Selena

by Greg Barth

  As I drove the last half mile I thought about how things could go. I could wind up dead, back in the hospital, arrested, or I could be successful and get out of town. Either way, I felt at peace.

  I drove past the diner. The lights were on inside. Kurt Dello’s car was in the lot. A young guy in a white t-shirt and jeans stood at the corner of the parking lot smoking a cigarette, a yellow mop bucket next to him. It was turned on its side and had been emptied into a storm drain by the street. The front door of the diner had been propped open, probably to make it easier to wheel the mop bucket out. It also made it easier for me to get inside the diner.

  I parallel parked along the street half a block up from the diner. I popped the trunk and got out of the car. I grabbed both shotguns, one in each hand held by the curved handles. My fingers rested gently on the triggers, elbows crooked with the stocks against my shoulders, barrels pointed downward at an angle to the ground.

  The night air was invigorating. A breeze tingled the skin of my bare arms, legs, and tummy. I made no sound as I approached the diner parking lot. The coke surged through my system—every sense heightened, every muscle on edge and ready to spring to action.

  I approached the diner from the opposite corner of the guy smoking by the mop bucket. He was bringing his cigarette to his lips and paused as he saw me move into the parking lot. We made eye contact. I wanted to tell him to go away, but I said nothing. In an instant I was across the lot, legs still moving fast. My heart pounded. I picked up speed as I went up the walkway on the edge of the building and through the door of the diner.

  A man that I recognized as one of Dello’s thugs sat at a table reading a newspaper.

  “What the…” he said and looked up.

  I raised the shotgun in my right hand and shot him through the newspaper. He took the buckshot in the upper chest and neck. The sound was deafening in the small dining room. He gurgled for a few seconds, slumped down in his chair. The newspaper fell forward. I stepped to the side to avoid the spray of blood jetting from his neck.

  Another man came out of the men’s room, in a blue polo shirt and jeans, a pistol in his hand. He had the pistol in front of his face so he could sight down the barrel. I stepped to the side to get an angle at him.

  He saw me and stepped back. His foot slipped on the freshly mopped floor and he went down on his ass a split second before I fired. All nine double-aught pellets hit the wall and men’s room door.

  I dropped the empty shotgun and grabbed the other with both hands.

  I heard a sound behind me and turned just in time to see the guy from the parking lot moving up behind me with a lead pipe in his hand. He swung it, caught me on the cheek and I went down. I could already feel the goose egg rising under my eye as I hit the floor. I remained conscious, but my thoughts were scattered with the shock of the blow. I tried to think if he had caught me on the cheek that still had bone underneath or if this was the plastic one.

  Bone, I thought to myself as handgun shots erupted. I looked up and saw that the man in the white t-shirt had been shot multiple times in the chest. His white shirt blossomed with red spots that grew in my coked-up vision.

  I rolled over and looked back at the man who had slipped coming out of the men’s room. He was still on his ass and was firing his pistol upward but had hit the wrong target. I brought my weapon up, sighted down the barrel, and spread his brain matter across the wall in a Post-Modern smear.

  I got to my feet and looked down at the mop guy. The fucker who had popped me in the face with the lead pipe was now pale and trembling.

  “You’re dying,” I said. My voice sounded strange through my ringing ears. I left him.

  “Please,” I heard him say behind me.

  I turned back to him. “Fuck you.”

  I looked to the entrance to the back office. Dello had to be in there.

  I knew I had only one shot left. I didn’t take time to reload. I moved fast, but kept my eyes on the open office door, approaching it from the side.

  Adrenaline surged.

  I came around the corner and saw Kurt Dello standing in front of a tall cabinet safe filled with guns. The office was larger than I’d expected. A gunmetal gray desk in the back. A long table in the front of the room. Walls lined with bookshelves containing rows of binders. Two smaller desks along the side wall. Each held a laptop with a pornographic screensaver running.

