"I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I fell for days and weeks and what felt like lifetime across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling."

― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me

-Chapter 1-

Another nine-hour day of work was complete, and the woman who finally saw its end was never gladder to trudge up her last flight of stairs and clumsily finger the deep scratches that decorated an otherwise ordinary, brass doorknob. The keys that latched onto her empty belt loop chimed in a pitch with the wailing landline that had grown stale long before she could fit the keys in the keyhole—she groaned a realization that she'd forgotten to turn on the straight-to-voicemail feature again. With a reluctant urgency, she hurried through twists and turns to her kitchen to grab the corded receiver on the wall, but the answering machine refused to grant her that fraction of a second and started off in its 44Mhz monotone:

Hello, you have reached Senna Figueiredo of M&T Construction. I'm sorry that I can't get to the phone right now, but if you lea—

"Hello? Hello!?"

She placed the receiver back on its hook to press star and 69 to call back, but she was not offered the luxury and simply picked up instead.

"Hello? Senna speaking!"

It was her—Senna's—mother. Like clockwork, it was all part of their weekly routine. Since her daughter could never officially guess which weekday night it would fall on, she informed her friends, in jest, that, from 6 to 7PM, she had 'homework' to do, and her mother was unafraid to let her know if she'd almost failed. The young woman placed the receiver on the table and pressed the speaker button.

"Neni! Why don't you get a cell phone? I've called you three times now." the doting mother groused in an entrenched, Carioca accent.

"I was at work, ma. I literally just got home when you called!"

"If you had a cell phone, you could tell me when you are getting home!"

"Mama,…" Senna's vowels trailed off flatly as she reached into her freezer for a small carton of vanilla ice cream. "...c'mon. You know I'll call you back if I miss you. I always do."

"Good, I need to hear you miss me. I never hear from you anymore! At least your job is going so well."

"We talk every week! Ahh, but yeah—it's been keeping me pretty busy."

"You know your father's been busy. He is celebrating his 30th year at Bernland's in November. With stocks as they are and the court settlement, he's thinking about retiring."

"Oh, really?" she blubbered in between paces and mouthfuls of frozen milk.

"You need to take care of yourself, Senna!" The mother piped up suddenly. "You're up there all alone with nobody and I told you so many times downtown San Francisco is not the best!"

Senna sighed with a weighty patience. "Ma, look, this place is close to my location, and… I like it; I have never had a real problem here. If this is about wanting to see me, then I'll come visit soon, okay?"

"Soon, soon—brincadeira! Your father and I are going to see your cousin's new baby girl next week in Chicago and we're staying until Sunday."

Senna leaned her back against the counter; her dessert was quickly morphing into a beverage. "Oh... Wait, you're leaving for Chicago?"

"Yes, yes, I told you before! I told you, right? I told Risa, I told—" The woman trailed off abruptly and in such a way that boasted of how well she absolutely could. "Ohh, Neni, your grandmother! I got to go tell her—"

"But wait! I wanna know now!"

"I will talk to you soon! You take care of yourself!"

Senna hummed her goodbye with a good-humored eye-roll. She parted with her paper waste and hopped onto her couch to flip through the local 100 channels trapped within her square hulk of a television. Everything in her 301 E. Walter St. apartment was a bit dated, and the 27 year-old woman had long since nurtured a contemporarily modest upbringing as a fine excuse to keep those technological relics-some even older than her-fully functional. She agreeably changed when her employers demanded the newest and best software for the job, but if each didn't, he was made aware that Senna pinched her pennies and made quick work of her disadvantages in two, concisely jocular languages—at least one being a resourceful markup in her scripted disposition: 'Make new of what you already have.'

And yet, the young woman wasn't completely resourceful; she was often curious with money and dared to venture into abstraction for innovation's sake just to end up with more dimes and quarters to spin on top of her desk. She valued her brand as a by-product of success, and she strived to meet the complete satisfaction of her clients and herself in what was, for her, the brand new world of Architecture. She guided herself through to the eye of the storm careening to the rhythm of efficiency, and she could disassemble the drumbeat long before she could describe what it sounded like.

