This one got a little weird and might be bad or I might have missed the prompt. My bad. it's what came to mind when I started writing.

A spit take launched three half melted ice cubes hurtling towards the kitchen tile. It was there they slid, dissolving into a puddle of what could be confused with spit. It was Alice’s spit. Alice had participated in the trick before when they were kids and her bunny returned with a soul and mortgage.

Trix was the name of her rabbit, and he was in fact named after the cereal mascot, when she was finally deemed too old for the stuffed toy; her father told her that Trix were for kids. It was loaded and so, not wanting to upset her parents and fulfill their wishes of getting ready to enter adulthood. She gave the bunny to her brother with the mystery spine.

Now, she covers her mouth, wiping the spit that had fallen from her lip based launch pad. This party was being held to honor the retirement/birthday of Matilda Price, the wife and soon to be mother of their General Manager’s child. The Same general Manager who was pulled behind the curtain and into Darren’s spine moments ago.

It would have been easy to close the restaurant for the evening, letting the hard working staff have a party in their workspace, leaving the clean up to a cleaning crew they could hire. Why lose money they could gain on a Friday in the summer? Why hire another cleaning crew when there are already maids working in their apartment. A little overtime won’t kill anyone, Gregor Price had said to his wife.

Opting instead for the general manager’s opulent downtown apartment. A place and time that seemed all too mythical to the staff; now, it is purely supernatural.

Gregor stands there, moments after being pulled behind the back of Darren, like a grandparent sneaking some spare change behind a child’s ear.

Withered, flesh ashen and dry, his eyes sunken and black, he shivers, hand jostled for a standing hold on the back of the couch.

“Gregor.” Matilda’s voice was fried and she nearly fainted as her words were carried off into the ether.

No one was standing behind Darren. None had witnessed the Chakra Abyss that lay inside his spinal column. 

Bones tapped on the side of his flesh that had peeled itself away, his back had become a night sky of blending and bleeding souls; tossed in and out as their chakra ran dry. 

He was born with a cracked heart chakra, one that bled and was infected by a Djinn impersonating his higher self. It fed for years on the emotions of youth, growing powerful enough to turn his body into a dimension of its own. 

The Boy known as Darren grew up believing he was a natural magician, but he was really a drain for a spirit sucker. A living vacuum for souls, trading them in and out of living and non-living things as freely as he’d eat a fruit snack.

“Put me back.” Gregor spoke between coughs of dust and words, He arched over onto the back of the couch. “Put me back!” His voice rose. The crowd, all except for Alice, had a cheeky look of delight crawling over them.

There were murmurs of this being quite the show.

A spectacle to be had. And attempting to scare poor Matilda from taking his fortune. This is the least clever way to announce an elopement I’ve ever seen. Elope? Aren't they already married? That wasn’t official, it was just something that they did as a spectacle, to keep the cooks from hitting on Matilda when she was working by herself as MOD (Manager on Duty)

The ensemble of chatter reaching his mind, digging in and making a home, Gregor could not believe what he was hearing. He knew his staff would gossip; all staff do, especially those in a kitchen, but to do it with unmoving lips and in his own apartment; why, he wouldn’t stand for it.

Gregor screamed as light pierced through the holes in his head, purple and white, the deep soul like chakra that is the 7th. This quelled the distilled chatter to a hum, stopping any pervading thoughts about what might or might not be going on behind the scenes.

If only they’d step behind Darren’s back; they could experience it for themselves.

This is something Alice had only seen once, and was too afraid to witness herself the second time. 

Trix had grown rabid, wanting to work, and wanting only to pay off his debt since he was free. He became a devout born again, wanting to absolve himself of the guilt of his past life. The  only guilty thing that Alice could consider Trix having done was when he, still a plush toy and not animated one worrying about the cost of inflation, was when he wrecked her 31st consecutive tea party in October when she was ten.

It had taken a ton of organization on her behalf to keep all of her toys apart who didn’t get along for a month of different guests and parties; culminating in that special Halloween party where they would all meet again under new names and different disguises to liberate themselves from their disagreements and settle old debts.

Rocking her tumbler onto a nightstand, Marry made her way across the carpeted floor towards her little Brother’s back.

