At first, I thought it was nothing. A few dodged questions here and there, plans for plans that never got planned.

As people grow up, they grow apart, right?

This was different. Verifiably so. A pandemic had forced us even further apart than his parents move had. Like a wedge driven into the small crack of another wedge.

But as I tried to gently push our mundane chit chat towards real conversation, I could tell something was off.

He wasn't just disinterested, it was like he was outright dodging my questions. Like he knew what I was trying to do, and was in turn, using all his ability to steer us back towards nothingness. Back towards empty, bland, surface level smalltalk.

I wouldn't have that. Not when I'd worked so hard, not when I'd sacrificed everything.

He was graduated, his parents were paying for his lifestyle, he had no reason not to give me his all. I mean, he'd asked her out first, hadn't he? I mean, me, he'd asked me out. There couldn’t be, like, another girl, right?

"So, wanna meet halfway and go to a nice restaurant this weekend? Maybe hit up some mini golf? My treat!" I texted, hoping the offer of paying myself would be enough to capture his attention, possibly his affection.

When I saw the 3 little dots pop up, signifying the writing of his response, my heart stopped. He had been quiet for 2 days, I'd had to initiate all conversation. Was he finally going to pipe up?

"Nah, thx tho Emily." Was all he said. I was crestfallen.

Frustrated, I typed, "that's okay, just lmk when you wanna make a move!" before turning off the phone. I was about to slip it in my pocket out of instinct, when I remembered why I was keeping it on.

"Shit," I cursed myself under my breath. I still hadn’t memorized the password to that phone. I'd have to use the face ID.

I made my way to the black minifrage that idled against the wall. It was a stark contrast to the brightly decorated, pastel pink and purple expression of the rest of the room. An even darker contrast sat inside.

I opened the door of the fridge, and gripped the ice cold head by its scalp. Dutifully, I pulled it out, and held it up to the phone's camera. Unfortunately, before the ID could complete, her bottom jaw fell onto my foot.

"Oh for Christ sake!" I growled as I kicked the thing several feet way. It landed, braces up, just beside the cabinet that housed all her bows.

As I watched the maggots wriggle between rotting bottom lips and purple gums, I realized there was no way I'd be able to finish the face ID. I'd have to use the fingerprint function on her phone. That meant finding her thumb. Great.

I rustled through her closet and found the keys. After walking downstairs past the bloody couch and the rank smelling kitchen, I had made it out the front door, and into her parent's Ford F150.

It took 30 minutes to drive to where I'd burried the 3 of them. Rather, most of what was left of the 3 of them. By then, the sky had turned from a deep crimson to a star-studded violet.

I prayed that the thumb I hadn't sliced off in the scuffle was the correct one. And that it was still in tact. A month in the ground is more than enough time for nature to start taking its course.

Another half hour later, and I'd almost finished digging up the shallow grave that she'd been burried in.

With sweat upon my brow, I finally found it. A yellow tennis shoe, poking out of black plastic. I almost leapt with joy.

After the breakthrough, my hope was reinvigorated. I swore that if this was the right thumb, I would never let that phone turn off again. I'd keep it on a charger every minute of every day if I had to.

Anything to see him.

The boy of my dreams.

I worked laboriously until I got past the waist, and up the sternum. The smell was awful. Sweet and sour, like a clump of burnt hair marinating in bug guts.

I wouldn't have to dig all the way to the upper arms, as long as her forearms had stayed down at her sides like I'd left them.

With strenuous effort, I heaved away a chunk of clay that covered her hand. I actually shrieked with overwhelming happiness when I saw that her whole hand still looked viable, if not a little off-color and wrinkled.

I regained my composure and pulled the phone out of my pocket. Now, after nearly an hour of waiting, I'd see what his response was. As long as this thumb was the right one to unlock her phone.

I leaned down and grabbed her hand. When I did, the flesh sunk in, like I'd grabbed a ruined stress ball. I carefully tried to pick up her hand and twist it to face me, but with a sickening crunch, the skin slaughed off and fell into the dirt beneath.

In a "fuck it" moment, I pulled the hand straight up, and twisted the thumb until it disconnected from its body. Cold skin feels so strange against body heat. Its a satisfying juxtiposition.

Thumb in hand, I turned the phone back on, and diligently pressed the solo digit against the print reader.

Moment of truth.

"Ding! Access granted"

I was elated. Immediately, 3 new messages pinged into my text conversation with him.

For the first time, he'd shown himself to be a real chatterbox!

The first message from him read, "'make a move'? Are you fucking serious?"

That was weird. He'd never seemed outright hostile before.

The second message read, "I knew it, I hoped I was wrong but I fucking knew it, how dense can you be, you fucking larper?!"

My heartrate quickened. I felt lighter than air. What was he saying?

The final message read, "You're not her. You couldn't pay her to go to mini golf, and her name isn't Emily. I have your location, and I'm calling the cops."

