Diminished

WEEK 2

I opened the rusty door of the old warehouse building next to the sea. It wasn’t a large or looming space, maybe big enough for a prop plane or two. First poking their heads out the door to make sense of their newfound freedom, a few seagulls flew outside into the salty morning air. Once they gained height they stretched their wings and glided for a while before propelling themselves back up again.

I scanned the place. The only light came from the door I’d just opened. The rhombus of sunlight illuminated a dirty concrete floor streaked with black marks. Tire marks? Oil? I couldn’t be sure. I knew I was alone. After all, I found myself trusting the voice on the phone. And the voice had told me I’d be alone and undisturbed.

“The barista will now give you an envelope,” the distorted voice said. At the same moment the barista slid a white envelope over the counter to me. “Within is an address. You’ll be there tomorrow morning. You’ll be alone and undisturbed. It’s a bit of a walk from your building. But you’ll be there. That will be all for now.”

There was a click and the voice was gone.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“I just do what I’m told,” he said. He pulled out a rag and started to wipe down the countertop.

I felt around the sides of the wall for a lightswitch and came up empty. I switched on the flashlight on my cell. The warehouse was bare save for a few sturdy metal tables and tool benches next to the back wall. There were some loose wires strewn about the floor. I didn’t check to see if they were connected to anything.

The fluorescent light bar over my head flickered to life with a soft buzzing sound. I turned quickly. What triggered it? Was someone here? With the extra light I got a better look around. No. It didn’t look like anyone had been here for some time. The warehouse was probably used for something mechanical in nature at one point, now it wasn’t used for much of anything.

I walked over to one of the tool benches. Most of the slots were empty and a few of the drawers were completely missing. Atop its stainless steel workspace was a manilla envelope. I undid the clasp and opened it up.

Inside was a series of photos and a typed note with no heading and narrow margins. There was some sort of knitted fabric at the bottom of the envelope. The photos were of a grimy brick building with a faded black and white sign atop it that looked like it read “Credit/Loans/Bail Bonds.” The windows were frosted white so I couldn’t see inside.

The note read ‘BELOW IS THE ADDRESS TO THE BUILDING PICTURED. YOU’LL DO AS FOLLOWS BY THE END OF THE DAY. YOU’LL THEN AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.’

I always thought using all capital letters was tacky.

I looked at the address. I recognized the street. I began to read the detailed list of directions.

My destination was on the corner of the same block as my sandwich spot. It was just as pictured. I wondered if it was even open. I took a deep breath to calm myself.

I put on the black ski mask and head inside.

The whole thing was one open office space with a door to a backroom on the wall opposite me. There were cubicles to both sides where I saw four people sorting through paperwork, and one working with what looked to be a client. There was a reception desk with an old woman with white hair behind it. She was heavy-set and had only applied mascara to one eye.

When I entered, a few of the employees at cubicles as well as the receptionist looked at me hesitantly.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked with a cautious and raspy voice.

“I’m looking for a loan. A loan today,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

“What’s your name?”

“Gerald,” I said, “Gerald Stevens.”

The receptionist wrote it down. One of the employees who’d been sitting in the back right of the room approached her and whispered something into her ear. It was a young woman with blonde hair and green eyes wearing a burnt orange cardigan and cream pants. She looked at me.

“You said… Gerald Stevens?”

“I did.”

“Come with me please.”

She led me through the door to the back room. It was an office. I assumed there was a desk below a mess of papers. There was also a cheap plastic office chair.

She shut the door behind me and put her hands on her hips. Was there panic in her eyes?

“Who are you really?”

“I won’t tell you that.”

“Who the fuck put you up to this? Was it Adam? Louis?” she asked frantically.

“You know who put me up to this. You know exactly why I’m here.”

She shook her head, eyes toward the dirty purple carpet at our feet.

“I just… I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

I was silent. She looked at me with pleading eyes.

“Is there any other way?”

I hadn’t been given a scripted response for the question. I stayed quiet.

“Fuck, why now… why now?” she said, tearing up. “Ok, alright, I’ll do it. I’ll do it right now! I promised. I promised and now it’s time.”

She walked behind the desk and opened a drawer. From within she retrieved a pistol, a revolver with a snub nose. She looked at me with a terrible grin, sadness in her swimming green eyes, and raised it to her temple. She pulled back the hammer.

“Tell him that despite all of this, I still love that motherfucker.”

I rushed over to her, but she was across the room-

BANG! She was gone. The carpet muffled the thud of her limp body slumping to the floor.

What… what the fuck is going on? I felt the warmth of tears welling up in my eyes. My breathing was unsteady and I had to wipe my cheeks beneath the mask. I heard the door open behind me. It was the old receptionist. She was panting, she must have ran across the room.

“What’s going on-” she saw the corpse making a mess of the carpet.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” she turned back to the other room. “She’s dead! Crystal’s dead!”

She was. My hands and wrists and eyes and lungs were shaking. I looked at the body.

The blood had leaked directly into the carpet and the resulting pool had colored the back of the woman’s cardigan a deep red. There were fragments of something white and sharp as well as bits of something pink and gelatinous atop the pool. Her emerald eyes were open and looking in different directions. She was smiling and her teeth were stained red.

