Writings on the Wall - 5. Chapter 5

They say he suffers from Geschwind syndrome. Funny how easy it is to make something inexplicable into a sickness, isn’t it? There was a priest once, he tried to heal him spiritually. The boy stood there and let the man rant and rave over him, and when he was done, the boy calmly asked why the ‘ugly one’ was holding the sermon. The priest declared him lost after that.

~

The car ride was long enough to get out of the cuffs without drawing Luigi’s attention, but at this point I had lost the urge to flee. Money bought me a few burgers and some weed, but a person who believed me enough to fire at someone - and lie to the police about it - was worth more than a week of food. Additionally, I expected to be left alone in his apartment until things had calmed down. I’d be able to raid his fridge then, and keep my money a little longer. If I ever got to claim my reward, of course.

The leather seat beneath my face smelled divine, of perfumed cleaner and wilderness and money. I didn’t like Luigi’s choice of air freshener, though; the cloying scent of vanilla permeated the air and weighed heavily on my stomach. Never a good combination with curvy roads. I kept my eyes fixed on the little air freshener tree dangling from his rear view mirror, but the swinging motions only made the urge to vomit stronger.

When the car finally stopped, the taste in my mouth was anything but pleasant and I ejected myself out of the car like a thief on the run, vomiting a stream of predigested water onto the sidewalk. I managed to miss both my and Luigi’s shoes, but he grabbed my arms before I could wipe my mouth. I resorted to using my shoulder, but I didn’t like staining my new shirt.

He twisted my arms behind my back in a comfortingly adept way. “How did you get out of the cuffs?”

“Just like always,” I replied, hawking and spitting out the last globs of bile sticking to my gums.

“Should have known,” he muttered, cuffing me again, this time behind my back. I whimpered out my unhappiness. With my tin foil gone, I’d have a much harder time escaping them.

Luigi grabbed my arm and pulled me upright, marching me towards an old, tired building a few doors down from where he had parked the car. It was a nice, if rather time-worn, housing complex with terracotta walls and artificial columns along the front wall. Grass grew out of cracks between sidewalk and walls, and a small, defiant thistle was forcing its way out of a window sill on the ground level. Each window had a raised plaster frame with little, white, frothy curls on the upper and lower side that made me think of the ocean and warmer things. The paint was chipped and a few of the columns had tags smeared on them, but that only made the block more likable.

He guided me through the dusty front double doors and into a vaguely warmer hallway that ended in a well-trodden, stone stairwell. Old dust had gathered in the tile seams and rusty chandeliers swung from mildew-browned cables. The view in combination with the taste of bile in my mouth made me nervous and giddy, so I hummed a few atonal notes as we walked up the old stairs. On the other hand, I only saw minute traces of Dark bubbling across sparse sections of the wall and two doors we passed, but nothing more.

Luigi’s front door was orange and peeling and very nice. Decorative carvings smiled feebly at me, so I smiled back and said a few niceties. I wanted Luigi’s home to like me and I wanted to like his home, although my efforts made him frown. As we stumbled into the medium warmth of his dark apartment, he didn’t let go of my arm, keeping his grip on me as I wrangled my soggy boots off my feet and padded down the small corridor to his living room. He stopped me next to the door, had me sit down on the floor and opened one of the cuffs to fasten it to the radiator there.

“You stay there,” he ordered, shaking a finger at me before walking out again. I kept silent, listening to the lock on the front door turn and his steps fading down the hallway we had come from. I let about a minute tick by— I would have wanted to wait longer, but counting over one hundred usually made my head derail—, then busied myself with opening the cuffs once more. It wasn’t as easy using my shirt and I almost got the metal teeth stuck in the housing, but after a bit of tugging and shifting, it finally opened.

As I rubbed life back into my blueish hands, I took a look around, not bothering to use the light switch for now. I’d turn on the lights later, when I could be sure he was truly gone. The living room was oh so quiet and dark, it reminded me of my mother’s flat on those days she hadn’t bothered coming home. I had always used those nights to eat all the popsicles, sucking off the sweet, cold juice around the tiny packages of cocaine hidden inside them and leaving those in the ice cube tray inside the freezer. Those had been the days I remembered most, not because I missed her, but because I hadn’t been an orphan and out on my own, back then. As I wallowed in past memories, I realized I was alone in a strange place, with no-one to bother me. It stopped me in my tracks; all my usual after-kill-occupations suddenly crowded my head with a vengeance that had me shiver with excitement. Eat. Roll around on his couch. Take a nap. Search his drawers for valuables.

Ah, yes.

Luigi came back very late, and he wasn’t alone. Judging by the raised voices closing in on the front door, whoever was with him was not a friend. It was a woman’s voice barking at Luigi, but the tone of voice she used had me doubt that there was any romance lost between them. She sounded more like a money shark’s goon trying to shake down some poor soul for money.

