by Jeff Siamon
“My god, you are injured.” She was looking down at the bandaged wrapped around his thigh.
“It’s nothing.”
He was staring at her breasts which were weakening his resolve. “Really Evie, let’s wait ‘til the morning.”
“Is it because of your leg?”
He paused before answering. Her knees touched his legs. He could smell her body. He needed some comfort. Evie was offering it. So what was the big deal? The big deal was Evie had already abandoned him without knowing it. If they made love, he would be giving her the wrong message. “Yes. It hurts.”
“Well, little Evie knows what’s best for you. You just lie back. You don’t have to do a thing. I’ll be gentle.”
She gave him a soft kiss on the lips and gently pushed him down on the bed. He didn’t resist. How could he? He felt her body heat as she lay down on top of him. She was being gentle. Slowly moving her body over his until he felt himself stir. Began to move himself. She wasn’t a solution to anything that was happening to him but he embraced her sensuality. That at least was real. Something he could hold onto for the moment. And as she moved her body, grinding her vagina against him. As she reached for his penis and slipped it inside her, the pleasure he felt shrouded all his loneliness and anxieties. Shuddered the loneliness out of them. Just as he had done to the thing’s invasions. Now all he wanted was the feel of her body. The passionate touch of her lips. The ecstasy that an orgasm would bring.
What she wanted to. Something to take away the fear. The disquiet when she was alone that gave her the shivers.
37
Desert wind. Like a growl across the landscape. It is the same dream. The two dark masses forming into eyes. The face that they become, framed by hair as dark as a cloudless night. Lips pleading. Black as well. The nightly descent into this dream has almost become a comfort to his dream self. Something predictable in his waking self’s unpredictable life. His dream-self is surprised when without warning a shadow falls across the landscape of his dream. Across the dream girl’s face. And the expanse of desert. Like an eclipse. The shadow darkens everything to twilight. That’s when he senses ─ when he feels this presence. Besides his dream girl. Or the sleeping body next to him in the bed. A sensation so real, it stirs him to wakefulness. He wants to open his eyes but he doesn’t. Can’t. The presence ─ this shadow as it darkens ─ smothers that urge. Obscures any thoughts he may have about bolting upright. About how the nature of his dream has changed. As if the shadow is a fog drugging his sensibilities. He can still hear the dream girl’s pleas but her image seems to be growing smaller.
Wake up. Wake up.
These were now her words. More of a whisper than a command. More of a plea than a command. They sounded hollow. Far away. Fading into silence as if they were echoes. But how do you wake when the mist is so heavy? Sleep seemed to be a better choice. Deep sleep. Dreamless sleep. Sleep that smothers his dreams so that all that remains is a silent blackness. Gone is the expanse of desert. As well as the pinprick on the horizon that was once the dream girl’s face. All gone.
✽ ✽ ✽
The breeze rustled into his apartment. It rattled the blind over one of the windows. An irritating sound. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. But always insisting on making noise. That’s what woke him. He never left the windows open at night. He needed the blinds shut to block out the outside lights. He needed reasonable darkness to fall asleep. As much as he ever was able to fall asleep these last weeks. He needed silence, too. That was another point of argument between Evie and him. She liked the breeze of open windows instead of air-conditioned air. That was his first thought when he was wakeful enough to have a thought. That she had opened the window in the night.
He sat up. Glanced at his side. She wasn’t there. It was morning. At least that’s what the rays coming in through the thrashing blind told him. She had always been an early riser. He liked to sleep in as much as she liked to have a before-breakfast run.
A perfect match made in heaven? he thought, thinking of what he had said to Vicky. Well, maybe not. But he and Evie had history together. That counted for something. Although how much, he wasn’t sure.
“Evie?” She was no doubt getting dressed. “Evie, do you want me to make some coffee? That’s all I’ve got. Or should we wait until we drive in?” Now that he was awake, he might as well get up and get dressed. “Evie?” As his ears cleared of sleep, he could hear the water running in the bathroom.
