by Edward Lee
But Steve is bellowing, too, as the thing in the corner continues to take him apart. What exactly is it doing, to generate such flaying screams? Blood is flying everywhere, spraying the walls. And there’s a sound that turns your stomach and makes you think of someone taking the insides out of a pumpkin…
Then the screams subside. Silence drenches the room, save for the sound of blood dripping off the ceiling and walls.
The figure in the corner rises and turns. The gun drops from your hand. You can only discern the shape of the thing, for that’s all it really is, a shape—an apparition of dust and flecks of darkness. It’s moving toward you now.
Its shadow-boned hands are reaching out…
Your fear is quite logical: The thing mutilated the blond girl and Steve, and now it’s coming for you. Paralyzed, you look back. Its black outstretched hands don’t seem threatening at all. Instead, it seems forlorn; it seems almost to be beseeching you.
In fact, it seems to be…offering something.
Then you look harder, and you see. Yes, you see exactly what it is that this spectral figure is offering you.
Steve’s heart…
“Lady? You all right?”
Blurred stars and midnight smudged her vision; when Alice regained her senses she found herself lying flat on her back in the middle of Federal Street. A young bearded man with a ponytail leaned over her, the lines in his face drawn up in concern.
Alice’s mind spun. What the— What hap— Then it all connected back to her consciousness.
Jesus God Almighty…
She was still dizzy, remembering the fantasy, or whatever it really was. The moon seemed to slide around in the sky. “What happened?” she asked. “How did I get here?’
“You were running down the street,” the pony-tailed man notified her. “You were screaming—”
Screaming, she thought.
“—then you just, like, collapsed in the street. Was someone chasing you?”
“No, no,” Alice wavered in reply. She was dressed in her navy-blue nightgown, whose thin material clung to her from perspiration. At once she felt asinine, embarrassed.
“You better, uh, you know,” the man murmured, “you better fix your leg first, I mean before you try to stand up…”
Alice could’ve shrieked when she realized what he meant. Her prosthetic limb had come partially unattached at the transection cap, bent off to one side. She leaned over, frantic to reset it.
“Let me—let me help you,” the man offered.
“No!” she objected, close to tears. What’s wrong with me? Her thoughts darted. What am I doing in the middle of the street? When she’d reaffixed the prosthetic to the nub of her left leg she was able to rise to her feet quite quickly.
“Do you— I mean, are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I mean, maybe you should go to the hospital. It’s just two blocks down. I’ll walk you there if you want.”
But Alice was already moving away. “No, really, I’m fine.” Barefoot, still dazed, Alice limped as hastily as she could back down the darkened street, back toward home.
— | — | —
5
ST. BRIDE’S BAY, ENGLAND, 1793
The figure stands stock-still, hands together as if in prayer.
Candles at either end of the altar flicker dimly, and upon the altar the man lay, stripped naked, shivering in spite of the heat, his wrists and ankles tightly bound.
In his terror, his eyes are wide as bright silver coins.
The still figure looks down, appraising the man, smiling slightly.
(Katelyn? Katelyn?)
In both hands then, the figure grips the knife. Its blade glints in the candlelight—
—then rises ever so slightly—
The man screams…
—and the knife plunges downward and sinks haft-deep into his beating heart…
««—»»
The angel whispered to her at night. Katelyn knew it must be an angel. Angels cast blessings, didn’t they? Only angels could do that, and one thing Katelyn felt sure of was that she had been blessed…
Blessed with beauty. Blessed with love. What greater blessings could there be than these?
At the edge of the tarn, as the crickets tremoloed, she held her eyes wide open on the water. The water lay still as a pane of new glass, bright with moonlight. Her reflection on the tarn’s surface seemed just as bright, and so sharp with clarity it appeared honed. This midnight image of herself grew when she dropped her straps and let her night dress slide to her feet.
White, aura’d moonlight sculpted her naked body to scrupulousness such that Katelyn could see every detail: high, firm breasts, dark nipples, long, lean legs, and every lovely feminine curve. For the first time in her life she felt whole and real and—
Beautiful, she mused upon the reflection. I’m beautiful now.
Her new beauty, she knew, was the angel’s gift to her. The angel had given it to Katelyn, and had asked nothing in return. That’s how Katelyn knew it was a blessing. For years she’d been cursed by her husband’s infidelities, not to mention the sheer physical brutality of his drunken ranting. Katelyn’s pain and travail, over all that time, had proved her simple goodness at heart.
So God has sent me this angel to bless me! she thought in warm, skin-tingling joy.
Her new beauty reflected back up to her in the moonlit water. I’m blessed now! I’m free!
The angel’s whisperings had begun just after that first night with the soldiers. She remembered how good she’d felt that night, and now, all the nights afterward. She felt reborn, re-created in the angel’s gift of new beauty and love. She didn’t mind that the soldiers were often rough with her. What mattered was their obvious desire for her. She knew it wasn’t love—in fact, thus far she’d never coupled with the same soldier twice. The angel’s love-gift was quite different…
(It’s not someone else’s love, Katelyn, and it’s not your love for someone else.)
(It’s your own love—for yourself!)
