I looked around in desperation. Why weren’t we leaving? But the boardroom across from us was fully populated with earnest Integratroniers who carried on working, and I had no choice but to force my gaze back to Ava and the wall-sized screen.
Whoop, whoop, whoop! The siren was insistent. “Explain yourself!” Ava yelled over the noise, and I forced myself to stare at her screen. I hated spreadsheets. What was I even looking at? Rows of shit that made no sense. The screen swam in front of my eyes. Where was Jazza, for fuck’s sake? The siren was honking like a goose trapped under the wheel of a bus, and I wanted to scream. Whoop, whoop, whoop! Ava was talking, but I couldn’t hear anything she was saying anymore. Blah blah, those red lips moved, and she pointed at her screen. Whoop, whoop, whoop! I nodded but the noise was a suffocating blanket. No, worse, I was drowning, I was under an overturned boat, bobbing in black water with a foghorn blasting in my ears. Whoop, whoop, whoop! I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears, but of course I couldn’t.
“Make a note of this one,” Ava said. “The primary account. You’ll have to…” Whoop, whoop, whoop! And then the words were drowned out, and all I heard was “Where’s the money, Sharps? Did you spend it on your cupcake wife and heirs to the throne?”
I watched the boardroom empty behind us. Whoop, whoop, whoop! The emergency response guy opened the door and waved us out, shouting. And still, Ava shook her head.
“We must finish this,” she yelled. “I want to KNOW!” Whoop, whoop, whoop! Whoop, whoop, whoop! She forced me to sit there, with the howling smashing at me like a baseball bat. I was trapped. I closed my eyes.
There goes my life. I should have tried to get another job but there wasn’t anything out there, and then Celeste and Daddy had come along and I had thought I was safe.
Whoop, whoop, whoop! I kept my fists clenched tightly by my sides. I dug my nails into my cuticles as if the pain would distract me, and it did for a while, but Ava still wouldn’t shut up. The fire alarm was still honking whoop, whoop, whoop! and she kept on talking. I was trapped in that boardroom with Betty Boop and her dead black eyes, going on and on, and her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Whoop, whoop, whoop!
Eventually, the EmrGuard kicked us out of the boardroom, refusing to take no for an answer. “Leave,” he yelled. “Out, now!” I wanted to run out of the building and never come back. What was I going to do? I was soaking wet, rivers of cold sweat ran from under my armpits, down my rib cage and pooled in the waistband of my trousers. My heart, a flattened balloon, chose that moment to inflate in my chest like the inner tube of a bicycle tire full of toxic air. I had to get out of the building, run away from Ava, find Jazza, and figure this thing out.
A red light flashed in my peripheral vision. Jazza. Thank god. But there was no good news.
By the time u read this, I will be dead by my own hand. Sorry Sharps. I couldn’t face it. I let you down. I let me down. Call the SSOs. I don’t want to rot here or have my furballs eat my face. Sorry buddy. Best Wishes.
Best Wishes?
Whoop, whoop, whoop! I read the flash comm again, shaking while Ava herded me towards the stairwell. She pushed her way in front of me, carrying her laptop-sized portable comm and her purse, tottering on high heels.
I paused at the top of Stairwell 9, shoving my arms into my twisted jacket while Ava trotted ahead. Whoop, whoop, whoop! My thoughts were spinning. What the fuck had Jazza done? Ava and I were alone in the stairwell, the rest of the building had emptied, and there was no one else inside.
Ava was half a flight down when I saw my opportunity. It wasn’t so much a conscious thought as a fully fleshed-out realization. Lose your footing. Crash into her. Solve this problem. Get rid of her. I’d risk my neck by crashing into her, but it would be worth it. I had nothing left to lose. And if she didn’t die in the fall, I could tackle her and strangle her and hope that no one noticed. “I fell, in the rush,” I could say. “It was an accident.” And no one would know any different.
I rushed down towards her. She had her back to me. I figured that if I got her at the turn, at the very top of the stairs, she’d tumble the full length and achieve maximum damage. The stairwell in Sky The Tower was like any other, steep and narrow, with a railing on one side.
