The Fly on the Window by Benjamin Batorsky	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

The ambulance came at once and rushed off with him. I hurried after it, but was turned away at the desk. The woman told me he was in intensive care, and he could not be disturbed. No matter how much I insisted, they would not allow me through.

Finally, I gave in. You may remember this night, when I called you and insisted you talk to me until such an hour that you finally had to yell at me before I would let you go. I wish you hadn’t, Anette. Maybe something would have been different, then.

I visited the hospital a number of times after that. Each time, Henry was too heavily drugged or too lost in his own thoughts to offer me anything but assurances he would be all right. His family was there one time I came to visit, a well-dressed couple with similar severe expressions that told me my presence was not necessary. I offered my sympathy and left.

It was some time before I decided to visit Henry again. I thought about him often. Mainly, it would be a vision of him in the ruined cocoon of his bed, reaching out towards me as if just touching me would save him from his pain. But at times it would be visions of him relating the dream, his mouth moving slowly as he formed the words. And I would watch his lips, spellbound, as they stretched and contracted. When I finally did make it to the hospital, Henry was gone.

I asked the woman at the desk, the staff, any doctor I could find and they all gave me the same reply. They did not know where he had gone. They referred me back and forth, but no matter who I talked to, the answer was the same. Henry was simply gone.

I went to his dorm, tried the door and found it locked. The smell was gone. Any of the residents I asked said they hadn’t seen him. All they had seen was a few movers come in and empty out the room, packing the books into boxes and clearing it out for the next occupant.

You may not remember, Anette, but that night we had plans. However, I was in such a state I could not even focus. I went straight home and began looking through my numbers to see if I had one for Henry or anyone who would know him. For some reason, the fact that he had simply vanished troubled me greatly. I just kept thinking that if I could just find out where he went, even if I could not reach him, everything would be fine.

I do not know the hour at which I gave up my search. I just know my terrors and the efforts of the day had worn my body down until I could no longer look at my computer screen without characters and images blurring together. I dragged myself to bed. And I distinctly remember thinking in a terrible moment between wakefulness and sleep that I almost wished that I had seen Henry dead.

That night, I had the dream. I had Henry’s dream.

I was looking out a screen window. I could vaguely see the shapes of buildings in the distance, but I, for some reason, could not focus on them. I did not know where I was or, for that matter, who I was. This did not trouble me. I merely looked, my body numb, my mind empty.

Suddenly, from the corner came the fly, along with the terrible realization that I knew what this was. I knew who I was, where I was and that I wanted nothing more than to be away from it. My eyes turned, unbidden, to the fly. I began to resist. I wanted to struggle, to break free. But the more I struggled, the harder the pull of the fly. I could not keep from focusing on it. Its wings. Its grotesque eyes. Everything else faded, though I could sense the room around me. My body was immobilized as though locked in a shell. And all I could focus on was the fly. I could hear it buzzing. I could smell its putrid hairy flesh. I could feel the saliva dripping from its proboscis.

And then, all of a sudden, there was someone behind me.

The sound of my screams echoed off my walls and, in my half-awake state, the world seemed to be screaming at me.

I felt it begin then, that change in me that you recognized later. I spent the rest of the day in a daze, trying desperately to rationalize my way out of the situation I was in. My mind was reeling in a way that seeing your face, hearing your voice could only steady temporarily.

I forced the conclusion that I had just spent so much time thinking about Henry and his dream that I had experienced it myself. The boiling of my mind in the daytime was spilling over the line of consciousness. I repeated this to myself and only in this way could I bring myself to lie down in bed that night.

I woke up the next morning without remembering my dream. When I opened my eyes, the early sunlight through my window looked more beautiful than I can ever remember it being. I had been right. It wasn’t Henry’s dream. It was my dream in sympathy and now I was free of it.

I laughed too much that day, almost danced down the street, called you and made you think me mad. I was maniacally happy, because the sense of freedom was overwhelming, and because some part of me knew what was to come.

