Love and Other Horrors Read online

  “Oh, you’re a small one,” it says, craning its body forward to look at Michael more closely. “What pretty eyes you have, young one.”

  “Thank you,” Michael says, reaching up to brush his cheek. “What is your name, Mr. Dalapago?”

  “I am Maximillian the Great Blue,” the creature says, rearing back to form a proud S with its body. “What assistance can I be to you today?”

  “The house,” Michael says. “What is it?”

  “You mean the house at the top of the hill?” Maxilimillian the Dalapago asks. “Why, that is none other than the House of Dreams, built by the Gingerbreads themselves.”

  “The House of Dreams?” he frowns.

  “You don’t know what the House of Dreams is?” The dalapago gasps. Its body expands like a puffer fish, feigning the human equivalent of shock, before returning to normal. “Why, the House of Dreams is only the place where children go for their dreams to come true!”

  “Can I go there?” Michael asks, looking out at the hills.

  “Of course you can go! Why couldn’t you?”

  “I…” Michael pauses. “This place… it’s a dream, isn’t it?”

  “Anything is possible when you dream.”

  Turning its head, the dalapago examines the hills and the plains below, then looks over at Michael. Its near-featureless face shifts, as though smiling, before it bows its head, flattening its body to the curve of the ground.

  “Climb on, dear Michael. I will take you where your heart allows.”

  Stepping forward, Michael takes holds of the dalapago’s sides, then throws himself onto the creature’s back.

  As the dalapago begins down the hill, Michael begins to fall.

  No, he thinks. Not now, not after I’ve just…

  His vision whitens.

  The world goes dark.

  They haven’t made love for six months.

  Preferring to remain distant, Michael makes as little physical contact with his wife as possible. A comforting woman by nature, Emilin often tries to initiate contact—kneading his shoulders or stroking his palms—but each and every time, Michael turns her down. Lately it seems like nothing satisfies him anymore. Even masturbation, his usual solace in times of frustration, has become a chore. In a way, it frustrates him; in another, relieves him.

  How sad, he thinks, that I don’t even want to touch my own wife.

  Rolling over, Michael reaches out to touch his wife’s arm, to prove to himself that he can, in fact, touch her.

  Halfway there, he stops.

  Arm frozen, wrist slack, he finds that he can only reach so far before he has to pull back.

  Hurt, angry and confused, Michael throws himself from bed and stomps into the kitchen, where he stops near the separating island to collect his emotions.

  Calm down, he thinks. Everything will be fine.

  Will it, though? In the off chance that something may, in fact, be wrong, would everything be ‘just fine’ or ‘all right?’ Not being able to control your emotions said something about your character. Some called it an illness, others called it an inhibition, while a few simply said to shut up and deal with it, because life is life and it’s going to do whatever the fuck it wants.

  “All right,” Michael murmurs, taking a deep breath. “Just give yourself a moment.”

  He waits.

  A clock chimes.

  A dove mourns outside.

  The rage in his heart slowly dissipates until, finally, it is gone.

  His heart content, his mind at ease, Michael makes his way to the refrigerator. There, he pulls out a carton of milk, fills a glass, then walks it to the microwave.

  Mother used to say that warm milk would chase the worries away.

  Hopefully, he thinks, it will.

  “Michael,” the CEO of the company says. “Do you have the reports ready?”

  “Yes sir,” Michael says, swallowing a lump in his throat. He toys with the flaps on the manila folder and hopes that the sweat on his palms hasn’t stained it as he musters up the urge to make his speech.

  “Well?”

  “Well… what?”

  “Are you going to tell us?”

  A murmur of activity begins around the circular table.

  “Yuh-Yes sir,” Michael says, standing.

  “Something tells me this isn’t going to be good,” an investor mumbles.

  Michael tries to ignore the man’s words, reaching into the folder in order to distract himself, but the moment he sees the charts and graphs, he panics. Goosebumps break out along his arms and the hairs on the back of his neck sticks straight on end.

  The perfect storm is before him. It’s ready to destroy his life.

  Taking a deep breath, Michael pulls the papers from the folder and spreads them out on the table before him.

  “The company will last three more weeks,” he says. “Then we’ll go bankrupt.”

  The committee gasps.

  An imaginary gong sounds.

  Tears threaten to break Michael’s eyes.

  He can’t deny it anymore.

  In less than three weeks, his job will be gone.

  He has no idea what he will do.

  When work ends, he doesn’t go home. Instead, he detours to a coffee shop with hopes of drowning himself in caffeine.

  Seated at the bar, waiting for his cider to arrive, Michael sighs and bows his face into his hands, massaging his temples and dreading the idea of going home.

  What’ll I tell her? he thinks. What will she think?

  The answer, as obvious as it already is, doesn’t sit well with him. Emilin has known about the company’s slow decline to bankruptcy since it began late last year. Always she has said that it would be fine, that if something did happen, he could find another job. Regardless, the answer she always offers is not the one that is necessarily needed. Emilin doesn’t work. She’s offered to, but with her multiple sclerosis, he’s always said that he would win the bread, that he would bring the venison home for dinner.

