Sua Sponte [Varnava]

[Josiah]

He stepped off on the tenth level landing and braced himself against the railing. How could he possibly have five more to go when he'd been climbing forever? It wasn't so much that he was out of breath, but rather that he had to move away from the edge of the stairs behind him in case the muscles in his legs gave out and he took a tumble back down, all the way to the ground floor.

Bet that would be enough of an excuse to take the elevator from now on.

"How often do you exercise?" his doctor had asked.

Hardly ever.

"Oh, a few times a week," he said, scanning the illustrations on the walls. They showed him the ins and outs of ear infections, which he never cared to see before. They showed him what bad toenails look like, with some poor guy's mangled foot just proudly on display. They showed him what gangrene can do to a body.

"You should exercise more," his doctor said. He busied himself with Josiah's chart and gave away no indication that he knew he was lying, or that he even cared. "You're losing weight. Nothing drastic or concerning yet, but you should be exercising more anyway. It'll boost your appetite and your immune system. If you want, I can prescribe something to reduce the nausea?"

His legs were practically jelly, and had anyone else been in the stairwell, he would've been embarrassed about it. His knees threatened to wobble with every step. Or, maybe he was kidding himself. Maybe most people couldn't make this climb and he was being overambitious. Maybe he would ask his doctor about it, next time. Maybe not. His doctor wasn't some role out of a movie. They didn't chum around, didn't ask each other any unnecessary questions.

When he saw the cigarette butt on the edge of the stair, he paused. It buckled in the middle like it had been pinched tight between two fingers, and ash still clung to the dead cherry. He didn't smell cigarette smoke, though. He would have noticed. He would have been drawn to it, like a fly to light, because, ****, he really wanted one. But there it sat as if it had rolled there completely by accident, mocking the "No Smoking" signs he came across every few floors.

He stepped over it and continued up. For whatever reason, he expected a face to be waiting for him on the next landing, smiling at him expectantly. His eyes searched above the railing. The average height of a man was roughly, what, five foot and eight inches? But no one was there.

And then, someone was. But she wasn't standing, she was laying in what he could only think was the most uncomfortable position ever, face down on the staircase as if her body was trying to scale them. She didn't move. Only her running blood reached out for him, and he found himself instinctively hugging the inside wall to escape it.

He'd never seen a dead body before. Not in real life, or actuality. Only almost-dead ones, with limp wrists and bloody foreheads; unconscious vampire bodies that would no doubt heal themselves if left alone, but he wanted to play hero for the first time in his life because he couldn't help himself. So he stepped in, nursed them back to health like a regular little Mother Teresa. Technically, they were dead. Undead. But they woke up after a few hours and invaded his mind whenever he was awake, even sometimes while dreaming. They became entries on his phone. They became the most recent contact.

But the girl in front of him wouldn't wake up ever again.

He didn't have to touch her to know that she was cold. All of her life's warmth pooled around her and spilled down the staircase like some obscene secret. It tainted the air like a jar of pennies baking under the sun. He tightened his arms around himself, pinched tighter on his mouth and nose. It didn't help. Who knew exposed bone was so white?

She really was ******* dead... He held his breath because breathing would be offensive. She would never breathe again. ****, she would be lucky if she would be recognized by her family, even...

This wasn't happening. And yet something about the deafening silence that had been in the stairwell for the last however freaking long he had been in there with a dead freaking body told him it was indeed happening.

He struggled for his phone and dialed up emergency services. It rang. Some part of him wanted to laugh out loud as the sound reverberated in his head. He imagined it being him, struggling to breathe from some flu symptom, and some automated voice on the other line: One moment, please. Remain on the line.

This wasn't freaking happening.

And yet, it was. It was as real as the headlines flashing in front of him. "Harper Rock Vampire Strikes Again!" "Another Young Mother Found Dead In Apartment Staircase!" "When Will The Killings End? Some Say Never."

He dropped the call and squeezed his phone against his chest. There she was, still laying in front of him. How she wasn't sliding down the stairs toward him just from gravity alone... He had to call it in. He had to. Her kids were probably wondering where their mother was. Did she even have kids? He couldn't recognize her. Though, to be fair, he didn't know any of his neighbors besides Mrs. Johnson, the middle-aged woman who lived two doors down, the one who always looked sad.

Maybe she was her daughter.

He dialed up emergency services again but erased the number and audibly cursed to himself. Instead, he pulled up his second contact and climbed back down the stairs the way in which he came, as slow as ever. He paused when he could still see the curve of her fingers, unmoving.

"Hey," he said into the phone, "it's me. Josiah. Uhm, hey, I need your help. Something's happened, and I don't... Can you come to my place? Now? It's an emergency. I'll meet you down in the lobby."

Ten flights up. He'd made it ten flights up, and every one of them went by faster and faster on his way back down.