5

My phone rings. It rings again because I don’t answer it. It’s Tyler, my boss. I can’t do it right now. I can’t pretend that things are normal.

I head home instead, to my condo. When I open the door and hear the television, I realize my mistake.

“Cody?”

Janet is still there. We don’t live together, but we might as well. My place is nearer Pajino’s than hers, so there’s no point in her driving out to her apartment in the burbs after she’s stayed the night and has to go to work the next day.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here? Are you okay?” Stepping around the corner, she looks me over, and the surprise turns to concern. “Shit, you look terrible. Are you sick?”

“I guess so.” But I’m not. I know that now. Something is going on, but it’s not in my head.

Janet puts the back of her hand to my head. “You don’t have a fever, but you smell like puke.”

“I threw up.”

“I felt you tossing all night. You shouldn’t have gone in to work.” She takes me by the hand and leads me. “Do you want to lay on the couch or in bed?”

“Bed.”

Some part of me must believe I need mothering, that there’s something wrong with me, because I meekly follow her to the bedroom where she helps me out of my jacket.

Holding it up, she says, “You got some puke on this. It’ll have to be dry cleaned.”

I nod, taking off my shoes and socks and pants. She flings the covers back and I get into bed.

“Do you want anything? Do you need something for your stomach? I can go get soda.”

“No, I’m okay. I just need to sleep.”

She nods and pets my curls, twisting her fingers through them. “Okay. I’m going to be here for another couple of hours before going in to work, so think of what you might want before then and I’ll go out and get it for you, my little pussy lip.” She kisses me on the forehead, then leaves the room.

She’s being so nice. She’s been so nice. So concerned. No one at Pajino’s would believe it.

Did she have something to do with this?

How could she have possibly had anything to do with this, and why?

The unlikelihood is no longer good enough, because the impossible has happened and in the wake of that, the unlikely becomes probable by comparison.

Janet moved in so quickly. Didn’t really give me a moment to think. Took advantage of my despair and confusion at Madison’s disappearance and my need for a safe haven as the police hounded me and my friends and family-to-be doubted me. And now, just as I’m starting to piece things together, she’s keeping an eye on me.

Or she’s a caring woman with a tough front necessitated by a rough life, so that her concern is always a little surprising.

I don’t know. The ground I’m standing on is so shaky that from my perspective, everything is moving, nothing and no one is safe.

No, there are two points of stability that everything is careening around, even time.

One is me. Unless I’m being secretly persecuted, I seem to be the only one who knows that reality has gone crazy.

The other is Madison.

Cody, I think I’ve found a way to fix everything.

She knew this would happen. No, she made this happen.

So where is she now? Why did she have to leave? What did this cost her?

I close my eyes and I see her standing across from me, shy, over a foot shorter than me, seemingly fragile, but strong. Strong enough to do this, to fix things.

She wouldn’t want me to follow her, but I wouldn’t have wanted her to give up her life to give me mine back. All I wanted was to have her back, but I was so stupid I couldn’t make myself ask for it until it was too late.

I have to find her.

All of reality spins around us.

After Janet leaves, I get up and start pacing. It’s how I think best. My bare feet slap the hardwood floor as I circle the living room.

Madison had been slipping into the old comforts of her past. Drugs. After a certain part of her decline, I don’t know where she was going. We all lost track of her.

I wrack my brain, trying desperately to remember her texts and emails, feeling them slipping further away as I snatch at my memories of them, flitting just out of reach like silvery little fish.

I smack my forehead. The silvery little fish fill my vision, then fade. It didn’t help.

So I backtrack. After I burned, I never saw her again. She became a disembodied voice to me. Especially as I willed the outside world to fade away. It’s hard to think of her as being anywhere during that time except on the tiny screen of my phone.

I turn my phone on again and flip through it. The last messages are from the night she disappeared.

Aren’t you done yet?

I flip through the messages again, but the ones I clearly remember her sending in that other world never appear.

I have to accept that I had no idea where she was at the end. I search my earlier memories, to when she was less secretive about what she was doing.

The Dorset brothers. She said she’d seen the Dorset brothers, the trust-fund brats who sold to all the confused rich kids.

I put on pants, pocket the roll of quarters I used to carry when I walked the urban campus at night, and head out the door.

* * *

The Dorset brothers live in the same suburb as the Barringtons, in a big colonial with a circle drive spotted with luxury vehicles. Either their parents had bought the place or they’d bought the place with their parents’ money.

By the time I met her, Madison had been through rehab and was done with drugs, and so was also done with the Dorset brothers. But I knew them through some of my frat brothers and business classmates. I’d accompanied my friends to parties at their huge house, adding a dash of color to an otherwise very pale crowd.

