WARNING: Reader beware. This one is very dark. If you don't like the way it starts, don't keep reading, it's not getting any better.

This one wanted to be written. It is your choice to read it. I will not accept flames because you didn't read the warning. If you have constructive feedback, I would like to hear it. Perhaps you'll grok the motion behind the madness.

Title: The Decay Of All Things
Author: Mandy
E-mail: kitty_amazon@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine blah blah blah no infringement intended, no profit gained.



The Decay of All Things



The Future


The dress was beautiful. A deep, royal blue of Chinese silk with delicate cherry blossoms in silver embroidery, a classic mandarin collar that slanted across her chest with delicate loops and knots holding it closed. The hem fell to just above her knee, and would have been quite modest if it wasn’t for the high slits on each side seam. When she sat down, the smooth skin of her thigh would have peeked out almost to the hip. The dress was exquisitely tailored to her body, clinging to her breasts and smooth belly, her small hips. She would have been a sight to see, wearing that. Alive.

Jarod touched the fine, short sleeve on one arm. They were capped high, and would have made her shoulders seem fine, narrow. He fingered the soft material, let it slide under his fingertips. Lord, she knew how to dress.

“High class pro?” Beside him, Avery looked at her with the kind of clinical detachment that came from seeing too much death. Jarod felt like hitting him for the question.

“No,” he said quietly, “No, this one was executed.”

Avery wanted to know how he knew that, but Jarod didn’t feel like answering the unspoken question. He touched her hair, pulled back from her face, and her head rolled easily to the side. Rigor had already come and gone. He pulled chopsticks from the French roll on the back of her head. They were carefully carved, of old, dark wood, and her hair slumped out of its style without it.

Jarod put his fingers into her hair, fumbled the tips of his fingers across the back of her skull, starting from the hairline and working up. He reached the crown, and still had not felt any scabbed blood, so pulled his hand away, long strands of hair sifting through his fingers. He rolled her head back upright, her chin propped into her neck unnaturally.

“This is my guy, alright,” he said, “I just need to know how.”

“Could be anyone,” Avery said, a hint of resentment thickening his tone, “She’s a pretty lady.”

Jarod shook his head, too tired to feel impatient. He lifted her hand, stared at the silver ring for a moment, rubbing his thumb over it. “No. She was chosen. This is her. It’s my guy.”

He cradled her fingers, lily-white and slim. Her nails were neatly manicured… and blue. He wanted to smile. He’d never seen her nails such a frivolous colour before. Deep, shining blue, like the dress. Such a beautiful dress. She’d hate him for letting them cut it off her. He lifted her elbow, checking the inside for tracks, and trailed around the other side, staring at her long, bare legs. She wasn’t wearing shoes, and her toenails were the same colour blue. No tracks on the other elbow, either.

“I’m gonna… gonna go see about that ID,” Avery said. He was staring at Jarod, staring at the way he gently turned her arm and elbow and folded it all back into place. He nodded, and Avery backed out of the room.

Jarod stood silently, for quite some time. A tear escaped once, but he managed to forestall any others for the moment. In the silence, he looked at her face finally. At her beautiful, pale face. Her skin was almost translucent, tinged slightly blue, her long lashes a fan upon her cheek. She looked peaceful. She looked dead.

“Miss Parker is dead,” he said aloud, to test the words.

He made it all the way outside before he threw up.


The Past


He’d slept in her bed. It took Miss Parker long, careful moments to realise this. She’d come home, tired from the flight, frustrated, wanting nothing more than to wash and fall into bed to sleep. The flight from Seattle had felt longer than it was. She’d stripped her clothes between the space of her bedroom door and the door to the bathroom in the dark, her clothes falling to the floor in a rumpled trail. She showered, resting her head against the cool tile in the stall, and hadn’t even bothered to dry her hair.

In the bedroom, she’d turned on the lamp on the side table, pulled the towel from around her breasts, reached for the covers, and stopped. The bed was rumpled, the blankets tousled, and she’d made it carefully before leaving the house two days ago. She’d *made* the bed, and now it was unmade. And after leaning over the cotton sheets and pillow, and inhaling deeply, she’d known.

He’d slept in her bed.

“You son of a bitch,” she muttered.

She leaned further over, dragging the covers right back and inspecting the sheets. If he’d done anything more than *sleep* in her bed, she was going to murder him. And after carefully going over every inch, the only evidence she found was a single strand of silky dark hair, several inches long, on the pillow. She examined the root – no cells at the base, he’d plucked the hair out, probably because he knew she’d find it. Just so there was no mistaking whom it was that had been sleeping in her bed.

The phone rang, right on time. Parker straightened, pulled it from its cradle, jamming it to her ear as she held the hair aloft between thumb and forefinger. She said nothing, just waited.

“Shall I call you Papa, Mama or Baby Bear?” Jarod asked.

“You’re no fucking Goldilocks, that’s for sure,” Miss Parker snarled. He’d *slept* in her *bed*.

“How was the Space Needle? Or didn’t you end up catching the view?” he asked.

