Scary Stories: I’m A PI And My Client Asked Me To Stalk Her. It Only Got Weirder From There

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.

Being a PI sucks. It’s not what you think. It’s pretty much harassing women. Men hire PIs to go harass their wives and girlfriends and once in a blue moon, you get asked to find a missing dog, or to harass a man instead. But that’s it, really. Sometimes I’m looking for hard evidence of infidelity, but a lot of the time my clients just want to rattle the soon-to-be-ex. To make them paranoid and jittery and less reliable in a courtroom, or less likely to pay attention to small print agreements that stiff them out of the holiday home. So that’s my job. I’m a pawn and it is almost always on behalf of the kind of men who think women reading a book in public are secretly looking for male attention. 

I don’t have an office. I did for a short while. But things are tough, as I’m sure many of you know, and PI work isn’t exactly lucrative. I don’t know why I’m still doing this job, except to say I’m my own boss, and it’s not easy out there. I went into this with vastly different expectations. If anyone wants to hire someone who was convicted of insurance fraud while training to be a police officer, let me know. Otherwise I’m on my own, following people in cars and sleeping in dingy motels. So when someone reached out looking for a guy to stalk them, I just figured it was a fetish thing. I got a nephew who went to art school and makes big bucks painting cartoon characters doing fucked up stuff. He ain’t painting the Sistine Chapel, but he pays the bills and looks after his family. I figure if that work is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

So I met the woman and was surprised at how normal she looked. It was in a public place, a park with a nice bench. And even though it was starting to rain a little we didn’t let it bother either of us. We sat there, two tape recorders running, and hashed it out. She said she liked me. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have gotten out of her car. That was flattering coming from her. Good looking woman. Professional. I didn’t know at the time but I’d quickly figure out she was a forensic accountant.

Anyway, we got talking. She never gave me her motivation, but I would later come to understand her as an amateur narcissist. She was new at loving herself. She was smart, accomplished, and actually rather beautiful provided you didn’t spend a great deal of time agonising over things like symmetry or eyebrows, and instead paid attention to how a smile reaches the eyes, or how laughter sounds when it catches someone by surprise. But she grew up dirt poor and spent her teen years unable to visit the dentist, or access a gym, or even just eat home cooked food that wasn’t microwaved. Plump frame, blotchy skin, hair she kept short with a pair of scissors because her and her mother relied on the shampoo and soap they stole from the motel where they shared cleaning shifts. When she fumbled awkward questions at some of the better looking boys in her class, she rarely met with success. That’s not to say she was an outcast, either. She had a social life. It’s just poor kids have to grow up early. Prom’s a luxury. Eating isn’t. If you know, you know. Otherwise you might be surprised by just how fucking tough it can be for some kids in this country. Anyway, she got out of that hole, fought tooth and nail, got an education, a good job, and by the time she finished her victory lap and took stock of her life she was thirty-five years old and a thousand miles from the trailer she was raised in. 

And she looked good. The woman in the mirror was a stranger that she wanted to get to know. I think hiring me was an act of self-love. I think if she could have, she would have sat in a car and watched herself get a cup of coffee, spying closely at the professional looking woman doing a little half-run half-skip to get out of the rain. The way she stood in line rocking back and forth on her heels to the music in her airpods thinking no one’d notice. She wanted to admire herself, but unable to time travel or clone herself, she instead resorted to hiring me as a kind of proxy.

I had my own boundaries, of course. They covered anything that was gonna get me in trouble. The gist of the contract, after a nice week spent meeting after work and talking, was that I was to follow her as often as I could and just… observe her. Photos. Videos. Secret recordings. Occasionally a little bit more. Nothing physical. For example, one time I inventoried her handbag after she left it in a taxi by accident. I’m not a photographer, but something about all those knick knacks laid out on a motel bed snapped with a black and white polaroid, it looked good. Like something you’d see in a fancy gallery. Avant garde my nephew would say. She loved it. Paid me a bonus for it and everything.

