The morbids, p.20
The Morbids, page 20
Dead.
No.
I wasn’t dead.
Someone was dead. They hadn’t said it but we all knew. Gerry. How did I know that? The app. When I’d booked. Gerry. And he’d told me. He was Irish. He had a—a car seat. A kid. A doctor’s appointment. A sick wife.
I wasn’t dead. I turned my head, side to side, to make sure I could. It hurt, but I could. And I saw glitter. Again.
Not glitter. Glass.
All the glass had shattered. The windscreen. The windows. Glass everywhere. All over the seats.
Not glitter. I touched my hair—fairy floss—and I felt it in my palms. Stinging.
Oh God.
Something broke. A bottle hit concrete. A tin can crushed in a fist. Another sound. Closer. A siren. Or a wail.
‘Oh God.’
My throat burned. I looked at my hand and it didn’t look like my hand and I could see where it stung, a sliver of red. I shook it, looked again, but it was still there. I could feel it. On my hand on my arms in my hair on my face, crawling, stinging.
Lina.
That was where I’d been.
Lina’s birthday.
No.
Matt’s birthday.
I was going to tell her.
I shook my head. More glitter. Glass. My chest hurt. My eyes hurt. Was there glass in my eyes? I blinked and it burned. There was glass in my eyes. Hot.
No.
I blinked again.
Just tears.
Hot. Burning.
‘Noooo …’
I’d stopped walking. Somewhere, there were voices. Other people. Somewhere far away. One laughed. It felt too close, too mean.
My chest hurt. Glass there too. Burning.
So much glitter.
24
TUESDAY, AUGUST
‘Have you guys ever heard of carbon monoxide poisoning?’
Geoff was sitting forward, elbows on his knees, looking at each of us intently, one by one, making sure we were listening.
When it was my turn I’d looked away, straightened my fingers in the pockets of my hoodie, tips straining the fabric. We’d done this before. Months ago.
Tom had the night off and I’d been so close to staying home with him. A part of me wished I had. I could have told him Lina was fine. Or that she was sick, that she had to work. Something. Anything. Just one time.
But I had to be careful.
Everything was strange. I had been trying to fix it but since the night at the casino everything was different. Harder. Tom was the same. He felt the same, looked the same, but sometimes when I looked at him I felt cold, like I had the flu, the bad kind.
I had to be careful. I was being careful.
‘I was up late the other night and I found this amazing thread on Reddit, where this guy was convinced his landlord was plotting against him. Someone suggested he might have been hallucinating due to a carbon monoxide leak in his apartment. Ended up being right and saving his life. It got me thinking …’
‘I read that!’ Louise exclaimed, so loudly it made me jump in my seat. ‘I know Reddit has a terrible reputation but that was amazing.’
‘Hi,’ a familiar voice said from the doorway, shaky and small. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
I turned.
Frannie walked in, pale, her eyes like saucers as she found an empty seat and sat down. She put her hands in her lap and her jacket rode up, and I saw thick white bandages around her wrists.
My breath caught, shook.
The room started to spin around her and I could feel my ribs closing around my lungs, so tight it was terrifying.
My mum’s sick.
Is she going to die?
Abraham shifted in his seat. He’d seen the bandages too.
My eyes found his and I begged him silently to fix it, to make it not real. He was the professional, I thought, as he frowned and looked away. It was his job to fix this. To fix us. That was why we were here.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said again.
‘It’s fine,’ someone murmured.
‘Welcome.’
‘Hi, Fran.’
All the voices blended into one, and then stopped. Someone started talking, stopped. Someone else.
I felt myself falling. That smell. Hot and sour.
My mum’s sick.
‘I’m not crazy,’ Frannie said suddenly.
I couldn’t look at her. I could smell it, from across the room.
‘I’m sick. I know I am. I can feel it. I look at myself in the mirror and I can see it. Why can’t they find it?’ Her voice was weird and low and desperate.
My mum’s sick.
