All The Lovely People E-Book

Mikael Mattsson

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 507

Beschreibung

When Matthew was a child, he was taught to hide his violent urges. Those close to him ensured he lived a good, normal life. But Matthew finds this life dull, meaningless, and empty. Despite having a job where he helps people, Matthew feels no compassion. His partner adores him, but Matthew is incapable of love and suffocates under the weight of affection. Everything changes when two young women are murdered. Matthew knows that as the hunt for the killer intensifies, it won't be long before his own dark secrets are uncovered. The skeletons in his closet are about to be exposed, and the facade of his normal life is on the brink of collapse.

Leseprobe

DISCLAIMER

This novel contains material that may be distressing or triggering for some readers. Topics include, but are not limited to, abuse, self-harm, and suicide.

If you feel that you may not be in the right mental or emotional place to safely engage with these subjects, please prioritize your well-being and consider not reading this book.

Your health and happiness are more important than any story.

Please note, this book is a work of fiction.

Mikael

For my siblings.

Yeah, I promised my siblings that I’ddedicate this book to them, so here we are.

Sisällysluettelo

Dedication

Chapter 1: Disconnected

Chapter 2: Thursday Evening

Chapter 3: The Corner Stop

Chapter 4: The Wall and The Girl

Chapter 5: Starboy

Chapter 6: A Minor Relapse

Chapter 7: Pam Says Bye

Chapter 8: Bad Day at Work

Chapter 9: No More Funny Shit

Chapter 10: Fire, Car, Empty

Chapter 11: Feelings

Chapter 12: Don't I Know You?

Chapter 13: Now There's Three

Chapter 14: Illusion & Dream

Chapter 15: Feel

Chapter 16: Alibi

Chapter 17: See?

Chapter 18: The Human Mask Conundrum

Chapter 19: The Cave

Chapter 20: Wrath

Chapter 21: A Violent Man is a Good Man

Chapter 22: The List

Chapter 23: What I Know

Chapter 24: Drawn On My Wall

Chapter 25: Not That It Matters Anymore But...

Chapter 26: ... I Know Who Killed Those Girls

Chapter 27: Everybody is a Nobody

Acknowledgements

1

Disconnected

The t-rex has some abnormally small arms, which makes me feel sad for some reason, almost as if it's my fault that it can't hug the stegosaur that I've placed next to it.

They can't really fight either; can't claw and rip and tear and...

The arms are too small, and the size between the two animals too starkly different.

I'm pretty sure the t-rex wouldn't be able to bite a chunk out of its prey before the prey managed to either slip away or tear at its belly since what could the t-rex do?

What could it do with those silly little arms of his?

I'm six years old.

I think.

In my hands, the two dinosaur toys seem both large and small at the same time, probably because I happen to love dinosaurs and therefore know that, in real life, these beasts were a lot bigger than the toys we humans created of them.

I'm sitting on a carpet that looks like a race car track, a long, winding gray road with strange-looking spectators on the sides. That catches my eye.

The people... So distorted, featureless, motionless... meaningless.

No story.

No past.

No future.

They are stationary and not even all that appealing to look at. I wonder what kind of life that must be before lifting my eyes to observe the two other boys in this same room. The pair of them are huddled together, playing with racecar toys while going "brrrmm brrmmm" way too loudly, almost as if they’re making an unnecessary show out of it, like they want attention, like they’re egging me on to make me watch the game they play even when I don’t want to, but they make those obnoxious noises, and now I have to stare.

They glance at me, their faces lacking any understandable expressions.

One of them speaks, and I happen to know this because that one lady who tells me things always tells me to look at their eyes first, then the mouth.

If their eyes are on me, and then their mouth moves, it means that most likely they're trying to make conversation, even if, in my mind, the words coming out of their mouth rarely matter.

But this boy speaks to me, and as expected, the words matter so little that I hardly hear them.

I lift up the dinosaur toys, indicating that I'm busy.

His mouth moves, but at the same time, his eyes move, and now he stares at the other boy, and that bothers me to the verge of making me want to slap him, force him to look at me again and make it clearif he was directing his words at me or at the boy because how can I tell since he changed the person, he was looking at mid-sentence.

The boys keep playing.

I stare at the carpet.

I stare at the boys.

On the carpet, the spectators of the race car event lack any real features, any real personality, or any real meaning.

I look back up at the boys.

It's all the same.

Those have no meaning either.

It feels as if they don't agree with my assessment though, and both of them are locked in what seems to be a very pleasing moment of harmony between them. It's almost as if they are strangely connected by invisible cords that unite their brains, maybe even their hearts, making it easy for them to comprehend all there is to understand about the person next to them.

I see no cord anywhere near me or in me on me.

Nothing visible or invisible that would tether me to anybody else.

I float even when sitting.

I float while others stay still; their invisible cords linked to both other people and the world around them, so they don't have to float.

"Matthew?" a woman calls out behind me. She places her hand on my shoulder. Her nails are painted red. I drop the toys and look down at my hands, wondering why her hands seem to be so firm and connected to her, under her control, when my hands seem to just betwo lumps of meat, unbothered by my desires for them.

I don't think they're even truly mine. They don't feel like they are.

"Matthew?" the woman speaks again, and I look up at her. It's hard to tell who she is; her face is a blur like with all the others, but her eyes are filled with all there ever will be and all there ever was. So much information, emotions, and thoughts that it makes me want to cry, realizing that my eyes look vacant whenever I look at myself in the mirror, and even on rare occasions like this where I can tell that she probably is an actual person with real thoughts, experiences, and purpose, I can’t seem to force myself to comprehend it all.

She’s here, but she isn’t.

She’s alive but living means nothing.

And I want to cry because how can I not when nothing I say will ever explain these thoughts, and no one will be able to understand what I want them to understand?

