It’s 2 am. I had six hours of sleep, then I awoke to an unnerving reverberation of silence on every corner. The wail of passing vehicles outside was scarce. On the center table were empty bottles, arrayed like caramel bowling pins, and takeout carton boxes, gaping flat and plastic utensils scattered. Lying down on a full stomach and a few beers must have helped me sleep.

Sin was gone. She must have slipped off for a late night feed while I was sleeping like a log. How many days does it take before she feels her stomach growling? I thought.

I stood, fumbled around for the kitchen light switch. I reeked of Chinese food, sweat, and beer. With heavy tarpaulin curtains, there’s not much cool air circulating in the living room. The air I breathe is fucking humid. At least the kitchen was soothingly cooler.

I grabbed an empty bottle and placed it on the kitchen table, then I sat down on one of the bistro chairs facing the front door, placed my arms on the table and helped myself with a cigarette, tapping the ashes into the mouth of the beer bottle while I smoked.

The front door swung with a thud. In waddled a figure, hunched, garbed in black. I assumed it was Sin, trailed by a man a foot taller than her, well dressed and staggering. Sin resumed to the door, slammed it shut while the man pressed her against it. He pressed a deep kiss on her lips as though to run his tongue down her throat and she obliged, indolently, gently pressing palms against his collarbones. He traced kisses down her neck and pressed her up the wall, hands on her waist and making a desperate search down the rim of her shirt.

I caught her eye the time the man began groping her breasts. She winced, stared, her expression transitioning from a befuddled frown to an impish grin. The man, suddenly aware of her lack of enthusiasm, traced her stare to find me equably perched to where I was.

The man stepped into the kitchen light, puzzled and irate, possibly intoxicated. My eyes weighed him from head to toe. He seemed to be in his late twenties, garbed with a collared shirt and black corporate pants, possibly stressed out for an after-work drink, the way conventional office workers do. He was coming towards me, assuming a tough, emasculated form, while Sin, vigorous and ravening, came from behind and wound an arm around his neck. He gagged, wrapped his fingers around the arm that tensed and brought him down, tried tearing it off to no avail. Sin then tore off the collar, exposed the beating pulse of his neck, and stretched her jaws.

She was meticulous, the way you would puncture and pry a pipe to neatly accumulate all its sprightly torrent, her teeth clenched and sinking down, her throat throbbing from every gulp. The man, grasping the irrevocability of his misfortune, fixed his eyes towards me, beseeching, as though an impetuous libertine like him had suddenly proclaimed a saint.

“Big, bad wolf,” I uttered as I placed another filter between my lips.

They were both reduced to the ground, the man pale and blue and eyes vacant, Sin on her knees, eyes closed and looming, like an image of the Pietà. From his abdomen formed embers crawling to his chest and limbs, consuming him then reducing him to ashes. He crumbled in her arms, and Sin stood, placed the other seat adjacent to mine, and sat down with me.

“Little pig,” she said, cupping her hands to light a cigarette.

I shrugged and folded my arms. “I once read an article about blood banks.”

Sin hunched forward, lending an ear.

“I always thought they were exceptional charity work, initiating blood drives in offices, draining pints out of you and you walk out, pale and nauseous and yet, feeling better about yourself. They’re actually more business than charity, selling donated blood by gallons to hospitals and medical laboratories. And, because blood still expires, I think, every 5 to 6 days, bulks are eventually thrown out, wasted.”

“How does that work for me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Thought it would be more resourceful, like stealing body fat from a liposuction clinic to make soap. You could drink it from a glass of wine like chardonnay with spicy chicken wings.”

Sin chuckled like she had never heard a jest in years.

“So, cliché employee here,” I said, shifting the subject, “what’s his story?”

“The man has nothing in particular, the way he flocks around women in a bar, believing his own emptiness could be filled by promiscuity and on how many women he’s been with. A typical Holofernes taking the bait, his head only to be severed by Judith.”

I looked down at the ashes on the floor, the man, the once viscous heathen forcing himself on her, sapped dry and reduced to a crumpled heap. The man can’t be me. I’m clever, demented, I’m diametrically different.

“Go on home, Cal,” Sin told me, “spending so much time in my world could take so much of your sanity. I’m not here to ruin your life.”

I nodded, stood abruptly and bent forward in a way my face would be inches from hers. She inclined, eyes wide and lips trembling in a slightly parted befuddlement. I withdrew, abashed, and planted a kiss above her hairline.

I uttered a barely audible goodbye before closing the door. At the dining table, leaned forward with a cigarette between her fingers, Sin sat still.