by David Beers
He couldn’t be around her anymore. Couldn’t see or talk to her.
And yet, simply telling her it was done over a phone call or face to face wouldn’t be enough, either. He needed to make sure she wouldn’t try to return, that when they broke up, they were done forever. He wouldn’t let Harry, or himself, hurt her.
Real noble, John, he thought as he watched Cindy walking across the school cafeteria. Let’s talk about how noble you feel once this is over, huh?
He had ignored her calls for the past two days. In class, he sat on the other side of the room and refused to look at her. After class, he left too quickly for her to say something. All of those actions building up to this, when she forced him to talk to her.
He saw the anger in her face from twenty feet away, and she walked with a purpose. She didn’t look at anyone else in the lunch room, only at him, and her feet moved too quickly—because he could do nothing to postpone this any longer
You built it up, John. Now watch as it falls apart.
“How long are you going to ignore me?” she said as she reached the table, her voice loud enough for anyone sitting by him to hear. She didn’t sit down, didn’t take her backpack off, either. She stared down at him with the righteousness of gods, and John saw hate there. Hate and a whole lot of pain.
Because you’re hurting her. Because she loves you, even if she hasn’t said it, even if she doesn’t truly understand it. She loves you and you’re tearing her apart.
But a stronger part of him, perhaps a piece that he only met that one time in a London school cafeteria, spoke up. And you love her. So do this so that she can love another. Because if you don’t, you’ll be the last person she ever falls in love with.
And in that strength came everything that followed. He blocked out the part of him saying how much he was hurting her. Perhaps he even blacked it out, killing it completely.
“You haven’t gotten the hint?” he said, his voice matching hers—his American accent slicing through the conversations around him with all the delicacy of a Viking sword. “We’re done.”
The anger in her eyes faded almost immediately, replaced by tears and hurt.
“I …,” she paused, her eyes swimming. “What did I do?” Her voice no longer carried the thunderous rage, but was almost a whisper. “What did I do, John? What happened?”
He stood up, his tray still on the table. He had stood up before like this, except then he took the tray and slammed it against someone’s head. That was when Harry still lived. And he had to hurt someone now, too, but he wouldn’t use the tray.
“What did you do?” his voice still raised, and the tables across the lunchroom were silent, all of them paying attention to the two people standing, one yelling at the other. “You’re just a cunt, Cindy. I don’t want anything to do with you. You can’t fix cunt.”
And the tears in her eyes swelled past the point of her holding them in. They fell down her face and she didn’t reach up to wipe them away. She stood looking like her heart wasn’t just breaking, but being crushed, slowly, as it still struggled to keep beating—struggling against something it would never conquer.
“You’re cruel,” she said, her voice still a whisper.
The entire lunch room stared at him along with her, and John knew that he just ended any chance of having friends in this country—he would be alone again, an outcast now. Perhaps even bullied. And it would all be worth it if Cindy lived.
She turned around and walked out of the cafeteria, her feet moving just as fast as they had carried her in. John watched her go, and just before she was out of sight, he watched her hand move to her face and wipe away the tears he caused.
Cindy lay in her bed.
The tears were done. At least for now. She didn’t have any more to give, not to John and not to herself.
But that didn’t mean she was finished with this situation. The light in her room was off and when her roommate came knocking, Cindy didn’t get up to answer. She didn’t want to see anyone or talk to them about what happened in the cafeteria. Without a doubt, her circle of friends knew about it by now. They were gossiping and some of them perhaps even trying to talk to John. Cindy didn’t care about any of that. They could go on about their business however they saw fit, but she wouldn’t get involved.
Because she had her own ideas of what to do next, and none of them had anything to do with her friends. All of them were inconsequential in this.
Cindy had never felt what she felt for John. She, of course, had flirted with guys before, but it was all kid games—the same as she thought this one would be when it started. A lot of people at school called her a tease because of how she flirted and then pulled away, which was fine; she probably was one.
Except with John.
Because he was special; he made her feel special, and despite his acting job today in the cafeteria, she knew he felt the same.
That’s what she spent the last two hours thinking about. The first four hours after the spectacle had been her crying uncontrollably.
John had been acting. Can’t fix cunt? It was like something out of a cheap fraternity comedy, in which the guy saying it always ended up getting kicked out of school for hazing pledges. John became a caricature, which simply wasn’t him.
So … he had been acting. Almost as if he wanted it to happen there and then, because why wouldn’t he have simply continued what he’d been doing? He could have stood up and walked off, making her look like some kind of possessive ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t. He raised the confrontation to a level of aggressiveness that she didn’t think possible.
But why?
And when she found the answer to that question, she felt relief.
John was hiding something and in such a public humiliation, he thought she would surely back off and he could keep his secret. She felt relief at that answer because she knew it wasn’t over between them. Not yet. He still cared for her.
And she wasn’t done caring about him, either.
