by Amber Stuart
“Eric, are you worried?”
Eric didn’t seem to know. “Maybe. But, we were talking about it with Daniel…”
“Goddamn, it, Eric,” I interrupted.
“Dietrich, just let me finish. We all decided we needed to make it clear that they can stay, but this kind of shit they’re trying to pull with Lottie needs to stop, and if it doesn’t, then they’ve worn out their welcome.”
Eric definitely watched too many movies.
“We didn’t all decide that, Eric,” I countered. “I wasn’t part of this conversation. You went behind my back and…” Now it was Eric’s turn to interrupt me.
“No, not really. Nothing’s changed. This is still your ballgame. I made that clear and everyone agreed. We all understand Lottie’s our biggest priority here.”
“Dietrich,” Mark finally spoke, “are you sure you want to go to Waco on your own? Seems like there’s a greater risk for shit to go wrong there than here.”
I looked back at Eric, still wishing I had just a little more time with him alone to figure out what I had done, what I should do, hell, what I should even tell her, but there was no more time. And we were not alone. So I just nodded and said, “Yes, I have to do this alone.”
The drive to Waco from Baton Rouge has to be one of the most boring drives I have ever taken. Endless miles of monotonous pastures and fields were sporadically punctuated by small towns with single traffic lights and the even rarer larger town where I could stop for gas or a drink or to pee because, God knows, there was nothing else to do. This meant the seven-hour drive gave me entirely too much time to think.
I tried to distract myself with music, but Lottie and I had listened to too many of the same artists and if I were trying not to think about her, then this wasn’t going to work. So I drove in silence, and I thought anyway.
I thought about Jackson, what I was going to Waco to do, how this dark space inside of me took pleasure in the thought of it. I thought about Lottie, my fiancée Lottie, the woman who should still be alive, who should have been my wife by now, maybe with our first child sleeping peacefully in her arms. I could see her face – that look of utter devotion and unconditional maternal love burning so strongly within her that I wanted to somehow pull this vision from my mind, capture it, encapsulate it, preserve it forever.
And, of course, I thought about Kyrieana, a woman whose love for me was so powerful, so intense, that she was willing to pretend she no longer existed. It wasn’t the same thing as dying; death would have provided a reprieve. A person does not know they are dead. She would know she was alive. She would always know she had been pushed aside, disregarded; she would always know she had been unwanted. And I would always know exactly how she felt.
The golden dome of the Ferrell Center gleamed brightly from the rays of the setting sun as I drove into Waco and headed toward the Hilton on South University Parks Drive. I had never been to Waco. Like the rest of Texas in late June, even with the sun setting, it was overbearingly hot but far less humid than south Louisiana. Flocks of black birds swarmed from tree to tree, and I found myself relieved that I was in a strange car – that many birds had to be dangerous for the paint.
After checking in, I carried my bags upstairs and carefully inventoried everything Eric had already told me he had provided. I needed to know where everything was now, feel their weight, imagine their possibilities. I didn’t plan on Jackson living through the night.
Downstairs in the lobby, I found a restaurant and ordered a salmon Caesar salad, but mostly I just picked at it. There were multiple wide screens in front of me, each one displaying a different sporting event. I occasionally watched one of the baseball games while I picked apart the pink, fleshy fish on my plate. Lottie loved salmon. She probably would not have appreciated me massacring this one.
It wasn’t Jackson and what I was going to do that night that had curbed my appetite. I was still hungover on the memory of Kyrieana wanting to sacrifice herself for me, believing it would keep me from leaving her. My mind was definitely fucked up. I paid my bill and went back to my room to wait.
By 2:00 a.m., I was standing inside of Dr. Jackson Garrett’s home. He lived alone, no pets, in a peaceful, well-kept neighborhood. It was dark, mostly quiet except for the occasional snorting breaths of the man who was deep in sleep. It was a ranch style home, an easy lay out to navigate; how thoughtful that he had even bucked the trend of hardwood floors and kept wall to wall carpeting so that my footsteps were soundless.
As I stood outside his bedroom door, the slow steady snore never pausing, I took off the mask I had been wearing; I wanted him to see my face as soon as he woke up, because from then until the time he died this morning, my face would be the last thing this man would ever see. I entered his room.
I stood by the side of his bed for only a few seconds, feeling that hatred sweltering inside me, before reaching down to clasp my hand around his neck. Jackson’s eyes shot open, wide, terrified, panicked, recognition then surprise passing through them so quickly while he gasped and sputtered, trying to breathe.
I pulled him out of the bed, allowing myself only the briefest moment to feel relief that he wasn’t the kind of man who slept naked, and shoved him back down so that he was sitting up now, his back against the headboard, my hand still around his neck. He was choking, trying to beg me to let him breathe, but I knew he could breathe enough – he wouldn’t die yet.
The zip ties were in a pocket, and when he realized what I was going to do, he let go of my arm that was holding his neck and tried to hit them away. It was rash and pointless. I was stronger, smarter and already had an advantage over him; I had the training, the experience. But he didn’t realize any of this yet; he was still panicked, consumed with shock and trying to fight off a man he must have thought was just a heartbroken lover wanting revenge for what had happened to his fiancée – or maybe for what was going to happen to her now.
