I didn’t want any questions.
Not about the countless lacerations, scratches and scrapes. Not about my general level of exhaustion, or the countless things I just couldn’t shed light on.
No people. There was, however, a note on the door.
Food is in the fridge. Your cousin stopped by.
-Joel
P.S. Your cousin came by again, 10:30pm. I checked for you, you weren’t back. Left her number inside.
I owed Joel something. I wasn’t good at this. Taking without giving back. He’d been upset when I’d insisted, but I didn’t like this imbalance.
No information on which cousin it was, and no phone number.
I opened the door, standing there as it swung open, feeling all of the cuts and scrapes making themselves known, the bruise at my shoulders, and the bruise on my stomach, where I’d only barely avoided being gutted by the deer. All of me hurt.
Worse, I felt filthy. I could still feel the little claws scrabbling on my skin.
I checked the length of the hallway, then pulled my clothes off at the door, leaving them outside my apartment.
I headed straight for the shower and cranked it on hot.
The water that ran off me was pink-brown, and it wasn’t the lines I’d drawn on myself that made it brown.
When I bent down, I saw that the brown was composed of specks.
Bugs. Thousands, so small I could barely make them out with the naked eye.
I shivered, even under the near-scalding water.
I turned it up hotter.
Soap, shampoo, rinse.
More soap, shampoo. As if I could simply drown them in chemicals.
The hot water ran out long before I was absolutely sure that I wasn’t seeing any more fleas in the runoff.
I stepped out of the shower to dig through the cabinet.
Pills, pills…
Antibiotics I’d been given by Ty after a bad bout of coughing. I hadn’t taken them because it was a fucking stupid idea to take antibiotics when you didn’t have to. Good. I popped one in my mouth.
As for cleaning myself…
There was paint thinner, which I used sometimes after work, but I suspected it would be a bad idea to pour it on myself with the number of open wounds I had.
Rubbing alcohol… same issue.
Hydrogen peroxide?
Fuck it. It should kill the fleas, and I needed to disinfect the wounds.
A minute later, I was standing in the shower, hissing through my teeth as each of the minor wounds bubbled. I made sure to brace myself before pouring it on the more severe gouge in my leg.
I patted myself dry with my shittiest handtowel, then stepped out of the shower, still damp.
I had no idea how bad I looked as a whole. I did know I was covered in marks. Enough that I’d draw attention in public. Enough that I might even scare people.
One of my eyelids was torn, and was promising to swell up. My ear was tattered at the edge, going by touch. The bruise at my shoulder was ugly, already purple in spots.
I’d suffered harm on another level, too. The tattoos. My best gauge to more metaphysical harm I’d sustained.
The birds were… somehow better than they’d been. A few less feathers sticking up, less hostile, feral, less beady. But the birds were vivid in color and definition, the branches seemed a little more wicked, more angular and sharp, and the watercolor was a darker cloud, more like the bruise at my shoulder than the lighter hues I’d had before.
I had the eerie sensation that the cloud of watercolor behind the birds was shifting, like clouds moving across the sky. But when I looked, I couldn’t see it.
A little disconcerting.
I’d need to touch myself up.
I reached for the locket, and paused.
Bit of a problem.
The hair was more like wire. Augmenting the chain, adding to it, mimicking it. Where it cut into my hand, the glamour was giving the chain a sharper edge at the seams where metal had joined metal. Spurs and barbs.
The imp’s influence, or was the glamour simply adapting to circumstance?
I used a nail file, and scraped, clipped or gouged away what I could.
Once I’d brewed together a bit of ink, I began touching up the worst of the damage. Face. Ear. Hands. The gouge on my leg.
I hesitated, my hand still wet with ink, poised over another set of scars. Narrow ones, years old now.
There was only so much ink to spare, and there were dangers. But the idea that I could cover them up, remove one more reminder of the bad old days…
I wiped it away. Photoediting real life.
I couldn’t say what the backlash would be, but I told myself the alternative to the glamour was me not being able to function or show my face to my friends.
Or my family, as it happened. I thought of the note.
I found the number inside. No doubt he hadn’t wanted to leave it on a paper visible for all the others to see. Respecting privacy. There was only a Toronto number.
It was one in the morning. The hour told me I shouldn’t call, but he or she had come by twice. I questioned whether it was urgent, or if more repeated visits would prompt more questions from the people around me.
In the end, I was too tired to really care about social norms. I wanted answers, not more things hanging over my head.
I called.
“Hm? Hello?”
A girl’s voice. I narrowed it down to Ellie and Paige.
I almost thought Molly, but Molly was gone.
“You dropped by?” I asked.
I heard a hushed, “Blake,” followed by a rustling sound.
“Yes. Unless you dropped by to talk to someone else?” I asked.
“No. One sec.”
I heard clumping noises over the phone, more rustling, and then the sound of a door closing.
“I didn’t want to bother my roommate. Late call.”
“I was out late,” I said.
“The police were asking around, looking for you,” she said. “They got in touch with everyone.”
Fuck.
“Oh?” I asked. “Any particular reason?”
“Molly died, then you disappear? It raises questions.”
“Ah,” I said.
Was Laird trying something?
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You have the house now?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Fuck that,” she said. “Why? What did you pull? Did you strongarm Molly?”
“No.”
“God, I haven’t been able to think straight, I’m so fucked up over this, and I’ve got exams coming up.”
“When you say you’re fucked up, you mean you’re fucked up over Molly’s death?” I asked.
“Over this. All of it. You. The inheritance. Molly. I thought that I’d look into it, get in touch with you, get some concrete answers, settle my thoughts. Then you weren’t there, which made things worse. I wound up going back, and you still weren’t there. Your landlord said he’d seen you… I need answers, Blake. None of this makes sense.”
While she talked on the phone, I got the meal Joel had prepared from the fridge. Lasagna. I put it in the microwave with a small glass of water.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “I don’t know what answers I can give.”
“Why you?”
“That’s an awfully good question,” I told her. “I wish I knew the full answer.”
“Things were just settling down, then something happens to Molly, and that’s bad enough, but you get the house? Molly just decides to give it to you?”