Infestation

Hiatus was due to vacation, failure, lack of commitment, disenfranchisement, and the ever looming darkness. At least Mort is having a worse day than I did. 

~~~

Infestation

In the tight belly of the dead

Burrow with hungry head

And inlay maggots like a jewel.

Karl Shapiro — The Fly

~ ~ ~

Mort

Mort didn’t want to be at the bodega at two o’clock in the morning on a Monday, but that’s / that was where he was. And that wasn’t even the worst part — the damn bug spray was going to cost $14.99. 

“You’re serious?” he asked the old guy behind the counter. The old guy nodded. Mort wasn’t sure why he’d even asked the question because Of course the bug spray would cost $14.99. 

Mort handed over a twenty and waited for the change. He wasn’t about to throw away a fiver just because he was in a hurry. Mort had some principles. “And this will work on flies, right?” he asked.

The old guy behind the counter nodded and handed over a grimy looking fiver. Mort grimaced and stuffed it into his pocket grabbing the bug spray and hustling out of the bodega. The harsh fluorescent lights flickered in the darkness behind him. 

His duplex was only an eight minute walk — he’d timed it — but he didn’t like being out at this time of night or morning, rather. And he was flustered, mostly because he was supposed to be at work in a few hours and the fucking flies had cost him a lot of time. There were still things to be done.

Sure, it was a duplex, but Mort was pretty proud of himself for owning both levels and if the comfortable life he had was something that Clara was happy to give up, it was her loss. She’d been gone a month now, and maybe the bug problem had been getting worse since then, or maybe it hadn’t. Maybe Mort was just noticing it more because he was alone and tended to find things like flies more distracting than before. Well, not tonight he thought. Tonight he was all out of time. 

He stomped up the bricked front steps and and unlocked the door. What awaited him was worse than twenty minutes earlier. A small swarm of flies buzzed out into the front hall as he opened the door and he couldn’t help but exclaim and duck. “What the hell!?” He was asking himself as well as the flies. They were everywhere, not thick enough to block vision, but loud enough to make a person such as Mort particularly uncomfortable. He didn’t have time for this shit. 

He blasted the air with the fifteen dollar bug spray and coughed as it flew back in his face. The buzz of the flies dwindled a little, so Mort blasted the swarm some more and retreated through to the kitchen on the lower floor of his duplex. His dinner — Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes — was still sitting half-eaten on the tiny dining table. He’d been too wrapped up in researching to clear away before he had a shower, before he went to bed, before the flies woke him up with their incessant droning. “What the hell?!” he asked the air again.

Surely the flies should have been gathered around the abandoned meal. Surely they would have been attracted to the unattended food. No. Instead they were up on the ceiling, on the kitchen cabinet handles, covering the refrigerator door and the coffee machine. 

Mort raised his fifteen-dollar bug spray can and blasted the air, making an elegant twirl as he went, arcing the poisonous mist this way and that, wreaking what he hoped was havoc. 

Buzz. Pat.

Buzz. Pat. Buzz. Pat. 

Buzz. Pat. Pat. Pat.

Buzzzzzzz. Pat, pat, pat. 

“Ha!” Mort pumped a fist into the air. The fuckers were finally starting to drop. Like flies he thought. That made him laugh. He sprayed again and laughed harder until he’d sucked in too much of the poison and he doubled over in a hacking cough. “Fuckers,” he murmured to himself as he watched the dying flies helplessly squirm on the floor at his feet. They kicked their tiny legs and spun in upside down circles. They were so fucking pathetic. 

Mort kept the bug spray clasped tightly between his fingers and stomped upstairs to his study. His laptop screen was still open where he’d left it before finally going to bed hours earlier. A few flies buzzed in the corners of the room. He ignored them.

The  tabbed pages in Safari blinked to life as he thumbed the track pad. He toggled through them, reassessing the information he’d garnished earlier and smiled to himself — Clara’s divorce papers arriving in the mail was one thing, her hiding from him was another entirely. That thing was a betrayal.

