by Shock Totem
The very next day, David changed seats, moving to the back of the room. Two months after that, Max was gone, moving out west with his family. For that, David Higgins was thankful.
• • •
The haze of recollection lifts, the demon’s slippery tendrils withdrawing from David’s mind, and his eyes flutter open. The living room seems darker somehow, more foreboding than ever before. He tries to speak, to plead with the vile thing to stop, but all that leaves his throat is a wet groan.
It’s the most sound he’s made in almost a full year.
The television on the opposite side of the room fades to black, static hissing and popping on its curved surface. The oil slick that is the demon appears on the wall once more, descending until it becomes a bulge in the faded brown rug that has covered the living room floor for more than a decade. The bulge rushes to the side. It looks as if there’s a giant beetle under there, one with menacing pincers that will take off inches of his flesh at a time.
Please stop, David thinks.
The demon isn’t listening.
His tormentor disappears beneath the bookcase that rests against the wall to the left. David tries to see where it’s gone, but his head is positioned at the wrong angle. He has to strain just to catch a fading glimpse from his periphery. And even then, the thing that draws his attention is the framed picture of him and his wife Linh, taken before Natalie was born, when the demon was nothing but a niggling wraith that haunted him only in dreams. Linh was young then, innocent and pure. She barely spoke any English. It would be two decades before cancer would strip her of that youthful visage and send her to an early grave.
The three shelves of books begin to shimmy and shake, drawing David’s eye. He looks on in horror as a single tone is pulled from the rest. It is a dusty book, and that dust slowly slides away like sand in a receding wave. The spine starts to bulge and warp as if breathing. A Tale of Two Cities becomes not a title, but an accusation.
Inwardly, David screams.
• • •
“You don’t like Dickens?” the young man named Percy Stout asked. “Really?”
David shrugged. “Never had any use for him, really,” he replied. “Just kinda drones on and on.”
Percy grinned sheepishly and reached out, handing him a thick book. “Try this one,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”
“Your favorite, eh?” said David. He looks down at the heavy book in his hand. “Isn’t this the one that starts with that best of times, worst of times garbage?”
“The same,” Percy said, his smile growing. “It isn’t garbage, though. Life isn’t all about ramming your shoulder into people while wearing twenty pounds of body armor. Trust me, you’ll like it.”
“If you say so.”
They both turned and walked down the hall, weaving through the throng of students. Some shouted David’s name as he passed them by, others raised their hand for a high-five. A few of the girls lingered shyly by the lockers, fluttering their eyes at him. David beamed as he threw his arm over Percy’s shoulder, appreciating the newfound notoriety. He’d finally done it; after three years of trying, he’d at last been promoted to starting linebacker on the football squad. For the first time, he looked forward to seeing his mother’s face staring at him with pride instead of the persistent disappointment she always displayed for him. He had a feeling his senior year would be the best of his life.
But still, despite his joy, a large part of him that resided just below the surface cried. David glanced at Percy, at the smooth contours of his jaw and the way his blond hair swept in a wave to the side. There weren’t many times that he thought of the moment five years ago when he’d first discovered his hidden feelings for the boy named Max, but ever since meeting Percy over the summer, that had all changed. Percy played sax in the school band, and it was one day after summer football practice that they happened across each other on school grounds. He was a sensitive sort, a head shorter than David and seemingly frail. But he had a great sense of humor and was able to draw people in. From the first moment they spoke, it was like they’d been friends forever. They’d become inseparable.
Again that buzzing feeling invaded David’s abdomen. He did his best to fight it down.
“So I’ll see you after school?” Percy asked as they neared the staircase.
“After practice. Four o’clock.”
“Got it. We can go over my trig notes then. You can drive me home, right?”
“Okay.”
“See you soon.”
Percy smiled a bit too warmly and dashed up the stairs two at a time. David hung back as other students brushed past him. He felt his neck flush, and deep down he was a flurry of confliction. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to run up those stairs, swing Percy around, and kiss him.
But he knew he couldn’t do that.
Those types of feelings were evil.
He turned around and headed to class instead.
• • •
It’s never enough. No matter how much the demon shows him, no matter how much its visions torment him and make his blood come to boil, it always wants more.
The evil thing lurches out of the bookcase, leaving the book it’d infested resting still like a casket. It floats through the air in a black mist, soaring right in front of David’s vision, a cloud of undulating malevolence. The demon seems to hover there for a moment, mocking him, until it picks up speed and careens toward the opposite wall. David almost can’t move his eyes fast enough to keep up. The billowing black cloud then becomes a funnel, streaming toward the lamp resting on a small end table on the other side of the room. The conduit of hatred slides over the lampshade.
David’s world is pitched into darkness. His body begins to quake.
• • •
David couldn’t sleep. He’d tossed and turned in bed for hours while a cold sweat broke out on his forehead, drenching his pillow. He had to get up. Had to get moving. The blaring of the television downstairs was maddening. He couldn’t help but think maybe he should go home, to his own bed. Maybe that would make a difference.
