Anathema

I am evicted. No, it is not as dire as that. As I make it sound. Yet that is how I feel.

William, in his generosity, has decided that how, now that I am past my probationary period as an employee at Aliki Towers, I am eligible for a condominium of my own as part of my remuneration package. How I will no longer be sentenced to sleeping in that cold concrete cubicle deep beneath the ground.

I am as you can might well imagine devastated. I tell myself this is but a temporary reversal of fortune. I have survived worse and I will this too. Yet as I witness the glee dancing in the old man’s eyes, my former rage returns.

My key to that basement room no longer opens the door. The old bastard has changed the code. I did not expect this treachery from Virgil though I now realize I should have known from the beginning of our association how his is of a covetous nature. He takes what he wants with little regard for the feelings of others.

I hate.

I begin to question the core foundations of the sense I once had of my morality. I have always considered myself a good man, and much like Virgil, I use an inflection of my inner voice to stress that syllable good to draw it out to deepen the nuance and thereby intone the true depth of feeling behind that assumption.

‘So how you liking your new digs, partner?’

Virgil plays as if nothing is amiss. He stops by to see me in my third floor quarters three maybe four times weekly and as always brings with him generous quantities of his homemade dandelion wine. The old man must ferment the evil concoction in fifty five gallon drums as much as he has to his avail. And yet I never turn him down.

‘Well enough,’ I assure him, though I wonder at my sincerity. I detest it here, being so far from Anathema. I feel how she, a creature born of moil and trouble, thrives not in these dizzy heights but rather beneath, in the isolation and privation of the darkness afforded by the depths of the earth.

He brings me gifts, items he has pilfered. Arrogated, as he puts it. And in my acceptance I am forever his accomplice. I tell myself it is of no matter. Yet my resolve weakens. This intense fury I feel toward Virgil oftentimes threatens to engulf that carefully constructed façade I have erected with much difficulty and long struggle.

It crumbles.

He flaunts his truancy. Oh yes. Do not deny it. He does. You must see it too. His every action is a grievance to his wife. To the job to which he has been entrusted. To me as his friend. To the world of light. He should be made to pay, yet I am certain how there are most probably those who have transgressed much farther, further than he, and still have yet to suffer the punishment due them, so in what way am I entitled to mete out his desserts?

As we drink he sits and he grins. I am in the presence of a leprous leprechaun. His white wooly hair. Those porcine eyes. A thing unholy. I inhale and I smell the stench rising from him, the odiferous reek that at one time not so long ago I found so appealing but now only disgusts me. That of dead decaying summers and buried winters. Springs gone to seed and rotting autumns.

‘Looks like you’re getting on with the new girl pretty well, eh?’ Virgil says this while simultaneously offering up one of his patented winks which on his face is as near a sneer as to be obscene. His ploy is so transparent I must stifle a guffaw. So what if I am seeing Camilla? It is of no consequence to this game of ours.

‘I… I guess.’ I stammer slightly, involuntarily. I pretend to myself, to Virgil, even, that it is merely the wine—it is especially potent—but you, who are privy to my darker secrets, of course know better. And you are correct. My reticence at admitting my dalliance with the new maid is more rooted in a sense of betrayal than inebriation. And let me assure you, here and now, that this is all it is. Our relationship. Platonic. A simple coquetry. Nothing more.

‘She reminds me of someone,’ the old man says, as a look comes into his eyes. A look I am not sure how to take. Is it affection or is it lust?

‘Who?’

He pulls out his wallet, extracts something, and holds out a picture. I take it. It is of a girl who looks familiar and yes she does resemble Camilla in some faint sense but no. That is not where I have seen her before. The girl in the picture. I turn away lest I remember.

‘My daughter,’ Virgil says, and his voice is choked. ‘She vanished five years ago. Just up and gone. Whenever Camilla started here last month, and just for an instant, mind you, I thought she was Jenny. But, of course, I was wrong.’

Her touch is real, uh huh. Oh yes. Her affections. Camilla. And certainly you must see it too: I do like the way her name rolls off the tongue. Yet for all that corporealness, I find a lacking which for the life of me I cannot quite lay a finger upon. I am a decidedly incomplete being and she ought to rightfully be a salve for that situation.

Yet, she is not.

He is like an animal having escaped the trapper’s snare and who now believes, having slathered on the empathy, he is safe and far afield from the hunter. But I cannot afford leniency. And if he thinks so, Virgil is mistaken on that count. I am still the predator stalking his prey. And I grow closer every day.

2

On my latest visit the doctor soundly chastises me for quitting the Compazine cold-turkey, as he puts it. Dr. Prius warns that I am most fortunate not to have suffered seizures as well as more severe withdrawal symptoms but he does not demand I resume the medication. Instead, he has prescribed Abilify as he seems under the impression I suffer from manic depression.

I humor him by filling the prescription but I do not take the drug.

I no longer feel like rubber. That, and a startling clarity of mind grows in leaps daily. I confess to a certain perhaps unfounded pride regarding my newly discovered lucidity. I also note how several of my coworkers have begun seeking me out for advice on matters pertaining from everything to financial matters to those of the heart. I even catch Virgil gazing at me in short furtive glances as if a thing newly minted about me has drawn his interest in ways not comporting to the usual.

I answer their questions intelligibly and yet I find have no thought processes preceding the time I open my mouth and out the words tumble. It is as if a part of me untapped is spilling forth, like the sap rising in a tree as it wakes from slumber. I am not frightened so much as disconcerted.

I see now how mistaken I was. It is not an army cot that Virgil treasures but a thing far older. One of my new abilities that has arisen with this resurgence is that of electronic lock hacking. It is such a simple method of rekeying my old pass I cannot fathom why I failed to make note of the technique prior to now. Such is the stuff of afterthought.

