by Sean Platt
His eyes flicked open, blue eyes, bloodshot and tired.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Roman, and I’ve been waiting for you.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 8 — Boricio Wolfe
Boricio woke up, shocked to find himself in a peculiar situation — tied to his bed, and not in a good way.
His lids weren’t gummed, and he wore no blindfold, but he kept them closed while sussing his surroundings, as best he could with his lids still drawn: metal cuffs biting into his wrists, thick clothesline or something pulling his ankles and wrapping them tight, and a twitching nose said prey in his room, waiting for a purge. Only this prey made the mistake of thinking itself a hunter.
Must’ve come in through the open window, Boricio figured. Some people would do anything for weed. Boricio knew it wasn’t related to the people who’d tried to kill him and Miss Mary. Otherwise, he’d already be six feet under. No, this was someone with a fucking death wish, eager to take the Boricio Express to the Pearly Gates.
Somebody’s going to die, and I’m going to wear that somebody’s face as a mask, while I shit on their body.
Whoever had Boricio was watching him, his prickling ears said so, inches from the short hairs dancing at his neck.
Boricio finished figuring as much shit as he could with his eyes closed, then opened them to the man sitting a few feet away in the room’s only chair. It was an old dude, overweight, who looked like, and smelled like, a cop.
He met the man’s eyes, then curled his lip and said, “You wanna let me go now so we can play chase? I’ll be it first, you’ll get a one hour head start. Of course, when I catch you I’ll carry your bones in a backpack, maybe wear your fingers around my neck.”
The man said nothing, keeping Boricio wondering on his identity as he sat in the chair, running his hands along five inches of blade from his nine-inch, high-carbon stainless steel knife. The man had taste.
He stared down at Boricio, still silent, his only broadcast a gesture, ever so slight: a tilt of his head toward a folder at his feet; manila, closed, contents a mystery. Of course the folder had something to do with why the man was in Boricio’s room, maybe everything, but Boricio sure as hell wasn’t going to ask about it, or even open his mouth — not after the pile of cock hairs had refused his generous offer of being it first.
“Ah, you’re awake,” the man finally said, still staring at Boricio, face so void of emotion that Boricio had to wonder if he practiced at keeping it blank. Boricio nearly asked him, but kept his trap tight since he knew the fuckface wanted him to talk. Another several minutes of silence, then, “You’ve got nothing to say?”
Boricio smiled: The guy was already losing and too stupid to know it.
“Well,” Boricio was ballsy enough to laugh, “It would be nice to make your acquaintance since I never like to tear the life from a man’s throat, or intestines from his belly, without knowing his name first. No need to be proper, a nickname will do. What do they call you at the rest stops, Ass Vandal? Hershey Murial? Mr. Butterworth on account of your colita being so rich and creamy?”
The man’s already sour face turned to vinegar. “My name is Michael Blackmore. Four years ago, you raped and murdered my daughter. I’ve come to claim justice in her name.”
“Ha,” Boricio laughed, repeated the man’s words, but three octaves higher, then went back to his swaggered baritone and said, “I probably came for justice in her mouth.”
The man’s nose twitched, and the way it did, Boricio realized this particular purging and subsequent escape would be a fuck ton more work than the usual, and more than he had time for, considering Rose, Mary, and Paola were due back from their meeting with the Flux Capacitor at any goddamned minute.
He’d have to hurry shit, not just because he’d want to eliminate the threat to himself, and bury the evidence afterward — tic-tac-toe, three in a row — but because Boricio didn’t know what the man might do when three women came into his room and interrupted his Count of Monte Cristo.
“Look man, I’m just fucking with you,” Boricio said. “I’m sure what we have here is a case of mistaken identity. I was busy the night your daughter was raped and murdered, it couldn’t have been me. Have you checked with O.J.?”
