Abuse. Child abuse. Murder as a response to abuse.
Necessary violence.
“As imposing as you are, why haven’t you killed the one who abuses?”
My eyes scroll over the creature, citing talons twice the size of my hands, muscles striated across its body, abundant fangs filling the large mouth, much as Alice’s make-shift fangs had cluttered hers.
“I roam the realm of his imagination,” it says, pointing at the sleeping child, the length of the arm putting the talon near my face.
I flinch, then immediately steady myself
“I can only administer help within the space between dreams and the waking world.”
Fair enough.
“I kill this person—”
“Monster in human flesh. Monster more hideous than you find me.”
“I kill this monster, you give me the syringe, and I’m on my way, right?”
Something outside the room, perhaps a fist pounding a wall, causes the room to tremble with earthquaking assertion.
I glance at the sleeping child. The turbulence tumbles out of his features, addresses his limbs as he curls deep into a fetal position.
“That’s all. Just murder.”
“Just murder. But swift.”
The door presses open, condensing the room as a man steps inside. He is wearing white pajamas with blue and red stick figures frolicking about—as far as the odd light will permit my perusal, but at least there are no rainbow fishes clamoring for attention—or is it blue and red pajamas with white stick figures waltzing across the man’s chest, his loins? Uncertainty distorts my perception as it often does. My eyes are playing tricks on me, or perhaps it is the three-ring circus in my head.
“Who the hell are you?” There is nothing of humanity in this being. It is a monster, driven by selfish, depraved desires and reeking of alcohol. Hungry for whatever it wants. Abuse. A battle…
I leap at it but am tossed off with ease. I land against a wooden toy box with a crunch and a groan as the corner jabs hard into my right kidney.
The man, the monster, knows violence well. He claws at me, hammers at my head with fists made of iron. I feel woozy, yet something blossoms in my belly.
My right arm, with elastic grace, strikes hard at his head, while my left arm wraps around his head, the fingers digging into his eyes. He screams at his impossible predicament.
I kick at his body, kick with kangaroo snapping swiftness and potency that surprises me. Whatever has blossomed within me has ratcheted up my physical capabilities. The wooziness has cleared. I smell his doubt. It is time to go in for the kill.
When violence escalates to this level, with death present and awaiting victory, every opponent becomes invincible…or at least thinks he or she or it is. The monster that is the man pulls a switchblade from thin air. He clutches it in a steady, experienced hand and jabs with flesh piercing precision. He is a surgeon, slicing the air with the expertise to keep me at a distance, while lunging twice with perfect aim. My stomach and shoulder suckle the blade, spitting blood at the intrusion.
“Don’t know what you’re made of. But we’re gonna find out,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow as he lunges again.
I grab his arm with both of my hands and jam the wrist against my knee. A knee festering with the blades of a saw. A diseased thing, the blades spin and rip through my flesh and pant leg.
Amputating the man’s hand.
I scream as the man screams, shocked and delighted at the changes to my being, yet wary of the reality of it as I see my knee and pant leg are normal. I only have to question how I can be holding the man’s dismembered hand in mine?
“Hurry,” the sleeping child’s monster yells, as another sound booms from the hallway. The sleeping child, less human and more a ball of putty being shaped by the events outside of its scope, seems embryonic now. A tiny ball of flesh, the putty made human.
The monster that is the man—father, dear father? Of course, aren’t all fathers evil?—sensing defeat, lunges again, this time grasping my throat with his remaining hand, while finding the wherewithal, despite the obvious pain, to shove the stump of the other arm into my mouth.
I gag on blood and the serrated meat; on fractured bone and his desperation.
Desperation, again. As always, present in the dark frontier, no matter which corner of the dark frontier the drama is played out in.
Something shoves the door open, filling the frame. Cracking the entrance with its girth.
The sleeping child’s monster cowers at the sight of this new shadow swelling at the doorframe.
