Imogene like couldn’t wait for that Blond Monster Tommy to return so she could Snapchat ^URS again.  Except she was like so effin’ grateful to him for lending her that tablet that she really shouldn’t call him a monster anymore.  Especially since she’d meant what she’d told ^URS about him.  She’d had to look at him a bit to like see him in a different light and figure it out, but it was bible.  Tommy was cute.

Still, after seeing him leave with that nurse, looking all scared and shy and not even able to look down at the Minecraft on his phone, Imogene wasn’t ready for the next time she saw him.  It like started before she even saw him:  She was looking down at his timed-out tablet that she still had, trying to figure out what other than “Minecraft” or “minecraft” his password could be.

She felt his eyes on her.

Looking up, she saw him coming at her with a big grin and sparkling eyes.  “Type in ‘thisisnotapuppylove,’ all one word.”

This is not a puppy love?  But Imogene was so mesmerized by how like intense his look was that her fingers froze.

With an even bigger grin, Tommy was behind her in a heartbeat.  He wrapped both arms around her, so he could type it in.

She could feel the muscles in his arms and chest dancing as he typed, along with the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck.  No one, except the medical peeps, had touched her in a very long time.  Caught by surprise, she was startled to discover that it felt good.

Then he jerked himself away and fumbled for his phone.

Imogene like actually felt like slighted or some effin’ stupid thing…but then she remembered she was in now and signed into Snapchat.

The Storage Space didn’t even care when the ghost of that so-long-dead Shakespearean actor returned.  Didn’t even care enough to ignore it and avoid it as it had done for so many tired years.  Therefore, for the first time, it heard Edward’s thoughts.  He was pining for her, the one both of them grieved, the greatest actress of them all who had fallen to her death so many years ago.

“And just why did she fall to her death?” the Storage Space queried harshly.

But in all those long years only Karen, the one the Storage Space would still bestir itself to ignore, had heard anything it had to say.  The ghost of Edward did not.  Instead he kept thinking of some letter that was written in Switzerland in 1898.  And he directed his yearnings toward the pregnant teenager that was now gone.  Because he knew.

Idly the Storage Space watched the pregnant teenager’s father, still in Unit 38 sorting through those “data sticks.”  Frantic, he kept sticking one after another into a “laptop,” obviously looking for something he wasn’t finding.  Each failure resulted in his punching a metal wall.

But the Storage Space didn’t care.  It didn’t even care about the one both it and Edward had grieved all these long years.  Even when it knew she had been reincarnated into the baby the pregnant teenager now carried.

No.  At long last the Storage Space could only care about one thing:  regret that it, along with its once-beloved tea room now gone, hadn’t been torn down long ago.

Frank couldn’t fuckin’ fathom how he could be dead and still feel so much pain.  Karen…  Elegant, fine, pure…  Like his grandma’s china he’d loved as a kid…but broken.

And now he’d broken Karen too.  Fugettaboudit!  He’d fuckin’ offed not her body but…far worse!…her soul.  He, Frank, a fuckin’ green mist of a ghost whose body had been chainsawed into pieces and put out with the trash, was more alive than this…  This soulless fresh-and-blood…  This empty Karen still breathing in the apartment of that silly Brit who’d actually managed to off Frank when Frank, in a jealous rage, was trying to off him.

Marie.  Karen’s best friend who’d started it all by seducing him.  But he now knew, as a ghost who could go fuckin’ anywhere, that Marie had first given up her face and identity, and then her life, to take care of Karen.  Frank had tried to reach Karen’s soul, softening her by telling her why Marie had seduced him as she retrieved Martin’s key from under that rock, but she hadn’t heard anything except the name Marie.

Lately, even when she did hear him clearly, all she had to say was, “Fuck you!”

How could he reach her?  How could he bring her back?  Could he bring her back?

Fucking A!

With his ghost’s 360-degree vision, he saw a grandmotherly ghost behind him shake her green finger at him as she passed through Martin’s apartment on her way to who-knows-where.  Frank had never seen her before, but he figured he knew why she’d shaken that finger at him.

Language.

It’s what his grandma with the exquisite china would have done.

He’d only known such language to begin with because her daughter, Frank’s mother, had married “so far beneath her.”  Frank’s father was…fugettaboudit…a thug.  Frank had grown up caught between his mother’s elegance and his father’s brutality.  He’d thought his father’s brutality had won…until he met Karen.

Karen…

He beheld her with his not only 360-degree but, at times, ubiquitous vision.  She’d dozed off in Martin’s chair, still a little weak despite her newly regained health.  Frank caressed her with his gaze, from every possible direction, then he slipped gently into her dreams…

Dead.  Dead.  Dead.  She no longer cared about anything.  She wasn’t even dreaming.  He had to find something still living inside her.  Desperately, he tried to remember…

Her grandparents.  What had she always talked about?  What had she showed him?

