They stopped in some dive outside Palm Desert. It was an old-school type affair, with a sign half out and the other vibrant, painful neon. Within, it was all checkered linoleum and bulbous chrome booths. Camille thought it smelled heavily of bleach, a citrus that lingered in her nose and watered her eyes, but Jim didn’t seem to notice.
The two plunked down in a corner booth—Camille thankful she had pants on, lest the material stick and pinch her legs—and ordered. The waitress was jolly plump and purple haired, a hue that gained Camille’s curiosity and admiration. When the food came, Jim went in like it was his last meal on death row. Camille chose to watch him rather than face her own plate. They sat in silence for a long while, Camille just idly nibbling at the bits of food she liked. It wasn’t much. She’d had a mind to order a piece of pie and nothing else, but figured the two-dollar slice wasn’t worth Jim’s judgmental looks.
Finally, he broke his no-talking streak. She figured it wouldn’t last long. As a six year old born to a talkative mother, she had learned a thing or two. She knew the silence before, the gearing up. The air would shift with it, flow toward them instinctively as they inhaled. She had felt the precognition of unsaid, future-words minutes ago.
“Can I ask something?”
Her stomach grumbled under the table. Uneasy. “What?”
“Why won’t you even pretend to tolerate me? As professional courtesy. ”
A question that was warranted, but came entirely from left field. She had a begrudging respect that he’d managed to sneak up on her. A respect that would go uncommented on; a secret she held close to her chest. He can’t know, something petty in her said. Don’t give him the satisfaction. Why did she dislike him? Not a question she cared to find the answer to. A roll of her eyes, and she continued picking at the chicken fried steak in front of her.
“We’re working together. It doesn’t have to be so…” A brief struggle for a way to define it succinctly. “Like this. Or is this how you are with everyone?” He shook his head, brushed his short hair back through his fingers. “I can’t tell.”
Was she? Looking back, she could barely recall anyone who had ever gained her favor. She was undeniably prickly. Coated in lacquer. A woman composed nearly entirely of veneer. Most people were content to leave her be; let her live in her fantasy of infallibility and no emotions and hot, dripping blood down her wrists. Let her simultaneously crave connection while destroying any possibility of it. Shoving away kindness with a closed fist. Even she did not know why — how could he expect her to explain it to him?
After waiting for a while, he shrugged. “Whatever.” He seemed, in the moment, offensively young. Like a teenager, shaggy hair and put-out cigarettes. Open defiance. Feet crossed on shiny glass tabletops.
Her anger had been a finicky, volatile thing lately. It came and went in waves, ebbed and flowed with no sort of pattern. Suddenly, she could feel it encroaching. Then, it would happen. A clench of her fist. A biting of her tongue, tasting metal. Crushing whatever was in her hands. (She’d broken two perfectly innocent pencils).
A fuse lit within, and her eyes were live-wires. The anger came fast and furious.
“I don’t have to like you,” she pressed through her clenched teeth. “You’re my subordinate. But if you must know,” her head was shaking erratically, punctuating her words, “I resent the fact that you’re five years ahead of me simply because you’ve got a swinging penis between your legs.”
He was silent for a moment, seemingly chewing that over while he chewed his pork chop. Then a sip of water, and his voice was low.
“Maybe that’s not why.”
She simply continued looking at him, gaze aggressively curious. What the fuck did that mean? She was suddenly, violently indignant, and she couldn’t keep her bitterness out of her voice. “Want to elaborate on that?”
A sharp exhale from him, a cocky bend of the mouth that made her more heated with anger. Her neck was a pulsing red column. “To be frank,” he said pointedly, “I heard you fucked a lot of subordinates.”
The fork in her hand shook, just a bit, so that it rung out like the tinging of a tiny bell. She immediately recalled what she and Eleanor used to say as children, the condescending mimicking of the chime when the other finally caught on to something that was quite obvious. Ding, ding, ding. Celebrate. You’re not a complete imbecile.
