A few moments later, the sound of church bells fills my apartment and a couple of stone gargoyles appear on my floor that are similar to the one that tripped me earlier today. Darcy tolls at them and they ring back, and it’s a whole conversation in a language I can’t understand and would never be able to recreate without a musical instrument. I played handbells for my church choir when I was in middle school, so I could probably learn if someone would teach me.
After a few moments, Darcy turns back to me with a low, orange fire burning in his eyes. “The gargoyles consider the bodies payment. They’re carnivorous scavengers and humans are tasty.”
“That’s a great way to dispose of corpses.” Too bad humans like to bury their dead. This would save space in places that are overcrowded with few and old cemeteries.
“Your responses will stop surprising me soon.”
I don’t know what Darcy’s talking about. “Surprise is the spice of life, isn’t it?”
“You’re certainly spicy,” he laughs.
He turns to the gargoyles and chimes at them, then they and the body disappear along with all the blood in the carpet and on the wall. Any evidence of the murder disappears, and that’s extremely convenient for a college student with no mop.
“I wonder if I should scrub the floor anyway since I filled the bucket.”
“I’m heading out now. Don’t answer the door while I’m gone,” Darcy warns, pointing at me emphatically.
“What if I DoorDash my lunch?” It’s not really reasonable to tell me not to open my door when someone knocks, and it’s kind of controlling, so setting the precedent of boundaries is important.
“Eat leftover curry,” he replies firmly. Like, he’s ordering me not to answer my door, which: fair—my neighbor did just threaten to shoot him and yesterday there was that whole thing with Stalker Steve. I can see how he might get concerned for my safety based on his experiences so far.
“I’m going to eat leftovers because Iwantto eat them.” Boundaries. He can tell me what to do in bed, but in my real life, I’m going to set boundaries and enforce them. “And please bring me a coffee when you return.”
Darcy narrows his eyes at me suspiciously. “I’m not bringing you coffee before dinner.”
He opens my front door and steps out, turning as he shuts the door. “And lock the fucking door, Peach. You better be whole when I get back or many people will die—though I guess that threat probably doesn’t do much for you.”
“You know, some people die because it’s just their time. I believe that. It was my poor neighbor’s time, and that’s alright. He wasn’t for this life any longer.”
Darcy scowls at me, and it’s probably bad that I think it’s adorable. “Don’t. Answer. The door.”
I roll my eyes, but he leaves, and I get to work scrubbing the floor, since I probably won’t have time to do it during the semester, and I’m already halfway there with a full mop bucket.
“Why do I have a bucket and no mop?”
No one can answer that but me, and I have no idea what inspired me to decide to mop on my hands and knees like Cinderfella. I don’t even like mopping—that might actually be the best explanation. I don’t like mopping so I didn’t get one. Instead I decided, “You know what? The guy with one leg is probably really good at getting up and down off the floor, so I’ll just get me some rags and a mop bucket and see where that takes me.”
Actually, I bet I was thinking I could use the practice of getting up and down off the floor, and, well, here I am, scrubbing the floor with a rag. Damn, sometimes I think I hate myself.
I don’t. I really actuallyloveme, but that’s been a lot of work to get to that point. I mean, what teen doesn’t have a whole lot of angst while they’re figuring out who they are? I was an angsty teen, just like everyone else. Which was what finally made me realize that I’m ok even if I don’t have all my feet attached. Everyone else was just as angsty as I was, so that made me stupidly normal. It was a nice thought, and it helped me get over the worst of my teen years.
Once the floor is shiny (because it’s wet, not because I’m all that good at scrubbing), I give myself permission to play for a while and just dick around on my phone until my stomach rumbles. As I’m microwaving the red curry, someone knocks on my door, so I open it with my lovely new chain lock in place. (Did I lock that chain?) On the other side is one of my exes, Samantha Broughton, holding a bunch of flowers with a suspicious expression on her face.
“Hey, Sam, what’s up?” I ask curiously.
“Darcy wanted me to check in on you.” She shakes the flowers and something falls to the floor. We both look down at the thump—it looks like a dead mouse.
“What the fuck?” she demands, scowling at the corpse.
I undo the chain and bend over, picking it up by the tail. “Dead mouse. Gross.” I take it straight to the trash can in my kitchen.
Sam follows me in and sets the bouquet on the table. “They were on the floor in front of your door when I got here. I just picked them up so I wouldn’t trample them,” she explains. “You got another stalker?”
I nod as the microwave dings. “Stalker Steve, but I don’t think he’ll be coming around anymore. You hungry? I got some curry. I can heat up some yellow or green for you, but the red is mine.”
“Green is fine,” she agrees, sitting at my table.
I pull out the green and get her lunch heating, then I turn to her with a spoon as I start eating directly from my container. “What’s going on, Sam? Haven’t seen you for a minute.”
