The stale air of the shelter, usually a dull throb of human existence, was a live wire tonight, buzzing with Maya’s agitation. Her voice, thinned by another meth bender, scraped against Charlie’s raw nerves. He was sober, clear-headed in a way that made the chaotic clang of the metal cots and the muffled arguments around them almost unbearable. Every word Maya spat was a needlepoint jab, pricking at the flimsy fabric of his self-control.
“You’re pathetic, Charlie,” she slurred, her eyes, usually the colour of warm honey, now glassy and vacant, like marbles. “Always pretending to be so good. But I know what you are. A coward.”
He watched her pace, a frantic, jittery hummingbird trapped in their cramped space. He could smell the acrid tang of meth on her breath, mingling with the faint odour of unwashed skin. Her words, though nonsensical in their specifics, were landing with pinpoint accuracy on his deepest fears. He was a coward. He was a murderer. And only the blind, brutal grace of an earthquake had saved him from the gallows.
A tremor, subtle but insistent, began in his left hand. Not the constant, anxious hum of before, but a familiar premonition, a ghost of a sensation that always accompanied the rising tide of his primal urges. He pushed down on it, focusing on the rough texture of the blanket beneath his fingers, on the rhythmic inhale and exhale of his own breath. He was clear-headed. And with that clarity came a terrifying, liberating thought: Mother Nature had been his unwitting accomplice once. Could she be again?
He watched Maya stumble, her leg catching on the edge of their shared cot. She righted herself with a grunt, muttering obscenities under her breath. The shelter was a temporary reprieve, a holding pen for the broken. But out there, beyond these thin walls, was the vast indifference of the world. He started to think, his mind tracing the contours of the city, the surrounding landscapes.
Could Mother Nature help him again?
Earthquakes, of course, were out. They didn’t happen every day, not like that one, that perfectly timed, destructive miracle. But what else? He pictured the raging storms that sometimes lashed the coast, the flash floods that turned dry riverbeds into raging torrents. Could a body be swept away, lost to the churning power of the sea? Or buried under a deluge of mud and debris? The image of the swirling, chaotic waters of the Disa River after a heavy rain began to coalesce in his mind. A body, bobbing, then sinking, carried out to sea. The ocean, vast and unforgiving, swallowed everything.
Then there were the fires. He remembered the news reports of the wildfires that swept through the Fynbos in the summer, leaving nothing but charred earth. A body incinerated, reduced to ash and bone fragments, that would eliminate all his DNA. But setting a fire was messy, too much risk of collateral damage, of drawing unwanted attention. He needed something cleaner, something that looked like an accident.
His gaze returned to Maya, slumped now against the wall, her head lolling. “You’re useless,” she whimpered, “just like everyone else.” Echoes of Sally’s final words.
A colder thought, a more insidious one, began to take root in Charlie’s mind. Why rely on the unpredictable whims of nature when he could orchestrate his own natural disaster? Not an earthquake or a flood, but something internal, something that would appear to be a self-inflicted wound. Something that would look like just another tragedy in a shelter overflowing with them.
Heroin. The word surfaced unbidden, a dark whisper in his mind. He knew Maya had dabbled in it before, in her earlier, more desperate days. It was a quieter death, a slow drift into oblivion. And an overdose… that would be just another statistic, another dead junkie. No one would look too closely. Not here, not in this place where lives flickered and died with such brutal regularity.
The cover up
The tremor in his hand intensified, but it wasn’t fear now. It was a strange, almost exhilarating anticipation. He felt a natural high come over him. He felt a tingling sensation, a warm, comfortable rush of blood throughout his body. The thought itself was addictive. He could write his own alibi.
“Maya,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady, almost gentle. He kept his face carefully neutral, a mask of concern. “I know a way to make it stop.”
Her dull eyes flickered open, a spark of fleeting interest. “What?”
“Something stronger,” he murmured, leaning closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Something that will make everything quiet. Make all the noise in your head go away.”
He saw the avarice bloom in her eyes, eclipsing the suspicion, the rage. The addict’s desperate hunger. It was almost too easy. He had a small stash, a relic from his own darker days, hidden deep in the sole of his worn boot. He’d kept it for emergencies, for when the craving became too much. Now, it would serve a different purpose.
He told her he’d get it, that she needed to be quiet, to not draw attention. He watched her nod, her head a heavy pendulum. As he fumbled with the laces of his boot, his hands were steady. He felt a surge of cold, calculated resolve. This wasn’t impulsive. This was planned. And he liked it.
He dissolved the small, white rock in a spoonful of water, the dull flame of a stolen lighter dancing beneath it. The sickly sweet smell of burning sugar and chemicals filled the air, briefly cutting through the general stench of the shelter. Maya watched, mesmerized, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Her hands, usually trembling, were still, held out in anticipation.
He prepared the syringe, the needle glinting under the dim, flickering fluorescent lights. He’d done this before, long ago. Muscle memory. He felt a chilling detachment, as if he were performing a clinical procedure. He pressed the plunger, watching the dark liquid disappear into her vein.
Maya’s eyes rolled back in her head almost immediately. A low groan escaped her lips, then a sigh. Her body relaxed, slumping against him. He laid her gently back on the cot, pulling the thin blanket up to her chin. He watched her chest, the slow, shallow rise and fall, becoming slower, shallower still.
As her breathing faded, a strange sensation began to ripple through Charlie. Not the tremor in his hands, but a profound, internal vibration. It started in his gut, a deep, resonant thrum, and spread outwards, up his chest, into his skull. The shelter lights flickered again, more intensely this time, casting wild, shifting shadows. The distant wail of a siren, already a constant companion in the city, seemed to grow louder, closer.
And then, he felt it. Not the ground shaking, not the walls swaying, but an earthquake within him. The memories of Sally, vivid and terrifying, surged forward, unbidden, overwhelming. He was back in that kitchen, the knife in his hand, the hot gush of blood, the sudden, terrible stillness. The roar of the collapsing building, the screams, the dust and the chaos. It was all happening again, inside him. The world tilted on its axis, a maelstrom of sound and fury.
He sat there for a long time, watching Maya’s still form. Her breathing had stopped and she had defecated. He checked for a pulse, a perfunctory gesture. Nothing. She was gone. Just another statistic. Just another dead junkie.
Slowly, the internal earthquake subsided, leaving behind a hollow silence. The siren’s wail receded into the background. He adjusted the blanket over Maya, making sure she looked peaceful, as if she had simply drifted off to sleep. Placing the syringe carefully back in his boot, he pulled the blanket over his own head, feigning sleep.
He closed his eyes pondering over how Mother Nature hadn’t needed to intervene this time. He had simply used her methods: the quiet, untraceable destruction, the illusion of natural causes. The shelter was a symphony of snores and murmurs around him, oblivious. He was safe. For now.
But the tremor was still there, a phantom limb of guilt and terror, waiting. Waiting for the next time the ground beneath him would fracture. He saw Sally’s eyes, wide with terror and accusation, then Maya’s, dull and vacant. Their faces merged, twisted. Ghostly remnants from his conscious and sub-conscious. Then a familiar face appeared in the shadows of his mind. His mothers.