latino_menace | OOM: Afterwards

He wakes to the sound of screaming. For a hazy moment, he wonders if he's still in that room and the woman has found her voice at last, whether his hand has slipped and she's found the air to make herself be known one time in her life, before it ends.

No. There's sun on his face and the woman is as invisible as she ever was. The noise is Martin, and he sighs as he crawls to a sitting position on the couch. It takes a moment before he can stand, the world lurching and swaying under his feet as he heads to the nursery.

The little boy is hungry. And distressed, if the fist in his mouth is anything to go by. He needs out and Ramon grimaces at the noise, trying not to throw up at the wafting smell off his jacket, (crack on his clothes, smoke in his hair, sex on his skin), trying to shush him because the racket is hurting his head. Martin calms a little when he sees him and gets picked up, and Ramon doesn't object when the child wraps arms round his neck to be taken to the kitchen, even though he's contaminating him with the blood on his hands.

It would be strange to an onlooker, he thinks. A toddler in a high chair, making a mess of porridge and banana, while a man smokes and waits for coffee to finish going through the machine. Maybe there'd be nothing odd about it normally. But today, he feels his shirt sticking to him and he knows why. Knows he's decorated with something that incriminates him in every way its possible to be accused. Betrayal, drugs, murder. Sin. That's what blood means. Blood and sex.

...empty, uncaring, unremorseful. Hurt. Alone. That's what anger means.

Martin is carried to the bedroom and given a toy to play with on the floor while he goes to shower. The boy's alright now. Smiling at his stuffed cat and talking to it in some incomprehensible childish language that no one ever remembers. Pai is paying him some attention. He likes that. And he's fed and has a toy. If daddy were here, life would be perfect.

Pai is standing in the shower, washing away pink water and the memories of last night. The ones that are willing to leave, anyway. The ones that involved the laughing sculpture, the imaginings of Random and his woman and what they're doing, whether it's nearly over yet. They can go, he's done with them. Because he'd believed Random when he'd said he'd come back. He will. But neither of them knew when that would be and it's not safe here now. He's fallen, here. It's time to move on in case it happens again.

The stained suit is burnt and with it, all evidence. Martin's clothes too, and the boy is bathed. A few things are packed up because some things have to travel everywhere with them. He looks around the house meticulously, to check that he's left nothing behind, left no trail. Automatic pilot, unthinking.

The last thing his eyes fall on, as he opens the door to the bar with a bag on his back and a kid in his arms, is the box containing the woman. He can't see the front, where it's open. But he knows anyway, that she's still laughing. Still protected in (his arms) her wrappings, still happy and reaching for her lover.

("She's beautiful")

He smiles without humour and Ramon leaves the house, headed for Haven where they'll be alone and he can't fall again. Where he'll wait until Random finds him - and the woman won't be smiling then. He'll come back here, break that box open and sledgehammer that grin right off her face.