The Nameless

I was 26 when my feral mother gave birth to me in an alley. I hit the ground, bloodied and bruised, and scrambled away from her as fast as I could. Her putrid smell clung to my clothing, and one of her wiry gray hairs was in my mouth. I spat it out and inhaled deeply, ready to scream. She spun toward me and uttered words in a language I couldn’t understand while her clawed fingers traced symbols through the air, then turned palm up in my direction. I could neither move nor breathe. 

“Shhhhh. Hush, hush, sweet girl.” 

She leaned in and petted my head with her bony hands. I shivered as her claws grazed my scalp. A tear slid down my face. She caught it on a claw and sucked. “Delicious,” she crooned.

I felt a rush of warmth as urine escaped down my leg.

“There, there, child. Don’t be afraid. You weren’t supposed to awaken until the birthing was over, but you have a strong will. I need a bit of youthful energy to feed on from time to time, but because you pulled away, there is now a tear in your essence... your energy, your “soul.” A kind of negative space…. Now, now, do not worry over this. This small hole will close in time; the body is always its own best physician.”

She placed a finger into her mouth, hooked it back and toward the side and began to pull. Hacking and choking, she slowly extracted something long, wet, and tangled from her throat. It looked like a rope made of hair being pulled from a shower drain, damp and sludgy. She placed it around my neck and tied it off in the back before cutting the excess with her teeth, like a mother animal gnawing an umbilical cord.

“Wear this for a week while you are healing. It will ward off the Nameless. You will remember nothing of our encounter in a few days; it will seem no more than a fever dream. I don’t want you to be troubled over the details of our…exchange. But be careful, child, for now you see things as they are, always were, and always will be.”

I looked up and got a glimpse of her horrible face. Filthy, flaking and cracked, like she had spent the whole of her life outdoors. 

“Happy birthday, dear girl, for now that you have been to the other side, you are reborn, and you will see the world as if for the very first time. There are things in this world as real as you or I, but not always easy to see until someone has taken you across the veil. And the Nameless will smell your newness, sense your tear, and will want to get in. They have souls, awful souls, but need a body with an opening.”

She slid her cold fingers down my face, pausing at my eyelids and muttering more strange words before pulling them away. When I thought she was gone I opened my eyes, only to see she had come still closer. She parted her flaky lips and spat straight into my open eyes. It seared like acid. My hands flew up toward my face. I began to scream and frantically try to rub my eyes clean with the back of my hands. When I finally opened them, I was alone in the alley.

I tore off the slimy, matted rope she had placed around my neck. I stumbled down the alley, trying to make my way back out onto the street while my vision adjusted. My eyes seemed to have a heartbeat, clearing and distorting at regular intervals. Fuzzy, clear, fuzzy, clear. I needed to get to a hospital. And tell them what? That a witch abducted me, birthed me across some other dimension to steal some of my energy, and then spit in my eyes before releasing me in an alley? Yes, I am sure to get treatment if I tell them that…treatment on the psych ward. Is that what the old woman was? A witch? Had I been drugged? I tried to remember the last 24 hours of my life but came up blank. The last thing I remember was getting off of work and walking home, dog-tired, and deciding to take the shortcut through the alley in which I was now attempting to make my way out of.

Nearing the street, I hung on to the wall as I peered around the corner. I was covered in urine, blood, and something black, sticky and unidentifiable where the disgusting necklace had been. It looked like blackberry jam, but smelled like feces and I gagged every few steps. Afterbirth, I realized in horror. I had to get back to my apartment, shower, and think about this rationally. I tell myself over and over: I am Lauren Beller. I am an accountant. I live at 26 Radcliff Street. I find the words calming and prepare to step out onto the street when I hear an ear-shattering roar. I jump back and watch as a man crosses in front of the alley. He is wearing running gear, his earbuds in, and appears to have just slowed from a faster pace to check something on his iphone. He seems oblivious to the dark and dripping shadow circling around and around him. The shadow that is changing shapes and piercing the air with low rumbling growls and roars of anguish. He picks up the pace and the shadow bolts inside of his chest and disappears, as quick as lightning.

I am losing my mind, I am actually going insane at this very minute, I am Lauren Beller. I am an accountant. I live at 26 Radcliff Street.

As soon as he passes I bolt for it. The street is empty for the most part, and I run toward my apartment faster than I knew I was capable of, probably not capable of, as I felt the muscles in my legs tearing and screaming out in protest. I pressed on, past the coffee shop, past the library, past the construction that signals I’m halfway home. I turn left and round the corner going past the 24-hour gym that is entirely made of windows. I glance inside and people are running on treadmills, climbing stairmasters and jogging ellipticals. The normalcy calms me. Here, Laren, here are people enjoying their evening, doing ordinary people things, that they do every day. Here is a marker that life is going on and yours too will probably be okay again once you change your clothes and get a chance to think.  Perhaps you fell in the alley and hit your head and had a seizure. It would explain wetting yourself and perhaps the confusion/hallucinations that followed. I slowed down, put my hands on my knees, and bent over catching my breath. I straightened up and continued slowing my jagged breathing and concentrated on the rows of legs running in the gym window. Left, right, left, right, left, right. My name is Lauren. I’m okay. Left, right. An accountant. Left, left, left, left. What? The man I had been watching on the treadmill now only had one leg. The place where the right leg had been was slowly growing the leg of a deer. It was too short for his right human leg and left him with a grotesque shuffle on the machine. He held himself up by his arms and I looked up into his face which was now distorting. His teeth grew and stretched his lips until they split. His eyes sunk in on themselves and became black holes in his face. His head elongated and then flopped over, dangling sideways, too heavy for his neck to support. None of the other people seem to notice any of this happening.

