#sitg

You are a new janitor at a Faz Corp owned entertainment lounge in the red light district of a neon-bathed city. Your job is low paying wage work but at least it’s money, right? You dream of escaping the city of Empyrean someday. But freedom comes at a cost. It was supposed to be easy. You weren’t supposed to become entangled with the strange and alluring robotic geishas working there. You weren’t supposed to learn the dark secrets surrounding them.

Word Count: ~9000

Warnings: Suggestive themes, Non-consensual touching, Possessive behavior, Robotic Injuries

“Do you think you’ll be able to talk to him?”

“O–oh. What? Sorry.”

“Steve,” She said again, pointedly, “Do you think you’ll be able to reach him?” 

People did that, sometimes, named the entities that circled their periphery. It helped them rationalize their fear of the unknown and helped them come to terms with something they shouldn’t have believed in. 

“It’s not exactly a phone call.” You stated, but it fell flat. Forward. You were too forward. The downside of the only human contact you get comes from the dead ones. “But I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Thank you.” She whispered, turning outward towards the expanse of the room, her footsteps masked to a dull thud as she walked over the sheets draped over every piece of furniture in the place. 

She wasn’t your typical client. People with money never called you– never believed in these things. From what you understood, she was a high-profile linguist for a Fortune 500, but she didn’t look it. Not in the big cuffed jeans and the sea salt textured bob.

“You hear that, Steve?” She called out into the void, “She’s here to help you. Be nice.” 

You didn’t blame him for guarding it. You would have too. If you had something this wonderful to cling to.

“I tried to bring in some people to finish it.” She had explained to you out front, sifting through her saddle bag for the key, “But he ran them off. Said his guys kept freaking out and walking off the job.” 

“So it’s a hostile entity we’re dealing with?” You’d asked her, and she chuckled, almost coldly, towards the door, still fighting against the lock. 

“I wouldn’t go as far as to call him hostile, but he certainly has a temper.”

Whatever that meant.  

“You keep calling it a he.” You looked back towards the house, the arms of the sinewy trees reaching out towards you, beckoning you back in. “Did you know who lived here?” 

“My friend.” She said, “He died in the house.” 

“If you don’t mind me asking, do you know how?” 

You wouldn’t turn back to face her. You hated this part. The human part. The feelings part. You did this because you weren’t afraid, because you had felt this pull to whatever they were for your entire life, and somehow, some way, you found a way to make money off of it. But this part? You didn’t get paid enough for this part. 

“He fell.” She cleared her throat, and you knew that if you tore your eyes from the house, you’d see her pulling at the corners of her eyes. “There was a ladder, and he was working on the house, and he fell. And as selfish as I want to be, keeping him here and keeping him close to me, I can’t sit here and let the house rot with him in it.” 

“It wouldn’t be right.” You agreed, eyes still skimming over every covered window, searching for a face that would not be there. 

Modern media projects paranormal investigation as a surfactant for quacks– a smoke show and a parlor trick to fool people into toying with their souls or, at the very least, coughing up a good chunk of money for whatever it is that you provide in service. But when Robin pulled down her collar to show you the scratches that spanned down her back from shoulder blade to rib cage, you knew that whatever, whoever, was left in this place had been very, very real. 

“Can you tell me more about him?” You ask, “The more information, the better, really. I need to know all I can get to see the full scope of who we’re dealing with here.” 

“His name was Steve.” You could see it beginning– that far-off look in the distance, that glass-eyed stare that the living clients got when they sift through the haze that they cannot reach. Where they rack their brain for clouded fragments of memories, the little details round out like polishing stones. “And this was his dream.” 

You look around into the open expanse of air, where the light casts a vignette over the room. Plumes of sheetrock dust circle through the golden beams of light. You listen to the stagnancy, feel the pressure in the room to make sure it hasn’t changed. Search for him in the clouded corners of the room. 

This house could have been beautiful at one point. It could still be beautiful now with some work. White marble spanned over a finished galley kitchen with a proper bay window that overlooked some overgrown gardenia, a big sitting room now draped in linen to protect whatever nice antique furniture sat underneath. Memories of a life built together, and now it was a shell. 

