Nigel bolted through the living room.
Looking back on that moment, Becca wasn’t sure what it was that made her jump. It wasn’t a conscious thought, one that she planned out and thought about. No, this was a more primal thought, one that rose to the surface of her mind when she needed it to.
She jumped over the railing of the stairs and onto Nigel’s back.
Wet pus and blood filled her nostrils. The skin under his clothes was evidently on its last string since when her legs put pressure on it, it gave way and soaked through the man’s clothes. Wet splotches seeped into her jeans.
Nigel never saw it coming. The man started to tumble under Becca’s weight. Before she knew what she was doing, she brought her pencil down into the man’s neck, right under his jaw. He leaned forward, and she fell.
She landed on her back, looking up. She saw pity on the man’s face, but also happiness. Then her vision became red as blood poured out of the open wound on his neck and onto her face. He fell beside her.
Her mother and father were saying something, but she didn’t hear them. Instead, she kept looking over at Nigel’s eyes.
They were Matt’s eyes.
The man’s skin grew bright white. Then that brightness was traveling to her. She didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t move. As the last breath exhaled from Nigel’s body, a bright light filled Becca’s vision. Her body grew warm. It was like she was being attacked by a hundred bees, all of them trying to burrow themselves into her skin.
Her heart beat faster, and then all became dark.
****
The following day, Becca thought that all of it had been a dream. A nightmare to be sure, but just as fictional.
However, when she woke up in her bed the next morning, she could tell that it had been real. There was a stillness to the house that seemed to warrant complete silence lest some imaginary force comes out of the shadows and swat at you for waking it from a deep slumber.
The blood had seeped through the wooden boards to the basement. Her father had taken care of everything, so there was no reason for her to worry. After the initial incident, and after Robbie took care of the body, he went over to Nigel’s house. The man had been trying to come up with some sort of manifesto or something against Robbie and the entire McCarthy family. He attributed everything wrong that had ever happened to him to be that family’s fault, and the fact that he was now dying had a part in that. He had planned on killing all members of the household and then going to press with the story. Only then would the cosmic scales in his mind be pointed right and true to the path of justice?
But that never happened.
Instead, Becca had killed the man with a pencil through his neck.
The floorboards were ripped up and brought out back to burn. If anyone asked, they would say that they were remodeling. Her mother had driven Nigel’s car back to his house and walked the rest of the way back home. If anyone asked, she would claim that she was having an affair with him, and that was why her prints and wig hair were in his car.
But all of that was like background noise. What her parents were most concerned about was what had happened after Nigel Torres had met the reaper, ascended to heaven, saw the angel above him, and decided to join it. They wanted to know about his NaU.
A quick blood test of Nigel’s dead body showed that his NaU was no longer there. It wasn’t dormant and hiding in another part of his body like Robbie’s and Carol’s was. In fact, there was almost no evidence that there had ever been any NaU in his system in the first place.
“So when we die,” her father said that morning over eggs and hash browns, “the NaU will detach itself from your DNA and go to the nearest living person.”
The fact that she had killed someone didn’t feel right to her. No one was talking about it, as though it didn’t happen, which might be a good legal defense, but it made her want to practically blow her brains out. She had killed someone, and she felt nothing. She had at the moment, but now that there was a night between her and the event, it held no weight inside of her.
Was it this easy for everyone else? she thought, thinking of the hundreds of murderers and other killers who went about their days, some of which were behind bars, others not so. She was a part of the club now, and while the blood might have been washed off of her, she still felt its greasy touch, as though it were latched to her for the rest of time, and no amount of soap and water could ever remove it.
Her father brought her to the lab. If Matt came home, then Carol would tell him what happened. Better to hear it from his mother than his half-sister.
The Argyle Research Lab was a small building located on New York Route 40 right in between Argyle and North Argyle but on the other side of the road from Goose Island. The building was tall, four stories, with freshly painted sides. Like a pillar or monument, the building stood out from all of the surrounding farms and trees.
No one else was in the lab that morning, and regardless if it was luck or divine chance, she was thankful for the lack of other people. Looking at people might make her feel weird, and she might find herself thinking if their blood
