by David Beers
“What are you doing?” she said. “What in the fuck are you doing?”
26
Present Day
John saw the bright, red blood on his sister’s cheek.
I put that there.
“How did it feel?” Harry said from behind him.
“Shut the fuck up, Harry.” John didn’t have to say how it felt though, they both knew. The same way violence always felt. His pupils were down to pinpoints as he looked at the blood pooling and running, pooling and running, down Alicia’s face.
“Not yet, John. The cop is still outside and I think he heard Diane’s scream.”
John looked at Diane; he had no idea what Harry was talking about. His wife stared at him, eyes wide, but clear. Her mouth moved but he couldn’t hear her.
“What’s she saying, Harry?”
“I don’t know, man. Whatever it is, it isn’t important. You need to focus on what’s happening outside. He’s going to be in here soon.”
John looked back to the trickle of blood on his sister.
Blood.
He felt the focus grow stronger, unable to control it. His eyes flashed to Diane.
Not her, John. Not her. Some part of him spoke. A part he hadn’t heard in a long time. Perhaps not since (don’t say her name!) high school.
Not Diane. Anyone but Diane.
The girl in the bathroom then. Starbucks. Her. Go to her and do what it is you should have done to begin with.
“Johnnnn, I know what you’re thinking, but for the first time, I need you to calm down just a bit.”
He turned around and looked at Harry who was no longer staring out the window.
“Listen to me, John, as you’ve never listened to me before. If you go into the bathroom, you’re going to let that fucking cop take all of this away. You still haven’t even had the goddamn chance to see if these two broads are with you or against you—though, Alicia may have made it somewhat clear which side she’s on. You’ve got to control this, or at least funnel it somewhere else other than the bathroom.”
John knew the truth; Harry always told the truth, even if it was something he didn’t want to hear.
He couldn’t go in the bathroom. Not yet.
“Open the door and give the goddamn cop what he deserves. You’re a good shot, John. Always have been. And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you’re as quick as he is too. So open the door and show him why he should have left well enough alone. Then, when you’re done, come back in here and do whatever you want.”
John nodded.
“Okay, Harry. First I take care of him, then I take care of this.”
John walked to the front door, gun in hand. He peered out the peephole and saw a distorted version of the cop, of Officer Dick Face, looking at the row of hotel rooms. So he heard the scream that John hadn’t. Good.
Let’s see if you’re any faster now than you were all those years ago.
* * *
The scream chilled Alan’s blood. It didn’t sound like pain, but pure terror. Someone watching something they couldn’t stand to see. Alan looked up immediately, though he knew if anything happened right then, he was in an awful place. He had walked away from his car, heading to the front office to see which room he needed. The scream came after he was twenty feet away from his car and now he stood in an empty parking lot with no cover.
He raised his gun to eye level, placing both hands on the butt. Alan stood still for a few seconds, looking for any movement but seeing none. Finally, he started walking again, quicker now, his head on a swivel watching the rooms in front of him.
Thirty feet away.
Twenty feet away.
Alan let his gun down, holding it next to his hip.
He heard the door open behind him, his head and body positioned toward the front lobby.
Fuck, he thought even as his body moved, desperately trying to reposition itself. His gun whipped up and his hips flexed, turning him toward the opening door. As all of this happened, his eyes fell on John Hilt, and he had a small moment of staring at someone he barely recognized.
What happened to you?
He pulled the trigger, hearing another gun blast at the same time.
An explosion set off inside Alan’s gut. Pain the size of galaxies burned—starting at a small circular core and then expanding like a bursting star throughout his stomach and from there, his body.
Alan looked down and saw blood staining his shirt.
Marie is going to kill me, he thought as he realized the shirt was ruined.
Alan fell to his knees. He looked up to Hilt’s hotel room. The door was open but he didn’t see Hilt anymore. He didn’t see anyone. Alan squeezed the trigger again and fired an errant bullet.
Shouldn’t have done that, he thought. Might hit someone innocent.
He looked back down to his shirt and saw the blood stain growing, indeed, it wasn’t a stain anymore but turning into a pool and dripping down to the ground in front of him.
Oh, Marie, I’m sorry.
Alan fell to his face. His eyes remained on the open hotel door, his hand extended with his gun in it, ready to fire if he caught a glimpse of Hilt.
He looked on for maybe another thirty seconds before the world ceased existing for Alan Tremock.
* * *
“Holy God it hurts,” John said.
He lay against the air conditioning unit, just under the hotel room window. He caught the bullet in his gut and had no idea whether or not he hit Tremock.
Blood was spilling out everywhere, as if someone had sliced open a large medical bag full of it.
“That’s pretty much what happened isn’t it?” John said, smiling as he looked at Harry. “Except instead of plastic it’s made of flesh.”
John placed his hand on his stomach, trying to put pressure on the open wound.
“UGGHHHH,” he groaned into the room. John let go of the wound and picked up the gun lying next to him. “I’m not gonna make it am I, Harry?”
