I’m so dizzy I can’t tell if I’m upright. Somehow I make it to the bathroom, face in the toilet bowl, heaving so hard it feels like I might break a rib until, finally, the first pukey belch breaks through. I throw up three or four times and lie panting on the cool bathroom tiles. Then I’m back at it, stomach squeezing hard against itself, pushing out those last horrible mouthfuls of rancid greenish slime. My face is sweaty and tingling from the strain of it all. I wipe my mouth and teary eyes on a fistful of toilet paper and make my way out on shaky legs.

I go to the guest room, pull the blanket and a pillow off the bed, and curl up on the floor. The blue-gray walls have nothing to do with me. The color is inoffensive and anonymous, like a hotel room. I’m in the middle of nowhere and I could be anywhere. I could be anyone.

The rain starts tapping at the window, gently at first but it gets harder very fast until it sounds more like sheets than drops, a roar that could almost be wildfire. I’m trying to get warm, trying to drift into sleep, but the rain is loud. And after the rain I know what comes next. The ground gets soft and loose, not like the ground should be.

The rain slaps the earth like the silver tail of a sea monster. My house wants to be at the bottom of the sea and it doesn’t care if I go down with it. I could be the furniture. I could be a phone that never rings. I’ll freeze and bloat. I’ll get ripped apart by sharks. And the really frightening thing is how cold it will be, the heat of my blood drifting away as it pours out of me. And the sharks will take no particular pleasure in it. It’s like shitting to them. Or like rape. It’s only dramatic for the victim. I could be anyone.

Waves slap, dragging their tentacles down the side of my house, spilling their gummy body up and over my roof, belly-flopping hard over me—a giant nightmare jellyfish—before they pull back, bracing for another blow. Smashing, banging, grabbing at me with thick pedo-fingers. It wants me but I’m not ready. And all the air drains back with it. And then the water—the rain, the waves, the flood—comes back. I’ll drown before the sharks get me. I once read that drowning isn’t so bad. And I’ll probably be crushed by the roof or some rocks or something as the house crashes into the ocean. It’ll be over soon.