Cheap Suits and Rotting Peonies

The box fan in the corner of the office had a busted bearing. It clicked on every rotation. Click. Whir. Click. Whir. Victor sat behind his desk and let the stagnant, ninety-degree air wash over him. His shirt stuck to his back. It felt like a second skin, damp and uncomfortable. He dragged a thumb across his forehead, wiping away a fresh bead of sweat before it could sting his eye.

Summer in the city was a physical assault. The asphalt outside baked all day and radiated the heat back up all night. The sanitation workers were on week three of a strike. The smell of rotting garbage, sour milk, and hot plastic seeped through the cracks in the window frame. Victor looked down at the desk. The divorce papers sat next to a half-empty bottle of cheap bourbon. His ex-wife had signed in blue ink. He hadn't signed yet. His pen lay next to the papers, mocking him.

The laptop screen glared at him. A new email. The subject line was blank. He clicked it. A low-res photo of a girl loaded. Maybe twenty years old. Bleached blonde hair showing dark roots. A silver ring in her left nostril. Tired eyes. The kind of tired that came from too many shifts and not enough sleep. The text below the photo was brief. "Her name is Lilith. She didn't come home. Five grand in crypto if you find her. Address attached."

Victor rubbed his jaw. The stubble felt like sandpaper. Five grand was enough to keep the lights on. It was enough to pretend he had a reason to leave the office. He closed the laptop. He didn't reply to the email. He just stood up, his knees popping in the quiet room. He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, instantly regretting the extra layer, but he needed the pockets. He shoved his lock picks, a flashlight, and a half-crushed pack of gum into the coat.

The stairwell of his building smelled like stale beer and urine. He took the steps two at a time, eager to get outside, even if outside was a furnace. The street hit him like a physical blow. The sun glared off the hoods of parked cars. Heat waves shimmered over the pavement. He kept his head down and started walking. Lilith's apartment was in the lower east side. A neighborhood where the city gave up trying ten years ago.

He walked for forty minutes. His shoes felt heavy. He watched the people he passed. Everyone looked exhausted. A guy in a business suit leaned against a brick wall, eyes closed, gasping for air. A group of kids sat on a stoop, passing around a melted popsicle, not talking. Just surviving the afternoon. Victor checked the address on his phone. A brick building with fire escapes clinging to the front like rust-colored ribs.

The front door was propped open with a broken cinder block. Victor walked into the lobby. The mailboxes were pried open. Junk mail littered the tile floor. He found the stairs and headed to the fourth floor. Apartment 4B. The door was scratched. Someone had keyed a crude drawing into the cheap wood. Victor knocked. The sound was flat in the empty hallway.

He waited. Nothing. He knocked again, harder. Still nothing. He leaned his ear against the door. He didn't hear a TV. He didn't hear footsteps. But he smelled something. It cut right through the ambient stench of the building. It was sweet. Sickly sweet. Like a funeral home right after a delivery.

Victor pulled the picks from his pocket. The lock was cheap. A standard pin tumbler. He had it open in fifteen seconds. The deadbolt clicked back. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

The heat inside the apartment was suffocating. The windows were painted shut. But that wasn't what made his stomach turn. It was the flowers.

The tiny, squalid living room was a jungle. Dozens of massive, pink peonies bloomed from terra cotta pots on the floor, on the coffee table, on the TV stand. They were impossible. Peonies didn't survive in this kind of heat. They needed cool air. They needed care. These were thriving. They looked bruised, the pink so deep it bordered on violent. The smell was overpowering. It coated the back of his throat. He coughed, waving a hand in front of his face.

He walked past the flowers, his shoes sticking slightly to the cheap linoleum. He checked the bedroom. A mattress on the floor. Clothes scattered everywhere. A cracked mirror leaning against the wall. Nothing stood out. He moved to the tiny kitchen. The sink was piled with dishes. The faucet dripped. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Victor opened the fridge. The light flickered on. The shelves were mostly bare. A bottle of generic ketchup. A half-empty carton of oat milk. And a sleek, black plastic container. He reached in and pulled it out. The plastic was cold. He popped the lid. Inside lay four pieces of bluefin tuna sushi. The rice was perfectly packed. The fish was a deep, rich red. It looked like a museum exhibit.

