Valiant

by Bradley Carter

  Facing Cherish and Valerie, with a firm boot set in front of each of them, Bull looks down to the twins. He squints, and looks curiously at them.

  “…The higher the hopes, the harder they fall.”

  Both girls fear to move. They both want to look to each other. To comfort each other. To tell the other things will be okay. Instead, both sit on their knees, paralyzed. Their near-naked skin shivering from the coldness that stands over them.

  “When the time comes, which will be soon,” says The Bull, “these items will be sold to the highest bidder and each product will be shipped to its rightful owner. The ones left will be traded for something else.”

  The Bull leans forward and caresses each twin’s face with his hands. His eyes glow and his lips fight to hold back a smile.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time to find you two.”

  Bending to his one knee in front of Valerie, he pulls her left earlobe forward, exposing a small dolphin tattoo hidden by strands of her hair.

  Rubbing a few times with his finger, he asks: “What’s this?”

  Valerie begins to sob, too afraid to answer. Her twin, Cherish, answers for her.

  “It’s a way to tell us apart,” she says. “That’s all.”

  And that’s all it is. A harmless tattoo. It’s the one trait the twin sisters do not share. The one way people could identify who was who. The Bull stands again over a shaking Valerie, and Buddha steps behind Cherish to observe.

  “Twins,” says Bull. “Copies double a product’s value. It’s a shame to lose out on that because of a defective mark. But either way…”

  A deep sigh breezes from his nose, pushing loose strands of Valerie’s hair to dance in the air. His hand reaches to a pocket as a tear falls from the terrorized girl’s chin. Before the droplet reaches the floor, and with a quick whip of the air, a thick black zip tie makes its way over her head and around her neck. The zipping sound precedes the screaming “NO!” from the girl’s sister, Cherish.

  She lunges to Valerie, but only to be held back by Buddha from behind her. Swinging her arms and screaming, Cherish fights to break free, but his thick arm locks over her shoulders and throat and the two fall backward. The wailing cries of Cherish causes the other witnessing faces to turn away. Their heads hang low and some cover their ears and tighten their eyes.

  Valerie’s fingers scratch deep into her skin above and below the cord, but it pulls too tight for them to get underneath. Her face turns red and then a deep purple as her eyes get big and become bloodshot.

  Unlike with most other victims, the zip tie pulls so tight, it’s hard for Valerie to swallow. Only gasps for air and gurgling sounds come from her lips. Her lips turn a bright blue. A single pink strap of her bra falls from her shoulder as she swings each elbow in an attempt to somehow break free.

  A desperate and bawling Cherish watches in horror as her sister weakens. With Buddha holding her back, she witnesses her dying sister’s pupils dilate, replacing the blue of her eyes with black.

  The Bull, towering above, tilts his head to the side and watches as Valerie’s body falls thudding to the floor. He sees everything in her eyes. The surprise, the fear, the desperation, and then the blank gaze. He doesn’t look away, not until her last breath. Not until she falls still.

  “…It’s bad for business,” he says.

  As her sister lay lifeless on the floor, Cherish’s body falls limp as well.

  People talk about the bond between identical twins. If ones heart breaks, the other can feel sorrow. If one’s in dismay, the other may feel anxious. No matter how close or how far apart, they share a unique connection. Valerie loses her life, and a part of Cherish dies with her.

  Letting go of her, Buddha stands and says to The Bull, “I’ll take care of it.”

  With an empty gaze, The Bull looks to him, shaking his head.

  “No. I’ll clean it up.”

  Like heavy garbage, like a weighted bag, The Bull tosses Valerie’s dead body onto his shoulder. Tangles of her sweaty wet hair hang over the back of his waist. A string of blood-tinged saliva drips from her cold lips. Her dead eyes stare at the floor into nothing. As Bull carries the corpse toward the end of The Hallway, he gives an order to the rest of the henchmen.

  “Find a replacement.”

  12. TOTALITY

  Haylee has never been much of a television person. Any time she lay on the couch with the TV on, chances are its background noise while she fumbles through her cellphone. Especially late at night when nothing entertaining is on.

