When Lucas came to, he was sitting in the backyard. He looked above at the moon and then below at his now naked body. He was covered in the same mud as the boy from the grave. His brows furrowed in confusion.
As if in answer to the question that began to formulate somewhere in the recesses of his mind, a light suddenly sprang to life from somewhere up above.
His bedroom window.
He heard his mother’s startled scream followed by his father barking for her to call 911. Aware of his nudity yet anxious to understand the rising calamity in his bedroom, Lucas bolted across the yard and tried the back door. It was predictably locked. Undeterred, he crept around the side of the house, inching along neutral colored aluminum siding that felt cool against his bare bottom.
As he reached the corner and was about to peer around toward the front door, a sudden burst of blue and red swirling lights bathed the neighborhood, the piercing scream of emergency response vehicles shattering the still night air as they tore around the block. Lucas froze, an amalgamation of terror and confusion riveting him to the spot. Somehow, he knew that the squad cars and ambulances and first responder units would stop in front of his house. The neighborhood seemed to instantaneously spring to life, interior lamps and front porch lights simultaneously going on across the cul de sac. Within seconds there were people everywhere – police and paramedics charging toward his front door, curious neighbors in robes and slippers shuffling up the sidewalk like zombies out of Romero film.
Despite the balmy early summer night, Lucas shivered from the fear and anxiety that gripped him like a vice, his mind racing to find an undetected way into the house. There were too many neighbors now gathered on their front lawn, necks craning and voices murmuring in concern, for him to make a dash for the open front door. As he tried desperately to figure out the how’s and why’s of his situation, there was a sudden commotion at the front door. The zombie neighbors suddenly moved back in unison on either side of the front walkway, and an image of the red sea parting for Moses in some biblical movie his parents forced him to watch at Easter flashed across his mind. He stood, incredulous, as the paramedics navigated a long stretcher down the front steps, stopping after clearing the bottom step and releasing an invisible lever that brought the stretcher upward dramatically. Lucas leaned into the juniper bush at the corner of the house, parting the foliage carefully and straining to see. He gasped.
He was on the stretcher.
In the shadow of the bushes, Lucas blinked once, then twice, trying to clear the surreal image playing out before him. He looked again at the figure on the gurney, took in the chestnut brown hair and familiar bangs, the similarly proportioned body lying prone and motionless. Even as his rational mind verified the impossibility of the scene, another newer part understood immediately.
He was now the boy from the grave. The invisible creature, unleashed from the book, had switched them in some weird Freaky Friday kind of way. Now the doppelganger, playing possum on the stretcher, was being wheeled away while he stood here naked and invisible. And strangely free.
As if to test his hypothesis, Lucas swallowed hard and stepped out from behind the bushes. Nothing…no reaction from the zombie crowd or emergency personnel still talking to his parents on the doorstep. Fueled on by his incredulity and an empowering sense of surrealism, Lucas took a few tentative steps toward the crowd.
Nothing.
Then a few more cautious steps, almost to the walkway. Nothing.
Lucas stepped out onto the walkway proper, now mere inches from his neighbors, abandoning all hesitancy. He held his breath dare someone might hear him breathe. But no one registered awareness of his presence.
He was invisible.
The ambulance raced from the scene with sirens blaring, which Lucas didn’t know whether to interpret as a good or a bad sign. As his frantic parents pulled out of the garage to follow behind, the neighbors began to disperse. Lucas watched the scene in dumbfounded amazement, snapping out of his reverie in time to run underneath the garage door before it closed.
Cold and trembling less from the night air and more from the bizarre trauma unfolding around him, Lucas turned on the garage light and began rummaging through boxes of camping supplies. He found a camouflage rain poncho, which he quickly pulled over his head. He suddenly laughed aloud at the irony – he was last person on the earth who needed camouflage in his new state. He opened the garage door again and jumped on his bicycle, pedaling off down the street in the direction of the hospital and avoiding the main thoroughfares as much as possible. In the darkness, the poncho provided enough of a human figure so passing motorists didn’t mistake him for the phantom bicyclist he’d become. Despite being naked beneath the poncho, he started to sweat in the hot summer night.
