Peeler
DAY 2
Birdsong through the early morning sunlight woke Ari. The warm, hazy canvas was dotted with leftover rain, and her whole body ached from the cold, face and eyes weak and overwhelmed. Paul’s arms were still around her, just as they had been when she’d fallen asleep.
He was wide awake, watching her, when she looked up at him. ‘How long have you been awake?’ she asked.
‘Not long.’ The lack of tiredness in his tone suggested otherwise. ‘How did you sleep?’
‘How…? Not fucking great, Paul.’ Ari sat up and folded her arms, incredulous. ‘What the fuck happened last night?’
Paul didn’t answer; didn’t react in any way. He simply watched her, as if waiting for more. ‘Nothing happened,’ he eventually said. ‘I got up to pee at some point. Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, that’s what I fucking mean. I woke up and you were gone, and none of your gear had gone with you. I…’
She paused, studying his clothes. His sleepwear was damp, his hair slightly slick. Ari’s was similar, though definitely worse; everything she’d worn out in the rain was still soaked where she’d taken it off, the same as her hair.
‘Where did you go, Paul?’ she asked again, a little more defeated. ‘Please, don’t lie to me. Just tell me what you were doing.’ He didn’t answer, just watching her, straight-faced. At the very least, he didn’t look, or smell, drunk. ‘You made a joke about bringing a flask with you yesterday. Was that… not really a joke?’ she asked, blunter than she wanted to be, but it was necessary.
Paul considered her words, blank-faced, before smiling. ‘Of course it was a joke. I just got up to pee.’
She scoffed and turned away, feeling tears coming again but not wanting him to see, keeping them in. She was sick of crying; she’d lost enough tears last night, lost enough over him in their years together. ‘If you’re lying to me…’
Paul shifted and put his hands on her shoulders from behind. She hated how easily it calmed her, how reassuring it was. ‘I’m telling you the truth. Maybe you had a bad dream, and you got confused, or mixed up somehow.’
Ari inhaled shakily, eyes closed. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Paul. Please.’
‘I would never, sweetheart. I mean it.’
Ari looked at her wet gear sitting in the corner. ‘I saw your footprints. You… you didn’t even put your shoes on. I called out for you so many times; I waited for so long.’ She looked at him again. ‘I mean it, Paul. Do not fuck with me. Did you drink anything last night?’
Something in his gaze resembling guilt or sorrow stared back at her, and she fought to keep her tears from falling. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. I don’t know what happened; I was in a rush to get out there, so I didn’t bother with the gear. I wasn’t out there for very long. You must’ve gotten confused, somehow, and that’s why you were out there for a while. But, I’m fine, and so are you; that’s what’s important.’
Ari’s lip trembled, looking for any hint of lying in his features. After a few moments she sighed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He returned the embrace and they held each other.
‘I’m… just glad you’re okay,’ Ari whispered, still holding her tears in.
‘Me too,’ Paul said.
*****
While eating a quick breakfast and packing up their camp, Ari continued to question Paul, but he continued to insist everything had been normal, and his answers came down to her being confused. She had woken up from some forgotten nightmare before she went looking for him, but it had all seemed so real. Even when she asked about the headlamps not working, he said they hadn’t replaced the batteries since their last trip – a long time ago – and it made sense they’d finally died.
She couldn’t remember the last time there had been awkward silence between them; at least, she didn’t want to remember. It had been before the Paul she knew now, before he’d committed to getting better. With the new Paul, whenever they had any kind of tension, one of them would speak up to begin the process of figuring out the issue. The previous night left her feeling uneasy.
Back on the trail, their hike was the same as the previous days’, with the exception of Ari’s scattered thoughts. She walked at her own pace, Paul inevitably falling behind, as he’d desired. She tried to wait for him, not wanting him out of earshot.
Frustrated from waiting for him every hundred meters or so, she decided to slow her pace to walk alongside him, making it easier to watch him. She’d make sure he was safe, but also look for anything suspicious; despite trusting him, his story of urgently needing to urinate still left her wanting.
