Beginning of Chapter 3

I explained away my statements about Quinn's death as the officer and examiner walked me out to the front lobby. There were a lot of concerned looks and apologies. At the end I walked out of the glass doors still uneasy, wallet still in my pocket, and a decaying brother still in tow. An acrid smell drifted about the place. It was familiar but I disregarded it.

Quinn readjusted his neck with a quick pip, the sound of an acorn exploding when being squashed on a sidewalk. As it reset into place, his arm detached and began to bleed. I unlocked the driver side door. He ported into the passenger seat, blood draining out of his left arm's socket and onto the floor where it coalesced, dried up, and sparked from existence. I started the engine and drove out of the parking lot onto Poplar.

“I'd like to go to Union if that's alright? I have some explaining to do.” he mumbled while fidgeting with his cartilage.

“I don't really care to know. You've been retaining so well, until these past few days." I cleared my throat, "You're losing grip. Tiffani said that would happen some day. You're just not focusing anymore.”

Tiffani Bevel. Psychic, mystic, charlatan, witch, druid, prophet, and seer. She also moonlighted as a graverobber on certain Saturdays. Tiffani owned the only psychic establishment on Union Avenue. It was very difficult to miss sitting within dragging distance of a Starbucks. It also had a huge, neon, red, revolving sign in the shape of a hand with the most awkward positioning of the word, “PSYCHIC,” in green lettering about the middle. The front door to her green shop was bright red. Posted just below the brass mail slot on the door read a sign which said, “MAIL.” Tiffani had an affinity for the dead, mostly the variety that didn't stay that way. I speculated that Ms. Bevel took her interest of the deceased a little further than academics, false séances, and cheap parlor tricks at bars.

Quinn defended himself, “That's not true. I'm steady. I just got hit while crossing the street to go see Tiff. That's all. Ripped the poor guy in half. I feel horrible about it. I do.”

I glared at him but I still felt unattached from all of this new information.

“Wait. So, after you got robbed, you were hit by another car? That's unbelievable. There's absolutely no fucking way. Lightning doesn't hit a retard.” This fact wasn't especially true. In 2001, a mentally disabled woman residing in Ohio had her house catch on fire, killing her, when it was struck by lightning. She lived alone.

“It's the truth. That hair dresser, you know the one you go to on Cooper, Carl? I still think that makes you 'a gay' by the way. I needed to grab my wallet out of the can. It was only for a minute. As I was walking down from the tracks, I was jumped by the hipster. I gave him everything I had.”

He always said, a gay. It was his conservative way of asserting his own heterosexuality for everyone listening. I found it annoying and bigoted. He thought it masculine.

Despite his need to represent his manhood in any way possible, everything that Quinn actually owned could fit into a coffee can with enough space left over to fit a human head inside. This is precisely why he used one for his cache. He hid it in the middle of Cooper Street on the railroad. A small pseudo altar hung from the location, two compact discs and a silver trumpet tied together by what appeared to be fishing line. It was placed there before the cache existed. Because of a fight which took place between us three months prior, he stored his personal belongings there.

For me, it had been strange to hold onto my brother's personal items postmortem. When I brought this up to him, he left the apartment for a week. The process that took place as he collected his things was my first encounter with possession. A stranger, whom would soon become my hairdresser, knocked on my door at three thirty in the morning asking me to retrieve everything that was Quinn's and put it into something. All that I had was an empty coffee can. I deposited his wallet, a toothbrush, an mp3 player, and an old cellphone inside, and handed it to Carl. Then he was gone.

I don't remember much of what took place during his self induced exile, but when he came back – actually, I can't recall that either. I think it just happened.

“I don't know why I bring things up to you, Stuart. You're not listening most of the time. That blank face seriously pisses me and everyone else off.”

I turned down Union Avenue regardless of what my face looked like. He made an effort to reattach his arm. The wind pushed against the small pickup truck. The remaining sunlight faded and the stars, which would soon be outshone by the lights of Memphis proper, peeked at us.

“It happened there. I was still inside Carl's body, running away after I had gotten robbed. The truck didn't see Carl and just took me out. I didn't mean for any of it to happen. At first I was fine. I stayed inside Carl for about five minutes. It was so difficult trying to convince everyone that he was alive and doing fine. The body was completely smashed. People were attempting to give me medical attention and all I can remember is laughing hysterically. They continued trying to stop the bleeding, but I knew there wasn't any way that he'd stay inside that pigeon's body forever.”

 I'd break a shot glass too. Hell, I might even kill someone's brother after realizing I had to eat trash and scraps for the rest of my life.
 
I knew possession was a tricky process. I didn't understand all of what was necessary for it to take place but I did know that once a person's soul was removed it had to go somewhere else. Otherwise, that person would just rip the spectre from the corpse. After a soul was placed inside of another organism, a spectre only had a small amount of time to interact with the world.

There were other ways to possess though. And, we had discussed this when I discovered that Carl was missing work and about to lose his job. For instance, individuals who drink alcohol are more susceptible to possession. Anyone who has ever experienced a blackout while imbibing in the sauce has been unluckily “repossessed” by a spectre. Lost a memory? Done something crazy, been filmed while doing it, but cannot for the death of you remember why you flashed that bouncer? Woken up without a tooth? Supposedly, the soul sleeps so sweetly through possession that after the consumption of a few copious shots, it doesn't need a surrogate. It just sleeps like a coma patient covered in sheep.

“So, I jumped out. I just left him. His body stopped moving and everyone kept trying to keep it alive but he wasn't coming back. I ran the rest of the way to Tiff's place, told her everything, and pleaded for a ride to the apartment. Carl found me and he's been following me ever since.”