I Can't Tell You That by Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin
Tasha's boyfriend works nights on a mysterious experiment, leaving her to deal with her nightmares of embodying violent people on her own.
Plagued. Plagued, she was, by dreams of violence and blood, the scent of prey, the stench of predation. And she, the predator. The lion in the veld that develops an appetite for human flesh. The alien that probes a man's sinew and tastes his heart. The wild-eyed shadow on the subway platform, clinically choosing one person to push onto the tracks.
And tonight she was a Roman legionnaire, the tremor of coming war in the air. She had massive calves, broad shoulders, the iron of testosterone pumping under the heavy armor. She was a man, tall and strong and wary, comfortable in the face of fighting and death. Sure feet in thick sandals on dust roads and stone. Helmet clamped onto the head over burly neck. She smelled the sand and soil just outside the camp, felt and heard the crunch of earth beneath her feet. Sun slanted into her eyes, and suddenly she was awake, still tasting lust for the impending battle.
Marc was long gone for the night, of course. She saw him only on weekends these days, almost two months now, but he promised the night shift would end soon and they would get back to normal. He left notes on his pillow so she would see them first thing on waking. He left food on her nightstand: walnut raisin muffins, persimmons, dried figs with pecans. Once he left a bowl of kumquats, another time a hunk of marble halvah. When ice cream was involved, or perishables like cannoli or custard donuts, she would find by the alarm clock an intricately folded paper directing her to an exact spot in the freezer or refrigerator.
She was well taken care of, well loved, but she dragged through the days ever more, sleeping less each night, hating the routine of her commute and her job and the headaches that came with each, finding refuge nowhere, not in an absent boyfriend, not in the three trains she took to work, not in slumber during the brutality of her dreams.
Tasha, my love, Marc's latest note said, tucked under a small tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries. These insane hours won't last much longer. I promise.
Later, at work, she sat at her desk with the largest coffee she could buy and performed her quality control review on thousands of online pages, the print and the blue light of the screen and the scrolling combining to hypnotize her. She might have been driving a car while sleeping. She might have been drifting off with her eyes open in front of a TV show. She would twitch to attention, get up, stretch, sip the muddy brew in the cup, and sit back down for another mesmerizing hour. Occasionally she actually caught something that needed to be fixed, but after the third time she performed this ritual the screen melted away, replaced by a disturbing narrative as her head lolled back against the seat rest and her eyes closed.
She was a man again, a male serial killer who knifed his victims and was never caught. For years she stalked the streets at night, patient, cunning, hunting other humans, both women and men, for no reason other than that to do so was the essence of her being. Then she stopped. A decade went by. She met a woman, married, had children. Now it was time to pick up the knife again. She shadowed neighborhoods on nights when there was no moon. She crouched by hedges and crept behind the unsuspecting. She felt the weight of the knife in her calloused hand, the quickening of breath that came with knowing she was about to reassert her true nature.
All in the space of minutes. Tasha jerked awake. Her hand slid off the mouse. The screen saver had come on. At least the door to her office was closed, so no one had caught her dozing. She eyed the giant cup of coffee and decided it was time to get another one.
When she got home Marc was making dinner.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked, standing on tip-toe to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Are you sick?"
"I don't go in until three tonight." He tossed the broccoli into the steamer and turned the stove on under it. "I slept enough."
Tasha washed her hands at the kitchen sink. "Why are your hours different?" She began setting the table.
He gave a smile from the side. "In preparation for the lab going back to normal. We're sliding our shifts by a few hours at a time."
"Really?" Her eyes grew wide. "You mean -"
He turned and put his arms around her, gathered her close so that her nose was in the folds of his sweater. He smelled like cigarettes, though she'd never seen him smoke.
"Soon we'll be like regular people living regular lives," he said.
"So, this mysterious project of yours is almost over."
"It's not mine." He drew away and lifted the lid off the pot of rice, added more water, and stirred. "But I'm part of it."
"And you can't tell me anything about it? Even now? You know I can be trusted."
"Sorry. I can't."
Later, they left the dishes in the sink and lay in each other's arms before he slipped off to shower. She tried to fight sleep so she could spend a little more time with him before he left. The scent of Dove soap and old wood lingered in the steam that wafted from the open bathroom door, and in its comfort Tasha floated into a darkness free of images. When she woke he was already gone.
He left no food on the nightstand this time. She went through the day tired, but not viciously so. When she arrived home after work, Marc took her out to eat at a small Italian restaurant.
"You're having pasta primavera for breakfast," she joked.
Later, as they held each other in bed, he murmured in her ear, "In a few nights I have to go back to the old schedule. But only for a little while."
She stiffened. "Why?"
"We're almost done. Really." He shrugged. "It's not something I can help. I'm sorry."
"How many of you have been working on this thing, this top-secret whatever it is?" She sounded petulant to her own ears.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity. Is that something you can't tell me either?" Tasha liked the irritation in her voice.
Marc sighed. "Two other scientists and me. Plus our boss. Happy now?"
She faced away from him but kept a grip on his hands around her waist. When he rose to shower and dress, she tried to stay awake but the fragrance of the soap and wood comforted her into a dreamless dark and she slept until the alarm went off in the morning.
It was when Marc resumed his regular night shift that she realized she hadn't dreamed of savagery or murder while he was with her those few nights. Ah, she thought, of course. That's what it was. Her nightmares had something to do with his absence. Once he stopped working these awful hours, everything would get better.
Food began appearing on her nightstand again: grapes and nectarines, banana bread, an enormous scone. Something stirred in the sludge of her sleep, and she began dreaming again. She remembered little on waking but was disturbed all day at work, as if a part of her was well aware of what she'd been doing in that other life.
