Jonathan Janz
Mr. Nelson looks at me and says, “I almost fucked a cat once.”
I start toward the door.
“Now don’t get all high-and-mighty on me,” he calls. “I never did it. I said I thought about it is all.”
“This isn’t worth it.”
“Isn’t worth…boy, do you know how long I had to work when I was your age to scrape up twenty bucks?”
I frown. “How old are you anyways?”
“Fifty-six.”
I note how the living room curtains turn his pale skin a drab dill-pickle hue. See the sparse, downy hairs clinging to the liver-spotted wasteland of his scalp. The pouchy eye sockets and the overlarge nose. Mr. Nelson looks closer to ninety-six than fifty-six, but whatever. His money will fill up my gas tank as well as anyone’s.
I sigh. “I’ll give you a few more minutes, but you gotta pay me thirty.”
“Done.”
“And no more cat-fucking stories.”
“I never did!”
I exhale heavily and wander back to the ratty calico couch.
Mr. Nelson eases into his duct-taped recliner. “She was a big white cat. Had this silky coat—”
I start to rise again.
“Wait!” he pleads. “Simmer down. For this to work, I gotta tell you some stuff.”
“For what to work?”
“I’ll get to that,” he says. “Just please…sit.”
I do. Reluctantly.
“I was drunk that night,” he says, eyes glittery. “I was alone, like usual. And Laura, she was sittin’ beside me, purring.”
“Your cat was named Laura?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Laura’s not something you name a cat. It’s something you name a daughter.”
“Well this one was named Laura, and she was the best damned cat I’ve ever had.”
He watches me to see if I’ll argue, but I don’t. The quicker I get this over with, the quicker I can get to Catherine’s. But to do that I have to gas up my car, and my parents aren’t helping. I get one B-plus and they act like the world’s ending and deprive me of my allowance until I prove I’m ‘applying myself’. Hence the reason I’m sitting here with the cat-fucker.
“I’d been drinking quite a bit,” he says and shoots me a quick, crafty look. “More than usual anyway. And I was watchin’ this movie about a guy who falls in love with a mannequin. I forget the name…”
“Mannequin?”
He snaps his fingers. “That’s it! It had the lady from Porky’s, what’s her name…”
I make a speeding-up gesture.
“Anyhow, the movie had a happy ending, and I got choked up. There was this song, I think it was Jefferson Airplane. And I started in thinking…goddammit, it’s good that people find each other sometimes. In this case it was a dude finding a mannequin, but that’s not the point. They found each other.”
His eyes take on a bleary look. He has a six-pack of Natural Light beside him, five cans empty, but I don’t think it’s the alcohol misting him up.
“I know how pitiful this sounds,” he goes on, “but some people, they never find somebody. I remember back when I was your age, staying home on Friday nights and askin’ my mom why no girl was interested in me.” A lost look seeps into his eyes. “Mom said ‘They will be, Buster. They will be. One of these days, when you come into your own’…”
I listen, a little disconcerted. I didn’t know his name was Buster. To me, he’s always been Mr. Nelson, the weird old drunk from down the street. But now, knowing his first name, picturing him as a teenager…alone…
I don’t like knowing that.
He shakes his head, gazing into the past. “Even then I remember thinking, ‘What if I don’t come into my own?’ What if I stay like this? The type of guy no one wants to hang out with?”
He looks at me with those pleading wet eyes and I think, Christ. No amount of money’s worth this.
“So I’m on the couch,” he goes on. “And there’s Laura. Just gazing up at me and purring. Looking at me the way that mannequin lady looked at Rob Lowe in the movie.”
Please stop, I think, bile percolating in the back of my throat.
“So I start to pet Laura, and she pushes into my hand the way she always did. And it was…a moment, you know? That song playin’ on the TV, that cat, my best friend in the world, lookin’ at me the way no one ever had. And I thought, ‘Why not? Just why the fuck not?’”
Holy shit.
“Mr. Nelson—”
“Buster,” he corrects, and leans forward to clap a hand on my knee. When he sees how I tense, he shows me his palms. “Now don’t freak out. I’m not Jeffrey Dahmer.”
