Before I could wake up completely, I heard someone implore' me, "Don't try to talk, we're taking you to the infirmary."
I couldn't move anyway. I felt myself being half lifted and half rolled, then boxed in with stretcher bars. I wanted to tell them that all this fuss was unnecessary, I was fine, but I couldn't move at all. I felt no pain, just a chill that immobilized me. I opened my eyes. I was being wheeled away down bright corridors. I thought I smelled John—he liked a certain soap. I felt a hot hand against my cheek.
"You're gonna make it, don't worry."
I was confused. I went back to sleep.
When I woke up again, the pain came with consciousness, hand in hand, like death and taxes. I moaned out loud and grabbed for my belly. John was there beside me, and he stroked my forehead and my hand until I relaxed. He wiped a few tears away from my cheek. "You've had a miscarriage," he said in a whisper. He sounded broken. "Your neighbor found you—he heard you scream, and he found you in a pool of blood. Your office is a real mess. The window was broken, your rats are all dead, it's a shambles. I'm just glad you're all right."
"I don't feel all right," I said thickly.
"No, I'm sure you don't. You're on an IV and will be till morning. I'll be here tomorrow to take you home—you have to promise to take it easy for the next week or so—no school."
"I'll get behind," I groaned. The room was spinning as if I'd had far too much to drink—half turn, then stop; the same half turn, then stop, then the same again.
He squeegeed tears away from his own eyes, as if he were ashamed of them and didn't want me to see. Behind his glasses, his eyes were red and swollen, his dense lashes still wet. "Nonsense. You're the smartest girl in school. You'll make it up in no time—I'll bring you your lessons. Dr. Reid already said he'd take over your TA classes until you feel up to coming back. Everything's going to be all right. You just have to relax, OK? I'll come get you between the Astro and Particle lectures."
I looked at him, then turned over my arm, stiff and cold with the metal and plastic tubing hanging out of it, and let all my cells collapse against the rough cotton duck of the hospital sheets. The room was blessedly dim—late night lights were on. "Don't be late," I whispered to him.
That night as I slept, I had nightmares about it. Again and again I came into my office, each time finding something more awful to look at—one rat had had its head ripped off and the trails of flesh spread across the floor like a red feather boa; another was crushed into a white furry bag of liquid, horribly misshapen. Again I saw the lightning strike, illuminating the white papers flying about like some Hitchcock intro, the overturned office chair, the ruined stereo, and—what else?
I was convinced there was something else in the room.
A gynecologist came to visit me when I awakened in the morning. I sat up in bed, drinking a pint of nutritional milk shake, and she sat in a chair opposite me. "How are you feeling, Ariane?" she asked me cheerfully.
"Kind of like someone stepped on me."
She granted that a medically astute smile. "It wasn't really a miscarriage that you suffered," she informed me. "We didn't find any of the hormones associated with pregnancy in your bloodstream."
I didn't say anything, plucking at loose threads in the hospital blanket.
The gyn sighed and went on. "Ariane, you weren't attacked, you weren't raped, were you? You can say so, I won't say anything about it if you don't want—I'm just trying to make a diagnosis."
"I… no," I said truthfully. "I mean, I don't remember. I'm not a repressed-memories kind of person."
"I thought so. I mean, we didn't find any semen traces on you either—just your own blood. The only thing I can think is that you suffered a prolapsed endometrium, for God knows what reason. There's nothing left of your uterine lining now. It seems to be reforming itself normally, which is good. It's a really rare occurrence, and it usually happens after a couple of miscarriages or abortions—"
"Never had an abortion."
"Yeah," she agreed with another shrug. "Just one of those freaky things, I guess. But you're healthy otherwise, so you're going to be just fine as long as you rest."
I finished my shake as she left the room, then gobbled down a few Tylenol and an antibiotic, and slipped into a twitchy sleep for a few hours.