She had to pee so badly that she wasn't sure she'd make it. With one knuckle she pushed open each stall door down the row and pulled back sharply at what she saw on the walls and floor and toilet seats. She chose the least offensive and squatted over the opening, trying not to touch anything, her eyes riveted to the streaks glistening on the back of the door and dripping onto the cracked tiles. She could smell the blood, fresh blood, old blood, clotted blood, as if a thousand used menstrual pads lingered in the receptacles.
Someone entered the bathroom. Comfortable shoes under fat ankles waddled past the space beneath her door. A woman. An older woman. Probably someone she'd worked with or even been friendly with. Tasha finished what she was doing and stood up, straightening her shoulders as she suddenly understood. Sickened, powerless to defy what was mapped out for her, she slid the knife off the toilet paper holder, the eight-inch blade pointing down.
The revulsion transmuted quickly to a surge of vigor, a vitality that stretched from heart to brain to fingertips.
She stepped out of the stall, propped herself against the bloodied wall, and waited.
When she opened her eyes she was leaning against the tiled wall, hand clenched at her side, heart pulsing erratically, the stink of an abattoir in her mouth. She opened her fist and a knife clattered to the floor. It was the knife kept in the office kitchen for birthday cakes. She saw no blood on the stall doors, no smears of excrement and viscera. Was she still dreaming? But no, she was at work, she'd taken the subway this morning, she'd been at her desk moments ago and she had a fresh paper cut on her index finger to prove it. She swooped down to pick up the knife and saw fat ankles under the nearest stall door. Tasha felt lightheaded.
The ankles moved, the toilet flushed. Tasha's moment of paralysis broke and she threw open a different stall door to hide behind just as the owner of the ankles came out and walked past. The walls of the stall were a gleaming gray. Water ran in the sink, then came the sound of a hand dryer, then the other occupant left. Tasha emerged, poking her head into all three stalls. No blood. The taste of death in her mouth was from her dream, but it was still there. And the knife was still in her hand.
She returned the knife to the kitchen. No one saw her. She blinked again and again but could not blot out the gore that persisted behind her eyes, or the rush of what she'd been about to do. In the dream, she told herself, in the dream. The dream she'd had during a workday in the office while holding a knife waiting for a co-worker to come out of a stall in the bathroom. She closed the door to her office and stayed behind her desk the rest of the day.
Marc startled her by climbing into bed just as she was suffocating a childhood friend with a pillow. "You're trembling," he said, wrapping himself around her as she turned onto her side.
"What are you doing home?"
"Not important. Are you all right?"
The shuddering began to subside. "Nightmare."
"I'm home now." He stroked her hair. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Tasha wrinkled her nose. He had a medicinal smell, as if chemicals had spilled on his clothes. "Why are you still dressed?"
"I have to go back in a couple of hours."
"What?" She pulled away and sat up.
"I wanted to check on you."
"I don't understand. Why?" In the dark she saw his eyes glisten. She was fully awake now. His grip on her arm was rough, and she shook him off to reach for the light on the nightstand.
"Don't turn that on," he said. "My eyes hurt. I just want to rest with you."
Her fingers hovered by the light switch, then brushed against something under the lamp as they came away. "What's that?" she asked. "Did you bring something home?"
"For you. A chocolate-almond croissant."
She said nothing as she slunk back under the covers and turned away from him. He flung his arm across her and dragged himself into a tight spoon at her back. "Are you angry with me?" His breath was hot in her ear.
"No," she said. "I just want this to end. These ridiculous hours of yours. You don't have to keep bringing me food. It was nice at first because it meant you were thinking of me. But now, it's like a substitute for you. My stomach is crazy, I can't sleep well, I have bad dreams all the time, and you're like a yo-yo with being here, not being here, going back, promising it's going to change." She wanted to cry, could feel the desperate urge deep in her gut, but could bring up no tears. "That's how I feel."
After a beat, Marc said, "You're having bad dreams? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Why would I? You're never here."
"What do you dream about?"
The flatness of his voice made her pause before replying, "I don't remember."
She spent the next hour with her eyes open, trying to loosen Marc's clutch on her as his breathing leveled into a fitful doze, but he grasped her tighter each time she budged. She tried to understand why she had lied to him about recalling her dreams. At last she fell asleep, and this time she really did not remember them on waking.
When the alarm went off at 5:30 he was, of course, gone. She rose from the bed too quickly. The motion sent her head into a spin and her gut along with it. She snoozed the alarm another ten minutes and sank back into the pillows. The ten minutes passed instantly. Tasha turned on the light and saw a large stain on the sheet next to her, on Marc's side, exactly in the spot where he had burrowed against her. She looked closely, sniffed it. Blood.
A spot of blood had gelled on the oak floor between the bed and the door. Another spot lay near the bathroom. She inspected the sink and toilet and tiles, then opened the lid on the trash can. Wads of bloodied paper tissue sat at the bottom. A rank odor hit her nose.
She texted him: Did you hurt yourself? I found blood.
The reply was immediate: Cut myself shaving. It's nothing.
Tasha emptied the trash can into a large plastic bag. The blood was bright red, the odor dizzying. No razor fell out with the tissues.
She checked the medicine cabinet, the drawers under the sink. She found an unopened packet of disposable razors but no used implement anywhere.
If he had bled from a shaving cut, the blood should have been on the pillow, but that's not where it was. She eyed the croissant on the nightstand, a colossal bulge of chocolate and marzipan wrapped in plastic. Next to it was a small handblown jar with a fancy label that said Sherman's Cacao Superfood. Under it was a note on which Marc had written, It's full of good stuff! You'll love it and beg me for more.