Parker gritted her teeth. Following a lead, she, Sydney and Broots had promptly been stuck in an elevator in the Space Needle for 23 hours. They’d conveniently found a pack of supplies strapped to the ceiling, but the escape hatch sealed. Parker had spent 23 hot, sweaty hours wondering just what the hell he was up to whilst listening to Broots trying to pass the time singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Hell was a blocked elevator shaft, and rescuers who couldn’t figure just what Jarod had done.

Now she knew what the distraction had been for.

“A bit extreme for forty winks,” she ground out. Jarod laughed.

“Oh no, it was well worth it. Your bed is extremely comfortable, Miss Parker. I slept fifteen hours in absolute bliss. Your sheets are so nice,” he said intimately.

“Three hundred thread,” she said, blistering with fury, “Put them on your wish list for Christmas. I’d be happy to deliver them personally.”

“I rather like yours. I may help myself to some later; they have the added bonus of smelling like-” Jarod stopped speaking abruptly. Parker frowned, wondering what had happened, and heard him let out a ragged breath, whispering, “Miss Parker, put on your robe.”

He could see her.

She lowered the phone from her ear, turning her head to look at the windows – the curtains were open. He was out there somewhere, and she was standing naked. Heat coiled in her belly. She put the phone back to her ear, looking out into the darkness.

“Where are you?” she said, anger blending with the heat, curdling inside. The silence was tight.

“I can see you,” Jarod said, his voice no longer smooth, but jagged and rasping with… something.

She discarded the phone; let the strand of his hair float away. She snagged her robe from the end of the bed, and turned – she didn’t know why – to the window as it draped over her breasts, pulling it closed. She tied the sash slowly, still looking out. She picked up the phone again, and put it to her ear. She could hear him breathing.

“Are you… were you going to sleep…?” he couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, just left the implication hanging in the air. *Were you going to sleep naked?* Sleep naked in the bed that he had slept in…?

Parker walked to the window, stood in front of the sill, looking out. Her robe was gaping, almost baring her breasts anyway, and the thought send an electric thrill jumping up her spine. She put a hand to her bare breastbone, resting her fingers upon the hard plane, considering pulling the material closed. But didn’t.

“Where are you?” she murmured. She could see nothing outside, just indistinct shapes of trees. Maybe he had climbed one.

“Not where I want to be,” Jarod said, and laughed harshly. The sound cut short. She didn’t think it was all that amusing in the first place. “If I came inside, would you take me in?” he asked after a long time.

“Yes,” she said. She could almost imagine him nodding. And again, “Where are you?”

“Outside. Looking… at you,” Jarod whispered. Ten points for Mr Obvious, she thought dryly. The fingers on her chest trailed down, of their own accord, to rest just below her belly button.

“And…” she wet her lips, “And what do you see?”

Oh, what a dangerous game. She had always been a thrill-seeker.

“Your hair is wet. Your robe is… hardly decent,” Jarod said, his voice catching.

“But it doesn’t matter because you’ve already looked, haven’t you?” Miss Parker said sharply.

“I didn’t mean to-” he began, but stopped when she tugged on the sash. The robe fell open, her body exposed. “Oh lord,” he muttered.

Parker ran a hand over her supple breast, across her smooth stomach and hip, down the top of her rounded thigh. “Let me sleep tonight, Jarod,” she whispered, and took the phone away from her ear slowly, hanging up. She remained, staring out into the darkness for a moment more, exposed, and then closed the curtains, switched off the light and climbed into the bed he’d slept in. She slept through the night, without interruption, and it was the best sleep she could remember having.


The Future


Jarod stayed while they cut her dress off, and saw the puncture wound on her breast first, but only because he was looking for it. He had the dress and her ring and the chopsticks from her hair put aside, and stood patiently whilst the pathologist cut her chest open and cut through her ribs. They started with the heart, and Jarod put gloves on and examined it himself.

Someone had injected an air bubble straight into her heart. A big one. It had burst and collapsed the left ventricle, the blood had stopped flowing, and Miss Parker of the Centre had died quickly, and probably only felt a brief moment of pain in arrest. The knowledge did not help Jarod at all.

She was cold and dead. She was not coming back. Regrets beat at him mercilessly. *I will never kiss her again, I will never hear her voice, I will never see her eyes…*

Jarod didn’t stay for the rest of the post mortem, found himself in a motel room off the side of the highway, with a bottle of Jack Daniels he was trying to drink and his phone. He sat between the bed and the wall on the floor and dialled with fingers that were shaking.

“Sydney,” came the distracted answer.

“Sydney…” Jarod said.

“Jarod!” the old man said, and his voice was filled with hope, “Do you know where Parker is, she’s been gone…”

He stopped talking in the weight of Jarod’s silence.

“No,” Sydney said softly.

“She was… in an apartment…” Jarod said stiltedly, and tried to clear his throat.

“No,” Sydney said again.

“She didn’t suffer, I don’t think…”

“My God,” Sydney said, his voice thick. Jarod choked back more tears.

“I…” he paused, his mouth working soundlessly, “I will find…”

He found he couldn’t speak anymore, but it didn’t matter anyway because Sydney didn’t seem to be on the line, he had put down the phone, and a moment later it went dead. Jarod dropped his cell, unable to make a sound as anguish overtook him, and he curled into a ball against the wall, alone in his grief.

*