I didn’t like the Dorsets, which was good, because I didn’t know what I might need to do.

I press the doorbell, hear it chime through the house. No one answers. I press it again. Again, no one answers. I look at my watch. 2:14 PM. I press and hold the doorbell. Eventually, a bellow makes its way through the thick door and the ringing of the bell, and I let go of the button.

“…the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid…”

The door opens, and there stands Jackson in a silk robe and boxers, looking like he just woke up and his lifestyle is catching up with him. “…fucker.” He stares at me for a long second, and so does his brother, Connor, from the stairs across the foyer. “I know you.”

“Cody Miller.”

His eyes unfocus, and soon he finds me in there. He cocks an eyebrow. “Cody. We have some mutual friends. What the fuck are you doing here?”

While everyone else fawned all over the brothers, I never made an effort to ingratiate myself. He must remember that.

“You know that Madison went missing several months ago.”

A spark of interest lights up his eyes, burning away some of the fog of disturbed sleep. He steps aside, says, “Come in.”

I step past Jackson into the cavernous foyer. The place isn’t quite a mansion. I think mansions should have marble floors, and these floors are hardwood. My footsteps slap up into the high ceiling.

The walls are covered with pieces of modern art. I know that these two aren’t connoisseurs, but will take a piece for payment in lieu of cash from the artists who mingle at their parties as conversational decoration or exotic pets.

“What is it?” Connor asks, coming down the stairs as we head towards chairs.

“It’s about Madison Barrington,” Jackson says.

I turn to catch the expression on Connor’s face, hoping it will reveal something these two sleaze bags might not otherwise admit. On Connor’s face is the same look of interest as his brother, but nothing that raises suspicion.

I settle into an arm chair, and they sit across from me, first Jackson, then Connor. Connor is older by a couple of years, but meeker. I don’t think he’d be living this way if it weren’t for his hot-headed younger brother.

I stare at them. It doesn’t take long for Jackson to get exasperated and say, “So, what? Why did you wake me up?”

“What do you know about Madison’s disappearance?”

He rolls his eyes and flops back into the couch. “Jesus Christ…Are you just playing detective? I thought you had something interesting to say.”

“Humor me.”

Jackson smirks. “It’s pretty humorous all around, because from what I hear, a lot of people think you did it.”

I expected this, but it brings up the old anger, feelings of persecution, rage and just plain frustration at having to explain myself over and over, first to the cops, then to everyone else as the truth of what happened to Maddy receded further.

“I had nothing to do with it. What else did you hear?”

“I haven’t heard shit else. I saw what everyone else did when they played that footage on the evening news: she got in her car and drove off.”

“And you haven’t seen her since?”

“We haven’t seen her for years, not since she was a precocious little school girl.”

I feel a strong urge to break Jackson’s jaw. Apparently Connor sees it on my face and says, “We really haven’t seen her in forever. Do you think she’s back into…”

I shrug. “Yeah, I think she might be. I didn’t think you guys had probably seen her, but she mentioned something, and I thought that you’re connected enough to know about it.”

“You should have started with that. Spill,” Jackson says.

“Ouroboros.” I lean forward, scrutinize them for a reaction.

“What?” Jackson says, screwing up his face in disappointment. “I can’t even say that. What is it?”

Damn it. That was my lead. My one lead. I rub my eyes. I’d been running on hope and when it goes it leaves exhaustion. “If I remember right from the show Millennium, it’s the snake that ate its own tail.” I stand to leave.

“Alright. Sorry to wake you so early in the day.” But I don’t even feel the sarcasm. I don’t feel anything except my systems crashing and my ability to tolerate the outside world diminishing quickly. I need to get back to my dark condo and my nightmares, and I leave the brothers without saying another word.

* * *

With the heavy blinds shut and the lights out I lay in the direct center of my big bed, covers pulled up, not sleeping.

My mind spins relentlessly, but not smoothly, instead in fits and starts as it hits the jutting irregularities of the world it’s trying to process. My head is a whirring hard drive and the read head is colliding.

I should let it go. I tried. I thought for months that Maddy abandoned me. I worked through that. With Janet’s help, I moved on, created a new life. But the core was rotten.

But now I know that Maddy didn’t betray me. In fact, I think she somehow saved me. I should take it. I should live this amazing life I’ve been granted.

But my mind spins. My mind is Ouroboros eating his own tail, spinning, spinning, and being self-sustaining, never slowing.

This is a great life.

I need to know what happened to Maddy.

I hadn’t remembered Maddy saying Ouroboros until I was talking to the brothers. The memory nags at me. Is it a clue to what’s going on, or was it just the confused rambling of a drug-addled mind.

At my desk, I open my laptop and start researching.