“Oh well,” he said to himself and threw the covers back. He had had to sleep only on one side because of his wounded thigh. So that side was stiff and a little sore. But his wound didn’t throb and his wrist was silent when it came to pain. Good signs, he thought.
He stood up and took a measure of how he felt. His nakedness reminded him of last night’s passion. His pants were on the floor where he had dropped him. On the other side of the bed, on the floor, there was no sign of Evie’s clothes. He pulled on his pants and padded to the bathroom door. It was open a few cracks.
“Evie, do you mind if I come in? I’ve got to pee.” She didn’t answer. All he could hear was the water running into the sink. He opened the door. “You know, Evie, you can use the shower. I don’t pay for the hot water.”
She didn’t say anything because she wasn’t there.
He turned off the tap. He sighed his Evie sigh and shook his head. Just like her. Got up before dawn and went for a run. Or ─ and there was always that possibility with Evie ─ she had already had her run and had left for the city.
There wasn’t a clock in his place. He always used his phone. He didn’t have a watch, so he didn’t know the time. But the radio would tell him that.
He went to the open window and closed it. Lifted the blind and turned on the radio. The light outside told him it was about an hour after sunup. The radio soon confirmed that.
He sat on the bed and considered. If she came back after her jog then she really did mean they were getting together again. And how did he feel about that? Well, okay. Ecstasy hadn’t solved any of his concerns. And she wasn’t about to either. But she had given him his first peaceful night’s sleep in a long time. No sudden wakefulness. He felt refreshed. Ready for anything. So, yes. He needed her. Needed at least her comfort. Her sexuality.
And if she didn’t come back? If she had gone back to the city ─ Well then, that meant that last night was just a mercy screw. Either for him or for herself. And how did he feel about that? A little more alone.
He showered and shaved. Then dressed. Still no Evie. The radio pronounced that it was seven-thirty and he decided she had gone back to the city.
So that was that. No Vicky. No Evie. He’d have to do whatever he was going to do on his own. Of course, he had no idea what this whatever was. However, he felt better. More refreshed than he had in a long time. Good start to the day. At least.
It was either the remains of the Chinese food or wait until he was in the city to have breakfast. His leftovers were still on the table. As were the boxes the food had come in. That was strange, he thought. Evie didn’t like leaving food around. She must have been a hurray to leave. Guilt probably, he concluded. For the mercy screw.
He had to go down to the lobby to use the payphone to call for a taxi. Until he got another phone, he’d have to use pay phones unless he was at work. When he had moved in and noticed the payphone relic, he had thought what an anachronism it was for the days when people still used land lines. So ─ perhaps using the phone, he had become an anachronism, too.
It would be at least thirty minutes for the taxi, he was told. He sighed after he hung up. It wasn’t an Evie sigh ─ a mixture of resigned patience and irritation. It was for his stomach. What he needed, then, was coffee. He started for the elevators when he noticed a commotion outside. Several people were regarding an ambulance and a police cruiser parked in the drive through. Well, somebody is having a bad day, he thought.
The hospital was just a few minutes down the road. He jokingly suggested to himself that if he
hitched a ride, he could always get some coffee and food at the hospital. And then there were the usual taxis waiting for fares.
He went outside. Not to hitch a ride. The wound on his leg reminded him what had happened to him in the last hospital cafeteria. But he was curious. And curiosity was something to pass the time until the taxi came. Or until his need for coffee became too great.
“Hey, what’s happening?” he asked a young man wearing a ball cap with some unknown crest.
“Don’t know. They said somebody died. I’m waiting for my uncle. He’s supposed to drive me to work. You live in the building?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know my uncle? Reggie Burke.”
Connie didn’t. But he knew Mr. Ray. He was a retiree who lived on his floor.
“What gives?” he asked Mr. Ray.
“Horrible. They think it’s a suicide.”
“What?”
The ambulance was pulling away while the officers were getting into their cruiser.
“Suicide. That’s what I heard one of the officer’s say. Some girl. They say maybe she jumped from the roof. The super never locks the door. I’ve told him about that. About those teenagers sneaking into the building and going up on the roof.”
