Corrupts Absolutely?

by Peter Clines

  “I will.” It was her promise, the only one she ever made.

  The heat off the craftsman’s oven met her back when she turned away from him. It drifted out the garage, following her into the house, unlike her father. This was a winter evening, and he would stay, she knew, working the glowing glass rods until long after nightfall, waiting for her to go out so that he could pretend he didn’t have a chance to see her change. Or to protest whatever it was she did when she finally left. Cin wasn’t sure which assumption was correct, and she’d never ask him.

  A two-day-old newspaper had been left on the breakfast table. This was the second part of the request. The paper was thin, not the city’s Journal but a county rag. Cin snatched it up on her way past, boots pounding the laminate checkers below. She found her room, closed the door, and went to work.

  It was good to have a job.

  The last one had been months ago. Too long ago. Crime, as the temperature dropped, had risen as if the thieves and cut-throats of the city had suddenly realized they were in need of stocking stuffers. Yet Cin had found herself home, recovering, the only reminder of the last marble she’d given away, the last request she’d fulfilled, the long, surgical scar running down her thigh.

  But that was the past. A different time, a different marble.

  Cin flexed her shoulders, rolling out a kink, and pulled her stool out from beneath her wooden vanity, sparing the mirror’s reflection only a sideways glance. Only one eye moved of course. The other stayed constantly ahead, its false pupil always smaller than the living eye, especially in the dimly lit confines of the bedroom. It was her most unusual feature, yet the everyday passers-by never noticed it, due, no doubt, to her trained stare. Cin had learned long ago to look at people straight-on, to turn her head with every movement instead of drawing attention to the fixed glass iris.

  “Never let strangers see what makes you different,” she quoted. Her father had told her those words a dozen times before. They were, perhaps, the closest he ever came to advising her to keep up a façade for the general populous.

  She turned her focus to the wig sitting to one side of the vanity, balanced on a faceless foam head. The dark hair was natural, not synthetic. Expensive but worth every penny. Heavy bangs hung low. It was cut into a bob that lowered in the back and tapered up to kiss the chin with a soft curl. Cin reached out, ran her fingers through it.

  The caress finished, her body stiffened once more. She flipped through the paper, glancing over each column and looking for the answer. It could have been made simpler for her. Jim could have circled the article. Heaven forbid he actually told her which one he’d intended her to see. But her father, for whatever reason, never spoke to her much at all. In fact, he never actually acknowledged what she did with the cryptic messages sent her way. Such a realization might have given another woman pause.

  Cin only continued her search. Finally, she hesitated, her fingertips hovering over a bold word that had caught her eye.

  “Oil,” she whispered. She read the rest of the title aloud, “Car Crushes Local Man During Oil Change.”

  An innocent enough accident. Two slipped jacks and Mr. Paul Ortiz was found dead hours later in his attached car garage. It didn’t stink of criminal activity. Cin had seen a similar article not a year ago in a national paper.

  “These things happen,” Cin said with a sneer, certain she was quoting an official who’d been on the scene.

  She lifted the marble out of its casket, staring at the colors reflecting off its surface, just like oil floating over water. In that moment, she knew there was more to Mr. Paul Ortiz’s death. Her father had, somehow, known as much too.

  Cin let her fingers stretch out, the oily rolling to the center of her palm. It sat in place only a moment before it began to spin. She smiled, leaning over it, willing the marble to continue. The glass orb lifted off of her skin, hovering a few inches above.

  “No strings attached,” Cin said, losing her grin.

  The marble slapped back down into her palm.

  It wouldn’t fly any higher, not yet. Not until she felt that old fire inside her. That rage. When it came, when it filled her, she’d be able to do more than make the toy hover. She’d make it fly, make it dance—make it shoot out of her palm at the speed of a bullet.

  First, though, she needed to know more about Mr. Ortiz. Anger would come on its own.

  She pulled her bag of makeup from the top drawer and turned to face herself. It was time for a night out.

  #

  Cin stayed in over the next two nights, but Cat’s Eye made her long-awaited return to the shadows. She wanted to go into the city, to play amongst the factories and skyscrapers, to be spotted by thugs and would-be rapists. To hear the villains whisper that she had risen as if from the dead. Mostly, though, to hear them say her name with fear.

