Page 1 of Poe: Nevermore

ONE

Everything is bathed in red light, as if blood spattered over the light fixtures and its color is now being cast about the room in horrific brilliance. The tips of my fingers skim along the blood-soaked walls, leaving thin white lines of cleanliness beneath which someone’s life drips. My shoes pick up red stain with each step I take on the swamp-like plush carpet, each of those steps accompanied by a nauseating squishing sound. A door waits at the end of the hallway, hanging ajar by a mere inch, just enough to reveal the darkness in the room beyond.

My pulse quickens and I can feel my ribcage expanding and contracting with each breath, can hear my heart beating louder, louder with every step towards that door….

The stench of blood thick in the air begins to twist my stomach and make me gag. The pounding of my heart in my head is inducing a migraine and with eachthumpof the muscle, my eyes shiver and the entire hallway seems to vibrate. Or, perhaps, the vibrations of the hallway are not a result of the migraine, but of my heart pounding with such force that the sound emanating from within my chest is so loud as to shake the entire house. My skull feels as though it has been caught within a slowly tightening vice, crushing me in its iron jaws, sending warm blood trickling from my ears.

I reach the door and slowly extend my hand before me, the pain in my head growing exponentially as I close the distance. I press my palm flush against the blood-spattered pane. I can hear a creaking sound exploding in my ears, and I’m screaming as my skull begins to crack under the pressure. With one last step forward, I push the door open…

The world falls away beneath my feet, my stomach, my heart, my breath in my throat, water in my legs. And I’m falling, falling, falling, falling….

A scream jolted me awake and I sprang upright in my bed, eyes wide as saucers as they darted around. Just as the automatic reaction to find the source of the scream and offer help took hold, I realized the screamer was me.

My shoulders slumped and I put one hand to my temple to hold up my head while I tried to slow my racing pulse and concentrate on the room around me, on reality.Relax, Poe. That wasn’t real.

Of course the nightmare wasn’t real, they never were, but its source was all too alive in my memory and that was what always made the nightmares difficult to recover from. It wasn’t sleep deprivation or graphic images that were the real Death’s Heads that haunted me. It was the emotional wounds that never really heal, the scars that can so easily be torn open again by a masochistic subconscious.

I took another deep, slow breath and then, with the nightmare sufficiently dispelled that my hands were no longer shaking, took my hand from my head and turned on the lamp on my bedside table. As the tiny, dingy apartment bedroom was flooded with light, I grasped the water glass I had left near the lamp and took a cautious sip. Slowly, I returned the half-empty glass to its place and adjusted the pillows so that I could lean back on them against the black rummage sale headboard with hand-painted silver scrollwork. The room was very small, so the poor lighting given off by the solitary lamp was enough to throw nearly the entire space into relief, soaked up only in the thick black curtains hiding the lights of Baltimore from my view. The bed was a full-size mattress as thin as a pillow, acquired at the same rummage sale as the headboard, with three thick quilts on it to defend against the apartment’s nonexistent heating system. The bed took up the vast majority of the floorspace, but I’d managed to wedge a large dresser with a tiny mirror balanced on it against the opposing wall. Nearly a dozen cleverly placed paintings and drawings I’d done over the years hid water stains and peeling plaster on the walls. The cost of living in Baltimore wasn’t obscene by any means, but being only two years out of college with no family or inheritance to help me get by meant I was extremely lucky to afford even an apartment this lousy. Battered paperbacks and water-damaged hardcovers filled rickety bookshelves along the walls and continued out into the living area. Just looking at the hundreds of books surrounding me, no matter their condition, was enough to chase away the nightmare.

I turned back towards the bedside table and checked the display on my stone-age alarm clock. Sure enough, it was five o’clock. The damn thing hadn’t gone off.

Throwing off the quilts, I shivered and slipped out of bed, wincing when my feet connected with the cold hardwood floor. Quickly, I flung open the closet and retrieved a black turtleneck, jeans and sneakers, then proceeded to the dresser for a bra, panties, and socks. The bathroom had looked like something straight out of parasite-heaven when I’d first started renting here, but I had since scrubbed it and smothered every surface in bleach enough times that it no longer made me nauseous to shower in there. I showered quickly and dressed, then blow-dried my long, thick, dark brown hair, a task which took me no less than ten minutes even when I left it mostly damp. I rushed to apply enough cover-up to conceal the triple-bags under my eyes, the scars of an insomniac. In the kitchen, I retrieved an apple from the refrigerator and grabbed my jean jacket and some cash, then exited the apartment at a run.

The trouble with working at Starbucks is that you often have to work in the early hours of the day. It is a good job for someone who doesn’t sleep much, though; I was awake every morning by five anyway.

My apartment was only about five blocks from the Starbucks location where I worked, so I liked to run there every morning for my shift. Living in downtown Baltimore meant that during most of the day, the sidewalks were fairly crowded and not a great environment for running, but in the early hours of the morning like this, there were only a spare few people around. The sky was thick with dark grey clouds, though it was nearly six o’clock, and a fresh dusting of snow covered the sidewalk, disturbed only in thin tracks left by joggers and dog-walkers. Few other people were dedicated or crazy enough to be out on the streets so early in late November.

I pumped my legs and broke into a sprint, my sneakers pounding on the cold-hardened cement. It was not an easy task, but I managed to stay upright despite the wet snow and slush. My heart beat faster, my lungs pumped harder, and I felt a smile ever-so-slowly stretching across my face as the freeness of the icy air and the city flying by me swept the night’s terrors away.

