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Month: January 2020

“I don’t know what to tell you Michael, it’s going to be a lonely existence…

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Out there for you, and there is very little in the way of what I might offer you to assuage that.” It says in its usual cold, crisp,voice. I adjust the control panel to bring the voice down to some velvety, dulcet tones. Always so very soft and measured in my ear. Seemingly coming from the center of my own head. Standing still in the dark room, my nose pressed up to the cold rain patterned glass, I can see pin lights and movement below stretching out for miles. A vast wasteland of a city whose name I have long forgotten, splays out below. Partially hidden behind fog, haze or low cloud cover of an orange tint. I’ve been told that I am approximately two hundred floors up and that I live in a pristine, hermetically sealed glass coffin. It has all the very best someone of my peculiar talents might ever need or require. I have been told I’m a once in a lifetime creation. A synthesis of pure artistic expression made human-ish. I produce all of the best music available to the incredibly wealthy, and for that they lavish more than just praise upon me. Far more than that. I am gifted with the knowledge that they will never let me die. As long as I am able to produce, my well being and every creative whim will be indulged. Outside the glass floor to ceiling windows is a lifetime of stark contrast for everyone else.

Pacing about my rooms, I’ve a well worn path that I take, passed rows and banks of instrumentation, blinking lights, nodes, dials, and keys. The mixed and pulsing syncopation of modulators, saw tooth effects, phlanges and signal boosters and interrupters is a familiar beat in my life all their own. I’ve used my own heart beating in more arrangements than I care to think about. The light is dim, I love the ambient glow of my technology more than any incandescent, phosphorescent or led bulb that I’ve ever found available. The walls are glass, with finger prints and streaks from disinfectant cleaners. The air in here is clean, but stringent. I’m an ardent tapper, on each and every surface, keeping time with the melodies and transitions that occupy my life. The poor, miserable bots can’t keep up, and their ticking, and clicking has been known to interrupt my flow. I only allow them in with me while my files are compiling or I am asleep. They creep and crawl over the glass like blind mechanical spiders, spritz and wipe, spritz and wipe, incessantly.

I don’t get many visitors up here. For the most part I enjoy it that way. But my patrons found a few unexpected scars on my wrists several years ago, and opted to provide me with Kenneth. He stood for something, but I have long forgotten what that was. He’s a node in my brain and he’s tied to a medical system buried elsewhere in the building, constantly monitoring me and my well being. Roi and all that, you know. A lack of mortality when so much of it is available comes at a cost, whether you care to pay it or not.

“What seems to be the trouble tonight Michael? You seem stressed out, do you require medical attention. Shall I have a med bay suite set up for you to retire to this evening…” Kenneth is right there. If I close my eyes I can imagine him standing only a few inches away, the softness of those words, like a baby’s breath on the back of my left ear. But Kenneth is not here, he’s an implant. Come to think of it, beyond our conversations together, I haven’t seen, nor heard from anyone else in ages. Wouldn’t matter if I had. I have extra bones and organs and all manner of wonderous things available in the med bay suites. All automated. All given freely, though, with no chance to refuse. “No need Kenneth, I am simply trying to brainstorm the next big thing to broadcast to my/our hungry fans… looking at them all down there, like colorful ants, many miles removed gives me a renewed sense of wonder. Rain on the windows, winds on the glass. The offbeat twinkle of lights in the late night darkness. It feeds me. It…” I trail off, as I am want to do. I can feel something. Inspiration.

“I don’t know how you do it Michael, but I fear it must be a cold and lonely existence for you here.”

“What is it?, what do you see?… well… come on, stop being so dramatic just tell me what you see!”

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Shuffling back and forth, switching weight from one leg to another, I’m struck by how uncomfortable I am will this silly thing. “I’m not being dramatic, I can’t see anything. Is it broken?” I jest. “Am I doing it wrong, come on don’t laugh at me, am I in the wrong position? No look, my feet go here and here right, I stand up straight and I look at it straight on, from here. It’s all black, I see nothing. I told you this wouldn’t work, these things never work for me. I’m cursed.” I shake off the last thirty minutes of attempts, roll my head on my neck, and shrug my shoulders violently, hearing the bones creak and crack audibly. “Can’t believe I let you talk me into that Karen.” I am genuinely annoyed. All of these attempts at it’s use never work out for me. I’m a black hole where conventional wisdom goes to die.

