rebounding around town #2
The morning sun reaches through my apartment window.
Home. I’m home.
What time is it? How long was I out for? Jesus, these dreams are only getting worse. My head is throbbing from all the scotch.
Nails pound in my skull. I’m covered in grit. I’ve got fucking salt all over me, clinging to my skin, like I was at the beach,
rolling in the sand.
It takes me a moment to recalibrate. Settle back into this space. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I was still—
There’s someone in the corner of the room. The sun doesn’t touch them, tucked into the shadows. I didn’t see them at first,
but now their cindered frame comes into focus.
Hey, it says. Same voice as before. Same red eyes. That was one heck of a nightmare . . . Do you have bad dreams like that one often?
“I still think I’m having it, to be honest . . .”
Really? Nah, man . . . This is real. Trust me.
“Trust you? I don’t even know you.”
I’d like to get to know you, if that’s okay. We can get to know each other a little better.
“No,” I say. It doesn’t sound nearly forceful enough.
You’re the one who called to us . . . If you didn’t want us stopping by, you shouldn’t have sent out the fucking invitation, you feel me? I wouldn’t have RSVPed.
I want to wake up. I pinch my eyes shut, hoping to push the dream out of my head.
When I open my eyes again . . .
He’s still there.
Closer now.
You okay? When it speaks, its lips never move. The voice resonates from within the back of my skull, some deep recess, echoing into
my ears, while it simply stares at me.
Just to test it out, I close my eyes again. Squeeze them, harder this time.
When I open them again . . .
Now he’s at the end of my bed. Looming over me. Staring. Head tilted to its shoulder.
Don’t mind me . . .
“What are you doing?”
Oh, you know . . . Just hanging out.
“Do I know you?”
Not really . . . Remember when your mom told you not to talk to strangers? Well, what if I introduce myself? Then I won’t
be a stranger anymore, will I? Problem solved.
“Yeah . . . I don’t know if that’s how it actually works.”
For real? Bummer. Oh, well . . . Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way, then . . .
His fingers find my lips. This time, when I struggle, I feel the full brunt of his body bearing down. He forces his weight
upon my head, pinning me in place.
His fingernails skitter across my teeth before slipping in, curling over and pressing against the roof of my mouth. He’s tapping
at the soft palate. He grips hold of my lower jaw and yanks, cracking open my mouth as wide as it’ll go, my own tongue lashing
out at the air.
Hang on to your hats . . .
In he goes.
A double rainbow. How rare are those?
Imagine a double dream. I just had a nested doll of nightmares.
Waking up the second time isn’t any easier than the first, only now, I’ve got to crawl out from under my own panic that this
is never going to fucking end. I’m just going to keep waking up from dream after dream after dream . . . I’m never finding
the surface of my sleep. Break through. Who knows? Maybe I’m still dreaming now. I’m never going to wake up, am I?
If only Lilith was here, sleeping next to me.
I’m covered in sweat, soaking straight through the sheets. There’s salt all over the place. Yesterday’s summoning circle is
still on the living room floor.
There’s a smell in the air. Burnt hair. Brimstone. Something sulfurous.
I need to get out. Get some fresh air. Get out of my goddamn skull.
A man drills a hole in his head in hopes of releasing the demons trapped within, whispering inside.
A father straps his son to a chair with bungee cords and for three days straight performs some ham-fisted exorcism, no food,
no water, no trips to the bathroom, only for the thirteen-year-old boy to end up dying of dehydration.
A mother is convinced her children are possessed and drowns all three of them in the bathtub, ages six, seven, and nine, every
last expelled air bubble another demon released from the depths of their tiny chests.
A husband shoots his wife after she suggests she’s been overtaken by a demonic presence, then takes his own life when he fears
the demon has transferred over to him.
When bleach doesn’t clean a housewife’s body of its infestation, she douses herself in kerosene and lights herself on fire,
burning her house and her family in the process.
Whenever I used to read stories like these, I always chalked it up to PTSD. Bipolar disorder. Postpartum depression. Possession is everywhere. We just call it something else. These are the real demons. Just people, broken people. Hurting. In need of help.
Now I’m not so sure. Now I know otherwise. Now I know Lilith.
There was never just one.
It’s in her absence that I feel possessed. I can’t stop thinking about her. See what she’s done to me? Before I met her, I
felt empty. Then she filled me in, filled me up, all the fissures and cracks. She completed me. It’s only without her that
I feel hollow again.
It’s happening again, this receding into myself.
