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Harper squeezed my arm as we started up the stairs in the not yet dark theater. "What is it?" I asked, turning to her. "Nothing," she said, but her gaze lingered on a middle-aged couple sitting four rows up. The woman munched on popcorn and the man drank from a soda as they watched the commercials before the show. I stared, but they seemed oblivious to our presence. Although we'd only been dating for about six months, I felt like I'd known Harper for a decade.
She was a terrible liar, and she wore her emotions on her sleeve. So when she said it was nothing, I could tell it was something. I stopped and stared at the couple, focusing my attention on the man. "Was he staring at you?" I asked loudly, drawing the man's attention. "Stop," Harper said, pulling ineffectually at my arm. "It's okay. It's nothing." I ignored her, staring down the man until he glanced away.
Dating Harper made me realize just how much shit women had to deal with in their day-to-day lives. I mean, I had known before that harassment was pretty common, but I had now seen it several times firsthand. There seemed to be something about Harper that attracted the creeps and weirdos. She was certainly attractive. That was a big part of it.
But she was also slight and fragile looking. She was delicate and like a flower. Some men had the urge to grab her and yank her around and smash her to bits in some misguided quest to take her beauty for their own.
On our second date, at a restaurant, I got into it with a man who had touched her as they passed. Harper had been coming back from the restroom and the man, a late 30s, ball cap and cargo shorts type, had just got up from a booth to head toward the restroom. As they passed, they both turned sideways in the narrow aisle. Harper turned away from him and he turned toward her.
But as they did this, the man put his hand low on the curve of her back, at the top of her ass. It was a quick movement, but I saw it clear as day. A voice inside that I had come to label my rage voice immediately started screaming. I stood at the table and looked after the man, fists clenched.
Harper met my gaze, and I could see how sick she felt, how violated. But the thing I saw there that spurred me into action was the resignation on her face. That was too much. I marched to the bathroom and found the man at a urinal. Without so much as a word, I slammed his head into the tile wall. He collapsed to his knees, and I jammed his head into the urinal, flushed it, and then walked out.
I left money on the table and grabbed Harper, leaving in a hurry. When she asked what I'd done, I told her we'd been together ever since. It seemed to work for us. She was meek, I was protective. She attracted the creeps and weirdos, I repelled them. She needed someone to watch out for her, and I needed someone to watch out for. Now, as we headed to our assigned seats in the theater, I glanced at the middle-aged man. Seemed like a creep to me.
Our seats, of course, were directly in front of the middle-aged couple. We sat down, and I started to get comfortable, but I was keenly aware that Harper was stiff in her seat next to me. Her being tense made me tense, and she could sense it. She leaned over and whispered, "Please don't do anything. Let's change seats," I said. Harper looked at me, her green eyes bright even in the low light of the theater. "But these are assigned seats.
"What if someone comes and we're in their spot?" "We can switch seats, and we'll just move if someone comes in and says we're in their seats," I said. Harper smiled and nodded. It was a matinee, and on a weekday at that. Although the previews were about to start, there were only a handful of people in the theater. Us, the middle-aged couple, and two gray-haired guys who sat on opposite ends of a row in the front section of seats.
Harper seemed to relax after we moved three rows down from the middle-aged couple. The previews ended, the theater went fully dark, and the movie started. It was an action comedy with Ryan Gosling. About halfway through, I whispered that I had to go to the restroom. Engrossed in the movie, Harper nodded absently. I moved out of the theater and hurried to the bathroom. Once I was finished with my business, I washed my hands and headed back to the theater.
But as I opened the door, I was hit with a wall of screeching noise. Bright white light flickered on the screen, almost like snow on an old-school TV not getting enough signal to produce an image. This seemed strange for the movie we were seeing. And as I walked into the theater, I saw some gruesome figures emerging from the static on the large screen. For a moment, I was sure I had wandered into the wrong theater, and this was a horror movie.