I had once heard it said that pushing a person down the stairs was as easy as opening a door, and it was. I hardly had to do anything, and there she was, tumbling down, down, down. The bicycle tire in my chest flew away as if it never existed. I grabbed the railing while I watched, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Bounce, bounce, bounce, there she was, nearly at the foot of the Stairwell 6. But a terrible thing happened. The door to Stairwell 6 opened and a woman stepped out into Ava’s path. Ava careened into her, like a luge sled going off track, and they both tumbled down the stairs, like spinning laundry, coming to an abrupt stop at the bottom of Stairwell 5.
I froze. I waited for them to move, but they didn’t.
And all this time, the siren was still wailing, but I was so overcome with horror that the sound was muffled, an underwater moan from far away. I sank to my haunches and watched and waited. The fire alarm pounded along with the message my heart was banging out, what did you do, what did you do?
Adwar. What was she doing in Sky The Tower? She was a low-level accountant from the Sheds who had no place in our hallowed grounds. I only knew who she was because she’d won the annual Christmas Shed Bonus Lottery and her face was plastered across our CPs, highlighting what good Christian folk we all were, helping the disenfranchised. We were told that she’d emigrated from Saint Genesius, formerly known as Ethiopia, to earn money and help her family and that she sent money home every month. Her name in English was Sophie, just like my little girl. I’d killed a good woman who’d never harmed anyone in her life. And Ava was dead. I stood there in the stairwell and realized that I had to do something. I had to take control.
I fumbled around in Ava’s jacket and found her portable comm. Jazza had told me her password. AvaQueen007! I deleted the texts she’d sent me as well as my replies to her. I grabbed her large portable comm and rushed down to Stairwell 4, hiding the comm deep in the clean wipes trashcan in the washroom. I took a moment to calculate. Fire drills usually took about an hour. Ava had kept me hostage for about fifteen minutes. If the fire drill had started at nine forty, I had twenty minutes.
I ran back up to Stairwell 5 and called #Emr, a shortcut for emergency calls. “We left the building in a rush,” I’d say. “Ava was running down the stairs in those killer heels and she tripped. And Adwar came out at that very moment. It was terrible.”
And no one would know about my role in the money scheme. Shit, I hadn’t known—it was all on Jazza. He’d admitted as much to me. I deleted my texts to him. There was a way out for me! I had Jazza’s admission of guilt, and Ava was dead. Relief filled my chest. I could do this!
What is your emergency?
Accident in the stairwell, two women unconscious, one fell down the stairs into the other.
Help is on the way.
I needed to weep. I needed to look like I cared, but I wasn’t an emotional guy at the best of times. I tried to force a few tears, but I stopped. No, it was better to play this the silent way, jaw clenched, stoic, shocked.
And that’s what I did.
Ava and Adwar were carted away. Ava was still alive but barely. Adwar had broken her fall. Adwar’s neck was broken, and her head hung sideways away from her body. I wanted to throw up.
“Go home,” Mr. Williamson’s boss said to me. It was the first time I’d met him. He was a tiny wizened gnome of a man with a dome of dandelion hair. He introduced himself as Nix and nothing more. “Take the afternoon. What a thing.” It was lunchtime by the time the scene had been cleaned up and the rest of the building let back in. “Come in tomorrow and we’ll talk. Get you in touch with EmoHealth and have them set you up with a compassio
n counsellor. I know Ava wasn’t easy to get along with but regardless, it’s a shock to us all.” He didn’t seem upset by what had happened and even seemed tacitly approving, although perhaps I was projecting.
But it wasn’t that easy to get away. The Safety Services Officers, the SSOs, wanted more than I was willing to give. Minnie had thought that Safety Services Officers sounded more positive than homicide detectives, but milder moniker or not, these two Pinkertons were intense. They wanted a detailed statement. I refused to give them more than the Coles notes version, seemingly incoherent with shock.
“We’ll come back tomorrow.” They finally agreed when Nix insisted. “Ten a.m. See you then.”
I nodded and grabbed my coat. I took the elevator to the fourth floor, retrieved Ava’s computer, and made a run for it.
