A Variable Darkness: 13 Tales

by John McIlveen

  STOP IT!

  ZING! went the pain behind his eyes.

  “My god, then what?” Cheryl persisted. The anger in her voice…

  “Tell her, you pussy!” Kotik insisted.

  Greg looked questioningly at the animal. “Really?”

  “What? Pussy? It’s like this.” Kotik leaped onto the top of the couch. “I’m a cat, but you, pal…you’re the real pussy! Tell her you know she had a guy here!”

  “I know…I…”

  “What?” Cheryl prompted.

  “Say it, asshole!” Kotik demanded.

  Greg held his head in his arms and squatted near the couch, feeling seasick and wanting to escape the onslaught.

  “What is with you?” asked Cheryl.

  “Pussy!” said Kotik.

  “I know you had a guy here,” Greg said, whining.

  Cheryl was silent for a moment. Greg couldn’t look at her, afraid to either hear the truth or confront her anger. Afraid his head would fall off his shoulders if he moved.

  “Are…you…kidding…me?” she finally said, her words like metronome clicks. “Is that what this is all about? It was my brother, Chris.”

  “Liar!” charged Kotik.

  “Chris lives in New York,” Greg said. He had never met Cheryl’s family, but she had spoken of them.

  “He’s visiting. He got here Wednesday,” she said with growing annoyance.

  “You never said anything about him visiting,” Greg said dejectedly.

  “It never came up. Damn it, Greg, you should have just asked,” Cheryl said softly…sympathetically.

  “You don’t screw your brother! She’s a liar!” Kotik roared.

  “No, she’s not!” Greg yelled back…and the room quickly went still.

  Greg stayed kneeling on the floor; the only sound was the whoosh of his pulse sending a sledgehammering misery through his arteries and up to his head where it crashed inside his skull like arrows. He wanted to shrink into the carpet fibers and hide away from everything. He knew he had gone too far. He felt like a child—a lonely, lost, child.

  Cheryl stared at Greg uncertainly. “Did you just yell at the cat?” she asked.

  “Imbecile,” said Kotik.

  Greg had no idea how to handle it, how to fix it, how to stop the pain, so he started to cry.

  “Wimp!’ accused Kotik.

  “Oh,” Cheryl said, her hazel eyes softening compassionately. She stepped toward Greg, ready to comfort him, but froze. Then she transformed, the rage turning her pretty face ugly. “God fucking dammit!” she bellowed.

  “Oh yeah. I took a shit near the chair,” Kotik said indifferently.

  “Oh, this is so fucking gross! I can’t…” Her words were interrupted by a gag.

  She hopped to the lounge chair and dropped down into it, her foot extended away from her. A wad of shit was adhered to the bottom of her foot and had squeezed up between her toes, forming little scrolls. The smell soon followed and she started gagging.

  “Serves the cheating harlot right,” said Kotik.

  “Oh, get me something to wipe it!” she said, and gagged again. “I hate that fucking cat!

  “Told you she’s a cat hater!” Kotik said. “This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t locked me out.”

  “It’s either him or me!” said Cheryl.

  “Good! Tell the bitch goodbye!” said Kotik.

  Each word felt like a nail entering his head. It had to stop.

  Stop it!

  “It’s your fault, you fuckrudder!” said Kotik.

  “Stop,” said Greg.

  “I said, get me something, NOW!” said Cheryl.

  “Stop it,” said Greg.

  “You’ll be better without her…just us,” said Kotik.

  “…kill the fucking cat,” said Cheryl. She grabbed one of the clean pillowcases and started working at the wad of shit on her foot.

  “Stop it!” Greg demanded.

  “Fuck you!” said the cat.

  “Fuck you!” said Cheryl.

  With a primal scream and the pain of a million knives, Greg sprang to his feet.

  “Good! Kick her ass out of here!” cheered the cat.

  Greg grabbed the remaining clean pillowcase, shook it open, grabbed Kotik by the scruff of the neck, and shoved him inside. It wasn’t easygoing. The cat fought diligently.

  “What are you doing man?” spat Kotik. “Wait! I’m your cat, dude!”

