No— I will not feel sorry for myself. I did this. Not Mom, not Da—
Ironically, it was another sigh that broke his self-deprecation; although, this time, it was not his sigh.
Startled, Oxford turned to his left and, for the first time since waking, realized that he was not alone: a woman lay beside him on what he now recognized as a bare mattress. She was lying on her stomach, her acne-riddled back bare, her buttocks covered only by a worn pair of greasy—good God—white boy shorts. His wide eyes slowly traveled upward from the small of her back all the way to her matted black hair, which was splayed almost artfully around her head; the woman was face down on the filthy mattress. Another thought crossed his mind then, and it too was accompanied by a barely stifled sigh.
Did I...?
He looked at the red spots on the woman’s back again and realized that what he had first passed off as acne wasn’t quite accurate; the bumps were swollen and red. Fucking sores. And her skin…the entire surface of her mottled skin looked dry, chapped, textured.
Oxford shuddered and, after pausing only to pluck the needle from the crook of his elbow, glanced down at his body. Although relieved that he was still wearing his purple boxers, this offered him little solace. He glanced quickly at the woman with the sores, then cautiously pulled the waistband of his underwear away from his scrawny body and gave himself a rudimentary once over. Everything looked normal, although he wasn’t sure what—chlamydia, AIDS, herpes, hepatitis, crabs, gonorrhea—he had expected to find. Either way, normal couldn’t be bad, could it?
Oxford took another quick look at the woman beside him and, confident that there was no chance she was going to wake, he kept the waistband of his underwear pulled back and bent his neck downward, drawing in deeply through his nostrils.
And everything smells normal too, Oxford thought, but he wasn’t really sure what that meant either.
He unhooked his thumbs from his waistband, and the snap as it slapped against his pale, thin stomach made him cringe. Thankfully, the woman beside him continued to sleep, oblivious. In fact, Oxford thought that he could hear her snoring softly, but straining to listen made his head hurt. And hurt did it ever.
After another deep breath, Oxford looked around, trying to catch his bearings. He remembered the peeling beige paint of the small apartment as much as he remembered the unconscious woman who lay less than a foot away. Equally as foreign to him was the black leather couch and the small tube TV—who still has a tube TV?—that was currently showing a portly man with a dark, manicured beard hawking the newest oxygen-powered cleaning agent. Oxford didn’t remember any of this. He remembered going to the Western Widget for a drink, he remembered—well, that was it, really; that was all he remembered. There were flashes of things—an alley, a green hat with a shamrock, a leather carrying case—but nothing even remotely coherent.
Disgusted with himself, Oxford turned his eyes to the syringe that he had tossed on the floor beside the mattress.
Fuck. This has to end.
After one more deep breath—in through your nose, out through your mouth—he gathered enough courage to stand, careful not to disturb the woman beside him.
White flecks flashed brightly behind his tightly closed lids and his world spun. For a moment, he thought he might come crashing down. Standing as still as possible, holding his breath, Oxford fought the sensations and they eventually passed. The relief was short-lived, however, as the void they left was quickly filled with the pounding of his headache.
Tiptoeing like a toddler sneaking downstairs on Christmas morning, Oxford made his way to the couch where he spotted his jeans and sweatshirt; his t-shirt was nowhere to be found. He dressed quickly, only now noticing a funk in the apartment that all of his previous deep breaths had failed to unearth. Oxford also noticed six or seven used syringes on the coffee table along with the usual accoutrement: a spoon, a lighter, and some aluminum foil.
This has to stop—how many chances are you going to get, Oxford? How many times are you going to fuck up and let everyone—Mom, for Christ’s sake, Dad, wherever he was now—down? When are you going to grow up and stop being so selfish?
Oxford did his best to drown out his meddling conscience as he dressed, his eyes trained on the sleeping beauty, ready to bolt the second she woke, dressed or not. But she only snorted once, a horrible, thick sound, and her head remained buried in the mattress. On the counter by the front door he found his coat and hat, and put those on, too.
As Oxford reached for the doorknob—almost home free—his eyes fell on a black leather cosmetic case on a section of counter between the stove and the door, and he hesitated. It was the same black case that had pinwheeled through his memory like a loosed hubcap, and although he could not recall its contents, he had been in the game long enough to know what was inside.
Hand still on the doorknob, the cheap, brass sphere half turned, he paused and licked his dry lips, his tacky tongue skipping unevenly across the chapped surface.
This has to end.
Oxford turned the knob and threw the door wide, but instead of leaving, he offered one more furtive glance toward the junkie with the black hair and sores on her pale back. Then he darted back inside the dilapidated apartment, grabbed the case, and fled, all before the door slammed closed behind him.
3.
Sheriff Dana Drew Pulled into the small police station parking lot just before nine. It was bitterly cold out, and the air pricked the inside of his nostrils with every breath. He walked briskly across the parking lot, noting with a subtle nod that both of his deputies’ cars were already there. But his expression soured when he realized that those were the only two cars in the lot; Alice, their dispatcher/administrator/resident barista, and her white station wagon were nowhere to be seen. Sheriff Drew shook his head in disapproval.
