by Bill Alive
The paramedics had come because Jocelyn had called 911, mainly in a panic over her writhing, gun-toting husband. She could have let us out herself a lot sooner, but she’d been too terrified to come up and face whomever Wallace had been aiming at.
Sure, I guess she had a lot on her plate just then, what with her husband trying to shoot someone and then collapsing and magically blistering and all. Fair enough. But Mark had to wait a long time for those medics. And yes, he was too exhausted to shield much against the pain.
Now it was the next morning, and Mark was looking much better. Better than “burn victim,” anyway. More like he’d decided to sunbathe in Death Valley.
Wallace had also been hospitalized. His burns were much worse.
I wasn’t going to ask how that worked. Probably he was just older and couldn’t heal as well. Mark had felt every pain they’d shared.
And maybe Gwen knew he’d made that choice. At least, her eyes had a strange shine I’d never seen.
Meanwhile, her peeling, beet-red hero, slouching against the headboard in his cheap hospital gown, said, “Graduate from what?”
Gwen sighed. I mean, here she was, finally making the effort to be oblique, and he goes and makes her spell it out. “Mr. Falcon. I can always use another detective who’s in this for the long haul.”
“What exactly is the question?” Mark said.
Gwen groaned. “I can see why he sprayed you.” But then her eyes flashed all bright again. “But you could have let him go. At least, according to Pete.”
“Thanks,” I said, from my perch in a bony old chair in the corner.
Mark shrugged, and fiddled with his sheet. “Shame to waste all that agony.”
“Mr. Falcon! I believe you’re blushing. Even through your burns.”
“Look, Gwen,” Mark said, straightening up from his slouch and eyeing her right back. “The answer’s yes. I’m in. For good.”
“Really?” Gwen said, quiet.
“Yes.” Their gaze was locked, two forcefields sparking.
Mark snapped away first, and he said, looking away, “It’s only pain. And now it’s gone. Mostly. And she’s still safe.”
I was tempted to pull out my phone and record this. In case Mark had any second thoughts (again).
But I knew I didn’t have to. Not this time. Not if he could say that covered with blisters.
“Besides,” Mark said. “That asshole practically burned me alive. What else can they do to me?”
Something flickered across Gwen’s face, like a cloud killing the sun.
“Don’t ask,” she said.
“Right,” Mark said. “Speaking of asking…”
With a wince, and at least one creaky joint, he eased out of the bed and stood, right there in his silly paper gown and his blisters and that awful hospital lighting that isn’t fit for the dead.
“I don’t know about you,” said Mark Falcon, “but I’m ready to go dancing.”
And then I really did wish I’d had my camera live.
Because Gwen reached out and gently took his flaking, muscled hand.
“Okay,” she said.
Mark smiled like I hadn’t imagined he could, like he was ten years younger, or maybe a lifetime, and Gwen smiled back, and it would pretty much break your heart. In a world of shit and blood and pain, good hearts could still find each other, like gulls calling in a storm.
I realized that in some other life, I’d once crushed hard on my image of this woman, my own little cluster of feelings and yearnings and need. And then when Mark had first flirted with her, and she hadn’t smacked him down (entirely), a dark Gollum part of me had whispered, “Another hot couple. Of course. And that’ll never, ever be you.”
But right now, Gollum was AWOL. All I could see here was mystery.
I barely knew either of them, in the end. I just knew how they chose.
And so for once, I forget their hotness quotient. Besides, we’d all blink and the hotness would vanish… they’d be older than Vivian, but even more themselves. They’d get stronger and brighter every year, radiating life into all the lives they touched.
These were two mysterious warriors that I got to call my friends.
My heart cracked with joy, and my eyes burned with blockaded tears.
And then Gwen said, softly, “I just have one question…”
“Just one?” Mark murmured.
Gwen nodded. “Did you really think Chip was a killer?”
She erupted in her great honking laugh. “He’s the nicest man in this town!” she crowed.
“It wasn’t the worst theory,” Mark growled.
“Neither was phlogiston!” she gasped, between honks.
“I don’t even know what that word means,” Mark said.
But they were still holding hands.
