A buzzing noise was coming from the left. Kristeva opened his eyes and found himself reclining in a chair. He stared ahead at detailed designs of numerous sorts--many of them circles--displayed on the wall, then thought to turn his head to look in the direction of the odd noise. His left arm was stretched out and somebody was bent over it, a tattoo machine filling the stylized fox head in with plain black ink. Kristeva frowned a little; the tattoo had been just fine, last he knew, and hadn't needed any touching up.
The machine stopped buzzing and its operator lifted his head to meet his eyes. Det. Singer held the gunlike device aloft.
"This is so you remember me," he said, and then set the machine down beside Kristeva's arm and reached someplace just out of Kristeva's line of sight to retrieve something else. He sat back up with a syringe in his hand instead, some sort of clear liquid filling the barrel, and flicked it once or twice with his free fingers.
"And this is so you forget," he said, and brought the syringe down, the needle jabbing directly into the fox's forehead.
Kristeva gasped and shot up into a sitting position, grabbing at his arm, but the sharp jab of pain was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, and with it went the tattoo designs on the wall, the wall itself, the tattoo machine and Singer and the entire parlor. He blinked several times in confusion before recognizing his room, let out a gust of breath, then grimaced and lifted his fingers from his left forearm, almost afraid of what he might see. The fox head stared back up at him, the same as it had always been; there was no blood, no fresh ink, no puncture marks. He rubbed it a little bit just to make sure, but the pain, whatever had caused it, was gone.
Another loud buzz came from his left and he jumped again before realizing it was merely his cell phone, left sitting on the bedside stand in vibrate mode. He let out a second gust of breath, pressing both hands to his eyes and willing his heart to quit hammering in his throat before reaching for the phone and flipping it open, lying back as he pressed it to his ear.
"Hello?" he said, voice cracking.
"So were you planning on coming in to work today," a peeved-sounding voice said, "or did you want me to just go ahead with this on my own?"
Kristeva opened his eyes again, blinked at the ceiling, then looked at the bedside clock. 6:27AM; even though it was a Saturday, he should have been in to work a half hour ago. He made a face and sat back up, swinging his legs from the bed. "Didn't set my clock," he muttered. "I'll be in in fifteen."
"Take your time," the voice said, not sounding in the least bit sincere, and hung up.
Kristeva snapped the phone shut and stood, having to give himself a minute to catch his balance when the room swayed around him and an ache niggled behind his eye. He picked up the clock and scowled at it, pressing the ALARM button; the clock had in fact been set the night before, but the alarm had been shut off at some point, presumably in his sleep. He grumbled and tossed it back on the stand, resolving to buy a louder one on his way home, if the roads were good enough. A glance out the window as he passed showed him that the rain hadn't let up in the least so far.
He reached the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink--no time for a shower, this morning--still mulling over the odd dream as he reached for a cup and the container of aspirin he kept on the shelf under the mirror. He ended up pausing with cup in left hand and aspirin in right, staring at his reflection, the dark rings under his eyes reminding him of Mitch, and before he even knew he was talking to himself, the word came out.
"Shoot."
No comments:
Post a Comment