  Instead, Cat’s Eye stayed hidden in the suburbs. This neighborhood was not her own. In place of dilapidated sheds and blue collar workers were the commuters with their clean lawns and tight schedules. Over those two evenings, she watched them, families in mini-vans, fathers in suits returning home late. Her main focus, though, was Mrs. Ortiz. In the daytime, Cin would drive by the neighborhood, visit the local library, eat lunch at the diner where Mrs. Ortiz liked to take her ten-year-old son for pie after a long day at school. Study, observe, know your enemy:

  Mrs. Ortiz.

  Mrs. Ortiz didn’t work, a stay-at-home mom with a television as her companion. With her youngest, the pudgy-cheeked devourer of sweets, at school and her oldest away at college, it appeared loneliness was part of her job. Mrs. Ortiz spent her days and her evenings the same way, in a constant cycle of cooking, tidying, and sneaking off to the fenced-in seclusion of her backyard for a few pulls off a cigarette. Most of all, though, Mrs. Ortiz smiled. In fact, she smiled far too much for a woman who’d just lost her husband in a tragic accident.

  When Mrs. Ortiz thought no one was watching, when the smoke was unfurling from between her lips, when she doused a pan in soapy water, the woman’s sorrowful mask slipped. And she grinned, a quiet joy in her sparkling eyes. Mrs. Ortiz was a woman at peace.

  After the third day of researching her target, Cin was growing tired of seeing the expression on the woman’s face. The timing couldn’t have been better either. At the diner, the youngest Ortiz had been babbling nonstop about Tommy McAdams’ new game system. The boy would be spending the evening at the neighbor’s, testing out the toy. A perfect opportunity for Cat’s Eye to make a special delivery to Mrs. Ortiz.

  At sunset, Cin locked her bedroom door, slipping on a uniform of black street clothes that hugged her body and left no room for clumsy slip-ups. Military boots clapped the floor as she crossed it, tying up her stringy, blond hair and tucking it beneath the black wig. She sat down at the vanity, spreading waterproof make-up three shades too dark over every patch of exposed skin. But she was still Cin. Even though she now looked far more like her late mother than her absent father, she remained Cindy Burrows.

  A brown contact lens covered her right eye, her living eye. There was only one more element of her transformation. She tapped her left eye with one finger, feeling nothing but the perfectly sculptured rise of the glass. Using the nail of her index, she pushed beneath the bottom lid. Lashes fluttered at her intrusion. The false eye slipped out. Its touch was a warm token against her palm.

  She blinked, the absence leaving her with a pink, empty slit.

  The new eye was heavier than the last, sculpted by her father. There were a slew of its clones stored like precious gems in a lock box below the vanity. Each and every one was a masterpiece, each and every one distinct, varied, if only slightly, from the other. Cin held it up to the light, and the light loved it. Cat’s Eye was the common name for this type of marble, and the narrow channel of black swirling against a tunnel of gold made it look the part. What she held between two fingers, though, was only part of such a marble, its magnificent curve set in clear glass with
a black setting.

  She pulled up her brow, resisting the need to flinch as the cool glass hit barren flesh. The effect was both terrifying and mystifying. A colored orb floating in black space.

  When she stopped a criminal in his tracks, it was this feature alone he was always able to recollect: “She had a funny eye… Looked like a damn cat’s…”

  Cat’s Eye stood from the stool, leaving Cin behind. She slid the oily into her pocket, forgoing all other weaponry. She wouldn’t need the rest tonight.

  #

  Cat’s Eye went in through the back. The sliding pair of doors led to Mrs. Ortiz’s favorite smoking hide-away, a folding aluminum chair tucked out of sight along the hedges. Two nights, and the woman had taken her escape at the same time every evening, right before she was ready to retire, and this third night was no different. Cat’s Eye slipped in behind her and past another opening before the woman could come back from brushing the taste of tobacco out of her mouth.

  Mrs. Ortiz returned to the glass doors, opened them, sniffed the fresh air as if to ensure that all evidence of her little habit was blown away, and shut them again. She slid the joke of a lock down, oblivious to the one eye following her every movement from behind the pantry door. The curtains fell into place.

