Escape Artist

Six counts, the arrest report said, six counts of theft, fraud and eventually murder. Six counts of a sixty is all it should take me to tell you this story. 
      We drove up to that prison entirely sure of what we were going to find there, Jamie Saint. We'd be forewarned that Jamie was a sadistic psychopath, a keen manipulator and a tricky escape artist. No one warned us that Jamie was a woman. I placed her at about twenty-five, tall, brunette, beautiful. A life devoid of cosmetics suited her, as did the color orange. 
'Look after this one' the officer growled at us as he walked her to our transport vehicle. He placed her in the back of the van and shut the doors showily, I heard Jamie sigh. 
  We began the journey, six hours, mostly straight road and desert. We were scheduled to stop somewhere just outside Oregon for rest room use and nourishment. This was the time I was most weary of. It was always like that though, being a prisoner transport unit driver had it's dangers and they mostly manifested in this half hour pit stop. Aside from the possibility of being strangled through the seating divide that is, but that almost never happened. Me and Horner drove in relative silence, after months of doing this weekly we'd almost run out of things to say. He instead turned on the radio and let the gentle lament  of the Turnpike Troubadours seep out of the dodgy speakers. I thought I heard Saint tapping her foot along to the melancholy beat but I couldn't be sure. Her humming to James Taylor was undeniable however. I felt her presence to be a calming and likable one, despite what i'd been cautioned. By the time we reached Oregon I didn't have a single apprehensive bone in my body about the woman in the back of the van, the woman who'd sang along to Bonnie Tyler, the woman who'd stabbed a man to death. 
  When we drove into the service station Horner told me he was starving. This of course meant that he'd be getting food and I wouldn't, as one of us had to stay in the van with the detainee. Normally I would have argued, but I didn't mind being alone with Jamie Saint. The thought didn't terrify me at least, how it usually did. Horner exited the vehicle once we'd pulled in at the front of the customary IHOP, a chain I was repulsed by after one too many sticky toffee waffles. After he left the silence was crushing, I felt awkwardly charged - like the air before a tropical storm. 
'Hey freckles, can we get some air?' a raspy voice spoke from behind me. In my heightened state the sound breaking through the lull startled me. I assumed she meant me because of my paradoxically boyish freckles, and I was the only other person present. 
'Ugh.. yeah, sure.' I stuttered and began to clamber out of the seat. I took my gun with me. I opened up the double doors at the back of the van and she winced as they swung open. The day was torrid and bright and the dark windowless space behind our caddy was fairly dim so i'm sure the sun blinded her. She adjusted and shuffled forward, chains binding her feet. 'Sorry, we can't take those off' I blushed. 
'I'm not asking you to.' she smiled. I couldn't understand how someone so delicate could be such a monster. She was akin to a wounded bird of prey, fallen from something so mighty and tainted with the mark of her past. I could see past it, but I could understand how others weren't so open minded. We walked, or shuffled in her case, over to a picnic bench just next to where the van was parked. The sun bathed us in a glorious and intrusive warmth, she tilted her head back - absorbing it. 
'I'm going to miss this' her voice was an adult lullaby, soft and hard in one sweeping tone. She opened an eye to squint at me. 'Go on, ask.' I stared back at her in embarrassment. 'I know what you're thinking and it's okay, just ask.' I lent forward, excitement on my lips.
'I just want to know what happened, why it happened.' She sighed again and once more tipped her head to bathe in the glow of the summer heat. 
    'It happened because of love. It's ridiculous to say it was with love that I killed him, because it wasn't, it was rage and hate and revenge but there was passion alright.' She looked me in the eyes from the corners of hers, possibly to gauge my reaction, and then she continued. 'I was enamored, completely consumed by the existence of another person. My first love, my first passion. Her entity engulfed my mind and I became something other than myself, I became a component in a mechanism, I became a 'we'. The more time I spent with her the more utterly and irreversibly in love I fell. I craved her, every hour of every day. She became a physical necessity like food, water - air. She was the most uniquely brilliant person I'd ever met and I couldn't understand how i'd ever managed to be without her, or who I was before I met her.' I flinched at the word 'her', confused by it, but nothing surprising stayed that way for long that day, after a while it just became evident fact. 'Then she fell ill.' She breathed a long jagged breath and picked up an empty water bottle that was lying on the bench. It was difficult to maneuver through her handcuffs, but she did it gracefully. 
    'They'll never understand, the judicial system, I know that now. Five sessions in court, seventeen statements and they still can't see that I did it for her. She was the north pole to my south, my one absolute attraction. She was the center of my universe and she was dying. It felt like everything I'd ever known to be reality was melting around me and I had no way to stop it. Like my world was liquidizing and falling through a crack beneath my feet. I tried to clutch it, to hold on to my stability, but the liquid just dripped through. Even though I could feel it, even though I could touch it - I couldn't catch it.' She picked at the label of the water bottle, ripping it slowly with her fingernail.
    'And then, one day, someone told me there was a way. A way to freeze her, to solidify her. It was like for one magnificant moment everything was perfect again, I could breathe again. I clutched at her, grabbed every part of her I could in those hours of hope. Savored every kiss, letting the taste tingle my desperate lips for hours after we disconnected. I watched her chest, watched the rise and fall of life, knowing for certain that it would stay there. But then, they told me the cost.' She ripped the label off entirely in one swift moment, screwed it up into an angry ball and then discarded it like it was nothing. 'I was a student and I had nothing more than a pile of debt. I had no family, no one to help me and neither did she. We had each other and that was all. So of course I did what I could, of course I stole to pay for the operation. I did whatever I could to stabilize my shaken world. To keep the plates spinning. But it didn't matter, they all crashed around me in the end. I went home, do you know what that feels like freckles, huh? They told me the operation was a success so after twenty-nine hours of sitting in that waiting room for a verdict, to know whether the heart mine belonged to was still viable - I went home. When I arrived the next day they told me she'd died in her sleep. "Peacefully" they said "didn't feel a thing.", apparently her heart had just stopped beating. But what about my heart? Why was that still going? Why, when my entire world had disappeared was I still standing? What was I even standing on?' She turned her back to me for a moment and when she turned again to face me she was holding a slightly disheveled cigarette between two of her long fingers, I didn't question where she got it - I was too absorbed. I reached towards her extending a lighter and she stared into my eyes as she inhaled. It mesmerized me. 
   'They say,' She continued, her eyes still burning through mine. I dropped my hand and she exhaled. 'That when a magnet is shattered, each tiny piece, each surviving fragment, forms another two poles. I was so broken, but I still yearned for her, I still magnetized towards her but she was no where on this mortal earth for me to find. So I got trapped. Trapped in delusions of her and how we were together, trapped in a place in my mind where she still existed and this world became all that I could think about. Everything else became irrelevant because, in some form, I had her. Then when after I stopped eating, I became physically ill myself and I had to be healed. After I was nourished my mind started to work again and I could see that she was gone, I could see that I was alone. And I was traumatized. I became obsessed, consumed by the inexorable thirst for revenge. That's when I looked him up, the surgeon.' There was a soft burning to the depths of her irises, they held in them the hatred she'd felt, I did not find regret beside it. 'I could not stop myself, I was engrossed by the idea of equivalent exchange, he'd stolen her life - so now his belonged to me. My magnetism was redirected, it honed onto him. I haunted him, I tracked him down and I stabbed him straight through the heart - because I felt that was only fair, because that's what his shoddy work, his shaky hand, his inattentive nature - had done to me. I watched the life drain from him and I thought of her, how I had never got the chance to be there, that I'd never seen that flawless light leave her. So I held him, his blood drenching my body, and I wept. I fell apart completely, screaming into his hairline - demanding her. She never came. But the police did, and they took me away. That was the first time I escaped, just slipped out the handcuffs, six weeks longer to freely wander the state, lost and damaged. It made sense to keep stealing, I had nothing to lose anymore. It felt like I was being punished by the Gods, all I wanted was to be alone, to find the time to end my own life so that my soul could once again be entwined with hers. But every time I came close I was detained. I just want that freedom freckles, to leave this earth on my own terms, not rot in a jail merely dreaming of her.' I stared at Jamie, this injured beauty. This tragic eagle. I reached into my pocket for the small metal key, the key to her death - her salvation. I unlocked her ankle and wrist binds. I then handed her my gun. 
'There.' I said. 'Be with her.' The smile that spread over Jamie's face melted my heart, the joy at being able to be reunited with her soul mate. She put her finger to the trigger, inverted the snout and reached the gun in front of her. 
'Thank you.' She breathed, then she flipped, pointed the snout at me - and fired. It didn't confuse me for long though, the pain - nothing did that day. 