Slipping into my old haunt, the sub-basement of Aliki Towers, is easy enough accomplished once I ascertain the old man will be gone during the afternoon shuttling Mrs. Peabody to the nearby pharmacy, where, as he has complained numerous times previously, she has a habit of browsing the shelves while she awaits her prescriptions which are being filled, thus the trip consumes an inordinate amount of time.

For him, but not nearly enough for me.

The cot is constructed of twin poles on each end crisscrossing one another held together by what appears to be wooden pegs along with a third stanchion running horizontally and which supports what in the beginning I took to be a normal cloth fabric. But upon closer examination, I discover the fiber is dissimilar to the weave of today, which is mostly constructed of cotton or wool or even a manufactured textile like nylon. I think this is made perhaps of hemp. The cot contains no metal which, along with the abnormal knit covering, leads me to the belief the object is at least a hundred years old, possibly more.

I must confess to you that while there, I lay back upon the thing as I once did and even closed my eyes, but only briefly. A strange feeling of drowsiness began overcoming me almost immediately. Fearing I might well succumb to the torpor of sleep and in doing so would soon be caught out for breaking into the basement by the old man upon his return, I jumped up and hurriedly left the room. Not that Virgil has any extraordinary claim on that cubicle other than the misguided notion that he once owned this property and so is still entitled somehow to certain liberties. Such as napping on the cot in the privacy and isolation of that concrete cubicle.

And consorting with my Anathema.

I wish to make no waves, however. Not now. Not when my careful plans grow so close to culmination. You see, she reached out and touched me while I lay but briefly in that cot and by gracing me with her presence allowed me the realization of how what I experienced with Anathema in the past was no illusion. I was never mad. I am as sane as you. Oddly, though I suppose it should, this notion lends me little comfort.

I fear the road I travel is a strange one yet I am exhilarated at the prospects of reuniting with her at the end of my journey. As the days pass, Camilla grows ever more morose at my lack of attention to her. I cannot blame the poor girl. No. I have not courted her in any real sense, yet I will admit it is true I respond to her attentions, but only so far as politeness is required in such matters. I have nothing to be sorry for yet I feel apologetic. Perhaps even ashamed.

I must confront Virgil but only do so on my own terms. I wait.

3

It did not cause any undue concern on my part, seeing Camilla with Phillip something, one of the tenants, the two of them walking together on their way somewhere I hope pleasant, locked in a synchronicity I have never found with her. She seemed embarrassed. As if she was stepping out on me. I consider going to her, saying how it is all right, her newfound passion. But the time does not seem appropriate.

On our last visit, Dr. Prius expressed concern how I am gradually isolating myself though I assure him this is only on account of how I prefer my own company to that of others. Certain of my coworkers have made overtures of friendship, such as inviting me to have drinks with them after our shift or perhaps coming over to their home for dinner. While I do appreciate their sentiments, so far, I have refused all requests.

I have, you see, once more taken up painting.

The vision which assails my mind’s eye is not one of color so much as complete absence. I see a face embedded within the deepest night. A face you cannot see, not unless you view it from profile with a background of light. Though it has been ages since I saw it, I know this face belongs to Anathema.

I can find no paint which conforms to my specifications so I have begun experimentations on using other techniques to achieve the desired effect I seek. Though I did attempt using it in the beginning and to my disappointment, charcoal is not an actual black. Not even close. What I envision is the deepest of interstellar space complete and without a prickling of starlight to break the night.

Black metal velvet shows promise with a specular absorptance rated at over 99.99%. The medium, consisting of a thin film applique, not unlike aluminum foil, proves difficult to ply into the shape I have in mind, however. Those who are not true artists might visualize a painting as a two dimensional object while we who understand the process know there is no such thing. A painting is created by layering whatever medium the artist works with upon a flat surface thereby rendering a three dimensional mosaic.

Black phosphorus is another material worth exploration, though again, its two dimensional properties do not offer me hope that I have found the solution I seek. Oh, you say. Then, you are not actually working on a painting. You are, in fact, involved in sculpting an object. But as you might imagine, I disagree. Perhaps in the end it is more a matter of semantics, however.

Micro-coating offers up possibilities, but the modeling eludes me. How does one portray that which is beyond the visible spectrum? And again, applying a two dimensional coating to such a three dimensional rendering may, in fact, negate the effect I pursue.

Finally, I read of a substance made of carbon nanotubes, a material which is as close to true black as anything yet developed. That, and since the nanotubes are in fact three dimensional, perhaps that particular material will lend itself well to the application which I seek to put it to use upon.

Think if you will of standing within the midst of a forest of tall grass a thousand feet high where not a photon of sunlight will ever penetrate. In such a state, the visual recedes, becoming useless, like those eyeless fish which are found living miles beneath the surface of the ocean or those moles forever sequestered deep in underground caves.

Therefore, metaphor is all we have to work with under such extreme circumstances. I am unsure this gnawing notion can even be imagined. Properly visualized. No. That is not the correct word. But perhaps you get my drift. We are delving into a realm completely outside the boundaries of this our ordinary reality. Even fantasy falls short of our goal. Ours is an unobtainable objective to reach no matter the distance we travel. At least, by those who profess sanity. It is the black of sudden onset madness. Such a profound darkness that it drinks up all available light leaving the senses bereft of any possibility of solace.

This is I fear perhaps a reflection of my own true nature, one which I do not expect you to understand nor condone. Yet if I am to be completely and openly honest with myself—with you—is this not the path upon which I must travel?

4

Despite what they will say, I am not a monster. Or maybe I am. Is it not all a matter of perspective? Perhaps the world is too forgiving of the dark and thus the light allows us to flourish when instead we ought to be hunted down.

Exterminated.

