Obsession

My half-faded, half-worn unique twist on the skull and crossbones symbol, that incorporates a necklace wrapped around the bones themselves and ‘Rosalie’ etched so subtly into the jawbone without knowing it’s there you could easily mistake it for shadowing, is some of the best work I think I’ve ever produced.

When I’m done, I step back away and join the other three to admire it.

“That’s incredible”, Logan says. “He said you were good, but that’s out of this world.”

In here nobody can see my cheeks go red. “Thank you”, I say meekly. “It’s different to the style I usually draw in, but I think it works well for this.”

“It’s perfect”, Jack acknowledges.

“We’re done here too”, Logan says. “The earth is too compacted at the bottom to get through, plus we don’t want to bury this thing for the whole of eternity.” He picks up the skull and holds it out to the group. “Who wants to do the honors?”

“It’s your skull”, Alice says.

“Let’s do it together”, I say, stepping forward to put my hands on it.

Alice shrugs. “I can get with that”, she says, moving closer to join us.

“Alright”, Jack says, “I’m game too.”

I know holding hands with a skull in between us shouldn’t really count as holding hands, but I’m going to say it does. We guide the thing to the trench Jack and Logan have excavated and then lower it as deep as we can reach.

“Should we say something?” I ask.

“Goodbye Shadowheart?” Logan suggests.

“Come on, we can do better than that”, Jack says. “We commit to the earth the legend of Shadowheart, to rest in peace with Rosalie, his one and only true love.”

“I think my version was better”, Logan complains, all of us letting the skull go at once.

There is a dull thud as it hits the earth at the bottom of the trench, and then a much louder crack that breaks through the soft silence that had settled nicely around us in the wake of the burial, that scares seven shades of shit out of everyone. Alice screams, I grab hold of both Logan and Jack and I can practically hear my heart leaping out of my chest.

“Please tell me that wasn’t Rosalie coming to get her necklace”, Alice says.

“I have no idea what that was”, Logan says, flashing his cell phone torch in the direction we came in, “but we should probably finish up as quickly as we can and get out of here.”

It takes about a quarter of the time to fill the hole as it did to dig it, every single one of us working hard to replace the shifted earth, terrified that whatever that noise was might be an indication of something absolutely unthinkable to come.

When we’ve finished, the soil has been replaced and stomped down, and Logan has checked that we’ve got the tools we came in with, we make our way back to the boarded up window, too keen to get out to even bother commenting about the return of the sound of the rats.

Outside, we pause in the milky light, gasping for the breath we’ve spent the last few minutes holding tight in our chests. There is a fine rain in the air, almost like a mist spray and I wonder for a moment whether the sound we heard might have been the whipcrack of thunder. Whatever it was, the moment has passed. Jack and Logan are laughing, and it’s so infectious I can’t help but join them too. I know all we’ve done is bury a monkey skull in the earth and make up a story about it’s origin between the four of us, but I can’t help feeling both a sense of achievement and a solidarity with these two men already, unusual for the small amount of time we’ve spent in each other’s company.

I know it sounds stupid to say it, but I feel like this is where I belong, where I’ve always belonged and how it’s meant to be for the rest of our lives, until it’s not a monkey head getting burying in the ground, it’s the three of us after a lifetime of happiness together.

“That was awesome”, Logan says, pulling everyone together for an impromptu group hug.

“You guys are crazy”, Alice says, when we’ve broken the bond again, way too early for my liking. “All of you.”

She may have been the most scared of the four of us, when whatever it was made that heart stopping sound, but it’s definitely not been enough to stop her from seeing the funny side of it now.

“You were scared”, I say to Logan. “Admit it.”

“Archeologists don’t get scared of unusual noises”, Logan says with mock confidence. “That’s Jack’s department.”

“My department is to make other people scared, not the other way round. Besides which, it was a car backfiring. Nothing unusual about that, right?”

“Nothing unusual at all”, Logan says.

“Whether it was a car backfiring or something else entirely, who wants to get out of here now?” Alice asks.

“Me”, we all respond in chorus, before we make our way quickly back to the shadows at the end of the alleyway, where I’m happy to see the car is still parked.

It takes some expert maneuvering on Logan’s part to reverse out of the dead-end street and back to somewhere he can turn around, and with the bay falling away behind us we make our way back to the lights of Brooklyn.

The digital clock on the dash reads 23:47, much later than I thought it might be. I’m not Cinderella, but the night feels like it’s coming to a close and the last thing I want to do is part company. My thoughts go back to the beginning of the evening and despite the heat all over my body, I try and focus on Alice’s words: make them leave wanting it tonight, and the next time will be like a thunder storm in a firework’s factory.

“So”, Logan says, “who wants to do that again another time?”

“How about something more conventional?” Alice says, while she purposely looks at me. “A bar, the cinema, a romantic candlelit dinner.”

“Penny?” Logan asks.

“Absolutely”, I say, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. “This is exactly the kind of thing I love doing.”

“I could take you on a field job”, Logan says. “Now that you’re going to be working with Jack, it doesn’t seem fair that he gets to see you all day and not me.”

“I’d like that”, I say.

“You can always come into the studio”, Jack suggests to him. “Help us work on the pirate story.”

Logan laughs. “It’s not really my natural environment.”

Brooklyn looks like a world away from the place we’ve just been, the streets filled with people moving from bar to bar, lights, activity, real life being lived. I can’t help but want it more than ever, as long as I get these two men to come along for the ride, of course.

“I’ve had an amazing time”, I say. “Thank you, both of you. That’s the best first date I’ve ever been on.”

I stop short of saying, can we make the second one with both of you? Because there’s no way I can broach the subject without coming across as weird and totally insensitive to everyone else in the car.

“Are you kidding?” Logan says. “That’s the best first date you’ll ever go on.”

I like his sarcasm, his mock confidence, the way he jokes constantly to hide what he really wants to say. I like him enormously, as I do Jack for his sensitivity, his imagination and his quiet self confidence. The two of them make me wish I was the kind of person who knew how to get people in bed by just looking at them the right way, without even uttering a single word.

Logan takes the car back to where he had it parked, what’s left of the short journey through the streets of Flatbush completed in the kind of comfortable silence that rarely spills into the realms of first dates. I’ve known people for twenty years I haven’t felt this comfortable with, other’s who can’t bear silence between us so much they’d resort to narrating what’s going on outside the car just to avoid feeling nervous, which is why I know this is special.

“I can take you guys somewhere else if you want?” Logan says, leaning over the edge of his seat to face us. Even if we wanted to go back inside, the bar we were in earlier is now closed.

“This is good”, I say.

“It’s perfect for me too”, Alice adds.