Jila pushed the suds away from the surface water with her hands. The top-half of the corpse slid to the right as the suds crashed around its head.
Iris lowered her head an inch to the water.
“My legs,” Jila said. “Something’s happening to me.”
Her two legs had stuck together to form a fleshy, fish-like fin, like that of a mermaid.
“Give me your hand.”
Iris lifted her left hand and, quite unsure of why she was doing it, placed it in Jila’s hands.
“Oh. It all makes sense now,” the girl said, her voice becoming more masculine as the words rolled out from her mouth. “So pretty. So… colorful.”
The blue-green wings on the butterfly tattoo on Iris’s wrist matched the same color of Jila’s legs.
Both women acknowledged the similarity.
When Iris turned to Jila’s face, she noticed a pair of gills creep around behind her ears and fold under her earlobes.
“I can’t breathe, Iris. I know I should have said something, but I didn’t. And I’m being punished for it. Please don’t hate me.”
Jila’s nostrils sewed up at the same time her lips swelled like two, bloodied sacks of fat.
Bwuck-bwuck.
Jila puckered her lips together and appeared to kiss Iris. The girl produced a low, throaty snoring as her eyelids closed horizontally.
“Help me, Iris.”
Feeling completely helpless, Iris offered the girl her arms for comfort. She still couldn’t speak, but felt the urge to allay the girl’s fears. She lowered herself to her knees and pressed the side of her chest against the bathtub.
“Let me hug you,” Jila whispered. “I just need someone to hold me.”
Iris’s gown clung to her front as she took the girl in her arms
Jila relaxed into her arms and ran her thumb across her butterfly tattoo. “So pretty.”
She noticed the black text Iris had written underneath it, and smudged it away with her thumb.
“You don’t need that.”
Iris gulped, producing a noise for the first time tonight. It might not have been words. It barely qualified as an exclamation, but Jila’s action of erasing the text burrowed deep inside her psyche.
“I know where you’re going,” Jila whispered. “I told you not to do it. Advised against it. You’re not going to follow my advice, though, are you?”
Iris shook her head, calmly.
“Typical you, Baskeyfield. Always stubborn. Always afraid of everything.”
Before Iris could respond, Jila shuddered against the cold in her arms.
“Hold me.”
The woman’s entire naked body vibrated, pushing ripples down her skeleton, which caused her arms and legs to shake up a storm.
Gwuk-gwuk…
The girl appeared to shrink in Iris’s arms as she spoke. Her mouth didn’t move, but her voice was loud and clear when she tried - in her own mind at least.
I’m so sorry.
Small, coarse scales cracked their way across Jila’s face as she turned up to Iris.
“D-Do me a -f-favor,” Jila croaked through her inexorable shrinking.
Yes, anything for you.
“When you k-kill him, k-kill him for me, t-too.”
I will.
Iris cried hard, unable to contain her emotions any longer. Before her first teardrop hit the bathwater, Jila had shrunk to a couple of feet, and nestled in Iris’s arms like a newborn baby.
Unable to speak, Jila now resembled a goldfish.
Iris sniffed and rose to her feet, cradling the girl in her arms. She looked at the girl and half-laughed through her tears.
Shhhh. It’s okay, sister. I’ll take care of him. Of you.
Iris moved to the toilet bowl and lowered the girl inside. The fish escaped from her hands and immediately swam around in a figure eight, excited at the prospect of what Iris had communicated to her a few seconds ago.
Iris gripped the flush handle and yanked it down with all her might.
The water whirled around like a violent vortex, and swallowed the fish whole.
Iris didn’t have long to witness what she’d done.
A lifetime of regret disappeared in a flash.
Her shoulders felt relatively lighter than they’d done just ten minutes ago.
And then, the bathroom shook around, enabling Iris to regain her balance. The bathtub was missing a dead body. The toilet bowl was missing a fish.
“They’s here,” came a familiar voice from inside the warehouse.
