The Empty Heart: A Collection

by Derek Murphy

  When the sounds of pursuit and battle had died away, he lifted her to her feet and turned back toward home. They had agreed while they waited that they would be married within the week. His grandmother lived further south, deeper in the Cherokee lands and he felt that Ti-yo-ni would be safer further away from the white men who continued to encroach on their territory.

  * * *

  Rod was aware of the fingers on one hand twitching on something stiff and coarse and gradually became aware that he was covered by a heavy sheet. The kind that hospitals used. Crap! Another failure! Opening his eyes, prepared for a nurse to gently scold him for his suicide attempt, he saw only a young woman sitting at the end of his bed. She was pretty in an almost elfin way, though he was pretty sure that elves didn’t come with olive skin, loose, dark curls and eyes dark as the bottom of a coal-sack.

  When she saw his eyes open, she leaned forward, scooting her chair closer until she was at the side of the bed and she leaned back, giving him an appraising look. If she was a nurse, she wasn’t dressed for it; the business suit with a frilly blouse under it obviously wasn’t a nurse’s uniform. As his eyes drooped closed for a moment, she cleared her throat, causing him to open them again.

  Irritated, he said, "If you’re with the police, I don’t have a statement."

  Her eyes opened wider for just a second before assuming a sleepy look. No. It wasn’t a sleepy look, but rather, something that indicated interest without commitment. But if she had sat at his bedside for any length of time, wouldn’t that seem to infer a commitment? She leaned to one side and lifted a leather, open-top briefcase to her lap. Rummaging in it for a moment, she withdrew some papers and laid them on the sheet covering his legs.

  "Mr. Hayden, I’m Marie Faustino. Among other things, I’m a lawyer who specializes in literary cases; particularly those involving copyright law. I have worked in the DA’s office and you have that experience to thank for not awakening in the Psych Ward. I smoothed the way for the police to let your foolish attempt to slide."

  His voice was raspy as he asked, "Why did you do that? I don’t know you."

  "I knocked on your door for fifteen minutes before I called the police and had them break in your door. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, you would be dead."

  Turning his head to the side, he looked out the window to avoid looking at the woman and asked, "Why do you care?"

  Shifting in her chair, Marie laid her hand on the papers she had laid on his legs and patted them, saying, "You really should look at these, Mr. Hayden. I was in the courtroom on another matter when the decision on your claim came down and I think I can help you. I took the liberty of researching the case and I believe that I can show the court that you possessed a secure copyright prior to the publication of the novel."

  Sighing, he turned his head back to look at her and said, "Then what? No publisher will touch it. That’s how this whole thing came about; I submitted the work to an agent who passed it along to a client who made a few cosmetic changes and they got it published. With a hefty advance, I might add."

  Shrugging, she said, "I can get you a reputable agent. Several of the big publishers owe him favors. He’s already agreed to talk to you."

  Knitting his brows, he asked, "So, where am I at in this?"

  Waving a hand around the room, she answered, "You’re free to leave when you are fit to care for yourself, and an agent is waiting for you. I can have you free and clear of your copyright infringement case within the week and then you will be on your way. The book is already a bestseller and with the money that the court will award you, there’s nothing to keep you from writing another bestseller."

  "And, what do you get out of it?"

  Smiling, she said, "My fee is reasonable and I think I can act as your manager. Better than you can, anyway."

  Coloring, he said, "And of course, you’ll charge me for your services."

  "A nominal fee. I also want something else from you."

  "What?"

  She crossed her legs, one over the other and the upper leg began to swing at the knee. Rod saw that her ankle was trim and nicely turned, much like the calf and knee above it. The suit she wore was attractive, and gave a hint of what lay beneath. He found himself liking Marie despite her unconventional sales technique.

  "The pleasure of your company at dinner when you leave the hospital. I think we can make a very good team, Mr. Hayden."

  "Why are you doing this? I mean, I’m nothing to you. Why go out of your way to help someone you don’t know?"

