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In the darkness, the voice in his head is screaming again.
Kenji crushes his knuckles into his temples, even though that’s not where the pain—or the voice—really is. But the agony is unrelenting, unspecified; it’s coursing through his body, making his muscles clench and his molars grind. And the screaming, oh God, the screaming. The voice in his head is screaming loud enough to drown out the raging metal band on the front, center stage. Painful enough that Kenji squeezes his eyes closed, shutting out the audience around him—all those glowing people, jumping to the time of the music, like a stuttering heartbeat.
Then there’s a moment, just a second, when the voice pauses in its shrieking and Kenji opens his eyes, only to find Eva standing next to him looking concerned. The bioluminescent mushrooms she picked on the way to the concert decorate her hair, giving her an unWorldly look. She can’t hear the screaming voice in his head, but she can read the expression on his face.
She knows something is wrong.
“Air,” he mouths, and points toward the door. Eva begins to shoulder her way out, pushing against the illuminated bodies of the audience, but he waves her back, shouting: “I’ll be okay.”
The voice in his head starts screaming again.
Stumbling toward the exit, pushing against the crowd of glowing people, it’s a struggle to keep putting one foot in front of the other when his muscles seize and his head’s ringing with strings of incoherent syllables, and none of this should be happening. But Kenji keeps pushing on. Pushing through.
By the time he’s outside the venue, the episode is almost over. His muscles are relaxing, breathing becomes easier, and the voice in his head sounds hoarse. It’s already mumbling “Sorrysorrysorrysorry.”
Kenji sags against the building, sweating, gulping down lungfuls of air, warm and muggy, like a half-drowned man. He feels some of the polypores growing on the building break and rupture under his weight. This is not the first time his voice has pulled a stunt like this, and if this is like those other times, he’ll feel normal again in a few minutes.
In a few minutes, it will be like nothing happened at all.
Which makes Kenji want to vomit. It’s the lie, the doubt, the false sense of security that scares him most, because if there’s something wrong with his voice … If it’s …
People in this World can’t survive without the voices in their heads.
In the darkness outside the concert venue, he feels the music throbbing through the boards of the road. It’s now background noise to the sound of the Endless River rushing by a hundred paces away. Which is to say, everything seems abnormally quiet now that the screaming has stopped.
Kenji’s relieved to be alone, to have this moment to himself before returning to the concert and living the lie—the one that says everything is fine. The towering fungi trees growing randomly on the road shush gently in the breeze. There’s no one else around.
Except for a girl, clearly a student, on the prowl. She has that stance that looks like wanting, like minor desperation. She’s glowing only slightly. He notices her too late.
By comparison, Kenji’s own skin radiates like a damn beacon. I need to take care of that tonight, he thinks. His glow is almost indecent. The girl spots him easily and smiles like a hunter striking lucky, quickly weaving her way around the fungi trees, vanishing the space between them in a breath.
“Sorry to bother you,” she says, though her tone apologizes for nothing. “Do you mind? It’s for school. What do you think?” She thrusts a button into Kenji’s hands, and he’s tempted to make an excuse or tell her off. The last thing he wants to do right now is talk about art.
“Doesn’t everyone want to discuss art?” the voice in his head whispers conspiratorially, even though he’s the only one who can hear it. “Isn’t it what you live for?”
Yes.
Or least that’s what everyone says.
Kenji stares at the button, fights to keep his hands steady. The button is a common brown mushroom cap, treated and painted aqua and lavender, with an elegant luminous script that says Given/Give Back. It’s pleasing and well executed, on its own. But Kenji has seen it before. Too many times.
“Good work,” he says. “Clean lines and nice color contrast. Maybe ease up on the background details, though. It detracts from the text.”
It’s a weak critique, uninspired. But Kenji doesn’t feel particularly moved by art tonight. There are a thousand other buttons like it in the World. A thousand other artists with the same message.
The girl nods seriously, diplomatically. She peppers him with other questions, asking about composition and the overall effect of the message. But Kenji gives her terse answers and her friendly demeanor shifts into wariness.
“Thanks for the feedback, mister,” the girl says quickly. Too quickly. She’s already backing away.
“Good luck with the assignment,” Kenji says, though he knows what she’s thinking.
A reluctance to talk about art is a sign your voice is dying.
As soon as she’s out of sight, Kenji empties the contents of his stomach at the base of the nearest tree.
Softly, his voice mumbles, “It’s okay. It’s okay,” as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. It sounds remorseful. And Kenji so badly wants it to be true.
He exhales, tilts his face upward, like in prayer. The flesh of the World looms overhead; the living, breathing ceiling of flesh dotted with every mushroom in existence. Keeping his gaze fixed upward, Kenji touches the base of his neck.
“You all right, babe?”
