Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats

~ 2023 ~

I toss and turn, laying in the bed of the hotel. It’s well into the middle of the night, everything around me is pitch black. I really tried my hardest to sleep. But my demons kept me up. Visions of that night at the beach, on the cliff, the last time we were here; they kept running through my mind, putting my head in its paces. Despite the foggy chill in the air, I felt clammy, sweaty. My sleep shirt clung to me like a suffocating film. 

I’m not going to get any sleep like this. I sigh, laying awake, staring at the ceiling. I feel like I’m going to be strangled with this sopping thing on. I sit up, rip the wifebeater off myself, throw it off into the corner of the room. Massage my temples softly, let my fingers dig into the scalp, push pressure into my eyes. I open them again, contemplating getting up to have a drink, when… Is there someone in the corner of the room? 

I squint, trying my hardest to make out the figure from the inky blackness. It’s barely there, but I’m sure of it. Someone is standing in my room, watching me sleep.

“Is someone there?” I reach over for my phone on the nightstand, fumbling for the flashlight setting. “If someone’s over there, you’ve got three seconds to get out before I fuck you up.” 

I press the flash button, but when I aim the light over to the corner of the room it’s entirely empty. No. I could swear I could see something there… 

I turn to put my phone back, head back to sleep, before a wheezing noise comes from that empty corner. “Owe…”

I snap up, fully awake now. “Hey! Show yourself! This isn’t funny!” I whip the flashlight back up to the spot, but it’s still empty, not even a thought in the space.

I move the flashlight away, but… The figure seems to still be there in the dark. I can almost make out a white face, beady black eyes, right where they should be. But when I move the flashlight back up to focus on them, it’s completely gone. Back and forth, three, four times.

“God, I’m losing my mind,” I mutter to myself. “Jumping at shadows…” I look down to the phone to shut the flashlight off. I turn to toss it onto the desk, and when I look back… the figure is there again. It’s even more defined than before. There’s clearly a man, pale, pasty. Hate in his eyes.

“What the fu–” I’m cut off by him loudly hissing, hunching over, and bolting to me! He climbs on top of me. Grabs my arms, pins them above my head, holds his other hand on my mouth to muffle me. He’s soaking wet, hair plastered to his face. He’s waterlogged, bloated. Pale gray skin, translucent where the veins go, eyes swollen near shut. Black blood drips from his mouth, open in a snarl, dripping onto my forehead. He’s wearing a necklace, a thin chain with a delicate medallion swaying above my head. One I intimately recognize. 

“Morty?” I struggle to speak through his fingers. God, it’s really him. Under all that decay it’s clearly my brother. I try to say more, but I’m muffled, and he won’t listen. He presses his hand deep over my mouth, fingers digging into my cheek. His nails are long and unkempt, but soft; they bend backwards instead of cutting into my face. 

He mumbles again, guttural, bile spilling onto me with his attempt. “You… Owe… Me…” He presses into me, his weight settling into my chest, holding me down tight. I can’t move an inch. “You owe me!” He leans over, mouth open, drooling that clotted blood onto my face, dripping as he lowers his mouth towards my eyes. His hands reach down, wrap around my neck, holding them tight against me, crushing my windpipe. I snap my eyes closed, grit my teeth, brace for the impact of his teeth…

“Eddy!” The lights in the room flick on, and I find myself alone on my bed. The thrashing stops with a whimper. Ronni is standing at the entrance to the room, drink in her hand, done down in her dressing gown. “Would you keep it down? You’ve been screaming like a madman!”

“Where did he go?” My eyes dart back and forth between the edges of the room, but I don’t spot him anywhere. It’s like he disappeared into thin air. I get up, cracking my knuckles, heart racing. “Show yourself!” 

Ronni stares at me with a tilt in her head, and a frown on your face. “Where did who go? Who else is in here?”

“M– Morty…” Suddenly I deflate a little, and realize how silly I sounded. 

She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms again haughtily. “Oh god, this again. Don’t you think you’re a little old to be having nightmares, Ed?” Could that really have been it? Another nightmare? It felt so real though. 

I push past her, into the other room of the suite. Rummage into the fridge to pull out a beer, pop it open, chug most of it down in one go. My heart calms down enough to start relaxing again. 

Ronni sits down at the counter across from me, propping her head up by her arm. Takes a sip of her own drink. Lets the glass clink against her chunky embossed ring. “I told you coming here was a mistake. We should have sold it. We should have sunk it into the sea.”

“It’s not the island that’s doing this to me, Ronni. You know that.”

She sighs, tapping her finger more aggressively against her glass. “I don’t know what I know about you anymore.” 

I lean against the fridge, the cool surface of the door sending a chill down my exposed back. I stare out the window overlooking the sea. “Don’t you miss him? You were his wife for christ sake.”

She sighs, lets her head rest on the countertop. “Ed, you have to let him go. It’s been five years. He’s. Gone. Obsessing like this is just cruel.”

“Cruel to who? Myself, or to his memory?”

“Cruel to me, Ed!” she hissed, snapping her head upwards to look at me, pressing her fingers into her chest as she spoke. “You don’t pay attention to me anymore, and when you do you start jumping at ghosts. The two-bit floozies of the world get charming Edgar, I get the broken man. And don’t give me any shit; I know what you do behind my back. Never were good at keeping your hands to yourself. It’s not my fault that I’m too much woman for you to handle.” 

I tense up, and then down the rest of my beer, toss the can onto the floor. “So what then? How could it be behind your back if there’s no relationship there in front of it? You were the one who got cold feet about going public. Decided the scandal would destroy the world’s new favorite socialite. Insead now the world treats me as the laughingstock.”

“You are a laughingstock, Ed!” She stands up, pinching the bridge of her nose. We stand in silence for a moment, glaring daggers at each other. “Look. Go out there, make your peace, beg for forgiveness, whatever it is you think you have to do. But get it done tomorrow. I want off this awful rock as soon as possible. Afterwards you can get a shrink, like a normal adult.”

She runs off in a huff, leaving me alone to my thoughts. I crack open another beer, run my hand through my hair softly. This relationship is really dead, huh. Pff. It was never alive to start with. She got her comfort out of me after… after Morty’s passing. And then realized I would be nothing but a hindrance to little miss socialite on her own rise to power. 

I down my beer on one go, slump down on a chair, and stare out at the ocean through the window. Start making a plan of attack for the rest of the visit. I think there’s more than one thing I’m going to have to make peace with before this trip is over.

CassieSandwich

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