Juno sniffed at herself. She thought she might smell a little sweaty from the heat, but that was it. Nothing she could smell reminded her of their old apartment. “How do you mean?” she asked. “And so you’re clear. Davey and me. Like I just said. We’re room-mates. He’s not my boyfriend. God, no. Please.”
Cadence shook even harder.
“You used to do drugs?” Cadence asked. “Heroin? You used to put it in there?” She pointed to the inside of Juno’s left arm. There were no more track marks. She’d been clean long enough that the only things that remained were nearly invisible scarring and slight discolouration, which could easily be mistaken for bruising. “I can smell it.”
“I...” Juno said, not sure how to answer. The strange thing was she didn’t feel offended. More like she felt a sense of wonder. Everything, and nothing, was making sense about where they were and who she was sitting with. “I don’t. Not anymore. Not for a long time.” As she continued to explain, a voice in the back of her head kept wondering why. “Davey and I were both addicted to drugs. Heroin, mostly. But, when we started going together and began living with each other, I found the strength to quit. Maybe it was because we were always together. Neither of us could cheat... I mean, use without the other knowing. He cared about me more than I cared about myself. I cared about him more than he cared about himself. We were able to stop each other from using. And, eventually, I cleaned up. Like I never thought I could. It was really bad for a while. Then I broke up with him. But we left our old life, and the people in it, behind and... I’m sorry. I’m rambling. Excuse me.” She paused, feeling her heart race, nervousness rushing through her. Clouding her thoughts as she looked away and squeezed her eyes closed quickly.
Cadence’s blink rate increased dramatically as she brushed her fingers through Juno’s hair again. This time, meeting no resistance. “It’s quite all right. I understand. It’s good you came here. It’s good you cleaned up first. You choose not to control your obsession with the flesh. You sicken me.” She brushed Juno’s hair back more, leant over and smelt her neck. Then she licked the palms of both of Juno’s hands softly. “More is coming. You’ll want it, but you won’t. A man. Evil. You’re hurting my son. Consumed by flames. He’s coming for you. To take you back.” She withdrew and her blink rate slowed. “The craving. The hunger. It still hurts. A lot sometimes. I remember.”
“Did you just say...?” Juno looked back again, scratching her neck, confusion in her eyes as Cadence hung her head down. Looking at the floor again. Her lashes batting closed so incredibly slowly. Her eyelids remaining shut. “I missed most of that. Have you...?” Juno asked.
“No,” Cadence said. “I’ve never put any drugs in my body. Not directly. I don’t believe in them. I don’t have a tolerance. They only make me sick. Then they leave me. I just know what it’s like to feel that hunger. That sickness. Starving for what I want, but can’t have. What I shouldn’t.”
“I don’t understand,” Juno said, her head still swimming.
“Why did you choose to live here?” Cadence opened her eyes, looking into Juno’s. “Why did you come here if you’re getting better? Usually...” She paused, clearing her throat. “Perhaps I’m talking out of turn. I apologise. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. That was indelicate of me to ask.”
“It’s okay,” Juno said. “I just don’t know what you meant. About wanting what you shouldn’t. Is there a problem? Can I help? What did you mean by—?”
“Will you forgive me?” Cadence asked as she stood. “I’m feeling a bit tired. Please excuse me while I go speak with my beloved for a moment.” She stopped as she began to walk, and held up a finger. “Will you stay? For a moment?”
“Sure.” Juno fell back into the soft fabric of the couch, letting it relax her. Thinking, now more than ever, that running might not be the best option for her. Not understanding why, but unable to bear the thought of any harm coming to her short-time neighbours. To Cadence, most of all. Although it made no sense, she felt it very strongly. Like an instinct a baby might feel for a surrogate mother.
Brent motioned for David to sit as he pulled out a pair of fold-out chairs and, by the time he’d gotten himself comfortable, Brent had returned with an open bottle of beer for each of them. The moon floating in the sky was more magical than any he could remember. But he couldn’t remember having seen one that wasn’t blotted out by smog and artificial light. The darkness and filth that floated through the city air wasn’t present here, and the outside world looked alien to him.