  Greg ignored the wasp-like buzzing in his ears that swelled and receded with the thumping of giant feet in his head. He knelt on the opening of the pillowcase and slid his leg down, pushing the cat far enough inside so he could tie a knot in the top with relatively few scratches.

  Cheryl finished wiping her foot clean, dropped the soiled pillowcase, and inquisitively watched Greg walk into the kitchen. She stood and followed him.

  “Come on, guy…I’m your fucking puddy-wuddy, you ass-flap!” Kotik pleaded, sounding desperate for once. “Tell you what…I can be the pussy, okay?”

  Greg looked at Cheryl and the beginnings of a knowing smile grew on her face.

  “Humane Society?” she asked, and then flinched as Greg swung the pillowcase against the side of the refrigerator with all of his strength.

  Greg stood still, relishing the blessed absence of Kotik’s voice. He looked at the now-still pillowcase, then the refrigerator with its telltale dent. Cheryl stood in stunned silence, also staring at the pillowcase.

  She wasn’t expecting that, Greg thought sardonically.

  Neither was she expecting it when the pillowcase caught her on the side of the head. A twenty-pound cat can be quite substantial, and can even snap a neck, with the proper force and accuracy.

  Greg’s force and accuracy were dead on.

  DAY 4

  Greg slept late…past noon, in fact. It hadn’t occurred to him how much the cat and Cheryl had demanded of him. He woke with no voices in his head, no paranoid thoughts, no guilty feelings, and the sense that he had taken a positive step in rebuilding his self-esteem.

  It was refreshing how clear his thoughts became immediately after he’d quieted the madness created by the other two. He had launched right into rectification mode; he knew immediately what he had to do and how to do it.

  Disposing of Cheryl, her car, and the cat had been easy. About a mile from his house there was an indistinct dirt road that hunters and fishermen (or women) used occasionally, and more often by high schoolers out for a quickie. The first two usually employed the road in the early mornings, and the latter, usually after midnight. It ran half a mile into the woods, ending at a steep, makeshift ramp that swiftly dipped into the Merrimack River.

  Saturday evening, when it was nearly dusk, Greg pulled the red Prius to a stop about a hundred feet from the ramp, Cheryl and Kotik tucked snuggly and unseen in the hatchback. With the car still running and all four windows lowered for better sinkability (a word Greg created just for this occasion), he positioned Cheryl in the driver’s seat, her body sloughing toward the floor, and her foot wedged against the gas pedal. Reaching into the passenger-side window, Greg depressed the shift-lock, jammed the car into drive, and jumped clear as the car accelerated forward and launched from the ramp like a little rocket, landing a third of the way across the river. It took less than a minute for it to sink out of sight.

  Greg threw the pillowcase containing Kotik’s dense body into the river well downstream and then walked the rest of the way home.

  Greg felt it was a sign of his imminent good fortune that it had all happened on Saturday. Neither he nor Cheryl had work scheduled for Sunday, and if all went well—and he knew it would—no one would miss her until Monday night. With the way he was thinking and feeling, with all the newfound clarity and confidence, he was sure he could have easily handled it on any other day, as well.

  He had a few chores to do: first and foremost getting rid of that stinking litterbox. Invigorated, he jumped from the bed, quickly dressed, and then brushed his teeth. He retriev
ed a package of Hefty trash liners from within the bathroom vanity, doubled two together, and slid the complete litterbox ensemble inside the bag. Knotting it closed, he lugged it through the kitchen, then outdoors, and dropped it into a large barrel outside the garage.

  In silent celebration that he would never again have to scoop Kotik’s shit, he whistled an anonymous tune and returned to the house. As he opened the storm door, something dark shot past his legs and inside, startling him. His first fear was that Kotik had somehow escaped his watery fate…until he saw it sitting on the kitchen counter to the right of the sink.

  It was another cat, but this one was midnight black, with a long, sleek body. Its tail swished and swayed hypnotically, like slow-rising smoke. The cat raised a fine paw and licked it with a small, pink tongue. Its movements were smooth and almost sensual, its face delicately featured with eyes that turned up ever so slightly, and Greg had no doubt that this cat was female. He stood in the doorway, unsure of how to handle this new situation. It seemed ironic and a little bit spooky that a cat would show up inside his house the day after…

  He became aware of a slight pinging ache starting in his head and raised his hand to touch the spot, but then thought better of it.

