Thank fuck.A distraction. “Sure. You need me to guard you?”
“Yeah. One night with that lady was enough to last me a lifetime.”
Jack glanced pointedly at the swimsuit magazine on the counter.
“Thoseladies would be fine,” Boris said. “Thisonelooked like a corpse.”
Tonight, Jack sat with his back to the headboard. Boris curled into a ball on the other side of the bed. Jack wasn’t exactly sure what his presence was supposed to do except make Boris feel better, but he didn’t question it.
The television blared in the background. Some crime show that Jack was only vaguely interested in played across the screen.
He rubbed his eyes and forced himself to pay attention. This was noStaring Down the Barrel, but the female lead was witty and competent, and he found himself entertained nonetheless.
He woke to the chatter of the television and the sound of water dripping. A distant hiss, like air escaping a tire. A cold breeze left him reaching for the blankets, gravitating toward the warm body beside him. His leg crashed against a muscled back.Not Carla, he realized, raising his gaze slowly.
Boris.
Shit. Jack was meant to be keeping watch.
He sat bolt upright. The frozen air settled into his bones, made ice of his marrow. His breath puffed in clouds before him.
Across the room, a shadow lurched.
Jack shook Boris’s shoulder, never taking his eyes off the figure. For it was a figure that emerged from the darkness, or more accurately, a silhouette: a woman, tall and spindly like a cartoon character, lumbering with the urgency of a sleepy drunk.
“Go away,” he choked. The words tasted like ash in his mouth. When he inhaled, a chill shot all the way down his throat, into his lungs. He coughed, stricken.
Boris didn’t stir. Jack shook him again, desperate now. A groan escaped his mouth, clouded the air like a white flag.
The figure drifted nearer, swaying with each step.
“Jack,” mumbled Boris, voice thin and reedy, like it was forced from him.
“I know, I fucked up,” Jack gasped, fingers clenched in the fabric of Boris’s polo shirt.
“Tell it… go ‘way.”
“Fuck off,” Jack panted, gaze glued to the woman drawing nearer. Every word froze his throat further. He imagined it was crawling with icicles now. The wrong flex of muscle and he’d surely be impaled.
The silhouette only paused, head cocking like a dog’s.
Supposing that he may as well treat her like a dog, Jack repeated, “Fuck off. Go away.”
“Go…” Boris mumbled, the world’s smallest echo.
The figure hesitated, regarding them curiously. Then came a surge of wind that sent the curtains billowing and straining from their rod. A frigid gust shot across the bed, so fast that Jack could barely blink. Didn’t blink, in fact, because it seemed even his eyelids had frozen.
Boris had neglected to mention the cold. Only the dead, staring eye sockets growing ever closer, step by step, until at last the figure stood at the end of the bed, inches from the sole of Jack’s foot.
In the background, the television flickered to static.
“Fuck,” whispered Boris. Jack tightened his grip on his shoulder, the only semblance of reassurance he could offer.
He needed to run. Needed to call for help. But those empty eyes captivated him, and he could not look away.
A strange sense of calm settled over him. Boris made a sound like a dying animal and Jack thought that maybe he should be worried, that maybe he should look away from the serene depths before him. But he was so warm, so relaxed, drawn deeper and deeper into that beckoning oblivion, where he could finally fade into nothingness like he’d always secretly wanted to. No responsibilities. No one to disappoint. No thoughts to trip over, words to choke on. Only soothing darkness, pulling him down, down, down into ecstasy?—
“Jack!”