The figures that emerged were hideous demon-like creatures that seemed to bulge from the screen, as if this was one of those 3D movies. But it wasn't a 3D movie. I wasn't wearing glasses. And it wasn't the wrong theater. As I rounded the corner and looked at Harper, I saw she was convulsing in her seat. I ran up to her, panic making my legs rubbery. She was lying in her recliner seat, twitching, eyes rolled up in her head, red and white foam coming out of her mouth.
Wanting someone to blame, I looked around, but everyone else was paying attention to the movie. Anger flared inside me, but I quickly realized I was wasting time looking for someone to fight over this. I felt useless, with no idea what to do. I shouted at the nearest people, the middle-aged couple. "She's convulsing!" The man stood up and hurried down without a word. "What do I do?" I asked. "Step back," the man said. "I'm an EMT. Call 911."
I pulled my phone out and did what he said, realizing I should have already done it. As I talked on the phone to 911, the man pulled Harper off the recliner and laid her out on the floor. Then he started CPR. Go find an employee and tell them what's happening, he said as he pumped her chest. Tell them to bring the EMTs when they get here.
I stood, helpless, staring down at my girlfriend. "Go!" he shouted. I went, running out and telling an employee at the concession stand to alert their manager of what was happening. Then I ran back into the theater. The strange static was still on the screen, the screeching noise still coming from the speakers. But I didn't see any figures in the static anymore. Not that I was looking hard.
All my attention was on Harper and the man still leaning over her. Now, everyone else who'd been in the theater, the man's female companion and the two old guys, were gathered nearby, watching the drama.
As I came around, I noticed the CPR guy had a pen out, the tip of it pressed under Harper's right ear. "Hey, what are you doing?" I shouted, trying to get closer to see what was going on. One of the old guys intercepted me. "Whoa, calm down. He's helping her. He's helping her. It's okay." By the time I managed to get clear of the old guy, there was no pen, and the man was back to doing compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing. "Did I imagine it?" I wondered.
"Is she going to be okay?" I asked. Suddenly, the lights came on in the theater and the audio changed. I looked up at the screen to see Ryan Gosling's face there. The audio was back to normal. As the theater manager rushed in, Harper gasped and sat up. Then she screamed. I sat slumped in a chair next to Harper's hospital bed as she slept. The paramedics had sedated her in the movie theater because she wouldn't stop screaming and flailing around.
She'd even hit one of the two medics before they decided to sedate her so they could get her out to the ambulance, then to the hospital. I had tried to help get her calmed down, but when her feverish eyes landed on me, I saw no recognition in them. Her screams ripped through my heart, and I found myself standing on the stairs nearby, shaking like a scared puppy, hands clamped to my ears.
The fright I felt had only faded slightly in the hours since, mostly because the doctors didn't seem to know what was wrong with her. They wouldn't let me come back into the operating room. So I sat in the ER waiting room for about an hour before someone came out to talk to me. "What kind of drugs was she on?" was the first thing the gray-haired female doctor asked. "Drugs?" I asked, standing up. "None that I know of."
The doctor cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. "What are you implying?" I said, the rage voice clearing its throat. "She doesn't do any fucking drugs, okay? We'll see about that when the blood work comes back." The condescension dripped off her like blood from a surgeon's tools. I stepped toward the lady, my rage voice unable to stay quiet. "The fuck did I just say to you? She's not on any drugs!" The woman smiled at me.
"You better step away, or you'll be in the back of a squad car so quick you'll wonder what happened to your bright future." My first instinct was to stare her down, but logic got the better of me, and I stepped back. "That temper of yours is going to get you into trouble," she said. "I suggest getting some help." "Gee, thanks for the input, doc. Now, can we get back to my girlfriend?" The woman sighed. "She on any medication?" "Just birth control." "Is she okay or what?"
She's stable now. You should call any family she has. Let them know what happened. She might need some help after this. I asked. What's wrong with her? What the hell happened? The doctor sighed again and took off her glasses to clean them on her scrubs. As far as we can tell, she suffered a severe mental break brought on by some kind of drug use. We won't know what kind until we get her blood work back. Mental break? I asked, shaking my head.
