22:00 IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY. the sky is tense and oppressive– the night leaden with the impending threat of a heaving storm, the kind where its shoulders shake, loud cries that hit the pavement like a car crash. it hasn’t rained in weeks. the blood left to scab on the wall comes away in days- dried flakes.
my shadow slices into the doorway with a knife’s edge, darkening the threshold of the once- was townhouse, ducking beneath the yellow tape ( i am, i suppose, haloed for a few moments by the streetlight. a flickering thing, dimming with every passing minute, smothered by the hazard lights of cop cars ). nature has half- eaten it by tonight: a tree grows into the left window, the floorboards moaning and pleading like a confessional under all the boots and red- stained sneakers marching in and out⸻ it’s almost swallowed the body that lay, purpling and bulbous and greedy, leaking into the grain. with the arterial spray decorating the wallpaper like forgotten graffiti, the flash of an officer’s camera hits me unguarded, and i recoil all the same, retreating to the quietude of the cracked tiles and rust of the kitchen. the wind blows through the busted windows, rustling the tarp as i enter and another cop exits.
we are two mercurial bodies, but i’d be lying if i said i was surprised to meet him here, that @lockvale. the ends of my fingers– bit down to a deep rawness– started aching the moment i stepped foot in this shithole. “ nothing human lives here, ” he mutters as i stuff my hands into my back pockets, just brushing the holster on my thigh. nothing more than a reminder that it’s there.
“ maybe once. maybe a long while ago. if you’re thinking an EO did it, what does that make you?” less than human, or more than? i cross the breath lingering between us; i am unimpressed by the size of his gravity. and then, “ what does that make me? .. what are you doing here, victor? ”
