He rolled over, his cold body brushing up against me as he did; he was facing me now, his eyes long gray, his face void of any color. Even though it was dark, not even the moonlight cutting through the void of my room, I could see the drab expression on his face. It wasn’t that there was no emotion, and it wasn’t that he was trying to have no emotion—I’m sure that somewhere, far behind those lost, sleepy hollow eyes that looked in me as if they were a lake of quicksilver teaming with corpse-fish, he hid emotion. Lucas processed thought.

“Victor.”

It was long, it was snowy, it was drawn-out, it was brash and rash. Maybe when he was underground he somehow caught a frog in his throat. And how my hands gripped at his sides, like I was going to squeeze him and he would pop like a cork; like a bottle of wine, champagne, that expression made a lot more sense. When I did so I felt like my hands were going to go into him, he groaned, he reached out his hands to hold onto me—it was tight and firm, the way he held onto me. I buried my face into his chest, rubbed into his shirt. I should have had him change his clothes, I didn’t think so; either that, or he should have taken the shirt off so that he was more comfortable. But did he care about comfort? Was it a worry to him or, instead, was it a trouble to him at all?

In the morning, he was still awake; I assumed that he stayed awake the whole night, I wasn’t too sure if he could actually sleep. I was still in his grip—I saw, over his shoulder, the light pouring into my room, even if it was dim and akin to autumn, and I could barely get a glimpse outside through a corner of the window. Unsurprisingly, it was rainy.

“Lucas,” I said—though I wanted to stay in bed forever I knew that I couldn’t, I had to get up because I didn’t know if my dad was at work or not. It was like he was a ghost, I didn’t see him at all unless the two of us crossed paths when one of us was leaving. And I understood that I was the one that had to get my own dinner, make my own breakfast, and that made me feel like an adult. Four months until that fact was true. “Lucas, I think we have to get up.” Hopefully he understood what I was saying—he could talk, I struggled to contain my excitement about the fact that he could talk, maybe I was the one that was going to pop like a champagne bottle. No, pop like a cork made more sense.

Those eyes looked at me, like when they were baby blue, like when they were an ocean of waves and salt, and I thought that he was waiting to say something, waiting for the time that he believed was right. Yet there was nothing else that he said, so I filled that blank space. “We need to get up.”

I would have thought that the ancient Egyptians would have pulled out the brain through the noise or through the ear of a mummy, but it turns out that I would have been wrong; instead, they keep the brain in there, they let it mummify like everything else. I wasn’t able to see what the state of Lucas’s brain was. There was no desire to, either. Instead, I only wanted to imagine it. He opened his mouth to say something, cold air coming out and lightly blowing on my hair, then for him to say fairly quietly:

“Bed.”

He wanted to stay in bed, then. Who could blame him? I needed to get out though, I had to make it known to him. “Out of bed. I have to get out of bed. You can stay, but I have to get out.”

When I explained it like that he understood. His awkward grip tightened, I was no longer being somewhat constricted—I didn’t mind it, of course. Getting out of the bed still required me to crawl over him, and for a moment I was overtop of him, he remained on his side. I finally got out, looked at him facing away from me, towards the wall, my bed in the right-hand corner of my room.

“Lucas.”

He grunted. He had heard me, he had recognized his name again.

“Do you want to stay in bed?”

Now he rolled over to stare blankly at me. He had range of motion, he wasn’t as clumsy as I thought he was going to be—I came to his bedside, pulling up the covers over him. I knew that he was cold, I thought that maybe the covers could bring him some warmth.

☠ ☠ ☠

“He’s a zombie.”

“He’s not a zombie. He’s different from a zombie. Zombies aren’t real, he’s real.”

I was making waffles, something that I did almost every morning. Whenever she would spend the night we would have breakfast together, she would stay for a few more hours, then we would part ways somewhere around two-twenty. It was a science at this point.

“He’s a zombie. He was on the ground. Now he’s not. He was dead.”

“If he was a zombie,” I said, bringing her plate of food over to her, “then we would have performed voodoo. That’s something you would know about, right?” I was trying to mock her. “Have you done anything like that yet? Or do you only concern yourself with brooms and tongues of newts?”

“It's the tongue of the dog, you would know that if you actually finished reading Macbeth.” She ate her waffles bland—she stabbed at it with a fork, picking the entire thing up on the prongs.

“I did.”

Her mouth was full of food. “No you didn’t.” In a short motion she fixed her hair, then she adjusted her strap. “I didn’t see you even open the book.”

“Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, and look on death itself! Up, up, and see the great doom's image.”

“So you know one quote—.”

“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.” I knew that I was getting on her nerves. It was all purposeful.

She looked up at me, still standing off to the side of the table. “You need a haircut, asshole.”

“I thought you said I didn’t.”

