Black Water

by S. D. Rudd

  “This conversation is awkward,” he muttered.

  “Sometimes that fulfillment is really a fantasy because emotions cause you to ignore logical things like flaws—typically the detrimental kind, because not all flaws are detrimental to the relationship—and therefore keeps a good person in a destructive relationship all because she or he is too confused as to whether to follow emotion or logic to make an accurate assessment on the actual condition of the relationship.”

  “Did you just do all that in one breath? You need to use more periods and commas, darling,” Alan said.

  A cute smile flashed across her gorgeous face.

  Suddenly, realizing what she was talking about, “Ok, I get the sex part but you’re saying there is relevance to everything that has happened?”

  The expression on her face said it all. “Of course! He was killed, remember? Dead! D-E-A-D with a lot of exclamation points, no further evidence necessary to get a judgment in its favor. The man is gone and now she is left alone to forget that he was a jerk because it’s really hard for a decent human being to find too much fault in a dead person.”

  Alan was losing interest again. She was rambling.

  His mind drifted and he was not attempting to row back to shore. Nothing was said for a while. All he heard were the clatter of dishes in the distance, the rustle of other conversations in the restaurant, and the roar of the televisions as the first of the double header game was on.

  He had to get home before the first quarter of the second game started. Alan found himself eavesdropping on the commentaries breaking down each play as they occurred. All ears. Filled with excitement inside.

  That and a yearning to end this non-date, because she wasn’t his girlfriend. Just a good friend with the same levels of interest who probably didn’t know he loved her so much. But today he was only interested in football. Not that he was bored with Monica.

  Quite the contrary.

  He was intrigued by her topics, her elaborate mind and her passion for life. Today, however, Alan felt the lure of the 52-inch Plasma calling his name so bad that he fantasized about laying across the leather sofa and passing out in front of the roar of another touchdown scored by the home team. The game he wanted to see wasn’t on.

  Yet.

  But in thirty-one minutes?

  “Two years.”

  Alan snapped out of his trance and looked up from his plate, semi bemused.

  “Six months and a day,” she said.

  Monica sighed, staring at her plate as she carefully sliced through the juicy surface of her lasagna to reach the third layer of tantalizing beef. Alan’s mouth watered. He kicked himself for changing his order from lasagna to spaghetti. Monica had ordered for him because she had arrived early. The only reason Alan changed it was to have something different.

  “That’s how long they’d been searching for him, you know.”

  Alan knew the discussion. Well. As she paused for another bite-chew-swallow session he studied his plate of spaghetti. He dipped his finger into the sauce. Cold. He lifted it to his tongue.

  Really cold.

  And bland.

  He would spit it out and send it back if he thought the chef could make it any better…

  “They can’t even find his family, Alan,” she continued. “It’s like they vanished. Or maybe even killed…but then their bodies are missing too.”

  His stomach threatened to press charges against him if he didn’t feed it this nasty stuff soon. So he twirled his fork and entangled a spool of noodles. He stopped short of his lips. Smelling. Testing. Then he eased his lips apart and brought the spool towards it.

  “Alan!”

  He flinched so hard that he almost dropped his fork.

  “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Family vanished, maybe killed, people missing,” he said with a dismissive mumble.

  Monica kicked his shin from underneath the table. Not hard. But hard enough. “Don’t get the Cliff notes, read the book. I said that they never found his body, boy, the search has been going on way too long…and you don’t even like spaghetti!” she said, snatching the fork connected to a web of disgruntled noodles from his hand.

  Alan gave her a look and said, “I might if you’d gimmie my dag on fork back.”

  She did. Only after muttering, “so typical.” She looked away resting her chin on the palm of her hand.

  He dropped his fork hard on purpose and folded his hands, elbows resting on the tabletop. It was an attempt at being obnoxious and funny at the same time…and it worked. Alan noticed the flicker in Monica’s eyes. She had to be fighting a laugh. “Ok. You got my attention. And I’m still hungry.”

