Buzzed
Setting: Pre-Season


The door is slightly ajar.

I'm alone on the porch. It's the middle of the night and I'm in Coral Gables. There are lights wrapped around the railing and the door, unlit. Fake spiderwebs and a rubber bat hang from the roof. There's a sign in the window but I can't seem to read it.

Dispatch crackles on my shoulder. Not talking to me.

There are no lights on in the house. The chick who called 911 is sitting on the hood of her car out front, smoking a cigarette. Or she was when I left her. The other car is sitting outside the garage, covered with leaves, which is weird because the lawn looks pretty manicured.

I unclip my flashlight, use it to tap open the door. It's unlocked.

"Hello?" I click on the light. There's a pumpkin sitting on the kitchen counter. There are flies on the pumpkin.

"Hello? Miami Metro Police Department."

There's a large and very ugly painting of the Eiffel Tower in the mouth of the hallway. The carpeting is beige and old and there's trash everywhere.

There's a fly on the Eiffel Tower.

I walk toward it. I feel kind of sick. Kind of afraid. On the wall next to the painting is a light switch. I flip it with the flashlight.

"Hello? Is anyone here?"

I'm drawn to the door at the end of the hall. It's the only one that's shut.

"Hello?" I knock on it with the flashlight. The fear is mounting, clogging up my chest. Because I remember. I know what happened.

I open the door. The flies that were on the other side erupt off it. They're already landing on me as I reach for the light switch, stop halfway there.

She's hanging from the door three yards away. In the flashlight's beam her face is purple, puffed up like a marshmallow, and covered with flies. Eyes milky white, flat like deflated balloons. "Irony," her shirt reads, "the opposite of wrinkly."

My heart crawls up my throat, gags me. When I reach for my comm I can't seem to speak.

Daroco Avenue, I keep repeating to myself. I'm on the corner of Daroco and 42nd and I've got a 1045.

There's an open notebook sitting on the dresser. It's the only thing between us. I don't see a pen.

Daroco Avenue, I'm caught on it, unable to speak it. 413 Daroco.

Irony: The opposite of wrinkly.

I'm staring at the shirt. I know what it says but I can't seem to read it. The flies are swarming around us, bouncing drunkenly off us, and the room seems somehow smaller.

1045.

The door is shut behind me.

The flies are building. I put my hand over my face to stop them from flying into my mouth or up my nose. I imagine what it would be like to accidentally swallow them, to have them crawl their way inside me.

Her legs are livid. She's wearing cream-white shorts. Her chin is sunken into her chest, mouth closed, dark hair falling everywhere. Dried blood running down her lips. Maggots in her ears.

I can't breathe. I turn to open the door, but I can't get a grip on the handle. I don't have my radio. I realize I never had it.

My heart is beating hard. My muscles are tense, stiff. It doesn't seem like I'm standing, like I can move.

I need help here! I'm trying to tell my comm. She's dead! She fucking hung herself!

There are flies crawling up my arms and landing in my hair. When I turn back the air is thick with them. I can't seem to move to swat them. The room is dissolving to a point, and all I can see is the dead grad student. I think I hear sirens. Or a voice.

"Deb."

I'm drowning in a swarm of small, buzzing, metallic bodies. She left a note on the table. I remember reading it, but the words are swimming and jumbled up. I remember she found out her husband was fucking around and she had a miscarriage—

"Deb."

Something contacts my arm and I jolt up. Reality crashes down.

Dexter's leaning over me. His hand is on my arm.

I'm twisted in the sheets. I can feel them knotted around my legs and my shoulders, and I smell sweat.

"Bad dream?" my brother asks. He's wearing work clothes. The apartment's dark.

Irony: The opposite of wrinkly.

I'm half asleep and the panic is still thumping in my throat. "What?" I say. I need to get out of the sheets. I sit up and kick them off me, focus on breathing. It takes an inordinate amount of effort to resist clapping my hand back over my face. My eyes hurt.

"Are you alright?" he asks when I've finally succeeded in throwing the sheets to the other end of the couch.

"Yeah." I clear my throat and rearrange my shirt. "That was just kind of fucked up." When isn't it lately? I check my wrist for my watch, but it's not there. "What time is it?"

He sits in the chair opposite me, checks his own watch. "7:36."

Fuck, so I've been asleep five or six hours. I sit up a little more, rub my face.