“Gary, it’s no trick. I stand here and…” woosh, a wave of sensation washes over her, her face lights up, she is seeing all of it. From birth, until death, every great achievement she’ll ever make, each tender moment, each sadness, with an equanimity I can’t fathom. Such highs, evened out by her lowest lows. It is the newest phenomenon to have made itself available to humanity. But I for one can’t access it. I know exactly why, but oh Karen, my dearest Karen she refuses to hear. She is just tickled pink that I continue to try to see anything at all. That’s all that has ever mattered to her about me, that I am always seemingly willing to try.

“They say that once you stare into time, it will stare right back at you.” Karen is trying to be nice about it, but it must be hard to be with a man who only sees blackness and empty nothingness when he looks into time directly. I let on that I don’t know what it means, or why it’s happening.

“Come on Karen, it’s time to go, you’re going to come down with something terrible, I just know it!” I implore her to step away from the edge, step back from the temporal phenomena that has been using up so much of her time and energy of late. “Karen!, let’s go. If it starts to rain you’re going to catch your death.” People around us have begun to stop and stare. Phones are out of their pockets and a cacophony of sound has begin to rise. People look anxious, and there are furtive glances between all the others on the bluffs waiting to see their own lives through time. Few things can kick up a stink quite as fast as a twenty year old girl with half of her head missing. Her ghastly visage poking out from behind new cloth bandage wrappings. We step back from the ledge, and wander around the cordoned off grounds for a bit. The lazy sinuous clouds are rolling in off the ocean, a thick curtain of mist has started to hid the view. It has creeped along the waves to come cover everything in a salty dappled mass, obscurring all but the brightest of lights from the parked cars and street lamps. Time passes on and the light pollution turns to Neon smears streaked across the wet pavement, the huddle of bodies slowly thinning out for the night. Karen wants us to try again.

It would be all too easy to step one foot too close to the edge in an attempt to hold on to the sights you are shown by the temporal phenomena. A last ditch effort to cradle a moment that would otherwise be entirely lost in time. Clutched to your breast as you plummet onto the rocks below. Back broken, body burst open, bones emptying their very marrow into the ocean. I am death. I am dead. One day Karen will be too, and she knows exactly when.

“Welcome aboard the Non Sequitur capsule, flight commander…

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Neil Todd, it’s a real pleasure to meet you in person. I mean, you know… I follow your missions very closely down at Houston Central Command, but as a capsule recycling technician I couldn’t wait to welcome you back to your ship for your next mission.” The tech is a portly woman of about twenty years of age. Her hair is pulled back in a tight braid. Her green coveralls covered in a slew of nicks and tears from repetitive injuries taken on the job. She must be very ambitious to have made lead at this age. It’s not a glamorous position, but techs like her keep the craft in peak performing condition, and well stocked. “Will lieutenant Jenny Todd be joining us soon commander?” I can see her smile growing bigger with anticipation. My wife is a force to behold. She can capture the attention of a football stadium with her wit and charm. People gravitate to her, as though she had her own gravitational pull. “Flight Commander Jennifer Todd will be joining us at oh four hundred. So less than ten minutes if all our instrumentation is properly synchronized.” I’m very attentive to even the merest of slights against my second in command. She also happens to be the mother of my two daughters. And my reason to get up every morning. “Oh, yes… sorry. I forgot about the field promotion that Cmdr Jennifer Todd earned recently. Please excuse me…” the tech is crestfallen, she attempts to slink out of the airlock, and extricate herself from our encounter. “Oh, please… come on, stay. I’m just fucking with you… uh, Capsule Recycle Technician Stacie Bradley.” A brief pause, then you can see the relief wash over her face, the twinkle in her eyes is back. Her shoulders relax out of their tensed up hunch.

