NaNo - the new story, Chapter One

[smeddley]

Chapter One
A completely normal, ordinary morning takes a swift left turn towards bizarre right after breakfast.

Getting out of bed in the morning is the single greatest feat I accomplish most days. This is not to say my days are easy - it's more a commentary on how hard it is to get myself out from under the covers. It's amazing the rationalizations your brain can make at 6 am. Things that usually seem vitally important, like showering and brushing your teeth, can be rationalized away. I mean, I showered yesterday, and brushed my teeth before I went to bed. I can just wet my hair down and the coffee will certainly cover the morning breath, right? And what's the big deal about being exactly on time to work? It's not like it's ever won me an employee of the year award, or anything like that. I'm not even sure it's responsible for my continued employment. I think that has a lot more to do with the fact that I know where all the bodies are buried. And I don't mean that figuratively.

This particular Monday morning I weighed the merits of calling in sick versus the chances that they'll believe I'm sick on a Monday. I was a bit congested, thanks to some dehydration and the onset of allergy season. I could probably rustle up a decent sounding cough, and no one likes a coughing employee. But then, it is a Monday. And even though, statistically speaking, it would be perfectly normal to take twenty percent of your sick days on a Monday, no one seems to. I haven't called in on a Monday since 1997. Even when I do have a fever, or am puking up my spleen, I drag myself in on Mondays. It's the unwritten rule of business. Still, this might be the time to break out of the mold. I really, really, really did not want to go to work today.

The alarm bleated again and I smacked the snooze button. It's now 6:30, and I needed to be half and hour away in half an hour. Chances of being on time were dwindling rapidly. Chances of showing up at all, though, were rising. I'd finally completed my usual half-hour debate with myself and managed (barely) to convince myself it's in my own best interest to get out of bed. My last-ditch effort on behalf of my laziness was the extreme crazy thought that my subconscious was trying to save my life. You know, like the people who miss their exit to the highway and curse their bad luck and end up late to work, only to find out that if they had made it onto the highway, they'd have been smack dab in the middle of a twenty-car pileup and probably would have burned to death? The only problem is that my mind tells me this every morning, and every morning I make it in to work un-singed. Plus, you know, the whole 'not believing in psychic predictions' thing. Even if one day it does come true, and I end up flame-broiled, it's not like it was a one-off feeling. I couldn't even really tell myself 'I told you so'. Even if, you know, I could tell my own dead self anything...

Before my train of thought got any more weird and depressing, I tossed back the covers and lazily stretched, then padded into the bathroom. The countertop is a cluttered mess of bottles and hair clips and... I'm not sure I want to know what that is. My brain made one last effort to get my body back into bed by promising that if I call in sick I can spend all day cleaning. It's a futile attempt, and I know it. If I call in sick I'll spend all day in bed eating ice cream and watching TV. Which, come to think of it, is a more compelling argument than cleaning. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and scowled. I look like crap. I looked back at the bed. It looks warm and cozy. I looked back at the mirror.

"You've lost the battle," I told my reflection. "The only thing to do now is admit it to yourself."

With a resigned sigh I walked over to the phone and made the call. I dredged up as much phlegm as I could, and threw in a few chest-deep coughs for good measure. And, of course, the coup de grace of 'and I can *cough* come in if you *hack* really need me to. *cough cough* Just give me a call if you *hack* need me...' which trailed off weakly as I hung up the phone, just as I started another bone-jarring coughing spasm. It's an art form, I tell you. I'm willing to be that when Jason plays that message he'll make a face of disgust and wipe the answering machine down with an antibacterial wipe. As if germs could travel through the phone. But at least I'll probably get an undisturbed day out of his irrational quirks.

I looked around the room after I've set the phone down. Now that it's done, I'm wide awake. And a little bit crappy feeling. That's the problem with acting sick. In order to put on a believable performance, you have to believe you are sick. And when you do that, I'm convinced you actually make yourself a little bit sick. I considered the bed again. I know if I lay down I'll fall asleep, that this awake feeling is very fleeting and temporary. I could also feel the beginning of a headache. A combination of dehydration and a lack of caffeine starting to take the inevitable toll.

With one last, longing look at the bed I headed down to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. I brewed a pot and had a cup as I ate a bowl of cereal, flipping aimlessly through the television channels. There's only news on this early, and I flipped past scenes of murder, car accidents, murder, building explosion, murder, house fire, murder, car accident, before turning the television off in disgust. Something about those scenes keeps flickering in my mind, something familiar... but I can't put my finger on it, so I poured myself another cup of coffee, turned off the pot, and headed back upstairs. The momentary awake feeling was fading, and I'm more than willing to concede productivity and wallow in laziness for the day. Isn't that what 'mental health care' days are all about, anyway?

