Onto the Next
“Onto the next. Onto the next.”
Dani went downstairs to find Barry walking around with a flyswatter.
“What are you doing?”
“Extermination.”
“Why do you keep saying, ‘onto the next?’”
Barry’s blue eyes could melt her, but right now he was looking away.
“I’m just killing a few bugs that don’t want to be bugs.”
She laughed. “What?”
He studied her for a second and then looked away and laughed. “I knew you were listening from upstairs and thought I’d be funny.”
She grabbed his face and turned his eyes to hers. “It’s a good thing. I don’t want to find out you’re crazy on the first night we live together.”
He hesitated. “Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
She had just finished her shower and gotten dressed for bed. She had called out, asking if he wanted some Sleepytime tea. He hadn’t answered.
She saw him through the living-room window. He was standing in the glow of the porch light, a shovel in his hand. He brought the shovel over his head and slammed it to the ground. Because of the angle, she couldn’t see what he’d hit, but she thought he scooped something up and carried it away. She waited for him to come inside.
“What were you doing?”
He shrugged. “A bird hit the window. I had to put it out of its misery.”
He was looking away again. She moved over and hugged him.
“You seem distant? Is it because we’re moving too fast?”
He stroked her hair. “Of course not.”
She had been dreaming something about an old man in a hospital bed, when she woke up and reached for him. He wasn’t there.
“Barry?”
There was no answer. She got up and moved down the hall. Something caught her eye out the sliding glass door at the back of his house. A silhouette was coming from the woods. She crouched behind a hutch and watched the silhouette approach. It moved under the rays of the porch light, and she saw it was Barry. He had his shovel again. She waited for him to come inside.
“Did another bird hit the window?”
He jolted. “You scared me.”
She laughed. “Let’s call it even then.”
They were quiet for a few seconds, and then he spoke in a boyish voice. “I had to go into the woods and kill it. It was suffering.”
“What was suffering?”
“The rabbit. It couldn’t move, and it didn’t want to be eaten alive by scavengers.”
Again, they were still, until he spoke. “I can understand if you want to leave.”
She took only a few seconds to decide. “No, I don’t think I could leave you. But I want to talk about this more in the morning.”
“Okay.”
She shook. She could still feel the cold hand.
She felt Barry pull her to him, and the cold hand was gone. She felt safe. “I had a horrible dream.”
“About an old man in a hospital bed?”
She was afraid again. “How do you know?”
“Because that’s how it starts. You love me. You feel empathy for me, and now you have to share my demons or go.”
“I can still go.”
She felt his grip loosen. “Yes.”
She pulled back to him. “I can’t really, even if I tried. Tell me about these demons.”
He sighed. “My father developed Alzheimer’s. While he was in the early stages, he made me promise I’d kill him when it got bad.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Worse than that. I abandoned him. I couldn’t handle seeing him like that, and I didn’t have the guts to kill him. They tell me he lived his last days out of his mind in total horror.”
She hesitated. “And the dream is how it starts?”
“Yes. You can leave now and be at peace, or you can stay, and before the sun rises, you’ll hear the creatures begging to die.”