Anyway, this carried on like this for about six months. They were… interesting times. Tailing her across train stations, racing across open parking lots to install a tracker on her car, standing on a bridge and dropping an air tag in her bag as she walked past. It was a little bit like being a spy. She even paid for me to buy high end equipment. Crazy stuff. One camera, I could sit on my balcony and read the texts on her phone from a block away. Occasionally there were days where I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the required intensity. Stalking requires a lot of cardio. When that happened, when I didn’t feel like following her into a crowded place, or sprinting half-way around town following her car, I’d do research. I’d investigate who this woman had once been. I created fake Facebook profiles and tracked down old school friends, spoke to former teachers, lovers, all of that. The whole job was a matter of mapping her out, like she was a country, you know? And a country isn’t just hills and rivers and borders. Countries have history. 

She was happy with my initiative. The text she sent me when I showed her the research folder was a glowing commendation. First one I’d had in a long time. It was nice, someone telling me good job. She had a real way of making me feel like a kid getting a gold star. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was putty in her hands. Head over heels, bless my stupid heart. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I’d had just enough time to grow over confident. I made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t gonna find anything in her past that’d give me trouble sleeping. 

Boy did I get that one fucking wrong.

Her mother. That’s where things took an odd turn. Now I knew from news reports the mother died in their trailer while her daughter was off staying at some boyfriend’s place for a few days. Natural causes, it read. I wanted to know a little more about what natural causes they were. Figured if there was a congenital thing, it seemed like maybe I ought to know. You’d think the way the trailer park owner reacted to me asking about it, I’d tried asking the Russian government for proof of a democratic election. Thin reedy little woman who gave me hell the moment I mentioned a name. What do you wanna know that for? Who’s asking? Who’s paying you? Why you wanna dig this shit up?

Oh she ripped me to pieces. I put it down to the natural sprinkling of crazies in the standard population and took a different tact. Started calling up the older folks in the park. Residents. Every single one of them put the phone down on me the second I mentioned her name. 

Well, all of them except one.

Some people wanna talk and this old bastard was one of them. He had a lot to say about everything from the president to social media and I let him ramble on before starting to press my point. Told him at the start I was a historian looking into the local area, that made it so it wasn’t too suspicious when I began asking about this and that. Slowly making my way to the death of a fifty-three year old woman a couple trailers down from him some years ago.

Again, soon as I mentioned her name, there was a change in the air, even over the phone. For a second I thought this old guy was gonna hang up just like the others. Could hear him smacking his dry lips as he mulled it over. 

“Francine didn’t deserve what happened to her,” he said after a while. “She wasn’t a good woman. Didn’t treat her daughter too good neither. But didn’t deserve what happened. Maybe if they’d found her earlier, some of those fellas in white coats could’ve got more evidence, put that little wretch of hers away. But from what I understand, weren’t much left of her at all.”

Then he hung up, leaving me with a whole lot of questions.

This frustrated me. I had, until now, had a fair bit of luck at this new profession of mine. They say be careful what you get good at. Sad truth was, I was getting good at stalking and this was my first real roadblock. I remembered the way I felt when she told me good job and it bothered me I couldn’t really say much about this critical part of her life. That and, well, maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder about being a failed policeman. If you give me a problem, I can sometimes drive myself crazy looking for a fix. 

So I hopped in my car and drove to the trailer park, damn near on the other side of the country. Don’t know I was hoping to find. No way the trailer was still there, and it wasn’t. But what I found odd was the lot hadn’t been replaced. There was a hole in the ground, about the right size, and nothing else. Just an empty spot where the trailer had once stood. And the trailers on either side weren’t occupied either. I could tell by politely and legally looking through the windows. Most of them were cleared out, but a few weren’t. They still had plates and other knick knacks left hanging around, like the owners had left without bothering to pack.

“You shouldn’t hang around there, mister.”

The girl who appeared stood a good twenty feet away, shouting over the wind so as to be heard. 

“Smell can make you awful sick.”

I wrinkled my nose, aware of the odour she was talking about. Had been since I approached the empty lot. A faint musty smell that made me think of an exotic pet shop.

“What do you mean?”

“Smell makes you sick,” she said like it was self-explanatory. “Woman who died there left behind an awful stench. Made the neighbours sick. And the neighbour’s neighbours, and so on for a couple trailers in a row. No one likes to live there now. Still can’t. Had a couple move in a year or two back and they got sick too. Daddy says it’s a bad one. Not even rats go near that hole.”

The smell wasn’t pretty, but this trailer park looked like the kinda place where hubcaps went missing regularly. Figured they would’ve been used to bad smells. What made this one so special? 

I looked over at the girl. 