I’m not entirely convinced, but whatever. The clock is ticking, and every moment brings me closer to milkshakes and burgers for me and Catherine.
“What then?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Went upstairs and tried to sleep it off. That’s when the trouble began.” He glugs some beer and stares into the can. “That’s when the trouble always begins.”
I can tell he’s building up to something, and for reasons I can’t explain, I’m dreading this more than some feline sex confession.
In a scarcely audible voice, he asks, “You ever get scared at night?”
“Sure.”
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t look up. “I don’t mean normal scared. I don’t mean scared of the dark or the wind.”
I peer out the window, where the sun is tumbling fast. If I don’t get out of here soon, Catherine’s folks won’t let her leave the house, and my Friday night will be shot. Sure, there’s always Saturday, but my heart is set on seeing her tonight. She’s been showing signs lately…gradually wearing down…
“It started when I was a kid,” Buster says, “after I looked up a girl’s skirt and didn’t get caught.”
For some reason, this grabs my attention.
A wistful chuckle. “Suzette Barr. Ninth grade. Sat behind me in Bio. Used to watch the doorway for her to come in, hopin’ she’d have a skirt on.”
“What’s your point?”
“After I peeped her, I couldn’t sleep. I laid there, not a sound in the world, not a light in my bedroom. But I felt like something was wrong.” He pauses. “You ever have the feeling of being watched, Stu?”
I don’t like him calling me by name. But he’s staring at me, not to be put off.
“Of course. Everyone feels that way sometimes.”
“Not like this,” he answers. “Not in your own bedroom. Not in the middle of the night.” He traces a thumb over the sweating can. “I started to feel…I don’t know, exposed? Like I was vulnerable, lying there. I always slept shirtless, and my shoulders, my arm…I felt like anything could touch them.”
“So wear a shirt.”
“I did. It didn’t do any good. There was still my neck, my face. My fingers. Clothes don’t cover everything.”
The living room’s growing dimmer and dimmer. If I don’t get out of here soon…
“You felt like you were being watched,” I prompt.
He nods. “Felt guilty for what I’d done. For peeping that girl.”
I try on a grin. “Most guys try to catch a glimpse at some point.”
“I did it a lot,” he says. “To a bunch of girls. You do it enough, it consumes you. Can’t think of anything else. There’s no room for anything else.”
His tone makes it impossible to hold my grin.
“What if…” he says, “…what if there’s something that stores up all our bad things, our lust…and waits.”
I shift on the couch. “We talking religion here?”
“Not exactly. At least, not traditional religion. I’m talking ancient stuff. Something elemental. Something that was there at the beginning.”
“You need to take it easy on yourself. Stop beating yourself up.”
In his haunted gaze I see the desire to believe me. I realise all but the meekest glow has bled from the evening, the curtains admitting just enough light I can still make out Buster in his dinged-up chair.
“Look, Mr. Nelson,” I begin, sitting forward. “I really need to get going. If I could have the money now, maybe Catherine and I could still go out.”
Though I don’t really believe that. Catherine is home for the night, probably pissed at me. Or relieved she doesn’t have to climb into my backseat. She let me go further than ever last time, but her body had been as taut as baling wire. Like she was pinching her nose and knocking back some nasty medicine.
Buster nods. “I suppose I should tell you now.”
“Tell me what?” I murmur, my mind still on Catherine’s firm body.
“Tell you the real reason I need you.”
“I knew this was bullshit.”
“Please,” he says. “I swear I won’t hurt you.”
“No? Then give me my money.”
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”
“Fine. Pay me a hundred.”
His voice quavers. “I don’t want anything from you. I just need you to spend the night in my bed.”
This time I’m off the couch and to the door in a few lunging strides. I was a moron to enter this weirdo’s house, was foolish to ask if he needed his overgrown grass cut. No amount of money is worth doing whatever perverted things he wants me to do. What the hell was I thinking?
