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Bluefin

bluefin

It was getting harder and harder to get Pacific bluefin tuna. Yeah, I could get other varieties, but everyone knows Pacific bluefin is the best. Especially for sushi. I contacted supplier after supplier, and all of them told me the same thing: they were being pressured to phase out the product and the prices would continue to rise because the demand was higher than ever.

My customers are well off. They can afford the best, so they demand the best. If I can’t give them what they demand, they’ll go elsewhere. In this competitive restaurant environment, if that happens, I’m done for. You can imagine my growing panic as the prices for bluefin rose and the supplies dwindled. Sure, my customers would pay whatever I charged when I could get it in, but that was becoming less and less frequent. The bigger restaurants would get first dibs. Why sell one to me when you can sell three or four to the guy down the street, especially when he had enough cash on hand to outbid me?

I was getting ready to give up hope. My sales were at an all-time low as the customers sought a better, more high-end selection from my competitors. In my desperation, I realized I’d be willing to circumvent the law if it meant staying in business. Staying in business meant my girls could stay at Yale. It meant my wife could continue receiving top-quality nursing care in our home while her Alzheimer’s worsened. I wasn’t ready to take that all away from them.

Ten years ago, I met a man named Satoshi. He was the nephew of one of my suppliers. He’d gone into business for himself and got into quite a bit of trouble for poaching some endangered sharks to sell their fins to the Chinese market. I think he spent a couple months in jail and had to pay a pretty big fine, but rumor had it that he’d emerged a new man. He reformed his business and appeared to be extraordinarily successful. It was that extraordinary success which caused me to get in contact with him.

To me, it appeared Satoshi was too successful. His business was small compared to the other suppliers in the area, but he was living a life of luxury. He drove a Bentley when the other guys drove BMWs. He had three houses in the most expensive areas of the city when the other guys had one. That kind of thing. I had a feeling he was into something extra.

Within an hour of our meeting, Satoshi said he could get me Bluefin for 80% below market price. To say I was surprised was an understatement. In fact, I laughed in his face. He remained serious, though, and insisted he wasn’t making it up.

Apparently, there was an area off limits to fishermen where Bluefin congregated in massive numbers. They were attracted to the warm water or something. Satoshi’s connections were in the Japanese coast guard, and they’d been planning a pretty big scam where their patrol boats got rigged with fishing gear and they could haul up Bluefin at night and sell them off at dawn. All they needed was a buyer.

80% below market price. I didn’t ask any questions and just said yes. I was fairly sure the police would break in through the windows and arrest me as soon as I shook Satoshi’s hand, but they didn’t. Satoshi just smiled at me as I wrote him a check. He told me I should expect the first delivery in the morning.

True to his word, at 5am, an unmarked truck pulled up in front of my restaurant. Two men got out, opened the back of the truck, and pulled three gorgeous bluefin from the icy compartment. Two were flash-frozen, one was ready for preparation. They brought them into the kitchen, helped me put two in the freezer, and left without saying a word.

I broke down the unfrozen one. It was perfect. The meat was firm and succulent. The samples I tasted were as good as the expensive stuff. I say “good” despite the fact I’m not actually a huge fan of the fish. Go figure. But I could still tell when I was tasting the real deal, and this most certainly was the real deal. I went and drew a huge advertisement on our sidewalk chalkboard. I was going to sell the bluefin dishes for half what my competitors were asking for. Then I went into the kitchen, started to prepare the fish, and felt relieved for the first time in as long as I could remember.

Dinner service was the busiest in the history of my restaurant. Word spread on social media and the place was packed from open to close. People who’d never been able to afford bluefin showed up once they learned how low the price was. The night was spectacular. So was the following night. And the night after.

I was delighted to take home many, many bluefin dishes to Aiko. She’d been having a rare, multi-day stretch of lucidity, and it warmed my heart to see her eating her favorite food and relishing her time spent with me. If I could feed her the food she loved most and could actually afford to do it, I was going to. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her happy.

I received delivery after delivery from Satoshi’s guys and was making money hand over fist. I was tight-lipped about where I was getting my supply, and the competitors were scrambling to keep up. Aiko drifted in and out like those with Alzheimer’s do; but no matter how far gone she was on some nights, she always perked up when I served her the bluefin she adored.

I started to grow a bit concerned, though, because it looked like Aiko had developed a skin condition. She’d bruise very easily and her skin was so delicate. Her nurse would have to be extremely careful when brushing her teeth because her gums would bleed badly. I was told it was a nutritional deficiency. Aiko was given some injections to help bring her levels back to normal.

The customers kept coming to the restaurant but Aiko got worse every day. Her nurse said if she didn’t start to show signs of improvement soon, she’d have to bring her to the hospital. When I stroked my wife’s hair, I was dismayed to see that some came out in my hand.

