The colour of desire
Slowly, the bedclothes slithered up the wall.
The deep, red sheets which surrounded her like a terrible womb rose up and obscured the white light from the window. The rattle which came from her throat in place of a scream died with her lost breath, and she could only watch as something unfolded from its impossibly small space like an Alien, magnificent, powerful, remorseless and deadly.
The hand that appeared from the visceral darkness was delicate and flesh-coloured and Alex, mesmerised like a wounded animal, stared helpless as it pushed the silk aside. Panting for breath and slick with chilling sweat, she saw the flesh and the blackness metamorphose into tousled, sandy, reassuring hair.
Gene – dear God, it was Gene! She was safe, safe, safe…
He turned towards her and smiled. His face was ghastly, the light in his eyes steel-like and glinting, and the blood that dripped from his beautiful stained lips was lost in the black of the shirt he wore. "Alex," he mouthed – there could be no breath in that heavy, dead body – and spray as if from an artery arced across the walls, the bed, her face, disappearing into the rich cloth in which they were wrapped as his heart was torn out. "Alex," reaching out for her now, as she had dreamt of him doing a hundred times, but not like this. Not like this!
She opened her mouth to scream again and tried to twist away, only to find herself falling, falling through a blackness as dark as the end of all things, cocooned in evil scarlet, sheets stained with the blood of her nightmare, raising hands in futile defence as would a child, twisting and turning and flung back, thrown against the bed from which she had just fallen, hands by her face, sheets settling around her, eyes wide with terror staring into the light, powerless as a newborn and exhausted with fear.
She turned, breathing heavily, to the mass by her side. Was Gene – but he had been – oh God it was moving…
Slowly, the bedclothes slithered up the wall.
The deep, red sheets lumped themselves together to form something living, and the dirty morning light exposed a hand as pale as bleached bone. Her own shirt remained black, but this creature wore pure snow-blinding white, textured and ruffled against the smooth slickness of the crimson which disgorged it. Its face, shimmering in her unfocussed vision, resembled her father's, or Evan's – a face she should have been able to trust.
Except that this too-familiar face was immaculate and evil, with eyes that might have witnessed the pain of children with lazy pleasure. As they turned their darkness on her, a mouth as red with malevolence as Gene's had been with blood pursed its cruel lips into the travesty of a kiss and leaned towards her. "Alex," and this time there was the sound of dry, dead leaves and the stench of rotting breath, and the word washed over her like an obscene baptism. "Alex," and as the eyes lit up, Moloch-like, the white hand opened to reveal the thick sticky redness of a still-beating heart, and she knew it was Gene's, even as her own broke with the horror.
"No!" the silent scream catapulted her out of the bed as something bitter filled her throat, and again she was falling, plunging through thick, heavy foetid air as Sam must have plunged in his final terrible seconds, hampered and trapped by the wet silky stuff that clung to her skin like slime, tumbling and screaming and hitting the softness – the welcoming, safe softness of the sheets, hands up like a baby fighting off death or welcoming it, panting in panic and cold with shock and
Awake, and
Oh God it was a nightmare. It was just a nightmare! Never had the trite words 'it was only a dream' seemed more wonderful. She caught her breath and lay quite still, not daring to move for the monsters that the child in her knew had been in the room. Warm sunlight, bright and clean, streamed through the window blind, and from somewhere outside she could hear the sounds of birds squabbling. Luigi's soft off-key singing drifted up from the room below. Everything was normal, and she was safe and alone.
She sighed raggedly, smiled uncertainly to herself, and sat shaking on the edge of the bed. "Gene," she whispered. At this moment, she wanted him more than life itself – she wanted his utterly reliable, solidly irritating presence telling her that all was right with the world – that the man in her bed was the one she wanted, and no-one else. She wanted to see him alive and whole and at once, and began to move towards the telephone. "Gene…"
As if in answer, something behind her moved. Fully awake, she turned unthinking, and watched as slowly the bedclothes slithered up the wall.