they say the owl was a baker's daughter: four existential noirs

by KUBOA

  I checked his chest, didn’t trust myself that his heart wasn’t beating. It seemed peculiar, peculiar that the neck would act on the heart so quickly, like there should be something else to the death of him—the neck made it a fact, but there should be some passage of time, an interval, a way to decipher life from death more than I’d fallen over.

  The veins on the back of my hand were bloated, looked like lizard tongues, looked like I’d been growing someone else’s skin in the middle of mine.

  For a moment, I realized that I wanted to feel his heart beating, wanted it to beat, wanted him to be alive. But in that moment, all I did was stare at my hand, knew the pulse I felt was my blood pushing against my fingertips like it wanted out.

  ***

  The room. Everything happening reduced to the length it felt a breath out of me reached, an arm length, a slight touch further.

  A rush of thinking, sudden, violent, unwelcomed got all over me, cramped me up to the door, my back to it.

  Obviously, what’d just happened had just happened, as had each thing prior to it, which had origin in which, which touched on which, which meant which, there was no room anymore for that.

  I was checking and rechecking the locks to the door when it occurred to me I wasn’t in my apartment—I was still in thirteen, the last place I should be.

  I started unlocking the doors, stopped, put them all locked, again, stared.

  Blinked.

  Ducked my both hands up under the front of my shirt, started wiping with it, jutting it, humping it all over the door front. I did this until I was wheezing, nose clogged to the point my eyes stung.

  Was there any way to think I could remove traces of myself from this apartment?

  I looked round, fixated on things for no reason in particular—the arm of a chair, the glop of light on the desk corner, the darker patches of carpet, the light switches—no idea what I was looking for.

  Touching my pockets like I might find my cigarettes, I knew there was no use in that. There was no use.

  Dimitri’s phone vibrated in my pant pocket, the noise and touch of it causing me to strike at myself, to brush up and down, hands over my head, hands over my head, involuntary, trying to clear myself of an insect even though I knew it wasn’t there.

  I opened the phone, fumbled at the button to show the message, a long line of incomprehensible letters, a question mark in the middle, in the exact middle, in a lump of garble.

  Ridiculous.

  I squinted at each word as though one might remind me of something, have enough to it I could get a context, decipher the thing, even choppily.

  Then I noted that below the message there was information about the it—the number the message had arrived to, this phone, labeled Dimitri, and the number the message had come from, some number, labeled Ginette.

  ***

  The earlier messages had come from a number that had no name labeling it. I dotted back through old messages, found that these two numbers—Ginette, unnamed—and only about four others were archived, in any way.

  Then I ducked the phone back into my pocket, rubbed at my eyes, moved back to the front door, tottering, unable to go through.

  If I left the apartment, I was leaving myself at the mercy of anything, I was behaving like a child hoping that pretending would carry enough weight to get myself overlooked.

  There was no possibility that I wouldn’t be connected to what’d happened in this apartment and the most vicious reality of this was that I could no longer, even flimsily, construct what my rationale for anything had been.

  That Ginette might’ve been in some sort of trouble.

  I nodded.

  It was only natural.

  To find out if something had been going on.

  This was a line that separated things from things, this willingness to act on what was observed. I remembered thinking that, but had no strength in the remembrance, it was a though I’d thought that to myself at one point, but nothing else I’d done had anything to do with it. It remained a fact, I couldn’t argue with it, but there was nothing beyond that, nothing in how I’d proceeded—I’d just strung along through guilt and shyness, through fatigued anxiety, embarrassment, and now I was left to defend myself of the results of these things.

  Dimitri was dead and locked in Ginette’s little bedroom. In the span of an overnight, I’d shifted awake from nobody into a murderer and there was no reason for it, it was as much a catastrophe for me as it was for Dimitri.

  ***

  Another pacing around the apartment, I realized I was looking for someplace to hide. The front door just stood there, my apartment was just through the wall, looking at the wall was an inch off of looking at my own rooms, but the cringe of nausea that overcame me if I even thought of going back there was incapacitating, bent me forward, had me clenched and sweating against the roils in my gut.

  Finally I gave in, used the toilet as hurriedly as I could, flushed still sitting, got my pants back on without wiping, started to move again for the main room but another rubbing of heat stopped me, I back pedaled, lowered my backs, voided myself, ran my knuckles over my lower back to try to ease out anything that might’ve remained, again stood, flushing, pants closed, was back in the main room two minutes before the urgency returned.

  I laughed three breaths, completely miserable, staggered to the apartment door, unlocked it, let it close behind me, was through my own door and locked in before I could even consider it, like shoplifting a soda by opening it hidden behind a magazine, realizing the one action didn’t have correlation to the other.

  In my bathroom, without the lights on, inhaling myself, moaning at my exertions, I heard Dimitri’s phone vibrate, again, barely heard it, flushed still sitting, a blunt cough unclogging my ears, sounds coming in like toy train whistles.

  I’d killed someone less than twenty minutes ago, I thought, like it was still a curiosity, still something debatable, or like it was something I might mention in passing, have someone correct me on, something I’d overheard wrong, misinterpreted through some sly mistake of dialect.

