by Wilson, Jay
As he sat down and picked up the controller to start a new round, he heard the sound of keys jingling at the door. He looked up, and Kasey entered the apartment as beautiful after a long day of hard work as she was when she left. She wore a thin black open-front sweater over a white shirt sporting a steep V-neck that accentuated her particularly large chest. She had black pin-stripe slacks and a pair of black flats. Her light skin complemented the dark attire nicely.
“Hey, sweetie.” He said, and smiled. “How was your day?”
Kasey dropped her large black purse off in the kitchen and pulled her shoes off. As she entered the living room, she sighed with frustration.
“You okay?”
She said, “Yeah. Just a long day. People can be so frustrating, especially the vendors I have to deal with every day. It’s like they make it their job to make my life difficult.”
When she neared the sofa, he stood and wrapped his arms around her. Her hair smelled like a mixture of strawberry and kiwi, and she was extremely hot and a bit sticky to the touch. To have her in his arms, though, felt good. Every day was a gift when he got the chance to see her, and he was thankful for every moment.
“Sorry to hear that.” He said.
“Thanks.” She said, and kissed him. “How was yours?”
“If was fine.” He said. “I think I saw Kurt Russell today.”
“Oh, yeah?” She said, and kissed him again before escaping his arms and heading to the kitchen.
“Yeah. Well, it looked like him anyway. I was busy helping another guest at the hotel, so I couldn’t go investigate.”
She opened her purse and fished out a stick of lip balm. She twisted the top off, and in between applying it to each lip she said, “Cool, shoulda got an autograph.”
“I probably should’ve.”
“Yeah, probably. So, what do you want to do for dinner tonight?”
“Oh!” He exclaimed, and startled her. “Guess what?”
She smiled, “What?”
He raised an eyebrow, “Not even gonna try to guess?”
She sighed again with the same frustrated breath of air, “Monkey butt?”
“What? No.” He said, and laughed. “Camdon and Gessy are in town.”
“Oh my god, we haven’t seen them in so long!”
“I know, right?”
“Where are they staying?” She said, and pulled the tie from her nearly jet-black brunette hair to reaffix it.
“I don’t know, but they wanna hang tonight.”
“Let me guess, Karaoke?”
“Yeah, and I was thinking maybe we can get some Sushi before we go.”
“Oh, that sounds so good right now.” She said as she left the living room and entered the bedroom.
“I thought you might like that.”
“What time are we going?”
“I didn’t ask, but I’ll text him and find out.”
Evin heard Kasey turn on the sink in the master bathroom, probably to wash off her make-up and apply a fresh coat. He picked up his phone to send a message to Camdon, tapped the screen, and navigated to the messaging app. He typed a quick one to his friend that read: “Come by our place around 6. I’ll drive. U guys r here to relax and drink.”
“Hey, baby?” Kasey called from the bathroom.
“What?”
“Tell them that we’ll drive so they can have a lot of fun tonight.”
He smiled, “Okay.”
As he stuffed his phone into his pocket, he saw something move from the corner of his eye. He looked up, and there stood a tall unfamiliar shadow out on balcony. The shape looked a lot like that of a man, but given the distortion, it could’ve been a plant for all he knew.
He went to the door, and as he unlatched it, the shadow suddenly moved out of view. He quickly pulled the door open and walked out onto the terrace. The hot, dying sun attacked his skin with its final golden rays as he turned to look for someone hiding out there. What he found was the grill he purchased months ago for an Independence Day barbeque. That’s it.
He scratched his head, and looked at the window leading to their bedroom. He checked it to make sure it was closed tight, and then tried to look through it. Kasey had apparently drawn the shades before getting ready to go out. He looked for handprints on the glass, but there was nothing.
“Weird.” He said, and went back into the living room.
After closing and locking the door, he walked through the apartment and entered the bedroom. What he thought at first was the sink had actually been the shower. A subtle hint of melon sweetened the air, a fragrance from Kasey’s body wash.
He checked the window one more time from the inside, and the lock was indeed engaged. When he turned around, there was something in the room with him. It floated in the air, and wore its skin like a tunic. The cape end seemed tattered and sliced, floated out to each other end of the room. Its arms were thin, short, and awkward, and didn’t appear to be of any real use. It had black orbs for eyes, no nose, and a black hole where a mouth should be. A dark ululation sang from it, and it moved closer to him.
Evin’s heart began to pound hard. He stepped back until he pressed upon the wall opposite the veranda. It moved closer and closer still. He threw his arms up, closed his eyes, and screamed.
For a while, he expected the thing to kill him. He expected something terrible, like his flesh being ripped from his bones or to be thrown through the window by the creepy thing. Instead, he remained untouched. He waited a long time, and when he finally felt courageous enough to open his eyes, he found the room empty.
“What the hell was that?” He asked himself, but he had no answer.
He took a deep breath, and sighed loudly. The scent of Kasey’s sweet body wash annoyed him. He’d felt as if he told her time and time again to find something less fruity. It was just like her not to listen to him.