Just as he was about to zoom in on the satellite map, a single fly zoomed past his face, striking him on the nose as it went. Caught off guard, Mort leant back too far in his chair and hit the ground hard, flinging out across the study floor on his back and ass. “Motherfucker!” He scrambled up and lurched for the bug spray on his desk but the fly was already gone out the door and the rest that had lingered, now followed. He stalked out of the room and watched them go down the stairs and congress near the front door. Frustrated and fifteen dollars poorer, he managed to blast one last dose of poison towards the stairs and then gave up, stomping back to his bedroom next to the study. 

~ ~ ~

The alarm woke Mort at 5:15AM just like it always did and he slumped onto his side, knowing for sure that he had definitely not had enough sleep. A soft buzzing from the hall outside his bedroom reminded him of the flies. “Fuckers,” he said to himself, but it was soft a sleepy, he was too tired for anything better. 

He switched on the coffee machine to heat it up and dumped last night’s dinner, plate and all, into the trash. Clara would probably die if she knew he hadn’t saved the food, hadn’t even bothered to clean the plate, hadn’t ensured the kitchen was immaculate before he headed to bed. But Clara was a cunt. 

Mort set the coffee machine to pour him a double espresso and then went back upstairs to get dressed. He found a barely ironed Genesys Corp button through hung in his closet and a pair of khakis that would most definitely bring him some flack from colleagues, but dressed was better than undressed, and at least he would be on time. The flies hadn’t quite ruined everything. 

Back downstairs he retrieved the double espresso and added a little milk and sugar. He swigged it and knew it was just what he needed, until a hard lump caught in his throat. What? Mort coughed and coughed until he spat up the lump into the sink.  

A dead fly.

Mort wanted to scream, to grab the bug spray and go mental, to grab a match and set the whole damned place on fire, to burn the fuckers into oblivion along with his Clara-less duplex. He rinsed his mouth out with water and vowed to buy a new coffee machine after work. He ignored the small mass of flies huddled above the top of the door frame as he left.

~ ~ ~

“Dude, you look like shit.” It was Dylan, Mort’s cubicle neighbour with a nose that was never devoid of flecks of pie. 

“No doubt. I got a bug problem that’s keeping me up.”

Dylan seemed intrigued for unknown reasons. “Like, for real? What kind of bugs?”

Mort paused before clicking his next call through on the ancient PC that the company insisted they used. “I don’t know. Flies mostly, I guess. Bought some spray last night, cost me a fucking fortune but doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.”

Dylan rolled his chair further around the cubicle wall. “Like, just flies?”

Mort squinted at his screen. “Yes. Just…flies. I don’t know. They’re fucking everywhere.”

“You should get an exterminator.”

“I work at this dump — I don’t have money for an exterminator.”

Dylan scratched his nose, appearing to think. “You could do one of those DIY bug bombs. I’ve heard they’re cheap but like, maybe super poisonous.”

This piqued Mort’s attention. “Bug bombs. Hmm. Do you get them from the supermarket?”

Dylan shrugged. “Yeah, I think so. But you’re probably better going to a hardware store or something. Maybe like Bobby’s?”

“They’re over from here, right? Just a few streets?”

“Mmhmm.” Dylan nodded and scooted back to his desk. 

Mort clicked his next call through and started making a plan.

~ ~ ~

Eight hours is a long time. 

Eight hours is a long time, especially when you’re trapped doing something that is necessary but not really a pressing matter. Eight hours can sometimes last a lifetime. Today, Mort was feeling a lifetime use up all of his Monday. 

Eventually finally ultimately it was two o’clock in the afternoon and a little extracurricular work while on the clock had proven fruitful — he even had a potential Facebook page for Clara, who was now calling herself Tiffany Montgomery. Gross. Mort didn’t like that name at all. He was almost certain she’d chosen it just to keep him from being drawn to her. But Mort was better than that. He could disguise himself at work and he could do it at home as well. He had looked for her since she’d left, he’d looked for her for a month, he hadn’t stopped looking for her. Because he knew he was going to find her. And he had. 