Again and again I mentally visited the room, looked around, squinting my eyes against the stiff wind, and then screaming until my throat was raw. But at some point the scream had died away as if it had never existed. There was something strange about the time… perhaps I had never screamed at all. My hand struggling at the doorknob, then throwing back the heavy wood, staring into the dark…
John was prompt that afternoon to pick me up, both of us grimacing at the embarrassing ritual of the wheelchair escort to the parking lot. He had brought me some sweatpants and a T-shirt to wear—my long flowered dress had been quite ruined. I settled wearily in the passenger seat, rattling my vials of pain pills and antibiotics, and John squinted at the dash as he started the unfamiliar vehicle.
One thing I can say about John is, though he drives like a half-blind Chinese grandpa, he's a wonderful nursemaid. He had a sickly childhood and an over-protective mother, and he knows all about soups, hot blankets, pillow fluffing, and Travel Scrabble. I was soon settled on the living room couch like Cleopatra with an array of light beverages, little sandwiches, and good books spread out before me within my reach. "Do you hurt anywhere?" he asked.
"I think you could punch me and I wouldn't feel it," I replied, smiling and sloppy with codeine.
He got on his knees in front of me and kissed the backs of my hands. "I love you so much, Ariane," he said. "I can't bear the idea of something happening to you. I'm sorry I was so beastly last night."
"Oh, honey, don't worry about that. I wasn't being too sweet myself."
John smiled against my hands. "You get much more Southern when you're drugged," he remarked.
"Surely, y'all. And don't worry about the ring. I'd only lose it anyway."
He shook his head and blushed. "If you need anything, call. Please, I mean it."
"Go to school," I urged him. "I'm going to sleep for a while. We can't both be slackers."
"Tell me you love me first."
"I love you, John. I love you—passionately."
He stood up and grinned. "I accept that," he said. "I'll be back after my last class."
"You're not going to drive, are you?" I teased.
He smiled crookedly. "Er, no, I think I'll walk…"
At last he left me, and I leafed through the papers. As usual, all they had was item after item of horrors—war in Eastern Europe, war in Africa, police corruption, two young men found horribly mutilated in the cemetery across the street from NCIT. The kids had been robbing graves, it seemed, until some big-time psycho got to them and slit their throats and gutted them. No leads on who, but already there was some slight anxiety about yet another Jack the Ripper. I was usually dismayed by things like that in the news, but I read all the tales of woe and murder with druggy fascination. I read the news item again and again until I couldn't hold my eyes open anymore.
I slipped into a hypnagogic state. I spent years of my life perfecting the transition from wakefulness to half sleep, and thence to sleep; I can stay in this fugue state for hours without sleeping, especially when on some form of opiate, like codeine. It wasn't quite meditation—peace of mind was impossible for me after the scary stuff I'd read.
Naturally I went back to last night, like the tongue going to visit the recent dental work. For some reason I had a lot more clarity now, as if some fog over my memory was slowly lifting.
There had been something else in the room—a hunched and bony form, skinny as a Third World starveling. I'd thought to myself, Homeless, malnourished, probably broke in to steal something to sell or barter for food. I was afraid, but I advanced closer, knowing that I was possessed of some physical power, and a little bit of mental strength, and I had little cause for fear.
The bones of the body were draped with a muddy, tattered, eaten cloth—a big coat, perhaps a rain cloak, dark in color. "Hey," I said cautiously, holding up my hand. "I know female self-defense."
The person turned its face towards me.
oh shit
I was losing the memory… must reel it back in. I shifted my place on the couch, then lay perfectly, perfectly still, slowing my breathing. Back to sleep… but not quite. At last the images swam back, coalescing.
The face of the—creature—I couldn't bring myself to think of it as a person anymore. Perhaps it had once been a person, but not much was left. The skin was dark, the color of the mud, dotted here and there with pinkish, livid sores, holes in the flesh. The skin didn't quite cover the cheeks—the strain of stretching over the high, rampant cheekbones seemed to be too much for it. The only thing I saw that didn't disgust me filled me with horror—the eyes, bulging and terribly bloodshot, large blue-gray irises, sentient eyes, eyes that begged, full of agony. It opened its mouth and hissed at me. The mouth was filled with yellow-orange teeth, four of them sharply pointed, two on top and two on the lower jaw. It hissed again and lowered its head to tear at something. It was one of my rats, squeaking in terror. The creature crushed it in one of its bony claws, and sucked out the blood that gushed from the rat's mouth. When the blood didn't come out fast enough for it, it crammed the rat half into its mouth and bit into it, sucking the juice out the way you would a slice of orange.