He stared at it. Lilith lived in a dump. She slept on the floor. But she was eating sushi that cost two hundred bucks a roll. He turned the container over. A small gold sticker was affixed to the bottom. "O-Toro."

Victor put the container back in the fridge and closed the door. The pieces didn't fit. A runaway girl. A crypto payout. Impossible flowers. High-end fish. He walked back into the living room. He looked at the largest peony sitting on the coffee table. The petals were heavy. He reached out and touched one. It felt cold. In the middle of a baking apartment, the flower was ice cold. His chest tightened. He needed to talk to the neighbors.

The Second Floor Hallway

Victor stepped back into the hallway and let the door to 4B click shut. The air out here was stale, but it lacked that suffocating, funereal sweetness. He took a deep breath, letting the normal, terrible smells of the city settle his stomach. He looked down the hall. Three other doors. Two were missing their numbers. He walked to the closest one, 4A, and banged a fist against the wood.

He heard a shuffle inside. A deadbolt scraped back. The door opened a crack, restrained by a chain. A face appeared in the gap. Early twenties, dark circles under the eyes, wearing a faded band t-shirt. The kid looked at Victor's cheap suit and immediately sneered.

"You a cop?" the kid asked. His voice was raspy.

"No," Victor said. "Private."

"Then bounce. Nobody called you."

"I'm looking for the girl next door. Lilith. You seen her?"

The kid's eyes darted to the door of 4B, then back to Victor. The sneer faltered, replaced by a tight, practiced blankness. "She logged out."

"Logged out?" Victor asked.

"Left. Gone. Permanently off the server," the kid said, his tone dripping with fake boredom. "Whatever. She packed up a few nights ago."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"We didn't talk. She was acting weird. Smelled weird. Keep your nose out of it, old man. People who go looking for the rot usually find it."

The kid slammed the door. The deadbolt slid back into place. Victor stared at the chipped paint for a second. The kid was terrified. The bravado was a thin shield. Victor pulled out his phone and searched the name from the gold sticker. "O-Toro."

The results populated instantly. It wasn't just a restaurant. It was a fortress in the Gold Coast district. Reservations took six months. The clientele were politicians, tech executives, people who owned the buildings that guys like Victor rented. It was a place where money bought complete isolation from the city's decay.

Victor put the phone away. He needed a shortcut. He needed Suzuki.

He left the building and walked twenty blocks to the precinct. By the time he walked through the double glass doors, his shirt was entirely ruined. The precinct wasn't much cooler than the street. The central AC had failed two days ago. Massive industrial fans sat in the corners, blowing hot air and loose papers around the bullpen.

Victor found Detective Suzuki at his desk. Suzuki was a man who looked like he had been slowly deflating for a decade. His tie was loose, his sleeves rolled up. He was stabbing a plastic fork into a sad-looking salad.

"Tell me you're here to confess to a crime so I can put you in a holding cell," Suzuki said without looking up. "The cells are in the basement. It's ten degrees cooler down there."

"I need a favor, Suz," Victor said, pulling up a chair that squeaked loudly.

Suzuki paused, a piece of brown lettuce hanging from his fork. He sighed. "You never come here unless it's a headache. What is it?"

"Missing girl. Name is Lilith. Found an O-Toro sushi box in her fridge. Half eaten."

Suzuki dropped the fork. The plastic clattered against the desk. He looked around the bullpen, making sure nobody was listening closely. He leaned forward. "You stay away from the Gold Coast, Vic."

"Why?"

"Because it's O-Toro. They own the mayor. They own the chief. If they want a girl to disappear, she disappears. You go poking around there, they won't just pull your license. They'll pull your teeth."

"She's a kid, Suz. Someone is paying me to find her."

"Send the money back," Suzuki said. "Look at you. You look like a corpse. Go home. Sign your divorce papers. Drink some water. Let the city eat who it wants to eat. You can't stop it."

Victor felt a familiar, stubborn anger flare in his chest. It was the same anger that had ruined his marriage. The inability to let things slide. "Just tell me if they have a secondary location. A warehouse. A supplier. Something off the books."

Suzuki stared at him for a long time. The industrial fan swept back and forth, blowing a strand of hair across Suzuki's forehead. Finally, the detective pulled a notepad toward him. He scribbled a single address. He ripped the page out and slid it across the desk. He didn't say a word.