His candidness surprised her. She was almost humbled. Her hands were steadied again with much effort. She would not let him see. “Please, go on. What other Abbott-related gossip had you perking those ears of yours?” She folded her hands across the table, as if the tawdry details of her life were facts and figures of a business proposal. Okay, tell me about the premium variety. How much will that cost me? Sell me on it. That life felt so far-off that she needed to be sold on its reality. A comfort, to hear him confirm it. Confirm that it hadn’t all been a dream. A nightmare. Some other person’s memories.
He was almost embarrassed as he relayed the information. So, so young. His eyes shifted awkwardly to the table next to theirs, where a waitress flitted and set down a large flesh-pink shake. “You got in trouble for prolonged relations with a local officer on a surveillance job. Telemarketing fraud in St. Louis.”
An uncharacteristic stumble, and Camille grappled for words. She had been expecting something about her family. Not that. Anything but that. Even just an allusion to his existence made her heart ache in her chest. She could feel the longing in every idle limb in her body. To distract, she fidgeted. Mention of Rayburn chilled her spine, as it always did, and the effort of stifling her shiver made her a second late in her prompt.
“Mm.” Don’t you fucking dare say his name.
He was prepared to go on. He listed the details like composites from witness testimony. “Married guy—“
“Separated.”
“With a kid.”
“Denied custody.”
Jim sighed with waning patience. “Sheriff Simon Rayburn.” Fuck you. “Forty, early forties. Been on the force twenty years. Good, honest cop.” His tone was almost approving, like a father complimenting a respectable suitor. It seemed inappropriate, given the context. “Word got around. Bitter former sexual partner—literally your partner, if I understand—squealed. HR told you you had to end it or you’d be slapped with a sexual harassment citation.”
“You’re doing great so far.”
He took a dramatic pause, leaned back in his seat. The cracked faux-leather squeaked beneath him. “But you didn’t stop.”
I was in love with him.
Camille sliced another slab from the steak, lifted it up between her slender fingers and plopped it into the pink O of her mouth.
As she gnawed the meat—overcooked, dry—she thought of Rayburn. How his facial hair had felt when it tickled her face. His thick eyebrows, always knotted up. Always expressive, where she was stone-faced. An open book, where she was under lock and key. She could remember every single time, stand-alone. Etches on her flesh. Hot fingerprints down her knees. Always the same routine with her. How she had pulled down her pants just low enough so that he could enter. How she guided him, wrenched away his hands when they traveled to lift her shirt. After a while, he stopped trying.
He was equally as fucked up and malignant as she was. She liked the sharp, hot point of a blade; he liked the senseless, sudden violence of chaotic arrests. Shoot-outs. He thrived on the stuff, told her so as if expecting some catharsis. She kept her own scars hidden. He didn’t pry. She liked that about him. They were both hungry for more than they had, people who craved activity confined to a white van. A desk. It was horribly civic for people with savageness in their veins. Feral children. They fed on one another like animals.
It had been a year since the last time. She realized, suddenly, that she felt acutely empty. Her shoulders pulled into her ears. She was practicing at being nonchalant, dismissive. “I have a weakness for dicks with pornstaches. So sue me.”
Beneath the bravado, her mind was ringing. How the hell had he known all of that? For a moment she sat idly, simply admiring Jim’s dedication. His feigned cluelessness when it came to her, when really he knew more about her than she did him. It took foresight to investigate like that; to rustle up information on a prospective partner, just in case it should come in handy. She felt suddenly foolish for not thinking of it herself. She wondered what existed out there on Special Agent James Horn.
Then she tossed down her fork. It trilled against the dish, which was smeared with soggy breading. “You really did some digging on me, huh? And don’t tell me you just pulled Sheriff Simon Rayburn out of your ass. No one remembers a name they just overhear.”
He nodded. An admittance. He’d looked into her. He knew he was cornered. Something about that had her quelling a satisfied smirk.
“Now let me ask you something,” she intoned as she wiped her slim hands on the napkin balled up on her lap.
“Shoot.”