And yet I still hadn't screamed. I'd pissed myself, that was for sure—I felt it running down my legs in a steaming-hot stream. But I was silent, transfixed. The creature… it was in so much pain. It threw back its head and gave a hoarse cry, rattling in its throat. I realized why it had hissed—it hadn't enough flesh in its voice box to make any further sound. Somehow the blood was feeding it.
It was gazing at me now. (In my fugue I writhed on the couch, sick with fear, but the images came unbidden now, released from their floodgates.) Its eyes were truly terrible. It was weeping now, great painful tears that made the creature gasp when they ran into the open wounds on its face. Salt tears! I thought in wonder. Not blood or pus, but salt, simple sea salt like any decent mammal. The creature stood up. It was wearing a large coat, as tattered as its own skin, and some rags of what looked like a fine silk or satin, reduced to ribbons. It was so tiny and wasted that no flesh covered its bones, only that mud-colored, fragile skin.
I felt a subtle push in my brain, almost an actual physical pressure, a little squeeze.
Slowly I circled the room until I had my back to the desk. My hand slipped in rat blood and raindrops when I tried to steady myself. I wasn't thinking at all—merely moving my body to and fro, arranging it idly but deliberately. I lifted up my skirt.
In some other place, I felt myself squirming against the upholstery on my couch, groaning through clenched teeth. In the memory state, my mind raced while I was physically paralyzed, the negative of what I was remembering—my body moving without the action of my mind.
Opium is a funny thing—the fantastic things you dream up seem real, but immense; the real things you remember seem to go on forever, you recall every atom of detail. I didn't want to see it, but I did—I felt it and remembered it completely—raising my skirt and allowing the creature to lift up my legs as if it were a lover ready to mount me. It tore my panties off with one deft swipe of its right claw, the fingernails glittering on it like talons, and it put its head between my legs and began to lap up the drops of blood coming from me.
The tongue was rough, sweet to the touch, not cruel or stinging, hungrily penetrating me for more; I lay there passively, but not so passively that I felt no pleasure or fear. There was a screen up in my mind—I could see it clearly, but not around it. It said DON'T BE AFRAID. I NEED YOU. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND KIND. The wraithlike hands gripped my buttocks, caressing them so that I felt the smooth texture of the bones and the clothlike shreds of skin. In a long moment, the licking and sucking became insistent, and I felt myself swelling towards an orgasm. I didn't want it. There was nothing I could do to stop it.
I had it—or it had me—the orgasm, intense as lightning, blistering through my nerves, forcing a great spurt of blood out of my womb into the creature's mouth. In my mind I felt an echo of my own reluctant ecstacy—the creature's sympathetic pleasure pangs. At that moment I felt its hold on me slip; I saw around the screen, I saw the corpses of my rats and smelled the stench of freshly turned earth, urine, blood, my own terrified sweat; and then I screamed. I screamed harder in that one moment than I ever have. In a panic the creature gave a great pulling suck on my cunt, as if to turn me inside out, and that is truly all I remember. I must have slumped to the floor, and there I was found, alone, slowly leaking what was left, my dress soaked with piss and blood.
I slid off the couch and crawled on my hands and knees to the bathroom, heaving dryly into the toilet until I slid down to rest on the bathroom rug, my cheek pressed to the sensual cold nubs of the tiles.
When John returned to me that evening he found me asleep there on the bathroom floor. He shook me awake and half carried me back to the living room. I drew him tightly to me and made him lie lengthwise on the couch with me. I held him and cried and shook for a long time, which he ascribed to too many drugs and not enough company. He held me tightly, fed me chili and saltines, and let me win at Scrabble three times. We crawled into bed and he held my naked body against his. "Are you cold?" he asked, eyes round with warm brown concern. So alive. My beautiful lover.