Her arrival is unexpected. During our brief association—I will not go so far as to call it a relationship—we grow familiar enough with one another’s routine that perhaps I might well have anticipated her visit but point of fact is I have become overly preoccupied with other matters which I will relate to you shortly.

When she turns up at my door, then, imagine my amazement to see her looking so vulnerable and in obvious need of sympathy. Of a shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her eyes red-rimmed, her face flushed with the exertion of tears. ‘I have no one else to talk with. If you want me to leave, though, I understand.’

My quarters above the ground are somewhat more accommodating than the hole I once kept. Still, with the hour being rather late I earlier donned the old monk’s robe I keep as a reminder of my monastery days. Without thinking, however, I stand aside to allow her entrance into the webs of my deceit.

Now, with Camilla appearing as alluring as she does and in such close proximity, so near I am breathing the same breath as she, I discover I am visibly stiff beneath this thinnest of cloth. As you may imagine, this causes me undue shame—especially as I feel her eyes wandering up and down and all around—as well as a sort of momentary consternation, enough so that I babble something about her having a seat while I make tea.

As I busy myself in the kitchen, after having decided not to change out of my robe, I hear her phone ring. I vouchsafe I am not in the habit of eavesdropping but you must realize how under the circumstances I deem it better to allow the girl a modicum of perceived privacy before entering the living room bearing cups of freshly brewed tea.

‘No,’ she says to the unheard caller. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Because how am I supposed to ever believe another thing you say? I saw you. The two of you. Together. Hand in hand. Oh, just stop. I’m not a complete idiot. It doesn’t matter where I am. At a friend’s. So what? Oh. Now you’re suddenly the jealous one. No. I don’t know when I’ll be home. Don’t you even…’

Her voice has an effect on me not unlike I think of a husband who inadvertently overhears an argument between wife and lover. Yet, I fix things. That’s what I do. I want to set to rights that which is causing Camilla distress only I am unsure how to proceed without hoisting undeserved blame not only upon her but on myself for listening in.

‘You heard,’ she says, after I wait an appropriate amount of time before entering the living room where she is standing. Again, I wonder if perhaps I should excuse myself to go and change into something more suitable. My intuition tells me, though, that if I do not strike at the heart of the matter immediately the time will pass without me having yet taken advantage of the opening afforded.

‘Sit,’ I say, setting her cup down in front of her. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘He treats me like chattel,’ she says, her right hand dabbing at the corners of one eye and then the other with that pink handkerchief I gave her on her last birthday, the one with hearts embroidered in the corners and monogrammed with her initials, while her left hand snakes out to pull me by the tie on my robe nearer to her.

I sit on the opposite end of the love seat inherited from a previous tenant. Bit by bit she shuffles her way to be near me. I feel extreme anxiety at keeping such close quarters. And yet, and yet…

Before I go on, I should perhaps admit to a certain circumstance which I find rather awkward, so please, keep this to yourself. Though my time with Anathema was consummated in a certain ethereal sense, I have not on any other occasion in my life taken a lover of flesh and blood. This fact engenders within me a specific dysfunction which up until now brought to a sudden and screeching halt any relationship which proceeded thus far.

This may help explain to you in part my reason for not pursuing more fully a deeper liaison with Camilla in the first place. I tell myself how tonight is going to be different. I am as ready as I have ever been. Oh yes. I am near to bursting with excitement.

I reach out to draw her in as we embrace. The intense shame I feel at her realizing my need vanishes and is instead replaced with an animal yearning of such power my instincts take over. The part of me I call I is lost to the moment. Rather than thinking, I react.

Now she is beneath me, our skin pressing so close we might as well be one. Her eyes wild with a wanton look, her arms encircling my body, hands clutching at my back, legs entwining, this is it.

The moment.

But again, the pressure is too much to take. As soon as she touches me to guide me into her, I deflate. And the humiliation rises within me like a fever. But Camilla does not withdraw in exasperated silence and disgust at my infirmity like all the others. Rather, she simply continues holding me close, even when I make an effort to roll off, to turn away.

‘Wait,’ she whispers. ‘Give it a minute.’

That is the moment Anathema enters the room.

Perhaps she is drawn by that same jealousy I felt that day I caught her with Virgil in my underground bunker deep beneath Aliki Towers. How the hate roared within me.

The lights in the room dim, flicker, and then go out. The air becomes heavy with the scent of sweet rot like when you walk through forests so thick the sun never reaches the ground to burn off the damp. A low hissing sounds somewhere close like the air being let out of a balloon but soon the noise fills the room to the point of my ears bursting.

I must have blacked out, and when I woke, Camilla had vanished.

Despite my chosen occupation, I am not an uneducated man. I fully understand the difficulty you feel in appreciating my predicament. You may assure yourself I did all I could to stop the attack. In the end, however, I am as powerless as Camilla in reversing her misfortune.

It is forever a tragedy for someone so young not to mention beautiful to be cut down in the prime of their years but it is not in my image that the die of guilt should be cast. I too am a victim.

5

It is amazingly easy to buy the most potent of poisons, even for someone who has been remanded to the custody of an insane asylum for a portion of his life. I purchase the product over the internet and have it shipped right to my door. Or rather, to Virgil’s door.

‘I want to order something,’ I tell him, as we are settling down after our dinner over cups of dandelion wine. ‘Only I’m not here during the day to sign for it.’

‘Send it to my address,’ he offers. ‘Lizzy is there. She’ll sign.’

Trails. You too must realize how everything leaves trails. If my plan comes to fruition yet I am caught out for it and sent to prison, to what good does all my plotting avail me in the end?

‘Thanks, Virgil. Yes. I wouldn’t mind a refill.’

The way I understand things, arsenic trioxide causes all manner of ills in a human being, and yet the poisoning itself is uncommon these days and thus easily overlooked when the symptoms begin appearing.