But I don't cry.

I smile because the lady who tells me things once told me that it makes people smile when I smile, and I think that smiling is good because it makes people look less like a blur, less like some strange puzzle that I have no pieces to.

Now she's smiling.

I wonder if my smile makes her feel like she can look at me and not want to cry, too.

2

Thursday Evening

My stomach won't settle down; it hops and twists while trying to force me to get up and rush to the bathroom.

Would be quiet and calm too, wouldn't have to take one of those timid and gentle workplace shits either. Everyone else is gone at this hour, and now it’s just me and this one student lingering in the dormitory staff’s breakroom.

He's talking. Or complaining.

I can't focus on the exact context of his verbal diarrhea since I would love nothing more than to shoo him away, rush to the bathroom, and release some diarrhea of my own.

But that's not what people do, I remind myself while imagining the tired voice of Pam saying those exact words. She wouldn’t want me to ignore this kid. She wouldn’t like the way I want to push him off his chair so I can run off while he gathers himself, unable to process what just happened, dumbfounded while looking into my eyes, flabbergasted over how a counselor just pushed him. But that’s not an option because Pam wouldn’t want me to behave like that.

Antisocial behavior was what she used to call it.

God, Pam was nice. Pam wouldn't mind it if I just told her to fuck off so I could be alone and not bothered by struggling to put on a mask of a human being while trying to pretend to listen and care and-

“So, yeah... what do you think?” The student looks defeated. His clothes are very ill-fitting, and I'm pretty sure it's on purpose to hide his ‘bigger than appropriate for a nineteen-year-old’ body.

“I think you have a problem.” I force a smile and make my words come out playful to hide the fact that I wasn't listening, and if he has a problem (which I'm sure he does), I would have zero idea of what it is.

Inability to stop devouring everything that contains more grease and fat than should be legally allowed?

Having an oddly proportioned body where he kinda has the build of a middle schooler who got stuck in a machine that tried to age him up but half-assed it?

“I mean, yeah...” The student scratches his chin which is covered by a thin beard that is probably meant to hide his double chin but only manages to look like a few strands of pubic hair glued to his face.

“But like how do I make him stop it? I just... I don't think it's nice that he keeps on messing with me even when he's not even living in the dorms anymore. Dude doesn’t even go to the same college as me.”

A surge of joy rushes through me when I realize what we're talking about.

It's nine p.m. on a Thursday night, and my weekend starts in an hour, so it's not like I'm being that bad of a person for not paying attention to what the hell this week’s drama at work is.

“Yes,” I say, nodding maybe a bit too eagerly, but you have to make these students feel heard and seen. “It really isn't cool that he keepsbugging you like that. Have you tried telling the teachers?”

He looks almost insulted.

“I'm telling you?”

“I'm aware of that,” I sigh. “I mean that maybe you should tell the teachers at the school so they can make Peter stop fucking with you because we can't really do anything about it here in the dorms since Peter doesn't live here anymore.”

Peter was kicked out a week ago for throwing a party in his room on a Monday while also somehow figuring it was a great idea to try and assault one of us counselors with a knife when he came to shut the party down. Never say that these kids aren’t innovative in the ways they seek to self-destruct.

“Well...” The student fiddles with his sad excuse for a beard again, and I really wish he wouldn't, because now I can't focus on anything else than those sad strands of thin, blonde hair. “I don't think the teachers care. Or like they don't want to get involved.”

“And why do you think that is?” I close my eyes and try very hard not to show my complete disinterest in this conversation. If there is a God, he will light a fire in one of the rooms just so I'll have an excuse to run off and do something other than listen to this student whine since, as far as I know, his only ascertainable function at the dorms is to eat, sleep, and occasionally stop a counselor so he can complain about things that really don’t matter.

I would also love to take a shit too, so there’s that.

The train ride back home will take an hour or so, and that has me nearly in tears since I won't make it in time to the Corner Stop todrink myself stupid because the new owner closes the place at eleven on weekdays.

This means that I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get drunk and happy, which, quite literally, places every single person that crosses my path tonight in danger.

“Sorry.” I give an apologetic smile when I realize that the student has been talking for a minute while probably wondering why I'm staring blankly at him. “I'm pretty tired. I missed that last part.”

“I was just... like thinking if you, or some other counselor, could like call the school and tell them to tell Peter not to mess with me. I'm like actually trying to focus on my studies and trying to get all of it done, and this whole thing is really messing with me...”

“Sounds pretty awful,” I say. I wonder if I sound like Pam whenever I say it because she had a very distinct way of saying it. “I'll write down what you said, and we'll figure something out tomorrow, okay?” “Are you here tomorrow?” He sounds so hopeful; it makes me grimace.

“No. But other counselors will be, and they can handle it.”

“Who is working tomorrow, do you know?”

“I don't remember off the top of my head.”

By ten p.m. I'm almost running up the walls in the breakroom.

The night manager should arrive any minute now, and that means I get to go home, so these last moments of anticipation are turning into a fight for survival. I sit on the couch, scroll through my feed onInstagram, open incognito mode on my browser, and check Emily's profile for updates (none, which feels like an insult for some reason), hesitate a moment, and check Mandy's profile for updates (some old photos posted by her friends that all seem to be locked in a never-ending competition on who can say the nicest thing about the dead girl), and finally, I travel into the mystical land of Pornhub where I check the page of my favorite star (if you can call porn actresses that) and find that she hasn't posted any new material, either, which flattens my spirit even further.

Sometimes it really helps to jack off in the counselor’s bathroom when it's a quiet night and you're literally just trying to stay sane while waiting to get the green light to fuck off and go home.

But that won't be happening tonight, it seems.

