Alphabet Soup

1

            Donald Moore had never been the kind of man who was capable of maintaining healthy romantic relationships. It wasn’t that he was crass or unfaithful, and it wasn’t even that he would prefer playing the field over keeping third base all season; it was merely that he couldn’t lie.

            Magazines like Cosmopolitan or Glamour or Allure invariably claim that honesty is one of the most vital aspects of a good relationship, but that argument—like any—has its issues. One major flaw is that pure, unadulterated honesty is so rare that it may well be considered a symptom of a mental disease in this day and age. Most people define honesty rather loosely and subjectively, and the rationalizations behind white lies, truth-bending, fact-omissions, and semantic-manipulations muddy the Merriam-Webster waters and make a true, universal definition of honesty almost impossible to achieve. Not to mention, the people who actually display genuine honesty are so rare that they are more likely to die alone on a planet of seven billion inhabitants than to actually meet a compatible mate who is also genuinely honest. This brings into question the second major flaw with women’s claims that they value honesty above all else: real honesty from only one party in a relationship is as useless and irrelevant as the sugar coat encapsulating an anti-viral pill. The final and perhaps most damning flaw of the honesty plea is that the women who write and take to heart the articles making these claims quite frankly don’t know what they want in a relationship. These are primarily superficial young waitresses and actresses and models with soft spots for hard heads and big muscles, but these characteristics are typically possessed by egotistic narcissists who will cheat and lie and laugh about it when the shaky relationship finally crumbles. The simple fact is that most individuals seeking relationships are neurotic and damaged and unsure of what they want. They resent being used and cheated in the past, and they truly believe that honesty is all it takes to maintain a healthy relationship.

            Donnie, however, knows better than anyone that this is all a load of malarkey. Women who pine for honesty have never been faced with pure, unapologetic truths in their everyday lives. Real honesty is shocking and unyielding and raw, and in the end it always breeds resentment founded upon words that can never be taken back. Not so long as the truth is to be maintained, that is.

            Now, gazing contemplatively at the floor and caressing the hand of his lover of four years, Donnie never would guess it would be one petty joke from a stranger that would ultimately dismantle everything he had so painstakingly created.

2

            Loud pop music permeated the vibrant air of Walton’s, equal part restaurant, bar, and nightclub. Because Walton apparently couldn’t decide what sort of establishment he was running (hence the incomplete, non-descriptive name), the scene attracted individuals of all ages; middle-aged biker friends drank ale and loudly played pool in the back, older women drank margaritas and chatted about their cribbage buddies in the restaurant-style booths, and young college students flocked around the bar and travelled in and out of the dark doorway to the dance room.

            To Naomi the entire place seemed far less attractive than it had ten years ago when she spent each free evening here during her last two semesters of college. She and Donald had been fast friends at the time—the kind of friends who spend every weekend together throughout college, laugh uproariously together at how much of those weekends neither can recall, and then graduate and move on with their lives, rarely (if ever) keeping in touch. But Naomi and Donald had gotten lucky. Nearly five years after graduating and parting ways as nonchalantly as any pair of friends who would see each other in the coming days, they had found themselves simultaneously feeling nostalgic and visiting that old hangout near their college town. Either five years wiser or five years more desperate, the couple had exchanged enthusiastic greetings, drank and caught up for hours, and spent the night making mutually well-received love nearly ten years in the making. The rest came naturally and rapidly.

            When Don voiced in his blunt, unashamed way his opinion that Walton’s just wasn’t what it used to be, Naomi smiled and admitted her agreement, but the place had had such significance to them both, so it seemed a reasonable venue to spend their fourth anniversary.

            She excused herself to visit the restroom, still smiling at Don’s quirky frankness, a quality she’d readily grown to love in him. He still claimed he feared she would grow to resent it like all his other girlfriends, and, sure, there were times when it was obnoxious and unnecessary, but Don was a decent enough man that always saying what was on his mind wouldn’t get him into irredeemable trouble. And the two shared enough common interests to find themselves in disagreement remarkably seldom. He simply couldn’t pretend. And if he did, he couldn’t for long. Don just couldn’t admit to liking her new dress if he truly didn’t like it, but he had a charismatic way of rationalizing his claims and making them seem less harsh. There were plenty of other dresses he liked. And if she liked it, wasn’t that all that mattered? Besides, there were far worse qualities for a man to have . . .

            Naomi entered the restroom still smiling about her life. Sure, this wasn’t a fancy five-star restaurant with maudlin violinists and candles on every table for their anniversary, but this satisfied her and Don’s shared plain interests. Right now, she was happy. Later there would be fights and blights and sleepless nights; later she would dwell on Donnie’s plain admissions, question his desires, and seethe unfairly over things he’d never done and would never do; later his harmless truths wouldn’t seem so harmless, and they would ultimately come to unravel the very foundation of their love; later there would be days when she felt okay at best and days when she even thought she might make it through . . . But right now, she was happy.

3

            Three years after graduating with a degree in secondary education, Jessica Langevin was still frequenting nightclubs three nights a week and working as a waitress the other four. Her degree would still be good in a couple years. And getting a teaching job wasn’t easy with the state of the economy. Not to mention, she would be young only once, and giving up this rambunctious lifestyle—which was more than supported by tips for her good looks and winning smile—was simply too hard to do this soon.

            Walton’s was far more tame than some of the clubs she’d been to closer to the heart of Knoxville. And Knoxville clubs didn’t hold a candle to those in Panama City or Myrtle Beach, but Spring Break lost all meaning once you were out of school for good. Maybe getting back in on the other side of the public education pool wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But no employers would be apt take seriously a teacher who utilized Spring Breaks for such frivolities. For tonight, however, Walton’s would be perfect. She was getting tired of half-recalled one-night-stands and panic-stricken pregnancy tests anyway. Tonight she just wanted to hang out, get giddy, and screw with some of the poor weirdoes who frequented this place.

            Jessica didn’t bother pretending to listen as her girlfriends argued about Krista’s clingy boyfriend who wouldn’t stop texting her and let her enjoy a single night out. She turned her back to the groups of older men sitting in the bar area and bent forward to retrieve her cell phone from within her knee-high leather boots. Turning back around and leaning against the bar, she pretended to type messages on her phone as she glanced over the top of it and searched to catch any guy (or girl) who may have been sneaking a peek at her tight, high-riding skirt.

            Who was she kidding? None of these old perverts were into girls with degrees. She was only twenty-four, but this game was already losing its luster. These clothes hardly even fit her anymore, and she felt out of place and self-conscious not for the first time this week. She was adopting this persona fewer and fewer nights each month.

            But here was one looking after all! He must have bought her text-messaging rouse, because he seemed to be still staring unabashedly at her crotch even as she watched.

            The man sat stock-still as if in a daze with her long, tan legs as his apparent date walked toward the restroom wearing a blouse that was far too fancy to be worn to dinner in this establishment. A lock of his moppy hair fell across his forehead, but he made no move to brush it back. He was only five or ten years older than she felt, so he wasn’t as ideal a target as some of these other old trolls, but Jessica figured her clock was only moving forward. The game wouldn’t be as easy as usual, but she thought she could work something out.

            She dropped her phone tantalizingly into her low-cut top and turned back toward her friends to interrupt their rants and admonitions. “Do y’all see that guy over there?”

            “The one with the mangy hair staring at your ass right now?” Rebecca asked.

            Jessica laughed and looked coyly back over her shoulder. “He ain’t that mangy,” she said, feeling a spark of pity so fleeting she may have mistaken it for a muscle twitch. The girls scoffed, and Jessica took Krista’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go fuck with him to take your mind off Steven.”

             

4

            Andrew Babbitt entered Walton’s at half past seven on a muggy June Friday. It was late enough to sustain his hopes of meeting a woman and early enough to ensure that the packs of hood-rats wouldn’t be out and about yet. At a place like Walton’s, it was always a safe bet that you wouldn’t find yourself waking up next to anyone too crazy the next morning.

            Heavily synthesized music with overly complicated vocals was blaring out of the speakers, and a deep, rhythmic thumping from the dark dance room overlaid the tune of the song playing in the bar area. Andrew had missed the bandwagon for this music by about half a generation. He wasn’t a hardcore, guitar-solo-worshipping child of the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s, but he preferred music made by real instruments. This stuff all sounded the same.

            Despite the unfavorable soundtrack to the night, Drew had a pretty good feeling about tonight. A moppy-haired man at a nearby table was arguing with his girlfriend, insisting that he “would never do that” to her, quite obviously struggling not to raise his voice; a burly man with a beard as big as his biceps was glowering angrily at the loud-mouthed drunk who was making a scene out of winning the pool game; a couple of old cougars straight from the casting rooms of a Sex and the City sequel were drinking margaritas and discussing what a disgrace their daughters-in-law were; yet through all this negativity and blooming animosity there was a girl at the bar. The girl at the bar.

            Drew had been focusing far too much on his work lately, and his social and romantic lives were suffering. Slowly trudging toward a stress-induced cyclothymia, he had awoken with the determination to turn things around this weekend. A good girlfriend could help turn things around. A good relationship would be just the thing he needed to add a sense of normalcy to his life and break the monotony in which he’d been residing for so long.

            The girl had unnaturally pin-straight hair just past her shoulders, a contrived but comely white smile, and ample breasts that were daring every man in the room to snap a furtive picture with his cellphone; her legs weren’t very well concealed either, and Drew thought that, without the mere inches of skirt impeding them, she would surely be able to wrap them twice around his head. The only contradiction to this demeanor was subtle, but Drew was sharp enough to catch it and be drawn to her despite her whorish façade. Her eyes, even from all the way across the bar, told a very different story. They were sultry, knowing eyes. Like the eyes of an owl. Sharp and astute, the girl’s gaze knew no compromise. Her eyes knew what they wanted, even if she herself did not. Eyes that said she would spot her prey and take it.

            Her eyes alone told Drew that she wasn’t where she wanted to be. On some level she must have known this. Despite the way she was dressed and the way she was animatedly laughing with her friends about some crazy shit she’d just pulled, her eyes said that she had a level head on her shoulders. Despite the fact that she was probably ten years too young for Drew, her eyes said that not too deep inside this shell of a college-aged biddy was a mature, self-reliant woman with a remarkable figure just waiting to settle down with the right man.

            Those eyes glanced up and caught Drew’s own directly, and in that moment he knew that she would be a challenge, but that challenge would be welcome. He would have her . . . had to have her.

5

            A middle-aged man walked into a bar called Wax and Wix and Candlestix in Newark, located just off the New Jersey Turnpike. More commonly referred to as “Whacks” by the heterosexual community, the bar had three bright red neon X’s in its otherwise blue name on the sign over the door, promising a good time for any gay man who ventured into this semi-seedy establishment that stayed open through the night seven days a week. And that’s precisely what Scott was looking for. A fair conversationalist turned triple-x by sunup.

            He was relieved instantly upon hearing that the music playing was not quite as stereotypical as some other gay clubs he’d been in. Sure, grimy techno beats with heavy bass that was choreographed perfectly with the lights on the dance floor is precisely what one might expect to hear in a place like this, but at least it wasn’t Abba or Lady Gaga or some shit.

            Scott picked out a group of nice looking young men who were conversing at the bar rather than grinding upon each other on the dance floor. While his conservative family and vicious schoolmates of yore may have sworn otherwise, Scott had never been one to dance.

            He sat down next to the kids at the bar and smiled in greeting at the blonde-haired boy beside him.

            “Well, hello,” the kid said, extending his soft hand to be shaken, “Adam Walker.”

            The guys were all college-age and most likely in college to be hanging out at a place like this, and Scott suddenly felt self-conscious of his age despite how young his long, straight hair and clean-shaven face may make him appear. He lightly shook Adam’s hand nonetheless. “Scott Thompson,” he replied with a lisp he had had since middle school. He would forever curse his parents for giving such a cruel name to a gay child.

            Adam must have understood. All four boys around him smiled, and he said, not unkindly, “That sure is a gay name.”

            The guys were obviously being friendly and warm, and Adam was clearly speaking in jest, but Scott’s familiar rage flared up inside him, and he felt sure his face flushed as his skin increased in temperature dramatically. Of course these kids were in college. Probably some liberal school nearby where gay was okay. They clearly hadn’t shared the same childhood that Scott had experienced nearly a whole generation before. These days it was hip to be homosexual.

            Let it go, Scott thought. You can fuck the sassiness right out of that mouth later if you play your cards right. He forced a smile, but it must have been see-through. Adam touched his shoulder and apologized, assuring Scott that he was only kidding around. “Let me buy you a drink to call it even.”