The sound of a truck engine thundered through the walls, followed by the frequent beeps of a reversing alarm…
Chapter XII
Nicholas’s eyes opened at the sound of the bedside alarm.
“What’s that?” he muttered as he wiped his eyes. His left hand instinctively felt for Iris, but she wasn’t there.
Her side of the bed was empty.
“Huh?”
He twisted his head to where she should have been. A head-shaped carter in her pillow stared back at him. The bedside alarm focused into view.
It read 11:45 pm.
“Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
Irene’s hastened voice shot through his cranium as he jumped out of bed and slipped on his underwear.
What do you mean she’s not there?
He ran across the hallway in his briefs, and checked the staircase. No lights, no sign of life. He ran back to check the door handle to the master bedroom.
The key was in the lock.
“Oh, shit.”
I mean she’s… no, there’s no other way to say it. She’s not here. She’s gone.
Nicholas hightailed it across the landing to Sammy’s room.
The boy was fast asleep in his own bed. He raced over and shook his son by the arm.
She can’t be far. Did you check the yard?
“Sammy?” he said.
The boy opened his eyes and saw his breathless father about to lose his mind. “Yeah, dad?”
“Where’s your Mom?”
“Um, in bed with you?”
“Christ.”
Nicholas’s feet thundered down the stairs. He thumped the light switch on the wall and ran his hands through his hair when he found no sign of his wife. “Where is she?”
Put on the yard lights and check everything.
The kitchen lights snapped on as Nicholas ran in and surveyed the area in a panic. “No, she’s not here.”
The kitchen window. Another light switch.
Sniff-sniff.
The smell of gas wafted from the rings on the stove. “Damn it.” He twisted the knobs on the front of the stove clockwise and shut off the gas. “Where the hell could she be?”
Sammy’s voice came from the footsteps descending the stairs. “Daddy?”
“Not now, Sammy,” Nicholas yelled over his shoulder as he gripped the handle of the door that led outside. “How did she get out?”
His bare feet trampled over the flat, dry grass, as he ran to the farthest fence. The streetlights provided a blue hue over the fine green blades of grass surrounding his ankles. Evidently, Iris hadn’t been anywhere near the yard.
Squelch.
His right foot landed on a thick, long slug.
“Ugh.”
Nicholas lifted his bare sole and tore the sticky length of death from under his toe. He didn’t register the burnt patch of grass a few inches away, nor the black flakes from what was once a plush toy buried in the mud.
No, Irene. I checked the garden. Sammy’s here with me.
“Sammy,” Nicholas called out to the kitchen door as his boy stood under the frame, concerned.
“Where’s mom?”
Nicholas flicked the dead slug over the fence and wiped his hands on his legs.
“I don’t know, son. Go back to your room,” Nicholas said as he arrived at an idea. “No. Don’t go back upstairs. Check the front door. Go.”
“Okay.”
Sammy ran through the k
itchen and into the front room. He checked behind the sofa, not that he expected anyone to be behind there.
Babar spent a lot of his “missing time” behind the sofa, and it seemed a good place to cross off the list, nevertheless.
“Mommy?”
Nicholas slammed the back door shut and darted through the front room and hollered at Sammy’s back.
“Did you check the front door?”
“No, I—”
“—For heaven’s sake. I mean, how the hell did she get out?”
He reached the front door.
“Oh, shit.”
It was wide open. A cool, night breeze waded into the front room, in much the same way a burglar might have done if they’d beaten Nicholas and his son to it.
Most unlike Iris to have done that. She rarely left the house when she was sleepwalking, Nicholas thought.
Nothing but an empty street and parked cars, including the Goddard’s, lined the sidewalks.
Then, Nicholas put two and two together. He turned to Sammy in haste. “Son?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Stay there. Keep an eye on the window, see if you can see her walking.”
Nicholas hoisted himself up the stairs double-time by the handrail, and made for the master bedroom.