‘They will,’ Geoff said kindly. I looked at him. He was pale, but otherwise normal. Carlos was nodding. I felt my breath quicken, my stomach churn, something awful rise up in my throat.
‘I know,’ Frannie said. There was a strand of hair on my face and I brushed it behind my ear. Another, and another, tickling but not tickling. Scratching. I brushed them all back. Slivers of glass stinging my forehead. Glitter.
‘It’s just so hard. I can’t start treatment until they find it. I’m rotting from the inside and they can’t find it.’
Donna shifted next to me. Everyone else was nodding and smiling at her like it was normal. Like this was normal. Like nothing had happened.
I made a sound. Odd, low. Geoff looked at me, and I glared at him until he stopped.
‘I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m sick and nobody will help me.’
My mum’s sick.
Is she going to die?
A surge of anger charged up my spine. ‘What if you’re not?’ I asked, before I could stop myself. I heard Donna say my name, hated the sound of her voice. Hated everyone, everything in this room. The calm, patient nodding like everything was going to be okay. Not fixing anything, not even trying. And I’d been trying so hard. ‘What if you’re not sick at all?’
My mum’s sick.
I took a breath, but I wasn’t there anymore.
I was fourteen, standing in a bathroom, pink and white, and stinking of vomit.
Lina was getting a textbook from her room and I needed to go to the bathroom and that’s where she was, head bent around the toilet, feet blocking the door. It smelled like vomit, but worse. Hot and sour.
Like death.
I liked her. I’d always liked her. Sometimes when she spoke it was like I understood her better than anyone.
I blinked. Frannie was looking at me, surprised, her eyebrows knotting together in a confused frown.
‘What if the reason they can’t find this cancer is because there is no cancer?’ I inhaled sharply. ‘What if you’re perfectly healthy and you’re going to be perfectly healthy for another forty years? What then? What if you’re not dying?’ My voice was too fast, too loud, and when I stopped everyone was staring at me, cold, hard eyes telling me how stupid I was for not understanding. ‘What if none of us are? This is horrible. This is absolutely fucking horrible.’
My mum’s sick.
I hadn’t understood when she’d said it, but I’d understood then. The second I’d seen her, I’d known. I felt like I’d always known.
I’d tried to stop Lina coming in, but I hadn’t known how. I’d tried to stop her seeing, but I couldn’t. And then she was wailing, begging for help, begging me to do something, and I’d tried to help her but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to do.
Acid. Vomit. Hot and sour, and she was bent at all the wrong angles. Lina pulled her up and she was floppy, like she was dead. Lina kept saying her name, or not her name, but Mum. Mummy. Begging.
I thought she was dead. The smell was so strong, so impossible. It made my throat close up. And Lina just kept saying her name, kept begging her to wake up.
‘Caitlin,’ Abraham said sharply. I blinked, not sure where I was. There. Here.
‘Why?’ My voice was small and my throat hurt. ‘Why would you—’
Frannie looked down at the floor, at her wrists. Acid. Blood. Vomit.
‘This isn’t normal. This is fucking horrible. Why are all of you acting like this is okay?’
Nobody said anything. Geoff’s eyes flickered down to his hands, but for once he didn’t say anything.
‘Why aren’t any of you doing anything?’ I looked at Abraham. ‘Why aren’t you? You’re supposed to be helping us.’
He didn’t answer.
I could smell it again, suddenly. Hot and sour. I turned. Everyone was still silent.
‘This is wrong,’ I said, standing up and putting my bag on my shoulder. ‘This is all wrong. You’re not doing anything. You’re not helping at all.’
Everything was wrong.
I heard someone say my name, ignored them. All wrong. I turned back to Frannie. She looked sick. She was sick. ‘Sorry for swearing at you,’ I said.
She nodded, her eyes huge and hollow, and I walked out of the room.
