The Price of Shelving

“It’s strange what survives the chaos—blood on trucks, bodies through Portals, and then, somehow, diagrams for shelving sitting in my back pocket like instructions for sanity.”

"You home, Luke?" Gladys's voice rang out from the entryway, casual on the surface but carrying that unmistakable edge of curiosity that always made my stomach knot.

"Shit," I hissed under my breath. My pulse spiked so hard it felt like it might burst through my throat.

I'd been crouched over the safe for too long, staring at the blank carpet as though it might offer answers to questions I hadn't yet formulated.

"Yeah," I called back, forcing my voice into something resembling nonchalance. "I'll be right there."

In a frenzy of motion, I shoved the backpack into the wardrobe's shadows, kicking it deep into the corner where only deliberate searching would uncover it.

I wiped my palms against my jeans, trying to dry the cold sweat that had formed there, but the dampness seemed determined to cling, just as the guilt clung to me. My heart was still hammering, and I forced myself to slow my breathing. I couldn't afford to look flustered.

I yanked the wardrobe shut, and the old rollers groaned and rattled across the track with an accusing screech, each jolt of metal against metal magnified in my ears like a siren. Too loud. Far too loud. Every second that passed felt like another opportunity for Gladys to poke her head in, her sharp eyes zeroing in on the one thing I didn't want her to see.

Turning toward the hallway, I deliberately slowed my pace. My footsteps had to be measured, casual, not hurried. Each one echoed faintly off the narrow walls, and the sound unnerved me—it was as though the house itself was listening, conspiring to betray me. I imagined Gladys waiting at the other end, arms folded, head cocked, ready to pounce on the faintest crack in my composure.

By the time I reached the threshold of the living room, I had rehearsed a smile. Thin. Measured. Hopefully enough to convince her I had been doing nothing at all.

"How did you guys go?" I asked as I entered the living room, my tone steadier than before, though the echo of nerves still clung to it like a faint aftertaste I couldn't quite mask.

"Well," Gladys began, her eyes lingering on mine a fraction longer than was comfortable. It wasn't a casual glance. It was probing, as though she could strip away the veneer I had hastily plastered over my face and peer into the chaos underneath. For a fleeting moment, I feared she had seen something—heard the clang of the safe lid, sensed the sudden tension in my voice when I'd called back to her.

I cut her off before she could pursue it further. "Oh, where's Beatrix?" I asked, too quickly, my interjection too sharp.

"She had other things to do. I dropped her off at home," Gladys replied, her voice carrying a thread of nonchalance, but her eyes betrayed her.

I wondered what Beatrix's "other things" might be. Counting the money she'd offered to contribute? Processing the surreal horror of the day's events? Or perhaps simply retreating into whatever private world she inhabited when she wasn't being pulled into other people's catastrophes. She'd been steady through it all, I had to give her that. Steadier than Gladys, certainly. Steadier than me, if I was honest.

I nodded as though her answer satisfied me, but my mind was already elsewhere, darting between tasks yet unfinished, threats unresolved. The list grew by the second: prepare for the doctor's appointment, figure out what Cody had actually done with the truck, check that the driveway showed no evidence of blood. Each task bristled with risk. Each demanded silence and control. And Gladys—well-intentioned, perhaps, but unpredictable—was another variable I didn't know how to contain.

"But you've finished all the deliveries?" I asked, pressing for confirmation, the need for closure on at least one front gnawing at me. If nothing else, the thought that part of this tangled web had been tied off might grant me a sliver of breathing room.

"Yes," Gladys said with a smile. A simple word, delivered with a smile that should have been reassuring.

But it wasn't.

"Great, thanks," I replied automatically, the words hollow in my mouth.

Relief flickered, but it was tainted by unease. Because the truth was inescapable: nothing was truly resolved. Not the missing truck. Not Joel, whose body had vanished into Clivilius with a stranger. Not Cody, who might yet reappear—or might be watching already. The deliveries being complete was just one thread tied off in a tapestry that was still unravelling from a dozen other points.

"And I've brought you the truck back with the shelving you asked for," Gladys announced.

"Thanks. I had completely forgotten about that," I admitted, the confession slipping out tinged with quiet self-reproach. The truth was, my mind had been so consumed with death, secrecy, and survival that shelving—the most ordinary of requests—felt almost absurd in contrast.

"Oh, and here's a few pages on how to pour concrete," Gladys continued, her tone softening into something more helpful, almost eager. She reached into her pocket and produced a bundle of crumpled sheets, the edges worn and dog-eared, as though they had already passed through too many hands. They crackled faintly in the quiet as she held them out to me.

I accepted them, running my thumb along the folds as though by smoothing the paper I could also smooth the jagged edges of my own nerves. My eyes skimmed the text and diagrams—simple, practical instructions rendered in black ink. Step one: prepare the site. Step two: create formwork. Step three: mix the concrete to the proper consistency.

