We are Wormwood

by Christian, Autumn

  Someone rapped on my bedroom window.

  “Have you seen my teddy bear?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Have you seen my Little B?”

  Go away.

  Lily tried to eat the Pop-Tart and smeared chocolate frosting all over her face. Mama fetched a towel and wiped it off her mouth. Lily faded in and out of existence. I could see her becoming darker, thinner. Her eyes stretched out and her mouth thinned. She was becoming me.

  Percocet shouldn’t be making me see these things. Maybe someone switched out the bottle of pills. Maybe I’m going crazy in the way Mama always wished she could have.

  The rapping on the window continued.

  Go away.

  I wanted to get up and wrap my hands around the new Phaedra’s throat. I wanted to tell her, it’s not worth it to be me. Please go back to who you used to be. We will not be fragments together; I don’t even know how to keep one story straight.

  Paris would never be like this. Paris would never have me staring out my bedroom door, a purveyor of my own life.

  There was a scratching and whining at the kitchen door. It’s Miss Margot, and there’s sharpness to her mewling I’ve never heard before. Mama let her in, and she darted through the kitchen and jumped onto my bed.

  Her eyes were gone.

  I jumped up in bed, my paralysis gone, and I grabbed her. She shook and bled, soft caves cut into her skull, collapsing light. I was screaming. I knew I was screaming because of the tightness in my chest, though I couldn’t hear a thing.

  I was screaming.

  Charlie.

  Lily and Mama ran into the room. I wouldn’t let them take Miss Margot away from me, not even to clean and care for her. I held her to me and rocked her and kissed her. I fell off the bed, sobbing, and collapsed onto the floor with Miss Margot held tight to my chest. She wouldn’t stop shaking. Lily lay down beside me. She tried to tell me things like this happen all the time. I rolled away from her.

  I didn’t remember much after that day. Everything became static. I dressed. I spoke when spoken to. I fed Miss Margot and I went to school and I kept putting on the dark lipstick, but I ceased to be a living resident of my own body.

  I cut out my cerebrum. All of my memories lived in my foreign spine.

  They rolled through me like wisps of gritty factory smoke, blown in from the north side of town.

  Years passed this way.

  It was dark and I was dragging a boy through the dry woods underneath a yellow moon. We rolled through the fog, fog like dry ice in a Halloween machine. We kissed and collapsed into a rotting tree. We were not alone.

  I was in the restroom of a gas station with an older man. He told me he was a musician. Then he told me he was a computer engineer. He talked slow, like it was difficult for him to remember the meaning of words. I didn’t even feel a pinch when the heroin plunged into my blood.

  My father, who I hadn’t spoken to in fifteen years, sent me a check for college, in the mail, with a written letter of apology. I tore up the letter. I cashed the check and spent it on a pair of white Valentino heels and a vintage party dress.

  I saw Samantha Hall walking down the high school hallway, seven months pregnant, and I started laughing at her. I laughed because I knew she’d never be pretty again. She looked at the ground and avoided my eyes. If she had looked up, I would’ve scratched them out.

  I went into a party wearing a stolen coat and my party dress. There’s marijuana in my pocket and heroin in my boots. I start dancing in the middle of the floor. There’s no music playing, but my heart won’t stop pounding. Someone calls me a slut, but in the crowd, I can’t tell who it is. I start grabbing people’s bottles and smashing them on the ground. I smash the jug of vodka. I smash the glasses. The boys grab my hair and my arms, and I bite someone’s neck until blood wells in my mouth. I’ve never been more bored in my entire life. They throw me out into the darkness and I go.

  Spinning.

  I wandered through downtown, drunk. I went into the boutique where I bought my heels and they kicked me out. I don’t know what I did but the sales girl screamed, her face distorting into a ghoul’s face. The pounding in my head transformed into a river and the noise carried me away.

  I went next door to the dollar store. I wandered the aisles of cheap candy and clothes. The cashier followed me. I thought she would kick me out as well, but she remained silent as she stalked me. I pretended not to notice her.

