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It was insane. It was impossible and insane. It had to be a joke. It was a joke. Surely? Probably. No. If it was a joke, it was in horrible taste. But it wasn’t a joke. Cole knew it wasn’t a joke. Even if he had pissed some people off, nobody hated him enough to go to this level of ruin-his-life awful. Nobody cared enough. And even if they did, would they want to do him bodily harm?
Why did you feed the beast? Why did you feed the beast? Why did you feed the beast? Why did you feed the beast?
The whispers, so quiet, yet deafening, reverberated through Cole’s mind. A perpetual maelstrom of impending madness.
There was a tightness in Cole’s chest, restricting, suffocating, wrapping around his throat — oh yeah. He should probably breathe. That was a thing that normal human people did.
His inhale was shaky, and for all he tried to fill his lungs with oxygen, it still felt as if there was not enough air around him. He ignored the tremble of his hands. He was not losing his bearings. He couldn’t afford to, not now. He was at the brink of something he had wanted for ages, a project he had put so much of himself into, that he had brought Mark and D into. It wouldn’t do to lose face. Not only that, but the implications if he were to lose his grip on reality now, no. Not an option. Cole clicked the joints in his fingers, the movement reflexive, as if releasing the tension would calm him. Surprise surprise, it did not.
“Gods,” he muttered, “what am I going to do?”
His eyes drifted, slowly, back to the place that he had been avoiding. The tape. That fucking tape. And the paper, with those damned words and its list of ghosts — were they ghosts? They haunted him, that was for sure. As his gaze lingered on the tape, the infernal breathing sprang unbidden to his mind. The raspy inhale and exhale — did it even come from a human?
“Of course it came from a human, what the fuck man?” Cole said, out loud. He turned his gaze away from the tape, opting instead to stare at the part of the table that wasn’t covered by weird, haunted shit that showed up without warning. For a brief moment Cole wondered if his problems would be solved if he just hit his head hard enough. Maybe he’d run into a wall, or something. All of this was just some whacky coma dream, where the solution was to bang his head against the table. Problem solved. Double concussion. No more spooky crap.
“Oh yeah, just concuss yourself, because that’s what sane and normal people do to get rid of their problems,” Cole said sarcastically, his words heard by no-one.
The table in front of him started to swim in his vision, a hazy mess that hurt his eyes. Oh yeah, blinking. That was another normal human thing that he had forgotten to do. He blinked, if only to get rid of the burning sensation behind his eyelids.
Cole glanced wearily at the hands of his wristwatch. It told him that it was a reasonable 3:30 am.
“Yup. Yup yup yup yup,” Cole mumbled, standing up from the chair he had planted himself in so many hours ago, “time to sleep.”
He had no illusions that everything would be fixed with a good night’s rest, but at least if he managed to sleep, he would be able to defend himself better against whoever was coming for him. If it could be described as a “who” at all. When Cole eventually fell into his bed, fully clothed, he tried very hard not to think about what he would do if what was coming was anything less than human.
As it turned out, Cole needn’t have worried about inhuman entities in the night who could cause him harm. What was the saying? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t? Betrayal will come from the place you least expect? Whatever the aphorism, nothing could have prepared Cole for the greatest misfortune to ever befall him, at the hands of the one he least expected: himself.
Or maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. The general trend of his behaviour seemed to indicate that his own profound stupidity (sending his address to total fucking strangers ) was to be his eventual downfall.
Sleep hadn’t come easily to Cole, and what little he did manage to get was uneasy, marked with dreams of whispers and faceless people in the night, too many eyes in the dark. When he woke, it felt as if he had run a marathon while having bricks thrown at him. Wholly unpleasant, even with all things considered. But, that was not to be the worst of it. To his own surprise, Cole found himself incredibly hungry upon waking up, presumably worrying about being haunted and forgetting to eat would do that to a man. After an hour of trying to drag himself out of the bed, he stumbled down the stairs into his kitchen, stuck dubious- looking leftovers in the microwave, took out a fork with which to eat it, and sat down at the kitchen counter.
Even while sitting in a hospital bed, the right side of his head throbbing with pain, Cole couldn’t figure out what had happened.
Was it the whirring of the microwave, lulling him back to sleep? Was it the sun that came through the kitchen window, falling on the table in just the right way to heat his body comfortably? Was it both of these, and the fact that Cole decided to fall asleep with his fork clutched in his fist, prongs sticking upwards, angled just right? Surely, his self-preservation instincts should have kicked in. Surely, his body should have reacted faster. Surely this was impossible, and the fact that Cole had jolted awake, prongs of the fork stuck deep into his right eye, was somehow a nightmare.
Whatever it was, it hurt. No, it was way beyond hurt. The pain was excruciating. How he managed to call an ambulance and explain with any coherence what happened — well. That was between him and whatever cosmic deity had it out for him.