"No," I said, touching his warm, stubbly cheek. "I feel better now."
In a week I was back in school, back at the lectern, good as new. Of course, the rumor mill at the Loony Geek Farm was healthier than any of the students, and I was treated with delicacy and deference. I pretended that nothing had happened, and soon enough there were fresh scandals to take everyone's mind off my little accident.
John treated me like spun glass for a while, holding doors for me and bringing my lunch to my new office, but even he got over it in time. I assured him, perhaps a little too much, that everything was all right, that I was fine now. By the time the first of December rolled around, I could tell he didn't believe me. My empathic professor lover lay beside me at night while I lay awake, and I could feel his lashes brushing my back as he blinked, as awake as I was.
What could I have told him? Would he have believed me? I hardly believed it myself. I have a New Orleans child's healthy respect for the supernatural, but generally that extended to not cussing in cemeteries and knocking on wood. How could I possibly explain to a scientist that I had seen a dead man walking the earth—had let him touch me—had let him lick blood from my pussy until I came? I didn't want to believe it, and I had been there. I didn't think it would go over very well with anyone else.
He never did ask me about it, either. Sometimes he seemed about to ask. He would hang his head, fall silent at dinner, take my hand, and stare intently at me as if he could force me to volunteer what had actually happened. When John did this, I usually laughed, kissed him, sang a Beatles song, suggested cocktails after classes, and he would shake his head as if to say, How could I ever suspect her?
In the heat of the pre-finals weeks of classes, I had the double stress of doing my coursework and trying to look after John's travel arrangements. He and I spent hours on the phone long distance to England, trying to convince his mother that it was better if he stayed in the professor's apartments provided for him, rather than in her cold-water flat ten miles away. She would generally listen to me more than to John. To add to that, John had nothing in the way of clothes, and no eye for clothing or good shoes, and I had to shop for him, only occasionally convincing him to come along with me.
After one morning off, returning to campus with armloads of shopping bags from Oak Tree and the Gap, I tumbled into my chair in my office, praying I'd gotten my interlibrary loan requests in through the mail. I called my student lackey, Lola, and asked her to get my mail from the faculty mai
lroom and bring it to my office, and to score a muffin while she was at it.
Lola came in with an armload of documents and a chocolate muffin. "I would have brought you coffee, but they were out," she said.
"Thanks, baby."
"How are you today?" She began to arrange the papers on the desk. I think she had a crush on me. She was a well-scrubbed Arizona girl in leggings and sweatshirt, her lips always perfectly pencilled in a subtle color.
"I'm fine… a little harried as usual… What's this?" I held up a Fed-Ex envelope and squinted at it. There was no return address legible on the outside.
"I don't know. It came just as I was walking out the door. Weird, huh? I better run off to Cellular, I've been late every day this week. See ya." She waved and shut the door behind her.
I took a crumbly bite of muffin and tore the perforated cardboard strip off the package. Inside the envelope was another envelope, this in a creamy pale brown expensive paper with rough edges, rather like an invitation to an art gallery opening or commencement at a hippie college. I slit it with my thumbnail and pulled out a slip of identical brown paper, with a scrolling, strange handwriting in dark brown ink. I read it once, then set it down, then picked it up and read it again.
To Miss Ariane Dempsey.
I would not blame you if you did not forgive me for what I did to you that night; I can certainly never forgive myself. I want to express my regret, my undying debt to you, my desire to set things right. If you are not afraid, allow me to apologize to you in person. Come to the Saskatchewan Hotel on December 12th. Come by eight, Suite 900. I say again, I am nothing to fear.
My eternal apologies.
I nearly lost the muffin in my anxiety.
It really had happened. I wasn't going crazy. I could feel a special vibration in the paper—something in the handwriting, too careful, too old to have been made by a real person—but too sloppy to have been printed. I jumped out of my chair and paced the office, John's bags of new clothes falling unheeded to the floor. What could I do? How in the world should I react?
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