She felt it, that old familiar tune, the one she would hear when his world was open to be explored. That low, enchanting song that seemed to whisper to anyone who would listen. It sounded like captured words in a rainstorm.

Alice kept her eyes down, only looking up when became close enough to stop and glance from the corner of her eye. A single bone-like finger tapped his flesh along the bottom, above where his waist used to begin. It cracked it like a spiderweb, drawing a red crackled line along his peach flesh.

Darren’s jawline clenched, ground his top and bottom teeth together, pressing each type of tooth from molar to incisor onto his opposite hole. He drove the ivory mouth bones into their places, whittling down one another, bits of plaque and gum spilling out of his mouth.

Alice could not move. She covered her reddening face, tears welling as another tendril of spine whipped out from her brother’s back. Lashing towards the far wall; latching onto the vent above the Price family's stainless steel stove.

Fluffy white fur, stained gray from play and naps poked its head from the hole inside her brother. 

Whiskers twisted on a face missing a button black nose, one that was removed in anger once he was discovered to be living; replaced with a single red piece of Trix.

Gregor became Cavity of time, just like Trix the rabbit was; they all would be. So long as Darren’s spine remained untapped.

The party grew eager to witness the origin of their line cooks' cracked pigmentation. Slowly, they called to Alice, but she could not hear.

She was moving towards her Trix, her bunny, her buddy who was calling towards her to enter the world of youth and never leave.

"The coldest man I know; it’s criminal what we’re charging folks. They’ll be sleeping with the fishes." Were everyday phrases I heard tossed around a lot among the extended members of Maria's family. I never thought too much  of it, with her parents being in the business of creating and fixing air conditioners, and heating and cooling systems for cars, schools, hospitals, casinos, and homes in the Tri-State Area. I ran on the assumption that it was tossed around as an affectation among repair men. Her familia were a competitive bunch, and a simple game of cornhole could become life and death sometimes. With them inviting rival repair men over to family BBQ’s and having them play a game, where it didn't seem like the guests were having too much fun.

That’s where I liked to pop in and lighten the mood, as the only other outsider at these shindings; I knew what used to make me feel welcome and comfortable; and that was to give it right back. All the shit talk.

A few of her cousins, namely Vinnie, had a hot temper and thin skin when it came to joking around. Sometimes, a gentle elbow nudge after a zinger from me wasn’t enough to lighten his mood and it would take making them one of my patented cocktails to smooth things over.

Oh, I did make the mistake once, and  had used some raspberry liqueur I found by a window in their house and some expired Kahula, which I had no clue went bad on a group of cocktails I handed out to Vinnie, the couple other cousins who were hazing this poor fella, and the local business owner.  I called the cocktail, Blue Balls, and everyone got a good laugh from my naming.

They all fell sick instantly, right around the pool area, and all of them had to be hospitalized. They canceled the party, and I was so ashamed I spent the afternoon cleaning up the mess I was responsible for.

Her father was so impressed with my cleaning that he offered me a contract to work in the city, cleaning up a few of their local businesses after hours. I took up the offer without a second’s notice; how could I not?

 We didn't live in the city, I had never and Maria moved out here to go to college to study photography, I'd always catch her sitting in her car, staring at the architecture of local banks, museums, and police stations. It's actually how she and I first met.

I rapped on her window three times with my knuckles, and she slowly pulled the expensive Nikon camera from her face. The lens was massive on this thing, the kinda camera that when you really focus lets you see for miles, and inside every pour of someone’s face or inside every nook and cranny of any structure.

I’ll never forget the pattern of the Leopard print ascot she was wearing that day, or those cool bug-eyed, don’t tell her i said this, but the lenses of the sunglasses she had were these wide ovals that, to my untrained eye appeared like bugs, like an ant or something. I’ve always been a bug collector of sorts, I like to see the bigger ones in person, I even own a couple'a them fightin’ beatles from Japan. They got loose in my neighborhood one day,and well that’s a story for another time.

My first night out, ah, I can still smell the sanitizer hitting the windows in the corporate offices and an unnamed social media company. It was like all my current jobs have become, never the same location twice, which initially made me feel like I was doing a bad job as a cleaner. And, if I was doing bad I needed to know why.

Because, well, it wasn’t always the same thing, some nights I’d clean spills that one of our–our, listen to me I’ve been working for the family for a few months and I’m already using terms like that. It makes me swell with pride to know I’ve been so welcomed.

