Murderland

by Garrett Cook

But still, so often she can’t tear herself away from it. It makes Jeremy debate whether she is in fact one of the few intelligent people he has ever met, or if she is falling for the game too, just falling into the pit they dig for people who are looking too close. He stops and thinks about the razors he keeps in the briefcase and about how there might just be wires in her, God don’t let there be wires, he thinks, god don’t let there be wires. Don’t let there be the fiberoptic cables that link up to the receivers for satellite images. Don’t let there be neural uplinks to the Dark Ones. His breathing gets heavy and there begins to be a burning feeling in his eyes. His head begins to throb violently with a humming like a fork against a violin string. He cannot stop thinking about wires and cables and the mechanical whirring of the machines around him. Cass leans over and kisses him and relief washes over Jeremy’s feverish brain. Human. Of course. Should have known. She is, after all a brunette. The Dark Ones will never touch her.

  “I love you,” she says. Her face gets bright and she looks at him as if he was the most interesting thing she had ever seen. She looks at him like a sunset.

  “I love you,” he replies.

  And it is all that he feels. All he wants to say and know and think about. He returns her kiss voraciously. It expands and moves around her mouth. The kiss, once small has become a colossus. They roll over on top of each other. They writhe and shake, they coil around one another and they begin to explode with power and intensity. Jeremy’s eyes are full of astronomy. The movements of planets and the blazing of bright new stars shine in them. His perpetual motion superpowered Swiss watch brain lets itself shut off, lets itself return to its roots as meat and juices. Cass sort of sees somebody she was a few thousand years back in Egypt or Mesopotamia or somewhere of the sort. She remembers being as she is at the moment: naked and exalting in the triumph of being and the movements of everything. There is Jeremy and there is Cass and they are creation. Crashing like waves and falling like torrents of rain.

  And then Jeremy’s elbow hits the remote and the channel changes. The room fills with venom oozing from the television and Jeremy can feel it. Jeremy smells the cloud of noxious hate and feels the flames of persecution lick at his feet. He feels more than a little sick.

  “Karl Edward Pratt, Kris Kringle, was found dead in his home today at the age of 57. Kringle was killed by a shot to the head from a .22 revolver. Kringle was known for the particularly inventive and grisly qualities of his murders, involving dismembering his victims and delivering body parts to their families. His killings numbered 14 to date. And while compared to others, that might seem to be few, he will still be remembered for the viciously ingenious nature of those he committed. Pratt’s identity was discovered only when police found a kitchen full of human parts and wrapping paper. The media and the American people alike remained ignorant of the identity of the visionary that so ably captured their attention. Karl Edward Pratt you will be missed. This is a true American tragedy.”

  The newsanchor, no longer a portrait of stony, ersatz integrity looks genuinely dismayed. He purses his lip in dissatisfaction in one of those rare moments during which he finds something truly sad. Jeremy is not altogether certain that those moments exist and is skeptical that somebody like Pratt would have earned one. But, this is the typical death knell of a minor celebrity. Thorough appreciation, a tragedy painted so eloquently, a career exaggerated. An explosion of relevance onto the life and the TV screen alike. Then, suddenly, the tragedy fades from the news anchor’s face. The relevance oozes down a drain behind his desk. He straightens up, perks up and turns to the woman at the desk beside him, the bleach blond with the low-cut blouse and the wrong shade of lipstick. Jeremy wonders if she’s related to the identical news anchor on channel 8.

  “Back to you, Eileen.”

  Cass finally shuts off the TV and a frown spreads across her face.

  “That’s too bad,” she says, “I kinda liked his work. And it’s occasionally nice to see them cover something besides Godless Jack or Hacksaw Sally. And sometimes, he was just amazing. He really had his moments. Like when he sent the Haskell girl’s parents her stomach and it was full of his cum, I mean, Jesus,” her tone changes. It’s more upbeat, more excited.

  “And the statement her folks gave the press was completely priceless, totally vintage,” Cass launches into a bad Texas drawl, “we appeal to you, our fellow Americans, to help get Safe Zone regulations repealed and get monsters like the so-called Kris Kringle who did this to our daughter off the streets. Gina was the most precious gift that God ever gave us and while we cannot have her back, new laws will allow many many people to have their little girls come back home.”

