by Andrew Post
The Daubers were twenty steps away, too invested in staring at each other to notice anything else.
Heads turned as she approached her marks; she gave each a look, letting it read in her face that it’d be in the best interest of those uninvolved to not interfere.
The Daubers, ten steps away.
Whether any of the old folks caught any idea something horrible was about to happen, picking up on the imminent awfulness through some latent, atrophied sixth sense, none stood up, none demanded to know what she was about to do. Maybe some instinct had been triggered, something deep and forgotten in the DNA that suggested they, being so old, would make for the easiest prey. But she was not here for them.
The Daubers, five steps away.
And then, the wave of anxiety she’d caused and brought with her, cutting a swath across the restaurant, washed over the Daubers too. Brenda could see it hitting them. And together, husband and wife looked at the woman standing at their table holding a glass of what by all outward appearances seemed to just be water.
Buckley Dauber, being the true target here, appeared to be connecting the dots. He knew what he’d done. Perhaps he’d even managed to not think about who he’d wronged for the past few days while playing the beach bum newlywed. But he was thinking about it now, his face reeling through several expressions in a second as he stared wide-eyed up at Brenda, settling on terror.
With her right hand, Brenda reached behind herself and drew the handgun, leveled it at Mrs. Dauber’s face and pulled the trigger. She’d had no time to say anything but the room provided, in her silence, a chorus of screams. The patrons forgot their age and ran, some toppling over, old men abandoning fallen wives, rushing for the exit.
The fish in the tank watched, indifferent.
Mr. Dauber reached for his dead wife, the contents of her head flooding across the white tablecloth and dribbling into his lap. He wore an oddly serene expression, like maybe some part of him, as much as he didn’t want to think so, knew this was going to happen. Maybe he’d been having nightmares about it and he was now trying to tell himself that’s all this was, another guilt-fattened nightmare, that he’d wake up in a cold sweat with her next to him in bed, head perfect and intact.
Brenda watched him stand, overturn his chair, and with his wife all over his hands, he felt over the parts of her scattered across the table. Detonated yellow fragments of skull. Torn clumps of brain. A hoop earring floating on a sea of red like a gilded life preserver. A fragment of flesh sinking to the bottom of her stemmed glass, the champagne frothing angrily at the arrival of the foreign object. A single red tooth on a plate, nestled close to the unfinished salmon steak as if seeking warmth.
Buckley Dauber lifted some of the loose mess in his hands, portions hanging together like beads on fine golden strings of his wife’s hair, looking like he was thinking about how, if he only worked fast enough, he might put her back together.
He turned to face Brenda with his wife running through his fingers. And when Brenda felt he’d gotten a good enough look and understood what was happening, she thrust the glass forward, sending the acid jumping at Buckley’s face.
Naturally, he screamed.
Brenda set the glass on a nearby table but tucked the napkin into her purse. She’d burn it in the sink back at the motel.
She knelt in front of Buckley Dauber to be at eye level with him as he slumped on the floor, clutching his face, a twisting noxious steam lifting off his head. Pink drips fell to the carpet before him, sizzling and bubbling in the carpet. The screams shifted more to a strangled gurgle, then a wet and damaged hiss as the acid forced his mouth to abandon its previous shape. He collapsed, perhaps dead, or maybe the assuredly unspeakable pain made his brain switch off. The work order did not specify what state he was to be left in, so Brenda absorbed the sight of his face sliding off his skull – his left eye shriveling in its socket, his hair curling to brittle sprigs – for the count of ten before returning the gun to her purse, and turned to leave.
On her way out, she passed no one dressed like Donald Duck. The parking lot was empty save for her vehicle and the Daubers’ garish Ferrari.
Beyond the parking lot, Orlando traffic moved as normal, all drivers oblivious to what had just happened. They might hear about it on the news tomorrow and say to whoever they’d come here on vacation with, “Weren’t we right by there last night?” There was no saying when law enforcement might arrive – because in situations like these, everyone assumes someone else called 911 – but Brenda wasted no time throwing her purse into the rental car and getting back onto Universal Boulevard.
She took a left, then a right, avoiding the main thoroughfares – because that’s what law enforcement would take – and found herself moving along a long street with no streetlights that appeared to be an access road for amusement park maintenance staff. Every few yards there was another tall gate with barbed wire. Past the chain-link fences stood blown-out signage and forsaken bumper cars and arcade cabinets with concave, punched-in screens. She spotted a defunct Ms. Pac-Man cabinet. Shards of her first date with Steve briefly punctured the surface. They’d gone to Perkins and played Ms. Pac-Man there, after their sundaes. She’d already killed nine people by that point in her life, this being back when she was still keeping count.
Up ahead, just outside the reach of her headlights, she noticed a tumbling mass of bright white and sky-blue. Brenda did not need to press the accelerator to catch up to them. Getting alongside the Dock 17 employee in their sailor’s uniform, she saw it was the hostess, just as the girl noticed the approaching vehicle.
“You have to help me. Please, there’s been a shooting.” Valerie apparently hadn’t stuck around to see what else had happened.