A soft groan sounded in the blackness of the room. Someone shifted beside him. A soft hand caressed his back.
“David, lie down,” said a groggy voice. “You need sleep.”
David reached over and clicked on the lamp sitting on the nightstand. He turned slowly, letting his hair fall in front of his face, and gazed at Percy from between the strands. Percy was up on his elbow, his upper body exposed while his lower was covered with the bedsheet. But David knew he was naked under there...just as David was now. His eyes traced the ribs beneath Percy’s slender chest, his small pale nipples, the supple curve of his neck. Earlier that night, his lips had been pressed to that neck, had licked circles around those nipples, had planted tiny kisses on those tender ribs. Those and more were acts performed nearly every night for nearly the last three weeks. David shivered.
“C’mon,” said Percy, patting the now-empty spot next to him. “Come back to me.”
David let out a deep breath and shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You want to get up now, then? I’ll do it with you. We’ll cook eggs or something.”
“No. Your grandma’s still watching television,” David said.
“It doesn’t matter. She probably passed out.”
David leaned back, allowing his right hand to slip beneath the sheet hiding Percy’s lower body. The beautiful, fragile young man sighed.
“Talk to me, Dave,” Percy said.
David opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t want to tell Percy what had really been keeping him awake. He didn’t want to break the heart of the one he now realized was the love of his life. But when he glanced over and saw that look of concern on Percy’s face, when he saw the way his dainty nose scrunched up, he knew he couldn’t stay silent.
“I can’t go,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Percy collapsed onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “But you promised. You
sounded excited.”
“I know,” said David. “But listen...I have my future to think about. I have my mom to help take care of. Donald just got drafted, you know. And I’m supposed to be starting college in a couple months.” He sighed. “What we talked about...it can wait.”
Percy rolled over, placed a kiss on the back of David’s hand. “Dave, listen to me. I hate it here. I hate the people, the judgment. We can’t be who we are! There’s places out there that’ll accept people like us. Places we’ll be welcomed, even. You can go to school there. I have my inheritance. We can both get jobs and pay our own way. We can be happy. Screw your family. Your mom doesn’t really like you, anyway.”
“Easy for you to say. Your family’s dead.” He inclined his head toward the floor, and the television blaring beneath it. “All you got is your grandma, and she’s doesn’t even remember your name half the time. Why else would we do what we do here and not at my mom’s?”
Percy withdrew, looking at him with tears brimming in his eyes. David had never seen anyone look so sad before.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t called for.”
“That’s right, it wasn’t,” said Percy.
David leaned over, putting on his best reassuring voice. “Listen, the time’s just not right. We’ll go eventually, I promise. We’ll build the life we want. I just need time. Please, Percy, give that to me.”
Percy looked at him sidelong, concentrating as if each word he spoke deserved to be analyzed like a complex math equation. “You promise?” he asked.
David wanted to tell him he couldn’t promise him anything, but he kept his mouth shut. He and Percy had grown so close over their last year of high school. They’d become part of each other’s lives. They’d become lovers and partners by every definition of the words. All of it combined to make David doubtful of everything—his wants, his needs, the very nature of his being. Being with a man in this way...all his life, he’d been taught it was a sin. He’d been taught it was evil. And now he was doing it.
If he ran away, his mother would surely find out, and then she’d disown him. No matter how much their relationship had wavered from sour to grudgingly prideful over the years, the last thing he wanted was to throw away his mother’s love. It was Percy who wanted this, it was Percy who was comfortable in his own skin. All David wanted to do was fit in and not make a fuss.
“I promise I will,” David said, drawing forth a smile from the love of his life.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Percy replied. The lithe man then leaned forward, and their lips met.
While they kissed, and during the moments of passion that came afterward, thoughts of doubt and sin and evil never once crossed David’s mind.
• • •
Time comes back to him like an unwanted tumor, speeding up and bringing David into the here-and-now. The demon’s oil slick lifts off the lamp, once more bathing the living room with light. David’s heart beats out of control; his breathing comes in rasping gasps and the machine that controls his lungs has a hard time keeping pace. The device pings and beeps ever more rapidly.
The conversation in the kitchen is still going on, feminine voices cackling with laughter. Natalie doesn’t seem to hear the commotion. David thinks that the woman who had come to visit is an agent of the demon that haunts him. It has brought her along to distract his daughter, to allow the haunt to torment him in private.
Please, Natalie...please pay attention, he thinks, but Natalie is nowhere to be found.
The demon, however, is. It takes the form of a wriggling black centipede, circling down the leg of the end table and scurrying across the carpet. It climbs up the leg of the coffee table in the center of the room. There are magazines stacked atop the table, ones that have gone unopened in God knows how long. The centipede stops in the middle of the clutter and rises up on its many legs. The thing faces David, and seems to be laughing.
The demon is mocking him.
