As Billy's father talked, one of his hands crept out from under the bed. The way it moved, fingers curling and uncurling underneath the oven mitt, reminded me of the worms in Aunt Sandy's garden, of their smooth and boneless bodies crawling out of the damp earth into the sunlight.

The hand nudged Billy's leg.

Billy took the hand and squeezed it.

♫

The fissure was a man's height and width. Carl moved through it, one hand on the wall to guide him. He could not see that hand. He could not see anything. Every last drip of light from the LED in the cavern had been drunk. The darkness had a texture, almost buttery. He felt it melting to him and around him. He felt it under his tongue and inside his throat. He could not swallow it. He could not spit it out. Twice he opened his mouth to call to his crew. Twice he shut it without making a sound, afraid he would not hear an answer.

Afraid he would.

His fingers ran out of wall, and his fear grew into something else entirely, something so large it could no longer fit inside him. He stood in the shadow of his own terror, his skin prickling, his spine locked. His brain was a frozen pond sealed around a single image, a grainy black photograph taken from somewhere up above:

Him.

Carl Rascoe.

Standing in the dark.

He walked forward on stiff legs, the ground smooth as marble beneath his boots. His footsteps made no sound. His breaths, if he breathed at all, did nothing to stir the air. Sweat rolled off his skin. For a moment was a minute that was an hour, he moved blindly through heat and darkness. Then his toe caught on a lip in the floor and the ice in his head chipped, just a little, just enough for him to process the new sensation building along the crown of his skull. Termites. Swarming across his scalp and digging through his skin, itching at the bone around his brain.

Something was watching him.

Carl looked up.

His own face hung suspended from the dark above, upside down and black, obsidian eyes peering out from coal flesh. The world flipped over, and he fell toward himself, toward his widening mouth and the tunnel of his throat.

Screaming, Carl landed in place.

He swayed quietly, still standing, still looking up. The face was gone, the face was gone, the face had never been. He lifted his foot to take a step back, tottering, and took one step forward instead.

There was an explosion of light.

He saw.

♫

"He saw, it saw, he saw what it saw, he saw, it saw, he saw." Carl's voice came faster and faster, a train off the rails. "He saw, he saw, what it saw he saw, he saw, he saw."

Nip was tugging at the carpet.

Ash's hand had moved from the armrest to my arm. Her nails bit into my skin.

With one final, booming, "HE SAW," the voice beneath the bed regained its tracks.

♫

The cavern was a hundred yards wide. A true ballroom, the walls rounded, the floor smooth and flat and so white it shone. In the center of the room, before him, Carl's crew stood in a circle. The LED blazed at their feet, drenching everything in a fiery liquid light. They were motionless, limp. Their necks were craned back, their heads at right angles with their bodies. All of them wore the same blank expression, jaws unhinged, mouths drooling.

They stared up at the ceiling.

And the ceiling . . .

The ceiling stared down at them.

It was an eyeball, and it was bulging. It sat encased in a crusty pink ring, a moat of tender flesh resting high above where the rock walls ended. From there the eyeball curved down, slick and gleaming and soft. Veins crisscrossed its plane like red fissures, each one as long as the ladder into the basement, each one leading toward one place. The pupil. Surrounded by thousands and thousands of pounds of quivering white flesh, the pupil looked almost tiny. And yet its moist black surface yawned wider than a mineshaft, the very center of it low enough to touch.

The frozen pond of Carl's brain had begun to melt. Water leaked from his tear ducts. Snot dripped from his nose. His left hand lifted, gripped his beard, and pulled. The cheek beneath tugged outward, stretching his mouth into a lopsided smile. A tuft of wiry black hairs tore from his skin. He let them fall, then reached up and ripped free another bunch of hairs. And another. And another. Blood trickled over his jaw line and down his neck.

He saw himself through the eyeball.

He saw his men through the eyeball.