Did she say anything about a place? A destination? Something like that?
Nicholas slid to his knees, burning the skin on his knees across the floor. He slid his fingernails under the skirting board and peeled the carpet back.
The key was missing.
Do you want me to come over?
He knew it was in the bedroom door lock, but now he realized that Iris had stolen it. He hadn’t screwed up and left it somewhere where she could find it. She must have discovered it or, worse, seen him hide it.
No, no, Oh God. What if she’s gotten herself into trouble? What if she’s hurt herself?
Nicholas yelled at the hallway as he looked around for any indication of where his wife might be. “Sammy? You see anything?”
“No, dad,” came the heightened response. “Hey, dad?”
“Yeah?”
No. Not yet, anyway. She left her phone here, so there’s no point trying to call her.
Nicholas scanned the bedside table and felt his heart stop beating. Iris had left her cell phone on it - an indication that she wasn’t fully aware of her actions.
“Shit.”
“I’m scared.”
Nicholas ignored the remark and grabbed the phone. He slid his thumb up the side and hit the unlock button.
Forget that, Nick. We haven’t got time to mess around. Did you call the police, yet?
The lock screen demanded a four-digit pin password; one that he didn’t know.
“Christ, think. Think-think-think,” he rambled.
He tried a series of numbers. Iris’s birth year… 1971… to no success.
Of course I haven’t called the fucking police yet, Irene. I’ve only just woken up. I’ve only just noticed she’s gone.
Then, he tried Sammy’s year of birth… 2-0-1-3. It didn’t work. He had one more try before he knew the phone would lock up permanently.
Nicholas lowered the phone and closed his eyes. “Think. If you were her, where would you go?”
His mind returned a series of void answers. “Christ, she could be anywhere.”
Quick-thinking, he hopped over the bed and grabbed his own phone. He tried to place his fingerprint on the sensor on the back in such a hurry, it failed to register.
His hand shook so much he could barely hold onto it. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Nick, I’m coming over there. Call the police, okay?
Finally, he managed to unlock his own phone. In a sheer state of franticness, he swiped the call list, and hit the contact named Irene.
It seemed to take an age for her to answer. “Come on,” he spat, as he ran out into the landing once again, hoping Iris might be lurking in one of a dozen shadows.
“Daddy?” Sammy’s voice bounced up the stairs once again.
“Not now, Sammy,” he barked at the stairs. “I’m calling Aunt Irene. Wait.”
Click.
Irene answered the phone. “Hey Nicholas, what’s up—”
“—She’s not here.”
“What? Who’s not there?”
Nicholas launched into a sarcastic fit. “Kim fucking Kardashian, who do you think?”
“Huh?”
“Iris. I dunno where she is. She isn’t here. Hell, she could have walked to the freeway for all I know.”
Chapter 13
An off-white-colored Mack truck drove at speed in the fast lane of the freeway. A brown-skinned twenty-something, Ahmed al-Burhan, gripped the steering wheel and focused on the road ahead.
A quick glance at the dashboard revealed the time: 11:45 pm.
His passenger and younger brother, a teenager named Freddie, woke from his slumber. “Shit, man,” he said as he wiped his eyes. “We’re gonna be so late. It’s quarter to twelve, man.”
“Relax, bro. I got this.”
Ahmed shook off his brother’s alarm and glanced at his cell phone, pushing the truck into the middle lane quite by accident.
“What’s the name of the place we’re headed to, again?”
“Jila, man.”
Freddie yawned and rolled his eyes. “Weird name for a meet.”
“It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
“Shit, you moron—”
Freddie grabbed the wheel and pulled it counter clockwise, and back into the fast lane - narrowly avoiding the trunk of the car they’d nearly clipped.
“Ahmed, man. Pay attention to the fuckin’ road.”
“Would you relax your ass?” Ahmed chuckled and thumped the dash. “S’all good. Besides, if we was to get into a crash, I reckon we’d survive. They’re in a car. We’re in a truck. We’re bigger than them.”
