Anton Strout: Dead To Me

He shook the last of the vial over the creature. It wasn’t moving, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. Connor stepped closer to examine it.

“I don’t get it,” he said, stepping back. “It’s gone totally feral. Usually when a spirit lingers, the humanity in it begins to stretch, become almost cartoonish. I can barely make out the humanity here. I don’t know what would do this to a spirit, what would cause that much degradation. Unless it has something to do with all those broken clay pieces…”

I grabbed one off the ground and handed it to him. He gave it a cursory once-over and slipped it into his pocket.

“Thanks,” he said, circling carefully around the phantasm.

“Thanks?!?” I asked. “For what? I should be thanking you!”

“These things feed on fear, kid. And frankly, I’m too seasoned to go all weak in the knees, so I really couldn’t get the drop on it all on my own, you know?”

I dusted the filth of the alley off me as I stood and moved to recover my now dirty bag of collectibles from a nearby pile of debris. The bag looked like crap from the outside but I hoped everything in it would look better once I was home. I was soaked through and pissed.

“So what does that make me in all this, exactly?” I shouted at Connor. “Bait? That’s it, isn’t it? You knew it would scare the crap out of me, feed off that, and totally forget about you, right?”

Connor shrugged and stoppered the empty vial before slipping it back into his pocket. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“And what’s another?” I fired back.

Connor slapped me on the shoulder, turning all smiles.

“Calm down, kid. You’ve been an integral part of this operation. It’ll look good on your performance record with the Department. Think of it-the Inspectre might even grant you some sort of commendation.”

“I’m not here to be your personal worm on the hook,” I said, pulling away.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Connor said with a hint of sincerity. “Really.”

Connor leaned toward me and brushed his hair over his forehead. The new streak of white was even more pronounced now. “Look, I don’t like how this went down, kid, or the fact that we’re doing Haunts-General’s work, but what are we gonna do? With all the budget cuts, Other Division picks up the slack. It’s what puts the Extra in the Department of Extraordinary Affairs.”

Connor was right and it really wasn’t his fault. We were overworked and caught up in the red tape of New York City bureaucracy. I let go of my anger. After all, my hair had been spared. Who was I to complain?

By the time Haunts-General finally showed up and decided it was time for them to do their goddamn job, Connor looked ready to pass out. He pointed out the mist-shrouded spirit in the alley to them, along with the strange broken pieces of clay scattered everywhere. I looked like an Olympic medalist comparatively, even covered in a mix of something both stickyand pungent from the puddle. The nappy brown suede of my knee-length trench was a mess, not to mention that it also reeked of the patchouli-scented concoction that Connor had used to trap the ghost. I wasn’t sure which was worse-smelling like a dirty hippie or smelling like garbage. Either way, I was in dire need of a shower.

The pains and aches of my overexerted muscles set in during the ten-block stumble back to my apartment. By the time I hit my elevator, I felt like the Tin Man right before Dorothy used the oil can on him. As I worked my way through the door and across my crate-laden living room, I hesitantly opened the shopping bag. I expected to find shattered circuit boards and soggy cardboard boxes covered in street sludge, but somehow they had survived intact. I slipped the console and games onto the shelf with the rest of my collectibles. Figuring out how to find Kevin Matthews would have to wait until morning. For tonight, I decided to stick with the basics in order of importance: (1) a shower, and (2) sleep.

The night’s events had proven a perfect remedy for the insomnia I had been suffering from earlier. I was exhausted.

I struggled out of my jacket-my arms stuck helplessly to the wet sleeves-as I stumbled toward the bathroom. I was so tired, I felt drunk. My apartment phone rang. A call at this hour meant one of three things: someone I knew was dead, someone from my past wanted money, or worst case, Tamara was calling to talk things through. The first two possibilities were ones I could contend with. Death, for instance, while often unpleasant, was a universal inevitability (except for those rare creatures that we came upon in my role with Other Division). And dealing with the people from my past-seedy though they were-was usually cake. A couple of bucks thrown at their problems (not that I had much these days) could solve most things on a short-term basis for that lot. But talking out my issues with my brand-new ex? That was something I was ill prepared for. I didn’t even know where to begin.

By the fourth ring, I had freed only one arm, but it was enough to reach for the phone. As my hand grabbed the receiver, I noticed the answering machine flashing the number sixteen over and over looking like two beady red eyes. Did I really have sixteen messages after being out for only a few hours? As I hesitated with the receiver in my hand, the machine picked up.

“Just what the hell have you been doing when you come over here?” Tamara spat into the phone. “That’s the only explanation that makes any sense, that you’ve been going through my stuff, you psycho…”

Sixteen messages,I thought.And I’mthe psycho?

I turned the volume on the answering machine down as low as it would go, and her voice became a faint hum. I picked up the phone, flipped it over, and shut off the ringer before setting it back down. I’d go through all the messages later, but right now I didn’t think my soul could take it. I knew I’d listen to them all-the yelling, the crying, the pleading-I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I owed it to her to at least listen, but not right now.

I peeled off the filthy remains of my T-shirt. The large white letters across the front were mostly still there with the exception of a missing Y, torn off in battle and reducing the Ramones’s catchy rock anthem toGABBA GABBA HE.

The faint sound of Tamara’s voice was still loud enough that I threw the unit into a drawer and buried it under a pile of shirts until I could no longer hear her.

A lot of people would be troubled by an ex ringing them late at night, but I willingly put up with it. How could I get mad at Tamara over her bad reaction to what was essentially my own freak show of a problem? Many of the women I had dated over the years wanted to label me as commitment-phobic or just plain weird, citing an utter lack of character on my part. But my failure, like any other construction in life, was something built over time, creeping like roots and vines into the very bricks and mortar of my relationships. My power of psychometry was the richest fertilizer for that on the market.

Tamara wanted answers.

I couldn’t give them, but the hope of controlling my power grew every day given my past four months with the Department. As I headed for the shower, I thought about how much I had already changed in such a short time.

After I’d abruptly left the criminal world, I’d been stuck in a long depression as I’d shed my less-than-ethical past, and especially the more criminal element I used to associate myself with. They were real scum-of-the-earth folk that I should have been happy to be rid of, but strangely, cutting myself off from such miscreants left me feeling alone. Turning to legitimate work was a last resort for a criminal like me-anything to keep my mind occupied and my hands busy in a less preternatural way. But I needed a job, a new start. As I flipped through the seemingly endlessNew York Times classified listings one night four months ago, I’d circled several options, mindfully skipping an all-too-tempting post at Christie’s auction house, but nothing really excited me. There were a million dead-end jobs in the city and few that I qualified for. I started to worry that the only road for me was the one that ended in a ten-by-ten cell. That’s when I saw a light at the end of the job tunnel wedged quietly betweenRECEPTIONIST andSYSTEMS ANALYST.