing she could grasp in her mind. Everything else was too slippery. She hated herself for it.
The creature’s face was almost human, with cheekbones poking out from the grey patchy skin, and it’s eyes were big and hungry, almost desperate, mostly sad. It’s teeth, sharpened and it’s tongue slicked with black gunk that was oozing out of its mouth. She imagined that thing crawling towards her, its broken body trying to reach her at any cost. It struck a chord somewhere in her brain, a familiar something. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Probably some scary movie she watched way too young.
She opened her eyes. Working to create happy images in her mind’s eye but everything she thought of melted away, rotted, or morphed into new dangerous things. She took a deep breath, her determination shaky, the weight of her anxious mind seemed to be too much. Her heart rate started to slow when she felt a soft graze of fingers on her cheek. Her eyes went wide, the touch felt familiar. She told herself it was nothing. That she was making it all up. That’s what writers do. So she closed her eyes once more and started to say a mi padre nuestro under her breath, hoping that if there was something out there, she would be kept safe.
Mel’s humming voice melted into silence, the vibrations of the prayer falling into dead static. She pushed away the thoughts of demons and murders and ghosts yet she was so sure she felt the graze of more fingers, breath on her face. She was sure that she was hearing whispers and laughs and something choking. It was rushing over her body and she was struggling to keep her head above all the fear rising to drown her. She tried to hold on to her adult notions of bravery and tried to quell the fear that threatened to pour out of her eyes. Her hands were balled so tightly into fists that her nails were digging in hard, almost piercing skin. The glitches were coming faster giving her less and less time to convince herself that she was simply being childish for being afraid of the dark.
There was a rumble in the air. Mel felt it shake the bed, slightly at first, then with more conviction. The deep laughter rang from vibrations, taking it’s time to fill the room. Mel’s eyes shot wide open. She stared into the darkness and breathed a sigh of relief. She sat up and put her now heavy heavy head into her hands and clenched her jaw, determined to move away from her anxieties. After all they were not real. Mel finally raised her head and looked over to the right. She froze. Her eyes tried to take in what she was seeing.
There was someone in her room.
They floated closer, their feet not quite touching the ground, the grey tendrils growing solid as they grazed the floor. Her heart pounded in her chest so loudly that her eardrums were shaking with it’s heavy thumps. Within seconds, her over anxious heart started palpitating and the cold began to chill her body. It was as if all the warmth was being chased out of her body starting with her chest. She tried to breathe but it seemed as if her lungs were too cold to do their job.
Mel was unable to look away from the creature. She was unable to look away from the creature's eyes, red and brown hues seemed to be swirling around a black pupil. While her body faced the icy shards moving slowly through her body, her mind began to move from one thought to another, but always coming back to ‘this can’t be real’. The creature moved. Mel flinched but was unable to actually move her body into a different position. The creature stopped.
Mel’s eyebrows furrowed. She quickly surveyed the creature's body. It seemed to have a faint humanoid outline but all of the edges and curves melted together. She found it difficult to pinpoint where the creature ended and the night began. The smoky tendrils surrounding the creature stretched into the blackness, every so often giving off a scaly hard look. It’s body seemed to be pulsing. Nothing about this creature was stagnant. Mel shook her head, still looking at the dark thing in front of her. This could not be real. This had to be something her mind had conjured up. It had to be some short circuit glitching to create some weird creatures.
She didn’t notice her body getting more and more tense. She didn’t notice that she was biting the inside of her cheek until finally she made herself bleed. She wanted desperately to convince herself that this wasn’t real. Mel’s breathing was the only sound filling the room. It was growing more and more frantic. There was a thing in her room. There was a creature in the dark. And it was here. And yet, despite seeing creature in front of her she could not face what that would mean for her if this thing was real
This horned creature that had scales that shone underneath all of the haze of smoke around it could not be real. This red eyed thing that looked just human enough to unsettle her could not be real. But she felt the cold in her chest, and that was real. She felt the heart palpitations and that was real. She felt the tears falling from her face and those were real.
The familiarity of those red brown eyes, that was real too.
Everything slowed. The creature inhaled and she saw the thing’s body writhe. She could have sworn she saw a hand jut out from the stomach. As the creature exhaled she then noticed the wings that grew seemingly from nowhere. The creature moved forward slightly, Mel tensed up even more. The smoky tendrils became reptilian appendages as they grazed the floor, the creature's feet dangling just above her grey carpet. She tried to will herself to move away, to run, to do anything other than sit there. But she was stuck, unable to move, only getting more and more tense. The creature began to smile. The curve of what she assumed were lips gave way to sharp white teeth. The smile grew and grew until it almost hit the edge of the creature's face. The creature began moving faster, taking her lack of motion as an invitation to attack.
