by Adam Cesare
“Faisil,” my guy says with a whimper.
I jam the gun into the small of his back. “Let’s go...Cutter.” He reacts like it’s a cattle prod.
My truck is parked across the street. You wouldn’t look twice if you passed it, because it’s a dump truck I bought for a good price at a city auction. Beauty of it is that it looks like it belongs no matter the part of town. Everyone wants their filth carted away and that’s what I do.
Cutter climbs into the passenger seat while I walk around the front with the gun trained on him. The windshield is reinforced and impenetrable, but he doesn’t have to know that.
“How far we going?” I say once I climb up and in.
“Not far. Twelve blocks.”
I reach into the storage bin beside the seat and remove a small bottle. I toss it into Cutter’s lap and tell him to drink up.
He picks it up and laughs. The kind of laugh that belongs to a desperate man without a card left to play.
“Snake venom,” I tell him. He starts to protest but my gun comes back out and gives him a cycloptic glare that stops his blabber dead.
“Ya see, Cutter, I gotta trust you and that’s never gonna happen. So you drink that. Drink it all up, and I give you the antivenom as soon as I find Casey.”
Cutter don’t like it, but it goes down the hatch anyway. Probably because I tell him it’s either that or a bullet to the head. Then we’re off through nearly empty streets. The city’s always dead at this hour—even this part of town, where trashcan fires glow at the backs of alleyways and homeless shutter beneath newspaper blankets. Youth packs wander the streets with the kind of aimlessness that puts graffiti on shutters, and passersby in the hospital.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
Sometimes I wish it’d all fall apart.
Politicians call me a barbarian. I ain’t never considered it one-way or the other. But these kids aren’t misguided teenagers. They’re entry-level scum on their way to becoming killers, rapists, and junkies. Squash ‘em quick and save yourself the trouble later. I’ve taken out my share, but killin’s a younger man’s game these days.
“Turn left up here,” Cutter says.
I do. Some guy’s out walking his dog on the sidewalk ahead as three kids surround him. Switchblade metal glimmers in the streetlamp glow. I refrain from pulling over and shooting all three dead. Believe me, this requires a lot of self-control. Worse than staying on that low-sodium ketchup shit my doctor keeps pushing.
Cutter stares at me in silence but it’s quiet noise. The kind that says he wants to bare his soul. I ain’t all that interested in hearing what he has to say, but I can see the newfound sobriety in his eyes and figure I’ll let him. I guess he deserves the chance to confess his sins before I finish my work.
“You know you killed my uncle?”
I don’t know why, but this makes me laugh. “He probably had it coming.”
“Actually, yeah. Knocked off a convenience store by killin’ the mom and pop who ran it. You were in the alley when he came out, and you cooked him with a fuckin’ flamethrower.”
I smile. Been years since I lugged that thing into the field. Murder on my old-man back, for starters. And too much of a tactical disadvantage to have it strapped there for any old punk to shoot. One rupture and I’m a fireball. Still, it leveled the playing field like nothing else. And Cutter’s uncle looked like burnt steak when he was finished moving. I don’t tell him that, because the poison’s already working through his system and if he’s agitated it’ll just work quicker. Can’t have him collapse before I’ve got Casey.
Suddenly my body aches. I’ve been awake for thirty-six hours and my bones, having been called old, are begging for sleep. I hate that I’m chasing seventy, but can’t do a thing about that. I carry more weapons than I used to, to keep my advantage.
“Since we’re sharing,” I say. “This missing girl…she’s advocating for you. Your type. Thinks there’s good in y’all. I tell her you can only turn over so many rocks before you realize there’s worms beneath every last one.”
Cutter doesn’t react. Doesn’t look like a man who spends much time contemplating his lot. Too concerned about where the next fix is coming from.
I think I understand Casey sometimes. It’s easy to wake up in the morning, read the news, and think there’s nothing good out here. Lying politicians. Racial tensions. Terrorism. Cancer chowing friends and family to the bone. Casey don’t think any of that’s a reason to quit. And that’s good. World needs more social workers who believe they can change the world.
That’s what makes this suicide mission worthwhile.
