3 Days Later
I never want to be that small again.
Click Here For Chapter, My Pills, My Priestess, My Demon
On her back, Heather stared at the translucent ceiling for what felt like a biblical age. Time felt curiously elastic, as though it had stretched across multiple generational lifespans. It felt impossible for all of that to happen, as it did, 3 days ago on the marble table. Could all of that happen in one night? Had it? It had felt like their encounter had unfolded on the head of a pin. How had she been able to get so far - so far - outwitting, outlasting, outsexing her divided devil - for decades it seemed - only to contract back down into Thumbelina and ride the pendulum, once again, back to the start?
It’s like I’m in my own personal hell. My own personal pit and the pendulum.
Tears pricked her eyes.
And now I’m stuck and that dick-swinging pendulum is going to pulverize me. At this point it was almost laughable. Would Heather be able to return to normal? Could she? How could she when the knife slid with an unctuous thrust into Joseph? When Tammy splintered between his teeth? (An auditory spectacle he had shared over the phone, held to his face). The phone that was now held to her face: Danny’s phone. She looked at it in quiet, peaking awe; like it was a venerated relic. It felt - God. Holding his phone made her heart pound. What would she find in there? What secrets did it hold? She tapped her fingernails against the screen, feeling like a spiteful Pandora. How am I gonna unlock this damn thing. It was only through her own nimble mental craft she had managed to distract him from the knowledge of its absence over the ensuing 3 days – which had sprightly come and gone, ejecting her into today.
It buzzed and a notification rolled across the screen. The pre-board itinerary for a flight that was landing in an airport in a different time zone. She knew this because she could see the conversion in the margin. Heather counted on her fingers. Europe, maybe. The rest of the message, because it sat on the locked screen, remained stubbornly truncated. And it was just like this, the last few days, she stared at his cell phone, observing his life as it trickled through in a slow, tantalizing drip. But so far, nothing had materialized to demystify the – conversational exchange? – that had transpired 3 days ago; a conversation that had driven him to distraction; a conversation that had driven him to insanity; a conversation that had compelled him to mentally stumble around her diminished state. Unless, hmm, it was the trip itself that had been the root of the problem? It had sprung up rather suddenly. On day 2, she remembered him slinking into the kitchen, informing her he’d be out of town; leaving a peace-making Starbucks; kissing her on the top of her head; then leaving. And the normalcy – the domesticity – of that moment had stunned her.
It was like they were together again. But as tender and intimate as that moment had been, it still wasn’t powerful enough to wash away what had happened in the eruptive liminal bang of the glass jar: languishing in salivary bondage, fingers twined around her diminished body as glimpses of his red, rough mouth flickered. It was a feeling she would never forget: being small and dispossessed, drowning in his size. She got onto her hands and knees, slipping his phone into her pocket.
She couldn’t reconcile her thoughts, so she tried to outpace them. However, staying a judicious step before her thoughts had the effect, apparently, of inuring her to her environment, because it wasn’t until she felt the pellets striking her back did she realize she had — like a sleepwalker — abscond of the living room and stumble into the wet room. The shower soaked her.
She hated that she moved with such ease, that she moved with such knowledge inside his home.
Granted, it was beautiful and well-appointed. It was an open-floor plan divided by panes of glass that sequestered the woods by a thin, condensing breath. The rooms were crowned by high, lofty architectural ceilings which were bracketed by long wooden cross beams that were fashioned, also, underfoot in warm pines; thematic reprisal continued, varnishing the wall molding, marrying broad, geometric staircases to recessed lofts. When it snowed, it was a wonder. Heather remembered watching the snowstorms roll through while tucked in the arms of her divided devil. Nothing could disturb their placidity from within the magnificent grand room, which abutted the wet room, the former anchored by open-faced fireplaces; one was outfitted with digital flames that rotated through fluorescent colors. Baroque paintings daubed the walls; some depicting prohibitively erotic artwork. A vase, one in each corner, sat sumptuously, bearing intricately designed gold-embossed figurines.
Once upon a time, she had treated his wealth as she did the water from the shower: allowing it to roll from her possession with little thought and little consequence, and, certainly, with little interrogation into its source because it was pleasant and comforting, but not hers to hold – but, now, she felt irked by it. Why couldn’t it be her? It was once, wasn’t it?