Through the eyeball he saw his men seeing him seeing it seeing themselves, around and around, reflections in a spinning house of mirrors. And behind this whirl, and underneath it, and above, he saw darkness. Darkness that no sun had ever touched. Darkness like space without starlight. A cocoon of nothing, of black beyond the color black, a cell of eternal night from which a second eye—looking up instead of down—watched over the world above without blinking. There was no part of Honaw not in its sight. It watched as miners moved like ants through the tunnels of Widow's Peak. It watched as children recited the pledge of allegiance, and teachers wrote on chalkboards, and fingernails scratched restlessly at desks. It watched stray dogs root through garbage bags, and ravens gather darkly on power lines. It watched a little girl with a bruised cheekbone put on makeup in a restroom stall, using the camera of her phone to see her face. It watched a boy laugh chocolate milk out of his nose, and a bus driver touch himself to a porno magazine in the backseat of an empty school bus. A car swerved to avoid a deer on the highway, the town's sheriff rapped his empty whiskey glass on Thunderpaw's polished oak bar, a spider spun its web around the corpse of a fly, and it watched. It watched and so, for that pocket in time, did Carl Rascoe.

Then it showed him.

Darkness and light came together in a great, rushing flood and washed a memory up from the depths of his mind.

He was six years old and standing in the backyard of his childhood home. A storm had come and passed before dawn, tearing the young blossoms off the Fuchsia and scattering pink across the soil. In Carl's hand was a tiny broken nest that had blown down from the eaves, and in that nest was an egg the size of his thumbnail. Now he was going inside the house, quiet on his tiptoes. Now he was in his bedroom, clasping the egg between his palms. Protecting it. His secret.

In the cavern, Carl the man felt a surge of warmth that had nothing to do with the stifling heat or the blood running freely down his neck.

Carl the boy tore strips of paper from his drawing book.

Carl the man moved over to his crew and tugged the backpack off Cricket's thick, drooped shoulders.

Carl the boy piled the shredded paper inside his underwear drawer, tucked the egg inside its new nest, and whispered, I won't let anyone find you.

"I won't let anyone find you," said Carl the man, to the eye. He walked across the cavern and did not look back. But he saw back all the same.

Behind him, the fingers of Cricket's left hand twitched.

The fissure was dark, but that made no difference to Carl. He moved between the rock walls without slowing or feeling his way. He walked through the dead trees and tunnel beyond. In his wake he left a trail of black hairs, like breadcrumbs. As he arrived at the ladder, the LED shut off at his crew's feet. The pupil of his right eye dilated. He pulled himself up the rungs with blood-slickened hands. Both of his cheeks were dripping. The collar of his shirt was damp. He reached the top and then continued walking down the drift. By the time he exited into Level F's main tunnel, he had peeled the last clumps of beard off his face and started at the hair on top of his head.

By the handful.

Carl did not see the transpo cart idling by the Porta-Potty. He saw only the safe and what was waiting inside the safe, behind its black walls. His fingers left red marks on the steel dial. He muttered the combination as he entered it. "Four times left to 28 . . . three times right to 35 . . . two times left to 59 . . . one time right until—"

Click.

Carl opened the door. Inside the safe on two separate shelves were piles of white and pink packages. The pinks were ANFO, and the whites were PETN. You could play catch with the pinks, even light them on fire, and still have both your hands to eat your dinner. But you had to be careful with the whites. Very careful. With his tongue, Carl caught a drop of blood running past his lips. He took off the backpack, unzipped it, and emptied it on the ground.

In the dark of the cavern, Cricket's neck jerked.

The eyeball quivered in its socket.

He filled the bag three quarters of the way with pink, then the rest of the way with white. PETN to take the spark, ANFO to make the boom. A mere thirty ounces of powder, poured into a borehole, had blown apart the wall hiding the fissure. When Carl finished loading the bag, it weighed almost sixty pounds.

"What the—"

Carl looked up as the Porta-Potty door banged shut. Mike's buckle hung undone.

