Chapter Three
I woke up slowly, driven unwelcomingly into consciousness by an unbearably repetitive musical jingle. My watch wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I found it on the floor beneath the table and blearily pressed buttons until the alarm stopped, then collapsed back into my pillow. It went off again in five minutes. This time I roused long enough to notice how oddly cold I was before switching the alarm off properly. I drifted back off wondering why my room smelled of perfume.
I slept hard, which wasn’t at all usual for me. Typically I woke up with the sunrise and got to ‘watch’ as the room changed colors while I got ready for the day. I can’t really see a sunrise, unfortunately, but I can kind of see a glowing haze in the air as the sun first comes up. I’ve never seen the moon or the stars, either, except in pictures. The changing of the celestial bodies was too subtle to wake me up today. My dreams were a gentle tangle of sense-memories and the vague impression that I was seeing colors or shapes, but with no distinction between actually seeing them and only believing I was seeing them.
At some point I awoke a third time to see that the sun was well and truly up. It occurred to me that I had probably slept through the entirety of my class, but for some reason, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I did get up long enough to use the bathroom, nearly bumping into Esti on the way back. You’d think I would have felt exceptionally awkward after the previous night, especially since I hadn’t gotten dressed when I got up. For some reason, though, I was still just too tired to bother with emotions as inconsequential as mortifying embarrassment, and I guess it showed.
“Back to bed with you!” Esti ordered, turning me back toward my door and giving me a gentle shove. I didn’t need any encouragement. I don’t think I even closed the door behind me as I planted myself face-first into my pillow. I was out before I finished pulling the blanket over my naked body. This time I didn’t even dream, although I could somehow sense that time was passing. If I’d had the capacity to care about anything just then, I might have been alarmed at how much of it elapsed before I finally found myself awake for good.
I felt absolutely rotten. My head ached, my stomach felt cramped and nauseated, and I was sore from lying in bed for so long. The door was indeed wide open, and what’s worse, Esti had left a note for me on my table. I weighed whether it was worth being embarrassed and decided against it. I doubted I had any secrets from her after last night. If I hadn’t felt so ill, the thought of what had happened would have been far more enjoyable than it was. With my brain having been replaced by a cactus, it took running my fingers over the scrap of paper twice to jog my synesthesia into clarifying the text into something that made sense.
You seemed pretty out of it when I left the house so I decided to let you sleep. You used up a lot of electrolytes and stuff last night, so be sure to eat something with salt and protein and drink lots of fluids. I hope you enjoyed it. Do it again sometime?
Below that was a crudely drawn face that, I figured out after a minute, was supposed to be winking suggestively. “Okay,” I mumbled listlessly and shuddered as the vibration from my own voice set off something down my gullet, giving me another pang of nausea. I hope I haven’t come down with something. If I did, I either got it from her, or maybe gave it to her. Either one didn’t bode well for doing anything like that again at any time in the near future, much less following Esti’s advice to eat and drink something.
Even getting dressed was an ordeal despite the fact that I didn’t even try to coordinate an outfit. I couldn’t figure out which end of my skirt went up, and I nearly put it on inside-out. Getting a bra on was a lost cause. By the time I succeeded in dragging a shirt on over my head, I wanted to go back to sleep and pretend I had no responsibilities for a week. I’d never been so completely out of it like this, not even the morning I woke up nine years ago with eyes turning gold and a world that felt like it was on fire. I could hardly focus, and my synesthesia seemed sluggish and out of sync, with images blurring at the edges. This had never happened before, and I was starting to worry a little that I might be a lot more sick than my body necessarily felt. I didn’t know. My brain worked differently than most people’s, so how could I predict what would happen if I got particularly ill?
Sighing, I forced myself up and went looking for my purse, rediscovering the pieces of my cane again. I’d find time to fix it later, but right now I needed to e-mail my professors and that was going to be tricky enough. Dad had wanted to buy me a desktop computer, but I’d begged off after he got me a phone that I could already barely use. My perception doesn’t extend to computer screens. With nothing to touch, taste, smell or hear when text or pictures appear on the monitor, a computer is nothing more than an opaque box to me unless I use special software to make it accessible, and sometimes that software doesn’t work with whatever program I want to use. I’ve gotten to where I can write papers and do my homework on my netbook without too many issues, but for more complicated tasks, I usually have to ask someone to do it for me. Normally I could send an e-mail on my own, but with how I felt today...
