Bad Thoughts

by Dave Zeltserman

  “You know what you’re going to do,” Winters breathed into Shannon’s ear.

  Shannon tried swinging the knife around, trying to get at Charlie Winters’s thick body, but Winters simply applied more pressure on the broken fingers until Shannon collapsed against the table, the side of his face resting on Susan’s stomach. He couldn’t help noticing how cold her skin felt. As he was pulled away from her, he saw the fear in her eyes, the wetness around her cheeks. Anger swelled up within him. He tried to swing the knife around and again was forced to collapse against the table.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Winters asked. “Gawd, are you a weak, little shit.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Shannon breathed through the pain.

  “Is that so?”

  More pressure was applied to his injured fingers. The pain sucked the breath out of him. From behind he could hear a wheezing laugh ooze out of Winters. The pressure continued. The pain seemed to build on itself, becoming something unbearable.

  Shannon looked into Susan’s eyes. He told her that no matter what was done to him, he would not hurt her. “And I won’t let this sack of human garbage hurt you, either.”

  More wheezing laughter came from behind. The pressure increased.

  “I would take the dish rag out of her mouth so the two of you could talk, but I’m afraid she would scream. Even though she’d know I’d have to kill her, she’d still scream. I don’t think she could help it. But you can talk, Billy Boy. Why don’t you tell her how my cousin had you whimpering like a baby and pissing in your pants?”

  Winters raised the pressure a notch.

  “Come on, Billy,” Winters breathed in his singsong voice. “You can do it.”

  “I was thirteen at the time,” Shannon said, trying to keep his eyes level with Susan’s. It was a struggle, though, the pain forced him to look away. “My mother was already dead before I got home. They broke my fingers and tortured me. I don’t know how long it went on for. I don’t remember too much about it. Even at the time I don’t think I was fully conscious of what was happening. I think I was in shock. Now, it’s nothing but a blur in my mind.”

  “I think you’re a liar,” Winters said. “I think you remember every little detail of what happened.”

  More pressure. Constant, continuous. The imaginary nails driving deeper into his bones.

  “One thing you didn’t lie about,” Winters said, “is that pain will make a weakling like you do anything. But you can stop it if you want.”

  He gave the injured fingers a harder twist.

  “All you have to do is cut her,” Winter said. “One drop of blood, that’s all. You cut her and show me a single drop of blood and I stop. After all, how much could a cut like that hurt her? I’m sure she’d want you to. I mean, trading all that pain for only a single drop of blood. You pick the spot, sport.”

  “You killed Janice Rowley—”

  “That’s right, bright boy.”

  “You framed Roper.”

  “Of course I did. Weak little shit. One little dream visit and he smothers himself. Come on, sport, show me the blood.”

  The pressure continued. Winters’s singsong voice droned through it, mixing with it, intensifying it. Shannon’s hand shook as he held the knife against Susan’s thigh. A small cut was made, drawing blood.

  The pressure stopped. “You broke your promise,” Winters said. Then to Susan, “He’s really quite a liar. I don’t know who he’s trying to fool with this gallantry crap. He doesn’t love you. The person he pines away for, who he dreams about every night, is his therapist. A real cute piece of meat, although a bit pale for my taste, and probably at this point a bit too stiff.”

  “I’ll tell you what I do dream about,” Shannon forced through clenched teeth, “the way it felt cutting off your cousin’s head. It’s like I’m there again. Seeing him scared shitless, smelling him crap his pants. I shove the knife into his neck. And all I want is to do it again.”

  “Now you know why I do what I do,” Winters said. He twisted Shannon’s injured fingers until the pain shot off like a fireball, firing deep into his brain. Then the red glare faded into blackness.

  * * * * *

  As Shannon regained consciousness, he heard Winters whispering things to him, his words slurred and nonsensical. After a while, he realized Winters wasn’t whispering but talking loud enough for Susan to hear. He was detailing what Shannon would have to do to stop the pain.

  “You see,” Winters was saying, “you cut her after only ten minutes of pain. I can keep it going for hours, probably even for days. By then you’d be begging me to let you do these things to her. And in your heart you’ll want to do them. You’ll be dying to do them. So why go through all that when you know how it’s going to end up? We both know you’re nothing but a pissant weakling.”

  Shannon shifted the knife so he was holding the blade and then flicked it over his shoulder. Winters dodged it and the knife clanked off the wall.

  “You’re going to have to beg me to let you retrieve it,” Winters said.

  The pressure was turned on. His fingers had swollen and the pain now was far worse than before. It seemed to fill him up, to push deep into his skull, hard against his eye sockets. Shannon begged to retrieve the knife. Winters ignored him. Shannon kept begging. It seemed an eternity before Winters moved him away from the table to where the knife had landed, all the while increasing the pressure. After Shannon picked it up, Winters moved him back to the table, back to Susan.

  More pressure. Just as the room would start to slip sideways on him, just as his consciousness would start to fade into blackness, the pressure would be modulated down. Then it would be increased.

  “If you want it stopped,” Winters said, “you’re going to have to push the knife into her throat. Not enough to kill her, or even do much damage, but enough to leave it bobbing up and down.”

