The Potential of Zeroes

by Eric Mattys

  He took all the other precautions that he could— gloves, a ski mask, pre-break-in shower and shave to limit DNA evidence. He even installed an anti-theft system at his tiny apartment so he would know how to disarm it. Most importantly, he made sure he left no trace behind. He took the bus out to the suburbs of Westminster or Lakewood far from his low-income hovel, walked the next day to a pawnshop he had not been to previously, and came home to sleep the rest of the day with money in his pocket.

  He might have continued with his simple thievery if he had not decided to rob a more extravagant house one night. He usually avoided houses like this one because they more often had alarm systems, but the slightly open garage door invited him to slide under. With luck, he might find his valued item without going inside. He slid under the door, looked around, and saw a lawnmower, hedge clippers, tools that looked like they saw regular use, old clothes, used sports equipment, all too noticeable or would not fetch much money.

  He cracked open the garage door that attached to the house and continued into the unlit house. Crawling was better than walking upright when breaking into a house where the inhabitants might still be inside. Distributing his weight evenly made for less creaking noises. If he had to hide, he was already closer to his final hiding position, whether it was behind a couch or under a table.

  The first room he encountered was the dining room. There was a half-finished bottle of scotch sitting out on the table and a nearly-empty glass with the ice mostly melted sitting next to it. He considered this a good sign. Drunks sleep soundly. The dining room had bottle openers, wine glasses, candles, candlesticks, fine china; nothing he wanted. He moved on to the living room; a Persian rug, some pillows in a similar color on a well-kept couch, The Joy of Sex, and one of those Magic Eye books sitting on the coffee table. He stepped upstairs where he saw a bathroom on his right. Prescription drugs would sell for a nice price back home. He slowly opened the medicine cabinet; aspirin, band-aids, Neosporin, Vicks vapor rub. Useless.

  He heard someone walking toward him from the other end of the hall. No place to hide except the tub. He pulled the curtain up from the bottom in order to limit the noise of the hooks sliding along the curtain rod and slinked into the tub. A hall light flicked on. Caked on the tub basin and shower curtain were multiple layers of dirt and grime. The filthy lack of cleanliness raised multiple points of concern; the first being the skin around his eyes and mouth not covered by his ski mask directly contacted the grime; the second being his ability to taste the multitudes of bacteria and possibly fungi as he breathed through his mouth to stay quiet; the third being that no gentle, God-fearing, easily overpowered person would permit shower filth to this degree. Clean people follow the rules; dirty people break them.

  He closed his eyes and pressed himself as flat as he could against the bathtub. The door opened slowly and footsteps echoed over the tile floor..

  A voice that sounded like cigars and whiskey dragging down the New Jersey turnpike, pumping air with bass from a gut overgrown, confident and fearless asked, “If you were going to kill a man, how would you do it?”

  He stayed as still as he could, face down in the tub, hoping the voice on the other side of the curtain might be monologuing. The barrel of a shotgun swung the shower curtain wide open and looked down on the creature in the bathtub.

  “I asked you a question, but maybe you didn’t hear me. If you were going to kill a man, how would you do it?”

  The face behind the controlling side of the shotgun hung gelatinous with eyebrows stressed together in disgruntled mounds across his forehead. The hanging part of his skin below his chin, pot-holed from repeatedly shaving acne-infected areas, trembled minutely with each pause. Tiny whiskers grew unexpectedly on the greasy, moon-like surface of his neck. The frames of the man’s glasses had a broad upper rim and thin lower rim, like the kind worn commonly in the Kennedy era, and his thick lenses made his brown eyes appear bigger than they were.

  The young man at the unfavorable end of the shotgun tried to turn around to face his new adversary.

