Shoulder Deep
by Sabrina Yang
His apartment is a quiet sanctuary. Six hundred and forty-seven square feet on the fourteenth floor, sandwiched between vacant units—his own little bubble. Wrought-iron windows line his living room wall, tall and rectangular, spanning the entire eastern side of his home. He likes them, though the angle of his unit and the surrounding buildings do block the sun from hitting his monsteras, wilting in their hand-pinched terracotta pots. Only come sunset can rays spill from between the dark metal prisons of his window frames at just-right angles, freeing the golden glow, allowing it to penetrate the claustrophobic red-brick walls of neighbouring condominiums to cut sharp bars across his floor, flooding up his walls to meet his ceiling, too, but that is a sight he has only caught a few times on rare evenings off from his work.
Late, on one of those evenings, he spots it. A faint shadow in the paint where the drywall panels met like tectonic plates, only making itself obvious in the dark, his apartment lit by one sole lamp far across the floor, replacing the scant golden hour light with aged yellow sheen. Standing still in the corner of his living room, the glow threw every flaw hidden within the walls into harsh jaundiced relief in the wake of its fluorescent bulb, bumps which he had noticed prior but tuned out completely with time and this new addition.
There is no mistaking it—a new crevice in the plane of his living room wall, a rift where, if he were to drag his fingers along the perimeter, the raised edge would certainly catch his fingertips, cold against his calloused hands, textured paint like a trail of gooseflesh.
At first, he ignores it. But from the corner of his eye, the way it disrupts the shadows, a slice of dark on his wall—it hooks his periphery every time he walks past, following the paint that comes off in chips along the edges of the cliff, revealing jawbreaker layers of whites and creams, heavy layers of paint over more layers of ancient wallpaper.
That night, he dreams of crushing weight. He dreams of soil, mildew, petrichor. Images of layers and layers of root and time, crushing him with sediment and gravity. He wakes up in sweat-damp sheets, room dense with humid air. It’s still dark out. He rises from his bed to crack open a window, to let some fresh air in, but through his open door, he sees it, cut wide with sluicing dark. The opening in his wall.
He blinks, once, twice, then moves to shut his door. He is probably still dreaming.
The next morning, he opens the door—and there is no opening, no crack, not even a hair-fracture. There even seems to be less paint, falling from the tiniest of edges. Barely a ridge, hardly visible in what little of the morning sun’s glow it gets. A tad of flaking paint at the very edge, white-on-white melting into the plane of wall. Nothing like the wide-dark cavern he thought he saw yesterday night. Nothing but a trick of shadows enhanced by his sleep-addled mind. He makes his coffee, goes to work. Puts his dream out of his mind, ignores the inkling of something secret hidden beneath decades of paste and lacquer.
He finds his wall is soft and seeping when he returns to his apartment hours later. He presses his finger against a bubble of fluid, feeling the skin of paint flex beneath his touch. He pokes at the pustule, laden with serous… something, strangely dense. In the back of his mind, he had expected it to be soft—fragile, maybe—but it is firm beneath his hand.
He digs a fingernail into the top of the cystic mass, dragging vertically. The thin skin tears easily, releasing a sour waft. He slices further and further down, the paint layer splitting around the weight of the syrupy fluid inside, and even lower then, until that thick-sticky wetness spills out. It settles beneath his nail, its putrid scent clinging to his skin. Maybe, this is when he should call his landlady.
She’s on vacation. He goes straight to voicemail three times before he gives up and returns to his wall, this time with a roll of saran wrap and scotch tape. He presses at the wall-cyst, freeing thick, pus-yellow from the bump. The paint skin sags without the volume of the wall-discharge as he pulls at the loose sheet of paint, tearing it in one smooth motion. He pulls at the skin, seeing silver-gray, revealing not drywall but sinew. Tugging harder yet, the connecting membrane rips with a creaking then a snap, red bubbling at the seam between husk and flesh following the fibres of wall-viscera to dribble down in straight lines, pooling at his feet. It soaks through his socks, cakes between his toes, crimson in the grout of his tile flooring. The insulation that is supposed to sit between drywall and brick is stained sulfuric ochre, spreading along the innards of his apartment. He grazes his knuckles against the softness of it, damp and slick as he presses his hand, fingers like a blade, against the tissue that connects the bulbous hills of fat-like insulation, or perhaps insulation-like fat, tearing a seam nearly as wide as his forearm is long with ease, as he nestles another hand within his wall.
The blubber comes apart easily, but he flounders when his fingers, shiny with the sheen of wall-lard, struggle to find purchase against the silver skin that shields maroon flesh deeper within his wall.
Slowly, he evicts himself for the day. There’s grease on his shoulder, soaking up his sleeve, crawling up the front of his shirt. His head pounds.
Several days pass. Every morning, he goes to work with leaden limbs. Every evening, he returns to prod at his wall.
It’s rotting steadily, exposed. The outside has developed a texture not dissimilar to a slug, with no skin to protect its meat anymore. Like a wound in sepsis, corroding itself. It leaks a sickly sweet miasma that drools across the floor that he has to be careful not to step in as he heads to crack open a window, letting the late February wind whistle outside as he retreats to his room.
He’s not fond of staying away from her too long. She follows him, wherever he goes, with her lingering whiff and the blisters she leaves in her wake, but it’s just not the same. Often, he does not sleep, opting to claw at her infinite flesh. Tonight, in his exhaustion, he lies next to her. Curls up against her firm coldness as the syrupy secretion seeps into his shirt. Tomorrow, he will continue to dig.
His skin splits at his fingertips. Standing in his living room, he takes a moment—and just a moment—away from his wall to fit a thumbnail under the clammy white edge of dead skin. It divides brittle as old rubber as he tugs at it, pulling his outsides away from his insides. It stings, distantly, in a thudding, faraway sort of pain, revealing dull maroon. He turns his gaze to the matching deep red of his wall.
Weeks before, his shoulder met flesh and yet there was still more give. Today, he brings a small flashlight that he holds in his mouth. Today, he will truly delve into her caverns, tear into her flesh, surround himself in her. He will curl up in her damp-warm-soft hold, gentle pressure at all sides. His knees will press against his chest in this place made for him. His arms will slot, crossed along his clavicle, tight to his chest. His fingers will just brush against his neck. He will be warm and safe there, rigid muscle protecting him from every angle, solid and true. This is where he was meant to be, drowning in the water of his self-made womb.