A red light flashed, an incoming comm. What now? It was Celeste. The BlossomVents in the house had died. She and the kids couldn’t breathe. What, like five minutes of real air was killing them? Celeste had a lavender and rose blend gently pumped into the high-oxygen regulated air flow, which she sometimes switched to lilacs or lilies. She said she didn’t know who to call, so I had to come home and fix the air. And Baxie had tripped over Sophie’s toys and chipped a tooth against his lip, gashing it open, and there was blood everywhere. She was hysterical and could hardly talk. That she’d prioritized flower-scented air over Bax’s tooth made me want to throttle her.
“Well, so far my day’s been pretty rough too,” I said distantly. She didn’t listen to me, so I yelled, “Celeste! I’ve got my own shit to deal with. Ava fell down the stairs and nearly died. She took another woman with her. Jazza didn’t show up for work and I’m in deep shit. I’ve got to go and find Jazza. I need you to step up. We both know you can do it.”
This was not greeted favourably. More hysterical sobbing ensued. I would have called Mummy and Daddy, but they were in Real Life Florida, most likely teeing up on a gentle hilly mound surrounded by flawless greens.
So I had to do the hardest thing ever. I had to ask Mother for help. “Cee, I’ll call Mother.”
Silence. The sobbing stopped. “Must you? Why can’t you come home?” she wailed.
“Because,” I hissed, “as I explained, I have multiple quadruple emergency situations of my own. I’ll get ahold of Mother and call you back.”
I took a deep breath and flashed a comm. Mother picked up on the third alert. “What do you need, Sharps?”
“I’m in a crisis, Mother. I need you to go and take care of Celeste. Long story, I can’t get into it. Please, just help me. There’s no nanny. Celeste will most likely be drunk by the time you get there. Bax chipped a tooth, the BlossomVents are dead, and god knows what else is going on.”
There was silence. “Mother,” I said. “Please. It’s life and death, and I do mean that. I’m not being dramatic. Help me out and I’ll buy you a NeptuneSupremeBodyFountain. I know you’ve always wanted one instead of the chipped old bathtub.”
“Okay,” she said, quick as that. “Deal.”
I swiped the comm closed.
Thank you, Mother, thanks very much. What did I ever do to you? All I ever wanted was to be loved.
A wave of self pity washed over me, and tears filled my eyes. Finally, emotion.
“It’s not fair,” I said out loud, and a passerby looked at me oddly. “I just want things to be easier. I just want Mother to love me.”
I flashed Celeste.
Mother’s on her way. I’ll be home as soon as I can.
16. WHAT JAZZA DID
I MADE MY WAY TO JAZZA’S APARTMENT. I hadn’t been back since that visit when I found his underwear and his zoo of hairy creatures, and I shuddered to imagine the state it was in now. Jazza had given me a key for safekeeping in case he lost his or locked himself out, which he did at least a few times a year.
I glanced around the lobby and pressed the elevator to the seventh floor. The corridor was empty. It wasn’t even three in the afternoon and the day had already been an unspeakable nightmare. I had no idea what level of horror to expect inside Jazza’s apartment.
I put my key in the lock. Part of me wanted to run, not see whatever was inside. I could delete Jazza’s text, pretend I never saw it, and go home once I had let Mother sort things out. I could go and sit in a deluxe coffee shop and get myself a macchiato with extra cream—no, maybe not since I hated cream—but I could get something, a treat of some kind and wait this out. I thought about running away, but I had no money. The credit cards were maxed. I stood pondering my options and decided I had no choice. I had to see what Jazza had done. Curiosity more than compassion forced the key into the lock, and I opened the door.
“Jazza?” I called out. There was an ancient wailing howling sound and I froze, sure my heart would explode from terror. Was that Jazza? “Jazza?” I whispered. “Jazza?” The ungodly howl sounded again, and I was about to run when I realized I was being an idiot. It was just one of the hairy creatures, and it sidled around the door and rubbed against my leg. I realized it was a cat.
Sadie. Sexy Sadie, Jazza had told me about Sadie and her ear-splitting yowls, and now I had met the beast in person.
I went inside the apartment and closed the door behind me. Sadie kept rubbing against my legs, and then she gave another gut-wrenching scream.
