Nigh

by Zachary Leeman

  Holding the girl, he doesn’t move, though I know he wants to. I can see the eagerness in his eyes, but he’s weak, an animal who has invaded a stronger predator’s habitat and he’s now waiting for permission to leave.

  I let him wait. His knees shake from the weight of the girl and he drips rivers of sweat. I drop my eyes to the 1911 in my hand and I know exactly what I should do.

  A coldness moves through my bones. My hand moves to my brow to wipe away nearly as much sweat as I see on the fat man. Just the thought of him makes the control begin to slip away, the same control that’s kept my senses in a senseless world.

  “I ain’t got all day,” the man says, his voice a weak attempt at something more authoritative than what came before. “You not the only one having fun.”

  I jump forward and wrap my hand around his fat neck so quickly that the look of shock never leaves his eyes even as he turns blue and lifeless.

  When the barrel of the gun presses against his forehead, he shakes more fiercely and the girl nearly slips off his slick shoulders. Tears bubble at the corner of his eyes and he looks ready to blubber like a child.

  I could kill him. Something buried in the boiling blood in my heart tells me to kill him, but what’s left of my sensible mind argues against it. Killing him is futile, worthless. The only body worth anything to me anymore is Jody.

  I lower the gun, my arm turning to dead weight, and step back. The barking from the dogs of madness sound furious and hungry as they scratch at the gates of my mind.

  The man stands still and looks toward me, unsure of what to think. He opens his mouth to say something else but before he can I push a .45 caliber round into his skull and watch him drop like a sack of potatoes, the girl tumbling to the floor with him.

  I breathe in his death.

  The ring is piercing my palm, the small diamond sending shots of pain through me as it digs into skin. I try as hard as I can to close the floodgates, but it’s all back. Sarah and everything that comes with her.

  I put the ring back in my pocket, noticing drops of blood freckling the small diamond now.

  I shuffle my way back through the door and slam it shut as hard as I can, hoping against hope it will put an end to the voices and make the memories die.

  I return the chair to its rightful spot, jammed against the knob.

  I shuffle my way down the hallway back to Jody.

  He’s impressively made it a third of the way to the windowsill. Chair knocked to the floor, his body writhes and fights in desperation for every millimeter, like a man dying of thirst pushing his way to a lake.

  I lean back against a wall and watch him fight his way to the mirage, the small distraction of his pain a welcome addition to my senses.

  Watching Jody struggle to grab onto the only hope left of some comfort, some happiness before it all collapses dims the voices just enough for me to make it from one thought to the other without the knives of madness fully thrusting their way into my consciousness.

  I almost feel sorry for him as I lift him and the chair up and drag them both back to their spot against the wall, his wailing almost as loud as when the hammer made its first contact with his bones.

  After he watches his progress disappear and ends up right back where his journey began, Jody’s head collapses to his chest in defeat.

  I move my way to the window, listening to a tired man suffer his way through his last painful breaths, tortured by what he knows is only just out of reach.

  They’re gathering now. It’s like it’s bringing them out in the open, like the less seconds there are, the more space they need around them. Some have likely been cooped up for weeks, months even, but now they all make their way to the streets, needing to feel the sky above them, needing to widen their worlds as much as they can before it all comes to a halt.

  From here they look like no more than game pieces thrown onto a torn apart board, each of them abandoned by the rules, the turns and the players.

  Some I can see scurry endlessly about, some scream or preach or yell, some fight, others shuffle and mumble to themselves, some even fuck.

  On one end of the street a large banner covers nearly a third of a building’s width. It reads, “HURRY UP.” It’s something that had to have taken the effort of multiple people. It nearly makes me chuckle.

  A fire burns at the other end of the street. Its foundation is what appears to be a minivan, but people are feeding it with various items — office chairs, dead carcasses, baby strollers.

  “A beautiful lie,” I hear crawl across my lips.

