The Manifest

“Sometimes survival comes down to a single scrap of paper—proof that the world still believes a lie you’re desperate to keep intact.”

"Reverse the front truck back a little," I instructed Beatrix, my tone clipped but steady, the kind of calm that comes not from serenity but from necessity.

"Sure," Beatrix replied, her voice level, free from hesitation.

That, at least, earned a sliver of my respect. For all her reckless curiosity earlier—examining Joel's corpse like it was an interesting antique—she could follow orders when it mattered. I filed that observation away as both useful and dangerous. Compliance today didn't guarantee caution tomorrow, and a woman who could look at murder without flinching might look at other things with equal detachment. Including, perhaps, whatever conscience might later urge her to confess.

I positioned myself behind the truck, squaring my stance, and raised my hands. Out here, in the driveway, words were blunt tools; gestures were sharper. Each sweep of my palm, each subtle flick of the wrist carried weight, translating thought into motion. Beatrix's gaze fixed on me through the side mirror, her movements slow, deliberate, as she inched the truck backward.

The world narrowed. I saw not just steel and concrete but the wider board on which this game was being played. The trucks, the Portal, the sisters—all pieces to be moved. And beyond them, the nosy shadows of suburbia that always seemed to be watching. Terry, from across the street, with his insufferable habit of glancing towards the house whilst pretending to water his front garden, became a ghost in my mind's eye. A single glimpse from him—a single moment of curiosity about why his neighbour was orchestrating a two-truck shuffle in the middle of the day—could undo everything.

That thought steeled my gestures, sharpened my vigilance.

As the tyres rolled back into position, I felt the hum of alignment. Not just the vehicles, but the plan itself—sliding into place like tumblers in a lock I was learning to pick. I inhaled once, slow, and then released it with intent. The Portal obeyed. At my silent command, its kaleidoscopic shimmer ebbed, retreating like a tide until the gate was once again nothing more than wood and paint. Ordinary. Inconspicuous. Safe.

"So, you can move the Portal?" Gladys's voice broke the quiet, laced with awe, though dulled by the wine that had softened her edges. Her astonishment was clumsy, but it reminded me of the power I had just demonstrated—and the danger in letting others glimpse it.

"Yeah," I confirmed, turning slightly. "As long as I activate it against a relatively flat surface, it appears that I can open it anywhere."

I let the explanation roll easily from my tongue, but I did not miss the undertow of implications. Mobility meant freedom. It meant options. It meant I could appear anywhere, disappear anywhere, move things—and people—without the constraints that bound ordinary criminals to ordinary logistics.

"That's so amazing," Gladys murmured, glass tipped at her lips, words blurred by alcohol.

I studied her as she swallowed, wondering not for the first time whether her intoxication was armour or surrender. Either way, her awe, her dependence, her carelessness—they all tethered her tighter to me. And tethered people, drunk or sober, were useful.

As the vehicle juddered to a halt, the last churn of the engine bled into silence, reverberating faintly against the driveway before dissolving into stillness. I slipped from the cab, feet hitting the ground with a dull thud, and circled to the rear. The latch clicked under my grip, and with a decisive heave I flung open the twin doors. They parted with a hollow groan, revealing the gaping emptiness of the clean truck's interior.

A stage waiting for its grim performance.

From the porch, Gladys's voice knifed into the quiet, sharp and incredulous. "What the hell are you doing, Luke?" Her tone carried a jagged edge, part confusion, part irritation, as though I'd interrupted her day rather than tried to salvage what was left of all our lives.

"We need to move the remaining goods into this clean truck," I replied. My palm slapped the side panel, a curt pat that was equal parts reassurance and punctuation. It wasn't just a vehicle anymore—it was my next step, my next card to play. Once the legitimate cargo was separated from the illegitimate, we'd have clean hands. Or cleaner, at least.

