Today was absolutely, unequivocally the worst day of Sock's life.
Jonathan opened today with a particularly venomous "Get out." Which had zero effect on Sock. Jonathan even appealed to Lil in the hallway, asking her to remove Sock, but she just shrugged and kept walking rounds.
"This is probably illegal," Jonathan griped, prepping some forms.
"You know you love me." Sock grinned, all cheeks.
"I don't love anyone. I am very firmly not in the love arena."
Sock grew a little cold, and not from the room's refrigeration.
"What?"
"You heard what I said. I'm not romantically interested in any way. Probably won't ever be."
Jonathan kept talking but Sock had stopped listening. He couldn't hear over the sound of his heartbeat increasing. Heat rose to his cheeks as he lost feeling in his arms. Not romantically interested? Ever?
"Sock. Sock?"
Sock met Jonathan's eyes. He felt sick.
"Will you leave now?"
Sock nodded and shuffled to the door. With his back turned, he couldn't see Jonathan's face cycle through shock and a bit of worry. The double doors slammed behind him and he was alone in the hallway.
Suddenly, he just wanted to go to the graveyard and never come back.
Footsteps approached and Sock hoped whoever it was would ignore the open grave and continue without noticing the person inside.
"Are you really sitting in a hole?"
No such luck.
"Yes."
Grass shushed as Jonathan shuffled to the edge of the hole. Dirt plunked onto Sock's hat when he swung his legs over the edge and took a seat. Sock didn't react. Jonathan would grow bored of watching him wallow in the dirt and then he would leave. Then Sock wouldn't have to try so hard not to look at him, wouldn't be tempted to ask him crazy things, wouldn't worry Jonathan would see his heart fluttering and know.
Jonathan had said so himself. He wasn't interested in anyone. But if that was true, then why was he here?
"What do you want?" Sock finally mumbled.
"You didn't come in today." A pause. "Is everything alright?"
There were a hundred things he could say to that: "My family is dead because of me." "I'm going to dig graves the rest of my life." "I'm running out of places to hide the bodies." "I fell in love with an emotionless morgue tech."
What he did say was Everything's fine. To which Jonathan replied with a shrug, and he didn't leave, and Sock rose to his feet and finally faced him. He couldn't believe his gall. Here he was, sitting at the edge of a grave like it was any other park bench, looking perfectly calm and normal with a big sweatshirt over his scrubs and little diamonds in his eyes that drilled a laser hole through his chest where a heart should be. Wind teased his hair. He was here, unmoving, but he wasn't interested in anyone. Wasn't interested in Sock. Probably wasn't even interested in himself.
Sock clenched his fists and bit his lower lip as pressure built in his head and behind his eyes. He wasn't going to cry over this boy. He didn't want anything to do with him.
"Go away."
"No."
"Why not?" His voice hitched a little.
"I'm not going to leave you alone when you're sitting in a grave marked 'Me'."
"I always sit in graves," he mumbled. "You always wanted me to go away and this is your chance. Just leave and you probably won't see me ever again."
"Well, yeah, I wanted you to leave…"
Sock huddled against one of the walls, head in his arms. Of course he knew that.
"Woah, hey. What did I say now?"
"Just what you always have," he said to the dark space formed by his arms and legs.
"I said I wanted you to leave. I'm here now because I want to see you. I… I guess I missed you a little bit."
Sock's face appeared. Jonathan watched his knees as he kicked his legs.
"You missed me?"
"A little bit."
Sock's grin felt like it would tear his face apart. Jonathan missed him.
The letter he composed that evening was from the exact spot Jonathan had sat, in the red light of sunset once it burnt the clouds away. It told the policemen that there were glimmers of hope for his love and that he wouldn't give up. It said "I'm going to have his blue diamond eyes and he'll have my heart." The policemen would trip over themselves trying to find the hidden message, the references to a new victim, the directions to a body. But they wouldn't find anything, because Sock wasn't making a puzzle out of death this time. No, this time he wouldn't be challenging investigators, but himself.
He wanted Jonathan's blue diamond eyes. Maybe someday Jonathan would want Sock's broken heart.
Jonathan did something to shake up everyone's routine. His truck pulled up to Primrose Cemetery as Sock was working on another hole. Sock stuck his shovel blade-first in the dirt and cocked his head curiously as Jonathan and Lil disembarked from the vehicle and approached him. With the shake of a leg, he dislodged most of the dirt from his overalls and stomped his boots in the grass. He was a little embarrassed that they'd see him covered in soil.
When they reached Sock, Jonathan tossed him a paper lunch bag. His usual order from the restaurant was inside. It smelled great, but they still hadn't given any explanation.
