The Devil

by Erik Henry Vick

  “No,” he whined. “I don’t want to. I didn’t mean to betray—”

  “Look at me!” Her whip-crack voice made him startle.

  Hell, it made me jump, too.

  “Get his head, neshama.” As I stood there gaping at her, she looked at me with frost in her eyes and an expression as barren as the steppes. “Do it.”

  I walked behind the chair, and Mikhail looked up at me with terror in his eyes. “Don’t, Rob. Shoot me. Kill me. Just don’t make me look her in the eye.”

  “Guilt’s a bitch, Mikhail. Time to take your lumps.” I grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back hard.

  He started to thrash his head side to side so hard that I was left holding a clump of Russian mob boss hair. “No!” He was crying by then, and not from the pain of ripping the hair out of his own head.

  I grabbed his ears and wrenched his head around toward Lily. He fought me hard. I can’t even imagine how much it must have hurt, but he didn’t cry out. He grunted and moaned, sure, but there were no more words.

  Lily stepped forward and put her hands on top of his wrists. “No, no, Misha, you keep those baby-blues open wide.”

  Mikhail whimpered.

  She laughed, right up in Mikhail’s face, but there was no mirth in her eyes. No mirth. Only a feral kind of cruelty danced there. “Obaldenny, suka,” she crooned. “Now we’ll see. Won’t we?”

  I had a great view of her breasts, but I have to say, the look in her eye totally quashed my vibe.

  There was a mewling, moaning noise coming from Mikhail’s throat. It was the kind of sound you expected to hear from a thirteen-year-old girl who’d lost her cat or something. He was still struggling, but not very hard.

  “Whatever you do, Bobo, don’t look at me until I tell you it’s okay.”

  The noise he was making kept getting louder and louder. It had a nails-on-a-chalk board kind of intensity that made my skin crawl.

  I glanced up at Lily. I couldn’t resist. Her eyes weren’t eyes. At first, I thought they were all black, just like in those horror flicks, but then I saw they weren’t black at all. They were full of images. Thousands and thousands of pictures of every kind of depravity and cruelty mankind has ever devised.

  Suddenly, she began to—I don’t know, to fade out. The beautiful woman began to disappear. In her place was something made of shadows and darkness. Its form was ill-defined. It looked like it was being ripped apart by violent winds, with pieces tearing away only to meld back into the whole.

  I whimpered in the face of all that—that malevolence.

  “No, no, mami. Look away. Look away now, Bobs.”

  I ripped my eyes away from hers. Only then did I realize how bad it had felt to look at her. Like I was dying. Like I had a brain weasel trying to gnaw its way out of my skull. Looking away was a relief. My heart was going about a million miles an hour. I could feel my pulse pounding in my neck.

  Mikhail was trying to speak but could only mutter gibberish. Maybe it was Russian—I don’t know. I kept my eyes closed. The noises he made freaked me out. He sounded like he was being eaten alive, but couldn’t scream.

  It seemed like it went on and on. Finally, Mikhail stopped making any noises at all. He stopped trying to wrench his head from side to side. He just sat there.

  Lily leaned back and sighed. It was the kind of sigh you expect to hear from a person who’s just had terrific sex, or who’s just eaten an amazing French meal. “It’s okay now, motek. You can ogle me again.”

  I looked down at Mikhail first. Or what was left of Mikhail. His face was frozen in a rictus of pain and terror. His eyes were just holes with wisps of smoke coming out. I jerked my hands away from his head. They were sticky with blood from where Mikhail had half-torn his own ears off while I made him look Lily in the eye.

  I peeked up at her face. She looked like the cat that had just eaten the canary.

  “Thank you for keeping your promise, kisa. I knew you would.” She was all sex now.

  It was jarring to see sexy Lily so soon after seeing demon Lily. I can’t say that I was much in the mood for intimacy, but Lily has a way…

  We had sex on the rug in front of what was left of Mikhail. Several times during our love-making, I swear Lily looked up at his cadaver, and her passion reached new heights.