            “It’ll take a bit more than a drink to even us out,” Scott ventured. These guys were clearly into him, and he didn’t care that they had just met two minutes ago. An opening was an opening.

            Adam chuckled coyly as he beckoned the bartender. “What did you have in mind?”

            “Anything to take my mind off reality. Daddy just died, and I’ve been dwelling way too much on my past lately.”

            “I think I know just what you need.”

            Four hours later Scott lay beneath the stranger’s sheets covered in sweat and out of breath after the second round of much-needed writhing. Adam had shown him an entire cabinet filled with prescription (and likely some non-prescription, non-over-the-counter) medications. In the end they had decided on a tiny pink tablet, and boy, did it do the trick! For such a tiny pill, it certainly packed a punch. They had done every position Scott had ever known and more in a span of nearly two hours, and they both came harder than Scott had in years. Now, despite his lack of oxygen and skyrocketed blood pressure, he felt that he could easily run a marathon or at least go another three rounds, but Adam seemed to be calming down for the night. He must have had a tolerance for drugs like this.

            Scott’s pupils were quivering against the upper limit of their possible size; his deep brown irises were almost nonexistent, and he could see everything in the dark bedroom with perfect clarity. He had too much energy to just let Adam fall asleep now. He slapped the drowsy figure sharply upon the chest. “Adam!”

            “What the fuck?” Adam asked in shock, drawing his arms in against his glistening torso.

            Scott climbed on top and felt Adam’s shriveling penis between his legs. “I want to thank you for being so kind to me tonight.”

            Adam tried to roll over and push Scott off of him, but he was too groggy. “It’s fine. But I’m exhausted now. I can’t go again tonight.”

            Suddenly Scott’s entire body was convulsing. Rage and adrenaline and energy filled his tissues, and he slammed both his fists down upon Adam’s guarded chest. “Get hard!” he screamed. His soft, feminine voice sounded bizarre with such anger beneath it. “Get it the fuck up!” He reached between Adam’s legs, grabbed his limp tool, and harshly began tugging and pulling on it.           

            Adam’s eyes opened fully again, and he finally started showing signs of fear. This was a little rough even for sexual roughhousing.

Good. Let the fear come. Let it come just as Scott’s had come all those times at the hands of his father. The hands of his aunts and uncles when his father had let them come over just to screw with him. The hands of the countless bullies in grammar school, middle school, high school, the two years of college before he finally dropped out. Let his hands evoke the same fear that he had felt when his freshman roommates dragged him out of the shower, duct taped his arms and legs, and left him nude in the freezing campus courtyard in January.  

            “Get off me,” Adam said sternly. “It’s time for you go home.”

            Scott interrupted this by forcefully slamming his bony elbow into the center of Adam’s face, instantly drawing profuse blood and a sharp shriek. He grabbed the boy’s ears, pulled his entire body into a sitting position, and slammed the back of his head against the wall once, twice, three times. Adam’s screams stopped on the third strike, and his body went limp. Scott twisted his shoulders to roll the body over onto its stomach. Still throbbing, he entered Adam, who groaned sleepily, and reached around to grab the front of his blood-soaked face.

            Thrusting forcefully in and out of Adam, Scott yelled triumphantly at the top of his lungs, likely waking multiple neighbors in the surrounding apartments, but he didn’t care. His fingers prodded unceremoniously into Adam’s semi-conscious eye sockets, his nostrils, his mouth. He pulled at the loose skin of Adam’s lips until he felt the tissue ripping and tearing from the gums. His fingers hooked into Adam’s nose, and he pulled the head back as far as the spine would allow. He ripped clumps of hair effortlessly from Adam’s scalp. He simultaneously mutilated Adam’s face and backside until the boy slipped fully out of consciousness and finally out of the realm of life. When Adam’s weak struggling and breathing stopped for good, Scott came again, this time harder than ever before.

            He leapt out of the bed and threw the ceramic lamp against the wall across the room. It gave a satisfying shatter and sprayed parts of all sizes along the floor. Now he grasped the heavy bedside table and hurled it as far and hard as he could. It crashed across the floor and spilled the drawers and contents everywhere.  But still Scott’s heart pounded huge quantities of blood into his head and dick.

            He jumped back into the bed and wrapped his fingers in the corpse’s beautiful blonde hair. This time he rolled the body over before penetrating it. As he pulled the legs over his shoulders and thrust himself inside, he pounded his fist into the face of the twink that was. He pounded again and again into the mouth until the sharp teeth first drew blood from his own fists and then crumbled and popped from their sockets.

            After he climaxed again, Scott still had two loads and two more rounds in him before he slipped away silently in the night.

6

            Donald’s gaze followed Naomi as she walked toward the restroom while some pop singer who’d had as many domestic assaults as singles was singing about S and M. His eyes froze on a group of younger women gathered around the bar. One was bending over with no self-consciousness to retrieve a cellphone from her gaudy boots. She must know that her too-tight skirt revealed an obvious outline of her thong underwear beneath.

            In his prime Don would have been drooling from more than one orifice at the sight of this goddess in his vicinity. Ten years ago this girl would have seemed as incredible as she thought she looked right now, but now she just looked like a gross, sad waster, a clone of her peers who would never amount to anything outside of perfecting the art of fellatio. She looked like someone easy trying way too hard to look easy. What Don never understood during his own college years was that the easy girls are actually the hardest. It was nearly too late in the game when he discovered that easy girls have droves of men after them, and the odds of any given individual getting lucky were so greatly diminished that one was far better off spending his time pursuing shy, sheltered, nerdy, and—surprisingly—Christian girls. The notches on Don’s bedpost doubled and then tripled in a single year after this counter-intuitive revelation.

            But he’d had his fun, and now he was done maturing. He’d settled down and was madly in love with the perfect woman. Of course, as Don had himself openly admitted multiple times, the perfect woman doesn’t exist, but Naomi was his perfect woman.

            The girl in the skirt and blouse that would make men slightly older than Don blush suddenly grabbed one of her friends and pulled her away from the bar. At once, Don’s ideas of maturity and settling vanished as quickly as his scornful disapproval of their attire, and his heart started pounding the way it had on so many occasions when he was a kid. They couldn’t be walking over to him, could they? And then there was Naomi, rounding the corner on her way back from the restroom. Surely this wasn’t really happening.

            The duo stopped at Don’s table, still hand-in-hand, and greeted him with a giggle as he stared at them expressionlessly. They timed it perfectly. Just as Namoi reentered earshot, the girl with the red skirt and black boots said, “We were wondering if you wanted to ditch your date and come have a threesome with us at our place.”

            Naomi froze, inches from her seat and stared wide-eyed not at the girls, but at Don, who was glancing back and forth among the three onlookers incredulously. A threesome? What man in his right mind would deny two beautiful, barely-legal, semi-drunk sorority sisters a threesome? Never mind their apparently atrocious personalities. In any other situation, Don may have been necessarily obligated to make this work, but right here on the spot like this? He could think of nothing to say.

            The girls simultaneously looked back at Naomi and gaped in transparent feigned surprise at her untimely arrival. What a sick, cruel joke this was. Torturing a stranger who was biologically programmed to think with his dick in situations such as this, as well as humiliating an innocent woman on her fourth anniversary. In a sinister way, it was flawless.

            Donald stammered. “Is that . . . rhetorical? I won’t even grace it with a response.” It was a pretty good save, but Don couldn’t lie forever. Naomi would grow insecure, and he would exacerbate that by admitting that of course he would have accepted the invitation were Naomi not in the equation. He loved her and would never do anything to hurt her and couldn’t fathom being unfaithful to her, but the simple fact remained that no male would deny a fantasy such as that being dropped into his lap. Sadly, in time, this rationale just wouldn’t be enough for Naomi.

            The girls backed away grinning sadistically and hurried back to their friends at the bar to laugh at the efficacy of their joke, leaving Naomi to sit uncomfortably back down with her meal that would remain unfinished.

7

            South of Trenton, New Jersey, was a small town with virtually no nightclubs, fine dining, or trendy bars. Instead there stood a decrepit tavern where dreams went to die painlessly and silently in a river of hard liquor. An untouched jukebox stood silently in one corner, and the building was filled with the sounds of quietly clinking glass, flowing taps, and sad, hushed conversation.

Quincy Robertson had rolled his wheelchair off a city bus in Trenton that morning, and ten hours later he was well met in this nameless pub with a medical student from Philadelphia.

“I grew up near here,” the kid was telling Quincy.” I watched my dad drown himself in Daniels at this place.” He paused reflectively. “Guess I learned it from him.”

The older, scraggly-haired man in the wheelchair learned that Philip Cook had grown up in Trenton, excelled in school despite the early death of his father and estrangement of his mother, and shipped out to a college in Pennsylvania as soon as he’d graduated high school. Once he’d earned a pre-medical undergraduate degree, the boy had been accepted into Drexel, where he’d signed away any hope for a social life and entered extreme poverty on account of the nationwide economic despair and lack of government loans for medical students. All this Quincy had learned in a manner of minutes as Philip downed shot after shot and spilled his guts with increasing sorrow and sincerity.

“What do you do?” Phil asked at last, after finally seeming to run out of steam on his own.

As if a nearly forty-year-old man in a wheelchair and with dirty hair and smelly, layered clothes far too stifling for the summer heat would have a profound answer to that question. “Drifter,” he rasped though slightly yellowed teeth. The boy nodded morosely. “I’m a con man,” Quincy said, laughing a bit more. There was an ironic truth to that. Philip raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Must not be very good at it.”

“Don’t let my appearance deceive you,” Quincy said, still smiling. “I live as well as I want.” Despite his tangled hair and expressionless, dusky gray eyes, he had a trustworthy air about him, but the kid still looked dubious. Quincy removed a wad of miscellaneous bills from one of his large pants pockets. “Just last week I split $500,000 with some chick after I helped rob her rich prick of a husband.”

“Then why do you just wander around like a homeless person?”

“I am a homeless person!” Quincy laughed heartily. “I don’t have to worry about settling down anywhere and getting caught. I don’t have to worry about how I look or how I act in public. I don’t have to worry about bills or debt or taxes. I have more than enough money for food and booze and travel—and the occasional prostitute,” he interjected, pointing at his useless legs. “I get to see a new city every week. From slimy shitholes like this to the lively streets of Las Vegas!”

His hoarse voice seemed on the verge of going out, yet he retrieved a packet of cigarettes and lit one, offering the rest to Phil, who refused.

“That’s quite a story,” Philip said. Quincy nodded in agreement. “Almost sounds better than the life I’ve worked so hard to obtain.”

Quincy smiled again. “Do you think you’d be happier if you were rich?”

Philip scoffed and replied, “As much as I hate to admit it, yes. Money’s really what drives everything in this country. It’s most of the reason I wanted to go to med school in the first place.”

“And do you think you’d spend less time punishing yourself in places like this if you had money right now?” Of course he would. This kid was a textbook assistant for a conman, a young, naïve, down-on-his-luck drunkard with little to lose and a great amount of money to be gained.

Philip was nodding. “Would you be willing to help me?” he asked, his voice suddenly low and confidential. His mind likely flooding with images of himself roaming the streets of Las Vegas with wads of twenty dollar bills lining his coat.

Quincy leaned forward and matched the kid’s low tone, “Do you have access to the bodies?”

An hour later the pair was riding the SEPTA toward Drexel College of Medicine in Philadelphia and discussing the insurance scam. Quincy in truth knew nothing about life insurance policies, but Philip apparently knew even less. He swallowed every assurance the conman made about medical schools having insurance policies for every student and being liable for accidents and deaths on campus. They’d take a cadaver from the school’s morgue, ensure that the teeth were removed and properly destroyed so no dental records could be obtained, and set the body somewhere on campus with a gas line that could be lit and exploded. All Philip had to do was place some of his belongings nearby and lay low long enough for his friends to miss him and the authorities to release the insurance money to his mother, who would never touch a penny of it if Quincy came through on his end.

Of course none of this was true, and the entire plot had more holes than Quincy’s underwear, but he was a professional. Selling stories was what he did, and once someone bought it, they’d go along with just about anything. Especially if they were already wasted.

“I can’t get in the morgue after hours,” Phil had said, “but my roommate’s a pathologist. I think he has a key.”

Once he had drunkenly stumbled through his apartment and secured a morgue key, the pair was home-free. They snuck into the deserted pathology department, made their way to the basement, and chose a body to pull.

“Okay,” Phil slurred, chuckling hysterically, “let’s drag the body out in the hall, then I’ll go find the files to get rid of.”

