14. Sunday, October 15, 2023 #4
She sat down beside him and tried to keep herself upright, but the drugs were making her body feel like liquid and it took far too much effort. She made a pillow from one of the blankets and lay down on her back. Gray pulled a blanket over her and lay down beside her.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” he said, but his voice sounded faraway, and she wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Who’s good?” she asked. “My family? Not me. I’m not good.”
Her eyes were closed but she felt him looking down at her. “I meant the mushrooms,” he said. “The mushrooms are good.”
She started laughing at her mistake. A laugh that grew until it took over her whole body, became an ache in her stomach, a pressure on her bladder, and forced tears from her eyes. She laughed so long that it eventually turned to crying. Crying felt better than laughing, and that made her sad.
“I miss my sister,” she said out loud, parting her hair to trace the scar of her surgery.
I’m right here. It was her sister’s voice, but instead of coming from inside Polly’s head, it sounded like she was somewhere in the cave.
Polly struggled to open her eyes and pushed herself up on her elbows.
Shadows skittered across the walls, where the light from the fire didn’t quite reach.
For a split second, one of the shadows stopped moving and took on the form of a person.
Polly squinted, but that made everything in the cave seem like it was underwater.
She closed her eyes tight. When she opened them again the figure was gone.
“Where are you?” she called out, her voice bouncing off the walls and coming back to her muffled.
Did you tell him what you did? her sister’s voice asked from another part of the cave, farther away this time. Does he know about the accident?
Polly shook her head and the whole world shook with it. “Don’t,” she warned. “Come out. I want to see you.”
She turned to look for Gray, to ask if he was hearing the voice, too, but he was gone.
“Gray?” she whispered, looking around the cave.
She was alone with the fire and the pile of blankets; even the figure in the shadows had disappeared.
At the thought of being alone, a shiver quaked through her, making her muscles twitch and pop.
She was too high. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to Gray, but she’d never tried mushrooms before.
“Why can’t I see you?” she asked. This time her voice came out garbled, like her ears were full of cotton balls.
I’m still here.
Polly spun around at the sound of her sister’s voice behind her, but she found Gray there instead, stoking the fire.
The light illuminated his face, making it look more beautiful than ever, angelic even, with its perfect skin and wise eyes.
The rest of the cave blurred and distorted all around him, but his face stayed exactly as it was meant to be.
“Where did you go?”
He shook his head and smiled. “I just got up to keep the fire going.”
“Did you hear my sister? Did you hear her talking to me?”
Gray’s face suddenly changed, and it was her sister looking back at her.
Sometimes things aren’t as they seem. Polly heard the voice in her head that time, not outside of herself.
Ask him what’s in the other cave. Her sister’s face faded and again she was looking at Gray, who was smiling back at her.
“What’s in the other cave?” Polly asked.
Gray’s eyes widened with curiosity. “What other cave?”
Exhaustion overwhelmed her, so she lay back down on the blanket and closed her eyes. She felt Gray slide in beside her under the blanket. His breath hit the side of her cheek like a cold puff of air, smelling earthy and green.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked, tucking the blankets in closer to her. The kindness of the gesture made Polly feel like crying. She nodded, afraid to open her eyes in case tears fell out.
Then she felt his lips on hers, gentle and light but still sending currents shooting through her entire body. “I like you,” she whispered, her words vibrating against his lips, bouncing back into her mouth so that she swallowed them.
“I like you too, Lucy,” he whispered, cupping the side of her face with his hand, going in deeper with the kiss.
All of it feeling as though it was happening in slow motion.
The tilting of their heads, the movement of their lips, the slip and slide of their tongues.
So languid that it took several seconds for Polly to realize what Gray had said.
She pulled free of the kiss. “No. Not Lucy. I’m Polly.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s what I said.” He lowered his lips to hers again. She kept losing focus, her mind drifting away from the cave to other realms, only to arrive back again and find that Gray was mostly naked and so was she.
