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  She was heavier in my arms now but she was still pretty. She moonlight caught the wound on her face and I could see the exposed cartilage, the brittle and jagged edges of her skull and the soft tissue and muscle that held it all together but somehow, I was still sure I could take her home and fix her. I could make her okay somehow and kiss those plump rosebud lips of hers that had given me so much pleasure but were now thin and gray.

  “Almost home,” I said.

  The road opened out ahead of us. I stumbled on some loose rocks, almost losing my grip on her but I pressed on, gripping the edges of her clothing to make sure I didn’t drop her.

  Still I couldn’t quite feel anything. There was nothing in my head. It was just empty, just numb. I waited for the tears to fall and I knew sooner or later they would but still, my brain refused to process what I was doing, what I was seeing.

  All I could think was that I found her at last and it was all going to be okay. I was taking her home where she could swim in the pool and lie out all day in the sun until she’d come inside and we’d make love until the night gave way to day.

  I could show her my lab, my new lab I had created while I was waiting for to return. She would love it, tell me how clever I was. She loved to call me that, clever. Like I was a child or a very well behaved dog. She even used to scratch the back of my head as she said it.

  “You’re so clever, Linx. I don’t understand a fraction of the stuff you’ve invented.”

  She’d love my new inventions too. Would sit down in the lab for hours on end watching me tinkering with a mass of wires and contraptions. I’d show her all the plans I’d dug out from the boxes and she’d clap a hand to her mouth and tell me how I must have been such a genius child.

  “What were your parents feeding you?” she’d ask with a giggle.

  She’d asked that a lot. Somehow she couldn’t fathom that my mind was in any way normal. It had to come from some faraway, mystical place where it was created by a God just for me. I couldn’t possibly have the mind of anyone else. No, my genius had to exist out with of Earth. It couldn’t have been the product of my parents.

  I was so caught up with imagining all the things we’d do once we were home that when the villa appeared in front of me, I was surprised to realize that I must have walked for miles through the dust lost so deeply in my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice I was walking at all.

  “Norma!” I shouted. “Norma, I found her!”

  There was the squeak of the gate and the sound of rushing footsteps.

  “Etta!”

  Norma hurried around the side of the house until she found us, standing just behind the rosebushes.

  “Where is she?” she asked.

  “Norma, she’s right here. Can’t you see her?”

  She took a step forward as if to run out and hug Etta then stopped in her tracks.

  “Wh… What…”

  She let out a scream and fell to her knees. Her voice pierced the air. It pierced everything around us until it was bouncing off the wall and stabbing into my head.

  And it was only then that I awoke from my daze and realized what I was holding. I fell down beside Norma and a cry escaped my body. We both lay across her stomach. Norma tried to touch her face but couldn’t.

  The sound of scuffling came from behind me. I turned round to see the dog watching us from the road.

  Chapter Four

  Berger

  I was sitting on the couch watching the news but I couldn’t concentrate. There was a feeling in my stomach that was making me uneasy. Like I’d forgotten some place I needed to be.

  The talking head on the screen was saying something about the Dow Jones but it meant nothing to me. I sipped my coffee and lit a cigarette, hoping my two favorite substances in the world would make me feel normal again.

  They did nothing. The gnawing feeling only grew stronger and I got up to look out the window. Down in the parking lot, Miranda was climbing out her car with bags of shopping in her arms. I wanted to go down and help her but I also wanted to be alone for a few more moments.

  I wanted to hold her, kiss her and feel the softness of her body, but I also wanted her to go away. Just for now anyway. Just until my head was straight.

  She blustered through the front door, looking annoyed that I wasn’t helping her.

  “Well don’t just stand there. Grab a bag.”

  “I thought you were a feminist,” I said. “I didn’t want to offend you.”

  She looked at me deadpan, as though she was imagining strangling me.

  “You can be a feminist and still have too many bags to carry, Franklin.”

  “Oh, it’s Franklin now. You must be really mad at me.”

  She dropped the bags in the kitchen and huffed, slamming cupboard doors open and shut as she unpacked the shopping.

  “What did I tell you about smoking in here?” she said without turning to face me.

  “The kids aren’t home yet. Thought it would be okay.”

  She slammed another door closed and reached for a bottle of air freshener before spraying it around me as though she was trying to exorcise a demon.

  “Don’t, please,” she said. “You know I hate it when the place smells like smoke.”

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “See you later,” I said and kissed her before she could start an argument.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  “That’s not what I asked you.”

  I answered her by closing the door and taking a breath of relief once I reached the silence of the hallway. She didn’t annoy me, per say, she just… made me need my own space.

  Maybe it had something to do with her being so sensible, so respectable with a home that was immaculate and children that were dressed like brats from GAP commercials. She overwhelmed me, made me want to retreat into my head where everything was dark and morbid. It was a place that I knew too well, a place that made me feel safe.