Next, I imagine what it would be like to call Sarah, but that idea feels less and less appealing the more I think about it, so I just put the phone away and feel the rush of complete and absolute emptiness that follows now that I'm left alone with my thoughts. Sarah's at home because she's never anywhere but home. She'll be way too happy to see me because she never sees anyone else but me, and even when she accidentally bumps into someone in the stairwell of the apartment building, she just coldly ignores them, probably out of fear of being rejected if she lets anyone get close to her. And when I get home, Sarah will want to cuddle and talk and have sex and watch a fucking movie and maybe more sex and if she's feeling like pretending to be a normal human, she'll want to talk some more and...

“Tired?”

I look up to find Victor, the night manager, standing in the middle of the room with a grin on his face.

It's only when I see that expression that I realize how I've bundled myself up on the couch in the fetal position.

“Yeah.” Forcing a kind, innocent smile gets harder with each passing minute, but like the good little freak I am, I do it and ignore the pain in my cheeks. “I have four days off, so I’m really looking forward to spending the next ninety-six hours sleeping.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Victor notes while scratching his bald head before heading into the kitchen. I hear him rinsing the coffee pot even when he must know that I did that already since it’s a part of my routine during the evening to rinse the fucking pot so that the night manager doesn’t have to. “You can go.”

He doesn't like me all that much; I've noticed it. It kinda feels like a blanket wrapped around him, and no matter how much I smile my innocent smile and how many times I make polite small talk, the blanket won't move, and I can't penetrate his defenses to make him like me. I often wonder if he sees past my mask, if he knows something about me, if he senses something and knows that something is off... Or maybe it’s me being paranoid (Pam would definitely tell me that I am being paranoid), but I can’t shake this odd feeling whenever I’m alone with Victor.

I don’t like being seen, and I think he might see me.

“Have a nice night,” I tell him after putting on my jacket and grabbing my backpack.

“Mmm.” He doesn't bother to look at me, so I find myself getting angry with myself since I still make the effort to smile at him.

Fucker.

Once I get on the train home, I search for the carriage with the least number of commuters, find one, sink into a corner seat, put in my earbuds, and close my eyes, so if anyone decides to sit next to me, I probably won't notice, and that way I won't have to feel even more anxiety than I already do.

Taking a shit at work helped somewhat, but the absolutely ravaging anxiety I have rummaging inside of me is making everything so goddamn hard that at this point I could vomit, shit, and cry for hours on end. I hate trains. I hate crowds of people, and I fucking hate feeling like a helpless little kid who is in the throes of emotional distress without the emotional maturity to voice his discomfort. Of course, it doesn't matter how emotionally mature I am or not, since the world hardly cares about my first-world problems like the crippling anxiety and my general incapability to feel absolutely fucking anything if not for anger and frustration, both of which probably stem from my constant need to not be here, there, or anywhere.

I could scream, make a scene, and get everyone to react and stare at me like the unstable timebomb of a person that I am, but how would that help?

Freaking out would calm my nerves for the day, but I'd still have to hop on this same train tomorrow, and what then?

Another freak out?

Something even greater?

Some act of complete insanity to make me feel something, anything?

Hell no.

Repeated craziness is how you end up locked up in the madhouse.

The world sleeps when you lose your shit intermittently, but it wakes when people notice that being unstable is not as much the exception but the norm for you.

The rest of my train ride home seems to go much smoother than the first few minutes since the music from my earbuds manages to calm my nerves and no one takes a seat next to me, which in turn gives me the chance to daydream.

Or sleep.

It was difficult to tell what it exactly was, but I did imagine myself sitting in the same seat, same train, same journey and suddenly, without a warning, a man came rushing into the carriage, sat down opposite of me, and started telling his life's story.

He wept when he spoke about his son, a broken man with a broken mind who had come across a charming youngster in a local bar, and it had seemed as if God himself had shown this youngster to his son's life since the broken man had been so terribly lonely for so long, his emotional and intellectual inferiority a hinderance that had made making friends an impossibility. Then the man wept harder, reaching out to touch my knee with his trembling hand while he uttered how his son had spent time with this charming young man through the night and late into the morning, even managing a smile beforeheading to bed. Come morning, the man had found his son dead, his wrists slit while he still lay in bed. Cold and distant even, when so close, he could've still touched his son, but the man knew he’d not feel warm skin on his skin but an endless cold.

Death.

Dead and gone.

All after that charming young man had planted his poisonous seeds, masked in pretty words, into the broken man's head.

Imagining this bizarre encounter, I saw myself stopping the man, telling him how I really don't want to hear more of his son and his son's misery. When the man refused to pipe down, I lunged at him, strangling the fool until his face was just a purple mess of broken veins with his tongue three times the usual size as it bulged out of his mouth.

I open my eyes when the intercom sizzles and then announces my hometown stop.

My first instinct is to look down at my feet, but I find no strange weeping man strangled there.

My hands are steady; there is no drool or blood on them.

My brow is sweaty and my breathing heavy, but that could be anything... right?

I hop off the train and greet the cold November night where the streetlamps shine over empty streets where nothing but the snow moves as wind blows across the land.

I deliberate a moment, my mind pulling me in two different directions.

Two separate places, more like.

There's always home. There's Sarah and her warmth, her unconditional love and admiration, for which many men would probably give their left nut, but that seems to be the problem for me.

I love things in the beginning. I adore the chase and the need to conquer.

I loved Sarah in the beginning too, well, loved as in the way I can love.

Loved the fact that she didn't show me any love; I loved her cold character and her way of toying with me even when we both knew that I would have her and she would have me.

And things went to shit when that happened, because if I know anything, it is that people aren't meant to get that happy ending since those only work in stories where the last page is the last page, the last experience, and the last judgement.

But not in life.

In life, there's always another page, the next day, and the next fucking chapter, and I'm cursed to be a character in a book without a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I haven't been given the chance to have an ending.