She readied for work, took the croissant and left the cocoa powder. At the office she kept away from the co-worker with the fat ankles, a gray-haired woman with a permanent scowl that seemed to originate in a poorly handled myopia despite eyeglasses. Tasha also tried to stay out of the bathroom, an impossibility because of all the coffee she was drinking. The day seemed to go on forever, and when it finally ended she went home a depleted mess, wired from the caffeine but mentally spent.
She was upset but not surprised to find that Marc had not come home. Normally he would be sleeping now so he could wake up at 11pm and leave at 11:30, but she had stopped trying to fathom his increasingly erratic schedule. She texted: When will you be home?
Sorry, forgot - working all night, he replied. Home maybe tomorrow.
She opened a can of soup for dinner and went to bed early.
The next morning her throat scratched and she felt nauseated. Even with the lights on, gloom filled the apartment, and dampness in the air caused the old wood to smell musty. She made coffee and tried to eat toast, but the bread was stale and the coffee soured her stomach even more. Soon after, she vomited twice, looked at the clock, left a message for her boss, and clambered back into bed. At least she wouldn't have to avoid the woman with fat ankles today.
She was cutting into her beloved childhood cat Misty, slicing through the fur and muscle even as Misty looked at her with loving, puzzled eyes, when the click of the lock woke her. Rattled, Tasha heard the apartment door creak open. Someone stepped in, and the door clanged shut. Bleak light pressed in at the windows through a gap in the drapes. Thank God Marc was home, saving her from the rest of that dream.
A silhouette passed by the open bedroom door. The shape of it - stocky, humped, disheveled - flung the haze from her head and she sat up abruptly. Staring at the doorway, she edged over the mattress and reached for the jeans she'd worn yesterday. Water ran in the bathroom sink, then stopped. The bedroom doorway filled and the figure stepped into the room before noticing her.
His sudden stillness betrayed his shock at seeing her. She thought he might bolt away.
Instead he said, "You're home."
"Yes."
"Why aren't you at work?"
It was Marc's voice, and though his face was in shadow and his contours too bulky for the man she knew, she also knew ineffably that it was him. "What happened to you?" she asked. "Are you all right?"
He held a hand up in front of his face. "Don't come closer. I don't want you to see me. And don't turn on the light."
"Marc -"
"No." He backed out of the room. "I'm going to leave now. This will go away. I just need a couple of days, maybe."
She ran after him and grabbed the sleeve of his now ill-fitting jacket. He twisted away, but the light in the living room was brighter and she saw the crude, massive features - the nose, the prominent ridge of brow, the simian eyes that were almost human. She gasped and stepped back.
He said, "This wasn't supposed to happen."
"What -"
"Don't look at me!"
She flinched at the sharpness in his voice. To her surprise she heard the bite in her own as she answered, "What's going on? It's your project, isn't it?"
He looked at the floor near his feet.
"Isn't it?" she repeated, inching toward the apartment door.
Slowly he raised his head. "You didn't use the cocoa." His eyes had become accusing slits. He stepped left and blocked her route to the door. Suddenly he choked back a sob, put both hands to his imposing head, and turned around to slump onto the sofa. "I'm so sorry, so sorry," he whispered. "I should have known better. No excuse. I knew, I should have known, I knew it could be terrible."
Tasha stopped sidling toward the door. "Marc. Talk to me. What the hell is happening?"
He looked at her. "We can't control it. It never acts the way we expect. I - I was fine for a long time, and then almost overnight... The others look all right so far, but I can tell there's rot inside, they fight all the time, they lie, they lie, they lie." He glanced away, as if a thought had occurred to him.
"And you?" She kept distance between them, part of her mind calculating what it would take for him to spring up and lunge at her. "What about you, inside?"
"I'm fine." His tone was curiously like a little boy's.
"Why did you ask me about the cocoa powder?"
"I did?"
"Do you lie too?"
Marc shook his head. "This is my punishment." He indicated his countenance with the wave of a hand. "But it should go away in a few days."
"You say it doesn't act the way you expect."
He grunted an assent.
"And you lied to me." She kept her voice low and even. "You've been poisoning me. My dreams."
"Your dreams! Right, I was going to ask you. But that's not what it was about."
"You were experimenting with me?"
"No, no." He gave his head a violent shake. "Yes, I lie too. I'm rotten inside, just like the others. But in my defense, I've not been myself. I couldn't control myself. I couldn't control it. I would never give it to you if I were in my right mind."
"What is it? What was it meant for?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
After a moment of thick silence, she said, "I want you to leave. To move out."
"I can come back in a few days, after this wears off."
"If it wears off. No. I want you to take a couple of things now, go wherever you want to go. I will pack up the rest of your stuff and text you when it's ready. It'll be outside the door. I want your key, now."
He stared at her, a curious slackness in his jaw. His mouth moved a few times, without sound. Then, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a single key.
She took it, and knew instantly that he had made a copy and this was not the one she had given him. "Where's the original?"
She heard the dry click of his swallow before he replied, "In the office. I was afraid of losing it."
"I want that back too." It was pointless, she thought. She was going to change the locks.
"I can drop it off when I pick up my things."
He rose from the sofa, his form heavy and bowed. Behind her anger Tasha felt sorrow for the man she once knew, though the sorrow failed to breach the wall that had shot up inside her. Marc walked toward the door, and as he opened it he turned and said, without meeting her eyes, "I've always loved you."
"Right." She watched him limp out the door, then locked it behind him. It occurred to her that he hadn't taken anything of his with him. Oh well, not her problem.