On a busy Saturday night, the nurse called me in a panic. Aiko had developed terrible, bloody diarrhea and was vomiting blood. She’d been rushed to the hospital and was in intensive care. I told the restaurant manager to take over and I sped to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Aiko was in a room by herself. She was stuffed with tubes and plugged with wires. Monitors displayed countless readouts that meant nothing to me. I stared at her from behind the glass and told the doctors I needed to go in and sit with her. They refused. I protested and fought, but I couldn’t get through the door. It was locked. Behind the glass, a torrent of blood erupted from Aiko’s mouth. It filled the tube and poured out over the sides of her face. A door on the other side of the room opened and doctors wearing yellow suits and masks ran in. They closed the curtains and I was left with Aiko’s nurse. We cried together.

My cell phone rang. Satoshi. I don’t know why I answered, but I did. He was beside himself with what sounded like terror. I barely could make out what he was saying, but in his panicky outbursts, I realized he was telling me something was wrong with the fish he’d been selling me.

I demanded that he calm down and speak clearly. “What about the fish, Satoshi?”

“You have to stop using it,” he choked out, panic still tainting his voice.

“Why?,” I asked, as pinpricks of dread rose along my back and neck. All I heard on his end was weeping. “Satoshi!,” I yelled, causing the nurse to jump.

His voice trembled. “I didn’t know they were getting it from there.”

“Oh no,” I breathed. I closed my eyes. “Satoshi…where are they getting the bluefin?”

An eternity passed as I listened to the man sob weakly into the phone.

I screamed his name with such violence I felt something in my throat tear.

In a tiny, almost childlike tone, Satoshi answered me.

“Fukushima Bay.”

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Bluebirds

Allow me to wax poetic about these tiny newborn birds. Never before have I felt such softness. As I reach for them, gentle prickles of static electricity cause strands of their avian gossamer to stand at attention before my fingertips trace whispers through their feathery down. My ears fill with the cooing of birds; two angels with wings outstretched. Two beacons of my newfound tranquility.

I sat, terrified, as they hatched the night before. Each one fought so hard to enter the world and battled to escape the confines of their once nurturing, but now worthless, container. But the fight went well for them. At the end of the battle, two strong, white doves met this world. Two porcelain baby birds. I watched, spellbound, as their mother expressed her thoughtless, impelled teleology to feed them before they could start to cry. And as the last bits of nourishment trickled down their throats, the warm body of their mother kept them protected against the dangers of night.

When I woke up this morning, the two baby doves greeted me with stares of admiration and love. I felt how hot the room was and noticed the dampness of sweat in my armpits and crotch. I shrugged away the discomfort. The little white doves needed warmth more than I needed clean, dry clothing.

The mother cared for the needs of her two white babies as I gazed at them with satisfaction. I brushed the belly of one with the back of my knuckle. Its down ruffled against my touch and stuck straight up as I traveled against its grain. Time passed and I stroked each of the tiny white babies for hours, savoring the sensation of their delicate fluff against my sensitive skin.

With each stroke, though, dull panic began an inexorable metastasis within my chest. These baby birds were growing. Even though part of me knew it was impossible to notice growth after only a day, its very prospect was abhorrent. No longer would they be soft, delicate, and tiny. They would be coarse. Thick. Bulky.

I buried my face in my hands and sobbed. I cried for so long I expected the two white babies to have grown up and flown away by the time I stopped. When I opened my swollen eyes, though, there they were – soft and tiny as ever. But their mother was gone.

I placed my tear-soaked hands over the faces of the tiny, white birds. I could hear their muffled coos of protest through my palms, but I remained resolute. My eyes closed and I imagined the quiet beauty of bluebirds; the birds of happiness. Minutes passed. Then hours. And then I knew I could let go.

The wide eyes of two bluebirds gazed adoringly at their mother, who had finally returned to care for them. I put their legs together and stretched their arms wide, as if they were perfect, angelic wings. Wings that would always be small, delicate, and soft. Glowing cheerfully in the nurturing warmth of the room, I stroked the downy lanugo dusting their tiny blue faces, chests, and bellies.

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Attempts to Repair the Irreparable

It was my rapist’s birthday the other day. Seven years ago, on that day, I endured the horror of having my autonomy stolen. Afterward, as the years dragged by, I grew to associate all birthdays with his. It took away a lot of the fun one might associate with the events. Especially the parties.

I’d been unwilling to break my silence about the experience. The people around me knew something must’ve happened. To them, there had to be some explanation why I changed from an ebullient extrovert into a person whose very essence screams, “stay away.” I didn’t say anything, though. I just remained cold and as detached as I could manage without being overly hostile. The masses of friends I had seven years ago evaporated into a few professional acquaintances. They didn’t need me, so I didn’t need them. I could manage alone.

So why am I writing this? Because I’m starting to make a change. Seven years of my life spent circling the drain wasn’t something I was ready to continue at 26 years old. Perhaps enough time had passed for me to start healing. The few books I’d read about trauma suggested that might be the case. The incident feels no less raw, though. The physical sensations haven’t dulled. Essential, daily bodily functions force the memory of his violence into every occasion. Every twitch of muscle. I have to sit there and think of him and how his atrocious legacy still dominates my body. The same body in which he planted his flag and claimed as his own. His body, rented by me.

