A Helix Turns Both Ways

      You open your mouth and a torrent of black acid spews out.

      I’m ready with the bucket, but some of it still sprays my forearms. I wince as it sizzles my skin, boring pockmarks into me. It always hurts, even though I expect it, even though I’m covered in scar tissue already.

      It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I’ll deal with it later. Later is a hypothetical shelf upon which a lot of things sit, nebulous but somehow extremely heavy all at once.

      I hold the bucket until you’re done and wipe the last dribbles from your lips with a cloth.

      “I’m sorry,” you say. You always say that.

      “It’s OK,” I tell you. “I’m here.” I always say that. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s true anymore, but what can I do? I’m here. You need my help. There’s no one else. The words are like old rotten wood, brittle and useless, save for decoration.

      I take the bucket out to the back garden. The contents roil and bubble, slick and stinking. The back gate is unlocked. I could set the bucket down and simply walk out. I could keep walking forever and never look back. But if I did that, you’d be left alone. You don’t deserve that. None of this is your fault.

      We don’t have drainage out there, so I’ve been pouring it away in the back corner, as far from the house as possible. The soil seems reluctant to accept it. It pools, rather than seeping away. All the grass died off around it, and the vegetables we planted a little further away soon followed. I think about them rotting in the ground, their bodies growing soft with decay.

      It’d make me sad, if I had any room left for sadness. We’d made this garden together with the wonderful sweat of a joint effort. Do you even know what you’ve done to it? No. You don’t come outside anymore, and I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you. You’ve got enough to deal with. It’ll only make you more upset.

      And that just makes things worse.

 

***

 

      When I come back in, I make us lunch. I aim for something warm and wholesome, something to bring comfort from within, in that way that a meal prepared with love can. You wolf it down hungrily, and make grateful noises in the aftermath, once your belly is full. I try to enjoy it, but it’s just fuel to me. I’m not even hungry. Like everything else, eating is obligation.

You’re gone before my plate is cleared, back to work on your project. Your obsession.

      “I’m almost there now,” you tell me. You always say that too.

      “You can do it,” I tell you. Did I ever mean the words? They don’t sound like I mean them, no matter how hard I try, but you don’t seem to notice. The growing void between us is part of a spectrum you can’t see.

      It started as something small, the project. You carried it easily in the palm of your hand, a small dark marble. You talked about it with such carefree passion, it was impossible not to be captivated myself. The more you chipped at it, chiselled and shaped it, the bigger it became. That was OK, you said. You just needed to finish it. You were almost there now.

      When it grew too large for you to carry alone, I helped. Of course, I did. Who wouldn’t help? We strapped it to us both and dragged it through our lives, trying to ignore the deepening trench it scoured in the ground between us with its weight.

      It’s kept in the spare room now, too big to move at all. I haven’t looked at it in years. I try not to think about it at all because the idea of the thing fills me with such anger. I can’t share that with you. To direct rage at it would be like attacking you, intertwined as you are. I don’t want to be angry with you.

      Even you no longer talk about it with any joy. It’s only a burden, only stress and frustration and the fear of what it might never become. Fear that all this effort will turn out to be wasted.

      You can neither pick it up, nor put it down, and so it sits in our house, growing bigger each time you cut something away from it. That feverish desire takes you often, dragging you away from any kind of regular schedule to chisel and fret and chip at the thing. All other interests have faded away. Even me.

 

***

 

      You call out to me, strangled by the vomit, gurgling my name.

      I bolt up from the sofa where I’d fallen asleep. I was dreaming about the blackness in the garden. It had grown so heavy that it tipped the world and brought everything sliding down towards it. I tried to cling to you, but you gripped onto the great dark mass of the project instead. You let me fall so you could keep hold of it with both hands.

      Awake and full of panic at the sounds you’re making, I race for the stairs. “I’m coming!”

      The acidic bile is gushing down steps, staining the walls and eating into the wood. I have no shoes on, but I don’t hesitate, gritting my teeth as the bile tears into my feet.

      You’re sobbing now, wailing between heaves. It goes this way sometimes, a rapid spiral down into uncontrollable grief. I find you on the floor, in front of the project. The chisel is still in your grip and your hands are raw from its use.

      “I can’t do it!” you cry, when you see me. “I want to give up.”

      The longing in my chest is so strong it hurts. I want you to give up too, more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I just want this to stop.

      “No, my love.” I sink to my knees and cradle you softly. My feet are singed and bloody, but I ignore them. “You can’t give up. You’re so close, you said so yourself.”

      I can’t bring myself to look up at it, that looming mass. I get only the slightest impression of jagged edges, like volcanic glass. Am I enabling you or encouraging you? I don’t know.

      “Come on.” I help you up. “Let’s get you cleaned up, OK?”

      You’re inconsolable and continue sobbing even when I get you into the shower. The bile never burns you. Your skin is unblemished. My feet and fingers are bleeding, and sting under the shower. I’ll bandage them later once the post-breakdown exhaustion claims you. I wonder how much more my body can take. The wounds heal fast, but they leave behind numbness, tissue devoid of nerve endings and empty of soul. Maybe when I’ve been burned all the way to the core, and those parts of me have scabbed and scarred into something dead, all this will be easier.

      Maybe then I’ll have the guts to abandon you.

 

***

 

      I watch you sleep a while, breathing in the peace of your silence. I can almost pretend things are the way they used to be, when my sleeplessness was incidental and watching over you like this filled me with soft feelings. I want that so badly, it crushes my throat and burns my eyes. I want it so badly, I can’t bare to look at you anymore.

