Just Like Hell

by Nate Southard

  Peter screamed. Karen lunged forward to help him, but Adam grabbed her arm and flung her toward the stairwell. “He’s dead! Get downstairs!”

  Karen reached the stairwell and threw open the door, diving inside. Adam turned to see a dozen wolves exit the fog, their jaws opening and slamming shut in anticipation of fresh meat. He sprayed them all with bullets, not caring what damage he did, just hoping to make them back off. There were yelps and spurts of blood, and he ducked into the stairwell, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “One minute,” he said. “Haul ass.”

  They dashed down the stairs, leaping from landing to landing. Bodies littered the lower levels, some dead of gunshots and others chewed to pieces. Adam and Karen bounded over them all, not slowing to give them a second glance. As they reached the second floor, Adam checked his watch.

  Fifteen seconds.

  “Faster!”

  They reached the first floor and Adam barreled through the door, knocking it off its hinges. He pulled Karen after him, racing down the short hallway that led to the lobby and freedom beyond.

  They reached the lobby with six seconds to spare. The glass doors stood only thirty yards away. They were going to make it. Karen shrieked with joy, and he joined her as they sprinted for the entrance.

  He heard the boom of tearing metal as the elevator doors burst open. He looked over his shoulder and saw hundreds of gray tentacles writhe out of the elevator shaft and into the lobby. They ripped Karen from his grasp, and her shouts of joy became screams of terror. He made a desperate lunge for her, but she was already gone. He could only stand and watch as their tentacles ripped her apart, painting the lobby crimson with her blood.

  There was a clicking sound behind him as the glass doors locked.

  “Lockdown complete,” a mechanical voice said. “Extermination sequence commencing.”

  Adam heard the hiss of gas seeping into the room. He let out a scream and fell to his knees. He was only a few feet from the glass doors, and he looked out on freedom as his lungs seized.

  Blood gouted from Adam Clark’s nose and mouth as he bucked on the surgical table. A trio of orderlies in matching blue tried to hold him still, but he was wild, finding the strength of ten men as his mind snapped and his heart collapsed.

  Karen Davies, head of recruiting, switched off the virtual reality program, and the helmet attached to Adam’s head stopped buzzing. His body bucked a few more times, then fell still as his EKG flatlined.

  Karen stepped out of the training room and picked up the phone outside, dialing Mr. Rose’s extension.

  “Hello, Mr. Rose,” she said. “We just finished with Mr. Clark.”

  She swept her crimson hair back over her ears. “No, I’m afraid he wasn’t management material. I’ve got three more interviews this afternoon, though. One of them might pan out.”

  She thanked Mr. Rose and hung up the phone. She stepped back into the training room, where the orderlies had already disposed of Adam’s body and were now mopping the blood off the floor.

  “How much time do you need?” she asked.

  “Few minutes,” one of the orderlies answered without looking up.

  “Good.” She stepped outside, picking up the phone again and dialing her receptionist.

  “Shelly, who’s our next interview?”

  “Ryan Willis. He’s from accounting.”

  “Great. Please send him in.”

  I stand in Miss Kenner’s living room and wait for her to make up her mind. It’s a week after graduation. She shakes her head, dark curls swaying like the branches of a willow, and tells me we can’t do what we used to anymore. I tell her I love her, but she just shakes her head some more, says I don’t know what love is yet.

  She’s wrong. I know just fine, because I’m in love with her.

  That’s when she tells me to get out of her house.

  I stare at her a minute, and I know I probably look like an idiot. I don’t care, though. Right now I just want to know why she’s saying we need to stop, why she wants me out like I’m some stranger who snuck in through a back window.

  “It was fun,” she says. She shrugs a little, and it makes her look younger than me. Not a lot, but a little bit. “You got your grade. It’s just time to call it a day.”

  “Wasn’t about a grade.”

  “If you say so.”

  “It wasn’t, and I don’t want to call it a day. I don’t want to stop this.”