  Haylee wears her pajamas, which consists of a pair of soft blue shorts and white tank top. Her eyes scan through friend’s pictures on social media while a commercial for Red Flags Whiskey plays on the TV.

  When a teenager has their face glued to their phone, you wouldn’t expect them to notice anything else happening around them, but Haylee does.

  There’s a rattle from outside the house.

  She sits up, pressing the mute button on the remote and listens in silence.

  The figure of a man passes by the curtains, a silhouette lit from the distant streetlights. Haylee watches as the shadow moves to the front porch, where it comes to a stop. She freezes.

  There’s a knock.

  The figure puts its hand over its face and leans against the glass window by the door, but from where Haylee sits, she’s out of the stranger’s sight. Still, they have to know someone’s home. The bright flickering from the television gives it away.

  With her phone in hand, she scrolls through her contacts and selects: Mom.

  The phone rings and the stranger knocks again.

  When she recognizes the short pudgy figure, she ends her unanswered call.

  “Haylee,” says a man’s voice. “It’s Cole.”

  Her shoulders relax and she releases the breath and hurries to the front door. Pulling back the curtain, she sees Cole standing outside in the chilled air. With a twist of her wrist, she turns the lock and opens the door to a familiar face. A nervous face. One that’s apologetic for stopping by so late at night.

  “Austin says he left his book here,” he says.

  Stepping back to let him inside, Haylee says she hasn’t seen any book. She asks which book is missing, but Cole doesn’t have an answer.

  Haylee scrolls through her phone for her boyfriend’s number.

  “I’ll call and ask him,” she says.

  Stepping toward her and pushing his hand out, Cole tells her not to call. He says Austin is at home asleep. Cole says he was running errands and thought he would stop by. He asks her to check her room. Knowing Austin hadn’t been in there, and knowing there’s no book, she goes to check anyway, leaving Cole in the living room alone.

  In Haylee’s absence, he digs behind a sofa cushion and pulls the thick book from the crease.

  At the window, he pulls back a curtain and peeks across the street at a dark van parked next to a stop sign. His eyes roll down to the latch he had left unlocked earlier.

  “What kind of errands are you running this late at night?” asks Haylee, coming back from her room.

  Cole’s head whips to see her standing in the hall. He chuckles.

  “Found it,” he says, lifting the book for her to see. “It was on the couch.”

  Haylee’s suspicion grows even more, but she’s unsure of what.

  She wonders why Austin would leave a book in a place where he never sat. She wonders why Cole is out so late and more importantly, why he hasn’t answered any of her questions. Yet, she knows Cole has always been a bit quirky. Always shy. Always nervous. As strange as the incident seems to her, Haylee takes it in stride.

  Cole has what he came for and leaves. He steps outside and Haylee closes the door behind him, locking the bolt. She hustles to the window to see Cole stop briefly at the bottom of the steps. She observes as he looks across the street and nods before walking to his car. Her eyes follow the direction of Cole’s nod, across the yard and to the dark van parked in the street. Even squintin
g, from that distance, the van looks empty. Its lights are off. There’s no steam blowing from the tailpipe from a running engine. To her, it’s nothing more than a parked utility van with a decal printed on the side—The A Corporation.

  Cole’s headlights back from the driveway and disappear around the street corner.

  With her phone still in hand, Haylee turns off the television and retires to her bedroom.

  Despite her curiosity and her surveying, not once did Haylee look down at the window seal. She never thought to check the locks. She never noticed the latch out of place.

  In the lot of a vacant park, next to a dark playground, Dax and I sit in our squad cars, facing opposite directions as we usually do so we can hold a conversation. The knob on my dash for heat is cranked all the way up and the warm air mixes comfortably with the chilling air from outside. I tell Dax it smells of snow, even though a flake hasn’t dropped, nor has the weather reporter predicted any.

  “I hate the snow,” he says, closing his eyes and leaning back against the headrest.