I’m wrestling open the door when he seizes my arm, and instinctively I spin and shove him away. He’s on his back then, gaping up at me, his bottom lip quivering.
“I won’t be in the bed!” he shouts. He nods at the recliner. “I’ll be out here.”
I face him, hands on hips. “You want to pay me a hundred bucks to sleep in your bed?”
“How much will it take?”
I grunt. “I don’t know, a thousand?”
His shoulders slump. “I don’t have that kind of money. Not on me, at least.”
I consider him, slouching there on his heels. I’d cast him off so easily. We probably weigh roughly the same, but I’m a good deal stronger than he is.
“How much do you have here?” I ask.
“Three hundred or so?”
Don’t do it, I think. This is the worst idea ever.
But an image of Catherine flits through my head, Catherine in my backseat, sliding her bra straps down. We could get dinner tomorrow night – a nice dinner, not McDonald’s – and I could drive her to the lake. Hell, with that kind of money I could book us a hotel…
“You promise you’re not gonna chain me up in my sleep?”
“Swear to God.”
“Three hundred tonight, another seven hundred tomorrow?”
He nods vigorously. “I’ll go to the ATM in the morning, drop the money by your house.”
I grimace. “Don’t come to my house. I’ll pick it up tomorrow afternoon.”
A hurt look passes over his face, but it’s gone quickly.
I scratch the back of my neck and mull it over. I know it’s a mistake, but I say, “Fine.”
Because all I can think about is Catherine.
Catherine and the hotel room.
* * *
The deal is simple. Buster wants me to sleep in his bed from 10:00 that night until 6:00 a.m. On the way to his bedroom, he asks, “Won’t your folks worry about you?”
“I’ll text them I’m at a friend’s,” I say. I pause and glower at him. “But they can track my cell. If anything happens to me, there’ll be records of my whereabouts. It’s been pinging right from this house, so even if you chop me up and bury me somewhere, they’ll know it was you.”
I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds good.
“Fine, fine,” he murmurs absently. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t even go in there.”
He opens the door and goes in there.
I follow. “You haven’t even explained why you need me.”
He flips on the ceiling light and moves to the queen-sized bed. The brown blankets are rumpled, his sheets the yellow of overripe onions. The closet door is open just a crack.
I eye the bed. “I’m not gonna get crabs, am I?”
A pfft. “I haven’t had a woman in here in so long, the crabs woulda died by now.”
I arch an eyebrow at him.
He says, “All I need is for you to be here in the dark. I need to find out…” He rubs his scruffy chin. “I need to know if you feel the same thing I do.”
I squint at him.
He massages his brow. “Look, this is gonna sound batshit, but bear with me, all right?”
I wait.
Buster says, “I believe certain…desires can become physical. Or can summon something physical.”
“That ancient, elemental thing?”
He won’t meet my eyes. “Yeah.”
“And you’re worried it’s, what? Living in here?”
He nods.
“Why don’t you just sleep somewhere else?”
A pained face. “I’ve tried that. I’ve tried everything.”
“And?”
“I can’t tell,” he moans. “I’ve slept in my chair. My car. Even hotels.”
“Did the boogeyman follow you?”
“Don’t joke about it!”
I gape at him. It’s the harshest he’s spoken all evening.
“Look, kid,” he says, “I’m sorry. It ain’t your fault. And I probably shouldn’t be involving you in this.”
But you are, I think.
“It’s just,” he flails his hands, “I don’t know what else to do. When I sleep somewhere else, it’s not as bad. But I can’t tell if that’s because I’m safe or because I’m tellin’ myself I am.”
I study him. His scraggly facial hair. His mottled scalp. Most of all those watery, egg-yolk eyes. “The feeling is strongest in here?”
He nods.
I move past him. “So what will set your mind at ease?”
“Don’t you see? If you feel it, that means the room is haunted, not just me. I’ll sell the house.”
I begin to shake my head, but he interrupts.
“You don’t understand, Stu. I’m losing my fuckin’ mind. Can’t sleep. Can barely function. You try makin’ friends looking like I do. You go out there and try to meet a nice gal.”
