"Yep, but they'll get harder to send as we get down to the wire with the buyout and see who loses their jobs."
"I know." Laura shook her head. "I'm here until the end though."
"Me too." Renee grinned. "Hey, want to hit the café for lunch? On me."
"Sure thing, boss."
Laura grabbed her purse when a loud cracking noise shot from the hallway.
"What the hell was that?" Renee looked at Laura.
More cracks rang out and then screaming.
"Oh my God, someone is shooting!" Laura pulled Renee down with her under her desk in the corner of the cubicle.
Six thousand employees worked at their company headquarters in three buildings. The floor Renee and Laura worked on housed four hundred of them in a sea of cubicles. Laura had always hated cubicles and now found relief hiding in one.
"Can you get under here more?" Laura whispered and pulled the chair toward them as far as it would go. She thanked God she wore her long coat today as it hung from her chair, a curtain hiding them.
"No, I don't think so." Renee let out a tiny sob and bit her lip. "How can this be happening?"
The screams tapered off and silence remained. Laura heard crying from down the hall. Then another gun shot. Then silence again. The phone on her desk rang. Its blaring ring startled them both.
Laura gripped Renee's hand and put her fingers to her lips with her other hand.
"It's not me," a man's voice shouted out. "Someone is making me do it. It's not me!" The man began to sob. His sobbing grew louder. He moved noisily into their area. Laura forced herself to breathe slow and silent. Renee shook as tears ran down her chubby cheeks and dripped onto her silk scarf. Sharp pains shot through Laura's chest, but she had to focus now on surviving.
Renee's leg twitched. "I can't stay like this much longer," she whispered. "Charley horse."
"You've got to," Laura mouthed back.
Renee's twitch got bigger. Her leg shot out and hit the chair with a bang.
The man's sobbing stopped. They heard him crashing alongside cubicle walls toward them. Renee gripped Laura's hand harder. They clung to each other.
"I'm sorry. It's not me!" He pulled out the chair they hid behind, exposing Renee's large body. "Stop it! Let me stop!"
He looked familiar to Laura. She tried to think of his name. He was skinny and about forty. His hair stood up in hand-pulled points and tears ran down his cheeks. Sweat stains spread from under his arms. He pointed a revolver at Renee. It shook in his hands.
"Please, please, don't shoot us," Renee begged with her head down.
"Fat, stupid bitch," he yelled at her in a deeper voice. "You don't deserve to live. No one will ever fuck you."
Laura shrunk further back under the desk. She hated herself for thinking she might be lucky Renee was so fat. It could stop the bullets from traveling through her and into Laura.
"Jack? Is that your name?" Laura looked at the man.
He looked at her with wild eyes and nodded. "I didn't mean to call her a fat bitch. I'm so sorry but he is making me do it."
"Who?"
"I don't know. But he hates you."
"Please let us go."
Renee's leg twitched again. It shot out and hit the man's foot.
"Stupid bitch!"
He shot. Once. Twice. Three times.
The back of Renee's head exploded and covered Laura in a spray of blood and brains. She screamed and tried to push Renee off but she was too heavy. Her body slumped over and pinned Laura down. Her head fell to the side, dead eyes staring at Laura.
The man lowered his gun. His hands steady now. "Not you. He told me it's not your time yet."
He dropped the gun and turned. She watched him walk away and then heard more gunshots. He crumpled to the floor facing her. His dead eyes stared at her too. Blood oozed from one perfect red hole in his forehead.
Laura felt faint. The room spun with noise and light. Then the police rushed in and pulled Renee off her. All she could do was stare at bits of Renee stuck to her hands and arms. Another friend's blood on her hands. She laughed in hysteria, but then it twisted into sobbing she couldn't stop. It was Moe all over again. And her parents. Who would be next? She wished it was her.