She chewed on some trail mix while waiting, leaning on her pack against a tree. He trudged up with heavy breaths, face sweating and red.
‘We should walk together for a while,’ Ari said. Paul’s eyes were on the ground, and remained there as he continued walking. ‘Paul?’ she asked. He ignored her – he was too close to not have heard her – and walked straight past. ‘Hey!’ Ari stomped up to him and grabbed his hand. She dropped it just as fast, shocked that his skin was freezing.
Paul finally acknowledged her, stopping and turning with a blank expression. He kept his pack on.
‘Don’t ignore me,’ Ari said, incredulous and annoyed. Neither seemed willing to close the space between them.
Paul’s empty expression stayed for a few moments, until the corners of his mouth slowly lifted into a forced smile. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said, his tone completely mismatching his face.
‘What are you doing? Stop that,’ she said, unnerved by his grin. He obeyed, his expression disappearing in an instant. ‘I’m going to slow down to walk with you. I’m… I’m worried about you.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine.’ His empty demeanour suggested otherwise.
‘I get it, but… I just want to spend some time with you, as well. Maybe we can…’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘I told you, I’m staying behind you. I don’t want anything happening where I can’t see you. It’s important to me.’
She waited, but he was silent. Blank. ‘I know.’ She tried hide her annoyance. ‘But I don’t want anything happening to you, either.’
‘I don’t expect you to have to wait on me all day. I won’t hold you back. You go as fast as you want, and I’ll catch up.’ He stared at her a little longer, his lip twitching once or twice as if contemplating whether to try another smile, before turning back the way they’d come from. He took a couple of steps and stopped, turning back to her, waiting.
She shook her head, shocked. ‘What the hell is going on with you?’
Now he did smile again, as forced as the previous grin. ‘What do you mean?’
Ari stomped over to him and folded her arms. ‘I want to smell your breath.’
‘Okay’. His blank expression betrayed nothing of what he thought of the request.
He opened his mouth and breathed. The air hit Ari’s face like a truck – a garbage truck. It was the worst he’d ever had, worse than any morning or hangover breath she’d withstood in the past. She winced and turned away. ‘Jesus, Paul, did you brush your teeth this morning?’ she said, unable to help a small smile. Though horrible, he didn’t smell like booze.
‘I must have forgotten.’ No sign of amusement, nor shame; nothing.
‘Paul,’ Ari said, grabbing his cold hand. ‘You know you can talk to me, right? Even if you’ve done something bad. If you’ve been drinking again, I’ll… I won’t be mad, okay? I probably would’ve been last night, but not anymore. I just want you to be honest with me. You can be. You know that, right?’
Paul looked at her, blank, and nodded. ‘I know.’ He took her other hand, and she tried not to wince at the icy touch. ‘Please, just go on ahead, at your pace. I don’t want to slow you down. It’s important to me.’
After a number of moments, with a sigh, Ari nodded. ‘Fine. If it’s that important. I’ll go on ahead.’
While she pulled her pack back on, fastened the clips, and took a drink of water, Paul watched her, expressionless. She waited expectantly for another moment, another chance for him to say something, anything, but he stayed silent, and she nodded and turned to continue down the trail, annoyed.
He’d been like this in the past – recoiling to handle his feelings before speaking to her about it – but not since before quitting the alcohol. If space was what he needed, Ari would give it to him; maybe he was asking her to trust him, without actually saying it. It’s something he would do. He would talk to her when he was ready, as he always did. She just hoped it would be sooner rather than later.
His footsteps faded as she walked on ahead, only turning back once to see him distantly following.
It hurt Ari to leave Paul behind, especially after last night, but if it was what he wanted – what he needed – she’d oblige him. She still trusted him, even if he was behaving strangely, and she could show him that. Even when she was so far ahead she couldn’t hear him anymore, she wanted to stop and wait, but she pushed forward.