“I’ve been calling in contractors to try to finish it, the way he wanted it finished,” Robin’s voice reverberated over the plastic sheeting and drop cloths, as if the house were devoid of the world that was left behind, “But I’ve had two walk off the job. Just point blank, refund with no negotiation.” 

“Did they say why?” 

“They said it would start with stupid stuff. Cold room, weird feeling, but then things started falling, and their guys would start getting hurt, and– Does this sound crazy?” She buries her face in her hands. “God, I sound crazy.” 

“No. Not crazy.” Here it was, that thing uglier than death. The living in the after of it. That sinking hollowness that has lived in Robin’s chest, begging to swallow her whole. 

“I just can’t keep letting the house go to shit knowing he’s in there.” She frantically wipes at the corners of her eyes, and you have to nod like she wasn’t a stranger two days ago, “It’s like its rotting around him a-and it’s the last piece I have left of him.” 

“I know.” You nod towards her, doing that thing that you’ve rehearsed so much. You’ve gotten quite good at it, staying genuine and stone-faced at times like this, “And we’re not going to let that happen, okay? I’m not afraid of a little spitting and yelling.” 

+

The lavender haze of twilight followed Robin as her yellow Fiat backed out of the driveway, and you tried to picture her here. In this house. With him. 

You tried to hear the tincture of her laugh reverberate against the bassline hum of his, as they mingled and seeped into the walls. You searched for pieces and fragments of memories of him to cling to, transcend time, and fill the spaces with yourself. Impose your body into places where you don’t belong– haunt his memories as he haunts her, now. 

It will always be unnerving, watching the light sink into darkness and surround you. You try not to think of the evil things that lurk under beds and in closets, and try to picture the gilded softness of something akin to heaven. 

You could see the shell of his life here, mapping the valleys and rivers between furniture and belongings to map out routines. To the left, a living room, and to the right, a galley kitchen with a bench seat and a bay window. 

You can see them sitting there, humming and dancing in the kitchen and trimming gardenia from the open windows above. You try to exist in regularity with him, follow his footpaths through the house, and feel the remnants of him flow through them like riverbeds. 

A formal dining room with no table, from meals shared over the scuffed coffee table leftover from an apartment, disproportionate to the house, but a relic loved enough to keep. Something with swooping legs and craftsmanship from a time when things were meant to be enjoyed. A reminder of the spaces between the quickness of living to remind you how fast life passed you by. 

A green bedroom with the cans still stacked in the corner. The memory of what almost was. The richness of the tone, a welcoming gloss over the room, that stinging chemical tinge of paint fumes mixing with the dust of dreams never coming to completion.  You could smell them now, even though it had been years since the room had been painted. 

You took a step in, coexisting with the ladder in the center of the room. You looked for traces of him in here, looked for the plans for gold-framed pictures of beloved relatives, paintings from artist friends, or things that reminded him of home. But the walls had never been filled, the static resonance of the room a chilling emptiness sitting hollow in the pit of your stomach. A nothingness that filled the room and sat adjacent to you, bathed you in its discomforts and stared you in the face. You kept along your path through the rest of the house. 

As you walk, you pull picture frames haphazardly from their neat piles, setting them up on surfaces where they should belong, breathing the dwindling remnants of life into the shells of rooms. You map their footpaths through the house, waltzes through the kitchen and the corner that everyone cuts too close. 

A first one, with Robin– you can place her immediately– and Steve– you can place him with Robin’s description. Handsome in the effortless way, in the way that you could stare at. Of course he was. People are always prettier when they gloss over after death. They stand side by side on a college football field, Robin in a gold and maroon Master’s degree hood. 

A second, face down on a solid antique buffet. Robin and Steve, with a dark-haired girl and a stony-faced man, were at a wedding. 

And another, unframed and tucked in a mirror by the doorway. Steve and a girl are holding keys by the front door. On the back, in a flattened cursive scrawl, “Homeowners! (Pic creds to Robin :P).”

And last, dog-eared and color-faded. Steve and Robin. Before the wedding, the Master’s degree, or the girl. There was them, knock-kneed in striped shorts. Tongues out, kids laughing at a summer job. Before the nuances of adulthood or the shadow of death reared their heads. There was a time when it was just them. 

It’s easy to impose her into this space; it’s easy to picture this house as an extension of her, and in turn, picture Steve as a Robin by proxy. But he isn’t as easy. You can’t see him as anything other than dead– anything other than a dog-eared photo tucked safely away in Robin’s mind. 

