His eyes bulge even further as he looks at what was left of his legs, and he begins a high-pitched keening. Irritated, she shoots him in the neck, blowing his head half off.
One more target, clumsily attempting to clamber out the window. The buckshot hits him dead between the shoulder blades, and his arms convulse outward like he’s crucified as he sails back-first to crash on the floor.
‘You got 'em, Mom!’ Eric watches avidly from the back of her brain as she scans the seven cowed survivors sitting in a disordered arc of metal chairs. They are completely in her power, but the feeling doesn’t give her the satisfaction it seems to give Eric.
She sees a child with one couple, and she frowns in consternation. Then Rita sees a wisp of a man holding a clipboard, another therapist, and she smiles inside the armor of her mask as she takes a slow step toward him. He cringes back in his seat, raising the clipboard like a shield.
Therapist? Rita thinks. Apologist.
"How many have you gotten released?" she asks gently. "How many do you keep free for the sake of your job?"
He opens his mouth to reply, and she shoots him in the groin. He slumps from his chair to lie on his side in the fetal position, grunting weakly for a few seconds before he dies.
Rita drops the empty shotgun to clatter on the floor at her side, and draws her .38 from her shoulder holster. She isn't in the mood for a debate.
Rita turns toward the couple with the child, facing the wife squarely. The woman quivers against her husband as Rita aims the revolver at them in a two-handed grip. The pasty-faced man pats his wife's back, unable even to meet Rita's gaze.
"You had to know." Rita is calm as she addresses the woman. "But you stayed with him. You knew, and you let him do it anyway."
"You don't understand," the man blurts, still staring at the floor.
"No, I don't," Eric says.
Rita shoots the pasty-faced man once in the chest and once in the head. He slides like a sack of grain from his wife's arms, who squawks as she attempts to hold him upright.
One round to the body, one to the head, and the wife follows her husband into death. Their chairs scrape across the tile floor as the couple's sagging bodies push them crookedly back.
Three men and the child left, ducks in a row. One of the men is praying silently, his lips moving; another is blubbering and shaking in fear. She drops both of them in quick succession, with two more head shots – she knows she's running out of time.
The last man has wet himself, the urine soaking down his pant's leg and puddling beneath him. It's clear from his unfocused look that there's no fight left in him. Good.
Rita turns to the child, a little blonde-haired boy of about ten. He stares at Rita like a huge-eyed statue, too stunned even to be afraid. It’s strange: she can tell he doesn’t resemble Eric in any way, and yet part of her still insists he looks just like her dead son.
Rita extends the pistol and wills herself to pull the trigger – but nothing happens. She doesn’t care what all the doctors had said in session, she knows the boy will grow up to become a monster himself – as Eric would have, if he'd lived.
She has to save him from himself, as she would have saved Eric if he'd survived – but she just can't bring herself to lay this child down. She’s too weak, she supposes.
Finally, she turns from the boy with a shamefaced snarl and shoots the last freak in both knees, then holsters her pistol as the man thrashes to the floor, his folding chair booming metallically onto its side behind him. He wriggles like a doomed fish on a boat deck, whooping and clutching at his legs.
Rita reaches carefully into her tote bag, withdrawing a stoppered glass bottle of hydrochloric acid and a taped-handled straight razor. She leans over, glares into the little boy's wide eyes from behind her mask, and whispers to him, "Watch – and remember!"
‘Do it, Mom! Do it!’ Eric crows in exultation from the black void of her soul as she steps forward to finish the job and give her son his final rest.
The screaming seems to last forever. But really, it is over rather quickly.
Rita exits the church at a brisk walk, having been inside less than five minutes. Still no sirens, but there are several people standing on lawns across the street from the church.
One of them points at her, seeing her carrying the shotgun openly — she ignores them. The child is still inside, alone and unharmed, sitting frozen among all the dead meat.
Kneeling behind the dumpster, Rita grabs the towel and rolls the shotgun in it. Still no police, but she can hear sirens in the distance now.