  Shannon looked at Susan and then at the knife’s blade. Through the pain he started laughing.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Winters whispered softly. “But it won’t do any good. If you kill yourself I’ll do horrible, horrible things to her. Far worse than what I’m asking of you.”

  “That’s not what I’m thinking, shithead.”

  His injured fingers were twisted violently. Consciousness flickered away for a heartbeat.

  “Enlighten me,” Winters demanded.

  “It was really pretty funny,” Shannon said, still laughing.

  “Go on.”

  “It was about, ha ha, you and your cousin.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was thinking how you must’ve been there while I cut his head off.”

  Winters pushed his broken fingers back. Consciousness slipped away for a moment. Then Shannon started laughing again, harder than before.

  “You were probably standing there watching. Ha ha, too chickenshit to do anything.”

  “Your front door was being broken down. I thought the police were coming.”

  “But they weren’t. It was just my neighbor. And you were too chickenshit to do anything with a thirteen-year-old boy with broken fingers and a forty-year-old tax accountant.”

  “Shut up.”

  Shannon’s broken fingers were jammed back. His consciousness faded for a moment. Then he was laughing again.

  “What did you do, hide in the closet? Too chickenshit to move?”

  “I said shut it!”

  “What a fucking god. The god, ha ha, of chickenshit!”

  There was a hard, violent twist. Then pain exploded through him. It seemed to blow him towards the ceiling. His body rising as if he were filled with helium. All pain was gone, all feeling was gone, any concern he had had dissipated. He looked down and saw both Winters and himself, or at least his body. It was like those other times with Herbie and his father. He had somehow detached himself from his body and was observing the events from a distance. It all seemed only vaguely interesting to him.

  Charlie Winters’s face h
ad become pinched. Thin, hostile lines pushed up from his forehead. He was straining as he used both hands to twist Shannon’s broken fingers. And Shannon’s own body just laughed harder through it all.

  Then Winters stopped. He stood for a moment, confused, staring at what was in his hands, not quite comprehending that the two broken fingers had separated from Shannon’s body. Had, in fact, been ripped from the body.

  * * * * *

  It was as if Shannon were watching it all from outside of himself. Watching as his body turned and pushed the knife into Charlie Winters’s neck. Watching as the confusion drained out of Winters’s face, only to be replaced by wide-eyed disbelief and then fear.

  From what seemed like through a haze, Shannon watched as Charlie Winters’s head was hacked from his body. Even as his head rolled free his lips kept moving, at least for a few seconds, screaming in panic the word “no” . . .

  * * * * *

  Shannon knew he was missing his two broken fingers. Even still, he could feel a throbbing ache from where they should’ve been. He stood up slowly and let go of the knife. Winters’s head had rolled a few feet from his body. Shannon tried not to look at it. He tried to stare straight ahead, trying hard not to even catch a glimpse of his mutilated hand.

  He heard a muffled noise from behind. Susan’s small body was convulsing as she sobbed. Shannon stumbled over to her and removed the dish rag from her mouth.

  “It’s going to be all right now,” he said, trying as hard as he ever had to smile.

  “I’m so cold. Please get me something.”

  “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

  He made his way upstairs. A woman’s torn body lay in one of the bedrooms. He removed both the quilt and a sheet from the bed. The sheet was used to cover Winters’s head and body. He lay the quilt over Susan.

  “Just another minute. I need to find something to cut these wires with.”

  “Bill, you need to call an ambulance—”

  “What else did he do to you?”

  “Not for me, for you.”

  “I’ll be okay. Just a minute . . .”

  Shannon searched through the house until he found a wire cutter. He didn’t seem to have much strength in his left hand and it took a while to snap the wires, but eventually he had them off Susan.

  “I know better than to ask if you’re okay,” he said.

  Her face twisted slowly into the saddest clown smile Shannon had ever seen and then she started bawling. As she, did Shannon tried to hold her. He tried like hell not to bleed on her.

  “He lied about what he told you,” she said when she could. “Your therapist, Elaine Horwitz, survived. I heard it on the news earlier today.”

  And then she just sobbed harder.

  * * * * *

  Charlie Winters knew he was dead.

  Instead of being drawn to a white light, he had been pulled through some sort of black void. The book he had read in prison had stated that leaving your body and dying were basically the same thing. This was different, though. He felt anchored to where he had been pulled to. Movement didn’t seem possible. And his essence, or spirit, or whatever it was that defined him, had changed shape. He had the sensation that he had become gnarled and gnome-like.

  They came as a group. The ones he’d recently murdered. Joe DiGrazia, Pig Dornich, Phyllis Roberson, the hooker in East Boston, all of them. There were even some he recognized from his days with Herbie. There were a few he didn’t recognize. Somehow he knew they were guides.

  They milled around him, looking at him as if he were insignificant, as if he were unimportant to them, and then they turned from him. None of them had spoken, none of them acknowledged him. It was as if he didn’t exist. Then they were gone.

  The quiet was unlike anything Charlie Winters had ever experienced. A pure, absolute quiet. He almost welcomed it when he heard them.