A calculated tilt of her chin. A move that was not hers. A question that was not hers, either. “You think Ana Fonseca is attractive?”
She watched with relish as a red, blotchy blush emerged on his neck. Then she shot him a merciful look. All she had wanted was the embarrassment. It left her peculiarly, uncharacteristically fueled.
“We should get moving,” she offered, a generous change of topic. Where had that come from? Something to do with the people, certainly. Whoever they were. People she knew, but no one she had ever known, no one from her past. She remembered faces. They were distinctly present-tense.
All at once, the desire for the knife came again. To assure her of her reality. Her bodily autonomy. Her as an individual. Where was she, lately? Camille was getting lost. It was like being swallowed up by a warm, temperate fog. The weather was good, but the obscurity was unbearable. She couldn’t see two feet in front of her.
She lifted herself gingerly from the seat, struggling a bit because it was so deep, cushion so smashed and sunken in. Countless individuals, sat exactly where she had been. Countless conversations that had gone well and poorly and disastrously and unremarkably, right there at that booth. She couldn’t figure out which way their little chat would be classified.
Then she took several quick, languid strides, not looking to see if Jim was following.
She could still feel his kisses on her raised pink flesh. Underneath her ribs, the S of his name burned hot.
Vishnu is on edge. Last night, he had hardly slept, too disturbed by – what can he even call it? – the man, the vision, the demon, the thing that spoke to him. ( From today, you are no longer just you. ) The words echo around in his mind like a song on repeat, but try as he might to make sense of them, it’s an entirely senseless situation.
How happy he would be if he could accept it had been some prank, a joke he’ll be let in on sooner or later. He’s never been that lucky.
As if in testament to that fact, Vishnu’s skin begins to crawl, an itch at the back of the head, digging deep down to his brain, and he is so painfully aware of another being in his living room. He sets his jaw and locks eyes with the intruder – they’re not the same as the last, and with this person there’s a certain feeling of… familiarity that Vishnu doesn’t even want to begin to consider. When he speaks, his voice is a bark, harsh; he has no intention of acting as fearful as he had during the first encounter
She’s in the pilled motel bathrobe, sitting at the foot of her bed, when she looks up and sees the wallpaper has changed, a welcomed replacement. She’d grown, in her brief hours there thus far, to despise those pink pastel flowers. The mirror is gone, replaced by a frame. She can’t help but be jarred by it, though she’s something of a seasoned veteran of the random scene changes by now.
Her hair is slick down her back, water droplets tracing paths along her spine. With the lulled movements of a hypnosis victim, Camille rises, eyes flitting to navigate their new surroundings: A couch, which she had sat perched on. A man, back to her, on the opposite side of the room. She’s hardly startled when he turns around, because there’s something in her---some foolish instinct, deep in her veins---that says she knows him. His face is metal on her tongue.
Camille places her hands firmly on the shelves of her hips, then hitches her head forward on her neck like she always does. Like an old, weathered cop, having just stomped out a cigarette, leaning in after taking lip from a civilian. Then he’d say, in a gruff, whisky voice: the hell you say to me, boy? Always boy. Camille hadn’t dared try that yet. Instead, she opts for a classic.
Faye wasn’t about to argue with the blonde’s words, since it didn’t appear to be the bathroom she’d been expecting, so instead a hand flew up to shield her from looking at the woman in the tub. If this was this woman’s bathroom, where had hers gone? “Faye Michaels, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize … this used to be–” She was interrupted by the other’s question, and immediately her hand fell away to see what the confusion was; they’d already discerned that it wasn’t her room. But her eyes widened in shock at the sight that greeted them. Eyes quickly roved the space to find that she was back in her bathroom, in her house, in the Hollywood Hills. Or at least, she sincerely hoped she was.
“It looks like you’re in the Hollywood Hills, in my bathroom. How did you … get here?” she hesitantly asked, grabbing the black robe from the hanger on the back of the door and holding it out to the woman so that she wouldn’t need to keep a death grip on the towel.