  “And what do you want, Jacob.”

  “You,” I say. I don’t know what else she expects. “I want you, Miss Kenner.”

  She jerks away when I reach for her hand. “You need to go.”

  “I’m eighteen. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Jacob. Neither one of us believes it.”

  I do, though. I stare at her a little longer, keeping my eyes on hers. She’s wearing glasses with wire rims, and I don’t need to glance down to know she’s wearing a peach T-shirt that’s kind of baggy and a pair of jeans that’s anything but. I prefer her in the clothes she wears to teach algebra. Without closing my eyes I can see the dark skirt that drops just past her knees, the heels of her shoes and the tan panty hose. I can see the black dress shirt that she buttons except for the very top. She leaves that one open to show the hollow of her throat.

  I’ve kissed that hollow a time or two. Done other things, too. I want to kiss it again right now, but I can’t take my eyes off hers. Her look is cold, almost bored.

  I need to kiss her. If I can touch her lips with mine it’ll change her thinking. She’ll see that I’m right. She’ll wrap her arms around me, and she won’t take them away until I pull that T-shirt up and over her head.

  “Get out,” she says. “Don’t make this hard.”

  “Fine,” I say a little louder than I mean. I make it to the Dodge Neon my mother lets me drive without crying. Even if I do love her, I don’t want to waste tears on a bitch like Miss Kenner.

  Now that school’s out, I work at my Dad’s pizzeria. Mario’s isn’t much, doesn’t even have a guy named Mario, but it does a pretty good business from the high school kids and families who think it’s some kind of expensive joint. Live in a town where almost every place has a drive through, suddenly tablecloths are a big deal. I guess that’s the idea behind it.

  I do a little bit of everything. I make pizzas and bus tables, ring folks up on the register and even wash dishes when it needs doing. Dad pays me a fair amount, I get all the pizza and breadsticks I can swallow, and it beats the shit out of working for the county. Besides, I’m only doing this until I leave for IU in the fall. Then I’ll find some other way to keep cash in my pocket.

  The other guys in the back usually keep a few six-packs hidden in the cooler. They let me swipe a few beers so I won’t tell my dad. They like me. I’m not a rat.

  Late at night, I lay in bed with my yearbook open to the Faculty section. Miss Kenner has a great smile. Her black hair hangs in curls around her face. I look at the hollow of her throat and think about what she let me do there once or twice.

  I miss her. I still don’t cry, though. That’s the sort of thing a baby would do.

  I stand in the kitchen at Mario’s. Heat pulses against my skin, and I think to myself that it’s gotta be a hundred degrees in the cramped space. I drink iced tea straight from the pitcher. I decide I’ll grab a beer when I’m done.

  Clinton and Ryan work the ovens. Clinton makes pizzas and shoves them in; Ryan takes them out and cuts them. They talk the entire time. It’s a rhythmic stream of syllables that doesn’t stop. It only picks up speed as the dinner rush turns into the late night crowd. I try to pick up the rhythm, join in, but it’s all just a bunch of syllables, something about movie directors and how much one guy rocks and another guy sucks. Or maybe it’s all the same guy.

  They talk so fast and so long, soon they just sound like static. I can’t even remember which guy is which. I head to the back of the kitchen to see if the dishwas
hers need any help. They’re fine, so I work on getting drunk.

  After work I smell like grease and garbage and garlic. I wad up my apron and throw it in the Neon’s backseat. Then I climb behind the wheel and drive into the darkness. I try to get lost in town, just put the pedal down and wander through the night. Instead I keep travelling through the fog of my own brain.

  I find myself across the street from Miss Kenner’s place. I watch the house, sitting in my car and smoking cigarettes. Most nights all her lights are off. Sometimes I can see a flickering in the upstairs bedroom, and I know she’s watching TV. We did that now and then. Sometimes she’d put in a porno for us to watch before we got started. She’d ask if I thought she was as sexy as the girls with fake tits, and I’d tell her she was. I never lied. Not once.

