by Cross, Amy
***
“Come to bed,” Ruth said, standing in the doorway. “Alex, it's late.”
Not turning to her, Alex continued to look out at the dark town.
“Another of those nights, huh?” Ruth asked, making her way over to him. “Can't sleep?”
“Sometimes I think I hear music,” he whispered. “Sometimes I think I feel the ground vibrating under my feet. Is that weird?”
She frowned, and for a moment they stood in silence. “Well, I don't hear music,” she told him finally, “and I certainly don't feel the ground vibrating. I think maybe you just have a very vivid imagination, and you can't accept that sometimes everything is okay. You nee to learn to switch off.”
“But what if I missed something?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the dark scene. “What if there's something out there and in all these years, I never noticed? Like a bear that's been so busy protecting her cubs, she hasn't noticed that the cubs themselves are turning into...” He paused again. “What if I'm that Momma Bear? What if I've been a blind fool and -”
“Alex, please, you're not a Momma Bear...”
“I can hear it,” he continued, swallowing hard. “Finally, I can hear a kind of dark pulse beating beneath the town. It's real, Ruth. It's real and it's out there and...”
His voice trailed off.
She waited for him to finish, before finally putting her arms around him from behind and holding him tight. She clasped her fingers together, settling them on Alex's belly.
“Alex,” she said calmly, despite a hint of irritation in her voice, “it's getting late, and you're not any kind of bear. Well, maybe you're one kind, but the good kind, the kind I want to join me in bed. So if you -”
Stopping suddenly, she realized she could feel something warm dripping onto her hands as they rested on her husband's ample belly. When a second drip fell, she began to peer around him to take a look, just in time to see another drip of blood falling. Gasping, she let go of her husband and stepped to one side just as he fell back, his whole body trembling violently as blood poured from his nose.
“In the pool,” he whispered. “Spiders in the pool. Bronx city make-up test. Hey, hey you. Spiders in the Bronx city make-up test in the pool.”
“Alex?” she stammered, dropping to her knees and trying to take hold of him, even as the shaking intensified. “Alex, what's wrong? Alex!”
***
Shoving her bag into the locker, Katie paused for a moment. All day, she'd been feeling distinctly uneasy, to the extent that she'd almost canceled her shift and stayed at home. Now, however, she knew there was no turning back. Simon would already have seen her entering the building on the CCTV monitors, and she figured she might as well earn another night's pay. Besides, she'd been thinking about her plans and she'd come to realize that she could just about afford to leave Bowley already.
With a sense of relief, she told herself that tonight would be her last night at the Border.
Her last night in Bowley.
She frowned. Bowley, the Border... In her mind, they were starting to seem like the same thing. Sometimes she felt as if one day she'd go so far down into the depths of the Border, she'd open the final door and find herself in the town square. That, she felt, would be the kind of irony she enjoyed, even though she knew it was impossible. The Border was just a club, albeit one that took itself a little too seriously.
Closing her locker, she walked naked along the corridor until she reached the door to the office. She paused for a moment, feeling a knot of anticipation in her chest, and then finally she stepped inside. Sure enough, Simon was at the desk, and sure enough he glanced at her briefly and then looked back down at his paperwork as if he wanted to pretend everything was normal.
“Hey,” she said finally, holding her hands together in front of her crotch.
“Hey,” he replied, turning to another page in his notebook. “You're late. The other girls started their shifts half an hour ago.”
“Sorry, I -”
“No excuses.”
“Sorry.” She paused, before making her way over to the desk. “I just wanted to say that -”
“You should get down there,” he continued, turning to yet another page. “Time is money and money is time. Remember?”
“Sure, I just...” She felt she had to say something, to somehow make the situation right, but she didn't know where to start. She also felt that if she told Simon she was planning to quit the Border, he might make some big show of affection to get her to stay, and that was the last thing she wanted. She just wanted to slip away at the end of her shift and disappear with a hint of mystery. Maybe even some self-respect, too. “So I'll get down there, then,” she said after a moment, heading to the door in the corner.
“I was joking, you know.”
She opened the door and glanced back at him. “When?”
“All that stuff I said the other day, after the funeral. You do realize I was joking, right?” He paused, still not looking at her. “It was a test.”
“It was?”
“I wanted to make sure that you're loyal. I do it to all the girls. Don't ask them about it, though, because I make them pretend it never happened. You should do that too. It's part of the test.”
“Oh.” She paused, painfully aware that he was lying but not wanting to cause a scene. “Sure. I mean, I figured it was a joke or something like that. It had to be, otherwise it'd have been completely ridiculous.”
“Completely.”
“That's good, then.”
She waited for him to say something else, before realizing that he was studiously ignoring her. Turning, she made her way through the door and then pulled it shut, before taking a moment to gather her composure and then heading down the steps. Loud music was blaring from nearby speakers, and when she got to the bottom of the steps she saw that several customers were already in place, while naked girls served drinks and sat with a few of the visitors. Making her way across the red-walled room, Katie smiled at a few of the customers and exchanged some pleasantries, but she didn't stop. After all, as a girl who worked down on the seventh level now, she had no time to waste up on the first. Even at Christmas, the Border was heaving.