I rolled around until I was facing the door, carefully avoiding the puddle of meat sauce soaking into the carpet next to me. Eavesdropping was frowned upon, I knew that, but only if a person wanted to come across as polite; I didn’t care about manners.

Luigi was answering in kind, snapping at her in a low voice that was a mixture of patience and disgust. His keys jangled, as he scraped the one to his door across the lock, but even after shoving it in with more force than necessary, he didn’t turn it. Instead, he said loud enough for me to hear: “Listen, detective, as much as I appreciate you being this thorough, I am fed up with this discussion, and I’m asking you to leave me alone. If you feel the need to talk to me in more detail, call me in to your office tomorrow. Good night.”

A few moments of silence passed, then the key finally turned in its lock and Luigi wandered into his home, sighing. Then he crashed into the shoe rack I had disassembled there and stumbled against the wall next to the toilet door, cursing. The door fell shut at the exact same moment, providing a certain oomph to his surprised rage.

“What the hell happened here? Crave!”

“I got bored,” I said, rolling onto my stomach to have a better view of him as he turned on the lights. He looked crestfallen when he saw the whole extent of my boredom, even sexier than usual. His glorious, sharp cheek-bones twitched with some emotion I couldn’t decipher.

“What is that?” Luigi asked, when he finally found his voice back.

“Meatsauce.”

He shook off his cashmere coat and threw it on the coat hanger without so much as a second glance. All of his attention was fixed on the spreading pool of dark red sauce and clumps of meat right next to my shoulder. He even walked closer, carefully and tense.

“Why is it on the carpet?”

I had no answer to that, so I came to my feet and shrugged. “Maybe the carpet was bored, too.”

He stared at me for a bit, then sighed and pointed to the cuffs still dangling from the radiator. “How did you get out of those?”

“I have lots of experience with cuffs. And manacles. And straight jackets. I made a PB and J for you, it’s in the kitchen. It’s my going away present to you.” I actually had done that. Sandwiches were one of the few dishes I had been allowed to make for myself in the institutes, and I had gotten pretty handy with a plastic spoon. Other than that, burgers and fries were my staple foods. Unwrapping things was easy.

What I did want, though, was to go home. It had been nice staying here and dozing on the couch, stealing all of Luigis easy-to-get-at screws and rummaging through his stuff, but I was getting tired and antsy. If I didn’t keep some resemblance of a sleep schedule, my attacks got much more frequent, and I really didn’t want to risk that.

Luigi took the last two steps he needed to grab me and caught my right arm in his steely grip. “You’re not going anywhere, we’ve still got to talk about the fucked-up shit that happened back at the house,” he snarled, tugging me towards the kitchen, where he unceremoniously pushed me into a chair on the far side of the table, away from the now unlocked front door. I still ogled my escape route, but sitting like this, he would catch me before I could bolt. I didn’t like that.

“I told you everything I know,” I huffed.

“You’ve told me nothing but convoluted bull-crap so far. Who sent you to my employer’s home?”

I frowned at him. I didn’t like this new, angry Luigi, not one bit. “A whore. She gave me the gun and told me to go shoot the people in 322 Promenade Street.”

“But that’s not where we met. So you got the wrong address, that’s a bit of a relief. But why would a whore send you of all people?”

I was starting to feel queasy. “Because I’m good at killing demons. People say I’m cheap and nobody suspects I’m able to murder someone. When I get arrested, they put me in the loony bin instead of prison. I don’t like it there, but they give me the good stuff before I’m thrown out.” I paused, breathing through a wave of anxiety and adrenaline. “I want to go home now.”

“I won’t let you go. You’ll disappear on me and I’m not satisfied with your answers,” Luigi stated with a hard voice. “What is your name? Your real name.”

My heart was thumping heavily and the taste of bile crawled up my gullet. “Home!” I snapped, thudding my fist on the table. Then I instinctively twitched back and hugged myself, trying to protect my arms from looming needles and restraints. I had answered enough and I wouldn’t say another thing.

“Your name, Crave.”

“Home! Home, home, home, home! I want to go home! Now!” I screamed loud enough to rile the neighbors. A small yappy-type dog started barking somewhere down the floor, another neighbor hammered against the wall adjoining Luigi’s kitchen, and someone even rang his doorbell.

To my surprise, instead of gagging me or reprimanding me for not using my inside voice, Luigi raised his hands calmingly. “Okay, okay. I will drive you home. That’s much faster than walking or swimming, and I won’t ask anything but the address for now. All you have to do is to promise you will show me your home, just for a few minutes, alright?”

I was still breathing heavily, snorting with anxiety and some kind of panic attack, but his suggestion sounded good. I had to get home as fast as possible, so I could sleep for real and rest and not risk another bout of obsessive writing. I nodded a little too quick and a little too often.

“Home. Driving. Yes.”