The following day, Friday, she went to work late after keeping an early-morning appointment with a locksmith, who left the old deadbolt in the door but added a second one with a hefty brass security panel. Before leaving, she dragged out two suitcases and a giant black garbage bag and settled them against the wall in the hallway, having already texted Marc to say they were there for him and he should get them while she was at the office. Ok, he'd replied.
At work she had trouble focusing and battled a vague nausea that periodically rose and swelled before ebbing again. The fluorescent lights in the ladies' room revealed troubled eyes in a sallow face, upper lids drooping in a way she'd never noticed before. She'd slept the night without dreaming anything she could recall, but was barely managing to stay awake at the computer.
Tasha returned home several hours late to make up for the time she'd lost having the lock installed. Marc's belongings were still in the hallway. A note was taped to her door. Her neighbor down the hall, a tightly wound man with a toupee that was never on the same way twice, informed her that she was in violation of fire department rules prohibiting storage of personal items in communal areas and that he would contact the co-op president if Tasha didn't remove them. Having had run-ins with him before, she lugged everything back into the apartment and texted Marc to ask when he was coming.
Marc did not reply, even though she texted him again before going to bed. The next morning she reluctantly left him a voicemail. By Saturday night, with no word from him, Tasha texted, I'm throwing your things away if you don't want them. After hitting the send button, she typed another text: By tomorrow night or I'LL GET RID OF THEM.
Immediately he answered: Ok, tomorrow. Evening.
She fumed. Tomorrow evening when? Five o'clock? Nine pm? Tasha stopped herself from texting again. Where was she going tomorrow anyway? Nowhere.
But she didn't want to see him, so at five the next day she moved his belongings back into the hallway. She slipped a note under her neighbor's door explaining that the things would be gone in a few hours. Nonetheless she expected trouble from Toupee Man, so she sat and watched TV in the living room, the volume on low enough for her to hear any activity right outside the apartment. When Marc came by, she would know it, though she'd pretend she wasn't home. If Toupee Man rang her buzzer or knocked, she'd also be sure to hear it.
The silence outside her door carried a stillness that made her wonder if anyone besides her was home in the building. Several times she peeked through the peephole and saw nothing. Twice she opened the door just to confirm that Marc had not yet come by. Her pulse raced, her head hurt, and to her horror she found she yearned for one of Marc's decadent food gifts. Something sweet, or savory, or rich. The craving dazed her with its intensity, abating only gradually.
Eventually the television lulled her into closing her eyes. She heard the murmur and shriek of commercials even as she descended through concentric rings of darkness, deeper into a wormhole where finally she disappeared and a man appeared in her place. She recognized him, the serial killer who'd given up murder for a family only to decide he liked it too much to stop. Brute force rippled down the sides of her neck and along her arms, and she felt the power of freedom from responsibility, her only function the pursuit of wretches and other prey. She was cold and lucid, bearing nothing that was wasted in emotion, muscles efficient, senses heightened. Every part of her body fit together in a structured, tidy way.
And she was waiting for someone. In a public garage, behind a metal beam, near a car with no distinct appearance.
The driver's door opened. Her neighbor, Toupee Man, stuck out a leg once muscular but gone to fat. With effort he pulled himself out, tugging at the cargo shorts, oblivious to his hairpiece's comical slant. His eyes popped open with surprise for two seconds, and then she pounced.
She woke up because the TV was too loud. She lowered the volume and instantly knew, without knowing how, that it was very late. Her phone confirmed the time was past midnight.
The light from the table lamp had dimmed, as if she'd changed the setting. She didn't recall doing so. Tasha opened the door and cursed under her breath when she saw the baggage still in the hall. She stared a moment at the paraphernalia of soured love. Tomorrow morning she'd throw it in the dumpster. For tonight it would go back inside. She grabbed one of the suitcases and pushed it over the threshold.
Something jumped onto her back and sent her hurtling to the floor, the suitcase beneath her hitting in all the wrong places. He was heavy, and for a wild second she remembered the dream and the fat leg and she bucked him with a roar and they rolled over the edge of the suitcase. Tasha slammed against the chair and she tried to use it for leverage to get up, but he was right on top of her, a noxious chemical odor exuding from his pores, his breath, his dirty hair.
"It's about time you came out," Marc said. He shoved the chair a few inches, then rolled her onto her back. With one hand he pinned her shoulder down and with the other he grabbed her face and squeezed, squeezed as if he wanted her eyes to blow from her face, squeezed so she felt the bruising of skin and tissue and the pain in her teeth. Part of Tasha's mind detached itself from her fear. She was aware of it pulling away, moving into a separate chamber where it filled the space like a dense gas. With learned efficiency her free arm stretched under the chair. Her hand closed around the knife she had not even realized was there until now, and when she pulled it out she wasted no time or emotion in plunging it into the side of his neck. It happened in seconds but played out like the frames in a slow-motion film.
When Tasha opened her eyes, Marc was still on top of her. She was covered in blood. She squirmed out from under his dead weight and stood up. Only the hand with the knife shook. In the dream she'd killed Toupee Man, and she wondered if she had done that in real life too. She didn't think so, despite having found the knife under the chair. Careful not to slip on the blood pooling on the floorboards, she went to the door and peered out. There was no blood in the hall. The building didn't have a garage. And she would not have been able to get into Toupee Man's apartment. Unless he let her in, of course.
Composure flowed through her as she walked toward his door. The hand with the blade stilled. She rang his buzzer. Twice. Three times. It was late, after all.
Pounding footsteps approached the door, then silence as, she presumed, he looked through the peephole. At last, a snarling "What do you want?"
"I need your help." She wiped at her face, leaving a streak of Marc's blood. "I'm hurt."
