The First Male (22 page)

“Where are you?” he called out. His voice echoed in the distance.

“I am near. Come to me and all will be revealed.”

“I don't know where you are.” Simon's voice sounded panicked. “Wait, you're fading. Where are you?”

“You will find me.”

“Wait, can I get an address?” he asked in frustration.

“Trust no one.” Her warning caused alarm in his spirit
.

At that moment, Simon heard a blood-curdling hissing scream that knocked him to the ground. All of the beautiful flowers wilted, and birds fell dead out of the sky. The warm breeze turned frigid and strong; the green grass turned a brittle shade of brown; the bright sunlight was sucked away, replaced by a menacing darkness and a putrid smell
.

“Wait!”

Simon woke up in a choking fit caused by the rank smell from his dream. The sour taste of bile burned the back of his throat causing him to cough violently to eject the source of the rancid taste that gathered in his mouth. The smell was tangible, like a ball of regurgitated food that stuck in his throat, only it wasn't food. It was something else. The smell was familiar, and not in a good way. His stomach churned and Simon could now
feel
boiling in his belly. His insides cooked, and he felt like the acid in his stomach would burn right through his skin. That smell was beyond an odor; it was an entity—something living that latched onto him and would not let go.

He took a few easy breaths, his lungs releasing the tension that squeezed them. He looked around his room, his body tight, and although everything looked fine, he still felt wrong—out of place. He remembered the assault on his senses caused by the shadow-thing he saw in the restroom at The Black Cat. Not only had he smelled the horror of it, but now he was tasting the rottenness of it. The scream he heard still hissed in his ears, but as he settled into the comfort of his small room, he felt protected. “I did it,” he said to himself. “I made contact.” He felt a sense of pride.

He placed his feet on the floor and tried to stand, but when he did, the room started spinning viciously and he lost his footing, almost falling to the floor. He grabbed onto the bedpost to break his fall and to steady himself. He paused for a few seconds and then made small, timid movements, fearful that any sudden exertion of energy would cause him to expel the content of his stomach onto the bedroom floor. He placed his hand on his stomach and yanked it back when he felt something move inside him. “What the fuck?” he said to himself.
Maybe I need to vomit
, he thought. He had to get to the bathroom. He stumbled through the room, using whatever piece of furniture within reach as leverage, eventually reaching the bathroom and tumbling gracelessly into it.

He burst into the bathroom and immediately grabbed onto the sink for balance. He clung to it for dear life. As he stood there, he couldn't convince himself that the unsettled feeling in his stomach was nausea; it felt much different, stronger. It felt malevolent. Carefully, he placed his hand on his stomach again and when he did, something moved, again. He could see his stomach rolling beneath his shirt. It was as prominent as the movement in the womb of an expectant mother whose child was changing positions. He froze.

“Simon,” Brooke said when she rushed into the room. The gruesome expression on his face shot terror into her body. “Simon, what's wrong?”

“There's something . . . something inside me.” His voice was shaking so much that it was difficult for her to understand his words. He pointed. “My stomach.”

With trepidation, Simon slowly lifted his shirt. He looked down, but there was no movement. He placed his hands on his sharp abdominals, but nothing happened.

“What do you mean?”

“It felt like something . . . alive . . . was inside me, moving.” He reached out for her hand and placed it onto his stomach so that she could feel the peculiar movement, too. As soon as she touched him, he screamed and doubled over in pain, slamming into the tub.

“Oh shit! What the fuck is wrong with me?” He started coughing so violently that he almost lost his balance again. Brooke placed her hands around him and moved him closer to the toilet in case he needed to throw up. He flung open the lid and leaned over, dry heaving ferociously above the commode.

“Simon!”

His coughing intensified so much that he collapsed to the floor with a thud, landing on his knees and hands. Brooke stood with her back to the door, facing Simon. She kneeled beside him as he began to spit globs of blood.

“Oh my God!” she said. “I'm calling 9-1-1.”

Simon let out a long, harsh cough and grabbed her by wrist, preventing her from leaving the room. Then, he felt some squirming in his throat and he coughed again. He opened his mouth and spit out a large clot of blood. It splattered onto the floor and onto Brooke's pants. She screamed. He coughed violently again and this time bile—bitter green and malodorous—spewed from his mouth.

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid
.

Simon heard the hiss in his head before he actually saw the black snake crawl out of his mouth and slither swiftly across the floor. Brooke screamed and backed away quickly—frightfully—slamming into the wall and hitting her head before falling onto her back into the bedroom. Using her feet and the palms of her hands, she scurried backward across the floor until she reached the safety of the bed. She leapt up onto it and watched the snake slither across the bathroom floor and disappear into a crack in the corner near the tub.

“B-B-B-rooke,” Simon said as he lay on the floor gripping his stomach, blood oozing from the corners of his mouth. The thought of a snake in his mouth sent a wave of nausea to his stomach and he shuddered. He raised his head and looked into the bedroom toward Brooke. She was pressed hard against the headboard, her body rigid with fright. A terror greater than anything he had ever seen was carved painfully and deeply into her face. Her eyes bulged and her mouth was agape; her body, melding into the frame of the bed.