  “No.” The man with the shotgun poked the back of his neck with the end of the barrel. “Stay right where you are and answer my question.” His gruff voice kept casual as he held the gun like a stressfully compressed spring. “No answers. Okay. If I were going to kill a man, just by myself, I would take him to a bathtub. Make him lie down on his stomach. Shoot him in the back of the head. Chop up his body with a Sawzall and put all the remains in a septic tank. So now I’m going to ask you again, if you were going to kill a man, how would you do it?”

  With the right half of his face flush against the tub floor, he looked up over his left shoulder to calculate if his response would be his own fate or if this was a man set in his ways. His guts were roiling acid, ready to projectile vomit. The shotgun asked for an answer, but if death was to be his final answer anyway, there was no reason to give the voice behind the shotgun what it wanted.

  “Are you asking me as a friend or are you seeking guidance? Because, as your friend, I would recommend not killing anyone, especially me. If you are looking for guidance, I would not be a good reference because I have only killed small animals in my lifetime. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, your plan appears sound. I am convinced that I never should have crawled under your slightly opened garage door. But I have to say, if I were going to kill a man, I would not do it with a shotgun in the suburbs in a house too large for me to live in alone. I hear no voices of conscience coming from you, but I am not so sure about the other inhabitants of the house.”

  “What are you doing in my fucking house?”

  “I intended to steal one item from your home.”

  “One item… BULLshit.”

  “One item that ideally you would not even miss. This is my mode of operation. I do not steal more than one item, and I do not take an item that would immediately be missed.”

  “I don’t like your talking.”

  “Me neither, but words are all I have, and I’m telling the truth.”

  “I should kill you…I have every right to kill you.”

  “Why would you kill a man, when you could use him instead?” Gustave forced his teeth together to subdue his frustration. Death by shotgun due to failure. That’s acceptable. Every second he doesn’t pull the trigger, the failure is on him. Too many failures in such a small space. “Listen, I am a very capable individual.” The sweat, grime, piss, and fungus smell soaked through his ski mask and made the back of his throat itch. “You must have something that needs to get done. I can do it. You do not want to kill a man in your own house. There are so many variables. You miss a detail, you go to jail. I do not imagine jail is any fun.”

  “I know it ain’t.” The metal shotgun trigger curved, gently welcoming pressure. With his breath increasing, the man with the shotgun considered what he would do after he pulled the trigger. Can’t let the cops get involved. Have to clean it all up alone. Sawzall in the garage. Paint mask. Trash bags under the sink. Arms off. Legs off. Torso in half, and half again, and half one more time. It’s a lotta blood, and guts smell terrible. Bags in the septic tank out back. Clean up. Tub sure as hell could use it. Drain-o. Pay in cash in multiple stores. Drain-o down the septic tank. Means no golf tomorrow. Burn clothes and slippers. Fuck. These are really nice slippers. Can do him more damage if he’s alive anyway. Red is scarier on a balance sheet than in blood. The man with the shotgun sighed. “Alright. Here’s how this is going to work. First, I’m gonna need to know who you are. If I don’t get a straight answer from you, I kill you.”

  “I am not one of those kinds of thieves who keeps his ID with him.”

  “That’s good. Heh. We’re going downstairs, to find out who you are. Once you see what I’m capable of, you’ll be more likely to keep your word. Let’s go. Nice and easy. This gun is fulla buckshot that’ll tear you apart if you move in a way I don’t like.” Slowly, Gustave stood up glaring directly
at the owner of the shotgun. The man with the shotgun backed out, keeping a safe distance from the intruder. The two of them walked downstairs with the shotgun at Gustave’s back. “Here’s my office.”

  Gustave sat in front of a dark red desk.

  The man with the shotgun ordered, “Take off your ski mask.”

  Gustave closed his eyes with his hands still in the air while trying to think of a way out.

  “You’re either dead or I own you; there’s no other way out of this. Take the mask off.”

  Gustave slowly took off the mask.

  “Turn on the computer. Now, you’re going to run your name. If nothing comes up, I’ll know you’re lying. Go to my documents and open a file named Colorado Residents’ Directory.”

