The Counterfeit

by Nate Allen

I’m thinking about the light that broke through the ceiling in my hotel room; and I’m thinking about the few words I said when I was in the lobby that led me back where I came from.

  What I failed to consider was the difference between Heaven’s light and the light that belongs to the counterfeit. And maybe I am in some inescapable pocket, affected by the nothingness behind me and suffering the strange side effects. Maybe only Heaven’s light can show me where Evan is. And maybe the trail that showed me which hallway to go down when I was in the lobby was meant as a trail of bread crumbs.

  The light that came from the ceiling is the only foreign substance this counterfeit has encountered. And I have to wonder, even hypothesize, that considering how close I am to Hell, maybe I’ve been playing a rigged game all along. And maybe the reason that the light broke through the ceiling wasn’t only to give me strength but to attach itself to me so I could call upon it later on.

  “You are the light of the world.” I whisper. And immediately, light appears all around me, suspended in the air as countless flakes creating a trail. I stop running and look behind me. There are two bright, uneven trails of light. And the empty darkness, unable to flee backwards, disappears into the nearest two open doorways and they slam shut at once. And what’s left in this hallway is clear direction.

  Up ahead I see where my room is. A bright trail leads from the center of the door and back towards the way I came from. It’s not far away at all, maybe six or seven doors. And as I begin to walk forward again, it’s clear that I am already getting closer. The emptiness behind me must have been erasing every step of my progress forward by having me run in place. Or maybe time and eternity was overlapping and I was left somewhere in the middle.

  Even though I continue to walk forward, I clasp the timer in my left pocket with fear. The last time the reality was distorted nearly a whole day had disappeared from the clock. If I really was in between the two, who knows how much time has passed?

  I grab it and look down at the green glow-in-the-dark numbers: 00 D 06 H 53 M 34 S.

  Nearly three hours ran off this time. I can’t put it back in my pocket. Even though the light is in bright streaks around me, I can’t take the chance. If they get close again, it won’t take long at all for his time to expire. If they affect my progress once more, I may not have enough time to reach him.

  While my feet continue walking forward, I look back. The light is beginning to slowly fade near the opposite end of the hallway. It almost looks like it’s being scrubbed from the surface.

  The light will only be here to hold them away for a time…

  I run forward, the urgency of the moment beating through every part of me like a loud drum. My steps are long and the doors on both sides of me pass by with a few strides. I am approaching the room I started in. It’s maybe thirty feet from me now. Without the streaks of light, the room I came from would be just another door in the darkness. The little bit of hallway light that remains is two doors down from my room.

  My fast steps quickly bring me up to and then past the trail of light that curves into the door. And as I leave the trail of Heaven’s light behind me and step toward the last light that remains of this world, I see that the hallway doesn’t come to an end up ahead but continues on in the same darkness. There are only two lights that still glow in this hallway. And their cast falls onto one door on the right, two doors down from the room I started in.

  This has to be where Evan is.

  Exposure

  1

  The last few steps I take bring me out of the darkness and into the small section of hallway light that remains. His door doesn’t have a number. His door is no different than any I’ve seen on the way. They are identical in every way, meaning I would have run right past it if it hadn’t been highlighted.

  I step up to the only door that the light is hitting and knock, quickly fishing for the words I’m going to say to Evan. I know that the world I see is different from the one he does. And I know the rules of exposure leave little room for me to provide him undeniable proof that Jesus exists. I look down at the timer in my hand as I hear footsteps approaching. Time is normal for the moment. Only a few minutes have gone by. I put it back in my pocket.

  The door opens. A pale man with a greasy mess of dark brown hair is standing nearly six inches above me, with his right hand rubbing his neck.

  “Who are you?” his voice is a soft rasp before he clears it.

