Crumbling

3

Quinn felt seconds tick by, each one putting a distance that was almost tangible between an innocent woman dead in her apartment and herself. Quinn had always been under the impression that time worked on reality the same way it did on memories. Time heals all wounds, a cliche that Quinn had clung to her entire life. She had spent the past several days thinking, meditating almost. A new calm had claimed her outwardly while inwardly a hurricane of emotions (particularly fear, anger, dread and grief) stormed and broiled within her.

Yes, time healed all wounds. A woman died in her apartment. Last Thursday, she was found by police after not appearing at work. She'd suffered multiple stab wounds, but what killed her was an elbow to the head which slammed her entire frame right into the wall of her bathroom, cracking tiles and shattering her skull. Time would dull these wounds and they will not matter.

Quinn sat on a bench, reading her book. She passed the time as best she could. She had prepped Ren as well as she could, but he wasn't stupid. He was probably smarter than she was, and he didn't need her fussing over him. So instead now she sat in the sun with a book trying to unwind.

Quinn wanted to unburden herself, to remove from herself this anxiety. But she could not. So instead she sat and suffered while anxiety gripped her heart and squeezed her lungs.

This afternoon was unlike most others. It was a holiday and the girls lazed around the house. They lounged on the sofas, half undressed and slumped in barstools in the kitchen, eating ramen noodles. Two of them, it looked like Rat (who was actually an odd transman stuck in this house of women) and Catherine lay up in the sun. Or, so it appeared from Quinn's vantage point. Others still lay across throw pillows on the living room floor, watching television.

Ren himself was hard to read. His emotions had mostly been masked. After the first night, after the hysterics, after having to essentially be carried upstairs to their room by Quinn, after having been then punched in the face by her and then again held in a close embrace, he'd hidden within himself. A typical reaction of Ren. He didn't leave their room on day one. He holed up in there. Quinn did, too after her excursion. Or, tried to, anyways. Ren's eyes tracked her every move. When she lay beside him, they bore into the back of her head. She had stood up and they followed her as she paced the room and settled on her as she stared out the window. They held fast to her as she quietly exited the room and remained on the door until she returned. Quinn found it intensely disturbing. She worried about Ren's mental stability and she worried that he'd have another breakdown or another fit of rage.

Quinn sat and read her book while Ren's eyes stared at a door in the center of the house from his bed. Quinn was outside, but she knew he must still be staring. She closed her book and walked into the house. It was starting to get hot out, the morning dew had evaporated. She was greeted by a bunch of screaming girls. Someone had stolen someone's car keys. Or rather, someone lost their car keys and was blaming the most unlikeable person in the house. Veronica, who sported rainbow bangs and a haughtiness that Quinn hated, was shoving her finger into Melvin's chest (who was only around because he was ill) accusing him of stealing her keys. Catherine did nothing to quell her fury and the other girls chimed in, adding that their things had been disappearing, too.

Quinn wasn't in the mood for this shit and she walked right up to Veronica (and the whining Melvin on verge of tears) and slapped her across the face. Quinn had never struck a girl before, at least not one that hadn't attacked her first, and everyone was silent for a beat. Then Quinn roared, she cursed and swore. Veronica was stunned but then got right up in Quinn's face, swearing and spitting. Quinn shoved her out of the way, which wasn't hard, she was tall but she was thin as a twig, and made her way to the crap table.

The crap table as it was called was once a really nice table in the dining room. However, the occupants of the house didn't like formal dinners, instead choosing to eat on the front steps or out on the porch or in their beds or sitting on a kitchen counter, and so the table was largely unused for meals. Instead, it served as a communal space for everyone to dumb all of their crap on their way upstairs to their rooms. This included (but was by no means limited to) purses, wallets, car keys, loose change, shoes, hats, phones, iPods, sweatshirts, makeup, homework and bookbags. "Did you look through this shit?" Quinn demanded. "Yes, I fucking looked through it!" keened Veronica. Quinn then swiped her arm across the table and everything on it crashed to the floor.

They'd attracted quite an audience at this point. Usually, Quinn wasn't this violent and instead just swore and yelled a lot but after the "epic bitch slap" most of the girls had come to watch. Kymme, too. Melvin had disappeared somewhere, maybe up to his room with Monique. It was hard to know, but he had no interest in Veronica's antics or Quinn's unchecked attack on her. "Why did you do that? My laptop!" someone yelled. Quinn commanded them to clean that up and that anything that was on the floor in an hour would be thrown away. It was something you'd do to a child, but it worked on the girls. They did. Quinn wasn't really sure what the goal she had in mind was, but she was pretty sure Veronica's keys were in there, then again, they might not be. She didn't really care one way or the other, but on some level recognized that she'd just made a bad situation worse. Melvin was probably crying in his room and Veronica had not found her keys and now she looked like a raving bitch.

But something had snapped inside of her. It felt good to be angry, not just at Veronica, but all of the trivial problems of her life. Of every life in that house aside from her own and Ren's and possibly now Kymmes. Quinn did not consider the girls to be real people. She had little respect for any of them. She saw them mostly as a group of people who didn't understand what sorrow was, of people who had yet to accomplish anything and perhaps just as importantly, yet to fail at anything. They were nonpeople with no experiences and she was sick of the idle chatter. She was tired of listening to them talk day in and day out about what so-and-so said to so-and-so and about how what's-her-face is such a whore and what program was on that evening and how it was such a pain ot get up early. She was listening to all of these things all the time while she lived with a man who had killed a woman simply because she vaguely resembled one he used to know.

All of the commotion had drawn Ren out of his room. In a T-shirt and sweats, he ghosted out of his room. He observed quietly what was happening. One of the younger girls, a blonde nammed McKenna, ran up to him. She excitedly told him what happened but halfway through realized he wasn't listening. The girls in the house all really liked Ren. She stood very close to him, looking up at him. He said something like "yes, I know, dear" and gently touched her shoulder. It was a dismissive gesture and McKenna looked confused but left him be.

He sought out Quinn and when he found her, standing in the laundry room doing nothing, just hiding it seemed, he touched her face and asked her what was wrong. Her eyes flickered for a moment and her face contorted. Oh, the audacity! How dare he! How could he ask such a thing? And then she saw the tenderness in his eyes and felt the affection in his voice. Now, Quinn was a proud woman. She didn't fall into his arms and let him hold her while she cried softly. Instead, she coldly said "nothing" and pushed past him. She would not accept this from him, but she wasn't going to attack him either.

There wasn't much for her to do at this point so she just went back to bed.