One Saturday, she arrived to find no one else on site, but three kids waiting to get in. Most weekends there would have been many more, but the neighborhood was mostly Hispanic, and there was a big Cinco De Mayo festival going on in a park a couple of miles away. Jennifer opened the gate and the locker room, changed into her own swimsuit, and mounted the lifeguard chair.
A few hours later, only the same three kids remained—a girl about 12 years old with two siblings, a boy and girl aged 7 and 8. The older girl appeared to have basic swimming skills, but all three of them stayed in the shallow end of the pool. Deciding the kids would be OK for a few minutes, Jennifer had come down from the lifeguard chair, grabbed her purse from the locker, and gone to the dingy, foul-smelling ladies’ room. She slipped into the only stall that still had a working door latch, sat down, and proceeded to do a couple of lines of coke.
Thus mellowed out, she stayed there for a while—may even have nodded off. When she finally came out, the pool was deserted. She parked herself in a lounge chair, brought up a favorite playlist on her phone, and once again fell asleep. When she woke, the sun was low in the west, and the pool was in the shadow of the building next door.
She realized she’d left her sunglasses in the lifeguard chair, so she climbed up to get them. Looking down on the pool from there, she noticed something for the first time—dark shapes on the bottom of the deep end.
Horrified, she dove into the pool and found them—the three children who’d been swimming earlier. The little boy was clutching the older girl’s neck. The younger girl was sprawled on the bottom near the drop-off from the shallow end. They’d been there for hours now, and she knew there was no hope of resuscitation.
In panic, Jennifer scrambled out of the pool, grabbed her clothes, and ran. Still in her wet bathing suit, she jumped into her car, leaving the pool gate wide open. She managed to drive home without incident, ran inside, and locked herself in her room.
The drowned kids weren’t found until the next day, when another volunteer showed up and found the open gate. The police had come to question Jennifer that afternoon. She’d already seen the morning news reports and was expecting them. No, she told them, she hadn’t been to the pool in several days—they could check the schedule for that.
In fact, her name had not been on the schedule—she’d agreed to substitute for another girl who had gotten sick—but the pool recordkeeping was sloppy, and there was no sign-in requirement. The other girl didn’t know who was supposed to take her place, and the manager—who had a problem with alcohol—couldn’t remember whether she’d called anyone to fill the slot.
In the end, the investigators were never able to determine who, if anyone, was at the pool when the kids drowned. The final report suggested that no one had been there at all, and the gate had been left open by the manager the night before, allowing the kids to go in without supervision. There wasn’t enough evidence for prosecution, but the manager was fired, and the case was closed. The pool itself was shut down and the property sold to a politically connected developer for construction of low-income housing.
The drownings had happened a few days before Jennifer’s 19th birthday. For the next three years, she had been in and out of rehab for her addiction, had failed to complete an online college degree she’d signed up for, and had been fired from a series of jobs her mother had arranged for her.
The drowned faces of the three children had haunted her dreams, and now, at age 22, she had emptied the trust fund her mother had set up for her to buy a ride on Charon’s Ferry. She’d passed the mandatory three-day wait, and today was the day. Surprisingly, she seemed far less nervous about it than Sparkling was. Of course, Jennifer was the one whose application they’d talked about—with some amusement—the one who wanted to die by drowning.
Now they knew why. And Sparkling Waters—who had said she wanted to be there when it happened—was going to get more than she’d bargained for. Under Lisa’s watchful eye, she was going to be the one who actually carried out Jennifer’s wish.
Jennifer imprinted the contract without hesitation. Lisa checked it over, then nodded to Sparkling.
“Hi, Jennifer…I’m Sparkling Waters. I’ll be taking care of you today. If you’ll just come with me, I’ll take you to the pool.”
If Jennifer noted the irony of the name, she didn’t comment. She got up from the chair and followed Sparkling out the office door.
As they came through the door into the pool area, Jennifer stopped for a moment to look around.
“Nice…” she said. “Kind of reminds me of…” Her voice trailed off, leaving the thought incomplete.
Waters walked her forward to the tiled apron around the pool.
“You can undress here…” she prompted. Without comment, Jennifer began to strip down.
We always send them off naked, Sparkling thought, at least the compliant ones. Lisa insisted it was just for convenience in cleanup and processing, but she suspected that Mark just liked looking at naked women, while Lisa enjoyed the view with either sex.
She had to admit Jennifer Strickland was worth looking at. Despite her addiction and lack of personal care, she had the body of a fashion model. Her face showed no emotion but was still attractive, with clear blue eyes and high cheekbones framed by long blond hair.
Wish I had boobs like that, Sparkling thought. While not overly large, Jennifer’s breasts were nicely shaped, and probably about a cup size larger than hers.
Jennifer undressed without question or assistance, tossing her clothes onto a nearby lounge chair. When she finished, Sparkling led her to the edge of the pool, then knelt to fasten a cuff to her ankle. The cuff was attached to a three-foot length of heavy chain with a 25-lb mushroom-style anchor on the end of it.
After locking the cuff in place, Sparkling pulled a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket.
“Now…just bring your hands around behind your back…”
Jennifer ignored the request. Instead, she bent forward and launched herself into the pool in an Olympic-style swimmer’s dive. Her entry was near-perfect, but the chain tightened and jerked the anchor into the water behind her.
Sparkling’s jaw dropped. Still holding the handcuffs, she turned to Lisa with a stricken look on her face.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Lisa shook her head. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right—I think.”
She turned to the flat screen displays they had set up to show views from the underwater cameras. Jennifer’s dive had taken her outward, but the anchor retarded her forward progress. It hit the bottom about 10 feet from the side of the pool in 12 feet of water.
At first Jennifer didn’t struggle. She hung in the water over the anchor, looking directly into one of the cameras. Then suddenly her swimmer’s instincts took over and she tried to swim upward toward the surface. The chain stopped her, and she doubled up and clawed at the cuff on her ankle. Sparkling winced, wondering whether the cuff would hold.
It did, and after a few seconds Jennifer stopped working on it and thrust herself upward, pushing off the bottom. This time, she actually managed to lift the anchor an inch or two before its weight pulled her back down. She tried the same tactic several more times, to no avail.
“That looks kind of…strange,” Sparkling remarked, “the way her boobs bounce up and down. If it wasn’t so serious, it might be comical.”
“That’s why competition swimmers wear suits that are tight across the chest,” Lisa said with a crooked grin. “Keep those puppies in check and reduce drag for maximum speed.”
To her surprise, Spark found herself grinning in return.
“Yeah,” she chuckled, “unlike the bikinis on the beach at Malibu. Those are designed for minimum restraint, maximum exposure.”
On the screen they saw Jennifer release the last of the breath she had been holding, a stream of bubbles from her mouth and nose. She held out for a moment more before opening her mouth and trying desperately to fill her lungs again.
She did
so, but with water instead of air. That produced convulsive shudders as her body tried to reject the invasive liquid. Her struggles became weaker and less coordinated as her oxygen-starved brain began to shut down. Eventually, she stopped moving altogether, and her body began to settle toward the bottom.
“She’s done,” Sparkling said. “I felt her departure, but…I thought bodies floated to the top. I know the chain keeps her anchored, but shouldn’t she be…well, upright or something?”
“Not with her lungs full of water. You can float on your back as long as you have air—like having a couple of balloons in your chest—but once she sucked water in…well, you see the result.”
“Yeah…” Sparkling’s face fell. “I screwed it up—my first one, and I screwed it up. Should have put the handcuffs on her first.”
“Don’t worry about it,” List said. “In the end, it made no difference. Forget the details—you got it done. How does it feel?”