The symbol is old. Really old. It has been found on ancient Egyptian engravings from 14th century BC, and since that time its been passed through different mystic traditions, representing the infinite, the cyclical nature of time, and self-sufficiency. Those first meanings fit with what I’ve experienced, in that I’ve lived the same time twice, but I don’t know how self-sufficiency fits in. Plato described a creature that was fully contained, even to the point of eating its own waste as nourishment. A closed system.

That’s gross.

Moving to more relevant information, I discover that the symbol is still associated with secret societies due to its association with Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism.

Now I’m wondering if this could involve the occult, if Maddy fell in with people more dangerous than the Dorset brothers.

I’m freaked out following this path, but then I read something which I find strangely comforting. The symbol also represents Karma. What I find comforting about this is that it’s said that even if only a portion of the serpent can be seen, the entire system is still intact, just not yet comprehensible. Even if I can only see a small part of what’s going on, what’s going on does make sense, somehow, and I will discover how. For Maddy’s sake.

I’m so deep in thought that I jump when my phone rings. It’s not a number my phone recognizes. I reject it.

A minute later the voicemail buzzes.

“Cody, it’s Jackson. We have information for you.”

I return the call with shaking hands. Hope is light stuff, amorphous enough to fill any sized void no matter how slight the amount.

“Cody, I have news for you about what we talked about earlier.”

“Yeah, I got your voicemail. What is it?”

“Just a second.”

“Quit jerking me around. What is it?” I say, but I get the feeling that there’s no ear at the ear piece of the phone at the other end.

My phone beeps. I see it’s a media message from the number I’m currently talking to. I open it, and there’s a picture of Madison.

My heart flops, feels for a moment like it’s going to stop.

She’s dirty, sitting in a corner with her knees hugged to her chest, her long dark hair matted and wild, chunks shooting off in all directions. She barely peeks at the camera, showing it one eye. All around her, shiny vertical bars reflect the flash. Some kind of cage, maybe?

Someone who didn’t know her so well would have a hard time identifying her, but it’s her. It’s her.

Her arms are different. They’re veiny. She always had a youthful softness, and however she’s been living in the last few months has taken that from her.

But the most dramatic change is the tattoos on the back of each hand. The light is dim. The photo a bit blurry because of it. They look like thick circles, but I recognize it from my research as something more.

Ouroboros. The serpent eating its tail.

A tiny, tinny voice awakens me, and I realize it’s been talking for some time.

“Cody?! Cody?!”

“Tell me where—”

“First of all, don’t say her name. We can’t have this conversation over the phone.”

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

* * *

You’d think twenty minutes would seem like an eternity with something like this hanging over your head, but it’s not. As I drive to the Dorset’s, my brain spins in my head, but it’s my subconscious. At the forefront, I can only see Madison. What did she get herself into? What does this have to do with my duel memories?

A couple of times I nearly drive off the road when I can’t keep from looking at the picture of her on my phone, and can’t keep from getting lost in it.

Before I know it, I’m pulling into the Dorset’s circle drive. But by the time I reach the Dorset’s front door, some of the shock has worn off. They might have made a big mistake by inviting me over, because I’m half insane to understand what’s going on.

Connor holds the door, and I step past him.

“Where the fuck did you get this picture?” I say, shaking my phone at him.

“Hold on. You need to chill out.”

“No, you need to tell me what the fuck is going on, because this is chill.”

Connor puts his hand on my shoulder. I shake it off. He puts it back. “Cody, we’re trying to help. We’re sticking our fucking necks out here. Madison is in deep, and if we don’t all play this right she could take any of us down with her.” His hand is still on my shoulder, and he gives it a squeeze.

I grab the hand and twist. I learned this in my undergraduate PE elective Aikido class.

“Fuck you and your good intentions. It’s not us against the world. You are this world. Talk, motherfucker.”

“Jackson, no!” Connor isn’t looking at me, but at his brother in the sitting area where he probably expected to lead me. Jackson’s hand is shoved down between the arm of the couch and the cushion and he stopped in mid-stand.

Trailerpark junkie or trust-fund Scarface wannabe, there are only so many places to hide a gun for easy access.

I let go of Connor’s wrist. Jackson sits back down, but leaves his hand shoved out of sight.

We’re going to leave things concealed, and as long as they stay that way, we can continue civilly. But once they’re brought out into the open, someone will have to die. I agree to go along with this because they have what I need.

That thought wakes me up, turns my rage down from boiling over to simmer. Because that thought begs the question: why are they agreeing to this arrangement? What do they need from me?

“That’s quite a move,” Connor says, rubbing his wrist. “Were you a bouncer or something?”

I shake my head, walk to my arm chair, let the weird brothers sit beside each other on the couch, let Jackson glare at me, his forearm muscles twitching.

