A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  Her name was Ellen and he stayed with her in a dingy tenement basement room she kept dark so she wouldn’t have to see the roaches and water bugs and mice. The stomach-turning smell of fuel oil spilled in from the boiler room. She did not want to go to his moderately better neighborhood and his safe and comfortable room. The cot she slept in was not big enough for both of them; Seth slept on a noisy, undone bundle of recyclable newspapers. They made love. Replayed the initial moment of contact, again and again. Her rage and self-destructive urges quieted. He did not kill anyone. Her touch, the warmth of her breath on his neck as she slept, her hunger for him and his need for her hunger kept him close to her wherever she went. He thought about why she wanted him, how she drained the surge of his killing strength, and all the other questions that had piled on top of one another over the years, but came no closer to answers than he ever had.

  Out of habit, she kept prostituting and preying on street inhabitants for drug money, but when the drugs stopped working she slowed down. Sat in the darkness with Seth. Talked after making love instead of falling into exhausted sleep

  Seth described his stay in the hospital, the kind of treatments he had received and the theories and test results he overheard and which were shared among the patients. Ellen asked the questions he asked himself. When he could give her no answers, she made her own theories: Seth acted as a filter for her, screening out the self-destructive tendencies, the self-hatred and rage, that had led her to the brink of her annihilation. It was her peculiar power to offer up her emotions, and to take them back, cleansed or soiled by the company she kept. It was what made her regular customers come back over and over: they left their filth in her. Seth’s empathy acted as a cleansing filter.

  Seth did not agree or disagree. He was just happy to be at the center of her attention, to be understood, feel useful.

  He was grateful for their intimacy, for her love, even if it meant spending the rest of his life in a basement.

  The glossy black postcard found him at her place. On the back, the message read: “we’re disappointed.”

  Seth explained his sudden calling as a mercy killer before their meeting. Ellen said nothing to him for two days. He took solace in the fact that they still made love, he still served her psyche, and he slept in her presence.

  The next postcard read: “You are enjoying an interesting career. If you wish to continue, please attend to the following.” A name and address followed.

  Seth wanted to throw the card out, but Ellen took it, paced the blackness of their hole, then led them out. They arrived at an old, stately apartment building reserved for the rich. Seth waited while Ellen went inside to talk to the doorman. After half an hour, she motioned for Seth to come in.

  “He’s an old millionaire,” she said, pressing the penthouse elevator button. “Sick. Maybe terminally ill. Probably so, if they’re sending you after him.” The door man was missing from his station.

  “What do they expect me to do?”

  “Kill him, I suppose. You’re the mercy killer.”

  “But why?”

  “Someone’s inheriting? Property or company voting rights? Who knows. Or cares.”

  “Why are we going up?”

  She cupped his head in her hands, kissed him on the mouth, tongue probing deep. “To see what happens.”

  “Where’s the doorman?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said as the elevator doors opened onto the penthouse floor. “I didn’t kill him. But he is hallucinating pretty deeply in the package room.” She laughed, and Seth’s heart raced. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh.

  They found the old man and two nurses in the bedroom. He waited for the spike of outrage, the emotional trigger that would inspire him to kill, but it was Ellen who kicked one nurse in the knee, smashed the other in the face with an oxygen bottle, and used a pair of scissors to end the old man’s life. She worked slow, going from eyes to genitals to digits and back to his ears before the shock of her assault finally took him. She broke down into a sobbing fit afterwards, and Seth went to her. Looked into her eyes. Drank deep from the well of her pain.

  She wanted to finish the nurses but Seth thought it was unnecessary, and they left after he took the trophy of the old man’s dentures to send to the ones who’d followed their work.

  “You’re back,” Bix said.

  Seth looked into the emptiness of the man who had helped set him free, then returned to his coffee and newspaper. “Ellen needed some down time. So did I. You know how it is, the stress of our kind of work. The medications help us both so much. Of course it does, or else I wouldn’t be sitting on this ward, now would I?” Seth giggled. “We’re leaving next week.”