Twenty minutes later, I sighed and sat back to rub my temples. “Click send,” I mumbled and was rewarded with a jingle announcing the e-mail had been sent successfully. Almost simultaneously, there was an electronic tone from the parlor. It took a moment to sort out the sound. Doorbell. Right. I resisted the urge to ignore it and pretend I wasn’t home in case it was important to one of my housemates. Groaning, I reluctantly sat up and trudged out to get the door, opening it to find—
“Sae?” I rocked back on my heels and nearly toppled over backwards, grabbing at the doorframe for balance. Her image swam in my mind for an instant before stabilizing, revealing her expression to be one of alarm.
“Sanmei, you look terrible,” my coworker said bluntly, stepping forward. I was forced to give way as she entered the apartment, utterly taken aback by her intrusion.
“Sae, not to be rude, but what are you doing here?” I asked as she kicked off her flats by the door. I was more than a little put off by her total disregard for etiquette. “How do you even have my address?”
With no regard for my personal space, Sae put a hand on my forehead, making me flinch. “I got it off the computer when you didn’t show up or call in,” she answered blithely. “Hmm. You’re a little cold.”
“You’re a little warm,” I countered, pulling away from her. My forehead burned uncomfortably, and gradually, warmth was joining it in my cheeks. Contrition overrode my annoyance. “I’m so sorry, I only just woke up a little bit ago and I’d just managed to get an e-mail to let my professors know I’m sick. What time is it?”
“You ‘only just woke up’?” Sae gaped at me in horror. “How late were you up? It’s a little past six.”
It took a moment for me to process this. At first I actually forced a giggle, thinking she was making a joke I didn’t get. When her expression didn’t change, then I did feel a chill. “Are you serious? I was up late, but it couldn’t have been later than…” I tried to estimate it in my head. Apparently now that I was up and moving, my body must have been waking up, because I started to heat at the memories that surfaced. “Maybe three. I know I was having trouble waking up and staying up, but fifteen hours?”
That did it. “Oh God. I’m so sorry,” I said again, stunned into repetition. I ran a hand through my hair and winced as my fingers encountered tangles. “I can’t believe I slept so long. I’m going to call my doctor right now and see if I can get in today. Tonight. What happened at the shop? Did you have to close early?”
“It’s fine; I got my sister to take your shift for the evening. Have you met her? Name of Ley, little shorter than me, brown hair, stutters a lot?” Sae chattered as she followed me. I got about a dozen steps back toward my room when suddenly everything tipped and I went down, or I would have if Sae hadn’t somehow got around me in time to interrupt my descent. I hit her with a thud and somehow she kept me from folding to the floor.
“Careful!” she cried unhelpfully, helping steady me. “Sit down before you fall down.”
That was easier said than done when my legs didn’t want to cooperate. They didn’t hurt, but they didn’t seem to be moving as much as I expected unless I paid attention to how exactly they were placed. I must have apologized a dozen times before Sae got me over to the couch Cassie’s parents had gifted the apartment. I collapsed onto it gratefully. An incoherent thought flitted through my head: So this is what it’s like to have vertigo. I don’t think I like it. Neither did my stomach. I decided to just lie still until it passed…
I think I must have passed out, because when I started ‘seeing’ things again, I was on my side and my head was on Sae’s lap. I sat up with a start and was surprised when the sudden motion didn’t set off my head or stomach again. In fact, as I opened my mouth to apologize and yawned instead, I realized I definitely felt better, if rather embarrassed for all the inconvenience I was giving Sae.
But if she was bothered, she didn’t show it. “Oh good, you’re awake!” she whispered. “It’s nearly ten. At night,” she added hastily, and I was glad she did — at this point, it wouldn’t have surprised me to have woken up at 10:00 the next morning. “Your roommates came home hours ago.”
I groaned, imagining what they must have seen and thought. “You should have woken me up.”
She shrugged easily. “You seemed like you needed it. How are you feeling now? Are you up to eating something?”
I used a moment to take stock. My head had cleared and my stomach just felt empty. Most of the fatigue seemed to have lifted. I felt like I should have felt if I’d just woken up from a long sleep, and how I’d felt instead this afternoon was now a memory. “I guess it must have been what I needed, because I don’t feel too bad at all now,” I admitted, feeling oddly guilty. “Just hungry. If I order out, can I persuade you to let me get you something? It’s the least I can do for everything today.”
