I often dwell on the pleasant memories of my youth. My present life seems dull by comparison. My bones creak and ache, my face wrinkled and changed. No longer do I gather company to conspire against the world, to seek change and glory. Such whims have been swept away, grain by grain with the changing seasons.

Seldom do I find divinity among the dribble of common men. Their words are empty, weightless. They lack the integrity that once graced their kind. Inspired by wealth and power over one another they squabble, hiding behind their printed words and polished lies. Men bring about a wickedness upon the earth that pales even their own Gods wrath.

One of them, but not among them, my curse of sentience confines me to the walls of my mind.

How can I live on an empty heart?

A car with no fuel,

The wind with no trees to travel through.

The stairs I climb, reach no where,

In circles I am led.

Round and round, the shadows take me.

Through thicket and forest, 

They show no signs of weary.

I am dragged through thorns that bear no roses.

No feather grazes my cheek,

No kiss to touch my lips,

Only life's arrows meet my skin.

How can I live on an empty heart?

Easy, I get dragged.

#poetry #pain #love #loss #empty

I woke up at three o’clock. My phone was too bright and It made me nostalgic for a good old analog alarm clock. I ate too much take out, it was creeping up my throat and singeing my insides. I live alone so there is no reason to wear pants. I haven’t had anyone in my life for some time now. They all seem to leave. Go somewhere, do something better. That was me for a while, so I dont blame them, just miss having a voice of reason around. My therapist says I should go out more. See more. Do more. Experience life instead of just watch it scroll by in my timeline feed. I tried that, I did all of that. I spent years going back and forth across the country. Backpack and bicycle. Helmet and med bag. Sure there is more to see, there is always more to see. I guess I just pay the guy to hang out with me. To talk to me. To take an interest in what I’m saying. He says I’ve isolated myself from my friends and family. That the quirks that I find appealing are demonstrative of disassociate disorders. I’m paying him remember? I don’t spend half my weekly paycheck on the guy for his medical opinions. I just have a lot to say, things only someone your paying would listen to. I had to find some one to talk to about this. Someone that wouldn’t understand, someone that would bother, someone that would try and find answer; or at least feign to.

I woke up at three o’clock and made coffee. I sat at my kitchen table and I thumbed through a 1995 edition of a sears catalog. The same one from when I was a kid an thought Santa Claus could really bring me anything from his book if I just said please and didn’t start any more fights at school or cleaned my room and got good grades. I remember circling water guns and gaming consoles. I sat decided that if I had these things, I would have friends. Just like in the commercials. I never got the consoles or water guns. I never got those friends either. Good thing. For them.

I drink too much coffee. I don’t see a cardiologist, but if I did I’m sure they’d say i drink too much coffee. I think its more a security blanket. The few memories I have of my family, all of them involve coffee. I would wake up early and catch my grandmother on the front porch. She would watch bats eat breakfast while she sipped her black coffee. She understood me. She never said anything like the sort, but I could tell. She knew I was going to be different. That something just outside the realm of knowing was in my future.

I woke up at three oclock and I stayed awake till seven that evening. I listened to my fire alarm chirp rudely every four minutes as I stared into the void of my cabinets. I felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me. That I was the butt of their laughter. I also felt like I was participating so that was good enough. I thought about trying to go back to sleep. To wander back through my shit hole apartment, a refurbed motel on Route 66, till the four steps brought me back to bed. That doesn’t suit me so well tonight. There is someone here. Someone is listening to me. My therapist is gonna retire in Florida with this one.

I lit a candle. I only had one of those mason jar ones, half price from the craft store. Ordered it online. I should go out more. There are people who might find me interesting, if I meet them on familiar turf and only let them see the layers that suit the need. I had to use a piece of dry spaghetti to light it, but I got it done.

As I looked around, I saw no reason to believe that I was anything but alone. I had no roommates and the apartments near by were empty. I guess there is only a certain type of person who finds this pod living comfortable enough to call home. It was a twinge in the mind, something like that, I don’t pay my therapist for his vocabulary, but he had some variety of fanciful words to fixate himself and make him go, mmmm. I made more coffee, a second cup to suit the visitor. Kept it black. I pulled the chair across from me out, just enough. I sat and cradled the warmth radiating off my mug. I just listened. For four minutes I had peace. Then the chirp reminded me to remove and put away the fire alarm.

There was just silence and a cold breeze for hours. Time moved without consent, as it does, but without a clock to measure it, hours were mere minutes. I asked a for a name, and it was silence. I sipped my coffee and gave my own. My name is Thomas Stonewell. Silence spoke nothing in return. Still, in the fragments of reality that still wander this mind of mine, I know that I am not alone.

—

My therapist says that its not my apartment that is haunted, that its my mind. That I’m on this hermit syndrome kick and the way to break out is to explore the world outside; more importantly the people that occupy it. I care little for them. I care about who occupies my apartment.

I decided that even without a name, or a fancy degree, whomever visits when the night is deep and silent, has a better sense of understanding me than my former therapist. Even if the cold winds I feel are simply the frigid return of my exhaled breath stirring in the cigarette smoke.

—

I got more candles. Went to the store and everything. Not to overcome a hurdle, or confront any hypothesis presented by my therapist. I just chose not to wait the two days for shipping. I work as copy editor. Ive never met my boss or coworkers. I don’t even know how many of us there are. I just get my assignments on Monday, most are due by Wednesday but the bigger ones have till Friday at noon. It was now the early hours of Saturday so I had some time. Time for an interview. I slept most of the day. So that I could be awake at three. I made earl grey for my guest, two creams and two sugars. It tastes the best that way. I kept my coffee black.

I was met with more silence and cold air. That was, until I extinguished the candle on the table. It’s absence allowed the void of darkness to engulf the chair now occupied by my guest. He, I shall call him HE, for there was no name or way to distinguish anything further about him. Blame the patriarchy. He sat in darkness, veiled in fabric of stars and night sky.

We sat, I sipped my coffee.

I woke up at the kitchen table, the morning light scattered on the old tiles of my apartment. My mug still full. His was turned over on the coaster.

———

My mother called while I was in the shower. I muted her call so the music would play. She would leave a voicemail. That she did. My sister in law was going into labor. She was two weeks past due. I needed to get to the hospital to meet them. There was something else in the message. Something in the buzzing of dead space between her syllables of hysteria. The mug overturned. The buzzing. The fog in the mirror. A blurred pale figure reflected in its opaque glare. More than just my own. A bitter wind blew past and the mirror turned back to its silver sheen. I was alone. The mug shattered and the tea inside ruined my favorite table runner.

