by Joshua Ingle
“The security guard looks fucked up.”
Brandon glanced over at Heather, who stared down through the expansive window near the kitchen. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, he’s soaking wet, just standing there looking up at me.”
“Well, he’s a weird fucker. Who knows what he’s up to.” Brandon flipped over the first card in the deck and began his card game, quickly freeing up several kings. Luck was on his side tonight.
In his peripheral vision, he noticed Heather discreetly removing a fifty-dollar bill from her pocketbook, then approaching Crystal’s purse on the countertop. Her eyes lingered on Brandon the whole time, no doubt hoping he’d ignore her in favor of his solitaire game. As she inconspicuously slipped the money into Crystal’s purse, her gaze briefly left Brandon, and he chose that moment to strike.
“What are you doing?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the cards.
Heather exhaled sharply. Her voice grew defensive. “Helping her out.”
“Why?”
“Because she needs it.”
“We all need it. Why give it to Crystal? What extenuating circumstances cause her to be the beneficiary of your generosity?” Heather opened her mouth to answer, but Brandon continued before she could speak. “Because I’m pretty sure she does drugs. She’s all about that instant gratification, you know. It’s like giving money to a homeless man.”
“Then I guess I’m just a little less selfish than some other people.”
Brandon chuckled. “Bullshit. You’re just doing it so you can pat yourself on the back, get that feel-good buzz from imagining you’ve done real good in the world. Your altruism is just as selfish as my self-interest. Don’t kid yourself.” He lined up his last ace above the rest of the cards.
“Hmm.” She thought for a moment. “So spending a night throwing up after partying too hard is basically the same as spending years curing cancer? Raping someone is on par with giving food to a hungry kid? Nah, I think I’ll pass on that.”
Raping someone? Brandon finally turned from his game to meet Heather’s gaze. Does she know? Her eyes were harsh, but revealed nothing about what she might know. Brandon countered with a smile.
“All I’m saying is that it’s human nature to seek pleasure for yourself. Keeping that money would give you greater pleasure than giving it to Crystal.”
“Fuck you. It’s my choice.”
Brandon’s grin grew wider. She was a troublemaker who never agreed with him—and probably hated his guts—but Brandon liked Heather. Her viewpoints were off-kilter, but unlike Cole and Crystal, she had a brain, and she used it. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, even to her boss.
He readied himself for another philosophical debate. Maybe tonight he’d finally win her over. “Heather, you know what? All thought and action—all of it—is just a physical and chemical process that started at the big bang. We’re all just clumps of atoms, playing out their scripts. None of us are free. Choice, morality… they’re just evolved mental constructs. Illusions.”
“Well, then I’d rather live in an illusion that’s nice instead of an illusion that’s mean. What’s the point of your philosophy if it just makes you an asshole?”
“Philosophies don’t need a purpose. They’re about what’s true. And alas, mine is.”
Heavy, muffled sobs suddenly emerged from behind the closed doors to Cole’s bedroom. Oh, sweet victory. If Crystal had broken down in tears, all was going well. Brandon felt all his problems slipping away.
Heather turned back from the noise. “Regardless, Brandon, other people besides you do have lives and purposes, however arbitrary you may think they are. People like Crystal and Cole. And your actions affect them.”
Oh, she was good! But Brandon, as always, was a little better. “I don’t think their purposes are arbitrary. They are arbitrary, objectively.”
Heather raised her arms in a flustered gesture. “Okay, try this then. Everything is meaningless to you, right? All beliefs are illusions? But you believe in… what? Nihilism? That’s a belief. That’s meaningful to you.”
“Damn, it really threatens you that I’ve renounced all value systems, doesn’t it?”
“It’s hypocritical.”
“Is it? How?”
Heather rolled her eyes in that vaguely sexy way she did sometimes. “I can’t even argue with you about it because every time I make a point you just say that there is no point. You just avoid the argument and say you’ve won.”
