Previously: Jenny discusses Roland’s tragic end with her superintendent Blair. They speculate on Roland's next of kin, and Jenny sets off to collect belongings from Roland's locker. She navigates a grim office, takes a clandestine route to a fake cellphone store, and then visits a diner where the chef transforms into a dark, symbolic liquid. Shocked, Jenny leaves, buys comfort food, and arrives at an apartment building, ready to investigate Roland's possessions.
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The sun has set on Raddison Avenue, and Jen pulls out her phone to call ahead before entering Roland's apartment, but the battery is flat. She opens Roland's mailbox in the apartment block’s lobby; the flap is pushed open by the mail stacked up and packed inside. Tucking a huge handful of circulars, handwritten envelopes, and bills under her arm Jen continues up the stairs to Roland’s flat on 3rd.
Scritch scritch scritch. Opening the door, she ignores the scratching coming from inside and is faced with a bellowing cat, pushing past her at full speed, making off down the corridor, leaving behind a faint whiff of spearmint. She doesn't have a moment to see it catch it, or care.
"You're such a bell-end, Dunkin."
Dunkin, a two or three-year-old street cat, was found curled up in an empty box of Crispy-Kreme doughnuts, a couple of winters ago. Its name was rather creative for Roland, who would have called it "dog" if he thought it was a dog. He had to milk-feed it by hand until it put on enough weight to function. Training this street cat to be a house cat was a successful pet project, but he never managed to get rid of its paranoia, its habit of eating out of the kitchen bin, or its taste for used chewing gum.
Jen steps into apartment 48 and squints as her eyes adjust to the darkness. Feeling for the light switch just inside, she feels a hand on her shoulder and spins around to see an elderly woman behind her holding a cat.
"I presume this is yours?" Dunkin is purring away, in this woman's arms. "How are you, Jen? How’s Duncan doing?" She looks straight through Jen, and into the apartment behind her.
"Hi, Grace. Duncan? Oh Dunkin, yes she’s great, if a bit of an idiot. We’re all just, fine, I guess." She throws the pile of letters on a side table just inside the door.
Grace hands over the cat, transforming Dunkin from a bundle of adorable, sleepy fur to an explosion of minty death claws. It sprints back into the apartment and wails. Jen pulls the door closed behind Dunkin before Grace can get her ever-extending nose in.
“You know if you need anything, you just need to ask.” Grace pauses for a response, but nothing comes. “It’s good to see you out and about again, Jenny. I think Duncan prefers my food. Shame. That's why they come to visit. I think she enjoys my company. I have a connection with animals you see. They can feel my aura.”
"They can feel your food. I think she’s just greedy.”
“Cover your ears, Duncan.”
“Dunkin,” Jen says under her breath.
Grace hovers for a while, smiles, and offers a prompt with her eyes, but again nothing arrives back from Jen. She gives it a few seconds.
“I’ll let you go then.”
“Thank you, Grace. I do mean it. Thank you.”
Jen waits for Grace to get lost, and returns to Roland's door, leading with her foot in case Dunkin decides to make another break for it. Her eyes readjust to the apartment's darkness. It is illuminated intermittently and softly from the storefronts across the road, glowing, blinking, phasing through different colours.
The furnishings are modern but unkempt and uncared for. Photo frames are turned face down on shelves covered with a fine layer of dust. Blown-over greeting cards fill the spaces between the photos and some spill onto the floor. Vases and bouquets with month-old flowers litter one end of the living room and stack up in the kitchen bin.
Jenny pays automated attention to the apartment she’s moving through, turning on the side lights to soften the ambience. She closes a window left open by Roland for Dunkin to come and go as it pleases and pulls the curtain across. In the adjoining bedroom, she takes off her bra with a vocal sigh of relief, pulls on pyjamas from under an unmade double bed, and kicks her feet into worn furry slippers.
