Authors: Summer Wigmore
“Mission accomplished, then,” Saint said. “All’s well on the Saintward front. Hang on a sec.” He hadn’t eaten much while he was jobseeking, and his stomach was informing him of that in no uncertain terms. He headed into the lounge, which would have been quietly pleasant if it weren’t for the presence of the Flatmate. Instead it was more sort of… loudly unpleasant.
The hirsute mass was sprawled on the sofa, hopefully asleep. Good, that meant he could ignore him. Saint poked around the kitchen and sighed. Not exactly vast depositories of food going on, here. Cockroaches scuttled from the light. The pile of dishes by the sink was becoming alarming.
“What’s wrong?” Steff asked.
Saint had never quite gotten around to telling his friend exactly how embarrassingly broke he was. If he did, Steff would do that stupid-looking frowny thing he did, he just
knew
it. Not that he could really remember what Steff’s frown looked like any more. Huh. It had been a while.
“My flatmate broke my waffle iron,” Saint said. “Guess it’s just, uh, Greek yoghurt for me today.” Was Greek yoghurt what rich people ate? It totally was. That and caviar, though hopefully not at once. “And baguettes,” he added, in a stroke of inspiration.
“What,” said his flatmate from the sofa, indignantly. Saint turned to look at him, a little reluctantly; the Flatmate wasn’t really the kind of person Saint would’ve chosen to associate with if he’d been given the choice. He just… hung out all day venting his anger by playing the same Xbox games over and over again, killing endless NPCs, the controller cradled in his unnervingly huge hands. Plus he’d hooked up with at least three women in the time Saint had been here, and Saint hadn’t hooked up with
any
. “We don’t have a waffle iron.” The Flatmate paused. “Do you
want
a waffle iron?” he said, simpering a little. “You’re under my roof, I need to make sure you’re treated hospitable.”
Saint rested his phone against his shoulder for a second. “Shh, sane people are talking,” he said, and held it back up to his ear, turning his back on the Flatmate’s irritated grimace. Never irritated
enough
, though – Saint could annoy him endlessly and the Flatmate was never irritated
enough
and it creeped Saint out a little, not that he’d ever admit that.
“Saint,” Steff said, in that sanctimonious preachy voice he used nowadays, ugh. “Are you being a jerk to your flatmate again?”
“Yes, well… ” Anyone who saw him this low and desperate bloody well
deserved
him being a bastard to them, even if they were actually weirdly nice guys that took him in when he didn’t deserve it and – pride demanded it, okay? “What can I say. Seeing a stricken kitchen appliance wounds me right to the core!” He struck his chest. “That tragic caterwauling you hear? It is my heart, rending in two. My very cardiac muscles are weeping as we speak.”
“Operating under the admittedly viable theory that if I let you keep talking, you’ll never stop,” Steff said, “let’s meet up later, okay, yes, done –”
“Traffic!” Saint said promptly. “Can’t. Traffic. Braving the streets at fiveish is insane.” Not that he had a car.
“Take a
bus
, idiot.”
A bus…
“Saint,” Steff was saying, and then more urgently, “
Saint
,” and Saint forced himself to pay attention, blearily. He was swaying, the room too big, somehow, too strange, black spots swarming at the edge of his vision. He reached out and gripped the counter, hard, hard enough to make his knuckles white with the strain.
“Sorry,” he rasped. Just. Buses. What the hell? Why would Steff just mentioning buses make him feel that terrified and broken and lost? That happened with people who’d suffered trauma – they’d be triggered by something reminding them of the traumatic incident, but – nothing traumatic had happened to him lately –
A hand rested heavily on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” the Flatmate asked, head far too close, and Saint jerked away.
“Leave me
alone
!”
He yelled it far too loud, nearly screamed it. It echoed around the room. The Flatmate took a step back with his hands held up peaceably, and heaved a sigh. He looked… disappointed. Disappointed in an annoying, douchebaggy way, of course, but it still gave Saint a pang of guilt, remembering the disapproval in Steff’s voice. Saint had… difficulty trusting people, sometimes. He should probably apologise.
“Are you okay?” the Flatmate asked again, eyes wide with concern.
“Shut up,” Saint snapped at him. “… By which I mean sorry, yeah, I’m fine, sorry. Sorry, mate,” he said again, to his phone this time. He wondered if Steff had heard him yell. Probably.
