Chapter 25 - The Man of Wind and Moss

His apartment was smaller and dingier than the one he had in Bushwick a year ago. Now it was a room in a house near Clinton Hill, and he had a hard time getting home. Kept getting turned around. Once inside, he climbed the crooked stairs and shimmied down the hallway cluttered with the other tenants’ things. In his room he recoiled at the smell. It was a wet, dewy, almost fungal smell. The smell of muddy leaves and dung beetles rolling about. Like logs rotting away. Like tiny organisms reaching up to the sky. Like moss. That was it. The place smelled like moss.

Marco knew he had to get a plan together but, fittingly, he felt like a car in mud. He didn’t know how to start to prepare, how to prepare to prepare. Theoretically, there was Dean out there looking for him. And he was playing for keeps. Marco touched his amulet, and it was dull. He wondered why it didn’t alert him to Dean last night, and the best he could surmise was that it was stifled, clutched in a cold grip.

Before he realized it, Marco was putting a chair under the doorknob of his small room. He pulled in his AC unit and locked the window. The place grew warm fast, and he sat on his bed and looked out the window to the passing road below. With the stench of the moss and the growing humidity, the sensation of twigs and dirt scratched at his throat, and he felt like he was looking out of a greenhouse.

Shit. Calvina. She was probably seen as an accomplice.

“This is so fucked,” he whispered to himself. He had his doubts about everything Sasha told him, but it was boiler-plate denial, and he knew that. Because if he actually believed that ‘they had won’ and that they were safe, he would’ve unwedged the chair. But—

Downstairs, someone opened the front door.

Marco felt the small building shift. Someone was coming up the stairs with heavy footsteps. Maybe wearing boots? Hiking boots? If it were Dean, now was Marco’s chance to experience him. To see what Sasha had seen. One step after the next, the person ascended. He was coming closer.

Marco’s breath quickened. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this confrontation after all. He started fidgeting, sitting on the end of his bed, staring at his cheap, little door and the desk chair cockeyed under it. He got up and moved the chair out of the way. Then he unlocked the door, and he backed up. He was standing like an athlete, bouncing on his heels, ready for Dean to kick open the door. Ready for the smell of the mud and for the sickly sight of a rotten face.

“Come on,” he said to himself. “Show me your face. I need to see it. Come on.”

The body gained the hallway and stopped moving. He’s trying to smell me, Marco thought. He’s trying to listen for me. The person in the hallway was tall, he could tell by the pace of their walking. He heard him knock on a door down the hall. When nobody answered, the man tried another door.

The place he lived in was cramped. Each resident had their own room they were expected to stay in. There was no living room, dining room, or foyer. They all shared a small kitchen in the corner of the house, purely functional, and a dinky bathroom in the center. Everyone kept their bikes and tools and books in corners of the main hallway, and he could hear Dean maneuver through them. Stepping high over knickknacks. Coming down the hall.

When he shows his face and he looks the way Sasha described, he’s going to try to kill me, Marco realized. He reached over to his desk and grabbed an orange box cutter that he stole from his liquor job. He extended the rusty blade and waited.

Dean’s footsteps appeared under the crack of the door. Marco’s heart was beating out of his chest. He white-­knuckled the box cutter. Come on, come on.

Knock, knock, knock.

“You found me,” Marco said. “It’s open.”

The doorknob turned. The door swung open. Marco flinched. But standing there was just a kid. Maybe twenty or so. He was his neighbor. He was gawky and had purple hair. Sometimes Marco would go into the bathroom after him and see his dark, early-morning piss unflushed and hazy in the toilet. He raised his hands when he saw the box cutter. “Your name is Marco, right?”

Marco, embarrassed, tossed the cutter onto his desk. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“This was in my mailbox.”

The kid offered Marco a postcard. It was from Paula. It was from Greece.

* * *

Before Paula and Christopher returned from Greece, Marco made his way to their apartment to clean the place up and replace some essentials. The message that Probably-Dean had written on the door was dark brown and crusted over. On the night of the incident, he had yanked out the arrow and tossed it down the trash chute, and now he attacked the bloody writing with a paper towel and a bottle of Kaboom. He fingered at the divot left in the wood and decided he’d play dumb. Inside, he replaced groceries and took out the trash and vacuumed the rugs. He watered the plants (iffy, afraid to handle them too long) and turned them different angles so they seemed fresh and alive. He moved like a refugee, ducking out of windows and turning on lights only when the curtains were closed. Through the French doors and the balcony beyond it, he cautiously peeked down to the road below. Dean was nowhere to be found.

