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dememarquette · 3 years ago

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REVENANT

We pulled up on the ranch at a quarter to eight. The silver hour had just begun to creep over the silos. Stalks of corn bow to the freshly milled earth, and frogs battled cicadas for the airtime. The man of the hour greets us through his screen door. The three of us met half an hour prior but it took four takes before his limp conveyed the right amount of dejection. Jim had come to us with a gift for our mid-season slump. A sweet tea flavored sob story. Without pushing the envelope for Ashwater, where folktales regularly made the paper, it was juicy. Marinated in so many cliches it fell off the bone. Jim reported his gates ruined. His dogs spooked. Livestock was turning up dead, strewn about the grounds like an Area 51 dumpsite. Nothing showed up on film except shapes and shadows. Even infrared was a bust, recording nothing except the moment reds and oranges left their bodies. The last straw was when his locks were knocked off. The culprit raided his own shed for a hatchet. Not wanting to risk a life sentence (we were not in a state harboring Stand Your Ground), he turned to us, the fate o’ four dozen chickens resting on our shoulders. “Look at ‘em.” He says. “Sad ain’t it.” Our heads turn in tandem. We look, and yup. That sure is a pile of dead things.

Alone, that wasn’t novel. Jim owned a farm-slash-butchershop, ‘Where the Middleman is Cut with the Fat!’ but the ruminative heartache of the rancher’s face was personal. He kneels and reverently handles the dead animal. Betsy looks at us, dead-eyed and limp. “Drained. Every last one of ‘m. Happens before sunrise. I find ‘em the next day, tossed around like this.” “How often?” asks Adria. Jim scratches his scalp. “Three times this week alone. Seems to favor the sows. I don’t know how I can keep on like this.” Adria adjusts her light. I’ve been in Ashwater long enough to see things I haven’t wanted to see, but excluding the atmosphere, there was nothing here. No evidence of a break-in, no signs of struggle. Not even a splatter. Jim only knew they were bloodless when he, against the better judgement of the FDC, scrambled to wrap a tourniquet around his bottom line. He chopped, and like any good 60’s slasher, the knife came away clean. “Well not to worry. We’re going to crack this. Right, deputy?” “We’ll sweep the grounds.” Her hand rested on her clip. “Maybe stay all week if we have to.” I nod emphatically despite my outright, off-camera refusal to do just that. This satisfies Jim. He sighs, heavily relieved, and tosses me a set of keys that could ring my head. “I gottem locked up in the back lot, but I reckon it’ll be back and wise to it. These’re for the rest of the grounds.” “You got it.” I salute. He turns to each of us individually. “Good luck out there, Father. Adria.” And cut. I bounce the key-ring off to Adria, hot potato. Jim let us know to ‘holler’ if we needed him, and I assure him that even if I knew what that was, we wouldn’t need to. Our game plan was simple. It consisted of making a round around the building, then picking a spot to surveil. Adria wanted to secure the perimeter, meanwhile for the crew there was bountiful Midwestern gothic B-roll for the reaping. Julia was salivating when she heard the address. She sniffed out the horror potential of a small town butcher shop a long time before the town did. I wouldn’t have put it above her to plant the monster herself. Personally? I think it left a lot to be desired. “When I considered the turn my career would be making,” I say, skipping off the porch. “I hoped the vampire slaying part would come with a mansion.” “Why would there be a mansion in Ashwater?” “Why would a vampire hang out here?” I counter, watching how her flashlight played off the fences. Horror emanates in a rustic sense. The deep red of clay. The wide stretches of land before finding another living being. Smelling animals but not seeing them. I scrinch my nose. I’ve been dying for a change of scenery, but extra, extra rural wasn’t what I meant. “What if we’re not looking for a vampire at all. What if we’re looking for el chupacabra?” “Draining whole cows?” She sweeps the dirt for footprints. There were none, just hooves. Tracks by the tens from where Jim led them into a separate enclosure. In the name of apogee, the director on-site instructed us to hit that up last. “Well I don’t pretend to know the weight class of a chupacabra.” “Like gremlin sized.” “And how big are gremlins?” “Knee-height.” She says, confident for what was essentially a nonsense conversation. I would’ve challenged her if it wasn’t completely irrelevant. “I’ve seen how big the hogs get here. There’s something in the water, deputy, and that should be what we’re investigating.” “I really don’t doubt that. Careful- don’t touch the fence.” I straighten, only noticing the hum of white-noise when pointed out. How, in the year of our lord, 2021, are electric fences legal? I consider it in lieu of helping when something bites my arm. I slap it, miserable. “Well the only thing draining me out here is the mosquitos. Can we go in?” She raises a vaguely amused brow as if she was making great strides kicking crabgrass. She wasn’t; whatever it was didn’t leave tracks around the corpse. “Our villain is not going to wait until the cows come home, literally.” “...Good point.” We enter through the shop. Jesse does a panoramic sweep in night-vision before Adria turns on the light like anybody who actually wants to investigate would. Empty display shelves flank us. Diagrams of choice cuts cover the walls, depicting slabs of beef that meant nothing to me until they were translated into French, served on a bed of potato au gratin. The camera man bends around us for a head start at the cleaning station. He had enough sense to know that, unsupervised, we’d waste half an hour of battery life on banter. We’d call him if we needed to act surprised by something. Still, I poke my head after him, spoiling myself on the next room. “Eugh.” I retreat. Adria checks the closets. “You can’t afford to ‘ew.’ You won’t find anything vegetarian for three hours.” “I know. Do you know what it’s like to crave falafel out here?” “What’s that?” I take a perch on the register counter, posed like a femme fatale as Adria pokes around underneath. There is, and never was, any expectation of me helping on the investigative front. I help research, but Dave and the deputy are the brains, brawn, and heart. I’m the 24 karat smile that keeps our commercial time slots booked. “Fried spiced fava beans, sometimes served in a pita.” “Huh.” She says, skeptical but not put out. “It sounds good.” I kick my legs. “It is! And there is actually a little place in the city for it.” “Yeah?” She perks. “Mmhmm.” I lie. Any metropolis worth its salt would have my back. “I’ll show you sometimes. It’s like- oh god, what is that.” Adria reaches and swings her pistol for the wall. “Oh.” She stands down. “Pickled pigs feet.” “Why?” I rephrase. She snorts. Lobby clear, she yanks me off the counter. “It’s an acquired taste.” We beat back a sheet of plastic separating the front from the abattoir. From there, we’re smacked in the face by a cold front. LED light tiles sputter to life by the yard. Each row extinguishes the next troop of shadows until their casters are revealed to be racks of anything and everything dead, halved, and suspended by a leg. Steeped under sterile light, marbling in the meat glowed. I shudder in equal parts horror and hypothermia. “Before you ruined my appetite just now, I was going to say we deserve a drink after this. Now I’m thinking four.” “I was thinking vacation.” “I’ll raise you one: how about both.” “Where were you thinking?” “The Maldives.” My fingers twinkle. “They have those bungalows on the ocean. Nothing but speedboats, seafood, and sunbathing for a week.” She makes a face. For a moment I worried she was going to suggest something that exerts effort, like hiking, but she says, “I trust your judgement.” “You sure? Careful. That means you’ll have to go along.” “Oh will I?” “Mhm.” She dodges me behind a bisected cow. I suspect she is concealing a smirk when ‘I’ curls with an upward inflection. In hot pursuit, I bob through gristle as if it wasn’t throwing me off my game. (It was.) “I don’t want to be the next Amelia Earhart. Someone has to save me from the crabs.” “The sun will get you before the crabs. After the Harvest festival, your ears were deep fried.” “I can overnight a vat of sunscreen. What I can’t do is defeat a decapod.” “You’re underestimating yourself.” She opens up the freezer full of oh, nice. Even more dead parts. “I’ve seen you crack-shot a crocotta and shuck oysters.” I shut it with my back, shuttering her grinning reflection for the real one. “Counterpoint: I only have enough air miles to get there and back.” “And?” “If I bring you, neither of us will come back. Someone else will have to shake down the gremlins.” “Where's the cameraman?" “I don’t think Jesse is up to it.” I say, sadly. “No I mean, where’d he go?” “Who cares-” Then I remember why we care. We spin. No longer framing our backsides into the rule of thirds, he was gone. We shut up. Filling the silence, there was nothing except the distant plink of something wet, the buzz of freezers, and a shrill beep objecting to an open door. Cop-mode had Adria activate like a sleeper agent. It took her all of 2 seconds to access, gauge, and run. She bolts. I only realize I’m snared when I zip behind her, dragged by my arm. We backtrack through Jim’s fleshy wonderland, shoulder-checking brisket as we go. “He’s probably grabbing B-roll.” I reason. “Nothing we were saying was airable.” “I’ve got to make sure.” Her free hand pulls her gun from its holster. “Jesse? Jesse!” We find him on the ground. His tripod was down on the cutting room floor, toppled where he’d been setting up a frame. The lens was focused on the far wall where neglect turned grime carmine but the money shot was blood pooling in the drain: his. Adria shoves me into the corner. She whips her pistol to all four walls before dipping for his pulse. We hadn’t seen or heard anyone pass us. It must’ve followed us through the front but Jesse wasn’t up for talking to correct. “Take care of him.” She hops up. “Cover the wound. Add pressure- lots of it, even if you think you’re hurting him.” She closes off the back with a broomstick through the handle. “I’ll go find it.” “On it.” I fight the dispenser for towels. Below them was a triple basin sink, with the last bowl full of dishware. I pull a carving knife from the blue, bracing the handle like I’d know what to do with it. When I drop beside Jesse, his eyelids flutter. He suffered a nasty crack to the head and, unlike the animals, a gaping bite opened up his throat, blooming blood vessels into my lap. “Hey. Hey, wake up.” I stuff towels into his collar by the fistful. It’s only after I say ‘wake up’ that I’m not sure consciousness is the right route. His breathing takes on a frenetic jump, and that frenetic jump splatters my thigh. “Jesse? Can you hear me? Jesse? Jesse?” His hand lifts. I exhale sharply. Thank God. The first sign of sentience. I know Adria wouldn’t have left a dead man lying, but I swat his arm. “No, no, take it easy. You just stay-” Then the gesture shifts to point. Confused, I follow it to a man I hadn’t seen seconds before. He pushes himself off the wall, out of his lounge, as if he’d been waiting for the light. “Leave him.” He wrings his hands. “Come with me.” And wouldn’t you know, that sounded like a reasonable thing to do. I move to follow his lead. Jesse’s hand closes around my wrist, but when he’s only pumping a half a tank through his cardiovascular system, it wasn’t hard to shake off. My knife clangs on the tile beside him. Mystery-Man issues the vague suggestion I wouldn’t need it, and honestly I had to agree. Somewhere in the frozen, meaty ether beyond us, Adria is barking orders into her transponder. She calls for Dave and an ambulance, STAT. SWAT if you can get them. The dormant, buried, awake part of my brain asks her to make it a double, but the thought didn’t clear my prefrontal cortex. For whatever reason, I was perfectly content following this guy into a closet, flattered when he held the door open. After it shut, Adria’s voice became muffled and metallic. Lighting is dim. I openly stare at the guy tucked up against me, but wasn’t unable to commit any identifying details to memory. I couldn’t tell you his eye color, how he styled his hair, or if he tucked his shirt. Only that he was beautiful, just the word, and that was enough reason to kick it between the brooms and the bleach. He pushes a mop bucket aside for space, and stagnant water spilled over its lip. My shoes were undeniably ruined but I forgive him, instantly, with a head thick with a comfortable haze only wine can muster. I ignore Adria’s shouting in favor of my new bestie. I don’t care that he’s shaking like he’s juiced. I don’t even mind that he’s in my personal space but our abrupt, deep, intimate friendship was ‘look but don’t touch.’ The second he pierces my neck, magic breaks like a fever. I sober up like an ice bath, fully aware of this pale bastard necking me. My hand goes for the knife, and when I remember it's absence, my cross. If there’s a fear of God in this man, he says 'that's nice,' but Adria is scarier. The cross sizzles against his cheek ineffectually, but he jerks when he hears her coming. My skin rips like he dug in with a claw hammer. Any screaming stops short, strangling into nothing like the cord was yanked. Adria is alerted. Either by the sound or the water, she kicks open the door, and pulls him out not knowing I'm connected by the rind of my throat. We both hit the ground. I roll off onto my belly, gagging. Blood greases my collar like a sprinkler. Sparkles in my vision congratulate syncope like confetti, and I’m bleeding out. Unable to make a sound, unable to warn her, I hold my throat. 'Don't let him talk-’ Jesse rasps it for me. "Shut him up." Thanks Jesse. She plants a boot in the vampire’s chest. A shot aimed for between the eyes lands between the teeth, bowling a perfect strike through the molars. The sound he responds with is guttural, then garbled, as the well of his jaw fills. He keels, drooling thick lines of blood and dental root. I kick off the tile, throwing space between us by the yard but remain mystified by that face. It’s enchanting. Captivating in a Lost Boy leper type of way. That makes no sense. I’m dying. When she goes to double-tap, she fails to notice his beetle-esque writhing was intentional, and not the most beautifully disgusting way to die. Squirming put his leg between hers. Her ankle is caught, interlocking like chain link, so when he twists, she twists, and she joins the class face-first on the tile. We’re all on the ground, party on a fault line. In the heat of the moment I don’t notice the missing time. I’m missing seconds, missing frames, missing context. When she’s suddenly up, struggling, and using her fists on his face, I don’t take it for what it is (Adria pounding his jaw into his brain recreationally) but instead that she’s unarmed. I move for the knife in the middle of the floor, intending for a pass. Mid-facial-reconstruction, the vampire grabs it first. I laugh- a sputtering, hissing, pathetic sound but a laugh nonetheless as he slams it into her police vest. It’s Kevlar, dumbass. It skids right off but as soon as I celebrate my ‘haha idiot’ moment, it’s in her calf. She screams, pitched high and loud, with the tail end curling into a battle cry. She leaves it sheathed and throws the dead-leg over his chest. I have one word for that move, and it’s DISTRACTING. Even beyond the heroism and valor that comes standard with a cop risking it all to save my sorry ass, I’m witnessing the two most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life duke it out in stop motion and god damn it- He twists and bucks, throwing her into a cabinet but apart from the pretty knock to her head, it’s all she needed to load a second clip. When he jumps for her again, she fires off the final round between the lips. Moreau’s textbook had a hearty list about blessed objects, garlic, and stakes, but whenever the legend has ‘blow its head off’ as an option, it’s her preferred payment. Ricochet pings off the freezers. A thread of gun-powder connects the last frame I saw to where a chunk of skullcap wobbles between us. I look over to the crater of his head cradling the meat of his eye. Disgusting. Vindicating, but I’ll be damned if that’s the last thing I see. Divine intervention has Adria crash between us- cuter than a corpse, but no less an omen. Her hands are around my throat before I know what is happening. “Deme, Breathe." I choke, wet, but delirious as I am, I do as I’m told. The breath I take is taxed for well beyond what it’s worth. I soak her palms. She shrieks- a stilted, hysterical cry that allows her one last moment to unravel before she pulls herself back together with what pieces she can. Doubling down, she leverages her knee under back. She pulls the knife out of her leg just to cut a ribbon from her tank. My neck rolls like an infant’s, washed under a wave of dizziness that rolls down my core. I didn’t realize how bad I’d gotten until I don’t remember dropping. I couldn’t meet her in the eye. Something internal is spasming. It wanted blood but I was too busy painting the walls to oblige. She wails a second wave of codes into the receiver pinned between her shoulder and ear. I feel bad for her. Dispatch can’t catch a word. Her transmission is garbage, slipping and sliding, her finger can’t get traction. I lean into her midriff, sweating as much as I was bleeding. It’s my fault she can’t stay on the button. All that jittery, Adria adrenaline that makes her a superhero is now her enemy. She’s a broken record. I try to say her name, to call her off, but it doesn’t work. Mechanisms in my neck don’t connect, link shorting like a frayed power cord. The only noises coming out of my mouth are from the dry stick of my tongue, and the hard D of her name. I was slurring. Clicking. Convulsions weren’t giving it a rest, jumbling syntax before I spit a single word. Fuck. Now I feel bad for critiquing her radio work too. All I want to do is talk. But she just pushes back my bangs, smoothing out my hair and coos a hopeful promise that no God had plans on honoring. She’s not hearing anything. Not her name, not my apology, and not my declaration that I didn’t want to die right when things were getting good. "Just stay with me.” Her fingers are so knotted in my hair it hurts, but exists as the only force keeping my eyes open. The edges of my vision blacken, haloing her face. “You're going to be okay. Stay with me.” Frustrated that I can’t speak, I reach. My hand passes through three iterations of her face before the right one sticks to my palm. I hook a thumb under her jaw, but her reciprocative hold is the anchor. Somewhere behind her, her radio smacks the linoleum. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to say something to break the oppressive tension Adria creates when she's worried, but I can't. I can only stare at her face. Half of it is carved out, bloody cheek smears into the forequarter behind her. I never hear the sirens. I stop listening to Adria's sobs. Pretty soon I can't feel her at all, despite knowing they'd need two tranq darts to pry her off of me. The cold gives way to a leaden sleep. My heart stops. Following it is a procession of cold, black, then nothing. And somewhere down the line, it reverses. I open my eyes to a place that could only be defined as abysmal. I’m in empty air. Deep sea. I can’t see my hand in front of my face to verify it exists. I’m not sure I’m moving. You’re in a coffin. The thought manifests as action. I slam my fist against the side. My knuckles numb. My jewelry pings- grounding me in the non sequitur that if I still had my rings I can’t be dead. Rolling with it, I pad my confines, manic. A high-pitched ting-ting-ting-TING-TING-TING tracks my progress. Not a coffin. Not a coffin, unless I was shot off to fucking space. The need for escape possesses me. I jerk, thrash, and hit the top, stunning both my kneecaps. Whatever I’m in is compact, and enacts a second wave of frenzied panic that acts independent of rational thought. I call for help, but with all the primal hysteria keying me up, I might as well be holding conversation from an electric chair. Beyond the metal panel, someone hears. They try the door, but not fast enough. I break the skin of my knuckles against metal, cracking a nail or two before I’m ejected like a toaster. She sees me and her shoulders sag. “Deme.” She says my name, but I don’t get the impression she’s talking to me at all. I freeze with both hands pulled against my chest. My eyes dart- taking in all four corners from a locker I’m sprung from. There are tons like it, stacked on top of each other like safety deposit boxes. White light neutralizes warmth from us both, confirming without question that I was indeed in a morgue. She hauls a duffel bag over her shoulder and throws it at my feet, answering nothing except she foresaw the need for a costume change before I did. “What-” I swallow thickly. My voice is so hoarse, they must’ve left it open. “What is-?” “Clothes.” She turns, rubbing her palms into her eyes. There’s tears. She’s laughing. Laughing, like a nutcase, flying high off a riptide of relief as she spins around for ‘modesty’ that I find more suspicious than comforting. “I’m breaking you out. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’re okay. I can’t believe you’re okay...” She continues on like that. I roll off the drawer like it's a hostage situation. ‘Okay’ is a funny way to put it. I’m outfitted with a paper sheet. My forearm was a rotting yellow from the spread of some antiseptic, and my neck was, in fact, stitched up. There’s a ladder pattern tying off what I recalled as a hole I could whistle through. It hosted the last bit of warmth I remember, running down my neck. It is gone now. What remained was a paralyzing stiffness, decimating all fine motor control. I try to pull on a shirt but can’t. The ends of my fingers curl. Buttons pop everywhere except in place. What’s wrong with me? My breath hitches. I can’t move. I can’t even button a shirt, but I would walk out of here- chest open, Ace Ventura, if I had to- But before that happens, she looks up. Clued into my imminent meltdown, she rushes over to pull it straight around my shoulder. I suck in a deep breath, afraid to let go. This close, I realize I’ve never seen her wear her hair down. It’s intrusive how much I smell it. “No one knows we're here.” She starts from the bottom. “No one has to know either. I exhale hard through my nose as something more confusing smothers the exasperation. “What?” “Just keep it down and I’ll explain." “Keep it down?” She folds my neckband and my eyes roll involuntarily. One thumb on my clavicle and I swear I lose my goddamn mind. “What do you mean ‘keep it down’? What am I doing here, Adria? I’m not dead!” “I know that! But they don’t.” “Who’s ‘they’?!” I throw three feet between us. In lieu of an answer, she pushes the bangs out of her face and gives me a once over. As much as I want to believe it’s the ridiculous outfit making her react like that, it’s not. I’m half-thawed and barefoot. I’m anointed in all manner of fluid- bodily and chemical haven’t even had a chance to check the bedhead situation. While my self-image was a few pegs below the more pressing priorities (I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold-), at the end of the day, I am Demetrius Marquette, and watching that recoil wasn’t great. "J-Jesus.” She has trouble meeting me in the eyes. “How are you feeling?" My face sours. “I-I don’t know!” “Y-you know what. Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.” “Please.” We inch into the hall and she checks around the corner. From behind, I see her hair was braided, just undone. She hasn’t slept in a week. It shows in the way she moves, Start, Stop, and Hydroplane. I don’t have long to think about it, or how long I’ve been AWOL, because when she grabs my arm I almost black out. She smuggles me out of the hospital in exactly the way a law abiding, enforcer of wellness and safety should not. Seasoned from disregard to concussions of yesteryear, she makes use of a staff break room and mute emergency exit. Next thing I know, we’re free. One foot outside, I want to die. The night is as vicious as the locker. I stifle the cry into my shoulder as it curls to brace against the air-stream. The wind cuts like a vegetable peeler, skinning the first layer, and laying bare everything underneath. I’ve lost a deltoid à la carte, but have never been in so much pain. For the first time since we broke out, her smile drops. “Deme-?” I whine, pathetic and weak. “Car. Please. Now.” She’s my valet to the door. Front seat, I swipe a fist full of uncooperative fingers across her dash. The dial shines red, blasting a vindictively delayed gust of warmth through the vents. If it had taken any longer to heat up, I’d crawl under the hood. My hands smother over the slots. Then, my face. As sensation returns to my nose, it’s hard not to notice the odd pressure against my lip. All cognitive function grinds to a halt when I realize there’s a damn good reason she was in such a hurry to lay heel on the gas. Mid-roll over the radiator’s slats, I turn to her. “...I’m not…” She looks over. “...am I?” Denial isn’t cute on anyone but it doesn’t stop me from trying. She winces as my cheek defrosts. "...I think...I think so.” She starts slow, but quickens. “But we can fix it. We already found a whole subsection on those guys. Moreau has got to have more.” “Are you serious?” “There are like 50 different cultures with- you know!” Her fingers fidget, ten and two. “Maybe ye olde Transylvania doesn’t have anything but that doesn’t mean, I don’t know, the Mesopotanians don’t!” I slow blink, unable to think of one iteration that didn’t end with a stake through the heart. Even Count Von Count had controversy. But to say I was concerned with death-by-skewer would be misleading. “Someone has to know something.” She continues anyway. “The book talks like it’s an infection. That means there can be a treatment.” “An ‘infection.’” “Yeah!” She supplements her argument with citations. She’s been studying, pulling back-to-back all-nighters snuggled up with Jo’s coffee pot, but I tune her out. I turn to the sliding farmscape. Breaks between the fields host black. Where there’s no crop, the interior of the car is reflected back. Adria’s hand is on the wheel, clenching and releasing for emphasis. Her skin, deep-toned and golden. The heater is on max, full-blast, but I find myself preferring how her thumb felt against my collar bone when she fixed my lapels. “Let’s try to take this one step at a time.” She says. I draw into myself wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. “...Mhm.” “There’s no reason to think it’s permanent. You remember how Damon and Elyse got sick?” “Mhm…” “It took us two days to find and kill that thing.” “Yeah.” “Are you listening?” I miss the beat where I’m supposed to reply. She reaches out to touch and I react like she used a drill. Hurt from her face leaks into her voice, she’s taking it personally, but any placatory response would be disingenuous. A deep tension wormed in my gut, and fermented there like oil. It was the urgency before vomit, the tightly wound force of a loaded spring. I am too aware of the space between us, and how little there is. Her touch is sharp, devastating, and intense in only the best ways. I’ve never felt it before, but it’s the ‘chills’ they bee-bop about in Grease. The sparks in a T-Swift song. ‘Butterflies in your stomach.’ Only I never pictured it to be so conflatable with violence. When I don’t respond, she steals glances from the highway. One, two, then total disregard. It’s a straight shot to the B-n-B from here, Jesus takes the wheel. “Deme you’re flagging.” Concern muddies the rules of the road. “Do we need to stop? Do we need to go back?” I didn’t have a heartbeat to speak of but felt a distinctive pulse in my jaw. “Answer me,” Worry tightens hers. “I can turn around. Maybe the hospital-” She touches me again and I realize our blood is pushing under our skin at the same tempo. The pang in my mouth matches the jump at her temple. I lean over the console, drawn in, only stopped when her hand shoves me in the chest. Rhythm in her forearm greenlights graphic fantasies that developed within the last fifteen minutes. If this wasn’t right, I have to ask myself, then why are we synced? “Deme- what the fuck?!” Her car screeches. She wrestles for control of the wheel. Danger on the asphalt matches danger in the cab. She tries to correct to avoid the more fiery of the two, but it’s not a concern we share. “What are you doing- STOP!” I don’t. Her tires squeal. She tries to smash my face into the window. My teeth scrape the pillow of her hand. The whole cab rocks, she sails over the rumble strip like it's the finish line. We’re flying, but she can’t let up on the gas. It’s the only leverage she has to hold me back, and it’s a two handed affair. Her pulse against my lip is magnets on a battery. All mental processes go, wiped like a blue screen. Next thing I’m cognizant of is my nails piercing her seat. Leather pops. She’s screaming, but my thoughts constrict into a singular impulse. I want that warmth for myself, I think. And for some reason I want it in my mouth. My jaw dislodges with the seatbelt. "Deme,” She shrieks, throaty. “Don't, Deme-STOP!" We hit a patch of gravel going 60. The tail swings forward, skirting 45 degrees before lifting. Cornstalks pinwheel across the dashboard. We are airborne. Her screams were the last thing I remember. I wake my arm trying to snap off my torso. After blinking excessive drowsiness from my eyes, I see why. My wrist is locked high above my head. It’s cuffed to an intersecting pair of steel bars. Confused, and waiting for critical thinking to boot, I give it a cursory pull, then a second faster one as awareness slogs through my brain. “Where…?” “You’re at the station.” My eyes snap from the chains to the metal door behind her. I have never visited the Ashwater County Dungeon, but I’d recognize Lenny's sickly sweet calling card anywhere. This is not proper police procedure. Hasn’t been since the Spanish Inquisition. “You flipped my car.” She snaps. “That’s not- that’s not true.” “Not true?!” She gestures herself with enough force to dislodge her shoulder. The evidence is damning. She’s caulked up Neosporin, enough to patch a dam. She has a busted lip. At least two boxes of bandaids criss-cross her biceps, giving her tiger stripes, and a butterfly suture pinched the skin of her brow bone together. It’s nothing that wouldn’t be found at the station. Her sling is a windbreaker, tied by the sleeve. We never made it back to the hospital. “You weren’t strapped in.” She smacks the bars to punctuate. “The car went wheels-up. You threw yourself through the windshield like a dumbass. You’re fine, of course.” I ran a hand over my face. Had it been anyone else, that would’ve come across as resentment. But this was Adria. “I don’t understand.” I say, mouth dry. “You tried to attack me.” I shake my head. That’s stupid. That doesn’t sound like me. “I didn’t.” “Demetri.” She snarls, low. The impulse to get out returns, overtaking any stimulating revelation I might glean. I pull on the chains. I twist. I try to break my wrist, thinking if I can survive a car crash, I can handle a sprain, but just as I do, I hear nails. Dave’s outside. He’s working on the wall behind me, doing highly specific renovation. There’s a plank of wood where the window is. Was. The last glimpses of starlight are boarded up, leaving us with only a 100-watt bulb to light the station. Suspended, I slowly rotate back. "You're kidding” I say, low. “You realize how fucked up this is." “You’re a threat to everyone. Including yourself.” “I’m not-” “You could’ve killed us both!” “Where’s Julia?!” If, by chance, through the heat of my meltdown, I smelled her telltale bleeding heart, it clotted by the namedrop. An impressive scowl threatens to split her forehead in twain. "What? You want her to know?!" I wrench myself upright, rising to her temper. Yes! Yes, I do! Julia wasn’t qualified for any ‘#1 BOSS’ plaques, but she damn sure could spring me in minutes, armed with a battalion of lawyers at the ready to expunge this nasty misunderstanding from the record. "Yes?! I would! I'd love for her to know I’m being held prisoner against my will!" “You’re kidding right?” “No?!” "Demetri-” She massages her contused temples. “Will you just think, THINK for two whole minutes! Julia isn’t going to help. She is going to make a spectacle out of you and turn you into the next media circus. Do you want that?” She waits for that to dawn on me, but it doesn’t. I stare, crazy-eyed. I’ve spent my entire adult life on cameras. What’s a little exploitation? Irritated, she rolls her eyes and steamrolls over it, “It’s hard enough not getting her attention on a regular day- much less, when you make me do stupid shit like that. She’s not out of town. You think she’s not going to notice I’m now arresting people out of Basil’s Honda Accord?!” “All the better to get her on the phone?!” “I can’t trust you with your phone!” “Excuse me?!” She glances over her shoulder, abruptly nervous, to where Dave was waiting in the wings. This is the first time I’ve seen him post meat-and-greet, and I already don’t care for the way his eyes pin me to the floor. Without question, I know he’s only here because she’ll crack. “You’ll get it back when we know you have a hold of yourself.” “What are you talking about? I have a hold of myself!” Both their faces fall. Flustering, I grab the bars. “Explain to me how I am going to keep up with everything without my phone.” “The Housewives will be fine.” “How will I shower?” He crosses his arms over his chest. “I will get the hose.” I don’t dignify that with a response. My eyes roll to the deputy, who's more sympathetic despite our romp through the spin cycle, “I don’t even have the privacy to piss.” “Do you even pee?!” “I don’t know?!” I shriek. "Have you thought this out at all? Why are you treating me like a literal prisoner? You’re both getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?!” "It’s only been one day! And you tried to bite me after we wrecked a cruiser!” I squint. ‘We’? “Assault is usually like, two years!” “And what is my stay instead, huh?!” Uncertain, she deflates. Dave squeezes her shoulder. “However long it takes.” He says with the authority of a death sentence. My lip curls. “No one even knows I’m here.” “And they don’t need to know! Not right now, anyways. So just-! Shut up and be patient, okay? I’m working on it.” “‘Working on it’?” “Jesus Christ, Deme. Believe it or not, it’s not like I want you down here!” ’Then let me go!’ I go to cry, but her suture opens as she says it. A frenzied series of thoughts punch through my psyche, like I was standing in front of a firing squad. She’s so close. Pull her through. My thoughts constrict like they did in the car. Grab her. Knock her out on the bars. She’ll drop. But she’d drop within range. I could reel her in. If she doesn’t conk, she’ll reach for her gun. She’d aim but she’d never shoot. I don't want to hurt her. I think, last, but it rings as fake and hollow as a New Years Resolution. This year I resolve to cut calories. Exercise more. To not smash my best friend’s face through the bars, and lap up whatever drips. I hold my nose, drunk on the way these impulses wash away inhibitions. Adria wasn’t Adria with that in the air. She was a peel no one cares with the fruit underneath. "Okay.” I cave, pressing against my eyes to shove my brain back into its socket. “Okay, I can't-" Dave catches on before she does. He shakes her shoulder, and taps his cheek. Skeptical, Adria drags her knuckles across her face, and freezes. When she looks up, she looks at me like a stranger. She sees something in me she hadn’t before. Before I can figure out what it is, the plug on this conversation is pulled, DNR. "I'll be back." She smears her jeans. “Worry about you for now. But for now, take this.” She shoves something through the slot in my door. Slave to my impulses, I zero in on it. It’s a bag, warmed through the fabric of her muscle tank. “Make a list of anything else you need,” She limps to the door. “I’ll bring it.” It’d be hours before I recognized that those thoughts weren't mine. Two more before I felt bad about it. I don’t stop fixating until sleep drags me under, concrete blocks tied my ankles. I dream of regret. Decidedly not for the right reasons. The next time I see Adria, we’re pretending what happened yesterday didn’t. She hucks a large box into my cell. Cuffs are removed only after she completes the delivery. It’s better for my dignity if I pretend that didn’t happen either. But it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say I was in better spirits by the time of her return. That’s not to say ‘good.’ I was never good about being a convict. Not even close, but the only thing worse than being a miserable convict is being a miserable one that no one sees is being miserable. I imagine this is the gist of Schrödinger’s cat. Not only that, but misery loves company. And compassion. Adria bleeds it in the way she gathers my things and folds my clothes. Despite the fact you’re really not supposed to crease linen, I’m touched. “Figured you might want these,” She spins a chair around. “I brought what I see you wear the most. The blue pinstripe thing, the trench coat, and just. All the rings. I’ll bring the rest by later.” I pick through the offering, impressed. I have a comforter. Two pillows, a watch, half my wardrobe, and my Berlutti’s. The last of which is wrapped in a neighborhood’s worth of pilfered Ashwater Herald’s, padded so they don’t scratch. I hug them, knowing I can get through this. “What does everyone think you’re doing when you keep raiding my stuff?” “That I’m making a Deme shrine, probably.” “Well you’re certainly on your way. These are great. You have an eye for detail.” Adria collects the trash. “Did I get everything?” “Almost.” Diligent, I check under my sleep mask. “I don’t see my skincare” “I didn’t bother.” "What?” I drop my aftershave like she poked me with a cattle prod. It’s poison, poison! without moisturizer. “I haven't exfoliated in weeks. That’s the difference between a youthful, healthy glow and looking my age." "You really don't need it." "What does that mean?” “Nothing.” She says, too fast to be believable. I grab my cheeks, super-imposing them over the Cryptkeeper. “What do you mean ‘nothing’? How bad is it?" She didn’t answer. Instead she dumps a stack of Cosmos onto my tray, turning heel. Airbrushed beauties flaunt what I no longer have. "Oh no. Oh God,” Adria avoiding an answer could only mean one thing. “Don't tell me I went from Jesse McCartney to Nosferatu." "Hardly." “What does that MEAN.” I throw off my blanket, scrambling for anything reflective. My watch face tells me nothing except that I slept past 3. “I’m going to need you to do something for me. Please. Rip it. Just rip the band-aid. How bad is the carnage?” “You look FINE, Deme.” “Fine?! Fine?!” “You look great, okay!!” She blurts, red in the face. “Was it the accident?” I feel out my nose, mistaking the smoother profile for Voldemort. “How bad was it?” She obviously wasn’t fond of the word ‘accident’ because her face, sympathies, and the box she was holding all plummet to the cement. “What do you want? Me to tell you you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen?” “You’re just saying that.” I whine. “Do you want a mirror?!” “I want a LOT OF THINGS Adria, but yeah, a mirror’s a good start!” “Just add it to the list!” “‘List’! Have to wait a day between necessities. How is this constitutional?” She rolls her eyes, weird flush passing. “I have other things to do, Demetrius.” I plop down onto my cot. “Other things like what.” “Work! I am a cop, remember? Crime does not stop just because there’s no longer a camera on it.” “I was hoping it’d cut it out without the sponsor deal.” “Well, it didn’t. Raid wants nothing to do with us anymore.” I sigh. “Well, can I help?” “‘Help’?” “You know. With….” I gesture to myself, in all my pale, gangly glory. “The situation.” "I don't think..." She starts, before her confidence withers. My morose self-pity is immediately replaced by suspicion. "That'd be smart.” "Why not?" “Just...because.” I hunch forward, not willing to give her rope. Ignorance is bliss for the other guy, but not me. “That’s not...that’s not really fair.” I wrestle my voice into something level. “I know next to nothing outside of Buffy and Dracula- and those are wildly different experiences." "I told you I’m working on it." "Who do you think I am? I can handle bad news, Adria. You just have to clue me in.” "It's not bad news.” She lies. “It's- it’s the," She flaps her hand. It fishes through the air but comes up empty. "Absence of news." I rise to my feet, staring cold, and waiting for her to meet me in the eyes. Something she’s purposefully avoiding. “You can’t leave me in the dark, Adria. We’re partners.” She says nothing. The air goes stagnant. Silence stretches. She thinks for a moment, overthinks for longer, but when she does finally look up, her face doesn’t harbor any of the malleability I was looking for. Angry Adria could be reasoned with. Angry Adria you just have to shout back at- fight fire with gasoline and the inferno burns itself out. But a concerned one? A worried one? She’d sooner move the Earth than change her mind. "No. Not yet.” She says, finality dealing the final blow. “Give me time.” In the interest of not making things worse, I shut my mouth. I trust her. Deep down, I trust her more than anyone else. Resentment doesn’t always do the math. The next morning I wake to find my cell is repurposed into a game of Jenga. My cot is an island, smashed into a corner in the wake of new arrivals. It’s a mystery they got it all down the stairs. Much less, into the cell, but the surprise import came with a dresser. A coffee table. Curtains. God, the curtains, I love them the most. They served no practical function given the sealed windows, but having something to slap over the Don't Dead Open Inside view made my heart sing. Any more TLC and it’d be a dorm. My fingers brush along a nightstand I recognize from her own home. It smelled like her. Inventory accounted for, I consider my 8’ by 10’ options. Here’s the idea: Open floor plan. Open-faced. With my morning bird hours shot to hell, I want to avoid secret drop-offs while maintaining full runway access. The answer to this is to arrange everything how I want it, à l'étroit minimalism, and then. Shove everything against the wall. Push the bureau, until it blocks the door. When all’s said and done, I look onto my progress, and think: God, I shouldn't have slept through this. But then again, there are things I don’t sleep through. Like footsteps. I hear them in the late afternoon. Voices, too. I can’t make out words but when there’s someone new, I fantasize. I think, I'm one call away from salvation. One scream from below to drown Ashwater in an FBI investigation so total the town won't survive. Television Priest Held Hostage by Deputy Co-Star, says the 5’o clock report. Scandal of the year. But that's boredom talking. I’m a domesticated thing. Let loose, I won’t make it out alive. So in lieu of any concentrated effort for escape, I start clanging stuff loud enough for her to hear. It works like a charm. On cue, she splits off from company, skips half a flight on her way down. "Morning." She heaves, out of breath. "Morning." “Here.” Unceremoniously, half a liter of blood drops onto my tray. It wasn't what I summoned her for, but you know. Appreciated. “Wow, thank you, ma'am.” She makes a noise of acknowledgement, and steps back. We pivot to admire my shitty job. It’s laid out like a period room. A cracked dollhouse. Any and all tenets of interior design are violated because not only is the composition 2-D, but apart from the bureau, there's a whole two feet of clearance between furniture and the bars. It’s a grievous waste of space. I recognize this, I acknowledge it, but she doesn’t notice. "Wow. Love what you have done with the place." She says, sarcasm being a coin flip. I pucker the bag like it’s a Capri-Sun. "Thanks. I was going for a contemporary with a Bohemian zest. If it was all shoved into a cereal box, of course." "I can tell." She tilts her head, her eyes catching on her nightstand. It was the same one she put the flowers on when my first apology premiered. I put it at the head of my cot. "Glad someone's getting some use out of that thing." "It makes for a lovely vanity, doesn't it?" "Uh huh." She yawns wide enough to spot all 8 molars. Insomnia isn't only darkening my doorstep. One look at the shadows under her eyes, and I’m reminded of the apricot cream being held hostage. At least I know no one’s getting into it. "Well, let me know if you need anything else." She turns for the stairs. Maybe for shut-eye, probably to work, but I abandon the bag to grab the bars. Plagued by the thought of hearing her all night, a command springs to mind. 'Tell her to stay.' My hands shake. I shut down the impulse, knowing where it’s coming from: the black place I’ll be later tonight. When I’m following footsteps from a floor below. Hoping, waiting, and praying that all the pacing she does will wear a hole through the linoleum. I need a bucket of cold water. "Hey wait up." I clear my throat. She turns. "How’s Ashwater?" Adria typically drops by twice a day. It used to be more on her days off, but when she stopped having those, it was whenever I could get her. In those rare moments she can spare half an hour, she's with me. I want to say I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sap up all her free time, but then again, I absolutely do. I love watching her work. I throw items on the honey-do-list: errands, shopping, anything really, all day long if it keeps her down here. But today? This one was all her. She got tired of me whining about losing fingers to frostbite between meals. “So if I’m not ugly, what am I?” She skims the manual sprawled out across her legs. She hated this topic. Personally, I loved it. “If I bring you your skincare will you shut up about your pores.” “You don't understand, Adria” I drape myself off my cot like a Victorian woman of weak constitution. “I need words. My self esteem is too fragile. Only validation from a fine country belle will soothe its broken pieces." “Oh okay.” She turns a page, not bothering to look up. "You want my honest opinion?” “Yes.” "You know how on TV, vampires have those long, sexy fangs?” "Hm." I run my tongue over my teeth. “I suppose I do." “Well yours make you like a beaver.” “Ooh, a beaver. How, uh. Industrious.” “And you’re pale. So pale. Your skin color reminds me of those eyeballs deep-sea fish have that can’t actually see anything.” “Anemia has never looked so hot." "And the nails-" Okay I was actually self conscious about that. I shove them under my ass. “Okaywellthankyou. Enough about me.” She looks up at that, grinning. “What about you? You getting enough sleep?” “Wow, what a transition.” “Serious question.” “Yes.” She says. I raise an eyebrow. Eyebags that carry an overweight surcharge at Delta don’t lie. “Okay no,” She relents. “But we are shorthanded.” “You were always shorthanded.” She scratches her hairline with a wrench. “Yeah, but before you didn't need two sets of hands for graffiti and cow-tipping." "I'd have thought you'd need like, four." "Not if you do it right." Color me perplexed but that's not what we're talking about. "All I meant to say was you're looking a bit tired and tight in the shoulders. Tighter than usual.” She shoots me a glare. “How about you take that vacation we were talking about, because me? Personally? Having my jugular ripped out to step back from television has done,” My eyes roll “Wonders. I recommend." "Deme, I can't. You know that." “Why not? Now that you’re putting in that radiator, it’ll be cozy down here. There's even a bed in the next cell. I won’t tell anyone if you camp out." I brace for rejection. Either that, or backhanded, impudent recognition that I was inviting her into the opulent accommodations of Lenny’s old stomping grounds, but she rests her chin in her hands “I’d like that.” "Adria. I think I know why the caged bird sings." I say. She ignores me. "Ahem. Adria, I said I think I know why the caged bird sings." “Why does the caged bird sing, Demetrius.” “Because you won’t give him his phone.” She looks over her file, sitting on the stairs of the basement. It’s probably day 56 or something. Her patience for my melodrama is limited. “I can’t trust you not to livestream your imprisonment.” “I just wanna play games!” “I’ll give you Damon’s Nintendo boy, final offer.” “Ugh.” I flop facedown on the cot. When I can’t smother myself, it blunts the effect. “Why don’t you just kill me.” She glares venomously, but that only encourages me. “You know. Since it doesn’t seem like I’m getting out of here,” I muffle through her mother’s quilt. “I’d like to dictate my will. I, Demetrius Marquette, would like to bestow all my worldly possessions onto Kris Jenner.” “It’s been four days.” “It’s been at least a week.” “You have no sense of time.” I sneer because she’s right. I don’t. My circadian rhythm is cracked. I tell time by the rev of Dave’s truck and the tap of Adria’s leg when she’s pouring over a case. I missed being on the other side of that desk- even if I wasn’t doing anything but playing with her pens. “Maybe I can orchestrate my funeral then. Hey, write this down.” “Oh God.” I kick my legs like I’m at a sleep-over. “I would like a cream casket. Gold trim- no. Rose, with a white lily spray. Unconventional choice, but I’d like to book the Black-Eyed Peas so it doesn’t get too, too depressing. The E.N.D era if you could hack it.” “Too late.” “What? What do you mean ‘too late’?” “Too late.” She says, busier now that I registered what she said. And it wasn’t that the Black Eyed Peas hadn’t performed since Fergie’s 2018 departure. “Did...did I already have a funeral?” “No.” A folder barricades her face. It’s a fort, the fort of a deceiver. I fly to my feet, grappling the bars. "You! You're a liar. Julia did not let that go without chronicling that like it was the fucking moon landing." “It wasn’t a funeral!!” Her fortress crumbles. Print-outs of the current monster of the week glide to the floor. “It was more like a, what’d Julia call it. A celebration of memories.” “A funeral!” The file drops. Behind it, she wanes. “You don’t want to see it.” “It sounds like everything I want to see, actually!” “Julia made it all over-dramatized! And everyone’s so sad.” I stare, not seeing her point. Again. Everything I want to see. “I forbid it until you’re better.” “‘Better.’” I repeat, acidly. “This is hell.” “Don’t be an ass. We’re still trying.” “It’s not trying if you’re not letting me help. It’s not trying if you don’t let me do anything!” “What do you think I’m doing all day?!” My wrists twist, wrenching myself between the breaks. “Don’t bullshit me.” I snarl. “If you let them do a funeral that says you have already given up on the prognosis.” That knocks her down a peg. Discomposed, she looks away. I follow the gesture, darting three feet to the left. “Admit it. Just say it. You don’t think this is going to work.” “It’s going to work!” “You don’t have to do this,” I say. “What do you mean?” “I can handle myself.” She wheezes, derisive. Guilty as she was, there was an order of operations to how she conducted herself. Rule 1 was Take No Bullshit. “No you can not.” “How can you tell?” “I can just tell, alright?” My temper flares, nails grating into metal. I wish I knew what to be offended about. “You’re afraid I’ll hurt someone.” She slams the folder into her lap. “Will you stop. For fuck’s sake, I don’t need guilt trips and psychoanalysis!” “Oh, because accountability is so terrible?” Heat flashes in her eyes. I’d been pressing all the right buttons but knocked against self-destruct. If looks could kill, I’d be obliterated, but something inscrutable forces her to condense whatever she was going to explode with into a chopped, measured response. “I want to help you, Demetrius,” She says, tight. “I know you’re sick. But I have to think of the town too.” “What am I doing here Adria? What are we doing? I have no control over my life. You decide when I eat, what I do, what I wear. I mean fuck- are you keeping me around out of pity? Out of guilt? Because that’s shitty too.” She throws her case onto the stairs to meet me halfway across the room. My chest puffs, ready for whatever she’ll bring. "Will you shut up?! I’m doing the best I can! I’m trying to make this work!" “Oh yeah?” I think of the way Dave looks at me. Disgusted. Ashamed when he walks into the room. Or that any social interaction is preceded by cuffs. Or how I had to quarantine half of my gold to the bottom of my jewelry chest because I can't think about my break-up with Catholicism right now. It’s no goddamn secret I’m a liability. Everything, everyone is giving up, myself not excluded. Why is she pretending she hasn’t? “You’re trying to make this work? You are? I don’t see you cut off from the rest of the planet. I don’t see you tied to the wall anytime someone enters the room.” "It's not easy! People think you're dead!” I roll my eyes. Who’s fault’s th- "There’s cameras all over town.” She continues without brakes. “They haven’t stopped. I can't walk two feet without everyone asking if I'm okay. And I'm not! I’m not okay! Because I have my best- I have you locked in a literal jail cell and can’t do anything about it. I can’t help you because I didn’t save you and-" She brushes back her bangs, but they fall back in her eyes. "I can’t even make you comfortable because it’s a fucking jail cell in a stupid town you hate that you don’t belong in.” My mouth slowly shuts. “But Ashwater isn’t safe either.” She swipes her eyes. “No one is. It’s getting worse and I can’t keep everyone happy. And now instead of doing anything about it, I'm whining as if I didn't completely ruin your life.” “You-” I start, before losing all traction. Not because I didn’t mean it, but because she wouldn’t believe me if I said otherwise. “No. Adria, you didn't." She runs her cheeks across her shoulder. My grip on the bars loosen until my hands fall limp. "...I know you're trying very hard." I say, defeated. She sniffs. “Yeah, well. Not hard enough.” She struggles. Whatever she couldn’t peel off the cement on the first try was abandoned. My knees gave out halfway through, and I fell back onto my mattress. There were half a million things to say but I didn’t. After that temper tantrum, it’d be bogus anyway. I let it go. The next day I wake to shuffling. 5 PM. There’s no new box. After she finally yielded apricot scrub to my poor, starving pores, my ‘needs’ dwindled to nothing but company. The cell looked like a cramped suite and until it was installed with a ‘Home is where the Heart is’ placard, it was just a step below Margie’s. Instead she rolled in a television set. It was one of those big box ones straddled on a wooden dolly. I whistle, impressed in the way that old 1950’s housewares are neat. “Where’d you get that fossil?” “We had it in the back.” She says. “We used it for the Say No to Drugs campaign in the 90’s. And these.” She slides a thin box set under the bars. I receive Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s, seasons 1 through 3. “Wowww,” I say, severing the sarcasm at the last second. The tone didn’t match the feeling, I was actually grateful. Still- she catches my bluff. “Margie bought them awhile ago, wanting to know what you were talking about at brunch all the time” My heart melts. “Aw.” I cozy up with the episode catalog as she disappears. I try not to let my disappointment creep into the physical realm. It was to be expected. She barely had enough patience listening to me talk about Kardashians before I was cooped up in a cell with literally nothing else to think about. Not to mention, we hadn’t officially made up. It was just kind of...implied? In the way all our fights are. Not the type of guy to think too deeply about those things (yuck), I pop in the first disc, reliving the early days of Kim K’s sex-tape. It’s interrupted by heavy clunking upstairs. I peek up the stairwell, delighted that the DVD delivery wasn’t my full serving of Adria for the day. “Are you doing renovations?” “Sort of!” She’s cut off by wood screeching against plaster. This was followed by a perilous series of thumps, sounding like a body hurled down the steps. I shove my nails into the lock mechanism, jamming them into the gears, when she pops around the corner. She was dragging her desk down the steps, alone. Dave was out somewhere on call. “HEY hey, easy! You’re going to hurt yourself!” “I got it!” she says, before it became very obvious she did not have it. Her fingers slip. The desk opts out of a chaperone, and sails down the stairs solo. I clap my hands over my ears just before the CRACK. Her pens explode over the floor. We both stare, lopsided, at her newly defurbished desk. I did her the grace of not commenting but just in case, I tamp hope down to idle curiosity. Too easily, she could break my heart. “Kicking it with me, deputy?” I pick at a lock of my bangs with practiced disinterest. “Now that there’s no show. We can move-” She says. “To a shift model.” She heaves. “Dave takes mornings, I take afternoons.” I don’t believe a word of that but don’t complain. I pull my chair to the edge, abandoning Kylie and Kendall to their star-studded sibling squabble. “How’s the job?” She blew her hair out of her eyes. “Wish you could’ve seen it.” “Oh?” “There was a goat.” She says. “A floating goat.” “Like a pegasus?” “Those are horses. And also they don’t fly upside down.” I smile. The whole ordeal must’ve exhausted her- she certainly has the bruises to prove it “I wish I could’ve too.” “I’m sure there will be more than enough floating farm animals to go around when you’re out.” “I’m sure,” I say, pretending that it didn't feel like the New Years Resolution-y thing all over again. “But until then you should let me help.” “No.” She blows the idea out of the air like a stone cold sharpshooter. Since I asked last, her resolve annealed into cement. She practiced it in front of a mirror. “Not about...that,” I placate. “Just-...you know. In general. How we used to.” She holds her head in her chin, stubbornly ignoring the warp in the wood. “You mean, you sip on frappichini’s while I do all the gross stuff?” “Yes, exactly that.” She thinks about it. I remind her that I have literally nothing but time, and she starts to pick through the folders. “Do you happen to know anything about labor laws and how it pertains to critters breaking into people’s houses to clean?” "Nope. Not-a-thing, but! Hand it over. I’ll be your basement Cousin Vinny." She smirks, and hands off a stack of files. I won’t lie. This gig pays significantly less than my last one. Only in blood, actually, but it felt good to have Moreau’s fieldbook back in my hands. I run my hand through the pages noting she hasn’t touched a single sticky note. Working, we settle into a companionable silence. Nothing but the pleasant flip of paper and rhythmic scratching from her bearing down on her pen too hard. With her so close, I betray myself. I fall asleep before any real work got done, but by the time 9 PM rolled around, I had her guy. “Hello Clarice.” Her messenger bag slides off her shoulder. “You’re so dramatic.” It’s 6 PM. Her visits are getting later and later, and longer too. I don’t say anything about it because a guy like me isn’t racking up good karma. Best not jinx it. “How are you feeling?” “Same ol’ same ol’.” I say, to avoid thinking deeper about it. “You?” “Mmph.” She grunts in place of an answer. Another file is dropped on my tray. I pick through it like a gossip rag, whistling. It’s a new case, full of grainy CCTV stills, and Adria’s abridged testimonies from the townsfolk. I flip through pages, admiring her special brand of candor. “This looks fuuun.” “It’s not. It burnt down the mustard museum.” “Oh. America weeps.” I reach for a bag, but come up empty. Looking up, I see she’s wringing it into a thermos. She'd never say it, but it felt easier to go back to how it was when I wasn’t sucking on a bio-hazard logo. “The whole town smells like a cook-out,” It squirts, painting the picture for me. “Which is not good. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.” “Fantastic.” “See if you can find anything that likes pungent condiments to a ridiculous degree.” “Aye-aye. On it, chief.” I take the thermos, grateful. “What’s on your plate, then?” “I’m going over the notes we found at the compound.” “Oh?” “Some of the guys credited with digging that pit match names in an old phonebook we had lying around.” “E-exciting.” “Oh, you know it.” Thankful to be spared yellow pages duty, I lick my finger and turn a page. Researching mustard deviancy gets me nowhere because of course it doesn’t, but while cross-referencing, my finger catches on a dog-ear. Ghoul is marked, stained, and subsequently torn. It was our first case. My trial by fire in the wild, untamed pastures of Ashwater. We were called to a cemetery at 9 at night to find a dried-up zombie looking thing smacking on the bones of Mrs.Adler. After my attempt at an exorcism failed spectacularly, Adria shoved me to the side and got to work with a shovel. She saved my life. I thanked her by spending the night looking at airfare. I can’t do it, I thought, hands trembling. The shaking hadn’t stopped. How could it? Everytime I closed my eyes, I got a face full of hot, rancid meaty breath, circled by a row of teeth belonging to 8 separate people. ’I can’t hold my own against monsters.’ I thought. Literal monsters. Godforsaken, gross, disgusting monsters. I wasn’t a superhero. Fuck, I wasn’t even a good Catholic. Do you know what I said? ‘Screw the town,’ I nearly deported myself to Tampa. ‘It’s cursed. Burn it to the ground, never look back.’ I threw a one-way ticket in my cart with no connecting flights. Ship me off to LA in a freighter. I want to be home. Sipping Boba, ignoring the unpleasantness of smalltown life with a rigorous course of retail therapy- But in a surprising turn of events, I didn’t commit. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. Call it PTSD. Maybe FOMO, but a nagging thought blocked the space between the keyboard and my pinky. It didn’t entirely make sense to me at the time, but even through the trauma of a near-dead experience, I knew I had gotten a taste of something special. An authenticity that didn’t exist on the silver screen. One I only pretended to harness it when I did my shows. ‘Healing’ the sick, but never in a way that mattered. Out here, I found altruism in the flesh. Pure selflessness, concentrated in the form of an abrasive woman with a killer, killer set of arms. And while my gut rolls to remember the snap of its skin when the space of Adria’s space met it’s neck, the squelch when it separated, objectively I knew if I clicked that button, I would never find this again. Leave it to Ashwater- leave it to Adria- to make my first rendezvous with death nostalgic. “So about the funeral,” I flip the page. “Deme.” She groans, already exhausted. “I’m just curious! How’d it work? Obviously I wasn’t in it, so…?” “It was closed casket.” “Well duh.” My stunt double has long since flown back in LA, registering for unemployment. “But how’d you pull that off?” “Me, Dave, creative angles, and the abuse of local Blue Laws.” “I’m impressed, deputy. Between stealing your brother’s Mario Party and your blatant disregard for the justice system, I think you like me.” She looks up from the paragraph she’s been re-reading over and over for the last five minutes, withering. “Don’t you think it’s dark? Why do you fixate on that so much?” I shrug. “I’m not trying to, but Khloe buried her poodle in season 3 and now I have to see if I had better digs than a dog.” “Yes, your funeral was better than a cockapoos.” “Ah- but she had hors’odevers from Cake Boss. Shaped like the late Fifi herself.” “Okay, yeah, well, you’re right. Your funeral wasn’t a carnival.” “So.” I bounce my brows. “What was it then?” She sucks in a breath, inhaling like she always did when she knew I wasn’t going to let it go. That didn’t stop her from making one last feeble attempt. “Just trust me! It was real sad and everyone cried.” I scoot closer. “It’s not just that. I’m worried about everything. Like what even happens to my estate? My condo? My 'rari?” “Dave is currently waging that war.” “War?” She gave me a look. A wilting grimace of such disdain that could only mean- "No," My insides curdle. “For the love of God, don’t let her claim me as a dependent.” “Dave is currently trying to import a lawyer to pry that one from Julia's hands. If you have any bright ideas, now’s the time, actually.” “If you’d give me my ph-” “No.” “Ugh.” My head drops off the edge of the bed. “Anyone else?” “Jeez, I don’t know.” I rub my cheek, upside-down. “Mom, maybe?” Her pen drops. “She isn’t close. Not in the same hemisphere, actually. She was doing a tour in Okinawa last I heard, but I know she won’t touch my-” “Wait.” My head lifts. “Hold on. What?” “My mom?” “You have a mom?!" "Yeah?" I say, dumbly. "How did- how did that never come up?!" I squint. That was the question she wanted to ask? ‘How did that never come up’? I know she panned through twenty more egregious ones to get there. Like, why wasn’t she at the hospital after I lost my shoulder? Why didn’t I call her then? Why didn’t I call her now? But why would I need to? All two people who needed to know already did. And were, conveniently, currently inhabiting this room. "It just...didn’t. Why? Did she come to the funeral?" "I don't- I don’t know!" She rustles through pages in a blind panic, crime scene confetti. “Was she one of the old ladies?” I dodge that bullet like I’m Keanu Reeves. "Come on, now you HAVE to let me watch it." “N-no, you really don’t.” I’ve been to Adria’s parent’s place. Melina was a compassionate and doting mother. She’s the parent who has finger-paintings carbon-dated 20 years, hundreds of hours of recitals in the form of VHS tapes. Photos lined the walls and shelves, preserved to break out every holiday. That wasn’t Maria Descoteaux, but Adria did not know that. Mustering the best face I could without the ability to form saline tears, I draw a stilted breath. My voice artfully cracks. “You are denying me rights…to my mother?” She dissolves completely. “Okay...okay! Fine.” She throws me another bag. Giddy, I milk it into my thermos as she puts a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. I try not to let my shock show when she lugs the colossal set into the middle of the room. Before now I’ve been operating with a remote. Before now, we haven't been within six feet. Dumbfounded, I clear space around the door, afraid to move too fast like she was a skittish animal, ready to bolt. She slides inside, and instructions were implicit: Stay on your side. No sudden moves. Don’t try to fucking eat me. And while the instinct to put her into my mouth like a toddler learning motor control was very much a thing any time she looked at me, I drew a long, puckering draw from my straw to signal ’Aye-aye.’ She sits across from me. Close enough to feel a static I thought it was unrequited, but she tenses too. She doesn’t pass the remote. I think better about wrestling it from her. The director's cut could wait. She hit play. The program opens with a new report, ‘DEMETRIUS MARQUETTE DEAD AT 36.’ After a quick glance to confer, she skips through footage of my flower-bombed porch in LA. She stops when it hits Ashwater. In Moreau’s chapel, the camera pans over a team of golden girls in the front row. Beyond scientific rationale, they are still alive, but Julia’s dished out enough NDA’s to mummify any one of them. They can’t say a word, but I’m touched that they made it. As I squint to pick one out randomly as my honorary mother, the procession starts. A lady in a pantsuit takes to the podium. She’s no one I recognize from my studio, or even Ashwater. Not even a television host. I’m man enough to admit I don’t deserve Mario Lopez, but c’mon. Not even Ryan Seacrest? Broken-hearted, I look over to find Adria sucking a smile through her teeth like it’s sour. “Who is-?” “Just watch.” She barely gets it out. “Good morning.” The lady on-screen dabs her eyes. “I am Julia Agrippina. As Father Marquette’s manager, I have had the honor and pleasure of working with Worship With Style’s pastor for nearly two decades. During that time-” My face dropped. “Oh my god.” “Yup.” “She...she hired an actress. To cry for her.” “Yuuup.” “I...I can’t tell if I’m touched or offended.” “It made the whole thing more tolerable, actually.” Julia’s eulogy concluded as syrupy and fake as melted plastic, consisting of a brief glamorized history of my life she retconned to firesale the last season. Did you know I was a child prodigy? Found the light at age fourteen, and dedicated my life to Christ since? Neither did I, but in her defense, honest eulogies are never fun. And with Hollywood bullshit out of the way, Father Moreau took over. He held a beautiful, eloquent mass. One so sincere that it even convinced me that I grew up here. The sheriff followed that performance with a brief but poignant speech of his own. Kind as it was, I was left unnerved by the way he spoke. It was too final, too serious, given his extra-curricular context but I shook it off in time for Liam. Liam has been my driver for the past several years. He was always a big softie but the poor guy was barely able to get a word out without choking. His road metaphors would’ve been beautiful if he could’ve got through them. And after the grand total of three people who I knew personally spoke, the floor was open for the town. I wasn’t expecting much by the way of the citizens. I knew them, sure. Don’t get me wrong, their reception of me has always been great. They were insanely hospitable when my crew came in and turned the town upside down, but I always kinda thought they liked me for the limelight. I see now that wasn't the case. I sank low into my seat. Citizen after citizen came up to the podium. Each with their own anecdote about me and the show. The first few were funny. Their stories were good times, composed of hundreds of tiny details I hadn’t bothered committing to memory, but then it got sad. Really sad. Candace spoke about the incident at Starbucks like I saved her life. Dan credited me with saving his business, and when Adria’s little brother and sister came up to the mic, their little hands intertwined with their mother’s- I was abruptly enjoying this a whole lot less than I thought I would. These were people we’ve helped. Lives I’ve touched without even knowing it. Granted, Adria did most of the heroism, but they credited me too. To be nice, I guess? Why do I feel so sick? I pulled my leg over my knee, bouncing it to stave the rolling feeling in my gut. This was an open window to grief not for me. I wasn’t meant to see any of it. Even if it's over me. When you’re not dead, you’re a voyeur. Last up was Adria. That’s about the time she shot to her feet. I blink, catching on two seconds too late. “What-” I hiss. “What are you doing!” “It’s bad!” She goes for the plug. “I was obviously lying the whole time so it’s not great.” “Let me watch.” “Demetri, no.” “Why not!” I throw myself across her lap. She lobs an elbow into my eye while dangling the remote out of reach. Her arm winds to chuck it. "Oh my God,” I crawl down her ribs. “Don't you dare! DON’T YOU DARE, GIVE IT-" "STOP! It's AWFUL, just trust me!" "That means it's going to be the best thing I've ever seen!" “Me crying like an idiot?!” I claw for her arm, but we both have the same wingspan. "Why are you acting like I haven't loved every single one of your antics?" "AGAIN! This is a funeral!" “Give me the remote!” And for some reason, she does. She stops, mid-wrestle, it drops into my palm. There’s a beat of silence. We both stare at it in my hand, her stunned and me disappointed (I was having fun), but before it registers, she throws me into the floor. “ACK. The hell!” “You cheated!” She jumps for the set. She claps her hands over the censor. But it’s too late. "AHA!" I cheer, battered from the tile. The program resumes with Adria up to bat. The defeated deputy plops down beside me, miserable as the one on TV. Like Hell I’m going to miss the most sincere one out of the bunch. The recording rolls. The Adria on TV straightens the notecard in her hands. I've never seen Adria in black. As a matter of fact I've never seen her in a dress. Or heels. The whole presentation would've been something to tease about, a 'You clean up nice’ snarked until she was red in the face, but then the recorded Adria looked up and any impression of levity popped. She was trembling. Hands shaking too hard, it was impossible to make out a word. Her eyes were too bloodshot to pick out a letter. Hollowing under cheekbones said she hadn't gotten a wink of sleep, and when it seemed the cue card might as well have been in Farsi, she slaps it on the podium like a bad hand. The cynical daydream of a ridiculous funeral devoid of earnest emotion, the one I had before Ashwater, went down like the Hindenburg. I took one look at her face and thought, oh shit. She was right. “I'm so sorry,” She stares at the podium, going for a cold open. Too late to back down now. The camera zooms in on her face. It was obvious from the framing the producers wanted her to look up for the teaser but that wasn't going to happen. Her hands were out of the cut, but I could tell from the tension in her shoulders she was gripping the podium tight. Excess emotion only knew how to escape as brute force, Adria was too aggressive for TV. "I want to say sorry to everyone," She starts again. "But mostly I'm sorry to Deme. I went into that shop wanting to protect you. I did the best I could, but it wasn't enough. If I was smart...If I wasn’t so stupid, I would've taken you with me. Or put you back in the car, or not have taken you at all. If I had known that thing was in there- I should've learned from the wolf or the crocotta. I should've-” Dave approaches from behind. He grips her shoulder, giving it a firm shake to impart all the confidence she needed to break the spiral. She swipes her eyes, and nods, and when looks back up at the camera, she shares the same feverish intensity she had when she realized the crash carts weren't going to be fast enough. She starts again, this time on a new breath. "You and me, we made the best team. I know I teased you a lot. I called you stupid, and prissy, and said cared too much about big-city housewives but that's why I liked you, e-even if it didn't seem like it. You brought excitement to this sleepy town. You got me out of my own head to enjoy this place, even if it was full of monsters, and executives, and stupid cameras. Even if we were arguing over nothing all the time, I was awake. I was happy. I felt like I was living for the first time and it didn't matter what we were up against, if it was going to be stupid or dangerous or gross, or spiders." She wheezed a little. "I was just excited to do it with you." I swallow thickly. My stomach locks up. The climb before the free fall. "But when you said you loved me,” She breaks. “You- you were so cold. You were bleeding out, laying on me. You looked up at me, and I knew. I knew you knew I couldn't save you and I wish- I wish I could’ve. I'm so sorry. You said you loved me and I-I was too busy trying to even say it back." I’m going to be sick. Her shoulder racks. For a steady thirty seconds, nothing else fills the church but her sobs. In the back, Dave removes his cap. He doesn’t dare to approach. Like all the other heads in frame, his dips to stare at the floor. In the present, I stop breathing. My heart seizes. For one long, dangerous moment, neither of us move. Funeral-Adria stood at the podium. Tears drip off the tip of her nose, timed like a leaky tap. I could only tell the feed wasn't paused by the tremor in her shoulders, shaking as she tried to find her words. But when she does find them, they come out in her abrupt, unrefined, blunt Adria-way. "So I'll say it now." She collects herself in an abrasive new vigor. "I do love you. And I miss you. And I wish I could've done better." And she ends it. She dropped the L-word then leaves stage left, her exit like a waking dream. Someone clamored up on stage to take up position after her, but I stopped receiving signal. Somewhere during the eulogy my hands wound up against my face. They covered my mouth while my head clouded into pure television static. Adria had gone equally still beside me. The remote sat balanced on my lap like a bomb. Ticking. Neither of us know how to defuse it. Both of us were too afraid to touch it. My funeral concluded not with a bang, but a whimper. On screen, Julia had a presentation that flitted