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Chapter Thirty

Friday September 19, 2014

5:49pm

"Happy New year!! :)"

"Hi! Can you call sometime? I really wanna talk"

"Please just say if you're getting my messages..."

"Dad said he tried calling already...i hope you're doing okay...love you and miss you...thinking about you today...please call or visit soon."

The words hung in death-coated eyes.

Tyson Marshall Spriggs, twenty-four years old, sat slouched 'gainst the back of an office chair in a white, windowless room. A lonely room, empty but for aged automotive digest stacked 'gainst one wall, but for himself and the chair he filled, and also for the stained desk from which a dead laptop leered and a pump-capped bottle of lotion with a thick strand of white drooling from its nozzle stood.

An old voice, scorning:

"--pathetic piece of shit--"

Dirty, gray sleeves dangled over the sides of the office chair. Coveralls with the brass zipper drawn open all the way so that a glistening canine member could air before making its gradual withdrawal. Tyson held his phone in his lap just beyond his genitals, scrolled through the unanswered messages whilst the room's stale air turned the carpet and the fur of his abdomen bristly. Several cloudy spots hardened on the desk surface.

That old voice, again:

"Don't you get how fucked up this is?"

No arguments occurred to Tyson. He let the phone fall from his fingers while the mess continue to dry.

* * *

7:25pm

"How about you just enjoy our walk."

The grunt snapped Anessa's eyes from the screen in her paws. A screen she guiltily returned to a pocket of her shorts before looking back to the sidewalk stretching ahead of them. They: her father and herself out on one of their walks. They walked whenever she was back from school. Their route was two and three-quarters miles--she'd looked it up one night--through the park after supper. This one was gray and cool and a little sad.

"I just wish he'd say something back," sighed Anessa--a little sad. A little frustrated.

She thought it would never pass, the sadness of losing her only sister. Horrible, having to realize and process such a thing at such an age. And not only her sister's suicide, but her mother's disappearance. Her mother, not once to return her calls after Bella's passing. Not even to attend the funeral. Not to be seen or heard from again, so far as she knew. More than five years had already passed since she had heard her mother's voice. In the first few she had clung to the hope that her mother would come back, that the divorce would turn out to have been just another episode in her parents' unpredictable relationship, but those hopes had gone the way of time. But she still loved her mother--migraines, bad temper, mean tongue and all--and would welcome her back into her life without hesitation. But from that long, heavy sadness, and with the helping paws of friends and family, Anessa had clawed herself and grown strong. Now she kept her grief stowed away in a little compartment, dressed it with love and nostalgia and tucked it away for days such as this.

Frustrated. For reasons unknown, her brother wasn't answering her calls. Would read but not reply to her texts. He hadn't shown up for Christmas, nor the Fourth of July, nor any day since. She missed him, even though his presence was often silent and oppressive, and she found it unfair. She already had enough family to miss.

Her father shook his head beside her, making her only more frustrated.

"We have to do something, Dad!" Anessa urged.

* * *

9:59pm

The living room of the apartment was nearly as white as the makeshift office, though not nearly so empty. The centerpieces: a sofa covered in loose fur and dark stains, a coffee table dressed in a glass-and-aluminum skin. Empty bottles and cans spilt over the table, lay about the carpet. Glass of the windows and the patio door they shouldered stood black against the wall. A television flickered beneath one window, but its radiance made no change upon the faceless shepherd grooved into the sofa.

Tyson brought a bottle in his left paw to his lips, pulled a heavy gulp.

The weekend lay before him, vast.

He took another gulp and let the bottle fall to the floor to drip its remnants.

* * *

Its exterior was long and rather handsome--grayscale brickwork, white vinyl and dark shingling. Many of the windows along its hull glowed with muted light while white orbs sitting upon black posts cast a sharper light over the property's front walk. A round awning capped a single door at the front of the apartment building, and beyond this door stood another door and a pretty little vulpine walking in the opposite direction.

"Thank you!"

"No problem," smiled the fox, holding a paw back on the second door.

Anessa followed a long and plain corridor to its conclusion and faced the final door on the left. Brass numbers beside it declared it apartment 109, and pushing an ear against the white door, Anessa could hear muffled voices, what sounded like a television's drawl on the other side.