  Weird, yes, but not out of character for Lily.

  She never answered any of my questions about Mikhail and all the things he’d said about her. Every time I asked, she just gave me her patented, “we’re not talking about this” look. I don’t know what the truth of it was.

  But, I think I believe Mikhail.

  I fell in love with the devil, and she betrayed me.

  I met up with Johnby a few weeks after Lily and I murdered Mikhail to check on the business. I don’t know if it was because of the brutality of it or the fact that not a single gangster from the lobby could remember anyone going up to or coming down from Mikhail’s apartment (according to the news at least), but resistance from the Bratva had all but evaporated. We were even getting feelers from some of the vor who wanted to join our gang.

  That’s loyalty for you.

  For the first time since I’d met Johnby, he looked lost and alone. When he told me his wife had kicked him out of their apartment, I knew. Of course I knew. I still asked why.

  “Why’d she kick you out?”

  He hit me with a furtive glance—just a peek and then away. If I’d had any doubt before that look, it was gone after it.

  He knew that I knew and he didn’t want to say it. He wanted me to give him a pass for fucking Lily. For fucking my soulmate. He wanted to pretend it never happened.

  I shrugged and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked so relieved I almost laughed as I slammed my Bowie knife into the side of his neck. I stabbed him a second time and shoved him to the ground. As I stood over him, I realized I was humming that weird, discordant tune of Lily’s. I shuddered and forced myself to stop humming that damn dirge for the dead or whatever it was.

  I murdered him. That one isn’t like all the rest. Johnby’s murder is mine and mine alone, and I should pay for that crime. I admit that.

  After he stopped twitching, I checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Then I turned my back on his corpse and left him lying in a pool of his thickening blood. I felt vindicated.

  That’s loyalty for you.

  I walked to the warehouse, getting angrier and angrier. I lost myself to rage somewhere in that short stroll. I’m not sure what happened next, but when I regained control, I found myself standing over Lily in the bed we shared, my knife stuck in her guts. As I stood, shaking, trying not to puke, Lily looked up at me and laughed—great big belly-shaking guffaws. The hilt of the Bowie twitched and jiggled in time to her hilarity.

  Then she pulled the knife out and threw it on the floor. She pulled me over and patted me on the cheek like she was consoling a child. “Sorry, Bobbicito. It’s what I am. A corrupter. The Corrupter. Sometimes I’m going to fuck other people. It doesn’t mean anything. I love you and only you. You are mine, and I am yours.” She shrugged. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Then she pulled me down on the bed and made love to me. Her blood gushed from the wound and coated both of us. That’s when I started to believe she really was the devil.

  The next day, I learned firsthand that the devil is merciless and cruel.

  Lily never went to the emergency department or to one of those cruddy little urgent-care centers that spring up like weeds. She never even put gauze over the damn hole in her gut. It was as if it wasn’t worthy of her notice, let alone her worry or care.

  The day after I stabbed her, you could no longer tell she’d even been scratched by the wide-bladed knife. No matter how close I got to where the wound should have been, I couldn’t see anything—not even a blemish on her skin.

  She caught me staring at her naked stomach and centered my gaze between her legs. “Don’t worry about that, chico mio. It was nothing, and I’ve alread
y forgotten about it.”

  “O-okay. I didn’t—”

  “Shhh, Bobbicito. Nothing needs to be said.” She glanced down at my groin and frowned at the lack of enthusiasm she saw there. She sighed and separated herself from me. “It’s all okay, sweets. It’ll just take a bit of time to get everything back to how it was.”

  I nodded dumbly, thinking that nothing could ever go back to how it was.

  She smiled at me as soft as rabbit fur. “You’ll see, Bobo. A day or two and you’ll be back to your horn-dog self.”

  I tried to smile.

  “Come on. Let’s go for a walk and get you some food.”

