Circling the Drain

"I've touched my face before! God knows what I've already smeared across myself—blood, death, the stench of finality. You can scrub all you like, but some stains settle in places soap can't reach."

Heavy eyelids fluttered open, the world around me cloaked in a blackness so complete it felt like it was pressing in from all sides. My chest constricted, each breath a labour, as though the air itself had grown too dense to draw in. Disoriented, I lay still for a moment, paralysed by the sheer weight of the silence. The air was stale, unmoving, and heavy with the scent of dust, old plaster, and something metallic I didn’t want to identify.

I shifted slightly, and the cold, unrelenting floor beneath me jabbed against my hipbones and spine. Gone was the softness of my bed, the comfort of duvet and pillow. That life—my real life—felt like a dream now, fading behind a thick, unscalable wall of grief and horror. Trembling fingers, stiff with cold and tremors of lingering panic, began feeling their way blindly through the dark, scrabbling along the uneven floor in search of my phone.

The need for light, for something real, surged inside me like a scream trapped beneath my ribs. I couldn’t bear another second in the darkness—alone with my thoughts, my memories... and him.

When my fingertips finally brushed the smooth edge of my phone, a wave of fragile relief rushed through me. Clutching it tightly, I pressed the button. The screen flared to life, casting a dim halo of illumination into the pitch-black confines of the cupboard. The sudden light burned my eyes, drawing a hiss from between my teeth, but I welcomed the sting. I was alive. I had made it through the night.

The screen’s glow was soft, almost sacred, like the moon breaking through storm clouds. It touched the plastic crates, the scuffed bricks, the cracked skirting boards. I rubbed at my eyes, crusty with dried tears, each swipe a small abrasion that forced me to acknowledge the hours I’d spent weeping silently in the dark.

But then, the light fell elsewhere—and I froze.

Cody.

My phone's glow revealed his face, half-shrouded in shadow, the rest illuminated with cruel clarity. His expression was slack, the life drained from every line. His head was still twisted at that horrific angle, jaw slack, eyes fixed in an endless, unseeing stare that seemed to reach through me. He looked like a mannequin in the window of some morbid shop—not him, not Cody, not the man who had once whispered my name like it was a promise.

The sob that rose in my throat was feral, but I swallowed it down, clamping my teeth together as tightly as my lungs would allow. My thumb jabbed the power button. The screen snapped off, plunging me back into darkness. Hide from it. Hide from him. Just for a second longer.

It’s not real. It became a chant in my head, desperate and pathetic.

It was just a dream… a nightmare, I told myself silently. You’re back in your bed. You’re safe. Cody’s safe.

“Even a night terror such as this would be better than reality,” I murmured hoarsely, my voice rough and raw from hours of silence. The sound startled me, unfamiliar, a reminder of how long I’d gone without speaking, without moving.

My hand found the empty wine glass lying beside me, its once-comforting curve now cold and useless. I raised it to my lips, instinctive, seeking the familiar taste of escape. But there was nothing. Just glass. Hollow. Like me.

"It's real, isn't it?" I whispered to no one. To everything. The question echoed off the narrow walls of the storage space, absorbed by the darkness. Not even an echo returned to me. There was no voice to soothe, no hand to hold.

I turned my face away from where I knew Cody lay, squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could. If I don’t see it again, maybe it won’t be true. Maybe when I open them again, I’ll be in his arms. Maybe this is the dream. Maybe—

But the silence offered no salvation. Just stillness. Just death.

The air felt thick now, almost gluey, like it was seeping into my pores, dragging me under. My limbs felt heavy, reluctant to obey, but I knew I couldn’t stay in here forever. I had to move. Had to find a way out. Had to survive, even if it meant crawling out of hell on my hands and knees.

I edged forward on my elbows and knees, wary, slow. Each movement was careful and reluctant, as though the air itself didn’t want me to disturb Cody. I tried to skirt around him, to avoid touching what I couldn’t yet accept. But the space was too small. The walls too close. My foot brushed against something soft—his coat, his leg, I wasn’t sure.

I recoiled instantly, biting back a cry. My heart jackhammered against my ribs, so loud it drowned out every other sound. Tears spilled freely again, and this time I didn’t wipe them away.

You can’t fall apart now, Gladys, I told myself, but even that voice was weak—broken.

Heart somersaulting and voice squealing, my hand brushed against a clammy face. The skin was cold, bloated slightly, and slick with the kind of sweat only the dead wear. The jolt that surged through me was instantaneous—an electric current of horror that forced my lungs to seize. I recoiled violently, but it was too late. I had stumbled straight into Cody’s twisted corpse, the reality of his death leaping into vivid, undeniable focus.

A sound escaped me—half gasp, half sob—as I fumbled frantically in the dark, searching for the cupboard door like a drowning woman grasping for the surface. My breath caught in my throat, high-pitched and ragged. The air around me felt suddenly suffocating, thick with dread and something more putrid. I slammed my weight into the door with a grunt, the wood groaning as it gave way under my force. I stumbled clumsily into the room beyond, my legs shaking beneath me. Cody's body followed, tumbling out behind me with a heavy, sickening thud against the carpet. The sound was hollow, lifeless—a chilling punctuation mark to the trauma.