But, as I said, I’d begun to change. Despite the hideousness of the prior seven years, I’d been able to hold down a good job. It’s basic web design stuff; nothing too glamorous. But the customers kept rolling in and the pay was good, so that small bit of positive reinforcement kept my finances afloat. More than afloat, really. Since I’d withdrawn so far away from all the fun and excitement I used to have, all I’d done was save money. Over those years, I was able to accumulate quite a bit in my savings account. Thanks to that, I was able to leave the city and rent a small cottage on a sprawling farm in rural Washington. The new scenery helped more than I’d expected.

The couple from whom I rent the cottage, Karen and Jessica, are in their 60s. You couldn’t tell by looking at them. Decades of hard work kept their bodies conditioned and strong. It wasn’t until they invited me to celebrate Karen’s 61st, which induced an involuntary shiver I was able to mask as a cough, that I had any idea they were so much older. I would’ve assumed mid-40s. They had no problem with my polite refusal of their invitation. On the day they interviewed me as a potential tenant, I told them I was private and, in an understatement that almost made me laugh, a homebody.

I spent my first month in Washington setting up the cottage. I arranged and rearranged the furniture, cleaned every surface I could reach, and even started a small garden in the back. I’m pretty proud of the garden. As we all know, Washington gets a ton of rain. That, in combination with the excellent soil quality, yielded the speedy growth of the basil, parsley, and rosemary I’d planted.

That month was the first time in seven years I didn’t feel the constant weight of my abuser on my back. Yes, I still remembered him many times each day. I still felt, with excruciating, perverse nostalgia, how much I cared for him even after he’d used me. But the terrible clarity of it all had begun to fog. Edges were blunted. I had three nights of amazing, dreamless sleep. Not once during those three nights did I feel his hot breath in my ear as he sobbed, “I’m sorry” with each devastating thrust. Things were quiet; as quiet as the dead I’d so often admired.

The next two months saw the gradual lifting of my mood. I became a frequent visitor to Karen and Jessica’s home. We would drink wine and talk. Sometimes we’d play Scrabble, which they eventually stopped suggesting because I knew all the 2-letter words and annihilated them every game. For a few brief moments, things felt, I’m cautious to say, like they did before the rape. I was laughing and talking with ease; my foul-mouthed sense of humor causing gasps of surprise and tears of laughter from the two women who’d made me feel like their daughter.

As the golden sunshine of summer transmuted into the leaden gray of winter, the relationship I’d developed with the couple, especially Karen, allowed me to do something I couldn’t believe. Late in December, a few days after Christmas, I revealed the assault to them. With a level of clinical dispassion of which I never imagined myself capable, I told them everything.

They were crying by the time I’d finished. When the last word of the story left my mouth, I felt invigorated. Proud, too. Proud of myself for having the courage to finally tell the story of why my life had changed for the worse so abruptly. Proud of the fact I’d found friends who could help me emerge from my shell and who genuinely cared about what had grown inside for those seven years. I loved them.

The night I wandered back to my cottage, tipsy from the bottles of local wine we’d shared, I collapsed into bed and fell asleep. He met me in my dreams. The rasping humidity of his sobbing apologies in my ear, the impossibly-heavy weight of his body on my back, and the incomprehensible indignation of having my autonomy stolen all coalesced into an interminable nightmare. When I awoke, sweating and shaking, it was still pitch dark. A glance at the bedside clock told me I’d only been sleeping for an hour. My sweat-soaked clothing clung uncomfortably to my skin, and I rolled off the bed to take a shower.

I stood up in the darkness, took a step toward the bathroom, and bumped into something. Someone. I gasped and reached out to push the person away. Strong, heavy arms wrapped around me. I shrieked and squirmed in a futile attempt to free myself. Putrid, wet breath filled my nostrils and changed my scream into throat-shredding retches. The arms gripped me tighter and my fingers dug into the assailant’s body. I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell he was naked. No clothing shielded his flesh from the assault of my fingernails, and I raked them over him, hoping the pain would make him release me.

My fingernails slid into his flesh far more easily than they should. I felt my first, then second knuckles disappear into his body. When I dragged them over his flesh, I felt the skin slough off and hang from my fingers. A smell, somehow even worse than his breath, filled the room. I choked and vomited against his chest. A thick, rasping voice choked out the words, “I’m sorry.” The pressure of his grip disappeared. The smell evaporated. He was gone.

Still in a panic, I ran across the room and flipped the switch for the main lights. The bulbs illuminated the puddle of bordeaux vomit on the floor. My fingernails, which I’d expected to be coated in foul slime, were clean. Confused and beyond terrified, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went through the tiny cottage. It was obvious no one was there. The door was still locked and deadbolted from the inside. No windows had been disturbed, either. But something had been in there. I went into the bathroom, placed the knife on the sink, and went to wash myself.

