Archive of Our Own

lockhart wakes up feeling like he's just been dragged out from underwater and back from death all over again, with water clogging his throat and spilling over his lips as he sputters to consciousness. but the deprivation tank is nowhere to be seen when he opens his eyes and finds himself instead lying on his back in his hospital bed, bathed only in the faint light of the moon outside his window.

slowly he tries to piece together the events that led to this, but all his delirious mind can focus on is an aching pain in his middle. he tries to move, but his stomach protests with a low, gurgling groan that sends a rush of primal fear up his spine. he feels horrifically bloated and even in the darkness he can see that his stomach is stretched round and taut beneath his shirt. even worse, he can feel something shifting within it and he knows it's more than just gas. the repressed memory of the eels swimming through the tube volmer forced down his throat flashes suddenly and vividly into his mind and all at once he knows they're inside him and he knows, oh, god he knows they're still alive. an overwhelming wave of nausea forces up a burp and another flood of water that dribbles pathetically from his lips to form a puddle on his pillow. if he doesn't sit up soon, he realizes vaguely, he's going to drown in his own drool.

with all his will he tries to push himself up on his elbows, but his cramping stomach renders his core muscles useless and prevents him from lifting himself. then a shadow falls over him and he feels a warm weight settle upon his thighs, extinguishing any hope he had of moving. his muffled noise of alarm is silenced by a pair of thin hands folding over his lips.

"shh."

it's hannah. he can see her pale face hovering over his in the darkness, her hair draping over him and tickling his forehead while she blinks down at him gravely. the familiar sight of her only barely relieves him, considering the ominous circumstances of her arrival.

"wh-- what's happening," lockhart slurs as she draws her hands away, fingers sliding over his wet lips.

"i'm trying to help you," she whispers in her mouselike tone as her fingers walk the outside of his sore throat and down to the sweaty collar of his shirt.

lockhart wants to trust her, but something about this situation feels so off. panic creeps into his frozen limbs and he wonders if he's going to have to fight her to get up. she's so waiflike that normally he'd be able to easily push her off but right now he just feels so weak, so heavy, like his body is already sinking into the mattress without her help. her hands move lower, dancing over his ribs and the heart pounding fearfully underneath them, until they reach the peak of his swollen stomach. she presses lightly into it and something inside him presses back, writhing just beneath his stretched-thin skin and sending another nauseous jolt through him. he begins to gag, struggling to breathe as more water mixed with bile pools in the back of his throat and blocks his airway. hannah quickly returns to his mouth, once again covering it with her hands.

"lockhart -- you have to keep them down."

lockhart can't believe what he's hearing. everything in his body is screaming for him to eject the abominations brewing within him, and yet here hannah is telling him calmly to do the exact opposite. he coughs wetly into her palm, sucking air in through his nose to fill his tortured lungs.

"i c-- i can't --" lockhart sputters beneath her hand.

"if you don't, he'll do it all over again," she warns him.

but lockhart can't think about the future right now; all he can fathom, in brain or body, is getting the eels out of him. another surge of warm water rushes up his  throat but hannah's hand stays glued over his mouth to keep it from escaping his lips, causing his cheeks to fill and inflate. a little liquid escapes the corner of his mouth and streaks out from beneath her fingers but that only seems to make her hold him tighter. increasingly frantic and quickly running out of oxygen, lockhart's eyes roll back into his head and his chest spasms and finally he's forced to swallow his own watery vomit to prevent himself from choking on it. just as the bulge of it disappears down his throat, hannah moves her hands to his purpling cheeks while he gasps for breath, stroking them as gently as someone who nearly just suffocated him can.

"that's it. keep them inside," hannah murmurs, reaching up to brush his hair back before returning her hands to the globe of his stomach. it groans at her touch, overstuffed and painful, and lockhart gives a moan of his own as her fingers crawl beneath his shirt to try and placate it.

"you have to accept it," is her twisted lullaby. "accept the cure."

lockhart shudders and terrified tears leak from the corners of his eyes to add to the water stains already on his pillow. the awful gurgling of his belly continues as hannah begins to massage it, pushing his shirt up to his straining ribcage as she climbs the curve. at first he can feel the eels inside him reacting to her touch by following it and pushing back from the other side of his flesh, but once she finds a steady pattern they seem to become tranced and go still, offering him some relief. she follows a circular path of motion with one hand on each side of his abdomen, brushing over the hipbones that cradle his distended stomach before tracing back upwards until her thumbs meet at his navel. occasionally she presses a burp out of him, sometimes along with a short gush of water which he swallows hopelessly back down out of fear of being smothered once again by hands that he now knows can be as cruel as they are comforting. though still shallow and labored, his breathing falls into rhythm with her movements, blowing hot over his clammy lips. his eyelids droop. the eels will digest, he reassures himself weakly. surely it'll all be over soon.

what he doesn't know is that these are no ordinary eels -- that they lived long in the waters and will live long inside him -- and that he'll always be able to feel them stirring even after their bodies have eventually decayed, a haunting horror he will never forget.