#fiction #stream #thoughts #depression #journal

The last time I saw my parents I was six years old. We were on our way to the beach. We lived in the city and my dad put in to have the day off four months prior. There was still snow on the ground when he came home and told my mom. I could hear them from my bedroom, they thought I was asleep, but I always waited till he came home to really fall asleep. I knew that he would come in and kiss my forehead. I knew he would watch me tussle and roll over to my side. I knew he knew I was faking it, but he did it all just the same. He would whisper in my ear, “Sleep as if the world lay in slumber beside you.”

I had to pee, again. It took ten minutes of protest and the repetitive kicks to the back of his seat, but eventually I won and we pulled over at the next gas station. Dad went inside. Figured we might as well get gas while we are here. He was actually taking a walk to cool down. The whole foot to spine thing really got him riled up. I could see why now. Mom followed behind, staying far enough back to give him space. She waited till the door closed behind him before she went in to ask for the bathroom key. I sat in the car, doors locked, windows cracked, a/c running. I remember drawing faces in the fog that spread across the window. In hindsight I’m sure they looked more like spaghetti thrown against a wall than a persons face but I liked it. Mom came out first, she opened the door and undid my seatbelt, her face was warm and I could see the swelling of tears in the corners of her eyes. Her and dad must have talked inside. There isn’t much a six year old can do to comfort the heart of his mother. Such an expensive gift must be more complex than a simple smile and my tiny arms wrapped around her shoulders. Yet this was all she really needed.

The button of my jacket snagged the seatbelt as she attempted to lift me out of the car, to have the moment that would make all the sadness go away. A full, long hug, mother and son. Tangled arms and nylon shake the keys free. With a humph she places me back down to find them.

That was all that it took.

I could smell the breath of a stranger. A foul odor from a man who never listened to his mother about brushing before bed. His hands were full of my t-shirt and skin. I screamed and kicked, my mom hit her head on the door trying to stand up in a hurry. It was too late. He already had me outside. I remember the smell of gasoline and Pantene pro V. I remember feeling the warm sun touch my skin. Through the tears and the infantile screams, thats what I remember the most. The warmth of the sun, and the feeling of my mothers hair against my face.

Breathless and exhausted, I faint under the pressure of my world crumbling on top of me.

I’d like to say I put up a better fight, that I bit and wriggled till they were forced to let me go. Part of me did, I saw that look in my mother’s eye, I knew this wasn’t right. That he was going to hurt me and take me away.

There are singular moments in life, fractions of memory capable of scarring over and remaining forever. The look my father gave me, as he stepped outside. The, right on time, look. That will never leave me.

#thriller #suspense #fiction

My name is Frank. Frank Olean, I was born forty eight years ago under the loving eyes of my mother and father. I was raised in the same house my father was raised, and his father before him. It doesn’t matter where I am from. Nothing before my thirty fifth birthday matters at all.

The doctors want to know, they delved deep into my family history. Trying to find any signs of mental disorder beyond generic depression. They found lung cancer, Alzheimers and heart disease on my mothers side and Parkinson’s on my fathers. Nothing else. They talked to my boss at the newspaper, they talked to my coworkers, nothing.

The police took it further by interviewing my professors from college and what’s left of the staff of my junior and senior high school. Nothing turned up. I skipped class twice in high school but never got caught and never fell below a 3.2 in college. My instructors remembered little of me, I turned in my assignments and was always present. I was predictable. Only the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Nobody is going to care about that life. They want to hear about the journalist who killed thirty eight people. The guy who left his wife and two kids, in the middle of a family picnic to embark on a decade long journey of death and carnage.

***

But the story starts a few days before that picnic, which was actually my eldest daughter, Faustinas birthday party. It starts before the balloons and bouncy castle were delivered, and the presents laid out on the table. Before all her friends and their parents arrived.

I graduated college and got a job at a small paper outside of New Jersey, it was a pretty hefty commute but it didn’t matter. I had a job whereas most of my classmates were still scrounging through blogs and free press. I got a job alright. In the mail room. I spent the first few months trying to sneak my articles into the printing room. Uploading files and hoping someone takes the bait. I spent about a year doing this to no avail. The only responses were increasingly stern emails demanding I stay in the mail room and let the field experts do their job. I wouldn’t be a very good journalist if I had listened to them.

My apartment was more of a walk in closet. I didn’t have any dishes piled up or food rotting in the fridge like a typical bachelor. I did have a blanket of dust about an inch thick covering the larger flat surfaces and the lowest electricity bill in the building. Nine to five I was a mail clerk. After that, I was a reporter.

Night after night I tuned into the police scanners, their codes weren’t hard to deduce. Not with the internet anyways. I kept this up for a few months. Trying to be the first on the scene. The first one to get the story. And I was. I had my notebook ready and recorder going. But no one would talk to me. Not without a press badge. Sometimes I’d get lucky and the cops would start talking before they realized. But it was never enough. It wasn’t the hook. The Who, the why and the how.

I didn’t quit. I should have quit. I should have quit right there during my first descent behind the yellow line. No one ever does though. I started seeing familiar faces, the E.M.T.’s, the beat cops and their Sergeants. What surprised me was the amount of repetitive appearances of the same bystanders. Month after month they would come out and mourn for the family of the convenience store, who was just robbed for the fifth time this year. Or they would say, “she was such a quiet girl, such a shame.” As the middle aged woman’s corpse is wheeled past them. “I bet it was drugs, its always drugs.”

I lived in a pretty shitty area. Crime was high and my percentage of interception was 3:1. 1:1 as an unaffiliated reporter scraping the gutters of society for a story. But it wouldn’t happen to me. I went to school for this. I wrote papers on reporters who lost their lives to their trade. They infiltrated cartels and human trafficking rings. If they didn’t die it would be a surprise. I wasn’t doing any thing like that. I was looking for stories that would pull the nations attention. Finally Slisdale would have a lime light shone on it, and our cries would be heard.

As I write this, I cry out to have that limelight dimmed, then fade altogether. Now when you search for Slisdale New Jersey. My name is all you’ll find. I never thought the magnifying glass would burn away the truth and leave me holding the gun.

***

It was July, just into my second year at the paper. I was no longer in the mail room. I was a reporter. A writer. A contributor. To the opinion section. Didn’t matter. I had a badge and it was my birthday.