I bite my lip, look around. It doesn’t feel much like a haunted room. Just rundown. And smelly.
“You’ll do it?” he asks.
“What happened when you stayed in a hotel?”
His eagerness fades, something haggard and doomed taking its place. “I dunno. I felt like someone was there. Sitting in the corner, in the dark. Staring at me.”
He slides open the dresser door, moves some stuff around, and comes out with some crinkled bills. “There’s three-oh-eight here. I’ll get the rest tomorrow.”
I take the money, which feels slightly greasy.
“It’s 9:53,” he says. “Guess I better leave you to it.”
“You’ll be out there?”
“Right in the next room.”
He’s nearly to the door when I call, “Hey, Buster.”
“Yeah?”
“What do I do if the thing shows up?”
His expression goes solemn. “I don’t know, Stu. If that thing does come…get out of here. If you can.”
I try to smile. “If I can?”
He looks at me. “When I feel it drifting toward me, I find it hard to move. Impossible, in fact.”
And with that, he goes out and closes the door behind him.
* * *
I lie there staring at the gloom-painted ceiling for a while. My mind keeps churning from Buster and his strange beliefs, to Catherine, and back to Buster again. I can’t see how this little experiment will prove anything. I know nothing will happen, know I’ll experience, at worst, a sleepless night. But I’m already three hundred dollars richer, and unless he’s lying, I’ll be a lot richer tomorrow.
I close my eyes and roll onto my side.
Catherine.
Man, she’s gorgeous. We’re both eighteen, but she somehow seems older. Where I’m eager to have fun, take chances, she’s always ready with a responsible answer.
If we lie to our parents about where we are, they could find out.
If I get caught drinking, I’ll miss half the tennis season.
We can’t do that, Stu. I could get pregnant.
God. That terrible word.
I hate the way she says it, like it’s inevitable. I explain how effective condoms are, how I’ll stop before I get there if that eases her mind. Though I doubt, in the moment, I’ll be able to stop.
But man, it would feel good. I think of Catherine’s neck, the scent of her perfume. I don’t know what it’s called, but it drives me crazy, reminds me of lazy summer days and swimming in the lake and her fingers around my neck, her nails teasing my hair…
I open my eyes. Peer into the darkness of Buster’s bedroom.
I have to piss.
I reach toward the nightstand and thumb on my phone. Only 11:25. The night feels endless already.
I sit up. The nearest bathroom is off the foyer, so I creep out of bed and get halfway across the living room before a bovine snort freezes me where I stand. I glance over and spy Buster with his mouth open, a silvery filament of drool still deciding whether it wants to make contact with his hairy shoulder.
He snorts again, and I scurry into the bathroom. I don’t trust the guy, but a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks, and if spending the night in a farty-smelling bed is the cost, I’m willing to pay. I relieve my bladder, tiptoe past Buster, and re-enter the bedroom.
And the smell hits me.
I tell myself it’s the same odour, but it isn’t. Not quite. There’s a depth to it that wasn’t there before. Like something has stirred while I was in the bathroom and kicked up this withering stench. Lakebottom mud tinged with sulphur. My hand trembling, I reach out and paw at the light switch. Yellow floods the room.
Empty.
Sure, the sheet and blanket are bunched in a not-pleasing way. And I don’t appreciate how Buster has arranged his nightstand just far enough from the wall to create a murky moat of shadow. Or the fact that the closet door is slightly ajar, even though I’m pretty sure I closed it.
I rush over there, barge it shut, but the click doesn’t come, something shouldering against it from the inside. Teeth bared, I rip open the door and spot the impediment. Only a belt. I swat it out of the way and jam the door until it clicks.
There. I back away, heart jitterbugging.
Now…
I pivot to face the room.
…about that smell.
Could it be that I’m more aware of it because it’s approaching midnight? Buster’s tale of a malignant presence is absurd, but it must have done a number on me because there’s no denying the sweat sheening my forehead or the persistent throb in my temples. I need water, but I don’t want to leave the room again. What if the sulphurous dead-fish smell is worse when I return? What if the closet door is open?