through montages from past seasons I didn’t care about, and the most recent one that I cared too much about. Three separate times I tried to speak, but my throat clenched each attempt like anaphylaxis. My life was inverted by Ashwater, but it was a type of subversion, the conversion of matter, you can't come back from. I could complain about my living conditions all day, like the spotty wifi, the lack of cuisine, but every night before I went to bed, I was happy. Fulfilled in a capacity I didn't know was possible. All the good things I had known were cheap. Distractions, at best but Ashwater was my Jesus born again moment, my wake-up call. It set into motion a transition from a Demetri I knew, to the one I don’t recognize. I could even see it in the picture Julia blew up for the memorial. Smile lines are different when you’re not pretending. In complete isolation I didn't miss fame, or the glory, or the autographs. What I missed was not knowing what life had next. Not in the adrenaline junkie way Adria does, God no, but the mystery. The spontaneity. Feeling something real, and having someone to experience it with, not at. But the inability to pipe up now goes to show a little something I’ve suspected all along since the inception of my second life, something only made obvious in the Ashwater scenes that made it into the montage, Adria never out of frame: I didn't learn shit. All this time I was afraid to touch her. I only felt permission when she was hurt. When I was hurt. When we were in danger and didn’t have to think about things and what they meant. It was a free pass. Like the unrepentant hedonist I am, I took them whenever I could get them, snatching chances like Kleenex, and living life like it was catered for me. But I wonder now, staring at the screen, watching Adria say she loves me, wondering if I ran the long con only to cheat myself. They say you’re most honest on your deathbed. In my experience, it only served to make me a better liar. I told myself, as I l bled out across her knees, that I’d know better next time. That if I had more time, I'd have been brave enough to say I loved her. That I wanted to touch her. It didn’t mean the same now when that love was indecipherable from wanting to rip her to pieces. The crawl of a piano plays us out, doing nothing but firm up the congealing silence between us. If nothing, I knew it was my responsibility to break it. “Acting, huh.” I say, flaky “Shut up.” She says, beet red. I try to laugh it off, fake, but it doesn’t forestall the impending awkwardness. Uncertainty rolls in like a thunderhead. Neither of us knew what it was or how to navigate our way out except for the same as we always had: bumbling, stretching, picking and jabs. And when that got stale, and neither of us can look the other in the eyes in any significant way, when things got too real, and the jokes fell flat, the night was called. Adria shuffled out of the cell, excusing herself with a clumsy ‘good night.' Obviously I could not do the same. It was after I heard her book the last flight of stairs, when I heard the station door lock, and her car pull off that I realized you can only bask in the good for so long. Eventually, reality creeps back. It’s insidious and unbidden. Septic, it spreads as an infection, eating through the good until there is nothing left. Just a corpse- me- laying on my back, trapped in the underbelly of the police station. I stare up at the ceiling. In the splotches of water damaged tile, I watch scenes play out in the plaque. They were soft. At first, they tried to be warm vignettes of what would’ve happened if I took my shot, but all too quickly those fuzzy feelings sour, putrefying into something unkind until the optimist in me who imagined Adria was home with butterflies succumbed to the cynic asking 'Who was I kidding?' When Adria walked out of here, she was free. When she passed through those doors, her life continued. To the rest of the world Adria wasn't a stiff in a box. She was alive. She was doing all the things normal people do- eating, drinking, laughing. Living. She didn't have time to fixate, to dwell. I curl under the comforter, huffing out a breath that miraculously didn't float past my eyes. ’It’s sad, isn’t it?’ This is what my life has come to. Of all people, it’s me clinging to small things. To gestures. To words, obsessing over feelings expressed a lifetime ago, like a pitiful Vampire Diaries meets Sunset Boulevard reboot. What did I have to offer her? I could give nothing. Mine is a bleak existence. A worthless one, parasitic, and whittled down to one powerful need that smashed Maslow's pyramid into a single line. I had nothing to live for except being fed and her return. The funeral viewing only complicated that. I changed in the face of concrete evidence. Gone were the days of denial, and in their stead, was a mania. My head was buzzing, full of wild and volatile regret, thinking of all the things I should’ve said. How I needed to tell her I loved her now. How it would've drawn her in until we touched. She would've taken me in her arms, forgetting what I am to run her hands through my hair. And with mine in hers, we would've kissed. Passionately like those TV specials she loves so much, deeper and deeper still, until we were stealing the breaths from eachother’s chests, my body warm, and mouth flush with a taste of the adrenaline. The very vitality that makes Adria who she is, and so damn irresistible. Sleep takes me before I figure out how I can get her in the cell. She returns at 6 the next night. “You won’t believe what I’ve found.” She staggers in, checking the door with her hip. The discolored cardboard box she’s lugging looks like it survived a flood, a fire, and then another flood consecutively. “Look at this list.” Bemused, I partake. It’s riddled with old timey names. Ediths and Arnold’s. “Okay.” “Compared to THIS.” She slaps down another page. I look over it too. The names match, albeit jumbled out of order. “...They’re missing people?” “It’s the connection.” She grins like an escaped asylum patient. “They left Modena en masse, telling no one to join the settlement in Ashwater.” “And?” “That’s where they all became part of this exclusive club!” She slaps down a print-out of a big, bolded headline. City Shaken by Cult Indoctrination. Mass suicide botched. They were shut down after some authority intervened. This group went unnamed- FBI or something, but the key takeaway was the owner was an Ashwaternite who owned ground in both cities. "The roster doubled in Modena before it went kaput." I spot the phrase ‘sacrifice of the faithful,’ and cringe. As nuts as Adria looked, sleepless-yet-jittery, on her way to caffeine overdose, she was onto something. “Sounds like Heaven’s Gate.” “It does, doesn’t it? Ashwater is having weird shit happen because of these assholes. I think they’re trying to open it again, a portal or something.” “But that doesn’t make sense.” I push it back, Devil’s Advocate. “The appeal of Ashwater that warehouse, and that was super abandoned. Not to mention the whole compound is built around a pit. How would you relocate a pit?” “Maybe they didn’t have to.” She spun another print-out around. Goddamn, she’s organized. This one is present-day. Or at least, beyond the turn of the century. “Maybe it’s safer for them to do it remotely. Look at this- Moreau found their club on Mapquest.” “‘Mapquest’?” I repeat, dryly. She just grins. “It hasn't even moved.” Unfortunately, for all her newfound confidence, that’s where her line of intel dies. The deed changed countless hands since the 40’s but where it ended up was anyone’s guess. The new establishment has been radio silent since its reopening, and the only nugget of relevant information she found was that they were recruiting again, but it read in a cryptic way. There were no applications to fill out, no pockets to grease. They preferred in person consultations without specifying what that meant. I sit back, impressed yet underwhelmed. “Okay so you got a weird club. What does that mean?” To answer, she dumped the whole box on the floor. Blueprints. Tax records. Renovations. Obituaries. Adria threw every name into a search engine, and hit Print with wild abandon. Manilla folders slip and slide under the bars, painfully evocative of that scene in Titanic where Jack is tied to the pipe and water rushes the door. The only difference is that this data would’ve been dry enough to save him. I shove tax documents under the door, pleading. “Hey, you know what I said about wanting to help?” “Nope!” “Ugh.” We had several questions to start with. Who owns the club? Does it serve the same purpose? Was the connection still relevant, and is it possible it really is the cause of all the weirdness in Ashwater? What happens when they’re done recruiting? The notes at the compound said their original purpose was to open a gate, to break down the barriers between worlds, until all manner of existence was interconnected. They failed the first time. Obviously that meant they were determined to try again, but that would be bullshit, bored, cocaine-addled insanity unfit to survive the wifi era, right? We combed through all manner of papertrail we could find, sorting everything into two piles: useless and probably useless. Progress ground to a halt after dusk. The hours ticked by without a lead, and divining the occult from publicly access records was as fruitful as it sounded. By 2 a.m. the heat of the radiator put her on the tile. She sits cross legged in front of the bars, slumping the closest she’s been since the car. I laid belly down across from her, pretending to study until my eyes crossed. My attention for administrative bullshit expired hours ago, but she was treating this case like it was the Hodge Conjecture. She gets so serious when she’s researching. She taps her leg, and chews her lip. I look busy when she is looking, but when she’s not? I watch her wrinkle the flesh of her mouth, licking the lid of my thermos like a yogurt top. When things got comfortable in Ashwater- when things were slow, and we could do nothing- I thought of what it’d be like to live like this forever. Last year if you told me I'd spend a prime Saturday night on the ground looking through census records, I'd have laughed in your face. And if you told me weeks ago I'd be on the A-team to prevent a Dixie town apocalypse? I’d have dropped a tip to the DEA, but that's only because those two hypotheses were always missing a variable, a common denominator that changes the whole equation. But even now, my job is gone. It’s buried under my headstone, and while I’m stuck here for an undetermined amount of time, none of it matters. Even if I go nuts from dawn to dusk, until she makes her way back down, when she walks through that door, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. Adria rolls over, then recoils. “That.” She says, disgusted. “That is the face, by the way.” “Huh?” She stands. The stick of her skin smacks as she peels herself off the ceramic. “I think it’s time to call it.” I blink. “But-” “Goodnight, Deme.” The beat of my heart slams against my ribs with the force to break them. I rise to full height. But it’s only two. I panic. I have seconds, seconds before she’s gone, leaving me scrambling to find a way to keep her. To get her to stay. I know what I’d have to do. If there was any time to say it, it was here: I wanted you before I died. I wanted her at that corn maze. I wanted her when she decapitated a ghoul, and I wanted her on the porch of her parent’s house, the two of us reminiscing over coffee. I wanted to spill my guts about it now, but the problem is there’s a little more to my desire that needed to be left unsaid. A secret stands between me and abject honesty: All the old ways I wanted Adria don’t hold a candle to the new ones. “You just reminded me.” She turns from grabbing her bag, and flinches. “Jesus, you’re fast.” She doesn’t step closer. “You can tell me tomorrow.” “You know what I miss?” I continue anyway. She shakes her head, and kills the light, not knowing how much worse that makes this. “I’m serious. I can’t do this right now. I need to go.” I press my cheek against the bars. The metal is so frigid I imagine it streaks my face pinstripe. “Sitting on your car.” That stops her, only because it deactivated whatever innate survival instinct that was telling her to go. “Before you wrecked it.” “Before I wrecked it.” I smile. “I miss feeling the purr of the engine on my back. It’s nothing like my ‘rari. It’s a lot rougher. Your cruiser, it just. Gets to your bones.” Between the vibration and the heat, it’s how I felt across her lap, wrestling for the remote. That live-wire energy I had seconds before the car flipped. She softens. “...We’ll get back to that. You’ve been patient, it’s just a little longer.” “But what am I waiting for, exactly? For when you’re not afraid of me?” The silhouette of a horror movie heroine stops. She swivels to face me, just before the door. The light is back. “I’m not afraid of you.” “I know you’re disgusted by me.” “No.” You’re disgusted by yourself.” I shift. And she’s silent. Convinced by the rigidity of her posture, I smile a little. That’s the one. A twisted strain of amusement bubbles inside my chest. It’s the discovery of a sick fact, a feeling born of a Faustian bargain to pump my veins poison in turn for proving my case. “If I know you,” I say. “It’s not even the whole vampire pretense. It’s because you put me in here, right? You feel bad.” She doesn’t answer. She grabs her belt. She leaves the rest where it’s scattered across the floor, the basement looking like it was whipped by a hurricane. “You shouldn’t go.” I call after her. “I can get out of here. Easy. Do you want to see?” The footsteps stop. Patient, I wait for her to pop back into view. “What?” “Unlock the cell.” The command imbues the air like a gas. I know it takes hold when her keys jangle. She takes a step forward, thoughtlessly, then another until she’s striding the floor. No resistance. I snatch her fingers just before they make contact. Beguiling, her pulse races against the meat of my hand. “See. What’d I say?” Blood drains from her face. The keys hit the ground where she then dropkicks them into the next room. They slide under the baseboard heater, chiming down the inner machinations. “You can’t fuck around like that,” She snatches her hand out of mine. “This is exactly what I was fucking talking about.” My hands move behind my head, face split into two by a grin. Treat me as a convict, and a convict I will be. “I wouldn’t actually do it, you know. I’m not stupid.” She stares at me, like she’s figuring out where I was going with this. I enlighten her. “I know if I don’t get out on Ashwater P.D.’s terms, there’s nothing for me on the other side. There’s nowhere to go, I’m dead. At the same time, though, you have to ask yourself what is this existence? What are you proving?” “I’m not doing this.” She says, clipped. “I have to go.” “Stay.” Her feet root in place. She looks down like a bullet punched through her sternum, then me like I pulled the trigger. “I miss so many things. I miss living, Adria. Like you. But this? This is not living.” “We’ve gone over this.” “C’mon.” I dip my head, doe-eyed through my bangs. It’s like the thought of moving didn’t occur to her. “When has an animal got better in a crate?” “You’re not a feral dog,” She snarls. “You’re a fully cognizant man who was due for a reality check on impulse control even before this.” I bite my lip, forced to concede. Well. She got me there. Driving the point home, my eyes haven’t left her mouth. Even as she spits venom, a little drop sits on her face, beautiful but a waste. She bit down too hard going over old blueprints. I haven’t stopped thinking about what it’d be like to take it from her. See how soft her lip was, if that tenderness went all the way through. “If you’re not afraid, come to me.” “I said I’m not afraid of you!” “Come to me.” Disjointed, she fights herself, taking a stormy step like she’s wading through a tide. She meets me at the bars. Fury screws up her face like she’s never hated anyone more. “That’s what the crocotta said,” she says, her voice tight. “‘Come to me.’” Even beyond the throes of certain pleasure, my face drops. The parallel she lays is unspoken. Implicit. I think about it, stupidly entertaining the insult before I become too irritated to continue. I am not Cyrus. He was twisted and cruel. A monster of a man who did incredibly awful things, and scrambled her brain enough to convince her that his depravity was her fault. As tightly wound as the love-hunger line was between, that wasn’t me. Disgusted the thought even occurred to her, I pull away from her mouth. The heat of her breath makes it agony, like a slate driven under my nails. A finger for every inch of space. “Your hand.” “Deme.” I grit through pulsing teeth, “Give me your hand.” At my command, her wrist raises. She stares in frosty acknowledgement, eyes indomitable but glassy with tears that inexplicably begged for sympathy where there wasn't any. The pull is magnetic. The ringing in my ears is a cicada swarm. Stopping now is going against nature, freezing a car after it sailed off a cliff. I don’t care about anything. Nothing except that purple thread woven between the small bones of her wrist, and the thin membrane preserving it. She always loved fighting. It shows in the way her blood rushes. It pounds in waves, crashing against my teeth. I taste vigor there. Her body is full of it, spirit too, and as it runs down my chin I think of what it'd be like if there were no bars. Where we could touch without contorting about metal. Where I could I feel the full hit, and pull her into my chest. Her ribs filling the recesses of mine, her heart drumming a frenzy that rights the arrhythmia of mine. I see why she’s into this. The energy, the thrill, the fight. She sprays the back of my throat, and I’ve never felt more alive. This is an impulse she could never understand. I could stand on a soap box for hours, crooning the virtues of excess but it'd fall on deaf ears. I was a glutton. I expected the finer things in life, and cut down all obstacles between me and what I wanted. And for a moment, at the height of it, I'm reminded that Adria is, and will always be at the heart. I want her with me. Not at just a physical level, but to understand. She deserves this. After everything she's done for this ungrateful world, after everything she has sacrificed, she is owed the power of wanting something so much, so selfishly, it's sought to your own destruction because that’s when you break windfall. I wanted her to understand the pull of overindulgence- Except it goes against everything I loved about her. Blood spills over my lip like a popped balloon. My eyes open. We’re on our knees. My head is pounding, my nose is sticky from blood shooting out of my face. I had been run through the bars. Several times if the cracked terrain of my face is any tell, but through unfettered ecstasy- the push and pull fervor of the fight- I didn’t notice. She wasn't doing as hot. She slumped in front of me. Her golden skin, a death pale in exception to her arm. From the elbow down, she was all manner of Valentine purples, reds, and pinks. Bruises and punctures, her wrist torn from where my teeth dragged. That ruddy sheen ran the length of her arm, pouring