The Long-Legged Man

by H.V. Patterson

I am dreaming, wandering through variegated darkness beneath an alien sky. As I wander, the light of a moon which isn’t mine plucks each exposed inch of my body until I vibrate like a harp in a haunted house.

I am alone. I am never alone. The long-legged man steps from my shadow.

The long-legged man is long all over. But his legs—folded when he crouches to look at me, eye to eye, those legs like twin springs, coiled and vibrating with potential energy—are the longest part of him.

His eyes glimmer like sea glass. Their brightness overshadows the rest of his face.

We walk together, and the long-legged man whispers to me. His teeth grind around his words. I can remember the bones and skin of his stories. They have bloody beginnings and bloody endings. But memory sucks the meat from their corpses and leaves them rattling seedpods in my head.

My waking life falls to pieces around me.

Even my cat runs away.

I am all alone.

Only the long-legged man remains.

More real than real. My past and future coil around his wrists.

We walk together, and I recite the oeuvre of my losses. He cups his hands to hold the measure of my pain. His long fingers enclose my wrists. Sharp nails prick my pulse point. My heart’s tempo increases. For the first time, I am afraid.

He does not come the next night.

He does not come the next night.

He does not come the next night.

He does not come the next—

I swallow a scream.

My cat returns.

My life is whole; my life was never broken.

The long-legged man returns.

He never left.

I reach through the many shades of darkness. The alien moon clutches me, tries to hold me back—and fails. My hand slides into his, fingers swallowed by his hungry grasp. The moon wanes-waxes above us, her disappointment palpable.

His breath caresses my moon-tangled hair. His pulse syncopates with my own.

From eons away, I sense the faint warble of my sun, electromagnetic radiation thrumming through the void of space.

I look up and up and up into his face. And he bends low and lower and lowest, his glittering eyes obscuring my horizons.

This is not a dream, I say.

I can see his face now.

I can see his teeth.

I know what they taste like.

My life unspools, every moment bleeding into every other moment.

I have arrived at the beginning. I have started at the end.

A circle has no beginning or ending.

But this life is not a circle or a sphere. There are too many dimensions.

The waning-waxing moon is wailing, has been wailing, will be wailing.

Some nights, I dream of the long-legged man.

I dream with my eyes open.