Suicide Diving
By Michelle Mary Davila
2.1x10- Verses of Angel :I’ve been looking so long, I’ve been living so long
▫◙▫
“If only tonight we could…”
The sky wasn’t quite blue enough. The sky didn’t quite have stars enough. I looked at them, trying to see the bells of laughter, trying to hear them and trying to find him. Trying to imagine him. Imagine him running along the sea, bubbles and foam about his bare feet. The sand doesn’t bother him and the crags do not hold him hostage. He’s content and full of delight. A giant smile across his face, causing his nose to point and his eyes to squint ever so slightly. He’s laughing… But I cannot remember that laughter. I remember standing quiet in the rain. And he ran to my heart to be near. How he always held close in my fear… I remember running soft through the night. We screamed at the make believe, screamed at the sky. And I finally found all my courage to let it all go… I remember falling into his arms, crying for the death of my heart. And feeling lost in the cold. I remember how he used to be. So much more than everything…
Sleeping on a bed made of flowers, Eros and I slept quietly in each others’ arms.
○٭٭○
Delilah stood at the balcony, leaning on limestone pillars and rails, ignoring Albert’s dilapidated garden below. She gazed upon the stars in the sky. Looking for peace of mind. Looking for what she lost. Finally falling to sleep upon a daybed, sleeping alone in front of a television with the volume all but gone.
When she awoke, she tore apart the curtains and tore apart the rugs. She threw them out into the rain and stood in front of them, chest gradually heaving and hair like soggy, black, overcooked noodles.
But he did not come.
She grew ever more discontent and uncomfortable with the sheer existence of the house, as though the walls and the doors and the floors disapproved of her. She never questioned living there, but she vowed never to use them, locking every single door, floating just above the floor and dematerializing through walls.
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I was just going to check up on her. As I opened the door, my vision failed till the door had closed. I turned around as it locked behind me, startled. I could only assume the door locked automatically. The light, too, was an automatic feature. I wondered if it would soon fade or if it could sense my very being. Whether it could sense me or not, fell to but a dull smolder. It was then that I knew was trapped.
I ran in circles. Every door I came to was locked and every entryway led to nothing but soft lighting. The sound of my own footsteps echoed as if the floors were made of numerous, slightly damp stones at the bottom of some dungeon, holding an epic monster that had to be disturbed. I wandered, then went up the large marbled stairs and slid upon the banisters of pure white limestone until she drifted past me, toes to the ground and free from the touch of the other. As she glided by, she stuttered and shrieked:
“You know it’s not fair to call me immature! You know that’s not fair... Why don’t you just stop getting older? I really think… you should stop! 11,046 really is old enough…
“You know, maybe you wouldn’t be so old if you didn’t sleep so much…”
I reached out to touch her, barely grazing the skin of her shoulder, barely missing her tiny freckle. She immediately spun about to stare, pupils heavily dilated and barely surrounded by the gold and barely surrounded by the smooth, black streaks and grooves in her irises. Her right hand was lifted slightly, like a claw ready but hesitant. Her pupils shrank. Then returned to a normal size. Her hand lowered, forgotten.
“What are you doing here?” She blinked at me, confused.
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It’s too dark. It’s too dark and everywhere are faces. Round, white faces with large, protruding fangs and teeth. Their eyes are just as round as their faces, licking them as well as their teeth. Sometimes when I look to the moon, she has this face. Even when I imagine happy badgers beating at their drum like stomachs to crack shells. Or shellfish. I know shellfish wouldn’t be lurking around the corner!
Sometimes it’s a hairy face. Never a scaly face. This just wouldn’t make sense to me. Sometimes it’s a pirate dripping wet from being lost at sea. Sometimes they have bulging eyes and curled tongues. Some of the time, they just jump out to surprise me. And that’s the end of it.
Sometimes I would think that if I could not save the sea, perhaps I should die to. If I could not even save the whales and porpoises from something as fleeting as sonar, how could I hope to save myself—was what I used to think. But it would just make me mad at Dean. I would still wonder.
I would still wonder why he didn’t at least say something, why he didn’t try. He knew it was important to me and he knew I couldn’t do anything, he knew I couldn’t be too public. He knew how close I was to just flying over and destroying all their ridiculous equipment. He knew I might suddenly find myself in a room with a Navy general or sergeant, a Congressman, a Senator, a Department Secretary—the President! Whomever I had to go to. I’d go to them all. And he knew. He couldn’t have loved me. He must have hated me. He must have hated me enough to hate all of them. He must have. He knew.