The place was a HazMat zone of shit, kitty litter, kibble, and piss. The acrid stench was so powerful that my eyes watered and I clamped my hand over my nose. It was worse than I ever could have imagined. Containers covered every available surface, balancing on the arms of the sofas and chairs. The garbage was piled high, stacks of Jenga towers. How the animals didn’t knock the shit down, I had no idea.
Squirrels darted across the sofa, and there were several cats and—was that a weasel? Yes, it was a weasel. And a big mama raccoon with a bunch of babies peering out from under the coffee table with their Lone Ranger faces. Dear god. I stared, speechless, at a cage full of guinea pigs and hedgehogs, but where was Jazza?
The full-length curtains billowed, and I dug my hands into my winter coat and shivered. Why was I so cold? Because the door to the small balcony was wide open and Jazza’s ratty brown drapes were gusting back and forth.
I couldn’t face the balcony yet. I went to Jazza’s bedroom in the hopes he had passed out on the bed. Oh shit. Instead of a coverlet, a moving colony of rabbits twitched and fidgeted. I closed the door as quickly as I could and I pulled my sweater up to my nose and breathed through it. The faint scent of dryer sheets and fabric softener helped settle me. I plunged into his washroom next. Hedgehogs lay asleep in a towel inside the basin, and a chipmunk peered up at me from the bathtub, rummaging through a bag of sour cream and onion chips with tiny paws.
I backed out to the galley kitchen to gather my thoughts. What to do? I mindlessly opened the fridge. A single beer sat at eye level, all by its lonesome. Propped in front of it, was a letter with my name on it. Hi Sharps! Read me!
I reached in and grabbed the letter. The rest of the fridge was crowded with black lettuce, fuzzy grey carrots, rancid mustard jars, calcified butter, and mouldy condiments. There was only that one cleared shelf, with a beer and a letter.
I opened the letter. It was neatly typed and printed, but OMG, Comic Sans? I’d had figured Jazza for Palatino at least or perhaps Bebas. We had endless discussions about typography—it was another weird obsession of ours—including exactly what kinds of plastic built our world. But since when did he have a printer? And Comic Sans? Really? More proof that he’d lost his mind.
Sharps. How did I know you’d poke in the fridge? Same way I know everything else about you, buddy. I use that word loosely. I was YOUR friend, but what was I to you? Nothing but a sicko, a slave. You think I didn’t know what you thought? I knew. And I know you thought I was so desperate I’d take any level of friendship, and I did and I hated myself for it. And by now you’re wondering when I�
�m going to get to the point.
He was right, I was.
Even now, it’s all about you, you, you. I stole the money. Why? Because Ava asked me to. The day we were put in the same office and you left to taxi Celeste around, Ava told me her plan. She sent me encrypted messages, in case you’re wondering how Daddy and the Big Boys didn’t find out.
It worked to her advantage, them putting us together like that. She had us in the palm of her hand. Well, me anyway. She got a lot more out of it than if she’d just carried on dating me and again, I use the word loosely. Her plan, all along, was to fund a female army who will reclaim the world. I know the army’s real because my mother was a she-soldier.
Even though my mother abandoned me, she kept in touch until she was killed guinea-pigging an alternative energy-creation technology. It’s got something to do with the rage rooms that you love so much, but I don’t know exactly what. Ava wouldn’t tell me. I wanted to help Ava because she knew about my mother, but I did it more because I loved Ava and I thought that if I did what she wanted, she’d love me again.
Because I believed that she did love me once, but you ruined it, and despite everything I did for her, she never loved me again. She said mankind is fundamentally flawed. Not womankind, mankind. She said I’d broken her trust, and she was right, I had. And for what? For you. You, who only ever used me.
She set things up so you and Daddy would take the fall while she collected every dime. You’ll never trace it to her because she flowed it into a bank account in your name and then into an untraceable trust in Saint Drausnius.
But here’s the stinger. Guess who hacked the PeachDiamondDelux Program? Ava! It was the ace up her sleeve the whole time, but she waited until she stashed all the dough she wanted. I had no idea it was her, and she couldn’t wait to tell me. She was so proud of herself. She was proud of how she’d ruined me, never mind you and Williamson, The Not So Great.
The Rage Room Page 11
