The surface of the street was cold and uncaring. Sitting with his back against a concreate wall, Dustin watched as the men in suits walked briskly to their respective places of work. Thinking about the day ahead of them. How much money they would make for themselves, and if they can, for their companies. Making plans for the weekend in Tahoe, Napa, or Carmel. Fantasies of drinking wine by the water with their wives, or in some cases, mistresses. Never bothering to turn their heads and give a smile, even if fleeting and brief, to the man sitting on the sidewalk.

So close, he could reach out and touch them, but that would be like crossing some kind of barrier. Traveling to another dimension. Plus, it was not allowed. To wake them out of their hegemonic dreams, meant the police would come and shoo him away; or worse yet beat him like that night last June. Or was it May? One day bled into the next with no end in sight.

It was at this thought that Dustin decided he would kill himself tonight. To take too much junk and relax into the darkness. Like falling into a soft warm blanket after enduring a cold winter’s storm. Only this time when he hit the blanket, instead of sinking to a point and stopping- he would just keep sinking until the warmth and the darkness took him back home. Back to the place he was before he was born.

“It sounded like a thunder bolt hitting the building. Waking me out of my daily stupor of typing away at reports on my computer screen, sitting alone in my office. My whole body froze for an instant. Unconsciously brought back to my childhood of my parents fighting over who will do the dishes, or how the cat should have been fed already, or that my father needs to switch to the day shift at his work. Loud, banging, anger.

As my heart subsided, another feeling, as if insidiously put there slowly rose up. Making my chest tight and breathing shallow. And just as a child, I wanted to see. To catch even a glimpse of the terror. Slowly opening up the door I told myself , ‘There is nothing to worry about… Its in the middle of the day… Something must have fallen and that was the noise… they are doing renovations after all.’

As I took a step outside, into the hallway, something did not feel right. Usually the lights automatically turned on from the motion detector, but they remained off. Only the translucent light from my own office fled into the hallway, giving it a foggy glow into the blackness. When I took a step forward, that is when I heard it.

It was a fallow hissing sound, followed by what seemed to be a chuckle. I had never heard anything like it before. I called out to my co-worker Mary. Then Tom. No reply. At this point my heart began to pound. So much so I could feel my shirt moving with the beat heart trying to escape my chest. Perhaps it was keeping it in, even with the slightest of pressure on my chest.

Some blackish figure skittered on the floor. Its faint clicks of what may have been toes or claws pattered as it scraped its nails on the cheap yellow linoleum flooring. It seemed to laugh as it did so, then fell silent. The whole building was silent, as if everyone had left and didn’t tell me it was time to leave. Now that insidious feeling made itself known. I was alone. Alone with something that drew pleasure from my fear.

“Hello!” I managed to shout out. Trying my best to sound confident, like I was not scared of the thing in the darkness. As if I woke it, a pair of eyes opened in the black at the end of the hallway. They seemed to glow even though its entire body was shapeless due to the dark. Red, shimmering eyes, slanted in the middle like a cat’s eyes. Ungodly eyes staring right back at me. I regretted saying anything.

My whole body wanted to run. To pick up my feet and run the opposite way. But I froze. I couldn’t move. It was as if the carpet had grown around my feet, keeping them planted in one spot. The thing moved closer. Its eyes stayed open, staring me down like a hunter coming for a prey it caught in its trap. Knowing I cannot leave.

As it came closer it appeared to be even closer to the ground. Only a few feet tall. Each step making it grow smaller and smaller. I could hear the scrapping again. Rhythmically growing louder and louder as it drew near.

Now I could see some of its body. Reptilian in nature with downy white hair, as if trying to look as human as it could. Only its hands were twice as large as its body, garnishing razor sharp black claws that seemed to glisten in the dark. It held up one hand and beckoned me to come to it. All the while just staring at me.

It smiled as it stopped and looked at me. Its frozen prey. It bared what would have been ivory white teeth if not bleached in blood and pieces of torn flesh from what I assume was Mary and Tom. It opened its mouth and the same hiss I heard earlier came out. Only now it was accompanied by a thought in my mind that was not my own. I thought that I should take a step forward. To come to it. That the only way out was to let it in and take me.

That’s when you showed up. The siren you blared when you got here, must have startled it. It turned its head, breaking its stare on me. It was then I found that I could move my feet. I turned and went back into my office. Closed and locked the door. That’s when I picked up my chair and ran at the window. The noise of the breaking glass was the best thing I’ve heard in my life. It meant I could run away from that thing.”