She didn’t know how she would talk to him, but she knew she would keep trying. She cared about John and wasn’t quitting just because he hid something.
No. Quit wasn’t in Cindy.
John paced.
Back and forth across his room.
“Take your mind off it,” Harry said. “You know how.”
John didn’t look up. He wasn’t sad at what happened earlier that day, but angry—with himself. He couldn’t focus his mind on anything else but what he said to her, and the stress mounting from this constant worry felt overpowering, as if he might collapse on the floor from such a great weight.
“Look, you didn’t want me touching her, so you did what you thought you needed to. Fine, I’m not going to be mad about it. But sitting here pacing won't bring her back. Going up one side of yourself and down the other with guilt won’t do anything either. We can do something, however.”
How many weeks had John been resisting this? Arguing and arguing. For what? For his mother to tell him she already knew and him to lose his first girlfriend?
The change in John wasn’t gradual, like a mountain slowly degrading against the relentless force of nature’s elements. No, the change occurred more like an earthquake right under the mountain, cracking it apart from bottom to top, from outside to core. All at once, the ground shifted, and when the first piece broke, the rest came right after.
“What?”John said, his pacing finished.
“I’ve been looking at some places,” Harry said, smiling.
“Where?”
“Well, about a mile from the school I found something pretty interesting. I think you might like it.”
John went to the door and grabbed his coat hanging next to it. “Let’s go,” he said. He walked out of the room without waiting for Harry to follow.
He exited the dorm and Harry was already outside on the stoop.
“Which way?” John said. He didn’t care anymore. He was so sick of fucking fighting it, of wanting it, and without any help c
oming from anywhere—except Harry.
“Oh, I like this version of John better,” he said. “Come on, this way.”
John walked slightly behind Harry, who hummed a song that John couldn’t quite place. John looked down at his watch and saw it was one in the morning. If someone caught him out this late, he’d face repercussions tomorrow, but that mattered about as much as a tear in a hurricane.
“How do you want to do it?” Harry said, the energy in his voice radiating throughout his whole body.
“I don’t fucking know. Haven’t you been thinking about this?”
Harry looked back at him and smiled. “Of course, John. Of course I have. I just wanted your input to make sure we were on the same page.”
John said nothing, only looked forward as they walked through the campus’s northern quad. Harry didn’t speak up again either, as if he knew that John needed this time in silence. He led the two of them, walking quickly, and making sure that they stayed in the shadows, close to buildings, away from any possible eyes peeking out windows.
Thirty minutes later John stood in front of the most broken part of England he’d ever seen.
A dark building stood in front of him . He followed it up with his eyes, seeing that Harry had brought him to a decrepit, old ruin.
“What’s in there?” John said.
“The people society forgot about. Winos. Addicts. Schizos. Those that aren’t cared for, I guess,” Harry said, also looking up at the building.
John offered no argument. “It’s safe for us?”
“Not as safe as your dorm, but yes, I think so.”
“How did you know about this place?”
Harry didn’t turn his head, but kept it slightly raised and facing the building. “We have enough to think about right now. Come on.”
Harry looked ahead and began walking. He made his way to the building’s front doors, where he veered to the right, heading to the corner of what once was probably a gorgeous stone entryway.
John watched, standing a dozen feet back.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” Harry said, bent over and rummaging in the dark. John couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but it sounded like stones were moving. Harry grabbed them gently, so that the scraping sounds didn’t echo too loud. “Where the hell is it?” he said, his head down, clouded by the building’s looming shadow.
“What are you—”
“Got it!” Harry shouted in a whisper. He walked back to John, holding something in his hand.
“What’s that?” John tried peering through the night to see.
“Grabbed it from The Old Hall.”
John squinted, wondering what in the hell he would have grabbed from that place. The Old Hall was the first building built on the campus, but people rarely went into it. The thing was more or less a museum to brag what the school had done in the past.
“This,” Harry said, lifting his arm at the elbow so that John saw a long metal pole with a point on the end.
“A fire poker? You grabbed it from the fireplace?”
Harry smiled. “Come on.”
John watched as Harry walked off a few feet, not waiting for him the same as he hadn’t waited when they left the dorm. John wasn’t questioning himself or fearful. Just …
This is it, he thought.
Things had gone too far to turn back now, so John followed his dead friend into an abandoned building. Abandoned by all but those that society cast away.
He walked inside the building and immediately smelled the musk of stagnant air. The place reeked of sweat and, somehow, pain.
“Come on,” Harry whispered. He turned the corner with John right behind him. No lights, only the moon’s inconsistent rays shining in from broken windows. John followed, wondering if his shoes’s sounded as loud to anyone else as they did to him.
Harry took a right and before them was why they had come.
A man lay on the floor, his brown skin touching the linoleum. No pillow, no sheet, just the clothes on his back.
“He’ll work,” Harry said.
John looked to Harry, understanding what he meant.
He’ll work meant that they had reached their destination.
