Night Five:

Stanley had not slept through the day.  His reddened eyes were like cherries.  His body ached with thirst, ached with the bond, ached with contradicting feelings.  Maybe she had done something to him with that promise.  He couldn’t do it.  Something had gone wrong inside him.  He felt something for Anne, something so powerful it had stopped him.

The night would soon be over.  Stanley had spent it huddled in the corner of his tiny motel room.  If Anne was still alive, if their bond hadn’t driven her mad yet, it was only a matter of time before it did.  He had to go back.

What happens when a lion falls in love with its prey?

It starves.

His walk to the corner of Oak Lane and 9th Street was drunken though he was sober.  Her window was dark.  Something gnawed inside him, something that wasn’t the thirst.  Was she still alive?  He pressed his hand to the glass.  Light illuminated her room.  She was there, her arm lowering from the light switch, in a corner as he had been.  Her body quaked like a Parkinsons patient as she watched him.  The eyes that had been so alive, were now hollow.

She had asked for him last night.  Nothing was stopping him from entering now, nothing but feelings.  Stanley backed away from the window.  His own words haunted him.  The dead do not rise.  If only they did.  If only this wasn’t necessary.  He could only hope it was for the best.

Anne’s room was dark again, but she had come to the window.  Stanley looked through the boughs at a brightening sky.  Anne would be his last.  She would be the only one to survive.  He had hoped to be brave, but as the sky filled with light, he began to wince.  The urge to wet himself was overpowering.

What happens when a lion that falls in love with his prey?

He dies.

She was watching.  She could see what a sniveling coward he truly was.  Several agonizing minutes brought the sun’s direct rays showering through the leaves.  Stanley cried out, sinking to the ground, and shielding his head.  The heat was so tremendous.  For the first time he could feel it.  It scorched him.  It was over.

It is well known that Stanley’s kind are deathly allergic to the sun’s rays.  What Stanley didn’t know was how soon his body would wither under them.  After a while, he stood up, and shook the leaves off his pants.  He was alive, the sun warming skin that had never felt warmth.  He shielded his sensitive night eyes and looked at her window.  She was still there.  A natural blush had returned to her cheeks, her body had steadied, and a caustic liveliness glinted in her eye.

Stanley examined his own body.  The bond was absent, as were the weakness and the thirst.  He had never known himself to be in bondage, but now he felt free.  His tongue explored his mouth, sliding over gums that hid no extra teeth.

Human.  Stanley’s miraculous second chance.

One would expect a happy ending with a kiss or wedding at this point, but one would be wrong.  Anne was happy that Stanley would not be killing anyone else, her included, but she was no more inclined to love him than she had been at their first meeting.  They parted friends, Anne quickly adding a restraining order to their friendship.  She returned to the city and soon found love, but not with Stanley.

Stanley left Anne that morning for the last time.  He was heartsick.  The promise of a new, normal life gave him hope.  It is not known if he ever returned to his dark ways.  One can only hope.  Let’s hope one is not wrong again.

Night Four:

She wasn’t looking well. The time was almost ripe. He could feel the strength of their bond in his own thirst. He could see it in her weakness.

Her hand lacked its usual grace as it felt for her ringing phone and pressed it to her cheek.

“Hello, Anne.”

She turned to her window. Stanley didn’t disappoint her, stepping inches from the glass where the glare wouldn’t shield him. He spread his palm against the window.

“Let me in.”

Her face paled as white as if she were already drained. She rose from her bed, nearing the window with the slow, staggering steps of a zombie. She pressed her palm over his.

“I’ll let you in on one condition, Stanley.”

He signaled for her to continue.

Fluid began to crowd her lids, but her voice was strangely even. “I am the last one. Promise that it ends with me.”

Get inside, his thirst was telling him. You can’t handle much more of this.

“I promise.” The lie sputtered off his tongue. His usual humor would insist on taunting his prey with her sudden burst of nobility, but this time was not usual.

Anne thumbed the window lock open and slid the creaking glass aside. Her trembling mounted into something more violent. Stanley couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, fear, or the strength of their blood bond. He pulled the soiled screen away, twisting its frame in his haste. Anne backed away, a hand over her elbow. Stanley slithered through the gap.