All I have is the day that comes after the previous day, and with each passing sunrise, I find myself struggling with the vast nothingness that seems to only increase in volume the older I get.

When I was ten, I looked at other children and wanted to cry or wanted to punch them because they were so happy playing theirstupid games, and even when they did have a bad moment, it wasn't real. It was a moment of sadness, not true emptiness.

When I was a teenager, I realized that people don't seem to think like I do and that I have to hide the way I think because they will fear, hate, and shun me otherwise.

And now at thirty, I look around and want to scream, cry, and punch things because, in a world so filled to the brim with people, none of them seem even remotely real to me anymore, and all I need is an ending to my story since this story is finished and it should be over.

I had my beginning when I was a kid and struggled with myself, with school, and people, and with life in general.

Then I had my middle point when I was a younger man, and I took my anger out on anyone unfortunate enough to get close to me, and I hurt people, things and animals, and it was all I ever needed because it was the only way to feel anything.

And finally, I had my ending.

I found a woman, I got a good job, I learned to behave (well, mostly), I created a life for myself where I am able to operate as a part of society without being a hinderance or a danger to it or the people in it. So now I need my fucking ending because with each passing day where my story keeps going, the risk increases... The risk that my mask slips and I do something horrible just to feel something other than profound emptiness with intermittent spills of anger and sadness.

So, I stand on the train platform, trying to choose which road to take.

Home to Sarah...

Or deeper into the sleeping heart of the city, where I might just come across someone or something that will make me force myself out of this rut.

But then I remind myself that people don't get to be monsters in this modern world of ours (not for very long, at least) and that gets my legs to take me home.

In the living room, a light is flickering, and the sounds of a YouTube video fill the apartment as I remove my jacket, perch it on the coat hangers by the door, and move further in.

Before turning to the living room (living room left, bedroom right, bathroom straight ahead, kitchen at an angle to the right), I stop to stare at one of the few paintings that decorate my home. My mother forced me to get a few of them, so I purposefully dragged her with me and Sarah to a drift store downtown, which royally annoyed my mother and Sarah both. They can stand each other but can't fake that they actually enjoy being around each other, which in turn gets me in a good mood because I get to just sit back and witness the passive aggressive comments that the two hurl at each other. Not to even mention the expression on my mother’s face when she realized I had dragged her to (gasp!) a drift store.

Anyway, now I have three whole paintings in my apartment, which is three more than I need.

One of them is on the wall right before you turn to the living room, and it's a picture of a long road covered in mist and surrounded by bent trees that create an archway above the street.

The second painting is in the bedroom, and it's an image of a silver chandelier that is purposefully painted upside down, so it gives off the impression that the crystals on it are floating upwards, trying to reach some mysterious destination.

And the third painting is that of an old typewriter with its keys all jumbled from constant, vigorous use.

It's my favorite, honestly, since it's simple and tells you all there is to know about it without being a pretentious little shit about it.

The road surrounded by trees and covered in mist is a bit too abstract, almost like an image from some fantasy novel, and the chandelier is too quirky, a bit too try-hard for my tastes.

But not the typewriter.

That fucker's simple and wide open.

It has no secrets, no bigger meaning.

“I stayed up for you,” Sarah says when I approach her from behind, her eyes glued to the TV screen. Apparently, she's back to watching true-crime documentaries. Wonderful...

“I can see that.” I remain standing since I think I might have to get up immediately, even if I did take a seat next to her on the couch.

“Had a good day?”

“Boring,” she sighs. “I'm bored, and everything's boring, and I missed you, and I thought about calling you at work to see if you'd like to talk dirty to me while I finger-fuck myself but then I figured 'no' because I wasn't sure what mood you were in. How was your day?”

“Just wonderful,” I reply.

I lean against the back of the couch, right behind Sarah, who still won't take her eyes off the TV. I'm pretty sure she did tell me something about how she's technically on the spectrum, but that was years ago, back when we met in college, and I have to be honest and say that I really didn't listen to anything she said back then since admiring her beauty was far more appealing than getting to know her and thinking of her as a real, actual, right-fucking-here person. Now I sometimes get the urge to ask if she's on the spectrum, like during these moments where she completely forgets that people are supposed to acknowledge other people when they arrive in a room and that speaking in a completely dead, monotone way is creepy as shit, especially when you've just got home from work and it's like one am and the whole apartment is dark apart from the light off the TV that's playing a YouTube video about a guy who tortured models and cut them to pieces before trying to put them back together with the power of crazy.

“Come here,” she says. Or more like it’s her ordering me since saying, asking, or suggesting aren't really things she excels at unless she strains herself to make a real effort to seem human. She's wearing black leggings and a tight black shirt, and I can tell that she's still not bothering to wear underwear of any kind, which I used to find hot, but now it gets to be an inconvenience since I'm the one who has to do the laundry and witness the chaos that her leggings turn into whenever we get intimate, and her wetness ruins the fabric that touches her privates.

Maybe underwear was invented so pussy juices, cum-stains, or any of such wouldn't turn your pants all crusty and disgusting?

“Matt?” She waves her hand behind her head, near my face. “Sit down with me. I need you close to me.”

“Needing me implies that something bad will happen if you don't get me next to you,” I mention while taking a seat next to her. She snuggles up to me, her body warm and slightly trembling as she purposefully grinds her torso against me and finally presses her head down on my lap, a bit too close to my dick.

“Well, I need you.”

“That's sad.”

“Why?” She plants a soft kiss on my jeans, right at the spot that covers my privates.

“I hate the fact that anyone would need me,” I say, but she's not listening, her mouth opening slowly as she gently bites down on my cock through my pants. “You don't find it terrifying that someone would need you, like, actually, need you?”

“Nobody needs me, so I don't think about it,” she states plainly while unbuttoning my jeans.

“What if I need you?”

