I’m a face in the rain. A sketch of shadows under streetlight. Mostly I’m a memory, a ghost of myself. Adam was my name. It’s confusing, but every time I even the score for us, I grow stronger. Isn’t that why I’m here, standing outside the restaurant, born of tears and blood? I’m the shadow Adam. Your husk.
The wind, a swirl of dead leaves, gives me shape. The rain silhouettes my shoulders. Fumes from a passing car lend the hint of a jacket, a turned-up collar. My hair is wet, the half-remembered colour of rust. A fluttering crisp packet picks out my face—a face you’d recognise if you looked out of the window. You’d see me, standing here on Blank Street, Nowhere. Know me like you know your own reflection.
I’m what you left behind.
When you look out, you see only rain. The city in your eyes is a washed-out limbo. Buildings that don’t care about you, that don’t know you like I do. You’re laughing and drinking, amused by something the man sat opposite you says. Miles? I caught his name as I followed you from the station, you a torch in the dusk. I can see what you see in him. Those dark looks you’re such a fool for. His rich brown skin. The voice you could bathe in. The hands that’ll grip you as you fuck . . . It’s your birthday. Why wouldn’t you flirt? You don’t know about Brick yet. Or the killings to come.
We’re the same, two sides of a mirror. One silver. One black. But I can’t say it’s my birthday. I began in the garden shed, in the mosaic on the floor. In the rage and the fear you cast aside.
Ghosts don’t have birthdays. But the living sometimes have ghosts.
Oh, Adam. What happened to us? We used to be so close.
Where did it start? This seed?
“I see how you look at me, fag.”
Ah yes. You were on your way home from school. Aged sixteen, circa two years ago. Brick said that as he stepped out from behind the big tree. I remember the smell of the grass on the playing field. The janitor mowing it, the slaughter of bugs in the air. Brick blocked your path. You saw his fist by his side, trembling. The fist of his face, screwed up in disgust. His smirk at the cruelty to come.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” You knew he meant the changing rooms after football practice, Adam. You knew what he was getting at, same as you knew he was wrong. When the boys in class were showering, you tended to look at your feet.
You tried to laugh it off. Brick wasn’t laughing though. In fact, he looked hurt by your rebuff. There was this . . . atmosphere, I remember it well. It made no fucking sense whatsoever. There wasn’t time to examine it, because then Brick was punching you. You fell to the ground. Blood in your mouth. Your ribs on fire as he kicked you. It went on and on. Was it a relief when he ripped your face from the earth, spat on you? Shock carried you like the wind, borne with laughter in your ears. Across town. To your house.
In the garden shed—there was no way that Dad could see you like that—you sat and licked your wounds.
Tears and blood fell to the floorboards, bright in the dust.
A beginning.
Ghosts are memories. How weird is that? Mine, of course, are only recent. They began last Thursday at the ‘party’ in your apartment. You had to make a song and dance about it, didn’t you? You stood there in your tee-shirt. Nevermind. Was Dad about to kick off again? Hit you like when you were ten? Hit us, I should say. Only you remember the feel of it, his knuckles . . . That day you spent in the shed thinking on your sins. Like you did after Brick beat you up. The tears and the blood. The shame. It’s an abstract. A recollection torn from me like tears and blood. Like skin and bones were torn from me when you decided to up and leave.
“I’m sorry,” you told Mum and Dad. You’d promised yourself you weren’t going to apologise. “This is who I am.”
Shouting ensued.
“No son of mine is a poof,” Dad said.
Mum cried. She held her pocket Bible in trembling hands. “How could you do this to us?”
I’m sorry, you wanted to say. I’m sorry for not being who you think I am. But every day, every hour, I was fading, you see. Rubbed out by your expectations. What you think of me. What you want for me. What you want for yourselves. Soon I would’ve disappeared completely . . .