  “Here you are.”

  Michael looks up, thinking it is he who is being served, but comes to find that another man has just received his drink. He’s about to turn his head to the side before the stranger smiles at him.

  For a brief moment, Michael stares, unable to contain himself.

  The stranger, briefly introduced by a tag embossed with the name Peter, winks at him.

  “Michael,” the coffeemaker says. “Here’s your…”

  He barely stops to think.

  Grabbing his coffee, giving the woman a quick thanks, Michael walks out of the coffee shop with sweat streaming down his back.

  “Are you well?” Emilin asks the moment he walks through the door.

  “Fine,” Michael says, setting his drink on the counter. Emilin looks at the cup with mute indecision. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, Emilin. Here, take it. I didn’t mean…”

  “No, don’t worry. You look like you need it more than I do.”

  Feeling more of an ass since he’s walked through the door, Michael shakes his head and starts toward the living room, his destination already set. However, before he can cross the threshold, a hand brushes his back and stops him in place.

  “What’s wrong, Michael? Tell me.”

  “Nothing,” he smiles. “Don’t…”

  “It’s about work, isn’t it.”

  Michael sighs, nodding.

  “You can always see through me,” Michael says, seating himself at the end of the couch. “You’ve always been able to.”

  “I’m your wife,” Emilin says. “I can tell when something is wrong.”

  Silence clouds the room for the next few moments. Michael, saying nothing, looks to the ground, at his freshly-polished shoes, while Emilin, waiting for a response, looks to Michael, at his hazel eyes and the doubt that clouds them.

  “I had a meeting today,” Michael finally says. “About the company going downhill.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Not good
. I wanted to run out the moment I said the company would be bankrupt in three weeks.”

  Again, silence washes over the room, but Emilin quickly remedies the situation by setting a hand at the middle of his back.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know, but it sure feels like it.”

  Standing, Michael starts toward the bedroom, but once again stops.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he says.

  “All right,” Emilin replies.

  Michael starts forward without another word.

  He can only hope the weekend will be better.

  “Hey!” someone calls.

  Michael looks up.

  Seated atop his own dalapago, waving his hand and flashing his teeth, is another boy, his blonde hair shifting in the breeze as the dalapagos continue down the mountainside.

  “Hi!” Michael calls back, smiling. “What’s your name?”

  “Peter!” the boy laughs. “What’s yours?”

  “Michael!”

  “Cool!”

  “Are you going to the House of Dreams?”

  “Of course!” Peter calls back, ducking as a stray branch from a gumdrop tree comes into view. “Are you?”

  “I’m going,” Michael says.

  “Have you ever been there before?”

  “No!”

  “It’s great!” Peter laughs, taking hold of his galapago’s neck. “You need to lay down. They’re going to go through the tunnels!”

  “What?”

  “DUCK!”

  Michael throws himself down just as they enter a tunnel.

  “That wasn’t very pleasant,” Maximillian the Dalapago says.

  “Sorry,” Michael murmurs.

  “Oh well. That’s fine. Have you made a new friend?”

  “I… I guess.” Michael frowns.

  “You guess?”

  “It seems like I’ve seen him somewhere before. I just wish I knew where.”

  “No matter. You’ll be seeing him again here shortly.”

  “Maximillian,” Michael says, pressing his head to the worm’s neck. “Why can’t this world exist?”

  “It does,” the dalpago says. “It does.”

  Michael wakes crying.

  Curled into a ball, back facing his face, he draws his portion of the blanket to his face and takes a deep breath.

  His head thumps.

  His lungs scream.

  His heart hurts.

  Why did it have to end?

  He was in my dream, he thinks. Peter… he… he was…

  The coffee shop flashes before his vision. He, sitting at the bar, waiting for his drink; a man, sitting nearby, stubble lining his square jaw and tracing his thin lips, waiting for the same. His mouth need not smile when his eyes, so crystal in clarity, can do such a thing, but seeing the interior of his beautiful frame had been the greatest gift of all.

  A shiver runs down Michael’s back, tracing his tailbone and tickling his thighs.

  His groin throbs.

  His erection lengthens.

  Crawling out of bed, he steals into the bathroom and locks the door behind him, falling to his knees and wrapping his hand around himself. His head roars and his eyes roll into his skull as an unstoppable pressure forces itself across his body. Dark memories and closeted desires come flooding back in an instant, assaulting him from all ends. He silences a groan by biting down on his arm as he continues, squeezing his eyes shut at the thoughts that roll through his head. The man, his eyes, his smile, his teeth—by the time he is done, Michael is breathless. His hands are sweaty and his chest is heaving, moisture slicking its surface and dampening the hair dusted across his torso.

  For a moment, the feeling is nothing he could have imagined.

  By the time he realizes what he’s done, Michael is crying.

  Why? he thinks. Why now, after all this time?

  Unable to contain his sobs, Michael reaches into the bathtub, turns the showerhead on, and destroys the evidence of his lust.

