There was an eerily silence following Jani's footsteps towards the door. A silence that rang loud in Inji's ears than her own heartbeat. For a feverish, hallucinations were a reality that they had no control over but was it any different than the reality they lived in everyday? The sky was grey, the air was damp, the metallic hinges of the doors were screeching because of the rust the many suns and rains have seen when Jani opened it.
There stood in front of him, drenched in the rain, covered in disguise, a yellow raincoat with a man in his late twenties. He wore a crooked smile, the corners of his mouth reached his ears almost as if he were animating an expression not physically possible for him.
There were man that tried to bend their muscles voluntarily to the things they were mentally incapable of, like smiling.
"Mr. Gunn?" spoke Jani with a surprised look on his face, his eyes widened and lips stretched in an equally awkward smile.
He didn't know the man, the man didn't know him yet here they stood in front of each other to exchange words none of them could pretend.
What was the reason this handsome, mysterious, shivering café owner was suddenly at his doorsteps after taking a bus that he hadn't ever taken before in eight years?
"Good evening. Jani, is it? I have heard a lot about the quiet house of the town but never had the time to forget my way here. How are you?" asked the ravenhaired man.
With his shoulders slumping as the gusts of wind froze him, he looked even younger than the young Jani.
Jani maintained the friendliness because he had no reason to decline especially since the delirious, hallucinating and bitter Inji scared him.
The rumors made him sympathize with her but there were layers to emotions that only situations revealed.
"I am good, living the life as good as I can. I'm sorry to sound very unsociable, believe me I'm not but do you need anything?" Jani asked.
Mr. Gunn's eyes drifted towards the background behind him. Other than the small LED cube in the corner of a distant room, everything else was dark.
The electricity was cut every time there was even a windstorm in the town because the towers were old, the wires naked and old people were always forgetting their way into the other people's property.
"Oh? Of course not. I was just on my way to Ms. Maylinn's house. She is a very beautiful young woman. Young for her heart, not for the age, you know?" came his response with a heartily laughter, Jani joined in to reduce the risk of awkward silence befalling them.
Ms. Maylinn was their neighbor, an old woman of age sixty or sixty three, none of them cared to remember, who was often found lurking into people's yards, porches, on stormy evenings.
She was looking for her husband that disappeared eight years ago, a retired soldier who might have only brought the coffee for his superiors and had his head smacked every time anyone got into a bad mood.
The town went through the trouble of holding a funeral for him, giving speeches, crying and faking concerns they never had for him when he lived only because he left a fortune for his wife. Everyone in the town just wanted a share in the wealth that was only rumored but never revealed.
"But I saw another young woman rushing towards your house. She looked very sickly. Is she alright?" He asked, looking at Jani's face intently as if he were to predict the next answer by the way his lips would curl.
"Ah, that one. That is my cousin Inji. She is… I would love to say new but she had a house here before." Jani replied.
"Oh? Is that the Inji I hear about from the townspeople? The old ladies playing cards at my shop are always talking about her."
"Are they? I didn't know people liked her that much."
"We often talk about things we dislike more than the ones we like, don't we?" Mr. Gunn added, stepping inside as Jani stepped back.
Having realized that he had kept his guest waiting at the door for too long, he invited him inside with a gesture of his hand towards the kitchen.
However, those raven eyes were fixated into the frozen white light into the tiny room at the end of the hallway where feverish wheezes were louder than the storm knocking against the windows.
The very thought that Mr. Gunn was inside the house with Jani alone, the naïve, stupid Jani that never saw anything wrong with stealing other people's hard earned money and gambled on video games with it was standing in the same space as suspect of a brutal murder, very fond of repeating the crime on the paper with pencils in a caricatured, yet horrifyingly genuine picture was doom.
Inji was plagued with fear that something might happen to her naïve, stupid cousin instead of her that was the witness to the man's sadist artistic frenzy. The corner of her lips trembled, she clutched her the blankets tightly into her hands, her knuckles turned white.
'What should I do? Should I go out? Show myself? No. What will he do to me? I am scared. I don't want Jani to get hurt.'
She slithered out of the blankets like a sand worm, carrying the weight of warm, woolen fabrics and crawled towards wall. She sat behind it, lowering her head towards the door and her eyes met with the black ones, her heart stopped beating.
