Charlie C. was crying. Big fat tears. It was all crashing down, now. The dead girl in the corner had screamed too loud. Neighbors had heard, most definitely. It was late, but the walls of this shoebox were so thin. He could maybe hide her in the closet, or stuff her in his footlocker until the police came and went. Except Georgie wouldn’t let him get up out of his chair. Georgie had a gun.
“Georgie, let’s talk about this,” Charlie pleaded. He was wringing his sweaty hands like a damp rag.
“No more talking to be done, brother bear,” Georgie said. He was studying the revolver in his hands. Half-lidded eyes like ice chips poured over the details of the firearm. They were tired, but resolute. His fingers wrapped firmly around the grip as he pointed the gun at Charlie.
“Frankly, this is all overdue,” he said, pulling the hammer back.
Charlie threw his hands up in front of his face. “Wait!” He screamed.
Georgie rolled his eyes. The hammer on the gun returned to rest. He let the gun fall to his side as he turned away from Charlie. When he turned back to him, there was fire in his glare. His mouth was twisted into an ugly sneer.
“You’re a fucking liability, man,” Georgie shouted. He pointed at the dead girl with the barrel of the gun. “I bring Lola over for a little fun and you fucking lose it like that? What the fuck, Charles?”
“Don’t call me that,” Charlie whispered hoarsely. Snot bubbled from one nostril.
“Don’t kill my girlfriends,” Georgie shot back. He walked over to the corpse and knelt. Grabbing her hair, Georgie lifted her head up to the light. The woman had no face. Where it should have been was only a smear, like wet paint someone had smudged with their thumb. Georgie made a disgusted noise and let go of the woman’s hair. Her head thunked back to the hardwood.
“You already forgot what she looked like,” Georgie said, disappointed. He stood again and turned back to Charlie. The fire was still in his eyes, but sadness lived there now, too.
“We had a good run,” Georgie said in a softer tone, “we both played wild over the years, Charlie. God knows you got me out of a scrape or two. But I can’t keep cleaning up your messes, man.”
“My messes? What about—”
“What? The girl in Dallas? That was three springs ago, C-Note. Not to mention, you picked her out. I wasn’t even itching that night. Haven’t itched in a long time, anyway. Might go straight. Might be time, you know?”
“So let’s go straight together, man! No more girls, no more—”
Georgie was shaking his head. Charlie’s heart was beating at a racehorse’s pace.
“Georgie, you need me,” he whispered, “Lysa thought she didn’t need me no more, look what happened there. I went into a coma for three months and she died, man. You wanna go out like that?”
Georgie shrugged, raising the gun once more. “At this point, whatever happens, happens man. I feel like a ghost. Actually becoming one might not be so bad. Besides, maybe for me, killing you will work. Lysa was new, you know? She wasn’t settled in like I am.”
The man in the tuxedo spoke up from where he sat in the corner behind Georgie. He had been veiled in the shadows. Neither of the other men had noticed him.
“You’ll kill us all, Georgie,” he said. A cigarette in his hand smoked lazily.
Georgie shot the man a glance. “Do you really care, Jonathan?” He asked.
Jonathan shrugged. “Just making an observation. Maybe we calm down and call the Doc.”
“Doc wants the same thing, but his methods aren’t working,” Georgie said, turning back to Charlie. The gun was still raised.
Jonathan regarded Georgie for a moment. His eyes were tired, sunken and blank. After a moment, he shrugged. “Fine. Do it.”
Charlie gaped at Jonathan. “You can’t mean it,” he said in a weak voice.
Jonathan’s grey-blue gaze turned to Charlie. They held an exhaustion that ran deep into the man’s soul.
“C’mon Charles,” he said, “let’s be honest with ourself, shall we? We all knew it was going to come to this eventually. The pills ran out days ago. Doc keeps pushing off our appointments. Everyone’s gotten louder. Everyone has something to say. The headaches are unbearable.”
Jonathan lightly pressed his fingers against his temples. He shuddered against his own touch.
“Not to mention the monsters,” he continued, dropping his hands to his lap, “I’m sure you’ve seen them coming around again.”
The pair of eyes that had been watching them all from around the corner of the hallway slid back out of sight at the mention of monsters. Something gurgled like an empty stomach from that direction. The men ignored it.
“We can’t just let him kill us,” Charlie whispered. Sweat rivered down the rough-hewn skin of his face.
“Why not?” Jonathan asked.
“Because I don’t want to die.”
“But maybe I do, Charlie. Have you thought about that? Or are you just so selfish that you only ever cared about yourself?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. Dr. Chevok says I have control over what you say to me.”
Jonathan laughed. Georgie laughed with him. They had the same one. It was a bitter, sour sound. Charlie added his to sweeten it up, but it came out as bitter and tired as the others.
“That quack doesn’t know shit,” the three men spat in unison. It scared Charlie when his mouth spoke without him asking. Georgie and Jonathan had begun to look like each other. Jonathan had lost his tux; now he wore Georgie’s plaid shirt. Georgie’s green eyes had taken on the grey hue of Jonathan’s. Both wore the same tight, hateful grimace on their melding faces.
