Apexology: Horror

by Anthology

  She hugs herself. “There’s a bit of me missing,” she whispers. “There’s a hole inside me, a missing bit of me that I left behind.” And she sounds sad.

  I bring my hand closer to her face, to touch her cheek. She turns away.

  “Tell me again,” she whispers. “Tell me again.”

  59.

  We haven’t stopped talking for three weeks. We hardly sleep. And when we wake, she tells me of the dreams she had, of seeing her other selves, her alternate selves. Lives she’s had but didn’t, memories of things that could have happened but didn’t, memories of what it was like to be ninety years old. She doesn’t really have these memories, she says. She only dreams of them. But they feel real when she dreams them. Just like all my memories feel real.

  And even though she’s completely recovered, there’s been no sex since she’d died. I’m losing my hold on her.

  60.

  “I’m going back,” she tells me as we stare out the window.

  “Okay.” I nod my head. “I’ll be there for you.”

  She looks away, her eyes set on a point beyond the horizon. “I know.”

  61.

  “Don’t do it with the pills.” It’s three a.m., and in seven hours she’s going to do it again. She can’t fall asleep. She has to talk about it. I stay up with her.

  “What?” She asks, looking away from the wall.

  “Don’t do it like me. I didn’t know how dangerous the pills are. And now I can’t go back there again. Committing suicide with pills is bad for my health, remember?” And suddenly I’m not sure if that really happened of if something else really happened. If it didn’t ...

  “Yes. I remember.”

  I nod. “There are other ways to do it. Other ways that will allow you to go back again and again.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like cutting your veins.”

  She thinks about it for a minute. “Yes,” she says. “We’ll do that.” And she looks back at the wall. She isn’t scared.

  62.

  I hold the knife. “Tell me what to do.” We’re sitting on the floor facing each other.

  “Cut here,” she points to the vein on her left arm.

  I cut there. Torrents of blood gush out onto my carpet.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Cut here,” she points to the vein on her right arm.

  I cut her there. More blood.

  “It’s not enough,” I say. “You need more.”

  “It’s not enough,” she says. “More.”

  “Where?” I say, putting the knife on her left shoulder. “Here?”

  “Yes.” I cut her shoulder. It bleeds on my knife.

  “Here?” I put the knife above her right breast.

  “Yes.” And I cut it until it bleeds.

  “Here?” I put the bloody edge of the knife to her throat.

  “Yes.”

  I cut it. Just enough to bruise the skin and make it bleed a bit.

  “Deeper?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I cut deeper, scratching something solid.

  “Deeper?”

  She looks at me with dead, uncaring eyes. “Please.”

  I shove the knife deeper, so deep that I can’t see the blade anymore. She doubles over in pain, rivers of blood shoot everywhere, her hands seize her neck, but avoid touching the blade.

  She twitches and twists for almost four minutes until she stops moving and stops breathing and just ... stops.

  She’s there, now. With her other selves. She’s happy.

  I’m here. With my other selves. And I look at what I’ve done.

  Her eyes stare at me blankly, the knife is sticking sideways out of her throat, and the flow of blood is slowly coming to a halt.

  Oh, god: I never noticed it before, but she looks incredible!

  63.

  I stare at her, my heart thumping and thumping. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. She’s so—She made me feel so—I love you, Sharon. I love the way you made me feel.

  My breathing slows down after an hour. There’s darkness outside. There’s darkness around the edges of my sight.

  I ... uh ... I need to sleep.

  I need to sleep.

  64.

  “Lick my shoe,” I say. We’re back in the playground, back in school. Sharon’s in front of me.

  “Please,” she whines. “Please.”

  “The people have spoken,” I tell her. “Do it now.”

  I’m dreaming. This isn’t real. She’s dead. This couldn’t be happening. She was never in my school.

  She drops to her knees. “Please,” she begs.

  “Do it!” There’s iron in my voice.

  Slowly, she bends and licks my shoe. I don’t want to see this, but I can’t move away.

  After a few seconds, she looks up, her eyes streaming with tears. “Okay?”

  And my heart is pounding, and my prepubescent hormones are getting a rise. Not of her pain or the humiliation, but of the control I have over her.

  “Part of it is still dirty,” I tell her. “Do it again.” The crowd cheers. I own them.

  And as hard as it is for her, she bends down, and licks my shoe again. And the pounding in my ears is exactly the same as it was when I killed her.

  65.

  “Lick my shoe,” I tell her.

  We’re back at the beginning. She hasn’t licked my shoe yet.

  “Please,” she begs me. “Please.”

  What the hell is this? What’s going on? Maybe she isn’t the one who’s dead. Maybe it’s me, again. Maybe it’s me still. Maybe I never came back to life. Maybe it was part of death’s scenarios. Maybe I’m still here, on the dark side. Playing with my dark side.

  Something impels me to say, “The people have spoken. Do it now.”

  No, I don’t want to go through this again. This isn’t me. This is a me that could have been, not a me that was. This is not the me that is.