Mel tried to use her voice, tried to scream but nothing came out. It was as if the cold had frozen her still; taken over her body. The creature stopped just shy of her bed. Lingering for a moment, looking at her, the smoky haze around it starting to touch her. The smoke felt warm, like feeling someone exhale against your skin. The smile began to disappear and the red in the thing’s eyes began to become more and more prominent. Suddenly she heard the vibrato laugh, except this time she heard the beginning of words follow them. Her heart stopped. She knew that voice. A hazy limb resembling a hand started to reach out and Mel tried desperately to get her body to work, to fight, to scream, to do anything. Instead her body stayed still; her mind whirring jumping from one death scenario to the rest. Mel then did the only thing she could do: close her eyes. She felt the cold air rush around her, enveloping her completely and she could have sworn that her heart stopped.
Instead when she opened her eyes to face what she thought was her death, she saw that the creature had shifted and sat next to her. This time the thing’s eyes looked more brown than red. It looked at her, cocked its head, confused, questioning, for a moment before showing its teeth once more. Blood stained against white. Bits of fleshy grey stuck between its teeth. Mel still could not move. Her body locked. Paralyzed.
Her breathing began to quicken, each breath growing more and more shallow, failing to reach blood and organs. Her mind held on to the idea that she was crazy, that the wear and tear of insomnia had indeed corrupted her mind, that there was no saving her sanity. It all replayed in a loop as Mel looked at the shadowy being before her, with its brown red eyes, horns, and fanged teeth. The moment seemed so still. The creature didn’t move. Mel kept her distance. Everything seemed anchored down to the floor, as if the realization mixed with the darkness made it impossible for movement. Yet the stillness did not reach her body. Mel felt as though she was convulsing with confusion. So the loop replayed, it seemed to be the only thing that she could hold onto. She was afraid of what would happen if this was real. She wasn’t ready for that.
She hoped for the vision in front of her to melt into its surroundings, to fade under the faint moonlight. She hoped for a break in the stillness, for the moment to break in two and reveal that she was just dreaming, that when reality crashed back into her, it would all end up being some twisted fantasy. After all, wasn’t that what she was counting on? Her twisted imagination, her busy mind, her conjuring words? This had to be a side effect of writing. Yet even as she hoped, she was afraid to blink, to reset the scene in front of her. Stillness welcomed cold, and it spread into her chest, arresting her breathing, stopping her lungs from doing their job. The ice creaked between her ribs, and once she settled into the breathlessness of the cold, she recalled the sensation. That paralytic kind of fear was something she was used to, familiar even. From the discomfort to the heavy breaths that were filling the atmosphere it seemed like deja vu.
When she was younger she would get night terrors almost every night. Her eyes would dart open and while she could never remember the nightmares. She would turn to her imaginary friend that she always placed within reach, and when that couldn’t ease her fear, she found herself at her sister’s door. The sun would occasionally melt away the cold, and sometimes her sister’s love was enough to chase it away. Most of the time, however, the feeling left when it wanted, when it had emptied her mind of thoughts and stole away her appetite, after the sun had come and gone. A glitch that became a part of daily life.
There was one night when she was 11 when it was at its worst. Her father had just died in Mexico and she never even got to say goodbye. Mel’s heart and mind were spinning at the idea of cruelty and death. It made no sense to her. Her therapist told her that her nightmares were just her trying to make sense of a loss.
She doesn’t remember much about that night, but her sister, Lu, told her the next day that Mel was convinced there was a shadow sitting on her bed and crawling bodies on the ground. What Mel does remember is the flood of cold in her chest starting to spread from ribs to shoulders to femurs. She remembers screaming and she remembers the hot tears failing to make her feel their warmth. She remembers eyes that were blood brown. She remembers feeling sad. The next thing she remembers are Lu’s arms enveloping Mel’s slight shaking frame. Mel wanted to stop shaking, to feel her body calm but every time she tried to control her body it seemed to rebel more and more. Nothing seemed to quell the melding emotions.
“Focus on me”, Lu whispered, pulling Mel in closer, “I’m right here”. Mel wasn’t sure if Lu was scared but if she was she didn’t let on. Lu’s arms enveloped her and Mel rested her head on Lu’s chest, trying to focus on heat and comfort and the break of a light from the hallway into her room. She tried to just stay in this moment. Whatever had happened before, Mel wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to know. She just wanted those feelings gone.
“It’s just a nightmare, Mel. It's not real”
“You promise?”
“Yes. None of it is real, Carino”
When she woke up the sun was already up in the sky and her sister was sleeping next to her. The sun finished melting away the cold in her body and in those precious sunlight moments Mel forgot all about her nightmares. The only thing she cared about was that it was the third Saturday of the month and her Mother had the morning off. It usually meant that she could have something other than oatmeal and fruit for breakfast.