To Market

Market 
36a/b West Highland Villas 

LA 

90001

I'd received the note at a black tie event, the kind with miniscule brushetta and cheap champagne. It'd been pressed firmly into my clammy palm by a pouchy man in a red trilby. 'You'll thank me later' he winked. I reread it multiple times to try and jog something in my thirsty mind, but I could not produce a single correlating thought. I went about my usual business that day, I slept, jerked off, ate, read a few scripts - the usual, but from the time I viewed it to well after i'd climbed into bed I could not keep my eyes from darting to the kitchen table, to the deserted section of note which displayed the cryptic address. I decided the next day I'd find out what resided at that address. I'd go to Market. 
    After much confusion, swearing and the eventual irritated abandonment of the Sat Nav I arrived outside a towering and dingy warehouse building. It was surrounded by other such structures but all the others seemed even more extremely desolate and neglected. The door was obviously restricted by a heavy and rusty pad lock. I decided to explore the side of the building to look for an entrance as my inquisitive mind had definitely been aroused. I stalked round the side and down an alley way. Although a dead lead I thought I could definitely hear some kind of muffled voices and pressing my ear against the baking concrete of the building only proved this. 
'Hello?' I yelled, stretching my head back to gaze up the windowless walls. Force of habit I suppose. I was just turning to leave when I heard a strange snuffling to the right of myself. I froze. I felt breath moving the downy hairs on my neck. I began to turn, slowly and apprehensively to view the source. Suddenly a pudgy hand forcefully wrapped a dirty cloth around my gaping mouth. This prevented me from really releasing the scream that had risen from the pit of my somersaulting stomach. Next thing I knew - the world went black. 

'Mr. Elswood?' 

A voice. 

'Bailey?' 

I pried my eyes open, but they didn't stay that way for long, a stabbing pain travelled through the right side of my brain and I had to close them once more, to make the feeling go away. But it didn't. 

'W... Water.' I croaked, extending my hand forward, still entirely unsure of what I'd find. 

'But of course.' the voice rang again, followed by a click. I heard someone shuffle up to me, take my hand, and place the handle of a mug into it. Once again, I attempted to open my eyes, I managed to crease one open a crack. I looked deeply into my mug of water trying to determine it's legitimacy - it's safety. I determined I didn't care, I was too thirsty. I brought it to my lips and drank, it seemed fairly normal if not a little metallic in taste. My head's stabbing pain subsided to a dull ache and I opened my eyes. 