I showered with the curtain open, soaking the floor, so I could see everything. The knife was perched on the side of the tub and in easy reach if whatever it was came back. It didn’t. Nothing did. I towelled off and put on fresh clothes. As I cleaned my puke from the hardwood, I worried I had either consumed far, far too much wine that evening or I was going completely nuts. The knots of terror in my chest gradually untied as exhaustion took its toll on my consciousness. When I finally had the confidence to go back to bed, with every light in the cottage still blazing, I slept immediately.

The next morning, I told Karen and Jessica about my nightmare. They hugged me and made me breakfast and told me not to worry. I decided to wait to tell them about the purple stain on the hardwood until I tried another couple times to get it out. We ate our breakfast and the two of them griped about the inordinately cold temperatures which would make the next growing season a major pain for them.

After we ate, Karen and I chatted while Jessica went to organize their office. An hour later, she came back apologizing profusely. She handed me a piece of mail that had arrived a week after I’d moved into the cottage. It had been forwarded from my old address. Jessica told me it must’ve gotten mixed in with their bills and that she’d be much more careful in the future. I laughed and told her it was okay.

I tore open the envelope and read the short letter inside. My head began to spin. I asked if I could use the phone to make a quick long-distance call. “Of course,” Jessica replied. I dialed the number at the bottom of the letter. A woman answered. I asked to speak to Ryan. There was a pause, and in a voice much sadder than the cheerful “hello” I received when she picked up the phone, she answered me. Then she hung up.

I shook as I handed Karen the letter, which she read aloud to Jessica.

“Marie, I am finally doing what I should’ve done seven years ago. No, eight years ago. Before we ever met. Before I could hurt you. I don’t deserve to continue living. I’ve always wanted to say how sorry I am, but I destroyed those words for you when I did that unspeakable thing. Still, in my darkest moments, it’s something I need to say. And I know that need will go unmet as long as I’m alive, since I can’t bear the thought of making you endure the sight of me again. Once I’ve mailed this letter, I will do the only thing I can to adequately express my sorrow. If you need to know I’m serious about this, please call this number and ask for me.”

The number I called was written below the body of his message, followed by his scrawled signature. I thought of the embrace from the night before and the words that were drooled into my ear. My knees gave out and I fell to the floor, screaming as I cried. Karen and Jessica could only hold me as years of incomprehensible feelings flooded out in painful, wracking sobs. Over and over, they told me it was going to be okay. And, as is customary, peppered within their sincere assurances that things would get better were liberal declarations of, “I’m sorry.”

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An Unlucky Samaritan

When I was 17, I was in a head-on collision with another driver. I think I was unconscious for a minute or two after the impact. When I came to, I was confused and couldn’t feel any pain. I couldn’t move much, though. Something was pinning me. A downward glance showed me what it was. There was a metal rod impaling directly under my knee, through what the doctors later told me was my patellar tendon. It had pushed through the tendon, lifted my kneecap, and driven itself up the length of my thigh. It wasn’t too deep inside; I could see it bulging under my skin.

A minute later, I felt everything. I screamed and screamed, thrashing for a bit before realizing any movement only intensified the pain in my knee and thigh. Then I looked out the cracked windshield and saw the other driver. His devastated skull sat on his neck like a mashed fruit. I could see his tongue lolling out of his ruined mouth. Without a lower jawbone to hold it in place, it hung down to his Adam’s apple. The remaining eye stared, unblinking, at the damage its owner had caused.

Another wave of impossibly acute agony surged through me, blurring my vision and forcing me to bite down on my own teeth until I felt at least one molar crack. Some part of my consciousness registered the fact I was hyperventilating and worked to calm my breathing. A couple moments later, the wave had passed. I realized no cars had come upon our accident yet. I tried to reach into the back pocket of my shorts for my cell phone, but there was no way the rod in my knee would allow that much movement. In exchange for my attempt, the unbearable pain resumed.

Once I’d regained my senses, I looked again at the remains of the other driver. There wasn’t much I could make out. It looked he he’d had a beard; hair was puffing out from the skin of what might have been his cheeks. Even though he was the one who’d caused me all this pain, I felt bad he was dead. No one deserved to have that happen to them. While I studied the gore with morbid fascination, the man’s neck jerked and sent the fleshy wreckage of his face flopping back and forth. He jerked again. This time, his shoulders and torso moved as well. I gagged as the movement forced his head downward and bits of his crushed brain oozed from the hole that was once his face.

The man continued moving as if he was enduring a terrible seizure. My pain came back. Unable to bear the sensation, I blacked out. It couldn’t have been very long. When I came to, there was something wrong with the man’s body. Something I couldn’t understand. The hole where his face had connected to his throat was stuffed with something. It slid out in a thick, wet mass onto the twisted steering wheel and dashboard. From my vantage point, about six feet away, I could only describe it as a worm or snake. Still, it was unlike either of those things. The body was grayish-white and oozed heavy, milky yellow discharge from gaping pores which covered the entirety of its length. That length increased as I watched with growing horror.

