by L C Barlow
Roland leaned forward in his chair - his khaki suit crinkling as he moved - and he said to me, "I want you to know that it's alright what you did earlier. Cyrus was training you, and he wanted to train you well, so he asked me to help. As you can see, I accepted, and so I was here for you before and am here for you now. I am going to help you learn how to kill and understand killing. You know - don't you - that someone who would sacrifice himself for you has your best interest at heart?"
I nodded my head as though under a spell.
"Roland has done a magnificent job," said Cyrus, "And perhaps we will do what was done this morning a few more times. You will kill Roland, and I will bring him back. And what you will learn from this is that you are not really killing him, not really. He is like a boomerang. He simply comes right back to life, no matter how many times you take it from him. But eventually, Jack, eventually we'll move on to another person."
My heart fluttered, and I looked from Roland's kindly face to the man responsible for life and death.
"And you will kill as we have taught you. When it comes to that person, though, he won't return like Roland. But hopefully you will keep in mind that you aren't really murdering that person or any other, not really, just like you're not really murdering Roland. Rather, we're just not bringing them back to life. Do you understand, Jack?"
I looked to my right at Mr. James' eyes, and they twinkled at me like the starry night. "Yes," I said.
"Then say it with me," said Cyrus. "Say, 'I'm not really killing anybody, I'm just not bringing them back.'"
I swallowed a sticky bit of saliva so that the words flowed freely from my mouth. "I'm not really killing anybody, I'm just not bringing them back."
"'Just like Roland James,'" said Cyrus.
"Just like Roland James."
"Thatta Jack." Roland patted me on the back.
Chapter 6
PERFECTION
With the man I murdered leading the way to my future murders, my path was paved with ease. How was I to say "no" to him? I had taken his life, and so I owed him mine. Thus, I obeyed him in whatever he said, which was a lot, as he seemed to take over for Cyrus in teaching me how to kill.
Roland never showed to me any malice, rather bringing me occasional gifts - and the fact that there was no ill will shown towards me because of my murdering him, the weight of the blood shrunk from a bucket to a teaspoon.
How the hell did Cyrus do it? How did Roland return? How did he come back? These questions racked my young brain. I ruled out early on the theory that Roland was simply a twin of the man I killed, for he would have had to be an identical quadruplet or quintuplet, for as many times as I killed him.
I shot the man, stuck my finger in the burning hole of his chest, as commanded by Cyrus. I strangled him to death with piano wire, placing my foot against the back of his neck and pushing as hard as I could, until I thought my foot would tear my arms from their sockets. I stabbed him to death, practicing in the most real of terms the twelve angles of attack - left femoral, right femoral, left ribs, right ribs, abdomen, heart, left clavicle, right clavicle, left eye, right eye, beneath the neck, vertical through the top of the head. Repeat. Finally, I killed him with a ball-point pen. Each and every time, Roland returned.
In the hours when Roland was alive, there might be some semblance, some sign of what happened upon his body in the hours before, with a scratch here or a little nick there, but the man was alive, so very cheerful and content. Murder was only a shadow upon him.
There is also no question that this man actually died. Each time, I checked the pulse as I was told. Each time there was the caustic blood, the lack of heat from the body, the complete and utter stillness after a series of body spasms. And there was that sigh that I have felt every other time - like there was pressure in the room that was suddenly released. There was that, too.
I believed wholeheartedly that I murdered Roland James a multitude of times. But Cyrus was right. Like a boomerang, Roland kept returning.
It made me wonder if there was something special about Roland himself. If Cyrus could own an evil box, perhaps he owned an evil man. Perhaps the two were connected. I did not know.
Cyrus made sure that I spent plenty of time with Roland. It was with him that I had my first puff of a cigarette - Clove, black, cinnamon, sweet. It was with him that I first fired a gun. With him I watched movies and heard about his life.