They tried to pull the cadaver tray out of its cubby hole, but Quincy was too low in his wheelchair, and the tray tilted, spilled the corpse into the man’s lap, and clattered noisily to the floor. Quincy gasped and rolled backwards into the wall, and Phillip fell to the floor in absolute hysterics. His infectious laughter got Quincy laughing drunkenly as well, although he’d had nothing to drink all day.

“Be quiet!” he tried to instruct, but his peals of laughter became just as loud and out of control as Phil’s. 

After the two finally calmed down, Quincy grabbed a scalpel off a nearby counter and said, “Teach me some anatomy.” This sent the two into another drunken giggle fit.

Phil grabbed the scalpel and prodded at the prone body’s shoulder blade. His hands shaking uncontrollably and tears streaming from his bloodshot eyes, he managed to scrape out a crater in the corpse’s gray outer layer of preserved tissue. Quincy leaned forward, laughing uproariously as Phil attempted to exclaim professorially, “And here . . . Here we have the s— . . . The subscapularis!” The two pealed laughter in the dark, eerily quiet morgue basement, and Quincy fell out of his chair and landed flat on his stomach. This alone sent Phil onto his back, screaming hysterical laughter and clutching at his abdomen.

When he calmed down slightly, he swiftly rolled the body onto its back and started hacking into its lower abdomen. This night was turning out to be so much more than Quincy could have hoped for.

“And here we see the subject’s left kidney,” Phillip exclaimed, still laughing uncontrollably as he ripped a hunk of unrecognizable tissue out of the hole he’d dug. “If we follow the ureter down . . . here . . . we can see . . .” Phil struggled to stifle a giggle at his perceived cleverness, “. . . this patient has a tiny penis!” He squealed laughter as he dropped the scalpel and folded over face-first onto the cadaver.

Quincy could scarcely breathe. He was shaking his head and hands and attempting to pull himself up onto his hands and knees. Once successful, the man picked up the scalpel and stood completely upright onto his feet, still wheezing hoarse laughter.

The rapidity with which Philip stopped laughing and stared in wide-eyed amazement at the miracle before him sent Quincy into one last fit of laughter.

“Wha—?” Phil managed.

“Come here,” the previous paraplegic said with a wicked yellow grin, “it’s time for my test.”

Philip’s shit-eating, drunken smile finally faded for good, and he struggled to back himself away, but once he reached a corner, he no longer struggled or spoke as Quincy drove the scalpel into the boy’s throat and proceeded to practice his new medical knowledge while the subject struggled to take a breath and stay conscious through his rapidly plummeting blood pressure.

8

            “Oh my God!” Becky exclaimed after Jessica and Krista stopped laughing long enough to tell the other girls what happened. “Did y’all really say that?”

            Jessica nodded, still chuckling, and looked back over her shoulder at the couple. The woman was seated and already arguing sourly with her shaggy-haired date. She had just ruined their entire evening. Part of her could still laugh at the joke the way she would have four years ago, but mostly she just felt bad for them. What was she doing here? She was too old for this nonsense. What would she have done if the guy had agreed? Then it would have been awkward for everyone, and things would have gotten a lot less entertaining in a hurry.

            “What an idiot. He probably jizzed all in his pants,” Krista chortled.

Jessica turned back to her girlfriends and looked down at her hands. Suddenly she wanted to call it a night and head home. She no longer felt like being around other people.

“Excuse me,” chimed a polite, reserved voice from behind her. The faint southern accent was nearly undetectable to Jessica, who engaged solely with phonies and die-hard Southerners who’d never travelled to any other part of the world. She turned to find a clean-cut man probably ten years older than herself. His dark hair was short and neat, combed over to one side, and he had a professional-looking short goatee that looked to be walking the line between youthful and salt-and-pepperishly distinguished. The whole group of girls was taken aback by his sudden appearance. Everyone stopped laughing and quieted expectantly.

The man extended his hand and continued looking Jessica squarely in the eyes. “Hi. I’m Andrew,” he said with a small smile. The introduction should have seemed forced and uncomfortable, but the man seemed entirely placid and at ease.

One or more of Jessica’s friends snickered behind her, and she followed suit with a short, breathy laugh. “Um . . . hi,” she responded with an interrogative inflection.

Andrew didn’t seem deterred. “May I buy you a drink?” he asked, smile never faltering.

Despite his pleasant demeanor and appearance, Jessica found herself struggling not to instinctively laugh in his face. How could someone this old have the balls to approach her and strike up a conversation.

            “You’re kidding, right?” she asked snootily.

            “Not at all,” Andrew replied, “I saw you and thought you looked interesting, so I’d like to buy you a drink if you don’t mind.”

            Jessica couldn’t bear to turn back around and face her friends right now, but she had to stop looking into this guy’s piercing green eyes. They were too sincere. And they never left her own.

            She sighed and looked over the man’s left shoulder. Her eyes immediately fell upon the couple she had terrorized only moments before. The two had stopped quarreling, and the man was staring at his date with his mouth slightly open in disbelief while she stirred her unfinished soup absentmindedly. The same way Jessica used to as a kid when she had no appetite for her alphabet soup. She always hated that stuff . . .

            Yeah, tonight would likely be the last night in a while that she’d go out.

9

            The dark interstate was unfolding monotonously beneath his tires as Oscar Phillips powered through the night on I-276 West. His hands were locked rigidly on the wheel at ten and two, and his hazel eyes remained fixed straight ahead, lids blinking closed every four seconds exactly. Oscar alternated between struggling to allow the two passenger-side tires to hit every two-foot white line in the road and struggling to maintain his vehicle’s position squarely in the center of the ten-foot lanes. It was driving habits like these that rendered him incapable of driving during the day when the streets and highways were crowded with other vehicles.

            In fact, Oscar had trouble doing anything in public during the day. His obsessive-compulsive disorder was crippling and insurmountable. In the daytime crowds of other individuals made it impossible for him to walk in perfectly straight lines down the center of sidewalks. When people weren’t getting in his way, they were shunning him and laughing at him and giving him a hard time, making his life far more difficult than it already was.

            It was well after three in the morning, and Oscar’s tank was beginning to run low. He had filled up before setting off on his excursion, and he couldn’t stop now! That would throw off the dynamic of the whole adventure. He couldn’t stop until he found what he was looking for . . .

            Minutes sloughed away as his eyes ticked shut mechanically fifteen times each. He would not look at the fuel gauge, refused to take his eyes off the dark, lampless stretch of asphalt before him. If something didn’t change soon, this could end tragically for him. If he stubbornly let himself run out of gas and coast to a stop on the empty street, then what would he do? He would be trapped, frozen here for the rest of the night like a sitting duck, until the authorities came and gave him enough sedatives to make him cooperative. And then they’d surely discover everything . . .

            Finally Oscar’s foot switched over to the brake pedal, and the dark night was illuminated by the red glow of his car’s brake lights. The car came to a smooth, calculated stop, and he put it in park right there in the middle lane of I-276. He also put the emergency brake on before risking to turn his head away from the road. Exactly beside his car and two lanes over, on the side of the interstate, stood an abandoned red pickup truck with a Pennsylvania license plate. Oscar glanced ahead and saw a green road sign illuminated by his headlights: Exit 326, 2 miles ahead. Then exit 326 it would be. Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania.

            Ten minutes later the red truck stood alone once again, encompassed in complete darkness, its license plate removed, and Oscar was entering Chesterbrook, where he would wait until morning.

--------------------

            By ten o’clock the next morning, Oscar had two women bound and gagged in his trunk. They were still struggling and clamoring noisily as he put the third woman in the backseat. He would probably be able to fit three more in the car with him, but five would be his new record, and there was no reason to push it until he was ready. Five was a nice, solid number.

            He proceeded to drive with the three struggling women to the next residential street he encountered that started with the letter D. Woman one had come from a street beginning with the letter A, woman two from a street beginning with B, and so on. He would continue until he had two in the trunk, two in the back seat, and one in the passenger seat.

            Coming to a stop at address 4 on Deckler Drive, Oscar took his roll of duct tape and a plain white hand towel and stuffed them into his pockets. If no one was home, he would go to the next street he found that began with a D; if a man answered the door, he would politely claim to have gotten the wrong house, and he would go to the next street. Men simply wouldn’t do. Men would respond with rage and act out. Women and children were better candidates for Oscar’s purposes.

            He drove around until after one o’clock, going to address 4s on D-streets and 5s on E-streets until he finally found a fifth lone woman at her mailbox. Address 5.

            Oscar stopped the car with its newly added PA license plate near the woman and got out, tape and cloth concealed behind his back. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in a reedy, quavering voice that passed through a larynx with morphological deformities from a lifetime of excessive levels of generalized anxiety, “I’m looking for a certain address.”

            The woman closed her mailbox and walked over to meet him. “Which address?”

            Oscar struck as soon as she was within reach of his arms. He gruffly seized the back of her head and threw her to the ground in broad daylight. Luckily for him no one else was around to witness except the two women still screaming through their mouthfuls of cloth in the cab of his car. Oscar likely couldn’t have stopped his method now even if the street were filled with a parade of veteran police officers. He forced her to the ground and smashed her head against the pavement just hard enough to momentarily stifle her shrieks and resistance. Once he’d taped her hands and feet together thoroughly and gagged her with the clean white towel, he carried her swiftly over and sat her in the front seat. A pretty young blonde, he would let her ride shotgun for the day.

            They drove for hours on back roads, steering clear of busy streets and interstates where other drivers may notice three gagged women in the car. Oscar drove slowly and carefully across city and county lines through remote woodlands and vast, rolling hills. By nightfall, everyone in the car had lost all track of where they were, especially the two in the trunk, who had finally stopped their whining hours before.

            When Oscar finally stopped at a dark, remote barn miles from the last sign of civilization, a thrilling frisson ran through his body like the electricity he would undoubtedly receive for what he was about to do. He got out and inspected the barn while the women in the car began struggling and sobbing anew. The wooden sliding doors were held together loosely with a steel chain and lock, but they were so old and rickety on their hinges that Oscar could simply push them apart and slide right through.

            He inspected the barn with the flashlight he had brought especially for this until he found a chain for the overhead lamp, and, when he found a variety of instruments to his liking, he unlocked the side door and went back to the car to dragged his victims in one by one, each sobbing harder and trying to shriek louder than the last. Once everyone was inside and attentive, Oscar began pulling tools from the shelves and racks inside the barn and laying them out neatly on a workbench in the middle of the floor.

            Finally he chose a pair of rusty garden shears, a small hatchet, a dull handsaw, a screwdriver, and a steel rake with sixteen blunt prongs. He took the garden shears in his hand and pointed to the blonde from 5 Eberhardt Lane. “I like you, so you get to go first.” He lifted her upright by the hair as she writhed and screamed with her mouthful of cloth. Bitter tears were coursing down her face, dripping from her chin and wetting the dusty floor beneath her feet. This couldn’t have made Oscar more pleased.

            He used the shears to cut the tape binding her ankles and grabbed her shoulders to stand her upright. Then he turned her around and clipped the tape holding her wrists together behind her back as the five women screamed louder and louder in unison. Finally free to move her limbs, the girl stumbled forward and scraped at the tape over her mouth.

            “Go,” Oscar said plainly. “You get the head start.”

            She turned and stared at him with huge, flooding eyes.

            “And don’t make this easy on me,” he continued. “Whoever I catch first gets this.” He held up the handsaw and waved it in their faces before hooking the handle into his belt. “If I catch two of you together, you both get it.”

            The blonde was breathing loudly and irregularly, huffing out short bursts of weepy breaths as though she were trying to plead but was unable to conjure the words.

            Oscar continued talking as he loaded the remaining instruments onto his belt and into his pockets. With only the rake left, he picked up the garden shears again and approached the girl he’d come to think of as 4-D. “Whoever I find last won’t suffer. Prolong the game, and you will be rewarded. I need a challenge . . . Since we started with number five, we’ll work the rest of the way backward.”

Blondie staggered crazily out into the middle of the night screeching for someone—anyone—to please help her. 4-D squealed when he approached, as if she still expected him to gut her on the spot, but he cut through the tape on her ankles and wrists and stood her up to push her out the door.

            When it was 3-C’s turn to leave, she reached out and seized the sides of the door as Oscar was pushing her into the encompassing darkness, where increasingly distant screams could still be heard. “Please,” she sobbed. “Why are you doing this?”

            Oscar gave her a dismissive kick in the rump and replied, “You’d better get a move on. And tell the others that the more they scream, the easier it will be for me to find them!”

            2-B sat in silence while he cut her bonds, and when he took her by the shoulder, she lunged forward at him with a rebel yell, forcing him backwards and into the workbench and sending the leaning rake clattering to the ground. She was strong. But not strong enough.

