Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “Okay, what the fuck – ”

  “Jenny,” I said firmly, catching her drugged eyes with my own. “Whatever it is you want from me. Anything you want. Anything you can think of. I don’t care. Just help me.”

  Jenny looked astonished, and then she burst into laughter, as always, at my expense.

  “You are too much, Preston. I can’t handle it. All right, all right, I’ll get you home. Fenrir still hasn’t come back anyway, so I got nothing going on. And,” she added, her eyes sparkling cunningly, “it seems like it might be fun to have you in my debt.”

  She was not gentle, slinging my arm roughly over her shoulders to manage my weight, but when you deal with the devil, you can't be hung up on niceties. I could barely keep my feet underneath me and Jenny groaned underneath my weight. I was frankly amazed she could manage it. Our progress toward the Estates was slow but steady, despite Jenny’s size, my clumsiness, and her incessant bitching. The rain was cold and relentless.

  “Shit,” Jenny muttered, plodding up the hill, toward Kadath. “Wish I’d taken whatever you took, Preston.”

  “You don’t. You really… don’t.”

  The hill had never seemed so steep, though my feet barely touched the ground. I started to wonder, through a haze of drugs5r6 and exhaustion, exactly how strong Jenny was. She had to half-drag me the last two blocks, but she stopped at the gate to the building, dropping me unceremoniously to the pavement.

  “You can start repaying your debt right now. You live at the Estates, right? A tenant in good standing?”

  “Yeah,” I gasped, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Well, then, invite me in,” Jenny smirked. “You can have guests, right?”

  “Jenny,” I said sincerely, “no one should be left out in this rain anyway. You don’t have to twist my arm. I want you to come inside.”

  Jenny appeared surprised, then laughed and threw her hands in the air.

  “Met a lot of weird people in my life, Preston, but you are right at the top of the list,” she said, heaving my arm over her shoulder and heading through the courtyard. “Let’s see the bitch try and throw me out now.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You’ll see.”

  We were fortunate enough not to encounter anyone on the way up to 2A. I had barely started the preplanned knock to let April know I was home when the door flung open. April’s face was streaked with tears, wild-eyed and utterly frantic.

  “Preston! I was so worried! Where have you… are you hurt? How did you get hurt? Who hurt you?”

  “Inside,” I said, stumbling in with Jenny sauntering after. “I’ll explain.”

  Jenny made it two steps inside the door before April stopped her by stepping, quite fearlessly, in her path.

  “Who are you?” April demanded. “Did you have anything to do with Preston getting hurt?”

  To my utter astonishment, Jenny smiled at April, the softest expression I had seen on her harsh face.

  “My name is Jenny. Preston got hurt on his own. I just helped him home.”

  April glanced at me and I nodded confirmation of Jenny’s story. April gave her a last appraisal before she ran to me, leaving Jenny to wander the apartment. She gave April the occasional bemused glance, taking in the barren surroundings and the elaborate mosaic of April’s charcoal drawings covering the walls.

  “Nice,” Jenny said thoughtfully, looking at April rather than the apartment. “I like it. Mind if I stay for a little while?”

  April beamed at me hopefully, clearly unaware of the fact that I was dying on my feet.

  “A sleepover?”

  Jenny cackled.

  “Exactly. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “I don’t,” April said, shaking her head while she slowly worked me out of my muddy, shredded jacket. “Is it okay, Preston?”

  “Sure,” I think I said. “Knock yourself out.”

  But I lost consciousness before I could finish the sentence, so I cannot swear to that.

  8. Anti-Life Equation

  The way her eyes close like curtains. The small, frightened noises she makes when she sleeps, in fear or loneliness. A lifetime is the record of a thousand tiny betrayals.

  I woke from a dream of a terrible formless thing writhing at the rotten core of the universe, to the maddening trilling of an alien pipe. My tongue was coated with the foulness of the monstrosity’s name, though I had already forgotten the words. I tried to sit, but there was weight on my chest, something preventing me. It took me a moment to realize that Jenny was pinning me down and cursing at me while April stitched my side closed and implored me to hold still. It really was like watching the whole thing on television. The overhead lamp cast strange reflections on all the blood, which I giddily recognized as my own. I watched my body twitch like a gutted fish with all the empathy of a gawker at a five-car-pileup. April spilled meaningless tears while Jenny watched with undisguised amusement. I felt no real sense of involvement whatsoever.

  “Hold still, Preston! Please hold still!”

  Like black snow, falling with the sound of pans clanging, metal on metal percussion. April pleaded, but where the snow touched my skin it charred and peeled away, smoldering like charcoal. The black snow seemed to collect on my side, so I tried to brush it away, but try as I might, I could not seem to reach it. I twisted and scrambled like a puppy pinned to the floor, but I accomplished nothing until I heaved my whole body in one titanic effort and managed to buck the weight from my chest. That brief moment of free movement was followed immediately by a jarring impact that slammed the back of my head into the table.

