I Kill in Peace

by Hunter Shea

  My hand trembled. My thumb was barely able to swipe the text icon.

  AO: You have nothing to feel guilty about.

  “I’ve lost my mind,” I said, holding the phone with two hands so it didn’t drop. “This can’t be happening.”

  AO: You’re not, and it is. This is only the beginning.

  “Get the fuck out of my head!”

  AO: You may rest today. The Mustang will be waiting for you tomorrow. You’ll drive to Saco in the afternoon.

  I no longer saw the need to text. Why bother when the great and mysterious AO could read my mind? It was all the proof I needed that I’d gone irretrievably insane.

  “And if I say no?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  AO: You won’t. Here’s why.

  My body went stiff as a board as a hurricane of images shot through me like a ballistic missile. I saw a school, a blur of kids streaming past me. I couldn’t tell their ages. Something exploded behind me. The hallway turned red as hundreds of voices screamed.

  I felt something tear through my stomach and I jolted from the vision with a burst of pent-up air.

  On the verge of hyperventilating, I stared at the phone still clutched in my hand.

  “I am not going to a school to murder children. You can kill me with that pain you put in my head, damn you! I won’t do it.”

  I realized that if Candy was home, she could hear me. Maybe it was for the best if she did and called psychiatric services to fetch me.

  AO: Trust in me.

  “Trust in you? Because of you and what you’ve made me do, people are dead. Lives are ruined.”

  AO: Or saved. It depends on your perspective.

  I thought of the nurse who’d accidentally been shot at the hospital. How did she fit in to all of this? Did she deserve to die? Had anyone who had lost their lives over the past few days? Marcellus was an asshole, but the last time I checked, being an asshole wasn’t a capital offense. The man who raped his son was a monster, but like Frankenstein’s monster, was he to blame for being what nature had made him to be? Sure, he should have been in prison, maybe even for life, but dead?

  “Where are you?” I looked at the closed closet doors opposite the bed, picturing some golem-like creature, AO made physical, leering at me through the slats, plotting the next move to keep me under its control.

  AO: Sleep now. Tomorrow, you’ll see.

  Before I could protest, everything went black.

  Deeper

  Chapter Eleven

  To my surprise, I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and full of energy. Candy was already downstairs with Katie. I heard the microwave pinging, alerting Katie that breakfast was served.

  I looked at my phone. There were no messages from AO. In fact, there was no record of AO’s texts to me the previous day—or any day for that matter. The sweet smell of cinnamon oatmeal wafted up the stairs.

  I’m supposed to go to Saco, I thought while I peed. AO’s urging to trust him seemed just as ludicrous after a good night’s sleep.

  So why wasn’t I contemplating how to get out of my next mission? Would my cell phone self-destruct in ten seconds? No, AO needed it to reach me. Yeah, sure, it was the phone that made me do it!

  “I hope you don’t mind that I kept Katie home,” Candy said, holding a mug of steaming coffee between both hands. “With everything that’s happened, I think it’s best she stays home for a while. I’ll feel better.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “I totally agree. It’s not like she’s missing anything crucial in preschool anyway. If we keep her home for the week, she may fall behind in her finger painting skills, but I can live with that.”

  Candy exhaled with a bright smile. “I don’t know why I was so worried you’d be upset. How do you feel?” She felt my forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Fine. I’m just happy to be out of the hospital”

  “They said on the news today that there were four separate assaults in town last night. It’s like the whole place has gone crazy.”

  “All the more reason to stay inside with Katie today. I’m going to take a ride to Portland, see if I can catch up with Jimmy V. Maybe he has an opening, or knows someone who does.”

  I knew Jimmy Valentine from when we worked at a credit and collections company, my first job out of college. Jimmy had moved to Maine several years ago and opened up his own consulting business.

  Not that I had any intention of seeing him. The trip to Portland and back was roughly the same as Saco, about two hours. I needed a good excuse to be out of the house for a while.

