15. THE INFLORESCENCE
THE INFLORESCENCE
Something is whispering into Isela’s ear at night.
The sounds are frenzied. They are fragments of static and resounding deep groans.
The words slip into her dreams and then vanish as soon as Isela opens her eyes to the darkness of her room.
The only words she can make out are her own name and the word “womb.” Isela dreams about infinite doors.
A voice leads her toward each one. They take her into different rooms from her life.
Sometimes, she’s in a doctor’s office or at the dentist looking at the inside of her mouth on an x-ray.
Other doors lead her to the beach with her old friends from high school.
Sometimes, the doors lead her nowhere, just pitch black and a vibrating hum.
One night, as Isela wandered in the shadows around the little house, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed it.
A brand-new door. She assumed it was a linen closet.
The door was small with a round top and a long wooden handle.
As Isela walked closer, she noticed fuzzy moss and teensy yellow mushrooms sprouting from the door.
She stuck her nose close to it. It smelled like a memory.
It brought Isela to the Pacific Northwest. She went there with Alfonso on one of their first dates.
The sun was going down and they were lost in the forest. Isela saw swarms of shadowy faces in the trees.
Their mouths agape as though they were screaming in silence.
Warped voices and laughter followed behind her.
Whispers surrounded her. A stillness took over.
She couldn't move. Alfonso grabbed her by the wrist and they ran toward the muffled sound of water.
Isela felt like her heart could explode.
She nestled her head on Alfonso's chest and listened in on his heartbeat.
His pulse was steady. Isela grabbed a hold of her flashlight and beamed up at the sky and then illuminated the stones in the clear river water down below.
The stones looked like small translucent creatures inside of a birth caul, almost like newborn puppies or kittens.
The forest morphed into horror. It morphed into an eerie silence, as though they were completely alone on the planet.
It took Isela three sleepless nights to find the courage to open the door. When she finally gave in, it led to a brand-new room. The Inflorescence. Isela mouthed these words as a whisper. This was the name given to the room.
As she stepped inside with caution, a gargantuan crimson placenta plopped from the high rounded ceiling onto the floor, which was cushioned with glittering wood moss and scarlet waxcap mushrooms. Isela looked up at the placenta which was shining and dewy.
It was taller than her by three feet or so.
It was perfectly round with dark purple capillaries percolating blood.
Isela was smothered in blood and mucus from the drop.
She took her nightgown off and wiped her face clean with the dry side.
The walls of the room were covered in purple vines and morning glories with their petals closed off to the scene.
The walls of the placenta were speckled with gold.
The golden flecks gave off light which illuminated parts of the walls and ceiling.
The placenta gurgled and thrummed. A shining umbilical cord hung from the ceiling, growing poppies and red azaleas on the outer tissue.
Through the translucent membrane of the organ, Isela made out a shape inside of the placenta as bile built up in her throat.
It was a creature she could not recognize at this stage of its life, but it was growing rapidly inside.
Isela held onto the wall of the placenta to watch the growing specimen, until it dawned on her.
The specimen was a human fetus. It was growing inside of the organ at an alarming pace.
It transformed from newborn to infant to child.
The child opened her eyes and looked straight at Isela as if piercing into her thoughts.
Isela slammed the door behind her, crashed into the hallway wall, and flailed to the bathroom to throw up.
The evidence of this new reality, this new room, was in her hair and on the soles of her feet.
She rinsed her face off, took off her panties, let her hair down and when she went back a second time the walls of this new room were warped and cracked like flaking bark from a sycamore.
Yellow honeysuckle vines twisted their way onto the walls and leopard slugs swarmed the floor.
Ribbed bog moss and unfurled ferns reached down from the rounded ceiling, dripping flecks onto Isela’s head.
The placenta was gone and instead, the stump of a redwood settled into the center of the room.
Isela touched the bark of the chopped down giant and she smelled her hands.
She saw herself as a child, chasing her little sister, Letty, in the dark.
It was joyous for them to run. They giggled and squealed and pinky promised not to say a word of where they ran.
They loved running away during the summer, even if it meant they were going to be punished.
Sometimes, they ended up at the edge of a forest trail, tempted to go inside and live there forever.
Isela licked her hands. She knelt on her knees and licked at the bark of the stump.
It tasted like she’d imagined. Organic. Untouched.
Raw. Sharp. She stood up and took her teeth to the upper edge of the stump.
She gnawed and laughed. Theoretically, she could chew through the stump, plug her stomach and intestines up until she burst.
She craved destruction. She wanted nothing more than to let The Inflorescence drag her underneath the house.
She slumped down against the stump and stared at her hands.
The urge to bash her head against the remains of the tree brought her a moment of ease.
She pictured her head splattered all over the room with banana slugs swarming her body.
Then, a moment of clarity. She forced a big smile by lifting the corners of her mouth with her hands. Tears fell down her sticky face. The stump decayed behind her, leaving a single sunflower behind.
She was placed on this earth to live her dream life, whether by god or by the devil. She was put on this earth to feel free. To feel everything. To feel nothing. It was a dream. Her dream. To imagine herself as more than she was. A life that would be worth it by the time she died.