by Paul Cleave
The other development is the drinking really has become your best friend, though Sandra would tell you he’s the friend that doesn’t leave when the night is over. She knows you’re drinking—but doesn’t really know because she can’t catch you. All the slurring and unbalanced walking you blame on Captain A. You are planning on cutting back before the wedding—if you’re going to forget Eva’s name when you’re giving her away at the altar, you’d rather it be from dementia than from being a raging drunk.
Good news—your problems don’t seem as bad anymore. You’re caring less and less about the real world.
Bad news—the bad news is that the good news above really should have been bad news. Not only have you accepted what’s happening, but you’re ready. Bring it on, Captain A. Do your best. Oh, and in case Future Jerry can’t say it, let me say it—fuck you, Captain A, and the disease-ridden whale you rode in on.
Back in the lounge, the girl, Fiona Clark, hasn’t moved. She hasn’t gotten up and fled his imagination and taken all that blood and violence along with her. Is somebody due home? There are photographs around the room—one on the bookcase, one on the TV stand, a couple hanging on the walls, and in them is a recurring character, a good-looking guy around Fiona’s age, embraces and kisses and laughter. A recurring character who could be at work, or on his way here.
He finds a bathroom. He washes his hands under hot water and scrubs the blood away. The music has been replaced by the low hum of bantering DJs. He can’t hear what they’re saying. He uses a towel to dab at the blood on his shirt, but only manages to darken and smear it. He uses the towel to wipe down the taps and the basin, then wraps the towel over his hand and uses it to open the wardrobe door in the bedroom. There are only women’s clothes in here, so the guy in the photographs doesn’t live here, but then he finds a jacket that is big enough to fit him that the guy could have left behind, or belongs to an ex-boyfriend, or the father, or even the victim herself. He puts it on to cover his bloody shirt.
He wipes down other surfaces in the house, including the container of bleach that he doesn’t use, nor can he even remember for sure if the bleach would have helped. He can’t bring himself to set fire to the place. When he’s done he crouches next to Fiona and searches for something to say, but what is there? Sorry? Sorry I stabbed you in the chest? He cleans the knife in the kitchen sink then wraps it in the towel. He heads for the front door. There are ads on the radio now. Jingles. He pats down his pockets to see what he has on him. He doesn’t own a cell phone, so he grabs Fiona’s, and while he’s at it, he takes all the cash from her purse, which turns out to be ninety dollars. When he reaches for his own wallet, he finds a neatly folded black plastic garbage bag tucked into his back pocket. He has no idea why he has it.
Don’t you? Henry asks.
He takes the SIM card out of the phone and wipes his prints off and has one foot out the door when the song his daughter wrote comes on the radio. He recognizes it immediately. When she finds out what he’s done, it will destroy her.
Then make sure she doesn’t find out.
He tosses the SIM card in the garden as he leaves. The towel with the knife wrapped inside is tucked under his arm. He’s not sure what street this is, let alone what neighborhood he’s in. Everything looks middle class, nothing too run down, most of the cars parked on the street or up driveways are Japanese imports, most of them around seven or eight years old. He walks to the end of the block. The street signs don’t mean anything to him.
He needs to dump the towel. He keeps his head down as he walks. Soon an intersection has to make sense. He reaches a park two blocks later. There’s a bunch of playground equipment in the middle but, thankfully, no kids, which means he can sit on the bench and not have anybody rush over to call him a child molester while he’s collecting his thoughts. There’s a trash bin twenty yards away. He figures it’s a good dumping spot, then figures it’s actually a really bad one, that the police will end up looking here. They’re going to look in every trash can and dumpster within a five-mile radius. Looking at the trash bin and thinking about dumping the evidence gives him a sense of déjà vu. Has he done this before? Or was it one of his characters?
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t even tell you what today is.
He needs to bury the knife. Or throw it into a river. Dump it in the ocean or send it into space. He takes the plastic bag out of his pocket and shakes it out, then puts the towel and the knife inside and rolls it all up. If he really had killed that woman, he’s sure he would know it. He would feel it somehow.
Like Sandra?
Sandra, dead because of him. He should do the world a favor and take the knife back out of the bag and become Henry Cutter and cut, cut, cut his way into oblivion. There is no mystery here—he killed his wife, he killed the woman he found on the lounge floor, and quite possibly the woman the police were asking him about.
He starts to shake. He can’t catch his breath. He’s a fool, a silly fool for wanting to escape the nursing home to prove his innocence because all he’s done is hurt somebody else. He is Jerry Grey, a crime writer, but really he’s nothing more than a confused old man who isn’t even old, but made old by the Big A. Jerry Grey, creator of worlds, killer of women, confused madman.
He’s a monster.
He’s the Breaking Man.
He doesn’t know what to do.
God help him, he doesn’t know what to do.
