Control

by Ed Kurtz

  Among the various blinking and scrolling bric-a-brac that filled up the screen was the date and time in the lower left corner—Saturday, April 17. 12:37 pm.

  Somehow, in a way completely incomprehensible to him, Leon had lost an entire day.

  “Coffee ready yet?” he heard his father mutter again.

  Leon collapsed into Harold’s armchair and exhaled slowly.

  Harold said, “I feel like hell.”

  Leon squeezed his eyes shut and began remembering.

  11

  Naila Alexander dragged a shuddering breath into her lungs and tried to roll over, but a sharp rock dug into the small of her back and forced her to remain as she was. The air was cool but musty, the loamy scent of earth and verdure in her nostrils. When at last she opened her eyes, Naila found herself looking up at the open sky through a great, jagged opening in the ceiling. A quartet of shiny black grackles perched around the edge of the hole, one of them craning its neck to look down at her. She moved her tongue around the inside of her mouth and tried to work up a bit of saliva to moisten her dry throat. It hurt to swallow, but it did the trick. She only wished she had a glass of water.

  The last thing Naila remembered was driving across town to the community center, where her church was preparing for their annual Weekend of Giving. The back of her hatchback was filled to the top with bagged groceries she’d bought for the occasion. Non-perishables, mostly, but also a stack of pies she’d made herself from scratch. Everybody loved Naila’s pies, and she was eager to share them with the hungry and hopeless.

  She had no idea where she was now, nor how she got there.

  Or why her whole body quivered and jerked beyond her control, like she was having some sort of epileptic fit.

  Naila braced herself on the dusty, pebble-strewn floor and heaved herself up to a sitting position. Her body was sore and stiff from crown to toe, aches made worse by her jerking muscles. Overhead, one of the grackles gave a shrill screech and the lot of them flapped away. Their disembarkment sent down a light rain of dust and ash from the roof. It powdered Naila’s hair and shoulders, but she did not notice. She was too engrossed with taking in her surroundings, trying to deduce what had happened and what was going on now.

  She was sitting in a semicircle of rubble, all chunks of concrete and blackened bits of charred wood. In front of her a destroyed wall yawned open to reveal lush overgrowth beyond the broken bricks and shards of glass. Everywhere Naila looked she found crumpled beer cans and shattered bottles. A few feet to her right, snagged on jagged cinder block, she saw a frayed pink bra. A sagging beam that once supported the ceiling angled all the way down to the floor behind it. Somebody had spray-painted blood-red swastikas all over it.

  If she did not know any better, Naila might have imagined that she was in the middle of some post-apocalyptic nightmare, the world after nuclear decimation. But she knew she was just in some burned out relic of a long time past. And, judging by what was left of the badly damaged bank of lockers in the shadows to her far left, she concluded that it was probably a school.

  With a little effort and good deal of discomfort, Naila managed to get on her feet. Her head swam a bit and her knees were scraped raw, but every limb writhed and swayed all the same. She stepped awkwardly over the rubble that littered the floor, accidentally kicking a can of Stroh’s across to the wall. The fog in her mind was beginning to lift. Fragments of memories started coming together.

  I only wanted to help, she thought, recalling the little man on the sidewalk, curled up like a baby and holding his head as though it might otherwise float away. He looked so helpless then, like a gift from God in light of her church’s weekend activities. And yet half a dozen people walked right by him as if he was nothing but trash on the ground. How could she not have helped him? What choice did she have apart from lifting him up and putting him in her car for a quick ride to the hospital?

  As events turned out, Naila had no choice one way or the other. All it took was that weird look, those peculiar, quivering eyes—that, and a simple injunction, spoken in a whisper.

  “No hospital. Drive to the lake.”

  Was that where she was now? At the lake? Naila wiggled out through the vast opening in the wall and over the accumulated debris to the edge of the woods. She could smell the rich aroma of the greenery and hear the birds singing in the treetops. But there was no sign of the lake. She scratched her head and peered through the dense foliage. All she saw was more trees. She wondered what happened to the little man and a shiver shot down her spine.

  Images of yellow police tape and bloodstains and dark, foreboding wilderness flashed through her head. She’d driven him to some office building, walked from the parking lot to the lake and from there into the woods. There was a house deep in there, a nasty little place cordoned off with caution tape. The little man pointed out the blood on the cement and instructed her to keep walking until they found the school. He said it was his old elementary school—Union Mill, it was called. He said it caught fire when he was still in high school, probably arson but they never caught anyone for it.

  He said his name was Leon.

  Things got very strange after that. He cried a lot and complained of headaches. He told her he took pills for it, but the pills didn’t help. He said he only felt better when he told other people what to do. And he told her a bizarre story about a redneck and his dog, and how he told the redneck to shoot himself in the head, and that the redneck did exactly as he was instructed. That, Leon said, relieved the pain. That was why he’d brought her here—to instruct her.

  The most terrifying aspect of it all was that Naila was powerless to resist. Somewhere deep in her consciousness she was crying out for Leon to let her go, but she could not voice her terror. She remembered quite clearly now how still she stood in the center of the debris, groggy and silent, waiting for Leon to speak. Not once had he touched her, nor threatened her. He only told her what to do, where to go, and she complied every time. When the husk of the school began to darken and the sun started to set, he screamed in agony, bent over with pain.

