Sleep Tight

by BJ Hyman

  “You know what I love to watch now?” She sounds slightly breathless as she struggles up the cliff above me.

  “Your ass as you climb? I know I love to watch that.” I grin as I take in my incredible view.

  She laughs. “It’d be pretty hard for me to watch my own ass as I climbed.”

  “It’s not hard at all for me. Wait. I take that back. It is … just not in the way you mean.” She stops to reach back and swat at me.

  “I used to not watch the seasons. It was all a blur except for summers and Christmas break as a kid. I missed all the in-between because I was only looking at what I had to do. I never had time to just look. I watched my mother’s azaleas bloom this spring. Can you believe it? It was the first time I really ever saw that little miracle. The brown dead-looking wood begins to get little green buds here and there. Then one bloom bursts forth. Only one. It looked so lonely. But the next day, it was like it was just the host of the party and the guests had arrived. The whole bush was full of blossoms. She has azaleas all around the house. They are in white and pink and purple. I can’t believe I missed that before. And she has buttercups. I thought buttercups were just yellow, but she planted some that are deep yellow on the cup part and lighter yellow on the petals. Then there are light yellow ones and dark yellow … almost orange … ones!” She stops to catch her breath as if the flowers have taken her breath away instead of the climb. When she looks back at me, tears have streaked the dirt on her cheeks. “How could I have missed all of that? It was such a waste of time.” She rubs an angry hand across her cheek before reaching again for the rock above her. I don’t know what to say so I just keep climbing.

  I may not have noticed spring before, but I saw the changes in the woman I followed. I love the way she feels things so deeply. Her emotions are a symphony to my new life. I have lost so much, but in that loss, I have gained her and the perspective she brings along for the ride.

  At last, we reach the summit and heave our bodies over the ledge. The rocks scratch my belly as I push all my weight up by my arms. We sit looking out over the cliff base as we catch our breath and regain our strength. Phoenix goes to the backpack that carries our change of clothes in it and a couple of bottles of water. She walks a bottled water over to me and hands me a candy bar. She sits back down wordlessly and we snack and drink in companionable silence.

  “So I think we should go over holding hands. As soon as we have cleared the cliff, I’ll pull you toward me. Wrap your legs and arms around me and we’ll fall facing one another. Do you want to land side by side, on top, or on bottom?” I look over to see her peeling the label off of her water bottle.

  “I want on top.”

  I put my hand on the inside of her tight thigh. “That’s my girl. Ride me like the stallion that I am.” I give her a suggestive wink. She only raises an eyebrow as she stands and reaches a hand out for my trash.

  I pull out my battered iPod and search for the right song. This Ladder Is Ours by The Joy Formidable has just the right tone I’m feeling. I saw them in concert a couple of years ago. The raw passion and drive of their music live is awe inspiring. They play with such concentrated abandon. It’s how I want to live my life now.

  I love how this song starts out orchestral before moving to a dissonance that explodes with rock. Perfection.

  When Phoenix steps up to me, I give her one earbud and I take the other. We clasp hands and turn to the edge of the cliff. With a deep breath, we begin to run toward the drop off and, in an instant, we are airborne. I pull her to me and wrap my arms around her. She holds tight and hooks her ankles behind my hips. She locks eyes with me as gravity drags us down.

  I can see the fear and thrill in her face moment by moment, in real time. There may not be a fear of death any longer but there is the anticipation of pain. And we both know this pain is intense.

  As we near the end, she turns us over in mid-air so that I’m underneath her. I know the split second before the landing by her grip and how her pupils dilate in excitement. I have never landed on my back before. I feel my spine and ribs crack as my head practically disintegrates into nothing.

  My last image is of Phoenix’s face smashing into mine. My elbows splinter into my forearms as her legs snap beneath me. I haven’t noticed any sounds on my solo jumps, but I hear her gasp this time that split second before the damage is done to my ear bones. And then, blackness.

  Slowly I become aware of the sliding and crackling that means I am mending back to normal. Parts of me rise and grow and fill in. I feel myself begin to separate from Phoenix’s parts as we become two entities again. When I can, I turn my head to watch as her face regains its shape. She goes from looking like an utterly inhuman pulverized mess to a beautiful woman again in a horrific slow backwards melt. She stretches out her hands to watch them pop back into shape. Finally, we are ourselves again. She runs hands over her body to feel if anything is out of place. It is all in its perfectly curved order.

  I pull her back to me and kiss her until we are both breathless. “I would love to bring someone out here and jump with them to see if I would completely separate from them.”

  She pulls back from me and looks at me with a startled expression. “What?”

  “Well, you know. Humans are so fragile. They’re like dandelion seeds in the wind. I come back together but they wouldn’t. I wonder if the damage between us would confuse my body and I get stuck with an extra bone sticking through me or something.”

  After a moment of silent staring at her hands, Phoenix murmurs, “We are human.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She looks at me with the corners of her mouth turned down. “No. I don’t think I do.”

  “I’m not meaning some good person or anything. One of the horrible people that we do justice on. No one that means anything.”

