by Adam Cesare
I’m in a cemetery, standing on a hilltop looking down at an open grave. I recognize the coffin ‘cause I picked it out, but I ain’t seen it in 36 years. Claudia’s in there. David’s standing beside me, and I look down at him. Shit, he couldn’t have been any more than four years old here, and he’s asking me why mom had to be taken away from us.
I remember this day. How hard I fought to keep my anger buried for David’s sake. I couldn’t help but cry, but that’s normal. And he did too. Every time I looked at him, I saw the hurt confusion in his face. Innocence lost. And that enraged me. I was already making plans to hunt her killers by the time the first shovel of dirt had been thrown.
Except that memory’s wrong. Because I’m looking down at that coffin again now, and it ain’t a memory. I’m there. And there’s nothing inside me. No anger, no hatred. Not even grief. David’s hand isn’t in mine. Instead he’s beside me, staring down at the coffin like he’s asleep. He still asks me why mom had to be taken from us, but my only answer this time is a shrug, and then an addendum of “everyone dies sooner or later.”
Another flash and I’m in Times Square now. I know it’s real ‘cause I can smell stone pizza from the corner joint. I look up and the sun’s leering out from behind one of the skyscrapers. I’m shuffling shoulder-to-shoulder with a hundred other people on the sidewalk. Wearing the same jumpsuit I always wear to work. Only unlike every other morning, everyone shuffles in silence. I don’t care that I’m going to work. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I... just... don’t... care...
I catch my wobbly reflection in a window as I pass. My eyes are sunken, stubbed out. I turn to look at the faces around me, and see that same indifference everywhere, and I realize now what Casey’s done. Diamond Head won’t take evil out of this world, so it’s giving it a lobotomy instead.
That’s Casey’s fuckin’ peace.
“Yes,” she says. I’m back on the floor of the burning office, and I pick myself up. “It’s still a world without fear. Without conflict.”
“That’s not living,” I say.
“If it’s the only way...”
I see those diamond eyes again. Two of them replace hers, and the third lifts out from a flap of skin at the center of her forehead. In this moment I know what they want.
They’re curious to know what I wish for.
“I wish to continue fighting,” I say and raise the gun. The diamond eyes are wide with interest. The creature makes the girl’s mouth grow into a smile.
I realize now she’s more dangerous than anyone I ever killed. Coming down here, willing to unleash hell in the name of peace. Part of me wants to tell her I’m sorry about this, but I’m not. It’s been too late for her for a long time.
I fire off a shot and her eye pops like a grape. The diamond shatters. Her head jerks back. Her body drops. The fire surges forward and swallows her like a striking snake that had been waiting for the opportunity. Her already burnt body slips into the wave of hungry flames and I can no longer see it.
“The world is more interesting with the evil you put into it.” Casey’s voice sounds as if it’s everywhere at once. Her laugher trails off and leaves me alone with the cracking fire.
The door behind me is open now. Maybe it always was. I make my way back the way I came, hurrying downstairs, through the halls, into the kitchen, the basement and, finally, the backyard. Keen flames burst through every window on the top floor, reaching toward the sky while raining glass down on earth.
I hurry for my truck while the growing sound of sirens threatens my anonymity. I can see the yellow interior glow of the cab from here. The driver’s door is open now when it hadn’t been before.
A young kid rummages through it. He’s got all of my spare ammo in his shirt, pulled away from his chest to make an accommodating pocket.
“Out,” I say and draw on him. He’s not any older than thirteen, but I can’t worry about that.
“I knew you were real,” he says. “I fucking knew The Executioner was out here. Saw the fire, saw this truck...I just knew.”
“I’m gonna give you a chance to walk away.”
I hear my wish reflected in my mind.
You wanted to keep fighting. Fight.
The kid lets go of his shirt and the shotgun shells spill into the street. I can tell by his gait that he’s got a piece tucked into the small of his back. His arm is stretched back there like I won’t notice.
“Don’t try me,” I say.
But he does.
So I fight.