  “It ain’t my fault you changed your order.” She paused a moment, Alan assumed, to gather her thoughts. “What if he’s not dead?” she said. “What if he’s still alive? Alan, I’m not ready for strangers to be busting down my front door again. No way.”

  “If you let me eat my food, I’ll bust down your door first so that, when the strangers come, all they have to do is walk in and snatch you. How’s that sound?”

  She was almost amused by his sarcasm. He could tell. But all she did was stare at him. “I’m serious.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You know I’m not…”

  “It’s a story, Monica! It’s make believe. Not real. Fiction. I understand you taking your craft seriously but this…this is ridiculous. No, it’s freaking ridiculous; it’s re-freaking-diculous. Take the best of any one of the three and you’ll accurately describe your condition. Bustin’ down your front door? Whoa! So, what, are you playing the character now? And I must be the dead, controlling boyfriend who may not be dead but may have caused other people to be dead to add to the mystery?”

  They stared at each other a moment with huge smiles. And then burst into laughter. Alan laughed so hard his stomach knotted up. Its intensity kept rising and when he thought it could hurt no worse, the pain of laughter in his stomach became unbearable.

  It was either get a hold of himself or lose what little bit of lunch he had eaten. Monica seemed to laugh harder than Alan. She had tears running down her cheeks as she leaned over the table, black long flowing hair splayed everywhere, and fought with all her might to remain ladylike despite the laughter.

  “Boy, you’re silly!” she said in ecstasy.

  “I do a little something every once and a while,” he said with overconfidence.

  When the laughter had finally stopped—which felt like minutes—they stared at each other without a word. Alan saw the look in her eyes, a mild yearning for a relationship more meaningful than friendship. How many times he’d seen that face. Felt that emotion. Once a week, he guessed. Every week.

  Waiting.

  For one of them to ask, pop the question. They both knew what the answer would be. Problem was Alan never mustered up enough courage. Even with all the obvious signs. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Not after he’d worked so hard establishing a good friendship with Monica and certainly not after the sex-makes-everything-complicated dissertation even though his intentions were not to engage in such.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes until Alan could take no more. He blushed and turned away to the gleeful chuckles of flattery from Monica…but she never withdrew her gaze. Like she was on a mission and she knew where she was going and what she wanted.

  Alan. And Alan wanted her…badly.

  Only she wouldn’t say it and neither would he but she did break the silence.

  “Can I ask you a weird question?” she said.

  He shrugged, still feeling the warm bubbles inside.

  Her joyful expression vanished into a hint of sadness. “If we were made for happiness, why do we experience so much pain? It just doesn’t seem right, you know?”

  He mulled over it a moment before saying, “I don’t know.”

  “Try.”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated, searching the surroundings of the r
estaurant for inspiration. “I guess there are an infinite number of reasons why. But I’ve never really given it much thought.”

  “Why do you think we do?”

  “Well…” he paused, suddenly realizing the motivation behind the unusual question. “I guess…I guess we hurt because we’re trying to reach a certain destination in life.” He paused again for another thought. Monica remained patient until he formulated his thoughts.

  Alan compared her to a good wife who adored, respected and appreciated her husband enough to not speak over him or for him. It brought the warm butterflies back to his stomach. “And I guess the older we get…the more we realize just how unrealistic it is to reach it in many cases.

  “And that shatters all of our childhood myths about this perfect life with everything staying on track one hundred percent of the time. ‘Cause that doesn’t happen in the real world and I guess the reality of thatbrings us sorrow.”

  He stopped talking when he noticed Monica turn away, appearing on the brink of tears but sucking it up well. It pained him to see her hurting on the inside. He felt powerless, yet he felt the dire need to try and rescue her from the pain with all that was in him.

  “Monica?” he said in a soothing voice.