Connor says, “Let it go, bro.” Then to me, “When you said that weird word yesterday, neither of us knew what it meant.”

“Ouroboros.”

“Yeah. But when you said it was a snake eating its own tail. Well, everyone in our world knows that symbol.”

I think of the worlds the Dorset brothers occupy. The idle rich. Drug dealers. The brotherhood of scumbags. For which did the image of Ouroboros hold special meaning?

“I’m not following you. You’re being cryptic.”

“I’m not trying to be cryptic, but it’s hard to reveal an entire hidden world to someone when they’re really only interested in one person. I’m trying to show you the whole city and you’re zoomed in with a high-powered telescope.”

I nod. I agree. Something bigger than one missing girl is going on here, even if that one girl means more to me than all the rest, even if I’d burn down the rest of the world to get her back. But to get her back, I need to work through the rest of the world.

“We’ve been doing this awhile—”

“Doing what?” I ask. Connor talks around things. Jackson is a dick, but I almost wish he’d take up his usual role as the brothers’ blunt spokesperson.

“Selling drugs. Living the party lifestyle. Watching people who can’t handle it destroy themselves. We were happy to see Madison get away. We really were.”

He looks at me earnestly. I nod to start him talking again.

“There’s constant turnover among our customers. Some people get help, get out, and we don’t see them again. Some people die suddenly. They OD. They get murdered. They murder someone else and go to prison. Obviously, we don’t see them again. Some people start sliding, like we’re up here in the sun at the top of this hill, and they slip and start sliding down this muddy side that leads into darkness and filth and eventually death. You try to give them a hand up, but at some point they’re too far gone and you just have to let them go.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that when a person starts losing teeth and hair and gaining seeping track marks and a certain aroma, when someone loses the ability to maintain, we refer them to someone else.”

I’m having a hard time disguising my impatience. I’m trying to see the big picture, but it feels like I’m being shown an entirely different picture, like one at the other end of the gallery.

“But there’s one other group who disappear suddenly. It seems like maybe they dropped out or got murdered or went to some foreign rehab, but then someone spots them marked with the sign of the Serpent. And after that, people stop asking questions. That person is as gone as if they were dead.”

“No. Fuck that. What does that mean?” I say.

“If you see that symbol on a building, on a package, on a person, whatever it is, you pretend it’s invisible. You do not touch it. You do not talk about it.”

“You talked about it. You asked someone about her and got an answer.”

“We like Madison, and this doesn’t happen to people like her. This happens to people who are already in deep, not people on the right path. The Serpent is like a sudden pitfall in a downhill slide, a drop straight to the bottom, to nowhereland. But on a downhill slide. It doesn’t just happen. So at first, I couldn’t believe it. When I got that picture in response, I thought about deleting it.”

“So why didn’t you? Why tell me?” The slope they mentioned, I feel myself sliding along it. I have been for awhile already. The people who disappear, they might start like this, with the world slipping around them. The only question is if a hidden pitfall is up ahead.

“Because we’re already in. If the wrong person finds out about this and decides we’re a liability, we’re all gone. We stuck our necks out and we’re waiting for the ax, but if it’s gonna fall it’s gonna fall and we might as well do something with what all this trouble bought us: that photo, and an address.”

I jump forward in my seat. My eyes flick to Jackson. I expect to be staring down the barrel of a gun, that the sudden movement spooked him, but apparently he’s got a short attention span, has forgotten that he’s playing a tough thug with a short fuse.

I turn back to Connor. “So who sent you the picture?”

“That’s the thing; I don’t recognize the number. I contacted a guy who contacted a guy who contacted a guy, and this is what came back. I don’t know how this person got my number, but it probably means I’m fucked.”

I look him in the eyes, and I see real fear there. For all the talk, the fear is real.

“Thank you for this.”

“Save it. I never would have asked if I’d thought I’d get an answer. Here.” He hands me a folded sheet of paper. There’s a phone number and an address. “That’s the number the picture came from, and that’s the only message that came with it.”

“Did you try to call it?”

“Hell no.”

“I want your contact.”

“Who?”

“You know who. The person you asked in the first place.”

Jackson has been squirming. I don’t know why he’s been keeping quiet, but it hasn’t been because he’s got nothing to say. He finally busts. “You’ve got what we’re giving. Get out.”

I meet his eyes. He wants a reason. I can’t believe someone like this isn’t in prison or dead, but his family has a lot of money and a lot of connections. He’d probably do it. He’s probably looking for an excuse.

I nod, stand. “Thanks for this,” I say to Connor. “For whatever reason you got involved, thanks.”

He nods. “I hope it turns out. For all of us.”

They let me see myself out.