by Brian Harmon
The lovemaking still fresh in his memory and Wendy’s naked body still pressed against his, he should have been floating in a cloud of euphoria. But instead, something was squirming miserably inside him, twisting hot and sickly within his belly.
Something was not right.
He supposed it was probably nothing more than guilt. The thought of his wife sleeping alone in their queen-size bed more than two hundred miles away, blissfully unaware of his unfaithfulness, was probably the cause of his earlier nightmare. But why should he feel it so intensely tonight? He thought that he had grown numb to the guilt in the two and a half years since he was first unfaithful.
Being with Wendy always felt right, regardless of how wrong it was. It had felt right even the very first time, back when his guilt had been the worst, back when his remorse ached deep within the knotted jelly of his guts like hot poison. And even now the warmth of her body against his felt right. In fact, she was the only thing that felt right.
No, it didn’t really feel like guilt. There was something about this place, about this room. There was something familiar about it, now that he looked around. But he had never been to this motel before. He had only even passed through this insignificant little town five or six times in his entire life. And yet he could not shake the feeling that he not only knew this place, but knew something terrible about it. He felt a sickening dread welling up inside him. But what was there to dread?
His eyes kept returning to the window. It was something about the light, the way it danced behind the curtains. It stirred something in his mind.
Careful not to wake Wendy, he slipped out from beneath her and stood up. A soft chill crept through his naked body as he crossed the dark room.
It didn’t look right. The only light on the other side of that window should be from the streetlamps in the parking lot. But this light seemed to flicker and move as though it had a body and a spirit all its own. It was almost like…
Like fire.
Something surfaced in his memory, a sliver of a nightmare that made his heart leap with fright. He spun around, suddenly terrified. He had to get to Wendy. They were both in grave danger. They had to get out before…
Before what? He couldn’t seem to remember. The fragment of memory was already gone again. His heart still pounded in his chest, but he could not remember why. What could he be afraid of? What could possibly happen? They were in a motel room in some small Midwestern town. What danger could they possibly be in?
But the feeling would not go away. Somehow, deep in his heart, he knew they were both in danger. He felt a shiver travel through his naked body as he stood in the middle of the motel room, gazing back at his sleeping lover.
The room suddenly appeared much bigger than it had before. Wendy lay in the bed that had been no more than five or six feet from the window when they first climbed into it, but now he stood halfway between the window and the bed, and she seemed to be at least ten feet away.
No, his mind insisted. Not seem. Is. The room is bigger.
What was going on? This couldn’t possibly be the same room in which he and Wendy had made love last night. There had been barely enough room to walk between the foot of the bed and the television stand when they arrived, but now he could practically fit a car through that space. The bathroom door appeared to be at least thirty feet away and the ceiling was suddenly at least twelve feet high.
Was he going insane?
The terror continued to well up inside him. It didn’t matter. He just needed to reach Wendy. He did not like being so far from her. He wanted her in his arms, not over there where…
Where what? None of this made any sense to him. He opened his mouth to call for her, to wake her and tell her to get dressed. He just wanted to go. He wanted to make sure she was safe.
But it was already too late.
All around him, the room began to tremble, as though the panic in his heart had somehow reverberated through his body and into the very earth beneath him. The floor began to sag in the space between his bare feet and the bed. He stared into a deepening pit of cheap brown carpet, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing.
It wasn’t real, he told himself. It couldn’t be real. This was just another nightmare. But it would not stop. With a soft ripping noise, the carpet failed and the center of the pit plunged into a dark eternity below. Suddenly, he was staring into a black pit of unfathomable depth.
It was as if his mind had abruptly gone numb. He couldn’t even move. He simply stared down into the darkness, unable to comprehend the absurdity of a bottomless sinkhole appearing in front of him as he stood naked in a cheap motel room.
With a soft crack, another portion of the floor broke away from the wall to his right and he turned to see the table and chair tumble out of sight. He started to take a step backward, but there was nothing there to stand on. He turned, flailing for balance, his heart leaping in his chest, and stared down into an eternal darkness where there had been a solid floor only moments ago. He could see the lamp that had stood in the corner by the window turning end over end for a few seconds before it was swallowed by the darkness.
“Oh god!” he breathed, hardly aware that he had even spoken. He turned back toward the bed again just in time to see the television and its stand plunge from sight, his wallet and keys and Wendy’s purse with them. He closed his eyes. “Not real,” he told himself. “Not real. Not real.” But it would not go away. He opened his eyes and stared down into the impossible abyss. A white shape fluttered, ghost-like, far below. Just before it disappeared, he recognized it as Wendy’s dress. It had been lying on the floor near the nightstand, exactly where it had fallen around her feet. He could hardly forget the way she’d looked as she stood there in nothing but her heels, beckoning him.
He felt dizzy. How deep did it go? He never heard anything hit the bottom.
“Not real…” he said again as he gazed across the abyss at the nearest wall. The white baseboard was still attached, marking the place where the floor had been only seconds before. Above it, the same dull wallpaper still clung to the wall, as if this were a perfectly ordinary room. Below the baseboard, however, black and slimy stone, like the hideous walls of some cold and moldy dungeon, stretched down as far as he could see.
