The Eighth Day
by Greg F. Gifune

The crumpled sock was a reminder of his addiction, an example of his need, and an odd testament to the depravity and darkness to which he had descended in recent months. There on the floor, just inches from him, untouched since the evening prior, it decorated the space between his chair and the door like a trophy awarded for his own weakness. An ornament with the appeal of rancid fruit dropped from the spindly branches of a long dead tree, it lay there, taunting, while the voice within him whispered his name and recounted his iniquities.

Still slumped in his desk chair, he moved closer on plastic casters and poked at the sock with his bare toe. It had been bright and clean once, like him, but now lay wrinkled and soiled and crusted with filth. His eyes slid shut, releasing the visions. They burst forth, flooding his mind like water escaping a crippled dam, until a single image transcended all others. His body, begging for sleep, weak, drawn, and needing nourishment hunched over in the chair. Dead eyes peering straight ahead like a woodland creature caught in the glare of oncoming headlights—seeing everything, and nothing at all—one hand clutching the sock, positioning it while the other worked furiously to grant him the
release he so desperately required. Shame and glee now brothers, light and dark merged into a single writhing entity—much like the act itself—the vision dissipated, rippling into oblivion the way a
reflection in water dissolves with the intrusion of a tossed stone.

As he spun away, the chair squealed as if in agony, returning his aim to the desk where the remaining tools and evidence were scattered about in haphazard piles of clutter and waste. Madly scribbled notes mixed with photographs and transcripts previously vomited from his printer at various points since the relationship began. An ashtray brimming with spent butts and caps from beer bottles sitting on the floor, arranged into tidy little rows, one stacked atop the other to form a pyramid of brown glass and shredded labels reminiscent of an abstract sculpture gone bad. Everything remained.

He lit a cigarette, smoked it quietly, his mind finally coming to some semblance of rest and tranquility. His eyes followed the course of dark hair across his chest that trailed in a narrow line beyond his
stomach, circling his navel before continuing on to a thick pubic tuft. Somewhere in the distance, in some other room, pipes rattled behind walls as a shower surged to life. She was awake.

Forcing himself from the chair, he waited for his legs to adjust to the weight, then moved closer to the desk, eyes darting from one picture to the next. Each time he looked at them the experience seemed new, yet the images they contained were things he had seen countless times before. Studying them was not merely a visual encounter, rather something of far greater depth and significance.

He ran a hand through his scalp; felt perspiration and oils from unwashed hair collect between his fingers. Bathing seemed irrelevant now. He wiped his hand on his chest, transferring the sticky residue, returned to his chair, and positioned himself in front of the computer. With a flick of the mouse the screensaver gave way, and his eyes quickly processed the information before him. Fingers tapped at the keyboard like the drops of steady rain clicking against the windows. The message completed, he sat back a bit and read it again. He took a final drag from his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray, forcing it between the pile of nicotine-stained filters. One renegade ember burned his fingertip, and he glanced down at it with disinterest, the pain barely registering.

In the past twenty-four hours he had typed this identical message many times, only to cancel the message before sending it, but this time his finger hovered over the mouse, the pointer locked on the Send button. Even had he finally garnered the courage to send his message, even then he was not certain he could bring to fruition the things his words promised.

It’s over. I’m sorry.

His finger dropped, the mouse clicked, and the message was sent. All these months spent talking with her, listening to her views and beliefs, listening to her talk of a loveless marriage, sexual desires
unfulfilled, her sorrow, and eventually, her uncontrollable attraction to him, seemed little more than vacuous rambling now. He had fallen in love with words on a computer screen, a faceless phantom somewhere in cyber space that had somehow tapped into all the things he’d been feeling. All the shortcomings of his own character had been touched, none of his weaknesses and fears, desires and longings left undiscovered. Exploited.

But unlike her, he had once been happy. His marriage was not loveless, his sexual desires were not unfulfilled, yet he had fallen into her trap regardless, reading the passion and power of her words,
the emptying of her soul, and eventually, the lust she felt for him. And there, in the seclusion of his small room, he had embraced that lust and released his own, making love with a shadow while his wife puttered about downstairs, unaware he was quite sure, why he suddenly felt the need to spend so many hours at his computer. Like lying in bed, draped in darkness, caught in a web of sexual frenzy and masturbating just inches from a sleeping lover, the experience wielded tremendous force, a fantasy transformed into reality, yet still shackled to the safety of anonymity.

He turned from the monitor and rifled through the stack of e-mail transmissions he had printed out over the last several months. I hate my husband. He’s useless. Sometimes I wonder how I ever could have loved him, and now I wonder why I stay, why I continue to subject myself to this. We could be together, you and I. We could be happy.

