by Sara Reinke
Tearing her eyes away, she hurried over to a box that had already been opened. She dug around until she found what she was looking for, a large, dark blue wool blanket. She hurried back to his side and wrapped it around him, drawing it tightly together so he could clutch it beneath his chin. “Here,” she said again gently.
The dog sat nearby watching them. It hadn’t tried to attack Jason again, but its lips would occasionally wrinkle back to reveal its teeth, and it would utter a little sound that would start off as a growl and then end in a short, rasping sort of whoof, more an expulsion of air than a bark, it’s way of saying I’ve got my eye on you, pal.
This has got to be a joke, Jason thought again, looking helplessly around while Sam turned again, darting down the hallway toward the bathroom. They moved my stuff while I was out in the alley—Eddie and David and the rest of them—packed up all of the tables downstairs, shoved it all into the storeroom somehow, maybe the kitchen. Then they came up here and packed my furniture, everything. Just one big practical joke.
Except being stabbed wasn’t anyone’s idea of a joke, Jason thought, wincing as he eased the blanket back from his shoulder, trying to get a look at his wound. The electricity hadn’t been working downstairs but was on in the apartment, and by the orange glow of a nearby lamp, he could see that he’d suffered one seriously gruesome injury. The fissure in his flesh was wide and ragged, the blood-crusted edges puckered in an oval like crude lips, the exposed meat beneath bright red and spongy. He was still bleeding heavily, and when Sam returned, carrying a first aid kit in her hand, she gasped, her eyes wide.
“What happened?” She fell to her knees and threw open the kit, ransacking it until she found a large gauze dressing pad. Using her teeth, she bit into the paper wrapping and tore it open. “Oh, God, who did this to you?”
“A man…in the alley,” he murmured, jerking and sucking in a hurting breath as she pressed the pad against his shoulder. “He had a gun. I mean a sword. I…I mean…” With a frown he pressed the heel of his hand to his brow as his head swam. “I can’t remember.”
“Hold this,” Sam whispered, close enough to feel her breath against his face, to her smell her perfume. This, at least, remained familiar and the same, Estee Lauder’s Pleasures. “I’ll go get some water. We need to stop the bleeding.”
He nodded, draping his hand against hers, holding the bandage in place. They stayed this way for a long moment, during which Sam’s rapid-fire, frantic breathing drew to a complete and silent stop, and then she stood again, pulling away from his touch.
“Just hold it,” she said, winding her way once more through the maze of boxes and ducking into the galley-sized kitchen. He heard more clanging, then the rush of water pouring full-blast from the tap. When she returned, carrying a large pot between her hands and sloshing a trail of water in her wake, the dog rose to its feet, its tongue lolling out of the corner of its mouth, its tail wagging expectantly.
“No, Barton, this isn’t for you.” Sam knelt in front of Jason again, dunking a dishrag into the water.
“Whose dog is that?” he asked.
“Mine,” she replied, and he blinked in surprise. “I got him at the pound right after you…”
Her voice faded and she cut her gaze away. Right after I what? he wondered, bewildered. Then he shook his head. It didn’t matter, not the wound in his shoulder or the fact that his entire world had otherwise seemingly been turned upside down and inside out, then given a hard shake. Only one thing remained that truly mattered, the one thing he’d been neglecting for far too long.
“Marry me,” Jason said, and she looked up at him, her eyes wide in surprise, her dark hair drooping out of her loose ponytail to frame her face in lank, wayward strands.
“What?”
He leaned forward and kissed her, his lips settling lightly. Her breath caught and he felt her stiffen against him for a long, uncertain moment. When she relaxed against him, the tension draining in her body, palpably releasing from her mouth, his kiss deepened. The tip of his tongue brushed the seam of her lips, and when she parted them, she uttered a soft, breathless sound, slipping her tongue gently, sweetly against his own. Her long, slim fingers, still wet and cold from the water, trailed against his face and caught in his hair as she lifted her chin and leaned into him, into the kiss. There was an unexpected and urgent passion in her mouth, as if she’d waited and wanted that moment, that kiss, for a long time.
