Secrets 6

Chapter 6: Shells

The water had gotten cold long time ago, and I still couldn’t move. I was basically in a catatonic state, and all I could do was just stare at the dead body on my shiny white bathroom floor, surrounded by its own blood. Fifteen minutes ago that dead body used to be Danny Madison, a friend of mine - not a close friend, and in fact not really a friend of mine at all - but I had known him..or at least I thought I had known him. 

Blood kept creeping up in all directions, inching closer and closer to the bathtub full of cold water which I sat in, as if it were coming for me. As I watched the blood make its way closer to me, all I could think was: “This is the kind of shit that happens in movies and those weird criminal law shows on TV, but not in real life. Nobody really comes into your bathroom unannounced like Danny did, pull out a gun, point it at you, turn it on themselves and and shoot himself in the head. 

That doesn’t happen in real life...” I kept thinking about that over and over as I looked at Danny’s broken face, which reminded me of a cracked egg with all its yolk - with all its essence, everything that had made it an egg, except for the shell, destroyed. Everything that had made Danny was gone, and all that was left was a broken, bloody shell, an image that would live in my mind for the rest of my life. 

My eyes drifted over to the gun in Danny’s left hand. His fingers were still gripped tightly on the weapon. It was a small black gun, shiny. It looked like it had never been used before until just fifteen minutes ago. But something inside of me told me that gun had been used before to end someone’s life. I wondered whose...

Somewhere, between the ringing buzzing in my ears, I heard a noise coming from downstairs. If I had listened to the noise the first time I heard it, when I was underwater thinking about how Patrick had fucked me raw, maybe I could’ve been more ready for what was going to happen. Maybe I could’ve stopped it. 

I continued to just stare at the dead body on the now crimson bathroom floor, when someone appeared in the doorway. The man was covered in shadows mostly, so I couldn’t see his face directly. I wasn’t startled to see the man in the doorway, I was concentrating on Danny’s dead form on the floor. His blood had made its way all the way to the bathtub now, and if I were to get out of the bathtub, I would have to step in it...

“Sean, what the fuck happened here?” The voice sounded familiar but too far away. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t allow me to hear it so clearly. The tall man moved into the light and I saw that it was Patrick. He had come back. And he looked different somehow. My vision was kind of hazy and weird at that point, so it looked like he was walking diagonally toward me. I don’t remember opening my mouth but I remember the words coming out. “Don’t step in the blood.” And then suddenly, the ringing in my ears just stopped completely. But my vision was still hazy. I still couldn’t see Patrick as clearly as I wanted to.

Patrick stopped where he stood. He looked down. He saw Danny’s shell on the floor. The tip of Patrick’s black shoes were nearly touching the pool of blood that separated us from each other. I was starting to get a really bad headache that got worse and worse by the second. 

“Sean, what happened here?” Patrick asked.

It was a stupid question. All Patrick had to do was look down to see what happened. The only smart question he could’ve asked me in that situation was “Why did this happen?” But even if he had asked that question, I really wouldn’t have been able to tell him. All of this was very strange, disturbing, and surreal. 

When I looked at the thing that used to be Danny, I saw it very clearly, I saw the blood, the bleeding eyes and the open mouth, but when I looked at Patrick, it was like looking at a hologram; he seemed to fade in and out, almost as if he was the one that didn’t exist instead of dead Danny on the floor. Again I asked myself the question: “How can this happen in real life?”

I watched Patrick bend down and examine Danny’s body. I don’t know why he was doing that. It wasn’t like he was gonna be able to save him or anything. It was beyond too late for that to happen. By that time, Danny was already gone to wherever someone goes when they die - if they even go anywhere. I didn’t really think about Danny going anywhere in terms of heaven or hell, but wherever he was, it wasn’t here. He wasn’t here anymore. 

Patrick snatched the gun roughly from Danny’s dead hand. He snatched it away as though he were taking back something that belonged to him...I saw Patrick very clearly at that point... “Sean, get out of that bathtub,” Patrick ordered. He sounded very different, very cold and irritated, like I had done something wrong. Patrick wouldn’t even look at me; he was so busy staring at Danny’s dead body on the floor that I think that he forgot that I was even there. 

I wanted to tell Patrick that he should go and call the police or the ambulance, or whoever you call when something like this happened...I wanted to say that we can’t just sit here and look at...we had to do something. But for some reason, the words wouldn’t come out the way I thought them in my head. 

“Sean, get out of the bathtub and put some clothes on,” Patrick told me again, much more angry the second time. 

I suddenly realized I was naked and sitting in a tub of cold water. “I need a towel,” I told him. 

Patrick looked me directly in the eyes, a very strange look as if he wished I wasn’t in the same room with him. He grabbed two heavy towels from the towel rack next to him. One of them he used to place on the floor, where Danny’s blood had collected and the other one for me. “Here,” Patrick, “get out and dry off.” I stood up, cold and naked, almost ashamed for Patrick to see me naked, even though it had been less than forty-five minutes since he last saw me naked. I felt embarrassed in front of him, being naked. 

I took the towel and away from him and wrapped it around my waist. Slowly I stepped out of the bathtub, onto the towel that covered some of Danny’s blood. “We gotta call the police,” I told Patrick. My headache had not gone away and grew more and more intense by the second. It felt like any moment I was going to black out. But I had to stay awake. 

Patrick didn’t say anything. He held that gun as though it were a part of his hand. “Go downstairs,” he told me. “Go downstairs and call the police. Tell them what happened.”

I wanted to do what Patrick asked me to do, but when I saw Danny’s dead body on the floor, I froze again. “I can’t...” I said to Patrick.

Patrick stepped over Danny’s dead body, just like someone would step over a dead pigeon in the middle of the street, and grabbed me roughly by the shoulders. “Sean I need you to listen to me. I know you’re scared, but I need you to go downstairs for a while.” It was all weird. None of it made sense to me. 

Patrick was acting too normal, and we was still holding that gun. He was touching me, and he still had that gun in his hand, the gun Danny had used to splatter his brain all over the bathroom floor. Why was he touching me with that gun? I shuddered and came to life again. Just a little. I could move a little bit. Patrick started to look hazy to me again.

I didn’t step over Danny’s body, I stepped around it, avoiding the pool of blood as much as possible. Even though a drop of it didn’t touch me, I felt like somehow I was covered with his blood. I ambled out of the brightly-lit bathroom, into the dark hallway, and I felt like I had just stepped into a dream. It seemed like the hallway stretched on and on forever, and when I got to the staircase and started to go down, it felt like I was going down a flight of a million steps. 

I made my way into the living room and searched around for the cordless phone. I found it on the couch, next to an old issue of TV Guide. I picked up the phone and it felt strange in my hand, like it wasn’t really real. Clicking the ‘talk’ button, I started to press ‘9’ but my finger stopped. Everything around me started to get darker by the second. It felt like all the energy had left my body. My knees gave away and I dropped to the floor. Everything went dark.