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And from behind the gate Arledge says "<span class="mu-i">Don't</span> drink the water," and maybe it's spite (okay: definitely it's spite) but maybe also you want to disrupt the mirror surface. So you dip your hands in and scoop. It's cold like water. Thin like water. Bright ruby red still. Not the worst thing you've drunk— not even the worst thing you've drunk today. You funnel it down your throat.
Tastes like water— maybe a little metallic. Nothing special. To make extra sure Arledge was watching, you take a second scoop and drink, then rub your dripping hands on your slacks and start rummaging around in your pockets. You can't remember which one you stashed the SEA-VIP—
Your teeth crack open. Down the middle. All of them at once. It can't actually be that loud, but amplified in your skull it's like a gunshot. They crack open again, after a second, into quarters. Tiny chips of enamel litter your tongue. Then again, mechanically. Your gums are throbbing. Your teeth-splinters are grinding together, shaving off even more shards as your mouth rearranges itself. It must be according to some grand plan somewhere, from the synchronicity. It wasn't in yours.
You cough automatically as it grinds to a halt, spewing out a hail of tooth-shards. Your mouth is raw and from the taste of it bleeding, but it doesn't hurt much. You grimace at your reflection and it grimaces back sharply. Sorry, Claudia.
And if it ended there you could've lived with it. Your teeth have been sharpened before. (Although you were anesthetized the last time.) It's just that after you grimace, you cough again, and that's where it goes to hell: either the water is expelled down to meet the red-stuff-in-hiding, or the stuff is launched up from your spleen or toes or wherever. The specifics don't matter. The key point is that they meet somewhere around your midsection, and it's from there that the <span class="mu-r">r</span>ed stuff takes root and unfurls around your organs and spirals around your spine like a beanpole and sends exploratory shoots up your arms and down your legs and you swear you swear you <span class="mu-i">swear</span> you can see something literally under your skin, growing, but what is there to say to that? When your throat is full of roses? You sway back down to your knees and plant your hands in the mud which is calming, if nothing else. Mud's still there. Inside it's hot spring and you are sweating and shaking and flowering heavily and your nostrils are full of blood and rot. You are staring directly down at the SEA-VIPER® which has fallen out of your pocket into the mud.
Annie, you think vaguely, and reach down with fat fingers and lift the package to your mouth and bite directly through the clamshell enclosure. Annie falls into your hand pale and grey, in striking contrast to your brilliant scarlet, and you find space in yourself for pity. You let her tumble into the lapping edge of the pool.
(3/4)
