From beneath me, under my skin and sheets and bed, comes a whisper of the thing called Rat, but I can’t understand it. Its voice enters my ears like the time I tumbled out of a moving skilift, a loud thwomp, thwomp, thwomp, as I stumble down the snowbanks of St. Moritz. Help, I yelled that time, as I feared for my life. I yell it now, too, as I fear for my death and the everlasting side effects of my infected essence.
I don’t yell it in a literal sense. It’s more of an inside thing. Something I do sometimes to pass the time, for the fun of it, you know? For the fun of pretending the door to my apartment will explode and on the other side there will be a man, a saviour, with white glowing eyes, ready to free me from the torment of unsleep and the selflessness and courage and strength to come to my aid. A man there! A creature of such elevated spirit that he knows I am worth saving. He knows I am here, screaming. It’s for fun, you see? It’s just for the fun of it. Help! Help! You see? Help!
Now I am awake and the sun shines through my window, and I see myself inside the mirror on my wall. I am snazzy and sharp, and my perfectly ironed suit glows in the morning bright. Look at me! The skin is tight around my jaw and my bones and my muscles almost show through the right-sized sleeves around me. I can’t wait to put on my sunglasses and roll down the window in my Porsche and drive into the office with a style people won’t believe. Oh! Look at him, they will say! Look at the man in the beautiful car with the tasteful music and the Hugo Boss suit! How I wish I could be him. How I wish I could be him!
Christina and Abigail call me at my desk, and I answer the phone while I look out my window on the 37th floor. This, that and the other. They don’t have questions for me. They want to hear my voice, so I let them hear it. I laugh with only twenty percent sincerity, seventy percent pity, ten percent something sour in my throat. They want the pity. It’s what they’re there for, on the other side of whatever demonic connection sits between us. After I have said goodbye and talk to ya later, Christina sits on the other end for five seconds too many, hoping that there will be more from me. Hoping that, perhaps, this is the day I see her finally and ask her to have a drink with me on the roof. But I say nothing, and she ends the call. She sits now in silence, and a tear rolls down her face on some other floor. Poor Christina. I shall never be yours.
My shadow has now elongated as the sun falls quietly across the zenith, and Rat begins to murmur, and his friends begin to smile. I’m cold but I am sweating and I rub my hands together. I swallow a pill that sits inside my top drawer and watch as my door opens with the sight of a woman I have known for far too long. It’s Diana Mercer, Managing Director, Client Experience. Her outfit sticks to her body like a carapace to a locust. Her leather shoes reflect sunlight with unimaginable style, and her matte brown bag stabs my aura with gunmetal hardware. Jesus Christ! Behind her, her long shadow cackles and a foul smell of ammonia stings my nostrils.
She’s berating me before I open my mouth and she walks into the room. Rat is screaming behind me. Thwomp! Thwomp! Suddenly she’s inside my personal space yelling numbers at me and her spit. Her spit has blessed my lips! Blessed be thy name, Diana Mercer. Blessed be thy presence! Now she holds my wrist, and it’s tight, and I don’t know what to say. She’s not speaking anymore. She stares at me for thirty seconds before laying it on me. We’re restructuring, she says. Now my ghouls are out of their cages and they climb onto my back and choke me. Diana’s shadow grows now and a hundred beasts swim within it. She pulls me to her and says ‘Kiss me’, and I do. Her shadow and mine now connect under the harsh sunlight, and her ghouls eat my ghouls, and my ghouls eat hers, one after another.
I look into her eyes and poke them out. She reaches into my armpit and rips my skin apart, taking a handful of flesh with her. Blood drains from our wounds and her head strikes mine and our skulls crack open and our brains leak out and we disintegrate on the 37th floor into a puddle of meat and blood. Soon our spirits are intertwined in a violent twister, and the ghouls that haunted us are laughing. We laugh too, in a never ending spiral.