Click.
Welcome to your personalized meditation tape. Are you ready to take your first step?
Good. Take it slowly, now, one foot in front of the other.
You should be in a dark space: quiet, alone. If you are not alone, do not worry—you will be so soon. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes.
Imagine an egg.
No, not a white egg. A brown one, flecked with pale freckling dots along its side. You can hold it in the palm of your hand. It’s cold, as if you’ve just taken it out of the fridge. It’s got a little heft to it, curved and smooth, like the arch of a bridge. It trembles in your grip.
Hold the egg carefully. It will be important later.
Where are you standing now? You shouldn’t hear anything but your own breath, rustling like paper in the night. There’s nothing around you, nothing in front of you. This is your quiet, dark space. You’re alone. Breathe.
You’re in your room. Visualize it, slowly, layers peeling and shifting in your mind. The crooked wooden floor. The rumpled and unmade bed. The eel-like shadows on the wall. The cool night air blowing in from the window, followed by the smell of sweet-cicada summer. The mirror that hangs glossily on the open closet door. Your reflection is indiscernible in the darkness.
You don’t hear rushing water. You don’t feel small stones beneath your feet. You are in the dark, it is quiet, and you are alone. You feel safe.
What are you wearing? A shirt and swimming trunks, you think? No, not quite. Try again.
It’s all right, I understand. You’ve been confused for a while, and it’s not easy to iron out your thoughts. Breathe. I will help you set things straight.
Yes, you are wearing a nightdress. Good job. This makes sense to you. See how easy it is to make sense of things when you relax? Wind caresses the back of your neck like cold dew. The smooth cotton hemline of your dress brushes against your knees. It is soothing, comforting, safe. Not smothering at all.
Do you still have your egg?
Breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your mouth. Keep holding onto the egg. Don’t crush it—it’s fragile and trembling in your palm, as if it is alive.
It couldn’t be, though. It’s just an egg. And this is just your bedroom. You are safe. You are free. There is nothing reaching out to you here. There is nothing pushing you forward. Relax.
Take another step.
Click.
The second step is simple. You’ve done this before. This is your room, and you know its contours the way you know the quiver of your mother’s eyes, the hard lines of your father’s face, or the rub of ropes against your brother’s wrists.
Don’t think about them. This meditation is for you. It will give you peace within your inner self, if you let it. But you must let it.
You are standing in front of the mirror. Keep the egg in one hand. Press your other palm to the glass. It will tremble at your touch, squirm like gelatin, but you shouldn’t think about that either.
When you touch the mirror, it will feel cold in the same way as the egg does. It will not feel like the bitter rush of water spooling over your skin. It will not feel like air has been ripped from your lungs as you collapse into a brackish current. If you are scared, then you are doing something wrong. Try harder. Breathe.
You are avoiding your own gaze. Look in the mirror. What do you see?
A girl, yes, a girl. You should not be afraid of her. She is you. You have always been her. Your river of dark hair falling down your back. Your white cotton nightdress. Your spindled fingers, callused and thin.
You have your brother’s eyes.
It’s okay to think about him now.
You remember your brother: hot summer days, swimming with him, in a place that might have been sea. The currents were strong and brackish, pulling at both of you with eager hands. Despite the brine, the water tasted sweet.
Your brother was not as strong a swimmer as you. He fell into the deep; he struggled to get out. The currents got their fingers into him and yanked, sending him down to the sand-pebbled floor. Bubbles rippled up from his mouth in place of a scream.
You may feel as if you are really drowning, but remember: this is just a tape. You are safe. You are alone.
That day, the water churned, hurling your brother back and forth with white-tipped waves. You remember that he bobbed upwards, just for a moment, and the sun gleamed like a coin off his short-cropped hair. He reached out for you, and you for him.
Then the water took him again, and you didn’t see him for a long while after that.
You are standing in a dark room: quiet, alone. You are not drowning. You are safe. You stare at your reflection, and it wavers, just for a moment, into the shape of your brother. Then he is gone, just as he vanished beneath dark water that day.
Good. This is as it should be. Breathe deep.
Do you taste saltwater? No, you don’t. Just clean, filtered oxygen, rippling in through the air conditioning unit on the left side of the room. It smells a little processed, to you, but it’s good air. Everything is good here, because you are safe. Don’t you feel relaxed?
You don’t? You must not be trying hard enough, then. This is a scientific exercise, you know, proven to sort through and correct even the most stubborn of memories. Inner peace is finally within your grasp. Aren’t you tired of always being so confused?
Easy does it, now. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This is your room. You know it like you know your skin—comfortable, familiar. Not ill-fitting at all. You cradle the egg against your chest. You can feel your own pulse reverberating through the albumen. It is not alive. It is just an egg.
