The Cleanup

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

They're going to kill me, she realized. I'm going to die. The knowledge drove her back to her secret place, but it wasn't the same there anymore. The numbness had spread, it had taken over, even her thoughts stared out in frozen horror as Rex unhitched his belt and unzipped his jeans and yanked them to his knees.

  Omigod, she whispered, and that was when Rickie cut her again. Then she started to cry, and he cut her again, saying you make a sound and you're dead, you unnerstand me, bitch, one sound and you're dead . . .

  NOOOOOO!!! Billy screamed-inside his head, but it didn't do any good, it couldn't stop what had already happened, and so he screamed for no reason other than because he couldn't help it as Rex lowered that stinking bulk over her body and then rammed that monstrous stinking thing inside. . .

  . . . and she almost screamed, and Rickie cut her again, and Billy could feel it, he could feel it all, the slivering pain from the cut-after-cut, the unspeakable rending agony of her vaginal walls, the complete and utter violation of it, the absolute assurance that it couldn't go on much longer, she couldn't take any more, it would kill her, please, soon . . .

  . . . and it didn't stop, and it didn't stop, and there was a high moan writhing in her throat that the knife couldn't stop no matter how many times it sliced and sliced because something was building up inside of her now, a tidal wave of molten lava, a razor-toothed climax of anguish that had nothing to do with sex or joy but had everything to do with the end being near, the beautiful peaceful black dying end . . .

  . . . and the pictures started flashing through her mind once again, but this time Billy saw himself in bed with her, Dave in bed with her, Lisa in bed with her, some guy he didn't even know in bed with her . . .

  . . . and they were wonderful memories, but they didn't help at all, the reality of the moment poisoned them, made them ugly and pathetic and sad . . .

  . . . as the thunder boiled up to its peak . . .

  . . . and then she was fading, she was fading, her thoughts and her body and the world just going away, borne on wings of black black evernight . . .

  . . . and Billy collapsed in a heap on the hospital floor, nerves aflame. He couldn't stop shaking. He could barely breathe. The pain in his nose and his mouth and his throat and his wrist and his back and his groin still throbbed at him like the phantom twinges of an amputated limb.

  But in his mind, it was the worst, because the rage and the terror and the hatred and the pain and the helplessness-unto-death of it had engraved itself on his central nervous system with sulfuric acid, burning a little deeper with every passing second. There was no escaping the pictures, the heartless brutality, the utter devastation of it.

  He had come as close to the female experience of rape as any man could ever dream of coming.

  And it was still only the tiniest micro-scintilla of what Mona, and all of the millions before het, had come to know firsthand.

  And he knew that he would never be the same. Not ever. Not ever.

  Again.

  Oh, God, I'm sorry, he heard himself thinking. Oh, baby, oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry I can't believe this I can't believe I let this happen to you . . .

  . . . while the cold part of his mind, the serpent-eye view from within, reminded him that he had not done it, any more than he had been the white man who drove the Indians down the Trail of Tears or wore the white hood while the nigger was a-danglin' from the tree . . .

  . . . and as he lay there, with the hospital tile cold as a corpse's and against his cheek, Billy began to feel the calm again. It was a terrible calm, like the eye of a hurricane; but his thoughts could assemble coherently within it, and that was all he needed or dared to expect.

  In only a very few minutes, he was ready.

  Clambering back up on his knees, though his nerves were still frying. Seeing, through eyes now well-adjusted to the gloom, the physical evidence of the nightmare.

  Reaching, then, for her temples once more. Sending, now, instead of receiving.

  He could feel the Power move through him. Out of him. Into her.

  And he began, without a sound, to speak.

  Mona, his mind's voice said. He felt the ripple of her unconscious receptivity. Mona, I love you, he continued. You are going to be okay. I swear it.

  He heard her sigh, from deep within. So far, so good. He let out a heavy sigh of his own before continuing.

