Chapter 4
996 Words
Chapter 4I gasp, open my eyes. I am face to face with Steve. He reaches out to me. “What the hell happened, Jack?”
I grip the doorway. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Don’t leave in a bad mood. I won’t sleep.”
“Not that. This.” He points at my foot, at my absurdly awkward hobble.
“It’s nothing. A work injury.”
He is close—I can smell his candy-sweet breath. When he opens his mouth to criticize me, the top row of his incisors is sharp and jagged. I can’t pull my gaze from them.
In the dark, things grow teeth and bite.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his lips brushing mine and pulling away.
Fucking tease.
“Nothing,” I answer.
“Nothing? You wouldn’t have chased after me if it wasn’t nothing.”
“I’m not chasing you. I can barely walk.”
He turns his head and smirks. He is sexy when he smiles. I want to invite him back inside and devour him, bust his nuts in one long swallow. Make love until first light. Curl up in his arms. Snuggle beneath warm bed sheets, the heat of his body familiar and comforting.
I know I can’t last more than ten minutes in his company, not now, not like this. My insides turn to liquid at the thought of Steve kissing me.
“Why are you out here?” he asks again.
“To talk. Look, I don’t want to fight. I don’t want this evening to end on the wrong foot.” I laugh at my pun. “That didn’t come out right.”
“It’s funny. Appropriately fitting.”
I stick out a hand and set it on his shoulder. “It’s my job to make sure you’re safe.”
“Is this you talking, or the tired policeman trying to offer me some lame advice?”
“It’s not lame advice, Steve. And it’s me. Jack, your boyfriend.” I squeeze the tight knot of tension in his shoulders. “It’s no laughing matter when the guy I love could be in danger.”
He pulls away, unintentionally. He is aggravated by the tone of my voice. I try to calm him and suppress the rising anger in his clenched fists at his side. When he turns and walks down the hall to the exit doors, I try to explain to him that I didn’t mean anything by my stern tone.
He paces the hall, not listening. He ignores me whenever his ego is bruised and tested.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” My apologies fall on deaf ears. “Steve,” I say, trying to rope him back into my arms.
He leans against the wall, five feet from me on the opposite side of the hall. He holds up a hand as if to tell me he needs time, a moment to think, absorb what I have said. I am patient and wait for him to reflect. He does not respond. He stands beneath a blurred lighting sconce cocooned with freshly spun spider webs and dust.
The air is stifling and warm in the claustrophobic corridor. My thoughts fill with blurry images of dead things.
Steve coughs, and I can hear the harsh wheeze building in the back of his throat. “You should get that checked,” I tell him for the umpteenth time this month.
He grimaces and brings a fist to his mouth; he coughs again. He turns away and heads down the hall.
“Steve,” I yell.
“It’s allergies,” he says, his back to me. “Bronchitis.”
“Don’t leave. Come in. I’ll make you a bowl of hot chicken soup.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Steve. Please.”
When he looks at me again, he screws up his face with a look of disgust. “It’s late,” he says. “I’ve got to get home.”
“This is your home too.”
Another deep cough. He yanks a crumpled tissue from his back pocket and heaves a gob of phlegm into it. His gaze lingers a few seconds too long, staring at the tissue. His expression disturbs me.
“What is it?” I ask.
He folds the tissue and stuffs it back into his pocket. “I gotta go.”
“Do not leave like this.”
“I don’t have the patience to deal with another fight. It’s the third one this week.”
“I am worried about you.”
“Likewise.”
“I don’t want you walking in the dark alone.” It comes fast and deliberate.
I see obscure images of tree roots creeping at the edge of my vision, the length of the shadowy corridor crawling with bony limbs from my nightmares, the fuzzy expanse of dense woods growing out from the peeling wallpaper.
I blink. There is nothing there; my overactive imagination plays hide and seek.
Footsteps. Clomp-clomp.
I stare at Steve walking toward me; his silhouette is tall and gangly, his arms extended and spindly, swinging slowly at his sides. I close my eyes and clench my teeth. I am too engrossed in my imaginary world that I do not answer him when he stands in front of me, yelling and jamming a shaky finger in my face, “f**k you, Jack.”
I bite back bitterness as it bubbles and burns in my throat. Steve turns around and strolls down the dark, endless hallway, his slender shape a long, thin shadow stretching the length of the carpeted corridor. Darkness swallows him.
I am lightheaded.
Something in my sinister thoughts whispers my name.
Tree limbs close in, clawing at me.
I shudder. I don’t feel or hear anything until the banging sound of the stairwell door slams shut and draws me out of my haunted house trance.
- Writer
