Black Rainbow

by Scott Savino

  I don’t know if you ever made that appointment. I reminded you of it yesterday morning, but I don’t know if you ever called. I don’t suppose it matters now, anyway, but you at least need to know why I left. What you did that convinced me I could never come back.

  I woke up just like I had all the other nights when you weren’t there but this time I knew something was different. The buzzing was there, but it was more of a nuisance than anything else, quiet and drained of its power over me. I sat up easily and unplugged my phone, turning on the camera. Every time I’d heard this sound it had been connected with your behavior, so I was determined to record you. I needed to play it back to show you, and maybe you would finally tell me what you were saying. Instead, I’ve been watching this video over and over by myself, reliving that night, and I feel sick.

  Far off, I could hear your voice at it again, chanting. It sounded like you were down the hall, maybe in the office, but when I turned on the light I saw you standing there in the corner. Blood was dripping down your cheeks and there were dark holes in your face, but the holes weren’t empty. Clouds of darkness swirled in the place where your eyes should have been, the black forms swirling within intermittently lighting up with impulse and electricity, like the lights of a storm ravaged sky.

  There was a knife in your hand and you just kept chanting. Over and over again those words came from you and everywhere else as they merged with the steadily growing sound of static filling my head.

  Then you spoke to me in English.

  “It said I had to take them out, so I did.” You were smiling as you let your head loll around in tiny circles. “Can you hear it too, honey? Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Jack,” I said quietly.

  “Shh. You have to listen. You can hear it if you listen closer. It will say what you need to hear. Just listen. It told me I could see all of them. My eyes were just in the way.”

  I was quietly crying then. “Oh God, Jack. What’s happened to you?”

  “Bleu, rouge, vert, jaune ...” you said in the dark, and then whispered “Noir. Noir. Noir.”

  “Jack, what are you—”

  You screamed then. “Shut up! Do you ever just shut the fuck up?”

  You raised the knife and charged at me, jumping from a standing position to land with both feet on the bed. You would have put that knife straight through my head if reflexes hadn’t rolled me onto the floor. I shot through the door and ran. I could hear you saying those words in French again behind me.

  “Bleu, rouge, vert, jaune, noir, noir, noir …”

  I toppled the chair in the hall right into your path but somehow you knew. You sprang over it like you were doing the hundred meter hurdles. I knocked over the side table in the living room and that didn’t slow you either. Each time I threw something in your path, somehow, you were able to avoid it, springing over it, never faltering, like a predator chasing prey.

  The television was on and the fridge was open when I grabbed my keys from where I keep them on the table by the door. The mirror above was smeared with blood. Your blood. Your eyes were there on the table, next to the spoon you must have used to dig them out. Cloudy green and gray, they stared up from the table, pointing directly at me, and for the first time I could feel them really piercing through me. All the while you were gaining on me, muttering those awful words. You barely sounded winded by the time I made it to my car and peeled out of the driveway.

  The seat was wrong but I didn’t fix it until I was miles away.

  It was a thick curtain of tears that made me stop. The words you’d said echoed through my mind as I sat there sobbing in confusion, terror, and grief.

  Eventually I realized my phone was still recording everything. It had been going for almost ten minutes. I decided to watch the playback then and there, hoping it would explain something about what was going on.

  I looked them up one-by-one, those words you chanted.

  That’s why I’m not coming back.

  “Les couleurs. Peux-tu les voir? Les couleurs. Peux-tu les voir? Peux-tu les voir? Peux-tu les voir?”

  The colors. Can you see them? The colors. Can you see them? Can you see them? Can you see them?

  That’s what you were chanting the night I found you at the fridge, and in front of the TV, and lurking in the shadows of our bedroom after you’d scooped out your eyes.

  Jack, I can’t come back. I do believe you’re not in control of this, whatever it is, but I can’t do it. Not because you tried to kill me, but because there’s so much I don’t understand and it terrifies me.

  I don’t understand where you’ve been taking my car. I know that’s a crazy thing to say, you taking my car, but I just can’t figure it out. More importantly, though, I don’t know how. How could you take my car?

  I don’t understand how you were able to avoid all of the furniture I tipped over, either. Is it because your entire life you were already so practiced at avoiding things you couldn’t see that you just knew? It was unnatural. Even for someone with as much practice as you have.

