Ryan Jahn - Low Life

But then shadow fingers were gripping for his throat yet again, and he was fighting with a man who wanted him dead, and legs got tangled, and he fell to the floor on top of his attacker. He grabbed the man by his neck with his left hand and squeezed it tightly. With his right hand he grabbed the flashlight from the floor and aimed it at the shadow face, making it human.

‘Who are you and—’

But then he stopped – was stunned into silence. He knew this man: he had seen him in mirrors, reflected back by rippling lake water, as a ghost in shop windows as he walked by. Simon’s hair was gray – almost white – while this man’s was a healthy brown; Simon’s skin was as pale as the moon while this man had a tan; Simon had no scars on his face, save the acne craters of youth, while this man had a twisted rope of white scar carved into his right cheek; Simon wore glasses while there was nothing between this man’s pale green eyes and what he was looking at – but otherwise Simon could have been staring at his twin.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

And then the man’s hand jutted up, quick as a jack-in-the-box, and the fingers clenched Simon’s already bruised neck for the third time.

‘Die, goddamn you,’ the man said. Simon saw the corners of his mouth were crusted with dry spittle and his bloodshot eyes were veined with madness.

Simon did the only thing he could think to do. He slammed the flashlight against the man’s head. Blood splattered across Simon’s chest and face, staining his T-shirt and dotting the lenses of his glasses, but the hand on his throat did not loosen its grip. If anything, it gripped tighter, with more determination. Simon swung again. The room filled with the scent of copper and sweat, heavy and thick as honey. Enough to make you gag. The grip on his throat loosened, but still he swung – again and again and again. His shoulder ached. His wrist hurt. At some point the cap was knocked off the end of the flashlight and the batteries flew out and scattered across the wood floor and everything went dark, but still he swung. And then he stopped. Finally it was over.

He sat there for a long time, straddling this stranger’s chest.

He breathed in and he breathed out.

There’d been moments in his everyday life when he had wondered what it would be like to kill a man. He thought everybody probably had those moments. Those moments made up what he thought of as a person’s low life – the internal life they lived but told no one about. Those moments that passed through one’s thoughts but didn’t so much as ripple the surface of reality. Those moments when an exhausted mother on the verge of losing control thought she just couldn’t take the crying any more and considered holding the baby’s head underwater. Those moments when a scorned lover thought that if he couldn’t have his love, then no one would be allowed to. Those moments when a man looked out of the window, saw a ten-storey drop, and wondered what it would be like to take that final step. But then a pacifier-placated child went quiet, the turmoil of a scorned lover faded, and a man turned away from the window and went back to what he was doing before glancing at that long drop. Of course, sometimes a person’s low life broke through the surface, like a breaching whale with an unstoppable momentum. But most of the time killing seemed impossible; most of the time the thought was downright nauseating. There’d been moments in his everyday life when he had wondered what it would be like to kill a man – but until tonight it hadn’t happened.

Blood dripped from the flashlight in his hand.

He swallowed back the urge to vomit.

He let go of his grip on the flashlight and it dropped to the floor and rolled in a lazy half circle before coming to a stop. He got to his feet. He took off his glasses and cleaned the blood from them with his T-shirt – the front of which was littered with tiny holes which had been put there by the caps of beer bottles, as he used the shirt to twist the things off – and then put them back onto the bridge of his nose. He walked to the wall and flipped the switch. An empty click. A strange laugh croaked from his throat, and then he felt his way to the kitchen. Then through the kitchen to the fuse box embedded in the back wall, its gray metal door hanging open. He flipped all the switches and various lights throughout the apartment came on, including the lamp on the end table in the living room. The fridge began humming. Someone on the TV chattered about a political controversy.

Simon walked to the living room and shut it off, killing the news mid-sentence.

He looked toward the telephone.

It sat on the floor, a thin gray cord twisting off it, and curling behind the back of the couch. The man who broke into his apartment was stretched out on his back in the middle of the hardwood floor, blood pooling beneath his head. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and a black overcoat. His shoes looked new, except that the toes were scuffed. They were dull-polished, hiding their newness, but Simon saw there was little wear on the heels and only shallow creases in the leather. A green scarf was wrapped around the dead neck, and beneath that and the collar a green tie knotted with a full Windsor. Simon took a few steps toward either the phone or the corpse. He wasn’t sure which. He could smell the sweat on the man’s skin and the anti-perspirant he’d applied and the stench of beer and an unidentifiable but thick odor beneath that. Perhaps the stink of insanity. Less than a minute ago this man had wanted Simon dead.

‘Why?’

His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

The telephone sat on the floor. Simon could see the man’s brown wallet poking from the inside pocket of his overcoat.

‘Why?’

He glanced toward the telephone once more, and then reached down and slid the wallet from the man’s pocket. It was warm from body heat and the leather was smooth in his hand. He flipped it open and looked at the driver’s license inside. The dead man’s name had been Jeremy Shackleford. He’d lived in Pasadena. Inside the wallet were six crisp hundred-dollar bills, several credit cards, a Ralphs club card, a Borders Rewards card, and an Arclight Cinemas membership card.

Simon tossed the wallet onto the coffee table, and then looked back at Jeremy Shackleford.

‘Why did you come here?’

The corpse didn’t answer. But then it didn’t need to. He had come here to kill Simon. That much was clear. That much was obvious. Why he had wanted Simon dead was the unknown.

A thorough search of Shackleford’s person turned up a wad of keys but nothing more; his pockets were otherwise empty, the lint which lined their creases excepted.

Simon put the keys beside the wallet on the coffee table.

‘Why?’ he said again.

He put a plastic grocery bag over the corpse’s head, then wrapped duct tape around the neck, one two three times, taping the bag in place. He tore the tape with his teeth and set the roll aside. If blood continued to ooze from the head it would be contained. Also, Simon did not want to have to look at the corpse’s face and see that mouth hanging open, as if on the verge of speaking. What exactly do you think you’re doing, Simon? Don’t you think you should be calling the police? He did not want to have to see those closed eyelids which looked like they might open at any moment. I can see you, Simon. I know what you did – and I won’t forget. I saw it all and I will tell everybody.

He dragged the body out of the way and laid paper towels over the pool of blood where the head once was. He stood silently and watched the paper towels fade to red. Once he got most of the blood soaked up and the bloody paper towels into a black trash bag, he got on hands and knees with spray cleanser and a scouring sponge and scrubbed away at the red-stained floor. Because the polyurethane finish had been worn off by years of use, blood had gotten into the grain of the wood and Simon couldn’t get it all out, but he scrubbed what he could for several minutes, putting all of his weight into it. Once he’d gotten the floor as clean as it was going to get, he threw the sponge into the trash bag with the paper towels. Then he removed his blood-stained T-shirt and threw that into the bag as well. He tied the top of it closed.