The car he had found was unlocked, luckily enough. Only thin plastic paneling had resisted his precise jabs into the innards of the vehicle. Long after the sun had set, he crept along the planned route, nervously making his way back to the garage.

Rapt with adrenaline, awash with hot blood and obsessed by the multitude of delicate shadows dancing across the dash, it took three hollow rings of his phone to jolt him from captivation.

“Hey, it’s Aaron. You almost here?” The familiar accent spoke of New York delis and crowded urban streets.

“Yeah… yeah I’ve been trying to drive slow… b-b-but… yeah I’ll be at your place in like ten.”

Silence surrounded him again. The night deprived his senses, allowing him to see only the sickly yellow lights of each uniform block sliding and shifting across the cloaked terrain, robbing his mind of everything but mute acknowledgment. That was until he saw the pale, white sign of the Trophy Club apartments. He knew she lived amid those three stories of cookie-cutter plastic and brick. He could practically smell her cheap perfume as he approached.

Ever since found her, bare, alone with that other man, he couldn’t get that stench off himself; it seemed entwined in his clothes, furniture, integrated with the very walls of his house. As he thought about her, he realized that it was the first time the thoughts didn’t spark the venomous repulsion with which he was so accustomed. Instead, he felt longing and desire coupled with a need for reconciliation, if just to see her one last time.

He found himself negotiating between the spaced white lines of the visitors parking lot, fumbling for the handle, and clumsily tumbling out of the car. Where he should have been feeling desperation and angst, he found hope and zeal; a few quick steps carried him up to the familiar room, shoddy door, and crooked room numbers.

He heard the hollow echo that replaced his raps on the door, and the confused cadence of someone drifting near. The customary process ended, and the door reluctantly crept back across the carpet. He stood ready with a smile and a thirty second speech to cover a year of speechlessness. The stark light that flew from the apartment forced him to blink multiple times. The first thing that alarmed him was her silhouette. It was different, larger, discomforting.

A scream shook him, knocking him back, startled. His initial alarm gave way to panic, and he realized his error. The black hood shrouding his face and the loose jeans he had worn to protect his anonymity now became a miscalculated hindrance. Whoever now occupied apartment one-eleven of the Trophy Club, wasn’t excited or elated about his visit.

“Help! Help! Robbery! I’m calling the cops!”

It wasn’t the pitch but the substance that awakened the instinct in his core. “Calling the cops” meant interaction with the very people he had been trying to avoid all night, jail time, and dark, caged recesses, filled with emptiness. His muscles agreed. No matter what, “calling the cops” , would not be an option. Autonomous, his arm flew, a bolt, hitting home in the soft belly of the startled woman.

Crumpled like the plastic steering column, she was unwieldy, but portable. Cyclonic fear dwarfed his few thoughts and remaining logic, and minutes later he deprived the helpless victim of oxygen, dropping her silently, almost admiringly into a nearby recess pond. Sprinting away, he left her, engulfed by silence, floating, consistently bobbing under the brooding sky.

Ms. Shemp remained there until the rescue divers dragged her body from the pond, shaking their heads and whispering about tragedy and the foolishness of swimming alone.