  How could you keep up with me and not trip over any of it at all?

  Worst of all, though, you told me once you didn’t have a clear idea what colors were. You told me most people born without sight didn’t. You told me that people explained them to you many times, but being blind from birth made the concept too abstract. You said it relied too much on being able to see.

  So then, why were you chanting about the colors?

  I don’t understand.

  I feel so lost right now. I can’t begin to explain myself. You have to understand how hard the decision not to come back home has been for me. I believe you when you say you have no idea what’s going on, but I almost died last night.

  So, I can’t come back. I’m too afraid of you. Of what I don’t understand.

  I do hope someone finds this and reads it to you so you have an explanation.

  You deserve that.

  You are the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’ll always love you, but please don’t try to find me, I’m begging you.

  Love,

  Stephen

  Nap-Town

  N.L. McFARLAND

  THE FOREST WAS DENSE ON either side of the little two-lane highway. Sunlight filtered through the branches above to dapple the road, and shadows ruled the trees. It was a nostalgic homecoming for Valentine, but Nick was less impressed.

  “Vale, I love you, but I still don’t see why you wanted to go this way.”

  “To make better time.”

  “And?”

  “And … because it reminds me of growing up around here. Learning to drive on these back roads, getting stuck behind some tractor and people having to wait an hour for the next passable stretch of road to zoom by.”

  “That … does not sound appealing at all.”

  Valentine just laughed and glanced over at his husband.

  Oh, that thought felt so good.

  Husband.

  Nick was his husband now. He still had the certificate in his back pocket, too. He could feel the outline of it against his right cheek as he squirmed a little in the driver’s seat. He kept joking that, rather than put it safely away in some fireproof box when they got home, he was going to frame it and hang it in the foyer so anyone walking in would have to look at it.

  Take that, homophobic Aunt Linda.

  Not that Aunt Linda would ever come visit them. Quite likely she wasn’t even going to be at this family gathering at all, because the two of them had RSVP’d. She would never be so blatant, though. Oh no. She would have made up some excuse to not show, even if it was the first time Valentine had been back in the state since he’d moved away for college.

  It would be the first time he’d be seeing most of his family since something close to forever. None of them had visited him in the hospital, after all, everyone blaming the distance and the economy. He knew the real reason, though.

  No one knew what to say when someone was dying.


  He got that. But now that he wasn’t dying, he and Nick had decided it was time to see the family.

  Together.

  “GPS is shitting the bed again,” his partner—no, his husband griped, adding some other less-than-Aunt-Linda-approved words under his breath as he poked at Valentine’s phone perched on the dashboard.

  “And you made fun for me for buying a physical map,” Vale chuckled.

  “I still don’t think this dinky little road is even on that map, but whatever,” Nick said, reaching down to rummage through a plastic bag on the floor in front of him. It contained the goods hunted-and-gathered from the last gas station pit stop of their cross country drive.

  Valentine waited patiently while his husband dug through their bag of goodies. The snacks had been meant to last until they needed to stop for gas again, however, the chips were long gone, the soda sat heavy in Vale’s bladder, and now Nicolas was breaking into the Twizzlers.

  “Hey, pest! Share,” Vale demanded.

  Instead, Nick stuck two Twizzlers in his mouth and waggled them in haughty defiance. At least until Valentine reached over and snatched one—or most of one—right out of his mouth.

  Nick cackled, a gleeful noise, and loudly chewed the piece of Twizzler he’d retained for himself as he unfolded the map and started searching for their approximate location.

  He looked up abruptly as Vale slowed the car to pull over on the shoulder, not that there was much shoulder to speak of. But while Valentine couldn’t do much about the width of the road, he had at least enough sense to make sure they couldn’t be rear-ended by surprise. He had waited until there was a nice long stretch of road in both directions before pulling over.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Gotta take a piss,” he explained. He put the Jeep in park and looked down the road before hopping out.

  “Classy, Vale, super classy. Couldn’t wait until we got to the next town?”

  “Can you even tell me where the next town is?” Valentine grinned cheekily back at his husband, nodded to the map, and shut the door.

  As Vale went tromping toward the tree line to do his business, he learned the shoulder was not only almost non-existent, it was also steep. He nearly slid down the wet embankment, groaning as his shoes splashed into a murky puddle hidden beneath some foliage and had to scramble up the other side of the deep ditch just to find a suitable spot to relieve himself.