“Yeah, right.” She's amused and flicks the head of my dick after pulling it out. “I think you only need one, or maybe two, things from me.”

“True,” I say, and it's followed by a gasp as she takes me into her mouth.

It's an unnerving feeling when she sucks me off and does it in that vigorous way that lets me know that she's not looking to get me excited to fuck her, but she's just blowing me to make me cum, and that means that even if she's horny, she's more concerned with me being happy and that her own pleasure means little to her if she weighs it against my happiness.

When I cum, she swallows, lifts her head, flashes a grin that tells me just how pleased she is with herself, and then gets up to go to the kitchen.

“I'm getting some juice,” I hear her announce on her way. “Want some, or at least what’ll be left after I wash the taste out of my mouth?”

“No, thank you.” Juice won't wash away the bad taste in my mouth, which probably doesn’t even compare to her mouth, which has the taste of my every bad choice in life mixed into the sticky mess that’s my cum, but I still feel like punching a wall or crying. Why is she so nice to me? Why does she have to be so fucking broken, lonely, and strange that her existence seems to revolve around making sure I don't disappear from her life?

Why am I so important to her?

Why me?

“Oh, by the way, did you hear about that girl who went missing?” she mentions casually as she returns to the couch. “They found her body this morning. Somebody dumped it in the woods, near the resort. Crazy, huh?”

“Crazy?” I look at her, puzzled. “Why is that crazy?”

“Well, like, someone's kidnapping and killing girls and leaving their bodies not twenty minutes from our home?” She doesn't look puzzled; she looks almost insulted, as if my response is somehow inadequate.

“You're the one watching all the true-crime shit,” I point out. “You should know that people disappear all the time and get killed all the time.”

“Mmm, not people we could know.” She keeps staring at me. Her eyes are a stunning deep brown, which I usually count among her greatest qualities, but during times like these, those eyes work a wonderfully petrifying magic on me.

She knows something. She's not saying it, but she knows...

Please, stop staring.

“What?” I finally snap at her. “You're gonna cry about some random chicks getting killed? You don't even know them, Sarah.”

“And?”

“What do they matter when you don't know them?”

She waits a moment, staring at me still, and lets me stew in this shit feeling even when I can tell she's softening up, a hint of a smirk appearing on her face.

Then, after what feels like forever, she takes a breath, shrugs, and leans back.

“True. They don't matter.”

I say nothing. I just focus on my breathing because managing not to wheeze has suddenly become an issue.

“Matt?” And again, she's looking at me. “Do you think they'll ever find the guy who's doing this?”

I tell my eyes not to blink.

I tell my face not to twitch.

People being pushed and questioned always fuck up by letting their faces show what they really feel. Just this once, it might be a good thing that I'm so completely emotionally retarded.

“No. I don't think they will.”

Silence.

She's not staring anymore, not interested in toying with me since I wouldn't let it show that it bothered me. Sarah's attention returns to the TV. A new episode is playing. This time it's about a guy who kidnapped couples, murdered the husband, and took the wives as sex slaves. The guy managed to pull this off three times before getting caught.

“What if it was me? Would it matter then?” Sarah asks, but her tone is monotone again, her attention grasped by the show, and thus her social capabilities have plummeted to zero. At this point, I could easily just not reply, and she wouldn't even notice.

For some reason, I still choose to talk.

“How and why would you ever be kidnapped and murdered by whoever this freak is?”

“He's taking pretty girls.” She shrugs nonchalantly. “I'm a pretty girl.”

“And when was the last time you were outside this apartment?” I mock her, and she gives no reply, her whole demeanor signaling thatshe has fully committed to ‘antisocial TV mode’ and will be unavailable for interactions until further notice. “Hard to get kidnapped, is all I'm saying. Statistically speaking, the guy probably won't come knocking on our door, asking you to come with him.”

No response.

Sarah leans against my shoulder, her gaze empty as she stares at the TV, her body eerily stiff like it always is when she disappears wherever she does disappear.

I close my eyes, hoping for sleep.

I'll reserve tomorrow morning for breaking the sad news of me going out to drink since it'll be a great scene of unfiltered sadness when she finds that out.

3

The Corner Stop

It's around nine pm on a Friday night when I finally escape the snowy hellscape that is also known as downtown Fogsville during November. Nothing against the winter, nothing against our small little town, either, but one simply has to admit that it's no goddamn delicacy to walk through streets covered in two feet of snow while more snow rushes at you from all sides since apparently no one has told mother nature that we have all of the snow already and really don't need to have it spray down like bullets from the sky all the way through November and into December and into January and...

I take a deep breath and close my eyes while pretending that I’m shaking off some snow from my hair and then I flash a well-practiced smile and give a wave to some of the regulars who've taken note of my arrival to the Corner Stop.

At the counter, I keep forcing that damn smile and the bartender (a wonderfully simple yet charming man by the name of Sam), knows to pour me a beer of my liking with no further questions asked.

The Corner Stop is a dimly lit, dusty, smelly little excuse of a bar downtown, and most would say it's the one establishment they will never visit since the regulars (mostly aging alcoholics) have made it their living room and now guard the place's integrity like they're protecting some great treasure like the Declaration of Independence and every new customer looks like Nicolas Cage, and we all know what the fucker tried to do with the declaration in that one film.

New customers get stared up and down, get glares and angry murmurs. They need to prove themselves to be adequately lacking hope in life before slowly, over months and months of regular visits, being accepted into the inner circle here.

Customers known to the regulars (such as me) are treated basically like that one guy who never shows up at any family reunions or company parties but suddenly bursts through the doors having warned no one and gets everybody buzzing since this guy must be living the good life and now we all need to know everything about his day-to-day in the exotic 'wherever the fuck' he lives and operates in.