So I tried to encourage myself. I tried, I tried to encourage myself. To welcome the demons. For I would gladly surrender mine to theirs, ending whatever life it is that I had managed to cling to, almost absent mindedly or forgetfully. It just seemed that tiresome. Never would I stop and think to myself, “For this, I have wracked my brains and ripped out hair. For this, I have begged and pleaded. For this, I sacrificed my very freedom, my very heart, my very soul. For this. For this.” Never would I think this. Never would I just think it would cause such a disaster, such a travesty.
But I couldn’t do it. I still ran from room to room, as though someone were waiting to ambush me in the long, long hallway. I still lock the doors and keep all the lights on with my own energy. For this almost all the lights are faint, only brightening with excessive activity. I still cannot sleep due to assassins and murderers creeping in the shadows. Assassins and murderers with godly, stately bodies. Though, even if they could do me no harm. I find I would be just as scared, just as terrified, just as distressed.
“If only tonight we could sleep…”
I smelled the flowers. Giant roses opened, petals outstretching and overlapping. Giant roses whose petals outstretch and overlap in their supreme softness. A gentle fragrance. A sea of dark red, tinted pink. Three roses of a white gently laced with magenta. And the giant petals outstretch. Outstretch and overlap.
“Why are you always sleeping…? I’ve been up for hours just waiting for you to wake up… I know I fall asleep earlier than you… but maybe if you didn’t sleep till mid-afternoon…”
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She constantly muttered nonsensically. Often about mornings and breakfast, sometimes of laundry and plays. Once she mentioned New Years. This was when I saw her sleeping at four in the afternoon. She was nearly content. Something about missing the countdown because they were racing.
When she wasn’t asleep, it seemed as if she should have been. I came to see that she only muttered in distress while awake and wandering, or if I rejected her touch as we slept. She would often gesture to her left and stare. She never seemed happy or content with her imaginings. Not until she fell asleep.
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There’s a show late at night with creatures that live under the earth. Their bodies look as though covered in mop strings, a putrid dark green. I used to see them, despite their generally friendly nature.
I could see things anywhere—upon the ground, hiding among foliage and tiny birds. Magicians with ragged beards and fierce eyes, who squirmed and hugged the ground to be unseen.
Sometimes there was a man made of pillows. His legs, his arms, his body—all pillows. His head was a round, or circular, pillow. His teeth were little tiny pillows, always shown due to his giant smile. I imagine his teeth are slightly too far apart. Enough for another tooth, maybe even a tooth and a half. His eyes are said to be made of buttons, but I think I imagine little round pillows. His eyes are indistinct.
The thing about the pillowman is that he came to children who would later end their lives in lonely suicide—he came just before their happy lives would falter. He would tell them, explain to them, how horrible their lives would become. They would end their lives with him, comforted, sidestepping the horror. I imagined he would stand at my doorway, his happy little grinning face filled with tiny, white pillow teeth, uniformly spaced. And though I refuse him, tell him I don’t mind and I will merely deal with my life, he comes for me all the same. And I’m suffocated beneath a giant pillow, so soft and white.
I’m afraid one day he’ll just tap me on the shoulder, verifying that all my years of work. All my years of servitude and all my years of defamation and all my years of compromise. Were for nothing. A complete waste of energy and a complete waste of time. A complete waste of a time. So much time.
Somehow, I never remember that he would have come already.
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Some nights I would stay and sleep beside her. Some nights she was overly affectionate and I would have to pull myself from her. At this, she would curl to the edge, muttering. Once she said:
“Maybe he just wanted to know, too… But sometimes I need to know…”
It was while we slept that I noticed odd rashes about her body. When I asked her of this, she merely told me she was allergic to grass, as she was not used to our ridiculous variety of plants. She simply could not understand them. But I don’t know where she came into contact with grass.