  I figure he’s trying to grab a nap in our down time, so I don’t say anything. I keep quiet. After a moment, Dax asks me what was on my mind.

  What makes the two of us such a good team is our ability to communicate. He can always tell when something is wrong. I tell him I’m tired, I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, but he doesn’t buy it.

  Dax always says I don’t hide myself well. I put on this tough cop persona, but he can see underneath the layers, right through me. The nice thing about Dax is he never pushes the issue. He never asks if I wanted to talk about things. He waits for me to come to him if I need a friendly ear.

  “Shit,” I say, thumbing through my phone. “I missed a call from Haylee.”

  Had my phone not been silenced, I would have noticed it ringing. There are no text messages or voicemails.

  “Obviously it wasn’t that important,” says Dax.

  I picture Haylee the same as the last time I saw her, before I left for work. I wonder what she’s doing at this exact moment. I don’t want to call her back. This late at night, she’s probably asleep, and I would hate to deprive her of such a luxury.

  Haylee is face down in her bed with her right leg draped over one of her three large pillows. The house is silent. Her room is barely lit by a soft faint hue from the streetlights that shine through her curtains. In her doorway, at the foot of her bed, stands a tall dark and bulky figure. His face hides in the shadows. He watches for a while as she lay dreaming.

  “Haylee’s a tough kid,” says Dax. “You can’t always expect her to depend on you.”

  With the tip of my thumb, I rub the tan line of my left ring finger.

  Dax, still resting his eyes, asks how she’s handling home life with it being just the two of us.

  The dark figure steps toward Haylee’s bed, towering over her. From his pocket, the man removes a syringe and pulls the cap with his teeth. Squeezing through the tip of the needle is a tiny drop of clear liquid. With his thick hands, the man pulls Haylee’s blanket back from her waist, exposing her shorts and bare legs.

  “You’re right,” I say to Dax. “Haylee is tough, or she’s really good at pretending to be.”

  Even with his eyes closed, Dax can sense a guilt weighing heavy on my mind. He asks how I’m holding up. I could try to give him any excuse to make it seem I’m fine, but he would see the truth. Why hide it?

  “It’s my fault.”

  Dax snickers and shakes his head.

  “That man is a fool. You did what you thought would make him happy, and unlike any other man put in that situation, he flipped out. Some people are too afraid to enjoy themselves.”

  Dax keeps his eyes shut and grins.

  “You did nothing wrong,” he adds. “I wish more women were like you.”

  I chuckle, and tell Dax he’s a typical male.

  In Haylee’s sleeping mind, she lies on her back, on a beach towel. The trickling sound of water rolling to the sand and back to the ocean again soothes her ears. She turns over to her stomach to let the sunbeam down her back and lifts her sunglasses. With her finger, she draws a word in the wet sand. As the tip of her finger lifts, her shadow vanishes. The sky turns to a grayish-green as a shadow rolls in. Over her shoulder, in the distance, a line of people appears from behind the trees. She sits up, startled, and from left to right, scans the onlookers who stare at her.

  Four tall men stand still, wearing business suits and sunglasses. One of them carries a briefcase, another holds a video camera. A set of metal chains hangs from the third man’s hands, and the last grips a power drill.

  Beside them are five more men, all darker shade of skin. They wear brown pants and colorful loose button-up shirts. Each of them holds a clear plastic bag of brown powder. Their thick black hair sways with the growing winds.

  To their side are three more people who appear to be part of an ancient tribe. Their faces are painted with white and red streaks. Torn red cloth covers their genitals. The woman carries a clay bucket and the two men hold spears.

  All twelve faces stare at Haylee, waiting, watching.

  Behind this line of versatile strangers, black smoke rises from a skeleton that’s tied to a post and burnt to a crisp.

  “He’ll come around,” says Dax, stretching his neck to get comfortable.

  On the back of my visor, I keep a photograph of Haylee, my husband, and myself. Each of us showing our bright teeth, being the happiest you can capture in a snapshot. Snickering and smiling, I slide my fingertips across the picture, caressing the faces.

