Congress With Demons

Today was a shitty fucking day.
Just like every other day.
Too bad, Dr. M, I know you don’t like it when I write like this.

Taylor closed his notebook and stuck the pen into the spiral binding. He had about twenty minutes until Lights Out, so after visiting the bathroom for his nightly toilet he settled down on his bed to read. His roommate Bob had been moved to the halfway house the previous week and Taylor was still a little spooked at having the room to himself. He figured that might be part of the current problem – not having anyone to talk to meant that he had too much time to think about things – the darkness that threatened to engulf his mood, hovering like mist on the edge of his perceptions. The book he was reading wasn’t helping matters, as it was a collection of short stories by Robert Aickman, recommended to him by Petra, who knew he was an avid reader despite having relatively little formal schooling. He wasn’t certain he really understood what these stories were about, but they were creepy and unnerving in their vague poetic menace.

Taylor was reading a story called “The Swords,” which as far as he could puzzle out was about a man who views a carnival sideshow while passing through a small town and becomes obsessed with the woman who swallows swords. Beyond that brief outline of the narrative, he could only dimly grasp that it was meant to be about something else entirely. He sat up and removed his notebook from the drawer in the nightstand.

Why do we want the things that will hurt us? he scribbled.
So many things are bad, but we want them anyway.

His skin itched, despite the prescription-strength lotion the attending physician gave him for his scars. But he had to wait for Lights Out to take off his clothes. Once, a monitor caught Taylor examining himself in the mirror and reported him to Dr. Mentjis; she felt he displayed obsessive tendencies towards his scars and wanted to discourage any fetishistic activity. Though Taylor couldn’t see them, he could feel them, and that was enough. Caressing the keloids appeased the itching sensation, which she had advised him was probably largely psychosomatic.

He glanced at the clock on the wall: ten minutes left. Outside his room, the hallway was strangely quiet – normally right before Lights Out there was a flurry of activity as the residents made ready for bed – and the silence had a sound of its' own, like the white noise of static or falling water.

Sometimes I think I know why I've done what I've done, but then I think something made me do it. Like someone whispered in my ear.
But I'm depressed, I'm not crazy. NOT.

The lights went out and Taylor's head jerked upwards in the sudden darkness, puzzled that the remaining time had seemed so brief. But hours often went by in a blink when he was lost within the labyrinth of his thoughts, circling around the same considerations of his mania like a predator stalking its' prey. Waiting first for his vision to adjust, he finally put his notebook back in the nightstand drawer and rose to shed his clothing. He made certain his bathrobe was lying across the foot of his bed in case he needed to visit the bathroom in the night and slid between the sheets gratefully, running his hands over his chest, tracing the welts with the tips of his fingers. A few minutes later the door opened and one of the monitors shined a flashlight upon his face.

“You in, Taylor?” he asked.

“Snug as a bug,” came the drawled reply.

“Good man. Nighty-night.”

He lost track of time once again as his hands wandered the landscape of his skin, pondering the tactile memory of the scars, pausing at each one like the enactment of a religious ritual. As Taylor’s conscious mind began to focus more deeply upon his recollections, he felt himself sliding into the chasm of sleep. At least he perceived he was there based on the next event. A brightness behind his eyelids caused him to blink rapidly. His open eyes beheld Malik at the foot of his bed, apparently floating above his mattress.

Taylor’s response was beyond speech, a breathy surprise.

The source of the light was behind Malik, a whirling blurring mass which resembled fluttering wings, but apparently this angel did not possess feathers. Other than the particular supernatural occurrence of his outward appearance, Malik seemed wholly himself. He was naked, and Taylor couldn’t help but notice that his body was equally as perfect as his face. This admission caused him discomfort, a deep-rooted shame twisting within him, and the Angel watched him squirm with apparent amusement.

“Fear not, bastard son of Agape, I do not mean your doom.”

“Wha-what are you talkin’ ‘bout?”

“Do you know your father?”

Malik’s voice had taken on a deep, echoing quality and Taylor wondered if it was his own trembling imagination which caused the other to sound that way, or if he really could deafen the hearing of mere mortals once he shed the pretense (and its’ accompanying monotone) of simple humanity.

