CW: blood/ body horror/obsessive thoughts

This morning, by the well, the water unusually low, a bird had fallen out of its nest. It lay on the ground unmoving. A wing covering its face. Last night, it was screeching like someone was plucking its individual feathers. I wondered, once it stopped, whether it’d been butchered. Only then did I sleep.

The house looked so destructible in the distance, and the sky melted into my skin. I was painted grey and watery.

“I might die of boredom,” I explained to a disinterested sky.

Two little worms inject themselves into my skin. They sneak up, under my calves, then my thighs. When they reach my stomach, they have swollen. Now they are the size of fat baby fingers, they connect and lengthen to that of a grown man’s. It continues, up my navel, up my chest, through my centre. It tickles, and when pressed away, it disperses into five million tiny worms. There it is: my repressed frustration. 

I stared into the well and noted the water level. Significantly higher than yesterday, which was significantly lower than the day prior.
Caked in wet dirt, the walk back to the house feels shameful.

“Am I making you feel sick?” I used to ask. I used to care about the answer.

“No, no, everything’s right, everything’s good,” he’d answer, but he’d shift around uncomfortably.

I’d suddenly feel hyper-aware of the space I took up.
Still, I looked better then, all over his mouth. My back to his front, we’d lie on the couch, my head tilting uncomfortably for his honey taste. My breath being snatched and scattered.

These scenes were sun-stricken, painted with upward brush strokes and soaked in a glossy overcoat. Hidden away in a haze, I look back on them. I watch this couple earnestly. They feel like strangers.

It feels stickier than anything, now. He kisses my shoulder as I enter the kitchen.

“Am I making you feel sick?” he asks, feigning wide-eyed hilarity.
He tramples over to the other side of the kitchen island and picks up the papers left there from last night. He knows the answer. I look out the window, toward the well and the bird.

“No,” I answer. I let my gaze linger, and my lips turn to malicious hooks that reach and catch the view. I say, “You look handsome today. Are you trying to impress someone?”
I know the answer, too.

“Yeah. You.” He pauses. “You beautiful, capable, young thing, you. You should pour me some coffee.”
This wrenches a glance from me, and I wonder if my basal disgust translates. I wonder if he can feel it like an orbitoclast piercing his skull.

He flinches, which gives me a sense of victory. I draw on my little strength and reach for the coffee pot.

“You know, the well’s level has been fluctuating recently.”

“Oh?” he begins, lamenting the need to care for a house out here. I warned him about this, and because he knows this, he adds, “I’ll take a look at it. Later.”

***

There was a time when my foresight had a voice. A shrill, concerned one, but a voice nonetheless.

When he flew home with this house in his hands, he said, “You’d love it! And the risk isn’t that high.”
But the risk was still there. The phantom-shakes had already begun.
I stopped caring to warn him. Unsolicited, I was difficult and wanting. Unfeeling, I was beautiful. Hot, even. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, half-naked, folded over, staring ahead. Bird-blood dripped onto my head and into my brain like cement. Thin, red lines soldering my cheeks.
“I’ll come, I guess,” I said, “but there’s a lot of upkeep you’re gonna be responsible for. And if there’s…”
He cut me off, stepped forward from his place leaning against the doorframe, closed in on me and kissed me on the cheek. It had less to do with the celebration of moving out here, and more to do with beating me, wearing me down.
“I’ll take care of it. You’ll love it, it won’t make you feel sick at all.”

***

I look up to see it hanging upside down from the ceiling, the beak open and pointed at me, and its bloody innards fall on my face—

“Did you hear the birds last night?” he asks.

My reverie is shattered. “Oh. Yes. There was a dead one outside today.”
He looks momentarily startled. There’s a small moment where shared knowledge lingers in the air. Water is filling my lungs.

“There are signs of this all around, you know. Just the other day, Louisa from down the road said her well’s been looking weird. Fluctuating, she said.”
I don’t much trust Louisa from down the road’s judgement. She still holds up her hands to identify left from right. I can picture her now, vividly, mistaking a turn and stepping into a rabbit hole-sized well that vacuums her in. She’s looking at me now, directly, her mouth struggling to rise above water level. Her body is vertical. Bubbles are rising, but her eyes go back in her head slightly, her hair covers her forehead and eyes, she’s reaching out a half-hearted hand, and if I stepped forward, I could save her.

I don’t move.

“You have to get rid of it,” I say. I don’t mention our well again.

***

The dead bird lays in front of four muddied legs.

“Give me the shovel.” I look to his hands, both empty, and dormant anger scratches the back of my throat.

“I didn't bring it—What happened here?” He looks up at the tree, a lone nest sitting precariously on a branch. It is bird-less.

“What do you mean, you didn't bring it? Why else did we trek all the way out here?”

“All the way out here? I can still see my mug on the counter from out here. Pointing, he continues, “Maybe we’re on the verge of—”

“Is this some kind of joke to you?”

“What?”

“Why didn't you bring the goddamn shovel?”