Gladys shifted, struggling to rise from the step where she'd been lounging. Her body listed drunkenly, weight swaying from one leg to the other as she clung to the handrail like a sailor to rigging in rough seas. The wine still had her firmly in its grip. I watched, my jaw tightening. The sight was both pitiful and infuriating.

My eyes rolled skyward before I could stop them. This is going to be a disaster. The thought dropped into my chest, pulling at the fragile scaffolding of patience I'd been balancing on all day. Yet inevitability pressed me forward. Drunken or not, irritating or not, I needed her complicity—her hands, her silence, her willingness to play along.

The task loomed, unavoidable, and with it came the bitter taste of necessity.

I crossed to the second truck—the delivery truck, the one with Joel's body and all its damning evidence—and tugged the doors open with a clatter that echoed into the street. The hollow interior yawned before me, waiting to be emptied.

"Okay, Beatrix, come help me move this stuff," I called, my tone clipped, firm—an attempt to make this feel less like desperation and more like logistics.

The boxes inside weren't many—smallish, compact, almost insultingly light compared to the heavier burdens weighing on me. A mercy, yes, but also a reminder that even the simplest of tasks had become fraught with implications. Every box I touched was a box that might later bear my fingerprints. Every surface I brushed against was a surface that might testify against me.

From the steps, Gladys's voice cut across the driveway, defiant, determined, and touched by the blurred edges of intoxication. "What about me?"

I turned just enough to see her swaying, one hand clutching her wine, the one hand braced on the rail.

"Shit, Gladys. You can barely stand up," Beatrix shot back before I could.

"I can too," Gladys snapped, her voice heavy with resolve. She peeled her fingers from the handrail, as though proving her strength by surrendering her only support. Each step she took was slow, deliberate, her arms extended slightly for balance. It was a fragile ballet, two steps of precarious grace, but it carried a weight far greater than its distance.

I found myself watching her with conflicted eyes. Admiration stirred, unbidden—her tenacity was undeniable, a spirit that refused to be subdued even when dulled by alcohol. That strength had always been part of her, a quiet resilience I had underestimated until now. Yet layered atop it was my growing concern, the practical voice whispering that her determination might cost us time, or worse.

Climbing into the back of the truck, the atmosphere changed instantly, a shift so visceral it made my stomach knot. The air was thicker here, saturated with the sour stench of blood beginning to turn—its metallic tang rotting into something heavier, rancid, almost oily on the tongue. I gagged, pinching my nose between thumb and forefinger as the nausea rose sharp and fast, threatening to spill out of me in a second humiliating wave.

My eyes watered with the effort of holding it back. I forced myself to breathe shallowly, quick gasps through my mouth, the taste of decay clinging to the back of my throat like something alive.

The sight was no easier than the smell. Dark rivulets had long since dried into sticky tar across the ridges of the metal floor, congealed patches marking where life had ended in violence. In some places, the blood had gathered into thickened pools, glossy and almost black, like oil slicks in a forgotten car park. I picked my way through it as though navigating a minefield, every step careful, my shoes skimming over what little clean space remained. One wrong shift, one careless scuff, and I'd wear the stain of Joel's death again.

Gripping the first of the boxes, its cardboard edges rough against my clammy palms, I forced my focus on the weight in my hands rather than the nightmare underfoot. My arms stretched outward, away from my body, holding the thing at its furthest possible reach like a token of sanity rescued from the filth.

"Here, Beatrix," I called, voice clipped, muffled by my pinched nose as I passed it down.

Her hands met mine, steady, sure. For a moment our eyes locked—hers wide, alert, carrying a sheen of unease that mirrored my own. There was no need for words; the exchange was a silent pact. We would endure this together, though neither of us wanted to.

"Gladys, come get this box." Beatrix's voice cracked the silence, sharp, commanding, impatient. "And for fuck's sake, hurry up!"

