Trust me, I know how that sounds. Saying it aloud, even in my head, does nothing but underline the utter absurdity of it all. But the truth is the truth, so that’s what I’ll tell.
I’m convinced that my lamp is evil.
Even as I type this it sits there on my girlfriend’s nightstand, menacingly, doing whatever it is that lamps usually do. Mostly nothing, seeing as it’s daytime. Either way, I know it’s all an act.
The lamp is an ugly little thing. About one and a half feet of copper standing on a heavy circular base and topped with an old fashioned light shade that wouldn’t look out of place at your great grandmother’s house. Even before it revealed itself as the equivalent of lamp Satan I’d been trying to convince Annie to throw the horrid thing out, but she was having none of it.
My suspicions began with the disappearance of a man named Danny Trenton, a name that struck me as familiar. I didn’t know him personally; he was something of a local legend. For all the wrong reasons, mind you.
I remember reading the article in the morning newspaper before looking quizzically at the lamp sitting innocent on Annie’s bedside table. Its cord was draped over the side of the nightstand, and I could have sworn it teetered closer to the edge than it had the night before. There was a subtle shine to it too, so I wondered if Annie had done a little spring cleaning during the night and somehow forgotten to give anything else a dust.
I could hear her pottering about the living room downstairs.
“Hey, did you move the lamp last night?” I yelled, carefully tuning my voice to be loud enough to hear, but not too loud as to sound accusatory.
There was a short pause before her response came. “No babe, why?”
“No reason,” I called back, glaring at the lamp with narrowed eyes.
I pushed it back to its place at the center of the table, expertly hid the black cord, and left on my taxing journey through the house to share the news with Annie. She didn’t seem all that surprised.
“He was a drunk,” she shrugged, “probably fell in a lake or something.”
It was a cold way of looking at things and I was taken aback by her bluntness, but as I sat in front of the TV later that day, yogurt in-hand, I learned that she was right.
An anchorman spoke of how a passerby spotted Danny’s body floating facedown in the water, apparently mistaking him for a moss covered log at first glance. The chief of police issued an update just a few hours later, stating the details of Danny’s gruesome injuries along with a request for those of us with potential tips to come forward. Danny’s hadn’t, in fact, fallen into a lake. He had been murdered.
The killings didn’t stop with him. Throughout the weeks that followed, the steadily mounting cases were starting to outpace my ability to keep track. More and more names were being crammed in the daily newspapers, turning me off my morning coffees.
Mortuary reports were sometimes included along with the announced murders and a pattern soon revealed itself. In nearly every instance, death was caused by asphyxiation due to strangulation. The victim’s head was them beaten to an unrecognisable pulp with a blunt object post-mortem.
My eyes lingered on the long black cord of the lamp when I read about the strangulation. I imagined how it might lift from the ground of its own accord and twist itself around a human neck like an emaciated python. I shuddered, before pushing the thought from my mind.
There wasn’t a whole lot to keep me occupied within the four walls I was condemned to stare at whenever Annie was away, so I did what I did best; I sat on my ass and watched the sun lower over the horizon from our bedroom window. I knew that once the shadows stretched all the way to the deck chairs down below, it was nearly time for Annie to unlock our bedroom door and greet me with that dazzling smile of hers.
We’d spend a few glorious hours together, hours that I cherished with my entire being, and then it came time for her to lay me down to bed and fix that cursed sleeping mask over my eyes. Paired with the uncomfortable plugs she wedged in my ears, it was like sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank. I hated it, but hadn’t the heart to tell her so. She’d given up so much for me. It wasn’t right to complain.
The long stretches of time spent in solitude gave me ample time to think. While the town turned itself upside down searching for the killer out there, I was growing more and more sure of a suspicion of my own.
“Do you seriously not see this?” I asked Annie one day, gesturing towards the lamp that had clearly shifted once again during the night.
She laughed humourlessly, “I see you’re going mental.”
“Just look.” I slid out my phone to show her a picture I’d snapped of the lamp the previous day, and then swiped to the one I’d just taken from the same angle.
“So? You probably knocked the nightstand or something. Or maybe I did, I don’t know. Forgive me for not remembering,” she said, voice laced with sarcasm.
I looked at her incredulously. “So let me get this straight. One of us knocked it,” I pointed to the dangling cord, “and the plug fell out?”
“I don’t know!” Annie suddenly snapped. “If you have something you want to ask me, just ask already.”
She stood there staring daggers at me, daring me to spell it out. I hesitated, tasting the air between us, before letting my shoulders slump in defeat.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “With everything going on I just…”
Annie’s expression softened as she bent and pulled me into a warm and sturdy embrace. Her strong arms had been a source of insecurity for me during the early days of our relationship, but it was something I had since come to admire.
“It’s okay baby, it’s okay. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.” She said into my shoulder.
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” I told her, gripping her back tight. “You hear me? Nothing.”
She nodded and pulled away, swiping a tear from her eye before it had a chance to fall.
I never should have let her go.
The police came for her this morning. There was a deafening sound like wood splintering followed by pairs upon pairs of heavy boots rushing up the stairs. It took three armoured men to drag her from the bedroom, kicking and screaming, whilst I made my fruitless attempts to stop them.
My voice was hoarse as I pleaded with them, screaming that they had it all wrong. When that didn’t work, I even lied that I was the killer. A quick, pitiful look at my wheelchair-bound form was enough to determine the falsity of the claim.
They’re saying she was responsible for the murders of no less than 7 people, and is suspected of having a hand in the innumerable ongoing missing persons cases. I’ve even read articles claiming that I myself am in some way a victim in all of this. That Annie somehow ‘brainwashed’ me after forcing me to depend solely on her, as silly as that sounds.
But I know better.
Since the day her car came careening into mine, I’ve known our love was fated. When they plucked my mangled body off the bloodstained tarmac I glimpsed her for the first time; a stunning beauty wringing her hands with worry. When the doctors roused me from my coma and her soft eyes were the first sight I met with, I was entirely convinced she was an angel that carried me back from the afterlife. She held my hands and sobbed her apologies, but I could barely hear them. The accident may have taken my legs that day, but it gave me something infinitely more precious in return.
Annie brought me, a broken man, into her home and gave me fresh purpose. I was happy to live for her when I wouldn’t have been willing to do so for myself, so that was what I did. Someone as wonderful as her wouldn’t have it in her to put a bruise on a fly, nevermind butcher a person.
So I’ll scream my belief to anyone who asks, because even this ridiculous theory is more likely than the disgusting lies being spread across town.
It wasn’t Annie. It was that fucking lamp.