My mother died on a Wednesday night in February. I sat at the kitchen table, staring down at the pinpoints of salt dotted on the dark wood and pressed my hands down onto the granules, observing the particles that stuck versus the ones that simply made light impressions on my skin. The only sound I could hear was the wind, wavering outside and slithering through the cracks in our home’s paper-thin siding. A voice broke through the silence, shrill and weak.
“Brandy,” she called. And that was it, one single call with a moment of silence after.
I waited, curious how much effort she would put forth this time. After another beat of silence, I scraped back in my chair and rubbed my salty hands off on my thighs. I slowly walked towards her bedroom door, adorned by a small but crooked wooden crucifix.
I knocked lightly, “Mom?”
I spoke with a firm, clear tone. It was the only way she could hear me in her later years.
She didn’t reply. Slowly approaching her bed, I could see her skeletal form beneath the knitted blanket, illuminated in grotesque shadows from the weak lamplight on her bedside. The form heaved slowly, a sign of life.
I took another step forward, feeling the cold wood beneath my feet, and cringed at the dust sticking to the soles. I reached out to gently touch what I could only assume was her shoulder. It was like touching a starved dog, all bones.
I dragged down the blanket enough to see her face. Her eyes were milky and glazed over, staring at the wall across the way. She inhaled, a sort of heaving that shook her whole body, and spoke again.
“I want to tell you something.”
“Okay, what is it, Mom?”
I was expecting a request for food, water, her prayer book—or even asking for Dad, who died 15 years ago.
“I have something for you,” she said, obviously pained by the energy required to use her voice.
I noticed she was clenching something in her fist, so tightly that it looked painful. The knobs of her bony fingers and hands protruded through her thin flesh, like they could break through at any moment.
Making my way around the bed, I pulled a chair closer to her.
“What is it? Are you holding it?” I asked.
She extended her hand slightly, and loosened the grip enough for the item to slowly detach itself from her and drop into my open hands.
I held the item closer to my face, examining it for a brief moment. It was a shell, maybe of a clam or something like it, just like the ones that littered the various stony beaches around the island. Nothing special, and likely just another dementia moment, I thought.
“Thanks, Mom. This is … nice.” I said, attempting to appease her.
I slowly went to move away, when suddenly her arm shot out, more rapidly than I had seen her move in months, maybe years. She gripped my hand, wrapping my fist tightly around the shell. I felt the edges of it dig into my skin. I tensed up in response to the sensation.
“You—he never wanted you to know. Maybe he was wrong, maybe you should know. It would be good for you.”
“Mom, you’re hurting me, let go,” I said this calmly, but in a firm tone, like a parent admonishing their child.
“Your father never wanted this for you. He made me swear I wouldn’t give this to you.” She gripped harder, my flesh now grating on the sharp edges of the shell.
“Let go,” I asserted again, trying to pull away. “You can tell me whatever you want if you let go.”
“You’re my child too, and I want you to have this.” She spoke these words through gritted teeth, a clear tone of anger present in her voice.
“Enough!” I shouted. I twisted my hand away to stand. As I wrenched myself away from her grip, a sharp pain shot through my hand. The serrated edges of the shell had clawed open my skin. I stumbled back for a moment and looked down at my still-closed fist. There was blood leaking through my fingers, beginning to drip onto the floor. I opened my fist up to examine the cut.
“What the fuck, Mom?” I demanded, an anger suddenly pulsating through me. I moved toward her, feeling an instinct to strike her, but instead held out my hand as evidence.
“You cut me, why the fuck did you hold my hand like that?” I showed her, pleading for an explanation.
At this point, her gaze had settled back to its original resting place, towards the dresser pushed against the wall. An old family photo, a figurine of Jesus, and a small rosary rested there.
Her catatonic response was enough to push me over the edge. I threw back her blanket, smearing my blood across it.
“Answer me!” I demanded, getting down to her level.
She exhaled, shakily, and finally met my eyes for a moment.
“You’re just like him, so angry. Maybe this will give you a new perspective,” she quietly responded.
It was then I hit her, open-palmed across her face, my blood leaving bold streaks across her cheek. I turned and stormed out of the room, the blood-soaked shell clattering to the floor as I threw it across the room.
“Bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
I stomped towards the front room, looking back towards the bedroom for a moment. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word, which somehow made me angrier. I pulled on my work boots, caked in mud, and slammed the front door. It shuddered against its thin wooden frame. I didn’t bother to grab a coat and grasped at my arms as the bitter wind whipped across my skin and threw my hair wildly against my face. I threw open the door to my truck and grabbed the keys from the visor. Soft snowflakes began to fall as I took the winding roads along the sand dunes. My headlights illuminated the sea grass, casting long shadows beyond them. I noticed my bloody handprints on the steering wheel and stepped down harder on the gas. I thought about my mother, and a tinge of guilt rushed through my body. I cringed, the guilt intensifying. I suddenly hit myself, my closed fist striking against my forehead a few times. Tears began to well up in my eyes, but I shook them away quickly. I tried to convince myself how she had deserved it. It was her pathetic last ditch effort to poison me against my father. But he had never hit me.
The road pulled me to a familiar destination, a partially empty parking lot, now dusted with a light layer of snow, bathed in the red neon light from the sign: “The Salty Dog.” The ‘S’ had lost its lighting years ago. Approaching the wooden door, I peered in through the small square window. I pulled it open and trudged inside. I was met with the familiar smell of peanuts and beer, and felt my body relax as my feet sank into the orange, stained carpet.
I glanced around, noticing the familiar faces dotted across the room in states of relative solitude. I took a seat at the bar and stared down at my hand. The bleeding had stopped, and the blood was now dried and creating a crust, flaking off where my hands had met the wheel. I was interrupted by Luke, who approached quietly and placed both hands on the bar.
“What is it tonight, Brandy?” he asked, a shy smirk making its way onto his upper lip. “Pabst? Or maybe we go for the fancy stuff and try a blue moon? I can even go the whole nine yards and put an orange slice in it.”
His lame attempt at humor nearly sickened me, but I glanced up and smiled, knowing a little harmless flirting could score me an unpaid tab.
“Hi Luke,” I nearly cooed, bile rising in my throat at my own tone. I blinked slowly, trying to make myself as sexy and girlish as possible. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
He looked back at me, tongue smoothing over his teeth in a way that felt predatory. He paused a moment, looking me over, and lightly slapped the bar before walking away to fill two pints from the draft.
I didn’t care what it was, as long as it tasted like alcohol and didn’t cost me anything. The frosted glass was set down in front of me before I had a moment to think.
“Let me know when you want another,” he said with a wink.
“Sure thing,” I said, sarcasm coating my voice. I moved my hand to feel the cold of the glass against my cut. I threw back the drink in a few gulps, desperate for the liquid to coat my body in its familiar warm glow and water down the memories of the evening. Despite my efforts, I thought of Mom again. How she would have dragged me away from the bar if she could, reminding me of what had happened to Dad.
The memory flashed clearly and instantaneously then: Coming home from sixth grade to find the TV still on, blaring commentary from the Patriots’ game. Dad wasn’t in his usual seat, but signs of him were there: empty beer bottles littered the floor, and the seat was reclined with the footrest up. I placed my backpack in my room upstairs and returned to the living room, prepared to make myself a cheese sandwich dinner while Mom was away at work. As I opened the fridge, I heard it, the sound of running water. Curious, but not afraid, I approached the bathroom door and pushed it open. Dad was lying in the bathtub, fully clothed, fully submerged, and fully deceased. I remember thinking he looked surprisingly tranquil, and how years later, I had realized that was the most peaceful I had ever seen him.
I felt my body cringe, rejecting the memory, and shook myself away from it. I raised my hand to signal for another drink and mouthed “with a shot” to Luke. He nodded, and walked to retrieve it for me.
The shot burned my throat as it went down, and I chased it with my beer. I felt my body continue to loosen, and my mind blur around the edges, finding the perfect boundary between tipsy and completely drunk. I swung my legs to the side of the barstool, slurped down the last few gulps of my drink, and collected myself before heading for the door. Luke eyed me for a moment before approaching me briskly from the other side of the bar.
“Brandy, don’t you think you’ve had a bit too much to drive tonight?” he questioned me. It was sweet, I thought. The closest he could probably come to being sincere.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve done much worse.”
And it was true. I was lucky the island only had one sheriff, especially last summer when I nearly wrapped my car around a tree. But no one was around to witness it, and Rudy at the body shop was able to order a new side panel with the utmost discretion.
“Please,” a tinge of desperation in his voice, “you can have another beer on me, if you let me take you home at the end of my shift. Just 15 more minutes.”
A wholly enticing offer, I thought.
“Can I have one of the fancy IPA ones?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes, but nodded.