When Paula and Christopher came back home and finally settled in, they had Marco over for dinner. They excitedly told him about their travels in Athens and Santorini and about the food they ate and the wines they drank. They wanted to sit on the roof like they typically did, and it took Marco a second to settle down. He paced along the perimeter just as he had before, and he looked over the edges half-expecting to see Dean scaling the wall like a lizard. Eventually, when Christopher forced several glasses of wine into him, he finally relaxed about as much as he could, which was not much, considering.

Over the course of the meal—mezze of artichokes and ceviche and falafel and other dishes they found so inspiring—Marco found himself glaring at Paula. When she spoke and drank and talked about art and women, he felt his foot begin tapping. Stewing in his shit little apartment, living in fear of an old friend, and going over everything Sasha had told him, he had no choice but to grow angry again about the cabin and the resulting chaos that followed. And sure, it had been a year since, and there was a brief time when Paula expressed her condolences, but Marco didn’t feel like that was enough. His friends were dead, his life was in shambles, and all she wanted to talk about was Greece.

Sasha said the Man of Wind and Moss gave you direction only to feed on you. To Marco, the list of culprits was endless. Anybody above you could be the Man of Wind and Moss. Any older generation. Any failed institution. Your boss who says clock out for lunch. Your father who says kick it up a notch, there’s no crying in soccer. Your teacher who circles a D- on the pop quiz she decided the day of. It was all hopeless. They were all parasites. When Miss Grabinski told Doll that she’d never be an art conservator, no, when Grabinski laughed about Doll being an art conservator, Doll should’ve put a gun to her old, wrinkly forehead and blown her brains out along Landis Green.

Paula had everything Marco wanted. Paula had everything from the start. Life was so easy for her and Christopher. They were affluent artists whose parents probably gave them starter money to buy a home when it was ten dollars a wall. They had lived out their lives being liberal and on the right side of history without actually having to change any views or put up with any challenge. They had their jobs, they had their money, and they had each other. And Paula got off on watching Marco struggle. That was the only reason she kept him around and asked about his life. It was entertainment to her. It had to be.

No, no, no.

He closed his eyes. This was the same headspace he was in before 5 Point, and it hardly helped him back there. But, damn, the anger was never ending. And now it was mixed with fear and guilt, guilt! This time, though, he wasn’t going to push anybody down the stairs. He was going to ask a question. He had asked Sasha the same question at Keith’s service, and it was only fair if he asked Paula too.

“Did you set me up?” He was drunk, holding his elbows tight.

“Set you up with what?” Paula asked. Christopher was downstairs making another batch of Tom Collins. It was a hot evening. The skyline turned on and sparkled and between the gaps in buildings the sun set into a pink smear. Clouds littered the area looking infected with magenta rashes.

“With the cabin,” Marco continued.

“My cabin?”

“Yes, your cabin. You wanted me to go up there and suffer, didn’t you?”

Paula pulled back and sat up straight. She was wearing a yellow shirt and blue, thrifty jeans. Around her neck was a kitschy necklace she probably got in Greece. She opened her mouth and closed it again, unsure how to proceed. “Of course I didn’t want you to suffer, Marco, how could you ask me that?”

“You’ve been on me ever since we’ve met. I’ve kept you up to date with everything going on and you’ve been eating it all up.”

“Because I’m your friend. I like to hear what you’re up to. You’re like my little brother.”

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“You need to calm down. What is bothering you?”

“I lost everything,” he said. The words came clearer now. He had since gotten his braces off and now he had the habit of licking his teeth. He leaned back, dulled by the alcohol in his system. “Because of your cabin and your advice. I lost everything because of you. And then when it happened you were so excited to hear about it. You’re still excited to hear about it. I’m a fucking laughingstock to you and Christopher. Aren’t I? You did this on purpose.”

Paula was shocked. She stammered. Marco could tell she felt betrayed. He started to feel bad. “How could you say that?” she asked. “How—I, that doesn’t make sense. How the hell could I do any of that on purpose? Why would I do any of that on purpose? Do you hear yourself?”