X-10 rocked with laughter, holding his sides. He was triumphant as the ultimate puppet-master. It had been his first time entering a human's body and forcing it to do as he wanted. How wonderful. It was comical to pick the skinny, pathetic man to be the one to shoot up the girl's office. Who would ever think such a harmless pig would do it?
It was better than the time he enraged the wasps to sting the old man, and the time he set the girl's home on fire. He gloated over those, but this held the grandest triumph. He now could plan his escape, again. He had conquered the full spectrum of his powers and could use them to live free amongst the humans, unnoticed. If he succeeded this time in escaping and they found him, they would kill him.
X-10's nostrils flared, widening his flattened nose further across his face, stretching from ear to ear. He breathed deep with his recent success and felt power surging through his massive, muscled body. His veins pulsed and throbbed, pushing up through his milky white skin. The blue veins cut across his naked body, carving ropes across his translucent skin. Having no nails, X-10 looked unfinished. His fingers and toes were fluid extensions of his body, they widened at the tips with connected webbing. He flexed his pod hands and feet now, congratulating himself on his victory.
X-10 had starved himself for two days to carry out this planned experiment to take over the man's body and use him as a weapon. Eating the drugged food kept his powers stunted and he needed his powers to be in full mode, plus he hated the drugged feeling. Powerless and weak, almost a human. How disgusting.
He had a short window of time before the idiot doctor would turn on the gas spray in his cell to knock him out and pump him full of drugs against his will. It became a standoff they had when he boycotted food. The doctor feared his powers. If he only knew X-10 waited for the right time to eliminate the good doctor. But X-10 had to plan his escape just right. If he failed, he wouldn't get a second chance.
He was seven when he discovered he would never be allowed outside. His doctors and teachers gathered together one day in his room to tell him he could not go outside to play—ever. He couldn't go anywhere at all. It was too risky. They said he wasn't human and could not live among humans. America's enemies could discover X-10 and steal him away to use him against them. They could not allow this. Surely, X-10 must understand this.
When he asked if he could meet the girl, they shook their heads, not understanding him. What girl? He couldn't explain. He just knew she was part of him and she was out there growing up with a family. He hated her for that. He wanted a family.
But he also knew Doctor Bjord led the project to duplicate his genes to use on soldiers in war. If it worked, they would have X-10's immense powers as advantages to win any battle. It would mean America could use these powers to rule the world in any way it chose. And X-10's life would remain one of exhibition in a cell. He would be on display ordered to amaze them with his powers of telepathy, telekinesis, and strength. X-10 was a freak show and nothing else.
In a rage, he killed all thirteen men there that day. All the doctors and teachers present. All except Bjord. He wanted him to live so he could torture him and someday kill him with intense pain. Some of his victims dropped dead of heart attacks. Some, he enjoyed ripping open their throats from his mind powers as he watched them flail at their wounds, blood pumping out with each scream, until their screams stopped.
When his rage left him the dead lay strewn across the floor and the doctor's project had been canceled. And X-10 was to be eliminated. However, the doctor pleaded with the government to keep him in the small chance he could succeed in his project. Success could mean world domination and it was too enticing to ignore.
And so X-10 was left with the doctor, both forgotten in a world that existed on the outside. A world X
-10 planned to make his escape into. A world where he could have a name, not just a number. He could escape to mountains somewhere and live in remote woods. Unfound. Free. But, he needed the rare opportunity to have his full powers and not be drugged.
He used this last time to see if he could indeed take over a human's body and use it as a puppet. It worked and how glorious it felt! But his body grew weak from not eating. At three-hundred pounds he needed constant food. So now he had to bide his time again, fuel up on food, and kill the doctor before he could escape.
"Charlie," he grunted. "My name will be Charlie. A hero who escapes his prison and kills all these pigs."
But first he would kill the doctor in a long and suffering way. Then he would find the girl and kill her too. X-10 hated the girl with intensity. Thinking of her threw him into violent rages when he tormented himself thinking of her life out there in the world. She got to live a life he never had. A life with a name.
