I'm So Sorry

What do you think is behind you?

Hopefully, nothing. All I can do is hope that there is nothing in the room with you right now. No one nearby. In fact, if you’re reading this with someone else, you should really leave. Now. Please read this alone. Check and make sure you’re alone.

I have something to tell you.

When I was a kid, I was scared of the basement. Every time I had to walk down the stairs into the dark, I nervously sang a song to myself. Nothing ever happened, but I was still scared of the blind corners and partially open doors that lead into unseen emptiness. I still ran up the stairs like something was chasing me. Even if I never got hurt.

I was just a kid, so I told myself it was because I was trading a song for my safety. Everyone likes music, right? Even monsters. They had to. What else was I supposed to do? What else could I believe? It didn’t matter how logically I laid it out, or how many times I had emerged from the basement unharmed.

I could never bring myself to believe there was nothing in the dark.

So I have to believe there’s something we can do about it instead.

I’m so sorry.

They told me last week.

I work in an insectary in Marr Valley, where we raise pest insects to test pesticides on. It’s not really high level stuff, but it’s still important. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself. The insectary is always humid and hot, because it’s suited more to our subjects’ comfort levels than our own. And the lights are on a timer.

Twelve hours on; twelve hours off.

It keeps the insects on a regular day/night schedule. And it’s automatic. The box controlling the timer is locked with a padlock that only our manager can access. Corporate power consolidation, you know? They don’t want lab techs to have the ability to actually make decisions.

Last Monday, I had the morning shift, and I came in at my usual time to start collecting eggs and setting new cages. The lights were on and my coworker Tam was already washing pans.

When the insects lay aquatically, we end up with a lot of dishes piled up at the end of the weekend. No one wants to wash on a Saturday. I could see an orange-ish film on the top dish in a little swirl of filth. Tam’s hands worked methodically at the backlog, scrubbing the brush across the pan in short, rhythmic swishes.

“Morning, Tam,” I greeted, moving past him to start my own work.

He continued to scrub.

Tam was a friendly guy, so I knew he must have his earbuds in. Listening to music was a perk of coming in earlier than the bureaucrats. Feeling a little burst of mischief quirk my lips, I realized he didn’t know I was there yet.

I’d just work until he noticed me and freaked out.

Looking forward to him clutching his heart and swearing at me before the inevitable laughter, I slipped into the first hot box. Technically, they were each called “insectaries” but calling the bigger lab and the smaller rooms by the same name could get confusing. So we called them hot boxes. They were an even higher temperature than the lab, since it’s where the insects were kept for the greater part of the day.

As I collected eggs from the breeding colonies, I hummed a little to myself to pass the time. There’s nothing quite so good at making time pass slowly than doing routine tasks in high humidity. Soon enough, I had collected everything viable from that hot box and brought them out to the center counter so I could set them up in their own cage to hatch.

There was still a pile of dishes on the counter next to Tam as he worked steadily on the dish in the sink.

His shoulders were stiff as he scrubbed so I quietly shut the door to Hot Box One, hoping he was involved enough that he wouldn’t hear. He didn’t turn and I silently congratulated myself. Every minute he didn’t notice me was another I could add to the total when he asked incredulously how long I’d been there without him noticing.

Beginning the painstakingly tedious process of setting hatches, I got a little distracted from my prank. It took a bit of focus to measure out enough eggs to match what R&D needed without accidentally killing off a bunch of larvae from overcrowding. Thanks to that, I could be forgiven when I set a pan down a little too hard on the metal table.

The clang of ceramic on metal made me wince - looked like that was the end of that joke. Plus, the noise was just unpleasant.

“Hi Tam,” I said with some resignation, knowing the jig was up.

He continued to scrub. His arm jerked back and forth without even a hitch in the movement.

Okay. That was… kind of weird. How loud was his music?

Tall and broad, Tam had always looked a little out of place among the rest of the petite lab techs. He tended to hunch sheepishly down to our level, but I noticed now that he was standing fully upright. In the harsh light of the lab, the sharp line of his shoulders at that height twitched back and forth with his movements. I almost didn’t want to interrupt him. Maybe he was upset.