  I was in a huge room of what appeared at first glance to be an abandoned warehouse of some kind. The walls were smudged concrete, the floors followed suit. In one corner was a little divided cubical, I could not see what it contained. There was a blue chipped door with a smashed glass window to the right of where I was sitting on a rickety office chair. I assumed that to be the stairwell. In front of me were two men, a slightly wrinkled face was looming close to me. 

'Better?' he spoke, his voice was that which woke me. He had dark hair and dark eyes. I could find nothing behind them, he seemed almost corpsial in his stare, but the rest of his face was animated and riddled with concern. His face was devoid of facial hair completely except one line extending from his thin lips to the base of his chin. His eyes kept flicking to the metal door on the left of the building, presumably the one I entered through, but they always came back to me. 'I would just like to start by apologizing for having to drug you Mr. Elswood.' he smiled apologetically, cocking his head to the right. 'Its just we always have to with new custom, to check they're not from the police. Which according to your impressive resume, you are not.' He giggled. The sound sickened me. Behind him stood a boy of about sixteen, his long black hair swept partially over his beady eye. He was looking at me with utmost guilt touching his youthful features. Seemingly, he was the one with the chloroform. When I still did not respond to the man's words he lent even closer. From this distance I could make out the hundred or so little craters in his skin. Acne scars, poor man - high school must have been hell. His eyes searched mine desperately for recognition that I could muster coherency, that the experience hadn't broken my brain. I coughed lightly. He shot up.

'Explain.' I spoke frankly.  

'My name is Kazi and I will be at your service today.' He bowed extravagantly. I still had no idea what I was doing here but half out of fear and half out of curiosity I decided not to ask. 'Now for the matter of the payment you've already paid sir, we received a payment for a Mr. Elswood a few days ago sir.' I stared at him in utter bewilderment. How could anyone have known I'd be here when I didn't even know? Then I thought about the man who'd given me the card, his seedy chuckle, his seedy nature... his suggestive 'thank me later.'. It must have been him. 

'Oh well' I coughed again, awkwardly this time 'Thank him for me.' 

'No need sir' Kazi chirped 'Your happiness will be thanks enough. Now, shall we meet the women?' And suddenly I understood, I was in a brothel. It all made sense. I'd been to them before but never inside the US. I began feeling excited, the jittery pounding of my fluttering heart laced with a nauseating shame. 

'Yes, sure' I breathed. He motioned for me to get up and I did and began shakily following him towards the staircase door. Leaving the teen in our wake, we pushed through it and walked up the dirty stairs, reaching the upper floor in what felt like an eon. Upstairs was exactly the same as the previous room in structure but the contents could not have been more different. 