  “It’s asking for a password.”

  “It’s encrypted. Move.” The man with the shotgun jabbed the barrel into the intruder’s stomach keeping his left finger wrapped around the trigger while his right hand typed in the password. Gustave watched the fingers type. K – L – I – N – G – O – N – 4 – 6 – . There was one more digit and the intruder believed it was probably nine. The man with the shotgun pressed enter and a screen with the Colorado State Seal appeared. “Now. Do a search…”

  “Uhh.” Gustave moved the mouse to the top of the screen.

  The man with the shotgun shook his head. “Control F. Are you a moron? Control F.”

  Gustave entered his name in the search bar and hit enter. A picture of his state driver’s license, social security card, rental agreement along with his bank statement showed up on the screen. “We have a match,” shouted the man with a shotgun in erratic glee. “I’m glad you’re smart enough not to lie to me.” Gustave looked the same as he did when he had his driver’s license picture taken. “Now, Mr. Gustave Tyner, I know exactly who you are, how much money you have, and where you live. This is just a records database. I also have access to active databases. I can put a warrant out for your arrest for child pornography and provide the authorities with the evidence to convict you faster than the time it takes to send an email to your mom from prison. I can make it impossible for you to rent or buy property anywhere in Colorado. I can take away any money you have in any bank. I can destroy you. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Just a quarter of a second to swat away the barrel of the shotgun.

  “So this is what I need from you.” The barrel of the shotgun rested away from Gustave for an instant. “There is a detective who is dangerously close to finding me. His name is Miguel Garcia. He lives in Parker. I want you to kill him.”

  Gustave considered this unfair. The work of another man would never be his work. The dealer of his potential death stood three feet away. He took his ski mask in his hand and shoveled it at the face of the man with the shotgun and, in one fluid motion, ducked and rolled out of the chair. The man with the shotgun fired off a round into the chair, scattering cotton stuffing across the room. Gustave stood up out of his roll. His fists blurred and buried into the man with the shotgun, a right to the groin, a left to the rib, and a right to the throat. He wrapped his left arm around the shotgun so that the barrel was under his armpit and his hand held the butt of the gun. Using all of his bodyweight, he threw his right fist into the nose of the man with the shotgun, rotating his left arm away to gain full control. The older man fell to the floor. Gustave whirled the unfavorable end of the shotgun on the fallen man and pumped the weapon, ejecting the used shell.

  “PLEASE NO!”

  “You failed.” Gustave kinked his pointer finger around the welcoming trigger of the shotgun and blinked as the blast resonated. The buckshot tore through the chest and ribs of the homeowner, throwing him and a spackling of countless perfect circles, red, against the wall. Gustave expected more of an echo; the brevity of it startled him more than the blast. Gustave looked into the man’s eyes and found a purity, a restoration of balance, a correction for a mistake. The feeling was beautiful. The sound, gurgling and wheezing as lungs found blood instead of oxygen, was disgustingly pathetic. He turned his back on the puddle of man and blood soaking into the carpet. Before shutting down the computer, he realized a mist of blood covered the front of his body. He stared blankly as the wheezing in the corner slowed and stopped. A killer is a different kind of human, one who depends on precision and control in all aspects in order to deny an irreparable inequity.

  To appear gentle, God-fearing, and benign, he needed to be clean. He left the office and walked efficiently back upstairs to the bedroom. The blood needed to disappear. Get the blood off. The house needed to burn down. Keep the computer with the Colorado residents’ information. Even without access, it would be a priceless leveraging tool in whatever business he conducted next. One failure was enough to settle his mind on giving up theft. He paused and thought lucidly about his escape. He thought a court would not understand his thorough disapproval of failure. Foul play was a more than probable conclusion where the body rested now. He walked back downstairs still covered in blood and checked the oven. A gas range. Back in the office, he dragged the body of the homeowner into the kitchen. The bulky size of the old man’s dead body proved difficult to move. His collapsed chest cavity gushed bone fragments, organs, and fluids out onto the floor. What a mess.

