by David Jobe
“You mean to tell me that you didn’t mean to kill all those police officers?” Stephen asked.
“No. I don’t mean that. Not exactly. I was cornered, and I lashed out violently. That isn’t me, but it was me doing those horrible things,” Sarah visibly gulped, though the neck restraint made it obvious that it wasn’t going to allow it.
Stephen hoped to God the cameras caught that.
“I am sorry, Sarah, but that isn’t really good enough,” he said simply. He knew that at this point, any real person that he had interviewed with no prep would have shut the interview down, but she had understood the part he had to play, and like wild sex, she was going to let him smack her around some. “You are a cold hearted killer, and I am not sure anything you can say will change that.” It was knife in the chest, and he knew people were cheering at their television screens, telling him to keep swinging for the jugular because the bitch deserved it.
“I know,” Sarah said, defeated. “There is nothing I can say that will undo what I have done.”
Stephen nodded inwardly. That was what the audience needed to hear. If she had tried to come up with some shitty excuse, they would have crucified her and not listened to anything she would say beyond that. So far, everything remained on course with the plan.
Stephen switched gears. He gave the audience what they wanted. He would smack them in the face with the big reveal. Like every murder mystery, whodunit, he planned to give away the final line. “So, everyone wants to know where you got your powers.”
That was indeed why he suspected that the majority of his viewers had tuned in tonight. They wanted to know the how of it. Like the monsters in the movies, where they came from was just as important as what they did. The trick here was that the main course meal the audience was about to digest was laced with poison.
Sarah sighed softly as if steeling herself for the tale. Stephen inwardly cheered at her theatrics. This could be the sale of the century if she pulled it off. “About five years ago, I was married. My husband and I, who I won’t do the disservice of naming, were trying to have a baby,” she stopped, collecting herself. “We went through two miscarriages when finally, one stuck. We thought we were golden, and the baby was going to make full term. About the end of the second trimester, my husband was celebrating with friends. They were out on the town, and finally, he gives me a call that he needs a ride home. I drive out to get him, like I usually do. I pick him up and we are headed home. We are talking about what we are going to name our baby boy, when we start to have a bit of an argument. It was something so simple. Just who got to choose the first name and who got the second. Honestly as long as we had the boy, he could name it whatever he wanted. I was just trying to be playful. Then, all of a sudden he grabs the wheel, and yanks. We hit an embankment and before I can correct, the car is flipping through the air at close to sixty miles an hour. We slam down and that is all I remember. I remember that I woke up in the hospital and they told me that I had suffered injuries, and that the baby had as well. They said that the baby had suffered a head injury from the crash, and was basically brain dead. Then they told me that they couldn’t remove him because of complications that might kill me in the process. I was going to have to carry my child to full term, and that there was likelihood that there would be some complications with decay at that point,” Now as she spoke, tears could be seen streaking from under her face mask.
“I tried as hard as I could not to blame my husband, but I couldn’t. To be fair, he blamed himself. Before the baby was born, he was gone, and I was alone. We didn’t even get a divorce. He just wasn’t home one day when I came home, and no one knew where he was. He had cleaned out half of the bank account, and sold his car. I called his job and they said he had quit without notice. He was a ghost, and with my own family passed, I didn’t really have anyone to turn to. The doctor’s gave me medicine to help with the complications, but they couldn’t give me anything for the nightmares or the waking hallucinations I would have. There would be days where I would swear I could feel the baby clawing at my insides with already decaying fingers. They had me on such a medley of drugs, they finally, decided it was best they sedate me and keep me in a mental rehabilitation wing of the hospital. I don’t really remember much of that time, and I think I am thankful for it. One nurse later told me that one of the other patients was found hanging in my room. No, one could figure out why he had decided to use my room for his last act. Thankfully, I don’t remember that part.”
Stephen sat there, visibly enraptured. Every detail she had thus given was technically true, but the way she told it became riveting and he hoped that the audience remained as enraptured by her tale of woe as he was. Of course, there was details that she had failed to mention. Like the fact that some of the police force believe that her husband was no longer among the living, and that he was her second victim. With cops, once they think you are guilty of one murder, they assume all the deaths around you were your fault too. Could have been. Her parents had died in a car accident that she was a part of at the age of six.
“Finally, after the baby was born. If you could call it that. They started to wean me off the medicines. I stopped having hallucinations and while the nightmares didn’t stop, they had some medicines that would let me sleep without remembering most of them. I started to try and get my life back in order. Since I didn’t have a job, and now had a record as a loon, I decided to reinvent myself. I simply became someone else. I went to school under a false name, and became a teacher’s aide while going to night school. Finally, a position opened up. I was offered it,” she stopped, trying to compose herself. Her arms flexed as she tried to move them to wipe away the tears, but she was bound tight, and he was sure that the camera had caught that. “Then, one day I am working at a charity event, and I see this man come stumbling in, obviously drunk. He walked over to what I would later find out was his kid, and just started verbally beating the shit out of the poor little guy.”
Stephen didn’t even say anything about the curse word. It was like whip cream on a warm apple pie. It belonged, and he wasn’t going to try and brush it away.
