Page 8 of Daughter of Rot

The ground trembled. Olivia wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but she decided not to mention it to anyone at the party. Her friends came over in pink and yellow and purple and black. They laughed and cackled. They danced. They played games. They complimented each other and took photos with their digital cameras. Olivia was the center of attention, and she didn’t mind at all. She felt a warmth in her chest. She wanted to stay in these moments forever.

Isela came out once to stand at the front door. She wore all black except for her pink slippers. Her eyes stayed on Olivia until Olivia turned around to look at her. Then, she watched Alfonso who was laughing and drinking. She walked back into the house, grabbed a corner of Olivia’s birthday cake with her bare hands and walked into The Inflorescence.

When it was time to sing happy birthday, Isela was nowhere to be found. The party guests speculated about the missing corner of the cake. Olivia laughed and explained that deer have walked into the house on their own and eaten things inside. The group sang happy birthday, Olivia beaming, and as they shouted with joy toward the end of the song, Isela charged out of The Inflorescence. As Olivia blew out her birthday candles, Isela gripped the back of Olivia’s head by her hair and shoved her entire face into the cake. She quickly pulled Olivia's head back up and then smashed her face in again. Olivia’s nostrils filled with frosting, her brow and the bridge of her nose slamming against her glasses. Isela continued pushing Olivia’s head into the cake with both of her hands as though she were trying to smother Olivia. Gasps and confusion filled the kitchen. Alfonso and Rebecca struggled to pull Isela away. Isela shoved Alfonso and took her bare hands which were filthy with mud and stuck them into the rest of the birthday cake and roared with laughter.

Isela ran toward her room and slammed the door behind her. Yvette and Rebecca cleaned Olivia’s face with napkins. Olivia coughed out the cake, her entire body shaken. Alfonso ushered the now silenced guests out of the house and apologized as he asked them to please go home. Olivia couldn’t bring herself to cry. She froze. Her body felt like it could explode. She was humiliated in front of her friends. She wanted to shriek. She saw stars and her stomach churned. She thanked Yvette and Rebecca and then bolted into The Inflorescence.

The Mother was inside. She waved slowly at Olivia and gave her a thorny grin. Olivia threw her glasses off. She rubbed the rest of the cake off her face and hair with ferns she pulled recklessly out of the room’s floor. She felt like a wild animal. She launched herself at The Mother, she punched her over and over as hard as she could and she screamed into her face.

Why? Why? Why was I born if you didn't want me?

Red faced and drenched in sweet sweat, she punched a hole through The Mother’s head which crushed into itself like a pumpkin. Olivia laughed as she felt the warmth she was pounding into. She screamed at The Mother again. She shook her by the shoulders.

Why are you like this? I didn't choose this life. I didn't choose to be born.

She ripped out the fungus growing all over The Mother’s body. She bit her neck and her arms. The Mother tasted bitter and had the consistency of a mushroom.

Why won’t you just die? You want me dead so badly. Why don't you just die instead?

While The Mother curled into the fetal position on the earth of the room, Olivia stomped her chest and her belly which gushed out a glittering slimy substance that smelled sweet and earthy. Olivia slipped on the slime. She picked herself up and spit in The Mother’s smithereens of a face. She smashed more pieces of The Mother, who was now unrecognizable. She stood over The Mother, surveying her destruction, and bawled. A slow eruption from within her as a harsh hysteric inhale and then the release. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. She screamed in an agony that felt like it was embedded into her DNA.

I’m so sorry, mommy. I am so sorry.

She gathered The Mother’s remains and piled them into the center of the room. She lied next to the remains and watched as they formed into a gelatinous orb. She patted the orb gently and then prayed to Saint Michael.

Please protect the creatures of this room. Protect them as though they were your own.

She cried into the ground until her exhaustion took over. Olivia fell asleep for a few minutes of silence. She woke up to the violence of her real mother screaming and cursing her on the other side of the door.

A FEVER DREAM

Olivia stayed home from school due to a high fever. She locked herself in her room and listened for her mother to leave the house. She organized a playlist of CDs and stuck them into her boombox one after another to keep constant sound in the house. She imagined herself in dramatic music videos, falling in and out of love. She rummaged through old tabloid magazines that her mother collected from the grocery store. She flipped through stories about a wolf-man who ate squirrels in New York City’s Central Park, a snail-lady who impregnated herself with an angel’s spit, and a bat-girl who used her sonar to spy on U.S. government officials and was subsequently arrested for espionage. Time went slow. Olivia's body ached. She considered roaming through The Inflorescence, but she didn’t want to spread her illness.