  Cass falls into utter paroxysms of laughter and Jeremy heaves a very long sigh. He looks angry.

  “Cass, they’re human beings and they lost their daughter. It’s not funny. Imagine how your parents would feel. What would they be saying on their news if they lost you to some maniac? What would I be saying?”

  Disgust creeps into Cass. She’ll never get used to his moments of moralizing. They come so briefly and they seem so goddamn random.

  “Maniac? Maniac? You’re so backward sometimes, Jeremy, you know that? I can’t believe you’re using that word. Catholic school really must have gotten to you. Maniac. God, these people have problems, Jeremy. Real honest to God psychological problems. But they overcome adversity and rise up to provide us with hours of quality entertainment every week. Talk like that makes you no better than guys like Tommy Simmons and the Christian Victim’s front. You should go out and…and…”

  Jeremy has heard this from Cass as much as Cass has heard Jeremy’s tirades. Just as much as she didn’t want him to open his mouth about it, he does not want to hear it from her. So, Jeremy does the one thing that any right-thinking red-blooded American male does in such a circumstance: he acquiesces.

  “I’m sorry, Cass, you’re right. I was just saying that it was in kind of poor taste, because, well, you know, they have a right to be angry. After all, they did lose someone they love to this person. They might not have a right to scorn or be bigoted or persecute, since society has progressed beyond punishing people for being who they are, you’re right. But, by the same token, you can’t really blame the victims; they’re people too, aren’t they?”

  Much of the time Jeremy does not quite believe this. In fact, much of the time, Jeremy does not believe this at all, as in this day and age, real human beings seem to Jeremy to be few and far between. And it is hard to fully process a concern for the rights of victims when one is in fact killing them. Jeremy is taking note of this, but still tires of such behavior in others.

  “Sometimes, Jeremy, you’re just too nice. It’s a mean world.”

  She kisses him once more and it is a little less so.

  He grumbles angrily in his mind at how they could possibly devote a whole news report to sheer trash like Pratt. No real reputation, no ideas that could benefit a community, no real redeeming social graces and even as a source of entertainment, he could often be pretty mediocre. TV is really puzzling to Jeremy, sometimes. As Jeremy often does, he wonders exactly what it is that makes him not a monster. This is more of a logical exercise than a line of deep moral questioning. In fact, he very quickly comes up with a variety of highly satisfying replies to this question. He remembers, first of all, that he is above guilt. It is something to be banished from his mind. He is above guilt and beyond evil actions. Jeremy Jenkins, it turns out, is far too relevant to deal in murky moral absolutes. Jeremy does the right thing. He stops and savors the quiet produced by all the squealing, mewling, nasty little Dark Ones that he has kept from emerging and kept from spreading the seeds of ignorance and wrath. Only this and Cass bring him the requisite peace and time to clear this head and allow him to enjoy the knowledge that thanks to Jeremy Jenkins, Paladin and Patriot the world is safe. He smiles down on Cass and means it. So seldom does he mean it. So often is the smile a tool and a sidearm. Cass has fallen asleep which is a shame beca
use he considers letting her know that were he to divulge his actions he would be a media sensation, and that whether he does or not, he is a rebel genius and the greatest killer since the Black Death. He is not often proud of it, but she might very well be. He thinks about just how adoring and fawning she would be if she knew about his work, but realizes that he needs to remain anonymous. That TV and such things don’t really become him much. He considers slicing her open and checking for wires, but instead he delicately and subtly lets his fingers slip into her, feels the chills and excitement of her not seeing or knowing about all kinds of manipulations and maneuvers.

  No, no TV for him.

  “I’m not a superstar,” he tells himself, “I’m a superman.”

  Nurse, Veterinarian

  As usual, I get up in the morning. No big surprise there. Then comes breakfast. I’m usually not crazy about breakfast. There should be a rule in relationships that you cannot converse with your significant other between the hours of six and ten am. Both of us sit there over oatmeal, staring down at the bowl for awhile like it’s a magic eight ball that will tell us what to do with the rest of our day. It never does. Then she finishes up her oatmeal, usually a little after I do because she stops and plays with it a bit. She has to keep stirring and make little shapes in it, remind herself of the texture, remind herself that it’s food. Sometimes she has a donut instead of oatmeal, but I don’t really like sweets. I don’t like the feeling that my body could be less efficient on account of what I’m eating. Today she drinks a Slash energy blend with her oatmeal, which means there’s more time I spend with an empty bowl watching her eat before work. Even before her makeup, her face is beautiful. I always find myself looking at her mouth. I always find myself wanting to kiss her, but it feels like it’s not appropriate at the moment. I feel shy.

