Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel

by T. M. Goeglein

  “Remember when you locked me to a chair? Seems like yesterday.”

  Doug’s eyes glowed like neon strawberries as he took a step backward. “So?”

  “So now it’s your turn, slim,” I said, and the struggle was brief—he slapped while Harry nipped at his pant leg, and I kneed him in the gut, taking away his breath, and dragged him by his collar, whimpering. When I had him secured to a chair, I said, “It’s time to puke for a while.” Doug let loose with ear-bleeding invective, quieting only when I yanked back his head and filled his big mouth with the (aptly named) Screaming Banshee, clamping my hands over his face to make him swallow. He did, his eyes went wide, and I barely managed to catch the crimson explosion in a bucket. The next hour was brutal, disgusting, and necessary as we repeated the process half a dozen times. Doug was as weak as a kitten in a storm drain when his stomach was finally, completely empty. I threw him on my mattress and fed him water. His eyelids fluttered to unconsciousness. When I was sure he was out, I reapplied the cuffs, attaching him to the radiator in my bedroom/office. It was the most painful way to kick a drug—do-it-yourself rehab—that brought to mind Heather, and further, Uncle Jack and Annabelle.

  I sat on the couch next to silent Johnny, who sipped water and nodded off. Harry laid his head on my lap, and I thought about my cousin glowing with the crushing force of beauty while pulsating with a power she barely understood. The old man, with the facts from “Volta” swimming around his plaque- and guilt-ridden brain, all that vital knowledge unable to be collected or remembered. And his middle-aged daughter, mute with regret and resentment but able to voice deep-seated greed. All of their secrets, desires, and failures—I felt the weight of them because I’d grown to care about them. The problem was that caring is dangerous. Sentiment and emotion had no place in my life—they were deadweights and anchors. Rolling Harry aside, I resolved to ask them to leave the bakery, to pack up and be gone by the end of the day tomorrow. Johnny would be dealt with too, probably left anonymously with one of the city’s many Polish social clubs. Grimly, I wondered if he might be so generous as to donate his red eye to satisfy Lucky.

  I stood and crossed the room, watching Doug snore, knowing I had a decision to make about him too. He’d betrayed me in such an egregious way that it had almost gotten me lobotomized. It was becoming more and more imperative to allow no one to threaten my existence as I fought to free my family from Juan Kone.

  And then I made the mistake of talking to Gina.

  • • •

  By Monday morning, Doug was sweating like a lawn sprinkler and misquoting movies in his sleep (“Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn . . .”) but wasn’t thrashing about anymore. I unlocked the handcuffs without waking him so he could use the restroom, and told Johnny that he had to stay inside the Bird Cage Club. He blinked his different-colored eyes. I told him to eat anything he wanted and not to touch anything sharp. He yawned and shivered from his well-worn spot on the couch and fell back asleep. As usual, I had to go to school so as not to raise suspicion, and glanced back at Johnny as I left, hoping that both he and Doug would politely not die while I was gone. As rattled as I was by my encounter with Juan, as hollowed out as I felt about my separation from Max, I resolved to make it an uneventful day.

  That resolution was kicked in the face the moment I walked into school.

  Talking to Gina knocked it out cold.

  Kids whispered and pointed as I walked down the hallway, and it continued until last period. It was with my head turned, tracking a group of oglers, that I plowed into a pair of Mandi Fishbaum’s look-alikes. The first one flipped her hair and said, “Better keep your eyes open, SJ. Wide open.”

  “Speaking of,” the other one said, “I never noticed before, but you and Heather have the same color of eyes.”

  “That’s not all they share!” The first one smirked, giggling and turning away.

  My instinct was to squeeze their throats until they choked up whatever it was they were cackling about. Instead, I went straight to the nucleus of all gossip. The hallways were emptying as kids hurried for the exits. When Gina saw me coming, she slammed her locker and hustled in the other direction, but between her heels and my determination, she never had a chance. I grabbed her, and when she turned, it was something I’d never seen before—her face etched with pity. Without preamble I said, “What?”

  “What what?” she replied, trying on a smile that slipped.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Gina. People are whispering. What’s going on?”

