“That’s right.” Sam’s face softens. “We made this power.”
“I know. It’s crazy.” I rub my arms. I’m restless and edgy, and my body doesn’t feel like my own. “Sam? When we died or whatever…where were we? What is that place?”
“I can’t really answer that. We just call itunder. We’re dead enough to be out of the real world but not dead enough to go anywhere else—if heaven and hell even exist.”
“I didn’t like it there.”
“I don’t blame you. It can feel really awful. I know. Hey, are you crawling out of your skin?” Sam asks.
I nod and realize that I’m tapping my foot on the floor.
“Come on.” He holds out a hand, and I go to him. “A shower helps for that.”
In his bathroom, Sam helps me undress.
I feel tremendously weak and tired now, so I let him run the hot water and get me into the shower. “Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.” He takes off his clothes and steps in. “Come here.”
I fall into him, and I let him hold me while the water rushes over us. “This feels nice.”
“Good. It’s a tactile thing. Sensory stuff gets screwy after tripping. Sometimes, light touches feel good, and other times, you need deep pressure. It sounds weird, but I used to rake a comb over my skin to bring me down. Another time, I blew bubbles and let them fall over me. Oh, and once, I slept with bags of rice on my back. You learn to get creative. Showers usually work though, no matter what.”
My emotions are mostly numb, but now that the surge has mostly passed, the reality of what happened sets in. “Sam…” My voice breaks.
“I know, I know.” He keeps me against him and soaps my back using gentle rhythmic strokes. “This is too much.”
“I can do this,” I say softly. “Iamdoing this.”
“You shouldn’t have to. And you had a horrible first trip, which is patently unfair.”
“I assumed mine was bad. Otherwise, you guys would have never gone under again.”
“You were tripped under shitty circumstances, and that can strongly influence things. I tripped badly, too, but it’s why I could get to you so fast. I was alert and not all drugged up. If it’d been good, I could have sunk a lot lower and been the way Costa was.”
“I don’t understand. Why was his trip so good?”
Sam glides his hands over my shoulders and down my arms, and his touch is soothing my nerves. “Costa probably had a highly intense trip because I killed him, and he’d wanted that for years. Then,yougutted him, and he’d just tripped you. The combination of the two of us…well, he’ll be under for hours and hours. Death tripping is very often tied into emotion. No two trips are ever the same because no circumstances are ever the same.”
“So, yours was bad because of how it happened also?”
He nods. “I ran my body into Costa’s and threw us over the edge. He hit his head on a rock, but he didn’t die right away, which he loved. I wasn’t thinking clearly though. There was no reason for me to trip him, but watching what he had done to you…I broke my rule about not tripping others. I couldn’t stop myself.” Sam stops to kiss me.
His passion and love are the only things letting me keep it together at all.
“I can’t think of a worse way to go into a trip. I understand how you felt, watching me die. I don’t ever want to see that again. That’s why I went crazy and launched myself at him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t hurt enough, so I had to get back upstairs.”
“How did you—”
“I really don’t want to talk about it. I saw more blood today than I cared to.”
“When you were under with me,” I start, “something happened to you.”
Sam turns me around again and takes his time lathering my hair with shampoo. “This feels okay?”
“Yes. The light touch is helping me. Thank you.” He’s being so sweet to me, but I need an answer. “Sam? Tell me what happened when you covered your ears during that trip.”
He sighs. “I didn’t know about this, but it seems that I can keep my powers when I go under. When you touched me, I was entirely focused on you and how much I wanted to make everything better for you, how much I love you. Then you…you power-augmented me when we were under. I could hear everything.”
