Nightmare Yearnings, page 14
“We’ll see about that!”
Jacob grinned, lifted his wife into the air, and spun her around.
“Stop! Please!” Emily said, smiling and laughing, at least for the moment.
Jacob let her down and kissed her on the forehead. “Hmm, you might not be light as a feather, but I’m strong as an ox.”
Before Emily had time to either take offense or compliment his poetry, a truck pulled up, honking and flushing some birds out of a nearby bush. Emily and Jacob waved as the truck came to a dust-kicking halt right next to their car. Emily’s parents, Ernest and Maureen, stepped out, grinning. Jacob embraced Emily’s mother, then shook hands with her father.
“We come bearing gifts,” Maureen said, poking her head into the truck’s back seat to pull out two bags—one blue and one pink. “Of course, you’ll only get one of these bags. I saved the receipts for both depending on which one I need to return.”
“Maybe you can just hang on to that other gift,” Jacob said. “Emily and I are hoping to have another sometime next year.”
Emily opened her mouth to say something, struggling to remember ever having this conversation with her husband, but the arrival of another car put that thought on hold.
Before long, twenty other guests had arrived. Jacob waited an extra five minutes before deciding the party could go on without the ones still “lost in the woods.” Everyone got to work setting up the tablecloths, disposable dishware, and potluck entrées that had sat in cars for too many hours. Jacob led the group in grace, then invited everyone to load up their plates—ladies first, of course.
Emily stood at the front of the line, serving herself a scoop of warm egg salad, a watery helping of wedding weenies, and several cubes of palest-pink watermelon. Her stomach wasn’t rumbling, but she knew if she didn’t eat, her mother would remind her of the baby’s nutritional needs. Emily would pick at whatever looked edible and leave the rest for the birds.
When everyone had a full plate, Jacob sat beside Emily and across from his best friend, Garrett. The two men quickly got to talking about their Fantasy Football league, ignoring everyone else around them. On Emily’s other side, her father scolded her mother for not packing any bug spray. When their argument somehow moved on to the topic of the best time for scheduling Ernest’s knee replacement, Emily stood up to leave.
“Where are you going, Em?” her mother asked, only now noticing her.
“Getting another plate,” Emily said, offering a flat, lippy smile.
“If you get any cornbread, don’t put honey on it, dear. It can give babies botulism and—”
“I know, Mom. You sent me the article.”
“Well, excuse me for reminding you!” Her mother held up her hands and immediately returned to discussing Ernest’s surgery.
Jacob was still locked in conversation with Garrett, defending his choice of running back. He didn’t even look up when Emily left the campsite.
Wandering past the buffet tables, Emily dawdled on her way to the outhouse. Sure, she needed to pee, but a little quiet and some air that didn’t smell like egg salad were even greater needs. Inside her, the baby kicked, the swell of a foot briefly visible under her green dress. She smiled, then realized she was crying. If anyone saw her like this, she would’ve told them they were happy tears—nothing to be concerned about—but even she wasn’t sure which feeling brought them on.
Questions that she normally tried to banish swirled around her head. What if the baby comes out stillborn? Will Jacob and I get divorced? Will I be happier? Will I finally get to finish my English degree?
A laugh, high-pitched and jackal-like. Emily froze, squinting ahead to see who or what was there. Just about anything could hide behind a redwood tree: a mountain lion, a bear, even an elephant. But this sounded like none of those creatures. The laugh echoed between the trees longer than a natural sound should, bouncing back and forth without losing sonic force. For a moment, Emily wondered if she was experiencing a sudden, strange episode of tinnitus or a side effect of pregnancy she’d never heard of before.
Then she saw the horns—two poking out from behind a tree, at least a yard long each, black but veined with glowing red cracks. Bits of ash drifted around the points, or maybe they were just gray floaters in front of Emily’s eyes; she couldn’t tell. But whatever they were, she was getting the hell out of there, full bladder be damned. She turned heel and rushed back to the camp, panting under the baby’s added weight. The hairs on her neck stood up while the echoing laugh followed her, but as soon as she passed back into the camp the sound cut off like someone had pressed a Mute button. She almost stopped to look back, but figuring it might be a trip, she continued running in spite of her heart palpitations.