The return of the pain in my knee was unable to overcome the fear sweeping over me at the sight of the monster. Over ten feet had unfurled from the carcass and had draped itself along the dashboard. It was lying on surfaces coated with pulverized glass from the windshield, and I could see chunks of it sticking in its pores as it moved. The thing didn’t seem to mind. Once another few feet came out, I saw its tail end finally discharge itself from the man. The parasite squirmed off the dashboard and onto the crumpled union of car hoods. The viscous, milky slime clung to every surface it touched and kept the creature connected to the contacted surfaces by thin ropes. It uncoiled completely and its full length lay wetly on our cars. The smell coming from its body was thick and putrescent with a revolting, cloying sweetness. I struggled not to retch, not wanting it to hear me.

The pores stopped oozing. An unsettling, peristaltic ripple passed through the thing’s body. Ugly flatulent sounds leaked from each pore, and I saw something moving inside them. With an explosive jolt that caused me to jump in shock, bright red tendrils burst out of its pores. Each one was about as thick as a pencil and every pore contained at least 20 of them. They grew and grew in length, some laying flaccidly on the cars and some erecting themselves and flopping around like severed electrical cables.

I screamed when a couple of the tendrils brushed against me as they grew. But seconds later, every one of them pushed downward and dragged the main body onto the surface of the road. An 18-wheeler was driving toward us. It screeched to a halt and I watched an overweight trucker stumble out of the cab and run toward us. First he looked over and saw the dead man was far beyond help. Then he saw me and my look of pain and terror. He opened his mouth, presumably to say he’d call 911, but the tendrils leapt into his mouth and throat before he could get a word out.

The trucker grasped the thick cord of tendrils invading him and tried to pull. More shot out from the thing in the road and wrapped themselves around his fat form. Over the course of a minute, the main body had been pulled over to the trucker. Gradually, the tendrils retracted from the man’s mouth while the body forced itself into his throat. The putrid seminal fluid again began to leak from the creature as it pushed deeper and deeper. A little while later, it was inside. The man was soaked from head to toe with the vile substance. But he no longer looked afraid. He just looked calm. He turned around and walked back to his truck, leaving a trail of milky-yellow slime. I heard the engine start and the truck drove away.

Another car noticed us soon after. The paramedics were called and I was brought to the hospital. I never told anyone what happened. I assume everyone was confused about what the slime was, but I didn’t hear them talk about it. All they were concerned about was the wound in my leg, which required two years to recover. I never saw the parasite, or any hint of it, again. It was another five years before I’d conquered my fear of driving. I’ve done my best to forget about what I saw. No matter how hard I try, though, I still shudder when a truck passes me and I see the driver through his open window. I know that thing is still in one of them. At least one.

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My Trouble With Fairies

Growing up, whenever my brother would get hurt, I’d blame it on my fairy friends. My parents never believed me and I’d get punished. It didn’t help that my brother said I was the one who pushed him or punched him or scratched him. No matter how much I protested, at the end of it all, I was the one who got in trouble. So, at a young age, I learned I was the only one who could see the fairies.

For some time, it was a mixed blessing. Having friends only I could see meant there wasn’t anyone who could tell them to leave me alone or that they had to go home because I needed to go to bed. It was nice to never feel lonely. The issue, unfortunately, was that the fairies were mischievous. They’d rarely listen when I told them to stop doing something. They would just laugh and flit about and continue with their fun.

Most of the time it was harmless, albeit obnoxious. They’d flutter their little wings under someone’s nose and make them sneeze or they’d knock someone’s elbow against a glass and spill their drink all over the table. That kind of thing. On occasion, however, their activities were more serious – especially when it came to my older brother.

The fairies didn’t like how Todd would talk to me. I didn’t think much of it; I was the younger sister and he was my bratty teenage brother. I just thought that’s how the world worked. The fairies begged to differ. And they wanted to make it known. That’s why they’d scratch and hit him. It went on for years as his treatment of me got worse and worse.

On a Saturday morning when I was in bed being lazy and listening to the rain fall outside, I heard a muffled scream from Todd’s room on the other side of the wall. The scream was followed by retching and gagging and Todd streaked past my doorway and into the bathroom where he vomited loudly and often. My parents noticed the commotion and came to his aid. Mom’s shout was loud enough to cut through the sound of Todd’s puking and Dad swore. That scared me. He never did that.

I stood in the doorway while the fairies giggled and floated in an iridescent orbit around my head. I knew whatever they’d done to my brother had to be worse than things they’d done in the past. My father father stormed from the bathroom and entered Todd’s room. He came back a second later with his fist full of something. He stood in front of me, eyes glazed with rage and disgust.

“What the hell is wrong with you?,” he hissed, and opened his hand.

I shrieked with surprise and disgust when I saw what he held. It was the body of a small bird, a sparrow, maybe, that was cut up and bleeding. Dislodged feathers stuck to the blood and greasy white discharge oozing from its truncated rear half.

“Do you have any idea how sick your brother can get from this?,” Dad asked. Behind his rage was a tone of deep concern and even fear. His fear only amplified my own.

