You're Only Dead

by Jack Parker

  Two hours passed. It was now almost nine o'clock and he was still sitting here alone. Emery picked up his phone and checked the time, but was hesitant to call again. What was the use if his phone had died or gotten lost? Then when they found it again Emery would just look like a madman, leaving a million bloody calls on it like this. Nevertheless he dialed again, standing up and beginning to pace. He bit his thumbnail in concern as he got to voicemail again. "Me again. I'm guessing you haven't checked your phone or lost it or something. Maybe you went out with a couple of chaps after work for a drink, yeah? Since you figured I'd be gone. Well look, I don't want to ruin your good time, just um, give me a ring if you need picked up from somewhere, won't you? I'll be there in a flash. Just…uh, well maybe give me a ring regardless. I'm…starting to get a bit worried. Okay. Love you."

  Come four in the morning and there was nothing. Emery had stayed awake as long as he could. It wasn't until ten a.m. that he awoke on the couch, looking around him and quickly holding up his wrist to check his watch. He rubbed at his face and grabbed his phone, gut sinking. No missed calls. He stood up, marching into the bedroom to find the bed made and no sign that anyone but him had been here all night. Emery's heart began to pound and he quickly dialed the number again. No answer. Something was wrong. Something was very fucking wrong.

  * * *

  It was the worst weekend of Emery's young life. He called and called to no avail, desperately tried to track down Kurt's boss and god, why, why hadn't he logged more information about the forge? He wasn't able to find anything at all until Monday morning. He caught a few blokes outside on their way in and stopped them hurriedly. He didn't recognize either of them by their looks—Kurt had only ever given some of their names in passing—but surely they'd know something. "Uh, excuse me," he said.

  Two men turned to look at him, one muscular and in his forties, the other older and rawboned. The younger of the two straightened up and looked him up and down. "Yeah?"

  "Hi. Uh, sorry, look, I'm here about Kurt. You know him, don't you?"

  The man nodded. "Yeah, sure. He's not in yet, though."

  Emery sank. "Do you know what time he left on Friday?"

  "Friday? He never showed," the man replied, looking between Emery and his coworker. "Boss called him but didn't get an answer. Are you a friend of his?"

  "Flatmate," Emery muttered half-consciously, feeling light-headed. "The last time you saw him…it was Thursday?"

  The man nodded. "Is something wrong? Is he okay?"

  Emery swallowed heavily. "I-I don't know." He turned off before the man could say anything else and marched back down the street, hands shoved into his pockets.

  He must've visited every single shop in town between their home and his work looking for answers, but no one was of any help. An older woman recalled that he often stopped by her store for a newspaper and a pack of mints but she hadn't seen him since well before Friday morning. No one had seen him. No one knew where he was. He'd just…vanished. It was Emery's worst fear realized and he was absolutely terrified. It had been too long—there were no more rationalizations. He never thought he'd be looking for his partner in the bloody Sunday morning obituaries. He never thought he'd be visiting local hospitals, having panic attacks in the car before he composed himself and went in to ask about a John Doe. He never thought he'd be trying to hunt down Canada's most wanted hoping to find a clue somewhere, but it was all to no avail.

  After a week of fruitless searching, Emery shut himself in his bedroom and collapsed for two straight days, curling up on the bed and shivering. This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening. This was some horrible dream. He'd wake up and Kurt would be there, right next to him. Or maybe he'd wake up and Hunter would be there instead. Maybe Kurt Gabler never existed. Maybe he'd snapped two years ago and fallen into some kind of delusional fantasy where his version of an ideal man had rescued him from his stepfather's clutches and it was just now breaking up, pulling him back to the darkest of realities. He kept his mobile clutched tightly to his chest and took to sleeping most of the day in harrowed exhaustion.

