Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

But because he had experienced her remembering about Aashrita only to almost instantly forget again, it wasn’t a big leap to imagine that she might have other psychological issues – like believing she was being persecuted by some bizarre group of mystics that called themselves the Cabal. He’d listened to and supported her last night without judgment because she’d been so freaked out. But if he kept up the pretense of believing her story, he feared he’d only strengthen her delusion, which in turn would only make it harder for her to break free from. So he hadn’t woken her this morning, had left a note for her in the kitchen. Now he was beginning to wonder if he’d done that more for his own sake than hers. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to deal with an ex-girlfriend who was beginning to go crazy. They might not be lovers anymore, but they were friends. He shouldn’t have abandoned her like that. Who knew where she might be right now or what state she might be in?

He picked up his phone and tried to call her, but he only got her voicemail.

“It’s me. I’m just calling to see how you’re doing. I’m worried about you. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

After he disconnected, he checked his texts and saw she hadn’t replied to the message he’d sent. He then slipped the phone into his pants pocket. He was beginning to have a bad feeling now, and yeah, maybe he was overreacting, but he didn’t care. He needed to see Lori, to speak to her, to reassure himself that she was okay.

He’d only eaten a couple of bites of his muffin and had a few sips of his latte, but he was too anxious to want more of either. He reached for them, intending to throw them both away as he left the shop. But before he could take hold of either, someone walked over to his table, pulled out the chair opposite his, and sat down. It was a woman. And she had eyes like a goat’s.

Larry had read about people whose mouths fell open in surprise. He’d never experienced this reaction before, nor had he ever witnessed anyone else having it happen, so he’d always figured it was bullshit. But his mouth fell open now and he thought, I’ll be damned. It really does happen.

He couldn’t believe how much her eyes resembled those of a goat. No, not resembled. They were goat’s eyes, large and watery, and they examined him with a detached, cold, and altogether alien intelligence. Like the woman Lori saw in the grocery store, he thought. No, not like. The same woman. He was getting over his initial shock at seeing the woman, and he now noticed that the skin around her weird eyes was soft and doughy. She exuded a strong body odor too, the stink so intense that it made him gag, and for a moment he thought he was going to spew latte and bits of chewed-up muffin onto the table. The blue sweatshirt she wore was almost disappointingly bland. A…being like this should be garbed in clothes that presented a sense of dark glamour – a black leather bustier with a high-collared cape, maybe.

“I’m disappointed in you, Larry.” Her voice sounded normal, conversational even, as if they were two friends having an intimate personal conversation. “I thought you were Lori’s friend. Her best friend. Best friends believe each other, support each other. They listen. That’s your problem. You don’t truly listen.”

He was only partially aware of what she was saying. He was too mesmerized by her eyes to fully concentrate on her voice. It wasn’t just the weird rectangular shape of her pupils, although that was some of it. But what had captured his attention was how black those pupils were, a black so dark, so deep, that it seemed to go on and on forever. Those eyes held endless voids within them, and he felt the darkness calling to him, threatening to draw in his awareness, his mind, his very self, and swallow it whole.

“You fascinate me,” Goat-Eyes said. “You have two professions, one based in sound, the other in silence. Do you love both, or are you merely reluctant to commit fully to one or the other?”

These last words snapped him back to himself. As a bisexual person, he often got the Why don’t you pick a side? question from both straight and gay people. He’d given up trying to explain that it wasn’t about sides, wasn’t about choices. No one ever understood, not really, except other bisexual people – and Lori. She’d accepted who he was without question, and that was one more thing he loved dearly about her. So when Goat-Eyes said he was unable to commit to sound or silence, it had struck a very raw nerve in him.

He found his voice for the first time since she’d sat down.

“They’re different aspects of the same thing,” he said.

“Are they now?” Her mouth stretched into a slow smile. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

She reached toward her face, touched the doughy flesh around her eyes, and with thumbs and forefingers peeled off a pair of dime-sized pieces of thin, whitish skin. She held them out, as if for him to examine, then she flicked her hands forward and released the scales. They flew toward him like tiny shuriken, and he thought they were going to strike his eyes. But they veered off at the last second, and curved toward the sides of his head. An instant later he felt sharp pain in his ears, as if someone had inserted long needles into his aural canals. It hurt like a bitch, and he cried out in pain. He felt a wiggling-squirming sensation, and he had the impression that something inside him was being rearranged by the flecks of Goat-Eyes’ skin. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain