She wrote her last of many letters to the editor about how the Post-Herald hadn’t hired anyone “worth their salt” since the Reagan administration. Vickie threw a coffee mug through a window when she read that line. That’s the kind of editor I like – stands behind her reporters.
I slide by the City Clerk’s office, undetected, up the stairs, peek around the corner.
The hall is empty. A sterile tube of shiny floors, bland landscape paintings dotting the walls. The whole building reeks of “efficiencies” and “shovel-ready projects.”
Room 237 is on the right. I’m revved up from the near-lethal combo of uppers. But I’m not as nervous as I usually am at this point. I no longer fear being caught. And I know my mission is sound.
It’s been the same since I enrolled in journalism school twelve years ago – I want to make a difference. I want to have a positive impact on people’s lives.
I press my ear against the door. Billy’s yukking it up.
“These are high-end, luxury condominiums that will attract the kind of young professionals your community is looking for.”
That’s developer speak for no black people.
“It’s a win-win proposition for all stakeholders – the neighborhood, downtown business, and the city’s tax base.”
How convenient, Billy – when you make millions, everybody wins!
Someone asks whether the site is an Indian burial ground.
“Look,” Billy purrs, “I know some of our friends in the press are against this. They’re out to paint us as a big, corrupt company, but are we really going to let them stand in the way of progress?”
Murmurs of agreement all around.
I turn off the safety and open the door.
Shrieks. Oh my gods. Chairs roll backward.
Thirteen suits, as usual. Nauseating remnants of lunch – greasy, half-eaten sandwiches and potato chip crumbs – scattered across the board table.
Billy still has his laser-pointer aimed at a screen. He smiles like he’s trying to sell me something. “Hey, what’s this all about?”
“Sit.”
“What?”
“In the fucking chair. Sit.”
Billy does as he’s told, places the laser-pointer on the table. “Whatever you say, boss.”
Harrison is swifter than his business partner and quickly grasps the gravity of the situation. He backs toward the window, tries to figure out if he can make the jump.
“How this is going to work is real simple, Billy. You just need to tell me my name. Do that, you save everyone in this room.”
“You’re… ” He turns his palms up. “Gosh, it’s right at the tip of my tongue. Why don’t you put the gun down? I think that would help me remember.”
Harrison can probably make that jump. Broken ankle at worst.
“Not good enough,” I say.
“Okay –”
“But deep down, I’m a nice guy.” I press the barrel into his Adam’s apple. I feel his pulse. “So I’m going to cut you a break, give you an easy one to start with. What profession am I in?”
Billy blinks. “Newspapers?”
I dial up Samuel L. “Check out the big brain on Billy! That’s right, newspapers.”
Harrison’s back is against the window and he’s nudging it open. For the first time, I have a sliver of respect for him. He’s scrappy, a survivor.
At least for now.
“You’re used to high-pressure situations in your line of work, right Billy?”
He nods. Loosens his tie.
“You can handle this. This is a whole lot easier than closing one of your multi-million-dollar deals. You know the ones I mean. Where everyone wants a cut and there’s a mob protesting every zoning meeting.” His eyes dart around like there’s an eject button nearby. “So, tell me. What’s my name?”
He presses fingers into gelled hair. I see the question running through his mind, a question he will never figure out how to answer, Why me? What did I do to deserve this?
“Take a guess, asshole.”
“I –”
“Guess!”
Billy’s bloodshot eyes want to cry, but it’s too human an action for him.
“Greg McDuffy?”
The window flies open. Harrison has a leg out when I shoot him in the chest. He falls, crashes into the juniper bushes below. A woman walking a dog can’t wrap her mind around what’s happened. Stares up at the window, back at the bushes, up at the window, back at the bushes.
“No. My name is not Greg McDuffy.”
I pump the shotgun.
Billy wets his chinos. Trembles morph to shakes.
“I have a wife and a little girl. Please –”
***
I drive to the office. I want to listen to Jimi Hendrix’s Live at Woodstock one last time, but my ears are ringing like a tornado siren is going off inside my head.
I reload the shotgun and grab an envelope from the glove compartment. Go straight to Vickie’s office and sit across from her. The gun is on my lap.
“Well, look what the goddamn cat dragged in,” Vicki says. “Should’ve known it was you.”
“Cops are looking for me?”
She lights a Misty 120. Vickie was never much for company policy. That’s why she never ascended past bureau chief. “All over the scanner.”
I hand her the envelope.
“What’s this?”
“My manifesto. I want it printed on the front page.”
“You’re screwing with me, right? Your manifesto? Who do you think you are, the Unabomber?”
“You should be grateful,” I say. “Rose Lensing? Harrison Willis? Billy Macklowe? You despised these people. I’ve made everyone else’s life –”
“You think you’re a savior or something? Bullshit. You’re satiating your own twisted desires.”