“Where is your dad?”

Few minutes later and I was stood outside a trailer waiting pensively. The little girl had disappeared inside to fetch her father and since then I’d been sat listening to the quietest trailer park in the whole world. Crickets and silence. Traffic on a distant highway. Place was dying, that much was clear.

When the father finally did make an appearance, he said nothing for the first few minutes. Lit a cigarette, offered me one. I refused on account of having quit some time back.

After a while he spoke up.

“I’d invite you in but if you been hanging around that old lot, not sure I want you inside my home. No offence.”

“None taken,” I replied. 

“Sally says you’re a historian.”

The man wasn’t terribly old. Mid-thirties, at a guess, but he looked me up and down like I was a teenager caught throwing eggs at his house.

“What’re you really?”

“PI,” I replied.

“Ha now that makes sense. Some relative looking for answers? Heard the Hendersons had a sister with money.”

“That’s exactly it,” I lied. “She didn’t buy the official story.”

“Nor should she,” he replied. “Henderson was fit as a fiddle day he moved in. Weren’t no justice in what happened to those who got sick. And poor Francine… They say she died of natural causes. Man even back then I knew it was shit and I was just a lil kid. The smell alone. Think it’s bad now but at the time, before they came in with a crane to lift the trailer up whole and move it to the dump. Shit it was something awful. There was talk of moving the whole park. Course no one gave enough of a shit about us to go ahead and actually do it.”

“What did she die of?”

“Don’t know. Only thing I am sure of is that that girl of Francine’s lied. Said her mother was live and well when she left before the weekend and they was all on good terms, but that was bullshit. We heard ‘em fighting for weeks before, for one. And of course the body, state that was in, ain’t no way it’d been rotting for just a few days.”

He offered me another cigarette. I refused. He lit it up instead. Second one in what felt like just a few minutes. Made me itchy just to see. I wanted to say something, anything to get a little bit more. But I’d told a big lie pretending to be there on someone else’s behalf, and didn’t want to catch myself out, so I just sat and listened to the quiet buzz of his little patio light.

After the second cigarette was done he reached into his back pocket and took out an old photo.

“I hope you find justice for Henderson and the rest of them,” he said. “Only real bit of proof I ever had something fishy went on.” 

He handed me the picture. Wasn’t easy to see what I was looking at. Pile of old leaves, maybe. Mulch. I squinted at it for a few good seconds but couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“What…?”

“Took that the day they arrived to get rid of the trailer. Had to stand on my friend’s shoulders just to reach.”

“What is it?” I asked, my skin starting to crawl as I picked out details. Whatever I was looking at, it was slumped on a sofa with floral wallpaper in the background. It was about the size of a man, but riddled with holes and cavities the size of golf balls. In my whole life, I’d never seen something that looked like that.

“Why that’s Francine,” he said. “Or at least what was left of her.”

He let me keep the photo. At a guess, that was the only interesting thing that’d ever happened to that man and he’d been waiting to share it with someone. All I had to do was give him an excuse. He seemed to take some pleasure in passing it on. Certainly found my reaction to it amusing. I must’ve gone pale as I grappled with thoughts of what had happened to make a body go bad like that. Back in the hotel, under a good light, I checked that picture again and again. Something about it made me deeply uncomfortable. Knowing a woman was under all that… all those holes and crevices must’ve been made in her flesh. And what’d happened to her skin that’d turned it such a funny texture? Looked furry, like the kinda thing that grows on top of a long-forgotten cup of coffee.

A part of me considered asking my client about this, but I knew that wasn’t the way to go. First, she probably wouldn’t tell me good job if I had to ask. She hired me to do a certain thing and that didn’t involve politely requesting information right from the source. Second, well… I’d read the police reports, what was publicly available, anyway. And she’d made it clear she’d left on the friday and came home on the Monday and… 

Well what if that guy was right? Did she really leave her mother alive and well? I mean, people kill. Not just psychos. People like you and me. We do it every day and sometimes we even pull it off. Only half of US murders get solved. That’s a fact. If anyone could be in the right half of that equation, it’d be her. She was smart as hell, my client. Even at seventeen she would’ve been a clever one. Clever enough that she might easily have been able to cover her tracks. Gone over to some boyfriend, twisted his arm into giving her an alibi. Sure, I could see that. 