Her grandfather’s delight in the intricacies of the mechanical toys that had been passed down to him from his own grandfather.  Karen showing him a small metal horse on wheels with almost all its paint chipped off, gently turning in over and over in her hands, her face all but exploding with her own delight.

Frank searched her mind for that memory, but her mind was such a barren wasteland now that it was as if all her memories had blown away like dust in a desert.  He was consumed with despair.  Karen.  How the fuck was he supposed to live without Karen?  He wasn’t even alive anymore and he couldn’t stand to be without the Karen that once was, but was no more.

He gave up when slipping back out of her sleeping mind he stumbled haphazardly upon the metal horse.  It hadn’t been there before.  Like a lightbulb about to go out forever, her memory of it flickered on and off.

Frank focused all his attention on the horse, Karen’s grandfather, and all the wonderful things she’d told him about him.

Karen didn’t respond.

He tried again.  And again.

Finally Karen responded.

The words cut through Frank’s soul.

Karen said, aloud though talking in her sleep, “Fuck you!”

Karen climbed over a fence to get to Martin’s back yard.

Atta’ girl!

Fuck you! was Karen’s answer to the ghost of Frank she assumed she was only imagining.  She guessed she was supposed to remember when she couldn’t even crawl out of her storage unit and feel grateful for the miracles wrought by modern medicine.

But she didn’t.

She looked around.  The light was soft on a garden that, though now grievously overgrown, was still sweet.  She made out primroses; she’d loved Martin’s primroses.  He’d told her they were as prim and proper as those in his mum’s garden in Kent.  She guessed she should feel something.  A twinge for the long-lost innocence and simplicity of her life?  Or even fury at Martin for killing Frank who was, after all, the love of her life?

She didn’t feel a thing.

That funny rock.  Still there.  She lifted it just enough to retrieve the key to Martin’s back door underneath.  Suddenly, for no apparent reason, a name resonated through her head:

Marie…

Nothing more.  Just the name.

Why had that cop who told Karen she was going to get out of the hospital…and that that emergency worker was going to drop the charges for some mysterious reason…asked her so much about Marie, even for her address?

Karen shrugged it aside and tried the key in Martin’s back door.  At first it didn’t work, but wiping off more dirt did the trick.  At last she was in, scurrying around till she found that Martin had stashed her suitcase, her purse, and most of the clothing she’d had no time to put back on when she rushed out the back door, in a closet.  She dragged it all out, into the middle of the living room floor where she’d left it when she fled to escape Frank, and collapsed into the mustard-colored cushions of one of Martin’s vintage Danish Modern armchairs.  It had been so very long ago:

Frank cheating on her with her best, friends-forever friend Marie.

Leaving the apartment she’d shared with Frank with only what she could get to that accursed storage unit she’d signed up for with Irwin and this suitcase she’d brought to temporarily move in with her friends-with-benefits Martin.

Frank kicking the door in while she and Martin were exploring their “benefits.”

Her fleeing half naked out the back door and running to her storage unit.

Martin and Frank following…

But none of it mattered now.  She rifled through her purse…plenty of money…then grabbed her phone for the first time in forever.  The battery, of course, was dead.  Charger in her suitcase, but what was this:  another phone in her suitcase, not hers?  She turned it over in her hand.  The case said “Jennifer.”  Then she noted a whole bunch of boxes in the room that hadn’t been there before, marked “stuff.”

Tommy like stared at his phone, waiting with baited breath for her response.  After all, he thought she was cute, especially when she looked like his dead puppy…

Instead of Snapchatting back to ^URSunPC&proud…the fucking stupidest name anyone had ever used to Snapchat…Imogene looked up at him and stared.  Probably hadn’t factored in peripheral vision and figured he was too busy on his phone to notice.  Fuck!  She was researching whether or not he was cute before answering the question!  Tommy tried to look busy on his phone, using the lull in their conversation to tweak the hack he’d gotten from his new storage unit that allowed him to masquerade as her Snapchat buddy.  But he almost blew it and fucking snapped the connection because what he was really concentrating on was looking cute.

He shifted his weight, nonchalantly showing off the tight jeans he thought were important, but…if his peripheral vision was accurate…she was looking at his face.  What the fuck could he do about that?  He stiffened his jaw.  No…wanted to look tough but not belligerent.  He licked his lips.  Fuck no!  Too obvious!  He gave the phone he was still staring at what he thought was a soulful look…but maybe it just looked ridiculous, looking at a fucking phone like that.  He remembered an old movie, James Dean, and ran his fingers through his hair, real slow.  Squared his shoulders.  Flexed a few muscles here and there.  Finally he pulled out all the stops and looked up from his phone, trying to rivet her with his eyes.

