GARDENS OF NIGHT

by Greg F. Gifune

  “They got any beers in there?” the man asks without opening his eyes.

  “Yeah,” his partner answers from the kitchen.

  Sated, the man on the loveseat absently scratches at his crotch and snuggles deeper into the cushions. “Bring me one.”

  “Hold on, I’m making a sandwich.”

  Marc realizes his pants were completely removed at some point. He sees them on the floor a few feet away in a tangled mess with his underwear. Again, he zeroes in on the man on the loveseat. His eyes have opened, but he’s looking off in the direction of the kitchen, unaware that Marc is conscious.

  “What kinda sandwich?”

  In a single motion, Marc sits up and grabs the paperweight. Despite still feeling shaky and nauseous, he gets to his feet with remarkable ease then staggers forward. Just as the man seems to realize what’s happening, Marc swings the paperweight down in an arcing motion hard as he can. He raises the gun but not in time, and the heavy piece of glass crashes the top of his head.

  The paperweight bounces off his skull with a resounding clank, turning the warning he attempts into a muffled grunt. He appears stunned but not badly hurt, but sits there for a second, dazed and looking as if he’s trying to figure out what just took place. At the same time Marc raises the paperweight and again brings it down onto his head, feeling the impact reverberate up into his wrist and arm.

  This time the man slumps to the side and Marc closes on him, smashing the paperweight down across his head again and again until the blood and perspiration between his fingers causes him to lose his grip. The paperweight finally falls free; rolls off the cushions then hits the floor with a dull thud.

  “Get in here,” the man attempts to call out, but his voice is a slurred groan, and two thin lines of blood have already begun to leak from wounds high on his scalp, trickling down across his face like vines.

  And then Marc’s on him, pummeling the man with his fists, smashing his nose and mouth and grinding his knuckles into the man’s eyes. As he topples over, Marc grabs for the gun.

  Holding the man’s gun-wrist with one hand, Marc cocks back the other and throws several more punches at the man’s face. They connect with a sickening sound similar to a slap. The gun falls from his grasp and bounces away along the carpeted floor, but Marc continues striking him long after the man has slipped into unconsciousness. He hasn’t hit another human being in years, not since high school. Until now he’s never liked violence, has always found it abhorrent. But now he loves it, needs it, draws it into his body and absorbs it the way one inhales a wonderful breath of crisp fresh air. It feels… natural.

  In what seems like hours but has only been a matter of seconds, Marc has disarmed and overpowered the man. As this realization dawns on him, he stops hitting him and steps back a moment. His hands are bloody, the skin along the knuckles split and bruised. He feels no pain.

  “Shit, I can hear you from here,” the older man says from the kitchen. “Hope that’s not the bitch you’re hitting like that. I ain’t done with her yet don’t bust her all up, asshole. Do the prick instead.”

  The sound of the man’s voice stops him. Marc looks to the kitchen, his bare chest heaving. There is a clear line of sight from here to there, but the man is out of sight, probably sitting at the table.

  He finds the gun and grabs it. It’s much heavier than he anticipated.

  The man on the loveseat moans.

  Movement. Behind him.

  Brooke is awake. Perhaps she has been throughout, he can’t be sure. Still on her side, she’s rolled over and facing him, her eyes wide. She nods slowly but emphatically, once and then again.

  He answers with a nod of his own then turns and raises the gun, pointing it at the open doorway. The other man is coming. He can hear him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asks as he crosses into the room, realizing too late that it’s Marc he’s talking to and not his partner. He freezes just inside the den, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and the combat knife in the other. He’s dressed but his pants are undone.

  Their eyes meet and lock but neither man says a word.

  “What the fuck you think you’re gonna do with that?” he finally asks.

  Marc shoots him.

  The gun kicks and blood sprays from the man’s neck as he falls back and collapses to the floor. He lay bleeding out on their carpet, violently twitching and trying to speak, his voice reduced to a gurgling rumble. The knife is still clutched in one hand, the bloody sandwich in the other.

