Issue September 2012 Flash Fiction Online September 2012

When his daughter came home with her first hole, Martin plugged it with gauze and said, “School can be cruel sometimes, darling.” After, they shared a pizza and watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which had long been her favorite.

The next day Lauren came home with two more holes — one above her collarbone, another in her upper thigh. Martin tended to them with peroxide and slathered them with antibiotic ointment while she vented about the girls at school. When he finished, he stuffed both holes with cotton because he’d run out of gauze and patted her cheek.

“There, all better. Good as new,” he said, standing. He kissed her on the forehead, and she looked at him with her mother’s faded blue eyes.

The next day after school, Lauren vaulted down the bus steps and up the driveway, leaving a trail of blood on the asphalt. Once inside, she slammed her backpack down and lifted her shirt to reveal a half dozen more holes dotting her stomach and chest.

“Let me get my kit,” Martin said.

Lauren stood in the middle of the kitchen, blood pit-pattering on the linoleum, as Martin treated her wounds. While he worked to plug the six new holes, the two-day old wound sprang open. With a sigh, he started to clean that one again when the wounds from the previous day popped too.

“Just let them bleed,” Lauren said.

“No. I can fix them. I promise.”

And so he did. It took half the night before he managed to stem the flow of blood and cover the thrust marks, but when he finished, he slumped back in his chair, exhausted. For dinner he made Lauren her favorite beef stroganoff, and they talked of better days, of days with her mother, of days before middle school.

The day morning, Martin hugged his daughter while she waited for the bus and whispered into the top of her head, “Armor yourself in my love and no one can ever put holes in you again.”

Martin’s love proved to be poor armor though, just paper to the other students’ knives. Lauren returned home more battered than usual, spotted from head to toe in holes that looked like tiny, flickering tongues.

“I told them I only needed your love, and they laughed at me and did this,” Lauren said, turning to reveal a sucking wound in her back, square between her shoulder blades.

The wound looked too wide, too deep, for his menial skills, but still, Martin would try to mend it. “Who made that one?”

“Lacey,” she said.

“But she’s your friend.”

“And that’s why it’s the worst.”

“Let me tend to that one first then, and we’ll deal with the others after,” Martin said, scrambling for his first-aid kit.

When he returned to the kitchen, he found Lauren standing over the sink, dribbling blood into the stainless steel, staring out the back window.

“Here,” Martin said, beckoning with a hand.

“Not tonight, Dad.”

Martin ate his cold supper alone, and the next morning, Lauren went to school covered in brown, crusty scabs. She never said goodbye, just climbed aboard the bus with her head cast toward the ground. Martin called into work sick and pulled the bloodied sheets off her bed. He spent most of the day bleaching them over and over and over until they looked white and new.

Lauren came home with more fresh holes than Martin could count, and all the scabs had peeled away too.

“I bought more gauze,” he said when she came through the door.

Lauren shook her head. “There’s too many now. Don’t bother.”

“No, I can take care of them,” Martin said, reaching for her. He hugged her close and her blood soaked through his shirt.

“When will it stop?” she whispered.

“Soon,” he promised. “And these holes will all turn into scars and be reminders of just how tough you are.”

Lauren smiled faintly and trailed her blood up the stairs, leaving red dots on the white carpet. Martin went to the kitchen and made two cups of cocoa, each with a dollop of whipped cream and some of those mini-marshmallows too, just like Lauren used to beg for after a day of sledding.

He had no free hands to knock on her bedroom door, but he said at the top of the stairs, “I have something for you.”

“I don’t need any more gauze.”

“It’s better.”

He pushed the door open with his shoulder and stopped so fast the cocoa sloshed and burned his hand. Lauren stood in the middle of the room, bleeding from dozens and dozens of holes, even more than she’d come home with.

“Who gave you those?”

“These?” she said, gesturing over her torso. “These I made myself.”

“What do I do now?” he whispered. He’d have to go back to the pharmacy and buy all its gauze and tape — and even that might not be enough.

“You did everything you could, but no amount of gauze and cocoa will fix this. You just have to be OK with that.”

Martin nodded and backed out the door, watching his daughter bleed on her bed, knowing he could do nothing but love her.

The nightmare drifted at the girl’s shoulder as a dark, sinuous coil of mist. As I crossed the room, its eyes followed me, as red and changeable as coals glowing in a grate, and the sharp sting of its malice raked over my skin.

“He won’t hurt you,” said the girl. She sat cross-legged at the head of her bed, unicorn plush cradled in her lap, eyes wide and earnest. “He’s nice.”

The nightmare’s tail lashed, and it curled around the girl’s shoulders. Resting its jaw atop her curls, it bared fangs that dripped with ectoplasmic venom. She giggled, swatting it away.

“No tickling!”

