The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (reading fiction .TXT) 📗

on the ground shouting about being sick, or getting sick, threatening to throw up on the cots. Two men tumbled down their shed’s steps, spewing food as they fell. Men zigged across the lawn with their hands capping their mouths.

“Everyone’s sick!” Randy screamed. His neck was drenched in red liquid.

“Where do we go?” another one shouted.

Dyson moseyed out of the barn as if the clearing were empty.

I ran to him. “The men are dying,” I told him.

“No one’s dying,” he told me. I don’t think I had ever seen such clarity and confidence in his face. Nothing of what was happening behind me surprised him. “It’s probably food poisoning. The generator must’ve shut off overnight.” He lifted his right arm and snapped until all the men were looking at him. “Atmospherians,” he said. “If you want relief, follow me behind the barn.”

They trailed us to the trough, their cheeks expanded to melon-sized swells. A few men were bent perpendicular. One threw up into his elbow. Red liquid wormed through another man’s lips—neon in color, too bright for blood, I thought—the cheap wine marking its return.

“Kneel in front of the trough,” Dyson told them. “Let everything out.”

Chewed pork and potato salad plopped into the trough. They gagged. They sprayed. They wailed. Every few heaves, the men turned to me, desperate for comforting hands on their backs. I was their mother, their grandmother, wife, sister, daughter: every woman they’d ever passed in the street. Please, they would’ve said, had they been able to fit in a word. But they were stained red at the mouth and neck, as if they’d plunged their faces into the gut of a deer.

This scene is a favorite of movies and exposés. We’re often accused of slipping ipecac into the wine—which, yes, we did later on—but this was an unforeseeable accident. Dyson was right. The generator shut off. The men had food poisoning.

Dyson lectured them from the end of the trough: “Nausea is the first step of reflective enlightenment. What you’re feeling is decades of repressed emotions buried inside you. Everything you refused to let out is escaping. You’re vomiting up the buried emotions and feelings you’ve spent your lives running away from. You never confronted yourselves and the mistakes you made. You’ve never not been sick. Health? It terrifies you. Of course it terrifies you: because this is what it means to be healthy. It hurts to be healthy. And you can’t get well until you get worse. I encourage you to get worse. Embrace illness. Don’t hold anything back.

“When you think you’re finished, keep going,” he said. “There’s always more to get out. Use your fingers if you must. One finger. Two. Even three! Don’t be afraid. There is nothing to fear. You must empty everything out.”

Randy let out pained, undignified heaves from his spot at the end of the trough. He lifted his face to look at me. His forehead was speckled red and food stuck to the gel in his hair. He caught my eyes, begging me over.

I felt generous. “What is it?” I asked him.

“Heh,” he started to say. “Heh.” And finally: “Help… me.” The words shot out like an arm knifing through the closing doors of an elevator.

I palmed his head, directed it to the trough, and whispered, “We are.”

fourteen

IT IS NOT impossible that Dyson put ipecac in the wine. But that doesn’t make it likely.

fifteen

AFTER MY RESPONSE to Lucas Devry, a small cadre of my followers piled on in the comments, called him creepy and sexist, an incorrigible coward, a toad; nothing too terrible—surely not for the internet. They insisted I was right: the world should rid itself of monsters like him. I reported his account; the comment disappeared. And, for a few days, so did he, shamed out of my life after a single confrontation. What a pitiful chicken, I thought, happy to be done with him.

I was set to appear on Wake Up! America that week to promote ABANDON with Kandace Heather. In the lead-up to the discussion, I watched every clip I could find of her talking to guests—influencers and makeup artists and dermatologists and the children of forgotten celebrities—guests ranging in confidence from startled kitten to mercenary. The influencers promoted proprietary juices; the makeup artists hocked sponsored eyeliners and foundations; one dermatologist promoted a book that included “over one hundred references.”

I had nothing to sell, I complained to Cassandra, though to her I said, “We have nothing to sell,” because I still hadn’t told her she wouldn’t appear alongside me.

“Nonsense,” she said. “We have ourselves. And a self is worth far more than a product.”

The skin-care influencers who normally appeared on Wake Up! America told stories of personal triumph over unpleasant appearance. The problem, however, was that I never triumphed over my appearance. My skin never cratered or scarred—I’d had a few blemishes in high school, some eczema on my neck during a stressful semester at college—but no “uglier” self hidden in the pit of my past, no before pictures to shudder over or glance away from in horror. Instead, I had Dyson, brought to the edge of death by fat burners and topical creams: the nuclear options.

“What a beautiful, heartwarming story,” said Cassandra. We were stretched out on her couch—a green velvet mod—rehearsing my story for Wake Up! America. “Your best friend was in trouble so you created ABANDON.”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “I introduced him to the pills and creams.”

“Don’t insult him by blaming yourself.” She gave my knee a don’t overthink it tap. “Your story is a beautiful journey of friendship and compassion. I feel honored to know someone as compassionate as you.” She stepped to the center of the room and cleared her throat so politely I barely heard her. The afternoon sun ignited the windows. Her hair glowed fierily.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s my turn,” she said.

“Your turn for what?” I was genuinely curious.

“To rehearse for my segment with Kandace,” she said. “It’s