In Nightmares We're Alone

by Greg Sisco

  Daphne. The picture that broke our family. Rose never trusted me after that. Three months of sleeping on the couch and asking for forgiveness and one day she wakes up and says ‘Fuck it, I’m done’ and that was the end of it.

  I never knew it started with Martin. No one ever told me.

  “I never cheated on your mother. The two of us tried to make it work, we really tried.”

  “Mom did. You didn’t.”

  He brought friends home from school sometimes when we were fighting. We tried to get it together, but there was so much anger in the house at that point. First grade. The first time the poor kid had ever struck up relationships with other boys his age and if he tried to spend time with them we embarrassed him. At best, we snubbed each other. At worst, we shut the bedroom door and screamed and cursed and he and his friends turned up the volume on the television.

  When he wanted to go to their houses, we used to say no. We started saying yes because we didn’t want him around while we threatened each other and reminded one another how we wished we’d never met, while we competed for the most cutting, scathing slew of words and surprised ourselves with how well we both played the game. It was better he not be around for it. We started telling him to go to friends’ houses even when he didn’t ask.

  But all the love in the other houses, parents making snacks for Martin and his friends while they played out at the pool or jumped on the trampoline, taking him to arcades and feeding him pizza and punch, letting him pick what video games to rent… Rose found out later that Martin stopped going to their houses. He stopped having friends because they made him sad. When we told him to find friends to stay with for the day, he sat out in the park by himself feeling unloved.

  Nudie pictures started the fighting, but it took killing our son’s childhood for Rose to decide to move out.

  And it started with him. Maybe it all felt like he made it happen. Christ, I screwed us up.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “You’re right, it was mine. I was a loser. A terrible husband. I’m sorry you got born to parents who were shitty for each other. I’m sorry your dad wasn’t the one you needed. It happened to me too. Don’t let it be a family tradition. Don’t let it shape you like I did.”

  “No, I’m gonna be a good boyfriend. Macie already really likes me.” His voice is so vindictive. I wonder if I’ve ever been this spiteful. At the very least, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t when I was his age.

  “I give up, Martin,” I say. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do a better job. I hope in time you’ll see that I meant to.”

  There’s a mean-spirited groan on the other end of the line. “Later, dude.” A pause. “And Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He hangs up.

  I hang my horned and semi-human head in the living room and sob. I guess it all had to come out one day, but I wish it didn’t have to be this day.

  * * * * *

  “Today is the day I die,” said the lion to himself as he lay down in his cave. “I can fight no more.”

  As he took the weight off his paw, it felt nice to know he would never stand on it again with the thorn there to bother him. If someone came to save him, then he would accept the help gladly. He would swear his life to this being.

  But if no one came, he would lie on his side until his body gave way to starvation, and either way, he would never again feel the pain of the thorn in his paw.

  I spend a solid ninety minutes in the shower, mostly comatose. The amount of time it takes me to get my clothes off the tangled cluster of shit that is my body, I’m not crazy about the idea of trying to dress.

  My feet and hands, even a ways up my ankles and wrists, my skin is turning into something that resembles bark. Beyond that, there’s a green tint to my skin.

  The water feels good. It’s probably the plant in me that’s making me feel that, but I don’t give a shit anymore. An hour in the shower and I notice there’s a twig growing from my forearm that’s not coming out of any wound or crevasse in my body and I figure all bets are off.

  I catch my distorted reflection in the shower head. My hair has taken on a sickly green hue. Not just the hair on my head, but my chest, my armpits, my pubic hair. My dick is a shriveled thing hanging off my pelvis like rotten fruit. It looks like it might drop off and decay at any moment.

  I hang my head in the stream of the shower and vomit up either bile or sap, I’m not sure which.

  By the time I shut off the water and look at myself in the mirror it’s clear I’m not dressing for this date. Not even a robe. Maybe a towel at the most, but even that would be a trick to fold together with these fungal pincers I used to call hands.

  I guess we all got raised on fairy tales and there’s still a little of it secured behind our barriers of cynicism. The idea in my head last night, the vision of how this evening with Elaine would go, I thought I’d answer the door in my best suit with a bottle of wine in my hand. I’d cook her dinner, charm her, laugh with her, hold her. I’d look into those gorgeous brown eyes and get lost, tell her I was in awe of how beautiful I found her. I’d touch her hair as she turned away blushing and I’d kiss her cheek and her neck until she pushed me away laughing and told me to stop. And then a gentle kiss to tie things up. Soft. Eyes closed. No tongue for a solid five seconds until she submits, and even then, tasteful. Delicate.

  And when she kissed me the growths would stop. They’d fall to the floor or retract into my body and I’d feel as healthy and strong as ever. The kiss that broke the witch’s spell.

  But mirror, mirror on the wall, how you humble and appall.

  What I am is a naked twisted mass of sticks and skin, of flesh and moss and leaves and bone. The roots from my toes barely let me walk. Can I still speak? Even if I can, for how much longer?

