a place like this (parts 1 and 2)

one.

She had hair, she had skin, she had toes, she had breasts and eyes and lungs and intestines and tonsils and fine hairs in her ears, but she was clearly lacking, it seemed to Nathan, in essential she-ness, whatever property it is that earns something a feminine personal pronoun;

in any case, those biological features could no longer be thought of as parts of Stella, the unifying consciousness was gone, all that remained was a doll slumped by his apartment door, a mannequin, a Stella waxwork, which Nathan now studied from some distance, sitting on his sofa like a child, chin on palms, elbows on knees, muscles slack, face passive, as if watching a performance, taking everything in, assimilating information like a macabre plot that reveals itself in incremental horrors, each only marginally worse than the last when taken in isolation, but on reflection, when viewed as the sum of the parts, the cumulative taste of the many flavours proves too horrendous, and this was certainly true now;

for without ample warning Nathan vomited loudly, explosively, immediately soaking his hands in a semi-digested watery sludge which soon seeped through his fingers, flowing over his forearms, onto his bare shins and down to his feet, finally pooling on the moss-green carpet;

eventually it was over, but it didn’t occur to him to clean himself, already his vomit was incorporated into the play that was being enacted around him, it was no longer his mess, but some external mess;

seconds or minutes passed before his eyes began to wander away from the body, only now did he fully register the scale of the disorder, there was blood everywhere, on his walls, his carpet, the whole room was covered in it,
the bedroom door, closed behind him, was also soiled, it was as if the room itself had been bleeding, from the walls, from the wood;

of course that was impossible;

but then, only twenty-four hours ago, if asked, he would have said that it was impossible he would begin the new year with a living Beth in his bedroom and a dead Stella in his living room, but there you have it, life is full of surprises and you can't take continuity for granted, not even in this place, where little seems to change from one moment to the next;

perhaps there is truth after all in that slogan, new year, new beginnings;

Nathan jumped as a thousand robots applauded, or at least that's how it sounded, but it was just the blinds opening in every room throughout the building, letting the sunlight in, doing their job as best they could,
these days it was true that in some places that wasn't very well at all, cogs and motors were broken, rusted, or tampered with, but in the case of Nathan's bedroom they still performed as they were intended, a dozen metal slats rotated from a closed vertical position to an open horizontal position, exposing the everything-proof window;

and Beth was in the bedroom, behind the closed door, ignorant of the churning and the vomit and the death;

but he spoke as if Beth were next to him, the words blurting out unvetted by whatever filter it is we usually employ to protect others from our innermost thoughts,
- She's fucking dead, he said,
and it was true, of course, she fucking was,
- And she's in my fucking living room, he added,
and this too was true, but the logical movement his brain was making wasn't over, because another question was fired into the light, as if brain-blinds had also been opened,
- What the fuck is she doing here?
and that was the only question, he couldn't help but say it again, to keep the words real and present,

- What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

and that phrase repeated was now joined by tears and breathlessness, but catharsis was cut short, once again he was retching and choking, like an animal, covered in puke and tears and snot, now on the floor, cowering in his own juices, ridiculous for a man in any circumstances, but particularly now when clearly action needed to be taken, and quickly, this was no time for wallowing;

and if Stella's eyes worked, they would have seen all this, but they did not, they did not, they did not.

two.

- It wasn't me, he thought, already rehearsing the conversation,
- It wasn't me, he would say,
- She was like that when I woke up, he would add,

but how much more to say? it would be foolish to speak too much, after all, people assume, make leaps, dot all the dots up wrongly;

Nathan was the only one with the dots dotted rightly;

and he knew well how he was regarded, but they didn't see what they should, what he saw, looking at himself in the small blood-streaked mirror hanging on the wall, naked, messy and matted hair;

vomit covered feet, yes, but what does fear prove? he was innocent, innocent;

innocent of this at least, and who is innocent of everything?
- No one, he said,
and then, satisfied with the sound of his voice,
- What now? he asked,
but his reflection had no reply and Stella had no reply;

the walls, grey here and brown there and blood-streaked everywhere, closed in, withdrew, inhaled, exhaled, in, out, in, out, contorting the mortar, moving in time with his own body, his own breath;

above him his work, his constellations, mercifully visible despite the mess, speckled the ceiling like pepper on a plate, hundreds of pinpricks representing hundreds of residents, thousands of lines mapping their relationships,
only now there was one mark to remove, to fill in, the Stella star had burned out,
and not only that, but dozens of lines had to be covered forever, her relationships were gone too, her friends were cut loose, after all, they can't exist in relation to a corpse, only in relation to other consiousnesses,
and yes, new dots and lines will be drawn in due course, a birth would mean the re-creation of a mark and perhaps similar spokes, but the new wouldn’t replace the old, wouldn’t be another Stella, souls don’t recycle, they are smoke, not air;

