Dark Tendrils by Claude Lalumiere Page A

drunkenness. He argued with everyone around him. Not making any sense. Being a jerk. The party had completely lost its glitter, becoming a blur of oozing anger.
    The next thing Kurt knew, it was dawn, and he and Holly were walking home, shouting, fighting.
    In their two years together, they had never quarrelled. Ever. On the rare occasions when a potential conflict presented itself, they’d always known how to talk things through calmly. He loved that about them, their relationship.
    Kurt didn’t even really know what they were fighting about. Holly was questioning him about some teenager—a dark-skinned girl with long, multicoloured braids—he’d apparently been chatting up.
    “She kept pointing at me. Whispering in your ear.”
    “I can’t remember. I was drunk.”
    “I saw her slip you a piece of paper. Her phone number?”
    “I said, I was drunk—I don’t remember her. I don’t remember anything.” But Kurt fumbled through his pockets anyway. He found something: a bookmark. Holly leaned in to see, but Kurt pushed her away.
    Lost Pages
it read, in bold blue letters on a brown background, with the address in small green type.
Whatever
, he thought, shoving it back into his pocket.
    From that moment on they fought about everything and nothing. Every day. About the most inane things. Too quickly, arguing became their predominant mode of communication.
    One evening, after five weeks of this torment, Holly stormed out after yet another screaming match. Something about the volume of the TV while they were watching the news. Stupid. Inconsequential.
    Near midnight, she finally came home, with Giovanni in tow.
    Giovanni, again. I should have guessed,
Kurt thought.
    Holly didn’t say a word to Kurt. She walked right past him, without acknowledging him in any way. Giovanni greeted Kurt with a “Hello” whose a tone left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.
    Then they started making out right in front of Kurt. On the couch. Taking off each other’s clothes. Fondling each other. As if Kurt weren’t there. Or maybe especially because he was there.
    Kurt didn’t know how to react. He just stood there silently, stunned into numbness.
    Holly continued to ignore him. But Giovanni kept stealing these cold glances at him.
    At this stage, anger was pointless. The sight of them—the girl he loved giving herself to a man he despised and feared, to a man who reminded him of his own weakness, stupidity, and shame—filled him with hatred and self-loathing, but he felt compelled to watch.
    When they positioned themselves in a sixty-nine, Kurt had finally had enough. He shut himself in the bedroom, closing the door quietly. He went to bed without bothering to take his clothes off.
    Kurt thought about leaving the apartment, but, as painful as it was, staying also afforded him a measure of control; it allowed him to focus on the transgressions that were occurring in his presence rather than letting his imagination run wildly paranoid with much worse horrors. Holly and Giovanni went at it for hours, groaning and moaning and screaming.
    Despite that, Kurt eventually settled into an unrestful doze.
    When Kurt saw the first hint of dawn through the window, he decided to get up and go out. Have breakfast at The Small Easy. Try to get his head straight. Figure out what to do.
    But he couldn’t budge.
    Frustrated at being unable to get out of bed, he tried to move specific parts of his body, but he couldn’t even wiggle his fingers. His entire body was cocooned inside some kind of force field. It stung, producing a mild electric current every time he tried to move. The field pulled itself tighter against him, crushing his chest. He panicked, uselessly.
    Kurt felt a presence—not so much with him, but directed at him. He could move his eyes, though not his head. He glanced around, but there was nobody. The bedroom seemed undisturbed. It struck him that he couldn’t hear anything—no noise leaking in from other apartments, no sounds