They cried. They mourned you to your face. No one asked you if you were in love. If you were alone. If anyone had hurt you. So you showed them your scars. Another thing you’d sworn not to do. Oh, how you betrayed us, Adam. My little Judas. All eighteen years of us standing in the living room on Any Street, Anywhere, showing them the marks you’d made with the razorblade.
Don’t you understand? you said. Shouted. I hated myself. I wanted to die.
They didn’t understand. They left, the door slamming. Like the door of the garden shed. Or a coffin. The funeral was over before they’d even put you in it.
But a part of you did die last Thursday.
And I came back.
I see how you look at me.
They don’t call him Brick these days. He doesn’t call himself that. The Arsehole Formerly Known as Brick got a job in the local shoe shop. No one likes grownups with nicknames, so he’s plain old Bill now. Boomers don’t take us seriously as it is and Brick was a bully’s name. A hero on the football field. In the Court of the Changing Rooms. That kind of shit doesn’t fly in the real world. Bill found that out last Friday night. He was polishing the shoes in the window display. Then he locked up shop for the manager and got on his bicycle.
In a swirl of dirt and leaves, I followed him. The first time he looked back, his pug of a face squinting in the gloom, I saw the misgiving in his eyes. The dark comes on quick in winter. So did I, hissing through the trees beside the cycle path. He sensed something then. He pedalled a little faster, through the cut towards the railway bridge. Keeping up wasn’t a problem; I’m empty enough to ride on the wind. In some way I was attached to him. I could see his trophies gathering dust on a shelf, a reminder of past glories. It pulled me on like a rope, passing through whatever lies behind the world and pushes against the emptiness. The next time Brick—let’s call him that for old time’s sake—glanced over his shoulder, he saw me. Saw something, at least. Swooping under the streetlights, invisible, I saw him look up. His eyes were full of sodium, circles of fear. I gusted towards him, viciously. He had to cover his face. He let go of the handlebars to bat at the swirling grit.
You hit us, I said out of the darkness.
His bike pranged. It crashed into the wall of the bridge. Flesh met tarmac with a satisfying thump. There was nothing to him but meat. Brick groaned, but he didn’t sprawl there long. He had bigger concerns. A troubling of the branches above. A flicker of the streetlights. A voice that belonged to no one. One he might’ve recognised, if he’d had time.
When we got home and took off our shirt, your shoe had left an imprint on our back.
“Please,” Brick said. He thrust out a hand, flailing at the murk. No one can fend off a shadow. “It was years ago. We were in school . . . ”
Sweet that he remembered.
It isn’t over. It never is.
Brick was crying. He covered his face. There wasn’t much there to see. Only the bridge. The trees and the night. A spindle of dirt. I pushed against the wind. Against his face. A damp patch spread across the front of his trousers. Thank God I couldn’t smell it.
In the distance, the rattle of a train.
“He was looking at me in the changing room!”
That isn’t true. It’s what you tell yourself.
Adam was too scared to look. I know that. I was there. How the tiles, the noise would press down on us. Every snap of a towel a bullet in our ears. Adam thought that if he looked a siren would go off above his head, flashing and wailing.
And everyone would know.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
Brick was climbing to his feet. Fear will do that to a person. He was brawny once. Much like that day on the playing field, Adam still wouldn’t have stood a chance. But Adam didn’t have the wind on his side. It was a simple thing to blast the bastard over the wall. I’d timed it just right. The six o’clock train slammed into Brick’s tumbling body at a hundred miles per hour. He burst apart like a melon. His spine went one way carrying his head. His legs another.
When I found him beside the track, he looked uglier than usual.
Still, he tried to crawl away in the undergrowth.
He didn’t get very far.
Soon after that day on the playing field we started to use the razor. One night we got up and went to the garden shed. Dad was right. We were a waste of space. We’d come to suspect we were different, anyway. When the lads in class talked about girls, boasting about a hundred dirty things, Adam, well . . . we found we had nothing to offer. We knew we were supposed to be turned on by it. The other boys were. We could tell by the way they shifted themselves, plucked at their trousers. Chuckled and coughed. It became clear that they were the ones turning us on. Making us hard. Burning our cheeks.
