“Lemme alone, motherfucker,” the junkie said. He shied away more, drawing his arms tight across his chest. “You just lemme alone. I ain’t done you nothin’, man. Nothin’.”
“All right, all right,” Tobias said. The reaction was not unexpected; junkie or not, it was a well-established fact that Tobias was not a popular person. Nor did he want to deal with another outburst from a crazy person, albeit one who had chosen to drive themselves mad. “It’s fine. I’ll leave you be.”
“I didn’t do nothin’,” the junkie said again. He shifted his eyes from side to side, looking a lot like a Felix the Cat wall clock. “Nothin’,” he spat again before losing his nerve entirely and running away, quick as a bunny, from Tobias.
“Well, that was interesting,” Tobias said as he went about his business of shopping—and moved farther away from the lingering stench of unwashed meth head. They really were a stinky lot, he decided; it made them even more like zombies, actually, when he thought about it.
Amused, Tobias went to get cereal, hoping he did not bump into Friend Meth Head again along the way.
He finished up his shopping and made use of the self-check registers, much to the apparent relief of the cute little cashier whose name tag introduced her as, Hi! I’m Stacey! She didn’t take her eyes off him the entire time he was ringing up his purchases though.
“Goodnight, Stacey,” Tobias said when he was done.
She made a soft sound that might have been a murmur of acknowledgement or a sigh of relief. Tobias chose to pretend it was the former as he pushed his cart out of the store and back into the balmy summer night. As he rounded the corner his throat began to itch. Tobias froze halfway to his car and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat—the moving lump. He took a strangled breath and when he exhaled, he began to cough; hard, racking coughs that left him bent over double. He moaned low in the back of his throat with horror as it finally popped loose and a perfect black butterfly flew out of his gaping mouth.
18
Jeremy was in high spirits after another productive therapy session. He knew that Dr. Helen did not think it was productive at all, but that was her problem, not Jeremy’s. He’d spent the session telling her about how he was making progress with trying to contact Thanatos. He told her he was getting very close to making contact again on his terms for the first time in a long time. Most importantly, he told her that this time, Thanatos would not be late; this time Thanatos would not show up in the final gasping moments of Jeremy’s life. They would be together for real this time.
Dr. Helen had frowned at him, looking over the tops of her wire-rimmed spectacles as he talked. Jeremy saw that she did not consider the turnaround of recent events to be a good sign. To the mind of Dr. Helen and those like her, Jeremy was sick; he was delusional. For him to be speaking of progress in trying to reach Thanatos, it was multiple steps backward and down the long, slippery slope toward a full-on break with reality. There was no way to convince or dissuade Dr. Helen away from those notions, so he didn’t bother to try.
He’d finished his session with a promise to call her, any time of day or night, if he felt the need to talk. “I want you to know I am here for you, Jeremy. No judgment, no conditions attached. No matter what.” It was something about Dr. Helen that Jeremy truly appreciated: she honestly cared about her patients; they weren’t just a way to pay her mortgage or fund her gambling addiction. Jeremy’s second psychiatrist had had a real problem with backroom poker games. And hookers, he reminded himself, mustn’t forget all the hookers. It had been something of a scandal when it all came out.
Jeremy had rushed home and kissed Mooncricket silly then asked if he wanted a drink. Like most people with any kind of habit, Mooncricket had several smaller habits to go with his King-Kong one. Drinking was one of those and Jeremy had sipped a drink while Mooncricket cheerfully swigged straight from the bottle. By nine o’clock, Mooncricket was well soused and in the mood to go visit his friends. Because he was in a good mood and because he needed some time alone to work on a commission piece he’d accepted day before, Jeremy agreed to drop him off at Greene’s Funeral Home to go play with his little buddies.
