Wind barreled down the street, slapping my shirt.
The suburban houses of Mark’s neighborhood transformed into office buildings that loomed over me. No one else was out. The city was empty. How long had I been walking? A rush of air rattled the street signs lining the sidewalk.
Watch for pedestrians.
Share the road.
Leave your friends to die.
My leg shot up flairs of pain that exploded in my head. All my injuries did. The bruises. The loose teeth. The bloody nose. They all screamed in unison. The drugs I stole weighed in my pocket, slapping against my thigh like a ticking clock.
What was I waiting for, a sign?
Stop.
Dead End.
Shut up, and kill yourself.
My reflection bounced off the office windows alongside me, and I finally stopped walking to rest my forehead against the glass.
The fog from my breath erased my face, but the rest of me was still there. My torn jeans. My blood stained shirt. A Halloween costume.
Something smelled like dead flowers.
The stench curled through the air and down my nose and throat. Worse than rancid compost. I gagged, choking on the rotten air. Pink spittle flew against the window, and long strands of drool slipped from my mouth.
Another heave, and it all came out.
Chunks of raw meat splattered against the sidewalk. Yellow bile splashed off my shoes.
As I bent over, coughing everything out, my reflection didn’t move. It loomed over me while hot stomach acid continued to spew out my nose. While tears dripped off my face.
When I finished, when there was nothing left to expel, I looked back up at myself. Dark, charcoal eyes, and a pale, beat-up face. It all looked like smudged makeup.
My reflection smiled.
“Fuck.” I stumbled back, slipping off the curb as I did. The smile turned into a laugh, and as I turned to bolt, my shoulder smacked into a street sign.
Slow down.
Speed Limit 25.
Run away like you always do.
Without looking back, I kept going. I ran until the office building ended at an alley.
I ducked inside.
Dumpsters lined the brick walls, and my shoes splashed against the juice puddled around them. I zig-zagged around empty cardboard boxes and burnt out drums. Only when I couldn’t see the street anymore did I stop.
My breath wouldn’t come. I couldn’t even stand upright. My throbbing leg buckled from the strain, and the grooves in the mortar rattled against my spine as I slid down. Dumpster ooze soaked into the denim of my jeans.
It was as good a sign as any.
I yanked the lump of drugs from my pocket.
Verona’s keys—my makeshift brass knuckles—they came out too. They clattered against the asphalt, and I tried to remember just how long ago it had been since I jumped from her balcony, but I didn’t even know today’s date.
How long had she been dead?
I unknotted the bag of drugs, bringing it up to my lips and lifting my head. Several signs looked down on me.
One way.
No U turns.
Who killed me?
The powder clogged my throat, unable to dissolve fast enough. I coughed a white cloud across the narrow alley, and leaned back to pour even more down.
Enough to kill a horse.
I leaned back. The empty bag slipped through my fingers and fell through the air, twisting around itself before landing in a pool of rotten liquid. I gripped my chest, counting the space between heartbeats.
She threw something at my feet, Verona did. “People are animals,” she said. “That’s what those German Expressionists found.”
She was teetered over, half-inside an open dumpster.
“When they started asking themselves who they really were,” she continued, her voice echoing from inside the trash. “When they started to dedicate entire self-portraits to it, that’s when they figured it out.”
Something else came hurling through the air towards me. A crushed can for some kind of strawberry energy drink.
“Some of us are rabbits,” she continued. “Jumping at any chance for validation.”
A bottle of Mystic Mirage soared from the dumpster before smashing against the brick wall.
“Some of us are snakes.” The clinking and rustling of garbage muffled her voice. “Living in the gardens someone else grew.”
A torn package of once-frozen sausages thudded next to my head.
“And some of us,” she said, hopping out of the dumpster. “Some of us are coyotes. Desperate, skinny, and always howling for even the tiniest scrap of meat.”
Something furry dangled from her fist as she walked towards me.
“Can you believe people just throw this stuff away?” she asked. The thing looked like a small, fuzzy dog. “These are all perfectly good art supplies.”
The sun haloed behind her head as she bent down next to me. I asked her if I was dead.
She held the hairy thing up. It wasn’t a dog, not a real one, just some stuffed animal. She pinched a tuft of fur free and held it next to my hair.
“An exact match,” she said. “Do you think I should add it to your portrait?”
Her breath smelled like a skunk beaten to death with a gallon of expired milk, and I licked the scar on my lip.
“They were right, of course. The Expressionists,” she said, letting go of the fur. The sharp edges of her face blurred against the halo of sun, and the tuft of hair scattered apart. “We’re all just animals, nothing more.”
Her voice faded along with her face. “But they forgot one important thing.”
Before she could tell me whatever that thing was, before she disappeared completely, I leaned in and kissed her.
A skinny dog pressed its nose to my face.
Globs of saliva dripped against my cheek, while an army of flies buzzed around us. This couldn’t be right. I shut my eyes and tried to go back to sleep.
“You punkin’ me?” The dog pawed at my face, and I blinked my eyes back open.
My dry throat cracked as I spoke. “What?”
“Pay taxes all my life, but I guess that still ain’t worth no small miracles.” The dog’s teeth shone in a large stupid smile. “Lord, this town’s gone downhill. Down. Down. Down.” Worn shoes scuffed the asphalt next to my head. Someone was sitting right by me. “These kiddies today got none, huh?” A ragged hand reached out to pet the mutt.
“Trash.” The man threw something at the ground. A blue and white trinket. I reached for my chest, patting up and down. Was that my necklace? It rolled from where the man had thrown it and into my forehead.
“Trash. Trash. Trash.” More objects hit the ground. A key. Another key. That detective’s business card. Another key. As I moved my hand to check my pockets, the dog licked me. Its smooth, gray tongue slicked my hair back.
The man coughed. “And what about you?”
My heart dropped. His bony fingers reached into my line of sight, towards something in the congealed dumpster puddle by my face. The small plastic bag. A thin film of the remaining mystery drug caked the bottom.
He rimmed his dirt crusted finger around inside. Saliva dangled from the dog’s cartoon smile, while its owner smacked his lips around the powder on his finger. Tip to knuckle. He coughed again. It sounded like a vacuum that sucked up something it shouldn’t have.
“Fuckin, none,” he said, crumpling the bag and tossing it. “These kiddies banging baby powder.”
His knees popped as he worked on standing up. “Come on you runt,” he said, petting the flies off his dog’s back.
Did he say baby powder?
Wind rolled the crumbled plastic bag back in my direction as both the man and his dog disappeared into the city. I continued playing dead. If the fake drugs hadn’t killed me, maybe an absent minded, garbage truck driver would.
The bag kept tumbling towards me, catching itself on a loose key. One of Verona’s keys. Tied to it was a rectangular tag—some kind of label. The words printed across it said Outta’ Space Storage.
I sat up.
You know about those paintings, right? Wanna tell me where they are?
Shit. Verona’s artwork. I forgot.
I grabbed the storage key, and my necklace, and everything else that man had though was too useless to steal.
Ten-thousand dollars? That’s quite the windfall.
As I trembled to my feet, it knocked loose a rancid collection of different smells. Dead flowers. Moldy sweat. The sun shone down, baking them together. Dog’s breath. Regurgitated cat food.
At least now I could afford a new shirt.