by J. Thorn
***
Drew hit the sleep button on his alarm clock three times before Molly shook him by the shoulder. Her fingers felt like roach clips connected to a car battery. He cursed under his breath and pulled the comforter over his head.
“Hon, you’re going to be late.”
“Not going in today.”
Molly sat up and rubbed her eyes. “You never miss work.”
“Leave me the fuck alone.”
Molly stood and wrapped her robe around her waist. She paused, and then thought better of speaking. She shut the bedroom door behind her and went downstairs to halt the marshmallow-and-peanut-butter breakfast the kids had made.
Drew rolled onto his back. Every muscle in his body hurt. His eyelids closed over balls of fire and his throat closed, struggling to swallow what little saliva remained. He looked at the alarm clock and then at the phone. With trembling fingers, Drew snagged the phone from the cradle. He lifted it to his ear until the buzz of the dial tone threatened to split his skull in two.
“Fuck it,” he said, sliding his legs out of bed. The pain in his head came a half-second later and almost knocked him to the floor. “Just be stuck with the cold bitch all day if I lay here.”
The realization motivated Drew. He dressed and drove on autopilot to the office, determined to suffer through the day. Cars honked and pedestrians stuffed in winter coats like emperor penguins sauntered through crosswalks. Drew considered plowing through a throng of them a block from the office, but decided not to after considering the amount of paperwork it would cause.
“Drivers got no rights,” he said aloud. “Idiots think they can walk out in front of a four-ton beast and not get hit. If I can find one texting, I might be able to argue it was his fault for not paying attention.”
Drew saw a vision of a hipster in tight jeans and Italian loafers floating over the hood. He saw the man’s phone smashing off the windshield before the impact knocked the beret from his head. He smiled. The light turned green, keeping the throngs out of the grid and on the curb until the symbol changed again to a white hand flashing.
Drew made it to the front door of the office. He gave the receptionist the usual smile and imagined what it would be like to fuck her from behind, his fist balled with a handful of her blonde hair, yanking her back into position at the end of each thrust.
The coffee machine light blinked “brewing.” Drew slammed his mug on the counter and cursed. “Which of these motherfuckers had the balls to empty the pot? Rude pricks.”
The women in the cubicles closest to the break room looked up, more from the tone of his words as they could not quite make out what he was saying.
He abandoned the idea of another cup of coffee and walked toward his desk. Drew looked to the right and noticed that Brian’s monitor was dark, like the entrance to a deep cave. Drew sat down and hit the icon to bring up his e-mail client. He scanned through ten or fifteen subject lines, skipping them all until his eyes fixed on one toward the bottom that read “Out.” He clicked on the subject line and brought up the message in a full window.
Dude,
Feeling like total shit today. Gonna stay home and watch porn. Tried calling Johnson but got his vm. Please tell me that fucker ain’t out again today. Hoping to be in tomorrow. Need a solid from ya. Can you please fax Bill at Diversicorp? Yeah, I know he’s my client but I need your help. I left a contract on my desk that I had planned on sending this morning. It expires at 5:00 p.m. All you have to do is send it to the number on the cover page.
Rock,
Brian
Drew leaned back in his chair and looked at Brian’s desk. He saw the document Brian mentioned in the e-mail. He looked back at his screen to the time column.
8:37 p.m.
He scratched his head.
He wrote the sick e-mail last night?
Drew picked up the documents and walked to the fax machine next to the receptionist’s desk. He managed to slide in another sexual fantasy about her while waiting for the fax-machine-confirmation page to print.
He waded through a handful of other e-mails and looked at the clock. It wasn’t even past ten and he felt as though he had been in the office for the past seven years. The clacking of keyboards rattled his skull, and the phony, syrupy greetings of cold calls made him want to vomit. Drew put a set of ear buds into his ears. He pulled up the media-player app on his computer and scrolled through the selections until he found Kill ’Em All, the loudest, meanest, most intense Metallica album recorded. Even the rapid-fire guitar work and caterwauling of James Hetfield could not keep the office noise from penetrating his ears. Drew threw the ear buds down on the desk and snarled. Someone had left the coffee-machine burner running and the bitter, harsh aroma of burnt coffee flooded his nostrils. He broke out in a cold sweat and his hands shook as if being flooded with electricity.