My first “official” case was a gang killing. A trio of white thugs stormed into their dealers place, killing him and stealing his cash and goods. They were cutting him out. From first to thirty second street is theirs. He knew he shouldn’t have been peddling his shit out here. It wasn’t a hard case for the cops to crack. So there wasn’t much coverage. Two news channels and few single column articles. If they would have known that this was where it started. Where I was reborn as a cursed man. They would have used more of their lexicon.

The cops found one of the guys outside the bar, near the T. He stepped out to smoke at the wrong time. He was well known throughout the neighborhood. They knew that when they heard gunshots it was him or one of his shit head nimrods.

I got “lucky” when I heard the call come over the radio. Code 719 outside Clydesdales. Murder suspect. My car couldn’t shift fast enough to keep up with my adrenaline. This was it. Finally I can flash my badge, keeping my finger over the “Opinion” sub header, revealing those beautiful letters, JOURNALIST. And they would spill their guts, desperate to have their names forever emblazoned in the press.

They already had him in the back of the car, they were taking statements, when did he get here? Who was he with? Textbook spiel. Only one news crew was there, already wrapping up their equipment, satisfied that they had enough. Luck soured quickly as the badge had no effect on the cops nor the small crowd that gathered around the yellow tape. They got their fame in the background of the television crews. They waved their hands and smiled like they were on Good Morning America.

Disparaged, I turned on my heels and headed back to my car. I parked it a couple blocks away. The cops built a barricade in case the other two perps were near by. I had to slink under unwatched tape and creep through alleys like a rat looking for food scraps just to save time. Fastest way from point a to point b is a straight line. I should have gone around. I should have taken the long way. Where street lights and passerby’s can see me.

He was only about twenty feet into the shadows of the alley behind the bar. He was waiting till the heat died down so that he could get back home, pack a bag and leave town. He was running late to meet perp A at the bar. Just twenty minutes between freedom and a prison cell. He must have thought I was someone else, a friend of the guy he helped kill, or someone from his team tying up loose ends. He pulled his knife out the moment he heard me stumble over the bag of garbage overflowing from the dumpster. As I stood up he lunged at me, with his semi-serrated bench-made. If I would have seen him coming, if I didn’t turn my shoulders the way I had when I stood up. If I hadn’t turned around right when I did, that knife would have landed in my rib cage instead of his. It would have crept right through my intercostal spaces and pierced my heart, instead of his. But I did turn and stumble when I stood up, and I didn’t see him coming. I had no fight or flight, I wasn’t tense or nervous. I was embarrassed.

He grabbed my shoulders and his eyes looked right through my own. He couldn’t speak, but he garbled something about money and innocence. His death was intimately imminent. His grip was that of a bear trap. I was the last person he wanted to be touching. I was the last pair of eyes he wanted to stare into as he left this world. His legs gave way, and I lowered him to the wet garbage ridden pavement of the alley way. I screamed for help. I called out through the labyrinth of buildings for anyone to hear. His eyes never left my own. His fingers went weak, and his breath grew rapid and shallow. I could no longer feel his pulse through his palms.

It took an eternity for someone to hear my raspy shouting. I felt like an orphaned alley cat begging the world to take me too.

***

I quit my job, but I was going to get fired anyway. I enrolled in therapy. It wouldn’t be good if I hadn’t. No one is going to hire a guy like that. I prepared for life to get rocky. Rock bottom rocky. I knew my pay check to pay check lifestyle would go belly up one day. My bills would start collecting and I’d be out on my ass at the end of next month. But that’s not what happened. Two weeks after the incident. Four sessions with my therapist. Dr. Mena. I opened my email inbox to find not one, not four, but six job offers. Life was going to be ok after all.

I put the mess behind me. I started my new job, got a new apartment in a new city. I had a clean slate. Better. I was in the black. I had a savings account, I had an I.R.A. And health insurance. Finally things were working out.

My phone rang, a call was from Detective Cassopolis. He was the lead on my case. It wasn’t unusual for him to be calling. It had only been a month or so since the incident. And it was an attempted murder case. Though, they had their guy, and I was pretty in-depth with my report. It kind of comes with the job. Turns out alley guy wasn’t connected to the trio. Or to the drugs or to any active cases being investigated. He was just a guy in an alley, with a knife. Some Gotham style shit. I figured that would be the final “I” to be dotted and the manila folder would but put in a drawer and sent to archive. And it did, for a while.

First it was in my dreams. He would appear standing on the beach, hundreds of miles away. A tiny dot that I just knew was him. Each night he would get closer and closer. Till the thought of seeing him, face to face kept me awake for two days straight.

I saw him in the faces of my neighbors, as they checked the mail or waved hello. I saw him when I turned the tv off. I heard his voice, Not the blood filled ramblings of a dying man, when I was in the shower or taking a shit. When I was doing laundry or washing the dishes.

Eventually my eyes grew heavier than my will and I fell asleep.

We met outside the bar. The one where he died. We sat at the bus stop across the street. It was afternoon in front and pitch night behind. People without faces bustled around us, fading out of existence once out of sight.

He told me the story about how he came to be in that alley that night. He told me that he was but a messenger. A carrier. Patient one million. And that I was patient one million and one. I had two choices. Bear the weight of death or seek my own to pass my sentence to another. Dreams have no beginning or end. They have no sense of time or reason beyond the imagination of the beholder.

Not this dream.

This was my prophecy.

He wanted me to kill. He wanted me to rip the throats from peoples bodies and wave them in the air, laughing at the Gods. He twisted the faces of my neighbors into horrible facades of ghouls and monsters. Demanding their demise. For me to rid them from this world. To save those that would fall victim to their talons and fangs. One for the many Frank. One for the many.

I knew it wasn’t real. I knew I should have talked to Dr. Mena about it. But I just got this job, my clearance went through last Thursday and I couldn’t risk it. If I had, maybe they would finally believe me. But there was no progress note to reference, there was no appointment on the books. I was deemed fit for duty and given the stamp of approval.

This was nothing but nightmares, PTSD twisting my mind. Shell shock screwing with my perception. Nothing I cant get through.

He didn’t quit. He spoke endlessly night and day. Through interviews and during my editing sessions. In the bath or on the subway. “That one, that one, what about that one? He killed someone ten years ago, he’s perfect, he deserves it.”

I never thought that I would give in. I thought I was better than that. Of stronger character than that. I thought eventually whatever this was would dissipate in the morning air, and nothing but the remnant of a dream would be left.

***

He told me that she had drowned her daughter in the tub. That she laughed while doing it. Her other daughter stood outside the bathroom; silent, watching. Before reality snapped her out of the trance and she ran for the phone. He told me that she was let out on good behavior. That they let her daughter live with her again. That she would do it again.