      I leave the room, seething against powerlessness and fighting back tears. Suddenly desperate for air, I open the hallway window and gulp down night air. The garden below is black as the ocean and I can’t tell how much of it is shadow and how much of it is you.

      I could leave.

      Take my wallet. Take the car. Never come back. It’s not like you’re well enough to chase me down or find me. Guilt punches a hole in my heart, the way it always does when these thoughts arise. You won’t survive without me. And you’ll blame yourself. Somehow, I can’t stand the thought of that. Is it your fault? You could have quit the project when you saw how much harm it was doing to us. You could have got help. You did this to us both and I helped you.

      On an impulse, I open the spare room door. The project looms there in the dark, jagged tips pushing their way into the plaster of the ceiling. I force myself to look at it, to take in the details of what you’ve made.

It’s a helical thing, a rough spiral comprised of jagged arms, thicker than my waist at the base and branch-like at the ceiling, spreading into a canopy of shards. It almost resembles some hellish tree or coral, the chisel marks giving it a rough epidermis that appears much more organic than if it’d been smooth. It almost looks like a living thing.

      I’m drawn towards it, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. I’d avoided looking at it for so long out of sheer resentment, that I hadn’t seen the detail you’d put into it. There are features on the hard black flesh.

      A series of long smooth crenelations on one side. A soft ridge, catching street light through the window. An indent, concave with a strange flat edge over it that seems so familiar. I reach out and almost touch it, then fall back as the action prompts a memory.

      I’ve touched it before, many times, just not on this black helix.

      It’s the outline of your eye socket.

      Those soft oscillations in the surface are a section of your ribcage. The ridge that caught the light is your hip bone. These features are scattered about the sculpture almost haphazardly, unconnected to each other. There are others too. Now I’ve recognised them for what they are, the pieces of the puzzle slide into place.

      Your collarbone, which I’ve kissed more times than I can count.

      The lean line of your triceps, running down to the edge of the elbow.

      Even a section of your inner ear, perfectly recreated.

      I know these pieces of you as well as I know my own body.

      I fall back from the project in horror, unable to tear my eyes from the perfect pieces of you trapped in that crystalline abomination. It makes perfect, awful sense. You’ve poured yourself into it over and over.

In this moment, I want nothing more than to destroy it. I want to take a hammer and smash it to dust. You’ve given it so much energy. You could have given something to me, but you chose this every time. This thing has fed on both of us and we’ve allowed it.

      I pick up the chisel and pull back my hand to strike.

      “What are you doing?”

      I wheel around to find you standing in the doorway behind me, etched in outline by the light of the hallway. Your stance is odd, almost threatening, tight shoulders and a bowed head. Your voice is ragged, breathy.

      “I…what is this?” I’m afraid, I realise. I’ve never been afraid of you before. A question rises unbidden to the front of my mind: if you poured yourself into this thing, what has it decanted into you in return?

      “You know what it is.” You don’t sound like you at all. At the very edge of your voice, there’s a crystalline chime. “Get away from it. It’s mine!”

      You lunge at me with a speed and violence I’ve never seen from you. I flinch back, but your nails are raking my face before I know what’s going on. I scream as you draw blood.

      “Stop!” I beg, dropping the chisel and grabbing your wrists, but you kick and writhe like a wild animal. I catch the glinting of your eyes in the light. They’re black and hard as gems. You sink jagged teeth into my hand, forcing me to release you, then shove me down with surprising strength. Off-balance, I fall, hitting the ground and scrambling back from you. My hand throbs. Shards of your teeth are embedded like little black needles in the bite wound.

      There are no words for the hurt I feel. The betrayal. The wordless howl that comes out of me is all grief. You’ve crossed the final line. You’ve never hurt me on purpose before. I’m given no time to process this as you come lunging at me again, low and savage and growling like a beast. In a panic, I grab for anything to defend myself. My hand finds something hard, and I swing, catching you cleanly across the face.

      Too hard.

      You’re thrown back. You hit the floor and lie still.

      I drop the chisel again. It suddenly sounds much heavier than before, as it hits the wooden boards. Now, I’ve crossed the line too. I’ve never hurt you on purpose.

      But a part of me has wanted to.

      I creep towards you, praying silently that you’ll move, praying silently that you won’t. I just want it to be over now. I crouch beside your body, hands shaking as I turn you over. There’s a long wound across your temple and the side of your head. The fluid that leaks out is black and sizzling. I recognise its stink. Bile. The slick yolk of vomit from the very bottom of the gut. You’re still breathing. The rasp it makes in your throat is like crystal chimes.

      Movement draws my eye back to the helix.

      Another feature is forming on the surface. Another fragment of you lost to me and gained by this thing.

      The helix flexes, expands and contracts. The room creaks around it. It’s breathing. Your eyes watch me from its blackness.

      “I hate you,” I tell it. But it’s too late for hatred now.

      I look down at your body, pale and leaking bile on the floor. I’m crying. You need my help. You always need my help. There’s only one way I can escape this that won’t leave me guilt-ridden forever.

 

***

 

      When I come back with the bucket, you still haven’t moved. You might still be breathing. I don’t check. The wound on your head is pumping out the bile with a steady cardiac rhythm. I lift you up enough to catch it in the bucket. It doesn’t take long to fill.

      Once it’s done, I take off my clothes and stand before the twisted sculpture. I wonder if my features will appear on it too.

      As I raise the bucket, you start to stir. I think you murmur my name, but I can’t be sure.

      “Shh,” I say. “It’s OK. I’m here.”

      I tilt the bucket and let the acid rain down on me.