He was a musician, and he'd played in many clubs, he told me - the piano, the sax, the clarinet, and the trumpet - and he dabbled a little in "hollerin' and moanin' at the mic" he said. He taught me to play the piano a bit, as well as the alto sax. I remember how, when I first started to play the saxophone, I bit on the reed so much my mouth burned and my lip bled, and when I complained he said, "The skin learns not to bleed and hurt after a while. You just gotta give it time. All things worthy take time. And then you can play the blues, if you want, or something classical. Just make sure you don't get out of practice, because the callous won't stay forever if it isn't encouraged a little now and again. Still, though, no matter how long you go between playing, it's always easier to build up that callous after it grows the first time."
Often times I would see through the door's crack the eyes of Alex as he watched me with Roland. That is, until Cyrus or Roland discovered him, and then they sent him on his way. Cyrus always kept his two families separate, despite what he claimed repeatedly.
Aside from music, Roland cooked delicious foods, and we often worked together on meals. Brandied carrots and parsnips, sage-crusted pork loin, pecan-crusted chicken, Brussels sprouts au gratin, chess pie - these were the silver lining of our days. A little blood in the morning, and by evening a little salty and sweet to wash away all those pennies in sugar. Being poor, and being hungry as a child, I'd often dream of food. Roland gave me my dreams. I'd kill the cook and then dine with him. Sometimes I imagined he cooked all the better each and every time he was brought back.
When food is there, and you can smell the cooking meat and carrots and potatoes, and feel the warmth of the oven near, and your best friend in the world - the person you keep sending away, but who always comes back for you - is playing the piano and singing "In the Pines," there is an ineffable magic in the air. It's something you wish you could bottle, so you can spray it, and taste it, and keep its little drops forever. It's that important to you.
"Jack," Roland said to me one evening, "Come sit beside me for a moment, there's something I want to talk to you about."
He was on the cobalt velvet couch by a small and cozy fire in a fireplace surrounded by gray-green slate squares. He patted the seat beside him, and I hopped up, leaned against him, felt his delicious calm.
From the stereo in the room on a wall twenty feet from the couch played a classical piece. It was soft, melodic, easy-going, pianissimo. Interspersed with Roland's words were always the "plum... plink... plink" and "ploom... pink... plink" of music.
"Jack," he said, "I've always been a man who sang for others, but there was an evening not long ago when a man sang for me. It was one night when I was drunk, stumbling through the woods close to The Meddlesome Myth - a bar where I just played. I heard it! The sweet wooden vibrations of a violin and, when I closed my eyes, deep tones of a voice that sang an odd tune. My ears led me exactly in the direction I needed to go.
"With only a cigarette in my hand to light my way, I stumbled and crawled in those woods and those trees, until I came to a small pond - and then I could hear both the music and the sloshing sound of water.
"Who did I see, but a man standing out in the middle of it, his back to me, the tips of his toes pressed in the moonlit water, dangling there by some unseen force, swingin' his hand back and forth like he was sawing into the instrument. And the cross that hung 'bout my neck - a silver one given to me by my momma - became so hot I had to take it off. When I held it out in front of me I could see it was glowing white, and then it shriveled up into a little ball - all its corners turning in and meetin
g one another - as though the thing had been alive, but wasn't anymore. Once it did that, it went cool again, and the light disappeared.
"The man then turned around on the pond, like he could finally face me, and he quit playing that violin, quit singing. He walked towards me a few yards, to the point I could just barely make out the lines of a face, and he stopped. 'Hello Roland,' he said, and then straight under the water he went without a splash. It's like the water sewed him up. The top was as still as if he had never been there or gone through it.
"This was the first time that anything that I would have deemed 'impossible' ever happened to me. It was purely supernatural, Jack, and it was good for me - not just the experience itself, but the knowledge of it... it took me out of this world a bit.
"Because it made me less concerned with what was goin' on here, what was goin' on here didn't bother me anymore. Him just showing up on that lake, just playing that violin and singing, and dipping back through the water like a damn fish in a three piece suit was enough medicine to keep me from ever being a victim of this world again. That's the nice side of the dark things - they are victimless. You should be victimless now, what with what I've given you - the same sort of taste that man gave me. Something just... out of the norm. It will make you out of the norm... it already has."