The angel whispered her blessed secrets every night. The words came like caresses to her, assurances and consolation in the face of Katelyn’s despair. Now she no longer cared about her wretched husband’s beatings and infidelities. She no longer cared that he didn’t love her. Nor did she care about the way the soldiers regarded her—
(Do for yourself now, Katelyn. From now on everything you do is for yourself. You deserve to love yourself…)
(love yourself…)
(love yourself…)
(love yourself…)
The angel had taught her. The angel showed her and helped her and blessed her. Sex was no longer an act of her own submission, no longer an instance of letting herself be an object for someone else’s pleasure. It was Katelyn’s own pleasure now, whether with the soldiers coming off their night watch on the docks or with her husband.
The angel taught her how to turn all that primitive male lust into the vehicle of her own ecstasy. And why shouldn’t she? All these years she‘d denied herself. She‘d suffered. She’d wept long into the night. Now the angel had changed that, had shown her how to turn it all into a means through which she could finally love herself
And Katelyn loved herself a lot now…
It was the same every night. After finishing his shift in the great quarry her husband would drink and carouse at the tavern. Most nights, thank God, he’d been slaked by the prostitutes and would merely stagger home and fall asleep. It was then that the angel would begin to whisper to Katelyn—
(Katelyn, Katelyn? Come outside now. Come out and see me now.)
(Katelyn? Katelyn?)
— | — | —
6
“Alice! Alice!” Snap-snap-snap! “Alice! Are you there?” The voice, combined with the irritating metal snap! of the brass knocker, stirred Alice awake. Her neck and back ached dully; she realized she’d been sleeping not in her bed but on the scroll couch in the paneled livi
ng room. Snap-snap-snap! Alice grit her teeth at the sound. I don’t like that knocker, she quickly concluded, and who on earth would be knocking on my door? Groaning, she reconnected her Grimes, Inc. prosthetic leg, then straggled to the great inlaid front door and put her eye to the peephole.
It was Holly.
Snap-snap-snap!
At first Alice felt disinclined to answer, and she knew why at once. The leg, she thought. That man last night seeing it had been uncomfortable enough. The leg protruding past the hem of her nightgown made her feel naked. She simply didn’t want it to be seen. But—
Snap-snap-snap!
Aggravation implored her to answer the door. “Well,
I see you’re quite a sleepyhead,” Holly said when Alice opened the door. “Are you all right?”
“Well, yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’ve been calling all morning.”
Alice tried to rub some of the grogginess out of her eyes. “My next session isn’t until tomorrow. What were you—”
“You could invite me in, you know. Or is it the housekeeper’s day off?”
Oh, Jesus, Alice fretted. This was exactly what she didn’t want. She could either be rude, or—
“Come in,” she said, trying not to sound inhospitable.
She let Holly into the foyer, closed the door quickly. “What time is it?”
“Past two.”
Did I sleep that long? This confused Alice, but then she remembered how upset she had been last night, the “fantasy” of killing Steve running wild, and her terrified flight down the street well past midnight. In one of the door’s varnished panels she saw her reflection. “I’m a mess,” she excused. Her nightgown still felt sticky with sweat. “Let me get cleaned up—”
Holly turned in the foyer. “Alice, it’s not the queen coming to visit; it’s me.”
Her artificial leg seemed to hum. “No, really, I hate being seen in this ratty nightgown, and my hair’s a mess, and my—”
“Alice, if there’s one person in the world you don’t have to lie to, it’s your therapist.”
This irked her. “What are you talking about? Why do you always—”
“Didn’t you agree not to lie to me, yesterday during our session?”
“I’m not lying!”
“Yes, you are,” Holly replied calmly, giving the foyer a cursory glance-over. “You are fabricating an alibi to scurry away and change into long pants so that I won’t see your prosthesis.”
Alice felt half enraged, half dejected.
Holly, now more carefully examining the framed paintings just past the foyer, said, “I hope you consider us friends first and therapist/patient second. Please don’t be inhibited around me… Let me put it this way: I know you. I know a lot about you. I’m well aware of the fact that you have an artificial leg. And…I don’t care. I understand your social inhibitions, your reservations, your uneasiness. But please know that there’s no reason for them to apply to me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I suspect you do. To me, you are not Alice, my twice-weekly patient with the artificial leg. To me, you are only one thing: You are a woman named Alice.”
Alice felt a thickness gather in her throat. This seemed more sincere, however cold, than anything anyone had related to her in a long while. She found it impossible to object to, or to nullify.
“And, believe me,” Holly added in one of her rare departures from form, “you look as shitty as I do when I wake up. You should see me—I look like Medusa in the morning.”
Thank you, Holly, Alice thought, still a bit flustered. Suddenly, it didn’t matter; none of it did, at least not as far as Holly was concerned. She showed her into the paneled living room, expecting to sit down and chat about whatever Holly’d come to chat about, but the therapist interjected, caught off guard: “This is absolutely beautiful, Alice.” She moved around the room in awe, wide gray eyes finding fascination in every detail. “I love what you’ve done here. It’s so real, so authentic.”