  I won't take away your memory of what happened. I'm not even sure that I could, but I'm not about to try. You will want to remember. You've gone through too much to forget.

  His fingers, traveling down to the bridge of her broken nose.

  But I will atone, as best I can, for this.

  As the membrane and cartilage and nerves realigned themselves, burst capillaries sucking spilled blood back in and sealing themselves up seamlessly.

  And this.

  Fingers moving down to the mouth now: the swollen lips, the bloodied gums, the shattered bits of bone. Fingertips, tapping her own deep regenerative powers. Tapping them into overdrive.

  As the swelling receded. And the torn gums re-knit.

  And the teeth grew, quite perfectly, back.

  And this.

  Tracing the knife wounds across her throat and shoulders and breasts.

  The wounds, diminishing into puffy-red and temporary scar-tissue traceries.

  And this.

  Mending the broken wrist, the slit flesh of the hand.

  And this.

  Reaching down to lightly cup her battered vulva in his hand. Not daring to tiptoe inside. Sending wave upon wave of healing Power from without.

  From within.

  As the damage and pain receded from the savaged vaginal walls.

  And finally this, he said, dragging his fingertips up the length of her body, dealing with the many glass and plasterboard lacerations before coming to rest once again at her temples.

  I will avenge you, he said . . .

  . . . and in the final moment before the connection broke, from deep within her stunned sedation, she could feel the one micro-scintilla of male anguish that the connection made possible quite distinctly. She could feel the conviction behind his vow. She could feel the Power. It heartened and undermined her, all at once.

  Alleviating certain terrors.

  And magnifying others.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  CONUNDRUM

  "Jesus fucking Christ Almighty," Dennis Hamilton muttered, sucking deep on a stale Winston and wishing, not for the first time in the last week, that he'd picked another line of work.

  Her name was Marcy Keller, and up until roughly three hours ago, she'd been a real looker. That was all behind her now. As was everything else, save a trip to St. Vincent's in a Ziploc bag and whatever lay beyond the pale.

  Dennis felt sick. To the stomach. To the core. Fuck Rizzo and his sour little pep talks, he thought. This was not getting any easier to handle, and exposure was not desensitizing him to the miserable mindless brutality. If anything, it was heightening it: following him home, ragging him, making him wish that he could find the little son of a bitch before anyone else did. He wanted to toss the little fuck right of the World Trade Towers, watch him splut against the cold hard pavement below.

  All he got for the wanting was an excess of bile and a lot of lost sleep. Things were not looking up.

  Dennis looked up. Two rival news crews were close to duking it out, jockeying for primacy and the most lurid angle to feed to the late-breaking reports. The media was turning this whole thing into a Christian-eating lion trip, digging into the pasts of the victims, drawing elaborate conclusions about the killer on the wispiest of theories, even battling over what to call him. The Smiley-Face Slasher. The Happy-Face Killer. The "Have a Nice Day" Assassin. Every pea-brained TV station and newspaper in town had their pet names, which they hoped the public would adopt as their own. The press conferences were circuses, with the blatant Battle of the Monikers practically superseding the quality of the information being gathered.

  Not that there was
much to gather, or much of any quality. It harkened back to Son of Sam, and Hamilton's rookie days at the periphery of the armada assembled on behalf of that particular psycho. Hundreds of men and millions of man-hours, just spinning their wheels until the guy screwed up.

  And that, perversely enough, was their only thread of hope. This nut case, whatever else you might want to say about him, was certainly ambitious. Three girls in five days: not the work of a slouch. And if he kept it up at that pace, they were bound to get lucky soon.

  But they, including Dennis, weren't feeling very lucky just now.

  He looked over at the murder site. Rizzo was walking toward him. Marcy was tagged and bagged and ready to roll. The news crews were off and running, hot to be the first to feed her memory to the aforementioned lions.

  "C'mon, Junior," Rizzo said, placing an uncharacteristically sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "We've done everything we can here."

  "We didn't do shit," Hamilton countered.