He smiled at me, and he patted my hand. He looked around for a second and said, "I kept the cross to remind me. I keep it in my pocket always. The metal isn't as smooth as it used to be," Roland reached into his pocket, "it seems to shrivel a bit more every year," and he pulled out a decrepit looking spherical cage and dropped the little ball into my hand. I ran my hands over it, feeling its little grooves, looking at what appeared to be a tiny withered windowpane. It smelled like ash. I gave it back to Roland, and he eyed it appreciatively, then dropped it back into my hand.
"Keep it," he said. "Keep it safe." I rolled the cross in the palms of my hand in awe, thanked him, and put it in my own pocket.
Roland smiled. "It's hard not being a victim in this world, but that's what we're working at for you, for others in Cyrus's little group. The supernatural... that's where getting beyond what's here lies. The darkness, well, evil can't be a victim. It's easier to take the hell of the world when you're comfortable with the fact you deserve it. It's calming.
"I want you to remember that. Not just for yourself, but because it explains others. 'Ventually you'll see kids your age - usually when you get into your teens - that'll start dabbling in drugs or theft or something they or society labels as evilness because there's a calm in the fact that evil can't be a victim. It rather decides the victims. They like that. They want a taste of that power. But the fact is you can't dabble for long. You either gotta dive in or get off the ocean. Most will step off.
"You, Jack, though, won't be making that decision anymore. You'll be unlike the others. We're starting young with you. And I think doing all this adds a bit of innocence to the darkness, 'cause you're not deciding what you're doing. We are.
"Yes, innocent and guilty as hell. It's a strange mix. Not one for everyone. But for you, the fact is that later on in life you can't dabble. You were raised with all of this. You eventually won't know any better. It also means you start out strong. You've already slipped out of the world a bit. It can't affect you as well as you can affect it. That's good. We'll get you there."
With that he patted my leg, and he got up from the couch. He slipped his hands into his pockets and stared at the small fire in the hearth, and then he glided over to the piano and pushed back the cover from the keys. He played the all-so familiar, E, A, G, B, E chord variation, and as he played, he sang slowly,
"Little girl, little girl don't you lie to me,
Tell me where did you sleep last night
In the pines, in the pines where the sun don't ever shine,
I shivered the whole night through"
I sat there, and I listened to Roland, and I was so at home in that moment that it could have been a dream. I never would have known the difference.
As for Roland, no matter what he told me, I could stomach it, for he always came back, always sang to me, always taught me and cared for me, and I wholly loved him, this man I murdered.
People that I let live have often never meant so much to me.
Chapter 7
INHALE
That night was not like the other nights. Ever since I had met Patrick, he had invited me out to parties every few weeks, as well as gatherings with his friends, to eat, drink, shoot up, sniff, snort, inhale, and stagger. It had been wonderful, these days - a spicy heaven. But then, quite suddenly, it shifted.
"So tell me about yourself," he yelled to me under the flashing lights of the club. Patrick had bought me a Royal Fuck, and I had downed it. He had bought me a vodka and sprite, and I had downed it. I was now on a Colorado Bulldog.
"Well," I yelled back, "I'm from Florida. Moved here for college. Grew up on a lot of land with my mom and dad. Didn't grow anything on that land, though. Had llamas for a while once when I was younger. Have a brother. His name is Jason. He's going to the University of Maryland. He's studying aeronautics."
Patrick nodded his head up and down as I spoke. "Listening to Jason talk about the shit he does..." I continued, "makes me want to put a bullet through my head... or his. It's so boring." I shook my head back and forth. "Came here to study biology." I shrugged my shoulders. "It's going well so far I guess. How about you?"
Patrick nodded his head one more time, smirked, took a drink, surveyed the club, and raised his eyebrows. "That's complete bullshit. What you just said."
