HEIRS OF THE ABYSS
by William Pauley III
Dreams won’t eat you. At least that’s what I’ve always been told.
“Oh, Rita,” my mother would say, “Calm your head, child. It’s just a dream and dreams won’t eat you.” As a child, I often leapt out of bed in the middle of the night, sprinted across that great unknown darkness [that hung like a shroud] in the space between my room and my mother’s, and in all my cold and clammy panic, I dove into the gray vagueness of her room until I at last was nestled inside the warm pocket of her bed sheets. I was haunted by my dreams in those days. It felt like everything, including my own mind, was out to get me. Thinking of it now, I suppose things haven’t really changed all that much.
“Except in Eighth Block,” she’d add, and she always turned away from me as she said it, as if lamenting some once-buried secret she’d thought would never resurface. “In Eighth Block, dreams…they eat you alive.”
She didn’t talk much about Eighth Block, but every time she did, I was all ears. Like many folk in the neighborhood, especially the children, I was fascinated by the Eighth Block Tower. It stood like a monolith and loomed over our part of the city, like a scream made of concrete, as if the damn thing was demanding our attention. I could tell what time of day it was just by looking out the window and seeing what house the tower’s shadow was covering. My house was 5:30. My friend Barcy’s was 2:45. Old Lady Barker’s was closer to 1. Because of that great sliding shadow, every last one of us living in the surrounding city block thought about that building at least once a day. Who lived there? Were they all as insane as everyone made them out to be? Could the stories actually be true?
I never discovered the connection between my mother and the tower. Never had the guts to ask [or perhaps never had the guts to find out]. I’m not too sure there really ever was a connection to begin with, I just know it came up sometimes and when it did, things got weird. Something stirred inside her in those moments, prodding, hitting her where it hurt. She was always left frozen, for several seconds at least, snagged on some memory.
I thought of her when I first met Tony. Tony was the first resident of Eighth Block I ever met. He borrowed a quarter from me at the Five Star Laundromat, then struck up a conversation that lasted the entire hour those machines were churning. I found him irresistibly charming. Back then, we were new adults, technically still teenagers, but I found him different from the other boys I knew. He was sophisticated, intelligent, and confident—but not in that asshole-ish entitled way that’s often mistaken for true confidence. As fate would have it, Tony liked me too. From that moment on, we were smitten.
Our first few dates, I felt as if we were swimming in clouds. Even our walks in the park felt otherworldly to me. Tony just had a way about him, like he was radiating electricity. I suppose it was in the way he paid attention to the little things, the things most of us took for granted. For example, sometimes he'd pause mid-conversation just to stare into the web of my eyes, and every time he did electricity moved through me in waves. It felt as if my insides were melting, but, you know, in a good way. I'd often think if he could make me feel that way with only a look, how incredible would it be to be touched by him? Well…soon enough, I'd find out.
And that's when the problems began.
No, not those kinds of problems. Sheesh. I shouldn't have to say this, as it has nothing at all to do with the story I'm here to tell you, but now I feel obligated to mention it—as far as our "bedroom life" goes, I've never had a single complaint. Just to be clear. No complaints. The problems I speak of had more to do with the venue in which the events of our “bedroom life” took place. You see, at the time, I was still living at my parents’ house, and due to the pandemic, when the two of them began working from home, I never had the place to myself. Tony, on the other hand, did have his own place—an entire apartment actually, right there on the top floor of the Eighth Block Tower. But see now that wasn't good for me either, cause the way I saw it then [and hell, perhaps even more so now], the tower was essentially a brick and mortar manifestation of my every anxiety. Just looking at it from the outside filled me with a sense of dread, like maybe the walls were somehow sentient…or, I don’t know, constructed solely from…harvested brains, but only the parts responsible for excreting the chemicals causing us to feel fear. Okay, I admit, I watch too many movies. I know this sounds insane to anyone fortunate enough to have never encountered the tower, but I’m telling you, the place is…different. It gets inside your head.
