by Hunter Shea
How could murdering another man be easier? I wanted to scream. My hands trembled too much for me to text back.
AO: Trust me.
I couldn’t even trust myself anymore.
Justifiable
Chapter Six
It was kind of hard to enjoy a beautiful Saturday knowing that I was supposed to do something horrible to a total stranger. AO said the man outside the preschool raped his son. So, was I supposed to waltz up and give him the scimitar treatment based on the allegations in a text?
I was cracking up. I did my best to keep my distance from Candy and Katie, saying I had a headache and was nauseous.
“It’s probably the stress,” Candy said, offering me three Tylenol and a glass of water. “Go back to bed and take a nap. I’ll take Katie to North Conway to play mini golf, give you some peace and quiet.” She rubbed my arm, gently kissing the center of my forehead.
The television was on, tuned to CNN. The meteorologist dude looked absolutely giddy over the extreme weather patterns popping up all over the country and other parts of the world. Something about a shifting El Niño current, solar flares, and the same old rant about global warming.
Candy visibly shivered as she turned the TV off. “It’s getting so I don’t want to watch the news at all anymore.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning to my side. I could give a shit about a twister in Colorado at the moment.
As they left the house, my daughter shouted up a hearty goodbye.
My phone was on the bedside table. I lay against my pillows, dreading the sound of an incoming text.
Please, just leave me alone.
There hadn’t been anything on the local news about Marcellus. Now that I gave a shit about. I wondered how long it would be until someone found his rotting body on the porch. I also wondered how many critters were nibbling on him at this moment.
I barely made it to the bathroom, heaving up everything I’d eaten the day before. Searching the medicine cabinet, I found Candy’s scrip for Xanax. She took it occasionally to sleep. She’d never recovered from Katie’s almost yearlong bout of colic when she was born. All of her sleep mechanisms had been permanently damaged.
Taking two of the pills, I returned to the bed and squeezed my eyes shut, thinking of nothing until the pills took effect.
I awoke several hours later to the sound of a revving engine.
Bolting up in bed, I looked at my phone. It was dark and silent.
The big engine roared again.
My head swam a bit when I stood up. That Xanax was powerful stuff. It felt like my body needed another few hours to let it work itself out of my system. Shuffling to the window, the Xanax hangover was swept away in an instant.
The red Mustang purred in my driveway. The muscle car rumbled, smoke tailing from the exhaust.
“You motherfucker.”
I ran down the stairs. This time, I’d catch that AO bastard. I darted to the driveway in my bare feet. The car was running. Just like two nights ago, I tugged the car door open. And just like the other night, there was no one inside.
“Get in,” AO’s feminine voice ordered through the car’s speakers.
“Leave me the hell alone,” I said, taking a step back.
That searing pain ripped through my skull. I think I cried out, staggering into the car. My chest slammed into the edge of the open door, adding to the pain.
Fire. Flames were everywhere, even when I opened my eyes this time. My house was a blazing inferno. So were all the homes on the block. Even the asphalt street was on fire, melting into a black pit of tar.
“No!” I clutched the sides of my head and jumped into the car to avoid the flames. As soon as my ass hit the seat, the pain was gone.
And so were the flames.
Everything had returned back to normal.
“Follow the navigation,” AO said. “Hurry.”
I closed the door and backed out of my driveway, hoping none of my neighbors saw me behind the wheel. I could just see Mrs. Robb next door coming up to Candy and saying, “When did you get the new sports car? Is that your husband’s midlife crisis?”
“Please don’t make me do this,” I begged as I drove. The navigation system took me to the other side of Bridgton. I hadn’t done much exploring in this section yet. This was not the way I had envisioned seeing my adopted town.
As I drove down a road with a few houses in need of repair, AO said, “Stop right here.”
I pulled onto the grass on the side of the road and hit the brakes.
“Take the case and walk around that bend. Look in the second window on the west side of the house.”
“Then what?” I asked, grabbing the scimitar’s case.
AO didn’t respond.
I dropped the case on the backseat and crossed my arms.
The pain and fire came roaring back. It hit me so hard, like the waves in the Atlantic before a storm, that my forehead thumped off the steering wheel.
“Stop! I’ll go!”
As soon as I touched the case, the agony abated.
I got out of the car and started walking. It was the middle of the afternoon. This was hardly the time or place to commit a crime. I knew I was going to get caught. I deserved to go to jail for what I did to Marcellus. I could face that.
But could I survive without Candy and Katie?
The shingles on the tiny, single family home were a diseased gray. I figured they’d been slapped on the house sometime during Johnson’s presidency. One of the windows had a hole in it, stuffed with a dirty rag. The roof was missing more tiles than I could count.
People live in this?
Bridgton was not a hick town by any means, but it did have a handful of what I called redneck pockets. All this house was missing was a ratty, mildew-infused sofa outside and an old clunker on cinder blocks. The house itself looked as if it were being consumed by the trees and wild vegetation that grew around it.
