When Night Climbed From The Shell.

A story about the power of evil, and the doubts of mind.

1

“We don't know where this goose came from,” said Darrafay, “all we know is that it delivered Ra like a pizza to the doorstep of Egypt, and then Thoth came along with his Ibis and the myth morphed again. Nearly all cultures have a similar tale, all the good ones anyway...and I'd suggest power-pointing this for your own research later, the Greeks called it The Orphic, the Vedic peoples termed it Brahmanda, among others, ….however the origin of the concept, on the whole, still lingers in the waning territories of speculation...”

The waning territories of speculation.

It was statements like this that made Jim glad he had signed up for his third and, hopefully, final night-course before acceptance into college. Any college would do. Of course he did himself no favours when it came to academia; three courses on three different ancient cultures would hardly help towards his application for an astronomy grant, but they were the only courses affordable at the time.

Since he and Emma had received the bleak, heart-crunching news from doctor Gleason, they both needed time to think, to escape the company of the other, which was hard to do in a bedsit. And Jim was just glad they'd have some time apart.

“Now,” said, Darrafay, the lecturer, a single thin line of sweat draping his left temple.

“I've got homework on top of homework for you all, barring those of you clever enough to have offer me a bribe.”

Some students chuckled, others fought off smirks. Jim was between the two. Over the past three nights he had found the teachings entertaining rather than educational, all thanks to this mystic oddball. Darrafray was not quite eccentric but Jim supposed if you rattled his skull for a moment you'd definitely hear the tick-ping-tick of jangling screws.

“Now as well as your assignments I have a little extra for you to do, something which may appear foolish but is actually rather profound. My girlfriend and I thought it up last night in the bath. If you have any questions, as one wise Buddha once stated 'don't hesitate to ask someone else first.'”

He moved toward the hulking desk in front of the heavily scribbled blackboard, and kneeled down in a kind of struggled genuflect that popped the knees. The cabinet door, concealed behind the heft of the desk, creaked open. Darrafay reached in making humoured grumbling noises as you would fake-rage with a dog. However this comical grunting quickly changed to earnest sighs of labour as he lifted the tray out of the cabinet and onto the top surface. It landed with a thud followed by little clinking noises.

A few of the students saw where it was going and giggled aloud. But Darrafay was deadly serious.

On the drive home  - Jim loved driving beneath the moon when it was huge and silvery like this, it made him feel as if he were skimming the county lines of The Twilight Zone - he kept frustrating about the inevitable discomfort awaiting him at home. He knew it went both ways; Emma was probably dreading the encounter just as much as he was. But they had been together for so long and had been through so much, they both knew this recent problem, despite its seemingly impossible perplexity, would be just another hurdle to hike albeit an extremely time-consuming one.

More like a mountain, he thought sitting at a red-light waiting for the green to go. A mountain of anti-nature covered in frozen tears.

“F*****g cruel is what it is,” he told himself in the rearview mirror. “I can't be a father, I just can't. It's too much.”

Then, after a further moment of stationary boredom, he looked back in the glass, this time to check on the condition of the egg.

At least six times the normal size, it gleamed with a ridiculous silver tint, close enough for tacky. Jim was just glad he hadn't fallen prey to the same childish antics some of the younger students had and drawn a face on the front, frilly fringe and all. What was the teacher hoping to achieve with this childish task? And to assign marks as well….how ridiculous was that?

On the second to last traffick-light - deserted, thankfully, there were a lot of ugly creatures in The Twilight Zone - he leaned back on the headrest and glanced in the rearview mirror merely to distract. But what he saw was much worse than any mere distraction. For as crazy as it sounds, he saw something on or in or around that egg that horrified him beyond reason.

The smooth, bland surface of the thing had, for a moment at least, been home to a face. But not just any face; the most grotesque and beguiling face Jim had ever seen in his life. It wore the kind of expression you'd expect to see on a PCP addicted assassin enjoying long-sought combat revenge: thick brows floating high above two huge, dark, bloodshot eyes, bulging nose, wide mouth caught between a frivolous grin and a gruelling snarl.

And then, as if this unnatural display was not enough, the menacing egg began to scream in a low pitch resonant howl that set Jim's hand trembling on the wheel. The grainy screech had a pulse to it also, and it came out almost like hysterical laughter.