Desire has a smell, I think. So does fear. We must’ve stunk of it. That’s where the idea of the siren started, invisible and waiting. We started pushing it down. Burying it. Us. We started to change the subject. Then, when Brick laughed at us—virgin!—we avoided the guy talk completely. We went to the library. Hid in books. It’s the story of a thousand boys like us, Adam. It’s corny as fuck. But none of their stories are like ours.
We thought we could get it out of us. We thought if we linked the thought to pain that it would fix us. God was useless. There was nothing in His book but blame. We gritted our teeth. We sat in the dark. Drew steel across our skin. We wept, holding ourselves when no one else would.
Make it stop. Take it away.
It isn’t always God who listens.
Blood and tears speckled the floorboards. Enough over time to make a mosaic.
All that hate. It had to go somewhere.
I’m stood here on this rainy street, remembering. Why not? I’m a memory, after all. Well, a little more perhaps, seeing as I get to even the score. It’s something to do with fear, I think. And the blood, which gave me substance. I’m half-shadow and half-air, but litter flutters to a stop when it hits me. Puddles ripple when I pass by. The more I remember, the more the world allows for my presence, it seems. It makes sense that blood would build a bridge from the emptiness. The blood is the life. I read that somewhere. Saw it in some dumb film. Blood is where I came from, that’s for sure. Leaking in drops. Fed on tears. Blended with dust on the shed floor. With rags and dried paint. The husks of dead insects. A nightmare brewed behind doors.
I got bored of watching you in the restaurant. All your laughter, the way you stroke your throat as you talk to Miles or whoever. It’s such a come on and he knows it. His eyes never leave your face. He thinks it’s happening, first date or no. When he pays the bill and you exit, his arm hangs around your shoulder. I whirl through the rain and the headlights of cars to follow you. That’s what shadows do.
At the door of your apartment—you’re such a cliché—I watch you from the stairwell as Miles leans in to kiss you. He touches your hair. Looks into your eyes. If you weren’t so distracted, you’d notice me there, a not-quite-solid shape. A puckering of angles and corners. Of course you’re not paying attention. Jealousy, cold and bright, stabs through me. How fucked up is that? Part of me envies you. Part wants to rip the guy away from you, hear his bones crack against the hallway wall. What happened to my say in things? Six months ago you’d have gone to the shed for even thinking like this. We were together. Together.
It was all that counsellor’s fault. Rachel Marsh.
When did it begin, the pain? She asked us.
Adam, you’re kissing him back. He’s taller than you. His weight presses you against the door. The edge of the frame is between your buttocks like a promise of what’s to come. And I’m thinking about the counsellor, Marsh. Whether I should pay her a visit as well. The throbbing in my head makes it hard to focus. When there’s heightened emotion like this it becomes uncomfortable. It makes perfect sense, seeing as I am you. Or was. I can feel you growing hard. The same way you can feel Miles. You shiver at his size through his jeans, another unspoken promise.
“Miles . . . ” you say. “I’m not—”
That’s when the lightbulb shatters, dousing the hallway in darkness. I don’t want to see.
“What the hell?” Miles says. His jacket is up, shielding you from the flying glass. I guess that you like that.
Still . . .
“Miles, I’m not ready for this.”
Miles takes a breath. You expect snark. Resentment. Maybe he’ll call you a timewaster like that other guy did. Instead, he smiles and strokes your cheek.
“They hurt you too, huh?”
You’re no longer thinking. You turn to unlock the door and you drag him inside.
I’m a whirlwind. I’m a fury. I’m out of here. The hallway window shatters, not that there’s anyone around to hear it. And I take to the night.
I am not going to watch you fuck.