And then there are the regulars who wake up, come here, get shit-faced, go home, and repeat that cycle endlessly until they drop from a life lived embracing unhealthy habits and loving booze more than they ever loved their own children with the only condolence that they get in death being the knowledge that for one night, every regular raises their cup to them until they too pass out.

"Guess what day it is," Sam says while handing me my first beer of what hopefully will be many.

"Friday," I say, take the beer, take a drink, set the beer down and, remind myself to keep smiling since Sam clearly has something to say and I probably can't just exit stage left. "What day is it, Sam?

Some special day, I assume?"

"My birthday." The man absolutely beams. "Fifty-five today."

"You look a lot younger," I lie (he looks like a wet golden retriever) while looking around, checking who's here and who's not yet here,but ultimately will be since all the same faces always end up here.

"Happy birthday, Sam."

"Thanks." Still beaming.

"Hey, why the fuck are you working on your birthday?" I ask, suddenly stricken by what an unpleasant experience it must be. I wouldn't mind it personally, but I also hate being the center of attention in any way, shape, or form.

"Well..." Sam flashes a coy grin, lifting a beer from under the counter. "Technically, I'm not working. Just covering for Anne before she gets back from her break."

"Good for you," I say while my attention sways toward the corner table, where a group of karaoke regulars are doing their best to catch my attention. One of them is currently singing "Motion Sickness" by Phoebe Bridgers, making a lot of the patrons stop their constant drunken yammering to close their eyes and let the beautiful rendition take them to a better place.

"I'm fifty-five today," Sam repeats, and I now realize how drunk he sounds.

How drunk he is.

"How lovely." I flash him one last smile before heading toward Abigail, who is right about finished with her song, eyes closed, hips moving nicely as the outro plays.

I play it cool, moving past Abigail, who does notice me but can’t really make any moves since she has to still linger to receive the rousing round of applause following her performance, and I take aseat at the corner table, touching shoulders, dishing out kisses on the cheek, giving and receiving hugs, just generally dying inside…

"It's Sam's birthday," Cecilia yells in my ear, her hand aimlessly reaching for a microphone that the approaching Abigail is handing to her.

"I heard," I reply. Cecilia gets the microphone, and we both jiggle our chairs until she can slip from the table toward the area where all the singers sing.

"You wanna sign his card?" yells Marcus from across the table just as the music starts. Cecilia is performing Hallelujah, probably because she knows how well she kills it. It's a grim fate having to follow up Abigail's performance, and not that surprisingly, singers are a competitive bunch, so obviously Cecilia is going to go with her go-to song.

"Sure." I take the red birthday card with a childish picture of a dog on it just as I need to wiggle my chair again because Abigail, probably slighted by me ghosting her just a second ago, has now decided to take a seat next to me, which isn’t her usual spot, and now I’m annoyed by that, so this will be a long night.

"Where's my hug and a kiss on the cheek?" she yells over the music, teasing me.

"How old is Sam now?" I throw out just so I can forgo answering Abigail.

"Fifty-five!" Almost everyone delivers in unison.

"You like the dog?" Margaret asks, her eyes like two dinner plates pre-dinner: shiny and empty. Jesus, she's gotten off to a rough start.

"Sam loves that dog. He said it looks just like the one he used to have."

"Hey, how are you?" Abigail leans closer so she won't have to yell over the music, but I pretend like I’m really riveted by whatever Margaret and Marcus are talking about.

"No, he said it looks like a dog he wanted to get as a kid," Marcus clarifies, eyeballing Margaret like her breath stinks. Which it probably does, if I'm being honest.

"I'm fine, thanks," I say in the general direction of Abigail with my eyes still on the birthday card. It looks like almost everyone at the bar has signed it but me, which makes me think that either some of the regulars have already come and gone tonight or they were contacted on their free time to come and sign it, which means that I wasn’t among the list of people who got called. The thought sours my mood for some inexplicable reason since I can't say I would care for anyone here to contact me when I'm not here, but still... Kinda hurts. I don’t wanna be at the party, but I do wanna be needed at the party, you know?

"Are we gonna make you finally sing tonight?" Margaret yells just as Cecilia begins to howl 'hallelujah, halleluuuujaaaah' in the background.

"He never sings," Abigail replies on my behalf. "Haven't been able to break him just yet."

"And you never will," I inform the whole table. "Anyone got a pen?

Kinda difficult to sign the card without one."

"Use my lip-gloss," Abigail suggests, giggling.

"I have a pen." Marcus is ruffling through... his purse? It looks like a purse, but it can't be a purse. Not that a man can't have a purse, mind you, but it’s just weird to think that Marcus (a big, burly manly man) has an honest to God purse.

"I could always sign it with my blood," I mumble mostly to myself, but I notice Abigail react to it, trying to hold in laughter. "Anyone got a knife?"

"Here." Marcus is not handing out a knife (how sad), but the pen he promised. "Make it something special."

"How about just my name?" I suggest while scribbling my name on the bottom right corner where there is still some space left. Seeing a card absolutely loaded with names of people remembering you on your big day makes me either sad, jealous, or angry. I can't yet tell which and probably never will since those three emotions more or less go hand in hand. "What's this?" I point at a name near the middle, a name not written with the same pen as most of the others.

Merilyn.

"Did I write my name there yet?" Margaret seems to be going for the prize of 'fastest to pass out on a Friday night at the Corner Stop'.

"Hey, Cecilia, my tuuuuuurn!"

Hallelujah has finished. I didn't notice people clapping, even though they surely did. Cecilia squeezes between the wall and me back to her chair, shaking her head while relinquishing the microphone to Margaret.

"She's going to butcher that song," Cecilia moans.

"Whose name is this?" I demand, but no one seems to notice.

Everyone is either too busy drinking or trying not to cringe at Margaret who can barely stand, let alone hold a tune to save her life.

