I’m at the warehouse not even twenty minutes after bolting from Fuji’s salon-turned-house-turned-makeshift-rehabilitation-center. No Rocket this time. Only Caris and his Napoleon stature and energy. He grunts and I follow him downstairs and into the arsenal room where guns are still mounted to the wall while mold from the floorboards penetrates the sinuses. The cage sits in the corner underneath the dangling light bulb, no longer containing a drooling, sloppy man. To the right of the staircase are the same wooden crates as before, hay poking out, and no discernable ability to see inside.
“What’s in the crates?”
Caris ignores me. He fetches the pillbox and opens it. Holds up the third Lobotomy Pill, and I open my palm to receive it.
“Water?”
I shake my head. Pop the pill in my mouth and swallow.
Back on schedule.
And as the pill slides down my esophagus, soon to be broken down by the acids in my gut, dissolved and absorbed into my bloodstream, the countdown clock can begin anew.
Seven days.
Seven days until pill number four.
Seven days until the final pieces of my memory, the most recent events of my life, burn away. Then, not long after, perhaps after a period spent in that cage, I will be new. I won’t be Dash. I won’t be Chris. Not a reporter. Not a medical supplies deliveryman.
Seven days.
That’s it.
Seven is the new name of control.
“You’re still journaling your most recent memory, right?” Caris asks.
Shit.
I lost all of yesterday to detox and never took out a Post-it note.
“Yes,” I partially lie.
Caris shrugs and walks away.
Glitch and I are back in the Golden Home Medical truck and on the road. The poor dog hasn’t eaten in a couple of days—unless Fuji fed him something while I was melting into detoxing oblivion. Doubtful though. I drive to the grocery store so I can buy him some food, and as I do, my mind starts to focus on the consequences of my mistakes. Will Fuji call the cops? Will they be waiting for me at my apartment? Or worse, is the killer there waiting for me?
Not staying there tonight.
Going to have to sleep in the truck.
I find a parking spot. Take out a Post-it note and scribble down the oldest memory I can locate in my mind. The night of college graduation. Feel very sad. Not sure why. Age: twenty-one. Now I’m really back on track.
I rub Glitch’s ears and crack the windows. Tell him I won’t be long.
Inside, the floors are streaked with shopping cart skid marks brought on by impatient people feeling the same way I do at this moment—hating grocery stores for the abnormal stress they create, the inexplicable reasons they create it, and the overpowering urge to just get what you came for and get the fuck out as soon as possible.
I walk down the cereal aisle.
Past the colorful cardboard boxes adorned with cartoon characters selling sugar to kids. Dodge a man pushing his cart with his head cocked toward jars of jams and jellies and preserves. I realize he looks familiar.
Was I spying on his smartphone last week?
I drop a small bag of kibble and a few cans of wet food into the cart. Push it back up to the checkout counters surrounded by tabloids and Reese’s and Skittles and get in line. At the other end of the store, Joan—colleague, crush, and rare friend at the Coast News—calmly walks her cart in my direction. Navy scarf tied around her neck. Black sweaterdress. She hasn’t noticed me yet. Instead, she looks down at a sheet of paper, probably her shopping list. I hold my gaze, waiting for her to recognize me and transform these nervous wasps buzzing in my gut into anxious dragons.
And then it happens.
It starts with a woman the next lane over. She’s flipping through a magazine. She looks up at me, and the whites of her eyes expand into her forehead. Me? I turn around and make sure she isn’t reacting to something else. But no. She’s still staring. “Are you that reporter?” she asks.
“Maybe?”
The couple standing behind her realizes what she’s asked. Now I’m staring at their tonsils and wide eyes.
One by one, everyone within the section of the store turns in my direction.
An older man points at me.
Another couple begins whispering.
The cashier in charge of my line asks the person a question and they both look back in my direction.
Joan finally notices me, but it’s not the look of recognition and surprise I was hoping to receive. It’s something else.
Concern.
She swerves around the mess of gawkers. Parks her cart to the side of the checkout lane.
“Hi,” she says with caution.
“Hi. Good to see you.”
“Are you doing alright?”
“It’s been a weekend.”
“I’m sure. I was terrified when I heard.” She leans in closer, lowering her voice. “What did the police say or do?”
“The Coast News investigation? I don’t think the cops are involved. Just some third-party group.”
“Oh my God,” she says, pain hugging her tone. “No—not the investigation. Have you seen the news?”
“News?”
Joan takes her phone out, and as she does, I look up and see several others doing the same. “I’m so sorry.” She hands it to me. I load one news site after the next. Read the headlines and comments. The photos locals have posted on Twitter/X from the scene. I swipe up and continue to absorb what I’m looking at until it becomes clear. Guilt’s crushing embrace has me once again.
Take a deep breath in. Let it out.
What in the world have you done?
“I have to go,” I tell her.
She puts her hand atop my shoulder. “You shouldn’t stay at your place,” she says. “Let me know if you need any help.”
I thank her and say goodbye. Pull my hoodie over the top of my head and slink out of the store. Speed walk back to the truck. Back to Glitch, the only living thing that has seen both parts of my life—the daytime episodes and nighttime errors—and loves me nonetheless. I pull out of the lot and drive.
Anywhere.
Just not home.
After fifteen minutes, the first raindrops smack glossy against the windshield. Smear the view out into the real world. Blur the damage out there I’ve once again caused.
Air flows through the open window and into my lungs, but I can’t exhale and let go of what I’m feeling because trauma and confusion work together like an atomic bomb, and I’m in no position to split that atom, and I have nowhere to go but the one place harboring the only person that wants to help me. I flip around at the next intersection. I know where I need to go. What I need to do.
At least for now.
A few minutes later, I’m back in front of the house. Glitch and I walk through the front door, greeted by the salon chairs and the fish tank and a glowing television. Fuji turns her head.
“This is a bit of a surprise,” she says.
I fight back the immense urge to cry. A car tire wedges in my throat, and I can’t swallow it. Then, through a gush of tears, I uncork it.
“I need to tell you things.”
“That’s all I wanted.” She smiles.
Soon, I’m seated, eyes locked to the tops of my shoes, and I tell her everything.
Ever-y-thing.
Rocket and the Subterraneans. The man at the dealership. The freeway. The missions I carried out with Enzo and when I burglarized her home. I tell her about the Coast News and the story I made up and how it has led to the killer and his taunts. My cocktail of meds. The Lobotomy Pills. Fuji listens intently, never speaking a word, hardly even fidgeting, her silence only broken by a consistent wheeze from her lungs.
The TV begins to broadcast the local news, and the top story mirrors what I read on Joan’s phone. The same one evoking the reactions from strangers in the grocery store.
The whole of my sins is now greater than the sum of their parts.
Fuji resists any urge to look back at the television as the reporter details the double murder. She resists because she’s listening to me. And I report to her my local news. About Emily and Veronica. My neighbors. Former neighbors.
My sins now corrupt the fates of others.
Through short breaths, with the saltiest teardrops rolling off my lips, I explain how out on the sand dunes, underneath a message written in kelp that reads, My Latest Story, their bodies—a weekend of torture evident across their flesh—were found earlier today.
And all I want to do is close my eyes and fall asleep.
The Next Chapter Begins in 3, 2, 1 . . .