The man looked like he wanted to spit on Boricio. Instead, he reached down, grabbed the folder from the floor, opened it, then scooted closer to Boricio. He pulled photos from the folder, one by one. The first few made Boricio feel like he was watching some Hallmark After-School Saturday Morning Special: Before Your Bitches Start Bleeding, with one photo after another of some rug rat with pigtails, then braces, then grass on her patch, which Boricio couldn’t see, but knew by the tits in her sweater. The man looked like he was teetering near losing it, so Boricio didn’t push, though he could think of a dozen things that might make the fucker fall right over. Problem was, the man had a nine-inch knife, and Boricio wasn’t sure he wouldn’t take the rapist and murderer with him when he went.
They reached the end of the Hallmark part of the presentation. The man pulled out the photo of a crime scene and his daughter’s mutilated corpse.
The first picture had the girl’s body sprawled across a filthy motel mattress, with some of Boricio’s funnier sketches scrawled on her skin in blood: a cat; a walrus; the Applebee’s logo with a line through it. The second picture wasn’t of the girl, so much as her head, all by its lonesome and resting on the dresser, hair pulled into pigtails — a lot like in one of the first few pictures the man had showed like shit from his wallet. Boricio wondered if Daddy saw the resemblance.
Of course, he remembered the girl, Boricio wasn’t kidding about knowing names. That somehow improved the purging, though back when he split Amber’s head from her body, it wasn’t purging so much as an excellent way to spice up a night. But Boricio remembered everything about that particular evening: He remembered meeting Amber at the Lucky Puck; remembered her looking right into his eyes and knowing she’d be eager for all the things Boricio wanted to do, except for the last one, of course; he remembered driving to the motel, in separate cars; he remembered every minute of the two hours spent filling each of her three holes — no persuasion needed; and he remembered decorating the room in honor of Heath Ledger, whose excellent performance deserved to be commemorated after the sad man lost his sad, little life one year prior.
“I remember Amber.”
Boricio saying his daughter’s name seemed to shake the man from his fugue. “You knew her name?”
“Of course, I knew her name,” Boricio said, as if it were no different from knowing how much the Astros lost by the night before. “I never get business finished without knowing a name. My way makes it better for everyone.”
The man was clearly shocked, staring at Boricio, clearly clueless as to what he should say. Boricio figured the man had never met anyone so honest, and was probably expecting the old back and forth: I didn’t do it, it wasn’t me; please, I’ll do whatever you say, just don’t hurt me; I didn’t mean to, now I’ve seen the error of my ways.
But that wasn’t Boricio.
The man gathered his composure, then leaned down from the chair, lifted Boricio’s shirt, then dug the knife’s tip into his skin, starting at the shoulder and dragging it all the way down, nearly to his wrist.
Blood soaked the carpet as Boricio screamed, inside. Outside, he stayed silent, chewing his lip and vowing on mute that he would end the man in the most painful way his minutes allowed; splitting all 20 of his digits wide, peeling them back to shred tendon from bone, blooming pain and making sure the fucker felt raw hairs of torment with every flay.
“I’ve had a lot of time since you took Amber from me,” he said. “I’ve spent most of it searching for you, and when I wasn’t looking, I was dreaming of the day I’d finally find you. And I’m a man who likes research. Once upon a time I was a cop, now I’m a writer. I research what I don’t know. I get online and sift through
mediocrity until I find the meaty stuff. If I’m writing about a city, I make sure I know everything about that burg, from who has the best chili-dogs to the layout of its award winning parks, before typing the first word on that first paragraph. If I’m writing about a mechanic, I make sure I know all there is to know about the Dodge Charger sitting on blocks in his driveway. If, however, I’m not writing, but say, looking to find someone deserving of torture, I make sure I know all there is to know about various torments and agonies, enough to elongate the pain and suffering, misery and anguish, so I can keep a fucker like you in purgatory, just long enough to get you begging for hell.”
“That’s so purty, I think I might weep,” Boricio said, daring to push him.
Time is not on ole Boricio’s side.
“You won’t be brave once I start showing you what I can do,” the man said, ignoring Boricio. “You’ll be screaming.”