“I got so angry, thinking about how I was without a son of my own, and here was another drunken man squandering the gift he was given. I remember some anger training I had seen online where you look at your hands and count to ten. Well, I tried that, and by the time I got to three, there was a raging fireball in my hand. I screamed and it went away. Luckily, my sudden scream had shocked the whole assembly, so the drunken man stopped his verbal barrage and sat down to stare stupidly at me. From then on, whenever I got angry, the fire returned.”
Stephen nodded. “So, what do you think caused it?”
Sarah frowned. “Honestly, I am not sure. My best guess is that it was that odd mix of medicines that they gave me. I can’t even tell you what all I took or how much for how long. All I know is that after, when I got mad, I could call the flames.”
Stephen nodded again. “But that still doesn’t explain why you were at that mall, killing police officers.” He was still slinging mud, even though now he knew for sure that eight percent of his viewership had re-evaluated their stance on this woman and her punishment.
“I got a letter from my husband,” she said simply, casting the hook.
It was pure bullshit at this point, and Stephen loved it. Bring back the now classic villain.
“He said that if I didn’t pay him ten thousand dollars that he would expose who I was, and that everything I had worked so hard for would fall apart. I decided to see if I could raise the money.”
Matt erupted in his ear. “Stephen!” Matt was yelling, which was nothing like him. “We have been shut down!”
Stephen was furious. Granted, the poison had already been served, but he wasn’t satisfied. He needed to make sure everyone drank the Kool-Aid. “What?!” He raised a hand to Sarah to motion for her to stop, but she couldn’t see his damn hand, and she just kept rattling on with her story.
“They
are doing a press conference for that kid who power punched the gunman at the bank and killed two people,” Matt answered apologetically.
He knew it. He knew that they had done this on purpose. He didn’t know how they had figured out his plan, but he was sure the police had acted to shut him down to screw with him. “Fuck,” he said aloud.
“What?” Sarah asked.
“Shut up,” Stephen said, forever ruining his chance at flexible sex, but he couldn’t give two shits and a giggle. By god, he swore to himself. If they don’t hang that fucking kid, he would make it his mission to do it himself. With his own damn bare hands if he had to and he would enjoy every minute of it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Brian stood with his head down and his eyes closed. He had heard the term “Media Circus” before, but had never truly understood it until now. All around him, the sound was overwhelmed him. Camera crews clamored, waiting to hear the verdict on what his fate would be. The air was alive with the chatter about him, all of it done as if he was not standing feet away from them. Try as he might to block out the words, he could hear them. One woman stated that she hoped they threw the book at him. Another said that he was a hero for saving the rest of the people in the bank. It was ironic that the opinions were varied so widely. They was that way in the police station too. They had taken him to the proverbial downtown, escorting him in handcuffs through the various stages. They had read him his rights, informed him of his options, all the while some police officers glared at him from behind desks, while others frowned with apologies in their eyes. Officer Kims was sympathetic through the whole ordeal, trying to explain what to expect next in this gambit of the criminal justice system. They brought him to a room that he suspected was an interrogation room asking him to go over what happened. He told his side of the story as best he could, and when he was done, that officer was replaced by another, who asked him to repeat what he had told the last officer. It was there that they told him that he had killed the female driver, and how. That the bank robber was maybe a year older than himself, and like the driver, was dead on the scene. He apologized, but no one had listened. Officer Kims had tried his best to explain that it wasn’t the role of the police to take sides. It was their job to get all the details, and then hand those details to the prosecutor. It would be that person who decided if Brian would be charged with homicide or some minor offense.
It was Officer Kims that had come to tell him what they had decided. He wasn’t happy about it, but Officer Kims had spent a great deal of time explaining the decision, and going over various legal doctrines that supported the decision.
Even now as the smell of too much cologne and perfume threatened to choke the life out of Brian, Officer Kims stood behind him, an aged hand resting on Brian’s as a form of support. Brian was thankful for the gesture, but the only thing that gave him comfort right now being the cold steel resting just inside the belt of his pants, hidden there. He had thought to swipe Officers Kims' gun, but he had realized that whoever’s gun he stole, they would pay a price for Brian’s actions today. He couldn’t bring himself to do that to Officer Kims. As he tried to figure out how he planned to acquire one, a solution presented itself. They was walking him down a hallway, hands cuffed in front of him, and he had seen the other officer from the other side of the hallway. There are times you can tell that you are being watched, and that the gaze had nothing but malice. Brian somehow knew what was coming, and had decided in that moment he knew what he planned to do.
The other officer was built, muscled shoulders straining the officer’s suit. The whole air of the man, from his clean shaven short cropped hair to his trimmed black facial hair spoke of malice and anger. He strode with a purpose toward Brian, until he was just about to reach him, then, like one of the worst drama actors he had ever seen, pretended to be distracted by something in his hands. The officer “accidentally” slammed into Brian, his elbow connecting with Brian’s throat. Brian had seen the hit coming, had known that it would be vicious and painful, but for the sake of his own plan, had stepped into it. Choking, Brian had slumped to the ground, hunched over, affording himself the perfect opportunity to conceal the stolen weapon. The offending officer was chastised for his obvious actions, and he shrugged them off, walking away without ever knowing his gun was swiped. Brian considered it poetic. Perhaps the officer would be happy that it was his gun that killed Brian. Maybe not happy with the method, but one seldom gets exactly what they wanted.