rivulets onto our laps. But she wasn't moving. I pull her up. I grab her arm, mouth vomiting hysterical noises that never quite manifested into a word or prayer, "Adria," I beg from my knees. Blood I hadn't yet swallowed bubbles out of my jaw. A repulsed part of my being says I shouldn't touch, but my hand hooks around her chin anyways, pushing back her bangs and opening her eyes. I feel for a pulse. It's there, but that's all that could be said about it. "Wake up. Wake up, please. Why didn't you scream? Adria, why didn't you say anything?!" But reflection interacts with my disease like an accelerant. Asking is deflection. Why didn’t you say anything? I shake her, like the ends justify the means. As if I could push the responsibility. Be saved one more time, and be owed the opportunity. Why didn't you scream? For fucks sake Adria. You’re the responsible one. Her head rolls. An unnaturally calm expression so wrong on her spitfire face lulls to tell me what I already know: Even if anyone had heard, she wouldn't have let them in. I allow myself one last indulgent cry before grabbing her waist. I push my destroyed nose into her shoulder, and hysterically crane for her belt loop. When it's in range, her radio. “Dave," His name hangs off chin in strings. He's been on-call since I got stranded in this town, I know he'll hear. "I need help. It’s Adria. I messed up. I'm so sorry, I messed up.” His answer is brief. A “Coming,” muffled by movement. It'd be minutes before he arrived. Maybe ten. Maybe half an hour. Time passes through a vacuum, and I lose track of it with Adria draped against my chest, in as close of an approximation she could be on my lap. The result is pitiful. A tilt like a tipped doll- a contradiction to everything she embodied. Adria is motion. She’s strength. She’s an amazon that can’t even pick out a shirt without worrying about how it fit. It was ridiculous the first time I heard it. She called her shoulders 'broad,' like those arms could ever be a turn-off. I laughed in her face then, never realizing how horrifically wrong she looks without them. She’s limp. Tired. Wilted. All her fire put out, she lays against me like a flat tire, half her size when she’s not around to pilot, when she’s not here to scream, and punch, and do all the valiant, heroic things she does for some reason, even when no one is looking- Yet even indisposed, she’s who I cling to. I hold her hand. Mine squeezes around hers, clenching to the cadence of a human heart, trying to keep her warm, but in reality, if I quit fucking lying to myself, I’d realize it’s self-soothing. I’m sapping her strength. Hanging on, one last time, under the delusion that I am helping. I hope I am, though. Dave arrives before I get any solace. A shot tears through before I see him, pinging off the cell and leaving metal shrieking like an explosion in a turbine. I shrink into my shoulders. My eyes squeeze out tears, in a last, lame attempt to dodge the only form of salvation I deserved. Adria slips down the bars but Dave hits the landing before she does. "She's alive." I say, due for bullet in the brain any minute now. “I tried to stop it, but she's alive I promise. She's-" His pistol cocks as a call for silence. Too critical to trust the word of a parasite, he verifies. His calloused fingers smudge the bloodied fingerprints I left on her throat, and when I turn out to be right, he hefts his arm under her ribs. She bows over his shoulder, and he drags her out of the room like a war vet. The gun trained for my skull never drifts until they pivot the corner. In silence, in solitude, and in unspeakable self-loathing, I fall apart. I don’t know how I fell asleep. Everything Criminal Minds taught me said I shouldn’t be able to. I couldn’t tell if that meant my guilt was fabricated, something I was only pretending to experience or if the blood in the air lulled me into a false state of comfort. Evidence of the night before is smothered all over the tile. Smeared, haphazard like the work of a demented artist, brushstrokes of blood line a play by play of our scuffle. Even though it looked like I slaughtered her in cold blood, her desk was the first place I looked. My guilty conscience drove my eyes there, like she’d be there. Eyebrows drawn, foot tapping, waiting with a lecture. It was a rosey thought. But that’s how she responded to human Deme problems. I knock over my hamper grabbing a shirt. Pouring half a bottle of cologne, I treat my makeshift mop like a mostoltov. On my knees, I sop up the blood. The resulting fumes are suffocating. My eyes tear up but I didn’t want to chance to smell anything organic. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to internalize what she smelled like 12 hours expired, just like I didn’t like knowing the temperature difference between blood that’s mine and hers. How much warmer I was when we connected, knowing what fear in her body tasted like. I scrub until the run-off stains the sink. “That’s not Demetrius,” says Dave, upstairs. It was two minutes into their heated exchange. To no one’s surprise, Adria discharged herself first thing after a transfusion. Back at work the next night, it didn't matter that she couldn’t take ten steps before needing a breather, Dave hadn’t even tried to drop off the ‘Get Well Soon’ card to her house. “He’s just having a hard time.” Fatigue lowered the pitch of her voice. “He’s not adjusting well.” “He’s attacked you unprovoked- twice.” “I wasn’t monitoring him close enough.” “It’s not your fault.” “It is!” She says. Her panic could only mean one thing. I drop my rag. I knock her coffee table against the wall. It creaks, threatening to cave under my weight, but holds. “Time got away from me,” I knew the guilty panic was mirrored on her face. “I didn’t realize he hadn’t eaten in hours. We were studying and-” If Dave has any mercy for her, it doesn’t develop in his tone. He takes two steps toward her, each one heavy enough to make it through the hardwood. “He’s not a child, Adria. He had words. Instead of using them, he chose to try to kill you.” “That’s not-” She starts. “That’s not what happened.” "You're doing it again." “Doing what?!” “Blaming yourself.” I throw my pillow against the window and drive my elbow into it. Glass crunches on the other side, muffled between goose feathers and wood panels against it. “Lying. It's not you that needs the chance. It was never you.” The contrite, angry touch in his voice must be driving her insane. He pitied her. You only needed to know Adra for five minutes to know how much she hated that. "You’re taking responsibility that's not yours to take. And it’s not the first time." “Don’t.” She starts, cold. “No, you don’t. I know the car wasn’t you, too.” “It was!” “It was not.” He crumpled her argument little more than words. Dave hits where it hurts, dissolving her worry with worry of his own. “Do you think I’m stupid? You’re covering up for him. You’re lying, and you’re only destroying yourself. Again.” For a long moment, I don’t hear anything else, but I know she’s crying. Struggling to breathe through the clotted blood in my nose, I draw quiet breaths. I splinter the pane. I pry apart wood by the strip, knowing I’m making headway when I see beams of the old streetlight peeking through. I just had to get to a payphone. I could call Liam. But before I make a hole big enough to grip, Dave continues. “We haven’t given anything else leeway like this. He shouldn't be different because that’s not him anymore." His footsteps get closer. Encroaching where she’s leaning against his desk, head in her hands. Her composure is fraying like when we found out Damon and Elyse were sick. “I’m not saying you have to look.” He says, softer. “I can do it.” "Dave." Quiet fury courses through her body. White hot emotion reacts to his cool-tempered escalation, Mentos in a Cola. When the door shook, I knew it was her body. She slammed into the door to block him. Dave doesn’t push it. Not on a physical front, anyway. “I liked him too,” He says, on his last leg. “But letting him live as that thing isn’t protecting him. You know I’m right.” My lip curls. The impulse reaction is murder. I shred the wood. Wedging my nails between splinters, I chip away at its fibers wishing they were his vocal chords. If she wasn’t watching, I’d invite him in. I’d do to him everything he was accusing me of, be the thoughtless monster that craved carnage, even if it was proving every goddamn thing he said right. “He’s still there.” She offsets the click of his pistol. “I’ve been spending every night with him. For God’s sake, if there’s anyone who knows Demetri, it’s me. He’s still in there.” And despite it all, she was still ready to fight for me. Just like that, violent thoughts extinguish. Guilt worms its way into the cracks they left, visions of murder replaced by spinning skullcaps and spattered grey matter. She has more faith in me than I have for myself. For just once, just once, I’d like to prove her right. For once, I wish I felt the compulsion to do the Adria thing. “Where do you draw the line? When he attacks someone else? When he hurts your family? Your brothers and sisters?” Adria didn’t have an answer. She’s lied, cheated, and stole to give me a lease on life I never deserved. Maybe it was the sunk cost fallacy. Or maybe she still saw me through the haze of her own blood hemorrhaging. Whatever it was, she didn't back away from the door. "You know him." She says simply. Like knowing me proves anything at all. History repeats itself. Time and time again, I picked at her trust until it scarred, the scorpion to her frog. The only defense to saving my life she had, the only one that’d hold water, was the weight it’d have on her own conscience. Imagine being so altruistic you’d die for the wrong thing. I slide down the wall. “One more chance.” says Dave, to no one’s benefit but hers. Adria didn’t deserve the trauma of hearing me die below her feet. In half an hour, she was back. She faced me in the pile of sawdust of my stillborn escape, and tossed me a bag. I waited for her to say something, but she didn't. Her return was inevitable. We had left the entire history of Ashwater strewn across the floor. Obviously she’d be back for it, even if half of it was illegible through blood and perfume. “Sorry, I’m late.” She says muted. I had a whole speech lined up, but it evaporated when I saw what she was wearing. I hadn’t spoken in so long, my voice cracks. "Are those…my sunglasses?" She dropped the bag on the tray. I don't know how but I could sense- I could feel- she still microwaved it. "I researched that trick of yours. Coercion doesn't work without clear eye contact." I swallow that pang of guilt. Without comment, I took what was offered. After that, I fully expected her departure, but she pulls up a chair. She spins it around, leaning forward against it’s back. "Can we talk?" She says. Three words like the drop of a guillotine. I fight against squirming, preferring capital punishment to confrontation. "If you want." "I know you're not yourself. That’s an understatement. "So what? You're going to kill me." "No!" She says, harsh. Angry with me for suggesting it, but quickly she strangles frustration into something softer. "I told you it wouldn't come to that. I promised.” I could've kicked myself for asking. Selfish. Adria would never. But she misunderstands. I didn’t ask because I thought she would. I asked to hear her say she wouldn’t. These last 48 hours of solitude have given me enough time to think. To anyone truly repentant, it would’ve been time to introspect. All it did for me was prove I had nothing to lean on. My religion was gone. The structure of what I used it for, too. The fame, glory, attention, reaffirmation that everything I did was right left me defenseless after setting me up to be where I am now: trying to find one measly reason to be saved. When she walked in, I knew she'd spent the last two nights doing the same. That’s where a selfless hero like her and a self-obsessed monster like me intersect. Neither of us can pull the trigger. "Nothing else was given this mercy." “You aren’t everything else.” I laugh. At rock bottom, there’s little more you can do. There’s no rebuttal. I have no defense. But when the words do come, they’re in the face of her ashen, expectant stare. “Do you want...an apology?” “No shit.” She says. As always. No-bullshit. I pull up a chair. If she’s here for no nonsense, she’s come to the right place. She doesn’t want me talking out my ass. I can’t say things I don’t mean, but deep down she has to know I can’t mean them, right? No, what she wants is something to make it easier. Conveniently, that’s all I had. “You’re right.” I lurch forward, elbows on my knees. “I am not myself. I haven’t recognized myself in awhile, and to be honest, I don’t think the same way of you either. I haven’t in some time.” She goes rigid. It’s all or nothing. “When you walk in..I think about all the ways to destroy you. It doesn’t matter that I did it before, or that I threw up everything I took because right here, right now is a fresh chance to do it again. It is the worst thing. I don’t know how to tell it apart, how I feel about you I mean. When I want you and when I want to kill you, it feels the same. And I think about how I'd do it, too.” My eyes drift to the floor. Her tapping leg has come to a cold stop. “How I’d need to look, what words to use. I plan it hours in advance. Just this morning, I knew you’d be by to tell me this. I know it because of the wolf. Because of the ghoul, because of all the times you put your neck on the line to save me but I had nothing to offer you but disappointment. I tell you all this because I think one day I may do it.” Her eyes widen, searching my face for any telltale signs of deceit. There’s none, but she catches the glassiness in my eyes in the split second I chanced looking up. Now’s not the fucking time to make her feel guilty. Pull yourself together, asshole. “I’m in my own personal Hell, Adria. One where I have all the tools, and the means to act on my worst impulses. There is no God or conscience to stop me. I want to tell you I’m sorry. That I see you believing in me, and the hope you have, but I don’t.” I’ve been rewired to be a predator. My brain has been scooped out and replaced with a parasite that just so happened to have all my same inclinations. The perfect storm. “That’s the kind of monster you want to save?” "You're not a monster." Her throat clicks, faith waning. “And you were getting better. My visits were helping.” I smile miserably. Grateful, but without the need to hear that. She wasn’t in my head. She couldn’t spare my character when the lights went low. And if physical assault wasn’t enough, I broke her. I hurt her again, I see it in the way she’s crumpling now but all of that emotional bullshit served as a preface, just so she understood how empty it was. There it was, my disclaimer. There is no honor past this point, swim at your own risk. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” I say, hollow. But there’s one thing I left out. One last detail I had to know before my execution, that couldn’t be left unsaid. The only sparkling silver lining in this whole goddamn mess. "But why aren't you?" She’s shaken out of rumination. "What?" "Why didn't..you turn? It’s not like- I was trying to but…” Her eyes dip to her fingers. “I almost killed you. Why didn't you turn?" She withdraws. Suddenly frigid, she rubs her arms. The room falls ten degrees because of that alone. “You need to drink a vampire’s blood to turn. Not just drain.” I grimace. This is the part where I’m probably supposed to feel nauseous that I was bottle-fed bodily fluids by my would-be murderer but my dumbass leech brain actually felt jealous. I knocked back a swig of the thermos, and choked when the implications hit me. "Wait. He did that?" She’s silent. I pound my chest, beating blood back into the right pipe. As I do, gravity shifts. I’d been dominating this conversation in the flavor of creepy admission, but what I didn’t realize was that it paled in comparison to Adria’s. "Adria?” I say. “He did that?" She shakes her head. Her voice is breathless and thick with an emotion I couldn’t place. "No." “No?” Tears pit-pat on her jeans. I watch, setting my thermos down. Dread foams in my chest, expanding like polyurethane. “Adria….” Two more drops join the first. "You were saying how you didn't want to die.” Her fists clench. “You were saying how you weren’t ready. T-that you loved me, and we didn’t have a chance…” My mouth dries up. “I read about it before it happened. When we were researching. I never wanted to do it but you told me- Deme. You said you weren’t ready to go." She looked up at me, eyes full. She swallows hard. “And I didn’t want you to go either. Not like that- it was so stupid and pointless. We survived so much worse, we had plans to do things. But you were bleeding so much and-” I cut her off. "That's how you knew.” Pieces slide into place, faster than I could process them. One by one. All those nagging questions I had but never thought to voice came together, like why she was at the morgue. How she had blood on hand. Why she was so prepared for a situation beyond the realm of fiction. Why she didn’t shoot me. ”All I wanted to do was fix it, to save you,” Tears roll down her cheeks freely. “I thought I was doing the right thing. But I would’ve never done it if I had known how much you would suffer. It was selfish, and stupid, and I’m sorry.” She searches my face desperate- but how I was supposed to feel was hours from making landfall. What was she supposed to find? “So that’s why we’re here…” I say, in lieu of any concrete thought. “You and me.” She just shakes her head while holding onto the arm I ravaged. If I bothered to look up, I’m sure I would’ve seen the determination before it acted. “I’m sorry.” In a flurry of movement, she turned heel. Her chair smacked the floor. I hadn’t even realized she was up by the time she cleared the room, not sparing me another glance as she sprinted the stairs. Adria doesn’t come back. I kept hoping she would. Everytime I heard footsteps, I’d call out. I’d scream her name but there was never a response. This went on for days, until eventually she stopped coming by at all. One morning I woke up to her office gone. The desk was missing, no traces left of the deputy except the furniture she’d given me. It made me angry at first. Livid. It poured gasoline on an already unmanageable sequence of sickening daydreams that ate through all of my waking hours. Why prolong my life if you’re just going to go?! Why save me if you’re going to leave? Wasn’t that the selfish part? Aren’t you a hypocrite? But I knew the answer. The station might as well have a revolving door. Things were amping in Ashwater. News townsfolk stopped by every day. They told stories of demons, roads that go nowhere, and people missing. Ashwater P.D. was up to their necks in new reports. And without my finger in that pie anymore, after the anger receded, I felt lost. I was useless. A bystander who is powerless to help, just another obligation on the backs of people cut from a better cloth. Blood is delivered by Dave. His visits are brief. Blink and you’ll miss him. It’s the only human contact I get besides re-runs, and after hosting more than a couple homicidal thoughts starring his visage, it felt treasonous