  Emery's nighttime habits began to take on a psychotic quality. He would wake to the sound of his own screams some nights, covered in sweat, angry and frightened with his memory spotty. He would quickly reach for his phone to find that the only missed calls were from Bill that he didn't return. He couldn't be bothered to give a fuck about his job right now. The sleepwalking was worse. He never seemed to wake up in bed anymore. At first he would just find himself on the couch in the mornings. Once he came to with a terrible start sitting in what he realized was the driver's seat of his car. The next night he awoke sitting on a tile floor against the cabinets with bruised and bloodied hands. It was only after clumsily pulling himself to his feet and taking a look around that he realized he'd destroyed his entire kitchen in his sleep. Things were everywhere, broken, thrashed, scattered. All of his dishes were in shards at his feet. The oven was open. The burners were all turned on. Emery wrapped his arms around himself and shakily crept into the bathroom to wash and bandage his hands. That's when he stopped sleeping.

  No one Emery was able to find that they'd worked with in the past had seen or heard from Andrew Monaghan, Kurt's longtime Canadian alias. He even went to the top with a particularly nasty character by the name of Edwards who was the most likely suspect to have tried recruiting Kurt again, only to find that the man had been dead for the past three weeks. He was out of leads. He was out of ideas. He was out of his fucking mind. He resigned himself to sitting at home and drinking his sorrows desperately. He paced step after step, gulping beer after beer, placing call after call to Kurt's phone and receiving no reply. He downed the last of his bottle and chucked it away, wiping his mouth and breathing hard as the phone went to voicemail once more.

  "Where are you?" he asked it. "Why haven't you called back? How can you do something like this to me? You're bloody breaking my heart, Kurt!" Emery hung up, tossing the phone at his most recently discarded bottle and gripping at his hair. He whipped around to go and find another drink, stumbling and grabbing a shelf of his bookcase for support as he nearly fell. He hissed, righting himself and blinking drunkenly at the pictures on the shelf. Or picture, rather. He narrowed his eyes, noting that the only one up there now was the picture of his parents. The smaller one of him and Kurt on vacation was mysteriously absent. Emery leaned closer. It hadn't been knocked off. It hadn't fallen back. There was still a clear line from its little frame in the light layer of dust on the shelf as if someone had recently plucked it up. …Why? God, what the fuck did that mean? Did Kurt take it? Was it a keepsake? Did he leave on purpose? Emery felt himself falling over again.

  He tried to catch himself on a nearby desk but instead fell into it, dragging it over along with the glass terrarium that sat atop it. His world spun and he hit the floor alongside a crash. Bark substrate littered the floor. Glass was everywhere. The heat lamp had snapped apart and the bulb had burst. Emery staggered up to his knees and looked down at the wreckage in shock. "Oh…" he breathed. He quickly began digging through the pieces, chucking them aside, scrambling through the bark and flipping the desk back upright, but he was so drunk…he couldn't remember where he looked and where he hadn't. Everything blurred. He stumbled to his feet and backed away from it, holding his wrist to his mouth and closing his eyes.

  This was life without Kurt, Emery thought, sinking down onto his couch painfully. He'd bruised his arm falling. As he examined it he realized that he'd also cracked the face of the white gold watch Kurt had gifted him for Christmas. He bit his lip in horror and clutched it. Everything was ruined. Everything was gone. The full, happy little life he thought he'd established separate from Kurt meant absolutely nothing without him. He couldn't live this way. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. His eyes caught sight of the phone he'd pitched near the leg of the coffee table and he collapsed to the floor on his rear end to shakily pick it back up. His steadied his breathing and held it back to his ear. B
y now the long, continuous ring was so familiar that he wasn't even sure he was calling anymore. Maybe the sound was just on repeat in his head wherever he was, whatever he was doing. The soundtrack to his despair. He was almost at a loss for what to say when he was directed again to leave a message.

  "…Please," he said quietly. He sank back against the bottom of the couch and bowed his head down onto his knees. "…You can't be gone. You can't be dead. I need you. You're my other half, I love you so much…please just come back. Jesus, please just come back…" Emery clenched his eyes shut and felt searing hot tears jet down his cheeks. The phone slid from his grasp back into the floor. He wanted to drown. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion and never recover. He wanted a chance to say goodbye if nothing else, oh god, oh god… He nearly jumped out of his skin when something brushed his bare foot. On the floor below, a brightly banded shadow sat with one long hairy appendage resting over his toes.

