With a pleasant smile upon his face, he walked closer to the young woman’s sedan. As he reached its trunk, he extended his hand and brushed his fingertips over its dusty, cool blue metal. Lifting his fingers from the steel, he then slid his hand into his pocket to reach for an object.
The woman, now three steps away, and with music still playing in her ears, glanced away from her idle stare and directed her eyes to the young man approaching. Noticing his well-built frame, handsome face, and friendly smile, she returned to him her own neighborly smile.
“Good evenin’,” he greeted pleasantly.
Even though his words were unintelligible to her busied ears, she nodded her response. When she reached her car door, she stood for a moment to retrieve the keys from her clutch.
The sound of the black boots pacing over the dust of the asphalt stopped.
She opened the door, and then leaned forward over the driver’s side to place the grocery bag on the passenger’s seat.
The music streaming into the woman’s ears overcame the sound of the swiftly approaching black boots. In an instant, a muscular body collided into her, shoving her into the sedan.
Her hand instinctively dropped her clutch and grasped the steering wheel, preventing her face from smashing onto the car’s center island. She felt a strong arm wrap around her and pull her in tightly. A cupped hand came from behind her head and secured over her mouth and nose a dampened folded piece of cloth. She gasped. Immediately, she smelled the chemicals from the cloth, as its compounds rushed through her nostrils and into her lungs.
The earbud fell from the woman’s ear and landed on Sik’s forearm. From it, he could hear the pinging of a song’s rhythmic beat.
With all her strength, she kicked her legs and wriggled her body. Her panicked hands pounded into the car’s ceiling. Her feet struck the brake pedal in rapid succession. Outside, the sedan’s red taillights strobed her frantic yet silent plea for help, in the cool dimly lit darkness.
Sik pulled her in more vigorously. Placing his lips next to her ear, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She gasped and heaved for air, while her heart pounded. The chemicals from the cloth freely flowed into her lungs, and then quickly spread throughout her body. Within moments, her senses dulled. The signals traveling through the nerves of her body and the synapses in her brain became irreversibly impeded.
Feebly, she struggled one last time.
Again, his arms squeezed her in tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated in a regretful whisper.
Later, Sik drove the blue sedan of his female captive.
His journey began in Indiana, and from there, he drove down south on the 75 Interstate. Then, he traveled west on the 40 Highway toward South Carolina. The moon had long passed its apex by the time he approached his destination. Even though he had been behind the wheel for many hours, he was alert and steadfastly focused on what he was soon to do.
He reasoned, “Since this is only the first, I better get used to it and not get nervous. Just focus.”
The woman was alive but unconscious, in the trunk of the car.
The next exit on the interstate ran through Israel, South Carolina. He took it. After a few quick turns, he reached the Stedham Motel. It was a small one-floor motel oriented parallel to the road. With a single lamppost standing at the center of the parking lot in front of the lobby, old tall and thick trees overshadowed the perimeter of the motel.
Sik drove to one end of the motel and parked in front of the very last room. The light was dimmest at that end, and he took a few moments to peer through his windows and windshield to see if anyone was around. Satisfied, he opened the door of the car and walked, with a moderate pace, to the door of the room.
He tested the doorknob. “Good. Unlocked. Just like we planned,” he said to himself, in a whisper. He opened it, walked inside, and kept the lights of the room off. After a few seconds his eyes grew accustomed to the sparse light, and he investigated the area. Typical motel room, he thought, A bed, a nightstand with a lamp, a TV, and a bathroom. Nothing else and no one else was inside.
Next, he stepped out of the room, walked to the trunk of the car, and unlocked and opened it. For a long moment, he stared at the woman lying inside, thinking whether he should turn and bring her back or continue to take himself further into the shadows. Then, resolved, he raised his head and thought, Just do this smooth and quiet, and don’t even think about stumbling. After looking around once more, he leaned down, drew her out, and said to himself, “Time to start pumping that ice-cold blood you have.” Quickly, he carried her in his arms, into the room.