  I caught my reflection in a small hand mirror on the shelf. I found dried blood smeared across my mouth and nose, butterfly shaped, an old nosebleed.

  I didn’t have the energy to run to the bathroom and clean myself. I kept looking through the shop, until I came across her.

  She sat on a shelf by herself, in a glossy red pot, her spiked mouths agape. I watched a fly buzz around her for a long time, before landing on one of her green pads. It brushed against her hairs. She closed her mouth. She devoured him slowly, elegantly, no longer a mouth but an eye, the eyelashes brushing against the squirming insect. She was a demure lady, an unfortunate killer. The victim was gone, locked into her center, swimming in secreted enzymes, to never reappear.

  Venus Flytrap. Dionaea muscipula. I want to be you.

  I paid for her and took her home.

  At home I cleared my desk away and arranged a shrine for her near the mesh screen window, near smoky sunlight. In a place where other plants died, she grew big and richly colored. As I slept with Miss Margot in my arms, the plant’s shadow lay across my bed.

  I caught flies for her, slowing them down by placing them in the freezer. Just like feeding a lover drugs, my fingers rubbed raw with their use. My memories came back to me. I stopped going out every night while Mama slept, detoxed from the heroin and the wine. I pulled my reflection back from the mirror.

  ***

  When I slept, my dreams were clear for the first time in years. I dreamt of walking through a thick, ancient jungle, with nothing but a machete and a small girl as my guide. The girl came from a poor village, and yet she wore golden bangles around her wrists and ankles. She wore a red jewel around her throat, and the jewel sang like a bird. Her exposed belly swelled with milk, and her lips were full with blood.

  They were given gifts, she said, because they took care of Her.

  I hacked away tree limbs and vines that reached out from the woods, dripping with steam, to grab me.

  In a clearing we came to Her. The great Madagascar tree with the head of writhing snakes. The small girl clapped her hands. She said, Momma. Momma, I’ve brought you a gift.

  The snakes embraced the small girl. They lifted her up from the dirt, bent her head back as if in a kiss. They pinched the back of her neck with their teeth. Her body went slack, without a sigh. They devoured her and dropped the red jewel at my feet.

  When I woke, Miss Margot was gone. The Venus flytrap had caught a Daddy Long Legs whose gray legs were sticking out of one of her mouths. Birds were singing outside the window, birds with voices like the red jewel from my dreams.

  ***

  I went looking for Miss Margot in the house, and then in the garage. After she lost her eyes, she often hid underneath shelves or in between the car tires. I did not find Miss Margot, but I found, underneath a tarp next to an unused lawnmower and a rake, a white package of unmarked seeds.

  In our yard and backyard, nothing grew except crabgrass and weeds. The Homeowners Association was always trying to knock down our door for not mowing the lawn. Mama would appear in the entryway, stumbling, shielding her eyes from the light.

  “I have a medical condition,” she said, “I have a rare genetic disorder. I have cysts in my kidneys. Do you think I can mow the lawn?”

  They fled.

  I pulled weeds and planted the seeds in the backyard, the first time I’d ever done so, in a soft patch of dirt. I raked the dirt back over them with my fingers. I watered them with a ceramic cup.

  Inside, Mama was making herself a cup of valerian root te
a.

  “Have you seen Miss Margot?”

  She poured the boiling water into the cup. Her fingers were red and her face flushed with heat. The wallpaper had unfurled above her head and was hanging down, like a reaching hand.

  “Mama.”

  She didn’t respond. I realized I hadn’t seen her sober eyes in as long as I could remember.

  “Miss Margot is gone.”

  The steam boiled and rose in a plume around her face. It encased her head in a shroud. Underneath the shroud, her skin shifted. My Mama, all these years, was not a human being, but a lizard. The skin was like a bandage to cover the wound, perforated at the edges. The steam had curled her disguise, like it curled the wallpaper.

  “Mama”

  She turned to me with flakes of green on her face. She was an old lizard and sick, her scales the color of dulled vegetation, left out in the sun to dry. I pulled at my own skin. At my elbows. My fingers. Please, don’t let there be tears in this costume.