The instructions were mundane, almost comforting in their straightforwardness. This was how you built things. This was how you created something solid from raw materials and labour and attention to detail. There was something appealing about the simplicity of it—no Portals, no murders, no mysterious strangers with their own Portal Keys. Just concrete and wooden frames and the honest work of construction.

"They've even got small diagrams," Gladys pointed out, a glimmer of pride in her tone.

I nodded, folding the papers with deliberate care before sliding them into my back pocket. "I'm sure these will be very helpful," I said. The words were polite, even warm on the surface, yet my mind was elsewhere, drifting through darker corridors of thought.

The diagrams may as well have been blueprints for something else entirely—a grave, perhaps. A foundation for concealment. The irony gnawed at me. The pages in my hand were meant to represent construction, creation, order. But all I could see was how easily such instructions could be repurposed for darker ends.

And though I smiled faintly, I wasn't really thanking Gladys for paper or shelving. I was thanking her for the fragile illusion of normality—one I no longer trusted would last.

We walked together to the driveway. Gladys handed me the truck keys.

"I see the other truck is gone," she remarked, her gaze lingering on the empty patch of concrete where Joel's truck—and Joel's body—had been parked just hours ago.

"Yeah," I responded, keeping my tone steady. "It's all been taken care of."

Inside, my mind was anything but steady. The truth gnawed relentlessly: I didn't fully grasp the details of the truck's disappearance. One moment it had been there, hulking and undeniable, a monument to everything we'd done; the next, Cody and the vehicle had vanished through a Portal, swallowed whole by a shimmering cascade of colour. The image still haunted me, replaying on a loop behind my eyes—brilliant, impossible, terrifying.

Where precisely had they gone? That unanswered question coiled tight in my gut. Clivilius, yes—but where in Clivilius? And what exactly would Cody do with the truck once he was there? Dispose of it? Hide it? Use it as leverage?

The absence of detail was like a hairline crack in glass, widening with every passing thought.

I hadn't heard from him since. No message. No explanation. Nothing but silence where there should have been clarity. The void of communication left my imagination to do its worst, conjuring scenarios in which Cody was either tying up loose ends on my behalf—or considering whether I was one of those loose ends.

"We really should give him a proper burial," Gladys stated, her voice firm as she climbed into the driver's seat of her car.

"Burial?" I echoed, curiosity tightening my tone as I leaned against the cool metal of the car door. "We don't have a body to bury."

The body was in Clivilius, somewhere. Driven through a Portal by a man I'd met hours ago, a man who claimed to have been waiting for me, a man who'd appeared at exactly the right moment with exactly the right solution. The body was beyond our reach now—beyond anyone's reach on Earth, at least.

"You know what I mean," Gladys shot back with a sneer, her impatience thinly veiled. "Like a memorial service."

"A memorial service?" I repeated, the syllables rolling slowly off my tongue as I tried to picture it—candles flickering in the darkness, whispered words of remembrance, perhaps a forced moment of silence while we all pretended to grieve for someone none of us had actually ever known. The image felt surreal, out of place.

It seemed... unnecessary. Extravagant, even. A ritual of grief when what we needed was focus, action, survival.

"Yeah," she affirmed, her gaze locking onto mine, steady and unwavering, as if daring me to challenge her further.

"But you didn't even know him," I countered, my voice sharper now, laced with scepticism. The thought of staging a service for someone who was, to us, little more than a stranger—a boy who happened to be Jamie's son, a young man whose presence in our lives had been fleeting and whose absence was now permanent—it struck me as bordering on absurd.

His death was undeniably tragic. No one deserved to die like that, throat cut in the back of a delivery truck, life draining away whilst the world carried on oblivious around him. But allowing sentimentality to dictate our actions in the middle of everything else felt reckless. Dangerous. We couldn't afford luxuries like grief, not when survival demanded focus.

Gladys's expression softened into a pout, though her eyes betrayed a simmering frustration beneath the sadness. "It's what Jamie would want," she declared, her voice firm, her defiance carrying more weight than any plea could.

Jamie. The name hit me like a fist to the chest. Of course this was about Jamie. Gladys was right, and I hated that she was right. If Jamie knew his son was dead—and he'd have to know eventually—he'd want some kind of acknowledgment. Some gesture that Joel's life had mattered, even if that life had intersected with ours only briefly and disastrously.

I exhaled deeply, the sigh dragging through me like smoke, the weight of her insistence pressing down with unwelcome inevitability. Arguing with Gladys was like walking against a gale—you wasted strength and ended up nowhere. She was dug in, and I knew it.

"Okay," I conceded, the word tasting reluctant in my mouth. It wasn't agreement so much as surrender, a pragmatic choice to maintain unity in a group that was already strained to breaking. "Let's meet back here at eleven tonight."

Gladys turned the key in the ignition. The engine came alive with a steady hum, vibrating through the air between us. I lingered beside the vehicle, torn between apprehension and resignation. The thought of standing in the dark, holding some symbolic gesture over an empty patch of ground, already felt like an indulgence we couldn't afford—but sometimes symbols mattered more than sense.