  “What are you looking at, psycho boy?” it asked in a decisively female voice that seemed to emanate from inside his head. It was suave and suggestive…Cheryl’s voice, he realized. “What’s wrong, killer, cat got your tongue?”

  Greg lunged toward the table, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl, and whipped it at the cat. The fruit exploded against the wall behind the sink and wet shrapnel rained throughout the kitchen. The cat seemed to have anticipated the attack; she had moved so quickly it looked as if she had disappeared. He scanned the kitchen and living room and snagged another apple. He cocked his arm, prepared to let fly at any sign of movement, when the cat buried the claws of her forepaws deep in his calf.

  “Son of a bitch!” yelled Greg, grasping at the flaring pain in his injured leg. The cat tore into him again, lacing his hands with red-hot furrows, and then she charged up the hallway and into Greg’s bedroom.

  Greg gave chase as a searing rage enveloped him, awakening the beast inside his head. He slammed the bedroom door behind him and wedged the chair beneath the knob, making sure the cat couldn’t escape. A quick scan of the bathroom verified that it was empty, so he closed that door as well, leaving only the bedroom.

  “Okay, where are you, you little bitch?” Greg said, sneering.

  “Wrong breed, lover boy,” she said, but he couldn’t locate her; the voice was muddled by the pounding in his head.

  She could only have been hiding in one of a few places, most likely under the bed or under the dresser. He pulled a tee shirt from a dresser drawer and wrapped it tightly around his hand for protection, then took a pillow from the bed and shook it, freeing it from the pillowcase. It had worked well with Kotik, and this cat was a lot smaller.

  Kneeling beside the bed and then dropping to his belly, Greg lifted the bed skirt and peered underneath, tense and ready to strike. It all seemed clear, from the headboard to the footboard, and then she was suddenly there. She hissed, cuffed the side of his face, and then darted from beneath the bed to underneath the dresser.

  Greg roared his outrage.

  Damn, she was fast!

  He snatched the pillowcase and slid to the bureau, under which the cat was easily visible. Greg swiped with his wrapped hand. The cat hissed and backed up. He swiped again, missing the cat, but dragging something small and white out from beneath.

  He picked it up and turned it over to reveal the checkered plaid of The Kilted Keg, and the name Cheryl in neat script within the provided block.

  Cheryl’s nametag. Was she telling the truth? He wondered.

  “Good deduction, Romeo. You killed an innocent woman,” said the cat.

  “This doesn’t mean anything,” Greg said, weakly. “She probably planted it before she came out of the bedroom yesterday. She knew she was caught.”

  “No, she loved you,” said the cat with Cheryl’s voice. She slowly came out from beneath the dresser.

  “She was here with a guy!” Greg murmured, slowly turning the name badge over.

  “She explained that.”

  “But she…on my bed.”

  “Wow, you really are a fucking idiot,” said the cat.

  Greg looked at her sitting before him. He was confused, and feelings of remorse and sorrow started seeping into his armor, pushing away the confidence he had woken up with. It was a terrible feeling that amplified the slamming in his head, and he didn’t like it at all.

  Greg lashed out like a rattlesnake and grabbed the unsuspecting cat by the throat. He shoved her into the pillowcase, ignoring the condemning words and belligerent claws that tore at him. He ripped the chair away from the door and stomped into the kitchen, delivering the same punishment as the day before.

  As the noise and the pain ceased, Greg slumped to the floor in relief, the limp pillowcase at his side. “Kelvinator two—cats zero,” he chuckled.

  Greg disposed of the black cat close to where he had thrown Kotik. Upon returning from his walk riverside, he was startled to see a man standing in his driveway close to the porch. He was young, barely twenty, Greg figured, and he was holding a bicycle upright. Greg approached cautiously but tried to appear confident and friendly.

  “Hello. Can I help you?” he greeted. Greg noticed the man’s dark hair, hazel eyes, thick lips, and a chill ran through him. Son of a bitch…it was him, he thought.

  “Uh, hi,” said the young man. His eyes locked momentarily on the four parallel gouges across Greg’s cheek. “Are you Greg Fourtier?”

