Deliquesce

by Wendy T Lyoness

  “Liam? Why?”

  Amelie stiffens, stares at Cleo’s shoes. “I thought she…”

  “What? They broke up, so why would he—”

  “You don’t believe me?” Amelie shrinks, a bit, before anger flares up out of nowhere. “Well then, ask him! I’d say jealousy, but fuck if I know why men do anything. If you do tell him I told you he threatened me, you should remind him I can defend myself too. Don’t need a man to use a gun.”

  “You have a…” Cleo shakes her head. If Amelie owns a gun, it seems even less likely that she would have killed Elisa. She could have shot her dead. No need for blunt force. “Okay, I’ll ask him. But don’t go anywhere, Amelie. I will be back.”

  “Yeah? Fuck you.” Amelie slams the door shut.

  Cleo wouldn’t have minded teenagers in her building, if they’d dropped their attitudes. She’s not beaten Amelie. Not yet, anyhow. She’ll reconsider if she discovers the scrawny girl’s involvement in Elisa’s murder. Although, at that point, she might just tell her parents where their runaway hides. They could come pick her up.

  The calico traipses in front of her, while she retraces her steps to the stairwell, and inspects a piece of gum stuck to the underside of a door. Mice skitter away inside a wall after chewing on the insulation. Perhaps they can smell the curious cat.

  “You should be back, Cleo!” Amelie shouts, throwing her door open. “Quick as fuck! You should have fixed my shower days ago, so you may as well do it tonight if you’re up snooping on every person you tolerate in this shit hole!”

  If Cleo hadn’t moved from the door, Amelie wouldn’t have dared shout at her. She would have sat quietly inside without uttering a peep. Another night, she might not have let the behaviour slide. This morning, however, when sunlight seeps in through broken window panes, she’s got limited time. And she can’t spare a minute to set Amelie straight.

  “You listening to me, you old bitch?” Amelie shouts after her while she descends the stairs, but they soon lose sight of each other when Cleo slides past the infested mattress. “I don’t want to live like this!”

  “How about you learn to fix it yourself, and you won’t have to choose between staying in an apartment where the shower doesn’t work or going back home.” Cleo mutters. The calico looks up at her with its bright green eyes. “She won’t do it, I know, but it could have improved her lot in the long run. She might even have gotten a job.”

  Feet clatter down the staircases underneath and above her. The building has started to awaken. Even if none of her tenants pay rent, quite a few of them go somewhere in the morning. No one wants to live in her building for the rest of their lives, and those who aren’t too burdened by their vices work to afford to move somewhere else.

  Before her daughter’s death, she’d encouraged many, helped them as best she could. In Madgate, she doesn’t have to worry about running out of desperate people in need of a haven. There’ll always be someone to replace the tenants who leave. For better, for worse.

  Setting foot on the second floor once more, she hears a man scream at his partner. The calico hisses. Cleo ignores the commotion, proceeds toward Liam’s apartment, and avoids every window. The grime and dirt on them won’t shield her from the sun’s rays.

  Liam’s door stands ajar. She won’t have to bang on it again. If she wants, she can slip inside without anyone objecting to the intrusion. Did he lie? Trick her? Perhaps he’s a better actor than she gave him credit for, in which case he might have murdered Elisa and sent Cleo to pester an innocent. Amelie doesn’t seem the type to murder anyone over a disagreement. If she had been, the girl would have come for Cleo this week because of her shower.

  “Liam?” Cleo calls out to him, entering his home.

  A phone rings nearby, but someone picks it up, so she assumes it’s in another apartment. The walls are thin, especially after mice have chewed through the insulation. She’s glad she’s not affected by cold temperatures. She would have hated staying in the building during winter.

  Dishes lie piled in the sink in the cramped kitchen, a couple of drawers haven’t been closed all the way. The place stinks of cigarettes. Abstract art hangs in frames on Liam’s walls, yet the rest of the decor can only be described as sparse. He doesn’t own any furniture except a glass table and a fluffy, white couch. Does he sleep on it too? She’d expected him to own a laptop at the least, but he might have sold it before he shook his addictions.