Appraisal
Eyelids crack. Bright white spills in. Blue eyes flutter.
This isn’t home. Not her five bedrooms, four baths in Beverly Hills. Or the sleepy Melbourne beach house. And it’s definitely not her suite in the South of France.
This is… someplace else.
Her vision pulls into focus now. The ceiling is clinical like a hospital room, antiseptic but lacking assurances of aid. She lifts a limp arm and sees track marks that are like bug bites. A chill takes her and turns her ordinarily smooth flesh into riled bumps. She shivers. Nipples stiffen in the frigid air. She’s nude but doesn’t know why. Her heart pounds with panicked rhythm.
The slab on which she lays is horizontal—a plastic monolith placed symmetrically at the center of an otherwise barren room. The white ceiling bleeds into white walls, which bleed into white floors. Impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. Eternity in every direction.
It’s quiet, too. Not even an air conditioner’s hum on this sweltering Los Angeles evening.
Alice Benton tries kicking her legs off the table, and they move with sluggish delay. With a grunt, she struggles into a sitting position, and they drop over the side. Her calves dangle like two cuts of butcher’s meat.
“You’re awake,” a crackling voice cuts the silence. “I’m so glad.”
Alice leaps startled from the table but her atrophied knees buckle and she topples to the floor, collapsing on marble that’s so cold it stings.
“Careful! Careful,” the man says. “Do not move so suddenly, Ms. Benton. You are in need of rest.”
Alice covers her modesty with a cross of her arms. Her breaths are hyperactive. She wants to scream out, but there’s no voice. It’s as if her mouth has never spoken a single word. Every syllable is elusive, even the slurred yayayayaaaaa sound that comes naturally to babies. She tries to push something, anything, past her lips, but her throat just sounds like a rusty hinge opening in perpetuity.
“I know you’re confused. Someone is on their way to help.”
I don’t have to put up with this, she thinks, too indignant to allow terror to overwhelm. I am a star. But her mind is quick to correct itself. No, you were one.
True, things were not as they once had been. But Alice Benton was still a movie star. Yes, it had been years since one of her pictures played multiplexes, and longer than that since something with her name above the credits convinced anyone to stand in line for tickets. But that was about to change. Hopefully.
And if not, there was always Europe. They never really stopped loving her there. Where age wasn’t taboo. Where a woman didn’t become a second-class citizen at 40.
40. That was nearly a decade ago now, and what a good birthday it had been, in hindsight. Ten years ago she had assumed the worst of Hollywood’s war on aging was over. But this business got worse with every wrinkle.
She’d held onto that slippery A-list wrung with more tenacity than her peers, but you don’t stop Hollywood from putting its females on the path to irrelevance. You only slow the march.
Alice throws her eyes around the room and realizes there’s no way out. Never the claustrophobic type, these walls might as well be closing in on her.
How did I get here?
The night is a mush memory. Glimpses here and there, but it’s like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of shattered glass. She remembers a flash of blinding light. A rumble of thunder. The smell of gasoline rising over spindly smoke.
But it can’t be that. Right? She shivers again and realizes that, no, she’s far too cold to be dead.
So why can’t she remember? This isn’t the result of another bender. Can’t be. Coke’s been off the table for years, and alcohol…well, she only drank socially.
It’s definitely not some Mojave New Age rehab center she doesn’t remember checking into, either. What then?
Anger continues to overthrow this uncertainty. She’s worth $130 million fucking dollars, and won’t be treated this way. Defiance prompts her to stand. Lethargy tumbles off her muscles, and to walk means pressing forward in a wobbly shamble. She throws her stiff elbow at the wall. Presses her hands to its cold metal in search of the hidden lever or switch that she knows has to be here.
“Ms. Benton.” The voice again. “You’re eager to leave, and who can blame you? But my assistant is on her way to meet you now and…well, before all that I just have to ask… can I call you Alice?”