Heather meditated on the porcelain tiles of the wet room, watching with a sort of disconnected stupor as the water streamed away from her, toward the terra-cotta perimeter, creating a waist-high tide that, should she exit the shower stall, serve as a borderless bath. Once, this had been a source of pleasure for her. Now, it felt vaguely unsettling and perplexing, like being entombed. His entire home made her feel anxious. Because she had lived in it once before; and to it she returned again.
And she remembered how she had felt, back then, first walking into his home. It was not unlike the farmer’s daughter entering the king’s castle. But, even then, it had been clear he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth (no, Danny put other things in his mouth) nor cosseted by an unwieldy trust fund, so there had been something remarkably relatable about him. And that accessibility had prevented him from feeling woefully unreachable and pretentious. In fact, she had been certain, from the context clues she had pieced together: he was self-made.
He was an individual moving through that nebulous cloud of ‘business’ who had an almost effortless enchantment for making wealth with nothing (terribly) descriptive about his conquests other than the ever-rising, ever-upward feel of exploitation through the machine. He ascended the summit: spidering across boards, steering committees, and think tanks. He had found his niche – corporate contracts – and pincered onto it like a parasite, subsisting off of multiple retainers with enough trailing zeroes to make Heather dizzy. She knew this, because she had seen one of his bank statements roll through on his cell phone (and did an emphatic double-take).
A sort of savant, she remembered him tying up every conversation with a flippant I have good instinct for deal-making.
He was a creature that shouldn’t exist making money off of numbers that didn’t exist. These financial systems were meaningful only to patrons that wanted a carve-out in currencies and contempt; their beliefs affixed to a scale that existed only because it was determined to exist. And so, it must. This was a nigh-religious tithing. Big, big money exchanging hands just to seek advice from the lips of the oracle.
Even the financial markets were part of this banquet. A banquet for which she had somehow become a center piece. But there was a lot to dissect here, wasn’t there? Heather tried to triage her thoughts, to give them shape and meaning.
So, my ex-boyfriend — boyfriend? — is an evil creature boogey-man-thing that can contract people down to the size of a fucking pill.
Heather hated saying it out loud, it made her feel like a lunatic. But, even her internal voice offered no relief, because no matter the descriptor used, the calculus of it remained the same: He eats the women, so they die; they die because he eats them. Fuck. It was simple math. Simple transitive properties. And she could not undo one fact for the other, because the other twin fact still remained — evil, insidious, and haltingly familiar: like he tried with me. Heather wrinkled her nose. Pussy-first, even. Of course, he had tried to eat me pussy-first.
Fuck. She had lived with, sexed with, bonded with the instrument that ritualistically killed. What did that say about her? (And that she conveniently suppressed Tammy?)
She had promised herself one year ago (plus) that they would never (ever) get back together again because of the befouled strangeness he had visited upon her that evening — because even then, in her heart of hearts she had known instinctively that what he had done — what he had attempted to do — even when she had not understood it at the time, had been ugly, and that ugliness was now magnified because he had done it before: to others.
And Heather did not relish the thought of it, because if she was the prey, and he the predator, then that meant there was a design to this system: a, dare she say it, ecosystem. Which was all together infuriating because that suggested his existence was intentional in spite of - or because of? - a loving omnipotent God. Danny was no terrible accident to surge forth from primordial muck –
(or was he?)
Stymied, Heather padded out of the wet room, slid into a silk robe, and folded down onto the couch -grabbing a blanket- before casting a calculable glance at the marble table. It felt impossible, like some kind of temporal unmooring was happening. She couldn’t believe she had been trapped on that table, just 3 nights ago, scarcely three inches tall enrobed in nothing save for her moxie. A sudden nausea clutched her. It took a moment to assign meaning to it, but when Heather shifted her weight, she understood it.
I need my pills. But, no. I actually really, really, really need my fucking pills. The narcotics made her unpalatable to him. She needed them to curb her appeal; she needed them to survive. Because she did not trust him. I’d be crazy to trust him. She was not sure by which metric she finally determined her surroundings to be safe – but it seemed to be a fair one — because when she carefully, oh-so carefully, whisked herself free from the blanket, nothing happened. I wouldn’t put it past him to have ‘em turn that damn airplane around midflight…
So, on silent cat-feet she went.
It felt wildly inappropriate to move so freely through his home. Even when they had been dating there had been a crinkle of awkwardness whenever she had done so; but now, now it felt like a spiteful joust. She barely smothered her glee moving ghostly through the walls.
The master bedroom loomed. It pulled her. She looked at the conjoined his and her closets. Perfect for skeletons. But that was not her destination; she continued to the ensuite bathroom. It was far from the living room, rather perfectly tucked out of sight: the perfect place for him to hide her pills. It was the last place she’d look; obvious, but not. And, wonderfully symmetrical. A call-back to when he had expunged the pills from her bathroom. First, Heather tried her old spot in the toilet, behind the flush mechanics – but they weren’t there. Rolling her sleeve down, she checked under the floating sink; between the Roman shower panels; behind the diffusive shower head.
Nothing.
With an exasperated gasp she whipped around, and froze. She was struck by the mirror. Fascinated, she looked at her reflection. Her black hair was a bit tangled, and there was a flush pricking her cheeks, but otherwise she looked as hauntingly familiar as her surroundings. And the most terrifically frightening thing about this – about all of this—she realized, was that there was no evidence left behind: that he had diminished her.
Stop it. Stop the bad thoughts.
Heather reached out to touch her reflection in a surreal attempt to scold herself.
But, the mirror clicked and came forward.
“The fuck?”
It was a cabinet, but it didn’t look like one: the vanity was seamless and streamlined, illuminated by digital light that spangled brightly across the marble countertop. Opening it had sluiced forward a waterfall of brilliance. Momentarily dazzled Heather froze, then she re-animated. She peered inside.
Oh yeah, my pills will be in here. Nice try, Danny.
Feeling fiendishly clever: she reached.
Well. There were certainly bottles in there. And they certainly resembled those for pills. But there were too many of them and none of them were like hers. She studied them for a long moment, feeling a sort of paralysis. Why did a man-monster, with a fetish for consuming female flesh, need a stockade of pill bottles? (A stockade that was hiding behind a recessed cabinet and a false wall?) Heather looked at the orange bottle menagerie with new eyes. What’s sealed away in these bad boys? Do I even want to know?
It felt leering. The cache was hidden; but not. It was an advertisement; but not. Heather felt her theory solidify. He was hiding something. But she wavered. This feels too much like Chekhov’s rifle. Defeated, she turned away — but not before first impulsively grabbing a bottle and shoving it in her pocket.
Plot twist: grabbing Chekhov’s rifle.
If he had gone through such trouble to hide it, then it had value. Value she would ascertain later. Heather returned to the living room. She gazed out the long translucent window; the moon gazed back. Under it, the woods were canopied in thick, breathing shadows. She twisted her fingers together, her brain slowly ticking like a metronome, each syncopation flickering through her heartbeat. I need to find my pills.
Heather studied the door to the walk-in pantry.
Resolved, she eased it open, and stepped inside.
To the fore: a glass-empaneled wine room encased in the wall, airbrushed by platinums and silvers; to the sides: a litany of labels and sensuous bottles stacked like lovely little ladies, all neat in a honey-comb row. To the back: a sequestered room full of overwhelming excess. There was something distressing about seeing a cache of alcohol in a man-beast’s lair. But to it she went, running her fingers over the tempered glass.
Being in the presence of this churned so many embittered thoughts to the surface. Namely, if this need of his to consume was not actually a necessity, and instead, a voluntary practice… Then, well, everything flowing from that was made uglier. Uglier, because it was a choice. A selfish, demonic choice. Made over, and over, and over again. (Giving credence to his nickname of divided devil). Otherwise, these bottles were very stately, very expensive prop pieces emblazoned with silver-flecked labels of Cypress olive trees.
“Did you know that you have pattern here? You have preference?”
She could hear him saying in great projection, in her head, just as he did in the warehouse 3 days ago. Well, so do you, she said moodily. You really like expensive shit.
Heather ticked her nails against the glass. If, however, this was a biological imperative — and Heather felt so proud of herself, mentally producing that word — then, she would be pushing against a pounding, irreconcilable animal instinct. Over and over again. Until his jaws snapped over her head.