            1-A began writhing and groaning in vain moral support, but Oscar grabbed the girl’s hair and yanked her head back hard enough to loosen her grip on his immaculate blue shirt that was buttoned all the way to the top. Again in control, he forced her back against the wall and thumped her head against it brusquely. “You better hope I don’t find you first, bitch.” He growled through gritted teeth. And with that, he spun her and pushed her unceremoniously out into the night.

            The final girl seemed to have already accepted her fate, and, once freed, she set off into the darkness at a determined run.

            Oscar was finally alone in the barn. He closed his eyes and allowed the stress of the day to wash over him, bathe him. His head cocked repeatedly to the side as a nervous twitch seized his neck, and he shrugged his shoulders compulsively. That was fine. Let it come. Soon he would be on the hunt, and all his anxiety would be gone.

            He reached up and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Immediately, he felt a great portion of the negative energy flow forth from his mind. His breathing slowed, and his nervous tick ceased. He opened his eyes and imagined he was standing in a crowded street at midday. Someone had just laughed at his tidy attire: dress shoes, neatly ironed dress pants with an immaculate leather belt, pressed blue shirt tucked in and buttoned cleanly to the top, his thick rimmed glasses straight and clean beneath medium-length black hair that was slicked straight back. Or perhaps they had bumped into him as he was watching his feet while he walked, ensuring that he took two perfectly spaced steps on each slab of concrete. Maybe someone had pushed him gruffly out of the way as he compulsively attempted to reach out and touch any item that looked particularly new or shiny. But then they noticed the hatchet on his belt, the steel rake in his hand. Whoever it was and whatever they’d done, they froze in sudden fear and screamed, Oh please don’t hurt us! We’re sorry we laughed at you!

            But it was too late. The deed was done, and sorry meant shit when you’d just laughed in a sick man’s face. They weren’t sorry anyway; they just didn’t want him to be angry. The crowds dispersed, and everyone ran in sheer terror from the deserved wrath that was about to befall them. The hunt was on.

            Oscar snatched the rake off the ground with one hand and took the garden shears back up in his other hand. Obsessions ignored and rituals and repetitions forgot, he ran out the door and careened out into the wide-open pasture.

            The field played out yards and yards before him as he ran down the hill. Surely none of the girls would be foolish enough to have hidden in plain view out here in the farm. The dense tree line ahead was far too tempting.

            He barreled into the trees rake-first and started slashing through the thicket of branches and leaves. After he’d run as fast and far as he could without stopping for breath, he dropped to his knees and hyperventilated in short, quiet breaths, listening for any sounds nearby. He could somewhat make out crashing footfalls in in more than one different direction in the distance, but a soft sound was emanating from much closer. She would be the first.

            Oscar remained still as his eyes continued adjusting to the darkness and his blood replenished the oxygen supply to his tissues. The moon was a wan sliver in the sky, and there was little light.

            “You’ll pay for what you did,” he muttered. At that, a piercing, frantic scream arose less than thirty feet to his right. He leapt up and fell upon his prey, who was paralyzed with terror.

            The girl writhed in agony as he rubbed the saw blade back and forth in the crook behind her knee. First the skin broke, and he watched the warm blood gush out of the long, thin wound. Her screams echoed through the hills as he dragged the blunt teeth rhythmically to and fro across the bone not far beneath. Realizing that the old tool wasn’t going to sever the leg completely, he switched to the other leg after nearly five minutes of scraping. As she bawled hoarsely and tried to drag herself through the underbrush, Oscar sawed through each of her Achilles tendons before grabbing her hair and rolling her over.

            He stood upright holding one of her arms and kicked it at the elbow to force the bones to break inward. Her satisfying screams again echoed through the night. He repeated this step with the other arm. Now that she was immobile and starting to lose consciousness, he ripped off her shirt and began sawing at her soft belly, just below her lowest rib. When the gash was large enough to stick his hand in, he hooked his fingers under the rib and started sawing at the tough muscle just above it, separating it from the rest. Fifteen minutes later, he had six ribs on her left side nearly separated from the rest. As eighty percent of the hunt still remained, he had no time to go further, but he took each rib individually and pulled it back, enjoying the cracking and grinding sounds as they separated from the spine and sternum. Luckily his OCD was momentarily relieved, and he could leave this job unfinished.

            A short time later, he had found the second victim doubled over and gasping for breath. He swung the heavy rake down upon her back, and all sixteen spikes entered her skin and muscle. He had to strike her several more times in the back, legs, and arms before he satisfied himself that this wasn’t likely to end her life any time soon. Still she screamed and sobbed as he kicked her over onto her back and drove the rake down into her neck and face until her breathing ceased. The killing was far less fulfilling than the hunt, than having them run and hide from him for once.

            He discarded the rake and changed directions, pursuing the other rustling he had heard before. When he finally found the third victim, she had collapsed against a tree, covered her head, and proceeded to groan, “No, no, no,” incessantly.

            “Don’t worry, dear,” Oscar said, kneeling beside her, “you win the bronze medal.”

            He took her hand in his own, forced her unresisting fingers apart, and clipped them off individually with the garden shears. Bronze was still third place, and she would consequently be tortured. After one hand was done, though, Oscar took pity on her and placed her quivering neck into the crook of the shears, lay her on her side, and stomped the handle to force the utensil shut.

            The next girl was harder to find. Oscar wandered and remained in the woods for over an hour before deciding that no one else was around. He finally made his way back to the road and saw a dim silhouette stumbling along it in the distance. This turned out to be the young blonde girl from Eberhardt Lane, and he was sincerely disappointed that she wasn’t the winner.

            “You let me down,” he said, approaching her from behind. She screamed in fright and attempted to run away, but he deftly tossed the hatchet at her back, where it drove in to the left of her spine and rendered her body rigid. “I would have given you a special prize for first-place,” he continued as she fell to the ground.

            He withdrew the hatchet from her back and brushed her hair off the side of her face. “At any rate . . .” The hatchet entered her skull through her ear, severing half of her jaw and locking into place parallel to her tongue. She was alive for minutes afterward.

            On a hunch, Oscar began walking placidly back toward the barn. Halfway there he encountered the winner, who got a gold medal in the form of a screwdriver through the right eye.

His last stop was a small pond, where he washed the blood off of his hands and clothes. The anxiety was coming back with a vengeance, and he would soon need to focus on his driving.

            By the time the morning sun touched the blood-soaked corpses of the women in the Pennsylvania hills, Oscar’s car was nowhere to be found, and the red pickup truck’s PA license plate was lying at the bottom of a river miles away.

10

Jessica had told him that she appreciated his offer but that she was done drinking for the night, and with that she had beckoned for her friends to follow her lead as she gathered her belongings and left Walton’s without another word.

            Andrew maintained his smile and nodded in quiet acceptance as they exited. He sat down at the bar for a few moments by himself but didn’t order anything. He just couldn’t shake the image of the girl’s eyes.

            With no desire to strike out twice in one night, he left the bar and got into his vehicle, but instead of driving anywhere, he just sat thinking.

            The girl was clearly put off by his attempt—if not by his age alone—but her eyes had told a different story. On the surface, the entire exchange appeared discouraging and final, but Andrew saw through that. He wasn’t short-sighted, and he felt sure that he would see the girl again. He had peered through the windows of her eyes and into the depths of her character, and what he saw there was vastly different from the shell of her exterior. Her eyes defied her body language, and Andrew thought that she could escape that limiting cocoon and emerge a radiant butterfly. All she needed was a little prodding in the right direction. He could be that prod.

            His attempt had been forced and awkward, but he had been hypnotized by what he’d seen within. Now he had hindsight, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Given a second chance, he would make things right between them and secure himself a chance to show her how right the two of them could be together . . . He thought he’d found a way to get that second chance.

            Andrew had taken note of the girl’s gym card attached to her key ring. The membership was part of a nearby apartment complex, likely the apartments where she lived. With one short but risky operation, he could find those apartments before she got back home tonight, see what kind of car she was in, and follow her somewhere innocuous the next day. Sure, if she found out he would likely never have his second chance and he may even earn some sort of legal action, but he didn’t have much to lose at this point, and he thought he could pull it off.

            He started his car and drove to the apartments just outside of downtown Knoxville. After less than forty minutes, a red Toyota Matrix pulled into the parking lot, and he thought he recognized the face behind the wheel. When she got out and walked toward her apartment, he was sure that he recognized the tall black boots and short red skirt.

            The next morning Andrew camped out again nearby in order to keep an eye on the Matrix. Shortly after noon, the girl came outside dressed in blue jeans and a modest shirt that blatantly contrasted her previous outfit. He followed her at a safe distance to a nearby grocery store, where he would manufacture a second encounter and attempt to redeem himself.

11

            The Towson Town Center was already bustling with lively Saturday-morning shoppers by half past ten. Off-duty officer Bradley Houston was walking into the ground floor to make his way up to the AT&T store and inquire about some new subscription charges that his daughter claimed to know nothing about. He’d just finished a very trying Friday night shift in Baltimore, and he was contemplating padding his considerable gut with a fresh pretzel from Auntie Annie’s on his way out when a startlingly out-of-place British accent asked for the time.

            Marvin Nash had moved to America when he was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. The tumor was deep, inoperable, and malignant, so he really wasn’t worried about the piteous state of the United States’ healthcare system anyway. As an unwed London hit man of more than 20 years, his only concern was living out the rest of his short life in wealthy peace. America had just about anything a man could want to spend money on, and he doubted if any previous employers or clients or families of victims would come searching for him here in the next eight months. Shortly after the move, however, he’d found that no strength of prescription painkillers could alleviate his headaches the way that killing could.

            Marvin approached a police officer—a bobby, if you will—as he walked across the crowded parking lot toward the mall. “Excuse me, officer, do you have the time?”

The man glanced at his watch and cursorily spoke over his shoulder without stopping or turning. “Quarter to eleven.” That was fine. Let him be rude and dismissive and serve as a reminder for why Marvin had developed an antisocial personality disorder in the first place.

“I apologize, good sir, but is it ten forty-five exactly?” Finally the officer stopped and turned to face him. Marvin was well groomed with carefully styled hair made black by the gel in it and an immaculate black suit. The attire was topped off with impersonal black sunglasses and unseasonal black leather gloves.

“It’s 10:37.” Thirty-seven. That could prove difficult.

“Thank you,” Marvin replied with a hollow smile. As the officer turned back and went on his way, Marvin glanced around the parking lot, searching for anything to make thirty-seven viable.

There it was. Another police car turned around the corner of the Nordstrom department store and slowly rolled toward them.

Marvin wasted no time. He pulled a switchblade from his pocket, deftly seized the policeman’s left ear in his left hand, and sliced it off from behind with his right hand.

Chubby Brad Houston yelled and stumbled to one knee, seeming unable to decide whether he should grab at his gun or at the bloody pocket in the side of his head where his ear once was. Marvin was fast enough to spare the fat oaf the trouble of making such a hard decision in a time of agony. He reached down and thumbed off the strap holding Officer Houston’s Glock 9mm in its holster.

“One,” the British tongue said plainly as he put the barrel against the man’s head and sprayed his brains out of his nose onto the asphalt. Only fifteen rounds in the magazine at a maximum. As few as eight or ten if this silly git had failed to reload after any action last night. He would have to be careful.

Marvin turned in an instant to face the police car that was now speeding toward him through the crowds of frantically running and screaming shoppers. Don’t give them time to call for backup.

He lined his sights at the same time that he brought the gun down straight in front of the driver of the vehicle. In less than half a second, he squeezed the trigger coolly, and the driver’s head rocked back against the seat as the car swerved hard to the left and came to a stop against silver Ford Taurus.

“Two,” Marvin muttered.

The passenger had drawn his weapon and was clambering to call for backup into the walkie on his shoulder. Marvin’s third bullet went directly through his temple. “Three.”

Marvin walked briskly to the car and removed the two handguns from the other dead officers. Clicking on the safety and sliding the first gun in the back of his suit pants, he turned toward the door to Nordstrom wielding the other two.

A young woman who must have heard the shooting from inside was frantically running through the doors into the cleared scene. She must have sorely miscalculated the position of the shooter and thought she could make it to her car. Martin squeezed the trigger in his left hand, and she dropped midstride, the blouses in her arms splaying out on the concrete before her. “Four.”

Shoppers were still screaming and running all over the parking lot, and a small horde of escapees were nearly around the far side of the building. Martin turned toward the crowd with both arms extended fully in front of him. His right index finger twitched. “Five.” Left finger. “Six.” Right finger. “Seven.” Left. Right. Left. Eight, nine, ten individuals collapsed in the running crowd before the remaining were around the corner and out of sight.

