deformed into twin nebulas that reflected the red glow of the sky.
“Drive! We gotta get the hell out of here.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending, and when he glanced back, the monstrous figure had vanished. However, the tree lay on its side. She said, “What happened?” Then, spying the ruined tree, “We could’ve been killed!”
He clutched his elbow and stared wordlessly as the red clouds rolled away to the horizon and the blue sky returned.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
He looked at his arm. He was bleeding, all right.
VI.
The doctor was the same guy who’d splinted his fingers. He gave him a few stitches, a prescription for antibiotics and another for more pain pills. He checked Franco’s eyes with a penlight and asked if he’d had any problems with them, and Franco admitted his frequent headaches. The doctor wore a perplexed expression as he said something about Coloboma, then muttering that Coloboma wasn’t possible. The doctor insisted on referring him to an eye specialist. Franco cut him off mid sentence with a curt goodbye. He put on his sunglasses and retreated to the parking lot where Carol waited.
She dropped him at his building and offered to come up and keep him company a while. He smiled weakly and said he wasn’t in any shape to entertain. She drove off into the night. He turned the lights off, undressed, and lay on his bed with the air conditioning going full power. His breath drifted like smoke. He dialed Mr. Wary’s number and waited. He let it ring until an automated message from the phone company interrupted and told him to please try again later.
The closet door creaked. The foot of the bed sagged under a considerable weight. Mr. Wary said, “I thought we had an understanding.”
“What’s happening to me?” Franco stared at the nothingness between him and the ceiling. He dared not look at his visitor. When Mr. Wary didn’t answer, Franco said, “Why do you live in a shit hole? Why not a mansion, a yacht? Why aren’t you a potentate somewhere?”
“This is what you’ve done with your dwindling supply of earthly moments? I’m flattered. Not what one expects from the brute castes.”
“My dwindling supply…? You’re going to kill me. Eat my heart, or something.”
Mr. Wary chuckled. “I’d certainly eat your heart because I suspect your brain lacks nutrients. I’ve no designs on you, boy. Consider me an interested observer; no more, no less. As for my humble abode…I’ve lived in sea shanties and mud huts. I’ve lived in caves, and might again when the world ends one day soon.”
“So much for the simple life of dodging bullets and breaking people’s legs.”
“You realize these aren’t dreams? There is no such thing. These are visions. The membrane parts for you in slumber, absorbs you into the reality of the corona that limns the Dark. Goodbye. Don’t call on me again, if you please.” Mr. Wary’s weight lifted from the bed and the faint rustle of clothes hangers marked his departure from the room.
Franco shook, then slept. In his dreams that were not dreams he was eaten alive, over and over and over….
VII.
Franco collapsed in a stupor for the better part of three days. On the fourth evening, as the sun dripped away, the fugue released him and he finally stirred from his rank sheets. The moon rose yellow as hell and eclipsed a third of the sky.
The sensation was of waking from a dream into a dream. He loaded his small, nickel plated automatic and tucked it in his waistband. He drove over to The Broadsword and parked on the street three blocks away. The brief walk in the luminous dark crystallized his thoughts, honed his purpose, if not his plan. No one else moved, no other cars. A light shone here and there, on the street, in a building. Somehow this only served to accentuate the otherworldliness of his surroundings, and heightened his sense of isolation and dread.
Carol’s apartment was unlocked, the power off. She sat in the window, knees to chin, hair loose. Moonlight seeped around her silhouette. “There you are. Something is happening.”
Franco stood near her. He felt overheated and weak.
“Your arm’s gone green,” she said. “It stinks.”
He’d forgotten about the wound, the antibiotics. His jacket stuck to the dressing and tried to separate when he let his arm swing at his side. “Oh, I’ve got a fever. I wondered why I felt so bad.”
“You just noticed?” She sounded distant, distracted. “The moon is different tonight. Closer. I can feel it