Every Dark Little Thing

by T. S. Ward

  I would have made him suffer his penance for it, if I just dragged him out of that house.

  So, I sit there, staring at that door, arms wrapped around my knees.

  This man felt hopeless. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for him. And I can feel that—I know the feeling, know it seeping into my skin and my bones, the way it grips and doesn’t let go.

  I don’t want that. I won’t let that happen.

  I want to live. I want to keep living. And I think that’s the only thing that I really have—that intense desire to just keep going. It’s the only thing that will keep me alive.

  Day One Hundred

  “Is this gonna be the rest of our lives?”

  Soldier jumps, and the knife he’s using to crack open a can of mystery food slips against the metal. He’s right to be startled, considering I haven’t said a word since we left that house.

  He blinks. “What?”

  “This. Is this how we’re living from now on, for the rest of forever? You’re opening a can that may or may not be dog food with a knife in an abandoned building with no hint of human life, other than you and the sorry excuse for a half-dead person constantly being an annoying asshole—nevermind. Just… nevermind.”

  I wrap my arms around my knees and look past him, to the spaces in the walls where paintings have been knocked down.

  “You aren’t annoying,” Soldier says.

  “Fuck you.”

  He shrugs, and starts sawing at the can again. “I’m just glad I got stuck with someone who only pretends to be an asshole.”

  “I—excuse me, dickhead, I am hurt. A fake asshole? I am not a fake asshole, in fact, I am the most asshole, the biggest asshole, the fieriest-post-hot-sauce asshole—”

  “Yeah, okay, fine. Maybe you’re right. If the rest of our lives is you listing off different levels of asshole-ness, then, I don’t know what the hell we’re doing.” He smiles, peeling back the top of the can. “But at least we’re doing it.”

  I don’t know what to say. “I’m not just a one-trick pony, Benjamin. There’s more to me than creative self-deprecating insults. I’m not always creative.”

  He looks at me, and now neither of us is laughing. It’s just him, with a serious expression, and me, looking however the fuck I look right now.

  He shakes his head slowly. “You know, I’m not the kind of person to keep people I don’t like around me. Most of the time. Now come over here and help me eat this ravioli.”

  “I’m the rest of the time, right?” I say, but he just shoots me a look that says shut up, idiot. “Is it really ravioli or is it dog food?”

  “You think I’d joke about something like that?” He tilts the can to show me, and it is ravioli, so I shift closer to him. “If we’re living like this the rest of our lives, you have got to understand that I would never joke about ravioli in a mystery can.”

  “I bet there’s a priest out there somewhere,” I mutter.

  The words leave my mouth before I’ve even had time to process my own thoughts. The rest of our lives equals hey, that sounds like wedding vows which equals I guess no one is getting married anymore which then equals unless there’s a priest alive out there, and then, humorously, a badass exorcism priest kicking ass and sporting that white collar thing, spouting threatening bible verses at the damned.

  “What?”

  I hold a hand up. “There was an entire string of thought leading to that statement, and now I really want to meet an apocalypse priest, but honestly, if you’re that serious about ravioli, we might just need to find one anyway.”

  “I already told you, spooks. Find me a honey factory, and I’ll marry you right then and there. Priest or not.” He says it so casually I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, so we sit there in silence, eating ravioli straight from a jagged edged can.

  There’s a jar of honey in my backpack. Two of them.

  It sits across the lobby, a dark shadow against the wall. I could give it to him right now. Or maybe that would seem too eager. Would it? Or would it just be convenient? If by honey factory he means a few beehives in the backyard of some overgrown house garden, then maybe that’s—I don’t know. It’s something.

  He puts an arm around my shoulders then. “I don’t know what you’re thinking about right now, but I’m glad you’re talking again. We’re okay. We’re fine. We’ll survive. And we’ll find your sister.”

  I close my eyes.

  I don’t know what I did to deserve this. This kind of man on my side. Or, more likely, I’ve done shit all and now there’s a massive cosmic imbalance and I need to make it up fast or lose it.