“I changed my mind.” A swallow. “You need a haircut.”

I stamped off and back over to the waffle-iron; it was sitting relatively close to the sink, on the counter, so I peered out the window above the faucet. Save for my truck, the driveway was empty. I could see my neighbors getting back from church, father and mother and son and daughter, all in their Sunday best. With their perfectly trimmed bushes and their perfectly cut lawn and their perfectly smoke-billowing chimney—there wasn’t a fire yet, but if there was it would be coming out perfectly. The little girl had a nice pink dress on, it swayed in the still, damp air as her father helped her out of the car. It was a minivan, Dodge Caravan, why was it always a minivan?

“Why is it always a minivan?” she muttered under her breath. Amber could see them too. “Is the door to your room locked?”

“I can’t lock it from the outside.”

“I thought that you could.” With her waffles finished, her feet were sat up on the table, her leaning back in the chair with her arms crossed behind her head. “Don’t want him wandering off.”

“He shouldn’t walk too far.” I finally decided: I wasn’t going to eat breakfast. “He isn’t fast, he’s slow. His leg is broken.” Now I was looking at her, I was watching her every movement. Something inside of me wanted the chair to slip, for her to fall flat—she was teetering its legs at an angle. “You’re going to fall.”

“Nope.”

Maybe I could make coffee. The coffee pot was in the sink, dad had washed it the night before. I pulled it out, wandered over to the maker, forgot that I had to fill up the pot with water, and went back over to the sink.

“You hate coffee.”

“I do.” And she was right.

Nothing made sense. The night before she was losing her mind, she was worried that we would get caught, she thought that what we did was a horrible idea and that we had committed a sin that was unforgivable; of course we hadn’t, but she didn’t know. And she didn’t think of it that way. But now—now she acted like this was simply normal, as though this was something that we did all the time, there wasn’t anything odd going on. I’m not saying that what we were doing was strange; it was a product of our endeavors, and it was a product of my passion, mostly. It was mostly my passion. Hers—not so much.

“Maybe I should check on him.”

“It’s been fifteen minutes, hasn’t it?”

Yes, it had. Fifteen minutes where he could have potentially run off—I had changed my mind, as in that fifteen minutes, even if he was shuffling, even if his leg was broken, even if he was limping, there was the possibility that he had gone through the mudroom door and left through the garage, and now he was terrorizing the townspeople as he walked down the sidewalk and people screamed saying things like, “He lives!,” “Lucas is back!”, “Call a priest!” But that was turning him into a monster, he wasn’t a monster. Not my Lucas.

“Go check on him.” I should have checked on him, but I didn’t want to submit to her and listen to what she said. She wasn’t allowed to order me around.

“Don’t you have a western sky to go and rule?”

“What?”

“The west, the witch of the west. You’re the wicked witch of the west.”

I was given a dead, blank stare, much like Lucas’s. “No.”

“No?” The joke didn’t land. I don’t even know if I would consider it a joke actually, I was trying to be insulting. It was an insult. “Okay, well I probably should go and check on him, you’re right.” I had submitted. What a fool.

My bedroom door was still closed; that was a good sign. The air in my room was significantly damper than the air in the rest of the house, it was cold too. I had left the window slightly open all night and I hadn’t even realized because of how cold Lucas was already. When I looked at Lucas I realized that, potentially, Amber and I’s roles had been switched. Perhaps I was the one that was becoming too worried, I was the one that was having the weight of our sins put on my shoulders—stop, they weren’t sins. It wasn’t a sin.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Lucas—.”

“Hm?”

It was a groan, a growl, just like the two other times he spoke—he “spoke”—but he turned over when he responded.

“Were you sleeping?”

He nodded. Even though it was without verbalization, he responded to me, and that was all that mattered. Of course, I had already established with myself that he somewhat sort of knew what I was saying when I was talking, but now I was definite. Lucas put his hands over the covers, revealing his sleeved arms, his hair spread out on my pillow; he had, apparently, stolen my pillow when I was gone. I gave him his own when he first laid down.

“Do you want to get up?” He didn’t respond this time, he only blinked. He grunted when he tried to roll back over. Yes, he did want to keep sleeping. He said he was sleeping, so I guess he was actually sleeping.

“What’s the verdict?”

I jumped out of my skin—well, almost, if I wasn’t sewn to it so tightly. But I did jump, higher than I would any other time I purposely tried to. “Are you going as a witch for All Hallows Eve?”

“I was thinking of it, why?”