"That doesn't sound right. She seemed fine. They always do," the doctor said as she turned to leave. I sat in the waiting room, realizing that I didn't have any way to contact any of Harper's family members. They lived in Florida, and she didn't seem close to them. I had never met any of them, and I didn't have their phone numbers. In fact, I could only remember her talking about her parents twice, both times after I asked her about them.
It was a subject she didn't seem to want to broach on her own. Eventually, a nurse came and told me they were moving her up to a different floor for monitoring overnight. That was a good three hours ago. Now, as I sat slumped in the chair by her bed, I wondered what had happened. As far as I knew, she didn't have a history of mental illness, but this whole thing was making me realize there was a lot I didn't know about Harper. I just wanted her to wake up and be okay.
That was the most important thing. It was now the middle of the night, and as the monitoring machinery blipped and beeped, I grew tired. Visiting hours were technically over, but the nurse had made an exception for me because Harper didn't have anyone else coming. I rested my head on the back of the padded chair and closed my eyes as sleep took me. The strange demonic figures that had been on the theater screen played in my head, painting my dreams with darkness.
I awoke to the sound of huffing. At first, I thought something was wrong with Harper. I stood up from my chair and leaned over her, but she was still sound asleep, breathing slow and steady. Looking around the dark hospital room, I realized I must have been the one breathing heavily. The huffing had stopped, but it didn't make much sense because I wasn't out of breath. I straightened, wincing at the twinge in my lower back from sleeping in the chair.
I kept my phone in my pocket, not wanting to look at the time, dreading calling my boss in the morning to let her know I wouldn't be in. I knew she wouldn't be happy about it, and that she'd try to browbeat me into coming in anyway. I was afraid of what I'd say to her over the phone. I had been fired from more than one job for yelling at my boss, but I wouldn't leave Harper. No way. I moved to sit back in the chair, but the pressure in my bladder made me think better of it.
I headed to the bathroom instead, groggy with sleep and concern for Harper. I opened the private bathroom door and let my eyes adjust, not wanting to turn the bright lights on. I was hoping to get a little more sleep before the day started, and I didn't want bright overhead lights making that harder for me. Sleep was king in my book, and I knew I wouldn't be able to function well under stress if I didn't get as much of it as I could. Whenever I was tired, that rage voice was loud in my head.
The porcelain toilet sat in the back left corner of the bathroom. The back right corner was obscured by a wrap-around shower curtain on a track in the ceiling. There was no other divider between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom, eliminating obstacles and making it easy for injured or infirm people to bathe, or be bathed. Closing the door behind me, I tottered over to the toilet, lifted the lid, and then unzipped my fly.
just as the stream of urine hit the toilet water. The unmistakable sound of huffing came from behind the shower curtain to my right. My skin prickled with fear, and it felt like my neck joints hadn't been used in years as I turned my head to look at the pale blue plastic curtain. I couldn't tell from the sound whether it was a male or female making the noise, but I felt certain that whoever was doing it would soon pass out if they didn't stop. It was the sound of someone hyperventilating,
My mouth came open of its own accord, and the word "hello" started to form, but I slammed my jaw shut before any sound could escape. I didn't want whoever was in there to hear me, which was ridiculous because I was still urinating, my stream splashing off the toilet rim and getting all over the place. With some effort, I stopped urinating and tucked myself away. I wanted nothing more than to get out of the bathroom and find a hospital employee to deal with whoever had snuck into Harper's room while I was asleep.
But as I turned toward the door, the huffing noise changed, growing raspy. It sounded as if the person in the shower was about to hack up a lung. I fixed my gaze on the curtain, curiosity and concern battling my fear. A moment passed and the awful, raspy huffing turned wet, like someone drowning on dry land. I thought of pneumonia. Didn't pneumonia fill the lungs with fluids? Could some poor old woman be in the shower, delirious, having wandered from her room?
Concern won out and overcame my fear. I stepped to the shower curtain and pulled it back gently, peeking inside. But there was no woman in the shower. No old man. No human. The thing that stared back at me was like one of the creatures I'd seen on the movie screen, half obscured by the static. Only now, I could see it clearer. It was a humanoid with two arms and two legs, but it didn't wear any clothes and its whole body was mottled white.