“Are you okay?”
Drew turned, leveling the full fury of his thoughts on the college intern that stood behind the mail cart, retracting a hand that seconds before had been extended toward him with three envelopes.
“I’m fine,” he replied, taking a deep breath in an attempt to stave off the sensory overload of the office.
“You’re all pasty and sweating.”
Drew straightened his sleeves and tucked a lock of hair behind each ear. He smiled and shook his head like a master amused by the foolish questions of his apprentice. “Deadlines. You’ll have ’em too if they hire you on. Careful what you wish for.”
The woman frowned and Drew did everything he could to keep from punching her in the face. He balled his fists and used his right foot to fasten his left to the floor.
“I’m not afraid of deadlines. My professor for the night class said—”
Drew sat down and began opening his interoffice mail while the intern rambled on. He swiveled his chair and imagined crushing her beneath his heels, grinding her face into a pulpy mess that would need to be shampooed out of the industrially gray carpet.
She pushed the cart down the aisle, shaking her head. Drew watched her go and dreamt of stabbing her in the back. Nobody would miss that sorry bitch and her fucking man-calves, he thought.
Drew looked up and swore the entire office was staring at him. The men and women in the cubicles dropped papers. One man put his arm around the intern, trying to comfort her sobs. Drew realized he had spoken the words out loud. He looked at Johnson’s office and noticed the door was dark again.
“Looks like I need to call it a day,” he said, his voice wavering on an upward swing of thin optimism. No one in the office moved and nobody came to his desk. I can smell their fear. They think I’m a loose cannon.
He folded his coat over one arm and hit the power button on the computer. Drew scribbled a few lines on a Post-it note and stuck the yellow sheet to his monitor.
“Gone home. Sick. Will check e-mail tonight.”
That’s more information than they deserve, he thought.
He tossed the cold coffee from his mug into the sink of the break room and left it sitting on the counter. It would no doubt earn Drew a written chastisement from the night crew about leaving messes for them to clean. He did not care.
Let ’em earn their keep like everyone else in this fucking prison.
He passed through the office and gave an obligatory wave to the few that he did not despise. Drew winked at the receptionist on the way out. Although she wore a hands-free headset on the opposite ear, he knew she was involved in a conversation.
“Got yer back, sweetheart,” he said.
Trapped by the conversation, she could do nothing but wrinkle her nose and shake her head at the obtuse, and yet slightly cryptic, comment.
Drew drove his car as fast as he could. He ignored most traffic lights and stopped once long enough to fish through the backseat for a CD wallet embedded underneath the passenger seat. It came up with an audible pop, covered in the remains of sticky lollipops and dried soda. He unzipped the wallet and flipped through the variety of hea
vy-metal recordings, smirking at them and reminiscing like they were long-lost friends. He found another Metallica CD and pushed it toward the slit in the dash. The motor came to life, grabbed the CD, and pulled it inside. Drew cranked the volume knob as high as it would go while putting the car in drive and punching the gas pedal to the floor. He crested the hill overlooking his housing plan and turned right toward his street. The road was empty except for a random garbage can lolling along the curb where the garbage man left it to the mercy of the wind. Children were at school and parents were at work. The neighborhood felt ancient, old, and as though it was hiding something from the universe. Drew slowed the car and looked at each living-room window as he drove past. He saw no signs of life, no movement.
He pulled into his driveway behind Molly’s car. He put the car in park and waited until the verse of “Harvester of Sorrow” ended before turning the ignition off. Drew listened to the pings of the engine underneath the hood, the only sound made in the dead of the midmorning neighborhood.
***
Drew walked to the back door and slid his key into the lock. It clicked open after shedding a thin layer of ice deposited on the tumbler. He looked at the keypad to the right of the garage door. It sat there, dark smudges where hands had lifted the lid countless times to punch in the security code.
