After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  We were leaving Prince William Falls, population 2,345, for a city with close to a million people in it. Hell, the university’s enrollment that year was easily ten times the population of PWF. For a pair of small-town boys, it was staggering to think about. Neither one of us had been north of Lethbridge or south of the border but we didn’t consider ourselves completely provincial. It shouldn’t be a complete shock. This in mind, I’m still not ashamed to admit I was more than a little nervous.

  But it is strange what we’re drawn to. I was thinking of the U of C library tower – floor after floor of combined human knowledge right at my fingertips. I knew I would spend countless hours wandering the stacks, drunk on the scents of binder’s glue and old paper. Even if I was on the fringe looking in, I knew academia was the place for me.

  For entirely different reasons academia was also the place for Freddy. But by his simple statement, I knew it was not the same knowledge or learning he craved. He craved knowledge of the most carnal sort and would find it amid the throng of burgeoning adults. At Friday night house parties and post-game celebrations, he would find it. In the campus rec center and in college pubs he would find it. And he would let the monster slip – if just a little. While I had civilizations of understanding and wisdom to occupy me, Freddy looked forward to anonymity. He would become a no one in a vast throng of no ones. He was whetted but growing restless. He would be careful and he would live his fantasies. He would keep the monster close but only close enough to have control. I would have my books and with that I would be content to look away. I would keep my head down, my eyes diverted by Chaucer or Shakespeare, Milton or even a King or two. He would walk the lower path where the shadows lie deep and the wind never stirs. Yes, Freddy had grown restless. It would not be long before blood would flow. As always, my own hands would be clean. Just.

  Ch9. Points of Light, Points of Darkness

  Points of Light, Points of Darkness

  We rented a place together in Brentwood, just north east of the University campus. It was a five-minute walk for me to the library and a fifteen-minute drive with Freddy. We quickly discovered a good portion of the city was like that – or becoming like that anyway. Unless we were going across town it was typically faster to bike or walk. It didn’t cost anything to walk either but it seemed very few places offered free parking. Freddy even had to apply for a monthly pass to park his car on the street outside our building. Public transit wasn’t an option. It didn’t cost much but it took forever to get anywhere.

  By the fall of 1994, another recession hit the country. Alberta got it good but nothing like the one following the NEP. As a full-time student with a full scholarship, Freddy was oblivious. The only sign of it he noted was an eight or ten cent per liter dip in the pump prices. Aside from that there was little else to indicate to him anything was amiss.

  Myself, I didn’t possess Freddy’s skills on the field and of late I was somewhat lacking in the book-smarts department. Freddy had a bank account with something close to nine thousand dollars in it and a monthly living allowance nearly large enough for both of us. I was out of pocket for damn near everything. He might have gone on grinning but I definitely noticed the recession. Good jobs were scarce. I did manage to nab a couple of night shifts each week at the 7-eleven down the street. And two weeks into the first semester I was hired on campus for weekend custodial work – nights again.

  I was working nearly full time but still I could barely make two hundred bucks a week. Wages were way down and I was lucky to get what I did. This was a time when a ten or fifteen cent raise definitely meant something. Yes, I noticed the recession. But then most people did. The average person notices the price of things – small things. But the small things add up faster than the big things. Energy prices were down – not just gasoline but heat and power were cheaper too. Our rent reflected the times as well. Our two-bedroom apartment was just three-twenty a month. We had less money but things did seem just a little cheaper. Either way, most luxuries were well out of reach.

  Possibly the only really bad thing that ever came out of that recession was an explosion in the auto lease industry. There were auto leases before of course but by 1996 it seemed to me suddenly everyone had a new car. No one knew how much their car cost or even exactly how much it would cost in the end to keep it. But leases made sense to them. Really. A new car no longer cost ten or twenty or thirty thousand dollars – only two-twenty a month. It didn’t matter that you never owned anything and you were only paying someone else’s depreciation. It was still a new car.

  Whatever.

  I never did get a car of course. I couldn’t really afford one – even a twenty-year-old beater. But I did learn how to drive. Freddy taught me if you can believe it. Once I realized it was all but impossible to stall the Impala’s big motor it came much easier. Don’t get me wrong – I never did get very good at it but at least I could manage if needed. For the most part I have always relied on pedal power – bike or bipedal that is. Only once in my entire life have I ever felt the need to get somewhere so fast that a car was required. If I had a car then I probably wouldn’t be telling this tale now.

  -

  The anonymity Freddy craved, the crowds of forgettable faces merging with forgettable faces, was not all what he expected. Sitting in the shadows, watching, listening to the goings-on of the world around made for an enjoyable pastime. But Freddy did not want to spend his life like that. Who he was or at least who he had been no longer mattered. In Calgary, he was just another quasi-ignorant townie trying to bring the town into the big city.

  Back in Prince William Falls Freddy was a god. He was champion and conqueror. He was a killer and a lover and that made him something different from his classmates. It made him something better. It was almost as though he had his own V.I.P. card into wherever he wanted to go. Most importantly, Freddy had an outlet for his darker fantasies. He could always be – temporarily at least – sated.