"Beatrix!" Gladys shot back, wounded indignation spilling from her tone. Her protest trembled on the line between outrage and weakness. But she came, stumbling forward with a speed that betrayed more resentment than coordination. Her fingers snatched at the box, the cardboard bowing slightly under her grip. Whether it was anger or sheer determination, it was difficult to tell—perhaps both, braided together in the messy rope of sibling rivalry.

Beatrix's glare followed her like a blade, silent and unforgiving. "Just put it in the other truck." The command carried not just authority, but a warning—an unspoken indictment of Gladys's half-drunken state, of her carelessness, of her refusal to read the gravity in the air.

The box passed hands like contraband, but it wasn't cardboard that weighed us down. It was blood and silence, secrets and suspicion, pressing in until the air itself felt tight enough to choke.

Together, in a blur of motion and strained breaths, we shifted the last of the boxes. The rhythm of our labour—lift, step, pass, place—became almost hypnotic, a temporary reprieve from thought. The weight of the cartons mattered little compared to the far heavier cargo that lingered in my mind. By the time we lowered the final box into the second truck, my shirt clung damp to my back, the sting of sweat mingling with the faint reek of blood still carried on the air.

"I think that's all of them," I declared, my voice low, roughened by exertion and the unspoken dread still thick between us. The words carried a hollow satisfaction, relief woven through with a lingering nausea that refused to loosen its grip.

Leaping down from the bed of the truck, my feet thudded against the concrete, the impact grounding me. I circled to the side, brushing against the drooping sweep of silver birch branches. Their leaves, cool and damp, brushed my skin like ghostly fingers. I pushed them aside impatiently, their delicate insistence jarring against the harshness of the task we had just completed.

The trees flanked the driveway like silent sentinels. They swayed gently in the breeze, whispering to one another in hushed rustles, oblivious to the blood, the lies, the crime scene we had laboured to obscure. For a heartbeat, I envied them their indifference. They stood rooted, eternal, whilst I carried the weight of choices that threatened to uproot me entirely.

Settling into the driver's seat of the delivery truck, the cracked vinyl sighing under my weight, I felt the world momentarily narrow into the claustrophobic confines of the cab. The faint smell of stale fast food and old cigarette smoke clung to the air, a lingering ghost of Joel's life—the mundane rituals of a young man who'd expected to finish his shift and go home. The passenger door gave a protesting groan as it swung open, and Beatrix slid inside with her particular curiosity, her presence carrying with it a taut, expectant energy.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, tilting her head. Her tone was deceptively casual, but the weight of her stare made the air between us feel close, heavy.

"The delivery manifest," I said, not pausing in my movements. My fingers tugged open compartments, rifled through folders, scoured every pocket and crevice with the single-minded focus of a man chasing a lifeline.

Beatrix's simple "Oh" lingered in the cab, fragile and unresolved, a space-filler that left more unsaid than it expressed.

The glovebox opened with a reluctant click, spilling its secrets in an avalanche of mundanity. Sunglasses with a cracked arm. A scuffed box of Band-Aids. A handful of unopened condoms. The items landed in a messy heap on the passenger seat as I tossed them aside, their randomness an almost grotesque parody of normality—the detritus of a young man's life, scattered now like archaeological evidence of someone who would never need any of it again.

My jaw tightened with each failure, each useless trinket that wasn't what I needed.

"Shit," I hissed, low but venomous, my frustration breaking through in the muttered word. The absence of that single piece of paper—the neat columns, the names, the addresses—was more damning than the bloodstains still haunting the truck bed. Without it, I was blind, fumbling. And blind men got caught.

"What for?" Beatrix finally asked, her voice sharper this time, cutting across my thoughts.

I didn't answer. Couldn't. The truth was too heavy, too dangerous to release into the open. Instead, I pressed on, tearing through the last few scraps of paper with growing desperation, unfolding, scanning, discarding. My hands moved faster, less careful now, the earlier composure giving way to something frantic, as though sheer speed might conjure the manifest out of thin air.