“It’s too late, Charlie,” Jonathan said, “you’re a liability. You killed his girl Lola.”
Jonathan pointed at where the corpse had been. Now there was only a large black bloodstain on the floor. Charlie didn’t remember getting rid of her.
“Where?” Charlie asked, pointing to the stain. He looked to Georgie, not lowering his finger.
“I took care of it,” Georgie said. His voice was kind again. The gun was no longer in his hand. “One last favor for my oldest friend.”
“I’m sorry about her,” Charlie wept.
Georgie shrugged. “Shit happens, man. Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.”
The revolver was slick with sweat in Charlie’s meaty palm. Georgie nodded toward it.
“Gonna get to it?” He asked.
Charlie studied the gun. He looked up at Georgie. His face had become scribbles.
“Do it.”
The whisper came from just behind Charlie. He twisted his neck around. It popped and seized. Pain flooded in. It was all for naught; nobody lurked behind him except for a figure with no mouth. It couldn’t have been him.
“Do it, Charlie.” It was in front of him now. Charlie twisted back, but only Georgie and Jonathan were there.
“Do it.” From his left.
“Do it.” From his right.
“Finish it.” The creature in the hall.
Charlie covered his ears with his hands, but still the whispers came, loud as a thunderstorm on his brain.
“Do it.”
“Pull the trigger.”
“End the show.”
The whispers were coming from everywhere. They leaked from the cracks in the walls and ceiling, escaped the drains in the bathroom and kitchen, and drifted up through the floorboards. They were everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“No more fighting.”
“Let’s just do it.”
“Just give in, Charlie.”
Charlie clasped his hands tighter around his ears, desperately trying to block out the whispers, but it was no good. They were in his head now. Little speakers dug deep in his head, blaring. There was no off-switch. The pills were the off-switch, but there were no more pills. There were only the voices, Jonathan’s hopelessness, and Georgie’s gun. Charlie opened his mouth. He searched for a word but found he did not know what words were anymore. Instead, he screamed. It was a long, anguished trill that scratched his larynx and put the taste of blood in his throat. Someone pounded on the apartment door.
“I’m calling the fucking police you fuck,” a voice shouted from the other side. Charlie didn’t hear it. Neither did Georgie or Jonathan. Charlie kept screaming. If he screamed enough, he could drown the whispers out. He could shred this entire ghoulish situation with his voice if he could only reach the decibels that broke glass. If he tried hard enough, he might even be able to go higher than tha–
Georgie slapped Charlie with such force that it knocked his bullet-shaped head sideways. The beads of sweat that dotted his forehead were flicked into the stratosphere. Charlie looked up at Georgie, beginning to tremble as his old friend again put the gun to Charlie’s forehead. That was impossible, though, because Georgie’s arms were at his sides. Charlie gasped as the cold barrel of the revolver touched his temple. His own hand curled tight around the handle, and his index finger was putting pressure on the trigger.
“You can’t do this, Georgie,” Charlie whispered.
Georgie smiled. It was a loving, sad smile. The smile you give Grandma on her death bed.
“But you can,” Georgie whispered.
Charlie felt his finger pull the trigger, and then felt nothing else. He heard the crack the gun made as the bullet fired, and then he heard nothing else. He saw Georgie smiling for a second more, and then he saw nothing else. Charlie C. died, and then did nothing else.
Georgie watched the bullet burrow into one side of Charlie’s skull and push the grey matter out the other. The mess splattered on the wall and floor beside Charlie. Charlie slumped and slipped from the chair, hitting the floor on his side with a soft thud. Warm blood trickled like a stream from the entry wound at his temple, waterfalling over his face and into his open eye, staining the white a deep, dark red.
Georgie turned to Jonathan. The little man had returned to his dapper self. There was a wound that matched Charlie’s in his temple. Blood stained his dickie. He was sitting in his chair again, already dissolving.
“He’s dead,” Georgie breathed.
Jonathan stared at Georgie. Only his eyes were really left, intense and shining and floating in the air. Georgie thought he saw the ghost of a smile below them. Then, the dapper little man was gone.
Georgie found his feet. He stepped over Charlie and headed to the bathroom. He didn’t want to look in the mirror. The thought of Charlie’s dead eyes staring back at him filled him with anxiety. It took a great deal of effort to grasp the bathroom doorknob. Fear knocked on his chest as he twisted it. The door creaked open slowly. His eyes climbed to the mirror. His own unshaven visage stared back at him. Georgie watched the fear drain from his own eyes.
“I’m free,” he whispered, “I’m—”
But something was wrong. He edged closer to the mirror, peering deeper into his own reflection. Blood was trickling from a wound in his temple. Grey matter dribbled from the twin wound on the opposite side.
“Shi—”
Then Georgie was gone. He didn’t fall apart, or get ripped to shreds by the strain of sudden, solo existence. Georgie, the last functioning blip of Charlie C’s brain, dropped from existence as though he had never been there at all.
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