Starbucks was quiet when I arrived; only two joggers and one man with a laptop were seated at the tables. There was one employee at the counter, a high school drop-out named Gavin. Gavin spent his days working at this less than fine establishment and playing World of Warcraft. I knew because on the rare occasion we’d tried to force a conversation, within about two exchanges the subject inevitably shifted to his maniacal obsession with the game. As a result, I tried not to encourage conversation, which wasn’t too difficult. Gavin was usually so busy daydreaming or whispering to himself that he barely had a free moment to talk. He did register my arrival, though, and rewarded me with a not-quite-half smile, along with a ‘Hey, Poe.’

In the back room, I punched in and hung up my coat, replacing it with my Starbucks uniform, which I hurriedly threw on, along with the silly green hat, apron, and non-slip shoes. I even labeled my punch-cardsPoe, though that wasn’t my first name. I went by my last name on account of an unfortunate choice by my parents: Elenora Allison Poe. I couldn’t stand my first or middle name. Besides, being a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe made borrowing the last name all too desirable.

I headed out to the front counter, tying my apron as I went and rolling my eyes when I spotted the manager bent over his office computer, no doubt watching porn again. I really pitied his wife. He wore a gold band on his left ring-finger despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine a woman who would stoop so low as to marry him. Then again, I was not one to judge. Mrs. Aaron had married my foster-father after all. If Jonathan Aaron had once been sane enough to be marriage material, then it wasn’t so hard to see that a surly coffee-shop owner with a profound interest in Internet porn could have been as well.

I continued to my post behind the counter, delivering a small smile to Gavin as I relieved him. Without a word, he scampered into the back room to grab his monstrous Star Trek hoodie and deposit his hat and apron. I slipped my apple out of my pocket and hid it away under the counter to save it for the off-chance I would have time to eat it during my shift. Within a minute or so, Gavin was stalking through Starbucks to the front door and, ultimately, the nearest bus stop, his iPod blasting quirky techno music through his earbuds. I had tried more than once to tell him he would be deaf within a few years, but only earned myself a few sneers and dirty looks as payment for the advice.

I did not really mind working at Starbucks. It was not the cushiest job in Baltimore and I was not the full-time writer I dreamed of being yet, but it wasn’t bad. The coffee shop generally smelled good and the music the manager selected was soft and relaxing, as opposed to the grocery store music I had endured at other establishments. As a bonus, the pay was a few dollars better than minimum wage, which was more than could be said of most of the other places I had held jobs at since I was fifteen.

As my shift wore on, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into my memories. It was not nostalgia by any stretch of the imagination, though I was not happy with where I was in my life. It was more like a cancer that you can keep cutting out only to have it resurface in another part of your body, the sort that can never really be cured or forgotten. I tried to avoid letting the memories consume me, as they so often tended to do. They slowly ate away at the wall I had carefully constructed to bury them at the back of my mind.

Up until I turned fifteen, I had had the luxury of my bare essential clothing paid for by -my foster parents, who also permitted me to use the spare bedroom upstairs. When I had turned fifteen, though, I had come home from school to find all my possessions that the Aarons had paid for at the curb. The bed frame was broken, the mattress was torn, the sheets and curtains ripped, the nightstand and dresser kicked in. I would never forget the way my stomach had dropped when I had stood in the threshold of my former bedroom, staring into my foster-father’s new study as he smiled at me lecherously from behind a huge desk. He was fingering the gaudy ring he always wore with the big engraved ‘A’ on it, the ring he loved more than anyone else in the world combined. “Happy birthday, Elenora,” he’d said slowly, as if he was savoring the words.

My foster-parents from then on refused to contribute to my state of living any more than providing me with one meal a day and allowing me to live in the basement, where I slept on an ancient couch missing its springs until I left for college. I had to find a way to pay for any other comforts myself.

To be honest, I was glad to be in the basement, far away from the bastard.

Hot coffee overflowed the cup I was filling and I snapped out of the depressing reverie, wincing and smashing my palm on the ‘stop’ button. Carefully, I set the cup down on the counter and wiped the coffee from it and my hands, then brought the cup to the customer, a young blond man in jeans and a heavy leather jacket. He raised his eyebrows, looking down towards the counter, and muttered, “Jeez.”

I realized he was looking at my scalded red hands and shrugged, half-smiling grimly, “It’s nothing. High tolerance for pain. I barely even felt it.”

I realized it was a bad answer as I said it, accurate as it might be, but he did not give me an odd look, as I had expected him to. Instead, he frowned in unwavering concern and handed me a ten-dollar bill. “If you say so.”

I made no response and opened the cash register, depositing the ten and counting out his change for him. When I held out the change and his receipt to him, he touched my hand and met my gaze. I felt my heart skip a beat, not only at the foreign warmth of his hand, but also at his face, which I had not really registered until that moment. One of the side-effects of poor self-esteem was not usually meeting the eyes of others, but this man’s eyes were brilliant, a silvery blue that was like ice but simultaneously molten like liquid steel. They were not blue and not silver. They were not merely like water or metal; they were molten ice, something frozen and smoldering all at once. His face was chiseled, his jaw strong, his mouth soft and compassionate, but it was those eyes that held me frozen like the ice swirling in their depths.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

For just a moment, I wondered if he was really asking about my hands or something else. Then I swallowed in disappointment as the steel door I had built in my mind slammed shut, sealing away my emotions as a necessary evil. I nodded and gave him a fake half-smile I knew he did not buy. “I’m fine,” I said unemotionally, one step short of coldly.

---