  “That’s a great idea! It’s always who you know,” Candy said. “Now, you sit while I make you some oatmeal.”

  I said good morning to Katie, but she was so engrossed by SpongeBob SquarePants, she didn’t even know I was there.

  * * * * *

  It seemed as if the Lumina drove itself to the old elementary school’s parking lot on Depot Street. Auto pilot was becoming a common occurrence in my life. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the red Mustang, parked close to the empty building.

  First, AO could talk to me without my needing to text. Now I could find the muscle car without being told where it had been parked. All the more reason to believe this was some self-induced delusion. Did I have a split personality? What did I call myself when I bought the Mustang and the scimitar? Or did I just steal them? That seemed more in line with this new side of me.

  I swapped cars. The case with the scimitar lay across the entire backseat. For the first time, I noticed the odd smell in the car—a hinting scent of foreign spices. I looked for an air freshener but could find none.

  AO didn’t make an appearance during the drive to Saco. The radio didn’t work, even though the car looked brand new, so I drove in silence.

  It wasn’t until I passed the WELCOME TO SACO sign that AO spoke.

  We had taken Katie to the water park in Saco when we first moved to Maine and I was lost in the memory of one of the best days of the summer. AO’s simulated voice almost made me careen into the divider.

  “The GPS system will take you the rest of the way,” AO said.

  “It better not lead me to a school,” I said.

  “It won’t.”

  I passed an old factory building with the Saco River to my left. The GPS took me down winding residential streets. The neighborhood went from upper middle class to don’t-keep-your-doors-unlocked in just several blocks. Here, the weather-beaten Cape houses were caged in by rusted, twisted chain-link fences. There were more “Beware of Dog” signs than I could count. A startling number of angry pitbulls eyed me as I passed.

  “You have arrived,” the GPS chirped cheerily as I stopped in front of a two-story, two-family house. The front steps were missing a board and the screen door was off its hinges, leaning against one of the windows.

  “Do I take the scimitar?” I asked, worried that if I didn’t, that damned agony would return.

  “Of course,” AO said. “The door is open. Go inside quietly. When you get to the bedroom at the back of the house, you will have truly arrived at your destination.”

  I looked to see if anyone was around. The neighborhood was empty, save for a few barking dogs. That didn’t mean people weren’t watching the flashy sports car from behind thin curtains or slatted blinds.

  Carrying the case under my arm, I slowly opened the door, careful not to shout, “Is anyone home?” I sensed AO wouldn’t have appreciated that. The smell of yesterday’s dinner and dust enveloped my head. The inside of the house was surprisingly neat, though the furniture was worn and threadbare. There was a big, new, flat-screen TV in the living room. In the kitchen, dishes had been left to soak and the table for four was littered with crumbs.

  And that’s how you get ants.

  I almost laughed out loud.

  What the hell was h
appening to me? I just broke into a home carrying an Arabic sword days after murdering two people, and all I could think of were funny one-liners.

  Screw stealth. I was crazy. I needed to be caught. If I tried to turn myself in, the power I had given to this fantasy AO would cripple me. So, what was to stop me from being discovered and taken in by the cops? It was better than having another death on my hands.

  I accidentally caught my foot on a chair, spinning it into the wall.

  “Who’s there?” a voice, a boy’s, cried out.

  Run, kid, run!

  I tromped to the back bedroom as instructed, making enough noise to rattle some of the pictures on the wall. I kicked the door in. A teenaged boy jumped from his chair, eyes wide with shock.

  The gun he held in his hand was massive. I was pretty sure it was the rock to my scimitar’s scissors.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the kid spat. I noticed how the gun didn’t so much as quiver. He knew how to handle it and didn’t seem hesitant to put a hole through me.

  He was sixteen, maybe seventeen, with a shaved head—a tattoo of a dragon emblazoning one side. He wore a black Misfits sweatshirt, the white skeleton glaring at me, and black jeans.