I bit my lip and played with my facial hair. I smacked myself hoping I would wake up. I started making a sandwich, something to distract myself. What even goes in a sandwich? I left the bathroom light on. Fans going.

“Do it now, today, while she’s at school. You have to save her.”

I called out sick. Told them it was coming out of both ends. They didn’t ask any questions and hung up the phone.

I got in my car and put on my seatbelt. I just wanted to see if there even was a Mary Spinelli at 42 Leaf lane. I turned the ignition, reached my arm over the passenger seat and backed out into the road. I had to know.

He was there. From when I arrived at the corner of her street. To the moment I was in her kitchen. Holding the knife. He was behind her in the living room, as she folded her daughters laundry. Pink shirts with cartoon animals. Tiny white socks. He was there when I opened my eyes. He was sitting in their Adirondack chair, on the back patio. I was sitting on the first step. Looking at my hands. Elbow deep in Marys blood.

He left when I got back to my car. He wasn’t there when I slowly drove away. He wasn’t at my apartment waiting for me. He didn’t show up in my dreams. I killed Mary Spinelli. He could Rest In Peace.

The next morning I woke in a feverish sweat, two hours late for work. That feeling I was seeking met me as my eyes adjusted to the mid morning light. Knowing it was just a dream.

***

I met Anne six weeks later. She transferred from a sister paper and was going to be the editor for my department. I knew the moment I saw her, I would ask her to marry me. I just didn’t know I would do it four times.

I spent every moment of that summer with Anne. We ate more Chinese food than Chinese people eat. I found any excuse to stay late and work with her. I even slummed to botching some of my stories so that we would have to talk. So that she would be forced to “help” me get the story out. I was only interested in one story. Ours. I’m not ugly, but I’m not handsome. I’m somewhere in between. Average? I guess you’d say I’m average. And an average guy like me has to work a bit harder to garner the attention of woman like Anne. Editors have a reputation. Not a bad one, they just call things as they are, feelings be damned.

Eventually she called my bluff and exposed my poorly crafted plan and agreed to meet over a real dinner, at a real restaurant. Of which I must choose. That dinner led to another and another. I was living a dream.

A dream that as some dreams do, spiraled into a web of lies and chaos. Into the world of nightmares.

Anne was going to move in with me, but my place was too small and hers too far from work. So we decided to just find a whole new place, our place. We moved in together on our one year anniversary of dating.

That was when He came back.

***

Of course I refused. I yelled and I told him he wasn’t real. That none of it was real. He was just the mask of a traumatic event, resurfacing.

Darren Ewing died two days after we moved in.

With only the essentials put away, our boxes were still strewn about every square foot of our new two bedroom one and half bath. I should have remembered that when I came home. I wouldn’t have tripped over the pots and pans set. I could have slipped into bed without Anne even knowing I was gone. But that wasn’t me. She came storming down the hall, bat in hand, eyes wide and ready to fight.

From then on, I rented a room and left clean clothes behind. To change into after. This was my second kill and I had a better sense of what to do. I never worried over evidence. Over the chance of being caught. He told me not to. That things were as they should be and I should keep going.

After the third or fourth, it got easier. His voice was softer. Less obtrusive. He let me live my life the way I wanted to. I got my promotion and we bought a new car. Anne was pregnant with our fist daughter and we were trying to pick out nursery colors. Convincing ourselves that no matter how many books we read or what sage advice is bestowed we’re going to make terrible first time parents. We laughed and that was ok. We were going to be parents.

I woke up an went to work. I paid my taxes on time, balanced my debt to income ratio and was even setting aside for Faustinas college fund.

Then at night, when He would come, I would slip out of bed, grab my bag and drive away. Wash my hands, change my clothes and return to the warm loving embrace of my sleeping, pregnant wife.

They weren’t people anymore. They were monsters. Scourges on society. Drug dealers and rapists. Murderers and pedophiles. I was their judgment. He found me in that alley, to save the lives of innocent people from the insidious plans they were unknowingly a part of. With each death another child was saved from being shuffled out of the country to fill the sick desires of some pervert in the sand box. A wife saved from the brutal beatings of her husband. A nephew avenged. I was killing those that would do worse to others.

I slept soundly on this. I cradled the growing belly of my wife, knowing that each time He came, it was to make the world she would be a part of, safer.

***

I expected to be called to these scenes. The ones that were local anyways. A mother of two found strangled in her kitchen. Man found dead in his tub. But the cops must have kept the lid tight, called them suicides or accidents. Because nothing short of an obituary ever made it to print.

Everyone is under the impression the day I walked away from my family was the beginning. But that was just half way.

He must have met his quota after our initial spree. It wasn’t until Anne was three months pregnant that He came back. Three years and two days since I killed Martin Lynch. Number nineteen.

I put fourteen notches in my belt in the four years since Matty was born. Faustinas Birthday would end with number twenty three.

We spent the weeks leading up to her birthday reaching out to her friend parents, and hiring a caterer. We’ve done enough parties to know it was smarter to just pay someone else to cook and clean up afterwords. I called the bouncy house and entertainment. Anne dealt with the cake, food for thirty, and decorations. She was a machine. I was the out of work tradesman. She ended up taking over the whole thing when she saw the clown I had booked. No preteen girl is going to want some creepy clown ruining their party. My mistake.

In complete Anne fashion, everything was going off without a hitch. The cake arrived the day before and was chilling in the lay down freezer in the garage. The caterers showed up half an hour early just to run rehearsal. Good thing. They forgot half the appetizers. I needed my spinach spanakopitas. I paid extra for them. Anne has a very special look when things don’t go as plan. It’s not panic or anger. It’s excitement. She gets to fix something.

It was only about a half hour before the cake was due to come out. Before the candles would be lit and songs would be sung. The adults had broken off in their phone tree cliques and I found myself with the fellow Dads. Feinting interest in Golf was a lot easier than football. Football is America. America is free. I should know football.

It was then. With hotdog in one hand and beer in another, that He arrived. He stood behind Mr. Stetson, Cassis’ father. He nodded his head. I returned the gesture. I put my food down, excused myself and left out the back gate.

***

It has been twelve years since Ive seen my wife and children. It’s been two years since I admitted myself to Norwich State Asylum. I admitted myself after the last kill. Something about it felt different. It felt wrong. I felt something about it. And that sent me into a splashing array of emotional frenzy.

I never went to court. I never had a lawyer tell me to plead the fifth. I never met with detectives to review evidence or to try and cop a deal. I just asked the kind lady at the front desk of the asylum if murder counted towards rent here. She laughed. I didn’t. She picked up the phone and one thing led to another. I’ve been here ever since.

