Page 33 of Miserable Marionette

The house seems paler than I remember, messy and worn but not dirty. Like she’s almost given up on trying to keep the joy alive in it. My eyes catch the badge in the shadowbox, and the clock next to it. I should’ve been there for her. Should’ve been the one to hold her while she cried. To paint Maynard Fisher and make him perfect for her, to help prepare him for her last goodbye.

Did they dress him in his uniform?

Or that frayed, piss-colored sweatshirt he wore one too many days in a row from the time I first met him to the time we left?

Did they bother to clean the dirt from under his nails? Set his features in his natural frown, or did they try to make the stern man look more pleasant than he was?

My hands fist as I turn away, off to find Krissy.

A loud, sloppy knock rings through the house. I twist, my head tilting as I regard the door, the column windows beside it. A worn letterman jacket sways on the front porch before the doorbell rings. He mashes his finger into it so many times that one ring is indistinguishable from the next.

“Open the door, Audrey! You gonna break things off with me through my sister?! Come on, that’s low even for you!”

I smirk, letting him bang a moment longer, the paintings on the neighboring walls rattling.

How many times have you banged on her door like this, Bryan Jordan? How many times have you bullied and berated my girl into answering?

How many times have you touched her?

Fucked her?

Had her when she belongs to me.

How many times were you too fucking rough? Did you ever manage to get her off? I can’t decide which version of that scenario is more offensive to me. The buzzing in my mind blots out everything else, and before I know it, I’m swinging the door open with a stiff smile on my face.

He rears back, already unsteady on his feet. Still drunk from the night before or just getting started? “Who the fuck are you?” His eyes dart behind me, looking for her.

For my puppet.

She’s not yours.

Never was.

Stop fucking looking for her.

I offer my hand to the corpse. “Dr. Gideon Bell.”

“Doctor,” he whistles, not offering me his hand in return, just regarding mine like it’s offensive to him, before I let it drop. “Oh, hey, I fucking remember you. You’re that fucked-up kid she was all torn up about when we moved to town. Oh shit, yeah, Bell Boy, they called you. Why are you here? The fuck is Audrey?”

“You just missed her, unfortunately. She was running late this morning.”

His dark brown eyes turn on mine as he steps back, his drunk mind sluggish to keep up as I adjust my glasses.

“Why you in my girl’s house, doc? We going to have a problem?”

We? Oh no, you… you are the one with the problem.

I just smile. “I was dropping off a gift on her way out. A memory from the funeral home before I close it down.”

I am doing no such thing.

“Ah, aren’t staying around then?”

“No, far more interesting things to see where I live,” I offer, watching as he slowly relaxes, slowly decides I’m not a threat.

He’s right to. I’m not a threat. I’m a promise. I am fucking inevitable.

And Audrey is mine.