by J. Thorn
Frank kept digging. And he kept thinking.
He knew he could still do the job. In fact, he was. He had taken control of the situation and now had the fire licked. He had told Eddie and Sal to take the survivors to EMS, and he had directed Doug toward the other cry for help. Frank was still sarge, for all intents and purposes. If Doug wasn’t around, city council would not have to deliberate for very long on who should fill in. Given his age and experience on the crew, Frank realized he could retire as sarge. He could finish on his own terms.
“Hurry.”
The voice startled Frank. His mind had wandered, but his hands kept digging, and, for the first time, he thought he saw the cellar floor. Water had puddled, reflecting back at him like liquid onyx. The stench of the fire had overpowered his sense of smell, and his ears tuned out everything but the voice below.
An arm, charred and black, reached out. Frank gasped and drew back, surprised by the movement. He ripped his glove off and thrust a hand into the hole. He felt the warmth of the grip. As he pulled, Frank felt the skin slide from the hand, threatening to loosen his grip. He ignored what he knew must have been unspeakable pain to the poor soul trapped below. Frank reminded himself that this was how they would be saved and that the pain would justify it all.
It was then that he locked eyes with the person. Frank would not let anyone die. Not on his watch.
***
“Can you reach my hand?” Doug asked, yelling down into the hole.
He used one arm to balance on the ragged, brick wall while lowering the other side of his body as far as possible. The coal room had survived the initial blast, while the wood-framed house did not. The fact that the brick room sat beneath ground level also played a role in its integrity. Doug shook his head, reminding himself that a life was in the balance and that he’d have time to analyze the effects of a gas explosion later. There would be reports upon reports.
His question was answered with a grunt, followed by a shaky hand. It was covered in dark swirls, and Doug could not tell if it was blood, charred skin, or both. He felt the grip and pulled upward. The hand let go, followed by a wail.
“I know it’s going to hurt, but you have to hold on. I don’t know how badly you’re injured, and the sooner I can get you treated, the better. Can you try again?”
The hand reappeared, shaking.
Doug gripped it and pulled, this time seeing a shoulder and then a head. The fire had burnt most of the hair away, and the person was covered in black soot. Doug could not tell if this was a man or woman, adult or teenager. When the person’s head came into view, Doug reached hands underneath their arms and used all of his upper body strength to pull upward. He felt a push from below and knew the person was using their legs to propel upward. He smiled and hoped he’d have a chance to visit this survivor in the hospital.
***
“Trust me. I’m going to get you out of here. Get you to a hospital.”
The eyes continued staring at Frank. He realized that the odds of survival were already very slim. If the person did survive, it would take dozens of surgeries to create a humanoid out of this wretched flesh.
He reached down and pulled, feeling the body coming toward him and emerging from what may have been a fiery coffin. Frank backed away on his knees, smacking into rubble he had dislodged from the hole in the first place.
With a solid backward lunge, Frank brought the survivor out from the waist up. He locked eyes again, feeling the pain emanating from them. Before he could feel empathy or sadness for this injured person, he thought of Doug again.
Beat that, shithead.
***
“We’re getting the shot. That’s it.”
Kelly shook her head. Her eyes darted across the scene as she visually searched for the EMS man with the sparkle in his eye. Johnny. She liked the sound of his nickname.
“Kelly! You hearing me? We need to get this shot. I don’t care what Doug says.”
“The sun is coming up soon. Let’s do one more on-location and then call it a night,” she said. She saw the disappointment in Robert’s face as the implications of their extended shift became evident. He shook his head and looked up at the sky as if it had robbed him of the chance for oral sex.
“Fine. Let’s find a place to set up the tripod and roll.”
Kelly watched as the firemen continued tearing through the debris in the hopes of finding someone alive. She was not sure how that could be possible, given the utter destruction at her feet, but they had obviously found some sign of life or they would not be digging so hard.
“Stand near that bush and face me,” Robert said as he dropped the camera onto the tripod and locked it into place. “Over there.”
Kelly walked slowly, dragging the microphone at her side. She flipped up the papers on her clipboard to reveal a small mirror that she used to check her makeup and hair. Kelly gave herself a wink before flipping the papers back down.
“What am I reporting?” she asked Robert.
He shrugged.
“I mean, what’s different from our first shot?”
“Use your training, young Jedi,” Robert said. He frowned, realizing that Kelly was too young to catch his Star Wars: Episode IV reference. “Say something about survivors.”
“But we don’t know that yet. We don’t know if there are any bodies in there, let alone survivors.”
“Then focus on what you can say to make the story,” he replied. “I can’t shoot the scene and report it at the same time, now, can I?”
Kelly felt his mood changing. It usually did when the expectation of a blow job did not materialize. It had only happened once or twice before, but it made him angry.
“Whatever. Roll it.”
Robert hunched over the viewfinder, holding his fingers in the air to countdown for Kelly.
“Back at the scene of this two-alarm blaze, we’ve discovered that there could have been people inside the house when it exploded, and some of them could still be alive. As you can see behind me, the Pine Valley rescue squad, along with other members of the East Fallowfield EMS, are frantically digging through rubble in the hopes that they find someone alive.”