  The skies in Haylee’s dream roll darker as a black disk slides across the sun. The people standing across the tree line seem to be waiting for her to make a choice. A crumbling sound echoes from the island. Haylee looks in all directions. She catches a glimpse of the word she had written in the sand—SCREAM.

  In a panic, she wipes her hands across the letters, trying to erase them, but a sharp pain the in back of her thigh distracts her. She cringes and grips both hands around her upper leg. Her pain dissipates as her attention is drawn to a flickering yellow light from behind the trees. It grows brighter and the glow widens, spreading across the horizon.

  Haylee freezes at the sight of a flaming bull stepping onto the sand. Flames crackle from its hair but it doesn’t burn. Its eyes are locked on Haylee as it kicks the sand with its front hoof. The last bit of sunlight flashes around the edges of the black circle, glimmering the edges of a bright ring in the sky. As the beach turns dark, the fiery bull charges. Haylee inhales as much air as she can and releases a terrorizing scream, but it makes no sound. The more she tries to cry out, the harder it becomes.

  The heat from the flames warms her skin as the bull rages closer. The strange people watch from the tree line, waiting. As much as she waves her hands and pushing her legs, trying to run, Haylee’s sleeping body doesn’t move. She lay still in her bed as the dark figure stands, removing the syringe from the back of her thigh.

  “Everything will be fine,” I say to myself.

  Dax’s eyes stay closed as his lips separate, releasing a subtle snore. I smile and put the photograph back behind my visor. For a moment, about as long as it takes for me to sigh, I feel better. Then reality comes back to me. A heavy sensation falls in the pit of my stomach.

  Everything will be fine… until it’s not.

  The dark figure kneels beside Haylee’s bed and tosses her limp body up over his shoulder as he stands, tucking the empty syringe in the side pocket of his dark tactical pants. Her arms sway beside the back of his legs as he carries her through the hallway and toward the open window of the living room.

  13. BURN THE BULL (PART 4)

  KANSAS CITY, KANSAS - 2013

  At the Schaffer home, a detective sat across from the Lieutenant asking questions.

  Questions he wouldn’t hear nor answer.

  He sat with his elbows rested on the kitchen table and a cigarette in hand, burned down to the butt. Dark circles
puffed under his eyes. He wore the same clothes he’d been wearing for days.

  After the brutal loss of her children, Susanne was left to die alone in her prison cell. The two guards returned with no intention of unlocking her door. Mateo stood watching her lie on the floor. Her eyes crusty from dried tears. Her bones pushing against her thin skin. The room smelled of piss and shit. Some would say it was malnourishment or dehydration that killed her, but without her children, Susanne Schaeffer no longer had a reason to live.

  The second guard zoomed his camera to her face. She lay on her side with strings of her hair soaking in spit and blood. Her lips barely moved to the names of her late daughter and son. Her eyes never moved from the sight of the concrete floor. She repeatedly dug her thumbnail into the tip of her index finger, so much that the skin was beginning to peel. The guard watched through the camera’s viewfinder as the last breath left Susanne’s body. He kept recording even a few minutes afterward.

  “That’s a wrap,” he said, pressing the stop button.

  Mateo and his partner turned, leaving behind the corpse of a once happy mother and wife, finally released of its suffering.

  Days later, after the stirring of investigators and police had winded down, Lieutenant Schaeffer found himself alone once again. He sat in the center of his sofa, gazing into the carpet and listening to the tick-tock from the clock on the wall. The whirring sound of a neighbor’s lawnmower and laughter of kids playing outside in the streets gave him a sense of being divided from the happy suburban family life he once had and the hell he now lived in.

  Outside his front door came a rattle. The Lieutenant perked up, hoping to see his wife and two children enter their home. To him, it could have been a nightmare that he was waking from. For a brief moment, he thought they had only made a quick trip to the supermarket.

  The doorbell rang. Through the stained glass of the door stood the shadow of a tall thin body. The Lieutenant rushed over and opened the door to a deliveryman who held a yellow envelope. Signing for the package was like signing away his hopes of ever seeing his family again.