She is supposed to be here before eight.
He told himself to have that talk with her again, as this was the third—or maybe the fourth—time this week that she was late.
Inside the small, three-room police station, Sheriff Drew was greeted by the smell of fresh coffee and the static crackle from the CB radio that sat on the—surprise!—unmanned front desk. As he made his way across the room, voices from the back—the unmistakable voices of his two deputies arguing—grew louder. Rather than going directly into the back room and being undoubtedly dragged into whatever inane sports-related “debate” that they started every morning with, Sheriff Drew went to the sink and emptied his thermos instead. He stood there for a brief moment, watching the cold black liquid swirl in the aluminum basin before being swallowed by the drain.
“Christmas Eve,” he murmured. “My last day.”
He offered a quick glance at the dispatcher’s desk.
Where are you, Alice?
It was her last day before the holidays, too.
Where are you?
Sheriff Drew ran the faucet to wash away the coffee before refilling his thermos with coffee from the pot—it tasted like shit, of course, as Alice was the only one who could make a decent cup, let alone pot—then made his way to the back room.
Seated at a round table across from each other were his two deputies—the only other two police officers serving all of the sixty square miles that was rural Askergan County—a pile of playing cards tossed haphazardly in the middle. His most senior deputy, a large black man named Paul White, clutched a fistful of cards between his meaty fingers. Even from ten feet away, Dana could see that some of them were folded and bent, and as he watched, the deputy twisted and warped them even further in frustration. Sheriff Dana Drew grimaced.
Another deck? I’m going to have to get another deck?
This was the third pack of cards he had brought this week. Yet instead of interrupting by announcing his presence as he was prone to do, the sheriff resigned himself to a rare observer role.
“That is such bullshit, and you know it,” Deputy Paul White said, his tone, like his expression, taut. It was not yet nine, but the vein o
n the deputy’s heavy brow was already pulsating, and his gaze was so intent on the man seated across from him that he failed to notice that Dana had entered the room.
Deputy Bradley Coggins, a pale, thin man with hawkish features and the beginnings of a red beard, was leaning back in his chair, the cards in his hand held so loosely that from where Dana was standing he could see that he had a stacked house: jacks full of threes.
“Ha, c’mon, now, Whitey—there is no way those old-timers would even be able to hold a candle to new stars like Ovechkin, Karlsson, or Crosby.”
The much smaller deputy paused and leaned forward slightly, his tiny dark eyes glinting. He was liking this—really liking it.
“Not. A. Chance,” he said, laying his full house down on the table.
Sheriff Drew, moderately amused now, could literally see beads of sweat form on Deputy White’s forehead. It was only when the much larger Deputy slammed his cards down—two pairs, Dana noted—that the Sheriff decide to announce his presence and alleviate some of the tension.
“Morning, boys,” he said calmly, making his way to his desk at the back of the room.
Both men turned simultaneously, one face grinning, revealing teeth so small that they were almost sinister, while the other attempted, and failed, at a neutral expression.
“Morning, Sheriff,” they replied in unison. For some reason this collective act seemed to further anger Deputy White, and he shot a scowl at the other deputy. Dana couldn’t help but smile.
“One day, Brad, Paul is going to come across the table—”
The much smaller deputy didn’t let the sheriff finish, interrupting him with a loud laugh.
“Can’t do it, Sheriff, ‘cause I’m too fast.”
The man bobbed his head from side to side as he spoke, imitating evasive maneuvers, and even Paul’s tight expression relaxed somewhat. Coggins noticed this too and he laughed again—a short, and rather obnoxious bleet.
The niceties didn’t last, though, as the two Askergan County deputies resumed their argument even before the sheriff had removed his hat and coat and sat.
“Hold a candle?” Deputy White said, any humor that had crept into his face following Deputy Coggins’ comical head-bobbing having long since vanished. “What does that even mean, hold a candle?”
Dana decided then to end the argument before it degenerated any further. Although his deputies’ morning tiffs never developed into anything more than verbal affronts—for all his size and intimidating facial expressions, Paul White was as gentle as they came—he had no desire to see this one get any more heated. With the blizzard touching down any time now, they would need to keep their heads screwed on straight. Although Askergan was no stranger to the odd winter storm, this one was chalking up to be one of the worst in recent history.
“Easy, guys,” he said softly, just loud enough for them to take notice. He waited a moment for them to turn, especially Deputy White, who was now sitting with his back to him, before continuing. “Have either of you heard from Alice?” he asked, trying to keep his own frustration from creeping into his voice.
The deputies exchanged looks, and he knew in an instant that he had done a poor job of masking his emotions. Sheriff Drew brought a hand to his face and absently rubbed at the deep grooves that lined the corners of his mouth; there was no hiding things with this face. Nearly two decades being the sheriff, even in as uneventful a town as Askergan County, had weathered him—would tax anyone.
“Nuh-uh,” Deputy Coggins answered. “Only person who has called this morning is Mrs. Wharfburn.”
Again, the two deputies exchanged looks.
Dana took a swig of the bitter coffee, grimaced, and then ran a hand through his short grey hair.
“What is it this time?” he asked, holding back a sigh.
An image of Mrs. Wharfburn, her rust-colored hair frizzled and unkempt, with an absolutely revolting cat—more like a damn overgrown sewer rat—clutched in her arms passed through his mind and he shuddered.
Mrs. Wharfburn.
It was Deputy White who answered this time.
“She called six times already.”
“What did she want?”
Deputy White opened his mouth to answer, but Coggins piped in before he had a chance to speak.
“A new husband?” he offered, raising his thick black eyebrows.
“Unkind,” Dana said with a tight frown before turning his attention back to Deputy White.
“She called six times, and each time it was about the trees out by the road; says that with the storm coming, they were gonna fall and she would be without power and—her words—‘freeze her purple nipples off’.”
When Dana’s frown deepened, Deputy White raised his palms defensively.
“Her words, not mine.”
Deputy Coggins, who had since turned his attention to picking up his full house and shuffling them into the rest of the warped playing cards, added, “She said she is going to call back; wanted to speak to you directly.”
Of course she did, Sheriff Dana Drew thought. Of course she did.
The sheriff turned his gaze to the window and admired the thick snowflakes that were coming down more heavily now. Indeed, Askergan County was in for one hell of a ride.
4.
An Hour Into The drive, Cody found the car unnervingly quiet. His youngest daughter, Henrietta—her Leap Pad obsession satiated for the time being—had since fallen asleep, her chin resting lightly on her chest. In the end, his wife had managed to undo her jacket and had pulled off the girl’s boots. His eldest, Corina, was still listening to her music, forehead pressed against the cool glass, but either her music had mellowed or she had turned it down because the tinny reproduction from her earphones could no longer be heard throughout the car. Marley was staring ahead blankly, apparently lost in thought.
Probably thinking about the snow, Cody thought.
The flakes were coming down even thicker now, and despite what he had heard that morning, it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon.
To break the silence, he switched on the radio, making sure to keep the volume low to avoid waking Henrietta. A quick glance at his wife suggested that either she hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.
A moment later, the song ended and the DJ started talking about some starlet or another that had been slapped with her sixth—sixth!—DUI and yet was only sentenced to 30 days’ probation. Cody was shaking his head when the local weatherman interrupted.
“This winter storm system is here to stay, it appears. So all of you wishing for a white Christmas, you are going to get it in spades!”
Cody grimaced and quickly went to change the station, but Marley caught his hand before it reached the knob. Evidently, she had noticed that he had put the radio on. He slowly put his hand back on the wheel, knowing that she was glaring at him, but unwilling to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging the look.
“Bitterly cold temperatures and massive precipitation are expected...”
Cody didn’t need to look or speak to Marley to know what was she was going to say.
Cody! You said the storm would blow by us—that we wouldn’t be getting more than an inch or two at most!
He would shrug—his go-to move.
That’s what they said this morning.
Who’s they?
The weatherman.
Well, how many different weather channels did you look at?
One.
“...all counties north of the city, in particular the islands, will be hit especially hard over the next few days...”
He could literally feel his wife’s eyes on the side of his head and neck like lasers—tiny red points that burned his skin.
Marley had made her disapproval of heading north for the holidays well known, and it had taken all of his effort to convince her to come along with the girls. Truth be told, if it hadn’t been for the recent death of his father, he wouldn’t have hesitated to forgo the trip altogether.
&nbs
p; A quiet place to reminisce, to mourn, he had said. It wasn’t that selfish of him, was it?
Cody lasted only another ten seconds before cracking.
“Damn,” he whispered, trying to sound distressed, “they said it would blow over, pass us by.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead and turned the wipers to maximum.
“They? Who’s they?” Marley asked, venom on her tongue.
Cody was about to answer—to offer his pathetic defense—when someone in the car screamed.
5.
It Was Nearly Noon by the time Oxford got back to his small apartment, and it was two hours after that before he had cleaned himself up and packed his overnight bag. His head still hurt, but the pain had regressed to a dull throb after chasing his fourth Tylenol with about a gallon of warm water. If he could draw solace from anything in his decrepit state, it was that the hole the needle had made in his arm after having been left there dangling all night, however unsettling, had stopped bleeding.
What if I had rolled over in my sleep? I could have torn a vein and bled out.
His mind returned to the pale woman with the pustules on her back lying face down on the mattress and thought it unlikely that he would have rolled too far that way. But if he rolled away from her—if he had rolled in the other direction? He would have fallen off the mattress, which surely would have woken him up—maybe. Or maybe not.
Oxford left his apartment and headed for the train station. He had had a car once—a blue Chevy that was more than ten years old—but he had sold it when he’d needed to pay some bills. Of course, once that few hundred—four-hundred and ninety-five dollars—was in his pocket, well, it had made a quick exit. And at the end of the week, he had had a massive headache—not all that much different from the one he suffered from today—and his bills had remained unpaid.
The thick woman at the ticket booth gave Oxford a warm smile when he handed her a crumpled twenty from his pocket.
“Going to see your family for the holidays?”
The question made him uncomfortable—guilty—and he found himself nervously adjusting his collar that peeked out from his crew neck sweater.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 2