“Now you mention it, I’m kind of wiped out,” she replied. “I think I got that thrill of the kill you mentioned, and yeah—it was almost like an orgasm. Maybe that’s why I feel like I need a glass of wine and a cigarette.”
“Cigarette?” Lisa grinned at her. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t. Just…well, you know, the after-sex cliche.”
“I got it. How about we just take a coffee break instead? Then we can come back and clean up.”
When they returned to the pool half an hour later, Lisa went to the rack on the wall and retrieved a long-handled net.
“Doesn’t matter how they die, they still do it,” she remarked as she netted a drifting lump of fecal matter. “No doubt she peed herself as well.”
“So?” Sparkling said with a grin. “Everybody pees in the swimming pool. That’s why they chlorinate the water.”
“Hmmm…” Her grin faded to a look of consternation. “We probably should have tied a rope to the anchor so we could pull her up. Looks like we’ll have to go down and get her.”
She began stripping off her own clothes, tossing them without thinking onto the same lounge chair where Jennifer’s discarded outfit lay.
“Unlock the cuff and drag her to the shallow end,” Lisa said. “You can take a rope down to get the anchor later.”
Sparkling was getting used to the idea that they had the building to themselves, and they’d gone skinny-dipping in the pool on several previous occasions. Now she dove into the deep end wearing nothing but the key to the ankle cuff on a lanyard tied to her wrist.
She had no problem reaching Jennifer and unlocking the cuff, but she had to come up for air before attempting to move the body. She dove again and settled for grabbing the woman’s hair and pulling her toward the shallow end.
She had to surface one more time before she finally reached the point where she could stand on the bottom and walk toward the steps, where Lisa waited. To her surprise, Lisa had rolled out a lift of some sort, the boom of which extended about two feet past the edge of the pool, supporting a cable with a spreader and canvas slings attached. The slings were already lowered into the water.
“Wow…that’s neat. I was afraid we were going to have to lift her out by hand.”
“It’s Mark’s extended version of a Hoya lift—what they use in hospitals to lift patients out of bed. It’s got the reach to get out over the edge of the pool.”
Sparkling positioned the slings under Jennifer’s corpse. Lisa got behind the lift.
“This one’s manually operated,” she said. “We figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to have an electric lift anywhere near the pool.” She pumped the foot pedal, and the boom came up, lifting the dead woman out of the pool. Within a minute she had Jennifer loaded onto a gurney.
“Now that,” Lisa declared, “was about the easiest cleanup we’ve ever had around here. One floating turd, everything else left to the pool filter. No blood, no mess, just pull her out and put her in the tank.”
“And a quick dip in the pool as a bonus,” Sparkling said.
She had dived into the pool again to hook a rope to the anchor so they could pull it up. Then she toweled off and got dressed, while Lisa stowed the lift and other gear in the storage room. They had to roll the gurney down to the X-room because the pool didn’t have access to a disposal chute, but Jennifer was now in the tank, and the two of them were back in Lisa’s office taking care of the little administrative details.
“And…” Lisa hit the “Enter” key with a flourish, “she is now officially dead—registered with California DHS. Rest in peace, Jennifer.
“Good job, Sparkle.” She sat back in her chair. “How do you feel?”
“I dunno…kind of, well, disconnected. I just killed somebody—she jumped in herself, but I would have given her a shove if she hadn’t.
“Then we fished her out of the pool and put her in the pickling tank. And I’m like, OK—that was fun. Wonder what we’re having for dinner tonight.”
“Fun?”
“Yeah—I mean really fun, like exciting. Am I fucked up, or what?”
“If so, you’re in good company. As for dinner, I was thinking Fettuccine Alfredo—easy to fix, and I’ve been wanting to tweak my recipe a bit. Does that work for you?”
“Great! I’ll help you with it—maybe pick up a few pointers from the chef.”
“So, how’d it go, Spark?” Mark asked. “I was going to watch it on the screens, but my interview took longer than I thought. I got the contract, but it took a while.”
