“Harry, you have another call—hey, are you all right?” Libby Pointer asked, poking her head into his office, “I’ve been beeping you for the past ten minutes.”
Harry stared at her blankly.
“Oh... sorry,” he said, returning the urn to its pedestal. “I’ll take the call—thanks, Lib.”
2
Mark and Emily walked the aisles of Food Mart, Emily comfortably wedged into the seat of the shopping cart. Mark scanned the seemingly endless shelves of baby food, looking for something different. Whether or not Emily felt a need for newness in her diet, he felt the need for it. He scooped up a couple jars of blendered beef, turkey, and assorted vegetables and fruit into the cart, as Emily busily laddle-laddle-laddled to herself, playing with her tongue and the foamy bubbles she made with her lips. Mark was sure other children were probably able to do the same thing with their tongues as did Emily, but he never saw it, so pretended it was just another “sweet little thing” only his talented little daughter did. Emily was able to turn her tongue sideways ninety degrees while making it into a U-shape. Mark smiled absentmindedly...
Kacey.
Ever on his mind, but since what had to have been her first phone call to them since she’d left, she was even more there. Not that he had ever gotten over her desertion. After all, sooner or later, you just had to move on. For the longest time, he’d been a wreck... had even filed a missing persons report, but nothing’d surfaced. Then he’d found the smoking gun.
Her diary.
The book with all its damning evidence.
Oh, yeah.
It reminded him of that old Bread song from the early seventies. About the guy reading his girlfriend’s diary, thinking all this time her musings about love and longing had been about him... only to discover that it had actually been for another.
Well, similar situation, folks, only these musings had been about being strangled.
Yup, that had been the word, along with “held back” and “suffocated.” All those words and more had been written down in handwriting he recognized and had loved as his wife’s—but not about another, no, these words, unfortunately, had all been about him and their life together. About—
“Oh, what a darling girl!” a woman, her son also stuffed into her cart before her, declared, suddenly standing beside Mark and Emily.
Startled by her loud and sudden presence, Mark gave the obligatory Baby-mill response, “Thanks. Fifteen months.”
“Oh, isn’t she just adorable!” the attractive and somewhat overly dramatic and well-dressed woman continued to exclaim. She hunched over Emily like a cuckooed aunt. Emily continued being her cute little self, laddle-laddle-laddling, with her tongue and lip foam. “What’s her name?”
“Emily.”
“Oh, my, what a darling name! Hello, Emily!”
“What’s your boy’s name?” Mark asked.
“Timothy,” the woman responded.
He really wasn’t in the mood for this, but such was the responsibility parents took on in public with adorable children, “in the baby mill”... and Hot Mommy was easy on the eyes. And wasn’t it curious that nearly all of the Beautiful Mommies had the same shoulder-length bob cut? He’d learned early on (again through the baby mill) that moms wore bobs because their children kept pulling at their hair. Okay, whatever. It looked good on them and that was all that mattered from a guy point of view.
And there was another thing. The mommy attraction factor. He’d been without spouse for a year, and it really bothered him that he was finding all these mommies more and more attractive. Part of being a mommy was, usually, the married part... and part of his interaction with them was his Emily part... all a result of the Kacey part.
But Kacey wasn’t here, was she?
“Well, have a nice day,” Gorgeous Mommy proclaimed, in that usual High-On-Life manner all the young, preppy, Baby-Mill Mommies did. The Mommy Mafia. He waved and nodded good-bye and Emily gave her usual laddle-laddle-laddle good-bye, her lip foam spilling down a corner of her mouth. As Mark wiped it away, he watched the young mommy’s slim, fit form (yeah, she Zumbas... weight trains... ) depart, pushing along young Timothy and groceries onto her next Baby-Mill greeting.
Mark shook it off, for but an instant wondered what a lingering, passionate kiss from her was like, the touch of her skin... then instantly chastised himself.
But it was the diary. The diary that had brought it all home in stark, brutal clarity. What had gotten him to thinking, and, over time, to looking at other kids’ mothers.
