Day 8

10:42pm

Vomit:

Saul walked Marie down the street as a cop car rolled by in a slow crawl of supervision. He was just about to comment on it when Marie asked, "What's that?"
He turned his attention to her. Her brown hair held a metallic shine under the yellow street light. Just a shimmer really Saul thought noticing the shadows against the row houses. "What's what?" he asked following her sight to the street where a compact disc seemed to be discarded about a day or two ago. A thin layer of dirt was beginning to collect at spots and its bright red background was beginning to fade underneath. In yellow block letters, crooked across the one half of the disc, read, "KIDZ HIPHOP".
"That," Marie nodded toward the compact disc.
"Dunno," Saul said and leaned to pick it up. He shook the dirt from the top, turned the disc around and blew on its bottom.
"What's it say?"
They stood under the street light. It was Monday night. Saul just met Marie earlier that night for the first time at a bar and they were going back to his place. He was out to meet a friend who ended up calling and saying that drinks were going to have to be canceled. Saul was about to leave before he turned off the bar stool when he turned into Marie and her two friends. They shared a smile, he said excuse me, and instead of the front door, Saul stepped into the bathroom. Minutes later he was going back to the bar stool where sat Marie.
"Did I take your stool?" she asked, the smirk on her face tempting some flirt.
"My stool?" Saul remarked. "Isn't that kind of a gross thing to ask a stranger just coming out of the bathroom?" He then returned her smirk and stepped to the side.
"Funny," she responded turning back to her friends.
The bartender stepped toward Saul with a head nod, "One more?"
"Sure," Saul answered and grabbed himself a napkin from the bin.
"It's on me," Marie said to his left. Saul turned to her. "For taking his stool." She turned to him, blue eyes flashing from the neon lights behind the bar. "We'll need to do some tests on it, but you should get the results back sometime later in the week."
Saul smiled to himself. "Well I guess I'm going to have to get your number then to find that out."
"Nice one," Marie returned his smile. Saul could tell that he wasn't going to be upset with his friend for not meeting him out.
"Why dontchya introduce me to your friends?" he asked leaning to the side. The two friends were glancing over at Saul. "Ladies," Saul cheered them and raised his glass. They all three did likewise and chinked their glasses together. "To a lovely Monday," the friend furthest from Saul said.
"I'll drink to that," Marie said.
"You had a good day?" Saul asked her.
"I sure did."
The conversation took off from there for the both of them so that turning the compact disc over to read the label, Saul didn't find it unusual that his curiosity for the random discarded disc was matched by her tone when she asked what it said.
"Just some typical production notes. No song list or anything." He showed it to her.
"Let me see," Marie took the disc from him. "Weird."
"Not that good of a selection, I guess."
"Let's listen to it." She sounded to Saul like a girl who would sneak into a renovated building with you in the middle of the night.
Saul chuckled, "Okay. My car's right up here." He motioned down the street to his car.
After opening the door for her and getting behind the wheel, Saul slipped the disc into the player on the console. Nothing happened at first. Then faintly Saul heard a hissing through the speakers.
"You hear that?" He asked Marie.
"Yeah. That hissing," she said looking at him. The orange light from the console was giving Marie an odd look to Saul. He thought he'd probably be looking a bit odd in the light too and went to eject the disc, saying, "There's nothing here," but just then from the speaker sounded, "GRRRRREEEEEEEEEEE," progressively getting louder. A woman's shriek coming out into the dark car in the strange orange glow freaked the hell out of Saul and he jolted, "Holy shit!" It continued getting louder. He looked over at Marie. Her eyes bulged out wide. "What the hell is that?" she asked, her voice on edge.
And just as it came out of nowhere the shriek stopped leaving only the hissing remain. Again Saul went to take it out of the player, but a man's voice, deep, cracking, menacing, careened, "She died. She died. She died. She died. She died. She died," over and over again.
Saul's heart pounded and he squeezed the steering wheel with one hand. Marie's hand shot out from her lap and slapped at the console. "Turn it off. Turn it off," she starting shrieking herself.
Saul reached over and hit the eject button and the "KIDZ HIPHOP" compact disc slipped out from the player, the man's voice echoing in Saul and Marie's ears.
"Throw it out the window," Marie disdained. Saul, not knowing what to make of it, pushed the automatic window button. Halfway down he was about to throw it out, but stopped.
"What're you waiting for?" Marie asked.
He looked over at her. He could tell that she was noticeably spooked. Her arms were goosebumps, eyes moist, her body pinned against the corner of the car door and the passenger seat.
"What if someone else finds it though?" Saul asked. His voice sounded like it came from the back seat.
"What if someone else finds it?" Marie repeated him. "What else someone... Who cares? Get it out of here!"
"But a kid could walk by and pick it up and press play and like completely freak out and his mom walked in and has a conniption." His voice had traveled back to the front seat. "I mean... we can't just let anyone have this. It's gotta be more than thrown out the window."
"What?" Marie wasn't understanding where Saul was going with this. "What do you mean?"
"We gotta burn it or something?" He said, as if it were the last thing they'd do.
"We? I'm not doing squat with that thing. That's evil!" Marie's eyebrows arched incredulously. "Throw it out the window and let's get out of here."
"I'm keeping it," Saul said. "I"m gonna burn it when I get back to my place." He tossed it under his seat.
"Well if you're gonna do it, then I'll help," she said.
"Thanks." Saul smiled at her in companionship. "Whatever the hell that thing is, we'll make sure it doesn't get heard by anyone else's ears."
He started pulling away from the curb. Marie tried to settle in her seat. "Can you turn something else on? It's like I can't get that man's voice out of my head."
"Sure. Me neither. Holy crap that was freaky." He reached over to the radio and turn the knob on.
"She died. She died. She died. She died," careened out from the speakers in the same manner as though the compact disc was still in the player.
"OH MY GOD!!" Marie exclaimed.
Saul reached back at the radio taking his eyes from the road.
"LOOK OUT!!" Marie shrieked.
Saul looked up just in time to swerve out of the way as a cop car turned a wide corner. Saul slammed on his brakes.
"Dammit!" he banged the steering wheel as the expected occured, flashing reds and blues spinning around the neighborhood block of rowhouses. "Dammit!" he banged the steering wheel again.