Free Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere Page B

his twenty-ninth birthday, he joined cupiddating.web and arranged a few dates. After a handful of disasters,
he gave up. It had proved to be a fruitless exercise. His
profile had filled up with negative comments from the girls
he met through the system.
    “He’s cute, but WARNING: he’s, like, the dullest guy
EVER!”
    “He NEVER asked a single question. He didn’t want to
know anything about me. He kept staring at me like I was a
painting or a statue or something.”
    “The only question this dumb loser asked me was: Can
we go have sex now? Like, get real, you creepy Ken doll!”
    “What a shame that such a cute guy is nothing but a
BORING WEIRDO!!!”
    And so on.
    The third night, Mario again visited the seashore. Again,
he stripped. This time he did not hesitate: he immediately
stepped down into the cold water. He was surprised at how
shallow it was. He remembered it being so much deeper.
Seaweed laced around his ankles. Had he after all simply hit
his head and imagined everything?
    A few metres out, the bottom dropped much lower.
Mario dunked into the water and swam. He followed the
shoreline covering every possible place where the monster
could have lurked.
    Again and again, he swam the length of the area where
the incident occurred.
    Even if the monster were real, would it have waited
for him here for more than two decades? It could even be
dead. If it had ever lived.
    What had he expected?
    While he shivered under the hard blast of hot water in
his hotel-room shower, he concluded that he had, indeed,
hit his head, that the monster did not exist — had never
existed — and that its cold fingers had been nothing more
than strands of seaweed.
    This return to Bari was Mario’s gift to himself for his
thirtieth birthday. The date itself fell on his last full day in
the city. He had spent a week there. The next morning, the
train would take him back to Rome. That night, his flight
would take off for Canada.
    For his solitary birthday supper in Bari, Mario ate the
final pizza marinara of his Italian trip. He also drank three
bottles of red wine.
    In the middle of the night, he wandered once again to
the seashore and shouted obscenities at it, as if he could
injure it.
    The anger felt good. He couldn’t remember ever feeling
angry before. He should get drunk more often. Maybe that
was all he needed to loosen up those emotions.
    No . . . he’d gotten drunk before, and all it did was make
him sleepy. No . . . there was something about the sea here.
Something that stirred him.
    Cursing and crying, not really knowing why he was
doing it, he took off his clothes and once more submerged
himself in the sea.
    He felt something clammy wrap itself around his wrist.
Underwater, he opened his eyes; he immediately recognized
that glow.
    For twenty-five years, Mario endured this recurring
dream:
    He is five years old. He falls into the water. Everything
is dark. Clammy fingers make contact with his chest.
Suddenly, there’s a shimmering light. It’s a monster,
touching him, glowing with a sickly green phosphorescence.
The monster is only slightly bigger than he is. It has three
eyes, and they protrude from its forehead at the tips of
antenna-like appendages. Its mouth wriggles like a handful
of worms. It has six short limbs attached to its crooked,
lumpy body. From each limb erupts a nest of weedy fingers.
Its skin looks like layers of bloody and mouldy rags. Where
the monster’s fingers make contact with Mario’s flesh,
prickly, needle-like shoots insert themselves under the
boy’s skin. He senses something essential drain from him,
leaking into the monster. Then there’s a sharp pain as he
hits his head.
    And he wakes up. Screaming.
    The adult Mario struggled free. As soon as contact between
himself and the monster was severed, the glow faded.
    Mario surfaced briefly to fill his lungs, then plunged
back and swung his hands in wide circles. He wouldn’t —
couldn’t — let the monster disappear. He had to make