A Gray Life: a novel

by Harvey, Red

  “He’s working late.” Juniper told the empty kitchen.

  Anyhow, it was on the early side. Nine o’clock wasn’t late. Traffic had probably gotten the best of him. She tried not to think about how easily people were disappearing. To better distract her mind, she switched on the kitchen television.

  It was set to the international news station. A blond anchorman was speaking, and none of what she was saying was good news.

  “The worldwide crime epidemic has finally reached Europe. Citizens have fallen victim to senseless violence, some of these acts being committed by the police authorities. Our cameras managed to capture some of the brutality in Spain. We warn you, the images you are about to see are extremely disturbing.”

  Juniper turned the television off. She had seen plenty of disturbing images in her lifetime. She didn’t need to see anymore. A glance at the clock told her it was 9:18. Damn it, where was he? He could have at least called.

  Christopher’s call became obsolete when Juniper heard his key in the door five hours later. The house was an empty tomb. Every step he took was slow and heavy. Christopher lumbered downstairs, and then upstairs. She could hear him walking around from room to room. He was looking for her.

  Well, let him keep looking. Juniper had waited up for him. Christopher was alive, therefore he had chosen not to call. He had worried her unnecessarily for hours. Juniper wondered where he could have been. Most of his work was done from home. Occasionally, he was called in to do technical work at the office, but Juniper knew the office that contracted him closed before 9 p.m.

  “June!” Christopher yelled.

  Next to her room, the other guest bedroom door slammed shut. He would open her door next. Juniper didn’t know why the thought scared her. No, she did know why. Through the walls, she felt an anger unlike any she had felt before. Christopher’s body was alight with it, flushed with a darkness tinged with white at the edges. Even before he came to her door, she saw him, a silhouette outlined in white.

  Juniper was lying in the bed. Part of her wanted to draw the covers up over her head and disappear. Another part of her wanted the confrontation, and had been waiting for it since their wedding day.

  He threw her door open. Shadows from the hallway hid Christopher’s expression, but she could see his eyes. They were yellow.

  “What is wrong with you? Why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not angry.” Christopher moved from the doorway into the room. The light from his eyes and body faded. “I’m horny.”

  “Hmm, you’re drunk and I’m tired. So that’s not happening.”

  He came to the bed to sit down beside her anyway. When he spoke, his hot breath blew into her face. Juniper equated it with rotting cherries.

  “Yes, I’m drunk. Two more of my colleagues have disappeared. A couple of the guys and I needed to have some drinks, talk things over.”

  “You’ve needed to do that a lot.” Juniper remarked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Drink.”

  Christopher’s hand tweaked Juniper’s nipple through her nightgown. She slapped his hand away. His head came up and she saw his yellow eyes again.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Nothing. What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you fuck me?”

  Fuck me. He’d never asked her like that. She didn’t like it.

  “Because I don’t want to right now.”

  “How many?”

  Juniper sighed. “How many what?”

  “How many guys have you fucked?”

  If he had punched her then, Juniper would have been less shocked.

  I knew it, a voice whispered. Shouldn’t have trusted him. He just wants to hurt you like the rest of them. Juniper swallowed her shock and her pain, allowing her to answer Christopher’s question without tears.

  “You could have asked me that before, and not so crudely.”

  Christopher stood up and turned away from her. “Right, because I offended your slutty morality.”

  Another punch would have been more welcome. “If you feel this way, why the hell did you marry me?”

  Inside, the darkness was spreading inside of Christopher like a cancer. Juniper could see it taking root in his heart.

  “Did you let yourself feel what they were feeling while they fucked you?”

  Of course he knew about her ability. He had known for years, but he hadn’t asked. Though, Christopher might have guessed that she could and would use her power in such a way. Yes, she had put herself inside the feelings of another man’s pleasure. Juniper had done it because it was the alternative to feeling her own feelings: self-disgust, hate, pity. Could she ever admit her secret to Christopher? In his state, he wouldn’t understand. He would use it as an excuse to call her more names.

  “Get out before you say more hurtful things you can’t take back.”

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  Mid-stride, Christopher stopped next to the dresser. On top of it, he left something that resembled folded paper.

  “Maybe this’ll change your mind about fucking me.”

  When he walked away and out of the door, Juniper saw what he had left for her. A stack of money.

  Bastard.

  The odd thing about their conversation was Juniper hadn’t been talking with Christopher at all. A stranger had been in the room with her. His feelings, his mannerisms, his words, his eyes had all been foreign to her.

  In the master bedroom, she heard things falling over. Drunken idiot. She wondered how much longer she could stay.

  Turned out, three more weeks was her max; Christopher apologized for his words and behavior the morning after the first time. Two days later, he came home black-out drunk. Juniper let it happen five more times before leaving a few notes of her own on Christopher’s dresser. Except her notes were not greenbacks.

  He was lucky she left him anything at all, because she planned never to come back.

  It would be another two months before they saw each other again.

