The Dark at the End of the Tunnel

by Taylor Grand

  “Get out!” Don wheezed, clutching at his left arm. “You’re fired!” His face was covered with sweat, twitching wildly. He tried to reach for his phone, but Jonathan stood in his way.

  “You were right, Don. My mask has cracked. Wanna see behind it?”

  Don looked into Jonathan’s eyes and gaped in horror.

  When Jonathan stepped out of Don’s office a few moments later, he smoothed the sweaty, tousled hair back from his brow and adjusted his tie. He sauntered toward Don’s assistant’s desk, where Meg, a stony-faced woman glanced up.

  “You might want to check on your boss,” Jonathan said casually. “He’s not looking so hot.” And then he strolled off toward his office.

  He took his time packing his personal belongings into a box. There were several professional keepsakes, a withered office plant, and a framed photo of him and Margaret with obligatory smiles. He carried the box into the hallway just outside his office and dumped everything into a nearby recycling bin.

  He continued toward the building’s main entrance and noticed a crowd of coworkers. The double doors at the end of the corridor were open, and the light of an ambulance beyond it pulsed like an artery, bathing the lobby with the color of blood.

  As Jonathan reached the crowded room, coworkers began to whisper like schoolchildren. Jonathan glanced outside as two paramedics carried a stretcher with Don Henry on it toward the ambulance. He locked eyes with Don, who was alive, but seemed unable to speak. Don’s face was frozen into a mask of terror, the result of what appeared to be a massive stroke.

  Meg stood near Jonathan, her eyes dark with worry. “What the hell happened in there?”

  Jonathan didn’t answer. He just watched Don being loaded into the ambulance and tried his best not to grin.

  As he drove to his physician’s office a few hours later, Jonathan tried to convince himself that he was still in complete control. But the truth was that he’d been unable to suppress his wild ravings in Don’s office. It was as if he were watching from outside himself, helpless against his baser instincts.

  A sharp jolt in his lower back made him speed even faster.

  ****

  “Very unusual…” Dr. Stanton mumbled as he studied Jonathan’s X-rays.

  Jonathan shuffled across the antiseptic room, rubbing his back. His eyes followed Dr. Stanton’s finger as he pointed at a bizarre growth toward the bottom of Jonathan’s spinal column.

  He was almost afraid to ask, “What is it? A tumor?”

  Stanton leaned in for a closer look at the X-ray. “Too early to say. If it wasn’t so ridiculous, I’d swear your coccyx is growing.”

  “What’s the hell’s a coccyx?”

  “Your tailbone,” Stanton said, clearly as puzzled as Jonathan.

  An hour later, Jonathan limped out of the doctor’s office. Stanton gave him a prescription for some heavy-duty painkillers and told him to make an appointment with a specialist.

  ****

  Every facet of Jonathan’s life was spiraling out of control: his career, his marriage, his mind—and now his own body. Desperate for pain relief, he raced to the nearest pharmacy to fill his prescription.

  It was early evening when he reached the quiet streets and perfectly groomed lawns of his neighborhood. The medication had kicked in rather nicely, turning his sharp pains into dull aches.

  As Jonathan drove through the streets of the planned community, past the familiar imported trees, man-made ponds, and uniformly designed homes, he felt strange, like an outsider in his own life. What had once felt comfortable and safe now seemed oppressive; a prison of cookie-cutter suburban conformity.

  He felt a renewed pain in his coccyx area, and recalled something he’d learned as a boy in science class. The tailbone—according to some evolutionists—was a leftover from man’s early origins. He imagined himself growing a tail and regressing into some form of primordial beast. Turning into…Oh shut up, you idiot.

  He reached his home, a nondescript box in an endless row of tract housing. As he pulled into the driveway, he caught sight of Margaret walking past a tall casement window facing the street. She was going to bed and wore a short plaid nightshirt; her long, sinewy legs looked remarkably sexy. Jonathan imagined them wrapped around his waist as he thrust into her like a frenzied animal. Despite the medication, he felt a rise in his pants. It was a pleasant surprise.