Sae made a rude noise and waved her hands dismissively. “Too late! I was going to make you the same offer, but you slept through when I ordered. I hope you like poke. I put yours in the fridge.”
The guilt redoubled. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I protested, barely remembering in time to keep my voice low. I didn’t know who had class or work tomorrow, but it was usually a safe bet that someone would be asleep early. “I’m—“
I stopped because Sae had just planted two fingers on my lips. She gave a very feline smile as she leaned forward and I had the absurd notion she was about to kiss me, but she stopped a few inches from my face. “What you are is worrying too much, but if you prefer, I suppose I could chastity you.”
“I think you mean ‘chastise,’ ” I said automatically, heat flooding into my cheeks. I leaned away before she could get any ideas, then realized I had a perfect excuse to get up as my stomach let out a bubbling complaint.
“Do I?”
Her laughter followed me to the kitchen as I scurried away, eager to duck my head into the coolness of the refrigerator. I found a covered plastic bowl and quickly identified it as poke, a Hawaiian fish salad which had been gaining popularity in the University District, claiming a niche alongside sushi and teriyaki restaurants in the area. This one consisted of sushi rice, vegetables, and chunks of fish I couldn’t recognize by scent alone. I was surprised to find the bowl still warm as I lifted it up. That was just as well; I’d have hated to do it the injustice of putting it in the microwave.
That left me wondering when she’d ordered the delivery, and why it hadn’t awakened me sooner. True, something was seriously amiss with my sleeping habits, or else I wouldn’t have slept nearly 19 hours straight, but I found it a little daunting to think that Sae had gone to the door, received and eaten a meal, placed the leftovers in the refrigerator, and then put my head in her lap, all without me having roused during that time.
“I think you have mono,” Sae announced from directly behind me as I was fishing a fork out of the dish drying rack. The only thing that kept me from letting out a shriek was clapping my hands over my mouth, dropping the plastic bowl to the floor in the process. I spun around and fixed her synesthesia image in my mind, so badly startled that I was shaking. The little minx didn’t even seem to notice, chattering just as if she hadn’t done something nearly impossible by sneaking up on me so easily. “That would explain why you slept so much, wouldn’t it? Have you ever had it before? Do you have a sore throat too?”
“H-how did you get behind me? You were just sitting on the couch, weren’t you?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud, but it just slipped out of me as I regarded her in disbelief.
Sae inclined her head questioningly. “Well, obviously I didn’t teleport, on account of that being patently impossible, right?” She grinned, my discomfiture apparently not even registering on her horizon. “You must still be a little sleepy. You dropped this, by the way. Good thing I have quick reflexes, huh?”
She held up the bowl I knew—I knew for a fact—had just hit the floor. I was speechless.
My synesthesia is strange, sometimes inexplicable in its capacity to provide detailed imagery of things I shouldn’t possibly be able to sense, much less identify so precisely, but it had never lied to me like this. I had seen her on the couch, and then she had simply been behind me with nothing in the intervening space. I had seen the plastic container drop to the floor, far too late to be caught, and somehow she had plucked it from the air while hardly seeming to move. It was impossible. I refused to believe whatever trick of my senses had guided me so long had suddenly expired. Obviously she wasn’t breaking the laws of physics, so it had to be me, and that meant either I was taking leave of my senses, or else something much simpler was at play.
“I’m still asleep, aren’t I?” I asked, edging away from her. It had to be. I wouldn’t accept any other explanation. I was already struggling to keep my fear in check. “I’m asleep and this is a dream. Otherwise, none of this makes sense. Why would you be here? Why do these things keep happening?”
Sae blinked once and then smiled. Feline ears sprouted from her head as she reached forward and grasped me by the arm.
“Glad to see you’ve caught on. Now wake up.”
The world whirled and went utterly dark.
I jerked upright in bed, gasping for breath. The room was dark and I was blessedly alone, with no bizarre, cat-eared Sae to taunt me. Everything seemed normal, and I felt, aside from my pounding heart, relatively refreshed and much improved from earlier. Assuming any part of ‘earlier’ had been real. Unreality slid over me, making the fine hair on my arms prickle uncomfortably. I had no idea where reality had ended and fantasy had begun. Had Sae even been here at all, or had I dreamed the entire encounter? It had seemed so real, but…
I quickly checked. I was dressed as I had remembered dressing that morning, so that much was real. I didn’t feel like checking to see if I’d really sent that e-mail out to my professors, although I’d have to do it if I couldn’t make it into class… today? Tomorrow? I sighed and located my watch right where I’d left it and triggered its time readout.