  I felt a burning need to piss myself. What the hell had I stumbled into?

  “I said, who the fuck are you?”

  That was a damn good question. If I said, “I’m the guy my phone sent to kill you,” I was pretty sure I’d be dead before I finished the sentence. The kid had eyes so dark, they bordered on black. I didn’t detect an ounce of mercy in them.

  It was then that I also noticed the array of firearms laid out on his unmade bed. There were pistols, a shotgun, grenades, boxes of ammunition, and several of what looked to be homemade pipe bombs.

  In that instant, I realized what the vision of the school had meant. This jackbooted kid was planning to destroy his school. He had enough on that bed to kill a hell of a lot of kids.

  A calming wave swept over me.

  “You planning for a one-way trip?” I said.

  The kid cocked the hammer back on his gun. “What did you say?”

  “When you’re done,” I said, nodding at the bed. “You going to off yourself, shoot it out with the police, or turn yourself in? Suicide seems to be the exit of choice for you kids. Which makes sense. I mean, once you do what you’re planning to do, the fate of your afterlife is sealed. You’re already going to burn in hell for eternity. Why spend the life you have left being punished as well?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do. If you shoot me now, your neighbors will hear. This place will be crawling with cops. Why don’t you put the gun down?”

  The air between us was sliced with a high-pitched bang.

  It felt as if my leg had been kicked by a mule. I fell to a knee, watching blood seep from the tiny hole in my thigh.

  The kid smiled. “That’s why I have a silencer.”

  Chapter Twelve

  What the hell had just happened? AO, or my demented mind, had sent me to a gunfight with a knife. Now, not only was Candy going to be a widow, but dozens of parents were going to lose their children. What was the sense of my coming here?

  “To answer your question,” the kid said, standing over me, the gun pointed at my face, “I’m smarter than all those other school shooters. I’m actually going to get away and live a new life in South America. I have it all mapped out.”

  He grinned, and in that moment, I knew I had seen pure evil for the first time in my life.

  “I wasn’t coming back here anyway, so I don’t mind making a mess.”

  I feebly put my hands in front of my face, as if they were made of Kevlar. From between my fingers, I saw him pull the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He pulled it again, and again. The gun was jammed.

  I rolled away from him, opening the latches on the scimitar’s case.

  “Hey!” he shouted as if to get me to stop so he could have an easy shot once the gun was working properly.

  The scimitar nearly jumped into my hand. I lashed out without looking, feeling slight resistance. The kid looked down at his legs, his mouth in a frozen O. The blade had sliced through his shinbones as if they were made of cream cheese. Well, raspberry cream cheese.

  The gun fell from his hand, finally going off. The bullet buried into the kid’s side as he fell back onto the bed.

  Getting to my feet, I rammed the blade down on his wrists, severing both hands and just missing one of the grenades.

  “Oh my God!” the kid wailed. Gouts of blood pumped from the stumps, bathing him in gore.

  “Too late to switch sides,” I said. I rammed the curved tip of the blade into his throat. It went through him and halfway into the mattress. His eyes bulged and more crimson bubbled from his mouth. Arterial spray painted the wall to my right. The kid’s legs and arms spasmed for a bit, then went still.

  The moment the light went from his eyes, the searing agony of the gunshot wound in my leg screamed for attention. In between my angry hisses of pain, I heard a door open and close.

  Was this nightmare ever going to end?

  “Ralph?” a woman’s voice called out. “I just got a call from school that you cut class again. You better have a damn good excuse.”

  A middle-aged woman dressed in a Lady Gaga T-shirt, tight jeans, and high heels stopped in the bedroom’s doorway. She had dyed blonde hair and too much makeup. She looked every bit the part of the dried-up woman desperately wanting to be a MILF. Stale alcohol oozed from her pores.

  “What did you do to my son? Aaahhhhhh!”

