In the Safe and Sound (eBook)
400 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-8394-4 (ISBN)
'I wrote it from a melody in my head. When I read it, I hear music.' --M.A. Dixon
Mallory's life story is a raw and intimate portrayal of the challenges faced by those battling alcoholism and addiction. Through an unfiltered lens, the novel delves into the pivotal moments that define her journey-moments filled with both sweetness and despair, acceptance and rejection. Mallory's experiences offer readers a powerful glimpse into the consequences of addiction and the complexities of recovery, showing the toll on relationships, identity, and one's sense of worth. Yet, as she navigates her darkest moments, Mallory also discovers the resilience within herself and the transformative power of self-acceptance. Ultimately, this story is not only about the struggle but also the profound beauty of finding an unconditional love for oneself, even in the face of relentless challenges. Woven with themes of hope and redemption, the novel invites readers to witness a moving testament to the power of self-love and healing.
This Meadow Is a Cave
A voice says, “Do you want to die?”
She can’t hear it. Her ears don’t work right now.
A tube goes down her throat.
She can’t feel it. Her nerves don’t work right now.
A needle is pushed through her chest.
She doesn’t know it. Her heart is broken right now.
It’s cold in the cave. Water is dripping down the stalactites hanging just over her head. Echoes are bouncing everywhere. Her arms and legs spread along the floor like mini canals dug into the earth. The heartbeat of a beep starts its rhythm along the muddy sides of the cave and then travels through the center of her body, intruding every cell with its mechanical pulse before it circles back out again. A six-foot rat snake tunnels its way up and over her arm and then wraps its body tight. Squeezes. Sounds emerge from the subterranean pool of water beneath her. Bubbles from the cave pond cover her face, popping in and out of her mouth and nose. Some of the bubbles, from the deepest depths of the cave pond, are colored a deep red. They spill down over the rim of her cheekbones and hit the ground with a sound that howls against the cold, wet walls. A tornado of pain. The cave gets louder and louder, until the ground beneath her begins to scream back at the walls. Echoes play off each other like dewdrops reflected in a spider web, bouncing into each other and then back out. The noise escalates into a thunderous roar and the ground shakes beneath her. Soon, the gut-wrenching scream gets so loud that the top of the cave ceiling begins to crack. A viny cord reaches out of the crack and coils itself around a stalagmite before making its way up through her mouth and then scratching its way down her throat. The rat snake releases her arm just as the ceiling caves in. Cave icicles break off in every direction and puncture her skin everywhere. When they pierce through her head, they clamp themselves inside, growing new spikes while they twist. The rat snake appears again, six inches from her face, and speaks to her through its eyes.
It says, “Do you want to die?”
She can’t hear it. Her ears don’t work right now.
Her heart stops and is restarted.
She doesn’t know. Her brain doesn’t work right now.
Her heart stops and is restarted.
She doesn’t know. She’s not here right now.
A machine silences the room.
A heart tries again.
Her heart muscles contract.
She can feel it.
A voice is talking.
She can hear it.
It says, “Do you want to die?”
She can’t speak but becomes aware that she is lying on her back with faces around her on the outside and pain coming at her from the inside. Sparks of panic go skipping through her nerves as they try to catch up to her unpredictable heart.
She blinks her eyes open and sees syringes scattered on top of a sheet. Her mind plays tricks on her as new alarms go off in her head. She wonders why she didn’t hide them better and then realizes that these needles don’t belong to her. The ones she uses always have an orange plunger, and they never come with packaging.
There’s a lady with purple-gloved hands leaning in close to her face. It feels like she’s pressing into her chest, stabbing her elbows directly into her ribcage. It hurts everywhere. When she tries to move parts of her body, an inch of movement feels like a mile, the pain making every second feel like forever. Every time she blinks, her eyelashes leak new tears. She keeps her eyes closed but her ears, unfortunately, don’t have lids and the noises all around her are making everything much worse. Voices are too loud, and machines won’t turn off and the worst part is that Mallory can’t make her own voice to tell them to stop.
When she opens her eyes again, the edges of her vision are blurry. At one point, it looks like everyone around her has a playdough face, smushed and then stretched like flesh-colored silly putty from a vending machine egg. She tries to turn her head further so that she can see more, but the small effort of this drives a new layer of pain down her neck. Parts of her body reach new levels of rebellion. She is dizzy and nauseous and delirious. Someone has lit her body on fire. She believes she is being burned alive with bloody sweat dripping down around her ears. The purple-gloved lady is shouting now as she comes into focus just inches from her own face.
