by Schow, Ryan
“With what you’re going through,” Kaitlyn said, “and what I’ve gone through, do you really think it’s a good idea for us to be talking to each other?”
In my mind, I was like, so this is the gratitude I get for saving your bony ass? At least she didn’t hang up on me right away, which was what Damien’s dad has done twice now.
Lying in bed, the left side of my face and body puddling like melted wax, I struggle not to dwell on how alone I feel. Just when I start considering the merits of Xanax and/or binge eating, one of my burner phones beeps letting me know I’ve got a text. It’s from Damien. It says: LOOKING FORWARD TO TOMORROW NIGHT.
Tomorrow night? God, that’s forever away! Then again, maybe it’s not far enough away. Do I really want him seeing me like this?
No.
Yes.
Good God, I don’t know!
None of my selves can agree. Then again, he’ll never date me, so what’s the harm in being seen by him anyway? Part of me wants to text him back, tell him to just forget about it. But the truth is, I’m desperate for a friend. Desperate for someone my own age who doesn’t hate me. With Netty in crisis mode, Damien really is my only logical choice.
Or is he?
Oh my gosh, I’m being so stupid right now!
2
Irritated with the waiting, feeling alone and insane, I pick up the phone and stab in Gerhard’s office number. Nurse Arabelle picks up. I know it’s her because I hear her breathing, not saying a word, sounding as agitated as I feel.
“Part of being the mad scientist’s receptionist, Nurse Arabelle, is saying the word ‘hello’ when you answer the phone. Go on, be a good little Ruskie and give it a try.”
“I know it is you by the numbers on the phone.”
“I know you know it’s me.”
“Dr. Gerhard is working still on serum.”
“Hello, Nurse Arabelle,” I say, sarcastic and trying to prove a point. “It’s a pleasure to speak to you today.”
“You are being bug in my bonnet,” she says, not amused.
My frustration swells with the force of a tsunami, and it’s about to break loose all over this potato eating wench. “Oh my God, really? A bug in your bonnet?”
“You are annoying girl,” she says.
“I’m a half melted, radiated mess praying to Jesus freaking Christ Gerhard can fix me. At least you’re still beautiful and can go out in public. I may never get that again. Don’t you understand that?”
“You are being over dramatic,” she says, unmoved by my outburst. Then, softer, with some feeling, she says, “You think I am beautiful?”
I blow out an exhausted sigh, run my hands through my rapidly thinning hair, then shake the loose strands off my fingers onto the floor. I’ve started a pile. “Yes,” I say with little to no feeling. “If I was a lesbian, I would totally do you that’s how beautiful I think you are.” I stole her eyes, so the least I can do is tell her the truth.
“That is…that is very nice to say of you.”
“Yeah, well don’t get all sentimental on me. I still think you’re a bitch.”
“I think you are bitch, too.”
For a second we both lapse into silence, then I start laughing and she starts laughing and finally I say, “Okay, maybe you’re not so much of a bitch,” and she says, “You are definitely bigger bitch. I am putting hold on you to talk to Wolfgang.”
And with that, me and Nurse Arabelle become besties again. Well not really, but sort of. A minute later she returns to the line and says, “Doctor says serum is stable, and full dose will be ready in two days.”
The tension that has me wound tighter than a golf ball suddenly eases, like my body can breathe again. “Two days?”
“Two days,” she says again. “Come at the morning, at ten o’clock.”
3
That night Margaret comes to see me, again. Even though I hear her come in the house, I leave my bedroom door unlocked. I won’t let her see me, though. Not the left side anyway. When I hear her coming down the hallway, I turn over in bed, hiding the damaged parts of me.
She knocks and I tell her to come in, which I think surprises her. She opens the door, but just stands there. Finally she says, “Your father told you about the…affair, about my writer friend. I want to give you my side of the story, if that’s okay.”
“You cheated. That’s the only side I need to hear.”
“You’re right. I did. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
She comes and sits on the bed beside me. I scoot away from her. She draws my hair back, the gesture one of love, like a caring mother would do, and I swat her hand away.