I can't even tell what song she's supposed to be singing.

"Matt?" Cecilia nudges me, and I force a smile on my face even when I've explicitly told everyone a million times that I don't like to be touched like that. "You have any requests for me? Some special song you wanna hear?"

"No.” I point at the name on the card again. "Who is Merilyn?"

"Ooh, you know Malory?" Abigail seems to snap out of whatever hateful trance Margaret's shrieking had her in.

"No," I groan, having to close my eyes and take a deep breath since now the music is too loud, the people too close, the singing of Margaret too messy, and the air in this fucking bar too thick with sweat, cigarette smoke, shitty perfume, and stinky feet that haven't left various work boots in twenty-four-fucking-hours. "I just wanted to know who Merilyn is and why she has signed the card when it's clear that she's never been here since it's a different pen, and I've never met anyone named Merilyn at this bar."

"You feeling okay?" Cecilia yells over the music, but it seems to just be a formality because her attention is now fully on Margaret. "You should get another drink, Matt. Loosen up... Hell, maybe I need a couple more just to get through Margaret’s… performance."

"Merilyn was Sam's neighbor or something, I think." Abigail is applying lip gloss while admiring herself with her phone’s camera.

"Sam really liked her. Said she was nice to him."

"Matt, can I force you to sing with me?" Cecilia is a woman of forty-five, so understandably it's pretty unnerving when she talks to me with a playfully childish 'girly' voice.

"No, you can't. I don't sing. People have to suffer enough without being tormented by my voice, or lack thereof." I try to give her a sad smile, but she's not even looking at me anymore after she got up from her seat and is trying to signal Margaret to hand the microphone over since the drunken fool seems like she's going to wander off now that her song is finished.

"She actually died. Did you know?" Abigail brings it up casually while leaning close, examining the birthday card. Her hair is blonde and bundled up in two buns on top of her head, and she always wears tight jeans and a top that hug her fit body a bit too tightly, which makes me uncomfortable since she likes to get a little too close and is definitely way too hot to be getting this close to me without it possibly becoming a problem for the both of us.

"Does anybody want to bet on how long it'll take until Raimo starts hitting on Margaret again?" Marcus throws out and gets a soft, gentle slap from Cecilia, who is moving toward the singing area, her next song being 'Hotel California'.

"You will not let that man near Margaret," she yells as her song starts to play and she goes into performer mode, like she's not singing in a shitty small bar but performing at Madison Square Garden.

"What the fuck can I do to stop two horny adults doing-"

"The man doesn't even speak English, Marcus," Abigail groans, shaking her head.

"Yeah, because he's not American," Marcus fires back, like Abigail's previous remark was somehow uncalled for. "I think he's like Swedish or something."

"Is he Swedish?" Abigail nudges me gently, and I stop jabbing my finger at 'Merilyn' on the birthday card. "What’s up, Matt? Did you know her or something?"

"No, I did not." I shake my head and force myself to not focus on dead women before I take a big swallow of beer and try to relax again. "And Raimo's not Swedish. He's Finnish or Estonian."

"Where the hell is Estony?" bellows Marcus in an overly dramatic voice.

"Estonia," corrects Abigail before giving me the distinct look that screams 'please ask me if I want to go for a smoke with you so we can get some separation from these people'. "Jesus Christ, Marcus, even I know it's Estonia and not... whatever the hell you just said."

"Abigail, do you want to come for a smoke with me?" I ask, bored and suddenly very tired, but she doesn't hear me over Marcus' lack of general knowledge on anything that isn't something created, born, or made in his general vicinity.

"I wasn't good at school," he shouts over the music. "I mean, why the fuck would I need to know where some random foreigner comes from?"

"Oh God, shut up," I moan with my face in my hands, and everyone thinks it's a joke, so they laugh while I poise myself, take another drink, and pull out my cigarettes. "Abigail, smoke?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." She plays it cool, like she wasn't begging for it.

When we exit the table, Cecilia tries to grab me by the arm and force me to sing, but I swirl around like I'm dancing to the tune before slipping away, following Abigail, who makes it maybe three feet before a couple of relatively new customers (guys in their thirties, well-dressed, trying hard to impress with money, which is a bad move here) pull her aside and try chatting her up, and I have to swoop in and rescue her since either she's too kind to tell possible suitors to fuck off or she actually likes being the most desirable creature in a ten-mile radius.

"Oh, shit, how come nobody told me they were filming Wolf of Wall Street part two here?" I flash a big grin while pulling Abigail with me, which sends her giggling.

"What the fuck did he just say?" one of the guys asks the other, baffled, but neither makes a move because nobody wants to ruin the bizarrely idyllic feeling that surrounds you when you enter this place.

"So, you sure you didn't know Merilyn?" Abigail asks casually when we finally retreat to the peace and quiet of the smoking area. I stare at the plaque on the wall that informs me that only eight people are allowed in the booth at the same time, and no drinks are allowed in here. I'm pretty sure I've seen this booth packed with at least fifteen people, all with drinks in their hands, but-

"Matthew?" Abigail waves her hand in front of my face before slipping it into my jacket pocket to pull out my cigarettes and my lighter. "You seem off. Like, more off than usual. Where's my well-behaved, polite Matt at?"

"He's on vacation.”

I light a cigarette of my own after she's managed to light hers.

Abigail eyes the cigarette squeezed between her fingers, an expression of exaggerated sadness on her face.

"This'll mess up my singing tonight."

"Nothing messes up your singing," I tell her, even if I have no clue as to what goes into managing a singing voice since I haven't been able to carry a tune since… well, ever.

"Thanks.” She smiles the kind of innocent smile that makes me want to look away.

Pretty people shouldn't smile like that.

Or maybe it's just a weakness of mine: sweet looking girls who clearly know how good they look while still pretending to be all dewy-eyed and innocent.

