Next morning Mike slept late, drifting in his dreams from one mundane alternate to another, in an assortment of mildly interesting variations he didn’t care much about, but they kept him from getting enough real rest.
When he finally got up he found a note from Ruth on the refrigerator. She knew he would find it for sure if she put it there. She was out shopping and visiting but she’d prepared him some sandwiches for lunch, so he wouldn’t have to stand much on his sore leg. Even so he managed to bang it painfully.
He popped a pain pill, put in an old film noir movie, and lay down on the couch. Somewhat buzzed from the medication he became immersed in the movie and enjoyed it so much he watched two and a half more before he fell asleep.
Mick was awake, watching a slasher movie on his big screen tv. His focus and intensity made him a beacon to Mike, a promise of excitement like he’d never felt before, something he could experience nowhere else. He went straight there.
Everything felt right. Mick still had three more days of vacation from his job in a building supply store, but if nothing unforeseen occurred to foil his plans Mick was sure that tonight would be the night. This anticipation was part of the thrill. It would build through the day, and climax at zero hour. He would enjoy every minute of it.
Ruth shook Mike awake, shook him again as he started drifting off, and said, “I think your dreaming is becoming dangerous.”
“Don’t be silly.” He didn’t bother sitting up. “How can it be dangerous?”
“For one thing, you’re too obsessed with it.”
He knew what she meant. “That doesn’t make it dangerous.”
“Maybe not, but you seem to be sleeping all the time.”
“I was awake all morning and I do need lots of rest while my leg heals.”
She shook her head. “It’s more than just that. When I came in just now you were so immersed in one of those dreams I was afraid I couldn’t wake you up, and that’s not right.”
“You might have a point there,” he conceded, well aware of the dream that held him so rapt, “But it’s nothing to worry about.” He folded his arms behind his head and settled back into the pillows on the couch. “I don’t even remember all of them anymore, there are so many, with just minor differences from my everyday life. In some of them I’m just laying in a strange bed in the dark, not sleeping, even though I’m asleep here.” That was true enough, except for his contact with Mick, which he did not want to talk about with Ruth. That was too private, too intimate, to share. No way she could understand.
“I still don’t like it.” She grabbed his hand, squeezed it. “If I worry too much about you it’s only because I love you.”
“Well stop worrying,” he said gruffly. “I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?”
So she fixed him dinner, and she beat him a couple of times at Scrabble and he beat her a couple of times at cribbage and then she was tired and ready for bed. All the time Mike spent with his wife he had been aware that Mick was getting ready, putting things in motion. He wanted to be there, to experience the thrill of anticipation every step of the way, and he was missing all that, but it was still hours before midnight, and that would be the best part.
Finally, after he took his evening pain pill, he kissed Ruth good night, settled himself, and fell asleep before she did, even though he wasn’t very tired. Or maybe he just drifted into a more receptive state.
Mick was sitting in a parked car, looking down a street that looked familiar to Mike. He recognized the garish sign of an old strip club, faded from its former glory, but still struggling gamely. Mick knew it too, and it sent him down memory lane. To Mike’s surprise it was the same lane he was on, taking him back to that night fifteen years ago when he had been thrown out of that bar because he was one year underage and his fake ID hadn’t been good enough.
Shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, he walked away from the entrance to the stripper bar. He heard a girl laughing at him and glanced her way, annoyed, but she looked good doing it, with her long bare legs, barely covered breasts and heavily made-up face. “Whatsa matter sonny, too young to see the show?”
Flushing even redder he said nothing, just faced forward and kept walking.
“What’s wrong, you don’t like women?”
Mike remembered that woman that night. Under his breath he’d called her a bitch but he didn’t respond to her taunts, he just swallowed his pride and walked to another strip joint down the street, where the doorman hadn’t taken a second glance at his fake ID card.
Mick stopped in his tracks and turned around with something to say but the woman had one shoulder strap off and a nipple was peaking at him. He couldn’t look away.
“Like what you see?” She cupped the half-naked breast in one hand and came up to him. She took his hand and placed it on her clothed breast. It was the first time he’d ever touched a woman like that. The curve and the weight and the fullness of it thrilled him in a way he had never imagined. With his other hand he pulled down the top of her dress and cupped the naked breast, feeling all that had thrilled him with the other hand, but also the warmth and smoothness of her skin. And when he moved his hands the pleasure multiplied.
A car door opened and a gruff voice said, “Hey buddy, what do you think you’re doing with my girlfriend?”
Mick jerked his hands away but it was too late. The man unfolded from the car and stepped up beside his woman. He stood a foot taller and a foot wider than Mick, who couldn’t think of anything to say that might possibly placate this behemoth.
The man slapped Mick hard, scattering his thoughts and filling his head with pain. The backhand hurt worse, and then he was pushed so hard he reeled across the sidewalk and slammed into the brick wall. Before he could catch his breath or balance the man followed up with a brutal punch to his stomach that dropped him to the sidewalk, curled up in pain and gasping for breath.
He saw the man walk away, he heard the woman laughing, he saw the gleam in her eyes as she looked down at him, enjoying what she saw, drinking in his pain and humiliation.