Marco felt his cheeks flush. Flop sweat formed on the back of his neck. He doubled down. “You keep tabs on me like a spectator. You try to sabotage me just for laughs. Admit it.”

“Sabotage you?”

“Admit it!”

“What did I miss here?” Christopher had arrived from downstairs. He was holding a pitcher of Tom Collins. It was large and made of glass and had painted flowers on it. All real cutesy. It reminded him of mojito night.

“I have to leave,” Marco said. “Thanks for the mezze.”

“I’m walking you out,” Paula said, rising.

“No, you’re not—”

“Yes, I am, goddammit.”

Marco moved past her and Christopher down the stairs to the apartment proper. Paula stayed right behind him. She said in a stern whisper, “You can’t come into my house and talk to me that way.”

Marco grabbed his wallet and keys from the catchall. Right next to them was the babushka. He froze. He didn’t remember giving them back to her. He had given them to Dean when Dean went forward to find the cabin.

“Where did you get these?” He jangled them in her face.

“They’re my keys. I’ve had them,” she said. She reached for them, but Marco pulled them away.

“I never brought them back though.”

“I know,” Paula said. “I went up to the cabin and found them. They were in the front door. Good thing nobody broke in.”

In the front door? That meant Dean got there. Or somebody did.

“I have to get out of here,” Marco said, and he went for the door.

“Marco, just wait a minute.” She reached out and pulled at his elbow. “You’re going through some crisis, you’re projecting, you’re freaking out on me, and I’ve only been your friend.”

The two spilled into the hallway, moving their way down the skinny walk-up. On the landing, the two stopped and faced each other. Paula was pissed and confused. Marco fidgeted. He kept making fists and rubbing his legs. Right behind Paula, just over her shoulder, was the divot in the door.

“Look at me,” Paula said. “What are you talking about?”

“You have to promise me you’re not in on it.”

“In on what?”

“The Man of Wind and Moss,” Marco whispered.

“Who is that?”

“Why do you ask about what I do? Why do you pretend to be my friend? Why do you care about me and Pansy? Why do you care about who I fuck? I have to know.”

“Because I think of you as a friend,” she said. “Honest.”

“I don’t have any friends,” Marco explained. “I had them once, but they’re gone now. At first, I thought it was because of Sasha, and then I thought it was the Zaäper guys, but now I think it was you. All of you and the people like you. You’ve pushed me and urged me to take these risks because you never had skin in the game.”

“Are you really blaming me for what happened out there? Does that really make sense to you?”

“Nothing about what happened out there makes sense to me, that’s what I’m trying to say. And you can’t even get revenge on these guys because they’re always one level up! I’m here, and they’re up here, every single time. Just like you.”

Marco turned and headed down the stairs, but Paula grabbed him again. He turned back around. She wasn’t a mother but, standing there, a few steps above him, she had the air of his own. That made him angrier. She looked down at him, shaking her head. Her palms were out forward, soft and wrinkled. She smelled like warm food and wine, and he could feel the presence of Christopher watching from the apartment doorway. “I’m really worried about you,” she finally said.

But Marco didn’t respond. He hurried down the stairs, and when he left her building, he got turned around a lot and it took him an hour or so to get his bearings.

* * *

Marco didn’t sleep that night. He paced around his tiny apartment and triple-locked the doors. He refused to crack the window and, instead, stapled a towel to the wall to block out any prying eyes. Eyeless eyes? Yellow eyes? He didn’t want to move or make a sound or draw any attention to himself. But in the middle of the night, he snuck down the hallway to the communal bathroom.

His stomach had been upset since he left Paula’s.

Inside, he locked the door and lifted the lid of the cheap, cracked toilet. He turned on the fan, and it came to life with a high-pitched rattle. The shower dripped slowly, the plastic siding was covered in thick, orange streaks. The tenants’ hairs were in the drain and in loops on the wall, and the lower corners of the shower were caked with dried snot and gunk.

He lowered his pants to his ankles and sat on the toilet and he knew what was going to happen. It was the same sensation he felt when it first happened, right before seeing Calvina. It was different than the vomiting. The vomiting was sudden. Messy, yes, horrific to witness, undoubtedly, but it was over and done within moments. Coming out this way was agonizing. And although he didn’t need any more hints that the switcheroo was found out, this put it over the top. He’d take an eyeless, vengeful Dean over this, easily.