And yet, as intrigued and addicted to this woman as he’d become, he knew that it was his wife he loved, not her. She provided him with something he had not experienced with his wife in a long
time—excitement, risk, sexual freedom and expression—but there was no truth behind it, no substance. The intensity and ultimate satisfaction of release was all that remained, along with a beckoning, all-consuming darkness that lured him deeper and deeper into the sovereignty of
fantasy, and ultimately, degradation. It had grown within him, festering like open sores, and together they had pushed the envelope, carrying their relationship to new and dizzying heights.

He shut the computer down, thumbed through the pictures again, then gathered them, along with the printed transcripts and every other bit of tangible evidence and returned it to the folder. Excerpts of their first encounter in a chat room tickled his memory. He had opened a phony e-mail address, using one of the companies that offered a free account, and suspected, since she was also married, that she had done the same. Closing his account would be the equivalent of vanishing into thin air, a missing person wandering off, as if he’d never really been there at all.

The shredder came to life with a dull buzz. He dropped the contents of the folder through, one sheet at a time, watching the hidden blades slice their history into neat rows of confetti. He imaged being
able to fit through the narrow opening himself, screaming as he watched his feet and legs shred, the mechanism bucking as it attempted to swallow him, pull him deeper through its metal teeth. He chuckled softly.

The job finished, but for the rain, the house was quiet. She had finished her shower.

He left the room, moved carefully down a flight of stairs. The early morning sun had yet to fully rise, and clouds and thick rain masked what little light dawned. A ceiling fan spun silently in the kitchen, momentarily distracting him from a soft patch of artificial light bleeding from the open doorway of the adjacent bathroom. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen, and his parched mouth constricted, demanding caffeine. The windows next to the sink offered a blurry view of the street and houses beyond, nestled among patches of trees that had once constituted a forest of sorts. Coffee trickled into his mug, and as he drew it closer and took a sip, his eyes panned the room, pausing briefly on their second computer in the corner before focusing on the bathroom.

Steam rising from his mug was absorbed by lingering remnants from the hot shower, forming a cloud of mist through which Natalie became visible. Drying herself with a large white towel, she glanced at him and forced an obligatory smile. He felt his face twitch in response as his eyes dropped the length of her body.

The ease with which she moved about when completely nude in front of him had always been annoying, if not insulting. The way a sister might change in front of another, with no regard for what her nudity might be doing or causing to occur in him, as though he were a eunuch, or, an extension now of the lifeless machine he spent so much time in front of. But then, he and Natalie no longer possessed shared feelings. Her love for him had been modified by years of marriage and the familiarity born of routine. As with most other things, she didn’t understand his passion for her—its power. Despite it all, he still loved her, adored her really, even since assuming the role of distant,
easily ignored roommate. In time he would tell her why he had abruptly ended his relationship with the other woman, and she would finally understand him again. Though no rebirth of their union would be
established, life would go on.

“Good morning,” he said softly.

Natalie looked at him, tossed the towel aside and reached for underwear on the sink counter. “You look tired,” she said. He watched her step into her panties before maneuvering into a bra, adjusting first her breasts, and then the cups. Her hair was still damp, hanging just above her shoulders in small wet ringlets, and he detected the faint smell of talcum powder wafting about each time she moved. “I’m exhausted.”

“Maybe you should go back to bed, try to get a little more sleep.”

He put the mug aside and stepped into the bathroom, standing behind her as she ran a comb through her hair. The rapid cadence of his breath was obvious against the back of her bare shoulders, but she offered no visible reaction, only silent distance and an ever-growing valley
separating them even when she was within reach. His hands extended, coming to rest on the soft flesh of her tiny waist.

“Steven, please,” she sighed. “I have to get dressed.”

He leaned closer, tightened his grip and pressed his erection between the satin covered halves of her ass. “I need you,” he whispered, detesting the weakness in his voice.

“Don’t whine.” She continued to comb her hair. “Not now.”

“Yes,” he said, “now.”

Her eyes found his in the mirror. “I thought I had some say in this too.”

His hands yanked the panties down then returned; kneading her buttocks as his heart rate accelerated. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

“Of course, it’s just—”

Locking his fingers in her hair, he gently spun her toward the sink, keeping her in front of him as he lowered his shorts. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”

Natalie braced herself against the sink, allowing him to bend her forward until her face nearly touched the cool porcelain. “Steven, for God’s sake—”

One hand slid upward, across her spine and onto the back of her neck. The other guided his erection. “You said you liked this.”