  Tall, dark, and handsome, the girls used to say over and over, but two out of three won’t cut it. So much for charm and kisses and home cooking. She’ll still dream of me though. Probably for the rest of her life.

  Funny how visions of the future so rarely grow up to be recognizable.

  I order out for dinner. A nice French place. I ask them if I pay extra can they come over and set the table in my dining room and make it look romantic.

  I leave their payment on the table and stand back in the shadows of the hallway when two men from the restaurant come to set the table. I tell them I have scars and don’t like to be seen. They don’t seem overly interested. They have their money. They know their job. They don’t care whether I shake their hands when it’s done.

  When they go I ask them to leave the door unlocked. Elaine should be arriving in twenty minutes.

  I almost think of asking if they’d help me dress for a hundred dollars each, but I don’t want to see their reaction. I don’t want to watch two terrified men back against a wall and scream, or avert their eyes and gag and ask what the hell happened to me. I don’t want neighbors hearing them on the walk to their car talking about the freakish tree man they just helped to put clothes on.

  And what are the odds they could get pants or a shirt over these roots and branches and leaves anyway? On the off chance they managed, it probably wouldn’t make me any easier on the eyes to begin with. I might look worse. As I become more plant than human, it will be the human articles that look more freakish than the plant ones.

  The lion lay in the depths of the cave, his chin propped up on his leg, his eyes locked against all hope on the light at the end of the tunnel. And he waited. He waited for the savior on whom he could not give up hope, even though he knew what he hoped for was a miracle.

  I take a seat in a corner of the living room and wait. I stare at the door. I switch off the lights.

  * * * * *

  When the doorbell rings I yell, “Come in. It’s open.”

  It’s the only thing to do. Even if I could manage to turn the knob, it would be irresponsible to greet her like this without warning. She could faint, or scream, or run. If she’s going to
do something like that, she might as well at least see the lovely dinner I put out first.

  She walks into the house and flips on the lights in the foyer.

  “Casey?” she says. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” I say from a darkened corner of the living room, sitting in my chair.

  She makes a curious face. “What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

  “I don’t want to scare you,” I say. “But there’s something wrong with me.”

  Bad choice of words if you don’t want to scare somebody who’s alone with you in a dark room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want you to see me tonight until I’ve warned you. When you look at me I don’t want you to get scared. There’s just… something’s happening.”

  A sort of optimistic curiosity comes over her face and I realize she’s anticipating some kind of romantic surprise. Like I’ll emerge with a guitar and serenade her with a beautiful love song or something.

  Please don’t think that, Elaine. You’ll only make it worse.

  “My body,” I say. “It’s changing, sort of falling apart. It got really bad today. But I don’t want it to frighten you. I’m still me.”

  “What do you mean? Like a flesh-eating virus, or…?”

  “Kind of. Worse.”

  “Leprosy?” she jokes.

  “I’ll come to the light. Just please don’t run or scream. I know it’s bad, but… it’s just me.”

  “Okay.”

  It’s not easy to stand out of the chair. It takes me a long time. My body seems to snap and rustle as it straightens. The horror on Elaine’s face builds, her eyes widening and her throat tightening as I drag my roots across the carpet until I cross out of the shadows and into the light of the living room.

  She gasps softly and then stops breathing. She stares at me, frozen.

  I’m too treelike now for my nakedness to present a threat. My skin is all moss and bark and there are twigs and branches growing from my sides, my hips, my arms and shoulders. Roots stretch out of my toes and spread across the floor and the growths from my fingers extend into clusters of branches with blood-red flowers growing at the ends.

  “I brought you flowers,” I joke, holding one of my hands out to her.

  “Oh God,” she says. “Oh my God. Oh God.” She turns away, facing the couch. She puts a hand down on it to steady herself. After a moment she sits. “Oh God. Oh my God, Casey, oh my God.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s fucked up, right?”

  “Yeah,” she says, looking down and shaking her head. “Yes, that’s a good way of putting it.”

  “I, uh… I got us dinner.”

  She looks at the table and keeps shaking her head. “What happened? It’s been a day. How could…? What happened?”

  I try to shrug my shoulders but it’s tough to move them. “I’ve been tearing out the branches for a while whenever they grew. I just stopped.”

  “Do you need me to call somebody? A doctor or something?”

  “A topiarist maybe? Trim me back into something presentable?”

  She doesn’t laugh. “Somebody needs to help you.”

  “Only you can help me. They don’t grow as fast when you’re around. And they don’t hurt so bad.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Because I love you, maybe.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I’m starting to. Aren’t I?”

  She shakes her head. I can tell she wants to go.

  “Let’s have dinner,” I say. “It’s French food. Should be delicious.”

  “I’m not hungry,” says Elaine. “Not anymore.”

  “Pity,” I say. “I got a lot of food.”

  “Why did this happen to you?” she asks. “Something the dead did?”

