Steep

By T.E. Hahn

The saltwater bubbles around me like the car is exhaling. Emily is unconscious in the passenger seat. Holly and Callie are wailing in their carseats behind me. Holly reaches for me. Callie reaches her chin above the waterline. My hands blindly reach underwater for the Swiss Army Knife in the glovebox. I cut the belt, releasing me, but not from the decision of which child to save. Holly's red nose sinks. Callie's gray eyes buoy. I hold my breath as the sea rises until a seagull laughs and I wake in my bed, gasping for breath, soaked in saltwater and reeking of spoiled seafood.

My psychiatrist said the stench is body odor, the saltwater is sweat, and I need to reduce my sodium. "The dream expresses your fear of becoming like your father, unable to protect your family from your obsessive proclivities."

"No. It's an omen," I said.

He suggested meditating, but it always ended the same: struggling to breathe, drowning in the aquatic daymare. He prescribed sedatives, but they only locked me longer in the submerged nightmare. So I sought help from a Lemurian in Mount Shasta. The sandaled boho met me at the jaws of a cave. She hummed and held her warm palm to my forehead and told me I was a priest in a former life who had drowned while sailing to save sinners in the New World.

"This wound is ancient," she said. "Avoid water."

I had the dream again that night and awoke in brined bedsheets, stinking of fish. The watery moonlight through the naked window glinted off the open Swiss Army Knife in my hand. I snuck outside and threw it in the trash. In the morning, I didn't tell Emily about the knife, but I did tell her about the Lemurian. "You're losing it," she said. She was right. The saltwater was eroding me from the inside out, and now I was collapsing into a phantasmagoric sinkhole of me.

I moved away from her and the kids and rented an apartment miles inland where I taught at Woodland Community College. It worked. For three weeks, I dreamed of darkness. Emily initially brought Holly and Callie each weekend, but with each visit, they seemed increasingly exhausted. Maybe it was the hour-long car rides, or their parents' separation, but soon enough, the weeks between their visits receded into a maelstromic spiral until they vanished altogether after Emily texted, "You've lost it."

For weeks, I didn't leave my apartment. I convinced my chairperson to convert my classes to remote learning. I used Instacart. I kept the curtains drawn. The dream was dormant. But while teaching The Rime of the Ancient Mariner on Zoom one sunny Thursday morning, I heard a laugh, excused myself from class, moved to the kitchen window, and opened the curtain. A bloated seagull sat on the sill. It saw me and screamed.

That evening, I awoke from the nightmare again, but this time I was in my car at the entrance to the beach with saltwater around my ankles and the knife in my palm.

I retired early from teaching and withdrew my savings and 401K. I rented a U-Haul and purchased tools, building materials, and nonperishables. I drove north to Trinity County, the Emerald Triangle, deep into the sun-dappled woods. I dug deep into the damp earth. I stopped at six feet and built a box made of wood and steel. Atop the box, I installed an air tube that reached above ground. I advanced a trimmigrant some money to fill in the hole with dirt after I entered the box and to check on me twice a day through the air tube. He hasn't returned.

Here in the darkness, I eat salty beans from cans and sip saccharine soda. I count wood knots with my fingernails and listen to the muffled settling of dirt. The wood dampens under me as I slip in and out of daydreams—the birthmark in the shape of Maine on Emily's neck, the way Holly rocks herself to sleep, Callie's gray eyes, my father.

Through the air tube, the wind moving through trees sounds like running water. When I fall asleep, the running sounds like rushing. The dampness rises. The knife's blade is dull. The seagull laughs. And now there's nothing left to do but steep in the rising waters of my deep dark sea.

THE END

Author Bio: T.E. Hahn is the father of two incredible daughters and the author of the Kirkus Star awarded novel, “Open My Eyes.” His fiction has been nominated for The Best Small Fictions and a Norman Mailer Award. He holds an MFA in fiction and a PhD in English literature, specializing in contemporary American short fiction and ecomasculinities. He teaches literature and creative writing at Great Neck North High School and St. John’s University in New York. His fiction and nonfiction appear in Flash Fiction Magazine, Haunted Waters Press, Spry, et al.