There is one final door that has been left unturned, a seal of paint and dust left untouched, sitting in a fine layer over the handle and jamb, but when you go to turn it, it will not budge. You know it is the turret room, surrounded by solid oak windows, that lives at the front of the house, and you also have a sneaking suspicion that it was not Robin who kept it from your interrogation. 

You never feel the shift in pressure. You never see the redistribution of dust settled. You are the only one haunting this space tonight, and you wonder what secrets the other one hides. 

+

They’re always hopeful. Always wanting to be proven right, that their assumptions of the supernatural are correct, and someone will validate them so they can feel less wrong for suggesting it in the first place. 

“Anything?” She asks, still smelling of black coffee and a sneaky morning cigarette covered by something more expensive. 

“Not yet,” you shrug, watching the dust swirl in the gilded light of morning. It’s still hard to not superimpose them into the space, a flash of golden brown hair in the sunlight, that pretty man through a sheen of white linen. 

You watch the inevitable slump of her shoulders, the tinge of doubt and disease creep into her voice, and, again, you must remind yourself that reassurance is for the living. 

“But again,” You continue, before she can make any hasty decision about your employment contract, “It’s only the first night. He might be sussing me out. Sometimes they get shy once they realize I’m here for them.” 

“He was never shy.” She laughed, the lilt at the end of her scratchy voice feeling a little too humorless.  

“There were some pictures, lots of you guys, lots of him.” You stand, making your way to the walnut buffet where you had meticulously spent the night dusting the frames– removing the dirt and fog from times that were once real. “Can you tell me anything about these?”

She picks one up in her hands, her long, delicate fingers grasping it to her palm like it was precious. You can see her place herself back in the moment, smell the grass and the dew from the rain days prior. You know she is in a different place that exists only where he is still alive. 

“I’m sure you know about the earthquake.” She nods, and you do. It was the kind of lore that sets towns like these into stone, a crack in the earth that split and swallowed half of the city– the kind of thing that you could only see on television. Her red fingernail clicks as it runs over the glass, tracing over a boy with long hair and kind eyes. The kind of boy you’d see in a band. 

“It was a long couple of months for all of us. We lost a couple of really good friends during that.” 

One by one, she goes through them, a younger man with a mop of curls and a cheesy smile, tall and gangly boys all lanky with the marks of adolescence leaving the body, but stuck in the in-between of not yet being men. Clad in graduation caps and with something akin to both relief and excitement in their eyes. 

Two girls, one with red hair and one cropped close to her head, smiling with arms slung over one another in the embrace of girlhood grown together. 

You learn their names, learn who they are, or who they could have been. Learn about the ones who didn’t make it. You piece together love through Steve’s eyes, learn about the blood of covenants that ran thick like rivers through his chest and breathed life into him. 

Steve was the kind of person who loved with everything he had, and Robin loved him with everything she had. 

“That’s got to be upsetting, dying the way he did. Going through that and then…” You find yourself speaking to feel the silence, catching your insensitivity as it hung stagnant in the air no longer than a moment before cutting yourself off, “Sorry.”

“No, you’re okay.” Robin shakes her head, “I just.. I didn’t think about it like that.”

“Do you think this is what he’s so mad about?”

“I always thought it was more of a tortured romantic thing. Steve was always the type.”

“Who is she?” You ask, pointing at another image. Steve and a girl, both in No Doubt concert t-shirts, sitting tangled in one another on a patchwork quilt on a lawn somewhere back west. 

“She was the love of his life.” Robin shrugged, like it had been obvious. It was obvious. “This is who the house was for. This was his dream.”

“But not hers?”

“I don’t think she knew what her dream was. They were going through this kind of weird separation. He was working on the green room when he fell.” Robin gestured towards it. You had passed it last night, the one with the white French doors and the warm olive tone. Of course, it had been where he died. 

“And he was alone?”

You knew immediately it was the wrong question to ask. Of course, he had been alone. You could feel the weight of guilt, both from Robin for a thing she couldn’t control and from yourself for being stupid enough to ask in the first place, that static hanging thick in the air for you to answer your own question with. 

“Yeah.” Robin choked, “I didn’t find him until I got back into town that night.”

