A Delirium of Ashes

CW: Grief, loss

Liam gaped, mesmerized, at the octopus staring back at him. It hovered gracefully above its colorful garden of shells, polished stones, and sand-scoured glass shards arranged in intricate patterns. Some of the shells lay in spirals or mosaics. Neon-pink, blue, and orange anemones and sponges popped against the background of leaden, barnacled rocks, extremities swaying as the restless current dictated. Iridescent fish darted about in tight schools.

The creature’s tapered, nimble tentacles furled and unfurled in an exquisite slow-motion ballet. Bioluminescent pulses coursed across its protean flesh, forming dazzling patterns that appeared to repeat at intervals.

The display evoked Maria’s account of her “pulpo” dream.

Is this octopus attempting to communicate?

Sun dappled the sea’s surface far above, dimming and diffusing as it penetrated the marine environment. Liam found himself somehow respiring normally.

Nestled in the cracks and crevices of the rocky seafloor, bleached, dying coral structures rose like towers from which clinging seaweed billowed in the current like breeze-stirred drapes.

Scattered among them, he was stunned to notice, were a tiny xylophone and piano, a tablet, jigsaw puzzle pieces, and plastic gears.

Baby toys! Smart baby toys!

Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a crock resembling the one that harbored Joan’s ashes. A deepening, sandy murk obscured his view of the object situated in the entrance of the octopus’s cave.

Two humanoid shadows descended toward the odd pair from the surface, expanding in size as they progressed.

The threatened cephalopod jetted away from Liam toward its den’s entrance; wrapping its arms around the crock, it vanished seamlessly against the rock’s mottled surface. Frantic for a closer look, Liam propelled himself through the current to the cave’s mouth.

Reaching out for the crock, he was suddenly swept up and away from the cave in a cloud of ink by a muscular surge of current. The force disinterred the garden’s contents from the seabed, launching them into arrays that arranged and rearranged themselves into discrete groups of eight.

Octets … octals?

Suddenly unable to breathe, Liam launched himself toward the surface, his flailing limbs propelling him past the faceless shadows heading downward. Brilliant sunshine blinded him as he surfaced and gasped for air. Standing poolside and scowling down at him was his tall, whippet-thin brother-in-law, Wolfgang, clad in a baggy “SETI University” hoodie, the hood pulled down and tied such that Liam could scarcely discern his eyes.

From somewhere issued spacy prog rock not unlike that of the antediluvian band Traffic. Behind him rose an eight-floor building whose exterior walls bled into pastel hue after pastel hue. Neither steps nor a ladder via which to exit the suddenly and rapidly chilling water was evident.

Liam bobbed on the surface, catching his breath.

“You’re not getting any of my ashes, Liam,” his brother-in-law informed him.

“Help me out of the pool, Wolf.” All but spent, Liam’s arms labored to keep him afloat. He gasped for air as he spit out brackish water.

His panic grew.

“Not a chance.”

“Save me!” Liam screamed.

A wave of guilt washed over him at having been indirectly responsible for the grief and loneliness that had driven Wolfgang to join a cult. Despairing at having lost Joan’s ashes, he realized he hadn’t moved on.

“Talk to me, Liam,” a familiar, soothing voice prodded from what seemed like a distance.

“My brother-in-law is trying to drown me,” Liam answered his therapist, Mariposa Gideon, who was perched in her swiveler next to the sofa on which he lay. “Or at least he refuses to rescue me. I’m dying.”

I just said I’m dying …

“Remember,” she said in a soothing register, “you’re in my office, perfectly safe. Ask him why he wants to hurt you.”

“Why do you want to hurt me?” he asked Wolf.

“I knew you were stupid, bro, but you really swilled the Kool-Aid,” Wolf replied. “Your senorita’s just another false prophet, and I know one when I see one.”

Spoken like a true former cultist …

“Unlike you,” Wolf raged, “I can protect my sister from being obscenely exploited again, postmortem.”

Liam spat out more water. A deep ache seeped into his bones from his icy bath.

“So fuck you and your slash therapy and your Jesus Squad and your putrid joke of a book.”

“Wolfgang,” Liam cried, “I’m sorry about everything, but I have to have some of those ashes.”

“You don’t even know what you're apologizing for.”

A flock of squawking African parrots, from which radiated multi-color coronas, flew by, skimming over the roof of the building before disappearing.

Surrendering at last to his utter exhaustion and despair, Liam allowed himself to sink into the freezing liquid, to which he was now completely numb. His eyes closed, and he lost any sense of which way was up or down. His resignation relaxed him, allowing him to accept his evident fate peacefully as he descended.

“I’m dying,” he related in a garbled voice.

“You’re transitioning,” someone far away said in a low, soothing register.

A deep peace settled into his lifeless corpse as it was buoyed by the current. The heavy burden of his newest failure relaxed and loosened its grip on his psyche.

“What do you see, Liam,” inquired the calm voice. “What are you feeling?”

“I feel peaceful,” he replied in his garbled voice. “The water is warming. I’m rising back up.”

A resurrection …?

Feeling himself back at the surface, Liam reopened his eyes to see Salvador, draped in a flowing iridescent robe, standing, or rather floating, before him. From beneath the folds of his robe crawled a swarthy toddler, eyeing Liam curiously. Colors swirled across Salvador’s robe, bleeding into each other and swaying, reminiscent of the octopus’s recent ballet.

Jesús!

Feeling reinvigorated, Liam floated effortlessly in the pool, steeling himself for whatever might ensue.

“The storm’s rising, Liam.”

“Fuck you.”

“Have it your way.”

The same fish Liam had encountered in the octopus’s garden broke the surface around him, belly up. Far above, the skies darkened. A parrot flew into a window on an upper story of the building and plummeted to the ground in a flash of neon green.

Gathering the last vestiges of his strength, Liam thrust himself from the pool, launching himself at Salvador’s legs. His arms closed around air.

“You drowned, Liam,” Salvador said as a baby’s wailing pierced the air. “Remember?”

He vanished as fat raindrops slapped Liam and riddled the pool’s surface.

Sobbing, Liam tugged off his sleep mask, squinting against the relatively bright office light. Gideon’s black cat, Netty, stared at him from his window perch. Soothing instrumental music issued from a speaker on the oak bookcase.

Gideon wordlessly handed him tissues and held his other hand.

They sat in silence as Liam mopped at his eyes and gathered himself.

Finally, he met her sympathetic gaze.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m OK for somebody who just drowned,” he answered in a scratchy voice. “And now I know what I have to do.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m at peace with losing the ashes,” he said with calm resolve. “But I can’t live with the knowledge that he’ll keep abusing them.”

He guzzled water from a bottle.

“Or with what he and Biota might have in mind for Jesús.”