“Uh, definitely not. Every time we watch those movies, you fall asleep, and I’m so creeped out by that possessed zombie hand that I can’t sleep for days.”
Yup, that’s the piper I know and love, she’s fine.
“First of all, that's The Evil Dead 2. Second, that scene is epic. But alright. I’ll call you tomorrow then, maybe we can grab lunch or something.”
“No can do, I have an appointment,” she says quickly. “But definitely, Deliah's tomorrow night.”
We hang up, I grab my duffle bag off the floor and dump its contents into the washing machine before taking a quick shower. I throw on sweatpants and a hoodie and flop onto the couch, queuing up Netflix. A loud pounding at the door makes me jump. I look around for a second, confused before I walk to the door and look through the hole. I half expect it to be Piper, that girl changes her mind without notice all the time, but the dude at my door definitely isn’t my brunette best friend.
I unlock and unlatch the door, pulling it open before the guy knocks again and wakes up my neighbors.
“Man you’ve got the wrong unit, and uh, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s almost midnight.”
His eyes shift to look at the black numbers on my front door, and then back to me. “I don’t have the wrong unit,” he says plainly. “You’re Piper’s friend.”
“Uh, yeah, but Piper moved out like a year ago. Who are you?”
“I know she doesn’t live here, I’m a friend of hers, Bane,” he says.
At this point, I can’t really hide the fact that I’m confused as hell, and this guy is weirding me out.
“Like the Batman villain?” I ask, adjusting my grip on the edge of the door.
“It was mine first, and that guy was a bit much if you ask me. I’m more of a Joker guy myself.”
“Good to know… So what exactly are you doing here?”
He takes a deep breath and exhales loudly, like being at my door in the middle of the night is somehow an inconvenience to him. He pinches the bridge of his nose, grits his teeth and says, “I need your help. You’re Piper’s best friend. I seem to have broken her trust, and I have no idea how to fix it.”
“What?” I ask. My brain is trying to make sense of what he just said, but all I’m coming up with is this guy is crazy. “Dude, no offense, but I don’t know you. Piper has definitely never mentioned your name, and she tells me everything, so…” My words trail off because I don’t even know where I was going with that.
“Of course she didn’t,” he says, looking at me like I just announced that the world is flat. Like I’m the one standing in his hallway, basically admitting to stalking his best friend.
“Right, well, if you and Piper have something going on, you should talk to her, preferably at a distance, like text or call her,” I say, taking a step back inside. I slowly close the door, but he shoves his hand against it.
“If you help me, I’ll tell you what you want to know about her, what really happened on the night of your friend's party. I’d really think about that offer, Kit because I’m the only person in this city who can make it,” he says.
I feel my pulse rise, my heartbeat kicks it up a notch. I search Bane's face, but just like in my initial observation, I don’t recognize anything about him, and the thought that he could know something about Piper that I don’t is ridiculous, but something about his words struck a nerve. I've spent a lot of time trying to forget that night, and now a strange man appears at my door a month later, claiming he has answers? Against my better judgment, I step aside, leaving the entrance to my apartment open. He walks in and crosses the room, standing beside the windows on the far wall.
“So, tell me what you know,” I say, closing the door, but leaving the locks open. Partly in case this dude is a psycho, and I need to make a break for it, but also because I hope he’s not staying that long.
“Not a chance,” Bane says, shaking his head. “I’ve been at this for a while now, and we both know that as soon as I tell you what you want to know, you won’t have a reason to help me, at least not a reason I can have on my hands right now.”
He’s right, obviously. As soon as he tells me whatever he knows about Piper, I’ll kick him out and probably call the cops. The dude is clearly a stalker and a total nut.
“Right, but if I answer your questions about Piper, then we’re in the same situation. I have no reason to believe you’ll live up to your end of the deal,” I say, tucking my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “Besides, I’m the one that actually knows Piper. For all I know you’re just one of the guys that hits on her when she tends bar on south street.”
He pinches the space between his eyes again and scrubs his face with his palm.
“I can assure you that hasn’t happened in a while.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m even listening to this guy or why I let him in to begin with. I have no reason to believe that he knows anything other than Piper’s name, but something about him is off, and I can’t really explain it, but I just need to hear what he has to say.
“Piper hasn’t poured a drink for anyone but herself in over a month.”
I think back to the last time I asked Piper about work. It’s been a while, but I know she would have told me if she quit. She loves bartending, talking to the seasoned drunks, and serving twenty-one-year-olds the wrong drinks because they don’t know any better. Even if she didn’t, she hates touching her trust fund and spending her parent's money, why would she quit her job? I don’t even know if what he says is true, but it sure as hell has my mind working overtime, trying to remember the last time Piper mentioned the bar, or, more specifically, some incident from the bar. But I’m not going to admit any of that to this dude.
“She’s got a lot of other stuff going on. If you actually knew Piper, you’d know that.”
“Oh, yeah, tons of stuff. Just, you know, not the drug relapse and therapy you’re using to explain away all of her weird behavior.” He shrugs before walking toward the window that leads to my fire escape. He runs his hand over the sill, then curls his fingers into the old school metal handle, gives it one sharp tug and pulls the window open. My eyes travel to the top of the window, where the lock is still in place. Just like the night, I hallucinated about Piper. I grind my teeth nervously, and run a hand through my messy hair, completely lost for words as I think through what this means.
“You were here that night,” I say. It’s not a question, I don’t need his confirmation. The morning after the mystery flask incident, I called a repair guy to check out the window because I couldn’t get it to lock. He removed the old locking mechanism and installed a new one, but when I asked him what the deal was with the old lock, he had no idea. The steel piece that’s supposed to hook into the frame of the window was snapped in half, and he said he’d never seen anything like it. Well, mystery solved, I’m looking at the person responsible for the inexplicable event.
Bane says nothing as he walks over to the chair I was once sure Piper had sat in that night, threatening me with her sharp fangs and dark bloodthirsty eyes. He sits down and leans back casually, making himself comfortable.