“Second window, west side,” I huffed. I was a city boy. I couldn’t tell west from north, even with a compass. I’d have to do some window peeking until I found whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be looking for.
The tall grass that sprouted alongside the house crackled as I prowled around, peering inside the dirty windows. These people had obviously never heard of Windex.
I saw an empty living room jammed with mismatched furniture, newspapers, empty cans of food, and an old tube TV. I didn’t spot anyone, but I did hear noises coming from inside.
The next window gave me a glimpse of a small dining room. All it had was a table piled high with boxes and stacks of paper. Flower-print wallpaper was coming down in various places. What took my by surprise was the beautiful rosary that hung from the ceiling light fixture. It looked to be made of precious stones, each catching the light from the lone bulb.
I ducked away from the window when I heard a child crying. Circling to the other side of the house, I counted two windows and took a quick look.
What I saw got my molars grinding.
The man from the preschool was in the kitchen. I could see his fat, hairy ass. He wore a Red Sox jersey—Garciaparra—and stained socks.
But that wasn’t what set fire to my core.
The little boy, his son, presumably, stood in front of the man, his head in direct line with the animal’s genitals. I couldn’t see what the boy was doing, but I didn’t need to. I scrunched my eyes shut, willing the image away.
When I opened them, I was taken aback to see the scimitar in my hands. I had somehow removed it from its case without even knowing it.
The boy cried out. I looked back inside to see his father hit him on the side of his head.
“You can cry like a sissy when you’re done,” he grumbled, scratching at his dimpled ass.
The urge to slice him in half boiled within me.
&
nbsp; “No,” I said, gritting my teeth.
Not with the boy around. He couldn’t be witness to it. But I couldn’t stand around waiting for the abuse to end.
I found a brick in the grass. Eyeing an upstairs window, I heaved it as hard as I could. It blasted through the glass.
The man pulled away from the boy, tugging up his sweatpants.
“What was that?” the boy said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Be calm, I thought. At least for another minute.
“Stay right there!” the man yelled at him, dashing out of the room.
I ran to the back door, relieved to find it unlocked. The boy looked at me with resignation, as if strange men coming into the house were a regular occurrence.
And what were these strange men allowed to do with him when they came by?
“Get out of here,” I said to him. He was small for his age, with wide, brown eyes and unruly hair that curled down around his shoulders.
“Daddy said to stay,” he said.
I showed him the scimitar. Fear swept the indifference from his eyes. “I said go!”
He tore out the door without looking back.
Great. He saw my face clear as day.
The man clumsily stomped around the floor above me.
I didn’t care. It felt as if the scimitar was vibrating. Both it and I wanted to put it to good use.
Waiting at the bottom of the stairs, I listened to the man curse and holler out the window, threatening whoever had thrown the brick.
“You can stop your shouting,” I called up the stairs.
The man’s face popped into view as he leaned over the banister. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his teeth were a lovely shade of jaundice.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said warily. I kept the scimitar behind my back.
“The guy who threw the brick through your window,” I said calmly, even though my heart was racing. It felt as if I had a fever brewing. Could a person get physically sick from watching such a heinous act?
“What the fuck you do that for?”
He took the first two steps down. I saw the slight bulge in the crotch of his sweatpants and had to hold myself back.
“To get your attention, you rapist pig,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” He gave me a level look, playing it as cool as he could.
“I saw what you did.”
“Oh yeah, what do you think you saw?”
“Not just a child, your own son.” It was hard keeping my voice even. “You’re worse than a rutting pig, mister.”
For the first time, I noticed the bat in his hand.
“You broke into my house. I have every right to kill you. The law’s on my side,” he said with a lopsided grin. “I could take you out right now and I’ll get a fucking medal for defending myself and my property.”
“I’m not a little boy you can scare. You want to kill me? Be my guest.”
He gave a short laugh. “You’re one dumb fuck.”
Raising the bat over his head, he let out a phlegmy roar, charging down the stairs.
He swung the bat downward, hoping to crush my skull. The scimitar practically sang as it met the bat halfway through its arc, carving through the wood. The barrel clipped the man’s shoulder before it fell to the floor.
“What the fuck?” he said, wide eyes staring at the severed bat.
“You need to expand your vocabulary,” I said, ramming the handle of the scimitar into his considerable gut. The air whooshed out of him, along with a good deal of blood. He collapsed to the floor.
“No, no, please,” he said.
I swung the scimitar, slicing the man’s sweatpants open with the precision of a surgeon, exposing piss-stained tighty-whities.
“The cliché would be to cut off your cock and balls,” I said.