By half past midnight, however, Jeremy was starting to wonder if he should have given his idiot boyfriend the “don’t take rides from strangers” talk. He had bought Mooncricket a cheap burner phone the second week he was with him and usually he answered or texted back. That night the phone went straight to voicemail. In all honesty, Jeremy didn’t think anything nefarious had befallen Mooncricket; he’d probably just forgotten to charge the phone was all. Mooncricket’s short-term memory was not exactly good. There were probably dementia patients that could keep up with moment-to-moment events better than Mooncricket could some days.
Drugs were bad, okay?
Instead of giving in to the urge to drive around town looking for Mooncricket, Jeremy went to the grocery store. He needed more vodka and well, food. He’d been so wrapped up in his obsessions—Thanatos and art and murder—that he’d let grocery shopping fall by the wayside in the past couple of weeks. If Mooncricket wasn’t home by two in the morning then Jeremy would drive around looking for him. And maybe slap the shit out of him when he found him because Jeremy didn’t like being worried about other people. It was annoying.
He walked across the nearly empty parking lot of Bateman Grocery, listening to the harsh, racking cough of someone on the other side of the building as he watched all the cats. Late at night stray cats haunted the parking lot like small phantoms, deep in the midst of a feeding frenzy that took place all over town. There were a lot of feral cats in Sparrow Falls, there always had been as far back as Jeremy could remember. Each night after the town pretty much shut down, the cats crept out from whatever crevices and nooks they hid and fucked in during regular business hours to begin their nightly raid of dumpsters.
There was a fast food place that shared the parking lot with Bateman Grocery and Stayin’ Alive, the disco-themed diner, was only a block and a half away. Not to mention all the riches the dumpsters of Bateman’s itself held for the feral cat population. They might have been wilder than bessie bugs, but they were well-fed and fat; some of them even verged on being obese. Like the orange striped tabby with white paws that bore more than a passing resemblance to a furry basketball. It waddled quickly away from Jeremy, keeping itself low to the ground as though it genuinely believed Jeremy would not notice it if it did that.
Just in front of him was a fluffy, lily-white cat that did not so much as flinch from the sound of Jeremy’s approaching footsteps. It was crouched over something near the front of the grocery store and as Jeremy drew ever-nearer, it still gave no notice. Jeremy knew the cat was likely deaf and when it did at last turn to look at him—if it didn’t simply run away—its eyes would no doubt be blue as chips of ice.
He had been such a cat once, though pampered and very much loved. His name had been Cotton and he’d had eyes the color of the sky, but had not even been able to hear it thunder, though he’d been able to feel the vibrations of it. Cotton—Jeremy—had feared thunderstorms and though he loved them now in this human body, he still remembered Cotton’s fear.
The brutal irony of it all, Jeremy thought, was that had been one of the lives where Thanatos had actually made it on time. Nothing had come of it then, of course, that would have been disgusting not to mention physically impossible. Cotton had so loved the nights Thanatos would arrive to hold him in his lap though and let him needle his thighs with prickling claws as he purred and kneaded that stone-white flesh happily. The cat had not fully understood what or who Thanatos was, only that he had been Cotton’s favorite person in all of the world. He had even known that Thanatos wasn’t really a person, no matter how much he looked like one. What he’d loved most was that Thanatos’s voice was the one thing he could hear and oh, how Thanatos had talked to him. He’d told Cotton what a pretty kitty he was and that, by god, had stroked his feline ego to new heights.
Jeremy bumped the w
hite cat with the toe of his boot to make it scoot along. It turned around to glare at him and hissed once, bloody whiskers wrinkling back to show its needle-sharp teeth. It was scared, not angry; Jeremy understood that quite well. The world was full of nasty little surprises at every turn when you couldn’t hear a sound. They locked eyes for a moment, then the white cat snatched up the tiny wren it had been eating and fled back into the shadows near the rear of the grocery store.
With a smile, he watched the cat go and with its disappearance, carefully untangled himself from the mingled memories of Cotton, fond though they were. It was still weird to Jeremy that he could purr, however. It had come as a rather shocking surprise when he was a toddler, the first sign that something was more than a bit off with him. At such a young age, he had not known that, but he had hazy recollections of his mother’s abrupt, startled laughter and the sound of her voice calling for his father to come listen to what Jeremy was doing.