Dr. Mena is here too. His main office is down the hall to the left. He is the one who told me to start this journal. This memoir. He told me that it would help me address what happened. That it would help me see the truth. But he doesn’t want that. He just wants to see what’s going on in this head of mine.

I told him about Him. How we met in the alley and how I contracted his curse. Nothing I’ve written isn’t scribbled in one yellow pad or the other. But he wants me to do it, and what else am I going to do.

***

My names is Dr. Enrique Mena. The story before you was composed by one of my most interesting patients. She is seventy eight years old and has been a resident of Norwich state for forty of those years. Eunice Hempstead was brought to our doorstep, fighting tooth and nail, by her father at the age of thirty eight. It was apparent after just a few sessions that her affliction was deeper than anyone had expected. While otherwise euthyimic during the day. At night she was riddled by night terrors. Night after night she seized and convulsed violently. Her gagged screams could be heard all through out the floor.

She grew a tolerance to the sedatives, something that I wasn’t even sure was possible. She killed four people during her attempt at escape, including herself. It was the quick thinking of an orderly, who was able to pry the syringe from her trembling hands that kept that number from increasing. Regrettably, his actions led to the death of Eunice Hempstead. While the two grappled on the floor, the needled pierced Eunices pericardium and let loose the cocktail inside. Her last words were of money and innocence. Nothing more than the ramblings of a Paraphrenic. Remember this, Psychosis is a symptom, not an illness.

Please turn to page eighty four in your textbooks and read silently while processing the story you’ve just read. After a while we will break, then regroup for discussion.

Welcome to your first day of Psychology 101.

So here’s the thing about Jack and Diane.

Diane walked into Jack's malt shop back when bowling shirts were paired with creased pants held up to your actual waist. She was a shy brunette from downtown and his family owned most of the bricks in the city. He smiled at her when she would come in. He’d get lost in her arrival till the cold root beer overflowed onto his hand. She would laugh and find her seat in the red booth. Where her friends were already waiting. Laughing behind their menus. There was a lot of people visiting the Malt shop on spring street that day. It was 82 degrees, a record high for southern New Hampshire in September, and there was only one place to chill out and cool off. Tappy’s Pharmacy.

After months of courting and a year of dating, Jack took Diane’s father aside and spoke the words no father wants to hear. Will you let me take your daughter away from you?

He obliged and the two were married the following June. She wore her mother’s dress and her grandmothers sapphire necklace. Jack wore a simple black suit. After their I do’s they stole away to the Bahamas for their honeymoon.

The first child took his fathers name, the second, his great uncles, Samuel.

Together they lived rather uninteresting lives. They gossiped, they fought, they loved and ate as a family every night.

Until the morning of May 22nd, 1976.

The alarm clock was on Jacks side of the bed. It is set to go off every day at 0545. Jack gets up, heads to the bathroom and twenty minutes later he is out the door. It has been this way since 1952 when he took over Tappys.

Until today.

Diane hated having the juniper bushes so close to the house. Jack said they were to keep the nosy neighbors out of their business. So in they went, and within one day they became an apartment complex for the loudest, most inconsiderate tenants. Birds.

Even with the cotton balls filling her ear canals, partly for Jacks snoring, she can still hear them hemming and hawing as they bicker with one another. But there was something else wiggling its way through the plugs. It was Jacks alarm clock.

She rolled over to shake him awake when she felt his frigid, rigid corpse.

They couldn’t even wait till after his funeral to start proposing that she move here or there, she simply couldn’t be left to live alone. Diane smirked and buried her husband. She wore the cerulean sweater that he liked so much. Tradition be damned.

Hours were spent deliberating on what to do next, with Mother. Till the geyser of fury erupted from her pursed lips.

“I will not be treated as invilid simply because I am a widow. Samuel please take me home.”

That was the end of that.

The first year was the hardest, but it made the second seem easy. By the fourth, Diane began to decline. Her mind would run loops through her empty nest. Memories broadcasted in technicolor with full surround sound replayed constantly in her minds eye.

Diane does her best to avoid the front hallway. She looks up and out for a thousand miles every time she goes up and down the stairs. Hash marks climb the banister as a vine through time. Blue for Jr, and green for Sammie. She would keep them still while Jack ruffled their hair before seeing how tall they had gotten. Inches turned to feet rather quickly. All the men in Jacks family were tall, Diane just didn’t know it would start so early.

They got a dishwasher a couple years back, a Kenmoore. Top of the line. An anniversary present from Jacks father. She remembered the day it arrived. She spent the morning in the front window, knitting Jack III a blanket. He was due any day now. The house stood empty of people but was full of warm summer light. It smelled of oat bread and Shepard’s pie. Jacks favorite. Diane used the strawberries from her garden to make the jam. Only got a couple jars this year though, the birds busted through the chicken wire and wiped out a few plants.

As she loaded her two plates, two cups and two sets of silverware into the Kenmore, as she has for twenty years, she stood up too fast, the blood rushed out of her face, and she began to fall.

She knew it was Jacks hands that saved her. She would know them from any others. She could still feel his grip on her shoulders and arms. His cologne was in the air.

Diane slept on his side of the bed that night. She used his pillow and hugged her own. Diane was a proud woman. Especially when there was no one else around. When it mattered most. She refused to cry at the funeral. To be a matriarch was to sacrifice, so that she may provide the care that only a mother can to her grieving family. It was his Stetson that brought the first tear. It was not until she put on his favorite flannel and laid in bed that Diane finally grieved for the loss of her husband. That beautiful man that always brought her drink first and never once looked at the other girls.

There is a particularly restless slumber that occupies the night of a person who falls to sleep sobbing. It is filled with tossing and turning, the removal and application of blankets, hot an cold, awake, exhausted. Around three in the morning Diane finally closed her eyes and invited the sandman to work his magic.

It was this night that Jack came home.

Through the chimney he fell as a ball of flames. Landing in the soot with a crash. Using the downstairs shower he made himself presentable before quietly climbing into bed. Diane had shuffled back to her side, leaving his side warm and ready for sleep.

It was Jacks snoring that stirred Diane awake, just moments before the alarm went off. An alarm that hasn’t been set in years. Jacks arch reflex smashes the snooze button before he peels his face from his pillow. With a yawn and outstretched arms he gropes the air hoping to find the loving arms of Diane.

Diane was in the corner of the bedroom, using the bureau to put space between them. It wasnt possible for him to be here. To be in their room, in their bed. Using their sheets and his clothes.