Drawing near the hospital, Lucas ditched the bike behind some bushes and tucked the poncho under a tire. Now came the real test. Was he really invisible or just insane? Swallowing hard, Lucas approached the entrance to the emergency room. He looked down at himself and could see his own naked body; yet as he approached a pair of policemen chatting with an ambulance driver, they made no notice of the muddy, naked boy.
One of the policemen gave a second look when the automatic doors opened without anyone visibly present. In the brilliant light of the crowded emergency room lobby, he became more certain that he was truly invisible. In growing desperation, he thought for a moment he might speak to the nurse at the reception desk, to explain – maybe they could help him. Maybe this wasn’t completely unprecedented in the world of medicine. What was he saying? His condition was unprecedented in every realm except those reserved for science-fiction matinees.
Lucas was just beginning to wonder what to do next when he caught sight of his mother going into the ladies’ room. Lucas paused outside the door. He would wait until she emerged, and then follow her to the hospital bed where he would find the imposter. He stood by the door, growing impatient. When another woman exited, Lucas realized there was no reason not to go inside, except perhaps the idea of walking barefoot across an unsanitary floor. Once inside the bathroom, he could hear his mother weeping behind one of the stalls. He was instantly sorry that he had chosen to venture into the restroom. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that if he was caught, they would think he snuck in for cheap thrills. Little did even those closest to him know that watching women go to the bathroom was the last item on his list. And then it dawned on him – he was invisible; he could spy on anyone he wanted to. Thoughts came to him in furious fragments of endless possibility, snippets of dubious promise in his newfound capability.
Another burst of weeping snapped Lucas out of his voyeuristic reverie, and he noticed something else. It was vague and shapeless at first, a mere sensation – or, more accurately, a lack of feeling. The sound of his mother’s weeping, which would normally strike at the core of Lucas’ heart with an immediate and merciless pang of guilt, had a strangely dulled effect on him. It was as if emotion had been stripped away from the experience and replaced by a tangible numbness. Lucas realized with a shudder that he didn’t care that his mother was weeping on the other side of the bathroom stall.
Before he could fully wrap his mind around this peculiar emotional detachment, his mother emerged from the stall. He followed behind her to where his father sat in a crowded roomful of people, bleeding and waiting like travelers stranded in some kind of grisly airport terminal.
“Have you heard anything else,” she asked him.
“Yes,” his father replied. “They had to give him a blood transfusion. The doctor told me it was an unusually large amount of blood, but it looks like Lucas is out of the woods.”
It was for blood – that was why the doppelganger wanted to be taken to the hospital.
Lucas felt sick, and he felt something else – fury. The anger was unlike anything Lucas had ever felt before. It bubbled up inside of him with unfamiliar intensity, unlike any childhood anger he had ever known. Lucas wandered around sterile corridors until he overhe
ard someone talking about his - the doppelganger’s - condition. Eventually, he found the bed where they observed him in the intensive care unit.
The doppelganger opened his eyes immediately upon Lucas entering the room.
“Delicious,” was all the doppelganger said licking his lips seductively. He choked back a peal of laughter, gesturing toward the half-empty bag of blood hanging above him.
“You motherfucker,” Lucas whispered. “What have you done to me?”
“Don’t get so excited, missy,” the doppelganger said. “You don’t have to pretend with me. You know what you’re going to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve always been the world’s biggest pussy, Lucas. I know all about you – know all about what you’re hiding. The rage is just a veil, you know. Don’t you want to find out what’s underneath it?”
Lucas blinked. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered through clenched teeth.
A wicked grin spread across the doppelganger’s face. “I’m not doing anything, Lucas, my boy. This was all your doing.”