“Okay, fine.” Moving slowly back to my seat and waiting.
The IPA was hazy and bitter, and fully placed me over the threshold of comfortably drunk to unmanageably drunk, which was a high threshold to begin with.
About 20 minutes later, I was stumbling to Luke’s car, refusing his offers to help me on my way. My eyes glanced up from the ground to see the snow falling steadily. It was the kind of snowfall that strikes a chord of nostalgia, floating down from the sky with a softness that resembles a dream. For a moment, I was fully struck by its beauty highlighted in the street lamps. I turned my face to the sky and held my palms up, like a child basking in the sun.
The snowflakes began to coat my eyelashes, and I felt them melting quickly as they met the heat of my skin. Suddenly, a searing pain struck me, centralized on my injured palm.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed, crouching over to examine my palm.
“Are you okay?” I heard Luke fuzzily in the background. My focus on my cut nearly drowned him out altogether.
I moved my hand so the light could hit it more directly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary from a first look, but the pain continued. I flexed it, examining it from all angles, when suddenly I caught sight of a quick glint of light, seemingly from inside the cut.
I brought my hand closer to my face, only inches from my eyes when I saw it. A singular, bluish-green oval within the cut. It shimmered slightly, like a sequin, reacting when the light hit it from different angles.
Luke’s hands were on me now, lightly grasping my shoulders. I shook him off.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I growled.
The pain had eased slightly, but still throbbed and pulsed noticeably.
He took a few steps back.
“Brandy, stop, let’s get in the car. We can take a look at it there.”
“What a fucking gentleman. Are you going to open the door for me too?” I could feel myself being unfair, being a bitch, but the combination of my pain and drunkenness had lit something in me that couldn’t be damped down now.
“You know what? I think I’m actually fine to drive home. The cold has sobered me up anyway.” It felt like I was challenging him, waiting for him to force me into the car, force me to be cared for.
A moment of silence hung between us. He looked defeated, almost beaten down. A pang of longing hit me, and I felt the urge to move towards him, but my body resisted. He shrugged slightly, giving up.
“Have a good night, Brandy.” He slid into his car, and the engine quickly roared to life. The lights of his beat-up sedan suddenly bathed over me, a spotlight on my flaws, on my insecurities. He pulled out of the parking lot, and I was left as alone as I was when I arrived.
I climbed into the driver’s seat, shivering from the cold. I cried then, my body wracked by the intensity of my feelings. I gasped for air between the sobs, my throat constricted as if wrapped in barbed wire. I brought my hands to my eyes, rocking back and forth, waiting for the internal storm to pass, as it always had.
The wetness of my face transferred to my palms, and I suddenly felt the throbbing pain fade away. As it faded, the sensation was replaced with a soft pleasure. It felt like a warm glow had lit up within my wounded hand, the way it feels to sit curled up by the fire as a winter storm rages outside.
The startling transition worked to regulate my emotions, and devastation quickly turned to curiosity. I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and turned my palm to face myself once again. The glimmer I had seen earlier appeared larger now, more noticeable. Bringing it closer to my face, I could see the single shape had seemingly multiplied into five or six of the same shape and color, somewhat layered against one another.
I breathed in slowly and shakily, unsure of whether to feel afraid. I let a final tear drop fall into the wound, and I shuddered in pleasure again as the sensation rippled through my hand.
Before I could think, my fingers found their way to the open cut. I lightly dragged them across the surface of the wound, questioning my next steps for a moment. Before I could consider all of my options fully, I was digging into the opening, feeling the layers of flesh peel back as I pressed more force into it. Blood began to well up inside, pouring from the sides of my hand and onto my lap. I felt the warm sticky substance as it lubricated my fingers and fell onto my thighs. I felt possessed, immune to pain, immune to the sight of carnage.
That was when I felt it, the edges of the small, glimmering shape, deep inside the cut. I maneuvered my hand to grasp it with my thumb and forefinger, pinching it between the two. I successfully pulled it out, feeling a slight pop as it came free from my wound. Covered in blood, I attempted to wipe it down on my legs, smearing more blood across my thigh. I pulled the object up to my eyes once again, still coated in blood. I paused, before bringing it to my mouth. I began to lick it, tasting the strong iron on my tongue, but pressed forward by my desperation.
