You are sitting at the park, alone on a bench, when a hamburger hits you in the head. It is wrapped in plain white wax-coated paper, sealed with a circular white sticker, the contents slightly displaced by the impact.
You look around, baffled. Over your shoulder, a woman jogs the gravel loop, but you do not know her, and she is sweaty and fierce and probably not the type. In the middle of the lake, much too far away, an elderly couple shares a paddle boat, dawdling in the water. Their wake fades behind them along with their words.
It’s too coincidental. You skipped breakfast this morning, and you were just starting to ponder the nearby lunch options. A hollowness in your stomach expands, releasing an uncomfortable gurgle within you.
You examine the wrapper, hunting for the slightest sign of branding, some indication of where it came from, but there is none. So you call it what it is: manna. Through the wax, the bun is warm and just a touch moist. There is a nip in the air, and the heat feels good in your hands.
As you pick at the sticker, the burger almost seems to fight against your grasp, as though at any moment it could disappear, returning whence it came. You stop and laugh aloud at the absurdity. Sure, it’s a perfectly good burger, sealed, still warm . . . but how could you possibly? You scan the smattering of cars in the lot. Empty, empty, empty. Not a person in sight. No sign of a friend or prankster.
Manna.
The rumble emanating from somewhere deep in your stomach, your curiosity, and your assumption that it looks and feels like the burgers from that joint you love so much downtown and therefore must surely taste similar, work together to overcome your reservations.
The first bite is delicious, though it could use some sauce. Amused with yourself and the situation, you raise your hand as though it might appear. But none manifests, and you are not the kind of person who carries such things. Ravenous, you take another bite, and the moistness of the bun counteracts the dryness of the beef enough that you no longer care that there is no sauce—it’s perfectly fine without it—and you bite again but this time something is very different, very wrong, and you drop the burger and groan with a pain you can’t quite identify, a sharpness. The burger seems to hover in your mouth even as you try to spit it out. It’s suspended somehow, just beyond your lips, and for a moment you wonder how you could’ve been so foolish. A metallic taste begins to overpower the beef, bun, and cheese.
There is a hook lodged in the roof of your mouth. Just barely. You touch it, gently, and try to weave it through the path it entered, but a barb pulls against your flesh. You steel yourself against the coming pain and force the barb through, but just at the moment you think you’ve finally extricated yourself—
—the hook lurches from your grip and snags the inside of your cheek, jerking with such force that it feels as though it could dislodge your entire face, and so you run, as fast as you can, in the same direction the hook seems to be pulling you, toward the lake, trying to get ahead of it for a moment of relief. You clutch at the hook with both hands, letting your arms bear the brunt of the force instead of your face, flinging away the burger to get a better grip on the shank of the hook. It strains against you and you stumble forward, keeping your arms locked in place.
Your shoes are sopping wet, the lake spilling into them as you stagger in the ankle-deep water.
And then it stops. The hook no longer pulls. Your face is pulsing with pain, but the intensity, the sharpness of it is gone. The burger lays open faced in the water, the bun now disintegrating, a leaf of lettuce floating away. Even in your panic, bewildered, you can’t help but stare at that thing floating there, feeling disgusted with yourself and whoever is behind this.
Frantically, you scan the park, searching for the source of your torment. The woman jogging has stopped, bends with her hands on her knees, watching you intently. The elderly couple has angled themselves so they can see you. They, too, watch with interest.
“Are you alright, sir?” the old woman hollers across the lake.
It’s too painful to form words, the hook crippling your speech, and so you shake your head emphatically, NO!
“We’re coming to help!” the woman yells. And the two of them set to work, their feet spinning and churning the water, and as you look out at them, you see it. A string. A wire? Resting on the surface of the water, tracing a line that wanders a little but runs nearly straight from their boat, across the lake, to the burger, and into your mouth. The hook. It was so fine that you didn’t notice it before, but there, draping along the water, the sun glinting off the wetness of it, it’s unmistakable. You’ve been caught.
It seems so obvious now. And the urgency with which they paddle toward you starts to look suspicious. The concern on their faces—is it worry on your behalf, or are they afraid you’ll get away before they can get close enough?
It’s nonsense. Why would they do this? Still, their expressions and the furious paddling and the pulsing pain and the line and the burger now scattering itself across the lake invokes a fresh wave of panic. You take out your keys and try sawing the line, but the teeth won’t catch, they keep sliding off. You bend it back and forth but the wire refuses to break. So you run again. You run as you’ve never run before, gripping the hook and tapping into some primal, instinctive coordination of movement that propels you faster than you’ve ever imagined you could move, directly away from the lake, the paddle boat, angling for your car in the lot which is much too far away.
And then, as though it were waiting for just such an occasion, the hook yanks you the opposite way, back toward the lake and the boat and the elderly couple, their faces contorting in confusion, the paddling paused. This time you plunge into the knee-high water to lessen the pain, clutching the end of the hook right where it attaches to the line, wrestling with the imperceptibly small knot which must be there, then giving up as it pulls you further into the lake.
Again, you try to thread the hook back through your cheek. But it has penetrated too deep. And it takes you under.
You let go with one arm and kick and fight to the surface, porpoising out of the water just as the line slams you back in. You struggle to stay near the surface, tilting your head and gasping for breath as it carries you further out, closer to the couple and yet also, you feel, it is trying to take you below, into the depths. Your face burns and you keep switching arms to prevent the hook from ripping your cheek, but one arm isn’t enough to keep you above water for more than a breath, and you’re gradually being waterboarded. As your strength wanes you resign yourself to pain management, taking a deep breath, placing both hands on the hook, and surrendering to the relentless pull.