“I…I didn’t,” I stammered, and my eyes darted back and forth as I followed the hysterically-laughing fairies as they swept back and forth across the carnage in my father’s palm.

“Stay here,” Dad ordered.

“But…,” I tried to interject, but he grabbed my shoulder hard with his free hand and held me against the doorframe. The din of giggles stopped. I heard them whispering amongst themselves.

Dad leaned down and pushed his forehead against mine. When he spoke, his words were clear and smelled like the coffee he’d been drinking.

“You are not to say another word. You are not to leave this room. I am taking your brother to the doctor, and if your mother tells me you’ve said anything or set foot outside, I promise you will regret it.”

He squeezed my shoulder harder and I winced and tried to fight back tears. He stared at me for a full ten seconds without saying anything, then he let me go.

Dad turned the corner to head downstairs and I saw what was coming but was too afraid to speak up. As he started down, I saw the fairies hurl themselves against the bottom of his foot before it had made contact with the first step. His foot landed awkwardly and his ankle twisted, sending him face first onto the uncarpeted wooden steps. The sound of his face impacting with the stairs seemed louder than anything I’d ever heard.

Mom called from the bathroom where she was still attending to Todd. Dad didn’t answer. I peeked around the corner. He was on his belly at the bottom of the stairs. He was moaning and weakly flailing his arms against the hardwood. His legs were still on the steps, but they didn’t move at all.

Mom came out and down the hall, glaring at me before turning the corner and seeing her husband. She gasped and rushed to his aid. Not wanting to make them any angrier than they already were, I turned back into my room. I winced when I put pressure on my right ankle and limped back to bed, where I sat and stared at the fairies.

They were laughing again. They flew like a shimmering, animated constellation around the room, weaving in and out of closets and drawers and galoshes. My ankle throbbed. The fairies formed a line in the air and held the formation for a moment, then they made a beeline for the dusty corner behind my dresser. They burst into peals of uproarious laughter and blinked out of view.

As the faint sound of sirens in the distance entered my ears, I gingerly walked to where the fairies had gone. I noticed a tiny feather. And then another. And another. When I reached the dresser and peered behind it, there was a clump of feathers and some blood right next to a small knife from our kitchen. I felt a pang of confused, disconnected recognition, but was shocked back to my senses by a fresh wave of pain from my foot and ankle.

I sat on the floor with my back against the dresser. I pulled up the leg of my pajama pants and examined my ankle. It was swollen and red. The top of my foot hurt, too, and I drew my knee to my chest so I could get a closer look. Again, I felt confused and out of place. The sirens were loud and close but I wasn’t paying attention to them anymore.

I looked around for my fairy friends, but they were nowhere to be seen. For the first time, when I desperately needed to ask them a question, they were gone. My confusion grew teeth and fear pricked the skin of my back and neck. My ankle hurt, but that wasn’t what was scaring me. It was my foot. Because even though I watched the fairies trip my dad, for some reason, the imprint of his work boot was etched in the skin of my foot – and my heel was stippled with tiny handprints.

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Why I Don’t Hike Anymore

leaves

I don’t want to write about this. I’ll try to keep it short. My doctor suggested I put it down on paper, though, so he can have a better idea of how everything happened. He’d never seen such a thing in his 30 years of practicing medicine and he actually wants to talk about my case at an ENT conference next summer. So why am I posting the story here? Because if I have to suffer through writing it, you might as well suffer through reading it. Yeah, I’m a prick.

I’d always been an avid outdoorsman. Hiking was my thing. After my divorce, I did what I thought I had to do: quit my job and hike the whole Appalachian Trail. You know how your coaches always used to say “walk it off” after a bad hit? Well, after being sodomized by the vicious cock of alimony, I needed the longest walk I could think of. So off I went.

It was March when I started and I was pretty damn cold for a while, but I knew it’d warm up as the hike progressed. Contrary to the wishes of my friends, I’d insisted on going alone. I was an experienced hiker. No, I hadn’t gone such a great distance before, but I was definitely in good physical shape and knew quite a bit about outdoorsy stuff from spending time in the woods with my father before he died.

To be honest, the first six weeks bored the living shit out of me. Yes, the scenery was beautiful. Yes, the feeling of accomplishment I expected to experience at the end of it all would be memorable. Still, it sucked. I found myself walking faster and faster just hoping to finish a day or so earlier so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.

On cue, when my boredom had reached its peak, I got an awful cold. It was a nightmare. It seemed like every ten steps I had to stop, pick up an old leaf, and blow a gallon of snot out of me. For those who are laughing at me right now and saying I’m stupid for not just blowing out snot rockets, hey – I’m glad I could give you something to laugh at. But the reality of the situation was that the shit up my nose was like rubber cement. The one time I tried to blow without a leaf, I got a trail of yellow slime going from my left nostril to my knee. So thanks for laughing, but fuck off.

Anyway, as the days went by and I’d Hansel-and-Gretel’ed the forest with mucousy leaves, I started to get concerned that my cold hadn’t gotten any better. Quite the contrary. My sinuses were packed with snot. And I mean packed; you know when you’re in bed and you put your head on one side and you can feel your sinuses drain a little and get some relief? There was no relief. And every few minutes, I was blowing progressively-thicker goo onto anything unfortunate enough to get within my reach.