“It’s gorgeous out,” David said, “and so clear and bright at night. Coming from the city, everything feels so...”
“It’s okay,” Brent said. “Get it over with. Everyone I meet has to jump this hurdle.” He smiled as he watched David squirm.
“Everything feels so strange.” David laughed. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem. It’s something I got used to a long time ago. Now, that awkwardness is over.” He took a chug off his beer. “What are you so curious about? You keep looking back into the house.”
“Well, I was wondering... With your back door and driveway facing street side, do you have a front door? Or is the sliding door your front door?”
“No, this is the back door we’re sitting next to.”
“Then where’s the front door?”
“It’s around back.” David nodded and they laughed. “You open the front door and it’s nothing but corn as far as you can see. No one ever uses it, so the corn just took over. A little creepy. But, that’s the way it came and the price was right. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”
“What do you mean?” David slugged down his drink.
“You want to ask me something else. It’s written all over your face. You want to ask me two more things, actually.”
“Okay,” David said. “You read minds?”
“Maybe.”
“All right. Amaze me, Brent. Tell me what I want to ask you.”
“You sure?” Brent asked. David looked interested. “Okay. Here we go.” Brent did his best impression of someone tuning in to the psychic ether. Breathing in deeply, closing his eyes and touching his temples. “You.” He paused and held. “You want to ask me about the rumours. The rumours about your new home.”
“That’s one. Good short term memory.”
Brent grinned.
“Now. I can’t wait to hear the next one. Because I’m not even sure what that is.”
Brent looked at him sideways, smirking. “The other thing you want to ask me about is Cadence. Yes, Cadence. You want to know something about her. Wait.” He held out his hand and paused again. Building the drama.
As Brent kept up the act, David wondered if he’d noticed how Cadence reacted when he was around. The way she’d been smelling him. The animal fear in her eyes. The discomfort Juno had picked up on immediately. Then he wasn’t all that positive he wanted to know what was going to come out of Brent’s mouth next. But he was going to find out anyway.
“What?” David asked, as the silence became uncomfortable.
“You want to know why she’s so nervous around you, though she doesn’t even know you. Am I right?”
David gulped. “Yeah. That’s one way of putting it.”
Brent slapped him on the arm. “Don’t worry about it, buddy. She just wants to chew on you a bit.” Brent took another sip off his beer. David’s face turned slightly red. “Don’t sweat it, Davey. It’s nothing. If you and Junie aren’t dating, and you dig her, you should give her a ride. Fix her up. Tighten a few screws, if you know what I mean. She could use it. Just be careful she doesn’t break you.” Brent’s eyebrows bobbed. “She’s a free woman. And I don’t blame her. You’re a good looking guy.”
“Funny. Junie said the same about you.”
Brent’s eyes drew slowly closed and then open again. “Wait. I’m sensing something else. Yes, I’m sensing unbelievably awkward moments between us all in the near future.” He laughed. “Seriously, that’s kind o
f her to say. It’s perfectly normal, though, right?”
“Junie finding you attractive?” David asked. “Cadence wanting to chew on me a bit?”
“No. I mean innocent attraction to the new and different.” He spread his arms out to encompass the wide open space. “You spend your life out here, away from it all. You spend enough time out here and you get used to things being the way they are. Same things, same people. Cadence is her own woman. And a lonely soul. Besides, women are different than us men. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” David said. “I get it. It’s like they fall in love with how we make them feel, and then consider how we look. Pretty much the opposite of what men generally do. Sometimes looks don’t even figure into the equation for them. Junie dating me is proof of that. Am I making any sense? And why am I rambling on about how women think? It’s a mystery to me twenty-five hours a day.”
Brent laughed. “I hear you, Davey. I’ll never understand them. But I do love them. God knew what he was doing when he made most of them.”
