Strange is the Night Read Free Page A

he was nervous about starting school. He promised them he would be okay by morning then he lurched back to bed and forgot for a little while that any world existed.
     

III
    College was mostly what Robert expected it to be, full of noisy people and musty classrooms and halls that smelled of disinfectant, except on weekend nights in the dorms when the halls smelled liked spilled liquor and occasionally of vomit. He loved the library and his lectures and doing his homework, but dorm life was not for him. Robert being in the dorms did not exactly work for other people either. The first time someone caught him staring into the big mirror that stretched the entire length of the row of sinks in the shared bathroom, the guy that found him actually laughed it off. He thought Robert was high and told him to enjoy the trip.
    He was inside the bathroom and looking through the mirror out of a window in his world. He was high in a building and looking down, head swimming with vertigo as the red waves of an alien ocean crashed against quartz-like stones jutting from the sandy floor. The water had stained them pink over the years so they looked like foggy tourmaline. Things reared up out of the water too far out for Robert to really see, but some of them were beautiful, they had hides that glittered like mosaics made of precious stones. Then there were the other things, things that set his teeth on edge and made his brain feel as though it was twitching inside his skull, trying to pull back. They had mottled grey-black skin that seemed on the verge of splitting. Their gruesome mouths would open and he could see teeth like rib bones filed down to points.
    One of the beastly things came from beneath the churning waves and caught one of the mosaic creatures. It disappeared inside its hideous maw. When it surfaced again a few feet closer to shore and opened its mouth, pieces of the living mosaic were speared on those ragged rib-teeth. It was horrifying and fascinating and Robert could not look away. People came and went around him, someone elbowed him and another snapped his fingers in front of Robert’s face. One jerk yelled in his ear for him to WAKE UP, DRUGGIE , but no one tried to physically make him move away from the mirror.
    The setting sun was turning the deep red water to black when one of the monsters came from the deep and thrashed around in the air as though trying to free itself. As Robert looked on, its side split and on a gout of pus and blood came a flood of smaller things; things that in the light glittered and shined like gemstones. Even as he screamed and stumbled away, Robert realized it was how the beautiful things were born—they were devoured by the ugly things and inside of them they disseminated and became new embryos. The beautiful things were parasites and monsters far more insidious than the things which ate them. Life in Robert’s secret world was a vicious circle and the distinction between predator and prey was nonexistent.
    Robert wasn’t sure how long he lay on the floor, writhing and screaming with his hands over his eyes, pressing the heels of his palms against them through his eyelids until it hurt. At first he wanted to be blind, but he thought how he would be trapped then with that image inside his mind forevermore. He took his hands away from his eyes but left them closed as he drew his knees up to his chest and began to weep.
    He wasn’t aware of much until a hand on his shoulder jerked him out of his sandblasted reverie. Robert snapped his burning eyes open to stare back into eyes of pale blue that looked as startled as he felt. Then the stranger moved back and Robert stared. He looked familiar. Robert finally remembered that he was the first guy that saw him, the one who had told him to enjoy his trip. When he stood and offered a hand for Robert to take, he hesitated, not over-fond of touching people and definitely not a fan of being touched. The guy wiggled his fingers at him and smiled and