  Cat’s Eye followed her to the bedroom.

  Mrs. Ortiz stopped at the bed but didn’t bend to pull back the covers. Instead, she stood perfectly still, her hands loose and at the sides of her robe.

  “Figured something like this might happen,” she said.

  The voice was so soft that, for a moment, Cat’s Eye thought it had been her imagination.

  Mrs. Ortiz turned, the movement deliberately slow. She squinted, the yellow lamp light playing games with her vision. The older woman straightened.

  “I know you,” she continued, but it didn’t sound like an accusation. “The papers call you Cat’s Eye when they call you anything at all. I thought you stuck to the city.”

  Cat’s Eye cocked her head, looking every bit her namesake. Untouched by wind or force, the door behind her slammed shut.

  “I go where the crime is,” she replied.

  Mrs. Ortiz sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs modestly. There was weariness in her gaze, but the peace, the undeserved peace, remained in the small grin at her lips. Seeing it, Cat’s Eye felt an old, familiar heat crawl over her skin. When she raised a finger, the blinds over the windows slammed down with a clap.

  If the ghostly movement bothered Mrs. Ortiz, it didn’t show on her face. “Haven’t heard much about you in a while.”

  “Been on vacation.” Cat’s Eye realized she’d snapped with the words and regretted it not because it was wrong but because this housewife sitting in front of her, knowing and at peace, was too damned calm, calmer than any criminal Cat’s Eye had ever taken down.

  Cat’s Eye slipped two fingers into her pocket and withdrew the marble. She let it hover in the air between her gloved thumb and index finger as if it were being held by a string.

  “I know what I did was wrong,” Mrs. Ortiz said, beating Cat’s Eye to the punch line.

  “And I bet you’re real sorry,” Cat’s Eye said. The marble was spinning now, picking up speed. “Or, at the very least, sorry you were caught.”

  “I should have to pay,” Mrs. Ortiz agreed.

  “You really should.”

  The lamps beside the bed began to shake with a tremor they alone felt. Mrs. Ortiz ignored them, staring up at the young woman. The silence between them stretched tight before it broke. The lamps went still again. Cat’s Eye had a hard time holding back a sigh of frustration.

  “We’ll do this the right way,” Cat’s Eye finally said. “A full confession. No mention of my…persuasion. You’ll go away. You’ll pay.”

  “Sure.” Mrs. Ortiz nodded. “Alright.”

  “You’re not going to put up a fight?” Cat’s Eye asked. The marble had stopped spinning. She was losing it, the anger. The rage. “This isn’t how it usually works.”

  “I’m done fighting,” Mrs. Ortiz replied. “I won my fight. I didn’t have to do a thing either. Not a thing. Winner by default.”

  Cat’s Eye raised a brow, her body tense, alert. Her brain registered the sound a split-second after her foot had already lifted, ready to deliver a kick to the door.

  But it opened only a crack, a trembling voice from the hallway pushing past the opening. The words were high-pitched and muffled, but Cat’s Eye recognized the voice.

  “Please don’t.”

  The boy wasn’t supposed to be home.

  Fingers clenched around the marble, holding it still. Cat’s Eye sucked in a breath. A part of her knew she should still kick the door shut, block him from whatever he was about to say, but she waited too late. His fingers were clasping on to the frame and in her way.

  Mrs. Ortiz stood, and the mattress wailed. “Go to bed, James,” she said.

  The child didn’t listen. He pushed his way into the room, wide-eyed with drowsiness. But he didn’t flinch when he saw the stranger in his mother’s room. If anything, his back straightened. He stared up at Cat’s Eye with the same tired intensity as his mother. He recognized her eye.

  “Don’t,” he repeated. “Don’t take my momma away.”

  “Go to bed, James.” Mrs. Ortiz squeezed his shoulder, trying to steer him back to the door, but he stood still. “James, baby, Momma’s busy right now.”

  “I’m not a baby,” he said, pouting. His brow wrinkled. Cat’s Eye could see the wetness in his eyes. As much as they shined, they didn’t leak. “I know what she’s doing here. I know, Momma. I do.” He turned from his mother to the stranger. “She didn’t do it.” And back again. “Tell her, Momma. Tell her.”