There was one morning in early May, after I’d been sick for two straight weeks, that I knew I needed to hop off the trail and find a local clinic. I was fairly sure I had a sinus infection and it was severely affecting the amount of walking I wanted to do every day. I took a turn off the trail and in the general direction of a town.

The map indicated I’d be off the trail for almost a day. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but I really wanted to get some antibiotics. The way out was through. A few miles in, though, the pressure in my sinuses turned into blinding pain. I had to sit down and rest. There was no way I’d be able to get to town before dark at the rate I was going. I did my best to blow out the horrible contents of my nose, which was now dark yellow and as viscous as chewing gum.

I used my fingers to pull out as much as I could. There was almost no relief, though. Most of it was deep in my sinuses and no amount of picking or blowing was going to get it out. I wandered over to a small stream to wash my disgusting hands. As I pulled the slime off my fingers, I caught sight of something that caused me to gasp. I looked under my index fingernail. Buried inside the compacted dirt and snot was the unmistakable segmented body of a white worm.

Now I was really, really freaked out. I dragged the piece out from under my nail and inspected it. It wasn’t a whole worm. It looked like my fingernail had broken off either the front or back end of the thing. The pressure in my sinuses only intensified as my panic grew. I told myself the piece of worm had to have been under my nail before it I picked my nose. It was futile consolation. Every night for the last couple nights I’d heard what I thought was the moving and settling of my sinus contents. Now I knew. I’d heard them moving around. And that realization was where I lost it.

Rather than trying to blow out, I snorted the contents backward, trying to get them into my throat so I could spit them out. After a couple powerful snorts, I felt something hit the back of my throat. I spit it onto the ground. On the brown pine needles, a fat white worm half the size of my pinky wriggled in yellow snot. I screamed.

Over and over I tried to spit more of them out. Only one came. With the slightly diminished sinus pressure, I could feel them for what they were. This was the first time they’d been able to make any significant movement because they’d been so tightly packed together. But now, they wandered. I felt their thick bodies crawling around behind my nose and under my eyes. I started to hyperventilate when I felt one start to slither down into my nostril. I scratched and pulled at it with my fingers, but it wouldn’t budge. It just sat there, writhing.

The sensation was indescribably horrific and I needed the fucking thing out of me. I squeezed my nostrils together with my hand as hard as I could. I felt the worm burst inside and a torrent of gray sludge poured out of its destroyed body. Now deflated, I could pull its body all the way out. It was almost three inches long. It slapped on the forest floor like a used condom.

While the terror I felt was immeasurable, having expelled three worms from my sinuses gave me more relief from the pressure than I could have imagined. I still could feel others slithering inside me, though. But my breathing was much, much better. I started to run toward town. I didn’t stop until I got there.

There isn’t much else to say. I got to the main road and a kind soul let me hitch a ride to the clinic in the back of his pickup. The local doctor was pretty surprised, but he didn’t seem to think I was in any danger. He asked where I lived, did a little research, and found a highly-accomplished ear, nose, and throat specialist only a couple miles from my house. Later that night I was on a plane back home. The pressure change of the airplane wreaked havoc on my sinuses and it felt like the worms inside were throwing party, but I managed to stay somewhat composed. The guy next to me didn’t particularly like how I kept snorting up phlegm and spitting it into the puke bag.

The next morning, I met with the ENT guy. He did a whole bunch of stuff with small cameras that made me gag and he made a lot of sounds like he was absolutely fascinated by what was in me. After he pulled seven of the things out of me and warned that there are probably eggs inside that’ll need to get dealt with sooner or later, he tried to figure out how they’d gotten there. It only took about 20 minutes before he concluded I’d gotten their eggs in my nose from one of the leaves I’d used as a tissue when I first got the cold. Lovely.

So that’s that. Over the next couple weeks, he did some stuff to clean out my sinuses and gave me some pills he said would kill anything else that might be up there. Last week, he asked me to write this shit so he could share it with his ENT buddies who were really jealous he’d gotten to treat such a cool case. Well, hi guys. Every time I blow my nose I expect to see a fat worm looking up at me from the tissue asking why I evicted it from its home. Have a great conference.

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My dad was a safety officer at Chernobyl during the meltdown. Before he died last year, he told me about something he saw that night. I can’t keep it to myself.

I won’t give a long backstory because it doesn’t matter. Basically, he got the job through a former schoolmate of his who worked in some mid-level Party position. Dad was down on his luck at the time and Egor happened to see him at a local tavern. They got to talking, and Egor pulled some strings and gave him the position. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t qualified. “Half the guys aren’t,” he was told.

