Fire Flies

by Marie Marini

  I couldn’t take a chance on Greg’s screaming or crying anymore. I had to shut him up. I decided to just get it done quickly, I had already broken his mind anyway, so there was no need to drag this part out. I cut his throat and watched the life source bleed out of him. It was interesting to see the arc of the arterial blood. I was smart enough to make sure I was standing behind him. It’s a profound experience to watch someone die. To really watch it, for the fear to turn to resolution to acceptance and then they’re gone. Just gone. One minute a living breathing thinking person then nothing at all.

  I didn’t have enough time or enough Scene Clean XP to fix this. My only option was to rely on my training. When I built this new life for myself it started with fire and so it would end.

  I had a couple of 5-gallon gas cans on the side of the trailer for the generator. I doused the ambulance first, then the trailer. I had my bunker gear in my Honda Pilot which was back at my house in Pompano. I would need my gear for this. I didn’t want to call an Uber to the trailer so I walked three miles and had the Uber pick me up at a different address and take me to the train station. A car all the way home to Pompano would have just cost a fortune and left too much of a trail. I got a regular taxi from the train station to my neighborhood and walked in the back way, hoping the nosy old cow next door would be taking a nap. I stuffed my gear into 3 large duffel bags. I was tempted to take the Honda, but I had to have Jesus pick me up at the airport when I got back from Haiti. Having my car magically appear would cause a problem. It took me about four hours to get back to the trailer. I was exhausted. Everything looked the same. Lab rat was still dead. I left my gear on the side of the trailer where I kept the gas cans, picked them up and went into the trailer. After I torched the ambulance and the trailer I would have to walk out of here. I could walk across the farms a little ways and find somewhere to stash my gear until I could come back for it. I was thinking about all this as I stepped out the back door of the trailer.

  There was a man silhouetted against the sun sauntering up to the trailer. He was tall and thin…

  “Well, well, well, lookie here. I thought for sure you was dead. Couldn’t figure out who would go and buy me a nice trailer down in Florida so I had to come see for myself.”

  Sam.

  “How did you find me?” I stammered.

  “Well see I’ve been a bit down on my luck lately and didn’t really have no place to call home. I got picked up for drunk and disorderly or some bull shit and the nice PO-lice man told me he had an address in Florida for me.” He laughed. “I had to come check that shit out and will you look at that, my little sister got her hands on some money and bought her big brother a trailer! You pimp that little tight pussy out to get the money for this?” He was laughing. “You still like it rough you little slut?” He pushed me to the side and was still laughing when he walked past me into the trailer. “Let’s see this trailer you bought me!” I followed him in and turned and locked the door behind me. I still had two syringes loaded with GBH on the kitchen counter. I picked them up as I followed Sam into the living room. He was standing there looking at Greg. “What the…” I stabbed him in the neck with the first syringe. He wheeled around fast but I was faster. I wasn’t the little girl I used to be.

  “I don’t like it rough asshole. I don’t like being pushed down on a bed. I don’t like being burned, pinched, poked, scratched, pushed or punched.” He was still sneering at me and laughing. We were dancing around the living room. I stayed out of his reach until I could see the drug taking affect. I lunged at him. He wasn’t expecting that. I had always run away from him before, but not this time. I knocked him down, he was looking confused now.

  “You are just like me Kris, look what you did?” He looked over at Greg. “You aint no better than me, think you so high and mighty now do ya?” He was still vile and full of hate. I was sitting on his chest with my legs across his arms pinning him to the ground.

  He was getting groggy and I didn’t want him to pass out. I wanted him to be awake. I needed him to hear every last thing I had to say. I grabbed some rope and tied his scrawny ankles together but not too tight I had to be careful not to leave marks. I grabbed a t shirt from the bedroom and wrapped it around his wrists before I tied the rope on. He was drowsy and didn’t seem to understand what was going on.

  He would understand soon enough.

  I got up and went about my business. Sam had driven here in an old burgundy Oldsmobile which was probably stolen if I knew my brother. It was parked beside the ambulance. I fished the keys from Sam’s pocket as he snored. I moved the car away from the ambulance and got my gear from the side of the trailer. I doused the ambulance in the back cab and in the driver cab. I went back to the trailer. As I went through the trailer soaking everything in gasoline I finally got to talk to Sam. He was always jealous of my relationship with Dad. He couldn’t stand that Dad paid me more attention.

  “I know I killed your momma Sam, I know that but it wasn’t like I did it on purpose. Guess what Sam, she was my Momma too. You think I didn’t need a Momma?” Tears pricked the back of my eyes and crawled up my throat. “You didn’t have to hurt me every chance you got, Sam. You were just plain mean. I would cover for you too. I was just as stupid as you used to tell me I was! I would tell Daddy that the bruise was from me being clumsy and bumping into things or falling down. He didn’t even care.” Sam had a skinny little tree branch he kept under the bed just for me. If Daddy saw the marks on me Sam would say that I liked playing rough.