We cruise further into the city turning down different side streets. Cutter calls for me to stop here and suggests we walk the last block.
“They’ll shoot us to pieces if they see us coming,” he says.
I reach into the cab’s storage compartment and remove my 12-gauge. Load it and make sure to stuff some extra shells into my pockets. We walk an empty sidewalk. Wind whips our chapped faces as a Hyundai low-rider slides around the corner. It slows and two faces leer at us over rolled down windows. Gold smiles, dead eyes. I stare back, but refrain from giving a come get your asses shot glare. I only want them to keep driving.
They do.
Cutter lets me know we’ve arrived by nudging my elbow. The building is newly restored, a sore thumb that sticks out hard among its crumbling neighbors. Gentrification at its worst.
“Who lives here,” I say.
“The next link on the chain,” Cutter says. “Girls are processed back there, and the best of ‘em brought here. That’s all I know. Now give me the antidote and I’ll leave you to it.”
I remind him of the gun I’m carrying by reintroducing him to the barrel. “You better let me know what I’m walking into.”
“I don’t know, man. Royalty from Saudi Arabia, I think. Some other sandy hellhole, maybe. What’s it matter?”
“How many men he got inside?”
“Dunno. Ten? Twelve? All of them Special Forces desert dwellin’ motherfuckers.”
“Ok. Let’s go say hi.”
“Nah, man...”
“It goes well, you get cured. You don’t, you’re dead either way. So walk.” The shotgun to his back helps him move. We’re off the sidewalk, heading up the pavement when he points to a camera angled down on us from the porch.
“You’re already famous.” Cutter can’t decide if he should be smiling or not. His lips jitter with that conflict.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tense, but I think about my artillery, my Kevlar, and remind myself that I’ve done this before. Tonight, even. Yeah, I’m tense, but I’ll get through this.
Ain’t a person in sight. We walk unrestricted into the backyard while Cutter starts in with another plea for freedom. The cellar bulkhead is open and I tap his back so he knows he’s going down there. It leads into a finished basement done up like a trendy Manhattan nightclub. A black marble bar goes from one wall to the other, backed by rows of top shelf liquor. Bottles and bottles of Bombay Sapphire Revelation, Pasion Azteca, and a bunch of other shit I can’t even afford to lick off the counter when it spills.
The next doorway peeks into a home theater that’s dark and empty. Beside it, hall stairs lead up into a kitchen. Cutter steps through first and drops to his knees, crying out, “oh shit, oh fuck, oh no.”
I figure this is where the trap gets sprung. Ten guys with AK-47s. Wouldn’t be the first time. I brought the 12-gauge because it cleans out these close spaces like nothing else. So I take a few deep breaths and step out of the dark with it brandished. Ready.
Severed, dripping body parts are stacked on the kitchen table and piled to the ceiling. Arms and legs, torn free and twisted like pastries. Torsos flayed of skin, leaving slimy jelly spread across the human meat. Stomachs are hacked open and stuffed with amputated hands and feet. I don’t see any heads.
Behind me, Cutter’s protests have gone guttural. I tell him to shut it, and wh
en I look he’s on his side, convulsing. Arms outstretched, fingers wiggling at me. He thinks I did this to him. The pained look in his eyes begs for the antivenin. Do I tell him now there ain’t one?
Don’t matter, ‘cause it ain’t the poison anyway. His neck looks like a mass of tumors. Bubbles rise out of his skin like baked cheese. They expand and burst into glops of puss that land on the floor with a loud splat. I’m doubting my own eyes for the first time ever when his body lifts and arranges itself while his limbs continue to flail without coordination. An invisible force poses him upright, kneels him on the floor so he’s facing me.
Even in the dark, I see him looking to me for salvation. The devil you know, I guess. I’m about to point my gun and oblige when his arms tear off at the shoulders. They snap like twigs in winter. The body drops beside them into a blood puddle the size of Lake Eerie. Then I realize Cutter’s head hasn’t moved. It hovers there for a minute, then disappears and I can only see his eyes. It’s plasma burn on a powered off television. Even in my line of work, I never knew eyes could express horror in so many different ways at once. Then they too fade into the shadows and become nothing.
