Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (the ebook reader .txt) 📕

Grinders was a small place located in a strip mall only a couple miles from the clinic where Lori worked. There were six tables, each large enough to accommodate four customers, and an old couch with red velour upholstery was positioned near the front window. Only half of the seats were filled. A couple of people wore suits and worked on laptops, while the remaining customers were dressed more casually. They also had laptops, along with open textbooks and notebooks. College students, Larry guessed. He looked like one of the business types in his gray suit, wine-colored shirt, and gray-and-red-striped tie, but he felt he had more in common with the college kids. He was in his thirties, though, and he doubted the students saw any difference between him and the other ‘older’ customers. The thought depressed him.

He took a bite of his muffin – it was a little dry but it tasted all right – and as he chewed, he thought about the interpreting job he’d just completed. He’d been so concerned about Lori that he hadn’t been able to focus on his work, and he’d made mistakes that he hadn’t since his first signing class in college. He’d felt like a fucking idiot, and his embarrassment and frustration had only caused him to screw up even more. He’d managed to muddle through, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if the event organizers had decided not to pay him. As it was, he was half-seriously contemplating not cashing the check they’d given him.

Only two baristas were on duty at the moment, a man and woman the same age as the students. They were probably students themselves, he thought, working to help pay for college. He’d worked as a waiter during his own college years, and he knew what it was like to have to serve irritating, rude customers with a smile and a pleasant tone, and he appreciated anyone in a service position that was able to remain positive during an interaction with a customer, whether that came to them naturally or they had to fake it.

The young man who’d taken his order was a hair under six feet, with light reddish hair cut close to his scalp and a well-trimmed mustache and goatee. A lot of men that age affected a scruffy lumberjack look, but Larry wasn’t a fan. It was hard to kiss a man when you had to battle your way past facial hair so thick that you needed a machete to cut a path to the lips. The barista wore black-framed glasses that made him look intelligent, and he wore a black T-shirt beneath a green apron with the Grinders logo on it. He’d seemed genuinely friendly when taking Larry’s order, and Larry had enjoyed talking to him. Sometimes Larry could get a vibe when a man or woman was interested in him, but he’d picked up nothing like that from the barista. It was a shame. He was really cute. Then again, he was probably ten years younger than Larry, maybe more. Not an insurmountable age difference by any means, but he knew if he attempted to chat up the boy, he’d only fuck it up, worried as he was about Lori.

No cock for me tonight, he thought.

He didn’t feel especially bad about this. He fucked the same way he ate – whenever his body told him to. And he had others things besides sex on his mind right now.

When he’d woken this morning, he’d almost called and cancelled his gig. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving Lori alone after last night. But he was also afraid that if he stayed home to be with her, he’d be feeding into her…what? Delusion? Fantasy? He wasn’t sure what to call it. Despite what the police and the crime tech had said, he wasn’t certain that someone had broken into the apartment last night. Why would someone go to the trouble of forcing open the patio door and entering the apartment, only not to take anything? And if whoever it was had really wanted to get to Lori, it wasn’t as if the door to the master bathroom was made of thick, solid oak. It was a cheap, flimsy thing, easy enough to break open if you put your back into it. And why had this theoretical invader departed before he’d gotten home? If he, she, or they had been pounding on the bathroom door the way Lori had described, they wouldn’t have heard him coming up the stairs and opening the door. But he sure as hell would’ve heard them. But he’d heard nothing at all. If Lori’s car hadn’t been in the parking lot, he might’ve thought she hadn’t gotten home yet, it was so quiet.

Even if someone had sneaked into the apartment last night, no way did he believe it was a group of fucking shadow monsters. And he didn’t think the weird dream she’d had of a tower filled with otherworldly beings held any special significance. As for the goat-eyed woman Lori had encountered at FoodSaver, she’d probably been suffering from some sort of mental illness, maybe a physical deformity too, which accounted for the weird shape of her pupils. Then again, it was possible Lori had hallucinated that encounter as well. He knew she had some memory problems, at least when it came to the subject of Aashrita Dhawan and the girl’s death. She’d told him of the incident on several occasions, only to completely forget she’d spoken to him about it. Hell, it seemed like she sometimes forgot about Aashrita altogether. The first time this happened, he’d tried to repeat what she’d said to him, but she quickly became drowsy and fell asleep. She hadn’t quite passed out, but it had been close to that. Afterward, he’d decided not to push her on the matter. Maybe one day she’d come to terms with her guilt and be able to remember permanently.