He righted himself and approached her with outstretched arms, like a returning lover, except that his eyes were gleaming in their wicked way. Anne’s face couldn’t pale more than it already had. She huddled against a wall, hugging her arms. He could hear her heart beating louder with each step; it wetted his mouth. He grasped her arms and leaned over her shoulder smelling lemon soap and apple pie. He drew in a deep breath and savored it. This was the rewarding part, the end of the hunt. Victory. Feast.

He bowed his head to her cowering neck, his retractable fangs springing from hidden pockets in his gums.

Stanley hesitated. His teeth slid back into their pockets. Everything felt wrong. What had happened to the joyous victory? Stanley drew his hands away, blindly backing to the window. His eyes were flitting in confusion, and worse, his thirst was demanding to be wetted. The light was still on, but Stanley groped for the window and fell through it. A fear had taken hold of him. Stanley had not known fear for a long time.

What happens when a lion falls in love with its prey?

Stanley remembered the phone. He brought it to his mouth. “No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Then—“

“Yes. This is it.”

Her face was flawless even in the middle of distorting sobs. The sport of the hunt failed to satisfy Stanley as he watched with a steel grip on his phone.

Gaining a moment of composure, she wiped the tears from her face. “I won’t let it happen.”

“Let me in, Anne. It’s much easier this way.”

Anne trembled from head to foot, her will at battle with his. Her hand stretched from her body as if it was being wrenched to the window.

“What will happen if I don’t?” shuddered her voice through the phone.

Stanley’s eyes drifted from her window. “Things will get rotten for both of us, but worse for you. Either way, the game ends.”

Stanley turned reluctant eyes on Anne. She had taken her arm back and folded it straitjacket style across her chest. Her head bent over her knees. One hand still held the phone to her ear, the speaker angled away from her mouth. Slowly, the speaker twisted back.

“What if you found someone else to— Would that—Would I—“

“You would sacrifice a stranger to save yourself?”

The wind cracked through the drying autumn leaves.

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“Good. It wouldn’t work.”

“And you would keep finding more people. You’ll never stop will you?”

“I can’t stop. A lion doesn’t stop needing meat. A tree doesn’t stop needing water. I am what I am, and I am what nature made me.”

“So you weren’t spawned from the devil or any of that?”

“I’ve never met him, and I’ve never made any promises to him. My whole family was born like me. Are we supposed to wallow in Hell for that? It doesn’t seem fair that I should be condemned for something I can’t control. No, the devil is just a myth.”

“Don’t you see anything wrong with what you do? You’re a cannibal.”

“Of a sort, I suppose. I think I’m more a subspecies of human than actually human.”

She studied her toes as they flexed and curled. “What if something happens to you? Would I still—” her toes froze in a flexed position, “die?”

Stanley eyed the svelte creature through the window. Her posture was childlike. She looked so vulnerable.

“I’m not sure how that would effect you. Could you really kill me, Anne?”

Her thoughtful breath carried to his phone. Stanley turned from the window.

“Goodnight, Princess.” It was out before he’d thought it through. The words echoed in his earpiece, sounding just right, and even more wrong.

Stanley traipsed through a still town. The only relief to its stagnant silence was an owl hooting in the distance and the rustling leaves. Not even crickets interrupted a night as thick as this. Stanley hoped Anne could not hold out for longer than his projected five days. Otherwise, things would get messy. The other time had been messy.

***

His mother’s arms were belted to her bed posts, her lips ripped where her teeth tore into them. Her dark red hair threw a ghoulish halo over her white, clammy face. She was at least one hundred years old, but mother and son looked only ten years apart, a small perk of all the youth they had harvested.

A thin white finger pointed at the muted news program. Stanley followed the finger and adjusted the volume.

“That’s him,” she rasped as a picture of a smiling business man filled the screen. By him she meant her intended victim.

Footage of a bridge and a search and rescue team were dominated by a news anchor’s demure exclamations of a needless tragedy.

“Well, he got away, didn’t he? I told him it wouldn’t be easy. He had to dive off a bridge to prove me right.” His mother giggled feverishly. Her giggle turned into a cackle, escalating into violent heaves that spilled over her shoulder and arm. Her arms beat against their restraints, her nails clawing for her face. Stanley mopped at the mess.

“I need someone new, Stanny. I don’t think I’ll survive much longer without a long drink. Two. You’d better get two.”

Stanley dumped the soiled rags in her sink and pulled her bedroom door closed. He stood by her door until the sobs came. He strode into the night. The Elliots never used shopping lists. Two it would be.

