Rouge

Rouge - Chapter Eight

Joshua waited exactly an hour before leaving his bedroom. Listening to Hunter as she moved from the kitchen to her bedroom and back and forth between the two was immensely difficult, considering she remained so quiet and his bedroom was upstairs, way out of earshot. He liked having the upstairs bedroom; he could keep the temperature as cold as he wanted without Hunter getting a chill.

About fifteen minutes after the house was completely silent, Joshua was certain she’d retired for good. His mind racing and with no intention of sleeping at all - not after what had just happened - Joshua left his bedroom.

Still in his neat pants, shirt and tie, he crept through the cold apartment and collected the other key-card he kept in the freezer. Hunter would never find it there. As quietly as he could, Joshua left the apartment and moved to the stairwell.

Their building was quite sophisticated, but not nearly as expensive to rent as most apartment buildings in New York. In fact it was quite a dull building, with the same gray colors as the sky before a storm and a feeling of complete emptiness. Joshua had lived there with Hunter since she was just a small child, and he liked it. It was comfortable and convenient and would always be his home.

Joshua entered the elevator and pressed ‘B’. It was the floor below the lobby; the basement, of sorts. Since the very first year he rented a lower-standard apartment in the building, his relationship with the sub-letter had become quite strong, and for cheap rent, Joey let him rent the basement for his laboratory experiments.

The elevator doors opened to a corridor typically dark and lined with dripping pipes. He strolled down the corridor, his expensive shoes clapping lightly on the smooth stone, and stopped in front of a room marked ‘Basement’. He swiped his key-card in the door and stepped inside.

Hunter didn’t know he rented the basement, and he hoped she never would. It was something of a sanctuary. He spent almost as much time there as he did in the apartment upstairs, but he always worked late into the night. Sometimes Hunter asked him why he arrived home so late from the university or where he was running off to at eleven at night. She must think he was seeing women or some ridiculous assumption such as that.

But Joshua had no interest in women. In fact, he wasn’t sure he ever would. Not after what happened to Liz.

The basement used to be an apartment as homey as his own upstairs when Joshua had first rented it many years ago. Joey said that his grandmother used to live in it. True, it appeared that way when one entered. There was a homely couch in the right corner facing a small television screen, with a few works of art across the custard-yellow walls. One room led to a bedroom and small ensuite, the other led to a simple kitchen with a fridge and no microwave. This was not the boiler-and-stocked-foods type of basement.

And these dull decorations were only a cover for what lay behind the room.

Joshua crossed directly to the artificial fireplace where a collection of photos stood dejectedly on the mantelpiece, gathering dust. Pausing, Joshua glanced at the one picture he kept of Liz and felt his smile twitch ever so slightly.

She stood on the beach in front of their shack, only two months pregnant and glowing with laughter in the sun. She had her arms spread out wide, a beautiful, emerald green sarong rippling in the air like a flag behind her. It was the first he’d seen her happy in a while. He had to capture it on film.

Behind the frame, he found the lever. Just like in a Sherlock Holmes journal, the fireplace swung inward and Joshua stepped into a large, dark room.

Fluorescent lights blinked brightly, illuminating the room with the pale silver glow he knew too well. Sleek computers on desks lined the left wall, and two steel tables jutted out of the other. These tables were usually surrounded by silver plastic curtains, but for now they were drawn back against the wall. At the far end of the room was a large filing cabinet where he kept all his research. There were banks of shelves lined with fossils and rock formations, test tubes and glass beakers, medical and technical equipment. A giant corkboard hung on the right wall over the two steel tables with his many geographical findings and scientific terms, a scramble of notes pinned in order for him to make sense of them visually. A giant glass tank hummed beside the desks, the plants and substances inside it littered with icicles.

This was the room that used to be the basement. Now it was a laboratory, and the shelves lined with stocked foods were replaced with research equipment, and where the boiler used to be was now a freezer. That was used for a different kind of storage.

Joshua un-cuffed his sleeves and loosened his tie, as he always did when preparing for work. At the back of the laboratory where he kept his files, Joshua unlocked the second drawer in the third column. Inside, behind a stack of files, he caught sight of their documented videos, the ones he later converted into discs when the technology allowed it. Those were the best and the worst times of his life.

Hunter would never understand just how much he loved Liz, not only because of the promise he made her that day in the hospital, but because of how much Hunter reminded him of her mother. She’d never felt that kind of loss, and so she could not know. He said he would protect her from anything, and now all his work to keep things secret was coming undone. He was already breaking his promise to Liz.

Brushing a tear from the corner of his eye, Joshua rifled through the files. After the fire in the kitchen, a nervous feeling had overcome him. It was a hunch, but somehow, deep inside him, Joshua knew what it meant. Because it wasn’t just a coincidence, and it wasn’t a spontaneous combustion either. A flutter of something mixed with panic and excitement surged through him as he picked up the file, took it to one of the desks and spread it out over his most recent work. He looked down at the title scrawled in black across the lip and smiled.

Sitting down in the swivel chair, Joshua immersed himself in his old research notes, the file of information bringing back a flood of memories and emotions along with it. Delight. Anticipation. Pain. Joy.

It had been a long night and Joshua was about to explode from both physical and mental exhaustion. But the events of his night could not compare to what was happening now, before his very eyes. After analyzing the data and his predictions, Joshua’s heart began to beat faster. He knew this day would come. The evidence was there, in his own writing. Oh yes, this event had happened numerous times in the past, but Hunter thought nothing of it. This time, it was different. The fire on the stove was the sign. Hunter was the key.

Joshua let out a shaky sigh.

“It’s happening,” he whispered and closed the flap of the file marked ‘Feucotetanus’ with a definite snap.