Already Martin could feel the dull ache at the base of his skull receding. He turned and sprinted into the doors of the department store. Shoppers were scrambling in every direction, and none seemed to have a clue what was happening. Martin made his way swiftly through the store, stopping only once to put a bullet between the streaming eyes of an elderly employee behind the makeup counter. Eleven.

When he reached the door leading from Nordstrom to the open hallway of the mall, there were people flooding out of stores to run in the opposite direction. A few unwise individuals were frozen on the spot, more concerned with catching a glimpse of the mayhem in the department store than they were with their own safety. One woman stood outside Claire’s with her mouth agape and her hands on the stroller housing her infant son in front of her. She should be ashamed of herself. Marvin dropped her like a fly. Twelve.

The sounds of remorseless gunfire echoed throughout the corridor, and the rest of the rubberneckers in sight turned and ran at last. As Marvin walked by the stroller with the screaming infant, he coldly put a bullet in its tiny head lest his headache return. Thirteen.

Rather than chasing the hordes down the aisles, Marvin leapt upon the stairs leading up to the second level. Looking up, he could see scores of curious heads leaning over the balconies to see what was happening below. He aimed up at them and flawlessly popped them like balloons on the wall at a carnival game. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen heads exploded before the remaining all ducked and ran for cover. He managed to hit a seventeenth individual who was leaning just a bit too far forward over the handrail on the third level. The head rocked backward as the bullet entered and sent the body in a dead twist to the left. Its upper torso rolled and leaned over the railing, pulling the rest of the body over the side and sending it spiraling downward and landing twenty feet from Marvin with a satisfying crunch.

Marvin scaled the twenty steps in under three seconds and turned toward the fleeing crowd, into which he put six more flawlessly aimed bullets. A young teenage couple ran too late out of Abercrombie just as Marvin reached the doorway. He simultaneously pulled the triggers of both pistols and sent numbers twenty-four and twenty-five flying backward into a rack of pants. He entered the store and shot the dumbstruck cashier for good measure. Twenty-six.

Now the aisles on this side of the mall were nearly completely empty, and Marvin suspected he must be close to running out of rounds in each of these pistols. He took off at a dead run toward the crowds of people bottle necking into the stairwell and exit doors on the other side of the mall. He barreled headfirst into a crowd of frantic shoppers pushing each other down the stairs toward him. Making his way to the third floor, he shot three unlucky men who were blocking him, effectively clearing the entire stairway in under four seconds.

On the third level, he continued running toward the opposite side of the mall. He looked below and found a horde of screaming men and women on the ground floor, scrambling for an exit. It looked like Times Square on New Years Eve. Looking below and arbitrarily picking out four individuals within, he unloaded the last of the ammo in these two weapons and discarded them.

Marvin hit the next stairway and bolted up to the top floor. Here, trickles of scared shoppers were actually running toward him at this point, so he turned and made his way headlong into them back toward Nordstrom.

Pulling his last pistol from his black leather belt, he aimed and popped a college-aged guy who had apparently ditched his date and left her screaming his name farther back. Thirty-four.

As those ahead of him all skidded to a stop and scrambled to turn back in the opposite direction, he squeezed two more rounds into the backs of two black women with Victoria’s Secret bags. Thirty-six.

He spotted number thirty-seven immediately. She had dropped to her hands and knees when she saw the blood and brain and bone matter spraying from the scalps of the three before her. Marvin casually approached her and took notice that the gun’s slide had locked. Officer Bradley had forgotten to reload after his shift after all. “Dopey bastard,” Marvin muttered, tossing the gun to the floor.

He punched the unlucky girl in the back of the head, reached beneath her arms, and lifted her screaming, writhing body over the fourth floor handrail. Her wails stopped abruptly when she hit the ground a second later.

Marvin made his way quickly back to the ground floor and exited an empty door to the side of the department store he’d entered. He nimbly made his way through the crowded parking lot while removing his gloves and sunglasses. By the time he was in his car and pulling out of the nearby Walmart’s parking lot, he could just make out the first sirens in the distance. 

12

            Jessica woke up feeling better than she had on any Saturday she could remember. She had grown so accustom to waking up with a hangover on Saturday mornings that her subconscious cringed as she opened her eyes in the artificially dark bedroom. She got up and pulled aside the heavy curtain blocking her window. Morning sunlight filled her bedroom, and her eyes reflexively narrowed, but no sharp headache or wave of nausea ensued. This was a satisfying product of ending the night early after her spiteful shenanigans. Images of the sullen couple she had pranked flooded her startlingly clear mind. Then followed images of the creepy middle-aged guy who had hit on her. She supposed she had to thank him after all. He was the reason she felt so good this morning.

            In the shower Jessica smiled and enjoyed the invigorating warmth of the steamy water. How had she subsisted so many years without feeling this fresh on a beautiful Saturday morning? She had the whole day ahead of her. She would clean the kitchen, get some groceries, make herself a nice dinner, and maybe even get rid of some of the old clothes that were cluttering her closet.

            Today could literally be the day she made the changes she’d been moving toward for months. The older guy from Walton’s crossed her mind again, and she wondered if something so strange and arbitrary as that could change a life for good. In truth she felt so good today because of the timing of being hit on. She’d been hit on before by plenty of creeps, and she’d done what she had to in order to get out of the situation, but this guy had chosen to take his shot while she was in a weird, reflective mood. Besides, as far as older creeps went, last night’s wasn’t anything to take up arms against. He was actually pretty handsome. And polite. And he’d had striking, honest eyes.

            Regardless of the minute circumstances that hand interacted and brought her to this point, she was here, and she intended to make the most of it. She put on some blue jeans and a simple blouse that she was finding herself far more comfortable in than the miniskirts of yore. Then she headed out the door for what she hoped to be the most productive day in weeks.

            After cleaning the kitchen top to bottom and taking a complete inventory, Jessica gathered her belongings and headed out to a nearby Kroger to get groceries. First on her list were pasta, chicken breast, and cream of chicken soup for an old poppyseed chicken recipe she’d wanted to revisit for a while now.

            As she made her way toward the wall of Campbell’s Soup, her eye caught a row of Chef Boyardee ABC pasta. Accompanied by an ominous twisting in her gut, images of the couple from Walton’s revisited her. She stopped and picked up the can, thinking again of the offhand way the woman had been stirring her soup and how it had reminded Jessica of herself as a pouting child at the dinner table. Did her parents feed her this crap so often because they thought it would help her learn to read? The memory was strange and unrelated, but it brought with it a feeling of sick helplessness associated with being a kid. But in this case she wasn’t helpless. She had made that couple helpless. She had forced the alphabet soup down their throats and watched as they sat sulking in the aftermath. The association was unpleasant and unwelcome, and she wondered momentarily if she would ever shake such a stupid vivid image.

            “Fancy seeing you here,” said a familiar voice behind her, removing her at once from her tormenting trance.

13

            On the outskirts of Frederick, Maryland, stands a modern three-bedroom, two-bath home valued at over $750,000. The sun is down, and nearly every light in the house is on. In the master bedroom, the door to the walk-in closet is open, and articles of clothing are strewn across the floor and king-size bed. Every drawer in the room stands open. Bras and panties litter the floor. A red blouse is draped haphazardly over the polished oak footboard of the bed. The master bathroom is equally disheveled. Both the overhead and mirror lights are on, and every drawer is open to some degree. Mascara bottles and lipstick tubes lie open on the countertops and floors. A tub of face powder is upside down in the sink, its contents in various piles on the counter. In the hallway a trail of lingerie leads the way through the living room and into the kitchen. Bras of every color line the

path. Panties of various designs and fabric are likewise interspersed. A red bra is hanging from the lampshade; a black bra is draped over the couch; a purple bra resides on the coffee table; white cotton panties lie in the doorway to the kitchen; black lacy ones are on the dining room chair. An island counter stands in the center of the polished hardwood kitchen floor. Kelsey Ledbetter straddles the island wearing only a purple bra and a matching lacy purple thong, ripped and pulled to one side between spread-eagle legs . . . A long sharp kitchen knife in hand, his testicles are spread out on the countertop.

            This is the scene to which the middle-aged homeowners returned after a long weekend of enjoying five-star dining and Broadway musicals in New York City.

            Kelsey sat atop the island enjoying the cool sensation the granite countertop lent his exposed buttocks. He pressed the sharp point of the knife down onto his stretched-out scrotum until a fresh droplet of blood appeared. He drew the blade away as the sharp pain emanated from his groin. Once it subsided he pushed the tip of the knife back into the thin pouch of skin, harder this time, cursing the very existence of this unsightly appendage. One quick chop, and he could be rid of it for good. He could probably fit his limp penis under the blade too if he laid it out right . . . But the pain would be far too immense. Dainty women couldn’t tolerate pain well. And that’s what he was after all, a dainty woman trapped in this disgusting male body.

            “What the hell?” shrieked a frantic voice from one kitchen doorway.

            Kelsey’s head snapped up. He’d been so strongly considering castrating himself at long last that he hadn’t even heard the front door open. The couple before him stood and stared in wide-eyed shock at the naked man spread-eagle on their countertop. He was wearing the woman’s own underwear, and her makeup was smeared all over his face. His jade-green eyes danced crazily above thick, smeared eyeliner and ruby red lipstick caked all around his lips like some sort of demented circus clown. His greasy, tousled hair stood out in dirty clumps in every direction.

            The man of the house swiftly stepped forward and slammed his fist into Kelsey’s made-up face before he could even move to raise the knife from his balls. His pale, skinny body was whipped unceremoniously off the counter, and he landed painfully on the hardwood floor on one shoulder.

            “Get the fuck out of my house, you psycho!” he roared. “Honey, call the police!”

            No. No police. Kelsey remained still as the man walked around the counter and approached him. When he was within an arm’s length, Kelsey reached out and slid the sharp blade across the back of his ankle. This brought the angry man to one knee, the uninjured leg splayed out behind him. As he descended to Kelsey’s level on the floor, Kelsey lifted the long knife and drove it upward under the man’s chin. His body went momentarily rigid, and then he collapsed in a still, silent heap to one side, spurts of blood jetting out of his mouth and upper neck.

            Kelsey jumped up and pursued the screaming housewife as she turned a corner into the living room and struggled to dial the police on her cellphone. He reached out and seized her shoulder from behind. She dropped her cellphone as he yanked her arm back, but his grip slipped, and the strap of her dress broke. She wheeled around to face him as they both stumbled forward to the ground. He was just standing back up as the woman landed on her back and lunged one heeled foot at his exposed genitals.

            The pain was immediate and immense. He fell back down onto his stomach and screamed in agony as the woman scrambled upright. This was it. After an entire lifetime of cursing his external genitalia, they would prove to be his downfall at last. He lay writhing on the floor, expecting the woman to gain the upper hand but not caring. He waited for the inevitable blunt force trauma to the back of his head that would end his miserable life and stop this agony between his legs. How apt that he would die at the hands of this rich old cooze with his balls, the bane of his very existence, in absolute turmoil . . .

            But no blow ever came. After a few seconds, Kelsey looked up and saw that the woman was nowhere in sight, but, given that he was heaped in the floor on this side of her, she’d had nowhere to go but into the hallway. He took a deep breath and forced himself to channel the agonizing pain into searing fury. He picked up the knife, leapt to his feet, and thundered down the hall shouting curses this woman had likely never heard in her life.

            The bedroom door was closed and locked, but Kelsey wouldn’t let that stop him. He pounded his fists upon the wooden door and yelled in vain for the woman to stop fighting and open up. Only when he envisioned her holding a landline phone connected to the Frederick Police Department did he lash out with enough force to actually splinter the wood. He kicked and punched and gouged at the door with his knife. When he finally broke through to the other side, he plunged his fist through the cracks, twisted the knob from the inside, and removed his slashed, bloody arm.

            The woman hadn’t gone straight for the phone after all. She’d just seen her husband murdered by a deranged man with his penis hanging out of her underwear, and she was likely too frantic to think of anything but escape. She had holed herself up in the closet, but that door didn’t have a lock. Kelsey kicked it in effortlessly and approached the woman who was huddled in the corner shrieking like a banshee.

            He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back to expose her neck. When it entered her quivering larynx, the knife made a thick squishing sound like a small water balloon being squeezed in a fist. A waterfall of deep red blood flowed out over her classy blue dress, and Kelsey backed away to watch her struggle to continue screaming and breathing simultaneously. At last she ceased to do both, and he dragged her out of the closet by her ankles.

