There comes a time of night when it seems as if it has been night since the beginning of the universe, and will remain so until the end of all time. It's during this time of night that small children wake screaming for their mothers, in horror of the monsters that dwell under their beds; it's the time of night when veteran soldiers wake from dreams of war, clawing at the air against unseen enemies; it is the time of night when young people living alone for the first time wake to loneliness and wish desperately for the safety of their old homes. It's the time of nightmares and bad memories come to life. It's the time of night that a little part of everyone fears, no matter what sort of person you are…even if you're the fastest guitarist in the world.
Skwisgaar knew, in some deeply buried part of his mind, that he was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. A part of him knew that he was a grown man now, a grown man living in a mansion that was more like a fortress and surrounded by his own personal army. A part of him knew that he was thousands upon thousands of miles away from her. A part of him knew all these things, but during those endless, nightmarish hours, he never seemed able to remember them.
He dreamed his memories.
She is huge and towering and pale as she stands over his small body; her once-beautiful face is obscured by wisps of silver-blue cigarette smoke. She jabs him with the toe of her high-heeled shoe, pokes it sharply between his tiny ribs, and orders him to get up.
"Stand up and be a little man, damn you," she hisses, and her voice is cold. "Don't you want to eat tonight?"
He stands. He always stands. He is barely five years old and he stands because she is his mother and he loves her; he loves her now in the same desperate, deprived way that he will always love her, loves her despite the yellowish eyes of the old men in the shadows. She opens her arms to him and he goes into them willingly, a cold, naked little boy with haunted blue eyes and blond hair that hangs to his waist like a girl's. He goes to her even though he feels wrong, so horribly wrong as she picks him up and touches him and examines him and it happens almost every night but she is his mother and he knows that he is always supposed to obey his mother even if she makes him feel…wrong.
She smells icky and it makes him feel sick to his tummy. He wants to be sick, wants to be sick all over the scratchy blue carpet of the hotel room, if he's sick she won't do this to him anymore, she won't touch him anymore, she won't give him to the old men who smell like her except worse, as if they wet their pants, he always gets in trouble when he wets his pants but those grown-up men don't and it doesn't feel right to him, none of this feels right, not his mother's hands not the twisted, sticky fingers of the old men with the jagged, yellowy nails, it's wrong…it's so wrong…but his mother tells him to do it and he does it because it's right to obey his mother, if he doesn't obey he is wrong, and when he is wrong she hurts him, but if he obeys, if he's good, if he doesn't cry this time maybe she'll love him.
The nightmare hours were waning.
Skwisgaar's grown-up eyes fluttered open; his grown-up mouth opened wide in a scream that he was powerless to stop. He scrambled out of the bed, oblivious to the warm body next to his, his cold hand pressed tightly against his lips as he stumbled his way into the bathroom.
He didn't even try for the toilet. It was too far away. His bony knees hit the tiled floor hard as he went down next to the bathtub. The contents of his writhing stomach
(tummy, I have a tummyache, mother, no, I'm sick to my tummy)
came up in an acidic, searing rush barely a moment later, and Skwisgaar tried hard not to breathe through his nose, knowing that the smell
(icky, mother, you smell icky, the man smells icky, mother)
of acid and liquor and what little food he'd managed to eat would have mixed togther into something that would only make him him puke more. It did no good, and it was no surprise really, it never did any good, and Skwisgaar threw up again, he had to throw up, it made him feel cleaner, made him feel less corrupt
(wrong it's wrong but mother I love you)
and filthy, and he slid two of his long fingers down his throat until he was bringing up nothing but blood-tinged bile.
Skwisgaar spit into the bathtub, dry heaving, his stomach emptied but his mind a roiling mess of memories that he couldn't get rid of as easily. He curled up on the cold tile floor and screamed again, screamed until his head ached, screamed until his acid-scorched throat was raw red agony, and when he felt a hand on his shoulder he flinched and curled more tightly into himself.
The hand never left. Its warm weight became more real as Skwisgaar began to come out of his nightmares, as he began to realize that the touch was not that of a high-heeled shoe or that of a greasy, stinking old man. It was just a hand.
"Toki's hand," he thought, and suddenly he felt sick again from the shame.
