Anchors
A Short Story About A Woman Trapped. And How She Was Set Free.
Written a few months ago, this story was such a fun one to write over the course of a few days. It started as just the first paragraph written during a poetry writing workshop. I knew it was the beginning of a short story, though I had no idea which one until it came flowing out.
An allegory for the mental health journey, and anyone feeling pinned down who needs an escape.
Anchors
Piled high like the books she sees but never reads are anchors. Not stacked neatly as if Russian Dolls climbed upon themselves rather than in, they splay haphazardly into a heap that could be called a mound of sorts. Anchors of all sizes, some more rust ridden than others, originally meant to tie one to a safe harbored haven are really just a misunderstood cemetery. Seeping death rather than preventing it.
Heavy, their now synchronized energies radiate through her. Buzzing. Strange. She wonders why.
Because the anchors used to be silent, motionless, lifeless.
6 days and 13 hours. That’s how long ago she first noticed any semblance of movement. She’d been lying under the heap for much, much longer.
Her first thought was a long shot. Is that a bee? No, she remembered, it could not possibly be a bee. That tiniest bit of hope vanished. Because a bee would have meant life, a living thing somehow finding her.
So she investigated her mind, all the deep pockets and corners she hadn’t let herself explore lately, because it’s an exhausting effort when breathing under a mound of anchors is your only form of survival. She knew it would cost her energy. And when she succumbed to the empty answerless space in her head, she fell into a deep slumber while hoping she might not awaken.
Jolted into consciousness she’d realized what she was feeling wasn’t a dream. It was no longer only the faint sound of buzzing she’d noticed. A sort of ripple was now under her skin. Subtle, delicate, and yet undeniable. Traced only in the stillness of her situation. One in motion might not notice at all.
The past six and a half days have challenged what she believed about the world, where she was, if she’d ever be free. And the power of one small change. And then another. What happens when seeds of doubt infiltrate the status quo of your life? Your existence suddenly becomes an open door for something else. She decided on that afternoon of this sixth day that she would accept the vibration. Embrace whatever it was that was coming into her. Do I even have a choice? It didn’t matter, because the one thing she did know was that if nothing changed her existence was only this. Left under a pile of rusting anchors.
The salt, of course, dramatically accelerated the rusting. She didn’t mind the white crust growing at the corners of her mouth anymore. Or the way her eyes shudder at every breeze, tiny crystals collecting against her eyeballs. And the cracking she felt against her skin when she stretched her fingers and toes reminded her of the way mud would dry into her hands as a kid, cracking open like a gorge after it dried, distorting her fingers into a fist on purpose just to break each layer of earth that had become part of her before plunging them into the dark, thick, goopy pit once again. Somehow the salt became comforting.
Her movements limited by the weight pinning her to the floor of the ramshackle place she lived in off that dirt road miles from town, she at least had some range of motion left in her neck, decreasing as the days fled on without her. At first, she’d tried to scurry out from beneath the heap, or lift them one by one with her arms and hands, but they proved unmoveable. Stiffness, numbness, atrophy. Side effects of being stuck under a pile of rubble. With that slight remaining turn of her neck to the left, she spotted one of her favorites. Bound with a colorful spine, letters she had memorized, she couldn’t have read them from here otherwise. Though so very far out of reach in her current predicament, peace flooded through her. A moment without the harsh reminders of decaying plants and useless limbs.
How she’d survived this long in this state, she didn’t have a clue.
Maybe this was all a self fulfilling prophecy she turned over and over in her mind on those endless cycles of days, weeks, months.
It was true that she inevitably lost everyone. She pushed them away quietly, slowly, cyclically. Strategically in a warped sort of way. You’re so stupid! she repeated to herself more loudly these days. Because if she hadn’t, certainly someone would have found her. Called, knocked on the door, concerned. But no one would come. No passersby floating along the coastal edges of her territory. No stray hikers curious about the view. The fervently placed “private property” and “keep out” signs made sure of that a long time ago. And the bees, they’d been long gone since the geraniums took over and the eucalyptus crept closer like a beautiful, swaying canopy.