* * *

A short, soft succession of knocks--

Tyson jerked his head 'round, stared at the door from whence the interruption to his meditation had sounded. His eyes narrowed. Unusual, very. He waited, thought that perhaps the knock had come to a neighbor's door, and he held his breath, focusing on making not the slightest sound. They would go away. Whoever they were.

Another set of knocks.

Who? The owners? Neighbors? Had anyone knocked at his door since he had moved in? His father had shown up once or twice in the recent months, buzzed from the entryway. Not like Tyson was going to let him in. Not a chance. Not with all that had happened with Bella, the black shepherd--

"Ty."

Tyson grew further still, inanimate aside from his accelerating pulse. Anessa. It was Anessa. He stiffened as more questions raced. How had Anessa made it inside? A neighbor, it must have been. What was she doing there?

"I know you're in there," said Anessa. "Let me in."

A terrible idea, Tyson knew, and yet he glided over the carpet in spectral silence, pressed his back beside the door frame and listened. He wanted to fling the door open. Wanted to very much.

"I won't stay for long." Pleading, a sense of desperation was creeping into Anessa's voice. "Please, I just want to see you!"

And, as another article worked through his mind, Tyson's claws and muzzle tightened--a snarl shook loose from deep in his throat, and he reached for the deadbolt. He hadn't thought the words in years.

Fuck it.

* * *

The door opened, and he was right there.

His chestnut eyes watched her, his brow drawn down and in. His muzzle was firm and offered no greeting. Only the tickle of alcohol, a dry musk and, beneath those, his natural olfactory fingerprint left him. The same odors led into the apartment beyond his limp tail and his filthy, knotted fur. He was shirtless, depleted, and had anyone else answered their door in such a fashion, Anessa surely would have ran.

She leapt at the brother she hadn't seen in months. Encircled him far too easily in her arms. She said nothing either, couldn't at first. Sought his fur, wiping her face into Tyson's neck. She had always been the emotional one in the family. She eased back, or at least attempted to. When had he worked his arms around her?

Tiredly, she smiled and looked up.

"Aren't you going to let me in?"

* * *

She gazed up at him, eyes glossy and naive like he remembered them. Her bosom softly pressed against him and was kept by a little sleeveless top.

He had a better look at her inside of the apartment as he passed her a glass of water. The clean, defined cut of her muzzle. The model set of her ears. There was a gentle, outward curve from her ribs to her hips. Rounded hips stuck in little blue-denim shorts with her tailing wagging out the back.

"Dad and I were gonna watch a game tonight," she said, filling an end of the sofa and fixing her eyes upon the television.

Tyson watched as she sipped at her glass, then, figuring she would like somewhere to set her drink, he swept an arm across the coffee table so that bottles and cans scraped against the table surface and rained over the edge landing noisily upon one another. The sound filled the room, died against the walls and gave to a lengthy silence. Tyson sat back in the sofa, slapping his gaze onto the television.

"Are you mad that I came over?" Anessa quietly asked.

"No."

"You're still working at the same car place?"

"Yeah."

"Do you still drive a lot?"

"No."

"Have you been eating well?"

Silence.

* * *

10:52pm

"Crap!" squawked Anessa, looking at her phone. "I gotta get back home!" She didn't really have to. She felt plenty awake. Had nothing to tend to.

She jumped up from the sofa, wary of the cans and bottles littering the floor, and turned to her brother who stiffly rose to shadow her to the door. She turned back to face him in the hall.

"You better reply next time I text you," she demanded.

"Sure," was the response--stiff, direct.

"And you should go visit Dad sometime . . . He really misses you."

That one didn't get a response.

"I love you, Ty. Take care of yourself."

She started down the hall. Musk and booze softened their grip on her powerful nose.

Unexpectedly, her brother's voice: "I love you too." And the door of apartment 109 slammed shut.

For a moment, Anessa looked back in surprise.

The little Volkswagen Rabbit rolled down the highway, leaving behind it the lights of Hollins--the big city of northern Indiana. Population of a quarter-million. A two-hour drive. Anessa sighed quietly to herself. She couldn't help but realize she now carried the scent of her brother's apartment in her fur. Glass and aluminum intermingling echoed in her ears. She was glad to be out of there. Away from the disarray and the uncomfortable silence, those cold eyes.

A twist of guilt occurred to her. No matter how withered and grungy and pitiful her brother chose to live, he was alive. Later, upon reaching the driveway to the Sandy house, Anessa would whisper a hopeful little prayer for her brother and find a new message on her phone.

"I want to see you again."