Two perfectly round circles were attached to the man's eyes, only they weren't eyes for they lacked the light. They had a cross between them with four holes at the either sides of it and holding a ghostly emptiness to them.
"Is that Inji?" the button eyed man asked, his lips stretching to his ears as he smiled. His jaws were carved on either sides and his fingers elongated like an octopus' tentacles.
"Inji? No. Not Inji." spoke another person, stepping out of the kitchen and looking at her with brown buttons for eyes, with the same, wretched smile.
The murderer Inji. The whore Inji. The liar Inji. The peeping Inji!
The button eyed men yelled at her, followed by a laughter, the manifestation of a manic frenzy. Her breath rushed to compete with her heart but her limbs were faster as she crawled out of the room, gasping and wheezing, her damp eyelashes fluttered as she tried to focus on the inhuman shapes on the faces of the men that were her guests.
Was it a nightmare? Or had she lost her mind?
"Leave me alone." She whispered.
"What? Oh, damn. Inji! What are you doing here, you're supposed to be resting!" Jani protested, his eyes widening and face reddening in embarrassment.
How could she just waltz into the living room on her hands and knees, looking like a rat out of gutter in front of their guest?
She had tendencies to do things normal people wouldn't do but this was beyond acceptable.
His eyes were gaping at her, wide and deep as an abyss and with his each stop forward, Inji's pinned herself to the wall by the door to that cramped, dirty room her sanity had been imprisoned to.
"Hey, what's wrong? Are you okay?" Jani reached for her as her hands rose and jerked the risk of closeness away.
In her mind, the button eyed men were laughing and throwing her long tentacle limbs towards her, to pull her in toy with her and rip her apart.
The fever combined with flood of memories of the brutal art of the envelope was starting to cloud her senses, her eyes were yellow and her pupils were glazed, as she looked here and there. Where do you run away inside your own head?
"She has a fever." Mr. Gunn spoke, pushing the raincoat off himself in a simple motion and moved forward.
Thunder blared once again, his shadow cornered Inji against the wall and her heart burst through her mouth in a pained scream which was an echo louder than that of the storm.
"Ah, god! Quiet, will you?" Jani followed the other's lead and grabbed her by her arm, the blistering brush of her skin made him hiss. Fever or not, this was hysteria, he thought with his glaring eyes.
She was burning through her clothes, her breath was a touch of hellfire but worse was her mind. She lost her voice to the loud ringing in her head and heat rushed to her brain, melting away her thoughts and forced her into slumber of nothing but warmth.
Her head fell against Mr. Gunn's chest, her pale was face a glimpse of the grey sky flashing in his eyes with each stroke of thunder on the canvas of the atmosphere.
He could only stare at her, gripped by his manic curiosity. For sickness and panic suited this face more than he had expected.
Or perhaps Inji's afraid mind had imagined his thoughts to be when she woke up again.
The warmth of the afternoon sun against Inji's skin was a reality but she was being scorched by a beast called realization that breathed the fire into her thoughts that she may have invited something more vile than her sins.
A monster or a mirage? Of the hatred that she bore for the world but could not wield.
"You're awake?" spoke the voice she had never imagined to hear and felt as familiar as her own skin. The voice of the monster, or simply, Mr. Gunn.
"She never sleeps, ghost of a kind." Jani chirped in from a distance.
By the direction and the echo, Inji figured he was in the kitchen and slicing something as the knife made sounds like it was cutting through the air.
She did not bother to move, her eyes remained closed like her heart and her lips followed.
Mr. Gunn smiled as if she could see him. The smile he perfected throughout the one hour and forty three minutes she was sleeping, to attract her sympathy but in vain.
Was she the kind to idle between faith and disbelief?
His grey scale had been missing for a long time anyways.
The weight of his body made the floor tremor as he moved, the rustle of his clothes followed Inji's hearing like a ghost chasing the dark. It was wooden and old, the floor and her attention.
She felt his breath inching closer, her own quickening. Was he a reality? Or a hallucination? Or maybe both? After all, everything was inside her head.
"You saw it, didn't you? The envelope?"
TO BE CONTINUED…