He laid her down on the floor at the foot of the bed, closed the door, and turned on the lamp. Afterwards, he knelt down and straightened her legs and arms.
With his ice-cold blood now pumping, he was patient, deliberate, and quiet.
The cuffs of each of her shirtsleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up. As he turned her palms up, he saw the circular markings that he had tattooed on the inside of both her wrists.
Standing up and folding his arms across his chest, he lowered his head and stared at her once more.
The air in the room was still and dry. As he stood motionless for a long time, he heard no sound except the slow pace of his breathing lungs and the moderate beat of his pumping heart.
Even though his mind and body were calm, it was his soul that struggled with what he was about to do that night.
In his heart, he knew that what he was doing was wrong and against the steadfast upbringing and teaching of his parents. But there was something in his stirred emotions that permitted him to act this way: it was vengeance cloaked as a desire for justice. Moreover, there was something in the darkness that urged him to accomplish this and others, telling him to continue, and promising to give him what he ultimately desired. It vowed to him that in return for these deeds, the day would come when the justice he sought would be conclusively dispensed.
* * * * * * *
A few days later, the longhaired goateed man - feeling more like his regular self - stepped out of his apartment, then closed and locked the door.
Hearing a crow cawing a close distance behind him, he turned around. He saw the crow in the air, dodging left and right, chased by a tiny brown bird one-fifth its own size. With the tiny bird pecking at it, the crow tried to flee, swerving here and there, trying to determine the position of the little bird, and then clumsily flying the opposite direction.
Following the chase for a few moments, he quietly commented to himself, “Crows get a bad rap.”
Finally, the tiny bird halted its pursuit and turned away.
His eyes followed the frightened crow wobbling in the air, until it became a small dot in the sky. Pointing his eyes down the stairs, he thought, Well…they do eat road kill.
As he trotted down the concrete stairs, he couldn’t stop commenting, But other birds eat live bugs and worms. Is that any better?
His Mustang was parked with its top up just in front of his apartment, in a numbered stall. He entered it, started the engine, connected his phone to the stereo, and began to make his way out of the apartment complex.
The “65 Mustang was his baby. After buying the car many years ago, the first thing he did was to repaint it candy-apple-red. He kept the white-walled tires, but being a music lover and not a vintage car collector, he replaced the old original AM/FM radio with a CD/MP3/multi-format combo and the best speakers he could find.
Listening to his music, he drove a few miles east from his apartment on the 56 Freeway to have lunch at a restaurant called Trace, named after its owner Tracy. The sit-down restaurant was one among a chain in San Diego, with a bar and a microbrewery. Since he visited Trace almost every week, the employees recognized his face.
He walked in, like he walked into any place, not caring where he was, not caring who was there, and just there to eat and drink.
Standing behind a podium with a stack of menus, Paige watched him come in and thought,
Ah, here he comes, one of our faithful patrons. Silent…but faithful. When he reached her, she greeted him with an honest and pleasant smile. She was his waitress at times, and this day was one of them. She stood about four inches shorter than he, and her long blonde hair was tied in a thick braid that hung down below her shoulders. With a natural friendliness that was unmistakably genuine and uncontrived, she greeted him with it and asked, “Hi, how are ya? Got a preference for where you wanna to sit today?”
For a moment, he realized he had never taken the time to notice the color of her eyes, and today was no different. He turned to gaze not at her eyes, but at the direction of the booths in front of large windows that opened to the street outside. “How about one of those booths?” he asked, while tilting his head at that direction.
As he began to walk there, she followed. Then, he thought, What’s her name? I saw it on the tab once. Paige…I think. With a slight turn of his head, he glanced back at her and added, I doubt people here even know my name. It’s been years since I’ve really talked to anyone. I don’t think anyone knows it. As he reached the booth, he said quietly, under his breath, “I might as well not have one.”