Nope. Not going to give her a heads-up on this. Gonna find out what the fuck she does all day long when I’m serving time in my cubicle and the kids are at school.
He pushed the door far enough to crack the seal, feeling the dry warmth of the kitchen wash over his face. Drew slid through the door sideways and slipped his shoes off. They tumbled to the tile floor, the sound muffled by an entrance rug near the kitchen table. Drew paused, listening to the cranky motor of the refrigerator. The rest of the house remained silent.
Drew shed his coat and left it on the floor next to his shoes. He heard a squeak. The muffled sound was a familiar one. He heard it every night when Molly went upstairs to bed as he remained on the couch reading or watching television. They bought the mattress with wedding money, its springs holding out through two conceptions and thirteen years. The metal frame of the king-sized bed sat on oak hardwood floors. Any movement on the bed resulted in noises like a gerbil caught in its exercise wheel. Drew looked at the time on the microwave. He looked outside and back to the LED numbers. 12:37.
What the hell is she doing in bed?
He walked into the living room and sat on the love seat. The bed squealed in random bursts, like Molly was having a nightmare, wrestling with the comforter.
Drew’s heart thundered in his chest until he could feel it in his ears. The bed upstairs squeaked again. The heater kicked on and the blower now competed with the refrigerator motor for the noisiest device in the house. Drew sat back and rubbed his forehead with one hand. He stood with his feet glued to the hardwood.
“Nothing good will come of it. Leave. Go back to the office and then talk about it once you’ve calmed down or doused yourself with Jack Daniels. Don’t do it, man.”
He wiped a tear from one eye and shook his head. Drew wanted to scream, to rip a hole in reality and crawl through, to be embraced by an eternal, suffocating darkness. Disobeying a direct order from his brain, and not heeding his own mental warning, Drew placed his right foot on the steps, beginning the ascent to the master bedroom and everything that might come after.
Chapter 9
Ravna knocked the glass back until the last ice cube slammed into his teeth. The Johnny Walker Red dulled the pain but left a vague stinging that seemed to penetrate to the root of his front tooth. He winced and wiped at his watering eyes. The remote sat on the end table, beckoning for his touch. Ravna looked at his laptop open on the coffee table, the article deadline on his calendar app staring back in menacing, bold, red, Times New Roman font. He reached over with his foot and pulled the clamshell screen down with one toe poking through a hole in his sock. He picked up the remote and waited for the electronic impulses to dash through the air and bring the beast alive.
“Thank you, and welcome to Channel 7 News. I’m your anchor, Melanie Sampson, and this is our top story. Authorities have discovered another mutilated body in the Crooked Tail River. What was a gruesome but isolated murder yesterday looks now to be the work of a serial killer. Let’s go back out to Nan Roles, who has been covering the story for us.”
“Melanie, authorities are hesitant to call these crimes the work of a serial killer, but the evidence is pointing in that direction.”
“How so?”
“Just over my shoulder you can see the yellow tape surrounding the remains of the latest murder at the Crooked Tail River. Like Vivian Cabmel last week, this victim appears to have been battered and mutilated before being dumped on the riverbank.”
“Another woman, Nan?”
“No, Melanie. This victim is a man. Several kids playing in the woods noticed a messenger bag strewn in the snowbank and called the police. The man has not been identified, but investigators have told me that he appears to be white, middle aged, and unmarried.”
“Did the victim have a wallet or any identification on him?”
“Like the last crime scene on the banks of this river, the authorities are not releasing much to the media. If he did have identification, they are not divulging this, probably out of respect for the family of the victim.”
“Thanks, Nan. Has anyone on the scene given you any indication that the two deaths are related?”
“No, that hasn’t happened, Melanie. Police are going through their normal investigative procedures and do not want to jump to conclusions at this time. An officer told me that they do not want to unnecessarily alarm the citizens should this turn out to be an accident.”
