The End Is Her

by H. Claire Taylor

  The foggy dusk light played tricks on her eyes so she couldn’t quite see the extent of his injuries until she was right up close.

  “Oh, holy fucking hell.” She jerked her head back and averted her eyes. That was not the way his knee was supposed to bend, and the arm that had held the gun was MIA from the elbow down. “I can’t do this,” she mumbled. “He’ll be in complete agony if I bring him back.”

  She heard the sirens in the distance. Okay. That was good. She’d have to time this perfectly, though. And still, would it work? She couldn’t keep her mind from jumping back to the bullet-riddled man on her front driveway back in Mooretown.

  The flashing lights turned onto the street, and she shut her eyes.

  Fuck you for wanting to kill me.

  Then she let the miracle of life wash through her and into him.

  A moan like he was clearing his throat, and then the screaming began. She gritted her teeth when he gasped for air. “I forgive you.”

  There. That might work for a little bit of pain relief.

  The cops were on him in a heartbeat then, tourniquets already in hand. One pulled her up and away, and she directed him to the gun on the ground.

  She felt arms around her and knew they belonged to Chris. She turned toward him. “I’m going to kill him.”

  Chris’s brows pinched together. “What do you mean? You just saved him.”

  “No, not him. Jimmy Dean. He’s the whole reason I’m here. He’s the reason God had to kill that guy.”

  That was not, as it seemed, clarifying information for Chris. She sighed and decided to change the subject to one he could handle. “You think you could eat?”

  He didn’t skip a beat. “Yup.”

  “Still after all this?”

  “Always.”

  Jessica had passed on ketchup with her fries, but otherwise her meal went down fine. The cops had wanted to speak with each of them as witnesses but had taken a special interest in Jessica, for obvious reasons.

  She’d half expected Officer Misty McBride, the gruff woman who had responded to Jessica’s bakery twice and become fast friends with Destinee, to show up, but not this time. She didn’t recognize any of the officers, and none seemed to recognize her. But some of the other witnesses had clued them in, and by the time they’d taken her statement, boy did they have questions.

  Which meant it was an hour later before she’d been able to order her food, and she was well and truly hungry by then.

  So was poor Chris, and he inhaled his double burger before she’d hardly done more than unwrap her silver paper and poured her fries out on her tray. They weren’t as good without ketchup, but they were still better than vomiting.

  “God did that?” he said, finally taking a breath before swigging his Dr. Pepper from the clear plexiglass cup.

  “Oh yeah. But to be fair, the guy was coming to kill me.”

  “What?!”

  “Shh … calm down.”

  “Why, you afraid we’ll make a scene?”

  Their eyes met and the laughter wasn’t far behind. It was the manic variety that made her wonder if she’d lost control completely, and before long they were both in tears.

  He wiped his away and caught his breath with a “Woo …”

  She required just a little more time before she was in control again, and when she was, she tossed back a pinch of fries. “Thanks for taking me here. I think that would have happened no matter where we went, honestly.”

  “You think it was predestined?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows. It’s just a feeling.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad God’s watching out for you. ‘Bout time.”

  God sent me you, didn’t she?

  The thought surprised her. It sounded like it belonged on a greeting card, not in her mind beside the countdown clock to Doomsday. She chalked it up to the adrenaline crash.

  “Can I ask you something, Chris?”

  “Of course.”

  “Being seen together like this, people are going to assume things about us. It’s not going to, you know, cause you any problems with someone back in Philly, is it?”

  He didn’t seem to understand right away. Then, “Oh. You mean like a girlfriend?”

  She nodded.

  He tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy. “Jess. You serious?”

  She nodded again.

  “You know … I tried. Honestly. But who am I gonna date after the daughter of God? No one comes close.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t be. It’s not like I don’t have anything else to occupy my time. What about you, though?”

  “What about me?”

  “You seeing anyone?” He rattled the ice in his cup then took a sip, almost pulling off nonchalance. “Jameson or whoever?”

  “Ha!” Then she realized he was serious and maybe she should be a little more delicate about the situation. “No, no. No time for it. And Jameson is … He’s just a friend.”

  Chris relaxed visibly. “I was honestly surprised you called me for the alibi and not him.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You know, dead assassin aside, this has been a pretty good night.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, dead assassin aside, it has.”

  “It’s nice spending time with you again. I never want to go back to Mooretown, but being with you feels like home in all the right ways.”

  Oh, come on. What was she supposed to say to that?

  She figured it out in short order. “Fuck it. You wanna get out of here?”

  His eyebrows shot up as he caught her meaning. “Uh, hell yeah.”

  He gathered her trash onto his tray and was hardly out of the booth before he grabbed her hand and dragged her impatiently toward the exit.

  But when they stepped outside, their impulsive plans came to a screeching halt. The path was blocked by a fresh wave of reporters. Was this about the crash? It was a slow response if so. The police had already cleared the scene, though a few cop cars still hung around, lights flashing as the officers conversed.

  The frontrunner of the throng shouted her question as she closed in. “Jessica, any comments on the fire?”

  Chris cursed as she gripped his hand so hard she felt the bones of his knuckles grind.