"Well?" Beatrix pressed, the single syllable barbed with impatience, her eyes glinting with the satisfaction of having sniffed out my unease. She leaned in further, her curiosity sharpened into something almost predatory.

In a final, futile sweep of the glovebox, I found nothing but dust and frustration. My palm slammed the compartment shut with a dull thud that reverberated in the close confines of the cab, the sound lingering in the silence. For a heartbeat, I stayed there, my hand flat against the panel, chest rising and falling with controlled breaths, before forcing myself to meet her gaze.

Her face was close—closer than I'd realised—her breath faintly sweet with wine, her pupils wide, her curiosity written in every line of her expression. The proximity was jarring, collapsing the distance I'd kept between myself and everyone else since this nightmare began. For an instant, the silence between us felt charged, dangerous, as though it could tilt into something entirely different if either of us let it.

I broke it with words, a half-smile twisting my mouth. "You and your sister are going on a road trip," I said, the grin carrying more weight than humour, an attempt at levity masking the machinations beneath.

Beatrix's reaction was immediate and visceral. The sharp intake of breath, the little gasp, was like a slap of cold water to my face. It wasn't delight at the prospect of an adventure—it was dread. Her head turned toward the windscreen, her gaze flicking away as though the world beyond the glass might offer her escape.

"Please don't make me take Gladys," she whispered, and the plea was raw enough to pierce the façade of her usual bravado. It was more than complaint—it was fear, resignation, a bone-deep weariness at the thought of being tethered to her sister in close quarters.

I studied her, letting the silence stretch long enough for my expression to harden. The grin dissolved, replaced by a look that admitted no softness.

"But we need that manifest," I replied.

The necessity was bigger than her reluctance, bigger than my distaste, bigger than the mess that dripped through every hour of this cursed day. Without it, we were exposed. With it, perhaps—just perhaps—we might regain some measure of control.

Gladys, perhaps sensing the taut wire between Beatrix and me, inserted herself into the dialogue. Her head appeared at the doorway, cocked at a curious angle, the casual intrusion symbolic of her knack for pressing into spaces where she was neither wanted nor needed. Resting her head lazily against Beatrix's thigh, she seemed almost oblivious to the fragility of the moment.

"But why?" she asked, her tone hovering between curiosity and concern, as though she were probing the edges of a puzzle she hadn't yet decided was worth solving.

I drew in a breath, forcing my expression into calm deliberation. Words mattered now. They had to carry conviction, not just information.

"The company is going to report the driver and the truck missing," I began, pitching my voice steady, rational, authoritative. I framed the truth not as possibility but inevitability, the kind of inevitability that left no space for argument. "There's nothing we can do about that, but we can at least make it look like he went missing after he finished his deliveries. The police shouldn't have any reason to suspect us then."

It wasn't just an explanation—it was a carefully set stage. Each sentence a plank of a bridge I wanted them to walk across, guiding them away from panic, from questions, towards compliance.

Gladys nodded slowly, her eyes glazed with the sluggish pace of someone half-pickled in wine. "Oh, I see. Good call," she murmured, though her tone betrayed she was only skimming the surface of what I'd said. Understanding wasn't necessary—agreement was. And I'd secured that much.

Turning back to Beatrix, I caught her silent rebellion. Her lips shaped a fragile "No," her head giving a small, decisive shake. A whispered defiance, tender in its vulnerability. She was pleading not with logic but with raw emotion, banking on the faint hope that sentiment might sway me where reason could not.

Inside, I felt the faint curl of a smile that I didn't allow to reach my lips. A plea was as good as leverage. Every "no" whispered under duress could be stored, banked, and called upon later when pressure was needed. Beatrix thought she was resisting me, but really she was giving me something more valuable: a record of her reluctance.

And reluctance, I reminded myself, was far more pliable than defiance.

