Submergence

It began with a black stain on the kitchen floor. No larger than a golf ball in diameter, the inky blotch was smeared on the tile like a tiny handprint. Despite its off-putting appearance, it gave off no foul scent, nor did it seem particularly viscous or slimy. It looked like a small splatter of dark, dirty water, so it should have been no trouble whatsoever to clean up.

“Did you try just…using a cloth?”

Mike turned his gaze from the floor to his wife, who was already staring back at him with a sour expression on her normally lovely face. Her twisted scowl was all the response Mike needed. “Right. Maybe we should get the mop?”

“Great idea, Mike! I never thought of using a mop to clean the floor! A stroke of genius, really!”

“All right, Cheryl, I get it. Could do without the sarcasm.”

Only now noticing the unemptied mop bucket across the room, Mike furrowed his brow and crouched down for a closer look at the ‘unkillable stain,’ or so his wife had called it.

“Maybe it’s a burn mark, or something?” said Cheryl, arms crossed, and eyes fixed not on the stain, but on the stack of dirty dishes by the sink that she had yet to finish washing.

“The floor’s ceramic, doesn’t burn. Plus, it looks wet. Probably just mould.”

“If it was mould, then the mould killer would have killed it!”

“Well, I don’t know, Cheryl! It’s a black stain, what do you want me to do? If it doesn’t wash off, so be it. It’s tiny, anyway. No one will notice it’s there.”

Cheryl unfolded her arms to move them to her hips. “I’ll notice!”

“Then do a better job of cleaning it, I don’t know! I’m not getting someone in here to replace one measly tile, okay? Don’t be ridiculous! If it really bothers you that much, cover it up with something, or just don’t look down. I’m late for work as it is, I don’t have time for this nonsense!”

Picking his briefcase up off the floor, Mike exited the room, and with the slam of a door, the house; soon followed by the dissonant screeching of an old car leaving the driveway. Cheryl, left standing alone in the kitchen, let out a sigh of both relief and frustration. Throwing a nearby tea towel onto the floor, she covered up the black stain and returned to the dishes. Now they would just have to drip dry.

* * *

Mike returned home from work at the usual time, to an unusual sight: his wife stand-ing at the end of the driveway. With a heavy sigh, he opened the car door. “Cheryl, I’ve had a long day, I don’t want to–”

“It’s gotten bigger.”

Cheryl’s earlier look of scrutiny and disgust was gone, replaced by a wide-eyed expression of genuine concern. Closing the car door behind him, Mike buried the frustration he had been getting ready to vent, and calmly walked up to his wife.

“What do you mean it’s gotten bigger? How big?”

* * *

There was no longer a stain on the kitchen floor. There was hardly even a floor left. The small black blotch now took up more than half of the kitchen, but it had become more of a puddle than a smear. Dark, grimy water flooded the once pristine tiled floor, and around the edges of the liquid, the tiles seemed as if they were beginning to erode and turn black themselves.

“Jesus Christ, Cheryl! What the hell happened?”

Mike looked to his wife for answers, but she just stood silently in the archway, looking out over the kitchen in disbelief. Before there had been no smell, yet now the entire room stunk like a muddy swamp ridden with dead animals. “How long has it been like this?”

“Not…very long.” Cheryl’s eyes avoided her husband’s, remaining fixated on the inexplicable chaos on her kitchen floor.

“What? What do you mean? You’re saying this happened not long ago?”

Cheryl nodded. “By lunch, the stain had grown…to the size of a football. No larger. By the afternoon, there was a…puddle in the corner. I decided to call someone, but no one could come take a look until tomorrow. I left it…and an hour ago, I found the kitchen looking like this.”

Mike’s confusion quickly began to twist into a rage. “You found it like this? What the fuck do you mean, you found it like this?! You didn’t hear pipes bursting? You didn’t hear tiles shattering as water burst through the goddamn floor?! This sorta thing doesn’t just happen, Cheryl! Kitchens don’t just self-destruct on their own, so what the hell happened?! What the hell did you do?!”

“Nothing!” Cheryl screamed. “Nothing, nothing, nothing! I didn’t do anything, you bastard! I didn’t do anything!”

As he took a lumbering step towards her, Mike saw the tears streaming down her face, and stopped. Looking down past his trembling fists, the sight of his loafers standing in black, oily water diverted his anger. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, he tilted his gaze back up towards Cheryl. “So, when is the plumber coming, then?”

Wiping the moisture from her puffy red eyes, Cheryl swallowed back the last of her tears. “First thing…in the morning.”

With a nod, and one more long look around at the damage, Mike made his way towards the fridge, splashing with each step. With more force than necessary, he opened the fridge door, pulled out a beer, then slammed it shut.

* * *

Morning felt like it took an eternity to arrive, and not just because Mike had been relegated to the living room sofa. He had spent plenty of nights on it before, so getting to sleep was not the problem. It was what came after. It was the dreams.

