Love and Other Horrors

by Boye, Kody

Tears are in his eyes.

  In pain and agony, hurt and despair, he throws himself to the bed, to the throes of dreams and the monsters of nightmares.

  He wakes nestled against the curve of the dalapago’s neck. Confused, disoriented, and unsure of his location, Michael opens his eyes and raises his head, only to be blinded by a dazzling light a moment later.

  “Where are we?” he asks, bowing his face into the creature’s flesh.

  “The House of Dreams,” Maximillian says. “The home of all the good and wonder that exists.”

  “Are we really?”

  “We are really.”

  Shielding his eyes, Michael raises his head to find that the immense light that blinded him moments before is none other than a string of peppermint. Wrapped in cords and melting together like some beautiful, Siamese twin, it frames the roof of the snow-covered house, casting the area in rays of white and red.

  That’s why I can’t see it from the hill, he thinks, stepping toward the house. It doesn’t let you see it until you’re right here.

  Maybe this is why you are meant to walk the path instead of looking for it. Maybe this is why seeing isn’t just believing, why knowing isn’t understanding, why hoping doesn’t necessarily mean it will come true.

  Maybe, just maybe, this is why miracles are meant to exist.

  “Hey! Michael!”

  Michael looks up.

  Peter is standing at the doorway, waving his arms back and forth.

  “I thought you were gone!” Michael cries, running to the boy’s side. “I couldn’t find you!”

  “I never left!” Peter laughs, wrapping his arms around Michael. “What made you think that?”

  “I…” Michael frowns. “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Peter says. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Turning, both boys look at the gingerbread house, then at one another.

  They lace their hands together and run forward.

  Michael wakes crying. Ripped from a dream of a world so perfect that problems don’t exist, he rolls onto his side and tries to ignore the festering pain in his chest. He reaches forward, toward Emilin’s side of the bed, but realizes she isn’t there and begins to sob.

  All this, he thinks, just because of a memory.

  Had he not taken that drive, he would have never remembered that night or the reasoning behind it—or would he? Could it be possible that, had he stayed home—content with the warmth of his sheets, wife and bed—he would have never remembered anything, or would it have even mattered?

  No, he thinks. It happened before that.

  Almost immediately, Peter enters his mind.

  Another strangled sob escapes his throat.

  Japan—why there, of all places? Did he have family, friends, an estranged lover who beckoned him back with the wave of his hand? Surely Peter had a partner, a man to call his own. No man so beautiful in body and soul was alone in this world. He couldn’t be, not with a smile that shined like a thousand rainbows and eyes the color of Niagara Falls.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Michael wails. “Because he’s gone!”

  Michael screams.

  He throws what used to be Emilin’s pillow from the bed.

  A picture shatters, then falls to the floor.

  In the faint light pouring from the window, a woman sits trapped behind a pane of broken glass.

  Behind her, a man who used to be Michael stands.

  He isn’t smiling.

  Neither is she.

  It was the best picture of their wedding day.

  They must have captured the wrong moment, for both of them should have been smiling.

  For three days, Michael hasn’t been able to dream. Each day, he has woken to the light of a new day, only to cry and remain in bed until his body is too sore to sleep.

  That night, under the cover of darkness, Michael walks to the bedroom with a glass of warm milk in hand.

  Its touch against his lips brings him warmth.

  His mind at ease, Michael lays his head down for sleep.

  He begins to fall.

  At the end of a long, dark tunnel, a light appears. Then all goes black.

  “Michael,” Peter says. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Michael says. “What is it?”

  At first, Peter doesn’t speak. He seems distracted by the events around him. The children screaming, the gingerbread laughing, the dalapagos smiling and the other, candy-creatures dancing—it seems chaotic in this house of dreams, but it is anything but. They seem to exist in a world all their own, so at first, Michael frowns when Peter doesn’t speak. Then, after a moment, he realizes that his question must not have been thought out, that he first asked without thinking of what he was going to say.