  But before she could say anything else, another reporter piped up. “Miss McCloud, what do you have to say about the fire?”

  She looked at Chris, who shook his head.

  And then it all came crashing together. The whole reason for her night out. The alibi.

  She recognized one man from the TV. He had a fatherly face, not literally, in her case, and he’d always expressed a deep sense of calm when he reported remotely. She addressed her question to him. “What fire?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “No,” she said urgently. “What fire?”

  “At the bakery. It is Risen. It’s burning down.”

  Chris hauled ass across town in the F-350 to her former bakery.

  Both a thrill and white-hot rage swirled inside her. The loss she’d felt when it’d been wrested away from her hit her all over again. But this time it was laced with a subtle sense of victory. If Jessica couldn’t own it, no one should.

  “No, left!” she shouted.

  Chris took the corner quickly, and she felt the wheels of the truck leave the ground.

  “It’s faster this way,” she said, as the intimate routes of the neighborhood she no longer frequented returned to her like old neural patterns of addiction.

  She saw the glow on the horizon, and anything she’d thought she felt moments before was thrown into question. This concoction of emotions was too complex to pick out any one ingredient.

  They couldn’t get within a block of the bakery. Fire trucks clogged the street directly in front of it, and the police had put up barriers to keep everyone away. She jumped out of the truck and ran over to the edge of the closest barrier to watch.

  “’Scuse me, Officer,” Chris s
aid, waving down the closest one. She approached, her thumbs tucked into her duty belt. “Was anyone in there?”

  Jessica hadn’t even considered that possibility. Christ on a trampoline! Could Dolores have been in there? Could she be dead?

  No, don’t wish for that. She probably can’t be burned anyway.

  The officer looked Chris up and down, and Jessica didn’t miss the moment of recognition when she placed his face. “No, no one was in there.”

  A gust of wind brought the smoke billowing their direction, and Jessica felt a madness well up in her when she got a whiff of fresh-baked bread. Nothing had ever smelled so perverse.

  Her mind returned to the soft opening of the place, the party she’d thrown for everyone who’d supported her. But that was really when everything began to fall apart, wasn’t it? Quentin and Miranda had broken up. Mrs. Thomas had been there, no doubt plotting to take the place for her own before long.

  And still, she felt the loss of it acutely. Her marks were all over it, her history, her memories. They’d never managed to get her stalker’s blood stain completely out of the cement by the front door. She’d smote a man right there. Even that brought about a bit of nostalgia. Her first kill …

  But another memory floated up like hot ash toward the heavens. This wasn’t the first bakery she’d watched burn. Her food truck had burned, too.

  Things didn’t just catch fire.

  How many times would she have to watch her creations burn to the ground? How much more of this unique blend of pain would she have to endure in her life? The sense of futility, though, was what haunted her the most. She built something, and someone made it their mission to destroy it. Over and over and over. Would it happen with her church? Would she watch that go up in flames, too?

  She wouldn’t if she could put an end to the fire starter.

  Chris put his arm around her. “We should go.”

  “Jimmy did this,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “Jimmy Dean set the fire.” Fuck alliances, if this was where they got her. “He’s set all the fires. It’s time to make him pay.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  183:17:00:01 until Doomsday

  Chris picked her up at 7 a.m. sharp the next morning, and she was already waiting by the curb in front of her condo when he pulled up.

  “How’d you sleep?” he asked when she hopped in.

  “Great. Got a strong cup of coffee in me and I’m ready to murder a reverend.”

  Chris made a small squeaky sound, then said, “When you say you’re going to murder him, you don’t really mean it, right?”

  “Depends.” She turned to look him in the eyes. “Do you consider smiting murder?”

  “Okay, Jess.” Chris bowed his head and held up his hands. “I know you’re pissed. But we’ve seen this story time and again—NFL player indirectly involved in a pre-meditated murder—and it doesn’t work out well for said NFL player. I could be out for two, maybe even three whole seasons. So, if I’m going to drive you out to his house, I need you to promise you won’t kill him or smite him.”

  Well, damn. There went the revenge fantasies that had kept her hot and bothered all night. But he had a point. She could obviously get away with smiting someone, but Chris might not be so lucky. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll try not to smite him. Promise.”

  “You promise you’ll try not to or you promise you won’t?”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

  He shook his head.

  She knew she should have called her mom instead of Chris. Destinee wouldn’t put all these ridiculous restraints on her. “Fine, fine. I promise not to smite him.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  “But I will tear him a new one verbally.”

  “I’d expect nothing less. You got the address?”

  Jimmy’s house was out in Westlake, which Jessica knew meant it would be annoyingly large and expensive. But it wasn’t until they pulled off a public road and onto his private drive that she began to think she’d underestimated the annoyingness of it.

  They rounded a corner, Chris’s F-350 announcing itself whether it meant to or not, and there it was. The Villa of Jimmy Fucking Dean.

  “I didn’t think it was possible to hate him more,” Jessica said. “And yet, here I am.” Never mind that both she and Chris could probably afford something similar at this point. She knew neither of them ever would.