  She got dressed in about a second—I mean, how long does it take to pull on a minidress and zip up a pair of boots? It didn’t matter if it took her a second or not, she was the same knockout hot as the day I first saw her.

  We were strolling down East Drive in Prospect Lake Park, arm in arm like a pair of newlyweds when the three boys ran by us. One of them got too close and jostled Lily with his shoulder.

  The boy—and I don’t mean teenager or young man, I mean boy—just brushed her hip with his shoulder as they ran past. It was nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Ay, que chulo!” Her tone was nasty, hateful.

  I was surprised. She loved to see kids playing and cutting up.

  The boy stopped and turned to look at her. “Lo siento.”

  “Baseeta,” she snapped.

  I had no idea what that meant. I swear to God I spent ninety percent of the time I was with her wondering what the fuck she was saying.

  The boy’s face scrunched up like an old rag. “No entiendo. My English is not so much.”

  She sneered at him. “It’s Arabic, mijo.”

  He looked at her, head slightly tilted, puzzlement in his eyes. “Why are you pretend to be Puerto Rican? You know you are jincho, no?”

  She stiffened and withdrew her arm from mine, all slow and deliberate.

  I was confused, I’ll admit. She was building herself into a real fury over nothing—an accident and a boy who could speak English about as well as she spoke Spanish. “Come on, Lily. He didn’t mean—”

  “Shut up.”

  I closed my mouth with a snap that almost took off the tip of my tongue. It’s not like I was whipped or anything—well, that’s an absolute lie—but there was a quality in her tone that made me think of Sir Anthony Hopkins in that movie with Jodie Foster. The one about the serial killer who ate people. I’m no coward, but something in the way she was standing made me want to run, and I took a step back almost without deciding to.

  “Mírame, bastardo.” Her voice was arctic and sounded dead.

  “Let’s go, Lily, he’s just a kid.”

  “I told you to shut up, Robert.” She pointed at me with one finger, the sharpened red fingernail at its end glistening in the afternoon sun like it had just been dipped in fresh blood. She never even looked in my direction.

  I’d never heard her sound so…psychotic, I guess—not even when she was murdering Mikhail with her hoodoo eyeballs. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I shut up.

  The kid was looking at me for help and wringing his small hands.

  “Mírame, chingado.”

  The boy started to turn his head toward her like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. I wanted to stop him from looking. I really did. But I kept remembering those images that flickered in her eyes as she killed Mikhail. I didn’t want to have that gaze turned on me, so I let her do it.

  That’s my part in it. I allowed it to happen without so much as a peep.

  When his eyes locked on hers, he whimpered and wet his pants. His friends started to laugh, but when they looked at Lily, they went all white and then turned and ran for it. I think they were crying.

  The little boy’s eyes got wider and wider and wider until I thought his skin was just going to split and peel back over his skull. His breathing sped up until he was panting. His little chest rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. The smell of shit in his pants was overpowering.

  I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t, any more than I could have stopped her in Mikhail’s apartment. I should have stopped her, but by then it was too late.

  That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

  She spun away, and that weird blackness was already shrinking—I could see white around the outside edge—and she had a look of revulsion on her face.

  I wanted to laugh with relief because she hadn’t killed him.

  Except the boy…

  He was ranting and raving in Spanish. Drool and snot slid down his chin. His eyes were the worst, though. They were hollow and desolate. They were vacant.

  “Kill him, kisa. Use your knife.” She said it the way you might say “pass the salt,” or “do we have any milk.”

  I didn’t want to kill a kid.

  “I mean it, Bobo. He’s ruined. It would be a mercy.”

  “Why didn’t you just recruit him? Corrupt him or something? Why would you—”

  “No. I can’t corrupt him.” She glanced at the boy with something like awe on her face. “He was going to be either a priest or a cop. Not the regular kind of cop. A good cop. In either case, he would have made the world a better place.” She turned back to me with a malicious grin. “Not much chance of that now.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Or do. I just stood there.

  “Kill him, chavo.” Her voice was lilting, reasonable. “It’s mercy.”

