Cry Your Way Home by Damien Angelica Walters

Author:Damien Angelica Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: loss, dark fantasy, abuse, weird fiction, strong female protagonist
Publisher: Apex Book Company

Falling Under, Through the Dark

Kara’s sitting at her desk when she falls. There’s no time for panic; it happens too fast. One moment she’s working. The next, she’s in the water. Gravity and the force of the fall plunge her into the depths and everything blurs. She wants to yell but her body needs to conserve oxygen and won’t allow it. Natural buoyancy kicks in and she bobs to the surface, eyes still burning from the chlorine.

Now her heart starts to race and she breathes in huge gulps of air, her mind already fumbling for statistics. Facts. Every day an average of ten people die from drowning, and of those, two are children fourteen and younger.

Even as the edges of her world sharpen back into shape, the water pulls again, but nearly 80% of drowning victims are male keeps her afloat.

She rubs her palms together and focuses on the sounds of the office: the rhythmic hum of a printer ejecting paper, a snippet of conversation from another accountant’s cube, a quick trill of laughter, music from someone’s speakers set too low to discern anything save its existence. The prosaic, the expected.

Of course, because the falling is only in her head and her heart. There are many ways to drown; not all of them require water.

“Grab hold of something when the attack starts,” Doctor Harris said. “It will help your mind realize what’s happening isn’t real. Close your eyes so you see darkness instead of distortion—that works with car sickness, too—and breathe slow and even.”

But his recommendations require thought, and in those five to ten seconds, there are no thoughts, only the sensation, the shock. He told her it would pass—the old time and wounds and healing song and dance—and offered a prescription, an offer she didn’t take.

She doubts he’d approve of her methods.

She keeps statistics running through her head until the end of the day—she doesn’t fall again—and drives home, the sky a study of pink and orange. Her cell phone rings on the way, but she ignores it, knowing it’s Colin. They’ve said everything that needed to be said and everything that didn’t. She has nothing left for him.

Walking into the silence of her apartment, she fights the urge to call out that she’s home. Old habits don’t like to relinquish their hold. She turns on the television instead for background noise. Bare walls gleam marble pale. Boxes she hasn’t bothered to unpack collect dust in the corners. After setting a can of soup to heat, she listens to her voice mail. Colin asks if she’s received the papers from his attorney, asks if she’s signed and sent them back yet, asks how she is. The last feels like an afterthought. She grimaces, erases the message, and drops her phone beside a teetering stack of unread mail on the kitchen table.

Through the sliding glass door leading to a small balcony, she has a view of the South River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. In spite of the autumn chill in the air, boats still move across its surface.

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