【 I. 】
A RABBIT'S GAME
TROUBLE WAS AN ANIMAL Wendall knew well. And like all animals it was amoral; blind to guilt; detached from morality. A fleshed machine to instinct. So, naturally it didn't mind the hunt. It didn't mind watching idly. Pressing its muzzle to the ground, with its hind legs arched, and teeth bared. Deciding only to pounce—only to strike—once the wound on his body was deep enough: too raw, too lethal to fight back. As if to make sure that he could watch as its jaws unhinged and aim for his throat.
And this night would be no different.
Trouble—as it stood before him today—had worn him down towards the later hours of the night. It was currently the reason why he was still stooped in the corner rigorously scraping mold off the wall, still short-staffed, and rather frightfully reaching a sobering realization that this whole business, this dingy clubhouse of his was just a few months away from being for closed for good.
It was also the reason that exactly seven minutes from now he would encounter another near-death experience.
Though supposing if Wendall knew—which he didn't—he wouldn't have particularly cared. It wasn't that he was heedless or stupid, although at times he could be. Because he always came out of them alive. Volatile, sure. But alive, nonetheless.
As far as he was concerned, whatever was in front of him was all that he needed to see. There was no point in looking beyond something that couldn't be watched. For psychics like himself he had no luck in that department and quite frankly didn't want to.
He preferred the cruelty of spontaneity.
That things will just happen. That things will just occur without your knowledge—inexplicably without reason—because it just happened to exist in that very particular instance. Arbitrary and baffling consequential little things that appeared through pure happenstance; things that didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of suffering.
Very few knew that Wendall Saleem Clarke, was not a man of fate. That he was perfectly content with what he was given: nifty parlor tricks and aura readings. None of the complications that came with the future. Perhaps he had the sensibility of a gambler, but he found that there was simplicity in chaos. In walking headfirst into disorder and miraculously coming out of it alive.
And that is why Wendall won't be afraid when he opens the door in seven minutes.
Not at first.
Because he's not thinking about girls like Joanie Moore.
Girls with lit cigarettes between their split bruised patterned lips painted with streaky mauve lipstick. Girls with chipped front teeth, chewing gum jostling around the hard squares of their jaws, and cavernous dimples that dragged their weight against the taut corners of their cheeks. He did not think of girls like that. Girls who could ruin your life with just a single knock of a door.
And certainly not girls with blood—the sort of blood you couldn't easily wash away—smeared on the open hearts of their palms.
But he's not thinking about her yet, or how much he will be thinking about her when she leaves. His momentary thoughts are focused on the ever-wavering present: the fuzzy mold on the wall that didn't seem to budge, the chocolatey-nutty smell emanating from the small kitchen down the hall, and the storm with its heavy rain rattling and raging and battering against the shuddering windowpanes outside.