“Hey, I’m arguing now. Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“And you always make fun of religion for being a closed system that keeps people from asking questions, but isn’t… whatever you believe… isn’t it the same thing?”
Brandon inhaled deeply and sighed. Heather and he had these discussions twice every month or so (once even while shooting a porn video), and they always ended with Heather oblivious and Brandon bored. He often wondered what it would take to make her finally get it. As he turned over the jack of spades, a flash of insight came to him.
“I had a friend once,” he said. Crystal continued blubbering behind the doors while he stood and sauntered toward Heather. “He was a cop. And not one of the douchebag ones. This was a really, really righteous dude, fighting for justice and all that. But alas, he fell victim to that infamous kryptonite that slays all heroes: he fell in love. With a woman from the streets. A prostitute. They met surreptitiously, and he hid their romance from his buddies. He gave her his time, his money, his adoration, his friendship. They had a child together.”
Brandon paused next to a recliner and tapped his fingers on it. He nearly decided to just sum up the rest of the story and sit back down, but no, Heather needed to hear this. She needed to grasp the emotional impact. “But my friend’s sergeant found out and wasn’t too fond of this relationship. Kicked my friend off the force. With no job, he lost his house, his car.”
“That sucks.” Despite all the videos they’d made together, Heather seemed to grow uncomfortable as Brandon drew close to her. She broke eye contact and stared at the ground, and he knew he was winning, even before finishing his story.
“Yeah, it did suck. I let him stay with me for a while. Even gave him some money to start a business. But then there was a drug bust, and his lady friend was involved. He got there just in the nick of time, but she got caught in the crossfire between the cops and the dealers, so my friend jumped in to protect her.”
Brandon paused for emphasis.
“His sergeant shot him twice in the back.”
Heather glanced toward Cole’s room as if hoping the lovebirds would exit and save her from this conversation. But he had her cornered: a captive audience.
“Did he make it?” she asked uncomfortably.
“Nope.”
“What happened to the woman?”
Brandon grinned deviously. “She couldn’t stand what happened to him, so she got deeper into drugs. She died from ’em after too long. I don’t know what happened to that poor kid. But my point is why. Why did my friend do that? Everything he had he gave to her, because it made him happy to see her happy. But there was no purpose in the end. He lost everything, and so did she.”
Brandon’s long, slow walk to the kitchen ended. He arrived at Heather and reached his arms around her to lean on the countertop. As their bodies pressed together, he removed the fifty from Crystal’s purse and dangled it between their faces. “You do this—giving—over and over, until eventually you have a revelation. There is no justice. There are no rules. And at the end of the day, without exception, everything burns.” He slid his hand lazily down Heather’s cleavage and tucked the money into her bra. “So I’ll ask you again. Before the flames consume what little you have, why would you squander it on anyone but yourself?”
Heather nodded solemnly, pondering, and for a few seconds Brandon tasted victory. But then she looked him in the eyes and plucked the fifty out from between her breasts.
“Because she needs it,” Heather said, and
dropped the money back into Crystal’s purse.
Before Brandon could retort, Cole and Crystal entered the living room, Crystal wiping off tears and making a beeline for her purse. She had some kind of big red book under her arm. Heather turned to Crystal to offer some comforting words, so Brandon backed into the shadows by one of the deactivated studio lights.
As Cole stomped through the room, he bumped his shin into the coffee table Brandon had moved for his card game. “Fuck!” Cole yelled, and shoved it out of his way, scattering cards across the floor, ruining Brandon’s game. He proceeded to the sliding glass doors by the balcony and brooded there like he always did. Feel sorry for me, Brandon, his whiny expression seemed to say. I’ve had a rough life, and now I have tough decisions to make.
Get a life, pal, Brandon thought. He glanced past Cole at the spectacular view beyond the condo. The Port Bridge was lit a deep blue from underneath, the MacArthur Causeway purple next to it, snaking out toward the glittering bustle of South Beach. Brandon wished he could be out there tonight, getting hammered and chasing tail instead of dealing with the fallout in here.