Senna turned over on the couch, which she was lazily slouched over, and pressed 'Off' on her remote for the TV and VCR combo. No less fatigued, she sat up and quickly decided that she'd either spend the rest of her night shooting drinks with a good Ska jam or continue work on a client's project proposal; together, the allure was born of cause-and-effect. It wasn't long before she was swaying in front of her mirror and crooning to the image of a woman with a mid-tone complexion and a black, side-swept pompadour fixed with blonde streaks. She set her shot glass down on the table for a moment and leaned forward to see her reflection in her jet-black eyes, then wiped a smear of ice cream away from the corner of her rosy smile. When she realized that her stomach was bloated from all of the sweets, she laughed—the imagined look on her mother's face was an attraction well worth the admission.

"Soon, soon—brincadeira! Get back here now and I'll find you a good man before you ruin everything you got!"

Senna's specific title was an Architectural Technologist, and the professional performance record she'd completed in the last year made her thoroughly unable to forget it. Since then, the majority of her experience was merely theoretical, and she fit right in a salaried position along with two other apprentices and a few of her more experienced surveyors. The M&T structure where she worked was composed of about eight on-hands, supervised by both the senior Design Architect and Construction Engineer and followed by the general head of projects—the well-aged M. T. himself, who was also his very own, professionally casual construction manager. Those professionally casual days that followed for Senna began at 8:50AM to prepare herself for the surprise workload of her inbox at her desk, and the time only soared if the work wasn't clerical. It was now Thursday afternoon, and those first four hours weren't an exception to the former. However, she was eager to complete any and all documentation leading up to the imminent approval of her third, on-site design project: 1709 Mushroom Circle. With a good back stretch, she slipped the stack of paper into a bright, manila envelope and informed her design supervisor that she didn't want to see it again until after lunch.

Senna often ate at Maria's Best, a peaceful café which was conveniently located right around the corner from her lot, and she voluntarily spent her lunch-breaks in the company of some associates from a neighboring Independent Contractor agency that M&T inevitably enjoyed affiliating with. She and a group of three construction workers—today, two guys and a girl—delighted in each others' company, and the open, even-paced conversation between them was always a breath of fresh air. Mike, a brunette of about twenty, one who often enjoyed a plate of fiery-stuffed enchiladas smothered in nacho sauce, started a conversation about a bizarre occurrence to accompany the blissful chewing sounds among them.

"…One time, my girlfriend told me about a weird, raspy breathing that she heard when she used to stay at her grandparents' house in Maine. She went downstairs a couple of times in the night to see if it was them, and they were completely passed out. She never felt right in that house. The grandparents denied ever hearing anything."

A woman named Alana, approaching her latest thirties, chimed after. "Maine is such a beautiful place, but I don't doubt that it's haunted—not one bit—especially near the coast. It's like Seattle; it's cold and gloomy almost year round."

Senna interjected with a small mouthful. "I know this is a little off from the subject; it's kind of related…" she paused mid-sentence in her neutral accent and cleared her palate. "…But when I was a little girl, I remember my mother telling me about these huge, yellow turtles when we lived in Rio. I was too young to remember and we came to the states shortly after, but my mother witnessed one break into a museum and make off with an artifact. She said it was pretty fast, and it jumped down this large sewer pipe before she could even get to a phone."

The last worker laughed with the food in his mouth, and Mike smiled and did wise. "You believe everything your mother tells you like that, Senna?"

"Not really. She is pretty dramatic—about everything. But, what gets me is that she's not a liar. She doesn't even lie to kids; not about death, sex… It's embarrassing, actually."

Robert, food still in his mouth, was the last to speak. "That's a little too crazy for anyone to not make up."

"Yeah, probably." Senna admitted. "I just remembered it now from all of these years."

"Mothers don't think of it as lying as much as it is entertaining their children. It is very entertaining, though." Alana reassured. "You could write a story about it."

Hours after her lunch break, Senna jolted back into a state of awareness. The disbelief of the silly story had preyed on her mind since, and she found herself rather irked that it had. Fortunately for her, she was glad that she'd developed a firm reputation of deceivingly aimless studiousness, even in the short time she was employed. She was pleased to be enthusiastically interrupted by the senior Construction Engineer and to follow her fellow colleagues into the backroom for a briefing. Too, the project manager was present, and Senna swore that it was the first time that she had seen him all week. With a cleared mind, she sat with her arms folded in her lap and bounced her knees in anticipation of the health of her artistic proposal. The tall manager rolled up his sleeves and began to speak with a satisfied frankness.