Brenda stopped. The girl crashed herself against the driver-side door and beat on the tinted glass. She held her fists with the thumbs curled in, Brenda noticed.
“What are you doing?” Valerie tried the driver-side door, found it locked, same with the rear door. “Why are you just sitting in there? Help me.”
One thin layer of glass between them, Brenda allowed her to wallow in one more moment of panic and helplessness before lowering the window. She watched the girl see her. Confusion briefly, then recognition, then abject horror. The girl turned, stumbled, caught herself, ran. Silly to the end, her arms and legs all over the place. It had to be the most inefficient run Brenda had ever seen.
Before Valerie could gain too much of a distance, Brenda leaned out, set her forearm on the side mirror to use it as a rest, and closed one eye, leading her target. The girl was running away in a straight line. Brenda scarcely needed to aim.
The gun barked. The girl pitched forward as if violently shoved and hit the blacktop. She lay as she fell and did not rise.
The report echoed, echoed. If it had been heard by anyone in the area, it was probably disregarded immediately by the late-night roller coaster riders, nothing worth getting upset about when there was so much fun on offer.
Brenda advanced slowly and stopped the car beside Valerie, lying in the street. She unfolded her arm out the window, pointing the gun down at her, watching for movement. None came. Brenda tossed the gun into the passenger seat and moved on, the motionless shape in the sailor’s uniform shrinking in the rearview mirror, red-lit by the taillights. A crimson spotlight, fading.
It did not matter now how much the girl had seen or could, later, inarticulately describe to the police. Brenda was glad to benefit from the girl’s awful luck. Knowing she was still walking around with a snapshot of Brenda’s face in her head would’ve caused at least a few sleepless—
Brenda stomped the brake, nearly crushing her own nose against the steering wheel. Reversing, careful to not run the poor thing over, she got out and looked down at the expanding red dot between the girl’s shoulder blades. Brenda looked around, saw no one, and hooked her foot under the girl’s ribs to roll her onto her back.
Slight road-rash on her cheek, blank eyes looking through Brenda toward the night sky.
Her young features took on a strange cast suddenly. Brenda frowned her confusion. Light travels faster than sound. The nightly fireworks display began now over Disney World, Brenda flinching at the first tooth-shaking bang.
Faraway cheers. Brenda frisked the corpse, the light falling over them both blue, then yellow, then pink. Brenda always liked the fireworks that left long crackling streams falling out of the sky like a weeping willow.
The girl’s uniform had no pockets. But Brenda Stockton found, tucked deep in Valerie’s left sock, the two wrinkled twenties.
Pennies add up.
* * *
At the emergency room, Mel was told the wait would be less than a half hour, but that’d been two hours ago. She looked at the bloated catcher’s mitt at the end of her wrist. They might have to cut off her rings, she thought. She tried, yet again, to move her fingers and immediately had to bite her lip to mute a scream. She didn’t want to contribute another wailing voice. This waiting room was already full of them.
If it’d help speed things along, she’d pass on the X-rays because she knew from experience what a broken hand felt like, but she did need a doctor to put a cast on it.
She wanted to go outside for a cigarette but didn’t want to risk losing her place in line. The little boy with most of his head swallowed by a bloody T-shirt for an impromptu bandage had been sitting over there before she arrived. Yet again, either he caught her staring at him or she caught him staring at her. She smiled, nodded hello. He did the same. She waved her swollen hand and then acted mortified at the sight of it, as if she hadn’t noticed the horrible thing before now. The little boy laughed – until his mother heard him.
“Quit that. You’re hurt,” she said. She followed her son’s gaze to Mel and shot her a dirty look as well. “He is hurt. He might have a concussion and I doubt him giggling and carrying on is good for it.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Mel said and mouthed my bad to the kid, who shrugged.
The smell of a hospital used to make her woozy. Then she’d gotten used to it, going out to see Uncle Craig so often. Now, though he probably wouldn’t like to know this, she associated that smell of disinfectant and dying people with him. But it wasn’t a negative association. She liked spending time with him. More when he was still conscious, but even after his seizure, she didn’t mind that time together either. It was just quieter is all.
Her phone hummed in her pocket. Dani’s name and picture on the screen – she’d taken that photo she used for her caller ID when they went hiking in Zion last fall for their one-year anniversary. Looking at that photo, she tried to go back there, time travel through sheer will alone, but when she opened her eyes she was still in the ER with a broken hand. The present was seldom where she wanted to be but it was always where she found herself.
“Forget how to answer texts?” Dani said.
What number lie will this make now? Somewhere in the mid to high thousands? The thing about lying to loved ones was, because they knew you so well, that ratio of truth to fib would need to lean more toward truth when possible. “I’m at the ER. And before you start freaking out, let me just say I’m fine. Seriously, I am.”
“What? Are you okay? What happened?”
She tried to keep the pain from sounding in her voice. “I slipped on some ice leaving the restaurant and fell weird, but I’m okay. I mean, I’m like ninety-nine per cent sure my hand’s broken and it hurts like shit, but I’m going to get a cast put on and I’ll start heading home right after.”