***

“Now hold on just a minute. You expect me to believe that some little monster is the one that killed all your co-workers? And for some reason you were spared? That you are the only one left and that you had nothing to do with all of them being dead.”

“Well didn’t you find it?” Panic filled the void between reason and salvation. “That dammed thing? It must still be in there! You have to find it, before it kills again.”

“Jack!” the detective called to the orderly. “Take this lunatic back to his room. I think he’s had enough excitement telling tall-tales for today.”

“NO! You have to believe me, it’s still out there!”

“Of course it is Mr. Henderson” He said with a condescending tone. “And don’t you worry we’ll catch him and Bigfoot too. Because we all know you are totally innocent.”

As Mr. Henderson was brought back into his ill-lit room and injected with some chemical he was told would help him relax, he heard a noise. A scampering in the ducts in his ceiling. A running with a malevolent purpose. To take him back to the precipice of unending darkness, where madness rules, and fear is the sustenance on what they feed.

Deep within the earth was a Grand Cathedral, and within it sat but one stone. Distinct from the towering columns of the cave, the upside down spires that hung broodingly from above, or the stalagmites looking like melted candles of lost hopes and dead dreams; a single stone radiated a sapphire blue light in the middle of the cave’s pristine and holy lake. It continually sent out a pulsating and fractured light that played tricks on the eyes, to where it seemed as if great legends were being told amidst the blue shadows on the cave walls. Its origin and its long history was unknown, but Grimwell had devoted his life to it. He called it the Glimmer.

Grimwell kneeled near the water staring down into it, letting the light fill his mind and carve into his soul. He needed no sleep, nor food, nor companionship. The Glimmer gave him everything. Drinking from the water satisfied his thirst but starved his faculties. As if to keep his physical being as a vehicle and to rot away what sense of self and truth that remained.

It appeared to be alive. Like it knew he was near. It seemed to dim if he looked away, but shine brighter when he stared into it. He loved it, and he thought it loved him.

Once ten years ago, or was it twenty?... He had tried to swim down to it. Just to hold it. To feel its soft and warm embrace in his hands. As he swam closer the light had grown immensely. It surrounded him and blinded him. Even without his eyesight he could feel where it was lying. Instead of pulling him closer, the light pushed him away. It shoved him to the top of the lake and refused his touch.

He may have not remembered when it was, but the feeling of rejection stayed with him. How, much like the stone, his heart sunk to a depth that was unreachable.

Unexpectedly, a noise echoed like a ghostly choir through the cavern. To anyone else it would have seemed to have come from anywhere and yet nowhere, but to Grimwell he knew exactly where it came from. Years of living within these solid arched walls taught him how to locate the slightest of sounds. It was something different than what he heard before. Like a crunch. A porous rock being ground beneath someone’s boot; and it came from behind him.

They’ve finally came to take it from me! He thought to himself in a panic, while his mouth let out a deep-throated hiss. He shot up from bended knee near the water, near his beautiful Glimmer. He turned and scuttled towards the sound. Mindlessly, and full of blood-pumping hate for whomever dared enter his sanctuary of the Glimmer.

Grimwell stumbled over something. He darted his eyes to the ground and found bones. A sickly-yellowed and green with age bone protruded from the floor. Pausing, Grimwell refocused his eyes and saw that in fact it was a ribcage.

“Where did you come from?.... Ahh!” The mist started to clear from his mind. A Knight had once came to claim the Glimmer. His sword sharpened and armor shined; heavy and loud. Grimwell had heard him coming. Never sleeping, always listening, always watching. He hid behind a rock until the Knight came to the water. Then feeling the Glimmer inside him he let it flow through him, out of his hands and into the Knight. The cavern lit up with flashes of blue lightening. The sight was a hellish firestorm, seeing the Knight burn with a hot sapphire flame. The flesh melted from his bones and vanished into dust.

Grimwell remembered how it felt. Feeling the Glimmer work through him. Like a reflection of its power. It felt as if he was needed, loved, wanted. But something else was there. He could feel that the Glimmer did not find the Knight worthy. He remembered how he thought about this for years. Competing feelings of a deep love with paralyzing fear. Caring for the Glimmer, knowing it needed him to survive. But the endless needling of the unanswered questions of ‘Why would it find someone else worthy. Why even question that I am not the one?’ and then the deeper more hideous questions of, ‘if it ever finds someone to be worthy, what will happen to them? What will happen to me?’

This last thought had caused him so much sadness he considered leaving the cave. Going back out into the world, allowing the sun to touch his face once more, and to leave the Glimmer behind. No longer near it… a part of it. But this thought was only fleeting. When he looked down into the lake, allowing the blue light to wash his thoughts away again.