“I said, how old are you?”
Her brain convinces her that this is just one of her dreams, a crazy nightmare that got out of hand. She expects to wake at any moment but then she hears herself say “twenty-five” and then tastes the blood and bile in her mouth.
* * *
And then she was six years old again and had just crossed the monkey bars, by herself, for the first time. She didn’t ask anyone to hold her legs at the bottom or catch her if she fell. She was surprised at her own strength as she swung herself hard, catching the next bar with her fingertips. There was a breeze blowing hard against her face, causing her to squeeze her eyes partially shut. And even though the wind willed her otherwise, she pushed through until she hung from the very last bar. She held for one last second and then released her hands to land on her feet, twelve bars away from where she started. As proud as she was to have made it all the way across, she suddenly realized that this side of the monkey bars had no steps and no slide. The only way down was a firefighter’s pole for which she was too small to reach with her arms. Besides that, the only other way was to jump.
This was as high as she’d ever been, higher even than the ladder she used to help her mother pull the Christmas ornaments down from the closet shelf.
Like a statue, she stood with the fresh metal scent wafting from her fingertips. She wanted so badly to jump like he did. Her brother, Patrick, could always do everything better than she could. He always landed so perfectly at the end, never afraid, always brave. She thought she might be able to do it just like him, flying like a bird from that wooden plank.
She felt dizzy in the air, as though she had pumped herself too high on a swing. When she hit the ground, her teeth went straight through her tongue and the taste startled her. She landed in the wood chips, her two shoes holding tight to the ground and blood leaking out of her mouth. She wasn’t sure if pain was part of being brave, but she didn’t mind the throb in her mouth at all. She did it. She couldn’t believe she did it.
Patrick looked over at her, and instead of the smile she expected, he was staring at her face like he was waiting for it to do something. And though nothing was wrong with her legs, he ran over to his sister and picked her up with all the gentle strength of a brand-new superhero. He carried her all the way back to their house. For three blocks he carried her, waiting once at the stoplight and looking both ways at the stop sign. He was completely unaware of the strain in his neck or the pain in his arms. Patrick, so calm, so brave, now looked terrified as he struggled to carry his little sister up the hill to the front door of their white duplex. She remembers there was crying, but not from her own voice. Patrick was holding her so tightly, her bloody mouth kept jerking into his chest for every sob he let go.
* * *
“Okay, you have to stay awake now. How many did you take?”
The ride is bumpy, and she is moving backward in an unsettling way. She wants to tell the driver that they’re doing this wrong. You’re supposed to drive forward. Her head hurts badly now. She tries to reach her hand up toward it, but the same purple-gloved lady is tying something around her wrist.
“Don’t touch,” she says. “You have an open wound.”
She tries very hard to recall what happened and to calm the panic that colors her memory black. The only trick she knows is to focus on the details of something right in front of her, anything to attach her back to the present. The toes that are stretched out in front of her are peeking disjointedly from under a sheet. They’re painted a dark purple, almost black, and they are perfect. There is not a single chip or missed spot. She wished she had feet this perfect.
“Hey, look at me. I need you to tell me how many pills you took.”
But doesn’t this lady know? It isn’t about the pills. It is about her heart. Besides, those pills are all gone now. So are the other drugs and so is the booze. Doesn’t she know? She is only here because it was the only option left after everything ran out.
After he broke her heart.
And right now, she can’t peel her eyes from those perfect toes in front of her. The polish never veers off the nail, just maintains a perfect line from cuticle to tip, not even breaching the skin. They are the most beautiful feet she has ever seen.
Something in the back of the ambulance begins to rattle, and the lady with the purple gloves shouts even louder over the noise. There’s a cuff around her upper arm and a machine next to her, and now she starts to worry. She worries because the cuff has blood all over it, just like her fingers, just like her arm, just like the whole of her neck and chest and just like the taste in her mouth. This is when she starts to remember about her roommate and the fight and the darkness that came around her when she was lying on the floor naked. She remembers the blood on the carpet from where she hit her head. She hit her head because the last bottle of booze finally caught up with the last line of meth, and the pills that she took that she swore...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 14.2.2025 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8-3509-8394-4 / 9798350983944 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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