Hold the Light

by Ryan Sherwood

  "Since you left for work."

  "Come on in," she said, softly landing her hand on my shoulder.

  I turned and looked over the city one last time, trying to imprint this moment into my mind.

  "You know, I've spent all day out here and have seen every beautiful ordinary thing," I spoke out into the open air, "But the most beautiful was the light. At all times of the day and even at night, it held the most magnificence.

  And for the first time in a long time, I didn't wonder what it held for me. It's so peaceful."

  But it wasn't just peaceful it was illuminating. I discovered, over the city that day, that if I were to give up this mantle, things would be much worse. The original goal was to keep the gift to shield it from the wrong hands; if I was even the right hands. But if I rid myself of this gift, or die with it, the city below would suffer the same fate as I. Instead of each of them perishing one by one, I would go and they would linger on. I wouldn't do that to them. I wouldn't do that to Jessica.

  Thunder rumbled from the distance and Jessica helped me back inside. I closed the window and kissed her all the way to the bedroom. Lightning flashed outside.

  Chapter 57

  If I had known the finality of it all, I would have held her longer. She was extra sweet that night. Every touch she left on me felt like she struck a piano key, leaving a resonance of music. Beethoven's Ninth played on the CD player, which I had forgotten to turn off earlier in the afternoon. To this day, it's still hard to listen to. Every one of her kisses left an indent on my skin that never faded. She held extra beauty and I saw it right away as she smiled the entire time. We laughed like children under the covers. I held my contentment as close as she held my head to her naked breast. Her heart pounded hard.

  Afterward I sprawled out on the bed, listening closely to the music and enjoying my comfort. Sound danced on my chest and I smiled while the sweat dried. A cool breeze blew over and tightened the perspiration on my face. Minutes later I rose and washed my face in the bathroom, catching memories in the mirror of over three months ago when she rubbed our child within her stomach. The image of what happened in that room never left me. It plagued me.

  After a few minutes I looked out the small window in our bathroom that looked over the street. The rain began to steadily pound against the window and I was ready to sleep. Storms always relaxed me. I came out of the bathroom and stared at her from the doorway. She looked so peaceful lying in our bed. She was flipping through Metamorphosis by Kafka. I gazed in awe at her, feeling lucky to even be near her. With every step towards the bed, I realized more that she complimented me perfectly in so many ways. I slid under the covers and tickled her stomach. She smiled and kissed me.

  She went right back to reading as I bundled up, attempting to warm up and retire. I closed my eyes and nested in my niche with my normal bounce around to find my comfortable spot.

  Then began the convulsions. My stab wound began to throb. I tried to remain as still as I could. Nonetheless, I felt another trip coming on and Jessica looked over to see. She thought nothing more of it and continued with her reading. This was routine to her. I surrendered to the gift so I could sleep.

  Drifting out of my body like usual, I prepared to leave and return quickly to get back to bed. Except this time, I went nowhere. When all the motions were done, I saw Jessica lying next to me.

  "What are you doing? Go back to bed, sweetie," she muttered into her book, figuring I was already done with the trip and up and wandering about.

  When she received no answer, she repeated herself. She looked over to find me standing above her. She looked over to my side of the bed and saw my body lying there. She looked back at the ethereal me again and her mouth hung open, starring at me in shock. The surprise froze her for a moment, where she, no doubt, got to thinking of the horrible stories she inferred about the gift. That was the only time I ever saw her ever expect the worst.

  "No, no, no," she spat as she scurried backwards onto my body on the bed. My whole ethereal being was confused and heart-broken. My mind flooded with frigid betrayal. That all the years spent and all the hard work we accumulated to this moment would fizzle out into a crippling pain that drove me to the brink of sanity.

  All I could ponder was that I wouldn't survive this. That my sanity would be lost in the sea of souls I steal. I would crumble into nothing but a shell, to experience only crippling emotions to the mind numbing fullest.

  "There's nothing wrong with me honey, no - do, do, do something - fight it," she pleaded.

  A scowl cut into my face, forever etching worry lines into the body I wasn't in. My mind was all chaos and fear. I struggled to pull away from her with all my might again, commanding with all the rage that lingered within my limbs, but the foreign force pushing me forward was enormous. The effort to offset my hands from closing in on Jessica quickly compounded, as my ethereal body stretched. I had to fight and believe I could beat this. The struggle ripped me apart. I had never felt pain in that spectral state before; I never thought it possible. The agony was immense but I fought it to the end.

  "No please," she pleaded, "George...no."

  The fibers of my ethereal body stretched beyond their limits and pulled apart. Working loose from each other, the strands of me ripped apart like the tearing cloth. Agony resonated around my disemboweled ghost and nausea swam about my head. Each strand of me snapped apart like breaking fingers. Growing incredibly weak, I limply floated, still fighting with what strength I had left. I had to keep it together literally and hold on for that extra minute beyond the breaking point.

  "Oh God no," she uttered.

