26 Feb Cavities

I pushed my way through the front door, ready to collapse and sleep right there on the living room carpet, but knowing I still needed to eat dinner. I yaned and moaned. My muscles were all stiff. It had been a long day. I had a full day of scheduled appointments and two emergency root canals.

I closed the door and locked it and when I turned around, Brenda was standing there looking at me with sympathy. “Another long one, huh?”

“Very,” I said. “I’m ready to fall on my face.”

“Lucky for you, I got home early so I had time to make dinner,” she said with a smile.

I took her face in my hands and kissed her. “Oh, I love you. I don’t even care what it is. I just appreciate not having to cook it.”

She laughed. I’ve always loved her laugh. It’s not silly like so many others. It’s almost musical like an angel singing without words. “I’m glad, because it’s nothing fancy. I got all caught up and they said I could have half a day. I spent most of it on the balcony reading romantasy, but when you dind’t walk in at five I knew you were probably having a long day and I should give you a night off from cooking. I made frozen raviolis and a grocery store jar of red sauce, a culinary delight.”

“It sounds wonderful. I appreciate it,” I told her as I slipped my shoes off and flexed my toes. I followed her into the kitchen, grabbed a plate from the cabinet and shoveled some raviolis onto it from the steaming pot on the stove. “Wine?” Brenda asked.

“Please.” I sat down to eat and in a minute she joined me. We didn’t bother talking about our work days. It wouldn’t be great conversation to explain to her the process of repairing the boy’s front teeth after he fell face first into the stage in the auditorium of his school. Instead, we spent our time together asking questions. You’d think after ten years of marriage there wouldn’t be any questions left to ask but there always are. Sometimes they’re silly and we laugh. Sometimes we learn things about each other even after all this time.

After dinner, we stood side by side and washed dishes together. I’m a lefty and she’s a righty so we kept bumping elbows and laughing about it.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the weird guy,” she said.

“Weird guy?” I toweled off my clean dish and stuck it in the cabinet I took it from.

“Yeah, he came by earlier, and…”

“Came by?” For some reason those words made me nervous. Outside of our parents, the only people to come by were work colleagues and the occasional neighbor but those visits were few and far between and in most cases, planned well in advance.

“Yeah, it was the strangest thing. He was wearing enough layers to make me sweat just looking at him. I know it’s not exactly summer out there but it was definitely over kill. He had a hood that kept his face mostly hidden and kept looking over his shoulder like he was being followed.”

“He came here??”

She looked toward the front door. “Yeah, walked right up and rang the bell. He was loolking for you and said it was an emergency.”

My eyes widened. “Jesus, Brenda, why were you so nonchalant? That’s insane. Did you call the police?”

“Nope. I said, I’m sorry, Dr. Gaslow isn’t in at the moment. Maybe you should try the office where he works.”

“And then what?” I said in a panic.

She shrugged. “Then he left.”

“And you didn’t see him again?”

“Nope. I’m guessing the guy had a pretty bad toothache.”

“Yeah. It’s still weird to show up at the dentist’s house, Bren.”

She looked at me like I was a kid who just dropped my ice cream on the ground. “Honey, it’s harder to get dental care than anything. You have to pay upfront and you know how little insurance actually covers. A tooth infection can be deadly.”

I sighed. “You’re telling the dentist.”

She held her hands up defensively. “Alright, sorry. I’m just saying that it’s not that wild for someone to need help and not feel like they can go to the office. The clinic only does extractions. If he needed anything else, there’s no place in this area for himm to get it affordably.”

“So I should just start taking house calls now? Work all day and then let poor people show up at my home to get their teeth fixed?”

“Of course not. Look, he left when I said you weren’t around.”

“Yeah well, I just hope he stays gone. I’m going to bed. You coming?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah, I’m gonna read my book some more. If the fairies get it on again, I might just come climb into bed and wake you up.”

“See you then,” I said, kissing her lips. I staggered to our room and finally fell onto the bed. I fell asleep before I even realized it. I don’t know if I dreamed about anything. If I did, it wasn’t anything anywhere near as terrifying as what I woke up to.

* * * * * *

I woke up with an angry full bladder. Maybe it was because I didn’t usually wake up in the middle of the night but it seemed darker than usual. I rubbed my sleep encrusted eyes and looked over at my wife’s side of the bed. It was empty and for a sleepy moment I thought she must have had to pee too. It wasn’t until I was in the bathroom emptying my bladder that I realized she probably fell asleep reading her book and never came to bed. I felt suddenly protective and wanted to find her and make sure she was at least covered and warm.

