“What’s that say?” I whispered, not finding my full voice in the cold.
He started at the sound of my voice and slowly pivoted at the waist, shooting me a sly look from over his shoulder.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“It’s too cold for sleep.”
He grinned and turned totally around. “That’s what I’m here for.”
He shoved his arms in the shirt and was about to raise it above his head when I stuck a hand out and pointed at him.
“Seriously, Dex, what does it say?”
He dipped his chin to chest and gave me a long look, his eyes wheeling and dealing. After a thick pause, he said, “All right. But I’m putting my shirt back on after cuz it is cold as balls in here.”
I nodded, feeling a smile spreading inside my stomach and raised myself up on my elbows.
He came over and took back the covers and climbed on in. Then he turned so I could see his shoulder, bringing the covers up to his waist.
Written in the same italic font as the “And with madness comes the light” tattoo on his chest read the new tattoo.
It said: “Within your light, I lose the madness.”
I didn’t know what to think or say so I just took my hand and gently pressed my fingers against the words, tracing along it. He shivered from my touch but his skin was as cold as stone.
“You seen it?” he asked and gave me a backwards glance.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my breath clouding in the air.
“Good,” he said and twisted around, putting his shirt on. He shifted his body under the covers and rolled over to his side, as if he was going to sleep.
I wanted to talk about it. What did it mean? Did it mean what I thought it meant? Was I his light? Did Dex get a tattoo about me? Or was I so far out of touch that it wasn’t about me at all? Maybe it wasn’t about a person. Maybe it was a thing.
“Dex,” I said gently.
He grunted in return.
“Dex, what does it mean?”
Silence.
“The tattoo,” I proceeded. “Within your light I lose the madness. What or who is the light?”
“It’s anything you want it to be,” he mumbled, his voice heavy and obscured by the covers.
“But what is it to you?”
I watched him carefully in the lamplight. His body deflated with one long exhale and I knew he was having a debate in his head over what to tell me, if anything. He always gave you something, just not everything. At least, the old Dex was like that.
He said something so low and so muffled that I strained to hear him.
“What was that?” I asked, leaning forward until my chest was pressed up against his back.
I heard him pull the covers away from his face and the sharp exhale through his nose.
“You,” he said, voice low enough to vibrate.
I felt frozen on the outside but inside my heart had vaulted.
It was about me.
“Me?” I repeated quietly, my throat thick.
He turned onto his back, and rolled his head to the side to look at me. I was blocking most of the light, so his eyes looked dark and fathomless. Unreadable.
“You,” he said slowly. “You’re the light. You’re my light.”
My chest pinched at his words and wave of warmth flooded me from head to toe. I was no longer cold. I was glowing from the inside out.
I breathed heavily, studying the darkness that was his face. I felt the unmistakable urge to crawl into the space between his chest and arm, to hold him. My eyes dropped to his chest, to the fine patches of hair there and I fought the need to trail my fingers through it.
“I know it doesn’t matter to you anymore,” he went on gently. “But you’ve always been my light. When I’m with you, I lose this darkness, this madness around me. The madness inside me. But I had to go mad to realize that. I had to lose you to know it.”
Within your light, I lose the madness. Dex had gotten a tattoo about me. I was his light. I couldn’t comprehend any of it. It just didn’t make sense.
I looked away from his eyes and at the window that was laced with ice crystals and snow, a light sheen of condensation on the interior. I didn’t know what I was feeling but it was something that made me feel extremely unbalanced, like I was navigating new territory.
He rolled back onto his side, facing away from me and tucking the blankets up around him. “You asked, I told.”
He did. I wasn’t expecting his honesty, for him to be so blunt. I thought he’d skirt the issue or make something up but there he was telling me he got something about me inked on his body. Something about me that would be there for life, regardless if I came back into it or not.
“It’s a beautiful tattoo,” I finally told him, my voice breaking slightly. I cleared my throat then settled back to my side of the bed. I waited, watching him for a few beats. He didn’t say anything else, though I knew he was still awake.
~~~
I woke up to the eerie feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
My eyes sprung open and focused on a greying point on the slanted ceiling. The room was a bit lighter now that it was dark and I guessed that the amount of snow from outside was throwing in light from the window.
The air wasn’t as cold above the blankets as earlier and inside I was nice and toasty. Beside me I could hear Dex’s breath going in and out in the easy depths of sleep. But that wasn’t the only sound in the room.
A low, rough scratch came from the wall behind me, just right of the window and above Dex’s head. I moved slightly to get a better look, my neck craning and ears straining.
There it was again. It wasn’t coming from inside the room, but outside. It sounded an awful lot like nails being run down a chalkboard, only replace the chalk board with a wooden cabin. The sound didn’t even flow smoothly; it stopped and started like a nail was getting caught on bits of wood. It was loud and deliberate and reverberated in my head.
I didn’t dare breath, didn’t dare make a sound, didn’t even swallow. I just listened as the sound slowly repeated itself, starting up high and then making its way down. All my instincts told me that it was probably a tree – when I thought about the view out of the window, I couldn’t remember what exactly was out there. If it wasn’t a tree though, I didn’t know what the hell it could be. And I didn’t want to find out either.
In fact, all I wanted to do was bury my head back under the covers and pray for morning. I didn’t believe in Sasquatch, Bigfoot or some Beast. But I’d seen enough shit to know that there was still plenty for me to be afraid of out there. What if it was a ghost or demon? I knew we were out in the middle of nowhere, but what if Dex’s mom had followed him here and was standing outside the cabin, trailing her fingers down the side of the cabin? Though her fingers would have to be thick long claws to duplicate the sound I was hearing.