The landline rang over and over as Olivia was finally falling into a sweaty sleep. She emerged from her room, groggy and lightheaded. Over the phone, a strange voice spoke. Who is this? Olivia slurred as her flu medicine was kicking in. Mija, it’s your Tía Letty! It’s so nice to hear your voice! We have heard all about you from Alfonso. Mijita, I have to tell you, and I am sorry that I am saying this to you under these circumstances, but your grandma wants to meet you too, but she’s fading away, mija. She’ll be gone soon. I mean like heaven, mija, con el favor de Dios. Otra cosa, your sisters are here too, mija. I want you to know that we all want to meet you. We really do, mijita.

Olivia’s mind raced in neon colors, she saw spots. She fainted with the phone in her hand. The dial tone woke her. She woke up to a giant hole in the ceiling. Olivia saw how vibrant blue the sky was that day. It was bluer than she could imagine. It was almost as though the blue took over everything and she could float inside of the chroma. She wanted nothing more than to float. She crawled to her room.

The phone rang again. Over and over. Olivia woke from a dream of chasing white rabbits and giant cerulean grasshoppers in a sunflower field. Olivia? The voice cracked as though there should be a shared sadness between them. Yeah. Who is this? Olivia was fighting a sleepiness that felt permanent. We love you. So much. Even though we don’t know you like we should. You should know that you are so loved. You are so loved. Olivia didn’t know how to respond, so she said, Okay. I am sorry, but I have to go.

Every single thing inside of her told her that being loved was a burden. A difficulty. Being loved was something that could only happen in her imagination. Who was this voice to make such a claim? Olivia curled into a ball in her room. She covered herself with a blanket and shivered underneath it. An agonizing wail emerged from her. She didn’t understand where it came from, but she couldn’t help herself. She cried until she couldn’t make any more sounds. She lumbered toward The Inflorescence in her feverish state, dragging her feet, her limbs heavy. The door opened for her. She crawled in and the ground was plush blue grass, silky and smooth, embracing her, cradling her, making her soften. The breeze was calm and the sky was a glittering coral with wisps of pink clouds, the walls filled with lush red and purple rhododendron flowers. A buzzing surrounded Olivia and then bells in the distance. Olivia relaxed, soaked in sweat and tears. Her fever diminished and she drifted to sleep.

The next morning, she was more determined than ever to find out about her lineage. It was a hollow ache in her chest. It was a tingling at the top of her head. She wanted nothing more than to know these parts of herself. She pleaded with The Inflorescence to show her pieces of her family and the room filled with frigid river water, gray round stones formed under her feet, and the walls transformed into a mossy forest erupting with the scent of fresh pine. Rounded yellow oak leaves swirled around her. Olivia submerged herself and listened to the voices humming underneath. They told her about two sisters born in the city of the sun.

Olivia popped her head out of the water and two figures stood in front of her. They were both human silhouettes. One body was made of sharp pine needles that looked like hardened fringe. Gray curly horns erupted from the sides of her head and orange marigolds bloomed and fell from the spirals. As her body moved, it rustled and softly clinked.The other silhouette was made of rose petals. Reds. Oranges. Yellows. The petals fluttered as the silhouette waved her arm slowly at Olivia. Brown and beige horizontal striped wings spread out behind the rose petal body, lifting her up, hovering above ground. A golden phosphorescence outlined both of them. The figures turned away and followed toward the speckles of sunlight which poked through the back wall of the room. The back wall looked like an infinite illusion of a path. A path toward light. Olivia wanted nothing more than to see the figures up close. She wanted to look behind their skins. She wanted to see who was behind each mask but she couldn’t move. The river water was up to her neck. Her body was becoming numb. Olivia watched as the bodies warped into piles of brown dead leaves. The river water drained itself until Olivia found herself on top of slimy stones. The sunlight struck her and warmed her. She picked herself up and ran toward the dead leaves. In a fury, she dug into the piles with her bare hands. Two letters were tucked away and buried underneath. One from a Lucia. Another from an Isabel.