I just needed to figure out what the fuck was going on with that crime scene in the trailer. Thankfully I got some friends still on the force, one of which I even have a bit of leverage on. At first he couldn’t find much on the actual mother, but then I asked him  to see if he could take the photo I had, show it around, and see if anyone had seen something like it before. That proved a lot more fruitful. Few days later he came back with a strange one, but straight away I saw the connection.

I’ll spare the details. Old man was found in a tub, all sorts of fucked up, in some old apartment building. It had since been condemned on account of the body which is fairly weird since bodies don’t usually cause that much fuss, but less weird when you realise that said body was in such a bad state it made three people sick and caused long-lasting structural damage. Whatever happened to this guy, it ate through the tub he’d been lying in and seeped into the floors and walls below. Turned plasterboard to shit and apparently even caused some trouble for the sturdier elements like steel and concrete. I don’t know how that works exactly, but that’s what the file said and going by the photos, I didn’t feel like anyone was lying.

As for the pictures? What can I say? Made my fucking skin crawl. No blurry little polaroid snapped by a kid. These were professional crime scene pictures that showed something in a bathtub that didn’t register as human until my eyes went looking for details. He looked like a hairy paper-wasp’s nest, only there were fingers and nipples and other little things that made it clear it had been built using a person as the framework. No face though. Just a head like a pile of used paper plates. Looking at those photos made me learn a new word just to describe how I felt. Trypophobia.

Wasn’t just the one guy either. Building was linked to the disappearance of the ground floor tenant. Some computer geek. I didn’t worry about him too much. But what did catch my eye was there was only one woman living in the whole place. Second floor apartment. The registered name was… somewhat familiar. Close enough to a certain someone’s that it raised the hairs on my neck. Police at the scene managed to get a photo of her and sure enough, there she was. My client going by a different name. Clearly something fishy was going on or else why the pseudonym? I figured it possible she’d maybe offed her own mother. Parents and spouses make the most common victims. But what connection was there to that second corpse, and what about the missing guy?

It was like a horror movie was following her around and she was just blissfully unaware. Condemned buildings and festering trailers made for a far cry from the professional accountant who enjoyed oat milk lattes and used sweetener instead of sugar to spare her teeth. But there was no denying she was the connection. There was photographic proof she’d lived in that building. If I wanted to get ahead of this, to really understand what was going on, I had to figure out what had happened to those bodies. I’d pretty much exhausted my favours with the police and truth was they didn’t know any more than I did. But it turned out the building was still standing. Condemned, but they hadn’t demolished it, partly because no one wanted to take responsibility, but I reckon it might have had something to do with the biohazard warnings slapped on every single window and door.

Good thing I’d brought a gas mask. I waited for sunset, geared up, and entered through the unlocked door. First thing that hit me as the door swung open was the smell. Similar to the trailer park but full pelt and hot as hell. Made me think of lizards and poorly kept terrariums. Strong enough to make my eyes water even through the mask. One thing was clear as I took a look around the hallway – the building was diseased. Not just rundown or decrepit like the usual urban decay. This was something else. Looked like the inside of a clogged pipe. You know how limescale fills it up? It was a bit like that. This oily rust coloured fluid had seeped down the walls and left them glistening and soft. Ropey stalactites of the stuff hung down from the ceiling like old party banners, and I edged around them afraid of what might happen if one touched me. 

Best guess was that stuff was digesting the place. Anything soft or organic was going or gone. Old umbrella frames were left standing in one corner, the fabric burnt or dissolved away. The carpet was reduced to just a few patches no bigger than my hand. And a bunch of old cardboard boxes piled up under the stairs had turned squat and half-liquid, almost flowing down and around each other. The worst came when I took a look in the back room. More of a broom closet, I guess. Wouldn’t have gone in but something caught my eye. A well-worn shoe that wasn’t covered in that oily shit. Sign of recent activity. That and the way the door was ajar just raised my suspicions, so I took a look. 

