Roseanne
This is absurd. I'm absurd.
I'm sitting in the lobby of the Cunningham Inn, trying to focus on the same page on my e-reader that I've been stuck on for the last five minutes as I deliberate between making a run for it and staying.
What the fuck am I doing with my life?
This is dangerous.
And stupid.
Absurd.
But I can't seem to make myself leave.
My lungs fill with the scent of Pine-Sol and bad decisions as a deep, nervous sigh passes my lips. Giving up on my book, I sit back and take in the quiet lobby where my only company is a morose gray cat who glares at me from a leather chair next to the unlit fireplace. The room is dated but comfortable, with dark oak paneling and an ancient patterned carpet that was once burgundy. The antique furniture is mismatched, but polished and gleaming. A pair of taxidermied owls in mid-flight stand guard over the sun-bleached reproductions of Rodin paintings and heirloom railway and mining tools scattered across the walls.
I sigh again and check my watch. It's almost two in the morning and I should be tired, but I'm not. There was a lot of rushing around tonight, between slicing up Michael Northman's body and stuffing him in my freezer as I booked a flight out of Raleigh, to packing in a record thirty minutes, to renting a car for my arrival in West Virginia while Hyeri drove me to the airport. When I lamented that this whole escapade was a stupid idea, her response was: "Maybe, but you do need to get out and make more friends."
"I have a friend," I'd said. "You."
"You need more than one, Roseanne."
"But this particular friend? This random Lisa girl? ...Really?"
I can still hear the chiming cadence of Hyeri's giggle as she glanced over at my confusion with a gentle smile. "Having another friend who can understand you, the real you, is maybe not a bad thing," she said with a shrug, her grin untarnished by the scrutiny of my unwavering stare. "You haven't jumped from the moving vehicle. We're still heading to the airport. So yeah, I guess this random Lisa girl is your friend now."
Maybe I should have jumped from the car.
I groan as I slide further into the depths of my chair. "Her rationale didn't even make logical sense," I say to the cat as I replay that conversation with Hyeri, the feline glaring back at me with simmering, judgemental fury.
"Trying to consume its soul, Blackbird?"
I drop my e-reader as I startle, turning toward the source of the subtle Thai accent with a hand clasped to my heart. "Jesus Christ," I hiss as Lisa emerges from the shadows by the door with a smirk. My breath stops short when reality hits me that she's here, really here. Lisa looks exactly the same as she did a year ago. I might look a little better than our first encounter, having not spent the last few days in a disgusting cage as a body putrefied a few feet away. I'm not sure if she would care that much about my lack of makeup or knotted hair or chapped lips, considering she spent so much time staring at my tits. The memory makes me blush, and not out of embarrassment.
I swallow down a sudden burst of nerves. "Maybe I should consume the cat's soul. Mine just left my body."
"I figured that was how you acquired your beauty marks. Stealing souls."
"I see you're just as hilarious as the first time we met." I roll my eyes and move to pick up my e-reader but Lisa gets to it first. "Hand it over, pretty girl," I say as she gives me a magnetic grin that fills my senses and douses my worries with a different kind of anxiety. The straight scar through her lip seems to brighten as her smile turns rakish.
