Before Cain Strikes

by Joshua Corin

  They were in a spacious meat locker, not far from the loading dock where the meat trucks would come in the morning to pick up the slaughtered cattle. Hundreds of gutted cows dangled from thick steel hooks. Cain weaved among them as he spoke. The acoustics in here were wonderful. Maybe it was the high ceiling.

  The newlyweds in their chairs were positioned near the center of the meat locker. Their lips had begun to turn blue. Their ears were red with blood. Every so often his walking path brought him back to them, audibly shivering in their restraints of duct tape.

  Oh, the meat locker. Cain42 was nothing if not a traditionalist.

  “Why do we fuck? We fuck to conquer the future. We create generations with our loins. As with food, it serves a practical purpose and yet we quest beyond the utilitarian for the hedonistic and, unlike with food, over-abundance is not a vice. A surfeit of food and we twaddle toward obesity. A surfeit of sex and we race toward athleticism and the physical ideal.”

  He wore a ski jacket and gloves to combat the cold. In all honesty, the temperature wasn’t much warmer outside. He also wore a black wool hat, which warmed the top halves of his ears and concealed most of his hair. He was not fond of his hair. It never seemed to comb straight. On some days, he considered shaving it off, but he was scared of what he would find underneath, of what might be irrevocably exposed. So he wore hats.

  “And, finally, why do we kill? If sleep and food conquer exhaustion and sex conquers time itself, what does murdering conquer other than the life force of other men? What value can be gained from the creation of corpses? And yet, although technologies exist which allow for better sleep and produce better food and enable more pleasurable sex, our scientific efforts as a species have undoubtedly been poured into the refinement of murder. Abortions. Capital punishment. War. Our priorities are obvious. One might say that when we kill, we are fulfilling our historical imperative.”

  He faced them now, his hands tucked into the pockets of his ski jacket.

  “Who shall I kill first? I’ll leave the choice to you.”

  Both the husband and the wife turned their heads to look at him. They waited for him to continue.

  He didn’t.

  Instead, Cain42 grabbed another chair and sat down, a few feet from them, and waited for them to continue. He had all night. He was relatively warm. He had the music of his thoughts to keep him occupied and an inhaler in his pocket in case the dry air rattled his asthma.

  The wife wore a pink silk negligee. It showcased her slim, dark figure. She probably bought it especially for their honeymoon. The husband wore a simple pair of cotton boxers, white with blue dots on them. His physique was solid. Cain42 could have traced the man’s abdominals with the tip of his hunting knife.

  Hmm. Perhaps he would.

  Seconds passed. Minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Thirty minutes passed. The husband and wife simply refused to play his game. He had a tremendous amount of patience, but the first shift at the slaughterhouse would be arriving in a few hours. So it was time to speed things up. He grabbed a nearby meat apron and donned it.

  “Okay,” he said, and drew out his hunting knife. “This is stainless steel. It can cut through a tin can as easily as it can cut through a tomato. Do you see the serrated edge? That means it’s going to hurt going in, and it’s going to hurt even more as it goes out. It’s especially designed to cut through tissue. Let me give you an example.”

  He then proceeded to saw off one of the husband’s nipples. He probably could have lopped it off, but sawing took longer and caused more pain. And, oh, how the husband screamed and screamed.

  Cain42 flicked the nipple into the distance.

  “In case you haven’t yet figured it out, I’m a bit of a sadist. That means I want to cause you as much pain as possible. It’s a psychosexual thing. You don’t need me to get into it. But I’m going to put my offer on the table one last time, and now it comes with a twist. One of you I’m going to kill quick, and the other I’m going to kill slow. If you don’t choose in the next two minutes, I’ll make sure you both suffer. Now, are you sure you want your loved one to undergo that kind of torture? Choose, please.”

  That got them talking.

  Him: “Baby, I love you!”

  Her: “I love you, too, baby! Oh, God!”

  Him: “It’s going to be okay! As long as we’re together!”

  Her: “We’ll be together forever!”

  Him: “I don’t want you to suffer, baby!”

  Her: “I don’t want you to suffer!”

  Him: “I can take it!”

  Her: “Let me do this for you!”

  Him: “No!”

  Etc., etc.

  Cain42 watched the second hand tick past two minutes on his wristwatch and stepped in between the weeping lovebirds.

  “Time’s up,” he said. “So, who gets to leave class early?”

  “He does,” the wife replied.

  The husband opened his mouth to protest, so Cain42 thrust all six inches of his steel blade into that open gap. He tugged upward, and then pulled back, tracking bits of reddish palate along with it, and finally, with some effort, withdrew the knife through the man’s nose. The husband gagged, twitched in the chair and died, just as promised.

  The wife was sobbing.

  “Don’t cry for his fate,” replied Cain42. “Cry for yours.”

  And he went to work.

  Seventy-two minutes later, he was both exhilarated and exhausted. What remained in her chair more resembled one of the hook-laden cows than a human being. Cain42 photographed the crime scene, splashed both corpses with a gallon of refrigerant (the cleanest crime scene is a destroyed crime scene) and left them to be discovered by the morning crew.