“Well, Señor Sorrow, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through. I’m sure you’re a smart enough Officer Friendly to keep yourself from getting caught, despite the blood on the rug, but I start screaming and you’re trapped. You’ll hit traffic on PCH, soon as you leave the lot.”
“You won’t be screaming for more than a second.”
Boricio smiled, liking Señor Sorrow in spite of himself. “What’s with all the bullshit? Why not just kill me? You want me dead, why not just slice me up and get it over with, then run off into the night and cut your own wrists so you can join your daughter and the two of you can ever-after together?”
Señor Sorrow started to cry.
“Because,” he said, tears spilling from each eye and slopping down both sides of his face. “I want to know why. I have to know why you did what you did to Amber; I have to know why you took my daughter away!”
Boricio fell uncharacteristically quiet, doing what he rarely did — thinking about what he would say before it spewed from his mouth. He’d rather die than plead, but Boricio would rather live than die, and truth was, he felt for the guy, Señor Sorrow or not. Boricio could see the man’s grief in a way he never could’ve before, on the old world, or this one before his visit to that one; he could see things in a way he never had prior to Luca’s fixing. Boricio wanted to slip out of the danger, but he also wanted to explain things to the man, and maybe, he realized, to himself.
When Boricio finally spoke, he met the grieving father’s eyes and held them, staring into his anguish, owning it in a way that made his heart beat faster, his throat go drier, and covered his palms in a thin slick of sweat.
“Evil isn’t action, man. It’s a point of view. It’s perspective. God kills, so do His hunters. We’re random, indiscriminate. We take rich and poor, pretty or not. I was a different man when I met your daughter, and right this second I’m sorry about that, truly. I’m still a hunter to the bone, but now I’m more selective. I see evil and purge it, using my need to scrub the world one shit-stained tile at a time. But I didn’t do that with your daughter, because she wasn’t bad, and I didn’t know this version of me. I can’t give you a reason why I did what I did, but I won’t insult you by saying I didn’t do it, and I won’t beg you to spare me. Use that knife how you want to, the way your hand’s itching to start carving, then soon enough you’ll be no different than me. See, you’re already a hunter, that’s why you’re here, that’s how you found me, but you’re not a predator until I’m dead. So decide, Señor Sorrow, how much hell you want to live with for the rest of your life.”
Boricio braced himself, having no idea whether the man would go through with what he could do without blinking.
His face was wet, his hair sweaty, hands shaking with doubt. Then, Señor Sorrow found his resolve. Determined, he kneeled to Boricio, grabbed him by a thick clump of hair, yanking his head back with his left hand, and drawing the blade with his right.
“Any last words?”
Boricio had plenty, but before he could get a single one out, the door clicked with a key card, then opened to Rose.
She gasped, and froze.
Señor Sorrow dropped Boricio’s head and leapt for his gun. Before Rose could move he had the barrel aimed at her heart.
“Get in here,” he said.
Rose stepped inside and closed the door behind her, pale as she entered, as if already scared or bothered or upset by something that had nothing to do with the Tarantino going down in the room. Now she had piled terrified atop her pallor, body shaking and eyes bloodshot, skin so pale Boricio thought she seemed nearly see-through.
He wanted to comfort her, reach out and touch her, he wanted to tell Rose that everything would be fine if she could just trust him. But he didn’t say a word, not wanting Señor Sorrow to know he could wound Boricio without touching him.
He looked from Boricio to Rose and back, several times, calculating, knowing what Boricio didn’t say.
Still aiming his barrel at Rose, he sat and growled, “An eye for an eye. Now it looks like I have four.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
YESTERDAY’S GONE
::EPISODE 24::
(SIXTH EPISODE OF SEASON FOUR)
“By Any Other Name”
* * * *
CHAPTER 1 — Luca Harding
“What do you mean you’ve been waiting for me?” Luca asked, stepping back from the weird naked man sitting cross-legged in front of him.
