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What the God-Mouth Wants

by Ryan Cole

They call it a homecoming: when your own severed tongue finds its way back into your mouth; when it slides all slippery and wet onto the stump that your parents cut out when you were six years old; when it gives you the power, the freedom to say what your lips never could. All in exchange for a decade of silence.

Dallas doesn’t care. Tongueless for years, he’s ready to be whole again no matter the cost. Better to say what the God-Mouth wants than not be able to say anything at all.

Carefully, he climbs down the slick rock of the cave wall—away from his father who waits on the surface—and he stops when his toes meet the icy ocean water. The tidal pool swells as the current comes in. White froth surges through the cracks in the cave, smothering Dallas in thick, dirty foam. It stinks of old seaweed and oysters and mud, of the oil-spills steadily polluting the coast, killing the fish that keep his family alive, that kept Silence alive, back when the town was still full. When they hadn’t had to resurrect a long-dead god in order to save those few people who remained.

Now, all Dallas can hear is its voice: a low-bass rumble that creeps through the rock, pulsing like a heartbeat in the quickly rising tide. Yet still, he descends into the tongue-infested water, hoping this might be his last trip down. The last time he’ll have to brave the dark and the cold, the current so eager to sweep him away.

Sacrifices, his father is so fond of saying. We all have to do our part to make the God-Mouth strong.

A lesson Dallas has heard for the last sixteen years. He’s done his best to be patient—waiting for the God-Mouth to grow, for it to bring Silence back to its former glory, not just another ghost-town on the Oregon coast. But how much longer can Silence survive when there’s barely any clean food left to eat?

A problem for tomorrow. For someone else to solve. The sooner he can find what his father had stolen—what every parent stole from their child in Silence, in fealty to their god—the sooner he can speak, the sooner he can leave: this town, this life that the God-Mouth demands, this family who expects him to be who he isn’t. What Dallas has been hiding from his father for years.

Taking a deep breath, he dives into the water. He swims towards the never-ending pit at the bottom. Ten feet down, he opens his eyes. Dark tongues flit by. They wriggle up Dallas’ arms to his face, and they press into his eyes, his ears, his nose. Salt-crusted tips bite into his flesh. He reaches for one, but it slithers away, cutting through the push-pull swirl of the current.

His skull begins to throb with the voice from below, down deep in the black—the voice that he’s never been able to understand, that his father and the rest of the townsfolk crave. Never before has he felt so much pressure, his head about to burst like an overripe melon.

He kicks over to the rock wall, desperately searching. He digs into the cracks full of barnacled stumps, their gray-green tongue-tips thrashing to escape.

Something eel-like slips into his hand. Only three inches long, no wider than his thumb. He runs a numb finger over its soft, bumpy surface. It feels like what Dallas has been eager to find. His ticket out of Silence. His voice.

His tongue.

He pushes it, wriggling, back into his mouth. Tries not to scream as it clamps to his stump, binding the God-Mouth’s flesh to his own. With his breath nearly spent, he swims up for air.

He reaches, hands trembling, for his father to help him as he breaks through the surface, arms scraped bloody on the rocks as he pulls Dallas free. Dallas crumples into a heap on the rock; he nods as his father wraps him up in a blanket, tries to ask if he’s okay.

Too hard for him to answer. All he can hear, all he can think as he lies curled up on the ground, are the alien words on his newly-found tongue. The God-Mouth’s words. Pressing on his teeth. Pushing his lips to bring them to life.

For the first time, he understands the God-Mouth’s voice. An echo of the rumble in the cave.

You are mine.

---

Dallas doesn’t wait long to use his new tongue.

He hides in the alley behind Orson Brothers Shipping Co., crouched behind a trawling net that hasn’t been used in years. If he tries hard enough, he can still smell the town—or what the town used to be. Deep-fried crab legs on Saturday mornings. The reek of the fish market down by the wharf. The unwashed carpet in High Tide Arcade, where Dallas would spend most weekends alone, wishing the friends he used to know would come back, that Dallas could follow. But where would he have gone? No tongue, no voice, no way to get by.

Not until today.

His stomach starts to growl from so many lost dinners, so many months wishing for the God-Mouth to save them. Soon, his father says. Each tongue that we cut makes the God-Mouth stronger. Each mouth that can speak with its voice gives it life.

Dallas is sick of just sitting and waiting. But there’s still one person he can’t leave without.

Slate sneaks into the alley after dark. Sandy hair all windblown. Coveralls splattered with fish-guts and oil. He crawls over the trawling nets, checking behind to make sure he’s alone, and when he sees Dallas there—at their usual spot—he smiles and presses him up against the wall, their lips so close that it makes Dallas flush, still scared for his father to find out what he does, to know who he is. The person the God-Mouth says he can’t be.