  ****

  20

  Still October 8th

  As Louise swung the glass-paneled door open, we held our breath expecting alarms to go off. We knew it was impossible (no electricity), but it was our first break-in. No alarms sounded when we inched our way into the kitchen, and no people came running out of the dark, demanding to know what exactly we were doing in their home. However, it was so dark inside the house that if people had been waiting around the corner to brain us, we would have never seen them coming.

  “Find a flashlight.” Louise whispered.

  “Okay.” I whispered back.

  Maybe it seems dumb for us to whisper in a potentially empty house, but it felt right at the time. Carefully, we opened drawers and cabinets in search of lights, candles, anything.

  “Gotcha!” Louise squealed, forgetting to be quiet. She held up two battery-operated lanterns.

  Armed with light, we took a tour of our new home. I’ll tell you what, it was the slowest, most gut-wrenching tour I’ve ever taken. There we were, stumbling through dark corridors, an underfed boy and woman. No one to protect us. We had to protect ourselves. The prospect was enough to make me shit concrete (very bad, I know).

  We got through the entire house intact, physically and mentally, but it took a dang long time. Part of what took so long was the size of the place. I’d never been in a house with seven bathrooms.

  Who needs all that many bathrooms, especially when there’s only six bedrooms, and three of them are guestrooms. The other rooms consisted of a nursery, a room that would be every little girl’s dream of a pink princess paradise, and a master suite. All of them had an untouched look and feel, leading Louise and I to believe the house was some rich person’s vacation home.

  Our trek through the house left us tired. We ended it by returning to the kitchen. I hadn’t noticed at first, but there was light in the kitchen, the red light spillin’ from the moon, but still light. It was coming from a skylight. A skylight in a kit
chen was another luxury I would never understand the need for. I wondered how much it had cost to have it installed, back when things had cost something.

  Since we knew the house was empty (and sort of secure), we moved onto our next impulse: our growling stomachs. Being in an actual kitchen made me hungry, and Louise’s eyes were telling me she was hungry too.

  I didn’t hold out much hope a vacation home would be well stocked, but I’m glad I was wrong. The fridge yielded only catsup and mustard, but the pantry…oh, the pantry.

  The owners must have expected a nuclear holocaust for all the canned and boxed goods they stockpiled. It was like finding a treasure trove within a treasure trove. Louise and I searched the shelves with disbelief. If our lanterns weren’t lyin’ to us, then we had just become food millionaires.

  Cookies, crackers, candy bars, soups, fruits and veggies (canned, dur), Vienna sausages, ravioli, the list went on. We had a junk-food feast all through the night. It was the best meal I’d had in nearly a year, even if I wanted to throw it up after. My stomach wasn’t used to taking so much in, and it protested strongly when I reached for my sixth chocolate chip cookie.

  Louise was filling her face with canned deliciousness, but she looked as green as I felt.

  “We’d better quit before we empty out the pantry in one night.” She said.

  It was partly a joke, but I believed we could’ve done it. The outcome would’ve been pointless and painful, but cause of death? Exploding stomach. Didn’t sound like a bad death after all the different ones I’d seen.

  Louise suggested we sleep in the living room together for safety. I thought it was a capital idea. After all, we’d been sleeping in the same vicinity for over five months. A raid of the front closet gave us two hockey sticks, but no guns. Throw pillows and blankets on the sofas made for a luxurious sleep. Once upon a time, my dad used to complain about being sent to the couch, but I loved it. Compared to a bedroll on a cement floor, I slept like a king. In theory, anyway. I was actually too scared to close my eyes. Even with a full belly and Louise sitting up all night with a hockey stick, I couldn’t feel safe enough to close my eyes.

  Didn’t help that we’d left the hall closet door open, and I could see the open doorway leading to oblivion from the sofa.

  The dark abyss of an open closet door meant the possibility of monsters with fangs, viscous fluid dripping from them. With what we had seen Outside, it was plausible a demon might lurk in between the coats inside the closet. As each second passed, I was more inclined to believe a monster would leap from the shadows to devour us. Every second that did not happen, I was more convinced that it was going to. There was even one mad second when I prayed for it to happen, simply for the agony of the unknown to be over. It was paranoia that put me to sleep.

  Something happened during the next few hours, and I can’t be sure of the details. I heard movement, felt Louise get off of the couch, and then I heard more noise. The back door opened. Louise was screaming at an intruder. She brought down the hockey stick on them, and down again.

  “Stop!” A familiar voice cried. “It’s me.”

  When I heard that, I rolled off of the couch and ran to the back door. There, sprawled on the kitchen floor with two duffel bags beside him, was Michael.

  * * * *

  Still (yes, still) October 8th

  Over a breakfast of dry cereal and SPAM, Michael told us how he came to escape.

  “First of all, I didn’t think it’d take me so long to get to you two.” Again, none of us have watches, but an approximate four or five hours had passed until Michael had found us. “After you two escaped, Brian went for the knife. He got it before I could, but I tackled him. I held him down hard for a few minutes before realizing, he wasn’t moving. When I flipped him over, I saw the knife had been shoved into his face at a diagonal angle, starting from under his jaw and poking out from the opposite side.” I wished he hadn’t told us as much as he did. “His face…” Michael grimaced, “He may have deserved to die, but I can’t get the way he looked out of my head. I’ve never killed anyone before.”