  Obviously holding back her revulsion, biting back everything, trying not to cry, she falls to her knees, and bends over. Slowly, she takes her tongue out. For a friction of a second it hovers a millimeter above my shoe. This second time, I can see the hesitation. But the fear overcomes her, and her tongue touches my shoe. I can feel her tongue on my foot, through my shoe and my sock.

  I must still be dead. I try to step sideways, to get elsewhere, elsewhen. To any other situation but this nightmare.

  Nothing happens.

  She looks up. “Okay?” One tear to the left, two to the right. Her voice is pleading for mercy. For her nightmare to stop. I nearly cry back. This isn’t me. Please, make it stop.

  “Part of it is still dirty,” I say. “Do it again.” The crowd cheers. And me, as much as I revile this, when she turns her head back down, when it’s clear that she’ll lick my shoe again, I feel a rush. A rush of pleasure. Oh, god, no.

  66.

  “—my shoe,” I hear my voice echo back even as my lips seal themselves. It’s started again.

  She’s looking at me, her eyes watery, wavering. I shut my eyes.

  She’s pleading. I shut my ears.

  I know I’m answering back. I shut my mouth.

  I sense a shift in the sand. I know she’s on her knees, now. I shut my heart.

  Stop this. Stop stop stop this. This never happened. I don’t get such a pleasure out of humiliating people. This is NOT ME! There’s a cheering of a crowd around me. I’m not here. This is someone else’s experience.

  Through my shoe, I sense the movement of her tongue for the third time, and a buzz goes through me. A buzz of sheer pleasure.

  I know this feeling. I know this joy. I have felt it before. In childhood a time or two. When a teenager. But I so despised myself for feeling it, I never put myself in a position to feel it again. Until Sharon came.

  No. This is my feeling. It’s mine, not someone else’s. I am the monster I’ve always dreaded I could be.

  “Part of it is still dirty,” I say, as I open my eyes, willing
myself to speak. “Do it again.” My heart begins to thump. She does it again.

  67.

  Suddenly I can’t breathe. I sit up with a gasp.

  It’s dark. Was I having a heart attack? Why did I stop breathing?

  Where am I? A shard of light, outlining a door.

  Back home. Sharon’s in the living room. Was she ever here? Is she dead?

  All I have to do is walk to the other room, and I’ll know.

  Nah. I’ll stay here for a while. I’ll try sleep again. I don’t care.

  68.

  I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling and memories wash over me.

  I remember everything.

  And for the first time I’m able to separate my memories.

  I remember being raised by my father and my mother until they were divorced when I was ten. I remember drowning. I remember almost getting run over. I remember going to school and never asking anyone to lick my shoe.

  I follow another path, different memories of a different childhood. I remember my father dying at the age of seven. I remember my mother losing herself to drink, ebbing away while being alive. How I was the one who took care of her.

  I remember a different school. How I enjoyed humiliating—no, not humiliating people, controlling them—I remember how good being in control felt. I remember the satisfaction it gave me of getting back at life, of controlling everything and everyone, of making it impossible for the world to manipulate me.

  And, in this path, I remember the day I realized that I am not alive.

  69.

  It began the day my father died. When my mother told me about it, at home, there was another me there. Another kid who looked like me, half-invisible, looking at us. I could hear his thoughts, I could see his memories. He was me, but his past was slightly different. He was a different me from a different place.

  It took me years upon years, but, knowing that impossible things are possible, I learned the rules of my reality. This wasn’t life as everyone else understood it. I could slip from one reality to another. I realized this wasn’t life. I could slip into lives that could have been, that will be, that would have been. And when I watched the life of the kid that showed up in my saddest day, I learned that he was alive, that he had only arrived after he had died, and that he had vanished once he had been brought back. This place, where I was born, where I grew up, it was death. I had never been alive. I was just a possibility.

  I hated the real me. I wanted to be him. I watched his life. I knew he’d come back. He’d come back for me. And then ... I would kill him and take his place.

  70.

  And I did.

  Only he came back, too. I came back. Back from the schoolyard.

  I am both of me, now. I was there, at home, hearing my mother tell me the awful news. I was there, at home, watching me hearing the news. Both these versions of me are now inside me. At least both of me, if not more.

  But I can tell the different realities apart, now. They’re all of them real. But I can tell them apart. My father is alive here. My father died when I was seven over in the afterlife.

  This ... other me. This ... me that likes to control people. He’s the one that manipulated Sharon. He’s the one that overwhelmed me. He’s the one that got her to commit suicide once, and, when I saw—when he saw—that he was losing control, he was the one who committed the absolute act of control and got her to beg me to kill her.

  It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my pleasure I was feeling. It wasn’t me, for god’s sakes.

  But then whose pleasure was it? I felt it. It’s a pleasure I’ve felt before. It is mine, no matter how badly I don’t want it to be.

  That other me, that dead-me-come-to-life, he’s not a different person. It’s just a case of ‘there but for the grace of God, go I—goes he—go we’. He’s a me that could easily have been. I am he. And everything he does I could have done, I did do, I would have done.

  And now I did. I did it. And I liked it.

  And I hate myself.

  71.

  I can’t face myself.