I could make out no sex organs, and it had the thin chest of a sickly child. But it was incredibly tall, knees bent as it pressed itself into the corner, arms outstretched along the tile walls. Eyes of pure black stared out from a hairless white head. Two slits made up the nostrils and its mouth. As it huffed wetly, chunky black liquid came out of its gaping, too wide mouth and flowed down its chin. So far, it hadn't noticed me,
When its eyes suddenly darted up from where they'd been fixed on the floor and came to rest on my face, it stopped huffing, falling completely silent. Its wide mouth stretched into a grin, the black goop still sliding out. Its long, sharp fingers dug into the walls, breaking through the tiles with ease. It launched itself at me.
I pulled the shower curtain closed as I turned to run, and the creature barreled into it, ripping the flimsy plastic from the metal clips affixed in the track on the ceiling. Just a moment after I slammed the door behind me, the creature crashed into it. The wood vibrated with the impact, but the handle didn't turn, and the door stayed closed. "Help!" I yelled, sounding pathetic. "Someone help me!" I was vaguely aware that my ever-reliable anger had deserted me as soon as I laid eyes on that creature.
After a few moments, a female nurse rushed in, flipping the lights on and looking at Harper. "What? What's wrong?" "There's someone in the bathroom. They tried to hurt me," I said, still pressed against the bathroom door, holding onto the handle. The nurse immediately called security. By the time the security guys came into the room, the bathroom had been silent for several minutes. In fact, it had been silent since that first crash into the door.
I stepped back and let the security officers take over. At first, they tried to talk through the door, but when they received no response, they opened it and stepped back. Nothing happened, and from where I was standing, I could see that the shower curtain was still intact. It hadn't been ripped down. The two security officers and the nurse all looked at me like I was crazy. I thought they all had a point. Harper was sullen as we left the hospital about 25 hours after she'd been admitted.
She seemed in a daze, which I chalked up to the drugs they'd given her. I had the name of a psychiatrist recommended by the hospital, but the doctor refused to give me any further information, saying it would violate HIPAA laws. When I asked whether Harper had any drugs in her system at the time of the incident, the doctor shook her head and said she couldn't answer. "Talk to Ms. Pierce about it," she'd said.
So that's what I decided to do as we rode home in the back of an Uber. Since I'd left my car at the theater when I rode with Harper, the ambulance yesterday. Harper stared out the window, the overcast sky giving the city a somber feel. I reached across and grabbed her left hand. She jumped, whipping her head toward me as if she'd forgotten I was there. But when her eyes landed on me, she relaxed a little. "Are you okay?" I asked. "What do you remember?" Harper shook her head.
Not much. I was watching the movie, and then something happened and I was surrounded by all these people, I guess. They were grabbing me. They put something in my mouth. I thought of the man who dragged her out of her chair and did CPR on her, and of the three other people who'd gathered around her after I went to tell the theater employee about the incident. For the first time since yesterday, I remembered the pen that the middle-aged man had held pressed under Harper's ear when I'd come back into the theater.
What the hell was that about? I swallowed, trying not to think about my experience in the bathroom last night. Is crazy contagious? I thought wildly for a moment before getting my mind back on track. "Do you, um, take drugs?" I asked, lamely. "What?" Harper asked. "What do you mean? Like, illegal drugs? I mean, any drugs. The doctor said something yesterday. I mean, are you on any medication?"
When they asked me yesterday, I said I didn't know. That's important in emergencies. They need to know if you're on any so they can treat you properly. It was a lame save, and Harper knew it just as well as I did. But she let it go, turning to look out the window again. The driver glanced into the rearview mirror surreptitiously, clearly listening to our conversation. I'm not on any drugs, other than birth control, of course. I didn't think so. I breathed. We fell silent.
The car turned into our neighborhood. Five minutes later, we stepped into the living room of our second floor apartment. I shut and locked the door behind us. Harper walked over and collapsed onto the couch, face in a pillow, and started sobbing. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she said, her voice muffled. I sat down on the edge of the couch and rubbed her back, saying nothing because there was nothing I could say.
