October - Skylark - Scalpel
Please! I have a wife … and two kids!
Interesting. You didn’t seem to be thinking about them
when you tried to shove me into your car.
It was a mistake,
I swear! I’m sorry.
I am quite
certain you are sorry now, and yes, I won’t deny that it was a mistake.
I won’t do it
again … I won’t.
Correct. You won’t do it again. Think of this as a kindness, think of this as
your gift to your wife and you children… boys? Girls?
A girl … and a
boy.
MR
2022-1006
October spent her formative years at the Caldwell Insane Asylum, upstate New York.
She says it was a good preparatory school:
She keeps hair samples in clear plastic bags, liquified skin samples in corked beakers.
All meticulously recorded.
He spoke in hushed tones, as though he was afraid that someone would hear him, there, sunk in the booth with an eye on the door. He told me her name, "October" and he said it with such fear, an unnatural, bone-chilled fear. He spoke it as though just saying her name would cause her to appear out of thin air.
I tried to assure him that he was safe. It was mid-afternoon, and there were plenty of people in the café. Nothing was going to happen to him here.
He just said, "You don't know. You just have no idea!"
He just muttered "October" until I, too, felt the chill.
