Adam leaned over the railing beside the road, watching his sweat drip down to the highway below. The summer sun was beating its angry fists down on the back of his neck, feeling like it came in waves each time the breeze let up. From the overpass, he could see the naked horizon. There wasn't a damn thing spoiling the agonizing flatness— the overpass was probably the highest spot for a hundred miles. The shoulders to either side of the highway were freckled with chicory, giving the grass a sickly blue tint. The asphalt then was an endless grin of grey teeth parting the dead flesh of the earth. The thought did not help Adam's nausea. Maybe if he puked, the vomit would hit a passing car beneath him. That was a nice thought.
Adam had a love for animals, and was a vegetarian, if not a vegan, but he never owned any pets. He appreciated the company of animals over people, but didn't feel like he could handle the responsibility of caring for one. Adam, in fact, lived alone, and he liked it that way. Which was why it was, perhaps, all the more distressing for him to be confronted with an almost tangible wall of miasma upon opening the door to his apartment. The smell was that of rotting meat. There shouldn't have been meat of any sort inside his home. Adam wretched as he attempted to swim through the putrid air past the threshold.
The nose eventually becomes insensate after a consistent enough exposure to even the worst scents, but there is a certain intensity of odor that one can feel crawling across their skin, infusing itself into the fabric of one's clothing. He could still smell it on him, even out in the open air, though the vehicular odors of gasoline, exhaust and asphalt covered all but a trace. Adam sank down against the railing, pressing his back to the hot metal as the sun glared him in the face. He held his hands to his throbbing skull and squeezed his eyes shut. He could see images on the back of his eyelids.
As a reward for keeping himself from doubling over, Adam had been confronted with an assaulting display of gore, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. At first blush, one would be forgiven for supposing that several murders had occurred within Adam's apartment. Flesh had been constructed in various, creative ways across the floor and furniture, stretching from the living-room and into the kitchen. But upon review, it was apparent that this was a single corpse that had been so thoroughly dissected.
The level of raw mayhem would have made it impossible for a layman to discern the identity of the victim, however the head had been left conveniently intact, nestled into the pile of dirty dishware otherwise filling Adam's sink. He recognized this person. It was his coworker Eliza.
Adam's flight to the overpass had been straightforward. His presence of mind (which had directed him to a. Not scream, and b. Carefully close his apartment door behind him as he backed out of the horror scene) had left him by the time he ran out of the building and into the road, not bothering to look for traffic. Traffic, as one might assume, was a common occurrence in the middle of a four-lane intersection, so the fact that Adam was hit by a bus should come as no surprise. The bus-driver, not being in a state of frenzied panic, had seen Adam blundering across the road long before Adam saw him, and had managed to slam his foot into the break pedal fast enough to save Adam from splattering inelegantly onto the bus's grill.
But it did hit him, and when Adam regained consciousness, there were about a dozen strangers looming over him, silently taking bets on whether he was dead or not. There was a brief moment, as Adam laid there on the pavement, that he forgot that he had just minutes prior been staring into the lifeless eyes of his office's annoying-but-familiar gossip queen. He had a flash of indignant anger at the audacity of a bus to hit him, a pedestrian— until he recalled why he had been crossing the road in the first place, and the cascade of memories that followed.
Adam had ran, stumbling, from the scene of his concussion, down the block to the overpass, overlooking the highway that was located so conveniently close to his apartment block that its presence was comfortingly audible at all hours of the night. With closed eyes offering no respite from the world, he peered instead down the road, back to the intersection where the bus was still stopped. A police cruiser had pulled up. Adam felt a pang of guilt for causing what must be a nightmare for the poor bus-driver, not to mention the inconvenience caused to all the passengers of the bus.
But staring into the flashing blue lights of the police cruiser began several gears turning in Adam's recently-jostled mind. Calling the police, alerting them to the obscene crime currently occupying his home, might not be the best idea-- at least not at first. There had been a warming sense of relief at the thought of calling nine-one-one initially. Ah, of course, Adam had thought. The authorities will know what to do. That's what you're supposed to do when something absurd and violent happens. But then Adam had remembered that he was, technically a drug dealer, and there was a substantial quantity of merchandise sitting on his coffee table at that very moment.
Adam worked for a small company that produced forms and paperwork for other, more important companies. He was not compensated well, certainly not for the lifestyle that Adam liked to maintain. Not that his lifestyle was extravagant, but organic groceries, an apartment on the good side of town, frequent appointments with a therapist to deal with childhood trauma, these things cost money. So Adam sold drugs. Nothing too hard, and only to college kids. It was lucrative, if seasonal, and seemed pretty safe. As long as, you know, a murder didn't occur in his apartment.
Adam made his way back down the block, and ducked into one of the small convenience stores along the way. He pressed his hand to his chest, gritting his teeth. A broken rib would be such a delightful addition to his day, but it seemed like it was probably just bruised. He grabbed bleach, rubber gloves, trash-bags, and toothpaste (because his tube was almost empty, and he'd been meaning to pick up some more).
"Cleaning up a crime scene, are we?" the cashier joked, looking at the items Adam dumped beside the register. Adam starred blankly back at him.
"Yes. You caught me." Adam replied, deadpan. He produced a wad of cash from his pocket, and left without taking his change. He walked brusquely back up the block, and stopped this time to look both ways before crossing the road. The bus and police car had moved on. Any other day, Adam would have been pretty amused at the realization that he had technically just been in a hit-and-run. But humor, for the time being, seemed like an emotion far out of reach. The trudge up the stairs to his apartment was hellish, as the dread set in of what he was about to do.
Despite his tiny hope that he had only hallucinated the bloody tableau earlier, the carnage was still very much present as he re-entered, forcing himself once again over the threshold, this time closing the door behind him, trapping himself inside with the chaos that had been constructed out of his coworker's corpse.
Adam's entire plan had fallen apart immediately. He had snapped on gloves, and pulled open a trash bag, and had reached down to pick up Eliza's flayed left hand off the floor where it had been carefully arranged with some of her entrails. He couldn't do it. He couldn't touch it. He collapsed down into a mostly clean corner of the room and cried for several minutes. What the absolute fuck am I doing he thought to himself. Just call the cops. Let them find the stuff and arrest me, I don't care, just don't make me look at this fucking shit any longer. He drilled his palms against his closed eyes and sucked in a sob.
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