Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  He held it in his hand, the sharp point pressing against the calloused flesh of his thumb, the pain bringing his intent into sharp focus, then slipped it into the envelope.

  He wrote “John Caruso” on the front of the envelope and put it in the zippered inside pocket of his coat.

  He went back to the couch and sat down; felt the weight of the gun in his pocket; thought of Sara in Aidan’s bedroom, drugged and immobile.

  “Shoot her dead.”

  “Shoot yourself.”

  He shut his eyes tightly to block the voices. After a few seconds of silence he took the gun from his pocket and set it on the table, next to the bong, which had half an inch of cloudy water at the bottom. He picked it up, found it still loaded. There had been times in the past when the weed had silenced the voices and calmed his nerves. He needed to be calm now.

  He flicked the lighter he had left on the table the night before. The flame vibrated from the shakiness of his hand as he put it to the pot. The embers glowed as he put the bong to his mouth and sucked in, relishing the taste and feel of the harsh, sweet smoke streaming through his throat and into his lungs.

  He put his legs up on the couch and leaned back, his eyelids fluttering shut as exhaustion from the long night and day pulled him into a daze. There was a vague tingling underneath the skin of his face, a feeling of weightlessness as he imagined that he was gazing down at his own body, lying still and composed.

  And then the flames flared through the open door of the stove, momentarily brightening the light of the room.

  “Kier…an.”

  He opened his eyes. Aidan was standing near the doorway that led to the original part of the house. He looked as he had at five years old, the day after his birthday. Kieran knew it by the sight of his brother’s light blue flannel pajamas, and his high, childish voice.

  “Help me.”

  The sound of racing car engines filled the room—a roar loud enough to hurt his ears as images of stock cars filled the screen of the television.

  He became aware of another presence. He tried to move—to lift his head toward the sight at the edge of his vision—but was immobilized until the figure came into view; at first a familiar, bulky shadow, until the light from the fire fell on her face.

  It was Nurlene, in the flesh-colored bra and the black jeans that she had yanked on as she had stumbled out of bed, cursing at being awakened at an early hour by the sound of the television that Aidan had turned up to ear-splitting volume and forgotten.

  He watched helplessly as the dream image of Aidan shrank back, his eyes wide and terrified as she approached—

  And slapped him.

  Aidan’s tiny knees buckled. Kieran heard the ringing in his brother’s ears as if it was his own, and had a momentary vision through Aidan’s eyes, looking up at her, her mouth spitting saliva through an angry rant, her words lost in the roar from the television.

  And then he watched as she grabbed the back of Aidan’s pajama top and carried him, wriggling and screaming, toward the closet in the front room of the trailer. He heard the thump of Aidan’s body hitting the inside closet wall. And then he saw a teenaged vision of himself standing in the front room, next to a table he had started working on in shop class the day before, his open toolbox on the floor.

  He turned back to look at Nurlene as she kicked Aidan in his stomach.

  She’s going to kill him, he thought.

  Right here; right now.

  The rest unfolded in a wavy procession of images as he saw himself moving as if he was underwater, acting on sudden impulse but swimming against the current as he grabbed the claw hammer from the toolbox, his footsteps lost in the roar of the television as he advanced, holding the hammer with two hands as he came up behind her.

  His voice was a breathless scream as he brought it down, claw-first, against the back of her skull.

  He heard a wet thump and a grunt from her mouth as blood flew up in a spray against the dirty white wall, and watched as she dropped to her knees and then fell face-down on the floor. Her hands and fingers scrabbled outward from an involuntary twitching of nerves before a last, faint gurgle came from her throat.

  Fully immersed in the recollection now, he watched himself from a distance, setting the hammer down and picking Aidan up and carefully turning his head away from Nurlene’s still body. Blood dripped from Aidan’s nose and onto his shoulder as he took him from the closet to his bedroom and laid him down on the bed. In his memory he whispered calming words into Aidan’s ear but he didn’t know now or then if Aidan had heard him.

  He knew she was dead when he came back in the room and prodded her shoulder with his foot. She was completely still, a massive, unmoving pile of flesh.

  He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and felt a suffocating pressure on his lungs.

  The tremors came next, radiating through his entire body as he stepped forward and grabbed the back of the couch to steady himself and looked around the room—at the blood on the wall and the pool of it beside her head—as all of the colors faded into shades of pale blues and grays.

  He thought of the deputies coming to the house, arresting him and sending him away. And then he thought of Aidan, abandoned and alone. A terror that quickly cleared his head and enabled him to see the only way out.

  He made the 911 call two hours later. By then the room where Nurlene had died had been scrubbed clean and her body had been moved outside the side door, the back of her head placed against the edge of the concrete landing and her body sprawled face-up on the icy steps below.