Eventually, she fell asleep. I got up from the couch, leaving her to sleep. I had planned to go get my car, but I didn't want to leave Harper alone in this state, and certainly not while she was sleeping. I also didn't want to wake her up. I pressed my hands against my lower back and stretched it out, trying to massage the kink out of it from the poor night's sleep. Thinking there wasn't much of anything to do since I'd called out from work, I decided I would take a nap too.
As I moved past the kitchen and toward the only bedroom, I could have sworn I heard a familiar huffing sound. I stopped, staring at the closed bedroom door. "Why is it closed?" I thought. "We never close it unless we're sleeping." Listening hard, I heard no huffing. "This is stupid," I told myself. "Get it together." I opened the bedroom door and found it just as we'd left it. The bathroom was off to my right, the bed straight ahead, the closet to the left.
Harper's side of the room was messy with clothes. Mine was cluttered with books. We made a hell of a pair. Leaving the door open, I levered off my shoes and then collapsed onto the bed. It didn't take long for sleep to claim me. I had no idea how much time had passed when Harper's voice woke me up. "Reed?" She was calling from the living room. Voice dazed in a way that immediately put me on edge. "Reed? Are you here?"
I got up and stepped toward the bedroom door, wondering what time it was. There was no light coming through the windows, meaning at least several hours had passed. As I moved through the bedroom door, the bathroom door opened behind me. I froze, looking over my shoulder at the dark rectangle that led to the bathroom. "Harper?" I asked, thinking I had misheard and she was in the bathroom after all. "Reed?" I swallowed, throat clicking. Harper was in the living room.
"This is a dream," my mind said. "A nightmare! Wake up!" "Is someone else in here?" I asked. "Greed, help me!" The fear in her voice sent electricity coursing uncomfortably through my veins. Still staring at the bathroom doorway, I shut the bedroom door and then rushed past the kitchen, toward the living room. I could see the back of the couch, but no Harper. Stepping up, I looked over the couch and found nothing but cushions and a couple of throw pillows. Harper said from above me,
I looked slowly up at the ceiling, wanting nothing more than to scream and run when I saw what was up there. Grotesque, deformed hands with white-gray skin extended from the ceiling, grabbing Harper by the arms, legs, and body, pitting her to the ceiling. Her hair hung past her ashen face as she stared down at me. "Help!" A new hand formed out of the ceiling above her head, reaching down and grabbing hold of her hair. It yanked her head backward, snapping her neck with a series of crunches.
I screamed and reached up for her as the bedroom door burst open and a creature from the hospital bathroom rushed out and tackled me over the couch and into the wooden coffee table. Flailing on the floor between couch and coffee table, I screamed and fought, suddenly realizing I was fighting against nothing. I spun around and saw Harper lying on the couch, face down, head turned, eyes open. There was no creature and no hands reaching out of the ceiling.
Still, I thought Harper was dead. "Wake up!" I said, scrambling to my knees next to her. "Wake up!" Her eyes stayed open, and her skin was warm to the touch. I felt for a pulse and found one, strong and steady. Then I inspected her neck, seeing that it wasn't broken. "Harper?" I said, shaking her. "Wake up!" She just stared blankly, not waking up, not doing anything.
Through tear-blurred eyes, I looked up at the ceiling, like peering to the heavens for guidance. That was when I noticed the body-shaped dent in the ceiling, right where I'd seen Harper in my dream. Two hours later, I was back in the ER waiting room for the second time in as many days. This time, a different doctor came out, looking grim. I stood up but said nothing, my voice suddenly gone. The man stopped in front of me and chewed the inside of his lip for a moment. We're still doing tests.
But the good news is she's stable. Do you know if she's ever been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia? Any kind of mood disorder? I shook my head, thinking about the dent in the ceiling. This wasn't about a mood disorder. Then I thought about the theater and the man with the pen and how Harper had been afraid of him as soon as we stepped into the theater. Had she recognized him? Did she know him? I spun around and headed out of the hospital with the doctor calling after me.