  I was working my way through the kitchen and living room pouring gasoline over everything. When I made it to the bedroom my tears were blinding me. I was so angry and so sad and Sam wasn’t going to win this time. By the time the entire place was stinking of gasoline Sam was coming around.

  Oh, I wanted to make Sam suffer. I was getting flashbacks of things he had done to me.

  “I was just a baby Sam, how could you hate me so much?” I screamed at him. I went outside and put on my bunker gear. When I came back in Sam was crawling towards the front door. I laughed as I grabbed his legs and dragged him back into the middle of the room, but that gave me an idea. If the cops think that Sam bought this place and I can make it look like he was overcome by smoke they might think that he did this to Greg. Our DNA was similar, maybe they wouldn’t look too closely. I wanted them to be able to identify him and blame him for everything that happened. There might just be a little bit of justice in that.

  He was becoming more alert. “What the fuck did you do to me you little whore?” he roared.

  “Oh we only just begun motherfucker” I smiled. He hesitated. I had never stood up to him before. He looked around, trying to figure it out. He saw my gear and laughed.

  “You think you can play dress up to impress me? You were always a dumb cunt, so fucking stupid. You think I would believe that bullshit?”

  He was trying to stand up now. Realizing he was tied. I pushed him back down.

  “What’s wrong Sam? I thought you liked it a little rough.” I saw the moment he realized he was in trouble but he was still in denial. “You left me for dead Sam. You tried to kill a little girl who couldn’t fight back. You were my brother! You were supposed to protect me!” I finished putting on my air tank and my hood, the only thing left was my mask.

  “But you took my Momma away,” he was pleading now. “Before you came along it was perfect. Daddy didn’t drink so much, he had a job. Momma would cook dinner and tuck me in bed. You don’t know what you took from me!” His eyes were darting all over the place. He started to cry.

  “I was a baby Sam! I was a fucking baby!” I struck the match and let it drop on the gasoline-soaked carpet. I pulled my mask into place, making sure I got a good tight seal and opened my air tank. I heard the whoosh as the place lit up. I stood there breathing just fine, hearing my own breath and my own heartbeat. Sam tried to crawl to the door, he was sweating and his long hair that
he had slicked back was curling up the back of his neck. He was choking on the fumes, coughing and trying to stay low to the ground but he was still tied. It went quickly. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim anymore. I wouldn’t allow him to take anything else from me.

  I let him get to the door before I dragged him back into the inferno. I checked for a pulse before I removed the ropes from his ankles and wrists. You took everything away from me and with God as my witness you were going to be the one who gave me my life back. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He had no power over me.

  I was strong now.

  I dragged his body towards the back door, rolled him onto his belly with his left arm outstretched towards the door. When I opened the door the influx of fresh air would make the fire rage higher and faster and I needed to get out of there fast. I bent low to the ground as I opened the door, then closed the door behind me and ran for the ambulance. I set a match in back and another in the front cab. I could hear the fire trucks in the distance. I pulled off my gear and threw it in the back of the Oldsmobile. As I drove away, I didn’t look in the mirror.

  I had never really considered all these years that Sam could come back into my life. I just know that in that crucial moment if Sam hadn’t sneered at me in that old familiar way, if he hadn’t made that comment about “liking it rough,” he might have lived and I might have died. We always think it’s the big decisions that make a difference. It’s not.

  The scene was horrific. There was a man near the back door of the trailer on his stomach apparently crawling towards the door when he was overcome with smoke. There was another man hanging from butcher hooks. He was burned pretty bad but the arterial spray of blood all over the wall and floor indicated that he had died when his throat was cut. It was hard to tell much from the fire, but it looked like this man had been tortured for some time. What kind of a human being could hang another from meat hooks? What kind of fucked up is that? The ‘hung man’ is what we called him. The irony not lost on the fact that he was not “well hung” at all. His penis was missing. At that point, we thought it looked like that happened pre-fire. There was melted plastic dripping down his chest. Too early to say if it could have been rosary beads. It was going to take some time to do the forensics and sort all this out. Within 24 hours we knew that the crawling man was Sam. It was too much to hope for that the other was Matt. The hung man turned out to be a missing man from West Palm Beach, reported missing after going out with friends to a country bar in West Palm. Greg Walker was seen leaving with a petite woman with straight black hair. He hadn’t been seen since. That was almost a month ago.

  I would be the one to tell Kris, but it could wait until she came home. It was only a couple more days and I was pretty sure our relationship couldn’t withstand all of this. Maybe John was right and I should never have gotten involved. Who wants to be the one to tell someone you love that their family is dead? That makes me the bad guy right? Would she even care about Sam being dead or would she be relieved? Maybe she would be glad. You’d think I would know how she would feel about her family.

  I fell in love too quickly. I was blind. She didn’t know my family and I didn’t know hers, yet we had been together for over a year.

  It would be months of detailed forensic work to try to piece everything together, but it looked like Sam could be my serial killer. It would be hard to prove, but the discovery of what looked like a half-melted gallon bottle of Scene Clean XP and enough medical instruments to indicate medical experimentation might indicate we had our man. We might finally be about to give Darren Mayhew and Pete Donovan’s families some closure. It was going to be a nightmare scene to work. There was so much contamination and a multi-jurisdictional area with every detective in a 100-mile area trying to get some claim on it. The FBI were staking a claim because of the suspicion of serial kills. The press were going crazy. All I cared about was Kris. We still didn’t know where Matt Clay was.

