Blue as a Bruise - Sarah Payne

SARAH PAYNE

prose “How long did Marshall say this would take to hit?” Slumping onto her sleeping bag, Beth stretched her hands to the blue tarp ceiling of their tent, willing them to swirl and blur. Nothing happened. The aim of the acid trip was catharsis after crisis. Since the horror of Sophomore year had passed, Beth decided it was time to remove the root of her panic attacks through the homebrew psychedelic therapy heralded far and wide by psych majors: a tour of the “self” with lysergic acid diethylamide. The initial fears she had were all about “Alice-in-Wonderland-ing” in her own memories and hallucinating, but after half an hour with the tab on her tongue, all she felt was impatient. It wasn’t like she had any experience with psychedelic drugs. Her expectation was to be roiling in the human selfconscious for the next twelve hours, sunset to sunrise. Marshall had told them to “buckle up for a wild ride” as he passed them the plastic bag before they departed for Blue Spring State Park. Sam scrolled through cooking videos absently on his phone, the sunset on the tent casting his face in a blue sheen. It had been a little too long since his tawny hair had been cut, and a little too long since he shaved his face, but he was still handsome. A timer disrupted Binging with Babish. “Alright, remove the tab.” “Even if this doesn’t work, it feels so good to not be at school right now.” Beth snuggled into Sam’s side, wiggling with how good it felt to be out. Any anxiety she had melted away on the road to Orange City. “I was stifled! I was dying!” Beth lamented, casting a hand upon her brow. “Oh, yeah?” Sam cackled, his fingers finding all her ticklish spots. She howled, legs flailing. Beth had tears of laughter in her eyes, leaking tracks down her face. For a moment, her memory held still, kept that snapshot of them laughing and

[ 68 ] didn’t want to let it go. The reason why she could love Sam forever was simple: she could be herself around him, silly and ridiculous and true. Last year she lived moment to moment, clinging to happiness for safety, but things had changed. They kissed and she smiled onto his lips. Slowly, she started to lose the purpose of the trip. The thought of psychological exploration was drowned in his kiss. When the drug started to take hold, she was lost in the impossible softness of Sam’s lips, in the silken texture of his hair, and in the warmth of his embrace. It was only when he pulled away that she started to notice something off. The color of the tent was stronger than before, and suddenly it didn’t seem like the sunlight coming through the interior was turning them blue, it was that they themselves were blue-born beings. Blue as a bottle of Dasani. Blue as Care Bears. Blue as a cotton candy Dum Dum Lollipops. He was blue and she was blue and when she touched him, they were blue together. “What do you want?” A voice rumbled out of Sam’s chest, but his mouth didn’t move. “I…I…don’t really know.” Her tongue was timid and stuttering. The flap of the tent started to shake, zipper bouncing with pressure. Beth found herself intrepid and reaching. The zing of the zipper became a broken record in her brain. There was a long, tenuous moment where the students looked up at the man and the man down at the students. “What do you want?” Beth repeated after the rumbling not-Sam voice, calling out to the stranger like he was a far-off point in the distance. Yet his face zoomed in, clearer and clearer, until they were almost nose to nose. His eyes were incredibly wide set apart, pupils blown, a Habsburgian underbite revealed his teeth…the miserable mystery of his teeth…what was left of his grin were gaps between thin bone hooks. The ghost of facial hair crested over his lip. A headlamp was fixed to his forehead by a Velcro strap, giving him altogether the appearance of an anglerfish. Beth hiccupped. Any other day and she would have stopped and asked questions. Any other day, her roommate’s gift of pepper

