by Stacey Longo
“No. I’m ending this because you’re insane.”
“You coward! You spineless wimp! I love you, don’t you get that? That should be stronger than this. You should be stronger than this!”
“I’m sorry…”
“Do you love me?”
“What?”
“Do you love me? Did you ever, or were you just fucking me?”
“Emily, stop it.”
“Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you fucking love me?”
“No! You don’t really exist!”
There’s a long, indrawn breath. I’m not sure if it’s mine or hers. For a second I see, in that single beam of yellow light, the truth. How completely my dreams have entered my reality… The shock of it stops my heart; the absence of its beat a horrific mockery of death. Then it starts again.
“You think I’m a figment of your imagination?” Emily laughs. It’s a horrible laugh: nails on a chalk board, the sound of broken glass. I flinch. The curtains twitch and, just for a second, I see her again. Twisted, an awful grin; it splits her face, and a monster screams through the cracks in her beauty. Hatred and fury, cold flames and shattered steel. They burn me. I fall back from the thing that is no longer Emily, but speaks with her mouth. I fall back, and her laughter follows me, one voice that is many. A thousand dark whispers in her hiss, a thousand unholy screams in her laugh. The curtains close and, blind, I don’t see the lamp until it hits me in the face.
I fall out of the chair with a shout of pain, the darkness dimming. I do what anyone would do in the face of such fear. I hide. Curled into a ball, I throw myself behind the chair. Emily’s shrieks become indivisible from the bellow of my own wordless fear.
Sounds of wanton destruction tear through 4 A.M. silence; her scream tears paper, smashes furniture, shatters window panes. Objects fly over my head, half seen shadows, and I shrug deeper into myself, curling up in the corner. I close my eyes, denying this madness. It’s not real. None of it is real. Slowly, I raise my palms to my ears, blocking out those horrible, bestial shouts and screams…
Time passes. I don’t know how long. I’m captured in silence and darkness. All I know is that I’m terribly, terribly afraid…
Something touches my arm. I scream.
“Miles! What in God’s name is going on here?” I look up and meet the horror in my mother’s eyes with a desperate lunge. I cling to her, drawing all the comfort a child can from his mother in the face of the Devil’s glare. She moves away, holding me at arm’s length. Her eyes roam the room. Mine follow.
It is dawn, and in the beam of light from a fractured window, dust dances its frantic farewell. A final feather from a burst cushion settles to the floor with an audible whisper. Chaos has ruled this room, and its fingerprints are writ in broken wood and shattered glass. Shards of wood poke through twisted and tattered furniture like broken bones through rent flesh. And it’s cold. The wind howls outside, pushing through the broken window a chill that nothing warms. I shudder.
“Did you do this, Miles?” There is no heat of anger to her voice, only wavering incredulity, the shadow of fear. Perhaps she feels a fraction of what I do. Perhaps she feels the Devil’s gaze.
“No! No! It was her! It was her!” Even as the words leave my mouth I see their stupidity. Emily’s gone, if she’d ever been there at all. I reel around, drunk with shock. Is she real? Am I mad? What in God’s name is happening to me?
“What the hell is going on here, Miles? What the hell is going on with you?” There’s no anger still. No anger, only some kind of desperate confusion. I wish I could tell her, wish I understood enough to tell her, wish she could understand. But I can’t, I don’t, she won’t. I am alone in the dark.
***
Have you ever missed a step in the dark? That sense of teetering, just before you fall. Reality drops away, the darkness laughs, thick and gelatinous. For days, I walk through nightmares and shadows that others barely notice. By night, faces look in through the windows, knocking against the glass with corpse fingers. By day, I am followed by footsteps. I never see them, but they’re always there. Those thousand shadows I saw in Emily’s glare...they want me, but I don’t know why.
