by Ryan Schow
5
The police station operator transfers me to a line that rings through. “Detective Holden,” a man says. He’s got a no-nonsense voice. It’s not excessively deep and gruff, nor is it soft and thin. He has that sound like maybe I interrupted him writing reports, or drinking fresh coffee.
“If I wanted to mail you something, a written confession of sorts, where would I mail it to?”
“Who is this?”
I roll into his brain, feel his subtle anxiousness, feel him sitting up at his desk and fetching a pen and paper. He slides a sheet of scribbled-on paper in front of him as he prepares to jot down notes.
“Don’t ask me any more questions, Detective, just give me your address and in two days time you will have a career-making confession of the most high-profile sort.”
“I want more than a confession,” he says, thinking I’m confessing my crimes.
Looking at the emotionally beaten and psychologically bested Tad Blalock, I say, “You want someone to convict, someone to run through the courts and the press, someone to give closure to the families of the victims, of which there are thirty five. You won’t have that. This man, this unconscionable creature of depravity, he’ll be dead inside of five minutes.”
“You’re going to kill him?”
“No.”
“But he’ll be dead.”
“Yes.”
Rather than protesting, he gives me his address.
“Once you and I are done with this call, he’s going to willingly end his life,” I say, my eyes now deadlocked on Tad’s eyes. “He knows he can’t stop drugging and raping and killing little girls, and he knows he can’t survive prison either.”
“Is he there with you?”
“Yes.”
“Put him on.”
“Look for the envelope, Detective.”
I hang up, push the shotgun Tad’s way. He takes a deep breath, looks at me and says, “It’s loaded?”
“They all are.”
He takes the weapon, slides his chair back away from his desk, sets the stock of the gun on the chair’s cushion with the barrel aimed up under his chin, then takes one last look at me and says, “Fuck you, whoever you are.”
And then he pulls the trigger.
The crown of his head horks open, then he’s a slumped over body. Red, meaty things are blasted on the ceiling. It’s a Jackson Pollock painting done in wet shades of red.
Justice is served, and I didn’t have to kill anyone in the process. For a second, and this is a bit shameless I know, I’m kind of proud of myself. Of this new me. Considering the things future me did to lesser men and women, really, I think handling things like this is progress.
Welcome to the Blender
1
Somewhere in between the dispensing of Tad Blalock and returning home, I found time to text Orianna. She’d texted me a few times worried. I told her don’t bother. That I’m fine. I just showed up two nights ago as the half Hispanic, half Caucasian, brown eyed Savannah Swann and before breakfast was even served the next morning, I was gone. Didn’t even say good-bye. I just headed to the airport, paid out the ass for a last minute plane ride across the United States to right an unbelievable wrong. I didn’t even see Rebecca, but that was okay.
Honestly, I wasn’t ready to face her.
I’m still not ready.
So it’s just after eleven o’clock at night when I walk into the house like I’ve always lived there. I’m tired. It’s all over my face, I’m sure.
My parents are sitting on the couch together, watching whatever, and Rebecca is playing Candy Crush on her tablet, or some variant of it. Everyone looks up. Orianna smiles.
“Hi,” she says, almost in tune with Christian.
“Hey,” I say to them both.
My eyes go to Rebecca, who stops playing her game to look up at me. I say hello and she looks at Christian and Orianna, the question sitting heavy in her eyes. “I’m Savannah, a friend of Orianna’s,” I tell the girl. My father and mother look at each other, then back at me and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m pretty wiped out, so if you don’t mind, I really need some sleep.”
“Where have you been?” Christian asks.
“Are you really sure you want the answer to that question?”
Orianna shakes her head, no, but Christian is still trying to be my father. Not that I blame him. He sort of is.
“Of course,” he says. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Cameron O’Dell, the suicided daughter to country singer Patrick O’Dell, she bullied this girl, Patricia Blalock to death, tormenting her relentlessly at school and on Facebook. What Cameron didn’t know was that Patricia’s father, Tad Blalock, was molesting her regularly—”
“Honey,” Orianna says, glancing quickly at Rebecca, who’d gone back to her game, “that’s enough—”
“Her father was molesting her regularly,” I say, ignoring her, eyes back on my father. “He lives in New York, which is where I went. I paid him a visit to let him know Cameron was dead.”
“Cameron’s dead?” my father asks. Rebecca stops playing her game and looks at me. It’s hard looking back at her, knowing what I did to get her back and knowing she has no idea who I am.
“I said that. Jesus, haven’t you seen the news like…anywhere?”
“Why did you really visit Patricia’s father?” Orianna asks. “You could have called. It would’ve been…more economical.”
Like she’s worried about money. Ha! I just look at her, level her with that pursed-lips, narrowed-eyes kind of look that says, “Really? If you have to ask, you’re not paying attention.”
“Answer her,” Christian says.
I look at Rebecca, who’s now watching everything in total silence, then return to Christian and say, “She doesn’t want the answer.” I tell him this with eyes so tired they must appear robotic to all of them. Or uncaring. It’s not that I don’t care. I’m just trying to spare everyone from the harsh realities of this new life of mine.