“Which witch? I think that the wicked witch would suit you.” Of course I was trying to be annoying—I had already made that joke before. Multiple times. Every Halloween. I smiled at her. “Happy Halloween!” to then close the door in her face. But I wasn’t done with my joke. “Try green paint, that could work out quite well!” My slamming of the door seemed to have spooked Lucas, him now sitting up in the bed. “My fault buddy.” That wasn’t something I called him, his name sounded better—we never came up with a nickname for him before. “Lucas, my fault Lucas.” Maybe in a bit I could try the wicked-witch-joke a third time, thrice is the charm.

☠ ☠ ☠

I guess I was wrong when I said that I’ve gone to only two parties; it would be three if I counted the Halloween party, junior year, October 31st. Luckily All-Hallows-Eve had landed that Friday. I doubt anyone calls it that anymore, it was probably just me.

“Is your coven invited?” That was a month after I learned about her practices. At that time I refused to call it religion—and I have remained in that headspace ever since, it was a lousy, esoteric excuse for something that she and everyone that associated themselves with it couldn’t explain: whatever God was. I’ve always been one with the witch jokes, even if she didn’t find them funny.

“I’m not a part of a coven. I haven’t been invited to one yet.” I doubted that she knew what she was talking about. Herman Slater. Another occultist. Big surprise, she dug him, ever since she went up to New York with her dad and found the Magical Childe that year, over the summer. When she mentioned him I instantly thought of Herman Melville, and I was wrong; that wasn’t who she was talking about. My fault, I guess. What she did introduce me that I was interested in though was Anton Lavey, but that’s a subject for later. Although she did get me a pentagram necklace, metallic black—even though I kept it under my shirt I wore it everywhere I went. Other than her, Lucas was the only person to know about it, after he asked me about it when I took off my shirt to change for a second. That was the day before the All Hallows Eveparty, at Mariana Cross’s; she had one of those names, like Kirk Matthews. “Kirk” didn’t fit, just “Mariana” didn’t fit.

I looked at him, my hair a walnut-gray mess (assumingly), my chest bare, my underwear peeking out from the waist of my pants. Yes, I hoped that he noticed—I don’t know if he did. And when he asked about the necklace, about my amulet, I clutched it instantly. “This thing?” I was covering it. “Amber got it for me.”

“Can I see it?”

No. “I guess.”

That was the third time we were doing nothing in my room together. I came over, leaned over a bit for him to get a look at it.

“Can you take it off? I want to hold it.”

No, I couldn’t. I hadn’t taken it off for the past few months. I wore it when I slept, when I drove, when I showered—”Yeah.” Then I slipped it off my neck.

“It’s cool.” He held it up, let it dangle down and it almost touched his stomach. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely awesome.”

“A pentagram.”

“It’s a what?”

I put my hands behind my back. “It’s a pentagram.” Now I was standing up straight, looking over the bridge of my nose and down to him, laying on his back on my bed. My bed. “That’s what the shape is called. Didn’t you used to wear a cross? A crucifix? Was it a rosary?”

“I did, it was a little cross on a chain—my old pastor gave it to me, a week before he died.”

“Why don’t you wear that anymore?” I wanted to put the necklace back on but his gaze remained on it, I didn’t want to take his candy away from him. “The cross, I mean.”

“It doesn’t fit me.”

“It’s not my place, but I thought it fit you just fine.” Overstepping my boundary, crossing right over the border into a place that I shouldn’t be.

“Sure it is.”

What? Sure what is? “Really?”

“Yeah, I respect your opinion. Do you think I should start wearing it again?”

“Totally up to you.” I turned around, to return to what I was originally trying to do, put on another shirt.

“Let me guess, your favorite holiday is Halloween?”

After putting on the shirt I sat down on the ground. Something inside me told me I should have—could have, even—sat at the end of my own bed. I didn’t. “How’d you guess that?”

The posters. “Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, your copy of the Modern Prometheus.”

“The what?”

His finger jutted out, pointing to a book on the shelf above my desk. “Frankenstein. Mary Shelley gave it two names.” The necklace was sitting on his stomach, his hands placed over it. He rubbed the back of his head into my pillow, straightened out his jacket, then put his hands back over the necklace.

“You read the story?”

“Why wouldn’t I? It was cool too.” He brought the necklace back up. “I want one like this.”

“You can have it.” I was lying. I wasn’t lying, actually, I was just denying myself the respect that I thought I ought to have at one point.

He shook his head, again rubbing it into my pillow. “No, I won’t. I mean I won’t take it. It’s your’s, I don’t want to take your stuff. That’s stealing, taking what’s not yours.”

“Like a grave-robber.”

His normal, short, soft cough. “Like a grave-robber. Do you think that people really make a living off of that or it’s just exaggerated? I feel like there’s no way in hell you would be able to make a bunch of money off of digging someone’s grave up.”

I was mimicking what he was doing, laying on my back, instead on the floor though. It made sense why he had stayed on the floor for so long the last time he was over, in the oddest way my fan was enchanting, it occupied your mind. “I doubt it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What is your costume going to be?”

