by Mike McCrary
It does not.
Murphy braces for what’s coming.
Thoughts of Mother fade.
Brubaker is coming his way.
His eyes stare out like barrels of a shotgun. Breathing in and out, Murphy tries to focus on that elusive happy spot inside his ravaged mind. Something he’s only been able to see during fleeting moments of unconsciousness. He sucks in deep, lungs filling, while his splintered brain hunts for that sneaky chunk of calm.
There’s that memory he’s become rather fond of.
A comfy little mind-spot. A moment of bacon-wrapped peace. He can only hope it’s real.
Even now, he’s not sure it’s an actual memory.
His fingers press harder, as if trying to stab through the concrete counter to gain a grip. To hold on to his eye of the storm. Jaw clenches. Eyes close tight. He’s found it.
His maybe-memory
It pours over him like a synaptic downpour of sweet syrup. He holds his breath. His heart skips a row of beats. The memory is slipping. The fingertips of his mind claw at it only to watch it fumble and slip off into the void.
“Shit.”
Eyes open, hard breaths now push between clenched teeth.
Murphy waits for the inevitable to materialize in the mirror.
Blood rolls down from his eyes.
First the left, then the right. Dual deep-red ribbons run down his cheeks. Tiny drops drip, littering the counter and sink. Staring back at him in the mirror is a familiar yet still oddly unfamiliar man.
He snickers. Snort-laughs while his body shakes.
Blood tears slide around his nostrils before slipping over his curled lip. He whips his tongue across his lips with a lizard-like swipe. Upper, then lower, wiping them into a smeared form of clean. Murphy dumps the water from his glass into the sink, then grabs the bottle of whiskey. He twists it open with his teeth, spitting the cap out into the empty bathtub.
Smiles big and broad.
Doesn’t know the mix, but it’s high on the Murphy side.
The thick edge of the hotel glass clinks against the mouth of the whiskey bottle. Murphy’s shaking hands fight for a proper long pour. Booze splatters and splashes on the counter and floor. Murphy sucks some spill from the back of his hand, taking pride in the fact he got most of it into the glass. Like a young boy who hit the toilet, mostly.
He adjusts his pink tie.
Fixes his starched white collar so it lies correctly over the jacket of his gray pinstriped suit.
There’s a knock.
Murphy stops. A whole lot of violence is at my door.
His breathing evens. Slows. Heartbeat works a steady beat. The blood streams gain momentum. He wipes under his eyes with the back of his hand. Not wanting this pesky issue to ruin the overall look he has going.
Might not get another shot at Brubaker.
He inspects his work in the mirror. A brownish red smear is spread across his face, looking like a nasty clown who was slapped silly. He winces as he wets a towel with some whiskey from the bottle for better cleanup.
Another knock.
Another snort of whiskey. Holds his hands out straight. The shaking has slowed but still there. Mr. Nice Guy mutters something at the back of his mind.
Murphy slaps his face.
Waits, then slaps himself again, only harder.
Murphy adjusts his tie.
Shrugs, takes a jerk straight from the whiskey bottle before spinning himself into the living room of the sprawling hotel suite. The massive television shows his now favorite hotheaded news program. Brightly colored graphics frame a well-dressed, handsome man passionately pounding a desk about the crisis that led to violent riots the media has so casually named the Cash Clash. Or the more callous Snobs versus Slobs.
“The current financial crisis makes the Great Depression look like heavy petting.” The British man’s face glows redder and redder with each word. Others around him nod their heads in faithful agreement.
Murphy swats at the wall-screen as if shoeing a fly.
The wall goes mute. He adjusts the two red leather chairs—the few items in the room not blinding white—so the chairs are facing one another. Getting the angles right where he wants them.
Murphy tells the curtains to open.
They split, spreading to reveal the final moments of a stunning sunset over Baghdad. The suite’s eye-candy view overlooks the enormous infinity pool complete with rushing waterfalls on either side. In the distance, hints of the lowering sun bounce off the Tigris River like a retreating fireball who’s finished today’s shift.
Thoughts of the escape video flood his mind.
Part of him loves the art of it. Part of him does not.
The knock at the door is harder, angrier this time.
“Hold please,” he singsongs at the door.
Murphy fishes around his grab-bag mind, finding the fakest smile in the history of fake smiles. He throws open the door.
Lady Brubaker stands in the hallway.
“Hi,” Murphy almost sings.
He’s struck again by how she wears that dress. A weaponized woman with green eyes that carve through the world.
They cut through Murphy, he can’t lie.
She smiles at him like there’s no place she’d rather be. He can safely assume her true smile has long since disappeared. She pushes past Murphy like an unnecessary turnstile, taking a stance in the middle of the room. Wants Murphy to make a meal of the view.
“Come on in.” Not giving her the satisfaction.
Murphy shuts the door. Locks it. He smiles again. The woman puts on a nice smile, but deep down he knows she could not be any more disinterested.
This is business.
Ugly business.
Mr. Nice Guy’s services are not needed here.
Perhaps she’s going through some similar issues, he thinks.
“We gonna do this?” Unzips her dress as if she’s taking out the trash.
