Shadow Man

out, so that there is a strange, still silence in my head, except for the thudding of my heart. I can hear it, beating hard and fast.

I lick my dry lips again. Just reach over and take it, I tell myself. Like he said, you've done it ten thousand times. That gun is an extension of your hand; picking it up is an afterthought, like breathing, or blinking. It just sits there, and my hands have stayed on the arms of the chair, stiff and clenching.

'Go ahead. Pick it up.' His voice has gone hard. Not brutal, but unyielding. I've managed to get one of my hands to come off the arm of the chair, and I move it forward with all the force of will I can muster. It doesn't want to respond, and part of me, the very small part that remains analytical and calm, cannot believe that this is happening. When did an action that, for me, is close to a reflex become the hardest thing I've ever done?

I'm aware that sweat is streaming down my forehead. My entire body is shaking, and my vision has started to get dark around the edges. I'm having trouble breathing, and I can feel panic building in me, a claustrophobic, hemmed-in, suffocating feeling. My arm is shaking like a tree in a hurricane. Muscles spasm up and down it like a bagful of snakes. My hand gets closer and closer to the gun, until it's hovering just above it, and now the shaking is huge, has moved to my entire body, and the sweat is everywhere.

I leap up from the chair, toppling it over backward, and scream. I scream, and I beat my head with my hands, and I feel myself starting to sob, and I know he's done it. He's cracked me, split me open, torn my guts out. The fact that he's done it to help me isn't any comfort, none at all, because right now everything is pain, pain, pain. I back away from his desk, to the left wall, sliding down it. I register that I am moaning as I do this, a kind of keening wail. It is a terrible sound. It hurts me to hear it, like it always has. It is a sound I've heard too many times before. The sound of a survivor who has realized that they're still alive, while everything they love is gone. I've heard it from mothers and husbands and friends, heard it as they identified bodies in the morgue or got the news of death from my own lips. I wonder that I can't feel ashamed right now, but there's no room for shame here. Pain has filled me up.

Dr. Hillstead has moved near me. He won't hold me or touch me--that's not good form for a therapist. But I can feel him. He is a crouched blur in front of me, and my hatred of him, at this moment, is perfect.

'Talk to me, Smoky. Tell me what's happening.'

It is a voice so filled with genuine kindness that it sparks a whole new wave of anguish. I manage to speak, broken, sobbing gasps.

'I can't live like this I can't live like this no Matt, no Alexa, no love no life all gone all gone and--'

My mouth forms an O. I can feel it. I look up at the ceiling, grab my hair, and manage to rip out two handfuls by the roots before I pass out.

3

IT SEEMS STRANGE that a demon would speak with a voice like that. He stands nearly ten feet tall, he has agate eyes and a head covered with gnashing, crying mouths. The scales that cover him are the black of something that's been burned. But the voice is twangy, almost Southern-sounding, when he speaks.

'I love to eat souls,' he says in a conversational tone. 'Nothing like devouring something that was destined for heaven.'

I'm naked and tied to my bed, tied by silver chains, chains thin and yet unbreakable. I feel like Sleeping Beauty, written by accident into an H. P. Lovecraft story. Waking to a forked tongue against my lips rather than the soft kiss of a hero. I am voiceless, gagged with a scarf of silk. The demon is standing at the foot of the bed, looking down at me as it speaks. It looks both at ease and possessive, staring at me with the look of pride a hunter gives a deer strapped to the hood of his car. It waves the serrated combat knife it's holding. The knife seems so small in those huge, clawed hands.

'But I like my souls well done--and spicy! Yours is missing something . . . maybe a dash of agony and a side of pain?'

Its eyes go empty, and black saliva that looks like pus dribbles from between its fangs, sliding along its chin and onto its huge and scaly chest. The demon's absolute unawareness of this is terrifying. Then it smiles a leering smile, showing all those pointy teeth, and shakes a claw at me, playful.

