Chapter 2
Karma is not a bitch.
Karma is a 70-pound black Chow-Chow from hell. A boy Chow-Chow that humps.
I was supposed to walk Karma twice a day while my
parents took their second honeymoon trip to the Bermuda Triangle. They went
there hoping to be abducted and probed by aliens.
I don’t have the mental space to make this up.
But anyhow, the damn dog ran away while we were on his
morning poop-walk.
Because he hates me.
It’s mutual.
The normal thing to do would be to call my parents and
let them know I lost the dog, but I wasn’t calling my ‘rents for anything.
Anything. At all. If the house burned down, if a volcano erupted under the
house, if Godzilla came screaming from the ocean and stepped on the house, I
was not contacting the ‘rents.
I didn’t want my mom to get upset. She really did
deserve to get abducted by aliens, and I didn’t want her to worry about
anything, least of all a floofy ass-can of a dog.
Maybe I could buy another dog. Maybe one who liked me.
I gave up after walking the block for 20 minutes. I
got to my parent’s house and let myself in just as the sun cracked the surface
of the sky.
My work phone was already blowing up.
My family owns a large extermination company. I earn
my living taking critter calls.
“Greg, can you take a commercial insect estimate?”
Roz, the X-Term receptionist asked. “Hotel on beachside needs a bedbug check.”
“Isn’t Gale on this week?” I asked. I knew for a fact
that he was on call, because Gale is my twin brother, and our parents left us
in charge. In fact, I was here before dawn to drive Gale to work. “Call Gale, I
don’t take insect calls, Roz.”
I have a psychic power. I do not take insect calls
because of it.
The medical diagnoses for my “condition” are paranoid
schizophrenia with hallucinations, inclinations to self-harm, and epilepsy. And
the doctors put in ‘on the autism spectrum’ as a sweet little sidenote to my psychoses.
I’m sure most of that is true.
I am bug-shit crazy.
My every step is carefully curated to make sure I
don’t end up bashing my brains out on the sidewalk.
That happened.
I take calls for raccoons, snakes, alligators, bats,
cats, rats, and all of the creepy crawlies that have skeletons on the inside. My dad and brother take everything else. Gale
is the bug man while the ‘rents are gone.
Nobody knows about my problem, save for my family and
my best friend, Chelsea.
“I’ve called Gale 26 times in a row,” Roz snapped.
I swore under my breath. I don’t take bug calls. Ever.
“Roz, I have this morning off, I was going to come in
and do payroll this afternoon, and I have a bat removal this evening. Isn’t
there anyone else?”
“No, sorry Greg, it’s been a really hectic week. We
have a lot of people out with flu, and with your dad out… .”
Damn, I didn’t want her to call my dad for the same
reason I didn’t want to call my mom about the dog.
Gale and I are 24, and my parents had never had a
vacation. The two of us are so high maintenance that my parents never do
anything for themselves.
I did not want the office to call them.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled heavily.
“Roz, let me put you on hold, I’m going to see if he’s
here.”
I put the phone on mute and walked through the house
to my parents’ garage. Gale lived in a little remodeled tack room in the
garage.
I opened the door, no knocking, and waved my hand in
front of my face. The fumes. Body odor and weed. Knock a normal person
right on their ass.
Gale wasn’t there.
That meant Gale was passed out somewhere. Or sitting
on a bridge watching the sun rise while hitting his weed pen. Or, whatever Gale
does when he’s being the most worthless person I ever met.
I clicked back on the phone.
“Just an estimate, right?”
“Just an estimate,” Roz said.
“Ok, I can do an estimate, but I need you to get
someone else pulled and ready to set up the actual removal.” I said. “Give me
20 minutes, and I’m on the way.
I got a shower and grabbed a spare uniform from the
hall closet. It was Gale’s.
Gale and I are one of those weird twin sets. We’re
fraternal. Two eggs, two sperm, one uterus. He’s a boy, I’m a girl. Different
DNA. Different chromosomes. All of that.
But Gale and I could pass as identical twins when we
were little. If my hair is up, we sometimes still can. Our hair is the exact
same red-red with the same thick, fine texture. Our eyes are the same moss
green, and our skin is the exact same creamy white.
