The Chrysalis

by Deneen, Brendan

  After he graduated, Tom had moved away without looking back. Returning when it suited him, wanting to hang out as if no time had passed. Kevin pretended that it didn’t bother him, but of course it did, especially when the cycle repeated itself over and over again.

  “Tom?” he whispered.

  His friend didn’t move, just kept staring, dead eyed, at the screen in front of him. Kevin and Kroll reached the desk, and Kevin glanced at the monitor. To his surprise, there were no accounts pulled up, no spreadsheets, only a blank screen, its brightness fluctuating slightly. He’d never seen anything like that before—dead computer screens were usually black, not this blaze of sickly, pale, bluish light.

  Kroll shouldered past him, drink sloshing over his fingers, and slapped Tom hard on the back. Tom didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink.

  “There’s my fucking sales monster!” Kroll shouted. He turned, and Kevin could see his attention focus on the strange computer screen. “Uhh … working hard there, Decker?” He laughed and clapped Tom on the back again.

  “Your boy is either drunk or fucked in the head,” he said to Kevin. “And you know what? That’s fine with me as long as he keeps the deals rolling in!” Laughing, Kroll walked away, yelling over his shoulder, “Keep it up, Tommy boy. Keep it up!”

  Taking a close look at Tom for the first time in weeks, Kevin was shocked. His best friend’s face was as pale as a corpse’s, especially in the computer’s odd light, and covered in yellowed bruises and small scabs. He was wearing a nicely fitted suit, but his hair was a wild mess, and his beard had grown in. Was he going gray, or was that a trick of the light? Gray hair or not, the man looked older and worn. Withered. A husk of the person Kevin had known most of his life.

  “Tom,” he said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the music. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but enough is enough. You’re scaring me, man.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Tom still didn’t blink, didn’t even seem to be breathing. Kevin glanced back at the party, which was like looking into an alternate reality. People having fun, dancing, singing, making out in the shadows. The dark corner that Kevin and Tom inhabited felt like an inverted hellscape.

  “Please,” Kevin said, turning back and placing one hand gently on Tom’s shoulder.

  His friend jumped as if he’d been prodded by a live wire, hanging up the phone with a robotic smoothness. “Get your hand off me.”

  Kevin’s mouth gaped open. The voice that had emerged from the person in front of him sounded as if it had been dragged unwillingly from a grave.

  “What…?” was all he managed to get out.

  “You fucking my wife, Jenkins?”

  Kevin wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Tom’s lips barely moved as the words escaped, the voice still foreign.

  “I can smell her on you. You fucking Jenny, Kev? I know you’ve always wanted to.”

  Kevin felt something harden inside himself as his mind flashed back to the moment he’d pulled Tom down that flight of beaten-up wooden stairs. It was shocking sometimes how fast a friend could become an enemy.

  He took a breath, tried to contain his building anger. “I know you’ve been going through a lot … but watch your fucking mouth. Jenny is worried about you.”

  Tom’s head swiveled unnaturally, as though he were a machine attempting to approximate human movement, and his gaze focused on his coworker. He rose with that same bizarre smoothness, only inches from Kevin, who fought the urge to step back. Almost exactly the same height, the two men stood face-to-face, inches from each other.

  “Is that right,” Tom said flatly, his voice gravel.

  “Tom … I’m worried about you, too.”

  Recognition flickered behind Tom’s eyes, and Kevin longed to reach out, to shake him or hug him, but something held him back.

  Tom’s eyes deadened. He leaned forward and spoke, his fetid breath curling against Kevin’s face. “You should worry about yourself, you fucking piece of low-class orphan shit.”

  Without even thinking, Kevin punched Tom in the mouth. He’d always struggled with his humble beginnings, with his constantly absent parents who had then died in a car accident when he was very young. He’d always felt responsible for his three younger siblings, felt hemmed in by his overly strict grandparents and the family’s almost complete lack of money. Tom knew that. Knew it better than anyone.

