Contraction, Expansion, Trend
Zandra shuffles to the bathroom sink and runs the water cold. She cups the water in her hands.
I didn't do it.
She splashes the water on her face and watches herself in the mirror as the drops skid back into the sink.
Did I?
Zandra wipes her face with a towel and tries the door for good measure. It's locked, and no amount of jiggling or pushing or pulling is going to change that.
Returning to the bathroom, she lights up a cigarette and uses the sink as an ashtray.
Think.
The pounding of feet coming from the level above her cabin signal the event resumed.
"If anyone cares, I'm not sick. I'm down here," Zandra says to no one in particular. "You'll miss my demo on how to read stock charts. Kind of a twist on reading star charts in astrology. Really great. You're missing out."
Not that I knew what I would be doing at that demo anyway. I'm not a Wall Street investor, but I do know that stock prices do one of two things: go up and go down. There's a 50/50 chance that I'd make a correct prediction during my "psychic reading" of stock charts. Actually, it'd be better than 50/50. Stocks go up and down multiple times throughout the days, weeks, and months. I'd only need to be fuzzy about the timing in order to go from 50% odds to 99%.
The slap dicks who signed up for the demo thought I was going to make them rich. It's the other way around, because they signed off on giving me a percentage of any money they make.
Maybe there's a Wall Street investor in me after all.
Zandra drops the extinguished butt of the cigarette into the toilet. She hobbles to a shelf by the Murphy bed and pulls down the three-ring binder an attendee gave her.
"Three years of stock charts for a company called The Writer's Glove, LLC," Zandra says to an absent audience. She flips through the pages. "Stocks go up. Stocks go down. Not sure how anyone thinks there's more to it than that. The rest is gatekeeping financial jargon to keep Wall Street rich and everyone else in the dark."
The lines and boxes representing stock movements look random. A guide in the corner of one of the pages explains that the lines and boxes are called, "candlesticks." They show the opening price, closing price, highest price, and lowest price of a stock for a given time period, such as one day. The candlesticks condense all this information into a single design that looks similar to—as the name suggests—a candlestick, with wicks pointing up and down at either end of the wax.
I'm bored just thinking about this.
Despite that, Zandra can't bring herself to put the three-ring binder down yet. She plops down on the Murphy bed and continues looking through the charts.
Another guide on a page explains volume. Volume, expressed as a simple bar chart, shows the number of stocks that were traded over a period of time. On some days, The Writer's Glove, LLC, stock's volume went to about 1 million. That seems like a lot to Zandra until she spots a surge to 20 million.
That's a lot of money changing hands in one day.
The crash course in stocks shakes awake the part of Zandra's brain that's served her so well for so long. She starts making connections and noticing patterns.
The stock price goes up, the stock price goes down. Millions of stocks change hands in a single day, all trading the same company. That means millions of decisions, and millions more factors influencing those decisions, go into what happens to that stock on any given day. The variables and possibilities are almost infinite. That's why the charts look so chaotic.
Or do they?
Zandra traces her finger over the fast rise, pause, indecisive wobble, and sharp rise again of The Writer's Glove, LLC, stock over the course of a week. The next week, the stock price pauses like it gets stuck, wobbles indecisively, falls sharply, and pauses once again.
Zandra turns the pages in the three-ring binder faster and faster.
There's a pattern in the chaos.
Over and over, the stock price pauses, wobbles indecisively, and makes a big move up or down. The exact location of the prices on the chart still seems random, but the pattern couldn't be clearer. One stage follows another, every single time.
"So, you've got thousands or millions of people, all making decisions independent of each other about buying and selling this stock, all following the same pattern despite not having a clue what everyone else is thinking," Zandra says, again to no one in particular. "That's fucking wild."
Pause, wobble, make a big move. Pause, wobble, make a big move. It's like the stock price contracts, expands, and finds a trend.
Contraction, expansion, trend.
Contraction. Expansion. Trend.
Contraction.
Expansion.
Trend.
Zandra sets the three-ring binder aside and rubs her temples.
This could be some fingerprints-of-God stuff. If I sat here the rest of the day looking at those charts, I bet I could find even more.
But I can't sit here all day. I've got to figure out how to get the hell out of this room.
Zandra returns the three-ring binder to the shelf. Also resting on the shelf is a hardcover of Moby Dick, the classic novel. A copy is in all the cabins on the Curd Queen.