  Moving to the city gave him an opportunity to stalk. He returned to his roots, following women around campus and through the library stacks and the food courts and he let himself dream. In the first month of school Freddy came close to killing at least a half dozen times. These would have been impulsive acts, the kind of act I was expecting him to make. I was waiting for it even. Each time he stopped himself just on this side of the brink. But each time that point edged closer.

  He followed a young woman, a student returning home from the library on a Friday night. It was late. A skim of snow fell early that year but it would be gone with the blowing of the first Chinook. Freddy told me nothing of how he found her or how he managed to keep with her across the campus alone in the dark without her seeing him. But he managed. He followed her all the way to the Dorm towers. He stood in the elevator with her and three others. The three were friends and they were loud, stinking of marijuana and campus pub draft. One of them hit the button for the fourth floor. The young woman hit the sixth. Freddy hit nothing. He waited.

  The three began hitting on her, their remarks lewd and debasing. Freddy made his move, the move that would either damn her or restore her faith in men. He had been standing near her side but not too near. Now he moved closer, his arm falling protectively around her shoulders. He gave the three drunks a hard look.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, “I think that is enough.”

  The girl stiffened slightly at his touch but only for a moment until he spoke.

  “Whu? You two together or sumpin?” Was the response.

  “Yeah, we’re engaged,” Freddy admitted. The elevator was passing two on its way to three. “I’d like you to leave us alone. If you want to discuss it further, we can always go back outside.” He left it hanging as the elevator gave a lurch, slowing to arrive on four. The look was on his face, the same look that gave the shop owner, Giles, a moment of pause, the same look that gave Liza Harding a case of the squirmies, the same look that made Mike Thomas want to fight. These three absorbed the look the way Giles had or how Mike
had while it was on him. They folded.

  “We’re gettin’ off here,” a second of the three mumbled, his eyes on the floor. A flush had crept over his face which had nothing to do with the booze. The elevator doors opened and all three stepped off.

  “Have a nice evening, Gentlemen,” Freddy intoned with the same deadly seriousness forecasted in his eyes.

  As the doors slid closed the moment came. The young woman let out an explosive breath of relief. “Thank you.”

  He removed his arm from her shoulders and stepped back. “Any time.”

  “But engaged?” She laughed.

  Freddy laughed with her. “It was a little much but it worked.”

  The elevator had reached six. Freddy let his eyes flick up to the small tinted lens in the upper corner. Say cheese. He knew then it would be stupid to do anything with this girl – at least what he wanted her for.

  “Is this your floor?” She was smiling. Her were eyes friendly, if not quite flirtatious.

  “No, actually I don’t live here.” Freddy told her. “When I saw those three guys, I just had a feeling they were gonna bug you. I didn’t see any harm in going for a ride – just in case.”

  She was holding the elevator door with her foot, still very much willing to discuss this further in her room down the hall – or more likely over coffee sometime soon, if I would hazard a guess. “My hero.” Now she was being flirtatious. Maybe something more than coffee after all.

  He recognized the signs. He knew the look and he liked it. But there was the camera and he did not want her for anything less than a sacrifice. Freddy told me she just had the right look about her. She was perfect.

  “Any chance I could buy you a drink and thank you?” She was forward but their agendas didn’t quite jive.

  Freddy managed a regretful smile. “Unfortunately, I am engaged,” he lied smoothly. “Sorry.”

  “Lucky girl,” was her reply as she pulled her foot out of the door. She blew him a kiss as the doors slid closed.

  Thinking ahead – far ahead – Freddy kept up the act until he was not only out of the elevator but out of the building as well. If anyone watched the video, they would see him and her having an innocent conversation. He was just a nice guy being nice. It put him in a foul mood by the time he was home.

  Freddy didn’t stop himself because he knew it was wrong. He stopped himself because he knew he would get caught. He had no plan, no alibi. He had nothing. He decided he needed a system. He needed to be anonymous, a ghost. He would need to strike and melt, disappear without leaving any trace of himself. In September he had no idea how that would be accomplished.

  Meanwhile I could see the tension building. I watched him daily in silence just as he watched his own prey. He was going to slip. The monster would emerge and he would be lost. I waited. I was certain it wouldn’t be long.

  Yes, moving to the city gave him the opportunity to stalk and it provided him with ample prey. He could watch. He could learn. If he was able to control himself, in time he would cut through the city like a January clipper and everyone would feel his passage. But they would be helpless to stop him. He was bright, I’ll give him that. He was dark but bright – if that makes sense. He loved the hunt, the peering into the windows of private lives to see just what lay beneath the masks.

  -

  Freddy was anonymous in the big city but that was not to say he was without companionship. He played football and met the right group of guys. Consequently, he was able to move in the right circles. His jock-hood opened the right doors. And he had the look, his version of the thousand-yard stare. The doors were opened for him and the look did the rest.

  He had a preconceived notion of what university life would be like, as I had as well. His was based much on the movies we watched as kids. Mine was not. Thus, I was not let down. Freddy imagined a land filled with beautiful women and very little clothing, of all day, all night parties and such an abundance of casual sex that he would ache from chin to knee cap until the week after graduation. There was a depravity to the lifestyles of his contemporaries but it was not one he was prepared for. In the end he found that lifestyle woefully disappointing.