  Dello’s dark hair was slicked back, his widow’s peak prominent in front. His thick, black eyebrows punctuated the high, balding forehead. He wore jeans and a tight black t-shirt. His thick arm muscles stretched the sleeves tight.

  He was chambering a round in a small, black submachine gun. He looked up, and his eyes widened.

  I felt an unexpected burst of emotion at the sight of him. This was the man who hurt me.

  I jumped back out of the doorway and landed on my side, clutching the shotgun with both hands, just as he released a burst from the gun. He fired on full-auto, spraying through the doorway where I’d been standing just a moment before. I lay flat on the floor and pushed myself backwards with my feet, sliding on my back as the bullets stitched a line along the wall above me.

  I heard him reloading. I lay still on the floor and pointed the shotgun in front of me at the open doorway. I could only hope that he would show himself rather than staying put and firing more rounds through the wall.

  His footsteps sounded as he slowly approached the door.

  “You okay in there?” he said.

  I didn’t respond.

  “I think I got you. Did I get you?”

  He paused at the doorway. I could see the muzzle of the gun. I aimed at the barrel of the submachine gun, then moved back to the left a bit and squeezed the trigger, firing through the wall. The wall exploded inward in a shower of drywall.

  “Fuck!” he said. His gun clattered to the floor.

  I moved fast, sitting up and getting to my feet. I made the doorway in a split second. The buckshot had hit him in the hand and knocked the gun from his grip. He stood there cradling his mangled hand with the other, blood dripping and collecting in a pool on the floor.

  My heart pounded even harder. The last bit of coke had been too much.

  I felt as though I was going to cry.

  I broke open the shotgun, ejected the spent shells, reloaded from the pouch at my waist.

  He looked up, “No, no, no, no!”

  I looked down the barrel of the shotgun at him. I had the bead centered dead between his eyes. My face twisted with emotion. My breath came fast. My eyes squinted with fury. My lips curled away from my teeth in a wolfish snarl. “Goddamn you,” I said. My voice sounded coarse and husky.

  “Who are you?” he said. “I have money.” He gestured to the safe. “There’s gotta be…fifty thousand in there. At least.”

  Tears streamed down my face. Thin, clear snot spread across my upper lip. I had never felt emotion this strong before. I felt a breakdown of some sort coming on. “You don’t even fucking remember me,” I said. I fired one barrel over his head.

  The adrenaline. The emotion. The coke. The fury.

  The gunshot felt like my first orgasm.

  “I can fix this,” he said.

  I lowered the shotgun. I fired the remaining load of buckshot into his pelvis right along his waistline, totally fucking up his plumbing. He fell backward and landed on his ass. He tried to get away from me. He pushed himself across the floor with his hands, sliding on his ass. He left a trail of blood and piss in front of him, his legs useless. He got as far as the wall and leaned against it.

  My breath came in snot-filled bursts through my nostrils. My hands shook.

  “Oh god,” he said. “You shouldn’t have fucking done that.”

  I broke open the shotgun and reloaded both barrels with fresh buckshot shells. My fingers trembled as I fed the shells into the breech of the shotgun.

  He saw my swastika tattoo on my forearm for the first time.

  “You?” he said.
<
br />   “Yes.” My voice sounded on the brink of madness.

  “Thieving little whore. We should have fucking killed you.”

  I closed the breech of the shotgun, fresh loads in place.

  “You’re just a stupid cunt,” he said. “I couldn’t even get my cock hard for you. I had to close my eyes and think of somebody less skanky just to fucking rape you.”

  My tears came with more force. This is it. This is the breakdown that I have been trying to have for twenty goddamn years. I sniffled. I wiped snot from my nose with my bare forearm. I felt a hatred surging inside of me stronger than any emotion I had felt before. It washed through me like a torrent. I felt the pressure of it build inside my head until I was afraid the rage would pour out of my eyes like an erupting volcano. I glared at him, my face reddening with fury. Some of the hatred was centered at Kurt Dello, sure. Much of it was hatred that I had pent up for a lifetime, toward others who had wronged me in my childhood.

