Maya
Floor is lava. That’s the game.
Except it wasn’t lava. And it wasn’t a game.
It’s on the bed. It’s on my bed.
Maya
Hi. It’s Maya. Welcome to Maya and the Fog.
Leo
And Leo.
Maya
And Leo. Who — before I even start —
Leo
I’d like it on the record that I was cleaning up.
Maya
You were asleep. On the floor. In a pile of Lego.
Leo
That’s one way to clean.
Maya
Okay. Before we start, I have to tell you something. Last time I said the story was scary. This one is more scary.
Not a lot more. Some more. There’s a part where I can hear it coming —
— and I can’t make it stop. And there’s a part where I have to get off the bed.
So if you have a stuffed animal — go get it. Right now. I’ll wait.
Got it? Good. Hold on tight.
Leo
Nobody needs a stuffed animal.
Maya
Leo was asleep. On the floor. For all of it. Leo also says the window was open "for air," and that the green stuff was "a reflection," and that a person can’t clean a whole room in the dark in four minutes.
I did it in three.
So… you decide.
This one’s about the night the slime came. It came in through the window. It came in with the fog. And it came for Pip.
Leo
Allegedly.
Maya
Okay. Here we go.
The floor
Maya
So. What you have to understand about our room is, there’s my side, and there’s Leo’s side, and there’s an invisible line down the middle that Leo is not allowed to cross. My side is clean. I’m not bragging. It’s just true. Leo’s side —
Leo’s side is a landfill.
Leo
It’s a system.
Maya
On that night, here is what was on Leo’s floor.
A Lego city. The whole thing — the fire station, the airport, the part he calls downtown.
Three socks. Not a pair. Three.
A granola bar wrapper.
And his blanket, half on the bed and half on the floor, like it was trying to escape.
Leo
It was a warm night.
Maya
And the window was open.
Leo
For air.
Maya
For fog. It was the foggiest night we ever had. It came in over the windowsill like it was pouring out of a jug. You could see it on the floor. Little pieces of cloud, on the carpet, in between the Lego.
Mom came in to say goodnight.
Mom
Lights out, you two. Leo. That window.
Leo
I’m building.
Mom
You’re building. At nine o’clock at night. On the floor. With the window open.
Leo
The airport needs a second runway.
Mom
Bed. Both of you. Door open or closed?
Maya
Open.
Mom
Open it is. Night, kids.
Maya
She didn’t close the window. She forgot. And Leo did not go to bed.
Leo built a second runway, and then a third runway, and then he lay down in the middle of the airport and went to sleep. Right there. On the floor. With his cheek on the fire station.
Leo
The fire station is very comfortable.
Maya
And here’s the part that’s my fault. I had Pip. Pip’s my rabbit. He’s grey, and he’s flat from being hugged, and one of his ears is longer than the other because Moose got it once. Pip sleeps on my pillow. Every night. Since I was a baby.
But that night I rolled over, and Pip fell off the bed. I heard him land. Soft. Right down on the carpet.
I’ll get you in a minute, Pip.
I didn’t get him in a minute.
And here’s the thing nobody told Leo. There’s a rule at our house that’s older than Mom’s rules. Nobody wrote it down. But Moose knows it. Every dog knows it.
Whatever’s on the floor — belongs to the floor.
Leo
That’s not a rule. That’s just a thing you said in a low voice.
Maya
Then where did your socks go?
Leo
…The dryer. Everybody knows the dryer eats socks.
Maya
They never went in the dryer, Leo.
So it’s dark now. Leo’s asleep in the airport.
Baby Lily’s down the hall making her little sleepy noises.
And Moose —
Moose isn’t in the room.
He’s outside the door. Sitting. Whining. He won’t come in. Moose always comes in.
Everything’s normal. Except for that.
The first sound
Maya
And then I hear a drip.
Not the bathroom. The bathroom drips are far away, and they go plink. This one went —
It’s coming from the windowsill. Where the fog is.
Leo. Leo, there’s something dripping.
Leo
It’s the fog. Fog is wet. That’s what fog is.
Maya
Fog doesn’t go plup.
Leo
Wet fog does. That’s science.
Maya
There it is.
Leo
I’d just woken up. I’m not responsible for anything I say when I’ve just woken up.
Maya
And then there’s a new sound. And I don’t have a word for it yet. It’s wet. And it’s slow. It’s like — you know when you step in mud with a boot, and then you pull the boot out?