She had slipped up on the photos — actual photos of her with her sister and her nephews and her dog. She’d cut her hair and dyed it so that now she was a dark brunette. Clara was not a brunette, she was a redhead and Mort knew that more than anyone else. Her carpet was ginger. And her face was a photograph in Mort’s mind. Clara could never be forgotten. And now she was about to be found. 

***

Mort was relieved to find a certain deterioration in the fly population when he finally opened the front door of his duplex just after four that afternoon. He’d stopped at Bobby’s tools and picked up four residential house bug bombs for six bucks a-piece. He had decided he was never going back to the over-priced bodega with the old guy behind the counter. 

There were a few small clusters of the black-winged fuckers in the corners of the rooms in his duplex, but they appeared to be keeping to themselves, and they certainly weren’t as confrontational as they were the previous night. He made a plan for the morning, drew up where he was going to place the bombs, and then retreated to his study to check on Clara and what she had been doing. 

The activity was low and so Mort was disappointed. There was nothing new posted to Facebook or Instagram by Tiffany Montgomery and so he scrolled through the photos that he’d found the night before, poring over them. He thought about the bug bombs, and Clara, and his recent discoveries. He wondered which was most important. Maybe all of them were important, maybe none of them were. But that was just the thing — Mort didn’t believe in coincidences. 

As he scrolled further through her Facebook page looking for slip-ups and clues Mort found what he had ultimately been afraid of. It was an innocuous photo at best, but it was blurry, hastily taken, and there was a hand near Clara’s shoulder. A male hand. 

Mort tried to calmed himself but the thought had already taken hold of his mind and heart. He knew what this was. He what this was. What this was. This was her — the bitch — taking aim directly at his his weak spot, provoking him, making things much worse than they had to be, making him much worse than he had to be.

A few had left their swarm and started doing little circuits around his head, bumping into him now and then. Mort swatted at them but it was useless. The damn things could fly for goodness sake. A few more of them detached from the cluster in the corner of the study and joined in the circles around his head.

Just as Mort was about to close the laptop something popped up on Tiffany Montgomery’s Facebook feed. 

Hey guys! Just letting you know I have a whole bunch of old sentimental crap that needs burning, but I thought I’d have a garage sale instead :)

A smiley face? The bitch was testing Mort’s limits.

From 6am in the front garden guys! 1120 Hollyhock Drive. See you there :)

The second smiley face was quickly forgotten as Mort felt himself get a little hard — an address. An actual address delivered to him on a silver-fucking-platter. Cunts like Clara could run, but they could never hide. Cunts like Clara could abandon the men that they loved, but that was never the end of it. Mort knew better. Mort knew that he was someone who understood commitment. That’s why he had found her.

~ ~ ~ 

1120 Hollyhock Drive. A little bit of searching later and he grabbed his keys — the address was only forty-five minutes away if he drove. Just one tiny problem, his car was in longterm storage a couple of blocks away. Not quite the end of the situation but definitely a lego brick on an otherwise leisurely stroll through the hallway. That’s fine Mort told himself. He had the key to the storage facility and it was his right to go down there and retrieve his dusty old hatchback in the middle of the night on a Monday. The other tiny problem was gas. If there had been gas in the car when he first stored it that would have been handy, but by now it had most surely evaporated and there would be no way he’d be able to turn the engine over.

Mort bit his lip as he paced in the front hall, keys in hand, a small congregation of flies still circling his head. Suddenly it hit him. He cut Mr Wilkinson’s grass next door. The duplex didn’t have any grass but Mort had a mower and when he’d first moved in, he had offered to do the chore for old Mr Wilkinson. Long story short, there was a can of gas in the bottom of Mort’s broom cupboard. 

Sure enough the can was there and as he picked it up and headed out the door with newfound confidence, Mort wondered if Clara would scream the same way now that she was a brunette.