The taste of iron subsided quickly, and I could see it clearly now, a scale, like a fish scale. I felt my eyes widen as I took it in, turning it over in my grasp. I pressed down on it and felt the scale flex slightly. I thought back to days on the fishing boat with Dad, and running my hands over the captured fish in the nets. This scale I held in my hands now felt exactly like the ones from my memory.
A horrified feeling ran through me as I pushed my fingers back into my palm, digging for more. I felt another scale and pulled it out, comparing it to the first. Disgust overcame me, and I tossed the scale aside.
Turning the ignition, I pressed my hands into the wheel, blood continuing to leak out from under my grip. I slammed on the gas, peeling the car from the parking lot and back onto the main road. I rolled down the windows, allowing the frigid air to envelope me. I hoped it would sober me up, or possibly wake me from some sort of psychotic break. But it didn’t, and I waited the whole drive to feel something else besides fear and the cold.
When I arrived at the house, I slammed on the brakes, sending my car skidding a few feet in the snow before it came to a complete stop. I stumbled out of the driver’s seat and ran towards the front door, tripping on the first step. I caught myself against the porch and pulled away, noticing the bloody handprint I left behind. I slammed my shoulder against the front door, as the right corner always stuck slightly.
“Mom!” I called out once inside, a slight wavering in my voice that could be perceived as anger, but I knew it as fear.
No response. I stomped towards her bedroom door, open but bathed in darkness, and threw the light switch on. I moved towards her quickly and shook her body by the shoulder. She felt heavy and rigid, like all 90 pounds of her was soaking wet and frozen. I moved to roll her over on her back. My eyes met her face, and I knew she was dead. It was the same face Dad had fifteen years ago.
Startled, I backed away. I brought my hands to my mouth in surprise and disgust, the smell of blood and the realization of the moment overwhelmed me. I vomited, mostly liquid from my night out, directly onto the floor. As I stood hunched over, hands on my knees, I looked down and caught my breath. As my gaze focused, my eyes settled on the shell. Small and rounded, it lay next to my mother’s nightstand. I was struck by how plain and unimportant it looked in this light. I brought my boot down upon it, feeling and hearing a satisfying crunch beneath my weight.
The taste of vomit lingered in my throat, and I rushed to the kitchen for a glass of water. My hands shook as I picked up the glass and turned the faucet on. I thought of my dead mother in the other room, of my blood smeared across the home, the car, myself. Trembling, I brought the glass of water to my lips, letting the cool liquid slide down my throat. I was suddenly struck by the deafening silence and the accompanying sense of loneliness within it.
Moments later, I felt my stomach and abdomen clench tightly, like my internal organs were being squeezed in a hydraulic press. My throat burned and throbbed, and I could almost feel the pink, fleshy membrane closing in on itself. I gasped for air, my mouth gaping open like a dying fish. The violent internal sensations struck me repeatedly, and I stumbled sideways as if struck by some outside force, slamming into the kitchen table. My body shook the table, and the salt shaker fell to the ground, shattering and spilling its contents onto the floor.
I fell to the ground and held myself up on all fours. On my knees, I felt the granules of salt press into my hands. Suddenly, the same release that I felt in the car overcame me. Pain was replaced by pleasure. I frantically moved my hands across the floor, working to smear the salt deeper into my palm and pushing the granules directly into my open wound. I pulled my palm to my mouth and licked the salt from my flesh. The pleasure heightened, and I felt my throat loosen and relax. I pressed my tongue into my open wound for more. The salty taste of my blood satisfied me deeply.
I pulled back for a moment, looking down toward my hands. There I saw a thin, nearly translucent connection of flesh growing between my fingers. I pulled my hand away from the floor, still on all fours, gazing at the sight. Webbing, I thought. Fear gripped me tightly, and the image of my father flashed across my mind. His face appeared, bathed in shadow and lined with a sober expression. Those nights on the fishing boat, he was always drunk and would craft incoherent stories of sea sirens, pirates, and giant squid. I remembered the sensation of waves crashing against the hull and the motion of the boat pulling my stomach from side-to-side, parallel to the sensations rising within me on the kitchen floor.
I slowly crawled to the bathroom. My fingernails flexed backwards as I worked to pull my body across the floor. At the bathtub, I hauled myself up to sit on my knees, grasping at the faucet. I managed to wrench it on, and water flooded into the basin, clear and cold. I pulled my upper body up and under the stream, awaiting some sense of relief. The cold water suddenly burned my flesh with a startling voracity as my body screamed for salt.