He flinched at the word suicide. “Do they know who it is?”
Both watched the cruiser leave the driveway. As did several other people who had stayed to watch the drama before going about their business.
“No.” Mr. Ray shook his head. “Not from the building. That’s all I know.”
Connie flinched again. He was back on the bridge. Hand out to the woman before she jumped. Her face calm like she had no intention of jumping. Another suicide, he thought. He had to do something. “You know,” he said thinking aloud. “Somebody should investigate all these suicides. Somebody should go to the newspapers and have them look into this. Maybe I’ll do that.”
Mr. Ray raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t heard anything about suicides except this one.” His curious look at Connie became suspicious. “You know anything about this?”
Connie didn’t like the way Mr. Ray was regarding him. Like he was some Jack-the-Ripper type. “No. It’s just a thought.” He shrugged off the suggestion as well as Mr. Ray’s reaction. That was what worried him. If Vicky in the end didn’t take his words seriously enough to stick by him, what hope was there that anyone else was going to believe him. Except maybe to think he was responsible.
With that thought, his flinch became a stab of despair.
A moving truck drove into the driveway. Connie followed the sound. He saw the super dragging a hose to the blood-stained spot where the person had landed. The man put up a hand to stop the truck before it ran over the stain. Connie had purposely tried to avoid the sight so he turned away. That’s when he saw the glitter of something shiny.
There was a small island in the middle of the driveway entrance. It had once been landscaped, but whatever had been planted there was now a dying hedge of evergreens with three trees in the middle that would forever give the impression of winter.
The glitter looked like a coin and that reminded him of something his mother used to say. “Find a penny. Pick it up. All the day you’ll have good luck.” He walked over to it. Then he had a ghoulish thought. It might have belonged to the person who had jumped.
It did.
When he saw it, he nearly retched. It was a heart. A Tiffany heart. Evie’s. He bent down and touched it. His hand shook. Then the tremor invaded his body like he was suffering from hypothermia. He shuttered so violently that he nearly fell over. Instead he went down on both knees and threw up what was left of his dinner.
As if on cue, a shadow suddenly slid across the driveway. As it did so, the memory of his dream slid across his mind like it was being pulled by shadow. He remembered the presence. And he knew now what it was. But knowing wasn’t going to console him this time. Wave after wave of hopeless crashed over his senses. It was the thing. It was mocking him.
Despair kept him on his knees. All but the teenager had left the front of the building. If it had been Mr. Roy, he would have gone over to see what was wrong with him. But the teen had been there many times before. After rough nights, you retch.
But he hadn’t had a rough night. It had been peaceful. Dreamless until now. That realization tore at his despair so that he felt he was having a heart attack. If he had only woken up, he could have saved her. But he hadn’t woken up. That was this thing’s joke on him. For now, he thought of the thing as if it were a person. With thoughts and purpose and vengeful desires. Stealing human bodies. Alive or dead. It had made her jump!
He stood up. His legs were shaking now. The dead trees seemed to be swaying when there was no hint of wind. He looked down at his feet to steady himself. But what he saw made him blink several times. The asphalt he was standing on resembled stone tiles. Grey and stained with impressions that looked like shoe prints. He blinked some more and the tiles became asphalt again. At the same time, his stomach wanted to heave. Would have except he was startled into becoming alert.
He heard gun shots. Not just ordinary gun shots but rapid-fire explosions as if they came from an automatic rifle. Several automatic rifles.
38
Aflash of light caught Connie’s attention. He looked up. Into its brightness. It blinded him. Sunshine. But not the sunshine shining down on his apartment’s drive way. It was coming in through a window high up on a wall. He stared down at his shoes. Their brown color a contrast to the grey floor. Not the grey of the asphalt driveway but that of the stone tiles.
