A Blade Away

by Jack Wallen

  Sometimes I wanted to slap Skip. Sometimes, like this time, I wanted to thank him. I did so by snagging the phone number from his greedy little paw.

  “That man was hot!” I said behind my reddening cheeks.

  “And did you see what he had underneath that spandex? Girl, you could be—”

  I covered his mouth so no trash could escape. “You’re impossible, Skip. I love you, but you are impossible.”

  We sat back down to enjoy our lunch. Skip wouldn’t stop smiling at me. It was infectious, and I was soon grinning ear to ear as well.

  “You know, you could try to set me up with one of his friends. That jersey the blond had on was covered in rainbows; it just screamed ‘team gay.’”

  “I’ll see what I can do for ya, sweetie.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  As Lakmé drove, his mind was wrapped around keeping Allie out of the Faith house. He couldn’t let her innocent eyes spy on the dirty secrets locked inside the human body. She couldn’t know those things. But how could he keep her out?

  She sat in the passenger seat changing the stations on the radio. Her youthful beauty was filling the car. She talked about skating, music, boys, and should she just be a ‘dyke.’ She even told him her birthday was coming up soon.

  “We’ll have a party,” he said, imagining all her little friends spending the night having pillow fights and giggling about boys.

  Lakmé was allowing himself to forget his preparation for the upcoming transformation. He was slipping. Even though the give-and-take with Allie made everything so much better, he couldn’t allow his mind to continue to focus on his passenger.

  He fell quiet. His thoughts turned away from the girl and sped towards the minute detail of the procedure. Without the tranquilizer, the procedure wouldn’t be as beautiful as it normally was. Instead, it would be loud and ugly, filled with shrieks of agony. Nevertheless, it had to happen. Hope ‘N Faith deserved the transformation. Hope ‘N Faith had been a good person and lived a life deserving of womanhood.

  In fact, Hope ‘N Faith was one of the subjects he most wanted to transform. Hope was an older man, around sixty-five, who had lived a charmed life until his wife of forty-five years had passed away last year. The man had nearly died of heartache. His wife, his companion, his best friend, his everything had been washed away when Lilly died.

  He knew so much about his victims.

  Lilly had been such an accepting wife. She loved that her husband was a cross-dresser. She had even made dresses for him. They would walk hand in hand, dressed in identical frocks, down the street together. Some found it repulsive, but most just saw it as touching that an older couple could be so free and open-minded.

  The couple had given a lot of money to AIDS charities and donated much of their free time to helping the transgender community of Louisville. They were role models in a world that desperately needed such kind souls.

  And Hope would now spend the rest of his days as the woman he had always dreamed of being.

  He came bouncing back to reality as he turned onto the quiet Iola Avenue. It was a model neighborhood where children played on the street, everyone walked their dogs, and the sounds of the busy main strip were silenced by the wealth of trees and shrubbery.

  On the radio, a Pink song was playing. Family Portrait was the name. The song reminded him of his boyhood, of his father.

  Daddy, please stop yellin’, I can’t stand the sound…

  Tears threatened. He quickly shut off the radio with a single swipe of his hand. Allie barked about the song being her favorite, at which he threw a rather menacing look her way.

  “Sorry, dude,” she said, as she returned his look in kind.

  After his blood cooled down, he managed an apology laced with a little white lie. “Her voice sounds so mean; it upsets me.” He was a little boy afraid of the big bad Pink.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  I was digging into my burrito when my phone rang. It was Jason. He either had a list of names or information on one particular name for me. I jumped up and answered the phone while heading outside for some privacy.

  “Give me good news, Jason,” I said with as much hope as I could muster.

  “Bad news first. I ran a check on that name. Found a few thousand occurrences, three of which are located here in Louisville.” He went on to describe the three Chris Davies to me. Of the three, one was a minister at the Southern Baptist Church, one was a sixty-three-year-old accountant for Humana Health Care, and the last was a four-year-old child.