  The mansion sat atop a hill that made it look like it was part of the sky. If the entire estate had been made of uncut cocaine, it would have been less brazen in its design. Tall white marble columns on either side of the paved drive held up an arch that had SUMUS OMNES PORCOS engraved in fake Roman script so that the “U”s were both “V”s. That detail made her hate him a little more.

  The driveway curved round, and in the center of the bend was a marble fountain that depicted Jimmy Dean holding a baby skyward while a fat hog looked on from below.

  And so it was that she hated him even more than a moment before.

  It was her. She was sure. Jimmy had a fountain that included her as a baby. “I’m for sure not leaving here without smiting that,” she said, and Chris only nodded his consent silently.

  “Where should I park?”

  “On the lawn.”

  He shot her a quick glance and a sliver of a grin peeked through before he pulled the truck onto the perfectly manicured lawn and killed the engine.

  The sun was only just up, and it shone directly onto the face of the mansion, making the whole thing glow with an aggravating sense of superiority.

  Jessica’s heart raced. She didn’t exactly know what she was going to do from here. Once her smiting fantasies had kicked in the night before, they hadn’t let up. But if that was off the table, what was her game plan?

  She didn’t have one, but too late to back out now.

  She climbed down from the truck, wondering if she could isolate the smite. Maybe just blast off one of Jimmy’s hands. Smite that dick right off him. He couldn’t be putting it to any good use, anyway.

  Chris had to jog to catch up with her on her path toward the front door.

  DO NOT SMITE HIM.

  I’m not planning on it.

  LIKE HELL YOU’RE NOT.

  Seriously. I’m not planning on—

  THOU SHALT NOT SMITE JIMMY DEAN.

  “Dammit!”

  SEE? IF YOU WEREN’T PLANNING ON IT, YOU WOULDN’T BE UPSET.

  Can I smite him just a little?

  NO. HIS PART ISN’T DONE YET.

  She found herself stumped when she reached the door and wasn’t sure of the proper way to announce herself. Pounding on the door like she was the police sounded nice, but there was that damn boar’s head knocker that threw her off. And was this place so big he might not hear her? She went with the doorbell instead and immediately regretted it when it emitted a deep, choral “soo-ie!”

  Had she descended into Hell without realizing it?

  She heard locks turning and steadied herself for the attack, but when the door opened, she wondered if there’d been some mistake.

  A woman with sex-tousled hair wearing a white silk robe with red embroidery around the edges stared back at them from the other side of the threshold.

  Jessica had almost forgotten. Jimmy Dean was engaged, wasn’t he?

  The woman’s mouth fell open then quickly bent into a smile. “Jessica McCloud?” She turned toward Chris. “And you must be Chris Riley, the sports player.” She held out her hand. “Emily. The reverend’s fiancée.”

  Jessica exchanged a small glance with Chris before shaking Emily’s hand quickly, like it was contaminated. “We’re looking for Jimmy.”

  “Of course you are. I didn’t know he was expecting you.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Well, that’s fine. You’re practically family.” She stepped back, allowing them past. “Come on in. He’s breakfasting in the conservatory.”

  Jessica felt
that morning’s coffee try to make an esophageal escape at the phrase, “breakfasting in the conservatory,” but she swallowed it down and stepped into Hell’s foyer. Emily padded barefoot along the white marble floors past an ungodly number of highly stylized photos and painted portraits of Jimmy that lined the walls.

  Jessica regretted not tracking in more dirt on her shoes.

  The conservatory, it turned out, was on the far side of the residence. Emily led them to the entrance of a sunlit room where a glass wall provided a clear view of the lake. Jimmy Dean wore a robe that matched his bride-to-be’s and he hunched over a bowl of something hot, reading the paper. He looked up when Emily announced them. “You have guests, light of my life.”

  A flash of confusion so brief Jessica thought she’d imagined it, and then he straightened up, dropped his spoon, and said, “Ah! Jessica! And Christopher, too! What a surprise! Come in, come in. I’ll have Juanita bring you some porridge, if you’d like. It’s ancient grain, only farmed in a small valley in present day Iraq, but the seeds are descended from those of the original fertile crescent.”

  “I’d rather eat my own shit,” Jessica said before cringing slightly at the thought. It wasn’t as badass of a retort as she’d imagined. Pretty weird, actually. But too late now. “Jimmy, we need to talk.” She stepped forward, and Jimmy nodded to Emily. “You won’t want to see this, dear. I might have to be blunt with her. Not all women know their place like you do.”

  “Yeah,” Jessica said, “Lady Stockholm Syndrome is a real role model.”

  Jimmy stood from his chair as Jessica continued stalking toward him on the far side of the overlong table. “You don’t seem happy, Jessica. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “You set fire to the bakery last night.”

  He laughed. “Of course I didn’t. You think I would do something like that myself? Ha! Look around you? I could pay someone to carry me from room to room if I wanted.”

  “I think you like setting fires,” she said, pausing when she was only a few feet from him. “I think you would do it yourself for the sheer pleasure of it.”

  He blinked at her and something in his expression cleared. When he spoke again, his voice was devoid of the puckish playfulness. “I thought you’d be happy to see that place burn. It’s owned by the Devil. It was no good to either of us. She was tarnishing your brand.”