Even now the timeline eludes me, but someone, a vagrant most likely given the way they were dressed, died a nasty death in there. Chemical burns come to mind. They were balled up in one corner, eyeless, looking up at me as I pushed the door open to take a closer look. Pink flesh threaded with red blood vessels, yellow bones poking through here and there. From the looks of things they’d been trying to work the door open. You could see a history of their escape attempts left by bleeding hands. Rust coloured finger streaks ran all along the door’s edges, special attention paid to the hinges. And he’d broken the only window and tried hauling himself up there only to realise it was barred from the other side. The jagged glass that still clung to the frame was covered in old blood. His palms must have looked like grated cheese. Eventually he’d given up and lain down in that shit and the thought of it made my chest feel heavy and tight. I’d only been in the building a few minutes and that shit was already eating through my shoes. I could hear the thick rubber soles sizzle and pop with each step. But that guy had been forced to sit down in an inch deep puddle of the stuff, likely because exhaustion had left him no choice but to tough it out. So how long had he tried staying up right?

Hours? Days? Weeks?

Him getting stuck in there had to be deliberate. I was sure of it. A feeling in my gut. Someone had locked the door behind him and left him to die slowly. God only knows why, but did that mean they were still hanging around and waiting for a chance to get to me? Looking around, I sure didn’t feel safe or alone. The shadows seemed too deep and the steady drip drip drip of that rancid oil oozing out of every surface was too monotonous. Someone or something lived in that filth and chances were they’d been responsible for that poor vagrant’s agonising death. 

That meant getting out of that shithole was a priority, so I made for the stairs and started the climb. If there were any answers in that place, it’d be in the apartment where that old man died. The crime scene tape was still hanging off the door frame when I found it, and the TV and sofa, or what remained of them, stood in the same place as in the photos. Back in the day the old man had been a hoarder and I was surprised crime scene hadn’t cleared all his shit out. It was all still there, only what had once been a chest high maze of papers and magazines was now just a kind of hardened pulp, almost like magma dried mid-flow. Whole fucking place was covered in the stuff like a coral reef, growing up the walls and even patches of the ceiling. Looked a hell of a lot like a wasp’s nest, and it looked to be the source of that oily looking fluid. You could see it sweating out of every crease and fold in that strange hive. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Glistening amber beads oozing out of papery sheets that flowed like rock striata. There was a gentle, barely perceptible rhythm. Hypnotic.

I don’t know why but I reached out and ran the tip of my finger as gently as I could along the surface. It felt like the underside of a mushroom. All those papery gills. Gossamer thin. Soft and inviting. I wore no gloves and the brief moment of contact had deposited a single bead of that strange syrup on my fingertip. It caused a tingling sensation that was not entirely unpleasant. Even the blood that trickled down my knuckle felt warm and wet, like testing a hot bath with your hand. I liked it. I liked it and I wanted more. 

I went to reach out and push my arm into the nest when a hand burst out of the nest and gripped my wrist. I was so surprised I didn’t even make a noise, but instead wordlessly fell back as the hand pushed me away from the nest. A very nearly skinless forearm followed and soon after a face emerged from the papery nest like a grime covered nightmare. Black eyes and a lipless mouth. It was a man that could have passed for a corpse, like a half-digested piece of meat. Terrified, I struggled to my feet and realised that this person had broken damn near every bone in my wrist with that single grip.

“Your meat smells raw,” he growled before heaving himself out of the nest in a disgusting parody of childbirth.

My sanity flickered and the next thing I knew I was on the ground floor with bleeding eyes and both hands frantically pulling at the door handle. My mind returned in pieces. I blinked red tears away but didn’t stop trying to open the door. I felt it, that urgent need to leave, like a suffocating man feels the need to breathe. But I’d fucked up bad. I’d sniffed out the closet and saw the trap laid there, but hadn’t seen the larger one set for me. There was only one way in and out of that building and I hadn’t jammed the door open! Now it was shut and nothing I did could get it open. With more time maybe I could’ve pried the jamb or even kicked it down, but my heart was racing and my vision blurring. I wanted out of that place. A hot primal need to get the hell out. The air was too hot. My mask too stifling. Sweat condensed on the inner plastic and made it damn near impossible to see. And the pain in my wrist was a throbbing explosion that made sensible thought impossible. I’d realised early on into my little foray that I was underprepared, but the scale of what that meant eluded me until I was there wrestling with thoughts of exposure and contagion and disease, fumbling at a greasy doorknob with a broken hand while suppressing thoughts of what might be crawling up my leg or back or neck. Panic threatened to consume me. The world and all the normality it represented was right fucking there. I could hear it. The distant hum of traffic. The amber glow of streetlights that lit up the biohazard posters. Not thirty minutes ago I’d been there. Safe and far away from this waking nightmare.

