The Dive
By Ethan Voorhees
“Will you dive?”
A monotone metronome voice came from over Ale’s shoulder, triggering a visceral, instinctual jump. With a turn, he swung his arm—clean cut through empty air. Nobody was behind him. The High Tide Bar’s only bathroom had an occupancy of just one: Alessandro. The faucet released a steady waterfall of metallic non-potable water into the browning porcelain sink. Ale’s curly hair, black with brown curls, lost all of its oaky notes. The water he had been running over his head had slicked his locs down, pressed against the top of his head. He looked at himself in the mirror: the corners of his hairline steadily receding. And he is only in his thirties. Fuck.
Below the cracked mirror: EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS—
Hair not hands, he joked to himself. He pushed his fingers into his hair and vibrated his hands, wicking away oil onto his skin and water into the air. Ale made his way to the bathroom door and ran shoulder first into paneling. He forgot to unlock it. A mix of tiredness, liquor, and the recency of that event with the doper on those weight-loss oils who died in the bathroom—name he couldn’t even recall—that turned the bathroom into single occupancy made him forget to unlock the door.
When he stepped out into the main room, the gentle red lights calmed him. The red centerpiece swung with a modest gait. This meant one of two things: one of the regulars had left the hookah corner for a refill of booze and had cast a breeze onto the fixture, or the High Tide had new guests.
He walked behind the bar. New guests.
“Ale?” The man questioned, reaching over the bar to tilt Ale’s brass employee nametag up to the only light in the room. The tag blushed with tarnish. “Your parents named you after beer? Some alcoholics.”
Ale stared back, channeling a dead fish gaze. This one was hardly sober, but had the asinine vocal cadence of a frat boy. After hundreds of back-to-back eight-hour shifts at the High Tide, dubbed “dives” by his co-workers and he, such a person didn’t surprise Ale.
The man leaned far too forward and dragged his Dan Flashes Hawaiian shirt across the bar, picking up whatever Ale had spilled that night. The shirt was black, with cream floral swirls. The man inhaled, catching a whiff of the hair of the dog radiating from Ale’s breath. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh?”
Ale outstretched and wrung out his bruised wrists. Too many haphazard falls on drunk nights. “My friends nicknamed me ‘Ale,’ short for Alessandro. But you’re batting six hundred now.” Ale folded napkins into taut triangular origami. They were pristine fine China compared to the rest of the bar—nobody ever ate at the Tide.
“Ah, so your friends are the alcoholics. Birds of a feather flock together, then?”
“I haven’t figured yet if I like the nickname for the beer or the way it sounds coming off your wife’s lips.” Ale paused, giving his beatdown time to sink in. “You still have sixteen questions left, or are you ready to order?”
A lady hung off the man’s arm, slinked back, attempting to be invisible. Ale found solace in this, glad that she latched onto this prick for tonight.
The man slipped his way into a shit-eating grin. “I think I’ll drink some Fireball tonight. On the rocks.” Fireball, on the rocks? The man shifted on the stool and Ale caught a glimpse of his lower half: distressed jeans, nearly bleached, and maroon leather Oxfords. No socks. What a jackass.
“You dress like you’re going through a mid-life crisis, order whiskey like you graduate college in a month, and drink it like you’re coming into your forties. Pick a stereotype, you know?”
The man grumbled and then balled up his fist and then coughed before clearing his throat. He mimicked Ale’s cadence: “You dress like an alcoholic but judge other people’s whiskey like a millennial liquor snob. Pick a stereotype, you know?” The man accompanied his mockery with a tilt of the head pointing out Ale’s untucked white linen dress shirt. Linen was the trick—thin, coarse, airy. Temperatures rose in the bar; the place was always hot and humid. Could wear linen even in Death Valley.
In the back right corner of the room, a four-top consisting of three women and a man giggled. They smoked. Regulars.
“What are they smoking?” the man asked.
“Nothing, Officer,” Ale teased. “Hash, I’d guess. I don’t smoke that shit.
The women hmm’d.
“A hookah. It’s weed—pot. You don’t know? The devil’s lettuce?”
The man grinned unnaturally wide until the corners of his mouth creased and cracked like dried lips. “That’s the one.” He pointed at Ale, tipped his head downward into a nod, drank the last of his Fireball by sucking it from the glass using his lips as a straw, and slid his glass forward for a refill. The motion felt newly choreographed to Ale, as if this were all on a big stage and the man was trying to encode the way to move like a human for the very first time.
The man slowly licked his lips. “Your type has always been an interest of mine, Mr. Sandro, Sir.”
“My kind?” Ale asked, preparing to strike a nationalist across the chin.
“Bartenders. Your type sits back and consumes the sweet, drunken misery of the patrons that enter. And you get to taste the uncontrollable freedom and emotion that comes with liquor. But, as for you: why work in a place like this?”