Which, like everything else, made absolutely no sense whatsoever, since he’d only last kissed her surely no more than an hour ago.
When she drew away, her hands lingering in a soft caress, her eyes glistened in the lamplight, swimming and glossy with tears. When one spilled, sliding down her porcelain skin, he drew the thumb of his pad across her cheek to catch it.
“Marry me, Sam,” he whispered again, managing a weak smile. “I wanted to ask you last weekend at the waterfront, at Holiday Island, but I…”
More tears spilled, but to his surprise, when he reached for her, she jerked back. “How do you know about that?” she asked, rising to her feet. Twin patches of hot, angry color bloomed in her cheeks and she balled her hands into trembling fists. “Who the hell are you?”
“What?” Bewildered, he shook his head. “Sam, it’s me. It’s Jason.”
“No, you’re not. I don’t know who you are, or…or how you know about that day at the park, but you…” Tears rolled down her cheeks and her voice grew hoarse and strained as she backpedaled. “You’re not Jason Sullivan. Jason is dead. He died five years ago.”
It felt like she’d driven a sword into his shoulder all over again, or shot him again, or whatever the hell had happened—then hauled off and kicked him in the balls for good measure. He stared at her, stricken. “What?” He staggered to his feet, doubling momentarily as the effort stripped the wind from him. He looked up at her, pleading. “No, I just went outside. I went to your car. Sam, don’t you remember? To get the menu. There was a guy out there. He stabbed me—I think—then he took my clothes and the car. I hit my head. I must’ve passed out.”
Sam stared at him, looking for all the world like she saw a ghost. But I’m not, he thought desperately. I’m not a ghost, not dead. Why would she say that? I was only out maybe five minutes, tops—not five years!
“Sam, please.” He reached for her, his hand shaking. “It’s me. I’ll prove it to you. Last Sunday, I took you to Holiday Island and spent fifteen dollars on the stupid Shoot the Moon game so I could win you a stuffed yellow duck that reminded you of a toy you had when you were a kid, one your dad had given you.”
He rose to his feet and limped toward her. “On our first date, I took you to Nona’s. That’s your favorite, you told me. And you always order the chicken crepes.”
“Stop it.”
Another step. “Before I went out the door tonight, out to your car, you told me you wanted to add some kind of Hawaiian thing to the menu—pupus, you said. And I made a crappy joke about it, said you wanted to put shit on my menu.”
“Stop it!” She slapped his hand away, but he caught her fingers.
“Sam, please,” he begged, tears stinging his eyes. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s me.” He drew her hand up to his face, holding her palm against his cheek. “I promise you. I swear to God, Sam. It’s me.”
“Sam?” A voice from the doorway startled them. A man stood there, a sopping paper bag tucked against the crook of one elbow, a dark-green bottle of champagne in his other hand. He dropped both in simultaneous surprise and the bag’s wet seams split, sending a tumble of white Chinese takeout boxes in one direction, the champagne bottle in the other. It didn’t break, but landed with a heavy thud and spun in a wide, lazy semicircle. The man nearly tripped over it as he darted forward. “Hey you, get your damn hands off her!”
He grabbed Sam so roughly, when he jerked her loose of Jason’s grasp, she went stumbling away in a clumsy pirouette. “Dean,” she cried. “
No!”
She called this out even as the man, Dean, balled his right hand into a fist and sent his knuckles careening into Jason’s cheek. He hit Jason hard enough to crack his head toward his shoulder and send him crashing to the floor.
He hadn’t seen the blow coming, not as much because Dean was that good at throwing a punch, as because he had been distracted. Dean was frightened. More than just being able to see it plainly in his face, his fear was something Jason could sense too. It hung heavily in the air between them like something thick, pungent and nearly palpable. More than just attracted to the sensation, Jason had felt aroused by it, so suddenly, acutely aware of the man’s fear, he hadn’t so much as tried to duck to defend himself.
“Call the police,” Dean said to Sam. Fascinated, Jason stared at him as he spoke, the words fading into nonsensical sounds as his brain refocused on this new, unfamiliar and inexplicably pleasant sensory input.