“Ok now, ease it back, that’s it, nice and slow now… watch out for those waypoint markers, they’re closer than the last time we shipped out.” I say it in jest. My wife knows this ship better than I do. She is one of the best pilots I’ve ever flown with. We’re the first mission ever to have two Flight Commanders, and we are proud of it. No way were going to split up just so we could captain our own capsules individually. No, the Non Sequitur was where we conceived both of our daughters, it’s where we’ve raised them ever since. Except for the brief interludes between missions, spent in low gravity on the base around the dark side of the moon. Our girls have never known earth. They are brilliant, beautiful and talented junior cadets. A chip off the old block. Tenacious, just like their mother. A woman who is my second in command first, and a devoted wife and mother second. There is nobody else I trust my life, and ship with more.

“The Company has asked us for a run down on the payload again. Seems like there might be an anomaly with the manifests. We are showing added weight on board that they can’t account for… Yo! You who. Neil!… you read me?” Jenny is barking into the intercom, she knows damn well I can hear her, especially at this range. “That’s a copy, Cmdr Jenny. I was given a gift of some super expensive, but real artisanal Chinese coffee, has a hint of spice to it. It’s lovely.” I say it with a smile in my voice, I know what’s coming next. “It’s cinnamon isn’t it. You fucking bastard, you know how much I hate cinnamon!” She enunciates each word harshly. “Well, more for me then I guess. Each bulb has this lovely poem on them, in a very traditional script. Mandarin, and Cantonese. They are a work of art. Shame we have to incinerate all trash for the recyclers.” We are making small talk. The first twenty nine weeks to get out past Mars are tedious and boring. We’ll be testing out equipment as we slowly build up speed. Can’t turn the main ion engines on until we have enough room out in front of us. That reminds me, I have to check in on the sensor and antenna arrays. Part of my daily ritual, I do it so often it becomes automated, deep in that reptilian part of the human brain.

Everyday, day after day, after the girls are asleep and her command shift has ended, Jenny comes to the observation port to gaze at the void before us. I’m always here, tucked behind the fold down table that nestles into the bulk head, eeking out all that I can from the sensor and antenna arrays. She knows she’ll find me here. The first time out to Pluto is something you never forget. So she comes up here and seems to be able to capture the awe every single time. I am unable to do this, and I’m not mad. I love to see her smile. Just like our girls, her dimples pop when she is genuinely happy. Her orange flight suit is immaculate. Jen helps to run a tight ship. She keeps the girls occupied with small science related tasks, and cleaning. Lots of cleaning. They got to skip basic, and flight training by virtue of having been born into it, so to save them getting too cocky, we have them wash everything imaginable. Not to mention their two famous, and intrepid parents. Jen was popular and extremely talented as a test pilot in the air force. I garnered my accolades by designing a capsule for The Company that can take a hit from an asteroid and bounce rather than implode or burst into ten million one micron pieces, us passengers included. For that they let me fly with the best of the best of them. That’s how I met my wife, she piloted the early makes and models of The Company’s capsules. Love at first flight.

There is a heavy layer of smoke, like a painted veil, or gauze in front of my face, it stinks of burning electrical. There are sparks shooting out wildly from exposed wires. I’m tumbling end over end, with both a pitch and yaw. My vision is red, I can feel the sting of blood in my eyes. My head is pounding, I think I’m going to be sick. I can’t tell which direction is up. What is that noise… everything is going black. Why are there horns. God damn my head hurts. Fuck, I’m about to pass out. Fuck, fuck… fuck.

 

PART III

“Hey, we’ve got an alarm here, main bus three, now four’s on the blink too, five and six…

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What the hell is happening.” The control board is lit up like a Christmas tree, warning buzzers, klaxons and every light that blinks is going haywire. “Hey tech, are you seeing this… is this a glitch? This should absolutely not be happening. What is going on out there.” Me and everyone else at Houston Central Control are on our feet, phones are ringing off the hook and support staff are being woken up. The room is in chaos. The Company builds these capsules to ridiculously stringent specifications. Each system built with three redundancies, all on separate breakers, housed in various locations across the bulk of the craft, shielded under plate steel, or lead casings. They recycle them, over and over again because they are so robust. You could plow a five tonne asteroid into the things, and they’d just… bounce. Took some engineering to achieve that feat. The “Non Sequitur“, it really is a remarkable space faring craft. Ugly as sin, spartan in design, but it’s gods be damned sturdy as a mother fucker.

