Dead White
an excerpt

“The last thing I remember is him being annoying!” Madison needed to wash his hands again.

“Which truth to tell is the last thing I remember about Gwen too. Only I remember him being annoying two weeks ago.” The man who’d found him, Kingsley, the social redneck of Lacey’s tangents, shrugged from his corner. He leaned against the wall with an apathetic, disdainful sort of air that spoiled his otherwise thoroughly attractive countenance. Tall, with a mess of dark curls and piercingly Baywatch blue eyes. Absolutely goddamn gorgeous, to the point where it made Madison mildly uncomfortable to think about it.

Gorgeous minus his clothing, at least - not in the pick-up line way, but in the way that he was very badly dressed. He’d somewhere found the most hideously brilliant Hawaiian shirt Madison had ever even imagined, and instead of framing it as would anyone with a sense of humor, he was wearing it as would a sadist.

“Well he was still annoying yesterday! --The day before yesterday!”

“So you say!” Lacey snapped, thrusting a finger at Madison’s nose. Her glare slid down it like a slide, slamming into him as a child at the park made impact with the last hapless toddler to take the plunge. Abruptly her look softened and she shrugged as well, retracting the finger and leaving him to collapse with a whimper into the couch. “I don’t mean it, Maddie - nobody thinks it was you but for those who don’t already suspect someone else. But you’ve lost two days and that’s just shady.”

Shady was that no one had gone looking for him - or found him, for that matter, given how up-in-arms the locals purportedly were, and how on his case these two were right now. Shady was that if someone really had wanted to frame him they’d done a terrible job of it, and shady was that no one had the faintest idea where his stuff was.

He opened his mouth to tell them so but the horribly dressed Kingsley spoke first, “You have fun playing bad cop, Lacey. I need a latte, and therapy.” The man made for the door without a second glance.

“I need whiskey,” Lacey suggested.

“That’s great. Hope I never see you kids again.”

“No, no, no! Bad Kingsley, sit! You found him, you’ve got to stay!”

“Woof,” Kingsley waved once without looking back and left.

“Oh right because that’s not suspicious at all! I hope you get hit by a hummer!” shouted the Patron Saint of Jaywalkers.

Madison couldn’t hear his response but he didn’t much care to. Keeping Kingsley wasn’t something high on his hit list of priorities. Hadn’t been since the moment the man found Madison making odd, yelpy noises at Gwen’s head “There’s better ways to vent, Albino von Psychopath. Pottery, macaroni art. Here, have a card.” until the moment he’d called Briana “Guess what? …No, that’s stupid. Newbie decapitated Gwen. The sentiment’s sweet but I’m finding the execution a little hackneyed.” and the time they’d had to spend together until Lacey showed up, “You look confused, Garden. Are you high?”

All in all it’d been upsettingly unsympathetic.

Even more appalling he’d taken the head, turning it over and over in his hands to examine the black-dried orifices and positioned so conspicuously Madison couldn’t turn away long enough to be sick. He’d only put it back into the bundle when Lacey arrived and shouted at him things she’d probably heard on the television, things about messing with evidence and interfering with the investigation. It’d sounded practically accusatory, and most unnerving of all Kingsley had chuckled into compliance.

Madison got the uncomfortable, perhaps undeserved impression that for all he’d apparently bent to Lacey’s will, Kingsley had somehow managed to screw him terribly, painfully and permanently. And really not in the good way. He couldn’t place his finger on the moment when he knew… “Can’t run, can’t hide, can’t even break a habit. You’d think you’d learn.” But something, something in what he’d said, or possibly even the way he’d said it…

The pale shadow of something indoors fell over his attention, “What’re they after you for, Madison?” She hadn’t freaked out before, didn’t look liable to give into it now either. Unlike he had. There was a great big chasm of a difference here. Where at their first meeting she’d been nothing but whimsy and a tease, all that had crumbled quickly into a hardset mouth and arms defensively crossed. He would never again have to wonder whether she was really being serious.

Joints in his fingers tightened, felt like they were drying - which was ridiculous given the humidity - but there it was, skin that felt stretched and taut. “Nothing,” he said and hesitated, because leaving it at that was almost the closest thing to the truth he had at his disposal, “Nothing like this.”