  “You had to do it. It’s okay, Michael.” From her tone, I imagined Louise was forgiving him for more than was necessary at the moment.

  He wiped his eyes and continued. “I wanted to run after you two…but my stomach hurt like hell.” Louise and I studied the bloody hole in his t-shirt. “And I wanted to gather all the supplies I could. I made myself rest, and an hour later, I emptied out His house of all the useful items. There wasn’t much food, but there were other things like matches, tools, and guns.” His foot kicked the two duffle bags on the floor. “Then I get here and Louise almost kills me.”

  “I thought you were a creature, or Him!” Her face was streaked with red splotches.

  “I know. I’m glad to know you can defend yourself if need be.” His tone wasn’t demeaning, but the words made Louise balk.

  “If need be? After the world ends, there’s no room for a damsel in distress, shithead.”

  They both smiled and looked at each other in a way my parents had plenty of times before. They didn’t kiss (they hadn’t made up that far), but I could tell they wanted to. Yuck.

  “What about your wound? Are you okay?”

  Michael lifted his shirt. A big patch of gauze was covering a hole in his gullet. “I cleaned it best I could. Plus, I don’t think he hit anything major.”

  Louise scoffed. “How do you know that?”

  “Cause I’m still alive.”

  * * * *

  There was a knock at the door. Who knew Juniper was at the hotel? No one. Has to be the maid, she thought.

  No one announced themselves as “housekeeper” or “room service”. Just silence while Juniper decided whether or not to open her door. Then it occurred to her that the boy from the street could have followed her the few blocks down to the hotel. She didn’t feel the perverse excitement that belonged to the boy. What she was sensing was sadness and …regret. Couldn’t have been the molester from before.

  Juniper guessed who it was before he spoke through the door.

  “It’s Christopher.”

  Christopher. Her estranged husband.

  The man she had given up her life for to start a new one. Not that Juniper’s old life had been overly fabulous, but it had been hers. Because of his inability to cope with their dying world, she'd had to start over a third time. Good thing prostitutes were in high demand no matter the social condition of things.

  Condition of things.

  The condition of things had been Juniper’s most motivating factor when leaving Christopher.

  You’re too drunk right now, so maybe I’ll give this note to you later.

  When you drink like this, it worries me. It makes me wonder what’s so lacking in your life that you have to drown it out with alcohol. In truth, it breaks my heart.

  If this goes on, I don’t know how much longer I can be on this road with you.

  This is part of the reason I tried to let you go before.

  I knew in my gut that you would do this. I knew you would hurt me. I just didn’t know how…This must be it.

  And still I love you. It makes me weak and a coward to confront you. I wonder if I’ll even give you this note. Most likely, I will just repress my unhappy state, hoping that you’ll change. But this is you, isn’t it?

  Juniper hadn’t given Christopher the note the first time he had come home drunk, or even the second time. In all other areas of her life, she wasn’t one to let things continue to happen. With Christopher, she didn’t know what she was doing. She let him keep on drinking because she was afraid to be without him. And she was also stupid because she believed he would change. Oh, he changed. He changed right into an asshole. His normally blue aura became a dingy yellow. All his feelings of love, kindness, and humor corrupted into grating waves of emotions Juniper hardly recognized as human.

  She had tried reading animal emotions before. The experiment had failed every time. Every so often thou
gh, she would get a flash of happiness or anger from a cat or a dog. As a child, Juniper had felt something coming from the gorilla habitat at the zoo. A large gorilla once stared straight at her, and she stared right back. Its feelings were so clear that she could practically hear its thoughts: the gorilla was bored. Below the mellow feelings, there was anger. At the core of many of its strange emotions, Juniper knew there would be anger.

  On one end, she was fascinated with the encounter. On the other, she was frightened at the implications. While apes and humans were different, they weren’t too far apart genetically. Obviously, the difference wasn’t a huge if Juniper could sense their emotions so clearly. What separated humans from apes (in her estimation) was the anger. Humans had plenty of their own anger, but it wasn’t an underlying emotion in all of their actions. Being inside of the feelings of the creature made her see there was a veil, a very thin veil. Lately, Juniper sensed the veil was disappearing, for everyone. If she really thought about it, Christopher’s anger (and even the boy’s anger) closely resembled what she had felt that day in the gorilla habitat.

  “Can I come in?”

  He didn’t sound (or feel) drunk. It was probably safe to let him inside. Juniper opened the door.

  For a drunkard, Christopher looked remarkably sober. His hair was combed, his buttoned down shirt was clean, and his khaki pants were unsoiled by beer or piss. It was like looking at the man she had married, instead of the monster he had become.

  “How did you know I was staying here?”

  Juniper didn’t step aside to let him in, nor did Christopher try joining her in the room.

  “I saw you in the lobby when you checked in downstairs.”

  It didn’t make sense. Christopher had already been in the hotel, but it didn’t explain how he knew which door to knock on.

  “Yes, but how did you find my room?”

  Christopher found his shoes interesting. “I followed you.’

  “And how long have you been doing that?”