This question is so obtuse it stops her movement dead. She’s at his mercy. He knows this. Knows what she wants doesn’t matter. The false politeness of it reminds her of the old men who run this town. They used to leer at her like meat: Everything from hands on her ass to sex scenes hastily scribbled into shooting scripts so she’d show her tits. “You don’t mind, right?” They’d ask. And she’d answer “no” knowing full well there was no choice. Not really.
That’s how it was, and it’s kind of amazing that Alice had managed to hold onto any stardom at all. She wanted to believe that pure talent was to thank. Back-to-back Oscars proved she was more than Rex Neill’s trophy wife, although it was their divorce that bathed her in a hero’s light where the public was concerned.
Rex’s penchant for high-class models and higher-class drugs was her cross to bear. Her attempt to get him into counseling was seen instead as a shot across the bow, and divorce papers were served with the speed of reflex, thrust into her hands after racquetball practice where her make-up had sweated off, her hair was a ratted mess, and one knee was scraped and bleeding.
The paparazzi had been there to capture that image, and the press loved it so much that it went on to grace the cover of every tabloid less than 12 hours later.
Divorce conditions were terrible, but you couldn’t fight a legal machine supplemented by decades of box office dynamite. Only thing she managed to keep, and just barely, was contact with Isabella. The girl wasn’t hers by birth, and yet Alice relished the role of mother far more than any other part.
Seeing Isabella once a month was charity, and if she contested it, fought for more time, then Rex’s legal team would air her dirty laundry: an ongoing affair with her trainer—a young Aussie less than half her age with a weakness for older women and aspirations of his own stardom.
Alice had never considered this indiscretion to be in poor judgment. It was pleasure and passion when she otherwise had none. Rex had dangled it over her as collateral, and she didn’t contest because, well, she wanted to be in Isabella’s life.
Isabella...
Right. The realization strikes so fast she gasps. She’d been on her way to see Isabella when the rising beam of headlights flooded the cab of her Audi Q7 and sent her swerving.
But that’s all she’s got. Her thoughts remain cloudy no matter how hard she focuses. Confusion that happens in tandem with weak muscles. Gotta be drugs, right? She tries screaming out again, slightly more terrified as she runs fingers over the bumps on her arm. Whatever they’ve injected her with keeps her words forever elusive.
Part of the wall in front of her pushes out with a sudden mechanized hum. It lifts toward the ceiling, leaving a large dark recess behind.
“Ms. Benton.” A woman enters wearing a tight black uniform. A paper gown is tucked beneath her arm. “I’m sorry for the delay, but these were misplaced.” She goes to the table and places it while introducing herself as Kathleen. She isn’t shy about a head-to-toe glance. Then a smile.
Alice doesn’t bother reaching for the frock. The opening is too tempting to ignore. She hustles toward it but her speed is as reluctant as her speech. This feels like one of those dreams where you feel like you’re running through quicksand. The wall slams shut before she even gets close.
The taunt of escape is more than enough. With one last, desperate flex of her lymphoid, she pushes the words up and through her larynx.
“let... Me... GO!”
“Alice, please.” Kathleen snatches the gown off the table and holds it out. It unfurls and dangles in her fist like a towel. “Cover yourself. That’s the first step.”
Her shaking hand snatches it and slides it over her head. It falls down her body, dropping only to her thighs. It barely takes the chill away.
Kathleen walks past. “Trapped in this little space for as long as you have been… it’s enough to make anyone mental.” She reaches into her skirt pocket, takes out a thin blue card, and pushes it against an unseen sensor, leaving it until an accepting beep grants them exit.
Alice starts to ask how long it’s been but the room beyond, dark as it is, distracts from her interrogation. A lightning crash from outside seems to ignite the space, revealing a corridor. Alice trudges toward the windows and pushes her nose to the pane. Rain sluices against it, but the pitch dark beyond is impenetrable. She sees only her blue eyes reflecting back.
Kathleen’s hand brushes against her shoulder. “Follow me this way, Ms. Benton,” she says and points down the hall. Electric wall sconces click on in succession, lighting their path forward. A dozen doors on the left, capped at the far end by a large set of doubles.