Mark stood up from the chair in the hospital waiting room, the look on his face a perfect mixture of befuddlement, concern, and… was that humour?
“I don’t mean to be insensitive my man,” he said as Cole approached, “but what the fuck? How did you stab out your own eye? ”
Cole couldn’t be bothered to give any substantial emotive response. He had gone through enough humiliation trying to explain to the doctor with the raised eyebrow that yes, the holes in his eye were fork-shaped, and no, it wasn’t deliberate and no, he didn’t need to see a psychologist. Well that wasn’t technically true. Maybe he should go see a therapist. But Cole didn’t have the time for that, so he filed it under ‘For Later Consideration’.
“Please,” Cole asked, trying not to sound like he was someone who had stabbed out his own eye with a fork, “can you just drive me home?”
“Okay, okay okay,” Mark held up his hands in a show of peace, “I get it.”
Cole wished he didn’t have to call Mark, but the doctor had insisted he have someone drive him home, someone he knew and trusted. Mark was the first person to come to mind. He pressed down the guilt and apprehension that creeped into his stomach, and hoped that the eye thing would keep Mark from asking about anything else. Like why he hadn’t been showing up for recordings. Or answered texts. Or anything else.
The walk to Mark’s car was silent. Cole could practically hear the gears in his friend’s mind whirring with thought. What to ask, what not to ask. When to ask the things he shouldn’t ask. Cole took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the throbbing headache that had still not subsided.
Once they were in the car, silence only lasted for two minutes before Mark turned to him.
“A fork?” he asked incredulously.
“A fork,” Cole exhaled.
“How?”
“Who’s to say.”
“You!” Mark said, and Cole tried to ignore the concern he heard creeping at the corners of Mark’s one-word inquiries.
“I’ve… always thought cyclops were cool?” He replied lamely. Hopefully the humour would be enough to stop Mark from thinking something was actually wrong. Well, there was something wrong. But Cole didn’t think Mark needed to know. Not yet, at least.
“Seriously?” Mark scoffed.
“What?”
“You get your eye stabbed out, are given an eyepatch to wear, and your first thought was cyclops? Not pirate?”
Cole blinked (or was it winked, now?) at Mark in disbelief. “That’s your main take-away here?”
“Well,” Mark turned his eyes fully back onto the road, “you aren’t going to say what’s actually up. Being cold and broody is more pirate than cyclops anyway.”
Cole let out a chuckle despite the pain in his head. He was thankful, for the small amount of normality Mark allowed in the bizarre situation. Slowly, he let his head rest against the car window, his good eye taking in the neighbourhood as they drove along.
Then something caught Cole’s eye. A dog, at the side of the road.
“Mark, stop the car.”
Why did he ask that?
“What?”
“Mark, just stop the car!”
“Okay, okay. Give me a second.”
Mark pulled over to the side of the road, and before Cole could rationalise anything he was doing, he opened up the door and got out of the car. He could still see the dog, standing on the other side of the road. It was a black labrador, unremarkable. Or it would have been unremarkable, if Cole wasn’t filled with the distinct impression that it was looking at him.
“Cole?” Mark called, not even trying to mask his concern.
“Gimme a sec,” Cole replied under his breath, though it was uncertain if Mark had even heard him reply.
Slowly, as if pulled by some magnetic force, Cole felt his legs move towards the dog. It still did nothing, save for keeping its eyes trained on Cole. In the back of his mind, recollections of the exchange story concerning Perogi the dog came to mind, but it was faint, and didn’t matter. Cole walked until he was in front of the dog, crouched down to look it right in its eyes. They were dark, swirling pools of black. Unbidden, a thought sprung to his mind.
“I should give you my eye,” Cole said to the dog.
The dog said nothing.
He did not know where it came from, but Cole was filled with the conviction that he needed to remove his eye patch, reach with his fingers, and remove his eye from its socket. The why didn’t matter. He knew why. He needed to give it to the dog. It could help him, he thought.
Something whispered in his mind, “An eye for me, an eye for you.”
“Cole!”
Mark’s familiar hand landed firmly on Cole’s shoulder, a rock, solid in a raging storm, and Cole was yanked from whatever reverie had entrapped him.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, um,” Cole glanced at the dog. It was panting, a smile plastered over its face. Eyes a deep, chocolate brown. “I just thought I recognised the dog from a poster I saw somewhere.”
“Oh? And is it that dog?”
“No,” Cole tore his eye away from the dog, and looked up at his friend, forcing a smile to his face, “I must have been mistaken.”
Mark made a noise of assent. “Righty then. Let’s get you home, captain.” He winked audaciously, and Cole felt something within him loosen up.
“Aye aye,” he replied, and followed Mark back to the car.
“An eye for me, an eye for you.”
Cole had work to do.