Page 26 of Odder Still
I, in turn, can only watch you unfold,
caught
so close to your own magnitude
that you no longer see the size of your soul,
only the spot
where the meteors hit the avenue.
I STARE AT THE whiskey bottle. It stares back, unblinking. I take a swig of it. The alcohol burns like fire on its way down, scorching out the monochromic emotions, turning them to soot in the back of my throat. I sip a few more times to wash even that away and traipse over to my shoes. The rim of grime they leave sticks to the floor even after I wipe at it with my sock, then scrub with my fingernails. “Fuck.”
‘Oh, good fuck,’the parasite replies, drawing up Tavish’s words from way back on the beach.
That’s not your voice, I hiss in my head.
The parasite remains silent, but it simmers, a sort of frustrated confusion slipping off it, turning me antsy and annoyed. I move to the bathroom. Its counters sweep in an arc around a giant tub, a single stream of light shooting from a long, high window with a ridge above it.
I hop the tub’s rim and pull myself onto the windowsill, perching there as though between two mangrove branches. The walls of the Findlay estate creep in at the view’s edges, but beyond them lies a clear ocean, its blue so deep and full that the sun must have finally peeked out through the grey gloom. In the distance, flashes of color gleam off a black-and-white body. The orca, still stalking me. Or stalking the parasite, more likely.
I nudge the creature so hard I can feel the poke through my skin.Can’t you tell it to leave?
It turns my own words from the day before against me:‘You can do this.’
I snort.And let you sink deeper into my nervous system?
‘There. Not so cold anymore, are you?’This time it’s my mother’s voice, so soft and distant it could be the wind.
I leap down from the window and turn on the bath, twisting the hot as far as possible.One kind deed doesn’t make up for murder.I don’t know which murder I mean: the ones the parasite committed by my hands, or the one it’s committing with each of my nerves it tugs into itself.
The parasite says nothing, but its emotions continue to drip through me, sweltering beneath my skin. I tap my foot against the tub and take a swig of the whiskey. My fingers yearn to flip something between them. I turn a few circles, but Tavish’s counters are regrettably free of small knickknacks.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I don’t look tired—the reflected man who pulls back his lips and lifts one brow to a smirk seems like he could conquer an entire universe. It scares me. But the thought of my exhaustion showing scares me almost as much, the idea that people could see right through my face into my all too-empty, listless being.
I strip off my outfit, leaving only the three bronze, fang-like rings in my right earlobe, and drop the clothes into a dusty pile. The creases between my bare muscles are too gangly, a stark reminder that I should be eating something that doesn’t come in liquid form. But the growl of my stomach cries only for more alcohol, for how much faster and stronger that alcohol will hit when there are no remnants of a meal obstructing it.
I can already sense it buzzing along my edges, fizzing with the joy of a life I barely remember. It feels like being me again, as though the world has turned from the stench of stagnant water to the overwhelming blaze of a hundred thousand falling flowers. I barely notice the bite of the bath’s heat as I slip into it.
Tavish’s soap smells of honey, and I carefully lather it into my braids before cleaning the dirt off my skin. My bath turns a gruesome shade of tan. I flush it all down the drain and fill it back up with another round of nearly boiling water, lying there in the steam and wishing it were mist until the vapors die and the room goes cold.
Climbing out is so much harder than climbing in. A long sip of the whiskey helps, and the plush towels stop my regrets from piling. I slip into an equally luxurious robe of blue and white that only covers me to my knees. After a moment of hesitation, I put my fishnet gloves back on. The rest of my worn outfit can be washed, or perhaps burned, but these I can’t part with.
The whiskey bottle feels lighter now, its glass expanse a quarter empty and my arms drifting on stardust. I swirl it around once. Cups. Tavish said something about cups.
I search back through my recent memories, finding them blurred and brightened beyond use. The parasite steps in, but it moves sluggishly, pulling up the same discombobulated recollections paired with a soft laughter that might have been my own as a child. It clutches a moment just hard enough for me to make out the worddresser.
Dresser, dresser, dresser. I open the drawers one by one. Socks, silken pajamas, an assortment of scarves and ties, all arranged by color between perfectly spaced separators, then a collection of desk supplies, a bundle of unused notebooks, and a letter opener. I pause at the last drawer. A case sits at its center, displaying a knife so ornate it looks cumbersome. Five glasses make a neat row to its right.
“Success!” I fill one, set it aside for Tavish—it seems he should have been back by now—and return to the bottle despite the parasite’s disdain.You don’t want me to feel good, is that it?
It seethes in silence and pokes at the foodless state of my stomach. I ignore it.
The line of the whiskey sinks down in chaotic intervals, as though the time has been pulled away from me with each small slip of the sun. The hazy light greys further, letting the glow of the ignation-fueled tech around the room come into better focus. Where is Tavish?
In his absence, my hands search for something to do, tossing about each paperweight in Tavish’s extensive collection before growing bored of them, moving on to the next thing. The room seems to grow smaller with each turn I take. Where thefuckis Tavish?
Something crashes down the hall, loud enough to penetrate both the thick walls and the haze of my drink. A scream follows it. My heart thuds a little too loud. If someone could kill one Findlay, then they could kill more. And Tavish should be back by now.
