Detective

“Lucia… Sarah. I know where she is, but how do I get in? The Rapturists. This has gotten suicidal.” Tobias was talking to himself again, a habit his roommates had gotten used to.

“You need to relax, dude. Want some pou?” Josh offered the gravy fries topped with cheese curds.

“Don’t you ever get tired of going to that stand?”

“No way! My boy Felix hooks me up! Man, you used to be fat and happy too, Toby. What happened?”

“Zombies.”

“Ohyah. Dat,” he said with a mouth full of fries.

“Yeah, that. I’ve had zombies on the brain lately, and if you say ‘you better get them off,’ I will pull your goddamn eyes out with a spork!”

“I didn’t say anything, dude. Cool your jets!”

Tobias sighed, thumbing his temples. “I wish Raj was here. He’s the reason any of us are alive in the first place.”

Josh lowered his food to his lap, his face somber. Theo walked in to grab a drink from the fridge. His eyes were red from crying.

“And here’s our mystery man,” Tobias said. “You ready to tell us about what happened between you and Vera?”

“Don’t be so callous, dude,” Josh glared. Tobias wasn’t sure if he meant about Raj or Vera.

“It’s okay. She left me.”

“We got that much,” Tobias said. Josh cleared his throat. “Sorry. Go on.”

“I don’t know. She just doing dishes and reciting poetry. Then she was all like ‘I want to go to Guadeloupe’ and I was like ‘you a crazy ho’ and then she left.”

“You did call her a ho, bro,” Josh pointed out.

“I didn’t really,” Theo whimpered. “I was just trying to sound tough.”

“Does she usually recite poetry when she’s doing dishes?”

“I never thought she was a fan, but I guess she was really into that one dude.”

“Who?”

Josh rolled his eyes. “Here comes Mr. Detective.”

Tobias held out a hand to silence Josh. “Theo. Who?”

“Uh, it was the one about Tigers. They had it in a Hellboy comic.”

“William Blake?”

Theo punched his beer in Tobias’s direction. “That’s the dude!”

Tobias had worked the beat enough to know the Rapturists’ different code words. That poem was one. This was his in!

“What is it, Tobe?” Josh leaned forward.

“Theo. I got good news and bad news for you. I don’t think your girlfriend’s heading to Guadeloupe.”

“You don’t?”

“I think Vera’s joined a cult.”