The first level seemed so tame now. Almost pitiful, in fact.
“It really sounds crazy down there tonight,” Olivia said a few minutes later, down on the sixth level, as Katie made her way to the next door. “I think you're going to be busy.”
Katie smiled, but Olivia's comment only made her feel a little nervous. She'd quickly become used to the things that occurred on the first level, and the second had been pretty easy too; it was with the third level that she'd begun to struggle, and the sixth had almost killed her. The pay was good, though, and she'd been able to take regular nights off to recover from any injuries she sustained. Stopping at the next door, she took a deep breath and tried to brace herself for one final night of action.
“Dear God,” she whispered, repeating the ritual that she'd begun to use in an attempt to stay calm at every shift lately, “please let me get through this. Please -”
She paused, before thinking of the money. That was all that really mattered. With the money, she'd be able to escape, to get out of Bowley and never look back.
With a trembling hand, she opened the door and stepped through. The music was even louder now, and before she even knew what was happening, several figures lunged out of the pulsing red haze and grabbed her by her arms, pulling her down the steps as their bony, long-nailed fingers scratched at her flesh.
***
“I feel so bad about Bob,” Candy whispered, staring down at her hands in the stark bathroom light. She was halfway through getting dressed, with only her shirt and socks left to go, but suddenly a wave of sadness had settled in her soul and, with no other obvious sources, she figured the problem had to be Bob. “Maybe I should talk to him...”
She paused, before looking over her shoulder, toward the door that led through into Tom's dark bedroom. �
�Do you think I should do that?” she called out.
“Do what?”
“Talk to Bob.”
“Why?” From his tone of voice, he seemed to find the idea highly amusing. “Forget him. He's human garbage. Why would anyone talk to a man like Bob unless they had no choice?”
“But he's sad,” she continued. “I dunno, I spent a lot of time with him, I feel like I don't want him to get too down.”
“You'll be telling me next that you love the idiot.”
“I...” She paused again. “Well, I mean...”
Turning back to look at her reflection in the mirror, she realized that Tom might have a point. After all, even though she found Bob utterly infuriating, and even though the incident with the hit-man had made her run a mile, she couldn't deny that she missed having him around. The idea of loving Bob was crazy, it made no sense and it infuriated her, but her feelings for him were uncomfortably close to how she always imagined love would be, so it was impossible to discount the possibility entirely. She wished there was a simple swab test that would tell her the answer, one way or the other.
“I...”
Her voice trailed off.
“No,” she whispered, seeing the sense of shock in her own eyes. “I can't love him, that'd be...”
“You're making a classic mistake,” Tom called through. “You're mistaking love for pity.”
She frowned. “I am?”
“You feel sorry for Bob. You wish his life wasn't such a mess. You wish he wasn't a complete moron. I get it, those are natural reactions that anyone would feel when faced with a man like Bob. But none of those things mean that you love him. Love's something deeper, something most people never truly experience. They aren't loved, and they don't love in return. They try, of course, and they pretend, and society coddles them and tells them they're feeling actual love, but... There are, what, six billion people on the planet? Almost seven?” He cleared his throat. “Probably less than a thousand of them ever have a shot at real, true love. In fact... Hell, I don't even believe love exists.”
“You don't?”
“It's a human construct. It's a word that's used to cover over other emotions like pity and sympathy and... I don't know, dependance. Fear. All those things are real, but love? No way.”
“That's...” She paused. “That's horrible.”
“It's true, so get used to it.”
She took a deep breath. “No,” she said finally. “No, I don't believe that, not for one second. I think love is absolutely real. No-one goes through life without at least loving one time, and being loved. No-one. We all get... It's like we all get a little credit in the love department when we're born. All of us.” She felt a shiver pass through her body as she realized that Tom wasn't as much fun as she'd expected. “You know what?” she called out, grabbing her shirt, suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense to find Bob. “I think actually while you're out, I'm going to -”
Suddenly the light over the bathroom mirror blinked off, and she realized there seemed to be no power in the house at all. The adjacent bedroom was dark too.
“Tom?” she called out.
Silence.
“Tom, there's a power -”
Before she could finish, she spotted lights through the bathroom window. Limping over, she peered out and saw that the neighbors' houses were all lit up as normal.
“Huh,” she muttered, turning and fumbling across the bathroom, unable to see a thing until she reached Tom's bedroom. At least here, there was just the faintest hint of moonlight showing through the window, which meant she could see the dark shapes of the bed and the wardrobe, as well as the door in the corner.
She waited.
The house seemed so completely silent. Even the air-conditioning system was off.
“Tom?”
No reply.
“Are you checking the fuses?”
She took a few steps forward, passing the bed and limping out of the room.
“Tom, I really think -”
Stopping suddenly, she realized there was a figure at the far end of the corridor, framed in silhouette against the moonlit window. She opened her mouth to call out, but instead she tilted her head slightly, squinting in an attempt to get a better view of the figure. Deep down, she could already feel a sense of panic slowly starting to creep up through her belly, but she told herself that nothing was wrong, that nothing could possibly be wrong.
