The Collection

Her gaze flitted from his face to the paper and quickly back again.

Was that worry he saw on her features?

'I felt sick,' he said dully. 'I came home early.'

She smiled at him, and the smile was genuine, all tiace of worry gone—if it had been there at all. She walked over to him, patted his head with one hand, picked up the stationery with the other. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. 'Other than that, how was your day?'

He looked at her, thought for a moment, forced himself to smile back. 'Fine,' he said slowly. 'Everything was fine.'

Pillow Talk

When my wife and I were dating, we used to go to this bargain theater and basically see whatever movie hap­pened to be playing that week. One night we sat in front of two young women who were commiserating with each other about their nonexistent love lives. Just before the movie started, one of the young women said that sometimes at night she fell asleep hugging her pillow. It was an odd image, and I found myself wondering if a man would ever do such a thing.

And then I thought, what if a man did?

And what if the pillow hugged him back?

* * *

When my pillow first started talking to me, I ignored it. I only heard it speaking when I drifted into sleep, and I put it down to the inevitable merging of the material world and the dream world which occurs when the waking mind relin­quishes its hold on consciousness.

But when I woke up one morning and felt the pillow pulsing beneath my head, I knew something was wrong.

I jumped out of bed, simultaneously throwing the pillow away from me. It landed flat on the floor next to my dresser and was perfectly still. I bent down closely to peer at it but could see nothing out of the ordinary. I touched it with my foot, prodding it, half afraid it would leap up at me and at­tack, but there was no movement at all. I thought, perhaps, that I had dreamed the whole thing.

Then I heard the pillow speak.

It was a soft voice, whispery and seductive, neither male nor female. At first, it might sound like the rustling of dry sheets on a quiet morning or the gentle stirring of clean linen on a clothesline. But those soft sounds formed human words, turned those words into sentences, used those sen­tences to express thoughts.

'I want you,' the soft voice said.

I ran from the room in a blind panic, not stopping until I was outside the apartment. I was wearing nothing but my underwear, but I didn't care. I was breathing heavily, not from the exertion of running, but from fear. I did not feel, as people often do in books or movies, that I was going mad. I knew I was sane. I knew the pillow had actually spo­ken to me.

I shivered as I recalled the whispery sound of those words. I want you. I had no idea what that meant. For all I knew, the pillow planned to kill me. But I perceived no threat in the words. Instead, I sensed an undercurrent of erotic longing.

And that scared me even more.

I heard the door to the next apartment open. A little girl came out to get the newspaper. She looked at me and gig­gled, averting her eyes. I forced myself to gather my courage and go back into the apartment. I looked around carefully, afraid that the pillow was hiding behind a door or a couch, but it was nowhere to be seen. I crept down the hall to the bedroom. It was still lying on the floor next to my dresser. I slammed shut the bedroom door, grabbed some dirty clothes out of the hamper in the bathroom, put them on and left.

It was after twelve noon before I was brave enough to re­turn to the apartment. Even in the harsh heat of midday, my fears did not seem stupid or childish. The pulse of that pil­low beneath me, the horror of that soft voice was still very real, and I came back to my apartment with a newly charged pitchfork and a large plastic bag.

The pillow was still lying on the floor.

Had it moved?

I couldn't be sure, so I stabbed it with the pitchfork and tossed it into the bag, using a wire twist tie to seal the open­ing.

Inside the bag, the pillow jumped.

I fell back, shocked, though I had been preparing myself for exactly that. In a series of short leaps, the plastic sack moved across the floor. Fighting down the dread that was building within me and threatening to take over, concentrat­ing on my anger and trying to nurture my aggressive feel­ings, I grabbed the squirming plastic bag and took it outside.

The second I crossed the threshold, the pillow stopped fighting me. The movement died. I did not stop to ponder the reason for this sudden good luck, I simply ran to my car, opened the trunk, and threw in the bag. I drove to the dump, still keyed up, and was gratified to see that a pile of wood and leaves was in the process of being burned. Taking the bag out of the trunk, I threw it on the fire, not daring to move until I saw the greenish black plastic sizzle and evaporate, until I saw the pillow inside blacken and wither and burn.

I had expected to feel relieved, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders, but the anxiety I'd been ex­periencing stayed with me. I felt no joy after the pillow had been destroyed; I felt no freedom. My dread became less im­mediate, but it was still there. The pillow was gone, but it had won its war. It had done its job. I drove home feeling frustrated.

Before going to bed, I took a spare pillow from the hall closet—the pillow guests use when they sleep on the couch. I was still nervous, tense, but the sight of the new pillow made me smile. I took off my clothes, turned down the blan­ket, and got into bed. The pillow felt soft and comforting, re­assuring in its ordinariness. My body was dog-tired, but I'd expected to have trouble falling asleep, afraid that my over­taxed and overactive brain would keep me up all night. My mind, however, was tired as well from the day's exertions, and I fell almost instantly into a deep, dreamless slumber.

I awoke to the sound of the pillow whispering in my ear. 'Take me,' it said, and there was no mistaking the intent be­hind that statement.

'Take me,' it whispered again.

I'd been sleeping with one hand under the pillow, which in some grotesque way could have been considered a posi­tion of perverse embrace. My mouth was open, drooling onto the pillow cover, and in the second before I leapt out of bed, I felt the cloth press upward against my mouth.

As if to kiss me.

I spent the rest of the night sleeping outside, in my clothes, on the stoop.

In the morning, I was angry. My fear had turned to fury, as fear will do after a suitable gestation period. I refused to be intimidated by whispering voices, I refused to let squares of padded cloth rule my life. I boldly went inside, closed the bedroom door, showered, shaved, and made breakfast.

After I ate, I took every piece of linen in the house and threw it into the Dumpster outside the apartment complex. None of it fought me. None of it even moved. I would have taken the linen to the dump but I was too angry. I refused to have my life dictated by inanimate objects, and I refused to devote anymore time to this ludicrous pursuit. I threw the sheets and pillows and bedspreads into the blue metal con­tainer, then afterward, in a gesture of supreme disgust, I emptied my garbage on top of the linen.

'Eat shit,' I said.

And this time I really did feel good. The dread, the ten­sion, the nervousness left me and was replaced by a sense of optimistic finality. The horror was over.

I slept that night on a bare bed, with no pillow, no covers. And the feeling was nice.

In the morning, after breakfast, I went outside. I'd been intending to stop by, see a couple of friends, maybe catch a movie, but the sight that greeted me on the apartment stoop stopped me cold.

A trail of sheets and pillowcases, covers and comforters led from behind the building, where the Dumpster was lo­cated, to my door. On my doorstep, leaning upright, as if they'd been trying to get inside, were three pillows.

It wasn't the pillows, I realized. It was the apartment. There was a spirit in the apartment, or a demon, which ani­mated the linen. Factory-made cloth in and of itself could not be malevolent, could not be alive.