  She faced him, not seeming as wounded and for a second he was mesmerized by her hazel eyes.

  “Oh, you scared me for a minute.”

  Her face lit up. She loved it when he took interest in her feelings.

  “So…well…that was the best I could do with such a difficult question,” he said.

  “It was a great answer,” she said.

  “Yeah but not very helpful.”

  She forced a grin.

  Alan paused before asking, “are you hurt?”

  Hesitation. “Noooo!” she overemphasized with a seemingly compromised smile. “It was just a hypothetical question.”

  “Well, hypothetically speaking, are you hurt?”

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Alan. You know if something was wrong with me you’d be the first to know about it.”

  He dared not press a third time for fear of irritating her. Now, an awkward silence fell over them, one that he had no clue how to pull out of topically at the moment…but he wouldn’t have to rescue the conversation.

  “You?” she asked.

  He paused too long before he lied, “course not.”

  “That’s good. I wouldn’t want you to be keeping anything from me.”

  Peering into her eyes, “I wouldn’t want that either.”

  At that moment the waitress brought the ticket, a Styrofoam container, and a fresh brew a decaf coffee. Black. He took a sip of it immediately. It left a terrible aftertaste. Then again, black coffee with no sugar was nasty anyway. He ignored the medicine aftertaste the second time and directed his attention toward the container. Its aroma teased his stomach beyond reason and he knew what it was.

  “Here ya go!” the brunette waitress with perfect teeth said. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  Alan glanced at Monica, puzzled but not really. “No, we’re fine. Thanks.” After the waitress pronounced a nice evening on them and hurried off, Alan pointed to the container sitting in front of him. “Ummm, yeah…this is your doing I assume?”

  Monica beamed from ear to ear when she said, “I knew you would try something you wouldn’t like so I ordered you lasagna to go.”

  Alan was stunned.

  “You can eat it in front of the Skins’ game.”

  She knew what he wanted!

  His silence was noted. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Uh, no.” He glanced at the container. “Not at all.” To her, “Thanks.”

  She just kept showing all of her teeth while he reached for the ticket.

  “Well, I guess I’d better take care—”

  His blood ran cold.

  Alan took one glance at the ticket, another at the back of the waitress leaving another table, and yet another at the ticket again. On the front where the bill should have been two words were written in large, squiggly ink. He tried to blink away the mirage. But it was still there. He knew he wasn’t hallucinating. No way. He saw it.

  Plain as day.

  “What’s wrong?” Monica said.

  “Is this a part one of your stories?”

  She gave him a vacant stare.

  “Here.” He handed her the bill and she studied it.

  “Oh my God!” she said.

  “That’s what I was saying. What’s going on?”

  “She didn’t even charge us for the lasagna to go! She must be flirting with you. I should pose as your girlfriend, put her in her place, and make you pay full price,” she said, playfully peeling her eyes at him.

  “Stop playing,” he said. “Do you see anything else on there?”

  She handed him the ticket. “Only what I just said.”

  He took a long look at it, disbelief riddling his brain.

  “Why the long face, Alan? You got a discount. If it counts for nothing else other than the price it means you’re cute.”

  It didn’t make sense. “No, I just thought a saw something.”

  “What did you see?”

  Get down! “Nothing,” he said. “I must be hungrier than I thought.”

  “Well, now you’ll be able to satisfy that hunger but you can’t do that until you get comfortable in front of the TV.”

  Alan dismissed the hallucination and thought about Monica. How sweet she was. How perfect they were for each other. She was made just for him and he was going to tell her right now before it killed him.

  “Look, Monica…we’ve been friends for a long time and lately…just recently…” he stopped himself to formulate his thoughts. Monica’s eyes beamed on him with expectancy, as if she knew what he was going to say.

  When her shock formed into an expression of overwhelming flattery his confidence increased. This was it; this was his opening. This was the right time. Monica would know how he felt before he left this restaurant. He reached for her hand and she let him take it, still beaming.