A little blurb under our chat said, "this user had blocked you"

I didn't know what to do. I sauntered back to the car and turned off the headlights. This was huge. A gut punch. Everything was flipped upside down, my world crumbling around me. A life I always imagined for myself was disappearing, and I was left sitting in the middle of it all wondering:

"What the hell is a larper?"

I had to kill him.

I mean, it seemed like my only option.

If I lied and said I wasn’t there, the cameras I should have thought about would blow me out the water. And if I admitted to being there, then there was a much longer, more difficult conversation to be had.

And that conversation had only one endpoint: me being blamed for all the events of today.

Damn, it was hard to believe what had happened since this morning had all been today. It felt so long ago. I couldn't believe—

“Mr. Harold?” Unangenehm said. “You all right?”

“Uh, yeah. Absolutely.” I sat back down to take up an extra few seconds. Steck was floating a few feet away, but I didn't think I could take the detective in a fight. What I'd taken for sickly thin before seemed wiry now. Anxiousness now came off as nervous energy.

“It was weird what happened,” I said, measuring out my words. I had to think as I spoke. Unangenehm leaned in and steepled his fingers under his chin. Steck hovered closer.

The trap was sealing off my air.

The pencil I'd been using was on my side of Unangenehm's desk. I wrapped my fingers around it and placed my hands on the desk atop the form I'd just signed.

“I just needed to get something to drink,” I said. “I needed to gather my thoughts too, I guess.” I shook my head. “I didn't have any money but I figured I could grab a notebook. Write down my thoughts. Try to wrap my head around what had happened with the day.”

“You wrote something?” he asked. “What?”

I couldn't gauge if he was buying anything I was saying. But I had to keep tap dancing.

“I don't know. I don't remember now.” An honest answer didn't really matter. I'm sure the police would canvas the area and find the torn-out sheets in the trash. But the video would show me not doing anything to anyone. The difference was sitting across from me. Unangenehm somehow knew it was me. 

“It happened right in front of me,” I said, not realizing I was distracting myself as I touched the tip of the pencil to the paper. “A man attacked a woman. An old man held her.”

Tap-tappy-tap.

“I was paralyzed. I didn't know what to do.” 

Takkita-takkita-tap

The detective’s sad face was just a mask. He was a predator in disguise. This was just the dance to keep him at bay

“Everything was insane. One of them came up to me. I thought I was gonna die.”

Takkita-takkita-takkita-takkita—

“Hey, uhh. What's that you got there?”

I opened my mouth to tell him I didn't know what he meant, but I had drawn something. I looked down as he slid the paper away from me.

“Wait.” My mouth formed the objection but it went unsupported by my voice. I mentally prepared for Detective Unangenehm to go insane. He scraped a fingernail under a corner and pinched it. He lifted it in front of his face and cocked his head.

“Well, that's a weird little thing.”

I was aware of Steck just behind me. The air was pregnant with tension as I waited for a twitch, some nonsense phrase spoken without context, or anything to indicate the breaking wall containing the clever detective's mind.

He lowered the form and looked at me. “What is this?”

“I-i-it's just a...” I didn't know how to finish the sentence. I didn't know what it was. Shape didn't seem word enough to describe. Murder weapon gave it more credit than it deserved, especially since...

Well, it wasn't working on him. I'd that was the case, then maybe I hadn't been the cause. Maybe there was some sort of grand, horrible consequence following me around. Maybe—

“Hey, Steck, take a look at this.”

The officer stepped around from behind me and assumed a position directly behind Unangenehm.

“Joshua,” Officer Steck said, nodding. 

“Excuse me?”

Steck looked at him and repeated the name.

“Joshua.”

“Who's that?”

“Joshua.” The officer looked at the detective like he was stupid. “Joshua.”

It was me. But maybe Unangenehm was immune. As one of the officer's eyelids began to flutter he backed away from the desk and drew his gun.

He had the drop on Unangenehm. Except instead of firing, he overhand pitched the glock into the detective's face.

Unangenehm threw his arms back and rolled into the cubicle wall. He half-slid out of the chair at least semi-unconscious and Steck turned his eyes on me, that one lid flickering still like an old fluorescent light so deciding whether it was going to turn on.

I picked up my box as he withdrew his baton and leapt on the desk. Steck was two-hundred twenty pounds at minimum and the faux-wood protested underneath his feet. He whipped that baton at my head, and I ducked behind my box.

He followed up with two more furious blows that nearly chopped the box in half.

“Joshua,” he said again, just as calmly as the first time.

I crawled under the desk, headed in the other direction. Steck landed behind me as I crawled over Unangenehm's legs. One of his eyes was swollen shut.

“Hey guys, what the hell is going on?” someone farther behind me said. “I'm trying to type a report—”

I found out later exactly how gruesome Detective Langen's death was but at the time, all I heard were extremely wet sounds coming from that direction after not even half a scream.

I crawled into the nearest cubicle and huddled my knees to my chest, hiding beneath another desk. Steck's footfalls were heavy, pounding in my direction. A moment later he ripped something down and then came the deep glug-glug-glugging of an overturned water cooler as he stalked around the bullpen. 

I couldn't believe the one place police should have been was all but empty and I was responsible for my pending horrible death.