What in Gods' F**k is happening to me, thought Jim, there's no way I'm coming out of this sane.

He realized then that all those countless other times he thought he was having a breakdown, they were just playful training exercises. Practice matches. Teasers. And now the All-Ireland Superbowl World-cup Olympic climax ceremony was upon him. Afterall, you can't argue with a laughing egg.

After only a few seconds the intensity of the event became too much, and Jim instinctively swung around in the seat expecting the monstrosity to be staring him down, eye to eye. But the egg had returned to a faceless state of smooth, neutral white.

Cold boulders of sweat rolled down Jim's face as he sat there for what seemed like hours, faintly registering the shifting colours outside in the cold, night air. Eventually, he gathered himself, glared for a time in the glass, reassuring himself, painting funny faces on the egg in his mind, and decided for the sake of his sanity that he had just experienced your standard acid flashback.

Alert as a bird in a spider's nest, he drove slowly home.

2

The main light was off up in the sixth floor window of the apartment block; only the shimmering purple of bright-lit pixelations behind closed curtains could be seen, and Jim knew Emma was curled up on the couch again, looking just as anxious and miserable as he did. The holiday she had been forced to take from her work at the university had really taken a toll on her, for Emma had a brilliant, active mind that loathed, on every level, the negative wiles of idleness. Factor in not one but two life-changing events in the space of three weeks and her magnificent winged-mind now fluttered darkly, vertically, to the void. Although, thought Jim, she hasn't just experienced a possible meltdow-

He cut himself off, eyeing the egg in the rearview mirror, taking comfort in the innocence of its form, then reached back firmly - no hesitation - and picked it up from its perch. The shell was ice-cold, further assuring Jim of its inanimate history. Yet he still walked at a brisk strut, never once looking down.

Inside, the flat was blustering hot, like someone was showering in lava upstairs, and Jim had to rush to take his jacket off in fear of scorching up altogether. When he entered the main room of the flat he stood for a second in the doorway holding the egg, watching the television screen. Extended highlights of the recent trial of Michael White aka The Lol Strangler streamed across the screen. One half of the considerable tv unit was filled with stark, dusk images of the moorlands under which most of the victims were buried; the other image was of a young, heavily tanned man with a mic standing outside the sun-drenched entrance to Strangeways prison. Emma had muted the set when Jim opened the front door so the quickly jabbering jaw of the reporter went unheard.

The mere presence of this evil in their home was enough to drain any sporadic optimism from Jim's mind. “Why are you always watching that?” he said, setting the schoolbag and the egg down on the vacant armchair over by the window. “Don't you get enough of that from the solicitors?”

Lizzy and Melvin were studying each other from across the dim-lit sitting-room: two black cats with pointed green eyes relishing the security of familiarity.

Emma was glaring at the featureless egg; she turned to Jim as he fell in beside her, said, “really?”

“I know,” he said, keeping his focus on the tv, “it's serendipitous, but we get extra marks for playing along.”

“Fine, but did you have to show me? With everything going on you could've just left it in the car.”

Jim had honestly failed to realize the grim metaphorical relevance of the egg pertaining to their situation. He went to get up; Emma grabbed his arm. “F**k it,” she said, “it's done now, come here.”

She dug her nails into his arm, the way he liked, and they kissed for a minute. Then they relaxed back to talking as they had done ever since they had learned of their pregnancy. Jim rolled a smoke thinking, if it wasn't for her medication, Emma would be comatose again, unreachable. Given the situation with her family, an absolute collapse of heart and mind's not only understandable; it's almost necessary.

And then, as if shock and misery had not all ready peaked its zenith, the unwanted pregnancy had pierced the murky horizon an ultimate compliment to the chaos.

As soon as the sound on the tv was turned back on, Jim's whole demeanor changed again.

“What are we going to do Em?” he said.

Emma's face grew white, her fair hair made shades darker by contrast. Ghostly, she muttered, “Just f**k off, Jim...” her words quiet under the sea of sorrow, “...please.”

And Jim, stoned, adhered. On the way out of the room he plucked the egg up, brought it out to the cubby under the stairs, and lay it to rest on the rough carpet.