"I don't mean to be rude," he began, "but what the hell are you two doing in a cemetery?"
Jonathan smiled a little and Sock felt his heartbeat speed up.
"We figure you've visited our workplace enough, we should visit yours. We brought lunch."
They each held up a similar lunch bag.
"Oh," Sock said. His cheeks warmed. "That's real nice of you."
They sat with their legs dangling in the grave, eating greasy food and discussing their gripes with their coworkers. Sock laughed and winced, he ate good food and smiled. Maybe if he couldn't romantically have Jonathan, being his friend wouldn't be so bad.
The thought startled him. He'd never had friends before. Is that what Lil and Jonathan had become? Was he allowed this? After a life of solitude, could he manage friends?
He met Jonathan's shimmering eyes and decided that his doubts could wait for later. For now, he and his friends were having lunch.
"I really don't appreciate you hovering around in here."
Sock just hmmed and kept watching the back of Jonathan's head.
"I'm working, and this is a secure, sterile environment, which you are definitely messing up."
Instead of responding, Sock just asked, "What do dead people's organs feel like?"
"Like lumpy, goopy mashed potatoes in plastic bags." Jonathan turned a bit and wiggled the plastic bag he'd been weighing, which contained some dark, nondescript little organ. "Sock, please leave. I can't let my supervisor find you in here."
Jonathan really cared about his job too much. Nothing happened in this podunk town, most of his cases came from the greater tri-county area, and even those were few, so his supervisor hardly made any visits once he considered his job with the body done. Whenever Jonathan worked, he was alone, left to clean up and organize and fill out paperwork. It was excruciating to watch all of the careful, sterile work. Sock thought it could use the dirt he provided.
There was more than a bit of mass hysteria brewing at this point. Five people dead, all murdered horribly, all in the county. It had been only a couple of months. Three of them had been killed along roads and two in their own home, practically in front of their son. Needless to say, Sock's town, and a bunch of others, were on the brink of panic.
There was officially an open case with the police. It was practically all Lil and Jonathan talked about at lunch now. It didn't help that it was all over the news, even displayed on the TV across from their table.
The news had begun calling him "the Gravedigger" because of the stone thing. Ironic. They didn't know how close they were.
Jonathan continued to be tight lipped about the case, committed as he was to all of those disclosures he'd signed. While he wouldn't give any forensics data away, he would answer Sock's questions about about his department, and some procedures, like the autopsy itself.
"What I do is all the assistant stuff, like weighing and taking notes and cleaning up." He ripped off his gloves and tossed them in the trash before taking the trash bag, tying it up, and tossing it in the back hallway. "The menial work."
"This," he said one day, gesturing to the body he was cleaning. "Is what we usually do for an internal examination."
Sock leaned over slightly, curious about the methodical way the body had been sliced up. A cut extended across the chest, from one shoulder to another, and a larger cut traveled the entire length of the chest and abdomen, and ended at the crotch. He could see plastic gleaming inside the abdominal cavity.
"When we return the bodies to family, we put the organs in plastic bags inside the body to keep them from leaking. That would be kind of traumatic for them."
"Did you do this?" Sock asked.
Jonathan shook his head.
"I'm just a technician, I'd need more school and a higher position to actually perform the autopsy. I do help, though."
Sock had a sudden image of Jonathan, covered in warm blood, helping him kill someone. The image was a lot hotter than the scrub-wearing, masked, gloved Jonathan carefully wiping fluid off the skin of the cold body right now. It was a crazy image. Jonathan was too much of a goody-two-shoes to go around killing anything.
Although, it was kind of cute to think of Jonathan carefully examining Sock's kills after the fact. It was like sending notes back and forth. Sock killed them, Jonathan examined them, then Sock buried them. With the back and forth, they were practically a team at this point anyway. As far as Sock was concerned, it was sweet either way.
The next time Sock killed, he slit their throat to make them shut up, then tried the incision he had seen the other day in Jonathan's lab. Shoulder to shoulder, chest to crotch. It really did open the body up in two easy cuts. Pretty amazing. His cuts were ragged where the dull knife had caught and ripped skin, but he figured it looked professional enough. He had plenty of time to practice again.
He stuffed his letter in the chest cavity and found a nice stone for the head.
Numbers six, seven, and eight were also incised. It was better every time, if he did say so himself. Practice made perfect. He said so in his letters.
What he didn't communicate to the police was that he was running out of places to come across potential victims. By the fourth kill, he had already begun to worry about the sparse traffic and limited roads through their area of the county, and now that he was double that, he struggled. No one wanted to travel through the places a body has been found, or if they did, they did it quickly, locked in their cars with at least one other person.
