I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  He suspected the only way to really fix it was to kill him. It really seemed the only viable solution, but he balked at it and tried to find another answer. As the days passed and he did not think of one, his mood grew darker and more volatile. His anger seeped out, it touched his co-workers and Jacob and the smallest thing set him off.

  By the end of January, he was alienating people. He spent more time at work than ever, but what he accomplished did not reflect it. He had been sleeping before, very little, but still doing it; after Christmas, he didn’t sleep at all. He passed out once, but it was on a Friday and when he woke up, nothing very serious had happened. He still snapped at Jacob for letting him sleep.

  Jacob didn’t rise to it. He didn’t like the way Ezekiel had been behaving, but he was trying to understand. If he waited, whatever it was would pass. It always did. So he didn’t snap back at him because he did not want to fight. Though sometimes it seemed like Ezekiel was spoiling for one.

  One morning, Ezekiel sat at the kitchen table drinking his second cup of strong coffee, glaring moodily out the window while Jacob made breakfast at the stove behind him. He wrinkled his nose up at the prospect of scrambled eggs as Jacob stirred them around and scraped the cooked, fluffy yellow bits onto a plate for him.

  “I hate eggs,” he muttered.

  “No, you don’t. You’re just being disagreeable,” Jacob said.

  “Fine. I want cheese on them though,” Ezekiel said.

  “I’m not putting cheese on them,” Jacob said. “If you had your way, all food groups would be cheese. You can—”

  “Then I don’t want the fucking eggs!”

  Jacob halted with the plate in one hand, already leaning down to set it on the table. He had been going to suggest Ezekiel put cheese on them himself if he wanted cheese on the eggs, but he had had enough. “You know, I am not a nineteen fifties era housewife, my darling,” he said. He overturned the plate of eggs over Ezekiel’s head. “Get your own fucking breakfast.”

  Ezekiel jumped up, little bouncy pieces of egg falling all around him, and turned on Jacob, but he had dropped the plate on the counter with a clatter and he walked by him without another word. “Goddamn it!” Ezekiel shouted. “Fuck you, Jacob!”

  Jacob grabbed his car keys off the table in the living room and slammed the front door as he left the house. Ezekiel shook egg out of his hair and scowled out the window as he watched Jacob back his car out of the garage and drive away.

  Ezekiel showered the egg off, skipped breakfast completely and spent the morning too distracted to get much work done at all while his stomach growled. He knew he was being a jerk, he knew he was taking it out on Jacob and everyone else. Delaying what he had to do was only turning him into a mean son of a bitch, but when he thought about going home and apologizing to Jacob, it made him want to stab things.

  “I will not,” Ezekiel muttered, glaring at the document on his computer screen. “I’m not fucking apologizing. Dump egg on me. Fucker.”

  He looked at his watch, saw it was past noon and spitefully decided he would have a double bacon cheeseburger for lunch. With fries. Extra large. Because even though Jacob was undoubtedly mad at him after breakfast, he knew the look of horror he would have worn on his face if he knew and that amused and pleased him.

  “Why don’t you just open a can of Crisco and chow down?” Ezekiel said softly in a mocking, slightly high voice. Jacob did not have a high voice, but it certainly sounded like a nagging wife thing to say. “A big old pile of clogged arteries on a plate.”

  Actually, Jacob knew better. Ezekiel would never die of a heart attack. He did not get clogged arteries. He could eat nothing but cake, ice cream and cheeseburgers for years and all he’d have to worry about was the possibility of getting scurvy and a double chin.

  Ezekiel got up from his desk, grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and left his office. Mason Schechter was at his desk hunched over the keyboard, peering at the screen, engrossed in what he was doing and unaware of Ezekiel walking toward him. There was a cup of pens on the side of his desk, neatly lined up with the corner. Ezekiel reached over and swatted it onto the floor as he passed.