A vein in my forehead throbs. “No, you don’t understand. I used to think like you do. I thought I could change things by exposing corruption or shining light on the good people do. But that does nothing. The world needs action – direct action. Other people don’t have the stomach for this calling, but I do. I’m like the garbage man, I –”
“Then make like the garbage man and can it, you crazy fuck.” She drops the cigarette in a bottle of diet soda and it hisses. “You exact revenge against anyone who crosses you – not even that, anyone who irritates you. You’re an ordinary psychopath, buddy, not some kind of altruist.”
I brought the gun because I wanted to take out a couple of cops. But I find myself aiming at Vickie.
“This your solution to everything?” Her blue eyes blaze. “You think I’ve got anything to lose? I’ve got at least another decade before the shitbirds in corporate let me retire. At which point I will retire to a coffin.”
Sirens sound in the distance and keep getting closer.
She drops my manifesto into the shredder and presses a button. The grind of the machine mixes with her laugh, hoarse and mocking. “What you got up your sleeve now, Garbage Man?”
Three cruisers speed past the window and turn into the parking lot. Car doors slam. I run out into the awful, crackling sunlight. Dry grass crunches under my feet and my whole body itches and my head vibrates with noise.
The cops are yelling at me the way cops do. They are blurry and very far away, like I’m viewing them through the bottom of a glass.
I raise the Mossberg. But I have no will and pressing the trigger might as well be lifting a boulder.
I wonder what getting shot feels like.
-
Chris Rhatigan made it out of the newspaper industry alive. Now he writes short stories for places like A Twist of Noir, Pulp Metal Magazine, and The Flash Fiction Offensive. In November, he will have a story at BEAT to a PULP. If you like short crime fiction, check out his blog, Death by Killing.
Threshold Woman
By Richard Godwin
Late June, fireflies bomb the window of my Buick as I drive slowly to Sultry.
Her brothe
r Carlos calls her Anna, he doesn’t know her secret name, the one I use as I hold her shivering in my arms.
She is clear as diamonds, soft as petals.
She shimmers in her own perfume.
A diamond is an allotrope of carbon and it’s less stable than graphite.
There is nothing artificial about Sultry.
I remember the first time, I enter it again. I feel her there trembling beneath me, I can hear her slow soft pants, I can see the vein stand out on her neck as she tenses.
She is swollen with desire.
She stiffens with pleasure.
She tightens.
As if she is harnessed by a tourniquet.
I am working for her brother Carlos, a smart assed fuckhead who steals cars and beats people up. He is a small time crook with big time aspirations.
He watches his sister with the obsessive scrutiny of a jealous lover.
He carries a pair of dusters with him wherever he goes and he collects the teeth of his victims.
He puts them in a box and rattles them at you. It is a small black box with the image of a snake on it.
My first day at work with him he gets into an argument with a business colleague.
I watch as he punches the guy’s lights out and stands picking his teeth from his knuckles at the front of his office.
Carlos is fiercely protective of his sister and we all think he has the hots for her.
He treats her like some medieval bride.
I see her walk up the steps to his office.
First impressions are that she is beyond beautiful. There is perfect grace and sexual depravity merged into one in her face.
I watch the way she moves, she knows.
She changes her body language for Carlos.
She looks in my direction, I know.
She has azure eyes set in a face that looks like alabaster.
She has thick black hair that just shines in the sunlight. And she moves like she is on heat.
Carlos uses me as a heavy.
I rent collect for him, nothing too severe just an occasional smacking.
That night as the heat sears the air he is out of town and asks me to keep an eye on Sultry.
It is not a hard job.
I turn the ignition off.
I walk up the path to her house the one she shares with Carlos and I hear my leather soles tap tap on the burning concrete.
I want to fuck her and remind myself I’m there to do a job.
I think of Carlos’ box of teeth.
I ring the bell at the appointed time.
Sultry opens the door dressed in a bathrobe.
It is loose at her shoulders and her hair is wet.
There is sexual calculation in her eyes.
“Come in,” she says.
She barely stands aside as I slide past her.
I follow her through to the living room and turn my back as she goes into the bedroom.
There is a mirror on the wall.
She drops her robe and bends into her tights, pulling them up her full-toned legs.
She turns and sees me watching her.
There is this frozen moment when we are both seeing the mirror image of our desires and it is unspoken.
She has this perfect female figure.
Her breasts are full and her nipples dark and rounded.
I can see the outline of her shaven cunt inside her pantyhose.
Her ass is tight and she has a beautifully shaped hollow between her thighs.
I consider if it’s her beauty that makes Carlos mad.
I make myself a drink and sit down as Sultry comes out and puts some music on.
She is wearing a low cut black dress.
I want to touch her.
“Who’s this?” I say.
“You don’t know who this is Mack?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Neil Diamond. Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon.”
And she starts to dance.