“I done told everybody I don’t know who my dad is – unless ya believe my grandmaw Jess’ crazy stories.”

“Perhaps you should have.”

“What the hell you want, anyway? I ain’t done nothin’ to you!”

“I bring you revelation, stupid boy.”

The muscles in Taylor’s face screwed up in anger. “You think just because I talk like a backwoods yokel that I’m stupid, but I ain’t. Not by a longshot, fucker. Okay, so you’re really an angel, or whatever, so fuckin’ what? Congratufuckinlations. And Eishka really is an alien, so why do we have to put up with either o’ya? I think we’ve all got enough problems, frankly, that we don’t need to deal with some kinda war between y’all.”

“This has nothing to do with that thing. However, I cannot say my motives are entirely pure in this regard, but I am imparting valuable information nonetheless. What you choose to do with it is your own concern.”

“You know who my father is.” Taylor delivered this declarative with skeptical scorn.

“Yes.”

“And how the hell would you know that?”

“I imagine your grandmother Jessica told you and your cousins a wild tale – five sisters conceiving on the same night, all bearing sons with oddly-colored hair and eyes – a community uproar and estrangement to follow, not to mention the angry siblings who believed the mysterious and beautiful man had affection only for each of them.”

Taylor felt his jaw drop, the ability to control his facial expression misplaced in the wake of Malik’s comment.

“How do you know? How do you know?!” He rose to his knees upon the mattress, wanting to grab the vision, but feared affirmation of his certainty that this was not a hallucination. It did not matter if one of the monitors came in response to his shout. But Taylor was equally certain that was not going to happen.

“Because the one who sired you is my brother, the very same brother destroyed by that thing. She claimed he asked her to do so, to ease his suffering at having come to accept so much, the burden of loving humanity. It is our task to show the way, not to feel, not to long to move down the tree to the dirt below.”

“No, it ain’t true. I ain’t gonna be your pawn just because you wanna hurt her. That’s on you.”

Malik laughed, and that sound at least was very familiar. “Do you honestly believe I would ask a human to deliver my vengeance? You’re all worthless and that’s why Dog put you at the bottom.”

“And you’re stuck. I heard her say that one time. Eishka.”

“She is equally mired in this realm. I am telling you this for more than a few reasons, but primarily because there is nothing worse than not knowing the truth. I find myself compelled to tell that poor girl’s parents the truth, but the outcome would have been the same. The end of my journey is here, among the detritus of your race. So imagine my surprise to find you, spawn of my brother, the glorious Kahil.”

Malik put a hand around Taylor’s ankle, the appendage was hot, on the borderline of being unbearably so.

“This small test,” he murmured, lifting Taylor’s foot to his lips. He ran his flawless pink tongue along the largest of the scars on the sole. Taylor felt as though he were going to faint, piss the bed, and experience the most intense orgasm of his life, all at once. The feeling passed immediately after Malik let go.

“Sweet.” Just the one word, but a thousand different insinuations.

Taylor found himself wanting to ask for more, just as others had asked the same of him. And when he refused, they took it by force. Understanding, faint but certain, cut through the fear, anger, and confusion.

“But how can that be? You’re sayin’ my father weren’t human.”

A smile at that observance, condescending yet eternally beauteous, inspiring devotion even in response to behavior that would sadden the most abject of dogs.

“We can do whatever we wish. We are angels, the Agents of Agape. It is our Purpose to inspire humanity to heights of achievement and understanding which will bring them that much closer to the Singularity: the moment wherein all in the tree are one. But my brothers and I believed we could create a better creature. However, without the proper framework such breeding causes madness, not betterment. You, for example, only wish to destroy something outwardly perfect; however, not wholly perfect, and therefore the conflict tortures you and everyone who comes in contact with you. A lust for oblivion, causing you to scar yourself irrevocably when your efforts to die failed. But the beauty remains despite your attempts to erase it. I pity you, boy. My brothers and I did not fully comprehend what was wrought.”

“You’re all evil! Angels my ass!”

“Humanity only sees what it is allowed to see. And Dog allows you to believe my kind is the crown of creation. Only Dog can judge me.”

“Why the hell do y’all keep sayin’ ‘dog?’”

A quiet chuckle, the tone appeared to have descended back into the realm of human utterance.