That night, the dream came to me almost as soon as I closed my eyes. I watched the fly make its zig-zag across the screen and then I was lost. The presence behind me was closer. I could not tell how much, but it was closer. I felt the terror well up in the frozen shell of my body, drowning me, washing my sanity away.

The next few days I cannot remember very clearly. All I can remember is the dream. The presence growing closer and closer. And the mantra I repeated to myself that it was only a dream, that it was just the lingering memory of Henry, that his melancholy had infected me.

Between repetitions of my mantra, I cursed him, cursed ever knowing him, cursed my curiosity. I still do. More than anything in the world I wish I could return to that day I had met him. And just turn my back on him.

It wasn’t until a week later that the presence attacked me. I had not been getting much sleep. I would sometimes nod off, dreamless, in class, and several times was lectured by teachers who had once held me in such high regard. There was darkness on my heart. The thud of it would rouse me from half-sleeps and make me stiffen with dread. I saw phantoms at the edges of my vision. I turned, because in this waking world I could.

But the phantom existed only in the wild fantasy of my mind. It was only when I saw you that I could break free of the spell of it. But when the presence finally reached me, I knew, there would be no respite.

I had, for several days, felt the breath of the presence on my neck. It was bitingly cold and thick with a noxious order. I struggled with my frozen body to throw myself away from it, but all I could see was the fly.

It was one night that I felt the hand of the presence on me. The hand was ice cold. It gripped my arm gently, almost apologetically. But it held me firm. Even if I had been able to move, it would have been hard to wrench myself free.

And then it pulled. My mind screamed with pain as I felt the skin begin to tear. I felt the muscles stretch and snap. I felt the joint break lose, felt the bone that bound it snap. And then I awoke.

I fumbled frantically for my arm and felt it, still intact, though the flesh of it prickled with the after-effects of the dream’s pain, as though my mind was insisting that it had been injured. I looked towards it, and what I saw made my body tingle with slow-spread terror. Where the hand had seized me was now a red mark, shaped to fit the encircling fingers of my attacker.

Anette, I tell you, even in this dark time I thought of you. But a strange sort of madness had overtaken my mind and I, in a frenzy, closed my shutters, bolted my door and turned off anything that might light the dark world I was creating for myself.

I sat shivering for I am not certain how long. I have heard that I had visitors, but if I did, I was unaware of them. I sat in a stupor, rubbing my wound, muttering my broken mantra.

If you came to me at that time, Anette, I apologize. But even your voice could not reach me. After some time the days began to blend together, only punctuated by that dream, that wretched dream.

What was worse was now every time my attacker touched me, I could turn my head, but only slightly. Each time it seemed I could turn more. And more. Until I would catch the outline of its head as it leaned forward and pulled from me another of my limbs. It started with my arms, then my legs, then it began tearing pieces of me at random, sometimes twice before I could scream myself awake.

I do remember you that day, Anette. I do remember when you came in with the doctor. I remember your look of horror and... oh, Anette, how I wanted to comfort you. How I wanted to brush that terror from your face. But most of all, how I wanted to blot out whatever would cause you such distress. How I wished, at that moment, I had never been.

Surely, it was the time you spent at my bedside that kept me from completely succumbing. I would face the dream, each time trembling in my paralyzed form, but each time forcing my head to turn as though if I could see the face of the torturer, I could break the spell. It was your heart that maintained me. That enabled me to see the face of the monster.

And, oh, how I have repaid you. That night you came, once again demanding I tell you what had caused this illness. How I adore your spirit, Anette. The way your eyes burn insistent like unquenchable flames. But it was not your folly, it was mine. Would that I had never opened my mouth, that I had never described it to you...

Anette, I feel my consciousness ebbing from me. I know that should I sleep now I will never waken. For even looking into those grim blue eyes will not deter it from its task.

It is too late for me, but it may not be so for you. The reason I write this to you, the reason I warn you thus is because I desire two acts from you. Two oaths I ask you to swear on our love:

One, I ask that you destroy this letter as soon as you read it.

Two, I ask that if the dream comes to you, if you feel that horrid presence appear behind you...

I beg of you, do not turn around.

Copyright © 2010 by Benjamin Batorsky

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