I quickly hit him across his cheekbone, felt something break through the leather gloves on my hand as blood spattered across his ivory sheets. I couldn’t help wondering if Lottie would have called them creamy ivory.
Jackson wailed, or tried to, but my right hand was still around his throat. The zip ties were prelooped. I slipped one around his wrist and one of the posters of his headboard and tightened it until blood began trickling down his arm. He tried to scream.
“Do that again,” I warned him, “and I’ll fucking sever it.”
Jackson closed his mouth but I kept my hand around his throat. I would let him speak when I was ready. You’re in my world now, asshole.
When his other arm was tethered to the other poster, I released my grip on his throat just enough to let him speak. If he tried to scream again, I could stop him almost instantly.
“Dietrich,” he panted, “what…”
“Shut the fuck up.” He closed his mouth again. Blood was still pouring from his nose, dripping onto his chest, the sleeve of my shirt. I thought about breaking the other side. “Why was David with you in Baton Rouge?”
“I don’t kno…” I broke the other side of his nose.
Jackson moaned as loudly as he could, a fresh river of blood rushing from his left nostril.
“Every time you fuck with me, I will break something else. There are 206 bones in the human body, and I will break every single one.” I didn’t actually know if that were possible – how would I even reach those tiny bones inside his ears? But I was willing to give it a shot. “Why was David in Baton Rouge?”
“You’re just going to kill m...”
I broke the radius in his right arm by shoving it into the headboard. I heard it snap. I tightened my grip around his throat before he could scream, then gave him a few minutes to think about how he was going to answer me the next time I asked him. “Why was David in Baton Rouge?”
Jackson was silent for a moment; he was in shock, but he hadn’t passed out. I was about to break his other arm when he stopped me.
I wasn’t in the mood for him to take his time parsing his words. I slammed my fist into his broken arm. A strangled, gurgling cry rose up from his throat, and I ordered, “Finish.”
“To kill her! David was there to kill her!” he hissed.
My grip on his neck tightened and his eyes bulged; I had to force myself to relax my fingers. He couldn’t die yet. “Why?”
Jackson’s eyes closed. If this fucker thought I was done with him, I would remind him who was in control now. I had been straddling him on the bed to keep him from moving, and I lifted myself just enough to bring my knee into his groin with as much force as I could manage in this position. His face turned the color of mulberry wine. I knew he wouldn’t be able to talk right away so, again, I waited.
One of the reasons I rarely watched movies was that Hollywood made everything so complicated; as I watched Jackson’s face, waiting for the color to return to its pallid shade, I wondered if anyone who ever worked on those ridiculous spy movies realized how little technology was needed to torture a person. Jackson didn’t seem very comfortable to me.
The blood from his nose had crusted over, but thin drops continued to trickle down his arms from where the zip ties were cutting into his flesh, falling off onto the creamy ivory sheets and spreading larger and larger crimson pools around us. I had decided these were definitely creamy ivory, if for no other reason than my wedding day, my bride, had been stolen from me; but some part of her still lived, and this asshole wanted to steal her from me again. Maybe I had already fucked that up myself. I should have kept our relationship platonic, so that I could love Lottie, so that in some small way she was still in my life and I could find some new meaning to this afterlife. And by doing so, I would have still respected Kyrieana, appreciated that she was herself, and deserved a life of her own. But that was for her to decide – not me, and certainly not this fucker.
As his face returned to a lighter shade of pinkish-red, I asked him again, “Why?”
“You know,” he croaked, “she’s…” He paused again, but this time, his confusion seemed sincere. “I don’t know why she’s different. I swear.”
He was trying to take deeper breaths, so I relaxed my grip a little more to show him that if he talked, this wouldn’t hurt so much. I was anxious for it to end soon as well. “I was told to tell her exactly what you heard. She’s dangerous for us. I believe that. She has to…” he flinched again.
“Why is she dangerous?”
“I’m not sure, no, I swear!” But it was too late. I broke his other arm.
“I don’t know!” Jackson cried. Tears were streaming down his face now, mixing with the dried blood, forming sluggish pink rivers that joined the blood ponds on the sheets.
“Who told you and David to kill her?”
“Abram. Abram, he’s in New York.” Jackson was sobbing. He was ready to die.
Abram from New York was the same man who had called him in his motel room.
“Think about this again. Why do you think she’s dangerous? Why were you willing to believe him?”
Jackson sputtered, coughed, and blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. He was finished. There was nothing else I could do to him at this point – he would have told me anything he thought I wanted to hear to keep me from torturing him again. That was always the drawback to trying to beat information out of a person; after a while, most people are ready to sell their souls to you just to get you to stop.
Jackson moaned as a new string of blood spattered onto his sheets. It seemed to be coming from everywhere now. “Because people like her aren’t supposed to exist. If they know, if they find out, at home, who would risk coming? We’d be closed. Done.”
Jackson himself was done. His voice was cracked, rough, dying. His eyes refused to stay open. Too much time was passing anyway. I needed to leave.