  Most of it, I knew, was hatred for myself.

  What Dello said rang true. I was a stupid cunt. I had never been loved. I would never be loved. I was nothing but trash. A nasty whore to be used like tissue then thrown in the gutter.

  I was nothing.

  That’s why what he said hurt.

  Because it was how I felt about myself already.

  Because it was true.

  But that didn’t mean I had deserved what had been done to me.

  That didn’t mean he would leave this room in one piece.

  “You did this to me,” I said. I was sobbing.

  “I didn’t,” he said. He shook his head. He looked frantic. “I didn’t do this. Don’t be a dumb bitch and make this worse. We can fix this. You don’t have to kill me. Listen. Listen. Listen to me.” He tried to back away, but the wall wouldn’t relent. His voice turned to a whine. “You kill me, Faranacci will skin you alive. You hear me? Crazy Joey will go to the ends of the earth to find you. He will.”

  “You did this to me.”

  “What? Did what?”

  The only peace I ever felt was found at the bottom of a Kentucky bourbon bottle. But now even that had been taken from me. Now, I could only find satisfaction in murdering a man.

  “Please,” he said. “Just calm down and listen to me. I won’t hurt you. Faranacci won’t hurt you.”

  I stepped forward. “You,” I said, voice trembling with emotion, “DID THIS TO ME!”

  I pushed the twin muzzles of the shotgun against his mouth. His eyes widened. There was a strong smell of human shit in the air. I backed the gun barrels away from his lips only to bring them back again hard against his mouth, smashing his lips against his front teeth. I repeated this again and again, again and again, harder and harder until his lips were hanging shreds and his teeth nothing but bloody shards. The lower part of his face had been reduced to a dark red smear of gore.

  He screamed, a weak mewling sound. I pushed the shotgun barrel into his mouth. I stood over him and used the shotgun to leverage his head back. His mouth gaped. He mewled at me, his voice muffled from the gun metal. I applied my weight to push the steel down further into his mouth. Into his goddamn throat.

  The twin barrels of the shotgun were 12 bore and wide, the side-by-side layout making them more of a rectangle than a circle. His throat resisted. I got a better angle, practically standing straight over him, his head tilted back, pressed against the wall. I shoved down with all my might, trying to bury the shotgun down his throat. I looked down into his eyes. I put the butt of the shotgun to my shoulder and really put my weight into it.

  “You suck it!” I said. I took a deep lungful of air, and I screamed at him. I let the scream draw out long and loud and shrill until I was completely out of breath and the sound died off to an insane screech. My throat was rough and raw. My flushed face burned. Saliva drooled down at him from my raging, trembling lips, striking him on his cheek. Clear snot dripped from my nostrils and fell in strings onto his forehead. My tears fell into his eyes.

  I pushed with all my might against the butt of the shotgun.

  With the next thrust, I accidentally hit both triggers. Everything exploded.

  With his throat obstructing the muzzle, the hot gas from the gun had nowhere to go. Dello’s throat exploded outward, his head flew apart, his remaining teeth flew against the walls, and the gun barrels blew outward, sending hot shrapnel flying off to both sides. The breech of the gun came apart in my hands. Buckshot exploded outward from Dello’s neck and struck me in the shins. Felt like someone had hit me across the legs with a two by four.

  My ears rang. My eardrums throbbed with my rapid pulse.

  The walls, the floor, and my legs were all splattered with gore.

  I stood there in shocked silence

  I wiped snot from my lips with the back of my hand and stepped back. I was covered in Dello’s blood.

  The scene of horror in front of me came into crisp focus.

  With his final heartbeat, that which had previously been Kurt Dello was transformed to a pulsing, headless, crimson geyser.

  I stood there crying for what felt like several minutes.

  I knew I had to get out of there fast. A voice inside my head told me to grab the sack of cash from the safe. Fifty-thousand dollars was no life-changing amount, but it would be more than enough to get me down the road.

