wasn’t long before we became lovers.
She was there for me when my mother died. She let me move in with her when I lost my apartment. She was with me to celebrate the publication of my first novel. So when she wanted to get married and raise a family, I felt duty bound to be there for her. Today is our wedding night. I look down at the little gold band on my finger, and a weak, unenthusiastic hope swells in my chest before flickering out forever.
“I wonder if this is the answer? Just getting married? I wonder if this will stop the carrousel? The rotation of the earth? End the infinite loop? No. No. It wouldn’t…it couldn’t be that easy. Ain’t shit ever that easy. The merry- go-round ain’t ever going to stop. It just keeps going and no little ring is going to stop it. No vow of fidelity, no fucking ‘til death do us part is going to freeze its gears. It just keeps going ‘round grinding my sorry black ass into the dust!”
I begin to laugh.
Again the worried look from Renee.
“Forever and ever.” She says then catches me staring at the ring and adds: “’Til death do us part.”
This makes me laugh harder. Then I blink, and she is gone, and for the first time it is a relief.
“I won’t open my eyes again. Not this time. Not ever again.”
I imagine digging my fingers into my eye sockets and tearing my eyes out of my head. I imagine lacerating the tendons and optical nerves with my jagged fingernails. It would be just like ripping oysters from their shells.
“I love you. I’ll love you forever.” I hear someone saying.
My eyes are still squeezed shut. I don’t know who’s lying next to me now. I don’t care who it is any longer. Just as long as they stay…
…forever and ever…
“I’ll never leave you.” The woman says.
…’til death do us part.
No, you’ll never leave me. Because I’m going to rip my eyes right out of my fucking skull and I’ll never blink again.
“Just you and me sweetness.” I laugh and lick my teeth nervously.
“Yet still this fond bosom regrets while adoring…”
I begin to reach beneath my eyelids. When I touch my eyes it reminds me of that Halloween game we used to play with peeled grapes when we were kids. “This is an eyeball.” Someone would say while they placed the peeled grape into your hand, and it felt…just like this. But what if I rip out my eyes and this woman disappears and no one returns in her place? What then Einstein?
“…That love like the leaf must fall into the sear…”
“That’s just a chance I’ll have to take.”
My fingers hook into claws.
“…That time will come on when remembrance deploring…”
“I’ll always love you,” she says.
My last thought before I destroy my eyesight, is about that old movie “The Man with the X-ray Eyes!” At the end of the picture the guy goes crazy and tears out his eyes, then the screen goes blank. But rumor has it that in the original director’s cut, after he rips out his eyes, he turns and screams to a horrified audience: “I can still see!”
“That’s just a chance I’ll have to take.” I say to myself.
And then the screaming starts.
“…Contemplates the scenes of our past with a tear.”
“I’ll love you forever.”
Run Away
The night absorbed the landscape around me, swallowing the terrain whole in a thick tapestry of shadows. Ahead of me I could see nothing but the street lamps lining the freeway and the ominous silhouettes of stalled cars laid out like grave markers, their occupants long fled or murdered. The only sounds were my own rapid footfalls, my own panting breaths, the disturbing sound of tearing flesh, and the snarls and growls of the things pursuing me in the dark. The screams had stopped a few days ago. I feared I was the only thing left alive. It was all the incentive I needed to keep running.
I tried to stay beneath the streetlights. Slipping from one protective cone of electric sun to the next. Shadowy creatures lunged at me baring saber-like fangs and long gnarled claws, yellow luminescent eyes glazed with hunger. Gruesome things lived in the darkness now. I spun away from them, weaving and faking like an NFL runningback. I knew they couldn’t catch me. Not as long as I kept running. They were slow, stupid, and every-fucking-where. There was just enough illumination between lights to allow me to see their silhouettes lurking there in the blackness, waiting to spring.
A car parked at the curb rocked and jerked with violent activity as I passed it. A few weeks ago I would have thought there was a couple in there, fucking their brains out. Now I knew that whatever was in there wasn’t copulating. It was eating. The wet smacking and sucking sounds, the grunts and growls and moans of ecstasy were not those of a happy couple consummating their relationship but of a feeding frenzy. I shivered and kept moving past. I still carried the axe I’d borrowed from a sporting goods store a few days ago when the cramps first began; the first indication that I wouldn’t be able to outrun them forever. But whoever had owned that vehicle was past any heroics I could provide.
I hit a wet slick of dark liquid trailing out from under the car and nearly tripped; saving myself from a lethal fall by grabbing onto the next lamp post. I looked down at my running shoes already knowing that it wasn’t motor oil that I’d stepped in. There was no time to wipe the tacky red substance from my sneakers. I had to get moving again. The car door was opening. Several long serpentine phantoms came slithering out, tracking my scent, drawn to my heat. Had to run.
Human remains littered the street ahead. I would have to dodge the creatures while running the obstacle course of rotting carrion. Some of the bodies were still being fed on by the night things. I tried not to disturb their meal. I pumped my legs harder, nearly sprinting as a herd of the dark creatures rose from the gruesome maze of death and decay.
There had been all kinds of speculation as to where the things had come from. It had started with a few random attacks but soon swarms of the things began to pour out, covering the earth in a thick cloud of voracious evil. The best theory seemed to be that they had come from beneath the earth; roused from the bowels of hell by petroleum drilling equipment in search of hidden pockets of fossil fuel. The most popular one was that hell had unleashed its minions upon the earth. The end of times. Armageddon. Churches filled with parishioners begging the lord for forgiveness. Many of them were eaten right on the church steps as they left, having made the mistake of worshipping past sunset.
Soon the wild theories and speculations began to peter off as thoughts turned towards survival and the theorists themselves were murdered in their beds. It seemed the entire human race was now under threat of extinction. Of course it could have just been happening in isolated cities and I’d just been unlucky enough to have run through every one of them. Or maybe it was just the West Coast? I couldn’t be certain. My only concern now was with my own survival. I had to keep moving. I had to stay one step ahead of them.
I hurtled a couple of the night things as they burrowed in and out of a man who appeared to be about six- hundred pounds. Most of his girth was due to his body filling with gases as his organs decayed. He had obviously been dead for some time. The stench of the dead was overpowering. Nothing seemed to be alive anywhere except for the rapacious shadow creatures and me. I tried to block out the thought that I might be the only living thing in the whole city to keep the panic from crushing the remaining air from my chest. I calmed myself as much as possible, concentrated on the road, maintained my heart rate at a steady even pace, still only slightly below panic level.
My lungs were burning and felt as if they would explode under the tremendous exertion. Still I maintained my fanatic pace. For the ninth day in a row I put in miles that would have awed the most dedicated ultra-marathoner. There were still at least another three hours left before daylight and already I’d run twice the distance of the average marathon. But now my body was starting to rebel.
I was perhaps a day or two away from organ failure. I was losing fluids far too rapidly. And there was so little fat left on my body that my muscles were starting to consume themselves for fuel. Spots began to dance in front of