"Thank you, everyone, for doing your part this last week. We've done our reports and turned in our proposals on time. Along with our senior Architect, Margaret, I just interviewed the client with his Contractor, and we've finished the paperwork, and received payment. So, we're clear to start auditing the site tomorrow!" There was a unanimous roar of cheer and applauds from within the small room. "The client won't be on-site until Monday, although his Contractors will meet us at 9AM on-site. Margaret looked over Senna's proposal—pretty good— and the client will offer us further feedback in a couple of days. The Engineers—Doug, you should have the files in your email tomorrow morning for review."

He paused, and Senna stole a satiated sigh before he began again. "As you all know, we've settled on the demolition of the current structure, so the machines will be on-site once we thoroughly inspect the site. To my apprentices: please keep in mind the National Electric Code and the ANSI if you need to dig anything out; it's an old building, but those wires are still active. As always, I will be on-site tomorrow. If you have any questions—"

The elements of the room began to scatter and a voice in the escalating crowd made itself audible. "It's been government owned for 5 years prior to purchase, and it's right next to the underground sewer system. There's probably no work done on it in those five years; is it possible that a leak in the plumbing could induce corrosives with the wires?"

"There's a better chance that the plumbing itself is much more corrosive."

Senna shook her head and left on the note. She had suddenly become too hungry for turtle soup to let other broths spoil the cook.

It was a bright, Friday morning at 1709 Mushroom Circle, and the M&T crew met up with their client's contractor bright and early in a minor parking dilemma. With so many vehicles parked in parallel and only leaving room for the clearance of driveways, Senna resorted to parking her sedan across the L-curve down the street. The walk wasn't far, and it still allowed her to slowly ease the realization of the decrepit structure onto her instead of suddenly and aggressively. She supposed to herself that it used to be a small clinic or a private nursing home. Whatever it was, it was in the worst condition that she'd ever seen a two-story building in. Its wood paneling was so old between the gutters and roof that it had long excreted gelatinous ooze, and she could almost imagine the inside decorated like a solutional cave. When she arrived next to the General Contractor, she remarked "How's this for a Carpenter's amusement park?" He shook his head in some sort of agreement. When they were all gathered there, Dr. M. T. made his face in front of the neighboring crews and started his morning announcement.

"Well, here it is; the lovely 1709 Mushroom Circle. Again, we are in synchronized agreement to demolish this structure after we do a manual audit of the land in a full report. But before that, we must identify and disengage potential hazards before beginning the audit. Let's get to it!"

He clapped his hands, and his audience of six slipped on their protective equipment and entered the building in single file. As dark as it should have been without the supply of power from overhead, all of the holes in the roof's placement almost made the interior look bright. The head of the bright yellow brigade was a General Contractor named Tom who led in place of the Doctor, who did his audits from the safety of outdoors. Tom lifted leg after leg over scattered and abandoned furniture until he found an area that looked plausibly like a basement.

"Guys, our highest priority is to find the circuit breaker and switch off. Then, we can inspect the wiring." He held up two fingers to lead a subgroup made of himself and another further down into the unstable structure, and just moments passed before a string of numerous, flickering bulbs flashed and finally exhausted.

"All clear."

Upon his return, the group split down the middle. Senna decided to follow Tom, who was also followed by a very young and timid intern—a to-be Engineer. They navigated through slanted archways and doorless side-rooms, briefly assessing each one. With thick, but weakened walls and a dark-grey dust that blanketed the scattered debris, each room they visited followed the dump's uniform decay until they discovered a half-bathroom cramped in the corner inside of what seemed to be a room once used for custodial care. What Senna found strange about this room was a horrible smell that seemed to emit from one of the best preserved facilities in the house yet. Its toilet, sink and shower barely looked as if they'd been used at all. It was only littered in the drywall that had fallen from overhead; and still, the smell lingered. Tom and Senna engaged in a short discussion about it, and he led.

"What a smell! It has to be from the sewer system. There's a leak below."

"But if that were true, the whole house would have that uniform smell. It's just this room."

"Not necessarily. It's likely that it's just backed up on this side and the leak is only beneath this area."

"Yeah, but—somehow…" She narrowed her eyes in sleuth. "…it doesn't smell like your normal sewage."

"The house is years old. I'll be surprised if the septic tank has been pumped in a decade or more."

