Miss Massacre's Guide to Murder and Vengeance

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

  “You’re very attractive. Beautiful, I’d say. You have a…darkness.”

  He thinks I’m a street whore. I would be insulted, but at least it gets me close to my goal. I wanted to use the Tox on him, but his little kink has given me a better idea.

  “Thirteen concubines and now, a walking sampler. Delia must truly want something special from me. Come to me,” he motions with his finger.

  I start towards his little throne, but I’m never going to make those narrow steps. I hesitate, shuffling a little and trying to look coquettish, as it seems a Goth thing to do. When Caligula whips a .45 out from the side of his throne, I know my ruse isn’t working.

  “Up here. Now,” he demands, his whole Prince-of-Darkness routine flickering for just a moment.

  So I try. I can’t really bend at the knee, and there’s no handrail. I’m in deep trouble. Apparently these negotiations aren’t the friendly kind. He’s unbuckling his belt with one hand and cocking the gun with the other. I’m not in range to kill him, and he’s got the drop on me with nowhere to take cover. I swallow hard and try to go for it.

  I fall forward slightly, catching myself on the stairs with my hands. I’ll crawl up to him, and I’ll try to look sexy the whole time. It’s definitely got his interest, as he’s lowered the gun. One step at a time, closer to thee, Big C, so that I may choke the life from you.

  It’s around the third step that I realize my worst enemy in the room is not Caligula, not the naked harem back there, but my pants. They’ve snagged on something. I can’t shake them loose. I can’t cut them loose because drawing my knife would look more than a bit threatening. I lower my body down and try a different angle. It only succeeds in pulling my leg off slightly. I knew I should have had Joe re-mold the cups on these legs. I think I’ve lost weight. I should have put an extra sock over my thigh.

  Big C looks thoroughly unimpressed now. “You’re killing the mood, sweetness.”

  I pull harder, and the worst happens. The leg goes right off. At first it’s not noticeable, the webbing of the pantleg is holding it on, but then it rolls sickly to one side and proceeds in the opposite direction down the staircase.

  Caligula sets his gun down and stands up. I look back over my shoulder. If Nova is still in the room, he’s off in one of the shadowy recesses somewhere. Nobody has shouted yet or called for help, so I guess I’m all right for the time being.

  “How exquisite,” Caligula says, touching his chest lightly. “Ladies…my concubines, come look at this.”

  Four heads peek out from the bed at strange angles, and the ladies glide back onto the platform, wrapped in sheets. Somebody gasps. Most of them look sick.

  Caligula crawls down the steps towards me, like a deranged spider. He cups my chin in his hand. “You’ve made me elated again. You’ve taken my breath away. We’ve met before…”

  My mind spins. I need to get some space between me and Caligula. Find some shadows, don’t let him get a good look. His concubines are slowly descending the steps now, all pale and gossamer. The romance of the picture is spoiled by the finer details: the track marks, the greenish skin, the rotting teeth and superficial scars. They surround me and carry me the rest of the way up the stairs, leaving my leg behind.

  “I didn’t think the rumors were true…” he says.

  They set me at the foot of Big C’s throne, while he moves down to the floor and picks up my leg. At first, he hefts it like a golf club, swinging it slowly, watching the foot react. He slowly unlaces the shoe, his eyes never leave mine. The other women are enthralled.

  I don’t know if it’s the shadows or the mood or the placebo effect, but my phantoms are starting again. Caligula has a hand clamped around the ankle of my leg, and I can feel it in the air before me. I watch the shoe loosen and slide off, revealing the flat metal paddle foot, and I swear I feel the breeze between my toes.

  Caligula is probably one of the more repulsive men I’ve ever seen, but I have to admit it, I’m a little turned on right now.

  If I can keep his eyes on my legs, maybe he won’t linger on my face. I keep my eyes on his and move my hand down to my other leg, slowly undoing one of the straps, tracing my fingers around the cup. Big C catches his breath again.

  “Both of them? My, my my…”

  The women crouch closer to me, hands reaching for my body. They grab needles off of my chest, and I don’t even care which is which. There’s only me and Big C right now.

