by Platt, Sean
“No, he didn’t turn into a fucking monster! Why did Rose?”
Will folded his hands in front of him, “I don’t know. There’s so many variables in play, and our team is looking them over, trying to figure out what happened. Obviously this is a huge setback in the program, even if Rose wasn’t a part of it — she’s become a part of it, now.”
Boricio swallowed. One more slice of the guilt pie.
Boricio swallowed hard, trying to put words to a thought that had been forming in his mind since he’d been thrown into the cell.
“What is it?” Will said, knowing his son like a book he could read without turning a page.
Boricio said. “What if I’m the variable.”
“What do you mean?”
“The serum was the same and Dr. Williams performed both procedures. The biggest variable is me — this time I handled the vial.”
“Did you open the vial?” Will asked.
“No, but maybe I didn’t need to. Or maybe the seal wasn’t as tight as I thought it was.”
“That seems unlikely,” Will said.
“I know, but ever since I got the vial, I’ve been having these weird dreams. The vial has been all I could think about. It was like an obsession, clouding my thoughts. Like I was suddenly so damned certain that I needed it in order to help Rose. More certain than I’d been with Luca.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, but what if I somehow infected the vial? What if I’m the variable? That means maybe the Doc could make a new serum. Get a new vial and just start over without my interference? Maybe it will reverse the effects?”
Will looked at the floor. “I’m not doing that,” he said.
Boricio flared with anger, but didn’t have the strength to fuel it. He started to sob, again. Then finally, from behind his broken pieces, a cracked voice said, “Please, Will. You’re her only hope. That makes you my only hope too.”
Will said, “Why don’t you first tell me where to find one of the other two vials you took. That might be a good place to start.”
His tears vanished. Boricio wiped his eyes and turned to Will.
“What? Are you saying there are three vials missing?” He shook his head. I only had two, not three.”
Will ignored the discrepancy in the math and said, “How did you get them?”
Boricio should have expected that Will would infiltrate his mind, but sitting beside him sobbing had reduced his guard to rumor. Now that he wanted to keep Will out of his head, it was already too late.
There was one second when Boricio felt especially full, followed by a flash where he felt nothing but empty, then a slight prick inside his brain that felt a bit like a needle slipping into his skin.
“No,” Will shook his head. Sudden horror widened his eyes. He stuttered, “You didn’t ask him. What the hell, Boricio?”
Boricio wondered if Will was saying “him” instead of “Luca” because of the closed circuit cameras.
“Do you realize the danger you’ve put us in?” Will seethed. “And I mean all of us!”
“I’m so sorry,” Boricio said. “I had no idea.”
Will turned to leave the cell.
“Where are you going?” Boricio called.
Will turned back and hissed, “To fix your mess.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 6 — Callie Thompson
Black Mountain, Georgia
March 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
Callie wondered if they’d ever return Charlie to his cell.
So when she woke in the morning to find the lights on and two guards wheeling someone in on a gurney, she got excited that he was finally coming back. But the guards stopped two cells away, opened the door, then deposited an old, heavyset nude man onto the mattress.
The old man lay motionless, likely sedated as she had been. They closed the door to his cell, then left the hallway.
A while later, the same guards came back with breakfast — Cheerios in a bowl, two bottles of water, and fruit. Before the guards left her, Callie asked, “Where’s Charlie?”
But the guards said nothing.
Callie considered yelling, but decided to keep her mouth shut, at least for now. Charlie had gone willingly, or so it seemed. That meant she would have to be patient. She ate the Cheerios with her fingers. At least it was Honey Nut Cheerios, and not plain. She was surprised that even without milk, the Cheerios tasted pretty good.
After a while, the old man began to move on his mattress. He sat, immediately meeting Callie’s eyes. Something about his gaze sent a chill down her spine. It was almost as if he’d never been sleeping at all. He simply woke, sat up, then turned his eyes on Callie with a creepy stare that settled somewhere between Willy Wonka and Hannibal Lecter.