I was being reduced to a prey animal. Even in the moment I could sense it happening to me. Being made into something lesser, but it was like my actions were no longer my own. When I finally gave up on the front door, I turned around and saw the shadows way back at the hallway begin to shift as something descended the stairwell. There was no other way out. No door. No window. Just me, a long corridor, and a nightmare coming right at me.

Something inside me gave up. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m still not sure if it was that building and that strange fluid that seemed to warp my own thoughts, or maybe there’s just too much one person can go through. But I could practically hear the thin membrane of my sanity tear as I fell backwards into the door and slid down onto my ass, breathlessly awaiting my terrible fate. I almost contemplated turning off my light but by then it was too late. I could see him coming towards me. He was legless. Nothing from the waist down except blackened viscera trailing up the stairs behind him. He pulled himself towards hand over hand with hungry eyes. Before I knew it he was on top of me, one hand gripping my mouth with a salty palm, the other stroking my hair.

And then in an instant his demeanour changed. He pulled back with a terrified cry and scrambled away like I’d just stuck him with a blade. 

“No no no no no,” he muttered. “No no you should have said you should have said I didn’t know I thought you were another one I didn’t know I thought you were here for me I didn’t know you were hers.”

He cowered away, pedalling on both hands backwards while keeping his eyes fixed on me.

“Tell her I did not know you were hers I could not smell until I was close very close if I hurt you I am sorry tell her I am sorry I did not mean to hurt you it is just I do not get to eat often and am always hungry.”

With a rapid gesture he threw the key for the door at me. It skittered across the floor and fell just short of my feet.

“Tell her I did not know.”

“W-w-w-what are you?” I stammered.

He looked at me curiously, stopping his retreat only briefly to gauge my expression.

“She likes to be seen but I looked without asking and I got what I deserve.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

He very nearly laughed, but with such deformities it was mostly a drooling guffaw. 

“You know!” he gasped. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in love with her. Just like me. But different. You got permission. I didn’t. But she was good. She left me an old nest to live in. And I have permission to eat anything I kill or trap myself. Hard now that people know to stay away but sometimes I get lucky.”

His eyes flicked to the closet with sickening hunger. 

“What has this got to do with her?” I asked.

“What colour are her eyes?” he replied, almost manic with excitement. “Answer. Answer. Tell me. Tell me. What colour are her eyes?”

“G–”

I stopped. The word felt wrong in my mouth. 

“Bl–

“Bro–”

“No no,” he chittered. “None of those.”

Seemingly excited but afraid, he raced forward momentarily and gripped my lapels with twisted glee.

“Compound,” he hissed with such forbidden pleasure. “Her eyes are compound. She’s jealous of us, you know? 

“Jealous we get to love her.”

And then he disappeared into the darkness and something inside me gave way entirely and I passed out.

I don’t know much of what came after, exactly. I was found a few hours later in my car, idling at a traffic light. I’d made some effort at getting away on my own but didn’t get very far. No surprise here but I got sick as a dog going in that place. A deep chest infection. The kind that scares everyone at least once in their life. Only fair given how fucking stupid I was. But forgive me, I hadn’t anticipated nightmares beyond human comprehension. I challenge anybody to think that fucking far ahead. You think junkies. You think flies. Squatters. But that guy… that man slipping out of the nest and barrelling towards me on two hands. My mind going sizzle pop along with the soles on my boots. In real life, shit like that always sneaks up on you. 

So I paid the price. Six months. Jesus. Six long months. I got every fever you can think of. Sepsis. Kidney failure. Liver failure. Month after month drowning in my own fluids, coughing up shit that made the nurses gag and leave. I asked the doctor what the long term effects will be and he winced before reading a list of things that didn’t leave much hope for a happy retirement. And if it was hard on my body, it was even worse on my mind. Those fever dreams… doctors say what I remember in that building, that was all just part of the sickness. Say I spent a good three days in a coma and strange dreams are the norm. Which I might accept if it weren’t the fucking skin graft still healing on my right hand. No one can explain that.