Still, I reminded myself that I worked alone with Tam all the time, and he’d never done anything to hurt me. Even if my mind was playing back the knowledge that I was a short woman alone with a tall man behind three different electronic locks.

Our company took confidential information like pesticide formulas very seriously. No outsider was sauntering in on their watch. Nor would anyone come running at the sound of a scream.

I swallowed and wiped my palms on my pants with a nervous laugh, raising my voice, “Tam? Can you hear me now?” When he didn’t react, didn’t slow in the relentless, steady scrubbing, I took a step forward. I thought that it might be better to just yank the earbud from his ear at this point if it got his attention. My stomach was starting to knot and I just wanted him to turn around.

“Tam,” I reached forward to touch his shoulder, but stopped before I could make contact. The stack of dishes had caught my eye again. It had been shoulder height when I walked in, and that had been half an hour ago.

It was still the same height. There was even the same dish on top that I’d noted when I walked in, the orange swirl blatant and unmoved.

I drew back my hand, slowly, and rounded the edge of the sink at a distance. It looked like he didn’t have earbuds. So no music. Still, there was nothing wrong with being… very thorough with a single dish.

For half an hour.

I’d just get a little look at what horrible thing the senior scientists had left that took that long to clean. From a bit of distance. Say, out of arm’s reach.

I repeated to myself that maybe Tam was just upset. He could be zoning out and that was totally valid. The thought made my chest twinge a little with guilt at my own paranoia, but… He was still twice my size and possibly pissed off.

Better to play it safe, right?

The way my stomach was twisting told me my gut firmly agreed with me.

“They told us.”

The abruptness of Tam’s voice breaking the silence made me jump, but relief flooded my body soon after. The lights flickered but I barely noticed. At least he was saying something.

“Who?” I asked, glad to be getting to the bottom of his distraction. “What did they say? Are you alright?”

He shook his head, a sharp, disjointed motion that looked as if it were conducted by strings. Through it all, he continued to scrub, back and forth and back and forth. There was a lot of effort put into each stroke, but it didn’t look fast enough to actually clean efficiently. The lights flickered in time.

“Do you want to talk about it?” As soon as I recovered from my surprise that he’d spoken, I’d started moving closer to him again. It sounded like whatever happened wasn’t something to shout across the lab. As I asked, I was finally close enough to put a hand on his shoulder. And see what was in the sink.

My heart rate skyrocketed up and past the record it’d set earlier as I stumbled back.

Tam had it gripped with one hand, scratching steel wool over it with the other. A head. A human head, red curls tangled in his fingers and red… stained over his skin. Pale, unseeing eyes stared up at us unblinkingly, her skin scraped away where he’d been scrubbing and exposing the white of bone. He continued to work.

Back and forth.

The lights flickered on and off, the period it was off lengthening to match his movement.

“They told us,” he repeated, voice too normal, the words coming too easily. “And she had to forget. I have to get it out of her.”

I knew that face. I’d never seen it that pale and… His girlfriend had featured prominently in his profile pictures. I’d seen that face so many times. The lights continued to flicker. On, off. Back and forth.

I wanted to run. I wanted to throw up until I’d emptied myself of everything I’d seen. But my legs were trembling instead of leaping into action. My knees gave out and I fell back against the wall, groping for the door with one shaking hand. I couldn’t help a single sob escaping my lips in a painful convulsion of desperation.

Abruptly, the scrubbing stopped. The lights stuck dim, a setting they didn’t have.

“...Did they tell you?”

For the first time all morning, he turned away from the sink, eyes settling on me with a cold focus and freezing me in place, even as his voice twisted earnestly into pitying words.

“They- no one told me anything,” I insisted, my pitch too high and another sob breaking the sentence in two. “I don’t know it. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I can help if they told you,” he continued unfazed, picking up a towel and wiping his girlfriend’s blood from his hands as he took a measured step in my direction. “I’m sure we can get it out. Both of us.”

