Free This Is the Night by Jonah C. Sirott

forehead and made a few quick scribbles on her notepad.
    “Regular lice, there’s a shampoo for that,” said Unzipped. “You can get it at the drugstore.”
    “I told you guys, there are no lice. You’re not going to really do anything.”
    The intern increased her note taking to a furious pace.
    “Say again?” said Zipped-Up.
    “So there’s no infestation at all?” asked Unzipped.
    Lance sighed. “You’re just going to come in here, poke around with your equipment, and make like you’re getting rid of something. It’s a psychological extermination.”
    “Pyscho-logical,” repeated Zipped-Up. “Make sure you get that down,” he told the intern.
    Though Zipped-Up was slow and dull, the casual way he pursed his lips reminded Lance of his second-oldest brother. He let the silence hang, hoping Zipped-Up might repeat the small movement and bring the slowly fading memory of his brother back to life.
    “I can’t have this kind of thing get out, the idea that we do fake exterminations,” said Unzipped. “If our clients associate us with a fake extermination, it might affect their decision-making process regarding whether they would hire us to do a real one.”
    “And we are certainly not trained in anything psycho-logical,” added Zipped-Up.
    “There’s barely anyone in the building,” Lance told them. “Most of these apartments are empty. Registry-runners, you know?” This wasn’t quite true, but he could sense that the two guys upstairs were making moves. Why not give these exterminators the opportunity to purge a bit of the contempt lying half-rotten in their bellies?
    “It’s just sick,” said Zipped-Up.
    “Disgusting,” added Unzipped. “You should point them.”
    Lance looked to the intern, a woman his age, to see if she agreed. For a brief moment he caught her eye before she looked away.
    “Look,” Lance said, “I’ll give you double just to not do anything.” He had begged, borrowed, and saved, but whatever he might owe didn’t matter.
    The exterminators agreed, but demanded a verbal contract of nondisclosure. The four of them shook hands, the exterminators shrugged their shoulders and huddled with their intern, and though Lance had told them not to, they sprayed as though they were performing an actual fumigation. Lance pushed the crisp Currencies at their confused faces.
    That night in bed, Lance explained to Lorrie that he had killed the lice forever. The smell of insect death hovered in the dense air, drowning out even the odors of Neutral Country P immigrant cooking that slipped beneath their door each evening and lingered till morning. Lorrie seemed to believe him, and for the first time in weeks, they began to undress each other. His fingernails were too long, the short, brittle hairs of his beard were too rough, but they squeezed and arced and twisted and followed each other around the bed. His weight pressed her deep into the mattress. He moved down between her thighs, but she pulled on his ears and brought him back up to her eye level. Nothing was normal anymore. Lance was disgusted by the lice, and with each thrust, he saw himself driving back the enemy. Only it wasn’t working. There was no escape from the scratches and marks on her body, rising off her skin with bright disdain. No, this wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt them, to hurt her. The flat nose and puffy lips of the intern flashed before him, but he pushed her image out. He needed to see Lorrie as she was. The next thing either of them knew, Lance turned her over and muscled his way into her. She let out a scream that was swallowed by the pillow; neither of them had ever done this before. Once it was over, the two of them lay on the bed, caught between the smells of themselves and the poison.

    Even after he had the house smoked, had bombed the whole place with chemicals, Lorrie still felt the lice. Lance stopped sleeping and began to rage against each tiny bug that wasn’t there. After he’d scrounged up