By now, of course, she was quite convinced.
She bought an alphabetical encyclopedia of contemporary murderers and criminals, but knew better than to kill too many of them all at once, and she certainly knew better than to go through it alphabetically. Also, she killed the first man at one o'clock in the afternoon, before work, so no one would detect a pattern forming. Not that she was much concerned about being traced. The ultimate murder weapon. She'd show these monsters how to commit the perfect murder.
She went through the papers, killed some more people she found in there.
She killed an Ayatollah, but his death wasn't reported by his people. There was always the possibility, too, that he had already been dead for a long time before she focused her sight on him.
The freedom, the reach, the power. She could change the world. Save the world. She must read more on politics. She must find out who it was most important to kill for the good of the common people, and the planet itself. Presidents, religious leaders, the heads of mammoth corporations, the members of the World Bank? Sooner or later people would know something very strange was happening, but how could they ever discover the machine? Just in case, she burned her clipped papers and magazines quickly, and the photos from her central view screen as soon as she was done with them. She padlocked the cellar door before she went to work.
She contemplated placing a photograph of, say, Hitler addressing a crowd in the machine. Would nothing happen? Would the past he affected? She wouldn’t go down that route of experimentation now, but later...when she'd learned more.
The sleeves of her bulky white sweater were pushed back in rings, arms before her on the table, hands folded around a styrofoam cup of black coffee, the steaming heat growing painful to her hands but she didn't take them away, her eyes caught in the tangled steam tendrils.
The gray metal door clicked open. Rita pushed her upper body in.
"Did you go to lunch late?"
"No...my regular time," Leslie murmured, not looking up.
"Well, it's seven-fifty." Leslie was twenty minutes late.
"I'll be there when I'm ready."
Rita didn't respond or move for a moment or two. Leslie had never spoken to her in an arrogant way – except that time Rita had taken her into the boss's office.
"Ah, I think you should come back now...I just put some work on your desk."
"Why don't you do a little of it for a change? Or do we need some more paper chains for Christmas?"
Again Rita was at a loss for words. That time she had called Leslie in for a talk Leslie had snapped at her about how she extended her breaks, and Rita had snapped back it was none of her business. Leslie had started trembling badly and had barely been able to form words; luckily Sharon stepped in and soothed things out a little. But Leslie and Rita hadn't spoken for days. Now Rita could obviously sense the same situation building, but she was a group leader, and she'd be damned if she backed down.
She came fully into the room, holding the door wide open. "Come on, Leslie."
"I told you I'm not ready."
"Are you feeling sick or what?"
"No, I just don't feel like working. You know what that's like, don't you? When you and Sharon and Kenny go in the upstairs break room for an hour on your ten-minute break, and then into paste-up for an hour, and then down to the cafeteria for another hour, and if anybody asks, and nobody does, you just say you're on your ten minute break? Well, I'm just practicing to be a group leader. Maybe if I sit on my ass all night they'll promote me, too." Leslie hadn't once looked out of the steam.
"I get my work done," Rita hissed shakily.
"I get your work done."
"I won't leave until you go back to work, and I'm going to have to report this tomorrow, I'm sorry."
"Wow."
Rita slammed the metal door. The wall shook. Leslie casually lifted her drink, delicately sipped at it. Rita's voice over the intercom tremulously paging Marty, the night supervisor, who was actually primarily involved with the presses and not prep or upstairs. Several minutes later as Leslie was finishing her cooling coffee Rita reappeared triumphantly with Marty, a friendly and decent man Leslie had never had trouble with. Marty looked concerned.
"Are you all right, Leslie?"
Leslie got up, threw away the cup and approached them. "When they don't work, I don't work, from now on. I'm sorry, but I won't be taken for a fool. And tomorrow I think I'll have words with personnel...or maybe the president."
As Leslie began to pass Rita to go through the door Rita reached out and grabbed Leslie by the baggy sleeve of her sweater. "You'd better calm down, Leslie!" she hissed through her teeth, jaw thrust, her whole body shaking.