Yawning, I made my way to the living room. I expected to find her on the couch, book in her lap and her glasses still on but crooked. It wouldn’t have been the first time. She wasn’t there though. It didn’t look like she’d ever been there. What had she said when I got home? My sleep addled brain struggled for the answer.

Then it hit me. The balcony. It was too cold for that at night though wasn’t it? She did always love the stars and the moon. Maybe she brought a blanket out with her. I went upstairs and thought I must be right because the air was cooler.

I walked down the hall and into the study. I smirked at the bookshelves when I entered. I loved how it displayed us both. A shelf of all my medical and dental books and then a shelf of elf smut. The sliding glass door at the other end of the room was open and the curtains blew toward me, propelled by the breeze.

“I hope you didn’t fall asleep out there,” I said as I approached. She didn’t answer. It made me nervous. The balcony wall was high so it she would have to stand from her chair to go over the side, but if she was half asleep and disoriented it was still possible. Did I mention I have anxiety?

I approached with caution. I was talking gently to her. I didn’t want to yell and startle her awake. I’d never be able to live with myself if I ended up the reason she toppled over the wall.

“Brenda… Brenda, baby…”

I reached the door, caught the blowing curtain and moved it to the side. My nervousness increased when I saw her favorite chair empty. What was worse was that her book was there, open on the floor. Brenda treasured her books. She didn’t bend them too far because she didn’t want the binding creased. If anyone dog eared a page of creased her binding she got visibly angry and told them to keep it, then bought a new copy for herself to keep pristine. I was staring at her book now, pages down, opened almost exactly half way, creased binding staring at me.

I looked at the wall to the balcony and knew I had to look over the edge, but I hated the idea of it. My heart was in my throat. I prayed to God to not let her be laying down there, broken on the concrete.

I couldn’t breathe if I wanted to as I moved toward it. I had never been so scared in my life and that was only the beginning.

I reached the wall and wrapped my fingers around it. Then I froze. I knew I had to look but I couldn’t will myself to do it. What if she was dead? Oh God….

I tried saying her name again, softly at first and then louder, “Brenda!”

The only reply was the whistling wind. I screamed a curse word and I wasn’t that type of person. I was so used to being at the office and working on children or just trying to keep a professional atmosphere in general, that curse words were all but out of my vocabulary. It took something to this level of distress to draw one out of me.

I leaned forward and looked over, the wind blowing down the back of my neck and under my shirt. I shivered, but tried to focus. “Oh, thank God,” I said when I didn’t see her body laying broken on the walkway.

My relief was shortlived though when I saw someone else standing at my front door. He looked homeless, wrapped in layers and topped with a navy blue hoodie pulled over his head. I knew it had to be him, the guy Brenda had told me about earlier. He came back, but where was Brenda? Did she see him? Maybe she went to wake me and I was already gone. Or maybe she got scared and dropped her book and ran inside. But then where was she? The bathroom? What if she went down to answer the door again and something happened? But if he did something to her wouldn’t he go away and not just stay there at the door? That was pretty damned conspicuous.

There was only one way to know what he was up to, and that was to go down there and talk to him. Something about him creeped me out. My instinct told me to not go down there, to do the opposite and locked everything and stay far away from that guy. But it wasn’t really an option. I had to know if he knew what happened to Brenda.

As I was thinking about this, he seemed to sense my presence and he looked up at me. I didn’t mean to but I gasped. His face was bathed in the shadow of his hood but I could see enough to know I should be frightened. His skin was scarred and torn and his eyes were like cat eyes; I swear they glowed in the dark.

I was terrified but I felt bolder being up there on the balcony than I would being in front of him at the door so I called out. “What are you doing here? Where’s Brenda?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he waved me toward him with a finger and gestured for me to come down. My instincts were screaming. I patted my pocket looking for my phone and realized I left it on the nightstand next to my bed. I always unload my pockets before bed to amke sure I don’t forget to change anything voer to my clean pants the next day. It’s happened. I cursed for the second time.

I needed to check the whole house and make sure that Brenda wasn’t inside somewhere, safe and sound. I could grab my phone during the search and call the police. Maybe he would get tired of waiting for me and just leave. It wasn’t an elaborate plan but at least it was a plan.