When he called out to her again, she didn't answer. She couldn't answer. She had no words. He wanted to go over to her, to caress her and tell her that everything would be all right, but his tongue could not form the lie. Things had drifted so far from all right that he could no longer separate this terrifying supernatural existence from the life he had lived only days ago; they were painfully and forever bound together. Tonight had changed everything. No longer could he deny or rationalize or run from what was right in front of his face.

Carefully, he pulled himself up from the floor using the sink as his crutch. His knees were still a bit unsteady, and when he looked at himself in the mirror he barely recognized his own image. Sure, it was his face that reflected back in the cool glass, but there was something behind his eyes that remained unfamiliar and unsettling. He stared at his face. His expression was solemn and he watched as both of his eyes turned black, like pools of sticky tar. He closed his eyes and when he opened them they had returned to their natural color; but his eyes weren't the only things that had changed in those few seconds.

He no longer felt nauseous. Or scared. He felt powerful.

C
HAPTER
15

F
ranklin looked at the clock on his nightstand when he heard the anxious pounding against his front door. It was 3:33 in the morning, and he was dog-tired after a long night at The Black Cat. He hadn't performed, but he had partied like it was the last Mardi Gras.

The pounding continued, growing in intensity. “Go away!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Seconds earlier, he had rolled over and covered his head with a pillow when he heard the doorbell ring frantically several times in a row, presuming it to be some dope fiend in need of a fix who mistook his door for the door of the dealer two apartments down. Usually when it happened, the crackhead would stop after a few moments; probably out of fear that the door would swing open and they'd get pistol-whipped. Franklin had seen it happen once before. The resident drug dealer had a short temper and was known to pound a person to a pulp without much provocation.

Franklin sat up in bed and continued to listen to the noise. The pounding sounded like a police battering ram that was about to break his door down. He had seen that happen, too, but he could tell that this pounding was different. The thumping this time wasn't random; it was purposeful and desperate.

He finally leapt out of bed and moved quickly down the narrow corridor that led to the front door, stubbing his left big toe against
the end of the dresser on his way out of the room. He let out a yelp and bounced off the wall but continued down the dark hallway, hobbling his way toward the door. He was naked except for a pair of boxers that hung loosely over his slim hips and bony legs, not having time or even caring enough to throw on a shirt. His underdeveloped chest was tattooed with a crucifix on his left pectoral and the phrase “music man” was written in cursive on his right. A black bar with a gold ball on each end ran through his nipple, directly below the phrase.

“Franklin! Franklin!” The thudding continued, destined to alert neighbors.

“Simon?” Franklin said, recognizing the voice, even though it sounded gruff. He looked through the peephole and began un-latching the locks on the door. When the door finally opened, Simon quickly pushed past him and burst into the darkened apartment.

“What the fuck?” Franklin said, as he closed and locked the door. Simon had already moved into the living room and was pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself.

The apartment was covered in darkness, except for a sliver of light escaping from underneath the bathroom door. Silver moonlight spilled into the room through the thin curtains that hung across the big window behind the television set. Simon was disheveled, as if he hadn't slept in days. The bags under his eyes were heavy and his clothes were wrinkled. He wore a path in the carpet between the coffee table and the makeshift dining room set with the mismatched chairs.

“I gotta go. I gotta get out of here. I gotta go.” He spoke quickly, as if he were running out of breath.

“Simon,” Franklin said, as he flicked the switch and turned on the light, “dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Simon looked at Franklin, stone-faced. “I need your car. I gotta go.”

“What? You need my car? Are you crazy, bustin' up in here in the middle of the night asking fo' my car. I could've had a little freak up in here. You can't be bustin' in like that.” Franklin's voice was irritable.

“I. Need. Your. Car.” Simon spoke deliberately, clearly enunciating his words so that there would be no confusion.

“What's wrong with you?”

“I gotta go.”

“Go where?”

“Just go.”

Franklin stepped closer to him and grabbed his arms, trying to get Simon to settle down.

“What are you talking about? What's wrong?”

“I gotta find Addie. Yeah, Addie. I gotta find her.”

“Who the fuck is Addie?”

Simon looked at him as if he couldn't believe he didn't know who Addie was.

“She's . . . she's . . . she got answers. Answers to the snakes. She knows about the shadows.”

Franklin looked into Simon's wild eyes. “Fool, are you high? You been smoking?”

Simon looked at him and spoke in a lucid tone. “You know I don't smoke, Frank. I need to go.”

“You ain't makin' no sense.”

“I been seeing things. Hearing things. Shadows. Snakes. Ghosts. I can do things. I can feel things. I can fly.”

“Okay, if you think you can fly, you must be high as a kite. I don't know what you took, but you need to sit down for a minute. What did you take?”

“I didn't take anything. No drugs. No drugs in my body. Only snakes. Only snakes in my body. I vomited one earlier. Ask Brooke. She'll tell you.”