Magic Gloves
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The next morning, I made a beeline for the gym and ran five miles on the treadmill while reading an issue of Rolling Stone. At some point during my second hour, I got bored enough to do something that would get me in trouble if anyone noticed it or found out about it later: I took off my magic gloves.
I couldn’t afford to wear them anymore because now there were people following me who weren’t just hoping to catch sight of my bare hand again and laugh themselves into fits. They wanted what was hidden inside them. And they’d been very busy since Sunday night.
The gym was empty when I left as if all its members had decided to go home after their first workout, only to find their apartments surrounded by police tape, and their lives turned upside down. I didn’t want to think about what the news might have reported by the time I got back, so I hurried through the streets instead of taking my usual shortcuts.
When I finally came up behind the apartment building, I slowed my pace until I heard laughter coming from within. Then I ducked around the corner and peered over at the door, which stood wide open, invitingly, like a gift waiting to be opened. “Well?” I called out. “You ready yet? Or should I keep working on your other arm while you’ve got this one stretched out here for me?” I held out my bare right hand.
It wasn’t long before he showed himself: He stepped into the light, his face flushed with exertion, and then he looked away, as though suddenly embarrassed to be caught looking in someone else’s window. But the moment he started to walk away, I shouted out another question.
It took him a few steps to turn back; once he did, I pointed toward my feet. “Why don’t you come to sit in the front seat, where we can talk face-to-face.” When he hesitated, I added, “If you’re worried about someone seeing us both, I promise not to try any of those mind tricks on you that might make you think I’m a vampire.”
I could tell how much that must have freaked him out—because, damn it all, I felt the same way myself. But it seemed like such a good idea at the time…
His eyes shifted to mine, surprised, but the hesitation vanished. He nodded once and disappeared behind the stairs leading to the second floor. When he returned, I followed, carrying a pair of sweatpants and a tank top in case he needed them.
After I changed, we headed downstairs and walked outside together. It was still raining and I hadn’t brought an umbrella, so we kept our heads low against the downpour and huddled under the eaves of the building as we moved along the sidewalk. There was no place, in particular, we were trying to go, only the general idea that we should head somewhere far away from here.
Once we’d cleared the immediate vicinity and were walking across a parking lot, the rain became more manageable. We passed through an old brick building and stopped at a metal fence surrounding a grassy yard filled with benches and picnic tables.
I didn’t say anything when he pulled me to a stop beside him. For a while, neither of us spoke. Then he leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, “Are you going to try to kiss me, too?”
I turned to face him. In the bright morning sunshine, he was nothing but a shadow. His hair was damp and stuck to his forehead and neck, and raindrops dripped down from his lashes as I stared at him. “No,” I said slowly. “Not today. Not even if I thought you’d let me.”
He sighed, a breath of wind blowing through wet leaves.
“How about tomorrow? Or the day after?” I smiled up at him.
But his expression didn’t change. Instead, he asked, “Can we really trust each other? Are you sure you won’t trick me into doing things I’ll regret when you decide you need to use me for your own benefit? You know exactly what I can do—but you don’t seem to understand what will happen if I start thinking I have no choice but to obey you without question.”
My smile faded. “What do you mean?”
For the briefest moment, he hesitated. Then, shaking his head, he turned his back to me. “There’s no point in talking about it now. Maybe we should leave the city altogether—take a road trip or something. Start fresh somewhere else.”
As soon as he mentioned it, I knew what he meant. A vacation would allow us some distance, give him time to reconsider, and possibly decide he’d rather keep what he had than risk losing it. “That doesn’t sound like the answer you promised me,” I said softly.
“Maybe it isn’t.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
The words sounded hollow even inside my head. The rain fell harder, drumming on our shoulders and arms and the hoods of our sweatshirts, making it difficult to hear anything over its clamor. I wondered what he heard in return.
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. Don’t make yours the worst by turning away from me.”
I wanted to believe him, and I hoped he believed me when I said, “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me.”
A pause. Then, “I think you are.”
“Then I’ll stop.”
This time there was a long silence. And then he said quietly, “I’m going to miss you.”
***
After leaving the park, we decided to go home first to get some rest. While I waited for the elevator, I watched him step onto the landing of the fire escape outside the apartment and climb carefully down the metal ladder.