+

Something felt different in the air tonight, and immediately you knew that he was here, and he was upset that you were here. There was a change in pressure, a disruption of silence, and suddenly you felt like you were not alone. 

You always hated the static buzzing of the EVP reader; it disrupted the silence more than you liked, but you were determined to see what he had to say. Sometimes you wondered how they heard it from their side, the rapid flipping through frequencies. Sometimes you equated it to the way a silent whistle bothered a dog, with the way you felt that kind of grating settle between your shoulder blades. But he was here, and you needed answers. 

“…Go…” It said, almost immediately after you flipped it on, and you kept your face trained into complete calm. You would not invite him to scare you, you would not let him drive you out without at least forcing him to talk. 

“I’m sure you’d like that, huh, Steve?” You called out into the open expanse of night, your boots heavy as they thud across the antique wooden floors. 

You waited a few minutes, the frequencies flipping through their high-pitched tenor without another word from him. 

“What about Dustin, Steve?” You asked again, walking to the credenza to flip the picture up, that same mop-headed boy still lanky with adolescence, except now in a suit and standing with a raven-haired girl in a white gown, “Robin said he got married, she told me he saved you a seat at his wedding, and that it was beautiful.”

And she had, earlier today, through those same lingering tears. She said that Dustin had been the most devastated by his death. That he had been the closest to Steve, second to her.

“Why are you so angry?” You ask, unable to keep the annoyance out of your voice. “Is it because life went on, Steve? Because you think people forgot about you? Because they didn’t.”

You hold your arms out, gesturing for him to argue with you. You could understand his anger with death. Only those who had died could feel what it was like. You had never been cross with their anger, having never known death, but you couldn’t fathom why when he was so, so… loved. When this many people cherished him. 

“She told me that you were his best man. That he left your picture at the altar so you could still stand with him.” 

The frame snaps back down on to it’s face with a vigor so violent that it rattles the brass hangers on the credenza. You almost want to check to see if the glass had shattered, but you had so much energy that you needed to keep talking.

“… Suzie…” That same voice comes back through the EVP reader, more howling with a forlorn nature that only the dead could possess. 

“Yes, Suzie is Dustin’s wife. I know you knew her.” You try to lighten up your voice, try not to project your own feelings onto him. You would not allow yourself to be a vessel for him to feed from. Not allow him your peace of energy– not if he was as hostile as he was proving to be. 

You run your hands over your arms. The room is disgustingly cold, that ugly feeling of aloneness and being watched creeping up your spine. This part never got better, but it was your cross to bear. It was your job to find answers and help everyone finally find some peace. So here you would sit, shivering and uneasy, if it meant that the poor woman who called you as a last-ditch effort could stop feeling like she was the reason her best friend was dead. 

“You can’t scare me with a tantrum, Steve. I’m trying to help you. Robin is trying to help you.”

“Tell me who she is, Steve.” You flip another picture up, the one with the girl at the No Doubt concert, “Tell me about her.”

You gasp out loud as you feel the stinging over your shoulder and down your arm. Almost at the same time that the frame snaps back down onto its face. Blood seeps slowly down from the deep gashes that have opened on your shoulder and drips down onto the hardwood.

+

“Thanks for helping me finally go through all this stuff.” Robin says, sympathy heavy in her voice as her eyes flicker over the gauze patches taped to your arm. She had been so apologetic, as if it had been an untrained dog scratching you and not a grown man conscious of making his own decisions. 

“Maybe there’s something that can help us.” You shrug, as nonchalantly as possible, a silent I don’t blame you for this. 

A thick plume of dust swirls through the turret room like glitter through the sunlight as she pulls back a drop cloth. Beneath lies an antique green steamer truck, lined with brass rivets and a manufacturer’s label still stuck to the side. The heavy clank of the latches echoes off the walls of the octagon that you stand in the middle of, and Robin gasps. 

“Oh god.” Robin chokes, covering her mouth. You place a hand on her shoulder to reassure her that she absolutely does not need to apologize again for crying, as she had several times this morning.  

“This is good. This can help.” You nod, dropping to your knees, neck to her, to sift through some pictures. All ink-blotted and charcoal-smeared renderings of him at all angles, the softness that only the watchful diligence of a wife could capture. Most with him in small reading glasses with a pencil clutched delicately between fingers. Some of them bend over a geranium shrub. Some half-finished and smeared with the movement of laughter and love and all things radiant. 