  “You’re back.”

  “Well, not officially, of course. All is forgiven, and all that. I never said how I got out, and it turns out they really don’t care. It all turned out for the best. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I told you what would happen if you came back.” Bix took a step closer. “And we fucking hate your trophies, your stupid mercy killings.”

  “Actually, I’m back in the capacity of a military psych technician. You see I come and go as I please. I’m a keeper, now, Bix. A temp keeper in here, yes, but I have the pass card. So why don’t you have a seat.”

  Bix ripped the paper out of Seth’s hands and knocked the coffee cup against the wall. Other patients murmured in the background. “Keepers die just as quick as us.”

  “Who’s your keeper, Bix?” Seth asked.

  Bix grabbed Seth by the shirt, picked him up. Seth’s body twitched as it remembered pressure points and blinding lights of pain.

  Bix let him go as his head jerked forward and back, his eyes glazed and a foul stench escaped with his final breath. Bix collapsed to the floor. The other patients withdrew, scattered.

  Ellen took the pick out of the base of Bix’s neck. She smiled dreamily at Seth, her meds giving the both of them a temporary reprieve from the rigors of cleansing. Emotional toxins built up, shadows of guilt obscured boundaries, needs merged to form unstable and dangerous combinations. Everyone needed a vacation. She went back to her station in the nurse’s office.

  Mr. Black appeared, another vortex of free-floating emptiness, and looked down at Bix. “The gods are fickle,” he said, with a hint of sadness. “We can only perform our sacred duties and abide by what is given to us in return.”

  “Mr. Black?” Seth said, daring to put a hand on the man’s fine suit arm. The medications made him feel oblivious to the danger. “Ellen would like to meet my friends on the old ward. Especially Omar and Kasie. Do you think that would be possible?”

  Mr. Black considered, then took Seth’s arm gently in his hand. “How else but through sacrifice can priests know what gifts gods will bestow on them?”

  They went to get Ellen and visit his old friends, and grant them the mercies they might require.

  SHE WHO SPEAKS FOR THE DEAD

  “It was my Dad who said, “There are no innocents.”

  “Yes, there are,” my Mom said. “The children.”

  He didn’t say anything more, and I never got a chance to ask why he thought like he did because a couple of weeks later, he was gone. Seven years old and no Dad. It wasn’t like I was the only one in school with a missing parent.

  But I felt like I was. He never came to visit, and Mom had to fight all the time for the support. There was nothing from him for Christmas or birthdays neither. My big brother Pete tried to help, but he didn’t understand what girls go through when their Dad leaves. For a while, I wasn’t sure if Pete wasn’t going to disappear, too. Maybe Dad needed his son and he’d come by some night and snatch him. Didn’t look like he needed a daughter.

  When I heard Mom talking to my aunts about Dad marrying again, and having children, I hurt a little. I was twelve by then, didn’t talk to anyone in school unless I was spoken to, and then only if it was a teacher doing the talking. My brother was the only boy I trusted. And even with him, I sta
yed ready to lose. I saw how he dumped his girlfriends.

  Dad had two daughters with the other woman. I wondered how long he’d stay with them. I thought, when he finally did leave, I could go to their house and meet the girls and we could all get to be friends. We’d share the hurt Dad left us with, and maybe with three of us working together we could heal a little and come out of our shells. I could start having some fun, instead of staying in the back of the class and out of the way all the time, choking on words and feelings, spitting out nonsense and getting laughed at anytime somebody asked me a question. But a year or two passed and Dad stayed on, from what I could overhear, and I figured if he left his new kids at the same age he left me, I’d be nineteen, and I didn’t think I could wait that long.

  What really scared me was the idea that he’d never leave them, that he’d stay with that new family of his because he liked them better.

  I worked on that thought for a while. One day, I cut school and took the bus to where he worked. Caught him at lunchtime. He didn’t see me coming up to him, though I was the only fifteen-year-old girl for miles. Didn’t recognize me when I stopped in front of him.

  “What did I do to make you leave?” I asked.