“Hey, whoa. Easy.” Holds up his hand. “Let’s talk. Get to know you style chitty-chat.” Offers her the red chair by the window. He wants the one by the door. He’d prefer to block the exit if at all possible. “Please. Drink?”
Brubaker drops her fake smile, rolling her eyes as she slides down into the chair by the door. Murphy takes the unwanted seat across from her, accepting his minor defeat. She unwraps a cherry lollipop, plopping it on her tongue. Rolling it, sucking it between her deep purple coated lips. Annoyed, but always pushing the sexy.
A pop, a crack, then a boom sounds off from outside the window. The fireworks display is cranking up. Flashes of exploding color ripple across the room. Neither one of them jump or show a hint of anxiety. The booms echo as the room fades into a quiet, still state.
This moment of silence is deafening.
Eyes fire bullets.
“Well.” Murphy claps his hands. “Okay, now—”
“Stop.” Slips the lolly from her lips. “What is all this?”
“What’s what?”
“The bar. At the bar, we already talked. You liked what you saw. You asked me to come here. Sooo…” She jams the lolly back into her cheek. “Start your engines, Big Fun. Or my sweet ass walks.”
“Yeah, you don’t have to pretend, Sweet Ass. Playtime is wrapping up.” Holds up a finger. “Now, don’t get me wrong. You’re gorgeous. No argument. But sticky sexy time ain’t what’s on my mind… Lady Brubaker.”
Her eyes flare.
She sucks the lolly harder, as if the center holds some answers.
A bonfire dances behind those green eyes. Brings a dirty smile to her face. A genuine one. She nods her head, studying him harder now.
“Your eyes.” She leans in with a knowing smirk. Motions to the remains of his blood tears. “They, well, honestly, they don’t look great.”
Murphy shrugs, noticing a tiny flake of red clinging just below her nostril. Some papers in the files said some of them might bleed from their noses.
“Sucks.” Lady Brubaker g
ives an understanding nod. “Doesn’t it?”
“It does. It really does.”
“Headaches?”
“Hmmm, hate those.”
Faster than a blink, Brubaker pulls a knife from the inside of her thigh. Perhaps a blade from Japan, Murphy notes. She sits up straight like a cobra. Eyes wild and wide. Murphy is struck by her glee. They usually reserve this level of joy for parents of a fresh newborn. The blade of her knife is shiny-wet, slick with smears of blood.
“It’s a damn shame, right?” Holds her knife like an impatient surgeon. “They make it sooo hard to get guns into this country.”
Murphy whispers a soft, “Yes.”
He snaps his fingers as if remembering something.
Murphy pulls his Ka-Bar combat blade from behind his back. Cold. Clean. Black military-grade steel. Resting the knife on his thigh, he ever so slightly digs his designer shoes into the carpet. Ready to launch himself forward if necessary. He thinks of the super-needles Peyton and Thompson gave him. Resting in the suitcase near the bed. He wants to jam the Ka-Bar into his thigh for being the type of idiot that would leave them over there.
Lady Brubaker grips her messy, Japanese blood-blade.
Fireworks pop then boom outside. Exploding sparkles light up the night, blanketing the room in flickering shards of light. A fresh spark of silence.
Lady Brubaker pops her lolly out from her lips then flings it behind her.
“Your knife there…” Murphy makes a yuck-face at the blood. “Kinda gross.”
“Right?” Tilts her head birdlike. “Yours looks a little neglected. You know what to do with that thing?”
Lady Brubaker’s gaze is like a funeral.
Murphy’s smile is cold.
“Part of me does,” he says.
“I’m sure it does.” Her eyebrows dance. “Markus Murphy.”
Chapter 24
Murphy’s blood runs cold.
“Oh yeah, I know you.” Lady Brubaker’s eyes flare, reading his zeroed-out expression. “I know Dr. Peyton. Only by name, unfortunately. Love to meet her. Thompson—that guy I know all too well. But you? You’re my super, special favorite boy.”
“You knew I’d come here.”
She nods.
“You made it easy.” Searches his thoughts while speaking. “Made it simple to find you.”
“Shhh.” She presses two fingers to his lips, casually flipping her hair back.
Murphy’s thoughts burn.
Feelings race to the surface, burst, then turn to dust. He’s peeling away again. Tiny pieces of him drifting off the bone like burning paper flaking and floating. Unable to shake his focus from the blood that shines along the blade of her knife.
He thinks of the injectors, useless in his suitcase near the bed.
“The stability of things has been teetering for generations.” She thumbs toward the news show as they continue debating the Cash Clash. “The delicate balance between the penthouse and the shithouse. A thin hair holding it back from the fall. We didn’t start it…” She stands up from her chair, looking down at him. “But we’re pleased as punch to push it over the edge.”
Murphy rises to his feet, gripping his knife tight in his fist.
She steps closer.
“They probably told you all kinds of things, right? Bet they failed to mention one fun fact, however. The fact I can shut it down. I can stop the party we have planned.” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that. All they have to do is give me what I want.”
“And that is?”
“We’ll get there.” Eyes wild and wide, locked into his. “Our way. Nobody can stop us. Okay?”
