by Tricia Reeks
“How long for?” Hoek says.
***
“I knew you’d come.” The Ghûl clambers down from the roof of the mausoleum and pokes at the bundle Hoek is carrying. “So this is him, eh?”
Hoek almost resists when the Ghûl takes the body from him and carries it down the dank steps, laying it on the sarcophagus at the back of the gloomy chamber. “Ahh!” The Ghûl draws in a ghastly sucking breath. “A pretty one! I can see why you want him.” It uncoils its long tongue and begins to carve the flesh away from the face, unhooking its jaw before bending forward to crack the skull like a nut and sucking up the soft stuff inside.
“Here,” it says, jaw back in place. “Tie this around my eyes. It can be a bit rough for him when I change, seeing what’s happening. Come on, it won’t tie itself.” But Hoek is clinging onto the ornate marble column that flanks one side of the steps leading up out of the mausoleum, and can’t move. “Oh, right,” the Ghûl says, and wraps the cloth around its own head, giving the knot a savage yank. “There, that should do it.”
Hoek stands by the pillar, trying not to look as the Ghûl opens the ribcage with a single swipe of its arm and lifts the bloody lump of Rook’s heart up in its fist.
“Want a bite?” the Ghûl asks.
Past Perfect
G. Scott Huggins
I turn my back on the old man and close his door behind me. She is waiting not twenty feet down the hall. She advances as I walk to her. “If you have what you came for, you know the way out,” she says. I pause and look into her eyes.
“You know, I was the one who really loved you.”
Her eyes narrow, and her slap strikes stars into my eyes. I reach in my pocket, and the world flows away . . .
***
She meets me just inside the big double doors of their house. I haven’t been to this one. Wide hardwood stairs frame her where she stands, her black eyes weighing me. For a moment we do not speak.
“It’s been a long time,” I finally say.
She nods. “He’s in the study. It’s this way.” She turns to the stairs. Words form and then just block, sitting in my throat. What can I say to her after eight years? Have you missed me? It’s our mutual birthday next month again, how does thirty feel to you? Or of course there’s the one I’ve always wanted to ask and never had the guts for: Did you ever feel anything for me?
“Do you know what he wants to see me about?”
She stops at the top of the stairs and turns to me, her long black hair framing her face. I have a second to think about how she doesn’t seem to have aged a day.
“Don’t you know?” she asks.
“I know . . .” I pause. “The lawyer told me he’s dying, Su. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Her eyes flash.
Am I? I don’t know.
She shuts her eyes. “I’m sorry. That was unworthy . . .” she takes a calming breath, “of both of us. Forgive me.” Her voice is spring steel.
“I wasn’t told anything else, Su.” Nothing. Chad was dying. How did I feel about that? About standing here in front of the woman who was his wife, and my old . . . friend? What could I feel about that?
***
Walking back from the play at Nichols’ Theater that night with her ten years ago, there had been no question what I felt: her hand, wrapped around mine, warm even in winter.
“Thank you for going with me, Andy,” she said. “I don’t have many friends who’d be able to sit through Kabuki Medea.”
“My pleasure,” I said. The play had been beautiful. A complex blend of a Western myth with Japanese interpretation. Like her, really. I stole a glance at her beneath the hood of her coat. Dark skin with straight black hair over half-Asian eyes. She was sixth-generation nisei, half-Maori on her mother’s side. “It was perfect,” I said. “Especially Medea’s death scene, when she went, ‘Eeuuuhhhhh . . .’”
“Oh stop!” she giggled, pushing me away from her before I could continue my atrocious falsetto. “The music wasn’t the best part.”
“My lady, I’m shocked,” I said, “I thought you delighted in all things belonging to your noble roots.”
She snorted. “Not the music. I’ll take my American heritage for that, thanks.” We walked on across the campus. That’s when I heard the song.
“Hello, darkness my old friend . . .”
Her contralto was barely audible, but it drifted through the night. I matched it:
“I’ve come to talk with you again . . .”