I wake from dark dreams to find things around me are different: furniture moved, possessions broken, dirt and leaves between the sheets of my bed. Sometimes I’m somewhere strange, somewhere I don’t remember. Houses I’ve never been to, people I’ve never met, days since I last checked the time. I am terrified, frost fingers on my skin. This is not a rational thing, to be afraid of, yet to know, there is a way to overcome that fear. This is something different, something I cannot understand, let alone face. To even let my mind dwell on it is to stop my heartbeat in my chest.
I drink more, I smoke more. It doesn’t help, not really. It just makes me care less when I see a friend’s eyes flicker blind-white in the twilight. I dig myself deeper into this grave of unfeeling, hoping that eventually I shall get so deep that nothing can find me.
But the only thing at the bottom of a grave is a coffin.
***
It’s raining. Not the light drizzle of wet vapor that seems to be England’s natural state, but a heavy grayness that banishes good thoughts. Not that I have any. Sheet upon sheet of solid water hits my body, cutting and cold. I’m not wearing a coat. My t-shirt clings to me like a second skin, clammy and slipping a little against me as I shudder violently. I hug my arms to my chest and shiver as water slides down my face. I taste its clarity on my lips. I don’t know how I got here. I should leave. This is a terrible, awful idea. I turn.
“Miles?”
A door opens. I can’t turn to look. I’m terrified.
“Miles, what the hell are you doing here?” Emily’s voice is sharp with anger and confusion and maybe a quavering undercurrent of worry. But it’s solid, there, real. I whimper. Thunder rolls overhead, ominous and crackling. One deep, shuddering breath. Then another. What am I doing here? This is insane.
“I…I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it…I…I don’t want to be afraid any more. I want you…I want you to stop this. Please, stop it. Stop torturing me like this.” I think I’m crying. The water on my face tastes salty now. The only solace is that she can’t tell the tears from rain.
“What the hell are you talking about?” The wind shrieks, sending a spray of rain in the open door. Emily yelps and leaps back from its assault. “Oh Christ, just come in, will you?” She turns and heads inside. After a long, wavering moment, I follow.
As the door closes, memory assaults me, born on a tide of familiar scents. I haven’t been in here since we broke up. I walk past a sofa we slept on once, through the hallway we first kissed in, into the kitchen we fought in… Emily’s clicking fingers wipe the veil of time from my eyes.
“So?” Her features are set in a solid stone scowl. My vision blurs, doubles for a second. I wipe tears and rain from my eyes. “What are you doing here? Are you drunk?”
I laugh at the absurdity of her words. My voice cracks and skitters. What do I hope to achieve here? She hates me. I open my mouth to explain, and all the insanity in my mind pours out.
“Please stop being angry with me, Emily. Why can’t I stop thinking about you? Why won’t you leave me alone? Why are you doing these things to me? Please stop the footsteps, the whispers, the things in the dark. I can’t take it anymore.” My breath shudders with the chattering of my teeth. “I’m scared…”
Emily gapes at me. The storm batters at the windows, filling our silence with flapping wings of night. I barely notice. My entire being is focused on her face, willing her to stop this torture, this curse she’s inflicted upon me. When she finally speaks, she speaks slowly.
“Miles… You broke up with me, remember? You broke my heart, so…so I found someone else…” For the first time perhaps, I see her clearly. She looks tired, sick of everything, including herself. “You broke my heart. What did you expect, that everything would be just fine between us? That doesn’t happen in real life.
” She hugs her arms crossed over her chest, an imitation of myself. We’re both shivering. It’s freezing in here. My vision blurs again, colors changing and flickering. I wipe at my eyes.
“Emily, I’m so sorry. For everything… Please, just give me another chance. Stop doing this to me or give me another chance. I…I still love you.”
A long, slow second passes. She stares at me as though she’s never seen me before.
Then she steps towards/away from me.
She shakes her head/smiles at me. I smile back.
“Okay/No.”
“Last chance/I‘ve found someone else.”
“I still love you/I’m not in love with you any more…”
My heart surges. I step forward, arms encircling, and kiss her/My heart surges. I step forward, arms encircling, and kiss her.
