After the doctor visit, we fall asleep on the big bed, surrounded by the debris of a shipwreck.
This is my dream: I am drifting underwater, legs akimbo. My hair is long, spreading in every direction, tangling and wrapping around my face. Fish are nibbling at my toes and picking flecks of skin from my shins. There are thousands of them, tiny, darting between my fingers and through my hair. I am naked, and their scales scrape and pinch. The long hair is everywhere, with fish in and out of the strands. My skin is devoured in tiny bites. They chew the tough skin on my feet, the soft pink of my lips.
They work their way through my skin and I bleed; the water turning a deep crimson. I can’t see through the darkness but feel the fish still working at my body, pulling at veins, capillaries dissolving in the salty water. My hair floats away, a net of strands, as they eviscerate my scalp. Their teeth are sharp: a thousand pins, slashing.
There is a moment of relief, until the crunching and grinding begins, like a nail file, as they start on my bones. The ball and socket of my hips and the joints of my knuckles loosen as the fish gnaw. My bones become powder, floating through the water. The more delicate bones go first: the tiny cartilage of my ears, the narrow bones of my feet. Powerful thigh bones fill with. The holes grow larger until there are more holes than bone, and then my limbs float away and the fish devour the last scraps.
The sound of pipes rattling in the wall wakes me. Sam must be home. Finn is next to me, his face still. He sleeps with his arms above his head, a champion’s pose. His entire body fits in my forearm.
Sam walks towards the door and I close my eyes again and keep my face still. His footsteps creak back towards the kitchen.