The trio began more thoroughly investigating the plumbing. Tom and the intern, who was Jacob, checked the sink and toilet while Senna stood in the tub and squatted to take a better look at the small, grated drain. She only knew the very basics of plumbing, but when she tapped at the tub's broken spout, even she was surprised to have not smelled anything more unusual than the mildew that constantly permeated through the house. And yet, the abominable smell was still somewhere. Senna eased herself back to a standing position by putting her hand onto the tub's tile wall when she felt the structure rattle. Senna turned to Jacob, who turned to Tom, and their triad of suspicion was formed.

Tom smacked his hand against the tile, and it rattled more violently. It was a surprisingly thin wall, and it was likely that there was little-to-nothing, if not anything at all, supporting it from behind. By now, each was excited about the discovery, and the three took nearby blunt objects and began to attack the tile wall mercilessly. Whether it was one of the building's oldest secrets or just bad craftsmanship would be something they'd uncover with just a few more blows to the surface, and when that time came, the secret therein delivered the last blow unto them.

What lay beyond the tile was a small room that was no larger than an oblong closet and a rather large, bright yellow pipe that was covered in slime and sluggish, plump vermin. The same slime covered most of the floor behind the tub, and the smell was one just less atrocious than the stench of death. Jacob and Senna stared at the sight, mesmerized. "Now this is interesting!" Tom exclaimed as he tore down the tile a little more to accommodate for two more onlookers.

Senna immediately revisited the story she'd told her lunch-mates just the day before. The pipe before her looked almost big enough to allow her to slide down—not that she'd entertain the daring feat a moment too soon. She watched with an evolving expression as Tom tried to put a foot through the hole in the tiles, but for him, the crevice was still too high and he was also not interested to dive face-first into a pile of damp slime.

"I was just telling a story the other day to some Carpenters that my mom once told me about giant turtles that went down pipes like these." Senna looked and sounded like she was a bit disoriented—perhaps from the smell. She turned to the young boy, Jacob, who offered her no words, just a blank and confused stare in return. "…damnit, maybe these are the pipes that they went down!"

Tom grabbed her shoulder with an even more confused look on his face than Jacob's. "Miss, these are sewer pipes, remember? Remember we were talking about the one that broke below the surface? Some idiot—" Tom suddenly stopped to laugh at the situation as a whole before continuing. "—some IDIOT must've forgot which way to put the pipe and tried to cover it up! In a bath… I-I-in a bathroom!" The Contractor stopped to laugh even harder. He removed his goggles, and a tear began to stream down his reddened face. "The people must—HAHA—the people must've thought that their toilet had a permanent shit-smell!"

Tom's laugh was so distinct that Jacob cracked up at his laughter alone. Even Senna smiled a little, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the small hint of the pipe's alluring chrome shine that sparkled from underneath the filth.

"And she—ooh, boy—and she thinks it's turtles!" He couldn't help himself. Tom laughed so hard that he sounded like he was regurgitating his stomach. "Who built this house? A Russian?! It's the only bathroom that shits on you back!"

Jacob was sitting on the floor and holding his head to sustain his vocal amusement, and Senna sat at the edge of the tub only to realize that it had come loose, too. Finally, she broke down completely and she slapped her knees and began to laugh with the duo. She embraced Tom in a fit of their hilarity, and then, everything about the house became a joke to them. The three laughed themselves happily throughout an effortless day.

Nighttime had come more quickly that night than it had for every day in that entire week, and Senna felt as if she was still a day behind. It was almost midnight, and she had been sprawled over her couch like a rag-doll for hours, mulling over her thoughts since the conversation she had had at lunch yesterday—all as if they were a figment of her imagination. Every so often, she'd eye the little piece of paper that she'd reveal and push back in her pocket: (Tom – (288)-555-0153) and even that felt surreal somehow. She could not reason why she got so excited to visit a house that was set to be torn down in the first place. How could such a ridiculous story become more valid the more that she doubted it? And what was that pipe that lay beyond the shower wall? The questions preyed devilishly on her mind, and Senna closed her eyes for a long moment. Behind her eyelids, she saw cheerful faces and laughing mouths, and when she reopened her eyes, she exploded with a verbal reasoning.

"It's a dream is what it is!"