I went room to room, frantically calling for her. “Brenda! Brenda, honey, where are you? Brenda?”

I looked in insane places I knew she would bever be, just to satisfy my anxiety and know I checked everywhere. I looked in closets and under beds, behind doors and in cupboards. I grabbed my phone while I was in the bedroom but I wanted to make sure she wasn’t laying somewhere safe and sound sleeping the night away before I called the police. Sure, I would have to deal with the man in rags on my stoop but it didn’t necessarily have to involve the law. A lot of time, homeless people were treated badly. They had it hard enough as it was and Brenda was a huge advocate for all human rights. She would be incredibly pissed at me if that guy got roughed up because I was feeling anxious.

The more rooms I checked though, the more I started looking at my phone as a lifeline. If Brenda was nowhere in here, that meant she had to be out there and the image of her book returned to my mind. “Oh, what have you done?” I said quietly.

Too be honest, I’m not sure if the question was directed at the man who may have taken my wife or at Brenda for going to open the door and talk to a creepy stranger in the middle of the night. Either way, the question was appropriate. When I got to the front door, my shoulders sagged. Brenda was not in this house. I frowned at the door and took my phone out. I wanted to be able to tell this man when I opened the door, that the police had already been called.

Before I could even press those three important numbers, my phone rang. It felt louder than usual, ear shattering in the quiet of the night. I don’t answer the phone for anyone other than Brenda or my parents. Everyone else, I text. I didn’t even know the number. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever was on the other end might know something about Brenda and not answering could mean her life. It could have just been my anxiety screaming in my ear but still, I wasn’t shutting it off.

I pressed the green answer button on my screen and held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“You’re going to want to not do anything stupid,” a voice said. It sounded thick, mucousy, sickly.

“What?” It was all I could think of to say.

“If you call the police like you just intended to, I’ll kill her. Hang up the phone, put it back in your pocket and open the door.”

I was really trembling then. I didn’t know what to do. There only seemed like one choice so I did what he said. When I opened the door, I gulped, my hand going to my mouth. The stranger stood facing me and he held my unconscious wie by the back of her collar. She was draped on the floor at his feet as if she was no more than a lifelike dummy replica of herself. I had to ask. “Is she–?”

“Not yet. I need you to invite me in and then move out of my way so I can enter.”

I didn’t move or speak for a moment. I just couldn’t stop staring at Brenda. My heart hurt like it never had before.

“Now.”

I nodded and stepped aside but he didn’t move. He just glared at me with those piercing eyes. “You forgot the first part, Dr. Glasgow.”

I tried to speak and my throat wouldn’t let me. I cleared it and tried again and was surprised by how mousey my voice sounded. “Mhm… Come in.”

He nodded and stepped inside, dragging Brenda’s limp form with him. When inside, he shut the door and locked it.

“What did you do to her? What do you want?” I asked.

“I couldn’t break in and I knew you wouldn’t let me in because the good doctor doesn’t associate with street people, but you kindhearted wife presented me with an opportunity. She was out on the balcony reading her book at night. I thrive on the night, Dr. Glasgow. I simply went up and brought her down as a bargaining chip to gain entry.”

“But she’s–”

“Asleep. I couldn’t chance her screaming and waking the neighborhood, so I told her to go to sleep and to dream good things until I told her to wake.”

This man was insane. I shook my head and stammered before finally finding my voice again. “So you’re some kind of magician? A hypnotist or something?”

“Not hardly,” he said. He removed his hood for the first time and I couldn’t hold back the gasp. His face was covered in burns, scars, and scabs. His hair was in clumps upon a bald-patched melanoma spotted head. His nose was little more than slits, two nostrils caving into the rocky crater of his face. His ears came to pointed tips like the elves in Brenda’s smutty books.

“Wh- what happened to you?” I asked.

“I was a cocky young man my first century, Doctor.”

“What?”

“I thought I could walk in the daylight because I could just drink and heal and pain was something I cherished not ran from. The burns of the sun didn’t frighten me. Pain was a reminder that I was alive. People refer to us as undead but that’s for books and movies. I’m very much alive.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. My gaze kept darting from his horrible image to my unconscious wife at his feet. “Are you saying you’re a vampire?”

He nodded. “Forget everything you think you know. It’s all wrong.”

“Uh– okay….” I said because what else could I say to this strange man. I was just concerned about Brenda.