Chills shrieked down my spine in unnecessary warning. I didn’t need gut instinct to tell me I could die in that lab. This renewed my frantic search for the doorknob, and even with my eyes trapped on Tam as he approached, my hand finally gripped the cold metal and turned.

I fell through and stumbled into a run. Out was easier than in, I told myself. The locks were designed to keep people from getting in, so even if no one could get in to help, I could run.

I did run.

I sprinted through heavy doors, past the dark, empty cubicles of the front office and into the parking lot before I realized my cell phone was where I’d left it. Balanced precariously on the upper shelf in the lab, next to my car keys.

I swore through a gasp. My lungs were burning and my throat felt like it had a hole in it even with all my hyperventilating. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe and all I wanted was to scream.

Where could I go? The sun wasn’t even up. Only Tam and I had cars in the parking lot.

There were businesses nearby, but they wouldn’t be open at this hour. The residential areas, though… Who would open their door to a disheveled woman in a stained lab coat at five in the morning?

Hopefully, someone. Anyone with an ounce of curiosity or compassion. Hell, I would take schadenfreude with gratitude. A sharp cramp in my gut reminded me that my running time would be coming to a sudden halt very soon and I had better make the most of what I had left.

Not to mention the door opening behind me.

I didn’t even turn to look, forcing my shaky limbs into a run that was more controlled falling than conscious action across the street. Traffic was practically non-existent and I couldn’t have cared less if a car had come, anyway.

Maybe it’d hit Tam.

I dashed painfully to the first door with a car in the driveway, slamming my fist against the wood in a manic pattern until a light came on. But I couldn’t wait for them to get to the door.

He was at the edge of the driveway, walking up the asphalt at an unhurried pace.

I covered my hand with my lab coat and smashed through the small window beside the door to unlock it myself. Scrambling through, I locked it behind me by habit, mind blank and screaming with alarm instead of thinking through how useless that was.

“Who are you? Get out!” The owner was a plump woman who might have looked kindly were it not for the fear settling into the lines of her face. “I’m calling the police!”

“I’m sorry! Please call them!” I agreed, but she was already retreating upstairs, the door shutting and locking with an audible click. There was no time to explain. My stomach dropped entirely and I searched desperately for somewhere to hide, upsetting furniture and throwing open doors in search of locks.

One door had a deadbolt on the inside.

The basement.

I didn’t know where the light switch was. I couldn’t take the time to find it. Instead I threw myself through the door and slammed it shut, locking it and leaning against the curling paint of the wood as if I could hold it shut with my presence alone. My panting was too loud in the enclosed space and I struggled to control my breath, feeling my head throb as heat blasted through my blood in a silent demand to breathe, dammit that I had to suppress. Quiet, quiet, quiet. I felt like I was going to suffocate, like my veins were going to burst, and I’d die here anyway, with the dark at the bottom of the stairs pressing against my back like a physical vice grip.

I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t make myself go down into the basement, no matter how much smarter it might have been. If I were braver, I could have looked around. It might have been a storm cellar with a second exit. I might have hidden myself in a cabinet and made it nearly impossible for Tam to hear me.

But I was already so scared. I felt more like a child than an adult, huddling in the dark in fear of a monster. Cheeks already wet with tears, I felt my eyes burn with more and bit my lip against the harsh breathing that would give me away.

I just had to stay quiet. I didn’t have to die in the dark.

The very thought broke a quiet sob from me and my every vein went instantly ice cold, hand over my mouth.

Footsteps.

Towards the door.

Past it, maybe?

A tap against the wood made me scream before I could help it, wound too tight to react with any sort of calm. I barely managed to avoid jumping back and falling down the stairs.

“They didn’t tell you, did they?”

Tam’s voice was considering, and my heart stuttered painfully in my chest, still facing the closed door and knowing he was there on the other side.

But I couldn’t step back into the dark.

