What Have You Done
Matthew Farrell
1
The first things Liam noticed were the mattresses lined up on the living room floor. The furniture had been pushed to the walls on the outer perimeter of the room, leaving the mattresses placed strangely in the center, where the couch and coffee table should have been. There were three of them, side by side, no covers or sheets, just a single bouquet of paper flowers their mother had learned to make at a craft party her friend Patty had hosted when she was pregnant with her second bundle of joy. One bouquet for each mattress. Their bright colors painted a dreadful picture against the otherwise dark surroundings. The shades had been drawn. The house was silent. Liam’s stomach turned once. This wasn’t right.
Before he could inquire as to what might be going on, a thump interrupted the quiet, and from his periphery, Liam saw his older brother, Sean, fall to the floor. Hands suddenly grabbed Liam from behind, and he was lifted off the ground, carried by someone he couldn’t see. Liam struggled to free himself, tried to call for Sean or his mother, but the grip was tight enough that he could hardly breathe, let alone cry out for help.
The bear-claw tub was old and rusted. Liam caught a glimpse of the calm water that had been filled to the rim before he was thrust to the hard tiled floor. His hands were pulled behind his back and tied together so tight he lost feeling in his fingers.
“We’re going to visit your father,” the voice said behind him. It was his mother’s voice, so suddenly full of life and determination. She was strong and vibrant, the adrenaline coursing through her. This new energy scared him the most. “We’re all going to be one happy family again. All of us together. Like it should be.”
She picked him up and threw him into the tub. Liam thrashed about, kicking and jerking upward, trying to get enough leverage to sit above the waterline, but with his hands tied behind him and the slippery porcelain, he couldn’t do much more than keep his face above the surface. He couldn’t hear anything under the cold water other than his breathing, which echoed in his ears.
His mother appeared over him. She’d cut large swaths of her hair off so close to the scalp he could see bloody patches of skin. Clumps of hair fell from the collar of her dirty nightgown and onto the water’s surface when she moved. Her skin was pale, her eyes sunken and hollow. “I love you, Liam,” she said. Her chapped lips cracked as she spoke. “You and your brother. We’re going to be with your father now. I’ll see you there.”
She placed her hand over his face and pushed him all the way under. He held his breath as best he could, but panic set in as he lay on the bottom of the tub, submerged, trapped. He tried to move, turn, kneel up, anything, but his hands were fists stuck under the weight of his body. His mother kept pressing down, her fingers digging into his eye sockets and cheeks, making it impossible for him to move. His lungs burned as he tried to hold on. He squeezed his eyes shut and could see bursts of color exploding in the darkness.
Seconds seemed like hours, and it wasn’t long before his tiny body gave in and he involuntarily opened his mouth to take a breath. The water tore down his throat. He tried to cough, but still the water came, rushing into his lungs, choking him. His body regurgitated what he inhaled, but the water had nowhere to go. It kept coming. He was drowning. He was going to die. His mother’s maddening promise repeated in his mind.
We’re all going to be one happy family again. All of us together. Like it should be.
Liam opened his eyes as he took a breath and began to choke. He jumped up from his sleep, gagging and slapping at the standing water in the tub. He crawled over the side and flopped naked onto the bathroom floor, panting and coughing.
“Jesus!” he screamed between another coughing fit and the wheezing of a damp breath he fought to keep steady.
Footsteps from the hall. His wife, Vanessa, ran to the doorway, where she stopped, frozen by the scene unfolding before her. “Liam! What’s wrong?”
The room was blurry for a moment as shapes and colors blended into one floating and twisting image. He sat up and pushed himself against the wall by the toilet, his chest rising and falling as he took deep breaths. “I… I… how did I get in the tub?”
Vanessa hurried into the bathroom, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, her hazel eyes filled with fear. “What happened?” she asked as she knelt beside him, helping him sit up straighter against the edge of the slippery porcelain. “Why are you screaming? What are you doing in the tub?”
He calmed himself, stared at his wife, then the tub, then back at his wife again. His body began to shake as he was suddenly aware of how cold he was. “Why am I… how did I… why was I in the tub?”
“That’s what I just asked you.”
“I woke up, and I was in here. How did I get here?”
“I have no idea.” Vanessa stood back up, grabbed a towel from the rack, and tossed it to her husband. “I was sleeping. You scared me screaming like that. I thought something was really wrong. I don’t know how you got in there. Last I saw, you were crashed out on the couch.”
Liam draped the towel over himself and tried to stop shaking. He stood carefully and shuffled over to the toilet to sit. Ever since the day his mother had tried to drown him, he’d been petrified of water. He never would’ve voluntarily taken a bath. He hadn’t had a bath in twenty-seven years.