Jerry laughed at his own joke, pulled Barbara in tighter, then the pair of them turned and started toward the line of trucks.
And there she goes, that new dark voice sneered in Colin’s mind, the so-called love of your life. Just look at her now. You let her get away and now she’s a trashy, simpering growth under the arm of Jerry Saban. Jerry friggen Saban! Wow, when you lose, you manage to lose for everybody.
“That’s not true,” he whispered as he gazed at the backs of the retreating figures. “This can’t be right. It doesn’t make any sense!”
Oh yeah? Aren’t you the one who just said “It is what it is?” Well take a good look at what it IS!
What it was, was an obscenity. It was everything good and worth having in the world being dragged through sewage and taught to like it.
It was too much.
“No!” Colin shouted, “No dammit! Stop!”
The couple stopped and Jerry turned toward him. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Barbara, I don’t understand! You’re better than this!”
Now Jerry didn’t look happy at all. The hulking redneck started back in his direction with clenched fists, but Barbara remained where she stood…with her back to them and still staring at the ground.
“Barbara, this isn’t you!”
Colin tried to ignore the approaching man and focused on the distant girl.
Barbara, please! I’m sorry! It doesn’t have to be like this! Come back with us and we’ll forget the whole thing. You don’t belong here! You don’t…”
“Traction time, loser.”
Jerry’s fist impacted with meteoric velocity and Colin hit the asphalt in the next split second. Blinding starbursts filled his vision, and it felt like a great molten crack had opened up in the entire left side of his face. He had only been hit in the face one time before, back in sixth grade, and it had been nothing like this. But it didn’t stop there. He didn’t even have time to bring his hands up to his face before the next fist bounced his head off the asphalt.
Galaxies now whirled in his vision, and pain wrapped his head like a red fog. Colin tried to get his arms and legs to do something useful…anything…but the rain of punches disoriented him and prevented any chance for him to marshal a defense. Nothing but pure survival instinct allowed him to finally cover his head with one arm. Then the boot buried into his ribs and he figured it was better just to die.
But apparently Jerry had satisfied himself with the current level of damage inflicted, so even that escape eluded him.
“Losing hurts, don’t it Nerdbeak,” the man spat. “So do yourself a favor and crawl back to that ‘better place’ you think you come from and stick to reading comic books and building tinkertoys. The face you save could be your own.”
Colin barely heard him. He lay curled on his side in a red sea of hurt. Blood filled his mouth, his left eye already threatened to swell shut, and pain knifed into his side with every breath. But even that paled to the agony caused by the sight of the distant Barbara still standing back there, pointedly looking the other way.
Do you get it now? Do you? Take a good hard look…because you need to see every miserable second of this so you never forget it.
And Colin did look.
He watched as Jerry returned to the girl, laid a possessive arm over her shoulders and swaggered off with her down the row of parked trucks. She never once looked back.
Get it?
That little black stone in his chest reached the weight of a neutron star. Then it imploded into a bottomless void that sucked all the hope, illusions, and ideals he held in with it. It was time to grow up. It was time for a change.
“Yeah,” he whispered, and spit blood on the asphalt. “I get it.”
And when he finally managed to crawl to his feet…after the couple had driven off in their truck…he left the old Colin on the ground. Colin the Loser, who had failed when it mattered the most. Now it was time for a new Colin.
A better Colin.
The eyes that stared after the receding taillights in the distance were hard as diamonds, and blackness filled their depths.
###
Those same diamond-hard eyes now peered through the windshield at Huntington Road, although the darkness inside them roiled with turbulence.
He didn’t know what awaited him, but he was ready. A calm tension ran through his steroid strengthened muscles, and his awareness never wandered far from the weight of the knife in his pocket. A simple wedge of steel that in the right hands…his hands…could settle a lot of issues.
Permanently.
His eyes narrowed as the plywood sign for Elkwood Estates, dim in the drizzle under the faint radiance of its single light bulb, came into view.
Several faint lights showed in the darkness behind the sign from where trailers huddled in the grubby little park. Colin couldn’t imagine what dreary excuse for existence passed for living in such a place. He didn’t really care to try. And fortunately, it didn’t appear he would have to explore the matter this trip either.
A dim figure appeared in his headlights beside the sign.
It was Barbara.
She still had the tall hair, and if anything the outfit she wore looked tackier than the last. He couldn’t really make out her makeup under the current conditions but he had the feeling that remained the same as well. The only difference between now and that night a year ago was her lack of a companion.
Colin relaxed a shade, strangely unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed by the absence of Jerry Saban. Common sense told him this probably counted as the best outcome. But the blackness inside growled at the missed opportunity. A violent ambush by Saban would have been the perfect excuse to leave him gutted and coughing up blood in the nighttime ditch…a friendly little lesson in how times can change.
Instead, he settled for pulling up beside the sign and staring out the windshield while Barbara pulled the door open and slipped inside. He refused to look over at her. Colin really didn’t want to see her like this. The man simply waited until he heard the door close, then pulled back out onto the night road.
