Andrea DeAngelis
Desmond
You wade through walls, slowly rotating one hip then the other. A wishbone body poured thinness, stretched tall over a poorly draped and moldy dinner jacket. A face so distorted and disfigured by burns and scars that an invincible twenty-year-old flees screaming. Who needs such proof of rough eternity? Life is evidence enough.
The ceiling crumbles as malevolence kicks the wall. An obscenity of cartilage and bone twists the sheets of your bed. You wake up as the gray man fractures your limbs rolling you into a broken ball to fit in his bulging sack.
Powdered aristobrat, self-knighted Duke of Albany no less, dreary devious Desmond. His lips coiled in a perpetual sneer, painted dripping red as it pleases. The fatal fop sits in a corner pouting while impaling a corkscrew into his slender wrist.
Its laughter bites those it pursues, spills over like hot tar. Pain stimulates keeping Desmond awake for days when all his body desired was respite. There are no clocks in the gray. Time stops and slithers onto the warped faces.
“Oh my dear, you certainly should sleep with him,” his tone soothes like a vampire once invited who cannot be uninvited. “It isn’t a sin to do what you want.” His clever malice generates endless rust. “You would be a fool if you didn’t, despite the consequences.”
Perfumed paper awaits with drying hate when you do not obey. “I despise you, but come to my little soiree anyway, my dear, before you disappear into nothingness like all the rest.” Your existence flickers like a busted flashlight.
He was small, he’d always been small, his legs thin and aching. He hated who he was and never felt quite human. Desmond wasn’t his true name, and no one would ever know that misnomer again. He had learned his lesson after being dragged down to hell, a dark place with cracks like fingers of pain. No one ever sees him, which he uses to his advantage. It is easy to manipulate those who are weak by making them weaker. Desmond bares his long-jagged smile.
Vomit pervades the bathroom tile. A pair of mouths grow brittle with the continuous bile as the two are at it again, water dripping down their pasty faucet chins.
“It’s not a sin, my dear,” Desmond weaves the words they want to hear, “to compel, to control your body. Your pain is merely a physical technicality to the possibility of carving the perfect silhouette.”
Runners Mira and Tina turn skeletal under his care. You start referring to them as the ghouls upstairs. They galumph despite being all bone.
It starts with the banging. The ghouls drop furniture continually, a thunderous cacophony. You drift upstairs to investigate and as soon as you unlock their door, the clattering ceases. There is no one in the room at all, not even furniture, only matted fraying carpet. You return to your room not remembering the stairs.
The pipes in this old dorm moan to each other but only when you close your eyes. Even as a child, you attempted to remain awake as long as possible, to avoid the void, this place between falling asleep and the solidity of dreams where you are either drowning or hyperventilating. Several times an hour you jerk yourself awake, positive if you lose consciousness you will die. As much as you try to evade oblivion, it returns snapping at your mind. And the abyss is not empty but full of long gashes which itch to be broken open, run oozing and bloody, to return to eat the world. In your late nights as a resident advisor, you summon a ghost to reassure you not all is empty.
He says his name is Desmond and that he is a student here, but he is the devil. The gray man who slips into your closet only to reappear at the foot of your dread.
“Desmond, I can get you what you want.” When he spoke, it was gravel being spewed from a road, raw and pitted words.
But that was your name, wasn’t it? The splintered reflection cackling.
How he wanted everyone to love him, but no one did.
All dream the same haunting. All slumber enmeshed like a spreading tumor in the dorm’s common area convinced he is coming for you. It is false but also true.
Andrea DeAngelis is at times a poet, writer, shutterbug and musician living in New York City. She tries not to disturb her neighbors by putting her guitar amp in the closet. Her writing has recently appeared in Carmina Magazine, Corvus Review and Bowery Gothic.
Banner Art:
“alien? where did you come from?”, by gryffyn m, Unsplash, 2020