“It’s quite simple, really. You are the bottom of the tree. You look up. We look down. Therefore, to speak of the universe, the Architect of the Great Design, is all a matter of orientation.”

At that, Malik, or the vision of Malik that Taylor beheld, vanished. Taylor sat in the returned darkness, heart pounding, head aching.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered at one point.

After a time, when his limbs had stopped trembling, he got up and put on a pair of boxers, then slipped his bathrobe over them and tied it tight. The linoleum seemed ice cold on Taylor’s bare feet after the touch of Malik’s hand. He left his room and went down the hall to the nurses’ station. The second shift nurse, Esther, gave him a concerned look.

“What’s wrong, Taylor? Are you itching again?”

“Naw. I can’t sleep. I’ve been lyin’ there for however long now and I feel like my eyes (mah ayes) are glued open, or somethin.’”

Esther pulled his chart and consulted it briefly. “Well, Dr. M did write you a script for Klonopin. . .do you want to take one? That might help you relax. There’s no notation regarding hypnotics on your chart.”

“Yeah, that’s okay, I guess. I need something.’”

He knew better than to ask for more than one, though once a psychopharmacologist had prescribed Klonopin to him and he had experimented with different doses. One of his cousins had taken it for his severe anxiety and seemed much calmer, almost to the point of apathy. Taylor longed for that kind of disconnection but was reluctant to let go of his dis-ease, even for a moment. All or nothing, that was how he viewed his dilemma. However, it had been so long since he last had taken any kind of sedative, he thought it might make him drowsy enough.

Otherwise he might never sleep again.

Considerations of reality versus delusion were beside the point, because they left the exact same imprint upon Taylor’s brain, and it was crumbling beneath the weight of the truth. The truth did hurt, he thought, and he had never felt a greater urge to end his life then at that moment, staring at the contents of the meds cabinet as Esther dispensed him his magic bullet.

But Taylor knew that might make things worse, somehow. Knowledge which only someone touched by the divine, or perhaps the damned, would possess.


In the lounge, residents gathered around the television, tuned to Court TV. The program playing was entitled Open Court, featuring broadcasts of trial proceedings of various cases; the more sensationalistic the better, of course. Dun recalled that yesterday they had watched a case about a man who killed his wife by strangling her, then weighed her body down and dumped it into a lake. He had requested that evidence of his religious beliefs (a kind of neo-paganism) and sexual practices (polyamory, among other things) be kept out of the proceedings because it would prejudice the more-than-likely conservative Christian jury picked to hear the trial.

“That’s so stupid,” he remarked to Eishka, as she sat beside him and paged through a magazine, probably looking for other Agents of Agape to add to her scrapbook. “People don’t kill just because they think they worship the Devil, or whatever. Everybody has a personal reason to do things.”

“There is no Devil,” she murmured back to him. “It is merely a form – all the evil things you do – that exists only for you. Dog is all.”

“Then what does it mean to be a demon?”

“We are born of your desires. Desire is strong enough to assume its’ own form. We live among you and we are what you want.”

“Is that why I think I love you? I don’t even know you, really, but I believe you. Believe in you.”

She gave him a slight smile. There was an eternal patience embodied within.

“Love is something you only believe you know. But we are a piece of that impulse, to treasure something so much that you would die for it. Kill for it. Be damned for it.”

“If there is no Devil, then how can anyone be damned?”

“When one is absent from Dog, from the source of everything, that is to be truly wretched. To be damned to an existence in the darkness.”

Today Dun decided to change the course of their discussion, though to seek more answers was merely to entertain further questions.

“What is it like, where you’re from? Originally, I mean.”

Eishka paused in her daily task and put a hand to her mouth: a pondering gesture.

“I cannot explain. It all seems so unreal now, save those flashes of what I knew.”

A sliver of doubt, a slight puncture on the surface of things – one could easily posit that Eishka was merely a fragment of a personality that the host, Melinda Rosen, used as a coping mechanism to deal with her particular cognitive handicap – but Dun dismissed the incertitude based on many things, primarily because he did, just as he had told her, believe in her. Moreso than anyone had ever believed in him. He had been starting at Eishka so intently he did not notice that Taylor was now sitting on the other side of him.