Anyway, I wasn't having it. Tony invited me up a few times before I ever mustered the courage to accept. On second thought, I suppose it wasn’t so much courage as it was raging hormones. We’d been seeing each other for something like two months at that point and I just couldn’t fight my feelings any longer. We were madly in love and more than ready to consummate that love, so I pushed out everything I’d heard about the tower over the years, every silly story, every embellished encounter with the residents, and all my anxiety and fear went right along with it. It was time to push our relationship forward.
The first time Tony took me into the Eighth Block Tower, I must admit, I was a little disappointed. It just wasn’t anything like I imagined it would be. As kids, my friends and I would huddle up just outside the steps that led to the front entrance of the tower and we’d stare at that busted glass door, the crumbling blocks of concrete that served as its foundation, and we’d all exchange stories about the things we heard goes on in there. Mostly second-hand tales we’d picked up from other friends at school or our parents.
—The entire building is made of salt, you know. Salt and Slime. —I heard a couple exterminators went in for a job and never came back out. My dad was hired to tow their van away, eventually. They were never seen again. —I heard they’re all going mad from some kind of radiation inside the walls. It’s so bad they’re all slowly deforming, becoming something else, something that isn’t human.
The conversations always ended the same way, with one of us daring another to climb up the stoop and peek inside. Over the years, a few of us came close to answering that dare, but ultimately we were all too chicken shit to follow through.
On those nights, however, after leaving the tower and heading home for the evening, I’d lie awake in bed for hours, trying my damndest to stay awake. I knew the moment I allowed myself to fall asleep, I’d be right there in that tower…at least inside my mind. Of course, it never failed. I'd always fall asleep.
I dreamed about the tower often. In a way, it haunted me. Once my eyes finally closed, I was instantly transported to a place, usually some communal hallway, where the floors and walls blazed with bright green neon. The entire place would be glowing, almost to the point it was blinding. All I could ever really see were the piles of salt in the hallways, some as high as my chest, and an occasional figure floating through the hallways—tower residents—all of them without form. Ghost-like. The only feature that even looked remotely human were their eyes, and even they were oversized and much too close together to be considered normal.
As frightening as they were to me then, nothing ever happened in those dreams. I was simply an observer. And despite how abstract the world inside that tower appeared to me, somehow it still felt real. I felt connected to it. Mentally, I mean. Instinct told me, even back then, that I’d one day cross paths with it. That it would eventually draw me in. That I would one day become a permanent resident of the Eighth Block Tower. It was to be my destiny.
I suppose that was why I was so let down once I’d had my first actual encounter with the building. As frightened as I was of walking into it, facing my destiny head on, a part of me was relieved it was finally happening, that it was no longer hanging over me. The weight of the burden had all at once been lifted from my shoulders, and that part of it felt incredible. However, that small part of me that was actually excited to finally be doing this, the part of me that expected to be diving headfirst into a pool of madness, to become one with the ghosts that had been haunting me all my life—that small part of me was disappointed. The building seemed to be…just a building. A run down, piece of shit building at that. The armpit of the city. But there it was, the Eighth Block Tower. I was there, inside it. I finally gave into it, only to find that my visions…well, that’s all they were, just visions. Dreams. “And dreams won’t eat you, child,” I could hear my mother say. “Except in Eighth Block…”
She was right. In the tower, dreams do eat you, as I'd soon find out. It just takes some time, I guess.
Tony and I kept seeing each other and eventually he invited me to move in. At that point, I would have done anything for that man. I’d never loved anyone the way I loved him. Without hesitation, I accepted his offer.
We lived on the cliff for about two years without much strangeness at all, but I must admit, it was mostly due to my avoiding it completely. You see, Tony warned me about some of the things that went on up there, stuff so unbelievably odd I never could have imagined it on my own. But see, Tony knew a trick, something he said the other residents knew nothing about, something that couldn’t be taught. A sort of unique ability, I guess.
Tony could turn the tower off.
Not only could he turn it off, but he could also manipulate it to do pretty much anything he desired. Because of that, his apartment, now our apartment, was totally self-sufficient. There was no need to clean anything, cause the apartment would do that for us. Same with cooking. Even the pantry and refrigerator would restock itself with whatever food and beverage Tony wished. No dirty laundry, no remaking the beds, no dusting of the window blinds. All he had to do was think it and it would happen, like magic. The trick worked for more than just chores, too. If he thought of a new TV, it would appear exactly where he imagined it to be. If he wanted to go to a basketball game, the walls would transform into bleachers and suddenly he’d be right there, watching it live, and from the best seats in the house, too.