"How's... um, the guy?" I ask just to make conversation and have her stop smiling at me.

"The guy?" She laughs. "Who's the guy?"

"Well, the fucking... the one with the... the one you're with."

"I'm not with anybody," she teases. "I'm just here singing and seeing my friends."

"Mmm." I need to direct us away from the flirting. "Hey, you ever think it's weird that we hang out with people so much older than us?

Like, people who're basically from a different world?"

"They're not so much older than you," she keeps teasing, a flicker in her eye, and now I'm regretting this conversation again. "Older than me, sure."

"I'm thirty."

"Yeah, and?"

"And you're like..." I draw a blank and try to play it off with a joking shrug.

"Nineteen," she says, annunciating each letter very carefully.

“Well, you shouldn’t be here then," I remark.

"Kinda helps when you know the owner, and the bartender, and all the customers. I mean, who the fuck wants to wait until they’re twenty-one to drink and sing at a bar? How am I at risk of fucking up my life by being here; singing and chilling?” “I guess that’s true.”

“Though maybe I need to shut up about my age and all that.” She frowns. “You know, since I’m the same age as Merilyn was and she’s… you know. And that other girl that they found... You heard about that?"

"Yeah." I inhale smoke in rapid succession, trying to make myself dizzy.

"It's so awful, isn't it?" She examines me with her eyes, clearly trying to ascertain how I actually feel after dropping that trap of a question.

"It's pretty awful, yeah," I finally say after mulling it over. Or mulling over the best response, which, as usual, turns out to be the thing Pam would say and always told me to say when I feel the disconnect and can't actually form an emotional response to something that society expects people to have a response to. "You knew her?"

"Not really." She shrugs, which makes me feel like an idiot since it's now crystal clear that she was testing me for nothing because apparently the death of some random chick makes very little difference to her as well. "Sam did. He said he liked her. He said that she was always nice to him. They were neighbors. I guess I just figured you'd seen her."

"Why would I have?"

She has a confused smile on her face.

"I mean, you've been to Sam's place, right? The few times, right?

The parties?"

"Those were at Samuel's place," I correct her while glancing over to the entrance, where it seems that more and more customers are pouring in. This place is dead from Monday to Thursday; the only customers are the regulars, but on the occasional Friday or Saturday, it becomes the go-to spot for all sorts of younger folk. It's almost like young people have heard the stories about this bar and have made coming here on weekends a kind of coming-of-age ritual that shows them if they're ready to venture further downtown to an actual bar with actual people and not just generic old drunks.

"Samuel actually tried to beat the shit out of me the last time I was at his place," I note to keep the small talk going.

"Oh, really? Why?" Abigail seems a bit too enthusiastic about the prospect of me getting my face kicked in, but who can blame her?

"I think we went to high school together or something." I shrug, inhale once more, and flick the bud into the ashtray. "Yeah, so he got completely obliterated on tequila and started telling me how I always act so clean and superior and nice and smooth and blah fucking blah.

After that, he lunged at me, and some other guys at the party pulled him off and took him to bed."

"Well, I mean..." Abigail smirks. "You are pretty clean, smooth, and do have that aura about you, you know, like you could think that you’re better than everybody else."

"Lovely…” "But I don't mind it," she says quickly. Too quickly. "I guess you're just one of those people who come off like that."

"I'm not like those people," I say, annoyed. "I'm me. And as far as, I know we're all supposed to be special, unique snowflakes, so there's only me and no other people who are like me."

"Ooookay." Abigail is somewhere between amused and confused. I notice her eyes on me, the look in them prompting me to smile kindly.

"I’ve had a few rough days at work," I offer as an explanation.

"Too old to not get worn out by spending time with teenagers?"

She’s teasing me again.

"Probably." I shrug and head out of the smoking booth. "I only noticed it now that I'm around you, though."

"What?" She cups her ear; the music in the bar area is blasting so hard that it's impossible not to communicate without shouting.

"I said, I'm going to grab another drink; do you want one?" I yell over whatever horseshit Margaret's screaming into a microphone right now.

"Yeah, thanks!" She touches my shoulder and is about to head back to the corner table before suddenly turning around. "Hey, you didn't give me my hug yet!"

I give her the hug (didn't I hug her already?) and then she departs for the table where Cecilia and Marcus seem to be engulfed in a desperate attempt to make small talk so as to not have to listen to Margaret's singing.

At the counter, I find Anne, not Sam, since the man has finally been released to roam the bar on his birthday and is now sitting at one of the larger tables in the middle of the room, a group of elderly construction workers (all regulars here) slapping his back, throwing high fives, and cheering while poor Sam straight up demolishes one shot of tequila after the other.

"Same as last time?" Anne talks the way you imagine a cat would talk if it knew how to form words.

"Mmm." My attention is still on Sam. It feels kind of strange to have people practically force-feed shots down the throat of a man who, by any medical standard of measurement, isn't mentally fit nor intellectually fully developed.

I mean, Sam's not a bad guy, not by a long shot, but he does give off the same vibe as a preschooler lost in a shopping mall.

"Harry bailed again," Anne moans while handing me my beer.

"Fucker's never here when you need him. Great fucking owner..."

"Sounds pretty awful," I tell her before heading back to the corner table, where, upon taking my seat, I notice that I haven't even finished my first beer yet.

"Somebody's thirsty tonight," Cecilia teases. "Get gooooood and drunk, and we'll get you singing."

"Nope." I shake my head and take a swig of the old beer that has already gone stale.

"Or maybe he'll walk me home again," Abigail coos. “I mean, since he didn’t even bring me the drink, he said he would bring.”

"Nope." I take another swallow; the first beer now finished and my head, body, and soul aching for the next one.

"What, Matt doesn't want to be Mr. Good and Proper anymore?"