oh gooooddddddddd why does my brain think of these things
Another horror story written in the middle of dark o'clock. ghghghhhhhhh
~:~
The moment was nothing particularly important. There was music on the radio, and John Harrison was folding shirts. His plan for the rest of the day was to pile hte shirts in his laundry basket, bring them upstairs, and lay them out nicely in his shirts-drawer. But the music skipped, without any preamble, to the announcer. "That was Vivaldi's violin concerto in D major, Opus 3, number 9, performed by," and John thought, 'power outage?' But no, the lights hadn't flickered, that was stupid. Still, he waited a moment, but it was nice weather and the radio was going on as usual. So it was just weird.
He went to continue folding, but his hand was gone.
It took a moment to realize why his fingers weren't pinching the seams and pulling them together. His right hand - sure, fine. Worked great. At the end of his left arm, though, there was nothing. Just plain, soft pink skin.
John looked at it. He frowned and turned the radio off, and held his wrist up for inspection. It didn't hurt, and it didn't look healed. "Where the hell is my hand?" he said aloud.
His voice echoed weird in the quiet laundry room. John winced and looked around. What the - what the hell had happened to his hand? It was that blip in the music, the piece hadn't finished, and it was gone-?
"It's gone," he said again.
The laundry room was very small. He left it and went to look around the rest of the house. Nothing else had changed. Fear rose slowly as he went from room to room. Nothing else had changed. The sun shone in from the southeast - it was 11.00 and bright, not a cloud in the sky, not a cat on his porch. John went again to his bedroom, and the neighborhood outside hte window was still - no wind moved anything, and no cars came by. John felt the empty space around him and behind him, and dind't look back but when again downstairs.
"Oh god," he said, and the words were flat and loud against the hardwood floors. "It's gone. What th- what the fuck happened?"
There was no sound. Now that the radio was off, the house was silent. No sounds reflected in from outside - no lawnmowers or dogs barking or cars in the street. He knew the air-conditioning should be on, and he thought he heard that - air whined in the ducts - but everything else was silent.
And his left hand was gone.
John went to the kitchen phone and pulled it down. He started to sit, but felt creeped out by the emptiness of the air behind him, and so he moved his chair to sit back against the wall. He called - who would take this seriously? He called his parents first, and they picked up after four rings.
"Hello?" John asked.
But there was nothing on their end of the line. Maybe a thin, tuneless buzzing.
John hung up. He was really starting to be creeped out. He shoved it down and called Meridith.
"Hello! Hello, Merry?" he said as the call picked up. There was an awful silence, still and buzzing quietly, but then a voice answered.
"Hey, John! How're you doing?"
John breathed out. "Not - I don't know," he confessed, and cleared his throat. "Merry?"
"Yes?"
"My hand is gone."
"What?"
"My hand, left hand! It just, I was folding shirts and now it's gone! I don't know where it went, it's just suddenly gone!"
"John? John, it's okay, it's okay, calm down. Calm down, honey. It's okay, things'll be okay."
Calm down? He tried it. Breathed in, saw his empty wrist, felt the silence around him. Closed his eyes, breathed out. Breathed, and breathed out.
"Good, good," Merry said on the other end of the line. "Now. let's think about this clearly. Are you sure you didn't leave it somewhere?"
His eyes snapped open. "What?"
"Do you know where you could've left it? By your bed, maybe? Or on the table next to the door? Think about where you last-"
"Are you serious?" Paul snapped. "Are you joking? You can't be serious, this isn't my keys, it's my hand! My hand is missing!"
"I know, honey, and I'm just trying to help you find it-"
"What're you - no, no, Merry, you don't get it. Do you not understand? My hand. My left hand, it's just not on the end of my arm anymore, it's gone! I don't know where it went! One minute I'm folding clothes and the next, it just - it's gone!"
"Well, Paul, honey, it's okay. These things happen."