By the time I reached the theater by Uber, it was after 10 o'clock. I marched up to the box office and bought a ticket for whatever the next showing was that got me inside the lobby without drawing attention. As I moved around, I searched for and found an employees only door that looked like it would lead to the projection rooms for the theaters. Without stopping, I walked through the door and into a corridor. Old movie posters lined the walls,
There was a stairwell straight ahead. I moved up it and into a wide and long hallway cluttered with computer screens and large electronic boxes I soon realized were digital projectors. Each computer screen corresponded to a projector. I thought I would find a few employees up here, working to make sure the movies were shown on time, but the projection hall was empty. It was all automated.
I hustled back down the stairs and opened the employees only door, ducking back and closing the door slightly as I saw a familiar face behind the concession stand. It was the middle-aged man from the theater, the one who'd given Harper CPR, the one who'd put a pen to her neck. Peering out the door, I watched as the man spoke to one of the teenage employees. The man was dressed much like he had been in the theater yesterday. He wore a white and blue striped collared shirt and black slacks.
It was clear from the employee's demeanor that this man was a boss of some kind. After a few moments passed, the man moved out from behind the concession stand and headed out of the theater through the front doors. I slipped from my hiding spot and followed behind him, determined to get some answers. He seemed oblivious to my presence as I followed him through the parking lot. I suddenly realized I didn't have a plan beyond confronting him.
I had no weapons on me, but I had my fists, and they had always served me well before. Plus, I had my anger. That rage voice was back with me again, loud and clear. As he turned into the space between a van and a truck, I rushed to confront him. "Hey!" I said, turning to see him already facing me. "Hello, Reed," the man said. To my left, the van's door slid open, and hands reached out of the darkness inside to grab me.
I tried to scream as they pulled me into the vehicle, but my cries were muffled by a gag. Then I felt a sharp prick at my neck, just below my left ear. The world went fuzzy. The van door closed, the engine started, and we were soon moving. After a few minutes, the rocking and hum of the van, along with the drugs they'd put inside me, whisked me off to sleep. I awoke screaming, curling into a ball, palms pressed to my ears against the familiar noise.
It was the same screeching static I'd heard when coming back into the theater after alerting the employee about Harper's emergency. Only this time, the noise was louder, and it was somehow able to penetrate my head more. For a moment, I thought it was coming from my head. Even though my eyes were closed, I saw the same grotesque figures I'd seen on the staticky movie screen. Only now, they were clearer and closer, and I knew instinctively that they weren't leaving.
They crept toward me out of the impenetrable darkness surrounding me, gibbering and growling and laughing insanely. I cried for them to leave me alone, but they were soon surrounding me, and I felt their spindly fingers touching me, prodding me, their sharp nails slicing through my skin. I was in hell, doomed to an eternity of torment. Yet, when I heard Harper's voice calling my name, the monsters were suddenly gone, along with the terrible noise.
I opened my eyes to find myself in the middle of a hallway with stone walls and many open doorways. After checking my body and finding only the bruises from my tumble over the couch and into the coffee table back at the apartment, I got to my feet and called out for Harper. She answered me from inside a nearby room. I rushed over and into the room, seeing the middle-aged man from the movie theater straddling Harper on the floor, hands around her throat.
Choking and sputtering, Harper battered at the man as her face turned from red to blue. On the wall nearby hung a savage-looking weapon, like brass knuckles with two-inch spikes. Without thinking, I grabbed the weapon and slid it onto the fingers of my right hand.
The sight of Harper in trouble had that rage voice louder than I'd ever heard it, my anger taking control. I rushed at the man and punched him in the back of the neck. The spikes punctured the skin and got stuck briefly, but I pulled them back out. Blood poured from the four wounds, but he still didn't let go of Harper's throat. I punched him in the side of the head, the spikes sliding along the bone and leaving ragged gouges. He fell onto his side and looked up at me.
What did you do to her? I screamed, stepping over him and holding the bloody spikes in front of his face. He remained silent, so I punched him in the throat. Harper screamed. I looked over to where she'd been lying, but she was gone. It sounded like she was down the hall. Leaving the man where he was, I raced down the hall and into the next room.