  The noise they made was like razor blades being scratched over glass. Millions of blades over millions of pieces of glass. A pure, raw terror filled him as the blades scraped closer, as the noise screamed through his every fiber. He still couldn’t see them, but he could sense they were almost on top of him.

  They were on him then. Shredding him, engulfing him, their blades ripping his being to infinite pieces. Just as the quiet before had been absolute, his agony now was also pure and absolute.

  When he had first learned how to slip into the dream world and then into other planes of existence, he searched for Herbie. He never found him, though, and he now knew why. Herbie suffered this same fate, or rather Herbie must still be suffering this same fate. Because Charlie Winters knew the shredding would never end. He knew the agony would never end.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The book had stated there was no hell, that you would keep going back to earth until you improved yourself to where you could enter a higher plane of existence. Which meant he and Herbie would keep going back to earth. That was how it was supposed to be.

  Through the pure, absolute agony he felt an overwhelming sense of betrayal. It was all so damn unfair. After all, there wasn’t supposed to be any hell.

  A voice cut through the swarming mass, it cut through the agony screaming through Charlie Winters’s consciousness. It told him: “You can’t believe everything you read in books, Charlie.”

  Chapter 37

  It had been ten months since Shannon had seen Susan. After that night with Charlie Winters, Shannon spent the next five days in a hospital as doctors tried to reattach his two fingers. They were unable to, though—the damage to both his bones and muscles had been too severe. When he got out he found that Susan had moved into her own apartment. She told him she needed some time alone. He agreed that it would probably be best.

  Six weeks later, she asked for a divorce. They did it quickly. Afterwards, Shannon moved to Colorado. Since then he had spoken to her over the phone only a few times. Two days ago, she had called to tell him she’d be visiting him. Before that he hadn’t heard from her in over half a year.

  Her plane was twenty minutes late. Shannon found himself oddly at peace. He felt no anxiety, just a warm calm. He watched as Susan got off the plane. She looked thinner and paler than he remembered, but she was still beautiful. A worried frown pinched her face as she searched for him. When she saw him she tried to smile. Shannon walked over and helped her with the overnight bag she was carrying. He told her he was surprised to get her call, especially about her wanting to visit him.

  “I thought you could use some company this time of year. How are you, Bill?”

  “Pretty good. We’ll talk later, though.”

  He got the rest of her baggage and carried it through the airport to his car. They drove in silence as they circled around Denver to get to Interstate 80. Once on it, they headed east towards Boulder.

  “I guess it used to be much easier getting to Boulder from the old Stapleton airport,” Shannon remarked.

  “That’s interesting. When are we going to talk, Bill?”

  “Soon. Let’s just enjoy the ride right now. It’s very pretty out here.”

  After a while they could see the mountains. The plains were covered with snow and seemed to stretch forever. What Shannon liked most about Colorado was how he could go for miles without seeing anything but wide open space. He enjoyed driving the highways there, especially the trip between Denver and Boulder. It relaxed and soothed him. When he reached Boulder the traffic became more congested. He parked at the end of the Pearl Street mall and took Susan to one of the small bistros lining the street.

  “The food’s really quite good in this town,” he told her. “Very healthy, wholesome stuff. I’ve become a vegetarian, but this place has good veggie and meat dishes.”

  “After what we went through a year ago, I don’t want to ever look at meat again,” Susan said, her color dropping a shade.

  Shannon couldn’t help noticing how tired her eyes looked. As thin as she had been before, it was obvious that she had lost weight. Her cheekbones were more
pronounced, her lips slightly larger against her face. The overall effect made her look both somber and sad.

  “You look tired,” Shannon said.

  Susan started to laugh. “I should. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

  A waitress came with the menus. Shannon suggested that they split a pizza. Susan said that would be fine, and Shannon ordered one with olives and broccoli along with a bottle of wine.

  When the waitress left, Susan asked why he ordered the wine. She looked as if she had been struck.

  “I thought you’d be asking why I’d order something with broccoli.”

  “I’m serious. Why did you order that?”

  “It’s okay. I don’t drink much, only a glass or two of wine with dinner. Every once in a while I have a beer.”

  “You promised me you’d stop drinking—”

  “That was years ago, and besides, I would’ve thought any promises we had were voided with our marriage.” Shannon took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t very nice. I know you’re concerned about me drinking, especially with February tenth only a couple of days away, but there’s really nothing to worry about. I’ve never been an alcoholic and I now know what caused my problems before. I also know they’re never going to happen again.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought we knew already, that it was because of what happened to your mother—”

  “No. It was because of him, and he’s dead now.” Shannon had left his glove on his right hand. His face tensed as he grabbed where his two fingers had once been. “It’s been almost a year,” he said, grimacing, “and I still get these damn phantom pains.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just a minute.” After a long ten-count the muscles along his jaw relaxed. He let go of his gloved hand and leaned back in his chair. “Jesus, that was a bad one. It felt like my fingers were still there and were being bent back to my wrist.”

  There was a wetness around Susan’s eyes. “You don’t have to wear that glove for me.”

  “That’s okay. I feel more comfortable with it on.” Shannon looked away from her. “I never told you this, but somehow he was able to get into my dreams. That’s how I knew where to find you that night.”