The Anomaly's Enigma

“Michael James Way!” I hear Frank screaming from across the apartment. Given that this whole apartment is about the size of my entire living room in our actual apartment, I don’t see why he has to yell, but I assume Mikey did something that pissed him off. You don’t go middle naming people for no reason. That’s only for really serious things.

“What?” Mikey yells back.

“You didn’t pick your fucking towel up off the floor you fucking asshole,” Frank yells. I guess the reason Frank’s yelling is because he’s in the bathroom and, given the fact that ten minutes ago he said he was going to take a shower, he’s probably naked.

“Okay?” Mikey calls back. He’s sitting right next to me while we watch Clue on Netflix. Mikey will tell you that we’re only watching it because we couldn’t settle on anything else, but I know he just likes the sound of Tim Curry’s voice. Also he likes murder. Not real murderers, like the person who wants us dead, but he’s fine with it when it’s actors.

“You used my fucking towel!” Frank says.

“Oh,” Mikey says.

“He’s going to kill you later,” I say offhandedly.

“And he knows how to do it too,” Mikey points out.

“Yeah but he doesn’t have a gun.”

“I do too have a gun!” Frank shouts. It would surprise me that he can hear us, but it doesn’t because this apartment is just the pits. It’s so shitty. We can hear the people upstairs having sex every night. Frank and I can’t really complain though.

It’s been a week total now of living this apartment. So far, we have watched an unhealthy amount of movies, eaten an unhealthy amount of delivery pizza, and seen the sun an unhealthy amount of not at all. At least none of us are going to be getting skin cancer, though we might turn into vampires. That’d be kind of cool in theory but no one wants Mikey to live forever, it’d be hell. It’d be worse than hell. It’d be Chuck E. Cheese. Or a Brony convention.

“What do you want me to do?” Mikey asks. He doesn’t look all that scared, and he’s actually more interested in the movie than whatever threat Frank is going to give him.

“I want you to fall from a large height and die,” Frank says.

“Well unfortunately I’m not a Disney villain and we don’t have any balcony for you to push me off of, so you’re going to have to live with me,” Mikey replies.

“Gerard!” Frank yells.

“What? Oh, sorry,” I say, standing up and rushing around to find Frank a towel before he takes someone’s head off. I have to find him something even though it’s Mikey’s fault, because I’m the idiot who married Frank. Sometimes, mainly times where I don’t want to stand up, I regret that, but mostly I don’t. I am lazy though, and sometimes I don’t want to do things. Most of the time if I can not do something rather than do it, it’s preferable.

Someone knocks on the door a minute after I stand up and I groan.

“Fuck,” Frank whispers quietly. “Whatever you do, do not answer that door. Don’t do it.”

“What?” I ask, standing right outside the bathroom. It’s open only a crack so that Frank can talk to me, and I’m confused when he hushes me.

I turn to see Mikey roll his eyes and stand up to go see whoever is there, but I shake my head at him.

“They might be able to hear us,” Frank says.

“Gimme a sec,” I say, walking over to the hall closet, which has no right to be called a closet because it’s smaller than the locker I had in middle school. I grab a towel and walk back to the door. Mikey is standing in the middle of the room looking at me with a bored expression. He doesn’t move any further to get the door, and I just wait for Frank to tell me what to do. He’s the expert. He’s the one who has any idea of what we’re even doing.

There’s no knocking a second time, and to be honest, I think it was just our landlord or something, but the lecture Frank gave us on opening the door while we’re trying to use this apartment as a safe house floods back to me. Honestly that speech had felt like the lecture your mother gives you about not opening the door to strangers, only the way Frank explained it was a hell of a lot more terrifying. For one thing, he made us watch the third episode of Luther to tell us why we should not open the door to strangers, and after that, I think I’ll take his word for it.

Mikey just shrugs and goes to sit back down, while Frank closes the door on me after I hand him the towel. He comes out a second later looking damp with his pants askew, and his hair looks like a train wreck as well. I don’t think he got a chance to dry off at all so those pants must be hella uncomfortable. I’m not going to complain about the lack of shirt. I am only human, and Frank looks good without a shirt. Sue me.