When Jacob saw her, he stopped talking to Garrett and jogged over. Everyone else turned to look, too, their conversations snuffed out instantly.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Jacob asked, putting a hand on Emily’s sweaty back. “You see a bear?”
“No,” Emily said, out of breath and forcing a grin. “Just getting some exercise.”
Jacob removed his hand from her and shook his head. “You know you can’t do that,” he said. “It’s bad for the—”
“Yes, yes, I know. Can we just get to the reveal, please?”
Jacob sighed, took a step back, and turned to the onlookers. “Hormones, am I right?” he said, holding up his hands and smirking.
A couple guests rolled their eyes, but most laughed; Emily wasn’t sure if this laugh or the strange one from earlier was worse. Her cheeks burned red, and she shuffled over to the dessert table where she could occupy herself with food instead of conversation. She glanced down at a half-eaten cherry pie swarming with flies, grimaced, and turned her attention to the forest instead. A dark shape lurked behind a bush thirty feet off, but when she squinted to get a clearer view, nothing was there. A shudder passed through her. She closed her eyes, breathed deep, and pictured her favorite spa in the city. Relaxing and totally artificial—no strange animal sounds or stalking creatures to speak of.
In the meantime, Jacob prepared the gender reveal device, which he’d modified at home to maximize its pyrotechnic spectacle. The canopy was a few hundred feet above them, and assuming his calculations were right, the thing wouldn’t go that high. If it shot up past the canopy, no one would be able to see the color when it exploded. After Jacob had it positioned correctly and made sure there were no park rangers around itching to write a ticket, he cleared his throat and gestured for everyone to come in close. The guests approached him. Emily lingered at the dessert table, and it was only Jacob calling her name that drew her out of her mental spa.
With everyone gathered, Jacob began his speech, feet spread wide and hands folded together. Emily knew that Jacob called this his “power pose”; he whipped it out whenever he brought his employees in for a meeting or a talking-to.
“I’ve gathered you all here today to celebrate new life,” Jacob began, sounding as if he were reading from a teleprompter. “Emily and I have been blessed with a child. A child that we didn’t always think would come.”
Emily looked at her feet and tried not to cry. She’d asked Jacob multiple times to cut this part out of his speech.
“For the first six months of our marriage, we thought Emily was infertile,” Jacob continued.
Emily balled up her fists, trembling, and her ears rang once more with that otherworldly laughter she’d heard by the outhouse. She whipped her head around to see where it was coming from, but no one else seemed to notice the sound. The too-intimate details of Jacob’s speech had them transfixed. But the mix of her husband’s over-rehearsed words and the incessant cackling overwhelmed Emily’s senses. Jacob recounted, in agonizing detail, their appointments with multiple fertility doctors: first to the eighty-two-year-old Dr. Lawrence Albrecht, then to the young and leering Dr. Mitch Sampson for a second opinion. Jacob also mentioned their nightly pre-copulation prayers aimed at bringing sperm and egg together through divine intervention. While he’d prayed to God, Emily had cast a wider net, praying to any being that could bring them a child. Jacob preferred a strictly Christian approach, but he admitted to the crowd that sometimes the end justified the means.
With each new word that spilled from Jacob’s mouth, Emily felt her temperature rise. She was a pressure cooker about to blow, and soon she could take the feeling no longer. In a sudden burst of motion, she shoved through the crowd.
“Honey, what—” Jacob said, moving to intercept her and then stopping in case she was about to puke from morning sickness.
But Emily wasn’t sick. No, she was headed for the gender reveal device. She snatched the lighter from the ground, flicked it to life, and lit the device’s fuse. The sooner this thing went off, the sooner she’d be able to go home. Jacob staggered forward, yelling, but stopped halfway to the device, seeing that he wouldn’t make it in time to stomp out the fuse. Emily backed away but tripped and fell. Her father shouted out behind her, but as the man ran to help Emily, he slipped, too, his bad knee the culprit. The rest of the guests scrambled to help the groaning old man up, and Jacob ran toward Emily, cursing the whole way.