He smiled, and Callie looked away.
A bit later, a guard in a yellow hazmat suit appeared, looking at the old man. Callie recognized him immediately as the one who Charlie had been speaking with earlier as she pretended to sleep. He looked a bit like Boricio, but bald and with an eye patch. He looked a lot like him, in fact, though she couldn’t be certain without a closer look or hearing him. If it was Boricio, she wondered why was he going through the ruse of holding them?
Most of all, what did Charlie know that she didn’t? Why was he out of his cell? Where had they taken him? And why hadn’t they taken her?
The man who looked like Boricio started to yell at the old man, though Callie couldn’t hear him. But she could still see him, waving his arms and pointing his fingers almost accusingly, it seemed to her.
Callie wondered why.
After five minutes or so, the man who looked like Boricio turned from the cell and left. The old man smiled, staring after Boricio as he went down the hall.
Well, that’s just weird.
Then the old man turned his attention to Callie, staring directly at her.
Even weirder.
* * * *
CHAPTER 7 — Mary Olson
Dunn, Georgia
Boricio’s Compound
March 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
The cool spring night did nothing to chill the warm feeling Mary felt as she tossed the empty “bottle of piss” from the wooden picnic table into the large metal bucket across the yard, where it crashed loudly against the metal, then rained glass into a pile.
Bottles of Piss was what Boricio had called the alcohol-free near beers that she was kicking back like they were the real thing. She’d never much liked alcohol-free beer, but she was pregnant, and Boricio had managed to get the generator to run a refrigerator on the back porch, making the drink ice cold, which did a lot to make up for the fact that it wasn’t getting her buzzed.
“Shhhh….you’re gonna wake them!” Boricio said, mimicking Mary’s earlier warnings she’d been using since Luca and Paola went to bed about two hours before. At least that was the warning that Mary was using before she started throwing bottles herself a half hour ago.
Mary laughed, feeling goofy enough to wonder if Boricio hadn’t switched labels on the beer bottles.
“You didn’t give me real beer, did you?” she asked.
“I might be an asshole, but I’m not gonna give a pregnant chick beer,” Boricio said. “I don’t wanna see you giving birth to some short bus kid.”
Mary laughed again, despite the awfulness of his comment.
Mary was on her fourth bottle of piss, or perhaps it might have been her fifth. She was usually good at keeping track, but throwing her empties into the bucket had begun to confuse her. Or maybe it was sitting on the bench beside her new friend Boricio the Killer that had done it.
Mary didn’t believe she could ever get used to living in close proximity to Boricio, and nearly everything about him still horrified her. But after several days in his company, and what seemed like a hundred-thousand hours or so of his endless mouth, Mary had a vague, but fascinated, understanding of what it was that made him tick.
Boricio was a genuine killer; that wasn’t for show. He was the real deal, and had been long before the end of the world, she figured.
Only after Mary opened her third bottle of piss, the one that might have been her fourth, did she finally got the courage to ask Boricio what she’d been wanting to ask, for a while, and even managed to do so without flinching. “What was it like the first time you killed someone?”
Boricio was mid-swig when Mary asked.
He took an extra long swallow, then smiled like a wolf, returned his lips to the bottle and stole its final swallow, then turned from the table, and the bucket behind it, and tossed his bottle like a dart into the forest.
“That’s a helluva good story,” he said. “You sure you wanna hear it?”
Mary nodded. “Yes,” she said.
Boricio howled. “Well, alrighty then. But I’m not telling you a PG-13 bullshit version of the story. It’s a spicy dish and I’m not holding the pepper.”
Mary said, “Has there been anything from your mouth in the last two hours that’s been anywhere PG?”
Boricio howled again. “Nope,” he shook his head. “But that’s because there isn’t a point. You censor the words and you’re just giving a dirty mind more to work with.”
Mary said, “Well, good thing Paola doesn’t have a dirty mind.”
