by Dan O'Shea
Benske growls. “Get the hell outta here. Mama wasn’t friends with anyone like you.”
“You sure?”
“Look at her place, old man. Hearts and angels? Doesn’t match your tats of needles and skulls. She didn’t have friends like you.”
“She had all kind’a friends.” French points at the pictures. “Take a look, tell me that was a heart attack, and I’ll hit the road. Never see me again.”
Benske’s heart a sledgehammer. Whole road crew swinging it, pounding his ribs into dust. But he looks, can’t stop himself. Mama’s heavy face bruised, nose newly crooked. Tattooed knuckles – H U R T M E - in the shot, holding Mama’s lips open over two missing teeth. A shot tight on Mama’s hands…knuckles scraped.
A fight? Mama hit the scales at more than 300 pounds. Fighting?
Realization hits hard. Not fighting…defending.
Beat to death? What the fuck? Mama was soft, pleasant to everyone, no clue of life’s sordid realities.
Except – Wasn’t that kitchen chair turned over? Wasn’t the computer monitor askew? Wasn’t the kitchen table out of its usual place? Had thought that was from the swarm of EMTs who’d come to save her, or that she’d moved shit since the last time he’d been here.
Remains of a fight? Of trying to save herself?
And didn’t that fuck the picture? Staring at her empty house for hours. Can’t get his head around life without Mama. She is gone and he is absolutely unmoored. His entire life is back in Illinois, but most of his life gone now.
Sure as shit, feels the itch to cut. “Who?” Swallows sandpaper into his throat. “Why?”
“That goddamned blog.”
Sighs. Blog had been back of Benske’s mind. Didn’t want to post a note for her handful of readers – other lonely women who had cats and traded recipes along with stories of growing up in a world they saw through the patina of nostalgia. Didn’t want to tell them she was gone.
“All that extra bullshit. The gossip.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Should’a just left us to us.” French says. “People sent her all kinds of junk and she posted it like some fucking 1950s Hollywood tabloid.”
Shakes his head. “Must be your other girlfriend. Have you seen Mama’s blog?”
French snorts. “I’m on Mama’s blog, dumbass. I was her favorite.”
“Her favorite what?”
For a long minute, forever, French stares. Eyes squint, maybe unsure of what he was seeing, who he was looking at. Finally goes to her machine, cranks it up, bangs a handful of keystrokes, backs away.
Benske hesitates.
“Step up, young buck. But I hear one shitty word about your mother, I will shoot you in the head and sleep like a baby.”
Benske looks.
And everything changes.
“BBW? What the fuck? My Mama?”
• • • •
Keeps his eye on the big girl. Michelle. She will be the problem. “If I hear anything…anything…about any of you interfering in the investigation, I’ll throw your fucking asses in jail.”
Michelle’s eyes spark. “Why would you investigate a heart attack?”
Sucks a breath and plays the silence. One of his best weapons. Too much silence and people piss their pants. Deliberate and slow when he pulls a cigar from his pocket, bites the tip.
“Can’t smoke in here.” Michelle again.
“Interfering means fucking with my evidence, too.” Shoves the cigar in his mouth. Eyes hard on Michelle, ignores the other nurses. “Tough to keep a job…you got an interfering conviction.”
“You don’t have to threaten me, Sheriff.”
Takes his time, lights his cigar, blows a lungful of smoke. “I don’t make threats, Missy.”
• • • •
“Bleeding.” French sucks on Benske’s bottle, hands it back, grimace carved into his face. “That shit sucks.”
Benske absently wipes his forehead. He’d smashed a mirror when he’d seen the blog, when he’d realized what Mama had been into.
Now they walk, two mourning men in a dark, garbage-strewn alley. Guzzling cheap whiskey. Too cheap to buzz through Benske’s burn.