  Her smile faltered a moment and he saw a puzzled, questioning look in her eyes before her mask was back in place and she said, "I don’t know. There was something about you when I saw you in court the other day that just appealed to me. Maybe I thought you were being pushed around by someone who could afford the best lawyers while you could only afford a kid with the ink barely dry on his degree. I didn’t like the idea of you being taken advantage of."

  Shaking his head, he said, "I don’t know, Miss Faustino. I feel like I owe you something, but I don’t know what, or why."

  Rising, she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Her scent came to him then and he wondered where he had smelled it before. It smelled something like an ocean breeze with hints of cinnamon and green, earthy, growing things. It smelled better than it sounded in his head, and he liked the feel of her lips on his skin. He found himself wanting it to continue, like a piece of music that played over and over in his head.

  Back to Table of Contents

  If Shadows had Voices

  Pulling a ‘run-book’ from the case beside the console, he grumped at having to work nights. The work wasn’t hard, and the pay was good, but the lack of a social life was wearing on him. Since his divorce, he had been forced to use vacation time and weekends, those that he didn’t work, to meet women. The few sexual encounters he had since the divorce had been enjoyable, but fruitless as it regarded finding someone to spend his life with.

  As he opened the book to the page detailing the inputs, outputs and printed production of the job he had just started, an alarm popped up on the console screen and he read it with frustration. Drive 480 had a bad tape on it and the job would have to be re-run. Cancelling the job, he dumped the printer output in the queue and deleted it as he made note of the time on the log; just after three o’clock. As he worked, he thought he saw someone standing by the offending drive and turned his head to see no one there.

  Being a computer operation, the machine room was kept at a tightly controlled sixty-eight degrees and fifty percent humidity. Tonight, the room seemed uncommonly cold and he shivered a little as gooseflesh rose on his arms, even under the long sleeves of his shirt. The sensation made him think of the temps and humidity outside when he came to work and he didn’t relish going back out into it when his shift was over. The thermometer had hovered near ninety-five degrees all night long and there was so much humidity that it smelled like rain outside, even though there was no front anywhere near the area.

  Walking to the tape-drive, he could swear that he saw his breath steam in front of him and he stopped a moment to blow an experimental breath. Nope. No foggy breath. But it still felt damned cold in here! He wondered if he was coming down with a summer cold or something. His kids weren’t sick, and it had been nearly two weeks since he had seen them, anyway. He grimaced at that thought; he loved his kids, but he needed to get laid in the worst way. Soon. Robert knew he could always take the kids over to his parents’ house and they would be glad to keep them overnight for him. But with the luck he had at finding someone to spend time with, he would just feel guilty at being away from them and coming away with little or nothing to show for it.

  His mind went to a girl he had known in high school; Alicia. She had been a challenge and once she had decided to enjoy sex with him, had entered into it whole-heartedly. The way she had berated him all the while he was kissing her and trying out all his best high school foreplay moves had angered him. But it was a c
old anger and he hadn’t forced her or anything, just put his best effort into the endeavor. The memory of how she had called him stupid as he was interlocking their bodies still sent chills up and down his spine. It wasn’t that he craved, or even liked verbal abuse during sex, but that she had offered a challenge that he had accepted and he had been victorious.

  Looking back on the encounter, he knew that he had handled her badly. She was pretty and smart in a prickly sort of way, and he knew that she had loved him at least a little. The way she had cried out during her orgasm and held onto him afterwards had been a sure sign. Instead of asking her to ‘go steady’, he had moved on to another girl and been a complete jerk where Alicia had been concerned. Sighing, he reflected that the games teenagers play with each other are cruel, even when they didn’t mean to be. The way he had treated her was a regret that he had carried with him ever since and there was no way to make amends. She had died in a car wreck a few years later and any chance he had ever had was gone forever.