When he first told me this, of course I thought he was joking. It was insanity! It couldn’t be real, right? But then he actually showed me. He had the walls of his apartment transform into the Five Star Laundromat, the place where we first met. He said on that very day he had asked the walls to show him the love of his life and the walls took him there to that dusty old laundromat down the street. He said he was confused at first, but then he saw me and knew instantly the walls had done just as he’d asked. As sweet as the story was, I kindly asked him to take us back to his apartment and never do that trick with the walls ever again.
I was freaked out, to say the least. I hated knowing that the love of my life was so strongly connected to that awful thing, the tower. No good could ever come from it, I knew that right away. Still, I’m embarrassed to admit, it didn’t stop me from enjoying some of the minor conveniences it often provided. I mean, I never liked doing the dishes anyway, or the smell of the trash chute down the hall, and I suppose I didn’t mind when Tony would peel back the ceiling and allow the sun to warm our little apartment every morning. Once, I even asked him if it was possible to turn our place into the gulf coast, white sands and clear water, even though I already knew the answer. He just smiled, then we were there.
I suppose he could sense I was warming up to the idea of allowing the tower to be a bigger part of our lives, to take us places, to provide us with life experiences, and in many ways, I was. Still, I had my reservations, and he knew better than to use those tower walls to surprise me. I was never one for surprises, anyhow. I liked being prepared, and knowing just what the hell I was getting myself into.
That’s why I got so upset the night I first heard the drumming.
At first, I thought I was dreaming, and I didn’t mind it so much because in a way the sounds were soothing, but at some point I shook myself awake and the drumming didn’t stop. It was a steady, rhythmic pulse—two quick beats and a pause—muffled slightly, I assumed, because it was happening somewhere outside our bedroom walls. I sat silent in my bed for a full minute, just staring into the darkness hanging above me, hearing the pulse beating inside my head, while trying to come up with a rational explanation for where it was coming from. That’s when I heard another sound flowing through the beat, a sort of whooshing, like the sound of water rushing over floorboards, gallons of it.
I sprang to my feet, carefully patting the air with my hands, in an effort to find the lamp, somewhere there beside me, enveloped in darkness. It wasn’t there. I pushed farther into the night, thinking somehow I’d just underestimated the distance to the bedside table, but still nothing. I could sense the layout of the room and knew my exact place within it, still curiously, not a thing inside it was where it was supposed to be. Upon waking, I suspected the darkness was mostly due to my eyes adjusting, but that was just sleepy thinking. My eyes should’ve already been adjusted to the dark, seeing as how they’d been pinched behind the protective sheaths of my eyelids for the last couple of hours—but they hadn’t. I was totally blind.
I kept pushing forward until I was outside the limits of the room, beyond walls, as if I was walking straight through them. The incessant drumming thumped at my temples and the sounds of water floated in the air around me, and despite chasing after it, I felt I wasn't any closer to its source, or farther for that matter. Sounds vibrated all around me. I felt fully immersed inside a black ocean, and half expected to see the light of some ancient angler fish as it passed me by, but again, there was nothing but that goddamn drumming.
That’s when I started running, thinking eventually I'd come into contact with something, anything at all, but the space inside the room just continued to expand, and faster than my legs could move. I had no idea where I was anymore. I was trapped inside a vast expanse of blindness, somewhere between the world's many oceans and the vacuum of outer space.
I panicked, fell to my knees, then lost total control of my emotions. Like a newborn babe, I allowed them to pour out of me, unfiltered. I caterwauled into the impossible night.
That feeling of unbridled fear and the way it projected from my lungs was totally foreign to me. I'd never been so scared in all my life, and it moved through me quickly, before I could even process why it was even happening to begin with.
Thankfully, a voice called out to me and pulled me straight out of my madness. It was Tony. He was close. I shouted his name and opened my eyes, and as if a switch had been flipped, light leaked into the room and my eyesight returned. Even the drumming had stopped.