“Can we get all team leads to the tenth floor conference room, repeat, all team leads to the tenth floor conference room, stat!” The voice on the pa system is tense, and the volume has been cranked to ten. No one is going to want to claim they didn’t hear the dispatch from the guys in charge. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Outside the control room, the tone is very somber, punctuated by flurries of activity, followed by countless hours of waiting. The shadows beyond the windows stretch and shrink, stretch and shrink as the hours bleed into days, then into weeks. The once eager faces have grown grey, pale and worn. Five o’clock shadow has become the norm, in what is usually a very rigorous and stringent dress code. Walk down any hall way and you’ll find cots with passed out technicians, scattered across every corner, every nook and cranny crammed with unwashed bodies.

“So you’re telling me… after three weeks…that he’s simply not responding to our calls? Do we know if the radio and antenna array are in working order? What do we know… people! Listen. Shut up. I need you to sound off. NOW.” Bruce is about to snap, we’ve been coming to these meetings since day one of the catastrophic event aboard the Non Sequitur, waiting for something new to emerge from the raw data. He’s worked CapCom control for two decades now, and nothing even remotely eventful has ever happened. Not even a dropped call. His skin has taken on a yellow tinge, and his eyes have sunk deeper into his broad face. He looks as though he hasn’t showered or slept in days. He has picked up smoking again, so much so that his fingers tips are stained a dark mustard yellow. His over grown dirty fingernails are tap, tap, tapping on the conference table impatiently. “Well uh, we know that he’s… um, Todd…, yes sorry, Flight Commander Neil Todd, we know he’s still alive because he’s the only one with the bio-metrics to log in to conduct the scans off of the sensor arrays. The data packets are flooding back in, terabyte by terabyte. It doesn’t make much sense, what we are seeing.” The under staffer is visibly nervous about relaying this information. “What?” Says Bruce “The radios are transmitting to us? But he isn’t responding to our queries? That’s very unlike Cmdr Todd. What the fuck happened up there.” Bruce is not taking this new information well, he and Cmdr Todd go back quite a ways. Their kids were all born at the same time, both of them. “Well, we um… have some strange readings…” Terry, the capsule tech specialist chimes in. “The Co2 scrubbers must be malfunctioning, they are way below where they should be. They should need to be replaced every ten days, but we’re what, twenty one days in, on the same one…” he is pacing around the room, fingers pinched on the bridge of his nose, grimacing over the incomplete data. A sudden bang at the door startles the group in the conference room. Opening the door is dr. Sanjai, the loose bun on her head is dropping strands of hair over her face obscuring her now red rimmed eyes. “I can elaborate on that Terry, we were finally able to scour through enough of the data packets in the information dumps to mine the medical subsets. I’m so sorry Bruce…” she says stepping passed the threshold, and into the room. “Jenny and both the girls were killed in a blast. They were exposed to the vacuum of space while asleep in their bed pods.” Everyone is awestruck, Bruce sits down abruptly in his swivel chair at the head of the table. The crew quarters are the most heavily shielded and armored portion of the capsule. It’s where protocol sends you to ride out a gamma burst, radiation, or an asteroid impact. “From what we can tell Cmdr Todd suffered a blunt force trauma to the head, his brain waves sank to near dead for a period of approximately sixteen hours. I think… I… I… I believe he may have suffered brain damage in the blast. And from our other metrics, probably a good chance of substantial blood loss. If it weren’t for the antenna array logins noted on a daily basis, I would have believed him dead.” She is standing stock still in front of the room, a stunned silence fills the space. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke covers the low hanging ceiling. There are water spots on some of the drop ceiling tiles. The Company likes to see its money go into the program, and not wasted on ground staff creature comforts. Bruce, after a brief pause is up on his feet again, he resumes pacing in front of the dusty blackboards. They are covered with all the minutiae of organized space flight. “What about guidance, navigation, payload, what are his consumables like, what state is he in. Best guesses, any details, no matter how fine, are welcome.” Bruce falls back into his chair, as though the weight of the world is clutching at his shoulders and pulling him backward. A mousy slender wisp of a man steps through the gathered group. “Derick here, hi guys, from what we can tell both the navigation system and the engines themselves are fine. We have evidence that some of the crew quarters emergency lighting panels are sending out rapid fire bursts, must be sparks firing almost constantly, like the tail of a comet down off the back of the capsule. I mean, like, this is crazy, whatever hit them managed to pin point the crew pods, out of ten pods, the only three grouped together that happened to have people occupying them got blasted, gutted, fucking near vaporized. I can’t believe it…” he has his detailed spec print outs nearly crushed in his hands. You can tell he is fighting the urge to gather a consensus among the gathered technicians and scientists, for just how insane the statistical probability of this is. “The math shows him to be heading off course, hard to gauge at this point, he must have caught one hell of a bounce, that’s what I’m thinking, but right now he’s about seventy thousands miles wide of where he should be. By the time he gets out to the elliptical range of Pluto it could be as much a six, maybe seven million miles off course. It’s really worst case scenario at this point.” The life drains out of him, and he staggers backwards, dr. Sanjai points him toward an open chair. Once again Bruce comes alive, leaping up from his leather chair. “But he could course correct right? We’ve heard that navigation and engine control are operational. What’s our protocol on a redirect from here?”. He looks hopefully to Derick. All hopes are dashed as the single main priority of these missions comes crashing back into focus. There can be NO ability to redirect these missions from earth. Tensions are too high, too much is riding on their success to allow subterfuge from an errant tech or saboteur. He’s got enough food and supplies for ten men over a five year journey. It’s all down to Cmdr Todd.