One thing he considered was focusing on another town, but he figured he would be easily spotted as an outsider. It might lead to an arrest.
His next consideration was to somehow lure people to his house, or transport them there. He didn't own a car, just a bike, but he figured that maybe now was the time to go in on some sort of vehicle.
The closest used car dealership was two towns away. His salesman's name was Zack. He was a tall man who had obviously been the jock type while in high school. Sock nodded and hmmed as Zack showed him the more expensive cars and gently steered him towards the cheaper models. He needed something today, because he was itching for a thrill tonight.
At this point, the police were desperate for an arrest. An out of state agency had been brought in, no one was sure if it was the FBI or what. The new agency didn't find much more than the local forces, but they did stumble upon one lead. They snatched it up immediately.
They came for him during lunch hour.
Sock, Jonathan, and Lil were at the usual place and the usual table. The topic of discussion was the correct pronunciation of milk.
"Melk," Lil said. "It's dialect."
Jonathan winced. "Maybe it's just because I'm not from around here, but that just sounds wrong."
"I'm going with 'melk' too," Sock decided.
"You've all turned against me!"
"What, like 'muh-ilk' is supposed to sound right?"
A group of men in black uniforms entered the dining area. Sock grew cold at the sight of badges and guns. Conversation died into a complete hush as one of the men approached their table.
"Jonathan Combs, we need you to come with us."
Sock grew colder. Oh no, no, no, no…
"What?"
"You're under arrest on suspicion of perpetrating eight homicides in the area. Come peacefully and we won't have to cause a scene."
He felt Lil grab his arm and squeeze. She was staring at Jonathan, eyes wide. She didn't really believe these guys, did she? Jonathan was nothing like Sock. Jonathan didn't have a killing bone in his body.
Or a loving bone, his mind grumbled.
Ugh, now was not the time to be holding grudges.
Jonathan didn't say anything else, just stood and allowed himself to be led away, arms locked in the grips of two of the men. He only looked back once, at Sock. There was no fear, at least. Blue diamond eyes just reflected confusion.
Sock paced and paced and paced across his living room.
"Oh my god," said Lil. "Jonathan's the Gravedigger?"
"They think he's the Gravedigger," Sock corrected. "Why would anybody think that? Why would you think that, Lil."
She bit her lip and looked away.
"Lil?"
"He just… I hear about the case, okay, Sock? Through doors and in the hallway. They mentioned that they had a suspect but I just, I didn't think…" She took a seat in an armchair, hand over her pale face. "It didn't click until lunch that they were talking about Jonathan. All of the evidence made sense. I just can't believe it's Jonathan."
"What evidence?"
"Henry. This all started with Henry. Or maybe your parents," she conceded, but kept going. "Jonathan mentioned that he'd had difficulty finding a morgue that was looking for a tech. He had to go out of state for the job. Henry was killed and almost immediately, Jonathan was there."
"That could be a coincidence," Sock said.
"Yeah but, the murders really picked up after that. You could argue that this all started once Jonathan arrived. And the bodies. They said that they'd been cut open, like in an autopsy." She drew the cuts in the air, a "Y" shape. "And they analyzed the letters. Whoever wrote them seemed to understand crime investigation, and even have some inside knowledge on the Gravedigger investigation. Jonathan would have that, right?"
Sock swallowed hard.
"And as if that wasn't enough, Jonathan really has the personality of a rock. They were saying that serial killers have difficulty connecting with people, sometimes with displaying emotion or empathy. Jonathan had no friends before you and I, and that was difficult for both of us."
It really had been. Sock thought of all of the times he'd been kicked out of the autopsy lab at the morgue.
He shook his head in disbelief. He wasn't really getting on board with this theory, was he? Sock was the Gravedigger, not Jonathan. He somehow had to get the investigators off Jonathan's case.
He came across her on the highway. He was in the SUV he had purchased to solve his problem with transporting victims. She was wearing a heavy pack, as though she was hiking somewhere, or running away.
"Are you following 22 to Heidelberry?" she asked.
"Yes," he lied. "Get in."
"Jojo." She stuck her hand out.
"Sock," he returned, shaking her hand.
It was nervousness that kept him from killing her right there. This was the first time he was going to have the car as an accomplice. He settled for stuffing her unconscious in the trunk. The killing could come where he was in a secure location.
She was very pretty. He thought about her face on the way home. Not as pretty as Jonathan's, but something about it was attractive. Her skin glowed. A halo of moonlight shone off her hair. Her grip was strong. She was of the same breed as Jonathan. An angel, probably.
Sock wondered at his talent for falling for impossible people at first sight.