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November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

Increments
by Daniel Bachleda

At first, he would just sit and stare out the window to the street below—at jaunty dog-walkers, impatient auto drivers, insatiable stiff-legged bums, sleek bicycles—and he'd talk to no one. His visitors entered as they normally entered doors, placid, cheerful even, but left with scorned looks or worried moues on those faces. Phone calls rang into anonymity. He just sat there staring.

As the first few days like this passed, he began, each new day, to move slowly, by increments, closer to the window, the relationship between the two—man and framed glass—becoming more familiar, more comfortable. He was even seen, once, with his feet propped irreverently upon the sill—that same vacuous look on his face—by a middle-aged Hispanic maid hired by the apartment complex. 'I don't know about that one,' she might have said if asked. 'He's got problems.'

He stopped shaving and going to work. He stopped answering the door. He'd only descend the dark stairs, approaching the ground floor slowly, by increments, when it was absolutely necessitated by survival needs—banal things like eating, shitting. He lost weight, gained dark circles under the eyes. Bills piled up inside the door, dutifully shoved every day by the indifferent hand of the mail man, and formed there a small pile—curiously measuring to the exact dimensions and volume of his withdrawal.

He stopped speaking entirely, and thinking, too, went out the window, so to speak. The mind was allowed to wander, and it did, as minds always will, but not to any particular tune or fancy. He remembered nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true, and he would correct this storyteller if indeed, the storyteller allowed him the opportunity. No, he did remember something: he remembered her.

She with her caresses and her body pains, her glances and her petite fury, she with her fingernails and her complaints, her compassions and her apathies—she was a catch; he knew it. They'd worked out so nicely since an impromptu inebriant rendezvous at the goth bar they both hated but continued to find themselves at. He'd never meet another like her, he knew—but this he wouldn't think of during his visits to her cold recent grave. Those trips were his only ones out of the house anymore.

The sun was always hot and belligerent, but he always walked. He had no need of busses and their rushing around; he wasn't in a rush anymore. Once there, at his lover's 'resting place'—he thought the phrase such a stupid, offensive euphemism—he'd sit with his back against the stone, sinking slowly, by increments, into his memories of her, his love for her existence, his grief for her loss—her life bashed from her by another cell-phone-driver in an SUV. It seemed to him that everything in his life had simply been preparation, events building up to his inevitable meeting with her, and then Fate, that damn fool gambler, had rolled a snake eyes for the pair. She was gone, so soon after their small, modest-in-material, rich-in-passion wedding ceremony; he had, then, everything he could ever want.

But isn't that how it always goes?

He does not answer such questions, there, at her grave.

It was on his most recent trip, this very one, that he discovered several other questions that required immediate responses. Chief among those were these: Am I going insane? And who in Hell is speaking to me if I'm not going insane? Indeed good questions, and as there really was no one else in the graveyard in sight, highly pertinent questions, too.

'Hello?' he shouted at no one. But there it was again—a voice, quiet, almost too quiet to hear, feminine. He stood up, looked around apprehensively, sat back down. Upon hearing once more the voice—calling, it sounded to be—he stood again, furious eyes attempting to pinpoint exactly who should deserve an appropriate beating for disturbing his ache, his reserved reticence: no one—birds peering oddly at him from the tops of weathered headstones, heat-wilted flowers, cerulean sky, crisped grass, cars on the street beyond the far away gates. He resumed his observance once more.

And came once more the voice, unmistakable now, growing more audible each time, by increments. Imagine his sudden shock and revolt as he discovered that the plaintive call was originating from beneath him.

He didn't go back to the spot, for their time together, for several days. Throughout these days, he never got the voice out of his head. That is not to say that he heard the voice. No, in fact, he did not. But it was there, in his mind, without caesura. Thusly, he decided he was not losing his mind; something, someone—no names, please, not yet—was talking to him from the ground. The horrible, macabre implications—perhaps even an imprecation, (but why?)—were almost too much for him. She was gone; he knew this. He had kissed her pallid face goodbye, stood there as they lowered her into the earth, tossed the first handful as a melodramatic flourish he knew she'd have loved. She was gone; he knew this. She was not speaking to him. Staring out the window, his value systems churned, his processors became dedicated—his thoughts now driven with this terrible new purpose, his eyes sharpening again—and he decided he had simply imagined the ghastly communiqué, in his grief, and tried to accept this as fact, slowly, by increments.

This was his decision at sunset, and his new friend, the window, seemed to agree.
By nightfall, he was climbing the rear wall of the cemetery.
But isn't that how it always goes?

Warily, he plodded his usual course through the monuments to memoria, approached the destined plot, glowering at its heavy stone marker, paused, satisfied himself finding silence, and sat down in the dirt. What he heard: nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time, in some small, poorly lit region of his mind he felt a sadness, an emotional grimace, a trite disappointment—the kind of response generally elicited in those who seek, with a child's pure hope, signs of miracles, of the supernatural, but find only dust and old empty rooms. He shivered at the realization that he'd actually want something so sick and disturbing.

That, of course, is when he heard the voice—her voice, beyond a doubt—calling to him once more. 'Yipes' is most certainly the word he'd have exclaimed if his brain weren't as frozen solid at the time. So it was true. His heart leapt in strange ways.

Oh that voice! If he could color the sound of her voice, it would be a warm blue, if that makes any sense (but it doesn't really have to, does it?)—so refined in enunciation, so hearty in weight, sweet but not cloying, soulful, elegant, lively—how he had longed to hear it again, and how unfair it was—up until then, of course—that he'd not receive such a boon. And here it was, here she was, speaking—he could not make out her words. If only he could hear her more clearly.

He leaned down, pressed warm ear to cold earth, and held his breath. What are you saying, dear? He could almost make it out, but his head was feeling sort of fuzzy inside, like static over the phone. He grabbed a handful of earth, pushed it aside, and leaned down once more. Better, he thought. He committed himself to the task: handful by handful, he was coming closer to his bride slowly, by increments. I'm coming, baby. His head was feeling fuzzier, but it didn't matter; his heart was overflowing with joyous love.

When the first caretakers arrived, early in the morning, they found him, silhouetted against the coming day, his voice raised in buoyant solitary song, his woman pressed close against him in dance, measured and eloquent, turning circles slowly, by increments.