~ ~ ~

Clara

It had been growing, of course, but she didn’t know when it had started. If asked, she couldn’t give you a day or a date or even a period of time. At first it was just here and there. One or two. Nothing to really catch anyone’s attention. But soon it was more and more. Clara learnt quickly. 

Her bruised face was hard to hide sometimes. It was better to put the green-toned concealer on before her foundation. Frozen spoons hid the bulges of her eyelids. Long-sleeved shirts avoided questions about the abrasions, the cuts, the finger marks. Hiding was something that Clara had become good at, but she was no professional. She supposed that was why the flies had come.

And that Monday they had come again, all the way to her sister’s house on Hollyhock Drive, and they had called to her from afar. Their swarming, buzzing sound comforted her and so she quietly slipped out the back door in her night-dress and went to meet them. The flies with all their eyes and all their wings drew her across the yard and told her they were her. They were her. Clara wondered if it was true. She felt the flies and the flies felt her. A million eyes and a million wings. She felt them lift her up, tell her things. She was becoming the flies. 

No she though. The flies were becoming her. Her. The flies were becoming her.

Clara walked for a long time in the darkness, her bare feet becoming dirty as they made contact, over and over, with the asphalt. She wasn’t a stranger to pain — she had Mort to thank for that — but this was something different. The flies were her companion for the journey and without realising it, she found herself back on the street, not too far from Genysis Corp, where Mort had made a house and a home for them. 

A blackness rose in her. It was commanding. It was something that she couldn’t resist. 

And so she didn’t.

~ ~ ~

Mort

Mort was barely a half mile down the road when he heard them — the flies — buzzing in huge swarms somewhere out in front of him. 

Dammit, where were these things coming from? He changed the gas can to his other hand and searched his pockets for his phone because fuck this he was going to call an Uber. Before he could even open the app there was an explosion further up the street — a few street-lamps had burst. At least that’s what Mort presumed it was. He squinted into the darkness and saw nothing. The street was black. It was right in front of him. The flies were behind him and they were in front of him and they were everywhere. Suddenly he heard them as if there was nothing else to be heard. 

A swarm hit him from the front and Mort was on the pavement, his gas can wrenched from his hand and he cursed as the damned thing spilled all over him. Is stunk up to high hell and soaked through his clothes. Mort was beyond angry. He swatted at his face but just like that, the flies ascended and hovered above him, clearing his view.

What he saw was Clara. 

Mort watched as she took a small packet from the pocket of her nightdress.

She smiled at him and something flared in the darkness.

Clara had lit a match.

Dark Red

Twisted veins
Strings of blood
Hold me here
Await the flood

Water flows
love, you say
But black and cold
It's not the way

I thought would be
Inside embrace
Beautiful; bright.
Not commonplace

Your blood, dark red
And so is mine
Just let me go
We're out of time

Just To Be Clear

It was far too late to go for a walk

But of course I went anyway

Right down to the end of the street

Forgetting this wretched pain of a day

Trying at least to lose some of my nerves

Remembering all of your solid words

Coming up short when it came to the end

Knowing that I just cannot bend

So I came to the end 

where the road was no more

I found everything

It was smashed on the floor

My heart and my soul 

Still belonging to you

Cursed and abandoned;

But no longer true

So don’t be surprised

When comes the dawn

You said disappear 

And so, I was gone

It was far too late to go for a walk

But of course I went anyway

Right down to the end of the street

Thinking of how I could fix this day

All I found was a curve in the road

And a long wooden fence, and beyond, a lake

That’s when I was soughed and I became

Part of the beyond with nothing at stake

Night Shift

I’m tired and I know I should be working on my novel, but I just don’t feel like it. On Wednesday I cracked the halfway mark, a cool thirty thousand words, but it appears I have lost interest in the story and the characters. Somehow, I’ve lost the fun. 