W MINUS FIVE
You saw Doctor Goodstory yesterday and again this morning. He said Captain A is going to make this a pretty quick journey because you are now in the advanced club, all the way baby, from zero to a hundred in just a matter of months. Aside from being tired a lot more often, you told him you don’t really feel a lot different. Sure, you feel muddled sometimes, but otherwise very much yourself. When you got home, you printed out the Ray Bradbury quote you like so much, and put it into a frame where you can see it from your desk. Things really do feel like they’re all over now, just like the quote says.
Sandra and Eva are still running around like the sky is falling. You spent this afternoon with them at the church Eva is getting married in, Saint Something or Rather. It’s a really pretty stone church with lots of beautiful gardens out the front and a cemetery out the back, a horseshoe ring of poplars and oak trees separating the two. You can’t deny there’s a creep factor to the place, what, with all those bodies in the ground only a minute away from where Eva and Rick are going to exchange their I dos. Of course that’s the old horror writer in you thinking that. You’ve probably forgotten this by now, Jerry, but your first few manuscripts were about vampires, and zombies, and shape-shifters. Back then if you knew the real horror was waking up at three in the morning confused while taking a piss against the bedroom wall, that the real horror was stepping out your back door and stepping through a memory wormhole, then you’d have written a successful horror novel years ago. Eva getting married at a church by a graveyard—the failed-to-be horror author can’t help but see the timing of all of this coinciding with the timing of the zombie uprising, the zombies choosing your little girl’s big day for a little big day of their own. You feel bad Eva’s marrying her hip-hop-loving boyfriend in a place like this, but they’re doing it because of you, because
Captain A
Is taking you away,
Yo.
After the church visit, you all headed out to the winery where the reception is being held. Eva and Rick were lucky there, because there was a cancellation, so everything worked out. It’s out in the country a little, mountains in the far distance, vineyards in all directions, a lake, a beautiful building, all of it stunning, stunning, stunning. And expensive. If there is a zombie uprising on the day, just hope nobody tells them it’s an open bar.
The last few days have been full of meeting people and ticking i’s and dotting t’s—the priest, the florist, the band, the caterers, picking up your suit, and you had to go back into town and see the dessert baker again. You had to
stand there and nod and pretend you had no idea what was going on between him and Sandra, who again wore her hair down. Henry keeps saying you have to take care of that situation, and you will, after the wedding. There’s the rehearsal in a few nights’ time, where you’ll be shown how to walk in a straight line with Eva on your arm, how to shake Rick’s hand, then how to sit down in the front row next to Sandra. Everybody is worried you’re going to mess it up, that you’re going to make it halfway down the aisle, shit yourself, and trip over the priest.
Oh, another thing, you got the notes today that your ghostwriter has written up. There are some changes he’s planning on making, but none make any sense. He’s even suggested a name change to the novel. They’re going with Burn Time. You emailed Mandy and told her to go ahead, that everything looked fine, because it’s easier just to let it all happen now. Since you can no longer have the title you wanted, you’ve written The Captain Goes Burning on the spine of the Madness Journal so, if you’re wondering why it’s there, well now you know.
Hans came over again today. He brought more gin. You hid it away in the office after he was gone, but you’re not going to touch it, not till after the wedding, then you’re going to drink as much of it as regularly as you can. You’ve always wondered if the difference between being an okay writer and a great writer was sobriety. All the greats—they’ve spent time coked out of their minds or starting the day with a morning Scotch. Future Jerry, there are more days in your past than your future—that has been true for some time now, but even more true now. Spending your days in a nursing home staring out the window while a nurse wipes the drool off your face isn’t the future for you. When the wedding is over you’re going to drink yourself to death. You should get to decide how you want to go out, and that seems like a pretty good way. It does mean this journal doesn’t really have much of a purpose anymore, except maybe as a coaster.
You were out on the deck with Hans when the florist came over to see Eva. She smiled at you through the window of the French doors and you smiled back, and Hans grinned and slowly shook his head.
Got yourself a little crush there, have you?
No, you said, and shook your head.
I hear ya, mate. If things get to the point where you have to go into a care facility, and I’m sure they won’t, but if they do I’ll make sure there are some nurses in there who look like her.
Of course there’s no way he can do that, but the sentiment made you both laugh, and you can’t deny to yourself that if the nurses looked like the florist, then the nursing home can’t be all bad. You told Hans you’d started talking to yourself, and he said everybody does that sometimes, but he thought you meant you were saying things like Hmm, now where did I put the phone? You told him about the conversations with Henry.
Is he asking you to do things? Hans asked.
Like what?
Like hurting people.
You shook your head while you answered. No, it’s more normal than that. Like the conversation any old two friends would have.
He the one who told you to spray-paint the neighbor’s house?
It was a good question, and one you couldn’t answer. If you did spray-paint her house, was it on the suggestion of somebody who doesn’t exist?
At least you can’t leave the house without the alarms going off, right? Hans pointed out.
I can sneak out the windows.
Just don’t let Henry talk you into sneaking out to visit your florist, huh?
He laughed then, and you laughed too, and why not? Everything is funny in Batshit County.
Good news—the weather report is good for the weekend. It’s plain sailing ahead.
