Regret
by Gabrielle S. Faust
Originally published in Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror 2008


Marcus sat curled with his pale boney knees against his chest. For hours he had remained motionless in the exact same spot, in the worn leather armchair – the one he had scavenged from a neighbor‘s garage sale earlier that summer – parked in the corner near the glass door to his balcony. Brenda hated that chair. She always complained that it reeked of stale beer and old cigars, but her protests never lasted long enough to truly rustle Marcus‘s irritation. He had developed a strange attachment to the chair over the past few months, physically craving its lumpy, leathery embrace as the hours grew late in the day. As the hands of the clock ticked past five p.m., Marcus would leap from his desk and race down the two flights of stairs (it was always faster than waiting on the ancient elevator) and out into the parking garage to his car. Only when he was at his front door and the familiar sound of the lock clicking open reached his ears did he truly exhale a long sigh of relief as if he had been chased for blocks by something he could not see. After dropping his keys in the bowl on the table by the door, he went straight to the kitchen to pour himself a stiff, straight bourbon and then into the living room to his chair. His beloved chair.


He had tried to tell himself that it was merely the stress of his job which was making him so reliant on the creature comforts of he and Brenda‘s home, but the anxiety had turned into full-fledged panic attacks that often left him in tears if stuck on the freeway in traffic. He rarely ventured out at night anymore, leaving Brenda to attend the social functions of their small circle of friends. Marcus had even become absent at the majority of company events, including the ones that were firmly suggested by the higher-ups to those who were interested in surviving the next inevitable layoff. In his chair the world stood still, his mind could focus in a clarity he hadn‘t experienced in years and the incessant drone of the world that threatened him constantly, from all sides, five days a week, simply dissolved amongst the creases and tears in the fabric.




Brenda had begged him to seek counseling. Growing up with a bi-polar mother had made her astutely tuned into the signs of mental distress. She knew the darkness that could bubble up like crude oil if a disorder were left untreated, the manic highs and lows, the brooding, the silence; all of the very signs and symptoms that Marcus had begun to display. Because of this, she worried constantly about Marcus now, and the wear on her nerves showed in the dark circles beneath her eyes and in the fine lines that had crept in between her brows. Marcus refused to go though. It would have meant deviating from his routine, the one that returned him home each day at approximately five-thirty p.m. and into the arms of his new lover. Besides, no one would understand. Not about the chair. Not about the panic. Not about the dreams…


Marcus‘s eyes roamed over the heavy shadows of the living room. The sun had retired hours ago, yet he had not moved to turn on a light. He realized then that he had grown used to Brenda doing such things for him, and so he suddenly wondered where she was as he became lost in his own thoughts. In the darkness, curled tightly within his chair, the imprint of his dreams seemed more vivid upon the backs of his retinas. The horrifically disturbing images blazed with a twisted life force independent of his own will. Growing up, Marcus had never remembered his dreams upon waking. Whatever his subconscious had worked out the night before had always remained behind, vanishing into mist and leaving not even an impression upon him the day after.


Then one morning, he had awoken with a gasp, the image of himself and others traipsing over an island made of skeletons burned permanently upon his mind‘s eye. He had staggered to the bathroom as the dream had replayed itself over and over again in his mind; the sound of bones crunching beneath his feet, the smell of fog thick with sea salt in his nose, the arguing with the “others” that they were not supposed to be there…


“Here! This is it!” A male figure stooped before Marcus to the island of skeletons and ripped a jawbone from a protruding skull. “This is what we came for!”


“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Marcus said quietly as the man, whose face was obscured in the fog, features seeming smudged and flowing as it rolled silently past, handed him the bone. Marcus looked down at the bleached curve of jaw and teeth. He wanted to hurl it out into the sea, to be rid of it forever. He could feel a low, cold resonance within the bone; a darkness that seeped through the marrow like oil, clinging to his skin, but for some reason Marcus could not let go.


The man said nothing and they turned as a group and began to head back to wherever they had come from. The chill invaded Marcus’s clothing, molesting his skin with clammy, cold fingers. A sharp pain seared through his teeth and he reached up to cover his mouth with his free hand. Wetness. Marcus pulled his hand away and through the whiteness of the enveloping ground cloud he could see his hand was covered in red. He ran his tongue over his teeth and tasted blood; his gums were bleeding profusely.


“Damn it!” he yelled through his fingers as he dropped the jawbone and covered his mouth with both hands. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea! I told you we weren’t supposed to be there!”


It was then that he had awoken in a cold sweat.