The alternate blog, the hidden blog, had been dark. Visually hard to see. Blacks and grays popped with bullet holes of saturated reds and blues, greens and purples. No name, no tagline, no animated graphics or video, nothing but shadows and niches. Lots of pictures, though. Big women, wrapped in whips and chains, bulging out of lacy lingerie, men at their feet. Deeper inside the blog…men on their knees, faces buried between stout legs, lips and tongues swirling around rolling breasts, fingers delving deep into fleshy asses.
“Ain’t about porn.” French says.
“No, huh?”
Glares, snatches the booze, drinks deep. “That whole thing? Love and acceptance. Alternate sexuality. Your mama made a safe place for people.” Points a finger. “If they wanted to come out she gave them a place to do it. Without all your hypocritical judgment.”
“Hypocritical?”
Grabs Benske’s arm, pulls it out for display. Holds tight. “You’re a damned cutter. Prob’ly got scars all over your body.”
Yanks his arm back. “So?”
“So most of your Mama’s people are cutters, too. Looking for someplace they can…just…exist, and not have to cut.”
Benske understands anything it’s that. Ignores it. “The gossip?”
French annoyed. “Used to damn near live in this alley. Find fucking anything down here. Skid Row’s Main Street. My particular thing? Skag.” Points at the three syringes tattooed on his right arm. “Three rigs…three ODs.” Points at a skull. “Died once.”
“But you came back so I guess it worked out better for you than Mama. The gossip?”
“I really miss her.” French says. “Listen, your mama and me and Michelle and our other friends know all kinds’a people. That’s what happens when you’re out beyond polite society. And sometimes, some’a those people know other people and those people know things or think they know things or think they’ve seen things. Lotta that talk came to your mama. Emails and texts and fucking smoke signals for all I know. Michelle knows what.”
Yeah? She know who beat my mother? She know who beat a 300 pound woman into a heart attack? ‘Cause if she does….
They finish the bottle.
“Was she happy? Out beyond polite society?”
French hurls the bottle. Smashes against broken brick. Shards catch the dirty moonlight. “Yeah…I think so. She missed you, no shit about that, but I think she found a place for herself.”
“And now she’s dead.”
French’s heavy biker boots crunch the broken bottle. Leaves Benske in the alley, the stench of blood and piss and shit hard in his nose.
“Where you going?”
French never stops. “’Bout time to work on that fourth rig, I guess.”
• • • •
“Who beat her?”
Asks it straight out. Doesn’t mess with niceties or social obligations or even polite conversation. Three hours since French stepped into Mama’s house and blew Benske’s world up worse than it already had been. Benske’s righteous anger working and working. Blood-boiling, vision-searing.
The big nurse swallows. Her eyes pop all around, taking in the entire ER. No one else around for the moment. She rubs her tattooed knuckles. “I don’t know anything for sure.”
“Who. Beat. Her.”
“That beating isn’t what killed her, Benske. She had a heart attack. And why not? She was big…had some heart trouble in the last year.”
“What?” Bouncing foot to foot. “She didn’t tell me that.”
“Didn’t tell you lots.” Eyes down. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”
“No.” Benske says. “It was fair. I abandoned her.”
Big smile on a big nurse’s face. “She didn’t feel like that. Not that she ever told me. She told me you were a good boy and that you alw
ays knew what needed to be done.”
“I left her.”
“She always said you had to…to save your own life.”
“Maybe. Tell me about the gossip.”
Face clouds over. Full of storms. “She knew lots of gossip. Posted lots of it, too.”
“Like what?”
Again the look around. Still alone but she leans in and talks quietly. “Who’s banging who, who’s throwing key parties, who’s – “
“Key parties?”
“Eight or ten couples and everyone puts their keys in a bowl and then goes fishing. Whoever’s keys you grab is…well…whoever’s keys you grab.”
Stops breathing. Mama? Had never known she knew about this kind of stuff. Saw her, other than as an idealized, sexually pristine coupling that produced him, as non-sexual.
Pain across Michelle’s face. “She knew some awful stuff.”
