by Nola Sarina
Why was I crying? I’d only gone to sleep on the floor. It wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t injured beyond repair, all the money was still there, and I missed him with all of my heart.
Missed him? Who? I shook my head and tried to slow my tears, and my hand started to ache vaguely.
“You musta punched the counter when you passed out,” Blair said to me. “Did you remember to eat, Calli?”
I cradled my hand and chomped on my lip – God, I love grapefruit! – and gazed down at my hand. Sure enough, a big, black bruise ran along the bone in my hand from my wrist to the knuckle of my pinky finger. Broken. I didn’t remember doing it, but I was accustomed to forgetting things.
“I broke my hand,” I whispered, but I couldn’t find my voice. Where was my voice? I wanted to cry again, but I swallowed hard and refused to let another whimper escape my lips.
That didn’t stop the tears, though, and I wiped them again and again. I thought I smelled a whiff of something strange, like rust or pewter, but I couldn’t make it out and I just wanted him back.
Who the hell did I want back?! Who had I lost? I didn’t have a puppy.
The day was a blur, and nothing made sense.
I closed the shop and cancelled all the appointments, since there was no point in trying to tattoo with a busted hand. I went to the hospital, had it x-rayed and got a splint. The doctor complimented me on properly setting the bone by myself, but I didn’t remember doing it. Blair elbowed me where we sat together on the hospital bed, urging me to tell the doctor about my blackout. I simply elbowed her back and kept quiet. It wasn’t like this kind of thing was new to me, after all.
Freddy bitched when Blair asked him if he gave me acid or something, and I couldn’t take his bullshit anymore so I fired him. I couldn’t blame my sister for asking. He stomped out with his middle finger high in the air, and I felt a little bad. He had been so concerned when I woke up, and I knew my night blacked out on the floor wasn’t his fault, after all.
No tattooing for six to eight weeks. I was completely fucking screwed.
“What did you drink?” Blair asked as we chowed down a pizza in the shop before evening rolled in.
“Nothing,” I said. “Well… something. Orange juice, I think.” The memory escaped me, but I knew it had tasted off. “It must have been spoiled. I haven’t been that fucked up since mushrooms at graduation.”
Blair laughed and almost choked on her pizza. “Oh my God, I’m so glad we only did that once.” Then, she sobered. Graduation was two days before I disappeared, only to return in the hospital a year later with a gaping hole in my memory.
Her company was soothing. She suspected I tripped and blacked out when I broke my hand. Stranger things had happened, I supposed. I was grateful my illness seemed to be behind me, and though I couldn’t remember why I’d dropped the cash, I didn’t really care, either. I knew I should care, but I simply didn’t.
I locked the door once Blair left for the night. My apartment was above the shop, so there wasn’t much point in her walking me home since the journey only involved a flight of stairs. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m sorry I spooked you.”
“Spooked?” Blair snorted. “That’s an understatement. You cannot scare me like you did when you took off five years ago. I didn’t think I’d live through it then, and God, Calli… seeing you on the floor like that this morning…” She shook her head.
I squeezed her fingers, remorseful but without an excuse, since I didn’t know why I’d been gone for so long before my accident, either.
Blair straightened and smiled, and I was happy she seemed as eager to put the day behind us as I. “Look,” she said, “tomorrow night Dizzy is staying at Joseph’s sister’s house, so it’s movie night for you and me.”
“Joseph going out for poker?” The prospect of a girls’ night with Blair – and no caution about waking my sweet little niece Dizzy – sounded fantastic.
Blair nodded. “Yep, so it’s just you and me!”
I smiled, but her enthusiasm was only half as sincere as it sounded… Blair had a hard time leaving her daughter anywhere, so fiercely overprotective was she. I couldn’t blame her. The world was full of dark, scary things.
What kind of scary things?
I gave my sister a hug and sent her on her way. At least tomorrow’s Sunday. Can call Freddy and hire him back, since I can’t tattoo for a couple months.
I locked the back door as I slipped out of the shop and climbed the fire escape stairs. Halfway up, I jumped.
“Jesus, Freddy, you scared me!”