  Outside, I shivered as the Atlantic blew through the tunnels between the high rise apartment blocks. Up here was a far cry from the almost Martian landscape of San Lucrezia. At least I was still reminded of my time down there by the strip of sunburn that was still lingering on the top of my nose.

  I touched a hand to it now and felt its roughness. As I climbed into my car, tossing my cigarette butt into a nearby frozen puddle, I thought that maybe there was a way I could drive out of here and simply keep going. Just keep driving until I arrived at the border and then I’d drive some more and see the desert, see the way the sunlight changed as it grew closer to the Earth.

  Stepping on the gas, I thought about leaving Miranda behind. She was perfect. Too perfect. I’d only fuck her up eventually. Better to leave her now before I could properly hurt her.

  I found myself swerving out onto the highway driving at a reckless speed intent on getting to a place that only existed in my head. The uneasiness in my stomach began to dissipate as I drove faster, as though my body knew what I was doing before my head did.

  “Fuck it,” I said.

  Driving to my own apartment, I stepped into the living room and looked at all my things scattered around and thought that it was all meaningless. I didn’t need any of it. Grabbing a bag, I thrust some underwear and clothes into it along with a half-empty bottle of shower gel and took off. As I reached the front door, I stopped and looked back.

  I took my keychain out my pocket, carefully removed my apartment key from the ones attached to my car’s and dropped it on the coffee table.

  “Fuck this place.”

  I strode out to my car with a new sense of purpose. After everything, there was no way of ever returning to normality. No, I needed to join my fellow friend of perversion. Bosworth had twisted my brain up but he was the only person who knew what it was like to live inside my head.

  He’d know how to get rid of the uneasiness inside me, he’d no how to straighten o
ut my mind.

  Chapter Five

  Lincoln

  She hadn’t stopped screaming. She couldn’t. Even when her throat was raw and she couldn’t make a sound, she continued to scream, silently with her face distorted into a Gothic portrait of sheer pain and horror.

  Her mouth was always dropped up, her cheeks pulled tight like white sheets draped down over a statue. She was always shrieking, always sobbing with wild, wide eyes like broken windows.

  All I could do was sit in silence with my back against the cool tiled wall watching the body decay in front of our eyes. I didn’t know where to take her. All I wanted was for to be safe so I had carried her down the long, winding spiral staircase to the basement and placed her between the boxes of instruments.

  “She should be in her bed,” said Norma.

  “No, she should be with me while I work.”

  “How can you work? How…”

  “It’s…. It’s all I can do.”

  But I couldn’t work. No matter what I had planned, all I wanted was to bring her back but I couldn’t. What was left of her couldn’t be brought back. She would no longer be the queen I held at night.

  “We need to tell someone,” said Norma.

  Tears and snot were dripping down her gaunt face. Etta’s blood was covering her sweater, growing dark and dry.

  “Tell who exactly?”

  I thought of the old man in that shack with his secrets, of his son and the man, Pinstripe who he took me to. I thought about the police back home, even of the government. Who could I trust?

  Then I thought about the man in the desert with his own voice screaming with grief. His end would come but right now, right now I couldn’t move an inch.

  I watched Etta’s body for so long it became this abstract shape in front of me. Just blood, just a body, just pain and dead love. I thought that I could stare at it for so long that eventually my love for her would reach out my eyes and bring her to life.

  Norma, meanwhile, lay down beside her, paralyzed by misery. She hadn’t even asked me what had happened to her or where I found her. She couldn’t. Just like me, no matter what she heard, it didn’t matter. Etta was gone and no explanation could ever bring her back.

  “Just tell someone,” she whimpered with her head on Etta’s chest.

  Her body was beginning to become misshapen as nature took its course and used it up for its own processes. Her ribcage seemed to sag below Norma’s weight. There was no breath to hold it up anymore.

  “Norma, it’s just us now.”

  She lifted her head slightly and looked at me through the mass of Etta’s hair.

  “There… there must be…

  “There’s not.”

  She lowered her head back down, tangling her fingers in Etta’s hair as she stroked it. I watched as a clump came away in her hand and she looked at it for a long while as though she didn’t know what to do with it. Then I watched in horror as she tried to press it back onto her head.

  “I need a drink and so do you.”

  It was too much watching her suffer like this. It was too much feeling this way and the longer I left it, the longer we went without her. Delving into a box, I pulled out a sheet, pushed Norma away and covered Etta’s body.

  “You can go to sleep now,” I said although I wasn’t too sure why. “We’ll leave you alone now.”

  Norma clung to me as we ascended the stairs, always looking over her shoulder at the body beneath the sheet.

  “We can fix this,” I said.

  “Now we can’t.”

  “I can fix anything.”

  I truly meant it although at the back of my mind I had no idea how I could even begin. Upstairs, we sat down at the kitchen table with the sound of the clock ticking softly in the background. I watched the hands move. For the first time, it dawned on me that time moves on no matter how much you suffer. It stops for you but no one else. The world keeps turning, although it’ll never turn the same way for you again.

