Demons
In memory of Sharon Stieff
And all the loved ones anyone has ever lost
She dies again in my dreams. I don't sleep much, but when I close my eyes I see her falling from that tower again and again. She drops as gracefully as a sheet of paper; a sheet of paper with the weight of a wrecking ball about to tear down the abandoned building of my life. She dies again and I wake up screaming.
The woman in my bed doesn't hear me. She's too lost in dreams of swimming through gold coins or something like that to notice. She used to be a demon, but she's not the demon I'm interested in right now.
They gave us the night off. They said that I was working too hard. They said I was only human, and therefore, I couldn't keep going out night after night; that I'd be killed. The old man said the all the others could handle it.. So I let others do the fighting for me while I climbed undeservedly in to my comfortable bed. That's how I was able to go to sleep at all. But I can't rest. There are demons and I need to kill them.
I get out of bed slowly. Each time I blink, she falls another inch. The town is silent tonight, but I know just outside my window, there are screams of pain, of death. I can't hear them, but I feel them within me like a stake through my heart. The demons are feasting. I get dressed not knowing why I bother. I can't win. I'll probably just end up dead. Good. I should die. I should be dead instead of her. She did so much for this world, saved so many. And what was her reward? Jumping into Hell as a final act of servitude for a world that didn't even know she existed. Me? I'm still here to give the world all the sarcastic comments it so desperately needs. I'm here to make another joke or cartoon reference, to be a liability, a child-man in need of protection, to take everything and give back nothing. Of course, no one will admit that. They tell me they need me because I'm the "heart" of the team. Like hell I am. Do you give your "heart" a night off when every minute more people are dying? Do you send your "heart" out to get snacks where there's real work to be done? Does your "heart,” upon returning with said snacks, insist on calling himself "Lord of the Ring-Dings?" Do you need a heart like that? Do you need a "heart" when the body is dead? I should be dead.
I pick up a baseball bat. It's strong enough to cause damage to something fairly large, and it's made of wood in case any of those pointy-toothed bastards show up. It's also the only weapon I can find. I take my bat and take one last look in the mirror. I don't see myself, at least not who I used to be. It's like I'm not casting a reflection at all. I turn away from the empty mirror and go out to visit the dead.
There's a slight fog in the graveyard. It covers everything in the distance with a grayish film and makes the trees look like a gray tinted painting. Tombstones stretch out before me in endless rows like tiny skyscrapers. I walk among them; a giant monster attacking this miniature metropolis. I tell myself I'm looking for demons, but I already know where to find them. I walk slowly. After each step, I don't know how I'll survive the next. How will I survive anything now? I walk among the tombstones, surrounded by death. Of course, that's nothing new. For five years, I've seen friends, enemies, associates, strangers, and finally some of the only real family I've ever had dies meaninglessly. Who can say what they could have achieved, the people they should've been, what they could have brought to this world had they not been massacred by monsters. And then there's me: The guy who can't seem to get killed no matter what happens. I've been captured by vampires so many times, held hostage by a gang of zombies, even been a slave to Dracula, among other things and yet I'm still alive...meaninglessly. I should've been killed a thousand times, but somehow, I always make it out. For what? To build cabinets and windows? To make fun of serious situations and sum things up in the simplest possible terms? I hear the demons now. How will I survive them?
In a few minutes, I'm there. She probably passed this spot a thousand times on patrol never realizing that she'd be patrolling it forever. He's already there when I show up. His tiny body stands fully straight except for his head, which is tilted down. He stares at the inscription on the rock that is the only sign of the girl who lies there. I take a second to get into character. I put on the goofiest grin I can muster and saunter over to him. I have to be the joker, the clown. That's what I'm supposed to be. That's what he expects me to be. That's the only thing I can give him.
"Isn't past your bed time, Mini-Me?" I ask him with a jocular slap on the back. He jumps at my unexpected appearance. He stares up at me nervously like a human in a sci-fi movie staring at some horrible creature towering over him.
"Oh, hey, what are you doing here?" he stammers.