She removes her mask as she stands, and that's when she sees it on the church sign next to her – today's date, followed by these words: ‘When Your Child Dies - A Workshop For Helping Parents & Siblings To Cope.’
Her head whirls as the significance sinks in, and she staggers where she stands. Then Eric's presence fills her to overflowing, fills her with a numb kind of strength.
She hears the gloating tinkle of Eric's laughter, scraping at the inside of her skull. ‘Right place, wrong night,’ he giggles, louder than she’s ever heard him, but still for her ears alone.
‘We’ll do better next time,’ he says, but he doesn’t sound regretful at all: he's fed now, and he's fully awake.
She dives into the alley as if escaping (as if escape was possible).
She’d come hear tonight to lay Eric to rest. But, as she runs through the shelter-less darkness of the alley toward their car, running as if she could run forever, Rita realizes that Eric isn't going to rest for a long, long time.
Blind Date
He slowly comes back to himself, the pill fog gone for the first time in years it seemed. He looks slyly around the dayroom, keeping his face as slack as it had been the moment before, looking at all the other medicated zombies he lives with.
He doesn’t bother trying to analyze why things are clear again; he’s in the moment, assessing. Proud rage threatens to spill past his mask though: all the ward attendants appear bored, they joke with each other as they wander carelessly among all their dayroom charges.
How dare they feel safe around him? Where are the restraints they’d honored him with when he first came here, the blood of his last victims still fresh on his hands?
He smells Doctor Leeds approaching. He allows his mouth to hang open, lets his eyes go unfocused as his old nemesis studies him; there’s a young woman next to Leeds, wearing a staff uniform.
“He’s still in there somewhere I suppose,” Doctor Leeds says, his voice deep and gloating. “Modern pharmacology has brought the old dragon low.”
“Yes father,” the uniformed girl says quietly, looking at the floor.
“Don’t ever call me that here,” Doctor Leeds hisses. The daughter winces, and then the two are gone.
He sits there patiently for the rest of the day, allows himself to be herded along with the rest of the shamblers to the meds-locker just before lights out. Doctor Leeds daughter hands him his pills; the bored attendants make sure he swallows them, make sure he doesn’t hide them under his tongue.
He joins the parade to the dormitory and climbs onto his cot, irritated that he isn’t even confined to a padded cell. He waits for the pills to take effect, reflecting that his charade will become real soon enough.
This latest dose of meds will take him away from lucidity and into the haze again, this time forever. No escape after all.
But later he lays awake in the night, eyes closed as he listens to the mumbling dreamers surrounding him, studying his continued clarity. ‘Modern pharmacology,’ Leeds said – how it must have pleased Leeds to disrespect him, to make light of him by using pills as a cage.
What was happening here? Why wasn’t he doped up anymore?
He is suspicious; this couldn’t possibly be to his benefit. Once could mean a weak batch of anti-psychotics, but this ongoing lucidity has to mean enemy action.
The good Doctor’s ‘profiling’ had put him in here in the first place. Perhaps Leeds is trying
to trick him. But it doesn’t matter; the old needs are back in full force now – even if he’s serving another’s plan, he has no choice but to go forward.
He uncoils from his cot, grateful that the long inactivity hasn’t stunted his physicality. He floats though the dorm-room to the staff-office in the corner, mouth open to improve his hearing as he tries to psychically locate whoever was on night duty.
He reaches the office and sneaks a peek through the half open door. The attendant lies there next to the desk, staring at the ceiling with dead eyes.
There’s a spilled cup of coffee next to the white clad corpse, the brown liquid still steaming and acrid smelling as it puddled on the linoleum. There’s no blood, which is frustrating – but the door to the day room is open, and excitement overpowers his irritation as he glides through.
The main security office looks unmanned, but he hurries that way so as to overpower the security personnel that he knows has be somewhere around; he’s gleeful to be in the zone again for the first time in ages. But both the rent-a-cops are dead as well; some one had gotten to them before him and stolen all his fun.
