Go Deep

“It was a perfect spiral,” Lenny said, reenacting the throw on his back from the chaise lounge. “It just landed in the wrong hands.”

Lenny let his plastered arm drop to the cushion with a thud that sounded like pig skin crashing into a receiver’s chest.

“And that’s why you drove your truck into a ditch?” asked Dr. Emanuel.

“No, that was the beer,” Lenny explained.

“The tests would beg to differ,” Dr. Emanuel countered.

“What tests?”

Dr. Emanuel pinched the screen of his iPad and turned it towards Lenny.

“The doctors tested your blood. Your BAC was .00,” Dr. Emanuel said, pointing to the results on the tablet.

“Well, I was in that ditch for awhile,” Lenny noted. “Maybe it worked itself out of my system?”

Dr. Emanuel made a few more finger swipes on his device and handed it to Lenny.

“According to the police report, a witness called 9-1-1 the moment you were ejected from your vehicle. You were emitted to the ER within 28 minutes.”

“So?” Lenny said, handing the tablet back to Dr. Emanuel.

“So, there’s no way your blood level could’ve dropped from DUI to nothing in less than thirty minutes.”

“Maybe it was one of the other drugs?”

“No other drugs were found in your system,” Dr. Emanuel stated, no longer bothering to pull up Lenny’s charts.

“Maybe I was roofied?” Lenny suggest.

“Although odorless and flavorless, Rohypnol can still be detected in your system. Which in your case, it was not.”

Lenny sat up and looked Dr. Emanuel in the eyes.

“What are you getting at, Doc?”

“The root of your problems.”

Lenny laid back down and stared at the textured ceiling that reminded him of painted turf in an end zone.

“My only problem is that goddamned throw that cost me a goddamned championship,” Lenny argued.

“That certainly is a problem,” said Dr. Emanuel, “but it’s not your only problem.”

“Well no-fucking-shit.” Lenny said, waving his cast arm towards the doctor.

“That’s two problems,” said Dr. Emanuel, “but I bet we can find more.”

“Heeere we go,” Lenny moaned. “Time to delve into my daddy issues.”

“Who said anything about your father?” Dr. Emanuel asked.

“Give me a break, Doc. You seem to have my entire life on that goddamned tablet.”

“Guilty,” Dr. Emanuel admitted, throwing up his hands. “But then again, so are you.”

“Of what?”

“Of lying to me.”

“About what?”

“About your real problems.”

“Fine, guilty,” Lenny said, throwing up his arms to mock Dr. Emanuel. “I guess growing up around a self-destructive sociopath sticks with you.”

“And in you,” said Dr. Emanuel.

“In you?”

“Don’t you see a little bit of your father in you?”

“Yeah, every time I look in a mirror.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I am NOTHING like my dad,” Lenny said, standing up from the chair and inflating his chest.

“Are you going to hit me, Lenny?” Dr. Emanuel asked, more intrigued than intimidated.

“No.”

“Then why are you standing over me like a territorial gorilla?”

Lenny turned away from Dr. Emanuel and began taking a lap around the office.

“I don’t know?” Lenny responded in stride.

“What makes you think your father was a self-destructive sociopath, Lenny?” Dr. Emanuel asked.

“My old therapist told me so.”

“Did he or she ever meet him?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Then how could she diagnose him?”

“Well, the self-destructive part is kind of a no brainer.”

“How so?”

“Ask his liver.”

Dr. Emanuel’s eyes widened as he dragged his finger across the tablet.

“So your dad was a drinker?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Is that why you don’t drink?”

“It certainly helps.”

Dr. Emanuel paused to take a quick note and continued.

“What about the sociopath thing, Lenny? Where did your therapist get that?”

“Where do I start?”

“Where did you start with her?”

“Probably his funeral,” Lenny said, retaking his seat on the chaise lounge.

“What was it about his funeral that stood out to you?

“No one came.”

“No one?”

“Nope, aside from a few family members.”

“Was your dad a secluded man?”

“Not at all. He was constantly trying to get other people’s attention, especially women.”

“When would he do this?

“Grocery stores. Restaurants. My peewee football games.”

Dr. Emanuel readied his iPad for a treasure trove of insights.

“What happened there?”

“Not my games, as far as he was concerned.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he was too busy flirting with all the moms to even know what number I was wearing.”

“Were your parents divorced?”

“NO! My mom would be sitting right next to him, and he’d still turn and talk to Ms. Calvin’s big fake tits.”

“Did your mom say anything?”

“Hell no. That man could do no wrong in her eyes.”

“Why’s that?”

“He used to be a dumb jock; she was his secret admirer; and it wasn’t until everyone else they knew went to college that they, ‘fell in love,’ as she tells it.”

“Ah ha,” Dr. Emanuel said, pressing his finger against the tablet so hard he almost cracked the screen. “Let me guess, your dad was a quarterback?”

“You’re brilliant, Doc,” Lenny answered.

“A high-school-championship quarterback?”

“Can’t get one past you.”

“And you’re angry that you’re not?”

“Are you a psychic?”

“And THAT is why you drove your truck into a ditch.”

“No.”

Dr. Emanuel’s grin vanished and his finger stopped moving.

“No?”

“No.”

“Are you lying to me again, Lenny?”

“No.”

“But you said you were disappointed about the loss?”

“Of course!”

“But not disappointed enough to harm yourself?”

“No.”

“Then why would you harm yourself?”

“My mom.”