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I could not tell if it was a dream or hallucination. I saw giant sea grapes, like lime green glowing plums, burst with red octopus like babies the way I imagine the brain of the dolphin does. I imagine the explosions of blood and beaches littered with them and their mothers and their fathers and their friends. Beaches and beaches that stretch out for miles, unnaturally, like the faintest hell and with the same rotting hell smell. The old man can’t stand, but wakes up, meaning to devour. Outstretching his icicle hands and icicle arms with icicle fingers, his face whitely bearded, he washes his hands over them. With a special paint. Which cannot be painted on or painted over. Which can never be washed off or painted over. But what does the sea grape bring to the party? Shutters are slammed after I’ve put my head out them, wondering where that wind, where those shadows have gone and where that evil fish came. Talking to dolphins that are no longer there and killing the swordfish that killed them, though he is already dead, dead like a zombie. Dead, glazed over eyes even before I attacked. He’s stuck in a gel, formaldehyde, like a pig or its embryo. If I were dead like a zombie, would someone kill me too, believing I some murderer of the sea? Though it was I who came from it more recently—much more recently, far more recently than any of them. Even if it has been hundreds of years since I’ve seen my amazing tail. Hundreds of years since I’ve seen my shimmering scales and my gorgeous fins, hundreds of years since I swam alongside iguanas and dolphins and manatees and whales, jellyfish and turtles and penguins and walruses. Hundreds of years since I plucked a fresh sea grape for myself. Sea grapes which are meant to be so very tiny.
And I wonder. If I were dead like a zombie, if I fell, would someone kill me too?
»˜΅♥΅˜«
“You can’t do this.” I raised one eyebrow and stared at her plain face.
“Ah, Aphrodite. It has been a while.” She looked at me with eyes barely more than half open.
“This is a complete breach of contract.” I glared and circled her like a vulture,
But she did not seem at all phased.
“We don’t have a contract. We have a strictly verbal agreement.” She downed some cranberry soda straight from the one liter bottle. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the carbonation, which usually irritated her sensitive stomach. “Since I couldn’t sort the rice, I’m to perform a series of errands for you. When I’m done, you’ll tell me where he is. And I will have your blessing. Your exact words. I don’t have to do everything you tell me to do. I just have to complete your errands in a preferably timely manner.”
“Don’t forget that—”
“Until I’m done, you will keep my gems. Any slip ups will result in further errands. Yes. I have not forgotten. We’ve worked together for 4,271 years. I can still remember quite well.”
I was shaking my head. “But you can’t just—”
“There’s no part of our agreement that says I can’t.” She shrugged very lightly.
I could not believe her. I could still not forgive her. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but she will certainly not double cross me. She will certainly not find some ridiculous loophole to make her punishment less horrifying. She will certainly not get the better of me.
▫╠╤╪ ▫
I was so glad to have told her off. It has been so long since I’ve had the upper hand in our partnership. I cannot even be sure if I ever have, but I would like to leave the possibility open. I would like believe that I once had. And that I will again.
I wonder if time will pass more slowly or quickly this way. I wonder why Ivan is still hanging around and taking care of me. I wonder why he is not handling any form of police or detective work. I wonder, then, if Steven has put Ivan up to this, holding some sort of lost or vague affection for me. I wonder if I could fall. But I do not care to look into any of these prospects.
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I was glad to know that only the strep throat was contagious, the rash was merely obnoxious. I was glad to know that though she had polio, it was not the strain which caused paralysis. I was glad to know that with consistent use of her new shoes, she should not need surgery. However, she was always feeling too warm, and she was always feeling nauseous and she was always feeling frail and she was always feeling sore and she was always feeling poked and she was always feeling like she was stepping upon knives and daggers and spears and thick shards of glass. But she was never feeling. She never really felt any of it. She was just meant to feel it. She just complained.
∙۪۪۫۫ ∙
Delilah was still sitting there an hour and thirty-three minutes later, not at all moving, aside from the slight rise and fall of her chest—showing all who could see that she was not quite dead, though at this point she had forgotten to blink. Ivan didn’t notice. He sat beside her to tell her the news.
She had contracted polio, an inflammation of motor neurons at the base of the brain—the brain stem and the spinal cord. In addition, she had scarlet fever and was at high risk for lung cancer. However, Delilah did not smoke unless somehow detached from her body—casually inhabiting and using her zombie form, which could no more feel the smoke in her lungs than the heat of it. Additionally, the water she drank was neither contaminated nor tampered with, refusing to host any and all viruses.
He felt rather bad, considering her hair was falling out at an alarming rate—a phenomena which the doctors found no cause for. She now needed the most special of shoes, which were customized. The improper balance and stress upon her metatarsal bones caused a burning pain upon the balls of her feet as she walked, or at least were believed to. Her plantar fascia, the band of tissue connecting the heel to the toe, had been overstretched and torn. Her toes began to point inward to an extremity that would perhaps call for casts upon her feet and lower legs or surgery—if they could not be straightened. Her toes had once kept an equal distance between each other, very slight but reminding me of electrons, who only associate if they must. Now they were clashed, trying so hard to reach that big toe. Just as her fascia was.
