Drip, Drip, Drip

"Cold isn't something you feel after a while. It's something you become. Same with darkness. Same with fear. Eventually they stop being visitors and start being roommates."

Cold.

Not a word. A state of being. Cold that had stopped being something I felt and become something I was. My bones were cold. My blood was cold. The thoughts in my head moved through cold like insects through amber, slow, trapped, dying.

The vial.

Warm.

The only warm thing. I pressed it against my chest until the glass edge bit into skin. Pain. Good. Pain meant still here. Pain meant still—

Dripping.

Somewhere. Beyond the walls. Water finding its way through stone, through centuries, through whatever membrane separated this cell from the rest of the earth pressing down above us.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I tried to count. Lost the numbers. Found them. Lost them again. The drips weren't regular. Weren't a rhythm I could hold onto. They came when they wanted, fell when they chose, reminded me that time was still passing even if I couldn't feel it passing, couldn't measure it, couldn't—

Drip.

My legs.

I looked at them sometimes. In the dim green light from the moss. Looked at these things attached to my hips that used to be mine, used to carry me, used to run and climb and press accelerator pedals on delivery runs through the hills above Hobart.

They looked the same.

That was the worst part. They looked exactly the same as they always had. Pale skin. Dark hair.

The same legs. But empty now. Meat that used to be me.

I touched my thigh. Watched my hand touch it. Felt nothing.

The hand might as well have been touching the stone floor. Touching the wall. Touching anything that wasn't—

Him.

Across the cell. Darker shape in darkness.

He breathed. I breathed. We breathed in different rhythms, out of sync, two broken metronomes in a box.

I didn't look at him. Didn't want to see. Didn't want to remember the driveway, the knife, the—

But looking away didn't help. He was still there. Still breathing. Still watching.

I felt his eyes even when I couldn't see them.

Hunger had a sound.

I hadn't known that before. Hadn't known that when your stomach had been empty long enough, it stopped growling and started whining. A high thin sound. Animal. Pathetic.

My stomach made that sound now. Had been making it for—how long? Hours. Days. The concept of days had become theoretical. A thing that existed somewhere else, for someone else, in a world with a sun and moon and meals at regular intervals.

Here there was just the sound. The whine. The slow consumption of self by self.

I was eating myself. My body was eating itself. Breaking down muscle, breaking down fat, breaking down whatever it could find to keep the essential organs—

The thought scattered. Wouldn't hold together.

The whine continued.

You are mine.

The voice came from everywhere. From the stone. From the water dripping beyond the walls. From inside my skull, behind my eyes, in the space where thoughts should have been but weren't anymore.

You are mine, Joel Gibbons.

The lagoon. Clear water. Still surface. Something moving beneath—

I jerked. Gasped. The cell swam back into focus.

Just a cell. Just stone and moss and darkness and the shape of him across the floor.

But the voice lingered. The feeling of being claimed, being owned, being—

The vial pulsed against my chest.

I held onto it.

Metal on stone.

The slot in the door. I hadn't seen it before—hadn't noticed it in the darkness—but now it scraped open and light spilled through, harsh and yellow, hurting my eyes.

A bowl pushed through. Another. The slot snapped shut.

The light was gone.

The afterimage burned on my retinas. Red-green-purple shapes that danced and faded and left me blinder than before.

The gruel smelled like nothing. Tasted like nothing. I lifted the bowl with hands that shook so badly half of it spilled down my front, warm against cold skin, and I didn't care, just drank what was left, scraped the bowl with fingers that felt like someone else's fingers, someone else's hunger, someone else's desperation.

The bowl was empty.

The hunger remained.

Mum's kitchen.

Sunlight through the window above the sink. The smell of toast burning because she always got distracted, always wandered off to check something, find something, think about something. The smoke alarm shrieking while she laughed and waved a tea towel and I stood in the doorway watching, eight years old, ten years old, sixteen years old, all the ages I'd ever been compressed into a single moment of morning light and burnt toast and her laugh that sounded like home.

I couldn't remember what home felt like.

Tried to hold the image. Tried to stay in that kitchen. But the cold kept pulling me back. The cell kept pulling me back. The darkness kept—

Gone.

She was gone.

I was here.

"They'll come."

His voice. Cutting through.

I flinched. Hadn't expected it. The silence had been so long, so complete, that the words felt like violence. Like the scrape of the food slot. Like something being forced into a space that had closed around its own emptiness.