Ale slid his silver ring up and down his ring finger. “Rent—it’s tough. And I live with my fiancé, Alina. We’re expecting.”
“Betrothed to an alcoholic.” The man nodded and stroked an imaginary beard.
“If I don’t make money, what’s the point in keeping me around?”
“You’ve tried your hand at other things before, haven’t you?” The man’s style suddenly shifted: now, he was an attorney, performing a key cross examination.
“Sales.”
The man waited for Ale to provide more details. Ale’s shoulders began to ache.
“Weight-loss oil. Mix it in with your meals, just three times a day. Clinically proven to make you lose—”
“Blah, blah, blah. You must think me clinically stupid if you expect me to buy that shit. You’re no salesman—you’re a snake oil salesman.”
Ale felt his face heat up. The man sounded like Alina. Ale, she would start, you’re a fuckin’ cheat, Ale. Sellin’ snake oil, Ale. Rippin’ people off, Ale. Killin’ them people, Ale. Won’t be married to no fucking scammer, Ale. She said it all in her country bumpkin accent, too.
“I sold suck to suckers; they got what was coming.”
The man, a dull look plastered across his face, said, “You tempted them?”
Ale felt as if his skin were bubbling.
“So, besides me being here, how’s your dive been going?” the man asked.
Ale froze.
Diving was an inside reference, one that only people who worked the Tide knew. Fucks sake, it was High Tide’s own Colonel Sander’s famous recipe. Doing a double shift, back-to-back, was doing a dive: the longer the night went on, the deeper you sink into booze and tiredness. On dives, there was no drinking on the job, just the job.
“You’ve worked here before? You know someone who worked here?”
The man smiled an innocent, teethy smile. God, his teeth were perfect. White as bone. “No, never. So, how’s your dive been going?”
Ale reached across the bar and gripped the man’s collar, his knuckles whitening into irregular snowy mountaintops. “I’m fed up with you—”
The man held his hands up, pausing Ale. “Piss break. Wait here for me, won’t you?” he asked the woman.
She nodded.
When the man walked into the bathroom Alina didn’t fumble with her purse. Instead, she immediately got to work, giving this prick what he deserved.
“You see his watch,” Ale asked Alina. “Worth more than the arm it’s strapped to. I’m keeping it.”
“No. You’re sell-ing it.”
Ale was far too happy, the man’s fate decided, to bicker back and forth. “I call any golden crowns, then. We’ll pluck them from his mouth!”
She looked from her purse and stared into Ale’s eyes. “You’re silly.”
A blush climbed its way onto Ale’s cheeks.
Then, she found it. Alina pulled out a small plastic baggie of white, unevenly crushed powder. An amateur’s job. She was careful to deposit the substance in the whiskey surrounding the ice. Ale could hardly watch. One misstep at this phase—God forbid one visible sprinkle of Rohypnol—and everything is fucked. Instead, he stared down the door to the bathroom, expecting it to swing open any moment.
“There, there!” We’re good. Relax. Relax,” she said and then took two ragged, deep breaths, clutching her side.
Ale gave her a take it easy worried look.
Then, the bathroom door swung open, and the mark returned. The air in the room was tense. The mark brought his drink up to his face and glanced at the top of his ice cube.
A mound of white powder. Right there. Dandruff on a dog.
“Huh,” he said. His face dropped and stared first at Ale, then at Alina, and then once more at Ale. It rose back into a smile. “It’s snowing.” He swirled the drink and downed it without a hint of stopping.
Ale’s heart began to race, and a shortness of breath followed immediately after. The air in High Tide grew thicker every moment. He patted the outside of his pant pockets in desperation, looking for his carton of cigarettes. And the he took out a lighter, the carton, plucked one from the container, and put it back. The flint clicked and clicked and clicked and clicked. Not a spark came.
“I’m—I’m,” Ale was slurring his words and all in the room except for the unlit cigarette became visually sharp, edges raised like a topography map. Just a panic attack, Ale told himself. He waddled or limped or whatever the hell Grandma Jackie did towards the bathroom door. “I’m stepping into the bathroom. If you need something, reach across the bar and get it yourself.”
When Ale shoulder checked the bathroom door, it flew open into an alleyway before colliding with the opposing building. He stepped out into a gentle rain, some may even call it a misting. The alley was narrow. Cramped. Claustrophobic. Ale drew his arms together like a boxer guarding his face to squeeze between the High Tide and the building. The door closed behind Ale, making hardly a sound. Then, the building across from him groaned and then slid with a metal scraping noise closer to High Tide, nearly hugging Ale. He glanced up at the sky, expecting a symphony of budding blue and white stars intermingling behind dark clouds. Instead, the building shot off into outer space, hundreds—no, thousands of stories tall.
