by Tess Oliver
Her words flowed into my brain and through my blood, straight into my rapidly beating heart. I worried that I might stutter, and I swallowed hard to keep from speaking. I reached for her hand just as she spun around toward the microwave. I lowered my arm.
“Damnit,” she huffed. “Why is there such a fine line of time between perfectly popped and charcoal black?” She pulled the bag out and stared at it. “Should I bother to take it to Julian?”
It took me a second to regain my composure. “Yeah, bring it. We can fish through the blackened kernels for the edible ones.”
Frank was no longer mopping the dining room. The room always looked sterile and uninviting when no one was sitting in it.
“Glad we don’t have to tiptoe past the giant’s ugly scowl again,” Sugar said.
We got to Julian’s room, and I gave the secret knock. He didn’t answer. I moved my mouth closer to the edge of the door. “Hey, Jules, it’s Sugar and me. We’ve brought popcorn.”
No answer. I looked back at Sugar.
She leaned closer. “Come on, Jules, let us in.”
The door opened. Julian walked away before we stepped inside. He plunked back down at his computer. He had a red cap pulled down over his forehead.
I shut the door. Sugar sat on the edge of his bed, and I sat down next to her. She put the popcorn bag on his desk. Julian peered up from the shade of his hat brim like a gunslinger staring up from beneath his Stetson. “It’s burned.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sugar said.
He continued to tap away on his keyboard. His mouth was pulled tight, and his eyes were flat and cold.
“Hey, Jules,” I said, feeling slightly annoyed by the drama act, all the while reminding myself that he couldn’t help it. “What’s going on? You’re not yourself. Did that new guy say something to you?”
It took him a few seconds to respond. “I’ve been here too long, and it’s worthless. Need to get out of this place.”
I chucked him lightly on the shoulder. “Starting to make you climb the walls, eh?”
Sugar laughed. Julian didn’t even crack a smile.
“That popcorn smells bad,” he said.
Sugar grabbed it. “I’ll throw it away.”
“Not in here,” he said grumpily. “My whole room will smell.”
“Fine,” Sugar sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
She walked out, and it was just me and Julian. The brim of his hat moved up and down as he typed. I watched him for a second and came damn close to shutting the laptop on him, but Julian wasn’t the type you did something like that to. He wasn’t some friend you could just get pissed at and treat with some degree of disrespect like throw some hearty cuss words at him or tell him to snap out of it. Julian couldn’t just snap out of it. “Look, buddy, whatever it is, tell me about it. You always listen to me when I’ve got something to gripe about.”
He shook his head. It seemed the stone face was all I was going to get tonight. Then he looked at me. “No way to undo things. They try in here. The doctors, the drugs, they try and take away the past, but it can’t be done. It’s the past. It’s permanent until I die and then it’s gone. That’s when relief comes. With death. My brother never had to go through any of this. He didn’t have to sit around in this toxic smelling hospital trying to take away a permanent past.”
Julian had, one day, in passing, brought up the horrid fact that his twin brother had been still born because Julian’s umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck. But he’d told it to me almost as if he had been just reading me an article from a magazine, no real emotion. This was the first time he’d mentioned his brother since.
“Yep, that past isn’t going anywhere. I guess they think if we talk it out, and you know, analyze shit, then it will help us deal with the present.” His mention of relief coming with death had me freaked. I leaned closer even though we were the only ones in the room. “Hey, Jules, you’re not thinking of offing yourself, are you? Because you know how it is when the blues hit. We all get that feeling from time to time.”
“Not thinking about suicide, Tommy. Just want to get out of here.”
“Why don’t you talk to your dad. Sugar and me would be real sorry to see you go, but maybe he could get you released. If you think you’re ready.” Of course, he was far from ready, but maybe the guy just needed to get out from within these walls for awhile.
He snorted a dry laugh. “My dad doesn’t want to help me. He only cares about himself.”
Julian rarely talked about his dad. “I think if you called him—”
He went back to his keyboard signaling that this conversation was at an end. I leaned back on my elbows and stared at the rocks on his wall. “Hey, it looks like your numbers haven’t changed too much since the last time I was in here.”
“Just don’t feel like climbing to nowhere anymore.”
I sat back up. “When we’re both clear of this place, I’ve got to take you to California. There’s a place called Yosemite, where—”
“Why is Sugar taking so long?” he asked suddenly. He was obviously not in the mood to talk about trips or anything else for that matter.
“Maybe she decided to go back to her room. I’ll go check on her.” I got up. This visit had been a waste of time. I was good at constructing a stone wall around myself when I didn’t want to face something or talk about something, but Julian constructed an entire fortress. “I’ll leave you to your computer, Jules. If you want to talk, you know where I live.”
No response. He continued to plunk away on his keyboard.
