Page 11 of Daughter of Rot

Inside of The Inflorescence, the walls are teeming with pastel pink oyster mushrooms and the ground is overflowing with luminescent ghost mushrooms. Plumes of fungal spores curl and gently float around. The air is crisp and sweet. Fireflies glow. Green tree frogs croak to each other and cicadas scream.

Envelopes are fanned out under the rounded opening of a willow tree in the center of the room. Olivia thumbs through each envelope. They are years of failed correspondence to her sisters. Stamps torn off the corners. The receivers’ names are scribbled out in black ink. Some of the envelopes have been torn into small pieces and stitched together with blades of bluestem grass. A tightening in her abdomen makes her dizzy. Her head is throbbing. There’s a heavy ache in her chest. She caresses the letters. Her face is hot. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She remembers writing each one.

She wonders if Isela read her letters. She wonders if Isela mocked her sincerity. If she was embarrassed by it. As she combs through the rest of the envelopes, she finds follow-up letters from her sisters who kept writing in spite of never receiving anything from Olivia. None of them are opened. The envelopes are pristine.

Olivia sits with the truth for a moment. Her chest hurts. She pounds on herself with her fist. She sits still. Anger creeps into her. She reflects on the reality of her mother. The reality of how she’s grown up. Her mother, convincing her that she didn't have it bad enough. Her mother, admitting she wanted to inflict more violence, but she stopped herself. Her mother, demanding to be put on a pedestal while confessing that she didn't know how to love someone else, especially not a daughter.

Olivia reads through each thoughtful letter from Lucia and Isabel. She puts them in order by date. An overwhelming warmth takes over. A sigh of relief. It’s a new feeling for Olivia. How can she miss people she has never met before? They seem kind. Gentle. Tender. She puts her face into her palms. She weeps in silence under the willow tree who watches over her as mossy moths flutter around her and cover her from head to toe until she looks like she has always been a part of the room’s ecosystem.

THE CHILD

The nightmares follow Isela. She’s taken without any means of escape. A beam of light shines down and lifts her up into the purple sky. She breaks the ceiling with her body. Fragments of wood pierce her skin and stick in her hair. Blood spreads onto her pajamas and pools on the backside of the fabric, dribbling down, drop by drop. She's suspended in the air with her spine toward the earth and above her, as she's floating and bleeding, she sees births. Babies being pulled and pushed from the womb and spilling into the stars. Then, the babies in their frenzied screams, start dropping onto the earth below. Wet plops and splats and bursts. Isela knows she’s next. There’s a tingling sensation in her fingers and the back of her neck. She falls slowly at first, and then her body gains velocity. It feels as though all of her bones break. The throbbing pain starts at her toes and works its way through the rest of her body until she’s just a spasmed mess on concrete. She falls into her old neighborhood. She sees old neighbors come out to look at the spectacle of her. Their mouths, revolted caverns. Her sisters and her brother come to gawk at her. They point. They whisper to each other. In embarrassment, she rolls over onto her belly and drags her body into the darkness at the end of the street.

She drags herself into The Inflorescence. The placenta has returned. Surrounded by wild violets and soft shield ferns, the placenta purrs. Isela gains strength, crawls over, and peers through the walls of the placenta. Something is growing inside. Isela pierces through the placenta by digging into it with her hands. She excavates an opening into the gelatinous orb until she’s in past her elbows and stops. She holds her breath and squeezes herself into the slimy sac. It gurgles and squelches as she’s squirming inside of it. Isela feels for the growing creature and pulls at its hands as hard as she can. Needing air, she slithers out of the placenta, which is now leaking red into the rest of the room, drowning the violets and ferns.

Isela plops back in and pulls out the creature by the shoulders. A birthmark on the back of its neck and in its inner thigh matches Isela’s. Isela shakes the creature, which is completely hairless and a slight shining green. She swats its back as though she were burping it. The creature coughs and opens its eyes under a thin opalescent membrane which Isela peels off. Glints of gold flakes sit in the irises of the creature’s eyes. The creature smacks its lips together in hunger. Isela feeds it some of the placenta and some violets by hand, the creature suckling her fingers as it takes in the offerings. Isela peers into the deflating placenta as a distorted wailing emerges from it.

