“Well”—he chuckles—“you’re actually correct. Everything about meisa lie.” His face is somber now, and again, I find myself disoriented. “There’s no time to explain now”—which makes me laugh—“but it’ll be over soon and the good news is…” His pause is short, but noteworthy. “The good news is that we always win.” He ends this proclamation with a forced smile.
I just shake my head. “This doesn’t feel like winning.”
But he’s gone, and the purple dreamwalk fades, and I am nothing but a half-eaten, half-dead monster again.
I scream. And it’s not a human one, either. It’s something animal. No. Worse than that. It’s something demonic. Because that’s what I am. It’s time to face the truth. I am a fuckingdemon.
I am the opposite of everything I wanted to be as a young man and my whole life has been nothing but one, long failure.
“Oh, come on, Ryet. You can do better than that.”
I open my eyes and I’m back in a dreamwalk, only it’s not purple, it’swhite. And the person talking to me isn’t Paul, it’s…Jane.
“Jane?” And for a moment I think I might cry. I stand up and just stare at her. “Am I in a delusion? Am I seeing things? You’re not really here. You can’t be here. You’re too good, Jane.”
She smiles and walks towards me. She’s wearing a white, short-sleeved cotton blouse and a pleated mint-green skirt that covers her knees. Her shoes are white with no heel. And I recognize this outfit as one she wore often. At least once a week I would come home from work and find her in the kitchen cooking dinner in these same clothes. If there’s a classic image of Jane in my mind, this is it.
That’s how I know it’s not real. She’s not here. I’m delusional.
“You know that’s not true, Ryet.”
I scoff. “You left me. And it was a one-way trip.”
“I had to. I was told to. And…” She hesitates, unable to meet my gaze for a moment, but she quickly recovers and stares right into my eyes. “And I made a deal.”
“Deal?” I laugh. “A deal? No, go away. I don’t want to hear about your deal. This isn’t real. You’re dead, Paul killed you and the kids, andnone of this is real!” I yell this last part. “You’re Paul. You’re fucking with my head. You’re trying to get me to do something. And?—”
“Shhh,” she says, putting a finger to her lips. And it’s such a Jane thing to do, to shush me like she used to shush our children in church, that I actually shut up. “I made a deal, Ryet. To save the souls of our children, but not only that. It’s so much bigger than that. You see, I had a vision when we first got married.Hecame to me in a dream.”
“Who?” I ask, my heart thumping. But it’s a dumb question. I know who.
“Paul. He was…” She shakes her head. “My God, the man is?—”
“Not a man,” I growl at her. “He’s not aman, Jane. He’s a fuckingvampire.”
“Of course he is. But hewasa man. Once. And then he got the call. So when he came to me?—”
“Oh, no. No. No, no, please tell me you didn’t fall for his lies, Jane!Please!”
“They weren’t lies, Ryet. It was all true. And this is all so much bigger than just us. It’s about so much more than just a married couple with children. It’s about…everything. Once he explained it all in detail, I understood and I knew what I had to do. Paul asked me if I wanted to go with them or stay with you. And it was my choice.”
“Oh, my God.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “No. Please, don’t tell me this. I don’t want to hear any more.”
But Jane is not interested in what I want—has anyone ever been interested in what I want? She just keeps talking. “I chose to go with them and it was the right choice. Not just for me and the kids, but for you. Because I would’ve just held you back.”
I open my eyes and look at her again. “Held me back?” And now I’m angry. “Your death, the kids, the burning church—these are the reasons I said yes to him, Jane! If this is true, and I don’t think it is, then you’re… you’re a fucking bitch! You ruined my life! I said yes because you were gone! I had nothing left to lose. So hey, why not, right? Why not let this demon kiss me and feed me his blood? Why not let him change me into thisdespicable creature?”
“You let him do it because you knew it was your path, Ryet.”
“And stop calling me Ryet! That’s not my name! You know it’s not my name!”
“You’re not listening.”
“No, I’m not.”
Her smile is kind and warm, but she sighs. “It was all in the plan.”
I hear the truth. I know it’s all true. Because why wouldn’t the one person I thought was pure and good betray me in the end? Of course she did. They all do. But I can’t deal.
So I turn my back on her. “Go away. Go away and never come back.”
And when I turn around, finally, someone has done what I asked.
But as the white fades back to purple, I hear something.
A song sung by children. My children.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
But as I slip back into my own hellish reality, she gets the last word. “Find a way to shine, Ryet. That’s all I have left to say and that’s all you have left to do. Just find a way toshine.”