  He strokes the steel pole that makes up my calf, standing there below me, and I feel it. I feel it all. I want it in stereo. I yank the straps on my other leg and send it sailing down to him. I spread the stumps of my thighs wide and lean forward, not in a sluttish way, only to tell him I want more.

  He obliges, picking up my other leg. He starts to move up the steps, staring at my thighs.

  “Let me touch them.”

  They’re always so fascinated by the remnants. Physical touch is the last thing I want now. I’m somewhere else, I’m wondering how much farther he can take me with my legs in his hands. I lean back and shake my head, sliding my thighs closed.

  “Mmooor,” I mumble.

  He gets it. He moves around behind me, setting one leg on each side of me. I watch his fingers trace my big rubber knees, my skinny alloy calves, the complex ankle joints, the composite “tendon” attaching thigh joint to calf.

  His concubines scatter to the four winds. They’re off getting buzzed, and perhaps two of them are now in full cardiac arrest from the Tox. Big C rubs up against my back, his chest caressing my shoulders, his hands still working my legs. I reach up for him over my head and draw him close.

  He leans into me, bringing his face close to my ear. He kisses me lightly on my neck, where the skin is fairly thick and unresponsive. I embrace him tightly, so tightly that I can feel sweat starting to pour from his body. I feel his heart begin to thunder in his chest.

  His fingers trace my ears, my cheeks, my jawline. And they pause ever so slightly on the circular scar underneath, just long enough for me to feel that spark of recognition. Shit. I was lost in the moment.

  His embrace doesn’t change, but I feel his body cool slightly, tensing. “It was you the whole time, wasn’t it?” he whispers.

  I shrug, better to feign ignorance.

  “You framed me for Shakes’s murder…”

  Shit, I don’t want to talk business now, I was just getting into this. But he’s still all over me.

  “Wann yrrr hellp,” I tell him. “Wann ngo werrz Grronka Ngaggn…ffffffrrronka…”

  “Veronica? You want to know where Veronica Madden is? We’re all chameleons, are we not? Do you think I’m stupid?”

  I play it dumb.

  “Veronica Madden is a bitch,” he says. “Veronica Madden is a leftover whore. She’s worthless. Atrocious. I wish to God I’d never met the woman.”

  He pauses, breathing near me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He moves back a little. I still feel the heat radiating from him.

  “You’re working with Delia, trying to take what I’ve made. But you can’t have it. You can go after anyone else you want, but you can’t have what I’ve made.”

  He snaps his fingers, and I hear rustling on the bed. A sharp intake of breath, cut off, strangled. Gasping. There’s a pause, long enough that I realize I’m holding my breath, too. Waiting to hear a sound.

  Click.

  Caligula snaps his fingers again. There’s a tidal wave of gasping, intake, breath, hanging on to life. He’s got women in there choking each other on command. “That’s power. That’s what I have, and that’s what I’m not giving up. God, your legs are exquisite.”

  Frankly, I’m barely listening to his speech. I feel his fingers dancing on the insides of my knees, his hand occasionally brushing my inner thigh.

  “I told you before that a girl has no place doing man’s work. But you just…keep…coming…back. No more, no more, no more. You knew me as a Frenchman, a politician, a power grabber. Now I am power. Now I
am action. And before I put you down, before I finish what he started…would you like to see Heaven? Would you like to see this man work, girl?”

  His tongue dances up and down my neck, and I’ve never wanted anyone so much in my life. But stronger than my need to feel him is my need to feel him die. As much as this pains me, it needs to end. I reach up behind my head again, pulling him in closer.

  “Say you’re sorry, say you’re sorry…” His hands knead my flesh.

  I pass the handles of the garrote from hand to hand behind his head and pull down and in, cutting off his air supply. He can’t scream. He can’t breathe. He can’t do anything now but die for me.

  Why am I screaming? Isn’t this supposed to get easier each time? Am I not the angel of righteousness? My brain screams at me, for God’s sake let loose, that’s a man dying in your hands. Instead I just crank tighter.