She heard a few expletives from behind the door, then the rattle and snap of locks. He threw open the door, his face blanching when he saw her. Then he noticed the knife.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
And tonight she was a Roman legionnaire, the tremor of coming war in the air. She had massive calves, broad shoulders, the iron of testosterone pumping under the heavy armor. She was a man, tall and strong and wary, comfortable in the face of fighting and death. Sure feet in thick sandals on dust roads and stone. Helmet clamped onto the head over burly neck. She smelled the sand and soil just outside the camp, felt and heard the crunch of earth beneath her feet. Sun slanted into her eyes, and suddenly she was awake, still tasting lust for the impending battle.
Marc was long gone for the night, of course. She saw him only on weekends these days, almost two months now, but he promised the night shift would end soon and they would get back to normal. He left notes on his pillow so she would see them first thing on waking. He left food on her nightstand: walnut raisin muffins, persimmons, dried figs with pecans. Once he left a bowl of kumquats, another time a hunk of marble halvah. When ice cream was involved, or perishables like cannoli or custard donuts, she would find by the alarm clock an intricately folded paper directing her to an exact spot in the freezer or refrigerator.
She was well taken care of, well loved, but she dragged through the days ever more, sleeping less each night, hating the routine of her commute and her job and the headaches that came with each, finding refuge nowhere, not in an absent boyfriend, not in the three trains she took to work, not in slumber during the brutality of her dreams.
Tasha, my love, Marc's latest note said, tucked under a small tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries. These insane hours won't last much longer. I promise.
Later, at work, she sat at her desk with the largest coffee she could buy and performed her quality control review on thousands of online pages, the print and the blue light of the screen and the scrolling combining to hypnotize her. She might have been driving a car while sleeping. She might have been drifting off with her eyes open in front of a TV show. She would twitch to attention, get up, stretch, sip the muddy brew in the cup, and sit back down for another mesmerizing hour. Occasionally she actually caught something that needed to be fixed, but after the third time she performed this ritual the screen melted away, replaced by a disturbing narrative as her head lolled back against the seat rest and her eyes closed.
She was a man again, a male serial killer who knifed his victims and was never caught. For years she stalked the streets at night, patient, cunning, hunting other humans, both women and men, for no reason other than that to do so was the essence of her being. Then she stopped. A decade went by. She met a woman, married, had children. Now it was time to pick up the knife again. She shadowed neighborhoods on nights when there was no moon. She crouched by hedges and crept behind the unsuspecting. She felt the weight of the knife in her calloused hand, the quickening of breath that came with knowing she was about to reassert her true nature.
All in the space of minutes. Tasha jerked awake. Her hand slid off the mouse. The screen saver had come on. At least the door to her office was closed, so no one had caught her dozing. She eyed the giant cup of coffee and decided it was time to get another one.
When she got home Marc was making dinner.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked, standing on tip-toe to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Are you sick?"
"I don't go in until three tonight." He tossed the broccoli into the steamer and turned the stove on under it. "I slept enough."
Tasha washed her hands at the kitchen sink. "Why are your hours different?" She began setting the table.
He gave a smile from the side. "In preparation for the lab going back to normal. We're sliding our shifts by a few hours at a time."
"Really?" Her eyes grew wide. "You mean -"
He turned and put his arms around her, gathered her close so that her nose was in the folds of his sweater. He smelled like cigarettes, though she'd never seen him smoke.
"Soon we'll be like regular people living regular lives," he said.
"So, this mysterious project of yours is almost over."
"It's not mine." He drew away and lifted the lid off the pot of rice, added more water, and stirred. "But I'm part of it."
"And you can't tell me anything about it? Even now? You know I can be trusted."
"Sorry. I can't."
Later, they left the dishes in the sink and lay in each other's arms before he slipped off to shower. She tried to fight sleep so she could spend a little more time with him before he left. The scent of Dove soap and old wood lingered in the steam that wafted from the open bathroom door, and in its comfort Tasha floated into a darkness free of images. When she woke he was already gone.
He left no food on the nightstand this time. She went through the day tired, but not viciously so. When she arrived home after work, Marc took her out to eat at a small Italian restaurant.
"You're having pasta primavera for breakfast," she joked.
Later, as they held each other in bed, he murmured in her ear, "In a few nights I have to go back to the old schedule. But only for a little while."
She stiffened. "Why?"
"We're almost done. Really." He shrugged. "It's not something I can help. I'm sorry."
"How many of you have been working on this thing, this top-secret whatever it is?" She sounded petulant to her own ears.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity. Is that something you can't tell me either?" Tasha liked the irritation in her voice.
Marc sighed. "Two other scientists and me. Plus our boss. Happy now?"
She faced away from him but kept a grip on his hands around her waist. When he rose to shower and dress, she tried to stay awake but the fragrance of the soap and wood comforted her into a dreamless dark and she slept until the alarm went off in the morning.
It was when Marc resumed his regular night shift that she realized she hadn't dreamed of savagery or murder while he was with her those few nights. Ah, she thought, of course. That's what it was. Her nightmares had something to do with his absence. Once he stopped working these awful hours, everything would get better.
Food began appearing on her nightstand again: grapes and nectarines, banana bread, an enormous scone. Something stirred in the sludge of her sleep, and she began dreaming again. She remembered little on waking but was disturbed all day at work, as if a part of her was well aware of what she'd been doing in that other life.
She had to pee so badly that she wasn't sure she'd make it. With one knuckle she pushed open each stall door down the row and pulled back sharply at what she saw on the walls and floor and toilet seats. She chose the least offensive and squatted over the opening, trying not to touch anything, her eyes riveted to the streaks glistening on the back of the door and dripping onto the cracked tiles. She could smell the blood, fresh blood, old blood, clotted blood, as if a thousand used menstrual pads lingered in the receptacles.