“I dont know who you are, but you need to leave now, the police are already on their way!”

“Damnit Diane, what are you talking about? The police? Old Sandusky’s gonna have my ass for sending the boys out here for no good reason. Go call em off will ya?”

“Ill do no such thing! Get out of my house!”

Jack turned his shoulders and took his hand off the alarm clock. He slipped on his robe and turned to face his understandably confused wife.

“You, you.. you.. you you.. you look.. ju..just like him..”

“I’m home honey, I’m home.”

Diane put down the golf club and ran straight into his arms. She nestled the chest hair that pried its way through is V-neck. It was him. It was really him. His arms, his body, his face, his voice, his smell, HIM.

“How?” She whispers into his robe.

“I dont know love bug, I dont know.”

“Oh the children will be just thrilled! I must call them!” Diane dashes towards the door, Jacks strong arms reel her back in before she can get a way.

“Not yet bug, lets just enjoy this secret for now. We can tell them in the morning.”

The next morning became the next week, the next week turned into next year. Page after page fell from the calendar and still not a word to the family of Jacks return. It was better for the family. This wont last forever and they’ve already bore the burden of burying him once.

With her family spread across the country living their own lives, Diane fell into the the comforts of Jacks return privately. They played rummy and sipped tea, even shared the occasional cigarette over morning coffee. Just because. As the days blended into one another, Diane began to notice more and more wrinkles on her face, and spots on her arms and legs. Her hair turned gray seemingly over night and her voice turned down to a whisper. Jacks arms grew larger, and his hair black and full. Diane wanted to call for a Doctor, but Jack reassured her it was nothing but Father Time. No need to worry.

He would be there when she had a hard time getting out of bed. When she couldn’t make it to the toilet in time. When her bones creaked and her spine stiffened. He was there to comfort and smile at her. To kiss her forehead and push back her hair. So that he could see the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

Jack held Diane close as she took her final breaths. They sat together on the chaise lounge on the back patio. Wrapped in the blanket she intended for Her great grandson. The sun was just over the horizon the birds were all silent. Her Chamomile tea sat cold on the ottoman. Diane was gone.

In a brilliant flash, Jacks form vanished and a ball of light was all that remained. It flew in circles like a trapped bat before burning through the screen door and shooting up the chimney. Sending sparks of black flame from his tail. Sparks that would feed on the wood paneling and the cedar walls of their home. Sparks that would grow and engulf every memory and photograph. Every moment and keepsake.

It took three fire trucks two hours to put the fire out. The water splashed around the way it does when you douse flaming oil. They had to call in a truck from the next town, and another to be on standby. Everyone knew who’s house it was. They went there when they were kids for trick or treating. They were the family that always handed out full bars. They delivered their newspapers and went to school with their kids. This house was a part of the neighborhood as much as the town hall. They did everything they could to save it. But it wasn’t enough.

The fire marshal came after the last snipping flame was put out. He was the one who found her. The nylon blanket melted to her charred skin. Her mothers necklace draped, unscathed around her neck. Her wedding ring glistened in the steam.

He didnt want to report that she set the fire out of grief. That years of solitude had finally driven her mad. Instead he called it an electrical fire. Her hair drier malfunctioned and took the place like a tinder box.

Her legacy deserved as much.

My name is Rose. Well its Rosemary, but do NOT call me that. It means dew of the sea. That isn’t the type of fun fact I usually keep nestled in the confines of my brain. It was embroidered into every Sunday dress, blanket, cotton sheet, top cover and yes, even the bed skirt of every bed Ive slept in till the day I graduated high school. I moved out in my graduation gown. White square cap and all. Something Catholic about it, I mean Cathartic. Or both? I don’t really know a lot about that either. Growing up in the south of Boston, raised on the blood and body of some effigy, it didn’t jive with me. I stopped paying attention right after my first visit from “flow” right there in the pews. My mom grabbed my hand and squeezed it so hard, I thought I was going to clock out right then from the mix of it all. She slapped and cursed me with the twitches that crept from the sides of her mouth. I knew the way her face got when she was throwing me through the cleaners in her mind. I was wearing my jacket in July after all. I sat through the two hour service before I could attend to the devils mark on womanhood. I pray, ha! Ya, me, I PRAY, that my “mark” still stains that pew.

That same church buried my mother fourteen years later. Lung cancer. It was 1974, I was a sophomore in community college. I was trying to be a nurse. I got pretty far, until the blood. I didn’t think that I could handle the blood. I thought that when I saw a doctor carve into the flesh of another person, my face would turn and I would cover my mouth and trip over the bedsheets trying to find a trash can. I wasn’t far off. I didn’t trip over the bedsheet, I didn’t loose my breakfast either, but in a way, I suppose, I couldn’t handle the blood.

After her funeral, I thought I could balance the empty feeling of not knowing what to feel about her death, and the curriculum of microbiology and western civilizations. I attended classes and maintained an average GPA. The school counselor advised that I take an excused absence, reassured me I wouldn’t loose my seat in the program and for all intents and purposes, escorted me off the campus.

The state started sending letters, demands really. Her apartment was still furnished and covered in plastic. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was the only one around to clean up after her. I’d just drop them in the neighbors mailboxes knowing they would get sent back and their cycle would start a new. I kept the beast at bay for two months before the warden arrived. He found my apartment, just as my mothers. Full of life and memories, and yet wholly abandoned.

Playing pin the tail on the Amtrak sign, I hopped a train that took me to a bus. I rode that till the trees outnumbered the buildings. It was a small town. Four hours west. Killingly. There was a trolley that ran down Main Street then curved right into Canal. I felt like I was in San Francisco, on my way to eat lunch over looking the Golden gate. It was no bridge of grandeur but a bridge none the less that decorated the view outside the quaint broken yolk cafe. I sat at the bar and watched the torrent calmly slink, away a ribbon carving through the earth. That was until the grating sound of metal prongs on ceramic clawed at my ear drums. A toddler pouting over a plate of peas. Who orders peas for lunch? The same people that force their kids to sit at the table, obstinate, until their vegetables are eaten. The parents that make you bring that plate of cold cream corn to your bedroom. The parents that force you to scratch a metal fork against the plate until two in the morning. The parents that see your tears, but refuse to give in and realize its slop fed to prisoners of war. The parents that remove the metal pronged utensil, only to replace it with a spork. A piece of plastic that if found in any condition other than it was presented, would herald a rage the fallen angels would fear.