  Things went quiet all of a sudden. All I could hear was the voices. My head floated free of my body, aware of the terrible pain but not actually party to it. I wanted to remain that way forever.

  “Did you... kill him?”

  April sounded doubtful.

  “Naw. He's a strong one, though. Had to knock him for a loop. He’s a bitch to hold down.”

  The pain in my side resumed, but this time I knew what it was – April stitching back together, again. Whenever I went to pieces, she was there to put me back together. I fell helplessly deeper in her debt.

  “Hey, April. What is he to you? Is Preston your boyfriend or something?”

  A pause. I could imagine April frowning as she considered. She takes every question seriously.

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  Jenny kept prying as if she were fiddling with a lock, her voice expectant and conniving.

  “Well, what then? Your brother? You can’t tell me a guy who says your name repeatedly when he is passed out is just a friend. You should have seen it. Fucker was bleeding out on the street, and the only thing he cared about was getting back to you.”

  The pain in my side abruptly increased as the tension in April’s hands transferred to her work. Even in the haze of my delirium it was obvious to me that she did not want to talk about this. I would have changed the topic for her, but nothing worked when I tried to move or speak, so instead I lay there and listened to my head ring.

  “I’ve known Preston forever. It was different between us once. Then he left for a long time,” April said, the words coming haltingly and at obvious personal cost. “He came back for me five years later, but things had changed.”

  “That was some bullshit. Give me a straight answer, April. How do you feel about him?”

  Another pause. I wondered if April had forgotten about stitching up my side, or if she had finished.

  “I’ve liked Preston since I first met him,” April said, so quietly that I was not sure I heard her right. “But I like everyone. Preston is special to me, though; he is the first person I ever talked to.”

  Every word was a wound, every sentiment a barb lodged beneath my skin, working its way into my heart. If only I had. If only I hadn’t. If everything was different, if we were different people…

  “You aren’t much better at answering questions than he is. What is Preston to you, April? He resc
ues and protects you, but doesn’t try to sneak in your bed at night? Or don’t you want him to?”

  The next silence equated to misery on the part of April.

  “We aren’t… we don’t do those sorts of things.”

  “It’s always more complicated when you like them, isn’t it?”

  Silence measured in blood loss and disorientation.

  “Where did he get all these scars?”

  Jenny’s jagged nails tracing the scar tissue that crossed my chest. It should have tickled, but I didn’t even twitch.

  “He has one on his head from the Institute, but he keeps his hair long in front to cover it. The rest of them, I don’t know,” April said sadly, wiping down my side with a cold liquid that I assumed was alcohol. “Preston went away for five years. He’s never told me what he did during that time, or what happened to leave him this way.”

  “Some of these are bite marks from dogs,” Jenny said thoughtfully, and, I might add, quite accurately. “And I see cuts from a bunch of different blades. Too clean to be accidental – a car crash or something – the scars would be all jagged. On his shoulder… that’s gotta be an electrical burn. Shit, he’s got those all over the place.”

  “I know.”

  “What the fuck?” Jenny sounded amazed, maybe even impressed, but not sympathetic or horrified, which is more in line with what I am used to. “Somebody must have tortured him. Why, though? He doesn’t seem like the type to know anything special.”

  “I don’t know. Preston is good at keeping secrets.”

  It was Jenny’s turn to think things over.

  “What’s he say when you ask?”

  “I never have.”

  “Are you serious? Why?”

  There was another long pause. I knew from experience that April was hunting for the right words.

  “Because I don’t want him to lie. When I ask Preston a question, he makes something up. Preston lies to everyone, even me. I’m not sure that he can help himself. I think that if I am patient, and I don’t bother him about it, maybe one day he will talk to me about what happened willingly. Maybe he would even tell the truth.”

  It was humbling to discover that the person I cared about the most saw right through me. April had, of course, realized that I was full of shit. She just liked me enough not to call me on it.

  “And he never tries anything? He breaks you out of wherever, runs with you here, and he never even puts a hand on you? ‘Cause Preston seems a little...”

  April hurt and I felt the pain, transmitted through the thread and to my battered body, cursed to carry my treacherous mind.

  “Not since he came back.”

  “Huh. Do you think he wants to?”

  “He won’t even sleep in the same bed with me, even when there is only one bed in a hotel room. That is stupid after all this time. It isn’t like… anything would happen. I wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t do anything.”

  “You don’t say.”

  April abruptly resumed working with short, sharp movements. I would have cried out for her to be gentle, but the drug separated me from my body as if it were on the other side of a mirror.