  Kevin had tearfully poured out his insecurities and frustrations over the course of more than one sleepover when they were kids, lying on a sleeping bag on the floor of Tom’s bedroom. Tom had vowed never to tell anyone about it, never to make fun of him or make light of his feelings. And he never had. Until now.

  The blow threw Tom back and sent him toppling over the small desk. The computer monitor smashed to the floor, but its light continued to shine, now at a bizarre angle, like a demented spotlight.

  Kevin looked down at the dark crumpled mass that was his best friend.

  Behind him, the music and shrieking continued. No one had even noticed their altercation.

  Tom rose, wraithlike, into the sickening light. He smiled, blood running through his teeth and into his beard. Lunging forward, he tackled Kevin, knocking the breath out of him. Stars danced in front of Kevin’s eyes. His mind flashed back to the last time he’d been lifted off his feet, during a wrestling match in college.

  He’d been an All State wrestler in high school and snagged a partial scholarship to a small Division III school, making him the first person in his family ever to get a college education. His grandmother had shed giant tears when the acceptance letter arrived.

  Undefeated in high school, Kevin had entered his first college match like a returning champion rather than the freshman newbie he really was. His opponent didn’t look like much, and his teammates patted him on the back, excited for the high school phenom to take that skinny little fucker apart.

  But within seconds of the ref’s blowing his whistle, Kevin found himself in the air, the victim of a painful move he’d never even heard of before. Then he was on his back, blinking in confusion as the ref counted to three in slow motion; his teammates refused to make eye contact with him when he looked at them, pleading silently for affirmation that never materialized.

  The memory shut off like a switch had been thrown as Kevin and Tom crashed into the makeshift DJ area. At the impact, the digital music glitched and skipped; the DJ shouted and jumped aside. The fighters smashed into a string of Christmas lights, getting tangled up as partygoers backed away from the melee.

  Kevin tried to roll away from Tom but was unable to get far due to the lights tethering them together in some kind of sick display of holiday cheer. In great shape from hours spent at the gym, Kevin was on his feet almost instantly. To his surprise, Tom was, too.

  “Look … Tom … I didn’t mean to—”

  A fist came out of nowhere and connected with his cheek. Kevin thought he heard something crack in his face and fought to keep his balance; another fist landed in his gut, driving the breath from his lungs. As Kevin doubled over, gasping for oxygen, Tom brought his knee up and smashed it into his friend’s face. Kevin nearly blacked out; the intensity of the pain told him that his nose had been broken. Blood filled his mouth and he sputtered, somehow managing to avoid another blow to the head.

  People had formed an unintentional circle around the fight; most were too shocked to help or even call for help, though Kevin thought he saw one or two using their phones to record the fight.

  “Stop it!” Kevin shouted, throwing a vicious uppercut into Tom’s chin. Tom’s head snapped back, trailed by a thin stream of blood. To Kevin’s amazement, Tom laughed as he staggered back, then wiped his bleeding mouth on the sleeve of his expensive white dress shirt. Tom looked at the bubbling stain for a moment before smearing the blood all over his face. Grinning, he started walking slowly toward Kevin, hands at his sides.

  “No, Tom, no…”

  His entire body raging with pain, Kevin managed to
throw another punch, catching Tom in the left eye, which immediately began to swell and turn purple. Tom was still laughing. Tears ran down Kevin’s face as he smashed a fist into Tom’s other eye; his friend retaliated by grabbing the string of lights that connected them and wrapping it around Kevin’s throat.

  The attempted strangulation seemed to shock the party guests into life. Led by Kroll, they surged forward. Kevin’s eyes bulged as he gasped for air, arms flailing. Were they kids again? Had everything that seemed to have happened over the last twenty years been a bizarre flash-forward or some kind of wish fulfillment made up by his subconscious? Was he actually falling asleep at Tom’s house after hours of video games and comic books and gossip about the girls in school who they thought were cute, fading out of consciousness in a sleeping bag on his best friend’s floor?

  With a sudden surge of strength, unwilling to surrender, Kevin whipped his head forward, smashing Tom’s nose with a sickening snap. Somehow, with blood streaming down his face, Tom kept laughing, though his grip on the Christmas lights faltered and Kevin shoved himself away.

