Serialised novel:

Edvard Tusk without his face

[Part 13]

By Pablo D'stair

The man who exited the bathroom was a foot-and-a-half shorter than me, exactly as wide as the frame of the door (in fact had to slightly sway shoulders to step through) with a tightness to his physicality, almost paradoxical, seemed lithe, serpentine while at once giving the impression a solid, immobile block of shaped wood, no definition to his musculature, just a sense of stamped permanence.

I'd been standing, limp and mute, waiting since the shower had gone off, while the toilet was used - almost ten minutes, just stood there, bathroom door closed between he and I, sound of my breathing him blowing his nose in to some toilet tissue, giving flush another push - a bit surprised when the fellow came out to see he had put on pants, was holding an undershirt balled in one hand, giving me a casual smile as we met eyes for the first time. My gaze drifted to a precisely manicured area of hair on his chest, thick, almost like an applique - the rest of him hairless, freckled to the extent (the effect increased due to the steam in the air wafting behind him and out in to the room, proper, caught in the light in distinct tufts) that his skin seemed to be moving - and he was smiling wider as I corrected my gaze back to his eyes.

He pulled the undershirt on over his head, gave himself a glance in the mirror above the sink, mussing his hair in an adolescent kind of way, sniffling in dissatisfaction, then turned to me, crossing his arms, leaning back somewhat awkwardly, not tall enough to actually seat himself on the counter.

"Wrong room?" he said, uncrossing one arm, cleaning out an ear with the small finger of that hand, returning his arms crossed, a yawn he for a moment seemed to tense jaw to stifle, then gave up, mouth opening to the point of strain, vein on his left temple bubbling, deflating.

His tone was friendly - almost flirtatious - and for a moment I forgot my appearance, forgot the events I'd just been involved in.

Being back in my room - despite this interloper - gave an almost drunken sense of ease to me (forceful, as though my mind was insisting on normalcy and would do acrobatics to arrive at it) and I simply said, "It might be the other way around." I pointed to my bag, indicated the room key I still held, then, a shrug, gestured widely, head turning a loop of all directions.

The man sniffled, again, cleared his throat. "I was wondering about the bag and all, but, at the same time..." he trailed off, again friendly, as though I should be right with his train of thought, ready to nod my head in easy agreement, concede there was some way he could rightly be thought to understand the room was his, me to understand it wasn't mine.

The lack of words he let hang in the space between us broke the temporary inner calm I had developed, a dissonance beginning. Was I actually standing here, directly after experiencing what I had just experienced ("directly after killing a woman," the phrase, unsolicited, accompanied a blink of my eyes and then I winced down, smothering it as best I could, disbelieving it, hating the automatic of the words) entertaining even the slightest chance that this strange man was in my room on account of some simple accident, that his manner was natural, his presence something to discuss as an everyday quirk? Was I so outside of myself I was immediately reacting as though this was not, obviously, the perpetrator of whatever had happened to me?

It seemed so. Every instinct in me was to - not with guile, not to set a bait - show the man I was friendly to him, agreeable to his view of the world, that whatever he said it was, so to speak, it was, I fully amicable to agree to his version of reality.

"How did you get in here?" I asked, slap of regret, though I felt my mind convincing itself I'd managed to come off breezy, playfully quizzical if anything.

"Same as anyone. Same as you, I guess."

He was playing. It was a stage play. His delivery was amateur production level, all the wrong emphasis, like he was over-acting the spooky humor of the dialogue, teenager performing for teachers and parents."Shall we call someone?" he asked, "Get this sorted out?" I stared. "This is your stuff?" he asked, pointing to my bag. "Look: I'm sure they must have made a mistake with the keys - given you one for a room other than they assigned, given me one for the room they did assign.

Or," he snapped his fingers, happy, allowing this possibility, though as an afterthought, "vice versa, right? Maybe I should be in a different room and they gave me the wrong key."

Then he spit on the floor. Slowly. I looked at the thick mound of saliva and mucus, somewhat beige-yellow, soak a bit in to the carpet then stabilise, equilibrium between his discard and the floor attained.

"What happened to you?" he asked, face scrunching as though only just now noting the state of me.

The question immediately brought me to my senses. The proposition was made. It was a sad horror. Of course this man had something to do with things (whatever this current game was - this attitude of ease - that remained beyond me) but now added in was the absolute that even if he wasn't, he had seen me. In the off chance this person was a completely removed party from my situation, some random man in my room due to an honest mistake, I still could not allow him to leave.

There was a dead woman. The body would be found in a matter of hours. My fleeing was now not a soft option (if it had ever been) because this man would describe - and the timeline show it within the hour the woman breathed her last - me returning to my room, wounded, disoriented. I would be sought, tracked, found. I snapped out of these thoughts to find the man squinting at me, as though he had been watching the movements of my eyes, tracking the speed of the thoughts with amused intrigue.Did he know I was thinking about killing him?

(Was I thinking about killing him?)It was as though he was giving me all the time in the world to self-interrogate myself, I some piece of cinema projection he could see and watch with amusement - first frame and final frame comparison.

Did he follow - through subtle facial cues, shades changing in wrinkles, light now here now there, quarter millimeter difference from the slight tremor of my body in the room light - that it was occurring to me I could not kill him even if I wanted (did I want?), that there was no way I could overpower him, no chance at all I'd come out ahead in a struggle (added in to which, this was, in fact, my room, my name associated with it, my credit card, so a corpse left behind would end me even more certainly than the idea of him giving evidence of my state to the police).

Why was he just standing there letting me think? Just watching me. Watching me. That simple act contained all the affirmation of power he needed, proved me to be at his mercy.

Continued next week