A portal.

She witnesses her own birth.

She watches as her mother feeds her milk, as her mother smiles down and kisses her on the head.

Isela’s breasts prickle and begin to fill in, they harden and tingle at the tips of her nipples. Milk spouts from each breast. She nudges the creature toward her chest and it latches. Isela watches and her belly aches. Vomit billows in her mouth. She can’t keep this creature. She never wanted any of this. Who would want such a thing? She pulls the baby from her breast, covers its eyes and mouth with bloody ferns, and places it on the floor. The Inflorescence understands.

The next time Isela ends up in the room, nothing grows but a single sunflower in its center.

FAMILY REUNION

Inside of The Inflorescence, there are four figures. They sit on an indigo mossy couch in front of a TV which is glitching, going static and then changing channels from landscapes of cloud forests to barren terracotta deserts to jagged mountain ranges topped with snow. The TV is controlled by the figure in the middle. His face is malachite stone, his eyes are empty, his mouth opens and closes with no sound as slimy spit oozes out. He wears a white muscle tank top, his translucent belly peering out and shining in a sheen of blue-green. The remote control is nothing more than a piece of wood. He clicks on it over and over in a slow TAP, TAP, TAP. The three figures beside him get up slow, and then down on their knees and look up at him.

Isela knows exactly who they are. She grits her teeth and lets out a huff. She holds back a scream.

She points at one of the figures. It is made entirely of chestnut brown hair braided together to form the silhouette of a woman. It smells like burning firewood and winter air. Letty, you told me that Rene worries way too much.

She points at another body. This body is made of seashells that look like jagged teeth. It sounds like wind chimes when it moves its head and smells like ocean water. Rene, you told me that Letty doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.

She points at the third figure. It is made of colorful intertwined electrical wiring and the wings of dead luna moths. It smells like sun-drenched clothes and sweat. When it moves, the wires spark and crackle.

Hector, you told me that Letty never believed you when you told her what dad did to me. You told me that she ignored what you said. She sat in silence. She ignored the pain, per usual.

Dad is still in control of the TV. Look! He had too much control. Can’t you all see that? He is still in control. A crack in her voice. Each figure turns to her sluggishly, eyes opening from their previously blank faces.

She turns her back and wipes the tears off her face. There's an urge in her belly to run, but she stops herself.

When I see you dad, you are surrounded by fire, with a big white smile, eyes glistening, belly engorged, and a bulging, pulsating heart floating above your head. The heart is brimming with tar and this heart pours bloody tar onto you until you are nothing but a pathetic pile of bones. Hah! It’s beautiful, dad.

Remember when dad used to say that his guardian angel walked amongst us? The guy with the big grey wings that worked at the swap meet selling beaded jewelry? That was his guardian angel. He blamed this angel for his torment and our torment. This angel was earthbound and what did that mean for him? How could this grey creature lead him to heaven?Dad, how could you ever think you were going to heaven? How could any of us think we were destined for the sky? How?

Mom called our dad a liar all the time. Maldito mentiroso. Always talking nonsense. She never saw the angel. Did you?

One time, Mom told me she was going to leave Dad, so I told him her plan, I don’t know why. Would that stop him from touching me? Could we really ever escape him? He locked us in the smallest room of the house for three days. We peed and shit in a bucket. He blocked the windows and the door. He ignored our screams. He wrecked the house. He left piles of glass and paper and torn up clothes everywhere. Do you remember? He called to his own mother, who was long dead. She didn’t answer and when mom asked who gave us away, I didn’t answer. I don’t know why.

Evil is easy. It really is. He showed us that.

Letty, you had a near-death experience when you were a baby. She claims she saw us all burning in a hellish landscape as she was floating to the sky. She was a baby so there was nowhere for her to go but up. How can any of us assume we are going up? Do any of you believe we are going up? Do you three really believe that?

Rene has a gambling problem, but not like you think. She plays with Ouija boards and tarot cards and crystal balls like a bruja wannabe but she can barely make sense of her own life. It’s like she wants to be possessed or taken. This is what Letty told me over the phone.