What they don’t know, is that it sits in my lap now. Or that it happens all day long. When it started, it was only at night. Now it just sits there, hour after hour. Connected to me. Only, no one knows, because they can’t see it. And they don’t know that it’s draining me. All the time, draining.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been here anymore. I’ve no way to tell and I can’t ignore the defeating coincidence of this place being called a “Home.” Even though that word is used in a decorous commercial way and not a “where the heart is” way. Of course, I realize they can’t go around advertising it using any of the more fitting words either.
Words like Hole.
Wallow. Gutter.
Abyss. Miasma.
Hell.
“Come to Rosedale Manor Retirement Pit and start wasting away today.” That probably wouldn’t sell.
But I suppose it’s a “home” of some sort, as there are people “living” here.
The yellowed linoleum catches a bit of sunlight, flicks it horizontally at me, so I move my gaze to the right as far as I can. I see the usual cluster of wheelchairs corralled around the tv in a half-circle. Soap operas droning. Errant coughs trip down the hallway and into this room, then back, like stones skipping across a pond’s surface. Tinny music pines away somewhere distant, somewhere untouchable. If any of the residents could touch it, they’d surely turn it off.
And no one knows there’s something sitting on my lap and stealing half of my air. Sucking me dry like a tick. Something not human.
“Hurry in and dispose of your familial waste at Rosedale Manor Invalid Cache. Now with 12% more despair!”
It’s nearing lunchtime now, the most active part of the day. The closest thing to life around here, except the rare day when someone brings in a toddling great-grandchild and the residents who have any cognizance left latch on like they’re drowning and the poor child is a snorkel stabbing up above the surface. A moment’s respite from dying.
A few times I’ve wondered if I could just reach up and grab the plastic crucifix off the wall, would it give me some type of power over this thing leeching off me? Experience tells me I have to Believe in order for it to work, but that may just be hokey b-movie bullshit.
When I first came here, I still had my wits. Was in possession of all my senses. Had more awareness of my surroundings. What scares me the most is that the rest of me is still inside somewhere, although my strength has been drained to where I can’t find a way to communicate. I’m trapped in my own body. Now I just sit in this chair and get pointed at the window or wheeled over to the TV and changed and bathed and spoon-fed and transferred back into bed. And fucking patronized to no end.
“Dump your wrinkled loved one at the fully-renovated Rosedale Manor Prune Trough and forget your cares before dinner!” So maybe my wits aren’t completely gone.
It’s honestly become an event just to have my oxygen tank swapped every few days. A short break from the nasal cannula biting into moisture-deprived membranes inside my ninety-year-old nostrils. Just so some invisible monster can steal the air right back out from my lungs. Drink me like soup.
I can feel it getting heavier with each breath now. It sits on my lap with an unearthly weight that I can’t ignore but no one can see, me included. If only it would crease my pants or indent my withered thigh then someone might notice.
That’s where my wits went, my strength. My self. Siphoned off by some invisible demon. It started at night, like in the old wives’ tales and spooky campfire stories. I woke up a few times with the feeling of weight on my chest, gasping. Thinking it was just a dark dream. Nothing there.
And then it grew stronger. Bolder. Ravenous.
At night, it casts a shadow.
“Join us at Rosedale Manor Fogey Trench and you too can have your very own invisible chi-sucking hag monster for a roommate today!” There’s a winner.
I tried to tell someone about it, back when I still had strength enough to do more than raise one paper-skinned arm. But that was weeks ago. I think. It was an orderly, or whatever they’re called. A new one, too. I remember what I said to him. It was the day after I realized what was really happening to me. And by then it had started feeding before dark. While I was still awake.
“There’s something in the room with us.” I said. It was dusk, filaments of weakening light coming in under the gauzy curtains at my window.
“Excuse me?” He answered, without looking up. Humming along with the tinny music, down in his throat.
“Right now. It’s here.” I said. Gasped. “It’s…” gasp “…feeding on me.”
“What? You mean a mosquito or something?” He shuffled some clean sheets off a cart and onto the naked mattress next to my chair. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t stop what he was doing.
“Bi…bigger.”
It was all I could muster. The last thing I remember was the orderly’s polite-but-condescending laugh. Then I drifted off. Or was shut off, maybe. Kept quiet. Could it have that much control over me?
Now I’m so weak I can barely speak a word. I think it’s almost done with me.
I think I’m almost done for.
Today, it waited until I was in my chair and then it mounted me like a horse. How can it be heavy but not actually push me down? If it did, someone else would eventually notice at least.
“Want to see the birds today, Mr. Sterling?” A woman in flowery scrubs asks me, insincerely. She doesn’t expect an answer. I don’t give one.