“Peephole?” I ask.

“No,” Frank says, “peepholes are fallible.”

“What do we do?”

Frank looks at me, walks over to the corner of the room next to the vent and he steps on the floor board. I hadn’t noticed how Frank rigged the floorboard to work like an axle. He steps on one side and the other lifts up to reveal, unsurprisingly, a hollowed out space in the floor.

It’s probably weird that I find it sexy that Frank has a gun in the floor, but I did fall in love with an assassin in the first place so obviously something is not right in my head. I really do need to get a cat scan or something, it’s not normal to fall for people who try to kill you. He tried to kill more than once. Yeah something is wrong with me.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

Frank doesn’t respond, he just walks over to the front door and looks at it like it’s about to explode. At this, I decide pausing the movie might be a good idea, but when I try to, Frank stops me.

“What?”

“If the noise from the TV suddenly stops, someone must’ve stopped it, dumbass,” Frank replies.

After a minute of what feels like complete silence, even though the TV is still running in the background, there’s another knock. Both this knock and the first were very quiet, only barely audible. Frank looks a little more concerned at the second one because that means whoever was there, is still there. I just look at him, wondering whether I should run and hide or wait for Frank to do something.

He doesn’t have time to do anything because someone starts talking on the other side of the door before anyone can do anything.

“Frank I know you’re in there,” A voice that I don’t recognize says. I don’t know who the hell that is. It’s a man’s voice. That’s the most I know about it though.

I can’t see his face, but Frank freezes, standing right in front of the door. He’s out of the way of the peephole should someone try to look inside, but he’s right next to the door.

Frank moves so quickly that I barely even know what’s happening. All I know is that he opens the door, grabs whoever is out there, drags them into the apartment, and then slams the door back closed behind him.

I don’t even have time to ask what’s going on, before Frank is pushing the guy against the wall, and putting the gun to his chest. I can tell my eyes pop out of my head, even though I don’t remember telling myself to do that. Frank’s got a gun to this dudes heart though and I am just freaking out. I’ve seen a guy die before, I was kind of glad to witness it in all honesty, I don’t miss Banks in the slightest. One thing I haven’t seen though is Frank kill a guy, and I’m scared that he’s about to. It’s the same feeling I got when that Slav broke into our apartment. What did Frank call him? Señor balaclava, I think. That guy is still in prison.

This guy isn’t the same person, I wasn’t under that suspicion. The way Frank is treating him just seems to be similar. The man is old, but he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t necessarily look old. He’s got grey hair, but a young face. He’s the kind of old guy who stays active, I suppose. He’s a little scruffy with somewhat of a neck beard that is not at all flattering considering his hair is grey, but there’s a lot to catch your eye about the man. For one thing, his clothes look too nice for this sort of apartment building. He looks like a lawyer or something, but he also looks like he owns a nightclub. I can’t explain it.

He looks like he got into a bar fight recently. He’s got a black eye that looks to be healing pretty well, and a split lip. I don’t know that that’s surprising though considering the kind of guys Frank used to deal with.

I’d say the guy tans easily so maybe he’s Greek or Italian or something. I’m not so sure, and I only have a few seconds to evaluate him in the first place. He’s just a weird looking dude, but not a bad looking dude, but not an attractive looking dude either.

I don’t say anything, because Frank seems way too stern to have me butting in right about now. I look over at Mikey whose face looks just about as stunned as I feel. He must be surprised if he’s got any expression at all.

“New accent,” Frank says to the guy, which makes no sense to me, but then again, I have no idea how these two know each other. I know they do know each other though, by the way they’re both acting. The guy pressed against the wall does not look scared in the slightest. He almost looks like he’s trying not to laugh. Frank’s face I can’t see when he’s looking the opposite way, but I can tell from how he’s behaving that he is pissed off.

“New life,” the guy says in response to Frank. I don’t know what the hell kind of accent his is, but Frank’s paying more attention to it, I guess.

“Who are you then?” Frank asks him, almost playfully.

“Clive Spencer.”

“Sounds fake.”

“It is fake.”

