When The Time Comes

chapter 22; Omar

When we get back to street, Lib doesn't have to use her bobby pin. The door is unlocked and I know it's the right house because it's got the same door number and colors as the picture I got from the dude on the dark web. Or the regular web. I'm not exactly sure how he got the data or why he reached out to me on reddit for the fair price of a hundred dollars. I'm not even sure if I got played or not and this could all have been done fairly easily on a regular AI website that I'm just too old to know anything about.

But it doesn't matter.

I've got a good feeling about this. The house is practically empty. There's a single sofa in the living room, facing the window. I picture Stewart sitting on it, watching us break into his house next door. I wonder what he thought about as we wasted our time. Our precious time.

"What's that smell?" Liberty's fingers clench the bridge of her nose.

"Smells like sewage," I look at her from the window.

"That's sewage?" she retorts while grimacing.

"We should check upstairs," I say, walking past her and out of the room.

We silently make our way to the floor above. I expect to see Stewart as I turn the corner. What would I ask him first?. Maybe how all of this is even possible. Or why he chose to hide. Paranoid excitement bubbles in my throat like acid.

We take each of the rooms, searching them thoroughly. There's a mattress on the floor but no bedframe here. The window is draped with a makeshift curtain, pegged by forcing the fabric through nails on the wall. It hangs lowly, the blue light of night entering through the gap. Beside the mattress is a tall glass bottle with a cork. The edge of the bedsheet is damp from where water spilled from the bottle. He must still be close if it's wet.

"Omar," Liberty's voice echoing through the shadowy parts of the house reminds me to hold my sleeve over my nose. I'd forgotten about the smell.

"What?" I ask, coming out of Stewart's bedroom.

Liberty points at a door opposite us. When we open it, there are stairs leading into the attic when foul odor breezes past us. I pause as the nauseating feeling dissipates. Being the first to walk upstairs, I feel overwhelmed with the rotten stench coming from the attic. It gets stronger. Strong enough that both my sleeves are around my nose and mouth.

Liberty turns her phone's flashlight on. When the light stops moving, it's easy to make out the shape of a man in the corner. His legs are spread out, partially sitting up against the wall. I scan his body, capturing miniscule details for the small amount of time I have with him. The blue checked shirt, partially unbuttoned. The vest that's thin enough you can see clumps of his body hair through it. His bare feet, nails long and hardened. His arms on either side of him, laid like he was watching television on a couch. For a second, I imagine he is alive. That is until I meet his unmoving eyes.

This was the part where I ask Charles Stewart Jr. how he survived his Stag date. This was the part that we beat this. Liberty and me. Where we survive and go on to live our shitty average lives. But the gunshot wound on his forehead tells me a very different version of the same story. The one variable of this god damn plan that I didn't account for.

It takes a minute for me to fully grasp what has happened. I think it clicks much earlier for Liberty because she turns around, leaving me in darkness as thick as the dirt over a grave. The smell hits much worse in the dark. Something about your other senses kicking in harder when one goes. It smells so much worse now that I know what it is.

The rest of it happens like skipping parts of a movie. Liberty yanks me from where I'm rooted to the floor and I make it down the stairs without tripping over in the dark. Behind us, the attic door swings before ultimately coming to a close on its own. I assume she helps me make it to the ground floor because time is moving fast. The sound of our heavy footsteps echo in my ears a long time after we leave the property.