Melanie opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs had been robbed of air. She felt around for a door or a wall, or anything she could hold onto, and after a minute of grasping cold hair she found the cold plastic of a light switch. The black turned to white, and then she was inside her apartment, her body pressed hard against the front door. She grabbed the knob and twisted, but it refused to turn, somehow locked from the outside. “I have to say..” an older man’s voice called out from behind her, “You’re my favorite so far. Even though you lasted this long, I barely had to do anything to upset you!” 

She flung herself around and saw George standing in front of the kitchen with a wide, toothy smile, and his hands tucked into the pockets of his baggy, gray sweatpants. “Are all the kids this self-deprecating these days?” he asked jovially. “You had a whole office full of coworkers you could have been friends with–but no–you fell for the dead girl in your apartment!” He burst out laughing, spit flying out from his dentures. “And you couldn’t even tell her! She was with you every day and you couldn’t work up the nerve to tell her how you felt!” 

“Shut up!” Melanie cried, “She died because of you! I know it was you!”

“Yes,” the old man chuckled, “and unlike you and George here she fell apart quickly.”

Melanie felt something in her break. She remembered how fragile Eileen sounded when she first realized she was dead, the fear and desperation in her eyes, and the way her entire body was shaking. She had been grieving her brother, alone, and this thing had thrived off of her pain. It had taken advantage of it. And worst of all, it was mocking it. Anger mixed into her fear. “You don’t know shit about us,” she growled under her breath.

“What is there to know?” the creature laughed boisterously, “You’re all the same. Lonely. Fickle. Always wanting more than you need.” He pulled a hand out and adjusted his small, thin framed glasses. “You put Eileen on a pedestal, but she wasn’t special. She was just as sad and broken as you, and you know that. You just wanted someone to distract you, so you didn’t have to look at yourself.”

Melanie grit her teeth. She felt the tears streaming down her cheeks and the ache in her chest swelling up to her throat. “Shut up..” she whimpered and grasped her head with both hands. “Shut up!” Her legs gave out, and she slid down against the door and onto the cold wood beneath it. 

Then all at once the choir of rage and anguish inside her fell silent, collapsing abruptly into numbness. She stared at a particular line in the pattern of the floorboard, one of millions of lines curving in millions of different directions. There was nothing special about it. She would forget which one it was out of the others. She would forget it was even there at all. Her eyes followed it forward, between her legs and feet and up a few more inches until it suddenly stopped. A shadow was cast over it, breaking the pattern sharply at its edge, but it didn’t belong to the thing in front of her. It was coming from her left side. She followed the shadow back until a hand suddenly appeared in front of her, reaching out. 

It was Eileen, standing over her with a smile, and wearing a beige, oversized sweater and jeans instead of her usual white loungewear. A sick joke, she thought. One last twist of the knife before it plunged all the way in. “Hey..” Eileen said. “Come on.” 

Melanie sighed and raised her hand up. Hopefully this was the light of heaven taking her away, and if it was just a joke at least it was in good taste. Then she felt the warmth of Eileen’s hand. Her real, actual hand wrapped around hers and squeezed, pulling her up and back onto her feet. Melanie stared at her face. It had color, her cheeks flushed in red and her lips pink and full, and she could see little brown freckles she hadn’t been able to before. The moment felt far too good to be true, until she saw out of the corner of her eye the creature dressed as George still standing in front of the kitchen. His eyes were wide with horror. She looked back at Eileen and felt all the pressure and tension in her body fall away, breaking down into tears, but this time in relief. She felt Eileen’s arms wrapping around her and embracing her tightly. “How..?” she breathed into her shoulder.

“That thing,” Eileen said, turning her head to the creature, “didn’t do as good a job as it thought.” She let go of Melanie and stepped toward the old man. “I’m sorry I was gone for so long.. He put me in a coma, so it took a while to recover physically..” she explained, taking another step forward. 

“Wait, Eileen..!” Melanie shouted and grabbed her hand.

“It’s okay,” Eileen looked back at her and smiled. “It can’t hurt us.”

The thing snarled and twitched as Eileen approached it, its disguise gradually warping out of shape. George’s pale skin melted into an ashy gray rot, his facial features collapsing into it, and his body stretched into nonsensical proportions, the engorged flesh shredding through his clothes until there was nothing left but thin scraps caught in the folds. The monster groaned and fell onto one knee, failing horribly to balance on its unnatural structure. “Look at me,” it said in an uneven chorus of different voices. “Take a good look at me, and say that again.”

Melanie watched breathlessly as Eileen walked calmly up to it, looking straight ahead at the draped flesh where its eyes would have been. She reached over the back of the couch next to her and grabbed something on the other side as the creature stared at her, its body expanding and contracting with heavy breaths. Her hand returned clutching the handle of her brother’s baseball bat, the metal shining as she pulled it over to her right side. “You can’t hurt us,” she repeated, bringing the bat down on the monster’s head. 

It shrieked loudly as the impact caved its flesh in, but instead of viscera and bone the crater left behind spilled ash out all over the floor around it.

  “You have to get us to hurt ourselves,” Eileen said. She lowered the bat as the creature writhed and fell over itself trying to stand back up. 

“You’re nothing..” the monster replied weakly, propping itself up on one side with one arm. “Held together by medication…living…in your brother’s shadow..” 

“You’re desperate,” Eileen shot back. “You could have left this place and gone anywhere you wanted, but you stayed and waited for me to come back, because I figured out how you work. You couldn’t risk me telling your next victim, or ending you myself. That’s why you busted the locks on the front door and the windows. You were going to lock me in here forever, until I got sick or starved to death. Only I didn’t come back, and someone else showed up.”