  Mrs. Ortiz slid to her knees, holding the child.

  “I did, baby,” she whispered.

  The tears fell. “It was an accident.” But the statement quivered with his bottom lip.

  Mrs. Ortiz smiled her peaceful smile. “It was, baby, but leaving him there was the same as killing him. I watched him die. I waited for him to.”

  James huffed, holding back a sob. He pushed away from his mother’s soft hands, glaring up at Cat’s Eye. “This is your fault!” he snapped. “You’re ’posed to get the bad men, and you didn’t. You didn’t help.” He pushed his sleeve over his wet nose, his round face red with the effort to continue. “It’s not fair. My momma’s a better hero than you! She saved us when you…you never even came.”

  James let out a sob, disappearing back out of the room. Cat’s Eye could hear him, just one room away, his body shaking against the plaster wall. She gazed down at the woman sitting on the floor. Studied her. Two days and two nights, Cin and Cat’s Eye had watched and waited. Neither of them had seen the dark bruising over the woman’s chest, right below the modest neckline of her blouse. Tonight, the robe showed too much and too little. The marking was nearly healed. Several days old.

  Probably about four if Cat’s Eye ventured a guess.

  “Tell me,” Cat’s Eye said. It was not a request. This was not Cin’s teasing voice. These words were orders. “Tell me now. Justify it.”

  Criminals were experts at justification. Those were her father’s words, and they were true. As always.

  Mrs. Ortiz shook her head, unmoved by the authority in Cat’s Eye’s voice. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It was wrong. Two wrongs don’t make a right.” She paused, a small laugh taking her breath. When she recovered, her hand was raised, open and cupped. Asking for it. “I’ll call the cops myself. I promise.”

  Cat’s Eye squeezed the marble before unfolding her fingers. This was it, the part where she left her calling card behind, left the criminal with something to think about. Something to remember her by. The rainbow over the clear glass looked wet, polished by the glove’s hold. Cat’s Eye gave it a final glance before sliding it back into her pocket.

  “It’s not meant for you,” Cat’s Eye said even
though she wasn’t sure of the truth behind those words. She had read the newspaper her father had left out twice. She knew the articles, knew what to look for when it came to her father’s subtle hints. This, this story of a tragic accident, it had been the one he’d wanted her to see.

  Mrs. Ortiz didn’t reply, and Cat’s Eye didn’t ask for more answers. She would never ask for those answers, even the ones she needed. The ones her father held. Had he meant to teach her something, sending her here, after the justified?

  The question wouldn’t leave her lips.

  When Cat’s Eye finally returned home, her father was still in his shop, his oven glowing hot. She put the marble back in its box, not mentioning its imperfection, and left the toy sitting on his work counter. He didn’t speak, as usual, his eyes straying so that he wouldn’t have to see her black uniform, see his shining workmanship in her eye socket.

  “I won’t,” she finally said and left him to his craft. Cat’s Eye hoped the frown at his lips was not one of disappointment.

  Sometimes, even Cat’s Eye didn’t keep her promises.

  Hero

  Joe McKinney

  Dr. Lange stopped the recorder and studied the man on the other side of the desk. Robert Hanover looked broken. He was wrecked with exhaustion, his lips purple, his skin a pasty gray and filmed with sweat, yet even still, he fought against the restraints that held his wrists to the chair.

  Dr. Lange sighed.

  This was yet another recording he’d have to erase.

  Hanover suddenly rallied. He fought against the restraints. “God damn you!” he shouted. “You let me go. Let me help her. For God’s sake, Gene, let me go!”

  Dr. Lange’s expression soured when Hanover addressed him by his first name, but he quickly forced his distaste down. Correcting the man would do little good. Hanover was a clinical narcissist—as close to a textbook case as Dr. Lange had ever seen in fact—and refusing to address doctors by their proper titles was but one symptom of his inflated sense of entitlement and self-importance. He also needed constant praise and reinforcement. He set unrealistic goals. Social clues went by him unnoticed. And, of course, his self-esteem was fragile as an eggshell.