Kissing Skulls *Revised*

Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

            Dave was in the basement when I came bursting into the storeroom of the hideout, holding the note between two fingers as if it were a smelly pair of underwear.

            Underwear with fangs.

            There was no one else around to watch me fumble with the doors one-handed or stumble down the stairs that led to the dank basement—which was odd for this time of day.

            Everyone else must have been out on a mission—that, or sleeping after the morning meeting had let out.  Today was a Saturday, after all; one of the few days we had to truly rest.

            At least until nightfall. 

            I trudged the long lines of metal shelves that covered the basement from end to end, until I finally found Dave crouched in a corner behind the farthest one.  A naked light bulb hung overhead and spilled orange light onto his lanky body. 

            “Please tell me you saw me leave the alley in one piece,” I begged, as I made my way over to him with the crumbled note poised in my hand, ready to broadcast the creepiness if he answered anything other than yes. 

            “Yeah," he replied without looking up.  He was crouched on the floor, surrounded by stacks and stacks of dusty boxes.  "I watched you go home last night, actually,” he added, before hefting one of said boxes onto a low shelf. 

            He was doing inventory.  A boring process that involved dusting off old gear and cataloguing it—something that an anal neat freak like Dustyn thought was vital to do every week, even though I had never seen half of the stuff outside its box since I’d joined on. 

            “I tracked you with a spell.”

            It was a statement that, from any other teenage boy would have given me the heeby jeebies—but coming from Dave, made me feel oddly relieved.

            He had been looking out for me—just like I knew he would…but that didn’t explain the note, or the strange hangover-like blandness that clung to me like saran wrap. 

            “So, I didn’t go anywhere?”  I posed the question wearily, already knowing the answer even before Dave paused to give me a weird look from beneath the fringe of his wispy bangs.

            “Um, no.  Besides, where would you go?”

            I didn’t like the way he’d phrased that.  Where would you go?  As if I was a hermit or something. 

            I did have a life…or, at least I used to.

            “Nowhere,” I said, hands on my hips.  “But…I didn’t make a detour?—not even a teensy little one?   To a store, or the warehouse, or…a bar, perhaps?”

            “A bar?” 

            Dave paused taking inventory long enough to drop a heavy box on the floor and dust his hands on the side of his already filthy jeans.  He hadn’t changed his clothes from last night I saw, wrinkling my nose.  He’d stripped the blood-covered shirt of course and replaced it with a plain gray hoodie, but the pants were the same.

            I could even smell the ghoul. 

            I wondered if he had come over straight from the mission, using the mind-numbing tediousness of inventory as a way to clear his mind.