My legs pull back, bent backward as an insects.’ While my arms clutch the man’s throat, my bony feet scale his body until they are perched on his clavicles, each one taking measure of the task at hand. With a concentrated push, the bones split and snap, puncture through the stick figures with the stick foundation of this man, this monster dressed in a man’s flesh.
His high, tinny, screeching protestation is snuffed out by the humungous thumping sound a body makes when being thrust at a wall across a room. The lifeless meat slides down to the floor next to the sleeping child’s bed. The sleeping child is a puddle of goo now, no distinction to be had. I only know it was him as he’s not moved since I showed up.
The thing at the doorway blinks into nonexistence. The wood in the frame sighs in weary relief.
My breath is the only sound that follows. I look in my hands, my normal, human hands, my normal human body shaking as I stare into the dead eyes of the monster, the man, the abusive father, with both shock and envy for this boy. Finally rid of this encroachment on his childhood, his innocence.
I drop the head to the floor. Blood and viscera are smeared in arcing patterns over what looks to be blue walls with a trimming at the junction of wall and ceiling done in more Star Wars characters.
What a pleasant room for a child.
I stand, and, still shaking, say to the only monster that remains, “The Centipede. Now.”
There is no time to rejoice in this victory. There is no time to delve into feelings I did not want to delve into, anyway. I have filled the request. I need to be on my way.
The monster opens the top drawer of the dresser, moving a bit of moist body part from the handle, reaches in and collects my syringe.
I take it and say, “Thank you,”
The monster’s smile is odd, but noticeably a smile.
“No reason to thank me. Circumstances present us with choices. You did what you thought necessary. We all do as we believe we need to, in order to get what we deem essential.”
Rules of the game called life.
I turn to observe the destruction before heading on my way.
I have decimated a monster, or perhaps I have not. A man, not tall, not fierce—not decapitated—slumps lifeless next to the child’s bed. Not even a faint trace of the smell of alcohol or the tang of blood bite my nostrils.
I run my hand along where the knife struck me, only to acknowledge there are no wounds, no blood.
I was at a loss.
“Be on your way, before you find out something that might shake you to your core,” the monster says as it laughs, a sound like the rustling of the maggot-filled paper bag left to sit out in the sun and stew.
What the hell have I just participated in? I do not know and know it’s best just to move on.
I take the syringe as the shade is placed over the nightlight and fish swim in my vision as something again swims in the syringe and it does not matter. Nothing matters but my destination.
I jam the needle into my neck and the maggots feel as though they’ve shifted from my ears to my throat, squirming, filling me, bloating the diseased flesh. Feasting on me. I am a toad pumped full of air and ready to explode. I open my mouth and something abhorrent coats my tongue with kisses from the void. Colorful fish breed colorful nightmares.
The sleeping child has awoken. I hear him say, “Did it work?”
Another voice, his voice but not
, says, “Of course it did.”
“You’re one messed up genie,” followed by twin peals of laughter cut with sadistic joy that reverberates off the walls of the aquarium.
The colors are so pretty, so pretty, as they fill me and I drown in them.
Chapter 15 Blake
Outside of the hotel room, Blake and Jane Teagarden spent a few seconds looking in each other’s eyes, shaping their next move.
“The car the man was driving was a rental. Our first line of fire is to check the rental desks at the airport, see if he’s turned it in. Get whatever info on him that’s available.” Blake drew a deep breath and watched Jane do the same, the fresh air outside needed to cleanse the lingering stench of the dead woman out of their nostrils. “If he’s dropped it off, perhaps he’s still there, waiting for a flight.”
“It’s imperative we find Marlon, Mr. Blake. Whatever it takes, we must get to him before he’s gone forever.”