  “I loved you, man. I loved you,” Kevin said, his voice as rusty as an old tin can, while the non-music kept playing and the twinkling lights blinked on and off, bathing their distorted, battered faces in waves of color. “But we’re done. Do you hear me? We are fucking done.”

  He shrugged out of the string of lights, spitting a glob of phlegm and blood onto the floor, keeping a wary eye on his opponent the whole time.

  But Tom just stood there, grinning and giggling, staring intently at Kevin as if attempting to drill a hole into his head with his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said to Kroll, swaying slightly. “This is my fault. I threw the first punch and I’ll pay for the damage. But if this motherfucker is still working here after the holiday break, you can bet your ass that I won’t be.”

  As he limped out of the office, the room lapsed into near silence, except for the strange, skipping music. Even Tom had stopped laughing, his head cocked to the side like a confused animal, staring after the man who had once been his best friend until the door closed behind Kevin.

  * * *

  After a long moment, someone coughed and Tom snapped out of his stupor, looking at the other party guests as if seeing them for the first time. He glanced around the room and then removed the rest of the string of lights from his body. He smoothed his suit and straightened his tie. Several people stepped away from him, unsure what this blood-streaked crazy person was going to do next.

  Tom reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew his Zippo and a pack of cigarettes, then tapped one out and lit it with a shaking hand. He inhaled a long puff, then exhaled, a giant smile crossing his face as smoke billowed into the air.

  “What are you fucking pussies waiting for?” he shouted. “Let’s party!”

  MONTH EIGHT

  The last few weeks had been a blur for Jenny.

  At the end of her lunch with Kevin, feeling so hopeful, she’d stayed in the restaurant when Kevin left, telling him she needed to use the bathroom—which she did. When she returned to the table, which the busboy was already clearing, she’d ordered a second beer. She’d sat quietly, savoring every sip, picturing her future. She and Tom would reconcile after nights of tears and apologies, and she’d move back home. Once their beautiful baby was born, they’d focus completely on their brand-new family, wrapping themselves in a cocoon of blood and darkness.

  Jenny had nearly choked on her beer at the image that suddenly soaked her mind in crimson. Her stomach went sour; she stood quickly, almost knocking over the half-empty bottle, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, and rushed out of the restaurant.

  For the rest of that day, she’d tried to shake the images that had assaulted her at the restaurant: being consumed and choked with blood as she held her baby and was held in turn by Tom. This waking nightmare echoed the kinds of dreams she’d been having lately—horrible, gore-soaked visions often set in the basement of their house. She tried to laugh them off, to chalk them up to her accident on the basement steps, months earlier. A single small scar on her leg served as a permanent reminder of that day. But each time she had the dream, it got worse … and harder to dismiss the following morning.

  She spent the day after her lunch with Kevin in bed, waiting for him to call. She hadn’t had the patience to read a book or magazine or even to watch TV. Victoria had knocked a couple of times, but Jenny remained silent, unwilling to engage in small talk, or any talk at all. She refused to cry, though. She was sick of crying.

  A little after ten o’clock at night, with the world outside drenched in blackness, her phone had vibrated against her arm. She blinked awake.

  God damn it, she thought. How could she have fallen asleep? How many times had Kevin called before she woke up? And why had she turned her ringer off? She had no recollection of doing that. In fact, she’d been having weird memory lapses lately, often directly correlating to the hallucinations. It was maddening.

  “Kevin?” she said, picking up.

  After a moment, a weak voice echoed in her ear. “Yeah.”

  “Kev, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Fear thrummed through her and she heaved herself to her feet, struggling with the bulk of her pregnancy.

  “No. I’m not. I’m not even close to okay. Tom has lost his goddamn mind.”

  Jenny stared out the window at New York City. Victoria’s apartment was on the twenty-third floor, and the view of Downtown Manhattan was usually spectacular. But tonight, as the rain washed down, the lights of the city were muddied and hard to make out.