“They d- didn’t tell me,” I stuttered back. Suddenly the fear flared and my gut clenched as rage filled me. I was backed into a corner. One of my own devising, sure. Still, no one had told me anything, especially not something that would make me want to let Tam kill me! And he was only now deciding to believe me? The injustice of it seared me inside and out. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, you monster! I’ve never known!” My hands thumped flat against the door once in my fury before the emotion collapsed in on itself and the crying began in earnest. I sank to my knees, then sat back on my heels, leaning against the wall as I messily gasped and cried.

This was never meant to happen. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Tam was my friend. He’d been my- my friend, hadn’t he?

He’d been nice and funny.

He’d been in love with his girlfriend.

What happened? I repeated the question out loud, somehow audible through my sobs.

“I need to get it out of my head,” he told me, voice so low it was almost a whisper. “I need to get it out, but she already knew and I already knew. There was nothing we could do. They told us together and we- we had to get it out. I didn’t-” Finally, his words broke on a rasp of sorrow, real emotion entering his voice for the first time that morning. Tam sped up, as if desperate to explain, “It took a little while for us to understand, but then… She begged me. She begged me, do you understand? I didn’t want to do it!” His pitch rose with his volume and he slammed the door at the end of his sentence like furious punctuation.

“Okay,” I said weakly through the wood. It was less that I agreed and more an attempt at acknowledging whatever the murderer said in the hopes he would go away.

“Okay,” he repeated, volume dropping and his knees hitting the floor with a thump as he slid down to the floor. I could see the fabric of his pants in the gap. We were both leaning against the door between us, now. “I think it’s why they told us in the first place. To get it out. I think that will get it out. Maybe I’ll forget. Maybe I- I’ll just be able to live with it. I think- No, I’m going to tell you.”

I swallowed and didn’t say anything. Maybe I could have run into the basement, but… I couldn’t even gather the strength to stand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he told me.

The words were simple. They didn’t make sense. My first thought was that I couldn’t believe people had died for a nonsense sentence that didn’t go further than four words.

And my second thought was that they felt familiar.

“It’s out,” Tam breathed on the other side of the door, and began to laugh. There was no humor in the sound, only stark relief that quickly faded. “It’s out,” he said in an altogether different tone that sent a chill down my spine. “But I killed her. I thought I had- I didn’t know- I couldn’t even think for hours- ”

The laughter started again with a distinctly hysterical edge.

“I killed her!”

He stood and stumbled away from the door with uneven steps until the laughter suddenly stopped, replaced with something wet and gasping.

I sat on the top step between the darkness below and the darkness outside, pinned in fear until the police arrived.

When I came out, Tam’s body was slumped against the kitchen cabinets, sprawled on the floor with a smile on his face and a gaping Glasgow grin beneath it. Finally I got to throw up. The cops were less than sympathetic, at least until I could explain that Tam was why I’d broken into the house in the first place.

I told them everything - but for one detail.

Even if the words seemed innocuous, silly even for all the build up, I didn’t let them know Tam had told me. When they asked if I knew what he’d been talking about, I lied through my teeth until they let me go home. Then I sat very still, for a very long time, and thought.

I thought until I understood.

And my mind screamed in denial as my heart stutter-stopped in reaction to the pain of knowing. It’s in my head. Or maybe not my head.

For the first few hours, I would’ve rather died, but I was barely able to move. Not for myself. I knew why Tam had killed her, then.

If anyone besides me had known, I’d have been able to muster the energy.

I’d have strangled them with a smile.

It’d be a mercy compared to the steady tattoo of knowledge stabbing into my brain over and over and over and over-

But now I just want out. I can’t live like this. It’s been three days and I know I need to eat or drink or sleep but I can’t with this- with this in my head.

I hope you understand now. I hope you’re alone.

I know we can beat this. This has to be the way. If we can just pass it on through a screen, when people are alone, then we can beat it. Like singing to the monsters in the dark, if we just pass it on fast enough, we can make it through. A bargain with eternity. No one has to die.

It’s just going to hurt.

I’m so sorry. I’m going to tell you. Look down.

Those aren't your hands.