Isolated out in the far reaches of space, humanities success rests entirely upon his beaten, bloody shoulders – alone.

 

 

PART II

“Can you at least look at me when I’m trying to talk to you…

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Scott. Put down the controller, take off the head set, and talk to me. God. You’re a big fucking man child. No! No, don’t you dare put that head set back on. Fuck you Scott, Fuck. You.” I’m standing in the doorway to the den, the walls to this windowless room are covered in old creased band posters, and framed sports memorabilia. The room is cluttered with comic books, action figures and empty beer cans. It smells like a gym sock, mixed with a cheap dive bar. I’m surprised there’s no stripper pole in there. The vents are always shut, and he can never be bothered to vacuum. The old dull grey carpet feels gritty underfoot.

“Huh? What’s that? Oh, oh, hey hold up. Sorry fellas…” he’s so calm, talking to his buddies through his head set, getting off the line, logging out as slowly as fucking possible. I can feel my pulse begin to rise. “Baby, babe! Yo… you ok, what’s goin’ on now?” He’s trying me, good god, lord above he’s trying out his, Hi I’m this super charming guy, voice on me. I could just slap him. My blood is pumping, and I’m not in the mood for this frat boy, laid back bullshit. “You know damn well what’s up. You man child! You fucking man baby! Look at all this shit, toys?, Scott really?, you got children’s toys in here. Comic books, toys, video games and fucking model kits. What. The. Fuck!” I clap my hands to punctuate each word. I turn from the doorway, and storm down the hall. It’s the longest stretch of our apartment, it makes for wonderful dramatic effect. I know he’s watching my ass as I storm away. I know it, and I’ll use it against him.