“Awful enough for somebody to beat on her and give her a heart attack?”
Hears her swallow, hears the fear in her throat, sees it in her eyes and shaking hands. “Not…uh…not so much, no.”
Leans in close to her. Tries to reassure her, touches her knee softly. “Tell me.”
Instead, she hands him a sheet of paper. Crumpled, dotted with specks of blood.
“It was under her. Johnny, he’s an EMT, found it. He gave it to me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He’s a friend of ours.”
“That letter should have gone to the cops.”
“No.”
• • • •
To The Editor:
Are there really terrible people in our community? Those who would pray upon our weakest? Our most vulnerable?
It has come to my attention that there is just such a predator amongst us, a woman who practices ‘alternative sexuality.’ This blight on our community has apparently found men who share her size fetish, but as always happens with homosexuals and deviants, dabbling in one revolting sexuality leads automatically to another revolting sexuality.
This road?
Children.
I have it on good authority, from those who would know and will soon expose her crimes to the world, that this woman is a child molester. She boldly writes about her crimes on the internet, but so far no one has been able to chase her down and save our community and our children from this horrible woman’s designs.
She is about to be exposed. The Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office are days away from taking out the garbage. She’ll spend the rest of her life in prison and I pray she has done to her what she has done to our kids, as awful as that is for me to write.
I am proud of the Sheriff’s Office for their courage. Our children and community will be safe from this monster because she’ll be rotting away in prison for the rest of her life. Or maybe God will do us all a favor and simply give her a heart attack and save us all the time and money.
(signed)
A Concerned Parent
• • • •
Says read the blog…carefully. Says the clues are there. Mama never put it out straight, but hid it amongst bits of gossip and loose talk, write-ups of drunk driving arrests and who was sweating the sheets with who and divorces. Says Mama wasn’t interested in the gossip, but in leaving him naked.
She didn’t have the courage to speak up.
“He’s killed people.” Michelle, face down, voice a whisper. “Got away with it. Got kickbacks coming from damn near everybody. Runs this town like his own little kingdom.”
“Did Mama tell you it was him?”
“Didn’t have to.”
• • • •
From the blog….
…when i was a little girl, i layed out under the stars. watch and dream and pretend i was somewhere else. these days, when children are under a star, i bet they still dream of being somewhere else….
… i love handcuffs…as my faithful readers know! a good game of restrain me, scare me, do terrible things to me. everyone who plays says yes, gives consent, wants to play the games. but what of those who give no consent, who simply cannot give consent?
…secrets thrive in the darkness. in darkness that is accidental, but also in darkness that is intentional. but secrets shrouded in darkness hide a darker heart. what about hearts protected by bright, shiny brass? does the sun glinting off that brass mean the heart is somehow lighted? or does it mean that the light is deflected away from the heart, ensuring darkness….
…how do they see love? smothering? or enveloping? or just physically painful?
• • • •
…find fucking anything down here….
French said. Pointed at the needle rigs tattooed on his arm. Overdoses.
But also pointed at the skull.
Died. Brought back by Michelle and a couple ER docs.
…find fucking anything down here….
And anything might mean…anything?
Children? Lost or for sale? Stolen or runaways?
Benske in the dark while a fine mist of rain – and who the fuck ordered rain in the middle of the summer in west Texas? – lightly touches his face. People pass, some see, some don’t. Doesn’t care. None of them are him so he hardly sees them.
Back against stained brick, standing on the broken whiskey bottle. Seems symbolic somehow.
Fuck that shit. Don’t want symbolic. Want Him.
And there he is. Like it was nothing to come to this alley, to meet someone. Benske supposes it isn’t so surprising. After all, anyone can find fucking anything they want down here.
“And you’re the prodigal son?” the man asks. “Don’t remember you at all.”
“No?” Benske stays dark, stays back against the wall. Like the comfort of the wall against him. Likes the lack of choices it offers. “My name didn’t come up in your community?”