She stopped. “You like Simon and Garfunkel?”
“My parents raised me on it.”
We continued the song. By the time we reached the dorm, her hand was again firmly in mine.
We parted in the common room. “Come to dinner in my room tomorrow night,” she said. “I have one other guy coming, but I know he won’t mind; he’s just there for the food.”
“Sure,” I said, looking into her eyes.
***
And now her eyes turn down. “Well, Chad is a very private person, Andy; you know that. Some things he doesn’t even tell me. It seems this is one of them.” She leads me to a door.
“Su . . .” I begin. And stop. “The years have been good to you,” I finish, lamely.
The sound she makes is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She looks away. Her voice is steady. “Always the right thing to say; that’s you, Andy.” She knocks softly at the door.
“It’s Andy, darling,” she says.
“Andy Darling?” Chad’s voice is distorted somehow, but the mocking tone is still there. “Funny sort of name for a guy, isn’t it?” He laughs.
“I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean, dear. I’m not dead yet. Send him in.”
“Don’t let him upset you.” She mouths to me, Don’t upset him.
“Hah. I’d like to see the day he could. Come on in, Andy,” says the voice. “Come and see. It’s been eight years, hasn’t it? Seems like longer.”
He is laughing at me. He knows I am afraid, and he is laughing. Now I know what to feel. Anger bursts inside me. And shame, that my wounded pride has lasted longer than love.
***
I turn my back on the old man and close his door behind me. She is waiting not twenty feet down the hall. She advances as I walk to her. “If you have what you came for, you know the way out,” she says. I pause and look into her eyes.
“Can I see you later tonight? It’s important.”
Her eyes narrow, and her slap strikes stars into my eyes. I reach in my pocket, and the world flows away . . .
***
The old man in the power wheelchair looks up at me from under a hanging lock of pure white hair. He’s kept his hair. That’s all I can think for a second. A thin, clawed hand grips the chair’s joystick. The other, as always, in his pocket. The only way I could ever tell he was feeling nervous.
But what I’d been going to say dies on my lips.
“My God . . .”
“Yes, I suppose I am,” Chad smirks. “Don’t worry, I won’t demand a sacrifice today.”
It is Chad. The sneer proves it. Sick, but Chad. No, not sick, just . . .
“Dying of old age at thirty, Chad?” My own mocking tone is back, just as if I’d spoken to him yesterday. “I’d never have thought you’d be so careless.”
For the first time in the eleven years I’ve known him, Chad actually looks surprised. Then he laughs. “Somehow I thought you would see it. No one else even suspects, except the doctors, and they’re going on about ‘late-onset progeria,’ as if that had ever happened to anyone above the age of four. When I die of it, they’ll call it Kello’s Disease. Don’t tell Su, that’s all I ask. She’d never forgive me.”
“Tell Su what?” What is the man talking about?
“That I’m dying of old age, dumbass.” He searches my face. “Ah, the instincts are working, but Mr. Brain doesn’t believe them. No wonder I stole her from you, Andy.”
My jaw drops. Straight talk at last. I�
�d even accused him of it, once, and he’d denied having any idea of what I’d meant. But he’d known. I’d meant that dinner.
***
I’d assumed we were ordering in when Su had asked us to meet in her dorm room. After all, how could she cook without a kitchen? Staring at the neat slices of raw fish on rice beds, I realized how.
We sat in a triangle. On my left was Su. On my right was Chad. They were watching me. I should have been watching him. But I was watching the fish. Gray blubber peered up at me. And pink. And orange.
“My favorite,” Chad was saying as he picked up something that looked like a dead, leathern banana with lacquered chopsticks. “Sea urchin.” He chewed with relish. He looked at me. Smiled. “Takes experience,” he said. He brushed back a floppy lock of hair, the only imperfect thing about him. Looked at my plate.
“Is something wrong, Andy?” Su asked.
This son-of-a-bitch was not going to outdo me. I picked up the orange piece of fish, looking him in the eye. And kept looking him in the eye while my chopsticks sent it flipping end-over-end across the room.”