My hands, slick with sweat and still trembling, grabbed at Cody’s shoulders as if some part of me believed I could undo what had happened—stuff the reality back into the shadows. I heaved, gritting my teeth as I tried to push him back into the cupboard’s mouth, but he resisted, slack and uncooperative, like a grotesque puppet whose strings had been severed.

Together, we managed a grim sort of sit-up, his head lolling sideways, chin tucking in unnaturally against his chest—until a sudden, ghastly belch escaped his lips. The sound was wet, gurgling. The accompanying stench rolled over me like a physical force. It was so foul, so inhuman, that my stomach lurched violently. My eyes watered from the sheer potency of it. If I'd had anything more than cheap wine in my stomach, Cody would have ended up wearing it.

Choking back bile, I let him drop, the thud of his body hitting the carpet sending a stab of guilt through me. “But what choice do I have?” I asked myself aloud, the words slipping out in a whisper as brittle as dry leaves. My hands rose, pressing against my mouth to hold in the sobs, the screams, the undeniable fear that I was crumbling under. I forced myself to straighten, dragging my leaden limbs into some semblance of function.

I turned and looked down at him. Even now—especially now—he looked peaceful. Like he was only asleep. Like he could wake up at any moment and flash that crooked grin and say something maddeningly charming. "You're too heavy," I told Cody, my voice breaking apart mid-sentence, tears catching in my throat.

I sank back down beside him, my knees folding unwillingly. One hand reached for him—slow, gentle, reverent. I brushed a tangled curl from his forehead, my fingers lingering against his skin. It was a soft, instinctive gesture, one I might have done a thousand times in another life. And then—I saw it.

Red.

A smear of crimson trailed beneath my fingertips. I jerked back as if stung. My hands—both of them—were covered in it. Sticky and dark and unmistakable. I stared, paralysed. Blood. Cody’s blood. Innocent blood. The words echoed like a bell tolling in my mind, loud and slow and horrifying. I didn’t know how much of it had transferred to me before, where I’d touched—my lips, my eyes, my face.

I've touched my face before! The thought landed like a knife in my gut.

A raw panic bloomed in my chest. My stomach twisted, a steel vice clamping down on my insides. The first dry heave came quickly, my body reacting before my mind could even register the movement. I slapped a hand over my mouth, staggering backwards, the nausea building to an unbearable pitch. Each step away from Cody was like wading through molasses. My skin was crawling. My lungs burned.

Then I turned and ran.

Up the stairs—those cursed stairs I had descended in terror only hours before—my feet pounded against the carpet like a desperate rhythm of survival. I stumbled into the bathroom, hands shaking so violently I could hardly lift the lid. I collapsed to my knees, the cold tile unforgiving beneath them, and vomited into the bowl with a strangled, retching groan.

Wine, bile, acid—everything came up in violent waves. The stench was acrid and sharp, mingling with the coppery taste of fear that had already taken root on my tongue. It burned my throat, my nose, my sinuses. The sound of it, the animal sound, was awful.

When there was nothing left to give, I slumped against the toilet, my forehead resting against the rim. My face was clammy, pale, streaked with tears and sweat. My hands fumbled blindly for toilet paper. I used far too much, scrubbing at my face, my hands, my mouth with a desperate intensity. Red-streaked tissue filled the bowl before I finally flushed it all away.

The gurgle of the toilet felt like a curtain falling on the moment.

Rising slowly, I closed the lid with trembling fingers. It clicked shut with a sound so soft, yet final. Like the closing of a chapter I could never reopen.

Numb, I drifted down the hallway, each footstep heavy and echoing in the emptiness of the house. There was no comfort left to be found. Just walls. Just silence.

Just loss.

Standing in front of the basin, I turned on the taps, letting warm water stream out. The steady rush filled the small bathroom with a comforting murmur, a sound that might have calmed me on another day. But not now. Not after this.

I refused to even glance at my red-stained hands, as if not seeing them could somehow absolve me of the reality. The guilt soaked into my skin like the blood itself, refusing to loosen its grip. I couldn’t bear to look at the evidence of what I’d touched, of what I’d lost.

Instead, I stared at my ghost-pale face in the bathroom mirror.

The woman staring back was barely recognisable. My eyes, once lively and curious, were now wide and glassy—haunted. My skin had lost all colour, drawn tight across my cheekbones like brittle parchment. I looked like someone who had walked through hell and returned with the ash still clinging to her. The person in the mirror wasn’t me. She was a version that had surfaced in crisis—a stranger shaped by trauma, by panic, by irreversible choices. I no longer knew where Gladys ended and this other woman began.

The water ran on, warm and persistent, like a distant lullaby. Yet I remained frozen, held captive by the mirror’s cruel honesty. My mind reeled with disjointed memories: Cody’s body slumping against mine, the crimson streak on my fingers, the bitter taste of wine and bile, the sound of my own retching echoing off the walls. Every detail gnawed at me.

In a dazed reflection, my hands found the sanctity of the warm water.

I moved like a machine, dipping my fingers beneath the stream. The heat stung at first, as if the water itself recoiled from the guilt that clung to me. My movements were slow, almost ritualistic, as I began to scrub—not with the aim of cleansing, but in search of absolution.

The blood was stubborn, as though it, too, didn’t want to let go.

As I watched the faint red swirl disappear down the plughole, I felt as though something within me was circling the drain with it—some final thread of innocence, slipping silently away.