  By the time he reached the master bedroom, Margaret was feigning sleep. It was a familiar routine: he’d climb into bed and lightly kiss her cheek, her neck, and gradually move down to her shoulder. On rare occasions, she would stir, which was the green light for sex. Otherwise, she’d lie as stiff as rigor mortis.

  As Jonathan reached her shoulder, it was obvious that this was going to be another Night of the Living Dead. He was disappointed, but not surprised. They hadn’t had sex in nearly a year. After undressing, he lay down next to her and stared at the white, spackled ceiling. His thoughts drifted to Don Henry’s words.

  Your mask is cracking…

  Is it? Jonathan wondered. And if it was, what was underneath? He suspected it was something terrible.

  He mused about the people in his life, Margaret foremost in his mind. They’d been married for over a decade, and yet he often wondered if he knew her at all. He tried to remember what had attracted them to each other in the first place, but the memory remained elusive.

  He thought of his neighbors and former coworkers as they prepared for work each morning: dressed in their power ties and corporate-branded uniforms. They were, of course, expected to act accordingly; a perpetual 9-to-5 masquerade ball—costumes and masks required. He also wondered about the people he passed on the streets, in the stores, and throughout the goings-on of his daily life. What lurked beneath their cool exteriors?

  He recalled a recent news story about a beloved cardinal in New York who’d sodomized two generations of young boys, and the respected female pediatrician in Maine who was caught torturing infants under her care.

  What lies beneath their masks? Or mine?

  Rusty Creeter had seen it, and so had Don Henry. And Christ, look what happened to them.

  He could feel something dark, twisted, and irresistible growing inside him. It smashed its fists against an invisible wall in his mind. A wave of fear washed over Jonathan, unlike anything he’d ever known.

  Something wanted out.

  He gripped the sheets defensively, eyes wide, feeling his control slipping away—

  Margaret stirred with a soft moan. Jonathan held his breath, praying she wouldn’t touch him. He knew he couldn’t hold back whatever raged inside. But she rubbed an inviting hand across his leg and whispered, “It’s time. I’ve been waiting.”

  Jonathan couldn’t imagine what had prompted this, but then realized that it wasn’t him that had aroused her. It was something else. As if possessed, he reached over and tore off her shirt, fully exposing her. She groaned with pleasure as he grabbed and clawed at her soft flesh. She responded in kind, biting his shoulder hard enough to draw blood.

  She pounded at his chest and let him fill her with his desperate need. They had sex like wild beasts, biting, scratching, and tearing at each other. It was as if a storm had filled the room, whisking away the years of quiet desperation and long-suffered deceptions. In a perverse way, they seemed to be relating for the first time.

  Their frenzied session went on and on, until Jonathan’s adrenaline waned. The moment he regained control of his urges, he forced himself off of Margaret and tumbled to the floor in a bruised and bloody heap.

  Margaret remained naked and sprawled out on the bed as Jonathan struggled to his feet. She smiled at him in a way he’d never seen before. There was a secret anticipation in her eyes. She seemed to know something—see something—he dared not imagine. Her unblinking eyes followed him as he limped into the bathroom and fell back against the closed door.

  Glancing at the bathroom mirror, he gasped out loud. What he saw in the reflection was far worse than the blood
and contusions.

  His eyes…Its eyes. Whatever it was studied his pale reflection in the mirror with a mixture of revulsion and hatred. It glared at him from behind his own eyes.

  And suddenly he understood.

  The weight of this realization made his knees weaken. He grasped the bathroom sink to steady himself.

  There had never been an It trying to take control of his life.

  He was It.

  He stared at his mask in the bathroom mirror as the fingers of his right hand grew talon-like. It began to tear jagged holes into his face. The severed flesh of his right cheek fell into the sink with a crimson plop.

