Part I: Darkened Dreams
Dabria woke up with a shudder. “Not again.” The collar of her sleep shirt was damp and sticky with sweat, but she knew if she got up to change, she’d wake Luke.
Instead she rolled back over to him and interwove her fingers through his, and he responded with a squeeze even in his sleep. It was ritual with them, through more than a decade of dating and marriage. She’d thought it odd at first, that he’d wanted to keep a hand on her while sleeping.
She couldn’t sleep without it now. The habit made traveling for work exponentially harder, especially recovering from fatigue afterward.
But then, compared to Luke, she slept like the dead anyway.
“Can’t sleep?”
Her shoulder jerked. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“Mmm.” He pulled her over, and she tucked into him. “Bad dreams again?”
She let out a sigh and nodded, even though there was no way he’d see it in the dark room with its blackout curtains. “Must’ve died three times in that one. Swordfight, riot, drowning.”
“I’ve got you.” He wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. “You’re my girl.”
“You’re my guy.” The words were soothing ritual, a promise that all was right with the universe. Dabria marveled again at how lucky she’d been to find this man. “I think it was the washers at the ford. The death omens.”
“Sleep, baby. It’ll be okay.” Within minutes, his breathing slowed and deepened in her ear.
She didn’t know when she joined him. When she woke up again, she’d sprawled away from his embrace, one hand underneath her pillow and dangling behind the bed.
Her dreams hadn’t been pleasant, but this time they brushed away with wakefulness, a riot of soundless color and blurred snapshots in time as scenes vanished from memory.
She stretched, trying not to wake Luke again. Flexing her fingers, she started to draw her hand back into bed.
And closed her fingers on something that should have been empty space.
The scream echoed through the room, more an angry duck squawk at full volume over the high-pitched horror movie classic.
“What?” Luke was already stumbling on bare feet, looking around for the threat. The Ka-bar kept discretely in a nightstand holster was already in his hand.
Dabria pointed to behind the metal headrest from where she huddled in the bed, covers still tucked over her knees. “Something – something is down there.”
He lowered the knife to his side. “Baby, spiders happen.”
She swallowed hard. “No. No. I think – I think it was a finger. I touched something, and it felt bony and alive and cold and –“
He held up his free hand. “Okay. I’ll take a look. Okay?”
She nodded, grateful he was willing to look and that her voice had stopped shaking. “Thank you. I know it’s stupid. But it really felt like a finger.”
He still had the knife in his hand when the pillows moved. She heard the noise and turned, just in time to find herself caught inside the tangled blankets.
The creature burst from behind the headboard and bit her shoulder, just below the joint. She threw back her head and screamed in pain and shock, frantically pushing the head away.
It tore her flesh further as Luke yanked it backward. The blade flashed, the creature choked, and she didn’t care what it was as long as it was dead, dead, dead.
Blood trickled between her fingers as she pressed a hand to the wound. Luke left the knife embedded in the creature’s throat and started for her. His gaze was fixed on her shoulder.
Dabria let out a warbling, incoherent cry, pointing behind him.
The creature was standing, reaching for her husband, knife looking like one of those old joke arrows through the head and just as funny.
Luke seized the knife, but she couldn’t tell what he did. Dust burst over the room, and with it, she did not mind falling into darkness.
She did not wake until darkness rose again, and did not dream.
Part II: Forever is Forever
He looked up from chopping vegetables as movement flickered outside the kitchen window. Dabria stood at the fence line, staring over the wooden barrier and into the cemetery, barely glimpsed over steadily increasing shadows in the dusky gloom.
Luke set the knife down and wiped his hands, then headed for the back door and toward his wife in her spiderweb skirts of gauze, blending into the shadows as if she were a fleeting wisp of cloud.
Her head didn’t turn as he joined her, clasping his left hand over her right atop the fence. Moonlight rippled in the pond’s reflection.
“This is my life now,” she murmured. “I always enjoyed cemeteries. It never bothered me to live next door to one. The shadows and statues. Black-green moss and worn carvings, speckled with blue-green lichen.”
His fingers tightened upon hers. “It’s not so dramatic as that.”
“Isn’t it?” She turned to him at last, waving her free hand at her face. “Tell me this is not a story of grief.”
He sucked in a breath. In less than twelve hours, her cheeks had hollowed. Deep, purplish-black surrounded eyes that gleamed reflective yellow when she looked toward the house, where the kitchen’s light spilled into the backyard.
She held out her other hand to him. “Yesterday I had a tan. This evening?”
Luke swallowed, his throat dry. “It’s hard to tell in this light.”
“Humans aren’t meant to be grey, baby. You know which emoji has the grey skin tone? Zombie.”
He seized her wrist and pulled her close. “Let me warm you up at least. It’s freezing out here.”
“I think it’s going to be cold for a long time,” she whispered, but laid her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist.
He snuffled a laugh into her hair. “So dinnertime is different now. The darkness has always been your friend. We’ll just need to be more nocturnal than we used to be. Moonlight walks instead of sunsets. It’ll take some time to adjust, but we’ll get there.”
They sat underneath the magnolia tree, the one they’d planted shortly after he’d moved in, before they got married. This was their spot, where she’d fed birds and planned the backyard gardens while he’d done the labor. He’d even proposed here, and had been irrationally worried about a squirrel running off with the ring before he could get Dabria to come outside. Its lemon-honey scent surrounded them above cool earthiness of fresh-turned dirt, waxy leaves evergreen in the unexpectedly cool evening.
“They say in Louisiana, magnolias mask the smell of the dead when the floods disinter the bodies.” Her voice broke on the last word into a sob.
“It doesn’t matter.” He tightened his grip. “This is our magnolia. Ours. Nothing can take that away. There are no bad memories here.”
“Forever is forever?”
“What else could it be?” he answered, his mind whirling. “Through all the changes. Whatever they may be. I’m not letting go of you.”
She sniffled. “I’m tired, baby. So tired.”
His hand clamped on hers not long after, their knees touching. Luke fell asleep and woke up an undetermined time later, still holding Dabria’s hand.
Blinking in the moonlight streaming through the blinds, he realized she was watching him with those odd reflective eyes.
“Can’t sleep,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I sleep anymore.”
“It’s okay. I’m right here with you.” He squeezed her hand and rubbed his thumb over her palm before drawing her cold, bony fingers to his lips for a kiss.
“I know. You’re my guy.”
Her smile wavered in the moonlight, though it could have been the tears in his eyes.
“And you’re my ghoul. I love you, baby.”
***
This week on More Odds Than Ends, things went in unusual (but hopefully good) directions. As is to be expected given the moniker odd prompts…AC Young turned frozen birds into a space war and rescue (go read it in the comments; it’s good!). Meanwhile, I took Leigh Kimmel’s prompt about what was under the magnolia tree and turned it into something either romantic or morbid.
You decide.