Roman didn’t stand or try to stop Luca from leaving. “I was a friend of Will’s. He told me in my dreams that you’d be coming.”
“Will?” Luca tasted the name and its familiar confusion. “Who is Will? I dreamed about him, but don’t know who he is.”
The man’s head turned sideways, as if struggling for recall. “You don’t remember Will?”
Luca shook his head, “Only from my dreams. Who is he?”
“He’s an old friend of mine. Gone now. But he came back long enough to show himself in my dreams; he wanted to let me know you were coming, that you were pure, and that I could trust you. So … can I, Luca? Can I trust you?”
Luca was more confused than ever, not understanding what Roman meant about “pure.” But as the question of trust settled, Luca started to vigorously nod. He had always prided himself on his ability to stick to his word. If Luca said something, he meant it, and always did as he said.
“Yes, Sir, you can trust me.” A slight pause, then, “But trust me for what?”
“To be a custodian, Luca.”
“What’s that? Is that like Mr. Randall at school?”
Roman laughed, shaking his head, “Not that kind of custodian. No, Luca, this is much, much different. You’ve been chosen as a guardian, a protector. This is a huge responsibility, and if I’m being honest, you look … young.”
“I’m 10!” Luca said, wanting responsibility, understood or not.
“Will said you’ve been touched by The Light.”
“The Light?” Luca asked.
“Yes, some of us have been touched by The Light. Will was. I was. A few of our friends from back in the day were. We’ve all been chosen. For a long time I didn’t know why or what for. I thought I was cursed. But now … now I see the blessing.”
“I’m confused, Sir, but OK.”
Luca felt certain that the crazy-looking man was in fact crazy. He remembered once when he was 6, walking with his family on the boardwalk after getting ice cream at Moosy’s. A weird, dirty-looking guy approached them and started saying wacky things about how the government was using mind control rays and adding stuff to our water. For a moment, Luca thought the man might hurt them, but his dad handled the situation, talking to the guy in the same voice he used when trying to talk Luca down from a tantrum, and using some of the same words, until they got away without having to fight. He dreamed of the crazy guy for months after it happened. Roman reminded Luca a lot of that man. Though he wasn’t making any threats, Luca thought the old guy might turn violent at any moment. He decided to follow his father’s example by using the “no-more-tantrum” voice and saying whate
ver was needed to find his way home.
Roman looked Luca up and down, “Are you pure?”
Luca tried to keep his fear from showing. As long as the guy stayed seated on the ground, Luca figured he was OK. If he stood, Luca might have to run.
“Yes,” Luca said, though he still didn’t know what the man meant by pure. “Can you tell me how to get back home?”
“The Light will return you,” Roman said.
“Good,” Luca said, hoping the man was right about that much, if nothing else.
Roman pointed at a spot in front of Luca where the sand piled slightly higher.
“They’re in there,” Roman said. “Dig them up.”
Luca dropped to his knees and started scooping sand from his body, not sure what was buried. He had so many questions:
Is this a dream?
How did we get here?
Why are you covered in poop?
But Luca dared not a word. He wanted to get whatever the man had to give him, then go home. Luca didn’t even care if the police were waiting. Anything was better than getting baked in the desert.
Luca’s hand found something hard in the sand, about a foot down. He swept grains aside until he could pry the object free. He pulled it from the ground and saw it was a black, metal box of some sort, about the size of the final Harry Potter book. It felt cold and weird on Luca’s fingers, more so once he realized it was vibrating.
“Weird,” he said, staring at the box. Luca looked closer, wondering if it was, in fact, a box, or some sort of meaningless metal rectangle, empty inside. It had weight, maybe like a bag of apples, but Luca couldn’t feel anything shifting inside. The box looked both new and somehow ancient, with no hinges, buttons, or clasps. Naked: black metal, smoother than anything he’d ever touched.
Pure.
“What is it?” Luca asked.
“That is The Light. Which you must protect.”