I stepped into the hallway. Most everyone was asleep, and the corridor was so quiet, I could hear the lights overhead buzz with electricity. Half of them were turned off, an energy saving policy. As I headed to Sugar’s room just to let her know I’d given up on Julian for the night, a tiny, muffled sound came from the end of the hallway. It was such a small, insignificant sound that at first, I waved it off as nothing, but then something about the entire eerily quiet stretch of hallway in front of me sent a rush of adrenaline through my body. Something was wrong. It was too quiet.
I turned the corner. Kirkendall’s office door was ajar, and the light was out. She must have gone to the dining room for coffee, I reasoned. But as I stepped past the office, I heard a noise. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. My shoe slid through something slippery. My heel crunched something metal. That’s when I saw a large silhouette standing motionless in the corner of the small waiting room. I reached back and flicked on the light. For a brief second, I was sure I was back in my bed stuck in a bad dream, a really bad fucking dream.
The liquid my foot had sloshed through was a pool of blood, and the crunched metal was tiny gold earrings. Dr. Kirkendall’s lifeless face stared up at me from the floor. The silhouette in the corner filled in with color. The man was dressed, head to toe in black, with a black beanie pulled low over his head.
The silver blade of his knife gleamed in the light as he lunged at me. I jumped back, skidding through the red puddle as I grabbed the doorknob. The guy slammed into the door as I jumped into the hallway and pulled it shut. I held it tightly, thinking about a dream I used to have as a kid where I was holding shut my closet door to keep a monster from jumping out. And now it was happening for real, and I was losing my grip.
With all my strength, I shoved the door open. It slammed into the murderer on the other side. He stumbled back and fell over his victim’s body, dropping back against the chairs. I skirted around the macabre mess on the floor and delivered a solid kick to the man’s face before he could get up. Blood spurted from his nose, and he groaned in pain. I kicked him again, this time in the neck. He gasped for air as he flung the knife-wielding hand wildly toward me. I grabbed his arm and wrenched it hard into an unnatural position. He dropped the knife. I kicked it clear of his reac
h. It went sliding past Dr. Kirkendall’s body and into the blood.
My stomach knotted. I swallowed back a bitter taste that was a mix of fear, adrenaline and the metallic scent of blood. Sugar, the name flashed through my brain like a bolt of light. Where the hell was Sugar?
The guy reached for my leg, and I turned on him. I pounded him. I was back in the locker room, plowing my fist into Alex Yardley’s face. Only this guy wasn’t a school bully. He’d slit the throat of a woman, a woman who’d spent her work day trying to help others out of the ditches they’d dug for themselves, a woman who didn’t deserve the end she’d just been handed. My knuckles hit bone the first few rounds. Then it felt as if I was punching a bag of gravel. Then sand. Blood was smeared all the way up my arm to my elbow. I hit him over and over, even though he was as limp as a rag doll in my grasp now. I had to mentally yank myself out of the trance I’d sunk into, the dark state of mind where it seemed this guy’s death was the only appropriate response to Dr. Kirkendall’s violent murder. Sugar, I reminded myself. Make sure Sugar is all right.
I gave the man’s half-mutilated face one more hit. He slumped back against the chair and folded over to the ground. I had no idea if he was alive or dead. I didn’t give a fuck either way. My knuckles were numb from pummeling the guy and a sharp pain shot through my shoulder as I shook some of the blood off my hand.
I stepped into the hallway. It was quiet and deserted and clean, a complete contradiction to the horrid carnage I’d just left behind in the doctor’s office. I needed to find Sugar and get to Nurse Greene, so she could call the police. As I ran toward Sugar’s door, I heard that tiny muffled sound again. It was coming from the front room. Like in a nightmare, the hallway seemed to stretch on forever, and my feet felt as if they were filled with lead. I ran past the closed doors of the other residents, most of them sleeping peacefully in their beds, with no idea of what was happening right outside their rooms.
I glanced back to make sure the murderer hadn’t somehow miraculously recouped from the beating I’d just given him. My red shoe prints covered the white tile floor. I flew around the corner and my stomach tightened again. Nurse Greene was draped over her desk unconscious or dead. Blood stained the back of her head.
My own bloodied hand shook with fear and fatigue as I reached for her arm. It was still warm. Her back rose and fell with a breath. She was alive, but barely, it seemed. A whimper behind me made me freeze. Slowly, I turned toward the farthest corner. Frank’s big head jutted up above the top of a tall file cabinet. He stepped out. His massive hand was over Sugar’s mouth. He had a pistol pressed against her temple. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, and the color had washed from her face.
She clutched at Frank’s arm, but it was futile. He had an iron grasp on her.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I lifted my hands up in surrender. “Let her go, man. Whatever the fuck this is, she’s got nothing to do with it.”
“You’re both here, so you’ve both got something to do with it now,” he sneered. Apparently, Sugar and I had stepped into his murder plot and messed things up. What I couldn’t figure out was what the hell the motive might have been. Had Kirkendall crossed him at some point? That explanation seemed farfetched. He moved his hand from Sugar’s mouth but kept his arm around her shoulders. The gun stayed pressed against her head.