Bad news—you’re going to Rick’s bachelor’s party later this week. You don’t want to go, but Rick’s dad has promised to look after you. You’re only staying for the dinner part of the evening. Could be fun. Or it could be a nightmare. Things will be better when this is all over. Not just the wedding.
It turns out Jerry does know what to do. Of course he does. It’s why he took Fiona Clark’s cell phone and searched her purse for cash. It’s like he was telling himself (or Henry was telling him) back in the house: he has to think of this like one of his books. What would the Bag Man do if he were innocent?
He wasn’t.
He starts walking again. The streets are different but look the same—same houses, same cars, same atmosphere, but then he finds a street that gets a little busier, and he follows it, like following narrow streams to bigger ones until you find the sea, and that’s what happens here, a sea of traffic, of people, a main road he can identify. The good thing about Christchurch is you can’t drive for ten minutes in a straight line without passing within a mile of a mall, and he figures he’s about a thirty-minute walk from the nearest one now. He must be used to walking, because the nursing home is a good distance out of town. He wonders how long it took him to walk from there. A long time. Maybe all night. It takes him forty minutes to reach the mall. He hates malls. Yet he’s always thought that if you took the malls away, society would fall apart. It would be like watching the world if the wheel had never been invented. He dismisses the idea of dumping the knife in one of the bins there. Whoever empties them could find it.
He walks past an electronics store with half a dozen TVs pointing at him, some displaying TV shows he doesn’t recognize, and some displaying him as he walks past them, a camera sending back a live feed. He walks past bookstores, shoe stores, a bank, a confectionary shop, jewelry stores, a sports store, stationary stores, a toy store with a giant stuffed pig in a tuxedo on display in the window. He reaches a supermarket with aisles full of sugary foods and bored-looking people. He buys a bottle of water and a sandwich and a SIM card. The girl at the checkout asks if he’s having a good day, and rather than telling her the truth he tells her it’s going well, then asks how her day is going. She tells him it’s also going fine, and he guesses it is for her because he didn’t wake up in her house earlier. When he heads back to the mall exit he passes the shops in the reverse order, the only difference is the TVs on display are now showing the news, and on the news is a picture of him, Jerry Grey. . . .
You are Jerry Grey.
“The author who wrote under the pseudonym Henry Cutter . . .”
You are Henry Cutter.
“. . . has disappeared from the nursing home . . .”
You live in a nursing home.
“. . . he was committed to after the murder of Sandra Grey, his wife . . .”
You murdered your wife.
“. . . last year. Grey is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is likely to be lost and in a very confused state, and if spotted the police should be called immediately.”
He heads to the sporting store he passed a minute earlier. He spends half of his remaining cash on an overpriced rugby cap (go All Blacks!) and tugs it tightly over his head and tucks the front of it down a little. From there he heads to the bathrooms and finds an empty stall and locks the door and sits inside. On the back of the door somebody has written at the top Damien is awesome, and below that people have written other things, reminding Jerry of the comment sections online, a long list starting with That’s because Damien has a vagina and ending with Fuck the world. He opens the packet with the SIM card and slots the card into Fiona Clark’s phone. He starts to call Hans and straightaway there’s a problem. He has no idea what Hans’s number is. Why would he? He hasn’t remembered anybody’s number in a while now, and not because of the dementia, but because his smartphone has remembered everything for him for several years now. He’s lost the habit of committing numbers to memory, and maybe that’s where all of this started. Is this what he’s done the other times he’s escaped the nursing home? Found his way to a phone not knowing how to call for help?
In this day and age there has to be a way, doesn’t there? A goddamn way of calling somebody! How difficult can it be? He bangs the palm of his hand into the side of his head. Come on! Those numbers are in there somewhere!
Calm down, Jerry. The voice of reason. The voice of Henry Cutter, who wrote the most unreasonable things until a ghost had to start writing them for him. The numbers may not be in there, but what about emails?
He’s right. Jerry hasn’t used email in a long time, but if he can access his account then he can email Hans. He uses the phone to go online, and he has to concentrate, really concentrate to remember his own email address so he can log in, letting his fingers roam over the phone, being guided by muscle memory, which he manages to do, the address coming to him, and back in the day—the day of Sane Jerry—he used the same password for everything. In the password field he types Frankenstein. Five seconds later he has access to his account. There are over eleven hundred unread emails. He doesn’t read any, and is about to compose one of his own to Hans when he remembers that not only does he have access to his emails, but also to an online address book. Hans’s number is there.
He makes the call. The whole bathroom smells like wet dog and bleach. Hans doesn’t answer. He leaves a message. He thinks about what other options he has. He looks back through his contacts and Eva’s number is in there. Could he call her? He decides to give it a few minutes in case Hans calls back, which is exactly what happens. He answers the call.
“It’s me,” Hans says. “Sorry I didn’t answer, but I never do if I don’t recognize the number.”
“I’m in trouble,” Jerry says, the words falling out of him, the sense of relief almost overwhelming. Suddenly he is no longer alone in this.
“I know,” Hans says.