“I don’t know.” He thought. “Indiana Jones? Michael Jackson? Ghostbusters? I was thinking of the Terminator. Ya’know, from Terminator.”

I silently nodded.

“But then I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m built for it, but I don’t think I have the stuff for it’. I could always do a vampire, but that’s pretty basic. Mummy is a solid choice.”

“Hey, that was my idea.”

“I thought you were going as the Doc. Or Frankenstein.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. You could be a werewolf.” I thought to myself now. “But if you don’t get all of the other stuff right and only have the flannel you might just look like a lumberjack.”

“That’s a good idea.”

I doubted that. “No, lumberjack is too silly.”

He rolled up his sleeves, then rolled the back down for some reason. And he laid on his side, facing me, gripping his left hand the necklace. “What’s Amber dressing as? I could match with her.”

And I caught my breath. I couldn’t have that, that wouldn’t be right, if she was going to match with anyone it would have to be me or someone else, it couldn’t be him. He was far too tall, she was far too short. “I think she’s going as Carebears with some other girls.” No she wasn’t.

“I was going to say that you could match with her too, but now I’m not so sure. Do you have a costume?”

“Even though it is my favorite holiday I’ve kind of been out of it. No.”

“We have a day. We could match.”

Lucas was right. He was always right, wasn’t he? “Any good ideas?” Something burned within me—excitement, want?—and I had no idea what it was. It could have been need. “I bet that we can’t throw matching costumes together in one day. Under one day, honestly.”

Out of my bed, over to my closet, he was now standing with the double doors open, scratching his head like he was some kind of ape. “You have a lot of clothes—.”

I ran up in front of him, tripping over my untied shoes; I forgot that I hadn’t taken them off yet. “Hey, hey—!” Slammed the doors in front of him. “You can’t just open my closet.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s my closet. Only I get to see the inside of my closet.” Maybe I didn’t mean that, but my closet was the dirtiest part of my room; it was unkempt, there were clothes all over the floor. It was extremely shallow yet I somehow found a way to fill it to the brim. “My closet.”

“Can’t I take one peak?”

“No—.”

His hand was now on my wrist. Wasn’t forceful—assertive, that’s what he was. “It’s just a closet.” Apparently when he had opened it before he hadn’t had the time to absorb what it looked like on the inside. I conceded to him, his smile was too much for me.

I opened the gates to hell. Hell was an understatement. Hades, even. Scribed above the closet doors should have read, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”. I knew that taking Italian was a good idea. Might have fit better as an abbreviation: L.O.S.V.C.

“Jesus Christ.” If he was holding a stick he might have poked at the amalgamation of garments on the floor, saying something like, “Is it going to move?” “Have you ever thought of cleaning this?”

Cleaning was my least favorite thing to do—my floor was constantly a minefield, unless I knew that someone was going to be entering in, at most, the next thirty minutes. I could do it, there wasn’t anything stopping me from cleaning up my room (my closet, even) other than myself. And I could have listened to him, that would have been easy too. Amber had told me to do the same thing, every time she did I acted like she wasn’t talking in the first place—too much of a bother, I couldn’t hear what she was saying. “I can’t hear you”. That’s what I would say.

“So, we don’t have clothes for Doctor Frankenstein, Victor.” For a second he looked at me, for a second he looked me up and down, then he scratched his neck. “The simplest thing I say we could do is…” He didn’t have an answer, he was trying to prolong conversation. He was trying to stall. I was blanking and so was he. In his pocket he was holding onto my necklace—I saw the chain hanging out and at his side.

“We have a lot of toilet paper.”

“Dressing up as a mummy is good, hard to keep the paper on you though, and some people think it’s gross.”

“Some people are stupid.” That wasn’t my best comeback; I could have done much better than that.

“Some people are stupid, yeah.” Another turn to me.

This time I smiled at him. “I think I have an idea.” Approaching my desk I pulled out a drawer, grabbed a pen, scribbled on my finger with it, rubbing the ink onto my thumb. “Let’s try this.” I struggled significantly to reach his face, requiring me to leave the room for a moment and bring in an ottoman to stand on. “Here.”

Gaunt eyes—actually, I have no idea if “gaunt” is a word that can be used to describe eyes, that might be more for the description of someone’s face. Rather, it was dark eyes. Sickly? That was right. Yeah, that was the right word. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I noticed that when I wiped the ink underneath his eyes, curled it around his sockets, he didn’t flinch at all. Brought him into the bathroom, turned on the light; I showed him what he looked like. “What about that?”

“Hopefully it doesn’t stain.”

“Amber has makeup that would work.”

“Ink is fine.”

“So I’m a zombie?”

“That’s right, you’re a zombie. We can be zombies.”