In that moment, confronted with Beatrix's silent entreaty and Gladys's begrudging acceptance, I felt the weight of leadership pressing down upon me. It wasn't about ego, or the grim satisfaction of control—it was about survival, about responsibility. We have no choice, I admitted inwardly, the thought settling in my chest. Leadership, I was learning, was less about making the right choice and more about shouldering the consequences of impossible ones.

I let out a long, weary sigh, the kind that seemed to carry with it the collective fears, doubts, and fragile hopes of everyone tethered to this predicament. My breath fogged faintly in the cooling air of the cab before dispersing into nothing, just as so many of our certainties had.

With the manifest still missing and our options dwindling to almost nothing, inevitability took root. There was only one place left I could think to look—a final gambit that made my stomach churn. Risk pressed in from every side, yet inaction was its own kind of death sentence.

Pushing open the cab door, I stepped down and moved once more to the rear of the truck. The hinges groaned their protest as I opened it, revealing the tableau I had been trying—unsuccessfully—to push from my mind.

Joel's body.

The stillness of him seemed louder than any scream could have been. The air was thick with the sour cocktail of iron-rich blood and stomach acid, the coppery tang clawing at my throat. The fluids had begun to congeal, darkening and thickening in grotesque swirls that made the floor a patchwork of decay.

For a moment, I hesitated, my hand braced against the metal frame. Revulsion rose like bile, tightening my chest. But alongside it was urgency, a clear, relentless voice reminding me: If the manifest is here, we need it. If it isn't, we're running out of places to look. I steeled myself, biting down hard on the revulsion that threatened to unman me.

"Beatrix," I called, my voice low but edged with necessity.

Her response came quickly, though I caught the falter in it. She approached warily, each step betraying her reluctance. "Yeah?"

"I need you to help me roll him." The words landed heavy, hanging between us like the tolling of a bell.

Her reaction was immediate. She recoiled as though I'd asked her to step into fire. "Roll him?" The disbelief in her voice cracked high, jagged with horror. "Hell no. I ain't touching him." Her refusal was absolute, a boundary drawn sharp and immovable.

"Beatrix, please." The word left my lips before I could stop it, weighted with an edge of desperation. "I need to check his back pockets." My tone carried the practicality of the request, though my stomach twisted even as I spoke it.

Her head shook violently, her silver hair snapping with the force of her refusal. "Uh uh," she insisted, voice hard, unyielding. "Not a chance. No way." Her words rang like iron, slamming a door that I had hoped, however faintly, might open.

I stood there, suspended in the thick silence that followed, staring at Joel's body as though the answer might reveal itself if I willed it hard enough. The responsibility was mine alone—that much had been made brutally clear.

At that moment, Gladys interjected, her voice cutting through the taut silence like glass under strain. "Beatrix," she said, her tone edged with desperation, the words startling both of us.

"What?" Beatrix snapped, her tone sharp, defensive, as though she already knew what was coming and hated it.

"Help him. I don't want to go to jail," Gladys implored, her plea raw and unvarnished, driven by fear rather than compassion.

Beatrix's jaw worked as she swallowed, her throat bobbing visibly. With a roll of her eyes, she exhaled heavily and muttered, "Fine." The word came out squeezed, reluctant, as if forced past clenched teeth. It was compliance, but only just.

A flicker of frustration surged within me, sharp and unwelcome, though I buried it quickly beneath a mask of composure. Their endless squabbling, their hesitations—it was like dragging ballast through quicksand. Honestly, the two of them are doing my head in, I thought, though I kept the remark to myself. The last thing we needed was another fracture in our fragile unity.

Beatrix crouched down beside me, her posture tense, her reluctance radiating off her like heat. One hand clamped firmly across her mouth, a futile barrier against the nausea clawing at her throat. The other hovered uselessly, twitching with indecision, as though her very body resisted the command she had agreed to.

The air was thick, oppressive, metallic with the unmistakable tang of blood. Joel's body lay inert, his pallor made all the more grotesque by the shadows pooling in the truck. The weight of death was not abstract here—it was visceral, pressing on us with every shallow breath we dared to take.

