Blood Men: A Thriller

I’m not familiar with the area and get lost on the way to the cemetery. I run a couple of red lights by accident, but I also end up sitting at a few green lights, which I figure balances the equation. I make it there safely and turn into the cemetery driveway. There is no detail in the church, only an absence of light, a dark shape somewhat darker than the night around it. I keep driving ahead and quickly become lost. I haven’t been out here since Jodie was buried, and then I was following everybody else. Now it’s a maze. The church disappears behind the line of trees, then it’s graves and grass everywhere, broken up by more trees. Maybe this is why it’s called the Garden City—the view is fucking fantastic when you’re dead.

I drive around for about five minutes before deciding I can cover more ground on foot. I grab the beer and get out and lean against the car to open it, but slide right off the wet surface. I hit the ground and scrape my knees and drop the beer and it takes me a minute to find it. I walk among the plots searching for Jodie, even calling out to her after a few minutes. In the end I’m too tired to keep going. I sit down and lean against a grave that’s not as old as the others. The grass is very wet and the water leaches into my pants. There are gaps in the cloud cover letting moonlight through but I can’t see any moon. A light breeze pushes my wet clothes against my skin. I pop open the beer and it fizzes up from the earlier fall. What doesn’t froth out keeps me warm as the night continues to cool around me. I talk to Jodie even though the person beneath me isn’t Jodie, but someone who died a few months ago in his early twenties, according to the script on the stone, but it doesn’t say anything else about him—maybe nobody cared enough, or maybe people were glad he died.

“I’m so sorry, Jodie,” I say. “For everything. I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry it was my fault. I’m sorry I smashed the plates against the kitchen wall.”

Jodie and the guy beneath me ignore me. The cemetery is deathly quiet but scenic. The sky is clearing, the veil of cloud is pulled back revealing thousands of stars. They light up the night, silhouetting the trees, shining down on the grounds where Death and a few of the friends he’s made over the years are buried all around me. The breeze becomes warm again and strong too, coming from the northwest over the Port Hills, which are lit up with street-and house lights, whipping across acres of tussock and grass and rock before sweeping down into the city. By the time it reaches the cemetery it’s picking up leaves and petals and throwing them about, it blows dirt into my eyes and I have to turn my back to it. Pretty soon the stars dim and I can no longer taste beer. I wake up what ought to be only a few minutes later, but must be several hours since the moon has been replaced by the sun. The bright light hits my eyes so hard it almost knocks a hole in the back of my head. I roll onto my side to bury my head into my pillow but there’s only grass and a cement marker. I rub my eyes and have no idea where I am for about two seconds, then it all rushes back to me. The breeze has died back down. I figure I’m one of many who have fallen asleep with a bottle of something out here with their loved ones cold in the ground. My clothes smell of sweat and vomit and Jodie’s blood.

My body is aching as I stand up, the muscles stiff and sore. I’m not sure where my car is so I pick a direction and walk. Nothing is familiar as everything looks the same. I walk for twenty minutes in an expanding circle before finding it. The keys are still in the ignition. There are already a couple of mourners who throw me suspicious glances, probably because I look like I just crawled out of one of the graves here. The cemetery is in need of a caretaker—the lawns are too long and the gardens are being overrun by a crime wave of weeds. One side of the car is in bright sun, the other has wet leaves stuck to it.

I take the backstreets home instead of the main ones, figuring they’ll be quicker, and figuring wrong. I pass a couple of people building fences, others mowing lawns, summertime activities that seem a world away from the world I live in now. When I finally make it, I race into the bathroom and take a leak doing my best to hit the bowl and not the floor and my feet. I’m pretty sure I’m draining off the only fluids I have in my body.

I stagger through to the kitchen and open the fridge. The milk has expired but it seems to taste okay and I drink half a glass of it before deciding milk is the absolute last thing I want right now. I look at the beer. Strike that—milk ain’t that bad after all.

I lean against the kitchen bench, disoriented and lost, like I don’t belong here, and that makes it harder for me to remember exactly what happened last night. Part of me doesn’t even feel like I’m back home: I’m stuck somewhere, maybe in some purgatory where the milk is always expired and my mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of it. Even my teeth are sore from grinding them in my sleep. I hang the bloody bank clothes back up before taking a long shower. It revives me a bit, at least physically, but mentally I’m exhausted as the memories of last night trickle back in.

Mostly I’m ashamed by it all.