Novels work the same way, don't they? First, the world of the story is static—contraction. New events or information are introduced that cause that stasis to change—expansion. Everything changes in the climax—trend. Finally, the story settles into a new normal—contraction.
I wish Herman were here. He'd know what to do with weird shit like this.
OK, that's enough. I really need to stop with this. Time to get moving.
"That could've been a great demo. Sorry, everyone," Zandra says.
A muffled cough from the hallway outside her cabin redirects Zandra's attention. She moves to the door and listens. Silence.
Probably someone walking by. This cabin soaks in a lot of noise.
That reminds me of something.
Zandra goes to the Murphy bed. She raises a hand to the hole in the wall where the vent used to be. A cool draft tickles her fingers.
The vent serves as a veritable intercom for other parts of the Curd Queen. She could hear Aaron shuffling around in his room a couple days prior, pre-fatal gunshot wound. She also heard Jade's scream from the upper level earlier that morning.
But there's something I didn't hear: the gunshot itself.
A gunshot on the upper level powerful enough to wipe the face off Aaron would've woken me up, wouldn't it? Jade's scream did. Why wouldn't a gunshot?
Zandra lowers her hand from the vent to cough into her sleeve.
Unless I wasn't in bed when the gunshot happened.
She looks at the vent lying on the floor, placed there by her accusers when they found the gun.
Homicidal somnambulism? I guess it's possible. But how did I get the gun to do it?
Zandra picks up the vent. She runs her fingers along the edges, feeling the holes for screws in each of the four corners. The screws themselves rest on the floor. Zandra drops the vent onto the Murphy bed and scoops up a screw. It's a Phillips™.
Is there a Phillips™ screwdriver around here?
Zandra searches every nook and cranny of the cabin. It doesn't take her long to not find a Phillips™ screwdriver.
This smells like fuckery. Whoever put the gun in the vent had a Phillips™ screwdriver. Whoever found the gun had a Phillips™ screwdriver. I don't have a Phillips™ screwdriver.
It's not like that type of screwdriver is some rare artifact; they're everywhere. The question is this: who has a Phillips™ screwdriver and how did they stick a gun in the vent without me noticing?
"Unless, of course, I found a gun, killed Aaron, hunted down a Phillips™ screwdriver, unscrewed a vent, hid the gun, and screwed the vent back in, all while sleepwalking," Zandra says. "The least believable part about that is that I would give a shit to hide the gun."
Zandra lights up another cigarette, this time not bothering to ash in the bathroom sink. She stares at the hole above the Murphy bed.
Something isn't adding up, but I'm never going to complete the picture inside this cabin. I need to get out of here.
She walks to the bathroom and eyes the toilet paper stock.
Two rolls. Is that enough to clog the toilet? I could let that go and flood the sink until the water runs out the cabin. It'd look like the Curd Queen is sinking. They'd have to open the door and let me out.
But then what? It's not like they're going to let me loose to play detective.
No. I've got to get out without anyone noticing.
Cigarette between her lips, Zandra rolls onto the Murphy bed. She stands to examine the indent that houses the bed when it folds up into the wall.
Aaron's room is on the other side of this wall. There's an excellent chance the room is empty.
How much do you want to bet that the wall is the thinnest right here? It'd have to be.
Zandra slides off the bed and grabs the hardcover copy of Moby Dick from the shelf. She returns to the indent and draws the lawnmower knife.
Who says classic literature isn't relevant to the here and now?
Holding the point of the lawnmower knife against the wall, Zandra slams Moby Dick against the paracord-wrapped handle. The knife cuts into the wall with only moderate resistance. Zandra yanks the knife out of the wall, lowers the point, and repeats the process with Moby Dick. Eventually, she cuts enough of the wall away to see Aaron's room peeking through the other side.
The Murphy beds in our cabins are right on the other side of the wall from each other. The wall between them is more decorative than anything else.
What a shit design. I've slept in cars sturdier than these cabins.
After a few more cigarettes' worth of work, Zandra punches through into Aaron's cabin. It's unoccupied, but Aaron's personal effects remain. Zandra can't help herself. After helping herself to a bag of chips, she takes inventory of the late quarterback's possessions.
It's nothing but clothes and condoms. Good lord, the condoms. How many people was he planning on fucking?
Not finding anything interesting—at least not interesting at the moment—Zandra tries the door. Unlike her cabin, she's able to open the door from the inside. Taking care that no one is watching, she steps out into the hallway.
Time to figure out what the hell is going on.