Roger gawked at the scene before him. All that remained of the motel room were the walls and ceiling and two fragile towers of stone. Roger stood upon one, while his lover lay naked and sleeping in the bed atop the second, undisturbed by the queer changes that were taking place around her.
A streak of light passed before his eyes. Then another. He blinked in confusion and lifted his face toward the ceiling. The white tiles above his head were burning. Ribbons of flames oozed down and dripped into the abyss in a slow, fiery drizzle.
Somehow, the fact that the room was on fire did not fill him with the same disillusion as watching the floor fall away. He thought of the light he’d seen from the window, the way it had flickered like fire.
Wendy stirred and opened her sleepy eyes. “Roger?” She gazed across the empty room at him. “What’s happening?”
Roger snapped out of his daze and looked across the room at her. He saw her eyes lift to the melting tiles. Panic washed across her face at the sight of the ceiling in flames, wrenching her fully awake.
He opened his mouth to call out to her, but he was again too late.
Within the mattress, something came alive. The springs uncoiled themselves and slashed through the sheets as if they had only been waiting for her to awaken. Dozens of writhing, eel-like wires spewed up from below and seized her, coiling around her, constricting her, pinning her to the bed. She screamed, terrified, as they snaked over her, wrapping themselves around her arms and legs and head, cutting cruelly into her fair flesh.
Roger screamed her name. The numbness he felt at witnessing the impossible phenomena around him washed away in an instant as the woman he loved struggled against her unnatural restraints. Without a thought, he stepped forward and hurled
himself across the bottomless chasm. He closed his eyes and reached out for the other platform even as the rational part of his brain screamed at him in terror.
A part of him was certain that he would not make it, that he would simply drop like a rock, that he had just committed suicide and left Wendy to whatever horrors awaited her. But somehow his hands found the top of the pillar and he slammed hard into the swaying stone. His eyes filled with tears as he felt warm blood flow from his stinging nose.
Forcing himself to ignore the pain, he lifted himself up, clawing at the carpet, trying hard not to look down or even to think about the depths below his kicking feet.
Above him, Wendy was screaming. He could hear the panic in her voice as she wailed desperately for help and he used it to find the strength to climb up to her.
But even as he rose to his knees, he realized that he was already defeated.
Wendy was still bound to the bed. He could now see blood seeping from beneath many of the wires that cut cruelly into her flesh. One small trail of blood trickled through her eyebrow and into her eye. One of the wires had wrapped itself around her ring finger and was pulling it painfully back. Yet another pressed deeply into her tender breast, making the skin bulge sickeningly around it. Her skin had already lost color from the loss of circulation. Her hands and feet were turning purple.
She cried out for him, begging him to help her, but he could not reach her. He was no closer to her than before. Even though he had leapt to her, risking his life to reach her, he was somehow still standing upon his own tower and she was still across the room.
Again, he screamed her name.
Fiery tears fell from the melting tile above and dotted the bed around her. The first few were dashed into faint ribbons of smoke, but then one struck the sheet beside her foot and a small yellow flame rose.
Still screaming her name, Roger rose to his feet and turned in desperate circles, searching the room for anything that would allow him to rescue his beloved Wendy. The molten tiles dripped onto his naked shoulders and back, but he was numb to its blistering heat. “HELP US!” he screamed, when no other option could be found. “SOMEBODY HELP US!”
Wendy cried out for him again, and then let out a horrible scream of pain as her ring finger succumbed to the force of the wires and broke.
More flames rose from the sheets around her.
“SOMEBODY PLEASE!” Roger screamed. He turned back to her as tears began to stream down his face. She was bleeding badly around many of the wires. Her thigh was wet crimson from her knee to her hip, and the wires holding her belly looked as though they would carve her in half at any moment.
This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t.
Wendy’s screams turned to horrible sobs as the flames began to spread around her. Blazing drops of molten tile dotted her exposed skin. Thick smoke began to rise from behind her head, where her long, beautiful hair had begun to smolder.
A long, desperate howl rose from the bed as another sickening crack echoed through the empty room and her foot folded up at a gruesome angle. A few seconds later, her arm broke as well.
Her skin had turned various shades of purple. Her hands and feet were almost black. The sheets beneath her were soaked with blood.
Around her body, the flames grew and closed in on her. Her foot was already caught in the fire, her flesh roasting even as she still begged for her life.
Helpless, Roger dropped to his knees and began to sob for her. Her screams were torture to hear. She wailed in agony, begging for help that he could not give. He heard another bone snap, and then another, but he could only watch her suffer. Again he called out for someone to help them, knowing that no one would come.
The flames crawled across her smoking hair and surged with wicked greed, engulfing Wendy’s pretty head. She let out one final cry as her face began to burn. It was not a scream of agony or terror, but rather a long, howling wail of heartbreaking despair that seemed to go on and on.