  I pressed Jason for the good news.

  “The good news is that there was a print found at the Evan Caprini scene. We’re running it now. It shouldn’t be more than an hour or so before we get a match. I’m monitoring the search, so I’ll have firsthand knowledge of any matches, and you’ll be the next to know.” I could tell Jason was proud of himself. He should be.

  Actually, if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he was flirting with me. But I did know better and figured he was just trying to get to Skip through me. Maybe I should work on Skipper for Jason. I tucked the thought into the back of my mind for later retrieval.

  We hung up, and I went back in to finally finish my lunch. Skip had finished and was giving my chips the hungry-zombie glare. I sat down and slid them his way.

  “I thought gay men watched their figures?” I joked.

  “Not this one, hon. ‘Specially when no one else is watching it.” Skip shoved a chip in his mouth. “What’s the T?” A piece of chip flew out of his mouth and onto my arm. He giggled and flicked it off.

  I filled Skip in on the information from Jason.

  I finished my lunch, and we took off after Skip refilled his drink. Hardly a mile away from the restaurant, my cell rang again. This time, however, it was Craig Wayne. I had a bad feeling. I answered the phone, and Craig’s voice seemed a little edgy right away.

  “Jamie, I’ve got some bad news that I’m not even sure I should share.” I didn’t like where this was going already. “But before I tell you, you have to promise you won’t do anything stupid. You’re already on the chief’s bad side as it is.”

  I promised to be a good girl, and Craig dropped the bomb on me. The chief had told a press contact that he had taken me off this case because I was incapable of removing myself from my biased connection to the gay public, which was clouding my judgment in this case.

  My blood raced to my head. I was boiling, seeing red. I couldn’t believe he was dragging my name through the mire. I was a good officer with a spotless record, and if the chief of police was going to see my connection to gays as my biggest weakness, then more power to me.

  But he would pay for this. Somehow, I would see to it that I had that man by his testicles. I had no idea how or when, but I knew that someday he would regret ever tarnishing my record with lies.

  I didn’t bother to tell Skip. The last thing that sweet man needed was to find yet another member of the public who wanted to force him back in the closet, lock the door, and throw away the key.

  Unfortunately, Skip could tell something was up. I hated to lie to him, but this time I could just bend the truth a smidge, and no one would be the wiser.

  “The shining example of humanity we call chief told the press that I was taken off the case because I was incompetent.” Skip went off on a tirade about who the incompetent really was, and how he would do anything it took to bring that fat sumbitch down.

  After I calmed the Skipster down, we did a little revenge plotting. We agreed the best thing to do was to get him planted in the middle of Club Connect with a ‘CHER SUCKS’ t-shirt on and see if he made it out alive.

  I had to admit, the idea was elegant. No one would suspect a thing. Well, maybe the entire community would suspect the chief of gay play.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  It took about fifteen minutes of persuasion, but Allie finally agreed to wait in the car while Lakmé did his job. She didn’t even bother to ask what the job was, but he did impress upon her how i
mportant it was that she stayed in the car, and that it might be a while.

  She flashed a grin and whipped out a nail kit from her purse.

  The house stared him down. It was a small Colonial with a spring flag waving in the wind and a dressed goose on the porch. There was no car in the drive or lights on in the house.

  No one was home. How perfect was that? He gathered his bags, walked around to the back of the house, and fumbled with the back door. It was locked tight. Lakmé had left his lock picks back at the hotel, and there wasn’t time to go back. He knew Hope would return from his day of work in roughly a half hour. He had to get in.

  Lakmé checked for any tell-tale signs of an alarm system, and when he found none, he broke the glass on the door, reached in, and unlocked the deadbolt to let himself in.

  The house was smaller from the inside than it had appeared. It was decorated and furnished the way a grandmother’s house should be. Cozies and doilies abounded, and the smell of moth balls hung in the air; the sights and smells of retirement.