  He placed the man’s body in a chair next to the half-empty bottle of bourbon. He picked as much of the bone and organ remnants as he could and draped them across the kitchen table behind the man. Then he grabbed the shotgun out of the office, placed it on the stove, and shot the dead body a second time, aiming for the exact same wound. Difficult with a shotgun. A gas leak and an explosion should destroy most of the evidence. The recoil from the blast sent the butt of the shotgun smashing into the back of the stove. He wiped all of the blood off the weapon and put it back exactly how it was after he pulled the trigger.

  He went back upstairs, showered off in the grimy shower, put on some of the homeowner’s clothes, and disconnected the computer downstairs in the office. Finally, he turned on two of the gas burners in the kitchen without igniting the flame and fled the house the same way he came in, sliding back under the slightly open garage door. He stole exactly two items—a desktop computer and another man’s life. If anyone noticed his possession of these two missing items, he never knew.

  Four years passed since he became a killer. The tension of his first kill remained with him. It changed the way he spoke. Every syllable of every word carried the significance of death and required precision; any amorphous situation or mistake felt like a threat to his life and he reacted as such. He operated with meticulousness to create a world in which he had full control.

  13

  Bums

  The outside air tastes vivacious but burns a little, too. The plants’ final pushes of pollen, the smog, and the not-quite-humid cold of morning make Doobie’s inner workings pound as he steps further and further from the hospital. It’s richer than the indoor air running through ventilation systems and filters caked with dust, the relentless scent of ammonia and disinfectant, and Dr. Calvert’s deodorant. The outside makes Doobie a newborn again.

  He looks down at his bare toes; the once-hardened creatures waving back to him are gooey, pliable and accustomed to all the niceties of polished, friendly tiles. The tiny rocks on the sidewalk lodge themselves in his feet and slow his pace. No one appears to be following him. The sun warms the sidewalk and Doobie’s feet thank the sun. Shoes and regular clothes would make him more thankful, not to mention help him avoid capture.

  He wonders how hard it would be to make his own shoes. A dead bird’s feathers wave at him from the side of the road. Doobie considers making shoes of feathers or wings like Mercury. What bothers Doobie is that he can’t see the bird’s eyes. Without seeing the bird’s eyes, it’s an inanimate object with no reason for existence but to decay and provide nutrients for scavengers, or microbes, or plants. Sadness overwhelms him for the deceased bird because it flew once, bu
t it does not fly now. He wishes he could strap the bird to his feet and breathe life back into it so he might fly to his next destination. Without tools or any tying material to keep the feathers together, he keeps moving.

  The sky makes him smile even though the blueness overwhelms him; there are no clouds to hinder the blue. He squints to deal with the brightness. Resting under a tree and comparing the yellow of the falling leaves with the blue of the sky for the rest of the day is tempting, but time wouldn’t allow that. Despite the unfriendliness of the rocks grinding against his gooey feet, movement encourages his ebullience.

  He reminds himself aloud, “My words no longer need be my prisoners. I’ll let them rewire the brains of the people with ears so that they’ll want to give me all my minute comforts before the end times finalize our destruction.”

  Doobie sees a man with a cardboard sign sitting on a corner. The sign reads, “Why lie. I need a beer.” Doobie stops his movement to watch the man sit on the curb and do nothing. Ebullience evades this stranger. His face is swollen like a boxer who lost; sturdy, stoic, and expressionless. The blackness of his eyes and the blackness of his hair mean that the two might be from the same material; both appeared slightly wet. Perhaps the honest man who needs a beer could see better with the hair on his head than the eyes nearly lost under skin. The wind blows his hair and Doobie imagines tiny lenses at the end of each hair follicle collecting thousands of light signals to be sent to the brain to compensate for other lost signals. Doobie wonders if he looked this way when he carried his sign before asking him, “Does this work?”