I chugged half the cup of coffee and snuggled down under the covers. With my tummy full and caffeine once again coursing through my veins, I fell asleep quickly. But it's a fitful sleep. Images of fire keep racing around my head. Snippets of overheard conversations at work mingle with images of clients and business meeting. And it all keeps coming back to the fire. Explosions. That news broadcast... As I struggled awake, I could feel the pieces of the puzzle slipping away. It was right on the tip of my brain, I was about to figure it out, but I couldn't hold on.

Then there was a pounding on the door, and it all snapped into place. The building the exploded, the one on the news this morning, that was the office. The house that was on fire, that was Jason's house. And the murder victim... I never saw a name, but the location was very near the house of a recent client. It wasn't all a coincidence, and neither was that pounding on my door. They'd know I wasn't in the office this morning, my car was still in my garage. It's not as if I could walk to work. I could walk to the bus station, though, if I could get out of the house undetected.

The deadbolt on the front door flipping open crushed any hope I had of that. I slid soundlessly out of bed and tip-toed over to my closet. Heart hammering, I realized hiding would be my only chance, and only if they didn't torch this house, too. The thought of being burned alive was terrifying, but so was staying out in the open to face whatever was going to come up those stairs. I crawled along the bottom of the closet until I found the little hatch that led to the small attic space. It wasn't masterfully concealed - you'd see it if you really looked for it - but it was my best hope. I huddled in the cold, unfinished space and looked through the vent to the rising sun. It was late November, and the sun was just making a full appearance. It was also really freaking cold. I was basically standing outside in my pajamas. Good thing I'd worn a set of long-sleeved pant pajamas, or the chattering of my teeth would probably have given away my position. As it was, I kept it down to violent shivers. I slid the panel open a crack and reached out and snagged a pair of socks that were lying crumpled on the closet floor. Then I also grabbed a sweatshirt. I was about to reach back out when I heard the voiced coming towards the bedroom. I shut the panel as quickly and quietly as I thought I could, then hurriedly slid into the sweatshirt and slipped the socks on. It wasn't comfortable, but it was better than it had been. I hugged my knees to my chest and listened intently to the snatches of conversation.

"...the place looks ... it's been tossed already, boss," a deep voice said.

"Who... gotten here before us?" a familiar voice replied.

My breath caught in my throat at the sound of that voice. It was Mark, the new construction manager Jason had hired a month ago. This is where I'd like to say I'd had a bad feeling about him, or that I knew all along he was a bad seed, but it wouldn't be true. Sure, I didn't like him, but I chalked it up to him being another run-of-the-mill macho construction creep. The kind that treated woman like crap and expected them to thank him for it. I certainly didn't see him as the 'burn the house down' loony. But then, maybe he wasn't here to kill me. I was jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was here to try to protect me, because Jason sent him after the fires.

"Maybe Jason's already been here and grabbed her," the deeper voice said. "The coffee pot downstairs is cold, she could have left hours ago. I don't see a suitcase, and this place certainly looks like it's either been searched or someone packed in a hurry."

So much for that theory, I though, and the voices became clearer. The sounds of them digging through the closet made me hold my breath. Please don't see the little door, please don't see it, I chanted in my head.

"You're probably right. I don't think he ever told her anything important, though, so I don't see why he'd come and get her." Mark's voice took on an even more oily quality. "Unless he was banging her. Maybe he just took her along for a little sport."

The voices started to trail off as the men wandered out of the bedroom. I could here them laughing, and a few snippets of conversation. "Mexico... check the airport... catch the bastard..." I heard the front door close, and I scrambled over to the vent. I was glad that it overlooked the driveway, and I could clearly see the two men getting into the car and driving away. They hadn't set fire to the house, and they thought I was already gone. So, basically, I could just hole up in my house until I found out what was going on. I crept out of the closet and was just about to stand up when I realized something was wrong. The curtains were all wide open. Staying close to the floor, I crept out into the hallway and down the stairs. All the curtains were open on that floor, too. Obviously, they were going to keep an eye on the house and see if I came back. Great. At least my bathroom didn't have a window. I crawled into the bathroom and curled up on the plush rug, glad I'd splurged on it. I felt exhausted, but was no where near being able to fall asleep. What was I supposed to do now? I rolled over on my back and looked up at the ceiling. If I was going to stay in the house I'd have to make some preparations for the evening. They were probably watching from a distance, and as long as it was bright and sunny out they wouldn't be able to see me unless I got very close to the windows.

I crawled out of the bathroom and opened up the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, pulling out the extra blankets and pillows. I dragged those over to the closet and shoved the shoes out of the way, forming a comfortable nest. Then I crept down to the kitchen and gathered up a bunch of food (okay, mostly cans of soda, crackers, and pop-tarts, because I needed things that wouldn't go bad) which I stuck at the other end of the closet. Last, but not least, I grabbed my hand-held television, a stack of books, and my knitting project and crawled back into the closet. I tuned the television to the local news station and waited until they showed the story on the exploding building and house fire.