Mel looked at her sister in the bed. Lu snored softly. Mel laid back down and nestled her head into her sister’s arm. She couldn’t vanquish the fear or the cold. And her heart was tired of feeling things after that night. She did hold onto her imaginary friend. She stuck around for a bit until Mel was too grown up to conjure up these sorts of childish things. All it took was a snide comment and the laughter of her best friend to convince her to let go of it. After that, there was nothing left but to face it head on like an adult and work around the lapses in reality, the ice, and the nightmares.
In the dark now, amidst the shadows and the things that can only breath at night, Mel lifted her hands up to her face and moved the waves out her face just like anytime she was nervous. In the dark, in front of a creature surrounded by smoke, glittering with movement, and watchful eyes, Mel found herself trying to rationalize it all. Her heart began to slow and the thumps gave way to a silence so thick, she was sure it would suffocate her. The thing moved closer to her, never touching the ground, just floating, as the smoke tendrils started to get closer to her. Although fear was very present in her body, Mel couldn’t help but slow her breathing into an almost calm state. She locked eyes with the creature in front of her, it’s blood brown colors meeting her honey eyes. It stopped just shy of her, the tendrils of smoke reaching out and pulling back, as if afraid to touch her. They swirled around her, hesitantly, slowly, as if waiting for something. The creature bared its teeth and Mel flinched, the smoke fluttering against her cheek.
Laughter ruptured the moment, splitting time and space into pieces, until the creature pulled away and dissipated into some dark corner of the room. The laughter continued to grow, the chuckling more menacing than the creature that was just in front of her. A muffled voice rang between the gaps, the words crushed between air and vibrations, but the voice-the voice shook Mel to her core. It's tone, it’s timbre, just like everything about the night so far struck a chord, a familiar pitch that made her stomach sink down through her body, through the floor, straight to some fiery pit. Her brain itched with the beginning of recognition, a turning point ready to wash over her mind. Her chest began to ache, a threat of breaking open seemed to be too real for Mel. She could not handle the incoming pain, she could not handle the creature that had stood before her, she could not and would not feel this way. However, before she could name the voice, point to the resurfacing memory she felt fingers trace at her ankles, at her wrists. Mel looked down and the grey humanoids with all their flakey grey skin and oozing mouths seemed to cover the floor, their hands reaching for her, their touch leaving blistering heat in their wake. Suddenly, the laughter was interrupted by the clattering of bones, and the whisper like moans of the things that crawled to her.
Their bodies squirmed, their mouths oozing, their teeth the brightest thing in the room. Their eyes, however, were not just filled with anger and hunger, but sadness. The red lined grey eyes mirrored her own brown tired eyes.The curving red veins and the angry water lines made their eyes seem like they were on the brink of tears. Mel’s heart melted just a bit to let something other than fear enter her chest. It felt warm and heavy, like something threatening to pull her under the current of bodies squirming on her floor. However, She pushed those feelings away, closing off her emotions, and shook her head, rejecting anything other than the fear that was starting to drown out the rest of her feelings. Mel then came to her senses and pulled her feet onto the bed, wrapping her arms around the knees. She moved quickly, her body jerking, shaking, turning cold as her back met the white wall of her room. There was nowhere to go.
She was stuck.
Her heart began to beat with so much force it felt like it wanted to push through the wall and away from this room. Mel’s tears lined her face, and her curly hair was starting to fall into her face from shaking her head so much. But still. They came, they climbed on top of each other, their bodies writhing and convulsing in hunger.
The moans continued, and she could see the skinny arms waving, trying to climb onto the bed. Mel’s voice filled the atmosphere, the ringing of her words rattling against the walls, against the flimsy hungry bodies on the floor. She didn’t even know what was coming out of her mouth. The only thing she was sure of was the fear settling into bones and the heat on her face from tears. But those sensations were not enough to ground her, they were not enough to bring her back into her body. Instead, Mel retreated into herself, refusing to look at the bodies that had gotten on her bed, or even feel the hands that she was trying to kick away.
She refused. She refused because that was the only thing left for her to do. Her screams filled and she hoped that maybe someone would hear her, that someone would come. But there was no one. The hands of the humanoids were reaching out and before she could kick them away, one of them grabbed her. The fingers felt icy and burned her skin. Yet their hands tried and tried to grab at her legs, clasping down on her skin, their nails breaking through. She felt it all, The ice forming on her skin, the breaking open of flesh. She wasn’t sure what they wanted, but she knew that she had lost, that her body was going to be torn apart.