I can’t remember who shrieks, the wind or Emily. There’s a large noise, big enough that it blacks my vision and sends me stumbling. My hand goes to my head and my fingers come away bloody. I see her reflection in that crimson glister: distorted, bulging, demonic… I look up, scared, and see Emily holding a frying pan.
“What the hell? Miles, Christ, just let go! It’s over! Don’t you get it, you prick? It was over between us ages ago! I thought you’d just accept that and fucking move on! I didn’t realize you were going to be such a bloody obsessive bastard about it. Now leave. Get out you bastard. Get out! I never want to see you again!”
Without warning, I’m full of fire. My vision narrows to her face and I smell something burning. My chest and shoulders tighten. I stumble to my feet. She’s shorter than me; I smile seeing fleeting fear in her face.
I miss a step in the dark, and fall.
“Stop torturing me! Stop it, stop it, stop it! You bitch! You whore! Don’t tell me one thing and then another; stop fucking me about; you’re tearing me apart; following me telling me you love me then you don’t; wrecking my house; stop messing with my head! I can’t stand it anymore! You bitch you bitch you bitch!”
My mind is blank. All I know is the overwhelming desire to end this horror story, to stop the monster that shines through the cracks in her beauty.
“Miles, please…”
She smiles, mocking my anger/She backs away, scared, and raises the frying pan. I knock it away, just as I knock away her gibbering protests.
I hit her.
She trips backwards.
Her head hits the counter with a dizzying crack.
It leaves a crimson stain.
She slides to the floor with a soft, quiet thump. The storm has stopped. Everything is suddenly silent. I stare and I stare and I stare and…
Then I see her. Standing exactly where she stood before I... She stands there, and nods slowly, thoughtfully. Then she smiles, mocking me. She meets my eyes.
“Now do you see?”
Emily turns and walks away from me, stepping over her body. Then she is gone. I am left alone in the silence, with the crimson stain on the counter. I smile through my tears.
Now I see.
About the author:
Tomas Furby is a freelance writer, proof-reader, and third year undergraduate of the English Literature with Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His stories have been published in Static Movement anthologies and on Short-story.me.
People Person
By Stacey Longo
Jess moved to the island on a lark, answering an ad that promised “summer jobs—fun in the sun!” She was working at the island grocery store, and from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the lines stretched to the back of the store, where the deli hawked sandwiches and pickles. Her register was the old-fashioned type, into which she still had to manually punch the prices and departments, and half of the time, the keys stuck. The customers were hot and sticky and eager to take their overpriced chips and soda to the beach, and Jess loved every minute of it. She loved meeting new people. She thought of it as an adventure, and every face she saw held a story to be read, a fresh perspective on the tiny ocean town.
Jess had straight brown hair that she kept pulled back in a ponytail, and sea green eyes. Her love of fine foods kept her constantly battling her weight, but this summer, she was winning the fight against being a fatty. She found many of the tourists that filtered through her line would flirt and banter with her, but the locals seemed more cautious. Their conversations with her were stilted and guarded; Jess would just smile at them, assuming that time would win them over. She had a small apartment above the store, and when the manager asked if she would consider staying the winter and keeping the room, she thought she might. She was estranged from her parents, having disappointed them by graduating college as a culinary arts major instead of following in Daddy’s footsteps and becoming a lawyer. When she’d announced her major her sophomore year, her parents had yelled, screamed, cried, and eventually pulled all financial support. She had college loans to pay off, and the island might provide the kind of solitude and inspiration she needed to concentrate on her cooking. She agreed to stay on.
After Labor Day, the island closed up like a hermit crab withdrawing into its shell. Storefronts were boarded up, restaurants went dark, the theater sat vacant. Jess found herself with time to spare at the register, often reading a magazine or flipping through a cookbook between customers. The faces that came in became familiar to her, and she learned from these locals that only about 200 people stayed year-round. It was isolating and cold on the island in winter, but Jess thought she might welcome that. She started wandering the beach after work, combing the tidewater line for hidden treasures left by the sea. She had a tidy little kitchen in her apartment, and took to experimenting with spices and herbs, indulging her creative cookery. She had a television and a laptop in her room, but her internet connection was spotty at best, so she didn’t keep in touch with her friends from school as often as she would have liked. She’d emailed her brother, Stephen, occasionally, to let him know how she was, but after he unfriended her on Facebook, she didn’t bother any more. Stephen was in his second year of law school at
Boston University, working hard to be just like Daddy, and couldn’t risk their parents’ wrath by staying in contact with her.