  If she lingers, the sun will shine on her through the threadbare curtains barely covering the windows. Every minute outside her coffin puts her at risk. Where could Liam have gone? Upstairs or downstairs? Has he gotten a job after cleaning up his act?

  She reaches for a paper lying upside down on the glass table when a scream cuts her short. It didn’t come from the nearby apartments. It sounded distant, from another floor. She might not have heard it if she’d been human. The calico stares at the open door, fur rising on its back.

  The screaming resounds again, yet this time it doesn’t fade. Whoever is screaming screams for their life, well-aware they need someone to hear them to survive. If only Elisa had done the same, Cleo might have showed up in time to save her.

  Stepping out of Liam’s apartment, Cleo listens to determine the direction of the screams. An elderly woman cracks the door to her apartment, sticks her head out, and freezes when she spots her, licking her lips.

  “Who—”

  “Quiet!” Cleo waves her back inside her home. She has no use for a decrepit lady who’ll only get in the way.

  The calico raises its gaze toward the ceiling. Upstairs, the screams originate on the third or fourth floor. Higher maybe. Amelie?

  She hurries through the corridor, leaps up the stairs in the stairwell, faster than the cat can move. That fucker Liam tricked her. He might even have followed her to the fourth floor without her noticing. What if someone has embraced him and turned him into a leech? It’d explain how he managed to clean himself up, shake his addictions. He replaced them with the wondrous, bitter taste of blood.

  Bounding past the mattress riddled with bed bugs, she realizes the screaming has ceased. She arrives on the fourth floor only to be met by the regular sounds. Footsteps shuffling along the corridors, doors closing. The traffic outside has gotten louder, but it’s just another sign it’s morning. Time for the humans to go to work.

  From what she can see, the door to Amelie’s apartment sits closed. Undamaged. Either nothing happened to her, and someone else screamed, or Amelie might have been ambushed in the corridor. She’s got no choice but to check on the new girl again.

  Hopefully, Amelie is fine, but as she approaches the door, her doubts grow. Someone has left fresh scratch marks in the corridor’s discolored wallpaper. Long lines run from Amelie’s door to the next. The calico startles her by meowing by her feet, finally catching up after she left it behind.

  Ignoring the insistent feline begging for her attention, she grabs the handle to Amelie’s door and pushes it open. It stops halfway, refusing to budge until she tackles it with her shoulder. The water pipes bang inside, echoing through the walls, and tell her Amelie has been patient with her lackadaisical approach to the duties of a landlord.

  It’s dark. Even flipping the nearest light switch doesn’t illuminate much of the home that reeks of pot and cheap fast food. Didn’t anyone teach the girl to cook? Are the kitchen appliances broken as well?

  If it turns out Amelie had nothing to do with Elisa’s murder, Cleo will take a look at everything that’s broken in her temporary dwelling. The girl ought to move somewhere else, even if just another apartment in the same building.

  Something squishes under Cleo’s right shoe when she steps into the living room. Her immediate suspicion is another pool of blood, but after flipping a second light switch, she notices how it’s merely a soaked carpet. No one ought to live in these conditions. Amelie has been very patient. She must have had it terrible at home to not have returned.

  The calico saunters between th
e furniture, spreading its scent on chairs and table legs by rubbing against them. Except for the cartons and wrappers left over after fast food, the new girl hasn’t done anything with the place. Cleo brought the chairs inside, along with the bed in the bedroom, thinking Amelie would take care of the rest on her own after she moved in.

  When the calico pushes the door to the bathroom open with its head, a swarm of flies is unleashed. Not the worst she’s seen or heard in the building, but it does make her question how the hell Amelie didn’t complain about those first and foremost. Cleo could have lent her a can of bug spray. Fixing the shower, now that requires time and effort.

  The flies buzz around her as if privy to the fact that she’s not as alive as the cat. She swats them away, following the calico into the bedroom when it meows to alert her to whatever it’s found. After the morning she’s had, she fully expects to stumble upon Amelie’s corpse. Brain splattered across a pillow.

