She suddenly reached to stay his hand from sliding under her sweater. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please…”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m—too thin. I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re lovely. You’re so lovely. You don’t have to worry. I want to see you…please…I want to touch you, Idelia.” He braced himself higher above her, still deep within her, and took hold of the sweater’s edge. Her hand still closed on his wrist, but her grip was either weak or fatalistic, and he peeled back the sweater to bare her upper body. He wanted to taste it. He wanted to lose himself in its pale glow…
But it was not pale beneath her sweater. There was a shadow there, glaringly black against the contrasting whiteness.
A patch of liquid darkness like an inky stain covered much of the woman’s belly, starting just above the squint of her navel and encompassing the lower half of her right breast, nicking the bottom of her aureole. It was not a hole, in that its edges blended into the flesh, and yet it was of a more profound depth than any hole. It was as though the void of space itself had burned through her thin tissues. And in this oblivion, a mist or fog rose and fell in billowing, blowing and soundless waves.
“You want to see me? You want to touch me?” A membrane of tears began to jiggle across her wide eyes. “Touch me.” She still held his wrist, and drew his hand toward that dark window.
Griffin yanked his hand free, slipped out of her (what darkness had he been penetrating within her?) and backed naked across the room. He didn’t want to know what that blackness felt like. Whether he would meet with solid flesh, or whether his hand would slip through her into that cold, churning mist.
She slung her legs over the edge of the bed, pulled the sweater down again to hide her wound, if such it was. “It’s spreading,” she informed him. “Every day…”
“What are you?” Griffin managed, in something like a whispered sob. “A ghost?”
Rising, Idelia smiled. “Not even that. A ghost at least was once alive.”
She was too near the door, but there was another by his left. She took a step toward him, still smiling, still weeping, and he darted to his left without waiting to gather his clothing. He plunged into another room, slammed the door, but could find no lock. He turned his back against it to see where he was. It was another bedroom, with no lamp on, just dim sunlight that struggled through the drawn shades and closed drapes. But against this wan light, a figure shuffled into silhouette. Then another. Shadows rustled now to both sides of him. Griffin whirled around and flung open the door he had just come through…but of course, Idelia was there, and he backed helplessly into the center of the room.
She flicked on a wall switch, and an overhead light came on. Griffin found himself ringed by a half dozen people. At least, they were people to varying extents.
They were all women, and all naked, but tainted as Idelia was with that plague of darkness. More afflicted than she, in fact. They were more skeletal, as well—cadaverous. One woman had no breasts left whatsoever, and one of her arms had vanished at the shoulder, where the black void gaped. Another woman had an abyss where her face should have been, this mask of nothingness framed in long straight hair like Idelia’s. One woman had no head remaining at all, but her body still stood at attention. Well, she was a kind of machine, wasn’t she? A machine Guy had made from the ether. That was it, wasn’t it?
“These are my sisters,” Idelia said. “They came before me. They were sketches, mostly, though Guy still used a few of them.”
One of them—the very first?—was not even fully in focus. She looked like a badly blurred moving figure in a photograph, though she stood quite still before him.
And what of Guy? Griffin had no doubts about a great hulking form on top of the bed. It was wrapped in a blue plastic tarp, this package wound with silver duct tape. There was a faint smell of rot which he had first, erroneously thought was coming from the decaying women. How long Guy had been dead and how he had died were the only particulars that needed answering. Idelia noticed his frantic glance at the bundle.
“We didn’t kill him, if that’s what you think. We aren’t vampires. He had a heart attack, I think. Three of us were with him.” She tittered, her lower lip quivering. “It funny, isn’t it? We with too little flesh, and he with too much? He couldn’t survive the pleasures he wanted. He was too hungry. And here we are, with no life, and we outlive him.”
Griffin looked back at Idelia. “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.
“You aren’t listening,” she laughed, then she sobbed, and gestured at the bulk on the bed. “I loved him, you know. We all did. He made us to love him.”
Griffin began to edge closer to her. She, at least, he knew somewhat. The others, however much they looked like her, were too silent, and too ghostly. But she was right; even phantoms were more substantial.
“Please, Idelia,” he said, “just let me go.”
She looked at him abruptly—then stepped back from the door. “I wouldn’t stop you, Griffin. I told you, this isn’t about my hunger—it’s about yours.”
He slipped through the door. She made no attempt to follow him, merely watched him from the adjoining room, along with those of her waning sisters who still possessed eyes. He dressed hurriedly, not taking his eyes off her…Guy’s daughter. Guy’s fantasy bride. And with untied laces and half-buttoned shirt he bolted out of the bedroom, out of the apartment…but Guy’s harem of apparitions made no attempt at pursuit.
* * *
The next morning, Griffin called in sick at work. He was over-tired from not having been able to sleep all night. He had sat up with a kitchen knife in his hand, watching the door and the walls as if some spectre or horde of spectres might step suddenly through them.
But when it came, the phantom knocked politely at his door. It was a faint, meek knock that he wasn’t sure he’d heard at first. Hesitantly but inevitably he went to the door. Cracked it, knife in hand. But then he opened it completely.
For a moment, with the door cracked, he had thought he saw Idelia standing outside, nearly lost in shadow. Her eyes wide and pleading, sad and afraid. A rush of concern or guilt made him open the door all the way. But when he did so, he found that she wasn’t there. There was only a swirling pale mist in the general outline of a body, he felt, but which dissipated in moments so that he was left to wonder if it had even been there at all.
Lost Alleys
There are places in cities only the drunk, drugged or insane can find. Even if you have been there before you will not find them again if sober—assuming you are one who occasionally regains sobriety. The angles and planes, the lay-out of buildings, conspire to direct you elsewhere, to more prosaic destinations. It may be this design is intentional. Streets point you past these alleys, and more conventional alleys bend eye and foot past the narrow sub-alleys. Magician’s misdirection and the psychology of art—but also our fear and inhibition of straying from the path—keep these places hidden.
I have found such secret or forgotten corners in several cities; I can usually remember what I saw at these places, but not always which city I found them in. I can’t always remember straight off in the morning which city I’m currently in. I suppose my proclivity for finding these shadowy caves in the mountain range of a city has to do with the fact that I am usually either drunk or drugged, and perhaps always insane.
Somehow tonight I had found my way back to a courtyard I had visited before in my somnambulistic wanderings. You never actually forget anything; your mind simply blots out what is unnecessary, or unwanted. But part of me must have wanted to return to see another of the battles in this tiny arena.