And if it helped Gladys feel like she was doing something useful, something meaningful, perhaps it would keep her steady. Keep her compliant. Keep her from asking questions I couldn't answer.

"But," I added, the pause deliberate, my words careful, mindful of how easily Gladys could escalate things into drama, "let's just keep it really short and simple." My voice hardened slightly, making it clear that this wasn't just a suggestion—it was a boundary. The last thing we needed was a spectacle, something that could draw unwanted eyes or stir unnecessary emotion.

Gladys, her hands resting lightly on the steering wheel, fell into silence. I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes, the way she weighed my pragmatism against her stubborn streak. For a moment I thought she might snap back, but instead her expression softened, contemplative.

"Agreed," she finally said, her voice tinged with reluctant acceptance. The word wasn't happy, but it was enough. I could almost hear the unspoken addendum—for now.

I watched as Gladys began to reverse her car, manoeuvring it carefully around the grassy vacant corner block where she had parked. The vehicle moved slowly, almost tentatively, as though it too carried the weight of our secrets, mirroring the heavy, uncertain atmosphere that bound us both.

Just as she straightened her wheels, the car lurched to a stop. Gladys wound down her window with a sudden urgency. "Hey, Luke," she called out, her tone shifted now, more pointed. "I don't suppose you can pay me soon for everything?"

I approached the car, the glare of the harsh sunlight forcing me to squint. It cast the whole scene in an unforgiving clarity, as though the universe itself wanted no shadow to soften this exchange. "How much?" I asked, already bracing myself, my stomach tightening in anticipation of a number I wasn't sure I could afford to hear.

"Seventeen hundred will cover it," she stated flatly. Her eyes locked onto mine with that straightforward Gladys intensity, a look that dared me to argue, though beneath it I detected the faintest flicker of something else—need, maybe even desperation.

Seventeen hundred. The figure echoed in my mind like a hammer striking an anvil. My eyes widened despite myself. The number seemed to expand in my chest, pressing down on me, a weight that grew heavier with each passing heartbeat.

I'd just withdrawn money from the bank. I'd just stashed bundles of cash in my hidden safe. And now Gladys was standing here with her hand out, and the mathematics of survival were shifting again, recalculating, demanding more than I'd anticipated giving.

"There's a lot of shelving in there," Gladys added, as if the justification might soften the blow. Her voice was steady, but I caught the defensive undercurrent—the anticipation that I might balk, challenge her, accuse her of opportunism.

She wasn't wrong, though. Shelving wasn't cheap, especially the industrial kind we'd need for Clivilius. And Beatrix had fronted the money, hadn't she? This wasn't Gladys profiteering—this was reimbursement. Fair payment for services rendered, materials purchased, risks taken.

I sighed, a long, weary exhalation. My hand slid into my pocket, retrieving the wallet that already felt lighter than it should. Opening it was like opening a wound—inside sat the twenty hundred-dollar notes I'd kept on my person, the walking-around money I'd separated from the larger stash now hidden in the safe.

Each note I pulled free seemed to whisper of sacrifice, of days of effort and layers of risk distilled into paper. I counted out the seventeen bills slowly, deliberately, my fingers stiff with reluctance. Finally, with the motion of someone surrendering more than just money, I handed the thick wad of cash to Gladys.

"Thanks, Luke," she said, her voice a mixture of gratitude and relief, though the relief felt heavier. "I have a few bills that need paying in a few days." The matter-of-fact tone carried the weariness of someone trying to juggle the ordinary grind of life whilst standing on the edge of the extraordinary.

I forced a smile, though inside unease twisted like a knot in my gut.

"It's fine," I told her, my voice coated in nonchalance I didn't feel. The lie was meant to reassure her, but also myself. If I can keep her steady, maybe I can keep all of this steady.

With a curt nod, Gladys shifted the car back into gear, the engine humming like a soft farewell. "See you at eleven," she called out as the car rolled away, her words stretching thin in the cool afternoon air.

I lifted my hand in a casual wave, though the gesture felt hollow. My eyes followed the car until it became no more than a flicker of sunlight on glass, swallowed by the distance and the ordinary streets of suburban Berriedale.

Turning back, the silence of the driveway rushed in around me, pressing close. The absence of noise felt almost physical, like something had been removed from the world and left a vacuum in its place.

I opened my wallet again, the near-emptiness inside staring back at me. Three notes remained—three lonely soldiers in a war I wasn't sure I was winning.

"Only three more left," I murmured, the words catching in my throat, hardly more than a whisper. My chest hollowed as I gazed at the green paper, each one a reminder of just how quickly security could unravel.

At this rate, all the money will be gone within a week. The thought landed with crushing inevitability, a grim arithmetic that refused to be softened by hope. The fifteen thousand in the safe wouldn't last forever, not if every errand and every favour and every piece of the survival puzzle came with a hefty price tag.

I closed my eyes briefly, trying to still the churn of anxiety. There has to be another way, I told myself, the words a mantra and a demand. Because if there wasn't, the walls were closing in faster than I dared admit.