“Yes, you said. What’s wrong?”
“Just… ” Buses. And that really shouldn’t have been terrifying, buses were the least terrifying thing in the world, but… “I just remembered my nightmare, that’s all.” His hands were shaking, a little.
“You had a nightmare?”
“Obviously!” He winced at how that came out, which must have been a lot more angrily and a lot less laconically than he meant it to, because Steff went all quiet. The Flatmate lumbered back into the lounge. Saint gripped the counter harder and took calming breaths. “Yeahhhh, suppose I owe you an explanation after that lack of composure there.”
“Mmmm,” Steff said. “Yes, quite. You very nearly showed signs of actual emotions. For shame. Do better next time.”
“There wasn’t a girl, this morning.”
“What? But… ” It was weird how Steff could still sound so lost sometimes, even all grown up and clever and insufferable. “But you said there was.”
“Well, you can’t rely on what
I
say, pet, I’m as shifty as a Shift key that’s decided on a life of crime. There was a girl and she – she was beautiful but beautiful in… ” How to describe it? “In strange ways.”
A pause. “Eh?”
“It was… There was something about the way she stood – I mean, sat, mainly. Uh, we were on a bus… ” The girl sitting across the aisle from him like she belonged there, staring at him with her wide dark eyes like pools of night and – gods, that was the most overdramatic description in the world but it
fit
, that was the problem. She’d been all sharp-angled, too much so, all the over-exaggerated beauty of a supermodel but taken even further, past the point of still looking human. Still far too captivating, all the same. He searched for words. “It was a dream, okay? You know how things work in dreams. She was just
wrong
.”
“Okay, following so far. Wrong naked girl.”
Saint grinned. “In any other context a rather pleasant-sounding scenario,” he said. “She was… she had all this long white hair, and that was fine, but then I looked into her eyes and they had black in them.”
The Flatmate made a surprised little grunting sound. Saint ignored him. From Steff there was nothing but a confused pause, and then, “Most people’s eyes have –”
“Solid black. Black all the way through. No pupil, no… iris? No iris, really. No colour at all, just this black blankness.” He half-hugged himself, absentmindedly, wrapping his arm around his chest. “It was terrifying.”
“Okay,” Steff said, and then, after a pause, “Sorry? I mean, it sounds like it was… unpleasant?”
“
Yes
,” Saint snapped. His friend was talking warily, like he wasn’t quite sure yet whether this was some odd joke that Saint was pulling. Which – fair enough, but. “She wasn’t
human
, see. Forgive me if I find that a little off-putting.”
“Are you okay?”
Saint forced himself to relax out of the rigid curl he’d tensed into, straightening his hunched shoulders, letting go of the counter. His nails had dug little gouges into the wood. “Naturally I am,” he said easily, “I’m lovably fearless. What the hell’s so important about this sudden urge for socialising, anyway? You could’ve just texted me, you know. That tends to cut down on unnecessary waking-me-up-unhealthily-early, which has been scientifically proven to cut down on grumpyface Saint. Then everyone can go on with their everyday lives of frolicking with kittens, unconcerned, little knowing the catastrophe they so narrowly avoided.”
“Four in the afternoon,” Steff said stiffly. “That does not count as early to any reasonable person. What the hell have you been
doing
? Living it up, yes, message received on that front, but. Jesus. At least take something for your hangover, okay?”
“I’m not hungover.”
“Well take something for your nightmares, then.”
“Night
mare
,” Saint said, in the interests of correctness.
Steff actually tutted, bless his darling little heart. “That’s what I said.”
“No – nightmare, singular. It’s not like it’s some embarrassing bad habit, having nightmares all the time. This is the first. The grand premiere of Dreams Involving Scary Naked Alien Women, one night only, popcorn eight-fifty a box, buy tickets now!” He made a grandiose gesture, before realising that of course Steff couldn’t see it and letting his hand fall back to his side. “Hopefully,” he added, “there won’t be a sequel.”
“They’re never as good as the first one,” Steff said, reflex-quick.
Saint grinned. “You are a massive dork and I miss you intensely,” he said. And oops, that had actually been the truth, hadn’t it. “And I’d
tell
you,” he went on hastily. “If I really was all whimsical in the brainpan, I mean. I’d tell you so I could crawl sadly into your tender embrace and eat cookies and sob about my troubled phallic dreams into your sternly loving shoulder, don’t worry.”
