Dark Screams, Volume 9

by Dark Screams- Volume 9 (retail) (epub)

  The sake sampler arrives as a row of tiny glasses. Erika takes a sip from one, savoring it before putting it comically out of reach. Vivienne samples the other three and chooses the one at the end, with the faint flavor of star anise.

  They drink and chat and eat sushi as it arrives, two handcrafted pieces at a time. Whenever they hear the swish of the server’s slippers in the hall, Erika talks about work. Is Vivienne happy? How could she be happier? What else could the company do for her? Vivienne plays along. You can never be too careful in the compound.

  Soon, though, she’s struggling to focus on the questions. The sake is stronger than she expected, and it’s making her sleepy. Too sleepy. She stares down at the glass.

  “The sake,” she whispers, words slurring as she cuts Erika off mid-sentence.

  “Hmm?”

  She shakes her head sharply. “No. Sorry. I’m being…”

  She can’t finish. Can’t complete the thought.

  “Vivienne? Are you okay?”

  “I…” Don’t overreact. Do not overreact. “I think…Too much sake.” She manages a short laugh. “Been a while.” Her words slur worse, and she blinks hard to keep her eyes open.

  “Shit,” Erika says. “You think they drugged the sake.”

  “N-no. That’s crazy. They wouldn’t—”

  “Sure they would. Send me to talk to you. Give you something to drink just drugged enough to make you more open to suggestion. The bastards. If that did anything to my baby…” She shakes her head. “Let’s just get you home to bed, and I’ll let them know you were exhausted from overwork, and the sake hit you hard, so we barely had a chance to talk. Maybe that’ll smarten them up.”

  Vivienne barely processes what Erika is saying. She wobbles to her feet. Erika takes her arm and leads her to the screen. The hall is empty. It’s late for a weekday, the place emptying fast.

  “There’s an exit by the ladies’ room,” Erika says. “It leads straight to the parking lot. We’ll slip out there. How are you holding up?”

  “Marco. I need to call—”

  “We will as soon as you’re in the car. Let’s just get there before you fall over.”

  They exit out the rear and into the dark lot. Erika opens her passenger door and helps Vivienne inside. Vivienne’s sitting in the seat, looking at her cellphone. It’s not working. Why isn’t it—

  Erika gets in the driver’s seat and hits the locks.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers as she grips Vivienne’s hand.

  “Not your fault,” Vivienne slurs.

  “Yes, but I still feel bad. I promise it’ll be okay.”

  Vivienne feels a sharp prick against her wrist and she startles, gasping. Erika keeps hold of her arm and whispers, “I’m sorry, Viv, but no one refuses an invitation to the Game. No one.”

  —

  Vivienne wakes in a tiny room. She blinks and lifts her head, struggling to remember—

  Invitation. Sake. Erika. Game.

  She leaps up, and she’s so certain of restraints that she stumbles when she finds herself free. She rubs her face and looks around.

  Tiny room. Low lights. A single chair. Something on a shelf.

  She’s walking to the shelf when a piped-in man’s voice says, “Welcome to the Game. Now that everyone has arrived, you have a moment to familiarize yourself with the other players.”

  A row of screens clicks on. Four other players. One she knows. Two she can name. The fourth she’s seen only in passing.

  The last one raises his hand in a tentative wave and says, “Hey, all,” then chuckles. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be so friendly with the competition, huh?”

  “We don’t compete in this company,” the voice says. “We work together, as you will tonight.”

  Vivienne looks around for a door and sees four solid walls.

  “Tonight’s game is a puzzler, perfect for our executives, who are chosen for their ingenuity, not their quick trigger fingers.”

  An obligatory chuckle from a couple of the others as Vivienne runs her hands over the walls, hunting for a way out. Even the screens aren’t really screens at all, but projections directly on a solid glass wall.

  “And, no, Vivienne, the puzzle is not a room escape,” the voice continues. “But your initiative is commendable. You’ll be cooperatively solving a crime. A series of seemingly unconnected murders.”

  She remembers the shelf and turns to see a virtual-reality headset.

  As if on cue, the voice says, “To your right, you’ll find a shelf with a VR set. Please put it on.”

  Vivienne keeps hunting for a way out.

  “It seems one of our players is having difficulty. Vivienne?”

  The screens flicker. A live video feed appears on the far-right one. It’s Marco pacing their living room, waiting for her. The screen splits to show her two sleeping children.

  “No…” she whispers. “Don’t you dare—”

  “We appear to be having technical difficulties with Vivienne’s room. You’ll have lost her video and audio feed, but she is putting on her headset now.”

  Three pictures—her husband and children. And then a fourth appears…of her gas stove, hissing.

  She puts on the headset. The hissing stops.

  “Thank you, Vivienne. We are ready.”

  The virtual-reality headset pops to life, and Vivienne finds herself in a bar, watching a middle-aged guy hitting on a young prostitute. The camera zooms in, and she realizes the john is the player she knew only by sight.

  “What the hell?” the man’s voice booms through the room speakers.

  “Please, we ask all players to observe without comment.”

  “But that’s not me. I’ve never—”

  “Please observe without comment.”