She struggled to the extent that she was able to turn and look back over her shoulder at him. “What the hell are you talking about? Get off me, Steven, I fucking mean it.”

“I saw the pictures,” he told her, pushing harder against her.

“The nude pictures you sent. Pictures I took of you years ago, pictures that belonged to us, Natalie, not him.”

Her eyes filled with tears but did little to mask her fear. “I don’t—”

“You sent them to me.” He stifled a nearly maniacal laugh, pushing deeper until he felt the beginnings of penetration. “What are the odds that all along we were sitting in this house—me upstairs, you
down—talking to each other?”

“Stop, Steven—”

“Russell,” he spat, leaning his full weight against her. “It’s Russell you love, Deborah.”

Her face fell, and for a moment she froze as if paralyzed by the realization that what he had told her was true. “How could…You’re lying,” she finally said, voice trembling.

A single violent shiver pulsed through her, and he tightened his grip, wrestling with the convulsion and grinding himself deeper. “I’m going to fuck you the way he did. The way he’s been fucking you for
months.”

“Get off!”

“You loved it with him,” he said, gasping. “Love it with me.”

Thunder growled overhead, releasing a driving rain and diverting his attention from her screams.

Steven wandered the house, still nude, still stained, gathering the components from her computer into a pile in the garage just off the kitchen. A sledgehammer reduced them to rubble.

Returning to the house, he found a pair of jeans and a shirt Natalie had left for him draped over the back of a kitchen chair. Without allowing his eyes to stray toward the nearby bathroom, he dressed, straightened his hair with surprisingly steady hands, then fumbled a cigarette from a pack on the table. Pacing near the sink, he puffed away as if only allotted a certain amount of time in which to do
so. His bare feet stuck to the inexpensive tile, the rain continued to fall, and the silence of the house grew stronger, tearing at his mind like the clawed paws of some rodent trapped inside his skull and slowly burrowing its way out.

Ignoring the pain firing through his temples, he finished his cigarette, grabbed a large trash bag from beneath the counter, and faced the bathroom. A gradually widening crimson puddle had nearly reached his toes, as the sounds—the memories—of her skull smashing against the sink in time to his rhythmic thrusts dripped from his subconscious mind. His fingers, still slick with an array of bodily fluids, curled around a handsaw on the table and lifted it to his side. “It’s going to be all right,” he told her softly. “It’s going to be all right.”

The private chat window appeared and blinked to life across the monitor screen.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

GRUESOME.

YEAH, FUN THOUGH.

I REALLY LIKED THE HUSBAND AND WIFE ANGLE, HOW ALL ALONG THEY’D REALLY BEEN TALKING TO EACH OTHER. THAT WAS WILD.

WELL, IT HAS TO BE ENTERTAINING OR WHAT’S THE POINT, RIGHT?

IT’S POSSIBLE. I MEAN, IT COULD HAPPEN, BUT NOT BEING MARRIED OURSELVES I SUPPOSE WE CAN’T BE CERTAIN.

BUT STEVEN AND NATALIE WERE.

THEY’RE NOT LIKE YOU AND ME. THEY’RE NOT REAL.

I KNOW, ONLY SOMETIMES IT’S EASY TO FORGET WHO CREATED WHO.

THEN REMIND YOURSELF. LEAVE NO DOUBT.

He heard movement, someone climbing the stairs. He turned slowly, looking over his shoulder. The fear had returned. Steven wiped a smear of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand and clenched shut his eyes.

“Steven.”

Natalie stood in the doorway, her skull still crushed; her features mangled and covered in blood. In her hand was the same comb she’d used to style her hair with earlier. Cracked lips parted, revealing a flash of blood stained teeth below sightless, long dead eyes. Scars and slashes from the saw remained, but her body was intact, as if hastily reconstructed by unseen hands. “You’re not real.”

Natalie lunged for him, burying the comb deep into his eye. As he howled and collapsed to the floor, clutching at the plastic handle protruding from his socket, she began to laugh. “Neither are you.”
The dark screen blinked, the tiny light on the disk drive the only indication the computer was still on.

HAPPY NOW? Russell asked.

Somewhere in the void of cyberspace, Deborah smiled.

©1999 Greg F. Gifune

Greg F. Gifune is editor of Thievin' Kitty Publications, publishers of the print magazines THE EDGE-Tales of Suspense and BURNING SKY, Adventures in Science Fiction Terror. He has also edited some anthologies. As a writer he has over 70 published short stories, a produced screenplay, a novel set for release later this year (Meager Ink), a short story collection due out in October (Goddess of the Bay Publications), and numerous nonfiction article credits. For more info his home page can be found at: http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/GFGpg/

January 2000 HofP