  “Dance,” he groaned. “Just dance.”

  She danced. She was not a particularly skilled dancer—more of a two-left-feet type than anything—but she did her best by rotating her hips and pumping her arms like pistons. She moved her head from side to side and even closed her eyes to delve deeper into the rhythm that was not there.

  Naila blushed at the memory. She was vaguely humiliated and not a little bit insulted. Dancing like Salome for that strange man in an abandoned school building was hardly behavior becoming of a woman like Naila Alexander. But perhaps, she thought, it was the only thing he could think of to make the hurting stop. If he had to control people to ease the pain, there were certainly worse things he could have done. Again, Naila shivered. Her arms and hips rocked back and forth. She bit her lower lip.

  She kept on through the woods, recounting her bizarre night as she went along. When the dancing alone began to bore him, Leon made her sing. She warbled a pair of her favorite hymns, but Leon did not like them, so she switched to a few old Motown tunes she’d been fond of when she was a girl. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” really got Leon’s feet tapping, and he even managed to crack a smile when she segued into “Just My Imagination.” Eventually her voice gave out as her legs did earlier in the evening, and Leon firmly commanded her to go to sleep. He must have left before she awoke, for he was nowhere to be seen, in or around the old school. Had he told her when to awake, whispered it into her ear while she slept? A passing sensation, like a dream melting in the morning, suggested as much to her. She just hoped he had not taken her hatchback, not with all that food in there.

  She emerged from the tree line at the dilapidated old house with the police tape all around it. From there she was certain she could find her way back around the lake to the parking lot where Leon told her to stop. Mercifully, her car was still there. She clasped her hands together and gave thanks to her god. She made it t
hrough the crisis relatively unscathed, if not deeply troubled by the implications of the whole ordeal. The question of free will. Of control.

  And the rather disconcerting fact that she was still dancing.

  One thing was for certain, though: Naila would always think twice in the future whenever she was possessed by the Spirit of Christian Charity.

  12

  Control.

  That was the only word for it. For what he had done to his father, and to Dane Honeycutt, and to that poor woman who picked him up off the sidewalk like Mother Teresa. He compelled them to do exactly as he said, for better or worse, no questions asked. Without fail they followed his commands to the letter every time. It was unbelievable, horrifying.

  It was miraculous.

  Leon let out a soft snort and rose from the armchair. He made a beeline for the front door and said, “Dad, I’m going out.”

  Harold said, “Coffee ready yet?”

  But Leon did not hear him. He had already gone out the door.

  13

  Trey was standing behind the security desk with his massive arms in the air, stretching and yawning. He was on the sixth day of his seven day work week, and Saturdays were almost always the most tedious—there was, after all, only so much computer solitaire a man could play before he went cross-eyed. He was placated by the promise of four days off, however, which he planned to spend on a hunting trip with his boy. The kid was nothing less than a pussy in Trey’s estimation, having been thoroughly womanized while in his mother’s emasculating custody, but if anything would make a man of him it was a Ruger 10/22 in his hands and a fresh deer carcass at his feet. That ought to take the boy’s mind off comic books and stuffed animals for a while. There was no feeling in the world more powerful and invigorating than a killshot, especially a boy’s very first. Trey could hardly wait.

  He arched his back and groaned with pleasure before sitting back down behind the terminal. The moment his ass hit the chair there came a light knocking at the glass front doors. On the weekends, barely an hour ever went by without some jogger or dog walker coming along, wanting to use the facilities. Per policy, Trey’s answer was a blanket ‘no way,’ although he occasionally made exceptions for particularly alluring young ladies, the more scantily clad the better. The figure at the doors was neither alluring nor a lady, as it happened. Trey narrowed his eyes and went around the desk before he could make out the face.

  It was what’s-his-name, the funny little guy. Leo Weissmann.

  “That’s weird,” he muttered to himself as he fumbled for the keys hanging on his gunbelt.

  He found the correct key, jammed it into the lock and turned it. The tumbler cranked back into its cavity and Trey opened the door.

  “Leo,” he said with patent surprise. “Nobody said anything to me about you coming in today.”

  Leon’s employee badge, like most of the badges, had only what the higher-ups called Phase One clearance, which meant he could not gain ingress to the building outside of regular operating hours. In fact, not only had no one alerted Trey to Leon’s impending arrival, but he had never once seen Leon at the office on a weekend in his seven years at Thompson & Associates.

  “That’s because no one knows I’m here,” Leon said. “Except for you, of course.”

  “Well, you know you need clearance first, Leo. That’s the rule. Let me call your supervisor, just to make it official.”

  Leon simultaneously lowered his brow and widened his eyes.

  He said, “Let me in, Trey.”

  Trey made a small O with his mouth and squinted one eye.

  “Yeah, right,” he said quietly. “Come on in, Leo.”

  He stepped aside and held the door open.

  “Leon, you fucking gorilla. My name is Leon.”