She finally looked down.

Now what he saw on his phone in his peripheral vision was that she had, at fucking last, answered the question.

But just then, before he could even dart a look at the answer, someone else locked eyes with him.

It was the nurse, standing at the door, who’d almost fired him.

Imogene like couldn’t believe it.  That Blond Monster Tommy had had to leave and do his work after she’d like lied to keep him out of trouble with that def-not-woke nurse, but…zayum…it was effin’ days later but he’d like walked right into her room and handed her his tablet!  She looked up at him with effin’ tears of gratitude, but he was busy on his phone.

Probably still playing Minecraft.

Imogene clutched the tablet, like sweating all over it as she logged onto Snapchat with shaking hands.  There was something funny about the log-in, but she figured it had been so effin’ long she’d just forgotten.  Anyway it didn’t matter:  she was in!

WTFwasImogeneCoca: U there?

^URSunPC&proud:  wheree the fuck else wud i b

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  Where u been?  So much 2 tell u!

^URSunPC&proud:  tell awayy

Imogene like kept having to blink back effin’ tears so she could see the screen.  Her fingers like flew as she told ^URS about everyone…even the effin’ med peeps…thinking she was pregnant, which was sooooo def-not-woke, since she’d just had the def worst period ever.  Vaguely it occurred to her that she hadn’t trusted ^URS at times, like how ^URS knew so much about Imogene without ever having met in RL, but she ignored that now, bursting to type faster so she could tell ^URS absolutely everything, including stuff she like hadn’t even told herself yet, like that her belly was getting big and that there was something that moved inside her…and she was afraid she had cancer.

And…except for one hot night that for some funny reason she couldn’t remember…all about like all the pain, and all the loose teeth, and every time her father ever beat her.

Even Tommy stiffened at that one, but it was probably something that had happened on Minecraft on that phone he was still bent over.

She told ^URS about Tommy…finally…after so effin’ long without any device…lending her his tablet.

^URSunPC&proud:  is he cutee

The Storage Space was no longer appalled, simply or otherwise.  It no longer cared.

Its newest customer, the blond boy, pummeled a wall that rattled and clattered as he uttered a string of the crudest obscenities…apparently directed toward something he called “vanilla Minecraft.”

Amelia called out, “Tommy!  Please!  There’s enough clatter here already from the renovations!”

The Storage Space couldn’t possibly imagine the craft of mining vanilla, since vanilla couldn’t be mined.  Amelia had stopped singing its favorite aria.  The supposed “renovations” were only a lie by that oddly dressed Pat so he…or “they” as Tommy would call this strange Pat person…could crowbar his way to all the Storage Space’s hidden treasures under Amelia’s nose.

But the Storage Space didn’t care.

Slithering announced yet another visit from the ghost of Irwin, Le Grand Rat.

The Storage Space didn’t care.

Le Grand Rat whispered amid slithers of his hatred for Karen who’d had the effrontery to kill him in self-defense.

Karen…  Did not deserve to be thought of ever again.  Karen had betrayed the Storage Space.

Elsewhere something akin to sepulchral silence reigned as that other young boy, Fifi’s clandestine lover, crept around on his rainbow shoes, using the keys he’s stolen from reception long ago to stuff all his empty suitcases with treasures from other people’s storage units.  Amelia of the beautiful voice…and Karen when she returned…would get in trouble.

The Storage Space didn’t care.

Then that even more oddly dressed Pat, crowbarring treasures hidden since the 19^th century out from behind the metal walls, freed a pocket of air subtly scented with starched linens, oiled leather, fine cigars, and exquisite perfumes that were no longer available.

Amelia aahed, stroking some freshly exposed wooden paneling.

Pat told even more lies about restoring the old theatre and pocketed a sterling silver snuff box when she wasn’t looking.

If the restoration hadn’t been a lie…if the grand old theatre was really, truly, going to be returned to its former dignity, its former glory…the Storage Space still wouldn’t care.

Marie couldn’t douche long enough, hard enough.  That emergency worker had been disgusting.  She deserved an Oscar for acting that shouldn’t even have been necessary.  Instead of handcuffing Karen to her hospital bed for stabbing the prick, they should have awarded her the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Finally Marie stopped douching, leaned back in her tub, rested her head against the wall, and closed her eyes.

Karen…  Free…  Fabuloso!

But it had cost Marie everything…even her own face, altered beyond recognition by witness protection’s plastic surgeon after she neutralized the mob connections to Karen’s boyfriend Frank.