The withered edges of what remained only saddened her until she could no longer feel. Traces of emotions were reduced to granules of sand scattered across the floor, neither seen nor felt. Not even her bare feet on the hard wooden floor could sense the bastards, her freedom to walk stolen when the angst of that heap was thrust upon her. She missed the sandy floor under her feet. She longed for those casual days of freedom, when the only annoyance was granules stuck between her toes and bedsheets.
Some days she appreciated the numbness, the complete inability to feel anything kept the pain at bay. And others, she longed to feel something, to remind her she’s human, she’s alive. Even if she didn’t feel alive at all.
She licks her lips and doesn’t cringe anymore at the harsh salty tingle. But it tastes different today. Almost like she can taste the way it’s preserving her body. She counts, tapping her fingers on the floor, partly out of habit - even before the anchors and now in her late thirties she would still lift each finger coinciding with its number while she said them aloud to herself - and partly as an excuse for her daily routine of rotating each joint, staying mobile, which most days seemed like a fleeting effort. “Nine (tap), ten (tap), eleven (tap), twelve (tap). 12 days.” She isn’t sure if it’s too early to call it a pattern, but on day six the ripple came and now this newly savored taste six days later. Are the anchors changing every six days? Why? How?
So she tasted again, slower, intentional, searching. Seeking answers she doubted were there but hoped she’d find. By the time she could feel the skin at the corners of her mouth, now relieved of the crust, the tip of her tongue was raw, stinging. Her palette now a shaggy rug, stringlets of skin hanging like a cave of kelp-like stalactites. How does salt preserve one thing and destroy another? she thought while grazing the roof of her mouth with her tongue, feeling the delicate strands, investigating.
Days dragged her along slowly, even more slowly now that day 18 seemed to hold some mysterious weight. If nothing else changed that day, she was wrong. Which she knew didn’t throw out all hope, but she had clinged so tightly to something she could make sense of, calculate. If nothing else changed on day 18, what do the buzzing, the ripple, the taste mean? Are they connected? If nothing else changed on day 18, would it come another day? Maybe it’s not about the days she pressed herself. Don’t get too attached, Lara.
She dreamt that night of a meadow. Tall grasses blown swiftly here then there as the wind blustered over the cliff’s edge not knowing where it wanted to go. It wasn’t her meadow, she knew, but so very familiar. Like she’d been there, but when she awoke any recollection escaped her. That was her first dream in months. It had confused her that in the current situation her brain wouldn’t let her escape into another, nonexistent world at least while she slept. And while such a simple dream, just the wind and the cliff and the grass, it felt momentous.
So she counted. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. “17.”
Days blurred together and the only way she knew to keep track was tiny piles of salt. On her right side, one round pile for each day, the size of the end of her right pinky finger. On her left, slightly larger piles tracked the weeks. The breeze blew in from the right, so she had to tuck the small piles between rust ridden anchors and her stiff torso, barely being able to count out of her peripheral vision the days in mounds of salt that rested snuggly, barely separated by bare hard wood beneath them. Most days, she counted them with her fingers, tracing the semi-circle of salted days, flattening each one as she went. She liked the feeling of the granules pushing into her dry, cracking skin as the floor resisted their hardness.
They’re tough, these salt crystals. Slightly larger than grains of sand and rougher than conventional table salt. She’d tried crushing them, grinding them with her knuckles until they bled, unsuccessful. Definitely salt, but so different than even the salt blowing through the windows, fresh from the ocean mist. One day early on all that time ago she had discovered that it was seeping not through the anchors from above, but from the anchors themselves. Puzzling further her already mysterious circumstance. So much salt. So many rusting anchors.