Once he sat, Paige handed him a menu and said, “You’ve probably seen this hundreds of times already, but here it is, if you need it.” After pausing, she added, “So, care for a drink before you order?”
Even though he kept his words brief, he tried to be polite and give half-smiles from the corners of his mouth whenever asking for something or saying a word to people. “How about a Mule and a glass of water, please?” he answered softly, in his usual manner. The “Mule” was short for the name of a beer Trace brewed: the Stubborn Mule. It was a dark stout beer, and it gave him a decent kick in the head after the first glass.
Paige smiled then made her way to the bar, where she asked the bartender to pour his drink.
Glancing up, he briefly set his eyes on one of the televisions above. With a lull in sporting events, the channel was on the news, and the news anchor read a prompt from the day’s latest, “…coming up, a high-speed chase results in tragedy. But first, the successful long-standing Middle East and Caliphate Peace Agreement leads the President to fast track remaining troop withdrawals across the globe. Even though other minor threats may still exist, Congress plans to drastically reduce the defense budget.”
The words merely droned in his ears. Then, slowly, he turned and stared out the window.
Later, after quickly finishing his meal and drinking one and a half Mules, he soon left Trace with a good buzz. Not having anywhere else to go, he hopped into his car and drove it, with the top down, towards the Pacific Ocean, reaching Powerhouse Park beach.
Once there, he parked his car on the side of the street. Keeping the stereo on with the volume turned down, he asked himself, as he searched for a song, “How about listening to some older stuff?” He enjoyed the music of his generation, but he preferred old-school music. It was mainly because when growing up, instead of hanging around kids his own age, he liked to be around adults; and so, he acquired their taste. As a song he liked started to play, its thoughtful melancholy tone and lyrics began to set his mood.
Tilting his head back and closing his eyes, he thought about his next distraction: the football season that was about to begin. He loved the sport, and even though San Diego’s football team, the Chargers, was a perennial struggling team, he believed this year, like every year, “This year is gonna be different. You’ll see.” He was excited and ready for the gridiron games to begin.
Soon, his mind took him to a time, when he was in his early teens, to a conversation he had heard that referred to football, and to where sometimes his idle mind seemed to want to take him, in order to subconsciously point out a message he needed to hear.
On that Sunday morning, he rambled curiously into the high school gymnasium, after finishing a game of touch football on the school’s football field. Inside the gym, there were maybe a hundred chairs arranged in rows, and a podium stood in front. He found himself sitting alone in the back corner seat of the last row.
It was a makeshift church. The small group had scheduled its services inside the high school gym every Sunday. The pastor was a young man, maybe in his early thirties, standing at the side of the podium, with his hand leaning on top of it. He seemed genuine and spoke as if he were in front of friends, just sitting in his home living room. For some reason, he was talking about the new professional football season’s talented rookies, incorporating it somehow into his message: the very message to which the longhaired man’s mind seemed to keep drawing him.
Remembering the pastor’s words, a sentence echoed clearly in his memory, “Just by living our average daily lives, we easily slide into the role the world makes for us…”
It was a foreign idea to him, and he thought, The world doesn’t make roles for people. I decide what to do every day, and I make the world what I want it to be - or at least try to make it what I want it to be. And what I do in my daily life is my decision only. Disagreeing with the young preacher, he thought, Ridiculous.
After the silence of a brief pause, the pastor finished his sentence, “…not the role God has purposed us to have.”
Shaking his head, he quickly brushed aside the memory. It distracted him from what he really wanted to remember, and he asked, “Who was the Chargers’ quarterback back then?” He mulled it over, but couldn’t figure it out.
Then, after staring out over the ocean for a long while, the sea breeze carried the high-pitched laughter of a small child from some distance. Shifting his attention, he quickly thought about his own son and the laugh the small boy used to blurt in enjoyment.
Then, reaching into his jeans’ pocket, he drew out a quarter that he used to use to perform a simple, common magic trick for his son. As he stared at the coin, his fingers flipped it from one side over to the other, and he remembered how his little son thoroughly enjoyed the trick and never became tired of it.