Her body was pushed against the wall, there was nowhere to go. Mel’s heart slowed and her jerky movements slowed to a stop. Was it worth it to keep fighting? She thought to herself. These monsters, these creatures were here and she was alone. What could she do to stop their hunger, to stop their cries, to stop them from tearing into flesh and bone. Nothing. She could do nothing. So she stopped kicking and instead brought her knees to her chest and put her head down. Mel’s chest began to fill with a heavy cold that made her stomach turn and flip, but her brain was already starting to shut down. A firing of sensations left on their own, disconnected from her mind.
Tears flowed down her face as she felt a gust of wind. Then came a piercing shriek. The sound and air, both heavy and vacant all at once, cleared the room within a moment. Mel, although stopped feeling hands on her legs, was afraid to look up. The ice in her chest was melted by the the new old worry that seemed to have defined the night so far. Yet, Mel was tired. She was tired of the night and the constant state her body was in.
She was tired and she wasn’t sure she had it in her to care, to wonder, to question what was happening. She didn’t care if it was real or if it was just in her head. Her body was aching, her mind was starting to fade to black. Her face was tear stained and suddenly, she could hear her own shaky cries. There were no more moans, or creaking bones, it was just her and her sobs filling the air.
Still she refused to look up. She refused to move. She felt the bed next to her sink a little, and warmth coming from her left side. It felt like someone was there. Like someone was waiting to be seen, but at this point, Mel was too scared to look up, to look to her left. The last time she felt like this was when she ran into a girl with dark brown eyes and short curly hair. The last time she felt like this she was in love with a girl who loved to read and was obsessed with Death Cab For a Cutie. Mel fell for Jessica with everything she had, sinking into new feelings, ignoring the ringing fear that seemed to outline each memory she had with Jess. Before Mel knew it, she found herself in a place she never could have imagined herself in.
She had seen her tías hide their bruises and pretend tears were allergies. She even held them as they cried when the men in their lives were gone all night and came back smelling like tequila. Mel always wondered if they asked their men where they were or who they were with but they must have always forgotten the answer because they stayed with them and put smiles on their lips and their lips on their husbands cheeks. She never wanted to be them. She thought being a lesbian would be her saving grace. Breaking the curse of bad husbands. That was her mistake. She had forgotten the violence that a woman could hold.
Without laying a finger on me or throwing drunken curses her way, Mel eventually found herself alone with no one to turn to. Lu warned Mel. Told her that love doesn’t work like that. She told Mel what she had found was not love but something twisted, broken, rotting. But at 21, how could Mel believe that something so big and heavy was not love. She thought that love was something you had to carry. So like her tias, Mel stayed. She stayed and She loved her with all her heaviness and bitter words. Mel’s chest hurt everyday a little more and every day it got harder to breath, but she stayed.
Mel decided to believe her when she put her hands on mine and told me I would never be enough of anything to be important. Mel believed her when Jess’ head was between her legs and told her she loved her. Mel believed Jes when she told her that love means changing how you dress. Mel believed her when she told her that Mel was her world. Mel believed Jess when she said that Mel didn’t need anyone else. Mel was alone and heavy and sinking. But she thanked Jess for saving her everyday.
She remembered the last day she spent with Jess. It started off so normal, so familiar, that even the pain and worry and breaking felt comfortable.
“You should change your shirt, babe”, Jessica told me, “Try to cover up a bit more. And maybe put on some make up?”. Mel nodded. Because that’s all she could do anymore. Jess was looking at herself in the hallway mirror, doing her last check before leaving for work. Mel had her first job interview in the last four months. It’s not that she didn’t want a job, but rather, she was having a really hard time leaving the apartment and Jess now shared. “I don’t think you’re gonna get that job. Maybe you should just stay home. Besides, we can’t afford to take Bean to doggy day care.” Jess’ voice was full of hard edges even as she wrapped her arms around Mel. She smiled and her lips met Mel’s cheek.
“I know it’s a long shot but It would be nice to have your support” Mel said turning around. Jess’ freckles were sprinkled across her face, a spatter of light brown paint. Her smile faded and she twisted her lips to the side ever so slightly as her eyebrows furrowed.
“Baby, I support you. There is no need to be aggressive”. She kissed Mel’s forehead and she found herself wanting so desperately to make Jess happy. Why couldn’t she make her happy? It was the question Mel had asked herself almost everyday for the past year.
She was tired. So tired. She could not fathom leaving that morning so did the only thing she could do; sit. Mel watched her walk out the door. Jess turned around and flashed her a smile. Her light brown eyes caught the light and her smile slowly grew as she gave a little wave. She was wearing tan flats, black slacks, and a denim button up. She looked amazing. She always did.