  Even as he reached out and knocked it over, he scolded himself for being a bully. While Schechter was odd, he was brilliant, but because of his eccentricity and his social awkwardness, he had been doomed to spend his career pushed into an obscure corner of the FBI somewhere out of everyone’s hair before Ezekiel noticed him. Ezekiel had chosen him, taken him on knowing exactly what he was getting and he accepted that and usually he handled it tactfully and well. Schechter admired and respected Ezekiel, he trusted him. Ezekiel felt like a bastard for bullying him, but he was feeling mean and Schechter was the perfect target. He was the youngest of the group, the most unsure of his position and he came with a whole row of preset buttons to push and triggers to pull.

  When the cup went flying off his desk and spilled its contents across the floor, Schechter let out a startled yelp and looked around at the mess. “Um… What…?”

  “Sorry,” Ezekiel said, clearly not at all sorry.

  “Okay,” Schechter said, eyeing him warily. He watched Ezekiel leave before he got up and started picking the spilled pens up off the floor.

  Crewes fell in step with Ezekiel on his way to the elevator. “I saw that,” she said.

  “I value your powers of observation, Crewes. Gold star for you.” Ezekiel walked through the double glass doors to the elevator with her on his heels. He punched the button to summon the elevator.

  “Sir, are you okay?” she asked. “No one wanted to be the one to ask, but we’re all pretty worried. Things all right?”

  “Peachy,” Ezekiel said shortly. “Thanks for asking.”

  “You fighting with that brother of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend troubles?”

  “No.”

  “Boyfriend troubles?”

  “No.”

  “You feeling okay?”

  “I’m getting annoyed. I’m fine. Drop it Crewes.”

  “You’re being… strange, sir. Mean.”

  Ezekiel turned his head and looked at her as the elevator reached their floor and the doors opened. “Then maybe you shouldn’t bother me,” he said.

  He got on the elevator and Crewes started to follow him, but he held up a hand for her to stop. “I don’t need company.”

  Danny Jeong came toward them from a hallway off to the left and he paused by Crewes, looked between them with raised brows. “I’ll just get the next one,” he said as the doors slid closed.

  As Ezekiel was going to his car, his phone rang. When he checked it and saw that it was Jacob, he almost answered it, but then he didn’t. He threw it into the passenger seat as he got in his car and started it. He drove to a diner nearby. He snapped at the waitress about the coffee being too weak and it pleased him that when she walked away she looked like she wanted to cry. While he drank his coffee and waited for his food, he looked at his phone.

  Jacob had left him voicemail.

  He wasn’t going to listen to it, he decided. He didn’t want to hear whatever it was Jacob had to say.

  After a minute of telling himself this, he picked up the phone and listened to the message anyway:

  “Zeke? You’re probably ignoring me, but fine. I’m calling to check on you because you’re a being a fucking psycho lately. Look, maybe we should talk later because I know something is wrong and I’m getting worried. Call me back later, okay? Whenever you… get this. And I’m sorry about the eggs.”

  “Goddamn right you’re sorry,” Ezekiel muttered, setting the phone aside.

  The waitress returned with his food and set the plates before him. “Sir, would you like—”

  Ezekiel picked up the bottle of ketchup sitting on the table and opened it. “No,” he said. “Go away.”

  “Um. All right,” the girl said, and she disappeared.

  He ate some fries and thought about Jacob. He should call him
back and apologize. He knew Jacob’s message was a peace offering.

  He ate some of his food and brooded about it. At one point he even put his burger aside, wiped his hands and picked up his phone, intending to make the call. Then he put it back down and finished his lunch instead. He did not want to apologize. He still wanted to be mad at him. He didn’t want to fix it. He wanted to push Jacob away, maybe out of the line of fire, but certainly out of his way.

  Before the Christmas party, he and Jacob were good again. They had made up and fixed things. He had known that all he needed to do to make Jacob forget about it and smooth it all over was stop. Just stop following Rainer Bryssengur, stop visiting him, stop it all and leave him alone and they could go back. Jacob would think he’d made a mistake and he might even feel like he had to make it up to Ezekiel in little ways. Eventually, Ezekiel wouldn’t think about Rainer at all.