The device went off, booming as it launched into the air—or rather, attempted to launch. Like a faulty rocket, it arced downward, exploding when it hit the ground. Its smoke was neither pink nor blue. It was black, thick, and pungent as burning oil. Flames leapt in all directions, clinging to guests and trees and cars alike. As the explosion’s echo faded, the screams escalated. Burning guests did a stop-drop-and-roll routine while others ripped tablecloths off of still-set tables to smother the flames.
Emily was on fire, two tendrils of sticky, flaming tar burning through her dress. Jacob smacked Emily’s belly to put out the flames, momentarily unconcerned with the baby inside her. When the flames were out, Jacob shook his hand, bright red from the heat. Whipping his head around, he spied Garrett howling and rolling on the ground, unquenched flames licking his legs.
“Stay here,” Jacob told Emily before running to his friend.
Emily winced and used her elbows to prop herself into a sitting position. She was no longer on fire, but others behind her were, and the tree in front of her most certainly was, flames climbing upward with the swiftness of a frightened squirrel. The burned parts of her belly stung, and she held her breath as she peeled the singed dress away from the wound. The flesh beneath had risen, bubbled, and blackened into two thin, curved points—both somehow identical.
A cackle cascaded through the camp, and this time, everyone snapped to attention. About fifty feet up, there was a black shape hovering between two burning trees. The thing had horns and wings, but the wings weren’t flapping. The creature remained suspended in air, its entire body vibrating so intensely that it was hard to make out its dimensions through the blur. Someone behind Emily screamed and fled. Only, the patter of footfalls didn’t last long. The creature blinked out of sight in a puff of smoke, and the fleeing person gasped. Emily turned around just in time to see the creature whisking Jacob into the air, blurry talons burning into him, smoke rising from his shoulders. The creature rocketed upward, its laughter and Jacob’s scream trailing behind, pitch warping to a lower register. When the thing burst through the canopy, flames sparked the leaves and spread outward in a fast-expanding circle of destruction. Emily gawked, looking for her husband and the creature. Seconds of waiting felt like hours. Someone shook her shoulder, but she paid them no mind.
Then, a fireball barreled toward Earth. It was her husband—minus his skin—limbs flailing and crackling as he plummeted. The impact of wet, crunching bone snapped Emily out of her trance. She screamed and allowed whoever was tugging her shoulder to lead her away. It was her mother. Hanging from the woman’s other arm was Emily’s limping father. They made their way toward the truck, one labored step at a time. Around them, the forest disintegrated into ash, Jacob’s outdoor church crumbling after its thousand years of glory.
“He can’t drive,” Maureen said, coughing through the smoke. “Give me his keys, Em!”
Emily fished through her wheezing father’s pockets, then tossed the keys to her mother. Some guests had already peeled away in their cars, but the rest were still scrambling for an exit. If they weren’t careful, they’d all be jammed together on the narrow road, car caskets entombed between burning redwoods. Emily helped her father into the truck’s passenger seat, then squeezed herself into the back. Brushing against the door frame, she inhaled sharply and clutched her belly. She barely had the door shut behind her before Maureen zoomed away, cutting in front of someone else who veered into a tree to avoid colliding with the truck. Emily glanced back, hoping the person—Garrett, it looked like—would still be able to make it out. But there was no time to worry about the others.
Maureen roared down the dirt road with little concern for wildlife-crossing signs. If they hit a deer, they hit a deer. It was better than being trapped by an impassable flaming log.
An hour of white-knuckled driving passed before they made it out of the park, forest giving way to four-lane blacktop. Emily could already hear the helicopters traveling toward what was now probably a massive fire.
“You tell no one about this, okay?” Maureen said, and then, remembering Jacob, added, “I’m sorry, Em. I really am. I wish—”
“Stop it, Mom.” Emily’s tone was flat.