  “I… I don’t know how to…”

  Norma was holding a bottle of rum in her hand, shaking so much that most of the contents were spilling across the table. I relieved her of it and poured two glasses.

  “You need to eat something.”

  “No. How can I?”

  “Please.”

  She shook her head and drank half her glass. It did nothing to calm her down. Instead, she held it down for a moment, looking off into the distance as though she was remembering something before heaving. She vomited across the table with nothing but wateryrum spilling out from her mouth.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  She began crying again.

  Walking back downstairs, I stepped around Etta’s body, still looking at it while I opened up a drawer and pulled out a vial of tablets. I bent down and kissed the top of her head through the sheet before leaving her alone once again.

  “I still love you,” I said and held down the urge to cry.

  Once I started, there would be no stopping the floor of tears.

  Back upstairs, I opened the vial and dropped five valium pills into Norma’s hand.

  “Take all of them,” I said. “You need to sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  She looked at them nodded, swallowing all of them down dry.

  A moment later she was slumping down into her seat and I was lying her down on the cold, tiled floor. She was silent at last.

  And now my work was to begin.

  Chapter Six

  Berger

  The road felt like freedom. Vast and expansive with nothing but white lines ahead of me and the darkness of the sky making the street lights pop out. I didn’t know how long I’d been driving for. It must have been hours but it felt like days, endless days of silence with nothing but the wind whistling in through the window blowing the cobwebs from my mind.

  Freedom, I thought. Sweet, beautiful freedom.

  I hadn’t still figured out what I was imprisoned by but it felt good to be free regardless.

  Maybe it’s Miranda, I thought. Was it her I wanted to be free from? Most likely not. She was the best thing to enter my life in so long but that was the problem. She was too good for me and I was reminded of it every time she straddled me and lowered herself onto my waiting cock. She was too beautiful for an old scarred up loser like me.

  At last, when my eyelids began to grow heavy and I noticed the flicker of the ailing fuel gauge, I knew it was getting later. It was only then that I looked at the clock and realized it was almost midnight. I’d been going flat out for almost twelve hours.

  “Christ.”

  Looking ahead, I saw the beckoning lights of a nearby gas station but I was even happier to see the motel behind it. I didn’t know how tired I was until I caught sight of the vacancy sign and on cue, I yawned as I rounded the bend into the gas station.

  I was the only person on the forecourt and as I stepped out and took in the smell of gasoline in the frigid air, I felt a chill down my spine. Gas stations were always a little weird to me but in the dead of the night, they took on a creepy quality. There was just something about the light they emitted and the way the snacks were stacked up with such precision even though there was rarely anyone around to buy them. And of course there were the staff. Usually behind the till one at a time with a gray pallor and zombified look in their eyes as though they’d been awake for days.

  As I stepped inside to pay, I saw there wasn’t even anyone behind the till. It was just me looking up at the porn mags thinking that none of the girls on the covers looked as good as Miranda.

  “Can I help you?”

  I still didn’t see anyone but a voice was definitely coming from the other side of the counter.

  “Er…”

  A head popped up and I saw the top of some graying bangs covered in a thick layer of grease. As I approached, I realized the littlest man I’d ever seen was waiting to serve me. At first I tried to reason that he was kneeling down, sto
cking up a bottom shelf or something but as I got closer I realized that wasn’t the case.

  “Hi there,” he said.

  “Oh..hey…”

  I handed over the twenty dollar bill in my hand and he took it with a smile.

  “Never seen a little person before?” he laughed.

  “Yeah, sorry it’s just that I’ve been driving for miles and…”

  He looked up expectantly as he handed me my change.

  “And I’m kinda outta my mind,” I said. “Just real tired.”

  I turned on my heel to walk away then halted halfway down the aisle.

  “But I have to say I’ve never seen a dwarf working nightshift at a gas station before. Do you get, like, robbed all the time?”

  He cocked his head to the side. The smile was still stuck to his face as he scratched at his beard.

  “Why? Are you speaking as an armed robber?”

  “I’m speaking as a former cop,” I said.

  “A former cop?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Early retirement,” I said with a shrug.

  I reached into my pocket for some cigarettes and clutched an empty packet.

  “Shit, can you get me twenty Marlboro?”

  I looked up and saw he was already holding the pack.

  “Nice. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. New in town?”

  “You’re very chatty for someone on nightshift.”

  “It’s just in my nature,” he said. “So, are you?”

  “Yeah.Just passing through.”

  “Going anywhere nice?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He now raised his other eyebrow.

  “A man of mystery,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I don’t feel particularly mysterious right now. Just exhausted.”

  “Oh, are you thinking of getting a room over at The Nest?”

  He pointed his thumb backward toward the direction of the motel with a grimace.

  “I was actually. What’s it like?”

  His face said it all but right now I didn’t have too many options.