by J L Aarne
“Who’re you really mad at?” he asks himself.
In his head, he hears his mother asking him the question. After his father died, Aarom had been an angry child for a long time. She had asked him that one day and he hadn’t been able to answer her because he was mad at his father and even as a kid that had seemed wrong. It’s the same now. He’s mad at Jonathan and it’s not Jonathan’s fault. Deep down, if he’s angry with anyone, it’s himself.
Aarom’s walking down an alley a couple of blocks from his building with his head down, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his long coat, his thoughts turned inward, when he trips and falls. He staggers, hits the wall with his shoulder and turns his back into it to stay upright.
At his feet, propped up against the wall across from him is Matthew and his throat has been cut. There is very little blood because the wound is cauterized, but what there is stains the front of his dirty old shirt so red that it looks like a child’s bib. His face is faintly blue, his mouth purple at the corners, the whites of his eyes are red; he did not bleed to death, he suffocated with a severed and cauterized trachea. Painted on the wall above his head is a hastily rendered prophet’s flag. The black and white paint has dripped in places down the wall and it’s not very well done, but Aarom knows it for what it is on sight.
He has never in real life seen a brutally murdered human being before. It stuns him for a minute. He’s seen dead bodies and dying people countless times, but always there is a layer of distance to it—it happened in the world of never was or it happened in virtual reality or a nightmare he can wake up from—but there is no distance here. He’s standing on pavement sprayed with Matthew’s blood. His own image is reflected back at him from the man’s opaque dead eyes. He knew him.
Someone looks down the alley, sees Aarom and the body at his feet and they run away screaming.
“Get up,” Aarom tells himself. He doesn’t move. He can’t look away. “Go. You have to go. You have to. The police will come. You have to… run!”
His own raised voice finally snaps him out of it. He pushes away from the wall and he runs. He does not quite run blindly, but he runs as fast as he can, which is really fast. Aarom walks for miles every night and he never takes a night off. He is in incredible shape, so he runs and puts several miles of distance between himself, the body and any possible pursuers in minutes, but it’s not fast enough. There are cameras everywhere, scanners, sentinel bots, and every single pair of eyes is a window for the machine.
But the machine doesn’t care about the dead; it is only concerned with the living. Aarom isn’t a killer, not that kind of killer, and the machine has never been able to quantify what prophets do or answer the question: Are they murderers?
So thinking, he lets himself stop to catch his breath and looks around. He has run in the opposite direction from his apartment building to lead them away from his home, but he looks around at the faces of passersby and none of them take any notice of him. A couple of people cast him worried glances and it occurs to him that he must look truly dreadful. No one points at him or cries out or cares that he’s standing there breathing like half the oxygen has been sucked out of the air.
Matthew is dead. Aarom hadn’t liked him, the man had scared and upset him, but he hadn’t wanted him dead. No prophet’s suicide for him either, he had been killed. Throat slashed open with a sickle knife and a flag painted over him. A message of some kind? It’s possible. A warning seems even more likely.
A warning for whom?
“Hey, you! Hey, you there, stop! You are under arrest!”
Aarom snaps to attention and sees a man in police uniform pointing at him. He is on the other side of the street and the traffic is keeping him there, but the light will change soon and the officer is already talking on his com, directing more cops to Aarom’s location.
Aarom has to run again. Instinctively, he wants to run home and hide where he’s most familiar, but he doesn’t. He’s not ready yet to burn the Marvin Jinn persona and start over. He’s faster than the police officers on foot, but he doesn’t expect them to stay on foot for long. They’ll be chasing him in cars and on hovers, which he can’t outrun.
He takes an alley, runs until another alley joins with it and turns right, keeps running. Alleys aren’t so narrow that cars and hovers can’t fit down them, but these are police who have never actually had to hunt a murderer before, so they are less likely to think of searching the alleys. Even if some of them do, the alleyways in and around the sprawl are a series of mazes that average professional, social, daylight people don’t know well enough to negotiate. He’s counting on the police, who live in a world devoid of violence, being not much different from the average person who walks by an alley without seeing it.
There’s a doorway at the end of the narrow alley he’s in and an unloading ramp that descends ten feet below ground level. Aarom walks down it until he’s hidden and peeks over the lip of the hole toward the street. A police car zooms by, blue and red lights spinning, siren wailing. It doesn’t even pause. A cop on a hover bike shoots by a moment later.
Aarom lets out a sigh of relief and slumps against the wall. He hears sirens in the area for a while, but nothing close. Soon, the cars move away and he can’t hear them anymore.
The big corrugated door at the bottom of the loading ramp rolls up and an old man with a beard and bushy eyebrows stares out at him. Aarom puts a finger to his lips, signaling for him to be quiet, but the old man turns his head and shouts something in what sounds like Italian at someone else and Aarom doesn’t stick around to see if he’s calling for help with the door or telling someone to call the cops. He hoists himself out of the hole and runs again.
When he finds himself jogging down the small unpaved road that passes behind Jonathan’s house and those of his neighbors, he’s not really that surprised. He can’t go home, he can’t go to his mother’s house and Sabra lives across the river, so he doesn’t have anywhere else safe to go. He doesn’t have anyone else to go to. Jonathan might be mad at him—Jonathan probably is mad at him—but he will still help him. Aarom has no doubt of that.