“Which hospital?” Dani said. Mel could hear Dani zipping up her coat, the jangle of keys being snatched. “Mel, which hospital?”
“Stop, no. You’re sweet, but there’s no reason for both of us to be stuck here. It’s just a broken hand.”
“Just a broken hand, she says. Mel.”
“Listen, I’ll text you when I’m leaving. You can be the first to write on my cast. I’ll say it now though: do not draw any dicks on it. I still need to be able to go to work.”
Dani didn’t know about Felix and Felix didn’t know about Dani – as far as Mel knew. She had no idea how Felix had learned about her uncle being in the hospice all the way out in Pennsylvania, but he’d found that out. He knew about Craig’s Cars, the money trouble, her dad’s suicide, so maybe Felix was just saving Dani to use as a threat for later. Or, he didn’t figure the relationship would last long enough to bother keeping tabs on Dani. Frankly, Mel was surprised they were still together. Somehow, she hadn’t managed to fuck up too bad, yet. It helped that Dani had the patience and understanding of a saint. Well, she did meditate twice a day and was pretty much consistently a bit baked. Though, right now, she sounded stone sober – which meant, unfortunately, she was going to catch every word Mel said, which also meant now was the time to be mindful about unfurling this new lie and the amount of details and the speed at which they were given. That’s one thing people tend to forget about lying well. You can have your story down fine, every bit of it ringing absolutely credible, the ratio of truth to fib balanced just so, but like telling a joke, a lie’s efficacy lives or dies in the delivery.
“I should be there,” Dani was saying. “I feel like I should be there.”
“It’s really not worth the drive. Seriously. It’s awful out. Stay home, stay warm.”
“Is everything all right?”
“You mean besides my messed-up hand?”
Dani laughed. “Yeah, well, sure. Besides your hand, is everything okay?”
“Well, my hand is pretty hard to ignore, but yeah. I’m all right. I’d rather be home with you, under a warm blanket. And I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a whisky sour.”
A moment. Mel hadn’t heard her girlfriend unzip her coat or set her keys back down.
“You probably shouldn’t be driving. If they give you pills or something, and you’ll have that cast getting in the way.” Dani paused. “You didn’t drive yourself there, did you?”
“I did, yeah.”
“You were working with Ron today, right?”
“Dani. It’s fine.”
“Did he see you fall? And why was there ice in the employee parking area anyway? Isn’t it his job as the fucking manager to see that his employees don’t hurt themselves at the workplace? I hope, for his sake, he at least offered to drive you.”
Welcome to anger, the second stage in the standard-issue alert mode that comes factory standard with all overprotective girlfriends.
“It’s fine. Ron said if I want to fill out a workman’s comp form, I can. I probably will.”
“Damn right you’re going to. That’s on him, not you. Lazy piece of shit.”
“Babe. Stand down. Take a breath.”
“I’m just saying everybody knows it was going to get icy out tonight, they’ve been talking about it on the news all week, and he doesn’t even bother throwing down some salt before all of you punch out? And then he sees you fall and doesn’t even offer to drive you to the hospital – because of his negligence?”
Mel waited for her to finish. “I was there, remember?”
“I’m surprised you’re not more pissed. They give you something for the pain already?”
“It gets icy, people fall. Welcome to winter in the Midwest.”
This was breaking one of the golden rules about lying well. Specifically the consistency tenet. Going against your character by showing a sudden willingness to let certain things slide that you – or who you’ve led people to believe is you – would normally not tolerate will send up red flags. Time to course-correct.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Mel went on, “I’m irritated. Sitting here in the emergency room is far from how I wanted to spend my Saturday night, especially when I have tomorrow off, but I figure I’ll let Ron have a piece of my mind after I’ve been reassembled. D
on’t even worry about that.”
It was like Dani heard none of that. “I’m calling him.”
“No, you are not calling my boss. We need me to keep that job, remember?” Mel left unspoken how he won’t know what the hell you’re talking about because I wasn’t even on the grid today.
Dani groaned. “Yeah, true, all right. Good point.”
“I don’t need my girlfriend reaming anyone on my behalf, even if they deserve it. I’m a big girl.”
“What about getting you home? I should at least come pick you up.”
“I can drive. I’ll be fine. We can’t leave my car here overnight. Even being here this long, it’s going to cost me sixty bucks to get out.”
Dani was quiet a second. “How long have you been at the hospital?”
“About a half hour.” Liar.
“I thought you only worked till four today.”
“Ron asked me to stick around. Beth called off.” This was getting into bad territory. Time to turn it around. “Not to be an asshole,” she said, “but when I didn’t get home at the usual time, is there a reason that didn’t bother you?”
“I figured you went out after your shift. You and Beth do that sometimes, hit up a bar or something, go to Unabridged or whatever. That or, you know, doing what you were actually doing tonight: picking up a shift.”
Mel counted to three. Let her sweat. “Should I be worried?”
“What do you mean? Worried about what?”
“About you. What did you get up to today?”
“Well, I went down to the bodega, got some noodles for lunch, after that I’ve just been sitting around here trying – and failing – to find something worth watching on Netflix.”
“All day?”