  Robert ejected the tape from Drive 480 and dropped it on the stack of bad tapes to be examined later. Since this was the third tape tonight, he removed the surplus tapes from the stacker and moved them to another drive. He stuck the three tapes from Drive 480 into another drive and moved back to the console. He initiated a scan on the tapes and returned to preparing the job that had cancelled for a re-run. The scans on the ostensibly bad tapes ended as he was setting up the job and he walked back to the console and read the results of the tests, scratching his head as he puzzled over them. The tapes had passed the scans with no bad spots on the tape and nothing wrong with the loading mechanisms. Picking up the logbook, he noted that Drive 480 needed service from the F.E. in the morning and detached it from the system. With it out of the Drive rotation, there would be no more jobs cancelled because of it.

  A flicker in the corner of his eye, as of someone walking past the bank of tape drives made him raise his head and he was sure he saw something reflected in the safety mirror attached to the corner near the door into the tape library. Rising, he walked quickly to the door to the library and leaned around it to see who was in the library. Seeing no one, he paused for a moment at the mirror, gazing at himself for just a second and felt the flesh on his arms and neck crawl.

  Alicia stood just behind him, as she had been the last time he had seen her in school. She hadn’t aged a day and still appeared to be no more than eighteen years old. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and her bangs hung to her eyebrows, giving her a peek-a-boo look. Her luscious, full lips pouted at him as she pantomimed a kiss and he spun around to find no one behind him. Turning back, he almost tripped over his own feet and barely caught himself with one hand on the cartload of tapes they kept beside the door. His eyes went to the mirror and he saw a faint shadow of someone coming back into focus. As the image achieved coherency, he saw again Alicia’s face and form. Trembling, he reached out to the mirror and felt a mild static shock. That wasn’t possible; glass wasn’t a conductor. But was the mirror glass? Being a safety mirror, it might be made of steel or some reflective plastic. He didn’t think it was plastic; Mylar didn’t hold a good enough reflective surface to give the quality of image that this mirror did.

  Rapping on the mirror with a knuckle, he jumped back. He had heard the metallic ring of steel, but had also heard a voice. Alicia’s voice. Tentatively placing his hand, palm first, against the mirror, he was able to hear her whispers clearly.

  "Ahh, Rob. You’re my unfinished business."

  Pulling his hand away, he held it to his body as though it had been burned and found himself clutching at it with his other hand. Dropping it, he backed away from the mirror, beads of sweat forming on his brow, though the room was as cold as usual. Turning, he ran for the door and barely hesitated as the motion sensor detected his movement and opened the door. Banging a shoulder painfully against the edge of the glass door, he darted into the break area and stared at his co-workers as they stared back at him. Their partially eaten lunches lay before them and they froze in the acts of reaching for drinks, or lifting sandwiches to their mouths. One had a cigarette in his hand and had already finished his lunch. He was preparing to rise and go outside for a smoke when Robert burst through the door.

  Moving quickly to his locker, he removed his uneaten lunch from it and slammed the door, neglecting to lock it. Turning quickly despite their uttered questions, he ran for the door leading to the elevators, casting a reply behind him.

  "I’m sick! Going home!"

  His supervisor, who had been sitting with the rest, holding forth on the volatility of the stock market, rose and followed him into the hall. He caught up with Robert just as the elevator door opened. Catching at Robert’s arm as he stepped in the car, he asked, "What’s the matter?"

  Spooked, Robert blurted out, "That place is haunted, Donald!"

  "Ohh! You’re making a mountain out of a molehill! We’ve all seen things up here that shouldn’t be here! Come on back. You’ll settle down with the rest of us back in there."

  Shaking his head and pulling his arm loose from Donald’s grasp, Robert said, "I’ve got to go someplace where I can be alone. You don’t understand, Donald. It was someone that I know!"

  Ever the stickler for accurate paperwork, Donald said, "Okay. I’ll put you down for sick-time tonight, but anything more than that will have to be vacation time."