“Dun,” he said, and there was a curious tone in his voice, a seeming fearfulness that caused the hairs on Dun’s neck to hackle. Dun did not startle easily anymore, he had learned to internalize his fear, attempting the blankness of those in whose company he often found himself, but he realized that both he and Taylor were quickly losing a grip on their faux courage.

“What’s wrong, dude?”

“What does she say ‘bout him?” He jerked his head in Eishka’s direction, his eyes darting from side to side, scanning the room warily.

“Who?”

“Who else would I be talkin’ ‘bout?!”

Dun looked around as well: ascertaining the proximity of Petra or any monitors in relation to their conversational space. They were keeping an eye on Eishka these days, no doubt waiting for her to have some kind of episode like the ones she had told him about - the days when the world made her sick, made her mad - and she would experience fits of deep mourning: rending her hair and her clothes, pleading to Dog to forgive her in His Infinite Wisdom for presuming that she knew better than He. To allow her to climb the tree once more and take her place among His Beloved Ones. There was a clump of people at the other end of the room by the television screens, two monitors stationed on opposite walls, eyeing not only the people in the room, but those passing by in the hallway. The other end of the room, where the trio sat on one of the couches, was mostly deserted.

“She says he’s one of the Agents of Agape. They’re like angels, I guess, that’s why he’s named Malik which means ‘angel.’ They’re here to help people, to teach them to be better, or something.”

Taylor sighed, a sound nearly explosive in the relative silence of their environs.

“That’s what I thought.”

“What’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Oh c’mon dude, if I believe she’s a demon, don’t you think I’d believe you?”

“Yeah, but you’re crazy. Some voice told you to burn your house down.”

Dun gave Taylor a steel-eyed glare, of the specifically don’t fuck with me kind. “The voice tried to tell me not to do it, dumbass.”

“Oh whatever! Okay listen, you can’t tell nobody what I’m gonna tell you, you hear me?”

“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a snitch.”

“He came to me, the other night. He fuckin’ appeared in my room.”

“And?”

“What – you’re not gonna say, ‘Well how could he do that, Taylor? He’s in solitary confinement, isn’t he Taylor? Have you lost your fuckin’ mind, Taylor?”

“Didn’t I just say I would believe you? Besides, Eishka can do it too. She came to my room one time when Petra locked it from the outside.”

“What in the goddamn hell is goin’ on? Why are they here and why do they gotta mess with us?”

Dun was staring at the television; a commercial was playing, something about serial killers, and he saw a montage of infamous faces: Gein, Berkowitz, Bundy, Ramirez. Through the nearby doorway that was directly across from the doorway of the Common Room, he could hear the radio playing a song his mother had been fond of:
Where is the love
you’d said you’d give to me, as soon as you were free
will it ever be?
Where is the love?

“Do you read comic books?”

“When I was a kid, yeah.”

“Some superheroes couldn’t handle being like that. Like Peter Parker. He didn’t want to be Spiderman. So maybe it’s like that for angels and demons – they don’t want to be supernatural. I mean, what would life on Earth be for somebody like that?”

“It would make ya crazy.”

“Yeah, maybe. Or at least in some cases.” Dun looked over at Eishka. “But she’s just a girl now, and that is what made her crazy.”

“He said he killed that girl, Malik did.”

“Well of course he killed her. I read a bunch of stuff about the investigation and the trial. There are some people who can get away with murder, and sometimes it’s because the truth is harder to believe than what you think actually happened.”

“But here’s the worst part.” Taylor leaned in close to Dun. His breath smelled sour, like he had been chewing aspirin. “He told me he knew who my father was.”

Dun had heard bits and pieces of Taylor’s history over the year or so since he had been transferred to the facility and experienced a particular type of cold comfort which comes from knowing there were circumstances worst than one’s own, even if one could not see beyond their own misery to acknowledge this fact.

“Like, he just knew his name, or knew him?”

“Oh he knew him. Said he was Kahil. Isn’t that the guy she was talkin’ ‘bout when he smacked her?”

“Wait a minute, he said your father was Kahil?”

“Jesus, would ya look at that?”