Someone entered the bathroom. Comfortable shoes under fat ankles waddled past the space beneath her door. A woman. An older woman. Probably someone she'd worked with or even been friendly with. Tasha finished what she was doing and stood up, straightening her shoulders as she suddenly understood. Sickened, powerless to defy what was mapped out for her, she slid the knife off the toilet paper holder, the eight-inch blade pointing down.
The revulsion transmuted quickly to a surge of vigor, a vitality that stretched from heart to brain to fingertips.
She stepped out of the stall, propped herself against the bloodied wall, and waited.
When she opened her eyes she was leaning against the tiled wall, hand clenched at her side, heart pulsing erratically, the stink of an abattoir in her mouth. She opened her fist and a knife clattered to the floor. It was the knife kept in the office kitchen for birthday cakes. She saw no blood on the stall doors, no smears of excrement and viscera. Was she still dreaming? But no, she was at work, she'd taken the subway this morning, she'd been at her desk moments ago and she had a fresh paper cut on her index finger to prove it. She swooped down to pick up the knife and saw fat ankles under the nearest stall door. Tasha felt lightheaded.
The ankles moved, the toilet flushed. Tasha's moment of paralysis broke and she threw open a different stall door to hide behind just as the owner of the ankles came out and walked past. The walls of the stall were a gleaming gray. Water ran in the sink, then came the sound of a hand dryer, then the other occupant left. Tasha emerged, poking her head into all three stalls. No blood. The taste of death in her mouth was from her dream, but it was still there. And the knife was still in her hand.
She returned the knife to the kitchen. No one saw her. She blinked again and again but could not blot out the gore that persisted behind her eyes, or the rush of what she'd been about to do. In the dream, she told herself, in the dream. The dream she'd had during a workday in the office while holding a knife waiting for a co-worker to come out of a stall in the bathroom. She closed the door to her office and stayed behind her desk the rest of the day.
Marc startled her by climbing into bed just as she was suffocating a childhood friend with a pillow. "You're trembling," he said, wrapping himself around her as she turned onto her side.
"What are you doing home?"
"Not important. Are you all right?"
The shuddering began to subside. "Nightmare."
"I'm home now." He stroked her hair. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Tasha wrinkled her nose. He had a medicinal smell, as if chemicals had spilled on his clothes. "Why are you still dressed?"
"I have to go back in a couple of hours."
"What?" She pulled away and sat up.
"I wanted to check on you."
"I don't understand. Why?" In the dark she saw his eyes glisten. She was fully awake now. His grip on her arm was rough, and she shook him off to reach for the light on the nightstand.
"Don't turn that on," he said. "My eyes hurt. I just want to rest with you."
Her fingers hovered by the light switch, then brushed against something under the lamp as they came away. "What's that?" she asked. "Did you bring something home?"
"For you. A chocolate-almond croissant."
She said nothing as she slunk back under the covers and turned away from him. He flung his arm across her and dragged himself into a tight spoon at her back. "Are you angry with me?" His breath was hot in her ear.
"No," she said. "I just want this to end. These ridiculous hours of yours. You don't have to keep bringing me food. It was nice at first because it meant you were thinking of me. But now, it's like a substitute for you. My stomach is crazy, I can't sleep well, I have bad dreams all the time, and you're like a yo-yo with being here, not being here, going back, promising it's going to change." She wanted to cry, could feel the desperate urge deep in her gut, but could bring up no tears. "That's how I feel."
After a beat, Marc said, "You're having bad dreams? Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Why would I? You're never here."
"What do you dream about?"
The flatness of his voice made her pause before replying, "I don't remember."
She spent the next hour with her eyes open, trying to loosen Marc's clutch on her as his breathing leveled into a fitful doze, but he grasped her tighter each time she budged. She tried to understand why she had lied to him about recalling her dreams. At last she fell asleep, and this time she really did not remember them on waking.
When the alarm went off at 5:30 he was, of course, gone. She rose from the bed too quickly. The motion sent her head into a spin and her gut along with it. She snoozed the alarm another ten minutes and sank back into the pillows. The ten minutes passed instantly. Tasha turned on the light and saw a large stain on the sheet next to her, on Marc's side, exactly in the spot where he had burrowed against her. She looked closely, sniffed it. Blood.
A spot of blood had gelled on the oak floor between the bed and the door. Another spot lay near the bathroom. She inspected the sink and toilet and tiles, then opened the lid on the trash can. Wads of bloodied paper tissue sat at the bottom. A rank odor hit her nose.
She texted him: Did you hurt yourself? I found blood.
The reply was immediate: Cut myself shaving. It's nothing.
Tasha emptied the trash can into a large plastic bag. The blood was bright red, the odor dizzying. No razor fell out with the tissues.
She checked the medicine cabinet, the drawers under the sink. She found an unopened packet of disposable razors but no used implement anywhere.
If he had bled from a shaving cut, the blood should have been on the pillow, but that's not where it was. She eyed the croissant on the nightstand, a colossal bulge of chocolate and marzipan wrapped in plastic. Next to it was a small handblown jar with a fancy label that said Sherman's Cacao Superfood. Under it was a note on which Marc had written, It's full of good stuff! You'll love it and beg me for more.
She readied for work, took the croissant and left the cocoa powder. At the office she kept away from the co-worker with the fat ankles, a gray-haired woman with a permanent scowl that seemed to originate in a poorly handled myopia despite eyeglasses. Tasha also tried to stay out of the bathroom, an impossibility because of all the coffee she was drinking. The day seemed to go on forever, and when it finally ended she went home a depleted mess, wired from the caffeine but mentally spent.