Mel recalled the night before. The yelling and cursing. The name calling and the sex. The guilt and the crying. The feel of her skin on hers. The anger in Jess’ eyes. The sleeplessness in Mel’s. It wasn’t the first fight they had like that. They had been together for three years. Fights happen, at least that’s what she told herself. However, Mel knew in her heart of hearts that she was afraid of Jess. She had been almost their entire relationship. And she was tired of feeling scared. She packed her backpack that day. She walked over to her best friends apartment, and although the relationship ended, it took her fear a lot longer to dissipate.
And now she was here. Afraid again. Feeling all or the horror seep into her body with a confident slowness, taking it’s time getting to her chest. Her shoulders shook as her sobs continued. Eventually, after seconds, minutes of clenching and holding, her body started to relax. Eventually the space next to her grew cold, painfully so. Her left arm began to burn, shards of ice seemed to push into her skin.
Mel flinched and looked next to her. A movement that came out of instinct, not choice. It was the shadow creature. It’s red brown eyes glowed behind the black of hood and smoke. It almost seemed to be darker, heavier, the smoke sinking instead of floating. Mel didn’t move, neither did her fear. The shadow creature was just there. Unmoving, unwavering, and for the first moment that night Mel felt something other than fear and anger and confusion. She felt… comfort? There was something calming about this being next to her.
As if this being was not just paying witness to the night but rather, accompanying her.
They sat there, the both of them. Mel’s tears drying, the creatures' tendrils falling towards the floor, neither one willing to meet each other’s gaze. Time slowly caught up to Mel, the seconds pushing minutes pushing the hour to three am. Moonlight shifted casting a light through her window, her feet illuminated. The creature looked forward, the cold becoming something both of them accepted. It was better than the heat the humanoid things brought. Cold expanded the dark, the room, like there was somewhere to go to when the fear became too much. The heat, on the other hand, seemed to threaten a pure and slow suffocating death. At least, that's how Mel felt right now. She was grateful for the cold. She pulled at the ends of her shorts until she found that blue thread she had spent the last two weeks playing with. By the end of this month she was sure she was going to unravel her pajamas.
Once the witching hour came, Mel started to melt and come back to her body. The glitching loop had begun to break and the gears of her body began to move again. The fear, although present and ready to take over, felt lighter. Not nearly as debilitating. She pushed herself against the wall, her arms wrapping around her, the cold following her, tracing her skin, leaving behind goosebumps. Mel squeezed in her legs, feeling the pressure of her thighs against her stomach, her arms around her shins, her chin on her knees.
The creature mirrored her movements. Their shadowy body pushed against the wall, their legs melting in their toro. Their eyes looked over at Mel. They didn’t push, they didn’t question, they just looked at her with a softness that shocked Mel. While time had caught up to them, there was a new tension in the air, a threat that could end the calm that was starting to settle into the room. Every breath seemed to pluck at that string, already fraught with tension. Mel looked back at the creature, but could not hold its gaze. Instead, she chose to focus on the heat, the creatures offered.
It was a slow softening of muscles, a gentle nudge to breath, maybe even a snap of a chord. Mel was curious, but not curious enough to move, to speak, to do anything. The same could not be said about the creature. It seemed to relish in the growing warmth. The shadow tendrils, while lacked their original wispiness, now reached out to her, small little outstretched hands that were curious. Mel didn’t move, but she also didn’t flinch. She let herself be surrounded by the gentle smoke. She closed her eyes, her shoulders relaxing and the from her brow starting to become undone. She took a breath. And then another. She was okay. She didn’t feel like she was collapsing anymore.
Mel tried to focus on her breathing, that what Lu taught her, but it was hard to keep her mind focused on the inhale and exhale. Her brain’s glitches were slower now, as if her breath had calmed them. Maybe Lu did have a point. Yet, there they were. Small bugs exhaling their own thought sequence into the pink of her brain. They made her feel like there was something familiar about this situation. Her heart melted slightly at the growing comfort, yet she felt the icy fear still in between brain ridges. Something was wrong. There was no world where both of these things could coincide, was there?
She opened her eyes. The tendrils had returned to the creature's side. Had it not been for the eyes she would not have recognized the creature next to her. The smokey frame melted into blue. “Nym”, Mel whispered.
Nym sat next to her, their glittering red skin shining from under the cloak that still kept them hidden. Their eyes were big and hopeful. Mel had at last recognized her. The familiarity and fear came together to form a sort of sadness that Mel had yet to experience. Still shocked, her eyebrows scrunched together, her eyes wildly scanning the being in front of her. Although the creature next to her looked different from the glittery being she had conjured up when she was a kid, it was without a doubt the imaginary friend that guided her through her youth. Maybe this was a glitch, a bleeding of past and imaginary memories into her present. Leaking and twisting shadows into haunted beings and flashing lights into bared teeth.