  She turns away from me. “Huh.” Her spine stiffens before she abruptly stands up. “I’m done for the day. Let’s go change and get back into the city. I’m tired.” She pushes off of her heel and begins making her way to climb back up.

  I somehow feel like I have lost an argument I didn’t know I was having.

  ◆◆◆

  Jennifer’s head is pounding. She must have had one hell of a night to not remember how she got this hangover. She tries to open her eyes but they just don’t want to cooperate. What did she drink? She doesn’t even remember.

  Then it hits her.

  She wasn’t drinking. There was something that was wrong in her apartment. She was scared. She was going to get her phone.

  But what happened then? She has no other memory. She had been spooked at work and still felt scared at home.

  She finally works one heavy eyelid up and light fills her sight. She promptly clamps her eye shut again. She thinks maybe if she stands up first, she’d feel better. She slowly tries to will her muscles to move enough to lift her head. It’s almost as if something is holding her down.

  Wait.

  Something…

  She tries lifting an arm but finds that there actually is something constricting her movement. She peeps open a weary, bleary eye to peek at her arm. She’s startled to see a strap around her wrist. She blinks her eyes awake to take a better look. It’s then she realizes she’s strapped to a table or gurney. She can’t tell which. She then hears the unmistakable beeping of a heart monitor. She turns her head to look in the direction of the sound to find that it’s her own heart beat being broadcast.

  She looks at all of the equipment on her left side. A varied array of machines with purposes she can only guess at spreads around her. She looks down at her body. She’s still wearing the concert t-shirt and pajama pants that she remembers putting on after work. Strange. Why hasn’t the hospital changed her into some sort of gown? What kind of place is this?

  She lets her eyes focus further and notices dirty brick masonry walls. As she turns to look to her right, she finds another person looking back at her.

  He’s just staring blankly at her fa
ce. She wonders if he’s drugged because he doesn’t even blink. He’s lying on a gurney that looks like it came out of an ambulance. She clears her throat and tries to speak. Her voice doesn’t work the first time. After she swallows, she tries again. In a dry rasp, she calls out, “Hey! Can you hear me?” No response.

  She coughs and tries to clear her throat before trying again. “Hey. Guy! You okay?”

  His shirt is open to reveal a slightly hairy chest. She would have guessed he was around 25 to 30 years old. It looks like there isn’t anything wrong with him except for the stupor. He’s strapped down the same as she is. She looks at his eyes and notices a blood vessel has burst in the corner of one of them causing it to look like his eye is bleeding. It creeps her out a bit.

  She looks for a call button for the nurse but she doesn’t see one. Maybe they’re checking her vitals from another room and would come soon since her heartbeat shows that she’s awake. She wonders at what could have happened to her from the time she went to get her cell phone to now.

  In an emergency, would they know who to call? She was mentally listing who they might have seen as an emergency contact in her phone when someone touches her arm.

  Caresses, really.

  She looks up at the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. She smiles until something seizes in her chest. He’s not right. Something on the edges of her mind tells her pleasure is not what she should feel at the sight of him. Her lips slowly fade to a confused frown.

  “You’re awake! Good! I was starting to think I’d used too much and you’d sleep forever. Sorry about him,” he indicates the man on the opposite gurney. “He didn’t make it through the process, but I’m feeling very confident for you. He saw how pretty you are. Notice how, even in death, he can’t keep his eyes off of you. A little morbid humor there. Sorry.” He shrugs.

  Jennifer’s eyes slide back to the man staring so flatly at her as his words sink in. “You mean, he’s dead?”

  “As a doornail. In fact, I’m going to have to take him somewhere to dump him. You woke up while I was getting my plastic ready. Don’t mind me,” he says with a shooing gesture of his hands. “You rest up since we’re going to start trying with you once I return.”

  He spreads black plastic sheeting on the floor in a big square. Jennifer is filled with terror as she watches him smooth the plastic and move around to the side of the gurney. The man’s slack face seems to be giving her a sad look of camaraderie before he is unstrapped, rolled off, and lands with a sickening thud and crinkle on the floor below. “No delicate way of doing that.” With a shrug in her direction, he wraps the body up like a burrito before securing the ends with duct tape. Jennifer fights against her restraints as best as she can. He walks over to her and runs a hand along her head as if to soothe her. “If he wasn’t strong enough to break out of those, you sure aren’t. Why waste the energy? Just rest. You’re going to need your strength. We’ll get through this. I promise.” He kisses her forehead and touches her nose with a finger before turning to lean down and drag the wrapped body away.

  She watches in horror as he pulls. The black plastic makes a crinkly scraping noise that hesitates with each of his pauses. He pulls it out of sight.

  Jennifer wonders what that odd scraping noise is. Her heart is racing and it is loudly beep, beep, beeping in the echoes of the room. She seems to be alone in a lab of some sort. She tries to call out. “Hello? Is there a nurse or someone I can talk to?” There is no response but a pause in the odd, uneven scraping sound. It begins again but grows more and more faint. It reminds her of the sound her Christmas tree box makes as she struggles to drag it from storage to her living room each year.