They drove the first quarter mile in silence, with nothing but the beat of the wipers on the windshield for background noise. He refused to be the first to talk. Fortunately, he didn’t have to long to wait.
“Thank you, Colin.”
“You’re welcome.”
That sufficed for another half mile. But with that out of the way, he now felt released to ask the inevitable.
“So where am I taking you?”
She gave a quiet sigh in response, and Colin could feel her now looking at him in the dark vehicle. He clenched his jaw and continued staring out through the windshield.
“Colin?” she asked in a soft yet even voice. “If I ask you a question, will you think about it and give me an honest answer?”
The blackness inside surged.
My, my, it snarled. Like her honest answers about where she worked, where she lived, and maybe even who the hell she is?
“Sure. Why not,” his hands knotted on the steering wheel. “Ask.”
The wipers gave another three or four beats while he waited.
“How much do you hate me?”
For a second, he couldn’t believe his ears.
Well now… You’ve got the answer to that right inside your pocket, don’t you. Sometimes it’s those nonverbal answers that express things the clearest.
“I don’t hate you.”
“I see.”
“I don’t hate you,” he repeated without expression. “I want to…or at least something inside me desperately wants me to…but I just don’t. I probably should, but that doesn’t seem to matter either.”
“But you won’t look at me.”
He swallowed and clenched his teeth, not knowing what to say to that.
“I don’t know if you will believe this,” she continued in the same soft and even voice, “but if I had shown the slightest concern over you in that parking lot, Jerry wo
uld have hurt you a lot worse. I did what I had to do.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t believe me, do you.”
“I guess” he deadpanned. “He strikes me as that kind of guy. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Nope. Life, lemons, lemonade…you know the proverb. In the end, it was educational.”
“Yes,” she sighed, “I can see that. You’ve changed.”
You have no idea…
Once again, he didn’t know how to answer so he chose not to. There probably wasn’t any right thing to say anyway…or even any particular reason to say it…so he focused on the approaching end of Huntington Road and the turnoff to the south highway.
“Left or right?”
Colin could still feel Barbara studying him, then heard her shift and knew she stared out the window as well. He didn’t even try to imagine what she might be thinking. He had given up on figuring that out long ago. Better to just take her wherever she wanted to go and let her slink off again. Probably better for both of them.
Of course, it never turns out that easy.
“Can we go back to your place? I could really use a shower.”
Colin closed his eyes for a brief second, then gave a grim nod and turned towards town. There didn’t seem to be any escaping this.
The knife now felt like a living thing in his pocket.
###
An hour later, the knife still weighed in his pocket like a warm lump of lead. He contemplated his awareness of it as he walked out of his little kitchen with coffee cup in hand.
Perhaps the voice of the blackness really belonged to the knife? No, that couldn’t be right. He had only picked up the knife six months ago. Could it have moved into the knife? Possessed it and given it a life of its own? It did have a certain knifelike quality to it…a tendency to cut straight through the bullshit, even when it was something he didn’t want to hear.
The hiss of the shower shut off behind the bathroom door, and he heard the curtain slide open. He paused and looked at the door, but resumed his walk to the couch when the howl of his blow dryer started up.
Making herself right at home, ain’t she. Maybe she thinks she can wash the trailer park off of her. Well, it doesn’t work like that. She’s trash. Even worse, she’s trash who looked down on you…thought you weren’t worthy of her.
Colin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. What the hell was he doing? Why did he let her come here?
Because you’re weak.
“No,” he whispered to the knife, “there have been other women since her. And I’m the one that threw them out. I’m not weak anymore.”
Yes, but she got inside your defenses before then. And then she owned you. She will always own you until you do something about that. You will dance like a puppet on her strings, and she will sneer and despise you for it. And you will deserve it for letting her.
“Not true,” he struggled against the unflinching logic. “She said she had thought about me. She asked if I hated her, so it must have mattered.”
She can say anything that suits her purposes, but actions are the truest statements a person can make. Actions don’t lie. And what did her actions say? That she had judged you and found you wanting. That you were less worthy than an animal like Jerry Saban. And that judgment will stand as long as she is in this world living by it.
Now what are you going to DO about it?
That last seemed to come as much from his hand as the knife, and he opened his eyes to see it had slid into his pocket. His fingers were already closed on the warm handle.
At the same time, the sound of the hair dryer ceased and he heard Barbara open the cabinet door beside the sink to return it to its place. Colin came to his feet just as the doorknob started to turn. His hand remained half in his pocket, with his fingers just a bare fraction of an inch away from the lethal switchblade. He rested his thumb in a belt loop, trying to make the position look as natural as possible.
A second later, his jaw nearly hit the floor.
Barbara Laurell stepped back into his life.
Not the garish creature of the nightclub parking lot. Not the tawdry vagabond waiting by the trailer park sign less than an hour ago…but the golden, graceful swan with sapphire eyes and the aura of summer.