  I’ll be making it up to the world for the rest of my life and then some.

  After a while, the ravioli is empty and set aside and an eerie hollow silence surrounds us as we sit there. I lean my head back against Soldier’s arm to look up at the skylight above us, at the stars between the snow drifts caught on the edges.

  “Any idea what day it is?” Soldier asks.

  “One hundred, since we left the hospital,” I say, frowning as I try to do the math and remember what months have thirty-one days and what have thirty. “It’s December thirty-first, I think.”

  He laughs softly, and takes his arm back as he reaches for his pack to pull out a watch. He passes it to me and keeps digging through his bag. The hand ticks to the exact hour. Eleven. “We’ve got a whole hour until the new year, and…”

  “A whole new year and the apocalypse is still happening and we’ve got nothing to wash it down with—” I shut my mouth.

  He sits back with two chocolate bars and a bottle of champagne. An entire bottle, sealed and corked, and this grin on his face. “You doubt me so much, don’t you?”

  I am a little in shock. And then a laugh shocks me more, real and straight from the chest, when I haven’t laughed properly in days. Barely even smiled. Barely spoke. I watch him pop the cork across the lobby and the foam that spills out onto the tile.

  He drinks some, and passes it over to me. “Here. Wash out that apocalypse taste.”

  I take it, but then I sit there, holding it for a while. Thinking. Contemplating. And then I’m swallowing all my fear, staring at the mouth of the bottle.

  “You good?”

  I nod, pointing to my bag. “Got something, too.”

  He raises an eyebrow, but he pulls my bag over and unzips it, following my vague directions. I take a drink when he finds one. When he pulls it out, unwraps the shirt, and reads the label. I drink again, smiling when he looks at me.

  “Ghost,” he says. That’s all he says.

  “You gonna make me drink all this myself?” I say, holding out the bottle. When he doesn’t move, I get fidgety, and I set the bottle down on the ground and grab a chocolate bar. “It’s not that big of a deal. Drink your champagne.”

  He squints. “That’s three, isn’t it?”

  “Thought you weren’t counting the one I blew up.”

  “Right. So one more, then.” He sounds almost disappointed.

  I close my eyes for a second, and then wave a hand toward the bag again. “Doesn’t even matter how many. There’s another one in there. And the whole farm, so.”

  He starts laughing, and then comes back to sit next to me again. He puts his arm back around me, both of them, hugging me, and then he takes up the champagne again. “I don’t know what I did to end up this lucky. How did I end up with you?”

  I shake my head, quiet now. “You quit your job. And all I did was nearly be murdered. Wouldn’t call it luck.”

  He looks at me. “No, we’re just two lucky bastards.”

  I turn my head to him, lift my chin, and smell the champagne on our breath as I look him in the eye. No air between us. “We gonna sit out here all night and get drunk and loud in a hotel lobby, or what?”

  “We could jump in the pool,” he says.

  “It’s cold as hell!”

  “And? That’s the fun part.”

  “I thought the fun part wa
s—” I shut my mouth before I say some shit that’ll get me into trouble.

  He frowns. “Was what?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing. A joke. Shit joke.”

  He hums, and he’s smiling then, standing up. “I want to show you something.”

  I’m pulled onto my feet before I can protest. He takes my hand and starts walking toward a hall I haven’t explored yet. It’s dark, and there’s a sign for the pool this way, which makes me panic.

  “I’m not going in the pool, Ben.”

  “Why not?” He says, grinning, and then I’m trying to pull back, but he has an arm around my waist.

  I scream-laugh, trying to fight him off, but. He passes the pool.

  There’s a conference hall. The room is dark as hell, but Soldier turns a flashlight on and sets it on a table, facing into the wide room, and all I see are balloons. Balloon archways, balloons on the ground. There’s a banner for a quinceañera on the far wall.

  “You’re a jerk,” I tell Soldier. “I thought you were going to throw me in the pool.”

  “I might,” he says.

