Tomorrow I Will Kill Again

by Matthew Allred

  As Clancy slid into the driver’s seat next to Mary in the middle, he said, “What’s with you today?”

  Rob sat at the passenger window. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything, but he was smiling. He said, “Nothing bad, sir, nothing bad.”

  “I’m with Clance,” Mary said, looking more than a little annoyed. “Something’s happening with you. You’re acting like a clown, if you want to know what I think.”

  “Well, lucky for me, I don’t. I got just the spot picked up for us. Head over to Twin Nest Lane.”

  “I don’t know where that is, Rob.”

  Robert took God’s name in vain, as if Clancy could save them all some trouble by just feeling where the fire pit would be. This was also against church doctrine. It was a tenant most church members actually obeyed. Clancy hated it when people swore using the name of God, even back then when his own faith was still in the early stages, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You aren’t going to believe this green.” Rob pointed the direction they were to go, and Clancy started the car.

  “Now what do you mean by that?” Mary asked.

  But maybe Robert didn’t hear her over the sound of the wind whipping in. He lit a cigarette, apparently producing a lighter out of nowhere. Mary, who hated cigarette smoke (perhaps because it reminded her of her father), eyed Clancy, telling him without words that he should encourage Robert to put that out if Clancy wanted his goodnight kiss at the end of the day. And he did want to say something. It was his car, wasn’t it? And maybe he would have on a normal day. A day when Robert was acting more like himself. Clancy pretended not to notice, hoping by the time the night was over she’d have forgotten it.

  Of course, he had no way of knowing that by the end of that particular day Mary would no longer care about Robert’s cigarette or anybody else’s.

  On the short drive over nobody spoke. Mary had called Robert a “clown,” but Clancy suspected that wasn’t quite the word Mary was looking for. Robert wasn’t acting like a clown at all.

  He was acting like a man possessed.

  †

  The teapot screamed; the water was ready.

  Miller was glad to be torn from the memory. Though he doubted it was gone for good. Not with everything that new house out there had stirred up. He poured water in his stained white mug, added the Postum powder, and began stirring.

  Miller wished there was more he could do, more he could control. But he had a feeling that his time of action had finally come, and that he’d do plenty before this was all over. Whatever “over” meant.

  Miller considered his options. He was old, feeble even, but perhaps his strength was not what mattered here. Perhaps the strength needed to do one more good thing for his God before his bones slept would be provided to him.

  He had, after all, always prayed for such strength.

  8

  Fifteen minutes after Paul began hacking away at the tree, Deeny materialized nearby. He watched Paul curiously for a time, and then said, “Writer, what are you doing?”

  Paul saw the man and his first thought—his first urge—was to bury the axe in the creature’s head. This urge sickened him though because Deeny was his friend. Paul raised the blade up, both hands wrapped around the smooth wood of the handle, looking something like a dark pagan priest about to perform a sacrificial kill.

  Deeny stood in front of him, beside the tree Paul had been working on, his wide, grotesque face not showing much emotion of any kind. It was as if he were waiting. The blade hovered above Paul’s head. He heaved in great breaths of air, expelling them in white smoky puffs.

  Deeny said, “I asked you what you are doing. Perhaps I can help.”

  And Paul began to weep in earnest. The axe slid out of his hands and missed Paul’s head by two inches before hitting the dirt path with a lifeless thud.

  “Careful!” Deeny said.

  Paul cried harder, almost convulsing, and joined the axe on the dirt path, falling to his knees. Deeny leaned down and cradled Paul’s back with one of his large hands. He passed gas as he crouched. “Excuse me,” he said.

  At this, Paul, still in anguish, also laughed quietly along with his crying.

  “What’s wrong, Writer? What are you doing out here? Did we not plan another nice evening for Jen tonight? Should you not be getting ready?”

  “Oh Deeny!” Paul wailed, wiping his eyes and nose as he clutched for the round, meaty shoulder of his friend. “I was trying to kill you! I was trying to bur-bur-burn the house down, and this forest! I was trying to kill you!”

  Deeny’s shining black eyes searched Paul’s face for meaning. “Why?” he said. Already his anti-light was obscuring the space between them.

  “I’m so frightened. I’m s-s-so scared, Deeny!” He couldn’t look at his friend; instead he buried his face in the cloth-covered chest of the man. Amid the panic and shame, Paul realized he’d never noticed what kind of clothing Deeny wore, and with his eyes closed now as they were, he couldn’t remember. “I don’t want to be a kih-kih-kih…” he blew his nose into his hand. “A killer!”

  “Why not?” Deeny said, apparently genuinely curious.

  “You don’t understand!” Paul screamed, suddenly vicious. “I’ve always believed it was wrong. I still think that.”