  Please, don’t let me be my mother.

  “Mama, do you ever think about anyone but yourself?”

  The steam boiled in the air. I knew if I touched it, I would burn.

  “Mama, have you ever loved me?”

  But there was only the sound of her skin tearing. It fell in a pile around her feet. She raised the cup of tea to her mouth.

  I knocked it out of her hands. It shattered onto the ground and I immediately regretted it. She fumbled for another cup. She crushed the porcelain underneath her feet, crushed it in a tincture of her own blood.

  “I just wanted you to love me,” I whispered.

  It didn’t feel true, even as I said it, but a part of my brain, a lazy, steamy part, believed it so.

  I ran out into the street. I ran calling for Miss Margot. I knocked on Lily’s door. I’d choke her if I could. If she hadn’t come into my house, high as fuck, and opened that door, none of this would’ve happened. Miss Margot would still have her eyes, I would still know which way was upright.

  Her mother answered the door. She lurched forward when the door flew open, her body like a hot coiled wire. She smelled musty, an attic thing, her body covered in rags. She wore a gazelle skull mask that hid everything except her eyes, cracked white and wide.

  “Where is Lily?” I asked, my throat closing and heart screaming, “I need to talk to her.”

  She pointed toward the woods.

  I ran. Urgency struck at my back. The air pounded at me like an abusive father. It was too early for darkness, but the sun took one look at me and plunged downwards. Hot red streaks of sky gushed from the top of the tree line, like the sun impaling itself below.

  “Miss Margot. Miss Margot.”

  “Lily. Lily.”

  Even as I called for them, I knew I searched for something else.

  For the great Madagascar Tree that took one look at me, its new sacrifice, and ate the child it once cared for and dressed in gold.

  For the carnivorous bellflowers that lured rats and birds to their sloping containers of mouths. Promised nectar, and delivered acidic enzymes.

  For a garden I’d grow, in which I’d no longer be a splintered mirror. For she could see me for who I was, and there’d be no need for reflection.

  I remembered the moment when the mask dissolved. It was not a mask pointing outward, but inward. I thought my facade of painted face and painted eyes was so clever. Instead I wore a costume that only fooled myself.

  The woods grew darker. The trees paled in color, the exposed roots, albino, the leaves ivory, as if they’d never seen sunlight. I stopped, gasping. My organs felt too big in my body. I hadn’t run that fast or that far in years.

  It’s quiet here, but I’m not alone.

  My shadow turned.

  It peeled from my skin

  It walked away, and I followed.

  Plants with teeth bloomed from the earth. They opened their mouths like oozing sores. They reached for the mosquitoes that landed on my bare hips and ate them alive. My shadow didn’t look back to see if I kept following. But I did. Stumbling, acid-eaten, and sore, I followed.

  My shadow found Miss Margot on her back in the weeds. She was whining, and scabs covered her legs. I picked her up and cradled her to my chest. She’d thinned. Her ribs were like needles, sharp against my palms.

  Moonlight bounced off the grass, and that’s when I saw something shiny and wet in the weeds.

  An eye. A cat’s eye, yellow and white, with a black pulsing center.

  Another rolled at my feet. My shadow cupped its hands around it. My cat’s shadow batted it like a toy.

  The weeds crunched behind me. The trees bent down, moaning. I knew if I looked, my fingers would forget how to make another mask. I’d be naked forever. Self-deception would be a memory.

  How did I know this?

  Because a Parisian does not find herself in a forest in the southern United States, dizzy, barefoot, and slipping on the soft eyeballs underneath her. Jezebel never stopped cutting off heads to run through the dirt, calling for a sick cat. And she never will.

  The trees hissed and the branches lay themselves about my shoulders like a mantle. They were warm and alive. From behind me, someone spoke.

  “I can give you.”

  A familiar voice.

  “I can give you something special.”

  Let me tell you all the things I’ve devoured today.

  A dirty girl sat, cross-legged, among a mound of cat’s eyeballs. Her dark hair covered her eyes.

  “Lily?”