He didn’t say anything, but as he reached the bottom and started to cross the empty space between us, I realized he probably hadn’t climbed down here just for fun; he might very well be checking whether or not any of our neighbors happened to be awake and paying attention to what was going on outside their windows.
Once we reached our front door, he paused briefly before stepping inside and looking around. Then he opened our door and disappeared upstairs into one of the rooms.
I closed the door behind me and walked down the hallway to see which room he’d gone into. It was a strange sensation—the sense that someone else was in the house with us, though he was nowhere to be found.
But he was definitely there, I could feel him, watching me from some invisible place where he was able to slip out of sight whenever I looked his way. As soon as I turned away, I felt him slipping back into place, hiding again until I turned around to find him gone completely.
I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of orange juice from our fridge and drank it as I walked through the living room. It occurred to me that if he wasn’t sleeping with me anymore, there would be no reason not to move out of this place. No reason at all.
So many thoughts. So much confusion. The last thing I needed right now was to spend another night alone in my room, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure things out while my brain whirled around and around in a hundred different directions.
And so I headed to the guestroom, figuring I might as well get some work done if I was already there and the phone wouldn’t be ringing off the hook.
As soon as I stepped inside the guestroom, the lights dimmed slightly, then vanished.
And I was suddenly standing in the darkness, surrounded by an endless sea of pitch-blackness.
“Oh, crap,” I whispered, starting to reach toward a light switch I couldn’t find. “What did we do?”
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” said the deep voice beside me.
“Who is that?” I demanded, turning to stare at him, feeling like everything was spinning out of control in a blur of blackness.
“You already know.”
He reached up and touched my shoulder, guiding me forward with one hand on my back. We were walking slowly through a misty white fog; the only thing visible beyond it was a pale glow in the distance. And yet somehow I knew that it was the same fog that had been surrounding the house all day. There was nothing new about it.
I stopped dead in my tracks, looking back and forth from him to the dark, featureless wall ahead. “Is this part of the house?” I asked.
“No. Not exactly.” He took hold of my hand and held it against his chest, and then we moved on, climbing upward in slow, steady steps.
There was something familiar about the foggy tunnel; it looked vaguely similar to the corridor I’d seen before during my second visit, the one with the doors leading off both sides of a single path. Yet it was also unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and the strangeness of the experience made me feel sick and dizzy. I squeezed his hand tightly and tried to focus on what he told me next.
“This is a place where the two of us can talk.”
“Two of us? You mean us together?”
“Yes.”
We stopped walking and stood facing each other. The cold fog seemed to surround us like misty smoke and swirl around us, making our clothes wet and clinging to our skin. I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, but I could feel that the fabric of my shirt and pants was damp from the humidity of the mist.
I tried to pull my fingers free, but I couldn’t. He tightened his grip, pulling me closer. My heart pounded hard in my throat and my breath caught in my lungs.
For a moment the world was still and silent, and I wondered if maybe this was really happening: if we weren’t stuck in the middle of a nightmare after all, but were truly standing in a place where he had summoned us.
But as quickly as the silence came and went, so did the eerie sense of unbelievability. A soft sound, like the whisper of distant thunder, broke through the silence, followed by an abrupt gust of wind and then another, rippling over our shoulders and running up our backs.
“Where are you?” demanded the voice I didn’t recognize as my own. “Don’t you dare try and hide from me!”
The air around us shivered with a rush of wind that knocked me forward and nearly sent me tumbling backward. But even though it pushed me, I couldn’t seem to break free of its power. I was too stunned to scream.
I could see nothing past the cloud of swirling mist before my face and only heard faint whispers of words, but it sounded like someone or something else was speaking. Something huge was breathing hard and heavily. It was saying a great many terrible things, shouting them with a low guttural growl, as if it hadn’t expected me to answer and was surprised to hear me say as much as I had.
Something hot, rough, and sticky dripped onto my neck, splattering against the side of my face and dripping down over my cheek and ear. I gasped, choking on my own blood and trying desperately to keep my head above the torrential flow of red droplets falling into my eyes.
As soon as I felt myself losing consciousness, he lifted me up and carried me away from the stream of fire and molten lava. We were moving fast, faster than a person would have been able to run through such thick, fiery heat, and I struggled to stay awake and breathe, but I lost more precious seconds when my eyelids fluttered closed.
The End