Mary waited for Boricio to challenge the thought, perhaps say something vulgar about her daughter. But he didn’t. Just opened another bottle, took a long swig, then wiped his mouth and said, “Looking back, Boricio should’ve waited a while longer before doing what he did when he did it. But I was green as a Jalapeño, and so I ended up making a 32-gallon trash can’s worth of mess that first night. I remember watching the news the following day, shaking my head, shocked at how much they did and didn’t say about all the things I knew I did. But the fucker who had to quit his breathing earlier than he expected to, and quite by force, sure as a new necklace after a titty-fuck deserved it. He was a regular at the restaurant where I’d been cooking for two months at the time of the ‘accident’ — this shit bar called, The Office.”
Boricio took another swig and Mary felt herself uncomfortably fascinated by his tale, just as she had been for every one in the two hours before it.
“So this same fucker would come in every night, drunk before he even got there it seemed, then order something fried from the menu and bitch about it five minutes after Jeremy set it on the counter.” Boricio looked at Mary. “Every. Fucking. Time. You dig?”
Mary swallowed, then said, “I dig, but does that mean you killed him just because he sent his food back?”
Boricio laughed. “No, I would never do that, at least not unless I felt like it. This fucker didn’t earn a grown-up abortion because he sent his food back; he got gutted on account of the gift wrap he gave the complaint. Every time the assfuck sent his food back, he attached an insult that made him deserve to die a little more, so really, the fucker was lucky I let him keep breathing as long as I did. Truth of the matter, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, is that I couldn’t understand why Jeremy Pile, the old fucker who owned The Office, was bending over for the shit eater each night. I probably should’ve figured what the hell and let the shit-covered dick continue to live since making slop on repeat wasn’t much different than making slop in the first place. I still punched out at the same goddamn time.” Boricio shook his head and took another long swig. “The fucker had said plenty of shit before, but when he said my nachos tasted like I’d put a tiara on a pile of rancid taco meat, and that the only creatures capable of enjoying the meal were the flies at his table, only thing I could see besides the red was the camel crying and the broken straw on its furry fucking back.”
Boricio cackled.
“When Jeremy came back in and told me what the fucker had said, I asked him why he didn’t throw his ass the fuck out. Pile said it was because the dude drank like a fish so who gave a shit if the place took a bath on ninety cents worth of nachos. Well, I did. So,” Boricio shrugged, “I figured I’d give the fucker a bath myself.”
Mary swallowed hard again. “What did you do?”
Boricio smiled. “I’m glad you asked, and thank you for playing, What Would Boricio Do? I got patient, that’s what. Waited three more weeks until the fucker was dumb enough to stay until the bar closed. I met him in the back of the alley, then surprised the fuck out of his holy spirit. Shit dick was always talking about his apartment, ‘just two blocks away,’ so I made him take me there. He wasn’t too drunk to realize he didn’t have much of a choice. Once we got inside, I spent the next few hours emptying the fucker’s fridge and making him meal after meal of shit that made those nachos taste like sweet ambrosia. He kept crying like a bitch with every bite, but swallowed every mouthful like a good boy, anyway. When the fridge was empty and his belly was full of all sorts of shit you ain’t ever supposed to put in your mouth, I made him some new meals with some fresh meat. When he was finished with that, I silenced the fucker forever.”
Mary could barely speak, but still managed to half-whisper, “Then what did you do?”
“Got the fuck out of Dodge. Left town early the next day, right after I saw the news, in fact. No Bob’s Big Boy of a deal; I was ready to leave, anyway.”
“And that was the first person you ever killed?” Mary also wanted to ask Boricio how many people he had killed since, but didn’t want to know an answer that might keep her from sleeping at night.
Boricio barked a broken hiccup of a laugh. “No, I guess if we’re talking Honest Injun, then no, I suppose it wasn’t. First was my dear ole fucking stepdad, but that ain’t a story I wanna tell right now, ya dig?” He smiled. “But it was the first fucker who ever got his shit premeditated, and no doubt the biggest goddamn mess I ever made.”