Blake knew this, but added the two cents he’d been tumbling between his fingers in the back pocket of his thoughts. “What we’ve really got to do is get to Marlon before this guy does. I understand as well as can be expected, the deal with the green limousine, and fate. I just wonder if this guy is a part of the machinations of Marlon’s fate.” Blake mulled over what happened to the woman in the motel room. If this guy was also on Marlon’s wayward trail, the end result would not be in Marlon’s favor. Potters suggested fate might mean something besides death. In this man’s hands, only death awaited. “I wonder if we can alter destiny, if this guy has intentions, well…”
“…they won’t bode well for my brother.”
They jogged back to the car, Blake insisting on the keys, and made for the airport posthaste. As he drove one-handed weaving between traffic and pushing every yellow light to red, he called Potters, who had better connections than he did, with intelligence sources both well-known and covert.
“I need you to spin your magic web, get me some info.”
“Is this about Teagarden?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I told you to walk away from this one, my friend. The vibe’s thick as congealing blood. Can’t you sense it?”
Of course he could, but he was in too deep now. Three fingers raised above the waterline, but still hanging on.
“I know. But I need to see this one through. So, you going to help or should I look elsewhere?” He had other connections, but Potters was usually the most reliable, and quick to boot.
“What do you need?”
“Anything you can give me on a man we saw leaving a crime scene today.”
“Crime scene? You are in deep, aren’t you?”
“Deep enough. The guy was my height, about 6’3”, 6’4”, a solid 230-240, shock of white hair. Slavic cheekbones dotted with acne scars. Slight cleft in the chin.” Blake glanced in the rearview mirror, half-heartedly expecting to see the man there. “Strange eyes, two different colored pupils. Black and gray. Lively eyes. An odd glimmer to the orbs. Thick lips. Like Cary, that fella you dated a few years ago.”
Potters grunted, understanding.
“Cream colored, no, white suit, as if…as if it was a regular thing for him. Oh, the shock of white hair was trimmed short above the ears, yet jagged like lightning, all over the place. Spiky.”
“Handsome,” Potters said, though his tone indicated otherwise.
“He looked like a glam rock star, a degenerate glam rock star, or perhaps a gigolo with no preference as to what gender to please…or decimate. He radiated menace like a crown he wore proudly.”
“Jeez, you got a good take on this guy. What did you do, have lunch with him?”
The thought made Blake’s stomach tighten. He stared out the side window, at the alien landscape, the bogus alien landscape, prettied up to play up an incident from almost seventy years ago. It was comical, when a serious slant might be more honest. Especially with what he was learning of the world over the last few days.
“You still with me? Anything else?”
“Work with that. Make it as fast as possible. Time’s running short.” He glanced at Jane, before turning back to the pot-holed road. Perhaps UFOs had left those pot-holes, evidence of their skid-mark landings.
“Will do, Sherlock.” Then, moving away from the faux joviality hinted at by the nickname, “And watch your back.”
Blake had his wallet out and ready, having struck out at the rest of the rental desk clerks, flashing his private eye I.D. toward a petite blond wearing a snug lavender suit and a nametag that designated her as “Charlene.”
“Charlene,” Blake said, forced smile in tow, but his voice laced with authority. “A man should have turned in a white Dodge Dart within the last thirty, forty-five minutes. I need to know his name, any information you have on him.”
“You know I can’t do that without—”
“It’s a matter of life or death, Miss.” Playing it up, but not by much. “Charlene. Please.”
Jane’s timing was perfect as she made it to Blake’s side, the look on her face etched with concern.
Blake had dealt with many situations in the southwest. One thing he could always bank on was the willingness of most people to help in any situation, no strings attached. Where those residing on the east coast thrived on the give and take help might garner, the advantage or upper hand built into the process, southwesterners flaunted good manners and willingness to assist, no matter the rules.
Charlene, though, shrugged her shoulders and said, “I wish I could help, but we’ve had no returns in almost two hours, Mr. Blake.”
“What? How can that be?” Jane said, eyes shading darker.
“Are you sure, Charlene? Tall man, really white hair.”
