The Season of Sinking

Imogen

For six seconds my eyes have been open, and I already process the rain sliding in silver rivers down the glass outside my fourth-story apartment windows, refracting the streetlamp’s glow in hundreds of trembling droplets.

And I can feel it, the sweat curling around the crest of my hairline, the hum of Seattle’s quieted nightlife vibrating beneath my ribs, and I know I’m okay.

Still. None of it calms me when the sweat turns cold against my raised flesh, and I remember it was only The Nightmare.

Tears brim behind my eyelashes as fear pins me to the bed in the darkness—save for that petite sliver of streetlamp shine, casting its faint glow into my bedroom.

I beg it to comfort me, to trick my subconscious into believing the waking world is gentler than the one I dream of.

But The Nightmare slides back in, thrusting into memory like an unwelcome lover, all hard and fast, keeping me breathless and cursing its constancy.

A crash of glass.

Mom screaming my name.

The boy’s bloodied face.

Like sick clockwork, I dreamt of it again. The same confounding spectacle that has plagued me sporadically since childhood.

“It’s over. You’re awake,” I whisper soothingly, swiping my wet forehead.

I push my lips into a hollow O and breathe out, forcing back the nausea, searching manically for a sudden distraction.

Then I hear the low hum of boats on the Puget Sound only blocks away, preparing to dock with plentiful seafood deliveries as dawn rises.

And I know that, in a few hours, Alaskan salmon and halibut from said boats will be thrown across Pike Place Market by bearded men in rubber fishing bibs—who will loudly echo the fish’s name with each brawny toss—to entertain the tourists, and I picture it.

Halibut!

Halibuuut!

A twitch pulls at the corner of my lip when I visualize the tourists laughing and pointing their phones at the handsome men repeating their silly act for the hundredth time that day, shoveling samples of mac and cheese and clam chowder into their mouths, hungry, too, for the show.

I take a deep breath, gently shoving the duvet off my heated skin and propping myself on my palms, scanning my small bedroom for intruders. Because The Nightmare always makes me feel like I’m being haunted.

No ghosts.

I roll over and kneel, my posture mocking prayer, and face the wall behind my headboard.

With a tug, the curtain spills open to reveal brick buildings and windswept trees, their outlines bleary in the dimness.

And there are the trusty streetlamps, illuminating the sidewalks for no one, as it’s too early for anyone other than the fishermen.

I can’t even hear the twitter of birds yet.

I unlatch the windowpane, desperate for a misted breath of night, to feel the outside world on my skin, like an embrace from my neighborhood.

Instead, it steals any air I still had. I suddenly remember that I live in a haunted house of my own.

One that ensures I’m constantly tormented during my waking hours.

My mother is dead.