Untethered
by John See
One night in early May – I remember I’d left open my apartment’s bedroom window to let in the cool Chicago air – two vines sprouted from my shoulder blades while I slept. Over the next few days, the vines grew rapidly. It seemed as if they were reaching for each other, but something told me not to let them join. I knew somehow that the vines would become more powerful if they joined, so I tried to keep them apart by tucking them under my arms. They were only a foot or so long then, and thin, so they’d slip free whenever I moved my arms. Inevitably, the two vines found each other, weaving together to form a single vine that continued to grow.
After three days, when the vine was two inches in diameter and nearly four feet long, I went to St. Bernard’s. The emergency room staff could only shrug and refer me to a doctor they said might be able to help.
Dr. Millard was bald, with muttonchops, green-brown eyes, and a snout of a nose. I saw him several times over the next few weeks, and I was encouraged when he said confidently that he’d seen something like this before. When pressed, he mentioned a middle-aged patient who had phantom pain in a third arm that had been removed at birth.
Dr. Millard’s advice, I soon came to realize, was contradictory and imprecise. One time, he spoke to me as if the vine on my back weren’t real. I felt for it then, finding reassurance in its slipperiness. It had stretched across the examination room floor, climbed the sink, and wrapped around the faucet. I tugged gently, pulling it back toward me.
It was forever seeking water, and I had an unquenchable thirst.
“There’s no indication of dehydration, no medical need for additional water,” Dr. Millard said. “The vine, such as it is, won’t shrivel up if you drink less water. It won’t be satisfied if you drink more.”
Such as it is. That’s the kind of thing he said that made me begin to question his ability and his commitment to healing me. The vine continued to grow, despite Dr. Millard’s attempts at treatment. He soaked the vine in tomato soup, which was surprisingly soothing until the thirst worsened. He trimmed the tip of the vine with a toenail clipper, or Littauer cutting forceps, as he called it. The pain was so excruciating that I passed out, and when I came to he told me that the vine, then three inches thick and at least eight feet long, had knocked him off his stool.
Dr. Millard tried other treatments, increasingly absurd and painful, and none of them worked, so I stopped seeing him. I stopped seeking medical help of any kind and resigned myself to letting the problem, the vine, run its course.
Its urgency and insistence soon began to consume me. Admittedly, I became obsessed with the vine, but I think it’s also accurate to say the vine was obsessed with me. Sometimes, the vine’s incessant seeking and reaching made it so taut that it would vibrate when I moved, sounding like a plucked guitar string. When others heard the sound, they’d look at me, then look away.
At first, in an effort to appease the vine, I ceded control of my arms and upper body to it, but that wasn’t enough. Soon it took over my lower body as well. The all-consuming desire for water, which I felt as keenly as the vine did, made it impossible for me to resist.
One of its favorite places to go – one of our favorite spaces, I suppose – was Wooded Island in Jackson Park. Frederick Olmsted had created the island and surrounding lagoon for the 1893 World’s Fair by dredging and draining what had been a swampy marshland. More than a century later, the vine was drawn to the island, seeming to prefer the lagoon to Lake Michigan, where we had gone when I still had control of my lower limbs.
Evenings, we’d take the bus to Wooded Island, the vine wrapped tightly around my torso, its prickles scraping my chest. We’d find a quiet spot close to the water, not far from the Museum of Science and Industry. I’d listen to the birds or read a magazine. The vine, after unwinding itself from me, would extend a tendril into the water and drink. We were never more calm, never more in sync, than during those quiet evenings at the water’s edge.
By September, the vine had grown to 15 feet in length, and the evenings were growing cooler. I began to wonder how we’d spend our evenings once the winter forced us inside. I could get a glimmer of the vine’s thoughts or feelings or needs sometimes, and I knew it wouldn’t want to be outside during the Chicago winter.
One afternoon that fall, when the temperature had dipped and the wind was strong, the vine led me to a spot across the street from our usual bus stop. Instead of going east to Wooded Island, we took the 63 westbound, getting off at St. Bernard’s, where Dr. Millard would be seeing the last of his patients.
The police found me leaning over the body with my hands at Dr. Millard’s neck and assumed, understandably, that I had strangled him. The vine was gone. All that was left were two sore spots on my back and the faint earthy pong like that of a weed pulled from the ground. I had no recollection of murdering him, only fleeting, dreamlike images of seeing – and feeling – the vine wrapped around his neck. Just before they pulled me away and began their unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate Dr. Millard, I noticed that, along with the bruises on his neck, there were red marks left by the vine’s prickles, just like the scars on my chest, right below my heart, from when the vine had wrapped itself around me.
John See writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Publications include an investigative article, “The Union-Busting Consultant Spreading Far-Right Conspiracy Theories” (In These Times), and a poem, “Sun Salutation,” (The RavensPerch). His short story “You and Ivy” will be published in Allium in Spring 2024, and two of his poems will be published this fall in Poetry Salzburg Review. He earned an MFA in creative writing from Western Michigan University.