It was late. The air was cold. His left foot was going numb in the pad and he felt heavy. The world was sad. It hadn't felt that way in some time so what was Kendall to think when a drunken Carlos stepped out of a stranger's car soaked in blood and a washed out expression only to shuffle across the fresh white powder that continued to flurry around him until he arrived on the porch. He sat on the swing beside Kendall in the light of seasonal LED. The late night back ground pulled the neon blues, lime greens, ultra violets, and candy reds to the surface and on caramel and pale skin they glisten.
Only their faces could be seen when the rest of them were loaded down in layers of clothes; Kendall's sweat pants, fuzzy socks, and deep blue hoodie he wore over a bright purple tanktop both embroidered with a different phase of white and violet moons. Carlos in a black t, an unzipped leather jacket a ripped apart puffy vest, and black jeans that hung over his boots and white socks.
Carlos says only one thing and it's colder than the silence, "The energies of those that came before us shake me to my core and I fear they will soon consume me."
Malese, James' on and off camera love interest, comes out of the front door and the small window of light that was behind her vanished as quickly as it came. In her white robe she looked distant as she sipped hot lemon honey tea and stared out at the sky, "Somethings off about James."
A soft but subtle whisper only adds to Kendall's increasing anxiety.
"How do you mean?" He responds.
She shakes her head, "We were... making love. He was just different. Not a monster, no he's never a monster. It's merely that this time he seemed" she hesitates. Then she continues, "broken."
Carlos' jaw begins to tremble.
"Carlos where is Logan? Why wasn't he with you?" Kendall asked.
The younger boy looked up with wide puppy eyes and knew not what to say.
Kendall rose to his feet and stepped down off the porch to look back at him, "Carlos I need you tell me what happened? Is he still at Kaydences? I will go down there."
Carlos only shakes his head and looks away.
"It's Christmas eve. Where would he be on a night like tonight?" Malese whispers.
Carlos takes a deep breath, "The ware house."
The warehouse is a place out in the center of Severe County Tennessee in a little town Just outside of Pigeon Forge called Gatlinburg. The boys purchased it on tour a few years back as a sort of hide away and practice when they had concerts back to back in the tristate area. Of course it stuck for so much more than that when Carlos decided to break away from the singing career for his dancing. How he loved to dance.
When Kendall returned from his Safari in west Africa he and James settled on a home in Rural Kodack which is only about forty minutes from the Warehouse Carlos had moved his life too. It became a studio. Bright, shiny, and classes twice a week he taught. Only when the ax fell and a virus took hold of the globe in the first pandemic of the century the warehouse went silent. The dust gathered, the airducts filled with cobwebs, the mold began to grow, and all the mats were rolled away except for one; Carlos spent every day dancing alone and having others deliver his essentials with no contact.
Had it not been for dance he'd have gone mad.
When Kendall, James, and James' fiance Malese were cleared to go back to work they invited Carlos to live with them in the spare room downstairs. A room with two entry/exits and no doors which was perfect for someone who spent months locked away alone in a ware house with his Obuela pacing the halls in the upstairs forgetting his name half the time from the side effects of her Dementia medications.
Only she had convinced him to take their offer and it broke his heart when she so bravely stepped into the backseat of her daughters car and drove off to another state where she now lives with her son. Former military Surgeon Dr. Eric Montoyez Pena-Vega. He knows she hates it there. Carlos would spend hours in his studio and forget she was even gone some days.
So earlier tonight when he heard a noise upstairs, just as he was readying himself to leave for Kendall and James' place after spending an afternoon in the world of dance, he merely thought it was her. How he fed into this idea until an hour went by and he recognized the memory of her leaving and he halted his music to go investigate.
He crept around the bend. He scuffled over old tin cans in the hallway that his obuela used to pile up here and there. He felt electricity wave through his body as he climbed a set of stairs. The air in his lungs caught as he tiptoed through a curtain into a dark breezeway. The night sky was void with an oncoming storm and he shivered as his own breath finally escaped in clouds of mist through the chill all around him and he braced himself to open a door before him only to quake as before he even turned the nob to push open the door a gut wrenching wail escaped the throat of a young woman strapped to a table.
She wasn't even sixteen years old and everything was on display for Carlos to see and a blood covered lab coat spun around holding Logan's body hostage as it continued to crack open her chest with a scalpel. Logan even looked up at Carlos but continued on as if it were only a draft and he was a simple farm boy carving up the nights livestock for dinner.
Carlos even stepped inside and walked over to the table looking down at the poor miserable girl who tried to reach out to him only to tense up her arm like the neck of a dog who forgot it was chained to the post in the center of it's owners yard as a kid who just got off the bus passed by walking home. Monitors beeped, her BP was dropping.
"She's bottoming out Dr. Pena-Vega." Said Logan to a person who wassn't even there, "Do I save the heart? It could go to UNOS?"
A spout of blood shoots Carlos in the face and then it streams out of her organs onto his chest and Carlos gasped.
"She's hemorrhaging." Said Logan.
Carlos could do nothing but turn and walk away.
"Dr. Pena-Vega! You have stepped out of the sterile field and you haven't given me an answer? Do I save this heart or no!" Logan shouted.
Carlos froze, "Save the heart Dr. Mitchell. You're a fourth year resident you should b-be perfectly cap-apable of pulling this off on your own. I have to go notify the patients loved ones."
"I wish I had the love for these patients the way you do Dr. Cambridge. You're such a good surgeon." Logan smiled at him.
With that Carlos continued on his way out the door and back down to the main entry hall of the warehouse grabbing his keys off the hook, stumbling down the concrete steps, making his way down the long, narrow, windy pathway through the woods on foot as he ordered an Uber with his Samsung A10 and meeting them at the Dollar General down the way on the outskirts of the eight mile loop through the Arts and Crafts community.
All of that flashed through Carlos' mind as he sat in the passenger seat of Kendall's corolla. A thought occurred to him, a question he didn't have the strength to ask, 'Why don't we just call for help.'
Logan is sick, we all know it. That's what Kendall would say, He's a damn good surgeon and the quarantine merely damaged a part of him they all should have watched more carefully. This would be what would convince Carlos that it was their fault. They were the reason someone died tonight, they were to blame, Logan was their responsibility and now life for them is going to change.
As they pulled in another vehicle was pulling away. Logan stood in the frame of the door with his arms crossed an a vacant expression on his face.
When Carlos stepped out the vacancy eased and was replaced with relief until Logan saw Kendall, "Dr. Pena-Vega who is this? I don't remember asking for a consult on any of our patients."
Carlos whispered to Kendall, "He thinks I'm my great uncle. They worked together at the medical center in Minnesota for a while."
Kendall reaches out to shake Logan's right hand just as it starts to rain, "Dr. Kendall Knight, don't you recognize me? I did a study on natural pain relief and started a new kind of innovative therapies induced in surgery."
"Therapy?" Asked Logan.
Kendall nodded, "Aroma therapy. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to practice my medicine in the united states for it's considered malpractice. That is until I met Dr. Pena-Vega here and he told me about your innovative research."
Logan nods, "Alright Dr. Knight, let's talk more over some tea. Come on in out of the rain."
He steps aside and Kendall and Carlos step into the darkness.