The man carves indifference onto his face. “You called about a letter? Not sure what you’re talking about, but given my job, I have to check everything, don’t I?”
Ignores him. Says, “They are freaks, aren’t they?”
He smiles, leans back against the door of his squad. Radio squawks. Meaningless jumble of cop-talk to Benske. “Gonna play games all night? Ain’t really got the time.”
“The fatties.” Benske says. “Having sex with huge women. Latex and whips.”
“And?”
Shrugs. “Everybody’s got their thing, right? Don’t want anyone to know. Lights out kind of stuff.” Leans in toward the man. “Come on…what’s yours? Me? I dig when she shoves her finger up my ass while giving me a blowjob. Right when I cum.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Winks. “What’s your thing?”
Heads back to his car. Waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but I got better things to do.”
“Yeah?” Benske asks. “Both know what those things are, don’t we?”
Stops, turns back, stares hard at Benske. “What did you say?”
“I remember the OCD. Every bottle of cleaner. Every tool on the pegboard. Every mop and broom and dustrag. All lined up. Every key on his giant key ring facing the same way.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We had a club…a community.” Benske says. “Not like Mama’s with all her fatty lovers. Not like yours, either. Well, the exact opposite of yours, I guess.” Benske out of the dark, face still sheened, though the mist has stopped. The moon hanging pregnant on his left, casting the sheriff in harsh angles. “See…his grandson died. Drowned or something. Trying to reanimate him, I guess. Or replace him, maybe. I wasn’t the only one who looked a little like the dead kid. There were five or six of us. For him, we were the most special students at Anson Jones Elementary.”
Sheriff’s face clouds. Three day beard is dirt on his face. Like he’s been rolling in the mud. “Fuck this bullshit.”
Benske shows. Blue metal in the moonlight. Scored it from an old high school friend. Five hund
red and dead clean. No bodies on it.
No serial numbers, either. Federal offense so make damn sure you dump this thing.
Goes to him, jams the gun under his chin. Just long enough to snatch the man’s sidearm and back away. Too close for too long is asking for trouble.
“Don’t do something stupid, son.”
“Prodigal son, right? And the stupid boat sailed years ago, asshole. See, our community was all the kids he fucked. The ones he took into the school’s boiler room and fucked during lunch recess or after school. We knew who was in the club because his grandson’s picture was in the boiler room. We could see which of us looked like him. But we never talked, even to each other.”
“You’ll get the chair for this.”
“No chair in Texas anymore, you fucking idiot. Too bad we can’t get the injection together, though. Me for killing you, you for killing Mama.”
“Didn’t kill her.”
Pulls the letter from a pocket. “Lots of projecting in this letter…psychologically speaking.”
Sheriff’s eyes move, quick, side to side. Searching out an escape, Benkse knows. Benske crowds him, backs him to the car, presses him against it. “Nowhere to go, Sheriff. Like Mama. Like the kids. How many have there been?”
Face drains, jaw tightens. Badge, shaped like a star, glints in the moonlight. “What the fuck? Are you crazy? I’ve never touched a kid.”
“Yeah, the janitor never did, either.”
Fires a single shot. He screams, grabs his shattered knee. Blood and bone spatter Benske.
“There was a kid. New to the school. We should’a told him what was coming. We didn’t. We knew the day, fuck that – the moment – it happened. We never talked to him afterward, either.”
“You son of a bitch.” Face twists, pain from his knee rockets through his eyes. “Ain’t no way you get away with this. My deputies will track your ass down.”
“Maybe. I don’t care. Taking my demons out for some exorcise so that’s cool.”
“My boys will kill you.”
Benske screams, heavy in the air, bangs off the buildings, disappears toward the moon. “I’ve been dead since that day in the boiler room.” Yanks his sleeve up. Scars. Some across his wrist. More lengthwise on his arm. “I’ve been dead since one of you bastards raped me.”
