by Hamill, Ike
The tentative smile disappears from her face as she leans forward a bit.
“I’ve taken enough of your time,” she says abruptly. She’s on her feet a moment later, making her way towards the door.
I guess it’s going to be a long, long time before I let myself be vulnerable again.
“Thanks for coming by.”
She’s already showing herself out.
I watch her climb into her car. It’s a rental. I bet she got it from the same place that I got mine. The headlights flare and I flinch back from the light, retreating deeper into my kitchen. Even her taillights appear impossibly bright as I watch her car disappear down the road.
That reminds me—I have to get rid of my rental car soon. It’s probably costing me a fortune and I’m not using it at all. The details of the transaction seem impossible. How will I get back home?
I return to the table and slump into the chair. I just woke up a little while ago when Amber knocked. I’m still a little tired. I have the urge to go out and find more berries. Those perked me right up the last time I ate some. Nothing in the kitchen seems particularly edible. I might as well live off the land while it’s providing. Winter is going to be a long stretch of hunger, I imagine.
Before I head out, there is one thing I need to really consider.
I reach back and pull open the third drawer down. My hand comes back with a stubby candle and then returns to the drawer for a box of matches. The occupational therapy class at the hospital never covered how to light a match one-handed. Fortunately, I learned that trick when I was a teenager. I fold one of the matches over the end of the book and lay it on the rough strip. Then, aligning my middle finger and thumb like I’m going to snap, I strike the match. I snatch it up from the table before the whole book catches fire.
Even candlelight feels too bright to me.
If I’m being honest with myself, my eyes are the real problem with returning the rental car. The place is only open during the day. Even squinting through sunglasses, my eyes will never survive that long out in the sunshine.
I have to do one thing before I snuff the candle.
I have to really examine my nub and try to see it from the angle that frightened Amber. She was clearly driven away by what she saw. I know I took the bandage off way too early, I haven’t been cleaning the area, and I stopped my antibiotics as soon as I left the hospital. The wound has every reason to be hideous and I’ve been ignoring it.
When I lift my nub into the candlelight, I understand Amber’s horror.
The new flesh recoils from the light and tries to disguise itself amongst the sutures and puffy skin. I reach out with my good hand and pinch the flame between my fingers. Now that I’ve seen the shape lurking in the skin on my nub, I don’t want to take my eyes off of it.
As soon as the candle is gone, the curious talons begin to emerge. There are only two of them. The one near my ulna is the longer of the two. It looks like it has three full segments before it ends with a tiny claw. The other one—near my radius bone—is smaller. That one might only have two segments so far. I imagine that it’s still growing. There’s a bump on the side of the smaller one. Eventually, the bump is going to grow into a third boney finger, I just know it.
The long, alien fingers are searching around, tasting the air.
My heart is pounding as I try to figure out what to do.
I don’t think I have the stomach to cut them off. Besides, why would I assume that removing them would help? They grew from the site of an amputation.
I lay my arm down on the table. The fingers retract for a moment and then reach out again. I know what they’re going to do even before they do it.
As soon as they discover the flat surface of wood, the longer finger moves its claw perpendicular to the table and then taps.
TAP. TAP.
It pauses and both fingers turn a little, like they’re listening.
My stomach twists and bunches.
These fingers don’t belong to me. I wasn’t even bitten by the thing upstairs—it just grabbed my wrist. But do I know that for sure? I didn’t see what was happening under the bed. I assume that it reached out and grabbed me, but what if it was a bite?
The doctors told me about an infection that forced the amputation, but they were awfully cagey about the nature of the infection. I wonder what they saw.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
They listen again. They’re taking stock of this room. They want me to eat. The idea seems to come from inside of me, but I’m sure that it really came from the fingers.
What kind of monster am I becoming? It’s a ridiculous question. I know precisely what kind. I’ve seen them. I’ve killed them.
Amber eventually saw me for what I was. That’s why she ran from the kitchen.
(I have an idea.)
I have an idea.
There’s a distinct possibility that Amber would have been frightened away immediately, but she made the mistake of…
“Looking into my eyes.”
I jump up and run for the bathroom.
I don’t know how long it has been since I’ve used this bathroom. The medicine cabinet is set in the wall.
The last rays of sunset are almost extinguished. I wouldn’t need them anyway.
I put myself in front of the mirror and then I look.
My eyes are twin galaxies, descending into infinity. They’re not as luminescent as they will be. When they truly sparkle, Amber won’t be able to look away, not after dark.
Even now, my eyes are almost so powerful that I’m entrancing myself.
“Mirror,” I whisper. They used to say that vampires couldn’t be seen in mirrors. Maybe the lore was twisted. Maybe the real message was that vampires couldn’t look at themselves in mirrors. To gaze upon one’s own infinite depths would bring paralysis.