  There’s no reason to deny it now.

  He married the wrong person.

  He never fell in love.

  Michael wakes up the following morning and leaves the bed without disturbing his wife. After showering, shaving and climbing into a set of clothes, he walks out into the kitchen, where he drinks a cup of coffee and eats a piece of toast before heading out into the world. Locking the door, walking down the driveway, crawling into the car and pushing the key into the ignition—it takes little more than forty-five minutes for him to disappear, if only for a few hours. Though he knows he won’t be gone for long, he thrusts himself into his journey as though he will never return.

  Making his way out of the town and into the wild countryside, he winds through hills and skirts the edge of forests, passes the remnants of civilizations and explores the world untouched by man. Once every so often, he pauses to look at the land around him, but always moves forward. There is no need to stop, he knows, because whatever it is he is looking for will eventually find him.

  Come the birth of mid-morning, Michael pulls his car to a stop in front of a monument to history.

  There, at the edge of a cliff, is a river, expanding out as far as his eyes can see.

  Taking a moment to console himself from his hour-and-a-half journey, Michael bows his head into the steering wheel and takes a deep breath. Afterward, he climbs out of the car and walks to the wooden fence, where he circles his hands around the wood and leans forward.

  I’ve come all this way, he thinks. Now what do I do?

  He doesn’t force the image to come. Instead, he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and listens to the world around him.

  Birds, water, the whisper of the wind against his ears—it soothes his aching heart and stills his wandering thoughts.

  The memory flows before him as though it has never been forgotten.

  Ten years ago, on the eve of his fifteenth birthday, his mother walked into the room with the Bible in her arms. One hand set over the cross, the other grasping its spine, her eyes had sought him out in the gloomy darkness of the room. He’d been reading then, he remembers, under the icy light of a slowly-dying desk lamp. The look on his mother’s face was one he would never forget. Her hair, usually drawn back, had been down, and her old, gnarled hands—laced with wrinkles and veins—had trembled, as though sad and full of worry.

  Mother? he’d asked.

  I know, Michael.

  Know what?

  About the things under your bed.

  Even the memory of the words sends ripples through Michael’s heart.

  What things? he’d asked.

  The magazines, she’d replied. I know what you’ve been doing when your father and I are asleep.

  A moment can be described as many things. Wonderful, ecstatic, heartbreaking, terrifying—there are many moments in life that allow you to look back on them with clarity so clear they could have happened yesterday. At that very moment in his life, Michael had felt a fear so great it would haunt him for the rest of his life. He swore his heart had stopped and his mind had locked up, because a moment later—after his breath returned and his eyes came into focus—his mother had stepped forward and her hands were shaking worse than they had before.

  It’s the Devil, she’d said. You know it, Michael.

  The Devil?

  The Devil tempts you, as he tempts us all. But you are young. You can still recover. Pray with me, Michael. Pray with me so your soul can be saved.

  Regardless of its clarity, the memory goes no further. He cannot remember what his mother said after she asked to save his soul. All he can remember is her hand on his wrist and his hand on the Bible, tears in his eyes and agony in his heart.

  “It’s all right,” he whispers. “You can open your eyes.”

  He does just that.

  He is greeted by clouds rolling in from the ocean.

  This is what I came here for, he thinks. To remember what h
appened. To know what I really am.

  Sliding a hand in his pocket, Michael turns and makes his way to his car.

  Along the way, he loosens the ring on his hand.

  When it falls from his finger—when it bounces in his pocket—relief fills his heart.

  He knows what’s true.

  He knows what he has to do.

  “Michael,” Emilin says. “Where were you?”

  Michael looks up.

  His wife is sitting at the kitchen counter, eyes wide and cheeks bloated.

  She’s been crying, he thinks, all because of me.

  “Out,” he says, then sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note. I needed to think about some things.”

  “What things?” Emilin frowns. “Michael… what’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk, Emilin.”

  “About what?”

  Shaking his head, Michael steps forward and settles down beside his wife.

  Taking her hand in his, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

  “About my life,” he says. “I’ve been lying to you for a very long time, Emilin. It’s time I tell you the truth.”

  Emilin agrees to a divorce on friendly terms.

  The day after Emilin moved back home with her mother, Michael steps into the coffee shop and seeks out the front counter. When he doesn’t see the man named Peter, he frowns, but isn’t dissuaded. He steps forward and settles down in one of the bar stools, relieved when he sees a familiar face.

  “Hi,” the waitress who served him no more than three days ago says. “What can I get you today?”

  “I didn’t come in for coffee,” he smiles. “I was looking for an employee. Peter.”

  “Peter?” the woman laughs. “He doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “What?”

  “He moved back to Japan.”

  Michael isn’t able to respond.

  No, he thinks, trembling. He can’t… he… not after—

  “Can I get you anything before you leave?” the woman says, reaching toward the computer console. “Coffee, cider, a scone?”

  “Nuh-No,” Michael stutters, stumbling from his stool. “Thu-Thank you.”

  Unable to control himself, he turns and leaves.