This time, one of the old men from the theater had Harper pressed up against a stone wall in the bare room. He held a knife near her face, left forearm to her throat. As I rushed at him, the man turned. I punched him with the weapon in the left eye. He fell to the floor, screaming, his ruined eye socket pouring blood. I turned to Harper, but she was gone again, disappeared. I shook my head, trying to clear it. This wasn't right. None of this was right.
Harper screamed from down the hall, but I stood where I was, trying to focus. She screamed. Moving with purpose, I headed down the hall and turned into the next stone room. The second old guy from the theater held Harper around the neck. He was positioned around her with a gun to her head. "This isn't real," I said to him. "What are you talking about, baby?" Harper said. "Please, he's going to kill me." "It's not real," I said. "None of this is happening."
"No," the old man said. "Then you won't mind if I do this." He pulled the trigger. The side of Harper's head blew apart. She fell to the floor amid the blood and brain matter. The smell of gunpowder was unmistakable. The ringing in my ears from the gunshot was painful. "Real enough for you?" the old man asked. I shouted and raced toward him, batting the gun away with one hand and punching him in the mouth with the weapon. The spikes pierced his lips and shattered his teeth.
He fell like a dummy, and I got on top of him, punching his head with the weapon. Blood splattered me as his face turned into a gory mess. But I kept punching, yelling all the while. Finally, after several minutes, I collapsed, breathless, and looked at Harper's dead body. Only it wasn't Harper. It was the middle-aged woman from the theater. The one who'd been with the man who did CPR. "What the fuck is going on here?" I asked myself. Then the old man's body began to twitch.
His ribcage bulged against his golf shirt, expanding and contracting with crunches and cracks. It bulged violently, and the shirt ripped, followed by the skin. His ribs folded open, blood spewing out as a grotesque white-skinned demon emerged from inside. It was about the size of a small child, but it grew before my eyes as it crawled out of the man's ruined body. It turned toward me, chittering as it grew.
That old, reliable rage surged inside, and I lunged toward it, not caring if I lived or died. I was half certain this was all a nightmare of some sort. It couldn't be real, so why not get crazy with it? Why not kill them all? As I punched at the demon with the strange weapon on my right hand, it swiped at me with its claws, tearing my chest open. I connected, piercing its skull. Black blood that smelled like the contents of a porta-potty at a summer music festival spewed from it.
The pain of my injuries drove me into a frenzy and I smashed the creature's head apart, much as I had the old man's. When I was done, covered in its stinking insides and huffing against the cool stone wall, I surveyed the damage. My senses coming back to me. Where was Harper? "It's a nightmare, dummy," that rage voice said. "Nightmares don't make sense." But I looked down at the gashes in my chest. I touched them gingerly, wincing at the pain.
This was no nightmare. The demon's body twitched, drawing my attention. Its chest bulged. "Not again!" I muttered. My words had no effect on the situation. My dismay did nothing to stop the creature's chest from expanding and then ripping open. Only this time, instead of one creature crawling out, two of them came squirming out of the black goo.
As they grew, seemingly faster than their predecessor, I lurched to my feet and ran out of the room. I glanced to my left, back toward the rooms I'd already been in, and saw two full-grown creatures in the hall. One of them crawled along the ceiling toward me, head distorted and joints crackling as it moved. The other one stood in the center of the hall, huffing, just like the one I'd encountered in the hospital bathroom.
I searched for that rage voice, but it was nowhere to be found. My anger had abandoned me, and maybe it was for the best if killing one of these things meant that two more would be born. Turning toward unexplored territory, I decided that it was time to run. The creatures chased me as I bolted down the hall, looking for an exit. I realized that none of the rooms I'd been in had windows. So as I passed the other rooms of the hall, I glanced in, seeing that none of them had windows either.
The hallway took a sharp right turn and then a left before ending at a pair of heavy wooden doors. Having nowhere else to go, I pushed through the doors. Harper stood in the middle of the cavernous room, wearing an elaborate black and red gown, hands held primly behind her back. Fake candles flickered on ornate pedestals lining the walls. A projector whirred in the corner, projecting the creature footage I'd seen in the theater.