I’m in danger of that now. It takes all my strength to push myself away from the mirror and flee the bathroom. I shut the door and vow to never go in there again. Fortunately, I’ve already banished the rest of the mirrors from the house. They’re still down in the cellar.
The talons on my nub are waving around frantically.
They sense the thought that’s still forming.
I have to put an end to this. I’ve already ruled out amputation. Even if it worked, the problem isn’t just with my left arm. My eyes are infected as well. I should have guessed this already. It’s not normal to be so sensitive to light.
The only answer is that I have to do to myself what I did to those other creatures. I have to find my stakes and then figure out a way to use them on myself.
Despair washes through me.
The idea of suicide is a betrayal of everything that has kept me going the last few years. I guess it should be a relief. After Mom died, I dragged myself back into the light. Kimberly kept me propped up until she was ripped from me. Uncle Walt was the last straw. He was the last real connection that I had to this world. I don’t know why I’m still fighting.
That’s not true.
I do know why I’m still fighting.
I’m fighting because Kimberly would have wanted me to.
She said, “Your darkness can’t last forever. Light always wins.”
Those words weren’t meant to be a prediction. They were a prescription. She was telling me that I had to fight for life. I couldn’t just let the tide overtake me and wash me out to sea. It’s up to me to keep fighting.
What does that mean now?
How can I fight for life when I’m turning into the instrument of death?
“How do you know?” I whisper.
The voice seemed to come from outside of myself even though I felt the whisper on my lips.
“How do you know they were instruments of death?” I ask myself.
I blink my giant eyes and move to the window.
The night is alive. My long claw taps on the glass and I see the ripples flow out as a yellow wave across the landscape. Anything moving appears as an orange flare while the
sound of the tapping rolls out.
Sure, I’m a predator, but haven’t humans always been predators? Haven’t we always hunted, killed, and fed?
I push myself away from the window. These aren’t my thoughts. These ideas are coming from the talons somehow. They’re coming from my alien eyes. While I still have some control of my body, I have to do whatever I can to eliminate the idea that I might spread this curse to others.
Betrayal
(I'm afraid of not dying.)
I’m afraid of not dying.
Standing in the loft of the barn, I have a rope tied to the truss above. When I was a kid, my uncle wanted to replace the winch that was attached to this same truss. He stood up the ladder underneath and extended it all the way. It wasn’t tall enough to reach the beam that spanned the main aisle of the barn. That beam was so high that barn swallows would nest up there and they wouldn’t even stir while we moved below. They knew they were safe. While he was pondering how to get up there, I volunteered.
“I can use the step ladder to get to the beam from the loft and then shimmy across,” I said.
He screwed up his face as he consider this idea. He started shaking his head, looking like he had just bit down on a lemon.
“Your mother would kill me if she ever found out.”
“I won’t tell her,” I said. I don’t remember how old I was, but I was old enough to know that I wasn’t supposed to keep secrets from Mom. She always said that there were no such things as secrets between adults and kids. If any adult asked me to keep a secret, I should nod and then run directly to her. She was smart that way. She stressed that it didn’t matter who the adult was—friend, neighbor, principal, or relative. There were no such things as secrets between adults and kids.
But this secret was my idea. That meant that it didn’t count.
Uncle Walt was still pondering the idea while I went and got the stepladder and carried it up to the loft. He was still shaking his head when I climbed up and straddled the beam. At that point, it was only an eight foot fall. As I worked my way around the first leg of the truss and out over the main aisle, the dirt floor of the barn was so far down that it made my head spin to even look. I kept my eyes straight forward and tried to ignore it. By the time I was out at place where the winch attached, I was terrified. All I had to do was reach under and remove the iron ring from the hook, but I couldn’t do it.
When I finally admitted that to my uncle, he wasn’t frustrated at all.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Just come on back. We’ll figure another way. You know what? If I just pull the truck into the barn, maybe that will make the ladder tall enough.”
Even before he finished, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to shimmy back to safety.
I broke out into a sweat and lowered my chest down to the beam, so I could wrap my arms around it. Without asking what I was doing, Uncle Walt figured out that I was having a panic attack. He shuffled off to go get the truck while I shivered and clung to the beam. For a little while after that, I was terrified of the idea of heights. I don’t know if it’s like this for other people, but I wasn’t afraid of the idea of falling. I was afraid that I would lose control of my body. That’s what happened up there. I kept telling myself that it was no big deal. If that same beam had been two feet off the ground, I could have done a thousand cartwheels on it and never stumbled. It was wide enough that I could have ridden a skateboard down the length. My body didn’t listen to logic. As soon as I got out to the middle, everything shut down.
I couldn’t even look as Uncle Walt arranged the truck and fetched the ladder. The extension ladder was so unwieldy that he usually had to wrestle with it for fifteen minutes to get it into position. That day, he was strong and confident. The legs of the ladder landed gently on the beam next to me and he climbed it in an instant. I trusted him completely when he guided my hand to the rung and then grabbed my belt loop and pulled me into position.