“Hello again, Colin.”
Colin couldn’t believe his eyes. She had been in there for fifteen…maybe twenty…minutes tops. But this transformation beggared belief! Even the hair framing her face now hung with the simple, elegant style of before. Yet it was more than that. Her affect…her very presence…had changed. The solemn beauty poised in the bathroom door had no more in common with the creature under Jerry Saban’s arm than a sunrise did with a slug.
It’s an illusion! A trick! That’s what she DOES! This isn’t who she is!
He fought to say something…anything…while caught between the scream of the blackness and the vision in front of him. The knife in his pocket burned against the tips of his fingers, howling to be grasped and driven into the source of all his misery.
“Colin,” her gentle, measured voice filled the silence created by his internal struggle. She stepped into the room, wearing the bathrobe he had left next to the sink the night before. It was a ragged old thing, but she wore it with a delicate grace. Her large eyes stayed on his face with grave intensity. “I need you to understand something. I know that saying ‘I’m sorry,’ doesn’t even begin to cover the pain and damage I have done to you…”
Damn right it doesn’t! And she doesn’t mean it anyway!
“…but I am sorry. I was selfish and blind. I was enjoying something I had no right to and I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I didn’t want to see what I was really doing, but that doesn’t make it okay.”
That doesn’t even make sense. She’s playing you. Are you going to let her do this? ARE YOU?
His hand slid down to the knife and wrapped his fingers around the polished handle. It was the sole source of certainty in the chaos that had become his world. It knew what needed to be done.
Her gaze dropped briefly to his pocket, and she paused for just the barest fraction of a second. She might have even paled a shade. But then she raised her somber blue eyes to meet his, and continued her approach.
“Colin? Listen to me. I can’t undo what happened. I wish I could, but I can’t. But…”
She laid her hand on his, just as it started to pull the knife from its concealment.
“…but…I can make the pain go away.”
So can I. As a matter of fact, I can make the pain go away and add a great bloody helping of justice to go along with it. Don’t be the victim again…let her have a taste of it for once.
Colin struggled to breath, caught between the two forces…the iron-voiced blackness that had gotten him through the past year of hell, and the golden-haired zephyr who had put him there.
“I can do it, Colin. I promise you, I really can.” The scent of summer surrounded him like a gentle embrace. “I can make it better. All you have to do is trust me one more time.”
Says the tramp standing in a ditch outside of Jerry Saban’s trailer park just one hour ago. None of this is real. You have to stop her. You have to stop her, right now! If you let her do this, she will own you from now on! And she isn’t worthy of that!
Colin’s hand clenched the knife and his eyes focused in on the hollow of her throat. That was where the blade wanted to go…needed to go. Thrust or slash, it didn’t matter. The blade would figure that out for itself. It knew what needed to be done.
“Colin?”
She laid her other hand on his cheek and he groaned from the inner impact of her touch. It felt like a body blow against the raging blackness, and the battle inside shrieked to new proportions. His world reeled. He shut his eyes, trying to find some internal anchor point to hold onto. Something had to give. Something was going to happen, and it was going to happen in the next few seconds. It hurt too much to continue.
“Co
lin,” her soft voice cut through the maelstrom, and he realized she now whispered in his ear. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I’ve done this to you…I’ve done this to you, and I have to make it right.”
No! Kill her! Kill her! Kill her NOW!
The knife screamed in his mind. His palm burned from the heat of its rage and he yanked the weapon out in one awkward motion. It was time. The fury, pain, and grief formed a cyclone of hate that howled in triumph, and the knife sprang open as it cleared his pocket.
But that was when she kissed him…
…and Colin’s entire universe imploded.
###
Awareness rose like a bubble through thick syrup in the darkness.
It faded in with effort, yet at the same time with a slow motion inevitability that made it seem as if the effort was on the part of awareness itself. Colin felt more like a spectator than a participant…a mildly interested onlooker on the sidelines of consciousness.
A peace he hadn’t known in over a year filled him. No shrieking blackness, no diamond hard neutron star for a heart, no suffocating blanket of hate to give him the illusion of strength. Just a calm stillness that filled him like a deep pool.
His mind floated like a sodden leaf on the surface of that pond; loathe to risk a ripple by doing anything in the form of thought. On the other hand, his body seemed to sink like concrete into his mattress, unresponsive to any but the most forceful commands. Not that he felt the desire to make any forceful commands. He felt content to just lie in the darkness, drifting in the absence of torment.
If only his wrist didn’t hurt…
Colin winced at the discomfort. Even that simple expression formed in slow motion, due to the incredible lethargy of his muscles.
“Does it hurt?”
Her gentle voice came from somewhere in the direction of his feet, and he started the languorous process of shifting his gaze in that direction. After a few seconds he spotted her standing against the wall at the foot of his bed. The total darkness would have made it impossible to see her, but fortunately the soft blue glow of her eyes revealed her position.
Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Page 23