  “No,” I say. “Maybe. I’m starting to think everything that’s ever happened is something the dead did. And their dead before them.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think everything is a cycle. A lot of bad things have happened to me. And I’ve done a lot of bad things. I lied to you. To everybody.” I take a breath. Now or never, I guess. “I can’t really talk to the dead. Never could.”

  There is a long silence.

  “You just… made it up?”

  “I stopped when this started happening. I’ve been a pretty shitty person most of my life, but I’m trying to get better.”

  She gets up from the couch and storms toward the door, then turns. “My daughter? My unborn daughter? You just told me those things to… for money?”

  I nod. “And because… I thought it would make you happy.”

  She puts her head in her hand, silently scolding herself for being stupid. “You’re a sick person,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “Look at me.”

  She does. While a moment ago she looked ready to run out, she has to stop now. It’s hard to abandon a naked tree-man who tells you he loves you and who probably won’t live through the night, even if he has been putting words in your unborn daughter’s mouth.

  “I canceled all of my appointments when this started. I used to steal from people and I quit that too. And I had women, meaningless relationships with women. I broke them all off. I thought maybe it was happening because I was a bad person, but I think it’s just happening. I think it’s just how it is. My only thought is maybe I’ve isolated myself and it’s happening because I’m alone.”

  “You said you had a son.”

  “I do. I called him today. The last thing he said to me was ‘fuck you.’ I think it’ll probably be the last thing he ever says to me.”

  Elaine looks sympathetic now. She pities me too much to be angry.

  “Why would he say that?”

  “We just fight sometimes. He tries to be a good kid but he’s had a rough time the past couple years. My divorce was messy. He went through stuff a kid his age shouldn’t.”

  She nods.

  “He told me he wants to date your daughter. I think it’s out of anger at me though. You should watch out for that. He wouldn’t be good for her.”

  She sneers at the thought. “Thanks. I’ll watch out.”

  “He might be at your house now.”

  “He better not be.”

  “He told me he was going to see her tonight.”

  She stares for a long moment. “How could you not tell me that? Why would you let me come here while a boy with ill intentions is planning on going to my house? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I wanted you here with me. I needed you here. If you leave… I think I’ll die.”

  “You’re an awful person,” she says. She starts digging in her purse for her phone and it rings before she gets to it. She picks it up.

  “Hello? … Yes, Macie, it’s me. … What? … What do you mean, Macie? What happened? … Macie, what happened? … Are you okay? Macie? Hello?!” She hangs up the phone and dials, paces the room, curses under her breath.

  “What did your kid do to my kid?!” she shrieks.

  “He’s harmless,” I say, shrugging, but there’s a sick feeling in my stomach that I’ve let something awful happen.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “I have to go. It’s time for me to go.”

  “Don’t go,” I say. “You have to stay with me. If you leave me I’ll die.”

  “You go ahead and die then,” she says, heading for the door.

  I rush to her, tripping on my feet. I grab her. “No! You can’t go. I won’t let you.”

  “Get off me!”

  I hold her as tight as I can and before I know what’s happening my branches twist around and ensnare her. She’s tangled in my fingers. They grow longer before our eyes, wrapping around her neck like snakes as she screams, coiling and tightening until she can’t breathe.

  “I won’t let you go,” I tell her. “You have to be with me.”

  She pulls at my branches around her neck. She grabs them and tugs at them, she pun
ches out at me. It’s only then I realize she can’t breathe.

  I try to let go, but I can’t. I’ve become so twisted and tangled my hands are stuck to her.

  “No!” I scream. “I’ll help you, Elaine. I’ll save you. Just hold on.”

  No matter how hard I pull, the branches only wrap around tighter. I try to bite them and the branches coming out of my mouth wrap around her too. The one coming out of my eye stretches into her mouth, gags her, suffocates her with itself.

  I push her so hard we both fall to the floor, but I’m still stuck to her. As I try to pull away, the sliding glass door fills my field of vision and the sycamore stands there. For a second I think I hear it laughing.

  “Elaine!” I scream. “Elaine!”

  I keep fighting my plant self until Elaine’s eyes roll back in her head and the convulsions start. Each jerk of her body pries on my branches and I wish she’d jerk hard enough to rip the roots right out of me. I don’t care how much it would hurt.

  All at once my branches let go of her and her lifeless body goes still on the floor.

  “No!” I scream. “Elaine!”

  I climb on top of her and sob into her chest, try to give her CPR even though I don’t know how. It takes fifteen minutes of pounding on her chest and screaming at her to live before I finally give up and resign myself to the fact that Elaine Giddings is dead in the doorway of my home and I am the murderer.

  Me and the tree. That silent, stoic sycamore. That expression of choicelessness and beauty or whatever the fuck it means. That ugly, indifferent, unflinching cluster of cells that stands in judgment of me always.

  I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand.

  In my dad’s last minutes of life he kept asking, “Do you think we get to know the plan when we die? Do you think we get to learn why all the things happened that didn’t make sense?”