    There were about nine burly men occupying it, each one was accompanied by a woman - on a metal leash. The woman were all of above average weight. That puzzled me in its own right because I always assumed sex slaves would be starved. All the men appeared to be of the same race as Kazi and the boy below but there was no way to definitively find out. I put the weight of the girls down to a racial difference in appeal I could not understand. Maybe bigger was better in the east. Kazi walked away from me towards another man standing staring at the women too, except he wasn't gawking at them the way I was - confusion etched into everyone of my deceivingly youthful chemically altered features - instead he stood resolutely, his face a lost language, impossible to read. I tried my hardest, straining to get a good look at him. But it was impossible. It displayed years of practised alexithymia. Kazi spoke in what I recognised as broken and flawed mandarin to him. He nodded back and pointed at a girl in the corner, the biggest of the bunch, fair skinned with a pretty face. The kind you just knows tries too hard in the sack. I admired this man, longed for his composure, possibly due to my ineptitude to possess any in the same moment. I smiled at him shakily as he exited the room, the red headed woman being dragged behind him, he did not return the gesture. Next it was Kazi's turn to avert his questioning my way;
'Which do you want sir?' 
    I gazed dumbstruck at the gaggle of women, every one so far removed from my usual fancy. I thought if I was going to do this, I'd do it so it was incomparable, so that when I returned to my tedious monotony I'd be devoid of reminders. I noticed that one of the girls, a Latina beauty, was not whimpering softly, struggling against her chains like the rest. She sat staring up at her captor in a violent rage. I chose her. Although not my usual taste i could feel a familiar soft throb as I thought of the prospect of dominating her, of staring into those hateful eyes whilst I enjoyed her. You may say that my desire for her had something to do with how every woman I sleep with in the day to day are so grateful to be with me due to my status that there's not even a hint of real emotion. You'd be right. Although they may be beautiful, although they may fulfil some kind of fantasy, quench a raw animal urge, the woman I usually associate myself with are never genuine, they're too numbed by Botox, narcissism and prescription meds. I just long for a spark, real passion. I wanted, in that moment, to have sex without the feeling we were performing for an audition. 
    The Latina vision had beautiful yellow irises, short autumn hair and flawless caramel skin. Her body type was more Texas than LA but I didn't mind - it was her eyes I coveted, her skin, her breasts. I nodded at her and Kazi followed my eyes, chuckling in agreement. He ticked his head to the side and clicked his fingers at the guard. The girl, seeing this, began clawing and struggling against the binds to no avail. I remember the way she looked at me reminded me of a prostitute I'd enjoyed once whilst on location in Japan. That girl however was younger, more fragile. But in her eyes there was something akin, it flashed trough her in the throws, just momentarily. I barely had time to register it then, before it disappeared for good, I saw it in this woman too, in the depths of her furious gaze as she was dragged away, face set like concrete. But it stayed with her, I could survey it how I wished. I wondered to myself what about this situation was similar to consensually throat fucking a hooker, to equate the same emotion. I suppose I didn't really want to know.
'Follow me please Mr. Elswood.' Kazi turned and walked back towards the stairwell and in a giddy daze I followed him. We walked upstairs and as I turned the corner of the abused staircase I heard a clank and a muffled shriek and realized the girl was following in our wake. 
    We reached an upstairs room which was once again a replica of the first, spacious, practically empty accompanied by the pungent smell of metal and burning plastic.There was no bed. I looked around a little disgruntled, I decided the floor will have to do. 
'Right' I spoke, I caught my reflection in a dirty widow, I shook my hand through my hair, elegantly dishevelling it. I was disgustingly proud of myself today, I looked my best in a corduroy shirt and freshly pressed jeans. I thought that the bags sitting happily under my tired eyes only improved my look, giving me a haunty ambiance. My strong jaw was freshly shaven and my lips were properly moisturized  Maybe she'd want me back, if I was gentle enough. Maybe we'd fall in love. Maybe. i turned to Kazi, clapping my hands together in an awkward manner. They did not turn to leave, instead the man holding the girl said;
'Did you want us to get started?' I was even more confused in this moment than I had been throughout the entire day. 
'You?' I spluttered. The man looked at Kazi apprehensively and Kazi looked at me in happiness and awe. 
'You'd like to do it yourself?' he chortled. 
'Well... Isn't that the idea?' I scratched my head in turmoil. 
'Okay sir, it's your choice.' He clicked his fingers at the man who handed Kazi a tied up black roll which Kazi then presented to me. 'You'll be needing that' he smiled. Kazi clicked again and this time I was handed the chain that belonged to the girl. It was wrapped tightly around her wrists, making it near impossible for her to fight. Her ankle shackles impeded a speedy escape. 'We'll wait just outside the door, we're armed so if she tries to leave we'll get her. Just call for us when you're done.' he grinned broadly and exited offering me another low bow. Soon, it was just me and her. 
    I opened up the roll, wondering what it contained, and saw several gleams of silver. Knives. Knives and tape and a handgun. I began questioning why I was here. The girl I was holding saw what the roll contained too. She began to wail loudly and relentlessly in my ear, feebly repelling the chains binding her and leaning far repelled from me. Her howls cut through me. I could not deal with crying, ever since I was a child and my father left. My mother would stay up all night and cry incessantly. Her lament would travel through the entire house, cutting through the paper thin walls and overpowering the Dido CD she'd put on to cover the noise. At first her howls tore me, imbued within me a kind of desperate longing to make them stop,to heal her and dry her tears. But after months passed, after she stopped getting out of bed, after I had to grow up - to look after myself - they began to anger me. Every sob was a pebble thrown at my face, flick, flick, flick. Sob, sob, sob. They built up until I couldn't take it anymore. I ran through the house and straight into her bedroom; 'Stop!' I screamed 'Just stop!' I shook her like she was a broken clock, hit her like she was a static TV - I threw her around in the hope that it would fix her, in the hopes she'd rejuvenate to her past self. My real mother. I jogged her until her bawling stopped and then I left her, to recover alone. In the morning I found her hanging from the shower rod. In the silence that the screams had left she heard herself, heard her illness for what it truly was - and she heeded it's call.  
   That night changed me. At the age of 13 I developed a hatred for that brand of self expression. I divorced my wife for crying when she lost our baby. She always thought it was from the trauma of losing a life that belonged to us both. I let her believe that, out of kindness. But now this girl, her shrill ululating wrapping around my head and suffocating me, stealing all the air from my futile lungs. Her weeping was everywhere it was instilling something inside my chest, creating a kind of hollow vacuum, a feeling i knew from childhood - i felt tears begin to vindictively prick against my widen eyes. 
'Stop it.' I spoke, eyes to the ceiling, blinking hard. Still her sobbing persisted. I hated her for this. Despised her solely for creating emotion within me that I hadn't felt for over twenty years. 'Stop it' I screamed, my fist colliding with her screeching mouth. 'Stop it' I repeated over and over as hit after hit indented her pretty face. I thought about the people I worked with, the people I worked for. Every foster family that didn't want me. I thought about my father finding me after I found fame, I thought about how I didn't punish him for what he did to my mother, I thought about the paella we shared instead. I thought about those nights sitting by my fireplace screaming at myself in the mirror, blaming my reflection for my mother's death. When I see her face in my dreams her ghost blames me too, it howls at me, condemning me, accusing me, - haunting me. My fist flying, my brain flooded with every bad thought I'd ever had, every slash of the razor I'd endured in my teenage years, every bottle of gin I'd downed since I could afford to buy them. I thought about the years of self-medicating, to cloud the corners of my mind where the doubt festered. I drank, sniffed, smoked, to confuse my demons, get them lost on the way to the surface. I went in to acting so I could learn to pretend to be okay, before those lessons I couldn't hide my trauma. Then I learnt how to study the people on TV, to mimic their smiles, to mirror their content. Now I couldn't hide my angst, my pure fiery rage. It was a shaken bottle of a carbonated beverage, and she'd loosened the lid. Everything that had ever irritated me, angered me, upset me, came flooding back and gushing through my fist onto this girl's face. Nothing was enough anymore, I needed this to subdue the rage. Every parking ticket, every rejection, every damn bruschetta. 
   I stopped to catch my breath and in doing so my anger subsided, the feeling returned to my fist and I could feel a throbbing in my knuckles, and somewhere else, pressing against my jeans. I turned away from her crumpled form in shame and disgust. I could hear her spluttering and moaning on the ground, her face unrecognizable, only her eyes visible through all the bruising - the yellow in them burning through the trickling blood, the brow scowling at me with purest hate. I waited for the situation to subside and then I headed for the door. 
'Kazi.' I whined, regret and fear was coursing through my entire body. I ran towards the door. 'Kazi!' I screamed. I turned to see the Latina still on the floor, trying desperately to stand. Kazi appeared with his usual dead-eyed smile.
'Yes sir?' 
'What do we do, with her I mean. I can't have the press finding out about this.' I was breathing heavily, fear gripping my heart. Kazi just smiled softly and clicked his fingers once more. In walked the man who'd previously been guarding the girl I'd just disfigured. He walked straight over to her and lifted her from the ground so she was leaning on his solid form. I felt relief mingled in with the shame. Kazi picked up his cell phone, dialled and said;
'Floor 4 - Ready for disposal', a few tense minutes later with nothing but the sounds of the girl's increasingly heavy breathing to occupy my mind in walked two more beastly men. One was carrying a chainsaw, the other a plastic bag. 