“I know it’s fake, but it shouldn’t be that transparent,” Frank says.

“You can talk about transparency,” the guy responds, whose name is apparently not Clive. I’m fucking lost, I don’t know what the hell is going on.

“How’d you find us then?” Frank asks.

“Not that hard,” he shrugs, which is a weird reaction because he does still have a gun to his chest.

“Mikey, hand me a pillow,” Frank says.

“What?” Mikey says, looking terrified that Frank would even address him right now. I don’t blame him. Mikey is closer to the pillows though, as he’s still standing next to the couch.

“You heard me,” Frank says.

“Oh come on, we both know asphyxiation is not your game,” the guy says to Frank.

“No, but I don’t have a silencer,” Frank says.

Holy fuck, I think Frank is going to murder this guy! I don’t know how to react to that. I do not want to watch him kill someone. I trust Frank’s judgment, but I don’t want to see him kill a guy. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to watch. I love Frank, I’d never be able to look at him the same again though if I had to actually watch him assassinate someone.

“Are you going to shoot me, Frank?” the guy asks, not even hiding his smile anymore. This guy is either a twisted masochist, or he doesn’t believe Frank will kill him. I believe in Frank more than I believe in anything. He’s not afraid to kill a person, it’s just a matter of who he’d kill.

“I might,” Frank says, “I want to have that as an option.”

He takes the pillow from Mikey who is completely on the same level as me. I know I don’t know a lot about Frank’s past, and I understand a lot of why he doesn’t want to divulge a lot about it, but I feel like I should have some guess as to who this person in our living room is, but I don’t. I don’t have a clue. Who the fuck is he, and why does Frank want to kill him?

“You want an explanation then?” the guy asks.

“You’re dead,” Frank states like it’s obvious, “you are dead. You’re dead. I saw you. In a morgue. I saw you. You were dead. Now, you’re not a ghost, so what the fuck aren’t you telling me?”

“Pulled a few strings,” the guy says as if it’s an answer to Frank’s question.

“Oh of course,” Frank says, and I can feel his eyes rolling even though I can’t see them. “You’ve got friends everywhere, don’t you? Faking your fucking death is no big deal?”

“Done it before,” the guy shrugs.

“So how much of it was true then?” Frank asks.

The guy raises his arms up to show Frank something and I realize that he’s wearing gloves. They’re black leather, nothing special, but expensive looking.

“Wanna see a magic trick?” the guy asks, Frank. That is either really creepy or really creepy. It’s just a fucking creepy thing to say in this situation.

“Sure,” Frank responds. I’d have gone with no on that one. Yeah, I’d have said no. Fuck, am I in a horror movie or something?

The guy takes one of his hands and prods at the pointer finger on his right glove, and it freaks me the fuck out when the glove bends in a way that it should not. There’s no finger there! He doesn’t have a finger. Oh my god, the guy doesn’t have a finger! He’s missing his finger. There is a hand attached to his body that does not have a finger that should have a finger where there is not one! His right pointer finger isn’t there! No finger there. Finger is not there. That finger is not where it should be, and by that I mean that it isn’t there at all.

“So you were tortured,” Frank says.

It’s right about now that the pieces click.

This man, the guy that’s now standing with a gun to his chest, is Conte. This is the guy who helped us four years ago. Frank is holding a gun to the chest of the guy he’d been so adamant was an ally.

I don’t know what the fuck is going on still, I just think I’ve figured out who the man right in front of us is.

“So you sold me out?” Frank asks.

“It was you or me.”

“You sold me out,” Frank says again, sounding really angry.

“You’re not going to kill me though, we both know that,” Conte says.

Frank turns to look at me for the first time, his grimace turning into somewhat of a plea as his eyes meet mine. I don’t understand what he’s trying to tell me without the words, but he looks upset.

Frank’s head hangs for a moment and then he pulls the gun away from the man. Frank’s taught me enough about guns that I know how to tell when he puts the safety back on. He doesn’t put the gun down, but it’s not much of a threat when he holds it so nonchalantly.

“You’re right,” Frank says. “You want to leave then?”

