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Jacob's Brood
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Erika sat on the bus staring out the dingy window across from her, ignoring the teenage couple kissing next to her. The girl kept banging her elbow into Erika’s upper arm and she was starting to get irritated.“Get a friggin’ room,” Erika muttered with a growl. She clutched her brown, ripstop messenger bag closer to her chest as the bus approached her corner. It was bad enough she hadn’t had a date in who knew how long, but to have to watch some pimply-faced teenage boy grope his girlfriend was just about the last thing she could take today.
Besides being nagged to death by her boss for not working fast enough to code the new website (what did he know? He was a marketing manager.), she’d managed to spill hot chocolate on her white t-shirt at lunch and broke her phone by dropping it when said hot chocolate spilled on her shirt. The guy who bumped into her and began the whole hot-chocolate incident didn’t even apologize. He just smiled at the blonde next to him and walked away with her.
They made an odd couple: she was neatly dressed in a dark skirt and crisp white blouse; he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, his scruff giving him an almost sinister look. And he looked familiar, which drove Erika crazy all through lunch. Where did she know him from?
The wheels of the bus squealed as it came to her stop on Pullman Avenue. Her apartment building was only a block away and she was eager to get home and change clothes. She hopped off the bus and began walking. Red and blue lights flickered on the street ahead of her. They looked awfully close to her…
“No!” she exclaimed and took off at a run. A fire truck and two police cars had stopped in front of her apartment building. She gasped for breath as she zigged around the few people on the sidewalk. The street ahead had been blocked off and people milled around out front.
No smoke emanated from the building and she sighed in relief. In fact, no one looked particularly concerned. Annoyed, yes, but not concerned. As she jogged to a stop, she saw a police officer pushing a skinny red-haired guy in his late twenties out of the front doors. The guy’s hands were behind his back and his head was hanging down, causing his long hair to shield his face.
But she knew who he was. Steve McNary. Druggie extraordinaire and girlfriend-beater. He lived right above her and she heard him and his girlfriend fighting a lot. One time the girl had thrown the fire alarm to get away from him. Erika wondered if the same thing happened today. Why else would there be so many police officers and fire trucks? Why did the girl go back to him?
Erika looked around to see if she saw anyone she knew from the building. Most everyone kept to themselves, but she knew a few people on her floor.
Suddenly, she gasped. The man who made her spill her hot chocolate was walking around the corner from the alley. “I knew that I knew him!” Erika huffed. If she were brave, she would go confront him. But she wasn’t brave.
Riley woke with a start to the blaring of the fire alarm. Flailing his arms, his right hand hit the wall with a crunch, sending needles of pain to accompany the shrill of the alarm. Sensation flooded his mind as it filled him with adrenaline, instinct demanding movement before his conscious thought caught up with the moment. Sound, pain, hunger, dark, heat.
Shaking his head to clear the dullness of sleep only recently relinquished, he took stock at the lightning speed of thoughts.
Where was he? Must be his room, in his apartment, in his bed. What time?
A quick glance at this bedside revealed the hour of six. Must be PM, he is rarely home by the AM, and never asleep. He glanced to his right and found his hand, throbbing, sunk in the drywall next to his bed. This place is worse than he thought, and he didn’t think it was much to begin with. He’d been living at Pullman avenue for years, since just after he’d started at Annex. It’d fit within his limited budget then, and was close enough he could manage the commute. A year ago he’d started saving to move out of this dump, but lately he’d been spending everything he had on food.
The alarm drew him from his thoughts in its insistent way and he pulled his hand from the wall. Cradling it against him he shuffled out of bed and hit the lights. Blinking from the sudden illumination he grabbed his phone and keys off the nightstand and moved toward the door. He doubted the alarm was real, but didn’t want to be the doubter that ended up dead.