Except no switch had been flipped. I simply transitioned from a state of panic to a place of peace, as if having been awakened from some strange dream.
But I wasn’t dreaming. That was not a fucking dream.
That’s when I laid into Tony. I really let him have it. I won’t lie, the entire thing had me so spooked I told him straight up that I was leaving, that I wouldn’t stay another night in that creepy, shapeshifting apartment. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. He said the room never changed, and that he hadn’t heard any of the sounds I’d heard that night either. He simply woke up to me screaming, lying on the floor. He thought I’d fallen out of bed.
Tony’s a good man, though. He knew exactly what to say to calm me down. He said he believed me, that the walls must’ve been reflecting some dream of his, totally unbeknownst to him. He even apologized for it. It was a kind gesture, but we both knew the walls didn’t work in that way. Changing the walls took effort. Tony made it look easy, but it took him a long time to master it. There was no way he could’ve exerted that amount of mental energy while he was asleep. The way I saw it, there were really only two explanations for what had happened that night: either I was going mad or the apartment itself was a sentient being. Just thinking of the absurdity of the second explanation had me leaning more towards the first.
The next month or so was kind of rough. I just couldn’t shake that awful feeling inside me. I wasn’t even sure what it was. It seemed to be some sort of shapeshifter itself, because at times I would feel hopeless and afraid, then it’d morph into something closer to anger and disappointment, then to paranoia, sadness, and all in the course of a week or so before it’d cycle through once again. Not only that, but every now and then I’d get hit with bouts of fatigue and nausea. Sometimes the latter would become so intense I’d actually vomit, and even then, it didn’t do much to relieve the fog. I just felt…sick. All the time.
Tony truly was a saint. He knew that night really rocked me, so in the time since, he didn’t dare to use the walls, for even the minor conveniences we’d both once enjoyed. Instead, we shared chore responsibilities and even went out for our own groceries. Never once did he complain. In a way, it was nice to do those things because there was a sense of normalcy to it all. Doing chores, no matter how tedious, was honestly the only time I felt even close to normal.
A few weeks later, I found out exactly why I’d been feeling so off. As it turned out, I was pregnant, about four months along. I felt stupid for not having considered it before, but I was young and inexperienced. It just never crossed my mind. Perhaps it was just ‘pregnancy brain,’ that’s what they call it, right? It explained everything, really.
“You’re pregnant.”
The moment the doctor uttered those words to me, I felt an immediate sense of relief. The weird dreams, the cycling emotions, the nausea, it all came back to the pregnancy. Just knowing exactly what it was that was causing that depression rift in my life was enough to get us back on track. I suddenly felt like myself again, excited to step into motherhood.
That night, I asked Tony to take us somewhere special via the walls, someplace romantic, a place with a great view and a warm fire. At first he was confused by my willingness to use the walls again, but he didn’t dare question it. I knew he missed it. He took us to a restaurant in some small village in Italy. We sat outside, on the patio, which overlooked the Tyrrhenian Sea, and he poured us two glasses of wine. I didn’t drink mine, but still I raised my glass to a toast. “To love,” I said, “and all the fruit it bears.” His eyes lit up. Pure electricity. He kissed me something like forty times, on both my face and belly. A moment of pure bliss. The details of that perfect night, our first as a family, belong to the three of us, but I’m sure you can imagine just how beautiful a moment it was.
It was all too perfect. A dream.
Well, that is, until the very next day, when I had my second episode.
That time I was wide awake. It was never a doubt, despite Tony's interpretation of the events. I swear to you, wide awake.
I had just run a warm bath and lowered the lights, hoping for a relaxing hour to myself and a good audiobook. I was submerged for no more than ten minutes before I heard it…that cursed drumming. At first, I mistook it as background noise in the audiobook production, but as the volume of the merciless beating rose far above the narrator’s voice, I knew exactly what it was. It had returned, the same drumming from the night of the forever dark, and it stormed through with a vengeance! The pounding had grown so intense that the walls were vibrating. The bathroom mirror rattled right off its hitch and shattered into a million pieces, scattering across the tiled floor.
Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump…
It was real! It wasn’t a dream or imagined!