PAST LIVES

In 1952, Olivia was a houseplant. A Venus flytrap. A young woman with dark shining pin curled hair and deep brown eyes watched over her. Her name was Anaís. Anaís spoke to Olivia as though they were dear friends. She shared her desires. Her dreams. Her shame. She wished she were more vicious. She wished she had the instinct to devour. Anaís asked Olivia to consume her father every night like a prayer. She asked Olivia to swallow the little town whole, make it all disappear. Engorge yourself and be proud. She laughed as if it were a joke, but she meant it with every fiber in her muscles. If her father were gone, if the town disappeared, she could become brave enough to be happy. Anaís watched with fascination as insects were lured into Olivia’s mouth. She took notes. She drew diagrams of Olivia’s stalk and leaves, her trigger hairs. She colored in the vibrant red interior of the trap. She grabbed at her own throat and emulated swallowing a creature whole. With every insect, she guessed the time of death. She wrote each one an obituary. She prayed for the bugs to come back as the hunters next time and never the prey. She found herself biting into her own arm and her knees, leaving indented patterns behind from her teeth marks. A reminder that her hunger was what kept her alive. Day after day, Anaís yearned until she finally found the hunger too overwhelming. When Anaís fled from her father and from that little town, Olivia was burned alive in a house fire. Along with the books and art and diaries Anaís abandoned, they all became ash together, as though they were a sacrifice.

In 1964, Olivia was a barn owl who died alone in the middle of a corn field. This particular barn owl left behind a legacy of scaring the townspeople on purpose. On the main strip of town, Olivia the owl picked a porch and faced the door throughout the night, hoping someone would come out to greet her. A friendly elderly señor opened the door to her one night and convulsed into a seizure and then a heart attack. Townspeople called her the devil. They hung crosses on their doors, which did nothing. Olivia the owl loved the full moon, swallowing field mice whole, and the scent of night blooming jasmine. Olivia the owl was ever so curious about the children she came across. Why were they bursts of high-pitched sound? Why were they so bony and small? How were they so brave when it came to climbing on the tops of buildings and trees? She often watched them sleeping and wondered what they dreamed about. They were her favorite creatures to observe. If the children ever woke up to her heart-shaped face watching over them, she stood as still as possible, and this often made things worse. The townspeople covered their windows and locked them tight. They left Olivia the owl offerings of blackberries and dates and crickets in the pitch-black fields. They prayed to old gods and goddesses and Olivia the owl watched as they lit their bonfires every month and danced under the moon together, chanting, howling, bringing out the animalistic parts of themselves.

In 1979, Olivia was a California condor. Her wingspan, over six feet long. Her face, fleshy pinks and oranges. She looked like a beautiful omen. Inside of The Inflorescence, Olivia watched herself flying toward shelter within the layered cliffs of red sandstone canyons. She saw her condor self circling in the cerulean above, gliding with the rhythm of the wind. She was waiting for the glistening guts disposed of by camouflaged hunters below. As soon as they drove off, she dived and she feasted. She picked at bones. She sunned herself at the edge of a monumental mesa, taking in the day. She spent five years in a cycle of scavenging and surviving until one day, she decided to fly toward the ocean. As though she knew her last day was upon her, she watched crashing waves against jutting rocks, she fought seagulls for fun, she swooped down close enough to smell the saltwater, and found herself slowing down as the sun set. She fell asleep by the shoreline and let the rising tide take her in.

***

Olivia asks The Inflorescence to show her the future but the room refuses. Instead, it grows poppies and bluebonnets beneath her feet. It showers her with cherry blossom petals. It sprinkles gold glitter which shimmers in the sunlight that warms Olivia’s face. It blooms with white and magenta hibiscus flowers along the walls. A wisteria tree erupts in the center of the room. Olivia lies in the field and falls asleep. She can never dream in the room, so she asks the room to do it for her. When Olivia’s asleep, the room becomes a shadow, and then, a brilliant map of the stars. The stars shift and dance and sing to each other. The stars morph into two human-shaped beings, their silhouettes filled with galaxies and planets and the deep dark of space. The star bodies hold hands. They walk over to Olivia and watch her sleep. One of the hands reaches for her face and touches it lightly. Lavender glitter bursts from the touch. Specks of glitter float around and turn into moss wherever they land. A patch of moss settles on Olivia’s face. Her skin absorbs the electric green, and a yellow sheen is left behind.

NIGHTMARES