Water everywhere. He would try to scream, but no sound would come out, and it would only let the water into his lungs faster. He tried writhing and thrashing, but he was being held down by two arms much larger and stronger than his own. The panic was overwhelming, like someone was using his heart as a stress ball. The struggle not to swallow more water was agonising. The entire time he felt as if his head might explode. No matter how hard he fought, or how much he pleaded in his mind, the huge arms would not let up. Bubbles flew violently in every direction as the light from above began to dim, starting from the corners and making its way in like a shadow creeping into view. As he finally let go, giving in to the desire to unleash one final scream, a strange calmness overtook his body. The pain quickly began to fade, and the panic was subsiding. The water grew still, and just as the darkness was engulfing him completely, he caught a quick glimpse from above of a face beyond the water. A familiar face.

Cheryl’s face.

* * *

It was Cheryl’s scream that woke him. Part of Mike was hesitant to leave the couch. A small part of him just wanted to ignore her screams, roll over, and go back to sleep. If he did, he would never hear the end of it, so he sat up, turned his body, and while letting out an exaggerated yawn, planted his feet on the floor.

Two splashes. Ice cold water surrounded Mike’s feet, reaching right up to his ankles. Frantically, he pulled them back up and let out an involuntary yelp. Eyes wide, he scanned the room. The entire house was flooded with filthy, pitch-black water. It was impossible to see the floor beneath it as it surrounded every piece of furniture, flowed in and out of every doorway, and had already begun decaying the walls with what could only be described as creeping black mould, shredding the white wallpaper like decomposing flesh.

Mike squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them, hoping to wake up from what had to have been another bad dream. When nothing changed, and the dark water that flooded the house remained in sight, he tried again, and again, and again.

He never woke up.

He never woke up, because he was already awake. This was no nightmare; no hallucination. This was reality, and Mike snapped back to it the second Cheryl let out another scream, this time calling his name in a shrill, fear-induced wail.

Cautiously, Mike waded through the ankle-deep water as he headed towards the stairs. “Cheryl?! Cheryl, are you all right?!” he called back.

“Mike! Mike, get up here!”

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Mike was beyond relieved to exit the icy black water beneath his feet, quickly ascending to the second floor. Despite the water being far below, the creeping black mold had already begun to seep through the carpet up here. Maybe it was just his imagination going haywire, but once again, the stains seemed to resemble small black handprints, scattered across the floor.

“Michael! Mike, where are you?!”

Mike burst into the bedroom to find Cheryl, still in her nightgown, standing at the window. Pale white light flowed through the glass and into the room, yet it did not seem like sunlight, somehow. It was less vibrant, less warm, and emitted more of a soft glow rather than the usual harsh rays.

“Come take a look,” Cheryl said in a whisper. Her voice sounded distant.

Mike approached the window, taking a glance out through the glass, only to step back a moment later, planting himself on the bed with his head in his hands. “How?” he mumbled. “How the fuck is this even possible?”

Cheryl said nothing. She stood in silence, staring out at the vast black ocean that surrounded their home, stretching out into an endless horizon. There was no sky above it, only thick, pale fog, as far as the eye could see.

Black ocean. White fog. Nothing more. No other houses. No roads, no skyline in the distance. Not a tree, a fence, or another human being in sight. Only endless black water and looming white fog.

“What is this?” Mike murmured under his breath, as tears began to well in his eyes.

“Hell.”

Mike looked up at his wife, his teary eyes wide with shock. “What did you just say?”

Still, Cheryl continued to stare out the window, gazing into the abyss. “I think we might be in hell,” she said, before letting out a faint, nervous laugh.

* * *

Mike’s first thought was to try the landline. Of course, there was nothing. Not even a dial tone. No power in the house worked. No lights, nothing. The only think keeping them from being engulfed by darkness was the mysterious white mist filling the air outside. Its faint, eerie glow was dreamlike, a bizarre contrast to the void-like black-ness waiting beneath it.

After what seemed like hours of frustrated denial and disbelief, Mike decided he would have to go back downstairs. As he left Cheryl standing at the window, he began to wonder if she would ever move from that spot again. He also started to wonder if he would care whether or not she did.

The steps creaked angrily beneath his feet as he descended to the ground floor. Lowering himself into the black water, it was noticeably higher than before. Earlier, it had only reached his ankles. Now, the water came up to his knees.

* * *

It should have been a given that the basement would be completely submerged. Standing at the door that once led down a long, wooden staircase, Mike swung it open to reveal a mould-infected ceiling, stretching diagonally downward into the dark liquid that encompassed everywhere else. The bottom floor of the house was completely lost, as he expected, yet seeing it still made him feel more disheartened than ever.