***

Night three:

A taunting breeze rustled through the leaves, seeming to say: If you were truly alive, you could feel me. Stanley shook the thought off, positioning himself again in front of Anne’s window.

A flood of feelings trampled over Stanley’s calm as his vantage point revealed an empty bedroom. His fingers trembled as they fumbled for his phone. He stubbed the buttons with numb fingertips that never numbed from cold. The ring tolled in Stanley’s impatient ear. The line clicked.

“Where are you?” He demanded in a voice less dominating than he intended.

Motion drew his eyes to her bedroom door. Anne’s perfectly sculpted hand cupped the knob. The rest of her followed, her hair turbaned in a bath towel and a ridiculous set of slippered pajamas disguising a remarkable figure. The cell phone was again pressed against her cheek.

Stanley’s lip curved in amusement, the wash of feelings eased at the sight of his prey.

“Ah, lovely evening wear.”

Anne’s eyes darted around her room. She nudged her closet door open with her slippered foot and examined it at a distance. Her eyes wandered again, landing on the window, and on him. Her breath caught in her throat, making a small hiccupping sound in Stanley’s ear.

“Don’t look so surprised. You guessed I was watching.”

Anne stumbled backwards to her bed, folding her knees in front of her. Her eyes were trained on the window, though her focus wandered from one corner to the other. She couldn’t see him past the glare of her bedroom lights at that distance.

“I can’t—I can’t stop shaking,” she said. “What’s happening to me? Am I—“ her sigh rattled through the phone. “Am I becoming like you?”

The different muscles in his face loosened, the hand holding the phone swung to his side. It wasn’t the first time he’d answered this question. He’d even asked it once.

***

It had been half a century ago. His mother was regaining strength from the birth of his sister. Stanley gazed at the little, pink creature in fascination. Her puffy lids were shut tight over confused orbs of brown. He stretched his pinky, scrawny with juvenile growth within her pudgy palm. Tiny fingers curled over the pinky with a tighter grip than seemed possible.

His mother rustled in behind him, clamping down on his shoulders with a steel grip.

“Don’t touch it,” she hissed.

Stanley frowned, freeing his finger. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s not one of us.”

“We can make her like us, can’t we?” Stanley was remembering the crumbling copy of Dracula stashed under his bed.

“It doesn’t work that way.” Stanley’s left shoulder felt damp between his mother’s fingers. “You have to be born one of us. There’s no place for a human in our family.”

“What are you going to do?” The baby’s eyelashes were so dark against her pale pink skin, so innocent.

“We’ll make it as painless as possible.”

The words resounded in his head as her hands peeled off his shoulder. The sound of rustling carried to his mother’s door and ended with the latch’s click.

“But she’s your daughter.” His voice didn’t carry past the cradle. He felt his left shoulder. It was damp.

He watched the baby sleep for a moment that seemed timeless. His hands stretched over her puckered lips. There, they stalled. Stanley backed from the cradle, collected a stack of receiving blankets, and approached it again. He wrapped his sister in the blankets one by one, and scooped her into his arms. As an afterthought he stopped by his bed. He swept his foot underneath until something skidded out. Stanley placed his sister gently on his bed and scribbled in the book. The page tore from its binding with little effort. He shoved it in his trouser pocket.

The night would have been cold for a normal child. That concerned him. The yard he chose was dark, sheltered by an ancient weeping willow, and close to an important building. He tucked the note under the top blanket with a small corner peeking out. Then, he kissed her.

“Goodnight, Princess.”

He had run to the nearest payphone, called the baby’s location in, and scrambled into the willow. The squad car had arrived shortly after. The police collected the infant and discovered Stanley’s note on the title page of Dracula:

her name is Katie

***

Night Two:

A return to small town life must be making her lazy. The drapes were thrown wide and the covers on her bed were still askew from the night before. Her pajamas of choice were another pair of drawstring pants and a long sleeved cotton shirt. Her locks of thick hair had been brushed into a movie star ponytail that swept across her chair with every tilt of her head. A laptop was propped open on a dark walnut vanity. Anne gazed at its glowing screen with a slight frown.

Stanley flipped his phone open and dialed her phone. At some point during the day the phone had escaped from the throw pillow. It sang tones of triumph at her elbow. She watched it, her hand darting to her mouth, to the phone, her arm, and back to the phone, answering on the fifth ring. Her lips parted only to breathe as she pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello, Anne.”