  “Yes,” Greg said, composing himself. He offered his hand, and they shook. “You must be Cheryl’s brother…um….”

  “Chris,” the young man reminded him, glancing at the bandage wrapped around Greg’s right hand.

  “Yes! If you’re not, then you have a female doppelganger.”

  Greg was sure Chris Kairns had no shortage of women vying for his attention.

  “I’m looking for Cheryl,” said Chris, forcing a smile. “She said she’d be staying here with you Friday night, but we were supposed to meet up for dinner last night. I’ve called numerous times and she hasn’t answered her phone, either.”

  “She never showed?” Greg asked, hoping to purvey the proper amount of surprise and concern without overacting. “She left here yesterday about three in the afternoon. I only…”

  Greg was interrupted as an enormous Siamese cat bounded to the porch railing and then vaulted onto the porch swing. He faced the two men and sat, statuesque, sleek, and not just huge…he was bobcat huge and solid.

  “Whoa! What the heck?” Chris said, taking a step away from the fearsome-looking animal.

  The cat looked at him dispassionately and yawned.

  Fucker must weigh fifty pounds, Greg thought, trying to appear unfazed, but the cat had shaken him to the core. His ears started buzzing and someone was whacking the welt on his head with a baseball bat, or that was how it felt. The cat turned his attention to Greg, and he could swear it was smiling smugly at him.

  “Oh, that’s my cat, Buttercup,” Greg said. “Say hi to the nice man, Buttercup.”

  “Fuck you,” the cat said to Greg.

  Greg snickered and turned to Chris. “I only tried calling her once, but I figured she was busy…maybe with some guy. Did you check her work? There’s a lot of them there.” His right eye began twitching and welling with tears.

  “That’s where I’m heading next,” Chris said, looking at Greg oddly. “What happened to your face and hand?”

  Greg jabbed a thumb toward the cat behind him. “Buttercup plays a little rough at times,” he said. “He likes it rough.”

  “You’re meat,” said the cat.

  “I’m supposed to go to work tonight,” Greg lied. “But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” He nodded to Chris and smiled like a televangelist. “I�
��m going to call in sick and then take a ride and see if she’s at any of her hangouts. But I want you to call me if you hear anything from her work.”

  He gave Cheryl’s brother a false phone number, stepped onto the porch and watched Chris bike away. This guy’s going to be trouble, he thought to himself.

  “Not for you,” said Buttercup.

  Greg held the door open and then followed Buttercup inside.

  FRONTRUNNERS

  “Eyes up, off the ground. Half a second’s preoccupation could be your death,” the voice said.

  “Yes, sir,” Franky responded and looked straight ahead.

  Admiral William A. Rancourt wasn’t a particularly large man at 5’10” and 175 pounds, but, garbed in his impeccable service blues, combination cap, and the compacted confidence of a career officer, he seemed like a ten-foot-tall wall of granite to Franky, even from a hundred yards away. He appeared to speak into his collar.

  “See the big picture at all times. It will save your life,” his words shuttled into her earbud.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Navy commanders hadn’t always been this militant, not in such a boots-on-the-ground way. Neither had training, but changing times necessitated transformed mentalities. Admiral Rancourt was SEAL trained, morally driven, and a time-forged patriot. But, since what he referred to as The New American Regime took over, his patriotism had faltered. He was a changed, but now-controlled man.

  Franky walked forward, hugging the side of the street, her eyes forever scanning left, right, quick checks over her shoulders. The replicated townscape was nondescript and anonymous, aptly named Anytown, USA. Two-story residences interrupted every couple of blocks by storefronts, a faux motel, and a church that someone with a dark sense of humor had named Abandoned Hope Ministries.

  Scanning left-right-up-down to match her hut-two-three-four cadence, a furtive peripheral movement caught her attention. She dropped low to the ground, pulled her weapon from the holster at her side, and logrolled behind an early-model Jeep Cherokee parked parallel to the sidewalk. She scanned for other movements that could open her to harm, ready to pull herself beneath the vehicle. It was not her preferred shelter, but safer than lying out in the open. She eased slowly to her knees, estimating the location of the movement at approximately eight o’clock, and belly-crawled alongside the Jeep. She peered through dirtied vehicle windows, and a round of gunshot echoed along the street.