  She’d changed. She picked up an eyeball and popped it with black, sharp fingernails. Her mouth was a piranha’s mouth, with sharp rows of fanged teeth. She swallowed the eye.

  When she brushed her hair out of her face and looked at me with dark green eyes, a wave of nausea hit me. The air swam thick.

  “Lily. What the hell is wrong with you?” I said, my mouth and voice far away, “Are you on drugs?”

  “They’re under my tongue,” she said. “Come have a taste.”

  “Stop fucking around.”

  But I know she isn’t. The Madagascar Tree stood behind me; I felt her like a guardian angel. Snakes, with leaves buried into their skin, encircled my legs and arms. They flicked their tongues at me, tasting me.

  “You never had a chance, Phaedra.”

  She ate another eye.

  “I can give it to you now.”

  Miss Margot went limp in my arms.

  “The ultimate drug. No symptoms, and no comedown. Ever.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. It was a tongue made of spiders, and the spiders held, in their limbs, a little red capsule.

  “Kiss me.”

  Kiss me.

  You will see what you want forever. Reality as it belongs to you.

  Kiss me.

  The snakes lured me forward with their black, tree-limbed heads. They lured me down into the wet mud. Miss Margot ran from my arms and jumped into the girl’s lap. My chest constricted. I gasped a single word.

  “Please.”

  I inhaled a sharp breath. As I did so, my shadow curled up around me and welded itself back to my skin.

  “Please don’t let me be my mother.”

  The girl laughed. The spiders on her tongue clicked.

  “That sad little ghost? You could be so much more.”

  If only I crawled.

  And I crawled. Through the eyeballs, I crawled. I could be more. The tree could be mine. Yes. My limbs would grow into a plant’s limbs. So difficult to be human, each generation raised by a tragedy, instead of a parent. I wanted to be more. Let the mask slip. Little Venus teeth were growing underneath.

  She took me in her arms. I kissed her soft, cold mouth. I swallowed the pill.

  ***

  I lost consciousness, but when I came to, I was running. Lights flashed behind me, people shouting. The cops. I found myself running in heels and a shredded dress, through a muddy creek. They told me to stop. I knew they couldn’t catch me. I was faster
than they could ever hope to be. There were muscles in my legs and my head I never knew existed. I flexed them and passed into a parallel world. The trees there glowed. The flowers called my name. I was laughing. I ran without touching the ground. I slipped in and out of realities. I wished for Miss Margot and she appeared in my arms.

  I was in all places at once, and at all times.

  By the time I got home I’d lost the cops. The doors of the house had blown open and I knew Mama was gone, but I didn’t care.

  The seeds I planted that morning had grown into my baby. My Madagascar Tree. I lifted my arms. She lifted her arms and took me gently by the wrists. Her snakes clamped down onto my fingers. I didn’t need legs anymore.

  The backyard had transformed into a midnight garden. The once derelict, broken-down fence became an obsidian wall. The weeds grew into enormous flowers, man-eating bellflowers with red translucent skin.

  The mirror that once trapped me, detached itself from my body. The town fell away with its police, high school, and quack therapy in its reflection, leaving me in the garden.

  I blew seeds from my mouth and they bloomed into blue roses. I shook my hair and the hair that fell on the ground, grew into cherry trees. The snakes brought me to the tree’s center. She could’ve swallowed me, but I knew she wouldn’t dare. I whispered to her, lovingly, teasing, I would be like fire in her stomach. I’d burn a hole straight through her, in the shape of me. I wouldn’t allow her to place the golden bracelets on my wrists. Instead, I would collar her snakes with crystal leashes. I’d take them for walks around the garden.

  The night would be a long one. Maybe it’d go on forever. I could feel my veins blooming into celluloid walls. Soon vines would overtake my heart and I’d no longer need to breathe with lungs. I’d breathe through my skin.

  I touched her trunk and I whispered.

  I devoured the pill.

  I devoured the mask.

  I devoured my neuroses.

  I devoured my history.

  I devoured the fear, and the shame.

  You’re in my garden now, and I am your gardener.

  About The Author