  “Peter?” Michael asks.

  “Sorry,” the other boy laughs. “I didn’t expect you to say yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. You didn’t seem to want to look at me before.”

  “When?”

  “Before,” Peter says, then frowns. “Before… in that other place.”

  “Oh.” Michael looks down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s ok.” Peter sets a hand on Michael’s thigh. “I know what I was going to ask.”

  “What?”

  “If you could do anything,” Peter begins, “if you could do anything you could to stay in Wonderland—anything at all—would you.”

  “Of course I would. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d do anything at all,” Peter smiles. “Anything in the world.”

  “So would I,” Michael says, pressing his hand into the cotton candy.

  His fingertips touch Peter’s.

  He can’t help but smile.

  Late the next night, after a long day of indecision, he enters the master bedroom and begins to comb through the medicine cabinet. Its interior spacious, its contents few, he begins at the top row and works his way down, all the while set on finding one particular thing. From the top row he pulls tubes of toothpastes and long-forgotten razors, while on the rows below he retrieves prescription drugs and over-the-counter medication. Most of it is painkillers—Ibuprofen and Aspirin, the angels in your pocket—while some of it offers relief in other ways.

  Emilin used to say that a good night of sleep didn’t exist. Such is the reason for tonight’s pursuit.

  Pushing an aging bottle of shaving cream out of his way, Michael sighs and sets a hand against his forehead.

  He knows it’s here.

  Where could it be?

  Come on, he thinks. It has to be…

  Michael stops.

  It glints at him from the corner of the cabinet.

  Reaching forward, he wraps his hand around the bottle and draws it toward him.

  Only one word is visible in the glow fading off the nightlight.

  Ambien.

  A touch—so humanlike and not at the same time—blooms across his chest. An orchid of trust or a devil of relief, its petals spread from his ribs to his shoulder, from his stomach to his abdomen, then back again. As it blooms, birthed from the realization of something so simple, its anthers creep forward like silent killers drawn from the shadows, then begin to vibrate, echoing across its petals and into the wider aspects of the room. First the mirror seems to move, then the walls, crawling with life and laughter, then the floor begins to melt below him. Hands reach up from the depths of nothing and claw at his legs. One grabs his pant leg while another wraps around his shoe. Oddly enough, they do not tug him down. Instead, they seem to be pushing him aside, as though it is not him they want, but something else.

  What is this? he thinks, tightening his hold on the bottle. What is this hell below my feet?

  Out of nowhere, something presses against his back.

  A claw wraps around his neck.

  It’s this that you fear, the creature says, the things that you have always known.

  Swallowing a lump in his throat, Michael nods. The mon
ster relinquishes its hold and skirts into the shadow. When Michael turns, he sees a crown of gold atop its head. Pendants and medallions dangle from its obscure, hornlike headdress, blanketing its face in wealth, while its eyes—black holes unto themselves—peer out at him from what appears to be a ceremonial mask. What isn’t obscured by said ornamental creation appears to be broken armor, but Michael isn’t particularly concerned about its appearance. What he does know, however, is that it has come with purpose.

  “What are you?” he asks.

  Something that all know, but few acknowledge.

  “What do you want from me?”

  Nothing. It is what you want from me.

  Michael frowns. He backs toward the threshold, but is caught off guard when the creature lunges forward. A shawl of dead animal fur adorns the curve of its plated shoulders, only barely obscuring the sickly, three-fingered claws that tip its arms. These too appear to be made from plate armor, but he doesn’t linger on their appearance. It has stopped him from walking out of the room, forbidden him from ignoring its call. He has to acknowledge it.

  “Are you from Wonderland?” he asks.

  I am from everywhere and nowhere at once.

  “Are you here to help me?”

  To guide you, yes, but not to decide.

  “What do you want me to know?”

  That you will never escape hardship no matter where you go, that life, as perfect as it may seem, it never as such.

