“No,” I replied automatically and then added, “What do you mean?”
“If what’s happening with the message is subliminal… What if there’s a hidden message for women, also? What if it’s telling us to kill ourselves?” She blinked rapidly. “Or, or, what if being assaulted passes on a virus or something?”
“I think that’s a far stretch.”
“Like men losing their minds because of a subliminal message isn’t a far stretch?”
“Okay. But we’re still here. We heard the message. You were attacked—”
“I wasn’t attacked the way Sydney was though.” Her voice hitched.
I pulled her into a hug. “Kitty Cat, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. If that were the case”—I hesitated—“you probably would’ve already done it.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah,” she responded weakly.
“Now, I really have to pee,” I said. Her body tensed. I held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I’ll use the men’s room. Then I’ll assess what’s happening and what we should do.”
“I’m coming with you. I want to be with you all the time. I’m scared.”
“I’m scared too.”
She nodded and followed me into the restroom. Nothing had changed in the dining area but the funky smell of rot I’d previously perceived as a lingering fart within the office was stronger once we exited the room. The men’s room had an awful stench but it wasn’t the same. I used the toilet while Callie rinsed her mouth at the sink. I found her trying to use her fingers as a brush and remove some of the sleep knots from her hair when I exited the stall. We switched spots and I tried to make myself slightly presentable while she used the toilet.
Rinsing my mouth did nothing to eliminate the lingering yeasty taste of beer. I tried to brush my teeth with my finger and water and mentioned to Callie the kitchen might have some mint leaves somewhere we could chew on to freshen our breath. She chastised me for talking to her while she was peeing.
We left the men’s room and I hesitated at the women’s room door.
Callie said, “I can’t go back in there.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
I started to push the door open but Callie stopped me.
“Wait,” she said. She retreated to the office and reemerged with one of the tablecloths we’d used to construct our beds with. She handed it to me and whispered in a solemn tone, “Cover her. We can’t leave her that way.”
I took the tablecloth from her and pushed open the door. The sink was located along the wall adjacent to the door. I peered around the doorframe and noticed a pair of bare legs hanging over the countertop of the sink area. Sydney’s socks, shoes, panties, and pants lay haphazardly on the floor along with a congealed pool of blood. The room reeked of the musty and coppery sent of old menstruation. I breathed through my mouth and stepped around the blood and into the bathroom with trepidation.
Sydney sat slumped against the wall-length mirror behind the counter and in between two sinks. She was naked from the waist down. Her cunt was a bloody mess, as were her wrists. Her head hung toward her chest. Her mouth was open and she stared downward with milky and unseeing eyes. A bloody knife and spool of cooking twine sat on the counter beside her.
I’d never seen a dead person outside of a funeral home and the experience was unnerving. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my ears tingled deep inside their inner workings as if I’d sucked on a piece of super sour candy. My stomach lurched but I took a deep breath of the fetid air to steady my nerves. I blinked back the tears of horror and fear and stepped up to the counter, careful not to step in any of the blood. There was no way to reach her without stepping in blood or climbing on the counter. I didn’t want to do anything to disturb the scene. I chose to climb on the counter beside her, careful not to disrupt anything.
I didn’t want to look at her crotch to know what she’d done to herself but I couldn’t help myself. The gruesomeness of being near a corpse was nothing compared to the awful recognition of the ghastly arts and crafts project she’d constructed from her own body. Sydney had cut and pulled her insides out through her vagina, wrapping and tying it with the cooking twine so it looked liked a penis.
I gagged and managed to maneuver my head over the sink in time to unleash the remnants of my stomach along with a wail of horror.
Callie cracked the door. “Sonya, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I managed between heaves. I spat in the sink and composed myself. “I’ll be out in minute.”
The door to the restroom made the slightest tap when it closed. I looked at Sydney’s dead face and searched the countertop for any sign of a note but didn’t find one. I thought about closing her eyes but I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I would rather go my whole life not knowing what dead flesh felt like.
I unfurled the tablecloth like a bedsheet and let it settle over Sydney. Something deep within in me hoped I was the one who was right about the broadcasted message and it only affected the men. Because if this was something I was forced to inflict on myself or, for the love of everything that was once good in this world, I had to watch Callie do this to herself, I might as well snatch the knife off the counter and slit my throat right now.
I carefully slipped from the counter to avoid disturbing Sydney or stepping in her blood. I picked up Sydney’s discarded black tennis shoes. Thankfully she’d kicked them off far enough away and they hadn’t been touched by the blood.
Chapter 6
“We have to leave,” I said.
Callie and I carefully checked out the front door of the restaurant, hiding ourselves from view. There were a few shamblers on the street. The men appeared lost and listless, unaware of each other or their surroundings.
An overweight man in a checkered button down shirt walked in slow circles across the street. Every so often he would misstep and run into a support pole for a business’s awning, bounce back a step, and continue his worn path as if nothing happened. The entire time he kept shouting, “That shirt is very becoming on you! If I was on you I’d be coming too!”
Callie said, “But where are we going to go?” She stepped back from the door and checked her phone for the millionth time. “We have no idea what’s going on out there.” Frustrated with the lack of signal and possibly a dying battery, she slipped her phone back into her purse.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we can’t stay here. We can at least make it back to our apartment and wait it out.” I stepped back from the door and nodded toward the bar. “The smell won’t be so bad there. We either need to leave or move the bodies outside.”
Callie’s nostrils flared and I knew her patience was wearing thin. She shook her head and I knew touching the dead men and Sydney was out of the question. She said, “And what are we going to wait for when we get home, Son? Someone to rescue us?” She waved her hand toward the door. “Have you looked outside?”
I gestured for her to keep her voice down. I checked out the door again to see if the guy across the street heard us. It didn’t appear he had. It didn’t seem possible for us to hear him shouting but for him not to have heard Callie.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Hey, do you think they can hear us?”
“What do you mean?” Callie joined me in peering out the glass door. She stared at the man for a few seconds and suddenly shouted, “Hey, you piece of shit! Fuck you!”
Her sudden outburst startled me. I took her upper arm and pulled her out of view. “What are you doing? There are a dozen of those assholes out there. They’ll tear the door off the hinges.” I checked around the edge of the door but the man was nevertheless on his endless loop as if nothing had happened. I turned back to her and made a confused sound.