Arsenic is tasteless and has no odor which makes applying generous doses to someone’s food quite easy to achieve. Still, one does not wish to be too liberal. A sudden and violent death will arouse suspicion. Rather, patience is called for in this as in all matters. It is my understanding that as a cumulative substance, arsenic is useful in the causation of numerous and deadly cancers.

Is it not interesting how in this life we seem drawn to certain individuals? I am tempted to bandy about words like preordained and inevitable and even synchronicity to explain such circumstances, because, after all, what are the chances, the odds, that out of all the people alive in the world, I should meet an old man such as Virgil. That he should go out of his way to befriend a lunatic. That we should both be hopelessly in love with a ghost.

I take to buying donuts for the entire staff each morning. I note how Virgil prefers apple fritters while William likes chocolate cream-filled long johns and the maids generally munch on the glazed. Most people probably never even observe simple things like this, but due diligence requires my attention.

I stand on a crag.

On one side, morality confronts my every action. I am no murderer. Yet driven to extremes, are we not all capable of acts resounding of such fury we no longer recognize our own self which performs the deeds?

Perhaps if he did not rub his lust so obviously in my face I might hold off. Virgil just celebrated his seventy seventh birthday. How many more can he hope to have? Yet he is not an aged man as I recall my grandfather being at the same point in his life; infirm and bordering upon senility. Virgil might well last another ten years. Twenty. I fear I have not the patience for waiting so long.

Once I begin there is no going back. I must be sure. Yet do we not all strive toward happiness in our own fashion? It is my firm conviction that if we do not, we are fools.

‘So you and Camilla,’ Virgil says, winking in that special way that quickly morphs into a leer. ‘I haven’t seen her around lately. Are things heating up between you?’

What has he heard? Is everyone in the building aware of my infidelity with the girl? Yet what do I have to hide? Neither of us are married. We are two consenting adults.

I want to explain to him that even if we are seeing one another, nothing will come of our relationship. But where to start? Virgil must realize by now how I am ensnared in the same trap he has fallen into and how we both are destined for dark ends. His death will potentially come sooner but with the years slipping by like they do I am bound to follow in no time.

‘No,’ I lie, shrugging and holding my cup out. ‘Not so much.’

6

I am sure I dreamed all of it, for when I wake no trace of Camilla ever being with me remains. Mechanically, I make my toilet, dress, eat a wooden breakfast, and leave to go about my daily chores, listening attentively while answering calls from disgruntled residents complaining as always over things of no real consequence.

It is not until later in the evening after I return from my day that I hear a phone not my own ringing somewhere in my condo. It stops and then begins again. What is it about phones that we are required to answer them?

I have I believe in some small way made a habit of lifting others around me up rather than belittling them. I do not say that to boast, and perhaps I find on occasion acquaintances will oftentimes seek to provoke in me some remedy for their current situation.

By the large percentage, I think, people live unhappy dissatisfied lives. I do not mean to infer they do so through any fault of their own, yet it is brought to my attention repeatedly how even when you make them aware—painfully—how they alone are responsible for the life they lead, most folk continue down that same black road only to be amazed at what they discover at the end of that journey.

‘They whisper about you, you know.’ We already consumed one bottle of that dandelion wine I come to appreciate and are well into the second when Virgil confides what I could tell is on the old man’s mind since he arrives tonight. Still, even prepared as I am for his pronouncement, my blood chills several degrees Fahrenheit as I fumble for a proper response.

‘What are you saying?’ No sooner do I utter the words than I wonder if they may be construed as an admission of guilt. I have, of course, by now ascertained the phone I discovered secreted beneath the cushion of the faux velvet purple wing-back belongs to Camilla and since I have no memory of her ever having visited my condo previously I am forced to conclude whatever happened on that night two weeks ago was no dream.

I have, in fact, made a thorough search of the entire unit in order to unearth any other evidence—a piece of underclothing, jewelry, any item she may have inadvertently dropped—but found not a shred.

‘Oh, you know the score,’ Virgil says, taking a long gulp from his cup before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘How you seem aware of things a fellow in your position might not normally understand.’

I sigh a silent pant of relief as I take a long sip from my cup emptying it and holding it out for more. Funny, I think. When I first tasted the stuff, I detested it. Now, I cannot seem to get enough.

‘One fellow in particular has been asking around about you.’ The old man fills his cup before pouring more wine into mine. ‘I think you must know him. Lives in the building. Phillip Argent.’

The name is familiar. Wait. Argent is the man Camilla is seeing. I am sure of it. Lives on the ninth floor. Rumor has it he pays the maids extra if they clean his condo minus certain articles of clothing but as this is but unsubstantiated gossip I beg you not to put your trust in what I say. Please, do not repeat it. And if you do, leave my name off.

Blame it on jealousy.

However, if Argent is indeed asking around about me, I can only surmise how he may be privy to Camilla’s whereabouts on the night in question. Is he the mystery caller? And did she say she was visiting me? Is there even now an investigation brewing and moving inexorably in my direction?

I reject that notion. If the authorities are involved—which most likely they are by now—and they suspect I have something—anything—to do with the girl’s disappearance, they will move quickly to pick me up. To interview me. To serve a search warrant. No. I should think instead it is he who is under suspicion. Phillip Argent. And so in flailing about like one drowning, and since he views me as within easy reach, I am the way toward which he stretches.

There are throughout one’s life certain moments when a sort of crossroad presents itself. These are, of course, most evident in hindsight, yet arriving as it is spur of the moment, we fail to fully realize the significance of such events. The potentiality lurking around that next bend. Thus, rather than pausing for a more full contemplation of our situation, we tend to blunder on haphazardly, blindly bumbling forward, and it is only in looking back we come to appreciate the implications of our choice.