When movement out of the corner of Jason’s eye caught his attention and he glanced down at the floor, he knew he was imagining things, because it seemed to him that his shadow was moving, even with him sitting motionless on the floor and the light behind him remaining stationary and still. As if attracted to Dean, a thin line of shadow had broken away from the irregular pool beneath his feet, a slender finger that crept across the hardwood planks toward the doorway.
No, not to Dean, Jason thought dazedly, watching its slow but methodical progress, like molasses that’s been warmed, then spilled on a sloping floor. It’s drawn to his fear.
Which made absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.
Though neither Dean nor Sam took notice of the moving shadow, the dog did. Its yellow fur bristled, seeming to frame its face in a wiry mane. Again, its lips pulled back from its teeth and from the back of its throat, a low rumbling emulated.
“It’s all right, Barton,” Sam said, even as that meandering rivulet of disembodied shadow trailing from Jason to the threshold found its mark, slipping into the puddle of Dean’s, a tenuous thread connecting them.
In that moment, at that connection, Jason felt a sudden shiver of pleasure, as if someone had just slipped the head of his dick into their mouth and offered a slow, sweeping lick with their tongue.
The man, Dean, looked wildly about at the boxes, at last grabbing what looked to be a bowling trophy. When he moved, his shadow moved with him, breaking away from the offshoot that had bound it to Jason’s. It was like a light switch going off inside Jason’s mind, and that sensation of pleasure, a sort of dazed euphoria, abruptly ended, ripping him out of his near-reverie. He shook his head once, then twice. On the floor, his shadow was his own again, the diaphanous thread that had stretched out toward the doorway gone.
If it had ever even been there at all, he thought. What’s happening to me?
“Sam, go get the phone, call the police,” Dean said again, and Jason recognized him now: Dean Abbott, a doctor at the nearby hospital and a longtime friend of Sam’s. That friendship had never extended toward Jason, however, nor did it seem to at the moment, as Dean held the trophy by the cheap gold-toned ornament on the top, brandishing the wooden base at Jason.
“Dean, no, don’t hurt him!” Sam grabbed him by the arm now to stay him, and he glanced at her, his eyes widening.
“There’s a guy standing buck-ass naked in your living room, covered in blood, with his hands all over you, and you’re saying don’t hurt him?”
“Dean, please—it’s Jason.”
“What?” Dean seemed to take a good, hard look for the first time. After a long moment, the trophy between his fists wavered, then lowered to his side. He shook his head. “No, Sam, that’s impossible.”
“It’s him,” Sam said, leaving Dean’s side and going to Jason. “It’s Jason and he’s hurt. We need to get him to the hospital.”
Jason’s eyelids fluttered as a powerful wave of vertigo swept over him. “I don’t…I don’t feel so good,” he murmured, because it was too much, all of it—the pseudopod of shadow he’d seen stealing across the room, the fact that his apartment was no longer apparently his apartment, his bar no longer his bar. Sam had told him five years had passed, that he was dead, for Christ’s sake. None of it made sense, and thinking about it made his head swim and ache, a steady, vibrato thrumming pulsating and pounding behind his eyes.
This has got to be a nightmare, he thought. Please let me wake up and have everything be okay. Please just let me have my life back.
He fell forward, crumpling against the floor again. As the world faded to black, he felt Sam’s hands against him, clutching desperately, her voice shrill as she cried out to Dean, “Help me! Oh, God, Jason!”
CHAPTER THREE
Jason dreamed of the stink of the gun barrel, hot and metallic, the hiss of its muzzle as it pressed deeply against the rain-soaked skin of his temple. He opened his eyes, dazed with pain, seeing a silhouette standing over him, hunched down, arm extended.
“No,” he groaned, his voice little more than a sodden, blood-choked croak.
Don’t kill me, he thought, his mind fading toward unconsciousness. Please. I was going to ask Sam to marry me.
He heard a distinctive click as the pistol hammer drew back, and closed his eyes, body tensed with terrified anticipation.
Please don’t, he thought, and then he heard a loud, echoing boom.