“That sounds like quite a coincidence, Nan.”
“That’s the general feeling here as well. We’ll be on the scene through the night and be sure to keep you updated on the investigation.”
“Thanks, Nan. And now we take you to an interview with Dr. Sharon Slider, author of The Mind of the Serial Killer. She’s here to help us develop a profile of the suspect. . . .”
Ravna hit the remote again, ending the interview with Dr. Slider, knowing exactly where that conversation was headed. He decided it was time and stood. The whiskey had rubberized his knees and he collapsed back into the recliner. He glanced at the car keys hanging on the rack next to his coat.
“I guess it can wait until tomorrow.”
Ravna closed his eyes and turned sideways in the chair, too drunk and too tired to make it to his bed.
***
He woke to the tinkling sound of freezing rain landing on the window. It clinked and rattled like the sound of broken glass on a tiled floor. Ravna’s mouth felt dry and his head rang with phantom chimes. He stood and immediately sat back down to regain his equilibrium. The calendar next to the phone stared at him, the date circled with “deadline” scribbled in the box beneath it.
“Shit.”
The shower helped to rinse the hangover from his body, and the sports drink replenished the lost fluids. Ravna dressed, combed his hair, and finished with the morning ritual. With a towel around his head, he shuffled into the kitchen and opened the cabinet containing his French press and coffee beans. He knew as soon as he lifted the brown, paper bag that it was empty. Ravna shook his head, uncertain he could even make it to the coffee shop in this condition.
***
Each carpeted step felt like a mile, the kind of steps carved by the ancient Maya that lead to the sacrificial Chac-Mool at the top. Drew struggled to lift each foot but was powerless to stop. He was going upstairs whether he wanted to or not. The squeaking of the bed continued at an erratic rate without pattern or consistency. Drew made it to the landing, pushed a finger through the blind on the window, and looked at his neighbor’s empty driveway.
He turned and looked at the five remaining stairs. His legs pushed upward as his arms grabbed the railings until he stood at the top, heaving.
He paused. A slight moan came from the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, through the six-inch gap where the door was pulled but not shut. He knew it was Molly. He recognized that moan, the one she used when they played on Saturday mornings. The game was always the same. He’d do things to her, pleasure her in ways that forced her to stifle it so the kids would not hear the moan over the cartoons and crinkly cereal boxes. By the time she came, he was so close it didn’t take much more than her breath on his erection.
It’s that moan, he thought.
Drew placed one foot before the other, capturing every detail, every sense pulsing on overload. He could see the wispy spider webs in the corners of the hallway, and the lay of the carpet fibers in shapes of feet. He smelled the scent of Molly’s body lotion as a delivery truck roared down the street, its payload battering the inside of the cab. A coppery taste flooded Drew’s mouth, his lower lip pinched between his teeth.
He passed Billy’s room, complete with hockey cards and dirty socks on the floor. He passed Sara’s room with naked Barbie and Ken dolls embraced in asexual, plastic sex. He stopped two feet from the master bedroom. Drew could see the comforter moving. He sniffed the air and smelled her, an aroma that aroused a burgeoning erection in his pants. Another short moan, followed by a longer, drawn-out sound muffled in a pillow. Drew placed his hand on the outside of the door and felt the coolness of the painted wood. Pushing with an even, steady motion, he stood in the threshold.
Drew saw Molly’s foot jut out from under the comforter and then withdraw quickly. He stood, transfixed, aroused, and angered. The moans escalated in volume and frequency. He looked down to see one hand in his pants, reaching for a throbbing erection that pleaded to be released.
The phone in the kitchen came alive with its shrill ring. Molly’s moans lessened, but continued. Drew lost his erection, the phone making him furious. After the third ring, he turned and pulled the door back to the position it had been in before he arrived. He walked down the steps until he stood in front of the phone. With one motion, he ripped the handset from the wall and left a dangling cord swaying in the air. Drew walked into the bathroom and slammed the door as hard as he could. The creaking bed upstairs stopped.
