Fiend - A Short Story

“I knew it was coming back for me. It didn’t get me when I was a kid, and it came back. It was that bitch from the church.”

“Jesus Christ, Buck.”

Buck didn’t need to see his uncle’s face to know the look on it.

That fucker Matthew, or whoever had said it, had it all wrong. Buck could remember so clearly the day he had stumbled across the verse. Stumbled wasn’t the right word. He had been led there by the Holy Ghost, across the room to the KJV and right to that page. To hear anybody else tell it, he had just flipped the old Bible open and pointed to the first thing that came up, but how else could it have been so perfectly fit to his struggles?

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Technically speaking, it was both his right and left eyes that were causing offense, but the King James hadn’t said anything about the left eye. The only other part it mentioned was the member, and Buck hadn’t offended anybody with that in quite some time. One eye suited him fine. He’d never have thought he could do both of them.

Buck had gone and done both of them anyway. It took an eight-dollar bottle of bourbon to work up the courage, and he always overdid things when he was drinking. Exceeded his limitations. The first sip burned more than he was expecting, and he remembered why he’d stopped touching the stuff.

“She was here to test me, like the devil did to Job,” Buck said with a yawn. He sat up reached behind himself, feeling for the pillow before awkwardly fluffing it and leaning back again. After so many weeks, he had gotten used to the hospital bed. His uncle had him on the couch, and he hadn’t been able to sleep last night.

“It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I can still see her. It’s worse. Used to, I could close my eyes and make her go away.”

The girl had come up from Byers, or someplace else down the road. She sat in the pew right in front of him. The first time she came to the church, it was a hot July day. He could remember sitting behind her, gazing at her shoulders the back of her neck. It took everything he had to sit still through the sermon. The rest of the summer, she’d come back with her skirts and her shoulders to torment him.

“You mighta gotten your mama’s spiritual convictions, but you sure as hell got your daddy’s brains,” his uncle said.

“It wasn’t my fault. You just don’t understand.”

“You got drunk and stuck yourself with a spoon. That about cover it?”

“I was doing so good. I had to do something.”

“Just shut the hell up,” his uncle said, punctuating each syllable with exasperation. Buck heard his uncle's hand slap against the table. “I can’t keep sitting here listening to this shit, and I can’t care for a cripple. I’m damn near one myself.”

“I didn’t ask you to take me in. I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.”

“I had to carry you to the bathroom last night just so you didn't shit yourself on the couch.”

“I’ve got a demon,” Buck said. “Same as my daddy.”

The chair cushions sighed as his uncle shifted his weight and stood up. He was a tall man, tall enough that most people would have noticed that first if it weren’t for his eyes. Half the time the sockets looked to be as hollow as Buck’s were now, but you always got the feeling that they were looking right into you. After the eyes, you’d notice the beard, since it was just about the only other thing on his face that could be seen. Buck supposed he was still a tall man, but part of him was grateful that he never had to look at those eyes again.

“I know your daddy had his problems,” his uncle said. “But you can’t be blaming everybody else for what you did. You say you’re a man, you take responsibility for yourself. That’s what a man does. You don’t need to make it some big thing about demons and God and judgment.”

“I need to take a piss."

“You know where to go. I’ve got things to do. I can't just sit here with you all day.”

A few seconds later, the front door opened and slammed shut. Buck could hear his uncle’s boots in the gravel through the window, then a truck door opened and slammed. The engine snarled, and the truck backed out of the driveway then disappeared down the highway.

The house fell quiet. Buck got off the couch and fell to the ground. He was still shaky on his legs, and he crawled forward, feeling for the coffee table, until he made his way down the hall to the bathroom and pulled himself onto the toilet. Properly positioned, he felt himself drifting into the kinds of deep thought that only come to a man in the bathroom. Like always, his mind went to her.

After she came to church, he could never concentrate on the sermons. He’d go home thinking about her, getting angrier and angrier. Come Saturdays, he’d start to lose his focus, knowing she’d be there the next morning. It was too much. If she was going to look like that, maybe she deserved whatever she was asking him for.