"No, they don't happen! People don't just - it's my hand, Merry! It's gone! How the fuck do you not get that, it's-"
"-excuse me-"
"-gone, it's not on my arm anymore, I don't know what happened to it or how, I just heard, there was this second," it sounded so stupid, but, "there was this second where the radio switched from music to talk, just like that, and then my hand's gone-"
He stopped. And listened to the other end of the line. There was buzzing.
That really scared him. He shoved his feet agains the floor, chair back to the wall, and flailed out with his left - didn't, because his left arm was gone.
"I said are you coming?"
Paul stared forward, phone still next to his ear. "What? What?"
"You don't have to shout, Paul, it's okay! I just wanted to know if you're coming-"
"Merry?" Paul pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the the display. Meridith Sharon. 8.21 pm. PM?
It was black as pitch outside, and underneath his chair, the A/C was on full-blast.
"M-"
"Paul, yes, it's me. I just wanted-"
But he wasn't paying attention, because his left arm wasn't there. He felt his balance tilt right, his body heavy on the right side, because it was gone. He tried to lean on the table and his ribs hit it. Nothing there. Empty T-shirt sleeve.
"-just wanted to know because the party started at 8, remember, and I just wanted to see how you were doing, since you said you'd come -"
"Merry, I just - I just lost my arm-"
"I know, honey, I remember. Do you think you can make it?"
"I c- I can't come anywhere, I can't drive like this!"
"Well I can send Scott to pick you up. Is that alright?"
She remembered? That his arm was gone? Had he - "Did I tell you about my arm?"
"Yes, Mark, it's okay, I know."
"But- how do you know?"
"Now, I'm just going to send Scott over, okay? You don't have to bring anything, just dress nicely and bring your pretty smile, alright? I'll see you!"
She hung up. Mark dropped the phone. He tore his shirt up off over his head and looked. Nothing. Nothing where his arm should've been. Smooth from his collarbone to his first rib. Not a bump, not a trace, not a scar of anything being removed.
He got up. The kitchen was silent, except for the air. The windows were blank black clots in the walls, and John left and thundered up the stairs, into the bedroom, in front of his mirror.
Looked at himself, and he looked normal. But he only had one shoulder. Nothing at all on his left side. He felt so unbalanced; his right arm was dragging him down, the hand on the end of it heavy and feeling loose. He had a sudden moment of terror that this feeling meant that that hand would go next, "no, no, no," he said aloud, and bunched the fist over his stomach, but his arm and hand didn't come back, and he noticed, in the window reflected in the mirror - in the window behind him - there were no lights.
Mark turned and went over to it.
There was nothing. He could see, in outlines and between tree limbs, his neighbors' house, but no lights were on. Nor in the house next to them, nor in the third one along. The streetlights were on, sure. They dropped orange, buzzing circles to the asphalt, in-between the still tree limbs. No house lights, nowhere.
The doorbell rang.
No cars along the street - he hadn't seen anyone drive up. He turned from the window and started to go to the upstairs front room. Then he fell.
No left foot. Nothing.
He scrambled up to a sit, checking. His left jeans leg was empty below the knee.
Mark screamed.
The doorbell rang again. It rang twice more. It rang again and again, like someone was leaning on it. He couldn't get his breath. The air-conditioner blasted in the quiet house, and then a voice came from outside, muffled "...okay? you okay in there?"
Mark gulped air in and crawled to the top of the stairs. The shape of a person in the glass of the door, and thank god, he started down the stairs, but he felt so swaying and unbalanced without a left arm and fell, halfway down, all the way down, ended in a heap at the bottom and crawled to the front door, knelt up, unlocked it, swung it open.
Scott, presumably - Mark didn't know him - stood there.
"Hey, Gimpy, you okay there?" Scott grinned, and shoved his hands back in his pockets. "What'd you do, fall down the stairs? I heard something like that in there."
Mark shook his head. "My - I lost my hand, and then my arm, and then my leg-"
"So look for them later. C'mon, let's go to Merry's. It's a good party, you should come."