"Laura," he seethed through his steam shovel mouth, his bulbous forehead pulsing outward in grotesque waves.
X-10 breathed deep to calm himself and turned his mind back to his other kill today. What power to kill from his cell. He had ripped out the throat of a homeless man on the street. The man had screamed, clutching at his neck as his blood pumped thick. Killing was always erotic for X-10 and his penis sprang hard from his groin. He fantasized about plunging his erection into the warm wetness of a woman.
He had done so, just once. A paid gift from the doctor. She gave him a pure joy he'd never known. Her name had been Sabrina and her touch had opened up a well of love he never knew he had. And when the doctor killed her, X-10 discovered a new well of sorrow so deep he swore he'd never feel again.
And even while he ached for a woman again, he forced himself to hate them all. To survive in this prison, he had to forget the sweet creature that had given her softness to him and called him Charlie. He wouldn't contaminate himself by plunging into one of them ever again. Hate would keep him strong. Love would only destroy him.
He fingered the oil painting of a blonde bitch in the throes of death spasms. Her mouth hung wide open in a scream and blood gushed from her ripped-open chest. Large breasts hung from her shredded top. X-10 had painted her that day. The paint was still fresh and the blood on her breasts left red on his fingers.
He closed his eyes and massaged his hardened penis with the thick, greasy paint. He fingered more and more from the painting and smeared it over his erection. His penis glowed blood-red in the dim light as he stroked himself over and over. His menacing staff twitched violently, as he spewed out calling to the bitch.
"Whore. Fucking human whore."
CHAPTER 14: 2006
Ben leaned on the balcony and gazed out at the mountain lake with its colorful borders. Autumn was creeping in. His bags were packed. Another assignment finished. He sighed. Another trip, another job, and at thirty-six years old he'd grown tired of it. Eight more years had passed since his friend, Andy, had told him to stop running and start living in one spot. But he hadn't taken his advice.
He tried dating, the few times he was in his Orlando apartment between jobs. But women always wanted more. To stay over, to know his deepest thoughts, to meet their family. He couldn't do it. It felt awkward and uncomfortable. He pulled back and ended the brief affairs. There had to be something wrong with him. He understood the mechanics of sex but didn't know how to be intimate with the soul.
To overcompensate he learned to satisfy a woman in many ways. He showed them the rewards of going slow and stimulating spots they had never dreamed could be aroused. He brought them to new explosive heights and exhausted their bodies straining toward sweet release.
He hoped his sexual abilities would be enough for them but they always wanted more and if they discovered the real him, they would be disgusted and leave him anyways. It was safer to push them away first. It had to be his choice, not theirs. If they knew what he had done they would know he was unlovable, untouchable. An outcast. That's what he felt like. An outcast in his own life. The one thing he had control over was his business. He could be cool, professional, and an expert at what he did and people paid him well for it.
And now he stood undecided at his room balcony at the Mohonk Mountain House, an exclusive, upscale retreat situated high above New Paltz, New York in the Shawagunk Mountains. Where should he go now? For the first time in a long while he had no job waiting for him.
Growing up in New Paltz as a kid, he'd stared up at the mountain in wonder, wishing he could venture into the retreat that had stood on the mountain for one-hundred years. It stood as a giant castle in the sky overlooking a blue lake he wanted to explore, but it had been off limits to a poor kid such as himself. Now he wasn't poor any longer. He was here. Yet, he had no one to share with the beauty and grandness of this historic mountain house. It left him feeling flat. For the first time on assignment he wished he weren't alone.
Complex and uncomfortable feelings had followed him the days he had just spent here shooting a family of six on vacation. He almost didn't take this job as it meant heading back to his hometown. Back to a place where he had once been happy and part of his own family.
More than twenty-five years had passed since he lived here and his parents died. Yet, he felt mired down in the ghosts swirling around him as he moved through each day back in his old haunts. He shot relics of his past in the background. The old bookstore on Main Street, the local diner where he scoffed down hot pierogies when his parents had money to eat out, the winding side streets he biked down, and the Wallkill River he played along.