  He went straight to the bedroom and prepared for the procedure. He secured the pantyhose to the headboard. As always, he would tie the patient so he couldn’t thrash about too much. Without the tranquilizer, he would have a little bit more trouble restraining him. The thought of knocking the patient out with a blow to the head occurred to him. But with what?

  Lakmé never carried tools of violence with him. No knives, no guns. There had never been any reason for such things. Panic was starting to well up. He had never felt such fear of not being able to follow through with the transformation, not until Evan Caprini had cursed him. There had to be some insurance that the victim could be easily put on the slab and the surgery completed.

  Lakmé desperately ran around the room checking for anything that might aid his cause. He checked under the bed, under the mattress, in the closet, in the drawers, but came up with nothing. It wasn’t until he opened the nightstand drawer and felt under the collection of Lucky magazines that he found a small pistol. It was his lucky day. The silver, toy-like gun was loaded and ready to threaten.

  He tidied up the room, took his bag, and closed himself in the closet. The one predictable thing about cross-dressers was that they always went straight for the closet after work so their real self could be brought to life. Hope ‘N Faith had no idea just how alive she was about to become.

  With the door closed, darkness became the order of the day. It was soothing. The lack of sight allowed him to become mentally prepared for what was to happen. With the recent addition of Allie in his life, he hadn’t been able to take the precious moments he needed to steel himself mentally for his tasks.

  Tucked inside the closet, Lakmé concentrated on his breathing. He breathed in the air of Hope. The clothing in the closet gave off the scent from the man. Mostly, he smelled a perfume reserved for the elderly woman whose olfactory senses had long ago become numb. What was that smell? White Shoulders? The smell was invasive and overwhelming but just what he needed to return to Lakmé.

  The doctor was now and forever in.

  Seconds turned into minutes. Finally, he heard the front door click open. The patient had arrived, and the doctor was in! Soon. Very soon.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Soon enough, Hope would open the closet, and destiny would call. Lakmé was alive.

  He heard the shuffling sound of bare feet coming into the bedroom. There was the clattering of keys and change, a heaved sigh, and then the feet shuffled closer to the closet. The old man was about to be reborn, and he didn’t even know it.

  The closet door opened. Lakmé met Hope’s eyes with his own. Time and hearts momentarily ceased.

  “No! Please.” Hope shook his head as he raised his hands to his wrinkled face and stepped backward. He must not have realized how close he was to the bed because he toppled over onto the quilted comforter.

  Before the old man’s heart could beat a second time, Lakmé was on top of him. There was very little fight left in Hope. Age had robbed him of any strength he might have. He did have lungs though, and he used them to call out for help. But the power of Lakmé was just too much. He had Hope flat on the bed without breaking a sweat. Lakmé forced Hope’s hands above his head and looped the hose around his wrists and pulled them tight. Even though Hope wildly kicked out, the legs were tied up just as easily. The old man’s strength just wasn’t enough.

  Hope was such a perfect specimen for the transformation, so fragile and delicate. He would make a wonderful woman.

  The cries rang gently into the silence as Hope was tightly bound to the bed with his own support hose. He was crying. He was obviously afraid.

  Lakmé sat down on the bed beside Hope. “You don’t have to cry. I’m only going to give you a gift. I’m going to break you from your cocoon, so you can fly away a beautiful butterfly.” He stroked Hope’s sweat-soaked hair.

  “I don’t want to die.” The tears continued to fall from the paper-thin cheeks. “Please, I have money. Whatever you want. Just don’t kill me.”

  Lakmé stared down at the old man. Confusion twisted into anger. He closed his eyes and forced down his temper. He didn’t want to take a chance on it ruining another procedure. “I’m not going to kill you, Hope. I’m just going to make your dreams come true.”

  Lakmé stood, stretched his arms high, went to the closet, and retrieved his bag. “In here are the keys to your new self.” He continued speaking as he pulled his tools, one by one, out of the bag. Before he set each tool on the bed, he gently kissed it.