Ari fell back into the trance she often found herself in while hiking, too wrapped up in her thoughts to consider much else, and she had more to think about than usual. When she focused back on her surroundings, the sun was high in the sky, the scenery mostly unchanged from endless trees only separated by the dirt and grass trail.
Paul would be a while catching up; she still didn’t want to go too far, and decided to stop and wait.
A tree on the edge of the trail looked wide enough to be comfortable to lean on. Her pack fell from her shoulders after loosening it and she put it by the tree, about to sit before something caught her eye in the forest.
She’d seen plenty of wildlife over the last two days – birds flying and searching for food, rabbits darting through the grass, lizards sunbaking and scuttling away – but something looked odd about this. Ari stepped through the brush for a closer look, but froze when she identified what it was.
A rabbit, as she’d suspected, dead. Not only dead, but… something worse.
Instinctively, she looked back towards the trail and called out for Paul, but he was much too far to hear her. He wouldn’t have been able to do much anyway, apart from pick up the carcass and throw it at her as a joke.
She looked back at the rabbit and gasped. The face seemed to be pointing directly at her. Had it been facing her a moment ago? Her first instinct was to help the creature, but she looked closer and noted its empty eye sockets, its deflated body. It was definitely dead.
In fact, it was just the animal’s skin.
She crouched to examine it closer. Maybe someone had been hunting rabbits and skinned the poor thing… but why leave the skin behind? The pelt appeared fully intact, no sign of cuts or blood; perfectly clean. Ari didn’t know much about hunting game, but if a person did this, they’d spent far too long ensuring the skin stayed completely intact to just leave it behind.
Maybe the animal had died of natural causes – there were no visible wounds or trauma – and the insects had gotten to it first, ants eating the flesh from the inside out. But there were no ants crawling around the corpse now; they wouldn’t have left the skin so pristine, either.
When she stood back up, uneasy from the carcass’s face still pointed in her direction, she realised ants weren’t the only thing absent. The entire forest seemed to have silenced. There was no birdsong, as there had been all morning; no chirping insects, distant calls from other wildlife. Only the wind pushing through the leaves above.
She shivered as she walked back to her pack. Putting it on, she looked back into the forest and the rabbit skin, not wanting to be anywhere near this place any longer, though she couldn’t explain why; it was just a dead animal, of which she’d seen plenty before.
Still, she looked down the trail where Paul would come from, no sign of him, and decided she’d continue on and wait for him further up. She’d slow her pace, now, to not get too far ahead of him – but only once her unease was gone.
She walked for a few hours before stopping. She’d tried to focus on her breathing the entire time, to quiet her thoughts – now not only concerned for Paul, but sufficiently creeped out by the rabbit, trying to rationalise what she’d seen. When the sun had slid low enough in the sky to hint at late afternoon, obscured by clouds growing thicker throughout the day, she found a spot off the trail to camp.
Her first task was to make sure there were no other strange corpses around. It was clear; she never thought she’d appreciate the sound of nature as much as she did then.
She set up as much of the campsite as she could – half of the tent and her own sleeping gear – trying, and failing, to silence her unhelpful thoughts. She constantly worried about Paul, debated with herself if leaving him behind really was the best thing. He’d asked for it, of course, but had it been wise to actually listen to him in his current state? He’d wanted her to trust him, but had that just been a ploy to get her to leave him alone, so he could drink without judgement or interference?
She shook her head, pouring some water into the pot to boil. No, she trusted him. She had to. That’s all there was to it.
To take her mind off things, she drank tea and read a book she’d brought, leaning on a tree. Against her intent, the words on the pages began to blur and merge and she drifted off, exhausted from the day’s walking and events.
*****
Nothing pierced the vista of nature around her – the wind and birds and insects still sang their songs – but something woke her. She hadn’t heard Paul approaching, asleep or not, but when she lazily opened her eyes to a darker sky and he stood over her, she screamed.