I came out to Belle Isle to clear my mind. To ride. Try, at least. The James River splits and runs around this tiny island.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Belle Isle housed the Old Dominion Iron and Nail Works, producing—you guessed
it—nails. Once the Civil War kicked in, the island became an internment camp for captured Union soldiers. Most didn’t survive,
buried here.
Now the island is open to everyone. Bike trails and hiking paths lace the land, like veins branching out from its body, well
out of the hectic intensity of the streets.
I can’t even hear the traffic. The rest of Richmond simply melts away. Perfect place to reconnect with my wheels, where nobody’s
watching. I’ll pass an occasional jogger, but at this time of day, the island feels empty. I’ve got the whole place to myself.
The sun is barricaded behind a latticework of branches overhead.
Lilith’s gift—this bike—feels strange. We have to sync up, me and the wheels. Get a feel for each other. Everything I do on
my own feels like an echo of a gesture. I’m just going through the motions, aren’t I? I’m slowly getting into a rhythm. I
feel the wheels propel me forward. There’s a pulse beneath me. A vein. I feel it spread, branching out and connecting me to
the bike, wrapping around the metal, and all I can think about is riding with Lilith.
I wish she was here, riding with me. When we were together, I felt connected. We shared oxygen, shared blood, shared metal, shared momentum.
We were one.
I spot a jogger up ahead. So much for having the island all to myself. They’re kneeling on the path. Are they tying their
shoe? They look like they are praying.
Wait—that’s not a jogger.
It’s a girl. A little girl.
She can’t be any older than ten. Her back is to me. All I see is the slope of her spine, slumped over. I can’t tell if she’s
hurt, but her head is bowed forward, to her chest. She has a pair of pigtails that drape themselves over her shoulders, exposing
the back of her neck.
Sobbing. Her head bobs just a bit, up and down.
I ride up next to her, then stop. “You okay? Are your parents around?” Shouldn’t you be in school? I almost say. There’s something in her hands. I can’t see what. She’s cupping it, whatever it is. Crying over it. Something
precious. “Are you hurt? Do you want me to call—”
I cut myself off as soon as I see it.
A robin.
She’s cradling a dead robin against her chest. I hope it’s dead. A rusted red-and-orange chest, a gray-brown back. One wing
extends out from the rest of its body, snapped, the shale-gray feathers bent out from between the fingers of her fists, clutching
it.
Where’s the other wing?
The robin stirs, flutters. It’s still alive, struggling within this girl’s grip.
That’s when she glances up at me. The fluid motion of her spine lifting as she turns her head to look over her shoulder, one
vertebra after another, as if she were precariously stacking a set of building blocks on top of each other, brick for brick,
bone for bone.
When she finally turns her head, saving her face for last, she smiles. I spot a stray gray feather still clinging to her bottom lip. It fans about the air before detaching itself, drifting off, leaving behind the slightest smear of red against her chin.
Her lips break, that smile going wider. When I see her teeth, I realize they’re covered—smeared—with blood.
“Want some?”
The girl takes a bite. The crunch comes quick. All those brittle bones. Her lips split just enough to let a bit of blood spill
down her chin. She talks with her mouth full. “Been a while since I’ve had a warm meal,” she minces. “Mmmmmm.”
She holds what’s left of the bird up to me.
“Sure you don’t want a bite?”
The girl tosses the robin. It strikes me in the chest with a sloppy thwack. I try to leap back, my legs tangled in my bike, as the bird rolls down my torso before landing on the path.
The girl springs up on her hands and feet. An animal’s gait, not human at all.
“Good to see you, Jordan,” the girl says in a voice that doesn’t strike me as very childlike.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me?” She frowns. “Oh, Jordan, I’m hurt . . .”
I want out of this nightmare. I want to wake up once and for all.
I want Lilith.
I put all my weight down on the pedal, pushing off. I try to get a little bit of distance between me and this girl before
I glance over my shoulder.
She’s following me on all fours.
Jesus, she’s chasing me.
The girl’s making some solid headway, too, closing the gap between us. I have to pedal harder, harder, pumping my legs, but she keeps up, scrambling across the path on her hands and feet, clawing at the ground before leaping
in the air and clawing again.
She’s going to catch me. Take me down. So I ride harder.
Come on, Jordan . . .
Faster.
Faster!
Her body slows. I don’t know, maybe her legs give out. Or she gives up. But the margin between our bodies widens, thank God,
opening into a gulf before her tiny frame fades into the distance and I abandon the bike path, hitting the cross bridge and
riding out.
Everywhere. They’re everywhere . . .