  He reached into his pocket and took out a few dollar bills, like I was homeless and begging. I guess, with my hair all wild an unwashed, like my Mom hated it, and my clothes big and loose and making me look near to a boy and probably older, he took me for some runaway or dropout. He stuck the money in my hand and kept walking. I admit to being happy he felt sorry for me, even if he didn’t know who I was.

  “Dad?” I said.

  His head shot around like a heavyweight hit him in the jaw. He had a look of fright around his eyes I recognized from my reflection in the bathroom mirror, when the night light lit my face after a nightmare and I had to get out of the bedroom to make sure it was over and wasn’t real and there was another world outside my head where maybe I could be safer.

  He kept walking, but faster, away from me. At least this time I saw him go.

  I found out where he lived and sent him a letter asking why he thought I wasn’t innocent, because of the last thing I’d heard him say. I asked him to tell me what I’d done to make him go away. And if he couldn’t, I said I was sorry for whatever I did, and I wouldn’t do anything, ever, again, to make him go away, and he could come back now.

  I filled a whole page with “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t answer. Just as well. A letter from him would’ve messed with Mom, and she would have taken it out on me.

  The kids in school must have picked up on something. Maybe it was a look I had, or the fact that I wasn’t handing in homework, anymore, and cutting class and acting even more spaced-out than usual, thinking about my Dad and what I’d done and why he wouldn’t come back. I started getting picked on, more than usual. I wasn’t used to the attention, being thin and scraggly and not caring what I looked like. After a few jokes, people usually left me alone. I was boring. But suddenly, kids wouldn’t let go. It was like being chased by wolves or lions who picked me to eat because I was the weakest of the herd.

  I tried dressing up, paying attention to fashion, getting a haircut, wearing makeup. I ate right, stopped smoking and biting my nails, even worked out in gym class. My Mom was thrilled, called everyone in the family, talking about how I’d finally broken out and was becoming my own person. At first, I thought this would be a good way to get Dad back. Seeing as nothing I’d tried had worked, and he was staying with those other two daughters of his, I figured maybe being a girl was the way. Being old enough to bleed and have my first little growth spurt, I wondered how far I’d go to get Dad back. I didn’t think I’d have to do what I’d heard some other girls did to keep their dads. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of Dad I wanted.

  I did show off my new look to him. Waited all day outside his office building. He saw me. Stopped dead in his tracks. I got close enough to see he never got a hard-on. But he did get pale, and this time he ran away.

  The kids in school thought my new look was hilarious. Especially since I was still the same old stuttering idiot inside, never sure what to say or how to say it, always laughing at the wrong thing, late with a comeback, or out of the joke everyone was laughing at. A lot of times, I was the joke, but I didn’t even know how or why.

  So I gave up on the clothes and hair and makeup. I got called into the guidance office, and my Mom had me go to therapy. Like a stranger really cared about me any more than she did, or my Dad. My brother came back from college and had me hang out with him. The kids had a great time with all of that. Giving up made them meaner, like they could smell my blood. They called me crazy, and a whore that fucked her own brother and father.

  I stopped going to school. For a while, I hung out downtown, near my Dad’s job, but I was afraid he’d see me, even though I wished he did. I went for long walks and came home late. Mom got called in. There were meetings. Some of the worst of the kids were brought in so we could all talk about our issues. I had to give urine and blood and hair samples for drug tests. Twice, when they didn’t find anything the first time.

  Things quieted down. I went back to school, as undercover as I’d always been. I did my homework just so the adults would leave me alone. I started thinking about having my own baby, a girl, it had to be a girl, so I could give it to Dad and then maybe he’d like me because I’d given him something he wanted. It was risky, though, because the girl would’ve come from me, and maybe he’d think I infected it or something. I was still working out that plan, not the least of which was finding somebody to make me pregnant, and getting the tests done to find out the sex, and getting an abortion if the baby was a boy, and how to deal with Mom and Pete and the teachers and everyone else who’d want to stick their nose in my business, when the kids at school kidnapped me.