I switch off the light and the darkness enshrouds me.
It’s hot in the room, so I shed my shoes, socks, and jeans. I peel off my T-shirt and add it to the mound on the floor. I rush to the bed and jerk the covers up to my chest. I lay back and tell myself to relax. It takes a while. But at some point I nod off.
* * *
I awake in two stages. In the first I’m with Catherine and we’re making out in a hotel room and it’s so good I suspect it can’t be real. And because it’s so good, because it’s so perfect, I know it’s a dream and then I’m awake and I realise where I am.
And the fear floods in.
I scrabble for those mental sluice gates, the ones that keep you from becoming a toddler sobbing in the darkness and begging for the monsters to go away, but it’s useless. My body is taut, a tingle running from forehead to toes. The covers feel leaden, oppressive. My breathing is laboured. I’m on my back, and I don’t usually sleep that way, and with my chest uncovered I feel totally exposed. I haven’t opened my eyes because if I do I’ll see whatever it is that haunts Buster, whatever terrible fiend dwells in this room. And lying there, paralysed, I realise what this is, what I’ve really agreed to. I’m bait, dammit. A sacrifice. Buster is hoping it’ll take me before it takes him. He’ll placate it the way the ancients appeased the gods by burning a goat or a lamb. I can almost hear the tortured bleats and smell the scorched flesh, and fearing the terrible presence will seize me, my paralysis breaks, and I roll onto my side.
Cool air whispers over my shoulder, and I open my eyes, sure some monstrous face is hovering over me.
The room seems empty, but the surge of relief doesn’t come. Instead, an icy breeze sweeps over me, chilling my bare shoulder, so I jerk up the covers to shield myself, but only the sheet comes up. I wriggle down and grasp a handful of blanket and stretch it all the way to my underjaw. I’m not quite to the point of burying my face, but that level of infantile panic isn’t far off. My hackles thrum, so I squirm lower to conceal the nape of my neck.
I still feel exposed. While my left arm is tucked safely under the blanket, my right arm, the side I’m lying on, juts out parallel with my pillow, and now I’m certain the presence is here with me, drifting closer, its pitiless shadow crawling over my shins, my knees, as surely as a thunderhead darkens a wheatfield on a sombre summer’s day.
Jesus God, what a mistake this was. The air’s so cold my flesh gathers into nodes and I’ve never felt smaller, never wanted my mother more. I think of her and Dad, just down the street, oblivious to my plight, sleeping the sleep of the unmarked.
I suck in breath. I’ve been so transfixed by my terror that I’ve neglected to listen for the presence, for the elemental being that’s shifted its gaze from Buster to me, but now I hear the slightest creak of a floorboard, the subtlest whisper, a hungry sound, the presence so eager for me that it mutters to itself, its foul lips writhing in anticipation. I’m powerless to stop it. My arm is exposed, my crabbed fingers offered up as surely as plump earthworms squirming on baited hooks.
I whimper, not giving a damn how weak I sound. I want to bolt from the room, want to escape, but it’s too late. My eyes have adjusted enough to discern the length of my body under the blanket, the freighted darkness beyond. And…
…I close my eyes, scourging them of the illusion. That’s what it had to be. But over my body, flowing out of the darkness like a slender funnel birthed from a rampart of nimbus clouds, a shape is gliding toward me.
That’s not possible! a voice inside me screams, but the voice is faint, the evidence of my eyes infinitely more compelling. The sound of the presence squeezes my eyes closed again, the low, throaty exhalation, a horrifying orgasmic sigh that sets my skin to crawl. I grind my teeth and realise I’m weeping, my sobs silent, my chest shuddering, and I pray for it to stop, plead for forgiveness even though I haven’t thought of God in years. But my pleas are a breathy stew, just gibberish, and tears leak and the freezing chill grips me and…
…I realise there’s a change in the room. An electricity surrounding me, a psychic leaning. The odour of sulphurous lake mud clogs my nostrils and I clamp my lips to keep it out. I tell myself it’s a panic attack brought on by Buster’s hideous paranoia. I wait, wait, and I’m about to open my eyes when moist fingers slither through my own, the flesh slimy, fever-hot, grasping my hand, and I open my eyes and see it leering at me, eager hungry eyes, vast and ivory and purple-irised with hateful ebony voids in their centres and I gag and push away and beyond it I discern movement.