Skwisgaar, wrapped around his own knees like an unborn child in the womb, wished for one of the quadrillionth times in his life (but only about the tenth since joining Dethklok) that he was dead. He wished it hard and with a childlike hope that it might come true, that he did not have to look up and see the pity in Toki's eyes, that he did not have to get up from this cold, hard floor and explain what had just happened. He curled himself tighter, shaking, and wished even harder. He even contemplated praying before deciding that any god that would hear the prayers of a man like him was probably a god better left alone. He knew his wishes weren't coming true when he felt Toki's arms around his shoulders, felt himself being lifted gently into a sitting position.
"Skwis," Toki mumbled softly into his ear, "At least get up and come back to bed. It's warm there, you'll freeze to death on this floor."
Skwisgaar jerked his shoulders out of Toki's hands, turning his back to him before he'd even seen his lover's face.
"I want to fucking freeze to death. Leave me alone."
He tried to make his voice sharp, tried to make it as cold and angry as possible. He would do anything—anything—to keep Toki from seeing him like this, to keep Toki from knowing the broken, sick part of him that was still so disgustingly vulnerable after all these years, to keep Toki from ever, ever finding out.
Skwisgaar sat with his eyes closed and waited for the warmth at his back to shrink away. Toki always shrank away when Skwisgaar was cruel, always had, but this time Toki didn't move. Instead Skwisgaar felt himself drawn into arms stronger than his own as Toki pulled him close, nestling Skwisgaar's bony back against his broad chest. His long legs lay warm on either side of Skwisgaar's own, and as Toki began rubbing his sunken stomach, Skwisgaar felt a pang of guilt that he would be so cold to anyone who gave enough of a damn to try to comfort him in the throes of his pathetic nightmares…but since when had he ever been comforted like this?
"Well if you're going to sit here like an idiot and freeze to death, then I guess I'll freeze to death too," said Toki, "Because I'm not leaving you alone, Skwisgaar."
"You're the idiot," Skwisgaar snapped, but his anger was half-hearted. "Just go back to bed. I'm fine."
"You're lying." Toki's voice was quiet. "You're lying because you still don't want to let me help you."
"You're not supposed to be helping me," Skwisgaar answered. He had begun shivering now; the floor was rather cold, and he was still naked. Gooseflesh crept up his legs and arms, standing his downy, golden body hair on end. "I don't need help."
"Tell that to your puke in the tub," Toki said lightly, but his voice was not unkind. He tucked his arms underneath Skwisgaar's and stood up, bringing the Swede slowly to his feet as he rose.
Skwisgaar allowed Toki to pull him up. The bloodrush to his head made him feel wobbly, and his stomach was rolling and pitching as if a small hurricane had taken up residence inside it. Still, he was able to make his own way to the sink. He swished some mouthwash; it burned his recently abused mouth, but he felt a little cleaner than he had before.
It was the first time he had never had to take a hot shower after the nightmare (the memory, the cruel part of his mind insisted)—the first time he hadn't scorched his skin pink trying to clean away filth that was decades old. Instead, he crawled into bed and Toki tucked himself against his back, one calloused hand rubbing soothing circles against the Swede's abdomen.
He was a thousand times grateful that Toki didn't ask any questions that night. The questions would come—he knew they would come, he had known it the moment that Toki had whispered "You're lying," for the very first time over a month ago, but he couldn't answer them tonight. All he wanted now was to sleep without dreaming, to sleep without remembering, and with Toki's chin nuzzled into the crook of his shoulder, Skwisgaar finally felt right.
He slept soundly this time, and Toki never moved from behind him, never took his arm from around the Swede's thin waist. Every now and then he couldn't help himself—he pulled Skwisgaar's skinny body more tightly against his own, as if he were pulling him away from some unseen horror.
Those were just the kinds of horrors Skwisgaar needed pulling away from—the ones they all needed pulling away from, actually. They could all face any terror that existed within the domain of the real world, or even from a fantasy world at that—lake trolls hadn't struck fear into their hearts and neither had the Devil himself.
What frightened them were the things that lived in their minds, Toki realized; things they still loved, despite the horror and terror that laced that love.
Toki wouldn't remember his revelation when he woke. It occurred to him on the edge of sleep, the worst time for remembering. He woke only to the realization that Skwisgaar was gone, and his side of the bed was cold.