  He had answers, but I couldn’t get them. He would have killed me. And if I have to choose between answers to my questions or finishing my list, it’s going to be the latter. A job has been written and it must be done.

  He wanted an apology? I want an apology. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Shakes, Grace Brooks, someone, anyone, to just say sorry and mean it. Not “business is business.” Not “you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Not “what could I have done?” Just a genuine, heartfelt apology for what’s happened to me. Instead, I get atonement, because I can’t ask for anything else. Atonement doesn’t take words.

  I feel dampness on my cheeks. I tell myself it’s his sweat, his spittle. It’s not my tears. It’s not me crying because I haven’t had my perfect moment of revenge. It’s not sadness that his knowledge about my past is gone. It’s certainly not the end of this sensual contact. No, never.

  I hear a gasp from the edge of the platform. Then a startled shriek, followed by panting. I try to twist around so that I can see. One of the breathless whores is across the platform and diving for me.

  She hits the floor in front of me, reaching for me, unseeing. A needle dangles from her arm. Botulinum. I relax a little, feeling Caligula’s dead weight sink into my back. He’s not struggling. His heart is done. He’s done. I release the garrote and he crumples to the floor behind me.

  And like the spirit of vengeance that I am, I turn and vomit onto the floor. Two by my own hands. I swear I’m going back to sniping. This is not satisfying at all, but it must be done. If not by me, then who?

  Nova. He’s seen the whole thing. He’s moving for me, one hand reaching to his belt, drawing out a gleaming revolver. I have nothing. No mobility. I can’t scamper to the bed on my hands, I certainly can’t go down the steps.

  He stops about twenty feet away. He raises his arm up, and I wait for the explosion, the muffled pop that will signal the end of my game. The air behind me grows warm, and my head is jerked back and slammed to the floor. Looking up, I see Caligula, his face almost purple, his boot holding down my hair on the floor.

  “Too much,” he hisses. “You turn me on too much. Steal oxygen. Whore!” His fingers scramble at his neck.

  “Futch yuuu!” I scream. It’s all I can think to say.

  His hand clutches at the garrote, buried deep in the skin of his neck. He finds one handle, then unwraps the wire, and his neck starts bleeding, a neat little red line all the way around. It looks like someone has cut his head off and set it back neatly on his neck. His breathing sickens me, a harsh raspy intake followed by a whistling exhalation.

  He draws his hand back and smashes me across the face. The softness of it startles him. There are missing chunks of bone that surprise his fist, soft spots where he was expecting resistance. None of this lessens the fact that it hurts like hell.

  He coughs and bends down, retrieving his cane, still standing on my hair. Shrieking, he raises the cane above his head, ready to hit one out of the park.

  My last thought is going to be this: I am crazy. I’m just a crazy motherfucking crippled woman who has no idea what she’s doing.

  I look at him because I want to see what raw hatred looks like, so that I may know myself before I die. I want to know how he does it with such abandon. His eyes are wide and dark, black pits surrounded by bloodshot yellow. I’m reflected there in stereo, warped, crying, broken, and wasted. When our eyes meet, he snarls and his hand starts to plunge down.

  Caligula’s face breaks into shards of bone and gristle as he flies backwards and crashes across his bed. The remnants of a small explosion bounce off the walls for what feels like forever, vibrating, hollow, reverent as church bells.

  The list has not been broken. I choked Caligula out. I don’t know what rose up. Maybe my hatred wasn’t enough to kill him, but he’s dead now. And I didn’t do it. And it really doesn’t feel all that bad.

  So what the hell happened?

  I pull myself up to a seated position, and I see Nova, cool as a cucumber, literally blowing the smoke from his gun barrel. He smiles at me as he pulls a purple kerchief from his pocket.

  “We just needed to see your dedication. Welcome to the club,” he says, tossing me the bandanna. I stare at it in my lap, the repeated white paisley pattern reminding me of the endlessness, the trap, the vicious cycle.