  But what is it they say? You have to live life to love life? I’d never really lived it, so I didn’t necessarily love it.

  I didn’t flee.

  Instead I sat down on the floor. I drew my knees up and hugged them to my chest. I cried. My body shook with my sobs. I wiped the snot from my nose with the back of my hand, and listened for the distant sound of sirens.

  My body convulsed with the sobs. My hearing returned, and I wished that it would go away again forever, because the sound I heard was that of a mad woman crying, calling herself a stupid whore over and over again.

  Somewhere along the way I had lost control of my bladder.

  From nowhere, like a burst of color and sunlight, a vision of my mother flashed before me. An old memory. I was maybe seven years old. She was drinking but not at the end-stage of alcoholism yet. It was Christmastime and she was having eggnog. She liked to make it with brandy, three fingers, I remembered. We were in the kitchen of the trailer, cutting out sugar cookies with Christmas-tree and gingerbread-man-shaped cookie cutters. My nostrils filled with the scent of the gingerbread.

  Dad was at work. It was just the two of us, and I had my baby doll in her plastic high chair at the table with us. Mildred, the doll’s name had been. The smell of fresh-baked cookies permeated the warm kitchen air. We were both wearing aprons and had our cookie-making ingredients scattered about the kitchen table. A happy mess of flour, sugar, eggs, and mixing bowls.

  She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She shared a sip of eggnog with me, and I liked the taste of it and especially how the warmth of the brandy spread through my stomach. She poked the tip of my nose with a flour-covered fingertip and we both laughed.

  I remembered the exact sound of my mother’s laugh in that instant.

  The one moment in my life that I’d been happy. Completely, innocently happy.

  “No,” I said. I pushed myself up from the bloody floor of Dello’s diner.

  My gore-spattered legs trembled as I got them under me.

  “No!” I walked over to the safe where the guns and money were stored.

  Just a stupid whore, a voice inside my head said.

  No.

  PART TWO: HOSTILITY

  “There are only individual egos, crazy for Love.”

  - Niccolo Machiavelli

  ONE

  I DROVE THROUGH THE NIGHT. The fresh blood of the men I’d killed was drying on my skin and clothes. I wore only a black, cotton sports bra, a pair of cut-off denim shorts, and a pair of Nikes.

  My shins throbbed from the impact taken from the final blast of buckshot. The pellets were spent by the time they hit me, so the skin wasn
’t broken, but my lower legs were bruised and swollen.

  I wanted a drink in the worst way. I resisted the urge.

  After four hours on the road, I took an exit that looked lightly populated. The signs leading up to the exit ramp advertised nothing more than a couple of gas stations in one direction and a McDonalds in the other. The exit was dark, offering little in the way of business to interstate travelers that time of night. I pulled up to the older looking of the two gas stations, hoping there would be no surveillance cameras.

  The parking lot was empty.

  I parked and popped the trunk of my car. I stepped out and got a hooded sweatshirt from the duffel bag in my trunk. I slipped it on over my sports bra and pulled the hood over my head. I hoped this would cover most of the blood.

  The store was locked. A sign on the door pointed to a sliding window by the cash register where they conducted overnight business. I walked up to the window and tapped on the glass. Inside, a skinny, young clerk with dark hair looked up from a textbook that he was reading on the checkout counter. He came over and slid the window open.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Can I get the restroom key?” I said.

  “You getting gas or anything?”

  “Yeah, after I go.” I shuffled my feet and bounced a bit like I had to pee in a bad way.

  He handed me the key.

  I went around the corner to the ladies room and unlocked the door.

  Inside the small bathroom, I checked myself in the mirror. My face was a mess. I only had a few flecks of dried blood, but my eyes were puffy and red from crying. I had a dark lump under one eye where I had been struck by the guy in the diner with a lead pipe. This would turn into a full-blown black eye over the next few hours.