Boo Says
Last night, Madeleine awoke in a subway station, and the previous night next to a desert road. But tonight she awakes in a forest by a lake shimmering with moonlight.
The old fear grips her. The fear she’ll die. That although she knows her body lies at home, trapped in bed by sleep paralysis, she’ll die in the forest by the lake, in her waking dream.
She calls it a dream, but she knows it will be very real for someone. Boo will see to that.
A cool breeze riffles the lake, slips through her nightgown and tightens her skin.
Laughter drifts from the water’s edge. Four men are seated around a campfire, drinking.
She knows what will happen next.
One of them stands, silhouetted against the lake, and turns toward her. “Yo,” he shouts.
He approaches — a young man, chest out, swaggering. She’s met his type before.
“Yo, baby. What you doin’ here?”
He smiles.
She doesn’t want to, but she smiles back. Boo makes her smile.
“Lost?” He’s in front of her now, a few inches taller, much heavier. Grinning. “My name’s Bobby, by the way. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
Behind him, moonlight shifts and condenses between leafy branches.
Suddenly she’s weary, the way she’s always weary when Boo casts her into the night.
She sits on a log and tucks her nightgown — a little too late — between her legs shining pale in reflected moonlight.
“Yeah, relax,” Bobby says, and now there’s wolf in his eyes, and shark in his smile. “Here, I’ll sit with you.”
“No,” she says, not harshly, but he stops.
“You scared, honey? No need to be scared of me. We can chat a while, get to know each other. Then I’ll take you home.”
“No. I’m not scared.”
Madeleine’s lying, of course. She’s terrified, but not of him. And the terror’s deep within her, down where it really counts.
“It’ll be easier if you stand,” she says. “Easier for you.”
Her eyes search his face for any sign of softness, for a reason to pity him.
He doesn’t notice, his attention focused on the curve of her breasts beneath the thin nightgown. He steps closer, mindlessly, instinctively.
She wonders why Boo chose her. Why he made her his emissary — or sacrificial lamb.
Perhaps because she’s slim and attractive, but she doubts Boo even sees that — if he sees at all.
Perhaps because she’s too sensitive, because she’s “an open wound” as her mother said when Madeleine cried over lost pets, and, later, when she stopped eating after deadbeat boyfriends dumped her.
Perhaps because her pain attracts an inflictor of pain.
Bobby presses against her, hard, his fingers in her hair. He’s beyond speech. The veneer of civility torn away by the leering, lustful thing crawling across his face. He doesn’t realize it, but his desire is screaming, screaming wildly into the frenzied place where Boo lives.
Behind him, a circle of moonlight forms on a wide, oak trunk: a pale, luminous face above a body of shadow and night.
Despite his burning lust, despite the fire that numbs his mind, Bobby turns.
He turns toward the man-like creature, with shadow body and featureless, moonlit face, that steps out of the gloom.
“Hello,” Boo says. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
And Madeleine knows she must stay and watch.
Did you enjoy this strange tale? Be sure to follow The Midnight Mosaic & The Mad River for more of 13 Days of Dark & Weird 2019. Submissions accepted until October 22nd, 2019.