Beatrix's head shook violently, her eyes wide and wet with trepidation. Every fibre of her body screamed refusal, even as her lips had surrendered the word fine.

I forced my own voice into steadiness, pitching it calm, instructional, as though this were any other task. "On three, I need you to grab onto his waist and pull him towards us."

Another frantic shake of her head, as though the very idea was unbearable.

"It just needs to be a few seconds," I added quickly, my tone firm but quieter now, trying to coax her past her fear. "Just long enough for me to feel inside his pocket." The reassurance rang hollow even to my ears, but I offered it all the same. Partly for her, partly for me—because if I didn't keep the words flowing, if I didn't keep us both tethered to instruction and purpose, the horror of what we were actually doing would consume both of us.

The countdown felt surreal, the numbers echoing unnaturally in the enclosed space, like incantations dragging us toward something neither of us wanted.

"One. Two. Three. Roll!" The command left my lips with a firmness that belied the tension twisting in my chest, the weight of necessity pressing harder than the revulsion clawing at me.

Beatrix flinched as if the word roll itself had struck her, but she moved. Her hands, trembling and uncertain, found Joel's waist. The moment her skin—or rather, the barrier of her sleeve—made contact, her face twisted into a grotesque grimace of revulsion. She yanked with more force than finesse, as though sheer urgency might shorten the torment, her strength powered by the desperation to be done with it rather than by resolve.

Her squeal—high, sharp, and uncontrollable—split the air as she lost her footing, the sound ricocheting around the metal walls like some obscene punctuation to the horror unfolding. Joel's lifeless form followed her in a grotesque lurch, his limbs moving with the sickening looseness of death, a puppet dragged across the stage without strings.

The body's motion was ungainly, obscene in its lack of control. The sound of it—a dull slap of flesh against metal, punctuated by the wet slide of fluids smeared beneath—crawled into my ears and lodged there. Then, with a final, nauseating squelch, Joel's body came to rest against my shoes, his dead weight pressing into me with a clammy intimacy I never wanted. The sticky wetness seeped through fabric, cold against my skin, and my stomach lurched violently.

"Shit, Beatrix!" The words tore out of me, frustration mingling with disgust, as though cursing her might undo what had just happened. My own footing faltered in the chaos, gravity claiming me in a graceless fall. My back slammed into the truck bed, the unforgiving steel rattling my bones, but the pain was secondary, a background note to the shrieking crescendo of psychological recoil.

Beatrix scrambled, crablike, away from the centre of it all, her limbs flailing as if she could distance herself from responsibility simply by putting space between her body and Joel's. Her breath came in ragged gasps, half-choked sobs disguised as coughs.

Then the brittle crack of shattering glass snapped through the charged silence. Gladys's wine glass, loosened from her trembling hand, crashed onto the concrete below, spraying shards that glittered in the harsh daylight. The red stain of spilt wine bled outward across the ground, mingling in my mind with blood and vomit until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Gladys's panic spiked, her shrill cries ripping through the confined space. "Get it off me!" she wailed, thrashing at her own skin as though the very air had turned toxic. Her fingernails scraped against her cheeks, leaving angry red marks in their wake, a frantic attempt to claw away the horror she was certain clung to her.

"Gladys! Shut up!" Beatrix snapped, her voice sharp, desperate to impose order over the chaos. "Someone will hear you."

"I think it's far too late for that, Beatrix," I cut in, my words low but weighted. Even as I said them, my ears strained against the silence beyond the driveway, half-expecting the crunch of footsteps or the inquisitive clearing of a neighbour's throat. The thought lodged cold in my gut—one more audience to our grotesque theatre would unravel everything. But the task before me demanded focus.

"Get it off! Get it off!" Gladys shrieked again, her voice ratcheting higher, each syllable drilling into my skull.

