Red

 

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Hammett knew who was behind the man.

He lifted up his cane for the man to see.
-Do you like it? He asked.
-Yes! The man said. He stood in the doorway, his large face bobbing vigorously in approval.
-I wore these as well, said Hammett and lifted up his wrists: two silver cufflinks.
-Very good! The man said, smiling sycophantically.
-It is a special occasion, Hammett said coolly.

Velvet red. The floor and the walls and the ceiling. There were no windows. There was a smell. Not overwhelming, but the smell of drains or wet wool. Grey, hunched men darted in a cluster at the far end of the room, working urgently on something unseen. Hammett’s footstep echoed around the chamber and they stopped their work with unholy synchronicity. They left quickly through the walls. Their object was revealed. A woman. Her dress reached around her feet and was the same red as the room and so it seemed as if she had risen from the floor; belonged to it. A beautiful, bronze-cast face and a headdress, like a crown of tall black rushes. She drifted aside, revealing the Radio. Hammett smiled. It was a precious, sacred thing before him. Unique.
Music played. The woman went to him. He put a hand on her waist and with his right hand held her left. It was cold and noncommittal, but still they danced. Hammett worried about treading on the hem of her dress; he couldn’t see it in all the red beneath him.  Later, he noticed, bemused, that he no longer held his cane and that his cufflinks had fallen out of his sleeves. But the music moved him along and he looked decisively up at the face of the woman who danced with him. He stopped dancing. She stopped with him. They stood motionless, their bodies together, while the music travelled in great gusts around them. Her eyes were closed! Not in wonderment, or expressiveness. Just closed, as in sleep. He let go of her hand quickly to wake her. The hand fell to her hip. Her eyes did not open. He let go of her waist and stepped back and she crumpled to the floor in front of him. The music stopped. Noise. Static. Then, a voice.
. . . Officer Hammett?!  . . Officer Hammett?!

The room became grey, only her dress was red. A basement. He knelt over her and touched the places where the rats had gnawed his daughter's cheeks and where the man had sliced her neck. He looked back over his shoulder. The man lay in the doorway. His body was contorted, as if suspended in a moment of seizure. His joints were broken where the baton had struck. A line of red welts ringed his neck, where the handcuffs had bit into it. And there was the radio. Black and small beside him. Insignificant.

. . . Officer Hammett!?

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