I didn't answer. Didn't look at him.

"Someone always comes."

The words hung there. I couldn't tell if they were threat or comfort or something else entirely. Couldn't tell if he was talking to me or to himself or to the walls that pressed in from all sides.

I pressed the vial against my chest.

The only answer I had.

Time.

Folding. Breaking. Refusing to move in the direction it was supposed to move.

I was in the cell but also I was in the lagoon, water filling my lungs, something vast rising from the depths. I was in the cell but also I was in the driveway in Berriedale, the knife against my throat, the pressure and then the release and then the—

I was in the cell but also I was seven years old, hiding under my blankets during a thunderstorm, counting the seconds between lightning and thunder like Mum taught me, the storm getting closer, the counting getting faster, the gap between flash and boom shrinking until they were the same thing, until the world was nothing but light and sound and—

The cell.

The moss.

The cold.

Him.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

I held them up in front of my face. Watched the tremors. The fingers that opened and closed without my permission. The skin that looked grey in the dim light, corpse-coloured, belonging to someone who was already dead and just hadn't stopped moving yet.

Maybe I was dead.

Maybe this was what death felt like—not nothing, but this. Endless cold. Endless dark. A body that didn't work and a mind that wouldn't stop and the drip drip drip of water somewhere beyond walls I couldn't see.

The vial pulsed.

No. Not dead. Not yet.

Something was still alive in there. Those tiny creatures Sylvie had told me about. Still glowing. Still moving. Still being whatever they were in their small glass world.

If they could survive this, maybe I could too.

Maybe.

"I've seen men break in cells like this."

His voice again. Unwanted. Intrusive.

"Seen them talk to walls. Claw at stone until their fingers bled. Forget their own names."

I didn't want to hear this. Didn't want to know what he'd seen, what he knew, what he was trying to—

"You're not breaking."

A pause. The sound of him shifting against stone.

"Not yet."

I said nothing. The words sat in my chest like swallowed glass. Like the things I couldn't say and couldn't spit out and couldn't—

The silence returned.

It was worse now. Poisoned by what he'd put into it.

I dreamed of Jamie.

Not a memory. Something stranger. He was standing at the edge of the lagoon—the one that had swallowed me and spit me back out—and he was calling my name. But the sound wouldn't carry. His mouth moved and moved but I couldn't hear him, couldn't reach him, couldn't make my legs work to—

You are mine.

The water rose around him. Around me. Around everything.

Mine.

I woke up screaming.

Or trying to scream. The sound that came out was more like a wheeze. A broken thing. The sound of a body that had forgotten how to make noise.

The cell. The moss. The cold.

Him, watching. Always watching.

The vial.

I gripped it until the glass cut into my palm. Until blood, warm blood, my blood, ran between my fingers.

Still here. Still alive. Still—

Something was wrong with my thoughts.

They kept sliding. Wouldn't stay in one place. I'd reach for a memory and find a different one. Reach for Mum's face and find the Magistra's. Reach for the vial's warmth and find the knife against my throat.

The boundaries were dissolving. The walls between then and now, between here and there, between me and—

You are mine, Joel Gibbons.

—not me.

I pressed my forehead against the cold stone wall. Let the cold shock me back. Let it hurt.

Pain was real. Pain was now. Pain was the only thing that wouldn't lie to me.

The moss was dimming.

Or my eyes were failing. I couldn't tell. The green glow that had been my only light source seemed fainter now, further away, like looking at stars through deepening clouds.

Maybe I was dying. Maybe this was what it felt like—not the violence of the knife, not the rush of the lagoon, but this. A slow fading. A dimming. A going out like a candle that had used up all its wax.

The vial pulsed.

Not yet, I thought. Or maybe I said it. The difference didn't seem to matter anymore.

Not yet.

"They'll want you alive."

His voice. Closer now. Or louder. I couldn't tell.

"Whatever they're planning—trial, execution, whatever—they'll want you conscious for it."

I felt his attention like heat. Like pressure. Like something crawling across my skin.

"So they'll come. They'll bring healers. They'll put you back together enough to—"

"Stop." The word tore out of me. Ragged. Raw. "Just—stop."

Silence.

The sound of my own breathing. His breathing. The drip beyond the walls.

I didn't look at him. Couldn't look at him. If I looked at him I'd see the driveway and the knife and the blood spreading across the truck’s interior and—

The vial. The vial. The vial.

I held onto it like it was the only solid thing in a world made of water.