     I thought perhaps naively that they would kill her before they dismembered her and maybe that they'd do so in a separate room. I was wrong. I watched her scream like a banshee as the chainsaw whirled into life. Kazi brought it down so it was almost touching her soft flesh, she was yelping like an abandoned puppy. Her struggle so impressive I once again glimpsed the fighter I'd chosen from the herd downstairs, her spirit and desire to live the very thing that had glued her coffin together.She was the unexpected re-ignition of a trick birthday candle, a happy surprise when the magic has faded. I felt myself growing hard once more. I'd become used to it by now and the riddling of guilt that accompanied it and by this point I could just enjoy the sensation. Kazi raised the chainsaw above his head and the girl winced as she saw it fly back down - her screeching ceased in mute acceptance of her dismal fate but when the pain didn't come she opened her eyes once more, perplexed, to again find the chainsaw poised above her trembling extremity. She began sobbing softly, returned anew to the extinguished tired flame she'd been previously. I despised her. Kazi brought down the chainsaw once more and the girl died a coward, not screaming through the absolute agony of the weapon wrathfully intruding her limbs but instead just quietly vomiting over her left shoulder. It didn't take long for him to divide her into equal ample pieces of taunt flesh.

He lead me into a side room. I assumed it's previous function to have been some kind of office, It was seedy in nature like the rest of the warehouse, he motioned for me to sit and then bowing low and offering me a toothy grin he exited the room. I was not the only person in there. Across from me sat on a faded and worn velour arm chair was the composed Asian businessman I'd seen in the first room. He had tears running silently down his gaunt cheeks. He'd lost his sultry ambiance displaced instead by an emotional anguish. He'd lost something else too, something us English speaking folk have no precise word for, but something the Chinese refer to as; 'tong zhen'. I watched him for a while, sniffling and sobbing and wondered briefly about my humanity, I wondered why I didn't feel this way, why my soul was still intact. Maybe it was the search for soul that had lead me here, and the absence of one that made me stay. I, a witness of lambs led to slaughter, a shepherd to their demise, an accomplice to their end. I had no qualms about it, no cracked conscious, no torn ethics. The more I thought about my lack of worry, the more worried I became. Kazi returned and spoke again in awkwardly hedged Chinese to the gentleman. He shook his head furtively and began crying even harder, a line of snot ran from his pinking nose and entered his protesting mouth. I averted my gaze, staring instead at my tensed fists. Kazi flicked his shifty eyes at me and smiled apologetically and then said plainly to the man, in English; 'You don't get your money back.' the man's sobs grew quiet and his frown hardened, his face crumpling like the note that lead me here. He morphed once more into the man I'd respected upon my arrival, he wiped his face softly with a silk handkerchief retrieved from his breast pocket, stood resolutely and followed Kazi from the room. Alone with my own thoughts I tried to retain them onto topics devoid of sentiment; dry cleaning, football, auditions. Anything but what I was doing here, how I'd come to even be here- no queries of why, who or how. Just mundane musings. To further my confusion was the undeniable question of what I was still doing here. What purpose could remain, the deed had been done - the woman was dead. Just as I was about to get up to leave Kazi returned into the room. 'It's ready Mr. Elswood.' he giggled, the sound eerie and sickening. The next room he lead me too was entirely barren of anything with the exception of a small rickety table and a lavish ruby throne cuddled up next to it facing a plate with a single steak on it. Food. I'd completely neglected it and I was so glad for it, grateful to Kazi for providing it as in my excitement and apprehension I'd neglected my body's most basic necessity. I walked over to the table and Kazi beamed like a proud mother as I sat down and placed the spotless cloth napkin delicately in my lap. I lifted the utensils and began carving away. I lifted the morsel to my desperate lips and bit down on it. Chewing on the meat I was impressed by its flavor and it's texture, I marvelled at the intensity of the spices. I smiled softly, and practically giggled through my glee, my body sighed in relief. 'Why this is delectable.' I chuckled, Kazi's smile extended so his eyes crinkled in sheer satisfaction. 'I'm glad you're enjoying her.' he beamed. Her? 'We have the best chefs in all of LA working in our kitchens, straight from Paris.' he adopted a faux french accent on the last word. Her. I gagged. I stared horrified at the remains of the flesh I'd just demolished. I stopped mid swallow so the meat had no choice but to uncertainly slip slowly down my throat, unsure of where to go - out or down. It cankered against the back of my heaving tonsils and I was painfully aware of it, it changed from a deliciously moist segment to a slimy blob of sin. I was repulsed at myself for being so stupid, for not realizing immediately. I had a decision to make. It is this moment my therapist is grateful for, this moment that signs the pay cheques I bestow to her after each session - this moment that haunts me. That which makes me heave on a fragile morning. Makes me drink on a low Tuesday. Makes me lose sleep. I swallowed. Then I began on the rest of the steak. After all, it was a free meal. I savoured every mouthful, thinking all the while about her soft skin, her amble flesh, her shining garnet eyes. Marvelling at how much better a food than person she made. I polished up my horrifying feast and left silently. Kazi walked me out, assuring me with a bow that I could return any time. On the drive home, between the monotonous drones of the chirpy Sat Nav, I couldn't keep my mind from a single invasive thought; she didn't taste anything like chicken.