“You’re sick,” she hissed. “Why are you doing this?”

“This is what I do.”

“So what are you? A stalker, a serial killer, insane—“

“Look at the inside of your elbow. You tell me what I am.”

Her head bowed, tracing a line over her wrinkled sleeve. “So you’re insane.”

“No, it’s worse than that. I am the real thing.”

“So, what you’re trying to tell me is that you are some dead/undead, night-haunting creature that ‘vants to suck my blood?’”

“I’m as alive as you.”

Anne scoffed. “You’re nothing like me. You get your kicks out of scaring and hurting people. I actually add something to society.”

Stanley laughed. It was a mean sound that carried farther than he intended. Anne looked over her shoulder with a worried twist of her mouth. “What you are is a career-obsessed woman that has placed financial success above any healthy relationship. When you wonder why you are alone, you convince yourself that no man has been suitable enough to keep your respect, let alone your love. How does it feel to know that you will lose your perfect control of life to a man as indistinguishable, as low as me? And you ask how I can do this in a world filled with self-adoring cattle.”

Her anger huffed in short breaths into his ear. Her ponytail shook and stretched below her seat as she raised her head to the ceiling. “Do you have any feelings?”

“Emotion is a weakness. Emotion based decisions are an evil the world could do without. My kind do not feel cold or heat. We train ourselves likewise to ward off the weakness of emotion.”

“If you don’t feel anything, how can you be sure you’re really alive?”

Stanley paused, lines creasing around his eyes.

“Ask for me.”

“Not a chance.”

“Goodnight, Anne.”

Night One:

Her house was on a quiet corner between Oak Lane and 9th Street. Mature trees canopied the yard and shielded him from a rare passing car. It was midnight, and the town was dead. Anne’s family’s house was a comfortable rambler built around the mid-eighties. Its wood panel siding was painted a boring beige gray.

Stanley wasn’t interested in the house, just what lay inside it.

Her family was too secure in their safety, fully drawing the drapes over only two of the house’s windows. The others allowed him peeks into the dark interior. He recognized Anne’s room by the suitcase stowed beneath its window. A charging phone glowed by its handle. Stanley drew behind some drooping boughs and punched in the number scribbled on his paper.

The windows were an older generation that leaked a triumphant ringtone through its panes. A light glowed between the half-drawn drapes, and Anne glided into view. Even bed head had no claim on her. The phone was disconnected from the charger and pressed against her rosy cheek.

“Hello?”

“Don’t hang up on me.”

“Who is this?”

“Ask for me, Anne.”

Her face flushed, her free hand subconsciously guarding the inside of her elbow. “You creep! I told you to leave me alone. I’m calling the police, you psycho.”

“No, Anne.” Stanley’s eyes gleamed. “You’ll tell no one.” The force of his command was almost tangible. Stanley smiled. He was back in control.

Anne threw her phone onto the suitcase. Her index finger stabbed towards the END button. It froze centimeters over it, and it hovered for several seconds, bound by an invisible wall. She dropped her hand, resolved on staring at the phone like a hissing cockroach at an insect exhibit.

“Goodnight, Anne.” Stanley snapped his phone shut. Anne glared at her phone until its display screen blinked. She flipped the display screen down and smothered the phone with a nearby throw pillow. Her sleek frame disappeared behind the drapes, and the room went black again.

Not a bad start, Stanley thought, stalking back to his shabby motel room.

The early morning maids were arriving to set up the breakfast buffet. As they bussed food from the freezer to the buffet, Stanley caught bits of whispered nonsense.

“No, no. I felt it,” spoke one with a heavy Asian accent. She hobbled with a cardboard tray full of blueberry muffins. “It was cold. Like fingers on my—,” she waved a hand to indicate her back. She shivered. “I no go in that room any more. Not good.”

“Well, that’s the room where that one guest died, wasn’t it?” whispered the other maid.

Their voices faded away as they turned into the buffet. Stanley shook his head. Superstition was rampant in hotels, even the newer ones. The guest that had died was not one of his victims. He never left his victims here.

The maids were returning. “My sister swears her house is haunted,” one was saying.

The Asian maid leaned against the front desk, kicking up a tired ankle. “What you think, Stanley? You hear tings at night?”