He took her hand, which was neither cold nor warm, walking her to her own car. Despite her feebleness of body, he could never open the driver’s door, so even now, she continues to drive. The SAAB convertible was hers alone. He could no more drive this car than he could understand its existence, as no mark of Sweden would be found in or upon it. The car was instead a creature of own creation. A creature of chemical equations and molded elements, producing metals and liquids and synthetic fibers. Ivan believed the seating to be of the most perfect black leather, matching the German fabric of the top. Ivan believed that the tires were made of rubber and the mechanics were simple, though beyond Delilah’s comprehension. Ivan believed this little, dark green contraption to be of no real value to her.
She drove him home, though he told her he would stay with her. She stopped the car for three minutes—no more than three, no less than three—and started up again without a word. She drove into a tunnel whose lights had been silenced by the car, which often drove for her. The tunnel seemed endless and dark, but the light did not disrupt their vision as they came out. The light was soft and hazy, the light of a dark garage, which to Ivan’s brain, nearly resembled a cave. And this was for the fact that it was.
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I had almost been locked out. The door nearly shut upon me a she hazily walked without lingering. I caught the door just before it shut and clicked, but I did not see her anywhere. I walked through her thin hallway, which only just had enough room for my passage. There were three doors—one to the left, one to the right and one straight down the middle. This was the only open door.
I went straight forward, to what turned to be her kitchen. It held a large oven and two sinks. One was specifically for dishes, it seemed. There then stood an immense refrigerator of the shiniest steel. The refrigerator and freezer section were about a foot in height, separated by two drawers, one of which was forty inches tall, considerably larger than the other—perhaps four times as large. The entire monstrosity was three feet wide and about three feet deep. The refrigerator section, at the bottom, held no real vegetation, but a few meats along with certain condiments—dairy and jams. A loaf of French bread lay upon the middle shelf. The freezer wasn’t a freezer at all—no cool breeze or faint white air.
Inside the “freezer” were a large number of items. Among them were a box of cheese flavored crackers in the shape of bunnies, a bag of carrots—both baby and adult, a basket of berries, an apple, an orange, a cup of miso soup, a large box of sea salt, a stem of broccoli, a single stem of asparagus, a bag of red potatoes and various drinks—just one of each flavor. The thinner drawer had exactly sixteen flavors of frozen desserts, four rows and four columns. Some were sorbets, some sherbets and some pure ice cream. Each was a pint. Each looked crisp and new, unopened. One, in the far, top right corner, was not labeled.
When I finally went to the last, thick section, I could not quite open it. I stopped, hand just inches away. Then pulled gently, but with great ease. Inside was water. Filled with aquatic plants. Some of them had roots and fanned out past the limits of the drawer. These plants grew wild and untamed. I plunged my hand in, getting my shoulder and the tip of my head wet as I bent down. But I reached no bottom and felt only the warm, slimy leaves. The thermometer on the side read 76. There were waves of green and slight greys and browns, as well as little round green orbs almost like eyeballs and marbles.
╠╤╪
The life in Dean’s aquariums made their way to the zoo. But my aquarium. My aquarium, which had come with me from one male to the next and one errand to the next and one house to the next. Came with me, save just the one sacrificial fish. But this was not by my choice.
My paranoia had moved me to an island, if it can be called that, off the California coast. This island was much like the point of an iceberg above the water, made of red stone rather than ice and with dirt fringes. I made my home inside this rock, sheltered from all. It was warm and well concealed. I had a large garage for Francis to live in, but I could never decide if I wanted a backyard.
The house itself contained the normal essentials—windows, a bedroom, bath, kitchen, and three extra rooms. One held the aquarium and a pool. Another was filled with pillows and books—the living room. The windows showed nature scenes from different parts of the world, depending on which room you were in. The ceilings mimicked a blue, sunny sky—clouds spaced only for convenience. At night, the sky was dark, but stars could be clearly seen, unobstructed by satellites and planes and city lights. The four largest moons shone in their various forms. When I look at these moons, they never turn to faces.
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Clothes were everywhere, including within her closet, but mostly strewn about the floor. The whole room was blue, but the bed was black, hiding pure white sheets beneath them. Pillows of dark mulberry and raspberry were littered about. But Delilah could not be found.
Velvet draperies hung everywhere, along with random satins—most were blues or purples dominated by blue. An oblong square pillow sat upon the round bed with a bunny puppet, a cartoonish stuffed lion, and a small panda. There were more books here as well as small notebooks. There were paints and black and white photos. Jewelry and bits of paper. Undergarments.
