"Bobby?" I call out. "Are you here? Where are you," and then, under my breath, "you f**k."
I'm just noticing that cell phones are scattered everywhere, across tables, under chairs, in piles on the floor, dozens of them smashed open, their antennas snapped off. Some of their transmission bars are lit but I can't get an outside line on any of them and then I
you are the sort of person who doesn't see well in the dark
turn into the darkness of the kitchen. I open the refrigerator door and then the freezer and light from inside illuminates a section of the black, empty kitchen. I grab a bottle that lies on its side in the freezer and take a swig from a half-empty gallon of Stoli, barely tasting it. Outside, the wind is a hollow roaring sound.
In a drawer adjacent to the sink I find a flashlight and just as I turn toward another drawer something zooms past me. I whirl around.
A reflection in the gilt-edged mirror that hangs over the stove: my grave expression. Then I'm laughing nervously and I bring a hand to my forehead, leaving it there until I'm calm enough to find the.25-caliber Walther I hid last week in another drawer.
With the beam from the flashlight I'm noticing that the microwave's door is open and inside it's splattered with a dried brown mixture of twigs, branches, stones, leaves. And then I notice the cave drawings.
They're scrawled everywhere. Giant white spaces heavily decorated with stick figures of buffalos, crudely drawn horses, dragons, what looks like a serpent.
"Just be cool just be cool just be cool," I'm telling myself.
Suddenly, over the speaker system that runs throughout the house, a CD clicks on and covering the sound of wind roaring outside: water rushing, various whooshing noises, Paul Weller's guitar, Oasis, Liam Gallagher echoing out, singing the first verse from "Champagne Supernova," and it blasts through the darkness of the house.
"This is so f**ked, this is so f**ked," I'm muttering, on the edge of panic but not in it yet and the yellow fan of light washing across the walls keeps shaking as I move farther into the house and
where were you while we were getting hi-i-i-igh?
the house smells so much like shit I keep gagging. One hand is holding the flashlight and I clamp the other, holding the gun, over my nose and mouth.
in the champagne supernova in the skyyyyyy
I bend down, pick up another cell phone. I pull up the antenna, flipping the phone open. No transmission bars.
I aim the flashlight down a hallway and then I shine its beam up into the circular staircase and I'm squinting, trying to make out the dim star shapes that seem to have appeared everywhere.
But then I see that those star shapes are actually pentagrams and they're drawn with red paint everywhere on the walls, on the ceiling, on the stairs leading to the second floor.
Something turns in the darkness behind me.
I whirl around.
Nothing.
I run up the stairs. Every five steps, I stop and look over my shoulder, waving the beam of the flashlight into the darkness floating below me.
in a champagne supernova, in a champagne supernova in the sk-k-yyyyyyyyy
I hesitate at the top of the staircase and then I'm drifting unsteadily along one side of the hallway and I'm feeling along the wall for light switches.
I turn hesitantly around another corner and-except for the pentagrams and the cell phones scattered everywhere-the set is immactilate, untouched, everything in its place.
I make it to the room I've been staying in, my shadow moving across its door as I walk toward it. My hand freezes, then I reach tentatively for the doorknob, thinking, Don't open it don't open it don't
After I open it I pocket the gun and shift the flashlight into my other hand. I reach out for a light switch but can't feel one.
I shine the flashlight across the room.
I open a drawer-it's empty. I open another drawer-also empty. All my clothes are gone. The passport I'd hidden, wedged beneath my mattress, isn't there.
In the bathroom -all my toiletries are gone.
A giant red pentagram is slashed across the mirror.
where were you while we were getting h-i-i-i-i-i-ighhhh
I move toward the closet, my heart pounding.
All my clothes have been removed.
And in their place, posted all over the walls of the small walk-in closet, are Polaroid shots of me and Sam Ho, naked, sweaty, delirious, having sex.
A larger photo rests in the middle of this collage.
I'm driving a butcher knife deep into Sam Ho's chest and I'm lost and grinning, my eyes red, caught in the flash, my expression addressing the camera, asking do you like this? are you pleased?