He seemed to recall his father answering with a wary question: “Is it poop-related?” Jeremy could never be sure if that was a real memory or not though. Mooncricket loved that he could purr and called it “awesomely freaky”. Something about that made Jeremy feel warm inside and that, in turn, was something he found rather upsetting.
Jeremy took a cart; he had a list and a mission: get groceries. Jeremy hated grocery shopping and did most of his shopping online at various retailers. For the privilege he often had to buy in bulk—fifteen packs of wintergreen gum instead of one—but he didn’t mind. The more he had stocked up meant the less he had to go get more of whatever. He was so low on supplies currently though that going to the market was not a choice; it was a necessity. He could do some online shopping later, but right now he needed milk and bread, some cheese and he thought maybe a couple of big-ass steaks.
He walked by the one open register and the cashier smiled at him, batting her lashes at him as he went past. Jeremy smiled back and thought she might be interesting if he played his cards right. He believed in not shitting where he ate, but sometimes he made exceptions. The wraiths would protect him and if he timed it right, no one would think a thing of her disappearance having anything to do with some random late-night customer a week or so prior.
The adventure began in the produce section near the front of the store. He went on to the liquor aisle conveniently located near the refrigerated juice section—mixers and booze, all a few short steps away from each other—and grabbed some vodka then went past the juice to the beer cooler and got a case of Busch Light. Jeremy liked cheap beer and expensive liquor. He bypassed sodas, chips and snacks and went straight for the soup aisle when his business in produce and liquor was accomplished. He turned onto the aisle then just stopped and stared.
On the floor, half-curled into the fetal position was one very dead meth head. His eyes were wide and unseeing, there was a small puddle of vomit around his head like a messy halo and a bigger puddle of piss around his waist and thighs. There was a whitish crust of foam drying in the corners of his mouth. It looked like an overdose from what Jeremy could tell. The restrooms were close to where Jeremy stood and it was easy enough to put together the puzzle that led to where the junkie currently lay going stiff and cold:
Junkie wanders into grocery store for a perusal of all the food he will not eat. As he looks around, the good old urge to fix comes upon him. Since a junkie is seldom ever away from at least a little bit of a supply, unless outside forces intervene and deprive them of it, the meth head goes into the bathroom to tap out a bump or cook up a shot. He’s probably already high and just wants a fix to quell the boredom all the labels on cans are causing to well up inside of him. The bad music sounds like the hum of angry insects and he can feel it in the ruins of his teeth.
A little dab’ll do ya, the saying goes, but this junkie is an old hand and thinks he can get good and spun, no sweat. But maybe this cook is stronger than some batches, maybe it’s cut with something that’s not as nice as baby laxatives or the dregs from batteries. He says to hell with it and snorts a couple of monster lines. Then he’s feeling super awesome good again.
He bursts out of the restroom (ta-da!), high, but not on life and resumes his stroll only now it’s at a frenetic pace. Then, surprise, something has gone wrong and he feels bad all over. Tina—meth—has betrayed him, that pockmarked bitch; that rotten cunt whore. Junkie wheezes and jerks. Junkie falls to his knees and has a seizure. Junkie gurgles and twitches, pukes and pisses and soon, the junkie is no more for this mortal coil. No one is in the store to watch the security camera monitors this time of night—another bonus of going shopping so late—and this little show goes unnoticed.
It was a very sad story and it made Jeremy laugh as he wheeled his cart around the junkie’s body and softly said, “Dead guy, aisle five.”
By the time he made it to aisle six, he was laughing so hard there were tears rolling down his cheeks. He wondered if he could quilt Dead Guy, Aisle Five. Probably not, but he could damn well paint or draw it and he thought he might after he got home.