  I shook my head.

  “Robert! Kill this little bastard. Kill him right fucking now.” She didn’t sound angry, she said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  But I knew she was getting pissed. There was nothing overt in how she stood or looked at me. No, it was more like the feeling in the air right before lightning strikes.

  “Look at me, Robert.”

  That was the last fucking thing I wanted to do right then, but I found myself looking into her eyes as if I were a puppet on a string.

  The blackness didn’t come; she just looked at me. “Kill him, Robert, or you can say goodbye to all this.” She swept her hand down her body like a supermodel on a game show. “I mean it.”

  “But I did the thing with Mikhail.” It was more like a six-year-old's whine than a reasonable adult sentence.

  Her eyes softened a fractional amount, but her face remained flinty and grim. “You did. You kept your promise.”

  “Then…”

  “You have to, Robert. Or I leave you, here and now.”

  There was no way I could let her go. No way at all. It was like the coke all over again.

  I looked down and was surprised to see the big Bowie knife was already in my hand.

  The Puerto Rican kid never moved. Not when I walked over to him. Not when I put my hand on his shoulder. Not when I grabbed him by the hair. Not even when the cold steel blade sliced into his throat and his hot blood spilled down the front of his shirt.

  After a day or two, I got my head around what happened in Prospect Park. She’d said she was a corrupter. Killing Mikhail didn’t push me outside my morality—he was a friend at one time, true, but he’d betrayed Lily. He’d disrespected her love. He deserved to die.

  The kid, though…he was just playing. He didn’t betray her. He just brushed against her, and he apologized right away. What she did to him was just random evil. Vicious, hate-driven shit. That kid didn’t deserve to look into the darkness.

  But still, she had to get me to kill the little snot. She couldn’t go against her nature.

  She had to corrupt me, too.

  I tried to murder the devil, but she knew. She knew.

  A knife wouldn’t do the job, I already knew that from experience. I didn’t want to get that close to her anyway. I thought about trying to shoot her with a sniper rifle, but I wasn’t sure even a high-energy round would affect her—except maybe to piss her off. Plus, I didn’t want to take the chance of meeting her gaze through the scope. I wasn’t su
re if she could do her little trick from a distance. One thing I was sure about was that I never wanted to end up like that little kid.

  If I was going to kill her, it would have to be when she was alone, and I was out of range of her gaze.

  I knew I had to set some kind of trap, but how do you fool the devil?

  It came to me about a week after the thing with the kid in the park. I could lock her in the warehouse and burn it down. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that it would work. I mean, they burned witches in olden times, right?

  I bought five short lengths of heavy chain—one for each door to the warehouse—and five padlocks from a local hardware store. Lily was a creature of habit and never used any other door to the warehouse than the one that opened into the alley. Over the next couple of days, I found opportunities to chain up the other four doors. Then I hid the last chain and lock in the alley behind a dumpster.

  It was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I think I—no, I did love her. There is no doubt that I did. I wanted to forgive her and let things get back to how they were before. I think she would have made life beautiful for me.

  But she had betrayed me. With Johnby, sure, but that I could have forgiven—in time. The unforgivable betrayal was when she made me kill that innocent kid. That kid who was going to grow up and change the world somehow. She made me a party to that act of hatred—of malice.

  She knew what murdering a child—another child—would do to me, and she still forced me to do it. I mean, she knew about Iraq. She knew about the firefight in the desert village that had wiped out my troop. She knew about the kid with the grenade that turned out to be a ball. The kid with a bullet hole high up in his right cheek. She knew what Newsweek hadn’t reported. She had to know. She knew everything else.

  Yeah, she knew. She made me do it anyway.

  When the perfect opportunity presented itself, I took it without hesitation.

  One night, as we were leaving the warehouse, she went back in. Butterflies started to riot in my guts. I lit the Molotov cocktail that I’d stashed in the alley and threw it hard through the dirty glass window above the door. Then I went to get the chain.