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He waited like a snake in the dark to the left of the door. Or perhaps some kind of freakish octopus, with his orange prison uniform, his hair slick with grease and his eyes just slightly too wide. Two weeks ago when he began his daily vigils his senses were as sharp as blade. Now he drifted in and out of a waking twilight of sleep. Shadows shifted around him every so often, sometimes he could hear snatches of songs or his mother’s laughter or a child’s screams or he’d smell the unmistakeable scents of sex or drink or all the “uncles” from his childhood. Or he’d hear the voice of the “uncle” he hated most, the one who stank of perfume and femininity and had long and broken nails, who spoke like a woman too, soft and slow and cold.
Or he would feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he would feel some inner voice telling him that Brady, poor fat Brady, had got up and away from the wall behind him in the isolated farmhouse, and was right this second reaching out with his arm, getting closer and closer, every second that he spent focussed on the door Brady was shambling closer, meaty fist already clenched.
And then he’d look around and Brady would be where he’d left him, slumped against the wall, his head lolling on one side, almost invisible in the darkness. During the night he was invisible, but it was daytime and a little light filtered into the boarded-up farmhouse.
He’d started eating Brady barely a day after they arrived at the farmhouse; Brady wasn’t useful anymore. He’d stopped being useful the moment that they’d busted out of jail, he was useless by the time they’d found the van. Brady was slow, fat, disgusting. He needed to be consumed, to be destroyed utterly, to be re-used as a part of something greater.
There was a lot of meat on him, though. How long ago had he ripped Brady’s throat out with his teeth? A week? Two weeks? A month? How long had he waited like a snake in the dark, in this stinking twilight, with a half-eaten man behind him and his own death ahead?
The pickup would come soon. Brady had promised. Bust out of jail, head to this location, wait a few days and then get picked up by one of Brady’s contacts. Brady didn’t look like the type of person who’d have contacts, but he’d promised.
Brady didn’t look like a liar.
Well, he didn’t much look like anything anymore. Nonetheless, he hadn’t looked like a liar.
And so, with what was left of Brady slumped behind him, he lay in wait for whoever would open the door to the farmhouse. Open the door and let him out into the world again.
He waited like a snake in the dark.
