Kissing Carrion: Stories by Gemma Files

Author:Gemma Files [Files, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction
ISBN: 9781504063685
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2020-10-12T23:00:00+00:00

Hidebound

. . . he howled fearfully:

Said he was a wolf: Only the difference

Was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside,

His on the inside: Bade them take their swords,

Rip up his flesh, and try . . . .

—-John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, no security guard is automatically issued a gun. You have to pass a special six-month training course for that, which hardly anyone ever does, because they make you pay for the privilege, as with so many other things—your P.I. license, your uniform shirt, your on-site shoes (black, thick-soled, equally presentable for PR or plain old patrol duty), your First Aid expertise, even your clip-on tie, with its risible little cloisonné company insignia. And since the unspoken rule of security is do exactly as much as your bi-weekly direct deposit check dictates—no more, often less—I’m sometimes surprised anyone ever ends up packing heat at all.

Besides, as everybody who’s seen an action movie knows, the security guard is always the first to go if anything actually does happen. So the best you can do is just ride each shift out, calm but cool, taking your mortality as a given: become a Zen master in 365 easy steps, for only seven bucks an hour.

So no, I don’t carry a gun, just like I don’t drive. I’m a Toronto girl, after all, downtown born and bred; quite frankly, I’ve never had to go anywhere that required me to learn how to do either.

I got my security job for exactly two reasons: Because I could speak and write fluently in English, and because having a certain quote of female guards was necessary in order for Saracen Security Limited to retain its licence under the new Ontario government (of the time), which supported the idea of job equity. This is how I ended up drawing my current site, subsequent to spending a week at 1088 Dupot, the events of which tenure comprise much of the following story.

And since I was originally referred to Saracen by a friend of my ex-fiancé Colin, who had worked her way through Theater at Ryerson, by taking night shifts at some deserted office building in Scarborough, I guess that’s yet another thing I have to thank him for.

Like so many others.

* * *

Much later, sitting on the couch with Colin, watching him trying to be calm— fingers knit, and shaking—as the music wove gilt swooping arcs around us, effortless trailing ribbons of sound, I thought: So this is the end of everything. And then, no doubt misquoting Shakespeare’s King Lear:

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