****
He dreamed of darkness, of Sam’s face emerging from a fog of shadows to look down at him, her eyes round, her face ashen. “Jason,” he heard her saying, over and over, as rain continued to fall around her, spilling, diamond-like and infused with streetlight, down toward his face. She was crying, her body shuddering as she hunched over him, trying to shield him with her body from the downpour. “Oh…oh, God, Jason!”
From somewhere close by, he could hear his friend Eddie, the bartender, his voice ragged and hoarse. “I don’t know! He’s been shot, for Christ’s sake, we need an ambulance here!”
The darkness swallowed him again, but he emerged once more, briefly, to blink up at a blinding light aimed directly into his face. Dozens of silhouetted forms darted around him, moving this way and that with a flurry of activity and a dizzying, overlapping cacophony of voices.
“Get an OR prepped and give me one milligram atropine by IV push, stat,” he heard a man bark out, as a face he dimly recognized—Dean Abbott, Sam’s friend—leaned into his immediate view. “I need an ultrasound in here to confirm cardiac tamponade.”
Within moments, though, this frenetic atmosphere quieted as shadows engulfed Jason once more. He heard a pulsating beep that abruptly faded to a solitary, droning note.
“He’s coding,” Dean shouted from somewhere, unseen, overhead. “Give me one milligram, epinephrine, intracardiac, stat, then ten more of atropine by push, q-five!”
Then, after another frenzied moment of clamor, silence.
****
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
Jason dreamed of another voice, of looking up and seeing someone lean over him again. There was a mark on the man’s forehead like a burn, a blackened depression in the shape of a wide V in stark contrast to his alabaster skin. His ears were pierced, a series of silver bands running up the outermost curve of his lobe, and he wore the slim hint of a goatee bridging his lower lip and the cleft of his chin. His mouth was wide, his lips thin, the one corner lifting in a crooked, sly sort of smile.
“This boy’s life abounded with mediocrity and sin,” the man remarked, reaching down to stroke Jason’s face in a nearly tender gesture. “Whether his own, or through that which he provoked, inspired or otherwise provided to others.”
At first, Jason couldn’t remember or tell where he was, but as his surroundings swam more clearly into view, he recognized the lights overhead, the cabinets just within his view. The hospital. He remembered being in the hospital, and there he apparently remained, although of Dean Abbott and the other doctors and nurses, the harried activity that had gone on around them, there was no neither sound
nor sign.
The man’s touch was cold, his fingertips like ice, but Jason couldn’t pull away, couldn’t summon his voice to cry out in protest. He felt paralyzed, unable to as much as bat an eyelash, immobilized and cold, lying supine on a gurney.
“Fucking, fighting, filling beer mugs and failure,” the man said, still smiling. “That’s all this boy has ever known. And yet, he’ll go on to an eternal reward likely greater than anything you’ll ever enjoy. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
A woman leaned into Jason’s view, but he couldn’t make out her face because of the glare—not from the light overhead, but from the woman herself. Her hair, skin, her entire form seemed to radiate bright light, so dazzling, it was nearly painful to behold. “No, Sitri,” he heard her say to the man beside her. “It doesn’t.”
****
He sat up with a hoarse cry and found himself in a queen-size bed, blankets tangled around his waist. Sam stood at his bedside, a tray in her hands with a coffee mug atop, the tail end of a tea bag dangling over the white ceramic lip. She shied back, tea sloshing out of the cup, startled by his cry, his sudden, violent motion.
“Jason!” She set the tray aside on a night table and sat against the edge of the bed, reaching for him. “Jason, it’s all right.”
He was in his bedroom in his apartment. He recognized the bank of windows to his right now, the red brick walls and exposed beams cutting perpendicular planes across the ceiling. “God,” he whispered, and when Sam touched his arm, he leaned against her, letting her embrace him as he shuddered. “I had the worst nightmare.”
I dreamed I was dead. Oh, God, Sam, I dreamed that someone shot me in the head and I died. The bar was gone, our apartment gone, my life was gone and you didn’t love me anymore.
“It’s all right,” she murmured, and he looked up, the tip of his nose brushing hers.