  The boom from the discharge is deafening in the small room, and Marc’s ears ring to the point where he can no longer hear. He can smell the gun, feel the heat from it and the weight in his hand, but all sound is swallowed into a vacuum as he looks around frantically, focusing first on Brooke, who is now on hands and knees and crawling across the floor as if to get away, and then to the man on the loveseat, who has fought his way back toward something close to consciousness, and is attempting to stand.

  He raises the gun and aims at the man on the loveseat, but doesn’t fire. No, he thinks, they’ll hear. One shot might he ignored, missed or mistaken for something else. Two or more shots will not go unnoticed. They’ll hear. And I don’t want them to hear. Not yet.

  Marc places the gun on the coffee table, a safe enough distance from both men, then pries the knife from the older man’s hand. Looking at the fingers, still curled as if holding the knife, Marc decides to snap a few. He breaks the man’s index finger first, snapping it at the second knuckle. He’s surprised the amount of force it takes, but once he knows the proper amount of pressure to apply he continues on and breaks the rest, pleased by the gasps of pain the man makes each time another bone cracks.

  Once finished, with neither forethought nor hesitation, he turns and strides over to the loveseat and plunges the knife into the other man’s thigh. He looks at it, buried there in the man’s leg, as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. Perhaps it is. Marc yanks the blade free and thrusts it back into him once, twice, and then again.

  It’s so strange. It’s not like movies, where things like this are always loud and histrionic. Instead it is almost sinfully quiet, only the grunting sounds and occasional soft cries from the man breaking the silence.

  And he’s not dead. Neither man is dead. Sometimes, he thinks, people don’t die quickly or easily. Sometimes they die slowly, sloppily.

  The man tries to get away but only manages to roll from the loveseat into a heap on the floor, grabbing at his wounds and moaning between sobbing cries, his face painted with pain and disbelief.

  Marc stands above him. He can feel his heart smashing his chest, his pulse pounding in his ears and temples. The man won’t look at him. He wishes he’d look at him but he won’t. Still, there is something oddly compelling here. And yet, it is callous and detached, his mind, body and soul transformed into a coldblooded reptilian version of the person he’d once believed himself to be.

  “Motherfucker,” the man gasps, “you, you –”

  Marc stabs him again, this time in the back, just below his right shoulder, close to the neck. The man howls and tries to crawl away, so he stabs him again, deeper, and with more force. The blade snags on something – perhaps bone – and bends his wrist. He nearly drops the knife but tightens his grip just in time and pulls it free of the man’s body.

  Marc turns away as a ribbon of blood sprays his face. He realizes then that he’s still nude. Expressionless and with mechanical movements, he finds his pants and pulls them on. Brooke has backed herself into the far corner of the room, knees drawn to her chin and eyes wide as saucers. Marc gathers her clothes, and without a word, places them on the floor next to her. Before he returns to the men, he touches her head, gently strokes her hair and the side of her face. He wants to smile but can’t remember how. “Get dressed,” he tells Brooke, his voice steady and calm. “Then call the police.”

  She stares at him.

  “Brooke. Get dressed. Then call the polic
e.”

  Trembling, she nods and begins to put her clothes on.

  “Go on,” he says once she’s finished. “Use the phone in the kitchen.”

  She makes a move to hug him, to be hugged, but he stops her, holding his hand up like a traffic cop. He cannot feel. He cannot love. Not now.

  “Call the police,” he says again.

  “What… what do I tell them?” she asks helplessly.

  Marc looks at her. He has no idea. How do you explain this?

  “Are they dead?” she asks, voice still laced with shock.

  The older man continues to gurgle and choke, drowning in his own blood, and his partner still tries to crawl away but is getting nowhere.

  “Yes.”

  She nods knowingly, or perhaps he only remembers it that way.