“No, Mr. Blake. My shift started two hours ago and I’ve only rented three cars, no returns. Wish I could help you, but…” Hands held up, palms empty. Her smile was a dagger into progress, though beneath the façade, the expression was laced with a sense of personal failure, as if it was her fault there was no information to be had.
As a cursory exercise in killing time, Blake suggested they drive around town, looking for the car, even though they both knew the car was probably many miles away. On the way to Marlon. While they floundered, beached and gasping for air.
After a pass along side streets seen a few times already, Jane—driving again, the pace more concentrated, yet no less imperative—pulled the car over on the outskirts of town at the opposite end, away from the palm-tree masked hotel, and said, “What now?”
Blake stepped out and lit a cigarette. Cranking up the machinery of his brain for the long haul. Telling her the truth would only irritate her further. Nonetheless, options were slim and none, with the possible exception of a pipedream.
“We wait. Potters is checking with his sources. We get that information, we might have something to move on.”
“Wait? Marlon’s path is fraught with negativity in every sense, and you expect us to wait? What if your buddy takes until tomorrow to get us anything of worth?” She stepped out and around to the front of the car. Her fingers did a jig along the hot hood.
“Then I suggest we get a hotel room or two and exercise our aptitude for patience.”
“Fuck patience, Mr. Blake. Action is all that’s necessary now.”
Blake watched lizards scatter amid the cactus and smooth stones. Their trails were as random as the one he was stuck on right now.
“Miss Teagarden. Sometimes the only response is patience. That’s the job. We’ve nothing to go on. We’ve exhausted our time here and now have to wait for whatever information Potters can find for us. Whether that takes an hour, a day, or a week, it’s all we have. Besides that, I have no idea which direction to head,” he said. Unless a businessman happened to stumble by like at SFO, dispensing with scribbled clues on torn paper.
“Fuck.” She raised her hands, two scorpions about to strike, dug the long, thin fingers into her thick blond mane, pulling the hair in tangles, the scrunchie used t
o hold everything in place momentarily discarded, before pulling it all back, the shambles messy now, but regrouped in the squeeze of the scrunchie.
“I understand your worry, Jane. Abuse leads some down paths where the only people one meets along the way have bad intentions. Seems like the path—”
Abruptly, as if Blake’s words carried the weight of his open palm across her face. “Abuse?”
“Child Abuse. The trigger for this whole mess, from my ringside seat.”
“What are you talking about, you stupid man?” Jane said, furious as she stepped firmly toward him.
“Your parents. Child abuse.” He snapped his fingers in her face. Wake up!
“I dispelled those allegations long ago—”
“And a fine performance that was. Meryl Streep would have been proud,” Blake said, unable to keep it inside.
“You miserable piece of shit.” Jane was all teeth, lip-stick smeared on the two up front, like blood on fangs. “I told the truth. That so-called performance was by a child of sixteen trying to hold on to a life she understood while it fell apart all around her. Marlon was never abused in any way.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t really care what you believe, that’s your problem. Your prejudice. A product of years expecting only the worst of people. I am not innocent myself, but I can tell you, unequivocally, Marlon was never abused, sexually, mentally—in any way. He had his own issues…” She turned away, breath caught. Blake could tell this was not a regular topic of conversation for her.
“Then why? Why did he leave? What were these issues? Perhaps if you give me the lowdown. Perhaps…” He moved toward her, around the front right headlight, filling her vision unless she was to turn away.
She turned away.
“Look, I’m…I’m sorry about my mis-reading of the news conference, the whole thing, but my instincts are all I have in this meandering trek around the sun. Along with pain in my right hand, migraines that could knock down a stallion, and a desire to blot it all out with alcohol and painkillers on a regular basis.” Blake clasped his black hat and removed it, ran his fingers through his hair as if combing it, only to put it back on, the action superfluous. “My experiences shape me and I am sure the shape is ugly. But if there was no abuse, what issues led Marlon to hit the streets and to virtually disappear, until now?”
Riding the Centipede Page 11