  She remembers she’s restrained. She begins to wonder if she was hurt in some way that made the hospital afraid she’d harm herself. She lifts her legs a bit to see if she feels pain. Each one in turn responds normally with no ill effect. She twists her ankles right and left before pointing and flexing her toes. Nope. Nothing.

  She does the same process with her arms, hands, and head. No feelings of any kind of pain. She does have an IV in her arm. Maybe they are giving her pain meds that’s dulling any reactions she could experience. She wiggles her hips and strains her torso. She feels fine. So why is she all alone strapped to a bed in this strange room? Dread fills the pit of her stomach but she assures herself that nothing is wrong. She should just wait until she sees someone so she can ask what has happened.

  Only…

  She feels as if she already has.

  A strange, disturbing feeling of déjà vu envelopes her and refuses to be released. What is she missing?

  What she could only imagine is a male model or actor posing as a nurse or doctor comes from around the corner. The sight of him unsettles her and not in an oh-my-gosh-he’s-beautiful way. A sense of foreboding.

  He smiles charmingly at her before rolling a gurney to the corner. He walks back to her and pats her thigh. “I don’t think I have to tell you not to go anywhere, now do I?” He chuckles. “I sometimes wish you would remember what I’ve done and said. It would be so much more fun. Especially after I do something like this.” He puts his hands on her breasts and squeezes hard enough to make her squeal. She squirms under the straps to try to get away from him but he only increases the pressure. “You’re mine now. I think you are very pretty so I hope you survive what I plan on doing to you. I think we could have a lot of fun together. I’ll be back soon, so don’t you go anywhere.” With a laugh, he lets go, turns, and walks out of the room.

  Jennifer can’t understand why her chest is hurting so much. She’s scared and needs to go to the bathroom. She hopes a nurse will come by soon before she soils herself. She wonders where the man who had been staring at her with the bloodied eye has been taken.

  Maybe she’s next.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mama June

  It’s been 10 months since I’ve had Reuben duty. Once we put him in the sinkhole along the river, we’ve taken turns taking care of him, each having two months at a time. I wonder how he’s handled the others. None of us really wanted to care for him. He’s a monster. But Preacher and I fought for grace … and to keep from becoming monsters ourselves. That was the main thing.

  I carry the few provisions that we determined would get him through a day. Nothing extra. Just enough. Or maybe just slightly under enough. He IS a monster, after all. Since I’m sure no one else besides Preacher would have thought to get his waste from him, I carry the rope with me that I used to take his trash from him before. I can’t imagine how much must be down in the hole by now. I suspect it will take several loads.

  I feel the familiar dread as I begin my descent toward the opening. This is never fun and I know that he has to be worse after a year down there. My feet slip along the rocks that fill the embankment. The rattles and clicks of the rocks smacking one another must serve as an early warning signal. I wonder how much he can hear from the bottom.

  I take my time with my bags once I come to the edge. I sit them on the ground and prepare the rope. With a deep breath, I glance toward the bottom. At first, I’m not sure what I am looking at. The pale emaciated form looks like some sort of creature from a nightmare. He is completely naked, but that’s not the most shocking thing. His appearance has changed until he’s almost unrecognizable. Withered claws replace the hands and feet. A rack of ribs shows from the bones of the spine to the center of the front like a doctor’s office skeleton. The arms and legs are but frail reminders of being once-ambulatory. There is a complete lack of fat or muscle present on his entire body.

  The eyes.

  The eyes are what gives the disguise away.

  I see the seething hatred and evil in the sickly orbs. It’s the only thing that makes me know he’s really still alive.

  The hate.

  A rock settles into the pit of my stomach and my limbs feel heavy as I start my swing to give him food and water. “Look out! I don’t want to hit you!” I watch as it lands near his legs. There is
no trash. In fact, there is nothing. The bottom is blackened from some sort of fire that obviously was all-encompassing. What happened and why did no one mention it?

  I feel sick and angry at the same time. I’m afraid to ask. He pulls the bag toward him and with shaking hands pulls out the bottled water. He gulps at it greedily even as his other hand searches in the bag for food. Pity is never a comfortable feeling, but for this man? A man who has done unspeakable things to others and was going to do unspeakable things to Phoenix’ child? I feel tears biting at the back of my eyes as I choke back the lump that has just made speech impossible. I don’t know how to feel.

  “I’m sorry … I didn’t bring any clothes. I’ll … I’ll come back with some and more food and water. I … I … Is there anything else I can get you?” I can’t seem to get my words out of my brain.

  Eerily alert eyes pierce me to the bone. He chews his sandwich like a rabid dog. “Can you bring me a blanket or pillow? Something to make it more comfortable down here?” Even his voice is reedy and sounds dried out. It doesn’t sound human. How long has it been since he’s spoken?

  I nod my head before I can speak. “Yes. I can do that.” I have to force my voice from behind my teeth. “What happened?” It comes out as a croak.

  He swallows the bite he’s scarfing down with a large gulp of water. “Those friends of yours. Did you really think they’d be as kind to me as you were?” He is painful to listen to. I imagine it is the sound of the voice of a demon. He looks and sounds the part of what he has always been. His evil is now completely visible. It’s a horror.

  “Was it all of them?” My heart sticks in my throat.