  “Monica, what I’m tryin’ to say is, I—”

  An explosion ripped through the front of the restaurant!

  All Alan heard from behind was a rumbling. Shattering glass. Tables overturning. And screams. Lots of screams. Enough to disarm any man.

  Then, another rumble thundered toward their table at an alarming rate. All of this went down within three seconds—he’d instinctively counted—but it seemed to happen in slow motion to Alan.

  As the rumble grew too enormous for his ears, he flipped the table, snatched up Monica and rolled both of them out of the way of a…what was that? A ball of fire! The nauseating crash was the sound of the gas stoves igniting from behind.

  Smoke. Black smoke. Everywhere! Filling up the restaurant. Choking his lungs. Blocking the ceiling. Suffocating its victims. Alan was blacking out but not from the inhalation. He had enough experience with the feeling to realize he’d been poisoned. The coffee!

  The sounds around him became muffled.

  His arms…he couldn’t feel Monica!

  He lifted his head to see that she wasn’t even wrapped inside them anymore. His chest hammered. Panic set in and he flailed around the floor trying to stand up. His legs grew numb. After a few failed attempts Alan finally managed to get up on one hand and one knee, but he had to stay under the smoke.

  Through fading eyes he swung his jaw from side to side in a frenzy. “Monicaaa!” he hollered.

  Yelling was a big mistake. It impacted the back of his head and he knew something critical was damaged.

  “Monicaaa!” he yelled again.

  His eyes felt like lead and the tightening around his head swelled to an all-time high.

  He felt sick.

  It took a great deal of effort but he eventually got up on two feet, much too late for that. Both knees buckled and the front of his head hit the corner of a table, a warm trail of liquid running down his forehead.
<
br />   Now his movements were disgruntled, a feeble flailing, as he lay on the floor refusing to black out before…Monica! He saw her being dragged out by an unrecognizable silhouette.

  “Monica!” he forced through groggy lips.

  He felt the life of his body fading fast. Cold. His body shivered. Pain free. His sense of touch had left him. Then he coughed up a glob of a black oily substance.

  Poison.

  That coffee.

  The waitress had poisoned his coffee. There was nothing he could do about it now. He couldn’t save Monica; he couldn’t save himself. That was the last thought on his mind. Monica. Someone had her. But who? It didn’t matter. Because as soon as he’d formed the thought.

  Everything went black.

  SEVEN

  He woke up feeling brutalized. The way his body lay told him he was not in his bed. An unfamiliar smell of old hinted that he was not in his house either. Creaks from its foundation settling chilled his bones. Damp clothes. Chilly air. A discomfort surrounding his wrists.

  He was not alone.

  He didn’t know how he knew that; he just did. Darkness hung around his eyes. But it wasn’t dark. Or was it? His eyes. He never opened them. For fear? That he would not be in a familiar place…yet that he was. All too familiar. And that’s what was fearful.

  What was his name again?

  A, something with an A. Avery, Anthony, Alvin…Alan! Charms. Alan Charms. In love with Monica Brookes, although he never let her know of that. Something about that revelation brought him sorrow as he wondered if she ever loved him. What happened to her? He feared for her life and he couldn’t fight the possibilities of torture from flooding his mind. Not being able to understand why he nurtured such a stew over her brought desperation to his body.

  They have her, he thought.

  A lone tear split the right corner of his eye and washed down his hardened face. He would find her and kill all of them.

  The pain in his wrists tightened. They were cold. Something restricted him from wiping his face. Alan shocked himself with the tears. This was not him. Something was breaking his mind and he fought with helplessness against its destructive force…whatever “it” was.

  His back hurt. Like he’d been laying on the floor all night. Right arm numb, starting to tingle to life. Alan moved his fingers about to stimulate blood flow. Then he tried to sit up but couldn’t. The cold around his wrists tightened again and he flopped back down hard.