“Cole, we’re gonna take the rest of the night off, okay?” Heather said.
Cole raised his hands in defeat, then leaned against the glass.
“You can spend the night with me,” Heather whispered to Crystal. “I’ll drive you.” Of course she would, because Crystal was a lowlife who couldn’t afford her own car.
“Give me a minute,” Crystal said. “I’ll meet you down front.”
Heather’s gaze swept from Cole to Brandon, then back to Crystal. She reluctantly left for the elevator. Before long the doors closed over her wary gaze, freeing Crystal to approach Cole again. Brandon watched every step as she shuffled up to him, hopefully to say goodbye forever.
Instead, she softly kissed him on the lips. “Thank you for reconsidering,” she said.
What? Brandon’s heart skipped a beat.
“No promises,” Cole said.
No, buddy. This was supposed to be all wrapped up! What are you thinking? Brandon had framed Cole’s choice as a choice between Brandon or Crystal. And if Cole had chosen Crystal… if Cole was even thinking about choosing Crystal…
Crystal exchanged a glance with Brandon as she walked to the elevator. As she waited for it to come back up, Brandon quickly went to Cole and whispered to him. “So what’s the verdict?”
“Jury’s still out,” Cole said.
DING. The elevator opened, and Crystal left.
Brandon rushed to Cole’s bedroom. This was very bad. Brandon’s job, his status, his security were at stake because of one dumb little bitch and the larva she was about to pop out. Chaos, he realized. But this wasn’t chaos he could manipulate. This time, the chaos was manipulating him.
He wasn’t about to let Crystal beat him. Brandon grabbed the putter off Cole’s bed and dashed into the service hallway, toward the service elevator inside it.
Behind him he heard a series of loud clinks as something clattered on a countertop. “Brandon!” Cole’s muffled voice came from the kitchen. “Brandon, did you move these bottles?”
DING. The service elevator beckoned. Brandon entered then jammed his fingers down on the “door close” button. His old friend called his name twice more before the elevator doors shut him out. Then the sweet hum of the machine whisked Brandon down, down, down.
Rage saturated his mind, as it often did. But he realized he was also feeling an emotion he didn’t often experience: fear. If this all goes to hell tonight, it doesn’t matter, he reminded himself, to calm his apprehension. Nothing matters, nothing matters. I’m indifferent.
All human life was just scripts being acted out. And now Brandon was going to act out his.
•
Past an alligator stalking a white-tailed deer by the shore of its lake, underneath a colony of bats nesting in the canopy above, then finally gliding through the last trees of the park next to the condo, Marcus emerged into the moonlight of the Sanctuary. Most of the African army had arrived by now; thousands of them swarmed above the high-rise, circling, searching. Marcus’s long-awaited vengeance was finally at hand.
In front of him, the metal gate of the condo’s underground parking garage clinked raucously as its gears pulled it upward. A few members of the horde swooped down to investigate, including Shazakahn, their one-eyed leader. They arrived just in time to see a young blonde drive her car around the corner toward the front of the condo. As the gate descended, Shazakahn took the risk and glided inside, a pile of dead leaves fluttering in after him.
The gate clanked shut, and the leader ordered his followers to guard the building’s exterior. Hopefully Shazakahn would remain trapped in the garage and nothing would come of his incursion; Marcus couldn’t abide competition. In truth, the army was only here as backup in the event that Marcus failed in his mission. They hated him, but Marcus had duped them into coming here. No other group of demons in its right mind would enter a Sanctuary, so he knew he could beguile these gullible fools again if necessary.
As he slunk through the foliage around the condo’s east side, prowling, his mind dwelled on a single resolute thought—likely the same thought penetrating the thousands of demonic minds floating in the night sky above.
Where is Thorn?
