“It’s… It’s something,” he said. “It’s The Nest. Been here for as long as anyone’s ever known.”
“Hmmm….”
We watched each other for a moment. I got the impression he didn’t want me to leave but I definitely didn’t want to stay.
“A weird old place, The Nest.”
Urgh… He’s not going to shut up anytime soon, I thought. Better make myself comfortable.
“Mind if I?”
“Go right ahead.”
I lit a cigarette and propped myself up on the counter. Without me asking, he dipped his hand into my pack to pluck out a cigarette. I had no choice but to hold my lighter up to the end. Cheeky little shit, I thought but for some reason I was still charmed by his smile.
“So it’s a weird old place,” I said. “How weird?”
“Are you talking as a tourist? Or as a cop?”
“I told you. I’m a former cop.”
He nodded and gave me a wink of understand.
“You can get anything at the old love nest,” he said and licked his lips. “You needing some company for tonight?”
And the penny dropped so hard I almost felt it smack the base of my skull.
“How much?” I asked although I instantly regretted it.
“Hmmm… A man of the law will surely be able to secure some sort of discount.”
He winked again. His mannerisms were beginning to annoy me but still, I leant in close to him, enraptured by the tiny man and his grand promises.
“I’ve got brunettes. I’ve got red heads and blondes and green haired punk girls. I’ve got girls as small as me and as big as you and guys that are even bigger. I’ve got-“
“Okay, okay. I get it,” I interrupted, eager to stop him before he burst into song. “Get me a blonde. I don’t really care about the height.”
“And age?”
“I don’t care about that either as long as they’re over twenty-one.”
“Nice…” he said as he picked up the phone. “I’ll call ahead and say you’re on your way.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“Anytime.”
I turned to leave and he reached over the counter to smack my ass.
It had been a pretty strange day.
Chapter Seven
Lincoln
It started with a hair sample. Just a small one pulled from her temple. I held it for a long while with just a patch of her scalp exposed at the top of the sheet.
“You’ll be coming back soon,” I said to Etta.
Still, I found myself waiting for her to respond to me like she’d move beneath the sheet and suddenly be alive once again. For a few minutes, I sat on the cold concrete with the strand of hair pinched so tight between my fingers it hurt.
“Not long,” I said. “Not long at all.”
I watched her, waiting for her to move, waiting for her to sit up beneath the sheet and embrace me. When I felt the chill rise through the floor up my legs, I knew it was time to get up.
Walking over to the machine, I stood in front of it with a sense of reverence. Even though it was of my own making, it felt that I was regarding some ancient structure created by otherworldly beings.
No one knew of its existence apart from me and Norma and there came such a feeling of power from it that I felt myself grow dizzy. Yet the hair never left my grip.
The machine came to life in a flurry of icy blue lights that glowed its unique shade of indigo onto my face. In that moment, it lit up my eyes. It lit up my entire life with the possibility that I’d see her again.
Deep within its core sat the mechanical heart that would pump life into the clump of cells I was to introduce. Sterile and untouched, it sat surrounded by glass and lights, waiting to be penetrated by the hair shaft. I slid it inside and with great reluctance, pulled my fingers away.
A moment later, I was closing over the door, pressing the great purple button and listening to the hissing sound of the processor. Fuck, I thought. It’s really happening.
The blue lights floated over the sheet on Etta’s body like a portrait of some ethereal, electric night time.
“It’s happening,” I cried, falling to my knees. “It’s happening, sweetheart. You’re coming back!”
The lights danced where her face was supposed to be. Soon, I’d be kissing it again and feeling the softness of her skin.
“Norma!” I called up the stairs. “Normal it’s okay. I’ve fixed everything!”
I ran up the stairs, taking the steps so fast I tripped twice, skinning my knees on the rough wood.
“Norma!”
She must still be asleep but that was okay. She’d wake up to the greatest news she’d ever receive.
“Norma?”
There was still no sound. I moved into the kitchen ready to see her sleeping body on the floor but she wasn’t there.
“Hey, Norma.”
I looked up at the clock and realized I’d been down there for six hours already. How did that happen? I was just… gone for a moment.
“Norma, shit I’m sorry I left you there for so long. Norma!”
It was then that I looked up and saw the door to the patio was open. Outside smoking, I thought. That’s where she always is. The door was only slid open enough to fit Norma’s small, elderly body and as I pushed it all the way open, I realized how exhausted I was and it fell back with a clatter.
I had grown weak these last few months, and weaker still over the last couple days. Now I was running on nothing but rum and adrenaline. As I stepped outside, I could see my reflection in the windows, could see just how skinny I had gotten. My ribs protruded from my sides like a landscape of ancient rocks.
“Norma? Are you out here? I have something…”
I saw something else in the window. It was moving in the pool behind me.
“Hey? What are you doing out-?”