My mom calls it creamy white. But I think the actual
term is ‘fish belly’ white.
We’re the exact same height and build, and within a
few pounds of each other. I have boobs, and long hair. That’s our main
difference. His feet are a half size bigger, his shoulders are a little broader,
and his hips are a little slimmer, but other than that, we can still wear each
other’s clothes.
We are the most identical fraternal twins I’ve ever
seen.
Which is why I took his last clean uniform.
Mom washed Gale’s work clothes and hung them in the
hall closet so they wouldn’t get lost.
Gale lost a strange amount of clothing.
I stripped right there, in front of the closet, and I grabbed
his last clean uniform.
I left my crapped-up clothes on the floor of the hall
and jumped in the shower.
I stole socks from mom’s dresser and used an entire
canister of Clorox wipes to clean off my shoes.
Today, my life was basically a wet fart in white
pants.
I lost the dog, and I had to take a bedbug call. Both
things were my brother’s fault.
Let’s review this. I lived across town; I had to come
here before sunrise to walk the dog before I took my brother to work because he
didn’t have a valid driver’s license.
Gale lived here. He should have been able to
walk the dog a couple of times a day.
Losing my mom’s dog was clearly his fault. It should
have never been my job.
I loved Gale, but I’d rather not spend any time with
him. We did not have a twin bond. At least not anymore. Maybe when we were
little kids, but half of the time I hated him so much it made my teeth hurt.
Gale was a grown-ass man who lived at home like a
teenager. Our mom made him get his worthless buns up, and our dad drove him to
work.
And, shocker, Gale flaked out the minute our mommy
and daddy left town.
I did another run through my parents’ neighborhood,
hoping the dog would show.
No Karma.
My mom would have thought that was an omen.
I texted my fiancé, David, to let him know I wouldn’t
be back until later because I had to take a call.
He didn’t text back, and the rolling in my stomach had
nothing to do with the utter terror of the bedbug call. David had been distant
this week. He’d been distant for a few weeks. I wasn’t sure what I’d done, but
I was absolutely positive his coolness was my fault.
I just wish he’d tell me what I’d done. I don’t pick
up social cues.
I breathed heavily and stared at my phone. I pulled up
social media and stalked him. His profile said he was online, but that could
have just meant he had the browser open on his work computer.
There must have been a reason he left me on read.
I was pulling into the hotel for the bug call when Roz
called me again. She pulled one of our other exterminators for the estimate,
and I fought the prick of tears at the corners of my eyes in gratitude.
“Thank you, Roz, you’re the best,” I said.
“Well, sugar, it’s not because you’re getting the
morning off,” she replied. I heard her take a sip of something, probably boba
tea. “We may have raccoon stuck in the skylight of a daycare.”
I cussed. Raccoons are not easy.
“And a snake call, too,” she said.
I cussed again.
A raccoon and a snake on my morning off.
It was easier than bedbugs for me, but still.
I got the critters trapped and released. One was easy;
one was not.
It was around lunch time, and I hadn’t eaten. I was
starving. I thought about stopping at home to grab some food and make sure
everything was copacetic.
David still hadn’t texted me back.
I sent him a kiss emoji.
Nothing.
I felt like crying. I felt like pulling my hair out or
screaming my brains out in the truck.
I took a deep breath and rationalized that David was
probably working. He was a collection agent who worked from home. If he was
working, or gaming, he usually didn’t check his phone. He gamed every spare
moment of his day, so it was probably just a really intense campaign, or
whatever. Or maybe he was on a work call.
I tried to feel better.
Roz texted me at that moment, and I dared to hope that
I’d get a break. If I had a break, I could stop by home and make sure all was
good.
Nope. Roz reminded me we had to have payroll to the
courier before 4 p.m.
I grabbed subs for the staff and headed to the X-Term
offices to take care of payroll.
The courier picked up the package a few minutes before
4 p.m.
David had not texted me.
I sent him another text as I prepped for my last call
of the day: A bat removal.
If I’d known then how it was going to go, I would have
gone home.
If I knew what would happen at the bat removal, I
would have called my parents and told them to come home.
I would have called my court-ordered psychotherapist
and told her I needed Lithium and shock therapy.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I met my first monster.
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