  John Caruso had been the first deputy to arrive. But Caruso had been to the house countless times before, taking his reports on the injuries reported by the school nurses and the social workers. Saying nothing about the impending death of his own son even though it was known to everyone on the mountain, yet conveying, with every interaction with Nurlene, a simmering rage over the abuse he and Aidan had suffered.

  After pretending to believe the story about the fall, Caruso had sat with him during the questioning by a detective and yet another social worker, nodding as he repeated the story, word for word, again.

  Weeks later, with help from Caruso, he was under the care of a psychiatrist and the spell of the medications that brought him balance against the two selves battling for control of his mind. The killer who caved in Nurlene’s skull. And the savior of his little brother’s life.

  Aidan.

  Gone now.

  Broken neck dead and cold.

  He opened his eyes, and slowly sat up, felt the weight of the gun in his pocket.

  With me.

  He looked around the room, feeling Nurlene’s presence without seeing her there; understanding then what the voices had been telling him ever since he dropped to his knees and held Aidan’s body in his arms.

  “You protected him in life.”

  “Protect him in death.”

  He picked up the gun and thought of how terrified Sara would be when she saw it. Not that it mattered. It was going to happen quickly. A retribution that would take place at the side of Rolling Road, at the exact spot where her father had run Aidan down.

  Sara heard the creak of the floorboard outside Aidan’s room and slowly sat up. Pain speared her temples as images ran like rapid snapshots through her mind: Kieran gripping the wheel of his truck. The snowy woods rushing by. The blood on Kieran’s black leather coat.

  “Aidan’s blood.”

  Kieran’s voice came from the memory of him standing over her, forcing her to acknowledge what her father had done.

  And then she heard the sound of the deadbolt, flicking open.

  Kieran stood in the doorway, still wearing the bloody coat. He had one hand in his pocket, and she could tell by the crook in his arm that he was holding something in it.

  “Kieran…” Her voice was weak. “What are you doing?
”

  He said nothing. The stubble on his face was darker and thicker. She tried to remember how he had looked at her in the past, the flicker of warmth in his eyes, the magnetism that had always seemed to connect them.

  The feeling was gone now.

  “You drugged me, locked me in here.” The defiance in her own voice surprised her. “Why?”

  “You know why,” he said.

  “Because of something my father did? Which was an accident and something I had nothing to do with?”

  “Lie down,” he said.

  “No.”

  Another step and he was standing over her.

  She glanced past him. He had left the door open. She tried to imagine herself punching him between the legs, forcing him to double over in pain, giving her time to leap from the bed and rush through the front of the house and outside—

  Impossible.

  She looked up and did her best to bring the defiance back.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Please just tell me what you want!”

  His grip tightened as he pushed her down on the bed. She surprised both of them with a hard kick that landed against his side. He grunted faintly from the blow and suddenly thrust one arm under her back and flipped her over. She tasted dust from the bedcover as she gasped for breath, and felt her hands being yanked together and bound. She recalled the stories about her mother and the murdered women on his computer.

  He killed them.

  And he’s going to kill you.

  He grabbed her shoulder again and tossed her off the bed as if she weighed nothing. She landed painfully on her knees. The room swayed around her as he grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her to her feet. Then before she could react he wrapped his forearm around the front of her neck and prodded her forward.

  He walked her into the front room and gave her a hard push that knocked her sideways over the arm of the couch. Both of the windows in the room were covered by blinds and the only light came from a lamp on the desk and from a low glow from the woodstove.

  He left her there and went over to the desk and picked up an envelope. He held it in his hands and went still, as if he was suddenly lost in thought.

  She looked around the room, searching for a way out. A memory came back to her; a glimmer of hope.

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  Kieran said nothing. He looked as if he hadn’t even heard her.

  “Kieran—please?” She practically shouted.

  “Then go. You know where it is.”

  She awkwardly stood up, her balance off-kilter with her hands behind her back. “I can’t, like this.”

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then went into the kitchen and opened one of the upper cabinets and pulled out a metal box and set it on the counter. He pulled his keys from his pocket and inserted one into the lock. She remembered him telling her that Aidan had gone through a phase of fascination with sharp objects, an obsession that Kieran believed he had grown out of but only after he had come up with a way to keep the kitchen knives out of his reach.

  He pulled a long, narrow knife from the box and held it at his side as he came back toward her. She shut her eyes as she felt his grip on her wrists and the cutting of the duct tape that he had used to bind them.

  She let her hands drop to her sides, realizing only then that her fingers had begun to grow numb. She felt him watching her as she headed toward the bathroom in the original trailer section of the house, and quickly turned around and pushed it shut.

  The plastic shower curtain was closed. She pinched the bottom corner and gently pulled it aside. The dismantled shower head she had seen the night before was still there, surrounded by tools on the shower floor. She started to reach for them but stopped at the creak in the floor on the other side of the door.

  He’s waiting, she thought. Listening.