It started as a knot in his lower stomach and sweat at his hairline. He trembled. The first and last time it happened, it was diarrhea. It started painful but ended fast. By the time he realized what was coming out of him, it was over. But this time felt mean.

Something dripped into the toilet water. He looked through his thighs but couldn’t see it clearly. It was dark. Maybe blood? Maybe shit? Something started to come out, and it was sharp.

He rearranged himself on the seat. The high rattle of the air vent was giving him a headache and the pain in his stomach moved down. His whole groin hurt. His balls ached.

He had to kill Dean. He had to. This was all such a big, colossal disaster. And he knows he’s to blame for Erether finding out. But to be painfully honest, he’d do it again. Listening to the wet smack of that bookseller’s skull was invigorating. It was justice. But this right now was bleak.

You see, the human body actually has a series of sphincters, some along the urinary tract, the respiratory tract, and even along the opening of capillaries. However, most people only think of the anus when they think of “sphincter.” But even at the anus, there is the internal sphincter and the external sphincter, the internal being smooth, delicate muscle housed inside a larger, thicker ring. When Marco gasped with pain, he didn’t know what precisely was happening, but a splinter about two inches long had pierced his internal sphincter.

“Oh, fuck,” he yelped. He rocked forward, instinctively, and the muscles struggled to contract and pass whatever it was that was trying to come out. The blood that came out of his asshole didn’t all pour into the toilet. Some of it, due to surface adhesion, streamed awkwardly down his thighs to his socks and pants like when you pour a cup of water too slowly.

He couldn’t see the splinter, couldn’t even imagine how deep it was going, but the sensation was sharp and rigid and hot. But a splinter meant that it was splintering off of something, which suggested a larger piece. Of wood most likely.

The image from Zaäper popped into his mind. The Grafting. The man was on all fours as plants exploded from his back. This must’ve been why Dean was eyeless. Erether was fucking with both of them, pushing them forward, trying to break them down physically and psychologically until they killed each other and delivered the other one on a silver platter.

“Goddammit!” Marco hissed. More liquid fell into the bowl. He reached his hand around and tried to feel for it. Yes. Wood. Twigs. It was a branch. He could feel the shitty, bloody buds. He gripped it. His dick began to harden from the pressure, and his balls retracted. He knew that if he just pulled the branch, the splinter would keep going in. He had to break the splinter off first.

The sweat was pouring down his face. If he thought too much about it, he would get lightheaded. From his angle, squatting, leaning forward off the toilet, he could see the mirror of the medicine cabinet. Yellow eyes. Erether’s face, the clearest he’d ever seen it. Black, old, leathery skin, sagging off a conical skull. A mouth wide open, not smiling, or angry, but wide open. Erether grabbed the side of the mirror, His side of the mirror, like he was about to reach his Black Arms through the border and into the bathroom.

Marco had to pull the branch. If he waited too long, he’d pass out, bleed out, or have a heart attack right there. They’d find him in the morning, pants at his ankles, a tree branch sticking out of his ass. He had to pull the branch.

He gripped it tight and pulled and the splinter went deeper until it snapped. Confusingly, confoundingly, the branch stimulated his prostate at the same time. He grew harder, he screamed, there was blood, and the branch slid out with a wet pop.

Marco fell forward, face down into the communal shower, and the branch hit the ground with a muddy slap, and the smell was horrendous. Tightly packed feces, mixed with the rot of trees, mixed with bugs, mixed with blood—now unblocked—deluged out of his ass. It splashed along the floor, covering his pants, his ankles, the bathroom mat. It was fetid. Marco’s kicking and writhing smeared everything brown and red, and Erether started coming out of the mirror. He dipped his long, pointy head through the silver glass. He was coming. Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph.

Marco tried to make quick work of the splinter. He reached his fingers up inside of him. His opening was wet and warm, and he felt for the stiffness, but the angle of his wrist was all wrong. The only way to pull it out was to pull it back up from the way it came. He got on all fours and tried his best. Shit was everywhere and he tried not to vomit. He saw a millipede skitter across the floor, covered in leaves, and he knew for certain it had come out of him. He reached his hand back around and back inside himself and he did it slowly, agonizingly, like playing a tiny violin. Unfortunately, this further stimulated his prostate. It was miserable. His dick was still hard. He was going to cum. He was being raped by this tree. By Erether. What the fuck was happening.