  I pointed the bloody scimitar at her.

  “You raised this monster?” I said, gritting my teeth from the pain in my leg and the anger at a parent that could allow a child to fall so far.

  “I’m calling the cops! You murdered my boy!” She started backpedaling, hands fluttering around her mouth.

  “I did the world a favor,” I said.

  As she turned to run, I cleaved her left shoulder with the scimitar. It took the breath right out of her. She fell face-first onto the floor, quickly flipping over so she could beg for her life.

  “Please, I didn’t do anything to you,” she said, all concern for her son gone now that she was facing her own mortality. “If you leave me, I won’t tell the cops that I saw you. I’ll tell them I came home and found Ralph dead.”

  Her plea made me physically ill because I knew she would be true to her word. She cared more about herself than her child.

  “Don’t bother,” I said, swinging the scimitar like a pendulum. Her head rolled away from her body, settling against the baseboard. Her eyes blinked hard several times. I had to stop myself from kicking her right between them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I limped out of the house, pausing on the porch steps to see if anyone was about. That woman had a loud voice. Someone must have heard her.

  The streets were empty. Even the dogs had stopped barking.

  “Ah, Jesus,” I cried, clomping down the stairs. My thigh both burned and felt as if live wires had been run through the savaged meat. The scimitar’s case kept me unbalanced. It was a chore getting into the car. I tossed the case into the passenger seat. The Mustang started up on its own. I backed out of the driveway, laying down rubber as I sped away from the house. So much for a quiet exit.

  “Come on, talk to me AO,” I shouted, taking a turn a little too fast and almost sideswiping a line of parked cars. I had to get the hell out of Saco.

  If AO was a figment of my imagination, the muscle car was all too real. As I rocketed onto the highway’s ramp, I wondered where I had gotten the car. Had I stolen it? Or had I owned it all this time, the sane side of me never realizing what the insane side had in store.

  The bullet wound was just as real. My
jeans were wet with blood. Did it sever an artery? I was too sick with worry to look. I had to see a doctor, but if I did, they’d have to call the cops once they realized I had a bullet buried in my leg. I was good and fucked. If I chose to ignore it, hope the bullet had gone all the way through and a tight bandage and some antibiotics were all I needed, how could I get in the house without Candy noticing?

  I had to settle down. I moved the Mustang into the center lane. Even though I was going seventy in a sixty-five mile an hour zone, a steady stream of cars flew past me on either side.

  “What now?” I asked, hands locked at ten and two. My right foot squished when I pressed down on the pedal, my blood saturating the sock. “You’re leaving me hanging out to dry?”

  A pickup flashed its brights behind me. It rode my ass so close, I could see the color of the driver’s eyes—Sinatra blue. The guy had long hair and a week’s worth of carefully sculpted stubble. Metrosexual meets modern day metal head.

  “Go around me, asshole.” I waved him to get in the fast lane and leave me be.

  If I didn’t go to a hospital, I could call ahead to Candy and tell her to meet me at the diner for lunch. That would get her out of the house so I could get at the first-aid kit and a fresh pair of jeans. But how would I explain the limp? I shook my head. Coming up with a lie on how I hurt my leg was the least of my problems. I’d call home once I got a little closer. She wouldn’t recognize me if we passed on the road. In that sense, the Mustang was good camouflage.

  A horn blared behind me, an unbroken stream of impatience and stupidity.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, staring into the rearview mirror. The guy was glowering back at me. The circus of cars had broken. He had the entire damn road to go around me. Just pick a lane.

  I slowed the car down. If he was in such a hurry, he’d figure it out.

  Gritting my teeth, I chanced poking a finger around the bullet hole in my thigh. I winced, but more from expecting thunderbolts of pain rather than actually feeling anything. The pad of my index finger came away sticky with blood. I touched it again, wondering how deep the wound went. I was probably making any potential infection worse by prodding it with my dirty finger, but so what.