Dallas kisses Slate, hard. The tip of his tongue slides over Slate’s teeth, exploring the crevices he’s never felt before, so different from the dry pecks on the lips he was so used to. He whispers “I love you” into Slate’s warm mouth, though Slate just smiles and never says it back. And all of it while resisting the God-Mouth’s urge: to push Slate away, to tell him “I never want to see you again”, to make him believe they weren’t so alike, that people like them weren’t welcome in Silence.

Dallas recoils. His throat starts to swell; his jaw seizes up; his whole mouth pulses with a heavy, second heartbeat. He swallows the words as his tongue tries to speak them, tries to betray him. Tries to erase the one good thing in his life.

“You okay?” says Slate. He reaches for Dallas, but Dallas shrugs him off.

How to convince him? What can he say that will make him understand? Dallas starts to panic—what if Slate says no? Slate’s already found his tongue. He’s had weeks to get used to the God-Mouth’s voice, even though he tries to hide it. So, Dallas settles for, “I’m leaving.”

Slate cocks an eyebrow. “Leaving?” he says. “But you just got your tongue back. And we’ve barely even used it.”

Dallas licks his lips, in awe of the taste of his own salty skin. “I have to,” he says. “Once the God-Mouth emerges, it won’t let us meet. It won’t let us be us. My dad says the town will go back to the old ways. And I don’t want to be here to find out what that means.”

Slate’s shoulders slump; his smile disappears.

Dallas knows what he’s thinking: of Sandra DiMarco, Slate’s adopted older sister. The reason why Dallas hasn’t told him this before. The reason why no one else has tried to leave Silence.

“It was an accident,” says Slate, though they both know it wasn’t. Hard to believe that a sixteen-year-old girl could slit her own neck and throw herself into the God-Mouth.

Sacrifices, his father had said when they’d found her. Some people are just willing to give more than others.

Dallas remembers how unhappy she’d been. How much she’d avoided the God-Mouth’s cave. He wondered who benefited more from her death: Silence, or the God-Mouth, her body enriching its tongue-filled waters?

“You can’t go,” says Slate, his face gone pale. “What if they find you?”

“Well,” says Dallas. He does his very best to hide the crack in his voice. “I was hoping you might… want to come along with me?”

Slate bites his lip; he looks over his shoulder. “I don’t know…” he says.

Dallas tenses up. Too soon to dream. He should have known better than to think he’d agree, to hope they could try to build the life together he’s always wanted.

“I’ll think about it,” says Slate. “How much time before you go?”

That was probably better than Dallas could have ever expected. At least it wasn’t no. Maybe the two of them still had a chance.

“Tomorrow morning,” he says. “Before the God-Mouth wakes up.”

Slate doesn’t answer; he just smiles and nods. For the rest of the evening, they hold tight to each other, their lips and their tongues too busy to speak.

---

Later that night, Dallas starts to prepare. He has to pack light—just a t-shirt and jeans, a few granola bars. Whatever he can cram into the pockets of his backpack. He doesn’t have much money, only twenty-three dollars. Barely enough to buy a bus ticket out, if the bus still ran. His best bet is following the highway out of town—to a city farther inland, where the God-Mouth’s influence can’t yet reach—and hoping the sheriff doesn’t send out a patrol, doesn’t try to come and catch him like he thinks they did to Sandra.

She didn’t get a funeral. Didn’t get an obituary in the Silence Sentinel, the local newspaper his father still operates. All Sandra DiMarco got for trying to escape was a watery grave in the black of the God-Mouth.

Dallas tries not to worry. He’ll have Slate there with him. Alone in the woods with no one else to watch them, no one to tell them that what they do is wrong, where Dallas can touch him and taste him all he wants.

Just one more night, and then Dallas will be free.

He hears his father’s voice from all the way up in the office on the second level of their house. “Dallas, can you come up here?”

Dallas hesitates. He can’t just ignore him. He knows from experience: disobeying his father never ends well.

When Dallas knocks on the half-open door of the office, his father is hunched over and typing at his desk. Probably working on the next day’s headlines. Dallas can see old newspapers stacked along the cramped office walls, their ink now faded.

Oregon Ravaged by California Oil Spills.

Economic Collapse Threatens Silence’s Future.

Caves Along the Coast: Are They the Power We Need?

Just some of the thousands of stories they’ve run over the last several decades, since Dallas’ grandfather first moved to Silence. The legacy Dallas’ father won’t abandon. Too stubborn-stupid to know when to leave.