He pushed himself along the floor with his heels, trembling hands held out in front of him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“Yes…you did,” I said. “If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
I flicked the scimitar and several of his fingers bounced off the floor. Blood coated his shirt and face.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. I’m sick. I can’t help myself. My father did it to me. Please, just stop and I’ll turn myself in.” The disgusting turd wept and trembled. Tears ran down his grimy face as copiously as the blood that seeped from the open stumps where his fingers once resided.
I let the scimitar fall to my side.
“Get up,” I said. “And start walking.”
Pressing his good hand to the hole in his gut, he managed to get to his feet and headed for the front door.
“No, out back,” I said.
He sobbed, “Why out back? Do you have a car parked there? I’ll go with you to the police. But you gotta take care of my son.”
As he stumbled outside, I said, “Your son would be better off alone in the woods in the dead of winter than with you.”
“Wait, where’s your car?”
With one quick swipe, I forged a horizontal crack in his ass. He fell to his knees.
The rage took full control. Before the man could drop another F bomb, I hacked away at him, pitting flesh and bone, exposing muscle and organs to the sun’s afternoon rays.
When he started to scream, I sliced off his jaw. My brain burning, I brought the scimitar down on his collapsed body again and again, using the blade to douse the fire within me.
After God knows how long, I staggered back, mesmerized by the red mass of undistinguishable viscera steaming in the grass. There was no way to know the pile of gore had ever even been human. It looked like someone had dumped a bucket of chum in the yard.
All of my pent up anger bled away. I was dizzy, shaky.
When the boy popped out from behind a tree, seeing what I’d done, I wanted to throw up.
Holding it together, I said, “Do you have any family nearby?”
His little head nodded. “My Aunt Mary lives over there.” He pointed into the trees.
“You should go to her,” I said, close to passing out.
He turned tail and ran as fast as a chipmunk.
I puked several times getting to my car, laying the blood-soaked scimitar back into its case.
As I drove home, I kept thinking, The boy knows I killed his father. He’ll tell the police. I puked up enough DNA for even a blind cop to find. I’ll get the death penalty for murdering a child abusing scum.
For the first time since our unholy union, AO remained silent during the drive.
Chapter Seven
“Maybe I should take you to the doctor,” Candy said, shaking down the thermometer.
I lay in bed, my head propped up by three pillows. My wife had stripped the comforter away as soon as she took my temperature.
“I don’t feel bad enough to go crying to the doctor,” I lied. The truth was, ever since I returned from mincing the child molester, I was racked with a headache, stomach cramps, and felt as weak as a newborn hamster. I’d parked that damned Mustang around the corner from my house and barely made it to my bed. Candy came home, saw the state I was in, and immediately went into nurse mode.
“Your fever is just over 103. If it goes any higher, I’m taking you no matter what you say. Anything over 104 can be dangerous, honey.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. My throat felt as if I had chugged a glass filled with tiny needles. “You gave me some Tylenol and a washcloth, now all I need is a nap.”
Deep inside, a part of me was screaming. How could I act so relatively normal in the face of what I’d done? I wanted to confess to Candy, but the words wouldn’t come. Every time I wanted to even hint at the hideous acts I’d committed, the room would spin. In my silence, I kept reminding myself of the nature of the two men I h
ad removed from the population. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. Culling the herd wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as wastes of life were the ones getting culled.
She washed my face with the cool, wet cloth.
“I’m keeping a close eye on you,” she said. “I just hope it’s not stress that weakened your immune system. Even when Katie’s not sick, she’s still a carrier from being around all those little snot noses in school.”
Candy smiled and I so wanted to smile with her. The best I could do was pat her hand.
Katie must have heard her name, because she popped into the bedroom. “Hey, Daddy, you wanna see what I won at golf?”
She was carrying a business card. I did my best not to look like a terminal, murdering monster.
Taking the card, I said, “Wow, a free game. You really got a hole-in-one on the eighteenth hole?”
“Uh-huh.”
I looked at Candy. She said, “She did it all by herself. I think we have a little Michelle Wie on our hands. Now, let’s give Daddy some time to rest.”
“Are you sick?” Katie asked.
“Just a little bit,” I replied. Her tiny fingers caressed my cheek.
“I’ll kiss you and make it allll better.” Her lips touched my forehead.
“Thanks, baby. That’s exactly what I needed.”
Candy picked Katie up and said, “I’ll be back to check on you later.” She turned the TV on and lowered the sound. The moment they left the room, I was pulled, as if by some outside force, into a deep, troubled sleep.
* * * * *
When I awoke, it was dark outside. I couldn’t recall any of my dreams, but I was filled with an oppressive foreboding.
“The sleep of the guilty,” I mumbled, sitting up.
On the plus side, my head and stomach felt fine. The sheets were damp with my sweat. Physically, I felt good. I must have burned off whatever infection was trying to take hold.
Was that what this was—a killing virus? Take two pills and just sweat it out. Toss those soaking sheets, and AO, into the washing machine and carry on. It’s not my fault. The virus made me do it.