She rested her head on the cool glass of the window, letting the vibrations calm her. Her throat still burned with smoke, but if she breathed slow enough, it offset the pain. She wondered if she was supposed to be crying. That seemed like the appropriate response to all this. Had it not happened yet because she was in shock, or—
There was a kick in her womb, or rather two simultaneous kicks. They felt sharper than normal, and she almost yelped. But when she looked down, the sight stole her breath—two needled points pressing outward, straining the flesh, pushing far harder than Emily figured a baby was capable of.
“Please, please, please stop,” Emily whispered, her words thin and breathy.
“What?” her mother asked from the front seat.
The thing inside Emily eased its pressure, the two points receding back into her womb and returning her belly to its smooth, round shape. Emily breathed deep, trying not to sob.
Out of nowhere, the winged creature swooped down to Emily’s window, floating soundlessly and keeping pace with the truck. Had it been following them this whole time, creating a false sense of security before making a grand reentrance? Emily clasped a hand over her mouth, not wanting to frighten her mother while she was driving. The creature was draped in Jacob’s loose, singed skin, its trembling wings poking out through two holes in the back. Yellow, catlike eyes gazed at Emily through Jacob’s eyelids, which flapped in the wind.
While the creature’s mouth didn’t move, a voice entered Emily’s head—ethereal, but most certainly Jacob’s.
You didn’t think I’d abandon our child, did you?
Smaller
Dr. Hollis is the first to notice the change in your body. You’re a full inch shorter than your last checkup. Strange for a twenty-six-year-old, but not unheard of. You joke that you’re not in the NBA anymore, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Hollis laughs, and so do you. Yours sounds raspy—aged, like your shrinking frame. Or maybe that’s just how it sounds in your head.
Hollis says to mind your blood pressure. Exercise, eat a healthy diet, avoid stress. “Are you stressed? Things all right at work? Home? Anyway, take this pamphlet. Come back in a year, okay?”
When you get home, Oren is sitting at his computer playing League of Legends. You kiss him on the cheek, and he pulls his head away. He can’t see the screen, damnit. Insults spill from his mouth like a dam breaking—“fucking idiot,” “dumbass,” and “stupid little bitch.” A constant stream. None directed at you, thankfully, but rather some acne-riddled preteen from Milwaukee.
You tell Oren about your doctor visit, all while he attacks the enemy Nexus and shouts commands at his team like a fascist dictator. High blood pressure sounds like something he might have, too, you suggest. At this, he says of course he has high blood pressure—these fucking cretins are to blame.
Match over. They’ve lost. Oren drops the r-word and you cringe. He’s just angry—he doesn’t mean it. At least, that’s what you’ve told yourself the last ten or twenty times he’s used the word.
You snap out of your rationalizations, and Oren is in matchmaking once more. This cycle will continue all night. You ask if he wants to do something else—maybe go to the bar or watch a movie together. He grunts—a digital caveman. The match starts, and it’s like you never even said anything at all. He’s back to screaming at the screen, his blood pressure well on its way to becoming a Guinness World Record.
You think back three years to the Grindr profile that first reeled you in—“you better like ’em fiery, ’cause I don’t cum any other way.” After dating the dullest accountant pillow prince imaginable, fiery was what you wanted and what you got.
Too bad fire burns everything in its path. You wake up each morning denying your burns: the bubbling scar tissue, the acrid fumes of ashen hair. Perhaps it felt nice at first—like a sauna in the middle of winter. Weren’t those the days?
You load up a movie you know Oren can’t resist—The Fellowship of the Ring—and wait for him to notice. Maybe it’s enough to pull him away from his computer, to get him to cuddle with you on the couch—how long has it been since you two did that? Oren doesn’t budge, even as you watch the opening scene and turn up the volume. The movie is cheesy and hasn’t aged well, but if it draws him in, the overextended runtime will have been worth it.
You jump when Oren lets out a “fuck” that’s sure to wake the upstairs neighbors. The League of Legends servers are down, apparently, and you try your best to feign sympathy. You ask if he wants to watch the movie instead, but he’s already plugged his headphones into his computer and opened up an internet browser. It’s not long before porn pops up on the screen featuring dudes lighter-skinned and more muscular than you’ll ever be. You get up from the couch and walk over to Oren, sliding your hand down to his waist. He brushes it away—says he’ll be done soon.