Leslie looked from Rita's fist clenching her sleeve slowly up into Rita's eyes, and smiled.
"Hey," said Marty to Rita, gently pushing her arm away.
Leslie continued on out of the room, her mind already made up to call in sick again tomorrow.
As much a pack rat as her grandmother (she just needed five or six more decades to catch up with her treasure), Leslie had saved every company newsletter since she'd started. She glanced at the clock while she snipped. She was upstairs; she stayed out of the cellar now when she wasn't using the machine, so she wouldn't grow jaded with its presence and dampen its fire. She sat cross-legged on the study floor, probably on the spot where Nana had died, but she wasn't afraid. Soon she would build a black machine, to communicate with her and others...great minds, so she might learn from them. She needed to know as much as she could about the world.
And a white machine. Yes, that would probably even come first. The opposite end of the cellar, so she wouldn't be distracted by one while at the other (she would have to hang curtains over them soon – yes, that would be dramatic, black velour or satin). The white machine would be the Love Machine. She didn't know what kind of love she might spread through it, but she would experiment. The spirits could lend her advice. Love that healed the body perhaps, or mind at least. One thing was certain...Jason would forget all about Aileen.
Leslie nodded her head to a darkly majestic song by Brian Setzer, The Knife Feels Like Justice, on her tape player. When it was over she rewound it and played it again. Tonight, again, her scissors felt like justice.
She went down to the cellar. It was twenty of seven...and seven was second shift's "lunch."
Her clothing neatly folded aside, she stepped onto the rubber mat. A nearby space heater would keep the chill air from distracting her.
Into the center frame, grinning Noh mask and mirror above, Leslie slipped a piece of paper with tiny photographs of Rita, Sharon, and Kenny glued on it. All three decapitated black and white heads were smiling.
The machine came rumbling to life, hissed, glowed, quivered in anticipation. The dead beetles came to dancing life. Leslie hooked the four wires to her nude body, and inserted the hose. First the levers. Then three names punched in on the keyboard. Switches, knobs. At last, the wheels.
One turn...two turns...three turns. On to the second wheel.
It was one past seven. They would be in one of their cars together, on their way to the Chinese restaurant for drinks and an appetizer. All together like three yolks in one egg in her fist. She stared intently at their faces. Rita. She remembered her face from yesterday, the thrust jaw.
Sharon, next.
One turn...two turns...three turns...
And Kenny, smiling at her. She put her hands on the third, last, wheel.
She liked Kenny, even if he did follow Sharon like a puppy. But he had seniority over her. With both Rita and Kenny gone, Leslie would be made second shift commercial stripping group leader...wouldn't she?
One turn...
She stared at Kenny. She liked Kenny. He was even sweet...he had never been malicious to her...not even unpleasant.
Two turns...
She had liked all of them at one time.
Her knuckles were white, her fists felt bloodless.
Leslie jerked her h
ands away from the wheel as if electrified.
She would learn the next day that on the way to lunch, Kenny had nearly lost control of his car. Rita and Sharon had screamed as the car shot toward a telephone pole, but at the last second Kenny was able to wrestle back control. Something with the steering wheel.
The next day she would be standing with Kenny, Rita, Sharon, Marty, and many other employees watching firemen and police sift through the charred ruins of the printing company they worked for. Had worked for. It was flattened. Marty said he had heard the explosion; it had rattled his house's windows. Thank God, he said, it had happened in the early morning hours when no one was inside it.
Leslie turned slightly when she heard Sharon sniffle. Rita was dabbing at an eye. Dethroned. Just monkeys now, like the rest of...
Us, Leslie almost completed. But she was no longer a monkey.
She believed her vengeance had been just and fair. It was about time justice was brought into the world.
The photograph of the printing company, snipped from a recent newsletter, burned in a metal bucket. Leslie stood over it. She was down here today, with no work to worry about, to begin work on the Love Machine.