Something inside him snapped, like a mental circuit breaker had just been severely overloaded. A red fury overrode his pain. He sucked in a long, long breath of air, gathered himself together, and launched across the sidewalk at the man as he opened his car door. Caught by surprise, the man bounced off his car and started to slide. Mick grabbed his head and smashed it as hard as he could against the door frame. The man went limp and Mick pushed him into the car as he fell, then tucked his feet in and closed the door.
The woman stood frozen throughout. He was grinning as he looked up to meet her eyes. When he took a step toward her she bolted across the street but he broke into a run and followed. He caught up to her and gave her a shove that sent her flying off balance. As she struggled to her feet he grabbed her and pushed her into a nearby alley.
He had intended to just slap her around a bit but he discovered that he had a raging hard on and he wanted her. The terror in her eyes just made him want her more. He didn’t care what she wanted anymore. She had started this and he intended to finish it. He slapped her and tore her clothes off and had his way with her. Her struggles made it all that much sweeter.
The intensity of the memory, almost like reliving it, showed Mike that Mick dwelt on it too much. This Mick guy was who he could have become if he had taken a different path to the present, and that was a scary thought because Mike could see how Mick had been sent down the sociopathic path, a path he himself had been close to taking a number of times when his anger had threatened to burst out.
Their paths had diverged from this single incident. In Mick’s life he had grown to feel the urge to kill, an urge so strong now it was almost a need. At first he had tried to resist but after all these years and a dozen kills he no longer tried to resist because he liked it and looked forward to it.
Now Mike had joined him and found himself liking this path too, hooked on the unequaled thrill it gave him.
Mick backed his car
almost the full length of the alley, then parked the car out of sight behind a garbage bin. He left the keys in the ignition but pulled partway out so the alarm wouldn’t bong, and took up his position in the shadow at the mouth of the alley, right at the corner of the building.
While Mick stalked his prey Mike was riding in the front seat, seeing everything through his eyes, feeling everything he did, experiencing it with his brain and mind, losing his own identity in the intensity of Mick’s emotions, his high, the intense buzz he got from stalking and killing.
Mick took his switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open, then closed it and flicked it open again just to hear the satisfying snick, then stood waiting patiently.
He was focused, in tune with his victim. He didn’t need to peer around the corner to see if she was coming, he knew she would be, just as she did five nights a week at the same time. He only had to wait a couple of minutes before he heard her coming. This was it. She was close, only a few steps away. Nothing could stop him now.
At precisely the right moment he stepped out in front of her and she stopped to avoid a collision. He slashed her arm. His blade was razor sharp and the cut was small, so it probably didn’t even hurt yet, but he liked to cut his target right away, so she could see the knife and feel it, see her own blood, and know he wasn’t afraid to cut her. He drank in the horrified look on her face when she saw the blood flowing from the cut on her arm, and he smiled when she looked up at his face, into his eyes, and he saw her horror grow.
He grabbed her by the arm with his free hand and said, “I’ll cut you deeper if you scream, and if you try to run away I’ll chase you down and cut your throat. Now come along quietly and you won’t be hurt.” She came meekly, stumbling as he hurried her along. They always cooperated to avoid getting cut again, and that was part of the fun for Mick, because no matter how much they cooperated he always cut them more, because he liked to see them bleed. But by the time they figured that out it was too late for them.
He pushed her through the driver’s door and climbed into the car after her. “Put your seat belt on,” he said as he locked the doors. Wordlessly, she complied. He started the car and drove away. He had a nice, secluded spot picked out, where only he would hear her screams.
Mike witnessed what Mick thought, shared what he felt, but despite the closeness of their link Mike’s aversion to violence kept him from participating fully in Mick's twisted enjoyment. Sure he could be caught up in the newly-discovered thrill of stalking the girl, but to actually cut her and see her blood flowing did not appeal to him. Mike fought free of the intoxication, no longer partaking of the rush Mick was still feeling.
He was in Mick’s body and mind, but he wasn’t Mick and wasn’t like him. Despite their similarities and their common past, they now had many differences. He didn’t share Mick’s sadistic pleasures. This was Mick’s life, not his. He could not go through with a rape and murder, and he couldn’t let Mick go through with it either.
Mike had to save the girl, but what could he do? They were still in the city limits but traffic was light. If he acted quickly he could stop the car and unlock her door, giving the girl a chance to flee while Mike tried to hold Mick back.
Mike stomped on the brakes and the car slowed almost to a stop before Mick reasserted himself and took back control. He seemed to be aware of Mike now and Mike got the clear message that tonight was the night and Mick wasn’t going to let anything stop him. Mick pushed. Mick’s will was too strong and Mike’s connection was weakened by his revulsion. He couldn’t hold on.
Mike woke with a start in his own body.
He lay awake in bed with his wife Ruth sleeping beside him. Unless he did something that woman was going to die. He tried telling himself that she was in an alternate world so she wasn’t real so her life didn’t matter, but he remained totally unconvinced. She was just as real in her world as he was in his. It was up to him to save her, and every other woman Mick might choose to kill in the future.