The water is murky with algae and duck shit and your eyelashes are pitiful filters but you squint. Try to slow your pulse to make your breath last. The line stretches out ahead of you, taut, disappearing into the thick green of the lake.
And then the pull of the hook becomes more rhythmic. Pull, pull, pull, pause. Pull, pull, pull, pause. And you see them. Two large scaly shapes in the water, about as big as you, eyes flat against their heads like discs, mouths gaping, full of pointed teeth. Elongated bodies with slits on the side that pulse with the movement of the water. Appendages flat and flowing. Triangular tails.
They are using some sort of contraption to coil the line and bring you closer, and then, with a net, they scoop you up. The apnea is taking its toll on your body, your heart hammering and the carbon dioxide swelling in your chest, fear the only thing keeping you from inhaling. One has a set of pliers and reaches toward your face. You try pathetically to lunge away, but the net restricts you and the thing grabs you by the neck with its absurd appendage and holds you while it reaches into your mouth, the jaws of the pliers closing around the hook. You writhe in pain and you can see that the creature is trying to be delicate, but the hook and the pliers make that effort useless. It tries to retrace the arc of the hook, but the barb pulls and you groan, letting out precious air—and then it yanks, tearing the hook from your face and taking a piece of you with it.
You scream and it deposits you into an upside-down bucket the size of a small car. It is full of air, and you gasp, drink it in, sucking and screaming and holding your cheek. And yet, even as you feel them tying your legs, even as you see that there is another here in the bucket, her eyes open and lifeless as she bobs in the water, mouth agape, a piece of tortilla draped loosely over her lip, each breath soothes the burning in your lungs, the squeezing vacuous feeling, and fills you with a renewed sense of hope. Her hair fans out around her head like a wilting flower, long black tendrils floating listlessly. You want to look away, but an irrational fear tells you the moment you do she’ll reanimate and drown your newfound hope.
Slow, deep breaths.
The bucket is anchored to the lakebed. The air feels stagnant, thin, and you wonder how much is left—how much did she use before . . . ? You put pressure on your cheek to dull the pain, then, suppressing the fear, you take a breath and peer into the water. The sunlight still penetrates just deep enough for you to see a few feet below.
They appear to be arguing, one of them gesticulating at the hook, specifically the barb, a piece of your cheek still stuck on it. Their mouths open and close and bubbles slip out sporadically, racing to the surface. Beside them you see a series of pails containing various kinds of food: chicken legs, pizza, tacos, the burgers wrapped in white wax paper, everything hermetically sealed. You struggle to interpret their body language, but now they both gesture at you, the light reflecting off their disc-like eyes, their pupils eerily centered and undeniably locked on you.
One appears to sort of shrug, and they pull you down, back under the water using the rope around your feet. Briefly, they examine you. They stretch you out and hold you flat while they measure your length, wingspan, circumference, and buoyancy. You didn’t get a full breath before they pulled you back into the water and now you’re not sure if this will perhaps be the moment your lungs expire, when you’ll finally breathe in the algae and duck shit. The emptiness fills your chest and you squirm with anxiety, the burning sensation returning, prying at your ribs and begging you to open your mouth and inhale.
And then they untie you. Give you a shove toward the surface. You pat your body, your legs, your face, confused. Are they really letting you go? They are. And so you kick with every ounce of strength you have left—which is not much—and furiously flap your arms to the surface, clawing your way out of the water.
You break the surface and all you can do is gasp, gasp, gasp for breath, but you know this is not freedom yet—you are still in the water, still in their domain. The elderly couple sees you breach and they cry out.
“Oh! There he is! Over here!” They point you out to a small crowd that has gathered on the shore and in the shallows. They offer to take you aboard their already crammed paddle boat, “Jerry, make some room will you? Pull him up!” But you refuse. Fear is still throbbing in your veins and capable of propelling you to shore far faster than their frenetic paddling possibly could.
It’s not far, but even the short distance saps what little will remains, so that you begin to question your decision to swim, the heavy breathing of the elderly couple just behind you.
Your foot touches the bottom and you realize you’ve been swimming in knee-deep water for some time, but before you can stand a crowd of strangers surrounds you and lifts you up by the armpits, dragging you to shore, and this time you don’t have the strength to refuse. They lay you in the grass and murmur questions you can’t hear or process, talking to you, about you, around you, the susurrations like so much static.
You succumb to the exhaustion and close your eyes.
* * *
No one believes you. Your friends are incredulous as you describe the food that appeared in your lap, the line pulling you in, the creatures lurking in the depths. How they took that woman but inexplicably released you.
You lose weight. Even sucking from a straw pulls at the edges of the wound and tears it anew. Your aversion to pain and reliving the trauma overpowers your hunger, and your body slowly consumes itself. You avoid smiling and laughter at all costs.
Secretly, you harbor a fear of sewers and pipes and their proximity to water. You question the reality of non-edible items which you imagine could just as easily serve as bait. Anything out of place, anything you’d never noticed before, you examine with suspicion—a bag of chips in the cereal aisle, mail without a return address, toilet paper that isn’t properly placed in the holder.
As your cheek heals, your friends mock your paranoia about all bodies of water. Your skepticism about consuming food outdoors, or even inside—can they reach you there, too? The way you cautiously take each bite, carefully nibbling at every morsel after tearing it to pieces with your silverware.
And yet, with all their doubts and bewilderment, none can deny the evidence of your cheek. Even after it closes, scabs over, and scars—as though even your body is trying to sow disbelief and discredit your experience—the slightest touch there causes you to tremble, and sends you back beneath the surface.
Every absence sends you there, too. When a coworker misses work, when a friend is late for lunch, you wonder if they’re down there somewhere, bobbing in a tub of air they’ll never breathe, or if by some unpredictable mercy, they’ll be released.