“As a living being, I am susceptible to human illness, it seems, at least soemwhat. I’ve never had a cold or the flu in my life, but my constant sunburns resulted in skin cancer that metastisized. I can’t really walk into the clinic and sign up for chemo and radiation. Feeding though, feeding pushes the symptoms back. It restores my health for a bit, but the illness always returns. That is why I must continue to feed.”

I swallowed again. “Do you want to feed on us?”

He sighed and rolled his piercing eyes, glaring at me like I was stupid. “If that was all I wanted, I would have already taken sustenance from Brenda. Life is never so simple, is it doctor?”

“No?” I asked, more of a question than an answer. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to actually respond or if that was the answer he was looking for.

“No,” he repeated and I almost sighed with relief.

“I can’t feed. My fangs have horrific cavities. The pain is awful but as I stated, I can deal with that. They’re breaking and if I lose them, I die. I won’t be able to fight the cancer.”

I raised an eyebrow. This time I was looking at him like he was dumb. I was feeling more confident. “Obviously, that’s not true,” I said, hands on my hips. “You could just drink it out of meat packages or hell, stab someone and put your mouth under the flow like we used to do with the Slurpee machine as kids. You didn’t really think this through, did you?”

He snarled at me and I jumped back, fearing for my life once more. I probably shouldn’t poke the beast, I realized.

“If I needed the blood to go to my stomach, that would be fine. I told you to forget what you know about vampires, Dr. Glasgow. You clearly didn’t listen.”

I sighed, my eyes on Brenda, wondering what she was dreaming about behind her closed lids. “So you need it in your veins or something? Get a syringe. They have them at the local pharmacy. I can even give you some to start with.”

He was trembling with rage now, a pot boiling over and my inner voice was screaming at me to shut up.

“It is the brain that tells everything  else to work and how, Dr. Glasgow. My fangs are retractable, thin, like the syringes you speak of. They are connected to arterial like tubes that pass through my sinuses and go directly to my brain. My heart is dead. It would do nothing with the blood if I injected it into my vein. But human blood gives my brain life and it send electric impulses to the rest of my organs, jumpstarting them and making them function, more like your fabled Frankenstein Monster.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Blood on the brain is dangerous. Brain bleeds are fatal. I got a concussion when I fell on the ice one winter and they were so worried about brain bleed.”

“It is not blood that I consume. My fangs go into the back of the neck or through the eyes to the brain. I take the cerebrospinal fluid as my own leaks out. It is part of the vampirism. It is thick and filled with harmful proteins and needs to be replaced.”

I shivered at the grisly image of this horrific man sinking his fangs into someone’s eyes and drinking the fluid from their brain. Even still, I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m a medical professional and I don’t buy it.”

He raged at me. His mouth unhinged and his jaw dropped lower than it should. Two long needles shot from his gums and I could see that they were stained and cracked. He growled but as a dentist, I was more interested in understanding the strange teeth. I’d never seen anything like them.

When his mouth closed, he said, “You’re a dentist, Dr. Glasgow, you’re not House. Nothing about me makes sense. I have dead petrified organs that only work when they get impulses from my brain powered by human brain fluid. I burn in the sun and developed skin cancer. I’m a monster.”

“But you said it metastasized. If the organs are dead until you feed, doesn’t that mean it can’t spread like that?”

“It should. But even when I get them working, they have complications now, cells that are eating at them, fighting the instructions my brain is sending them. My body is working against itself.”

“Doesn’t that mean feeding is actually bad because it’s not just feeding you, it’s feeding the disease.”

“And yet…it’s the only option. Eventually, my jumpstarted organs will fail and I will perish but not feeding will end me now.”

“Why? If you’re not truly feeding on it, you won’t starve without it. Maybe you’ll be fine.”

“I haven’t fed in days and look at me. My burns won’t heal. My nose fell off. If I don’t feed I will rot and turn to dust.”

“So you are dead…. Kind of.”

“I don’t know what I am. I didn’t ask for this. I was made and now it was so long ago, the details are little more than a blur.”

I nodded. I hated to admit it but I was fascinated by the stranger’s story. If he was being truthful then Brenda was unharmed so I could allow myself to listen and participate in this bizarre experience. “So your options are rot and die or live with the agony of cancer slowly killing you. That sucks.”

“It does, especially after a hundred and fifty years of life, but I suppose true immortality doesn’t exist, Doctor. All things must come to an end eventually.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the dentist?”

“I just did.”