The clamor of the wolves clothed as reporters brought Brian from his memory. Apparently the police commissioner, governor, whatever they called the head cheese, had arrived to give the news. The sound of the crowd grew, and for a moment sounded like a bunch of birds being murdered. A murder of crows, Brian thought. Brian raised his head now, letting his long hair part to let him see the mass of people and cameras pointed at them. The head police cheese stood at the podium, waving his hands to indicate that he was about to speak, and that he wanted them to sit.
Like obedient children hungry for the information meal, they sat, perched on the edge of their seats.
The head cheese spoke at some length, talking about the exhaustive effort that they put into this and that, but then he finally, came to the meat of the matter. “We have decided not to press charges against Mr. Franks,” Of course, referring to Brian. “He acted in the defense of others, and the death of Mrs. Swandon has been deemed as an accident.” The poor woman who had her heart pierced by a window crank of all things.
The crowd burst into sound, jumping to their feet, thrusting microphones and tape recorders at Officer Big Cheese. He waved them down again, and began to answer their volley of questions one by one. Most of them stemmed from how he intended to address the outrage of the people who felt that Brian was little more than a vigilante, whose actions had brutally murdered an innocent woman. Every time someone tossed out murder, criminal or some other hateful term, Officer Kims squeezed his shoulder in reassurance.
Finally, after Brian could take no more of the tormenting words, already lost in his own self tormenting cycle, he stepped forward, and said loud enough to Officer Big Cheese that he would like to say something. Of course, the microphones that adorned the podium had instantly caught that and the whole crowd heard it. Officer Big Cheese turned to face him, trying his best to cover the mics. He advised against it, the look in his old gray eyes saying that he knew it would not end well for him. Brian could tell if Officer Big Cheese was one of the people who believe it was Hero Brian or Villain Brian.
“I understand,” Brian said, having not heard a single word the man had uttered to him. “I think this is something I need to say, and I want them to hear.”
Of course, the crowd ate it up, demanding that he be allowed to speak. They crowded in close, looking more like possible rioters than a group of nonbiased reporters. Officer Big Cheese shrugged and stepped back to allow him to step up to the podium.
Brian stood at the podium, looking out at the wave of people crashing before him. They clamored and yelled, shouting hateful questions or supporting questions, depending on how they intended to slant the news. Brian stood there for a moment, not answering them, taking in every last face that would play party to his final words, and his final act. Finally, after he let them shout and yell, demand and bargain, he said into the mic. “Shut up!”
Instantly they did, once again taking on the obedient children role.
“I am not going to answer questions. I am sure that I will answer for what I have done soon enough,” Someone tried to throw in their two cents about him apparently not having to do just that, but someone else shut him down from the crowd. “What I want to say is to the family of Mrs. Swandon. I am truly sorry for what my actions have done. I wish it was me that had died, and not her. If I could switch places with her, I would in a heartbeat. And to my own family, I want to say I am sorry. I know that you will suffer by association, and I wish that wasn’t the case. My family has always been loving and supportive. Please l
eave them alone. I am sorry.” With that, he drew the gun from his waistband as quickly as he could; slamming back the slide to make sure a bullet was chambered. Amazing the things a movie will teach you. He jammed the gun up against the bottom of his throat, the barrel pointed up into his skull. In that final moment, he heard the words again. “Boom headshot,” repeated over in his head. Sad, the irony of it all.
The reporters didn’t move, watching with rapt anticipation. Even those that was on his side did not move, favoring instead the better story they were about to be able to report. The only people who did move were the police officers that stood around him, Officer Kims with his outrageous mustache looming into his peripheral vision, screaming for him not to do it.
Brian knew that it was now or never. Back up your words or be a killer and a coward. He closed his eyes, a single tear escaping from each eye, and he pulled the trigger.
His head flew back, his hair whipping out around his face. It hurt far worse than he had expected, and he fought back the tears that threatened to well up in his eyes. He would be damned if he died on national television crying like a kid with a cut knee. Yet with all the pain, and the throbbing that now networked like spiderwebs across his face and jaw, his knees remained locked and he did not fall. His vision was blurry, but nothing in his body told him to fall. He started to wonder if this was what the afterlife was. Could he now be standing over his body, invisible to the rest of the world, while his corpse bled out on stage below him? Even with blurry eyes, he looked down, and found that his body was still his own. He was not some ghost version of himself. Down at his feet something caught his eye. It was metallic and gleamed in the light. His eyes gained focus and he could see that it was a bullet, mangled by impact. He stared at it a bit longer and noticed that there was no blood on it. Nor was their gore surround him. He had seen enough real life crime drama and shoot-em-up shows to know that if his had killed himself like this, there would be bits laying around him. Yet no blood, just that lone bullet, flat on top, with the ass end of it peeking out.