‘Fuck,’ she yelled, once the shock faded and she realised it was him. ‘How long have you been here? You scared the shit out of me.’
He didn’t say a word. Hands by his sides, face completely devoid of emotion as it had been that morning, he stood and watched her.
Ari stood. ‘Did you at least finish putting the tent up?’
Up close, she saw he was covered in sweat. His shirt was soaked through, beads running down his forehead and face. She would’ve believed he could have found a nearby pond and gone for a swim, if the distinct smell didn’t betray him.
‘Jesus, did you sprint for an hour to get here?’ Paul didn’t answer; he hadn’t moved since she woke up, except his eyes following her every move. She shrugged expectantly. ‘Are you going to say anything?’
After a few moments, he opened his mouth. ‘Thank you for going on ahead. It’s important to me.’
She sighed. ‘Maybe you should change, hang out your dirty clothes. I’ll get started on dinner.’
He obeyed – watching her as she retrieved the food – and stripped, digging through his pack for his sleepwear.
The sun set and the clouds turned from grey to black while they sat in front of the small pot of boiling soup. Ari watched the food as much as she did Paul, still blank, silent, and covered in sweat. Dark patches already grew around the armpits and chest of his nightshirt, his hair damp.
She wanted him to speak, but knew he wouldn’t. ‘Are we just going to sit here in silence all night?’
His empty eyes darted from the pot to her. ‘You want to talk?’
She scoffed. ‘Yes. What is going on with you?’
He just watched her, empty eyes, empty expression becoming less frustrating and more concerning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t lie to me. Just tell me. Are you drinking?’
‘What do you mean?’ he repeated. Even his voice had lost all emotion.
‘You’re fucking out of it, Paul, and you’re sweating like you’ve ran a marathon. I don’t know what else could be happening. If you aren’t drinking, then… Then I’m even more worried. Did you get bitten by something, or, eat something bad? I don’t know… What’s going on?’
His lips slowly spread into a grin, so forced it looked like the effort caused him pain, yet none of his other features moved. When was the last time he’d even blinked? ‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’
‘Stop!’ she said, opening her hands at him. He immediately dropped the grin, as if in relief. ‘Clearly you are not fine. You need to talk to me, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to help you.’
‘Really, I’m fine,’ he said again, and though something had finally changed in his tone, Ari hated it, as if the words had been painful to push out.
She gave up while they ate, angrily spooning the soup into her mouth. Paul had always been reserved, always wanted to figure out his own problems before allowing anyone else to assist, but this was ridiculous. If he wasn’t drinking, he was physically unwell. If Ari knew how to help, she would, but he had to let her, and he was still intent on keeping her completely in the dark.
By the time they’d eaten and washed up, the sun had set, and the trees were bathed in darkness around them. They headed for bed, Paul climbing into the tent first, Ari following. She wanted to suggest he change again, his shirt wet, but he’d either ignore her anyway, or, at this rate, just sweat through whatever else he put on.
Rain tapped against the dark tent above them. Paul lay perfectly still on his back, his chest barely rising and falling with shallow breaths. Ari had her back turned to him, frustrated thoughts racing, as the rain picked up. When she decided to try once more for the night, the hammering rain was louder than their breathing.
She rolled over and sighed. ‘Paul?’ she whispered over the rain. ‘Are you awake?’
Nothing changed in his breathing or movements, but in a normal voice he said, ‘yes.’
‘If you won’t talk to me, fine, but I can’t just lie here like this. I’ll go crazy.’ She shuffled over to be closer to him, just wanting to show him some comfort, some love; that was all she could do. But she sucked in her breath and recoiled away as soon as she was against him. ‘Jesus, you’re so cold!’
He didn’t move. ‘I’m fine.’
You’re soaked in sweat and freezing.’ She sat up, holding his forehead, but couldn’t for more than a few moments it was so chilled. ‘Okay, that’s it. You have some kind of fever, or something, and you’re not okay. What happened today? Did you get bitten by a snake or something? You need help. Medical help.’