Unfortunately, when he gets there and pounds on Jonathan’s back door, there is no answer. He still isn’t home.
“Hey there.”
Aarom whirls around and falls back against the door. Instead of a police officer this time, an elderly man is peering at him over the fence that separates his small yard from Jonathan’s. He smiles when he sees Aarom and holds up his hands in a placating way.
“Whoa now. Didn’t mean to startle you, son.”
Aarom drags a hand through his hair and sighs. His heart is beating painfully fast, but it begins to slow as he slides down the door to sit on the gravel walk. “Sorry,” he says. “Just… a little jumpy I guess.”
“Well, I guess so,” the man says. “You looking for Jonathan Wendell, he’s not home yet. Suppose he had to work a bit late.”
“Probably,” Aarom says.
“It’s not like him though. Odd,” the man says. “Of course, he’s been odd the last few weeks. That’s what my Sarah says and she’d know. She talks to him more than me.”
“Odd how?” Aarom asks.
The man shrugs. “Just odd. Up all hours, home strange times of the day and night. He’s been something of a shut-in of late. Awfully quiet, too, which isn’t like him. He’ll usually visit and laugh with a person for a while.”
That is odd. Odd for Jonathan at any rate.
“I seen you around here before,” the man says. “We’ve never been introduced though. I’m Vern Bryant.”
“Marvin Jinn,” Aarom says. “Nice to meet you, Vern. I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea when Jonathan might get back?”
“Nope. Like I said, he’s been odd lately.”
Aarom nods and stands up. The back door has a thumbprint lock on it and Aarom thinks how unsafe that is. Fingerprints aren’t difficult to steal. It might as well not have any lock on it at all. Then on impulse he puts his thumb int
o the lock and presses down on the scan pad. It reads his thumbprint.
The bolt clicks open.
Aarom carefully controls his expression so that he doesn’t look as surprised as he feels. “I’ll just wait for him inside,” he says.
“Well, sure,” Vern says. “I’ll get back to tending the roses. Have a good evening, Marvin.”
“And you. You have a good evening, too,” Aarom says distractedly as he enters the house.
Jonathan’s house is not large or terribly luxurious, but it’s spacious enough for him and the occasional visitor. Aarom’s apartment is bigger, but the house has always felt more cozy than claustrophobic to him. Jonathan is a neat person, has no pets, lives alone and his only concession to clutter are the books left off the shelves in places on the coffee table or one of the end tables. The only dirty dish left in the sink is a cup with a dried brown spot of coffee residue at the bottom. He has two houseplants, a young ficus in the living room and a decorative pepper plant with spotted leaves on the windowsill in the kitchen. Aarom remembers Jonathan telling him that he had named them. The pepper plant is called Brutus, but he can’t remember the name of the ficus.
Aarom turns the light on over the kitchen sink, gets a cup of coffee—Italian roast, black, no sugar—from the machine on the counter and sits at the table with his chair turned so he can watch out the window for Jonathan. He watches it get dark and doesn’t see any police on the street. They won’t look for him here. If law enforcement has a picture of him and they run facial recognition, he will come up in the system as a ten year old suicide. That’s what they call it when you hang a black flag to summon a prophet. It’s not quite the right word for it, but there isn’t a better one. If that happens, they’ll know he’s a prophet and there’s a list out there somewhere and his name will be added to it. They’ll believe he murdered Matthew and Aarom will be hunted, but they still won’t connect him to Jonathan.
“Computer?” Aarom says.
From a tiny speaker on the wall above the window a pleasant male voice answers, “Yes?”
“Has there been a news update today about a murder in the city?”
Silence for a moment, then, “There are two. Would you like to see them?”
“Yes. On the window, please.”
The window looking out at the street in front of Jonathan’s house goes opaque and the news articles appear. They’re both about the death of Matthew, whose last name had apparently been Vasquez. He was killed with a prophet’s sickle knife and much is made about this and the painting of the flag near his body. Marion Flowers is quoted several times, though the quotes are from previous interviews about prophets not specific to the death of Matthew Vasquez. It doesn’t matter; the object is clear and the result the same. Prophets are murderers, prophets are the only ones who use sickle knives; Matthew had been murdered with a sickle knife, so therefore his murderer has to have been a prophet. The flag adds a real visceral kick to the picture that accompanies the article.
Even if one ignores the bias and politics, they’re right. The killer undoubtedly is another prophet. Only another prophet would have been able to kill the man without being stopped. With all of his ranting and raving and loud nonsense drawing attention to himself, Matthew had been putting them all in danger, which gave a prophet motive to silence him. Sickle knives are not easy to come by and the average citizen has no use for one. Aarom’s was a gift from Sabra. As he understands it, they are typically given to acolytes as gifts.
It wasn’t a coincidence either that Matthew had been killed so close to Aarom’s apartment building. He had started deliberately avoiding the man after the last time he encountered him. Perhaps Matthew had caught on to it and come looking for him.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Aarom murmurs.