Or do I put too much emphasis upon the notion that we do indeed now or ever have the freedom to willfully choose this way over that? Is it not more certain that the road upon which we travel has already been paved with our intentions?

I must pay Mr. Argent a visit.

7

I have been expecting the call since the aggregate of events are leading up to this. It could well be how Argent may be wanting a talk with me as much as I am craving one with him.

The note from William reads: ‘Unit 969—owner reports leaky faucet in bathroom.’

I recognize right off that the owner of that condo is one Phillip Argent. Yes, I have done my homework. Now that the moment is nigh I find I am filled with trepidation. Does the man suspect? And if so, how much does he know?

I decide to fortify myself before calling on Argent. Virgil came by last night leaving a bottle of his finest when he left, inebriated as usual. I quick-trip past my condo to quaff a mug of the potent brew and then figure it will hurt nothing to partake of another.

The early morning beverage explodes comfortably in my belly helping in erasing the hangover headache hovering just behind my eyes and lends a healthy spring to my step which heretofore had been but a sad and sorry shuffling of feet.

Unit 969 is high enough in the sky and pointed to the east so that it commands a startling view of the not too distant ocean. Today, it is a gray roiling beast and surly under sullen clouds. Still, I cannot help but pause to admire the view. Stretches of oleaginous foam the color of bone gathers in the trough between waves.

‘It never gets old, does it,’ says a sotto voice behind me. Argent. Call me Phillip. Though I normally do my level to find a thing to appreciate about anyone I meet, I find myself inexplicably repelled by him. It is a repugnance greater than having seen the man in the company of Camilla. Far more.

He is older than me by at least ten years, probably I suspect more, a type who seems taller than he really is due I imagine to the authoritative way he has of carrying himself. He is doubtless a runner, and from the look of his physique works out obsessively.

After I rang his bell and introduced myself he said yes, I asked for you specifically. I hear you are a good man, and in the same way Virgil has of lowering his voice an octave, Argent stresses the syllable good, emphasizing the nature of the word and how it pertains to certain people.

‘Thank you,’ I respond, walking into his condo, being stopped momentarily at the vista of the seascape unfolding before my eyes.

I pry my eyes away to turn and take in the room. It is tastefully appointed without in any way being ostentatious. The owner is obviously in favor of minimalism as the décor is predominately black on white but for a painting—an original, I am sure, since I am the artist—taking up nearly the entire wall opposite the sliding glass doors leading to the patio.

The center of the painting is a cube of black. Not just any black. It is absolute black devoid of any color. A black which draws you in. A black which suffocates all light. Around the cube a mass of multi-colored lines blue, red, green, yellow riot forth as if bursting from that sheer and complete blackness in the center. I recall the struggle I had getting just that effect.

‘You have a good eye,’ Argent says, as he steps to my side, also admiring the painting. ‘It’s a Basquiat. I bought it from him when he was still on the street in New York City. Guess how much I paid for it.’

I shrug, unsure if he really wants me to say, or if instead he is asking a rhetorical question. I suspect Argent is lying in a way he hopes will glorify himself in my eyes though I cannot fathom why. Can he not see I am incensed at how he has stolen my painting of old? Does he not notice my name scribbled upon it?

‘Three hundred dollars,’ Argent says. ‘I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at what it’s worth now.’

I nod apprehensively, taking a step toward the painting. I am mistaken. It is not a cube in the center. It is him. The devourer. As my mind drifts towards the recognition of how what is beneath the surface of the man also lurks within the configuration of oils, somewhere in the distance I hear Argent speaking.

‘You’re that friend of Cami’s.’

‘Who?’ I nearly stammer the word, discombobulated as I am by this blackness lurking at the center of my sight, by being here in the company of Phillip Argent. Are the walls closing in?

‘Camilla,’ he says, a slight smile gracing his mouth, morphing into a sneer as I peer at him quickly. I am in the presence of a demon—a man who feasts upon the pain of others. Revels in it.

‘Oh, yes,’ I say, returning to myself.

‘I wonder if you’ve seen her lately.’ Argent says. It is more a statement than a question. An accusation. He turns to study my expression as I continue pondering the painting.

I judge the fight will be an even one. If I get in the first strike I might even gain the upper hand. Then again, the response, the prowess of his anticipated retaliatory powers, might soon overwhelm my meager defenses.

‘No,’ I say, unable to tear my eyes from the darkness in the center of that painting. Is it expanding? Is he?

‘When she called the other night, I got the impression she might be at your place,’ he says, goading me. He has no lips. That combined with the utter black of his eyes and the baldness of his head lends him the look of a mannequin moving about of its own volition. I want to remind him it was he who called Camilla and not her him yet that will be tantamount to a confession.

Instead, I shrug. The blackness at the center of the painting has burst to the point of nearly obliterating the brightly squiggled lines once surrounding it, the nonsensical images embroidered around the edges. Even my signature at the bottom. Does Argent not see it too?

‘So,’ I say, struggling to bring my attention back to bear to the matters at hand. ‘You have a leaky faucet?’

‘Yes,’ he says, pointing in a somewhat derisive way to the bathroom. ‘In there.’

Drip, drip, drip.

I assure myself it is water I hear and not the black of the painting leaking onto the floor. Entering the bathroom, I turn on one handle of the sink and then the other. Allow the water to run for a few seconds. I shut them both off. The dripping stops.

‘Well,’ Argent says, somewhere behind me. ‘That was a simple fix.’

As I walk past the painting, I steal one last glance. The blackness in the center is billowing like silk under water, formless, without shape, or rather mutating so quickly one to the other and back again the senses cannot keep up.

‘Thank you,’ Argent says, standing in the door. ‘I’ll be sure to tell William how your service has been—most impeccable. Oh. And by the way…’

‘Yes?’