That’s when he knew it was the devil. He was a good man. He was born again. He’d been made clean, traded whiskey for Jesus. Christian men didn’t think these things, not unless they were being tempted. Buck had made up his mind to shut her out, so he wouldn't do the things she was tempting him to do.

The house was quiet when he crawled back down the hall to the couch. He closed his eyes and started to drift off. It always struck him odd that he still closed his eyes to sleep. Her shape came back to him, and he felt the same rage and lust she gave him every Sunday. He didn't want to go with her, but she pulled him along, and he fell asleep thinking all the things she wanted him to think.

There was a sound like a door slamming, and Buck jumped up. He could see, and he grabbed at his eyes. Everything felt solid and healthy. He was sitting up in a bed now, and instead of his uncle's house, he looked around at the room he slept in twenty years ago.

He remembered this night, when everything changed. There was a heavy dread in the air. He didn’t want to be here again. For a long time, he was able to shut this dream out with whiskey. Later, he went to the altar, and that worked almost as well. It was only after she started coming to the church that his dreams kept bringing him back to this night.

Buck's parents were arguing downstairs. He knew how the fight would go. It was always the same. When his mama started screaming, Buck heard the sound that he knew would follow. In his childhood, he had thought it sounded like the door slamming again, only impossibly louder. Eventually, he came to understand that it was a gunshot. Even worse was the silence that followed, and the retrospective knowledge that the scream was the last time he would hear his mama's voice.

Your daddy’s got a demon. That’s what his mama had always said. The man came home so many nights smelling like whiskey. Buck knew the smell of whiskey because his daddy had given him his first sip. Some nights, he smelled like perfume, but not his mama's.

The silence was broken by the sounds of slow, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Just like every time it replayed in his head, Buck got up from the bed. He knew he had to leave. Even as a child, he knew something wasn't right.

He went out the window. His bedroom was on the second story, and Buck tumbled down into the bushes, landing hard on his side. His arm was crushed underneath him, but he only let out a single cry when he fell into the bushes at the edge of the house. His eyes were hot with tears, but he stayed silent, hidden in the leaves.

Above, the stars blinked down at him. They were the eyes of the angels, his mama had told him once, and each one of us has a special guardian. Don’t be afraid at night. Just look up, and know the angels are watching you.

He saw his daddy’s silhouette lean out of the window. Buck looked past him to the stars, praying silently that he wouldn’t be seen. His daddy sighed and leaned back inside, and Buck waited for the final door slam. He held his crushed arm tenderly and stared at the stars. When it finally happened, and the demon took his daddy, Buck's vision went blank again.

“Who's there?” he asked, startling awake. His voice was dry, and it cracked like like a teenager’s. He coughed. His uncle's house was silent. He felt that same dread from his dream, and he shivered.

Buck touched his eyes, but felt the eyepads reminding him of their emptiness. The darkness felt choking to him, and he begged God to restore the sight that was just lost to him again in awakening.

He heard roaring, grumbling sounds outside the window, getting louder and softer again and again. The growls came like waves, ebbing and flowing, threatening to break into the house. Buck knew that it was the demon who possessed his daddy and took his mama away. It didn't take him when he was a child, it didn't take him when he started drinking, and it didn't take him when it sent that girl to the church. Now that he was alone and blind, it had finally come to collect.

"Don't you come in here," Buck said to nobody. He had to get out of the house. The air coming in from the window was cool, and he guessed it was nighttime. He needed to get outside and find his angels again.

The door was on the other side of the room, but the window was right by the couch. He turned over and reached for the wall, following it until he came to the window. It was barely big enough for him to fit, but he managed to crawl through and tumble down into the yard. On hands and knees, he crawled out into the grass. The roaring was louder outside.

“You stay the fuck away from me,” he yelled. There was another growl in the distance, getting louder. His demon was coming.

The million eyes of the heavens looked down at him, but he couldn’t return their gaze. He crawled over the grass until his hands met pavement. If he could just make it down the road, he could get to the church. He could find the pastor and beg him to save him, to tell him what to do.

He heard the roar of the demon, snarling behind him. He never saw its eyes, projecting horizontal pillars of light through the night that was hidden to him. When he crawled into the road and the demon finally took him, he found a new darkness, deeper than any he had ever known.

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Photo from Max Pixel