Nym’s eyes met her honey brown ones, and Mel knew that this wasn’t some short circuiting mistake. Although Mel didn't want to trust the growing comfort in her chest. Her mind was telling her that it was a lie. She felt the thought run against each other, each worry growing louder and louder. However, even her anxiety ridden mind couldn’t reason away the familiarity of the being next to her.
Nym. This was Nym. What happened to them?
Mel asked herself. She turned her head slightly, trying to truly look at the being in front of her. She tried to take in the dark, the glitter, the ridiculous and the frightening aspects that seemed to reside in this new Nym. Mel traced the outline of Nym’s figure. They were bigger than Mel remembered. Her Nym was small, petite, a wispy thing. This version was tall, with limbs varying in sizes. This version looked mangled. Pressure built up in Mel’s chest. She looked away from Nym and looked at the cloak. At first glance it looked black, but from this angle, at this light, in this second, Mel could have sworn it looked like the blue comforter her dad bought for her. She shook her head, wanting to chase that feeling far away. She forced herself to look back up and meet Nym’s gaze.
Their eyes were the most familiar. The most recognizable part. Looking at them up close, she wondered why it didn’t dawn on her before. They were almond shaped, just like hers, they were brown, just like hers, they were sad, just like hers. The red flecks were gentler now, than they seemed like before. A muted red she had added because it was her favorite color at the time. The pressure in her chest was building and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. However, before she could look away completely, the shimmer of Nym’s teeth caught her attention. The razor points sticking out and cutting into their bottom lip, a soft oozing blackish liquid trailing down here and there. The Nym she knew never had that. The Nym she knew was soft and kind and patient and nothing like this. Yet, as she looked at the trailing blood that was falling down her lips, to chin, down her through, a flash of a dream came at her.
Hands.
Hands rushing up on her body.
Hands grabbing, tearing.
She was pinned between her bed and the creatures. She felt their nails tear skin and their breath hot on her face. She was drowning. Her chest was heaving, her cries interrupting the air flow to lungs. Mel fought, kicking, screaming, crying, trying to get all these corrupted corpses off of her. She called for help but before fear could completely take over her body, she felt her body slow down. Mel felt a calm, gentle relaxation of her body. She gave up. It felt empty. The pressure in her chest was getting unbearable and Mel was shocked that she could still breathe through the pain. She gave up. She gave up and she recognized that scene, that feeling from just earlier that night.
She had lived this night before. Tonight was a variation of many. With humanoids and smokey demons and pain and fear. Her eyebrows furrowed and she let out a soft sigh. She let her head fall slightly, her right hand coming to her forehead, as if to stop the incoming realization and memories. Nym moved closer to her, and offered their hand. Mel looked at their hand. She sat up, her face contorted with confusion and a new found wave of adrenaline. She bit her lips and looked at the outstretched limb.
It was mostly covered by the cloak, but she could make out a grey amid the smoke and black shadows that surrounded Nym’s hand. She looked up at Nym, her eyesight becoming blurry with tears. Suddenly, a laugh interrupted the moment. Mel’s heart started beating even faster, threatening to tear through bone and muscle and out into her room. Without thinking even further, her hand reached out and grabbed Nyms hand.
The laugh grew louder and louder, before dividing up into a chorus. Cold flooded her chest, giving her rising heartbreak a startling stop. Mel pulled her hand away from Nym’s but it was too late, something had been unlocked and now Mel had to face it. Each of the laughs and voices grew. Comments about Mel, cutting remarks surrounding her life, seemed to rebound against the walls of the room, hitting her hard. She wanted to scream. The pressure in her chest was breaking her down. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, as if with every added voice and chuckle, she was losing something. She closed her eyes tightly, tears pushed out, but even with her eyes closed she could see them. She would recognize them anywhere.
She smelled him. The musky scent of a man who smoked and spent all his time outside. She refused to open her eyes. But as he placed his hand at the small of her back, she felt herself recoil. But there was nowhere for her to go. Heat from his hand radiated into her body and she hated every second of it. It didn’t take long before memories of a college party she could hardly remember come back. The bits and pieces growing in her brain, taking up more space than she had ever let them. They were heavy, drenched in tears. Water can be heavy too. Heat can be heavy too.
Still she refused to look at him. Her face twisted in pain but still she remained silent. She tried to detach. To divorce herself from this. To float away to somewhere out of reach and out of sight. But she was trapped. In this moment, there was no breaking the loop that had started. In this moment she had nowhere to run, no way of controlling the fragments slicing her mind up.
All of a sudden she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. A gesture she had missed. The tears were coming steadily while her breath continued uneasily. She could feel like her body was shaking, but she couldn’t stop her shoulders from moving, or her sounds coming out from her mouth. She had missed her. Her ex girlfriend stood next to her, wearing her usual button up and dark jeans. Mel looked up at her. Jessica’s looped up in a small smile. Mel fought the urge to smile back, to fall back into her arms. Jess could always make Mel feel comforted, to ease all the worries, to make them disappear, as if they never mattered. That’s exactly what Mel wanted. For all of this to have been in her head. For all of this to disappear. For her to disappear.
