Submechanophobia
But I know… we both know… that, one day… you're going to fall in the water again.
This short story is part of the Blackwater Project, and ties into my previous entry in the series, which can be found here. It’s probably required reading to understand this. The larger Blackwater Project mythos can be found here.
It always starts the same way - she’s back in New Jersey, back at that god awful aquatic park in East Rutherford, she’s six years old again, tailing behind the rest of her class, distracted by some bird or a plane in the sky or odd-shaped cloud. No one’s waiting on her. Not even the teacher. No one talks to her, because no one ever talks to her, so no one notices when she slips and fall and goes right into the water from the edge of the observation deck. She’s so small she barely makes a splash, and it happens so quick that she doesn’t have time to yell or even understand what’s happening as she sinks into the brine water. Colorful fish, swimming in massive schools, gawking at her like the on-lookers on the other side of the vast aquarium glass on the lower levels of the multi-tiered structure, watching with shock and surprise and fear as she sinks deeper and deeper into the exhibit, filled with sea-life both organic and artificial. Living eels snaking through coral-choked stone, spying her from dark, shadowed holes with blank, vacant eyes. Animatronic dolphins with glowing eyes, their fake, rubbery skin creasing and wrinkling as they swim.
The sound of metal, creaking and groaning, whining and straining, fills the water, underlaid by the hum of mechanical motors, spinning gears, and other clockwork, growing louder and louder as the worst of them all approaches. She hears it coming from behind, and with weak, flailing motions, she manages to turn around right as the mechanical dragon that occupies the tank - the long, wriggling, snake-like beast with it’s goggle-eyes and flapping maw and serpentine tongue, floating in the water between white teeth both dull and large - has it’s gaping nostrils mere inches from her face, and this time, it doesn’t stop. The dark pits of its mouth seems to expand and swallow her whole, sucking up the world around her and all the light and leaving her in floating in a dark and watery void without end in any direction.
She sits there, suspended in the crepuscular border the gray light of a surface she can’t reach and a lightless abyss below, surrounded by an sea without borders that she can feel has no end in any direction, leaving her feeling smaller than a plankton, and utterly, completely alone.
For what feels like an eternity, she simply drifts along a weak current, helpless and powerless. No amount of thrusting or thrashing or flailing or kicking moves her, because there’s nowhere to go. On some level, she knows there’s nothing. No land, no shore, no beach she could ever hope to reach. Even the surface is illusory, and she knows that if she could swim, she’d only be treading water, forever. The fear never abates. The panic never cools. She never adjusts or acclimates or feels anything but the mortal, animal dread of someone in the midst of drowning, yet, still, she doesn’t, and she can’t, and she never will, which only compounds her misery and dominates her thoughts until she hears it - the distant creak of metal. The groan of turning clockwork, only just barely functional, on the cusp of complete destruction, churning somewhere in the far distance. The cold, clammy sense of dread doesn’t abate, but it does change from the fear of someone subsumed by murky water to the epiphanic horror of prey realizing it’s been seen by a predator they can’t escape.
It slowly fades into view, gliding slowly through the water, its details growing more sharp and defined as it drifts closer through the gloom, magnifying in size with each inch it approaches - a creeping, inescapable presence, to large to flee from, and with nowhere to hide from. It's the dragon - bigger than it ever was before, it's ghoulish head supported on a long, spindly neck that stretches an impossible length down into the murk where it meets some unseen and unfathomably large body that lurks beyond where the light can reach. Large patches of the artificial scales have fallen away, exposing a skeletal metal lattice underneath that's rusting and breaking and warping from what look like decades of neglect, laced with dead wires that drift around it like severed arteries ripped from its insides. What scales remain are pale, the paint fading and scraping and chipping over with time, and filthy with layers of accrued scum and slime, mud and muck.
The thing's mouth is still fixed in that broad, awful smile, with teeth that have decayed into jagged shards of rusted metal that line a mouth large enough to entomb a full-grown man inside. Bulbous white eyes, scuffed and scraped and scratched, stare sightlessly in separate directions. The fins on either side of its head are tattered, floating like seagrass or the hair of a drowned body in the currents of the water. The horns are chipped and broken.
Though the dead eyes lack pupils, and face opposite angles, she still feels the pressure of their attentive gaze fixed squarely upon her.
You're back.