  It was one of his acolytes from the website who had provided the address of the slaughterhouse. They’d assured him that the nighttime security was lax, and so it was. He ambled back to his silver Camry (bought for its ubiquity) and drove off without one rent-a-cop asking for his ID.

  The meat apron (which he’d left behind) had absorbed most of the blood, but not all of it. He would need both a new coat and a new pair of jeans. Ah, well. Such were the sacrifices he made for a job he loved.

  Sunrise was still an hour or so away. The poets called this the magic hour, when the demons of the night were still awake and the darlings of the day were stirring from their beds. A melting pot of good and evil for one blessed, cursed span of minutes. Cain42 didn’t wonder which side of the spectrum he was on. As far as he was concerned, moral relativism was for patsies. He considered stopping for a late-night snack, maybe a doughnut or a cup of soup, but his exhaustion dictated otherwise, and he headed for his motel.

  As he idled at a stoplight, he noticed a homeless woman trundle toward the sidewalk. She walked rigidly, as if the joints in her knees had fused solid, and kept her head down. Most of her face was concealed by her shaggy gray mane. Her body was concealed by a shaggy gray coat. She shuffled up to the curb. Cain42’s light turned green. He didn’t drive forward. She glanced up at him, one green eye peeking through that fuzzy amoeba she called hair. No one else was in sight. Just the woman, the man and the hour of magic. He waved her forward. She nodded to him and stepped into the crosswalk, clopping forward in that steely gait of hers. She passed in front of his Camry.

  He floored the accelerator and collided with the woman at a steady clip of twenty miles per hour. Most car accident victims toppled up, and Cain42 had braced himself for her impact on his windshield, but this homeless woman toppled down. Maybe the stiff joints in her legs were to blame. Either way, she went down and under the carriage of the one-ton-plus vehicle. Cain42 felt his car roll over her body, as if it were a speed bump near a church, and continued on his way. A quick check in the rearview mirror—and her arms were still in motion, swatting at imaginary flies, the rest of her body impossibly twisted up under that shapeless gray coat she wore. Was she still alive or were those frantic arm motions simply the impulses of a dying nervous system?

/>   Hmm. Maybe he could go for a cup of soup, after all.

  He stopped at an all-night coffee shop conveniently located near his bed-and-breakfast, changed into his other pair of jeans, left his bloody coat in the car. He checked the front of his Camry for any victim debris, flirted with the waitress and spoon-fed on a pint of piping-hot chicken broth. A few errant vegetables floated in the yellow sea, but their presence seemed more a culinary afterthought than an essential ingredient. Eh, it’s 6:00 a.m., let’s toss some leftover shit in the guy’s soup. Cain42 enjoyed his meal, flirted again with the waitress on the way out, regulated his breath with a hit from his asthma inhaler and left a sizable cash tip.

  His B and B was called the Shellmont Inn and, as far as he could tell, its entire staff consisted of an old gay couple named Lou and Norm. The Shellmont Inn had seven rooms available, each named after a heavenly virtue. Cain42 stayed in Temperance. Above the head-board of his bed was a framed print of Luca Giordano’s Baroque masterpiece Temperantia.

  Cain42 loved B and Bs. He subscribed to “B and B

  USA,” an online newsletter that highlighted the best inns, cottages and guest homes in the continental fortyeight states. Since he was always on the road, knowing the best local place to receive room and board with a personal touch came in quite handy.

  Lou was already awake, rounding up the morning’s eggs from the chicken coop. He and Cain42 shared a wave. He trudged up the steps to Temperance. He so desperately wanted to just fall into that lovely queen-size bed the Shellmont Inn provided, but first he had one final bit of business to attend.

  His MacBook rested on his pillows like an oversize mint. Cain42 unlocked it and brought it out of sleep mode. He could have used the Shellmont’s wi-fi, but preferred his own 802.11n modem, already plugged into a USB port. It offered both higher speeds and better security, and he needed both if he was going to properly maintain his website.

  And he treasured his website.

  Delightfully, the thread he’d introduced earlier in the day under “Announcements and News” had received even more responses. Members were openly sharing their grief—and anger—over the death of one of their own.

  i’ll light a black candle in his honor

  —Peterkurten

  mothman always made me laugh

  —new_world_order

  im gna gt myself cawt jus so i can kil that

  sombitch myself!

  —lambofsatan

  It was one of the bylaws of their brotherhood. Cain42 would hold their identities a secret—even from fellow members of his ersatz “killers labor union”—unless and until the event of their deaths. Then, in a heartfelt obituary, he would lift the veil of secrecy.

  He had had to do it too many times as of late.

  More often than not, a union member got himself killed by ignoring the valuable tips Cain42 himself offered right there on the home page of the website. They weren’t difficult to follow, but some people just couldn’t be relied on to follow any rules, and some people, at the end of the day, were just plain lazy.

  Mothman had been neither. Mothman had been a child prodigy. He had only yet begun to actualize his potential. When Cain42 heard about the events in Ulster County—from another member, who had speculated openly whether Timothy Hammond had been one of them—he had been brought to tears. To be taken from the world at so young an age. So sad.