We moved down the ladder together, one step at a time. At the bottom, he told me to hold still while he dismounted. I sat on the gate of the goat stall and watched as he went back up and did my job for me. He and I never talked about the beam again. The next summer, I had my nerve back and I was able to help with the roof. Even with that, he didn’t let me get too high on the roof before he called me back. He never mentioned the beam, but I suspect that it was in the back of his head. I was ashamed that I had failed him.
He would have been proud of me tonight.
Tonight, I jumped from the deck of the loft and grabbed the beam with my good hand. I was able to swing my legs up and then pull myself on top of the truss so I could walk calmly to the middle of the barn. I tied the rope a few feet away from where I had a panic attack when I was a kid. I’m fairly certain that I could have done a handstand on that spot and not wavered.
Once I got the rope into place, I walked back over to the edge and jumped back down to the loft. The occupational therapist never taught me how to tie a noose with one hand, but I figure it out. They should do that—teach amputees practical techniques for one-handed suicide. I bet it comes up fairly often.
Now, I’m standing here with the noose around my neck.
My talons snatch something from the darkness and stuff it into my mouth before I can react. Chewing it, I figure out that it has to be a spider. I have silky web stuck to my nub. I would spit it out, but it tastes really good. It’s like eating a particularly tasty piece of scab, if that makes sense.
I can’t live like this.
Maybe other people could cope with this alien transformation, but not me.
I step off the edge of the loft.
For the moment, everything is silent. I’ll be flying for the rest of my life. It’s nice to have everything planned out.
(I expected pain.)
I expected pain.
I’m gently swinging and the rope is creaking as I sway back and forth. My talons search for something solid to tap against. They want to send yellow waves out into the night to see what reflects back. I think I’m beginning to understand that compulsion. Tapping against solid objects with my claws is sort of like scratching a deep itch. The sound moves out into the world, but it also resonates through my own body. Now that I’m swinging in the air with nothing to tap on, my heart aches for that hollow sound.
After a few minutes of swinging, I realize that nothing is going to happen. I start to think about the others that I dispatched. One of them had only one eye. I can picture his suicide attempt fairly easily. Recognizing that he was changing over, I bet he tried to stab or shoot himself in the eye. Clearly, it didn’t work. One of them had a stretched out neck. I wonder if that’s what I’m going to look like when this is done.
I sigh and look around the barn.
I bet I could chew through the rope. It’s just a stray thought, but when I run my tongue over my teeth, I start to believe it. They’re not particularly sharp yet, but they will be. The flat bottoms of my front teeth are chipping away. My molars are splintering. If I just start chewing, my mouth will be full of razor-sharp daggers by the end of the process.
There’s an easier way though. I kick off my shoes and brush one foot against the other. As I surmised, my toenails have already begun to sharpen. I reach up with my good hand, grab the rope above my neck, and then twist my body upside-down so I can grip the rope with my feet. I can’t even describe how it works, but it’s the most natural thing in the world. After a couple of seconds, I’m back up on the beam, pulling the rope from around my neck. If I want to end this monstrous life, I’ll have to find another way.
Once more, I’m thinking about that lonely train whistle. When I was a kid, I imagined a scene where the conductor stopped the train because he saw people on the tracks. Then, vampires overtook the train and drained the conductor of blood.
But what if the vampires were trying to commit suicide by stepping in front of the train? It’s not a terrible idea. I shut my eyes and try to picture it. Even in my imagination, I can�
�t do it. I can’t hold still and let the train run me over. My body will react at the last second and I will jump out of the way, whether I want to or not.
It’s starting to occur to me that I won’t be able to do this alone.
I need myself from a week ago.
I need someone strong enough to take a stand against the abomination that I’m becoming.
Submission
(It seems like a good plan.)
It seems like a good plan.
I wait until it’s almost dawn before I even think about moving into action. I had to tape the paper down to the table in order to write the note. Every time my left hand got close enough, it tried to scratch away the text or knock the pen out of my other hand. My only recourse was to sit down on my nub, as painful as that was, and write quickly.
I carry the note at arm’s length just in case my talons want to try to shred it as I walk.
I don’t take the road. There’s never any traffic out here, but if there happened to be, I’m afraid of what the headlights would do to me. Even the stars seem really bright right now. My eyes aren’t that good at recognizing shapes. For example, it took me forever to find a sheet of paper in my uncle’s study. I had to consider the sheet of paper from several angles before I decided that it was what I was looking for. It was almost like I had forgotten the purpose of paper.
My eyes are sensitive as hell though. Far away from Mr. Engel’s house, I can see the light that Amber left on upstairs. I have to circle the building so that I don’t accidentally get a full look at the light as I approach. The back door is locked. She has already fixed the window that I broke when I tried to use the phone the other day. The windows are locked as well.