Not His Type

Arthur glared at the screen, lit up with a message, rested on his leg. The lights outside passed by in staccato; others remained still, looming and leering through his indecision. He waited for it to fade, at first by degrees and then sharply to black, absolving him of the choice.

The engine was still silent, and cold as his clammy hands had been in the theatre, when the only thing of interest was the body on his left. His hands were occupied in taking copious notes, hot and frenzied, noting down every syllable with chicken-scratch disregard for perfection.

Arthur closed his eyes, and rested his head back, pouring out his frustration in a sigh that shaped into a cloud of mist between his lips. When he opened them again, a new message renewed the cycle.

We’re going for drinks after, you’re welcome to join us.

When they were side by side, saying nothing, the air was full of possibility and chances to take that didn’t seem as daunting as this, now. He could have slain the whole room and never thought twice.

Well, figuratively… maybe…

He just had to go and ruin it. While they were still clapping, he left those pale warm hands alone as they had been, fleeing the scene like a robber who came only to look, not touch. He hadn’t looked back, but now he wished he did. And the event, well it was over now.

An evening at the theatre, with friends that weren’t his own and never would be, and the freedom to watch someone else’s tragedy, someone else’s life going down the drain and not think twice about it. But when the curtain fell, and he rose from his seat, forgetting every word on stage or on his tongue, was when reality flooded through those doors, and he ran out, with the knowledge that he’d struck gold, and looked down the whole time.

Tragedy, that was all he was capable of, right? Enjoying it until it was his own, like a candle dancing in the song of a breath, then catching on a wayward sleeve. He just went and knocked it over, and stood back as the carpet, curtains, clothes and ceiling turned red then black.

Now he was trapped in a burning limbo, where if he moved, he burned, if he stayed, he scorched, and if he ceased to exist, nothing would be any different than it was before tonight, before yesterday, and that day during the heatwave, when the edge of a tattoo peeked out from under a tailored sleeve.

He had asked to see it then, and was told ‘not yet’. The lure was set to catch him. This man knew something about Arthur, and the invitation was meant to reel him in. Well, he hadn’t bit yet.

This man was a professional, or so he carried himself to be. Always around a different group, a different theatre, or restaurant, or club. He had money, by his watch and clothes, and charisma enough to eke a smile out of every new mourner. Charming, suave, a net that drew people around him, and none were spared, not even Arthur, who could see his tricks for what they were. Docile, until it was time to feed. Retractable claws.

His eyes snapped open again, not realising he’d closed them, and he caught the phone before it could slip off his knee. The screen lit up afresh. He read the new message again and again and again, a refrain of salvation, urging him to open the door and leave the engine silent a little longer.

He did. Outside was even colder. But the heat of the screen warmed him in his pocket, and the promise of an evening longer than he planned for, even more.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, and it sounded so sincere, just like Arthur had read it in those pixelated words.

“Yeah, I — I was just looking for something in my car.”

Three other people whose names he’d forgotten smiled in turn, his friends, not Arthur’s. Their eyes flicked between the two of them, waiting for the next word between the two pillars rising above them. Bystanders, all holding for an input — any.

He was spared, once again, by the same person.

“Should we go, then?”

The evening got drunker, darker, and louder, sleeves were rolled up and shirts unbuttoned, the only sober mind among them was focused on one thing, the growing patch of exposed skin. He was sure he saw something the first time, but now the cuffs unbuttoned and rolled up to the elbows, wrists twisting with the rolling of two dice, and Arthur began to think twice about his perception.

Two bare arms, untainted by ink or any other imperfection, stared back in coloured flashes as the lights spun overhead. Nothing to see there except what he was being shown. Nothing but the man he first took him for.

He should have stayed in the car.

“The dialogue, I think was a bit stuffy — scruffy, no… yeah, stuffy.”

Flipping through the fourth page, he repeated the same word in his mouth until it sounded right, or wrong enough not to care anymore. His eyes half closed, something was about to break, and it wasn’t the half-unscrewed barstool he spun around on.

Arthur had never been in an empty bar, and tonight was no different, but it was silent now at least. So silent it could have been empty, and they had made it so. Aside from the squeaky stool, the only sound was the mechanical whirring of the lights still spinning around above their heads. He wiped his mouth of spit and other things.

No music, no dancing, no talking. Two worn dice between his fingers, the corners smoothed to roundness by years of overuse in games that nobody ever truly won.

“Act three could have been ten minutes shorter,” the man went on, and there was nobody around to counter him. Arthur watched his red lips, and fought the urge to reach out with a napkin, save him the embarrassment of being seen like this.

“How come?” he asked instead.

“There’s a character… I think… Grayson? Doesn’t even need to be in the play.”

“I don’t remember him.”

“Her,” he laughed in response. “And you just proved my point.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Arthur said, in an epiphany that raised him from his seat. Then, with no direction, he looked around at the hundred or so people, passed out or dead or dying — who even knew? — and sat back down, leaning his head on his hand, elbow rested on the bar.

“Why did you leave?” he asked, and Arthur blinked at him, reminding even himself where he was.

“Oh, you meant before…” Arthur rolled the true answer on his tongue and swallowed it down. “Well, I guess I didn’t like the play.”

The man nodded, and ran a hand through his hair.

There.

There it was again.

A wayward snore took him out of his thoughts, and he shook the alcoholic fog away. It couldn’t have been a trick of the light, he clearly saw it there, spidering its way from jaw to ear. When he saw it first, it was in the palm of his hand, retreating.

Arthur smiled, and took the papers from his hands.

“But I didn’t understand it. Maybe you’ll have the answers I’m looking for.”

“I bet I could fix all the mistakes. Make a real good show. Get rid of all the unnecessary bits and keep the good ones.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it at all,” said Arthur, taking inventory of the bodies no longer moving, and the ones still not drained. “Not at all.” He cleared his throat, catching his own reflection in the wide mirror behind the bar, spinning a full glass of red wine between his fingers. And once again, the scuttling shadowy shape whisking out of sight, into his hair. It clung to his skin, like it was made of its shadows condensed and grown legs, but free to leave so long as it returned from its deadly purpose.

“I think we could work together,” he said, to which Arthur smiled. “Make something real fun. Not this waste.”

“I bet we could,” he replied, holding out his hand. When he took it, and shook once, a coolness along his veins, a satisfying chill, slithered down his wrist and met at the joint where the two hands entwined.

A bite, a sharp sting, and a retreating coolness of ink scales behind his sleeve, and Arthur was the only one sitting in the bar. A very odd place to target. Before dawn, surely there would be more patrons, more witnesses. Too much to worry about.

His personal favourites were theatres. Nobody to walk in or out of the doors for hours and hours, no interruptions until the intermission, so he could enjoy half a show at least before getting to work. And there were always so many to feed on. Everyone loved the theatres.

Arthur left the rest of the living in the bar to be found, and eventually saved. All his own feeds were assured dead, and if they remembered his face, had no more throat to tell it.

He took out his phone, and marked another name off the list. The last message glowed the way his eyes had glowed, too bright to be subtle, masking the dimness behind them.

He’d been going to them alone for so long, never wishing for anything to be different. He thought that… well, it wasn’t always going to be like this. He followed the air of culture, of experience. It was impossible to tell from the outside, how long one had been on the hunt.

Time and time again, it was always an amateur, acting like a vintage, but was really another novice with poor opinions and rich taste, clumsy and proud and… messy.

Not his type.