After Ian
by Jill Jepson
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
My body tenses, vibrates, heats. I feel as if every cell is burning and pulsing, the membranes rupturing, the cytoplasm simmering. My intestines and heart are roasting inside me. Intense purple light burns the insides of my eyelids. Dozens of tiny, powerful bombs explode all over my brain. Mommy, it hurts.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out, or even if I’ve been out. I see nothing. Not darkness, but what you see out of the back of your head. Nothing.
I wonder if I am dead. If this is what death is like, it is hell. Nothingness. Emptiness. Oblivion would be better, but this isn’t oblivion. This is nothingness with consciousness. You exist. You are aware, but there is nothing to attach your thoughts to. Is this it? For eternity.
I was supposed to be with Ian, but he isn’t here. The assholes lied, I think. They’ve sent me off here and they will leave me. An eternity of nothing. I can’t even scream.
Then faint streaks of light appear. Distant murmurings, barely audible. I am aware of movement. I’m not sure if I’m seeing and hearing or sensing stuff in some other way. My scrambled brain strains to make sense of it. The sounds becomes louder, clearer. A raspy gurgle. A slushy movement, like viscous waves. Then a smell. Foul. And he appears. Ian.
I shrink back, shuddering in horror. I want to run. To be back in the ordinary world. I cannot stand to look at this thing, this monstrosity that was my child. I want the rescuers to come. Revive me. Now. Please.
What was I expecting? My little boy? The way he was before, when he was healthy, brown eyes wide, skin tawny from days swimming, small hands smearing paint on paper? Or the way he was when he was dying, hollow-eyed, shrunken? At least, even then, he was alive, breathing, blood moving through his veins. I cannot look at this bloated, green-black, half-liquified thing. Ian in death.
“She’s back.”
I feel the sofa underneath me. I smell the soiled cushion. I groan and try to focus my eyes. Burns torment my hand. A sticky damp clings to my groin. I’ve wet myself. I lean over the side of the sofa and throw up on the floor.
As my vision clears, I see Big-belly smoking in his chair.
“Not what you were expecting?”
The woman sticks a packet of pills in my uninjured palm. “For the pain,” she says. “Free of charge.” She gets out a mop for the vomit. They let me rest until I’m ready to go.
Somehow I get home and into bed, my soiled clothes still on, my dirty shoes muddying the covers. When I wake up, Colby is there. He holds me while I cry, rubbing my back.
“I told you not to go there.”
I manage two words between sobs. “I failed.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did. I failed Ian. I failed as a mom. I couldn’t protect him when he was alive, and now...”
“Now?”
“He was there. In front of me. He came to me. I’m his mother, and he needed me. And instead of going to him, I turned away in horror, as if he were a fiend. But he’s not the fiend, I am. I’m a fiend for rejecting my child.”
Colby rubs my back. “You didn’t see him, Cass.”
“I did.”
“It was an illusion. Those guys, they’re scam artists. They use the power of suggestion. What you saw were just hallucinations created by your own grief.”
“I saw him. He was there.”
Colby gets up. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea.” He goes into the kitchen. I hear him fill the tea kettle, get out cups and saucers, get the tea off the shelf. Then he goes into the bathroom and throws up. When he comes back, he pours himself a glass of water, then another and a third and swigs them all.
“You okay?” I say.
He shrugs. “Blood sugar. I’ll be fine. The human body can handle a little abuse.”
* * *
After he leaves, I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling. I have to go back. I have to see my child, to take him in my arms. To tell him I love him. To beg his forgiveness. Now I know why Doval went back again and again. Why Dima put a bullet in her head because she couldn’t get the money together. Colby was right. It changes your brain.
Twelve hundred dollars, they tell me.
“Last time you said a thousand.”
Big-belly grins. “That’s for a first. Second is twelve hundred. We did you a favor, remember? Half price. Now you have to pay full.” They won’t bend. I go home, desperate.
I don’t have money for food, electricity, toilet paper. I decide to do without. That afternoon, I lift fifty from a student’s bag, slip a man’s wallet from his back pocket on the subway, hit up a homeless woman for the money she made returning bottles. I’m starving, but I don’t buy anything to eat. I have $217.
Colby comes over with groceries. He makes me a BLT, and I wolf it down. He says he’s glad my appetite is back. I don’t tell him I have a mission now. I need to build up my strength.
I’m good at what I do, and I’m smart. I go out every day. I don’t get caught. The money adds up bit by bit. I have $476. Then $705. Then $950. Not enough.
The next day goes bad. The day after that, too. I am eating almost nothing, and my hunger is making me sloppy. I’m going to get myself caught, I think. Then I’ll never get back to Ian. I go out again and again, but my confidence is shaken. I have to figure something out.
When Colby comes over next time, he makes soup and lunchmeat sandwiches. I watch him chop carrots and onions, spread mayo on bread, layer on bologna, lettuce, pickles. He’s getting thick around the middle, I notice, but his arms are thin and pale. His auburn hair is thinning. He looks over his shoulder, catches me watching him, and grins.
“Mustard?”
“Sure,” I say. I whisper, “I’m sorry.”
The cash Colby has in his wallet pushes me just over the $1200 mark. It’s easy to take from him. It’s always easy when people trust you. I know he needs the money, but he gets paid this week, and he has friends who’ll help him out.
After we eat, he sits on my sofa watching TV, clicking the remote from one station to the next. I tell him I’m going to get a soda out of the fridge, but instead, I slip away and rush down the broken streets to the dingy room, my pocket stuffed with cash.
* * *
It’s dusk when I get there. The door is locked. I pound on it. I call. No one answers. I hammer on it again and again, knowing it is pointless. I slide down with my back against the wall, sit on the sidewalk, and wait.
I sleep that night curled up in the dark, and wake up astonished to find my money hasn’t been stolen, that I haven’t been picked up by the police, or murdered. It’s an omen, I think. Good luck is on my way. Two hours later, Big-belly shows up, with his companions.
“Look who’s here,” he says. He unlocks the door, and I follow the trio up the stairs and into the room.
“Twelve hundred dollars,” I say, sticking the wad of bills in Big-belly’s hand.
He takes his cigarette out of his mouth and turns to the others. “They always say they don’t have the money. Then they always come up with it.”
I push past him to the seedy sofa and lie down. I hold out my hand. Big-belly counts the money, then looks at the withered man, and nods. The thin woman gets the cushion for my head. The bar, the strap, the electric cord, it is all done again. This time, no one asks if I have last words.
I am not surprised when the jolt comes, the searing purple, the catastrophic explosions in my brain. There is the nothingness again, but this time I’m expecting it. I wait. It takes a long time, but I’m not afraid. I don’t care if I’m stuck here forever. Then comes the sound of flesh motion. Rigid, stumbling.
I strain to see my child. To tell him how much I love him. To promise him I will keep coming back. I know that now. No matter how much it costs. No matter what I find when I see him. I will return to him as his flesh dissolves and he comes to me a clattering skeleton, a pile of disconnected bones, a tiny skull full of baby teeth.
A figure emerges from the darkness.
“Ian!” I cry.
But it is not my child. The figure is large and still intact. Not rotting yet, but stiff. Rigor mortis, I think. Newly dead.
Colby cannot speak, but he doesn’t have to. I know already. The human body cannot handle too much abuse after all. I try to call to him, to beg him for forgiveness, but I’m already returning to the dingy room, to the big-bellied man and his grimy companions, and Colby is disappearing into the dark.
Copyright © 2024 by Jill Jepson