I hope that Chester didn’t suffer at the end. He wrote the lyrics that sustained me through my teens. He and Mike (and the other boys as well) were my life blood and, honestly, I don’t know if I would be alive now without them. This story is for them. And it is for you. Though not for any particular reason. Just because.

In other news, PASQUALE will be home in twenty minutes so that’s the last of my peaceful time for the day. I feel like talking to you but you’re not here anymore, so I will be quiet and I will write this thing. Just a little something that has been circling my mind for a few days. 

It will have a fitting title. It will move back and forth in time. It will replace any therapy I should be having. It will reflect me. I wish I was Skye, but if I’m anything, I’m Declan. 

Night Shift

Declan is good at lies. But night shift can make you crazy.

Sure, he’d had a lot of practice, but if he was being honest with himself he had found that he was good from the very start. Maybe it scared him. Maybe it excited him. 

Declan is good at lies, and when you tell the lies enough times you start to believe them. But that never makes them true. 

One lie that Declan tells — and he tells it to himself — is that the workplace coffee in the kitchen was not-so-bad and sometimes even drinkable. This, as was said, is a lie but it has never stopped him from drinking it.

Instant coffee of that kind is easy to make, and just as easily it will go cold and separate from the milk. It will oh-so-easily unmake itself. It will cool and separate. 

Cool and separate. For some reason those words stuck in his mind. Coffee, milk. Cool and separate. Cool was a verb in that instance referring to the coffee as it cooled, but cool could also be an adjective. Separate was a verb as well. And an adjective. Declan wondered which combination suited his mind’s wanderings. 

Cool and separate. 

The coffee cools and separates from the milk. Declan loses heat and feels his parts pull away from each other. He knows what he saw last night couldn’t have been real — he knows it. He wonders why he still feels so sure that he had seen it. Cool and separate

***

Declan blinked. Someone was asking him something. It was Chaz.

Freight?

Freight.

FREIGHT?

“Dude, where are you today? Are you even listening to me?”

No, Declan thought. “Yes,” he said. “Sorry, it was the coffee.” Night shift can make you crazy. 

Chaz wasn’t really mad. Chaz was never really mad. His question was almost a laugh. “You’re charging freight on the coffee?”

“No, dude. The coffee was cooling and separating.” Declan scrubbed his hands over his face and then pulled them away to see the ridiculous expression Chaz was sporting. “I know,” he continued, “it doesn’t make sense. Don’t bother trying your tiny brain at it. Freight is only on the orders for One Mile today.”

Chaz shrugged and appeared to give up. 

Declan returned to his invoicing. 

***

Marnie is in the shower when Declan gets home and he can’t help but breathe a tiny, quiet sigh of relief to himself. 

Keys in the bowl. Next to that the letters, he reads them, discards the junk mail and marks the bills that need payments. These things are next to the nine-hindered dollar coffee machine that he never uses. A waste. No time for dwelling on that now though — Marnie is in the shower and he knows he has time to himself until she is done. He has to listen closely. 

The laptop lid is a little dusty but it flips open with ease and a small glowing circle asks him to Login. Declan gave Marnie the password but he didn’t tell her there was another, hidden profile. That’s the one he logs into now. It takes only a second and the desktop pops up and it doesn’t have his Citirx shortcut or his work emails or the folder with all of his tax return records in it. The only things on the desktop screen is a link to Skype and a password protected folder. The folder is named Skye and the password, that he now types in, is baby23. Maybe he regrets the password.

It only takes a moment to load but Declan feels himself getting hard already. That’s because he knows what he will see when the photos flicker alive inside the folder. Her perfect moon of an ass. Her small breasts, nipples a reddish-pink, the scar just to the side of the left one. Her lacy yellow knickers. Her dark curly hair. The other, mottled scar, a burn, on on the ridge of her neck. The rest of her creamy skin.

Declan knows it won’t take him long to get there.

He listens closely for the shower. 