“Candy,” she remembered Bob saying one day in bed, “no offense, but your instincts are always a little screwy.”
She had been offended when he'd said that, even though she hadn't let it show. Now, however, she was hoping he was right, because her instincts were setting off all kinds of warnings.
“Tom?” she said cautiously.
“Candy,” the figure replied, with Tom's voice.
“Oh, thank God,” she said with a sigh. Making her way along the corridor, she felt genuine relief. “What the hell is going on, is there some kind of -”
She stopped a few feet from him, as she realized that he was wearing something that didn't seem quite right. He seemed slightly taller, as if he was wearing boots with thicker soles, but the most striking difference was his head: he was wearing some kind of head-dress or mask, with a series of broken twigs and branches poking up like a kind of crown. There was something extremely calm and peaceful about him, too, as if his heart was the only thing moving in his entire body.
Instinctively, she took a step back.
“Tom?” she said finally. “What are you wearing?”
“You wouldn't understand,” he replied flatly.
“I...” She paused. “But what is it?”
“It's not mine,” he continued. “I'm just the current occupant. It's part of a tradition that goes back a long, long way.”
“Huh.” Figuring that she really didn't want to get into anything too kinky, she turned and made her way back toward the bedroom. “Well, I'm just gonna grab my bag,” she told him, hoping to keep things as normal as possible even though she felt that Tom was a little weirder than she'd realized. “You're obviously very busy tonight, so I'll let you get on with everything and I'll give you a call in the next day or two, okay? Maybe after the weekend...”
Reaching the bedroom, she grabbed her bag and turned to limp back out into the hallway, only to let out a gasp of surprise as she found that Tom had followed her and was now blocking the way.
“Hey,” she said, forcing a smile, “that's a really neat costume. Did you get it for Halloween?”
He paused, before shaking his head.
“It makes you look like a... You know, what are they called again? Oh yeah, a moose!”
“A moose?” he asked, sounding a little puzzled.
“Or a deer.”
“A stag.”
“Or a stag,” she continued. “Yeah, that thing on your head is a bit like a stag. It's cool, definitely, but...” She paused, before stepping toward him, hoping that he'd get out of the way. “I thought you said you had somewhere to be?”
“I do.”
“Well then -”
“And so do you.”
She paused again. “Uh... Actually, I was thinking of just going home, Tom. You really tired me out tonight and -”
“You're not going home,” he replied. “I have a surprise for you. Turn around.”
She looked up at the broken pieces of wood poking up from the crown. “I don't think I'm in the mood for a surprise,” she said cautiously.
“There's no need to be scared,” he continued. “It won't hurt, I promise. In fact, you'll love it.” He waited for her to turn. “After that, I'll drive you home.”
“Well, I...” Figuring that his offer wasn't too bad, she turned her back to him. “I really appreciate you helping me out.” She waited, hoping that whatever the surprise turned out to be, he'd get it over with quickly. His surprises usually involved his penis in some way. “I should definitely speak to Bob,” she added finally, hoping to keep up the smallta
lk and avoid letting things get too deep. “I know you think he's pathetic, but I really think -”
“Look down at your chest,” Tom said suddenly, his voice sounding a little further away.
Turning, she saw that he'd backed over to the door.
“Tom...”
“Look down at your chest,” he said again, stopping as he reached the doorway. He was rubbing his right foot against the carpet now, which seemed a little odd, and after a moment he bowed his head, letting the moonlight catch the broken antlers.
“Okay,” Candy muttered, turning and looking at her own chest.
“What were you about to say?” he asked.
“I don't remember,” she said cautiously.
“Something about Bob?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, just that I think Bob -”
Suddenly she heard Tom running toward her from behind. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, but then she saw his shadow quickly falling over her, following by a heavy impact from behind that sent her stumbling forward until she put her hands out against the nearby wall, and then a sharp pain burst through her back. Gasping, she saw several of the broken pieces of wood bursting out through her chest, the tips covered in blood, as if Tom had kept his head bowed as he charged into her from behind.
She tried to ask what was happening, but as blood began to flow down her chest, she found she couldn't get any air into her throat at all, which meant no words came out.
Turning, she saw her shadow on the farthest wall, with Tom's shadow bent over behind her, his head pressed against the small of her back. Looking down again, she began to feel weak and dizzy as she saw the top of the crown still poking out through her chest.
“Behold,” Tom said finally. “The source of all life. The animal majestic, its prize claimed. I always wanted to try this, I thought it'd work. The others said it might be silly, but I knew it'd be fine so long as I got a good run-up and really threw myself into it all.” With that, he let out a loud, grinding cry of victory.
Still impaled on the crown's broken pieces of wood, Candy stared lifelessly at the wall. Just before the moment of death, a few tears had begun to roll down her cheek. A moment later her body began to shudder as, behind her, Tom started trying to wiggle the crown free from her back. The process took a few minutes, during which he let out a few choice curse words, but finally he stood up straight as Candy's corpse slumped to the ground.