That. But in the room. On the floor.
I look. I lean over and I look at the floor, and it’s just Leo’s mess. Lego. Socks. Fog on the carpet. Nothing moving. Nothing.
So I do a thing I have never done in my whole life. I turn my nightlight off. On purpose. Because sometimes you can see better in the dark.
And there’s a glow on the floor.
Green. Not bright. The kind of green a glow stick is when it’s almost done. About the size of a dinner plate. Sitting on Leo’s carpet, right where the granola wrapper was.
The wrapper’s gone.
Leo
I ate it.
Maya
You ate the bar, Leo. Not the wrapper.
Leo
…That’s a fair distinction.
It eats
Maya
It moves. Not fast. It doesn’t do anything fast. It kind of — pours itself. Toward the first sock.
The sock goes under it. And the glow is bigger.
Second sock.
Bigger.
I want to tell you it was fast, because fast is scary. But it wasn’t. And that was worse. You could watch. You could watch it decide what to eat next.
And it reaches the Lego city.
Every brick. The fire station. Both runways. Downtown.
Leo
All three runways.
Maya
All three.
And now it’s the size of a pillow. A big one. And the whole room is green, like we’re inside a fish tank. And it’s turned.
It’s turned toward my side.
Toward Pip.
Pip. Pip. No, no —
I said his name. Like that would help. Like it would hear me and think, oh — that one has a name. I’ll leave that one.
It didn’t stop.
Ears last.
Leo
…I’m sorry about Pip.
Maya
Pip’s fine. Wait for it.
And here’s what I’m thinking, sitting on my bed in the green. I’m thinking: it ate the wrapper. It ate the socks. It ate a whole city. It ate Pip. What if it eats everything? What if it eats my blanket, and my bed, and the door? What if it never, ever gets full?
The island
Maya
Okay. Here’s what I know. It eats what’s on the floor. It’s on the floor. I’m on the bed. So the bed is safe. The bed is the only safe place in the whole room.
Floor is lava.
You know that game. Everybody knows that game. You jump from the couch to the chair to the pillow, and if you touch the floor, you’re out.
It’s not a game right now.
And I can’t stop thinking things. Bad things. What if it’s faster than it looks? What if it can climb? What if I fall asleep, and I roll over, like I always do, and I fall off the bed — like Pip did — and I land right in it? What if I’m on the floor. And I belong to the floor.
And Leo is on the floor.
He’s asleep. In the airport. Except the airport’s gone, so he’s asleep in a wet spot where the airport was, with his blanket lying on the floor next to him. And the slime is — it’s about as far from Leo as I am from you.
Leo.
Leo.
LEO.
Leo
…second runway…
I don’t remember saying that.
Maya
You said it.
So I throw my pillow at him. Hard. To wake him up. And it doesn’t reach. It lands on the floor, short, halfway between us.
And the slime turns. And it goes to the pillow. And it eats the pillow.
It’s the size of a bathtub now. A whole bathtub. Full of green pudding. If the pudding was alive, and hungry, and could see you.
Moose growls. Once. Through the door. He still won’t come in.
Mom
Maya. Bed.
Maya
…I am in bed.
And that’s when it stopped going toward Leo.
It turned again. Slow. Like a big wet hand turning over.
Toward my bed.
I can hear it reach the leg of my bed. I can hear it touch it.
And then the squelching stops.
Silence.
Maya
That was next to my ear.
It’s climbing the bedpost.
My blanket. My blanket’s hanging over the side. All the way down to the floor. A blanket is a ramp.
Leo
A blanket is a ramp.
Maya
A blanket is a ramp.
Off the island
Maya
Here’s what I know. If I stay on the bed, it comes up the ramp, and then I’m on the bed with it. If I get off the bed, I’m on the floor —
— with it.
Those are the only two choices. And only one of them is a choice.
I want you to know I thought about it for a really long time. Probably a whole second.
I’m going to jump over it. Off the end of the bed, over the green part, onto the clean part of the floor, and run for the socks. That’s the plan. It’s a good plan.
And I jump.
There is no clean part of the floor.
It’s everywhere. It’s the whole floor. And I land right in the middle of it, and it’s cold — it’s so cold — and it’s up to my ankles, and it’s thick like pudding, and it’s —
— it’s got my feet. It’s got my feet, and I pull, and they don’t come. My feet are on the floor. So my feet belong to the floor.