She was upset but not surprised to find that Marc had not come home. Normally he would be sleeping now so he could wake up at 11pm and leave at 11:30, but she had stopped trying to fathom his increasingly erratic schedule. She texted: When will you be home?
Sorry, forgot - working all night, he replied. Home maybe tomorrow.
She opened a can of soup for dinner and went to bed early.
The next morning her throat scratched and she felt nauseated. Even with the lights on, gloom filled the apartment, and dampness in the air caused the old wood to smell musty. She made coffee and tried to eat toast, but the bread was stale and the coffee soured her stomach even more. Soon after, she vomited twice, looked at the clock, left a message for her boss, and clambered back into bed. At least she wouldn't have to avoid the woman with fat ankles today.
She was cutting into her beloved childhood cat Misty, slicing through the fur and muscle even as Misty looked at her with loving, puzzled eyes, when the click of the lock woke her. Rattled, Tasha heard the apartment door creak open. Someone stepped in, and the door clanged shut. Bleak light pressed in at the windows through a gap in the drapes. Thank God Marc was home, saving her from the rest of that dream.
A silhouette passed by the open bedroom door. The shape of it - stocky, humped, disheveled - flung the haze from her head and she sat up abruptly. Staring at the doorway, she edged over the mattress and reached for the jeans she'd worn yesterday. Water ran in the bathroom sink, then stopped. The bedroom doorway filled and the figure stepped into the room before noticing her.
His sudden stillness betrayed his shock at seeing her. She thought he might bolt away.
Instead he said, "You're home."
"Yes."
"Why aren't you at work?"
It was Marc's voice, and though his face was in shadow and his contours too bulky for the man she knew, she also knew ineffably that it was him. "What happened to you?" she asked. "Are you all right?"
He held a hand up in front of his face. "Don't come closer. I don't want you to see me. And don't turn on the light."
"Marc -"
"No." He backed out of the room. "I'm going to leave now. This will go away. I just need a couple of days, maybe."
She ran after him and grabbed the sleeve of his now ill-fitting jacket. He twisted away, but the light in the living room was brighter and she saw the crude, massive features - the nose, the prominent ridge of brow, the simian eyes that were almost human. She gasped and stepped back.
He said, "This wasn't supposed to happen."
"What -"
"Don't look at me!"
She flinched at the sharpness in his voice. To her surprise she heard the bite in her own as she answered, "What's going on? It's your project, isn't it?"
He looked at the floor near his feet.
"Isn't it?" she repeated, inching toward the apartment door.
Slowly he raised his head. "You didn't use the cocoa." His eyes had become accusing slits. He stepped left and blocked her route to the door. Suddenly he choked back a sob, put both hands to his imposing head, and turned around to slump onto the sofa. "I'm so sorry, so sorry," he whispered. "I should have known better. No excuse. I knew, I should have known, I knew it could be terrible."
Tasha stopped sidling toward the door. "Marc. Talk to me. What the hell is happening?"
He looked at her. "We can't control it. It never acts the way we expect. I - I was fine for a long time, and then almost overnight... The others look all right so far, but I can tell there's rot inside, they fight all the time, they lie, they lie, they lie." He glanced away, as if a thought had occurred to him.
"And you?" She kept distance between them, part of her mind calculating what it would take for him to spring up and lunge at her. "What about you, inside?"
"I'm fine." His tone was curiously like a little boy's.
"Why did you ask me about the cocoa powder?"
"I did?"
"Do you lie too?"
Marc shook his head. "This is my punishment." He indicated his countenance with the wave of a hand. "But it should go away in a few days."
"You say it doesn't act the way you expect."
He grunted an assent.
"And you lied to me." She kept her voice low and even. "You've been poisoning me. My dreams."
"Your dreams! Right, I was going to ask you. But that's not what it was about."
"You were experimenting with me?"
"No, no." He gave his head a violent shake. "Yes, I lie too. I'm rotten inside, just like the others. But in my defense, I've not been myself. I couldn't control myself. I couldn't control it. I would never give it to you if I were in my right mind."
"What is it? What was it meant for?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
After a moment of thick silence, she said, "I want you to leave. To move out."
"I can come back in a few days, after this wears off."
"If it wears off. No. I want you to take a couple of things now, go wherever you want to go. I will pack up the rest of your stuff and text you when it's ready. It'll be outside the door. I want your key, now."
He stared at her, a curious slackness in his jaw. His mouth moved a few times, without sound. Then, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a single key.
She took it, and knew instantly that he had made a copy and this was not the one she had given him. "Where's the original?"
She heard the dry click of his swallow before he replied, "In the office. I was afraid of losing it."
"I want that back too." It was pointless, she thought. She was going to change the locks.
"I can drop it off when I pick up my things."
He rose from the sofa, his form heavy and bowed. Behind her anger Tasha felt sorrow for the man she once knew, though the sorrow failed to breach the wall that had shot up inside her. Marc walked toward the door, and as he opened it he turned and said, without meeting her eyes, "I've always loved you."
"Right." She watched him limp out the door, then locked it behind him. It occurred to her that he hadn't taken anything of his with him. Oh well, not her problem.
The following day, Friday, she went to work late after keeping an early-morning appointment with a locksmith, who left the old deadbolt in the door but added a second one with a hefty brass security panel. Before leaving, she dragged out two suitcases and a giant black garbage bag and settled them against the wall in the hallway, having already texted Marc to say they were there for him and he should get them while she was at the office. Ok, he'd replied.
At work she had trouble focusing and battled a vague nausea that periodically rose and swelled before ebbing again. The fluorescent lights in the ladies' room revealed troubled eyes in a sallow face, upper lids drooping in a way she'd never noticed before. She'd slept the night without dreaming anything she could recall, but was barely managing to stay awake at the computer.