  But the opposing force was tireless. The final filament ripped and I was left helpless. I tried to muster any and all energy within me and found none. I was depleted into a feeble whimpering puppet. At the moment I was useless, I reassembled back into my spectral form. I was completely at the mercy of the manipulating force. And so was Jessica.

  All I could do was watch her terror-riddled face, as I was forced to close her nostrils and reach into her mouth. My hands helplessly pulled and pulled on the string of her soul. Grayish-black bags formed around the whites of her eyes. Her face went pale against her dark eyes. Her flesh clung to whatever bones it could find as if dangling from a cliff.

  My fingers just kept on pulling. I begged, prayed, pleaded for mercy.

  "You can't go. I can't do this." I meant to yell, but instead whispered.

  "Help me," she garbled.

  Her words echoed in my head and shook my skull. Then all my thoughts and anything that resembled wits vacated me. I felt nothing whatsoever.

  Blank and drained, I fought without effect, as my cloudy blue hands finished off the process. The severity of it didn't hit until I saw her little blue soul creep through the air and disappear into the darkness of eternity. I tried not to look into her eyes and risk seeing the betrayal in her face, but I had no control over the matter. Whatever forced drove the gift pivoted my head to stare. I tried to force misery onto my face to show her I lost the struggle and I couldn't save her, but I couldn't even do that. I wasn't able to conquer the gift in the slightest.

  "Oh God, no more," I cried in my head.

  The controlling force dispersed and I snapped back into my body. My eyes instantly locked onto her. I saw the last look her eyes ever made. She was pale, with her deep blue eyes dulled so much that they blended in with the white. Her lips were pursed together with nostrils flared. Sweat soaked my hair. My right hand trembled as my fingers gently patted her cheek, pressing divots into her skin without the sensation of touch residing in my fingertips.

  Shock wouldn't let me believe I killed my own wife.

  Chapter 58

  Disorientation attacked me in violent strokes as I leaned over her. A tear rolled off my eye and landed on her sweet face. More tears followed, uncontrollably seeping and gathering on her cheek. I jerked my hand awkwardly over her face to dry the tears. Her skin was still warm. She still felt alive. That's the
moment I hated hope and all its false pretenses.

  She just laid there, her skin gaining a yellow tint as I held her wrist to check for a pulse. I could find none of course. Frantically, I started to think of ways to right this terrible wrong. I stopped with my lips on hers and realized that there was no way to revive her. Her soul was gone and if I huffed into her, trying some weak attempt at CPR, I could accidentally pass the gift on to her.

  "I could give her my life like Randy did for me," I thought, "But he didn't take my soul...and even if it worked, then she'd suffer under the gift. She'd wake with my dead body next to her and the miserable gift inside her. God, that would be worse."

  I was torn to shreds. I could revive her by passing the gift onto her, but she'd be cursed. "God!

  I can't just let her die!"

  I finally understood, with the terrible thud of my heartbeat in my ears while Jessica had none, that there was nothing I could do. My hands reached for her and then retracted several times.

  "God give me something!"

  He gave nothing.

  I looked at her face and leaned in for a kiss on those sweet lips one more time. A goodbye kiss. I closed her eyes as tears streamed out of mine. Behind those eyes was everything I knew, everything we worked for. I had no reason to live. To Hell with everyone! I'll be selfish. Everyone else could suffer my fate, there was no way I could let her roam the spans of eternity without her hand in mine.

  I had to know where she was. Where did all the souls go after I stole them? What destiny did I force on these poor souls? I had to find out for myself and guide them. Guide her.

  "Fuck this curse," I stated aloud to my empty bedroom. "It's just a light."

  Maybe it was that simple, even though it never felt that way. The light could be nothing more than a stoplight on a road. Could I run this light and go speeding into the mass of souls taken over the years? Could I disrupt the traffic? I imagined the demon waiting to arrest me if I did.

  I attempted to remember every detail of her body and burn it into my memory. I never noticed before, as I studied her, how perfect her face was. Nothing was too large or too small and I realized how much I had never seen on her face. I've missed out on a lot of things in my life, but this was one I was not going to forgive myself for. If only she could tell me I was forgiven.

  Something needed to be done before I completely lost my mind to grief. I looked about the bedroom, desperate to find something I could grab to relieve my pain and send me on my to her, but a sensation scraped into my head. The bedroom blurred and my mind went blank. The foreign feeling slithered around my brain and I grew anxious, waiting for an assault. My skull tensed into a headache. I curled into the fetal position on the bed.

  No more pain!

  I saw her long hair had spread like roots across the pillow. My head fought a stretching claw of mania that ripped its way out from the headache. My eyes or the room shuttered. All of reality vibrated and it felt like my brains would pour out my ears. I clamped my hands on my ears to steady my head, or the room, or everything when my eyes fell upon the only object not jittering. It was small and yellow. A pad of paper resting on the nightstand.

  I scooped up the ruled pad with a pen clipped to the spiral binding. The only shaking now came from my fingers. My emotions, my all poured into the pen once I held it and struggled to understand the words flowing out from it. My hand and head pleaded to mourn her, but I was too stubborn. Dealing with her death would eat me alive with sharp teeth; I had to bury my feelings. I had to run. I wrote the only thing that could stop me from caving to the pressure. My sentence dribbled down as the scribbles of a madman.