As excited as I was to know I still had a grip on my own sanity, the feeling quickly faded. What was it? Where was it coming from? And even more terrifying to ponder, what was coming next?
I slunk down into the bathwater, as if I could hide from it, but the vibrations of every pounding drumbeat caused the water to hum inside my ears. I thought of the baby, and how the noise was affecting her. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, hoping they’d absorb some of that awful vibration. My own heart was beating faster than the drumming now. I’d have to come to the surface to take a breath soon.
That’s when I noticed the walls of the tub folding in on me. Without thinking, just on natural instinct, I kicked back against it, but of course flesh and bone were no match for the cast iron walls of the bathtub. Luckily, I managed to slip out just before the entire thing clamshelled and pinched itself shut. The bathwater burst from the tub and washed over my feet, which was when I noticed the bleeding.
Tiny bits of broken mirror had worked themselves into the soles of my feet, but I didn’t let it distract me. It was hardly a concern, for at that moment the entire room was closing in on me. Everything had suddenly become an enemy. Pressure built inside the shampoo and conditioner bottles until at last the caps shot off each of them like corks from a champagne bottle. The contents of each erupted and lathered mid-air, causing the room to become doused in soap suds. Razorblades leapt from the medicine cabinet and went soaring through the air. Two of them tore into the flesh of my left arm and leg.
That’s when I made my way to the door, but, of course, it was no longer there. It was probably the first thing the walls had changed. I panicked, desperate to find some space where I was able to protect my unborn baby, but there was simply nowhere to hide.
As the walls moved in on me, the entire room went mad. Toothbrushes and pill bottles were tossed into the air, every last one of them pelting my flesh, but not with enough force to cause any pain. The toilet rocked back and forth violently and flushed itself every two or three seconds. The towels and toilet paper unraveled and went soaring through the air, piling on top of me, seemingly an attempt to smother me, but the attack only served to provide me with a little protection. I wrapped the towels around my naked flesh, which was enough to shield me from most of the mild attacks.
Most troubling though, was that several objects seemed to be trying to become a part of me. The handheld showerhead was attracted to me, as if I was some powerful magnet pulling it in. It so desperately wished to make contact with me that it actually managed to rip itself free of the main showerhead and wrapped itself around me. The same with the pipes under the sink, and even the short metal chain on the drain plug, they all freed themselves and latched onto me. The ends of each of them dug into my skin, as if trying to get inside me. I managed to kick the steel pipe away, but both the chain and the hose of the showerhead dug in deep. That’s when I realized I was wrong, they weren’t trying to pierce the skin, they were…suckling me. And no matter how much force I used to rip them away, they were latched on too tight, I couldn’t remove them from my skin.
The walls continued to bend inward, and soon enough the entire room had balled up around me. The sound of crushing metal and shattered porcelain was all I could hear. That, and the drumming, drumming, drumming…
Finally, I screamed. I couldn’t take it anymore.
That’s when Tony claimed he woke me up.
I admit, it was strange that the walls stopped its attack on me the moment Tony entered the room, and not only that, but everything was back in its proper place, as if the attack had never even happened. I was starting to suspect the apartment was jealous of me, as it seemed to be doing everything in its power to convince Tony that I was insane. He, of course, was concerned about my mental health, especially after that particular incident, and I can’t say I blamed him. From his perspective, I must’ve come off as some basket case. I couldn’t write that one off as a cute side effect of ‘pregnancy brain.’
Perhaps I should’ve kept the details to myself. In hindsight, I suppose that would’ve at least put his mind at ease, but that just wasn’t me. Say what you will about me, but no one can deny I’m an honest person. Even when the truth hurts to admit—especially when the truth hurts to admit.
I told him everything, and as the words spilled from my lips, my heart raced even faster than it had when I was under attack. I searched his eyes for any trace of a clue as to what he might have been thinking as I unloaded on him. He kept quiet through it all, until I had said everything I wanted to say. Afterwards there was an awkward moment of silence before he finally spoke up.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately,” he said. “You’re stressed. Not only from the burdens of being pregnant, but also from doing the chores, running errands, just keeping up with everyday living. It’s too much. I’m not having it. From here on out, we’re leaving those tasks to the walls.”