Victor took the paper. He stood up. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me," Suzuki said, picking his fork back up. "I'm just giving you directions to your own funeral."

The Exhaust Vent

The Gold Coast district didn't feel like the rest of the city. The sidewalks were power-washed. The streetlights all worked, casting a stark, clean glow over the imported European cars parked along the curb. Victor felt entirely out of place in his wrinkled suit. He stuck to the shadows, moving down the alley behind the O-Toro restaurant.

The back door was solid steel, secured by a heavy mag-lock. There was a security camera mounted above it, its red light blinking steadily. Victor didn't even try the door. He looked up. Ten feet above the ground, a large HVAC intake vent hummed quietly.

He found a stack of plastic milk crates near a dumpster. He dragged them over, stacking three on top of each other. The plastic bowed under his weight as he climbed. He reached the vent. The screws holding the grate were old, but not rusted. He pulled his multi-tool from his pocket and went to work. It took four minutes. His shoulders burned.

He pulled the grate free and slid it onto the roof of the adjacent building. He pulled himself up and into the ductwork.

The metal was shockingly cold. The restaurant's AC was blasting at full capacity. Victor shivered, the damp sweat on his back turning to ice. The duct was cramped. He had to army-crawl, his elbows and knees scraping against the galvanized steel. The dust in the vent coated his throat. He breathed through his teeth, trying not to cough.

He crawled for what felt like hours, taking right angles, following the flow of the freezing air. Finally, he saw light filtering up through a grate ahead of him. He stopped, pressing his face against the metal slots.

He was looking straight down into a private dining room.

The walls were paneled in dark wood. The lighting was low and amber. A massive oak table sat in the center of the room. Eight people sat around it. Men in bespoke suits, women in dresses that cost more than Victor's car. But Victor didn't look at their clothes. He looked at the table.

In the center of the table was a massive floral arrangement. Giant pink peonies. The exact same flowers from Lilith's apartment. They pulsed with a weird, heavy vitality under the dim lights.

Waiters in stark white uniforms moved silently around the room, placing small, slate plates in front of the guests. Victor squinted. The meat on the plates wasn't fish. It wasn't beef. It was grayish, sliced incredibly thin, glistening with a dark sauce.

One of the guests, an older man with silver hair, picked up his chopsticks. "Is this from the new harvest?"

A chef stepped into the room. He wore a pristine black apron. "Yes, sir. The fertilizer from the south sector has proven highly effective. The yield is extraordinary. The flavor profile is far more complex than last season."

The guests murmured in approval. They began to eat. Victor felt a sudden, sharp nausea. His stomach turned over. He didn't know what they were eating, but he knew it wasn't right. The way they chewed, the reverence in the room, the cloying smell of the flowers drifting up through the vent.

Victor backed away from the grate. He crawled backward, moving faster now, the metal tearing at his slacks. He reached the intake, dropped down onto the crates, and hit the alley floor just as a large box truck pulled up to the steel door.

Victor flattened himself behind the dumpster. The truck had no logos, just a faded black exterior. The driver got out, scanned a keycard, and began unloading large, plastic-wrapped bundles. They looked like soil bags, but they were heavy. Too heavy.

Victor waited until the driver went inside. He slipped out of the alley and jogged three blocks to where he had parked his beat-up sedan. He started the engine. The dashboard lit up, the check engine light glowing its familiar yellow warning.

Fifteen minutes later, the black box truck emerged from the alley. Victor pulled into traffic, keeping two cars between them. The truck headed west, driving away from the Gold Coast, away from the city center, heading straight for the industrial wasteland on the toxic edge of the city limits.

Glass and Bone

The drive took an hour. The city lights faded, replaced by the amber glow of sodium lamps over empty highways. The air outside the car changed. The smell of garbage was gone, replaced by the sharp, metallic tang of sulfur and rust from the abandoned chemical plants.

The truck turned onto a broken access road, kicking up clouds of white dust. Victor killed his headlights and rolled to a stop, watching the truck pull up to a massive, sprawling structure. It was an industrial greenhouse. Most of the glass panes in the roof were shattered. Weeds choked the chain-link fence surrounding it.

The truck driver parked, locked the cab, and walked into a corrugated steel shed attached to the side of the glass building.