  The man and the prostitute move into the back alley, the camera following. He pushes her against the wall. Then he wraps his hands around her neck.

  “What the fuck? That’s not—”

  The man’s voice cuts off mid-word, but Vivienne can hear him shouting through the walls—shouting that it’s not him in that picture, not him strangling the young woman, not him walking away when her body falls, lifeless, to the pavement.

  “You sick fuck!” another of the players says. “You sick, sick fuck.”

  The man continues his muted shouts of innocence, punctuated now by pounding at the wall.

  The image changes. It’s still night, but on an empty road, where a BMW idles with its lights off.

  “Hey,” a woman’s voice says. “That’s my car.”

  The picture zooms in to show a figure behind the wheel. Vivienne recognizes her as one of the players—Kate Lindsey, from sales.

  “What?” Kate says. “I don’t remember…”

  Kate trails off as a figure walks onto the screen. The car revs, and the man turns. The headlights go on, blinding him, and he dives out of the way, too slow, as the car speeds toward him. Kate shouts, “No!”

  A sickening thunk as the car strikes the man. Then it reverses over him and Kate screams that it isn’t her, she didn’t do it, her car is fine—go look, it’s fine.

  Vivienne reaches up to fling off her goggles, but the strap tightens and pain stabs through her skull.

  The picture changes to a hallway. One she knows so well she can picture every detail of the photographs lining it.

  “No,” Vivienne whispers. Tears stream down her face, pooling in the headset. “Please, no.”

  The camera pulls back to show Vivienne in her nightshirt. Her eyes are blank, unfocused, as she moves purposefully toward her destination.

  She turns into the nursery. Ahead is the crib.

  Vivienne squeezes her eyes shut. But it doesn’t help. She still sees the picture, as if projected onto her visual cortex.

  She stands over Hannah’s crib. Reaches in. One hand strokes the baby’s head. Then she takes a stuffed dog from the end of the crib.

  No pillows for babies, guys. She can have one toy, but it stays out of r
each, or she might…

  Or she might…

  Vivienne places the stuffed dog over her infant daughter’s nose and mouth…and presses down.

  —

  Screaming. Sobbing. Wailing. That’s what Vivienne hears. It all comes through the walls, though. Comes from the others. She can’t make a sound. Can’t speak. Can’t think.

  No, that’s not true. She can think.

  She thinks, I did not do this. Not willingly.

  And she thinks, It doesn’t matter. I still did it, and I can’t live with knowing that.

  The answer is simple. She will leave this booth, and she will not go home, never go home. She’ll drive to the city. Find a bridge. Plenty of them in San Francisco. Find one and jump.

  “Vivienne?” the voice says on the speaker. “You saw what you did.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “We have proof that it was.”

  “It was my body, but not under my control.”

  “Are you suggesting we used mind control to make five people commit murder?” A dry chuckle. “I certainly hope that isn’t your legal defense. Claiming postpartum depression would be the way to go, though it will cost you your husband, custody of your children.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “No one will believe mind control, Vivienne. And, yet…if such a thing were possible, it would be quite the sword to wield, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t want to cross anyone who held it.”

  She says nothing.

  “If someone did wield that power, I bet they could use it for good, too. Erase the memory of what you just witnessed. Would you like that, Vivienne?”

  Silence.

  The voice continues, “Peace of mind would come at a price. The price of your loyalty as an employee. We would implant a subconscious terror of leaving the company. You would, at some level, understand that if you left, we’d be forced to reveal your forgotten secret. Should you try to leave, we would need to bring you back in for a reminder. I can assure you, though, that few need reminders. Very few.”

  Fran Lee did. That’s what Vivienne had seen in the older woman’s eyes. Repeated exposure to whatever horror she’d committed while under the company’s control. Exposure and erasure, corroding her mind, disintegrating her memories.

  “Do you want us to erase that memory for you, Vivienne?”

  No. Consciously or not, she had murdered her own child. She must pay for that.

  When she doesn’t respond, the voice says, “Imagine if we don’t erase it. Would you tell your husband? Inflict the horror on him? Or would you abandon him and your children? Rob them of their mother? Destroy their happy family life?”

  She cannot return to them with this secret. She knows that. She can’t live with this secret. And yet, how would Marco cope with her suicide, never knowing the reason? How would her children deal with it, knowing only that their mother abandoned them?

  You took one child’s life. Will you ruin the lives of the other two?

  “Your choice, Vivienne?”

  She doesn’t have one. She sees that. No choice at all.

  “I’ll take it.”

  —

  Vivienne waits as one wall of her booth whooshes open. She steps out to see Kate, shaking her head and saying, “Well, that was lame, wasn’t it?” and one of the guys murmuring, “No shit,” as they all share a smile.

  The Game turned out to be an embarrassingly low-tech virtual-reality chess match, where they’d had to lift and move giant chess pieces. Erika was right. It needed a design overhaul, stat.

  The players swallow their mockery as six board members walk in. The man at the head of the group welcomes them to the team and says they’ll each receive a brief orientation, with details of their new benefit packages. Oh, and there’s one last thing…

  “Here at the company, we’re always looking to retain talent. Yet we aren’t always in the best position to recognize that talent. You are the ones in the trenches, seeing promise overlooked every day. So, before you leave, I’d like you each to nominate someone for the next Game. Consider it the first taste of your new executive power.”