“Tony, you can’t!” I shouted. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? The walls are the fucking problem! We can’t use them anymore! They want me dead, Tony!”
“You’re paranoid,” he said, calmly, and somehow that soft tone cut me deeper than anger ever could. Had he been yelling, I could’ve put up a fight all day, if I had to, but that sharp, matter of fact, one-two jab cut me right down to the bone. Especially the words that came next. “Take it easy, or you’ll lose the baby.”
You’ll lose the baby…
Just the thought of losing our sweet little girl was enough to make me sick. I thought for a second about Tony’s proposal. If the walls really were jealous of me, just as I’d suspected, then perhaps allowing them back into our daily lives would serve as some sort of peace offering. I thought of the timing of that last attack, how it happened almost immediately after using the walls for the first time in two months. If the walls truly were sentient, then I could certainly understand how they’d be offended by our use of them. If a so-called friend of mine only called me up whenever they wanted something from me, then I’d be offended too.
Maybe Tony was right.
I just nodded my head in agreement, and Tony smiled. He wrapped a warm towel around me and helped me out of the bath. As I walked down the hall to our bedroom, Tony stopped me to ask if I was okay. “Just a bit rattled, that’s all. I’ll be fine,” I said. He shook his head and said, “No, that’s not what I mean.” He looked down and pointed at the trail of wet footprints on the floor, formed not by water, but by blood.
Four months passed with little to comment on, thankfully. Tony kept the walls busy, so I wouldn’t have to worry about a single chore, and although I remained skeptical, it all seemed to be working out great. I caught up on a few books, binge watched half a dozen TV shows, and even got in some exercise by strolling through the most beautiful parks the world had to offer. I even enjoyed a few good hikes, which wasn’t something many women in their third trimester would ever attempt. I’m not saying I could hike the entire trail, but through the convenience of our Eighth Block apartment, I had the ability to return home the exact moment my feet began to ache. It wasn’t a bad life. I was actually starting to believe the apartment and I could make the arrangement work.
Then came the day that Tony lost control of the walls completely.
No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t get them to remove the trash, to restock the cabinets, or even toast a slice of bread. The mental connection Tony shared with the apartment had somehow been totally severed. It was as if the entire apartment had just…gone offline…you know, like in the movies, when systems go down and the action ramps up. That was exactly how it played out, like the climax of a fucking movie…
It all started when the windows and doors dissolved right off the walls. We were just nestled there, on the couch, watching some game show on TV when it happened. Before we even had a chance to stand up and investigate, every light in the apartment burned out, except for the TV. I looked at Tony, hoping he had somehow triggered all of this accidentally, but he assured me it was none of his doing.
Again, that terrible drumming sound returned, however that time it was thumping twice as fast as before. Thump, thump, thump…
“This is it,” I said, in a way relieved Tony was finally able to witness it for himself. “This is what I’ve been talking about!”
That’s when the walls morphed into a combination of biological substances—specifically wet, pink flesh and some viscous gel-like substance that oozed from all surfaces. Suddenly, we were trapped in some sick gore cave, like we’d been swallowed up by some giant creature. I could hear my mother’s voice clearly, as if she was somehow there, watching it happen. “Dreams won’t eat you, child. Except in Eighth Block.”
A gush of warm liquid ran down my legs. My water broke. Oh, God. Not now, I thought. It’s too early. It’s not time. I’m not ready. I latched onto Tony’s arm, who was frozen in fright at all the madness unfolding in front of him. I shouted, “It’s time!” But he heard nothing. A sharp pain radiated from my back and moved through me in a slow wave. The baby was coming, and fast, presumably set off by the stress of the situation. Tony was right. I’m going to lose the baby. I panicked. I dug my nails into his forearm, which finally caught his attention.
“Babe?” he said, then a wave of clear fluid crashed over us, as if we were thrown into the middle of a stormy sea. He wrapped his arms around me, cradling my belly, as we were pushed by its mighty current. We moved through the room, tossed inside the wave, until we were pushed up against our living room wall. I noticed there was a small fissure there, at the bottom, allowing most of the liquid to escape. I waited for a break in the waves to finally speak again.