and what would Beth think? at any moment she would walk through the door and see this, the carnage, the carne, the meat, the body, Stella,
and what then? no, he had to get to her first;

his body unlocked, he stood, slipped past dead Stella and into the bedroom,
there was Beth, still asleep, mercifully asleep, but his hand wouldn’t shake her, his voice wouldn’t wake her, instead he followed his body around the bed and into the bathroom and he got in the shower and he cleaned from himself as best he could,
the vomit,
and the taste of vomit,
and the stink of vomit;

but the spitting showerhead wasn't what it was, like so many things, like everything perhaps, nothing's what it was, that's the nature of this place,
but best not to dwell, all roads don't need to lead to death, nor to dilapidation, they just converge there when we think a certain way, like Nathan was thinking, naked in the shower, washing his feet, imagining dead Stella by the front door,
perhaps he should wash her, it's never too late to be clean, clean is beauty and beauty is good;

while he was drying Beth appeared in front of him, acutely naked, and took the towel from him, and began touching him and laughing and her breath smelled of the night before;

and he wondered how he was supposed to tell her, what he was supposed to say, it’s not the kind of subject you introduce everyday,
- By the way, he might begin,
- My ex is in the other room and she is dead, he might add,
ridiculous,
but there was nothing else for it, he couldn’t allow this to continue;

- I’m in trouble, he said, pushing her away gently,
- There’s something you need to see, he added;

before he opened the door to the living room he felt the need to warn her,
- It’s not pleasant, he said,
but those words were inadequate;

Beth didn't scream, she squeaked, a kind of eep, her hand moved fast over her mouth to deny what she saw, that’s what people do when they want something not to be true, cover their mouth, and Beth very much wanted this not to be true, it was the first dead person she’d seen, first dead anything she’d seen;

yes, she’d imagined death, told stories, sang songs, made jokes, but until now she didn’t know how it made the air taste, dead bodies are one thing in the mind but quite another in the decaying flesh, especially when the body was property of someone you had spoken with, was someone you had spoken with;

she backed into the bedroom and he followed, he was shivering now, he was wearing only his towel and the air was cold and he was scared;
- It wasn’t me, Nathan said,
- I found her like this, he added;

- But how did she get here? Beth asked,
- I don’t know,
- Were you sleeping with her again?
- Fucking her?
- Either,
- Not any more, not recently, not last night;

he so wanted to carry on explaining, speaking, making noise, it detracted from the tension, fictionalised everything somehow, made it less immediate, but Beth silenced him with a wave of the hand,
and she turned to the everything-proof window and looked beyond it at the decay, and Nathan could tell she was alive because she was upright, but otherwise she too could have been a doll, a mannequin, a waxwork, she was so still;
and if this went badly, a tragedy may become a catastrophe, or the other way round, whichever word carries more weight, but really it doesn’t matter, after all, semantics are irrelevant beside what had happened, and quibbling never solved anything;

but there had been no option, Beth would have seen, there was no way around it;

and still she remained quiet, while Nathan sniffed back tears in rattling snorts, sucking the phlegm down into his throat;

and this nothingness, this single moment, dragged itself along for an indeterminate time, before Nathan lost the fight to control his mouth and more words poured out,
- I didn’t do it, believe me, I don’t know what happened to her, I don’t know why she is here, we haven’t spoken in months;

Beth hadn’t looked at the body since she first saw it, understandably, after all, it’s not unusual to avert the eyes from this kind of thing, but now she walked back into the front room and rested her gaze squarely on the source, on dead Stella,
and, as if leaving a dark place for a light one, the obnoxiousness of the glare was blinding, but only in the first moments, quickly it began to diminish and the situation slowly came to focus;

Beth said,
- Somebody killed her, and if it wasn’t you, and it wasn't me, then it was someone else,
Nathan nodded, the logic was irrefutable;

- She’s your ex, that can’t be a coincidence, she added;

it was true and it was obvious, but it took a while to sink in, the implications were extraordinary,
Nathan jittered from one side of the room to the other, his body reacting once again on a nonsensical urge to flee, millions of years of evolution had not been dismissed by a few years of living in this confined building, where flight is a non-starter at the best of times, but in this particular circumstance it was even more true;

- You should go, he said;

Beth’s skin seemed whiter than ever, her hair straighter than ever, and now, as she adjusted her posture and spoke, her voice sounded clearer than ever,
- I’m staying, she said;

Nathan protested,
once;

and for a while they pretended to consider their options, each waiting for the other to voice their conclusion, as people do when they want to say something contrary to the morality of the place and the time, they wait for another to go first, everyone knows that endorsing a view is less objectionable than suggesting it, and in theory they could have sat forever in stalemate, but it was Beth who finally spoke,
- We have to get her out of here, she said,
- And then we have to get the blood cleaned, she added,
- And then it might all be okay, she concluded;

but the vividity, the vibrancy, the life in the colours of death overpowered Nathan's imagination, for no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't imagine how anything could be okay again;