As fall descended, the boat schedule slowed down to a standstill, offering one boat a day, then every other day, until the islanders only had the Saturday morning ferry as an option to get to the mainland. The only places open were the grocery, the post office, the gas station, one church, and one local pub. She’d ventured in to the bar a couple of times, just for human contact. Each person in the place was hunched over a beer, so she’d ordered a Budweiser to fit in. The man next to her (who smoked Pall Malls, she remembered from the store) had smiled at her, introduced himself as Phil. He was in construction, had lived on the island twelve years, and what was a nice girl like her doing in a place like this? Jess had stammered, her tongue not yet loosened by the ale, and Phil had taken this as an invitation to continue.
“Not much for a young gal like yourself to do out here, is all,” he’d shrugged, sipping his beer. Foam had stuck to the gray wiry beard that grew wild on his face.
“I guess that’s why I came in here for a drink,” Jess frowned. “What is there to do out here all winter?”
“Come to the bar!” Phil had barked with a laugh, drawing it out, waiting for her to join in. She’d given a nervous chuckle, and he’d continued. “Seriously, folks here either come to the bar, or go to church and talk about the people at the bar. Some don’t bother to leave their house at all,” he’d added.
“Sounds lonely,” Jess had mused, sipping her bottle. “Don’t they miss being around people? Does anyone go visit them?” Phil gave her a long look from under his dark, bushy brows, and started to slowly rub his thumb, which was missing its top knuckle.
“Some people just don’t like other folks, is all. Best you leave those types be. Don’t go disturbin’ other peoples’ privacy.”
Jess had flashed Phil her widest smile, finished
her beer, and stood up.
“Me, I’m a people person,” she’d grinned, feeling a little giggly after the beer. “I wouldn’t be able to stand being shut in all winter. I’ll see you at the store, Phil.”
Sometimes, when she was walking down the beach, she would catch a glimpse of something moving in the dunes, a flash of color out the corner of her eye. As the days grew shorter and the beaches fell to darkness earlier, she thought she could see shining sets of eyes glowing at her from the dunes. There were no coyotes or raccoons on the island; she began to imagine spooks and werewolves were watching her, waiting to make her one of their own. The idea strangely thrilled her, but no creatures jumped out to bite her.
Jess began sleeping with Cobb out of loneliness. He was too old for her, probably 20 years her senior, though she hadn’t bothered to ask him his age. He had short, salt-and-pepper hair and eyes the color of a sunny blue sky. When he flashed his dimples he oozed charm; she imagined she was not the first girl fresh out of college to tumble in to bed with him.
“Why aren’t you with someone?” she asked, watching him putter around the kitchen, naked, in search of coffee.
“My last girl left the island. Couldn’t take it out here anymore.” He found the coffee, poured two steaming mugs, offered her one. Jess accepted the mug gratefully, began tracing a pattern in his pale, muscled leg.
“Does that happen a lot? People up and leaving without warning?”
“Happens all the time. You young kids, you come out here, think you’re going to be the next Picasso or Hemingway, then once the ferries stop running, you can’t handle being cut off from Mommy and Daddy. You probably won’t make it past December,” he added with a wave of his mug. Jess was mildly offended, but didn’t correct him.
“Why do you stay?” The pattern on his leg grew wider, the loop more pronounced.
“I’m a good hunter,” he grinned, and thumped the graying curls on his chest twice for emphasis. “Tarzan hunt and fish. Provide for his woman.” She giggled, and they wound up folding themselves back under the blanket, and her loneliness was eased, for a while.
