Nick Cutter - The Deep

“You mean of stature?”

“No, there’s another meaning. It’s a military term: short-timer . It’s when you’re at the end of a long hitch, just before you hit furlough. In a combat zone, that’s the most superstitious time. When the fates are gonna take a swipe at you. People get hinky. I’m so short I could parachute off a dime, man . That’s kinda how I feel. The more dives I make, the more I test this big black motherfucker, the Mariana, the more I’m sure it’s going to… Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m rambling. We’re fine and we’re going to be fine.”

“I trust you,” Luke said simply.

A stiff bark of laughter from Al. “Try to catch a nap if you can. Sleep might be tough to come by the deeper we go; the pressure can mess with your REM patterns.”

The sea swept against the Challenger ’s hull with a lush suctioning. Luke felt as though he was in an elevator plummeting to the bottom of the world—closing his eyes, he envisioned red numerals flashing past:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, G, P1, P2, P3, B, SB, SSB…

Sub-subbasement —did floors go any lower?

“The Ag Mey.”

“Hmm?” said Al.

“ The Ag Mey Are Here . The words written inside the Challenger . They have any meaning to you?”

Al sounded curious. “Is that how you read it?”

“What, you saw it differently?”

“Yeah. Man ,” she said. “The Something-Man.”

“The Ag Man are here?”

Al shrugged. “Nonsense words, Doc. The grammar doesn’t even jibe. I don’t presume they’d have meant much to Dr. Westlake by the time he wrote them.”

LUKE SHUT HIS EYES.He was hungry but he didn’t feel like eating; the sea seemed to reach through the submarine’s walls, pressing uncomfortably on his stomach. His thoughts circled back to his mother. He was anxious, and during such times his mind would stalk the walled-off corners of his memory relentlessly, chasing a handful of dire recollections like a terrier down a rat-hole.

After she was put on disability from the Second Chance Ranch, Luke’s mother began to eat. It became an obsession. Though she’d always been sturdy, she’d never been much of an eater—only enough to sustain her frame. She took no apparent joy in eating, and that never changed—only the quantity changed.

Porridge. She’d cook it in a huge steel pot—three, four pounds of edible sludge—and gorge herself in front of the television, eating it with the same sterling silver baby spoon she’d used to feed pabulum to her infant boys.

After a while the smell of cooking porridge was enough to make Luke feel ill. He’d come home and find his mother in the dark, eating congealed porridge with a wet-mouthed vacancy, her lips moving like a horse eating sugar cubes.

At first she simply got thick… a solidity over her arms and legs and bosom that gave her a matronly look. But she kept shoveling in that gray gruel and soon thickness gave way to bloated girth. Her arms projected from the sleeves of her shapeless shifts like the booms on a sailboat, larded with folds of quaking flesh that resembled hunks of wet wool. Her thighs widened to the point that when sitting, her legs appeared to be welded together: a vast blanket of quivering skin. When she limped from her spot on the chair, her thighs rubbed together with a raw whispery note. Her features receded into the shapeless bloat of her face. Her eyes stared out of that netted flesh like two raisins thumbed into proofing dough.

“We are all but flesh,” she would say to Luke’s father when he dared mention that she might think about cutting a few carbs, “and we will all go the way of all flesh.”

As her size increased, so did her cruelty. Especially to her husband. It was a sport to her. She’d belittle the man in front of his boys and torture him far worse in private moments.

One night, unable to sleep, Luke had crept downstairs for a glass of milk. On the way back to his room, he passed his parents’ open door. He caught the rustling of sheets, the movements of bodies.

Next: a breathless exhale. It sounded like the moan of a man who’d been stabbed and wanted to deal with the injury as quietly as possible.

“You dirty boy.”

His mother’s voice.

You dirty boy .

It wasn’t an endearment or a sly encouragement. No, this was more as if Luke’s father really was a boy, a depraved and softheaded one, who’d been found under the porch steps smeared with his own excrement. Yet his father moaned in that soft, gut-stabbed way and whispered: “ Yes, yes, so fucking bad .”

She ruined Luke’s father, decimated him until he sickened her. Her bulk would have cooled the ardor of some other men, but it only intensified his father’s servility. Like a whipped dog, he mooned around her petticoats, begging for scraps of affection, which only deepened his mother’s loathing.

All day she had nothing to do but sit in the dark, dreaming up ways to dominate the household. She’d squashed her husband already. Clayton was either down in his lab or, in later years, pursuing his projects at sponsoring labs. Beth’s immediate project was Luke, who by then had discovered the vast well of malice that lurked inside his mother.

Luke had once returned from his fifth-grade classes to find her in the tub. She was in the bathroom Luke and Clay used, even though she had her own. She didn’t sound a warning as Luke climbed the staircase and stared at him silently when he opened the door. Her body was ghostly and pale. Bubbles clung to the edges of the tub, gray and scummy, darkened from the dirt off her body. Her belly was ribbed with fat, her breasts huge and sallow.

Luke’s eyes dipped. She’d said nothing, willing them to rise again. He slammed the door.

“Don’t you ever knock ?” her voice boomed from behind it.

Despite this, Luke continued to bring her a glass of Ovaltine after school, sitting at her feet like a lapdog. She’d slurp it and gawp at the TV—it played soaps or infomercials, although Luke figured she’d be just as happy with a test pattern. Sometimes she would say the nicest things. Lucas, you’re my angel. How would I live without you? But she could turn sadistic without warning. One time she’d stared at him dolorously and spoke in a dry monotone. I had such high hopes for you. Such high, high hopes .

In time, Luke believed his mother only said the nice things so that the barbs would sting even more.

Not long after the bathtub incident, he’d come home to find his comic book collection on the front lawn with a sign reading: FREE.

“You’re too old for comics,” she’d told him, sunk down in her easy chair with a dollop of porridge on her chin. “We must all let go of childish things.”

“But—”

Her head swiveled, eyes peering out from pits of buttery flesh.

“But nothing. Let some younger boys in the neighborhood have your funny books. You’ve read the damn things how many times already.”

Funny books . These weren’t Archies or Casper the Friendly Ghosts. These were Daredevils and Wolverines. They weren’t funny .

“But… they’re mine. I’m collecting them.”

“All they’re collecting is dust. They’re gone, Lucas. The matter is settled.”

He’d turned his back on her, tears scalding his cheeks. Those comics weren’t just ink on paper—they represented freedom from the increasing hostility of his home life. He could dive into those pages and spend time with characters who were larger than life, fearless, and did right by others. He’d even created a superhero alter ego, joining the cast of caped crusaders and crime fighters in his favorite comics. The Human Shield . As Luke envisioned it, his alter ego had touched a glowing asteroid that bestowed a singular trait upon him: his flesh was impenetrable. Nothing could hurt him: not bullets, not blades, not even a heat-seeking missile. The Human Shield’s role was to stand in front of children and single mothers while his superhero pals battled their archenemies; any stray laser beams or pumpkin bombs would strike his body, which safely absorbed the blast. He wasn’t one of the top-tier superheroes, but he was allowed to hang out at the Hall of Justice and X-Mansion, rubbing elbows with Aquaman and Marvel Girl. What Luke liked best about being the Human Shield was his ability to protect the innocent without fear—because his home life was by then characterized by a marrow-deep, ever-present dread.