  Rizzo shrugged, conceding it. "But we still have to get back to the office."

  Dennis Hamilton nodded sourly, tossed his butt, and followed his elder partner back to the car. The faces of the dead girls haunted him, tattooed in neon across his inner eyelids, pleading for justice every time he closed his eyes.

  And he wished that it were not his responsibility.

  And he wished that he could accomplish it.

  And he wished that he could lay down the badge, the rules.

  Just for a minute.

  Or maybe forever.

  Lisa stood at the sink, filling the teapot and letting the tears stream down her cheeks. She'd been home for over an hour, but sleep was out of the question. There'd be no sleeping tonight. There'd be nothing but tears and fears and pointless recriminations.

  Coupled with one absolutely unshakable conclusion..

  Never again, her mind whispered, the words like knives. Mona, I would die before I let that happen to you again.

  She'd been down this road twice now, and that was two times too many. The first time was hers. Almost six years and three thousand miles of scar tissue stood between that night and this, but the rage and betrayal lay like a dead animal at the bottom of a well: just beneath the surface, poisoning her perceptions and lending the ring of truth to her basest fears. About men. About herself.

  About life.

  No great drama, she told herself. Paula and Susan would pass on it in a second. Nonetheless, it was her story, and she let her mind glide across its contours like a blind woman reading Braille. Remembering . . .

  Remembering . . .

  She was a sophomore at Cal Tech, involved in a semester-long research film project with two fellow sophomore/cronies. What were their names? She snorted derisively, all the while going through the mindlessly soothing motions of making tea.

  Roy. Gordy.

  She'd never forget them. Ever. Their names poked her brain full of little bleeding holes in the wee hours of those nights that she fell prey to morbid introspection. Roy and Gordy. Her two fuzzy friends. They'd sweated and slaved together for three months: a lot of late nights hunched over the moviolas in the labs, a lot of grace under pressure. A lot of late-night bitching and drinking sessions at Gordy's apartment, which was three blocks from campus and had a great stereo. A good place to decompress after an evening of editing film that delved into the breeding and feeding habits of great white sharks.

  They grew close. She couldn't help it. Gordy was sweet, and oh so shy. And Roy . . .

  Lisa shuddered.

  The water boiled.

  She always knew in her heart that it was Roy's idea. She couldn't prove it, of course hell, she couldn't prove anything—but she knew.

  It was another late night: they'd just finished the third reel, which scored a major point in proving the casual relationship between aggressive behavior and the shark's propensity for sneak attacks. They were feeling really good, so they partied it up at Gordy, doing endless Seven-and-Sevens with The Police blasting through the speakers. She remembered passing out on the couch, a hill-tilt buzz on.

  She woke up in Gordy's bed. Naked. With Gordy and Roy.

  It was feeding-frenzy time.

  With her as bait.

  The memories flooded up and out of her psyche like a wave of projectile vomit. Gordy and Roy: drunk as lords, mean as snakes, hooting and grunting and trying to convince themselves that her struggles were for fun. Gordy and Roy, capitalizing on the moment of her maximum vulnerability to rut and suck and chew and thrust. Violating her body. Violating her trust. Making her hate something that shouldn't, shouldn't be hateful.

  Making her hate them.

  Eventually she passed out, a merciful black wave of alcohol-and-shock-induced overload. They continued onward for some unknown time longer, leaving her with only a scattered, lurid gestalt of the nightmare.

  She still couldn't stand to have things thrust in her face.

  And the next day, it was as if nothing had happened. Nothing. No apologies. No acknowledgments. Just business as usual.

  She'd left before the week was out. And in no small sense she'd been running ever since. Away from that night. Away from herself. And toward . . .

  Mona . . .

  Lisa stifled a sob, back in her kitchen again. She could feel the rage boiling up inside her, like the water whistling painfully through the teapot's tiny hole. She thought of Mona's beautiful face, swollen and broken and bruised. She thought of Mona's neck and breasts, limned in crisscrossing arcs of blood.