Anger is a magnet, drawing me to the source. You better believe I was pissed off. And the truth is the both of us know where the pain began. When you were six years old. When you saw him punch Mum for the first time. Years later, you thought of it yourself, the razor between our fingers in the shed, slick and red. We wondered, our sixteen-year-old self (selves), whether we should take it to in the room upstairs. We stood there, watching him sleep, his throat bared. It was only our fist closing on the blade that forced us to step away. To forget the whole thing. It doesn’t matter now. Whether we imagined it or not. It’s in us. It’s a thing. And it gives me a foothold in the emptiness.
I roll with the wind. That’s how I find myself flying along the freeway of all places. Lights leave an orange smear above. The shutter speed of passing bridges. Click. Click. Click. Dad is driving home.
He’s the boss at the factory these days, grey haired, fat bellied. Respected. He gets the job done. He’s changed his shirt. He made sure to pack a fresh one in his briefcase that morning. He took a shower in the hotel. It’s the only way to be sure there’s no trace of perfume on him. Mum would notice, he thinks. She doesn’t know about the girls downtown. At least she tells herself that. Dad believes he’s doing what any man would. That it’s part of who he is. It’s funny when you think about it. He sees his needs as reasonable when he’s cheating on his wife.
You’re the pervert, remember.
Dad is listening to Elton John (‘Tiny Dancer’, I think), crooning along without a shred of irony. Elton! It doesn’t help my mood. On the one hand, I lack the bond you have. You took that shit with you, Adam. Your daddy issues. On the other, I’m grossed out by looking into his soul. Seeing all his dirty little secrets.
That’s where Brick comes in handy. Or the mess I made of him. I have the juice to fuck with the car radio. The music washes out in static. There’s the whine between stations. Then Dad is listening to his own voice. His Bible bashing over the airwaves.
“It’s against nature. God. You represent the death of the human race.”
He said this to you, glaring over the pages of the Book in his lap. You’d gone to see him with beers on Saturday, tried to talk to him about it. I can’t help who I am et cetera. He didn’t even ask you to sit down. Blamed you for all of the evils in the world. The destruction of everyone, everything. He called you a plague. His only son. These people . . . they never think about the pain they cause. That it never goes away.
I won’t go away.
“Jesus!”
Dad—your Dad—might well invoke the name of his Lord and Saviour. I am filling up the car. I am shadow uncoiling, a black serpent in the cramped space. Just like I uncoiled in the shed. He thinks I’m smoke, I guess. First thing he does is slam on the brakes. Then, one hand on the wheel, he tries to roll down the driver’s side window. But I’m holding it fast. He gives a wail as darkness engulfs the car. The streetlights, the motorway eclipsed.
The radio squeals. Half music. Half bigotry.
Homophobia. The greatest hits.
There’s a second, a moment of regret. He thinks about you, Adam. Honestly he does. Sorry. The wheels screech on tarmac—he’s struggling to get control—and the car slews to one side. I don’t think I can hold him like this for much longer. I’m only shadow and wind. So I let myself go. I’m a whirlwind of blood and glass (I kept the shards from the hallway window), exploding in the car.
Dad screams. I’m in his cheeks. His eyes.
We are a flower of flame as the car slams through the railings of the freeway.
Acceptance is a terrible thing.
“Learn to love who you are,” Rachel Marsh said, sat in her plush green armchair in the office.
Marsh was the kind of woman that people admire. She looked crisp in her nice grey suit. Marsh emanated patience. It was an aura around her. She wore just enough make up, but that’s up to her. There was a photo of her with another woman on the desk. They looked happy, but we were never going to be friends. We went there full of shadows. It wasn’t a good starting point for pleasantries.
We were on the couch.
“I hate myself and I want to die.”
We didn’t actually say that. Kurt Cobain said it best. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind us borrowing it, considering. Hey, maybe I could ask him. But then I’m in the emptiness and Kurt . . . well, Kurt is really gone.
“Hate is a poison, Adam,” Marsh told us. “It seeps into every corner of your life, spoiling everything. Most of all you.”