He walked across the room, and noticed that she’d left her shirt and sweater draped on the bed and the rest of her clothes piled on the floor next to it. He chuffed loudly. As a marine, he learned to keep clean. Everything in the house was spotless, and it seemed every time she came home, she made a mess of his meticulousness. It was as if she did it on purpose just to harass him.
“Fucking bitch,” he said, and went to the closet.
The walk-in illuminated when he flipped the switch. On the left side were his clothes. Hung first was his street and work clothes followed by the military uniforms he kept when he was discharged. All of them fully pressed and clean. On the other side was her mess. Clothes hung disorderly, shoes stacked below and on top of each other. He took a sharp, deep breath.
“God damn it!”
“Did you say something, pumpkin?” Kasey called from the shower.
He reached up above his head and pulled down a plastic case. Inside was his old service pistol secured by a simple, six-digit lock. He rotated each wheel until it read 10-14-05, and then he pressed the switch to disengage it.
After retrieving his gun and loading it, he went into the bathroom. The steam billowed from the top of the shower, and the smell of melon was even stronger in there. He reached out and pulled the shower curtain open.
Startled, Kasey whipped around. When she saw him, she smiled softly and said, “Come to join me?”
He furrowed his brow, and lifted the gun.
She reared back and said, “Evin! What are you doing?”
He remained silent, and let the gun scream his anger at her. He squeezed the trigger. One, two, three times. Each bullet ripped through her flesh, and blood sprayed the white tiles. The shower feverishly tried to wash it clean, but much of it remained.
He looked down at her as she choked for air. Water beaded from her pale-white skin, some of the melon soap, once a frothy white now tinted pink, ran from part of her leg. When her final breath escaped her quivering lip, he turned the gun on himself and fired one final round.
Chapter One
Sweat beaded on Olivia’s forehead as she stretched to reach
the next hold above her head. The muscles in her back, shoulders, arms, and legs burned. She extended her foot, and turned her body to get the best length possible. Her face pressed softly against the cool false rock surface, and her fingers finally felt the rough exterior of the next rung. She used her two middle fingers to hook into the small hole, and she pulled herself up.
When she grasped a nearby hold, she steadied herself. The pause felt good, and it even gave way to a bit of relief, but she knew she couldn't stop for very long. The rest may have felt nice but it was misleading because it worked her body worse than if she kept moving. She just needed a second to lock into the next krab, a fancy word for a device plugged into the wall to keep her from falling. Therefore, she grabbed the belay rope, and stuffed it into the carabiner. When she felt safely connected, she took in a deep satisfying breath, and continued upward.
Rock climbing was the best escape for her. As a detective, she routinely dealt with matters that tasked her mental health. She couldn't deny the satisfaction that came with helping people, but the cost of dealing with murder, rape, or other atrocities was just as significant. Climbing took her away from that place. Whether it was inside like now or out in the mountains, she felt the freedom of mind. It provided just the right kind of recovery, and recover she did.
She didn’t often climb alone, but this night she did. Normally, her partner, Detective Danny Trijo, went with her, but he needed to work an extra shift. She didn't mind, though. For one, he needed the money. Just that spring his mother passed, leaving his father, Enrique, behind. As a result, Enrique fell into a deep depression, which caused him to lose his job, and Danny now supported him, too. It was hard on both of them, but Danny managed to push through with a smile. He didn’t mind taking care of his father because the man was, after all, the person who raised him, and he knew no better way to thank him than to do the same.
The other reason she didn’t mind being alone was that she needed it. The week started hard with the body of young boy found near the man-made lake in Greenwich Park at the center of the city. The killer strangled him and dumped the body, and thankfully, the boy suffered no other intrusions before or after that. That Friday, they found the murderer, and discovered the boy wasn’t his first. She spent all of Friday afternoon and Saturday evening informing the families of the boys the man took.
Therefore, she spent that Saturday night relaxing with a climb. The solitude of being alone granted her the ability to think about all that had happened and to wrap them up neatly enough so she could tuck away the bitter feeling edging its way into her stomach. She could never fully rid herself of it, because you can never really escape the darkness of the world, but she could temporarily throw it into one of her hidden compartments just the same.
The various aluminum connectors jingled as she reached around her back and chalked her hand. The colorful false rocks jutting from the creamy wall glistened in the cool florescent light, and the powdery residue from past climbers made them look like sugared candies. Her mouth watered a bit, which was a well-embraced effect since it had gone dry from her fear of heights.
Olivia slapped her hand against her shorts to knock excess chalk from her fingers, and then she reached up to the next one, which was hot pink, probably bubblegum flavored. She then steadied herself, locked into another krab, and added more tension to the slack.
Solo belaying was a dangerous job. She knew it was always important to have another there, but she needed the rush. She needed to feel her life existing in that moment because she needed to know that after all the death she dealt with, she was still very human. She thought that the monsters who seemed to slip in and out of her life had slowly took away her sense of self, and in that moment, drinking in the rush of fear, she felt better than ever. She felt human.