He had to kill Dean.

His mind was made up right then. He was on all fours, covered in his own shit and blood, face down in the shower, fisting himself, trying not to ejaculate, and he knew what he had to do. In the morning, he was going to wake up, apologize to Paula, grab Sasha, and go back to the cabin. Dean would come for him. Sasha and Marco would team up. This will all be over.

He had to kill Dean.

He pulled out the splinter, came on the floor, and cried.

He had to kill Dean.

* * *

It was early, around nine a.m., when Marco got off the 3 train at Grand Army Plaza. He walked with an awkward limp down the waking block, already humid and hot, and he mulled over his apology, and he refused to look up at the trees. There was a chance here somewhere, Marco thought. He and Paula had been friends for a long time now. Granted, the friendship had an odd age difference and even odder sexual tension, but they had apologized to each other before. They had crossed gaps before. None of them this big, however. This one was a canyon. But maybe all that didn’t matter because, forgiveness or not, he was going to steal her cabin keys and say goodbye.

He let himself into the building and he moved up the stairs, but when he saw that the door to her unit was ajar, he had the sudden urge to turn and run. There was no music coming from inside. No bustle of breakfast. There was no deep laugh from Christopher and high titter from Paula. The entire floor was silent.

“Paula?” he asked. He stepped forward, slowly, and pushed the door open. From the balcony doors, the morning sun poured in pale and weak and put everything in a light gray. Dust motes wafted in the rays of sun. A ceiling fan, high above, shook back and forth, spinning its blades. Marco took another step into the apartment. “Paula? It’s me.”

Nothing.

“I want to apologize for being a shithead.”

He touched his amulet.

Still nothing.

When Marco finally saw them behind the kitchen island, his first thought was how they must’ve died screaming.

Christopher’s stomach was cut open, and his entrails were on the ground, the long ones strewn over the back of the couch. His eyes bulged out of his head, and his eyelids were sucked back like he didn’t shut them through the whole ordeal. Paula, next to him, was on her side. She was missing pieces of her. Her left hand lay next to her knee, the rest of her arm behind her head. Someone had taken a cleaver to her legs and her chest. Her face was unrecognizable. Large wedges cut into it the way someone would cut into a mango.

Marco got dizzy. He grabbed the nearest chair but his legs turned to jelly, and he fell over with it, bringing the old wood down against the hard wood floor. He pushed himself to his butt (still sore from last night) and scooted backwards, putting his back against the credenza. His mouth went dry.

“I knew you’d show up.”

Marco knew the voice. Coming out of Paula’s bedroom was Dean. But something was wrong with him. It was the way he approached. The hallway was skinny and on the walls were paintings by Paula and her friends. On a small counter were knickknacks she had collected from traveling—little porcelain houses from Amsterdam, figurines from Oaxaca, small doodads crafted from metal that a friend did in Greenpoint. Dean walked slowly, a dim figure in the shadow of the home. His left hand was missing his pinky and ring finger. In his right hand was a meat cleaver. From the rectangular blade and the walnut handle, Marco knew it was actually Paula’s. It had come from the magnet strip in her kitchen. Marco was extra familiar because over the years, doing tasks for her, he’d hustle down to Greg the Grinder and get the blade sharpened for the holidays. He knew exactly the weight and swing of it. How effortlessly it got through bone. Christopher always did an impression of a barbarian when he used it, grunting along as he buried it into a butcher block. In fact, he had just used it last night to cook and now Dean dragged it along the counter and knocked off all its knickknacks. They crashed along the floor and shattered. Then he stepped on them with his hiking boots still caked in leaves and mud. Marco couldn’t stand up. He was too weak.

When Dean came further into the living room, stepping into the morning light, Marco saw him in full. Sasha was right. He didn’t have eyes. But they weren’t quite empty. The holes of his skull were packed with soil and leaves, and little pill bugs scurried out and over his face disappearing behind his head or into his ears, of which he only had one. The other ear was a mess of flattened, tender skin, cut down flush with his skull. Dean smiled and had maybe ten or twelve teeth left. It was hard for Marco to focus. Hard for him to count.