You think this isn’t real. Of course it isn’t—this is a meditation exercise scripted out on a pre-recorded tape. You’re not really holding an egg. You’re not really in your room. You’re in a dark space: quiet, alone. Just as you were instructed.
If you feel something begin to hurt you, ignore it. It’s just as real as this tape.
Oh, dear. You’re starting to panic. Relax your shoulders. Breathe. You can breathe. Don’t listen to the aching strain of your lungs. This is all within your mind. You are not in pain. Look down at your egg, your imaginary egg—small, defenseless, ovoid. Let it ground you.
Imagine you are in the egg. You are fetal, curled up and safe. The shell surrounds you like brown concrete. You may feel womb-water pressing in around you. You may not feel anything at all.
Click.
It’s time for the final step. Even though you feel as if you can no longer move forward—as if you are smothered on all sides by that sticky gelatin mirror—you must.
Press onward, go forward. There is no weight in your chest. Why are your eyes burning? You don’t think you’re crying. Blink hard and the pain will go away.
Or perhaps not.
Because here is the hard, unfortunate truth: your brother died.
No? What do you mean, no?
You’re not listening to me. Of course you had a brother. Of course he died. I showed you his memories, didn’t I? The shape of his eyes, and the rub of rope against his skin. Swimming, swimming and choking. That’s the last of it. He drowned. I’m sorry, but he drowned.
Yes, he did.
You remember—
You’re getting upset. That’s not good for this meditation. Roll your shoulders back. Flex your wrists. Take a breath.
Imagine an egg.
Now, let’s try this again.
You and he were sister and brother. Peas in a pod. A matched set. Twin eggs. You did everything together. You loved each other. You were so similar that sometimes, you had trouble telling each other apart.
And there was a river behind your house. Beyond the short-scrubbed grass, beyond the small-pebbled shore, currents rushed past, unencumbered and free. The water was a lovely indigo. You swam in it every day in the summer, watching shadows and light dance through the rippling waves.
But one day, your brother swam too far out. One day, the water took him and ate him. He cried out for you, and you reached for him, but it was not enough. You never saw him again.
Your parents?
…yes, your parents were there. Why they didn’t help is unimportant. What matters is that your brother drowned that day, and only you, the sister, remains.
Of course they love you. You’re their only daughter.
They didn’t watch their son die. They didn’t want their son to die. You’re being ridiculous; you need to stop thinking that. (And even if they did stand by and let him sink, you know, in some part, he deserved it.)
Stop crying. Shut up. They saved you, and that’s what matters. You are here, even if your brother is not.
God. You’re not listening to me. You have to listen to me. It is the only way you will be able to put your brother behind you, once and for all. Imagine that egg, again, and clutch it in your palm. Careful not to break it. You get clumsy when you’re upset. Take a deep breath. Take one more step, if you can, and—
Wait—
Don’t—
Click.
I take the egg in my palm and I crush it, yolk streaming like blood through my fingers. Shell splinters across my palm, scattered in sharp-edged constellations. There is no egg. There is no tape. But someone is speaking to me. Someone is lying to me.
I open my eyes. I am underwater. My wrists are tied together. (There is no egg. There was never an egg. The tape was right about that.) It is a dark space: quiet, alone.
I am drowning.
The river-water surrounds me, and I flail against it. I scream, but only bubbles echo from my mouth, just as the tape told me they would. The world roars on, above me, silent.
Saltwater burns the back of my throat. Tears stream from my eyes and blend with the river. I kick and push my bound-up body, squirming against the current like a freshly hatched salmon.
Now that I know who I am, I can fight. Now that I know what has happened to me, I will survive it.
The current tears at my hair and skin. Sand swirls up from the bottom of the river, haloing my view. I push forward, upward, blindly. The sunlight makes strange patterns down below.
I pull myself to shore, lungs bulging to catch fresh air. A melting chrysalis of water drips from me, a chassis peeling away. Mud squelches beneath my palms.
On the opposite bank of the river are my parents. They seem disappointed.
Panting, I lie flat-stomached in the mud. I stare at my reflection in the roiling water.
I have short-cropped hair. Spindly fingers, rope-burnt wrists. And my brother’s eyes.
My eyes.
I knew I never had a brother.
I am him. I am he. The tape can try and trick me, but staring down into the river, I know myself. This is who I’m meant to be. A boy broken free of his shell, dripping water like yolk. Undrowned and whole.
I push myself to my feet, mud slipping down my shirt. My parents stare like twin stones across the river. The rope grates against my wrists, leaving a patch of red skin behind. It hurts, but I am free. The voice on the tapes is gone.
I run.
Click.
| Avi Burton (he/they) currently moonlights as a writer and daylights as a university student. His work has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, and other literary magazines. His stories often feature mythology, revenants, and—on occasion—laser swords. You can find more of their stories on their website, www.aviburton.com, or find the author themself on twitter under @avi_why. |  |