  All the while he could hear Nick laughing at him from inside the car, no doubt delighting in his misery.

  Valentine didn’t venture far. Nostalgic as the drive might have been, he knew better than to wander into the shadows. So, he chose a tree large enough to hide himself behind, but still within sight of the road if he peeked around the trunk, and settled in with his back to the woods.

  It wasn’t difficult to find a tree big enough to hide him since he wasn’t the bulkiest of guys—not thin by any means, but he definitely had to work at the gym to bulk up, not trim down.

  Trimming down was Nick’s domain; worrying about calories and cardio, switching to diet soda every few months only to gradually slip back in to drinking regular, and forcing himself to endure salads in place of bacon cheeseburgers. Valentine had already heard his husband grumbling about feeling overweight since they’d started their trip. Their healthy routine had taken a backseat, as evidenced by the candy bar and fast food wrappers stuffed in the door pockets of his Jeep, so those little insecure moments of self-doubt had popped up more frequently. But Vale supported his husband in everything he wanted to do, such as encouraging the exercise and good eating habits, even though he loved Nick just the way he was, bits of soft pudge and all.

  Brush rustled somewhere behind him and that creepy “being watched” feeling crawled up his spine. It sounded like a bird or other small animal, but he still glanced over one shoulder, then the other, as the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

  He knew it was ridiculous. There were no cars coming down the road in either direction and he hadn’t seen signs of a residence or private road in miles. There was nothing but thick forest and the road.

  And even if there was someone out in the woods, some hunter or whatever, they weren’t going to get much of a show as long as he finished his business quickly.

  “Come on, Vale! Did you get lost?” Nick called.

  “Dude, shut up! You know I can’t go with you watching me!” Relief flooded him even as he chided his husband.

  Nick. Of course. That had to be all it was, just his husband trying to look for him from up on the road. He scolded himself, took a deep breath to relax, and let his bladder loose to water the unsuspecting tree.

  “What took you so long?” Nicolas snorted when Vale climbed back into the driver’s seat. The map was an unfolded mess across his lap and half the dashboard. “And why are you so out of breath?”

  That was a valid question. Valentine could get in a fair bit of exercising without breaking a sweat, but he was sweating now, his hands clammy and breath coming in quick little gasps like he’d sprinted a mile.

  He wiped his hands with a sanitary wipe from the center console. There had been a point when he had been meticulous about germs out of necessity, to avoid infections. Things had changed, though, and he had settled into living with a compromised immune system. He managed it, but a few little quirks remained. Mostly because they were just good habits to have, but also because they soothed his anxiety. Which was exactly what cleaning his hands did for him now.

  Valentine took a bit of comfort from the old familiar scrubbing away of germs as he tried to steady his breathing. “Just got a little spooked is all. Thought I heard something as I was climbing back up the ditch. Probably an animal.”

  Not that he was going to stick around to find out. He jabbed the button to start the Jeep, put it in gear, and pulled into the lane.

  “Vale!” Nick’s shriek of alarm was nearly drowned out by the blaring air horn of an eighteen-wheeler as it swerved to avoid destroying the Jeep. It thundered past, using the empty oncoming lane to narrowly avoid them.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Valentine said, gripping the wheel with both hands in his panic.

  “Do you need me to drive?”

  “No, I’m fine, I just forgot to look. I’m so used to these roads being empty.”

  With nerves slightly raw, he tried again, this time checking the rear and side-view mirrors before pulling out onto the road. He gave the rearview a double glance, sure he had seen something as they pulled away, but there was nothing when he looked a second time.

  Probably an animal.

  oOo

  “I have definitely confirmed,” Nicolas muttered around a mouth full of Twizzler, “that this road is not on this map. So we’re lost.”

  “We are not lost. We are on this road, heading east toward Napton.”

  “Napton. That sounds like a fun place. Nap-town.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “That’s why you married me.”

  Valentine glanced over in time to see that cheeky smile. It wasn’t like he could argue, either, because Nick was right.

  They passed through the next little town without incident. Napton, as Valentine had correctly predicted. It was really nothing more than a scattered collection of houses set into the forest, itself, with the occasional Blair Witch-style lawn decoration leering from the trees. There wasn’t even a gas station, so it was good the Jeep still had plenty in the tank.