stockings hung over a fireplace. the man in the girl scout uniform pulled himself behind the bushes and screamed. the couple stopped kissing long enough to look at hIm through the madness in their eyes.
“please. we’re sorry!”
hE whispered in their ears. they forgot. and they kept right on cheating with each other. feeling the heartbreak they caused their dying spouses with each kiss. just like the man opening the door to the police and hearing how his child had been found murdered. 10 minutes of worry. 10 minutes of devastation. 30 seconds of joy when the child is born. then, 10 minutes of worry. 10 minutes of devastation. forEver. by hIs count, the man who murdered that child had experienced the pain he caused those parents 1,314,000 times by now. people thought that they would eventually get used to eternity. didn’t they realize that you can’t get used to something that you can’t remember experiencing? of course the answer was no. but hE thought someone would have realized how it works by now.
every day was the first day here.
and soon, it would be on earth.
hE looked at the mailbox people on the sides of the street. waiting for their turn at eternity. not knowing what they would see when the zippers keeping them blind were finally opened. the top of a cloud. or this place. forEver.
then hE saw
her.
she crawled across the lawn. desperate to get back to david’s house on the corner. she had already begun to heal. she always could. she always did. hE could make her insane. hE could turn all of her words of warning into terrifying screams. hE could take all of her maternal gestures and shouts of “run away. he is evil. you must not help him.” and twist them into hisses and nightmares and rage that terrified the very children she was trying to save. hE could turn all of her kindness into terror as easily as hE could turn men’s love into mankind’s wars. but it didn’t matter how many times hE stabbed her. how many times hE shot her.
hE could not kill her.
and she kept hIm in here.
forEver.
they balanced each other like two children on a seesaw. the energy between them intertwined like an ocean’s ebb and flow. neither of them owned the power. they simply channeled it like the moon’s gravity through water. some decades her. others hIm. except in those rare times when hE could find that even rarer child. so pure. so kind. so trusting. with enough intelligence to know everything except the one piece hE had to keep hidden like a rabbit straining for breath inside the hat.
which one of them was actually holding the strings.
hE had tried many stories over the centuries. and hE had learned from hIs mistakes. in the end, hE found it somewhat ironic that honesty was the best policy. christopher was too smart not to find the inconsistencies in the story otherwise. so, most of what hE told the boy was true. there was indeed something of a one-way mirror between the worlds. there was a way to whisper to people on the real side. the tree house was in fact a portal between the worlds. there were 4 ways in. 3 ways out.
but
the imaginary world was not exactly imaginary. the 3rd way out did not exactly require anything more than the key. and the hissing lady was not exactly the one who would be considered evil between the two of them.
except by hIm.
hE picked her up, broken and bleeding. she spat at hIm. cursed hIm. stared at hIm. eye-to-eye. i-to-I. hE pulled out the dull, silver blade. hE sharpened it on his teeth like a barber’s razor on a leather strap. hE plunged it into her chest. then hE pulled the blade out of her flesh. the wound healed instantly. hE plunged the silver blade into her over and over and over again, stabbing her like a woodpecker. he could feel her bones crunch, dulling the blade until the silver was no more. just like she did. Every time. ForEver.
“why don’t you just fucking die already?” hE sighed.
then hE kissed hEr.
hE left hImself with the hissing lady as hE broke apart and spread through the town like a cloud. walking down the hallways of the hospital. marveling at the pieces on the game board. there was no coincidence. everyone was where they needed to be. all of those people sick with it. so much anger. so much flu. all of that heat.