The Decay of All Things

The Past


“Just peachy,” Miss Parker swore, and tin cans rattled across her porch in mockery. The bottom of her grocery bag had split. Food items were making a break for it in every direction. A broken jar of plum jam was a bloodstain on her step.

It would take too long to find everything in the darkness. The globe of the light above had burst three days ago, and she probably wouldn’t get around to replacing it for months. Now the food was hiding in the shadows, and she could opt to stalk it with a flashlight or leave it to daylight.

The choice was easy. She went inside. The house was dark and silent and she appreciated the solitude as she climbed the stairs, carelessly throwing her Blahniks over her shoulder and shedding Donna Karan on the landing. In bra and panties she went into her bedroom, dropping her gun and phone onto the dresser. She hesitated near the bed. Climb straight in naked and fall into precious oblivion, or take the time to wash her face and brush her teeth? Naked and oblivion won.

It wasn’t until she was between the sheets that she realised that someone was in the bed with her. And when she stretched her hand out it played across a corrugated abdomen rough with crisp hair, and the person sighed and mumbled in Jarod’s voice.

Parker waited until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, til she could make out his shape beside her, see that his arms were flung up around his head and he was sleeping. His audacity made her smile faintly, and she let her hand wander down until she was exploring his bare hip, evidence that he was as naked as she.

A Pretender in her bed, bare as the day he was born. Oblivion forgotten, Miss Parker dived under covers and resurfaced around his bellybutton; pressing her nose to the skin beneath his breastbone. Lord he smelled good, and she wriggled between his thighs with her breasts pressing all around his penis, and both he and his penis were starting to wake up.

“Par…Parker?” Jarod said, his voice weighted down still by sleep, and she tickled her fingers up his ribs as he drew in breath.

“I hope you weren’t expecting someone else,” she murmured, and felt his chuckle through his belly. She licked his breastbone. He tasted of salt and warm male.

His hands were cupping her shoulders and smoothing down, stretching with fingertips trying to discern her state of dress, skating the edges of her breasts. She wriggled up and up, making Jarod moan as she pressed and writhed against his erection, rasping her nipples across the hair on his chest. She found his mouth, and he was a man who kissed with his whole being and folded her lower lip open with his thumb even as his tongue slid into her mouth. It swept across her teeth and looked for her soul, tasted her and treated her with passion and she found his thumb between her thighs, penetrating her.

They rolled, Jarod settling between her thighs and the tip of his erection meeting his thumb just inside of her, but he didn’t push all the way in yet. He sucked on her lip and plucked at her breast, and Parker wound her legs around him breathing in short, panicky breaths of exhilaration. She fondled the rippling muscle across his shoulders and back and squeezed him closer, frustrated with his shallow probes.

“Promise me this isn’t a mistake,” he said, and took her answer into his mouth.

“It isn’t, it isn’t,” she chanted, his thumb withdrawing replaced by his erection, “I promise, Jarod, I promise you – oh…”

And then he was pushing inside of her, and Miss Parker was sure she was drugged with tension to curl her toes and fingers, to tattoo on her lungs. The thrill of this, ah, having him inside her, moving so careful and slow, and she could see his eyes shining in the darkness and reached up for another kiss to stifle her mounting cries.

Parker couldn’t pinpoint a moment of climax, rather felt it come on in slow waves that left her voice hoarse and muscles stretched. She fell back in a boneless slump when Jarod made a throaty murmur, shivering and shuddering in her arms, and his weight settled fully on her. Clarity was slow after such a rush of passion. No regrets, no, none at all. This had been inevitable for years, hadn’t it?

“Are you okay?” Jarod whispered, full of apprehension.

“Mmmm-hmmm…” Parker moaned, and twined her legs around his, her arms around his waist. In a long, slow stretch, she rubbed her body against his. Jarod gave a soft groan in response, his nose sinking into her hair.

“A little… faster than I’d intended,” he murmured. His hips rolled, a settling motion, and his head lifted, propped on one hand. He studied her.

“Perfect,” she said, and smiled. Yes, perfect, for the first time in so long. No more fighting the truth, putting up the barbed wire, blocking out the sun. Clarity. And Jarod.

Their mouths brushed, a slow, tender kiss that deepened gradually. Warmth rose inside of her, and she pictured it in her mind; like vines from her heart, twining around her lungs and coiling around her spine, taking over. They parted, mere millimetres between their mouths, breathing the same air. A week earlier she had fallen asleep with the line still open, and had woken in the morning to realise he was still there, his breath faint and even with sleep. Oxygen, when shared, became such an intimacy.

“No regrets?” Jarod whispered. She tucked a lock of hair behind his ear.

“Not on this side of the looking glass.”