She says, “I know you don’t love me.”
“I don’t.”
“And I hardly love you either. Maybe it’s devotion, or responsibility, but it’s not love I feel for you.”
As cold as I can be, as mean and stoic as I’ve become, my heart still aches for the love of my mother. I’m crushed hearing these things. Tears well in my eyes, but I won’t show them to her. She won’t see them.
“Please don’t do this, Margaret,” I hear myself say. What I want is to tell her how fragile I am, but I can find neither the words nor the courage.
“I realize love isn’t something you have so much as it’s something you do. I didn’t understand this before. Not until I got sober. The difference between the old me and the new me is I want to love you, no matter what you look like, no matter your weight or anything else. I’m ready to do that for me, and for you.”
“What about dad?”
“We have our own problems.”
“Yeah, you’re making cookies with the writer.”
“He thrills me.”
Inside my hurt turns sour and before I really come undone, I turn to her with my ugly, demented side and say, “Your love is a one way street. It’s not going to be reciprocated now or ever. Not by me and not by dad because you’re an ice cold, narcissistic scab with no thought for others, except when it serves you. I’m not a kid anymore. I see through your plastic, loveless veneer and I’m disgusted by the very sight of you.” My heart is angry, scorched.
“Savannah,” she says, pleading, her eyes taking in every ruined line of flesh.
“Go away.” She starts to speak, but I won’t let her. “Go away!” Startled, she shrinks back, but she isn’t getting off the bed so I channel all my emotions—all the nervousness, fear, anxiety, hatred and depression—into the mother of all screams.
What erupts from my gross, lopsided mouth is an ear splitting, gale-forced shrieking that has Margaret scrambling off the bed and right out my bedroom door. My father appears in a heartbeat, his face wrought with concern. That’s when I realize my nose is bleeding and I feel really, really dizzy. My father, he’s at my side, speaking to me, but spots are crowding my vision and I feel cold all over. Really cold, but hot, too. The last thing I remember is toppling sideways off the bed and hitting my forehead on the corner of my nightstand on the way down.
4
When I come to, hands are lifting me off the floor, getting this disgusting body of mine into bed. My head is throbbing and bleeding. Margaret is somehow still here, draping a cool, damp washcloth on my head. My hand instinctively goes to the wound. Margaret takes my hand and gently puts it to the side, saying, “It’s okay. It’s just a bump.”
I feel the way a baby calf might feel after being shat out into the dirt, awkward, disoriented, confused. My vision clears enough to see tears in Margaret’s eyes. My head clears enough to remember how half my face is a horror show and I feel sorry for her having to see me like this. Sorry she’ll never have a beautiful child.
“Always going to be ugly,” I hear my mouth say. I realize then that I will never be the child my parents wanted. I’ll always be that giant disappointment. Always unlovable. “You two…deserve better.”
Smoothing my hair back, kissing my good cheek, Margaret says, “Don’t worry, Vannie, you’ll feel better in the morning. You just go
t overly excited is all.”
“C’mon, Margaret,” I say, my voice a little bumpy, a little scratchy. “I’m a freaking radiated mutant. A toxic waste of life. If Gerhard can’t stop this poison from spreading inside me, and fix the mess it made of my body, someone’s going to have to put me down because there’s no way I’m going to live like this.”
Margaret is saying something reassuring, and my father is holding my hand, but I can’t stand it anymore, so I turn over, more depressed than ever. I want to cry, but not because of my now pounding headache. It’s recognizing Margaret has the capacity to be a mother, but I’m not sure I can let her be a mother to me. I’m not sure what will happen if I open myself up to her love.
“The beauty queen needs her sleep,” I hear myself saying.
On their way out, Margaret says, “I’m going to stay over tonight, if your father is alright with that, just to make sure you’re okay.”
“What about your boy toy?” I mumble. She doesn’t respond and suddenly I feel worse than petty. I feel the fight draining from me. I feel ashamed.
Minutes later I’m drawn into the hypnotic pull of sleep, and I’m like, oh thank God this disaster of a day is over.