She searched through her pack at the foot of the tent for her headlamp, before remembering it was as dead as the phones and the charging brick. Paul’s icy hand landed on her shoulder. He was sitting up, too, though Ari hadn’t heard him move at all.
‘Stop.’ He spoke evenly; he should’ve been shivering. ‘It’s dark and raining out there.’
Ari’s impatience grew, but so did her relief that he was actually speaking logically. Yet, in the darkness only illuminated by slivers of moonlight peeking through the clouds and trees, she knew he was not okay. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Don’t. Lets sleep, and worry about it in the morning.’ He lay down.
Ari didn’t know what was more frustrating; his nonchalance about whatever was afflicting him, or the fact that he was right. There was little they could do at the moment, in the middle of the night and a heavy rainstorm. There weren’t any other people around to ask for help – they hadn’t seen a single other person on the trail all day – and would have better luck in the morning.
She lay back down, concerned, angry, annoyed, too worked up to even think about sleep. Paul, however, appeared to instantly return to his even, shallow breathing, as if flipping a switch, which only annoyed her more.
She’d worry about him all night – especially his low temperature right beside her – but she tried to focus on the rain and her breathing to get some sort of rest. She’d need it for tomorrow if they were going to find help.
NIGHT 2
Ari woke, regretting to see it was still dark, rain still pattering on the canvas. She felt she’d barely even slept, but when she rolled over to hold Paul for some comfort, she was instantly wide awake.
He was gone.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said, pulling on her shoes and raincoat. ‘Paul!’ she yelled and unzipped the tent flap. ‘Where are you?! Don’t do this to me again!’
She peered through the rain from the tent, black drops and tree trunks filling her vision. Paul’s footsteps were clear in the dirt, fresh, but he’d left the tent barefoot again.
‘Goddammit, Paul!’ Ari shouted as she left the tent, pulling her hood over her face. She focused on his tracks, angry and terrified, cold and wet.
After watching the ground for a few steps, she stopped and gasped, a chill running down her body. ‘What the fuck,’ she said.
It was dark, but she didn’t move her eyes, didn’t blink, letting her vision soak in the corpse. Another animal, bigger than a rabbit – a possum, maybe – but just the skin. A deflated, emptied corpse, the outside layer fully intact. And the face, the emptied skull, looked like it was facing directly up at her.
She couldn’t look away, as if waiting for it to move, waiting to see who’d crack first, until she heard something above the rain.
It was distant and difficult to hear, but as she left the animal skin and followed Paul’s footsteps, the noise grew louder and clearer. It sounded like moaning, the moans of someone being tortured to the point that their throat had begun to give out. The cries lasted a few seconds at a time, forced into the air with great difficulty from whatever was producing it. Ari’s skin crawled from the cold and the sound. ‘Paul?!’ she screamed, jogging along his tracks.
Between every few moans, a louder, even more forced sound pierced the night, a prolonged rasping cough or choke, violent enough to destroy a person’s throat. The moaning and rasping continued, growing louder and more unsettling as Ari got closer and closer, following Paul’s tracks.
‘Oh my god,’ Ari mumbled when she finally found him.
In the rain and darkness, Paul was naked on his hands and knees, back painfully arched up almost to the point of breaking. His chin and chest were covered in mud and vomit, remnants of the soup they’d eaten for dinner and what must’ve been stomach acid, for in between his heaving breaths – the moaning Ari had heard – his spine would bend down the other way, pushed to its limit, and he would open his mouth, producing the sickening rasping she’d heard, almost hurting her ears at this proximity, accompanied by a flood pouring from his mouth, some thin as water, some thicker than oil.