She walks off, leaving Alice with no choice but to follow. There’s always the other direction, but an over-the-shoulder glance promises only deep shadows and nothing to light the way through them.
Their first stop is another door on the left. Kathleen swipes her card and they step into a closet-sized space that looks like a doctor’s examination room.
“Now,” Kathleen says as she holds up a silver stick with a thin beam of light glowing from the top. “I need you to point your eyes here.” Alice does, but only after the urging of Kathleen’s disarming smile. “Good, now hop up on the table and let me check your reflexes.”
“Where am I?” Alice says while doing as she’s asked.
“I’m Doctor Kathleen Alland. Private physician to Mr. Sandoval. Your doctor, Dr. Rovin, was notified that you’re awake and is on his way here.” She completes a series of basic checks and then points to a folded dress on the counter. “I will wait outside while you change into that,” she says.
“You know, I feel a little weird knowing that Mr… Sandoval has been spying on me in the raw…”
“Oh no,” Kathleen says. That disarming smile again. “He hasn’t seen you at all. When you awoke, table sensors notified him you were awake. He sent me to retrieve you. I’m the only one who’s seen you. Now go on, and I’ll be waiting out here.”
Alice slips into the black dress. It’s lithe, comfortable, and fits her curves surprisingly well. Then she rejoins Kathleen in the hall. The double doors launch upward with a futuristic swish as they disappear into the ceiling jamb to reveal the main part of the house. A massive entrance foyer. Old portraits adorn the wall, suited men with old money, holding cigars and oversized brandy glasses. A thin red carpet runs all the way up the central staircase, and there are doors everywhere.
Lots and lots of doors.
“This way.” Kathleen waves her arm and flashes her card again. Holds it in place for the beep. The space beyond is a sprawling dining room that’s already occupied. Silhouette heads crane to watch her entrance, gasping in a series of oohs and ahhs.
An obese man sits at the head. He slaps his hands together with delight before standing. He might’ve said “splendid,” but it was lost beneath the echoed clop of Kathleen’s heels. The tuxedo he’s wearing looks tight enough to be a t-shirt gimmick.
“Alice Benton.” He speaks her name with triumph. “Welcome to dinner. Where you,
my dear, are the guest of honor.” It’s the intercom voice.
“There’s a spot reserved for you right here,” Kathleen says and takes her to the table’s opposite end. She slides the chair across the marble and lets Alice take a seat before an onslaught of delicious smells that set her stomach rumbling. She hasn’t realized how gnawing her hunger is, but it’s the only thing she can think of now.
Faces watch with glued attention from either side of the table. Fixed grins stretched so tight she feels like she’s sitting in front of life-sized plastic dolls.
“I am not usually so inexact, Alice, so I feel strange about this,” the host says. “But I was forced to guess at your dietary preferences from interviews you gave.”
Alice tugs at her dress collar, suddenly bothered by the heat, while her eyes bounce from one fixated gaze to the next. Everyone here is a stranger to her.
“So,” the host begins with bursting excitement. A thunder crack makes half the table jump and his brow furrows over nature’s unwelcome interruption. “I had my staff prepare everything that I think you’ll like.”
Kathleen disappears into the shadows, and another woman, this one in server’s garb, appears out of a sliding door behind the host. Two men follow pushing carts of warm and plated food.
“For our starter,” the host says, “a honey pumpkin salad with sage croutons, and slow roasted tomatoes on the side, drizzled in olive oil.”
Alice is served first and she stares at the dish with suspicion. Identical portions are given to each guest, but all eyes remain locked as they court her permission to begin. She refuses to take a bite with a firm shake of her head.
“Please,” the host says and gestures to the food. “You must be starved.”
“When will my doctor be here? I’d really just like to know what’s going on, and know who you are.”
“Jasper Sandoval,” he says, unable to avoid sounding pleased with himself. He takes the first bite and smiles through an open mouthed chew. “As for your doctor’s arrival… I don’t know. In this weather? I wouldn’t expect him for another hour or so. So please, eat.”