scales

The air is as sharp as her memories. It still feels like a thick menthol foam is expanding and coating her throat with every inhale, spilling out her mouth and into the air. The air bites her cheeks, surely leaving behind its strawberry mark. Dark strands obstruct her view of the lake and she's glad for it. She doesn't need to see to know that the water is currently displaying an upside down autumnal Monet, trees swallowing the horizon and the edges of the painting. She can smell the fog wafting from the water and creeping through the wood. It mixes with the smell of damp earth and decaying things in a way so sturdily personal to her. It whispers to her.

Through her unfocused eyes and her scattered hair she makes out pale green-grey smudges dotted with stark red. It's enough to recall how the misty greyness contrasting with the bright warmth of death makes her feel. She never expected to stand at the flat shore of this lake again. She’s unsure of how the freaky familiarity of it sits with her.

She has been there before and yet at the same time not really. Not the girl (oh god, woman?) planted there right now, smelling the air like a dog inspecting if it's safe while completely blurring out the twilight zone around her. Yes her body has been here, lived here, existed amongst the atoms of this space. But so much life has been lived since then. Things have formed within her she never even had the seeds for in those days.

The crunch of the leaves offset the squishes of her boots on the 20 feet trek to the back door. Inside the worn white house she heads straight to the coffee she’d been waiting on. The kitchen opens into the nook that serves as a little lake observatory. The table sits tucked into the tower of the small Victorian house, the many windows overlooking the dense trees and water.

She stares at the ripples as she burns her mouth with the hot coffee. Her tongue rests still in the black pool, getting it thoroughly raw. She gnaws on the wound in between laps and it feels good. The bitterness is sharp and that feels good too. She could never wrap her head around all those ripples. The lake is dead, inhospitable. It’s a spot for geese to swim and snapping turtles to riddle, nothing more. It confuses her, but in that way where it isn't possible to think about it because there is no answer. And so an anomaly goes unnoticed all due to the human inability to think past something impossible.

The chair across from her, facing away from the windows, lies in its state of perpetual suspended animation. There it is, still askew from the last time her father scooched away from his meal. He never tucked it back in and it drove her insane. There it is like he could barrel into the room and plop down at any moment. It itches at her brain the same way an incomplete puzzle does.

He’s not there. He’s nothing but ash and dirt looking over at her from a ceramic prison on the mantle. He is dead and she does not miss him. Jesus, why doesn’t she miss him? He was good. He laughed with her, he cooked for her when she was sad, he brought her hot chocolate on her period, he encouraged her, he was in her life. Why does it feel like nothing changed? Change implies a transition from one state to another. This is more like she was suddenly beamed into a parallel universe. There is no past, no present. Memories of her former life play in her head like she’s watching a movie about someone else. The knowledge is still there, but like it was told to her about another person.

The urn irritates her. She knows that's why she’s here, the only reason she came in the first place. A final walk through the house before being scattered into the depths of the lake he adored so much. His only lover, he’d joke. It weighs heavily on her that she still hasn’t done it, but not really in guilt. It's more akin to the sensation of being watched. Halfway through his last view of the den she could not shake the sudden ridiculousness that washed over her. Marching around a piece of pottery like its sentient, how dramatic. She needed to put it on the mantle and take a moment to laugh. Then she got the phone call.

Her friend's apartment building caught fire. She can’t afford real, legal, registered rent. There is nowhere to go. She has no choice but to live in her childhood home. It doesn't feel like her house, or a place she’s lived in at all. There isn't anything to do except watch cable tv and stare at the lake or urn. Hours of time will pass and she’ll find that it is dark and her gaze has not wavered from her dead father. Then she’ll move to the table to eat and find it is suddenly dawn, and oh there’s the sun in the water.

Why does the urn mock her? She is well acquainted with procrastination but this requires no effort. It's too simple for even her to feel the dread of having a task. Is she stalling because she can’t let go of him? Is this out of body experience just her body numbing itself against the pain of loss? Is she going to break down and lose it from grief at any moment? It doesn’t feel like it.

The coffee fades to warm instead of hot so she begins to actually drink. She hasn’t had her fill of the pain yet though so she’s already planning another cup. It occurs to her she needs to eat but she’s made her way through the scarce remains of her father’s shopping. Flower arrangement after flower wreath after framed photo surrounds her, overflowing from the table onto the floor. They’re the kind of condolences that show dutiful respect for the person lost, not care or concern for the loved one left behind. There are no casseroles, no meals for when the grieving cannot remember hunger. She’s starving and there’s no food and she can’t function enough to get any.

It’s not that she’s hated by her hometown. It’s really a cold shouldered indifference. That's actually what made it hurt when she was growing up but she knows it isn’t personal. She never fit into the community the way her easy going dad did. He was involved in every small town event, engaged and always helping. He was a true neighbor. Participation was not for her. She’s quiet and reserved, something they don’t understand. Her shyness served as a barrier between them that killed any chance of belonging.

She managed to be the talk of the town without there being any real meanness in the gossip, mostly confusion and worry. A patronizing, selfish sort of worry. Ignoring her ran deep here, and she found it an odd punishment for the crippling anxiety that made her so withdrawn. It's not like she could control that. She was forever the black sheep, it was out of her hands. Now it's even worse, she’s completely frozen out. No one has said a word to her.

The girl who ran away and no one knew why. She didn’t even know why. She left bearing scar tissue and battle wounds she couldn’t recollect suffering. Her childhood was fine. Lonely, but not traumatic. Yet still she bolted as soon as she received her high school diploma. No warning to her father, no big blow out. She snuck away with her things into the night and didn't look back. Her one real friend already moved to the city, happened to have an extra room at her apartment, and that was that. She had no money and no future plans but at least she didn’t have rent.