            In the bedroom floor, Kelsey proceeded to lift and remove the soaked blue dress. He admired the woman’s fit body, which was exceedingly attractive for a gal who had to be nearing forty. He felt a painful surge of jealousy as he ran his fingers lightly over her smooth pubic bone, to which her black panties conformed neatly and flatly. The breasts were ample and firm, and Kelsey used the dripping knife to remove each individually. He stuffed them into his own purple bra and looked down to admire the way they protruded out from his flat, hairless chest. Pulling one side of the bra down, he caressed the nipple of the left breast and groaned, imagining that he could feel the exquisite tickle of his own fingertips.

            He suddenly leaned forward and plunged two fingers into the gash he’d made in the woman’s neck. Starting on one side, he gingerly inserted the knife and carefully began removing the skin of her face from the fascia beneath. He slid the knife upward past the ears and around the curve of the woman’s hairline, then he slipped the point of the blade in and out of the long incision to peel the skin away from the underlying muscle and bone. When he’d removed the entire mask, complete with holes for his eyes, nose, and mouth, he gently laid it atop his own face and got up to enter the bathroom.

            “What a pretty girl I am!” he exclaimed in a giddy whisper as he looked into the mirror. He brusquely tucked his penis between his legs and squeezed them together to keep it hidden from view. “What a pretty girl.”

            Four tubes of previously sampled lipstick lay nearby, and Kelsey took up the closest one, not caring what shade it may be. He touched it to the lips of his beautiful new mask and began smearing it in circles around his mouth while his free hand squeezed compulsively at his new breasts. “What a pretty girl!”

            Tears of happiness and fulfillment flowed from his glistening, darkly circled eyes. Never before had he felt so at ease in his body. So complete. So right.

“Pretty girl . . .”

14

            Andrew followed the red Matrix at a markedly safe distance. He was determined to win a date from this girl, and everything would be ruined if she noticed him following her. He never allowed himself to get within three cars away.

            After driving six miles, he followed her car into a Kroger supermarket’s crowded parking lot, but at this point he safely turned toward the opposite side of the lot and raced to get a spot before she could. Parked safely, he watched as she found a spot and walked inside. He remained far enough behind her to be able to play it off if she happened to turn around and spot him at this point, but once she took her basket and set off down the canned food aisle, he knew he was home-free.

            He took his own basket and made his way down the next aisle, pulling miscellaneous items from the shelves and placing them in his basket. Finally Andrew turned the corner and entered the canned food aisle, where the girl was staring at some Chef Boyardee soup with a faraway look in her stunning eyes. “Fancy seeing you here,” he said, approaching her from the side with a winning smile. She turned toward him, and the look of reminiscence in her eyes was replaced with a flare of indignant disgust that rapidly softened into something much harder to read. Those eyes spoke unadulterated truths that words could never convey.

            She just stared for a moment, seemingly at a loss for words. “Sorry if I startled you,” he said, pulling away slightly.

            She scoffed softly and replied, “Yeah, well, it’s just a little sketchy when you run into bar creeps the next day.”

            Andrew’s polite smile didn’t falter. “I can imagine,” he said, as if she were referring to someone else entirely. Don’t react to her initial resistance; she’ll settle down. “I do want to apologize if I came off a little strange last night. I’ve been out of sorts lately.”

            She nodded in a snotty, condescending way that would have completely turned Andrew off at once if he hadn’t already seen through her veil of bitchiness. “You get a lot of drunk young girls doing it that way?”

            He laughed genuinely. “If I did this a lot, don’t you think I’d have a better line?” Just as Andrew was worrying he actually was pursuing a lost cause, she smirked, and her whole face seemed to change to that of someone adult and relatable. “Let me buy you dinner, and we’ll call it even,” he continued, returning her smirk.

            Now she looked at him with only slightly offended indignation, her eyes narrowed and her mouth agape. “Um . . .”

            “Look, even if I’m being a creep, are you really going to turn down a free meal from me?”

            She had no idea what to say, but Andrew didn’t either at this point, so he just shrugged and continued smiling, waiting for her response. He worried briefly that he’d pushed her too hard too fast.

            “I don’t even . . . What was your name again?”

            “I’m Andrew Babbit,” he said, extending his hand amiably, “and I don’t believe I ever caught yours.”

            “Jessica Langevin.” She took his hand in hers and shook it lightly. Perhaps it was something in his honest eyes or his winning smile, or perhaps it was his unabashed persistence, or perhaps it was even his borderline pathetic lines, but at this point, she actually returned his smile as though she had stepped down off her pedestal for the first time in ages and was once again on the level of mortals such as he.

            She looked at his basket and raised her eyebrows at the random items within: two different brands of ground cumin, a tube of bacon bits, and a box of bread crumbs. He glanced at the items himself for the first time, grinned, and shrugged. “I’m out,” he explained plainly.

            Jessica nodded, and, despite the cogency of her eyes, Andrew couldn’t tell if she actually believed him or not. In any case, she didn’t spout off any accusations that she may have if her friends had been present. “Well, Andrew, you’re lucky. You caught me in a weird mood on a good day. I’m off work tonight, and my dinner plans aren’t really set in stone, so if you insist on buyin’ me dinner, who am I to refuse?”

            Her announcement came across as phony as her Southern Belle’s accent, but it was acquired quirks like these that Andrew could help break with time. It was quirks like these that, similar to her thin outer shell of sorority sister characterization, were already cracked and waiting to be broken.

            She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and jotted down information that Andrew already knew. “You can pick me up at five.”

15

Martinsburg WV Police Department,

I recently passed through your quaint city and decided to stick around and unwind a bit. Sitting on a bench in your beautiful War Memorial Park, I thought that I should like to share this anecdote with the members of the MPD: Growing up in Brooklyn, my mother used to tell me stories that I later discovered her own mother must have told her. The stories were of the Vampire of Brooklyn, the Boogeyman. Or the man behind the myths, Albert Fish. She would tell me and my brother that if we misbehaved or strayed from home or stayed out too late or did any number of other misdeeds, that the Brooklyn Vampire would snatch us up, cut us into little pieces, and cook us into a stew. Of course we now know that he likely would have molested us first, but mother didn’t share with us that detail. We didn’t believe these stories any more than any child really believes that Santa won’t bring them gifts if they misbehave. But when my older brother ran away from home at thirteen and never came back, I started seriously considering this notion of the Boogeyman. I cried myself to sleep and wet the bed and had screaming night terrors for years after. And even when I entered junior high and started doing my own research on Albert Fish, I had serious issues growing up. I found, however, that Albert truly did terrorize Brooklyn children in the early 1900’s. This man whose persistence ultimately got him arrested and executed in the electric chair molested young boys, abducted helpless children, and ate the flesh of his victims, often cooking them into stews. Pretty safely regarded as a monster by the general population. Like I said, I had a very hard time getting over the disappearance of my older brother, and I spent much of my youth dwelling on the details of this alleged vampire. And I have grown to see him in a different light. Albert was a man just like the rest of us. He wasn’t a monster or a vampire or even the Boogeyman. Just a man. And like any man, Albert was subject to temptations and evil and sin. Unlike the other men, though, Albert sincerely repented his earthly sins. It is this repentance that brought him to his seemingly monstrous actions. It is this same repentance that brought me to your lovely park.

Sitting near the pool and watching the children laugh and play and run and be joyous, I had to reflect on how pure and innocent each and every one of them must be. A man like me has simply experienced and thought too much to display that kind of delight. And what better way to compensate for our sins and wrongdoings than to consume this childlike innocence right from the source?

I picked a particularly beaming young girl of about 8 or 9. As she ran to the restrooms like a good little girl who knows not to potty in the pool, I followed her and ensured that the parents present weren’t paying attention to me. I didn’t wait for her to exit the toilet. I entered myself. When she saw me, sitting bare upon that white throne with her one piece bathing suit lying on the floor and her short legs dangling and not touching, her eyes got wide and she told me I was in the wrong bathroom. I warned her not to scream, but she started to anyway, so I was forced to hit her and cover her mouth myself. I got her dressed and quickly drove her to my motel, where I killed her painlessly and started to cut her up. I broke into some diner last night to cook her meat in the oven. Even though I’m no good cook, her meat could have won awards. She tasted even better with the feeling of her pureness entering my own being. I liked her lean belly the best. The warm blood washed down every bite with a feeling of freedom that can’t be described. I sure wish I’d had the ingredients to try out a stew of my own.

It’s a shame that the innocents have to be sacrificed for men to live at peace. But I took care not to do her any harm. Like the late, great Albert Fish said, “I did not fuck her tho I could have had I wished. She died a virgin.” While I did feel an intense sexual pleasure in most of the act, I made no conscious efforts in my multiple ejaculations. This was a pure act of self-preservation, and I did not taint it. My wrongdoings are for the moment forgiven. And the lightness of her soul will live on through me until it fades and goes dim and I am forced to expunge yet again. Perhaps me and Al are vampires after all. Vampires of a sort . . .

Until next time,

Isaac Jacobs

16

            Despite her initial reservations, Jessica thought the date went about as well as any could go. Andrew, just old enough to be visibly older than she, took her to a seafood grill that was at a safe spot in between shoddy and pretentious. After being alarmed at first when he dismissed her questions about his work, Jessica grew to believe that Andrew truly wanted to know more about her. That was certainly a new concept in her romantic life. He said he worked in accounting for a bank’s loan office, that he had been drowning in his workload lately, and that he was just looking for a change. That certainly explained his eagerness to score a date with her.

            Notwithstanding the age difference, Andrew had done a quality job in not only making his date feel special, but also in making her feel as though he was genuinely enjoying her company. This was a subtle difference that meant a great deal to Jessica. Of course any man could feign chivalry and refrain from acting like a complete troglodyte for two hours, but Andrew had, even since their very first imperfect encounter, come off as nothing but sincere.

            Now, in his passenger seat being carried back to her apartment, Jessica thought that Andrew’s true test of character was still to come. Would he prove an aging pervert and try pathetically to get some action tonight? Or would he remain a gentleman and wait for her to make the next move?

            They pulled into her apartment’s parking lot at a quarter after eight o’clock, and Andrew stepped out of the car without turning it off. He must have had no intention of inviting himself in. Good move.

            He walked Jessica to her apartment door and claimed to have enjoyed their lovely evening. “It really was the breath of fresh air I’ve been needing.”

            Standing uncomfortably in her doorway as she had after countless dates in the past, Jessica felt an entirely new emotion. Pity. This man wasn’t quite old and lonely enough to feel sorry for yet, but he clearly wasn’t a horny old pervert just trying to get his dick wet. He had seen a companion in Jessica that even she had a hard time acknowledging, and she had been condescending and dismissive toward him. Yet he hadn’t given up, and at this point Jessica was grateful for that. He had unintentionally rescued her from another long night out drinking and a wasted Saturday spent in the dark with an upset stomach and a pounding headache. Then he’d unintentionally rescued her from her own unsettling memories of childhood. All the while he’d taken her low blows with a patient smile, and here he was, after spending twenty-five dollars on her dinner, standing at her doorstep and requesting nothing in return.

            “I’d love to take you out again the next time you’re free,” he continued.

            “Sure,” she agreed. In truth, she actually enjoyed his company as much as he seemed to be enjoying hers. She scrawled her phone number on another small scrap of paper and extended her arms to give him an affectionate hug. “Just give me a call if you get something in mind.”

            Andrew bid her a formal farewell and retired to his car at last, and Jessica closed the door and sighed. Any other guy would have clambered to get his way into her bedroom, just like all the rest. And with any other guy, she probably would have allowed it. She wondered what it said about herself that she was poised and ready to kick Andrew out on his ass if he’d made any move regardless of how many complete strangers had spent a night in her sheets.

            She put her purse down on the kitchen counter and kicked her shoes off into the corner when a loud knock at the door startled her from her muse. Her mind immediately decided that the old pervert actually had decided to come back and try his luck. Her mouth came open, and she stood at the kitchen entrance trying to decide whether she was more disgusted with herself or with this guy.

            Another knock at the door. Louder this time.

            Jessica finally unlocked and opened the door, sighing and shaking her head, her emotions all jumbled as she steeled herself to assertively turn the poor guy away. She screamed sharply as the man lunged through the door and wrapped his hands around her throat.

            “I’ll fucking kill you!” he yelled, pushing her across the kitchen and ramming her back forcefully against the wall on the other side.

17

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            Gerald Harrison sat in a dark field in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He compulsively twirled his hair around his forefinger while rhythmically muttering, “Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            A gust of lonely midnight wind rustled the tall, dry grass that stretched on for acres. The breeze raced like a crashing wave through the tall grass and approached Gerald, sending a chill through his body when it finally reached him.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .” That chill would pass.