It took another hour before a doctor dropped in to give Mark official permission to resume his life and his pants. Then we all walked out down the hospital hallway, and I let them walk ahead a bit, just another couple holding hands.
Until we hit the lobby. Gwen saw first, and she went stiff.
Ceci. Back in her uniform, back at work.
I knew the pain wasn’t entirely gone. But she’d lucked out, I guess, and turned some corner where it was bearable, mostly. For now. So of course she’d come right back to serve the ones who weren’t so lucky.
She didn’t see us; she was standing by a couch in the lobby corner, helping a couple of patients I couldn’t see yet.
Gwen pulled away from Mark, and she turned to walk away in the other direction before Ceci saw her. Mark kept hold of her hand, and their arms stretched as she tugged away, shaking her head. Not yet.
Mark sighed and let her go.
Gwen marched off past me with a stiff nod. Her head was high, her face was grim, she was back behind her wall against the world. For now.
Mark let me catch up with him, and, being Mark, we walked into the lobby like nothing had happened.
But he did angle his way toward Ceci.
Seeing her, here and now, was so strange… it really was like nothing had happened, like the very idea of a panda costume breaking the drabness of this hospital was a preposterous dream.
A glimmer of an ache tingled in my chest. Going back to normal felt a little sad.
But just then, my hand itched like crazy. I had my own peeling burn from where I’d brushed Mark’s sleeve.
Maybe a long stretch of normal sounded great.
I tried to catch Ceci’s eye. Until I saw her patients.
Jocelyn. I hadn’t even recognized her at first. She looked like grief had aged her another ten years overnight.
Maybe it was just the awful light, but her blonde looked mostly gray, her face was grooved with deep new wrinkles, and her eyes were swollen with exhaustion and tears.
Finding out your husband killed your son might do that to you.
And yet, even as I looked, all her wrinkles creased into a beatific smile.
Because the other patient was Rachel. And Rachel was holding her new baby.
I’m not going to lie. I’d never seen a baby that new. So my first thought wasn’t so much cute as… well… alien.
The weird bulgy head, the spacey eyes, the scrawny legs that jutted out like the legs on a cold chicken you’re rinsing off to roast… and then it screeched this painful little squawk like a baby raptor.
It didn’t help that they were changing the diaper. That stuff was like green tar from a nuclear waste site. I guess it’s called meconium? Some special newborn thing. It wouldn’t come off. Those first few days, even the poop is extra gross.
But Rachel and Jocelyn were cooing over that baby like they were in some alternate dimension of bliss.
Later, Jocelyn would tell us that late last night, Rachel had gone into labor and called her, hours after Wallace had been arrested and put in the hospital. The way Jocelyn would tell it, that call might have saved her life. Her sanity, for sure.
Rachel wouldn’t say why sh
e’d changed her mind. Or even really look at me much. I would understand.
But in this moment, wiping away at that poop tar, the two of them saw something in that alien kid that I wasn’t seeing. Some beauty that had come here to bloom in the house of pain.
Rachel looked a bit older too, but also softer, warmer. The contractions and the labor were now ancient history… the worst of the pain was past, and the rest couldn’t last forever. Now there was a whole new person.
Then Ceci gently, gently took the baby in her arms.
And she finally turned and caught my eye.
And here’s the thing. I never used to believe in time travel.
But in that look, we broke time. That was our kid she was cradling… whatever surged between us then, whatever always had and always will, before and after and above and under everything we did, that connection was a portal. Whole new people were going to soar right through. They were already pounding on the door.
Doubts were obliterated. The beauty rush, the toxic comparisons, the fears from your parents’ mistakes… they’re all so hilariously irrelevant when you realize that you’re home. Like waving concert lighters in the noonday sun.
We both knew we’d seen it. We both knew it couldn’t be unseen. It was over. It was done. It was finally begun.
I said, “See you soon.”
“Yes,” said Ceci Jensen.
THE END
[AND THE BEGINNING…]
AFTERWORD
This’ll be short. I need to get this book out now, in case we don’t come back.
When Mark and I had finished chatting with Rachel and Jocelyn, we walked outside, and Gwen was waiting. Mark and Gwen went out to lunch. I got a definite vibe I should sit this one out, so I offered to stay behind and finish up the last few chapters on this book. I didn’t have Mark’s ancient laptop, of course, but I figured I could use my phone.
