My phone.
I see it flying through the air. Plunging into the dark water. Sending a growing ripple back to me. I might as well hear the muffled sound of it landing atop the rusted metal roof of some abandoned SUV. Maybe the force is enough to break through, finish the erosion that the water started decades before. It could keep falling, bouncing against what remains of a seat, through a hole in the floorboard, finally reaching the cloying earth below. Where it can sink into the ground like a corpse, never to rise again.
I laugh. That’s just not true. Maybe, for some, the dead stay dead. For me, that’s never been the case. At the same time, hatred rides the current back to me. As do rage and fear and loneliness. It is as if all of my pain, every last shard, is dredged up from the cold, lifeless bottom. The air around me thickens with the flooding tide, threatening to choke away my life on the spot.
I spin, my skin afire. My eyes burning. My hands balling into tight fists. The passenger-side door of the Mazda swings open. I see her pale face. Her eyes as wide as mine, yet filled with fear, not rage. Lauren stumbles, holding on to the doorframe, her feet slipping on the dirt. I lunge after her, a sound rising in my throat, grating past my teeth. It is raw and inhuman. She whimpers when she hears it.
Lauren finds her footing. She runs, sprinting away from me. With each breath, she makes a noise, too. So different from mine. But it feeds me. Like a drug. I need it. I devour it.
She rounds the car and heads back the way we came. I close the distance between us. A smile pulls at the muscles of my face, causes my teeth to click together. I thrust my arm out. Pushing her between the shoulder blades. Her feet lift off the ground and she falls. She uses her hands to brace for the impact. I see her wrist twist unnaturally to the side. She screams.
Without a word, I grab her jacket. As she cries, I lift her and drag her back toward the cabin.