            He twisted his scraggly hair between his thumb and index finger until the small patch was a tight spiraling weave, which he wrapped around his finger and deftly plucked from his scalp. The click of his zippo resounded across the silent hills, and he flicked the flint to ignite the lighter. A small flame erupted and illuminated the dark space around him. He brought the small lock of hair to the flame in front of his face so that he could see it clearly.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            The tips of the hairs began blackening and curling as they were engulfed with intense heat. Gerald touched the cluster of long hair to the flame directly, and it immediately ignited. Pinching the lock by the unlit end, he let the flaming end dangle so the small flame could work its way upward.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            The smoke drifted upward towards his face, and he inhaled deeply, basking in the sharp, soothing smell of burning hair. His muscles tensed with each exhale and relaxed again as the fresh scent entered his nostrils with each inhale.

            When the flame reached his fingertips and started to burn his calloused skin, he dropped the black knot of hair and glanced up, clicking the lighter closed. As his eyes readjusted to the darkness around him, he could again make out the small wooden farmhouse a short distance away. It had been an exceptionally dry summer. The façade would likely burn readily. And if not . . .

            Gerald glanced down at the can of gasoline he’d stolen from the barn to his rear. So what if the house would likely burn on its own? He had the means . . .

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            He continued muttering under his breath while he shook the gas out all around the edge of the small house. He took great pains to coat all the doors and windows with excess amounts of fluid. Better if the inhabitants weren’t escaping from all sides of the building.

            He made a trail of gasoline a safe fifty or sixty feet away from the house. This would be his “fuse.” He tossed the empty can back toward the house and immediately began twisting his hair again. A quick pop as the lock of hair was ripped from his scalp, and he squinted his eyes shut. He continued squeezing them tightly shut as he twisted the end of the hair cluster into a point and pressed it lightly all over his face. He savored the soft poking of his hair against his eyes, cheeks, nose, and lips. He slid the point of the hair into one ear until the tickling itch faded on its own. Then he inserted the point into his other ear.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            He tossed the clump of hair to the ground and opened his lighter again. Now he ignited it and touched the flame to a patch of dry grass that he hadn’t coated with gas. The blades slowly caught fire and withered into ash. Gerald closed the lighter and sat back to watch the small embers slowly spread and ignite the blades of grass around them. He clenched his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and then relaxed his face as he took another patch of hair and twirled it around his fingers.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            This clump of hair he removed from his scalp and inserted into his mouth. He worked his lips to maneuver the long strands of hair upward and into his mouth like a long spaghetti noodle as his hand went methodically back to his head and started twirling.

            Gerald watched as the small flames slowly spread throughout the dry grass, and when they finally touched the edge of the gasoline trail, a blinding eruption illuminated the night. But Gerald didn’t squint. He watched with wide eyes and an open mouth, a tangle of hair hanging just below his chin, his hand frozen with another lock twisted about his index finger. The trail of gas blew up impossibly fast, and for several moments the small house was completely obscured by an enormous sphere of white-hot fire. Every window shattered at once, and the earth seemed to quake with the sharp thud as a significant portion of the oxygen vanished from the air. Gerald’s quiet mantra was momentarily stalled as he stared in quiet wonder and the hot shockwave blew his long, dirty hair out of his face.

            Once the initial explosion was over, he could hear screaming from inside the farmhouse. A woman screaming and choking and calling someone’s name.

            As the flames dwindled to a more reasonable height and began to consume the house from every side, Gerald’s breathing slowed, and his mantra resumed.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            At last the front door burst open, and the screaming woman emerged. She ran frantically through the wall of flame and stumbled face-first to the ground at the bottom of the steps. No man was with her, so the initial blast must have hindered his ability to escape.

            Gerald swooped in and seized the woman by the hair before she could even push herself upright. Her hair was already singed, and her skin was blackened from the thick smoke and ash. Heart pounding adrenaline-filled blood into his head, Gerald roughly dragged the woman closer to the flames and shoved her legs into them.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . .”

            Her agonizing screams and writhing drowned out Gerald’s quiet murmurs, but when the smell of burning flesh reached his nostrils, he closed his eyes, and his heart began to slow. The woman continued shrieking and fighting against her assailant, but his dirty, burn-scarred arms were too strong for her current condition. Gerald held her tightly for several minutes as she died a miserable, painful, slow death with her legs and lower torso thrashing about in the open flame. Her incessant yelling was a little unsettling, but the thickening scent of her melting skin calmed Gerald to his core. His eyes closed, he continued breathing slowly and deeply to take in the smell and muttering, “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .” with every exhale.

            When the screaming and fighting finally stopped, he held her just a moment longer and savored the combined odors of burning grass, wood, hair and flesh. Calm and satisfied, he rolled the corpse into the flames and bounded off into the surrounding darkness, still twirling his wavy hair in his fingers and murmuring under his breath.

            “Burn . . . Burn . . . Burn . . .”

18

            Andrew continued smiling placidly as he made his way down the walkway toward his car. The pleasantness of their date combined with the success of having won Jessica over after last night created a euphoria that simply couldn’t be matched. He paused in the middle of the sidewalk and considered going back to knock on the door. He didn’t want this night to end so early.

            A familiar man with long, shaggy hair brushed by Andrew as he stood in stationary bliss. He wore a scathing look of contempt, and he was breathing heavily despite having just stepped out of a parked vehicle moments before. Andrew was immediately distracted by the familiarity of that face. Where could they have met before?

            He turned and watched the man walk away toward the building. As he disappeared into the darkness, however, Andrew’s mind wandered back to what Jessica would do if he simply knocked and asked for more of her time. At the same instant that her shrill scream echoed through the parking lot, the memory came full circle and clicked in place. It was the man from Walton’s who had been arguing heatedly with his date. What were the odds—?

            “I’ll fucking kill you!” someone yelled; then there was a scuffle and a dull thud.

            Andrew ran back up the sidewalk into the apartment’s dark breezeway.  Jessica’s door was open, so he bolted inside to find her lying on the ground in the kitchen floor. The moppy haired man from the bar was standing over her as though he were terrified about what he’d just done but compelled to keep going. Andrew grabbed the back of his head before he could come to a decision. He thumped Donald’s face against the wall and swiftly slung him backwards into the floor.

            “What the hell is wrong with you?” he roared.

            Don just stared at him, tears mixing with blood from his nose, his mouth working but no words coming out.

            “Get out!” Andrew grabbed the man’s shirt and lifted him up to toss him out the door.

            Don stumbled through the door and fell flat on his stomach upon the concrete. He was very obviously drunk out of his mind. “You ruined my anniversary,” he slurred, struggling to stand up. “She ruined my marriage.”

            Andrew would have inquired further, but Jessica finally spoke up from behind him. Her voice was shaking. He turned and saw tears streaming from her wonderful eyes, tears of fear and pain and guilt and remorse. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

            “Your fucking joke ruined everything!” The man in the breezeway was crying harder than Jessica now.

            “I didn’t mean it,” she said. “I wish I could take it back!”

            Andrew watched this melodramatic exchange until both parties were weeping so profusely that neither was comprehensible. He finally decided it had gone on long enough. He took the man gruffly by the arm and began leading him out toward the parking lot. “You’re going to go home and make amends with your wife. Whatever Jessica did, she’s sorry, and you’re going to stop blaming her and do something proactive about whatever situation you’re in. You’re going to sober up and act like a reasonable adult. And you’re never going to step foot back here again, or you’ll have a lot more shit to save than your fucking marriage!”

            Donald leaned on the hood of his car and continued crying openly. Crying for his wife, his marriage, his actions, and likely his soul. Andrew doubted if he would remember any of this come morning. Probably for the better.

            Andrew turned to go check on Jessica, who was his main and only priority at this point, but fresh anger flared up inside him. The nerve of this guy. The sheer audacity of drunken losers. The complacency of the sluggish, slighted shitheads who self-induce brain damage and suddenly think they’re entitled to some sort of retribution!

            He turned back to Don and seized the back of his head once more to slam his face down onto the hood of his own car. Don fell into a sobbing, bloody heap on the asphalt by his front tire. But this still didn’t satisfy Andrew. He brought his foot down as hard as he could into the man’s ribs once, twice, three times. Still he couldn’t shake his hatred for this worm. Andrew wasn’t a fighter; he was a smooth-talker . . . But Jessica could have been killed if he hadn’t stopped and considered turning back when he did.

            He took Don’s hand in his own and twisted it until the arm reflexively drew itself behind his back. Then he twisted it some more. He continued twisting until he heard several of the small bones in Don’s wrist snap like dry twigs.

19

            Love was in the air! Late-night travelers on the lonely, southbound I-81 might have slowed and taken pause near the exit for Roanoke, Virginia, and not because they’d yearn to learn what about this exit was so important that it need be broadcast on road signs over three hundred miles north, but because the romance surrounding the city was practically palpable.

            A man who, if he could speak, would likely refer to himself as his birth name of Edward Freemantle, was standing in a dark yard and leaning against a lone tree. As a child, Eddie had had a severe speech impediment, which had regressed into full-blown mutism when his impatient parents started beating him out of frustration, but Eddie didn’t let that affect his love life.

He had recently succumbed to a raging crush he’d developed on some unnamed young girl. Watching her every move for days, Eddie had cultivated that crush into a love that bordered on obsession—or, more likely, an obsession that bordered on love. Perhaps she was in college, or perhaps she was in high school, but Eddie had discovered that she was currently living at home with her parents for the summer. He’d waited patiently and bided his time for days now, and his desire could wait no longer.

            He peered around the large oak tree in the girl’s front lawn. Her parents had just left her home alone, and Eddie watched her dark silhouette through the drawn shades in her lit upstairs bedroom. He imagined he could see her clearly as she undressed and put on her pajamas for a late night of watching television all by herself. Boy would she be in for a treat.

            He saw her come back downstairs, so Eddie approached the front door and knocked. When she opened the door, a wide-eyed, love-struck, much-older man stared back at her madly. His head was mostly bald and looked as though it had been shaved with a shard of glass. Cuts and sores and lacerations permeated the would-be smooth surface of his scalp, and wild patches of mangy, uneven hairs stood out in every direction. Despite the revolting condition of his head, the man’s eyes were his most notable feature. Deep blue, penetrating eyes danced crazily in their sockets. He smiled a smile that would have been endearing if it didn’t make him look even more insane, a smile that exposed unsightly, yellowing teeth and said, “I love you unconditionally despite all the reasons that should be impossible.”

            Eddie reached out and attempted to take her hand. He didn’t even notice her initial look of concern, followed by cautious pity, followed again by fear as he reached out. “What—?” she asked, jumping back while maintaining her hold on the door. “Can I help you?”

            Eddie couldn’t have answered if he wanted to. He just continued smiling lovingly and stepping toward her, reaching.

            “Stop!” she screamed suddenly. She tried to slam the door in Eddie’s face, but he was used to resistance. He held out an arm and pushed back against the door. As he stepped fully inside the house, the girl started shrieking frantically. “Help me! Somebody help!” She turned to run, but Eddie grabbed the back of her pajama shirt and fell upon her.

On top of her face-down figure, Eddie coiled his fingers in her soft, delicious-smelling hair. His parents had taught him the best way to end a struggle, if nothing else. He lifted her head while she writhed beneath him and powerfully knocked the side of her face against the hard floor. She stilled immediately.

Not bothering to check for any witnesses or even close the front door, he lifted her weightless body into his arms and carried her out toward his car, which was parked down the street. He had made something for her that would surely make her fall for him just as readily as he had for her. And if she continued to struggle . . . Well, he could always kill her like the rest.

The girl began stirring and coming to just as Eddie’s car came to a stop on the dark, secluded dirt road where he’d left her gift. He leaned over and planted a kiss on the corner of her mouth as her eyes fluttered open. She groaned and started reaching around groggily to get out of the car. Eddie took her hands and stilled them, resting his own on her lap.

Ahead of them, just beyond the beam of the car’s headlights, was her gift. And Eddie couldn’t have been more proud. He touched her chin and pointed straight ahead. The girl whined, and tears began to flow from her eyes, but she was still too disoriented to say anything. When she could finally make out the full-grown German Shepherd hanging by its forelegs from the tree before them, deep gashes and dried blood all over its coat, its head lolling grotesquely out behind it, she groaned again and struggled weakly once more. Choked, quiet sobs escaped her, and Eddie knew that she wasn’t going to be reasonable about this. He was hurt that she didn’t seem to like his gift, and he was even more hurt that she wasn’t going to even try to love him back, but he knew things would be all right in the end.

One way or another, he would spend the night with her beneath the tree, stroking her cherry-blossom-scented hair and savoring the warmth of her body against his own . . .