"You know, I love the ambiance. I also enjoy long walks on the beach and just talking for hours. What do you think I'm doing here?" That's it. Make another joke. Do what you always do. The only thing you do. Make him laugh, and maybe you'll be worth something.
"Sorry. Stupid question," he admits and rubs the dirt with his foot.
"So, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at home dreaming of Princess Lea or some Vulcan babe?" Make fun of him. That'll make you feel better.
"I don't know," he says as he turns back to the stone. "I guess I kind of just wanted to say good-bye."
"It's pronounced 'good-bye.'" I want him to leave as fast as possible. I need to be alone with her.
"That's the problem. It's just as easy as two words. I don't feel anything. She saved my life up in the clock tower, and they asked me to give her that award at the prom, but I never really knew her. She was just another face in the crowd to me, and now she's just another dead girl. I feel like she shouldn't be." I feel like he should shut up, but I'm generous and let him keep talking. "At the funeral, when you all were talking about how much she meant to you, I couldn't keep my mind from wandering. I couldn't help but wonder who would win in a fight between He-man and Superman."
"Superman, hands down," I tell him like the little boy that I am. "The power of Greyskull is no match for the last son of Krypton." Way to ruin a serious moment. Great work, stupid.
He ignores my comment, "I though that maybe I was too nervous to feel anything with so many people around, so I came back tonight, but still..." He pauses and stares blankly for a moment. "So many people die around here. I don't know how to care about them all. I have no idea what you and the others are going through right now, and it makes me feel like I'm a bad person, like I should care more, but I just can't. It makes me want to hate myself."
He's made me angry. How dare he think that her death was just another among the countless? She was so much more. He wants to feel something? How about my fist in his face? But something about what he said touches me, but I don't know why. So, in a rare moment of maturity, instead of reacting with my usual anger, I act rationally for once. I give him the cliché. It seems to make him feel better.
"You can't live your life in constant mourning," I tell him even though I don't believe it. "If you feel for every death, you're not really living. Life has to go on. You just have to do your best." I hate myself for spreading such sappy idiocy. I know I will be mourning her forever.
"Thanks," he answers. "But why does it have to happen this way? I don't understand why an uncaring person like me is still alive, while saints and heroes die every day."
"I don't know," I say. We stand in silence for a few seconds. Eventually, I speak, "You'd better get out of here if you intend to keep on living. It's not safe out here. It's not safe for any of us."
"Are you going to be okay," he asks more out of obligation than anything else.
"I'll survive," I reply. "I always do."
He says thank you and good night and wonders off into the darkness unaware of how I saved him from the demons. I watch as the night swallows him, and as soon as he is gone, I fall to my knees. Tears fall from my eyes watering earth out of which nothing can ever grow again. She can't be gone. She doesn't deserve to be surrounded by dirt and have nerds think about He-Man at her funeral. I cry out at the sky like some inhuman beast. I can't keep on living with the pain, the guilt.
Suddenly, I feel a soft hand on my shoulder; the smooth, gentile touch I've felt so many times before, but this time it's cold, dead. I look up and see the face I know all too well: The blue eyes, the golden hair that falls perfectly in place, the tanned skin over the delicate cheekbones. For a moment, it's like nothing has changed. We're together again, in the graveyard, tracking down some new Big Bad. Then I remember. The eyes are glass. The hair's a wig. The skin is plastic, and the bones are steel. We're not together, and the demons are winning.
She, no it, tilts its head and asks me, "Are you injured?"
Immediately, the tears are dried and I've switched back to my usual hilarious self, "No, that was just my manly battle cry. I like to frighten the monsters before I slay 'em, or at least annoy them."
"You are my friend," it announces in a voice without intonation, without feeling. "You help slay the vampires. You will come patrol with me tonight." This thing is a bad memory I can't seem to forget. Every time I see it, it's like the funeral all over again. Everything it speaks is a eulogy for her. Each word is an obituary telling me over and over again that she is gone.
"Sure, I'll go with you. It'll be like some weird episode of Small Wonder."
It answers me, "I do not understand." Of course it doesn't. How could it?