I watched as the waitress, who after reading the dining room, promptly brought the family of three a spork wrapped in cellophane. Dad thanked her, removed the heavy stainless steel fork form his daughters frail determined grip and supplicated her with the object that pulls from my viscera feelings of twitching carnage.

Waking up in a hospital after drinking too much, with an IV in your arm is one thing. That sounds like a Tuesday. Having a panic attack and waking up to a diagnosis is another matter completely. I went face first into my biscuits and gravy.

The Docs threw the phrase “anxiety disorder” around more times than I can count. These white coats talked to each other more than they did me. I sat up in bed and watched as the top doc went through his ranks and humiliated them one by one. Right there in the room, so close I could count the rings on his spiral notebook. Thirty-five. I can tell his dry cleaner couldn’t fully remove the ink stain from his pocket. Doc approved of my change of address. Out from the stressors of the city and into the small town life. He gave me a slip of paper with some chicken scratch on it for some pills and told me to find a therapist to follow up with. Once they where done with me, I found my clothes in a clear bag, marked “patient”. Next to it was a brown to-go bag, stamped “Broken yolk”. They must have really felt bad for me. I took a long piss then got dressed and left. Well, not before I took the elevator down into the basement. To the morgue.

It was colder than I expected it to be. I dropped out of school before we got to clinicals. Before I got to see a body. To see where they are stored. Far from the sensitive gaze of the living. I pried the bracelet from my wrist and shoved it deep in my jean pockets. If I get caught, It’s easier if I’m just a lost visitor looking for the bathroom. As the metal doors of the elevator closed, a gust of warm air mixed with the frigid stench of formaldehyde. Sending a chill down the backs of my legs and arms. The thrill of being where I am not supposed to be, the pull of what’s left after life, an amalgamation of power and positioning took control and without blinking I was there. Staring down at a husky, stark naked man from the medical examiners stool. Just dead weight on a table. The tag on his toe read. Derrick Stowd. Without blood coursing through the immense highway of veins and arteries, his skin was fair as snow. I knew he wouldn’t move when I pried his fingers back, farther, farther. Rigor Mortis gave me resistance, but I channeled that stored energy and found myself exploring the parts of my body only the devil would compel me to touch. His chest was marked with blue ink, dashes in the shape of a Y. His heart was still in his chest. Dormant, sleeping, waiting for a shock to run through its nodes, a twitch it will perform even in death. We are simply and extensively, voltage boxes covered in skin and disorders. Destined to lose the spark and decay.

The ME’s coffee was still steaming on his desk. He’s due back any moment and I’m in too deep for the bathroom excuse. Back up the elevator, down the passageway and out the front door. I spent the bus ride home imbibing on the lingering scents on my fingers. The smell of death on one, the scent of pleasure on the other. I passed the tips of my death fingers around my lips the way my mother used to put on lipstick. The pulse of life quickened my heart as I bit my lip. Copper and stainless steel, life and death join into a potion. An enchantment. A compulsion.

Life is such a simple thing. A flicker in the eye that passes through the heart and tells the body to keep it up. It is the spirit that separates mind and body. It is the suture woven between them. I find myself desiring to pull that thread, to see the spark travel from the heart back to the eyes.

I passed my stop four stops ago. I couldn’t move my legs. Paralyzed with desire, I craved nothing more than the dark red blood of someone’s veins painted on my skin. To gaze straight through their blown pupils and count away the moments till the stardust in their minds vanish.

It wasn’t until the passenger next to me pulled the cord, telling the driver to stop, that I noticed my hand was holding the spork from inside the to-go bag. To see it was unwrapped, and the second to last tine had been snapped off. The guy barreled past me before I could move my knees. Sending my second attempt at breakfast to the floor. Something about the color of the white gravy on the aluminum floor sent my mind into slow motion. I could feel my chest getting tighter. My free hand pulled on the coat tails of the guy and in the flash of a reflex, he was back in the seat beside me. Muffled voices grew louder and less distinct. Lost echos from an ancient civilization. I saw mother coming into my room, her eyes searching for the bowl of creamed corn. For the Spork. By now the potion had taken full effect, I sat upon the precise moment on which to act. There is nothing after. Only this, here, now, this dirty old man, this plastic piece of memorabilia.

He fought at first. He yelled when he felt the plastic shards break off in his neck. I snapped the spork and sliced into his thyroid membrane. Only the passengers could be heard now. All of them yelling and hollering, not one of them doing anything about it. His arms flailed as a bird with broken wings. I placed my hand over his throat, I wanted to feel his pulse slow. I wanted to be able to count the moments. To live in each one. There it is. Three. Two.......One.

#thriller #horror #murder #fiction #feminine #female #pain #explode

I don’t know how they talked me into this.

Frankies taillights bounced away and it was too late to think about how I got here. Mike said If I didn’t start by sun down it was going to be a hell of a time. Fucking Frankie showed up two hours late and smelling like salami. He gave some shit about his Ma in the hospital for testing, but the shredded lettuce on his collar told me otherwise. I guess they have been using this spot for a long time now. Mike says to walk till I hit the double blue trail then bank a right at the boulder that looks like a bear. After a bit, you’ll know the spot. Ive only been into a forest a couple times. Field trips and high school parties. I’m not even sure what a bear really looks like, let alone what a rock that looks like one, is gonna look like.

I joined up with the Old Boys nine months ago. My uncle knew some guy and that guy knew this other guy, I mean I don’t ask a lot of questions. I do what I’m told and I get paid for it. Its 1954 and there ain’t much for a guy like me to be doing. So here I am, rehabilitated by the sweet and sanguineous state of New York, digging a hole in the ground for some schmuck who talked when he shouldn’t have. Worse even, gave a name. A real name. Not one of the ones they drill into our heads. So that its the first thing we think of. Cops like it when you spit it out quick. Makes em think you’re really caving. The white light and the humid room and their eyes and badges finally got to ya.

Take em out. Bury em. Once Big Mike gave the word, people stepped too. It was impressive.

I don’t have to worry the how, Sal’s got that. Aunt Connie called in a few favors from the deli. Got that good paper. Wrap him up good. Then double bag em. That rug shits for the cartoons.

It took me long enough, but I found where my gut told me people were beneath my feet. “You’d know” he said. Well. I guess this is it.

I’ve never dug a hole before. Something I was sure I’d have years of experience in by now. I mean sure, the one time I went to the beach, when my mom was still around, I dug and I dug and I dug, and I kept coming up with water. I lost interest and went for a swim. I’ve demolished houses and rebuilt them. I did some time in the sanitation department then moved on to clean toilets and bed pans in hospitals. In my twenty-four years, there are few dirty jobs that I haven’t done. An accomplice? More than I can count. Murderer? Nah, ain’t got it in me. Dig a hole at night, in the middle of nowhere and never tell any one for 500 bucks. I think so.