Stanley’s mouth fought to form a congenial smile. He wasn’t one for idle chat. He wrestled a fair imitation of a grin over his lips. “Ladies, the dead do not rise.”

The maids left the desk, shaking off his skepticism.

He had left Anne in the deepest of sleeps, drunk on his influence. That influence, that little piece of dominance over his victim’s mind was something the first bite granted him. A smile spread over his lips. That is what made the hunt so fun.

The Asian maid stopped by the desk again. “Stanley, you no believe in heaven?”

“No.”

The maid leaned closer, earnestness in her aging eyes. “Maybe you need start. I tink you like heaven.” She bobbed her head in a quick nod and returned to the buffet.

A corner of Stanley’s lips was curving, an amused squint creasing his eyes. What place was there in heaven for a vampire?

Two hours from sunrise, and one hour until the end of his shift, Anne tapped out of the elevator. She was dressed for business again in a pair of form-hugging pinstripe pants and a tailored oxford shirt. Her sleeves cuffed just below her elbows, concealing a fresh wound on her left arm. A large pair of sunglasses hid her eyes. Her hair fell loose and perfect over her shoulders.

Stanley raised his jaw from where it had fallen open. The trancelike sleep he had left her in should have lasted another eight hours. She rolled her baggage to the lobby doors, her hand reaching for the push bar handle.

Stanley’s eyes gleamed. He drew on the dominance he had taken from her with that first plundering bite. “You don’t need to check out this early, you have so many hours to get where you need to.”

Her arm dropped from the push bar. “I don’t need to do a lot of things,” she answered, turning towards him at last. “I do things when I want to. It comes from this great ability. I think they call it the ability to choose.” She pressed the push bar down, the lock squealing away from the metal door jam.

Stanley felt his dominance slipping. It was a dilemma he’d never encountered before. He seized onto the dissipating power with a firm determination. His eyes were frightening to see. “Stay, Anne. We are not through yet.”

Her arm bent. She hesitated, her sunglasses pointed at the floor. From her throat escaped a voice devoid of her characteristic strength. “Don’t look at me like that.” She straightened up, regaining some of her confident poise. “We haven’t started anything to get through. And I certainly won’t anytime soon.”

“But you will. Within five days, you will ask for me. You will need me, and I will be waiting.”

Her nose wrinkled with distaste, and she strode out of the door. Stanley looked on, an expression of concern feuding with one of confidence over his face. No one had resisted his dominance so powerfully before. It wouldn’t last, though. It couldn’t.

His middle finger tapped the computer mouse until a file opened on his monitor. He clicked the end of his ball point pen against his chest and wrote down the address in Anne’s reservation file. He dropped the pen, seized it back up, and scrawled her phone number across the bottom of his notepad.

Anne peered around the door, earlier amusement spreading to her lips. “True to your word.”

“The extra pillow you requested, miss.” Stanley held the pillow out as if presenting her with a royal gift.

Anne snorted, another habit out of place with her appearance, and swung the door open wide. She had swapped her business wear and heels for a loose-fitting set of drawstring pants and a matching tank top. “I didn’t ask for an extra pillow, but you knew that.”

Stanley held his position, feigning confusion. “I was pretty certain someone requested a pillow for room 215.”

“Well, since it’s here, I can’t say I don’t want it. Bring it on in, please.”

She held the door for him as he passed through, and padded behind in bare feet. Stanley shuddered. Even he didn’t walk through the hotel without something between his feet and the floor. The entertainment center doors were open, the T.V. spewing out noise from the national news. Stanley hated that alarmist stuff.

The bedroom was off to his left, behind a set of French doors, but he didn’t plan on getting that far. A little exclamation behind him offered the opportunity he was looking for.

Anne wasn’t looking at him. Her hips were pressed up against the couch. A slim hand covered her mouth in shock. “Those poor things. How could anyone do that.”

Stanley seized the moment. Time always went slow when he did that, although for Anne it was only a fraction of a second. He sprung through the air, drinking in the smell of her. She smelled like a high-rise office and lemon soap. Her long dark hair was draped around her neck. Not a problem. He didn’t need that tonight.

He landed beside her. The delicate hand was still frozen over her lips, a sad look of shock pulling at her exquisite face. Stanley ran his fingers through her hair. He was right; his fingers slipped through without snagging. He drew a stray lock away from her arm. There it was, on the inside of her elbow, pulsing almost undetectably. His thumb clamped down on it, and his whole body shivered with the vein’s pulse.