  She lowered the seat of the toilet so it made a noise that would be audible outside the door, slid her skirt and underwear down and sat. For a long moment she thought it would be impossible to pee but finally she managed a faint trickle that she expected he would hear.

  She heard another creak of a floorboard just before she flushed, the sound of Kieran walking away. She moved quickly to take advantage of the soft roar of water refilling the toilet and stepped over to the dismantled shower nozzle. There was a Phillips head screwdriver lying on the floor. The shaft was short—no more than five inches—and the molded plastic handle fit easily in her hand, the tool small enough to have been forgotten in Kieran’s efforts to keep dangerous items out of Aidan’s reach.

  She slipped it into the side pocket of her skirt then quickly turned back to the sink. She stared for several seconds at her reflection in the mirror. Her skin was completely drained of color and her pupils were dilated. She felt the shape of the screwdriver through the fabric of her skirt and tried to imagine herself wielding it as a weapon, stabbing him.

  It was a horrifying thought. She leaned forward and remembered looking into the same mirror the night before. Dabbing gloss onto her lips, anticipating the touch of Kieran’s hands—

  Feeling love.

  The toilet stopped filling. The room was silent.

  She turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door, still expecting him to be standing there. But he was back in the main room, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

  She glanced toward the front door, thought briefly of trying to run, but knew she wouldn’t get far. Instead she reached into the pocket of her skirt and slowly walked toward him. She stared at the back of his leather coat; tried to imagine how far the short metal shaft of the tool would penetrate if she stabbed him, and watched as he brought his hands up and covered his ears and started rocking, forward and backward, a low hum coming from the base of his throat, as if he was in some kind of trance.

  She took one more step, heard him whisper “No…no!”

  And knew that what she had seen hours before was happening again; knew that he was hearing things.

  The humming sound in his voice became louder, and the forward and backward motion stopped. He lowered his head and began to cry.

  She felt a sudden swelling at the back of her throat, and thought of the wracking sobs that had overtaken her so often after her mother’s death.

  She took a step forward, her knees still weak. She took her hand out of her pocket, and gently placed it on his shoulder.

  He tensed, then and stood up and turned around to face her. There were tears running down his cheeks.

  He covered his face with his hands. She felt a sudden, powerful urge to hold him in her arms. She resisted, but reached up and lightly covered his hands with her own.

  The touch of his skin sent a tingling sensation down her arms.

  “I loved Aidan too,” she said.

  He slowly drew his hands away from his face. And then suddenly he was looking at her the way he always had. In the tutoring room as she worked with his brother. Behind the closed door of his office as she told him things she could tell no one else. In this same room the night before, with Aidan at her side.

  In that moment he became the Kieran she knew.

  There are two parts of him.

  She knew it for certain as she saw the pain in his eyes.

  One to love, and one to fear.

  “You have to get some help.”

  He went completely still. She heard a faint crackling sound in the stove, and then saw a flash of flame, as if a piece of wood had reignited.

  Kieran’s eyes widened slightly, and she saw the motion of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, and then with a spasmodic jerk of his head as he stared into the fire. His mouth started moving, soundlessly, and his eyes opened wider, as if he had just seen something horrifying.

  “Kieran—” She touched
his forearm.

  He jerked it back and covered his ears with his hands.

  She tightened her hold, staring at the beads of perspiration on his forehead.

  He shook his head back and forth, whispering, and then shouting “No no NO!”

  “Kieran—”

  He slapped the side of her face, sending an explosion of light in front of her eyes as she went down over the arm of the sofa. He grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her back up and spun her around, his left arm flat against her stomach, his right coming around into a chokehold on her neck. Panic shot through her as the crook of his arm tightened against the soft spot below her windpipe. Her right hand brushed against the handle of the screwdriver but she had no chance to reach for it as Kieran shifted his weight and tightened his grip, applying more pressure to the side of her neck, locking her in a vise.

  She shook violently in his arms, and managed to punch her elbow into his stomach. She heard a grunt and felt a rush of air on the back of her neck and broke away as he doubled over. She spun around and rushed toward the door—almost making it before he grabbed her around the waist and threw her back down.

  She saw the edge of the table an instant before it struck her, dead-center at her forehead. She felt a sharp, hot pain. And then she saw nothing but the darkness, swallowing her whole.

  Stephen made his way along the mountain road one step at a time, balancing precariously on the icy surface of the pavement as the pain pulsed through his ribs. The muscles of his face felt frozen, immobilized by the snow he had pressed against his nose to slow the bleeding. His mind fixated on the certainty that he would soon see the headlights of a car; that he would stand in the middle of the road to stop it and get the driver to call 911 while taking him back to O’Shea’s house. Sara would be there, waiting for him. He would admit everything to her and admit it all again when the police arrived.

  And then it would be over. He would be charged with a hit and run death. There would be headlines. And shame, he thought, for Sara and Kenneth too.