Robert stood and nodded, clearly pleased with her spin on the unknown. He twirled his fingers, encouraging her to continue.
“Authorities are still uncertain as to the cause of the explosion, the source of which could take weeks to determine. In the meantime, they are not ruling out anything, from an accidental gas leak to arson.”
The smile grew on Robert’s face as Kelly continued to embellish what little facts they had.
“Residents are encouraged to avoid the area, as fire and police will be on the scene until safety has been restored. Once again, I’m Kelly Swift reporting for Channel 3, WPVD.”
“Excellent. You’ve got it, honey. You really do.”
Kelly smiled with a strange mix of pride and revulsion at Robert’s praise.
He began breaking down the gear, snapping the legs of his tripod shut while packing up the camera. Kelly turned to face the scene, where the firefighters continued digging. Several ambulances had arrived, and the crews waited next to open doors with gurneys poised on the sidewalk.
“You think someone is in there?” she asked.
“I can’t imagine them going deeper into the fire pit if they didn’t have good reason to do it. I’ll bet they saw something down there.”
Kelly tilted her head to one side, her gaze fixed on the destruction. She had not been in the field for very long, but she had seen some terrible things. Kelly applied her journalistic training to desensitize herself to the situation and report the facts. It was never easy, but reporters became better as time went by. For some reason, she could not look away from this fire. She felt her eyes drawn to the scene for more than just a grisly glimpse. Something about it did not feel right to her.
She often scoffed when her mother spoke of “women’s intuition,” yet this felt like that to her. During her childhood, Kelly always kn
ew when her father was about to fly into a fit of rage and begin hitting her mom. She had also known it was only a matter of time before he turned on her as well. Kelly remembered sitting on the floor of her closet while her father beat her mother with his bare fists. She could still hear the sound of his meaty hand slapping her face and the muted cries of her mother trying to be strong. A breaking glass or steel pot bouncing on porcelain tile would often break her father’s tirade, forcing him to step around the shards of glass to hit her mother again. Kelly had spent hours in that closet, yet time crawled. She had huddled with a teddy bear and her robe wrapped tightly around her waist, knowing that more often than not he would enter her room, and when he did, she knew what was coming.
The school guidance counselor often called home, but domestic abuse had not been taken as seriously decades ago, and her mother would blame it on a fall at the playground or a spat on the swing set. Her father was wise enough to not give Kelly another black eye for weeks or even months to avoid suspicion. When he discovered he could inflict pain in places typically covered by clothing, the calls from school dried up completely. Kelly had hated that feeling of vulnerability and the betrayal caused by her father. When he finally left, rather than feeling relief, Kelly had felt responsible. She was convinced it was her fault. She had not loved him enough. She had not been a good daughter, and so he was gone. Even as a teenager, Kelly realized that it was abuse and not love levied by the man, yet her heart could not convince her head that this was true. When Kelly’s mother finally drowned herself in gin and tonics, what was left of her heart was broken. Kelly found her, naked and cold in the tub, bottles scattered across the floor. Her father had not drowned her with his own hands, but he may as well have.
On the verge of adulthood, the abandonment by her father and the death of her mother had left Kelly reeling. She moved in with her mother’s sister, who already had her hands full with three of her own children. Auntie was able to provide a roof over Kelly’s head and three meals a day, but was not equipped to deal with her emotional needs. Kelly found relief in men and drugs, one providing the other. She lost her last teenage years to a swirling nightmare of overdoses and pregnancy scares. By the time the state stepped in, Kelly had hit rock bottom. Her mug shot for a prostitution bust showed the face of a haggard, thirty-year-old woman, not that of a seventeen-year-old girl.
She became lucky, finding a social worker in the system who gave a shit even with one hundred-nineteen kids in her caseload. The woman cared about Kelly, and over the course of a year, she had cleaned her up and put her back on her feet. Kelly ended up enrolling in the journalism program at the community college. Armed with a GED and a pretty face, she quickly made up for lost time. By the time she won the Atlantic Young Reporters award in her junior year, the major networks were taking notice. And if it hadn’t been for her fucking father’s arrest, she may have been the next host on Morning USA. Instead, she was stuck in Pine Valley, still sucking dick, but for a different kind of drug.
“Ready?” Robert asked her.
She shot him a violent glance.
“Whoa! What’s got your panties in a bunch? We leaving or what?”
Kelly turned back to the pit and felt it again. Those visceral memories of the drugs and the sex came back to haunt her. There was something in the charred ruins that hinted of pain, feeding on fear and disgust. Kelly could feel it, and it made her sick. She turned and vomited on Robert’s shoes.
“Ugh!” he cried as he tried unsuccessfully to back away from the splatter that now covered his shiny, black, patent-leather loafers.
Kelly smiled as she wiped the drool from her face. She did not think they would be parking the van tonight.
***
Robert turned his shoe sideways and dragged it through the weeds until the puke smeared beige streaks across the leather.
Fucking bitch, he thought. She fucking did that on purpose. She’s going to pay for it.