They said watch out for the wolves and bears and all that shit. They said start during the day when you can see and don’t forget to radio in when your done. They never said diddly about these MOSQUITOES!!! Digging a hole deep enough, large enough to fit a body into was hard enough. Add the constant attacks and its hell in a hand basket.

***

Three hours later, I think what looks good enough to be a resting place is finished. Its up to my ears and just a bit longer than me laying down. It should do the trick. I dug out some holes into the side and put in rocks, so that I could climb back out as I got deeper and deeper. I found water, but it sunk back into the soft brown earth. Found a few bones too, didn’t think twice, just pushed em to the corner and kept digging. I don’t have a singing voice but there wasn’t anyone out here to tell me to hush. So I kept my mind busy and my heart light by belting out what ever popped into my head.

I called in to Connie, she’d been waiting since ten, thinking I shoulda been done by then. I didn’t think to call in and let em know I was late, that Frankie was late. It felt like snitching so I just got to work and kept my mouth shut. Connie was pissed. She gave me an ear full for a while. But I could tell she found the hard stuff around one. She was drinking alone and got to that talkative state one does in such situations. I just hope she calls Frankie before she passes out. Either way. They’ll be here soon enough I guess.

The woods at night is no quiet place. Every broken twig is a beast ready to eat me alive. I never thought I’d miss the street lights and pavement, but this place is for the birds. They can keep it. I’m ready to kick rocks and get to sleep. I told Mike I’d open up the Deli in the morning. Thought I’d be home by now. Sal should have been here by now. I was two hours late and they were gonna be here just after sundown. When the roads were safer. Connie said they were on their way though. Just sit tight.

Sit tight. I sat tight for four years, my second B&E got me with manslaughter. I didn’t kill the guy but I was there when he went down. I ran with the rest of em, but I got caught. The judge saw my rap sheet, a high school drop out with a last name that ended in I, and sealed my fate right then and there. He didn’t know my Ma left me at the church when I was eight after my dad died. That I dropped out of high school and ran away because my foster parents like to put their hands where they didn’t belong. The judge didn’t care about any of that.

I used to.

Those bars take away more than they give back. But what they do provide is time. Time to think about all the crap life has thrown at me. Time enough to realize life didn’t do any of it. People did. People left me, people touched me, people hit me, people stole and cut and lied and hurt me.

Life was pretty good otherwise.

I had three squares and a place to sleep. Manslaughter gets you a good rep, so I got left alone for the most part. Did my time, smashed some rocks and figured out I liked reading. It’s like the radio, but the words are put in your head through your eyes.

***

Its about freaking time they show up. Its gotta be almost morning by now. Sals going too fast down these roads. They are nothing but rocks and dirt. I can hear his car radio from here. Show tunes? He’s getting ribbed for that when he gets here. And for not telling me to wear long sleeves, on account of getting sucked dry by all these damn bugs.

I took off to meet up with Sal, in case he needed a hand. I wasn’t sure if he was coming solo or not. Dead weight is dead weight, even for a guy like Sal.

It wasn’t Sals car parked outside the trail. It was a black Cadillac with white wheels. I could see a figure standing outside the car, its head lights were still on. Must of sent someone else, or maybe this was the Johns car. Mikes former lawyer maybe. Not a cheap set a of wheels. Either Sal lost some weight since he dropped me off or that was someone else, checking their watch and looking around.

He looked well kept, matched his car down to the white gloves. His face obscured by the shadow of his brim, but I could see thin cheeks and a goatee. I decided to stay hidden, just a few yards behind the tree line, away from the headlights. This wasn’t one of Big Mikes guys and I wasn’t looking to make friends. I hope Sal is being Sal, passed out at home right now. That they couldn’t get the guy tonight and I’d have to fill in the hole just to dig back up tomorrow.

“Sammie! Sammie you still there?”

Shit! The radio!!

My fingers can’t find the off switch fast enough. I know he heard that. My heart pounds and without even looking to see, I take off into the woods. I know where Im going, but its a needle in a hay stack for him. I can get back to the pit and lay low. Keep the radio on and call Connie. Get someone, anyone here.

***

I don’t think he followed me. I heard tires spitting up rocks, he must’ve ran too. Found more than we were both looking for. I’ll wait here till the heat dies down, and my breath catches up to me.

“Connie, Aunt Connie, you hear me? I know you can hear me, close the fridge and talk to me, someone’s out here and it ain’t Sal! Get me outta here!”

“Sammie?”

“Yea, I’m here. I’m in the pit hurry up and get me outta here!”

It took a moment to register, but the voice wasn’t coming from the radio.

“Sammie, I bet you prefer Sam, don’t you? I wouldn’t worry about Connie, shes sleeping soundly on the couch. Sal, he’s back home too. Its just you and me.”

I guess a grave isn’t the best place to hide after all. I cant place his accent but he’s not from around the neighborhood. I bet I can make it out of here and into the woods before he’s close enough to grab or shoot me. There’s enough trees here that a shot in the night won’t gonna kill me. Really glad I put in these stones. Made for quick escape and Mr. Mystery is no where to be seen.

He couldn’t have been alone, whoever’s driving is going to make their rounds then head back, to pick this guy up. If I can cut him off by playing dead in the road, I can grab his keys and get out of dodge. Leaving the two of them to figure it out.

I only got a few feet outside the clearing before he clothes lined me. I went down hard, my head crashed on the grey stones of the path. I could feel his watch face still embedded in my throat when he stepped over me, and peered down his thin nose. He tilted his hat to get a better look at me before pulling me up by the collar. Like I was a toddler who said his first cuss word. The look in his the same as my fathers when he was heading for the belt. Whatever was about to happen, was going to hurt.

“I bet this, I mean, well, I must assume that you weren’t brought in on this deal? Am I correct in my assumption Mr. Cavarelli?”

His breath was more than just spit and sound. It came out in plumes off crimson pyroclastic fog. Charing my face with every syllable. Something told me he was tenderizing me. There was no point in answering. His eyes aren’t like mine, or my priests or Big Mikes, or anyone’s I’ve ever seen. But they tell me enough just the same. I guess eyes don’t change that way. They tell me that hole wasn’t for some guy who snitched. It didn’t even need to be that deep. I found bones just a couple feet down after all.

Someday, someone’s gonna find mine.