I might not have to use a Love Machine, daddy, if it wasn't for you, Leslie thought as she dragged a box of car parts across the floor.
There had been the brief fantasy...only a brief fantasy...of putting her father's face into the Hate Machine.
She dismissed that memory, brushed it away as even now she brushed sooty cobwebs from the stone wall with a broom. The Love Machine would be tucked in the niche under the stairs. Smaller than the Hate Machine, but so nicely enclosed; putting up a curtain here to close her in would be easy. Squatting in this space, she swept old webs and spider husks with a small brush into a dust pan.
Footsteps above.
Leslie froze in her squatting position, nerves straining to pick up a vibration.
Had it been her imagination?
A muffled woman's voice.
Floorboards creaked. Closer...
Nana, Leslie thought, and shuddered.
The basement door squealed open. Leslie trembled, holding the dust pan sideways like a hatchet. Footsteps came clumping down over her head. She didn't breathe.
Men from the government.
It was a man. He turned to face her, his face registering shock.
"Jesus, Les, what are you doing under there?" Jason chuckled nervously, holding his chest. "You wanna give me a heart attack?"
"I was just sweeping up webs," Leslie said, smiling shyly. More clumping steps. Leslie came out and straightened as Aileen stepped before her.
"So this is where you hide. Like a little white cave worm."
"Aileen," said Jason, "come on, now."
"What do you mean walking in here like this?" Leslie said, blue eyes frigid.
"Why not?" Aileen smiled. "It's my house, too."
Leslie glanced at Jason, back to her sister. "No it isn't."
"It is, Les. Mom's been trying to call you but if you paid your bills you'd have a phone. She' s coming down tomorrow but I just couldn't wait to tell you. My lawyer has found that Nana's updated will was invalid."
"That's impossible! That's...impossible! It isn't invalid, how can it be?"
"Look, Mom wants us both to split this house like we're supposed to. And Nana did, too, before she got Alzheimer's disease, which she had...and she was on medication, also...she was always doped up."
"Her physician was a witness!"
"My lawyer talked to him."
Leslie's mouth hung open. She wagged her head, the ice eyes starting to melt into tears. "Don't do this, Aileen...please...don't do this."
"That's what I said to you, Les – don't you remember? Don't do this to me? Don't cut your own sister's throat? But you did...you did. Remember?" Aileen smiled tightly, began to stroll about the basement with hands in pockets. Jason stood by looking at the floor, helpless and embarrassed. "I'm not doing anything to you, Leslie...I'm just undoing what you did to me." She picked up an odd empty picture frame, its wire hanging. "Don't worry, I won't be living here with you. I'll just rent out my floor. I'll even let you decide which floor you want. But all of this – " she held up the antique frame " – gets split up evenly, too. All of it...evenly."
"I won't let you do this," Leslie said, tears rolling down her face in two symmetrical streams. She couldn't bring herself to look at Jason. Only his presence prevented her from crumpling into sobs of fear and anger.
"Mom wants it this way. What the hell is that?"
"Don't go near that!" Leslie hissed, feeling faint.
Jason looked up, startled, then over at Aileen.
They hadn't noticed it before. Looming in the shadows. Dark...still...
"Look at this, Jason." Aileen threw a lever. "Look at this. A skull. Where'd you get a skull, Les?"
"I told you not to touch it!" Leslie ran at her sister, pushed her away. "It's a fake skull like they use in schools. This is my artwork." She stood protectively in front of it, reached behind her to shut off the lever Aileen had thrown.
"It's sick, Leslie. You're sick. I mean it, you really are. It's sad." Aileen gave Jason a bitter smirk over her shoulder. "It's pretty pathetic, Les. I've tried to help you get out of this thing..."
"Go away! Leave me alone!" Now Leslie did crumple, Jason or no.
"Aileen, leave her alone," Jason snapped.
"What's...this?" Aileen said, a metal bucket at her feet. Black ash. A partially burned photograph...the fire had gone out before it had fully burned away. Aileen lifted it out. "Oh my God."