“Been looking all over for you,” Dean said. He spoke like he had a nosebleed, his face titled up, like he was listening with his chin. He kept the blade pointed forward, scanning the room, bouncing around like a snake’s tongue tasting the air.

Marco tried to find the strength to stand up, but he couldn’t. A long time ago Doll had told him the four F’s of facing a threat: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn. Dean was fight, undoubtedly. When someone got in his face he put them down without a second thought. He was so good at it, sometimes there were jokes that he was going out hoping for a threat. Waiting to show everyone his particular brand of threat response. Keith was fawn. Always had been. He’d crack a joke, relieve the stress, talk someone down. Sasha was flight. Marco remembered her hightailing it up the slope as soon as the arrows came from the tree line. As for himself, he always thought he could be fight if he absolutely-gun-to-his-head-needed to. But here he was. Freezing.

“I know you’re there,” Dean said, looking down at Marco. “I can see you through his eyes.”

Marco looked around the room to see if somebody else was with them, but all he could see were the shadows from the sunlight. For a second, he thought he could see a face, a face in the negative space between the leaves of a snake plant, his arms somewhere in the corner of the room, made of the angles on the wall, the plants on a countertop, reaching, searching, and feeling.

“What did you do?” was all Marco could ask, as if it wasn’t obvious. As if the answer was not in a pile on the floor right in front of him.

“I wanted to meet the bitch that gave us the cabin,” Dean said gesturing to the bodies. The smell had become more apparent. It was sweet in the nose like when larva took to the trash. “I wanted to meet the bitch that set this in motion.”

He was talking just as Marco had been last night. “She didn’t do anything,” Marco said.

“Oh, shut up!” Dean shouted. He took another step. His boot rested in the river of blood that had stretched from Christopher’s stomach. “I got to see her again, you little fucker,” he said. “The woods were eating me alive, but then one day, out of nowhere, I got out. My wounds healed. My mind healed. And I was back with Pansy. And I was happy. And then . . . And then my baby died on the table. And everything went to hell. I started rotting away. Sprouting fucking roots. Like the woods were picking up right where they left off.”

“It’s happening to me too,” Marco said. “We can figure this out together. I know it.”

“I don’t want to figure this out with you,” Dean replied. He sounded congested. “I want my life back. Do you understand?”

He took another step forward.

“And you’re the only thing in the way. Because you’re always in the way. Butting in where you don’t belong. But once I get you, I can have my life back. I can have my girl back. We can try again.”

“I’m proud of you, man,” Marco said. “Finally settling down.”

A laugh came out of Dean’s face. It was wet and gritty. Then, quickly, he raised the meat cleaver in the air. “Come on, Marco,” he growled. “It’s Guys Dance.”

Dean closed the gap. Marco was still on the floor, next to the chair he had fallen with, and he placed his heel on the chair and kicked it out towards Dean’s legs, tripping him. Dean fell forward and caught himself on the kitchen table, and Marco scurried under it, standing up on the other side, but he wasn’t fast enough. Dean swung, and Marco put his arms up when he should’ve backed away. The blade of the cleaver opened up Marco’s left wrist, a mean slash right down Main Street. The blood started flowing in seconds. Marco hissed in pain and clutched the wound with his other hand.

At first Marco thought he could buy some time if he kept the kitchen table between them, but then Dean leapt on top of the table and Marco’s strategy went out the window. There were three exits that came to mind. The first and obvious one was the door he had entered. He could scream bloody murder and sprint down the hall and down the stairs, but Dean would probably get him in a second and bring the blade down on his shoulder. The second option was up and over the balcony. Paula lived on the fourth floor, though, and Marco didn’t exactly see himself Jason Bourne-ing his way down. He’d probably fall and break his legs, the last thing he sees being a meat cleaver spinning down from the sky and sinking into his face. The final option was the roof. That one felt right. If he could lure Dean onto the roof, then maybe he could outmaneuver him and run back inside and lock the roof access behind him. Then Dean would be stuck out there, giving Marco enough time to haul ass. Dean chasing Marco up there would be easy enough. The outmaneuvering? Well, he’d have to take his chances and right now his wrist was bleeding bad and he could feel a coolness spread in his shoulder so let’s stop talking and roll the dice because it’s time for a skill check.