  She doesn’t know whether it’s an improvement to discover hundreds upon hundreds of photographs plastered to the walls, thrown on the bed, and stacked on the floor. If they’d not all depicted Elisa, she would have deemed it a normal, healthy hobby for Amelie to have.

  Yet the expensive-looking camera positioned on the tripod in the corner with its lens sticking out of the crooked blinds suggests it’s nothing but. Amelie is spying on someone. Maybe all of Madgate since the window provides her with a good view of the streets.

  “Why…” Cleo can’t help wondering if Amelie knew Elisa was her daughter. If the new girl had let her enter her apartment to fix the shower, she might have seen these photographs. Amelie has made no attempt to hide them.

  The calico jumps onto the bed. Giving in to her curiosity, in the hope she might discover a clue, Cleo examines the photographs of her daughter. Elisa can’t have been aware anyone snapped those on the walls since she never looked at the photographer. They’ve been taken from hidden angles behind bushes, hedges, or corners, and depict Elisa going about her life as normal. Nothing special about it.

  How long did Amelie stalk her? Cleo wants to torch the bedroom along with the camera, but she never did take many photos of her daughter. And now she’s gone. Amelie might have done her a service, in the end, by immortalizing Elisa.

  It’s not until she spots how oddly intimate the photographs on the floor tend to be that she feels like an intruder.

  Bending down to grab a few of them, a sticky substance that smells like lavender perfume clings to her fingers. Elisa smiles in the photographs, pronouncing the dimples in her cheeks. However, she doesn’t wear a lot of clothes, and the fact only becomes exacerbated the more of them Cleo looks at. Her daughter agreed to pose in such a manner for Amelie. She didn’t know a stalker could be so successful at entrancing the target of their affection.

  Admittedly, Amelie is skilled beyond her years. The photographs Elisa must have agreed to pose for strike Cleo as professional, high quality, and couldn’t have been snapped by an amateur. Amelie knows how to portray her subject in the most flattering light, when she’s not busy photographing them in secret.

  Sensing something on the back of a photograph as she touches it with the tip of her fingers, she flips it over to uncover writing done by a black marker pen. Vampire, it says, with a stylized question mark at the end.

  Amelie thought Elisa was the leech in the building? What would give her such an idea? She breathed up until someone bashed her skull in, didn’t she? She didn’t have fangs either. Elisa could have put the idea in someone’s head to impress them, but it would only ever have gotten her into trouble.

  Retreating out of the bedroom, no longer that eager to see her daughter alive and smiling, Cleo has an idea why someone might have murdered Elisa. Jealousy, like Amelie said. If the murderer didn’t have a problem with Elisa bragging about being a vampire, they might have killed her when they discovered Amelie’s photographs. Liam could have done it for that reason. Or the other guy he mentioned, Amelie’s friend. Amelie might even have done it herself, if she’d grown possessive and deranged.

  Cleo would like to think the best of her tenants, but evidently, they’re a bunch of crazies. Even her own daughter must have lost a few marbles if she thought it appropriate to mention vampires to anyone. Real leeches would kill her as a lesson to others. Cleo had warned her in no unclear terms.

  The calico strokes itself against her leg once they’re both standing on the wet carpet in the living room. They best leave. If Amelie is still alive, she must know why they targeted Elisa. Unless she did it herself.

  Perhaps Cleo’s worst mistake will prove to be how she allows anyone she pities to move into the building. She ought to have had a vetting process before it became too late. She can’t claim she’ll ever care again.

  Several loud thuds echo in the corridor outside as if someone bangs on the walls or falls down a staircase. It’s difficult to tell from inside the apartment, so she leaves, turning off the lights on the way out.

  “Help…” A faint voice greets her in the corridor. “Please.”

  She moves toward the stairwell with the cat at her heels. The sun outside shines brighter than she’s seen it do in years, flickering across the grime of broken windows. Visiting the fifth floor or worse, the roof, would be fatal for her at this hour.

  “Cleo.”

  Lying at the foot of the staircase to the highest floor, bleeding, Amelie’s legs bend at angles that make it clear they’re broken. She may not have sustained any fatal blow to the head, but blood pools around her nonetheless.

