Excerpt of Regret by Gabrielle Faust

6:00 A.M. Like a semi crashing through his bedroom wall, the alarm sounded from Marcus’s bedside table. After only three hours of sleep, which, again, had been invaded by twisted nightmarish landscapes, the idea of waking so soon nearly caused him to scream. His heart thundering in his chest, his face still buried in the pillow, he slung his left arm out of the covers, striking out at his arch nemesis. After several fumbling attempts, he managed to slam his palm onto the snooze button and silence the sound of the Eagles’ Hotel California. After several bourbons and a can-and-a-half of cleaner, Marcus had finally given up on removing the stain from his beloved chair and staggered to bed. Even after several hours of scrubbing until the sponge had begun to dissolve and his hands to crack from the chemical cleaner, he had still been convinced that he could salvage his beloved friend, but exhaustion and drunkenness had finally won. With an exhausted groan he let his arm slip off the nightstand to the floor beside the bed and lapsed instantly back into unconsciousness. He felt his body slide into the quicksand of sleep. He sighed, praying that the next nine minutes would be peaceful.

Silence washed over him and the world of alarm clocks and day jobs dissolved into an empty city street. For a moment he stood there, on the sidewalk, studying the landscape around him, vaguely aware that he still wore only his T-shirt and boxer shorts. From the soft blue light and chill breeze he judged the time to be somewhere around dawn, though he could not be certain from the overcast sky. He shivered, staring up at the rows of empty black eyes lining the sides of the towering skyscrapers around him.

Why can’t I ever just end up on a beach somewhere? He thought. Or in a threesome with two Playmates, like normal guys?

The wind picked up, pushing him from behind. He staggered forward a pace, regaining his balance, and turned to look over his shoulder down the avenue.

Maaarrrccuuusssssssss…

He whirled around. The voice had seeped from the open doorway of an office building to his left. His stomach soured with dread. He sighed heavily and shivered knowing all too well that his dream-self would follow the sound of his voice being whispered. With slow, careful steps he walked towards the black rectangle in the building face, his bare feet aching from the city street debris beneath them. For a moment he lingered in the doorway hoping that his mind had played tricks on him. He poked his head into the building and scanned the room. It appeared to have once been an old tavern of sorts, a neighborhood dive with oiled wood walls covered in cheaply framed black and white headshots and several round wooden tables and chairs, a few of which had been overturned by previous looters. In the back of the room, Marcus could barely make out the outline of a pool table beneath a low-hanging stained glass lamp. The place appeared to be empty, so Marcus took a few tentative steps inside.

Walking over to the bar, he realized that the place could not have been deserted all that long ago as half-empty mugs of beer still sat on their coasters upon the bar’s copper top. Behind the counter, dishes sat in a sink filled with water and the greenish digital numbers on the cash register still glowed brightly against the gloom. Suddenly, footsteps echoed from the back of the room, near where the pool table stood. Marcus’s head snapped up, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Hello?” he said quietly, not really desiring an answer. Behind him, outside, it had begun to rain heavily. Marcus wondered if perhaps the sound of the water striking the asphalt street had made him misinterpret another sound. He took a step forward. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Moments ticked by to the sound of water pouring from the awning over the front door to the sidewalk.

“You’re the boy who bought my chair,” a deep, gravely male voice said slithering through the darkness.

“Excuse me?” Marcus was caught off guard. “Your chair?” His curiosity overcame his fear and he walked towards pool table.

At first he saw nothing as he scanned the pitch-black shadows surrounding the table. He reached up and scratched the side of his head, confused and suddenly wanting his alarm clock to rescue him with another bad song. He sighed and turned to go, but the sound of a match striking across the side of a matchbox snared his attention. He spun back around.

In the far corner, off to his left, a strange misshapen thing sat huddled in what appeared to be his treasured armchair. Marcus could not suppress the grimace of shock and disgust which instantly twisted his features. Perhaps once this thing had been a man, but now its limbs had taken on the gnarled texture and grayish pigment of a dying tree. What served as skin was mottled gray and black, slick as if from rain or sweat and cracking open in places in long jagged lines of red, like lava breaking through a landscape of soot and obsidian glass. The thing hunched forward, its stomach so sunken that Marcus could see its backbone through its belly, the deformed lines of its ribs straining obscenely against the layer of broken skin containing them. It raised its head, which looked like a gourd that had begun to collapse in places from mold and rot, and watched Marcus with eyes of scarlet made milky by thick cataracts. Its right hand extended to the light of a red candle suspended in midair beside the chair and then returned to its lap, the match mysteriously having vanished.

Marcus’s mind was blank with panic. He stared mutely, both horrified and fascinated by the creature. The thing tilted its head inquisitively, blinking several times as if to try to clear the fog from its sight, though somehow Marcus knew it could see far better than even he.

Finally, Marcus found his voice. “Wha...who are you?”

The creature tried to smile, but the act was grotesque as what was left of its lips curled back over the rotten stumps of its front teeth. In place of incisors jutted large white fangs, the only two teeth not touched by rot.

“I am known by your people as Desiderium.” It sat back a little in the chair, its skin creaking with the movement as new fissures split, red and hateful.

Marcus shook his head slowly and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of you.”

“Hmmm…” Desiderium murmured. “Humanity is so very peculiar to me. You take the time to label what you cannot truly comprehend and then, a mere few centuries later, you have completely forgotten your own lore. I find it rather amusing, don’t you?” Its voice was harsh, like the hissing of two pieces of sandpaper drawn slowly together, forever.

“Are you a demon?” Marcus was unsure why he asked the question, but in his dream it seemed logical.

Desiderium laughed a little under his breath, then said, “Another label. Hmmm…yes, I am a demon, though that word irritates me as most mortal words irritate me. They are so…limiting. I am the Demon of Hatred, to be exact.”

Marcus frowned as he thought. The creature before him, to Marcus, appeared more wretched and pitiful than the ferocity that would come with such a title. Hatred brought to mind bloodlust and violence, fire and brutality. If the creature truly is a demon, he could be lying, Marcus reassured his dream-self.

“I never lie,” Desiderium spat. “I have no need to lie, especially to something like you.”

Marcus was stunned. He took a step backwards.

The creature leaned forward, folding its long, twisted fingers over its bent knee. “Where are you going?”

“I…I have to go…to work,” Marcus sputtered. Distantly, down through the darkness of the bar, he could hear the faint melody of a song whistling in from the vacant street outside.

The creature smiled, its fangs glistening in the candlelight. “You hate work, don’t you? You hate your life.”

Marcus was backing up faster now, past the pool table. He bumped into a chair, knocking it over and nearly falling himself. “No…not exactly. It’s fine...”

In his dream he felt the need to pick the chair up. He stooped over, fumbling to right the overturned piece of furniture, and in doing so began to turn his back on the creature in the corner. The world slowed. Marcus watched his hands reaching for the chair while his mind screamed at him of the foolishness of his actions. He felt heat on his back, the roaring of flames in his ears.

“You will…” Desiderium’s sandpaper voice hissed through his mind, sharp as a razorblade against his consciousness.

Marcus turned and screamed as a ball of flame engulfed him.