I darted forward so fast I tripped over my own legs and fell against the sidewalk. My front teeth hit the pavement and broke in half. I watched the pieces roll across the concrete as I pulled myself up and began running again. I didn’t even care. I could buy new teeth and right now there were more pressing matters to attend to like people with fucking monsters inside them. Why am I seeing this? I must have a brain injury.

As I hit the residential street I am suddenly aware that my presence is making every dog in the neighborhood bark. They all come to the edge of their yards, hair raised and growling, or paw at the windows of living rooms with their teeth bared. They must be able to smell my fear. Or this disgusting excrement I am covered in.

Oddly, the sound of their barking comforts me. It is an ordinary sound that also makes me feel less alone on a street that is otherwise deserted. Two more blocks and I am home. 26 Radcliff street. Lauren. Okay. An accountant. Street lights are beginning to come on, but I haven’t even noticed it getting dark. My eyes seem to have trouble adjusting to the darkness. I really need to go to the hospital and find out what that old hag spit into my face. What if she had a disease…what if she -- My train of thought its cut short as I notice a hulking, rounded form slowly making its way toward me. I hear it emitting a high-pitched whine and freeze. Quickly, I drop to my knees and scramble behind a car parked on the street. Hopefully I saw it before it saw me. I am starting to regret taking off that disgusting necklace…what if I made a horrible mistake? What had that horrible woman said? The No Names…The Nameless? Are these the horrific things I’m seeing? Is this what the necklace would have protected me from?

I watch the shape come closer and begin to make out forms and lines. Wheels and feet and…a stroller. A mother with a stroller that has a squeaky wheel. Fucking hell! I blow out a breathe I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. I needed to get home. One more block. I emerge from behind the car and sprint past the mother who looks startled and wide-eyed as I pass.

“Ma’am,” she calls out. “Ma’am do you need help?

I just keep running.

Finally, I see my apartment building come into view. A small yelp of relief involuntarily escapes my lips. I let my pace slow a bit, my calves aching so badly that even walking now feels like my bones are smoldering embers, searing the muscles of my legs. I make it to the outside door and yank it open, running straight into my landlord.

“Hi Lauren! I just left a note on your door. I…Oh my God, Lauren are you okay?”

I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

“I just stopped by to let you know that…” His voice turned to a sharp whisper as his tongue slid from his mouth, unraveling to land flopping against his shoulder.

“…the water heater is fixed,” he hissed.

I screamed and bolted past him up the stairs to my door. I could hear his laughter echoing in the stairwell.

Unlocking the door only after the third try, my shaky hands pushed it open and slammed it behind me. I fumbled to throw the deadbolt and then leaned back against the door. I heard something squish between my weight and the wood and jolted upright again. The jam-looking substance on the back of my clothes. I gagged and began kicking off my shoes and ripping off my clothes as fast as I could. When I was completely naked, I grabbed everything I had been wearing and stuffed it all into my kitchen trash. I longed for a hot bath, but didn’t want to be soaking in whatever washed off me. A shower would do just fine.

I let the water heat up to as hot as I could stand and then stepped inside. I closed my eyes until I stopped hearing things plop and plunk against the bathtub floor. I didn’t want to see it. When the stench started to dissipate and most of the filth was off of me and down the drain, I soaped up and rinsed off. Five times. And then washed my hair twice. I turned off the shower and stepped dripping onto my map.

Okay. Maybe these things I am seeing are real, maybe they are not. But in the meantime, maybe I should drive back to that alley and pick up that filthy necklace and put it back on just in case. I can wrap it in plastic wrap so it doesn’t have to touch my skin. What had that old woman said? I needed it because….my soul was torn? Something could get in? Isn’t that what she said? No, I couldn’t risk going back. I would just stay in my apartment until I stopped hallucinating. Surely that is what is happening. And even if all of this is real, didn’t she say my soul would heal itself?

 I was shaking again trying to make sense of it all.

I continued to dry off and slid into my bathrobe. Its bulky warmth was like stepping into a hug. Finally clean, I realized that although I was shaking my breathing had returned to normal and I began to feel a bit better. I wiped the steam from the mirror with the back of my hand and looked at my face. My eyes were wild. I looked exhausted, haunted. I just wanted to stop thinking about all of this and sleep. My brain was overwhelmed and I was going to be no good in figuring any of this out until I had some rest.

Turning on the tap I wet my toothbrush and covered the brushes with toothpaste. I gingerly placed the brush in my mouth and began to scrub, being careful of my broken front teeth. Spit, scrub, spit, scrub. Catching a glimpse of movement, I caught my eyes in the mirror. They were running with inky black tears. No. No. I am not seeing this. I began to scream, and when my mouth opened I saw that my teeth were now razor sharp points covered in suds of toothpaste. They began snapping and chewing with a mind of their own, leaving my lips in shreds. I tried to scream again but something was pushing my voice down. Something was inside me, taking over. I wrestled to keep my thoughts, but they faded fast. 

I am Lauren Beller. I am an accountant. I live at 26 Radcliff Street. I practiced saying the woman’s name until it rolled off my tongue. Poor thing. She fought so incredibly hard; it would have been easier if she had been more submissive when I attempted overtake her body. We could have avoided that whole ugly scene in the alley. And I wouldn’t have had to enter the body of that filthy homeless woman and pretend to do all that hocus pocus. My lovely Lauren. She had no idea that I was with her all the way home, entering in and out of warm bodies with their guards down, showing her some of my many, many forms!  But sometimes in nature, mothers eat their young, don’t they? Sometimes the child feeds the mother.

 I am Nameless. I have been here before and will be after all of you are no more than dust. I have watched body after body grow old, fall apart, and die. And yet I remain. Always growing, always stronger.