  -I said it aloud, I killed someone, bewildered by the fact that I was doubting it. I said it, again. Then said You killed someone? a purposeful tilt to the accent that made it a question. I killed someone, I said, perfectly uncertain, but not of any of my recollections, uncertain of something semantic, of some subtlety of definition.

  Maybe that Dimitri wasn’t a person.

  -So I said, I killed Dimitri, removing the quirk of definition, making it more a flat fact.

  Still it sounded peculiar, dissonant.

  Maybe that I wasn’t a person, I sniffled, but didn’t seem to think that the sentence necessarily indicated that I was a person, just that I was I—a talking frog, a pile of wet paper, anything that existed and could be referred to.

  I was something, regardless of what it was.

  I’d killed someone.

  The sentence stood inarguable, factually, but nevertheless incomprehensible to me, a poem, something that only sounded like what it said.

  ***

  I poured some water from the tap into a cup I’d pulled from the basin, poured six or seven ibuprofen tablets into my palm, swallowed them, a bit of water dribbling to the counter that I wiped at with my hand, my hand then through my hair.

  It was six thirty-seven, by the oven clock. Morning, unerringly morning. I just looked at the numbers while they changed—thirty-nine, forty—then set the thermometer under my tongue, looking down at my feet while I waited for it to record my fever.

  No fever. Or so slight it didn’t matter. Ninety nine three, ninety nine four.

  I shook the thing down, set it under my tongue, but just as quickly removed it, knew it was correct, that I didn’t need to be ill to explain myself at this point. No sleep, hardly any food in me, medicine running its course, the sound of creaking leaning from me however I tried to relax, there was no
telling what I actually was.

  It seemed absolutely horrifying, the sudden finiteness of it all, not even Finite how many minutes until someone was bound to go into thirteen—not Finite. Inexorable. Absolute. Everything had moved from erect to collapsed-years-ago without the count of three.

  At the same time, though, I mumbled, didn’t it seem I could just stay where I was, that everything going on without me would keep on going that way, might not seep in through the door?

  I touched my hand to my forehead and the skin ached. I repeated this, fixated, even smiling. It was the skin of my palm that ached when the palm was on it own, held up, held away from me, but when it came to my forehead, even when it wasn’t in contact, just the heat of it bearing down on my brow, the forehead took the ache on, sagged under it. Or my forehead ached, first, and the palm spooned the ache away a bit at a time, a bit at a time.

  Or neither, I said, exhausted, humiliated, like I’d been actually telling this to someone and they’d caught me out on my half formed stupidities.

  ***

  I tried to keep focused on a thought—that the incoming message from Ginette didn’t mean that she was alive. It could’ve originated from her phone, someone else doing the sending.

  But this was ludicrous.

  Unable to focus any better on an alternative, I pawed at the idea, each thought ridiculing the notion more and more.

  The phone showed messages nearly every day for a month, other saved messages from months prior, from Ginette.

  Had the deception been going on so long?

  I had a last little flare up, a last courage in myself, that perhaps the majority of the messages were genuine, they’d only just recently changed, maybe even over the course of the night—a simple tool to have around, an easy appearance to make.

  Then I’d had enough, laid to the sofa, immediately sat up, laid to the sofa, immediately sat up, automatic, like I was making the incorrect motion, my body sensible enough to retch me up from down, still awake from attempting to sleep, but only that, not offering an alterative, a broken little doo dad, I was a button that fit fine through the hole but fell right off after.

  My stomach knotted up, I flopped in two, catching myself on the sofa arm, twisting at the neck, lips an obscene snarl tugged around to one side of my head.

  Leaning there, suddenly, I brought my fist down, as hard as I could manage, to the fabric of the arm, felt my wrist sizzle with numb and it recoiled, striking me square in the nose, my legs giving out, a blunt collapse to my knees.

  I stayed there. On the floor. Stayed there. My hands were halfway through the motion of cupping, blood streaming from my nose, palm butts to either side of the throbbing flow but not touching each other, making a hole I was dribbling out through.

  ***

  I made my way over to my telephone, took the receiver up, pressed the button for the dial tone and listened to how I could barely hear it, let the line go dead, hung it up.

  The phone did something to relax me, though, and I again hit the button to dial, keying in the number to the store where I worked. Whoever was opening would be there, prepping shipment.

  A supervisor I hardly knew called Leanne answered and I told her I was calling because I was ill, scheduled for the afternoon but was sure I couldn’t make it.

  Obviously busy with something else, taking her exasperation out on me, she said I’d have to get coverage, that someone else had called out already and she wasn’t going to work alone until four when the early crew left at noon.

  I stammered politely that I honestly had a high fever, that I wasn’t playing around, I couldn’t make the shift. She got a pointed little tone, said that she had to come in when she wasn’t feeling well, everyone did, that I should find coverage and she snapped that she thought Samantha or somebody wanted hours.

  I stood, listening to her doing paperwork or something, felt uncomfortable that she was being so quiet, just letting me stand there, just keeping the phone to her ear.