"You, your face, what are you—"

Carl pushed to his feet. As he did, he closed his hand around a rock. "What sees should not be seen." He walked across the ground in smooth, skating strides. "The world must be as blind as it is not."

"Rascal." Mike stepped back against the Porta-Potty.

"Its life is our life." Blood dripped into Carl's eyes, both of them, filming his vision in red. "Its death is our death."

"Just stop, stop right there, and we'll get you help."

Carl reached up with his free hand and pulled at his hair. A clump ripped free, dangling bits of flesh like mud from roots. He held the clump out to Mike. Mike glanced down at it in horror. Carl raised his other hand and slammed the rock into Mike's temple. The big man fell back against the Porta-Potty, and that was good, that was perfect, because this way Carl didn't have to sit down and get back up all over again.

With his forearm pressed into Mike's throat, holding him up, Carl used the rock to smash out Mike's right eye. It took three blows. The left only took two. When the work was done, a pair of clogged holes wept juices down Mike's cheekbones. Still he hadn't screamed. That was shock, Carl supposed. Sometimes pain doesn't set in right away. Sometimes pain doesn't set in for a long time. But it would. Sooner or later, pain always caught up.

Carl counted to five, and there it was.

There.

Mike's mouth twisted open, and as his scream came out Carl's rock went in. Gums smashed to pulp. Chips of teeth peppered the ground. Carl let go of the rock. The rock stayed. He let go of Mike, who did not stay. His body slumped down the Porta-Potty. His scream kept going, muffled. Carl gave one last look at him, at the dribbling caves that had been his eyes.

"It's okay, Mike. It's supposed to be dark down here."

Carl walked to his backpack. He hoisted it onto his shoulders, glanced into the safe, and considered carrying some more packages in his hands. There were so many left. But it was a long walk, and having his hands full would only slow him down. Not to mention the ladder. He'd never get down the ladder.

Carl closed the safe and set off, hunched beneath his backpack like a kid on the way to school.

He was grateful when he reached the darkness of the ballroom. He could not understand how he'd ever been upset about a few shadows. Darkness was natural. Darkness was the body before the cancer of light crept in and rotted all the good flesh away. In it, Carl felt healthy. Carl felt whole.

He wiped his palms off before gripping the ladder. It wouldn't do to slip now, not when he was so close. He kicked his legs over the edge and started down, left foot right foot, left hand right hand. Between each rung he saw the eye, trembling and moist.

Why was it trembling?

Was it scared?

Why would it be scared?

Still descending the ladder, Carl looked down upon the three upturned faces of his men. There was Mancini's, stubbly and handsome (God was he beautiful). There was Block's, narrow and not so handsome because of the scar running along his hairline. And then there was Cricket's, fat and bruised and . . .

Moving.

Cricket's face was moving side to side, swaying with his body.

Carl took a seat at the base of the ladder. This was good enough. Any closer and he might crack the egg. Crack the egg? He shook his head and unzipped his backpack. The packages of PETN stared up at him, as white as the white of an eye.

"Hello, I see you there."

Carl fished around for his Zippo. He'd had the same one since he was a boy. He always liked how the flame stayed lit until the lid clacked shut. Carl thumbed the wheel and a pinkie of fire tickled at the air. He turned the Zippo down to the topmost package . . . down to the detonator cap of the bomb resting between his legs. But the flame only singed the thick plastic. It would take minutes to melt all the way through this way. He couldn't wait that long.

Holding the lighter in one hand, Carl grabbed the package of PETN and tore at it with his teeth.

In the cavern Cricket blinked sleepily, like someone coming out of a deep sleep. His face remained blank for a second. Then it twisted into an expression of loathing, of simple unthinking disgust. He reached into his pocket. As the LED burst into life at his feet, metal flashed in his hand.

"No!" Carl screamed.