  One of the board members takes Vivienne to a lounge. As they sit, he says, “Do you have a name for us? Or do you need more time?”

  “I do but…it might be inappropriate.”

  He smiles. “We’ll be the judge of that.”

  “He’s talented, brilliant, and an insanely hard worker. He’s just not in a division the company often recognizes with executive promotions.”

  “Ah, an innovative choice. Always the best kind. You don’t need to make excuses, Vivienne. Just give us a name.”

  She takes a deep breath and says, “I’d like to nominate my husband. Marco.”

  Summer of ’77

  Stewart O’Nan

  For Paul Cody

  They saw me at the lake, when I had the cast on, the one I made in the basement. They saw me messing with the trailer hitch. They came over.

  “Hey,” they said, “need a hand with that?”

  Guys and girls both, the young ones. That’s who went there.

  They had long earrings like chandeliers. They had long blond hair parted in the middle, their bright combs poking out of their cutoffs. They had muscle shirts and puka beads, they had shaved legs and baby oil for the sun.

  “How’d you do that?” they said.

  “How do you sail with one hand?” they said.

  “Let me help you,” they said.

  When there were two of them, I let them fix it so the taillights worked, then I thanked them and left.

  They were all leaving; that’s why they were in the parking lot. I could leave and come back and they’d be gone.

  “How much can a Bug tow?” they said. “Nothing heavy, I bet.”

  They saw me from across the lot, putting away their blankets, their wet towels around their waists. Suits still wet and smelling of the lake. They walked out into the shallows and stood there sipping beers. The garbage was full of cans, every one of them worth a nickel. I almost wanted to stop and fill a bag.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s hard with this on.”

  “No problem,” they said.

  “No sweat.”

  “My dad has one like this,” they said.

  They had wallets, licenses, credit cards. They had keys I had to throw in the river. Rolling papers, little stone bowls. They had bubble gum. They had Lifesavers.

  “How does it go together?” they asked.

  “How did it come apart?”

  They knelt down in front of me to see what they were doing. They had freckles from coming to the lake; they had sunburnt shoulders, and their hair was lighter than it was in the winter. The ends, and around the top. They smelled like lotion, they smelled hot. They wore flip-flops so you could see their toes, the hard skin of their heels.

  They liked my car. They asked how old it was, if I might sell it, how much I’d ask.

  “How do you shift with that?” they asked.

  They lifted the two ends of the connectors. They didn’t see the other set electrical-taped under the tongue. They didn’t know they couldn’t put it together, that it was impossible. They tried to do it the regular way, like you would.

  “Here’s your trouble,” they said.

  They turned to say it, to show it was two male ends.

  The parking lot was empty, everyone down at the beach. Kites in the sky. Hot dogs on the free barbecues the county put in. Charcoal smoke.

  They smiled as they turned, like I didn’t know. Like I was an idiot or something, so dumb I’d busted my arm. Pathetic. A little weak thing.

  The lot was empty, kites in the sky.

  I had the cast over my head and brought it down hard.

  “Oh,” they said, the bigger ones.

  Or “Uh.”

  Nothing really interesting.

  They fell across the hitch, and the first thing I did was grab them by the hair and pull them up. I could use the hand. It l
ooked like I couldn’t, but I could all along.

  So stupid.

  I grabbed them by the hair and the back of the waistband and spun them into the car. Because I already had the door open. They saw me like that first, with the door open. Helpless. They came over to see what they could do.

  Most the same age. The older ones I let go. They were young, with good skin. I liked them best that way. Blond, tall. The boys had muscles. They were everywhere that summer, like a song on the radio you can’t get away from. You start to sing it anyway.

  They came from the city, or just outside of it. They lived with their parents, or with friends over the G. C. Murphy’s, or they were at school for summer semester. They had IDs for work, they had chips for free drinks. They had bottle caps in their pockets. Heineken and Löwenbräu, Bud and Bud Light.

  They lay back in the seat when I folded it down and put a towel over them. They were breathing; they were making breathing sounds.

  The lot was full, windshields all glinting in the sun. You could hear the little sound of the lake.

  “Oh, God,” they said.

  “Please,” they said.

  They had freckles on their chests. They had bright white tan lines. They had the red marks their suits made around their waists. Their hair was still wet from the lake, and smelled like it. They had sand there.

  They got up to see what was happening and I hit them with the cast again, backhand. Bam, straight out. I didn’t even have to look.

  “Oh,” they said again. “Uh.”

  The highway was empty, the fields, the barns. All of it hot. A mile away from the lake, you couldn’t tell it was there. Just hills.

  They didn’t see the dust in the mirror, didn’t hear the rocks clunking in the wheel wells.

  “What year is it?” they asked.

  I laughed then. Me, pathetic. Weak.

  “An accident,” I said. “Nothing major.”

  “I really appreciate it,” I said, and already I wanted to hit them and never stop. Right there in the lot. But I waited.