My wet, bleeding body left a kind of mucosal trail behind me as I pulled myself back to the kitchen. My soaking hair stuck to my face and slowly grew colder from the winter air seeping in through the siding of the house. Pushing myself up on the counter, I pulled open the cabinet to find a single, likely decades old, salt box. Decorated with the cutesy cartoon girl beneath an umbrella, I grimaced at her image as I clawed the box from the shelf.
Stumbling back to the bathroom, I threw my head back and poured some of the salt directly into my mouth, like taking a swig from a whiskey bottle. The tub was nearly overflowing now, and I stood above the rising water level, body hunched inward to hide myself from the pain. I turned the salt box upside down and emptied the contents entirely into the water. The clumps sank quickly to the bottom of the tub and swirled slowly, dissolving. With the box feeling empty, I tore open its cardboard sides, ripping into the sturdy cardboard with my short, dirtied nails. I held the torn box over my mouth, praying for a few granules to fall into my tongue.
Nothing came, and the pain in my organs wracked me again. I threw myself into the porcelain tub and felt the weight of my body slam against the bottom. I hadn’t bothered undressing. The water immediately soaked through my flannel shirt and dress. The water quickly filled my dirtied work boots and pulled my feet to the bottom of the tub. There was a strange comfort in the way the water encased me, even as the frigid temperature shocked me. I sank into the water slightly, placing my nose just above the surface to continue breathing. Relief washed over me.
The individual granules of salt felt gritty under my palms in the basin of the tub, failing to completely dissolve in the icy water. I dove my head underwater, and felt the tub overflow. I exhaled, allowing my body to sink lower as the air exited my lungs. I felt the sides of my neck pulsate, and moved my fingers up to investigate the sensation. I found mucous coated slits, located on either side of my neck. They flared in response to the icy water, like a faulty car engine attempting to sputter to life. I would have felt panicked, but the relief of the water overcame the baseline of fear in my chest.
I opened my eyes beneath the surface of the water and stared at the crack in the ceiling above. I pulled my hand from the water and held it above me, gazing at the webbed structures emerging between my fingers. I felt a slight smile move its way onto my face.
Small scales began to push themselves through my flesh, emerging across my body and making contact with the wet layers of clothing heavy upon my skin. The friction of the two felt uncomfortable and unnatural. The slits in my throat continued to pulsate, and I felt my airways constrict in response.
A small sensation of heat began to grow internally, combatting the frigid water surrounding me. I felt my throat continue to close and my skin gradually began to feel too tight for the body inside. Small waves of cramps returned to me, subtle, but washing over me with increasing intensity with each pass.
The pain heightened, and quickly turned to concern. With a furrowed brow, I moved my hand along the bottom of the tub, seeking out the clumps of salt. Finally hungry for air, I pulled my head above the surface. I attempted to kick off my boots and remove my flannel, hoping my bare skin could absorb more salt. Manipulating my body felt harder, like my legs were stuck together, glued by something. I looked down to pull up my dress. There I found the flesh between my thighs fused, a bridge of skin formed between them.
I began to thrash in the tub, grasping the edges and trying to lift myself out of the water. In an instant, my hands and feet slipped. I heard the crack of my skull against the porcelain, sending a stream of blood seeping into the already murky water. My vision blurred, and my head slipped under the surface again. The slits in my neck swelled and palpitated. The sensation of pressure in my body heightened, like my organs were slowly pushing against the barrier of my bones. In a daze, I pulled in a breath underwater and felt the liquid enter my lungs. The sensation of drowning pushed a spike of adrenaline into my body and I pulled up, attempting to keep my head above water.
Gripping the lip of the tub, the weakness in my body heightened, and I slumped back into the water, unable to hold myself up any longer. I suddenly lost all control, and my body began to thrash in convulsions. The water sloshed violently in response to my movements, and the murky water splattered across the pink floor tiles already covered with dirt, salt, and blood.
Suddenly, the sensation of pressure released within me, as if a balloon had popped. I slowed, coming to rest on my back. With my head underwater, I felt fluid continue to fill my lungs, and my vision again settled on the cracked ceiling.
I laid still, just under the surface of the water. I was overcome with the heaviness of my own body, and my mind slowly settled deeper into the feeling. The weight of my head pulled me deeper underwater, the shuddering inhale of my lungs forced water down my throat, and my slowing heart resembled a singular whisper in the silence of the water. The sound of the wind whistled eerily outside, and as my vision went black, a slight smile moved across my lips.