Tasha returned home several hours late to make up for the time she'd lost having the lock installed. Marc's belongings were still in the hallway. A note was taped to her door. Her neighbor down the hall, a tightly wound man with a toupee that was never on the same way twice, informed her that she was in violation of fire department rules prohibiting storage of personal items in communal areas and that he would contact the co-op president if Tasha didn't remove them. Having had run-ins with him before, she lugged everything back into the apartment and texted Marc to ask when he was coming.
Marc did not reply, even though she texted him again before going to bed. The next morning she reluctantly left him a voicemail. By Saturday night, with no word from him, Tasha texted, I'm throwing your things away if you don't want them. After hitting the send button, she typed another text: By tomorrow night or I'LL GET RID OF THEM.
Immediately he answered: Ok, tomorrow. Evening.
She fumed. Tomorrow evening when? Five o'clock? Nine pm? Tasha stopped herself from texting again. Where was she going tomorrow anyway? Nowhere.
But she didn't want to see him, so at five the next day she moved his belongings back into the hallway. She slipped a note under her neighbor's door explaining that the things would be gone in a few hours. Nonetheless she expected trouble from Toupee Man, so she sat and watched TV in the living room, the volume on low enough for her to hear any activity right outside the apartment. When Marc came by, she would know it, though she'd pretend she wasn't home. If Toupee Man rang her buzzer or knocked, she'd also be sure to hear it.
The silence outside her door carried a stillness that made her wonder if anyone besides her was home in the building. Several times she peeked through the peephole and saw nothing. Twice she opened the door just to confirm that Marc had not yet come by. Her pulse raced, her head hurt, and to her horror she found she yearned for one of Marc's decadent food gifts. Something sweet, or savory, or rich. The craving dazed her with its intensity, abating only gradually.
Eventually the television lulled her into closing her eyes. She heard the murmur and shriek of commercials even as she descended through concentric rings of darkness, deeper into a wormhole where finally she disappeared and a man appeared in her place. She recognized him, the serial killer who'd given up murder for a family only to decide he liked it too much to stop. Brute force rippled down the sides of her neck and along her arms, and she felt the power of freedom from responsibility, her only function the pursuit of wretches and other prey. She was cold and lucid, bearing nothing that was wasted in emotion, muscles efficient, senses heightened. Every part of her body fit together in a structured, tidy way.
And she was waiting for someone. In a public garage, behind a metal beam, near a car with no distinct appearance.
The driver's door opened. Her neighbor, Toupee Man, stuck out a leg once muscular but gone to fat. With effort he pulled himself out, tugging at the cargo shorts, oblivious to his hairpiece's comical slant. His eyes popped open with surprise for two seconds, and then she pounced.
She woke up because the TV was too loud. She lowered the volume and instantly knew, without knowing how, that it was very late. Her phone confirmed the time was past midnight.
The light from the table lamp had dimmed, as if she'd changed the setting. She didn't recall doing so. Tasha opened the door and cursed under her breath when she saw the baggage still in the hall. She stared a moment at the paraphernalia of soured love. Tomorrow morning she'd throw it in the dumpster. For tonight it would go back inside. She grabbed one of the suitcases and pushed it over the threshold.
Something jumped onto her back and sent her hurtling to the floor, the suitcase beneath her hitting in all the wrong places. He was heavy, and for a wild second she remembered the dream and the fat leg and she bucked him with a roar and they rolled over the edge of the suitcase. Tasha slammed against the chair and she tried to use it for leverage to get up, but he was right on top of her, a noxious chemical odor exuding from his pores, his breath, his dirty hair.
"It's about time you came out," Marc said. He shoved the chair a few inches, then rolled her onto her back. With one hand he pinned her shoulder down and with the other he grabbed her face and squeezed, squeezed as if he wanted her eyes to blow from her face, squeezed so she felt the bruising of skin and tissue and the pain in her teeth. Part of Tasha's mind detached itself from her fear. She was aware of it pulling away, moving into a separate chamber where it filled the space like a dense gas. With learned efficiency her free arm stretched under the chair. Her hand closed around the knife she had not even realized was there until now, and when she pulled it out she wasted no time or emotion in plunging it into the side of his neck. It happened in seconds but played out like the frames in a slow-motion film.
When Tasha opened her eyes, Marc was still on top of her. She was covered in blood. She squirmed out from under his dead weight and stood up. Only the hand with the knife shook. In the dream she'd killed Toupee Man, and she wondered if she had done that in real life too. She didn't think so, despite having found the knife under the chair. Careful not to slip on the blood pooling on the floorboards, she went to the door and peered out. There was no blood in the hall. The building didn't have a garage. And she would not have been able to get into Toupee Man's apartment. Unless he let her in, of course.
Composure flowed through her as she walked toward his door. The hand with the blade stilled. She rang his buzzer. Twice. Three times. It was late, after all.
Pounding footsteps approached the door, then silence as, she presumed, he looked through the peephole. At last, a snarling "What do you want?"
"I need your help." She wiped at her face, leaving a streak of Marc's blood. "I'm hurt."
She heard a few expletives from behind the door, then the rattle and snap of locks. He threw open the door, his face blanching when he saw her. Then he noticed the knife.
I started the story thinking it was going to be a Walter Mitty-style fantasy of violence, but then it took a much darker turn. I like these dark speculative tales that play with the fabric of reality. Philip K. Dick used to say that the question of "what is reality" is really the only game in town, in terms of questions worth being asked. This one definitely made me question what was going on. Good job also on establishing a palpable sense of mystery and building it into dread.
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