  I picked Kris up at the airport as planned. She looked great. I wanted to just drive away and keep on driving and not tell her anything, just start over somewhere else. Instead, when we got in the car, I drove to the nearest parking lot and just parked the car. She looked at me expectantly.

  “I know you must be horny, but can we get home first” She was laughing until she saw the serious look in my face. “Okay, spill it. Just say it Jesus. Don’t hold back on me.”

  God I loved this woman, she was so strong and brave.

  I told her about the fire, about Sam’s positive identification, and about the tortured corpse. I didn’t give her all the details about what had been done to Greg Walker. Didn’t tell her about the butcher hooks, his genitals, the multiple burns on various parts of his body or the nipple we found on a slide under a microscope. She didn’t need to hear all that. Tears filled our eyes as we discussed the fears that had been haunting us both for some time. I didn’t want to bring up her father, but I had to.

  “Kris, your dad is still out there. His name was on a vehicle purchase of an old repurposed ambulance we found parked out back of the trailer. I’m worried that he might hurt you.”

  She bit on her bottom lip and big old tears rolled down her face. It broke my heart to do this to her but better coming from me than some nameless detective who didn’t know her.

  “Kris, we need to talk about getting you out of South Florida. I know some people who can put you in the witness protection program and move you out of state at least until we can find your dad. I can make the arrangements to have your nursing license transferred to Tennessee or Virginia. I think it’s best if you give up being a firefighter, at least for a little while.”

  She wasn’t even looking at me now, big old fat tears were rolling down her cheeks. She knew now that I knew everything. Our relationship was over. I would forever be the guy who snooped on her.

  “We won’t be able to see each other anymore. If you go into the program no one from your old life can know where you are or what your new name is.” I cried with the shame of the pain I was putting her through. I cried for the little girl she never had a chance to be, for the stolen childhood. I cried for us, for what could have been. I cried for myself, for the devastating loss I was already feeling even though she was right there in front of me.

  I drove her home in silence. As we pulled up beside her house, I put the car in park. I took my seatbelt off and pulled out my wallet. I took my key that she had given me and handed it to her. She smiled sadly and took the key. I carried her bags to the door. My own big fat tears were streaking down my face as she pulled me in and kissed my salty cheeks.

  “Can we have one last night?” she asked.

  I went into the house with her and she held my hand and led me to the bedroom. She kissed me slowly, softly and started to undress me. I just let her lead, let her be in control. She always was.

  “Tell me what you want Kris. Tell me what to do.”

  “Just love me.”

  There were no restraints that night. I didn’t try to dominate her, I let her lead like I always did. I cherished every inch of her. She let me touch her. I trailed my finger-tips from her collar bone so slowly down the curve of her breast, over her ribs, across her hips to her leg, barely touching her skin. I watched little goosebumps pop up where my hand passed over her. I kissed her belly, her legs, her hip bones. Oh my God her sexy little hip bones I would never forget. I loved her with everything I had. I wanted to experience this with all my senses. I smelled her skin, tasted her sweat, listened to her breath catch in her throat, touched every part of her and burned her image into my retinas.

  I had positioned myself so that she would be on top but she shook her head no. She lay back on the bed and gently pulled me to her. When I finally entered her it was slow and beautiful and we both kept our eyes open and looked at each other. After a little while, I rolled over, pulling her on top of me where she belonged. We both cried as we came and held each other gently.
I don’t know if I had ever felt that before or if I ever will again.

  I got up in the middle of the night and took my clothes and dressed in the living room. There was nothing left to say. I would hand her over to Tony tomorrow. He would protect her and put her somewhere safe until we could find her dad. My heart broke into a million pieces but there was also a kind of peace that I knew she would be okay. He would never find her.

  My last night with Jesus was all the Hugh Grant movies I had ever seen. I discovered in that night of loss that I loved him. But it was too late. It took me too long to figure it out. Maybe I was just as dumb as Sam always said I was. Our last night was magical and beautiful and achingly sad. He kissed and touched every part of me. He took his time touching me as if he was seeing me for the first time. I let him be on top for a while and I didn’t freak out, it was lovely. I don’t think anyone could ever make me feel like Jesus did. I would never find that again. I fell asleep in his arms and woke up to a cold empty bed. I rolled over and opened the drawer of the nightstand retrieving my Bible and my pink plastic rosary beads.

  Jesus was gone.

  I can see now that my relationship with Daddy was wrong. Sex should never be anything other than what it was with Jesus that last night. It should never be fear, or shame, or trying to make someone else happy. It should never be a sense of duty or that that you owe someone. You should never feel that you can’t say no or back out even if you had originally wanted that. You can always change your mind, you can always wait until it’s special. And it will always be special with the right person. With Jesus, it was patient and kind and giving and everything the Bible and the movies say it should be.