  The cup in her hand bore a picture of Snoopy and the words THIS HAS SEEN A WONDERFUL DAY. Lisa let out a shriek that was barely human and winged the stupid motherfucker into the wall.

  And as the cup shattered, so did her paralysis.

  Slowly, Lisa turned and left the kitchen, unfastening her clothes as she went. She was down to T-shirt and panties when she reached the living room. The light bulb in the ceiling buzzed as she turned the dimmer down to candlelight level. It didn't faze her. Nothing could faze her now.

  She hadn't known what to do about it, six years ago. She knew what to do about it now.

  Lisa: in the dim light.

  Lisa: eyes fixed on the middle distance, moving with fluid determination across the broad expanse of floor. Strike. Block. Position. Kick. Breath controlled, in perfect synch with the rhythm of the movement.

  Lisa: lost in the movement, one with the movement, mistress of the movement. Punch. Roll. Position. Kick. Her body fluid and slick with sweat, illuminated only by the halogen streetlight outside the window and the faint glow from above. Performing kata, her formal warrior's rites, as prescribed by her sensei, her instructor.

  Lisa: five-year brown-belt devotee of jujitsu, working through her fury by endless repetition of the ritual cycle, until her body thrummed like a tight steel wire.

  An hour later, it still wasn't enough.

  She ended the kata, bowing ceremoniously to the implied presence of her sensei: a handsome woman named Gloria who lived in Brooklyn. Her body felt charged, alive, in a state of balance.

  But her soul still screamed for atonement.

  She stared across the living room at the makeshift bookshelf affair, so common to the young and struggling. Six tiers of shelf, constructed wholly of unvarnished pine boards on cinder blocks. She crossed the room in four long strides and started pulling the books off, tossing them unceremoniously to the sofa. Humor, history, art, and politics all fell in a jumbled heap.

  The complete works of Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and a host of other militant feminist ideologians fell in with scarcely a second glance. Lisa had no need, right now, for their tireless screeds on the nature of the condition. Lisa knew the nature of the condition. She had lived it.

  Right now, she needed to do something about it.

  When she had emptied and dismantled the case, she set about the rearrangement. Four of the blocks, stacked two on two, with a meter of space between them. One board, laid lengthwise across.

&nb
sp; Perfect.

  She stood before the display, staring at it fixedly as she centered her weight.

  Paused.

  And with a short, clipped keai!

  (never again!)

  she broke the board cleanly in half, using the heel of her right hand.

  Without stopping, she moved the blocks closer and laid the halved board back down. Again, the keai!

  (never again!)

  and a swift downward thrust of the elbow. The board fell in quarters.

  Her heartbeat was up. Wordlessly she set up two of the blocks, and placed the four quarters in a neat stack atop them.

  She'd never done four boards before, particularly not such short ones. Didn't matter. She cleared her mind, took a short cleansing breath, and KEAI!

  Eight pieces of wood clattered to the floor.

  Lisa rose slowly, measuredly, like a diver in a decompression tank.

  And then she did it again.

  And then she did it again.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BROTHERS AND SISTERS

  At 11:05 the following morning, Mona de Vanguardia was released from St. Vincent's with no complications whatsoever. The chart at the foot of her bed gave her a clean bill of health. The pharmaceutical department gave her a healthy batch of downs. There was no charge for her overnight stay. The doctors and nurses and orderlies and security guards all waved and smiled and said good-bye.

  Billy took care of everything.

  Bubba was waiting at the curb when they came through the revolving doors. He went into an animated cha-cha-cha when he saw them, without any help from Billy. Mona very nearly smiled.

  They caught a cab on Seventh. Ordinarily, Bubba would have been a problem, but Billy took care of it. The cabbie didn't mind a bit.

  All the way home, Mona was stiff and silent and distant. Billy had reached for her at one point, as she stumbled on her way out of the hospital elevator. The scream in her eyes had made it quite clear: she did not want to be touched.