Emanon's Revenge

She gasped and lurched forward into the black tossing her covers down to her waste. The room around her - her bedroom - was pitch black, and everything below her knees was completely consumed by shadow.

The coolness and silence of the room drained away the panic that had roused her. There was no memory of the nightmare - just a ghost of a horror.

And now with the fright abating, a new emotion surfaced - unexpected and unfortunate. A black feeling of despair.

What had she dreamt about that had moved her so?

She sank back into the mattress and pulled her comforter over her shoulders.

She felt as though part of her was missing - like an amputee fretting over the severed hand. Maybe it was her profoundly empty bed or the house that was not a home - nothing but furniture and televisions to keep her company and no warmth other than her own.

Was that the cause of the nightmares?

She pondered the growing frequency of them as her eyes traced the random shapes and figures eternally frozen in the plaster of the ceiling.

The dreams had been occurring for a very long time now, but they seemed worse than ever. And it was always the same. She always awoke afterwards distraught and could never recall why. Sometimes, she’d even wake up crying.

The Air conditioning kicked on shooting a cool jet of air into the room from the vent beneath the window on the wall to the right. The air from it caused the blinds in the window to scrape ever so gently against the window seal.

Her eyes drifted shut.

It was over.

No use contemplating it further.

Her thoughts quickly trailed off into nonsense to the beat of the steady drumming of the blinds softly scraping against the window seal and the drawn shade behind it. The soft hum of the central air.

That’s when someone very close cleared his throat.

She sprang forward with her eyes darting all about the shadows.

"Who’s there?"

Her eyes stuck to a formation of shadows just over the right post of her bed in the corner by the window. At first, it looked like a ponderous series of shapes, but the more she stared on the more she recognized the form.

It was a man sitting in a chair by the window with his left leg crossed over his right leg and his hands folded in his lap.

She recoiled from it like a person flinching away from a spider that she has just found hovering far to close.

"Who are you?" she half-screamed.

But the shadow sat as still as a stone completely unfettered - oblivious.

She began to wonder if the form wasn’t some kind of illusion. The shadows coupled with an overactive imagination already excited by a nightmare.

"Why are you in my house?" she hissed, for good measure.

The figure did not move, but this time, he spoke. And he was so still when he spoke that she wondered if he was actually saying the words or thinking them.

"You invited me into your house, long ago and inadvertently. I wonder. Will you chase me out just as before?"

She started sobbing uncontrollably. His ill intentions resonated from him. He was evil.

"Please don’t hurt me. I don’t have much, and I live alone, but take anything you want."

He still didn’t move, but this time, the frustration in his voice was readily apparent.

"Stop sniveling. I have no lust for your possessions for I have all things and nothing. That is, if oblivion is everything."

"What do you want from me?" she cried.

"All I ever wanted from you was everything, but what you gave me was nothing. Nothing and everything if oblivion is possibility."

"Do I know you?" she choked through tears.

"All I ever wanted was to know you and me, but you denied me the chance."

"What is your name?" she said.

"I have all names and no names if oblivion is potential. You may call me Emanon."

"What kind of name is that?" she snapped.

"That is the name of infinite possibility. All I ever wanted was to have my own, but alas."

"Sir, I don’t know what I did to you or why, but I’m sorry."

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. His motions were fluid and graceful.

"I believe you. That is why we are here."

She smirked. "What is this some kind of crazy guessing game?"

Her captor said nothing further. He crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. His posture was almost whimsical. He could have just as easily been looking out of a morning window over a foggy pond and thinking about nothing in particular.

She stared at him.

There was nothing familiar about his way. If she had known him, it was only in passing. And his way of speaking was curious. All of his phrases seemed to become the same thing while at the same time saying very different things.

She didn’t recognize his voice. It was cool and refined - professorial.

"Who are you?" she said, more to herself than to him.

"Who I am is apparently not important enough to be explored. All I ever wanted was to know, but I was denied. And now I have all identities and no identities if oblivion is possibility."

"What the hell is this oblivion thing you keep blabbing about?"

He sighed. "Oblivion is what you made me. It is both infinite and finite. Everything and nothing. The embodiment of all things that should have and could have been."

"Did we date?"

He huffed. "I have never known love not even the most basic variety. You should have offered it, but you never did."

"What kind of a crazy man are you?"

"I am not a man. I have no gender. I would have, but we’ll never know."

Her heart sank.

It slowly came together in her mind.

All identities and no identities.

All names and no names.

No gender.

Who I am is not important enough to you.

Oblivion is what you made me.

Her thoughts harkened back to a time long before when she was very young. Her boyfriend was young, too. Neither of them were ready for the consequences of the very adult thing they did. He paid for her to have the problem taken care of, and she did.

"You can’t be," she said breathlessly.

He stood and she caught a glimpse of his head. He had no face.

"I am what should have been and could have been, but you denied it thinking that you were wiser than God. I am the part of you that you feel is missing. You might say that now, I am everything to you and nothing at all, and that is all I will ever be."

Her chest was heavy. She gasped for breath.

"I can’t breathe," she said.

He leaned forward. "And here’s why."

He held out his heavy hand and opened it. Her heart lay on his palm beating erratically.

She gasped and lurched forward.

* * * * *

The next night, She gasped and lurched forward into the black tossing her covers down to her waste. The room around her - her bedroom - was pitch black, and everything below her knees was completely consumed by shadow.

The coolness and silence of the room drained away the panic that had roused her. There was no memory of the nightmare - just a ghost of a horror.