The mist came flooding back into his mind. Like a hazy veil it covered the images and feelings from the past. He slowly walked back to the sacred water, hearing it call him to worship. He gazed down into the shimmering water once more. Feeling the light caress him again and again telling him like a dying lover that she’ll love him forever.

A vulgar splash snapped Grimwell out of the hypnotic state once more. A figure of a man had leapt into the water and was swimming to the Glimmer. Its light brightened to a glaring white, but the figure, now seemingly black due his shadow against the glare of the Gilmmer, kept growing larger and closer to the exquisite glowing stone. It did not push him back up to the top as it had done all those years ago to Grimwell. And suddenly the man, the Glimmer, and the light - were all gone.

Grimwell sat down near the lake, in the all-consuming darkness. His heart and soul were now just as cold, vast, and empty as the cave he had lived in for so long. The mist in his mind had parted once more and now he could see clearly. Grimwell then fell forward into the water with one intention only. To sink. To sink to the bottom where the Glimmer had once been, and never come back up.

I love the wait. Jack thought to himself, as he stood still with bated breath, listening to the song of the creaking floorboards. The darkness surrounded him like a blanket, warm and reassuring.

Her sheer size and weight made the floor ache and scream in pain as she wandered around in the kitchen. Probably wanting to make herself another snack. What is it? The third one today? No, this hour? The basement was musty and had the stench of neglect. A faint constant dripping kept ringing off the walls, like the beating of a wet heart.

Poor dear probably has not been down here in years. Probably wouldn’t be able to get back up the stairs...well, until the coroner and some strong men dragged her back up. Jack thought to himself as he smirked at the thought.

Suddenly, the footsteps grew louder to the point they were pounding on the floor.

“I’m not selling my house!” Sheryl Lindsky screamed “No now you listen to me! I’m not moving and that’s the end of it. You take your filthy money and leave me alone.”

Ah, she must be on the phone from someone from the company. Thought Jack. Well, I guess they should try one more time before she dies in her sleep tonight. Dreaming is so dangerous for some people. Jack giggled at the demented scene playing out in his mind. He could imagine waiting till she was asleep, creeping upstairs into her bedroom. He could see her on the CPAP machine forcing air into her, eyes closed. The light would be dim from the full moon sprinkling silver light from the window adjacent to her bed, almost till he could see his shadow move as if it were independent of him and had a mind of its own. He would slither on top of her, turn off the machine, then put a pillow over her face. She would then wake-up, and in a frenzy try to push him off. But the panic would use up any breath she had left. He would then watch as the light faded from her eyes, before he would carelessly saunter out of the house in the dead of night. Keeping the scene in his mind like a movie reel on repeat, playing it over and over again.

The stomping stopped… silence began. Silence had a presence all on its own. An abject stillness between the movements of the world. Then the steady dripping set in. Jack could feel his own heart match up with the slow cadence of the drip, as he waited for the night to come.

***

Sheryl had just finished her dinner. Loaded potatoes, a buttered baggett, several discounted steaks from the local grocery, dirty rice, and to top it all off - a big bowel of ice crème with hot chocolate syrup. All her favorites. It should have made her feel better. Not so empty. It had always done the job in the past. However it didn’t do that today. It only hurt her, making her feel all alone. Empty. Just like the dishes and discarded packages she had left behind.

I can’t leave here. There is no way I’m leaving. Daddy left me the house and I can’t just abandon it. He built this house for us. Sheryl thought to herself as she prepared for bed.

While brushing her teeth in the mirror she suddenly stopped. Frozen by the feeling of melancholy. Depersonalization. The knowing that you exist, coupled with a feeling of tingling numbness rising up. It consumed her.

Sheryl shook her head and came out of it. She finished brushing her teeth, set about hooking up the CPAP machine and laid down for bed. She closed her eyes hoping sleep would find her. The thoughts of her father, Karl Lindsky, filled her mind. A single-father after her dear mother died during child birth. He was a kind, gentle, mountain of a man. He taught her everything from cooking, to driving, to doing taxes. When you were in a room with Karl, you could feel the warmth and love he radiated. She missed him dearly, and couldn’t let go of the house he made for the both of them.

As Sheryl fought back the tears while refusing to open her eyes to admit she was still not asleep. As several hours past; Jack stood in the bedroom doorway. It was well past one in the morning. A time where the other people he had dealt with were usually in delta or deep sleep. The best time to kill.