  “Tonight, though,” April added, finishing her work on my side with one tremendous tug, “he will sleep in the bed for sure.”

  I could hear Jenny pacing about the room, apparently losing interest in the conversation. I wondered cynically if she was stealing my stuff, then remembered I had nothing worth taking.

  “I’m gonna shower,” Jenny said from somewhere across the room. “You mind? Normally I use the one at the station, but that’s cold water…”

  “Go ahead,” April encouraged. “There are towels and stuff.”

  I heard pipes sputter to life as April finished her triage.

  “Preston, you idiot,” April muttered. “What are you doing? What have you done? Why won’t you tell me?”

  Then she fell across my chest and started to cry. At least this time I had an excuse for my failure to comfort her, as my arms were frozen and inert.

  ***

  “There are scars here, too,” Jenny remarked playfully. “Does it still work?”

  “Hey, what the hell are you –”

  “Hush.” Jenny shifted from on top of me to lay down by my uninjured side, propping her chin on her elbows. “April’s asleep in the other room. I know you don’t want to wake her up. That kid is worried sick over you. We watched TV for hours and she cried the entire time. Unless you want me to go and get her. I’m cool with that…”

  “Shit,” I mumbled, my mouth painfully dry. “We gotta move. Jenny, I have to move us. If they found me, it can’t be long until they find this place. We need to go.”

  Jenny put one chipped black fingernail to my lips.

  “If they could, then they would have taken her already, you dumb fuck. I’m pretty sure that they don’t know shit. Anyway, I don’t think you can even walk.”

  I could hear April’s nocturnal struggles from the other room and knew that she was asleep. Nothing in the world sounds quite as terrible as that girl sleeping. No other sound could have comforted me more at that moment, because it meant they hadn’t found us yet, hadn’t taken her back.

  “Okay,” I settled back into the pillow, Jenny too close not to notice the way her hair smelled like April’s shampoo. “What are you doing here, Jenny?”

  “I can’t sleep.” Her eyes shone feverishly in the dark, edges of her teeth reflecting the feeble light from the cracks in the blinds. “I can’t ever sleep.”

  “What a surprise. Any chance of some water?”

  “Do I look like a nurse?”

  Jenny stalked to the bathroom wearing a threadbare t-shirt and incongruous polka-dot panties. She came back with a plastic cup half full of lukewarm tap water that I spat all over my bare chest in the process of drinking. This reminded me to look around for a shirt, because even I don’t like looking at that mess. However, I was still too weak to stand, and if my clothes had survived the impromptu surgery then they were nowhere in sight.

  “There’s a story I wanna hear,” Jenny said, running her finger along the surgically neat crosshatching that covers the center of my chest. “Where did you come from, Preston?”

  “No place you ever heard of,” I answered carefully.

  Jenny laughed and slid her hand down my stomach, dragging the ragged edges of her nails across my skin.

  “You’re starting to sound like a real native,” she said approvingly. “I will make it simple. If you lie to me, I will know, and then I will hurt you. If that doesn’t make you honest, then I will hurt April. Now talk. Do you like to kill people, Preston?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a hard question,” Jenny grumbled, taking hold of me in a way that made me gasp and my back go rigid. “I kill people because I need money to get high or buy breakfast. It isn’t really shit to me. Most people, though, they have feelings on the matter. Killing means a whole fucking lot to them, whether they cry themselves to sleep or get off on it. So tell. What kind of murderer are you?”

  “Not the same as you,” I managed, squirming against the bed, groaning when she started to move her hand.

  “That’s not an answer. Try again.”

  “I do whatever I have to do.”

  Her thighs clenched against my legs.

  “Fair enough. Now – tell me why.”

  Jenny bent over me, one hand on my chest, her hair tickling my upturned face.

  “What?”

  I tried to find words, but it had been such a long time, and Jenny was relentless. I closed my eyes by reflex, afraid of what she might see. My lips brushed against her cheek, but she pushed me roughly back to the mattress.

  “You are being difficult,” Jenny scolded, continuing to do very distracting things, her eyes never softening, never leaving my face. “What gives you the right to kill, Preston? Every murderer has a reason. How do you sleep at night?”

  There was no room left in my head for lies. I only wante
d her to touch me. I only wanted it to stay this way forever, suspended above a vast empty space, aware of the height but not quite falling.

  “April Ersten,” I panted. “Everything. For her.”

  Jenny stopped what she was doing and studied me skeptically.

  “Oh, come on. I thought we were getting somewhere. I don’t need a lame answer like that. The more I get to know you, the more I am sure. You are a liar, aren’t you, Preston? You lie and you kill and you don’t feel bad about any of it, not really. Am I right? I’m sure that you have your reasons, but I won’t buy altruism.”