THE FIEND

We were on holiday and I believe we were wandering around Sienna. We’d had a couple of bottles of wine between us at the restaurant and subsequent bars. Earlier on, we couldn’t have been more in love, congratulating our good fortune in meeting each other ten years ago. At a subsequent stage of the evening, however, you resorted to sarcasm and I took to overreacting. That’s right, you were walking and it was me who was wandering, getting left behind with each drip drip drip of sarcastic comment; plodding slower and slower until suddenly, I saw them, the footprints on the tarmac. Black, the colour of tar, long and narrow with talons at the end and I recognised them. Last seen ten years ago, the evening I met you.

Could I have drawn them to your attention? No. Only I can sense The Fiend and then I can only perceive its traces – footprints behind you, shadows in the bedroom with us, a soft mocking laugh when I whisper that I love you. There was nothing I could do, except make the last of your time with me as nice as possible. After all, you couldn’t know that with each passing day, wherever you went, around on holiday, then back home, those footprints followed and each time I checked they were a little closer behind you...

The evening you returned from work with the footsteps just one pace back from yours, I took a little time out to remember the parties, the laughter, the good times, the love making and the sound of your key in the door. Then I quietly put those things away. I sat in the corner of the living room, watching the big black shadow rear up behind your armchair. You made the mistake of turning round, your eyes widened with fear and you screamed. Only, no sound came out because your head had disappeared inside the blackness, your torso followed, then your legs and finally your feet. I didn’t cry, because you no longer existed to me.

“All right?” the new man is leaning over me in bed.

“I’m fine,” I whisper, “go back to sleep.”
He does so. I switch on a bedside lamp and glance round me. A different room, but the same handwriting is on the wall. I get up and rub it off before he can wake again. These men I’m sent always come with instructions. I must adjust and comply, because the moment I relax, switch off or lag behind, is the second the Fiend’s footsteps will appear and I will endure the horror of failure again.