Event III

Suddenly, I am tired of this. I take my hand away and the body tumbles off the sofa and lands face down in the pool of its own drying blood. A cloud of the blood’s odor puffs up like dust, but it is souring, old. I ignore the set of keys I now see clipped next to a set of handcuffs. They are irrelevant now. I concentrate until I am able to move towards the door. It is not graceful. I lurch into motion and more shamble than walk. I grasp the door handle and my fingers sink into it like putty. I pull, and the door, frame and all, comes away from the wall. The sound is sudden, startling and loud, but I know that there is no one who can hear it. With no more effort than turning a page, I lean the door against the wall and move through the gap.

I find myself on a second-floor landing like a balcony. A rickety set of stairs leads down to the cavernous warehouse floor. Below me, I can see long rows of shelves stretching away into the depths of the building. I see motion. Dead bodies are staggering around below. Some are shuffling into the rows of shelves. Others are shuffling out, their arms filled with merchandise. They hand the things to others who pack them into boxes that still others take from them and stack on wooden pallets near a set of bay doors. The doors are open so that the semi parked outside can be loaded. I can leave. I can smell the fresh night outside and I know that out there is where I will find that which will feed my hunger.

I stagger into motion and almost fall down the stairs. I find that I have to concentrate everything; stairs are much more complicated than the floor. Halfway down I have my first flash of memory. Not clear, but it is there.

I am standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up. She is a vague form at the top of the stairs. She is talking.
“Good John. Very good. You looked up. You can see me. Oh, you do have promise. Now, come up the stairs. No. Stop. Take hold of the rail with your right hand. Good. Put your foot on the stair. No. Bad. You have to bend your knee and raise your foot. No. Not so high. Good. Now, move it forward and set it down on the first step. Oh! Very good John. Very good. I am very happy with you. You want me to be happy with you, don’t you. (It is not a question. She knows I want her to be happy with me.) Now, lean forward and put your weight on your right foot. Good, now lift your left…”

The force of the memory has brought me to a stop. It stirs anger in me and with that emotion I come back to myself. In the space of a breath, I am alive and thinking clearly again. I stumble and almost fall. It is as if I have been trying to push through a thick soup and have come through to the thin air on the other side. Gracefully, I catch myself on the stair rail and stop myself from falling. With great relief I realize I can no longer smell the girl’s blood and that the all-consuming hunger of a moment ago has receded to a manageable ache.

At first I think I have gone blind, but then my eyes slowly adjust to the sudden darkness. I can see the vague shapes still stumbling along in their mindless toil and the lesser darkness of the night through the open bay doors. With that other sight, I had seen in the darkness as if it were full daylight. I can't think of that right now. I need to leave. I remember that my clothes are covered in blood and that I will need the money on the desk upstairs.

Though I can’t see as clearly anymore, I remember the layout well enough. I know now that I have spent some time in this building, but that this was the first time I had gone upstairs. I have an instinctive memory of the ground floor and I know where I can find what I believe to be a locker room.

I feel my way cautiously down the stairs and along the wall at the bottom until I come to a door. I go inside and shut the door behind me. I feel along the wall until I find the light switch and turn it on. On the wall against my left are the lockers and through a door to my right I can see the showers. Quickly, I strip off my soiled coveralls. I leave them where they fall and almost run to get clean. As if.