“Frank?” I speak up for the first time. I don’t know what he’s doing but I think asking the guy if he wants to leave sounds like a bad idea. I feel like that’s just not smart. I mean, he knows who Frank is, who I am, who Mikey is, and how to find us. Also, he sold us out before. I just feel like, all around, bad idea.

“I can’t kill him, Gerard,” Frank says, “I can’t kill him. I mean, if he crosses me, I won’t hesitate, but right now, he’s our only shot.”

“You’ve lost me,” I reply. That’s not true, he lost me a while ago, but I’m lost now too.

“Conte was tortured by the guy. I believe him when he says that. You should too, he’s trustworthy to some extent. The point is that he wouldn’t be here right now if not for two possibilities. The first possibility is that he escaped being tortured after revealing my name, and he now wants revenge on the guy who did that to him, because he’s prideful and also that’s a shitty thing to do to a person. The second possibility is that he’s leading whoever’s looking for us right here and he’s betraying us for the sake of his own life.”

“Oh is that all?” I say sarcastically. Mikey’s still looking perplexed at the three of us like we’re speaking a foreign language.

“To be honest, if I had to give you odds on which of the options is more likely, I’d say the odds are so far stacked against us that Conte is actually our ally that, really, I should shoot him on the spot,” Frank says.

“You’re right,” Conte says, “I’m probably not here to help you.”

“No, probably not,” Frank agrees, “but whether he’s a Benedict Arnold or not is inconsequential. He’s not a murderer, I know that much, so it’s highly unlikely Conte is going to be the one to kill us, and if he tried you can bet I’ll outdraw him in a flash, but that’s not important. Without Conte here, we’ll be at a standstill. We might be here for the rest of our lives, just waiting, which is a form of torture in and of itself. To move forward or backward though, I have to, for the sake of a façade, pretend I trust him.”

“Doesn’t telling him that you’re pretending to trust him kind of eliminate the purpose of pretending in the first place?”

“Your husband is an idiot,” Conte says.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing, Gerard,” Frank says, brushing me off like I’m the one who insulted Conte or something.

“Frank!” I say.

“Sorry,” Frank says, and I notice that Frank’s doing his best not to take his eyes off of Conte, or The Conte, or Clive, or whoever the hell this guy is. “Gerard, the best place to keep your enemy is right under your nose, and as of five minutes ago I don’t know who to trust anymore. All I know is that I trust you and Mikey. This guy, I’m not so sure, but he has to think I trust him even though he knows I’m not going to trust him because why the fuck should I? So he knows I don’t trust him, because I’m smart, but for both of our sakes, it’s best if we treat each other like we do trust each other, even though that makes no sense because neither of us in fact trusts the other.”

“Uh-”

“You know what, it’s not important,” Frank says, “you’re pretty, you can be stupid sometimes. It’s okay.”

I start, “I’m not-”

“Not always, but sometimes you can be a little stupid.”

“He’s right,” Mikey mumbles.

“Oh alright, so we’re just going to disregard the fact that there’s a guy who may very well be here to murder us in our home?” I ask. “And also, are you telling me that I’m allowed to be stupid solely because you find me attractive?”

“Which one do you want me to answer first?” Frank asks.

“This is so weird!” I say, collapsing over onto the couch.

“If it’s any consolation,” Frank says in a tone that tells me that it won’t console me in the slightest, “he did lose a finger. I feel like that means he’s got some sort of vendetta against the guy who cut it off.”

“Yeah, that’d piss me off. A bit,” I reply sardonically.

“How do we know he doesn’t have a finger and he’s not just hiding it inside his glove?” Mikey asks.

“Well it’s been gone for what, like a month?” Frank asks looking at Conte, “Do you guys really want to see the stump of a finger that isn’t there anymore after only a month?”

“No, I’m going to take his word for it,” I say, “but Frank, I’m not happy about the fact that you let a guy who might be out to kill us into our house. That is so not cool.”

“Oh you’re using the angry spouse voice, really? Are you seriously angry with me that he’s here? I didn’t draw him a map,” Frank says.

“You were the one who found us a safe house and it’s not all that safe if you’re dead friend can find us.”

“Touché.”