Soon after that you locked up the shed. The one in your mind as well. You threw away the razorblades. They’d become blunt. It was hard to see which bits were blood and which rust. You hadn’t used them in quite a while. Into the trash they went, wrapped in newspaper and a faint, frightening hope.
Soon enough, we found ourselves in bars. Under neon. In strange beds. We were trying. Under every sweep of laser, with every discarded condom, you were growing brighter.
And I was fading, Adam. You didn’t care. You left me behind. Dust. A pile of rags. A mosaic of blood and tears. A husk. That was me.
But Marsh was right all the same.
Yeah, she was right about that.
Poison.
Somewhere. Some town. Miles is walking home from your apartment. It’s dawn. We’re in that dull grey hour that seeps into everything. The suburbs smell of dog shit and dew. Miles left you sleeping. He has to go to work. The truth is he’s pleased with himself. You can see it in his step. Miles really likes you. That just won’t do.
The streetlights are blinking as he reaches the underpass. Blink. Blink. Blink. One by one they go out. Through the pools of shadow I drift. Low to the ground. Clothed in litter. If it weren’t for the traffic, Miles would hear me, the tinkle of glass in the wind. Oh, I’m more than that now. More than blood. Than hate. The car crash was fuel too, you see. Your Dad’s scream has sharpened me. But I wait until Miles is halfway through the underpass, passing graffiti that wishes him dead, and then I make my move.
Shadows engulf the underpass. I engulf the underpass. At first, Miles doesn’t notice it. Concrete makes everything grey. The tunnel stinks of piss and death. If Miles runs, he could probably break through the web of shadows. I’m not strong enough to hold him. I have to move fast. Still, there’s a certain satisfaction in watching it dawn on him, the same way it dawned on Brick and Dad. His eyes grow wide. A curtain falls over the tunnel. There is no light at the end.
Smoke? he wonders. Sweat glitters on his brow. He doesn’t know what to do. When he turns back he sees me. Me and my shadow. Blood and dirt floods the underpass. Rags weave in the wind. An odd spot of paint. The chips of glass that pass for my eyes. The fire of my smile.
“Adam..?”
He knows I’m not Adam.
He isn’t yours, I tell him. He’s mine.
Miles is trying to speak. There’s a sound in there somewhere. It’s no surprise that he can’t get it out.
I burst into flames. I carry the car crash with me now. I’m feeling much stronger. Brighter. If I push, I could fill up the underpass. The shadows have him cornered. If I push, flames will rip through the tunnel. It is all over for Miles.
Grief will bring you back to me, Adam. All the fear. All the hate.
This time, you’ll never leave.
If I push—
“Stop this.”
And I see you. Adam. The real you. You’re standing in your jeans. An open shirt. You pulled your trainers on without socks. Fuck, you were in a hurry, weren’t you? The emptiness of the bed next to you had you running for the door. You didn’t know what you were going to say to him. You don’t know now.
Oh, Adam.
Miles screams, a shatter of echoes. He tells you to run. To get away. But we’re not listening to him.
You left me, I say. You left me behind.
Fuck, I’m angry. I’m a fucking funnel of fire. I’m a shoeprint on your back. I’m a razorblade in the dark. I’m a pocket Bible in trembling hands. I’m rags and dust and blood and glass. I’m your shadow. Your husk. And you should be afraid of me.
But you only smile.
“No,” you say. “I didn’t.”
Before I can stop you, you step forward. You step forward with your arms spread.
You embrace me.
Us.
The sun has slipped behind the clouds when we walk out of the underpass. Miles is shaking. He winces when I take his hand. We’re a little hot from our tantrum, you see. All the same we know that Miles likes us. Really likes us. Enough to overlook the darkness inside. The blood we’ve spilled. The shit we never wanted. The poison.
We smile at him. He smiles back, uncertain.
He understands. We know he does.
It isn’t over. It never is.
Originally published in The Horror Collection: LGBTQIA+ Edition, edited by Kevin J. Kennedy.