***

“You want some dinner love?”

Declan hates that she calls him that. Love. Like it’s some kind of trap he just has to suffer. “I’ve already eaten, sorry. Actually I’m feeling a bit off. Might have been the chicken.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding worried. “Well, there are candles in the bathroom.”

Declan feels himself relax. “Thanks. And sorry.”

He knows she’s smiling in response to his supposed embarrassment. She doesn’t say anything further, let’s him be. 

In the bathroom Declan cleans the cum off his penis with some tissue and then washes it awkwardly in the sink. He feels like he’s done this a million times and maybe he has. He cleans the sink with more soap and stares at himself in the mirror. Clean and separate.  

Skye was anything but clear and separate. Skye was…

*** 

Skye.

She was intelligent, and that was only to start with. At the start her tattoos had made Declan feel intimidated, but her smell was so incredible and her banter so fluid that he soon forgot his nerves and rolled right into the conversation. Skye.

Skye. Just a girl at the traffic light who stepped off, and tripped, and dropped her bag, revealing  — pens, pencils, notepads, a yellowing paperback, a box of tampons, a doobie in a zip lock bag, and a small plastic wolf figurine. That was all he could remember though he was sure there had probably been more. A girl with the most perfect ass and the widest eyes and the loveliest smell. 

Skye.

Declan lost his mind. That was when he first started lying. Skye. 

***

“I have to work early tonight.”

Marnie didn’t look up from her writing. “That sucks love. When do you think you’ll be done in the morning?”

“Maybe eleven.”

She did look up then. “But that’s what? A twelve hour shift?”

Declan waved her concern away. “I haven’t done one for a while so I don’t really mind. Plus I’ll get the OT. We can put it towards the mortgage payment.” He needed to fill his ears with angry music. He was tired of her voice.

“Okay love.” Love. She went back to her writing and Declan went to bed. 

***

It’s an hour before he has to wake up when Marnie slips in beside him. Declan is awake and very aware that she doesn’t speak to him, doesn’t touch him, doesn’t acknowledge his existence. She thinks she’s being polite — not waking him, letting him sleep, leaving him be. He should be thankful but he isn’t.

He gives her a quarter hour to fall asleep and she does. He gently leaves the bed, careful not to disturb her, and has an early shower. It’s 9:44PM when he’s ready to leave and if he’s anything at all, he’s tired. That’s the thing about night shift. Even when you’re awake you’re not really awake. Everything is too bright and too loud and coffee doesn’t help and walking around the building doesn’t help and cocaine is too expensive and dangerous and scary and carbohydrates only make you more sleepy / sleepier?

There’s a plume of mist from his exhaust and then he’s moving. Out into the night. Towards Ainsley Tower. Ainsley Tower. He’s memorised the address and he’s sure now that his mind is lost. That his lies are known. That his secrets are no longer secrets. 

Declan check’s his phone and there’s a message from her. Skye. 

Far away?

He wonders if there’s excitement in her words.

Almost there he responds, thinking that there might be electricity in his blood. 

Ainsley Tower isn’t upper class but it’s better than he expected — healthy monstera plants in huge terracotta pots either side a racing green canopy and a fairly tired and shabby looking doorman. 

“Good evening sir,” he say with a curt nod.

“And to you. I’m here to see Skye Reed.”

“Of course sir, she is expecting you.”

Declan is surprised but keeps himself in check and brushes past the doorman and into the vaulted lobby. It is cavernous and smells of cut flowers and vanilla. Marble floor, an impressive chandelier hung from the high ceiling, and a feeling that you’d stepped into another dimension. It was almost as if someone had completely renovated the interior of a derelict without even considering the outside. It was like cutting into a rock-encrusted gem. 

Another message. Here now?

He texts back quickly. Yes. Downstairs. You never told me you live in heaven…?

There’s no response but a DING to the right alerts Declan to an elevator and then to his right, there’s a voice.