He turns to find Eva standing behind him. Outside, away from the crowd, he can see her clearly, the patchwork of acid-burn scars that blankets the left side of her face, muting her frown some, but not enough to hide her worry. “What’s wrong?” she asks again.
Kenji feels his voice’s mantra of “It’s okay” on his lips. He bites it back.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to drag you away from the show,” he says.
Eva shrugs, an easy rolling gesture that shows off her broad, beautiful shoulders. “Music’s catchy but still derivative of the genre that inspired it. What’s going on?”
His voice whispers: “Everything’s okay. Promise.”
And it feels true. The pain and screaming that were so visceral moments ago are echoes now. But this is the third episode his voice has had in three days and the worst one so far.
“Kenji, tell me,” she says.
They say your voice screams when it starts to die. And when your voice dies, so do you.
One way or another.
Kenji takes her hands, his own trembling. “We need to talk,” he says.
* * *<
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Kenji was never an artist, though he tried. He tried and tried. But his best efforts in poetry, drawing, music were never more than mediocre, if the critic was being generous.
When asked what the hell he was doing reading ancient how-to books, he said he studied history for inspiration. When asked what this unWorldly mess was supposed to be, he said he tinkered with new tools to improve his art.
This was a lie he told to everyone, but mostly to himself.
Then, three years ago, Kenji invented the thinnest, palest paper anyone had ever seen. Well, not so much invented it as rediscovered it. He found an old manual in the First Givers’ records on papermaking,
It took experimentation. Many, many, many hours of it. He had to figure out the deckles and moulds, the slurry, the couching. The manual called for tree pulp, and the eucalyptus trees in the records were nothing like the fungi trees Kenji knew. The most difficult part was finding the right mushroom for the slurry. So many of those early attempts crumbled in his hands.
White turkey tail mushrooms gave different results.
He called his invention an art project. But when Eva held that first sheaf, still wet and dripping in her hands, she said: “This isn’t art. It’s so much better than that.”
“What’s better than art?” his voice asked, and Kenji agreed, repeating the words out loud.
He regrets that now. How he doubted her in that moment as she held his creation and imagined.
It took her hours of experimentation and countless failed attempts. Their parents, friends, and mentors couldn’t understand how the sheaves of paper on their living room floor were supposed to be art. They whispered to Eva, when they thought he couldn’t hear, that perhaps Kenji was hampering her artistry.
But after Eva made her first paper sculpture, no one questioned Eva’s creative vision or Kenji’s tinkering again.
Kenji remembers holding that sculpture, marveling. It was an ecru-colored replica of a turkey tail mushroom, a material transformed, reborn. It was the first of its kind in the World.
Why don’t we learn more about our history? he wondered, silently thanking the ancient manual he’d found.
“No good can come of it. Stop asking questions,” his voice hissed. It was something his parents would say.
But as Kenji held up the sculpture in his hands, for the first time, he wondered why his voice was lying.
* * *
There’s a hole in every home, just large enough for an adult to lie spread-eagle. In a spare bedroom or where a tub should be or in the wall of a closet. A cutaway revealing the soft, sticky flesh of the World, always meticulously scrubbed of fungal growths.
In Eva and Kenji’s tiny apartment, the World is in the farthest corner of their living room.
Kenji’s standing naked in front of the cutaway, the World’s exposed tissue, dark and gray, spread out before him. His skin glows brightly, unabashedly, all those nutrients shining through his pores. He doesn’t want it, doesn’t want to glow. The curtain that usually sequesters the World from their living room is crumpled in his hands.
He understands it’s a symbiotic relationship. To live in the belly of the World is to be given and to give back. The World feeds them, a boundless variety of mushrooms and waterlife from the Endless River. In return, they feed the World. Though why the World will only accept nutrients when the voice in your head is alive and well is one of the great mysteries in life. Maybe it’ll be the subject of his next research project.
That is, if the World accepts him tonight.
With his heart hammering a staccato beat, Kenji pulls shut the curtain behind him. Eva catches his hand.
“Wait. I want to watch. Please.”
The bioluminescent mushrooms she wore to the concert earlier that evening still decorate her hair. Her expression is one she usually reserves for her harshest critics—she’s expecting him to argue.
Kenji nods, lets go of the curtain. Usually giving back to the World is a private affair, but tonight, he’d rather not fight. If this is the moment when his voice finally fails him, he doesn’t want to be alone.
He touches the World with a toe first. Its flesh is warm and damp. It always sinks a bit under his weight, like an invitation. Slowly, he nestles the heel of one foot into the living tissue. Then the other. Leaning back, he spreads both arms. Maybe it won’t be so bad this time, he thinks.
He always thinks that.
He settles his head down, letting the nape of his neck touch the World.