Game

The game was man hunt and that's what it became. Blood stained oaks and tiny limbs shredded and abandoned under clutters of autumn blades. The harvest pallet matching the scene perfectly, golden maple sun over blood red infamy- brown trees and crisp green foliage.

'One, Two' - she screamed from the door, her voice an echo of generations before her, her eyes screwed so tightly no one could ever brand her a cheater.

'Three, Four' we all began to scatter, a late start due to our heightened excitement. Turning our backs to her booming shouts, they faded as we faded from the protective sight of the dithering adults. We became spirits, punctured by sun. Shadows cast longer and longer with every hurried step until we were celestial figures stretching to the climate.

'Five, Six' to the woods we flew, off in different directions - a solitary path laden before us, never to be tread back. I tip-toed away from her travelling holler and stalked further into the darkness of the woodland. The calm pressing down on me like pressure from an advancing ocean, so far I trod into it that it became me, imbued itself intertwined within me.

'Seven, Eight' giggles and murmurs lost amongst the timbers, their jealous leaves snatching our childish ambiance and crushing it into silent apprehension. I heard the padding of approaching feet and offered a harsh 'Shh' to the direction of my fellow. But no warning was headed. No whisper returned. The blue ghost of a moon shone above the struggle that ensued, breaking through the azure sky - an ominous prediction of the lunar glare yet to follow. A shy wave to the day, to bid it goodbye.

'Nine, Ten' A gleam of teeth and a splash of red, a hiding place is made vacant once more. 'Ready or not here I come.'

And she wandered towards the places where we once stood, so silent and serene and buzzed with vitality, awaiting our predator with gleeful innocence not morbid fear, the way we would have perceived it had we known. The dull thud of approaching paws growing louder and louder as we sat behind bark and crouched under bushes. A perfect mask of purity veiling the carnage occurring in the hush. The girl wandered through the silent woods, fleeing after every snap of a twig, her melodic twitter chasing the sinister sound. She traipsed around the  thicket for over an hour, her excitement fading into dread which stuck to her like the cobwebs she'd been collecting along her journey. They grew thicker around her and with every sweep they clung harder. She tripped and fell and the further she ventured the darker the skies became, the harsher the winds, the louder her heart beat in her own tightened chest. It was only as her eyes fell on my ravaged carcass that she gave up looking. The game was over.

He

He was my stars. It sounds cliche to say but it's how I felt. He lit up my night sky and made it shine, he sparkled across it, every aspect of who he was blazing individually in the abyss that every other component of my day-to-day created. He was the sun itself too, the darkness rose like a tidal wave above me in his absence, crushing me under it's oppressive weight and holding me there like a submissive prisoner until he returned to explode through it and make his way back into my arms. I never thought of him as damaged. He was perfection embodied to me, a blue-eyed angel with dyed black hair. I couldn't see past his resplendent smile, and into his fragmentary heart. To me the boy was the center of my barely-spinning universe, there to revolve for - to get out of bed for. He was a drunk conversation on a Saturday night that turned into the person that defined me, the name that followed the 'and' after mine. He was everything, and he was alive.
     And then he was gone. In the blink of an eye he crumbled and fell, like the empire of Rome my love became obsolete  a mere memory of something once so grand, so impenetrable. Sometimes I wonder, late into the night, if it was my darkness that got him - my pain. Did it seep in from over-exposure to my toxicity. But he screamed through his own gloom, battled his own obscurity. I saw it, in the depths. Behind the speckled iris of his perfect eyes. Beneath the musical chortle of his lively laughter. Hiding in his pearly smile. Lacing all his perfect words, poisoning them with inevitable demise. If I hadn't been so dependent on him, maybe i'd have voiced my concern. Maybe, if it wasn't for my demons to distract me, I'd have noticed the skeletal form of his. Those dancing imps, come to taunt from Satan's nursery, to prey on the minds of the innocent, deforming their dreams from celestial wants into ineffable horrors. Without them, i'd still have him.  
     I do what I can to forget him, to be rid of his formidable presence. But there are things that don't go away. The memory of his cautious touch - that hits me on the first day of summer. The air changes and as I inhale the heat I think of his almost accidental brush of my flushing cheek on the evening of our first encounter. In the winters I taste him on my lips, dry blood and lip balm - that season's memory cocktail. The thought of never seeing him again no longer haunts me, as with every slowly ebbing second I run closer to him. To one day greet him in the comforting arms of death. Sometimes, if I ignore reality and hole away with the memory of him, he feels so close I can almost taste the chemical sting of his skin on the tip of my desperate tongue. It's then that I struggle most, when I can almost deny that he's truly gone. Everyday when I first awake there's a second I cherish. It occurs just before I open my eyes. In that beat of my struggling heart he is still alive, and we're sickeningly happy again. My sky's restored and my planet isn't orbiting blind.
    But then the moment passes, and the grief holds me once more. Tighter than he ever did. They say pain can't be remembered.The sensation can be recollected, but the sensation not mirrored. It's simply ghosted, a phantom reminiscence of something agonizing. But in that moment I feel that pain, it shoots through me like the day it happened, just as sharp and just as harrowing. Constantly I live through that  knowledge that it will come again, and as I close my eyes at night I dread the rising sun, dread the day ahead. Sleep taunts me with it's necessity - I curse it until with exhaustion it beats me down, until the dreams of him begin.
  Even in the wake of happiness I feel that brush of pain. Every laugh, every smile, is laced with something sinister; because I survived - and he didn't.