She could have sworn that she’d locked the doors on her way to work that morning.
Camille kept her fingers wrapped tightly around the towel, though mostly to cover up what was scrawled like raised, pink graffiti across her thighs. Camille didn’t care for a total stranger to see them. No, not a stranger, she decided. How on earth did she know this face? How had she decided, from all others, to manifest this precise one? Brows knotted in the middle for a moment before slackening.
“This shit again,” Camille swore, throwing her face momentarily into her hands. With a furious rub of her eyes, she emerged, teeth biting lip with determination. She declined the outstretched robe with a shake of her head, not deigning to figure out just how far the phenomena extended. Not yet.
With sudden realization, her voice perked, and the insertion was quick and fleeting. “Faye Michaels. Sounds familiar.” A brief pause for deliberation, and she continued, not bothering to introduce herself. Her name was perhaps the least important element to what was happening.
“I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure that I’m actually here.” She gestured about her. Then she started in calmly, thinking back to the previous occurrences. Delusions, she had told herself. It was time to face reality. Just the same, Camille could not stop herself from providing the brief disclaimer. “This is fucking crazy. Or maybe I’m fucking crazy. I know that.”
Pause, smooth her slicked hair. “But we seem to be experiencing each other’s surroundings, and nearly as completely we do our own.”
“I have to be ruthless, because failure is not an option.”
“Ruthless?” She scarcely bothered to stifle the laugh that bubbled from her lips, expanding to fill the vast cavern of the room. It bounced off the walls, rebounded and reached her ears again. Her fury was mounting. Her impatience was at an all-time high. Colby had Ana to thank for her negative reception to his comment. Camille dug her nails deeply into her palm through her shirtsleeve, still held over the scar that burned white-hot beneath it. She looked over the work sprawled before him; papers and figures that weeks ago Camille wouldn’t have been able to comprehend. Now, they spoke to her. Conveyed messages, encrypted warning signals in their numbers and code.
She edged over his shoulder, then whirled and faced him full-on. Empty of patronizing grin, now tight and bristled.
“My god, that sounds like something off an episode of Law and Order. Other cop bullshit.” The word was spat with venom Camille did not know she possessed, save for when it was directed at criminals. “So you fail. What’s the worst that happens, tough guy? Clients lose their money? Doesn’t look so hot in your portfolio?”
Camille didn’t wait for an answer, instead just shook her head, curling her bottom lip over her teeth. Biting down. She tasted metal. “That’s something only people who’ve never truly had to succeed say. People for whom failure doesn’t mean life or death.” Her head was still shaking furiously, and in her eyes burned angry tears.
She was cognizant that she was being self-righteous. She could feel the shame creep up the back of her neck when she finished, suddenly embarrassed at her spontaneous rage (and then angry at her own embarrassment). If she were a better person, she would have apologized. As it were, she simply shifted in her stance, not even having the courtesy to leave his presence. Her eyes challenged.
Defend yourself, they dared. Fight me on it. This new urge to competitive exchange was unsettling her.
“I promise you’ll never be bored.” // “Let’s make him suffer.”
“I promise you’ll never be bored.”
Her tone was lilting, each note colored with allure. Baiting. Absently, Camille’s tongue found its way between her clenched teeth, and a rare smirk quirked her lips. She looked positively pacified, though her fists were tight, white balls at her sides. In her irises, danger cracked and leapt like forest fire.
“The prospect of boredom has never really been my issue,” Camille purred. A flick of her cigarette—when had she started smoking?—and the embers lit the sidewalk.
Lately, Camille’s relationship to her prey—prey, that was not a word she would have used before—had become complicated. Puzzling. She hated Ana, she did she did she did. But she had to repeat it to herself, privately, solemnly, an uttered prayer as she clasped her hands over her chest at night. A devout little girl, god-fearing and tempted by evil. Her hunger had grown, mutated. Her fingers had turned to weapons before her eyes. Weapons that she itched to inflict upon another. Weapons she kept carefully occupied at all times, which she dedicated to the pursuit of the woman across from her. She hated her, she did she did she did.