This was not what I had expected.

Her parents had worried that little Marie’s new imaginary might be somewhat out of the ordinary — not that they could even see their own imaginaries anymore. The mother’s had been a wispy husk of a creature, small, fluffy, and dull. The father’s was so faded as to be barely an outline, drifting listlessly in his wake.

“Seems a bit on the scaly side,” the mother had said, holding out a crayon drawing for my perusal.

A stick figure with yellow squiggle hair stood beside a jagged scrawl of black and green. Red eyes glared up at me from the paper. Between the figures, a pink heart had been drawn with gentle care.

“Not something we’d ever pictured for her.”

“Dark,” agreed the father.

“I mean, with the accident. Her brother…”

“It’s okay.” I had smiled my best professional smile. “I’m here to help.”

I eased myself into the child-size chair, tucking my skirt beneath me with one hand. As an afterthought, I settled my clipboard across my knees and turned my attention to the bizarre cuddle-session in progress.

The nightmare had wrapped around Marie again and again, but its eyes remained locked on me. Nightmare or imaginary, only the ones bonded to them, who believed in them, could hear or touch them, but I sensed this one snarling.

The girl traced patterns along the creature’s skin with one tiny finger, pink nail polish against matte shadow.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Dunno.”

“No?”

“No. Where’s yours?”

“Vets don’t have imaginaries,” I said. At her frown, I explained, “Veterinarians — I don’t know who picked the name. I guess imaginaries are somewhat like pets, right?”

“But why don’t you have one?”

“So we can see other people’s.”

“You can see him?”

“Oh, yes.”

She beamed. “Isn’t he great?”

“Question for a question?”

She stuck her tongue out from the gap where front teeth had yet to grow. “Fine.”

“Did you imagine him yourself?”

I had never heard of a child mistaking a nightmare for an imaginary before — they were utterly different, hopes and dreams against doubts and fears. Still, stranger things in heaven and earth…

Marie shook her head, curls bouncing. “Uh-uh. Who do you dream with?”

“I don’t dream. Well, not like you mean. Where’d you find him?”

“Under brother’s bed.” She slumped against her pillows, fingers plucking at her unicorn’s rainbow mane. “I heard him, and I told him I don’t know when brother’s coming back. And I said he could wait with me.” As though she had been holding the question back, she blurted, “You’re not taking him away, are you? Because he is nice! He won’t let monsters get me — they don’t crawl under my bed anymore, or in the closet, and he comes to school and everything. You can’t take him away!”

“Wait…”

Tears pooled in her eyes, and the nightmare arched over her like a cobra, snapping at the air.

“Let me talk with your parents,” I said. “I promise, it’ll be okay. I’m here to help.”

The nightmare’s eyes followed me as I fled.

That night, I dreamed of dark scales and glowing red eyes, of the sudden impact of fangs against my throat, and then sunlight through my curtains and sweat drying on my skin and my alarm clock blaring.

In the kitchen, I had just poured myself some coffee when I sensed more than saw the growing gloom in the corner.

Heart pounding, I turned. Floating in a swirling, never-ending ouroboros, Maria’s nightmare glared at me with the intent focus of a raptor observing a mouse.

For one eternal moment, we stared at one another. Swallowing around a tongue as unwieldy as a lump of sand, I mustered my voice.

“I can’t have you removed,” I said.

It did not react, continuing to twist around and around. My hands trembled around my mug, and I concentrated on the warmth against my palms. Anything except that dark corner of my kitchen.

“I can’t force any imaginary to leave — even nightmares. I can recommend therapy, tell whether it’s working. She holds the power here.” I squinted out of the corner of my eye — it seemed less terrifying that way. Nightmares screwed with your head. It could not hurt me, except in my sleep. “Since she’s happy, and you don’t seem to intend harm…”

It stilled.

“Even if she does reject you,” I added, “you won’t fade. Not like regular imaginaries.” I smiled, tense and bitter. “People share much more fear than hope. You’ll find somewhere else to haunt.”

I held my breath.

When it moved, it slid toward me like a ripple along a lake, smooth and slow.

I could count the fangs, jutting in uneven fractures from the misshapen jaw. It had gills, rippling silently in the air, and patches of dead and rotting skin hanging off its frame in tatters.

It crept closer and closer, until I could see my reflection within its eyes — small and pale and wide-eyed and wild-hair.

And then it vanished.

That night, my regular nightmares returned.

I faced them, a ring of glowing eyes of countless hues, shadows that hissed and gibbered and snarled. Drawing in a fortifying breath, I reached for my clipboard, holding it to me like a shield, mustering a weak smile.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here to help.”

---

 

It starts with a heavy pinpoint, sharp, deep in the middle of Aaron’s heart. As he reads Megan’s letter, it swells and blooms, licks like fire through his veins.