Later, at just past 3 am, he felt the two cats wake and jostle onto the floor, then the landing, eventually chasing each other down the stairs. This was their usual custom so he drifted back off to sleep free of consideration. However, when he next woke it would be to Emma's most exotic and disturbing howl.

It was one long screech that began a second before Jim awoke and continued for another four seconds later, then shut off abruptly and was followed by a profoundly packed silence. For a moment he thought he imagined it but then he remembered the egg, and somehow he knew a terrible thing had happened.

He rushed downstairs and saw Emma leaning against the wall in the kitchen glaring down at something just behind the door. Morning thrifts of misty rain enshrined the window above the sink with mottles of honey. “Emma?”

She flinched but kept her gaze down at whatever monstrosity lay beyond sight. As Jim passed the little closed door under the stairs he thought he could feel the egg grinning amid the darkness within, but it shrugged it off as ludicrous and continued into the kitchen.

If Lizzy and Melvin were lying there as two dead cats it would have been shocking, but the sight on the cold marble floor was gruesome beyond comprehension. At least for a little while. But then the image slowly clarified and he realized that the bloody, twisted lump of fur and meat and faces was the combined corpses of both cats.

Melted into a single unit, their half-skinned faces set inward, scowling in agony, fangs bared. Beneath this twin-skull was a smorgasbord of organs. Slashed, flayed, crusty with blood and other fluids. Roughly in the centre, the only visible limb was caught in the liver-like interior of the heart, snagging, lifeless.

Her words trembling, Emma said, “who….what would do this?”

At the sound of her voice, Jim snapped out of it. He turned and fled to the closet, swung it open.

He was met by the egg's demented expression. Low-browed, jaws tightening with aggression. Bulbous lips quivering as it spoke through needle-teeth. “do you like my little display, friend? Death really does imitate art doesn't it? You knew this was going to happen didn't you? You've known along... Just keep that b***h away from me Jimmy old buddy, or it'll be her melted on the kitchen floor...YOWZHAHA!”

Jim swung the door closed with a crash. Dull tides of tears lapped his chin, falling to the floor.

Emma arrived beside him, teary-eyed. “What is it?”

In a low, confidential voice, Jim whispered, “the egg did it,” then burst out laughing. It startled his wife; it was so fast and loud and grainy. She moved away from him, retraced her steps back into the kitchen. Without glancing at the mutated horror in there, she went directly to the back door and from there next door to the Dunbry's. Whatever was happening to her husband, she had neither the courage nor the energy to stay around and watch.

Once the back-door slammed shut, Jim found himself back in the kitchen, staring at the freakish gore on the flooring, but his mind far away, well, not that far; a few feet away, in fact. He thought about racing back out there, grabbing that little egg b*****d, and clutching it violently till it exploded, splashing vitreous liquid against the wall or clumps of mortal poison across his face. Instead, Jim went to the press under the sink, fitted himself with yellow rubber gloves, turned, and just stood there for at least ten minutes eyeing the sight, attempting to work out logistics over the bellowing disbelief. Finally, he dragged himself out of it and began the morbid task.

As he was scraping the blood-stuck bundle from the marble he could sense the evil being of dairy-meat listening a few feet away, relishing, waiting. And he knew that more was to come.

Yet the urge to destroy the extraordinary object was dampened somehow, like when the mist holds off the rain just long enough for a long-sought sun to bare its golden crown.

3

When Emma arrived in through the front door, she found Jim cross-legged on the sitting-room floor, eyes closed, letting the heavy morning light blind his lids. Thinking. Listening.

When he felt her presence behind him he stood up, moved toward her.

She did not back away.

“What did the police say?” she asked, her shoulders low.

“I didn't call them.”

“What?” said Emma, her eyes quickly widening. “You mean it's still in there?”

Jim shook his head, “I buried them,” he said, guiltily.

Emma burst into tears, broke forth, hugged him. “What the f**k was it?” she asked, her face buried in his shoulder. Jim could only shake his head.

After about a minute, Emma turned and, without a further word, headed upstairs for a shower. She was gone about two minutes before the phone rang. Jim was back out in the kitchen re-bleaching for the second time and actually jumped with fright from the shrill sizzle of the ringer.