Camille leaned back against the motel door, talking into the darkness. “The collapse of my belief system and the inevitable guilt from knowing I, by failing to stop you, allowed people to die?” Her eyebrows pressed her forehead into folds. “That’s more my concern.”
“Let’s make him suffer.”
Her hands were foreign objects.
She yearned to toss them across the room; cringe as they sputtered over the floor like a dispensed bug found clinging to a shirt thread.
At present they were poised above Jim’s eyes, which pled to her silently. Blue-green pools. Just moments ago her hands had secured him to the bedpost; tied his constraints rope-burn tight, until his limbs turned bloodless-white. Pulled a piece of gaff tape—the sturdiest of all varieties, purchased yesterday with premeditation—over his mouth, lulled open with unconsciousness. Wound it and pressed it deep into the corners; not the flimsy, surface-only execution seen in movies. Now he was awake, but deathly still. From above his ear seeped a sickening amount of red.
Within, the voice echoed. He was too close. He would not have let it go. He needed to be eliminated. It is for our own good.
Our, our, our.
Camille dropped the blade from her tensed fingers as if it had burnt her. She simply stood for a moment, trying to locate her remorse. Trying to retrace her trail, how she had arrived at this moment. Trying to distance herself from it. Trying to remember herself, as separate from the rest of them. How had they not stopped her? How did she not hear their disapproval, head-splitting, an enraged outcry for mercy?
She knew the answer. They were all there, situated about the room like statues, eyes glassy and faces stoic as they looked upon him. The inevitability of the current ordeal was etched in each one of their expressions.
All at once, she felt silly for her hesitation. They had decided, and it was her job to execute. It was for their own good. It was for their collective survival.
“No,” she exhaled.
One condition.
“I do this my way. Quick, painless.” Her gaze had not left his face.
“Grief demands an answer, but sometimes there isn’t one.”
It was somehow simultaneously a sting, and like salve to a wound. A raw, tender spot both old and new.
Camille lifted her face, ghosts of tears that would have been streaming her skin. Tears stopped, held in by years of careful implementation. Of orchestrated hardening. Of Ana’s indifference, lingering in her veins. She was not quite sad, but not quite without feeling, either. Grieving, but with a certain unmistakable dullness--the edge taken off, made instead blunt.
Elena’s slender hands, startling in their firmness and fragility, were on Camille’s shoulders, a consolatory gesture; a transfer of strength. In the moment, Camille resented her own weakness—their weakness, as it was. She hated Ana, for extinguishing life as if it held no value. An infection, that disregard was. It spread like wildfire.
Passing, she was certain, was not Elena’s deserved fate. She had been supposed to go, all those years ago. She had been slated to burn with her family. She was a self-pitying orphan girl who took blades to her own flesh; who dared death but subsequently cowered from it. Weak. Groveling. Death was her master, and had been since two weeks before her seventh birthday.
Elena was no servant to it. Instead, even in her state, with the poor cards that had been dealt her, she had located and seized her own peace. Camille could feel it in her palms. She could feel it spread her own limbs, making her stronger.
In an effort to the tip the scales, to comfort the person who deserved sadness and anger and indignation, Camille lifted her left hand—unmarred, without the tremor—and placed it tenderly over Elena’s. A squeeze.
Her pain was their pain. It seemed appropriate that her demise would be theirs, as well.
“I know,” Camille breathed, voice nothing but a soft exhale. Beneath her chest, her heart was afire, aching. She knew the outcome, had long ago reconciled herself to it. It was confirmation of a life-long belief Camille held. Confirmation of a faceless evil, a malign entity whose only purpose was to desecrate the beautiful and innocent. It had taken her family, and now it would seize part of her. One of the better parts. Why not Ana? was all she could think. Why not me?