Jack crept up to the bed. Silent. Allowing the air to move past him, as not to disturb a thing. He was living out his fantasy. The one he had been playing over and over in his mind for hours, only becoming more thrilling, more satisfying, more sinister each time he added a small detail here or a nuance there. He changed his plans from smothering her with a pillow to taking the CPAP off and kissing her while he chokes her to death.

Jack came up on the bed. Gentle. Light. Only indenting the bed, ever so slightly. Soon his gangly but sinew strewn arms where side by side, with Sheryl’s head in between them. He stared down at her, holding his own breath. So as not to wake her. And so that he could steal her breath away. Jack lifted his right arm, and carefully removed the mask, one strap at a time. Now he stared down at her bare face. With her eyes closed, the silver light pouring in from the window fell on her round features, and her hair laying tenderly on the pillow; she looked like a sleeping angel.

***

Sheryl opened her eyes. At first glance she could not register a person was looming over her, or why he would be smiling down at her. But once she looked into his wide and crazed eyes she knew what he was here for. Sheryl could suddenly feel both of his hands latch themselves to her neck and squeeze. They grew tighter and tighter as he eyes became wider with frightening excitement.

Sheryl put her arms up, over her head, and swung herself to the side with all of her might. She rolled right off the bed knocking Jack off of her. He scrambled on the bed, having the wind knocked out of him. He pulled himself to the edge to see what Sheryl was doing.

Sheryl landed on her side, sending a shooting pain through her body, originating from her left shoulder. She tried to get up, but the muscles hurt already and she felt she was getting dizzy.

J ack stood on the bed, ready on pounce on her and have her fall back to the floor so he could finish her. I’ll make it look like a break in. He thought to himself. As he was just about to jump, a hand grabbed his ankle and pulled hard. He, almost comically, fell down onto the bed with is back.

Sheryl was on her knee’s at this point. She knew she bought some time with the man falling, and that she may stand a chance if she just got up. A shuddering pain echoed through her body as she put her full weight on her already strained knees.

Jack flung his legs around the bed and sprung to the other side. He reached for the knife he kept in his strapped to his belt, in-case the suffication did not work. He always had a plan B. As he unsheathed the knife, it shined an eerie glow in the dim moonlight.

A light flickered in Sheryl’s eye and she implicitly knew what it was. A knife. At that moment something awoke in her. She no longer felt the pain in her shoulder or the unbearable pressure in her knees. She stood up.

Jack came slowly around the bed to face her. His eyes never leaving hers. Locked in a standoff. She was nearly three times his size, but he had agility, he could move quicker. He also had the knife. One stroke in the right place could kill her. Her neck, inner thigh, a hard jab to the chest. A smile formed on his face once more.

“GET OUT!” Sheryl screamed at him. The sound became more than a scream, it became a physical presence as it reverberated from the walls and surround Jack. Shaking him. Sheryl lunged forward and swung her arm. It sent out a sound as it whirled threw the air straight for Jack’s head.

Jack ducked, barely missing her arm as it swung narrowly passed his hair. He then flung himself upward, into Sheryl’s mid-section. Aiming for her inner thigh. She had them spread apart for balance, but left them vulnerable.

Sheryl realized he ducked at the last moment, but could not stop her arm from going, and twisting her body. She used this to her advantage as she then lifted her leg, hard. And brought it squarely into Jack’s body. She felt a sting in her thigh and some sort of rattle on the floor beneath her. Like metal hitting the floor.

The knife flew out of his hand, as Jack scratched the surface of her legs, seeing black liquid barely pour from the wound. He was flung across the room, as her leg came into him. It did not feel like a sharp hit, but a heavy and forceful push as he slid away.

“GET OUT!” she screamed again. Jack tried to shake the daze from being thrown across the room and then realized he didn’t have the knife anymore. A grimace of disgust washed over his face as the silence of the night fell upon him. Only her heaving breathing, his beating heart, and something else.

Sirens. Sheryl could hear sirens coming. Her shouting must have alarmed someone. Looks like not everyone had left the neighborhood. She saw Jack’s already bug eyes come out even further.

“No.” he whispered to himself. He instantly bolted out of the bedroom to the front door. Sheryl did not even try to give chase. She knew she wouldn’t be able to catch him.

Jack reached the door. Flung it open. And gave a quick glance back at Sheryl.

Is he smiling at me? She thought to herself queerly. Yes. Yes, indeed he was. And in the next instant, he was gone.

Sheryl sat down on her bed and awaited the police. They might catch him. She thought. If they do or not, I’m not moving. Sheryl stared out into the night, now flooded with red and blue flashing lights. I’m never moving.