There is pleasure in her face and I wonder what she looks like as she comes.
I sip my Jim Beam.
I pour her one.
As the music floats in the air she stretches in front of me bending into me with no disguise at all of what she wants of me.
And I wonder if she knows she is safe or wants the danger.
Her skin is glowing, it is full of some emollient only the most beautiful women have.
She has a highly refractive index, her sexuality can cut glass.
“What is it you’re trying to escape from?” I say.
“Is it that obvious?”
“I know your brother keeps you under strict rules and I work for him.”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“Know what?”
“What this music represents to me. Liberation, the freedom to be a woman, to enjoy a man, to satisfy myself with him.”
“Maybe you need to pick someone your brother would approve of.”
“My brother would never approve of anyone.”
I watch her move and she seems caught between the shadow and the act, some female lure who knows what she has and wants to be carried across the threshold. Her arousal is on the threshold like the half-touching of her desire.
Diamonds are less stable than graphite and I look at her and see the flickering of something in her mind. It is trapped in a body she can use to get any man.
And I want to take her clothes off and fuck her there and then.
I want to lay her on her back and part her legs.
She smells like sin.
I listen to the lyrics.
I watch her dance in her skin tight dress.
“You want some guy to die for you?” I say.
“To be prepared to die.”
“Because otherwise your brother will stop you being with anyone.”
“In a few years I’ll be too old.”
“Or am I a mirror?”
“A mirror?”
“You’re watching your own beauty through me and getting what you need.”
“I know I’m beautiful.”
And I say it. I use her secret name.
“So what then Sultry?”
She stops. It’s like a key unlocking a door.
I want to unzip her. I want to peel her dress from her.
“I want you to fuck me Mack.” she says.
We have some drinks and she touches me.
I turn and her lips are there and taste the heat of midnight.
She has the flavor of a corrupted Queen.
And as Neil Diamond plays I peel her dress from her and let it fall to the wasted ground.
I touch her and feel it all in her skin, the river of her desire.
She feels like silk.
I look into her eyes and see a knowing.
I wonder if I am the first.
I take her to the bedroom.
I take her across threshold of herself.
I see it in her eyes they are asking me.
She wants the inner act of love making. She wants me to penetrate her inner being.
We are touching and she reaches for my cock.
She bends and sucks me and I feel her wetness.
She lies back and I part her legs.
She has a diamond set in her navel. I reach out my tongue and lick it.
I open the lips of her sliced peach and put my tongue inside her.
I enter her and it is like feeding on the sap of an exotic wildflower.
She has sexual depravity in her flesh and she arches her back on the bed as I fuck her.
I hear her breathing speed up, the small short gasps she makes as a vein stands out on her perfect neck and I lick it, feeling the tube of blood with my tongue.
And as I listen to her gasps increase in speed she pulls me tight into her and I see it in her face.
She is on the threshold of womanhood, knowing all she needs to know and young enough to fool men into believing they are teaching her something.
&nbs
p; She occupies this space as perfectly as a con man becomes the person required by the mark.
Her skin exudes the flavor of sexual hunger.
I get some drinks and she goes through my coat.
I have some acid in there I am going to deliver.
It is pure acid, way stronger than anything you can imagine.
I sit and talk to her and we screw again and later, as I am getting dressed, I notice the pack is gone.
She’s taken all the tabs.
“Did you drop that acid?” I say.
“What if I did?” she says.
“Do you know how strong that is?”
“Stay with me Mack. Fuck me Mack.”
I get her to stand up and I call Tamsin.
Tamsin knows. She has the medical training, she is a drop out.
She knows all the drugs necessary to deal with any situation. I call her the doctor.
“I need your help. Someone’s taken too much acid. I need you to help them come down,” I say.
“Who is it?” Tamsin says.
“It’s a chick.”
“She needs a benzo like Klonopin.”
“Have you got any?”
“Yeah. It’ll cost you.”
“Bring it round.”
I give her the address and hang up.
Sultry is drifting, her eyes are nowhere.
I wait as she begins to trip out.
She begins licking the wall, running her hands across the wallpaper.
“My fingers feel like marshmallows,” she says. “And when I move I am bending at the corners, do you think you want to fuck my brother? Maybe he needs to give me his baby.”
“Sultry sit down,” I say.
“He fucks me, you know. He fucks me. He comes to my room at night and sticks his cock in me and I hate him.”
“Sultry do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yeah. Why do you think he’s so obsessed with me? Take me away Mack. Take me out of here.”
There is too much truth in what she is saying.
Her brother has his mark on her.
I think of her teeth removed and rattling in his box.
I think of where his obsession may go.
Tamsin gets there and we give her the Klonopin.
I hold Sultry as she injects her.
“I like pricks in me,” she says. “Feels like come inside me.”
Tamsin shakes her head.
“Get her to rest,” she says.
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