FAÇADE, 6
The metal smell burns my eyes and nostrils, although I’m not one hundred percent positive I truly smell it.

The redheaded jogger asks, “I’m going to die from this, aren’t I? Because I couldn’t stop.” Soon the floor turns into a pond of her blood and floods like a basement after bad stop. The blood never quits flowing; instead, a current develops and crimson waves crash along the shores of the walls. 

I close my eyes and pretend I’m not drowning. 

When I open my eyes again, the redheaded jogger stands up on the bed, dead and as though her nerves jerked her upright for me to see her body drying and cracking apart. Her shell falls to the saturated sheets. Underneath she is an older woman with a prominent brow and chin. She keeps aging, keeps aging. 

“Mom?” I ask under my breath, spitting out some of her blood.

“Your mother’s dead, my dear,” she says. 

I shake my head, confused. “You’re her. You are dead.”
Like loose cargo against the side of a ship, my heart pounds against its cage as I spring upright in my bed. I check my chest for any blood or wounds. None. The redheaded jogger next to me is still beautiful, still young, and still alive. 

I sigh.

She cracks her eyelids and mumbles, “Is everything all right?”

Instead of answering at first, I lie back down. The redheaded jogger is ​
quick to sleep before I say, “Sure. Everything’s fine.” My eyes want to lock shut as I’m ravenous for sleep, but all I can do is quiver.


Long after the redheaded jogger leaves, I rush downstairs and barge into Ray’s room without knocking. The room is a mess on the side closest to the door and immaculate around his desk, where a Magnum lies next to a photograph. At the sound of the door slamming shut, Ray snatches both items and shoves them into the desk.

“Sure, man,” he says, “come right in.”

I plop on the recliner next to his desk. “It’s my house,” I remind him.

He says, “Guess you’re right.” There’s something distant about his tone. 

“You okay?”

Ray stays silent. He withdraws the photograph from his desk and stares. It’s a picture of him and his ex-wife Emily. Smart, beautiful in away only the word beautiful can describe, and too selfish to stick around a man with baggage, as she so eloquently told him before she disappeared. “I was thinking about what you said at the park,” he almost whispers. 

“Man, don’t listen to me. I’ve just been in a real funk lately.”

“I think you’re right, though. She waited around for a few months, but Emily just fucking took off. After Mom passed. And I can’t stop wondering why.”

“Whatever happened to her?” I ask.

“She just wanted to get away, I think,” Ray responds. “Maybe she was learning too much about me.”

“Forget her then. If someone really wanted to marry you, then they would’ve stayed with you no matter what, you know? You can’t let some bitch get the best of you.”
​“And this is coming from you?”

“Yeah, and I’m your best friend, Ray. You can’t get rid of your brother.”

“Tell me something about that redhead you had in your room last night,” Ray says. 

I might’ve muttered, “Point taken.”

Ray opens the drawer containing the gun. He holds the Magnum up, and I admire the gloss of craftsmanship. Man never developed a good tool to preserve life, because what it really wanted was a sure-shit way to end it. “I bought this back before she left,” Ray says. “Thought I might need it someday.”

“Don’t you dare,” I say.

“Don’t worry; it’s not for me.”

I give him a speculative stare. “You wanna know why I can’t –”

“– Don’t divulge your problems with me right now. I have enough of my own.”

“I just thought –”

“– I’m nothing. I’m fine.” Ray shakes as he picks up the photograph and turns it around again. This display of emotion is a bit much of Ray, and the rarity of the event captures me while my eyes ingest a story lost behind broken glass. “Just get out,” he says.

One arm forward, I try to provide what I known as comfort, but he slaps my hand away from his shoulder and says, “Just leave me alone right now.”

Though diffident, I walk over to the doorway. As I grip the handle, he asks, “Do you wanna go to the club tonight?”
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