Page 43 of A Dance With Devils
Capitalist.
Global.
Oil?
Malachi.
I look up and around the room again, unsure what to think about any of that or the fact that it’s making me feel so freaked out. I don’t even know why it’s relevant to me at all, but it is. I flick my gaze back to the picture again. He looks so like him. Everything. Eyes, frown, jaw line and mouth. And it still seems so sad. All of it. I can feel it sweeping over me, burying a sorrowful despondency in the pit of my stomach for no reason at all.
It must be his grandfather, surely. And maybe these were his rooms years ago? I snatch glances, looking for other signs of family pictures – nothing. Other than the old dusty antiques dotted around. Binoculars. A quilled pen in its ink pot. A pair of men’s leather gloves - there’s no other images in frames or family portraits.
Either way, it all feels private suddenly, like I shouldn’t be here.
Or maybe I should and it’s just missing clarity.
And oh shit, this coat?
I scramble out of the chair, perplexed by this feeling of intrusion that’s crawling all over my skin, and gently lay the heavy wool coat back where it came from. I shouldn’t be here. I’ll leave. Find another room to hide in or maybe keep searching for a phone that actually works. I’m stalled, though, my eyes staring at the coat and the paper and everything I should be moving away from. It’s so much like him, like someone dressed him in old fashioned clothes and took a photo. And I’m feeling odd now, like I’m swirling and spinning regardless of being still, as I stare into his eyes.
That’s freaky. Wrong. All of this is. The space, the place around it.
The sadness and confusion.
And clothes would be good. Handy given my near fucking naked form under this robe.
Where did the dress go?
The window rattles, sudden squalls and gales outside making me jump, as a cold shiver shoots by my feet. My hands pull the robe tighter, unsure what I’m tightening it for. Freaks and freaky. I don’t even know what time of day it is, or what day it is either for that matter. How long have I been here? No clocks on walls anywhere, no sense of light or dark. I could have been sleeping for hours or minutes for all I know. It’s been dark, or nearly dark, the whole time. I think it has anyway. But then time was blurred before I slept, some part of it lost as if I wasn’t there with it.
A fear inches through me from somewhere. A real and desperate fear that wasn’t with me when I woke, and I turn to run from it. It’s only after a few strides that I see the real version of the photo standing in the door, his hands holding the door frame above his head just like he was doing in my house. He’s got a shirt draped on him now, the buttons undone and the sleeves hanging low back to his elbows. It’s then that I notice the bandages around his wrists.
I stop, gawp, move my mouth in the hope that some kind of apology comes out of it, but the memories are clouding rational thought. It’s all I can see in my mind. Bandages and blood. I don’t even know why, and even though this room wasn’t for me and I shouldn’t have been in it, I can’t see through the fog that’s building. “I’m … I was-“
“You were what?” he asks, lowly.
“I was … Sleeping?”
He’s so still. No movement at all, as he blocks my exit and scours his gaze over me.
His lips quirk, giving me some reprieve from the angry glower. “Sleeping?”
“Trying.”
And none of that matters now anyway. Only blood and bandages. I stare at them on his wrists, remembering my own hands trying to douse the flow, trying to bring her back.
“And that involved you reading a paper?”
“No. Yes.”
Quiet for a minute, just him looking me over and me wondering why those bandages are even there. Worn out features stain his face, dark circles under his eyes making them look even darker than normal. “You shouldn’t be here,” he murmurs.
“I know. I was just leaving and then here you are and …” I’m rambling? That’s as freaky as all this around me. “I’m sorry. I apologise.”
“What for?”
“Being here.”
“Did I tell you you couldn’t be here?”