  The activities – the booze, the drugs – were not new to him. But the attitudes surrounding it had changed. The women possessed a blatant sexuality, more a sensuality really, that he found all for show. I say the women because they were not girls anymore. These women wanted something more than they did in high school. Even as they offered themselves up willingly for exploitation, they wanted a relationship, a future. They were adults now, something like a flat image finally rendered in three dimensions. They were older, wiser and far more evolved. This evolution was something Freddy was not quite prepared to cope with.

  As a general rule, women want something more than just sex – so do men. This seemed obvious to me but Freddy was stuck back in 1991. His was the mind of an adolescent. These last years had never given him the need to grow up. His station, his status back home never required it of him. Of course, he had the look, a true angst these others could not grasp. Perhaps angst is not what I mean. Freddy did not feel vulnerable. He did not feel the world looming over him. He was never at the crossroads. But he did feel his path was a divergent one. And he did know shadows would always lie low against the horizon. This was his angst – angst more real, more vital than anything Sartre might have postulated – or even Kurt Cobain.

  The women found his look fascinating. He was seen as both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. They would go out with him and often they ended up in his bed. Quickly he would be discovered as the graceless child he was and the fascination would wane or his appetites would scare them off. They would stop calling or they would let him see them with other men – either way it was the new, evolved way of breaking up. Freddy didn’t mind. They didn’t hurt his feelings. He would just go hunting for another. To him, these women could not understand. But in the midst of this, he was becoming aware of his own lack of understanding.

  -

  Freddy became one of a loose group of quasi-jocks that hung around together. They were not the elite, the golden boys destined for great things but there was still some luster about them. Not being golden, their futures were in their minds and they knew it. They would meet at coffee shops for study sessions and share notes from class. They kept each other afloat. They also hung out at the same bars and went to the same parties. I think Freddy was happy with them. For a time, I think he considered them true friends, the first true friends he ever had. Note I do not include myself on this list. As his confidant, I could never be his friend. I was never invited to these get-togethers even to share notes. I was truly alone. If anyone ever had reason for angst it was me.

  The parties happened almost every Friday night. Freddy didn’t go to all of them but he did make a habit of going every second or third weekend. More so than the bar scene, the parties were just an excuse to get drunk. That much had not changed since high school. But now the drunks drank because they wanted to rather than because it was wrong or illegal. It was a way of decompressing, relaxing after a hard week of classes. It was at one of these parties Freddy met Tina Armstrong. She initiated him. She taught him the ways of adulthood. It was bound to happen, I know. I just wish she was a little less curious, maybe more observant and a hell of a lot more careful. I don’t think she ever knew what she unleashed on the world.

  A bar had been set up in the basement. There was a keg. There was always a keg. A tub was filled with ice and packed with coolers and ciders and bottled beer and the liquor flowed freely. Before ten most of the crowd was well on their way to inebriation. Upstairs a local band was playing in the living room. They had an eclectic set of seventies covers and several so-called originals that sounded too much like Nirvana to be anything else.

  Freddy met up with a couple of his friends, Allan Jessup and Luke Ferris – who everyone called Bull because of his lack of anything resembling a neck. Luke claimed the moniker had nothing to do with his
neck – or lack thereof – but rather it referred to his package. He claimed he was hung like a bull. Freddy readily quipped, ‘hung like a steer is not hung like a bull.’ The attitudes of our peers might have, as a general rule matured, but the level of sophistication in our jokes had not. Then again, I don’t think it ever does – at least for the male persuasion. On average I think a grown man knows at least five ways to imitate a flatus. The sound alone makes us chuckle.

  By eleven o’clock that night Allan was laid out in a La-z-boy with half a beer cradled in his hand while his head began its inevitable nods towards unconsciousness. Luke was not far behind but he abandoned Freddy to join a game of quarters in the kitchen. Freddy was left on his own. He stood against the back wall of the living room with a can of Pepsi in his hand while the band went through a piece so reminiscent of Heart-shaped Box only the lyrics might have been changed.

  Freddy listened to the band, his toe tapping to the beat, a finger occasionally joining against the side of his drink. His mind was wandering and his eyes roamed the room. He was people watching again. When people called out to him, he nodded or raised his Pepsi in a half-toast but he made no effort to converse.

  He did not fail to see Tina as she strolled up beside him, choosing to share his patch of wall while the band played. Freddy drew her to him in a way he could not have understood before that night. He was aloof, apart and distracted. He attracted her because he was not interested. His polite smile as she met his eyes was the same. He expressed no interest in her immediately and consequently managed to pique her interest in him.

  Freddy did not miss her. He had been watching her for most of the last two songs. It would have been difficult to miss her. She was blond, slim and quite pretty. Tina had that small town look about her where every girl was the girl next door. All town folk had something of that look – even Freddy. It was an openness, an assuredness not hidden or lost with the fading scent of wheat fields and cow shit. It was confidence without being hindered by arrogance.