  I turn my back on the world and see Jody, his body shaking and a stormy cloud of desperation hanging over his head. I can smell and cherish his hunger in the air now. It’s thick and ripe and it will never be fed.

  My eyes close and the cacophony takes hold of me again. It’s all there, swirling in one furious tornado and I’m just along for the ride.

  I try to focus on Jody and the moments ahead, but what use are fists against fire? Sarah’s words, the memories, the feeling of the shared impending fate turn my mind into a punching bag. The madness, the loss of control becomes seductive, a warm blanket against a snowstorm, a lifejacket at sea.

  Memories of when it all slipped away threaten to rip me from this world I’ve worked so hard to build. I force my eyes open, my eyelids feeling like steel doors.

  The world is flashes, a slideshow of progressive images in between spurts of pure blackness.

  The cold handle of the hammer touches my fingertips. My shoulder muscles tighten and lift.

  His screams feed and nourish me. I am the righteous man. Chunks of flesh and rivers of red remind me who I am, remind me to push the seductress of madness away.

  A different kind of pain shoots its way through me, one of tired, screaming muscles, dehydration and pure adrenaline. It’s intoxicating and life affirming. The voices grow dimmer and dimmer with each drop of the hammer.

  The black spots become more and more distant until they are no more and I am in the reality I need to be in.

  I can’t hear Jody. I don’t know if he screams and for the first time, I don’t care.

  When I’m through, when my mind is quiet and back to a temporary, but controllable calm, my arms feel like they’ve been ripped from my body. I hear the thud of the hammer hitting the floor, and I nearly drop to the ground from exhaustion.

  My hand finds its way to my face and is soon dripping in fresh blood. I move toward Jody, now a man crippled almost completely by his flipper of a hand and two legs which now look like backroads on a map.

  Through it all, his eyes still dart to the windowsill. It might as well be a dream to him at this point, but he doesn’t realize it yet and that exhilarates me only further, my skin crawling with excitement.

  I watch Jody attempt to move forward and then drop to the floor like a pile of loose bricks being kicked over as I spark another cigarette to life, its controlled burn hot and ever tempting against my lips.

  The smoke dissipates whatever doubt or memories are left in me. It burns it all away, as I hold the first inhale inside of me and close my eyes and imagine it setting fire to whatever corner of my mind I’ve pushed everything to.

  I exhale and feel the lightness travel to my head and Jody groans and releases what little energy he has left in him.

  When the cigarette is halfway gone and the sounds of the street and the outside world begin pecking their way through the walls, I let my eyes fall to Jody once more. He convulses on the floor after several attempts to propel himself forward and I can’t help but admire my handiwork.

  He hardly looks human anymore. The soul of a killer is contained now by a body that looks like it is eating itself alive.

  The ring finds its way back into my free hand as I move my way to him. Another inhale of smoke brings with it all the facts I have etched into my skull.

  Naomie Lyman. 23. Worked the counter at a movie theater while making her way through nursing school. She ate a plain bagel with butter
on the corner of Willow and Bran every weekday. She bought a bottle of wine at the liquor store on her half mile walk home from the movie theater every Friday night. She thought she was in love. She thought she was at the beginning of a new life.

  In a world of no good things, she was as close as one could come to innocence.

  I quickly stuff the ring back into my pocket and finish what’s left of my cigarette while standing over Jody.

  I stub what’s left of the cigarette onto the back of his neck and listen to him hiss while the embers die out on his skin. He doesn’t scream. He lets out aggressive winces, noises suggesting the pain is a relief compared to what has come before.

  He’s relieved himself several times, but I’ve somehow gotten used to the smell.

  I put him back in the chair and go at him a bit longer, slicing and peeling thin pieces of flesh with a blade from my bag.

  The little bits of undamaged body come easy. He screams from every incision. Whispers and pleas escape his lips, but he’s too desperate and delusional to manage full sentences. His words are jumbled, but it’s easy to see the weakness in his eyes and to taste the fear on his breath.