Ceci had started work early and was almost off her shift, so I could have hung with her. But now we were both kind of shy. So I found a grungy corner in the hospital cafeteria and swiped out the stuff you just read.
When I finished, they still weren’t back, so since I had all the other files on my phone anyway, I got this book all ready to go, even the free book offer and stuff in the back. Just had to click PUBLISH.
You’ll see why that matters in a second.
After their (leisurely) lunch, Mark and Gwen picked me up, all high spirits as we drove up the mountain to our pad.
They were talking about Numb, how maybe we’d scared him off from Back Mosby once and for all. Maybe we weren’t worth the trouble, maybe heroin would pass us by.
We were almost at the cabin when Mark winced.
“You okay?” Gwen said. “Is it your burns?”
“No,” Mark grunted. His teeth were clenched, he was shielding hard. “I can’t figure it out… it’s like nothing I’ve ever…”
Then his face jerked in pain. “Stop,” he barked. “Stop the car.”
Gwen braked hard on the gravel, right outside our driveway. She didn’t pull in.
From the car, the cabin looked normal. Empty. Glowering.
We sat and watched, silent as Mark struggled for breath.
Then something on the porch moved.
It was dark and it was small, smaller than a hand, flopping and clacking on the concrete. It was alive.
But the whole movement was wrong. My stomach hurt before I even knew what it was.
“Oh, God,” Gwen said. “That poor mouse.”
The mouse was in a trap. But sideways. The bar had locked across its neck, and the creature was frantic. It would take a long time to die.
We got out and walked closer, including Mark. But Mark was pale and starting to shudder.
“Get back to the car,” Gwen told him. “I’ll get this.”
“I’ll be fine,” Mark said.
“It’s dying,” Gwen snapped.
Mark gasped.
“The bottom!” he said. “The bottom of the trap, look.”
I looked, but the mouse was flipping back as it scrambled to escape. So I didn’t see the bottom.
Except one word, in thick black marker:
CECI
I felt sick.
Gwen must not have seen the bottom. She was arguing with Mark to get far enough away so she could safely put the mouse out of its misery without that doing who-knew-what to Mark.
Normally, I would never have gotten within twenty feet of a dying anything. Now, with a strange numb calm, I stooped and flipped the trap while the mouse writhed.
The back read:
CECI IS CHARMING.
6PM TONIGHT. VIENNA METRO.
LET’S DEAL, EMPATH.
-N.
Behind me, Gwen swore.
I’d never heard her scared. Not like this.
I set the mouse down, and I mechanically searched for something to end it. I could do that. That was one thing I could do.
Gwen was on her phone. “Mark?” she said, her voice still raw, terrified and terrifying. “Mark, she’s not answering.”
“Then let’s get going,” Mark said. His face was hard as rock. “There’d better not be traffic.”
And so far, there hasn’t been.
So far.
Crap, we’re there.
TO BE CONTINUED.
I HOPE.
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DISCLAIMER
(TOTALLY COPY-PASTED AND TWEAKED FROM MURDER FEELS AWFUL)
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANY ACTUAL PERSONS, PLACES, THINGS, INCIDENTS, WORKS OF ART, PRODUCTS, COMPANIES, RELIGIONS, HOBBIES, SUBCULTURES, CARS NAMED “THUNDER”, OR ANYTHING ELSE, IS COMPLETELY ACCIDENTAL AND UNINTENDED.
GET OVER IT.
For legal reasons, this is now officially a work of fiction. All characters, locations, murders, whatever, are completely made up, and any resemblance to real characters, locations, and stuff that actually happened are totally accidental, even if they happen to have the exact same names and seem really really similar.
Also, for legal purposes, the author of this book is now… um… “Bill Alive”. Sure. “Bill Alive” is a real dude who is not me, because I am a made-up character and he is real and everything I just told you is made up, because it was really him.
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(SEE YOU IN MURDER FEELS DEADLY…)
Murder Feels Crazy
The Empath Detective Mystery Series
PART 1 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
PART 2 Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
PART 3 Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
PART 4 Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
PART 5 Chapter 49