The only way he could possibly do anything to help her was if he was there in his dreams, as he still called them, and the only way to get there was to fall asleep, but he had been sleeping a lot lately and in his current agitated state there was no way he could fall asleep again.
Unless he had help. In the back of the bathroom medicine cabinet he found a small bottle of sleeping pills, left over from his wife when she’d had trouble sleeping a couple of years ago. Take two, the bottle said, so he popped four for good measure. That should be enough to put him out, but not so much as to be life-threatening.
He went back to bed and tried to relax but he was so anxious it didn’t work. He worried frantically that he wouldn’t get to sleep, that he wouldn’t have a chance to save the woman, but his thoughts eventually slowed down and after twenty minutes he began to feel drowsy. He let the drowsiness take him down.
He was back in Mick’s head, but he had taken longer than he thought and there was no time to spare. The woman was laying on the ground, three-quarters naked and bleeding from more cuts. Mick stood over her, still dressed, but Mike could feel the raging hardon in his pants, could sense the anticipation of the imminent rape, finishing with another sweet little murder.
The woman did have a beautiful body, but sobbing and trembling with fear were not turn-ons for Mike, not even with the leakage from Mick’s excited thoughts. Mick didn’t know Mike was back, he didn’t know he had an audience, but that would change as soon as Mike tried to exert control. He had one chance for one quick, decisive action.
In his lifetime Mike had occasionally sunk into bouts of depression, sometimes so bad he contemplated suicide. Mike could sense that Mick sometimes shared those feelings, but whereas Mike had taken antidepressants, Mick had turned his depression into anger and gone hunting, culminating in a moment like this, with a bloody blade over a cowering girl.
But Mike could detect the self-loathing under Mick’s exhilaration, the ever-present depression lurking not so far beneath the surface. Mike took that, added his own most suicidal impulses and, before Mick had a chance to think, tightened his hand on the knife and plunged it into his own stomach and gave it a twist.
The twist was the most painful thing Mike had ever experienced. Mick tried to push him out but the sleeping pills wouldn’t let him wake up and he was fixated on this alternate self, clinging to the connection despite the pain. Mick, reeling in pain and disbelief, pulled the knife out. That’s when the girl, forgotten for a couple of seconds, kicked him squarely in the nuts. He dropped the knife and fell to his knees while she scrambled up and ran away, disappearing into the darkness.
He overcame the pain of the groin kick enough to take a few steps in pursuit, but with his knife wound he knew he would never catch her. That wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Mike felt Mick’s panic, and it felt good, but he shared the pain in stomach and testicles and he wondered for the first time if he was going to get out of this. What would happen to him if he was still here when Mick died?
“Mike, wake up.”
Another slap, leaving its sting on his other cheek. He dragged up an eyelid that seemed weighted with sand, saw the worried face of Ruth. He was Mike, back home in bed, he wasn’t Mick, bleeding in a park in the dark.
“Don’t you go to sleep on me.”
But he was so tired.
The pain was still there and he felt himself weakening. Maybe he should have left the knife in. He had to get to a doctor.
He made it to his car and fumbled for his keys. Mike, inspired, helped him fish them out of his pocket and then, while Mick’s guard was down, and his own control was strong, he threw them into the bushes. Mick cursed him and set off to search for them in the dark. Mike expected to be pushed away again but this time Mick held onto him, his last act of defiance to take his killer with him. Mike tried to break free but the influence of the pills combined with Mick’s hatred kept him bound.
Mick fumbled around in the bushes but
he didn’t know where to look and it was too dark to see the keys anyway. He stumbled and fell, and didn’t have the strength to get up again. He lay there for several minutes, almost too weak to care.
No, that was Mick, who wanted him to die too. He was Mike, he had a wife calling him.
Slapping his face.
“Stop,” he said.
“Drink this.”
She helped him get the cup to his lips. He sipped tea, hot and sweet and very strong. It revived him so he took more. After two cups the caffeine and his willpower kept him conscious and he started talking.
When he was done Ruth looked at him for a couple of seconds, then said, “Maybe you should stop taking those pain pills.”
He chuckled and said, “You couldn’t force another one down my throat. This may not be the best life I could have had, but as long as I’m here with you it’s good enough for me.”
She kissed him. He kissed her back.
The cast didn’t interfere very much.
THE END
FAERIE BAD by David J. Wing
It was fair to say that of all the rum soaked, vodka stained, gin joints in all the worlds, the ones in Faerie took the biscuit. Waiting there at the bar, I knew I was in for some fun. The band played a fun, folksy tune; the flappy mouthed barmaid kept giving me the eye and across the room some Ogre-type fellow seemed non-too pleased about it.
The ale went down well, with a tingle. Then she came in. The room shushed and watched as she made her bee-line to my stool. The barmaid dropped off my shoulder and the Ogre huffed in the corner and went back to harassing some Leprechaun. Her legs never touched the ground, her hair damn near floated and when she finally stood in front of me some eon later her, voice crawled over my arms and down my back.
“Hello, Mr Cooper.”
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