And then it starts to climb.
Up my ankles. Up my legs. It’s cold, and it’s slow, and it’s heavy, and every bit of me it covers, I can’t move anymore. My knees. My tummy. It’s like being swallowed by a bathtub.
It’s at my chest. It’s at my chest and I can’t breathe all the way in. My left arm’s gone. I can’t feel my left arm.
It’s at my chin.
It’s cold on my chin, and I’m thinking: next is my mouth. And then my nose. And then I’ll be all the way inside it, like Pip, and nobody will ever hear me say anything again. Not even "mom."
Leo
…Maya.
Maya
I know. I’m getting to the good part.
I’ve got one arm. My right arm. It’s the only part of me that’s still mine. And there’s something sticking out of the green, right in front of me, like a flag. A sock. Leo’s sock. And I don’t know why — I don’t have a plan anymore, I just want to hold something — so I grab it, and I pull it out, and I hold it up over my head —
…And it lets go of my chin.
It got smaller. It slides down off my chest, and off my tummy, like water going out of a bath, and I can breathe again, and I can feel my arm again — and I understand. All at once, I understand the whole thing. Whatever’s on the floor belongs to the floor. So —
— what if nothing’s on the floor?
Leo
Oh no.
Maya
Oh yes.
Other sock. Smaller. Leo’s blanket — off the floor, onto his bed. Smaller. Lego. Handfuls of it. It’s inside the slime, and the slime is cold, and I put my hands right in and I pull the fire station out, and it comes out clean and dripping, and I throw it in the bin —
And it’s chasing me. It’s chasing me around the room, and it’s slower than me, and it’s angrier than me, and it’s making a sound like something trying to hurry that can’t.
Mom
Maya. Is that you cleaning?
Maya
YES.
Mom
…It’s the middle of the night.
Maya
I KNOW.
Leo
Why is it green in here.
Maya
Get on the bed. Leo. Get on your bed right now and pull your feet up.
Leo
Why —
Maya
FLOOR IS LAVA.
Leo
Okay okay okay okay —
Maya
And that’s how you get an eight-year-old onto a bed in one second. You say the magic words.
Last thing on the floor is my pillow. Down at the end of the room. And the slime’s on it, and it’s small now, small like a puddle, and it’s holding on —
And I grab a corner. And I pull.
And it’s the size of a puddle. Then a pancake. Then a coin.
And then it makes a sound like the very last of the bathwater going down.
And it’s gone.
And sitting in the wet spot where it was — flat, and soaked, and sticky, with one ear longer than the other —
Pip.
Leo
Did you… clean my side?
Maya
Yes.
Leo
…Why.
Maya
Go to sleep, Leo.
Leo
Where’s the airport.
Maya
In the bin. Where it lives now.
Leo
Good night, Maya.
Mom
Are you two okay in there?
Maya
…Yeah. Mom? Can you close the window?
Mom
The — Sure. I’ll close the window.
Maya
I put Pip on the radiator to dry. I got back in bed. I pulled my blanket up so not one bit of it touched the floor. And I did not turn my nightlight back on.
Leo
Why not?
Maya
Because in the dark, I’d see it coming.
Some guard dog you are.
Maya
In the morning the sun came up and burned the fog off the window, and Mom opened our door, and stopped.
Mom
…Who did this?
Maya
Because the room was clean. Leo’s side was clean. You could see the carpet. Mom had never seen the carpet.
Leo
Me.
Mom
You.
Leo
I clean at night now. It’s a system.
Maya
And that’s how I knew that Leo knew. Because a person who slept through it says, "what happened?" A person who saw something says, "me."
Leo
I was being helpful.
Maya
You were being quiet.
Mom
Leo, this sock is — huh. It’s wet on the outside. And dry on the inside. That’s backwards.
Leo
Fog.
Mom
Fog.
Maya
And Pip’s left ear — the long one — had gone the tiniest bit green. Just at the tip. Mom washed him twice. It didn’t come out.
And on the windowsill, where the fog had been — with the window closed, and latched, and locked —
That’s okay.
There’s nothing on the floor.
Yet.
So. That’s what happened.
Leo
That’s what she says happened.
Maya
Leo makes his bed now. Every morning. Tucks the blanket in all the way around. Not one bit touching the floor.
Leo
…That’s unrelated.
Maya
Sure it is.
See you next time. In the fog.