I looked at her and the terror in her face sent a jolt of pain through my stomach. “Tommy,” my name pillowed out from her lips on a wavering breath, and tears fell from her eyes.
“I’m here, baby.” I tried like hell to sound reassuring, but it was hard. After seeing what had happened to Kirkendall, I knew these guys had already signed their tickets to life in prison. A few more bodies weren’t going to make a difference. “Look, switch me for her,” I suggested. “Put the gun against my head. Let her go. If you let her go, you’ll still have a chance to get out of here alive.”
Frank’s big face twisted with a cold laugh. “I’ll be getting out alive. I’ll just have to leave behind more victims than I’d planned.”
I stepped closer, and he tightened his grip on Sugar. I stopped and shook my head. “No, see, I wouldn’t be so sure.” I spoke calmly, and as pissed as I was that he had a gun against Sugar’s head, my humiliating stutter stayed in control. It wasn’t the time to show weakness of any kind, except for the weakness I had when it came to Sugar. That, I had no control over. “Because if you hurt her, I will fucking tear you apart. Long before you can turn that gun on me, I will have you bleeding out of those giant fucking ears of yours. If you don’t believe me, then go check in on your partner.”
The mention of his partner hit a nerve. “Where is he?” he barked.
“He’s probably where I left him, in Dr. Kirkendall’s office struggling to take a breath out of what was left of his jaw, since I basically dissolved his nose with my fist.” I lifted my bloodstained hand.
Frank’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a fucking liar,” he hissed.
“Really?” I looked back toward the hallway. “Then where the hell is he?”
His eyes flitted nervously toward the hallway. “Fuck.”
“Like I said, if you shoot her, I will kill you. I don’t care how big you are, you harm her, I will fucking pulverize every bone in that big ugly mug of yours until you can’t breathe, or swallow, or see, or hear. Your head will just be like a big, bloody blob of meat at the end of your neck. How do you think I ended up here in the first place?” I winked at him. “Anger issues, you know?”
The guy was obviously stunned at how badly this whole thing had gone. It seemed from the small tic in his cheek as he looked at me, he was trying to decide if I was full of shit or actually capable of grinding him into cake flour.
“Look, I’ll make it easy.” I put my hands behind my head, a position of surrender I knew well, unfortunately. “Just switch the gun over to my head and let her go.” I had no idea where the situation would go from here, but taking Sugar out of the line of fire was all I cared about. I’d be able to think clearer, maybe find a way out of this.
He tightened his hold on Sugar as I moved closer to him with my hands behind my head. I worried for an icy cold second that he was going to go for it, shoot Sugar and see how quickly he could take me out too.
The guy was even bigger up close. “Turn around,” he ordered.
Without dropping my hands, I shuffled around to face the hallway. It was still serene and quiet as it might have been on any long summer night. The only thing that stood out as wrong was Nurse Greene collapsed over her desk. If not for the blood stain on the back of her head and tiny river of red staining her white coat, she could have just been sleeping.
The hard metal rim of the gun barrel pressed against my temple. “You’ve got me. Let her go to her room. There are no phones inside, so she can’t call anyone.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw his big arm drop down. Sugar pushed free. Her face was smooth and white as she spun around to look at me.
“Go, Sugar.”
“Uh, no you don’t,” Frank said, twisting my skin in the gun barrel as he ground it against my head. “If you run, I shoot him.”
I looked at her hard, as if we were standing in a room alone and there was no gun against my head. “Get out of here.”
She shook her head. “I won’t leave you, Tommy.” Her whole body shuddered as she spoke.
I looked at her, trying to speak with my eyes, my expression, telling her to get the hell away, but she didn’t budge.
“It’s only a matter of time before someone else comes out of their room for a snack or an aspirin. What the hell are you going to do? Kill everyone in your path? Your accomplice isn’t going anywhere that an ambulance can’t take him to, I promise you that. He’s toast. Get the fuck out of here. We’ll give you a head start before we call someone.”
His breath smelled li
ke beer as he laughed, the gun tapping my head with the movement. “That’s fucking funny, the guy with the gun against his head is giving the orders.”
I closed my eyes for a second, wishing that when I opened them it would all be gone, that Sugar and I were back in my room finishing that kiss that never got started.
Sugar wrapped her arms around herself. It did little to stop the shaking. Tears rolled from her blue eyes.
“Sugar,” I lowered my voice as if that would keep the man who was standing next to me from hearing, “baby, please go. It’ll be fine.”
I winced as Frank ground the gun against my temple. “I’ll shoot his head off with your first step.”
We stood there in a deadlock that would have to end with someone dead or hurt badly. My mind darted back and forth looking for a solution, but the dick standing next to me was lacking compassion and common sense. Or maybe it was common sense telling him he was screwed either way, so he might as well shoot the jerk standing at the end of his gun.
“Why Kirkendall?” I asked, deciding that buying time was our only chance. “I mean why murder her?”
“That’s what happens to overly curious people,” Frank said tersely. “People like you who don’t mind their own fucking business.”