Norma lay on her back floating in the center of the pool. I assumed she’d climbed into the water to cool down but still sedated by the valium, she’d simply rolled over onto her back and fallen asleep.
“It’s getting really cold out here,” I said. “You better come inside. I have the most amazing thing to show you.”
She said nothing and I took a step forward. Kneeling down, I attempted to reach out toward her in an attempt to pull her to the poolside. It was then that I saw how the emerald green water had become discolored around the perimeter of her body.
I leaned in closer and saw the blood pouring from her wrists, cascading down into the pool from her pale, fragile arms.
“Norma!”
I jumped in and slapped a hand to her throat. There was no pulse, no movement of her breathing.
“Wake up. Wake up!”
But I saw how much blood there was. It was soaking into my shirt, pouring down the sides of my body and turning the water around me crimson.
“Fuck. FUCK!”
I shook her, pointlessly and her body sloshed in the water. Something cold and sharp brushed against my foot. Looking down, I saw something glint beneath the water. A razor blade, one of my own she must have taken from my bathroom.
I stepped over it as I pulled her up onto the ground. All the blood had been drained from her so that her skin looked like the whitest alabaster.
“Kiss Etta for me,” I said as I stood up. “I have to go back to work now.”
Chapter Eight
Berger
The room wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be but the service was worse. The old bitch at the desk threw me my keys and told me take the last room at the end of the hall. When I opened the door, I was hit by the smell of lavender air freshener, the same stuff a guy last year had used to cover up the smell of his wife who he’d murdered.
Some cases just don’t leave you. As I lay down on the bed and kicked off my shoes, I remembered the day when I’d turned up to see the husband, a banker named Gerald with eyes as guilty as a shark’s, protest his innocence.
But there was no mistaking that sm
ell, lavender and decomposition. It permeated everything. I had to throw the suit I was wearing in the trash. No matter how much I washed it, it somehow still smelled like decay. I liked that suit as well.
A knock sounded on the door and I yawned as I drifted over to answer it.
“Yup?”
“It’s Candy,” came a squeaky voice.
A short girl stood in the doorway in a silver dress that barely covered her ass. Despite her size, she was perfectly proportioned with slim legs and pert breasts.
“Is that Candy with a C or with a K?” I asked as I stepped aside to let her enter.
“With a great big C O C K,” she purred and licked her lips.
She gave me a little twirl as she walked past me then sat on the edge of the bed. Looking up from beneath her bangs with her big, blue eyes, she slapped the bed and blew me a kiss.
“Bertie said you were traveling through here,” she said.
“Bertie? Oh.. Yeah. You been working for him for long?”
I didn’t know why I was making idle conversation but I sat down beside her and placed my hand on the small of her back.
“I don’t work for him, silly. He works for us.”
“Whatever.”
I lay back on the bed and unzipped my fly.
“Ready to get down to business?” she asked, straddling my thighs.
“Having a real shit day,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”
“I can make your day aaaaall better,” she said. “It’s what I do best.”
She released me from my pants but I wasn’t hard enough yet. Frustrated, she pumped her hand up and down until she was satisfied I was aroused.
“Hmmm… You’re a big boy,” she hummed as she swallowed me up.
I waited to feel something, some sort of relief from my uneasiness, from the weird gnawing numbness that had been chasing me but I felt nothing. My body did what it was supposed to, my cock grew harder as she sucked and I shook beneath her touch but my brain was empty.
Tangling a strand of her gossamer hair around my finger, I imagined I was in bed with Miranda and she was sleeping peacefully on my chest. I thought about her kissing me as I ejaculated. It was the only time I felt anything at all.
The girl lifted her head, coughing and spluttering as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Woah, it’s been a while, eh?”
“Your money’s on the table.”
She took it and left without saying goodbye. I lay back on my bed and for the first time since I left, I turned my phone on. There were ten missed calls from Miranda and three angry messages.
You said you were coming back. Where the hell are you? The kids have been waiting for you all day.
With guilt racking my body, I called her back. She answered on the first ring with the sound of kids’ cartoons playing in the background.
“Frankie? What the hell? Where are you?”
“I… I don’t know.”
I thought about the girl who just left and felt the peculiar urge to cry. What had I done?
“I don’t know where I am,” I said, feeling stupid. “But I have to tell you something.”
“What do you mean you don’t know where you are?”
“Will you listen to me!”
I was crying properly now and couldn’t hide it in my voice.
“Franklin will you tell me what’s going on?”
“I… I don’t know.”
I let out a sob and it sounded so alien to me. No noise like it had escaped my body before.
“Fuck, Miranda I love you so much. I’m an asshole.”
The kids’ cartoons grew quieter as she shut herself in the bedroom.
“What’s going on? You know I love you too.”
There was fear in her voice and I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t deserve her. She needed better. I decided to come right out with it.
“Miranda, I’m so sorry but I’m not coming back.”
“You’re not…”
“I’m not coming back,” I clarified. “I love you too much to be anywhere near you.”