“Would you like a fork?” he asked, still smiling.
“No, thank you.” This time I concentrated, holding a slice of red fish carefully. I brought it to my mouth. I don’t know what my face looked like as I chewed that piece of slimy, cold meat, but I couldn’t help it. It went down hard. Su looked concerned. Chad just . . . smiled.
“You might want to try some of the wasabi,” he said, smearing a chunk of greenish paste on another slab of cold gray fish. “This is how the connoisseurs in Japan eat it,” He swallowed the bite with relish. He turned to Su and spoke rapidly in liquid syllables.
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t know you knew Japanese,” she said. “I’ve been learning for years. Where did you study?”
He dismissed it. “Oh, you pick things up. I bet Andy knows some, too,” he gestured to me.
I could feel myself flush. “Shogun,” I said. “Toyota.” Chad laughed gently.
I was putting the green paste on my own lump of gray fish. Whatever killed that taste was fine by me. I just wanted to get through the meal. Su turned to me just as I bit into the morsel. “Um, Andy . . . ” she started.
And I knew then, in the moment between my teeth meeting and the pain beginning, that I’d made a mistake. I knew it by the expression on Chad’s face. There ought to be a word for self-assured superiority that disgusting. Smugma, perhaps?
After my fourth glass of water, Chad said, “I’m sorry, I assumed you knew what wasabi was.” He said something in Japanese to Su, who laughed, her eyes glowing.
“Sorry,” said Chad, turning to me. “Untranslatable joke.” But I’d translated it well enough. The joke was me.
***
I turn my back on the old man and close his door behind me. She is waiting not twenty feet down the hall. She advances as I walk to her. “If you have what you came for, you know the way out,” she says. I pause and look into her eyes.
“Su, you have to listen to me! Chad’s a motherfucking—
Her eyes narrow, and her slap strikes stars into my eyes. I reach in my pocket, and the world flows away . . .
***
Now my hands clench into fists. “Keep talking and you might not live to die of whatever this is.”
“Pah!” Chad pulls the chair back with a sharp whine of motors. “Don’t give me that shit. You can’t kill me, and you know it. Su would be so upset. Mustn’t hurt poor Su, Andy. And you would, if you killed me; I’ve seen to that.” Whatever the expression is on my face, it is enough for him. “Hah. That’s where you always went wrong, Andy. She’s not that easy to hurt; I know.”
“Yes, you do, you bastard. Because you always treated her like shit!”
“Now, Andy, not so loud. She’ll hear.” He folds his hands and looks up at me. “After all, I was the one who learned Japanese for her. I was the one who learned kendo with her. I treated her like shit? You were never really there after that dinner. Did I embarrass you that much?”
“That’s bullshit. It wasn’t that I was never there. You were always there.”
“It must have been terrible for you to watch,” he smiles. “Andy, you’re so close to the truth. Closer than you ever were to my little half-breed.”
“You’re dead.” I advance on him with murder in my heart.
***
If the dinner had been the start of it, the fight had been the end of it. The tears had run down Su’s face, despite her attempts not to cry.
“I need to see you alone outside,” I said to Chad in the lobby.
“Whatever you say, Andy.”
He followed me out to the lawn, brilliant under the streetlights. It was ten at night, and midterms were just around the corner, so it was deserted.
“What’s it all about, Andy?” he said, turning to face me. “You seem distraught.”
For an answer, I shoved him to the ground.
He bounced up. “Jealous, Andy?”
“No.” I was amazed to discover it was true. My anger was cold, and I raised fists that felt like solid ice. “You don’t ever talk to her like that again, you hear me? You understand?”
He smirked. “You mean I can’t have a fight with my girlfriend ever again? Hardly fair.”
“Not one where you call her a half-breed bitch in public, no.”
His grin widened. “You think she’ll love you for this?”
My rage broke. I threw a roundhouse punch, and he ducked. He hit me lightly under the sternum, and I nearly collapsed. From the floor I kicked out at him, gasping, but he jumped over it.