  “So much paperwork today,” she says, “you’d think lawyers would be a little more organized…”

  Her words disappear. I start thinking about her lips again. Then I think about how I want to go back to bed and get warm and I want her to go back to bed and get warm with me. It would be nice to grab something to eat later and then go to a movie. But the movie theater is dark and crowded and full of all these people. I can hear the clicks and the sounds of wiring and a hum of emptiness like a fluorescent light. I’d still sort of like to go to a movie. It would be nice to sit comfortably in the dark and enjoy something. Something that doesn’t involve people getting dismembered. Last time we went we saw Marshall Kozack, the Nailgun Killer walk into a kindergarten class. The guy had a camera crew with him and everything. Because this place was in the Safe Zone none of the cameramen were an accessory to murder. Cass gawked at it, full of thrills and shock and amazement. That wasn’t a movie, it was a massacre. It was a real massacre. I hope we could see a real movie and she could rest her head on my lap and I could feel close and feel our minds in the same room, at the same task.

  “You know, Jeremy,” she says, and she says it too often, “sometimes it seems like you’re not in the same room with me all the time. I don’t like it.”

  This comes up a lot at breakfast. She can see that I was wandering off. I wasn’t wandering too far, I don’t think. I was at the movies, that’s all. Sometimes, I go places we could go instead of places we are. I’m not fond of breakfast, and I’m not all that fond of knowing I have to set off for work in a few minutes. I want to kiss her and I want to make plans. She wants to remind me what a day we both have ahead of us.

  “I’m here,” I tell her, “I think you should wear the blue skirt. They might take you a little more seriously. It looks more professional.”

  “It’s kinda tight.”

  “I know, but it’s not quite as short as the other one.”

  “”You really think the blue one will make a difference?”

  “It’s less of a distraction.”

  “Thanks.”

  I regret that I don’t hear a word she says until she kisses me goodbye. I wish my brain wasn’t all over the place, but it just doesn’t want to sit back and find some peace. I can’t make it stop roaming around, not with what lies ahead. Some days I’m not sure we’re like a paralegal and a pharmacist. Neither of us is boring enough. Well, I’m pretty boring on the surface, but not quite boring enough for my job. Cass worries sometimes that I’m too nice and too dependable. I think one of the things that thrills her about the relationship is when she gets me to come out of my shell and have some fun. She likes making me have fun. I like that. There’s not much fun in my day. I wish I could participate more and communicate. I’d like to go out and communicate, be heard and talk to people. But that’s not the way it goes.

  The walk to work is always too short. I wish there were a few more blocks between me and the pharmacy, but the city only gets bigger when you don’t want it to. The Starbucks you’re hoping won’t pop up rears its ugly head, the little Italian restaurant you used to like becomes a Pizza Hut. But my apartment won’t get further from work, no matter how much I wish it will. Some days I think that I should probably be the one getting further away from the pharmacy. Not going to happen though. I take pride in my position as a “healer,” no matter how little actual healing I do. Maybe I feel guilty for doing what needs to be done. Maybe I just don’t want to deal with most people for more than a minute or two. Maybe med school would have been a better idea. Maybe I think too much. No. You can never think too much. Stop observing, stop keeping the notations handy for later, everybody and everything you’re up against gets an edge. I do not think too much.

  Well, I think too much for this job. I always remember how all the old people I actually like end up in the Obituaries. They’re friendly, but not too friendly, never pry, don’t talk about their condition, but I feel something of a connection. Then I never see them again. So, I feel like shutting off at work. So, I shut off today. Even the couple of people I like aren’t feeling too pleasant. Some of them ask me if I saw the latest Cabana Boy victims. They have to stop and describe in detail how strange it is that you see dead prostitutes on the news. No comment. Too much to say. The day passes surprisingly quick like this. I don’t feel like going home to Cass and the TV. I sort of feel like seeing people. Maybe.