  “You’re saying Wonderland isn’t perfect?”

  It is merely a mask of what it might really be.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  No.

  Michael shivers.

  It is your choice what you decide to do, mortal, but know that no matter where you go, no matter what you may believe, that nothing is perfect.

  Before Michael can question it any further, the creature vanishes, leaving behind only the scent of rot.

  Fleeing from the room, Michael makes his way toward his bed and seats himself atop it. In his hand is the Ambien, at his side the glass of water specifically chosen for this mission. Though the scent of rot is gone, it lingers in his mind.

  “My choice,” he whispers.

  Because nothing is perfect.

  Bowing his head, Michael closes his eyes.

  Peter, Wonderland, Maximillian, the House of Dreams—whatever can compare to a perfect world?

  Nothing.

  Lifting his head, Michael presses the bottle’s cap down and rotates it.

  He pulls a pill from its depths.

  Slipping it between his lips, he lifts the glass of water, then tilts it into his mouth. He swallows the first pill before taking another, then the next. He repeats this process for an indefinite amount of time, his mind lost in other places. Trees topped with gumdrops sprout on the road outside his house, while a pair of gingerbread men prance across the neighbor’s lawn, one laughing while the other raises a hand in silence. A dalapago appears from a doghouse, then slides across the road, while in the distance what appears to be a comet plummets, a candy-like string trailing behind it.

  For one brief moment, Michael fears Wonderland may be impossible to reach.

  Shortly thereafter, he realizes Wonderland is closer than ever before.

  Lying down, taking his last sip of water, he rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes.

  This is it, he thinks.

  The world begins to darken.

  His heart begins to slow.

  Then, with a smile on his face, Michael begins to dream.

  They are lying on a bed together. Staring into one another’s eyes, smiles on their faces, Michael slowly comes to the realization that he is no longer in pain. Gone is the hurt in his heart and the anguish in his mind. Gone is the idea that he will always be alone, that he will never be completed. Gone is the feeling that there is nothing better than Wonderland.

  “Is something wrong?” Peter asks.

  Michael shakes his head.

  “No,” he says. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Michael smiles. “Everything’s perfect.”

  “I’m glad.”

  In the moments that follow, Peter’s eyes soften and his breathing comes to a halt. He leans forward, as though wanting to come closer, but stops short. His lips purse and his eyes flicker, briefly illuminating an emotion Michael has never truly felt.

  “Peter,” Michael whispers.

  “Yeah?” Peter asks.

  Michael reaches up. His hand touches Peter’s cheek.

  Peter leans forward.

  Their lips touch.

  Some say that eternal happiness can never exist, that it is a state of mind and never a state of presence. They say that love only happens once and never again, that after that first moment you feel as though you are really, truly loved, everything else is false—unreal, an illusion to a perfect, first time.

  Some say Wonderland doesn’t exist.

  Those that do are wrong.

  Pedestrians

  I think of them as goats, those pedestrians. When they walk across the road with their wide eyes and their stiff, unsure gaits, it’s as though that, at any moment, some mechanical, primal instinct will crack, forcing them across the road in harm’s way. My hummer—my SUV—could easily strike them down, cut them in half or break them in two, but for what reason? Idaho law states that all vehicles must yield to pedestrians, no matter the risk that lies in suddenly slamming your foot on the break when you’re going an excess of twenty or thirty miles an hour.

  Wear your seatbelt, they say, but neglect to add that you can get thrown through your front windshield if you don’t.

  Obviously, it doesn’t matter what ‘the law’ states. People will go by without wearing their seatbelts, obeying the speed limit, or even stopping when they hit one of those goats—a pedestrian, simply crossing the road on an ordinary day.