  Robert knew that Donald was being incredibly lenient with him; allowing sick-time when he wasn’t sick, but nonetheless felt annoyed at his supervisor’s attitude. Pushing the button for the first floor, he stepped back and watched his supervisor disappear behind the stainless steel doors as they slid shut. He leaned against the rear wall of the elevator car and closed his eyes for just a moment as the car started to move. When he opened them, Alicia’s image appeared in the dim, reflective surface of the steel doors. She was standing next to him and he started, jumping to the side to escape her.

  Her whispered voice said, "Don’t worry, Rob. I won’t ever hurt you."

  Cowering against the side of the elevator, he lifted his eyes to the indicator lights above the door and saw that the car was nearly at the first floor. Stepping forward, he leaned on the doors, sliding through the gap between them as they opened, not waiting for them to fully open. The security guard at the desk lifted his head from the magazine he was using to keep himself awake as Robert hurried to the secure door and pushed the button to release the mag-lock.

  Out on the street, Robert ran for the parking lot and only stopped when he reached his car. Fumbling with his keys, he unlocked the door and slid into the seat gratefully. He locked the door behind him and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, closing his eyes. After he had calmed down a little, he slipped the ignition key into the lock and turned the engine over. When it caught, he looked into the rearview mirror preparatory to backing out of the parking space and jumped as he saw Alicia’s image sitting in the backseat.

  Almost screaming at the mirror, he cried, "What do you want from me?!"

  Her whisper came to him as clearly as if she actually sat in the seat behind him.

  "I love you, Rob. I’ve always loved you. It took a long time for me to figure out what my unfinished business was, and you’re it. I’ll be better for you than your wife was. You need me in your life."

  Shaking his head, he put the car back into ‘park’ and said, "Alicia, you’re dead! You’ve been dead almost thirty years. How can you possibly be in my life? Why can’t you just leave me alone and go into the light, or whatever it is dead people do?"

  Her image faded and he felt that maybe he had gotten through to her. Sighing, he backed out of his parking space and drove toward the exit. Pulling out onto the street, he began to calm down, though his eyes darted to the rearview mirror every few seconds. He was just beginning to feel somewhat normal when he slowed to a stop at an intersection on Waverly Drive. His hand went to the small ledge on the dashboard just in front of the instrument panel for the pack of cigaret
tes he kept there and his car was rocked in the wash from a passing car in the next lane.

  The car ran the red light and was struck broadside by a trash-truck. He had looked up as the car sped past his and saw what appeared to be a girl’s head, bowed over something before her as she drove into the intersection. The trash-truck smashed in the passenger side of the small car, rolling it over onto its side, then its top, amid a spray of sparks, broken glass and the sound of rending metal. One of the men riding on the rear of the truck was thrown clear and rolled over and over on the pavement.

  Robert threw his car into ‘park’ and pushed the button that controlled the emergency flashers. Only then did he exit the car and, checking for traffic, run toward the stricken man lying on the pavement. His hand slid his cell phone from his pocket and he dialed 911 as he bent over the man. He heard curses and moans from the occupants of the truck and rested a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  The man rolled to his side and began cursing, stretching a hand down to his knee and cupping it.

  "Shit! I think I scraped all the damn skin off my knee, Man!"

  "Just lie still until the ambulance gets here. They’ll have to check you out before you can get up."

  "Fuck that, Man! I ain’t got no insurance. I can’t afford no ride to the fuckin’ hospital."

  Grasping the man’s shoulder to keep him down, Robert said, "Relax. You were on the job. The City will pay for the ride if you’re hurt."

  The man relented and lay back down, stretching out his legs gingerly. As the man worked the joints to determine if there were any broken bones, Robert rose and hurried toward the two vehicles. A man in dirty coveralls descended from the cab, followed by another man dressed the same, but who seemed a little cleaner. The first was tall and fat, while the second was short and fat. The taller man, who had gotten out of the driver’s seat, limped toward the little car, its engine steaming while little wisps of smoke or steam rose from it. He turned his head toward Robert as he became aware of him and cursed.