“Oh my God, kid,” Buster gasps and the light floods on. He rushes toward me and I slap at the covers and crowd against the headboard and Buster’s voice is frantic, and I recoil from him and scramble out of bed.
“Kid!” he’s saying. “Hold up, Stu!” But his words reach me from a distance. I snatch up my clothes, fumble a shoe, and scurry to the doorway. I’ve got to get out, got to breathe the outside air.
“You can’t leave, kid,” he’s saying, but his words elicit no pity in me, all emotion seared away by the terror of what I saw, what I felt. I’m shaking so badly by the time I reach the front door that I can’t even turn the knob, much less operate whatever locks are there.
“You can’t leave me, Stu!” he moans. “We had a bargain. You said you’d stay till morning.”
I shake my head, slap the light switch, and finally locate the deadbolt.
Buster asks, “Was it maybe a nightmare?”
“Nightmare,” I repeat. Anything to get the hell out of there. I twist the deadbolt and the door jumps. I yank it open, my other shoe clunking to the floor. Screw it. I still have my T-shirt and jeans. I’ll go naked if I have to. Anything to escape this house.
But something makes me pause, one foot on the porch, the other on the threshold. I glance back at Buster and see him standing slump-shouldered in the doorway of his bedroom. Defeated. Not even looking at me.
I shrug off a pang of guilt and rush to my car.
But it’s locked. I rummage through my jean pockets, but though the wad of cash is there, the keys aren’t.
I turn back to the house. Ah, fuck.
I stand there, chest heaving. The foyer light is on, the interior door open. Nothing in there but Buster.
I think of the torrid, mucous-slick fingers snaking around mine. The purple irises crop-dusting me with loathing.
To hell with that. My house is right down the street.
I can get my keys tomorrow.
* * *
Safe in my bedroom. Under my own blankets. Not Buster’s foul-smelling ones.
Not in his accursed bedroom.
Lying in my bed, I think of the slimy fingers threading with mine and devise an ingenious safeguard. By positioning my hand next to the opening of the pillowcase, I can sheathe my fingers inside it.
Drowsy but not sleeping, I check my phone. Four in the morning.
I think of the arguments I’ve been having with my dad, how pissed he’s been at me. He’s an early riser. By six he’ll be at the kitchen table crunching his burnt toast and nursing his coffee and scrolling through his phone for stuff to bitch about. And he’ll notice my car isn’t outside. And no matter how I come at it, I can’t invent a plausible reason for my car being at Buster Nelson’s house. I can’t say it broke down. That’ll kibosh my night with Catherine. Can’t tell him the truth. Hell, I can’t tell myself the truth. I can’t spin some ridiculous lie—Yeah, Dad, I felt nostalgic last night. I parked down the road and took a stroll around the neighbourhood to reconnect with my childhood.
Horseshit.
I have to retrieve those keys, and I have to do it soon. Else my dream night with Catherine at a hotel – a fancy hotel – will never come to pass.
Before the superstitious terror can creep back in, I push out of bed and drag on some clothes. I pad through the house, taking care not to step on the creakiest floorboards. Outside, I marvel at how bright the sky is, the moon a swollen pearl that floods everything with its lustrous glow.
It doesn’t take long to troop to Buster’s. I stand on the lawn a moment, studying the darkened windows and the lightless rectangle of the foyer. I don’t like the darkness, and I hate the notion of sneaking back in to find my keys. But they can only be in one of two places. They either fell out of my pocket as I sat on the living room couch, or they tumbled out in my mad flurry to escape the bedroom.
Hell. I have to go in there.
But what if Buster owns a gun? What if he blasts a hole in the middle of my chest because he mistakes me for a burglar? I stand there debating it, fingers twitching. I could just knock on the door and wake his ass up. It’s not like I’ve done anything wrong.
