A Song In The Dark by P. N. Elrod

The crowd was enthusiastically approving with their applause.
    â€œSo that’s what they’ve been rehearsing,” Escott muttered. “Bobbi said it would be a showstopper.”
    â€œYeah, it’s great.” My voice didn’t sound right to me. Too tight. Too fast.
    Not again. Please . . .
    â€œWhat’s—” He turned.
    Ham-fisted, I tried to switch off the little lamp and succeeded in knocking it over. The bulb shattered with a hollow pop, like a very small gun going off. It made me flinch.
    â€œJack . . . ?”
    â€œMinute.” I’d not wanted him or anyone else to see me doubling over. I resisted the urge to hug myself, holdingtight to the edge of the table, fighting a flash of nausea and an involuntary shudder. Escott’s eyes must have been used to the thick shadows. He watched with apprehensive concern as the fit peaked and finally passed. Thank God he was being sensible and not going agitated on me. I had enough of that on my own.
    This seizure wasn’t as bad as the last, but bad enough. I wanted to shrink away into a small hole.
    â€œAll right now?” he asked after a moment.
    â€œNo, goddammit.” If I was alive in the normal sense, I’d have been panting like a dog. As it was, I barely drew in enough air for speech, so my reply came out a lot milder than I felt.
    The lights on the dance floor rose a little, and Roland and Faustine enjoyed their extended bows, then broke apart to do the other half of their job. He picked out a lady from one of the closer tables and invited her to a fox-trot. Faustine simply stood in place and a couple of guys nearly broke their necks trying to be the first to get to her for a turn. The shorter and more nimble of the pair won, and she granted him the honor of her company. Within a minute the floor was half-full of other dancers.
    Everything for everyone else was as normal as could be. I hung on by my fingernails and managed not to slip, convulsing, under the damn table.
    Escott found the small switch for the broken lamp and made sure the juice was off. “I suppose this is an improvement over your pacing and the jumping up to stare out windows and not talking for hours on end. Any more left to go?”
    â€œDonno. Just that red light caught me by surprise. It looked like . . . reminded me . . . you know.”
    â€œNo need to go into it. Has this happened before?”
    â€œNo. Yes.” Now why in hell had I said that aloud?
    â€œIndeed?” He expected more information. Waited me out.
    â€œW-when my guard’s down. Or if I think too much. I don’t dare relax.”
    â€œUnderstandable.”
    â€œAny blood around my eyes?”
    He hesitated, probably working out why I’d asked, then said, “I can’t really tell.”
    Just in case, I pulled out my handkerchief. It came away clean. Small favors. My hand trembled, though. Aftershocks from the earthquake. I stuffed the square of white silk back in my pocket.
    â€œI knew a guy in the army,” I said, staring at the dead lamp. “Shell shock. He just couldn’t stop shaking. Any sudden noise would set him off even worse. It was hell during a thunderstorm. They had to dope him to the eyeballs with morphine to stop his screaming, and he’d lie there tied to his bed twitching like a fish.”
    â€œWell, you’re not as badly off as that poor devil.”
    â€œMaybe. Guess this will take a while.”
    â€œMore than just a couple of days, but you’ll get through it. A bit more rest on your home earth—”
    Had done me squat. “I should be through it now, Charles. It’s finished. The bastard who worked me over is gone, he can’t come at me again, it’s never going to happen again . . .” But I got a flash in my mind of Hog Bristow’s grinning face and his knife blade flashing, catching the light, and what came next, and another