This time there’s blood however: they both have extra mouths carved across their throats, those twin bloody smiles calling out to him in old bon homie. His nostrils flare at the delicious copper smell of their uncongealed blood.
“Hah!” he sighs softly to himself as he picks up the bloody knife from the desk, as conveniently placed as if put there solely for him to find.
Outside the main entrance, a car is waiting with engine running. He is around to the driver’s side in a blur, the butcher knife poised to address whoever’s behind the wheel. As he readies to insert the blade, he reflects on just how fortunate the driver is – he wouldn’t be able to take as much time here as he liked.
The blade stops as he recognizes Doctor Leeds’ daughter. The girl acts as if she doesn’t even notice the blade.
“You want to look in the trunk,” she says, and presses a dash button. There’s blood on her hand.
She is at his mercy, he knows he can reach her before she could drive away – he’s strong again, so he takes the chance and steps back to the open trunk. Doctor Leeds is in there, hogtied mouth duct-taped shut.
Now he feels even stronger. Strong enough to kill God, strong enough to rape the Devil. It’s good.
Leeds's daughter gets out of the car and comes back to join him. They stand together, looking down at her father.
She clears her throat. “After you’re done with Daddy, I’d like it if you come home and take care of Mom before you decide what you’re going to do with me.”
He looks at the girl and she looks right back, meeting his eyes without fear, as if they were family. He reflects that her being out of the car means that he wouldn’t get any blood in the car’s interior if he decides not to take her with him – she’s deliberately made it easier for him.
He smiles down at her father, at her gift to him. “Agreed,” he says.
Then, as she watches and as Leeds stares up at him with screaming eyes, he bends over and gets to work.
Community Property
“Three months, Gordon. Maybe four if you don’t stress yourself out, if you give up burning the candle at both ends, and if you’re lucky.”
Gordon heard Doctor Benson’s words on an intellectual level, but forced their meaning to wash over and past him. All his attention was on the MRI scan printout of his abdominal region, trying to see if he could spot the tumor for himself.
But it was no use: to his untrained eye the MRI was only a jumble of color representing his internal organs. Gordon was irritated to have no idea what was really supposed to be there inside his body, and what was the invading cancerous parasite betraying him.
Doctor Benson’s hand touched his arm. Startled, Gordon turned away from that hypnotic MRI to look down at his plump, pretty primary-care physician.
There was nothing wrong with plump, he considered as he eye-perved her up and down. He was on the husky side himself, after all.
“You can get another opinion if you like, in fact I recommend it,” Doctor Benson said. “But I’ve run the tests more than once and there’s absolutely no doubt. The MRI is only confirmation. Would you like me to point out the malignancy on the display?”
“No,” Gordon said, refusing to look at the MRI again, wondering why he wouldn’t make this last acknowledgement of a truth he’d suspected since the first night he’d spent hugging the porcelain god and vomiting up blood. Instead, he focused his attention on Doctor Benson.
“Linda,” Gordon said, using her first name for the first time in their acquaintance. That old seductive croon had entered his bass voice.
“Linda,” he repeated, letting his unspoken offer color his words. He had nothing to lose anymore, after all.
Linda looked at the floor from under lowered lashes, avoiding his eyes. “Good luck Gordon.” Her voice was soft and almost regretful, but the shut down was firm.
“Don’t waste any time,” Doctor Benson said to his back as he left the examination room.
Out in the parking lot, Gordon lit up a Marlboro and hot-boxed it, toking hard. He noted five missed messages on his cell phone when he turned it back on.
He grimaced as he saw that four of them were from his wife, Yang. The fifth was from his attorney Chris Ketchum, and Gordon hit reply as he walked toward Yang’s Mercedes, touching his thick head of hair to make sure his coif was still immaculate.
“Gordon,” Chris said on his end as he Caller-ID-ed Gordon’s cell. “We have to talk my friend.”