  He hadn’t done that because he hadn’t been able to. He was drawn to him. It made him vulnerable, but he hadn’t seen that until it was too late.

  Now he thought he could get the exact same result only if he killed the man. He didn’t want to and it would upset him, but eventually he’d forget about it and he could tell himself that Jacob really had made a huge mistake. He might even be able to convince himself in time that he had never really been tempted.

  There is a marked devolvement to certain forms of mental illness, especially in those who tend to become violent, the narrator piped up in his head. The violent and homicidal, when they are rapidly devolving, will often take out their frustration and aggression on those closest to them. Warning signs of potential violent outbursts include acting out in a petty and aggressive manner, overreacting to minor slights or annoyances, verbal abuse and—

  “Shut the fuck up,” Ezekiel growled under his breath.

  The waitress paused on her way to bring him the check and hesitated for a moment. Then she continued on. “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

  Ezekiel wordlessly nudged his coffee cup toward her over the table with the tips of his fingers.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Ezekiel ate the last of his fries while he waited.

  When he got home that night, he moved into the guest bedroom downstairs. It hurt Jacob’s feelings, confused him and only made him worry and wonder more, but he didn’t ask him about it or protest. He tried to get Ezekiel to talk to him about whatever was bothering him, but Ezekiel couldn’t have even if he had wanted to. Jacob was understanding, but he wouldn’t understand that. He didn’t want Jacob to know how much he really had changed or how. Jacob could forgive him a lot and accept most anything about him and still love him, but he wouldn’t accept a murderer. Even if he went on loving Ezekiel, he wouldn’t be able to forgive or condone that.

  It occurred to him that he could have talked about it with Rainer if Rainer were not the root of the problem.

  He fantasized about death and killing a lot more. It started with his ambivalent inner debate about killing or not killing Rainer to solve his problem, but it didn’t stop there. He would catch himself sitting at the desk in his room staring blankly at the monitor of his laptop with vivid images from crime scenes before him while in his mind he watched it unfold in gruesome, thrilling detail. In such fantasies, he was the hunter, the killer, the murderer in the dark.

  He dreamed about it when he closed his eyes to nap. He would almost drift off to sleep and be shocked awake by sticky, hot waves of blood washing up on the shore of his foggy subconscious, his heart pounding and a twisted knot of excitement in the pit of his stomach, a sting of arousal not easily shaken off.

  If he was going to kill Rainer, he needed to do it soon. He told himself this, but he stayed away and he made no plans to do it.

  When full moon came that January, he spent the afternoon walking the sidewalks of Skid Row. He had no real plans, or so he told himself, but he watched the junkies and whores, noted their patterns of behavior, those who were always surrounded by friends and those who went at the world alone. He watched the homeless gather around metal trash can fires and strolled through the alleys where they built their shelters. He could feel the moon rising in the prickling fine hairs all along his skin and the soft whispering purr of the cat in his blood.

  When it became dark, he slipped his skin and shifted in the back of an alley, concealed in the shadows of a big green metal dumpster. He left his clothes there hidden beneath it in a plastic bag and kept to the deep shadows and the alleyways where the buildings pressed close together. He passed sleeping homeless people and nodding junkies with barely a glance in search of more lively prey.

  In an alley not far from where he shifted, he caught the scent of a man and followed it. He was young, healthy, slightly undernourished and a bit anemic, but Ezekiel detected no scent of drugs. He preferred prey to be drug free and aware, but he hadn’t counted on it when his hunting grounds by necessity were the abode of such wasted and hopeless people.

  The man was at the end of the alley trying to erect a tent in the glow of light from a battery powered camping lantern. He was slender, a little too slender, but Ezekiel did not intend to eat him. He watched him for a little while and when no one joined him, Ezekiel felt safe to creep toward him. He kept low to the ground, crouched down and slinking on clawed hands quiet as a whisper. He had the young man’s scent, it filled his senses and he could almost taste his blood running down his throat and feel his flesh parting under his sharp teeth.