  "Fidget," Emery gasped. He immediately bent over and with all the gentleness in the world scooped the animal off of the ground. It didn't struggle in the warmth of his hands as he held it up and frantically searched it for injury, which thankfully seemed to be lacking. His throat constricted hard. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" Emery cradled the spider in his hands and cried and cried and cried.

  * * *

  The world had never been so gray. Emery left early that morning to head to the jeweler's and get a fix for his watch, unable to stand the guilt when he looked at it. He absolutely couldn't face losing another thing. He pulled on a jacket without showering, indifferent to his completely haggard appearance as he trudged out the door. The weather was cold and it was a long walk but he didn't feel it. People smiled politely to him as he passed by and he ignored them. He couldn't smile back. He wouldn't ever smile again. Emery Fletcher was dead and whoever he was now didn't seem to have that capability. The shop was mostly deserted as he walked in, a single elderly woman perusing the necklaces. He walked to the glass desk and caught the attention of the man behind the counter.

  "Hello, sir," he said cheerily. "How can I help you?"

  Emery listlessly pulled the watch out of his pocket and set it on the counter. "Can you fix this?"

  The man picked it up, raising his eyebrows. "Hmm, let's see here…Mm hm. Hm, it just looks like the glass is cracked. Shouldn't be too much trouble to replace it. I can have it ready in just a few days. Is that soon enough for you?"

  Emery was looking away, eyes on the street outside. "That's grand."

  "It's a very stunning piece. You've got good taste."

  "It was a gift," Emery muttered.

  "Ah. Well, all the same. I won't charge much for it. Do you want to look at our selection while you're here? Maybe find a spare in the meantime?"

  Emery shook his head, moving off.

  "I noticed your accent. It's funny—seems like there're a lot of English folks moving into the area lately. More than I ever remember there being."

  Emery dragged his eyes back to him. "Hm?"

  "Oh, yes. Just a while back I had an Englishman stop in here right around this time one morning. And while he was here, he ran into two other English folks who seemed to know him, just by chance. It's a small world, isn't it?"

  Emery turned back around to the counter. "When was this?"

  "I guess it was nearly…four weeks ago now."

  "…What happened? What do you mean these folks seemed to know him?"

  "Oh I don't know, just the way they were talking. He seemed awfully surprised to see them."

  Emery's hands gripped the counter edge hard. "What happened then?"

  "He…left with them. Right away. Didn't buy anything—I think he was just browsing. Are you saying you know him too? I guess it's a smaller world than I thought." He laughed lightly, but was clearly uncomfortable under the severity of Emery's gaze.

  "Was he tall? Attractive, deep voice? Dark of hair and missing the last finger on his left hand?"

  "Uh, I'm afraid I didn't really look at his hands…but, yes, the other details fit if I remember right."

  Emery leaned over the counter. "Where did they go?"

  He shrank back. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

  "Was this a Friday?"

  "Uh…"

  Emery smacked his hand on the glass. "Come on then, was it or wasn't it a Friday?"

  "I don't…" he paused, eyes moving back and forth before he perked up. "Yes, I think it was. I remember asking him about his weekend…"

  Emery looked down at the glass, wide-eyed. Two English folks. Kurt was taken. He was abducted. Someone had swept him off the streets like a stray bloody cat and Emery had lost all this time looking in all the wrong places and feeling sorry for himself and drinking like a fucking id—

  "About the watch, I think it'll only be ab—"

  "Sod the watch," Emery interrupted, snatching said item off the counter. "Thanks just the same." Before the jeweler could reply Emery was out the door.

  * * *

  The shop looked about normal. It hadn't suffered much without him over the last few weeks, clearly, but he owed Bill an explanation, however brief. He waited outside anxiously as a lone customer finished up their purchase and walked out with their new leather vest, after which he quickly slipped inside, hearing the bell ring above his head.

  "Be just a minute," Bill called.