"I brought dinner." He gestures towards the kitchen. "I wasn't sure what you wanted, so I just got a pizza."

"I'm not really hungry," the reply is somewhat automatic. I'm not awake enough to know if I'm hungry. All I know is I can't stop thinking about those fucking flies.

"It's got pineapple and sausage on it."

The somewhat hopeless look on his face finally registers with me. He's trying and I'm being standoffish. "I guess I could eat," I amend.

"Good."

He starts to get up, but I hold up a hand. "Sit. I'll get it."

He settles back but gives me a look as I rise. "Get some plates too."

I grimace at him. "Of course."

I hear a slight harrumph as I walk to the kitchen and open a cabinet. As I reach for a couple plates I take a breath, let it out slowly. I'm not sure where that nightmare came from. I haven't thought about that house in years, let alone in full surround sound. Maybe my brain was just sick of rehashing the same old script night after night: Rudy strangling me, hog tying me with duct tape, and stabbing me to death, rinse and repeat. Or sometimes I just drown.

I plop the plates unceremoniously onto the pizza box, walk the stack over to the coffee table. Setting it down, I look at Dexter. "Want a beer?"

He nods. "Yeah. And a couple napkins."

I'm half tempted to point out the pointlessness of his effort considering the disaster I've managed to turn this apartment into since his last cleaning, but I don't. Whatever. He's the one who wants to use plates. He can clean them.

I grab the beers and the napkins and a bottle opener, then head back, set them down, drop onto the couch. I still feel weirded out but now a little annoyed too. I didn't manage to sleep last night even though it was my turn on the bed. I dragged myself out here to read and watch TV after Dexter left for work. I'm not sure when I finally succumbed, but I wish I hadn't.

"You've got your meeting tomorrow with Pascal, right?" Dexter asks casually, as if reading my thoughts, as he opens the pizza box.

"Right." I watch him set a slice onto a plate, which he then holds out to me. And even though I still don't feel particularly hungry, I take it.

"Nervous?"

"No." I don't know whether that's true or not. I poke at a piece of pineapple that fell onto the plate. "Maybe. But the shrink said she thinks I'm ready to go back, and Pascal sounded open to it." I'm still not sure if Wheeler did a line of coke or something before our last session, but I wasn't going to question it. She did condemn me to at least another couple sessions after my reinstatement, but as long as I'm back on the job I couldn't give a shit.

"And you're sure you're ready?"

"I'm sure." I lose interest in the pineapple, set the plate on my knee. I reach for a beer as Dexter stuffs half his slice into his mouth. "I'm more than sure." I pop the cap, then make absolutely no effort to retrieve it from where it falls on the floor, ignoring his twitch. I pause before drinking. "I need this, Dex," I say. "The only one who knows that more than me is you."

He watches me as I tip the bottle back but doesn't reply, just takes another bite.

For awhile we don't say anything. Eventually I start eating the pizza, and it's good but I can hardly get halfway through a slice. Whether it's because of the dream or the meeting tomorrow, I have no idea. But the beer I drink.

"Want another one?" I ask, getting up again.

Dexter nods.

I go over to the fridge and retrieve the whole box. While I'm there I spot a lime sitting in the otherwise empty sandwich compartment, and I pull that out too. I grab a pairing knife from the butcher block before making my way back to the couch, where I immediately start carving into it in my hand. After cracking open the next beer and shoving a wedge down the neck, I lean back and drink gratefully. Distantly, I'm reminded of Dad's liquid dinners, but I push away the thought before I can decide how I feel about it.

"Were you dreaming about him again?" Dexter asks suddenly, quietly, before I've gotten even a third of the way through the bottle.

I don't have to ask who he's talking about. "No," I say, then drink again. "For once."

He takes a sip of his own beer. "What then?"

I swallow, exhale as the gas rises back up. "It was more like a memory than anything…" I trail off, set the beer on my leg. "It was one of my first suicide scenes back when I was on patrol. I was the one who found her, called it in. I guess in retrospect it's not even close to being the most fucked-up thing I've seen." I drink again.

His brows fold. "Why would you dream about that?"

I shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine."

For a second he looks at his beer, then at me. "You sure you're okay?"

"I will be," I reply. "After tomorrow." I drink again. And maybe because I haven't eaten anything except those couple bites of pizza today I'm already starting to feel a little buzzed. "It's gonna be great."

I don't bother to gauge whether he believes me or not, or whether I even believe myself. I just take another drink.