The litter tray in the kitchen is piled with crap, white gravel spilling out, and kicked out over the surrounding tiles. Shuffling through to the kitchen, Jen ignores her foot crunching on the litter. Bowls and cups are piled in the sink, and she takes a cup out, rinsing it under the tap. Jenny stares at the water, watching it fill then overflow pouring down the plughole. The more she stares at it, the more she admires it, and the more the clear water starts to change, taking on a darker, yellow hue, then brown like pond water, then peaty. Jen is rapturous at the change, the muddy water, changes to a blacker fluid, then into deep thick paint. The mug is coated, and the sink starts filling up. She puts the mug on the work surface, leaving the tap running, and drops a tea bag in. She fills the kettle with jet-black tap water and knocks the power on, dripping filth all over the kitchen.
Splattered with this miserable liquor, she pulls out her cell phone and taps the face of it, "Hi. Yes, it's me. It was me. I'm finished here. You can send the clean team in now." The screen fills with glyphs and glass dissolves into liquid, running over Jen's hands, and pouring out of the screen.
Her "tea" is brewed, and she throws the teabag in an overflowing kitchen bin, pushing it down and compacting it, the pressure forces more black ink up from the bottom of the bin, and it overflows onto the floor, continuing to pour.
Shuffling back to the living room, it fills the tiled kitchen floor and follows her through, the liquid grabbing at the walls and doorframes, clinging trying and pulling itself up. Ancient symbols and icons bubble up and dance on the surface.
She sits down, pulls her coated feet up on the couch, and slurps on the thick, glyptic “tea”, spilling down her front. The rolling darkness catches up with her and swishes up the front of the couch. She flicks on the TV remote, the buttons oozing out tar with each press. The liquid catches the TV stand and creeps up the screen, reducing then completely muffling the broadcast. The programme dims behind as the black oil climbs up and covers the screen.
Dunkin, its feet blackened but unbothered, jumps up next to Jenny. It curls up next to her and yawns, its mouth coated in moving symbols, washing around its teeth and gums. The yawn turns to gurgle as dank fluid appears from down inside its throat. Dunkin is unconcerned and snuggles harder.
The whole apartment is filling up, not like a swimming pool or bath, but like being painted from the ground up. Like mould spreading in timelapse. The scripted oil creeps upwards over every surface, every object, up the walls, up and over the ceiling, slowly enveloping Jenny and Dunkin, tucked together on the couch.
Jenny is soaked and covered, and pushes her back into the coach, taking comfort in the black blanket spreading up over her, tipping her head back, feeling it wash over her in waves, she holds Dunkin tighter and tighter.
The apartment folds in on her, and then opens out, unfolding. The sky is blackened by rich oil and exotic symbols; the shadowed ceiling is illuminated softly by the blinking neons of the storefronts and diner opposite Roland’s apartment block.
The End.
Thank you for reading!
It’s safe to say, that not everyone gets this far into each post, let alone to the end of a four-part thingummy.
This final act did not start out as it ended. The tone change from Part 1 was a small crisis. The original idea of Roland becoming obsessed and corrupted and maybe a twist being it was Jen who was drawing in the evil just felt a bit of misery without emotion. Like the story would never end in their hunt for evil. Maybe for another time or story. Walking the dogs, and taking a shower always introduces a clear mind. Walking away from the story for a bit allowed by stoopid brayn to figure out what the story was trying to do.
Experience of darkness, and how we can lead a life of real duality to the point of it being fantasy, with pain and memory triggered by everything or nothing and how those memories can feel both horribly painful and also comforting, was a far more interesting end. I prefer ambiguity. It’s a lot easier to “play to the gallery” though.
There was the old fucker of exposition. Difficult to hold back and let the reader paint the picture, and join the dots. Much easier to make the whole thing a procedural story and investigation, rather than a bit more open-ended and open to interpretation.
I’ll leave that for another project. Or It could just pick up as a “part 5” in the future.
Inspiration and confidence taken from this excellent article from Transfer Orbit:
Most important of all, don’t sweat the small stuff, because before we know it, we’ll all be zapped by mysterious, super-space-beams
And if we survive that, there’s always a diet of Khan’s Ceti Eels to look forward to
I hope this lands well. Thanks for reading.
P.S.
Dunkin used to be a dog.
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I’m a huge fan of oily glyphs