The voice is not one that comes from within the dragon's mouth, nor one that travels or transmits through the water at all, but rather one that comes from everywhere and nowhere at once and bypasses her ears entirely, echoing inside her head.
It's high and keening, it's soft and gentle, and it carries no emotion save for some inscrutable inflection that could just as easily pass for mild amusement as it could some hollow attempt to sound comforting, kind, and inviting made by an intelligence that knew nothing of those concepts.
The rusting metal superstructure groans as the head drifts slowly from one side, then the other, at the mercy of the lazy currents.
It's so good to see you again, the voice tells her. It's been too long. Do you know how lonely it gets down here?
The idea to swim away never occurs to her. There's nowhere to swim to. No surface above her. No bottom below. There's an endless expanse in every direction, and there's nothing present - not a thing in this universe - besides her, the dragon, and the water around them.
Of course you don't.
The voice carries a tinge of notable disappointment in those words.
That's okay, it tells her, lapsing back into that vague, listless drawl. I understand. You couldn't know.
She tries to push away as the head inches closer with the groan of swaying steel, but it feels as if she's trying to swim through mud, like she's a bug stuck in tree sap, an animal trapped in viscous tar, and no amount of thrashing or flailing moves her an inch further from the dragon's leering face. The tip of it's nose, with two flared, dark, deep nostrils wide enough to stick a leg down, come so close that she can feel it without touching it. Her eyes burn with tears that slip into the water, unseen and unfelt.
And you never will, the voice assures her, confidently, as if it's speaking some wonderful, reaffirming truth. Because, one day, it tells her. When you come down here to stay… I'll be here. I'll be waiting for you. Just like I always have been. Just like I always will be.
A great, metallic sound - something like a sigh, or perhaps an odd, grating, twisting sound of the thing's steel skeleton - rises from an immeasurable distance in the darkness below her feet.
Waiting isn't always easy, it laments. I get impatient, sometimes. Especially with how quiet it is down here. But I know… we both know… that, one day… you're going to fall in the water again.
The screech of grinding rusted metal reverberates through the water as the dragon's mouth flops open. A ruined tongue of metal chords drifts lamely inside, emerging from a depthless black within its throat as black as the endless abyss that the thing emerged from.
And, this time? There won't be anyone to pull you back out.
“I was only down there for a minute.” She fidgeted in her seat, her eyes wide, furtive, and blood-shot, constantly moving in search of some unseen threat. “Before someone noticed. An employee jumped in and dragged me out. It was only a minute. Maybe less. But…” She shook her head, and, in a distant voice, continued, “It felt like it would never stop.”
Dr. Ludlow nodded and shifted in his seat, hands folded neatly in his lap, his brow furrowed with equal parts contemplation and concern - both of which, where she in a different state of mind, she might have suspected were feigned. “And - that’s where you saw the dragon.”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, it was - one of the animatronics. In the exhibit. It just… it swam in circles. Sometimes, it rose to the surface and it would blow… steam, or - or smoke. I don’t remember, but - it would come up and the sound…” She paused to sip from the plastic cup of water on the table besides the sofa she sat on. “It was like you could hear every gear inside of it turning and churning. All the metal underneath its fake skin groaning like some… some dying whale, or something.” She shuddered. “I hated that fucking thing from the moment I saw it.”
“It scared you?”
She nodded again. “When I was in the water, it came right up to me.” She put a hand right before her nose. “This close. I swear. There must have been a sensor or… or something in it that made it stop before it hit me, but… God. I could have sworn it was looking at me. And I could have sworn it was hungry.”
Dr. Ludlow opened his mouth, but she moved faster.
“I - I know,” she said in a shaking voice. “I know that - that’s stupid, I -”
“Daria,” said Dr. Ludlow. He smiled. “Please. We don’t use words like that here. You don’t need to talk that way about yourself.”
“But it was,” she protested, without missing so much as a second. “I know, it - it was a machine.” She spoke as if she were trying to convince herself of that fact. “Machines don’t get hungry. Machines don’t eat.”
“You can’t call yourself stupid for that,” said Dr. Ludlow, his voice low and pleasant, soft and comforting like the plush throw pillows on his couch that Daria had entombed herself with. “An eight year old doesn’t know that a machine isn’t going to eat them.”
“Six,” Daria corrected. “I was six.”