Since that night three months before, Marcus‘s dreams had grown progressively more perverse; filled with bizarre and demented scenes of bones and blood and gore he dared not try to decipher. The night before he had been forced to witness a cannibal slaughter someone as if they were a sacrificial cow, skin their corpse, clean them like a fish and then roast them on a spit over an open fire. The smell of singed hair and bubbling fat was still heavy in his nose whenever the images flashed across his mind. Marcus did not know if he could face another night of dreams, especially knowing that Brenda was not there to comfort him when he woke up screaming.


His eyes drifted to the coffee table where he had tossed his keys and cell phone. The three feet separating him from the table seemed like the Grand Canyon. He took a deep breath and slowly uncurled himself, feeling the blood return to the cramped muscles of his legs in an explosion of tiny dancing needles. Gingerly, he picked up the phone, reaching out to flick on the overhead light switch near the door as he moved. He then flipped the phone open. A text from Brenda lit the tiny screen.


Staying with Carol tonight.
Need some girl-time.
Be back tomorrow.
Love, Brenda


Marcus stared at the words for a long silent moment before deleting the text and flipping the phone closed again. He knew what ‘girl-time’ meant. It meant she needed to vent to Carol about him. He wanted to be angry with her, but damn, how could he be? If he could vent about himself, he would.


A strange sensation prickled the base of his skull, a heaviness settling in his chest as if he were being watched. He slowly turned around and stared at his chair. In the stark overhead light from the ceiling fan‘s four angled bulbs, the chair appeared even more dilapidated; each frayed patch of fabric, each mottled dark stain accentuated with a nauseatingly harsh clarity. Marcus let his eyes explore the chair for a long while, frowning slightly like an addict seeing the ugliness of their addiction for the first time. Beneath the lumpy seat cushion Marcus noticed the edge of what appeared to be a large dark stain that seeped just over the front and down into the crevice of the arm. He had never noticed the stain before, perhaps because they rarely used the overhead lights and the ambient glow of the floor and table lamps cast too many forgiving shadows.


He approached the chair with cautious, slow steps as if it had suddenly become animate. He squatted down and lifted the cushion up. Beneath it, the reddish brown stain was nearly as large as the seat itself, set deep and permanent into the faded tan fabric lining below. Marcus frowned, his face contorting in a grimace of disgust. To think he had been sitting on whatever it was for months was a vaguely nauseating concept to him. Curious, he briefly sniffed the area, trying to figure out what it had been that had created the stain. There was no aroma, except the smell of aged, dusty fabric. He sat back on his heels.


Could be paint? He thought to himself. Or coffee? But he knew instinctually that the substance was nothing so innocuous. Marcus removed the cushion from the chair and placed it on the carpet. The stain had spread over most of the bottom of the cushion, dark and mottled. He stood and stared at the chair for a long moment. The bourbon he had drunk earlier had made the world warm and fuzzy, his reactions a bit dulled, so he hesitated to make any instantaneous assumptions.


His first instinct was to haul the chair down to the apartment‘s dumpsters, but the idea of parting with it caused his stomach to sink and his skin to grow cold and clammy, his throat tightening with panic. For a moment he felt as if he had stopped breathing, the world standing still in a claustrophobic fog of anxiety and fear and…rage. Inhaling sharply and holding the breath in his lungs, he rubbed his eyes. The last wave of emotion left him shaken, crashing down over him with a tidal force. Gripping his heart with a cold sickness that forced bile into his throat, it made his innards shake with a revulsion he had never experienced in his life. Just as quickly as it had arrived, it rolled away from him with the echo of deep thunder, cold and timed as the call of the sea. He squeezed his eyes shut, terrified of his own capability for such emotion.


What was he so angry about? The chair? The idea of it being damaged? The prospect of having to dispose of it? Ridiculous! It was a piece of furniture…


Marcus nervously cracked his neck, stretching his arms over his head to loosen the muscles in his shoulders. As the crystals in his shoulder muscles crackled and dissipated, he rested his hands, fingers interlaced, on top of his head. The world settled back into place with a heavy, hard rationality that was indisputable. He knew he could salvage the chair. He had to. There was no other option.


He went to the kitchen and retrieved a can of foaming upholstery cleaner and a sponge from beneath the sink. Returning to the living room, he popped the lid off the can and sprayed a thick layer of cleaner on the seat lining and arm of the chair, as well as the cushion itself. He placed the plastic lid back on the can and set it on the coffee table behind him. Picking up his half-empty glass of bourbon from the end table beside the chair, he stood with the dry sponge in his other hand and stared down at the chair, contemplating his cleaning strategy. It might take a few passes before such an old stain could be removed. He would have to have patience…


Read the rest of this short story, as well as others by 19 upcoming horror authors, in the 2008 Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror anthology! Click here to purchase a printed copy or click the Paypal button below for a $4 PDF version. PDFs will be emailed to customers upon receipt of payment.

Tags: anthology, Gabrielle Faust, Horror, Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror, regret, short story

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