It was Fransisca, Emma's father's fiancé, who would only talk to Emma about this matter, which suited Jim right down to the ground. He went and passed the phone over, surprised by his own intense arousal on seeing his wife lathering in the shower, considering the horror of the morning. He went down stairs cursing the arrival of a semi-erection and returned to the scrubbing with an almost mechanical vigour. A few seconds in, he heard chuckling and thought it was coming from upstairs but then Emma called his name above the sound and he was speechless on his knees covered in bleach. The giggling stopped. The shower turned off. Emma called his name.

Wearily, he made his way down the hallway shuddering as he passed the cubby, and paced with fatigue up the stairs. Emma was sitting on the rim of the bath in which the shower head still dripped drably. She was paler than the white towel around her.

“My father was stabbed last night,” she said.

“Jesus,” said Jim, slowly. He leaned a hand flat on the hot moist wall. The sweet scents of apples shampoo encased the small room in a thick fragrant cloud. “What happened?”

With words free of confrontation, she said, “What do you think? A victim's friend or relative? A hired killer? Some crack-head trying to get famous?” Tears formed on her lids and she frowned them away. “I don't know why I'm getting emotional,” she said, “he's a monster.”

An edge of nostalgia crept into her tone, “I just keep remembering him singing to me when I was like four or five...” The tap tipped its plastic drumbeat as if to play the point.”Always The Doors….don't you love….” she stopped herself, stopped the obscene memory of comfort.

“I can't believe it's the same person who did all that….s**t,” she said, grimacing at the end.

She rose abruptly, alarming her husband, “Well, it won't matter soon, anyway,” she said,, “The doctor told Fransisca he probably won't make it through the night, so...” she trailed off, passing him on her way to the stairs. He grabbed her, tight, by the arm. She crooned so quick it almost snapped her neck.

“That's the only reason it matters,” said Jim, in a low husking growl Emma had never heard before. His eyes were unfamiliar, entirely empty. He squeezed her tighter still, digging his stubbed nails in.

“Jesus Jim,” said Emma, cringing. “let me go.”

But he didn't let her go; he dragged her roughly to him and kissed her in a hard, angry way that was so non-sexual it actually terrified her. Mid-kiss he seemed to snapped out of some trance, leaned back, releasing his grasp.

“Sorry,” he said, “that sight earlier really, really fucked with my head.”

Emma's heartbeat began to steady. “How do you think I feel?” she said, brushing past him, and her anger was of great consolation, because she wouldn't leave the house whilst she was angry.

For Emma loved an argument.

But if she wants an argument, thought Jim, despairing at the mess she had made, I'll give her one. If she wants to play beauty queen while I'm trying to build a better life for both of us then that's fine, maybe one day someone will throw acid on her face and she won't look so f*****g smug!

He blinked, stepped back, caught an image of his wide, disgusted eyes in the cabinet mirror, and put his head in his hands. “What the f**k is happening to me?” he muttered, and as if in answer, the shower head let loose some possible answers in morse code.

When he arrived in the sitting-room, the fire was lighting, and he was just about to ask why, when he saw the blank egg sitting among the first licks of flame. “What the f**k are you doing!” he yelped.

Emma was shocked there on the couch as Jim rushed to the fire.

“There's something wrong with that thing” she said, plainly, watching with unease. “I don't want it in the house.”

“I would've taken it out to the car,” he growled at her, darting his wild eyes back and then forward to the fire.

“What's the matter with you?” she asked, quickly, angry herself. “It's just a few f*****g points for a night-course.”

“NO IT'S NOT!” he roared at her, and her fringe fluttered a little. The flames were picking up now; the firelighters were pluming dark, pleasant fumes through the room. He reached in and freed the egg.

It was freezing cold.

As was Jim's spine when he felt the temperature. He scurried out to the kitchen and saw that Emma was all ready out there pouring herself a generous portion of vodka and vimto. Jim placed the egg in the sink, to give the illusion that it had been affected and ran the cold tap over it. Emma, now sitting down at the kitchen table having relinquished the tall glass of half its burden, said, “why are we keeping it?”