This was really happening.
She was sure she said it in her head, but then Gray asked, “Is it okay that this is happening?” Polly nodded, no longer sure whether her words worked better on the inside of her or the outside.
Ask him about the other cave, her sister whispered into her left ear.
Polly turned her head but nobody was there.
If you don’t stop this now, it’s going to get too loud to hear me.
That time the whispering was in her right ear.
She turned toward the voice, but again there was nobody.
It was all too confusing. Where was this other cave? And where was it going to get too loud?
Gray’s hands roamed over Polly’s body, his touch as light as a feather. She tried to focus on that, but then the singing started. It was her sister singing “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” again, but in stereo, coming from every shadowy corner of the cave.
“Shh,” Polly hissed.
“I didn’t say anything,” Gray replied.
Polly opened her eyes to find his face looming directly above hers. It had gone from angelic to demonic, full of dark hollows, and his hair standing up like horns on his head. She squeezed her eyes shut. I’m too high, she thought.
“Should I stop?” he asked, and again she wondered if he was reading her mind or if she was saying things out loud.
“No,” she answered, relieved when she heard the word outside of herself. Keeping her eyes shut, she gently guided his hand down between her legs, showing him exactly what she wanted. Within seconds, warmth bloomed there and spread through her body, and she began to relax.
Gray took this as a sign to go further and slid on top of her.
His body was much lighter than she’d imagined, but his earthy scent was suddenly so strong it almost choked her.
She was afraid to open her eyes in case he still looked like a demon, so instead kept them shut and imagined his face, the handsome one.
She felt him enter her. She heard a quiet murmuring above her but she kept her eyes closed.
Gray was gentle, but with each thrust she felt as though she were being pushed down into the earth, as though she was sinking away from him.
She took her hands from his back and stretched them out at her sides, palms-down, hoping to stop the sensation.
The murmuring became louder, became chanting, and his movements matched its rhythm.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered.
Gray didn’t reply, so she opened her eyes.
His head was lifted high, as though looking up at something, exposing the pale skin of his throat.
His Adam’s apple was moving, and she wondered if he was the one chanting, though the echo made it sound like many voices at once.
He began to thrust deeper and faster, but all she felt was the sinking sensation.
She dug her nails into the dirt floor to keep her body in place, so that he didn’t push her into the earth.
So that she wouldn’t be swallowed whole by the ground.
“Gray?” she whispered, wanting him to look at her, to give her something to focus on other than the sinking feeling and the overwhelming scent of earth.
He let out a low groan, then his whole body shuddered and he collapsed on top of her. His head dropped like a dead weight beside her own, his face obscured by her hair. She glanced up, searching for what he’d been looking at.
Only then did she see them.
A cluster of figures standing in a semicircle. Each one wore a dark cloak obscuring their face. She screamed and began pushing Gray off her. His head shot up, but he kept her there on the ground, pinned. Trapped.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re in here. Watching!”
“Who’s watching?” His question stopped Polly cold. She looked back to where she’d seen the figures a moment before. There was nobody there, only the shadows made by the light of the fire, skittering across the walls of the cave. “Polly, nobody’s there.”
“I’m too high,” she whimpered, the fight leaving her body, her limbs heavy again.
Gray slid off her but kept one arm across her chest. “Just close your eyes. I’ll take care of you.”
Polly did what he said, relaxing into his arms and closing her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again the world would make sense.
When Polly finally had opened her eyes, it was not the cave she’d found herself in but her bedroom, where she lay tucked under the covers, the alarm clock on the bedside table reading 4:43 a.m. She didn’t have time to recall how she’d gotten back there because a tidal wave of nausea was rolling through her, and she had only seconds to get to the bathroom.
Heaving the toilet seat up, she unleashed a violent stream of vomit into the bowl.
It tasted like dirt, smelled like rotting pond water, and colored the water dark brown.
Polly stared down at the mess in the toilet.
“What the fuck?” she whispered.