“This again, christ all mighty baby, you gonna do me like that, here? now!” He’s storming down the hall behind me, all one hundred eighty five pounds of him, he is chiseled like marble. He stops outside of arms reach. I can hear his breath coming faster. I can see spittle flecked on his lips as he gets going. “No, no Cheryl, not here. I told you I have to keep things stress free here. You know how bad work gets! You know. You KNOW!” His voice is quavering, and starts to take on a pleading tone. “No, you know what baby, you don’t know. No, don’t shake your finger at me. You want to know what I did yesterday. Do you, do you want to know?” He steps in close to me, I can see it in the whites of his hazel brown eyes, he ain’t going to hold back, he’s going to drop some hot scathing truth in my lap, and I’ll feel both intense love for him for it, and I’ll absolutely hate that I can’t even comprehend it. “Do you want to know what I came across yesterday, at werk!… I came across a mini van, with three kids in the back with their heads cut off at the base of the jaw…”. “Baby, God no, no… don’t say it Honey… please.” I’m pulled into his arms but the dam has broken and he’s not going to stop until it’s burned permanently into my heart. Like surgery done with an ice pick and a blow torch. “Seems the parents were junkies, love doing smack. But what they don’t know is, is that shit got fentanyl in it. Wife was driving, she’s dead as soon as the plunger drops the load in her veins, hot and thick. She couldn’t even pull off the road she was so hot for a quick taste. Crosses through the median, under an oncoming truck full of steel pipes. BAM. bitch, cut those sweet little Angel’s heads right off they necks… they wasn’t even in fucking car seats. Those kids was loose. LOOSE!” I can feel the room start to spin around us. He’s holding onto me just as hard as I hold onto him for support. We collapse together, a puddle of anger, loathing and despair. I think the floor might open up and swallow us whole. Before I can even lean in to stroke his hair, his pager is buzzing on the kitchen counter. Like a shot, he’s up and out the door. I hear something, but it is muffled by the closing door. I can’t make out what it was.

“Well, Cheryl I’m so sorry to hear of your husband’s passing. At least you told him you love him as he left for work that day. Few of us get the chance. It’s not like you two had a fight that day. I mean jesus, could you imagine?” She leans in towards me. “I hear Janis and Robert had a real banger the day he died. It’s eating her alive. But not us. No, we spent the last moments with our noble hunks in the throes of passion.” She’s smiling at me over her wine glass. The red wine must be good, it leaves a slight film on the glass every time she gesticulates with her hands. She smells of flowery perfume, and cigarette smoke. I look through her, to the open bay window beyond. Outside children can be heard playing. They’re laughing, and giggling. “Yeah… at least I have that.”

“You know what I love the most about being out here?…

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The unobstructed view of the galaxy around us. Don’t you just love it!” She says, looking back at me, over her right shoulder. Her orange coveralls tied firmly around her waist. Her socks, and her shirt are a brilliant white, not a speck of dirt on them.

“Hmmm… no, all I keep thinking about is how isolated it is out here, and how far we are from anything, or anyone.” I say, staring down at the now ice cold bulb of mock coffee. It’s inky, black-brown packaging has golden markings all over it. I can’t read it. It was a gift from the Chinese agency, from last Christmas. It smells faintly of roasted cinnamon.

“Well, I really can’t get enough of this view, I mean what a breathtaking vista that is spread out before us.” She says it with that ear to ear grin she always has. It makes her dimples pop, her ice blue eyes twinkle in the brilliant starlight. Every day now, she comes to stand at the same view port, always looking forwards – to the stars. I’m hunched over a tiny table that converts to tuck back into the bulkhead. I stand up, and toss my bulb of frozen black coffee into an incinerator bin. This capsule, the Non Sequitur, was meant for ten, still feels cramped, even with just the four of us. A long cylinder of off white padded curved walls, illuminated in phosphorescent white light that has started to show some wear and tear. I will give them this, The Company does love to recycle. This is my seventh uneventful mission out here with one of the jury rigged crafts. “You know… we… I… hmmm, that first twenty nine week stretch out to Mars was tedious. I didn’t get any worth while readings, and there is no sign of the anomaly.” I am not happy. This line of work was supposed to be cutting edge. For fuck’s sake, it is space travel, and you promised us adventure, aliens, or at the very least a chance to bring about the singularity before the fall of mankind. We ventured out here in search of something, anything, anything at all that could be the key to unlocking our full potential as a species. And all I got was this lousy t-shirt. “I am not looking forward to eighty more weeks of this before we make it out to Pluto.” I have been glum for quite some time. I never could muster the same enthusiasm for these missions. Even with the pressure of the world on my shoulders. I just don’t care anymore.