“Friday, 1:29 A.M.,” a female voice pleasantly announced from the watch’s speaker. I winced. I had slept through the entire day and now here I was awake in the early hours of the night with an exam later today. I was definitely going to make an appointment with my doctor as soon as I could. The good news was that unless I started feeling ill again, I could probably get to Microbiology and take my exam, although if I couldn’t convince my body to sleep a little longer, it was going to feel like late afternoon by the time it happened.
My stomach let out a rumble. Oh yes, I was still hungry, and no wonder if I hadn’t had anything to eat in over 24 hours. I pulled the covers off and stood up, spotting Esti’s note on my table, unchanged from when I’d read it earlier. So far, it seemed like Sae’s inexplicable visit was the only thing I couldn’t account for, and now, perversely, I had an urge to check the refrigerator for leftover poke. I crept down the short hall past Esti’s room, entered the kitchen, and hesitantly cracked open the refrigerator door.
No poke, not that I had really expected there to be any. I breathed a sigh, feeling strangely relieved. My suspicion was that Sae really had dropped by to check up on me that afternoon, but I’d been so tired that I didn’t remember going back to bed. I hoped I hadn’t been behaving strange or rudely while I was all but sleepwalking. Hadn’t she said she’d tried to call me? I had a few trails of breadcrumbs to follow as soon as I got something in my stomach and something to drink. I filled a glass of water and pondered what I could quietly make to eat as I took it back to my room, pausing as I passed in front of Esti’s door. It was closed, but that didn’t stop me from peeking inside, and I could tell that her bed was empty. That was mildly concerning, if not that unusual for Esti — which was none of my business, but I did hope she wasn’t somewhere suffering the same ailment I was.
It turned out Sae had left me two voicemail messages, first inquiring if I was in and able to make it to work, the second expressing concern that I hadn’t called back and warning me that she was going to visit to check in on me. She also mentioned in the latter that she had gotten her sister to fill in for me, which confirmed that at least part of her visit had been real. I had to assume my guess had been correct, and I had gone back to bed at some point after she visited and dreamed waking up on the couch with her. It had been so lifelike, and I had been asleep so long, that it had taken awhile for me to piece together what had happened and what hasn’t. I had to laugh at myself in retrospect. I never realized what a creature of habit I am. Oversleep a little while and I start questioning reality…
Well, to make a long story short, I had a post-midnight meal and miserably failed at getting back to sleep, but I did succeed in getting to class and taking my exam, which I did well on. Esti came home that afternoon while I napped, but since it was now a weekend night and everyone was up late, I saw her and the others when I woke up a little later and we hung out a bit while they watched a movie. I tried to keep up with it, but since I can’t turn off synesthesia to just enjoy the dialogue, what I heard and what I could ‘see’ often didn’t match up. I often visualized actors in front of empty sets and landscapes that were incomplete and fuzzy at the edges. I didn’t complain, though, since I was happy enough to vicariously enjoy my friends’ reactions to the film. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to speak to Esti alone before I had to go back to bed, but she seemed in high spirits, not sick at all, which had been my chief concern.
Over the next few days, I labored to get my sleeping schedule back on track, thanking God I didn’t have much to worry about on weekends other than any assignments I had to do, and this had been a week of exams, so I didn’t have much more than a bit of studying to take care of and a doctor’s appointment that thankfully turned up nothing of consequence. I missed the best parts of the day, but somehow I managed to make myself sleep at 4:00 AM early Saturday morning, and then at 1:00 AM the following night. I didn’t have much of a social life that weekend, and Esti in particular was nowhere to be found when I wanted to talk to her—which left me feeling more than a little stung—but at least I was able to be up at a reasonable hour on Monday and endure an entire day of classes without falling asleep in the middle of them.
It was Monday evening while I was sitting alone in our diminutive living room with my netbook, trying to retrieve my grades as a means of passing the time until I could drop into my bed and hopefully have everything back to rights when I woke up the next morning, that I caught something on the news that made me jump. Jesse had left the television on when she went to bed and I hadn’t been paying much attention to the window into a studio of people talking mainly about unpleasant things, this being how I ‘saw’ it, when their topic jumping finally referenced something particularly relevant to me.
“… his family, but the King County Medical Examiner has officially ruled Officer Orkin’s death one of natural causes. Although it was at first thought that the woman heard on audio retrieved from his dashboard camera may have played a role in his death, presiding coroner Doctor Miguel Martín now says his death was due to a heart attack suffered during the attempted arrest.