  No lights tonight. She’s sleeping.

  I wonder if she’s dreaming about me.

  I eye her front door, and I think about the time she answered wearing a plaid skirt like one of those Catholic school girls. I didn’t let her take it off the whole night. I remember she laughed as I kissed the insides of her thighs. I thought my lips tickled her, but now I wonder if she was laughing at me.

  When I’m sure the street is quiet and asleep, I climb out of the car and sneak onto her front porch. I piss on her doorknob and then leave.

  Later, I steal a six-pack from the Super America out on Route 50 so I won’t sober up.

  Lucy starts waiting tables near the end of June. She’s cute, maybe five-six with blond hair and a little stock to her frame. Not much in the chest, but she’s got a great smile, and the black panty hose she wears to work keep me staring at her legs.

  I joke with her sometimes when I’m bussing tables. She always laughs. Her second Friday, I catch her bending over to grab some silverware, and I slap a hand across her butt before I can stop myself. She jumps and whirls around looking mad. She smiles when she sees it’s me, though.

  “Don’t start it unless you can finish,” she says.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If you can’t figure it out, I’m not gonna tell ya.”

  Ten minutes later, I have her in the walk-in cooler. Her black skirt’s around her waist and I’ve torn a hole in the crotch of her hose. I slap a hand over her mouth so my dad doesn’t hear us.

  Around ten o’clock, Lucy gives me a wink as she walks out to her Dad’s car. She’s fifteen and can’t drive yet. There’s a stain on the hem of her skirt.

  On the way home, I throw a rock through Miss Kenner’s living room window. I wait to watch the upstairs light pop on, and then I burn rubber out of there.

  At home, I give myself calluses. I think about Lucy kissing Miss Kenner’s neck.

  Miss Kenner calls the private line my parents put in my room and asks if it was me who broke her window. I say it wasn’t. She asks again, and I tell her I don’t know who she is, but maybe she should leave me alone and stop being such a bitch. She says my name, and I hang up on her.

  I sit on the edge of my bed for a long time. I think about stealing a whiskey bottle from the corner store. Instead, I call Lucy.

  The Neon’s backseat is just about the most cramped place on earth, but we make do. Lucy straddles me and rocks back and forth. I grab her ass like it’s all I’ve ever wanted. She cries out, and I know she’s too young to fake it. Kids don’t know that sort of thing yet.

  Our sweaty skin squeals against the vinyl seat while the windows get foggy and the shocks creak. The whole damn world goes away until I’m done and Lucy pants against my neck.

  “That was the best time ever,” she whispers. I don’t have the heart to tell her it was only pretty close for me.

  I get quiet after that because I can’t stop thinking about my best time, about the carpet in Miss Kenner’s living room scraping my back as she bucks on top of me like a cowboy, how her fingernails tear at my chest, and she finishes with a scream before falling onto me. That’s when I push her belly to the floor and start again.

  Lucy asks me what I’m thinking about. I tell her I might be in love with her.

  My dad asks me if I’ve been keeping Lucy out at night, says her father heard some things and came around asking. He says her father’s pretty pissed off about his daughter and some older guy.

  I tell him we’re just friends, that I haven’t seen her outside of work.

  My dad thinks I’m full of shit. Says he knows I am.

  I ask what difference it makes. It’s the middle of July, and I’m heading to IU in five weeks.

  “Just be careful,” he says.

  July melts into August. I haven’t seen Miss Kenner in a couple of weeks. Drove by her house once, but there wasn’t any sign she was home. I thought about stuffing something nasty in her mailbox, but I decided against it. Wasn’t worth the hassle.

  I still look at her yearbook picture some nights. Not as much as I used to, but I miss her smile. I look at Lucy’s freshman year picture, too. She’s got a mouthful of braces in it. I’m glad they’re gone. They make her look too young.