“I mean… the office, like everybody else. You’ve been alive for so long. Surely, you have money and insurance and things, right?”

“If only. Look at me. I can’t walk into anywhere, especially during the day with my flesh smoldering. The money I have is stolen from those I feed upon and it isn’t much. I live in hiding like a rat. There is nothing glorious about true vampiric life.”

“Then why keep going? Why not just let it end? Stop suffering.”

His anger seemed to fall away like a towel that wasn’t tied tight enough. He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Many times, I’ve asked myself the same question. I guess it’s the humanity in me, Doctor. I have a will to live, the drive to fight and even at my weakest, most pained moments, I can’t escape it.”

I couldn’t argue against that. I pitied and respected this creature in equal measure.

“Also,” he said, “I can’t enter places without being invited. If I went to the dentist, skin smoking from under my hood, I would be glued to the doorway until someone told me to come in and it would surely cause a scene.”

I nodded at this. He wasn’t wrong. I also thought about how he couldn’t have fed on Brenda if his fangs weren’t working and his threat was empty to gain access to my home. Then again, not feeding didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. It was probably better to not take chances with someone who had nothing to lose.

“So you want me to fix your fangs. What if I can’t? I’ve never worked on anything like them before.”

“Then you will watch me rot and die in your chair because this is my last ditch effort. My will will be gone.”

“That’s a lot of pressure. This is my home. I don’t even have everything I’d need. We’d have to drive to my office, and I’d want to take x-rays first to get a better idea of what I’m up against.”

“No. I know you have your old chair and things in your basement. You will do it there.”

“But those things aren’t set up for use. They’re just in storage. They’re definitely not sanitized.”

“Make it happen.”

“I- I don’t think I can.”

“Brenda…. Awake,” he said. My wife jolted upright, her eyes wide and confused. She mumbled something. “Don’t speak, Brenda. Strangle yourself.”

She stared at me, her eyes filled with terror but her hands grasped her throat and squeezed. I watched her face start to color and I screamed. “Jesus, okay. Stop, just stop!”

“Brenda, stop that silliness now and go back to sleep dear. Dream happy things.”

She just collapsed like someone pulled her plug from the wall. She was breathing peacefully though and her eyes fluttered behind her lids. I looked at the bruises on her neck caused by her own hands and I felt angry. “Why me? There are many dentists. Why disrupt my life and hurt my family?”

“You are who I chose.”

“That’s it?” I snapped.

“That’s it.”

“Well, then why not just glamour me into doing it and make me your little slave like you did to my wife who you said yourself is the better person of the two of us?”

“Because I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can make people sleep and do things to and for themselves, but I can’t make someone do something for me. It doesn’t work. I have tried,, time and again. I thought I must have just needed to work on the skill, train my power, but after all these years I can’t even get someone to give me a free cup of coffee on a cold day. I read that it was put in as a fail safe to prevent us from glamouring anyone and everyone into inviting us in. If we could just make them let us in, we would be unstoppable.”

“But who created you in the first place? Why?”

“I don’t know. All I know is what’s in the journal I found from another like me. I will leave it with you as payment for your services. Maybe you can find out more about my kind, and our purpose.”

I felt a sudden thrill at this. I hated that a monster abducted my wife and used her to force me into working off the clock and yet, I tingled with excitement. It felt like I had been shown a secret door that led to a magical world no one knew existed. I almost hated that Brenda was unconscious. I felt like she would love this whole adventure. Though, it may be tragically disappointing to find out that real life vampires are not sexy like the ones in her romance books.

“Alright,” I said then. “Come to the basement with me. You’ve got to give me time to prepare.”

“Hurry,” he said, gesturing for me to lead the way. I did as he said. I ran through my things, trying to set up a makeshift workspace. I sprayed and wiped things to at least half-assed sanitize them. Then he sat and I put an apron over him and stared into his mouth. His fangs weren’t theonly teeth in bad shape. His entire mouth was a mess. Maybe it was due to the rot of not feeding. I didn’t know but I didn’t want to volunteer for more work. I wanted to get this man out fo my house and get Brenda back to normal so I took a deep breath and nodded. “Can you, uh…. Make them stay out for me?”

His eyes burned through me but he said nothing. His jaw just fell again. I heard the needle like teeth squish through his gums as they shot toward me. I stared in wonder at them and traced a gloved finger at them. It looked like I was going to have to perform my third root canal of the day. “This is going to be a big job,” I said. “Let me get you some novicaine to numb your face.”

