by Cyle James
While he still wasn’t hard he certainly was on his way. Whether it was the stress in their relationship or the years of unhealthy habits, it was increasingly difficult for him to get an erection. Only rarely would it be impossible. It was often only a matter of time and foreplay.
“I’m fine...just...keep doing what you’re doing, baby,” he sighed happily, only slightly nervous about the notion of not being able to perform.
Without another word she swallowed him again, sucking him as deep as she could. Within a few minutes Riley found himself standing fully at attention much to the delight of his wife.
“I’m going to regret saying this, but as great as this feels can we stop and get on the bed, please? I don’t want to get friction burn if we can avoid it,” Riley asked as he ran his hand through her hair so that he could look her in the eyes.
Without even taking his member from her mouth she nodded gently, sucking hard one last time as she pulled away and left him exposed to the cold air.
She tilted her head to the side playfully as she contemplated, “Fine. I guess. But I still get to be on top”.
As Violet stood up she pushed herself off of her husband’s thighs, who responded with a pained groan. With a small laugh she headed towards the bare bed.
“I lied,” he called out as he stood up and sprinted forward, grabbing her by the back of both legs, tackling her to her back on the bed with his body resting on top.
Even while she was smacking his back in retaliation Violet couldn’t help but laugh playfully.
Riley slowly started to retreat downwards, slowly kissing along her wonderful body, from her soft neck to her delicately crafted clavicle, from her supple breasts to her cute little bellybutton. He hooked his fingers into the thong around her hips and leisurely removed it as she extended her legs into the air as if she was still doing a dance just for him. He tenderly ran the palms of his hands up and down her legs as he parted them, kneeling on the ground before the foot of the bed.
Violet giggled as her husband licked and prodded with his tongue, exploring her wetness and making her struggle to breathe without gasping. She ran her hand through his hair, holding him still against her as she thrust her hips forward to his frantically working mouth. The closer she got the harder she clawed at the mattress beside her until she could almost hear it readying to rip.
Violet leaned forward to look at her husband as she was about to come, and that’s when she saw it. Or more accurately, that’s when it saw her. In the bottom corner of the mirror across from the bed, there gazed the glowing yellow eyes peeking out from underneath the blanket that was meant solely to conceal it.
Violet screamed out in horror and she hysterically recoiled up the bed and away from both her lover and the watchful eyes before her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked confusedly as he jumped to his feet.
She pointed towards the mirror, her hand shaking far more than she had expected when she extended it, “That fucking...thing”.
Riley turned and looked at the shape of the mirror underneath the blanket. He could see the small exposed part of the mirror where he figured she must have seen something, but as far as he could tell it was empty now.
“Get dressed,” he muttered as he tossed his wife her pants and shirt before hurriedly putting on his own clothing.
The Tylers rapidly put on their attire without turning away from the mirror as if something might burst forth should they avert their eyes. Once they were clothed Riley approached the mirror first, reaching out and grabbing a handful of the blanket.
“Be careful,” Violet whispered as she stood angled from the mirror behind the bed. Like he needed to be told.
Riley took a deep breath before yanking the blanket off of the wall, it’s tail end making a grand sweeping motion through the air as if he were doing a magic trick and he was revealing that he had made the elephant vanish under the crowd’s watchful eyes. As impressive as that trick would have been, the sight that was contained in the mirror was that much grander.
There stood Sourmouth in its house of shadow. Its body was shaped differently than it had been when they had last seen it. It was more detailed with every curve more pronounced and it seemed to have joints where it hadn’t before. Its arms looked to jot out from its body at impossible angles as if its shoulder blades were displaced from its back, sticking out from behind its torso like mountainous ridges. Its long legs seemed thicker, more muscular and looked like the joints projected themselves backwards like the legs on a dog. Its claws seemed somehow even longer as if they were growing to mimic the edges on a knife. The creature’s neck seemed to have extended a few inches outward so that its head motions seemed almost alien in nature. Its skull moved through the air like how a snake sways before striking its victim. Its so-called face was still without features aside from its brightly glowing yellow eyes. And despite the handicap of not having facial expressions it still managed to convey what the Tylers could only imagine was revulsion at their very presence.
“Oh god,” Violet whimpered across the room.
“Which one? I’d like to think that there isn’t anything that would have anything to do with this” Riley surmised as he stood watching the animal with curiosity, which aside from a few shifts in stance had yet to make any real movements.
“Sourmouth,” he said quietly as he tried to force the moisture back into his restricting throat.
“Don’t say that!” Violet called out with her own cracking voice.
Riley turned back to his wife and pointed at the mirror, “There’s a reason that this fucking thing is standing there watching us. And that’s because it can’t do anything else!”
When Riley turned back to the mirror he was startled to find Sourmouth had stepped forward, practically pressing its face against glass to stare back out at him. It was then that Riley could see more of its face, or lack thereof. Its skin was an almost translucent grey and thin enough that he could see the black veins underneath that were threaded throughout its body. The hide on its facial area looked brittle and dry as if it were readying to split open with an audible crack. And if Riley didn’t know better, he could have sworn that he could see the outline of a smile underneath the skin.