“Your mom?”

“Yes.”

“What did she do?”

“It’s something she said.”

“When?”

“After the game.”

“What did she say?”

“You remind me of your father.”

Dr. Emanuel rested the tablet on his lap and looked at Lenny.

“And that’s why you drove your truck into a ditch.”

Lenny’s eyes welled up with tears as he lifted his arms above his head.

“Guilty.”

Written by: Mark Killian

Photograph by: Omar Sanders

Pennybacker

When he was seven, Hunter slipped on his father's boat, fell in Lake Austin, and saw merlings. They were less magical and fantastical than he thought they would be; they were gaunt things with rigid bones and gray skin stretched thin. They were not the curved, fluid creatures of bedtime stories and animated films. They were, however, captivating. Hunter forgot everything: how to swim, his mother Elinor, even the importance of oxygen. His father jumped in and pulled him from the water.

There were witnesses. Witnesses who swore that the sopping wet boy's father had been a six-pack deep when he took his son out on the water. Witnesses who swore the father had a cap pulled low over his brow when the boy fell. Witnesses who swore the boy was under for almost a minute before the father jumped. It didn't matter how much was true. It mattered that Hunter's mother believed it

"Just tell her you saw them, Dad!" Hunter said. "I can back you up if you just tell her."

"When are you gonna quit this?" Hunter's father growled. "I didn't see them. You didn't either. You shut up about those mermaids."

"Merlings!" Hunter said. "They're merlings."

The merlings were real, and to deny them would be to lie. After his father left, he tried to convince his mother. Hunter drew pictures and plastered them all over his walls. His room was a chamber of Lovecraftian horror: shapes and angles forced by the rabid hand of an unskilled artist. There was one Hunter drew over and over again.

"The Harbinger," Hunter told his mother at dinner. He showed her his latest attempt, with rough calcified scales at the tail and sharp moldy skin. A wide mouth brimmed with dark pointed teeth. White eyes bulged.

"Where did you hear that word?" His mother forced herself to swallow a forkful of meatloaf.

"He told me. That's what he said he was called." Hunter replied. "I think I'm supposed to go back and find him."

His mother checked him into a children's psychiatric hospital. There, Hunter learned that he had likely experienced trauma falling in the water. The doctor said Hunter's father was an alcoholic, and although Hunter did not know that, he had figured out that he would probably die because his dad could not rescue him. Hunter's mind had invented angels of mercy to help him prepare to go to Heaven.

"But if that were true, I would've made real angels. Real angels are white and glow. They have wings, not fish tails." Hunter told his doctor.

Hunter learned that the mind does all kinds of funny things when you are scared. Maybe his mind played with shapes in the water. Maybe his mind played with how the light shined within Lake Austin. Hunter probably heard the word "harbinger" on TV. Hunter's mind knew what it was from context. When Hunter thought he was dying, he invented the merlings. One of them was his herald.

That's what the doctor said.

Hunter stopped talking about the merlings. Hunter stopped drawing them. Over years of therapy, the Harbinger faded into Hunter's memory.

But not Elinor's.

"I wasn't there for him," Elinor told herself.

She wasn't there when her son fell into the Harbinger's murky waters. She was across the street, "borrowing a cup of sugar" from Ted Vicars.

She wasn't there when the Harbinger called again. Her husband wrapped his truck around a telephone pole. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. The coroner's report said his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit.

In the years it took for her boy to become a young man, Elinor saw tragic events as evidence of the Harbinger’s presence in her life. When the doctor suggested Hunter may be ready to leave the hospital, Elinor did not object. Good news was rare.

When Hunter came home, he was surprised by the house. Each room had been painted a different shade of watery blue. The living room was a shallow mountainside brook. The kitchen was a country pond, its surface just kissed with algae. Hunter's room was the top of Lake Austin when it glinted with sun.

Elinor's room - no longer his parents' - made him uncomfortable. It was the dark, deep inside of Lake Austin. It tugged at him, begging him to remember drowned nightmares. Hunter did not go in his mother's room. Hunter did not see her fill the tub and stare at it. He did not see her submerge herself, holding her breath under the tepid water. He did not see the inside of her closet, wallpapered with his old sketches of the Harbinger.

Hunter did not hear her call its name.

"I think we should go back to Lake Austin." Elinor said over lunch. "I think it would be good for us to confront what happened there."

"Mom, I don't want to go back in there. I don't think it would be good for me." Hunter stared at his spaghetti. The shapes were tangled curves, and for a moment he saw the ebb and flow of water and thought he might vomit.

"By Pennybacker! Not into the water, of course." Not yet. She could hold off a little longer. Maybe take scuba diving lessons first - just in case he wasn't near the surface this time. And really, who knew how deep Hunter had been?

When Elinor saw the bridge, she knew they were close. It was a low, wide arch the color of rust, and Elinor laughed at how it looked like water corrupted the structure. The amber curve did not dip into Lake Austin. It straddled the banks, but it was a false portal.

When Hunter saw the bridge, he inhaled sharply. Bad thoughts came to him, dark and evil things flooded his memory. The bridge transported Hunter back to that day he saw the merlings, that day he saw the Harbinger, that day he realized his father couldn't save him.

"The Harbinger." The word was a whisper. Neither knew who said it. Neither cared.

Shaking, Hunter pulled into the nearest parking lot. Elinor stepped out of the car without a word.

"See you soon." The voice creaked.




Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
Written by: Erin Justice