"Don't touch that! Don't do this, Aileen, don't do this!"
"Jason." Aileen held the picture up for him to see, no longer smiling. "They said it might be arson at the print shop she works at."
"It wasn't me!"
"Aileen, for God's sake."
Leslie snatched the picture from Aileen's hand and shredded it. "Leave me alone," she sobbed hysterically, "leave me alone..."
"Did you do it, Leslie? Are you that sick, or what?"
"She didn't do it, Aileen, now shut up and go upstairs." Jason got behind his girlfriend and pushed her along by the shoulders. "I mean it, give her a break."
"Did she give me a break?" Aileen said, but letting herself be pushed.
"Go on now, I told you to wait until your mother got here to do this."
Aileen hesitated on the stairs. "Just in case, Les, don't get any ideas about burning any other houses down, or you'll be very sorry."
"Come on!" Jason yelled at her. "Go!"
Aileen clumped up out of sight; Leslie watched her black legs through liquid vision. Jason came to her, touched her arm but she recoiled. Drew in on herself.
"Leave me alone, please."
"Les, I'm sorry – she's hot over all this but she'll cool off...you're sisters. You'll both cool off. Don't let money come between you two."
"It isn't money," Leslie groaned. Couldn't look at him.
"Jason!" Aileen shouted upstairs.
"I'll cool her down," Jason promised.
"Please leave me alone."
"Are you going to be okay for now, Les?"
He seemed truly to care. How could Aileen have ever landed a guy like him?
Because she's confidant. Strong. I'm a crippled little weakling. A victim, she thought.
That was why she had landed Daddy.
No – I'm strong now. I'm very strong.
Leslie straightened up. "I'll be fine, Jason – thanks." She was able to compose her voice, even face him to smile. "Go to her or she'll have your head. We'll work this out."
"Good," he said. "Okay...I'll catch you later, then." Jason moved to the stairs. "I knew I was gonna have to referee today, but I know you two can reach some kind of compromise or something."
"Something will happen," Leslie assured him.
Jason hesitated a moment on the bottom step. Leslie's striking light blue eyes looked strange with the flesh around them, and th
e whites of the eyes themselves, so red.
The photograph showed both of them as teenagers, arms around each other's shoulders, bikini-clad at Hampton Beach. Squinting into the camera. Both had long dark hair, and Aileen wore a white bikini top. The portion of Leslie's bikini top that showed was blue. Leslie stared at herself. This girl was a stranger. She had ceased to exist.
No tape music played. The scissors felt heavy and cold, like a gun.
She cut the picture down the middle. Then she cropped the bottom of the photo to remove her hand from Aileen's shoulder. Couldn't take any chances, could she?
The space heater glowed increasingly as it fired up. Radio static.
Leslie neatly folded her sweater onto an old chair.
Red row of Christmas bulbs. She lit the end candles. Shadows moved around the machine like hooded Druids.
She folded her blouse and bra on top of the sweater, smoothed back her ruffled choppy blond hair. Unzipped, stepped out of her white pants. Neatly folded them on the rest like a samurai ritualistically undoing his robes for seppuku.
This is my gun, she thought of the red machine. My Martian death ray. No...my rooftop sniper's rifle. And this – she slipped the photo into the center picture frame – is my scope.
Aileen grinned out at her, tiny. Now who was the victim? Now who was strong?
Why wait for the Love Machine when she could take Jason now?
"I tried to warn you," Leslie told her. "Right? I tried to warn you."
They had fun that time at Hampton Beach. Leslie had eventually felt left out, jealous of Aileen's flirtation with boys, but they'd still had fun.
A long time ago. Another life. Leslie stepped onto the rubber pad. The shadows quivered in the empty sockets of the glossy red skull.
What if Jason's with her? her mind whispered urgently out of nowhere. What if she doesn't die of a cerebral hemorrhage or cardiac arrest? What if it's a car crash? An explosion?
The Endless Fall and Other Weird Fictions Page 22