She’d wanted out.
Pure and simple. Kacey. His wife, Emily’s own Gorgeous Mommy (who also did Zumba classes and weight training). Mark’s love of his life—
Emily blurted out protests of inactivity at no longer being the focus of attention. Mark pushed their cart forward. He still had a list of groceries to fulfill. Done with the baby food row, Mark continued into the next aisle.
Kacey had lamented how her life had been running away from her... without her.
That her once-exciting husband had turned corporate. How he’d lost his taste for adventure. Romance. For just about anything they used to do. How he worked too long, slept too little, and playtime? Ha! Nonexistent—unless it involved Emily. There were diapers to change, Emily to focus upon, and overtime to work. Broken servers to mend, corrupt files to correct, and hackers to thwart. All his scuba gear gathered dust in the spare room and he’d sold his jumping rig when he’d given up skydiving with Emily’s birth...
He tossed a couple frozen dinners into the cart.
Why had she had Emily, then?
That had burned in his mind—and continued to do so—since her departure. She told him she’d love to have a child, love to raise a kid as an extreme sports god or goddess... yet everything seemed to do an about face following Emily’s grand entrance.
He’d found his answer not long after he found her diary.
She’d just been... surprised, was as good a word as any... at the level of effort involved in growing a human.
She’d had no real concept of how totally life-consuming it was. There was no down time... no “me” time. It was all child time, period. No longer long blocks of time to sleep... to take a run... or take that far-flung trip. No... all that was on hold until eighteen years later when, hopefully, you’d done a good-enough job in raising Arizona that they were ready to fly the coup and begin their own life.
Eighteen years. If you were lucky.
She couldn’t wait that long. And, Mark surmised, after having all this time to think about it, he was sure that that one thought had begun to fester and fester and fester until that was all she could see—
“Oh, hello, again!” exclaimed Beautiful Mommy, as they passed each other down the paper-products aisle. “Hello, Emily!” The woman waved to Emily like an excited circus clown.
Emily was still blowing bubbles and doing digital gymnastics with her tiny little hands.
Laddle-laddle-laddle...
Eighteen years... and the loss of her life, as she’d called it. Of her husband... to a little (and this was the most damning—the one word that had affected Mark the most, in all that he’d read in that cursed, little
(laddle-laddle)
diary: Monster.
A Monster.
Yes, there it was. In her own handwriting... in black and white... his wife had written that their child—the product of their union, their love and raging hormones—was now, in her eyes—A Monster.
Good Lord—how could she have even thought such a thing?
How could the woman he loved—the mother of their child and who had carried Emily for nine months and brought her into this world—have put such a thought to paper?
Was she really his wife?
Maybe (he’d tried to reason) Kacey was only trying to help out a friend and had taken a friend’s diary in hopes of better understanding what this “friend” of hers was going through?
So hopeful in this train of thought was he
that he’d actually pulled out some of their love letters to each other to compare handwriting... when his heart sank, and his soon-to-burgeon internal affair of thinking about other Beautiful Mommies began. It was her, all right, no mistake about it. His wife thought of their child as A Monster, and of him and their life together as “suffocating.”
Men and women across the world find each other, fall in love, and sometimes (the ugliness goes) fall out of love... that was a given... that was something he could deal with (or so he thought), but to have his wife refer to their own progeny as A Monster... well, that was a horse of a different color... and it got under his skin and remained there. In fact, until her call he’d almost—almost—forgotten about it.
Mark looked to his list, determined he’d gotten everything, and began to head to the checkout lines, again spotting Beautiful Mommy and Timothy, up ahead, already in line.
The thought had festered in him since he’d read it, until he’d seen a doctor about it. That’s when terms like Postpartum Depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and hormone-induced lifestyle changes became known to him. Interpersonal psychotherapy. The doctors had told him that in a certain percentage of the female population something happens to a woman that can totally change her personality. Some women have suddenly turned into gifted, world-class artists without ever having written a word. Or painting a bowl of fruit. Some have turned into pillars of the community, while having been hermits prior to giving birth. There was no accounting for what happened to these women, but it was clear in all the “negative” cases, where the women took on radically different personalities, that counseling—and sometimes drug therapy—were needed.
