They Kill by Tim Waggoner

Author:Tim Waggoner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2019-06-12T13:41:39+00:00

Chapter Nine

Jeffrey was enjoying himself. He couldn’t feel the sun or the breeze on his skin, which admittedly was disappointing, but from all appearances, it was a thoroughly pleasant fall day. He’d been walking for a while now, he wasn’t sure how long, but he’d covered a lot of ground and wasn’t tired in the slightest. He felt as if he could keep on wandering like this forever, stopping only to greet people and bestow upon them the great gift he had to offer. He wished his thoughts weren’t so jumbled, though. He had difficulty focusing on one thing for more than a few seconds before his brain moved on to something else. It was like he had a world-class case of ADD, his thoughts sliding away from him like quicksilver. His memory wasn’t any better. He couldn’t recall what he’d been doing this morning before walking into town. Worse, he couldn’t remember anything farther back than that. Whenever he tried, his head hurt, and if he persisted, the pain intensified to the point where it became unbearable. So naturally, he’d stopped trying.

Flashes of memory came to him unbidden at times, though, scraps of sights and sounds that made little sense. Kissing a man he loved. Laughing with a woman who he also loved, but in a different way, deeper, as if she were part of him. There were moments when his memories became clearer – like when he’d seen the woman – Sierra? – through the window at the art place and left her a message etched in brick, and when the man – Marc? – approached him as he was giving his gift to the woman and her dog. These moments didn’t last, though, and his thoughts devolved into a disordered mess once more. It was frustrating, but it was also nice in a Zen kind of way. It kept him living in the now, and if he just relaxed and went with it, it was as if he existed in a state of grace, a peacefulness that he hadn’t known since his time in the womb.

He hadn’t consciously chosen his route all morning, had been content to wander and allow impulse and circumstance to choose for him. But that didn’t mean his subconscious didn’t give him a nudge in one direction or another at times. That was how he’d come to pass by ArtWorks, and why’d he’d ended up walking around shopping centers where he and Marc used to go. And it was also why he now found himself standing outside the three-story office building that housed Reliant Financial, the place where he’d worked. He didn’t recognize it as such, of course, but he felt compelled to stop and stare at it.

There were no signs outside to say what businesses leased space inside the building. The only identifier was the street number – 683 – indicated by large metal numerals bolted to the brick above the glass-door entrance. It was a professional building, a place where physicians,

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