They didn't have much in the way of information. It seemed they hadn't even made the link that the person who owned the house was the same as the person who ran the company. Not surprising, since Jason had set up everything to run through several dummy corporations. This is a wise move when you're dealing in a business that is not strictly - okay, not remotely - legal. For now all they could say is they had no leads but investigators were looking into it, blah, blah, blah. I switched off the set and picked up the book on the top of the stack. It held my interest for all of two pages before I found myself once again staring off into space, mind racing. Mark was sort of right when he said Jason never told me anything important, but he was wrong in assuming that meant I didn't know anything at all. I was grateful for his erroneous leap in logic, though, since it was probably what was keeping me alive. If he'd thought I had information, he'd have certainly torched the house.

What I did know was that Jason's construction business was only part of the company. A small part. From what I'd been able to piece together, the company also dabbled in money laundering, illegal gambling dens and prostitution houses, and as a general disposal service. It was the last that was the source of some friction lately, as one of the things that was supposed to have been 'disposed' of had surfaced. Not, I have to admit, that it was Jason's fault. It was a freak sinkhole that had ruptured that house's basement slab and exposed the bones. On the up side, the company that had constructed that house had been a spin-off of the main corporation, with no financial ties (I believe, at the time, it was a charitable tax shelter for some freshly laundered money), so the feds still weren't on to him. They hadn't even identified the body, but the people who'd paid him to dispose of it knew. And they were a little angry that there might even be the slightest chance of its identity being discovered, even some 30-odd years later.

Now, of course, Jason has much better methods of disposing of bodies, but back then the old 'buried in concrete' was a classic. They couldn't afford the fancy machines that could efficiently reduce a corpse to dust. But over the years, as business and profits grew, they found better and better ways of disposing of things... and more importantly, they also had legitimate uses for all of their equipment. Nothing screams 'I'm getting rid of a body' more that an apartment dweller renting a chipper-shredder. But a landscaping company that owns one, well, no one looks twice. And once they'd found the perfect company front for the freeze-drying and sonic equipment, they were able to reduce a corpse to nothing but a pile of dust with no visible evidence (and no smoke to explain, as is the case with incinerators, plus the lack of 'surprise inspections' from the air quality people - there was a story once...).

I'd been very careful never to write any of my observations down. No web site, no scrap of paper was safe enough when you're dealing with information that could cost you your life. I waffled with the double-edged sword that was 'tell no one, and if you die, there are no clues' and the 'telling someone could cause your death' and decided to come down on the side of ignorant, ditzy broad. No one suspected I knew anything, and that was fine with me. And I kept all of my information stored in my noggin. Neatly filed away in the 'need to know' section. My faked hearing loss and the perception that I barely knew how to operate a computer helped a lot, too. The truth was I had annoyingly acute hearing, but a lack of attention. And once people started to believe the fact that I had to say 'huh?' whenever they spoke to me was due to me not being able to hear them, I just rolled with it. Plausible deniability, and the number of times I was able to say, 'did I hear what?' made up for people talking loudly and slowly.

I rested my head against the closet wall and picked up my knitting. There was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on a book right now, even though escape would be welcome. I needed to formulate a plan to get myself out of this mess. First, though, I needed to find out if Jason was still alive. That bit of information would make a world of difference. He was the only one I felt any loyalty to, and if he was gone I'd have no problem spilling everything I knew about the company. Okay, I'd have a little bit of a problem, because I really wasn't sure the feds could protect me. But all in all it was probably a better bet than trying to make a go of it on my own. And if I could manage to leave the country, I might actually feel somewhat safe.

I spent the rest of the afternoon alternately musing about what country I'd like to move to and watching the television to see if there was any news. As the sun set, I turned off all the lights and laid there in the darkness, listening for any sound that meant I had to hide. every creak of the house made me jump, and once, as I was crawling to the bathroom, I saw a beam of light sweep across the front of the house. I froze, suddenly realizing there was one thing I didn't think of - what if they had planted cameras in the house? Certainly they'd seen me crawling about, then, and knew I was here. What were they waiting for? I tried to placate myself by saying they weren't in the house long enough to set up anything but the most obvious cameras, and I hadn't seen anything. Nothing looked out of place, and there were no new object that might be hiding a nanny cam.

Still, I crawled back into the cold attic space, pulling my blankets with me, before I fell asleep.

Comments

[icecat.livejournal.com]

I really like that - I wanna see Chapter 2!!

[smeddley.livejournal.com]

It'll be up either later today (if I write more) or tomorrow after work (I have a seminar all tomorrow and won't be at a keyboard at all - on the up side, it works out well that LJ is going to be down for four hours that day!).

I do warn you, it's getting weirder and weirder, and as time gets shorter goodness knows what will happen... O.o

[revoked-soul.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm intrigued. Bring on Chapter 2!