“Uh…I kind of screwed it up,” she replied. She told him about the no-handcuffs incident. The three of them had just finished dinner in Lisa’s dining room—the Fettuccine Alfredo had gotten rave reviews from all.
“That’s not a screw-up,” he said. “Most clients aren’t so eager to get it over with—would have taken me by surprise, too.”
How did she do? Mark queried Lisa.
Better than I expected. Not squeamish, not afraid to go hands on. She’s the one who went down and retrieved the body. And she says she felt the kill thrill…so…
Hmmm…think she’s ready to handle one on her own?
She did OK with the processing…I think she’ll be OK.
Two weeks ago, they had taken Sparkling downstairs to the meat locker for the first time to let her watch them harvest Samson’s organs. That time she had only watched.
Then last week they had taken her again when they processed a young woman Mark had terminated by hanging a few days earlier—a hanging Sparkling had witnessed, waiting with Lisa down under the balcony when the client “dropped in.” When they’d processed that one, she’d actually helped them bag and tag the organs.
She looks like such a sweet, innocent kid, but she’s really tough inside. Mark regarded Sparkling with something like fatherly pride—even though he could take no credit for raising her. Nothing we’ve showed her has bothered her so far.
Not surprised, Lisa said. Look what she went through, growing up—and how she handled it, on her own with no help.
“Hey! Are you two ‘dragon talking’ again?” Sparkling looked back and forth between them.
“Yes, Spark, we were,” Mark admitted. “You noticed that, did you?”
“Well, yeah…you were fiddling with your coffee cup and Lisa was poking around in the dessert dish with a spoon—but you kept looking at each other. I figured you were either talking or thinking about having sex—and it’s not bedtime yet, so….”
“OK—you caught us.” Lisa laughed. “And yes, before you ask, we were talking about you. You’ve come a long way since you left the commune.
“But now, you’re living in a very strange world with a couple of really strange people. Our whole outlook on life is pretty skewed compared to the rest of society. We get rich killing people—and people show up at our door wanting to be killed, sometimes in bizarre ways like Jennifer today.
“Then we chop them up and sell their body parts for profit. As if that wasn’t enough, sometimes we turn into gian
t, fire-breathing reptiles out of ancient mythology—which allows us to communicate telepathically and teleport ourselves across town without even thinking about it.
“Except for the dragon part—which was a sudden discovery for all of us—we’ve tried to introduce you to all of this gradually. Honestly, we weren’t sure how you were going to take it, but you handled everything like it was perfectly normal. You realize most of society would be absolutely horrified if they knew what you know about us?”
“Screw them.” She shrugged. “They’re clueless. They think social media is real life, that dragons only exist in fantasy games, and death is something that only happens to somebody else. Their brains—such as they have—would explode if they ever came face-to-face with a chupacabra.”
“Or a dragon.” Lisa chuckled.
“Or King Louie.” Mark chuckled as well, then gave her a serious look.
“The question is, are you happy here? You’ve been with us for a while now, you’ve seen how we live and what we do. Is this where you want to be?”
She thought about it for a long time…long enough that Mark started to get nervous; but then she perked up with a smile.
“Yes,” she said with a happy sigh. “I think this is exactly where I want to be.
“But—” she pointed a finger at him, “—you owe me something. I told you my story, about the commune and all. Now you two have to tell me yours. How did you get here? How did all this—Charon’s Ferry—happen?”
Chapter Fifteen: Send in the Dragon
“Gino, what are you doing?” LaLonde stared at the elaborate design on the warehouse floor.
“I’ve spoken with Witherbot,” Magnini said, stepping back to check his handiwork. “They are sending help.”
“Ah! Ribaldo and Jurgen perhaps? Maybe…”
“No. I was told they are not available. This one is coming from America.”
There was no point in asking for one of them to come. Ribaldo and Jurgen were twin brothers who always worked together. They were among the best of the Trashmen. Pierre shook his head.
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