I called an ambulance, in the end. I don’t remember who called Lina’s dad. He came and he was different from what I’d imagined. He didn’t touch Lina once. Didn’t hug her. He stood there talking to the paramedics with his arms crossed, frowning, shaking his head.
Mum came too—she’d been home the whole time, cleaning the floors. She’d come out when she’d heard the screaming. Lina.
Lina wouldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t. I sat with her and the grown-ups talked. Mum, the paramedic, Lina’s dad, another lady in a suit who’d shown up with a briefcase. Her dad looked angry, annoyed. At one point he stopped to take a phone call. What a pain in the arse, I heard him say into the phone.
And Lina wouldn’t stop crying. I held her hand and told her it would be okay. I promised her that I would make it okay.
I stumbled down the stairs, feeling my eyes get hot.
Ever since then, I’d been so careful. I’d been careful for years, about everything, everyone.
And then I’d been careless. Once. Just once. I’d booked that ticket. February fifteenth. And then—
I was trying so hard to be careful again. That was why I had come here, when all I wanted to do was be careless and stay home with Tom and let myself go, over and over; fall, harder and harder.
I needed it to work. To keep me safe.
At the bottom of the stairs I pushed the door open and stepped onto the street, the cold slapping me in the face, catching the tears on my cheeks and turning them to ice. I stopped, reaching into my bag for my tobacco. My phone was flashing but I ignored it, desperate for nicotine, for something, anything.
The cigarette I rolled was crooked, fat in the middle and the filter dangled out the end, but it was something, and I tapped the end with my index finger and put it between my lips, searching my bag for a lighter, finding cold plastic with my fingertips.
‘Cait.’
I jumped, the lighter slipping away. ‘Shit,’ I said, fumbling for it again, taking a second to understand what I’d heard.
‘Hey.’
I looked up, still not knowing, not right away.
Tom was standing in front of me, hands in his pockets, frowning. And everything stopped.
I tried to take a breath but it caught.
‘Hi,’ I said, my voice shaking. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and watched it wobble between my fingers, wiped my cheeks, tried to wipe it all away. Frannie. Jenny. I felt a flicker of confusion. His face was so strange. Hard. ‘What—’
This wasn’t right. None of it was.
My mum’s sick.
I felt my face rumple, a sob, forced it back.
‘Hey.’ His voice softened, tugged at me, frown disappearing. ‘What’s wrong?’
Something broke, somewhere just below the surface. I wanted to cry. I wanted to fall into him and have him hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay.
But it wasn’t. It hasn’t been for a long time. Days. Months. Years.
You’re too much.
I managed to shake my head. ‘I’m fine,’ I lied, begging him to believe me even as I knew he wouldn’t.
‘Cait.’ His hands came up to my shoulders, my cheeks. Warm. Terrifying. ‘What’s happened?’
I pulled back, stepped away. ‘Nothing.’ I put the cigarette back between my lips and found my lighter, but my hands were trembling too much to get it to work.
‘Here,’ Tom said, taking it from me and sparking it, one hand up to shield the flame. It caught.
I took a drag. So hard I immediately felt sick. ‘Thanks.’
He held the lighter out and I reached for it, letting his hand wrap around mine as I did. His fingers were warm from being in his pockets and mine shivered against them, so cold they burned.
‘Cait …’
‘Don’t.’ I didn’t mean to say it, didn’t mean to pull away.
His eyes widened, face frozen in confusion, hand hanging in mid-air. ‘Sorry.’
I looked down. ‘It’s okay.’
But it wasn’t. All I could see were Frannie’s wide, hollow eyes and her wrists; all I could smell was vomit and death.
Something was wrong. Something else. Not just with Frannie—with everything. Something had happened right in front of me and I didn’t understand it yet but I could feel it.
You’re too much.
It’s why my dad left.
Something was wrong with me. Something awful. Terrible. Incurable. Fatal.