She found herself with no family or support system and no real reason for such an intense self sabotage. In that itty bitty apartment in that medium sized city, she also found a deep unexplainable pain within her. Something had completely gutted her when she wasn’t looking and now her insides are shredded through. Being away unearthed this throbbing inside, constant migraines, and sharp pains in her joints. She became a ball of reckless anger and hurt who’s origins remained a mystery. The spiral was dark and her roommate had to promptly intervene.

Several psych wards and a lot of therapy later and there is still no answer for her leaving or her pain. She declines the video call from her therapist now, the absurdity of droning on and on about trauma she has no right to feel being too much for her on this day. There will be no time for ash scattering or reading or television or anything productive/entertaining today. She’s far too preoccupied with the lake boring right back into her.

The ache pinching in her lower back does nothing to move her and neither does the solidifying moon. One moment the moon is glittering and flicking at her within the waves, the next the table’s glass is her pillow, and the very next the glass has melted into rushing liquid.

It's her neighborhood. She knows she’s in her neighborhood. But the houses are off, there’s more of them and they keep going past what the furthest house should be. She’s on the wrong side of the lake and she needs to cross. That’s where home is. It’s dark and it must be night time so she must go home. It smells like her lake, her town, but there’s no menthol in her throat and no life anywhere. It's abandoned of all and yet she feels the encroaching danger of a perpetrator prickle at her neck.

In this world there’s a bridge across. A rickety thing of unfinished wood that sways with the waves of water. The silence rings in her ears and all of a sudden she’s running to the bridge and her bare feet are touching the planks. The fog is tickling at her senses in an intimate way that hurts. It means something is coming but she has no higher thought.

The black mass emerges from the still water and directly into her. The fall through the surface is violent. Panic fills her nostrils and scrapes down her throat with the water she’s swallowing. The depths trigger a vulnerability sharp as knives all down her body. It slashes at her. When her head finds the surface she’s uncontrollably spasming to leave the water as fast as possible.

The pitch black woods surround her like an open wound. The fear is different from fear in consciousness, here anything can be in those woods and every possibility stalks her like prey. The trees feel like living creatures keeping a secret from her. The water is rippling every which way with occasional gentle swishes and splashes. Something is moving beneath the surface. The possibility of brushing against an object with her legs has them stinging like live wires, cringing away from any possibility of touch.

Her eyes begin to adjust and the light tinkles of water are preceded by a swirling shadow. The ripples become broken up with ridges that scatter moonlight. The strange pattern focuses into scales, emerging from the inky darkness like onyx dripping in tar. Her movements to escape the water become increasingly frantic, thrashing through the liquid impossibly too slow. More and more specks of moon fracture across the ripples and she’s starting to feel her heart in her throat and pelvis at the same time.

All together the congregation snaps their jaws and breaks through the waves. Her ankles are just brushing past snouts, arms whipping past tails, claws inching closer and closer to skin. Her lower spine twinges in an acute pain that powers her torso forward, her spine running from the danger as it ghosts closer and closer to her. Every nerve ending in her body screams in fear at the potential for injury. An impossibly deep metallic sensation runs through her, and everything is crushing into each other, there is a much thicker wetness spreading across her body that has her dripping in endless burning. They got her, and then she’s awake.

She gasps like she’s dying and getting her eyes to open is like trying to escape out of hardening concrete. The first thing she can see is the ripple pushing away orange leaves and its maddening. Bursting from the table as if it's on fire she stumbles into her old bedroom, burrowing herself in the closet to self soothe. She’s been flayed open and needs an age old creature comfort.

For days she has mental battles and screaming matches with the ashes on the shelf. Every night she dreams of alligators infesting her lake, waiting to tear her apart. She grows weak from hunger, every movement becoming a stumble. Her sleep is more exhausting than being awake and the stress of it has carved itself beneath her eyes.

After collapsing on the kitchen floor, she dreams of the lake in daylight. It’s a known fact in this world that she lives next to a lake of alligators. She needs to get home from school and moves to sprint over the horrible bridge. Just as she poses, she makes out the shape of her father on the other side. He’s raking leaves. As she sprints over to him, he looks up and directly at her. Their eyes meet and he smiles. But it's wrong, his eyes could be glass and the smile hangs from his ears like a corpse from a tree. She trips over her own feet and directly next to a creature’s mouth.

She awakes facing the lake, arm stretching towards it and her body behind the counter, head just barely peeking out enough to see the wave crash. It lights a fuse behind her and before she knows it she is stalking towards the water, urn in hand. She pulls it open with a force that jerks at her shoulder in its socket. The dark soot is fattening with water and dissolving into murky brown before she can remember that smile too clearly.

*

This time there is no bridge. She is not stewing in the discomfort of knowing she needs to, has to cross. She’s just standing before the alligators, watching as they circle each other in anticipation. There is her father again, but no rake. No smile. He’s crouched over the coast, tearing pieces off of something. It keeps plopping into the water, splash after splash, and the alligators slither over in delight. She can see a finger disappearing into a cacophony of biting and pulling.

A siren song rips her from her sleep. A high pitched alarm of terror that resurrects her from the couch. She used to dream of a mermaid living in the waters, looking out for her instead of a mother.

She's pulled there like a zombie. The alcove her father spent all that time drinking beer and smiling at. She was never allowed there. It was his space. She stands there now, knee deep in silty lake water, surrounded by the bones she pulled from the sunken wire cages. Surrounded by the chum of who she thought her father was, falling deep into the very real, very her flashbacks of the way he used to treat her before he thought she could form memory.