The face on the WANTED poster undulated like an acid dream. Warps in the weathered paper made it bulge. Even without this distortion, the police sketch was menacing. The wanted man had a lecherous leer, a face crisscrossed with scars, and eyes that seemed to look in all directions at once.
A dark-haired woman strutted by with a sack of groceries in her arm. Her attire - fishnet stockings, mini-skirt, and a flimsy blouse - was noticeably scant for the brisk fall day. When she saw the poster she walked over and examined it carefully. Beneath the fugitive's face was a list of the crimes he had committed. She bit her lip. She couldn't say whether the list of crimes was complete, but the sketch itself was accurate. She knew this because the fugitive was hiding out in her house.
Two weeks ago - in the desperate hour before dawn - she had been woken by a knock at her back door. Through her bedroom window she could see a helicopter searchlight sweeping across her lawn. She ran to the kitchen, opened the back door, and beheld the fugitive standing on her doorstep. She shouted at him to get inside and slammed the door a second before the searchlight sliced across her back step. When the fugitive asked her later why she had let him in, she said it was because he had an innocent face. Paradoxically, she added that she liked to root for the bad guy.
In the weeks that followed the fugitive mostly kept to himself. He spent the majority of his time sitting in the kitchen and staring at the wall. He'd eat whatever food she put in front of him, chewing while looking straight ahead. After dinner he'd stumble into the living room and collapse on the couch. His sleep was always restless. He mumbled and twitched with spasms. In the mornings he'd awake with a shudder as if shaking off a bad dream and then stagger back to the kitchen to continue his staring. The woman let him have his space and he let her have hers -- with one notable exception: Whenever a loud noise broke the silence, he would be seized by a sudden fury. In these tense moments he ceased to view the woman as an ally and instead saw her as a wily opponent who had somehow orchestrated his capture. He would then corner her and demand to know the secret of her true identity. These outbursts all ended the same way, with the fugitive bending his captor over a piece of furniture and fucking her into submission. The woman blinked as she remembered the most recent episode, hoisted the bag higher on her chest, and continued home.
Several blocks away, the fugitive was seated at the kitchen table, staring at the wall as always. He stared at it with such intensity that it broke apart, dissolving to reveal a limitless universe beyond. Stars spun like wreckage in a cosmic whirlpool. Chunks of the kitchen wall hurtled into this starry abyss. A knife slid across the table. As the fugitive peered into the cosmic maw his mind reeled. Time is an endless ocean, he muttered. And its froth gives birth to all manner of evil. He opened and closed his hands. Somewhere in the vast expanse the Beast lurked, dragging its tail through the ether. The fugitive shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them again the kitchen wall was intact, the knife was back on the table, and the cosmic maw had vanished. He touched the knife to make sure it was real.
Suddenly the door crashed open, causing him to jump. The dark-haired woman stomped into the room and put her groceries down on the counter. She started to unpack her bag when a gunshot - or something resembling a gunshot - erupted from outside.
She spun on her heels but the fugitive was already upon her. One of his hands clutched a fistful of her hair. The other held the knife to her throat. Before she could say anything he gave her hair a sharp tug.
"Not one peep," he hissed.
She looked at him with unblinking eyes.