  The man sensed movement and turned toward him. Ezekiel leapt and took him to the ground, but the man kicked out and caught him in the ribs with the toe of his shoe. Ezekiel yowled and sank his claws into him, but the man jerked to the side and got out from under him, slipped his arms free of his jacket and Ezekiel was left holding nothing but worn denim and flannel.

  The lantern went flying, shadows jumping and dancing, and the man ran for his life. The homeless guy was fast and Ezekiel had underestimated him, but he was faster. He rolled and launched himself after him, lips drawn back from his teeth, a growl rising in his throat, becoming a snarl that echoed down the corridor of the alley before him as he pursued the man.

  Someone stepped into the mouth of the alley ahead and the man Ezekiel was chasing screamed, “Chris! Chris, help! Oh, my god, something’s chasing me, what the fuck is it?! Help me!”

  Ezekiel caught the bottom of a fire escape, yanked it down and scrambled up it out of sight. Below him on the ground, the man he’d chased ran into another person coming to his rescue and when he reached him, they both looked around. The monster had disappeared like he’d never been there at all.

  “Kyle, what was that?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t even know, but it was fucking huge!” Kyle said. He was shaking, his eyes were wide and he was bleeding.

  Blue eyes, brown hair, attractive; Kyle wasn’t quite right, but Ezekiel noticed the slight resemblance. He chuffed, amused with himself and annoyed. He would have to let Kyle go or kill the both of them.

  He decided to let him go.

  The fire escape took him to the rooftop of an apartment building that smelled like the infected breeding ground of parasites. He stalked over the rooftop, walked along the top of the wall and leapt to the roof of the next building. After pacing the length of the building, looking down on the alleys and streets in search of new prey, he moved on.

  His preferred victim was too specific for him to jump to the ground in the midst of a group of men around a trash fire or onto the back of a john fucking a whore over the trunk of a rusted car. He could kill more than one person, but he would rather take one alone, stalk it a while and play with it. Drawing the attention of others put him in danger of being seen and these days anyone could take a picture or a video with a cell phone. It was reckless to attack groups, a fact that deterred all forms of monsters.

  When he heard a woman scream and begin to sob, his ears pricked forward and he moved toward the sound. He found her behind another apartment build
ing; a young girl, sallow skinned, hair bleached to a fried yellow, kneeling on the ground with a tall, slightly overweight man standing over her.

  As Ezekiel made his way onto the fire escape and began to quietly descend it, the man reached down and grabbed a fistful of the crying woman’s hair. “Didn’t I fucking tell you to watch your goddamn teeth, you whore?! You can’t do what you’re fucking told and keep those big ass brittle teeth out of the way, I’ll knock the fucking things right down your throat.”

  The woman wailed and the man shook her by her hair like he meant to rip it out by the roots. “I’m sorry, Davey. Don’t hurt me no more,” she pleaded. “I’ll do it right, baby, let me do it right.”

  Davey drew his free hand back and slapped her hard across the face. He let her hair go and she fell to her hands and knees in the gravel at his feet. “Do it,” he commanded. “You fucking scrape me again and ain’t no one gonna want to fuck the face I’ll leave you with, you understand me, bitch?”

  She wiped at her watery eyes and nodded, crawling on her knees a few inches closer to him to do what he wanted. She stopped when Ezekiel growled, the sound terrifyingly feline, cutting the night wide open. Her and Davey both looked around, but neither of them looked up. Prey seldom thought to.

  Davey shoved the woman away and turned in a circle, looking for him and finally noticed the dark silhouette of Ezekiel’s form perched a couple of feet above his head on the fire escape ladder. “What the fuck is—”

  Ezekiel hissed at him and his arm flashed out of the dark. His claws, each one as long and sharp as a single-edge razorblade, sliced four gaping wounds in Davey’s cheek, baring the slick bone of his jaw and all of his putrid teeth. The man shrieked and stumbled backward, fell over the woman still on the ground and frantically kicked out, scooting away. His cheek was nothing but rags and Ezekiel had severed nerves with his claws, so the rest of Davey’s face sagged like melted wax.

  The woman saw it and started to scream.