M Sellars - The End Of Desire

My somewhat slower pace was actually allowing me to catch my breath, but the dizziness remained, and it was starting to make me nauseous. My throttled-back jog also wasn’t doing anything positive for my anxiety. As long as Annalise had been within my line of sight, I had felt like there was a chance to catch her. Now, I was beginning to wonder if I was simply wasting my time. Even if I was, I couldn’t give up quite yet. But, I also knew that running full out down the street wouldn’t allow me to see her if she was hiding just around a corner.

In a way, this all should have been funny, but I definitely wasn’t laughing. It had barely been one day since I had told Ben that Annalise was his problem and not mine. I suppose when I said that, I had simply been spouting empty words because when it came right down to it, she was just as much my problem as anyone else’s. Maybe even more. While Miranda was definitely at the root of this evil, I knew all along I was dealing with both of them, and it was a no-win situation. I had to find Miranda to find Annalise, but I had to find Annalise before I could do anything about Miranda.

I stopped in the middle of Dauphine as I crossed, glancing quickly up and down, but still saw no sign of my wife’s doppelganger. Continuing on across, I began running into more people, some of them possibly tourists from the way they were acting. However, instead of ignoring me as most of the workers had, the odd looks became far more frequent, and some of the individuals even made it a point to step out of my way.

The dizziness had grown worse, and I could no longer maintain a jog. Now, I was merely plodding along while sending my barely focused gaze to search both sides of the street, not that it was doing any good. My head was pounding as the world tilted and spun, and I wasn’t sure any longer if I would even be able to pick her out of the crowd if I was staring directly into her face.

An older couple darted out of my path as I began to stagger, their own faces stretching into horrified masks right before my eyes. I turned to look at them then stumbled and fell against the wall of the building next to me. I knew Bourbon Street couldn’t be much farther, but when I looked up, the signature light post at the corner seemed as though it was a mile away.

I slumped against the bricks as pedestrians continued going out of their way to walk around me, even stepping out into the street to do so. I hung my head and closed my eyes, trying to breath deeply and force the nausea to pass, but I wasn’t having much luck. When my eyes fluttered open, I noticed a small splotch on the sidewalk. For no other reason than to try focusing my eyes, I stared at it. The edges of the blot began to sharpen, and a moment of clarity overtook my vision. In that second I noticed a droplet of red as it fell and struck the blotch with a wet splat. Directing my gaze toward the source, I noticed a ragged flap of flesh peeled back from the top of my wrist and a swath of the same crimson flowing across the back of my hand.

I felt myself sinking as fatigue overwhelmed me, and I slid downward against the wall. Voices were echoing in my ears, and I struggled to understand them with little success. I tried to push myself back up to my feet but couldn’t seem to make my legs work.

I rolled my head back and saw lights flashing. My mouth watered as a fresh round of nausea attacked my stomach. I could feel my lips moving as I tried desperately to ask for help but found myself unable to make the word come out.

Everything began to spin and go dark.

Trilling music began playing softly. I knew it was my cell phone demanding my attention once again, but I couldn’t make my hand move to retrieve it. It continued stepping up in volume but was suddenly drowned out by the sound of a car stopping nearby.

The last thing I remember hearing was a rush of radio static followed by a voice echoing in my ears as it said, “I got ‘im. Corner a Too-Loose an’ Bourbon. Better send da’ paramedics.”

“Apparently kitten has claws,” Velvet said, giving me a once over as she walked in.

“Isn’t that some kind of makeup or something?” I grunted. “I think my wife has some of it.”

“I believe it might be a shade of nail polish,” she replied. “But, I was actually talking about your face.”

I had to lift my head slightly to see her because at present I was lying back on a table in a treatment room of a hospital. Earlier, when a nurse had been asking me for insurance information, she mentioned that I was at Charity Campus or something of that sort. My brain had still been a bit muddled at the time, so I hadn’t really registered much. Not that I would have really known where it was to begin with. All I knew was that it seemed like I spent a lot of time in places like this whenever I got involved in an investigation. It was a wonder my insurance carrier hadn’t dropped me yet. If they didn’t this time, I was sure they would be raising my premiums. That was something they always did without fail.

“Yeah, that,” I muttered, reaching up and brushing my fingers against the gauze bandage now covering the wounds. I felt a tug on the back of my hand and gave it a glance. I had pretty much forgotten about the IV line taped securely to it. I gave it a half-hearted wiggle to reposition the tubing then laid my hand back across my chest. “Teeth too.”

“How is the arm, by the way?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the other appendage which was now wrapped in its own windings of sterile dressing.

“Not bad right now. But, I can already tell the local is wearing off.”

I had lost track of how long I had been here. I’d been drifting in and out for a while although I had officially regained consciousness at right about the moment they were preparing to slide me onto the treatment table upon arriving in the emergency room. Since my most recent memory at that point-other than the disembodied voice-had been that of chasing after Annalise, my body seemed to think it was something I needed to continue doing. I was told that it had taken both paramedics and a nurse to keep me from coming off the gurney at a dead run.

“Do you know if they’ve found her yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but I’m not really in the loop.”

I shook my head as best I could since it was resting against the pillow, and with a full load of sarcasm muttered, “Fucking wonderful.”

“Tough little bitch, isn’t she?” she stated as much as asked.

“Reminds me of my wife,” I replied but didn’t expand further.

“That’s some wife.”

“You have no idea.” I sighed then tried to reposition myself a bit so that I wasn’t talking at the ceiling. “So, where did you go back at the cemetery? I looked up and you were just gone.”

“I left my cell in my car. I ran back to call the police like you said.”

“Oh.”

“Feeling abandoned, were you?”

“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “It’s not like we know each other all that well. A lot of folks wouldn’t have wanted to get involved…especially after listening to my outlandish story and then hearing her scream ‘rape.’”

“I was already involved,” she told me. “I took you there, remember? Besides, I’m not like a lot of folks.”

“I’m getting that impression… And, believe me, right now I appreciate that more than you know.”

It grew quiet in the room except for the noises of the staff out in the hall. I rested my head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a long while, contemplating the acoustic tiles as I tried to ignore the various aches that hadn’t benefited from a hypodermic full of local anesthetic. After a minute or two, a curious thought flitted through my brain, and I rolled my head to face Velvet once again.