"You didn't-" he didn't even, like Merry, didn't even know what was wrong. Stood there with his two hands at the ends of his two arms stuck into his two pockets, and smiling along, and behind him the house's air felt pressed and cold, like a tunnel far underground.
Mark crawled out onto the porch.
"You gonna go like that?" Scott nodded, and John looked down. Shirtless, in jeans, with his one foot in a sandal. A couple bruises were starting to come out from falling down the stairs. He looked back into the house, but the silence was there, and the door was already starting to swing shut. John pulled his foot over the threshhold, onto the porch, and nodded.
Scott helped him up and let him lean his one arm over Scott's shoulder, while he hopped on his one foot down the driveway to the car. The neighbor lights were on after all, and - and, as John leaned on Scott's car and looked back at his house - and it was only his own house whose lights were all off. Like when you face a bonfire, and your back gets cold while your front gets warm - only it was the side facing his house that was cold, and Scott's car, metal the same temperature as the evening air, that was warm.
The party was good. Merry's house was all lit up. She had, actually, a wheelcahir from her dad's visits, and so she wheeled it out and brought John in. He didn't talk about what had happened, and accepted first several shots, then several more. The party was good - it seemed like thousands of people, and Merry's place was lit up bright, Christmas lights even though it was June, a big, glowing string of them presiding over one room, several lava lamps in another, and in every open outlet, night-lights in fantastic shapes, bright plastic lilies and molded plastic trains. People carried food about and sat on the floor to talk - they didn't look down at John but up, and they wore glow-sticks around their necks and in their hair. Music played. People laughed and danced. John talked and laughed too, and didn't talk about why he was in the wheelchair until late, late into the party, when he had to go to the bathroom.
"Through there," Merry reminded him, although he'd been to her house enough to know where. It was hard to wheel down the hall with one hand, but he managed. It was even harder to shift from teh chair to the toilet seat with one hand, but he managed. He fell getting up, though, banging his head on the sink and his hand on the corner of the wall. Getting up, washing hands - hand - getting back into the chair - alright. Door - alright.
He started wheeling back down the hall toward the lights of the party when someone caught up with him. "Mr. Harrison?" said a voice over his shoulder. John craned his neck up to see, but couldn't. "Merry noted you might like to have a word with me, about your ... recent distress."
The figure pushed a door open to John's left and wheeled him in. The room was lit only by a blue-neon clock, oversized and taking up one wall. It lit John from one side, and the talking person from the other, as he came around in front of John to face him. Tall man, and his pale eyes and teeth flashed in the neon as he spoke.
"You must not be anxious. I am a doctor. I should be able to help you. Now, Merry tells me you are worried?"
And he was, John realized. He wasn't quite sober, but getting there, and he was - his arm. His leg. "They're gone," he pointed with his right hand.
"I see. Can you remember where you put them?"
John shook his head, and then added, "I didn't put them anywhere."
"I see. Well, when was the last time you saw them? Perhaps you left them-"
"I didn't take them off," John interrupted.
"Don't you usually?"
"No!"
"There's no need to be embarrassed, it's really quite common. I have several personal friends who-"
"I didn't take them off!" John shouted. "I didn't do anything to them, they're just gone! They're just gone! I was listening to music, and then it stopped and my hand was gone, and then I was talking to Merry and then my arm was gone, and then I was just lookign in the mirror and my leg-" he couldn't go on. Not just because it had happened, but because the doctor was looking at him, neon-blue on his eyes and grinning teeth.
"Aha," said the doctor. And smiled wider. "Aha."
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a phone. "You may be interested in a few friends of mine who also misplace things. You may want to give them a call. Here." He turned his cell-phone around and handed it to John. Then he turned and left the room.
John clicked through the list. *A, *B, *C. He clicked to *A and hit send, put the phone to his ear, and waited. It rang. It rang once, twice, thrice, and then someone picked up.
"Hello?" John said.
There was nothing on the other end of the line, only a very quiet, very thin and high buzzing.
John hung up.