Speakers sat on the stone floor, but there was no audio to accompany the footage. I took all this in as I turned around and slammed the doors on the approaching creatures. I leaned against the wood, expecting them to crash into the doors, but they didn't. "Thank you, Reed," Harper said. "I couldn't have asked for a better partner." I turned and looked at Harper. The words, "We need to get out of here," not quite forming in my mouth. Instead, I stuttered. "What?"
"You and me," she said, moving toward me with her hands behind her back. "We're partners. We've done this thing together. And now it's time to seal our bond for eternity." I took a couple of steps toward her, really studying her now. Studying the dress, the way her eyes looked in the flickering LED candlelight, the projection on the walls behind her. She stopped in front of me, close enough to embrace. She noticed me looking around. "I know, it's a little much.
But I'm a bit of a traditionalist in some ways. It's what attracted me to black magic in the first place. The intrigue, the darkness, the candles. But I wasn't about to have real candles in here. That would have been too much smoke. I guess it's strange to worry about inhaling smoke when you're about to become immortal, though. She shrugged. Is this a manic episode? I asked. Are you okay? We can get you some help. We can work through this. Harper laughed.
It was a full-throated laughter of a kind I'd only ever heard from her once or twice since we'd been dating. "A manic episode? Then how do you explain the people you've just killed with that very specific weapon? What about the impossible creatures they birthed? I knew you were dumb. Hell, it's part of the reason I chose you. But I didn't think you were that dumb." I glanced around, looking for the camera crew, praying this was all a practical joke.
"There's no need to fight it now," Harper said, stepping in close and bringing her hands from behind her back. "It's almost over." She slid an obsidian knife into my stomach, the blade so sharp I barely felt it slice through my skin. At first, she dragged the blade up until it hit my sternum. She held it there as she leaned in and whispered in my ear, "It's a delicate ritual, but you did well. It's a shame Bartley had to shoot Melinda for you to kill him, but she knew the risk.
She was a brave one. Other than that, everything went well. I'm proud of you. You did just what I wanted you to. You tried to save me the only way you know how. In a way, you did save me.
Smiling, she stepped back and pulled the blade out of me. I looked down as my insides tumbled out and onto the floor at my feet. I dropped to my knees and tried to scoop them back in, but my arms were so heavy and the weapon on my right hand made me less dexterous. After only a few sloppy attempts, I stopped, staring down into my viscera at four whitish bulbs about the size and shape of chicken eggs. But they weren't smooth like eggs. They were lumpy, and I soon saw why.
The four bulbs moved, uncurling, revealing miniature demons like those I'd seen outside. Their black eyes opened, legs and arms extending, as if waking from a nap. "Aren't they wonderful?" Harper asked. "It's so hard to bring them into our world, but you've helped me accomplish it. You should be so proud. These four are special. They will change the world forever."
As the four little creatures started scrambling around in my guts, I looked up at Harper with pained surprise on my face. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "And yes, they've been growing inside you since the first time we had sex without a condom. Do you remember that?" I looked back down at the things. They were growing, although not nearly as fast as the ones that had come out of the other humans. These were different somehow.
Don't worry, Harper said. It'll be over soon. They're just a little hungry. One of the little things bit into a length of intestine, releasing a foul smell. Another one leaped into the wound in my abdomen and started digging around, chomping on my insides.
I screamed and reached inside me, grabbing the thing and pulling it out. I pinned it to the floor and punched down at it, but the spiked weapon never made contact. Harper had moved impossibly fast, stopping my arm. "What kind of father are you?" she asked with mock outrage. Then she yanked the weapon off my fingers, breaking all four digits as she did. With a quick and powerful backhand, she knocked me onto my back.
The speakers suddenly came to life, that awful screeching noise blasting out of them. But it was no match for my screams as the creatures ate me. I lived long enough to see them grow as large teenagers. Each piece, subtracted from me, was added to them tenfold. The last thing I saw was Harper. She floated into my field of vision, her body parallel to mine as she levitated above me, hair and dress hanging toward my decimated body.
I remembered her in the living room of our apartment, held to the ceiling with the demon arms. Just before I lost consciousness, Harper blew me a kiss.