“You’re fine to go up, sir. Ms Reed is expecting you.” It’s a receptionist he hadn’t noticed behind a marble desk that he hadn’t noticed. 

“Uh, thank you. What floor is she on?”

“The top, sir. Twenty three.”

Ironic thought Declan. He nodded and stepped into the elevator and indeed there was a Level 23 and he pressed the button and the doors closed in front of him. 

His stomach fell out of him as he rose and rose towards Level 23. It was a shorter ride than he had expected.

“Hi.” Skye was waiting for him and she a smile on her face that only turned him on more.

Declan stepped out of the elevator and Skye pressed a kiss to the edge of his mouth. I’m already wet she whispered in his ear, and that pushed Declan right up to an edge he hadn’t seen coming.

He fell. 

And he fell. 

Her lips were against his and her hips were so neatly aligned —  everything was becoming so close and warm. Everything was growing and growing and growing —

STOP

***

Declan was in her apartment and it was cold, but the fireplace was lit and the down lights were glowing amber and everything was as it had been at the start. 

He started to fall. To really fall. 

***

In the bed she moved gracefully, as if she had done this a million times, and maybe she had. Shirt off. Shimmying out of her jeans. Pushing her hair aside. Playing with her knickers as if they didn’t want her to take them off. 

Declan knew he didn’t have the upper hand but he had his cock and he couldn’t help but think that it was what she wanted. He almost asked her but —

STOP

He fell.

***

Chaz was talking and Declan resurfaced in a place that caught him by surprise.

“Dude, how many times do I have to cover for you?”

Declan wasn’t sure what he meant. “Sorry?”

“If you’re going to zone out, at least chalk it up to drugs or a lack of sleep. Don’t just sit there saying fucking nothing.” 

Night shift can make you crazy.

Declan didn’t have an answer. All he had was — 

The Edge.

*** 

And that was it — Skye edged him for an hour. She worshipped him, wrapped around him as if she owned him. And when he came, Declan knew that it truly was la petite mort. The one he had been waiting for. The one that was his undoing. The one that broke him apart. The cool and separate. Cool and separate. The LA PETITE MORT. The one the was loud enough to echo in his ears.

The Edge.

Night shift can make you crazy.

***

Invoicing remained. Freight had to be charged. But the outside world was drowned out and Declan started to feel like it didn’t exist. What had he seen. What was it?

He knew, of course. He just didn’t want to admit it. 

Skye. 

SKYE.

Skye. 

It had been her. Walking alone, along the side of the road. Hair, dirty and tangled, clothes lank. She hadn’t looked at him; she had just stared out at nothing. She continued to walk as he drove past. 

Night shift can make you crazy.

And the lies culminated. Marnie was calling.

“Where are you?”

Declan felt his heart all jungle drums in his chest. “At work. What’s up? Is something wrong?”

Her pause and sigh were unsettling. “There’s a man here, from the police. He’s asking about a girl. A young girl named Skye. Skye Reed. He wants to know when you’ll be home.”

Declan dissolved into nothing. “It’s okay love.” Love. “I won’t be long. Tell him I’m on my way.”

***

It wasn’t a lie. Declan was on his way but he was going to make a detour. He was going to check on the the place in the woods that he had committed to memory. 

The Place. 

Which was a lot like The Edge. 

The Edge and the Place. They weren’t the same but they were similar. 

Night shift can make you crazy.

Declan felt himself falling. Declan felt himself going crazy.

***

The place was empty. Declan smiled as his panic took a hold of him. It was a smile of insanity and it persisted. 

He had dug for at least an hour and found nothing. He knew this was the right spot. He had narked it. He had been sure to make a mark. A small, red tinged lilly pilly planted in the ground right where he had buried her.

Declan was careful to keep the plant intact as he dug. But she was gone. Skye was gone. 