  There were a lot of kids. Over a dozen. Boys and girls. They had three cars, and the boys grabbed me, stuffed my mouth with socks, duct taped my legs together and my arms at my sides so I looked like half a mummy, and threw me in a trunk. I could hear them laughing, even the ones in the other cars as they passed us on the road. They chanted my name, “Roda, Roda, Roda,” like I was a star on the soccer team, and then they laughed even harder. I could smell the alcohol, too. The pot. They were having a party.

  Once they stopped for gas, but before they went into the station they sent a girl back in the trunk to stay with me. She pinned me against the spare tire and choked me the whole while we were by the pumps so I wouldn’t make any noise, so hard I didn’t smell the gasoline until we’d pulled out. She got a big cheer when they let her out.

  We drove around for a while, past sunset. I figured my Mom would call the police since I’d been reformed for a couple of weeks and she might think something bad had happened to me. Maybe she did. The police never found us. When we stopped and opened the trunk, it was pitch black. They lifted me out and carried me, and between the dark and the air and crazy motion I couldn’t tell where I was and, worse than that, I thought I was going to puke and then choke on the vomit because they didn’t take the socks out of my mouth.

  Finally they stopped and set me on my feet, and passed their flashlights over the ground so I could tell they’d taken me to a cemetery. An old one, in the country, that people never used, anymore. And then they showed me the hole they’d already dug. And then they put me down into that hole, just like I was a casket, with straps under my body, so I wouldn’t fall in and knock myself out and miss the whole experience. They stayed a while, drinking beers, throwing the empties and cigarettes and condoms into the hole with me, and finally they covered me with dirt and left.

  I wriggled like a worm until I’d sucked in so much earth I didn’t feel like moving. The tape stayed stuck tight. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  I might have died. Or maybe I was hysterical, or really crazy, like psychotic breakdown crazy. I’m not sure, now, looking back. They could have covered me with only a little bit of dirt, just enough
for me to feel it on my face but leaving room to breathe. Or maybe they buried me good and deep, thinking they were doing me a favor, putting me out of my misery. I would’ve thanked them, if that was the case, if they’d given me a chance.

  But dead or alive, I changed. The earth swallowed me, and I joined the company of the dead. I heard them, in the earth. Felt them, on my skin, my hair, kissing my eyes and lips. They knew I was something special. I felt welcomed. First time, ever, that happened. They talked, spilling stories I couldn’t understand about mommas and daddies, brothers and sisters, accidents, sickness, suffering and death. They talked like they’d been waiting a long time to get things said, and I listened, because there was nothing else for me to do. When they were done, they stopped talking and moved on, until there was none left, just me, in the earth.

  Only they hadn’t let me stay buried. The spirits had worked the duct tape loose, and raised me out of the hole, so all I had to do was sit up, then stand up, then put one foot in front of the other, and I was walking out of the cemetery and taking the long way back to my Mom’s house.

  The police said the kids had cut me loose before they left, and only sprinkled a little dirt on my face, to scare me. The kids said they’d been doing me a favor, taking me out to party with them, and I’d gotten wild and out of hand and they’d had to leave me behind or else I would have hurt one or two of them. The police had me held for a psychiatric examination. I didn’t tell anyone what I’d heard. Not right then.

  But later, when I was released, I went around to relatives, really the descendants of the ones that had been buried, and I made sure to leave long, clear notes about everything the dead had told me about what happened to them, so the living could know and pass on what had been known long ago and forgotten.

  And when that was done, I told my Mom, “There are no innocents,” because that’s what my Dad had said, and he was dead to me, but he’d spoken a truth that needed to be said over and over so no one could ever be fooled into thinking they were safe. When the right number of days had gone by, I left, just like my Dad, and I paid a visit to every one of those kids who brought me out to the cemetery and buried me with the dead. I thanked them for setting me free, for letting me find myself and a place in the world, speaking for the dead. And then I had them write confessions about what they’d done to me, and sign them, and then I slit every last one’s throat, and left the notes to say what they should have said, about what they never should have done.