Marie let her eyes flutter open in the steamy room, then squeezed them shut again, imagining she could still feel the pain from the plastic surgeon’s stitches.  Her favorite playlist, from the phone she’d plugged into a speaker by the door, would end soon.  Good thing she’d set the volume low…

And, speaking of low, all Karen would ever remember was Marie’s resorting to the same tactic as she did with the emergency worker to get all the information she needed from Frank.  Karen would never know it had been the only way Marie could protect Karen.

Marie thought she heard something in the hall, then laughed at herself…naked in a bathtub.  What was this?  Psycho?

Had it been the only way, sleeping with Frank?  That sudden thought hurt worse than Alan Bates stabbing Janet Leigh with the knife.  All the others, even those in the mob, she’d slept with, and finally that emergency worker…

What was this, the 19^th century, not the 21^st?  Wasn’t there some other way she could have done it all, accomplished it all, other than sleeping with…at least…Frank?

Her gut knotted.  Her eyes flickered open again.  The douche she’d left on its side drizzled its last remaining liquid over the tub like a garden sprinkler someone had knocked over.

Douching wouldn’t help with this.  Her gut re-knotted as the next stab of emotional pain came:  Had she hidden all her own flaws…including liking to credit herself with everything, an odd self-absorption, and false pride…beneath the supposedly pure altruism of helping her friend?

The shower curtain was yanked aside.  Some guy she thought she recognized…some cop from the hospital, though he wasn’t in uniform now…clamped a hand over her mouth.  Some other guy with him turned the volume up on her least favorite playlist.  She couldn’t catch all they were whispering, but she knew it had to do with making it look like an accident. 

Shit. False pride indeed.  She’d thought she could escape the mob.

Karen couldn’t have cared less about anything.  Except it was fun to torment roommate Lydia with…or, Karen smirked, should she say without…the amputated leg.

Soft shadows from the sunlight passing through the leaves outside danced across the floor.

Karen couldn’t have cared less.

The plaintive, heartbreaking cry of a child could be heard in the hall.

“Stupid brat!”

Lydia stopped weeping for long enough to ask, “Who are you calling a stupid brat?”

Karen smirked again.  “Not you, gimp!  At least not this time…”

Some cop came in with a look of absolute disdain for the donut he was eating.  “Anyone know where I can get a jelly donut?”  Then he gave Karen a sharp look, mumbling something about “the crazy blonde,” before he approached with a pasted-on smile.  “Good afternoon, young lady, Officer Grover Sanders here, at your service with some very good news for you today.”

Karen eyed him suspiciously.  Despite the smile, something in his eyes and body language suggested he was there to get something from her rather than give her anything.  But she went along while he made his way through some preliminaries like confirming her name and a home address she’d all but forgotten at this point.

“So,” continued Officer Grover Moore, “it seems the individual you allegedly assaulted with a scalpel has…suddenly and miraculously, one might add…decided to drop the charges.”

What?  Why?

“You look puzzled.  You…”  He trailed off.  Karen shivered.  Something in the stillness of the air reminded her of a lion about to pounce on its prey.  “You don’t happen to have a friend named Marie?”

Tommy had to respawn a skin because he got distracted by a bitch like that?  He’d thought she was cute for a sec, like that puppy in the elevator, but…no.

“I…I…like I need to borrow your tablet.”

Enough of this vanilla Minecraft shit; he was going back to mods.

“Like…  Please?”

He was too busy installing a mod.  That’s why the door opening behind him didn’t register until it was too late.

“Tommy!”

That fucking nurse.  Tommy spun around.

“How long have you been playing with that tablet instead of doing your work?”

Real Life.  The same RL where his mother had laughed as she drowned his puppy.  Tommy’s gut tightened.  He could feel the sneer deepen on his face, even though he figured he was about to lose his job.

But then the pregs spoke up!  “Like, it’s not his fault!  He was just turning his tablet off after I, like, kept him from cleaning up after The Gray…after the woman who was my roommate…because I kept asking him for…like, all kinds of effin’ stuff.”

The nurse looked suspicious.  She made a point of looking around the empty room.  “Like, what kinds of effin’ stuff?”

Pregs had it down.  “Like, none of your business.”

The nurse opened her mouth, then shut it.

Tommy mentally crossed his fingers.

The nurse nailed him with her ruthless RL eyes and slammed her hands around her scrawny little hips.  “Well…’like’…you just better have all your work done by the end of your shift or else.”  She spun, left, and tried to slam a door that wouldn’t really slam.

Tommy almost laughed.  “Hey, Pregs, why’d ya’ do it?”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Okay!”  He guessed he owed her that much.  “But why?”

“I…I…like really need to borrow your tablet.”

“For what?”  He was beginning to think she looked kinda’ cute again. 

“Snapchat.”

Hell, he would fuck with Pregs on Snapchat.