We had a bargain, he’d pleaded. You said you’d stay until morning.
No, I tell myself. The bargain wasn’t fair.
I trudge up the porch and listen at the screen door.
Nothing. No wind, no floorboards, no anything.
Just go in and grab the keys. Get some sleep and call Catherine before she makes some bullshit plans. Watching TV with her grandma or something.
I open the door, grimacing at the screek it makes, then step inside. I slide my phone out, finger-sweep the light. Creep to the couch, flick the light over the cruddy fabric, knowing I won’t find the keys.
I regard the bedroom door, which is closed. I blow out a trembling breath.
I edge forward, and I’m maybe three steps from the door when I hear it: a croupy chuffing sound. Like a seriously ill dog. One of those huge ones, a St. Bernard or a mastiff.
I creep closer, lean toward the door, and the chuffing grows louder. Phlegmy, but not sick. No.
Effortful. Rhythmic.
Squishy.
My flesh crawling, I twist the knob and draw open the door and the sounds amplify. I take a step and the toe of my sneaker nudges something, and I splash the floor with light and discover my keys. I snatch them up, and the chuffs intensify.
Oh Christ, I think. That’s not Buster.
My whole body numb, I raise my phone light and behold what’s on top of him. Nose-to-nose, a hideous alabaster face leers at him, its thick black eyebrows arched, its tongue sliming over Buster’s lips. The putrid stench rolls over me, acrid, exultant. I sway on my feet and try to look away, but the sight of its nude body, sinewed and glistening, rivets me where I stand. The creature’s worm-wet fingers fondle Buster’s chest, blistering his skin, a trail of crimson boils bursting and spilling over his torso like rancid wine. Buster’s eyes implore me, his mouth open in a voiceless scream. I hear a squelch as its midsection grinds into his. The creature’s legs writhe languidly against Buster’s. His skin bubbles, pops, the pus drooling down his thighs like bacon grease. The creature swivels its head toward me, the purple irises aglow, hateful, and I back away. The creature laughs deep in its gullet, and I don’t know how but I make it outside and manage to drive home.
* * *
I don’t sleep again that night.
Buried under a snowdrift of covers, sweating, yearning to lock my bedroom door but unwilling to leave the sanctuary of my blankets, I think of the creature atop Buster. Its maggot-white body. Its satyr’s leer. I thrash my head to rid myself of the memory, but it only crystallises, fixing me with its violating gaze.
I whimper and shudder and perspire within my nest and pray I don’t feel the weight of it press down on me.
I remain that way until six that morning, when I hear Dad puttering around the kitchen, burning his toast and slurping his coffee. I shower with the door open and mess around on my phone until seven, when Catherine usually wakes up. But before I call her, I search up the nicest hotel in the area, which turns out to be the Marriott two towns over.
I slouch on the foot of my bed and give them my info. I see my reflection in the door mirror, my bare chest, the arms I’ve been working so hard to bulk up. Soon Catherine will be squeezing these arms and clawing these shoulders. I’m thinking of Catherine’s fresh, unblemished body when the lady on the other end asks me a question.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Could you repeat that?”
She asks her question again.
“That’s right,” I answer. “One room. King-sized bed.”
She asks another question. I close my eyes and smile.
“Yes,” I begin to tell her. “We’ll only be staying…”
But I can’t finish. Because the smell has returned, and my gorge clenches and I know when I open my eyes I’ll see the creature hovering over my shoulder.
When I look there’s nothing behind me, but I’m not me anymore. My eyebrows are furry and arched and my mouth has widened to a harlequin’s leer. My irises glow purple, my skin is bleached and slime-glistened. I want to cry out, to bellow in horror, but I’ve lost all volition. I slide my fingers over my chest and watch the flesh bubble. The aroma of seared ham merges with the lakebottom stench, and the boils redden to bulging domes. Tears leak down my cheeks, and as my fingers slide over my thighs and the boils overrun my skin, I hear myself breathe, the chuff of mindless craving.