“Me? I didn’t ask for any of this…for you.”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Lucas,” the doppelganger continued. “You brought me here, first through your thoughts and then through your actions.”
Fury throbbed in Lucas’ temples. “Start making some fucking sense, you miserable son of a bitch, or I’m going to start flinging shit around here like some tweaked out poltergeist.”
“Poor little Lucas. Sad little queer boy, so afraid that someone will find out your secret that you spend your life pretending to be something you’re not.” Lucas looked at his likeness on the bed, stunned, his eyes swelling.
“Oh, yes,” the doppelganger continued, its strength growing with each drip of plasma, “I know all about you, Lucas. I know what you really want. But you’re too scared to take it in your human form. That’s why you came for me.”
“Came for you?”
“Yesterday. In the bargain bookstore. I drew you to me, Lucas. And you came.” Images of the dusty book flashed across Lucas’ mind.
“The book on invisibility?” he choked, breathless at the realization that he could have summoned this creature. He felt all the air being sucked from his lungs.
“That would be the one,” the doppelganger said. “And now, you’ve got yourself one first-class supernatural body swap at a bargain basement price.” He chuckled deviously.
Lucas grabbed the doppelganger’s IV-infused arm. It was ice cold to the touch. He flinched, backing away and knocking into an IV pole. A nurse looked up from across the room where she tended to the dressings on a burn victim, saw nothing amiss, and resumed her meticulous wrapping of gauze around charred flesh.
“A little more of this yummy plasma, and I’ll be all toasty again,” the doppelganger said mockingly. Even as Lucas watched, color seemed to slowly slither into the doppelganger’s gaunt cheeks.
“What do you want from me? How can we make this stop?” Panic crept into Lucas’ voice even as he fought to retain control.
The doppelganger turned its head sideways, eyes black and bottomless with malevolence. “It doesn’t stop, Lucas. It’s too late for that now. I’m going to take your human body, a body that will enable me to carry out my own plans.”
“What about me?” Lucas’ voice was small, suddenly childlike.
The doppelganger smiled salaciously. “You get the best part of the bargain. You get to walk amongst the mortal, invisible in your comings and goings. Your invisibility will empower you to take what you want…from whomever you want.”
Lucas looked up at the creature, his eyes suddenly alert to the temptation being offered.
“Yes, Lucas. Anything you want, from whomever you want. You can satisfy your deepest desires for the taking…no more dances of diplomacy or kissing up to get what you want. Your invisibility will make you a powerful creature, one to be feared.” The doppelganger’s voice was soothing, melodious in its offerings.
“Anything?”
The creature smiled knowingly. “Anything at all, my dear boy. Think about it, think about the possibilities to bypass every conventional nicety and simply take what you want. You’ll be known and feared as a great and malevolent being, one who those you touch will never whisper a word about for fear of their own sanity.”
Lucas understood the tradeoff now. He was being offered the chance to wander the earth, unseen to the mortal eye, to do as he pleased. No rules, no boundaries, no restraint. He felt a peculiar sensation in his midsection, a powerful churning of desire and heat. He looked down and saw he had an erection, a stiff and painful gesture of his acceptance. The doppelganger saw it, too, and smiled.
“All the pleasures of the world await you, Lucas,” it said, easing its eyelids shut as the last drops of blood dripped from the IV bag and coursed through the plastic tube toward its arm.
Without another word, Lucas turned to walk away in submission to the dark forces now inside of him.
“Oh, Lucas…” the thing on the bed called to him. Lucas turned to face the doppelganger for the last time.
“Say hello to Drew for me,” it said seductively, winking in a gesture of omniscience.
*
It was shortly after 4:00 am when the door to Drew Shaughnessy’s bedroom over the garage opened and closed, undetected in the stillness of the reposing household. The open bedroom window slowly lowered, the latch silently locking into place. The closet door swung open on silent hinges followed by the gentle rustling of clothes. Two neckties seemingly danced out of the closet, serpentine lengths of paisley fabric that undulated toward the bed like magic carpets.