Freddy lingered with his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets, glaring at me. His face was bright red, and he looked like he had been crying, but he said nothing as I stopped on the landing between the ground and my apartment door.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, shivering slightly in the cool, summer air. Portland had been rainy this summer, and I felt stupid for not bringing a jacket down to work with me yesterday. “I was going to call you in the morning and apologize. I wasn’t myself today.”
Freddy stuck the tip of his tongue between his lower lip and upper teeth, my skin crawling with maggots in my veins. God, he’s gross. He didn’t speak, only let out a mumble of a chuckle and pulled his hands out of his pockets. He stepped toward me.
I put my good hand against his chest and tried to push him back, to give me space to breathe. My heart thudded when I detected the stinging sweetness of alcohol on his breath. Rum. Shit.
“Freddy, step back, please. Let me go home.” Niceness was the best first defense, I figured.
Freddy stuck his lower lip out and pretended to pout, and then his eyes lit with dangerous intent as I backed myself against the railing. He advanced into my space and cornered me, and I thought I was going to barf, his silence only making the situation seem worse.
I took a steadying breath. “Freddy,” I said with more force, trying to shove back the waver of tears in my voice, “Get back. Now.”
Freddy sighed heavily, blowing his nauseating breath into my face. He must have already vomited once from too much to drink, and I averted my face to try and gasp some fresh air in the hot cloud of stink weeping off him.
But he grabbed my chin, and I pulled away from him. I wasn’t strong enough to fight him, and his thumb dug into my scar on my cheek. I let out a shriek but he silenced me with his mouth, his lips hard on mine, forcing his tongue between my teeth as his other hand grabbed me by the ass. This wasn’t the Freddy I knew. This was the Freddy I feared. I froze for a moment as he crushed me against the railing, his desires obvious as he ground his pelvis against mine. But I didn’t freeze for long, as the stench of his breath washed over me through his moan, so I chomped on his tongue and tasted blood as he jerked away and grunted.
I spat out a mouthful of blood with a gag. “Get back!” I shouted, shoving him with my good hand. He grabbed it by the wrist and yanked me to his chest, his eyes showing the fog of alcohol mixed with the sharp anger of rejection as a drop of blood slid from the corner of his mouth.
And then, much to my surprise, delight, and bone-deep terror, a voice as smooth as chocolate and wine echoed from the ground below our feet.
“She said to get back.”
Freddy jumped with surprise and released me, and then craned over the edge of the railing to peer down at the stranger, and my heart thudded anew, with panic, fear, excitement, gratitude… some other emotions I couldn’t define, too. Things I’d never felt before. Who was this stranger, and why was he back?
Back? He was here before. When? I couldn’t remember, and I shook my head violently for a moment, trying to clear some fog I couldn’t touch. Freddy glanced at me and then back down at the stranger.
“Calli, get upstairs,” Freddy hissed at me. “Go! This guy is fucked up!”
I focused on Freddy. “Are you kidding me? Like your intentions here are so honorable.”
“No, Calli, seriously, fuck, get upstairs! Go, now!”
I glanced down at the s
tranger, and though his eyes pierced black through a dark-veined brow of pallid skin, no fear shivered through my spine at the sight of him.
Well, no fear I didn’t like, anyway. The fear I did feel was hot and leaking in my heart, filling me from the inside out like the pleasant burn of wine, like excitement and desire. Like driving too fast or the lurch of my stomach on a steep slope skiing.
The fear I tasted at Freddy’s presence wasn’t hot. It was cold, gross, and smelled like vomit.
I shoved Freddy back with more force and he stumbled down a couple stairs. At the bottom, the stranger appeared, having moved so fast I didn’t see him take a single step. Freddy crashed into the worn, brown leather coat of the stranger - my memories seeped back into my mind, and I wanted to touch it, to lick the silken material as I’d licked his thumb – and the stranger grabbed him up into the air by his hair.
Like, up in the air. By his hair, with one hand, the stranger lifted Freddy’s feet right off the ground.
Freddy shouted and grasped at the powder-white fingers wound through his hair, but he couldn’t shake himself free. The stranger jerked him once and Freddy’s hair yanked out of his scalp as he crumpled to the ground.
