This is a short story for the NIGHTGALE Blog Challenge from Glitterword.
Prompt:
January 19th – PROMPT To Die and become one with Nature
Keats – “Darkling I listen, for many a time, I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die;”(Ode To A Nightingale)
Late Delivery
Nick opened the apartment door to darkness and silence. Even the fluorescent over the stove was off. He never turned that off.
“Jen?” he asked the darkness. He reached for the light switch. Nothing.
Stepping into the living room, Nick reached inside his coat to feel the comforting weight of the gun in its shoulder holster. The gun he’d had two weeks, simultaneously empowering and terrifying. He shouldn’t even have been carrying it, but he’d become paranoid in recent weeks.
Distantly, he regretted not taking Jen and getting out of town while the getting was good. Maybe he’d waited too long. Maybe it was finally too late — the cops, or one of Laslo’s friends, had finally caught up with him.
Maybe it had been too late for awhile now.
As his eyes adjusted, moonlight began to limn the apartment with faint lines of blue radiance.
“Hello, Nick,” a voice drawled from his left.
Nick drew the gun and wheeled, squinting. A shadowy figure lounged in his favorite chair. One thin finger twirled a silvery object on a fine chain. Back and forth. Winding and unwinding.
“Who’s that?”
“Calm down, buddy.” The figure’s tone was casual, but something in the voice — like a throatful of gravel, a tongue caked with mold.
Nick’s heart tightened, but he fought down the nauseating fear he felt in his gut. “I don’t know who you are, but you have about five seconds before I start shooting.”
He’d meant it to sound tough. He doubted it did.
A wet chuckle. “I’m telling you, relax. I just came back to give you a message.”
Nick suddenly remembered to thumb off the safety, hoping the figure didn’t notice. “Back from where?”
“I came back to tell you that you were wrong. There is something else. And it’s not heaven. It’s better than heaven.”
“What the f–”
“Right now,” the figure said conversationally, “you can’t imagine what I see. What I feel. Every breeze an orchestra, every step a journey of a million miles. I’m in tune with everything — I understand time’s ouroboros — I understand the primal snake swimming through the mud of ages–”
“What are you talking about?” Nick fought to keep the quaver out of his voice. The barrel of the gun had started to quiver.
“Nevermind,” the figure said. “It’s getting more difficult all the time — to relate — this body flaking away like a set of old clothes I don’t have the good sense to shed…”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Forgot me already?” The figure leaned into a bar of moonlight. A haggard face, skin stretched like old canvas. A familiar smile — An eyesocket that crawled with slimy, wriggling motion –
Nick’s throat closed. “Laslo?”
“I came to thank you, old buddy,” Laslo said. “For showing me a new world. A better world. Something beyond death. I know you just wanted to be with Jen. I know I was in your way. That’s all right, buddy.”
The figure rose from the chair with a sound like the hiss of chains.
“I forgive you. And I want to know — you’re going to be together again very soon.”
The figure tossed the object down on the coffee table. Jen’s silver heart necklace, smeared with old blood.
Laslo grinned. “We all will.”
He lunged.
Nick finally started shooting. But it was too late, he realized, as bony fingers forced their way into his mouth, as a lifeless thumb pressed against his eyelid, harder and harder –
It had been too late for awhile now.
# # #
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