  “You just started a war big enough to burn this city to the ground. Congratulations. Now get your legs on and let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  You think you know someone and they just turn out to be full of surprises. I wasn’t expecting Nova to decorate the basement chamber with Caligula’s brains. His name, as it turns out, is Trevor, and he’s a fairly gruff fellow, Delia’s inside man on the job. We’re at the base of the stairs leading up to the club.

  The concubines mill about, examining the walls or their fingers, or anything that moves and streaks across their clouded vision. I expected some kind of retaliation. Pleasuring Caligula was their job. The job’s dead. They move on.

  While I strapped on my legs, one of them approached me and asked if she could have more drugs. I said I was out. She pointed at one of the Botulinum victims and demanded some of what she’d had. I explained to her the contents of the syringe, to which she replied, “Still, it’s not fair.”

  Trevor got pushier as the minutes passed, asking a few times if he could help with the legs in an entirely innocent way, but I declined. We went through the usual pleasantries of him trying to talk to me, me staying silent, him resorting to sign language as if that might help me talk, and finally, silence punctuated by nervous mutterings on his part when he became too uncomfortable. His upper lip is coated in a thin sheen of sweat and he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet. I should ask him what he’s on, but speaking would get us nowhere.

  One thing that’s nice about my condition: people tend to tell me the truth. Silence makes most people uncomfortable. They’ll talk just to hear themselves, but after a while, the absence of noise is too much, they’ll tell me anything I want to hear, just to get a word, a mutter, a drooling noise of recognition.

  “Times are changing,” Trevor says, stopping at the edge of the tracks, where the ornate bell he rang still sits on the stand. “This gang-war stuff is bullshit. Everyone’s in the mayor’s pocket, and he’s in the Doctor’s pocket. Et fucking cetera. It’s all about a show of support so that the impoverished areas of town can be squashed, ground out, and reborn as mini-malls. It’s a land grab. So now all of the old crime families, the drug cults, the slum runners, everyone who had done such a good job leaving each other alone, they’re all rallying for power. Less territory to share, less revenue. It’s a case of all or nothing.”

  Trevor lifts the bell. He gives it to me to hold. “So what’s your beef? Who do you work for?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “You work for Delia now, no shit. That’s the only right answer.”

  Savior or not, Trevor is inching his way out of my heart minute by minute. Just another guy who obviously wants nothing to do with me.

  Trevor pulls a small pack out of his pocket. Semtex explosive. A timer.

/>   “No evidence this way,” Trevor smiles, noting my look of concern.

  Which reminds me…

  “Weee shhd gleeeg,” I say.

  “I’m taking out the whole basement. Leave nothing behind. You see anything you want here, you better be ready to carry it out.”

  I slow down, choose my words carefully. “Whole buirrrdnng ‘sgonn glo…‘splode. We godd go.” I motion urgently to the door.

  “Keep your legs on, sweetheart. I know what I’m doing here. This isn’t enough to take the building down,” Trevor asks. “I’ve rigged this thing up to a little oxygen canister. We’re gonna toss this into Caligula’s stash of oxygen, and when it goes, there’ll be a blaze so big, it could only have been an accident.”

  I shrug. Explaining that Joe already has the whole building rigged would just rain on his parade. Trevor seems like the angry ex-military type to me. He’s not going to listen to a woman. The bell shakes in my hands as he finishes what he’s doing.

  “You better be able to run. And you better keep your shit together when we get back to Delia. I’m already tired of pulling your ass out of the fire. Think you can get out on your own in five minutes?”

  I’m already moving, leaving the bell in his hands and jetting for the exit. It’s almost twelve, and Joe loves symbolism. After midnight, he’s gonna bring the whole house down.

  I wish this was like a movie, where I’d hear a beep. And another. Rythmic. Pulsing. Like a heartbeat. A metronome. Something counting time. But in the real world noisy bombs attract attention and nobody has time for that. Trevor’s about to make his own little supernova down here, that’ll be plenty loud.

  Caligula will be dead and buried, the whole bar reduced to rubble, and I’m still not happy. Strange time to get nostalgic, I know, but I was born here. The person I am now wouldn’t exist but for this horrible place. If it’s going to be immolated, I should be the one doing it. Not Joe, not Nova.