  “Don’t come back in here,” he says.

  She doesn’t.

  Marc stands over the older man, watches him struggle to breathe a while, then squats down closer, placing the blade against the man’s face.“Why did you come here?” he asks dully. “Why us? Who are you?”

  The man attempts to respond but cannot speak in anything but an indecipherable gurgle. A burning pain pulses in Marc’s anus and he clenches shut his eyes in an attempt to ward off the memories of this man on top of him. He grabs the man by the shoulder and rolls him onto his stomach. The man flops over like a ragdoll, the frightening and imposing figure he cast earlier barely a memory. Marc puts the knife beside him then pulls the man’s pants down, tugging at them until they’re around his knees. He retrieves the knife, leans in against the man and puts his mouth to his ear.

  “Shhh,” he whispers, mocking his attacker’s earlier words, “it only hurts the first time.”

  He slams the blade and pulls it free, smashing it up and into him again and again until they’re both slick with his blood and the man gurgles and spasms no more. Marc can feel the warm blood pumping from the man and running along his bare chest, arms and hands. And then a gut-wrenching smell rises, filling the room.

  Marc rolls off him, leaving the knife buried in what remains of the man’s mangled rectum, and turns his attention to his partner.

  He has seen what happened and is trying desperately to get away, but he’s lost too much blood, has too many wounds, and has nowhere to go.

  “Don’t,” he pleads. “D-Don’t!”

  Marc crouches and studies him like a scientist considering a lab rat.

  I can let you go… I don’t have to kill you… if an ambulance gets here fast enough they could save you… you don’t have to die…

  But you will.

  Marc climbs onto the man and pushes him back in a strange slow-motion maneuver. Easily pinning the wounded man to his back, he straddles his chest and places his hands around the man’s throat. He looks into his eyes as he strangles him, never looking away even when the man’s eyes have rolled to white and he bucks and vomits and writhes about in pools and puddles of blood and bile, urine and shit. Something leaves Marc in those empty violent moments, and something deep inside him breaks, shatters to pieces. Something he needs flees, and he knows even then it will never come back. It’s not possible.

  The man is dead. He continues to choke him a while anyway.

  Finally, he climbs off, moves to the loveseat and sits down, back straight like he’s waiting for a bus, bloody hands in his bloody lap.

  Take their eyes, he thinks. I should take their fucking eyes.

  By the time the police arrive he has succeeded.

  * * * *

  Blankets… he remembers they give them blankets. It’s not cold but Brooke cannot stop shaking. He only knows the blanket one of the EMTs wraps around him is scratchy and weighs on his shoulders in a manner that causes him to want to shrug it off. There are a lot of people in their house, not just paramedics and police, but seven or eight men and a woman in suits, speaking quietly or with their hands over their mouths, milling about and taking notes, controlling things, organizing things, asking questions, listening, watching. They never speak directly to him (or Brooke), preferring instead to remain on the periphery. Only one man, an older bald man in khakis and an IZOD pullover who is clearly with them rather than the local police, speaks to them, and although he looks to be in charge he never introduces himself and Marc cannot remember anything he says.

  It seems to happen so fast, this part. Everyone is there, vehicles and people and lights. And then, it’s all gone. They’re gone too, he and Brooke, strapped to gurneys and whisked away in the back of an ambulance. He remembers being only vaguely aware of the EMTs as Brooke reaches across the narrow gulf separating them and places one of her hands in his.

  It is the most profound feeling of love he has ever felt.

  They’re taken to a hospital, but he doesn’t recognize it. Or maybe the narcotics they’ve injected into his veins to stabilize and relax him have confused him. He can’t be sure. He only knows he and Brooke are separated, and he’s taken down a long and empty hallway to a dark room and left there on the gurney. Why haven’t they turned on the lights? he wonders.

  Marc is alone for a very long time, slipping in and out of sleep.

  “Marcus.”

  His eyes open.