  “I’m staying in the room two doors down.” I don’t know what to say next. I close my eyes and sigh.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Honesty is the only way I can reach him. I have to talk about the scream I heard last night. “I don’t know how to bring it up.” I open my eyes to find him standing in the doorway like a man already defeated. His extremely thin frame makes his black suit jacket and the dirty white shirt beneath it hang on him like he is made of plastic pipes. There is no shape to him. His black dress pants scrunch up around his waist, where he clearly has had to pop several new holes in his belt in order for his pants to even stay on him.

  “What are you talking about?” no longer rubbing his neck, he uses his bone thin wrist as a stand to keep his large head from tipping to the side. He is malnourished and barely looks human. His green eyes, though bloodshot and bulging, tell me that he is tired. They tell me he is sick of fighting and nearing his end.

  “I heard a woman’s scream come from this room last night.” I look at him and then away. “Is everything okay?”

  He pulls his hand away from his neck for a moment and I see a fat, pale yellow maggot embedded into his skin, stretching from his right collar bone up under his right ear lobe. Fat and swollen, it sits on him the healthiest member. He is skin and bones; it is thriving.

  “No.” he says as he looks back into his room. “I lost my temper. I started hitting her and I couldn’t stop. She laughed at me. They always laugh at me.” He starts to scratch near the maggot as his eyes tremble.

  “I was never good enough for my wife. She left and moved onto someone better.”

  He blinks like a robot trying to compute the information. “Did you ever hurt her?”

  “There were times when I wanted to, but I was able to control myself just enough to make sure my fists always went through a wall or bruised my own face. I was in control enough to direct it elsewhere.”

  “How?” the question is sad. As he continues to scratch near the maggot on his neck, I understand his struggle. It is an itch he can’t scratch, a foreign member he can never seem to satisfy.

  “I don’t know.” And I don’t. There were many times when Angie would make me feel so small and stupid that I wanted nothing more than to hurt her, to make her feel the way she made me feel so often. There were many times I punched myself harder because it was the only thing I could do to keep from turning it on her. “I guess I knew what it would lead to if I didn’t control it in some way. I knew that once I started hitting I wouldn’t be able to stop, so I never let myself reach that point. I knew that if I hit her once, I wouldn’t stop until she was dead.”

  His lip quivers for a moment as he breathes out heavily. “I wish I could’ve stopped myself. But, she knew just the right buttons to push. They all did. It was almost like they were in on it together, because they all laughed at me for the same reasons. And they wouldn’t stop no matter how many times I asked them to. They kept laughing, until I start hitting. Then they scream for help, but there’s no hope for them once I start hitting. I don’t stop until they are quiet for good.” His scratching is closer to scraping, as he digs in deeper with each motion.

  “Have you told anybody else these things?” I ask as I look back from the way I came. The trail of light is fading moment by moment. The creatures will be coming back soon.

  “No.”

  “Then, what made you tell me?”

  “I wanted to tell somebody while I’m still here, because I won’t be around much longer.”

  “You’re dying?” How d
oes he know?

  “Something like that.” He slightly smiles as he starts to shut the door. “Thanks for listening.”

  I stop the door with my hand before it closes. “Don’t kill yourself. I know you hate yourself for what you’ve done. I know you want it to be over. This doesn’t have to be the end of your life.”

  Only half of him is looking at me through the cracked door. “You don’t know how dark it goes.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I was the one you chose to tell your secret to. Don’t make me live with the knowledge that I ultimately set the stage for your suicide. Give me a chance to do something about it.”

  “All you’ve done is rob me of the first happy moment I’ve had for as long as I can remember. I was at peace with the idea. You gave that to me. And now you want to take it away?”

  “No. I want to offer you more.”

  He opens the door back up and steps aside to invite me in. “You aren’t going to like what you see in here.”

  Before stepping into his room I look down the hallway one last time. The streaks of light are faint and only continue to fade. It won’t be long at all…

  2

  Evan closes the door behind me.

  “More?” he says as he walks past me, no longer the bone thin man that he was. “Whenever happiness is promised usually some religious pitch is involved. Please tell me that isn’t what this is.” He turns to face me. This man is much