‘I hope you have a Cami little Christmas.’ He croons the tune in his baritone, and then adds, ‘and please. Tell that slut when you see her there’s nowhere she can run that I can’t find her.’

8

Camilla is at my door. I stand, blinking, wondering if she is real or an illusion. Am I asleep and dreaming? Is the bright light of morning playing its trickery as it so often does? Does it matter?

‘May I come in?’

I stand aside and after she enters I poke my head out the door to look this way and then that, to make sure she is alone, I suppose. I close the door and turn around, half expecting her to be gone, but she is standing and peering about the room.

‘I think I left my phone here the other night.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I didn’t see it.’

Lying has never been my forte. She looks at me, hard, and then shrugs her shoulders causing her blonde hair to bounce, as if giving up. In. How do you tell someone you thought you might have killed them and so you promptly disposed of any incriminating evidence?

‘I’m sorry I ran out on you like that,’ she says. She is standing way too close. I am in danger of drowning in the pools of those eyes. Are they blue or are they green? I decide it depends on the light. But then, I do not want to look at them too closely lest I fall again. I decide it is the blackness at the center which disconcerts me so.

‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, trying to sound nonchalant. To not let the hitch in my voice betray my true feelings. ‘I’m just fixing coffee. You want some?’

‘Okay.’

I leave her in the living room as I walk into the kitchen. The Bunn only takes three minutes to brew a pot but that gives me time to regain my composure. Where have you been? I want to demand answers from her. To bully her. To talk harshly. Maybe raise my voice in righteous indignation. Why did you leave like that? What could you have been thinking? Do you know what I have been going through all this time? All this time!

Instead, when the coffee is ready, I fill two cups watching as the steam curls and walk back to her, again thinking how she will not be here. That she will have vanished. That it is merely my imagination playing its games with me again.

But here she is.

I do not remember her looking so bright. Like she has swallowed something golden, perhaps a fresh moon, and it is seeping out through her pores, pouring out of the bright yellow of the blouse she wears, the tight black of her jeans. It occurs to me I am perhaps seeing her aura. I feel like I might be on drugs. And if not, I should be.

Some decision has been made. She is going back to him, and perhaps she believes—mistakenly—she owes me an explanation. I set her cup in front of her on a coaster and then remember she takes the French Vanilla creamer and sweet and low. I keep them in my cupboard. Just for her. I rise to retrieve them and then sit back down, facing her.

I will allow her to speak first, no matter how long takes the wait. She searches my face. For signs, maybe? Does she know of my madness? Has Argent informed on me? Virgil? William? I imagine anyone with twenty five dollars can do an internet search. Discover my background. My insanity.

Outside my sliding glass door, a crow has taken up a perch on the black wrought iron railing of my patio. My condo does not command a view. The door looks out into the black of the asphalt court where tenants park their cars. A flutter announces two more crows alighting, and then two more. A feather flurries to the concrete. It reminds me of my painting hanging in Argent’s room, shedding its black, expanding exponentially.

They are peering at me. The crows. Expectant of—something.

9

You may as well leave your doors standing wide open in this building as easy are the locks to open. Returning to unit 969 in the guise of night, I remove my shoes that I might walk soundless across the floor after hacking the lock on the door with a copy of the masterpass I lifted from Virgil that night he drank himself into a mindless extinction bordering upon the dead.

Taking advantage of the lateness of the hour, I slip into the office and using the key encoder, I copy myself a key before returning the original to Virgil’s pocket. Now I have the same ability as the little man in that I can enter any room in the building and do so with the aplomb of one who belongs.

The shower is running, but is that a ruse? Has Argent detected my entry? Perhaps he is attempting to lure his quarry into the bathroom only to bushwhack me. I stand close to the semi-open door of the bathroom. I breathe, relieved to notice steam is drifting out into the hall scented with the smell of body wash and shampoo.

A naked man cannot normally fight nearly as well as one clothed. I am not sure how I know that fact. Some bit of trivia you pick up along the way, perhaps. Still, I am not here to fight Phillip Argent. I am here to subdue him. To prevent him from further harming Camilla or any other girl or boy who happens to cross his path of perversion.

I bought my Vipertek stun gun on Amazon for twenty three dollars ninety five cents plus shipping and handling. It is what you might call an impulse purchase, one made under the influence of heavy doses of alcohol and a late night. The advertisement says the Taser is identical to those used in law enforcement though for the price I suspect there is some untruth to that statement.

It is not unusual in my capacity as maintenance man for you to see me carrying bags of trash from the building even in the early hours of morning. Therefore, I have taken the foresight to bring along with me a number of heavy-duty trash compactor liners which will enable the disposal of pretty much anything so long as it is cut into manageable pieces before being bagged.

It is also my experience that men in charge of collecting trash do not take the time to examine the contents of anything duly and properly Dumpstered. In fact, given the vast quantities of garbage produced in a building of this size during any specified time, the possibility of doing so borders upon the ridiculous. Still, it does no harm to insure the undesirability of opening up the trash by sprinkling said bags with a foul-smelling mixture of offal and tripe well-seasoned under a hot sun and, of course, prepared beforehand with a liberal scattering of maggots.

I feel fortunate Argent is already in the shower, thus making his dissection much less of a mess than you might otherwise suppose. He is a big man and to move him will perhaps put me under more stress than I care to exert. And while the odds are the man never knows what is happening to him, I like to believe how in some small part of his brain he is aware as I start with the cutting.

As I bend and set to work at the dismemberment of Phillip Argent, I remember doing it before. Just where to cut to facilitate proper separation. Joints can be particularly tricky, even frustrating, unless one properly understands the structure. Does this mean I will soon forget this night too? Will I only be reminded if I repeat the procedure during a future moment? Is it an experience from this life I am recalling? Or have I committed such atrocities previously? In a life lived in the past? If there is such an animal.