  Emery remained in the doorway, hands in his pockets. A moment later Bill emerged from the back, carrying a stack of shoe boxes. The moment he saw Emery he dropped most of them to the floor in shock. "Emery!"

  "Bill," he nodded in return.

  "My god," Bill's eyes stayed on him as he clumsily tried to set the rest of his boxes on a nearby counter, missing it completely and dropping those too before coming towards him. "Where in the hell have you been? I was starting to think you'd been killed!"

  "I know, Bill, I—"

  "You don't answer my calls, you don't show up to work. I went 'round your flat and rang your bell, even. I thought about calling the bloody authorities." He gaped at Emery and shook his head. "My boy, you look a sight…"

  Emery rubbed his stubbled chin and swallowed. "I'm sorry, Bill. I didn't mean to run off like that. I want to apologize for any inconvenience I've caused you. You've been nothing but good to me and you deserve an explanation."

  "Well what on earth is going on?" Bill demanded, taking his elbow and pulling him further into the shop.

  "Kurt is missing."

  Bill straightened up. "Missing? Your flatmate?"

  "Yeah," Emery nodded. "Bill, look, I…wasn't completely honest about him. He isn't just my flatmate, he…we're lovers."

  Bill gave him an annoyed look. "Are you really gonna stand there looking at these wrinkles and talk to me as if I was born yesterday?"

  Emery frowned. "You knew?"

  "You're a grown man living with another by choice. Not the hardest case to crack. Plus you brought him along that time to the pub a while back, didn't you? It was your birthday. Caught the two of you snogging in the hallway leadin' towards the loo. You were probably too pissed to remember that one, but it didn't leave me much room for doubt."

  Emery rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry. It wasn't exactly a secret, it's just…"

  Bill held up his hands. "Say no more. Private lives is private lives. But what do you mean he's missing?"

  "Just that. He never made it to work one morning and it's as if he's dropped off the planet. I've got to find him, got to leave the country, and that's why I'm here. I just wanted to say thank you for everything…and goodbye." He turned, but Bill snatched his arm again.

  "Now hold on, just hold on, don't just rush off."

  "I have to go, Bill. I've got to find him. I've just got a lead on who took him and I can't let it alone any longer than I already have. He needs me."

  "Emery, you've been run ragged. You look like you're about to drop. Come here, just sit a moment."

  "Bill—"

  "I said sit," the old man repeated gruffly, po
inting towards a chair behind the counter.

  Emery looked at the chair, then Bill, closing his eyes in frustration a moment. "…For a bit. Yes. Alright."

  Bill ushered him over and sat him down, pulling up another chair and a small end table covered in papers. He went to the back and came out shortly with a cup of tea, which he set in Emery's hands. Emery nodded his thanks and drank. Bill sat down at looked at him with concern. "Now start from the beginning, lad. What's going on?"

  Emery set his cup down and sighed. "Bill…I'm not who you think I am."

  "And who do I think you are that you're not?"

  "My name's Emery Fletcher. That's true. I was born in Brighton, that's also true. But…my legal name is Emery Eaton. Stepson to Hunter Eaton."

  Bill stared at him for a long moment. "Am I supposed to know who that is?"

  Emery shook his head. "Just some entrepreneurial millionaire. It's not terribly important. What is important is that I'm a fugitive."

  "Millionaire? Wh—a fugitive?" Bill echoed in disbelief.

  Emery nodded.

  "Well whatever for?"

  "I didn't leave England, I fled it. But it's worse than that. I'm a thief, Bill. A thug. A killer. Before you hired me out of the goodness of your heart, I was a criminal."

  "You're pulling my leg. You? A crook?"

  Emery pursed his lips. "Yes."

  There was a long moment of silence as Bill absorbed the shock of the confession, rubbing his chin with a hand and looking distant. "But…I thought you just said you were a millionaire's son."

  "For a long time I was…Two years ago I was kidnapped from a pub in South Croydon by a group of men who wanted to sell me back to my stepfather at a high price. But my stepfather was an abusive man. I didn't want to be sent back to him, so instead I joined up with them. Told them I could get them more money if they helped me, and I did."