Before he even knew it his wife was pulling him backwards to give them space, “I’m sick of this shit. It’s not worth it”.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not worth it’?” he asked his wife as he tried to turn to face her without fully looking away from the mirror.
“All of it. I’m done”.
It might have been the nerves but he laughed, “And what do you think you’re going to do? Now that you’re done? This thing is standing right here staring back at us and you just want it to stop?”
Violet looked at the wall and to the frame that housed Sourmouth, “I’m going to smash it”.
“You’re what?” he asked alarmed.
Violet cut the distance between herself and the wall in a second and gripped the frame as if she needed to act before the brute caught on. But her speed counted for nothing when she realized that she couldn’t seem to pry it from the wall.
“What’s wrong?” he asked his wife as she struggled.
She tried to thrust her finger nails underneath the wood to gain some sort of leverage, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t make any headway. It was as if the frame was a part of the wall itself.
“Fuck,” she grumbled as she kicked the wall in frustration.
The Tylers watched as Sourmouth leaned forward and began to stare at the frame of the mirror from his side, examining it like a newborn puppy. Slowly it reached out its claws and ran a finger down the side until it found a groove. The creature proceeded to pull, shaking the glass from the inside.
“That’s...not good,” Violet said as she stepped behind her husband, clutching his arm so that her nails dug into his skin.
But as hard as it might, Sourmouth couldn’t seem to figure out what to do next. Just as the mirror didn’t seem to
budge for the Tylers it didn’t budge for it either. In response to its growing frustrations the creature growled so deeply that it seemed to vibrate the glass without even trying. Gradually it stepped backwards, creeping off into the darkness until it could no longer be seen.
The Tylers stood in silence. Both waited and watched the mirror as if expecting it to come stalking back, but it never came. Riley turned to his wife with a look a look of bewilderment.
“I... What do we do now?” he asked as he rubbed his eyes with his fists, trying to remember how he was supposed to blink.
His wife made large, exaggerated motions with her mouth as she struggled to find something to say back. But nothing that she could think of actually seemed to be fitting.
“I think we need to go see Anna. Or find Poyam. Or call the National Guard or the Mounties or someone who can fucking help us,” she ranted as she paced towards the bed and back.
“What... What did you think would happen if we broke it? That we’d kill it?” Riley asked as he tried to stop his wife from stomping a ditch into the floor. Violet just pulled away and kept pacing.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. I figured that we needed to do something. Hell, let’s still smash it. Let’s throw something at it or take a hammer to it”.
“You think that’s really a good idea? I mean, you tried to pick it up and then it tried to do that, too. What would happen if you tried to smash it with it inside? Would it try to break the glass, too? Would it get free? What would happen to us if it did?”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know!” she yelled.
“Stop yelling at me!” he replied.
“I’m not yelling!”
“Yes, you are!”
“I’m not... I’m not yelling at you...” she finally admitted as she attempted to stop to breathe.
“I understand that you’re afraid. But taking it out on me isn’t the solution. Let’s figure this out together,” he said as he stepped forward and put his hands on her arms, trying to comfort her.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. I feel like...like we’re in danger here and I don’t know how to protect us”.
“If you really want to be done with this, then I guess we can just go. Let’s just get out of here and not come back,” Riley suggested, stepping towards the door ready to leave without so much as grabbing a bag.
Violet wasn’t sure if he was faking his concern or not. His abrupt change in attitude suggested that he expected her to call his bluff. And unfortunately it didn’t take long for her to see the flaws in his plan.
“And where would we go? We don’t have another place to stay”.
“In the morning we’ll just go to the docks, take the boat to Vancouver and just go home. This vacation has hardly been one that’s advertised in the brochures, what does it matter if we cut it short by a few days?”
“And even if we wanted to do that, what do we do right now? Do we just go to bed and pretend that this never happened? Take turns sleeping on the couch downstairs and hope nothing pops out to eat us?” she posed to him.
“We’ll sleep in the car”.
“For the night? We’ll freeze to death if we sleep in the car”.
Riley huffed and left the room without answering, leaving his wife standing alone in the dark.
When he returned she noticed that he was carrying the candle that had been underneath the cot in Poyam’s old room.
“With this we’ll be fine. I’ve heard that if you burn a candle in an enclosed space, it can never get below freezing. It might not be comfortable. But it’s not here, and if you’ll be happier then that’s good enough for me,” he said.
Violet stood contemplating, watching her husband roll the candle around in his hands. Running wasn’t a solution to their problem. But it was all that they had. And the car was far enough away that it would suffice until they were able to get on a boat and leave.
“Pack your bags. We’ll sleep in the car. And in the morning we’ll leave when we can,” she stated as a matter of fact as if it was her idea all along.