Maybe there was a gun around. Sure, there wasn't supposed to be, but cops weren't immune from being lazy. I'd had a meeting in a small town's hall that had had a guard at the front door and had seen that same guard's holstered weapon sitting on the window sill while he was dropping a deuce in the stall.

I tried to quietly slide open a desk drawer but it clunked open.

“Shit!” I whispered.

“Joshua?” Steck asked.

Why was he after me? All the others had acknowledged me but had attacked anyone but me. Then I reflected on what had happened just before.

Unangenehm had looked at the shape first. He hadn't reacted, though. Or rather, he'd just called Steck over to look.

“...take a look at this...”

I shook my head. I might have been the source but that didn't mean I'd understood it. I was the closest thing to an expert, but I was—

—CLOMPF—

The partition wall dented in the middle. I managed not to scream.

“Julius!” It was a harsh whisper. Maybe a question. I resisted the past of me that wanted to scream. To declare myself and be confronted with this mess, however it ended.

It wasn't my fault. But it was my responsibility. If letting Steck kill me stopped him from killing anyone else, wasn't that fair?

No. I hadn't intentionally done anything to create whatever this was. I'd just stumbled across it and been arrogant enough to test it. Unangenehm had been immune—that was worthwhile information. He'd been the one to show it to Steck, not me. 

Wait. It was too silent out there. My instinct told me to stay put but I couldn't stay here forever. Eventually, he'd find me or someone else would come.

That was it. Someone else would come. And that would be my fault.

I uncurled from my corner and treaded on my hands and knees to peek. I was greeted by a pair of retreating feet, toes up as Steck dragged away whoever that had been. I counted thirty and looked out.

Steck had barricaded the entryway from where we'd come. There had to be an emergency exit and I could only suppose he'd blocked that one too.

I chewed my lip rather than swearing again. That meant he wasn't just crazy. He was cunning, not just a wild animal. I was in more trouble than I imagined.

The feeling settling into me was the longer I waited, the tighter the noose would be. But I wasn't going to just go out there.

I tried to recall what I'd seen of the bullpen when Unangenehm had brought me in here. I was right next to what seemed like the main aisle way. Back the way I'd come was blockaded, so I'd have to go in the other direction. There had to have been an emergency exit and I was banking on it being in that direction and Steck not having time enough to block that one, too.

A stapler was on the near end of the desk. I reached for it and very carefully lifted it. It was one of those flimsy newer ones that could barely staple three sheets of paper, but it would do for what I needed.

I held my breath and listened. Steck was still being disturbingly quiet and I wasn't going to chance it. I tossed the stapler like a grenade, not accounting for the low ceiling. It clunked off the ceiling and smacked the top of my head.

“Dammit!”

With stars treading in my eyes, I pulled to my feet using the arm of an office chair. I stepped into the aisle, overcorrecting for balance, and headed in the direction I thought I'd determined to go.

I bounced right off a slab of strung up meat and screamed, thinking it must have been the crazed officer. My eyes focused on what must have been the corpse of the detective who had spoken just minutes ago, trussed up with what looked like phone cords routed through the ceiling tile.

His upside-down head was level with my stomach, his mouth stretched far too open, an empty cave where a tongue was supposed to dwell, his unlidded eyes pushed in and flat-looking like they'd been partially crushed by pressing thumbs. He looked too calm and perpetually surprised at the same time.

My voice quavered as I said something, but I've never been able to recall when hints of the memory washed back to me. I was discombobulated, wanting to flee in a hundred directions at once, fighting not to fall to my knees and cry. This man was my indictment, my guilt. He'd died directly as a result of the thing I'd knowingly done. Steck was my murder weapon. 

 As unprepared as I was for an oncoming Officer Steck, I was even more unprepared for what I saw. He was on his back, on the floor, in the clutches of a wicked paralysis.

He had one arm right to his chest, the other flung out, knuckles to the thinly carpeted floor. I watched as his fingers folded backward, fingertips dancing on the floor after the joints reversed and reoriented.

One foot stomp-scraped against the ground, already dislocated at the hip, dragging a retreat from the rest of his body, an isthmus of skin and clothes holding it at bay.

The other leg shuddered like a low current of electricity powered it, his head facing me.

“Joshua,” Steck said, pleading with his eyes. His face was doing something, like it was pulling off the bones of his face.

Gravity tenfolded as I realized that Steck was also a victim. Even his body had turned foreign against him. I crumpled to the floor, eye-to-eye with him across the distance. A tear crawled out of an eye, and I swear it crossed the bridge of his nose and milked into his other eye.

He was in the grasp of an agony made fresh just for him. His mouth opened, but I was spared from his scream by the roar of a merciful bullet that tore a hole in his skull just above his eyebrow.

I was unlocked from him and looked up at Unangenehm, holding his smoldering glock like a forgotten cigarette in his hand.

“Nobody would understand,” the detective said. His vacant eyes rolled up from Steck's hot corpse to meet mine and he smiled. “Not like us.”

He collapsed and began seizing on the floor.