Boricio looked at Mary, his bottle hovering in the air a few inches from his lips. “You know what the kitchen looks like around Thanksgiving with all the pots and pans and bullshit before you get to setting the table, right? Well, this looked like that, but with about six or seven gallons of blood.”
Mary felt like she was about to vomit, and wondered if she’d be half as patient with Boricio’s macabre recital if she wasn’t so thoroughly drunk.
“How can you be so honest about everything?” she asked. “Don’t you ever feel bad, at all?”
Boricio sucked on the nozzle of his bottle for a while, and Mary wondered if he had any intention of answering the question. She couldn’t quite decipher the something on his face, though if she had to give it a name, she’d call it “almost thoughtful.” Mary had no idea how long Boricio took to open his mouth again, just that she had time to open one final near beer, just like her last two, and nurse it to a third empty.
“Before a few days ago, no, never,” Boricio said. “Not even for a fucking minute. But ever since Luca broke me, I’ve been seeing shit upside down, and yeah, that’s had me wrestling with some of the shit I’ve done.”
“Does that mean you regret it?”
“I don’t know if it’s that exactly,” he said. “I don’t think I’d be here talking to you today if I wasn’t that Boricio, you know?” He took a final swig then threw the bottle into the woods, chasing the handfuls he’d already thrown.
Mary didn’t agree, but wasn’t brave enough to challenge Boricio out loud. But she did ask, “How can you talk so openly about it?”
Boricio shrugged. “Because what happened, happened. Life’s too short for regrets. Shit is what it is; you may as well be honest and give it an NC-17 instead of drowning it in lies and dressing it in a PG-13.” He winked.
Mary wasn’t sure if it was the placebo buzz of the near beer or the frank conversation with Boricio that gave her the confidence, but she said, “How do I know you won’t ever hurt me, or Paola?”
“Because you’re safe with me,” he said, without pause. “Now I’m not saying it’s the sort of safe where you’re never gonna hear the boogeyman howling outside your window, because here at the end of t
he world, I think that’s the special of the day. But you can feel safe knowing that Boricio isn’t the big bad wolf, huffing and puffing and waiting to get in. He’s the one who’ll protect you three little piggies and blow all the other houses down.”
Mary wanted to say more, but didn’t want to push it, or him. So she went back to her earlier question. “So, there’s nothing you regret?”
Boricio shook his head and looked like he was about to say no, then paused and said, “Yeah, I’ve got regrets.”
He went silent after that, so Mary said, “Like?”
“I had this one lady named Sissy, tried taking care of me back when I was a kid. Was one of the only women who ever reached out to me, almost like she actually cared. But I shit on her like I shit on everyone.” Boricio looked suddenly hollow. It was another several seconds before he finished with, “Though I’m not sure I’ve ever given it a lick of thought until today.”
He shook his head and muttered, “Fucking Rip Van Creepy broke me,” then opened another bottle. “How about you, Miss Contrary, any regrets?”
Mary was just fake buzzed enough to bore Boricio with the story of her and Ryan, and how she caught him with Natalie Farmer.
Boricio said, “Well, that’s not all that surprising. Men are a helluva lot more likely than women to cheat anyhow, and it sounds like you were giving your man all sorts of reasons.”
Mary blinked her eyes, shocked. “Excuse me,” she said. “And how’s that?”
“Didn’t you say you were making like a billion dollars a year with your To Be or Not to Be greeting card shit?”
“Not quite,” Mary said. “But yes.”
“Well hells bells and cum-filled wells, Miss Mary, that will get a fucker wanting to test the Big Bang Theory with a bitch he don’t have to hear snoring. Now don’t get me wrong, you’re a mighty fine looking piece of ass, but with your little lamb being around for so long, you probably started boring your boy in the bedroom. And us guys like our shit fresh. We don’t get it, and it’s easy to justify the cheating. Add to that the fact that you’re wearing the pants — bringing in the bacon and cooking it for dinner, well that’s a formula for fucking outside of the house.”