We walk through the cemetery in silence. Robots don't need to talk, and I don't need to talk to robots. A vamp takes us by surprise, but we stake it...eventually. After the fight, I lean against a headstone winded and bruised. I'm a carpenter not a slayer, and it shows. I can barely stake a lone vampire even when assisted be the Slaymaster 6000. What good am I? I can't stop the demons anymore.
What really gets to me is the machine. I saw it fight. Its style, its moves were like a strange pantomime, a mockery of reality. It fights exactly like she did. It disgusts me.
"Bring on more vampires! I will kill them and make fun of their wardrobe in the process," it proclaims. "Because I am Bu-"
"No, you're not," I interject. "You're just a robot designed to make people think that you're her, but you're not. She's gone."
"I do not understand."
"Oh really? Then let me explain it to you." I grab hold of my nearby baseball bat and use it to push myself to my feet. Once I'm standing I accidentally glance at the name of the corpse whose stone I leaned against. I knew him in High School. I didn't know he was dead. Suddenly, I realize what had touched in the midget's words several minutes early: He and I are exactly the same. "You see, for the past five years, I've seen tons of people die, and you know what? I barely even noticed." I tell the robot. "I just lumped them together with all the other deaths in this town, in the world, and tucked them away in the 'That's a Shame' file in my mind." I move slowly, intently towards the machine.
"I do not understand," it says.
"I treated all these deaths like items on a discount rack: Things to be glanced at and tossed aside. But then, someone I cared about died and I realized something about those discount rack people. I realized, I shouldn't be able to ignore their deaths, but I can and I do. Everybody does. Really anyone could've been as great as she was. Most of them just never had a chance."
"I do not understand."
"Well I don't understand either!" By this point I'm standing right in front of it shouting as loud as my lungs can manage, but not loud enough to wake the dead. "I don't understand how one life can mean so much to one person and nothing to some one else. I don't understand why I get to live while those better than me are killed constantly. And I don't understand why something like you can be allowed to walk around masquerading as someone you could never be."
"But I am," it tells me. "I slay vampires. Therefore, I am the vampi-"
"No, you aren't!" I cut it off again. "You're not her! You're just a monster in the world of the dead!"
"I am not a monster. I help people. I do good."
"Sure you do. You slay a vampire or two and you think that's good? You think that can compare to what she did? You're a monster!" I lose control. Before I realize what I'm doing, the bat has already smashed into its knee. Robby the Robot can't dodge fast enough further proving that it is not the real thing. Metal bones wrench from their sockets. Plastic skin splits. Circuits explode, and the creature in front to me looses its balance. It barely manages to grab hold of a nearby headstone clutching it for dear life.
"I am damaged," it says. "If I am damaged, I am programmed to return to-"
"Oh, shut up!" I scream as I swing at its jaw. There is an eruption of sparks and searching metal as the lower half of its face shatters. It grasps the tombstone more desperately as all its limbs twitch and convulse like a rabid dog. "You don't deserve to live, you worthless, lying, monster." I strike it one last time in the midsection, and it falls landing as softly as a sheet of paper. The pile of broken electronics stares up at me with its usual blank eyes. "Why should I let you live? Why should you be allowed to live when so many have died?"
An answer issues from its broken lips. In between the static and the crackling of the sparks, I hear it sputter, "I...good."
I'm about to put us both out of our misery with one last swing, when I understand the truth behind its words. I put down the bat and turn away. I close my eyes and see her falling one last time. The wound can never heal. There will always be a hole where she- where all the dead will be missing, but the robot is right. It does do good. The machine tries to make up for her absence. That's the best it can do. The best any of us can do is masquerade as those we've lost. Do what they would've have done. Everyone has to work twice as hard at life to accomplish their mission as well as those of the dead, to bring to this world everything that it lost along with what he himself can give, and slowly fill up the hole a little bit. I turn back to face the machine.
"That's the problem with women," I remark. "You give them a small problem, and they just fall apart." I laugh as I gather up what's left of the robot. They'll use science and magic to fix it somehow. It's worked before. By tomorrow night, we'll both be back out in the world trying to fill the shoes of someone we're not.
When I bring her back home, they ask me what did this to her.
"Demons," I tell them. "I killed them."
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