7
DING. Her purse slung over her shoulder, the red braille book under her arm, Crystal stepped out onto the ground floor and began her walk toward the lobby. The taps of her shoes on the polished marble floor bounced off the walls and through the expansive condo’s curving hallways, stressing to her just how small and alone she was. She hadn’t felt this abandoned since she was nine, living with her estranged aunt while her mom fought countless legal battles to get her back. Later, as she’d worked her way from minimum wage job to minimum wage job, Crystal had toughened up, grown independent and streetwise. But she’d never belonged anywhere until Cole offered to let her move in with him.
Just months ago, this condo had been bright and welcoming: seagulls yammering outside, sand between her toes, salt air from the ocean filling her every breath. It had felt like home. Now, that same salt air reminded her that this glamorous high-rise was just another part of the grimier Miami she knew so well, full of drug dealers, shady meetings in back alleys, fear of falling through society’s cracks, crippled dreams.
The condo’s doors and windows were shut, and the beach bum music they usually played in the halls had been turned off for the night. If not for the harsh echoes of Crystal’s footsteps, these halls would be completely silent.
He’s reconsidering, though. He might decide to keep me, and our baby.
But Cole’s demand had cast her entire relationship with him into doubt in her mind. It’s not all my fault, she realized for the first time.
Whenever Cole’s mood was bad, Crystal wondered what she’d done to upset him. Whenever he was especially quiet, she worried he might have discovered what Brandon was doing to her. Even when Brandon violated her, she’d felt on some level that she’d caused it to happen. She used to think it happened because she’d been a bad girlfriend to Cole, or because she didn’t work hard enough to go to school and get a better job, or because she disappointed her mother, whom she loved dearly in spite of their disagreements. Crystal had been obsessed with her own shortcomings and her penance for those shortcomings, as if she deserved nothing good in life just because she’d been born as a piss-poor nobody. She’d shrugged away Heather’s concerns earlier, but now, when she visualized herself from Heather’s perspective, she saw that her own insecurities were all bullshit. Why had she blamed herself when it was Cole who was disregarding Brandon’s depravity? Even if Cole didn’t know the full extent of it, he knew enough, and he could have gotten rid of Brandon any time he wanted. But Cole was so compliant, so indifferent. She’d always assumed that Brandon had made him that way, but now she wondered if Cole had always been like that.
What did Cole want her for, anyway? Now that she thought about it
, all they ever did together was go out to clubs, go out to eat, go out to social functions, nap, and have sex, with Brandon usually present for all but the last two. Crystal wanted a soulmate, but all Cole seemed to want was someone to pass time with. Was she just arm candy to him?
But I am the one who chose to stay with him, Crystal tried to tell herself. To stay in the same living space as Brandon. But her choice had been between this and abject poverty. She’d choose the poverty if she could go back and decide again, but she was stuck in the here and now, where the men in her life had made her fragile, and had taken advantage of that fragility. All that will change now. Now I’ll—
Her thoughts scattered when she realized that someone else was with her in the hallway. She thought she’d heard a door open a minute ago, and had assumed it was another resident. Now she realized that whoever it was, they were trying to be stealthy. The footsteps were softer than Crystal’s. Their volume didn’t fade over time, though; they were following her. As she turned a corner, she casually peered into a reflective picture frame to see who was behind her.
Brandon! And he had something in his hands, hidden behind his back.
Crystal quickened her pace, leading Brandon past the lounge where they’d filmed earlier tonight. It’s nothing, she told herself. He’s just coming to check if the guard found out anything about those markings. Brandon would never attack her here, in the open, in public.
But it wasn’t so public—the halls were empty, the condo sleeping, and no one lived on the ground floor anyway. They have security cameras! Or maybe Brandon knew how to turn them off?
Would the security guard be able to hear if she called for help? She could run, but then Brandon would know she was on to him and he’d chase her. I’m so stupid! How could I let myself fall into this situation?
He was getting closer. Way too close! He was only feet behind her, and now she knew he was here for her. Okay, then. Okay…