“Jackson, one more thing,” I said, shifting my weight off of him, leaning toward him now with both hands wrapped around his throat. He opened his eyes to look at me. “It’s Herr Kliewer, asshole.” And then I broke his neck.
There was a natural gas leak at Dr. Jackson Garrett’s house that night while he was, as far as anyone else knew, sleeping. Around 3:30 a.m., the house exploded in a massive fireball that blew out neighbors’ windows. By the time the fire department had the blaze under control, I was asleep in my hotel room on the other side of Waco, having already figured out a way to get Abram Mirowski to Baton Rouge.
Chapter 12
Eric and Mark had been busy while I was in Waco. By the time I got back to Baton Rouge, the apartment they’d rented had been somewhat furnished, and just like the bachelors we all were, the fridge had been stocked with beer and leftover Thai takeout– and not much else.
I was only somewhat surprised to see Lydia there, excitedly helping Eric hang a framed poster of Death Valley in the living area. Apparently, it had been a welcoming gift from her and Lottie. I couldn’t help smiling when I saw what she had brought.
“Did Lottie tell you we used to have a poster very much like that?” I asked.
Lydia shook her head at me, her blonde hair, pulled back in a tight ponytail, bouncing as she swung her head back and forth. “Nope. But this is Baton Rouge. Who doesn’t have one of these in their home?”
“Nobody who deserves to live here,” I answered solemnly.
Eric had gone to Auburn. He shot me one of those just-wait looks, and I found myself wondering if it would be possible to fix a college football game. If we lost to Auburn this season, I would never hear the end of it now. Eric, though, never let on to Lydia that he didn’t bleed purple and gold like the rest of us.
“Where’s Lottie?” I tried to ask her casually, but I wasn’t sure if I was desperate to see her or desperate to avoid her.
“Work,” Lydia chirped.
She was in such a good mood it was hard to believe that only two days ago, some asshole – now a dead asshole – had threatened to tear her world in half. Eric wasn’t stupid. Surely he knew he was the reason for Lydia’s transformation, but like everything else lately, it seemed like one more conversation we were never going to have the chance to have. Someone was always going to be around us now or one of us was going to be traveling the country – or, hell, maybe the world – trying to end this nightmare for both Lottie and Lydia.
“Does this look straight?” she asked, stepping back from the wall, tilting her head with a hint of a frown at her lips.
It was a little crooked but Eric answered before I could. “It looks fine. Still.”
Mark stepped forward and straightened it a little, cocking an eyebrow at Lydia to see if she approved.
“Oh, that’s better!” she chirped again. It still looked crooked to me.
“Have you been to an LSU game?” Mark asked her.
Lydia shook her head again, that long, thick ponytail swinging with her head. “No,” she sighed, “who knew tickets would be so hard to get? They sell out so quickly.”
She frowned again. Jamie had never frowned like that. Jamie had always been beautiful in that I-know-I’m-a-sex-goddess kind of way. Lydia was downright endearing and radiated this innocent charm that Jamie probably hadn’t even been born with.
“I can get tickets. I can take you, if you’d like,” he offered. It had sounded like a casual offer, but Eric and I glanced at each other knowingly anyway.
Lydia was glowing. “Oh, that would be so much fun! Can we tailgate? I’ve always wanted to tailgate! You know they put them on College Gameday. LSU fans, I mean. They say we’re some of the best tailgaters in the country. Oh, what game do you think we’d be able to see? Would it be an SEC game?”
“Auburn,” Eric and I said at the same time.
Lydia
turned to look at us, the smile on her face growing wider, showing off more of those straight white teeth. “Do you think you can both come too? And Lottie? This is going to be so much fun!” She was positively giddy now.
“Only if Auburn’s a home game,” I responded.
“It won’t matter,” Eric mumbled.
Lydia didn’t even notice us. She was completely enraptured by this new daydream of having one of her fantasies come true. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t help smiling as I watched her and Mark continue to talk animatedly about the upcoming football season. Jamie hated football. And sports. Lydia’s fascination with one of the roughest sports in this country was another stark reminder that the only thing she had in common with the woman who used to be Lottie’s – my Lottie’s – best friend was the body she now wore.
Rolling thunder in the distance forced Eric to break up their fall tailgating plans. “Hey, why don’t we go get some dinner before the rain comes? Dietrich, you hungry?”
I was starving, but I mostly wanted to sleep, so the three of them left, and I collapsed on the bed that I had been told would be mine. I kicked off my shoes but didn’t bother taking off anything else. Outside, I could hear the rain starting to fall. Ever since a beautiful spring day in Houston over two years ago, I had hated the fucking rain.
It had gotten much darker in my room by the time I recognized there was someone knocking at the door; I must have slept for quite a while. It was still raining.
I groaned, sore and irritable, but pushed myself off the bed. All of the lights were off in the apartment and with it being new to me, I had to feel along the walls for a light switch. By the time I reached the door, I knew it was Lottie waiting outside. My chest suddenly felt pinched and tight. She had gotten soaked walking from her car to the building, and she was trying to wring the water out of her hair when I opened the door; her lips, those pale pink tender lips, spread into a wide smile when she saw me.