He let me get up. “Are we fighting, Andy?”
“Come on, you bastard.”
“Okay.” The spin-kick came from the left like a sledgehammer. I tried to charge him, but he threw me off to the side. I looked up at him and then I knew. I hadn’t caught him off-guard. He’d been waiting for me. I stood again. I breathed for what must have been half a minute. I didn’t have to beat him. Just hurt him. Just a little. Just make him respect her. Respect me. I charged, stopped and kicked. He blocked with practiced ease. But I took one step forward and drove a hard punch at his eyes, too close for him to block. He ducked back but I caught him on the nose and blood sprayed.
“Stop it!” The shove from behind sent me sprawling to the ground, face in the freezing grass. I lay there listening to her voice. Then I looked up.
Su was kneeling over Chad, stanching the blood with a handkerchief. And when I struggled to my knees she looked at me and said, “Can’t you just leave him alone?”
***
I turn my back on the old man and close his door behind me. She is waiting not twenty feet down the hall. She advances as I walk to her. “If you have what you came for you know the way out,” she says. I pause and look into her eyes.
“You know, Su, sometimes you’re a real bitch.”
Her eyes widen, and she rears back, fist balled to strike. I have just enough time to laugh before I reach in my pocket, and the world flows away . . .
***
I grip the old man’s robe and pull him up six inches. My lips pull back from my teeth, and he is helpless. He looks into my eyes and answers with a smile. “Are we fighting, Andy?” I say nothing, trying to outstare him, but I never can. Never could. “Will this be how you win? Beating up a dying man? She’ll be so impressed.”
I release him and sink back into a chair that I’d barely registered before. “That what you called me here for? To remind me that you always win?” I finally say. “You haven’t seen me for eight years; I stayed away like she asked. Are you so pissed off that I’ve outlived you that you have to remind me before you go?” He says nothing. One last spark of hope strikes within me. “Or did you want to provoke me into killing you because you’re too gutless to die the natural way?”
“Heh, you wish. I’m not afraid of you, Andy. I never have been, and I never will be. You’re the one who’s afraid. Get used to it. You’re the one who’s lost
.”
“That the reason you’re dying in the chair?” I snarl.
“That the reason you won’t look me in the eye?” he snaps.
I have no answer. Only shame.
“Don’t you want to know why?”
There is only one thing to say.
“Because you were there, and I wasn’t. Because you always knew the right things to do and say, and I never did.” My eyes are fixed beneath his desk. “That’s why and I know it. You were always just in the right place. Wherever I could have been. You were always better than me. No matter how good I was.” Tears threaten at the back of my throat.
“You weren’t that bad, Andy. But no one’s as good as me when I want something. Hardly fair, is it?”
“No.”
“Well, life isn’t fair, is it? But I’ll have to admit that it was a bit unfairer to you.”
“What?” I am too worn out to care.
“Because I cheated you.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Look here.” He puts his hand in his pocket, then says, “Tell me how I always won, again.”
“You were perfect.”
“I had help.” The world seems to freeze. “You know what they say makes perfect, don’t you, Andy?”
“Practice,” I say, as in a dream.
“Here it is,” he says, and brings his hand from his pocket. He lays an object down on the desk. It must be heavy, he nearly drops it. “Take it.”
It lies on the desk, a golden machined donut with a half-twist in it. It is heavy. Two recessed spaces sit on either side of it. I look through the hole in the middle. I look away, nauseated.
“It made me do that, too.”
“What is it?”
“The secret of my success, Andy. The Rewind Button.” When I say nothing he continues. “How do you think my timing was so perfect, Andy? How do you think I knew what to say?”
“The Rewind Button?” I echo.
“Press the left button, and the universe rewinds itself around you. Press the right button, and it stops. It’s like saving a computer game. You pick up from your last mistake. There are limits, about a day or so, so it isn’t quite perfect, but it’s enough, mostly, to make people think you are.”