“She did these– the… the fiancée.” Robin sniffled, frantically wiping at the stream still pouring from her eyes, “ There were so many of them through the house that I just gathered all of them up and shoved them in here and forgot about them. At the funeral she… I don’t think she knew how to process it. She kind of just shut down.” 

“I-I don’t think she could handle it; she didn’t know how to be loved, and in turn she didn’t know how to love anyone back. It wasn’t her fault, but he was so, so hell-bent on making her love him back and she just… I don’t know.” 

Her face crumples again, and you try your best to hold her as she cries. Minutes pass this way, of Robin starting and stopping and sniffling again, and you let her do it, because you’ve seen grief in all of its faces. You’ve seen what it does to people, and this, you could tell, had been eating at her for a long, long time. 

“I told you I was a linguist for work.” She says finally, hugging her knees to her chest, “I speak nine languages. And there’s no way in no language to tell him how much I miss him.” 

And, then, suddenly, you see that dam break in her, that ugly thing called grief rearing its head and gashing its teeth and clawing through her ribs to get out. She is clutching at her chest and pounding on the floor like a child and screaming into oblivion, and you will watch, and you will understand. Because you know, in the loss of Steve, there was a piece of her that was lost, too. 

“I told you not to do that until I got back, not with the vertigo, dammit.” She thrashes, standing up and kicking the trunk with the toe of her leather boot. Her rage bounces off of the walls and cuts through the air so much that it stings. 

“You weren’t my Suzie.” The tears of back, angry and red and snotty, “Fuck! You weren’t my suzie, but you were my Steve, and I wasn’t supposed to do all of this by myself.” 

And then she throws herself back on the floor, her head back into her hands, and she curls her body so far inwards you think she might implode into stardust around you. 

“I wasn’t supposed to do this by myself.” She sobs into her hands, body shuddering in great waves. 

And you let her have this, watching the dust that has been settled for far to long swirl in great plumes around the disruption of this monster of grief. 

+

You go back to the turret room that night by yourself with all of your gear, but you stop yourself halfway through setting it up. 

Part of this job relied on gut feelings, and tonight, you knew that he wouldn’t be speaking. 

“You had people that loved you, you know.” You sit on the antique couch, crossing your legs in front of you. Not imposing, not demanding any sort of feedback, recall, or evidence. Just… talking into the open air. 

“I know that this anger and resentment that keeps you here and scares everyone away isn’t you. Not when you’re this loved.” 

You take a breath in, unsteady as it rattles its way to where it settles in your lungs, and you keep it there for just a beat too long, letting it burn for just a second to remind yourself that this is real. 

“I’ve never had someone who loved me like that. I think I was given this gift and this… awareness… to try to help you. But I can only help you if you want to help yourself.”

“But I think now we can both agree that it’s less about helping you and more about helping her.” 

You feel them before they track down your face, two solitary things. Single streams of hot silver burn their way down your cheeks as you continue through a shaking voice. 

“Because– and I think you know this better than anyone– the kind of love that Robin gives is the kind of love that you can’t find anywhere else. And I think that means more than a marriage that fell apart before it even started. I think it means more than your wasted time or your broken heart. Because I think now you’ve become so— so lost in that that you’re just a shitty, resentful ghost of the person you actually were. And you choose to continue to hurt her because it’s easier than just letting it go. And all I can do is prove that you’re real. I can’t change your mind. I can’t make you see. And I can’t make whoever she is love you in a way that was different.”

You sniff, scrubbing at your face violently as you look for the shape of him around the room, as you wait for the change in pressure or the snap of a frame or the slam of a door. You have no inkling that he is even still here when you speak again. 

“I think you need to rest now. I think it's time you let her rest, too.”

As you sit there and take in the house, you feel the sense of impending dread lighten, and whether it is that hardened spot in your own heart softening or the plume of him dissipating from this place, there is a dust that settles within you. 

You open the windows and doors, and you watch the dust swirl through the alabaster beams of light, and you know that it is over. 

The house gets finished. You know this because Robin had sent you a Christmas card from the front steps of the house, a show-variety Afghan hound standing upright on the porch signed neatly from Robin & Batman.