“Convenient,” she said, then spotted a dark hair caught in the broken drywall. “Oh, that won’t do at all.” She plucked it out, found two more, then shoved them into her pocket.
The place was a mess. Though she hadn’t really registered it with the song playing, it must have been really loud. Also, everything was glowing, which made it all look super strange and confusing.
She picked her way over a broken coffee table, then her knees gave way as another pain racked her. It was unexpected and terrible, centered on her hip. It was fire. Jerking around, she thought she’d somehow come into contact with a live wire, but there was nothing. Yanking down one side of her pants, she craned her neck to see what it was all about.
On the flesh of one hip a black mark was forming, tiny curls of smoke rising where it burned in. Before it was even complete, she knew what it was. Gritting her teeth, she waited for it to be over. A dark pattern in the shape of stylized wings emerged as the dark line moved along her flesh. The pain retreated as soon as the final bit was inked…or burned…into her body.
She recognized it, of course. The young woman in the brown uniform delivering a box. Then she remembered Baby and her dark mark under a fingernail, her assurances that Mel would understand soon and that it wasn’t melanoma.
“Dammit,” she muttered, looking at the mark. It was as big as her outstretched hand and would be obvious to anyone who saw her in the police showers. “Oh, I couldn’t get a nice discreet one, could I? Oh no, I have to get the giant one I can’t possibly hide.”
Mel yanked her pants back into position and threw her hands up. She had no idea who she was talking to, but she said, “Advertising is great, but not when you’re a cop, you know!”
The answer was instantaneous. The pain returned, but was this time accompanied by one on the bottom of her foot. She hopped around on one foot, amazed her complaint had worked, but also firmly committed to being cautious about her complaints in the future.
Amidst the litter, she removed her boot and sock to find the mark on her foot, now a demure inch or two in size. Though she knew it would be gone, she checked her hip and found it unmarred.
Unnerved that there was now something she couldn’t see or hear not only marking her body, but listening to her, Mel put on her boot, then considered her next words carefully. “Thanks.”
She waited, but there was no answer. Mel was sort of glad about that.
Neighbors. She suddenly remembered that there were three other apartments. Even though people in this neighborhood probably didn’t call the cops too often, they might. She glanced in the direction of the other apartment on this floor and was so surprised by what she saw that she took an involuntary step backward.
Through the walls, there was a glowing blue shape. In no more than a second Mel could read a myriad of information in that glow. A woman, an old woman. She was leaning on a cane and had a glass in her other hand. One hip stiff but firm, the other stiff and painful. A pale line and ball along the firm hip was visible through the blue flesh. It was like reading a map. One hip replaced and one that needed replacing.
She cocked her head as the woman took another step toward a vague chair shape. No, not just pain. It was impatient pain. So, one hip replaced and one scheduled for replacement. The woman sat heavily in the chair. A static filled light emanated from a cheap screen on the wall, and more of the same came from something on the woman’s head. Headphones. She was hearing impaired.
Glancing upward, Mel saw another blue shape, but this one was a cat. It was directly above her, head tilted and ears radar-dishing around. She grinned. The cat had definitely heard her.
“It’s okay, kitty,” she whispered. “It’s just a little murder. Cats like murder, right?”
The tail flicked and the cat bounded away.
The last apartment also had a blue person, but this light was weak, pale and bleaching into nothingness, with lovely pink threading through the edges like filaments. It was a man. He was lying down and she could see a throbbing shape inside him. Bad liver. Dying slowly and painfully. The throb made her squint and she read the news in the light. Months left at most, and those months would be hell.
Below her there was nothing save the small shapes of rodents scurrying and weaving through a jumble of boxes and cartons. She grinned and realized she was in the clear, at least for the moment.
“Okay, so the colors mean something. Green means go. Blue? Regular people?” Looking around the apartment, she cataloged the colors. “Green smears everywhere, but also white, some weird grey.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Mel took a deep breath and urged herself to think. When she opened them again, she could see everything. It was too much, a rush of information, as if the internet just dumped itself into her brain like an electronic fart from hell.
“What the shit,” she said, unable to focus.
As her eyes traveled, the information sorted itself. There, that tiny line under the carpet. It was a wire attached to a security system. Cameras there, there, and there inside that light fixture too. Passwords flashed through her mind, exact computer codes for access, database organization. Even the tiny brown spill of dried soda on the edge of a keyboard she couldn’t yet see showed up in her mind.
The hairs she’d left in the room showed up as bright, white lights, tiny daggers stuck in broken walls, on the carpet, and even one draped over a lampshade on the floor. She snagged them all before the light faded, because who knew how long this