  -Can I have some people’s numbers? I finally asked, leaned to the counter, a droplet of blood from my nose again over my lip hitting my bent knee.

  She asked me if I could call back awhile later and I, confused, said I’d probably pass out, actually, and could I just have some numbers.

  Another two minutes of her working—maybe two minutes, I didn’t know—my nose stopped itself up or at least stopped dripping to my knee, stopped clogging in the hairs of my shin.

  She cursed at something unrelated to me then whipped this into telling me to forget it, she’d find coverage or would deal with it and as I tried to both apologize, say Thank you, explain myself, she hung up.

  ***

  I cleaned myself at the bathroom sink, brushed my teeth, went through little ritualized motions I’d collected, things that constituted the part of my morning I largely paid no attention to. Now I watched them, clicked my tongue into the sponge of my cheek as I ticked off each one, the sound of observing appalling.

  I loitered at my closet and bureau, knelt to examine the floor where Dimitri had attacked me—started to argue with myself about the interpretation of this event—but saw such clear indications of the violence, an ugly tug of his dingy hair just laying there, cakes of dandruff still moist mixed in it.

  I looked away, put on a new shirt, new pants, my shoes without any socks. I had a cigarette and looked at the cupboard of the kitchen, the wall beyond the stovetop, held my breath to see if I could hear even a creak of sound from thirteen, some evidence someone had gone in while I’d been in the throes of anxiety, remorse, feeble panic, whatever it could be called, but heard nothing and I let smoke a long time through the clot of my nose, tasted blood, smoke, soured old breath, new breath just as sour.

  I took Dimitri’s phone out, set it down, probed around my pocket a bit more because I’d felt something that turned out to be the padlock key. It was likely the only one, I thought, and this put a strange creep back in my thoughts, but just as quickly I shrugged, got a new cigarette going, said aloud It doesn’t mean that, there could be ten million of these keys.

  My eyes fastened to it, though. I touched it with the smolder of the cigarette I was about to discard and as I ran the faucet to extinguish this, set the key back to my pocket.

  I moved to the door, face to the peephole, the lit of the empty corridor there, waiting, a bored little mouth going dry.

  ***

  Between parting the curtains, not really looking at anything, stepping to the bathroom mirror, moving to the apartment door, to the kitchen, cigarette lighting cigarette, I tried to work up the enthusiasm to leave, even if just for a walk, nothing final. It was mostly the looseness of my bowels and an irritating pinprick of sensation of needing to piss every two minutes—two drops or nothing coming out if I did move to the toilet, the sink—that kept me in and I gave up on my notion of leaving somewhere in the nervous loop, the sitting to toilet, the standing.

  Peripherally at first, I became aware of voices outside in the corridor, not people passing, voices unnaturally there.

  I felt stung all over, heated in pain to the point of numbness.

  There was an evenness to the tone, a private quality to the speech though the voices didn’t keep hushed at all.

  I took a quick peek out. There were two uniformed policemen there, between my door and thirteen—more toward my door, more toward thirteen—warped cups of two policeman in the corridor.

  I shrank down, cramping, immediately perspiring under my arms, an ache to it, the hair stiff of old deodorant, it roughed into me decrepit.

  I closed myself in the bedroom, sat to the mattress, running hands over my face or looking at the ceiling.

  I couldn’t quite understand the presence of the police, but the first time I even tried to give myself an explanation of their presence having to do with anything but me, anything but Dimitri, I bounced on the bed, laughed a burp, jittered there and growled at myself to shut u
p.

  ***

  The officers had discovered that the door to thirteen was unlocked. I could hear them through the wall, voices like furniture moving, like distant television.

  My breath was shivering and I tried to get an idea of if they’d both gone into the apartment, or if they one of them was standing in the door frame, eye on the corridor, on my door.

  If there was some way I could slip by, it seemed too oppressive, nothing I was capable of enduring.

  I assumed that either Ginette or whoever else it was sending messages had asked the police to check on Dimitri, hadn’t been able to get him to respond to messages, these officers were just there to investigate that, nothing else.

  What else could they investigate?

  I was upset, felt invaded, like nothing that could be known over the telephone could justify this.

  If they knocked on my door, I wouldn’t have to answer. Maybe it would better to just walk out my door, say I was heading off to work if they stopped me and if not just keep walking.

  I mulled it over, softly gummed the butt of my palm.

  I couldn’t leave.

  It was better to stay, at least have an idea of what was going on.

  -You’re behaving curiously unlike a murderer, I whispered, had a handful of tap water, felt good I’d said it, waited for the thought to go stale, decay.

  It’s what I was, a murderer—whatever I was doing was what a murderer was—so it calmed me that I was so unlike a murderer, couldn’t find myself in myself.

  If there were consequences to anything, I knew they would be long, would just become words, soon enough be referential only to themselves, explanations and interpretations would replace Dimitri, replace me. Already had.

  ***

  Not prepared for the knock, the ordinariness of it, I faltered where I stood, turned to the door by rote, had to exert force to curb the motion.

  The knock did have a clap to it of casualness, like the officer might just be giving it a try, shrugging at his partner, nothing odd in thirteen so just seeing if a neighbor was home.