David and Brent clinked bottles and opened a fresh pair as they sat and looked at the darkening sky.
“So,” David asked, “now that we’ve gotten the two minor infatuation syndromes covered... What did you mean when you said there were rumours about where we’re living now? I mean, I know what you meant. What were the rumours? I’ve got to know.”
“You really want to know?” Brent took another drink. “You may never sleep right again.”
“Yeah, Brent, of course I do. It’s our new home. Come on. It can’t be that bad. What’s the rumour mill have to say about our house?”
“Well, it’s not so much rumours. There’s facts in there too. I suppose there’s two or three in every good rumour, though.” He pointed to David and Juno’s new home. “For years now, since it went up, that house has been randomly occupied by various folks. Sometimes couples like you and Junie. Sometimes individuals. None of them ever stayed long. Always moved in late at night. Always disappeared a day or so later. If I had to estimate, I’d say their shelf life over there was twenty-six, twenty-seven hours.”
“Yeah?” David looked up into the night sky, wondering if Brent could divine he and Juno were thinking of disappearing soon too.
“Supposedly, it was a police safe house of some sort. A place where they put high-risk witnesses up until trial. Except we’d hear strange noises over there. When other people used to come and stay. Before it stopped being occupied. It was empty for almost a year before you two showed up.” Brent took another chug off his beer. “Sometimes, I could swear, we’d wake to the sound of gunshots. And, the next day, whoever lived there would be gone. And if you went to go look in the windows. Which Cadence did every time, no matter how much I begged her not to. If you looked inside the house, the day after anyone left, it was spotless. I mean sparkling clean.”
“Why is that bad?” David asked.
“It’s not necessarily bad. But then the rumours started going around. Crooked cops from the city used the place. Set it up as a Roach Motel. Pests go in, but they never come out. Like the commercial. That sort of thing. Like a safe house, but... I don’t know what you’d call it. A kill house?” Brent looked over at David and cocked his left eyebrow. “What everyone believed, at that point, was, if anyone moved in there, they weren’t going to be alive for much more than twenty-four hours. In twenty-six or twenty-seven hours, like I said, whoever happened to live there would be taken away. Not back to prison or court or wherever. They’d be taken back to their God. In a bad way.”
“You think that’s true?” David took a swig off his beer.
“Still, you mean?”
“Yeah. Still.”
“I don’t know,” Brent said. “You two are interesting. Of course, the rumours can’t be substantiated. Not now, anyway. Not about back then. The only things we could find out were patchy, at best. The people who stayed there weren’t what you might call... Notable? It was like they didn’t exist before they showed, and if you believed the rumours, they ceased to exist just before they left. We only got to meet six or seven folks who stayed there. And well...”
“Yeah?” David’s pupils grew large. His mind swirling with black, foggy thoughts. Grateful it was getting dark enough out Brent couldn’t see the look of concern slowly creeping over his face.
“Well... Cadence. She didn’t care for any of them. Not one bit.” He looked over and motioned at David’s empty bottle. David shook his head. “And I don’t mean she felt indifferent about them. She really hated them. It was bizarre. She would smell them.” He paused. “You noticed that, right? How she smells everyone?” David nodded. “I’ll bet that had you wondering. Maybe Junie, still?”
David laughed. “Yeah, that’s been on my mind.”
“It’s nothing,” Brent said. “Or maybe it’s something. But she smells everyone. Strange as it sounds, her sense of smell is like a connexion to a sixth sense. It’s like she can sniff out evil. Or sniff out bad. Like a dog. Which is good news for you. She couldn’t shut up about you when we got back home this morning. David and Juno this, and David and Juno that. All curious about your relationship. Annoying as hell. It’s not your fault, but it was interesting.”
“Why?” David asked. He was starting to feel like a doting idiot.
“The other people. The ones who went away. Or got killed, if you believe the rumours. Everyone before you two. She had little to say about them. In fact, she pretty much said the same thing about all of them.”
“Which was...?”