“Same time tomorrow then darling.” She giggles as she says it. Every time with this same schtick. I’m annoyed, but I chuckle anyway. “Of course babe, say hello to our girls for me.” Jennifer vanishes in the dim light, leaving me all of the sparse, utilitarian room. The bright padding fades away to reveal the gathered filth and blood splatter of neglect. The fabric throughout the cabin is stained jet black in places, it reeks of smoke, and decay. The lights inside the observation pod have not come on in quite some time.

Outside the capsule, sparks continue to fall away from the craft’s hull like a giant rooster tail of cascading embers. A large black burn stretches across the jagged edge of what’s left of the crew quarters. There in the distance are vague forms of a woman and two children, suspended in their bed pods, both flash frozen, and boiled in the vacuum of space. The capsule is half a million miles off course, even though the engines and navigation survived the attack in one piece. Denial, much like the void of space, does not discriminate.

 

PART I

 

*****

And NOW for shits and giggles you can listen to me narrate Chapter One .

“Listen here dickhead, do you hear the words coming out of my mouth…

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I know what I saw, ok, I mean jesus, why you guys always gotta give me shit about this stuff. Fuck!” She’s leaning against the wall, the torn Gucci shirt has fallen over the edge of her shoulder. She is visibly shaken, the incident has taken some of the polish off her demeanor, but my god is she ever mad. You do not want to get within arms reach of her now. We’ve only gone and pissed her off further with our line of questioning. Standing across from her in the tiny interrogation room, she moves to lift her leg to scratch at a newly formed scab on her calf, she stops abruptly and pulls a long drag off of her cigarette instead. The accumulated ash tumbles off the edge, and lands on the front of her skirt. It’s tweed, an A-line cut, as my wife would later describe it to me, and looks to have been expensive, that is, until some dipshit bro thought she needed a date for the evening.

“Look, I am not here to bust your balls, ok? I just need some answers. Your clothes are all kinds of fucked up, and we’ve got what’s left of some dudes corpse downstairs.” She flinches at the mention of the body, I can tell she’s more shaken than she’s letting on. I should offer the counselors services again, but the last one got an earful, and a gold pen to the kneecap.

The smoke she is exhaling is hanging above us in lazy curls. Wafting up to the ceiling, and settling in a haze by the flickering phosphorescent lights. The tiles on the wall are chipped and cracking. The light here is a dim blue, meant to stop junkies from easily finding a vein. The chatter from out in the hallway is just barely audible. A constant smattering of barks, shouts and ringing phones. I can hear a reel to reel recorder in the next room, tick, tick, ticking as the end of the tape flaps freely. Restless people are watching us from behind a smudged, and dirty two way mirror. They are shuffling in their seats, it’s the squeak of the vinyl that gives them away.

“Why does it always stink like farts in here man, like, what the fuck you guys eat in here anyhow?” Trying to antagonize us – always brings a smile to her face. Underneath that Sephora make up is a ruthless, cunning lawyer with sharks teeth in her vagina. She’s not going to give us anything. Running down the clock, and we’ll just stand here, dicks in our hands, mouths agape while she lights up cigarette after cigarette. They are a crisp bright white, and that very fine linen paper, with the ultra wide filter tips. The brown matches her shoes. I have no clue if that’s intentional with Sophia or not.

“What do you think happened here”

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He says from over my shoulder. I am looking at the body in front of me, laid prone on the floor in a massive puddle of dark icor. “Well, hmmm… from the looks of it, I’d say he put two in the chest, and one in his head, painting that wall over there with bits of brains, skull fragments and hair.” I stand up slowly, have been having nasty head rushes as of late, when getting up from a crouch. “No, not that, my sandwich! Look there’s like one strip of bacon, and like half a leaf of lettuce. Jesus, don’t the rookies even look at this shit before they bring it to us.” He’s mad, turning this way and that, looking to get up in someones face, anyone within arms reach. “Oh come off it. Lunch was an hour ago, put that down and help me put together a reasonable theory of the case.” I spit the words out, realizing my lunch didn’t do much to satisfy my hunger today either. Irritated, we walk out the front door of this rat infested apartment, with its dangling light bulbs, and chipped paint on all the trim. The shared hall is choked with cops, and partially dressed angry neighbours. They’re all in a huff over the noise, and foot traffic coming and going at all hours. Really they’re just mad they can’t smoke crack or meth while so many cops are around. The floors creak under the additional strain of so many bodies. The temperature inside this hundred year old building is intense. Humidity of high summer has condensed on the walls, dribbling down to make foul smelling pools mixed with discarded cigarette ash, and garbage.