“I know, I know,” Gordon said as he hit the alarm button on his key ring. Yang’s Mercedes chirped greeting as he gave the hood an affectionate pat, admiring the perfect lines of his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s car. The Benz was top drawer, a 2008 S65 AMG, and Gordon enjoyed its luxury as much as he enjoyed the taunt he was sending Yang by keeping it from her.
“Don’t you blow me off again, Gordon,” Chris shouted, loud enough Gordon had to pull the cell away from his ear a bit as he threw down his smoke and got into the Benz.
Gordon hit the speaker phone button and tossed the cell onto the passenger seat as he buckled up, chuckling to himself even as he did it. He’d always been a careful man (except in his love life of course) and habit was hard to break even now when it didn’t matter anymore.
“How long have we known each other, Gordon?” Chris asked, voice a little lower, a little calmer. “She says she wants her Benz back as part of her share of the community property; I’d say she really just wants the closure. You sign the papers, you show up tomorrow in court and hand her the keys, and I’ll bet I can keep her from fucking you too hard.”
Gordon laughed as he started the engine and lit another smoke. “You don’t know Yang as well as you think you do, Chris. The divorce is just her opening salvo, and the Benz is just the first trophy she’s going to scalp off me. She’s going to burn me down to the waterline. She’s taking this all the way no matter what I do. Besides, I don’t really have to give a rat’s ass anymore.” Gordon realized he’d said too much even as the words came out of his mouth, but it was too late to back pedal.
“And what exactly to you mean by that statement my friend?” Chris asked slowly, his attorney brain chewing hard on Gordon’s words.
Gordon pulled out of the Kaiser Hospital parking lot and took Broadway west under the 580, heading toward Oakland Civic Center and thinking hard himself. He powered down his window and flung out his latest butt, then fumbled another from his pack and lit up while he drove one-handed.
“I’m dying, Chris,” Gordon said, wondering even as he uttered the words why he was burdening his friend with the information. Maybe he was trying the fact of his imminent death on for size. Maybe he wanted Chris’s legal brain to show him some kind of loophole from his upcoming demise.
“Jesus,” Chris breathed, and was silent for several seconds himself. “Get your ass over here Gordon. Screw the divorce; you shouldn’t be alone rig
ht now.”
“You always were a good buddy, Chris,” Gordon said. “I’ll be in touch.”
He reached over and picked up the cell phone, ended the call. But it started ringing again immediately. Gordon powered down his window again and tossed the cellie out of the car without bothering to see if it was Chris or Yang vying for his attention.
Gordon reached Jack London Square and turned south along the Estuary to the industrial park his company was located in. He crossed the lobby, took the elevator to the top floor, and entered his office. His secretary Sarah looked as relieved at his arrival as if he was the Second Coming.
“She’s been burning up the phone lines,” Sarah said in that husky Midwest drawl that had turned Gordon on since the first time she opened her mouth at her job interview two months before. “I just about ran out of note paper keeping track of her calls. Oh, yeah: a process server came by but I refused to accept whatever paper he was trying to hang.”
“Good work, babe,” Gordon said, reaching up to make sure his hair was un-mussed. He angled to get a look down the front of her low cut dress at her cleavage, but realized he was just doing it from habit, going through the motions. His heart wasn’t really in it today, so he just took the paper listing Yang’s calls from Sarah, walked past her toward his office.
“Gordon,” Sarah called out from behind him, and he turned. “Is everything all right?”
Was that honest concern he saw on her face? Or did she only smell the possible end of her meal ticket?
Gordon made himself try to smile, not realizing that the facial rictus made him look anything but pleasant. “Everything’s fine.”
Sarah nodded as though she wanted him to think she was relieved, but he sensed she had more to say, waited in unaccustomed patience.
“Do you think your wife knows about us?” she blurted after a moment, her face gone a little red.
Gordon almost laughed at the irrelevancy of the question, but restrained himself. “You have nothing to worry about, Sarah. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”
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