The knife's point slipped quietly into the eyeball and the blade continued up, burying itself to the hilt. Carl saw his reflection (Cricket's reflection) impaled in the black of the pupil. The reflection came undone, peeling apart at the center, and the knife dropped. It bounced off of Cricket's forehead. Hot blood, steaming blood, bucketed down over him. Then Cricket could not see because his eyes were boiling in his skull, and so were the eyes of Block and Mancini. Their faces bubbled and sloughed off, the skin melting off the bone. This Carl watched from above, from the one eye in the cavern left to him. As the red washed down and down, it washed his sight with it, leaving him in the dark of the basement with only his flickering Zippo.

And his pain.

Its pain.

A searing needle pushed through Carl's right pupil into his skull. He dropped both the lighter and the package of PETN and clapped a hand over his eye, screaming as the soft meat of his brain cooked from the heat. And then, as quick as it had arrived, the pain was gone. He waited for it to return. He counted to five. It did not come.

But something else did.

A smell, sharp and sweet at the same time.

Carl looked down. The mouth of the backpack smoked between his legs. Inside the backpack, atop a package dimpled by teeth marks, lay his Zippo. Its flame licked lovingly at the white plastic.

Carl pushed away from the bag in a slow, dizzy panic. He couldn't remember what he had been doing, or why, but he knew it had been important and that he had failed. When he backed into the ladder, he twisted around and began to climb. When a soft orange glow filled the shaft, he began to climb faster. When he reached the top, he began to run.

♫

My body had broken into two heartbeats. The first, in my chest, was a skittering thumpumpthump. The second, in my legs, was a dull and powerful throb. I listened to the story with a growing sense of looseness, no longer in the room but not down in the mine either. I was on the road in that between-place, and it was dark there, so very dark, and I was alone.

♫

The first LED in the drift flicked on, and the searing needle paid Carl a visit. He howled, bowling forward with his shoulders down. In his right eye the world was a muddy gray, the color drained out of everything.

In his left the world was turning pink.

Blood leaked from the cracks beneath his boots and dribbled from the crevices above his head. The puddles he splashed through hissed and steamed. Carl thought of Fuchsia petals scattered across soil, of the tiny egg he had tried to protect but accidentally crushed between his fingers. He let out a sob, and the sob rebounded off the rock as a laugh. He ran through the rising pink fog, crashing into the walls at every curve. His face wore a gummy mask of red. What remained of his hair clung to a raw scalp.

He came flying out of the drift, and an instant later he was flying, literally. The tunnel kicked like a gun barrel and he bulleted through the air, his bones singing, his body born up on a solid blast of sound and heat. He crashed onto his stomach. As the roaring grew, there came a deafening crunchcrunchcrunch, like ice chewed between enormous teeth. The drift collapsed behind him with a spew of dust, tinged pink by roiling steam. A huge lump of rock detached from the ceiling and exploded on the ground. The LED that had brightened for him a second ago now fell and shattered. The tunnel went dark. He pushed up onto his hands and knees and started to crawl, rocking with the dying vibrations of the earth.

At last the shaking stopped and he could walk again.

He walked for a long time.

When he finally emerged from the tunnel, into the light, the air was swimming with pink. It tasted salty, like a sea breeze. Mike's body was no longer by the Porta-Potty. It had been dragged over to the safe, which had tipped onto its side. Underneath the black bulk lay Gabriel, his bottom half pinned.

"Dios mío." Red bubbles popped in his mouth as he spoke. "Dios míoooooooo."

Carl lumbered past them to the elevator. He waited for it to arrive. It never crossed his mind that it might not. When it did, he walked into the back where the shadows were thickest and waited some more. Others boarded at every stop. Soon the cage was packed with bodies. No one talked to him. No one asked why he was facing the corner or holding his hand over his right eye.

There was no pain there, not yet.

But he could feel it.

He could feel it building.

____ ____

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Poor Things, please consider hitting the vote button—it will help other readers find the story. Comments are always appreciated, too. Seriously, I love them.

Coming up on Tuesday . . . I'm not saying a word.