A spasm rocks David’s left shoulder, and his hand slips off his wheelchair’s armrest. His arm dangles there like a dead tree limb, useless, empty, and heavy. David’s body is twisted at an odd angle, and the pain is excruciating, even for one who’s been wracked with constant pain for years.
The black centipede chatters and falls back down flat. It becomes liquid, seeping into the many dust-covered magazine covers, staining them, darkening them, making them evil. The magazines flutter to life, pages rifling as if caught in a gale-force wind experienced only by the coffee table.
And David is sent back once more.
• • •
There wasn't anything interesting to read on the table in the army recruiter’s office. Nothing but dog-eared copies of Life and Time, five years old at the earliest, and a stack of wrinkled brochures proclaiming the glory of the Armed Forces. It was as if the implementation of the draft had made the Army stop trying even slightly to impress their potential recruits.
He’d come home during Thanksgiving break his sophomore year in college to find his mother in tears. Donald, his brother, had died in Vietnam. His mother was inconsolable. Donald had always been her favorite. David reminded her too much of his father, she’d often said, the man who’d left them all high and dry after David was born. And now Donald was gone. “It should’ve been you!” his mother screamed at him. “It should’ve been you!”
After that tongue lashing, he’d left the house and spent the night at Percy’s. He cried in his arms, railing against the unfairness of it all while Percy’s grandma waddled about downstairs, blissfully unaware. The loss of his brother, the loss of his mother’s love, the fact he could never make himself reveal their relationship to a single living soul; all of it conspired to break him.
“If it should’ve been me, then I’ll give her that wish,” David told Percy.
Oh, how Percy protested. “You can’t join the army,” he pleaded. “You can’t go to Vietnam. I’ll be alone without you. You’re all I have!” But David was stalwart. This was what he now wanted. No more college, no more sports. He’d get a gun and a uniform, and he’d do everything he could to punish those who’d ripped his brother away from him, who’d made his mother not love him anymore.
That morning he’d left Percy in tears and stormed straight to the recruiter’s office. No second thoughts, no wavering. For the first time in his life, David Higgins was all action.
The front door opened, and David glanced up from watching his jittery knees to see Percy enter the room. He looked delicate as usual, his frame much too slender, his hips much too narrow, but there was something about the expression he wore that chilled David to the bone. Percy walked up to the window, received a clipboard from the receptionist, and then sat down two chairs away from David. He began filling in his forms, eyes intent on the paper.
David leaned over. “Percy, what’re you doing?” he whispered.
Percy’s eyes flicked toward him, but he never moved his head nor said a word. He kept filling out the form.
“C’mon, Percy, this is stupid. What’s going on with you?”
Finally, Percy slipped the pen back under the clipboard’s clasp, stood up with a huff, stormed across the waiting room, and placed it on the windowsill. It wasn’t until he was back to sitting that he turned in David’s direction.
“You want to act rashly?” he said in a quiet yet stern voice. “Well, so can I.”
David instantly got goose bumps. It was completely out of place, but to hear Percy talk in such a way excited him. “You don’t understand,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter what I understand or don’t,” he said. “All you need to understand is that I’m not gonna be alone again. You go to ‘Nam, I go to ‘Nam. That’s just the way it is.”
“But Percy—”
“But nothing, Dave. My mind’s made up. Paperwork’s all signed.” He slapped his hands together as if knocking dirt off them. “What’s done is done.”
After that they sat in silence, until the recruiter came forward and ask
ed David to come to his office. He cast a final glance into the waiting room before the door was shut and saw Percy sitting there, looking angry and brittle at the same time. He was like a pissed-off china doll, and in his mind’s eye David saw that china doll lashing out at a wall in anger and shattering to bits.
He shuddered as the door closed behind him.
• • •
Stop it! David strains to tell the beast. Stop it now!
But the demon won’t stop. Its mass lifts from the magazines in a gelatinous wad of black goop. The pages fall still, covers intact, as if they were never disturbed. The wad of gunk then writhes and becomes a ball that rolls off the coffee table. David strains to see it, watching the rolling ball of hate grow ever closer to him before veering off to the side, where it disappears beneath the fringe of the couch sitting against the far wall. For a long while, all is still.
David’s breathing slows down. All a dream, he tells himself. Just a freaking dream. He spots movement from the corner of his eye and glances over. Natalie is standing in the doorway, a rag held in her hands. Her skin is creamy and bronzed, like her mother’s, and her eyes reveal half of her ancestry. When she smiles, it is like the stars realigning after a prolonged era of suffering.
“Dad, everything okay?” she asks.
David wants to reply to her. He wants to tell her about the demon beneath the couch, but no matter how hard he tries to tell his muscles to move, they won’t obey him. It is like his body is a prison that he’ll never leave.
Natalie walks over to him, kisses him gently on the cheek. She straightens his torso, lifts his arm back into position, and fidgets with the roses in the vase beside him. She checks the machines that control his breathing, making sure they’re running properly. David can’t see her, can’t force his eyes to roll that far in their sockets, and it’s like she’s not there even though he can hear her fiddling around with knobs and switches.