For that blinding moment ─ for that stab of sunlight ─ all his senses were suddenly muted. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t think. Then a shadow swept across the sunshine in the window so that its brightness became cloudy grey. Rain suddenly splattered against the pane. That’s when he heard it. A whisper. The thing. It was its shadow and it was mocking him. As it had on the driveway. And in his dream. What it meant was as clear as if it had spoken intelligible words. This time, Connie was the intended victim.
Behind him, he heard a door being kicked open. The sound jarred his senses. Instantly he knew where he was. Staring at a wall he had seen before. Behind a row of bathroom stalls, he had seen before. The speakeasy bathroom. To prove his realization, he glanced to one side. To the urinals and the two men who were standing there. The same two he had seen before.
All these revelations happened simultaneously. The shadow. The rain. The door opening. The two men. And in another near simultaneous moment, he turned around to see two other men entering the doorway to the bathroom. Each held a tommy gun. Each fired their weapon as they entered. Each man at the urinal twitched, then bled from the impacts of the bullets, their blood splattering across the urinals just as the automatic flushing cycle began.
What had been a whisper now became the numbness of another invasion. The familiar headache. The queasy stomach. The hopeless despair. It was meant to paralyze him.
Connie stared at the two gun men. At the barrels of their guns smoking like lit cigarettes. Transfixed both by them and what they had just done. The gun men stared back at Connie. Their faces a mixture of surprise and decision. They raised their guns in Connie’s direction.
In that moment of surprise and decision, whatever numbing effect this invasion had on Connie, it was suddenly overwhelmed by the warrior forces he had discovered in the desert. He ran at the men. Startled them long enough for his outstretched hands to grab hold of the tommy guns’ muzzles. At the same time, the gun men pulled their triggers, raining plaster onto the dead men after the bullets had struck the ceiling.
Connie wrenched the weapons out of men’s hands and without pause, whipped the guns across their bodies. They cried out in pain. The impact sent the men to the ground.
Connie’s blood was pumping hard from the rush of adrenalin. Once again, he was surprised at what he had done. As much as at the violence he had witnessed. The shock he felt evaporated his head ache
and sick stomach. But all he was aware of were the two men on the tile floor.
As they were of him. One of the men took out a pistol from under his jacket. Carefully. Deliberately. The other man began to do the same.
The muzzles had begun to burn his hands and he released his hold on the barrels. The guns fell to the floor. The impact likely saved his life. The man who had first taken out his pistol glanced at the clattering weapons as they hit the tiles. At the same time, he fired. The bullets buzzed Connie’s head just as he was crouching to the floor while the gunman’s partner fired two shots into the space where Connie had been standing.
Connie grabbed one of the tommy guns, spinning it around so it’s muzzle faced the prone men. The gunmen pointed their pistols at Connie. The moment seemed to be frozen for him. And for the two men. That’s when Connie pulled the trigger of the tommy gun. The spray of bullets hit the gunmen just as they fired their pistols over Connie’s now prone body. Both men died as instantly as the two they had murdered.
Connie’s senses were still on alert. He jumped to his feet, the tommy gun firmly in his grasp. He glanced around the bathroom looking for another exit. But there was only one. The door the gunmen had entered.
Then as his heartbeats began to calm, he looked at the bodies in the room. He had never seen anyone dead before. And the only bleeding he had ever witnessed was his own. There was no context in which to place the sight of the dead bleeding bodies. Not even in dreams had he imagined such horror.
With that realization and with his body shaking from the effort of defending himself, his only thoughts were of escape. The mocking whisper; the invasion, the why and the how he had gotten here ─ these thoughts mattered less than his immediate survival.
He glanced at the exit door. Beyond it he could hear the cries of injured people. He walked to the door. Slowly pushed it open. The tommy gun at the ready for whatever might come next.
Next was a scene of carnage. Dead or injured bodies slumped onto the tables of the speakeasy. More bodies on the dance floor instead of dancing. The musicians who had been playing ─ who had somehow survived the killings ─ remained in their seats. Rigid as if rigor mortis had set in. While the backs of the shooters ─ hatless men in dark suits ─ were leaving by the front door of the club.