  Cleo should call an ambulance for Amelie if she wants to learn the truth about her and Elisa, yet the infernal hunger she’s experienced every day as a leech reappears with a sudden pang. She’s gone too long without feeding. Thank god she didn’t consider devouring the remains of her own daughter.

  “Cleo, what…” Amelie can’t say more than a couple of words before succumbing to pain. “Help…”

  Since Amelie is in no state to answer her questions, she could have a sip. The ambulance won’t arrive in time, if it arrives at all. No one cares about the humans in this part of Madgate. No one except her. And after how Amelie stalked Elisa, she may as well bleed her dry. It’s her right.

  “Liam, he… upstairs.” Amelie shivers. “He…”

  She can run upstairs to confront the murderer, leaving the new girl to die, or do the only thing she can do for her. She can’t say whether Amelie’s bones will heal, afterward, or if she’ll remain a cripple. The hunger won’t relinquish its hold on Cleo until she’s surrendered to it.

  Footsteps cross the floor above. She kneels next to Amelie, raising her off the blood-stained, dusty floor to cradle her in her arms. She shouldn’t care what happens to her tenants. They’d all flee their homes if they knew the truth about her. Not a one of them would stay.

  Sinking her fangs into Amelie’s neck, the girl cries. It’s her right to bleed her dry, but that doesn’t mean she has to fall victim to the instincts of a predator. She can save her, right here, right now, by embracing her. Someone else can deal with the aftermath. What reason does she have to walk the Earth after losing her daughter?

  “Elisa told the truth,” Amelie whispers.

  “She wasn’t a vampire.”

  “Never claimed to be. Only wished she could cure them.”

  After everything she’s been through, the words of a teenager shouldn’t affect her unbeating heart. Elisa should have joined her in eternity rather than died of misplaced stubbornness. No rhyme nor reason in trying to be decent in a city like Madgate.

  Cleo quells her hunger, drops Amelie, and hopes she did enough. Perhaps the girl can get revenge on her parents with the gift of death. Or she’ll become another pointless mistake committed by an elder who ought to have known better.

  A warm draft slides along the corridor, reminding her of the sun’s presence. She doesn’t have time to dwell on her choice, nor wait and see if Amelie will recuperate. The door shutting on a floor above alerts her to how
the man who murdered her daughter gets away.

  If Liam’s retreated to the fifth floor, or the roof, he might have realized what she is. He might have murdered Elisa at the time he did, so she would lash out in this way and walk into a trap. He never seemed that bright, but she could have underestimated him.

  “Excuse me, Amelie.” Cleo steps over her, placing her foot on the blood-streaked staircase. Amelie took quite the tumble before she found her. It’s sort of impressive how she survived at all. Not that she did. Not after their meeting. “I’ll deal with Liam, set him straight. He won’t hurt anyone again.”

  “He’s…” Amelie raises her voice in protest, eyelids fluttering, and passes out in her own blood. If she does awaken, she will have to find someone to teach her about her new world. No one appreciates a fledgling who doesn’t respect or understand the customs of the city.

  “Come on, Cat.” Cleo climbs the stairs, refusing to wait for him. He’s quick to obey anyway, this time.

  Litter lies strewn across the stairwell landing between the floors. Broken drywall, rags, and bottles. Glass crunches underfoot with each step. The cat meows, as if telling her to be as careful where she steps as him.

  A stench of urine flows down from the fifth floor. She’s stopped letting her tenants live on it. By now, it should have been condemned. Along with the rest of the building, maybe, but none of the other floors have holes in their walls.

  Abandoned items sit in an armchair missing its cushions in the middle of the corridor. Broken vacuums, a SDTV, and a large assortment of bottles. She can’t recall whether some squatter snuck in recently and set up shop in one of the disused apartments, or if she hasn’t cleaned up in months. It could be either. The fifth floor has become a dumping ground.

  She can see straight into the closest apartments since they’ve got holes the size of fists in their walls. The only creatures moving inside are cockroaches and mice. It wouldn’t shock her if the dusty air has become poisonous to humans at this point. Usually, a heavy padlock bars the door between the stairwell and the fifth floor, and living on the floors below still has to beat living on the streets.