I move my bottom lip but nothing comes out. It feels like I’m screaming but there’s no sound. She turns my wheelchair away from the TV and toward the window. As it swings around, I scan the face of a female resident nearby and the look she gives back chills my marrow. I could maybe remember her name if my synapses had enough oxygen to fire correctly. And it’s so fast that I can’t quite be sure of what I see in her eyes, but it seems a mix of horror and recognition. Like she knows what’s happening because she has her own lap-monster, maybe. Which makes me wonder something grave enough to stop my heart for a second.
Are there more of them in here?
Then I hear the dead rubbery sound of the brake locking against the wheel as I’m left facing the windows.
There aren’t any birds out there.
The woman who wheeled me over starts to walk away and I hear another sound, but this one I don’t recognize. A single click. Sharp but not loud, like something small falling nearby. I move my eyes side to side and it seems no one else heard it, but when I turn my head for a look, my oxygen tubes pull loose on one side, flipping over my ear and hanging just at the edge of my periphery. One nostril is clear, and I feel that parasite greedily reach inside it in an instant. It hasn’t been able to go that deep in days.
For a moment I sense it looking at me, an inch from my own face. Leering. Maybe smiling, if it even has a mouth. When I picture it in my mind’s eye, it does have a mouth. A crooked one, uneven, with broken teeth. Sneering. Mocking. Triumphant and immune. For an instant I could swear I see a shimmer near my reflection in the glass ahead, like some dark Eldil from those C.S. Lewis stories. It’s already gone from view, but I still feel the weight in my lap. Feel it pulling on my lungs.
Clouds are rolling in outside. The curtains out here are that horrible gauzy material too. So light and stringy it seems like a fire hazard. Who the hell picked those?
“Swing by Rosedale Manor Fossil Vault and see the spectacular décor! Don’t forget to deposit a relic or two on the way out.”
I turn my head again, toward the loosened oxygen tubing, trying to wrest it back in place and keep from getting lightheaded. That’s when I notice something on the floor to my left. Something that doesn’t belong there, that didn’t come from any of the residents. It’s small, and orange. Plastic. I turn further, straining cords in my neck that haven’t moved in weeks.
A cigarette lighter. That’s what I heard, it falling on the floor. My eyebrows rise, and it’s damn near involuntary. As I’m looking down, the oxygen keeps hissing out of the loose plastic tubing next to my cheek and the curtains hang on the edge of view.
And I know what to do then. I’ll burn that fucker, even it if takes me with it.
That’s an intoxicating thought, if only for a second. Because the next thought is, how am I going to pull that off? My chair is locked in place with the hand brake. I doubt I can get my hand down there, maybe a foot but I’m not exactly ape-dexterous anymore. So, assuming I can whisk my slippered foot over far enough to touch that lighter, then what? Rule out telekinesis and prayer, because I’ve tried those both recently and just ended up more exhausted and vulnerable. But I’ll be god-damned if I’ll let this thing suck me dry like some giant invisible tapeworm without a fight.
So, what then? I could try to draw attention and see if someone else picks it up. Two obvious problems there. If I succeed, they’ll just take it away. But more immediate, if I had the ability to speak or move enough to get someone’s attention, I probably wouldn’t be having this problem anyway.
I could swear it knows what I’m thinking and laughing silently.
“Come see the Transparent Flaming Demonspawn! You won’t believe your eyes. Only at the Rosedale Manor Parade of Mortality, a limited-time engagement.”
Alright, I’m on way own. So be it. I lived most of my life that way and I can go out that way too. If I keep thinking about it, this damn lap-hag-monster-dark-Eldil will figure it out and stop me somehow. Nothing for it but to try.
I flick my right wrist and my arm tumbles off the metal armest of the wheelchair, hanging as limp as my old pecker and about as useful. I can only move my fingers the slightest bit and just when I’m about to try and raise my hand to grope for the brake something happens that I hadn’t counted on.
My breath returns.
I take two huge gulps inward to feed my cells and I’d swear it feels like the first time I smoked a cigarette. Adrenaline and a strange calmness flood through my head, then my shoulders, arms, chest. For a split second I wonder what happened, why now? Maybe because it got in deeper when the tubes moved it’s letting go a bit. Savoring me.
“It’s time for the Early Bird Special at Rosedale Manor Raisin Farm! Soup du jour is Walter Bisque.” Ha, I actually got myself with that one.
Shit. It doesn’t matter why it’s letting up, and I can’t hesitate now. With a fledgling strength I’ve not felt for months, I reach my hand up slightly and clamp it down on the handle of the brake. Flip it back and I feel the chair shift the tiniest bit. I’m still able to breathe more fully. Good. That sonofabitch must be getting so high on my fucking chi or whatever that it hasn’t noticed. So I can’t give it time to notice.
I swing my legs enough to spin the chair a few degrees and the little orange lighter is straight ahead now. Less than two feet in front of me. I spear my left foot toward it and miss. It slides an inch further away and my heart sinks an inch with it. I move the leg slower this time and, although something pops in a place inside me that’s not a joint, I’m able to settle the front of my powder blue slipper just on top of the lighter and scoot it toward me. A few more inches. One more. There.