  There’s a battery-operated radio on one of the tables. He walks to it, turns it on, and then there’s this music filling the room, quiet and soft. Spanish voices sing in harmony.

  “What the fuck is this?” I laugh, because it all seems so ridiculous to me. A dark room filled with balloons and Spanish music, and this man who is former army, and the fact that there’s the taste of champagne on my tongue, and maybe that it’s New Year’s Eve.

  And then a stray thought of mine interrupts whatever Soldier’s about to say.

  “We missed Halloween.” The way I say it, it sounds like an outrage, but it’s more the shock of everything happening so quickly that we skipped holidays entirely.

  Soldier laughs and holds out a hand to me. “Every day is Halloween with a Ghost for a…”

  I tilt my head. “For a what?”

  “An annoying asshole,” he says, but he has my hand in his, pulling me a little closer, and he’s looking at me with a frown. Confused. Or wondering something.

  “Oh,” I say, “So not quite a friend.”

  He lets go and goes back to the radio, and then pockets his flashlight again. “This isn’t actually what I wanted to show you.”

  “Why are you stalling?”

  “Because you won’t believe me,” he says, backing up, stepping back out into the hall.

  The door falls shut behind him, before I get there, and when I step out into the hall after him, he’s gone. I stand there, looking up and down the hall. There’s nothing to tell me where he’s gone, but I know the door at the end of the hall is trapped and I would have heard the cans rattling, so I start back toward the lobby.

  I swear when I pass the pool door and hear it open behind me, and then Soldier’s pulling me in.

  “Don’t you dare!” I screech, gripping his arm as he lifts me from the floor and carries me to the edge of the pool. “Benjamin, please, no—”

  He’s laughing, but he lets me go. He starts taking his stuff off. His jacket, his boots. “I won’t throw you in. But I need you to trust me or it doesn’t work.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  I stand back and watch him as he strips down to his boxers. He looks back at me, eyebrows raised, expectant. So I step closer again. Touch a hand to his chest. Goosebumps rise on his skin, on mine too, but—good god, I swear it’s a curse that I don’t take anything seriously. I shove him back into the pool.

  He surfaces while I’m standing there laughing, shock on his face. A smile slowly appears as he treads water. “You have to get in now.”

  I start backing up. “It was your idea.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  I roll my eyes, drop my jacket, and kick off my boots.

  He swims to the edge and rests his chin on his arms, talking as I strip down, too. “You don’t have to. I’m not really gonna make you get in just because you pushed me in. Not complaining, though. I’m not… hey, you think you’re tall enough to touch the bottom in the shallow end?”

  “Oh, you—”

  I jump in, and my heart stops for a second. It’s fucking cold. My feet hit the bottom, and I push up, breaking through the surface, and immediately start cursing.

  Soldier treads water next to me, a grin on his face. He doesn’t even look cold, but I’m shivering, teeth chattering. “You ever jumped in a frozen lake before? It’s bad, until you learn how to stay calm.”

  “Why the fuck would you do that?” I grab his forearms and swear again when I find that he feels warm, the bastard.

  “Base I was stationed at up north. First night there, there’s this little lake, completely frozen over, and the guys are out fishing on it. They swore up and down it was thick enough, so I go out there, and before I know it one of them ends up going through the ice. He doesn’t come up. They’re all drunk. Everyone’s standing around going what do we do, what do we do? And then I see a rope in the ice hut. I grab it, dive in, and start trying to find him. Don’t see the guy.”

  He’s moving us toward the shallow end as he talks, pulling me against him, and I think I’m more focused on the feeling of his skin on mine than his story.

  “The current catches me, but I’m not worried because I’ve got the rope, so it’s fine—until I keep going. Bastards cut the rope and got their buddy out like it was some kind of joke, except now it’s not, because I’m going with the current, there’s ice above me, I can’t see a damn thing. And then I somehow manage to get myself out. The water goes still. But my vision is fading, I’m running out of air. I punched my way through the ice a mile and a half down the shore and surfaced just in time to get some air. And somehow the air was colder than the damn ice water.”