Victor got out of his car. The night air here was still hot, but the heat felt different. It felt dead. He walked toward the greenhouse, his shoes crunching softly on broken glass. He found a section of the structure where the glass wall was entirely gone, replaced by thick, hanging plastic sheeting. He pulled the plastic aside and stepped in.

The smell hit him like a physical wall. It was the smell of Lilith's apartment, amplified a thousand times. The sickly sweet aroma of the heavy pink flowers, mixed with the unmistakable, gag-inducing stench of rotting meat. Victor pulled his shirt collar up over his nose.

He clicked on his flashlight. The beam cut through the humid, stagnant air.

The greenhouse was a jungle. Rows and rows of dirt mounds stretched into the darkness. And growing out of the mounds were the peonies. They were huge, some as tall as Victor, their stalks thick and fibrous.

Victor walked down the center aisle. He shone the light on the nearest mound. He stopped. His breath caught in his throat.

The dirt was loose. Sticking out of the soil was a human hand. The flesh was gray and peeling. The stalk of a massive peony was growing directly out of the center of the palm, its roots wrapping around the fingers like thick, green veins.

Victor stepped back, his foot hitting something hard. He looked down. A ribcage, half-buried, bursting with pink blooms. This wasn't a farm. It was a graveyard. The cult was using human remains to grow the flowers. The elite were eating the meat of the dead, flavored by the rot.

"They need a lot of water."

Victor spun around, dropping the flashlight. It rolled in the dirt, the beam illuminating a pair of bare feet.

Victor picked up the light and shone it up. It was Lilith. She wore a simple white cotton dress. It was stained with dirt at the knees. She held a heavy metal watering can. She didn't look tired anymore. She looked calm. Terrifyingly calm.

"Lilith," Victor breathed. "What are you doing here? We have to go. Now."

Lilith tilted her head. She looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language. "Go where? Back to the city? Back to the noise and the concrete and the smell? No. I belong here."

"They're killing people," Victor said, his voice rising. "They're eating people."

"They're recycling," Lilith said softly. She stepped forward, reaching out to stroke the petals of a flower growing from a shattered skull. "The city is a corpse. It's ugly and it's mean. I was tired of being ugly. Here, I get to be part of something beautiful. Soon, it will be my turn to go into the dirt. I will feed the roots."

Victor felt a cold panic grip him. She was completely gone. Brainwashed. Broken by the city until she welcomed the rot. He stepped forward, grabbing her arm. "I'm not leaving you here."

Lilith didn't pull away. She just smiled. "You don't have a choice."

A heavy footstep sounded behind Victor. He turned, but he was too slow. A solid steel pipe slammed into his ribs. He heard a crack. Pain exploded in his side, stealing his breath. He dropped to his knees, tasting copper in the back of his mouth.

Two men stood over him. They wore the same pristine black aprons as the chef at O-Toro. One of them raised the pipe again.

Victor didn't wait. He threw a handful of wet dirt directly into the man's eyes. The man shouted, dropping the pipe. Victor scrambled backward, his ribs screaming in agony. He pushed himself to his feet and ran. He crashed blindly through the rows of flowers, snapping stalks, slipping on the slick, bloody soil.

He hit the plastic sheeting, tearing it down as he tumbled out of the greenhouse and into the night air. He heard shouting behind him, but he didn't look back. He sprinted to his car, fumbled with the keys, and threw it into drive. He floored the gas, the tires spinning in the dirt before catching.

He drove for an hour, his hand pressed against his side, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He didn't go to the police. He knew Suzuki was right. The cops wouldn't do anything. O-Toro owned them. The city owned them.

Victor made it back to his office as the sun was starting to rise, casting a sickly yellow light over the smog. He collapsed into his desk chair. His side throbbed. He pulled his phone out and typed an email to the client.

"Found her. She's dead. Don't go looking."

He hit send. He looked down at his desk. He hadn't realized he was holding it, but his left hand was clutching a single, massive pink petal he had torn from the greenhouse. He dropped it onto the desk.

He picked up the bottle of cheap bourbon and poured two fingers into his dirty glass. He didn't drink it. He just sat there, watching the heavy, bruised petal slowly curl at the edges, watching it rot right next to his unsigned divorce papers.