to strike up conversation. He wants me dead, and I know I should be. What else is there to talk about? Regardless, one day I try. "Who all knows?" I ask one visit. One foot out the door, he stops, startled just as much as I am. The rules of my continued existence depended on silence. I broke the status quo and don’t know what he was going to do about it. "Adria, Me, and Moreau." He says, after careful contemplation. "Moreau?" I frown. He’s one of the last people I’d want to know. Knowing how far I’ve fallen was liable to kill him. I just see his hand rest against the door. "Adria thought it best to clue him in early on. To help out, with blood drives and getting your studio out of town.” He pauses, then "He's been wanting to talk to you." My jaw sets, the pregnant pause speaking volumes. Why say that the choice wasn't contingent on either of us at all? "You won't let him." Pressure releases from his shoulders. Dave sighs. I don’t see his face, but a hand scrubs through the fringe of his buzzcut, the image of every disappointed father in an 80’s coming-of-age drama. “Can you blame me, Demetrius?” No. “You think I should be gone." Dave’s too honest for a 'no.' "Just say it.” I snare the bars. “We didn't give anything in Ashwater a chance to explain itself. Why do I get one?" In truth, I have no idea what I want. Confirmation, maybe? Condemnation? But Dave doesn’t respond well to aggression- never did, but that’s not to say his approach was explosive. He’s better at sad cop stares. The kind you get coming across a hit dog in the street, still alive but barely. Having a heart means knowing when to put a bullet in the chamber. And he could shoot me if he wanted. He could say I lost it, attacked him. Even Adria wouldn’t argue it then. And to the world? Demetrius Marquette was already dead and buried. After a power wash there’d be nothing left. There’s only one thing stopping him. "...How is she?" I soften. "Focus on getting yourself together." He shuts that down, and gets ready to go. I grit my teeth, mentally preparing to waste the night staving off homicidal fantasies, but to my imminent fear and surprise he approaches. My heart leaps into my throat. The massacre in my head had already started, and there was no time to go back to being a human- I force myself to sit. Frozen, I don’t move, as if I could be presumed innocent if I stay put, but he reaches his fist through the bars. Against his better judgement, he yields something. My phone. Upon Googling, I start to see what she meant. Research was abysmal. Information was sparse. Nothing eluded to a cure, only a thirst that never stops- one that can’t be slaked, and only deepens until the legacy of human emotion is overrun by a parasite. Until you’re a manifestation of a dark hunger wrapped, in a rabid husk that only resembles a person. Yadda yadda. So naturally when wikipedia was too dry, and Anne Rice too wordy, I turned over to the next best thing: Kirsten Stewart locking lips with Robert Pattinson, 4 am on a Saturday night. And after I finish the first installment of the Twilight Saga, I think about its sequel: New Moon. It was the height of 2006. New Moon comes out- the book. I got my copy at a midnight release, pages still warm from the presses. I read through, voracious after how Twilight ended. Where does this go next? How will they stay together? Does he turn her into a vampire? How do I turn this into a sermon? And for awhile, Meyer leans into the same old song and dance rampant in the vampire genre. Girl meets vampire. Vampire is too dangerous for girl. Vampire leaves for girl’s benefit. It’s melodramatic and trashy, but oh man, is it fun. Usually. I’m all about the angst. And until that plot line became far too pertinent to my life, I’d have said everyone can go for a good romantic struggle. The problem is Meyer conveyed this theme in the worst way possible. Edward left Bella. Bella cried about it. And then- Nothing. Edward fucked off to Italy or something, and Bella just…. Dealt with it. I paid $18.99 for a book padded by 20 empty pieces of paper. Meyer wrote nothing. Nada. Just negative space- page after page of nothing but the heading of months gone by, February, March, April, May- that symbolized Bella’s depression. It was the most contrived, belabored, bullshit ever. I mention this because while being stuck in a cage, I’ve had a healthy amount of time to think about what vampire media got right and what they got wrong. Bloodlust to an insatiable degree? Mm. Yeah. Revulsion to what I’m doing? Sometimes. The anguish of depending on others to survive? When have I ever cared about that. The subversion of ellipsism, knowing you will experience the inevitable heartbreak of watching all your loved ones die? Without Adria, I’m not making it out of here alive. The fact is, in the quiet moments when I'm alone, I don't feel different. I wish I could say I’m changed. It’d be great to have the beautifully convenient excuse that I don’t feel like the same person- that being bit somehow transformed me into a merciless creature, but it’s just not true. I’m the same self-indulgent creature I have been all along. But then I think of those pages. What they represent. Time passing- blank, unnotable, empty. And it’s not whatever performative depression metaphor Meyer was trying to convey- but my own revulsion to the empty histrionics. Before Ashwater, I earned my check with fake healing. I was a glorified scam artist, performing a book written thousands of years ago to convince people of the power of love and faith when I didn’t believe in it myself. But then I got to Ashwater. Call it Pavlov, but I accepted rural suburbia in stride with the supernatural. I roll into town and everything’s suddenly real. Authenticity is grown from the dirt, and it’s just as strange as the monsters. When people ask ‘How are you,’ they mean it. Your answer won’t end up on TMZ out of context, but the dinner table when they follow it up. And strangest yet, you’re forced to be real too. The girl you run with calls your bullshit the second it leaves your mouth, and for some reason that’s...

Great? Regardless that Ashwater is home of the world’s shittiest wifi, after a few months, I haven’t looked back. I say all that, though, because I am back. Back in 2006, thumbing through the blank pages, to get to the good parts. The good parts which, just like it’s predecessor, was negative space before the story began. I open a text. And then I close it right after. Goddammnit, I’m chicken-shit. Who am I kidding? I beat my head against the wall. I’ve tried to eat her! Twice! How can I sit here, staring longingly at the picture of us at the Harvest festival, and think I have the right to text her? I’ll tell you why: I’m a selfish dumbass. And also, I can’t smell her. But you know what? I can't smell her through a phone!!!! I open it again. Then close it. Open it again. Then close it. I remember that I was gifted the art of charisma from birth, and open it again just to start with. [01:34] Hey. Smooth. I tamp down the first wave of ‘Ohmygod-WhatdidIjustdo’ and to my surprise, after two consecutive strokes, a text bubble pops up. She types for a second, then stops. I wait on the literal edge of my seat through two Housewife divorces. Her response takes so long I take a self-care break. I throw my cell across the cell. I do some breathing exercises, watch an episode of the Kardashians, and then when buzzes, I break my ankle covering the distance. [02:55] hey She replies back. I wipe the sweat off my neck, skin clammy. What’s happening? It’s like I’m back in high school. [02:56] Dave gave me the phone. I swear I’m not on the lam. [03:01] i know. i asked him to. My brow furrows, skeptical. Questions spring up, but I’m quick to squash them. What has my motto been? Don’t question a good thing. I lick my lips and type. [03:01] Did you tell him to delete Julia’s contact too? [03:01] nope. that was all me. [03:01] Knew it. [03:02] guilty as charged. you dont want to know what she’s been up to anyways. [03:03] No. No I do not, actually. She doesn’t respond for awhile. I realize it’s because I didn’t say anything worthwhile, and try again. [03:35] How's ashwater going? [03:37] its harder now. [03:37] Harder? [03:40] way harder. without the help i mean. fuck even julias cameras helped get film. I raise my brows. Missing Julia is a grand testament to how bad it’s got. [03:51] i don't know what's happening. but i think we found the answer. [03:52] The answer? [03:55] the club has been up and running again lately. we got a date for the recruitment. still no details. no one knows anything. My grip threatens to crack the screen. [03:55] You're going? [04:00] we’re trying to find a way to sneak in. dave and i are trying to use google maps and old blueprints. there’s no telling if they’re still accurate though. [04:00] No, you should infiltrate [04:01] infiltrate?? [04:02] Yeah. sneaking in. Without the hard, dangerous, impractical part. [04:02] says mr hollywood I smile, sitting on that one for a bit. What I’d give to go with her. To tie a corsage to her wrist, and go undercover, arm-in-arm into the halls of clandestine underground cabal tearing our town apart. But given that I flossed my teeth with her arteries, that daydream in actuality is more Jeffrey Dahmer than romcom. [04:26] Hey. Look at the bright side, you can stop by the pottery barn while you’re in town. [04:26] Maybe find that falafel? [04:26] You’ll have to tell me how you like it. Her bubble typed for a long time, then popped. Two sleepless hours go by. I pace, eventually coming to the conclusion I took too long to reply. That maybe I said something wrong. She fell asleep, and by 8 am, I’m forced to accept it as fact to fend off insomnia. But at 7, I wake up to a text. [10:10] ] i’m sorry I don’t know how to respond to that. If there’s any conclusion I’ve drawn, it’s that I’m not the type to get better without motivation. It’s not rocket science. As a matter of fact, it’s basic biology. Rats need cheese for a puzzle. Drug sniffing dogs get a treat. And when you’re a blood-sucking monster, driven by the insatiable desire to ‘embezzle vital essence in order to maintain a crepuscular existence’ (to quote the vampiric authority that is frankripel.org), the right one becomes hard to find. The first day consists of Googling how to quit cigarettes. On the second, heroine. On the third, I try letting blood sit for as long as I can before it warps my brain. To no one’s surprise it’s hard to have a healthy relationship with something you depend on, crave, and will turn you into a psychopath at any given moment. I set a timer on my phone. I try extending it a quarter of an hour each time, to see how that works. Not to spoil it for anyone like a liter of AB positive, but it doesn't! Blood grows a pudding skin if you let it congeal. The sensation of trying to slop that up is like gumming a soggy cheerio. I try to down it like a shot, but the last vestiges of my human constitution I have tells me that it’s rotting and wrong. I want to vomit it right up. This is no permanent solution. Sure I could do it, maybe it’d save a life, but left to my own devices, I can’t be trusted to suffer in silence. I'm here because I have no impulse-control. Who’s to say what will happen when I get out? Averting doubt, and the responsibility of considering these things, I text her instead. [11:23] Seems like you’re having a party downtown. She writes back, an hour later. It’s coupled with a picture of a black smudge sitting atop a telephone pole. If you squint and tilt your head, it looks like it’s flipping her off. [12:01] something tearing up powerlines. [12:02] Oh that sounds fun. [12:02] i promise you its not!!!! I rest my head, grinning a little. [12:02] If there’s anything i can do just ask. I hear I’m supposed to be adept at hanging upside down. [12:30] i dont think so. I think we got it handled. [12:35] maybe. Shit. [12:36] we lost it. [12:36] damn it. whatever. [12:40] how about u tho? anything i can do for u? That message catches me off guard. It’s the first time I’ve thought about it since she left. Truthfully..? I’m..the best I’ve been in days. Without blood in the room, it’s easy to be normal. I can parse my thoughts from instinct. Darker impulses fade into the background because she’s not facing it nor am I. I feel like myself. [12:43] Maybe look less delicious I suggest, riding high off that thought until cold realization hits me like a brick. Yes, Deme. I race for System Settings. It’s real easy to be normal when you don’t say shit like that!! I throttle my phone. I flip it into airplane mode, hoping to nuke the traitorous thought before it lands. It doesn’t. ‘READ’ pops under my message. “GODDAMNIT.” I sweat, wondering what else I can do. What if I bomb her with a hundred memes? Start a facetime? Maybe she won’t notice. Maybe she’ll avoid picking up, then forget the text is there. Or maybe the joke wasn’t so bad. Maybe it wasn’t in poor taste. Or was it? I mean- it was another allusion to eating her! Friends don’t talk about eating eachother! Oh goddamnit. Fuck what I just said. Fuck what she said. I am a monster. She was right about the phone. She was right about everything. Dave too- My phone pings. [12:31] oh ya? [12:31] noted. [12:31] i’ll make sure i smell real bad next time i see you I collapse into my cot, breathing like I ran a marathon. Crisis fucking averted. After the initial wave of relief subsides, I reread her message, and probably again a hundred times over. ‘See you’ and ‘next time’ brings a flush into my chest that biology had no chance of explaining. I try not to take the words at face value. Instead, I appreciate the passing feeling for what it was. She’s being nice, but it’s a nice thought. [12:35] i need to go. she says. duty calls. it moved to the I-45 [12:50] I miss you. I type. It stays on Delivered until the power comes back. Rehab is slow and painful. Moreso because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Treatments for drug addiction are bunk. I tried exercise. Support forums. Surrounding myself with distractions. Daily affirmations. None of it did jack shit, but I can’t stop until I exhaust all my options. I’m 30 minutes into my latest attempt, self-guided meditation, when Dave makes his first appearance for longer than 15 seconds. He steps through the threshold and stops. We make awkward eye contact as he allows me to contort back into a pose fit for human consumption. He doesn’t come bearing a bag. Instead, a cooler. “...Hello.” “‘Morning.” Dave pulls up a stool. He lays a wooden cutting board across his lap, awkward, like he was thrown onstage unrehearsed. I feel the weirdest instance of fight-or-flight face when he picks out a wall-eyed fish. Of course, Dave doesn’t rush into explanations. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate good ol’ boy bonding time as much as the next metrosexual, but, “Uh.” I pause Gwyneth Paltrow’s KINRGY class. “Is that catfish?” “Pike. Catfish have whiskers,” He says. “Adria said you need 'social stimulation' or you’ll go insane.” I feel my face fall. She’s not wrong. I won’t rush to deny that, but I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean in relation to him. No offense, but Dave hasn’t been the most spirited cheerleader. Objection to my living status notwithstanding, he’s too tired to be here. His arms are riddled with cuts representing every stage of the healing process. There are new calluses on his hands, thicker than his buzzcut that was edging out of regulation. His beard even sprouted a few more greys. “She also said you guys were super busy.” “That’s true. But I can make time.” “And this is the best use of it?” He shrugs. Dave is either oblivious to my scrutiny or ignores it. He takes a knife, props the fish, and slides it under its gills. Blood seeps out from the cut. Tiny bones break when he doesn’t follow it’s spine. The sheriff is too much of a seasoned pro to have done that by accident but I also imagine he has too much respect for the animal to maim it for any other reason than to make a point. Whatever this display is, it’s only made more disturbing when I see he’s watching me more than the fish. Uncomfortable as I am, I get a grip. Long enough to ask, “How has Ashwater been?” “Not great.” He wipes his knife on a rag. My eyes follow, hoping he’d make it through the denim. “There’s something new every day. We set up a new helpline, and have volunteers but there’s not enough hours in the day.” “That bad, huh?” “We do what we can do. It’s all a matter of keeping our head above water.” “Adria too?” Dave grunts, offering me a warning glance. It’s the adjustment of his slouch, and the slight lift off his brows. Once the message is emphatically received, I back off. He offers me a cut of the fish off his knife. I decline because ew. We talked for a while after. It’s stilted, awkward and uncomfortable at best when we’re avoiding topics that’ll make either of us feel any sort of way, but I can’t get over the fish. I think about it, perfectly filleted. What was that? A threat? Was he out to prove something? If he was, I don’t know what. Fish is too cold and too alien to be appealing in the slightest. What was he expecting? Me to pounce? I don’t know. But after he leaves, when there’s no longer any hot blood pumping through the room, it occurs to me that I’m a psychopath and that shouldn’t have been the first thing on my mind, anyways. I’m not nearly as far along as I need to be. That was only the start of Dave’s weird visits. Each day, he’d swing by to clean a fish in front of me, trying to elicit a response. It only started to become a challenge when the tests preceded dinner. Even harder when he moved to real game. Here were the rules: if I move, he’s out. If my nose flares, it’s sayonara. I could not react, and the challenge of that was so downright psychological that I couldn’t even think about losing. One moment of weakness and it’s over, sometimes before he even sits down at all. It’s not the first time I wish I knew what was going on with my goddamned face. “Almost,” he’d say, packing up his gear. “Good try sport.” I’d spend the night screaming into my pillow. The only thing that kept me sane was Adria. While she refused to tell me my tell (Is it my eyes? no. My mouth? no. My..nose?? IM NOT TELLING YOU, STOP ASKING), she was her own bonafide form of stress relief. Her conversations kept me rooted. Dave tried his best to treat me like a person, but Adria made me believe it. Her confidence was as pervasive as it was nonsensical, and eventually I started to get it. It wasn’t that she was stupid (my longest running theory), but that there was something lost in translation. What it was became clear after Dave failure #12. It happened on a Monday night. I lost to a rabbit again. Something about them screws me up. Maybe because they’re warm? He gets them fresh? They’re something I would’ve actually eaten before I died? I don’t know, but Dave cut it open, and I handled it. He skinned it, and I was fine. But then he dropped his knife. I didn’t even really do anything. I just flinched. A little lunge before I caught myself, but that was all it took. Dave ‘good try sport’d’ me and bailed. I threw myself on the cot. After a muffled string of choice profanities, I rolled up in the sheets until I formed a cocoon, hoping the blue light of my cell would