Remember to Forget
1
The one in charge of the boy’s body sat in a small concrete room at a table across from the woman known as Brice O’Brien: the boy’s handler. Brice’s beautiful, middle-aged face had been issuing commands into the boy’s subconscious for nearly four hours. Every single command, rooted deep within his mind, now lay primed for the right trigger.
The one currently in charge of the boy, Delta 1A, understood his instructions. Receiving and carrying out the proper commands was Delta 1A’s sole purpose. More than anything, he knew if he had a purpose, and if he fulfilled that purpose, the boy’s body would not be destroyed. It would not be thrown from The Freedom Train, as Brice so often said.
In the prep room, Delta 1A was stripped bare and ordered into an industrial sized tub. He stood silent and perfectly still, his pale, skinny body breaking into gooseflesh. Brice took the next half an hour to lather and shave his body. Head, eyebrows, armpits, chest, back, pubic hair, legs. Delta 1A knew many things. Mostly he knew nothing would get him thrown from The Freedom Train faster than leaving trace evidence behind.
Once his body was completely hairless, Brice scrubbed him with a stiff loofah, leaving the skin bright red and clean looking. The boy’s body registered pain, but Delta 1A didn’t know anything other than pain. He simply stood still, waiting for her to finish. When she was done, Brice dried the body off and escorted him to another room.
Strapped to a chair, a fresh drug cocktail coursing through his veins, he felt an uncomfortable calm. An irritating peace. Delta 1A was nothing if not unbridled rage. Being drugged, having his anger subdued while he was still awake, was a punishment worse than sleep.
Gem existed like an unspoken whisper inside him, seeing everything, monitoring everything. Delta 1A had the feeling something else was inside the boy’s body. Someone else. He could feel it. Besides, it was always like this before he was tasked to kill. He always felt that someone looming over him.
On the metal table between him and his handler was a open manila file folder bearing an eight by ten image of a girl. Savannah Van Duyn. His eyes saw the file, committed the photo to memory, then looked up at his handler to indicate he received the data. His handler’s final command was this: Leave no witnesses. As always, his job was to follow mission parameters to the letter. And he would. When their session was complete, his handler looked at him and said, “Now you must remember to forget.”
Yes. He must…remember…to forget.
His handler finally said, “That’s all.” She said, “Sleep.”
Her voice—gentler than the tip of heaven, more seductive than a warm breath upon him—lured him into sleep. He was grateful for the reprieve. She repeated the word “sleep” two more times, and though the drugs gave him that floating underwater feeling, it was her voice that finally drew him under.
The somebody watching him…it was Gem.
Drifting down into the darkness, into the center of the boy’s mind, Delta 1A felt himself falling into the core of what he knew to be a pentagon-shaped, bottomless infrastructure. The nothingness rushed up to meet him. In the void, he was no one.
Buried in the boy’s mind, he was nothing.
2
Delta 1A’s first objective was to get into the Van Duyn house. When the van dropped him off and pulled back to the extraction point two blocks away, he slipped into the shadows of a very late night, traveling through the darkness like a wraith.
The large house presented many opportunities for entry, but his specific instructions were to enter through the kitchen door located in the backyard. Before entering the house, he ran recon on the first floor, peeking through the windows for occupants or pets. He knew he didn’t have to worry about alarms because no permits had been issued, but that didn’t mean there weren’t dogs or guns in the house.
Satisfied everyone was asleep, he headed back to the kitchen door, took one last look inside. A glowing digital clock on the microwave said 12:34 in green numbers.
He removed a slim-line set of lock picks from his black cargo pants, selected the right tension wrench and inserted it in the lower portion of the lock. He turned it clockwise a fraction of an inch. With the appropriate pick, he first raked the pins, setting two of the five. From there he turned the torque wrench and worked the remaining three pins, setting them one by one until all the upper pins were trapped outside the cylinder.
At 12:36 he entered the home.