The sky is indigo with the arrival of morning as I complete my task by splattering the mattress in Argent’s bedroom with his bloody entrails. It is perhaps an uncalled-for extravagance, but nevertheless says how a message has been sent. At least to those who are capable of reading between such lines.

10

When I open my eyes I find I am in a place so profoundly dark it is as if I have been lowered into a vat of molten tar and left there to harden. I cannot move. I wonder if my eyes are even open. I hear nothing, numb to the point I am unsure I am breathing. Or perhaps my inner senses are no longer pervious to external input.

Gradually, I realize I do hear something: a faraway drip, drip, drip. It is not water. Something rather more viscid. My mind flutters with myriad explanations of how I got here, to wherever it is I am, yet fails.

I suspect there are myriad reasons why I am so isolated.

My childhood was not exemplar but there are millions of those who can say the same of theirs and yet they find themselves surrounded with good friends and a fine family. My nature is not one conducive to light-hearted and good-natured banter with peers yet without trying I find I tend to fit into social gatherings in ways which if you happen to be watching I would hazard you might discern no visible difference in my mannerisms from the others around me.

It is the trying which tries me. Like now. If I simply let go the reins, give the horses pulling the cart carrying my perceptions their freedom to follow the road only they see, then I suspect the answer to this situation confronting me will present itself. Instead, I struggle. I fight for control knowing all the while I am only being dragged deeper into a morass of madness.

I am not a witless creature floundering in my own ineptitude yet I do feel as if I am flailing about in a trap of my own construction. The promises to others, to myself, that I make and fail to keep: are they what I must hold responsible?

Given the otherwise thorough and utter lack of sensory feedback, I focus on the dripping. The sound feels tinny, as of liquid dropping into a metal container of sorts, though said basin or dish must be fair to full since I detect subtle ripples on the surface, that and interference patterns that doubtless result from an incomplete cessation of undulations before the next falling drop arrives.

I have gone hysterically blind. It is the pressure to which I have been subjected. The suspicions cast my way. I have gone off my path to help these people, yet the moment I need…

Oh, just forget I said anything about anything. The pinky finger upon my right hand, I believe it moves. Give me a few minutes. I will put my rights in order once more.

I am thinking how it is not a good thing to quit the drinking so abruptly. Once I am able to move, I will retrieve the bottle of Gordon’s from the tool shed. No, wait. I disposed of that just the other day. No. It has been longer than that.

Virgil will be good for the loan of a little alcohol. Only there is something about the old man hovering at the back of my mind. An accident, perhaps. Those things happen, even when you have simply the best of intentions.

Recollections leak back into my consciousness, coagulating in an unseen and treacly pond like that omnipresent dripping out there. In the dark. The sound now that I consider it more closely is not dissimilar to blood draining from a carcass hanged upside down upon a rafter prior to the butchering.

I am deep beneath Aliki Towers sheltering in that concrete cubicle I once called home. Yes. The feeling is returning to my body. The memory. I am lying upon that old cloth and wooden cot that belongs to Virgil. Belonged. I am not blind. When you close the iron door to this room it effectively blocks out any possible light source. All I need do is reach out. The oil hurricane lamp is nearby.

My body is slowly growing into my own again, limbs coming under my control, my senses flaring like must a newly born child’s as he first enters the world. Is that what has happened? Am I recalling my birth?

‘I have advanced liver cancer,’ Virgil announces. The news does not surprise me. I plan well. And for the past few weeks I surmised something is amiss with the old man. He seems pensive. Apprehensive. Of course, who would not be upon learning they have mere weeks left to them. ‘You believe in the afterlife?’

‘I believe in something,’ I reply, searching the bottom of my mug for any possibility of an answer written there. It is well after midnight and unusual for Virgil to appear so late in the night but I feel as if I have been waiting for him. I suppose I ought to feel—something. Sorrow? Pity? Shame? But I am numb. ‘I cannot imagine we pop into existence, live a few years, and then fall back into the abyss. Yet these memories, they reside within the synapses of the brain. So when the brain dies, I think memory goes with it.’

‘And that’s all we are? Our memories?’

‘No,’ I say, holding my cup out for a refill. I will miss his dandelion wine. When he is gone. ‘You know they never found his body.’

‘Who? Who are we talking about?’

‘Argent. Phillip Argent. They still may charge me with his murder, though.’

‘I see,’ opines Virgil, as he chugs his wine. I watch his bony Adam’s apple bob up and down beneath the blue collar of the uniform he wears. ‘So it will do no real harm you helping me out a bit, I suppose.’

‘Part of us goes on,’ I say, pondering just how to explain these notions welling up in response to the old man’s query. Funny how I have not considered these ideas previously. Or perhaps I have. ‘I think we are, on some primal level, made up of what you might call fibers. Not unlike the weave of a rug. As we depart this vale, those fibers come undone. Float off into what I suppose we can only call nothingness—oblivion, if you will—only to be resurrected as the creation of a new life. A reweaving.’

‘How long?’

‘How long what?’

‘How long you think it takes to come back?’

I shrug. I want to shout: how would I know? I have never died. And yet… and yet…

‘Time is only relevant to the living, old man,’ I say. ‘A blink of an eye, perhaps. An eon. These things are just that. Things.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘With what?’

‘With the body,’ says the old man. ‘Argent.’

‘Oh. I cut him up in his shower, put the pieces into garbage bags, and threw them into the Dumpster out back.’ What is it about confession that frees the soul? I feel better than I have in months.

‘But why did you leave such a bloody mess in his bedroom?’ asks Virgil. ‘If you hadn’t done that, nobody would know. Everyone would have figured the man had taken off on his own. It would be a perfect crime.’