“Whatever, man,” Freddie said. “Just keep your eye on the road. Let’s try not to get all fucked up before we get there.”
Ahmed dropped his cell phone between his thighs and licked his lips. “Big time pay day comin’ right up.”
Freddie thought about what Ahmed had said. “Jila ain’t no place I ever heard of in the Valley, man. Is that code for something?”
“What, Jila? Dunno. It’s the name of the contact they gave me, innit? Slap-bang central of the Valley, man.”
The Mack truck dominated the road. It’s sheer size, along with all eighteen of its wheels, intimidated the other drivers into veering out of its potentially destructive path.
The turn off for the junction up ahead whizzed past, not unnoticed by Freddie.
“Man, that was exit, back there. Junction eleven. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“Sure I’m sure, bro,” Ahmed protested, quietly. “Let me concentrate, man. It’s the industrial estate. It’s all good.”
Freddie thumbed the junction over his shoulder, “But wasn’t that the industrial estate turn off?”
“Nah, man.”
Ahmed’s attention drew to a crazy vision of a burning building on the horizon, to the west. “Shit, bro. Look at that.”
“Huh?”
Freddie leaned forward with a look of concern on his face. “That’s the Freeway Five estate. I know people who live there. Sab lives there.”
“Who?”
Freddie realized what he’d said and played down his mistake. “Ah, nobody, man.”
“That chick from school you like, is it? Sab?”
“Shut up.”
Annoyed by the intrusion of his privacy, Freddie turned around and thumped the wall behind him. “What you carrying in this truck, anyway?”
“About fifty rolls of one thousand bills, mate.”
“And you need a truck for that? Wouldn’t a Ford have been enough?”
“Nah, man. These ain’t those kinds of bills. I don’t think of them as what they are, bro. I think of them as plenty cashola, innit?”
&
nbsp; Freddie huffed and shook his head. “So, why do you need me for this exchange?”
Ahmed launched into an aggrieved tirade. “I’ve driven close to two thousand miles. Crossed three borders, and nearly been busted each and every time. Last thing I want is to get to where I need to be to deliver this thing, and be on my own, only for the geezers payin’ me to screw me over. I don’t trust ‘em anymore than they probably don’t trust me.”
“Why don’t you trust them?”
“Because they’re black, innit? Put money on ‘em for a boxing match, sure, sure, you’ll see a return. Try and do a deal with ‘em, mate, and they screw you over. So I got insurance with me.”
Ahmed thumped the glove compartment. The hatch slid down and lit up, throwing light over a pistol.
Freddie squinted at the gun and lost his mind. “What the fuck, man?”
Ahmed smiled as if it was nothing. “Nothing, man. Just some insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“Yeah.”
“Insurance for what? The fuckin’ Wild Bunch? Are you outta your mind, man?”
Freddie booted the glove compartment shut with his boot. “I don’t wanna see no gun, man. I don’t want nothing to do with it”
“Quit your whining, Freddie. We ain’t gunna get pulled over. And, you know, even if we did, it’d be for speeding—”
“—Or for starting a war right in the middle of town.”
Freddie folded his arms in defiance and tutted to himself.
“It’s always the same with you, man. Up to some shady shit. Getting me involved. You’re gonna land me in jail one day.”
“Masha Allah, brother,” was Ahmed’s only response.
Freddie grew restless as the city streets zipped by. The buildings seemed to shrink in size, suggesting they were headed out of town altogether.
“The fuck, man? We’re definitely lost.”
“Jila. We’ll find it.”
“Give me that phone.”
Freddie reached between Ahmed’s legs and grabbed for something.
“Oi, gay-boy. Stop touchin’ me up.”
“Gimme your phone.”
Freddie clutched the device in his hand and held it up. “Fuckin’ Jila, mate. Knowing you, you wrote it down wrong or—”
His face fell when he read the text in the notepad app: J11A
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