Delta 1A had the layout of the house committed to memory. Part of his mission parameters. Once inside, he unsheathed his karambit knife. He fit his hand around the hilt of the curved blade, thumbing it open. The short blade—shaped like a razor-sharp cat’s claw—was perfect for inflicting lethal damage in extremely tight quarters. It was his weapon of choice for these kinds of kills.
He moved quietly and efficiently through the darkened house, heading upstairs to the girl’s bedroom. He passed the master bedroom, arrived at the closed door where he knew the girl was sleeping. With a gloved hand, he tried the doorknob, squeezing just right to prevent any natural clicking of the hardware. Stillness. He turned the knob, entered the room on a current of warm air.
He listened for the soft in-and-out breathing of the girl. Satisfied, he closed the door behind him, crept deeper into the room. Moving with deftness, with perfect grace and intent, he arrived at the side of her bed. His eyes looked down at her. The girl lay in a fetal position on her left side, her face and body steeped in shadow. Her brunette hair was splayed out across her cheek. He carefully moved it aside, then leaned down to sniff her skin. The subtle citrus smell was intoxicating, almost erotic. At once, he was both overwhelmed and embarrassed by his lust. Or perhaps he hated her so much it felt like love.
The ones who controlled him—Gem and Brice—had always been aware of his propensities, his urges, and though they had done their best to subdue his errant, carnal instincts, they would never fully control that part of him.
As he sniffed the hollows of her exposed ear, he dreamt of a different existence. One where he was free to be how he wanted with a girl. With this girl.
The girl stirred lightly, shifting her legs, scratching her side, and then she gave a little fart and settled back into sleep. With the drapes pulled shut and the bed situated away from the window, his eyes had a hard time adjusting to the darkness around her. But these things were secondary to his cravings. His eyes saw her, but his mind saw something else entirely. It saw violence, and need.
The voice rose inside him, insistent, aggravating, very female: Gem. “Complete your mission, Delta 1A.”
Snapping out of it, he drew back from the girl, almost in offense. The wanting was severed as quickly and as sharply as a light switch being snapped off. In one swift movement, he clamped his hand over the girl’s nose and mout
h, pressing her head down into the pillow with the force of someone twice his size. The girl awakened in a fright, her visible eye bulging in the darkness. She struggled against the boy’s grip, but he was in control. Waiting.
When the angle of her thrashing was just right, he slid the karambit blade across the most vital point of her neck: her carotid artery. A geyser of blood shot up and away from him. She bucked and squirmed and screamed into his gloved hand. Moments later, the fight was gone and the girl was dead.
He covered her face with a fan of her hair, letting her lay in anonymity against her white, blood soaked pillow. It was time to go.
He crept out of Savannah’s room, but something felt different. His senses prickled. The long, bending hallway glowed faintly at the turn, a light on somewhere downstairs. Possibly in the kitchen? Two words flood his brain, instructions he’d heard before, instructions he followed to the letter: Leave no witnesses.
The girl had parents. He did not have specific instructions for their deaths, but he was trained to kill at a moment’s notice. He moved swiftly down the hallway, toward the glow of lights. Creeping down the stairs, he saw a woman: mid-forties, dark hair, narrow shoulders in the kitchen. With her back to him, she was eating something from the refrigerator. She wore a slinky, pink and white nightgown. Delta 1A silently rushed her, his body supercharged with adrenaline.
He was ten feet away when she turned, a spoonful of yogurt in her mouth, her unmentionables exposed behind strategically placed sheer fabric. The spoon fell from her mouth as she began to scream. The Sig Sauer P226 was already in his hand. Regrettably it was not silenced, so when he shot her once in the throat and once through her right eye, the boom! boom! of the gunshots echoed through the house and possibly out into the neighborhood.
He registered the mistake.
He must fix it.
Fast.
He turned and sprinted upstairs, where he and a man in white underwear nearly collided at the corner of the hallway. The man swung a fist at the boy’s head, but with fluidity and precision, Delta 1A dipped under the punch and with the karambit, trenched open the man’s femoral artery. His leg was a waterfall of red. He would be dead in seconds, but Delta 1A knew in combat, seconds were the same as hours.