Jess moved forward, her hands coming to cup Mel’s face, wiping her face ever so softly. Mel breathed and closed her eyes again, trying to catch up to her now racing heart. She let go and her hands came down to the cold sheets of her bed as she melted into Jess. The fear lingered in her chest, but it was a pain she could manage. She could manage this. So she let herself lean against Jess. She breathed into pain and let the cold air fill her lungs. It tasted stale and made her feel heavy, but anything was better than pressure and hurt that she was stuck in a few moments ago. It was as if she was stuck in some black tar. Eventually it didn’t even matter that she was afraid, she just couldn’t handle the sheer hurt and shame that started to flow through her. It was overwhelming, that heat, she couldn’t stand it.
Mel couldn’t shake the last of the blistering pain and her breath was still shaky. However, her tears had slowed and her heart was able to move easier. Her body still felt hot, as if it was running rampant with an infection. Jess’s embrace got tighter. Mel opened her eyes and tried to pull away, but Jess wouldn’t let her. She felt Jess’s arm around her waist pull her closer against her.
“Jess let go”
“Mel, you had another nightmare”, Her voice was forceful, “I don’t really think you should be alone anymore”
“I’m okay right now” Mel tried to reason, attempting once more to move away from Jess. She looked at her, her light brown eyes shadowed by the darkness of the room. “No you’re not. You might be losing it a little, baby” Jess said, her nails digging into her skin.
“Stop, Jess, that kinda hurts” Mel’s voice came out softer than she intended. She was very tired, too tired to fight against the coming embrace. Jess pulled her into a hug. Mel’s head rested against her shoulder as her arms were trapped underneath hers. She smelled of vanilla and lavender. Mel’s hands were balled into fists as she kept herself from pushing Jess off of her.
Crazy? She thought that Mel was going mad. But she wasn’t. The anger started in her stomach and was coating over all the pain and fear that was still inside of her. It grew and grew. Mel was practically vibrating with it. There was no way all of this made her insane. There was no way that all of this wasn’t real in some way. No way. She felt Jess. She felt the heat of hands. She felt her skin break open. She felt the hurt. And all it was real. It was real. She was sure of that.
“Why don’t I stay with you tonight?” Jess’s voice was it’s usual honey over iron. Sweet in all the right places, hard and cold everywhere else. She knew that voice. The lilt and turn telling her to listen or there would be another fight. That was the thing, Mel didn’t have a lot of energy left to fight. To yell or to scream. It took everything she had to just feel the anger that bubbled with every soft caress and carefully planned sentence. So she laid down and closed her eyes.
The next thing she heard was crying. The sobs were twisted and familiar. Her eyes shot open and she got up and out of bed. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew she had to follow the sound. It didn’t take her long. She found her mother, thinner than she remembered, younger too. Her grey hair was replaced with dark brown locks pulled into a messy updo with a clip She was crouched on the floor between her bed and the well. A small space where things often got lost. Surrounded by dust and random bottle caps from prior sleepless nights, her mother was crying. Her face was scrunched up in pain, her cries lingering in the air. Mel knelt down.
“Mama?”, she didn’t answer. Instead her mother turned away from her. “What wrong?”. Mel tried to keep her voice soft and kind, but a part of her was worried about what she had stumbled upon. She reached out a hand to try and comfort her mother.
“Dejame”, Her voice was stern, cruel even. There was anger there. A lot of it. Her mother still carried it too. Some of it in worn down shoes, other morsels in her prayers, but most of it she carried in her body. It aged her. She lifted her hands up to rest on her knees and while her fingers got lost in her hair.
“Mama, let me help you”, Mel’s voice came out meaner. She was angry too. She knew where this was going and she didn’t want to relive it. Not again. Her brain, infected with bugs and glitches, knew that her mother was going to lash out and tell her that her father was taken away, that they went to the factory where he worked and took him away. She would yell it. Unable to control the sheer frustration and loss in any way. Not that she should have had to. She lost her husband. Mel lost her dad. But, her yells and cries only made Mel feel even more scared. She wasn’t sure how but she was sure that somehow it was her fault. It was her fault her father was taken. That somehow all her prayers for him to be home more backfired and God had taken him away.
Her heart, even though it had survived it once, could not bear to hear it again. So she got up and left her mom in that dusty corner. She didn’t want to absorb her sadness, her anger, Mel had enough of it on her own. She walked over to the furthest corner of her bed and pulled her knees against her chest. She felt so small. Crushed by the anger and hurt that seemed to swirl inside her chest and guts. She cried. She cried quietly in order to let her mother’s pain take up the space.