Dr. Ludlow gave her a small, paternal smile. “Even less reason to beat yourself up over it, then. You suffered a traumatic experience. There’s no shame in that. But, you have to tell yourself, Daria - no matter how frightening that dragon might have been, or the fear that you might have had that it would eat you…” He spread his hands. “It can’t hurt you now.”
Daria was silent for a long moment. Dr. Ludlow, for all his years of experience, still found himself to read her expression. She didn’t look at him so much as look through him, her eyes unfocused and glazed. With her dark hair out of sorts and tied back, face bare, and that usual, confident façade she conducted herself absent, she looked like a different person than the one that he was familiar with. Had he seen her in public, especially dressed in the rather plain pair of slacks and a simple, black t-shirt, he wouldn’t have recognized her as one of the most important people at Elysium’s Beaverton campus.
Her lips moved, but the sound that came out was unintelligible, near inaudible. Dr. Ludlow smiled a bit wider and sat forward in his chair. “I’m sorry, Daria,” he said. “I didn’t catch that. What did you say?”
“It…” Daria’s eyes focused, her pupils visibly dilating as they fixed on Dr. Ludlow. “The dragon - it isn't the dragon that scares me.” She swallowed. The tightness in her throat made it difficult and painful. A violent shiver ran through her body as her mind articulated the thoughts into words as disturbing as they were difficult to admit.
“So… what it is that does scare you, then, Daria?”
Daria inhaled through her nose. She held it for a moment.
“This dragon,” she said. “It isn't - I know there is no dragon.” She gave a shuddering sigh. “The dragon is scrap metal today. But - the thing in my dreams. It’s not the dragon. It's a… a face. A mask, or a - a front, of some kind, that… that something else is hiding behind. I don’t know what it is, but - I almost drowned in that tank. And it found me when I did.” Her fingers clenched into tight fists and her jaw wired shut, hard enough to start an aching in her temples. “It's using the dragon to talk to me. Or - or maybe… maybe it’s what I put over it, so I - I don’t see what it really is.”
Dr. Ludlow’s brow creased. “You… you keep saying it, Daria. Could you tell me what is it, exactly?”
Daria shook her head. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “I… I don’t know. I’ve been wondering that my entire life. But - I do know…” She nodded, more to herself than the psychologist. “I know it's telling me that - when I die. It'll be me. And… that thing. And that'll be it. Nothing else.” She took another sharp breath. She forced herself to say the last words - the hardest words of them all to say.
“Forever.”
“So. What's the verdict?”
Dr. Ludlow sighed as accepted the glass of wine that had been set out from him, leaning back in the stiff, uncomfortable chair. He swirled the contents of the glass for a moment before taking an experimental sip.
“Daria’s condition has deteriorated since our last session.” He took another drink, his eyes fixed on the glass. The waxy orange light of the desk lamp shone through the contents and projected a plum-colored, wavering stain on his white sweater. “Chronic insomnia. Severe anxiety. Irritability. Trouble concentrating and memory loss. She's suffering from angina… dizzy spells… cluster headaches. Intense nausea, too. Frankly, she's a wreck. It speaks volumes of her dedication that she's even coming into work.”
Across the table, Site Director Borges scoffed. “All of this over some… some sort of… cheap amusement park prop?”
“Animatronic,” Dr. Ludlow corrected. “And, it’s not that she’s afraid of. She’s afraid of dying. The dragon… it’s something of a metaphor.”
“For what?”
Dr. Ludlow shrugged. “Death itself. The devil, perhaps. Maybe even God. She has this idea that, when she dies, she’ll be trapped with alongside it, whatever it is, and she’s used the memories of her near death experience to illustrate these sensations and emotions in the most evocative imagery her psyche can draw on.” He sipped at his wine, and added, “Perhaps it’s a manifestation of self-loathing. And the only thing she really fears is being alone, and she sees death as just… the ultimate isolation. Alone with herself. For eternity.”
Borges sighed as he poured himself another glass. In the lamplight, his tanned skin, mottled from many years spent in the Mexican sun, looked like that of a wax statue’s. “She never did tell me the full story behind what happened,” he said, watching the dark wine pool in his glass. “What was it exactly that happened with this… this dragon that has her so disturbed all these years later?”
Dr. Ludlow was silent for a moment. “I'm… not at liberty to disclose that information. Doctor-patient confidentiality.”