  So I head downtown and the girls begin to smile at me and the dogs begin to smile at me too and the cops wave hello and smile, too, and lookie here the old people smile at me and so do the teenage boys skateboarding. So, I’m beginning to really get tired of everybody. Everybody is so friendly and the world is so harsh. How can they be so friendly when the Cabana Boy is running around and Kris Kringle is dead and children were dying in Vietnam during the late 60s and early seventies? How can they? The sheer audacity of their decision to remain friendly makes me more than a little uncomfortable, to be honest. And really, they aren’t actually being friendly anyway. It would be some feat for somebody to actually be friends with all of these people: an absolute miracle. And for all of these people to actually like me too would be quite a feat as well. I don’t expect them to and I don’t believe that they do. And if they were actually friendly, those big smiles and the waving and the joy at my passing would probably not be there. They would ask questions instead of assuming that they were happy to see me. Such an assumption is, in my book, very unwelcome. Were they actually friendly, they would instead say: “Jeremy, you look like something’s wrong? Care to enlighten us about exactly what it is that has you looking so disturbed?”

  And I, being their true friend, would oblige them. I would say:

  “Our culture is being eaten by creatures from another harsh and unloving dimension and they are trying to impregnate our females with their vile hatemongering destructive seeds. I would tell you what it is that they look like and intend to do with us, but I think you just ate. Also, human monsters have quite frequently been appearing on the covers of such publications as People and Us Weekly. They endorse shoes and videogames and DVDs of their butchery are on the shelves at video stores and all major retail establishments. It turns ou
t as well that our president just filled the atmosphere in China with the equivalent of six thousand drums of Sarin gas yet again and again such stories end up on page H8 of the newspaper between weddings and honor roll announcements. Maybe it’s just that the other news is much more entertaining, or maybe and this might just be it, maybe I am the only one who can see it. If this is so, I worry very deeply for my mental health. Do they see it? A massive spacecraft was recently unearthed by scientists working in Antarctica. It was covered with strange symbols indecipherable by all the world’s best linguists and cryptographers alike. It seems very likely to me that this spacecraft is possibly connected to the same extradimensional beings who have been caused me no end of trouble and who utilized my own mother as one of their numerous breeding vessels. And because of all of these breeding vessels, I need very desperately to take action against them. And for this reason, every other Saturday, or whenever else I get the chance, I have to go out, find and shut down one of these vessels before they end up impregnated with something inhuman and completely vile. For five years, I have found yet another empty little blond whore, another womb for them to take over. I find them and I take out their uterus after cutting them open with a razor. And even after they’re dead, I have to be really really careful that the Dark One embryo can’t escape and find another host. I’ve seen it happen. You wouldn’t believe the environments these creatures survive in. As I said, their home dimension must be an unspeakably awful place. And when I am not doing it on Saturdays, my schedule switches to Mondays and Wednesdays. And nobody has ever noticed, because number one, psychopomps are everywhere, and number two, I’m too damn clever. Because, you see I switch to Tuesdays and Thursdays on alternate months. Did you see it? Do you have any clue what I’m doing for you?”

  And THAT is why those that are supposedly friendly are in fact not friendly at all. They’re not friendly because no matter how happy they look to see you, how much light shines in their faces or comprehension in their eyes, the fact is that they don’t comprehend any more than your average dog can. It’s sad, but, no matter who Mr. Casual Greeting or Miss Nervous Smile actually are, they don’t have the slightest clue who you are, so at best you are merely exchanging fake phone numbers on business cards you both printed out yourselves. I’m trying very hard to appreciate how nice people can be, honestly, I really am. But when faced with a kindness that only exists because it is tempered with utter ignorance, how can I help but be completely frustrated and lose faith in whatever the fuck it is that they’re trying? The smiling, waving, satisfied hordes shuffle by and for a second they just become ducks in a shooting gallery, mechanically quacking to seduce me into blowing them to kingdom come. And then I count to 100, as I have taught myself to do when stress gets to be too much and I am tempted toward random violence. I think of how later on I will have Cass, and I will have bed and I don’t hate them as much anymore. I think that I begin to pity them and the fact that they don’t know that they’re robots and couldn’t do anything about it if they tried. Forgive them, Jeremy, they know not what they do.