“Tony, honey, it’s time,” I repeated, finally getting through to him. For a moment, I expected a second round of waves to come crashing down on us, but it never came.
“Wait, what?”
“The baby,” I said. “We have to save the baby!”
“Here? You’re having the baby, here?” Tony said, as if I had any say in the matter. Another contraction shot through me. I tried to catch my breath.
“Listen! We’re parents now! Our priority is to keep this child safe. So, no matter what happens, you take our baby and guard her with your life.”
“Me? What about you?”
“You worry about the baby,” I said. “I’ll worry about me.”
“Rita, honey,” he said. “There’s no way out of here. I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t control the walls anymore.” He seemed on the verge of a panic attack. I reminded him to breathe. “Babe, we’re trapped.”
“We’re not trapped,” I said, pointing down at the opening in the wall. “There’s a way outside. It may not look like much of an exit, but it’s already twice as big as it was a minute ago. If the force of that wave was enough to do that, then surely you can push your way through it.”
“But what about you?” Tony asked again. “I’m not leaving you.”
Another sharp spasm of pain ran through me. I had to lay down. Tony removed the clothing from the lower half of my body, as I concentrated on my breathing exercises.
“Tony, she’s here,” I said, feeling the baby drop inside me. I tried blanking my mind, to focus simply on pushing the baby out, but I kept getting this awful feeling like something terrible was about to happen. I was never one for religion, but I won’t lie, I was so nervous I began praying. Please, let our little girl be okay. Let her make it through this.
“Oh wow,” Tony said, his eyes welling with tears. “I can see the top of her head!”
As soon as he said it, that tiny fissure in the wall split the entire room in half, and to my horror, there was nothing on the other side but darkness. It was much too late to think of another plan. The baby was here. I just had to keep pushing.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…
The sound of a heartbeat. I pushed harder.
“Babe! Her head! Her beautiful head!” Tony shouted, tears streaming down his face. I was crying now too, anxious to meet our sweet baby girl. Then the room suddenly became impossibly bright, blinding me completely. My eyes ached at the sheer intensity of it.
She was born a minute later.
The drumbeat immediately went silent.
When our eyes finally adjusted to the light, everything was different again. Our apartment was still our apartment, but now reflected on the walls, at all times, was perhaps the most terrifying visions of all: our own faces. You know that initial shock that runs through you when you go to take a picture on your smartphone and the selfie feature is on? How for one quick second you see yourself in terrible lighting, at the absolute worst angle imaginable, and wonder, is that how I really look? That feeling has become part of my everyday life.
As it turned out, the entire time, the apartment was connected to the baby, in utero. We were just seeing what it was seeing and hearing what it was hearing. The incident in the bathroom, with the showerhead, it must’ve been some attempt to drain nutrients from me, like an umbilical cord. Whatever it was, at some point, the apartment’s connection to our child became stronger than the one Tony had once shared with it. Good genes, I guess, but knowing now what was happening, it made it all the more horrifying.
Now that our sweet baby girl’s been born, the apartment walls change to reflect her every thought. We’re trapped inside that small space, at the mercy of whatever our baby can imagine, which at this age, is mostly just mommy or daddy and occasionally, when she’s hungry, my tits (daddy especially loved when the baby was hungry).
It really hasn’t been all that bad just yet, but I’m certainly dreading the toddler years.
Still, it isn’t a bad life, just different. We’re very much in love with our little family. Happy, healthy, and in love. In many ways we’re living the dream.
And in that way, my mother was right.
Heirs of the Abyss
© William Pauley III, 2023
All rights reserved.
YOU CAN FIND THIS STORY AND OTHERS IN:
TWELVE RESIDENTS DREAMING is a short story collection that includes 14 stories:
Prologue: “The First Life of Anacoy Marlin”
A shipwrecked man comes upon an apartment building located in the middle of the ocean. Inside, he finds the skulls of twelve residents, each one eager to tell their story.
Dream #1: “Heirs of the Abyss”
A newlywed couple discovers their apartment is sentient and responds to their every command. Life is perfect—that is, until the apartment begins making decisions all on its own. Soon, they find themselves trapped in a psychedelic dreamscape, hopelessly entangled within the physical manifestation of its every want and desire.