This routine kept her mind alert, active, and her joints as fluid as possible given her limited access to movement. While day 18 came and went eventless, she’d held strongly in her memory the meadow. The grass. The cliff. The wind. What does it mean?
And she couldn’t explain why gravity hasn’t pulled the anchors through her, crushing her like she flattens piles of salt. A long time ago she filed away this question into the corner of her mind where she stored these unanswerable dilemmas. Accessible, yet hidden, organized, contained. She couldn’t bear their enormous weight swinging around her mind like wrecking balls.
On day 20, she felt something soften against her. Craning her neck to the right, challenging muscles to do what they hadn’t in so very long, she saw it. Past the tiny piles of days, through a small crevice between anchors, a pile of rusty salt. Adjusting her eyes to the darkness at which she gazed, pearls of light cast like stars onto the anchors from the mid afternoon light through the window, it appeared to be a large piece of crumbled anchor. The anchors are salt? She wanted to touch it, but how? Her arms were in fact quite long for her height, but it would still be a stretch and she didn’t know how the girth of her arm would even fit through the mound of rusting anchors all the way down past her knee. In a swift motion before her muscles and mind could argue, she thrust her fist into the mound through the crevice. Instant moisture meant blood, already sticky touching thumb to forefinger. Thick. She felt downward, ignoring the blood, her left side body aching from the unfamiliar motion, finally touching skin. Rolling her fingers over the skin, searching for knobby bone, there. Hard to know for sure due to her low visibility when she’d spotted the rusty salt pile, guessing by feel she thought there was only an inch or two more until she reached it. Another more jerky motion this time, thrusting with determination, her hand plunged into a pile that felt like salt at the same time a muscle in her side gave way, forcing a high pitched screech from her mouth.
She didn’t care, pain was at least a feeling, and crumbling anchors were far more important. Though more cautiously and slowly now, she rotated her wrist and wiggled her fingers, caressing the salt. Beaming with newfound hope and curiosity, she pulled out a handful to visualize this development. What is happening? Flaky orange-brown specks permeated what she held in her hand, and she licked it just to be sure. Salt. Then she spit it out because she knew better than to swallow rust. An idea flickered through her mind, but she wasn’t ready to put all of her hope into this one suspicion.
She let the next couple of days pass, simply observing. And meditating. That colorful spine, those memorized letters, they spoke to her from across the room. Now the energy she felt wasn’t just from the anchors, it was like she was giving energy back to them. No longer just receiving, now able to give. She reconnected with her inner strength that had become so fragmented, disjointed, dislodged, no longer part of her. With it, a strong intuition filled her gut, and by day 23 her sense of smell had returned.
She couldn’t remember the day she noticed she could no longer smell, only that it had been so long, too long, since the fresh, salty breeze brought with it notes of eucalyptus and jasmine and honeysuckle. More signs of life. Invigorating like a surge of vitamins to her blood stream.
By far the most compelling series of developments since several more rusty clumps of salt had collapsed onto her, leaving behind gaps where anchors used to be, she gathered her strength, clung to the floor as tightly as she could with her dry, cracked hands on either side of her rib cage, and pushed. Little by little her body started to slide out from beneath the heap. Bruised skin and rumpled, distorted muscles finally felt the energizing sunshine after a long, dark, confusing existence.
Finally free, she cried. Wept. Tears made salty streams down her cheeks, puddles on the floor between her crossed legs. After a while, she rose, walked out onto her front porch, allowing the sun to hold her, revitalize her. Then she slowly strolled the edges of her property overlooking the ocean, appreciating her freedom of movement, and that’s when she saw it. The meadow from her dream. Just beyond the rolling hills.
Instantly she knew. As quickly as she could while her muscles regained their composure, she returned home. Stepping through the threshold into the living room was like another world she had long forgotten. No anchors. No salt. Only the scabs on her knuckles revealed that dark, lonely past. She drew in a long, deep, comforting breath while the sun grazed her face through the window, tasting the salty breeze. Salt will never taste the same again.
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