Jim went to the cupboard, retrieved a glass, and starting pouring himself an identical glass of equal pleasure. “It's important,” he said.

“Who gave it to you?” asked Emma.

Jim gulped down about half the glass, thinking of Darrafray's kind expressions and genuine friendliness. But then he remembered, realized, really, how unsettled the teacher had looked when he had said, I have a little extra for you to do, something which may appear foolish but is actually rather profound.

“A very smart man,” said Jim, and downed the last of the liquid. Emma watched not worried but grinning, and finished her own glass with an epic gulp. “I feel like listening to Strauss,” she said, smiling in the cute way he liked.

Jim observed her for a moment, letting the first hazy hues of drunkenness merry his mind and body.

“I could f**k you right now,” he said. And, as crazy as it sounds, he did. Right there on the spot where their beloved Lizzy and Melvin had met their grizzly end. The climax Joe and Emma came to on this occasion, however, was far from grizzly.

Afterwards, they did put some Strauss on, but they did not waltz. They were, in fact, silent and ashamed by their actions. Soon, they were back to their earlier routine: her weeping quietly in the bathroom, him scrubbing with bleach in disgrace. Although this time they both had a glass of vodka in their hand.

When Emma left the shower she planned on going straight to her room to go online, but when she heard Jim humming along to Roses from the South, she forget everything for a second and smiled.

She travelled by tip-toe downstairs " the music was blaring, anyway " and the sight of him frantically scowering the scene broke her heart. He looked overwhelmed, traumatised...innocent. A great warmth of love suddenly rushed her body, like some heavenly kiss, and she had taken a few steps toward the kitchen when his form began to change.

His clothes rippled from grey-black flannels and black pyjama pants, to scruffy, decades-old workwear, and his head was balding at a bizarre rate. Even the harmonious string music soaring from the sitting-room phased unevenly into subtle drums and guitar. And then, in an instant, Jim was Michael White, cleaning the kitchen of the Whites' old family home on Market lane, singing,

“Don't you love her madly? Don't you need her badly?”

Emma tried to move but was smelted to the spot, soundless, out of her element. Almost fell back.

Jim flew out, took her by the waist and shoulder, and led her into the sitting-room, where he then poured them both another glass of circumstantial medicine. After taking a few sips in silence, he asked her what had happened. After she told him, Jim, sickened, unable to look up from the symmetrical patterns on the carpet, said, “after I finish this glass I'm going to destroy the egg, or whatever the f**k it is.”

Emma pursed her lips, frowned, said, “What egg?”

Jim grinned. Emma joined in as well, but the grin was uneasy.

“The one under the stairs,” said Jim, his smirk fading, “well, it's in the kitchen now.”

Emma took a sup from her glass. Her words were slurring now as she said, “I'm not in the mood for a joke.” When Jim saw the effort she was putting into fooling him just for her entertainment, he became irate.

“What the f**k's your problem?” he said in a quiet, contained voice.

There was a pause.

“You look really fucked up right now,” said Emma, obviously unsettled.

“Don't f*****g try it Emma,” said Jim, losing control of the tone, “you know what I'm talking about. A little creep about this big, no body, no face, trying to kill us all.”

Emma stared at him for a long time and Jim didn't know if he had actually spoke aloud. Then she smiled, “Jim you're hammered babe, where did you leave the….egg….last?”

Jim went to the kitchen and there it was, sitting atop three bottles of Chilano on its winerack throne, smirking at him from that ludicrous face. The high princely cheekbones, the enormous intense eyes. Vicious. Mesmerising.

Ah! There you are, it said, without moving its lips. What's wrong with your face chippy-chappy, you look like you've seen an egg. HA! Don't look so disentangled, we've all got our quarks. Listen though pal, that c**t has to go, did you hear her taking the piss out of us? Like it's all a joke. You know she's f*****g that strapping lad from the university? He uses graphs during foreplay with your wife my friend, and cries on her tits when he comes. Also, I hate to tell you mo chara, but she's doing the good doctor as well, that Frisky Darrafay. She met him years ago when she was doing her thesis, and they've fucked like goats ever since. Doesn't that just turn your heart into a big, sopping smiley face? Something has to happen muchacho. Either you do it or I will.