‘Camilla was scared to death of Argent. And he said something to me that day I went to his condo. Something about her. So I wanted her to know. For her to know that guy is dead and gone. That she never has to worry about him again. But I couldn’t exactly tell her myself. Could I.’

‘Well played,’ the old man says. ‘She a good woman? Camilla?’

‘Better than I deserve.’

‘Yeah. Same with my wife. So. Will you help me, son?’ I wonder if he knows my name. We must have been introduced, once, yet I cannot recall him ever saying it. Calling me by name. Help him, he asks. Do I have a choice?

‘Yes. I’ll help you, Virgil.’

‘I’m afraid,’ he says. ‘Otherwise, I would do it myself.’

‘No worries, old man.’

‘What will you do with it?’

‘With what?’ I know, but I have to ask. To make sure.

‘My body,’ says Virgil, staring at his cup as he swirls the inch of wine at the bottom before tossing it back.

‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

‘I’d like to be buried. Somewhere pretty. Close to water. On a hillside, maybe. If you want, you could plant trees on my grave.’

‘Okay,’ I say, measuring his joints.

11

I have lost her.

Anathema.

Then again, was she ever really mine?

‘I think the drinking is past tense now,’ I say. I hope. We deserve a new start. It is a strange thing: addiction. It is as much a habit not drinking as is the drinking. A person only needs a change in perspective to see that, I think. I have no craving for alcohol but then again, did I ever? I feel disintermediated from the old way of life yet oddly recalcitrant in moving forward.

‘You said that before.’

And she is right. I have no excuse. For how I have treated her. For my absences. My cruelties. Yet in this relationship I am not alone in that regard. She must see that as well. Dr. Prius advises me against this course of action. How I am just now beginning to gain a firm grip. Oh, but what does he know except what I confide in him? Can you imagine the revelations I might show the good doctor which would not only shake his confidence in my sanity but in his as well? I best leave him to it.

She is not as beautiful as I remember. Camilla. Something has gone out of her. Or more likely, me. I am not sure I even love her any longer. Oh, I love the notion of loving her. But do I love her for herself? Or is it instead the idea?

It is not difficult to dispose of a body. This is a skill like any other which one diligently acquires with practice. A man first must know what it is he aims to achieve, and then, like water, he indefatigably follows the path of least resistance back to the source.

I pack carefully, for in leaving I do not intend a return. I have no destination in mind though I think I will never live far from the sea. My bag is not so heavy as you might think. The accoutrements of a lifetime boil down to nearly nothing in the end.

Just ask Virgil. Or Argent. Call me Phillip. A life well-lived is I think one where we leave little to no mark upon the world, and in our passing, the memory of what we once were gradually fades back to the black of unremembered dreams.

No one notices how the painting is missing. Or if they do, they do not remark upon it. One cannot carry such an object attached to its frame unnoticed yet folded the canvas takes up surprisingly little space. No more than a pair of worn jeans.

I have one thing left to do before I quit this place.

It is I who united them.

Anathema.

Virgil.

Old lovers.

In doing so, I see I am wrong in what I foretell of death. In what I said to the old man. In point of fact, memories do not die along with the biological brain in which they are stored, for remembrances are far more than electrical pulses firing between synapses.

We are such a shortsighted species, human beings. We isolate ourselves from the world with wood, glass, aluminum, and steel, and proclaim our mastery over nature, yet we can never be separate. Our vast intellect springs not from our puny brains, but from the marvelously rich culture into which we are born, and for the most of our lives take for granted.

I am no exception. Rather, I am most probably the rule. A rock apart, an island alone, I refuse to bend to the undercurrent of the larger world around me, never quite grasping how I too am part of that world, of that raging torrent.

‘I want to be with her,’ Virgil says. He is the kind of man who looks a person straight in the eyes when he speaks to them, but today, his gaze is off to one side, his voice but a husk of a whisper. The light is going out.

‘Who?’

‘Come on, son,’ he says, exasperated, more sneering the words than speaking. ‘You never played the dummy before. Don’t start now.’

I nod. The old man follows me out the door of my condo and down the elevator to the basement, a lamb willingly and gratefully going to his own butchering. I cannot help but envy him.

He stumbles on the stairs going down into that underground cubicle of concrete. I take hold of his elbow to steady him. He shakes loose. Gives me that look. I push open the iron door and we enter the darkness.

She is here, not a thing seen if you look directly at her, but more a feeling you get, like when you know you are being surreptitiously watched. Virgil might well have asked me to cut out my own intestines instead of this. But I gave my word, and I am resolute.

‘I don’t want it to hurt,’ says Virgil, sitting down on the floor, gasping from the exertion of walking down the stairs. ‘Look. I brought pills.’

The old man exhumes various brown vials from his pockets setting them in a semicircle in front of where he sits. I see the question in his eyes. Will what he has brought be enough?

I pop the cork from a bottle of dandelion wine and pour two cups, handing one to Virgil, keeping the other for myself. He lifts his Styrofoam high and white in the air as a sort of toast, takes a pull, sets it down in front of him, and then begins, not unlike a child, to methodically open the vials one by one spilling the contents onto the cold concrete in small and separate piles of blue, red, green, yellow.

‘What about your wife?’

‘She left me,’ Virgil says, chin jutting, defiant. ‘Claimed I was seeing someone else. Can you imagine? Married over fifty years and she’s never trusted me for one day.’

‘Who did she think you were seeing?’

‘Oh, I left her once. Years ago. Made a clean break. I actually thought I was over her. But here I am.’

‘You left your wife?’

‘No, of course not,’ Virgil snorted into his cup. ‘I would never leave Lizzy.’

‘Why did you come back?’

‘She’s the color of a wet highway at night,’ Virgil says, gazing at something hovering in a dark corner. ‘You ever notice that?’