“You ever wanna shake shit up—I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Jessica.”
“Jess—“
“Jessica.”
“Jessie, you ever feel like that? Like you just want to do something crazy?”
The girl’s hand hovers near her bag.
Miriam darts her own hand out—grabs the girl’s wrist and—
Darkness. Clorox. Thunder boom. Rain hammer. The girl cries out. Something in her hand—something cold, heavy, full of consequence. A hard shove. Someone cries out—wait, it’s her, it’s Jessica, she calls out for her father, “Daddy!” and then the thing in her hand is taken, and for a moment she feels lighter, like a weight’s been lifted, a weight far heavier than anything in her hand, far deeper than what exists on the surface of the skin, and then the darkness lights up and the girl catches a round in the chin that splits her skull and like a bolt cutter severs the spine behind and then—
Miriam gasps.
Lets go.
Steps back.
Tries to suss it out. Tease out truth. It darts, ducks, evades—a firefly fleeing a chasing child with jar in hand. Fuck. Fuck.
“Do you know that woman?” Miriam asks, jerking a thumb over her shoulder toward Gold Earrings. “Do you know any of these women?”
The girl says nothing. Hugs the bag closer. Tries to be stealthy and go for the zipper but Miriam points her own finger-gun at the girl and for some fucking reason, the girl stops, pinched fingers frozen.
“Answer the question.”
“I know the rich bitch.”
The rich bitch.
“How do you know her?”
“She killed my Dad.”
“What?”
“It’s her … thing.” The girl blinks back tears. “Black widow. I think that’s what they call them. She hooks up with men. Poisons them. Robs them. Hits the road.”
Now the girl’s fingers are unfrozen. Zipper back.
Miriam knows what’s coming out.
A gun.
Except it’s not. It’s a manila file folder. The girl thrusts it into Miriam’s hand.
Miriam opens it. Photos of Little Miss Gold Earrings. Scans of her driver’s license—Layla Kenney. Not the name of a rich woman. But maybe the name of a Black Widow. Behind all that, cut-out clips of newspaper obituaries. All men. All middle-aged. All dead from—Miriam finds the phrase fast, heart attacks.
Shit.
Miriam looks over her shoulder.
Gold Earrings—Layla—is looking this way.
And now, coming this way.
Miriam turns back to Jessica.
The teen has a gun. For real, this time. Nickel-shine .38 with a pig-nose barrel.
As if on cue—
Boom.
Thunder gut-punches the sky above.
The sex shop shakes.
The wind keens.
The lights go out.
It’s then that Miriam figures out how Layla Kenney dies.
* * *
One gunshot. Then two. In the bright flash, Miriam sees Jessica’s face frozen in a strobe-moment, eyes wide in fear, mouth twisted in anger, gun up, bang, bang.
But nobody’s there to receive those two hollow-pointed lead presents.
A shriek that rises with the wind but stays even as the wind dies back rises up next to Miriam—
Someone barrels into her. Knocking her to the side. Has to be Layla Kenney.
It’s happening. Happening like in the visions.
Miriam’s head twists around it like a wet towel choking a tight throat—is this fate? Is she playing into it? On which side does she stand?
Movement. Two shadows. One calls out a name—
“Daddy!”
Jessica.
Shit.
Now. Has to be now.
Miriam staggers back to standing.
Fumbles out—hand against the wall—
Finds something. Something heavy and unruly. Like a baseball bat made of loose rubber.
Sees a shadow. There’s the tiniest glint—
A sliver of light on metal.
On shiny nickel.
Miriam swings what she’s got. The weight shifts. Her shoulders wrench.
Her hit connects. Then again. Third time’s a charm.
And then, it really all does become a joke. A cruel joke played by a callous and callow god—
The lights come back on.
Fzzt.
Layla Kenney is dead on the floor. Head at a wrong angle. Gun still in her hand.
Earrings gleaming gold.
Jessica stumbles backward. Face in hands. Suddenly weeping—great gulps of grief. The other two women stand toward the front of the store, just staring, bewildered.
Lugnuts mumbles: “Holy shit.”
Miriam looks down at her hands.
She’s holding a black double-ended dildo.
It falls from her hands with a dead python thud.
* * *
The storm is gone by morning.
Nobody says much until then. Jessica manages to eventually walk over to Miriam—who sits on the corner, understanding now how you can be cold despite it being hot—and to whisper “thank you” in her ear.
Eventually, they all file out into the light of dawn. The orange fingers of the sun reaching up for rheumy bands of black clouds.
Miriam asks Lugnuts, “And you’re sure there’s no cameras in the store?”
“I’m sure as shit.”
“You can tell them what happened. The police. But keep everyone else out of it.”
He stares her up and down.
“I don’t … I don’t know…”
“I beat someone to death with a display-model two-headed dildo.”
“Yeah.” He swallows a hard knot. “Yeah.”
“So, you’re gonna do like I said.”
He nods.
Miriam sees Yellow Slicker heading toward the parking lot. Feet splashing through deep puddles, water the color of chocolate milk. The woman shuffles along. Miriam knows where she’s going. She catches up. Steps in front of the woman.
“I can’t stop you,” Miriam says.
“Oh. Okay.”
“I know what you’re going to do.”
The woman stiffens.
“Your sons are dead. I don’t know how. And you want to end it. Thing is, what you’re going to do, it’s already carved into the rock. Nothing I can say will change your mind. Slashing your tires won’t work. Breaking your kneecaps won’t work. Somehow, fate finds a way. It goes down like it goes down unless I can—“ Here she stops. It’s no use explaining it. No value in telling this woman that to stop her suicide, she’d have to kill someone—someone responsible for the suicide in some way. She suddenly asks: “Do you have them, yet? The pills?”
Almost imperceptibly, the woman shakes her head.
There, then. That’s how she could do it. Could find the someone who sells Mrs. Horsley those pills. Could kill him. Or her. It might save her. For a day. For three.
Maybe longer. Maybe not.
“Do you really want this?” Miriam asks.
“I do.” Two words. Each a hard whisper.
“I don’t know what’s on the other side. But if there’s too much pain here, I guess we can hope there’s less there.” She doesn’t tell her that she understands. That she almost did this herself, once. And that it’s cowardly and shitty just the same.
Instead, she just steps aside.
Mrs. Horsley nods. Heads to the car. A family minivan.
She pulls away. Tires shooshing. Spraying water.
Miriam sees the Haggard Ragged Rag-Hag—Junice—heading toward the road, smoking like the stack of a steamboat.
Miriam runs to catch up.
CHUCK WENDIG is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of such novels as Blackbird, Mockingbird, The Blue Blazes, and Under the Empyrean Sky. He is an alumni of the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab and is the co-author of the Emmy-nominated
digital narrative Collapsus. He lives in Pennsyltucky with wife, son, and two dopey dogs. You can find him on Twitter @ChuckWendig and at his website, terribleminds.com, where he frequently dispenses dubious and very-NSFW advice on writing, publishing, and life in general.
CRIMINAL ELEMENT’S MALFEASANCE OCCASIONAL. Copyright © 2013 by Eric Cline et al.
All rights reserved.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eISBN 9781466852617
First eBook edition: August 2013
The Malfeasance Occasional Page 24