He eased away from her with the greatest reluctance, settling behind her and Parker smiled as his body nuzzled against hers in a spoon, his arms curled around her protectively. Drowsily she played her fingers over his forearms, wriggled deeper into the shell of his arms. He might not be there when she woke in the morning, but he’d certainly be back soon.


The future


He’d been to the scene before, but not with knowledge sitting in his back pocket. He’d come through the door with dread and nausea and looked at Miss Parker on the bed, and the world had shifted maybe thirty degrees on its axis. Oh. You did this.

The apartment was on the second floor of a brownstone, and only remarkable in it’s lack of distinction. Grimy but not dirty; with long patterns of cracked linoleum skating across the kitchen floor to an ancient refrigerator in the corner. Roach heaven. Windows with little fields of clarity amidst all the dirt. A porcelain sink that had scum around the drain. Did you wash your hands here? Wrinkle your nose? Why did you come here, and fall asleep on the bed?

Grey sheets that might have once been white. There was no bedroom, just the space underneath the window where two mattresses were stacked on top of each other. Jarod sat on the edge and smoothed his hand across the middle, searching for warmth. You lay here. You died here.

Darkness was settling on his mind like fog. He could picture a silver jackhammer of grief tearing at his brain, disrupting the stores of serotonin. Unbalance this; here is your depression and it’s real and it’s staying. Her absence would make the chemicals tilt and slide towards the abyss and make it all unsettled and permanently disturbed. You will suffer in darkness forever.

Go find your family now, lab rat.

Blood dripped onto the sheet. Jarod touched his nose, and his fingers came away slick and shiny red. He blocked the flow with a handkerchief, and stared at the drop on the sheet. He’d contaminated evidence. It didn’t matter. This was the Great Depression of evidence anyway. Every scene was like this. The killer may have been clumsy about method in the initial murders, but he wasn’t clumsy about forensics.

The blood flow stopped. Jarod lay down on the dirty sheet, sniffed the pillow for remnants of her life. He closed his eyes. Maybe I can commune with the dead, Jarod thought. Were you thinking of me when you died? Or was it too fast? Perhaps your death was a matter of fear and pain and confusion, synapses firing and an adrenalin rush that came to late, a puncture in your chest and that sickening certainty of imminent death. If humans have souls, I hope yours isn’t trapped in this dirty apartment.

He tore the sheets from the bed, all but shredded the musty duvet and heaved the top mattress off into the middle of the room. On the bottom mattress there was a line of neat stitching, three inches long. Jarod had a flash of the sutures on Miss Parker’s belly. He tore them open with a pocketknife, and delved amidst stuffing and rust-sharp springsust ust motes danced in the air. I should have reached into your chest and breathed my life into your heart. He found what he wanted trapped inside a coil of spring.

This photograph was a little curled at the edges, torn in one corner. His blood buzzed in his ears. Fury rose with bile in his throat. It was a picture of Miss Parker, under a halo of light – a street lamp – dressed all in black. She was smiling a secretive smile, and the photograph had captured her at the exact moment before she kissed him.

It was a photograph of both of them. He hadn’t fucking saved her.

He got into a fight. He stumbled out of the apartment and out onto the street, and walked as far as the first seedy bar. He sat down inside, and put a hundred dollars on the counter. The whiskey was cheap, burned. He managed not to cough but just slung them back like he’d seen her do before and let his mind wallow in alcohol and pain. I can see why you did it now, why you used to drink like that. It doesn’t block out the darkness but it puts everything in slow motion. Take you half an hour for one thought to roll unsteadily through your mind. One hot blare of pain, like an oil slick on your neural pathways.

It was late when he headed for the door, but he didn’t know the time. He couldn’t remember where he was staying, and figured he’d just go find a park bench to sleep on. And tripped merrily, blindly, out the door and walked into some guy with tattoos who took offence.

Jarod let the guy hit him three times. Once in the jaw, so he reeled away, fireworks behind his eyeballs. Another in the eye, when he dared to come back up again. And once more in the gut. He threw up in the gutter, and felt a lot better for it. And then he went into the bar, feeling remarkably sober, and frog marched the guy out onto the street with an arm bent behind his back, and the guy howled cause Jarod knew he was pretty close to snapping bone.

His fist made pleasing, meaty sounds on the other guy’s face. Once he even felt a satisfying crunch. He breathed harsh and loud in the quiet of midnight, and sometime it had rained which left the pavement wet and gritty. He pulled back his fist again and again, holding the guy up by the front of his jacket and soon his knuckles were coming away with blood, and mashing the guy’s face felt like sinking his fist into a bowl of pudding.

Jarod dropped him. He spat in the gutter, wiped his bloody hand on his jacket. He took out his cell, and called an ambulance for the unconscious guy on the ground, and walked away.

*