***

It was perfect. She rode him like a pro but it was more than that — there was something in the air that made him sizzle with excitement and even when it was over his dick throbbed with anticipation. 

After sex she rolled over and slept. It was immediate and heavy. She snored like a fucking tug boat. He wanted to stay but didn’t. The doorman smiled widely at him as he left. 

Declan felt strange and the fog was thick as he walked out into the black night, away from Ainsley Tower. Her name stuck on his tongue. Skye.

***

He called Marnie as he got back into the car, dirt on his hands and under his fingernails. 

“I’m sorry, I got waylaid at work. Everything okay?”

She sounded fine. “Yeah, the guy left. The police officer. He said he had a lot of other people to talk to and he would come back. Did you work with her or something?”

“Work with who?” Declan was good at lies.

“The girl, remember? Skye or something.”

“Oh, right. No, I mean, I think she came in once or twice to do some temp work but I could be wrong.” Then something else. “Chaz mentions something about her today. Maybe the police spoke to him as well.”

“Oh, well. Oh…” he could hear the tension drop immediately out of her voice. “Oh, well. I don’t know. From what the policeman said she’s missing but you know how these things go. People run off. People disappear all the time. You know how it is.” It wasn’t a question but Declan knew Marnie wanted him to reassure her. 

He played his part. “Yeah, she probably just did a runner on her husband or whatever. Don’t worry about it love. I’ll go in to the station tomorrow and give a statement. You know, just whatever they need from me.”

“Yeah. Yep, that sounds good.” Marnie sounded relieved and it put Declan’s worry at rest, it let him breath again. Night shift can make you crazy.

“Okay baby, I’ll see you when I get home.”

***

Thee road was dark and long, as most roads are when you know that you’re in trouble. The road went on forever. After a while Declan started to think that it wasn’t real. That the road was something pretend, something that didn’t exist. Still, he kept driving. Eventually he came to what he knew he had always been coming to.

Skye stood in the middle of the road. She didn’t gesture at him, she didn’t make a sign or a sound, she stood as she was, dripping water and caked here and there in mud. She started to speak words that he couldn’t hear. She was saying something, and then she was screaming.

Skye was screaming.

Skye was screaming.

***

She doesn’t follow him, which Declan finds strange, and so by the time he gets home he’s so used to looking back over his shoulder that his neck it tinged with a slight pain. 

Inside the house there is no hint that he was in trouble. Skye isn’t there. Skye is supposed to be dead, and maybe she is. But at least she isn’t there. “Any leftovers?” he asks as he walks through the front door and hangs his coat in the entry way.

Marnie sounds surprised at first. “Oh. Uh, yes…there’s beef cheek and veg in a bowl. But you’ll have to microwave it. Sorry, I wasn’t sure when you’d get home.”

There’s something in her voice, something confident that Declan hasn’t heard before. He wonders if they might have sex tonight. The thought excites him.

Her feet are the first thing he sees as he enters the kitchen. They are motionless and dirty. 

Marnie is wearing a pretty, tight fitting dress and humming as she stirs something in a sizzling pan on the hob. Marnie is not dirty. She is pristine and humming. It is Gloomy Sunday playing on the radio. 

Declan steps further into the kitchen and the shudder in his body becomes more pronounced. It turns into an almost-convulsion. Declan holds himself back and doesn’t retch. 

A pair of dark purple shorts that are cut off just below the curve in her thigh, and an oversized grey T-shirt. Perhaps that is the custom among girls her age. Declan isn’t sure. Marnie hums and stirs what she is still cooking on the hob. It smells good.

Night shift can make you crazy.

Marnie stirs and Declan feels the blood drain from his body. Skye was perfect. Skye is covered in dirt. Sky wears what she did when she died. She is cut up into pieces. Skye is missing a lot of her skin and meat.

Sky is wearing what she did when he killed her. Dark purple shorts and a grey shirt. 

Skye is meat.

Now. Skye is dead on his kitchen floor.

Skye.