He stayed at Merry's house as long as he could. He got very drunk and passed out on her couch, and woke up there the next morning, and begged a place for the night. Merry made a helpless face and said, "I'm sorry, John! I'd like to have you over, really, I would, but my roommate's coming back tomorrow and I've gotta clean this all up before she gets back! You understand, don't you?"
He said he did, but his face was so worried, Merry's heart went out to him. "One more night," she promised, and he smiled wanly and thanked her. Actually, she had a hard time getting work done with him there - he was right in the middle of the downstairs living room, and whenever she went in there to clean up or vaccuum or pick up plates or wash things up he was always staring at her, still half-naked, hugging his ribs with one arm, face almost desperate. It got to be kind of creepy, and she knew John was a good guy, she knew he wouldn't try anything, but still she locked her bedroom door that night.
Luckily, she was right: he didn't do anything. She came downstairs the next day and said, "John?" and he lifted his head and opened his eyes. "You ready to go back?"
He pleaded with her not to, but really, it was getting to be too much. She had stuff to do, work tomorrow and roommate coming back today and she still hadn't done the groceries or the laundry or anything, and she said, "I'm sorry. I'll drive you back, okay?" He didn't look like it was okay, but Merry shook her head and loaded him into the car and drove him home.
At his house, she wheeled him out and onto his own porch. "D'you have a key?" she asked.
John shook his head.
"Well, darn." She tried to look in the front window, but it was dark inside. But the front door was unlocked. Merry pushed it open. Cold air blasted out. "Oh my god, you really had the AC going, didn't you!" and he turned the wheelchair around, still staring at her in that really rather creepy way. Merry looked away. "I'm sorry, John, you can come over another time, okay? Just not now, I have so much to do, okay? See you-"
She stepped down the stairs, still talking. John watched desperately but couldn't say anything - the cold had already caught his throat, and behind him, the empty air was pulling him back, in, into the house. The wheelchair rolled back. He grabbed onto the doorjamb, but the door closed on his fingers, and finally his one hand let go.
And as Merry drove away, the door closed.
~:~
The moment was nothing particularly important. There was music on the radio, and John Harrison was folding shirts. His plan for the rest of the day was to pile hte shirts in his laundry basket, bring them upstairs, and lay them out nicely in his shirts-drawer. But the music skipped, without any preamble, to the announcer. "That was Vivaldi's violin concerto in D major, Opus 3, number 9, performed by," and John thought, 'power outage?' But no, the lights hadn't flickered, that was stupid. Still, he waited a moment, but it was nice weather and the radio was going on as usual. So it was just weird.
He went to continue folding, but his hand was gone.
It took a moment to realize why his fingers weren't pinching the seams and pulling them together. His right hand - sure, fine. Worked great. At the end of his left arm, though, there was nothing. Just plain, soft pink skin.
John looked at it. He frowned and turned the radio off, and held his wrist up for inspection. It didn't hurt, and it didn't look healed. "Where the hell is my hand?" he said aloud.
His voice echoed weird in the quiet laundry room. John winced and looked around. What the - what the hell had happened to his hand? It was that blip in the music, the piece hadn't finished, and it was gone-?
"It's gone," he said again.
The laundry room was very small. He left it and went to look around the rest of the house. Nothing else had changed. Fear rose slowly as he went from room to room. Nothing else had changed. The sun shone in from the southeast - it was 11.00 and bright, not a cloud in the sky, not a cat on his porch. John went again to his bedroom, and the neighborhood outside hte window was still - no wind moved anything, and no cars came by. John felt the empty space around him and behind him, and dind't look back but when again downstairs.
"Oh god," he said, and the words were flat and loud against the hardwood floors. "It's gone. What th- what the fuck happened?"
There was no sound. Now that the radio was off, the house was silent. No sounds reflected in from outside - no lawnmowers or dogs barking or cars in the street. He knew the air-conditioning should be on, and he thought he heard that - air whined in the ducts - but everything else was silent.
And his left hand was gone.