Beatrix swallowed her revulsion and moved with surprising swiftness, her sleeve bunched up as she pressed it to her sister's face. "Hold still," she muttered through clenched teeth, dabbing and wiping with the brusque efficiency of someone who wanted nothing more than to end the scene as quickly as possible. The gesture was awkward, not tender, but it was enough—Gladys's sobs subsided into breathless whimpers, her body trembling but no longer convulsed by panic.

For a moment, the truck fell quiet save for the rasp of our breathing and the faint hum of the idling world outside. The reprieve was fragile, but it gave me what I needed: the will to continue.

I forced my gaze downward, back to the corpse sprawled across the bed of the truck. Joel's body, shifted by Beatrix's chaotic stumble, now lay twisted enough to reveal the dark outline of his back pockets. My stomach knotted, but I could not allow hesitation. This was why we had endured the screaming, the falling, the sickening squelch.

With a sharp inhale, I crouched low, bracing one hand on the metal floor to steady myself as the other reached forward. My fingers hovered for a heartbeat over the rough denim, my skin crawling as though proximity alone carried contagion. Then, swallowing bile, I slipped my hand inside the pocket.

The fabric was warm from the afternoon sun, slick in places where the damp had seeped through. My fingertips brushed paper—thin, crumpled, unmistakably what I had been searching for. Relief jolted through me, sharp and bitter, chased by a surge of guilt at finding triumph in so profane a context.

I withdrew the paper quickly, almost snatching it free, as though the body itself might object. My hands shook as I unfolded it, the edges stained faintly but the text intact. Eyes scanning line by line, I found what I had hoped for, what I had gambled so much dignity and composure to uncover: the manifest.

Small, crumpled, yet priceless—it was proof, an anchor to reality, and perhaps the first step toward clawing order back from the abyss.

"Is that it?" Beatrix's voice wavered between hope and fatigue as she reappeared at my side. The sharp edge of her earlier refusal was gone, dulled by the fragile anticipation that maybe—just maybe—we had endured the worst of it.

"Yeah," I breathed, the confirmation escaping me like an exhale I hadn't realised I'd been holding. Relief spread through my chest, not triumphant but weary, a release of tension that had been grinding my nerves raw. "We got it." The words hung there, light yet weighted, an anchor dropped into the chaos.

"Thank God," Beatrix muttered, the phrase carrying no grandeur, only the tired sincerity of someone clinging to the smallest victories.

With deliberate care, as though the paper itself might crumble if mishandled, I folded the manifest. The crisp edges crackled faintly beneath my fingers, a sound absurdly loud against the muffled silence of blood, fear, and breath. This flimsy document carried more weight than any of us did—it was proof, protection, and, if handled well, the thin thread that might keep suspicion from strangling us.

I extended it to Beatrix. Her hand closed around it, her grip firm but reverent, and for an instant the paper fluttered in the breeze, a fragile bird in captivity.

"Gladys, get your ass into the truck," Beatrix snapped suddenly, her voice slicing through the air with authority that startled even me. She leapt down from the bed of the truck, her movement quick, graceful, determined. The manifest trembled in her hand, pages rustling against the wind, as if alive, as if resisting its role in this grim theatre.

"But… but… the glass," Gladys stammered, her words stuttering over themselves. She stood paralysed by the shards glittering at her feet, her wide eyes fixed on the jagged constellation scattered across the driveway. In the fractured sunlight, each shard flashed, beautiful and menacing all at once. Her fear of them seemed irrational, yet I could almost understand: to her, they weren't just fragments of a wine glass—they were fragments of our unravelled composure.

"Forget about the glass," I said, my tone firmer than the resolve I felt inside. "I'll clean it up." I tried to lace my voice with calm, to make it sound like control rather than concession.

Inside, though, irritation prickled. Every second we lingered felt like a hand tightening around my throat. We had to keep moving, keep ahead, keep the façade intact. Yet here we were, delayed by broken glass—an apt metaphor, perhaps, for the fragility of everything we were balancing.