  "This is my soul," I read out loud.

  My soul can't be in jeopardy if it's outside the light's reach. Outside of me.

  "Oh God what bullshit!" I scolded myself aloud but at the same time, as if to spite my doubt, I came to believe in it.

  Why not? If I can be Death...well, why not? The more I pondered it, the more I actually believed that my soul was on or is the yellow scrap of paper. I needed to keep the only decent thing left of me away from the war zone that was my body. All the violence that constantly seethed within me couldn't be contained any longer and if I kept my spirit away from the war, maybe I would survive.

  Or at least, I hoped so. Just long enough to save Jessica.

  Carefully I ripped out the page, folded it up neatly and held it. Never had paper seemed so fragile. I straightened my back and shuffled to the window. The carpet swooshed beneath my feet until I reached the windowsill and I placed my hand on the metal frame. An electrical shock bit back. I shook my wrist and cursed my luck. Placing my hand back carefully to avoid another shock, I looked out onto the city.

  Red taillights and white headlights sped along the streets. I looked up from them to the dark skyline and the twinkling windows. I followed the outline of the skyscrapers with my finger.

  "Gravestones," I mumbled.

  The depressing grays and the coldness of their designs told me I was living in a high-rise graveyard. Every building was a marker that told another horrible story. What a plague. The macabre and morbid, marked by those skyscrapers, told me about all the death I had caused. No, not me, the demon and the damned gift. The demon brought all of this down on my head, collapsing the bridge within me that helped me straddle life and death. And...it killed her.

  I began longing for the death I dispense. I had to join my wife and help her in death as she helped me in life. I couldn't breathe this air any longer, there was too much of her floating in it to ever bear.

  I turned away and ran to the kitchen in search of a weapon. I spotted a carving knife and grabbed it. I raised it above my head and held it above my chest. Staring at the blade in my hands, hovering and threatening from above, I saw a flash of the convict. All his colossal mass stood around me in impenetrable shadows. I could see his hand guiding my arm, begging it to plummet.

  'Yes, yes!"

  Simultaneously, my memory and his desires brought the blade down as second thoughts poured in. The knife plummeted with a thud into my chest. Blood sprayed into my eyes. The blade cracked past ribs until only the handle stuck out of my chest.

  I gurgled out a bubble of blood and it streaked down my chin in a thin vein. My hands violently quaked around the handle of the knife. I gawked at my chest for what felt like hours and waited for a reprieve. Weakness filled me. I prayed for a swift end. I couldn't stand hearing the convict's laughter ringing in my ears for much longer.

  Chapter 59

  My heartbeat lingered. My eyes scanned the room and my fingers fidgeted; I should be dead by now, but my vicious self-inflicted stab wound left my heartbeat unchanged. Maroon blood pumped out onto the white tile as I leaned forward and wailed, resting my forehead against the linoleum.

  "I can't see her!" I screamed realizing I wasn't going to die.

  I pounded my fist on the floor and it slipped on the blood. It was everywhere.

  My mind raced in panic as I looked at my chest. My head became woozy. I had lost a lot of blood. I had to do something. I couldn't just leave the blade in my chest like I was some brainless zombie. I curled my fingers around the handle of the blade. My hands where covered in blood and I slipped off the hilt. I took a deep breath, wiped my hands off on my pants then brought them back to the handle again in a strong grip. This was going to really hurt; I had to get it out with in one try.

  Gritting my teeth and closing my eyes, I yanked.

  I yelped and more tears flowed down my cheeks. It barely budged. I let it go and took more deep breaths. A strange giggle popped out of me. It quickly turned into laughter.

  God, am I nuts?

  The laughter turned into sobbing. Better luck this time. In a pained and frustrated groan I gripped the handle again. I jiggled the knife around in my chest to loosen it out of its niche. Shocks of blasting pain responded. I gnashed my teeth and drew strength from deep within. My flesh stretched as the knife rose. The kitchen was a bloody prism through my
soaked eyes. My stomach heaved. The blade slid upwards and I knew I had to get it out with this tug.

  Heaving with the last of my energy, as my elbows shook, the blade came free and I tossed it away. The knife landed against the wood cabinets and splashed an array of blood that streaked like a red web across the kitchen walls.

  I fell to my hands and coughed and spat, trying to bear the pain. Blood ran down my body and onto the ground in a network of streams. A vacuum gripped my throat as the gift clenched down on my esophagus. I shut my eyes and tried to calm myself. When they opened my kitchen was a bright blue, everything flipped to cobalt except for the deep red blood on my hands. The hands that have killed so many. I prayed for an answer. A cold gust of wind rushed through me.

  "Oh God, no," I whispered, "Not now."

  The frozen rush of death ran beneath my skin, warning me of another convulsion. Unable to think of anything else, I poised my hands above my chest in protest. I will not go. Enough. I'll reach into the hole in my chest and pull out my heart if I have to. This whole damned lineage had to end.