by Harvey Click
Monday he called in sick and went to see his doctor. He didn’t think the doctor would be able to help him, but it occurred to him if he was going to be sick for very long he should try to get on disability in order to pay his bills. The doctor took a blood sample and told him to come back in two days.
Tuesday he went to work, though his head was reeling. A couple people in his area told him he looked tired, but nobody else noticed. Sitting all day in a cubicle wasn’t a way to make friends who would notice if he was sick or even dead.
Each night he tried to stay awake long enough to hear if his car pulled out of the garage, and those nights when he was able to stay awake long enough he always heard it. Some nights he’d hear her returning hours later, and one morning his car still wasn’t there when he got up for work, though she was back by the time he finished his shower.
He hated those hours when she was away from the house, when he’d awake in the middle of the night and find her room empty. He almost wished she’d bring her one-night stands home with her; at least then he’d know where she was. Before long she started doing that some nights, and then he knew he’d wished for the wrong thing. He’d lie awake in his bedroom, hearing the sounds of their lovemaking in the next room, and his agony was excruciating. Later he might hear the man shuffling down the stairs as if half dead, and then hear a car driving away, but some nights her lover didn’t leave, and as he ate his breakfast and got ready for work he knew some man was still there in Julie’s bedroom.
He looked older now. He was thirty-three but looked as if he’d lived at least forty-five rough years, and when he showered he noticed his hair falling out and clogging the drain. Though Julie had told him he’d recover his strength, or at least most of it, this didn’t seem to be happening. His joints ached and many days he had barely enough energy to sit in his cubicle and stare at his computer screen. More people at work, including his boss, were noticing his sickly appearance. His doctor referred him to a specialist, who decided he was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, and he filled out forms to apply for disability.
His biggest regret about looking and feeling older was concern that he’d no longer be attractive to Julie. He’d never been a handsome man, and now he looked haggard and gaunt. He knew many nights, if not most, she enjoyed the company of other men, and though he’d seen none of them he imagined they were all young and handsome. There was no way he could compete with them, even if she left them looking as worn out as he was, so to keep her interest he bought her gifts he couldn’t afford.
He began to think he might be dying, and one night while he shivered on the sofa with a deep chill he asked her, “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like?” she asked, fitting his comforter more closely around his shoulders.
“You know—the other side.”
“It’s pleasant,” she said. “It’s nothing to fear.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“No. I don’t like to think about it.”
“If it’s so pleasant, why did you want to come back? I mean, I remember you saying that in this world everything devours everything else.”
She looked sharply at him, as if surprised by the question. “I guess I like to devour,” she said.
His illness only increased his need for her, and his greatest fear was that she’d leave. He couldn’t imagine facing his wretched existence without her. She was kind to him in her way. She cooked his meals and cleaned his house. When he felt particularly weak she nursed him, always wearing her rubber gloves and, to his great disappointment, never doing anything to satisfy his desire. He believed she took pleasure in his frustration, often wearing nothing or else scraps of lingerie so revealing they only whetted his appetite, and despite his illness his appetite raged constantly.
It raged most intensely when he awoke in the middle of the night and could hear that she’d brought another lover home, as she did more and more often now. He would lie in the darkness of his bedroom tormented by the sounds of their lovemaking but clinging like a voyeur to every whisper and moan. Night after night he was sorely tempted to tiptoe to her bedroom door and open it just a crack so he could watch.
One night he did. The sounds had been going on for half an hour, and his jealousy and arousal grew so intense that he couldn’t restrain himself. He quietly opened her door a little way and peered inside. The dim lamp on her nightstand was on, and he saw Julie crouching on top of her naked lover.
Except Julie was no longer human. The female creature had bluish-gray skin ridged all over with something like snake scales. Its head was hairless and similarly scaled, its ears were pointed, and when it turned its head to smile at him he saw sharp teeth and intense green eyes that simmered like coals.
The creature turned its head back and continued its lovemaking. Terrified but too dumbfounded to move, he stood and watched. The naked man lying beneath the thing was scarcely moving, as if unconscious, but eventually he jerked in a frantic convulsion and gasped loudly with pleasure or pain. The creature rolled off him swiftly like a snake, sat on the edge of the bed, and smiled at the voyeur standing in the doorway.
“Do I frighten you?” she asked.
He was too astonished to speak, but perhaps he wasn’t so astonished after all, because he realized in the back of his mind he’d suspected something like this all along. He stepped a couple feet into the room and stared at her lover, who was unconscious and breathing weakly. He looked barely alive.
“Is he going to die?” he asked.
She shrugged and said, “Probably. But don’t worry, he’ll live long enough to get up and drive away, and even if he makes it home and survives he won’t remember where he was tonight. In fact, he won’t remember anything about this night.”
“Have your other lovers died?”
“Not all of them. I always read the local paper online to find out. Authorities are wondering if some new virus is going around.”