I froze, feeling the sweat of the glass in my hand. "No it isn't," I replied.
"Oh please." He waved an arm at me and shook his head. "There's no need to lie. None of that shit matters anyway." He turned away from me, leaned on the rail, and looked at the pulsating crowds. "There are other ways to get to know a person. You don't have to tell me about your past if you don't want to."
He looked sideways at me and bit one of his lips. For a minute all I felt was the beat of the music, and then I came to stand beside him. I leaned against the rail.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't normally lie."
"Why did you?"
I shook my head. "I'm uncomfortable."
"Why?"
"I'm still sober."
He laughed. "Then we've failed."
"Well, we've got the whole fucking night," I replied.
"To get rid of ourselves... so we can talk about ourselves."
I nodded. "Yes."
He licked his lips and turned to me suddenly. His face flashed pink, then yellow, beneath the lights. "What if I were to guess? About you, I mean. If you can't put yourself into words, can I try? Will you admit when I'm right?"
I smirked. "Oh Lord. You're going to shock me with myself."
He gave a deep-throated laugh, and I barely heard it over the music. "It'd be nothing new."
I downed my drink. "Sure. Why not?"
The first thing he said to me: "You're the type of person who knows how to pick locks."
I replied with nothing, turning my eyes up to his ginger head ever-so-slowly. I felt the vibrations of the music file through me, down to my bones. They burned bright for a second.
Only an idiot would miss why he said that.
"In fact... you are the type of person that can do more than pick locks. Yes?" he urged.
"What says that about me?"
"Everything."
"That can't be good." The bass of the music swept into me, made me notice the desolate silence between us. "What other ever-so-beneficent things am I capable of?"
Patrick didn't bat an eye. "Own a brothel. Hijack a bus. Take illegal substances across state lines. The possibilities are endless."
"Sounds like a lot of damned responsibility."
"Versatility."
"If that's what you want to call it." I paused, scanning the crowd. "And why do you need someone who can pick locks?" I asked.
; His smile spread its wings for miles, feathers glancing off those on the dance floor. "See what I mean?" he asked, and he moved back and forth on the rail, rather pleased. "We don't need facts to get to the truth. We just need questions."
"And drugs."
"Sometimes..." he said. "Fascinating, isn't it? How much you have to inject yourself before any real blood is spilled."
"Tell me more about me, Patrick. I'm beginning to find myself very intriguing."
"I think... you're a cook." He winked.
"You're wrong."
"Let me finish..." He brought his hand out on the rail close to mine, palm down. "A cook in the sense that you have the recipe of all recipes."
"And this recipe would be..."
"How not to get caught."
My chuckle was corked. I took my right hand from my glass, and I poked Patrick's chest with my forefinger. The alcohol made me laugh at him outright. "You're ludicrous."
"Why?"
"I'm not what you're looking for. I'm not a professional."
He took his own finger and jabbed the center of my chest with it, imitating me. He said his words one at a time, sparsely. "There is no better bonding for two people who have just met than what I have to offer. Nothing better in the world. Why would I waste that on a cold, emotionless professional?"
I shook my head condescendingly at him, "You talk about it as though it's building a castle out of sugar cubes. But 'jobs' live and breathe. Each one is its own monster."
Patrick smirked at me as though he were all-knowing. "For fifty grand, would you deal with a monster?"
"For fifty grand..." I stopped. I wanted to tell him 'no.' But as I tried to shoot the word from my mouth, the gun simply wouldn't fire. I was too drunk to lie. "I'd take a look at the damned thing," I confessed.
He threw me the keys to his car and said, "Then let's talk about it. You drive."
Fuck meth. Nothing even compares to the hum of a hundred thousand dollar car caressing my body. I felt the gear shift in my right hand, the seating from the softest slaughtered cows. I adjusted the rear view. I raced to a hundred and twenty. And for the single second I nearly killed us both when a semi cut across, I felt like I was returning home. As close as to home I could get, anyway. To Cyrus's.