The magic trick was the closest he could get to make something disappear, allowing him to seem more than human; and for his son, it made him more than other fathers.
Escaping for a moment, he closed his eyes, imagined his son’s face in front of him, and began to perform the magic trick. With his left hand he motioned the quarter, as if it were in front of his son’s smiling eyes. “Look,” he whispered. “See the quarter?” He waved the coin slowly to the right then to the left. “Now watch.” With his eyes still closed, he moved the coin as though moving it behind his son’s ear. Then, when he drew his hand back in front of his son’s eyes, the quarter was no longer in his hand. Revealing his empty palm to his son, he said, “It disappeared!”
His son giggled and laughed, “Where is it? Where is it?”
He motioned his hand behind his son’s ear once again, and then pulled it forward. “Here it is! It was behind your ear!” His son cheered with glee, and hearing the boy’s laughter gave him peace and contentment. He paused. He smiled. The world stopped for a few moments. With eyes still closed, they began to moisten with emotion, and he waited for them to dry.
Then, he heard, “Do it again!”
Again he motioned, brought the coin behind his son’s ear, and then moved his hand forward. He whispered, “It disappeared!”
Strangely, his closed eyes sensed a flash of light. Then, his fingers no longer felt the quarter; instead, there was a sensation of warmth. Quickly, he opened his eyes to peer at his hand.
The quarter was gone.
He searched for the coin to see if it dropped on his lap. Then, he looked down at his seat and at his feet.
Nothing there.
“Where in the world did that drop to?” he questioned. Leaning his head over the edge of his car door, he peered onto the street below. Again, nothing.
“What the…?” he whispered.
Perplexed, he leaned back on his seat and said word-per-word, “Son. Of. A. Beach.”
Unwittingly, he had made the quarter vanish, and conseque
ntly, the memory of what he had done when he was a very sick child, who had made the mantis disappear, was indeed true. Yet unknown to him, he had begun to undergo a change, and his life was about to be defined in terms unimaginable. Yet unknown to him, he was more than human.
He was puzzled, but a few moments later, he began not to care.
Suddenly, a breeze picked up and pelted tiny sand on his face and into his car. Casually and slowly, he brushed the sand from himself and blinked them away from his eyelashes. Looking up, he took a couple slow deep breaths, and then realized it was time to go.
After starting the engine, he looked over his shoulder, patiently moved into the street, and drove away. He hadn’t noticed, but to his right, a little boy and his father stood close by on the sidewalk, hand in hand, waiting for him to move past them in order to cross the street. The son could barely reach his father’s hand. As the Mustang glided past them, the little boy noticed a bright-green insect trying to position itself on one end of the Mustang’s smooth chrome rear bumper.
The boy quickly pointed at the green mantis, and then jerked his head up. With a surprised smile, he told his father about the curious looking bug he had just seen.
* * * * * * *
Just before five o’clock p.m., the door at the front entrance of the Lexington County Coroner’s Office, in South Carolina, opened.
Cold air inside rushed out to the open air.
As the door slowly closed, the steady clicking of a woman’s black high-heeled shoes could be heard echoing against the marble floor and the office walls. The sound caught the attention of the coroner’s assistant, who was in a room away from sight. The assistant, a young male in his mid-twenties stood up from his chair and walked to the front desk. When he gazed upon the woman approaching him, he smiled a very friendly smile. “Good evening, ma’am,” he warmly welcomed her.
She too looked like she was in her twenties. She had long, softly waving, dark hair, and she wore a long snug black skirt that reached her knees. With a hand, she pulled straight her black jacket that fit her closely over the white-laced blouse she wore. She was outright beautiful. In a sweet southern accent, she spoke to him, “Good evening, sir, I’m a reporter from the County Daily Chronicle. And I was wondering if I could speak to the coroner about that poor woman found this week in the Stedham Motel.”
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 3