Anyway, dad started working there in 1984 and did a pretty good job. He did what he was told; most of it was just checking dial readouts and making sure pipes were sealed and whatnot. In late 1985 and early 1986, he started noticing far more Party representatives coming in and out of the plant. Usually the visits were limited to compliance officers and hazardous materials supervisors when radioactive material was moved in or out. But these weren’t plant specialists. They looked like they were Politburo. He told me he recognized a couple of them from televised speeches, but he didn’t remember the names. He just knew they were high ranking.

On the night of the meltdown, Dad was doing his usual valve and dial checks when Politburo members, accompanied by soldiers with kalashnikovs, streamed down the hall toward the reactor area. The soldiers were wearing radiation suits. The Party members weren’t. He tagged along a few tens of meters away and went up on a high catwalk where he could see all of them. They crowded around the cooling pools. Dad made an effort to act as if he was staring at the pressure readouts in front of him, vaguely noticing they were rising as he watched.

This was around the point when the lights cut out. Apparently this wasn’t abnormal for the plant; the electrical systems were under maintained and all the electricians on staff were tasked with more critical work. Even with the lights not working, Cherenkov radiation cast its characteristic blue glow over the group and illuminated the politicians and soldiers. The water in the pool started moving.

Now, dad wasn’t a nuclear engineer. Still, he knew whatever was happening in the pool was abnormal. He’d been by the area plenty of times and never once did the water move like it did right then. It sloshed with turbidity and looked like it was coming to a rolling boil. He glanced at the dials in front of him and saw the temperature and pressure in the loop system was dramatically higher than it should’ve been. As he was beginning to sprint across the catwalk toward the nearest alarm station, he saw something that made him stop.

What he told me didn’t make much sense at first. You have to figure someone running at a dead sprint to pull an emergency alarm at a nuclear power plant wouldn’t stop for anything. But he stopped. And he stared. Something had floated to the top of the boiling water. The way he described it, it was dark, grayish red, almost shaped like a person, but much bigger and dreadfully deformed. It floated, facedown, in the pool. The Party members didn’t react but the soldiers raised their rifles at the thing until one of the politicians barked an order at them to stand down.

A moment or two later, the thing crawled out of the pool and raised itself on thick legs to stand before the gathered crowd. What dad said he remembered most about the thing was its head. It sat directly on its lopsided shoulders and it had no eyes, no nose, no ears. All that was there was a gaping hole. Not even a mouth, but a hole. And inside, the same blue glow from the pool shone out onto the faces of the people surrounding it.

Someone else in the plant must’ve noticed the temperature and pressure abnormalities and pulled the alarm, because sirens began to blare and diesel generators were galvanized into action to force the cooling cycle into overdrive. None of that mattered to dad, though. He said the thing approached the soldiers, one by one, and without any of them putting up a fight, it pressed the hole in its face against the top of each of their heads and they started to dissolve. First their suits melted, then their skin began to blister and char. The thing moved its maw downward until it nearly reached their legs, which dropped to the ground in a smoldering heap.

It then did the same to the assembled Politburo. All but one. She stood in the middle of a pile of steaming legs and hips and crotches and stared at the atrocity. Then, she screamed at it. It’s something dad said he’s repeated to himself every day since. “залить соль на почве.” Salt the earth. As the words left her mouth, the geiger counter dad was forced to carry with him at all times exploded into life at the same instant the politician burst into flames. He could swear she smiled as she burned.

All this was finally enough for dad to make a break for it. He knew he’d been irradiated badly, but he took some solace in the fact the ticks from the counter slowed quickly as he left the pool area. Right before he was clear of the room, he took one last glimpse at the thing. It had begun to melt. As soon as its body began pouring through the metal grate, the water below erupted into a mass of superheated steam. Dad avoided being scalded to death by about half a second when he turned the corner and slammed the door behind him.

The rest of the meltdown played out more or less like it was eventually reported. Dad was able to get out before the main explosion. He lived with the profound guilt of running by his colleagues who still didn’t know something truly catastrophic was about to happen. He believed his thyroid cancer was payback for his indifference toward them during his escape.

The iconic photograph of the radioactive “elephant’s foot” in the basement of the power plant stood, framed, on his dresser for the rest of his life. As he told me this story, he confessed he kept it to remind him of the implications of the politician’s words before she was devoured by flames. “That thing will render the area around it uninhabitable for a hundred years,” he sighed. “And it’s melting through the ground, even today. If it hits groundwater, it’ll explode like a dirty bomb and make the disaster in ‘86 look like a firecracker. Russia, Europe, North Africa. All irradiated.”

He died a couple days after he shared his experience with me. I just have no idea what to do with it all. Obviously, he could’ve made the whole thing up. But I don’t know why he would. He doesn’t have anything to gain now that he’s dead. Maybe some of the other survivors or their kids can corroborate parts of what he said, maybe they can’t. Either way, if it’s true, there is so much more going on with that disaster than we’ve been told. Even now, as that radioactive slag melts into the ground, dad’s story almost makes it sound like the meltdown was just a precursor to something far worse. Something plotted. Please, if anyone can give some advice or insight, it would be appreciated. I don’t want what he told me to be true, but “залить соль на почве” terrifies me more than I can bear.

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