He mutes the TV.
“Perhaps,” Christian replies, “but I want the answer. And I’m tired of asking, so just give me an answer, please.”
He’s starting to get irritated and I’m exhausted, so…
“Dr. Tad Blalock ran a mental health facility. He couldn’t stop what he was doing, not to his daughter and not to the underage female patients he Roofied at night. So we had a talk today and after I explained the concepts of retribution and closure to him, he put a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger.”
Rebecca startled, then looked away. She just stared at her tablet, white faced and perfectly still. Neither of my parents said anything because they couldn’t. They can’t. They know me. What I am. Who I have become. This life I’m slated to live.
In their heads they’re thinking, how the f*ck are we supposed to raise her? Um, hello…I’m raising myself in case you hadn’t noticed!
Retiring to the guest room, where Maggie died and where I’m now sleeping, I try putting my dead friend out of my mind as I slip on a t-shirt and fresh underwear. Before crawling under the sheets, killing the lights and sleeping for like twelve hours straight, I call Brayden. The last thing I want is to make this call, but it’s necessary. I’ve put it off way too long. Besides, he deserves closure with me. He earned it. Easily.
The phone only rings once before he answers.
“Raven?” he says. He doesn’t even say hello, which makes me think he’s been dying for me to call. That and I’ve missed about fourteen calls from him.
“Hi, Brayden,” I say in a kind tone. I miss him. I miss who I once was with him, how there was a time when I was easy going and a pretty decent friend. Well…compared to now, anyway.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I am.”
“You sound different,” he says.
“I feel different.”
“Where are you?” he says.
He’s still at Astor. School’s still in for another couple of wee
ks and then it’s Christmas break. I can’t believe I’m missing my senior year of high school. Then again, I’ve got millennia to self-educate and isn’t that more important? It’s not like I need money, or a job. And my social skills are, well…passable. Okay, they’re passable with a little work, but whatever.
“I’m gone, Brayden.”
“Gone where?”
“Just…gone. I’m not coming back.”
“What?” he asks, panic rifling though his voice. “Why?”
“You saw what happened at school. You saw what I did to those boys.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I’m never going to get those images out of my head. Who were they and why did they attack you the way they did?”
“He was…Jesus, he was from…another time, and he was here to stop me in this time. Oh my God, I still can’t believe this happened, yet it did. And saying it out loud to you? It’s like, half the time I feel crazy thinking this is my new reality.”
“You’re like the Terminator,” he says, laughing bitterly, “but with tits and an amazing ass.”
“Exactly.”
“Wait, are you being serious? About the whole ‘other time’ thing?”
“I sound like a lunatic.”
“You are a lunatic,” he says.
“This isn’t a joke, Brayden. That’s the problem…I’m not joking.”
“Seriously Raven, do you hear yourself?”
I’m about to relent, when a soft knock on my bedroom door distracts me. To Brayden I say, “Hang on.” Covering the phone, I say, “Come in.”
Orianna opens the door, her beautiful face seeing mine. I can’t believe the relationship we’re forming and it makes me sad thinking she wasn’t a great mother in my formative years—she was mostly a shitty mother, to be truthful here—but she never signed up for this, for what I am, for what I’m becoming.
“I just wanted to say good-night,” she says, “and I’m glad you’re home.”
“Love you,” I say, trying on the words. They feel good; they feel right. She comes and kisses me on my cheek, then gives me a swift, motherly hug.
“Will you be here in the morning?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“We can have breakfast together then?”
“Mmhmm.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” she says.
She leaves, shutting the door behind her. I return to Brayden feeling warmed by our interaction. That she can put aside my confession of what she might wrongfully assume is yet another murder enough to tell me good-night, that she still loves me, it’s damn near miraculous.
“I’m back,” I say, my tone measurably brighter.
“Who was that?”
“My mom.”
“Is it weird that I can’t get used to you calling your mother ‘mom?’”
“If it’s weird for you, trust me, it’s weirder for me.” For a long moment, silence settles over us, then: “I’m having nightmares, Brayden. All the time. It’s all the things we’ve done, how they won’t stop happening in my mind.”
“I’m having them, too,” he says being unusually sensitive.
The long silences between us, they’re now logging more time than the talking, but it’s not terribly uncomfortable between us. That’s one of the things that makes us such good friends: we know each other like this.
He speaks first: “Please don’t go, Raven. Please.”
“I have to.”
“No.”
“I do,” I say, even softer.
My chest is starting to feel tight, the lump in my throat colossal. Behind my eyes, a deep, pulling strain starts. Gerhard’s cure for me, it rid me of my social anxiety disorder, and all my other weaknesses, but it failed to rob me of my humanity. I’m so sad right now. I’m so ashamed of who I’ve become.
“You can do anything you want, Raven, so why do you have to leave me?”
“Too many people get hurt around me, Brayden. This thing I’m becoming, what I’m still evolving into, it’s not pretty. It’s not pleasant.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“Brayden, I’m beyond freaked out. Seriously. I’ve witnessed almost firsthand some of the darkest, most harrowing days of everyone’s lives and I’m horrified by what I’ve seen. That boy who came after me, he’s the tip of the iceberg.”
