Short Story: Congealed

Beth feels a sharp, bright pain growing beneath her left eye. She groans and rolls over, pressing the left side of her face deep into the dark hills of her pillow. It’s too early. She flings her arm toward her nightstand and blindly feels around for a bottle of aspirin as memories of the night before bubble up in her mind. 

Strobing pink and purple lights; distorted, thumping music; cigarettes and sweaty fingers. 

Her hand finds the pill bottle. She fumbles with it for a moment, eyes still blurry from sleep. 

“Comfidem,” a voice behind her gurgles softly. Beth drops the pill bottle and swerves to peer behind her, eyes now wide and clear. She doesn’t see anyone, but as she looks around the room, everything is off. The mirror by her dresser has a new crack spiderwebbing through it, Beth’s jewelry and cigarettes are all over the floor, and her dining table is on its side, covered in congealing wine. What happened last night? 

“Hello?” Beth calls out anxiously, feeling around in the covers for her phone. 

“Comfidem,” the voice gurgles back. Beth jumps out of bed and spins around. 

“Who’s there?” Beth waits for a response, standing in the middle of her disheveled apartment, but everything is quiet. She searches for her phone in bed again. After failing for a minute, she tiptoes over to the kitchen and grabs a knife, trying to calm her shaking limbs. A whirring pain picks up beneath her left eye and in the small of her back. More memories from the night before rush through her brain. 

“What’s in this?” She had asked a quiet, handsome man in a hat. 

“Celestial vision, mama. And a little ecstasy to make it go down easier.” 

She swallowed the pill without water. 

Then, the quiet, handsome man climbed through the crowd, onto the stage, and behind a drum kit. 

Each bass kick felt like lava in Beth’s chest, while each snare tap set off sparklers in her brain. 

Relief washes over her. I’m probably just still high. Her arm drops to her side, but she keeps the knife in hand as she wanders through her apartment, looking for her phone or maybe the handsome drummer passed out somewhere. “Hello?” What was his name? She didn’t find him or her phone, but she did find more mess. Did he and I do all this to my apartment?  

“Comfidem,” the voice calls out again. Beth ignores it and heads to the kitchen. I need some fucking coffee.  

“Comfidem.” The gurgling is louder this time. A bolt of pain cuts into the small of Beth’s back and punches into her gut, pushing her backward onto the kitchen floor, gasping. She looks at the tile beside her and sees spilled wine dripping slowly from the toppled table onto the floor, but no bottle. She notices a knife on the ground, hiding in the shadows of the table, dotted with wine—or is it blood? 

She looks down at the knife in her hand—it now looks the same as the one on the ground, covered in crimson. Beth drops the knife she’d been holding, but instead of hearing it clank coldly on the ground beside her, she hears the gurgling again. This time, it starts soft and slow and builds into a kind of rhythm: “Com . . . fid . . . em. Com . . . fidem. Comfidem. Comfidem, confidem, comfidem.” The rhythm brings her back to the night before. 

She stood in the middle of the crowded venue, swaying to the music with her eyes closed. 

She didn’t need to see the band because each sound they made erupted and bloomed in her body. 

She could feel them all—the sounds, the musicians. 

But she couldn’t feel her feet. 

“Comfidem, comfidem, comfidem.” The sound is persistent now and slowly growing louder. 

“I get it—no more drugs for a while!” Beth shouts back. She tries to block the noise from her mind, but the harder she tries, the louder it gets, and the louder it gets, the hotter it feels burrowing into her head. 

“COMFIDEM!” It yells and burns into her eyes. 

“What do you want?” She screams. Her apartment is silent for a moment. Beth exhales. Thank god. She stands up and walks toward her coffee pot, feeling a wave of relief as she begins her morning routine. She pours grounds and water methodically into their separate places.

But before she can press “Start Brew,” the door to the living room closet creaks, turns to one side, and then the other. 

“Co-o-om-fi-i-de-eme,” the voice groans along with the doorknob; the sounds vibrate through Beth’s spine, hot like lava. She grabs at her back, groaning in agony. 

“Comfidem.” She feels soft movement beneath her shirt: a small twinge, a subtle shift, a sudden sharp jerk. She leans against the counter, twists her body around, and pulls her shirt up to find a small wad of gauze folded up and shoved in a wound on her back, soaked through with pinot noir. 

“Comfidem.” The edges of the wound pucker and struggle to move as the sound comes out. 

“What in the . . .” Beth pokes at the wound, watching it respond to her touch. “Is that you talking to me?” 

“Mmm,” the wound hums; Beth feels its vibrations. She grabs a piece of the gauze and slowly, gingerly pulls it out. 

“I must actually be going crazy,” she states out loud. 

“No-o-o,” the wound responds as it spits out a few small clots of blood, discolored edges of skin curling up and forming sounds. 

“Nope. No. This is not real.” 

“Co-ome fi-ind me-e the-en,” the wound sputters as the closet doorknob rattles. Terror washes over Beth. What is going on?  

“Co-ome fi-ind me-e. Co-ome find me. Come find me, come find me, come find me.” The wound echoes like a drumline, punctuated by the creaking, turning doorknob, as heat builds in Beth’s spine. 

“Fine!” Beth stands up and walks to the closet, worried about what kind of monsters she’ll find. As she puts her hand on the knob, it relaxes and stops moving. She opens the door slowly. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness and shadows. She gasps and jumps back, both hands on her mouth. 

After the show last night, Beth’s head had been full of sparklers and sounds. 

As she walked back to her apartment, she felt a shadow on her shoulder. 

Then a quiet man in a hat burst through her apartment door. 

Beth looks down at her own lifeless body in her closet, a stab wound in her back with a pack of gauze unraveled beside her—another stab wound behind her left ear. She kneels down and cradles herself. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. 

“Me-e to-o-o,” the wound replies. "Le-et's fi-ind him."