  But it was a danger of the trade. This line of business had a history of unhappy endings. This labor union sought to diminish those odds, but nothing could stand in the way of human nature and human error. Steelworkers and coal miners still died, and so did his men and women (mostly men, but as a proponent of both women’s rights and affirmative action, he was actively pursuing more female and minority recruits).

  To get his mind off Mothman’s tragic demise, Cain42 clicked on another thread on the message board and started up one of his silly polls.

  What is your favorite murder weapon?

  Knife

  Ax

  Gun

  Blowtorch

  Poison

  Chainsaw

  Hands

  Candlestick

  Wrench

  Lead Pipe

  The last three made him grin.

  He sifted through his in-box, sorting the significant from the banal. Most of the private emails he received were complaints, one member sounding off about another’s foolish and/or insensitive remarks in some thread. Some of the members, even though they didn’t know one another’s IRL, had developed grudges and rivalries. Publicly, Cain42 denounced such disputes as petty and unbecoming, but privately, he knew that anything that bolstered competitiveness had to be an asset.

  The positive rate of growth in the “Photographs of the Trade” archive seemed to point in that direction. It was the most popular page on the website, and with good reason. Words were just words, especially online, but authentic photographs of actual union work boosted morale and fostered intelligent discussion. And ninety-nine percent of the photographs submitted were authentic. Cain42 fact-checked each and every one.

  Although the most recent photograph wouldn’t have to be fact-checked at all. He uploaded tonight’s JPEGs from his camera to his laptop and added them to the “Photographs” archive. The thumbnail of the husband and wife now occupied the space in the top row recently held by Mothman’s masterful kill of that woman in upstate New York, the space reserved for the newest and the freshest.

  Time moved on.

  The best way to honor Mothman—or any casualty—was to learn from their mistakes. What had the boy done wrong? He had fallen into that teenage pitfall of letting his parents get involved. That was really no fault of his own. The second best way to honor Mothman would be to replenish the union’s membership. So Cain42 fought his cloying tiredness and opened his database of potentials. He had seven names on his list. Maybe it was time to be bold. Maybe it was time to contact them all. How wonderful would it be if all seven checked out?

  His eyes scanned the list. Some of the nicknames these people came up with sure made him roll his eyes. Jack_the_Ripperest? Really? He stopped at the last name, though, and smiled. Galileofan.

  Now there was a man after his own heart.

  15

  For his own protection, Grover Kirk had been placed under house arrest—and that house turned out to be Esme’s. This was Grover’s only request, and given the certain amount of danger he was putting himself in, it was not an unreasonable one. What made it worse, of course, was that it also made perfect sense. He had, after all, come to Long Island to interview her. If, in a fictional world, she had been copasetic with his interests and supportive of his book, she might have allowed the budding journalist to crash at her house for a few days while he did his research. This would clear Cain42’s background check because, well, it contained a terrific amount of plausibility, and meanwhile, she could keep an eye on Grover in case Cain42 did come a-knocking. In this fictional world, Grover Kirk was apparently not a pathetic creep who had intimidated the little girl he was now living, temporarily, with under the same roof.

  Convincing Rafe to acquiesce to it all had been a task and a half.

  “First of all,” he’d barked at her over the phone, “you didn’t even tell me about what happened in the museum. I had to find out from Sophie. Who’s still a mess, by the way, thanks for asking.”

  Esme rubbed her forehead and sat back in the car. Was it still only Monday? God. When would this day end?

  “What you should have done, wife of mine, is tell your boss to go fuck himself.”

  “Oh, yeah, Rafe? Is that what I should have done?” She glanced to her left, at the sallow companion with whom she was sharing the backseat. He was typing on his computer. The dickhead didn’t even have the good sense to get carsick.

  “Esme, I will not have that man in my house.”

  “One, it’s not just your house. Two, it’s not your choice. It’s not mine, either. Do you think I want him within five hundred miles of
Sophie?”

  Grover glanced up from his laptop, opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and returned to his writing. Up front, the rookie FBI agent driving them to Oyster Bay switched on the cruise control and leaned back in her seat.

  Tom was asleep in the front passenger seat. Apparently, the day’s events had taken its toll on him. Esme wondered, not for the first time, just how much Henry Booth’s bullet had permanently emptied him of his vitality and spirit. Had she made a selfish mistake? He had been so content, living in semiretirement with Penelope Sue, working at a desk. And he could have returned to Kentucky on the next flight out of Newark, but he’d insisted on accompanying them to Long Island. In for a penny, in for a pound. That was Tom Piper.

  “Well, Esme, I’d like to know how you plan on explaining all this to our daughter.”

  Esme sighed. So would she. And she also would have preferred her husband offer assistance rather than dumbheaded interference, but this was her life, and not the fictional utopia they hoped Cain42 would purchase (along with, perhaps, a bridge and a pair of unicorns).

  “And where’s he going to sleep, Esme? Have you thought about that?”