Dun had turned his scrutiny away from the television, but looked back after Taylor’s interjection. Open Court was apparently replaying the proceedings of Thompson v. Leahy. As the Prosecution presented the opening argument, the camera repeatedly cut to an impassive Malik Leahy, knowing what the audience truly wanted was to experience the guilty pleasure of looking upon his beautiful face rather than pay attention to the legal particulars.

“He’ll have to stay in solitary now,” Dun remarked.

An excited murmuring filled the room as the monitor along the far wall looked over at the television and exclaimed, “Holy shit! Joe, go get Petra, now!!” The other attendant ran from the room. Eishka looked up.

“I was not so wretched when he was in the box. He could not hurt me in the box.”

Dun felt compelled to state what was perhaps not entirely obvious to her.

“Uh, he wasn’t really inside the television, Eishka.”

She was silent again, looking down at another magazine.

Gazing once more at the program, Dun inclined his head toward Taylor’s.

“I hate to break it to you, but your dad looks just like him. Eishka says that they’re all are similar, but some are identical.”

“Well ain’t that just fuckin’ spiffy?” Taylor leaned back against the wall and put a hand over his eyes.

Petra had entered the room and shut off the television from the main panel, causing a chorus of disappointed groans to sound.

“Oh stop now – you can have TV again when we figure out how to block that goddamn channel. You all shouldn’t be watching such morbid trash anyway.”

Once she left the room many continued to sit in their chairs, staring at the dark glass of the silent screens.

“You know it don’t matter, him bein’ locked up.”

“I know. Which is why I need to figure out what to do about him.”

Taylor made a sort of hissing sound, his teeth clenched. “Boy, you are crazy. What you gonna do against an angel?”

“I don’t know yet. But I can’t let him hurt Eishka.”

“Seems to me she could take care o’herself, if she’s really a demon.”

“She’s not, not anymore.”

“Well why is he still an angel but she’s not a demon? What the hell is that about?”

Dun turned to her, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Why, Eishka? Why does he still have power if he was banished like you were?”

“I have power,” she replied, equally quiet. “But I have subverted the Design. Dog has judged me, and decreed I must be seen. I must become like those at the bottom of the tree. To be who I was before, that would mean oblivion.”

“But Malik wants to kill you!” His whisper turned frantic.

“What is desired and what is granted can often be opposite states of being.”

“What is she talkin’ ‘bout now?” Taylor whined, ever annoyed when Eishka’s pronouncements became distinctly metaphysical.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Dun said, his hands cradling his head, attempting to will the oncoming headache into that same oblivion she spoke of. Another whisper then, as the Voice offered its’ own observation.

Someone is going to die. And it might be you, did you ever think of that?

Before he could stop himself from muttering aloud he said, “Shut up if you’re not going to help me.”

“What?” Taylor asked.

“Nothing,” Dun replied, wishing he had some real comic books to consult.


Dun was in the thrift shop, behind the counter, and thought it strange to see Eishka come through the door. Stranger still that she glowed. The air shimmered and danced and he wondered if the world looked that way to her as well. She was magnificent and golden: like melted butter on popcorn or hot caramel on ice cream.
She tilted her head and asked, “What is caramel?”
He puzzled over possible explanations and finally answered, “Burnt sugar.”
She frowned, then smiled. And reverted to normal, her image refocusing as if the reception were bad. His eyes, reality. . .he could not view her as he normally did. She was breaking up.
“Is that what you really look like?”
She flickered back into bright being. “When I am where I belong.”
“I don’t know how to help you.”
She smiled again, but sadly, regret stretching her face into a gentle rictus.
“You may learn how to help yourself.” Back to merely skin. Her brown eyes seemed to retain the ochre glow.
“Will he do to you what you did to Kahil?”
“And what do you know of such things? What did the Angel tell you?”
He stammered through a negation, she was right in front of him, touching his face. Her hands were warm, she smelled like flowers and cotton candy and fresh bread. She shone like the gaudiest of gold jewelry.
“I cannot speak the Purpose,” she told him. “I cannot tell you of agape. But were it for me to show you, I most surely would. I would make you happy once, and only once. But it would be enough.”
She dimmed again, and this extinguishment seemed to be final. Only a glimpse of her higher self could she give him, so that he might understand. She turned Dun towards a mirror that hung on the left-hand wall for when people wanted to hold a garment against themselves in search of a definitive buying decision.
“Is Dog with you?” she asked, as they looked at themselves in the glass. “You are the only one who may answer.”
“But I don’t know.”
“You will need to know, if you are to help anyone.”
A blurring of the reflection just then, and he turned to see Malik standing on the sidewalk outside. There was a glimmering behind him, like fluttering wings, but made of light which continuously shifted. Dun finally perceived the beauty which had the ability to stun others; he felt himself wanting to stare at that face forever, to contemplate the notion of perfection. Malik grinned: malicious and arrogant, then moved his jaw with both hands in the same motion Eishka had used when he had hit her, seemingly pushing it forwards and backwards, in a way in which a normal person could not. He spoke, and his voice chimed and echoed, quite unlike what Dun had previously heard.
“I am hungry, demon.” Then he was gone, not with a gradual fade but a sudden deletion, as if his appearance were the conjurer’s trick instead.