  Trey pinched his brow, processing the new information. Leon walked into the lobby, his steps echoing choppily off the marble floor.

  “Do you have access to Cheryl’s office?” he asked.

  “Sure. I can open any office in the building.”

  “Great. Follow me.”

  Together Leon and Trey walked over to the elevators and rode up to the third floor. Trey followed Leon as he navigated the maze toward one of the few closed offices on the floor. On the door hung a brass nameplate that read:

  cheryl minchillo

  manager, corporate services

  “Open it.”

  Trey obeyed. Leon went in, switched on the light and set to rummaging through his boss’ rolodex. There was a card with Ami Akinjide’s personal information scrawled on it, which Leon pocketed, but it wasn't what he’d come looking for. Unsatisfied, he delved into Cheryl’s filing cabinet and flipped through folder after folder until at last he found what he was looking for—a file for her personal receipts from various business trips. A file that included, on multiple occasions, her home address.

  “Got it,” he said victoriously to himself.

  Trey lingered just outside the door, standing stock-still and staring at a wall. Leon tapped him on the back as he came out of the office.

  “Go ahead and lock it up,” he said.

  As Trey did so, Leon said, “Hey, Trey—seen Ami recently?”

  Trey smiled dumbly and said, “Yeah.”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Never talk to her again. In fact, don’t even look at her. Ever. Got that?”

  “Sure, Leon.”

  “Good.”

  Leon marched back toward the elevators, leaving Trey where he stood. Leon had not told him to move, so he stayed. It was only two and a half hours later, when his knees finally buckled and he dropped to the floor, that it first occurred to Trey that something unusual might have occurred that day.

  * * *

  Cheryl was shocked to find Leon standing on her front porch, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. Upon hearing the doorbell, she naturally assumed it was just one of Andy’s school friends; she hadn’t even looked to see who it was before opening the door. But there he was, not much taller than an eighth grader and smiling like that cat that ate the canary.

  “Hi there, Cheryl,” he said.

  “Leon? What are you doing here?”

  “Wellllll….,” he drawled, “I wanted to apologize for not showing up to work yesterday, for one thing.”

  Cheryl planted her bony fists on her equally bony hips and regarded Leon. The truth of the matter was that she had always considered him a little strange. Lazy as all hell, too. Hardly a model employee, but never negligent enough to warrant anything other than a stern talking-to. Yesterday changed all that. By Friday afternoon she was already eighty percent certain she was going to fire him. Now it was absolute.

  “How did you even get my address?” she growled. “I mean, this is really inappropriate, Leon. You should have just called in, if you were sick or something.”

  “Oh, I was sick. I was really sick. But I cured it. I cured myself.” He nodded in agreement with himself. “Can I come in?”

  “No, Leon. You can’t come in. And don’t bother coming in Monday, either. I think I’m going to have to let you go.”

  “Now, Cheryl…”

  “I’m sorry, Leon, but you can’t behave this way and expect to get away with it. You’ve walked a thin line as it is, but your failure to report yesterday, and now this. It’s too much. I’m sorry, but it’s just too much.”

  “I’ve had such a terrible headache…”

  “That’s too bad, but nevertheless…”

  “…but I’ve finally figured out how to get rid of it.”

  “Damn it, Leon! Are you even listening to me?”

  Cheryl’s cheeks bloomed red and her jaw tightened. Leon narrowed his eyes to slits and crooked his mouth up on one side.

  “Let me in,” he said.

  14

  The stereo was blasting—not full volume, but loud enough to make the insulated window panes rattle—and the air was rife with shouts and laughter and jubilant exclamations. John
Fogerty wailed about his desperate need to play centerfield from the two floorstanding speakers on either side of the oak entertainment center while Andy Minchillo, Cheryl’s thirteen year old son, banged a pair of metal ladles against an impromptu drum set comprised of overturned pots and pans on the living room rug. Ketchup and mayonnaise splattered his hair and neck and tee shirt, giving the initial appearance of the victim of a traffic accident, but it was only the result of the uninhibited food fight he’d had with himself in the kitchen. No one cared. Cheryl was too busy reenacting her signature move from her sorority days on top of the glass coffee table: the Hustle, in just her bra and panties. The frat boys loved it back in the seventies, giving her the lion’s share of the attention at nearly every party and plenty of hot dates, to boot. She had not let loose like this since well before Andy was born, but it felt good. She felt like she was twenty years old again.

  She felt amazing.

  Fogerty faded out to Supertramp and Andy dropped his ladles on the floor, tired of the drummer act. He seized one of the larger pots by the handle, reared back and sent the pot sailing at one of the bay windows. The glass exploded on impact and the pot disappeared in the rosebushes below. Cheryl stopped gyrating and gawped at the spectacle for a moment. She then erupted in a peal of shrill laughter. Andy laughed, too, and was thus encouraged to begin hurling his erstwhile percussion set every which way—through windows, against walls, smashing family photos and knocking the little ceramic figurines off the mantle. He could not remember the last time he’d had so much fun. Breathless with laughter, he celebrated by tucking into a corner of the room and relieving himself on the carpet.