  I shiver. “You bullshitting me?”

  “No, ma’am. See? Cut myself on the ice.” He shows me a scar on his wrist.

  “And now you think you’ve got superpowers or something?” I stand, and so does he, and he’s right. The air is worse. “Think you’re immune to hypothermia now?”

  “No,” he says, laughing, “You definitely aren’t. Come here. Let me show you the actual thing I was trying to show you.”

  I huff out a breath and follow him out of the pool, violent shivers slowing me down. “That wasn’t it?”

  “You pushed me in.”

  “You took your clothes off. Or is that what you were trying to show me? Because really, I’m not complaining…” I stop talking when he looks back at me. Despite the bone chilling cold, there’s a flush in my cheeks. And I get defensive. “What?”

  He steps to the side. “Nothing.”

  There’s a hot tub behind him. One that is working for fuck’s sake. Steam rises from the surface, and then Soldier’s climbing in, holding a hand out to me. I don’t hesitate. And it’s motherfucking heavenly. The heat calms my shivering immediately, and I sink down into it, eyes closing, smiling.

  “Fuck you,” I whisper.

  “Seems like that’s your goal,” he says.

  I slip on the seat under me, choke on some water, start coughing. Now I’m flushing. “What?”

  He’s laughing hard, his entire face warming with a wide grin. “I was joking, but I think that reaction says I’m onto something.”

  “Fuck off,” I wheeze.

  “Says you finding all that honey.”

  “You wanted it!”

  He shifts over to sit next to me. “Yes, I did. I do.”

  I stare at him for a second, and then there’s a lump in my throat. I pull my feet up and hug my knees, staring at the bubbling surface of the water where the jets come up, instead of at him, because if I look at him—fuck, even without looking at him, just the thought is enough.

  I clamp my teeth together, bite my cheek to distract myself. Squeeze my eyes shut as I press a hand over them.

  “You good?” He asks.

  I nod, but god damn, the tears are there, fucking this all up.

  “Ghost.�
��

  Pull yourself together, idiot. Enough with this bullshit.

  Soldier puts a hand on my back, and it’s nice, it’s okay, I’m okay with it, but I flinch without trying. Without meaning to. I lean forward, press myself into my knees, and he doesn’t touch me again. And I hate that he doesn’t.

  I hate it.

  This might have been the stupidest fucking idea we could have had, jumping into a freezing pool, getting in a damn hot tub. Fucking with limbo.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Oh, shut your mouth,” I tell him, “Don’t. Don’t—it’s not you. It’s… I don’t know if you’ve ever had the distinct, honourable privilege of thinking oh I’m totally fine, only to discover at the worst possible moment that you’re fucked right up, but… yeah. Yeah. This scares the fuck out of me.”

  He nods. “Okay. Okay, yeah, I get it. I’m not trying to rush you.”

  “No, but… that’s the problem. It’s not rushing. Not when I…” I lean back, sighing, groaning, fed up with my own bullshit. “I like flirting. That part of this. I like what we have. I’m just scared. I don’t want it to change and I know it will.”

  “Why would it change?” He tilts his head and rests his elbow on the edge of the hot tub. “I think whatever you’ve experienced to make you think that is bullshit. I’m not flirting, Ghost. I’ve been serious this whole damn time. And that’s how it should be. I’m not going to fuck around and leave you.”

  I nod, and I press my hands to his cheeks. “Good, because I’d lose my shit.”

  “I don’t do anything halfway.”

  He’s looking at me, eyes sparkling in the dark, steam rising from the surface of the water and from our skin. I don’t think there’s any going back to whatever limbo was left, and I sure as hell don’t do anything softly or carefully or casually. I am a wildfire and a hurricane. And so I pull myself closer, kiss him deeply, and god, he’s soft with me. Soft lips, soft hands.

  But that isn’t me. So I kiss him like I’m drowning and he’s the last bit of oxygen. Touch him like we’re both burning.

  “Ben,” I say, forehead pressed to his.