Slowly, with the precision of a surgical procedure, one necktie slithered under Drew’s right wrist, looping in such a way that tightening would come with the first jerk of the young man’s arm. The opposite end of the necktie coiled itself around one of the bedposts, knotting itself tightly. The second necktie slipped undetected under the opposite wrist until it, too, was fastened to the bedpost.
There was a pause in the room, as if the palpable sense of growing urgency and desire saturating the oppressive humidity in the unventilated room was at conflict with a waning sense of right and wrong. Then Drew stirred slightly in his sleep, his legs sliding in a motion of unintentional sensuousness beneath the thin fabric of the sheet that covered his sleeping form.
Slowly, as if in answer to the unspoken moral conundrum, the sheet began to slide down Drew’s body. Inch by inch, the retreating sheet revealed more of the prize beneath – the broad, freckled back that narrowed at the waist in a symmetrical V-shape, the fleshy mound encased in taut white cotton, the long muscular legs covered in delicate wisps of red hair.
As the mattress depressed on either side of Drew’s slumbering form and a salty tear dropped out of nothingness onto the small of his back, Lucas Ridgeway surrendered to the art of invisibility and understood with sudden clarity that even bargain books came at a price.
The Sisterhood
R.B. Payne
The path meandered through a stand of oak trees. Beneath the canopy of autumn leaves, Sister Aveline walked. Above her, the gnarled tree limbs intertwined like fingers of praying hands to create a forest cathedral and, here and there, shafts of dusty sunlight created godlike columns of yellow luminescence. The musty scent of decay was incense. She followed the ancient path even though it wasn’t visible.
She knew the way by heart.
Unleavened bread, fruit, and cured pork filled a woven basket slung beneath her shoulder. Spying a cluster of mushrooms poking among the leaves, she added them to the bounty.
The slope steepened. Her legs were heavy and she paused for rest.
Perhaps it was time for a younger nun.
Surely not yet.
Sister Aveline pressed on.
At the forest’s edge, she ascended an escarpment where winter storms tumbled granite boulders down a cliff. Here, the rising trail was hidden among
the rocky debris, and if she had not memorized the twists and turns, the way would have been lost on the hard ground.
Her sandals scraped a steady rhythm and her woolen habit flapped in the breeze as she climbed higher. Her hip complained with a dull ache, but she paid it no heed. Feeling the familiar stones beneath her feet and the morning cool against her face, peace flooded into her. She recited a prayer as she walked.
Clearing a low ridge, she emerged from the shadow of the mountain. Here, the sunlight warmed her. Pausing at a craggy overlook, she viewed the valley and the village cradled in it. Resting the heavy basket on the ground, she waited to catch her breath.
Smoke curled from a few chimneys of the stone houses of St-Gilles-du-Gard. In the orchards, the farmers were harvesting the last of the summer apples and pears. Towering over the town stood the monastery where the Holy Bones of St. Giles were buried. Outside its gates, pilgrims were waiting to view the relics of the hermit saint and to seek forgiveness or perhaps a miracle.
A dirt road cleaved the village and in the distance she could see the dust of a caravan or perhaps a horse troop of crusaders heading toward Toulouse and eventually to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. In the other direction, towards Arles, the road was dotted with a few lone travelers – too poor to be robbed, or simply too tired to care.
She, too, had once traveled the Way of St. James and he, in his wisdom, had answered her prayers.
Tucked below the cliffs of St-Gilles-du-Gard was the Abbey of St. Sebastian. This morning someone also waited at its gates. Sister Aveline knew it was a woman even though no detail could be seen from such a distance. No doubt the woman had traveled far and was exhausted from her journey.
Hungry.
And frightened like a rabbit.
Just like Sister Aveline had been the day she... well, that had been a long time ago.
Hefting the basket of food, she stepped quickly. A mewling cry carried on the wind and she knew les déformés were expecting her.
Abominations of Desire Page 23