Then, the alley door swung open once more. And the man walked out. “Need a light?” he asked Ale.
Ale blinked, his very reality deconstructing before his eyes. No match for a nicotine addiction. Ale brought his cigarette up to his lips, waiting for the familiar click of a lighter flint and steel. Instead, the man brought his fingertips to the tip of the cigarette and his flesh began to glow like a hot coal. Smoldering shavings fell into a muddy pile between the two men. Smoke was rolling. Ale, for the first time, stared into the man’s eyes: a natural redness—a chestnut brown strong on the chestnut and soft on the brown.
The buildings groaned and slid closer together once more.
Whatever the man was, he was no man. And he was here for Ale, who had tried to drug and rob some monster straight from hell—fuck, the thing had downed enough Rohypnol to sleep an elephant. But here it was. That creature.
“Your only offer is behind door number one,” the creature said to Ale.
“Door number one?” Ale then realized the creature was referring to the bathroom-alleyway hybrid door. His mind rushed with malicious thoughts: the creature would proposition him to kill Alina or everyone in the bar or himself.
Ale attempted to push through the door. A pressure met him. He pushed in and the door would push back, as if someone on the other side were holding it closed. Then, water began to leak. Inside, Ale heard it sloshing. He changed his strategy. Instead of pushing with his shoulder, he would push with his feet. He planted his feet on the paneling of the door into a wide-legged squat stance and pressed his back up against the groaning building. The snapped in an instant. A wave ran over the doorstop. Ale fell back, his waist on the ground, pants muddying and soaking, and back firmly resting against the building.
Even before Ale stood, he had caught a glimpse of the bar. The High Tide was in its highest tide ever. He stood and approached the door stop. The floor had become a cavernous pit, dark wooden walls mirroring the inside of the bar extended down as far as the eye could go. The floor: smooth concrete. The bar itself extended down like the stilts of a dock, secured to the bottom of the hole. The drink the creature had indulged himself with, Fireball, still sat on the counter. The water was a thin black, as if black paint smeared paintbrushes had been dipped, cleaned, and stripped of their oils in the water. Ale was unsure if the water itself bore that color, or if it simply mimicked the darkness of the walls. The bar now served no patrons. And the lights had gone. Even the red, seductive lights the sleezy owner had forked out cash for had gone out. The room had lost all color. Gray, gray, gray. High Tide was closed for the night.
Ale leaned over the edge and peered down. At the bottom, a laminated check was fastened to the floor by a chain. What the hell is this? Ale thought.
“No, nothing like Hell,” the creature responded. “Fate or justice, depending on your answer to my next question, has brought me to you. The amount on that check will make you faint. All your life you’ve been off the deep end. You’re a diver. Before you answer my question, think of Alina—think of that unborn baby: will you dive?”
At any other time, Ale would fly off the rails and smack the creature across its face, defying all its unholiness. But now he was drained. His arms ached and the tips of his appendages were growing colder by the minute. His fingertips were now numb. “I’ll drown,” Ale argued.
“It’s a drain. Pull the plug, drain the water, get your cash,” he said, a slyness encroaching on his face, pursing his lips. “I’ll even give you three tries.”
Ale crouched down, knees bowed, aching. From an arm’s distance away, the water seemed to slosh with a thick consistency that absorbed all. When it splashed up the wooden walls, it stained over the varnish, turning the wood a greyish black. He reached his hand down and scooped a handful of the black substance from the creature’s ocean. In his hands, it felt heavy and sticky. They ached holding the water.
“There goes your first try,” it called.
“I’ll dive,” he spoke, staring down into the water, his reflection staring back. He closed his eyes, forcing sore eyelids together.
Then, with a sudden splash, he dove.
From the moment he split the surface of the water, the liquid disoriented him—it was cold. Ice cold. And though he hadn’t felt it in his numb, swollen palms, he felt it in his stomach as he swallowed a mouthful of the substance. This was not water. Water has no taste. What the hell was giving the water—the liquid taste? His ribcage shuddered and his spine flexed until it cracked with the sound of crunching leaves, his body heaving to force the liquid out of his esophagus and into the black ocean surrounding him. The pressure was too much—no leak. When Ale opened his eyes, he saw no more than a few feet before him, his arms and fingers fading to black.
He tumbled upwards and then resurfaced. Reality struck like a frostbiting iron: he had hardly made it six feet deep. He gasped and spat and spat and gasped, the two behaviors overlapping until black liquid leaked from his nose. Everything burned—the cold frostbite burned, his nose burned, his muscles burned. This was an impossible dive.
“Second try,” the creature commented. “You dove deeper this time,” it teased.