John went to the kitchen phone and pulled it down. He started to sit, but felt creeped out by the emptiness of the air behind him, and so he moved his chair to sit back against the wall. He called - who would take this seriously? He called his parents first, and they picked up after four rings.
"Hello?" John asked.
But there was nothing on their end of the line. Maybe a thin, tuneless buzzing.
John hung up. He was really starting to be creeped out. He shoved it down and called Meridith.
"Hello! Hello, Merry?" he said as the call picked up. There was an awful silence, still and buzzing quietly, but then a voice answered.
"Hey, John! How're you doing?"
John breathed out. "Not - I don't know," he confessed, and cleared his throat. "Merry?"
"Yes?"
"My hand is gone."
"What?"
"My hand, left hand! It just, I was folding shirts and now it's gone! I don't know where it went, it's just suddenly gone!"
"John? John, it's okay, it's okay, calm down. Calm down, honey. It's okay, things'll be okay."
Calm down? He tried it. Breathed in, saw his empty wrist, felt the silence around him. Closed his eyes, breathed out. Breathed, and breathed out.
"Good, good," Merry said on the other end of the line. "Now. let's think about this clearly. Are you sure you didn't leave it somewhere?"
His eyes snapped open. "What?"
"Do you know where you could've left it? By your bed, maybe? Or on the table next to the door? Think about where you last-"
"Are you serious?" Paul snapped. "Are you joking? You can't be serious, this isn't my keys, it's my hand! My hand is missing!"
"I know, honey, and I'm just trying to help you find it-"
"What're you - no, no, Merry, you don't get it. Do you not understand? My hand. My left hand, it's just not on the end of my arm anymore, it's gone! I don't know where it went! One minute I'm folding clothes and the next, it just - it's gone!"
"Well, Paul, honey, it's okay. These things happen."
"No, they don't happen! People don't just - it's my hand, Merry! It's gone! How the fuck do you not get that, it's-"
"-excuse me-"
"-gone, it's not on my arm anymore, I don't know what happened to it or how, I just heard, there was this second," it sounded so stupid, but, "there was this second where the radio switched from music to talk, just like that, and then my hand's gone-"
He stopped. And listened to the other end of the line. There was buzzing.
That really scared him. He shoved his feet agains the floor, chair back to the wall, and flailed out with his left - didn't, because his left arm was gone.
"I said are you coming?"
Paul stared forward, phone still next to his ear. "What? What?"
"You don't have to shout, Paul, it's okay! I just wanted to know if you're coming-"
"Merry?" Paul pulled the phone from his ear and looked at the the display. Meridith Sharon. 8.21 pm. PM?
It was black as pitch outside, and underneath his chair, the A/C was on full-blast.
"M-"
"Paul, yes, it's me. I just wanted-"
But he wasn't paying attention, because his left arm wasn't there. He felt his balance tilt right, his body heavy on the right side, because it was gone. He tried to lean on the table and his ribs hit it. Nothing there. Empty T-shirt sleeve.
"-just wanted to know because the party started at 8, remember, and I just wanted to see how you were doing, since you said you'd come -"
"Merry, I just - I just lost my arm-"
"I know, honey, I remember. Do you think you can make it?"
"I c- I can't come anywhere, I can't drive like this!"
"Well I can send Scott to pick you up. Is that alright?"
She remembered? That his arm was gone? Had he - "Did I tell you about my arm?"
"Yes, Mark, it's okay, I know."
"But- how do you know?"
"Now, I'm just going to send Scott over, okay? You don't have to bring anything, just dress nicely and bring your pretty smile, alright? I'll see you!"
She hung up. Mark dropped the phone. He tore his shirt up off over his head and looked. Nothing. Nothing where his arm should've been. Smooth from his collarbone to his first rib. Not a bump, not a trace, not a scar of anything being removed.
He got up. The kitchen was silent, except for the air. The windows were blank black clots in the walls, and John left and thundered up the stairs, into the bedroom, in front of his mirror.