Jim was stuck to the floor, his brain-cells popping one by one like discount balloons, and he didn't even notice the egg morph back into an innocent, innocuous shell. Jim couldn't go back in there and face his wife now that he was certain of his madness. Instead, he made a decision that even at the time he knew was wrong: he went to the winerack and unscrewed a bottle, then took a number of gigantic, reckless gulps, till only a slither remained. If he had known how badly Emma was dealing with her father's situation he might have staved the temptation. But as it was, he was swaying with blood-red eyes by the time he returned from the kitchen.

Emma was crouching by the cindering fireplace holding a half-burnt slip of paper, as if praying before the broken alter of same ancient deity. She turned but her long strands of fair hair hung like curtains on her temples. “You called the police?” she said, alarmed.

“No, I-”

“You f*****g know well what will what happen Jim-”

“Just show me that,” he said, holding a hand out. There was no denying it: it was a police detectives calling-card. But how was that even possible?

“That doesn't make sense,” he said, his words now a slabbering groan. “Somebody must'aaa...broken in while I wasn't there.”

“Somebody broke in just to throw this card in the fire for nobody to ever find?” she asked, tilting slightly on her smooth, bare feet. “I dunno,” said Jim, “but I didn't call the police.”

Emma glared down at the card, then up at Jim, incredulous. Then she flung her arms dramatically, almost staggering back. “Maybe the egg did it again, eh?”

Jim's eyes shot open with realization. Emma burst out a devious gale of laughter that rattled Jim to the core. “That's it,” said Emma setting off toward the kitchen, and Jim intuited her intentions immediately.

“Don't!” he called, but she was all ready alongside him. He tried to push her lightly but her acceleration made it difficult and she ended up slamming face first into the wooden doorframe with some force. And then a grimly familiar voice cackled:

Hey! Is that what I think it is? Yeeahhh! You get her buddy, a little harder and her skull would have cracked like a cheap snow-globe. F*****G YOWZA!

Jim looked down on Emma's shivering, distressed body, clutching her face, as little splashing noises petered on the carpet. “Jesus Emma, I'm so f*****g sor-”

“Before this night is out,” said Emma, rising from the floor, turning around to face him, letting the blood run freely from both nostrils. She left the sentence trail away. Horrified, Jim raised his hands in an outlandish effort to comfort her, but she obviously recoiled. Amazingly, she turned back into the room, sat down in her seat, and finished her glass in one gulp. As she was reaching for the quarter-filled bottle to refill, Jim's head was once again flooded with that hoarse gravel-pit voice of the demonic beast.

“F*****g DO IT you p***y, or I'm gunna roll in there and do things to her. Or how about this? How about I make you do things to her instead? Like I did earlier, remember? Ah, those were todays.”

“What are you doing just standing there?” said Emma in a slow but excited voice. When Jim turned to address her he was met by an empty litre bottle of vodka sailing through the air. It struck him square on the brow, clattering the bone beneath. The shards showered down his face, into his eyes, his mouth. He could hear the crunching on his splintered lips, the hot glass inflaming his retinas.

“What the f**k did you do, you stupid b***h,” he stuttered, staggering, trying to wipe his closed eyes. “It's not what I did,” said Emma, her grin so large it actually made a sound. “but who I did, do you like you're new teacher? Well, I've been liking him, daily, for a while now.”

Yowza! Howled the egg from the kitchen.

Jim finally snapped.

He shot his eyes open and smithers of blood rolled slowly, nearly dryly, down his face; three streaks per cheek. A steady flow of red fell from his head, joining the maroon puddle formed from Emma's earlier collision. He lashed out in front with his knee, connecting with his wife's chin, sending her rocking back on the couch. He then leapt on top of her, blinking back the blood, the tears, the unreality that had now been resided far, far away from the waning territories of speculation, and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Now we're talking Jimbobbio! Who's the spider now?

At the sound of the egg's ominous croaks, Jim tightened his grip, feeling the veins in her throat pulse under the deathly-pressure. Her eyes were gaping, tiny sparklets of red scattering among the green-white pupils. But her brows were crossed, not with fear or pain, but with malice, cunning, betrayal.

