Part 4
John arrived at work the next day to find Alice Miller sitting behind the cash register. Normally, she was the one to open the store at 8AM. Lauren and John arrived at 9AM and they would stay on until the store closed at 6PM.
“Have you heard anything from Lauren?” Alice Miller said.
“I never talk to her,” John said. “She didn’t call?”
“No, she just didn’t show up. I called her house but she’s not picking up the phone.”
John shrugged and went to the back to his computer. He felt more restless than usual and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the incident of the day before with the lupins or, more likely, the fact that Jillian had been upset with him. That, and her odd behaviour, frightened him. He had never considered what would happen if she became angry with him or if she got tired of seeing him. He was becoming ever more dependent on her presence to make him feel happy and alive. Even now all he could think about was the next time he would get to see her face.
He found a website where he could set up a countdown and set it for three hours.
The morning went by with John mostly just watching the countdown, feeling his need for Jillian grow with each passing minute. Occasionally he would have to get up to make photocopies for someone, or to print something out, or to do a random task that Mrs. Miller came up with. He did these with growing irritation.
Three hours came and went and Jillian didn't show up. The afternoon wore on with no sign of the girl. He tried calling her cell phone but an automated message informed him that it was unreachable at the moment.
John was pacing behind the counter in the print shop when an elderly woman came in asking for colour copies of her pictures. He didn’t notice her presence until she called to him. When she handed him an envelope containing dozens of photos his frustration boiled over.
“Are you crazy, lady? I don’t have time for this. Do it yourself.”
Mrs. Miller heard him and ran to them with shock on her face.
Flustered, she said to the old woman, “I’m so sorry for this. I don’t know what's with him lately.” Then she turned to John. “Apologize right now, John. This is unacceptable. We’re going to have a long talk about this. Now, apologize.”
“You know what? Fuck you both,” John said and stormed out of Printsy’s. Outside, he lit a smoke and walked around the plaza, past Quizno’s, to Michèle Photographie. Through the window, as he smoked, he saw Beatrice, who had been the studio's assistant before Jillian came along. She was sitting behind the reception desk typing away. So Jillian was not in. She must have been sick. It made him feel a little better that she was sick and not ignoring him as he had feared. He finished his cigarette and went inside.
Beatrice greeted him. “Hey John, what can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for Jillian,” John said. “She’s not working today?”
“I’m sorry, who?”
“Jillian. She works here,” John said. “Started a few weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Beatrice said, “There is no Jillian here.”
John shook his head. “Are you messing with me, Beatrice?”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about, John,” she said. “Listen, you don’t look well. Are you sick? Maybe you should go home today?”
John frowned. He felt his head spinning. The longing for Jillian was worse than ever and he felt as though he might start to cry. He nodded to Beatrice and left the studio, lighting another cigarette with shaking hands. He got into his car and drove away, smoking.
Her house. He was going to drive to her house and check in on her. As confused, tired, and frustrated as he felt, he didn’t think he was crazy. He had spent nearly every day with this woman for the last few weeks. She was real.
He drove down Garrison Road, the main road that ran through Smithville, and slowed as he came close to the street where he had to turn. She lived in a little house all on her own in Radford Avenue.
He saw the Chinese restaurant that sat on the corner of her street and activated his turn signal, but there was no street. No Radford Avenue. Just an empty parking lot where the street was supposed to be. He turned into it and stopped the car. His mind was racing. He held his head in his hands then banged it against the steering wheel and stayed that way, sobbing, for a few long minutes.
“Maybe I really am crazy,” he said. This was where the street was supposed to be. Jillian’s house should’ve stood only a few hundred feet away but there was no street. Just a parking lot, and behind it the beginnings of a small forest. Among the trees there were lupins.
John tried to think back to the beginning, from the time that Jillian had first come into Printsy’s for those business cards. She had smiled at Lauren but the cashier hadn’t even looked up. The old man who had been there that day had never looked at her either. He went through all the times that they had been together and realized that no one else had ever acknowledged her existence. But what about their first lunch together? She ate a sub from Quizno’s. She must have ordered it, or did he do that for her? John had no memory of ever ordering the subs. He remembered only leaving Printsy’s and then finding himself sitting at the table inside the restaurant.
Maybe he really was crazy and Jillian didn't exist. But then he remembered that there was one person who had mentioned seeing Jillian. It was the woman Jill across the street. But that was impossible because Jillian had never been to his house. He always picked her up at her place. The place that now didn’t exist. He drove off again, this time toward his own street.
When he arrived John parked his car on his driveway and walked across to the house where Jill and her husband John lived. He was about to bang on the door when it opened from the inside.
“You’re here. Come in.”
It was a man. The man he had seen before who had been wearing the baseball cap, but now his face was revealed. John found himself looking into a face that resembled his own, only decades older. It was almost too much for him and he backed up and almost fell off the porch. The older man reached out and steadied him then put his arm around him.
“Come inside,” he said. “We need to have a conversation now.”
The man led John inside a spacious living room where they sat down. The walls were bare but there were vases all over with lupins in them. Dozens of stalks surrounded him on tables and stands and on the floor itself.
“She likes them,” the older John said. “She says they remind her of home. But they are really here to trap me. It’s how she keeps me here.”
John was shaking his head. “Jill?”
“Jill. Jillian. They’re the same, you know. I think you know but you won’t admit it to yourself.”
“This is crazy. Who are you then? Are you— are you…”
The man nodded. “I’m you,” he said. “We’re the same.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I know,” said the older man. “She’s not human, John. You know of the succubus? Those stories come from creatures like her.”
John could only shake his head.
“The witch, John. She comes in the night and sucks the life out of you. It’s her, don’t you see? Jillian. Jill. She makes you feel dead inside and lifeless and makes you need her and all you want to do is be with her, with the beautiful girl, the one who makes you feel whole. She is taking over your entire life, don’t you see? Our life.”
John rubbed his face with his hands. He dropped off the couch and and landed on the floor. They couldn’t be the same. It didn’t make sense. What was the purpose of it all?
“Why are you here then? With… the other Jillian?”
“She is eating away your life. This is how she feeds. It’s all closing in around you like a shrinking ring. Your past and future are coming together until the ring gets so small that it vanishes. I am your future, John. And there is nothing you can do about it.”
“Why the flowers? What’s with the flowers?”
“How do
you feel, John?”
John was frustrated and angry. He was confused and didn’t know what to think. This was all insane. But he realized that he wasn’t missing her now. That part of him that had been crying out for Jillian was silent. It was a strange feeling because he had lived with that yearning for her for weeks now. He nodded at the older man in understanding.
“The flowers make you feel okay. It’s so she can leave without me. I can’t go anywhere now, John. I can’t get too far away without her now. I’ve become trapped and I can’t be without her at all. But the flowers make it okay. They are a prison but they keep me alive.”
“Where is she then? Jillian?”
The man sighed. “She is killing Lauren.”
"Why? That's insane."
"Jealousy. Jill's feelings are... extreme."
John stood up from the floor. He had to stop this somehow. He couldn’t let Jillian kill Lauren.
“There is nothing you can do,” the older man said. “You can’t do anything to her. She’s not even really there, not the beautiful woman that you see, anyway. You’ve noticed how no one is aware of her? She’s not real. She is the thing that comes for you at night. That is what she really is, and only that.”
“How do you know all this?”
The man smiled. “I had the same conversation but from where you’re standing. So, you see, I know what happens next, and I know that there is no hope.”