  “Marcus.”A voice from the darkness. Male, it sounds disembodied and artificial, like someone speaking through a voice-altering microphone perhaps. “Can you hear me?”

  He tries to speak but manages only a soft choking sound.

  “You and your wife have been through a horrible ordeal, but the details surrounding this crime need not be released to the public. All anyone need know is that you and your wife were beaten and robbed at gunpoint by two escaped convicts, both of whom were ultimately killed when a struggle ensued during your efforts to defend yourself, your wife and your home. You’re a hero, Marcus. It’ll be in all the papers, on the local television stations.”

  “Am I dreaming?” he asks; his throat so dry it hurts to speak.

  “Something similar,” the voice tells him.

  “Am I… alive?”

  “Yes, Marcus, you’re alive.”

  “Brooke…”

  “She’s being seen now. She’s fine.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’ve been taken to a hospital. You’ve sustained some injuries, including a bad concussion, but physically, you’re expected to make a full recovery. The rest... well, time will tell, won’t it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Have you ever been stung by a bee, Marcus?”

  “What?” Head swimming, the darkness moves around him like ink.

  “A bee, Marcus, have you ever been stung by one?”

  He tries to think. “Once… when I… when I was a boy…”

  “There was once a fascinating study conducted involving bee stings. Would you like to hear about it?”

  He searches the darkness for the man but finds nothing, no one.

  “The subjects weren’t told ahead of time that bees were involved,” the voice continues, “so the stinging came as a complete surprise and most subjects wrongly assumed a bee had simply gotten into the room by accident and stung them. Almost every subject reacted more or less the same when stung, regardless of personality or predisposed traits or beliefs. Even the most hardened pacifist among them, once stung, reacted by killing the bee. And many went beyond simply killing the creature. For many, the pain stirred in them something primeval. They swatted the bee, stomped it to dust, swore at it, and with few exceptions, killed it with furious anger. The bee had hurt them unexpectedly, and their response – in their fear and anger – was to not only kill it, but completely annihilate it.”

  A tingling sensation behind Marc’s eyes fans out across his face.

  “That’s what they want, Marcus. That’s what they want to tap into, identify and extract from us. They want to produce a synthetic version that can be utilized at will, turned on and off like a switch.”

  “Who?” he asks, barely conscious now, his eyes closing d
espite his best efforts to keep them open.

  “Just imagine the possibilities. We’re a fascinating species with tremendous intellectual scope, capable of amazing acts of love, kindness, sacrifice. But we also possess the capacity for unthinkable violence and brutality. Luckily for you and your wife, Marcus, resilience in human beings is actually quite remarkable. We’re not equipped with any sort of natural physical armor, save the skull, but even that’s not ideal, in fact the manner in which we’re designed leaves us extremely vulnerable physically. Instead, we have emotional and mental armor. For all our deficiencies and vulnerabilities in those areas as well, it’s where our true armor resides. It’s our saving grace in many ways, our downfall in others. Human beings can endure inconceivable amounts of emotional and mental devastation and often not only survive, but continue to function effectively. Of course there are mental hospitals full of people who never recover, but there are even more moving about in the world that have and continue to every day.”

  Something moves in the darkness… something small that scurries up over his elbow to his forearm, its tiny feet tickling his flesh. He wants to swat it away, wants it off him, but he can’t move, the restraints hold him secure to the gurney, his arms pinned on either side of him.

  “As Yeats wrote, ‘All would be well could we but give us wholly to the dreams.’ So true. Good luck to you, Marcus,” the voice says. “Good luck to you.”

  But in that sad and lonely room, it is not the disembodied voice speaking to him from speakers hidden in the darkness he hears, it is something else…

  And he understands. Even when his mind shreds, consumed by the impossible, his memories and thoughts, dreams and nightmares, fears and joys becoming one, swirling and falling about him like ash, a black, diseased, cancerous snow, he understands.

  Shine…