“She made a pass at me,” Kelly replied, not bothering to turn around from whatever heavy textbook he was busting though.
“Right,” Matthew said, and dug through a laundry basket at the foot of his bed for a t-shirt and jeans. “Fuck I’m late,” he murmured.
“Better you than her...” Kelly said, tick-tocking a finger over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the textbook.
Matthew continued dressing, saying nothing, letting his non-reply dangle. When he glanced Kelly’s way again, his friend was turned around, giving Matthew his full attention, his dark eyes staring punctuated expletives.
“I was kidding, of course. Jesus, don’t tell me...”
Matthew laughed and shook his head. “Nah,” he said, then gave an embarrassed smile. “But I honestly wouldn’t mind... I mean, obvious practicalities aside.”
Kelly frowned and turned back around. “There’s plenty of time, Matthew.”
“I know,” he said. Then... oddly... forgot what he was doing. Going to class, he thought, but his blood ran cold. “I...” he started, staring around the dorm room, confusion coursing through his brain like black smoke. “Kelly...”
“There’s plenty of time, Matthew,” his friend said again, although this time his voice was muffled and slurred, as if speaking with a numbed tongue.
Matthew started to ask why he was repeating himself when Kelly turned around. But it wasn’t Kelly. Or, it was, but this Kelly had no face. It was just... blood. A face of blood. The large naked teeth were slicked with it, the bulging eyes piercingly white and roving.
“Kelly,” Matthew said, eerily calm. “Your face.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kelly replied, the words gurgling. He wiped at it lazily, smearing blood on his hands, then his pants as he rubbed his sticky hands against them. “You too,” he said calmly.
Matthew raised fingertips to his own face, felt spongy wet tissue and tight, pulsing threads of muscle, the hard round edges of bone. Moaning, he ran into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, stared in shock at his face which was no longer a face—the flesh torn away, the pulped tissue seeping droplets into the yellow-stained porcelain of the sink.
“Kelly!” he screamed, terrified, his pulse racing. He looked back toward their room, could see Kelly through the open bathroom door, watched as his friend crawled awkwardly across the shit-brown carpet, one of his legs bent unnaturally so his toes pointed upward, his knee loose, calf and foot dragged behind like dead weight. His collarbone was caved in on one side, his tilting head a gruesome pile of blood and eyes and bone.
“I know, I know...” he said, a guttural laugh coming from somewhere within the gore of his mouth. He sounded exasperated, as if losing his face was the most frustrating part of his morning. “I’m sorry, boy-o,” he said, then collapsed, his jaw working into the carpet. “We’re dead dead dead, man...”
Matthew started for him when the door slammed shut, smacking like a fist into the exposed tissue of his cheek. Matthew felt one of the bones in his face crack and pain surge to his brain. All his senses were screaming that he was damaged, his brain tapping his consciousness, repeating in a steady mantra that something was very wrong... wrong... wrong!
He spun and fell hard to the gray linoleum. He moaned, rolled over, the stained bathroom floor pressing into what remained of his broken face.
Something incredibly heavy landed on top of him, collapsing his lungs, bearing down on his lower spine and the back of his legs. He heard a creaking and raised his eyes toward the door, which had opened a few inches. Matthew prayed it was someone coming to help him help me up please and could only watch in horror as a torn, flayed hand slipped through the narrow opening, stamping smears of red on the wall as it groped for the wall switch.
He started to scream just before the fingers found their target. There was a click...
...and the lights went out.
3
MATTHEW OPENED HIS eyes but could not see. It was black. A thick, rich black pressing against his shock-wide-open eyes, slathering his skin, dampening his hair.
It took him a few moments to place himself, to understand... everything was so fuzzy, his thoughts slow, as if drugged. He was lying on his stomach, his face pressed downward, his cheek mashed against rough concrete. He tried to lift his head, found he could not, so left it where it lay. It felt so damned heavy.
A minute passed. Another. Matthew didn’t move, lying deathly still, trying to piece together what, exactly, had happened to him. He had to think...
He focused his breathing, blinked rapidly, attempted to formulate a clear, sensible idea of where he was.
Then he remembered.
The memories came in a mad rush to the forefront of his mind, freefalling through his rousing consciousness in hot, darting flashes, a lapping wall of flame eating its way to the surface. The horror of it flooded him. The unbelievable, unfathomable realization that he must be lying deep within the collapsed building. The terrible knowledge that above him—on top of him—rested a mountainous heap of bone-crushing weight.
The thought kickstarted a surging panic. A heavy blanket of claustrophobia smothered his brain, his flickering awareness, a defense mechanism built by blind terror. The panic beat against it with tireless, angry fists; a diseased, irate moth with a broken wing, bouncing and bashing against the inside of his skull. Without caution, he tried violently to twist his body free, but realized – in a blinding assault of horror approaching madness – that he was stuck. An object, unimaginably immense, had pinned him down. A fresh wave of terror ignited his nerves aflame and he wanted to scream until his lungs were emptied, lash out at something, anything. But his prone body refused, the synapses in his brain not firing the necessary instructions to his muscles, as if he had been cut off from himself. A dead, crispy butterfly pinned neatly within a boy’s insect collection. He imagined himself inside a frame, hung on a wall like so many other captured insects, awaiting the boy-god’s pleasure.
He gulped in deep breaths and the hysteria began to ebb, the moment of contested interaction between mind and body depleting his strength, allowing Matthew to take a moment to refocus, to calm himself. Stupid! he thought. Do I want to bring the whole building down on my head? He knew he must use greater caution, at least until he had a better handle on his situation.
Fine, fine... I’ll get my shit together. In the meantime, just how bad are we?
He waited for the surge of panic to subside fully. He closely monitored his breathing and kept his body very still, no longer daring to move. As his muscles relaxed and his mind quieted, he recalled a memory from when he was a child. His grandfather, when putting him to bed at night, would shut off the lights, stand by the open door and instruct him softly, his comforting voice so soothing in the dark. “Relax yourself slowly, Matthew. One body part at a time. Start with your toes,” he’d say. “Tell them, very nicely, to go to sleep.”
Matthew, just a small boy, would close his eyes, focus on his toes.
Then he’d think: Go to sleep, toes.
“Good,” his grandfather would say, watching him. “Now, tell your legs. Then your fingers, then your arms, then, finally, your head. Got it?”
Matthew would nod to the shadow by the open door, then, closing his eyes once more, follow the instructions exactly. Goodnight legs, whispering the instructions in his mind. Goodnight fingers... goodnight arms...
He rarely made it to his head.
Matthew decided to use the same technique now in assessing his injuries. Slowly, calmly, he did his best to let the suffocating fear slip away. Then, one-by-one, he began exploring individual areas of his body.
