Dark Currents

2

During my waking hours, it's easy to forget the what and the where. The dark secrets I've tucked down deep inside myself with smiles and cups of Brew with Kinami; festering beneath the façade I've spackled over it in words and deeds. But you can't hide from your secrets at rest, vulnerable in the shifting state of dreams.

And in my dreams, I drown.

Strapped to the gurney, my body angled to the blank wall across from me. Nerves crackle through my body, an internal hum of electric energy that leaves me jittery and unsettled. There is anticipation in the air, in the watching faceless white coats just visible in the thick horizontal slit windows. A bomb wouldn't crack that glass, and that knowledge sits heavy in my stomach, a churning lump threatening to crawl up my throat.

I didn't volunteer for this. My heart pounds a painful rhythm in my chest, caged against my breastbone where it tattoos the shape of my fear. I'm not alone here. One in a row of gurneys, each occupied by a strapped down man or woman in the same white scrubs. But where the others were sat side by side, I am the only one in a walled off space.

'Begin the summoning.'

I jump at the voice, pouring through the speakers tucked in the upper corners of the room behind me. A fizz of interference shudders through the last word. A hint of what is happening beyond this room, where the white coats swarm with activity. The staccato beat of my heart rises to a hummingbird buzz, my body shivering uncontrollably when the previously black wall cracks down the middle, rolling back into unseen crevices to reveal a writhing mass of fluid suspended in the air.

Despite the fear thrumming through my veins, the motion is mesmerizing, my gaze following the spinning, throbbing movements, until the first scream breaks. My shoulders hunch, reality coming down like a ten-ton weight. The sounds beyond the walls are desperate and raw. I can feel the pain in those cries like blades caressing my skin in dark promise. Straining against the bonds chafes my skin but I need to get away from those cries, away from this strange mass of moving fluid and everything it represents.

The mass ripples, heaving, as a bulge pushes forth. I open my mouth to scream when the bulge bursts. Water rushes forth, pouring from the shuddering mass, filling the room too fast, far too fast. The water rises around me, soaking into my scrubs, and swallowing my screams. It's not until I've been submerged that I realize the water is only around me. The walls are untouched, while the water sloshes, a living thing, surrounding the gurney, rising above my head.

I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Fear throttles my better judgement. There is something else in the water, with me, surrounding me. Something that brushes against my restraints. Something I can feel, brushing around inside my mind. I need air. I'm so scared. I open my mouth and let the water in.

The scream chased me into waking. I clawed at the back of the couch, levering myself upright from my tangled blankets. The apartment's frigid but sweat dripped down my back. I swiped a hand across my forehead, sucking in lungful and lungful of air, forcing myself to breathe through it. Goosebumps rose on my skin, a telltale hum making me look up at the coffee table, where the glass of water I'd set down earlier was disturbed. The glass had tipped, but not fallen, the rim creating a wobbling grind where it slowly spun over the scarred wooden surface.

The water from inside hovered above the glass, slowly twisting in a helix pattern.

"Fuck," I spat, snatching at the glass. The helix collapsed in on itself, water splattering over the paper files I'd been reading before bed. Clutching the empty glass to my chest, I was too busy freaking out to immediately act. Watched the ink run until the internal voice that had ensured I survived this long roared to life.

Move. Fix it. My body lurched upward, ignoring my wobbling mutinous knees as I rifled through the kitchenette drawers. The bundle of safe had been burned down to a barely useable nub, but it would do for tonight. My hands shook as I struck the match but once the familiar smoke curled through the air, a knot of tension released from inside my chest.

My heart rate had almost returned to normal as I waved the smoking sage around the couch I'd slept on. Like all old wives' tales, there was a grain of truth in the idea of sage dispelling evil spirits. What it dispersed was no spirit, but the sage smoke would break up and conceal the energy expelled by what my subconscious had done while I dreamed.

A nightmare, a memory.

I shook myself, letting the sage smoke itself out. That was the third nightmare this week. Not grabbing more sage on my way home had been sloppy. Especially if I was determined to stay in this location.

So tired of running.

Distracted by the nightmare and its aftermath, the sudden knock on the door startled me. A glance at the glowing red numbers on the digital clock said it was way too late or too early for visitors, and there was a quiet urgency to it. I realized how it had to be before I opened the door.

"Tru, what's wrong?" It was three in the morning and my young neighbor stood wide eyed and shivering outside my door.

"There's something downstairs," she whispered. Now that the door was open, the true chill in the air slapped me in the face. My breath emerged in a crystalline fog, while a chill that had nothing to do with the cold crawled over my skin. Tru was right, there was something here that didn't belong.

"Come inside Tru," I said, my voice a little sharper than intended. Tru didn't seem to mind, rushing past the hole I made for her into the sage scented air of my apartment. She leapt onto my couch, curling up and hugging her knees. Tru wasn't a crier, but she was obviously scared and that set my teeth on edge. "Is your mom at work?"

She swallowed and nodded.

"Can you tell me what you saw?"

A frown creased her brow. "I couldn't see it. But's there. It felt hungry. I didn't like it." Her small chin trembled, sparking a deep anger inside my chest. A pensive look crossed her face. "Are you going down there."

I wanted to tear whatever it was apart for scaring Tru. "Yes. I'm going to make it go away."

Tru hugged herself tighter. "Be careful, Jo."

Smoothing her hair, I braced myself as I opened the door again. "Lock the door behind me. Don't open it for anyone, not even me."

Her expression of disquiet deepened. "But, how will you get back in?"

"I'll have the key," I lied. Shutting the door before she could protest further, I waited long enough to listen to her hesitant steps approach the other side, before the lock slid into place. A flimsy barrier to what could be lurking downstairs but between the lingering sage smoke and the hints of my presence, it would hopefully keep Tru safe.

When the world fell, and most of the government systems in place with it, what remained were the corporations. A sort of governing system unto themselves, they ran unchecked, carving up the carcass of the world amongst themselves. One corporation ran most of the new eastern coastline of North American, where Old Boston sat on the fringes.

And like all the corporations of the new, bespoke world, this one created more hazards than it solved. Creating cracks that all manner of dark, treacherous, beings to slip through.

Creeping down the stairwell in careful, silent steps, the temperature continued to plummet to the point the residents in the other apartments were in danger. The cold was a presence, a curious predator that brushed against my body, wondering why I didn't react to it. Moving unhindered, I made it to the landing on Tru's floor.

The push bar handle was so cold, if I'd been a normal person, it would have frozen and peeled off the top layer of skin. If I was a normal person, I would have been running for the hills by now. But I haven't been a normal, or possibly a person, for a long time. 

Pushing open the door that sealed off the floor, icy pitch blackness waited for me, the usual hall lights frozen off. All signs of life had come to a standstill. Were the other occupants already dead? How had Tru avoided this fate and made it up to my floor was worrisome but something I couldn't examine now, not with that presence reaching out and trying to hook itself into me. This close, I could sense what didn't belong here, a grotesque bloated otherness that squatted in the dark. It sensed me too.

Time to go say hello.