“Friends in Dark Places”
It had been a long day at the animal shelter I spent most of my free time volunteering at, but I’d had a good, long talk with my friend Sasha, who’d convinced me it was time to tell Mom about the fact that I was in the process of changing my name.
Didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
“Oh for Chrissakes, Brayden, enough with the waterworks,” Mom snapped, disgust wrinkling her nose. “You’re a man now, you’re way too old for this!” Every muscle in my body tensed, my breaths rushing through a throat that felt far too narrow. I tried to stop crying, I really did; I didn’t want her to see it anymore than she did. But the tears were coming up hot, from deep inside me, and they refused to stop.
When I failed to do what she wanted she slammed her palm against the stained formica countertop closest to her, the close walls of our kitchen magnifying the sound and making me flinch. “Alright, that’s it,” she howled. “Get out of my sight! I don’t want to see you the rest of the night, do you hear me?”
I nodded, sniffling, and lunged past her as fast as I could. I was almost twenty, but she was so good at making me feel like a kid again. I ducked into my room, closing the door carefully, since Mom was the only one allowed to slam things or make noise. I locked my door then threw my body onto my bed, pressing my face into my pillow to muffle my sobs. All I want is to change my name, I thought miserably, a sharp ache clawing at my chest, hollowing it out. ‘Arin’ isn’t even a weird name. I just want to change that one thing!
But to Mom, I was born a boy, so I was a boy, period. It didn’t matter that I was actually nonbinary; to her, my saying that was just me being difficult or dramatic or spiteful. She couldn’t grasp that I wasn’t trying to hurt her, I was just trying to make myself hurt less.
I continued to sob into my pillow, wringing myself out until I was swollen and scratchy and my mind had drifted into an exhausted haze. Eventually I fell asleep, the beginnings of a headache threatening behind my eyes.
When I woke, it was to a still, quiet house beyond the barrier of my bedroom door. The air had the close, expectant feel of the deep night hours, but after a moment of listening, I picked up a sound that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was soft, a scraping, dragging kind of sound punctuated by a click-clacking staccato. My breath froze in my lungs as I strained to listen, and as I waited it grew louder, seeming to come from under my bed. I slid back from the free edge of my mattress, pressing my back against the cool solidity of my wall. My heart raced, and when I took a breath at last I caught a smell that was sweet and metallic at once, like rot and old blood. I shivered, hugging myself tight, and peeled my eyes wide, searching the darkness frantically. Maybe I’m imagining it, I thought, the blood in my ears such a loud rush that it was easy to tell myself I couldn’t be certain of what I heard.
Something rumbled and hissed, and a long, spindly limb darker than the night stabbed out from under my bed, followed by another, and the scent trickling through my swollen sinuses grew sharper, more distinct, as something heavy dragged itself out from under my bed. I closed my eyes, not trusting what I was seeing, hope making me pray that when I next opened my eyes I’d see what I wanted to see.
There was more noise, my entire bed jumping when something bumped it hard from the underside, and I held my breath again, squeezing myself back into the wall, praying, praying, praying.
A heavy weight settled beside me, the hissing and clicking growing louder still. Hot breath that carried the scent of carrion curled over my cheeks, fluttering the hair that hung over my forehead, tickling the skin.
Something snapped somewhere above me, and a deep, rumbling voice that creaked like an old gate swinging on rusted hinges said, “You hide from me, little one?”
My eyes flew open, and looming above me was a huge, unsettling thing, segmented and insectoid, with six long, slim limbs that skittered unnervingly over the sheets, ending in two sharp claws each, not unlike a spider. A face like latex flesh stretched tight over a monstrous skull dipped to look at me closer. Two enormous, all-black eyes bore into me from deep in the face, a short muzzle filled with needle-like teeth parting and a long, thin, prehensile tongue slipping out. The tongue traced along my jaw, flicking at the point of my chin, before retreating back into that lethal mouth.
I lunged up, throwing my arms around its long, sinuous neck, the edge of its headcrest–not unlike a triceratops’–digging into my cheek. “Rael!” I whispered, squeezing tight. Two sets of spindly limbs wrapped around me, holding me back just as tight, and the tension in my body melted away.
“I have been away too long,” Rael hissed, gently guiding me back into lying down. He began his strange version of a purr, the sound like heavy rain on a tin roof, the vibration and his impossible heat surrounding me, soothing me. More tears leaked from my gritty eyes, but now it was in relief, because Rael was here, and everything would be alright.
He’d first shown himself when I was five, coming to me in the night, just like this, after Mom had gotten really mad at me and hit me for the first time. He’d scared me then–of course he had–but he’d just sat by my bed, rumbling his strange sound and telling me that I was safe, that he had decided to protect me. And he did; none of the other things that went bump in the night ever bothered me, not even the nasty ones that hovered and fought to try to get at me. Sometimes when visited he was battered and bloodied from his struggles against the others, and even though it must have been so hard for him, he never complained or stepped down. He’d volunteered himself to be my shield, and he’d never flagged.
“She has hurt you again, Arin?” he rumbled, his long, heavy body so hot it made my whole room warmer for hours after he’d gone. But I felt so numb, so cold, that I welcomed it.
I nodded, ducking my head to try to hide my face. “I told her about changing my name,” I whispered, “and she…she didn’t take it well.”
“And you still do not wish for me to visit her?” he asked, anger rattling his words. He’d offered many, many times over the years, and every time I had refused. She’s my mom, I’d protest. I can’t hurt her. But…she hurt me all the time. She sometimes went out of her way to do it, and the hope I’d held that if I just waited, she’d eventually see me and stop it, seemed to have finally dried up.
I licked my lips, looking back up into Rael’s strange, hideous face. “What…what would you do?”
He growled, fine hairs all over his body standing up and bristling. “Only what she does to you. Make her feel small. Helpless. Hopeless. Make her scared for her life, make her think she has gone mad.” Razor-thin lips peeled back from sharp teeth, his tongue darting out like a snake tasting the air. “I would glut on her fear.”
I shivered, imagining it. Rael was fierce, I knew; he had to be to walk away from so many fights with other monsters. But he’d always been so gentle and kind to me, at times the only soul in all the world who I knew without a doubt loved me and cared for me just as I was. Still, I hesitated; could I live with this? With sending something like Rael after my own mother?
“Okay,” I breathed, so quietly I didn’t think Rael heard me.
But he’d heard; he laughed–a deep, chittering sound–and eased out of my embrace and dropped to the floor. He made to duck back under my bed, whatever means he used to travel residing there, then paused.
“You will stay here, little one,” he said, his voice more stern than I’d ever heard it. “I don’t want to scare you.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to see it, either. “Thank you, Rael,” I said, smiling at his nightmarish face.
He purred, one clawed hand brushing my cheek gently, and then he was gone, off to battle another of the monsters that meant to hurt me.