Mark pulled Emily into line, right up behind Beautiful Mommy, much to his divided dismay. Yes, she definitely looked good in her skirt and nylons... but he looked away to the newspapers, magazines, and candy, surrounding them. He wondered if they might even know each other, this Beautiful Mommy and Kacey... maybe even had taken the same cardio classes? Trained in the same gym?
Beautiful Mommy looked back to him, smiling, as she shuffled up to the cashier. She turned sideways and began depositing items on the conveyor belt. Timothy just stared at him, as if to accuse: You have your own mommy, mister... stay away from mine. I can’t help it if she ran away... but mine’s still here, and I don’t want her running away with anyone...
Mark looked away, smile fading. As he scanned the papers, one named something like the Star-Herald-Weirdly, had as their lead story, the “truth” about the Safe Harbor, Florida murders... that they’d all been possessed by Satan. Mass possessions, it went on to say, could it happen again? Had Hitler also been possessed by Satan?
Intrigued, but not enough to buy the rag, he looked to see what local papers said about the tragedy. There were a handful left. Authorities Baffled! one headline declared. Folding it in half, he tossed the publication into his basket. He failed to see Beautiful Mommy looking back to him—not Emily—for a few moments, as he repositioned groceries in his cart.
Mark looked down to Emily, who was now giving him a huge smile, when she opened wide her tiny little mouth like a baby bird ready to receive mommy (or daddy)-bird’s offerings of worms and grubs. Mark smiled and brought his face down to hers. Rubbed noses. Emily winced, giggling joyfully. They weren’t called little angels for nothing.
As he looked back up, Beautiful Mommy was collecting her receipt, and said, “Bye, Emily!” waving to her as she collected her checkbook and five-hundred keys from the check-writing counter. Emily heard her name and tried to turn, but couldn’t make it all the way around. Mark smiled and waved good-bye to Beautiful Mommy, who began to walk away, still waving to Emily. Now Emily could see her, and let loose a huge smile for the departing lady, from whom Mark found he just couldn’t look away. Just before Beautiful Mommy forever turned away from his life, she cast Mark a deliberate look and a smile—just for him... a look that Mark caught and knew meant Yes, I am attracted to you... but, hey, we’re both married to different people... so, well, have a nice life... okay?
Mark looked back to their groceries and the cashier.
You have your own mommy, mister... stay away from mine...
But where the hell was his?
3
Moses Banner listened to the hum of a streetlight as he gave a shadowy passer-by wide birth in his journey along the main drag of Tamiami Trail Boulevard. He’d been walking for hours, it seemed, trying to figure out why or how something like the retirement home’s murders could have happened. Tonight was to have been the night they all were to have gotten together at Garrett’s for poker and beer. Good times. No more of that... ever. He stared down at the dirt. Up ahead was Safe Harbor... in his mind’s eye he could see it still taped off, its damaged gate area barricaded from casual entry. He wasn’t sure why he’d come out here, tonight, except that it was what he’d done for the past handful of years. He didn’t want to miss it. Perhaps he wanted to honor it—and fallen comrades. Garrett and the others... but Garrett and he had been close... drinking buddies, poker buddies, backyard grilling buddies, fishing buddies... and the loss gnawed at him more than he cared to admit. Some tough guy...
But just what the hell had brought all those people down here to kill?
Banner bumped against a passer-by he hadn’t noticed, but which had startled him into almost decking the man.
“Hey, brother, can ya spare a buck?” the homeless man asked between coughs, hand outstretched, eyes wild, weird, and uncomfortably red.
Banner looked to him, jammed his hands deeper into his pockets, and said nothing.
Shouldered past.
