Page 33 of The Road to Ruined

"It's probably not as cool as Bone Saw."

"How old are you?"

"Would you shut the fuck up?" he says. "Stop asking me questions you know I'm not going to answer. Just sit there."

"Fine. But you're not like…superold, right?"

"Stop talking."

We head east at the same high speeds for about forty-five minutes before turning onto dirt roads. Eventually, we pull up to a home—or something like it. It's a dark grey concrete structure built almost entirely into the side of a cliff. He pulls into a garage underneath the house, and I follow him up a staircase to the main living space. It's large and open, everything inside is dark grey or black. Floor-to-ceiling windows cover the side of the house overlooking the cliff.

"This is nice," I say. "I didn't realize things like you had homes and cars."

"We don't," he says. "This is not a home. It's a place forthings like meto stay when they need to. There's a bathroom—second door on the right. Go shower."

He disappears around the corner, and I step through the door.

The bathroom is like the rest of the house—the decor is plain but immaculate, modern, and slate grey. There are no shampoo or soap bottles in the shower, just unlabeled dispensers built into the tile.

I take my time under the rainfall showerhead, only about seventy percent sure I guessed which was soap and which was shampoo correctly.

And when I step out onto the slate tile, it's warm—heated, just like the bathroom floors at Declan and Luca's home in Coeur d'Alene. A pang of longing hits me right in the chest. I pull a towel from the rack, plush and soft enough to sleep on, and wrap it around my body.

Then, I step back into the expansive main living space. It's empty now; soft classical music plays quietly from speakers hidden somewhere in the room, and Bone Saw is nowhere to be seen. I walk through the space, peeking into doors until I open one with a bedroom behind it.

I step inside and go directly to the closet, pulling open the doors. In front of me hangs the same sets of clothing, over and over again. All black, all long pants and long sleeves. All hooded.

They look like they come in all different sizes, but when I look into the collars and waistbands, there are no labels on any of them, just like in the bathroom. No brands, no sizes.

Perfect for people with no faces—people who don't really exist.

I pull on one of those long-sleeved black shirts, the one that looks the smallest, and then go to the dresser, pull out a pair of men's boxer briefs, and step inside them.

Then, I return to the kitchen in search of food and find the same situation. There are no boxes, no labels—just dry foods with no packaging, starches and grains in clear storage containers. Almost everything is shelf-stable and questionable, aside from a fruit bowl on the counter with a few red apples inside. I grab one and eat it over the table.

Bone Saw sits beside me a few minutes later. If he's showered and changed, you can't tell—he's wearing the mask and fully covered in the exact same clothes again, the ones I saw copied and pasted on every hanger in the bedroom closet.

He sets a small plastic black box on the table. "Let me see your hand," he says.

I unfurl the injured hand on top of the table with my palm facing upward. "It's not that bad," I say.

"A few of these need stitches," he says.

"There aren't any hairbrushes in the bathroom."

"This isn't a home, Teagan. I told you that."

"But I have curly hair."

Ignoring me, he opens that small plastic box and threads a needle.

"You'regoing to do it?"

"Not like it's my first time."

"Well…aren't you going to like…numb the area or something?"

"No," he says. "You're going to suck it up and sit there—still and quiet—like a good little monster."

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