Harry stood at the open door, just a foot or so in front of Alicia’s discarded body. He looked on with real concern in his eyes. “It doesn’t look good, buddy.”
“JOHN!”
John shook his head in short, snappy movements. Someone else was shouting at him? Someone else was here? He looked in the noise’s direction and saw his wife on the edge of the bed. She was on her knees, her hands covering her mouth.
“Diane,” he said and smiled again. “How are ya?”
“What is this, John? What is all this?” Diane said as tears dripped down her face.
“Hey, man, you don’t have time to listen to her right now,” Harry said. “I think you tagged the cop based on the fact that he’s not in here right now, but you have to finish this. You’ve got the girl in the bathroom, the cop outside, and then these two. So I need you to focus.”
John looked to Harry almost in disbelief.
“Harry, I’m fucking done. What do you expect me to do?”
He felt warm liquid rising in his throat, like vomit except hotter. He coughed blood into his mouth and over his lips. It rolled down his chin, turning his smile gruesome as he looked at Harry. “See what I mean?”
“Then make goddamn use of the time you’ve got left, John! What are you talking about? You’re going to lay here and die when we still have so much work to do?” Harry stepped across the room so that he stood above John. “Go finish Tremock. Then come back in here and finish them.”
Even then, with blood leaking and death approaching, John felt the hunger, the focus.
“There he is,” Harry said. “There’s the man we created. The one I need right now.”
“John,” Diane said. He had lost track of her again, as if they were in some kind of maze and she kept running off, only to run back a few minutes later. She sat on the other side of the bed now, the phone to her ear. “I’m calling an ambulance,” she said. “Just hold on.”
“This dumb bitch,” Harry said. “An ambulance isn’t what you need right n
ow, John. It may be the exact opposite of what you need. What do you think is going to happen when they show up and see a dying cop and a girl tied up in your bathroom?”
“Hold on, John. Please, just hold on,” Diane said.
More blood spilled over John’s tongue, this time with enough force to leak down his neck as well.
“Grab that gun and put a damn bullet in her, John. You don’t have to kill her but you certainly have to stop her from having paramedics show up. Shoot her in the shoulder, John, or maybe the hand. Can’t dial without a hand.” A twisted mania had replaced the concern on Harry’s face.
John held the gun’s barrel as it rested on his lap; his grip was still tight despite the blood loss.
“Yes. You know you need to. You know you have to. Because all of this comes to a quick end if an ambulance arrives. Just look at it all,” Harry said. He put his arms out to his sides and turned around in a circle as if showing a kingdom to his king. “You want this all to stop?”
John looked round the room. He saw his sister lying unconscious, blood drying on her face. He saw his wife frantically talking into the phone, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Alicia. He heard someone—Who is it? Remember, John!—making a racket in the bathroom, kicking the thin, wooden door. And then he looked to himself, a bloody, skinny mess of tattered clothes and pale skin.
“And remember, you can’t even see what the cop looks like, can you? All this, plus him? You’re going to let Diane ruin it?”
John grabbed the window ledge and pulled himself up, pain ricocheting through his body as he did. He moved the blinds slightly out of the way so that he could see the parking lot.
A single drop of blood dripped from his chin to the floor.
Tremock lay face down on the pavement and John saw a spreading pool of red around him too.
“You got the son-of-a-bitch!” Harry shouted. “See! And if he’s not dead, oh, we can make him dead! That’s a short twenty foot crawl, John! Shoot Diane and let’s get started!”
* * *
Alicia’s eyes fluttered open.
Her brain felt like a goddamn leprechaun had jumped inside and was now using the heads of screaming children to play drums. Each snap of the drumstick brought a child’s wail.
She was going to beat John’s ass.
That’s all she knew. Not what was happening, where she was, or why she lay on the floor with such a massive headache. Only that John was going to get it when she found him—she didn’t even know why that was so, only that it was.
She slowly sat up, using her hands to move the rest of her body, but it hurt to even do that—the children inside her head growing louder with each inch she pushed herself up.
Her eyes started focusing on the area around her.
A hotel room.
“Alicia!”
Diane’s voice. Alicia turned to her left and saw Diane on the phone, her face looking like someone had slapped her around for a solid hour—no closed fists, but enough to make her eyes nice and puffy.
Alicia found that she didn’t have enough saliva to speak. She turned her head forward again, trying to understand just what the hell was happening—and where is John? Because he and I need to talk.
She didn’t have to look far to answer the question.
John half sat, half stood in front of her. Really, he hung from the windowsill, using his legs to hold himself up and using his arm to hang on.
Red paint decorated her brother as if he had worn a fur coat at a PETA rally.
She heard his groans and heavy breathing.
That’s not paint, she thought as her eyes fell on the blood’s source: a hole in his stomach.
“John?” she said.
He looked to her and she saw he held a gun in his bloody hand.
“He’s hurt, Alicia. He’s hurt bad,” Diane said from her left. “I’m calling an ambulance. He won’t talk to me, won’t listen to anything I’m saying.”