Murphy stops. There’s something familiar in what she just said.
The words she’s chosen.
He’s heard them before.
“What did you say?”
“You know what? Think I’ll take that drink now. But…” Lady Brubaker considers, running her tongue over her teeth. “Don’t dare drink yours first.”
Murphy’s mind scratches, claws to remember.
His eyes drift. Shoulders inch up.
Then…
She bites her lower lip, then gives him a thumbs-up.
Everything stops.
Murphy’s mouth goes dry. Words catch, held captive in his throat.
The man and the woman at the bar. His favorite memory that’s buried so deep. Brubaker mirrored the scene from his broken mind. Identical to what he’s seen played over and over.
Murphy’s once shotgun stare now floats like a freighted child’s.
How does she know that?
Does she have the same memory as Murphy?
No.
Something is different.
A flicker of that favorite memory pops among his fumbling thoughts. Only for a splinter of a moment, but he sees the scene from a new point of view. That woman at the bar. Her beautiful face in front of him. Standing in front of Murphy as if he was the bartender.
“Tell me something. This thing they turned you into. This… Murphy?” Scrunches her nose. “Is he just like you? Is he a playground wrapped in barbed wire?”
A word forms inside his mind.
A name screaming out in the middle of a riot.
A name he can’t put a face to. One that’s not connected to a person, but a name that is becoming clearer and clearer. Then, soft like a gentle cry, that name slips from his lips.
“Kate?"
Lady Brubaker plunges her knife into his stomach.
Murphy’s body jerks.
Face falls.
He struggles to ask why?
She kisses him, robbing the question from his open mouth. Running her fingers over the side of his trembling face, she turns him. Steering him with the knife as blood spills over her hand. She shoves him free from her blade, down into the chair he so carefully moved in front of the door.
“You can have that chair now.” She taps him on the nose.
Murphy sits helplessly, holding his wound.
Eyes open. Lost.
Fireworks boom.
Lady Brubaker walks out the door without looking back.
Chapter 25
Kate.
The name echoes.
Soft, restrained, then loud and clear.
Like a name close to him. A name he’s said over and over but still can’t place where or when. Knowing that he is known as somebody else is the strangest of sensations, but not being able to place the people and events within his own head stretches the boundaries of bizarre.
His thoughts ignite. A synaptic brushfire.
Memories animate to life forming with color and light. Sights and smells. Only to have those memories break off into clumsy chunks bouncing away from him. Each one fighting to maintain its life in his mind only to crumble into rubble.
Murphy can see it all.
His life.
It’s all there but hidden behind a wall of blurred recollection. As if viewing memories through a wet cloth. Shapes and images play and dance in the bright spots of his mind. Moments with the strongest feelings attached shine the brightest, but they are all held back by something that cannot be described.
Kate had a drink with him.
They worked together.
They cared for one another.
They did this silly little thing ever since they met at a bar. Strike that. In a restaurant they both worked in. A nice steak joint in the city. They’d throw back a drink then she’d go through a ritual of sorts. One that always made him smile. The same routine Murphy has been viewing in his mind but couldn’t place who it was. It was him all along. At least a part of him.
Lady Brubaker did that silly little thing.
Performed that wonderful, silly thing to perfection.
Then she smiled as she plunged a steel blade into his stomach.
Murphy’s vision slips in and out. His loose grip on consciousness is fumbling away as his blood spills out from him. He watches the dots drop, peppering the hotel carpet like a slow red
rain. He needs to get to the phone that’s sitting on the bed. It’s like the room has stretched a mile long, the bed on the other side of the world.
She asked, Is Murphy just like you?
Like who?
Another name screams through the raging riot.
They called him Noah.
Those muscle boys from the false street fight Dr. Peyton and Thompson put him through.
Was that a glitch?
A chemical hangover from the neural chokehold they put on me?
Did they slip up or did they not know? Was their process rushed by circumstance or by the master they served? Was his name so deeply entrenched in his mind that it could not be taken away as easily as the rest? A name. A person’s sense of self is so strongly attached to letters strung together to form a name that a mind cannot let it go.
No matter the abuse.
His mind held on so tightly to those memories.
A mind that wasn’t ready to give up on everything contained inside of it. Everything they’ve told him is now up for debate. Always was, but now more than ever. Dr. Peyton and Thompson left out some major parts to this story.
Her name was Kate.
They call her Lady Brubaker.
His name was Noah.
Murphy’s kinder, gentler Mr. Nice Guy half.
Did they do the same to her as they did to him?
As they were leaving the hotel bar after Peyton and Murphy were talking in the booth, Peyton said something as Thompson was rushing them out the door. She said something about Murphy’s mind viewing as a third party.
Was Murphy watching the memories of Noah?
A spectator in the theater of the shared mind?
Had his mind become so mixed that Murphy watches Noah’s life?
He has to move. Has to keep going.
Murphy’s bloody hands slip along the leather arms of the chair struggling to push himself up. Legs feel like concrete. He fights his way to the bed. As he drops to the mattress, he sees his knife on the floor by the chair.
“Shit.” Should have grabbed that.