I hung up sobbing. She called back over and over but I was too afraid to answer. Instead I hurled my phone at the wall until it smashed into dozens of pieces.
Chapter Nine
Lincoln
There was so much blood. There was no way to clean it up. It congealed around my feet and sunk into the gaps in the tiles.I don’t know how long I just stood there, watching the blood turn black along with Norma’s lips but I didn’t walk away until the sun came up.
When I did, I walked up to the bedroom. Lying down, I stared up at the ceiling and pulled the covers up around my neck. They smelled like Etta, like what life was like only two days ago. I breathed in her scent and closed my eyes. Maybe if I breathed in hard enough she’d appear beside me.
Outside, I could hear the sound of a car pulling up outside the gates. For some reason, I imagined it was Pinstripe’s guys. I’d waited for someone to come and find me, come and interrogate me about his death but no one had arrived. Clearly they bought my story about a heart attack.
The memory of the basement came back to me now, the smell of fear and shit and the sound of the girls whimpering. I pulled the covers up over my face to block it out. It wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t go around saving everyone. No matter how much I tried, they always died anyway.
The car outside shuddered to a halt and there was the sound of the door slamming followed by quick footsteps. A moment later, the gate was squeaking open and the footsteps meandered slowly around to the pool. It wouldn’t be long until whoever it was found what was laying there.
“What the fuck?” came a familiar voice through the window. “Norma? Norma! Fuck!”
“Berger?”
With the covers still around me, I scurried over to the window and looked down. He was bent down by her body with his head in his hands. Sensing he was being stared at, he looked up and gesticulated wildly.
“Bosworth, you did this?”
“Slit her wrists? No, why would I do that?”
He stared at me for a long while, his arms still waving around in disbelief.
“Get down here, Bosworth.”
I dropped my covers to the floor and sighed.
“Be right there.”
He was still standing beside Norma when I greeted him with a bottle of vodka. He didn’t bother taking the glass, preferring to swallow a stomach full from the bottle.
“What are you doing back here?”
“Hey, nice to see you too.”
He continued to look into Norma’s face. I noticed his hands were shaking.
“Where’s Etta?” he asked.
“She’s doing some work in the lab.”
I don’t know why I said that. It just felt so natural to protect him from the truth.
“The lab?”
“I built a lab.”
“Jesus, Bosworth. What the hell’s been going on down here?”
“A lot.”
“Evidently.”
He sat on the nearby sun lounger and I took the one beside him. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was just two buddies having a drink in the sun, if it wasn’t for the body beside us.
“When did that happen?” he asked, pointing the bottle over toward Norma.
Being a hardened cop, the concept of corpses wasn’t unknown to him and now he seemed to be reverting to a classic policeman’s line of questioning.
“Last night.”
“Where were you when it happened?”
“In the basement.In the lab.”
“And Etta?”
“With me.”
“Did she say anything significant to you before she took her own life?”
I shook my head.
“She’d just had a drink. Popped some pills.”
“Pills?”
“Valium.”
“Where’d she get them?”
“Me.”
I threw the now empty bottle of vodka
into the pool and watched it bounce across the surface of the water where the chlorine had mixed with Norma’s blood.
“So you came back,” I said. “You must have really missed me.”
He laughed, albeit caustically.
“You know, Bosworth, I kinda did.”
He lit a cigarette and reclined back in his seat. His face was unshaven and red and blotchy. His exhausted eyes were lined with new lines and his lips were chapped. Still, he kinda looked like the quintessential handsome, bad-boy, anti-hero.
“Miranda know you’re here?”
“Nope,” he said, blowing a smoke ring up toward the sun.
“Didn’t work out, huh?”
“Nope.”
He blew another smoke ring and looked over toward Norma.
“How’s Etta coping?” he asked.
“Eh?”
“With…”
“She’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“Well, not fine. She just, erm, needs some time alone.”
He could tell there were lies in my eyes but he couldn’t figure out why.
“Hmmm…”
He jumped back off his seat and crouched down beside Norma. There were flies gathering around her mouth and she was starting to smell bad. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t care about it at all. My brain was frozen, my body as absent as my feelings. There was nothing in me by a pure kind of numbness that most people spend their lives trying to achieve. I wondered if I’d reached a state of Nirvana.
“How can you just sit there?” asked Berger.
I shrugged.
“I’ve seen it all.”
“She’s your fucking mother-in-law. Are you not going to call someone? Are you just going to leave her here?”
I shrugged again.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess?”
He stood back up and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’ve just dumped my girlfriend,” he muttered under his breath. “Driven thousands of miles and fucked up my life and now there’s this body. This fucking body. How could things get any worse?”
I knew how they could get worse. He could see what was beneath the sheet in the basement. He could see the hole in Etta’s head.
Jewels and Panties (Book, Thirteen): Mad Love Science Page 3