  I’ve been waiting. Margaret’s whisper still echoed in his mind.

  Yes, he thought. She was waiting for me to realize what she already knew.

  The last of Jonathan Bailey watched as his scalp was separated from his skull and his eyes were ripped from their sockets. The metamorphosis was torturous but blessedly quick; Jonathan’s bodily remains littered the floor like the sodden scraps of a slaughterhouse. Wet, jagged shards of skin from his legs and arms hung from the sink like laundry washed in blood.

  It took a deep, rasping breath then, breathing freely for the first time. A female voice called out from the bedroom, and It grunted with feverish expectancy. Glancing into the mirror, It was pleased with the reflection staring back. It flashed a savage smile, tearing away the final strips of Jonathan’s flesh with Its prehensile tail.

  Entering the darkened bedroom, It saw a nude silhouette standing motionless—watching It from the shadows. It heard a squish and looked down to see the fleshy remnants of Margaret Bailey lying under Its feet: a lacerated ear, a mangled breast, and chunks of indistinguishable meat spread across the crimson-soaked carpet.

  The thing that was once Margaret slithered out of the darkness with welcoming arms and a blood-soaked smile.

  THE SILENT ONES

  The phenomenon was like a cancerous growth: imperceptible at first, yet silently spreading with lethal intensity. The first sign of something amiss was a noticeable lack of mail being delivered over the course of several months. One day it simply occurred to me that my mailbox was empty more often than not. Even local ads and flyers had stopped. I checked with the post office several times but they always had my correct name and address on file. Although each time I spoke with them it seemed to take them a little longer to find it.

  I never would’ve believed that I’d miss junk mail, but I discovered that there was something comforting about seeing your name on a mailing label. It let you know that someone—even an automated mailing service—acknowledged your existence.

  The last piece of mail I received was the week of Christmas. I was excited, because I could always count on holiday cards from my mother and younger sister Karen. Mom’s cards were always sappy and included an awkwardly written personal note, while Karen’s were always of the homogenized, humorous variety; your typical mass-produced greeting card.

  It was Friday, December twenty-fourth, when I looked into my mailbox for the last time that side of the New Year. Inside, I discovered a single handwritten envelope. An honest to goodness letter! I actually flushed for a moment at the prospect of sitting down to read it. After all, in those days of emails, texts and instant messages, who wrote letters anymore?

  But as I read the envelope I felt the blood drain from my face.

  The letter was addressed to my neighbor. The postman had put it in my mailbox by mistake.

  After that, things worsened. A few weeks later, I called my mother to wish her a Happy Birthday.

  “Hello?” she answered, sounding distracted.

  “It’s me, mom,” I said.

  “Can I call you back?” she replied in a way that told me she’d most likely forget.

  I started to say “I love you,” but she hung up on me.

  I never spoke to her again.

  Then my phone stopped ringing. I still got a dial tone when I picked up the receiver and could call out just fine. But no one called me. Not even those automated reminders for overdue bills.

  It was quite humiliating coming home night after night to an answering machine that blinked zero at me. Sometimes I’d press the play button just to hear the automated recording, informing me that there are no new messages.

  But at least it was a voice.

  I even began to regret signing up for the national “do not call list” registry, which banned telemarketers. At that point, even a canned sales pitch would have been welcome.

  There had to be some sort of logical explanation. I was a pretty rational person. My approach to life was methodical, particularly at my job where I analyzed insurance claims.

  Initially, I approached my situation the way I did most things: systematically. First I checked for any issues with the phone company. Next, I called every company that I did business with or that I owed money. Oddly, I was unable to find any problems within any line of communication.

  Every billing representative that I spoke with assured me that they would resend my bills—but for some reason they never did.

  Every facet of my life became infected. At work I “slipped people’s minds” on a regular basis. Missed appointments became the status quo, and people ignored me wherever I went.

  I got so pissed off that I decided to skip work without telling anyone.