Riley nodded as he noticed that his wife seemed to be choking back tears. She darted forward and wrapped herself around her husband, hiding her face against his chest. And there she stood for almost a minute, safely in her husband’s arms before they both rushed to get out of the house as fast as they could.
Chapter 9
The night was a restless one. The Tylers awoke and fell back asleep constantly, shifting and turning as they struggled to get to sleep despite the images racing through their minds and the gear shift in their backs. Violet took the front passenger seat, retracting it backwards as far as it would go to put herself in as close as possible to a sleeping position as she could manage. Riley took the back seat, lying down with his feet raised above his head against the window due to the lack of room to stretch out. The candle burned softly over the driver’s seat dashboard, flicking flames until the early morning when it finally burned out. Both of the couple realized this during their routine wakeups, but agreed that they could survive a few hours without their miniature fire.
It was around 8AM when they awoke for the final time, sore from the lack of space and tired from the lack of sleep. Wordlessly, they both practically fell out of the car onto their feet, shivering in the chill of the morning air. It was almost absurd that the first thing they thought of was how pretty everything looked, the greenery shining from the reflections on the morning dew. And just as quickly as that thought came did they remember why they were sleeping in the car and the urgency to leave hit once again.
Like a well-oiled two-man team they marched into the house to grab their bags to get ready to leave. But more importantly, they went in for their breakfast as they hadn’t eaten since early afternoon the day before. Violet spread out one of their grocery bags from the previous day across the counter in the kitchen, letting the meal become a free-for-all between her and her husband. A few slices of bread thick with jam here and a couple of stale granola bars there was enough to satisfy their uneasy stomachs.
It was Violet who broke the poor man’s feast first, “Last night, I was thinking”.
“In between your snoring?” her husband jested.
“Seriously. I was thinking that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to run”.
“Are you kidding me? After all that jazz last night?” Riley asked with a mouthful of dry oats.
“No, I’m not kidding, which is why I said ‘seriously’. And yes, sure, we should get off the island and away from this damned mirror. But why should we run away from it completely? Like you’ve said, we’ve still found something really important here. We’re on the brink of that fame and fortune that you’re looking for, aren’t we?”
Riley groaned out and tilted his head backwards onto his shoulders, “Then what do you want to do now? We’ve gone back and forth on this so many times that I’m almost willing to pay a fortune for it to stop”.
“I know! I know. I’m sorry. It’s not like I was prepared to deal with all of this. Please keep in mind that this isn’t as simple as us trying to argue about what movie to watch or whether we should get a cat. I’m terrified of what could happen if we choose wrong”.
“Yeah, I understand all that. But I thought we had decided on a single course of action. Although I wasn’t fully happy about it, I was willing to leave for you. I mean, we slept in the bloody car and everything. And now suddenly you want to continue looking into Sourmouth? How am I supposed to take all of this?”
Violet made an expression similar to someone sucking on their teeth, “Yeah. I suppose you’re right. And I’m sorry for flip-flopping. But if you’re serious about continuing down this avenue then so am I. I figure what can it hurt for us to stop and dig into a bit more of its history? We can reach out to Anna today with the book and see what she can figure out from it, then head back to the mainland and call in someone who might be interested in the story”.
“Call in
who, exactly?”
“The media or something. There has to be a reporter out there who is willing to give the paranormal a shot. Maybe contact one of the big TV stations and see if they want to turn Sourmouth into the next ghost hunting reality show. We’ll figure it out when we get to that point”.
Riley just shook his head and smirked, “Is this something that I even get a say in?”
“Of course you have a say. You’re my husband. We’re in this together, you idiot”.
“You sure? It’s seeming like I’m being pulled back and forth. I get that you’re scared, I am too. But if we’re going to do this we need to decide and stick with it; there’s no going back”.
Violet cringed and cocked her head to the side, “I said that I was in this for the long haul. And if I didn’t know better I’d swear you were talking about us and not the thing in the mirror”.
“Not intentionally. But I suppose it would fit. Though it’s not exactly an appropriate conversation for right now, is it?”
“Why not? If you don’t think that we can do this, or that we can’t work out our marriage then I think you should let me know now before I’m willing to risk dying beside you long before old age,” she said.
“I never said I didn’t think that we could work. But I’d be lying if I said that I was sure we could. But the whole point of this vacation was for us to bond again. And we’ve only been either arguing or investigating this bullshit that then has us doing even more arguing. Where’s the part where we try to fix our problems?”
“I thought just being here together was us trying. What do you want us to do? Put a sign out in the front of the house and lock ourselves in a room until we’re back to being newlyweds or starve to death? It doesn’t work like that; we need time to get back to normal”.
Riley just stood there in the kitchen almost lifelessly. It was either the lack of sleep or the emotional roller-coaster that they had been through in the past two days but he was almost too exhausted to care.
“Let’s just go to town. Alright? We’ll talk about all of this later”.