At his doorway he grabbed his jacket and shoes, he’d put them on after he got out. Grabbing the handle with his uninjured hand he twisted and yanked. The door didn’t move. Damn Pullman, he had to get a better place soon. Maybe he could sue for a ‘sticky door’ in an emergency and use the money to get out of here. He twisted again and yanked hard. With a splinter of wood the door yielded to his pressure, the deadbolt ripping out of the doorjamb.
What the? Hell, he didn’t have time to wonder about it. Riley moved into the hall and joined the other residents on their way out of the building. As he shuffled down the stairs the all too familiar gnaw twisted his insides. He’d been eating non-stop for weeks, but didn’t seem to be putting on any weight. Truth be told he thought he was getting thinner. Maybe he’d make that doctors appointment,… as soon as he got something to eat. Would pizza deliver to a building on fire?
***
Some forty minutes later Riley watched from across the street, his pizza (nearly gone already) in his lap as the police and fire department drove away. Most of the residents had already shuffled back in after the police dragged Steve off. Maybe they’d lock him up this time and he wouldn’t have to worry about alarms anymore.
As Riley stood to make his own way back to his apartment he saw what must have been the last of the residents hanging out by the back alley. He didn’t recognize the man, but Riley hadn’t made that much effort to get to know anyone in this place. The man didn’t seem to be too anxious to go back in. In fact he seemed more interested in watching the others go in than moving that way himself. While Riley was puzzling this out the man’s gaze fell upon him, and lingered. Riley held his gaze, waiting for the man to move on, but that moment didn’t come. Even from this distance Riley could see the white of his teeth as a smile spread across his face.
Mod
He was still there, staring hard at the other residents as they filed back inside. Petra swore softly under her breath and bit her lip, not knowing what to do. She needed some kind of distraction, some kind of divine intervention to buy her a few seconds - just long enough to let her get inside and lock herself away in her apartment, that's all she needed. Was that so much to ask?
It must not have been, because just at that moment he glanced away. Petra's gaze sharpened, and her breath caught in her throat. He wasn't looking her way - he wasn't even looking at the door. Whatever he'd spotted seemed to have thoroughly caught his attention, and as Petra watched he smiled widely and started moving away from the building.
Never had an opportunity been so clear. Before she had even finished the thought, Petra was already halfway across the courtyard, and heading towards the door. Then she did something stupid.
The door was there, unguarded and unwatched, and it practically beckoned to her with its run-down, unwelcoming-but-familiar presence. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to take advantage of the man's distraction to slip inside and hide herself away. But she didn't. Instead, giving in to an impulse that was as sudden as it was foolish, she slipped past the door and around the far corner, heading into the alley.
Sending a nervous glance over her shoulder, Petra had to wonder if she were insane to be doing this. No one was following her, and she turned back to the alley. The dumpsters were ahead of her, and she moved quickly down the narrow space towards them, even as she concluded that yes, she was insane for doing this.
A few seconds later she was wrestling with the awkward, floppy cover of the dumpster. She swung it up, and managed to get enough momentum going for it to swing past the ninety degree point and lazily slouch down against the wall instead of slamming closed again. The sickeningly sweet smell of rot rushed up into her nostrils, and she covered her mouth and nose with one hand.
There it was - the shiny black garbage bag that she'd seen next to the scruffy guy in the hall. From her hiding spot, Petra had seen him leave the building with it, disappearing around the corner and then returning without it shortly afterwards. It hadn't taken a genius to put together garbage bag and dumpster and to track it down to here. She was just glad that it was still right on top - she didn't think she could have brought herself to go digging around any deeper.
She took a deep breath, then instantly regretted it as the smell rose up once again. Grimacing, Petra reached out and grabbed the plastic bag, digging into it with her nails and pulling. The plastic stretched, then gave way and ripped open. Garbage poured out, and Petra jumped back in disgust.
Melon rinds splattered to the ground, generously smeared with the slimy remains of used coffee grounds. Crumpled, waxy paper cups were scattered here and there, along with some broken egg shells and old clothes.