  It’s not that she’s dead. She wanted to die. She’s where she wants to be. It’s that I destroyed her world. I took away her job, her friends, her family, everything in her life—just for the sheer pleasure of it—and then I manipulated her into committing suicide. And once she’d been to the afterlife, everything she had been was left behind. She was just like me, she wanted to die again and again and again ... And I manipulated her, controlled her, took away her thoughts, her reason, her self—and had made sure that this death would be the last death. Just to get that rush of control again.

  And—I don’t even want to think about it, but I can’t help it—in that awful place on the other side, in the afterlife, there are other me’s. Me’s that could have been. There are me’s that are ten times worse than I am now, who commit deeds more horrible than the ones I committed here. There are murderers, I’m sure. Rapists. God knows what else. And they’re all things I could have become, if things were different. They’re not disconnected from me, they’re not other people. They’re me in other circumstances.

  Oh, my god, how can I face myself? How can I look at myself in the mirror, knowing I could become all those things?

  How can I live with myself knowing I’m everything I hate?!

  72.

  I’m to blame.

  I’m to blame for everything I could do, for anything that exists there, beyond. It’s part of me. And I’m to blame for it. I’m to blame for everything. Everything.

  I hate me.

  Help.

  73.

  It’s been two days. I’ve been in bed all this time, the curtains drawn. I don’t eat, I hardly drink, and I only go through the living room when I have to go to the bathroom.

  I can’t face myself.

  And then suddenly, I get this urge to leave the house. To go out. To find another woman. To see how far I could manipulate her.

  I can’t. I can’t. Not again. I lie on my hands and bury my head in the pillow.

  Oh, my god, I’m such a monster.

  74.

  It’s been two weeks.

  At least I can walk around and think. Thinking’s important. Maybe there’s a way to work this out with myself. Maybe there’s a way I can learn to live with what I am.

  I don’t know if it’s possible. I don’t think it is. But at least I’m thinking, and thinking’s important. I think I’m going to get out of this eventually.

  75.

  Sharon’s body is really starting to smell.

  I stuff it in a huge nylon bag, which I then wrap around a few times, cello tape, and put in the attic.

  I wonder if I should really keep it there, or just get rid of it?

  Nah. I’ll keep it. Sentimental value.

  Secret Thoughts is a startling examination of sexuality, motherhood, and society told in three novellas by Geffen Award-winning author Guy Hasson.

  In “The Perfect Girl”, Alexandra Watson is a newcomer to Indianapolis Academy of Telepathic Studies. By touch alone, she can delve into your memories, desires, insecurities… everything that makes a person. When she bonds with Professor Parks, her world grows complicated. Soon, she’s reading the residual memories of a recently dead and tracking down the mystery of her demise.

  “The Linguist” continues the story of telepathic-enabled women, except now the author has moved us several years in the future. The US government has determined that people like Rachel Akerman are a threat to the nation and orders countrywide extermination of those with telepathic powers. When a G-man uncovers Rachel and offers her a chance to help her country in exchange for her life, what choice is she left with? Rachel finds herself attempting to communicate with a frightened and imprisoned alien life form for the military.

  Finally, in “Most Beautiful Intimacy”, Guy Hasson posits “What if a woman were psychically attached to an embryo growing within her uterus?” Set years after the previous novella, Susan DiOrio and her hus
band hide in a remote region of Montana. Cut off from the world, all they have is each other, and that is threatened when Susan becomes pregnant. A telepath has never successfully given birth to a child. Poignant and urgent, Hasson effectively explores the fear and wide-eyed amazement associated with having a baby.

  These three novellas will open your eyes, raise uncomfortable questions, and make you fall in love with the protagonists three times over.

  http://www.apexbookcompany.com/secret-thoughts/

  WITH THE BEATING OF THEIR WINGS

  Martel Sardina

  The author of disturbing fiction and poetry, Martel Sardina has dedicated herself to her craft, taking feedback and rewriting until she’s teetering on the brink of insanity. She left the remainder of her insanity at the door when she recently became a submissions editor for Apex Magazine.

  After a hiatus from writing and other creative pursuits, the prodigal daughter has finally returned home. Her absence from the writing world included a stint in public accounting, traveling North America via motorcycle, and the continuing journey of parenthood.

  Martel claims to have a “freaky people tolerance” that is higher than the average person, which may explain her fondness for tattoo artists, musicians, writers and leather-clad biker types.

  If you see her without a can of Pepsi, please give her one as she is much happier when caffeinated. I prefer Coke, so when we meet for the first time, expect there to be a scene.

  —§—

  The monks chant as they carry me to the hillside. They pray for the person I once was and for the person I will become. The sun is bright and its rays are warm. I am naked and cold under this thin cloth shroud. I always thought that the dead could not feel. Some say our bodies are just shells, that it is the spirit that makes us living, breathing beings. When I was a child, I was not sure what to believe. When my father died, I witnessed the moment when he took his last breath. The shell theory made sense to me then. It certainly seemed that his spirit left his body with that final breath. But now that I am on the other side, I believe what the elders believe. The spirit stays with its host until it is released. That’s my only explanation for why I am aware that I am still here.