My stomach rolled and I tasted pizza. I braced myself against the railing with my good hand and couldn’t tear my gaze away for long enough to even blink.
The stranger dropped his handful of Freddy’s hair. Freddy skittered back against the bottom stair, grunting when his spine hit the metal. He tried to find a grip on the stair, but his hand slipped off and he fell against it again. The stranger bent and took Freddy’s chin in his fingertips.
“Look at me,” the stranger ordered Freddy. My former employee, would-be attacker and failed rescuer stared into those black eyes, stunned into stillness, helpless to the hypnotic glare of the monster.
“No way to treat your friend,” the stranger said. I watched Freddy shake, and then the stranger tugged his chin up and exposed his throat, leaned down, opened his mouth and sank his fangs through the flesh and meat. He stared at me all the while, black eyes diving into my body and soul as I gasped.
He stared at me while he bit my friend. My knees iced and tried to buckle, but I held myself up on the railing and stared right back.
He left his fangs imbedded in Freddy’s skin for only a moment before he pulled away and tilted his head, watching me witness this weird, intimate, wrong act.
Freddy wobbled where he sat for a moment, and I tore my gaze away from the stranger to watch.
He slumped against the stair and fell to the side, and his cheeks crinkled like he was smiling broadly. Then, they crinkled more, and his limbs –twitched and thrashed as though he’d been shot with a Taser. His knees crumpled up and his arms curled at his chest, and his skin crinkled further.
Drying. Dehydrating. Crumpling before me, Freddy shrank and shrank, choking the whole time but unable to scream, as his body mummified on the ground at the stranger’s feet.
I glanced up at the stranger and found him still watching me, and I tasted that fucking pizza again. My eyes were only off Freddy’s form for a second, but it was long enough that when I looked back, my former employee was shriveled up smaller than a Labrador retriever, and his cheeks fell fully into his face, highlighting the prominent edge of his cheekbones like a skeleton. He drew gasps that scraped with just a hint of his voice, and I wound my elbow around the railing to keep from falling over.
The stranger grabbed Freddy by the throat and broke his stare away from me as he lifted the mummy and shook his clothes from his skin. Naked, Freddy looked even smaller than before, his flesh crinkled up as though aged beyond death, and his skin clung to his bones like wet bed sheets as the stranger dangled him in the air.
And then the stranger lifted him higher and opened his mouth – like really opened it, wider than wide, unhinged in the most monstrous way… I had a brief imagining that he could swallow a car, if he tried.
No way. This couldn’t be real.
He dropped Freddy’s choking, dried form into his gape. He used both hands and shoved the wayward, crumpled limbs into his mouth after Freddy’s feet and torso. He flexed his arms as he shoved, his head craned back, stuffing Freddy’s whole fucking body into his expanded throat and unhinged jaw. I watched Freddy’s terrified glare lock with mine as the stranger heaved on the top of his head and wrapped his stretched-open lips around his face.
The stranger shoved once more and Freddy disappeared into his throat. A vast bulge stuck out from the stranger’s torso as he turned to regard me once more, and then he shuddered violently from head to toe and the bulge shrank, an odd mist seeping up like steam from his eyes, mouth, nose, and even his skin, a hiss ringing through the air.
A moment later, the air around the stranger cleared, his bulge shrank away, and my friend was gone.
Gone.
Fucking gone. Eaten. Bitten, mummified, swallowed and digested, by a creature that looked much like a man.
The smell of digested human – fucking digested human, are you kidding me?! – washed into my nose and mouth as I gasped, and I dropped back onto my ass on the ground, banging my head on the railing. I heard it, but I didn’t feel it. All I saw was the slow stalk of the stranger toward me on the stairs as he approached, and I wanted to scream, to cry, to vomit, to attack… but all I could do was stare. Paralyzed.
What a glorious, beautiful, terrible, disgusting monster… I couldn’t decide what to think. I couldn’t think.
Freddy was dead.
The stranger knelt before me and took a breath to speak, but blackness overwhelmed my vision again and all I felt once more was unforgiving steel and the softest of silk.