This feeling should be love. It is love underneath, but it’s wrapped in something hard and cold and perpetual.

Death.

Death’s followed Aaron for twenty years.

Death came for Aaron’s father first, a cruel illness that halved his body (no more walks in the woods), laid him flat (no more car journeys to nowhere), muted him utterly (no more wise words), and finally sputtered him out like a spent candle.

Aaron was seven, and he didn’t understand.

Nor did he understand when, ten years later, Death took his mother, his home, and all his worldly possessions. Everything he ever loved, gone with the tilt and flare of a scented candle against a curtain. He came home to a smoking shell and a stone-faced policewoman, who confirmed his status as Aaron Johnson: homeless orphan, owner only of grief, fear, and the filthy football kit he was wearing.

He hit the road the day he turned eighteen, resolving never to stop, never to put himself in a situation that could shatter the way his childhood did. The only way to spite Death was to keep moving.

This worked perfectly for nine years. Without responsibilities or family to preserve himself for, no country was too cheap for Aaron, no journey too dangerous, no company too suspect. Experiences flooded his life. He looked Death in the face at war and at peace, crowed ‘you can’t catch me’ and moved on, watching, writing, living. Caring without attachment gave him the perfect angle from which to contemplate anything and everything in front of him.

His tales of adventures great and small found a keen audience. His bravado and born-of-necessity quick tongue brought him to the lucrative motivational speaker circuit. Aaron never invested in anything he couldn’t carry on his person, so he lived the good life anywhere he could.

Until he met Megan.

She was at a conference, inauspicious and sterile, drowned in the cling and cloy of cheap aftershave and limp handshakes. He was a speaker; she was there to be spoken to. As he took the stage, her face lit up, stood out. He felt life exuding from her, surging and bright. For a moment he was certain Death must be looking elsewhere.

He held her gaze as he spoke, felt calm and curious stability in her hopeful face. She entranced and petrified him simultaneously.

Just tonight, he told himself, just tonight.

They talked at the bar, in the hotel, and in the garden as the sun rose. That afternoon, he said goodbye. But he knew it was a lie, because it hurt to leave her, and nothing new had hurt him in nine years.

Death stirred at his shoulder, tickled his ear, reminded him it was watching, waiting, poised to poison anyone he opened his heart to.

Aaron responded by switching continents for five nights. Don’t stop running.

A week later he was back, another speech to give. As he checked into his hotel, the receptionist handed him a letter.

From Megan.

Full of tiny joyful words and casual, pressure-less thoughts. ‘Write back if you like’, it said. He liked. He wrote back.

He convinced himself Death didn’t care for letters. Megan wasn’t real; she wasn’t there with him. Strictly paper. Nothing that can’t be carried in his one and only suitcase. Death wouldn’t touch this.

Wherever he went, her familiar little letters, yellow envelopes addressed in green pen, would be waiting for him at the front desk. The moment he was done with business or sightseeing, he’d spend all night replying.

If we stay far enough apart, we can be together forever.

Six months on, he’s in the best room of a fine hotel, looking out over a city he’s always wanted to visit. But he isn’t going out today. He’s reading this letter over and over. This letter isn’t like the others.

It isn’t cats and culinary disasters and a-funny-thing-happened. No, this one says real things, says can’t pretend things, says we’ve got something special here things. Things that make Death rub his hands together with glee, jolting Aaron deep with love, and furious with fear.

She’s too wonderful, too perfect, too precious to risk. He can’t be without her words, without her.

So he can’t be with her.

He writes back. He explains everything. He tells her about his father, his mother. About Death on his shoulder.

He tells her he’s given her everything he can, that now he’s moving on, and that he’ll tell hotels not to take mail for him.

And he tells her he loves her, and he’s sorry.

But he has to keep running: he can’t ever stay still to be with her.

He posts the reply. He changes hotels. He keeps busy. Tells Death he won’t let it win.

Four days later, he’s woken from a lie-in by a tentative knock at the door.

It’s Megan.

He’s overwhelmed, frozen. His memory of her wide eyes and open smile was monochrome and fuzzy, compared with reality.

His heart bounds as a chill darkness tries to flood it. Then she drops her bag and dives at him, wraps her arms around him; laughing, squeezing, she came all this way and he hugs her back and his heart beats so golden and warm Death doesn’t stand a chance.

You can’t keep her… Death whispers, nervous. Run, before it hurts.

He doesn’t want to run. He looks in the darkest corners for Death, and sees nothing.

“You know,” she says, drawing his gaze back to her, voice cautious, soft, aware, “I understand. I don’t need…things. I’ll sell my house, quit my job, and…come with you. If you like.”

He smiles. And says yes. Because Death can’t catch either of them if they run together.