“Yeah, but you can’t just turn into a hermit. You can’t ditch all your friends. Write off everyone who cares about you. Those of us who…love you.”
“I have to,” I say.
I already wiped the minds of my friends. I never existed to them. This is a terrible sadness that’s got me so sick to my stomach I can’t even let myself think of them.
But that’s what’s real.
They’re gone.
To cope, I remind myself that in the future, after the nuclear war kills nearly ninety percent of the world, I go nomadic for eons. For whatever reason, it’s like I’m forcing myself to get used to solitude. And punishing myself for all the things I’ve done.
“No you don’t,” Brayden says. “You don’t have to go.”
“It’s not because I want to leave, you have to believe me. It’s because I have to.”
I hoped the tension swelling in my body would abate, but it only continues to tighten and expand inside me, and suddenly I’m feeling crushed by the weight of this conversation. Decimated by the idea of leaving him. The sorrow mounting inside of me has me feeling so broken my emotions surge forward against my will, powering through me, overwhelming me. I won’t let Brayden know I’m crying, but dammit I’ve started now and I can’t stop.
“We need to see each other before you leave, Raven. I want to say good-bye. You have to let me say good-bye this time.”
Wiping my eyes, and my nose, I say, “This is it, Brayden. This is our good-bye.” I thought I could be cold, detached, so he can’t see how conflicted I am about this, but my voice cracks and I’m afraid I won’t be able to follow through.
“Please, Raven,” he says softly, the torment now settling into the deeper nuances of his voice. “Please don’t.”
“I love you Brayden. Thank you for being the great friend you are.”
There is a long silence and I’m about to hang up when, in a choked up voice, he says, “I love you, too. Please don’t leave me.”
And then I hang up and let the complete and total breakdown commence.
2
Brayden calls back the moment I hang up. He won’t let me drop him and just let that be it. That’s the kind of friend he is to me. I adore him for it. Right now, though, I need him to be different. To not care. To just let me do what I’m trying to do. The third time he calls, I wipe my eyes, clear my throat and pick up.
“You can’t just do this again,” he says, his voice rough, like he’s all choked up and holding his emotions back, too.
Audibly sniffling, I say, “I have to, Brayden.” I can’t even hide the sorrow in my voice anymore. I stop trying.
“No you don’t.”
“You don’t understand!”
“Then make me understand!” he argues.
He has a point. In the back of my head, though, I’m thinking I have to cut the chord. Not because of me, but because of him. I can’t string him along. Can’t leave him wondering why. And I can’t keep putting him in danger.
“My life is different now—”
“No shit.”
“I’m an addict,” I start by saying. “Not to drugs, or alcohol, or anything like that. I’m addicted to righting the wrongs of the world. At first, I just thought it was a way to make me feel better, empowered you know, but it’s more than that. What I have, this obsession with vengeance, it’s a sickness I’m not sure I can cure.”
“That’s fine, you’re a justice junkie, I get it. But being an isolationist isn’t the answer.”
“When I consider my life, when I look at stopping something like Gerhard’s war machine, the creep who…who did those awful things to Maggie, that murderous fiend
Dr. Heim, Cameron, The Operator most recently—”
“The Operator?”
“The boy I killed. Both boys. He wasn’t two boys though, he was, ohmigod, how do I explain this without sounding…insane? He was a soul from the future who had the ability to send a bevy of cloned bodies back in the past—our present—to execute his will.”
“Shut the front door,” he says.
“I told you I wasn’t joking. This is serious, Brayden. And this isn’t even the half of it, it’s so much worse.”
He doesn’t know about future me. The things I’ve seen. Me being…what I become in the future.
“So you’re like, this is real? Not some metaphor for…you know…whatever?”
“Rather than staying outside the body, though, The Operator stuffed his soul into the last boy I killed because he’s the future’s adrenaline junkie, and needing to be in the body’s proverbial driver’s seat was his Achilles’s heel. Those two boys, they were clones. Multiple vessels for one soul.”
“So if—Jesus, Raven, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation—if they were clones and he was operating in the future, then what’s to say he won’t come back?”
My face grows cold and hot at the same time, my stomach plunging. I don’t like talking about The Operator. This makes him stir inside me. He’s so angry. He’s like a poisonous rose trapped in my gut and I don’t want him polluting me, but he does.
“I ate him. His soul. Otherwise, you’re right, he could send entire armies of clones after me.”
“Wait,” Brayden says. “What?”
“Yeah, it’s something I can do now. Among other things. Don’t you see, Brayden? This is why I stayed away, why I can’t be near you. Who I become in the future, I’m a target and they get to people like me by hurting people like you. People like Netty.”
“Again I ask you, how the hell is any of this possible?”
“It’s like this,” I say. “Could you explain a cell phone to Lewis and Clark, or someone like Bonaparte Napoleon? No. You couldn’t. This would be like explaining the internet or artificial intelligence to Shakespeare. Time travel is a thing of the future and our past isn’t off limits, Brayden. We’re the future’s past.”