His mouth felt like it had gargled sand. The thirst awakened inside him. Anne’s skin was so soft, so pliant under his thumb. She must be, triumphed Stanley as he lowered his head, his most beautiful treat yet. This one would be savored.

***

So, here is my latest. This is a new genre for me, not one that I’m generally interested in, and one I doubt I’ll repeat. I thought I’d try it on for size, though. Heads up for those that dislike this kind of stuff, it is a vampire story. This is a longer short story so I’m dividing it up into smaller parts that will be posted over this week. Enjoy!

The Redemption of Stanley Elliot

The man behind the front desk was far from extraordinary looking. In a crowd, he would disappear into the sea of other unremarkable faces. He wasn’t ugly, and his features were too bland to be called handsome. His only notable characteristic was a wicked gleam in his brown eyes. That alone animated his face. What one wouldn’t guess at first glance was that Stanley Elliot was a vampire.

Certainly, the beautiful woman who tapped her way to the desk in a fashionable pair of heels had no idea. Graceful fingers slid away from a pair of chain link hand straps, as she set her purse on the counter. A cascade of thick hair fell down her back, inspiring a desire in Stanley to run his fingers through. No snags there. She had an elegant appearance, but the way she propped her face on her hands, and scanned the employee pictures for a familiar face betrayed a small town mentality.

Stanley requested the necessary information. The woman’s name was Anne. Her reservation was for room 215, one of the few suites facing away from the freeway. He zipped a keycard through the key machine, magnetizing it with an individual code.

His eyes began to gleam. “If you have any other needs, anything at all, just call down to the front desk. My name is Stanley, I’ll make your stay as comfortable as possible. If your pillow needs extra fluffing, you get a little thirsty…”

Her slim fingers took the keycard, her eyes narrowing with an expression between amusement and suspicion. “I’m sure you’d enjoy that,” she said. Her hands snapped up her purse and suitcase, and somehow she managed to whirl around the baggage with the ease of a dancer.

The wicked gleam was strong now, overpowering his lack of appeal. “I assure you I would. There’s only so much to do at a desk until morning. A little chat can get me around a lot of tedious time, but enough about me. Enjoy your stay.” He smiled, squinting his eyes more than necessary to hide their gleam.

She glanced over her shoulder. Now her narrowed eyes expressed only amusement. Stanley watched until the steel elevator doors squeaked closed. Then, he tapped a blank keycard on the counter. Once in a great while, he came across a woman like this.

He never passed on a good opportunity.

Stanley punched a pin number into the key machine and swiped the card through. Two words disappeared from the machine’s display screen: Master Key.

A truck driver wrenched a lobby door aside and trudged to the front desk. His hair was matted with sweat where the seam of his hat had pressed it down. The homicidal look in Stanley’s eyes didn’t need a second glance. The driver mumbled an excuse for himself and hastened out the way he came.

Stanley locked the hotel lobby doors behind the man, flipping the switch that lit up “NO” beside the word “VACANCY”.

The hotel was fifteen years old. A quick glance gave an impression of elegance. The carpet was patterned with bordering red stripes, similar to what can be found in any five star hotel. The trim and railing coursing the lobby, meeting rooms, and hallways were classically tasteful, and unlike other nearby hotels around the same size and pricing, it had a working elevator for its meager two floors.

Closer inspection revealed was carpet that was soiled and threadbare. The trim peeled away from the walls where the adhesive was cracked and yellowing. Even the wood for the stylish horizontal trim was flexible, melting from the wall like rubber. The coveted elevator never worked for longer than a month. The cheapest materials had been used to make the hotel look nice, but not to make it last.

Soon, his eyes gleamed on the handle of suite 215. A screw was missing from the bottom of the number 1. Stanley fiddled with the number until it hung straight. He could feel the keycard rubbing against his leg through the pocket. He raised his fist and hammered on the door. No need to use the key, not yet. A spare pillow was tucked in the crook of his elbow. He rearranged it over his arms as the handle turned.

This is the latest of the short stories I’ve been working on. Feel free to comment or point out typos. I never can find them all on my own.

A Lasting Decision

I never thought about my death much. What it would be like, would my life flash before my eyes, etc. I’d only passively despaired that everyone might be better off without me. That was before the crash.