When he awoke the next day, blinded by the early morning sunlight and stiff from sleeping several hours on the hard ground with the dead girl entangled in his arms, Edward could just scarcely make out a tall figure standing above him. His eyes slowly adjusted to the bright light, and the man came into focus. Standing expressionless and supremely clean-cut, the man held a startling familiarity. Before Eddie could place the man’s face, however, he noticed the knife he’d used to slit his new lover’s throat, still coated in her dried blood, gripped tightly in the intruder’s fist. His last act before the knife entered his skull was to pull his lover close and open his mouth in silent protest.

20

            “I’m fine,” Jessica assured Andrew shakily. She was rubbing her neck where her assailant had grabbed her, but Andrew claimed he could see no bruises. She winced when she touched the back of her head, but it was mostly reflexive; she didn’t feel any lumps or tenderness.

            “I don’t even know what to say,” Andrew was saying. “Come sit down. I’ll get you something to drink.” He led the way into the den and sat down beside her on the couch. “Do you want some water or something?”

            She covered her face with shaking hands, trying not to cry. She hadn’t anticipated drinking tonight, but . . .

            “I think I need something a little stronger right now,” she said.

            Andrew touched her hand and stood up. “I’ll find something. Just take it easy.”

            “All I have is some Smirnoff, I think. It’s in the cabinet under the sink. To the left. I mean the right.” It finally hit her. She put her face in her hands and started sobbing again. She was glad Andrew was here after all, but crying in front of him made her feel supremely uncomfortable, so she buried her face in a throw pillow to try to stifle her wails.

            She wasn’t even sure why she was crying at this point. Whether she was frightened or remorseful or frustrated she couldn’t decide. Nonetheless, the tears were coming, and she had time to desperately hope that this wouldn’t turn such a nice guy as Andrew off after one measly date. He was probably itching to distance himself from this scene.

            When he came back in the room and saw her state, he quickly put her drink down on the coffee table and tried to solace her.

            “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

            “You must hate me,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder and giving up on trying not to weep. “I hate myself.”

            “Why would I hate you? You’re the victim here. That guy was a nut.”

            “Still. It’s my fault. I brought it on myself. In a way you kind of saved me last night, and I woke up this morning and decided to make a change in my life, and then you showed up again, and I thought it could be a sign, but now this happened, and I just don’t know anymore!” Her body trembled as she struggled to express all the complicated thoughts she was having at once. Her voice kept rising to a shrill, despairing squeal.

            “Here,” Andrew said, ignoring her incomprehensible babble, “take a drink and relax.”

            Jessica accepted his offer. She took the glass from him and sipped at first, then downed two large mouthfuls in a row and embraced the sudden burn in her esophagus. Willing herself to calm down, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and slowly.

            “Okay,” she said. “I’m all right.” Andrew patted her shoulder awkwardly and seemed to be trying to keep his smile genuine. “I bet you want to run for the hills.”

            “Not in a million years,” he replied.

How could she have gotten so lucky? Her emotions today had ranged from one end of the spectrum to the complete opposite, and here, in this time of miserable distress, was a perfect stranger who was doing more for her than anyone in her life that she could think to name.

She sighed. “He was at the bar last night.”

Andrew was nodding slightly. “I saw him there too. Arguing with his date.”

Shame drew hot blood to Jessica’s face, but she had to get it off her chest. “They were arguing because of me.” Andrew didn’t respond, and Jessica felt fresh tears on the way. “My friends and I played a mean joke. We asked him to ditch his date and have a threesome with us . . . Just to see what would happen.” She worked her face in a valiant attempt to not start crying again.

Andrew seemed a little taken aback, but he didn’t seem turned off. “That doesn’t seem like . . . that big of a deal,” he said plainly.

She looked down at her hands and started bleating again. “But we did it just to ruin their date. Just to be bitches.” Andrew finally put both arms around her and embraced her in a comforting silent hug. “Will you stay with me tonight?” she whispered.

“Of course.”

She pushed him back and rested her head on his chest. As exhaustion settled in and she began to drift into a comfortable doze, her crying finally ceased, and her eyes felt sticky and pinched. But the way Andrew was playing with her hair eliminated all concerns whatsoever. If she weren’t so overwhelmed and ashamed and shaken up, she probably would have climbed on top of him and given him a proper midlife crisis, but for now she just let the waves of sleep rush over her like the incoming tide.

“I was watching them fight,” she whispered dozily. Andrew just continued kneading her hair. “She reminded me of when I was a kid. You know how you’re always scared of messing up or being scolded or getting in trouble?”

“Mhm,” Andrew grunted in agreement.

“I felt like that. She was playing with her soup. Distracted. And I thought of the way I used to play with mine.” She yawned. “My mom used to give me that stupid alphabet soup like every day.” A wan chuckle.  “I got so sick of it, but you know your parents will get pissed if you don’t finish your meal.”

“Mhm.” Andrew offered another noncommittal acknowledgement.

“I don’t know. I just got that feeling in my stomach. Like when I was a kid with my soup every day. Like I’d done something wrong, and all I could do was wait to get yelled at.”

Andrew stopped stroking her hair and put his arm on her shoulder.

“I felt like I’ve been doing things wrong. I felt in my stomach like someone was going to punish me . . . Then you came . . . I think you kind of saved me. Now I just want to make things right.”

He leaned forward and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Despite being the end of their first date, it was intimate and comforting. And with that, her eyes closed, and she entered a deep, dreamless sleep.

When she awoke several hours later, Jessica found herself in her own bed. Andrew was snoring lightly nestled at her side. Both arms were asleep, as she’d been sleeping with them behind her head.

She yawned groggily and stretched. As the tingling sensation permeated toward her fingertips, she found that she couldn’t move her arms at all. She grunted and tried to pull them down, but both hands were stuck.

21

            Charlie Daniels pulled to a stop just past the hitchhiker at the same instant “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” came on the radio. He gripped the wheel in momentary post-traumatic-stress-induced panic. Greater country music fans than fans of their own children, his parents had formed a habit of leaving their infant son (named after the iconic guitarist and fiddler whose songs they’d played at their own white-trash wedding) atop the tall kitchen counters while they attended to their own affairs, which typically involved fucking to hillbilly hoedowns on the living room couch. After months of this tactic, they were forced to quit when little Charlie finally crawled right over the edge and fell to a concussion while their very idol by the same name fiddled away and drowned out the sounds of his squalls.

            Not unsurprisingly, Charlie had developed a crippling phobia of even moderate heights and a hypertension-inducing hatred for the entire genre of country music. That didn’t stop him from compulsively listening to country music stations on his long drives, though. But not this song. This song naturally had a much more detrimental effect. He closed his eyes and struggled to take deep, calm, slow breaths.

            The passenger door opened and some skinny meth whore crawled in, panting in her thick southern accent. “Thanks for stoppin’. Some asshole just fuckin’ left me out here! And in the middle of the night!”

            Great. Now a crack whore who looked and sounded just like his mother to top things off. He was just a guy trying to do a nice thing for a girl stranded on the middle of the interstate in Hillsville, Tennessee, in the middle of the night, and this is how the universe repaid him. The very song that signified his parents’ lack of love for him and some blitzed-out bitched who probably spawned from the same filthy womb he had.

            He stared straight ahead like an obedient soldier, his hands locked in place on the steering wheel, his short, buzzed hair atop a motionless, expressionless head. “You all right?” the cooze drawled.

            Finally he unhinged his neck and looked over at her. “Could you love me?” he asked abruptly.

            “For the right price.”

            Bitch! He didn’t want to be loved out of pity or monetary gain. He locked the door and began driving, taking the exit into Hillsville.

            “I mean could you fall for me.”

            “We can act out whatever you like, honey.”

            Charlie lashed out. The back of his hand struck her bony face. “I’m not talking about paying you, whore!” he screamed into the dark, silent car.

            “You motherfucker!” She obviously didn’t like being slapped like the whore she was, as she reached over and grabbed his wheel and started clawing at his face with her long, dirty nails.

            Charlie slammed on the brakes and wrapped his hands around her skinny neck. Alternating between banging the back of her head against the window and punching her unguarded face, he screamed, “You fucking bitch! Don’t put your filthy hands on me! You’ll fucking fall! You’ll see! You’ll fall!”

            When she lost consciousness, he calmly took the wheel and continued driving up the dark dirt roads while the devil in his car stereo entered fiddling contests with a redneck.

            Just as the sun was peeking over the trees in the distance, Charlie pulled to a stop along a tall ridge above the winding road below. “Wake up, bitch,” he said, slapping the hooker across the face and dragging her out of his car. She didn’t stir. This was probably for the better, for this close to the forty-foot drop-off, a wave of vertigo crashed over Charlie, and he stumbled to his knees.

            He continued crawling and dragging the tiny girl closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. His heart thudding painfully in his chest, he rolled over on his back and pushed her with his legs until gravity did the rest of the work for him. He didn’t have the nerve to lean over and watch her falling, but he imagined her body, light as a feather, twisting and rolling and cartwheeling through the air, bouncing off jagged outcroppings of stone, and landing with an anti-climactic thud on the asphalt below. She would remain in a grotesque train-wreck of a heap on the road for all to see, just like all those who had fallen before her. While she may never have fallen in love, she had fallen in the end,

and she had met an equally tragic fate.

            Charlie lay on his back with his eyes shut tightly, waiting for the world to stop spinning around him. Eyes still closed, he rolled slowly back toward his car. Once he felt he had distanced himself enough from the cliff, he opened his eyes, but before he could see anything, his body was lifted from the ground and hurled backwards over the edge. Rolling and cartwheeling just as he’d imagined his victim doing, he opened his eyes to one last frantic image. A familiar looking man had lifted him off his feet and hurtled him to his imminent demise. With short, neat, combed over hair, a well-groomed goatee, and a crisp collared shirt tucked into impeccable khaki pants, the man stood at the edge of the ridge and watched expressionlessly as Charlie flipped and twirled into his greatest fear.

            That recognizable face was the last thing Charlie ever saw. It was also the last thing Edward Freemantle saw before the knife ended his life. It was the face that stared relentlessly into Marvin Nash’s sunglassed eyes as the bullet entered his brain as he drove away from the Towson Town Center. It was the face that beaded sweat as it watched Gerald Harrison burn alive in the very fire he’d created. It was the face of the man who singlehandedly ended the terror of cross-dressing Kelsey and sodomizing Scott, of Quincy the conman and Isaac the vampire and Oscar after his hunt. It was the face these men had gazed upon a million times before, the face that haunted their dreams and their victims alike. It was the face of the man who had always been there and who was taking measures to ensure that he would always remain.

22

            “What the hell?”

            Andrew awoke to Jessica’s weak groans and writhing. The drugs he’d slipped into her girly liquor were wearing off, but the shackles around her wrists and ankles would certainly hold.

His piercing green eyes opened to stark darkness, a darkness matched only by his depraved soul, so black and riddled with sin that it had fissured and fractured and splintered. He thought of Jessica’s lovely eyes—the way they served as windows to her soul. Her soul that was the antithesis of Andrew’s own, regardless of how much she felt she needed to be punished. Nonetheless, punished she would be. Punished and then imbibed, a spiritual sustenance that would live on within him and serve to expunge Andrew of his own wrongdoings and faults.

He got up to turn on the lights. He just had to see those breathtaking eyes once more before he cut them out of her screaming face and consumed them at the same instant that her vitality and life and goodness flowed forth from her being and into his own. He had to peer once more into the soul that would soon serve to assuage the sickness of his own. He had to investigate this butterfly’s rough exterior cocoon, which he would single handedly remove to release the inner beauty within.

Tomorrow he would likely wake a changed man. Tomorrow he would be forced to deal with the reality of the body of recently deceased Donald Moore in his trunk. Tomorrow he would have to deal with the gory, lifeless, soulless carcass he was preparing to create.

Tomorrow he would likely wake with no recollection of “Andrew Babbitt.” He would call himself a different name. He would have blue or brown or hazel eyes. His hair would be just a few shades lighter. His memories of childhood would be drastically different. His accent would be unrecognizable. His day-to-day cares and concerns would be utterly new and irrelevant to those of Andrew Babbitt. He would move on to a new city as a new man and commit new acts of unspeakable evil. His mind would manufacture memories and ideas completely unrelated to the events of the past several months. His fragmented mind was so pervaded with mental disease that even his mental disease had mental disease, but he had singlehandedly eradicated each disease one-by-one. He had eliminated each alter-ego with almost no resistance at all. Tomorrow there may be someone new, some new disease that Andrew would have to tackle in his own time . . . But right now he was alone.

Right now he needed to take her in.

He withdrew a serrated carving knife as Jessica opened her mouth in what appeared to be a conclusive understanding of what was happening to her.

“It’s time to finish my alphabet soup,” he proclaimed gravely. “All it’s missing are the eyes.”