'I have someone else here too, my love. My sweet, sweet Smoky.'

It steps aside to reveal my prince, the one whose kiss I should have awoken to. My Matt. The man I've known since I was seventeen years old. The man I know in every way a person can know another person. He is naked, and tied to a chair. He's been given a long, terrible beating. The kind of beating designed to harm without causing death. The kind of beating made to feel endless, to kill hope, while keeping the body alive. One eye is swollen shut, his nose is broken, and teeth are missing behind the shredded meat of his lips. His lower jaw is formless and shattered. Sands has used his knife on Matt. I see small, deep cuts all over that face I've loved and kissed and cradled. There are big slashes down his chest and around his belly button. And blood. So much blood everywhere. Blood that runs and drips and bubbles as Matt breaths. The demon has smeared the blood on Matt's stomach to play a game of tic-tac-toe. I notice that the O s won. Matt's one open eye meets mine, and the perfection of the despair I see there fills my mind with a terrible howling. It's a howl from the gut, a soul-shattering sound, horror put to voice. A hurricane shriek strong enough to destroy the world. I am filled with a rage so complete, so intense, so overwhelming that it destroys conscious thought with the violence of a bomb blast. This is a rage of insanity, the total darkness of an underground cavern. An eclipse of the soul.

I screech like an animal through my gag, the kind of screech that should make your throat bleed and your eardrums explode, and I slam against my bonds so hard that the chains cut into my skin. My eyes bug out, trying to burst from their sockets. If I were a dog, I would be foaming at the mouth. I want only one thing: to snap these chains and kill the demon with my bare hands. I don't just want it to die--I want to eviscerate it. I want to tear it apart so that it is unrecognizable. I want to split the atoms that make up the demon and turn it into mist. But the chains stay strong. They don't break. They don't even loosen. Through this, the demon watches me in bemused fascination, one hand resting on the top of Matt's head, a monstrous parody of a fatherly gesture. The demon laughs and shakes its monstrous head, causing its multiple mouths to mew in protest. Speaks again with that voice that doesn't match its form.

'There we go! Cook and baste, bake and broil.' It winks. 'Nothing like a little despair to bring out the taste of a heroic soul. . . .' A pause, and then the voice goes serious for just a moment, fills with a kind of perverse regret: 'Don't blame yourself for this, Smoky. Even a hero can't win all the time.'

I look at Matt again, and the look in his eye is enough to make me want to die. It's not a look of fear, or pain, or horror. It's a look of love. He has managed, for just a moment, to push the demon out of the world of this bedroom, so that it's just he and I, looking at each other. One of the gifts of a long marriage is the ability to communicate anything--from mild displeasure to the meaning of life--with a single glance. It's something you develop in the process of mixing your soul with your spouse's, if you're willing to mix your soul. Matt was giving me one of those looks and saying three things with that one, beautiful eye: I'm sorry, I love you, and . . . good- bye.

It was like watching the end of the world. Not in flame and fire, but in cold, drenching shadows. Darkness that would go on forever. The demon seems to sense it as well. It laughs again and does a little prancing dance, waving its tail and dripping pus from its pores.

'Ahh-- amore. How sweet it is. That'll be the cherry on top of my Smoky sundae-- the death of love.'

The door to the room opens, closes. I don't see anyone enter . . . but there is now a small, shadowy figure at the periphery of my vision. Something about it fills me with desperation.

Matt closes his eye, and I feel the rage again and tear at my bonds. The knife goes down, I hear the wet, cutting, sawing sound, and Matt screams through his ruined lips as I scream through my gag, and Prince Charming is dying, Prince Charming is dying--

I wake up screaming.

I am lying on the couch in Dr. Hillstead's office. He is kneeling next to it, touching me with words, not hands.

'Shh. Smoky. It's okay, it was just a dream. You're here, you're safe.'

I'm shaking hard, and I'm covered with sweat. I can feel tears drying on my face.