Poison Shy by Stacey Madden

dead.
    â€œMelanie, you okay?”
    Finally she collapsed onto the mattress. “Damn. I needed that.”
    â€œSo you
are
alive.”
    â€œYou too.” She turned and bent over the side of the bed in search of her underwear, her goosepimpled ass in my face. It, too, was smeared with blood.
    â€œWhat just happened?”
    She stood and slid her panties up her thighs. “Um, I just fucked you.”
    â€œI mean, what’s with the . . . I’ve never . . .”
    She patted me on the cheek. “I’m female. I bleed once a month. It’s a little something called biology.”
    â€œYeah, but —”
    â€œShove over, stud. I’m going back to sleep.”
    â€œLike
that
?”
    â€œI’m tired, okay? Send me your laundry bill. Now, shove over!”
    I went to the bathroom to rinse myself off while she burrowed under the covers. Squinting into the mirror, I saw the face of a confused young man with a bloody handprint on his cheek. I coughed and spat into the sink. Told myself this was it. Now that I’d slept with her I could go back to my normal life, killing bugs in strangers’ homes and drinking my face off with Chad. I could even get used to Farah being around. Maybe the three of us could go on a road trip to Montreal and see what Patricia was up to.
    I wiped my chest and hands with a wet towel and went back to the pull-out. Melanie was asleep again, or pretending to be. She looked like a murder victim, something out of a movie.

7
    I woke the next morning in a tangle of bloodstained sheets. Melanie was no longer beside me. I checked the clock: just after eight. I had to be at work in less than an hour.
    â€œHello?” I said, a stranger in my own home. “Anyone here?”
    The plumbing clicked in the walls.
    â€œMelanie?”
    Nothing.
    I sat upright. My vision blurred into a kaleidoscopic swirl of purple and beige. My mouth was dry as cement mix. I could smell the vinegary scent of my armpits despite the stench of dried blood. I needed a hot shower, a large glass of water, and possibly an exorcist.
    When my vision returned I noticed a torn piece of paper tacked to the back of my front door. Something was scribbled on it in pink highlighter. I wobbled over and read it:
    Had to run to work
    Don’t choke on your breakfast and die
    Mel
444-6187
    I crumpled the note and shot it at my garbage can as though it were a miniature basketball. It bounced off the edge and fell to the floor.
    â€œFuck it,” I muttered.
    After gulping a few litres of water straight from my kitchen tap and sterilizing myself in a scalding hot shower, I began to feel human again. I burned some frozen waffles, covered them in syrup, and devoured them in seconds.
    My uniform was buried in a pile of dirty laundry in the closet. I threw it on in a hurry and nearly fell down my front steps on my way out. Two teenaged boys with white-blond hair sat on the bench outside the laundromat with folders in their laps and brochures in their chest pockets.
    â€œExcuse me, sir,” one of them called as I rushed past. “Are you interested in hearing about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said, quickening my pace. “But I don’t think He’d be interested in hearing about me.”
    I stumbled into work right on time, only to have Dick inform me I’d been assigned another bedbug job across town. Bill had taken the van and was already on site. Dick dropped an oily bus token in my hand and glared at me without a word as I backed out of the office.
    The bus was full of strangers who judged me from behind their stolid commuters’ masks. Tweens with mp3 players, grannies with drug store paperbacks, basement dwellers scouring want ads. I sat next to an obscenely thin woman in a fur coat who smelled like coffee. Her bony legs, all nylons and varicose veins, hung over the seat like sausage links. She held a transfer in front of