NM 9

I was a bit surprised when I came back the next morning to see Gracie all smeared with ash and soot sitting on the steps Suzy’s front porch with the blind girl behind her rocking back and forth on the glider.

“I was wondering if you two were coming back. Figured all the stuff in that house was mine if you didn’t.”

I gave her a bitter smile as I put the kick stand down on the silver ten speed and looked at the smoldering remains of my home. From the look of it there wasn’t going to be anything to salvage from it other then some firewood.

My plan was to fill in the basement and turn the whole lot into garden space. It had always gotten plenty of light. Maybe I could part a trailer in the middle to build up into a new cage.

The other two nearest houses, Suzy’s and the Desantoes’ didn’t look to have caught on fire. Probably from the circular nature of the turn around at the end of the street making it necessary to build them a bit father apart then normal.

“I guess you and me are going to be room mates Gracie, you can have the upper floor.”

I turned to see the woman walking up to me with a look in her eye. Her one unnatural bright red eye. Not red as in bloodshot, her pupil was the color of blood.

Not something natural. I began tapping my finger and thumb together.

The Mirror began to circle the Nightmare who had fooled me into welcoming to my neighborhood. She must have seen something in one of my faces as she came to a stop and brought up the sawed off sixteen gauge she had taken the night before as her back up in case the Hounds got in the house with her.

She look back and forth from me to the Fletch “What’s going on?”

I could see where she had wiped away some soot from the side of face that I could see her real eye on. She must have pulled a colored contact loose when she did so.

“Well at least the guy you ate got to meet the girl of his dreams.”

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She stopped breathing for a moment, “I didn’t kill him.” She sighed. “Not directly. He was so afraid of me that he backed out onto his balcony and went right over the edge.”

Looking off in the distance she slowly shook her head. “He still had the image of me dominating his thoughts when he hit the ground. I had taken a form so close to human, that his focus on the idea of me was enough to make me fully real.”

She look from the Fetch to me again. “Real enough I don’t have to kill anyone else after being seen by them to anchor myself. The others, the forms they took can’t be real in this world. That why they keep killing, trying anything to avoid going back.”

The Nightmare took a step back. “I’m not a threat to you, if I was I would have hurt Suzy… No that doesn't prove anything does it. Not with her being blind. Just let me go, I’ll leave the area.”

My mouth was dry. “You came here to this world knowing you would have to kill. Your kind destroyed… everything.”

The thing actually began to cry, like she was a real person. “I’m sorry, we didn’t even understand death. Not like it is here. Our reality was ending, and this was the only direction we could flee. We just wanted to survive.”

By this time the Fetch had positioned itself behind the Nightmare, but it seemed to have lost track of what it was supposed to be doing as it listened to the Nightmare in fascination. Only know learning about why it had come here, finding out a little of what it had been.

Then it looked up at me, as it let go of it’s spiked club, which vanish as it left it’s hand. “I’m not going to help you kill her Chris. She knows things.”

“...Traitor.” It shrugged.

Then Suzy spoke up. “I want her to stay.”

I spread my hands out helplessly as I looked at her, gap jawed. Which really didn’t do much to show her my feeling about that. “Wha… Suzy, she’s a Nightmare. The enemy. They killed everyone.”

The blind girl made her way down her front steps with both hands on the guard rail. “I know. They killed my dad, and my friends at school. They killed everyone I ever knew other then you.”

She started hesitantly walking toward me, both hands held up in front of her until the Fetch said “I got you.” and slipped it arm underneath her hands.

I cleared my throat as she was lead up in front me and she looked at me in the chin. “Last night she fought to help you get away. The Hounds were trying to get at her too, I could hear then growling and barking at her when she hid up in the attic to hide from them.”

“She risked her life for you and stuck around until morning to let me know it was safe to come out. You have a Nightmare to help you, and I’m going to have her be mine.”

She set her hands on her hips. “So you are going to accept her, or I won’t take your help anymore. I’ll just go and look for food on my own.”

I glared at her or a moment before reaching out to poke her in the nose, making her jerk her head back and glare in my direction as she rubbed at it. “Fine, but she stays in your house, and you have to feed her and take her for walks.”

Gracie had watched all of this with a lot of different looks on her face. Surprise, embarrassment, hope and finally outrage. “Do I get any say in this?”

Suzy and I both turned to her. “No.”

As least if I was going to have a living Nightmare around, she was the living embodiment of someone fear of overly attractive women.

Which ended up to be great news a few weeks later for my very smug Mirror. On reflection, I can at least say that I truly did see myself being with her.

I that I may have to change the name of my street, since the humans are now out numbered, Elm street has become the place Nightmares come to live.