  The second Tuesday in August, my dad walks in while I’ve got Lucy on her knees in the cooler. He fires the pair of us and calls her father. I tell him not to bother, I’ll drive her home, but he shakes his head and tells me to get the hell out of his restaurant, makes Lucy go sit in back with the dishwashers.

  Clinton says something cute as I stomp toward the front of the restaurant. I shatter his nose with my knuckles, and his gurgling curses follow me out the front door.

  I drive around town awhile. My balls ache like crazy because Dad didn’t let me finish. I decide I hate him a little, maybe more, and then I find myself turning down Miss Kenner’s street.

  The light’s on in the living room. She hasn’t even gone up to bed yet. I sit behind the Neon’s steering wheel and look at her drawn curtains and wonder if maybe this is stupid. She’s taped black plastic—probably from a trash bag—over the pane I broke. A spike of guilt jabs me, but I shake it off and climb out of the car.

  My heart pounds as I cross the street and climb the steps to her porch. I almost scream when I knock on the door.

  The squeak of old springs tells me when she climbs off the couch. I try to keep the thoughts of what we’ve done on that couch at bay. I need to concentrate. If I concentrate hard enough, I can make her love me again.

  I hear a lock draw back. The doorknob clicks as it’s turned, and then the door opens. It’s not a lot, but it’s more than a crack. Miss Kenner’s entire face appears in the empty space between door and jamb.

  “Jacob?”

  “Hi. I needed to see you.”

  “What? No. That’s a bad idea.”

  “But it’s not. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s not. I bet you’ve been thinking about it, too. I mean, look at how long I waited before I came to see you. That counts for something, right? I wasn’t desperate or crazy or anything.”

  She shakes her head a little. It takes me right back to that week after graduation, standing in her living room. I have some idea of what she’ll say next.

  She proves me right. “Jacob, you just need to go. Get on with things, okay? You’re a sweet kid, but you’re just hurting yourself.”

  “A kid?”

  “I don’t mean anything by it.”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “I know.”

  “In your shower? In your bed? The floor? When I had you bent over the kitchen counter? You call me a kid then? No, you didn’t. You didn’t because I’m not one.”

  “Right. Jacob, I’m sorry.”

  And then I knew. She’d forgotten, so I had to show her again. Remind her. If she saw me again—if she touched me—she’d remember how great we were together. She’d remember how bad she wants me.

  I put my shoulder against the door and push it open another foot. I fumble for my belt and zipper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not a kid, Miss Kenner. I’ll show you.”

  “Go away, Jac
ob! Stop!”

  “But I love you! And you love me. You want me!” I jerk open the front of my pants and pull myself out. I reach for her hand. “You touch it, and you tell me you don’t want it!”

  Her hands shove at my chest. I see a look of fear in her face, but I ignore it. I need her to touch me, to remember. I can’t keep going without her remembering how bad she wants me.

  “Please!”

  “Go away before I call the police!”

  Her words stop me a second. I wonder if she really would call the cops. Maybe it’s just a game. Maybe she wants me to push my way inside, to take her rough and hard.

  I blink, and when I look at her again I don’t see anything that looks like love.

  “Leave me the fuck alone, Jacob. You come back, and I’ll call the police if I don’t kill you first.” She slams the door, and then I’m standing alone on her porch with my dick in my hand.

  I blink again, and tears roll down my cheeks.

  Well after midnight, Lucy calls. She wants me to sneak her out of her house, so I oblige. I take a minute to wash my face and get some of the red out of my eyes. Then I drive to her house with my knuckles burning white against the steering wheel and shadows turning over in my head.

  Lucy’s waiting at the end of her driveway. She wears a T-shirt with a cartoon cat on it and shorts that just barely cover her ass. Her sneakers and fuzzy socks make her look like a kid. She might as well have her braces. She’s got a backpack clenched in her fists, and I know that can’t mean anything good. When she sees me, her face lights up like I’m gonna save her life. I consider dropping my foot on the gas and hauling my butt straight past, but something makes me stop.