I should run. I know. But I’ve come this far and Casey’s close. I find the entrance foyer and a large staircase leading to a second floor. Upstairs, muffled voices carry on a conversational tone. One of them’s female. I don’t know if she sounds familiar, or I just want her to, but I follow it.
Now I’m moving down a hallway of decorative end tables and other shit that rich people buy to fill all the space they don’t need. My boot stomps disappear into soft red carpet as I follow the voices to an office door in the back corner. Beyond it, the discussion has become whispers.
I think, fuck it, and lift my boot to deliver a kick. It breaks open and I step inside.
“Uncle John?”
I’m not at all ready for what I see.
Casey’s there, sitting atop a desk in the back looking all Victoria’s Secret in dark lingerie—a purple garter and matching bra. One of her breasts is spilled over the cup. A row of half blown coke sits against her thigh, and the cigarette in her hand fills the air with the relaxing aroma of Colombian Gold.
“What are they doing to you?” First fuckin’ time in years I’m at a loss for words and blurt some stupid bullshit to fill the air.
She makes no effort to cover up. This distracts me from the man at her feet, largely naked save for the checkered kufiyah atop his head and the dog collar fastened around his neck. A chain leads from it to her clenched fist, and he’s lookin’ all smug behind an untouchable smile.
“Let’s go, kid,” I say. “Your father’s beside himself.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t give a shit about me,” Casey says. “He never has.”
“I promised him I’d find you.”
“What makes my uncle, the janitor, the one to do that?” She flashes a troubling smile. “Doesn’t he have a huge security detail for that? Unless the rumors are true and you are a fucking psycho. I heard Mom say that one night, you know, after Dad got woken up at 3 am to make a few calls on your behalf.” Her cigarette hand is steady like an earthquake as she raises it to her lips.
“What do you want to do here?” The kufiyah says, looking at Casey.
That motherfucker makes the mistake of reminding me of his presence. Before I can stomp his face to pulp beneath my boot, she slides down off the desk and scoops a bump of coke into the cup of her nail. “He’s going to try taking me, Rashi.”
Rashi moves beside her and she glides willingly into his arms, caressing his muscles while brushing back and forth against his body. His massive hand clasps around her neck.
“I’ll choke this bitch to death,” he says, and Casey laughs at the threat.
“He’ll do it.” She kisses and licks his forearm. “Maybe I want him to do it.”
My 12-guage might as well be a bouquet of roses for as good as it’ll do me here. Fire it now and Casey’ll catch its spread. She’s a good kid. I’ve known her since she could fit inside a shoebox, and I can tell her mind just ain’t right tonight. It ain’t the first time I’ve seen someone act all submissive for their captor. Guys in our platoon did the same to Charlie—and all they got was a bamboo bed and some noodle soup for their betrayal. Minds so twisted, they chose to stay when the time came for us to bust out of that place.
I’m not leaving anyone else behind, though. So I drop the shotgun to the floor. Let them think I’ve surrendered. Triumph lights their faces and it’s a sight I can’t stand. I rip the pistol from my holster and set the grinning bastard in my sights. I squeeze my shot off and it lands right between Rashi’s eyes. A splat of broken brains rips through the hole blown through the back of his head.
Casey screams wildly and falls to the floor tangled in the corpse’s limbs.
I go to her but don’t bother with comfort. I fling her over my back like a sack of laundry and hurry for the door with a hysterical girl crying into the back of my jacket. I tell myself she’s three minutes away from being her father’s problem.
The door slams and it’s suddenly resistant to the turn of the knob.
I grab the lamp off the nearby table and throw it against the window. I’m willing to drop two stories into Brooklyn if that’s the only way to get out of this weird shit. But it bounces off the pane with a thump.
Casey lifts her head. Her nerves suddenly steadied. “What do you want, Uncle John? He wants to know.”
I raise the pistol and fire a few shots toward the glass. Bullets dance off it like I’m throwing beach pebbles.
