silent, with the drugs draining out of your system, you fall into moments of pure void until the horrors rush in again. And the foot stands above the earth suffocating you, making you want to scream one last time. But after awhile you can only grunt. Whine. Moan. Then just stay still and feel nothing.
From a TV left on in the living room comes a deep, prophetic voice, surely an old movie:
. . . She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seems to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the waterâs edge. Her face has a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward . . .
The flame of the phantom foot races up again from the stump through your calf. It makes itself known. It is stuck to you, you cannot kick it away. So you lie there feeling its power set fire to the room, and you wait.
Day ten dead
(In which Bunny walks for the first
time without a foot.)
H AVING COME to count on being in this blue room indefinitely, you hadnât foreseen what might come after: the loss of euphoria and the petering out of the drug supply, the image of the snake drying up within its own curled form. But worse, your lost foot as the dark outcome of some fitful and flawed plan carried out by the bastard.
Because the shark hadnât worked out, hadnât killed you the first time. Not that the bastard could know that. The paranoia of coming off drugs brings a cascade of questions. How can one man have power over creatures of the ocean? How did he know youâd tumble down into the sea that morning at dawn?
For what seems like days youâve been resting, simply taken care of. No need to figure things out. Your foot wrapped up in impermanent injury, which you would sort out once you felt better. Once you were on your feet again.
You look up from an hour of staring at the palms, waiting for the snake to return with its message, and the young man appears. Your first impulse is to cry. He greets you like an old friend, not his lover.
âHow you doinâ?â You notice how his accent has shifted. How he carries his weight differently, his body more relaxed and in tune with the surroundings. You smell his skin as he leans over to adjust the sheet, a rich mix of clean sweat and soap. Everyone washes so often here, youâve noticed.
âI feel like Iâm nowhere. Or in somebody elseâs dream.â
âWell thatâs good, I guess. No harm in floating for awhile. Lettinâ it sink in, what happened to you. Do you understand it?â
âYou mean, that Iâm lucky I wasnât all eaten up?â You canât manage to smile so the young man is beaming on your behalf.
âWell everyone is considering youâre special because of that, yeah. And that it was your foot that got taken. Here that means something.â
From the abstraction of your talk with the young man, which is a comfort to you, to the material, grim reality: a foot, gone. It hits you again â it hits you because the phantom foot has reared up again, angled as it is in a furious clamp of pain.
âWhat could it possibly mean ,â you say, shaky and trembling, on the verge of tears. The young man puts a hand on your shoulder and you want more than anything to shrivel up so youâre tiny enough to fit within that hand. âThere is nothing meaningful about an accident that severs a body.â
From a TV left on in the living room comes a deep, prophetic voice, surely an old movie:
. . . She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seems to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the waterâs edge. Her face has a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward . . .
The flame of the phantom foot races up again from the stump through your calf. It makes itself known. It is stuck to you, you cannot kick it away. So you lie there feeling its power set fire to the room, and you wait.
Day ten dead
(In which Bunny walks for the first
time without a foot.)
H AVING COME to count on being in this blue room indefinitely, you hadnât foreseen what might come after: the loss of euphoria and the petering out of the drug supply, the image of the snake drying up within its own curled form. But worse, your lost foot as the dark outcome of some fitful and flawed plan carried out by the bastard.
Because the shark hadnât worked out, hadnât killed you the first time. Not that the bastard could know that. The paranoia of coming off drugs brings a cascade of questions. How can one man have power over creatures of the ocean? How did he know youâd tumble down into the sea that morning at dawn?
For what seems like days youâve been resting, simply taken care of. No need to figure things out. Your foot wrapped up in impermanent injury, which you would sort out once you felt better. Once you were on your feet again.
You look up from an hour of staring at the palms, waiting for the snake to return with its message, and the young man appears. Your first impulse is to cry. He greets you like an old friend, not his lover.
âHow you doinâ?â You notice how his accent has shifted. How he carries his weight differently, his body more relaxed and in tune with the surroundings. You smell his skin as he leans over to adjust the sheet, a rich mix of clean sweat and soap. Everyone washes so often here, youâve noticed.
âI feel like Iâm nowhere. Or in somebody elseâs dream.â
âWell thatâs good, I guess. No harm in floating for awhile. Lettinâ it sink in, what happened to you. Do you understand it?â
âYou mean, that Iâm lucky I wasnât all eaten up?â You canât manage to smile so the young man is beaming on your behalf.
âWell everyone is considering youâre special because of that, yeah. And that it was your foot that got taken. Here that means something.â
From the abstraction of your talk with the young man, which is a comfort to you, to the material, grim reality: a foot, gone. It hits you again â it hits you because the phantom foot has reared up again, angled as it is in a furious clamp of pain.
âWhat could it possibly mean ,â you say, shaky and trembling, on the verge of tears. The young man puts a hand on your shoulder and you want more than anything to shrivel up so youâre tiny enough to fit within that hand. âThere is nothing meaningful about an accident that severs a body.â
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