Dream #2: “Trapdoor”
When her best friend goes missing, a young woman sets out on her own, determined to find her. Every piece of evidence she uncovers leads back to a mysterious man with white eyes who’s stalking the hallways of the Eighth Block Tower. Even in pictures, his beautiful eyes leave her helplessly lost in a trance. She knows if she’s ever going to see her friend again, she’ll have to find a way to avoid his hypnotic stare. Unfortunately, by the time she finally comes face-to-face with him, she discovers he has many other secrets…
Dream #3: “Bad Blood”
After losing her brother to a vicious disease, a nurse is inspired to volunteer for a program that provides free healthcare to lower class individuals. The job is often thankless, and sometimes dangerous, but in the end, she’s still happy she’s able to help people in need. That is until she meets Ellie. Ellie’s unlike any of her other patients. She’s unpredictable and downright cruel, and even worse, she seems to think all of her many debilitating psychological issues are due to the ‘bad blood’ running through her veins. She considers the problem to be only temporary, however. Sure, she may not have ‘good blood’… but she knows exactly where she can get it.
Dream #4: “Killing Teddy”
A slumlord discovers two of his tenants are competing in a dangerous reality game show that’s been taking a toll on his building. After repeatedly ignoring his requests, he busts into their apartment and is shocked to see the tenant has fully transitioned into a man-sized carpenter ant. Hoping to not be evicted from their home, they explain to their landlord just how the game works—one of them has been challenged to live a full life cycle of every creature on earth, and to speed things up, the other must come up with creative ways in which to kill him. After discovering how much they stand to win, he joins in on the fun!
Dream #5: “The Plant People”
Death was the only thing that made her feel alive.
Dream #6: “The Burden of Lunar Ticking”
A man recalls a story his grandfather once told him, one about a ticking moon and the only man on earth who could silence it.
Dream #7: “Cyber Solaris”
A nervous man, trapped inside a cage, offers his most prized possession in exchange for a pack of smokes, a light, and a little something more.
Dream #8: “The Sinking Sanctuary”
A man feverishly tattoos the words of a religious book onto his flesh, attempting to preserve the scared text from the punishing rain hammering against his windowpane. As the flood water rises, his pen moves faster—leaving no time to eat, sleep, or even rest. In a few days time, the collected rainwater seeps into his apartment, eventually swallowing up both his furniture and his sanity. To add to his struggle, the horrors embedded inside the text are starting to leap from the page, manifesting in physical form before him, hoping to pry the book from his busy fingers. Soon after the first ghoul appears, he discovers these curious creatures wish to destroy more than just the book…
Dream #9: “Black Friday”
A young woman returns home for the holidays, only to discover her parents went a little crazy with this year’s Christmas presents.
Dream #10: “A Mist of Light”
By rewiring his brain via the ingestion of psychotropic chemicals, a man is finally able to strip away all facets of individuality in order to become what everyone’s always pressured him to be—exactly like them.
Dream #11: “The Eden Room”
At the end of your life, you must walk a path you unknowingly created while you were living. This path contains both obstacles and useful items, things manifested through acts of kindness or selfishness. For Waylon Peter Hurst, this path is ripe with danger—though he believes the placement of these traps to be completely unjust. He’s led a life of mostly sadness and despair due to the harsh conditions of his reality, none of his own doing. He pleads his case to his dispatcher, the guide assigned to help him maneuver through these soul-grinding obstacles, and though he seems to agree with Waylon, he doesn’t have much control over what happens next. Along his journey, there are many surprises, including a brief reunion with a long lost loved one, a soul that’s been dispatched to the utopian Eden Room. Knowing Waylon’s spirit is destined for a much darker place, his dispatcher becomes determined to, at the very least, show him mercy.
Dream #12: “Life is Beautiful (In Spite of Everything)”
Every one of us are fighting a battle unknown to the rest of the world. Be kind, damn it.
Epilogue: “The Second Life of Anacoy Marlin”
Through the stories of others, a man learns what he must do to find his own inner peace.
Storytime: "HEIRS OF THE ABYSS"