Harry lifted up the metal pole, handing it to John. He didn’t take it, though. Instead he looked at the sleeping man, who hadn’t even woken at the sound of someone next to him.
“No one will know,” Harry said.
And John knew that to be true. This guy had no family. Probably hadn’t paid taxes in two decades, if ever. No one was looking for him. If he died tonight, the world would spin completely undisturbed.
“Take it,” Harry said. “Give it one good swing, and if you don’t immediately feel better, we’ll leave.”
John felt a cold focus fall on him. He had felt it before, with the squirrel. With Harry.
He took the metal stick, resting it on its point.
“You do this and it’ll be over, John. You won’t need to stress anymore. You won’t need to keep thinking about how good it’ll feel.”
John raised the poker high above his head, as if it were an ax and the man’s head beneath it a block of wood.
John swung until he couldn’t raise his arms anymore. The man had stopped screaming ten minutes before.
John blinked, seeing the hallway around him as if for the first time.
Though, that wasn’t completely true—he remembered what happened, remembered it in detail. Only, then, he hadn’t seen anything except the rise and fall of the black poker. The flesh beneath its descent ripping apart, one whack at a time. The blood—normally red, but now a dark maroon—spattering out as the man’s meat gave way to bone, and finally bone to brain.
The man lay on the floor in nearly the same position, except his brown skin was now in tatters and his chest no longer filling with air.
John looked around, wondering immediately why he didn’t hear Harry’s voice; Harry, who hadn’t stopped speaking for almost a goddamn month, should be talking now. Rambling on about how much fun they had and how great it was, and on and on until John could puke.
As his eyes flashed around the dark hallway, though, he knew he wouldn’t find his dead friend. Even in the shadows, Harry couldn’t hide from John. But Harry wasn’t there. He left, leaving John and the body to reminisce about their fun times by themselves.
“What the fuck ….”
All the eagerness, the cold focus—the goddamn desire—was gone.
John recognized what he’d done. For the first time, he saw the effects of all his daydreaming and wishing. It lay before him in a broken and bloody mess, with brains oozing from its head.
Harry said John wouldn’t get caught. He said no one would find out about this man … but now Harry was gone, and what evidence did John leave? Were there cameras that saw him walking across the quad? Had anyone been up late and looking out their window, despite Harry’s attempts to keep them hidden?
John looked at his hands for the first time and a bone-deep horror took hold.
Blood lay splattered across his hands. No longer warm, but cooling, and soon it would cake onto him.
“Oh no,” he said. “Oh no.”
He couldn’t go back into the dorm like this. What time was it? Three? Where would he shower—just let the blood run off him into the communal bathrooms, hoping that the thin plastic curtain would keep anyone from seeing what he washed off?
“Where the fuck are you, Harry?” John said, hoping—near the point of praying—that Harry would come back. Just joshing around, John! I’m still here.
No one answered, though.
John took the bottom of his shirt, smearing more of the dead man’s blood on it, and wiped off the fire poker. He went up and down it multiple times, making sure that no fingerprints remained.
He didn’t have time to focus on Harry, or on what he’d done—not right now. He needed to make sure that he left nothing here for anyone to find. He leaned against the wall and looked at the bottoms of his shoes. No blo
od. That was good.
What else was there? He hadn’t thought about any of this. His mind had only focused on getting up here and doing what Harry told him. He mentally backtracked, thinking about everything he touched on his way in—but he couldn’t remember anything. He had simply followed—right?
“Oh, shit, you killed him!”
The words flung across the hallway, hitting John’s ears like a bucket of ice water after stepping from a hot-tub. His eyes jumped from the body to the end of the hall where he saw a skinny white woman staring at him. Her hair was a bird’s nest of twisting clumps and her mouth hung open in disbelief.
“You gone be in some trouble.”
John didn’t try to make any sense of her words. All he saw, all he cared about was that she saw him. With the poker. Standing over the dead man.
John didn’t think.
He simply moved, stepping over the body as if it were a discarded t-shirt on the floor. The woman hadn’t quit staring at the dead man yet, not until John started running toward her. Then she looked up, her open mouth gaping even wider as she understood what was about to happen. Despite whatever problems lived in her mind, it clearly knew when survival was at stake.
She turned to run, one hand reaching out to the wall for support.
Too late, though.
John attacked as if her head was a ball and her body a stand, rearing back for a powerful swing at a t-ball game. He connected in a bone-shaking hit, cracking the woman at her temple with the metal point. She collapsed in a heap, as if her body's thinness lied about an underlying massive weight inside.
Her eyes were closed but it was too late for taking chances.
John brought the poker down again, colliding with her skull in a wet thawp. Again. And again.
He stood above the dead woman, breathing heavily.
Walking back toward the first body, he looked at the floor, trying to see if he had stepped in blood and tracked it. He didn’t see anything, but how could he be sure?
Sureties don’t exist in murder, a part of him said.
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