  It was the first time I’d ever done that. I even planned it so I’d miss my yearly evaluation from my boss, just to make sure my absence would be noticed.

  It wasn’t and he didn’t. In fact, no one did.

  Fifteen years I’d dedicated to that company. And not a single person noticed I was gone.

  ****

  Any attempts I made to reconnect with the world were met with a wall of indifference. At first, I tried being overtly nice to everyone, starting with my obnoxious, two-packs-a-day, neighbor who sat on his porch most of the day blowing secondhand smoke through my living room window. When that didn’t work, I tried being friendly to the forever imposed upon barista at my local coffee house. Her stony-faced visage spoke of a childhood devoid of smiles. I also tried my snot-nosed cubicle mate at work and the Chinese food delivery guy with the terminal case of halitosis.

  It made no difference.

  When the niceties failed, I became overtly nasty. I shot people dirty looks, spat at others, even yelled at a few strangers for no other reason than to elicit a response.

  No one blinked an eye.

  Out of frustration I threw a full-blown temper tantrum right in the middle of our Thursday afternoon staff meeting, just to get a rise out of someone…anyone.

  Having failed to interject a single word into the discussion, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Excuse me!”

  Kevin, the lead financial analyst sitting next to me, winced a bit at the sound of my voice, but kept right on talking. Finally, I heaved my hot latte, cup and all, as hard as I could against the far wall.

  Suddenly, I had everybody’s attention.

  “Did you just throw that?” my boss, Barry said.

  “Umm…yes,” I said, suddenly wishing to God I hadn’t.

  “Why would you do that?” Kevin asked, but there was no judgment in his eyes. It seemed to be an honest question.

  I started to stammer out a poor excuse for an answer. But within a matter of seconds, I was forgotten again. It was as if I could only maintain their interest for mere moments with the greatest of outrage and passion—emotions that I normally bottled up and rarely exhibited.

  I panicked at that point and ran down the halls like a lunatic under a full moon. My wild energy provoked a smattering of human response, but not much more than if I were a monkey performing at the zoo, caged behind a sheet of impenetrable glass. It proved impossible to maintain such impassioned feelings. They were like unused muscles that had atrophied; the result of a lifetime of my own passivity and apathy. I was quickly disregarded; left alone to sob on the orange and puke brown carpet outside my cubicle.

  A littl
e while later, I gathered the wherewithal to drag myself home.

  But sitting in my apartment was like solitary confinement. As I paced the floor, I thought I was going to lose my mind.

  I had to find a way to engage with someone.

  There was this gloomy 24-hour coffee shop down the street where local night owls perched every evening. I’d passed it countless times before, but had never felt compelled to go inside.

  Until then.

  I sat there for hours, soaking up the greasy walls of the dimly lit coffee shop, watching nothing but nameless faces with sunken, hopeless eyes. They seemed to be drawn to the place, like moths ticking at light bulbs. A grizzled waitress with a blank expression wafted across the floor like a specter, while the brooding clientele stared silently from the shadows.

  Sometimes, while passing by late at night, I’d wondered what kind of people lurked inside this place at such an ungodly hour. Now—I was one of them. One of them: the silent ones; the nameless and forgotten; the in-between people that no one saw; the homeless that businessmen stepped over to get to their power lunches; the faceless figures that simply—filled up space and nothing more.

  Somehow I’d become one of them.

  I knew this because, for the first time in weeks—I’d been finally acknowledged. They seemed to recognize me. With a slight nod of the head or a weary meeting of the eyes, my status had been established. I was one of them now.

  I watched them gather there all night, hovering quietly at their tables, comforted by the fact that they were not alone in their—our—misery. I had to get the hell out of there while I could. I may have been offered membership into the dead-end club, but that didn’t mean I had to accept it.

  ****

  I didn’t go back to work. No one noticed my presence, so I doubted they’d notice my absence. Money wasn’t a problem, of course. I could steal any store blind and no one would raise an eyebrow. I wish I could say that provided me with some comfort.