The broad lenses of Dr. Borges’ glasses glinted as he pushed them up his nose. “It's not a matter of doctor and patient, Ludlow. It’s just chatter between concerned co-workers.”
Ludlow arched a gray brow. “Office gossip?”
Borges shrugged. “You could call it that.”
Ludlow continued to hesitate. He said nothing, and both he and the site director sipped their wine in silence. Ludlow reached the end of first. He looked into his empty glass and, through it, saw Borges raise the bottle, wordlessly offering more.
Ludlow extended his glass. Borges tilted the bottle up, pouring nothing. He cast the psychologist an austere look.
“At least tell me what you can do for her.”
The two stared at each other for a long, tense moment. Then, Ludlow set his glass on the table, but he remained leaned forward.
“Do you want my honest assessment? Or the professional one?”
“Honest,” said Borges. He poured another libation into Ludlow's glass, who accepted the offering eagerly.
“Honestly?” Ludlow sipped his wine. “She needs time to relax. The chest pains, the light-headedness, the headaches, the nausea - it's all stress. I can’t imagine the constant fixation of death with the work she’s doing on Blackwater isn’t aggravating her thanatophobia.”
Borges gave a small, single exhale of amusement. “Wouldn’t you say that counts as exposure therapy, Dr. Ludlow?”
“Well… exposure isn’t always the right course of action,” Dr. Ludlow said with a note of uncertainty. “Sometimes, exposure therapy is less like building up tolerance and more like rubbing sandpaper on a scrape.”
“Dr. Ludlow,” Borges said flatly. “Dr. DiMassi personally volunteered to participate in the project.”
“I get that,” said Dr. Ludlow. “Believe me, it makes sense that a woman with a debilitating fear of death would want to work on a project dedicated to finding immortality, but - that doesn’t change the fact that all this talk of death, day in and day out… it has to be corrosive to her mental health, and - honestly, if she keeps pushing herself, she runs the risk of developing very serious health problems. That’s to say nothing of the possibility that, one of these days, she just…” He threw up one hand and let it fall against the arm rest. “Breaks.”
“So what do you suggest we do?”
“I just told you,” balked Ludlow. “Rest. She needs to rest. It is, in my professional opinion, unconscionable to continue pushing a person in her state any harder than she’s already being pushed. In plain English… the woman needs a break.”
Borges was silent. Ludlow knew that wasn’t the answer he’d wanted to hear.
“How long?”
Borges didn’t sound particularly concerned.
“My recommendation?” Ludlow hesitated. “Extensive.”
“What about her medications?”
“We’re already pushing the limits of what she can take with her current prescriptions. She already has to be prescribed more meds just to counter-act the side-effects of her initial prescriptions. I don’t know if we could up anything she’s on. Not without running a very serious risk of injury.”
Borges said nothing. He held his wine glass by the cup, but didn't move it to his mouth, his eyes hidden by the glare of the lamplight catching in his glasses.
“Hector,” said Ludlow, his voice low. “There are some things you just can't fix with a pill.”
Hector supplied no answer. He added more wine his glass, though it wasn't empty. He sipped. He thought.
“Justin,” said Borges. “I know she doesn't look like it. I know she doesn't always act like it. But Dr. DiMassi…” He took another sip. “You know her credentials as well as I do. We can't replace her. We wouldn’t have anyone to replace her with. If she stops, the entire program here in Beaverton stops with her.”
“I understand,” said Ludlow. “But - Jesus, Hector. If she's that important, what happens when she drops dead of a - a heart attack, or something? What would we do then?”
Borges offered a cold, clinical smile as he sat back in his seat, his tanned skin gleaming and pitted with scars in the orange light of the desk lamp. “I understand,” he said coolly. “That pills aren’t the solution to every problem.” He laid his hands on the table and turned them up, palms skyward. “But they are a good place to start. So, tell me…”
Site Director Borges steepled his hands.
“What would you suggest we begin with, Doctor?”
This was the synthesis of several disparate ideas that, somehow, all seemed to come together. I didn’t anticipate writing anything about this character in particular, but it just kind of fit. What kind of person would be more invested in a project seeking immortality than someone who’s deathly afraid off… well, dying?
Just for the record, Site Director Hector Borges both looks and sounds like this in my imagination.
Thanks for expanding on this character. It was a chilling read!