[ 69 ] prose spray would be deployed with the accuracy of her survival instinct. Perhaps it was the LSD that stopped her, that created mystery in the stranger with his vulture’s gaze. Sam pushed her from the flap and shoved the stranger hard. Beth’s wrist was grabbed and dragged from the tent so fast she barely caught her footing. A breath held in her lungs as she sustained eye contact with the man on the ground, as he watched her the sky faded from sunset to dusk. The light from his headlamp grew stronger until it became the rival of the rising moon. Sam forced her into a hellish race down the trail to the Spring. The skewed world made her feel lethargic even while she was sprinting down the trail. Darkness was descending in totality, trees wrapped around them as the trail got narrower and narrower. Beth did not look back. The only reason she knew that the man was pursuing her and Sam was because of the bobbling light licking the trees around them, creeping along their shoulders. Every breath she took caught on the fear of being touched by the man. Her mind turned out bombastic syllables of yellow panic. Don’t get raped-murdered-stalked. Please don’t catch me. All of a sudden, drops of water started to splatter against her forehead, quickly returning with a vengeance in downpour. Beth’s shoes filled and started to squish. The only illumination in the thick tree cover continued from behind. When Sam grasped for her again, it was with the sharpest yank to the right. The dodge turned into a tumble downhill until they were plunged into the Spring. “We have to get out!” Sam shouted in a whisper. Beth could feel the sandpaper skin of a manatee tickle her forearm. The only thing she could think of was a poster she had seen as they drove in: DO NOT SWIM WITH MANATEES, THEY ARE PLAYFUL AND CAN ACCIDENTALLY DROWN YOU. Scrambling onto the shore, Beth clung to Sam. They gripped the roots of a tree to keep their legs from the water.

Big clean gulps of air touched her lungs in blessing, but fear still clenched around her heart, making it throb. The bobbling light of the headlamp reflected inside raindrops and on the spring water to her left as the man shuffled down the hill. All she did was stick her foot out from the cover of the tree at the right moment. Without intention, it would have been stretching. The man gave a shout as he tripped unceremoniously into the water. Young manatees, fully awakened, began to play. Their grey bodies surfaced and dragged the man down with their weight. Struggle was communicated only in the spinning flickers of his headlamp underwater, before the beam of light went still. Beth began weeping. Sam’s hand shielded her vision, but she knew the body must have resurfaced. She knew it because the flashes of light from the anglerfish-man’s headlamp gave a few desperate tries at illumination before giving up, attempts glowing red between Sam’s fingers. Murderer. A strange man chased after them without reason, she used self-defense, but the word crashed around her brain. A headache blossomed in Beth’s skull, brain pulsing from crying. It was the new snapshot her brain refused to surrender, a man floating face-down in a romantic spring by moonlight… surrounded by the same friendly sea cows that drowned him. +++ Morning came, but Sam and Beth did not awaken to the bruised sunrise. LSD kept the brain from resting, repeatedly kicking it into gear…Beth gripped the steering wheel harder. She was worried that she might never sleep again after what she saw…what she did. They had packed the car as soon as they stumbled back to their campsite, eager to leave and tuck safely back into their daily lives. Sam put a comforting hand over hers on the shifter. There was effort in their grimaces, which followed the natural shape of grins, but without any spirit. She put it in gear. The road spooled out before them, winding through the

[ 71 ] prose park. As Beth began to back out of the parking spot, she looked in her rear-view mirror. A man’s eyes collided with hers in her gaze. A headlamp dangled from his hand. Thin teeth pushed up from his under-bitten smirk. That fear in the pit of her stomach was ubiquitous…pulled from incidents last year like thread through a needle eye. Beth feared that there was nothing that could stop a man from taking what he wanted. Not society, not law, not love, not God. That a man with desire would be exempt from every earthly deterrent, never needing a reason. In his face, she saw the guy last year, who followed her home. In his face, she saw the guy who befriended her and Sam, only to make a move on her after Sam had fallen asleep. In his face, she saw the guy who threatened their lives after being spurned. Who left shotgun shells outside their dorms and sent threats to Sam’s fraternity. The stranger’s face was a caricature of that guy. When Beth realized it, she couldn’t un-see it. Wide-set eyes became wider. An underbite became Habsburgian. The kindness he used to lure them transformed into the illusion of the anglerfish with its bioluminescent gem. There was clarity in her heart as she plunged into reverse. The image of the man burst and dissipated like smoke as the car backed through it. Sam pulled up the emergency brake, narrowly stopping the car from hitting a tree. Bullets of sweat beaded at her brow. Breath came in bursts, but she felt stronger with each one. Safety was an illusion too, but one she had some agency over. “Beth, are you okay?” Sam pushed the shifter into park. There was no room for concern over her engine, no room for anything in the hug he gave her, squishing her over the console and into his arms. Beth could feel his fear for her as he held her, as he stroked her hair and tried to calm her down. “Everything is going to be okay.” She told herself. For the first time in a long time, she believed it.