Ryan Jahn - Low Life

Mr Shackleford’s wife, artist Samantha Kepler-Shackleford, came home from ‘a dinner-date with friends’ to find police and reporters waiting for her. She did not know of any plans her husband might have had to meet with Ms Wilhelm, nor was she willing to speculate as to what the nature of their relationship might be. Immediately after learning of her husband’s condition, she drove to the hospital to be at his bedside.

Ms Wilhelm’s father, John Wilhelm, did know of the meeting. He said Ms Wilhelm and Mr Shackleford had had an intimate relationship which Mr Shackleford had cut off abruptly two weeks earlier. A week later Ms Wilhelm learned she was pregnant, and when Mr Shackleford ‘offered to pay for the abortion, rather than do what was right,’ Mr Wilhelm said, ‘she flipped out. She threatened to tell his wife, and told him she was having the baby whether he liked it or not.’ Mr Shackleford, according to Mr Wilhelm, called the house repeatedly to request a meeting to ‘discuss the situation’. Ms Wilhelm finally agreed to meet Mr Shackleford at his home in Pasadena. What happened beyond that is known only to Mr Shackleford himself, who is unable to answer any questions. Perhaps when he regains consciousness, a more complete picture can be painted.

Ms Wilhelm was pregnant at the time of her death. She is survived by her father, John, and an older sister, Karen.

He remembered – a knock at the front door.

He walked to it, his stomach sick. Samantha was gone. She had gone out to dinner with a group of girlfriends, leaving him home alone, and left alone all he could think about was Kate. She was going to destroy his marriage. He loved his wife. They had a level of comfort with each other that he’d never felt with anyone. And now this little bitch was going to ruin it.

He’d never moved on a student. She’d come on to him. He had fucked up; he should have rejected her. And he certainly shouldn’t have let it continue for a month before getting up the nerve to end it. But he did not deserve this – her refusing to have an abortion, threatening to make a formal complaint with the college, threatening to tell Samantha. He had told her he loved his wife, he had told her there was no future in what they were doing – from the very beginning he had told her those things. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t taken him at his word. It wasn’t his fault she’d thought she could change his mind. Goddamn her.

He grabbed the doorknob – a large reeded faux-Edwardian job that Samantha had picked up at some antique store and asked him to install – and pulled open the door. Kate was standing there looking sad. Her face was pale and the patches of skin beneath her eyes were dark. She wasn’t wearing make-up. Her hair was lying flat on her head. Her clothes were wrinkled. She only looked into his eyes for brief moments before her gaze flickered away, darting around the room, lighting only momentarily on any one thing before moving on. He was shocked by how young she looked.

‘Come in.’

She walked into the house and he closed the door behind her.

‘Do you want something to drink?’

She shook her head.

‘Sit down.’

She shook her head again and just remained there, standing in front of the closed front door, eyes refusing to stay fixed anywhere.

‘We need to figure this out,’ he said.

‘What’s to figure out?’ she said without looking at him. ‘I already told you what I’m gonna do. There’s nothing you can say to change my mind. I don’t even know why I came here.’

Her arms were crossed in front of her. Her mouth was a hard straight line.

‘But why? I told you there was no future for us – I never lied to you.’

‘You never lied to me?’ She looked up briefly, making eye contact, and then allowed her eyes to drop again. ‘A person can lie with more than words.’

‘But I told you—’

Her hand whipped through the air and clapped against his cheek. He tongued the corner of his mouth, felt the beginnings of beard there, and tasted blood.

‘You loved me. You made me think you loved me, and then when you were done you threw me away. Left me with this.’ She glanced down toward her belly.

‘I never loved you,’ he said. ‘And I never pretended to.’

‘You loved me with your body.’

‘That wasn’t love.’

Another slap across the face. He rubbed his cheek. His stomach and chest went tight with anger. He could feel the pink welts rising on his skin.

‘Don’t hit me again.’

‘Or what?’

‘Just don’t.’

There was something defiant in her brief glance at him – defiant and angry. Her mouth twitched. Her hands formed fists. But she remained there, and she didn’t swing again.

He licked his lips. ‘You’re eighteen. You’re a college freshman. You have this child and everything you planned for your future changes. Don’t you understand that? You’re mad at me now, you want to get back at me now, but in a year you’ll barely remember my name. You’ll move on to other boyfriends, you’ll finish college, and then move on to a career, and I’ll just be a mistake you made when you were a kid. I’ll—’

‘Stop. Stop talking. I’m not a child so don’t condescend to—’

‘You’re not a child?’ A bitter laugh escaped his throat. ‘That’s exactly what you are. An angry child willing to throw your whole future away on a fucking tantrum.’

Her hand swung out again, clapping against his face.

He immediately swung back with his open hand, thudding against the side of her head, spinning her around.

‘I told you not to fucking hit me again.’

Simon continued to scroll through newspaper archives. He was confused, and as he read, as memories came to him – memories that were not his own – his confusion grew, as well as his sense of dread.

What kind of person had Jeremy been?

How could another man’s memories be invading his mind?

He didn’t want to be him any more. He didn’t want to be married to Samantha or have that house in Pasadena, or any of it, not if it meant becoming this person he was becoming. And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? He was becoming what he had pretended to be.

Simon Johnson had lived a quiet life in which he hurt no one. He had lived a quiet life and each day had resembled the one that came before. He said hello to people and he did his job and he got too close to no one and he hurt no one because you can’t hurt someone you’re not close to. Simon Johnson had lived a quiet life – but as soon as Jeremy Shackleford broke into his apartment, everything had changed. Simon had killed him accidentally, but it had changed him, hadn’t it? The coldness he felt over it that matched the coldness of the rest of his life – and this hot desire for something more that had begun to burn in the midst of it like a single hot ember.

And he had become a monster – he had become Jeremy Shackleford, hadn’t he? Or he was becoming him – was in the process of it. All those things that had been so far below the surface of his life that they were, for the most part, mere shadows without form – all those tentacled creatures came bursting forth, all those beasts of his low life began surfacing, and they were ugly, terrible things.

He hated what he was becoming.

She spun around, lost her balance, and fell. Her face slammed hard against the jutting brass doorknob with a force that shook the walls and rattled the windows in their frames – her head hanging there for a moment despite her body going limp, sagging like an overloaded bookshelf – and then she collapsed to the floor. She did not move. She simply lay on her side on the floor with her back to him.

‘Kate?’

He stood looking down at her. Then he saw a drop of blood splash against the hardwood floor. It dripped from the doorknob. The doorknob itself was covered in blood, and something meaty was hanging from it like a wet string cut from a roast. He leaned down and reached out with his hand and grabbed her shoulder. He pulled her toward him, knowing what he was going to find even before he found it. She rolled onto her back. She was staring at the ceiling with a single blank eye. The other eye was gone, the socket collapsed inward and expanded as the bone surrounding it shattered and fell like the dirt surrounding a sinkhole. Blood had flowed from the hole and coated that side of her face. Her mouth was partially open, her tongue sticking out between her white teeth. Her lips seemed exceptionally red in contrast to her colorless face, as did the blood itself. Her skin was so white. The blood was so red.