Every minute tense of Elena’s jaw—and ensuing pain in Camille’s own abdomen—was her sister’s toddler screams. (Had she actually screamed, or had Camille imagined that? Had she dreamt the shrieks into being, hallucinated their cries into memory?) Every sharp blow was the suffocating cloud of grey, scudding toward the starry sky. Every look forward was a look backward. In both directions, loneliness. Abandonment.
She could feel the ashes in her eyes, hovering in her lashes. The air smelled of meat; pork roasting on a spit.
Then again, with more gravity: “I know.”
When she spoke next, it was not clear if she was speaking about the tragedy that had befallen her family, or of her companion’s—no, part of her, her—deteriorating state.
At that moment, with Elena’s agony at her back and the smoke hovering in her lungs, they seemed one in the same.
“We’re in the same boat now. Take care not to tip it over. I can only save one of us from drowning.”
“We’re in a very gray area. Ethically. Legally. Which I’m okay with.”
“What a martyr craves more than anything is a sword to fall on.”
“Nobody can hear you. Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this.”
“I know all about hate. It starts in your gut, deep down here, where it stirs and churns. And then it rises.”
“You haven’t earned the right to be treated as an adult.”
“So you think when a woman asks to be treated with respect, that’s arrogance?”
“You don’t want to work anywhere you’re not willing to get fired from.”
“Treading water is the same as drowning, for people like you and me.”
“Love of family: most politicians are permanently chained to that slogan, family values. But when you cozy up to hookers and I find out, I will make that hypocrisy hurt.”
“He believes that if a fridge falls off a minivan, you better swerve out of its way. I believe it’s the fridge’s job to swerve out of mine.”
“Just making an observation.”
“Are you letting pride cloud your judgment?”
“I’m the only person who believes in you, but maybe that’s one too many.”
“Maybe they were right. Maybe you are worthless.”
“I promise you’ll never be bored.”
“He was the only one who understood me. He didn’t put me on some pedestal.”
“The most you’ll ever make of yourself is blowing men like me.”
“I can smell the cock on your breath from here.”
“He’d never go for you. You’re too intimidating.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time. I know when I’ve scraped all the shit off the shoe.”
“Do you get off on this or something?”
“There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth.”
“I have to put fear in other people.”
“I have to be ruthless, because failure is not an option.”
“I’m not going to lie. I despise children. There. I’ve said it.”
“Everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.”
“If I didn’t think you were such a liability to yourself, I might even like you.”
“I have zero tolerance for betrayal, which they will soon indelibly learn.”
“When did that happen?”
“You don’t understand. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
“I’ve known everything from the beginning.”
“I’m not here to punish you or to tell you to stop. I just thought I should open those big bright eyes.”
“I wanted to be significant.”
“I envy your free spirit, and I’m attracted to it, but not all of us have that luxury.”
“You had a choice. You chose not to be free.”
“Success is a mixture of preparation and luck.”
“Decisions based on emotion aren’t decisions, at all. They’re instincts. Which can be of value.”
“He doesn’t measure his wealth in private jets, but purchased souls.”
“Of all the things I hold in high regards, rules are not one of them.”
“You have a reputation for pragmatism.”
“You can’t purchase loyalty. Not the sort I have in mind. If you want to earn my loyalty, then you have to offer yours in return.”
“Now, the humane way to do it is to make it quick.”
“I took a chance, showed up at your house and placed myself at your feet.”
“I have been fearless. But, you know what? I’m really fucking scared this time.”
“Grief demands an answer, but sometimes there isn’t one.”
“If we never did anything we shouldn’t do, we’d never feel good about doing the things we should.”
“It’s personal for me now. I don’t have a choice, but you still do.”
“Stick a knife in its heart and put an apple in its mouth, I won’t shed a tear.”
“There is no sacred ground for the conquered.”
“You may have all the money, but I have all the men with guns.”
“You’re nothing. You’re a parasite.”
“I’m not who you want to be your poster girl.”
“I’ve never thought higher of her than I do at this moment.”
“Do you think I’m a hypocrite? Well, you should. I wouldn’t disagree with you.”