“She said they were done. To be correct, the way she talks, she said they were ‘well done’. She couldn’t get away from them fast enough. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t lose a wink of sleep after they’d mysteriously vanish. It was weird. She was raised... differently. But it’s hard to say if what she used to call them actually meant anything. She could have said they were inconsiderate. Or mentally unstable. As long as she said the same thing every time, right? Because the same things kept happening to everyone who lived there. Still, it’s interesting, no? She says they’re well done and, next thing you know, those folks were well done. For this town, anyway. Maybe for this world.”
“So we’re...? We’re not well done?”
Brent laughed again. “No, Davey. You’re not well done. You want to know what she had to say about you and Junie?”
“Yeah, Brent. Come on. Tell me. You brought me this far. Let’s hear the punchline.”
There was a knocking on the sliding patio door. Brent and David turned around to see Cadence requesting permission to open it. Brent nodded and she slid the door open and stepped outside.
“Excuse me, David.” She turned her face to the ground, beginning to shiver again. Brent looked over at him and smiled, winking. She tugged at Brent’s shirt. “May I sit with you for a moment, dear? Would you mind? I’m feeling a bit tired. I’m going to sleep soon.”
David’s face hid the fact that, although he found Cadence disarmingly attractive, he wished Juno would come outside and take her back in. How much he was dying to know what had been said about them. The couple who lived in the kill house, who weren’t ‘well done’.
“Please.” Brent stood and gave her his seat. “I’m going to be right back. Have to use the little boy’s room. You two behave yourselves.” He smiled at David and ran inside. As he trotted off, and Cadence looked on, disturbed and confused, David heard Brent turn on the television in the living room, telling Juno that Cadence would be right back, and she should just watch the shows for a moment. Juno telling him it wasn’t a problem.
“Juno and I spoke.” Cadence stared at David’s feet. “May I? May I touch you?”
“Sure?” David asked more than said. “You can look at me too. It’s okay. We’re not making you feel uneasy, are we?” She shook her head. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t need to be so formal anymore. I respect your position on the matter, but it would be fine with me if you relaxed. It would make me feel more comforta
ble, actually. I feel like I’m walking on egg shells.”
“That wasn’t my intention.” Cadence turned her face up and looked past his eyes. “I never meant to make you feel unwelcome. Or uncomfortable. Can you forgive me? I’m so very sorry.” She clutched his right hand in hers, her eyelids starting to blink furiously as she pulled it to her mouth and chewed on the knuckles, drawing a thin stream of blood that she cleaned with her tongue after sniffing it. And, though he could see that he was definitely cut, he felt no pain. “Who sent you? Why are you here?” She kissed his wounded flesh lightly, in between the absent chewing, as she apologised.
“What? I mean, it’s okay,” David said, feeling the incredible slowness of time, looking back to see if Juno or Brent were watching. Thanking his God Brent wasn’t, but wishing Juno was. “You’re not alone. Not in a world where you aren’t... I’ve never felt anything like you since... How is it even remotely possible you’re still single?” He spaced out, watching with wonder as Cadence’s body flickered in and out of view, and then feeling time speed up again. Wondering why he’d said what he’d said. “I mean... your apology is accepted.”
Cadence continued to kiss and smell him with her eyes closed.
She removed her lips from his hand and looked above his eyes, her lids floating open slowly. Speaking to him as if she’d heard none of his excited rambling. Perhaps he hadn’t said it out loud. “Juno told me of your problems.” Cadence looked to the side for a moment. “I wanted you to know. And I’m sure I speak for Brent. I wanted you to know you can confide in us. We will help you if we can.” She leant over, her blink rate speeding up once more, and sniffed about him. Her breath coming heavy and warm. Stroking his neck as he heard the sounds of pebbles being crushed under plastic wheels. Teasing and exciting him for what felt like ages passing in the blink of an eye, before she pulled back and her lashes began waving slowly again. “Juno is rare. And you attract that. You’re a provider.”
fiX - A ParaBnormal Fairy Tale Page 14