  That happened to me once, on a Saturday afternoon. Ironically enough, I’d been driving home from church, just after I’d said my prayers and repented for my bad ways. I paid a traffic ticket the week before, both for violating the speed limit and for not wearing my seatbelt. I always thought that it was ridiculous that you should have to pay for not wearing a seatbelt—I mean, what’s the point? It’s not like you’re going to hurt anyone but yourself if you don’t wear a seatbelt.

  Usually, when you get in a crash, no one gets hurt as long as you take extra precaution.

  That day, I did the exact opposite.

  A middle age woman of about thirty or forty, she’d crossed the street with the utmost concern, looking once, then twice up both sides of the road. I happened to miss her shock of blonde hair and the mess of her dowdy, long-sleeved shirt because the road seemed too bright. Ahead, I remembered, water seemed to rise out of the baptismal abyss of black road, like flames from dying charcoal.

  Birds would have died that day.

  The weather had been too hot.

  Things had gotten out of hand.

  The moment I struck the woman, the world seemed to fade to black. Like a movie shown in the fifties, things seemed to slow down—distort, become uneven. Slow motion ruled the world, a government bent on control, while the black and white continued, walking the street, flying in the sky, getting hit by an SUV.

  Only one color broke the surface of the horror movie of my life.

  Red.

  Red—a seemingly normal color upon first glance, but look again, and what do you see? Do you see cherries, the tips of bombs that destroy entire countries, or do you see blood, what soldiers shed when they go to war? Maybe you see rubies, lit with fame and full of shame, if you reek of wealth or passion; or, maybe, you see nothing but an apple, a cruel aspect of nature forced to drop once it has fully matured. Like a child, that apple is innocent, and never deserves to fall from the mother that is its tree.

  Neither, of course, does anyone deserve to die.

  I would later come to find her name was
Cloria Stephens—a respectable, middle-class woman that worked at the local elementary school. She tutored homeless children in math and science and gave her time for the disabled, pushing children in wheelchairs and wiping the mouths of those whose digestive systems did not work properly. She and her husband had three children—a young man of fifteen in high school, a girl of twelve in the seventh grade, and a boy of three that stayed at home, unbeknownst to the cruel, savage world that his virgin soul had not yet met.

  I killed a woman that day.

  It was only an accident.

  When I realized what happened, I slammed on the breaks, threw myself out of the car, and ran to her side, only to find that, in my haste, I had only made things worse. Since I didn’t bother to put the car in park, and since the topmost right wheel caught her leg under its rubber curve—forcing her upper body under the other, opposite wheel with gravity alone—the SUV veered forward, crushing her chest under nearly a ton-and-a-half of pressure.

  At first, I didn’t know what to do. I screamed, I cried, I yelled at the neighbors to try and get someone—anyone—to come out. Then, I realized—horribly, and with a sense of fear so terrible I feared my heart would simply stop beating—that no would had, or would, hear me.

  No one was around to see or hear what had just happened.

  Panicking, and in a state of mind that threatened to overwhelm my senses and force blood from seemingly every part of my head, I threw myself in the SUV, put it in drive, and veered forward.

  I crushed Cloria Stephens’ chest and sped down the road, all the while not bothering to look back.

  Little did I know that a trail of blood would follow me for the next hundred feet.

  I shaved my head, dyed my lengthy beard red, and starved myself of both sleep and nourishment in order to alter my appearance. My puffy, bloodshot eyes, my scraggly, black-and-red mess of beard, and my nearly-clean-shaven head kept me from being recognized of the man I had once been.

  My wife used to call my Charles.

  My son used to call me Daddy.

  Now, I went by the name of Tim.

  Although nothing happened following the incident, the guilt and worry that plagued my consciousness forced me to do things to myself that I would never even dream of doing. Shaving my head—though receding as my hairline was—dealt a blow I never imagined. Me—a teacher at the local college, with a fine, if somewhat graying head of red hair—bald, just like that? I nearly laughed when I saw the light bounce off its baby-smooth surface. I looked like my son when he first went through his leukemia treatments.