With his mood buoyed and inspiration tingling in the tips of his fingers, Jeremy finished shopping. In the checkout line, he made small talk with Stacey. He got her to laugh and as she did, she tucked her hair behind her ear and met his eyes. He paid in cash and told her his name was John Ramirez then asked for her phone number. She wrote it down on the back of his receipt with a flirty little laugh and a smile that showed a slightly crooked eye tooth.
“You have a great night, Stacey,” Jeremy, aka John Ramirez, said to her on his way out the door.
“Night, Johnny,” she called.
Already using the familiar of the name John meant she was already interested. Already a little wet with intrigue. Jeremy could have her and it wouldn’t be hard to do. It was the one gift his good looks had given him: it made his work so much easier. No one ever thought attractive people could be bad, it was the curse of fairy tales where beauty automatically equaled goodness, no matter what. Humanity had bought into the bullshit and that belief had followed them right out of the dark ages of folktales and onto the silver screen or small screen or top ten pop charts. No one would ever look at a gorgeous actor, model or musician; the modern day equivalent to the kindly princess or the dashing prince and think: That guy probably has bodies buried in his back yard. There was at least one famous actor-slash-musician who Jeremy really thought might, but Jeremy didn’t judge. Everyone was allowed a few bodies in their back yard or basement, in his opinion.
Francis Bacon said it best when he said, There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.
Jeremy was, without a doubt, strange in his proportions.
He unloaded his groceries into the trunk of his car. Then he got in, cranked up and drove away only to brake at the top of the exit ramp and frown. The deaf white cat lay on the shoulder near the entry lane of the ramp, white fur ruffling in the breeze, body twisted at an unnatural angle. Head a cracked and bloody egg.
“Fuck,” Jeremy said as he accelerated away. Cotton had met a similar fate, hit by a school bus one morning after he darted out the front door when his human went to collect the paper. There had been an instant of incredible pain then nothing for a while. Then he was conscious and aware again and Thanatos was taking him away, back to the river of souls to start over again. They hadn’t even been able to talk that time because he was still stuck in a cat body.
He put the deaf feral cat and Cotton both out of his mind after a little while. He smoked half a joint and drank a beer then made a sandwich. The tingle of inspiration came back when he was halfway through his sandwich and he left it abandoned on the counter in favor of going into his studio to select a canvas. He chose a smaller one; “Dead Guy, Aisle Five” didn’t need to be a huge piece. It needed a small canvas for a small life. He thought he might tear the canvas in places when he was done to better represent his idea. It was all a big, painted metaphor. It didn’t matter to Jeremy how people perceived his work, he never ex
plained it and preferred to let them infer what they would from his pieces.
Once he got involved in his preliminary sketches on the canvas, time ceased to exist for Jeremy. He didn’t look up or think much beyond what he was creating until some time later when someone touched his arm. He jerked and twisted away, nearly throwing himself down when he rose from his stool and whirled to face the intruder.
“Whoa,” Mooncricket said, backing away with his hands up. He stumbled, started to grin then squinted at Jeremy and seemed to decide that was a bad idea. “I didn’t, like, mean to bug you out, dude.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jeremy asked as his heart thudded in his ears. His unpleasant shock was already fading away and he remembered he was pissed at Mooncricket. “And where the fuck have you been? Don’t you know how to answer a phone, dipshit?”
“Uh… So, like, my phone died a bad death,” Mooncricket said. He took it out of his pocket and showed it to Jeremy. The cheap little flip phone was in two pieces where it had split along the seam holding the front and back of the phone together. The green of the circuit board poked out to one side like a lolling tongue. “I dropped it and then like, I stepped on it. It was a total accident and like…” He trailed off and stuffed his hands in his pockets, giving Jeremy a wall-eyed look as he half turned his head away from him, already starting to tense up and blink rapidly in preparation for what he knew was coming. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. I woulda called you, but I couldn’t remember your number ‘cause it was in my phone, so I didn’t have to dial it and then I got to drinking and shit with Dawn Marie and— Oh, shit. Dude.”
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 25