He waves Dallas over to the draft on his desk—a headline that reads Is the God-Mouth Ready? The untrusting look in his eyes makes Dallas flinch, remembering the purple-blue bruises from last time. “You were with that boy again,” says his father, eyes narrowed.

No, I wasn’t, thinks Dallas, but the second he lets the words settle on his tongue, his head starts to throb. His eyes start to water. There’s a needle-like pain in the root of his mouth, where the once-empty stump sat naked for years, and the more he resists what the God-Mouth wants, what it tries to make him say, the more the pain grows. It sharpens until the tongue-stump is white-hot and searing.

“Yes,” says Dallas, and he sighs in relief when the pain melts away.

Silence. His father’s jaw clenches as he glares.

Dallas backs away. Afraid of what his father will try to ask next, what Dallas will say even though he doesn’t want to, desperate to leave while he still has the chance.

“Stay away,” says his father. “It’s for your own good. That boy and his kind are what’s wrong in this town. What the caves can help fix.”

Dallas just nods, too scared to even speak.

“Am I clear?” says his father.

Dallas says “yes” without the God-Mouth’s help, its residue sticky like saliva on his teeth. More than ever before, he can feel its power bloom. The more Dallas speaks, the more that he uses the God-Mouth’s voice, the stronger, more potent, more dangerous it becomes.

He slips out the door before his father can catch him. Hurries downstairs. His mind is still focused on the low-bass echo in the well of his mouth, pulsing to the rhythm of his father’s last words, their two tongues feeding on the force of each other.

Who is he really speaking to anymore? His father, or the God-Mouth?

He crawls into bed and counts the hours ‘til sunrise, still not sure which one scares him more.

---

The next morning, Dallas waits for Slate by the docks. Gulls caw overhead as the tide comes in. The dock bells ring as the fishermen arrive. They gather at the opposite end of the wharf, boarding the boats that always come home empty.

But no sign of Slate.

Dallas tries to stay calm. Maybe he was tired from the prior day’s haul. Anything but the reason Dallas still can’t admit, which the God-Mouth places on the tip of his tongue.

When he gets to Slate’s house—a run-down two-storey on the other side of town—he knocks on the door, jaw clenching with worry. Hoping, and praying, that the God-Mouth is wrong.

When Slate cracks open the door, Dallas sighs in relief. He keeps a safe distance, his hands in his pockets. No way to tell who might be watching from inside—Slate’s mother or Dalia, his tongueless little sister—and Dallas can’t afford for them to start to suspect.

“Where were you?” says Dallas with a half-hearted smile.

Slate looks away; just shrugs. “My sister needed me.”

No sly, subtle wink. No camouflaged smile. No hint of the language they’ve spoken for years, that Silence and their parents had taught them they needed. Not able to say what they both truly want.

“I’m all ready,” says Dallas, leaning in too close. Pretending he can’t feel the pulse in his mouth. “I have food and clean clothes packed for almost a week. By then we could make it all the way to Eugene. Maybe Bend, if we’re quick. As far as we need to—as long as the God-Mouth isn’t there.”

Slate glances over his shoulder into the house. He picks at his fingernails. “Listen,” he says. “I—I don’t think I can come.”

Dallas just stares back. “I don’t understand.”

Slate lowers his voice. “I can’t leave my mom. She and Dalia need me. And work is picking up. The catch has been better these last few weeks. If I stay, I can make enough to keep things afloat. Keep everyone happy.”

A bald-faced lie. What he means is for everyone to be happy but him.

“What about me?” says Dallas, cheeks flushed.

Slate backs away. “I’m sorry, I… I hope you can find what you’re looking for.”

Dallas stands numb. His whole face throbs with the words he wants to say and the tears he wants to shed and the salt-thick saliva that pools in his throat. He wants to grab Slate’s hand, wants to tell him he’s wrong, to remind him of all the good things they could still share, but his own tongue stops him. It swells, starts to wriggle, and instead, it says something he tries to keep hidden, the words coming out no matter how much he resists. “Fine. I never wanted you to come with me anyway.”

Slate’s eyes widen in hurt, or surprise. Then he slips into the hallway of the home he wants to save. And before Dallas can stop him, he slams shut the door.

---

Now that Slate knows, Dallas can’t wait. What if he tells one of the men on his crew? Or Dalia? Or his mother? Word spreads quickly in a town like Silence. It’s only a matter of time before Dallas’ father finds out.

Dallas has to change course. Has to find another route. The long way, that no one in town will expect.

Which means more travel. More food. More money.

Dallas hurries home, and he stuffs more clothes into his already full backpack. Thankfully, his father—for once—isn’t there. No one to stop him from raiding the pantry. No one to keep him from picking the lock on his father’s office door, creeping inside, and poking through each moldy drawer of the desk, searching for coins or a bit of spare cash.