Anyways, sometimes when they were doing an install, the spray from the AC and heaters would leave this red stuff on the floor, and I’d need to come in and dissolve it. It was easy, and people would always run away from me in my gas mask, and plate armor.

I was told to wear it because the HVAC units can be contaminated, making it dangerous for anyone around, that’s why they gave me the gun. At first, I thought wow, are there some kinda monsters being created by these HVAC things, like, did I just isekai’d into a low-budget netflix show that gets canceled after one season, where I’m fighting monsters under the cover of being a cleaner.

No, nothing as exciting as that. Just cleaning up messes, messes that the family’s tech’s don’t have time for.  The gun was to scare away the people crazy enough to stick around during one’a these coolant leaks. I was ordered to fire it into the air, and scream for everyone to get the fuck outta here!

The inspectors for the building code were always late, and due to always being late, always and I mean always needed a police escort. Sometimes, the cops would have a hard time finding where the leak was, so I’d break a window open and scream at the cops to come and get it, it’s right here. One time, my finger slipped on the trigger, sending a burp of bullets out into the parking lot.

I accidently hit one’a the cops, and spent the next week visiting him in the hospital. I prepared one’a my get well cocktails for him, with Kahlua and Raspberry Liqueur of course, but he got sick also. Two bottles of Kahula in a row I’d used that got people sick.

I of course did my best job of cleaning up the mess, and it was then I met a security guard at the hospital, who had his own theories about what was really going on at St.Thomas’ hospital.

“Bodies come in, but don’t go out.” He was convinced, and did a great job of talking me into it. There was a new body racket going on in this hospital. One that was more than just about taking care’a your sick and dying loved ones, but one that was about taking the life outta’em, whether by cash or suckin’ the souls outta their asses.

The conversation turned to what I was doing here, and what I do for work. When I explained my job, and who I work for, the guard, a seemingly good dude, asked me to see my equipment. I agreed and walked him into the parking lot.

He was impressed with the gun and gas mask, and the plate wasn't a plate, he asked if I worked in a kitchen, cause this wasn't a plate it was armor. “Yeah, like a knight, like platemail. I didn’t know what else to say.” 

He told me he’d been investigating my new family for a few years now as an independent bail bondsman, and wanted to make something big of his first case as a private investigator, but in order to take something on, a study on a family.

“Study, like, what? A documentary?” He said, yeah, but more like a candid camera with a badge and a gun. “Like cops?” “No, not like cops. It’s like, you know Dick Tracey.” He snapped his fingers, finding the right reference in his mind. “Knives out.” I had seen that movie, and the sequel, I didn’t know Daniel Craig wasn’t from Alabama or somethin’ till after when Maria had pointed out he was James Bond.

This led to an argument between us, where I, being the ass I am, said there are a lot of James bonds. I didn’t know that she meant the most recent, and in my defense, she never stated anything like that.

Part embarrassed for my lack of ability to make a real cocktail, part of me being a lush; I had been keeping a cooler with what was left of the Raspberry liqueur from Maria’s dad’s place inside a cooler in my trunk. I tried changing out the ice as often as possible, but some days my work was busy, and between cleaning up office buildings, and spending time with Maria; I’d forget about checking the drinks, and cleaning the water up.

I split a cocktail with the security guard, I watched, again after his first sip his eyes swallow into the pit of his skull, his stomach curdle, as the big man toppled over onto me, his fist grabbing my collar, nearly pulling me to the dirt with him, as he had gathered a knife from a sheathe somewhere on his ankle.

I managed to step out of the way, and he fell to his last breath. I sped inside the hospital, letting someone know, through a bit of a fib that I’d found the guard drinking in the parking lot and he collapsed.

They did the finger on the throat thing, I guess there was no pulse, and his face had grown that light blue shade of an icepack. The medic wiped his eyes, he looked tired, I wanted to console him, so I put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, and these are words I’d never forget. “This is the coldest man I’ve ever seen.”

His blood had dropped to below zero, upon inspecting his body for contaminants, I had heard through the grapevine that he had ingested coolant into air conditioning systems. I don’t know how that got into my cocktails, all that was in my trunk was that Liqueur and Kahula from her pop’s bar.