“Do you wanna hear a funny story?” he whispered on the phone.

“Sure. I’d love to.” With little else to say and his heart beating out of his chest, Thomas just listened to the sound of Louis’ voice.

“Well last night I went out, right? We went to The Valley again. I still can’t believe they let me in there.”

“I know right, they never really check your ID.”

“So I go there and I have a few with Jennifer. She’s the best. One day you’ll meet her.”

“Everything you say about her, she sounds great.”

“Well, after we were leaving and they were having the sidewalk sale outside…”

“Wait. What’s the side walk sale? Did they have like art booths out there?”

“Oh my god you are too cute. No! It’s when all the boys hang around outside after the bar closes. You know trying to get lucky one last time.”

“You went straight home, right?” He said. An instant shift had occurred. One minute lulled by the sound of his soft glowing voice, and the other felt as if the ground had given in. Praying to god that he did just go home.

“Well, yeah….but,” the tension in Thomas’s body grew with that one word. The word that closes the door on everything that came before it.

“There was this guy that followed me home. At first I was like, what a creep. But I was with Jennifer and my sister, so I knew I’d be alright…”

“Oh good, yeah your sister has that military training.”

“Yeah... I told you about that huh? You got a good memory babe.” Like a slow crash of soothing reassurance, just one little compliment melted him. If only for a moment.

“Well I went up to him and I asked him what he was doing.”

“You did what?”

“Yeah, I mean why not. So you know what he says back?”

“What?”

“’I was wondering if I could suck your dick?’”

Only hoping for one response and not wanting to even ask, Thomas said “So what did you say?”

“I said sure. I mean what’s the harm in that?”

Silence.

“We were only a few blocks from my apartment. So when we went back, I sent Jennifer on her way and my sister upstairs.”

Silence.

“Yeah, he was kinda weird. So I told him he could only do it outside, that he can’t come in.”

An ‘ah-ha’ may have escaped Thomas’s lips as he listened to it all unfold. His mind was a film projector, and it felt as if he was tied to a front row seat with his eyes glued open as each hideous image after another was being played out.

“I just took it out and he went down on me. Right there in the parking lot. I told him I was pos, but he didn’t seem to care.”

“Okay?” Not knowing what else to say.

“Yeah, he just left after that. Isn’t that just the funniest story you ever heard?”

Silence.

“Thomas? Are you there?”

“Yeah I’m here.”

“Are you okay? You sound different?”

A buzzing sound seemed to come over Thomas. Like the sound of vibration consumed him. Shook him to his very core. Making him warm. Hot in fact. It was only then that something wet seemed to be falling on his lap. Louis’s voice was as if he was speaking on the other side of the water, instead of on the other side of the phone. Garbled, faint, and unreal.

“Why did you do that?” Thomas asked.

“Well it was fun. Plus it just happened.”

“No it didn’t just happen, you let it happen!”

“Look, it was a one-time thing. It didn’t mean anything to me.”

“Somehow that makes it worse. Like sex means nothing to you. Like you don’t care.”

“I don’t. Sex is just sex.”

“How….how???” There was a question behind this but it just did not seem to get out. What he wanted to know was how could this happen? How could he have deserved this? How can this be fixed? How after all this time, all of this emotional investment, all this love be cut down for a cheap thrill?

Louis’s voice was silent. Taking in what he had done. Finally, the slow heaves of crying were broken.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You don’t know. You have no idea of how you’ve hurt me. It feels like being stabbed in the chest over and over again, but all I can do is just sit and take it because there is nothing I can do.”

Silence.

“I’ve got to go.” Louis said. His voice still and calm. Different.

“I… I…”

“Yes? Look I’ve got to go, my sister is calling me.”

“HOLD ON!”

“Fine.”

“I love you.”

“No you don’t.”

“What?”

“I said no, you don’t”

“How the hell do you know how I feel.”

“You don’t love me. You can’t, no one really does.”

Silence.

“Look I’m going now. We’ll talk later.”

“No no wait!” Silence was on the other line. Thomas looked and the screen said the call had ended.

Thomas stared at the phone for an eternity. Not wanting what had just happened to be real. Wishing it was a dream. Maybe the numb aching feeling of his whole body was a dream. The pile of tissues on the floor, just an illusion. The image of the man he loved, getting blown by a nameless man, if only it could be etched out of his mind. But it could not. That scene would be with him. Not just for the sleepless night ahead; but for any wandering glance, casual compliment, or the faintest of smiles. It would be with him, and never leave.