Ale was far too busy still trying to empty his body of the liquid—he no longer called it water—to retort to the creature. The substance was more akin to a stew, the taste of gasoline steeping down below. There could be a future, Ale told himself. One where he wraps his fingers around that fucking chain and pulls the drain and walks away with all the money he would ever need. Switzerland and Norway and the Baltics. All the places they had dreamed of vacationing. He just needed to dive.
One more plunge.
Now, he was prepared. Ale stood and flexed his spine into the shape of a bow, letting his arms fall behind his back, his string—he would need a head start. He stepped back as far as he could. There, back against the wall, he swallowed deeply. Forward he went and dove into the water, smoothly slicing through the surface, his hands pressed together, the tip of his Swiss-army body. He pushed water aside, imagining his hands scooping the liquid and tossing the substance into the air behind him. Down he went. He was making progress, he could feel it—the pressure building, the liquid growing colder, the victory surmounting, the thing grabbing him.
Something grabbed him.
Ale froze and looked down at his wrist. A human hand, fingers wrapped loosely around his bones, tugged down. The body was rotting and waterlogged, flakes of flesh peeling off into the liquid, strands of the decedent women’s corpse falling out into the water. He was swimming in human stew—drinking human stew. He felt nauseous, his body tumbling in the way he had earlier. He shook his wrist, swollen but wrinkly flesh attempting to fight free of the flesh that gripped him. His wrist shook violently, twisting in a circular motion with the thrash of his arms. Then, it came free. Not her hand from his wrist, but her wrist from her body. Ale wore a corpse bracelet.
He screamed, bubbles aspirating the liquid in front of his mouth—there goes his oxygen. From the pressure of the water and the glimpse of the drain in the distance, he figured he had made it at least a few dozen feet deep. The drain was within sight. Without taking off his new bracelet, he struggled further down, the feeling of asphyxiation setting in. His vision vignetted. But the drain was there. His arms scooped and threw liquid with ferocity, pulling him closer and closer to the drain. And then, he wrapped his hands around the chain. The check floated at his waist—he couldn’t read the amount, but he could see the zeroes. Ale stopped counting at eight. Eight fucking zeroes. Bingo. His and Alina’s ticket to the good life—a life like the other half.
His lungs were on fire, experiencing the sensation of drowning for the first time. His lips slipped open and swallowed mouthfuls of human stew, desperate for a breath that wouldn’t come. Quickly. Quickly, he planted his feet on the concrete bottom of the ocean. He pulled—pulled—pulled. The drain won’t budge. He couldn’t pull the plug. Not like this, he begged himself. He dropped his knees lower and pressed with his legs, activating his thighs and calves and hips all in one motion.
No luck. Thousands of tons of human-remain infested stew sloshed above him; no person alive could pull this drain. Then, the check floated by once more—eight zeroes. He had counted every zero except for the one in front of the number: $0,000,000.00—the amount was large enough to make him faint, not from the amount of cash, but from the lack of oxygen.
Ale attempted to jump off the concrete floor. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of liquid held him down.
It was then that he realized something horrible: he hadn’t passed out from drowning; however, the pain would not subside. His entire body was screaming and on fire. Cells dying, lungs collapsing—but he wouldn’t die. God, just let him die, please. He attempted to vomit. The water held it inside.
He walked, body alight from an invisible flame, on the sea floor for a handful of minutes—hell, hours, even. He tried to alleviate the suffering.
First, he went to bash his skull against the walls. The water resisted his thrashes and slowed his suicide attempt into nothing more than a nudge on the forehead—an unknowing onlooker could have believed him to have fallen asleep on his arm. The sensation matched. Second, he clawed at his throat, digging nails into flesh and attempting to rip his carotid artery from his neck. This failed when his muscles fully depleted their oxygen supply. His third, most pathetic attempt, he realized, was to scream upwards, into the abyss of human remains, in the hopes that the creature would hear him. He did just that, sending his message out, before his body filled with the liquid. It rushed in like a bursting pipe. His body, though it filled with gallons of human seconds, did not expand. Instead, it seemed as though the liquid was lifted from his body through some demonic magic. He could drink endlessly; though, the taste never subsided.
He had an epiphany. Anything but that, he thought, scraping his tongue on the roof of his mouth in a desperate attempt to cleanse his palette.
Now, all he could do was slowly wade on the bottom.
Then, a voice above. It was the creature—the man, whatever the fuck he was. And it spoke: “You drank yourself into this situation.”
Not like this, please, Ale begged. The creature could surely hear him.
“Now, drink yourself out of it.”
There came a flickering spark in the middle of the room. Then: gone. And then, the bathroom door closed. A lock clicked.
He bathed in the large stock pot—cold. Ale took in a mouthful of human stew; a chunk caught between his teeth. It stretched like uncooked duck fat. Leathery, rippled chicken skin. He gnawed on it. And he swallowed, the first gulp of many.