Roger sobbed miserably in the lonely silence that finally filled the room. The bed on which he had made love to his dear Wendy was now a smoking funeral pyre. And then even that vanished as the tower on which it stood trembled and then collapsed.
The woman he loved was spilled into the unknown depths below and all he could do was watch his burning angel drift farther and farther away, until at last her light faded to blackness.
For a long time, he remained motionless atop his strange prison, weeping. He wished feverishly that he could have exchanged his own life for hers. He had loved her so much. He couldn’t imagine life without her.
Eventually, as the last of the flaming ceiling dripped into the darkness, he stood up. Vaguely, he could feel pain. The molten ceiling had left his shoulders and back blistered, and even his hair had caught and smoldered for a moment. But he’d barely felt it. The pain in his heart was far worse.
Tears still streaming down his face, he turned toward the window. Somehow, he knew what came next.
The glass shattered violently and a fireball belched through the heavy curtains, igniting them. They fell away in flaming tatters, revealing the vast ocean of fire that lay beyond.
He wasn’t sure how he had come to be in this horrible place where angels were mercilessly murdered. Nor did he know what had become of the humble motel in which he had only sought to be with the woman he loved. Just like the life he’d once had, all that was now gone.
The door suddenly burst into flames and swung open. Fire rushed in, pouring down the slimy walls like a hellish waterfall. An instant later, the walls began to melt, spilling fire down the black stone from every direction. A curtain of flame stretched down into the darkness.
The heat was dry and intense. It scorched his skin, but he barely felt it.
My baby’s down there, he thought sadly as he watched the flames chase her down into oblivion.
High above, in the black sky that now loomed overhead, a shadow took shape in the boiling smoke. Fiery white eyes burned down at him. It reached out with hands of foul-smelling smoke and wrapped him in a whirling storm of scorching darkness.
The last thing he heard was his own screaming.
* * *
Wendy sat up in bed with a breathless gasp. Her heart beat wildly beneath her heaving breasts.
Beside her, Roger stirred restlessly, but did not wake.
As quickly as she had been pulled from her nightmare, the images which had so cruelly ravaged her in her sleep faded from her memory and quickly left her trembling at terrors already forgotten.
At last, she relaxed and eased back onto her pillow. She was no stranger to bad dreams. Better than anyone, she knew that nightmares could not harm her. Yet she still felt better knowing that Roger was by her side.
She wondered what could have brought such a nightmare on, but was sure that the guilt she felt had been a large part of it. Roger’s wife was her best friend. She could not help but think of her whenever she held him.
She knew she was an awful person, that she had no business pretending to be any kind of friend when she spent every opportunity committing the ultimate betrayal. But she could not help herself. She loved Roger, in many ways far more than his wife ever could. When she sat astride his naked body and looked down at him, it was impossible not to think of the woman she was wronging, but neither could she miss the handsome man whose touch was so much more than any she’d ever felt before. The way he kissed her, the way he spoke to her, even the way he made love to her, was all as if he had been born just for her. No other man had ever made her feel so beautiful, so loved. She could not bear to be apart from him. She only ever felt whole when he held her in his strong arms.
But she loved her best friend, too. Neither could she bear to take him from her.
Again, Roger stirred. He moaned softly in his sleep as though he were having his own nightmare. Wendy rolled toward him and wrapped her arms around him, hoping to soothe his restlessness, hoping even more that he may awaken and thrust himself onto her again.
&
nbsp; But then she felt the heat that radiated from his body.
“Roger?” she whispered as she sat up and pressed her hand against his cheek. His temperature was soaring.
He turned his head from side to side as if trying to shake away something very painful.
“Roger.” She gave him a gentle shake to wake him and immediately his eyes flashed open. At the same instant he opened his mouth and screamed.
Startled, Wendy cried out as well. She turned and fumbled for the lamp switch. Her heart was again pounding. What could be wrong? What could make him scream like that? What could make anybody scream like that?
Roger howled. It was a terrifying wail like nothing she’d ever heard before.
With trembling hands, she turned on the lamp and turned back to soothe her suffering lover. She reached out for him, but snatched her hand back in horror as she saw the smoke that was rising from his throat. The stench of burning flesh suddenly filled her nose.
She leapt from the bed as her lover writhed in agony, his fingers clawing at the sheets, his back arched against unimaginable pain. She screamed his name, but he was already beyond her reach.
She snatched her white dress off the floor and covered herself with it as she rushed to the door to find help. But her hand sizzled against the red-hot metal of the doorknob and she cried out in startled pain. She stumbled backward, clutching the wrist of her blistered hand, her heart thundering.
For the first time, she noticed the firelight that flickered behind the curtains.
The backs of her legs struck the bed and she turned to face Roger, who was still screaming in agony. There were flames belching from his open mouth and his bulging eyeballs were clouding over, as if they were baking within their very sockets.
A great, wet sob escaped her throat as panic welled up inside her. She didn’t know what to do. She turned around, her eyes searching the room. Where was the phone? There had been one here the night before…hadn’t there?