“I thought you just wanted to look at the thing.”

“You thought we walked through the mud, just to look at this bird?”

I look at him newly. In the morning sun, his face is shades of embarrassment and stupidity. I stare back down at the bird. I think it laughs briefly, though not at him, at me. As it’s laughing, it starts choking.
Serves it right, I think. Worms start leaking from its beak, drenched in red. I look back at him. “Take care of it,” I order, stepping over the blood-soaked carcass and beginning my hike back.

“Is it making you feel sick?”

I walk until I become a faint voice in the distance. “No, but you are.”

***

Water sloshes up and down the sides of the tub. It’s violent, waves see-sawing between shorelines. It’s reminiscent of the well, a microdose of its treatment the past few days. When I look out the window next to the bath, I can see the well sitting patiently in the distance. Or maybe sulkily, for the dead bird still rests before it.

The water rushing cannot disguise the sound of him opening the flyscreen and stepping in, no doubt in his muddied boots. He closes it, surely noting the scratch in the “rich, art nouveau-esque” door frame. He’ll think to fix it “later”. That “later” will never arrive.

I dance around the tiles and find a bath bomb. Red and rose-scented, I distract myself with the packaging, something about releasing rose petals, something about “infusion”, “bliss”.

I accidentally catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The worm inside me is a necklace. When I spot it, it wriggles a little. Admittedly, it tickles. I think little of it, until, lengthening again, it wraps around the entire circumference of the inside of my throat. Growing larger and closer, it constricts me. I close my eyes and the unmistakable dripping of bird blood stamps my cheeks, leaking.

The door opens slyly, cheekily, wrongly. The worm undoes its tension and settles in my throat.

“Wait, I’m in here,” I call.

There’s an exaggerated sigh. I wipe the blood and stain my hands, painting across my chest and stomach.

“Our well’s fluctuated, too.”

“Okay,” I reply.

“You know what this means? And with the birds and all…”

“I know what it means.”

“Okay,” he resigns, “I’ll start preparing.” The door opens until it’s slightly more ajar.

“Don’t come in.”

“I could use a bath and if you’re—”

“I’ll be out in a bit,” I finish, stumbling over as best I can whilst leaving a trail of bird-insides.

“Am I making you feel sick?” he whispers as I lock the door. The question sours the air.

There was a scare like this once before. By evening the threat had settled and the well was back to normal. Back then I probably would’ve let him in. Welcomed it, in fact. Let him be slow and stupid, all sultry. We’d have stumbled into the bathroom and hit furniture, distracted in the pale mistiness, hazy candlelit idiocy.
The bath water a bereft, numbing chill.

Now, the water is scalding. I drop the bath bomb, watching as it plunges like an unforgiving cannonball. The red morphs from pink to dark to burning red, and sure enough, rose petals are dispersed. The petals, however, become stranger, and stranger still. They thin out with great urgency. No longer full and pear-shaped, they’re transforming into high-spirited, flame red, vindictive worms. They’re mocking me. In the mirror, the worm sits elegantly, tempting me. I glance out the window, and the bird stares back.

I step in, shrieking worms tickling against my legs and the rest of my body as I submerge. They incessantly writhe around and against me, and when I lean back, they press against my neck, calling for their queen to be released.

Downstairs, I hear him pattering about. He is most certainly taping things down, our frames and coffee-table books, drilling the TV down, securing cupboards and the bookcase to the wall.

I open my mouth when the shaking begins. I’m almost sad to see it go. Regardless, I open my mouth wider, and feel as it slithers up, my blood slick on its squirming body, inky with saliva. It pauses as the shaking resumes, and I begin to choke on its frozen state, attempting to expel it forcefully. It resents this, impressing itself on my insides and lodging there. My vision blurs, but I can see the bird still fluttering at the window. I hope I’m delightful entertainment!
Outside, the door handle is being rattled relentlessly.

“Hey, open the door, why the hell have you locked it?!” He’s throwing his tantrum as the shaking dispels. “It’s going to get worse: these are the foreshocks!” As if I don’t know.
“Open the door!”

The worm begins its ascent again, and slowly, it wanders upward, slimy and foraging for my breath.

“Open the door! Open it! This is serious, we need to get to the field. Come on, open the door!”

The bird begins to flutter backward, perhaps even it realises the dire circumstance. The water sloshes again, higher this time. Despite the shaking, the worm doesn’t stop moving, a small mercy that comes to a head when it slithers out of my mouth and into the water. Consciousness returns to me in glittering shapes and fantastical imaginings, and I stand from the red and let it drain. The door handle rattles half-heartedly, now.

“Are you okay in there?”

I reply, “Yes. I felt sick. That’s all.”

There’s a beat, and even after the trembling has momentarily alleviated, I tumble onto my knees, barren and hopeful.

“You go,” I call. “I’ll be out so soon.”

“Okay,” he agrees. His voice is indifferent and far off.

The shaking begins. It is violent and the bird is flying away.