Looked at himself, and he looked normal. But he only had one shoulder. Nothing at all on his left side. He felt so unbalanced; his right arm was dragging him down, the hand on the end of it heavy and feeling loose. He had a sudden moment of terror that this feeling meant that that hand would go next, "no, no, no," he said aloud, and bunched the fist over his stomach, but his arm and hand didn't come back, and he noticed, in the window reflected in the mirror - in the window behind him - there were no lights.
Mark turned and went over to it.
There was nothing. He could see, in outlines and between tree limbs, his neighbors' house, but no lights were on. Nor in the house next to them, nor in the third one along. The streetlights were on, sure. They dropped orange, buzzing circles to the asphalt, in-between the still tree limbs. No house lights, nowhere.
The doorbell rang.
No cars along the street - he hadn't seen anyone drive up. He turned from the window and started to go to the upstairs front room. Then he fell.
No left foot. Nothing.
He scrambled up to a sit, checking. His left jeans leg was empty below the knee.
Mark screamed.
The doorbell rang again. It rang twice more. It rang again and again, like someone was leaning on it. He couldn't get his breath. The air-conditioner blasted in the quiet house, and then a voice came from outside, muffled "...okay? you okay in there?"
Mark gulped air in and crawled to the top of the stairs. The shape of a person in the glass of the door, and thank god, he started down the stairs, but he felt so swaying and unbalanced without a left arm and fell, halfway down, all the way down, ended in a heap at the bottom and crawled to the front door, knelt up, unlocked it, swung it open.
Scott, presumably - Mark didn't know him - stood there.
"Hey, Gimpy, you okay there?" Scott grinned, and shoved his hands back in his pockets. "What'd you do, fall down the stairs? I heard something like that in there."
Mark shook his head. "My - I lost my hand, and then my arm, and then my leg-"
"So look for them later. C'mon, let's go to Merry's. It's a good party, you should come."
"You didn't-" he didn't even, like Merry, didn't even know what was wrong. Stood there with his two hands at the ends of his two arms stuck into his two pockets, and smiling along, and behind him the house's air felt pressed and cold, like a tunnel far underground.
Mark crawled out onto the porch.
"You gonna go like that?" Scott nodded, and John looked down. Shirtless, in jeans, with his one foot in a sandal. A couple bruises were starting to come out from falling down the stairs. He looked back into the house, but the silence was there, and the door was already starting to swing shut. John pulled his foot over the threshhold, onto the porch, and nodded.
Scott helped him up and let him lean his one arm over Scott's shoulder, while he hopped on his one foot down the driveway to the car. The neighbor lights were on after all, and - and, as John leaned on Scott's car and looked back at his house - and it was only his own house whose lights were all off. Like when you face a bonfire, and your back gets cold while your front gets warm - only it was the side facing his house that was cold, and Scott's car, metal the same temperature as the evening air, that was warm.
The party was good. Merry's house was all lit up. She had, actually, a wheelcahir from her dad's visits, and so she wheeled it out and brought John in. He didn't talk about what had happened, and accepted first several shots, then several more. The party was good - it seemed like thousands of people, and Merry's place was lit up bright, Christmas lights even though it was June, a big, glowing string of them presiding over one room, several lava lamps in another, and in every open outlet, night-lights in fantastic shapes, bright plastic lilies and molded plastic trains. People carried food about and sat on the floor to talk - they didn't look down at John but up, and they wore glow-sticks around their necks and in their hair. Music played. People laughed and danced. John talked and laughed too, and didn't talk about why he was in the wheelchair until late, late into the party, when he had to go to the bathroom.
"Through there," Merry reminded him, although he'd been to her house enough to know where. It was hard to wheel down the hall with one hand, but he managed. It was even harder to shift from teh chair to the toilet seat with one hand, but he managed. He fell getting up, though, banging his head on the sink and his hand on the corner of the wall. Getting up, washing hands - hand - getting back into the chair - alright. Door - alright.