fry my brain like early 2000’s exercise campaigns said it would. [01:12] It’s always the rabbits. I shoot off a preliminary text, then the rest in a rapid order. [01:12] I hate them. i hate them so much. [01:12] Tell Dave they’re out of season pls. Put up those signs like in looney tunes. Those are real, right? [01:34] why. why do you hate bunnies so much. [01:36] They get me every time ): [02:01] pff. [02:01] he told me about that. don’t be so hard on yourself. [02:04] i remember when you couldnt even handle a little cut. thats progress isnt it Her optimism made me want to gag. I don’t remember how I responded. Probably something to the effect of ‘tell that to Thumper’ but by that point, we hit the time of the night Adria goes AWOL. She falls asleep wherever she’s at, and stays comatose until the next crisis in 4 hours. During that time, I re-read that text. Over and over, like a riddle. It made no sense. I mean, what does she mean, ‘progress’? Over a bunny? I know she doesn’t think much of herself, but to put herself on par with a rabbit? She knows she’s the better deal, right? And that’s when it hit me. Between the two of us, wires got crossed. I was a perfect candidate to become a bloodsucking sociopath because nothing stood in the way between me and what I want, even before death. It doesn’t matter if it’s fame or fortune, fancy things or better seats, I had connections. I had money, and I had power- and even penniless, I had a mouth imbued with the power to bend the world around me. It didn't matter who I stepped on to get there. Desires were not a matter of 'if' but 'when.' I know that about myself. But Adria never saw that guy. Or maybe she did, when she hated him. In the beginning, when he was desecrating her town with photo ops and brand deals, but in time, the story shifted. He had to adapt- not because of the monsters, but because Ashwater wasn't a world that followed his rules. His desires jumbled. They shuffled as a means to survive, even without his knowing. He didn’t know what all these new feelings meant but whatever they were, they were terrifying. They were thrilling, but most of all, exciting. And before he knew it, he changed because he had something to change for. What Adria never understood is that she was it. When she became satisfied sitting with him for breakfast every morning, he won. When she joined him for long nights on the hood of her car, he prevailed. Every graze of the hand thereafter was stolen and a victory laid over all the karmic energy that should’ve called foul. Her attention satisfied his avaricious soul because at the heart of it, he pulled off the biggest heist he ever had: earning the attention of a girl infinitely worth more than he was. Unconditional love followed him to the grave. And though she did it without his knowing, she made him into a guy worth memorializing. But that’s where it stops. He feels no different because he’s not. Barring carnal predilections instilled into him by pernicious horrors, there was no headway made beyond death because there was no need. He never wanted again because what he had was never out of arm’s reach. Until now. Dave’s tests advance. I wish I could say the same for my patience. By day 17, I had taken to spinning my chair around when he sits down. For some reason this never disqualified me. This fact was astounded until I realized someone so proficient at cleaning meat knows the exact muscle ticks to look for. Imagine how many times I’ve turned around to find him gone. “How do you even find the time to hunt and fish?” I pick at my nails. "I thought you were dealing with a whole apocalypse." “You make time." “Well that seems counterproductive.” “Does it?” Dave gets to the part where slides the knife from its neck to its stomach. He folds the skin out. How it diffuses from there is pure incense. I take a deep breath- in through the mouth, out from the chest. Half my problem is that Adria didn't break my nose for good. I look over my shoulder to make sure Dave’s still there. He is. "I'd say so. Don't you have enough things to kill?" He shrugs. "Apples to oranges. You’re comparing leisure to duty, but life is all about having that balance. Monsters win if you can’t live your life right." "Ha. I feel like that's what I am for you." "How so?" I snort, twisting around. We aren't exactly buddies. It's a colossal time sink to spend every night in a dingy police station with someone you don't like. He could be anywhere, helping anyone else. Like saving real members of his community or- God forbid, taking a nap. Dave doesn't look up. He pulls the skin off the rabbit’s feet. "Believe it or not, Demetrius. Everyone wants you to succeed.” I cough, not as certain. The knee-jerk reaction is to be a sarcastic shit but even I’m not that much of an asshole. He's been clocking in time. Effort was effort, regardless if it was because he wanted to be here or because he promised he would be. "I appreciate that," I finally say. He nods, and picks a different tool. Says, "She asks about you often." like he read my mind. I flinch. These sessions force composure. I can't move or show emotion but it’s unfair when he pulls the chair out from under me. Adria was off limits. He didn't like that I was talking to her, much less every night. Now he was bringing her up of his own volition? I disguise my twitch by adjusting my seat. It's not convincing. "Oh?" "She says she thinks of little quips, jokes all the time. Stuff a geezer like me won't get but you would." “Like what?” “She called you a parasitic vine with nice flowers. Something like that.” I snort, wanting to be offended, but couldn’t be. "Yeah. I guess I am. You should tell her to visit." Dave drops the meat into the cooler. It’s the universal sign that he’s about to bail. I watch him wash up, knowing I blew it, but without a regret in the world. “She’s got enough on her plate. She can’t worry about you and the town at the same time.” "You obviously don't know Adria. Worrying is actually her favorite pastime." He gives me a significant look as he towels off. Aw c'mon. It was a joke! Sort of! She’d get it. Whatever, I don't know why I thought he’d- Dave cuts his finger. Before I can finish the thought, I slap a hand over my mouth, feeling like I was drawn and quartered. My eyes dart between his hand and the little knife I thought he put away. There's no way that was an accident. “What the hell, man?” Dave stares at his thumb like a ladybug landed there. The smell is hypnotic. Eyes rolling everywhere, I avoid staring but it becomes harder as he presses on it, just a bit, so that a little red bead grows on the point of incision. “This is unfair." He smears it between his thumb and pointer. “I know.” I hold my nose, pissed. The rules say I already lost. I reacted, I emoted. I don’t know why he hasn’t left yet, clearly I didn’t act like a human person. Humiliated, I stand, and move to my cot. Annoyed he wasted this move for a cheap shot. I hadn’t eaten today, what’d he think would happen? “You could’ve just said you had to leave early! No need to be dram-” Metal shrieks. I whirl around. As the second anomaly in a series of shocking events, Dave unlocks the door. I pull my legs up to my chest. I shrink against the wall as he lugs my bureau out of his way. “I can’t keep you here anymore, Demetrius.” A new, weirder, wild panic sets in. My breathing destabilizes, pitch hitting levels not at all natural. I thought I was doing good. Not great, but better, right? I think about last week. How it almost seemed like we didn’t hate each other, how I thought he didn’t mind coming down here, when it dawns on me: The cut makes sense in context. I’m being framed. My head snaps to the window above. It is still open from the night I chomped the deputy, the planks still letting wind through the curtains. Dave doesn't have his gun. I could make a break for it and actually have a chance, but escape plans fizzle before they extend past the parking lot. It doesn’t matter how far I could get, or how I got there, because I’m hung up on one thing. I was just texting her. If she knew he was coming here to finish this, surely she would have warned me. Said goodbye. “I thought you were better than this.” I snarl through my teeth. “Did you have cut yourself as an excuse? Did you need a reason to take me out back, to help you sleep easier at night?” No one has ever seen Dave roll his eyes, but he does the next closest thing. His brows raise, somehow without lifting the skin of his lids, “Wow. That’s not what this is...at all.” “Then what is it?!” “Adria and I are heading to Modena in a couple days.” My mouth snaps shut. “We’ve gotta start getting things together. We're going to be fine, don’t worry, but just in case something happens, she wants a contingency plan in Ashwater.” “‘Contingency plan?’” He puts it bluntly. “If this turns belly-up she doesn’t want to leave you down here to die.” My guard lowers. The explanation alleviates the sense of immediate danger, but something a lot more painful lances me instead.. “...Why didn’t she tell me?” He ignores the question entirely. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of trouble. We’ve all pitched in, done what we can to get you started, but it’s on you from here on out. Don't make us regret this." With one good shove, he props open the door. For the first time in months, I step outside. We drive all night. My eyes are fixed on the horizon. I watch for the sun, nervous for a break. I know he didn’t forget my allergy, but become less certain of it as the odometer ticks upward. Rays arcing off the planet just enough to hit a cloud and burn my eyes in a way that didn’t make sense. Given that I never bothered to learn the area, and Dave didn't believe in using a GPS, I had no idea where we were going. The answer ends up being a distant town on the fringes of another nameless suburbia, more woodsy and industrial. My room was pre-booked. Chivalrous, he even hauls my stuff to the steps where I'm given a keycard in an envelope and a cooler at my feet. I accept these boons, more than a little weird about it in execution. It’s like being dropped off at the airport by an in-law. What do you do? Hug, shake hands? Sparing me the dilemma, Dave shuffles down the stairs. I prepare to bid my smalltown goodbyes to a license place, but just before he slides in, he turns. "I don't want to see you back." I'd been holding my breath, I don’t know what for, but it wasn’t that. Sure. It was foolish to expect something more substantial. Ashwater was a gift to me, not it. I cup my hand around my eyes, not meaning to squint. “Yeah, I’ll miss you too, Dave.” Dave crosses his arms over the roof, ignoring the sarcasm. Staring at the asphalt somewhere in the middle distance he lets the moment simmer, knowing I respect him enough to suffer at least burns of the first degree. “Don't return,” He says again. “I mean it. But I do hope for the best. You're good stuff when you want to be. We’re all rooting for you. Good luck, Demetrius ." “...Thanks.” Dave nods, then hops into his car. I watch his headlights recede. They disappear behind a cluster of trees and take-out signs. The holiday inn at my back invites me. The buzz of it’s neon light advertises competitive rates and continental breakfast, a massive improvement in my accommodations, but as you can imagine, it leaves me feeling a little hollow. I haul in my luggage inside, and once checked in, I notice the supplies he gave me account for the next three weeks. Long enough to settle somewhere nice, sweet talk my way into new connections. I don’t have the energy to think about that now. I draw the curtains, feeling more bittersweet about freedom than I thought I would. There's harmony in this end, I guess. That a long, lonely chapter of my life was wrapping up into a neat, harmless bow. One that started as disappointment and heartbreak was ending in something akin to peace, and not bloodshed. For the first time in months the sheriff will rest easy tonight knowing he's done all he can to serve his town, and Adria, best. But to that I say, (respectfully): Fuck you Dave. To 99.999% of the world, Demetrius Marquette is dead. To Jeff Bezos? My money is good. I fill a cart. One-day shipping is back in action once your zip code has a wiki. I set 20 alarms, rising like a zombie and meet the delivery guy in the lobby. By 3 PM, my rental is parked up front. By 4 PM, the kid I paid finishes blacking out the windows. At 5, I get behind the wheel. Rocking a full tank, I hang a flying left back onto the highway, burning tracks onto the pavement. The dial inched up the speedometer, by the tens when I break off the interstate. I’m a man on mission, my blood is gasoline, and I’m determined to burn out far before I slow down. It's this enthusiasm that allows me to hit the state border at 7 PM. 7/11’s fall away to streets without names. Chain brands disappear, and from the dirt the tell-tale signs of Ashwater rise. My chest swells. I stifle something suspiciously burning like tears- I never thought I’d be so excited to see corn. Adria's home exists on her parents' property. At 2 miles out I kill the headlights. I don’t want to immediately draw attention, but when I pull up, it's loud. I take out her mailbox in the tailspin. Her yard is shredded by a fishtail that slides when I throw her into park too early. Beyond her porch I hear the k’chnk of her shotgun. I don’t blame her for the shoot first, ask questions later mentality. It’s expected actually, so as she stomps onto the porch, wearing nothing but a muscle tank and flannel, fist around a barrel, I allow her time for her eyes to adjust. She sees me and squints. My legs part in a premeditated spread. Theatrically, I lay both palms open-faced across the rental's wrinkled windows. There’s zero chance of getting the security deposit back on that- But it’s not like that matters. I timed this like I did so I could leave if I had to. The ball in her court. Tell me to piss off or- Or? I take a deep breath. Gathering my thoughts, I shuffle my priories like I learned during every one of Dave’s stupid tests. I love you. I’ve missed you. I messed up. “Adria. I’m so s-” “Why do you look like a clown in rehab?” "I-" My pitch curtails into a squeak. God. The vampire had more mercy ripping out my throat. “It’s sunscreen,” I hiss. In all but her expression, she ignores the slime-trail I leave slathered across my hoodie, and saunters down the steps. The shottie is still in hand, but the loosening grip says she has no intention of using it "What are you doing? Dave said he dumped you in the city." "You didn't make a mistake." Her bare feet stop cold. "The only thing you're guilty of is that you cared too much. You always gave a shit, even if I was never worth it." Her barrel swings into the dirt. "Wow, Deme. That’s not- this. This is not really the time." "Let me finish," I say, desperate. "It's important that I say what I need to say. If I’m man enough- if I’m human enough- to admit I can only do good when it suits me then, then so be it. You are- as you have always been- part of that equation. Hear me out." She didn't know how to respond to that. The implications don't have great optics but when a flush rises to her cheeks, I know she gets the gist. Seizing the opportunity, "I'm sorry about everything,” I say. “But you didn't make a mistake. I should have never implied you did. It was a super shitty, shitty thing for me to do but just in case you doubt me, like I know you do, I'll make it clear, LOUD ENOUGH for Theo: Six months was never going to be long enough to know you, Adria Kyriakoulopoulos. In no world would I have rather died than be where I am today. It took me a while to see past my own discomfort, because I’m an idiot and sometimes short-sighted, but there are too many experiences I want to have with you. There are so many more things to tell you that I can't right now, but I promise I'll make them worth waiting for, if you let me." Her face twists. Fighting uncertainty, or rather, the probability I’ll hurt her again, she stammers, “Demetri. I don’t know if-” “If you want me to leave, I'll go.” I step forward. “I'll fuck off to the west coast. I’ll be on the next flight, never to see you again, but something is keeping you from shutting that door in my face. You've spent countless nights agonizing over a choice you made, and I know it was hard, but let me tell you about mine, because I've made a thousand of them, but the biggest mistakes date back longer than abusing your trust. I hate that I never spoke up. I hate that we only touched when we're dying or dead- but clarity in the life you have given me has made me realize you don't need it flash before your eyes to know just how pathetic that is. I lost my right to fix it. I don't belong anywhere near you but at the same time I refuse to think I was let out just for you to suffer on my behalf. I know it’s your brand, but it’s not working." She looks away, eyes drifting off the horizon where her resolve hardens like metal pulled from the fire. She has 99 reasons to tell me to hit the road. Nothing in her right mind telling me to stay. "Deme, we will talk about this later. I need to-" "Later?" I say, tight. "Later when?!” “Tomorrow, or something, I don’t know-” “When you're off at that murder cult alone? Is that the best time?" Clearly I wasn't supposed to know that. A fire flashes behind her eyes, then shame. "W-we already have a plan, okay?!" "And what's that? Sneak in with Dave? Buzzcut, barrel-chested Sheriff David Monroe? He can't breathe without setting off every radar detector in a 5 mile radius. You need someone who can actually get in." "I don’t- Deme, we-" “You need someone who can go in there with you.” She tosses her head. Not having it, I latch onto her balustrade, and swing into her face. I wait for her to slap me. Chest heaving, I wait for her to tell me off, to walk away or slam the door- any sign that she doesn’t want to be here. “We started this together, Adria.” My hand moves over hers. “That's how we'll finish it. No cameras, no crew. Just you and me. How it should've always been." My head dips to catch her eyes. "I have to believe you saved me for a reason. Whatever it is, I’ll prove to you it’s there." What’s it going to be? She doesn’t immediately say. Night air filled my lungs, icy, yet charged in the way moments on the brink tend to be. Our lives are a beautiful, chaotic, Alanis Morissett-ironic mess, proven by the fact that not even a year ago, I was here too. Standing approximately five feet from where I was then, existing as that same idiot on her porch, scrambling to make sense of why my life was worth saving. Except this time, resolving to become that reason too. Devastating or hopeful, I hung off the balcony, waiting for the epochal answer. If I could only ask one more thing of her (and it's the last one, I promise), it would be to hurry up. And after a long, sadistic stretch of silence, she does. She takes a step back. The corner of her mouth upturns, making even the lines around bleary eyes smile. Whether it's a joke, the return of our banter, or the invitation to try, “Come on in.”

#WHOOOOOOOOOO #FINALLY DONE WITH THIS THINGGGGGGG #au #adria #ashwater #my 2008 self would say its not edgy enough #but thats okay #theres always 2030 when the vampire phase comes back around #Revenant

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