“The woman has still not been identified. Anyone who may have information relating to the events that took place this past Saturday evening is urged to contact the Seattle Police Department.”
I rocked back, struggling to make sense of what I’d just heard. Could it really have been the same man as Wednesday? I wish I’d paid more attention to the opening of the segment! Then I realized I was holding an object in my lap that could possibly give me the information I desired, if I was willing to put in the time to find it. I was conscious of the time, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t try. Sighing, I fumbled around until I managed to open a new window and keyed in a search.
It didn’t take long to get results, even if they were a bit scanty on details. His full name had been Zackary Orkin and his wife’s name was Sophia, and the articles mentioned they had a child together, although none of them gave the child’s name — for privacy reasons, I guessed. Still, I had enough that I was certain it was the same person. I could see about getting Esti to print a picture from the articles so that I could ‘see’ it, but I had a feeling there was no need.
One of the articles had an excerpt from an interview with the coroner, Doctor Martín, going into more detail than the news report had and clarifying a detail they had gotten wrong. He had performed several blood tests for toxins and had found nothing to suggest that the cause was anything but natural. However, he had actually ruled Orkin’s death as caused by heart failure, not a heart attack. This was unusual because Orkin had no prior history of heart disease, but it was possible he had suffered from some form of arrhythmia that had gone unreported and thus undiagnosed.
Several of the articles also referenced the mysterious dash camera video which had initially made police suspect that foul play had been involved. Orkin’s car had been on the side of the road with his body lying on the sidewalk on the passenger side by officers responding to a request for assistance. When they pulled the video, it had turned out Orkin had been in the process of performing an arrest when he collapsed, but the woman he was arresting never appeared on camera due to the way the car was parked, and Seattle officers weren’t yet using body cameras. The video had been put online and there was a lot of speculation about the mystery woman, who was thought to be a prostitute.
Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I found myself trying to find the video, thinking at least that the sound of his voice would confirm once and for all that it was the same man from Wednesday. I eventually found it just as I was starting to seriously run low on pep, yawning so hard my eyes watered as I tried to coax my netbook into playing the file. It took a lot of fumbling because the player wasn’t configured for ease of access, but after a few false starts, I found the play button and got it started.
The video opened with indistinct radio chatter, which I tried hard not to hear too clearly, not wanting to have to visualize more than one layer to this window. Orkin’s own incidental sounds were too soft to get much of a picture of him at first, but the video was only of the pertinent part of the incident, so I didn’t have long to wait.
“Hey, I’ve got a suspicious person here at the corner of Northgate and Meridian, possibly a code 125. Gonna check it out.”
The hair on my arms lifted. If I’d had any remaining doubt that this wasn’t the same guy, it had just been shattered. I easily recognized the contemptuous disgust as an echo of the same tone he’d used on his wife, and the image of him in my mind crystallized as he spoke. I shivered reflexively, although I knew I had nothing to fear from him now. Unable to pause the video, I jumped up and switched off the television set so I could better hear my netbook audio, sitting down in time to hear a car pulling over. Most of the details weren’t coming through clearly since the audio by itself, especially with such low quality, didn’t provide me with enough sensory information to form a complete picture. Still, I could follow along well enough, and did so with a rising sense of unease.
“Evening, ma’am,” Orkin called, apparently speaking to the mystery woman, his tone now superficially respectful. “Everything all right? Are you headed home?”
“Everything’s fine,” the woman’s voice came, painting a vaguely humanoid silhouette in my mind. I leaned in closer, surprised. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t this dulcet voice that seemed to curl around my ears. When she spoke again, it seemed like she had gotten closer to the camera. “Oh, mister Orkin. Yes, everything is just fine.” Then she laughed.
I don’t know how to describe what went through my mind at that sound. If I said that it was a beautiful, sexy laugh, I don’t think I’d be communicating the idea I wanted. Her laugh sent a shiver down my spine and left me squirming, wanting more. If I didn’t embarrass so easily, I’d even admit just the sound of her laughing made me wet. I’d never heard a voice like that before. It seemed to echo, or maybe just resonate somehow, like the way the right pitch can make a crystal glass vibrate.