Moons
I blinked in darkness. Where’s that silk? I reached up to find my pillow and it wasn’t there. My hand connected with something hard, and I gazed up and felt at it a little more. A headboard, carved patterns in wood. I fingered it for a moment and then blinked more, wishing the darkness would clear. This wasn’t my bed. And though somewhere in my fogged brain I recognized that I should panic about that, I didn’t.
I dragged myself upright and patted myself down. Still dressed, nothing broken. It was relieving news. I spent a moment concentrating on my breathing. There were no memories missing, this time… I remembered it all. Freddy, drunk. The stranger killing and eating him. Eating him. Seriously? I exhaled sharply and patted the bed around me, but felt nothing but mattress.
“Why do you do that?” The stranger’s voice welcomed me awake.
“Do what?” I glanced around but couldn’t see a thing.
“Fall asleep standing up. Why do you do that?”
I hesitated for a moment, unsure if I should answer him, scream, or what. “Can we turn the lights on?”
It was his turn to hesitate. “Lights hurt. Why do you want them on?”
I shook my head. “Because you don’t glow in the dark so I can’t see you. Where’s the light switch?”
“I think it’s on the wall.” His tone sounded slightly displeased, and his answer didn’t tell me much. No kidding, on the wall.
I rose to my feet carefully – still wearing boots, yes! – and fumbled for the wall. Halfway around the room, I found the switch and flipped it on.
The room was cozy and fine, with antique furniture and soft, warm lighting. I turned, taking note of the familiar heap of clothing on the floor: Freddy’s clothes. I gazed around, admiring the ornate, carved headboard of bed in which I’d awakened . The blankets were on the floor with the pillow, too. The stranger sat on the floor beside the bed, so close that I would have stepped on his lap had I risen on the other side. His golden cords of thick, shiny hair were loose about his bare shoulders, and his pants were black and heavy, probably work pants made of a sturdy material, I guessed. He squinted at the light and I raised my eyebrows as I took in his form – pale, heavily muscled, his hair long enough that it rested on his knees where he sat, cross-legged. He was absolutely huge even without the trench coat on.
/> “Why do you fall asleep standing up?” the stranger repeated.
I crossed my arms over my chest and shivered. “You scared the hell outta me. I fainted.”
“Fainted?”
I raised my eyebrows. Was he really this clueless? I needed to spell it out for him like I would for a kindergartner because… oh yeah, he’s not human. “I lost consciousness because I was so afraid.”
“Both times?”
Both? I had never met him before, I knew, but I also knew I had met him. “Yes. I had an accident, a few years ago, and my brain doesn’t work quite right anymore.”
His eyes showed some kind of alarm, and he parted his lips as if to speak, but no sound came out.
“What kind of drug did you give me, the first time? I can hardly remember anything except your leather coat.”
He glanced at the door to the room, and I followed his eyes. The worn, brown leather hung on the back of the closed door. The stranger frowned and sighed. “I meant to eat you. To end it all, for you. But I was surprised by your… colors. Then, you fell asleep.”
“I fainted.” I glanced down at my arms. My tattoos?
“Do they come off?”
I raised my head to regard him quizzically. My tattoos or my arms, I wondered. But his gaze trailed over my arms, admiring my tattoos, the bright, brilliant daisies in every neon ink known to man; the gold laced between the daisies like ropes of riches. The pattern wrapped fully around both – an expensive, double-sleeve tattoo I commissioned from a guest artist I’d had in my shop once, shortly after my accident which left me with all my artistic skills intact, but that annoying lack of ability to remember anything. Goosebumps pricked up on my skin with every inch he caressed with his scrupulous gaze. I swallowed hard. “No, they don’t come off. The ink is inside my skin.”
“How did it get there?”
I shifted, confused. Yep, he’s totally clueless! “With needles. Needles dipped in ink.”
He spent another moment admiring me, and I held out my palms, turning the undersides of my arms out for him to see. He stared as though memorizing the pattern to copy later, and I hid the urge to beam at him, totally flattered by this weird demon who had killed my friend.