I turned to do just that but he grabbed my wrist. For someone dying, his grip was immensely strong. My heart skipped a beat and I turned back to look at him. “I’m trying to help you,” I said. “Let me help you.”

“Then let me feel it,” he told me. “I need the pain. I can’t feed. The pain is the only thing I’ve got to tie me to life. Please.”

“But if you jerk or thrash when it gets bad, and it will get bad, I could make a mistake or break the tooth and then it’s over.”

“I won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Please, doctor….”

I sighed and nodded. Then I got to work. I cringed watching him suffer but he kept it under control, shaking and and shedding tears I didn’t know he was able to spend. After over an hour, I finally stood back and said, “I don’t know. I – I think I saved them. How do they feel?”

He snarled at me, his eyes wild like an animal and I jumped backwards into my table knocking the tools free. They clattered to the ground loudly. I could see him fighting against his instincts. With hs fangs in working order his body must have been screaming for him to feed, to replenish himself and stop his organs from dying. I stood frozen in fear waiting to see if he had the power to fight it or if I just gave someone the weapon with which to murder me.

He leapt from the chair and rain to the stairs where he hudde up on a step, curled into a ball. “I must go,” he said. “The hunger is too strong. My body knows I’m dying and it is screaming for relief. I won’t harm you or Brenda, but only because I need you and I’ve already been invited into your home. You will be my dentist now, Dr. Glasgow.”

“Wait… what?” I said, but he ran up the steps into my house. Despite his words, I worried for Brenda so I followed. When I got to the living room, she was still sleeping soundly and the front door was wide open. I hurried outside onto the stoop and looked but all I saw were the trees blowing in the wind. A scream sounded in the distance and I gasped. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” I said quietly, knowing that I caused that death.

I turned to go back inside when I saw a worn leather book full of yellowed pages on the step beside my door. It seemed he kept his word. I picked it up and took it inside with me. I locked the door even though I knew it probably wouldn’t keep him out if he wanted in. He took Brenda from our balcony and there’s no way up from the ground. I tried not to think about it. When I turned back to the house Brenda was sitting up and looking at me. She was disoriented and sleepy. After a big yawn into her hand, she said, “Honey, why am I on the floor?”

I gave her a reassuring smile. I was good at that. My patients required it daily. “It’s okay,” I told her, just like I told them. “Everything is going to be fine. Let’s get you to bed.”

She still looked confused but she stood. I took her elbow and led her to bed. In moments, she was curled up on her side, snoring softly. I went back up to the study and out to the balcony where I retrieved her book. I put a book mark in where it was opened to hoping that was the page she was on and I set it on the desk in the room for her. I knew she would be upset about the binding but I felt like that was a small problem in comparison to the fact that a monster had just invaded our lives and I knew he would be back. This was far from over.

I came in and closed and locked the sliding door that led to the balcony. It dind’t make me feel safe or confident but I ahd to do what was within my power to control. I looked at the book the man left me, a monster’s journal. It would have to wait. I had to get up for work in just a few hours and tooth pain made people frantic and hysterical. I couldn’t leave them waiting.

Opening a drawer in my desk, I put the book inside, closed the drawer and locked it. I don’t know why. I didn’t keep anything secret from Brenda and never had. I guess it was just that the book felt so rare, so special, that I coveted it. I wasn’t locking it away from my wife. I was locking it away from everyone.

With a yawn of my own, I made my way back downstairs and I climbed into bed beside my wife. I wrapped my arm around her middle and she put her hand over mine, cooing softly. I nuzzled my face into her neck. After tonight, the little things mattered that much more. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but I never that my life had been forever changed. It was hard to sleep. My heart was still racing. I stared at the window and listened to the screams ripping through the night.

Brenda’s hand tightened on my own and she sleepily mumbled, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said quietly, kissing her cheek.

The screams abruptly stopped, and I shuddered. I pulled Brenda more tightly into me and held her with everything I had. I did it for her, I told myself. I had no choice. But was that really true? I saved my wife, but at what cost? What did I just unleash upon the world? Was it worth it? My heart said yes, but all I could think about was that journal locked in my desk upstairs. I was terrified of the answers it contained. I didn’t know I was ready to receive them. I had to force it out of my mind. I nuzzled Brenda lovingly and closed my eyes to keep from staring at the window. Then, despite everything, I slept.