But at the same time, there was something else to that laugh, something I’d never encountered before either. I hesitate to describe it as evil, but it certainly wasn’t joyful laughter. It was the sound of someone intending to do something very unpleasant, and looking forward to doing it. At the same time that I found myself strangely aroused by her voice, I wanted to cringe and cover my ears, too. It was suddenly very, very clear why people had thought this woman had something to do with Orkin’s death.
In horrified fascination, I continued listening. Orkin recoiled to his side of the car as the woman laughed, his expression clouding in a mixture of emotions I couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Ma’am, step away from the car,” he warned, a catch in his voice betraying that he was just as affected by her presence as I was by proximity. “What are you doing?”
I couldn’t quite ‘see’ what she was doing either, but I had a guess that she had just pulled part of her top aside to bare her breasts. Unlike when Orkin spoke, her voice didn’t do much to clarify the image I was receiving, but I could see enough. “Don’t be like. I’m just showing you that I’m not… armed.” Somehow she managed to make the word sound like an invitation, which, combined with her actions, it clearly seemed to be.
Orkin sounded strained. “Ma’am, are you… aware that soliciting an officer is a felony?” He licked his lips and I shuddered, not liking where this was going at all.
“Is it really?” The woman sounded amused. Not in a funny ha-ha sort of way, but in the sort of way which suggested she had nothing but disdain for the idea. She seemed to straighten her top, though, and stepped back from the car, becoming even more indistinct. “Well, that’s no fun.”
“Yes,” Orkin breathed with a shallow laugh. Then, more loudly: “HQ, yes on the 125; 520.”
The reply was lost as the driver’s side door opened and shut, and after a bit of shuffling, their voices continued, more muffled now that both voices were coming from outside. My synesthesia was giving me almost nothing at this point, which was almost a relief.
Orkin again: “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to put your hands on the car.”
The woman came back into ‘view.’ “Oh, so you are interested?” A soft pair of odd scratching sounds painted her as leaning forward onto the car, her rear end lifted invitingly.
Orkin stepped closer as well, although he was just a ghostly shape. “Am I interested,” he echoed, his voice flat with disbelief. I shuddered. I could tell he was; I would have been, and I’m not sure why the woman was having that effect on me when everything in her voice indicated something bad was swiftly approaching.
“Is that a yes?” she cooed, her features edging further into clarity. I held my breath. She looked familiar, far too familiar, but I just couldn’t quite focus enough to recognize her.
After a long pause, Orkin spoke, a rasp making his voice even rougher. “Have you been taking drugs this evening?” When the woman didn’t answer, I heard him lean over her. “Ma’am? Have you—“
The audio suddenly cut away to the sound of sharp movements and Orkin let out a surprised grunt of pain. The images blurred chaotically as the two seemed to become one amorphous mass, and my head hurt trying to discern what was happening. Their bodies bumped hard against the car and the images cleared momentarily. Then Orkin made a noise that caused me to flinch and cover my ears, a piteous cry of agony that left no doubt as to how easily he had died. The woman seemed to be embracing him, or trying to keep him from falling, but she wasn’t saying anything. I could hear her breathing hard, but she wasn’t reacting like someone either trying to help or someone committing an act of violence.
It was horrible to listen to, worse to see it playing out. When at last the woman lowered him to the ground, I thought it was over. She was the only one still breathing, but now there was something else too. She moaned softly, in the manner of someone tasting something delicious. Oh, God, I thought, starting to tremble. I’d heard that moan when I’d cooked for my housemates.
I’d heard that exact moan.
Just like that, as if it had been waiting for that final clue, my synesthesia produced a crystal clear image of the woman, and yes, I knew her. Dear God, yes, I knew who that was, had no way of forgetting her after what had happened between us so recently. My breath froze in my throat as I choked on the first disbelieving sob, and then I was crying uncontrollably, frightened and unable to make sense of what I was seeing.
She had disguised her voice somehow, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was looking upon Esti, wearing a skimpy black clubbing dress that left precious little to the imagination. It wasn’t one I had ever seen before, but it was her style, as if the hair which threatened to drag upon the ground as she walked wasn’t a dead giveaway. But something was very wrong with this image, and not just because it suggested my housemate had been present for Officer Orkin’s demise.
I bit down on a sob and pinched myself. Hard. I failed to awaken.
I wasn’t dreaming this time, so that meant that I had to be hallucinating. There was no way I could accept what I was seeing was real. Esti was a great many things, but ‘winged’ was not one of them, and the woman in that video very clearly had wings like some sort of demonic creature.
Somehow I didn’t think I was going to get to sleep on time tonight.