Ari put her hand over her mouth, tears mixing with rain. She couldn’t speak, terrified. After another round of horrible rasping, vomiting, and moaning, Paul’s head snapped to face her. Even in the rain, she could see his lips form the same grin he’d been forcing all day, rain and spit and mucus dripping from his chin. In the dark, his skin looked grey and loose, eyes sunken and dark, despite his wide open eyelids. When his eyes met hers, the only thing that scared her more than whatever illness she was witnessing was his same vacant expression; nothing behind his eyes, his smile, his cheeks, anything.
‘Don’t worry,’ Paul said, barely audible over the rain, the sickening hoarseness of his voice, each word accompanied by a sharp, grating inhale. ‘I’m fine.’
There was no further mistaking that Paul was in genuine danger, drinking or not. Ari ran to him and lifted him to his feet, ignoring the smell of vomit, and let him lean on her to drag him back to the campsite. She didn’t say a word – what could she say? – while she dove into the tent to find his sleepwear. It was soaked in sweat as if they’d been sitting all night in the rain. She found a spare towel to wipe his mess away, but when she left the tent again, he was a few steps away, crumpled in the grass and mud, vomiting again with that sound that Ari regretted made her want to run as fast and far as she could.
Instead, she retrieved his water-resistant hiking jacket and walked over to him. ‘Paul, I’m scared,’ she yelled over the rain, in between his retching. ‘What’s happening to you? Please, at least put this on.’
In his condition, he took the coat but was coughing and gagging again before he could do anything with it. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said, his voice scratching through his throat.
‘I’m not fucking sleeping with you out here like this.’ She crouched and put a hand on his cold, wet back.
‘We can’t do anything…’ he paused to retch again, but the amount of expelled fluid seemed to be lessening. ‘Anything right now, while it’s raining, and dark.’ Every word he pushed from his chest and lips sounded as if it cost immense pain and effort. ‘We’ll figure it out in the morning.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Ari couldn’t leave him with whatever illness was plaguing him, but some small, quiet part of her didn’t want to be near him, either. ‘I can help you.’
‘No.’ He gagged again. ‘You can’t.’ Another cough, a trail of spit hanging from his lip and chin. ‘Please. Get some rest. I’ll explain in the morning.’
Ari wiped her eyes, her cheeks, both covered in tears and rain, shaking her head, but Paul didn’t say another word.
When she was in the tent, wrapped up in her sleeping bag, she felt awful for following his suggestion. Yet, hearing him periodically vomiting, retching in the rain, the sound tearing through her ears, she was grateful to no longer directly witness it – but that relief only made her feel worse.
After an exhausting day, sleep should have come easy for Ari, but every time her thoughts faded enough to drift off, the rain a gentle lullaby, Paul’s horrible noises would start up again, a combination of horrendous gagging, wheezing coughs, grating groans. Her eyes would snap open, and she’d contemplate going back out there to help him, even just to comfort him with her presence. Yet, something stopped her, and she couldn’t bring herself to; only roll into her sleeping bag, covering her ears, squeezing her eyes tight to not let tears escape.
Finally, she awoke again to a different sound: the tent flap unzipping, someone climbing inside. She didn’t know how long he’d been out there; she’d fallen asleep again, for what felt like a little longer. She rolled over to see Paul in the darkness patting himself dry with the towel.
Ari didn’t know what to say. She had so many things to say, to ask, to scream at him. ‘Are… are you okay?’ was all she could manage. It sounded stupid even to her.
‘I feel better.’ Paul pulled on his sleepwear and climbed into the sleeping bag. He sounded better, but only slightly. There was still a scratch in his words. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’
‘Paul?’ Ari said, crying for him, his safety and health, and crying for herself, how scared she was, how awful she felt for leaving him out there. She collapsed on him, their bodies pressed together in their sleeping bags, her tears rolling onto his chest. Even through the bags, she could feel how cold he was, yet he wasn’t shivering. Any scent that should’ve remained from his vomiting was also completely absent. ‘What is happening?’
‘We’ll talk in the morning,’ he said, putting his arms around her, and for the second night in a row, Ari fell asleep crying under his embrace.