“There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don’t even know where to start.”
“Just be glad I went with cookies instead of warm milk, which would’ve been a little awkward given the context.”
“Uh, Saint,” the Flatmate said, and Saint gave an aggrieved look to no one in particular.
“Hang on, the tumorous growth sharing my palatial apartment speaks at last,” he told Steff. “Yeah, what’s up,” he added, flat.
“Be
nice
,” Steff said, and Saint closed his eyes.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be brusque,” he said, still facing the kitchen. “What’s up?”
“Just,” the Flatmate said, in his stupid slow rumble of a voice, “this isn’t the first time. That you’ve had a nightmare, I mean. It keeps happening.”
Saint turned around to tell him that, no, it was the first time, and it wasn’t like he could just
forget
something like that. He turned around with the memory of rain and blood and horror still on the tip of his tongue and –
And he heard a growl instead of words, low and thick and menacing, and instead of an irritating guy sitting on the stained and battered couch there was a, a…
The best word Saint could think of was ‘giant’. Which was stupid, but.
This new creature was huge, impossibly tall, tall enough that it would have to bend half over to avoid braining itself on the ceiling if it stood up, though right now it was draped over the couch, all long, thick-furred limbs. There was something… simian about it, like a gorilla or some other kind of ape; its beard and hair were much, much longer and more ragged and tangled than the Flatmate’s hair had been, and it had hair all over the rest of it as well, furring its face and neck, even covering its hands, which were now tipped with
very
long yellowing nails, almost like claws. Quite a lot like claws.
Saint whimpered.
The thing that had been human a second ago was looking at him with glowering bloodshot eyes. “Saint… what’s… ” it said, and its voice had the same hollow, pounding quality that the growl had had; it was much deeper than a human voice, and the thrum of it was disorienting enough that for a second Saint didn’t notice that the thing had taken a slow step towards him as it spoke, unfolding from the couch like some huge furred spider.
Not real not real not real not real
, he thought, ferociously, a knee-jerk reaction. Because apparently when things went wrong he didn’t react with a clever quip or a dashing plan, just frantic denial.
No no no no no no
, he thought, and he thought it as strongly as he could. For a moment he saw both things at once, his Flatmate normal and human and that monster beast looming over him. Then the world snapped back into focus.
“… wrong?” the Flatmate said, human, looking at him with vague concern. Everything was normal and the world was normal and absolutely nothing was wrong. “You gonna be sick or something?”
Saint stared at him for a second with slightly glazed eyes. Steff’s voice was coming tinnily through the phone. “Call you back,” he said brightly, and flipped the phone closed and slipped it into his coat pocket.
“Stop staring, then, if you’re fine,” the Flatmate said, almost a growl, and the hairs on the back of Saint’s neck stood up, just at the memory of that low reverberation, the sheer
size
of that thing. The Flatmate sat back down grumpily. “Is this one of your joke things? After I take you into my home and give you everything you need or want just out of kindness. You could at least try to be a tolerable human being, sometimes.”
Saint went on with the blank staring. Hey, that strategy seemed to be working well enough so far, no sudden eviscerations or anything, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. “I really,” he said, distantly, “I really don’t think you’re in any position to talk.”
“Eh?”
“I need to go for a
smoke
,” Saint said, abrupt. His fingers were twitching, and he knew craving when he felt it.
“I thought you gave up,” the Flatmate said sharply.
Saint smiled his sparkliest Colgate smile. “I’ll go pretend to smoke, then, it’s… it’s ever so dashing right now. In vogue.”
The Flatmate snorted, and he was turning his attention back to his stupidly small TV now, oh thank the gods. Saint was
trying
to be decent to him, honestly, because the Flatmate was probably a good guy, but he just set Saint’s teeth on edge and oh was apparently a giant! “Because of course girls swoon over lung cancer,” the Flatmate muttered.
“Ha, they do if it’s
my
lungs,” Saint said, and breezed out the door. And he made it up the few flights of stairs to the top of the building, too, without fainting even once, powered by panic and manic energy and the dizzying pulses of terror that the nightmare had given him. He felt better once he’d gotten out there, out in the fresh air and the height and the cold, with the city stretched out beneath him and the Wellington wind pulling at the corners of his coat.