“Enough.”
Oz crouched on the ground, furiously rubbing his face, trying to clear the image of that girl, and her Ba, out of his mind. It was useless. His eyes burned once he finally allowed them to open, and the first thing to enter the frame was Bard’s profile—smoking and wiping the blood from his knife onto the back of his pants. It left thick, red streaks along the fabric.
When the knife was tucked back into his pants, Oz struggled to his feet and ran toward him. His knuckles met Bard’s jaw with a sickening crunch. He reeled back, his hand on fire, waiting for the return blow. It never came.
“You done?” Bard asked and shoved Oz off before skulking away from the still-burning apartment building.
Sirens screamed in the distance. The sound was becoming too familiar to Oz. Too frequent.
“Yeah. I’m done,” he said.
“Good. Now let’s get moving.”
“No.”
Bard stopped, but didn’t turn. He dropped and stomped on the cigarette he’d been holding between his teeth. “Okay, Princess. I get it. You’re pissed and scared. But that woman had to die. She should’ve died a while ago but it didn’t happen. Some kink in the system. You kink the system, the balance is thrown off and the rules don’t apply anymore. Bad things happen. People die.”
“Like her?”
Bard turned to face him. “Yeah. Now let’s go.”
“No.”
“What d’you mean, ‘no?’”
“I mean I’m done. I’ve had enough of this... this...” Something between a growl and a scream erupted from Oz’s throat. “I will not do this. All this death. I want to go back to The Department. Now.”
Bard sighed. “Doesn’t work that way, Princess.”
“The hell it doesn’t. How do I get back?”
“It won’t matter if you—”
“Tell me!” Oz trembled. He saw white and yellow and orange and red. He wanted to kill Bard before he could kill someone else.
Bard’s shoulders dropped. His voiced hardened. “How’d you get there the first time?”
The ambulance and fire engine were in sight. Oz knew what he had to do, but did he have the balls to do it? He took one look back at the apartment building, little more than a skeleton, now, and imagined the body inside. He fought the urge to be sick again.
He ran to meet the ambulance as it turned the corner. The driver eyed his destination and tapped the accelerator. Oz closed his eyes, braced himself, and took one step off the curb.
* * * *
Oz couldn’t see. He blinked a few times to force his eyes to adjust to the dark, but there was no light. Maybe Bard had tricked him. Oz felt a bubble of panic in his stomach. A flash of light cut into the darkness.
“Sorry,” a voice said, “I was just looking for another ribbon.”
The owner of the voice reached a long, slender arm past Oz’s ear and snatched a small box from the shelf.
“Thanks,” he said, and shut the door.
I’m in a closet.
After some fumbling, Oz fingered the doorknob and opened the door. Outside, were the familiar clusters of grey cubicles of The Department.
Up until this moment, Oz had never fully appreciated the order of The Department. The identical cubicles, the orchestral tapping of typewriter keys punctuated by the occasional chair squeak, but especially the complete absence of the physical evidence of death. It was clean. Structured.
He would never leave again.