“I ain’t one for lookin’ back. Eyes ahead.”
“From the lion’s den to a pack of wolves. When you’re fresh meat, kill and throw them something fresher.”
“I don’t know whether to be proud or terrified. Perhaps both.”
“Seduce him, give him your heart. Cut it out and put it in his fucking hands.”
“I’ve done what I have to do. Now you do what you have to do.”
“I said I would take the fall for you. And now I give you the means to make that happen.”
“Power is better than money, for as long as it lasts. But it never lasts.”
“What is wrong with you?! Why can’t you just leave me be?!”
“All you have ever done is fuck up my life!”
“Such a waste of talent.”
“Discuss is probably the wrong word. They talk while I sit quietly and imagine their lightly salted faces frying in a skillet.”
“Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after ten years, power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who does not see the difference.”
“Moments like this require someone who will act. To do the unpleasant thing. The necessary thing.”
“There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong. Or useless pain. The sort of pain that’s only suffering.”
Grief is a wild animal howling inside of you. Can you
hear it trying to tear its way out?
Feel its teeth scratching across the
inside of your ribs. You
try to tame this beast, feed it
raw meat everyday. It soon grows
bored and eats you
instead. It is dark in this belly. Empty
and sharp. You are the only thing
in it. This is the way it must
be. This is the way it will
always be.
The day had been full of long, hard work, her finger nails were caked with dirt, hair tangled, pulled up into a messy bun, and her muscles ached but Elena still made her way out into the field next to her family’s barn. Her brown eyes were turned skyward as she picked out the summertime constellations, her nightly routine. But frankly, Elena was taking advantage of the fact she didn’t feel any pain today, allowing herself to lay in the field, limbs stretched and back arched as she wound down from the day.
Elena wasn’t sure how long she laid there, but it was peaceful so she didn’t mind. Instead she was happy to see two shooting stars streak across the night sky. It was shortly after the second shooting star faded out of existence that there was rustling to her left. Elena knew it wasn’t the breeze rustling the long blades of grass, no that rustling was distinctly human. Slowly sitting up, Elena turned towards the familiar stranger and shot them a small smile. “It’s not nice to trespass onto someone’s property, but I can see the appeal. This is definitely the best spot to go star gazing”
Grass has replaced shampooed carpeting. Sky had taken place of-white ceiling, motel sprinklers, ceiling fan. Around her, a shrouding blanket of dark, dotted with stars. Seclusion. Serenity. Peace. Despite all that had occurred, Camille felt the calm saturate her limbs. She stood wordlessly behind the figure for a few moments, gaping as the breeze tickled her neck. It was by the far the best place she had found herself unwittingly transported to.
As the person turned around, Camille marveled. She knew her face, and she knew her tenderness, and suddenly, as she looked upon her, she knew the pain she felt welling in her abdomen was hers. Weariness in her eyes, Camille softened. She couldn’t help the smile that turned up the edges of her lips. Minute as it was, it was the first in a while.
She doesn’t look like anybody you’d find around here, and doesn’t strike him as a tourist. For starters, she’s speaking perfect Greek, and also no tourist could have just wandered into his kitchen from the street. She would’ve been thrown out by now.
So Cristobal is just working off of the assumption that she’s really quite brand new, and has just moved here from some other country after learning the language and – this is her first day. Nobody else is looking at her like she doesn’t belong here, after all. As a matter of fact, they’re ignoring her.
If nobody else is going to convince her to get her ass into gear, then he supposes that he’ll have to be the one to do it.
“Okay, really. Stop fucking around. I don’t care if you need to be institutionalized, so long as you go ahead and help me with these dishes. If I’m late, I’m fucked. So stop standing there! Come on!”
He earns a few looks, but he pays them no mind. People often think he’s too intense when it comes to his work. He’s used to it.
Mouthy son of a bitch, Camille thinks idly. With his yelling, the back of her eyes stings. She has always been an angry crier, prone to bursting into tears when infuriated. Gin sometimes made her weepy, which was why she usually avoided it. Desperate times.