I remember seeing the hospital walls between patches of mottled color and unconsciousness. It was so bright, so sterile looking. Voices spoke to me in choppy, incomprehensible bursts. The pain was terrible; even the morphine drip couldn’t get rid of all of it. My head pounded with it; my body rang with it; the sweat poured from my skin by the gallons.

I remember saying, “Just wipe it off. Just wipe the sweat.” The choppy voices would respond, and soon someone would press cloths to my face. I could see the discarded cloths, but I couldn’t figure out why they were red. Sweat wasn’t red.

Blood was red.

I suppose in these last minutes I should have been thinking of Lila, my daughter. All I could think of, when thought didn’t evade me, was of escaping. I wanted it to be over. Happiness would come when it was over.

Death came little by little. I began to feel less attached to my body. The pain was further away and that much worse when I became reattached. When it was time, it came as a question in my mind, or what my bodiless self thought of as my mind. Perhaps it was the ghost of my mind. The question was this, “Should we go?”

“Oh, yes. Please yes,” I said.

The attachment ended then. I could see the hospital walls clearly. I could see the huddle of people in lab coats and scrubs working on me. I could hear that famous flat line that signaled my heart failure, but none of it seemed important. None of it was real anymore.

“We can stay, you know.”

I was pain free, and nearby, complete happiness awaited me. “Why?”

“Lila.”

I feel guilty for admitting that my first thoughts of Lila were after my death. Only then did I wonder if my eight-year old daughter was going to live. She had been in the car too. How bad was she?

“Is she here? Is she like me?”

I don’t know how this other voice of mine knew what I consciously didn’t, but it did. “She is alive,” it (I) said. “She has already decided to stay.”

The old thought came back to me. “She’ll likely be better off without me. She will be happy, won’t she?”

“Yes, would you like to see?”

“I would.”

The hospital room faded, the bright lights morphing into the natural light of the sun through tall paned windows. I saw my husband at an altar, another woman, veiled and dressed in white beside him. It was strange, but I wasn’t upset. His face was serene; I couldn’t begrudge him that.

Lila was seated on the front row of a small audience. She looked on without decipherable emotion, but I could feel her uncertainty.

The scene changed, forwarding over Lila’s stages of warmth with her new family and stages that felt very cold. Some she would laugh, others she would drown her pillow with tears. I could hear her calling out to me. Ever present in her mind was the question, “Why?”

Lila blossomed into a woman. She was beautiful to my proud eyes. She married a handsome man and birthed three children. Inside she brimmed with happiness, but the question didn’t fade. Some nights, it even grew stronger. “Why?”

“How will it be if I go back?” I asked.

The scene changed again. I was in my home staring as two bandaged bodies laughed at a television, then cried from the pain of laughing. My own bleary eyes stared out from a set of bandages, Lila’s from the other.

She grew into a teenager. We argued, shouts penetrating the walls of our house. She stormed out, slamming her bedroom door. Lila cried herself to sleep in her room, and in another so did I.

I saw her leave for college, and call home twice a week to hear my voice. I heard her ask for my advice; vent her frustrations with friends, boys, and school; and I heard her end each call with “I love you, mom.”

She married again, had three children again. She was happy again. I saw myself die again, but something had changed. She didn’t ask “Why?.” She felt peace for herself and peace for me. This time she understood.

“I could be happy right now.”

“To go back would be painful,” It (I) agreed.

The hospital room was back before I knew I’d made the decision. The huddle had spread. No one was working on my motionless form. My dead eyes were staring at me. That face, that body didn’t look like me anymore. But I was going back. I floated into the eyes, settling myself back where I thought I should fit.

“Don’t you want to know why Lila stayed?”

“Do I?” I wondered. “She was scared? Maybe she got lost?”

“No one gets scared here. No one gets lost.”

“What was it then?” My body began to grab hold of the part of me that had escaped. The pain was returning worse than before.

“She knew how sad we would be without her.”

The “Why” made more sense. I had supposed it was a young girl’s natural response to the death of a parent. What I hadn’t realized was that it was really a questioning of betrayal. Why had I moved on without her, when she had stayed for me?

My other voice vanished, replaced by choppy exclamations of shock as my lungs inflated with a fresh breath. The agony was explosive, ripping through my nerves like fire. I didn’t wish to escape this time. Not everyone would be better off without me.