While they talked she was transforming back into the woman he knew. It was a slow process and strange to watch, the scaly blue-gray skin melting into pale smooth skin, the lovely blond hair emerging from her scalp like golden threads spun in a fairy tale.
“You didn’t look like this when we made love,” he said.
“No. When we were together I didn’t fully let myself go. I held back.”
She was Julie again, beautiful and naked and gleaming with sweat. She bent over her lover and said, “Get up now, get dressed, and go home.”
The man opened his bloodshot eyes, sat up with difficulty, and began pulling his clothes on, very awkwardly as if he couldn’t quite remember how to dress. She helped him zip his pants and tie his shoes, but his shirt was still unbuttoned as he shuffled to the stairs like a zombie. A couple times they could hear him falling, but eventually they heard the front door opening.
“Will he be able to drive home?”
“Partway, at least. Don’t worry, he won’t be found anywhere near your house. You won’t get in any sort of trouble.”
He sat beside her on the bed, too weak to stand. “You never were Julie Long, were you?”
“No. I know nothing about her except what her tombstone says.” She smiled and said, “You must really hate me.”
“Why did you make yourself look like her?”
“I didn’t. In fact I have no idea what she looked like. I made myself look like the woman in your drawings, because I assumed you’d be attracted to her.”
“Why did you come to me? Was I somehow attractive to you?”
“Oh yes. Very attractive.”
“But I’m not good looking, and I wasn’t even before this illness.”
“Your looks weren’t what attracted me. It was your nature. I could tell you’re a man who likes to be used.”
“You’re a succubus,” he said. “I’ve read about them.”
“It doesn’t matter what you call me. You’re afraid of me now, and I’ll leave you in peace. In the morning I’ll be gone.”
He wept for a long time, his now-frail shoulders shaking with all the regrets of his life welling up inside him like lava. When at last he was able to speak, he said, “Please don’t leave me. I won’t be able to live without you.”
“As you like,” she said.
She stayed, and he grew sicker and more depressed. He spent most of his hours in bed, and his only pleasure was when she’d come to his room to sit with him or to nurse him with a cool washcloth. She was doing this one evening when he said, “I want you to use me.”
“It will make you even weaker,” she said.
“No, I mean I want you to use me up. I can no longer bear this kind of life. I want you to take everything out of me.”
She smiled, took off her clothes, and climbed on top of him.
“Show me your true face,” he said. “I want to see you as you really are.”
Her smooth skin turned blue-gray and scaly, her golden hair vanished, and intense green demonic eyes stared down at him. He thought she was even more beautiful now. The bed rocked with their lovemaking, and he felt an arctic chill filling his entire body while his life drained out of him.
For maybe the first time in his life he felt fully happy.
***
He was in a pale gray featureless void. He had never believed in heaven or hell, but he supposed this must be hell or maybe some sort of purgatory. He had never wanted heaven, much less hell, and he felt miserably disappointed. He had wanted extinction, absolute nothingness, and he believed he had probably wanted it all of his life. Was that too much to ask for? He had never asked for life, and had taken little pleasure in it, and it didn’t seem fair that he still had to exist, possibly forever, alone with his regrets and remorse.
Because the void was featureless, it took him a long while to realize he could see in all directions at once, see a vast sphere of gray nothingness, as if he had eyes all over his body, except he had no body. But “a long while” really meant nothing because nothing seemed to happen here and therefore time didn’t seem to exist, for what was time other than the interval between events?
But after another long while in this timeless void, he began to perceive many dim spots of light like faint stars in the great distance, though distance was a meaningless concept because he had no idea of his own size or the size of the dim spots; they might be lightyears away or mere inches.
After another long while he came to believe they were moving closer to him, and he assumed they were other souls drawing closer out of curiosity. Maybe they wanted to greet him, though he doubted this place offered pleasantries such as conversation or comradery.
After another long while a few were close enough to be seen clearly. They looked like pulsating transparent membranes filled with dimly glowing gas or liquid. One of them moved swiftly toward him and touched him. He felt a chill as it pressed against him, and then a deeper chill when something like a tendril punctured his own membrane and reached inside. And then, quite suddenly, many of them, a great horde, were pressed against him, puncturing him all over and drawing away his essence.
Soon they were all over him, crushing him and suffocating him, and he felt a great contentment and even joy as they sucked away his soul.
The Persistence of Memory
Sylvia was brushing her silver-gray hair when she saw the dark-eyed man’s reflection behind her shoulder in the dresser mirror. Though she knew he wasn’t really in her bedroom, she turned and looked anyway because his image was so vivid it was difficult to believe he wasn’t there.
She’d been seeing him often lately, sometimes reflected in mirrors, sometimes standing on the sidewalk in front of her house and gazing into her window, though whenever she went outside to call to him nobody was there. He’d first appeared about a month ago, scaring her witless when she’d looked in the mirror above her dashboard and spotted him sitting in the backseat of her car. Since then she hadn’t driven, which was maybe just as well because she was becoming too absent minded to feel safe behind the wheel.