My stomach tightened, my spine, my jaw. I tried to swallow—all of it, down. Careful. But there was no careful. There was just a beige room full of death and it wasn’t helping and I didn’t know what possibly could. Still, I forced it down, forced a smile onto my face, forced my eyes up.
Tom looked so different, his expression one I’d never seen. Wrong. He looked away, past me, at the door I’d just come out. Stared at it for a long time. I almost expected it to open and someone to emerge. Geoff. Frannie. Abraham, in his standard-issue polo, holding his standard-issue clipboard. Something crept up my spine. Something that had been there since the moment I’d heard his voice but which I hadn’t recognised. I went to say something but he spoke first.
‘What’s going on, Cait?’
Something awful. Terrible.
I put my cigarette in my mouth, my hand trembling so much I nearly missed, caught it with my lip, inhaled. The paper crackled as it burned.
Too much.
I’m sick.
‘Caitlin,’ he sighed. Sad. ‘Please.’
I shook my head, pretending not to understand, begging him to stop.
He made a sound, a low rumble. It shook my bones. ‘What are you doing? What is this place?’ Looked at the door again.
A tiny earthquake. Somewhere close. Right underneath our feet. He hadn’t even noticed, or maybe he had.
‘I called you.’
The flashing phone. A tsunami. An earthquake, and then a tsunami. If one didn’t kill us, the other would. ‘You did?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How come?’ Trying to pretend I didn’t know.
He sighed; guilty, tired, something else. ‘I wanted to know what you were doing in there.’ He sounded apologetic. Nervous. The penny dropped, took my stomach with it.
‘You followed me?’ I didn’t realise what I was asking until I asked it; didn’t believe it. My ribs closed around my lungs, squeezed, and whatever it was rolling up and down my spine turned hot, shot through into my eyes and my fingers and my lips.
He didn’t say anything.
‘You followed me.’
It wasn’t a question this time, and he didn’t deny it.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, trying to deny it for him. ‘No.’
‘Caitlin.’
Heat prickled along my skin, lifting every hair on my scalp, burning my cheeks, my jaw. ‘Why?’ It was part wail, part whisper, part yell. ‘Why would you do that?’
He hesitated. Took a breath. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to …’
I turned away. ‘No.’
He moved in front of me, reached out to touch me, hold me. ‘Cait.’
I pulled back, dropping my cigarette and watching it roll into the gutter. ‘Fuck.’ I kicked the concrete. ‘Damn it.’
‘What’s going on, Caitlin?’ he asked again. Louder this time. Or maybe it just felt louder. More desperate.
I stepped away, bringing my arms up around myself. My chest hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.
‘What happened? Why are you—’
‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
‘Please.’ Urgent. I hated it, hated the fear in it.
‘Nothing.’ I kicked the ground again, as though I could stop what was happening.
‘Cait.’
‘Please. Stop.’
I was vaguely aware of the bodies on the other side of the street changing. Heads turning, feet shuffling. Hushed comments, not hushed enough before they were drowned out by a passing motorcycle.
I forced my arms down. Tom was still in front of me. Tom. My Tom. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear him breathing. I could see his hands on his hips, shoulders wide and stiff, his jaw twitching. Waiting. I’d never seen him like this. Hurt. Scared.
‘Caitie.’ So much fear. Sickly sweet and ice-cold. ‘Please.’
I thought back to when I’d left his flat, kissing him at the front door and telling him I’d see him tomorrow. He was going to order pizza and watch a movie and have an early night. Everything had been normal. Perfect.
We were just going to get Lina’s textbook and then go back to my house. There was leftover cake in the fridge and Lina had a new manicure kit but we had to study first. Fine.
And then it wasn’t. And maybe it hadn’t ever been.
My mum’s sick.
Is she going to die?
How does it end?
Everybody dies.
Everything had been perfect and now it wasn’t and nothing was ever going to fix it.
‘I can’t fucking believe you followed me,’ I said, a rush of anger the only thing keeping my body from collapsing onto the footpath. ‘How could you? This isn’t about you.’