Petra took another step back, shaking her head at nothing in particular. She didn't know what she had expected, but for some reason she'd been certain there'd be more than just...garbage. Body parts, maybe, or a bloody knife or something. An almost ridiculous sense of disappointment filled her, and she had to shake herself to get past it.
She was about to leave when a brown stain caught her eye. It was dark on the otherwise bright white fabric, as it huddled on the ground with the rest of the debris. Petra took a step forward, and gingerly fished it out of the garbage.
It was a woman's blouse, she realized a moment later, a nice one. Expensive, too - probably tailored, Petra thought. Then her eyes focused on the stain. At first she'd just thought that it was from the coffee, but it didn't take long to realize that the brown was really a dark red.
Petra dropped the blouse. Swallowing hard, she started to back up again, wondering what she should do. Then a sound reached her and she froze, too afraid to turn around. Someone was coming.
She hit the button with the half-worn-off 3 on it, then backed up and leaned against the far wall of the elevator. Her eyes drifted closed for a moment, and her head drooped. When she opened them again, her gaze rested blankly on the fake wood paneling of the elevator floor. Then they started to focus.
Something had been spilled on the floor - not unheard of in this building of course, but there was something about the color of the spill that caught Petra’s attention. She looked closer. The spot was small, just a single drop, half the size of a dime, with two other specks lying above and to the right. It was blood.
Petra went back to her spot against the wall of the elevator, bracing herself against the shallow metal railing that had been hung there. For a few seconds she was unmoved. Then, slowly, she began to become concerned.
The elevator made a dinging sound to indicate that it had passed the second floor and was on the way to the third. The gears of the mechanism were grinding in the background, and Petra’s pulse started to pick up. There was no reason to be afraid, she knew this - there was no threat in the elevator with her. But there was no reason, no safe reason, for there to be blood on the elevator floor either.
The elevator dinged again, signaling that the third floor had been reached. Petra knew that it would be at least another fifteen seconds before the doors would finally start to open, but she moved towards them anyway, anxious to be gone. She gave the droplets another glance, then looked away quickly, staring at her mottled reflection in the elevator’s old brass doors instead.
The doors finally creaked open, splitting her reflection, and Petra pushed through them almost before there was enough room to do so. She adjusted the strap of her bag where it hung on her shoulder, then began moving down the dimly-lit hallway. With each step she took, she felt a little bit safer, but also with each step she moved a little bit faster. She didn’t want anything to do with what she’d seen in the elevator - she just wanted to be gone, to be home, with her apartment door securely locked and bolted and chained behind her.
She was moving swiftly down the hallway, not quite running but definitely not just walking either, when a door was flung open and a man appeared in the hallway. Petra, whose eyes had been on her feet, nearly ran into him, but recoiled in time.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, reeling back and looking up into his scruffy-looking face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t - I didn’t see you there,” she said. As she spoke, her gaze drifted from his face down to the bulky garbage bag on the floor next to him. The faded fluorescent light barely illuminated the hallway, but it seemed to reflect almost brightly off the shiny black plastic of the garbage bag. “I’m sorry,” she repeated faintly, taking a step backwards.
The man’s eyes had been narrowed on her since their near-collision, and now she saw him look sharply past her towards the elevators. She heard a dull dinging sound, and knew without turning around that the elevator doors had just finished closing. In that moment, she was certain that she saw his face darken, and panic welled up within her.
Just then, the air was shattered by a high-pitched mechanical wailing. Petra covered her ears, and within moments doors were opening up and down the hallway, as people began to respond to the fire alarm. The man with the garbage bag reached towards her, but Petra evaded him and slipped quickly away.
She rushed down the hallway, not caring who she jostled in her attempt to put distance between herself and the guy she’d run into. She joined the general exodus that was heading down the stairs and out the big glass doors that led to the shabby courtyard out front. Once she was outside, she told herself, she could mingle with the crowd and stay out of sight. She just had to make it outside.