Dean leapt from the table and Marco bolted to the side. He stepped high over Christopher’s corpse and again over Paula’s, but his foot slipped in her viscera. He clutched the back of the couch and kept moving. With his good hand he grabbed the banister of the stairs and sprinted up to the roof.

THWACK!

The cleaver came down on the banister and missed his fingers by a hair. He kept moving. Up the cramped stairs, smaller than the width of his shoulders. He had to pitch upwards at an angle, and he looked back and saw Dean clamber after him.

At the door, Marco could feel the warmth of outside. He fumbled with the barrel bolt. With his left hand bleeding the way it was, he had trouble pinching and turning the metal bar. His thumb kept twitching out. The tendons on the back of his hand were fried and tender. “Come on, come on, come on—”

The lock pulled back, and Marco turned the knob and fell forward into the morning sun. The air was sticky, and the sky was cloudless and he scrambled towards the deck where he and Paula and Christopher sat just the night before. His momentum rocked him forward and he tumbled over himself. When he stood up, Dean was coming out of the stairwell. In the open air, Dean took a deep breath and spat.

“I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I actually missed this fucking city,” he said. “But you spend enough time in the woods, that’ll happen to you.”

Marco didn’t respond. He rearranged his feet and tried to look for the best angle to squirrel around Dean. He just needed him to come a little closer.

“Don’t you agree, bud? Or do you like being one with nature?”

“I’ve actually had my fill, thanks,” Marco said. He had trouble looking into Dean’s eyes. When he did, he felt the pain in his head like when he looked at the map. It was his brain trying to make sense of something that didn’t belong here in this world, in this reality. Like the branch from last night.

Dean took another step forward. He worked the cleaver in the palm of his hand. Every time he turned it, the wide surface caught the sun. The thing was professional ware. It was so professional that Paula’s blood hadn’t stuck to the metal. It just coated Dean’s shirt.

“You’re not the only one who lost things,” Marco said. Was this fawn or was this just stalling? “But Sasha can help us. I know it.”

“There is no more us,” Dean said. “I’m gonna cut you open and serve you to Erether. Turn you into a ficus. Then everyone will be free of this. Everyone will be free of you!”

Dean approached fast with the cleaver pulled back. Marco jerked back and jumped onto the deck behind him. When Dean brought the blade across, Marco leapt to the side. It was a sloppy maneuver that brought him to the ground, and he slid along his shoulder, but it cleared enough distance for him to scramble back to his feet before Dean turned around.

Marco lunged for the door and yanked it open. Dean closed the gap and charged after him, but Marco pulled the door shut and drove the barrel bolt back into place. The door was thin metal, and when Dean pounded on it the whole thing shook. Dean tugged at the door and Marco held the knob tight. When it looked like the bolt was going to hold strong, Marco exhaled. He stepped back and lost his balance and then he fell backwards down the narrow stairs.

He opened his eyes as fast as he could. When he looked at his stomach, he was confident he had been sliced open. The amount of blood on his chest was startling. It was wet and new, and it stuck his shirt to his skin. He was feeling lightheaded and realized it was his wrist, still bleeding freely, still draining him of energy. No, no, no, no, he thought. He grabbed his wrist tightly and squeezed the wound. The cut turned into a thin line, bright red blood fighting through. He sat up the best he could, and he touched the back of his head and felt a welt forming. He wasn’t dead. But I’m dying, he thought. Then he shook it off. Not yet. Close, but not yet. He could move and run out of there. The door to the roof shook, which meant Dean was still on the other side pounding at it.

A second wind came to him, and his eyes focused properly on what he was looking at. From his new POV, he was much closer and more intimate with the corpses of Paula and Christopher. Earlier, his brain was doing all it could to put them at a distance. But now they were literally eye-level, and he could see the openings in Paula’s face and the pink and white bone coming out of it.

“I’m so sorry,” he heard himself say. It was a weak apology given in a whisper, but he meant it all the same. Paula’s checkerboard face just stared back. Still clearly upset.

Marco knew that however this ended, it needed to be where it started. In Paula’s cabin. Remember what nature is for. He could hear it in her voice, echoing in his head between the sounds of the metal door being shaken off its hinges. He stood up and ran to the kitchen and tied a rag as tightly as he could around his wrist. Then he went to the shelf where Paula kept her keys. He fumbled through the sets before grabbing the one with the babushka. He put it in his pocket and was out of the apartment before Dean busted down the door.