Alicia watched the gun rise with John’s hand. He pointed it at her. His head kept moving from Diane to her, and then to an empty space beside him.
“John, can you hear me?” Alicia said. “Can you hear what I’m saying?”
His head snapped back to her, blood covering his chin but his eyes ablaze. His pupils were small dots in his eyes. The gun moved as his face did, the barrel looking at her with the same frantic intensity as its master.
“John, don’t do this.” Alicia didn’t understand everything, but she understood enough. She heard the banging from the bathroom and as she looked to the right out the door, she saw the cop lying in his own blood. John did all this, and the gun in front of her said he wasn’t done. “John, listen to me. Listen to my voice. Please don’t do this. Your kids, John. Tim and Drew. Look at us, John, just look. Don’t do this.”
* * *
“John ….”
Diane’s voice followed Alicia’s.
“John, I love you. Alicia loves you. Please, just put the gun down. This will all be okay.”
Harry took a step forward so that he was in John’s view. He pointed at Diane.
“Her right there. She’s never let you be happy. All the goddamn sneaking out. All the ways you’ve had to alter your life, alter what you really wanted to do, and she’s going to sit here and tell you it’s alright? That everything’s okay?” His arm moved to Alicia. “And her? This bitch who most likely brought the cop with her? She trusts you so much she followed you to Larry from Marketing’s fucking house. This is who you’re going to listen to? These two? Have they been here since the beginning? Were they there in England? Were they here through thick and thin, John?”
John followed Harry’s pointing, looking at the two women. He let the gun fall to his lap.
“You still got a little left in you. I can feel it. So have some fun on the way out and make sure these broads get what they deserve for the hellish life they created around you. Just like the cop.”
John’s finger squeezed slightly on the trigger and he saw the hammer rise back a bit.
“There you go. See how good that feels already?” Harry said.
John looked to Diane, the gun moving as well.
“Honey,” she said. “Honey, listen to me. Please. I love you. I’ve always loved you. You’re my everything.”
“She’s lying, John. Just like your mom who sent your dad to get you fifteen years after that bitch died. They’re all lying to you because they’ve never loved you. I’m the only one that doesn’t leave.”
“Honey, can you hear me?” Diane said, the phone still next to her ear.
John heard it all. He heard every word in the room.
Harry shook is head. “We came here to show them who you really are and we decided if they couldn’t accept you, then we would take care of them. Here you are, bleeding all over the floor, and do you think they accept you? Do you think they feel you’re worthy to be around them? No, John. They never thought you were and this is just an excuse to get you out of their lives for good.”
Was that true?
Was Harry telling the truth?
How many times had he trusted Harry? Countless, and Harry never let him down.
Cindy. Did he let you down there? Did he tell you the truth? That she wouldn’t suffer and you were really just sending her to a better place a lot faster?
And what about now, John? This dead friend, is he telling you the truth? Do the people in front of you look like they’re throwing you out of their lives? Or do they look like they’re begging? And how many times has Diane begged? To just be with you? For you to just be honest? And now, while you point a goddamn gun at her, she’s saying she loves you.
So how truthful is Harry?
“You going to listen to that voice again? The one that would have you in an electric chair if you listened to it all the time?”
John looked at his dead friend.
He wanted to listen to him. Of course he did. He always did. And he always had.
John didn’t know i
f blood or tears rested in his eyes because it all felt the same.
He never told Harry no. Always yes, and the rest of the world always got the no. Right down to Father Raport.
“You won’t stop,” John whispered. His face was a pale ghost and more blood kept leaking from his stomach. “You won’t ever stop.”
“That’s what I’m here for, John. That’s why we’re here.”
“No,” John said. “That’s not why I’m here. It’s not why I ever wanted to be here.”
Harry put his hands up in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “We are who we are, John. Let’s go ahead and finish this.”
John nodded, his pupils still tightly focused. He spit, blood barely making its way over his bottom lip. “The last time, huh?”
Harry nodded. “The last time. You and I.”
John looked to Diane who was saying something into the phone that he couldn’t understand. He lifted the gun again, pointing it at her face. She stopped talking into the phone and her mouth hung open in terror.
“I love you, Diane,” John said.
And then, he put the barrel to the side of his head and pulled the trigger.
27
Epilogue
“I imagine Marie is growing tired of you now that she is forced to be around you so much,” Susan said.
Alan smiled. “You might be right; I think she’s slipping poison into my IV while I sleep.”
“No, I’m the one doing that.” Susan took her seat near the foot of the hospital bed. She had come everyday for the past two weeks, mostly when work was finished, but sometimes during her lunch break. “I used to enjoy my evenings and now I’m spending them up here with you; seems like the easiest way to get out of it all is just to kill you.”
“Hush!” Marie said, walking in the door behind Susan. “You can’t give away our plan.”
Susan watched Alan’s wife walk across the room and sit down next to the bed.
“Seriously, though,” Alan said, “you don’t have to come here every day. You’ve done enough already.”