And there stood his old house. A bike lay on the lawn as if a young boy threw it down to run inside and tell his mom about something cool he found, just like Ben used to do. It looked the same. The new owners had given it a paint job and a new roof, but the tiny Cape Cod stood as it had years ago when Ben lived there and life was good. He didn't know it could be any other way back then. And so this week he followed his clients around taking photos of them amongst ghosts. He didn't want to remember. He wanted to forget.
He stared out at the smooth lake. A canoe floated in the distance on the sparkling water along the water's edge. A man, woman, and a young boy sat in it. The boy looked about ten years old. He stretched his arms out as if explaining something and the father leaned over and hugged him. Were they happy?
He jerked upright on the railing as it occurred to him, in order to forget his past he would have to remember. He looked at the family again in the distance. And that made the decision for him.
He would head to Coopersville and visit the lake where his parents died. It was only an hour away. Perhaps it was destiny he took this assignment so close to the events that changed his life decades ago. He had grown tired of traveling everywhere and belonging nowhere. He had built a life around himself that excluded others. All these years he had been helping other families create memories. Maybe he should start figuring out how to create his own memories, and his own family.
"Well, time to hit the road." He turned to grab his bags. Talking out loud to himself was a habit he picked up along his travels. He didn't need anyone to talk to. "Well, not anymore, bub. Time to face the music. Get off the pot. Stare the bull in the face."
He laughed at himself and slammed the door behind him. "Yep, 'cause the fat lady is singing." He bumped into a stooped, gray-haired man as he entered the corridor.
"Is she now?" the man asked with a smile, grabbing the wall.
"Sorry, sir," Ben apologized, putting down his bags to steady the gentleman.
"No worries, you must be in a hurry if the fat lady is singing. Grab it while you can!"
Ben smiled back and nodded, "I am!" Then he strode down the hall toward his destination. Not a new place, but an old one, to bring him new life. He hoped.
Laura sat at the four-way stop with both hands on the wheel and considered going left or right. No cars came from either direction. But it wasn't unusual for Coopersville. Population three-hundred. S
he figured she could sit here for half an hour and not see one car. Fields spread out to her left and woods reached up the hill to her right. The hill would take her to the place where she'd grown up. Mr. B told her years ago a nice family had bought the land and built a new home on it. If she turned right she would see it. She pulled a piece of paper out of her jean pocket and unfolded it.
It's time, Laura. Find your powers again because the evil is coming. And he is coming for you next time. If you want to live, be what you are.
Laura folded the note and put it away.
"Be what I am. What does that mean? Use my powers again? For what? To stop some evil man I don't know?"
She'd found the note folded in a neat square on the front seat of her car the day Renee was killed, after she was released from the hospital. It had to be from the man in black. He seemed like a dream in her mind from years ago. Was he real?
The day Renee died doctors concluded she was fine after examining her as a precaution. Fine. Right. How can you ever be fine again after a day when your friend's blood and brains are blasted across you? The day her life changed again.
No one could tell her why her co-worker went crazy shooting people at her company. Five were injured and four others died before he killed Renee. The media jumped on the story of a man cracking under the stress of the buyout. They also dug around and found Laura's grisly history of Moe's death and her parents and played her up as a tragic heroine that death followed.
Laura ignored the media, and focused instead on replaying the shooting scene, over and over, seeking clues.
The shooter kept repeating it wasn't him. He also said it wasn't her time yet, but she assumed from the note her time was coming. Was this man in black right? But who was coming for her? She had no idea, but she did know she had to prepare herself for his coming.
There was something else she also had to do. Besides regain her special abilities she had to find out where she came from. It had to have something to do with the murders of those she loved and why she once could perform magic, as she called it when she was a little girl. Maybe if she found the answers to the horrible events plaguing her life she could stop it from ever happening again.
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