  “SJ . . . ,” she said, biting her lip. “Sara Jane, please. I don’t want to tell you.”

  “How is that possible? You always want to tell everyone everything.” I leaned in, cornering her against a locker. “I want to know. Whatever it is.”

  She sighed, shaking her head. “The party Saturday, at Mandi Fishbaum’s? There’s a rumor, unconfirmed . . . Supposedly Heather slept with someone.”

  Of course people knew we were cousins, but I wondered what it had to do with me, and said, “Okay, big deal. She finally chose between Ken and Kendra, or she chose both, like an Olympic sex event, Ken to Kendra to Kendra to Ken. Who cares?”

  Gina looked at me, face pale, eyes moist. She wiped her nose, saying, “I always liked you, Sara Jane, but you’re so, like, clueless to how the real world works . . .”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, my mind thick, the pieces coming together too slowly.

  “The someone,” she said nearly inaudibly, “was Max.”

  My brain pushed against my eyes, my throat clogged, and my heart stabbed itself with something sharp enough to die. I touched tears and realized that part of me was a flimsy lie. So sure I’d disconnected myself from love, so stupidly positive that nothing could pierce the emotional shell I’d constructed from scar tissue, and now I stood weeping and weak. All I wanted was for it not to be true, but I knew something had happened between Max and Heather, since something always happens for a rumor to ignite. Besides a self-destructive desire to find out exactly what occurred (I didn’t want to know but needed to), the only other sensation coursing through my veins was the worst one known to human beings—a smothering combination of physical rejection and emotional abandonment, imagining the person you love touching someone else, kissing someone else, whispering things to her he’d spoken only to you. And how all of your intimacy—so precious and protected—had been destroyed by one secret moment that never remains secret. It can’t, because it’s infused with carelessness and disregard for the third person, the one for whom no concern is shown. Me.

  Gina hugged me and I stood rigidly in her perfumed embrace as she murmured, “At least you’re not boring anymore.”

  That’s all it took to understand that I’d been wrong; plenty of concern had been shown to me, but of the treacherous kind. I remembered Heather’s threat, hissed in semi-darkness—You won’t even see it coming! How better than to steal her cousin’s ex-boyfriend? It cut deeply and also created the sort of humiliation that would stick to me until I graduated. The only part that gave me comfort was knowing that it had been a plot, and Max a pawn. It wasn’t lust or charm she’d used to seduce him, but ghiaccio furioso. It didn’t mean he hadn’t done anything, only that he’d been powerless. And then my lifted heart fell, and I was enraged for myself and for Max, and mumbled, “He couldn’t resist.”

  “Oh honey, I know,” Gina said, hugging me tighter. “She’s too hot.”

  “It’s time to cool her off,” I said as electricity snapped across my shoulders.

  “Ow!” Gina cried, jumping away. “You shocked me!”

  “I’m just getting started,” I said, sprinting down the hallway and bursting through double doors into screaming daylight. I knew Heather would be heading to the El by now, and I ran for it, hitting the platform just as a train shuddered to a stop. I looked left and right as people flowed off and on, the cars pulled away, and my name was called, dancing behind the rumble.

  She was there, waiting for me, slim hips swaying a
s she moved languidly. A small, secret smile plumped her lips. “Gotcha,” she purred.

  “You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “I mean . . . did you? Do it?”

  “Gee, SJ,” she said, using a pinkie to smooth her lip gloss, “that’s kind of a personal question. Between Max and me, I mean.”

  “Remember when you asked me to tell you when you were being an asshole?” I said, cracking all ten knuckles. “It’s now.”

  The platform was empty except for us, and she moved within arm’s length, saying, “Max is a sweet boy, by the way. Not a lot of experience, but developing new talent is very L.A., so I was happy to—” And then she went silent, since it was impossible to talk with my fist in her mouth. She hit the boards hard on her back, skidded to a stop, and rolled to one knee. Holding her jaw, she spit blood, and said, “You sucker punched me!”

  “It’s very Chicago. An old tradition when someone talks trash,” I said, curling my fists and facing her shoulder-forward in a boxing stance, ready.