A gasp, suddenly awake. Panting and sweating.

Dun had an immediate need for a dictionary. And something to cease the pounding in his head.


“Duncan, I understand you felt badly when Melinda was hurt. I am aware you have feelings for her. But these feelings of persecution she is experiencing, although logical in terms of her own frame of reference, are inappropriate in terms of any actual threat. We all know Malik is in Lockdown, he can’t hurt her again.”

Why bother attempting to explain, Dun asked himself rhetorically. Crazy talk. He remembered one therapist at the work camp telling him when a person’s life was more irrational than rational, that was “crazy.” Not bad, not wrong, but crazy. And crazy meant he could never do anything normal like drive a car, or go to a movie theatre, or kiss a girl in public.

But what am I supposed to do?

Not even The Voice was willing to answer this question.

“ – I am more concerned in regards to your complaints that your headaches are worsening. Are you in pain right now?”

“Sorta. Just like a dull throbbing,” he replied to Dr. Mentjis.

She paged through his chart. “We’ve tried everything I can think of. We can’t take the route of prescribing triptans because of the other medication you’re currently taking. I can’t risk taking you off the Haldol just to see if something like Imitrex would work for you.”

Dun sighed, looking out the window behind her. Dr. Mentjis’ office featured a nice view of the parking lot, though it was largely obscured by trees, which now provided a sort of orange-brown curtain as opposed to the normal green. Soon the leaves would be gone, and the concrete would look that much bleaker when exposed to constant gray skies.

“I think I’m going to see if I can get you scheduled at County next week for tests. Hopefully we won’t have to wait more than a few days for the authorization.”

“The hospital? But that means they’d want me to stay overnight.”

“And?”

Dun shut his mouth, not wanting to elaborate. Karen gave him a slightly frustrated look and he was reminded of Eishka for a moment, they both had the same dark hair and brown eyes.

“Duncan, if you’re going to worry about someone, why don’t you try putting yourself at the top of the list for once, okay?”

He nodded, merely to placate her. No one ever enjoyed when Dr. Mentjis had to resort to lecturing, because she wasn’t very good at it and her annoyance could spread among the residents with the speed of an STD. Not that Dun’s mood could be said to be good, he had woken up every day of the past week with the psychological weight of a seemingly unsolvable dilemma crushing him like unaccustomed gravity.

Karen sensed, with a wisdom born from experience, that Duncan meant to do no such thing.

“Duncan, I know that you have always tried to do what you believe to be the right thing, that the voice which you’ve described is trying to help you make the right choices. And I respect your struggle. But you’ve lived a very unusual and circumscribed sort of life. You’re still young, and it’s not up to you to make everything right. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Your feelings for Melinda, they’re normal for someone your age. Did you ever have a girlfriend, before everything –“ She waved her hand in the air, to indicate the events of his cataclysmic break with normal behavior.

“No.”

“Then I’m not going to say that your fear is inappropriate or unreasonable. However, I will say that you can’t necessarily expect Melinda to understand your feelings or respond in kind. Her condition is a great deal more unstable than your own.”

Time now to repress an altogether inappropriate response, big guy. She’s being serious, and although it’s the funniest thing you’ve heard all damn day, you can’t start laughing hysterically in her face. You just can’t.