He looked about thirty with glossy black hair and piercing eyes just as dark as his hair. He was handsome, well built, and always dressed in an elegant black suit and white shirt. He looked familiar, very familiar, though she couldn’t recall ever having met him.
The doorbell rang. She put down her hairbrush and hurried downstairs to let Rudy in. He was neatly dressed and perfectly groomed as always, standing on the porch smiling his beautiful boyish smile, as open and innocent as a fresh spring morning, and in his right hand he held a spray of lilies of the valley.
Sylvia smiled and took them. “Oh really, Rudy, I’m too old to accept flowers from a young gentleman.”
“Nonsense. You’re younger than some twenty-year-olds I know. Am I late?”
She didn’t need to look at her wristwatch to know he wasn’t. Rudy was always on time, always cheerful, always considerate. Someday he’d make some lucky woman a wonderful husband, though whenever Sylvia gingerly touched on the subject of girlfriends Rudy said he didn’t intend to become serious about any of them until he was finished with his engineering degree and settled in a good job. That wouldn’t be much longer; he had only two more semesters to go.
He followed her to the kitchen, where she put the lilies in a small vase and pointed at the ice cooler. “Maybe you can lug that, since you’re strong as an ox.”
Rudy lifted it and said, “Feels like you’ve got an ox in here.”
“A small ham,” she said, “potato salad, and plenty of it since one of us here’s a growing boy, deviled eggs, fruit salad, two huge pieces of cherry pie for said boy and one small sliver for the ancient crone.”
“Grandma, you’re the woman of my dreams and you certainly know the way to my heart. That wouldn’t be homemade pie by any chance, would it?”
She gave him a friendly scowl and said, “Have you ever known me to buy such a thing? And don’t forget that thermos of iced tea to wash all these empty calories down.”
She grabbed her purse and the small wicker basket containing plates and silverware, opened the front door for him since his hands were full, and followed him out to his snazzy red secondhand Trans Am. “We can take my car and save wear and tear on your chick-mobile,” she said.
“That old thing? We don’t want to waste our whole day in a garage getting a new transmission, do we?”
He put the picnic supplies in the backseat and they were off. It was a lovely May day, just a little chilly but Sylvia had worn a wool cardigan sweater knowing he would want to take his own car and would want the sunroof open. Soon they were out of the city, heading east on Route 33, and the cool air smelled as fresh as Eden.
“So, Grandma, why this sudden urge to picnic in southern Ohio?” he asked.
“Not just any old place in southern Ohio,” she said. “I have a specific spot in mind. It’s just outside Athens, though I’ll let you stroll around town for a while first to ogle the cute college girls.”
“I don’t need to drive ninety miles to do that,” he said. “There are plenty of college girls in Columbus. Not that I’m complaining—just curious.”
“I’m getting up in the years and I’ve decided it’s time to explore my past.”
“What does Athens have to do with your past? I mean, you were born in Columbus, weren’t you?”
“That’s the story my step-parents told everyone. They didn’t want people to think of me as a stepchild, so they passed me off as their own.”
“Step-parents?” He stared at her. “You mean—”
“Watch the road, Rudy. This mighty muscle car moves along at a pretty smart pace. And yes, I mean your great grandparents are in fact your step-great grandparents. Rudy, for God’s sake, please look at the road.”
He did. “Well, gee,” he said. “So my favorite grandmother has some secrets up her sleeve. Did Granddad know you were adopted?”
“Of course he did. Henry and I didn’t keep any secrets from each other.”
“So you were born in Athens?”
“Sorry.” He smiled his beautiful boyish smile and said, “No wonder you’re my favorite grandmother. You have more mysteries about you than Agatha Christie. So we’re on a quest for clues, are we, searching for your mysterious past? But why now? Why didn’t we do this years ago?”
She smiled back at him and said, “Because years ago you were in diapers and couldn’t drive. And for that matter, I’m not convinced you should be allowed to now, since you pay no attention to speed limits or the road. But there’s another reason—for the first time in my life I’ve started to see glimpses of my past. At least that’s what I assume they are. They’re incredibly vivid images that I can’t place, so I think they must come from my early childhood. I think old age is beginning to cause that black curtain of amnesia to fray and fall apart.”
He wanted to know what images, so she described them: the dark-eyed man, a small cemetery beside a small church, and the winding, hilly road she’d been found walking on.
“So we’re going to picnic in a cemetery?” he asked.
“Why not? They tend to be quiet and restful places.”
“How do you plan to find it? And if you do, how will you know it’s the right one?”
“I’ll know because I’ve seen it so vividly I’ve been able to make out the names on one of the tombstones. George Jeremy Ivers and his wife Marie Harmony. I even know their birthdates and death dates.”
“Grandma, you should have told me the names. I could have done a search and maybe found out where they’re buried.”
“Oh, I think we’ll find the cemetery. I know the name of the road I was found on, and I suspect the cemetery isn’t very far from there. You don’t mind getting a little bit lost in the hills, do you?”