He taps the window and scrolls to the next article. It is similar. Police are following some leads, they have an eyewitness. There is a still shot of Aarom with the body from a camera on one of the buildings, but nothing of his face. Aarom instinctively keeps his head down to avoid cameras when he’s outside and there aren’t any images captured of his face. The officer in charge of the investigation is quoted as saying that they do not believe the man seen by the witness or caught on camera is the killer, but they would like to speak with him.
There was a camera in the area, which means there is footage of Aarom discovering and falling over the body. There should also be footage of the murder then, but there’s no mention of that in the news.
“Thank you. Close and return to window setting,” Aarom tells the house computer.
The news articles fade and the glass clears. Aarom drinks his coffee and watches through the window as it gets darker outside. There are no stars in the city, but the moon is bright gold and gleaming like a scythe.
“Computer, are you linked to Jonathan’s personal phone?” Aarom asks.
“I am,” the computer says.
“Call him for me, please.”
A moment of silence, then, “I’m sorry, sir. Jonathan’s personal phone appears to be turned off at this time. Would you like to leave him a message?”
“No. Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
Aarom finishes his coffee and goes to the machine for another cup. He tries the espresso this time. He likes it but it’s a little too strong, so he checks the fridge for milk. There’s soymilk and some kind of butterscotch flavored nondairy creamer. He uses the soymilk and the coffee’s better.
He’s still standing at the counter when the front door opens and Jonathan walks into the house. He halts in the doorway when he sees Aarom. Then he calmly closes the door and takes his jacket off.
“That was you in the news, wasn’t it?” he asks. “I thought so. Bad pictures, but it looked like you.”
“It was me,” Aarom says. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Did you kill that man?”
“Does that matter?”
“Aarom, did you kill him?”
“No.”
Jonathan nods thoughtfully. Then he goes to put his jacket away. He returns a minute later and his tie is gone, his shirt open at the collar, his shoes kicked off. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.
“Excuse me?” Aarom says.
Jonathan sighs and leans in the doorway. “If you killed him,” he says. “It wouldn’t matter. I just… I need to know.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Aarom says.
“You know who did?” Jonathan asks.
Aarom shrugs.
“You know who did,” Jonathan says.
“Jonathan…” Aarom hesitates and stares down into his coffee. “Jonathan, I’m sorry.”
Jonathan looks at him from beneath lifted brows. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“For… the other day. For what happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Okay, nothing happened.” Aarom takes a sip of his coffee. “I’m still sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.” Jonathan stands away from the doorway and walks over to stand in front of him. He doesn’t say anything else until Aarom lifts his head and looks him in the eye. “You’re always forgiven.”
Aarom lets out his breath and relaxes a little. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Aarom?” Jonathan says.
He leans toward him slightly and Aarom tenses again at his nearness. “What?” he asks.
“You never smile anymore,” Jonathan remarks, then asks, “Why did you do it?”
Aarom swallows and looks away from him. He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand him. That would be a lie and Jonathan would know it was a lie. “I don’t think there’s always one big reason,” he says. “There were a lot of things. It was… a bad time for me. Everything felt wrong. Don’t you sometimes feel it? The skin of the world pushing you away?”
“Yes,” Jonathan says softly.
He’s too close still, but Aarom forgets about that and looks at him again because that is not the a
nswer he expected. “You do?” he says. “Since when?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan says. “What do you think it means?”
Aarom frowns at him and says nothing for a while. Jonathan just looks back at him and waits. Finally, he says, “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He’s lying and they both know he’s lying. It means everything.
Jonathan steps back, turns and walks out of the kitchen. Aarom follows him and he goes into the living room and sits down in a comfortable chair with a heavy sigh. For a second, Aarom stands there looking at him, then he sits down in the chair across from him, though tensely hunched over with his elbows propped on his thighs.
“Maybe it’s always been there,” Jonathan says. “Like the background noise you tune out so you can concentrate. Not gone, you’re just not listening to it. Soon it’s like it’s always been there, which makes it easier not to notice it. Maybe it’s like that. When you’re busy, when your life’s good, when things are looking up, you’ve got shit worth getting up for in the morning, then you don’t notice it. You only start to notice it if something changes. Then the background noise becomes this annoying hum.”
“Jonathan—”
Jonathan looks at him sharply and Aarom sees the sleepless nights in his eyes. “Was it easy?” he asks. “It must have been. You never said anything.”
“Was what easy?” Aarom asks.
“Leaving,” Jonathan says. “Deciding to leave. To just quit the world. To leave us—to leave me. Was it?”
“Jonathan, no,” Aarom says. His coffee has gone cold in his hands, so he puts the cup aside on the table. “I didn’t leave.”
“That part wasn’t up to you, was it?” Jonathan smiles, but it’s one of those smiles that look strange on him. It isn’t quite real. “You made up your mind, hung that flag, decided to leave. Then the world went and spit you back out. Before that though, you decided to leave. Was it easy?”
Aarom tries to remember. It’s been a long time and he’s changed a lot since then. “I don’t think… I don’t think it was. I think it was hard. It gets easy once you make up your mind, but making up your mind is… That’s hard.”