At contact, the voice in his head ruptures into giggles, joyfully, brazenly, as if it was waiting for this moment. It’s the only time Kenji ever hears it laugh.
Giving back to the World is like being held too closely, too greedily. Like having your best intentions siphoned out of you, calorie by calorie. Like drowning as you’re being sucked dry. All while the voice in your head giggles, whispers unconvincing platitudes.
It feels like an eternity, but the whole process takes twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes. And when Kenji emerges, slick with sweat and the spit of the World, his skin barely glows at all.
He hears Eva sigh in relief as she drags a blanket over him and helps him to their bedroom. He catches tears in her eyes.
Kenji listens to her bare feet slapping against the floor as she moves back to the hole in the living room and steps in. He waits. He listens to the long sheets of his homemade paper rustling by the open window and the Endless River beyond that. Smells the stink of the sap glue Eva’s using for her latest sculptures, sitting in their unassembled piles on the bedroom floor. For once, Kenji relishes the scent. It wouldn’t be home without it. Exhausted as he is, he stays awake, waiting for Eva and for the World to finish with her.
His voice is mercifully silent.
Eventually, he feels her curl in bed behind him.
“Nightmare of my week,” she mumbles. Her breath’s warm on his shoulder as they lie skin to skin. She takes nothing, but if he could, he’d give her everything.
“If my voice is dying, I probably have one, maybe two weeks left,” Kenji whispers. He pulls her arm around him, suddenly desperate to be held by her. “What are we going to do?” It’s the question they’ve asked each other ten, eleven times tonight. Lobbing it back and forth like a ball.
Eva touches the spot on the back of his neck. The small raised mound of flesh. The place where the voice in your head really lives.
He rubs his thumb over the familiar mountain range of scars on her left hand. “What can we do, Eva?”
In the darkness, the dimness of their now dull bodies, Kenji can barely see her hand in his. But he hears the stubborn, hardened determination in her voice when she taps that spot on the back of his neck and says, “Cut it out. And get you a new one.”
* * *
Five years ago, Kenji met Eva on a boat on the Endless River. Or she met him. She was glowing brightly and the scars on her face were still fresh and red when she surfaced unexpectedly from the water, near his raft, swam over, and said: “Mind if I join you for a minute?”
“Um, sure,” he said, surprised that anyone was swimming in the middle of the River, where not even fishing boats bothered to go. There was nothing of artistic or nutritional interest here. Which was why Kenji liked it.
Eva hoisted herself onto the raft, a mostly smooth motion, though she winced slightly as she took the weight off her left arm. The hand poking out from the dripping sleeves of her wetsuit was red and crumbled with burns, too. He scooted over to make room for the dripping, mysterious woman.
“Thanks,” she said, squeezing river water from her hair.
“You’re a long way from shore,” Kenji said. “Are you trying to swim across?” He’d heard of some people training to do this, for sport. Kenji never understood the appeal. The River’s water was icy and boats were simpler, easier.
“No,” she said. “I was trying to swim down.” His voice hissed, and Kenji’s eyes widened in surprise. But before he could say her life was valuable, Eva held up a
hand and said: “Not like that. I want to hear the World’s heartbeat. Somebody said you can hear it in the middle of the River.”
“Why?” he asked. It was a weird, fascinating idea, to try to hear more of the World. He sort of wished he’d thought of it himself.
“Why not?” She studied him for a moment. “How do you know the World is living? We see such a small part of it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” his voice whispered, “of course it’s alive.” But Kenji gritted his teeth, focusing on this bright, strange woman. There was a dangerous edge to her questions about the World, like holding black paint too close to a pale, perfect painting, and from the cautious look on her face, she knew it, too.
His parents always said Kenji was too curious for his own well-being.
“What if it’s an animated corpse?” he asked.
Her expression relaxed. “Maybe it’s a giant death cap.”
“Or someone’s twisted art project.”
“Oh shit, can you imagine? What a sick asshole.” They giggled while the voice in his head tsked its disapproval.
“And?” Kenji asked, leaning forward.
“And what?”
“Did you hear it?”
Eva grinned. “I heard a long, slow thrumming. And if that’s the World’s heartbeat, it’s nothing like ours.”
“Of course. The World is beyond your understanding,” his voice said. But Kenji didn’t care about the World right then.
“Hey, I’ll row you back to shore. Which pier do you want me to go to?” he asked, picking up the oars.
Her smile died. “Any one. They’re all the same,” she said in a stiff, flat voice
Kenji knew he’d misstepped, then. He wished he could swallow back the words and return to the moment when they were laughing carelessly about the World.
But he didn’t know how.
So, he rowed to the Enoki Pier, the one he was going toward anyway. They traveled in silence for a while until they were only a few minutes from shore.
Questions Asked in the Belly of the World Page 1