“Me..” Melanie said, walking up to Eileen’s side. She looked down at the crumpled pile of meat and soot at her feet. “You never wanted me here.. You didn’t even show yourself until I’d already been here a week, and when you did it was when you were George and you tried to scare me into moving out..”

“She interrupted your hunt,” Eileen added. “It threw you off, and then you realized she was tougher than me. Tougher than George. Tougher than you.” 

The creature let out a broken snarl and clawed at the ground with its swollen fingers and yellowed, overgrown nails. “You..” it hissed at Melanie. “The only thing you know how to do…is leave.. You leave everyone…behind..” 

“You’re right,” Melanie said back to it. “I leave because it’s easier than trying to fix things..” She took a deep breath. “But I’m sick of that, being lonely and angry, and never knowing how long I have with people because I let them go so easily. I want to be more than that.”

“More… Nothing more…than…a coward!” the monster screamed furiously.

Melanie turned to Eileen, and she held out the bat to her.

“You should finish this,” Eileen said. “For all of us.”

Melanie nodded, taking the bat and holding it over the dying creature. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

No, Mel. You’re a lot of things, not all of them good.. But you are not a coward.

THWACK

She sent the bat down through the monster’s head, pulverizing it instantly. It continued to shriek in a dozen voices, enraged and anguished. The rest of its body twisted and stretched, flailing around desperately like a fish in its last breath out of the water. She continued swinging, first at its distended limbs as they swiped madly at her in a final act of self defense, and then at its torso, shattering its chest into a thick pile of debris and finally silencing its stolen screams of pain. She exhaled, then brought the bat down one last time onto the pile, sending dust flying in every direction. 

The air settled into a peaceful stillness as the ash floated slowly down to the floor. The mountain of dirt started to dissolve, thinning out until it was all gone, not a speck left behind in the grooves of the floorboards. Melanie felt her entire body easing with the moment as she let the quiet wash over her. She looked at Eileen and Eileen looked at her, both of them smiling, wordlessly agreeing that it was over. 

The news cycle played on the TV as Melanie and Eileen picked apart a pizza in the kitchen. Firefighters in the Northern California wilderness were battling another forest fire. A vigil was being held in Iran in honor of the protestors who lost their lives years ago. The parents of a little girl who lost her battle with cancer started a charity organization dedicated to helping other families pay for their cancer treatments. Melanie listened as she ate. She didn’t believe in prayer, but in her thoughts she made a petition. She asked whatever god or cosmic force that made her life right again to make the rest of the world right too. Or at least as right as it could be. 

Nighttime came, and the exhaustion of the day finally caught up with her and Eileen. They were standing over the sink, Melanie washing her hands of oil and tomato sauce. “So uh.. If you want you can crash here tonight..” she said. “I know it’s late.. And I mean, technically it is your apartment..” She swallowed, fighting the warmth in her cheeks. 

“Yeah?” Eileen grinned. She leaned on the counter and nudged Melanie with her shoulder.

“Y-Yeah..” Melanie whispered back. She looked up and found Eileen’s face inches from hers. “Yeah, absolutely.” She put her hand on Eileen’s shoulder and pulled her into a kiss.

In the morning Melanie woke up with Eileen in her arms. She ran a finger through her hair and along her cheek, just to make sure she was real, and she was. She was warm and breathing, her rising and falling chest shifting the fitted sheets beneath them ever so slightly. Melanie carefully slipped out from under her and the covers, soaking her bare skin in the sunlight seeping in through the window. “Morning,” she heard Eileen say softly behind her. She turned and saw her partner rolled over on the bed, tangled up in the blankets and smiling at her warmly. “Hey,” Melanie smiled back. 

“You have work?”

“Mm-hm.” 

“Damn.”

Melanie laughed and knelt down next to the bed. “I’m not gonna be long today. I just have to wrap up the last bit of a project and then I’ll head home.” She gave Eileen a quick peck on the cheek. “Are you going to be here when I get back?”

“You don’t have to rush,” Eileen giggled, “I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.”

The train was a little more crowded than usual, but Melanie didn’t mind. She leaned back in her seat, and pulled out her phone. It opened to a notification from her job searching app. Two out of five of her applications had been received and viewed. She sighed and opened her messages. She had texted her mother on the way into the station: Hi Mom! I hope you guys are having a nice summer. I’m sorry I haven’t messaged you much since Easter. A lot’s been happening and I promise I’ll fill you in on everything soon, but for now I wanted to tell you guys I started seeing someone. She followed up with a photo of her and Eileen at the dinner table, about to bite into their slices of pizza. Her name’s Eileen and she’s awesome. One of these days you’ll get to meet her. Maybe when you’re free we can do a video call or something? Talk to you soon! Love you!

Underneath it the in-progress message bubble signaled her mother was typing something. The text flew in a second later. It read: Aww cute! We’d love to meet her! I can call you later tonight. We’re doing our garage sale today! Finally getting rid of all the junk in the attic lol. And no worries honey we know you’re busy! We’ll always be here  when you want to talk! 

Melanie sent back a quick: Ok! Sounds good! and tapped back out into her home screen and into her contacts app. She took a deep breath, scrolled down to “Julien” and tapped the call button. After three rings the call connected. “Hey, Mel!” the laid back voice on the other end greeted her. 

“Hey,” she answered back shyly, “Do you have time to talk?”