He turned and walked toward the van with the camera on one shoulder and the tripod tucked underneath the other arm. Robert hit the button on his keychain remote that kicked the door of the van open. He gingerly dropped the camera into its plastic-molded case and then tossed the tripod against the steel walls, making as much noise as he could.
Robert had hoped he would never have girls, and when his wife gave him two boys, he knew it was time to call it quits. He had gone to his general practitioner and scheduled the vasectomy. Robert had only been twenty-six at the time, but he had his boys and did not want to risk bringing another woman into the world. His wife had done her job, given him his sons, and now he was done with her. Although not a prize himself, Robert had to close his eyes when fucking his wife. He had to imagine a lingerie supermodel in order to make his dick hard and high enough to clear his own potbelly. Robert had to push the folds of his wife’s fat to the side in order to make it inside her. Once there, he came as quickly as possible, turning away from her face to avoid any chance at a kiss or eye contact. Occasionally she would roll over on top of him, and he would have to pretend to be excited by her long, floppy tits. Robert would place his hands over them, imagining the perky C-cups of the girl down at the Sav-A-Lot instead. She did not initiate the sex often, but when she did, Robert obliged until he had his sons. After that, he did so less and less, until they rarely touched at all. What Robert’s wife did not know was what he did with his pecker after the doctors had snipped his wires.
It started with the Internet. Robert would spend hours locked in his basement office, huddled around a blazing monitor with his pants at his ankles. He masturbated until he could no longer coax his red, raw penis erect. In the early days, the dial-up modem and access to adult content made him settle for soft-porn shots of women on the beach without a top or models wrapped in silk sheets, half-naked on a bed. As a cameraman, he could appreciate the light filters and post-production touch-ups that made the women gorgeous, but Robert’s tastes devolved into more rudimentary and animalistic images. As bandwidth opened and pornography exploded into the dark realms of fetish, he could not satiate his urge for violent, dominating sex.
Robert searched and collected the most debasing images of women he could find. The more demeaning they were, the more quickly he ejaculated. Consensual sex of any variety did little to arouse him. He collected images of women bound, beaten, and humiliated. The images were so extreme that they bordered on being illegal. Robert rationalized his addiction by steering clear of kiddie porn and snuff. That was for really sick individuals, he believed. His tastes ran down and dirty and further solidified his opinion of the opposite gender: Women should be subservient to men and shut the fuck up while doing it.
With the next generation of technology came easy access to video. The quick edits and unlimited supply of money shots made the addiction worse than heroin. Robert never came along with the men in the videos. He would orgasm when he saw pain on the women’s faces, often freezing the frame until he could finish. While scenes of women with multiple men were often more demeaning than one-on-one sex, they did not satisfy him because the women appeared to enjoy it. He sought pain, not pleasure. Robert would lock himself in the basement office during the night, hammering away until the early hours of the morning and then heading to work. His grogginess on the job eventually caused his demotion to third shift, which had led him to Kelly. In a way, his habit reinforced his view of women and his opportunity to indulge in their debasement.
The door of the van slammed shut as Kelly slid into the passenger seat. Robert took a deep breath and realized, despite having her puke on his clothing, that he was aroused. Without the cover of darkness, he would need to be more creative if he wanted to release his pent-up sexual frustration on her. Robert shook his head, wondering if forcing his cock in her mouth would be enough. He considered that it might be time to up the ante. If she really wanted his industry connections, she was going to have to prove it.
Robert walked around to the driver’s side of the van and climbed in. He smiled at he
r and felt his face flush as he realized his erection was poking through his pants. But Kelly remained fixated on the scene outside her window. She was not even aware that he was there.
“Sunshine Cafe?” he asked, snapping Kelly from her thoughts.
“Shift is over. Let’s head back to the station and unload.”
Robert sighed. The coffee and biscuits at the Sunshine Cafe always came before Kelly putting her face in his crotch while parked behind the dumpster. He was not sure if it was the daylight or the situation, but she was not accepting his coded invitation.
“We’ve got time for a cup of coffee at least, don’t you think?”
She turned and gave Robert the look that women had been giving him his entire life. He could feel the hatred in her eyes, the utter contempt she had for him as a human being. At that moment, Robert realized he would make her pay for it. She would need to be punished and taught to respect the men in her life, and he would be the one to teach her.
“Not really,” she replied.
Robert nodded, pulling the facade over his face and starting the engine. He put the van in drive and pulled away from the curb, making a complete U-turn and heading away from the scene and back toward the station.
“Maybe tomorrow night, then? If there isn’t a major story to cover, we could have an extended breakfast, take our time eating?”
“I’m not so sure I want to go to the Sunshine anymore, Robert. The food there always gives me a stomachache, and I end up with the shits the next day.”
The coarseness of her language caught him off guard. She had never been that direct before, and he began to worry if he had overplayed his hand. This feisty female was close to writing him off, telling him his networking was not worth the price. Robert thought about the implications of that. He remembered the globular shape of his wife’s body compared to the tight curves of the woman sitting next to him. He would have to turn this thing around or it would be back into the basement with a box of tissues.