  When his arms are almost entirely raw flesh, I push my way back and walk over the slabs of skin curled on the floor. I return the knife to the bag and listen to Jody’s sobs.

  I make my way to the bedroom and lie down and close my eyes. I don’t sleep. I don’t need it. There is no sleeping now for anyone. I merely drown out the sight of the world and listen to the animal noises being released from Jody’s body. Words have escaped him. His voice now moves in a cycle of desperation, from blistering crying to murmurs of nonsense to high pitched pleading and then back again.

  I listen to the man beg for the only thing left in the world that could give him any sense of relief.

  My eyes closed, I pull the ring from my pocket and roll it between my fingers while listening to the man I’ve destroyed beg for the peace he will never get.

  A straight jacket of pain wakes me. A war erupts inside me. My stomach somersaults, and my heart races at a near deafening speed. Everything across my body contracts and expands at different paces and it thrusts me to my feet. This is what the end feels like.

  Images and memories flood their way to the surface of my mind, each coming with its own electric-like charge. Mother. Father. Sarah. My hand squeals in pain as I wrap it as tight as I can around the grip of the gun, as if the weapon can somehow intimidate my mind into slowing down.

  I shuffle out of the bedroom and make my way to the bag, feeling the blood on my arms and face crack with each movement like dried paint.

  I look to the watch on the counter. When I read it, the pain quickens inside of me as if receiving a shot of adrenaline.

  A pileup begins in the freeway of my mind, and I pull and hold the ring as tight as I can, trying desperately to focus.

  Finish it, I repeat to myself like a mantra until some semblance of sense blankets me. I turn to Jody.

  I storm forward and grab Jody’s chair and lean it backwards, his weight a struggle to hold as my body begins to moan again about how tired and hungry and broke it is.

  I drag the chair down the hallway, drinking in the pleading cries from Jody. My shoulder screams again, the pain cold and fierce now, somehow worse than before. It moves its way quickly down my arm, feeling like a blade digging its way slowly across my skin.

  When we are in the bedroom, I let go of the chair and kick it and Jody against a wall. My shoulder and arm let out a small sigh of relief, but they feel all but useless now, the pokes and prods and burns pulsating and going off like tiny grenades.

  I find myself pacing the room. When I realize I’m also talking to myself, I stop in my tracks.

  Focus, old man. Focus and finish it. Only so much time.

  “Please,” Jody manages to say, blood dribbling from his cracked lips. I move the ring in my hand again and feel its familiar twists and turns.

  Focus, old man. Focus and finish it. Only so much time.

  I close my eyes and one by one, I drown everything out. Jody. The whispers in the back of my skull. The memories. The sharp pains. The ring rolls through my hand until it’s the only sensation my body recognizes.

  How happy she was. People at work said she couldn’t stop showing the thing off after she got it. The woman they all knew as the quiet type who kept to herself suddenly couldn’t stop jumping into conversations and then showing off her new engagement ring.

  It was nothing special. A thin gold band devoid of any significant details save for the tiny rock on top of it.

  “Please,” Jody mumbles, his voice slowly working its way back into my world.

  “Say her name.” I open my eyes to Jody, a crippled mess of a thing with no real fight left in him. He’s not even a person anymore. He’s a copy of a copy of a copy.

  He begins to mouth the word “please” again before he stops himself, my request registering across his face when he sees the ring in my hand.

  “Say her name,” he hears again. Something leaves Jody’s lips that is impossible to make out.

  “Say her name.”

  “N-Na-Naomie.”

  “Naomie,” I repeat, dropping the ring back into my pocket, his eyes following it. “Say it again.”

  “Naomie,” he mumbles, fresh tears forming. He doesn’t look at me now, his face buried on the floor. For a moment, I wonder if he knew before when I brought him here. The question is swept away quickly enough because it doesn’t much matter. He knows now.