There were two more people in the back room now. The receptionist was crying and the eye with mascara was streaking black. The walls were closing in and the ceiling wasn’t as tall as it was before. I needed air so I forced my way out into the larger room and grabbed at my throat and felt the rough knit of the ski mask and thought of the husky watching me as I left the house for the last time…

I sprinted out of the place and found myself running back to my apartment complex.

When I burst through the lobby door I was sweaty and panting. I realized I’d yet to take off the ski mask so I pulled it off my flushed face. My hair stuck to itself and to my forehead. The black t-shirt I’d worn had a crescent sweat stain starting from my neck.

Richard wasn’t there. I saw an empty glass bottle on his desk and thought of the liquor store. I rushed up the stairs and threw the door to my room open then slammed it shut. I paced back and forth.

Why? Why this? I couldn’t have known… the voice didn’t tell me. I just did what I was told. Yes, I couldn’t have possibly guessed that outcome. But still, I accepted that I wouldn’t know the consequences and carried that goddamn plan out anyway! What am I? I’m scum. Maybe that’s why. That’s why-

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“W-who is it?” I said.

“It’s me,” Linda said.

Linda. A streak of heartache found its way through my disorientation. Then, I was confused and shaken again but the heartache was gone.

“I can’t talk right now.” I wondered how I sounded to her. Crazy? Normal? I’d lost my ability to observe myself.

“I just feel bad about cancelling yesterday. I was really looking forward to-”

“Linda I’m sorry but I’m busy.”

“Could you just open the door? I’m trying to apologize here and…” she said, voice becoming small. “Never mind. I’ll see you when I see you.”

I heard her footsteps start back toward her room. Should I call her back? Should I explain that I was a murderer and I was being blackmailed and that I felt like a puppet on a stage I couldn’t see?

No.

I sat on my couch and thought about my breathing. Slowly, with great effort, I was able to bring it back to what I thought of as normal. Still, my skin felt like it was constantly twitching beneath the veneer of sweat. The momentary darkness of each blink reminded me that the woman’s eyes were green and pointed in different directions as she lay on that carpet.

I turned the shower handle and climbed into the bathtub. Then one by one I stripped off my clothes and threw them outside the tub until it was just me and that woman in the orange cardigan and her skull fragments.

I stayed in the tub for an hour, maybe more. My fingers were badly pruned. I dried off and put on a faded old college t-shirt and sweatpants. Then I sat on my couch and fidgeted with my pruned hands. I understood my life was going to go on. I’d killed a woman. But my heart was still beating. And no one knew it was me. So the question became: what now?

A knock on my door. The same voice.

“Look, I’ve got wine. It’s not the greatest, but it’s better than something you can get at the liquor store on the corner. So if you’d just open up-”

I opened the door. Wine sounded like something I really needed right now.

Linda poured the last of the bottle into my glass. I was still shocked and shaken but also warmer than before. Wine hadn’t ever failed me.

I had a blanket over my shoulders and we were sitting on the floor. I took the glass from her and set it next to me.

“So I told her to fuck off, you know? I’ve got three apartments available and fifteen idiots who want them. If she wants it, fine, but it’s a kombucha free zone. Letting someone make that shit in their apartment is the kind of mistake I only make once. The smell, oh god, the smell!”

I forced what I could of a smile and studied the rings my glass had made on the coffee table. Ikea hadn’t had coasters…

“So what’s going on?” Linda said, her voice becoming serious. “I can talk as much as anyone, especially with this,” she said as she lifted the empty bottle, “but normally you’ve got something to say. Now you’re just sitting here like… like a war vet, or something.”

I wrapped my hands around my knees and pulled them close to my chest.

“I’ve had a rough day, Linda. A really, really rough day.”

“Mmm. Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think I could.”

“Why not?”

“Because things would be different after that.”

“And why is that so bad?”

“Because…” I trailed off. “I guess I’m not sure.”

I could feel her eyes studying me.

“Does it have to do with whatever happened back home?”
“I suppose.”

“Anything to do with that?” she said, motioning to the imposing crate in the corner of the room.

“No, nothing to do with that.”

“What’s inside?”

“My bass. My upright bass.”

“Someone shipped it to you? Must have been expensive, with how big it is and all.”

“You’re right.”

“Would you play it for me?”

I shook my head. “It’s still in the cellophane.”

She frowned slightly. “So it is.”

The stripes of my carpet seemed to spread like a disease. They striped the rest of my floor and my wall and once they’d done that they started to become even uglier. Each stripe its own species of mold…

She left around a half hour later. For most of it we’d sat there in silence. Why had she stayed for so long? What had she been waiting for? I wondered what she wanted from me. Plus, after what had happened with Eli…

My head swirled. From the wine but also from Linda. It had been her idea to sit on the floor. She’d draped the blanket over my shoulders. Why? I felt like I’d lost the ability to piece causal chains together. There was action and reaction and nothing but infinite void in between.

I was still on the floor, hands around my knees with the blanket over my back. I looked at the wine glass she’d left on the coffee table. On the stem I saw a slight, barely noticeable Ikea logo. There was a hint of red at the bottom of the glass. So little that the incandescent ceiling light shone right through it.

I imagined the wine staining a burnt orange cardigan and wept terribly.