“I wanted it to look original without looking like a museum,” Alice related. She limped very slightly behind Holly, whose perfectly straight sable-hued hair shined like silk when she passed the sunlit bay window. Beyond the panes, trees glittered green. “It took so long,” Alice continued. “It’s hard to believe that the renovation is finally complete.”
“Yeah, well you really did an amazing j—” Holly’s high heels ticked to a halt at the open doors. The woman looked stunned. “My God, what is this? The bedroom?”
“It’s the watch room, according to the realtor,” Alice said. “I fell in love with it right off, so I decided to use it for my bedroom. I turned the real bedroom into a guest room.”
“Watch room.” The word slithered from Holly’s lips. Her gaze roved over the newly papered walls, which, ceiling included, inclined forward toward the French doors and the veranda. Sunlight blazed languidly on the inner bay.
“From here they’d watch for ships coming into the dock,” Alice said. “At least I think that’s what they did. The pier at the end of the street used to be the city’s main port back in the 1700s.”
Holly slowly stepped in. “Watch room,” she whispered again. “Can you imagine…”
“Imagine what?”
“You know.” The shapely outline of the therapist’s body could be seen against the sun through a pretty chartreuse dress and a top of loose voile. I should be so lucky, Alice kept to herself. This brief glimpse gave her a pang of envy. She’s so pretty, and I’m so…droopy. She didn’t really consider herself fat, and certainly not obese, but something about Holly’s lean, curvy frame made Alice feel out of shape, lazy, over the hill. And she’s even older than I am, she continued the observation. Well, at least my breasts are bigger…
“This room… I mean, it’s just so sexy, isn’t it?” Holly finally revealed her impressions. “Can you imagine having…a lover here, making love all night, then waking up to this beautiful view?”
No, I can’t, Alice thought.
Holly’s quick frown came as no surprise. She seemed to decode Alice’s bitter reflection as always. “Not this again. When are you going to snap out of it, Alice? You behave as if just because you had an accident, you’ll never be in love again. That’s ludicrous.”
Is it? Alice thought. Is it? When she failed to reply Holly went on, “Lots of women have accidents. Lots of women lose limbs. But they don’t let it ruin their lives. Eventually they fall in love, they get married—”
Don’t you understand anything? Alice thought. Her despondency tainted her features now. She felt like a wad of sagging dough…
“Holly, I really don’t feel like getting into this topic again,” Alice commented quietly. God knew it was a popular subject with Holly.
The therapist was still looking around, nearly enraptured by Alice’s renovations of the Taylor Watch House. Her eyes never found her patient’s as she said, “You’ve got a lot going for yourself.”
“Sure, I know, I’m a successful attorney. You’ve told me a million times.” But she felt inclined to say, You’re not the one missing a leg; it’s easy for you to say.
“You’re a sophisticated and very capable woman. You’re alive, aren’t you? You could’ve been killed. You could’ve been paralyzed from the neck down. You could’ve sustained a cranial trauma that would’ve left you comatose.”
The stolid Dr. Greene at the hospital had told her the same thing, and Alice knew they were both right. But that rationalization only held water for so long. Sometimes it made her…sick.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Holly added, still not looking at Alice. “It’s an excuse—I’m really getting tired of hearing it.”
Alice felt accosted. Well, pardon me! She didn’t know if she should be angry or what. Maybe I should be, she contemplated. Maybe I should give her a piece of my mind for a change. “Why don’t we turn the tables a moment? Falling in love? Getting married? How come you don’t have any of that?”
Holly’s reaction was a
nything but what Alice expected. The therapist simply grinned. “The reason I’m not married is simple: I’m not going to sell myself short. You should consider my point, Alice. I haven’t yet met anyone who is good enough for me.”
Alice’s face fell.
“Does that sound pompous to you?” Holly asked, amused. “Does that sound selfish and egotistical? Well, it is. Don’t settle for what’s not worthy of you. Women have been doing that for the last fifty centuries. It’s brutal and sexist and wrong. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Alice supposed she did, in an ideological sense. But ideologies didn’t add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Especially when you’ve got a chunk of plastic for a left leg, she added.
Only now did Holly turn and look her straight in the eye. The way she did so, while maintaining that mocking grin, ruffled Alice. Holly went on, “You are going to overcome your introversion, Alice, and your pathetic lack of self-esteem, whether you like it or not. I’ll make you.”
Alice’s frown darkened. “You woke me up just to tell me that?”
“Well, first of all you shouldn’t be sleeping this late. Far too often unipolar depression patients use sleep as a way of eluding certain self-conceptions. When you’re asleep you can’t realize. You’ll wind up sleeping your life away, and I won’t have it. For as long as you have me as your therapist, that’s just the way it’s going to be. But aside from all that, I didn’t come here to shake you up, or to irritate you. I came here simply because I wanted to know how it went last night.”
“What do you mean?” Alice asked.
“The substitution technique I asked you to try. Did you do it?”
“Yes,” Alice answered. It gave her a mild thrill, however unpleasant the actual experience had been, to tell Holly that this technique of hers had backfired. “Oh, I did it. And it didn’t work out very well.” She related the entire experience.