  She rubbed her jaw, shaking her head, and said, “I should’ve known. You’re half a liar and half a cheat. No help when it’s really needed. Just like the rest of the family.”

  “You know nothing about my family,” I spit, feeling the cold blue flame flicker in my gut. “All we share is DNA.”

  “This could’ve been avoided if you’d helped me understand ghiaccio furioso. By the way, the ‘Trust Test’? You failed,” she said, rising carefully to her feet, kicking off her shoes. “Did I mention I was the capoeira champion?”

  “Of Rancho Salud? Must’ve been some tough opponents . . . you versus ninety-pound crackheads.”

  Heather smiled, drawing a pointed tongue across white teeth. “Of L.A. County. My therapist thought competitive mixed martial arts would be, quote, ‘a positive channel for an untamed life force,’ end quote. That’s rehab talk for I’m going to kick your skinny ass.”

  “I was right, wasn’t I?” I said as we circled slowly. “You used ghiaccio furioso in a sick and twisted way, just like I predicted.”

  “You call it sick and twisted. I call it a beautiful act between consenting adults.”

  “Except Max didn’t consent,” I said, lining up my fists. “That’s how you get that precious attention you need? Bending the will of a guy who loves someone else?”

  “Funny, he didn’t mention anyone. Then again, he was busy having his will bent,” she said, dropping and sweeping my ankles out from under me. I hit the boards and tucked and rolled, her hammering heel missing my face by inches as I leaped to my feet in time for a sharp cracking backhand to my face. I reeled, spit blood, and ducked. Her next punch swooshed overhead and I drove a fist into her solar plexus, knuckling the oxygen out of her lungs. As she gagged for air, I jabbed her twice in the face and she went back on her butt. She lost no momentum, rolling to her feet as I blinked, giving full, furious life to the blue flame, and my gaze scrabbled for hers.

  “Stop,” I said calmly, and she did, like playing freeze tag, seeing what was burning behind my eyes.

  And then she stopped me too, blinking just once, mirroring my gaze.

  “By the way, I don’t need your help after all. I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she said, drawing near, and it was like pointing the tips of magnets at each other, the power repelling each other, each of us unable to wholly grab the other’s mind—me trying to locate her deepest fear, her trying to wrangle my most closely held desire. All I saw were blips and scratches of what was buried in Heather’s brain—her dad screaming at her to Be prettier! Be cuter, happier, more peppy, zestier and bouncier and more TV-worthy, goddamn it, or no one will love you, ever . . . ever! and her mom, Annabelle, turning away from it all silently, doing nothing as Heather’s dad pointed a finger and called her Stupid girl! Clumsy girl! Big-nosed and too tall and too skinny and too this, too that! But I couldn’t hold or contain those terrible old feelings, and suddenly Heather was so close that I smelled her acrid sweat, salty blood, and curdling perfume. Contemptuously, she said, “Oh look, how sweet, all at home together . . . perfect mommy and daddy who love their daughter unconditionally, and a smart little brother who’s so devoted to big sis that he wants to link pinkies . . . awww,” and she was right, there they were, the image of my family between us, real and alive, and I desired it so badly that love rose up and crushed my heart, squeezing it to death. I was so weak I could barely move. And then the image peeled away in wet, gray strips, revealing another underneath. Heather’s face was so close that our noses touched as she hissed, “That’s right, SJ. Throats slit, bodies cold, staring into nothingness for eternity.” She’d seen it, that nightmarish image of my parents and Lou buried in my mind, and she was trying to use it to disable me, but all it did was start a sizzle-crackle-buzz! and then I could not have cared less if they were dead, since I could kill her.

  My hands moved with minds of their own to her perfect throat.

  I squeezed soft flesh, thumbs digging at a fibrous trachea—it was delicious to murder her—as her eyes popped with screaming, vibrating flecks of gold.

  And then my fingers were being bit and burned by a live wire, like touching an exposed, thrumming outlet, and Heather grinned with shark-blue voltage behind it. I freed her, screaming in pain, my palms scarred as I stood swaying, barely on my feet, like being punch-drunk. “Tell me!” Heather shrieked. “How does ghiaccio furioso work? How am I able to do this to you? Tell me about me!”