He started wheeling back down the hall toward the lights of the party when someone caught up with him. "Mr. Harrison?" said a voice over his shoulder. John craned his neck up to see, but couldn't. "Merry noted you might like to have a word with me, about your ... recent distress."
The figure pushed a door open to John's left and wheeled him in. The room was lit only by a blue-neon clock, oversized and taking up one wall. It lit John from one side, and the talking person from the other, as he came around in front of John to face him. Tall man, and his pale eyes and teeth flashed in the neon as he spoke.
"You must not be anxious. I am a doctor. I should be able to help you. Now, Merry tells me you are worried?"
And he was, John realized. He wasn't quite sober, but getting there, and he was - his arm. His leg. "They're gone," he pointed with his right hand.
"I see. Can you remember where you put them?"
John shook his head, and then added, "I didn't put them anywhere."
"I see. Well, when was the last time you saw them? Perhaps you left them-"
"I didn't take them off," John interrupted.
"Don't you usually?"
"No!"
"There's no need to be embarrassed, it's really quite common. I have several personal friends who-"
"I didn't take them off!" John shouted. "I didn't do anything to them, they're just gone! They're just gone! I was listening to music, and then it stopped and my hand was gone, and then I was talking to Merry and then my arm was gone, and then I was just lookign in the mirror and my leg-" he couldn't go on. Not just because it had happened, but because the doctor was looking at him, neon-blue on his eyes and grinning teeth.
"Aha," said the doctor. And smiled wider. "Aha."
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a phone. "You may be interested in a few friends of mine who also misplace things. You may want to give them a call. Here." He turned his cell-phone around and handed it to John. Then he turned and left the room.
John clicked through the list. *A, *B, *C. He clicked to *A and hit send, put the phone to his ear, and waited. It rang. It rang once, twice, thrice, and then someone picked up.
"Hello?" John said.
There was nothing on the other end of the line, only a very quiet, very thin and high buzzing.
John hung up.
He stayed at Merry's house as long as he could. He got very drunk and passed out on her couch, and woke up there the next morning, and begged a place for the night. Merry made a helpless face and said, "I'm sorry, John! I'd like to have you over, really, I would, but my roommate's coming back tomorrow and I've gotta clean this all up before she gets back! You understand, don't you?"
He said he did, but his face was so worried, Merry's heart went out to him. "One more night," she promised, and he smiled wanly and thanked her. Actually, she had a hard time getting work done with him there - he was right in the middle of the downstairs living room, and whenever she went in there to clean up or vaccuum or pick up plates or wash things up he was always staring at her, still half-naked, hugging his ribs with one arm, face almost desperate. It got to be kind of creepy, and she knew John was a good guy, she knew he wouldn't try anything, but still she locked her bedroom door that night.
Luckily, she was right: he didn't do anything. She came downstairs the next day and said, "John?" and he lifted his head and opened his eyes. "You ready to go back?"
He pleaded with her not to, but really, it was getting to be too much. She had stuff to do, work tomorrow and roommate coming back today and she still hadn't done the groceries or the laundry or anything, and she said, "I'm sorry. I'll drive you back, okay?" He didn't look like it was okay, but Merry shook her head and loaded him into the car and drove him home.
At his house, she wheeled him out and onto his own porch. "D'you have a key?" she asked.
John shook his head.
"Well, darn." She tried to look in the front window, but it was dark inside. But the front door was unlocked. Merry pushed it open. Cold air blasted out. "Oh my god, you really had the AC going, didn't you!" and he turned the wheelchair around, still staring at her in that really rather creepy way. Merry looked away. "I'm sorry, John, you can come over another time, okay? Just not now, I have so much to do, okay? See you-"
She stepped down the stairs, still talking. John watched desperately but couldn't say anything - the cold had already caught his throat, and behind him, the empty air was pulling him back, in, into the house. The wheelchair rolled back. He grabbed onto the doorjamb, but the door closed on his fingers, and finally his one hand let go.
And as Merry drove away, the door closed.