She stopped for another moment, and looked up to plan her route. As a short woman, she didn't have many choices. Many of the rungs were out of reach, which often wasn't too bad. However, she'd reached a point where all of them were just out of reach. Even if she stretched, she knew she wouldn’t be able to grab one.
Olivia looked down, and immediately admonished herself for doing so. Her fear of heights had forced her to form very specific rules to govern her life. Never jump out of planes, never walk to the edge of a cliff, and more important than anything, never look down. She never once broke the first two rules, but her solid gold—supposedly unbreakable—rule was one she shattered constantly. She didn’t blame herself, though, for what kind of acrophobic could resist the urge? Her excuse this time was she needed to know how far she’d traveled, both for her sanity’s sake and for what she planned to do next.
Her gaze trailed down from her heel, to the black and blue striped rope, and finally to the floor below. It looked to be twenty feet, perhaps twenty-five, but it could’ve easily measured more or less. Fear has a way of messing with your perceptions, and she had no doubt that even if she was only five feet from the ground, it would look and feel like a couple hundred.
She couldn’t stay perched there for long, but remained long enough to decide if she should keep going. In order to reach the next rock, however, she would have to jump for it. The dangers of doing so increased her heart rate and troubled her emotions. That was a good reminder of why she was up there. She wanted to feel alive, and what better way than to take a bold risk.
After sucking in a long deep breath, she finally picked a black jug hold and stared long and hard at it. The texture cast tiny shadows upon its own surface, which gave the appearance of a good hold. She had small hands, but the thinner end of it looked just the right size for her claws. She bounced a couple times to test her legs to make sure they were up to it, and even though her left knee protested with a soft hint of dull pain—an old soccer injury—she felt like she could do it.
She grabbed a nearby rock with both hands, and positioned her feet close to her center and both on one foothold. From the outside, she probably looked like a frog ready to make a long jump, but that's not how she felt. She felt like a woman about ready to put her life in the hands of the people who constructed the wall. What if the black jug was loose? What if she lost her grip and fell, but the krab didn't hold? What if she plummeted to the floor and died?
She shook her head. All these thoughts of what could happen if she failed, and not one being of success. She didn't like it. Not one bit. All this pain and suffering she lived with daily was making her negative, making her think that she couldn't make the jump. Every one of those emotions forced her to lean down like the tight coil of a snake, and then she pushed with all her might, springing up hard.
The wall rushed passed her, and she reached up. The hold she aimed for came at her fast, and she opened her grip. There was only room enough for one hand, something she didn't see before, but in that split second she extended out her right, which was her strongest. As she reached it, she clamped hard onto the handle, and smacked against the wall.
She hung there and looked for a good spot to place her feet, but she forgot to chalk her hand before jumping. As her hand began to slip, she frantically looked around for a hold. Her panic increased the sweat on her hands, and even though she immediately found places for her feet, her hands had become too saturated to hold anything. So, she used her left hand to hold herself while she reached back into her bag, but the only hold available was a small pinch that required a lot of forearm strength she didn’t yet have.
In all the movies and T.V. shows she'd watched, time always slowed down. In that moment, it didn’t. It seemed like death savagely snacked on her remaining time. She fell back, and dropped down six feet, three of which were lower than the last krab she used. The force yanked on the carabiner, but it held tight. She spun around, swung toward the wall, and smacked her head against a hold.
Olivia's vision blurred and the world around her became fuzzy. Her head pounded painfully like a headache but with the added coating of the wound on her head, and she became confused about what happened. It was an airy moment of
light-headed dissonance, where all her thoughts fogged together into a thousand nonsensical voices all jawing at once.
She felt the cold side of the wall against her shoulder, and as hung there with her hands wrapped around the rope. She didn’t immediately think to climb back onto the wall to safety because she didn’t want to move. She feared that any slight movement might jiggle her loose and drop her again.
The confusion from her probable concussion took a minute to clear, but as they did, she chalked her hands, reached toward the wall, and grasped a hold. She slowly pulled herself closer to the wall, and set her feet on the most solid spots she could find. Twinkling light like little white fireflies burned in and out of her vision, as she took a deep breath.
When some of the trembling subsided, she slowly climbed down rather than rappelling. It was much safer that way, and besides, her head continued to pierce with a kind of pain that felt like someone stabbed her repeatedly in the back of her skull with an ice pick. It was just a repetitive sharp and then dull feeling in rising and falling swells. Taking it slow ensured she didn’t make the pain any worse than it already was.
It took considerably less time for her to reach the bottom than it did to climb up. Part of it had to do with gravity helping her down, but the other part was that she was still dizzy and didn’t want to pass out while still up there.
With each carabiner she passed, she unhooked her line and added some slack to the rope. When her left foot touched the thick crash pad designed to break short falls, she felt relieved. When both feet were on it, she crumbled to the ground. It was obvious that she was hurt, but more than that, she felt glad to be on land the way a sailor values the shore after weathering a tumultuous storm. It was sweet and relaxing, and she probably would’ve laid there a long time had someone not approached her.
A man’s voice said, “Hey, are you okay?”
She probably wasn’t, but she replied, “Yeah, I think so.”
