Work Text:
Statement of the entity calling itself Petrichor, regarding its humanity and the events that led up to losing it. Original statement given twenty-third December, two thousand sixteen. Statement recorded by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement Begins
I guess I should start by saying ‘Merry Christmas’. It’s been a long time since I’ve wished anyone a happy holiday, but I haven’t really had the chance. Not many people come around me, even less stay. I don’t really mind though, I’m not the most talkative person. I know you probably wanted a statement directly from me, Archivist, but talking for long periods of time… well, it hurts. And I’d rather not cough up dirt all over the place if I can help it. I’m already leaving such a mess.
Anyways, I should get to the point, shouldn’t I? I came here to make a statement, so I should do that. Only… Only I don’t really remember wanting to. I still don’t know if I want to. But I will. I’ve already come all this way.
I’m a heavy sleeper, always have been, but I’ve never been able to sleep without a weight pressing down on me. It felt too much like I’d float away if something wasn’t pressing me down onto my bed. When I was younger, a few duvets would do the trick. Even in the summer, when the nights were humid and miserable, I slept too heavily to notice the heat, under my pile of blankets.
As I started to grow up, I had to add more and more duvets to keep the floating feeling away, until we didn’t have any spares. My mother didn’t want to invest in a weighted blanket for me, but when I told her how I couldn’t sleep without something heavy, and how awful I felt, she relented and bought one. My mother was a nice woman, but tight with money and set in her ways. There was a time when I thought the floaty feeling was anxiety, that I had had a disorder ever since I was a child, but she never took me to the doctor.
For a long time, I tricked myself into thinking that it was anxiety. But deep down I knew it was something more, because as time wore on the weighted blanket stopped helping, just like the duvets had. But the feeling was… more intense, this time around. It became less and less like… like floating and more like someone was taking the stuffing out of me. I’d wake up and my limbs would be numb, and my chest would feel so hollow it would ache.
But I was fine, mostly, aside from waking up feeling like I wasn’t actually there. I’d wake up, take a few minutes to ground myself and be fine. and I was ok with that, because I had to be. If I didn’t accept it, it would just be worse, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get the problem fixed. The only way I was going to the hospital was if I was dying. And I wasn’t... At least I didn’t think I was.
It was like that for a few years, lasting all the way up until I finished uni. It actually got better for a bit, after I got a job. I’ve always liked working with plants, I liked tending to them and watching them grow. I was jealous of them, I think. I remember wanting to be deeply rooted into solid ground, having something all-encompassing holding me down and ridding me of that floating feeling forever.
The only problem was, plants didn’t actually like working with me. If I ever managed to get them past a sprout they would just die. I was told it was because I packed them too tightly in the soil, but no matter how hard I tried, how careful I was, the dirt just… smothered them.
I worked at a greenhouse nonetheless, usually just watering plants and prepping soil. It was pretty boring, if I’m being honest, and, when it was time to haul in bags and bags of dirt, exhausting. I loved it though. I always felt so solid, so real, with my hands buried in dirt, even just being near it.
I should have been more concerned. I should have thought something weird was going on, but I thought I just- I don't know, liked plants a lot, and they comforted me. I didn’t know the dirt was calling me… but I answered anyway. Earnestly.
Eventually, the feeling when I tried to sleep came back. It gave no warning, no build up, just one night it all came back, worse than it had ever been. It wasn’t like I was floating anymore, and it wasn’t like I was fading away. It was falling. Harsh and sudden vertigo. I couldn’t breathe, it was like I had never known how to breathe. My bed wasn’t there anymore. Nothing was there. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t do anything. Except fall. It took everything in me to force my eyes closed. To plunge myself into a more personal darkness.
I tried to ground myself, but I could barely think, was I even real? Yes… yes I had to be. But it didn’t ease. I thought I was going to die. It wasn’t fair. I was going to die feeling like I wasn’t even there? Die in the openness of whatever hell I was in? It wasn’t. Fair. My entire life I had been tormented by weightlessness, and now it would consume me.
I thought of myself like one of the many seeds I had crushed to death with too tightly packed soil. If I was going to die… that’s what I deserved. The comforting weight of the earth crushing me. The heaviness grounding me so absolutely to one spot that I would never move again. Those thoughts eased the vertigo, enough to breathe, at least.
When I could open my eyes again, I was walking. I don’t remember getting up, or slipping my shoes and jacket on, but I was outside, walking down the road. My head was swimming, but I focused on letting my feet carry me, trying to not let the weightlessness, still tugging at me, drop me into nothingness again.
I don’t know how long I walked. Well that’s not true, actually, because I arrived at the greenhouse I worked at, which I know to be half an hour away from my home, on foot. But it felt like miles. Like I was walking for hours. For days.
My body carried me to the back of the greenhouse, and I remember wondering how I got in, because it should have been locked. It was the middle of the night. But now that I think of it, it could have easily been the afternoon for how little I was processing my surroundings.
When I reached the back, where we kept the basin to tend to the soil, I sunk my hands into the cool, wet, dirt. I cannot describe to you how alive I felt. How safe I felt. I didn’t ever want to leave, I wanted to bury my whole body in the dirt, I wanted to sink into it and never ever come out.
I think I was on the second handful of dirt before I realized I was shoveling the soil into my mouth. I wasn’t afraid when I realized this. It felt… natural. It felt good. I kept going, swallowing down handfuls and handfuls of dirt and rocks until I couldn’t breathe. It was different from before, when the air was stolen right out of my lungs. I didn’t care if I couldn’t breathe. Because the weightlessness was gone.
I was weighed down now. Heavy. In a way I had never felt before.
I… I died, I think. I don’t remember much after that, but I woke up outside, miles away from home, from the greenhouse, covered in a thick layer of dirt. Like someone had tried to put me in a very shallow grave.
I’m not human anymore. I don’t really know what I am. I don’t think I care. I feel safe, all the time now. I can sleep like I used to, when the duvets were enough, when the weighted blanket was enough. Better now, actually.
I’ve done bad things, Archivist. I’ve sent people into the ground, into the loving embrace of the dirt, and I watched them suffer. I didn’t want to. Not at first. When it happened the first few times it was an accident. My mother... was the first one I watched choke and die on the dirt that shouldn’t have been in her lungs. Despite everything, despite all I've done, I… I regret that one still. I don’t think I had a choice… Or maybe it was just easier to think I didn’t. It doesn’t matter now though, of course. I can’t go back to what I used to be. And I don’t really feel bad about doing it anymore.
Part of me wants to see how you’d sound, trying to scream around the dirt in your throat.
But that’s not why I’m here. I’m not here to tell you about all the people I’ve buried alive, or to torment you. I’ve done what I came here for. I've told you my story. And… well I’d say it’s a weight off my shoulders to tell someone what happened... but… well that’s just not true.
Statement ends
Follow up on this statement is impossible. No legal names are given, no addresses, not even any landmarks and there are no records of someone swallowing that much dirt turning up at any hospitals or morgues.
A few months ago, and I wouldn’t have even bothered with this. I would have taken one look and put it with the other disproven statements… but I know this is true… I… I can feel it.
There are themes of suffocation and dirt that have come up in other statements but. I don’t know what that means. I feel like I should know what that means.
I didn’t see this perso-… thing. come in. and no one told me about it. But someone must have known because it was filed away. I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t tell me about it. surely if they wanted to keep it hidden, they would have put it somewhere I wouldn’t look, or even destroyed it…
Nevertheless, whatever this thing was came and left without hurting anyone… so I have to hope that this is the last I’ll hear about it.
End recording.