  The words spilled like water over a dam as I babbled, “It begins with extreme emotions . . . love, anger, hatred, loneliness . . . igniting a cold blue flame in my gut. But now I can will it into existence. All I do is think and blink.”

  “The really powerful part, the electricity . . . where does it come from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Liar,” she hissed, grabbing me roughly at the neck. “Tell me. Now!”

  “All I know,” I rasped, “is that those intense feelings . . . have to evaporate . . . they have to die inside me. What’s left . . . is the overwhelming urge to kill someone who I believe has done me wrong.”

  “Yeah. I know the feeling,” she said, as the squeal of an approaching train sounded. I was lifted into the air and Heather grunted delicately before throwing me onto the tracks. I was mostly paralyzed, but I was also from Chicago, where people stumbled, leaped, or were pushed beneath the steel people-movers weekly, so I curled into a human burrito, clumsily pulling in my appendages. The train’s horn blared, tenor-high and apologetic for killing me. The train clattered overhead, spitting oil and snapping sparks as it complained to a slow, rusty stop, not crushing me, not cutting me to pieces. I lay on the tracks, inhaling the impossibility of being alive, licking petroleum, knowing without a doubt that the preordained time and date of my death had been wrong. There were voices on the platform, desperate to help but certain I was dead, as I clawed myself to freedom, seeing no more Heather. From the street below came the merry tinkle of an ice cream truck as Frank Sinatra rose up, singing the anthem of a city he loves.

  Or maybe this time it was a celebration at finally bagging his prey.

  24

  I ROSE SLOWLY TOWARD THE BIRD CAGE CLUB in the elevator, smelling like someone who’d gotten run over by a train.

  After the fight with Heather, I still was unsure of how cold fury worked against cold fury, although it was plain she’d grown stronger by the day. After seeing my fear, she was also aware of my family’s precarious situation. I gnawed a thumbnail, knowing it didn’t matter since the ice cream creatures had almost certainly taken her. I was appalled by what she’d done with Max and tried to do to me. But if she’d been carried away to the same horrific place as my family, then I’d try to save her too.

  It’s possible to dislike someone for who they are, but not how they became that way.

  The who part is up to the person, constructed from conscious decisions she makes as she grows older, each resulting in a (sometimes bloody) consequence. But how a person is shaped and molded
has nothing to do with the person herself. Where she’s born, to whom, and whether or not those people love and protect her, or abuse and use her, just isn’t up to the person. In all of those categories, Heather got a bum deal. Still, there’s a point where everyone has to stop being a kid and decide who she’s going to be.

  That’s why I didn’t hate Heather.

  I saw now that she was weak and damaged.

  Maybe because of how she’d been raised, the universe had bestowed upon her a level of gorgeousness that caused the general public to flirt, fawn, and sometimes faint. But she had a responsibility to decide what to do with that ethereal gift, and she had chosen the most selfish and manipulative path.

  I shuddered, knowing what Juan Kone would do to her.

  He had my dad’s blood but lost mine, and he needed those six precious vials.

  I wondered if they’d begun to draw them yet from Heather’s brain.

  The end would come soon afterward, not just for her, but for my family too. Juan would finally have collected enough blood to isolate enzyme GF, Heather would be lobotomized, and the services of the Rispoli clan would no longer be required. The trail would go cold, since Juan wouldn’t need me anymore, either. The creatures and their little black trucks would disappear, along with any chance of following them to the Mister Kreamy Kone factory. All of my desperate efforts had failed miserably, and now I was out of leads. When those six vials were full, the cosmic hourglass would be empty.

  I had only one supremely dangerous card left to play.

  I would get Lucky alone. I’d use cold fury to force the old man to order the entire Outfit—every killer, pimp, and bookie—to tear Chicago apart searching for my family. It meant admitting that they’d disappeared, which would expose my dad to life-threatening charges of being a rat (and me too), but there was nothing else to do. I was in that moment of silence before a dam broke, and if I didn’t act immediately, it would carry all of us away, forever.