My client visited. Just the once. There are universally sad moments in life and one of them is realising someone you have a lot of affection for doesn’t have it back. They have some. Just not the same amount. It was always one way though, wasn’t it? I saw her every single day but if I was doing my job right, she only saw me once a month for our meetings. Our arrangement ended not long after, so I hope anyway. She left like it was nothing but me… ah Jesus it felt like someone excavated my heart right out. Even after what she told me why she was there, even after what I did, I could barely stand up straight I was so heartbroken. There were times after that I wished the sickness would just take me. Maybe that defeatism is why it got so bad. Who knows?

She came to me looking for a recommendation, of all things. She wasn’t cold. Far from it. But there was a sense of disappointment as she sat beside me and eyed me up.

“I liked the initiative,” she said after a while. “But the results leave me unimpressed.”

“What the fuck happened in that place?” I asked, and even though I could barely hear my own voice, she seemed like she heard every word. For a moment, the way she contemplated it, I thought I was gonna get a straight answer. 

“You know my mother said men don’t see ugly women. They know they exist but they just poof them right outta their mind. Like a magic trick. She said we worked better being a little plain. Good enough to take home for a night. Any more and we’d start to leave problems everywhere we go. That guy was a problem. She was trying to warn me about the dangers of attention but silly me, I went and got addicted. I hoped with you there might be a degree of… separation. Infatuation on a contractual basis.”

She took a deep breath like she’d had a long hard day. 

“I don’t know. Maybe Mom was right. It’s ridiculous, I suppose. The fly shouldn’t admire the spider. It either sees it and fears it, or doesn’t know what’s coming until it’s too late. I think Mom was telling me to go for the latter. It’s no fun being invisible though. You spent all that time looking at me. Following me. What did you see?”

I looked at her until my eyes watered and something throbbed in my skull.

“I don’t know,” I tried to lie.

“Be honest.”

She looked right at me and something in the air changed. I don’t know what. Hot. Jesus it was hot. Like looking at the sun. I remember the heart rate monitor going nuts and then… then I remember gossamer wings and serrated chitin. A tick on the inside of your cheek. A leech on your tongue. A horsehair worm that won’t leave the skin. And then an instant later my eyes refocused and there was just a normal woman in front of me.

“Someone I could have loved,” I answered, unable to stop the words spilling like vomit. “Someone who I thought deserved love.”

“See,” she said. “Who wouldn’t like your version better?”

I was crying again. Heart racing. World like butter, going soft at the edges. Whatever she did, it was like undergoing brain surgery in real time.

“I’d like a recommendation,” she said after another minute or two of silence. “I’d like to see myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see what you do. I’d like an artist to paint me. A version of me, at least. It won’t be easy on them. All this time you’ve probably looked directly at me for no more than five, ten minutes in total. Just didn’t realise it. Always the back of my head or my hair obscuring just so. That won’t do. I want a portrait. I want to know what you see.”

“What will you do to them?”

“I won’t do anything. Not intentionally. But if you ask someone to paint the sun, expect them to go blind. Whoever paints me will be painting the sun in their living room. Going blind is the least of their problems. Now, fess up. You know someone. You mentioned them once in passing. A cousin, maybe. An artist in need of cash. I’m sure of it.”

“Why would I tell you anything?”

“Because you love me,” she said. “And because despite everything you will get better and you will come back to me. Year or two, I think. You are adamant I have no hold on you, and you will think that for a long time. And this period of freedom, you’ll enjoy it only by my good grace and mercy. You did a good job. Better than any before. I’ve read your notes and reports over and over and seen details of myself I didn’t even know were there. It’s a thing of beauty, what you did. And one day soon you’ll come back to me with some excuse for why you want the contract to continue.”

I tried to spit the word never but managed, at best, a weak shake of the head. Something that put a most peculiar smile on her face.

“It doesn’t work like that. It’d be like trying to brute force your way through Alzheimer’s. You’ll be back. Even now you’re mine. All mine. I’m just being gentle. And you’re going to give me the name and number of this artist because even though you know I could no more love you than a spider loves the fly, you are desperate to please me. Because when I broke the man in that apartment building. When I tore him in two and told him that he would live for as long as I desired, writhing without air for years and years, drowning in sickly fluids and trapped helplessly in a hive he is determined to maintain even though I wouldn’t be caught dead going back there. He was grateful. And, with time, you’ll be grateful too.”

She put the pen in my hand. She smiled, mouthed the word good boy, and God help me…

I gave her my nephew’s number.