[Love]
She was still there. Closing the door quietly (why? I don't know) and locking it again. She had been staring out of the window with her back to me and seemed only mildly interested enough to look in my direction as I left to room. I turned to descend the stairs, stomach still growling. I wondered what she was waiting for? I figured I had enough time to shower and do the usual rounds before I attended to Jeff- At the foot of the second floor I froze, 'the feeling' was back. I shook my head, was she following me? I scanned the stairway behind me, looking up. No. Him.
It was Jeffrey. I think my heart sank, shrivelled and screamed all in the same instant. For a blind second I couldn't even move. He was fully dressed in a suit and long coat - funny that I should be wondering why his apparition should clothe itself like that, in the official capacity of a job and a life he no longer owned. Almost as if his job had become a function of his identity even though he didn't have it any more.
"Jeff, don't-" I said.
What was I saying? If he was here that could only mean... I ran down the remaining flights my heart expanding to explode. From up the hall I could see the door was open The nightnurse had a master key. I made it to the door. In the hall that ghost of Jeff was lighting a ghost cigarette, leaning against the wall as if to say: "Go ahead, see what you can do. I won't matter." He blew smoke up above his head and I wanted to hurt him. Ghost, fiend, whatever it was. A hallucination? Jeff didn't smoke, did he?
I crossed the threshold into the room.
Jeff was laid out on the bed, his shirt was open like they'd been trying to resuscitate him and it hadn't worked. There were three nurses. One, the closest we had to a doctor, looked at me sadly and shook her head. One of the other nurses - male - was already leaving the room. I think I left all semblance of sense and sanity because I heard myself scream: "No!" with such conviction and strangled anxiety that I was pretty sure the voice wasn't mine. I didn't own this kind of pain or anger - raw and intimidating. I could weather this type of tragedy without so much as a wink. Couldn't I? My vision was swimming. The remaining two nurses were merely looking at me as I looked at him. On the bed, so still, so still. God, he still looked like he was sleeping. How could I have missed...? I touched his hand. Still warm. Not dead long. The second nurse left the room while the last still stood watching us. Or, rather, me. She knew me, she'd patched me up enough times. She started to say something but I didn't want to hear.
"Leave us." I said, my voice low, quiet and devoid of anything, everything.
She left. I shut the door behind her. Without thinking I walked to the window and drew the blinds. The room was dark again. I could see the outline of Jeff's body on the bed. Silent, unmoving. What could I do? What could I do? I was absently wiping hot moisture from my eyes. I couldn't be crying? What could I do? My head was thundering the litany. I think a sob escaped me, I think I sank to my knees, I think I only realised I was sitting on the floor when my hand touched the cold linoleum tiles and I shuddered. My head was bowed. The 'feeling' was coming upon me again and I just wanted to pull out my hair in empty frustration to take away the deeper, stretching numbness and disbelief. Anything, anything. I'd do anything.
Leaning on my knee, I noticed the briefest hint of the handle of the knife I kept there, strapped against my leg. It spurred me into desperate action. I had a half plan in my mind and it wasn't sane. I kept whispering, I can go with him, I can go with him. And pulling the knife out of it's hiding place I really wanted to. I looked at it's sharp glinting edge and the way my hands looked so blue and cold in the semi-darkness, how the veins stood out. They were shaking, my hands. I pressed the cold, sharp thing to the hollow of my neck and closed my eyes. A voice came out of the darkness.
"You don't have to be so melodramatic, you know."
My eyes flew open. In the corner by the door, the apparition I'd seen in the hall came out of the shadows.
"You don't have to be so melodramatic." It repeated again, as if I hadn't heard it. Then it put that cigarette back in it's mouth pondered for a minute, took it again between index and thumb and blew a tobacco halo.
"I heard you." I replied. A certain cruelty in my vowels equalling the contempt I felt at that moment for that thing, masquerading as Jeff.
"Oh, so you know!" It positively cackled.
My hand closed around the knife again.
"You're such a bright, beautiful, dangerous little thing." It said, looking me up and down this time. "Don't tell me we haven't met before."
We had but that wasn't the point.
"What do you want?"
"I have a...what do you call it? A proposition." It stretched the mask of Jeff's face into a wry, emploring expression.
I looked at the real Jeff's body on the bed and was kind of glad he didn't have to see the blasphemy this creature jangled into his features.
"You don't like it?" It said, picking up on my thoughts again. "Would you rather I looked like this?"
Suddenly I was looking at my father. I said nothing.
"No?"
It went back to imitating Jeff.
"I prefer this one. It irritates you the most. Jeffrey - just like his father." It exhaled smoke like a dragon.
The colour bled out of my knuckles and the blade pressed into my skin. If it was cutting me, I couldn't feel it.
I tried to make my mind blank. Failed.
"What do I want? Yes, this proposition...You want to save him." Not a question, a statement of fact. "I want you to...try, at least. What do you say?"
I'd say go to hell but...I couldn't. Hell had come to me.
It didn't even respond to this one, just dropped the cigarette, put it out with the flat of it's shoe and held it's hand out. I hesitated for a moment and then gave it the knife. Silently and methodically it rolled up it's sleeve so the forearm was exposed, placed the point of the knife at it's palm, pushing it down. Blood spurted up, red at first, then a fouler more corrupt colour. It twisted the blade around carving something into it's palm without so much as a quiver. Then drawing the knife up along the inside of it's upper arm, leaving a line of blood that stopped at the puckered sleeve.
"Your hand, my lady." It mocked me.
I held it out. I was surprised when it actually touched me, mildly repulsed but mesmered, marvelling that it was a solid entity and not just a pathetic phantom of my grief. I felt the firm grasp of this thing, holding my hand and then the sharp pain of it cutting me open. It seemed unbearable. And I knew it wasn't just carving my hand, it was carving far deeper than that. My arm was going numb, the pain excruciating now, I wanted to whimper, I wanted to cry out - but I didn't give, no matter how badly I wanted to. The blood, ours, was dripping onto the floor. It pulled me forward suddenly and I started, nausea suddenly curling against my stomach. My temples throbbing. I heard myself gasp, unexpectedly. It's fingers were burrowing into mine as it held me, still cutting, the skin and muscle visibly parting around the knife's path up my forearm. Why wasn't I passing out? Now it added deep gouges in the arm around the initial cut. I started to pull the hand away.
"This isn't...necessary." I panted around my pain.
The thing looked up. Jeffy's mask paling slightly. It's hand still squeezing mine, I heard the bones crack. The blood blending, the flesh melding. My voice seemed to roar though it wasn't saying anything. He jerked his hand, mine and me upward. He was so tall that my feet didn't touch the ground, my body strained impossibly against gravity. Heart began to ache, the thud of it all I could hear in my ears and the sense of slow infection as it's blood stole into me. Our wrists were fusing into one hardened bone. Everything shifted. I felt...like...I was dying.
"But first," it said, (I could only hear blood in my ears) "a kiss."
And then I felt i..was..d r o w n i n g.
***
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- fin -
CONTINUED in The Dark Ages.