“Mija”, a stern voice filled the air. It too was angry, each vowel a cutting edge. Mel sunk into the corner more. “Look at me”. Mel sunk deeper into herself, into the corner she had tucked herself in. She recognized the voice. She just couldn’t bear to look at him. Her chest was bursting with heat and hurt, there wasn’t room for anything else. Her body could only shake and cry. Mel could only break.
It didn’t matter that her dad was there. It didn’t matter that this was the first time she was hearing his voice since she was a child. It didn’t matter because she was already being torn apart by everything else that Mel just couldn’t bring herself to trust the voice and look. She couldn’t. Mel knew that she would melt. Mel knew that her heart would not be able to take it. More than that, Mel was afraid to open her eyes and find him gone. So she did the only thing she could do. Sit. Stay.
Cold started to seep back into the night. Her skin prickled with the new found chill. The cold, while did nothing for the breaking and tearing that was driving Mel insane, allows her to stretch into the space she was taking up. Her screams now grew louder, her howls, something she didn’t even recognize. Her legs relaxed into her bed as she tilted her head up. Her eyes were still closed but her sobs were open and almost seemed to crush her further. She wished for the pain to go. She hoped for a god to hear her, to look at her, and give her a reprieve. However, a part of her knew better to hope for that. There are no gods. Just scary things and glitching brains. Those were real. Still she wished.
Mel leaned against the back wall, her shoulders hitting the grey pain softly. The cold reached her chest and she felt her sobs subside, but her tears still flowed down cheeks, down her neck, and into the mess of sheets.
“I can hold it, if you need me to”
The voice was so soft. Mel could hardly make out the words. She slowly blinked her eyes open. She was facing Nym. Nym was by her feet, floating slightly above the bed. They looked like they were kneeling adn this time their cloak was off. Nym’s skin glittered with blue and grey and black. The shiny bits looked almost like shards of glass. Their eyes, however, were full of sadness.
“What?”
“I can hold all of this”, Nym pointed to her chest, “I can handle it”.
Mel looked at Nym, her eyebrows knitted in confusion. Mel shook her head and looked down at her hands before bringing them to her chest. She sat with the words Nym uttered. She sat and held her palms to her chest, trying to figure out what she meant. Nym floated closer, the smoky outline brushing just above her skin. Nym reached with their right hand, their palm stopping shy of where Mel’s hands were. The thought entered her mind and it made sense.
Nym was offering to hold her pain. To hold everything for her so that she wouldn’t have to feel this way. So that she wouldn’t have to live in the moments that tore her open. Nym had held them before. And Nym was giving her a choice. Mel moved her hands and let Nym’s palm meet her chest. They closed their eyes while Mel kept her’s open, determined to understand what was going on. As soon as Nym’s palm pushed against her chest, she felt the cold seep in. A liquid numbing sensation that erased all the tearing and breaking and ache.
Mel could breathe again.
Then she realized that this wasn’t the first night this had happened. A fuzzy memory came forward before the last of the cold settled into bones and blood and brain. Her second night alone in this apartment. Just a few months after she had left Jess. About a year before now. The day her nightmares came back. The night she stopped being able to sleep. She met Nym once more and just like tonight and every night since then, she was given a choice.
She could hold all the feelings, the memories, the facts in her body. Or she could hand them over to Nym. She could give everything she couldn’t deal with to them and she could live her days without the weight and the tearing and the fear. But her nights, well, they will always look like some version of tonight. And she would be offered the same choice again tomorrow. And the night after that. Until she decided to hold it all.
Mel wasn’t sure she was ready for that. But she was tired of this. Remembering all her past nights, well, it made her body heavy and her mind foggy.
So, she did, the only thing she could think of doing. She closed her eyes, lashes kissing cheeks, eyebrows unknotting, lips parting ever so slightly.
She had asked her mother once why people needed to sleep. It was one of those innocent questions that could have been dismissed or simply answered with a simple sentence. Her mother, however, knelt down in front of 6 year Mel and decided to weave a story. Her mother always loved making the world filled with magic and things not of this world. So her mother told her that sleep is when your soul can finally stretch and grow and visit the dead and the living. Time stretches and loops and opens.
She remembers a time before these nightmares. She remembers a time where her dreams were filled with light and movement and joy. That was a long time ago. She wasn’t sure that existed for her anymore, but still, she yearned for it. She wasn’t sure about the world her mother had once told her about, but she was sure that it had to feel freeing to sleep and truly rest. Mel felt lost. Her days fed into terrible nightmares and every day felt foggier than the last. Tonight was a choice.
She opened her eyes and looked into Nym’s and chose.