Jackals

The prairie was darkening. He could feel the change of season in the air, his skin prickling with goosebumps like tiny mountains erupting all over the plains of his forearms. His hairs stood on end and the orange sun blazed over him like a molten wave, drenching him in it's soft, inviting light. He squinted through it's marvel and focused on the eclipsing horizon. This would be the last sunset he ever saw round these parts. He stared straight into the sun, daring it to burn him alive, to turn him into ashes so he could join his beloved prairie and dance in the tornadoes of the land he cherished.
     Every one of his exhales had the strength and emotion of a repressed sigh. It was if his respiratory system couldn't quite hold the weight of his heavy heart. His soft brown eyes and rough black hair caught the glow of the sun, making them shine in crescent forms. His hair, a sickle atop a meadow - his eyes, segments of a dying moon. His face was dark from constant exposure to the midday heat and the aggressive sun. He tipped his hat further down his worn face, harnessing shadow to shield his pensive eyes from the unforgiving flare. He was a rider, he herded the cattle across to safety and that's all he'd ever known. That and the relentless howls of wolves and coyote all out for a lick of his rich blood. He watched them circle at the edges of the horizon where the dusk lived. They were inexplicably terrifying, and hauntingly beautiful - bounding and falling in playful taunt.
      He kicked off his boots to feel the hot dust and dying soil of the dehydrated pasture beneath his callus toes. He swept his eyes across the land, taking in every grain of sand, every shadow pressed against the blazing sun - dancing and leaping forms of deer and hefty patient cattle roaming freely with no thoughts beyond the grass in their mouths or the milk in their udders. He held his gaze over the feeble glow of stars beginning to emerge through the dulling expanse above him, fighting through the stubborn last day of his world. The battle of the future and the past, commencing silently just above his head.
     He thought of the girls who'd walked beside him down these parts, and the men who'd rode in front. He thought of Evangeline and her soft lips. He thought of how they laughed as he beat the dust from her bonnet after their desperate tumble under the cover of night in the summer heat. He thought of the fiddle's playful tune soothing him to sleep in those cold merciless winters. And then he thought of the concrete, of the trains and the automobiles, of the fast approaching rape of his virgin prairie. The death of it's innocence. The destruction of all that it, and therefore he, was.
      The sun had really set now. The darkness consumed him like a hug at a funeral, cold and shrouded in black. The stars above him cried, dripping tears of phosphorescent beauty to replenish the gasping ground. The chorus of crickets was his lullaby and his eyes began to droop. He wished to stay for eternity, to trap the  miracle of this moment in the back of his mind - to revisit whenever he dared to dream.
      In the end the jackals edged first, snaking towards him in silence, bounding lightly around the cattle. He held his gun close, ready for the pounce. But all he wished for was to jump, to skip toward the jackals as they morphed out of the darkness and began to stalk their victims. He watched them move, their doe-like legs bounding and jumping, bushy tails waving playfully in the air. Every movement enchanting, captivating - deadly. He longed to be chased, caught, and ripped apart by their beautiful mouths to dwell in their strong anatomy until expelled out onto the tundra where he'd melt into the grassland forever. But his terror was too much. He feared death more than he feared change. He could no longer pretend the world wasn't moving too fast for him and in the morning the contractors would come, and they'd pave roads across his ethereal barren home.
   The strays reached the cows but it didn't matter anymore - they were no longer needed, not in this new world. He heard the jackals scream as he turned his back on all he'd ever known - and he wondered how they knew, exactly what he was thinking.