Drawer after drawer, he comes up empty. Dreading the voice that he fears might come, the “what the hell are you doing?” that sends shivers up his spine. The same voice that’s starting to echo in his mouth.

Only one drawer left. He cringes at each sharp squeak of the metal as he jiggles it open.

No money inside. Mostly empty, like the rest. All he can see is a printed-out draft of tomorrow’s newspaper, November twenty-first written clearly in the corner. A bold Silence Sentinel is typed across the top.

Beneath it is a headline that doesn’t seem to make sense.

DiMarco boy drowns in the water of the God-Mouth.

The article is real—as real as any other Dallas has proofed over the years. It goes on to say how Slate went missing on the morning of the twentieth, how his mother and sister went out looking that evening, how they found him face-down, his body food for the crabs. A terrible tragedy. How sad for us all.

But Dallas knows better. He can see past the lie. A cold dread prickles his goose-pimpled skin.

The draft was typed out long before he saw Slate. The ink is already dry.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

Breathless, he throws the paper back into the drawer. He snatches his backpack and runs out of the office, hoping he can make it to the God-Mouth first.

---

At noon, he slips into the entrance to the cave on the far edge of town.

This close to the water of the God-Mouth’s grave, its voice is overwhelming. Like a thick film of grease. It makes Dallas feel dirty; his thoughts feel dirty; his lust and his longing for Slate feel dirty. He leans head first over the lip of the pool, and he searches the slowly rising cylinder of water.

Empty, as always.

An insidious thought roots Dallas to the edge. What if whoever is going to hurt Slate finds Dallas inside? They won’t let him just go. They’ll throw Dallas in, too; make sure he can’t talk. Both of them face-first and silent in the water.

He hears a gruff voice near the faraway cave entrance. Two more close behind.

He panics, his feet slipping on the wet rock. The voices grow louder as he slowly descends into the God-Mouth’s water, toes icing over as he dips into the foam. He clings to the wall, as quiet as he can be, and he holds at a spot where the rock juts out. He is too scared to even breathe.

“Over here,” says one of the voices from above.

Dallas tenses up. He knows that voice. He’s had to endure it every day, every night of his life.

His father.

“How’s the tide?” says another, a much younger man. Dallas can hear a slight tremor in his voice, a sign that he knows what they’re doing won’t help. That the town they’re so eager to save is already dead.

“Tide’s strong,” says his father. “The current’s coming in.”

Dallas can’t see, but it sounds like they’re dragging something up to the edge.

“Ready to lift?” says the younger, nervous man.

Don’t do it, thinks Dallas in the seconds in between. Please, God, don’t do it.

But something else creeps up the cavern of his throat. A gurgling echo that smothers his tongue, contorting its muscles. The same as the echo he hears in the cave, in the rippling water now up to his waist. The God-Mouth’s voice.

Two words.

Do it.

Slate crashes into the water beside him, splattering Dallas in salt-mist and foam. He sinks under the waves, doesn’t come up for air.

Dallas reaches for Slate, but he slips through his fingers. He can’t let go, or his father will see. He can’t risk having the men come in after him. But at the same time, he can’t just let Slate drown.

He kicks off as soon as the next wave crashes. Dives into the surf. Keeping as close to the rock-wall as he can. Dark tongues dig into his outstretched fingers, slicing him bloody with their salt-crusted tips.

Still, he keeps swimming. Chest on fire, his hands gone numb. At fifteen feet down, his fingers touch skin. The collar of a t-shirt. He snatches it, fighting the whip of the current, and he uses the wall to propel himself up.

Dallas emerges by the overhang of rock. Slate floats limp. He still has a pulse, but his breath comes shallow. Too weak to swim. So, Dallas just waits. Whole body shivering. One arm wrapped around Slate’s cold waist.

Give him to me, the God-Mouth rumbles from below, the echo of its filthy words pulsing through Dallas.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dallas fights back. He chokes down the white-hot pain in his throat, and he whispers the same words over and over, afloat in the slowly sinking tide.

I won’t.

---

Later that evening, once Dallas is certain the men above are gone, he drags Slate up to the surface of the cave. They lie there together, gasping for breath.

Slate rolls over to face him. “You saved me,” he whispers.

Dallas just smiles. He squeezes Slate’s hand. Building up the courage to ask him one last time. “Come with me?” he says.

No words in response. Just a brush of their lips. All of Slate’s warmth pressed into one kiss.

By nightfall, the two of them are well on their way, ignoring the echo of the voice on their tongues, which fades into nothing as they leave Silence behind.