Poker and beer... with Garrett, Fred, Bernie, and Hoosier. Well, Mikey wasn’t much into cards, but he liked the company—and usually brought good beer. What might Garrett be up to, now, wherever he was? He doubted he was in hell, if there really was such a place, but he certainly might be in whatever passed for Purgatory. Garrett was the first to admit it, he hadn’t lived the perfect life, but had always tried to do his best. If he did have to burn off a few sins, he hoped he didn’t have too much soul to singe.
Unnerved that he had come so close to a homeless guy without noticing it (no one sneaks up on him, goddammit), Banner lifted his head—only to see another shamble past. The guy looked to him, but said nothing.
All the years he’d lived here, he’d never noticed so many wandering roadside street folk. This was a retirement community, for chrissakes, not inner city New York.
A warrior’s death, that’s what Garrett’d wanted.
All that Japanese Zen stuff. He’d been into it. He’d tried to live his life like a warrior while on the force, but retirement had softened him a little, which was probably his undoing, as it does with most that age. Why’d you have to remain tough when no one was out to get you—or so you thought. Case in point. As much as Garrett had loved being a cop, all the excitement, the power, the living on the edge... he found he also loved retirement. Felt he’d earned it... had his own war wounds, and plenty of them... shin splints, brawl-and-knife-fight scars, two divorces, high blood pressure, and his ever-present cynical attitude. Yeah, he’d earned his life, he said, every nick and bruise of it, but none of it—none of it—mattered any more. On the good side, Garrett had three kids, a pension and medical benefits, a beautiful new home in the subtropics, and great friends.
Poker and beer. Weekly. What else mattered?
Knife-wielding murderers, that’s what.
You’d never been completely safe, had you, my friend? You tried—did your damnedest—but they still found you. Hunted you down. Just like everybody else in that place.
All those residents thought they’d given up the stress and strain of their working lives... only to have a murderous horde invade their privacy, steal their lives...
Banner sidestepped another wandering indigent. This one, a woman, stared back at him with deep, dark, eyes. There was something creepy about her—all of them. As he shouldered past the woman, she, also a little too
close for his liking, teetered on tiny, bundled feet, performing an unstable dance for balance, while tracking him with an outstretched hand.
Too fucking weird...
He hurried past, keeping her at glaring distance. Scanned the street before him.
What was the afterlife of a warrior? He certainly hoped there was something for everyone after all the hell we all went through during our existences—some more than others. He wasn’t a praying man, nor a church-going one, but believed there had to be something better. Nature comes and it goes, so it had to come and go somewhere... there had to be something or Someone driving it all... that much he felt to be true. Most cultures believed in an afterlife... the very thoughts themselves had to originate from somewhere. This was all too grand a plan to not have divine, logistical, support backing things up.
“What are ya thinkin?” another homeless person asked. The raggedy man stood directly before him. Banner almost rammed into him.
“C-can you spare a dime, buddy?” the guy asked.
“What’d you just ask me?”
Where were these guys coming from?
“Can you spare a quarter.”
“That’s not what you—”
The homeless man wiped his nose. “Fiddy cents?”
Banner stared at him.
“Look mister, I’m just asking for a dollar, is all. One dollar... can ya spare one?”
Banner grudgingly fished out a quarter and flicked it to the man. Continued past.
Then Banner thought better of it and spun around.
Froze in his tracks.
Positioned roughly in a straight line out from him no longer stood the bum, or any of the other homeless he’d thought he’d passed... but instead were dark and shadowy snorting mounts and their riders that looked just a little bit too large, distorted, for what they were.
Silhouettes of four riders.
Each held a spear, or some kind of pike, upright in their possession, and that was about all he could make out. He also got the distinct impression they meant business.
Banner backed up a step... looked to see if anyone else took notice of four horsemen with pikes along Tamiami Trail Boulevard. A glow radiated from behind them, though he knew there was no such light source. Instead of running, Banner held his ground. They seemed to be wearing helmets and possessed a bulky look, as if they also wore some kind of armor.
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