Dream

I have this dream, maybe once or twice a month - always the same sequence of events, always the same outcome. I'm sitting in a dinky corner of a desolate warehouse, the pungent odor of urine consumes me as I awake spluttering as if I was trapped under five feet of ocean spray. I look around but there is no light at my level of vision. I avert my gaze to the ceiling where a slither of light is visible. My lids squint protectively over my burning pupils as they just can't handle the pathetic glow from the dirty window. Like snails into their homes when met with a salty foe I struggle to coax them out of their hiding place, to once again search for me within the bleak nothingness surrounding my entity. I do not feel fear, although I can feel my palms sweat.    
   My eyes slowly begin to adjust to the darkness and I can make out multiple slumped shapes dancing like mirages in the heat. They are squirming on the floor like they are struggling to move and as I squint closer I notice they are human beings. Chained to miscellaneous points around the room. Some are missing various limbs, others extremities, some are just badly bruised and cut. All are crying, howling in pain and screaming with unfortunate rage. I feel a desire to go to their aid, but it is quickly extinguished and replaced with a mild curiosity to discover how they came to be there.
   I am hit by a memory. A monstrous, sickening being, disproportionate in girth to height, it drags itself along the floor of the warehouse through what appears to be the orange glow of an evening sunset. I can not focus my vision on this creature, it is masked in a shadow that moves with it where ever it travels. It leaves behind a trail of human blood, dripping from the fragments of bodies I can see dangling from it's tilted, razor sharp mouth. It's face is curled in the shape of a jagged smile and it's eyes are black. Pinks curls of thin venules swirling through their iris-less mass like toffee swirls on a molded sundae. It's skin is the hue of a cancerous tumor, translucent and pale. It's black veins pound beneath this thin skin and make sickening churning noises with every pump of it's vacuous heart. Still I feel no fear, I look on imbued with a curious sense of longing to solve this puzzle, unmask this enigma. The creature moves around the warehouse towards me and as it's eyes lock with mine I am transported back to the darkness, to the present time.
  Only now I can feel my extremities and the room is clear in the dark, I can make out every screaming face, every fragmented nail, every smear of menstruation on the discarded rags in the corner, every crack in the ceiling, all the furniture scattered across the room. I begin to walk, stifly at first then fluidly, towards a cracked mirror above the decrepid sink to the left of the whining bodies. I place my hands either side of the porcelain china and I look up at the smudged, honest mirror.
  And in that moment I am struck with more horror than I have ever experienced in this warped and unending dream realm or in the candor of the real world. But what is real? In that moment the marrow in the depths of my bones freezes and my blood stops stagnant in my veins. In that moment my heart beats so hard it slams into my ribs and I can hear them straining to contain it. Cracking under the pressure, blood pooling within my chest. In that moment I sweat more profusely than I thought possible, beads running down my face and a cocoon of damp warmth kissing my cold body. In that moment a sickening bile rises from the pit of my stomach and cankers acidically against the back of my dry, screaming throat. The screams pierce through the silence surrounding my previously peaceful sleep. I shriek and shriek as I try desperately to open my eyes - to make it all stop. Because, in that moment, in that mirror, that monster - was me.

Routine

I've been getting the same bus every week day for three years. It's an odd thought. Not in the sense that it's unusual to human behavior, i suppose most people have a vigorous routine. But it's odd because i've never noticed. Same bus. Same route. Same time. Same stop. For five out of seven days a week, rain or shine - same old. I only started to notice the unyielding monotony of this experience when it was broken - when she started sharing my bus. Numb to the ins and outs of commuters in London I no longer feared nor revered interactions with travelers. The endless babble of mothers with prams, droning on and on about bottle feeding and zumba fitness. The gaunt faced man with the brown paper bag - mumbling to himself because everyone else has stopped listening. The 'this suit is Armani' commuters paying all their attention instead to the aggressively loud top 40 hits blasting out of their iPhones. All these people were typical, predictable  I knew them in greater depth than I knew the tube map. This girl was different.
   She drifted in on a breath of air. The mechanical doors screamed open and the summer breeze sighed and she came with it. Entering the vehicle in a swirl of blossoms and a gust of summer. Her skin embodied the sun, it was a flawless example of the season itself - iced coffee with chocolate flake freckles. She sat down opposite me. Her hair was a brown cloud, toxic candy floss floating just above her hair line. Defying graity. Her eyes shone out of her face, their emerald contrast gleaming like soft glass embedded  in a sandy shoreline. She averted her gaze from my frozen stare and redirected it at the passing brick and mortar scenery as if it was the most wondrous sight in the world - her eyes racing around her sockets, pupils expanding and shrinking, swallowing to breathe it all in.
   She did not look at me again. Her expression may have remained stony,  uninterested - dead. But her irises exploded from the whites surrounding them like mercury reacting to it's chemical nemesis. It was like she was my atmosphere. As I marveled at her unyielding beauty I became lost within it. I tasted the delicious nectar of her unspoken promise, I danced amongst the butterflies on the breath of a breeze, bounded among the flowers only to be caught up in the beams of a relentless sun and burned into ashes. My death within her was just as wondrous as she, perfection  finality - yet at the same time it couldn't even compare. I was the pauper and she was the queen. Our class divide monstrous yet she was immune to this. She collected the ashes, exhaled them into that sigh of wind and we became one, circling together until we disappeared into cloud.
  I knew behind her cemented expression she was soft to the touch, like a human tootsie roll. I must lick away at her exterior, to get to the beauty within. My love, wholly mine. Her eyes champagne spilling over when I smiled at her, a celebratory oxidized beauty trapped within her - a surplus of it bubbling from the depths of her stomach, regurgitating through her organs and spewing from her mouth like a shower of glee. My love, eyes of wine. Deep rich hues laying flat, swishing within those irises, trapped stagnant during my absence. A vintage merlot, growing ever more delectable with age. The creases around them deeper than those around mine, wisdom beyond my own years. I still relished those eyes though, they would be mine for eternity. She leaned forward and her knee almost brushed my hand. She picked up her satchel and held my gaze and as she exited the bus I saw the ghost of a smile beginning to touch her lips, they curled at the edges like a plastic sheet over an open flame, rapidly deforming into the most tragically beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
  It was at that moment I knew I had to kill her. That smile must only ever belong to me, I'd make sure of it. I'd see her again some day, and then I'd break the routine.