The Price

I made some small noise—something that seemed accidental but I knew would catch his attention. He paused and half-turned where he stood, glancing back down at me from over his shoulder with those four black holes where a face ought to have been. I looked away; I couldn't bear to meet his eyes, not when I did not know where they were, not when I could not see them. He hesitated, his hands twitched and then he would have turned again to continue out of the room…if I had not spoken.

"Touch me."

Nothing more than a whisper, gone, lost in the darkness as quickly as it had emerged, a tiny and fleeting breath that almost had never been drawn.

I heard nothing, and so I dared to look back to him again. He was frozen, taxidermied. He reminded me of one of the cloth prop men we use in crowd scenes if only the moth worms had long since devoured its features. And then, slowly, he seemed to shrink just slightly as if someone had slit a hole in him and the sand had begun to leak out little by little.

Perhaps he had not heard me, I thought. Perhaps he doubted what he heard. It was understandable. The gas fire hissed in the hearth and such whispers were easily lost in air so thick with unspoken words.

I spoke again—"Touch me."—And this time he saw my lips form the syllables. At first he shrank more, recoiling, his hands rising stiffly as if to stop my breath before it reached him. The pits of darkness above his hollow cheeks narrowed as his cadaverous brow furrowed momentarily in frustration and then in despair. I do not think he breathed.

I looked away again then, tipping up my nose and folding my hands more tightly in my lap. The clock in the hall struck one and then there was only silence. But somehow I knew…I could feel that he was closer. I breathed deeply, the way I do when I am singing and my shoulders never move…but feeling my ribs expand and strain against my garments, I remembered where I was and was gripped by frustrated despair of my own. I exhaled quickly, tore my hands from each other, and turned back to him again.

I found that he had moved so close to me that I could not even see his face unless I were to choose to tilt my head far back. I chose not to.

His hand hung limply at his side, but the tips of his fingers pulsed with the perfect rhythm of a heartbeat, just slightly toward each other and then back again, as if they did not know whether or not to grasp what wasn't there.

I opened my mouth to speak, but I said nothing. My cheeks felt growing hot and the muscles strained and tightened in my neck to keep my head from obeying every instinct to look away again. Numbness tugged at one of my feet but I did not dare move it as my whole face then burned with that prickling force that one needs to hold back tears.

And then I must have blinked, for suddenly, without moving, his hand was in the air before my eyes, turning, his fingers unfurling like dead flower petals beneath the moonlight, reaching toward me, warmed by the very mortification radiating from my flesh. They stretched toward me with the growing-speed of twisted vine creepers until they brushed my cheek…

This time I did not gasp. His fingertips were not frozen and clammy with the chill of death, not the waxy, rotting bones I remembered—no, not at all like they had been before. His touch was light and dry like the brush of a dead leaf or a sprig of blossom that had lost its bloom and gone to seed.

And so I did not shudder once, and this startled him. I know this because he recoiled again. I made another small noise, and this time it was accidental. I clenched my jaw tightly to keep my lips from forming word or scowl. But if he noticed this tension, it did not dissuade him, for after several breaths, his hand was upon my face again and then was very soon joined by its mate.

The rest…Oh, the rest...I cannot even begin to describe it. But now, my friend, you know. That is how I convinced him to let me go.