Casey wiggles free and slides down my back. She gets slowly to her feet and flips her hair so that it’s behind her head, and I can read the crazy in her eyes. A trickle of blood drips from her nose and she waits until it reaches her upper lip before wiping it away with her tongue.
“He asked me what I want. Know what I told him?”
But I’m not listening to her crazy bullshit. I’m getting out. I grab the shotgun off the floor. Pump it and fire. Sounds like a canon’s gone off, and Casey nearly leaps out of her skin at the sound. The glass remains intact and untouched once the smoke clears.
She chuckles. “Did you see the remains of his men when you came in?” She’s got one of those grins like she just won the game. “They figured out what we were doing. Rashi thought we should bind Him to my necklace, but I reminded him there was more power in it for us if we let him inside. Rashi’s men wanted to kill us for summoning Him, so he had to use a wish to take them out first. All of them.”
“Help me break the door down,” I say, barely listening.
“Why? I want to be here. I made my choice when I came here looking for it. You think I want to go back to my privilege as the mayor’s daughter? Know what that buys? Contentment...the enemy of change.”
Casey points to Rashi, dangling awkwardly off the desk, fragments of brain still dropping out of his opened head and landing in an ever-growing pile of splat.
“Rashi knew this was dangerous. He needed to be convinced, and I convinced him. And no sooner did you break the goddamn bottle, uncle. We’re not going anywhere, because He needs a new home. He has a choice now, but He’ll choose me. I know it.”
If fury alone could kill, I would’ve dropped the crazy bitch with my glare. My wish? I wish I never got involved. Yeah, brotherhood counts for a lot in life, but when your best friend raises his kid with enough money so that her sense of reality is hatched not through living but through some fucked up idealism that can’t ever be met, this is what you get.
I shoot the window again, but it’s as effective as using foul language to break it. I ask if there’s a key but Casey’s in her own world. Rambling about inevitability or some shit. I realize that I’m frantic because I know she’s right. Cutter was dismembered in front of my face by absolutely nothing. I should’ve run then.
The corner of the room ignites, and pure red fire cuts the shadows down. Flames dance across the shape of a human figure that steps forward. F
ire thrashes atop its head like a fiery crown. Diamonds, three of them, sparkle in the center of what looks like a head, and I realize they’re blinking eyes.
Casey drops to her knees. She stares at the monstrosity like a mother watching her infant roll around on the floor.
“I am yours,” she screams as the humanoid flames roar in approval.
Smokeless fire moves in a beeline toward us, igniting everything behind it. The bookshelf is swallowed in flames, its collection of encyclopedias and history books become kindling. The oak desk goes next, and the burning drugs change some of the flames to chemical blue. Rashi slips beneath the spreading blaze, turning the smell in here to hairy barbecue.
Diamond eyes widen in my direction. My mouth opens for some reason, but I got nothing to say.
“Don’t look at him,” Casey screams. “He’s part of the problem. Come to me. Come in me!”
Casey gets on her back and widens her legs in a supplicating gesture. Diamond Head swivels to look. His decorative fire cools to reveal a naked body, dark flesh glowing like hot coals.
“That’s right,” she says, slipping her underwear off and using her foot to flick it into the fire.
Diamond Head glides to its knees without skipping a beat, climbing atop her body with a subjugated growl. Her gartered legs wrap around him, and her flesh sizzles. If she’s in pain, she ain’t showing it.
With the 12-gauge in my hands, I know I should shoot the fucker, but I can’t move. I feel something in my mind, sifting through my memories. Searching for vulnerability I ain’t had since Jimmy Carter—this city took everything from me long ago.
Casey cries out as the ember-glow body on top of her thrusts a few times and then disappears from the visible spectrum. The girl’s ravaged body is what remains, legs, belly, and arms so burnt that her skin slides off like fine roasted chicken. She’s sucking at what little air’s left in here while her lungs wheeze.
“Peace,” she says with an ecstatic moan.
The blinding flash comes out of nowhere. The worst migraine anyone’s ever had. I crash to the floor thinking someone’s jammed a needle into my eye. I hear Casey laughing somewhere above me, but her voice sounds further away the farther I fall.