  “What … what happened?” she stammered.

  “It doesn’t matter. But I’m done with him. You hear me? Done. Forever. And … I know it’s not your fault, but I don’t want to see you ever again either. Whatever’s going on with you two, leave me out of it.”

  Her vision swirled and she backed up, dizzy, until her legs hit the bed and she sat so abruptly that she nearly toppled to the floor.

  “I don’t understand. Tell me what happened.”

  “The only thing you need to know is that your husband is gone. The guy you fell in love with—the guy I grew up with—I don’t know where he went. But he’s not the psycho who beat the shit out of me yesterday afternoon at our office party.”

  “Beat the shit out of you?” Jenny repeated in a whisper, unable to process what she was hearing.

  Kevin sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m in the fucking hospital, Jenny.”

  “You’re in the…? Where? I’ll be right there.”

  “No. No. Aren’t you hearing me? I don’t want to see you! I don’t want you or Tom anywhere near my life. He is toxic. If you’re smart, you’ll stay the fuck away from him. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.”

  “But … what about at work?” She knew it was an odd question, but she couldn’t think straight.

  “Jenny, Kroll called me this morning, told me he’d fired Tom. Your husband was lying about all those deals, making shit up. Filing reports that were full of gibberish once you looked deep enough into the contracts and purchase orders. Kroll was not amused. Since I brought Tom in, I’m lucky I still have a job.”

  Jenny sat on the bed, watching the rain wash against the windows. Her pleasant visions of the future had disappeared as Kevin spoke. What the hell had happened?

  After a long silence, Kevin said, “Sorry, Jenny, but I have to go. Maybe I’ll call you when I get out of here, when I get back to work. I just need time. I might get out of the city for a little while. Go see my grandparents. And Jenny…”

  “What?” she asked, terrified.

  “Stay the hell away from Tom. He’s a monster.”

  With that, the line went dead.

  Jenny had immediately tried calling Tom, hoping whatever Kevin was talking about was a mistake, but the call went straight to voice mail.

  Over the next few weeks, she ignored the advice of her sister and kept trying to reach Tom,
without success. Eventually, his voice mail wouldn’t accept new messages and she stopped calling. On the days that she worked at her studio, if it wasn’t too teeth-clenchingly cold, she would walk past their house on her way to or from the train station, but she never saw anyone inside, never even saw a light on. Even the used car they had bought all those months ago was gone. Had Tom sold it? She had no idea.

  Jenny almost knocked a couple of times but could never quite work up the courage. She was afraid of her own house and her own husband. When the hallucinations hit, she was even afraid of herself.

  One late afternoon, as she neared her old Victorian, she’d seen Andrea and Paige coming out of their house nearby. A light snow was falling; the setting sun was shining through the clouds and it was a beautiful day despite the cold. Paige, dressed in a thick snowsuit, was jumping into giant piles of snow on the sidewalk. When Andrea and Jenny made eye contact, Andrea’s mouth fell open in surprise.

  Jenny smiled and raised her hand slightly in a nervous hello, but Andrea didn’t reciprocate. Instead, she turned away, leading her daughter into the garage. Moments later, their car pulled out and they drove past Jenny, who was still standing in the same spot on the sidewalk. This time, Andrea completely avoided looking at her.

  Sitting in the back, Paige grinned, eyes widening in excitement, when she saw Jenny. The girl waved enthusiastically at first but stopped when Jenny didn’t move, just stared at her, sad and forlorn against the gunmetal sky.

  To her horror, Jenny saw blood start gushing from the child’s eyes as the car pulled away. She knew it couldn’t really be happening, but it seemed so real. She quickly made her way to the train station and back to Manhattan.

  Victoria had told Jenny on more than one occasion that she should relocate her studio, move it into the city, but Jenny disagreed. She couldn’t afford a New York City rental, she was going to have a baby soon, and finding a new space and setting it up would take time she didn’t really have. But the real reason was that she hadn’t given up on Tom, refused to give up on him—a conversation she didn’t want to have with Victoria. Not yet. Everything was too raw.