  The replacements didn’t have the gleam and the melody that their forefathers had held, but they would do the job. “From these inanimate objects, a new life will spring forth for you, Hope. This life will be the life you’ve longed to have. You will soon be free from the masculine bindings and trappings. You will no longer have to hide from the world.”

  The tools lay on Hope’s nightstand. The hunting knife, the sewing needles, the fishing line, the white bra — all crude representations of what he had lost at his first failure, but they would suffice.

  Finally, the new CD player made its appearance, and the violins began to herald a new angel’s voice. The new angel was even more beautiful than the first. As the voice rose from the player, the gentle old man began to weep.

  The knife fit into Lakmé’s hand perfectly. “Ou la source dort et l’oiseau, l’oiseau chante.” Lakme sang and blessed the knife with a loving kiss. He slowly cut away Hope’s shirt with the overly large weapon. This time, it was all different, but it was just as glorious.

  The white, aged chest was bare for the world to see, to see it transform. The shirt came away in pieces. The chest was heaving and the saggy flesh quivering.

  The knife dug into the flesh. Hope screamed in wretched pain. He screamed and screamed. The sound rose above the duet. Lakmé could no longer hear Joan’s glorious voice. He wanted to turn up the volume.

  Lakmé stood and went over to the dresser. The cries were still overpowering the music. The voice was becoming ragged and breathy.

  From the dresser, Lakmé pulled a pair of women’s panties, walked back to the bed, and stuffed them forcibly in Hope’s mouth. There was very little resistance as the man’s strength poured from him in blood and tears.

  Lakmé sat beside him again and continued the slow cutting of the skin on the chest. The hunting knife was not nearly as sharp as the scalpel, so the cuts left behind ragged and torn edges. They would be much more challenging to sew together neatly. Unfortunately, that meant Hope was going to have some nasty scars. Fortunately, at Hope’s age, there was very little cause to show that portion of skin to the public.

  FIFTY-SIX

  She heard screams. They were horrible and frightening and seemed be coming from the house. Had something happened to the old man?

  Or worse yet….

  Allie jumped out of the car and ran to the front door. Locked. When she looked in a window, the house seemed empty. She ran to the back of the house and saw that the win
dow in the door was broken. Screams bellowed from within. The screaming reminded her of the Halloween movie her last boyfriend had made her watch. Even so, like the typical white girl in the typical slasher movie, she instinctively ran toward the sound of the screaming. If there was a chance she could save someone’s life…

  The back door was standing wide open, and the screams were pouring out from the inside. The sound made her grab her stomach.

  When Allie followed the screams to the bedroom, she nearly fainted. Living on the street, she had seen some pretty nasty dealings. But what she was seeing went well beyond that. Her new friend was like a vulture, tearing at the flesh of an older man who was tied to the bed. Blood was being tossed everywhere as the old man thrashed his head and torso about.

  Allie couldn’t stop the scream that ripped from her throat. Her friend stopped cutting and turned around.

  She turned to run away. Before she could get to the door, she felt a sharp pain in her back, right between her shoulder blades.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  My cell rang as we were driving back to my place. “Talk to me, Jason,” I shot to the point after one ring.

  “Where are you?” he asked quickly. I told him we were near the intersection of Breckenridge and Shelbyville Road.

  “A call just came in for a possible domestic disturbance on Iola Avenue. My program had just finished running, and I matched the names up. One of the names belongs to the house where the disturbance was reported. The call just came in, and you’re closer than anyone else.” After giving me the address, he hung up quickly, as if someone had heard him.

  I turned the car sharply, lit up the lights and siren, and sped down Breckenridge. I took a sharp right on Willis and then a left on Iola. I barely had time to fill Skip in on what we were doing before we arrived at the scene. Skip brought up the fact that the chief had expressly forbidden me from working on this case. I knew that Skip was just trying to save both our asses. I didn’t care about my ass at the moment; I didn’t care about a promotion or my job. All I cared about was nabbing this fiend and saving a life.