Even in all her confusion, and mind addled by alcohol, she cannot skip her police display. Officers of the law didn’t take shit. She had learned that early.
“Sir, do not raise your voice to me.”
As quickly as her bravado came, it disappears. Confused and stubborn, Camille extends her arms around her and pulls her shoulders up in a gesture of bewilderment.
“And I’m telling you I don’t know where ‘here’ is.” Her voice is pleading, but also a bit indignant. Looking at him, she gets an odd sensation of familiarity, though she cannot place it. As he thrusts his hand into the dishwater, she can feel the hot liquid lapping at her wrist. Self-consciously, she pulls her shirtsleeve down again.
There’s too much noise and hustle and intensity for Cristobal to realize there’s something off at first. He’s just doing his job, as always, in a timely manner to the best of his ability. There’s a lot of multitasking involved, a lot of maneuvering, and a lot of having to pay attention to what you’re doing. So of course he doesn’t give the stranger in the middle of the kitchen the time of day, because he needs to impress, needs to be the best he can possibly be so that he can get that promotion he deserves.
He only pays the stranger any mind when they get in his way, stopping him from crossing to another counter as quickly as he’d like to, but even then he doesn’t look at them properly. It’s not until he needs some help that he even thinks to speak to them, requesting that they aid him with these plates so that he can get them to the servers.
It’s a request that, apparently, goes ignored. That’s what makes him stop in front of them, brow furrowed, and he supposes that they must just be new here or something.
“Are you listening to me? Stop standing there, we’re busy–! Are you deaf, as well as stupid?”
Camille stays entirely still, as if even shifting a muscle would bring the world crashing at her feet. She can only stand, rooted to her spot, as she watches the man across from her work. Paying attention to all the details of the room; the number of burners, the plates in stacks, the wine glasses hanging delicately. It’s a habit she has. Catalogue everything meticulously. She had done so first with the person in the car. Then, the bathroom scene-change. Now, she is standing in an entirely foreign place, where just moments ago she had been lurking in front of her evidence wall, making calls to nearby departments. The phone is still clenched in her fist.
When he stops working and addresses her, she squeezes her fingers. An inhale, and she can swear she smells him: cloves, dill, a refreshing air of mint. Her mouth waters. Never before could she identify what cloves were, let alone what they smelled like. Somehow, it feels instinctual. Familiar.
“I--” she stutters for words, breath hitching in her throat. What to say? I don’t even know where there is? Instead, she squeezes her eyes shut, reopens them. “I’m not deaf or stupid, but I’m certainly damned crazy.”
The click of Faye’s black heels resounded through the vast hallways of her modern Los Angeles home. From the impeccably glossed white tile covering the floors to the stark walks only occasionally adorned with bright colored prints, the house couldn’t be described as anything short of decadent. Had it been wholly up to her, the house would be short 13,000 square feet but her manager had explained that her house was part of her image and her goal was to be extravagant. Reaching the glossy black door leading to the bathroom, the brunette was about to open the door when she felt a sharp pain shoot through up her leg originating in her calf. Hissing out a curse, she pushed through the door but froze upon realizing that she was no longer in her bathroom and was instead facing a woman in a bathtub.
She stood there in silence for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what she was seeing, before finally speaking up upon spotting the red liquid on the woman’s leg. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to– who are you?”
Camille eyed the door as it opened and emitted a bellow. “Jesus!” A convenient exclamation for a non-believer. Hurriedly, Camille pulled the towel off the wrack hanging just over her head, throwing it over her body protectively. She cowered against the tiled wall, hair still dripping down her back. “I’m the occupant of this room. Who the hell are you?” Leave it to the backwater motel to hand someone a key to the same room.
“God dammit,” she swore, then she eyed the woman, her voice rising. “Not your fault, but you’re in the wrong---” Suddenly, she looked about. What she saw made her freeze. Far too nice for the motel bathroom, with granite and shimmering chrome and spotless mirrors. Her voice was hushed, stunned.
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