His next stop was the kitchen, where it all began. Pulling open the fridge door, what were fresh groceries only yesterday were now sickly black heaps of mould. Strings of dark, sticky goo stretched between the fridge and the open door like spider webs. Mucus-like drippings hung from the top of the fridge, creating the appearance of a dank cave interior. Even the beer was fully consumed by the slime.

After the fridge, Mike tried the sink. Turning the tap with a violent, metallic screech, a moment passed where nothing happened. Silence, then a distant clanging, until finally water shot out of the faucet.

Dirty, black water.

* * *

Neither Mike nor Cheryl knew whether or not a day had actually passed, but after a while it felt like the right time to sleep. Cheryl had finally moved from her spot by the window, and now lay on a damp bed that’s white sheets were beginning to turn yellow. Mike sat beside her, pressed up against the wooden bed frame. It, too, was showing signs of rot.

“We’re going to die very soon,” Mike said, eyes locked onto the mould-stricken wall on the opposite side of the room. It no longer looked like handprints. Now, it was just clumps of black mass.

Cheryl said nothing; only smiled, and closed her eyes.

* * *

The next morning, if it was morning, Mike awoke to the sounds of a baby crying, and the cold touch of water submerging part of his left hand. Eyes barely open, he looked towards the hand he had left dangling off the bed, before quickly retracting it, forcing himself awake.

The bedroom was flooded. Not to ankle height. Not to knee height. The black water sat just below the top of the bed. The mattress and covers were soaked, and so was Mike. The cold white air was filled with a stale, mangy odour, and the once white walls were now all completely yellow and black.

The sounds of the baby crying came again, like some twisted alarm clock telling Mike to get up. Turning to his left, he noticed Cheryl was gone. Suddenly panicked, he frantically clambered to get off the bed, falling into the waist-high water head first. As he surfaced, gasping for air, the crying came again, this time more faintly, as if the sound was moving away.

“Cheryl!” Mike screamed, his throat dry and voice hoarse, and a disgusting taste of mould and death on his tongue. “Cheryl! Where are you?! Cheryl!”

He swam to the window she had been standing at yesterday. Was it yesterday? Or had it been days already? Mike was starting to doubt himself. Maybe it had been days. Maybe it had even been weeks.

“Cheryl!” he screamed again, hands clinging to the windowsill.

Looking out across the crepuscular sea that had now swallowed more than half the house, he noticed that the pale white fog was beginning to turn a dark brownish grey. In the distance, creating ripples in the black, he finally saw her.

“Cheryl! Cheryl, come back!”

She ignored her husband’s frantic pleas, swimming through the murky water with determination, following the fading cries of a newborn baby. “I’m coming, baby!” she yelled between shallow breaths. “Hold on! Mummy’s coming!”

Soon, Mike could no longer see, nor hear his wife. She had swum too far, her voice drowned out, and was now lost in the rapidly darkening fog.

* * *

Mike sat alone on the roof of his house, the tiles cracked and eroded, with black mould seeping through from below. At each edge of the roof, the dark sea waited, along with the looming fog that had gone from white, to brown, to equally inescapable black. Soon, the entire house would be submerged, leaving Mike nothing to stand on. He guessed he had maybe an hour before he would find himself floating in nothing but darkness.

“I drove her to it,” he murmured softly, cradling his knees like a newborn. “I drove her to it. I drove her to it. I drove her to it.”

From every direction, the cries of the baby could once again be heard. Some-times faintly, sometimes deafeningly loud.

Sometimes, the screams were muffled, and paired with frantic splashing in the distance. At times Mike could even hear his wife’s sobbing, and his own erratic voice yelling back at her. It was his voice, and it was not his voice. It came from across the dark water. All the voices did. All joined together, repeating over and over, like some inharmonious chorus of dread closing in on him. With his eyes squeezed shut and his face pressed into his knees, Mike tried his best to ignore them, but he knew it was impossible. The sounds had been following him long before all this; before the stain, and before the world turned dark. He never expected to know silence again…but he would.

The screaming stopped. The cries faded. All that could be heard was water violently splattering, growing closer with each splash. By the time it finally reached him, the house was gone, and Mike was fully submerged in the endless black puddle, floating effortlessly in darkness as he had expected.

The splashing stopped the moment it reached him. Instantly, the water turned still, and silence arrived. The silence Mike had never thought to experience again. It was unexpectedly peaceful, more than he deserved.

Looking down into the water below, he saw a face he knew would appear once more before he died. A pale, bloated, twisted face he could recognise regardless. As it stared at him up through the surface, Mike smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, son.”

Small, weak white hands pulled him down, dragging him into the pitch-darkness below. Although he had told himself he would not, he could not help but struggle and thrash around in the water. Eventually he would let go. Eventually the calm would take hold and he would drift away, as his son had, but until then…

Until then, he would suffer.