  “Say it again.” I move closer to him, his foul stench scratching at my skin.

  “Naomie,” he says louder.

  “Say it again.”

  I move closer.

  “Naomie.”

  “Again.”

  I’m inches away from him.

  “Naomie.”

  “Again!” My hands wrap around his jaw and I move his head so his eyes are locked into mine. If there is any fight left in the man then it burns brightly in his eyes.

  “Naomie!” he says, louder this time, with venom now dashing across his lips.

  “Again!”

  “Naomie!”

  I move my hand and walk away from him, feeling his eyes on me.

  So many questions. So many things I thought I wanted to say. Now, finally in this room with him, those questions and those things all feel so useless.

  I take it in for a moment, expecting something that never fully comes. It’s been there all this time and yet, I’ve hardly afforded it a glance.

  I move my way to the bed and sit. I can see Jody’s eyes fall on the darkened, uncleaned stain that is the last evidence of her ever being alive in this apartment.

  “Confess,” I say, digging around in my pocket until I find an old rag. I begin to wipe my face, knowing it’s layered in blood, blood I don’t want on my face when it’s all over. I expect resistance when I begin to wipe, but I’m surprised to find myself showered in sweat. The blood wipes away with ease.

  I put the rag away, and I see Jody giving me a look I can’t read.

  “Confess,” I say again. His face turns to the dried stain of Naomie and then back to me.

  “Why?” he says, his voice tired and hoarse.

  “Confess.”

  “Fuck yo —” a coughing fit stops Jody before he can finish cursing me.

  “Confess.”

  “Taste.”

  “What?”

  “A taste,” he says, clearer now. “I want a taste. You get what you want. I get what-”

  “Jody,” I say, holding his desperate eyes. “Tell me what I want to know or I will leave you in here and staple your fucking eyelids to your forehead and put you right in front of that fucking corner. You really want that to be the last thing you look at?”

  Silence falls across the room like a thick fog as Jody’s mind no doubt races, an addict weighing his options. His eyes are back on the corner.

  I notice for the first time that the room feels like
it’s quaking and vibrating. I think maybe it’s just in my mind until I listen closely and hear noises from outside fighting their way in, making our world even smaller now.

  “I killed her.”

  “What?”

  My attention turns back to Jody.

  “I killed Naomie,” he says, his eyes on mine. I look back to the corner and the photos flicker across my mind one by one. The pretty, blonde girl who was stabbed so many times, she’d nearly been split in two.

  She was nearly as ripped apart as Jody is now.

  I lift myself up from the bed and make my way to the other room, every piece of me heavier. Each movement brings a hammering of pain like my body is cannibalizing itself just to keep running.

  I move my way to the window and look down upon the rest of the world. I watch everything swallow itself.

  I make out a few of the signs people are holding. On a rooftop, one reads, “Fade to Black,” which nearly makes me laugh.

  Some fight. Some scream to the nothingness of the sky. Some wander and talk to themselves.

  Almost no pavement can be seen below them. People spent so much time these last few months avoiding each other, feeding their own desires, yet now it’s like feel a call to congregate.

  I move away from the window and run the ring through my hand one more time, trying to conjure up images of Naomie that can replace the crime scene photos still being projected in my head.

  Naomie graduating. Naomie with her parents, with her friends. Some of the images I see I don’t even remember from specific pictures; I just make them up.

  Before I get too lost in fantasies, I lay the ring on the windowsill next to the indulgences Jody would kill for if he could.

  I make my way to the bedroom and drag Jody’s chair back to its original spot across from the window, atop the dried blood and bits of bone and skin.

  He mumbles endlessly through cracked lips and a body that has no mileage left in it. He begs and begs, and I know I’ve convinced him there is a hell. I smile listening to his wails of desperation.

  It’s not long before the vibrations and noises from the street below scurry their way into our world and my smile dissipates. My mind starts running in directions that surprise even me.