Which is why I need my pills. Heather traced her finger around the foil of the label. Something was prickling her scalp. It was the same sensation that had trickled across her from whence she gazed into his flawless eyes, within the cupped universe of his massive hands, 3 days ago. That something, it flickered, it - The symbols. The symbols on the label were reminiscent of the ones inlaid on his necklace. Runic? Demonic? This is what I get for not paying attention to Charmed, I guess.
Feeling compelled, feeling driven by some instinct she did not yet understand, she flicked free her cell phone and snapped a photo. It processed. She looked down at the screen, and gasped. Surfacing, and coming into focus like a stabilizing lake reflection, was a slow coalescing of shapes. The shapes contorted, flickering, dancing before her eyes, before revealing – Heather blinked – a branching of words. Heather looked at the wine label, her cell phone; back again. Instead of the symbols inlaid on the wine label, seen by the naked eye, there were now words veneered across her cell phone screen. What kind of black magic was this? What runes was she reading? What – Oh. A banner appeared under the image. That was the devil magic: Google Lens had translated the symbology. Apparently, the symbols on the wine label – the symbols inlaid in his necklace – were not symbols; not at all. They were letters derived from… Heather wrinkled her nose. An alphabet? She pushed the photo into a hidden folder on her phone. It felt important. It felt necessary. She would examine it later.
Feeling strange, she turned away from the menagerie of glass bottles, and the ground underfoot, spun. She buckled. But she grabbed the wire-rack before impacting, but in so doing, something impacted with her.
Plink.
Smarting, she rubbed the back of her head. The foreign object clattered to the floor. She reached, and her fingers closed around a nostalgic shape that sent a spike of excitement through her.
A Mentos Box.
Holy shitballs. My pills. She knew it; it was immediate. She knew that he would have stashed her pills in something above Heather-height (and with her sightline barely floating above five-foot, that was laughably easy). She flicked open the lid. And the sight was so beautiful to behold, she could cry. All neat, in a honey-comb row were her pills. They were inlaid like little pretty purple ladies. Some, she realized, he had taken from the pill dispensary in excess.
But, something flickered, glow-bright at the liminal edge of her vision.
My phone!
The screen lit up. Her phone, blockaded by 3 days of dead air, now in the pantry, adjacent to the hotspot, received a tidal wave: hundreds, if not thousands, of notifications windowed onto the screen in an epileptic flash of color. Normally she would have harvested them with adolescent glee, but tonight her goal was not social media adulation, no, she had more pressing matters to attend to; namely, trying to decipher the strange symbology on the wine bottle, on his necklace, that translated into a sleeve of gibberish. So, she pulled up the screen lock, intending to retire her phone.
And she would have done so, if it were not for the very lively text that suddenly popped onto her screen.
Heather’s heart started pounding in sentience. It formed sentences in her temples. He knows. He knows. He knows. Fuck, he knows. She gripped her face. She turned in a tight, worrisome circle. Don’t lie. Just, don’t lie. It’d be dumb to lie.
Ok. Not too bad. He’s not that pressed about it. Besides, they both knew she hadn’t unlocked it to go through it. Yet.
Heather shoved a protein bar in her mouth; chased it down with a dollop of peanut butter. Oh my God, so good. The velvety mouthfeel was satisfying. It had been a few days since she’d eaten. Somehow, the thought of eating, as a broad, generalized concept, had disturbed her. But, now, relaxing in the afterglow of their conversation that was bubbling along, she felt… content. It felt good. Fed, and off a sprig of inspiration she volleyed him a series of text messages – flagrantly ignoring the double-text rule, because I am Aries hear me roar – then grabbed a tub of yogurt.
Heather snorted down a laugh behind her elbow.
Heather stared at her phone in mutiny. She stabbed the yogurt. Why was he gaslighting her? She could see the symbols: clear as day on the tempered glass. Tiffed, she tried once more.
Ok, fine, asshole. I’ll figure this out on my own. Heather took a screen shot and pushed it into the hidden folder. This was an interesting exchange. She had some juicy terms to research later.
Another text popped on screen. Was she enjoying this?
She immediately regretted her choice of words. Geez what a weird Freudian Slip. And, for some reason she didn’t delete it. In fact, Heather, mused, she could lord that over him, couldn’t she? She never deleted her messages.