“I know, Dr. Mentjis. Can we not talk about this anymore, please?”

Karen looked down at her desk, her eyes straying as they seemed to do more and more of late, to Malik’s file, open at the same photograph as previous. “Of course, Duncan. I did want to ask again if there was anything else you remember about the incident in the Game Room.”

“No ma’am.”

“So Melinda has told you nothing about who Kahil is? Or why Malik would be so upset by her statement?”

“No. Like I said, I think he hates everybody. We were all afraid of him, even before he hit her.”

“But that’s what I don’t understand – if you were all afraid of him, then why did you interact with him?”

“Because fear isn’t always a good enough reason to stay away from things, or people. You’re the shrink, you mean you don’t know that?”

Easy, boy.

Karen parted her lips to speak, then closed them again. She nodded her head towards the door, a well-engrained shorthand gesture for Your time is up, thank you for coming. Dun slunk out, his shoulders slightly hunched. Petra glanced at him from her desk, one ebony eyebrow cocked.

“You didn’t piss her off again, did you? Now she’s gonna make us all miserable.”

“Sorry Petra.” But he didn’t mean it. There was no real truth to any of the things he had said that day, except the part about not knowing what to do.


Malik waited in the conference room for his lawyer, accompanied by two of the monitors. When she finally arrived he could smell the cold weather upon her, the mineral-laden air emanating from her tweed coat, the tang of woodsmoke in her hair, and a certain musty, closed-in undertone. Probably her car, dusty and crammed with debris. She used to ask him to sit in the back whenever she drove him home from the deposition sessions. The passenger seat of her Honda was piled high with books and folders.

“Hello Malik,” she greeted him with a brief embrace. He could feel her cheek brush against his neck, she always paused to smell him. The slightest of smirks twisted his pouty lips.

“Sharon,” he said, tilting his head and seeming to appraise her. “Your hair is too bright.”

She put a hand to her own head, a little less formal now. “It’s new. Next time you see me it will have faded back to normal.”

They sat down side-by-side at the table and the monitors walked out through the open door, one standing just beside it and the other directly across from it, to grant the occupants an illusion of privacy. Sharon placed her hands on the table in lieu of touching Malik directly, a temptation that grew no easier to ignore as their familiarity progressed.

“I’ve spoken to the administration and they’re unmoving on their stance that you pose a threat to the other occupants. Your mother has insisted you be moved to another facility all along, but there are no openings, currently. I have a feeling some locations would be reluctant regardless, given your notoriety.”

“I do not wish to be moved.”

“Malik, they’re not going to allow you to leave solitary confinement. Is that what you really want?”

“Being alone is not an issue. Besides –“ the fingers of his right hand brushed the top of her left hand “- I’m never really alone, am I?” His eyes fluttered and the slight glow of her blush at his insinuation felt as radiantly hot as embers.

“No,” she whispered in response. He moved closer to her, his mouth was mere inches from her ear.

“Where are my letters? You must have a nice stack of them now, waiting for my reply.”

“I didn’t bring them. You know I don’t approve. I’ll send them over to Petra tomorrow.”

Sharon sighed, knowing she could deny him very little. She considered herself lucky that she had never fully succumbed to his charms, another Leslie Abramson manipulated by a charming sociopath.

“Oh Sharon, do you still cling to the notion you can have me all to yourself? I belong to the world.”

“The world can’t get to you, not here.”

“But neither can you.”

She pouted, reflexively. Malik could wound, so easily. But he was still the most beautiful person she’d ever known, and to consider rationally acknowledging her conflict of interest and passing him on to someone else in the firm was unthinkable. She’d rather die than give that up. Not to mention the certain glamour and cache which came with possessing an infamous client.

“Ms. Jones, your time is up,” one of the monitors called out.

They rose and embraced again and this time she squeezed him; relished his solidity, the thick flax of his shoulder-length hair, looked directly into those bright blue eyes.

”Ana behibak, Malik Azhar.”

In response, ever since she had first voiced her feelings in this manner to him, he used the same reply he always did, which, given her extremely limited knowledge of what she assumed was Arabic, she did not understand. But the language he spoke was one which no one who claimed to love him in this world would ever know.

”I know. And Dog pities you for it.”