She's laughing at you billy-bob, it's time she was hatched, HAHAHAHAHA

“You f*****g b***h!” he screeched, straining on the last word, and squeezed his grip with tremendous, unspeakable force, and she spluttered up a few globs of blood from her opened mouth, spraying his face with tiny splinths of gut-fluid. Her eyes were far away now, staring off into the distance, as if consulting an apparition, and Jim was crying, screaming, proceeding with the fatal grasp while the unthinkable beast just beyond called and laughed and thundered for more destruction.

Come on chummy let's sing her a song! Some nice soothing music while she waits to die?

And, as Jim watched the last few lungful's of life seep from Emma's body, and her strained face begin to soften, he began to sing viciously, through clenched teeth:

Don't you love her madly?

Wanna meet her daddy...

And then everything stopped in an instant. The roaring static in the air, the wailing egg, all the sinister intentions and undercurrents of insanity, and, most important of all: his grip. He leaned back, tipping her face toward him, (his own face now longer and more vacant than a scream mask) calling her name over and over and over.

4

Three days later, the front door came whooshing aside letting in the welcome glaze of the sun, and the not so welcome regaling of reporters. Jim slammed the door shut, balancing several bags of shopping in one tense hand, and carried the bags into the kitchen. He set them down on the counter, flicked on the kettle, and made his way into the sitting-room. The curtains were still closed but the new thirteen watt bulb he had put in yesterday gave the room a nice glow.

“Is it gone?” asked Emma, looking up hopefully. She looked better than she had in months: The colour of her hair had somehow changed itself back to a healthy bright blonde, the whites of her eyes were pure as clouds again, the blues like deified oceans. She had even put on a few pounds so that she was merely slim and not malnourished. Jim found himself with a wry smile at how free they had both been feeling lately, a genuine miracle of mood had taken place, and he had thought, more than once, that they had both died that night. But, if that was the case, then that was all right with him.

“I stayed till it was over,” said Jim with that idiotic, affectionate grin. He composed himself, but not before the loving grin had registered with Emma. However, she adjourned the smirk till after confirmation. Jim continued. “The technician down in the incinerator, what's his name, he's part of the engineering department?”

“It doesn't matter,” said Emma, anxious but calm.

“Sorry,” said Jim, “It's definitely gone, the guy opened up the furnace afterwards and slid out the sheet so I could see, and it was nothing but ash.”

Her eyes shining lightly, Emma breathed out a quick but joyful breath of relief.

She then put an arm around him, “I'd say the guy at the furnace was giving you some weird looks.”

Immediately, smiling casually, Jim said, “No weirder than the way you look at me.”

Emma chuckled deep in her chest, her generous breasts rising and falling.

“You know you're my freak,” she said, and Jim gave a pathetically dramatic fake laugh. But this ridiculous giggle was interrupted by a rustling in the kitchen. Emma and Jim shot their eyes to the door, still with post-traumatic alertness, that instant fear of invasion. After everything, was it possible Michael White, recently deceased, had walked the tight-rope between dimensions for just long enough to drop one last anvil of torture on their heads?

It rustled again.

“It's only the plastic bags settling,” Jim whispered but no sound was made. That's when the panting began, approaching them, just around the corner. Emma squeezed Jim's hand, digging her nails, but this time he was only weary of yet another perpetrator. And then a cat's head appeared at the door, sniffing. It raced into the sitting room.

“Lizzy!” cried Emma. Taking the playful cat into her arms, cheek to cheek, hugging. Melvin came racing out after him, having decided that the magic surrounding the food was unbreakable. Jim picked him up; the cat looked at him, blinking, and then began to purr.

Jim and Emma looked at each other. Then at the cats. The two of them had been through a lot, whatever it was, but they came out of it one piece. And they had each other; that was the most important thing in the world. It would fullfill them for the remainder of their short lives together.

END.

 

Kealan Coady July 2015

Reviews

[Robert Parlange]

Great story. One of the best I've read on this site.
You have a gift of story telling. After all, it is all about the story.
I like the way you handled the characters' states of mind. A descent into manipulated madness.
Also a good resolution.
Good work.

[kealan]

Thank you Mr Waguespack. That comment was amazing.