It’s directly beneath my feet now and I’m still feeling my strength return a bit at a time. It occurs to me in an echo-y, far-off way that I could just try to shout for help now. But I know what would happen. A bit of pandering talk and it’s back to bed for you, ‘ya poor old dear. Or maybe this thing would shut me off before anyone heard me, like it did last time I spoke about it.
“Here at the Rosedale Manor Antique-human Bazaar, we have a strict no-tolerance policy for rants about your life-and-death situations. Expire slowly, but please do so at your own risk”.
No. I’ll do it myself and then they’ll know everything.
I start to lean forward so I can reach for the lighter, and it’s easier than I thought it would be. Almost too easy.
Entirely too easy. Shit, I’m sliding out now. I put my left hand on my knee to keep from spilling out of the chair completely.
Wait…
If I fell, would it just follow me to the floor? It did stay with me when the chair spun, when she wheeled me over here. Hell, it’s not attached to the chair. It’s attached to ME.
I let go with that stabilizing left hand and pray I don’t break any bones on the way down.
Luck seems to be in my favor one more time, and I land crumpled in a pile of cotton-blend pajamas and brittle old bones with a litany of creaks and pops but little else for damage, only a bright ball of pain in my left shoulder that dials my focus up another notch. If there’s any skin left there tomorrow, I’m sure it’ll be rainbow-colored.
I’m laying on my left side. Legs apart just enough to keep me from rolling over. Oxygen tubes pulled loose and hanging in front of my face. Lighter almost touching my knee. Curtains within reach, probably. I can’t see them without looking up and that’s not worth the energy right now anyway.
I slide my bottom knee forward and wheel my right arm around, with the lighter between my leg and hand. When I grab it, I see another flash of some translucent, inhuman form reflected in the window glass.
It’s still right on top of me.
I could feel it this whole time but seeing it, or almost seeing it, is something else entirely. My heart rate increases and it’s already starting to get hard to breathe again without the oxygen tube connected.
Does it know what I’m planning yet?
I don’t even have the time now, or strength, to move my head up and look where I’m aiming, so I just throw my right arm toward the window and start flicking the sparkwheel. Once. Twice. Again. There’s just enough time to start wondering if I’m anywhere near the curtains when I feel a slight heat on the top of my head. I know I only have one chance, so I drop the lighter, grab the clear vinyl tube and pull it toward the flames. All in one motion and I feel like Flash Gordon because that was so smooth and it’s all coming together. I know I can’t touch the creature siphoning me, but I’m still hoping it just goes where I go and I shove both my feet along the floor as hard as I can. Something in my hips pulls loose with a noxious tearing sound and I think I’m screaming but then I realize someone else nearby has finally noticed this big pillar of flames near the window.
I can hear footsteps behind me, more than one set. And voices too. Anyone who can manage to is probably rushing over here to either help or at least see what’s happening. I try to push both feet again and only one obeys but it’s enough so I can grab the burning curtain and pull it down on myself like a deadly blanket. And as I’m pulling down on the curtain with one hand, I roll slightly to the other side so I can use that hand to pull the oxygen line and aim it just in front of my chest like a tiny flame-thrower.
In a space of less-than-seconds the pain ignites every muscle in my body, I roll completely sideways to face the rest of the room, then whatever strength I have left is gone and I’m going numb all over. It’s hard to see, partly because of the smoke, but also because I’m pretty sure this is it and whatever life this monster hasn’t already taken is leaving me.
But the only part that really matters now, is that the smoke and flames have revealed what I knew was there all along. And dozens of people are seeing it.
With the back of my head on the blissfully cold linoleum, I look up and see my dark Eldil’s silhouette hovering over me, still invisible but outlined by the billowing smoke and rising flames. It’s inhumanly thin arms waving in anger or pain or both. Beating against its angular chest, legs still crouched and too long.
It has a tail.
And I can feel it trying to detach from me, but I don’t think it can pull loose fast enough to save itself. Like it went in too deep. A waft of dark smoke rolls over the top if its shape and I see the mouth move. Open, closed. Open, closed. Like a fish out of water. Like it’s screaming without sound. Then it slumps toward the floor, through the smoke and I lose sight of it again.
Using the last of my failing strength, I turn my head as far as possible to see the reactions of everyone watching. I had thought, had hoped, this moment would be worth it. Validating. Gratifying. Liberating.
Heroic.
It’s not.
It’s none of those things.
I knew I couldn’t save myself, but thought if I could expose what was happening to me it would be a revelation. And maybe I could kill it, and spare someone else the same fate.
I was wrong.
As my vision starts to blink out and my lungs pull in breath for likely the final time, I have to ask that terrifying question again.
How many of those things are in here?
The last thing I see, in the spreading smoke, are three more inhuman shapes made visible in the laps of the people who rolled themselves closest to me.
They all have one too.