Her bathroom was connected to her bedroom and a second room. A space of wall was slightly different in color on both the bathroom’s side and the hallway’s side. Her sink was wide and white with a tall, thin silver faucet. Mirrors alongside the walls. Turquoise marble floors and columns reaching to the high ceilings—textured silk draping all about them, leading into a circular portion of the room with a twenty foot diameter. At about four feet in, the tiles take a dip, escalating to five feet at its center, where there’s a drain as wide as a cantaloupe and a switch of a cover. A wide sunflower shower head floated above it, seven feet and eighteen inches across, so that if she were to lie under it, she would be engulfed.
The door on the other side of the bathroom held a glass tank laden with color. Fish and crustaceans and invertebrates of small stature were everywhere. Anemones housed tiny shrimp and clown fish. Minute sea horses clung to brightly colored coral. The largest animals were the giant clam and the few turtles. Though the top of the tank was, presumably, where it met the ceiling, leaving a few feet of air, the bottom was unclear. Looking very close, at the edge of the glass, the coral and the anemones continued and were at least a yard down and away, where the waters were a deeper blue.
A few feet from this tank, which took up more than half of the room—which was itself rather large, ranging from 32-39ft in height and 42-49 ft in width—was a pool. The pool had a six foot radius and slightly rounded edges. What seemed most peculiar about it was the water. The water was dark, nearly black, but with a faint hint of blue. It seemed to be dark not from depth, but to an extreme lack of light.
I left, unsure through her room, as no other door could be found. I stood in front of the last door.
╠╤╪
I didn’t really know how to activate it, or if it had already occurred and I just imagined something different. I did my best to fall at all opportunities. It took me eleven tries to get into the cars, it took me 14 attempts to get into bed properly—which I would often fall out of through extreme rolling, it took me 17 attempts to get into the aquarium. I slipped excessively, making sure to leave as much water in my wake after a dip, bath, swim or nap. I dropped glasses and dishes as if I had thought they were rugs or tiles to be artistically placed. The shards never bothered me. I secreted a mixture of calcium carbonates upon them. Soon my feet were covered in nacre tears. Soon I had left seaweed scattered about my room and left them upon the floors for added slippage. Soon thick algae grew upon the tiles—for instead of carpeting, I had tiles all about the floor. This algae wasn’t very appetizing, but may have brought my beloved hydrozoas.
I started to suppose that I had always been under a spell—since my very birth. Just because I did not know of the spell or of its intentions. Were no reasons to believe it did not exist.
After all, I had never been able to die. Not since my first gas exchange, not since my first breath.
‹›ˇ‹›ˇ
I could not get in. It took me nearly an hour, maybe sixteen, to realize that this door had no knob. It was just a door. Just a door. I wondered if she had forsaken it.
I did not understand why the floors had become covered in a thin film of fixed goo or why there were tiny pearls scattered everywhere. It made getting around aggravating. I could not understand her living conditions, I could not understand her life.
∙۪۪۫۫ ∙
Ivan Gilberts could not understand Delilah’s life any more than he could understand her lack thereof. Ivan Gilberts could not understand why Delilah felt no pain and no discomfort. Ivan Gilberts could not understand. For Delilah was no longer herself. Her long, black curly locks had been drained of life and energy—blanched and bleached, it fell out in clumps until she had what could only be described as a haphazardly done bob. Her tan skin, too, had paled and thinned. Most all of her blue veins could be seen beneath her skin. And her eyes retained only a tenth of their luster.
Delilah had had about all she could take. She didn’t understand why Dean had hated her so, why he hadn’t saved her and her dolphins from the Navy’s active sonar, which would cause hemorrhages and brain aneurisms in marine mammals. She had succumbed to a listlessness and an ache for the past. Her hallucinations would continue and grow until she truly believed she was with her Eros.
○٭٭○
Having calculated the number of years that had gone by, Delilah used her new gills and her new tail to slide. Into deep black waters. And breathe. Then an angel came, with burning eyes like stars. And buried her deep. In his velvet arms.
In a swirl of water, she thrust her hand into the rock and removed the tiny, tiny little gem from its tiny, tiny little hovel. A gem so round and so red. A gem which she had left to cultivate like a pearl.
The black waters held a song in their arms. A song of sleep. A song of deathless spells.
In a haunting language unrestrained by space, she uttered:
“If only I’d thought of the right words…
“There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more…”