“Oh hey! Mind that puddle over there by that green door.” An elderly gentleman says, he has an indistinct, yet exotic look to him. Thinning dark hair, and a far too short kimono over what I could only describe as neon pink fishnets. “Huh? What’s that sir?”. I shout over the din of the gathered crowd. “Well, just steer clear of that shit. You know old lady Darcy’s a hoarder. That cloying smell of rot, vomit, and god knows what is her doing! Can’t even open her front door, it’s so chock full of shit in there.” He is becoming animated with all the young officers around, staring at him. “Some delivery dude came round here last week in fucking flip flops, had to go see a doctor because that puddle of sludge caused a pus ridden growth on both his feet. Fuck’in nasty. Banged on her door for like an hour, in a rage, he was. Poor kid. But what do I know…” My partner mimics the wanking motion with his left hand, the poor man’s soggy blt flopping about in his right. Mayo has collected on his lip, mixed in to his five o’clock shadow. He smells of cheap cologne, and sweat. We turn for the stairs, the black railing is peeling, it shows about twenty layers of caked on lead paint, and walk down the five flights to our squad car. The temperature outside isn’t any better, neither is the smell. Through a cracked window the radio cackles with an indecipherable muffled call. Followed by several clipped responses. In a rumpled tan suit, my partner shouts over the top of the car to me. I don’t hear it.

“Babe, can you come upstairs, Sarah’s been sick again…

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And it’s all over her bed sheets, her carpet, down the hall and seeping into the heating vents by the toilet.” With fuzzy, light blinded eyes I catch a glimpse of my wife walking back up the stairs from the landing. Pulling my sheets back, I feel the bracing chill of the late night air in my room. “God damn!” I blurt out as I step down, bare footed on the cold vinyl flooring, it feels like I’m standing on a sheet of ice. Lumbering half awake, I come to the stairs. My legs not yet functioning, my ankles creaking along with the old steps. Rubbing my hands on my thighs, feeling the fleece of my pants against my palms. Flexing my fingers, I mount the last few steps. Coming to the main floor I’m hit with the stench of it all. From the bathroom I can hear my daughter weeping, my wife a gentle murmur in the distance. I can hear snippets of their conversations…”No, no baby, you’re not in trouble, it’s ok, don’t cry, I know, I know.” There is a flurry of activity as my wife strips off the soiled pajamas and lays down towels to soak up some of the mess. I turn down the hallway, and grab a mop and bucket. I squeeze out some lemon scented soap and I can feel the steam from the hot water. The vapour is condensing on the cold window over the sink, rivulets of water pooling at the base of the sill. I pull down some paper towels, and grab an old plastic bag from a drawer. It’s sticky, and has an old crumpled up receipt in it, something that was beige had been in this bag.

“You two go curl up in bed, I’ve got you some water to drink, and I’ll strip off your bed after I wash the floors.” It’s the same script as before. We’ve done it so many times, I can move through the motions without having to think about it anymore. Afterwards I’ll fall asleep on the floor of my daughter’s room. I crash about, like a drunk searching for a full bottle among all of the empties strewn about the house. The smell is what gets me, never the sight of it. How can so much come out of such a small child. Looks the same, regardless of the end it originated.

After a time, I notice there is a sliver of light in the master bedroom, standing in the hall I can hear softly spoken words, lilting in a sing song fashion. Sarah is falling asleep in my wife’s tired arms. They are sharing a pillow as they cuddle. I can see sweat on my daughters brow. “This fever just won’t fucking break”. I say it aloud, but quietly, to myself. I need to grab more pain meds from the drugstore tomorrow. Turning from the doorway, I shut off the lights, and I collapse onto a pile of stuffed animals. Everything goes black.