By the time she even stirred from where she laid, it was half-past midnight, and the cogs of her mind had finally worn their teeth into perfect circles. She walked over to the kitchen for a snack, and realized that, in contrast to a refrigerator full of non-perishables, a freezer with a T.V. dinner inside was the more supple option. When it was finished heating, Senna pulled it out and propped her elbows on the dining table awaiting it to cool. A dead silence rang through her house, and in the nothingness, she realized that she'd spent every night this week by herself. She looked over to the phone's off-white receiver, and, as a 'professional', she could just barely stop herself from calling anyone so late at night for a bit of sanity—even her mother. She looked beyond the lifeless spread of the valance that hung over the kitchen window to see only blackness, and she had the strangest desire to go out and blend into it all completely.

"I must be tired; I'm thinking like a crazy person."

Now lethargic, she stuck the dinner in her fridge for later and headed for her room. Senna felt her eyes grow heavy the moment her head hit the pillow, and while she slept, she dreamt. First, there was nothingness like the stark blackness of outside, but then a small, white dot grew in the middle. Time blazed past her unconscious mind unlike when she was awake—she dreamt that a minute felt like a week, and two minutes felt like a year while the white dot grew, colorfully and kaleidoscopically, into swirling shapes that became more colorful, swirling shapes. Just as the figure itself grew more and more bountiful, it consumed her first-person view until there was no darkness left; and suddenly, she saw the shape from a profile view, and it was the inside of a large, yellow-chromed pipe. It had only been fifteen minutes before she jolted awake angrily—her eyes wide and her adrenaline pumping.

"That's it! That's all I can take… 1709 Mushroom Circle…"

Senna stumbled into her work jeans and shoes over the black leggings and tank top she wore as pajamas and headed out in her coupe for that old, ruined building. The road had felt hazy to her until she realized that the bright colors in her dream had faintly impaired her vision, and by then, she had arrived at her destination. It stood eerily against the darkness of the moon, and all she had to guide her way was the small keychain light dangling on the end of her keyset.

Even with her drowsy, desensitized vision, she realized that the adrenaline rush never really left her. The setting was different from how it was in the daytime, and she felt a sort of fearlessness dive in with the sweeping breaths of her chest; even with every step that she took, she'd relish if a door would slam shut behind her, even in the doorless archways. And then, she revisited the old half-bathroom. It came upon her as if she was a predator cornering its prey, Wary to identify her target, she took a few steps forward and shone her light directly on the pipe where a single spot shone brilliantly like car rims in daylight. This time, she dared to fit herself through the opening in the wall, and her boots splashed reluctantly into the rancid ooze below her.

Brushing off her regrets, she removed the thin layer of film that had collected around the rim of the pipe. And, with much anticipation, she shone her light inside only to see what was the same substance stuffed tightly inside the diameter, and she could only assume it to be filled with more of the same sludge. Her disappointedly confused face mirrored itself in the yellow chrome.

"It's a sewage pipe… That's all it is."

Senna felt a surge of foolishness replace the adrenaline. There she stood in the festering muck in front of a septic drain, possessing herself to believe that she'd find turtles with treasure on the other side of the pipe like Alice and the White Rabbit. Humiliated with herself, she turned back and climbed up out of the crevice and back over the tub to leave. However, she only strode so far before she felt the simple sense of misguidance turn into the deep sense of feeling lost. She knew that she had been wrong, but she couldn't bring herself to go back home. The moonlight shone elegantly on her back as it rose through the cracks in the roof, and, after a moment's pause, she again faced the gaping hole in the wall.

"Well," Senna pocketed her hands as if to retain some of her escaping optimism. "I've never played in sewage before."

Strangely, the prospect of doing exactly what she just said wasn't repulsive at all, and within a moment or two, she was extra decisive about it. Even in the elusive mirage of light that blanketed the frame of destruction she'd created, the turmeric yellow of the pipe shone outstandingly in its blackened cove, and it guided her smoothly like a moth to the flame. One, two legs over into the recess, and Senna embraced the tube with pressed palms. She forced her palms directly into the pipe's blockage, and to her surprise, the thick slime only occupied a single layer over the top of what was otherwise a gust of loose garbage. Not a moment later, that little bit and more garbage shot up from the pipe in a gust of putrid air—landing all around her.

Now the path was clear. In total fascination, Senna leaned over to look straight down a now endless tunnel. As if possessed, she leaned in a little further, and when she did, she was terrified to find that the pipe began to try to engulf her at the force of a small tornado. She locked her elbows with her palms around the lip of the pipe, and her already messy braid came wildly undone. She resisted the force with all of the strength in her body, and it was in these few moments, where Senna felt herself giving into the menacing suction, that she realized that she—and her life—would never be the same again.