Jack Ketchum - I'm Not Sam

I begin to sob into my hands. Can’t stop it. Can’t stop shaking. It’s like every moment of the past two weeks is flooding through me all at once, pouring out of me, all these moments away from her and it isn’t fair, it isn’t right.

“Patrick? Patrick, what’s wrong?”

And the voice is Sam’s voice.

I feel like a jolt of electricity. It’s almost the same as when I saw that snake. I’ve done it! I can’t fucking believe it!

“Sam! Jesus, Sam! Sam!”

I reach for her but she’s up and off the couch so fast I don’t even come close.

“I! Am! Not! SAM!” she screams, her face a twisted mask of frustration and anger and goddammit it’s suddenly Lily again, Lily in full-bore tantrum mode as she bats my beer bottle off the table, tears away the fireplace screen and flings it across the room, sweeps my John D. McDonald books off the mantle and as I’m standing trying to grab hold of her and talk to her saying god knows what to try to calm her down as she throws the standing lamp so hard against the wall that the light bulb explodes sending Zoey into a panic so that she leaps off the couch landing hard on her arthritic legs, skitters across the floor and races out of the room.

Lily’s screeching loud and high as she tears my framed Jack Kirby print of HULK COMICS #1 that I’ve had since I was seventeen off the wall and smashes it to the floor and she’s barefoot and glass is everywhere — I never want to hear that screech again as long as I live, it’s like an animal in pain — and then I hear another crash coming from the study.

“Stay there,” I tell her. I’m thinking about the glass. “Don’t move.”

I know what I’ve got to do. My being here’s no good. My being here’s just making it worse. She’s looking at me like she’d like to strangle me, tear my head from my shoulders so I back off and head for the study. At least I can see if my cat’s all right. So that’s what I do.

I hear the coffee table go over behind me.

In the study the first thing I see is my lightpad smashed beside the drafting table and my pages scattered all across the floor. There’s Zoey huddled in the far corner of the room beneath the window. She must have made a leap for the high ground and failed. Glass crunches underfoot as I go to her, reach down. She cringes. But I persist.

“Hey, girl. It’s all right. It’s okay. It’s all right.”

It’s not all right at all but in a moment or two she relents and lets me touch her, stroke her back, scratch her head. Her eyes soften.

I’m hearing nothing from the living room so I’m hoping the worst is over. I figure I’ll give it a little more time just to be sure.

I crouch beside the drafting table to gather up my pages and the world suddenly tilts on me, nearly sends me down to all fours.

I’m staring at the pages.

I’m looking at Doctor Gypsum and Samantha.

Only I’m not looking at Doctor Gypsum and Samantha.

I’m looking at myself. Myself and Lily.

In every frame. I’ve drawn us exactly. Our faces, our bodies. Lily’s and mine.

Battling the Abominations League. Stepping out of the rubble of an old building, wounded, taking shelter, healing. More battles, more wounds. Whirling through space. Diving deep into the safety of the sea.

I’ve been doing this every day for weeks now.

I stare at the pages and feel a weariness I’ve never known.

I gather them up and place them carefully on the table.

Then turn and leave the room.

Lily’s standing where I left her. The table overturned beside her. The living room is a shambles. There’s an acrid electric smell in the air.

She’s naked. The wedding dress lies torn and crumbled at her feet. And she’s cut herself. On the hem of her dress are three drops and one long bright smear of blood.

She’s crying softly. Her shoulders trembling.

“Lily.”

“I’m not Sam,” she says.

Only gently this time. Almost, I think, with regret.

“I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

And then a moment later, “don’t move. I’ll come to you.”

I cross the room and sweep her carefully up into my arms. Her face is still wet with tears against my cheek as I carry her into our bedroom. I lay her down on the bed and have a look at the cut on her foot. It’s not too bad. I go to the bathroom for sterile pads and peroxide, bandages and bacitracin. I tend to the wound.

The night’s warm. She makes no move for the covers.

I lie down beside her and look into her eyes and she looks into mine. I don’t know what she sees there but she holds my gaze and doesn’t turn away. I’m not sure what I see in her eyes either. I think of Sam and I think of Lily. But in a little while I reach over.

It’s perhaps a blessing, this thing I have, and perhaps a curse. I’ve always thought blessing but now I’m not so sure.

I know exactly how to touch her.

I know how to touch.

I don’t know what in hell is going on but I’m scared. My body is telling me something frightening and my body doesn’t lie.

As soon as I’m awake I can feel the wetness inside me — Patrick last night — so I roll away from him still asleep beside me, and as I stand his semen starts to ooze and slide along the inside of my left thigh. It’s just barely dawn. It’s still dark inside the house but I’d know my way to the bathroom blind. I use some toilet paper on my leg and labia and then a warm wet facecloth for your basic whore’s bath, thinking I really need to depilate or wax down there, wondering how I’ve let it go this long, and that’s when I notice my legs.

My legs are unshaven.

I run the palms of my hands up and down over them and that’s stubble all right. I’d say about two-or-three-weeks’ growth of stubble.

What the hell?

I stare at my face in the mirror. My face looks the same. But something about my hair’s wrong. I had it cut and styled just last week but you wouldn’t know it now. It needs a good brushing and it might be my imagination but I could swear it’s longer than it ought to be— longer than it was just last night.

I reach up into it to shake it out and stop midway.

There are light thin tufts of hair growing out of my armpits.

This is not possible.

What my eyes are reporting my brain can’t process.

I feel something drop in the pit of my stomach and it isn’t hunger pangs, it’s nausea.

I need to talk to Patrick right away.

But in the hall I glance to my right, and what I see in the living room stops me in my tracks.

My first thought is that we’ve been vandalized while we were sleeping, but I doubt that even a morphine drip would allow us to sleep this soundly. I step down the hall but not too far. There’s glass all over the living room floor, presumably from Patrick’s shattered poster art lying there, among other things, and I’m barefoot.

That’s when I realize the bottom of my foot’s bandaged.

I don’t remember doing that.

From where I stand I can see the overturned coffee table, the fireplace screen leaning over against the far wall by the television — mercifully intact — Patrick’s mystery books scattered everywhere, a broken Corona bottle, our vintage ’40s standing lamp lying in the middle of the floor, its bulb down to filaments and its painted glass shade in pieces. And beside it lies a pale white dress.

I inch a little closer, mindful of all the glass, just to make sure that I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.

It’s my wedding dress, veil and all, crumpled up and torn and stained with what looks like dried blood.

I’m a medical examiner. I see a good deal of dried blood. And even at this distance I’m pretty sure that’s what it is.