  “No,” Deeny said gravely. “It is as right as it gets.”

  “How can you say that? What could be honorable about it?”

  “Life matters only as much as it controls life.”

  Paul thought about this for a moment. He pressed his forehead more tightly into Deeny’s body. The fog Deeny gave off was so thick now Paul couldn’t have seen the man if he’d wanted to. “What does that mean?” Paul said finally.

  “I don’t know. I only know it is the truth. It is the destiny of me, and the destiny of you. We will kill forever. Perhaps there is some grand purpose, but I don’t think so. I think the killing is what matters.”

  “I want to believe you! I want to! I feel the pull! I feel it, just like you said. Just like the unborn said! But how can I do this? How can I kill?” He wept all the harder at this, his voice was that of a man out of options.

  “Believe me,” Deeny said. “It is what waits for us.”

  Paul heard a group of birds somewhere. He could not tell what kind they were, how many squawked, or how far from him they flew. He knew only that they were there. “I don’t understand any of this. I just feel the pulling. Who is pulling? What entity wants this?”

  “You are overthinking a simple thing. It is the great human failing to believe that something beautiful must also have meaning. Its beauty is its meaning.”

  “I’m sorry, Deeny. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” Paul did not know if he was apologizing because he was afraid, or because he had tried to murder him.

  “I forgive you. You are my friend, Writer, my partner. I will be patient.” He leaned in and with humongous sausage lips kissed the top of Paul’s head. The sound it made was a smack! “I will be patient, and I will help you through. You will need a gun. Can you get one soon, please?”

  “Yes,” Paul sniveled, so devoid of energy and thought he seemed as if he might fall asleep.

  The fat man smiled his classic awful smile, “Then we will just need a suitable volunteer.”

  9

  In Salt Lake City, a twenty-one-year-old girl stumbled out of a shabby wooden house on the west side of town, into night air cold as knives of ice. The sky was a clear, fine crystal, and a terrible wind whipped her dark blonde hair around her face, and into her mouth, and out behind her in great ribbons. The wind flipped her skirt restlessly, mimicking the random, jerky movements of a Hollywood poltergeist. Her body was wan like the body of a tall ballerina who’d forgotten how to eat. The girl had probably meant to put a bra on when she got dressed this afternoon, but she wasn’t wearing one now, and one of her nipples kept trying to peek out at the city through the dirty half-unbuttoned shirt she wore. Her intense green eyes were cooked red with lack of sleep. W
here her lipstick didn’t cover them completely, her lips had gone blue. But she didn’t care about blue. She was thinking about a different color. The color of water in a sink. The color of nothing.

  Though she was ill equipped for the cold, she barely felt it. Though she was shaking, and though her arms were covered with goose bumps, she didn’t notice.

  Heroin flowed in this girl’s veins—a calming, warming river. She almost smiled.

  She walked that night as she preferred to walk: alone. She had lost faith in humans of any variety. Be they male, female, stranger, family, friend, or foe—it didn’t matter to her. For she had learned that no one could be trusted like heroin could be trusted. Heroin was a well-trained dog, which gave its love unconditionally. Heroin was her best friend, her lover, her father, and her mother.

  Heroine was her god.

  After a long time she passed The Pie Hole and the Heavy Metal Shop on State Street. She didn’t smell the pizza. She didn’t see the gigantic psychedelic mural painted on the wall. She didn’t hear the sounds of people living.

  Eventually another woman, well dressed, about forty, approached the girl quickly at some street corner or another. “Hey,” The woman said. “Hey, honey, are you okay? What on earth are you doing out here dressed like that? You’ll freeze. Do you need a ride somewhere? My car’s close. Maybe a three-minute walk.”

  The girl’s gaze went to the woman, almost steady enough to be considered eye contact. “Everything about you is pretty,” the girl mumbled in a conspiratorial, penetrating way.

  The woman took a step back, glancing around to make sure there were other people in earshot if need be. “Look,” she said, her eyebrows creasing dramatically, “do you want a ride or not?”

  The next thing the girl knew the woman was gone. That made sense, she supposed, disappearing was one of the things humans were best at. And in this one way—and this way alone—heroin and humans had something in common: nothing stayed with you forever, in the necessary, unbroken chain.

  She was on a different street now, hopefully closer to the apartment. Maybe she would kill the man who lived there tonight. “Maybe I should,” she said, but her words were swept away in the power of the wind. “What a joke.”

  Her feet hit the pavement, rhythmically, the tattoo of a professional percussionist brought back from the dead for one final beat. She followed the rhythm to an alley somewhere and realized on some level of thought that she was lost. The lights of an ambulance flooded the small space, but there was no siren. Then it was gone. Her head began to ache from the cold air in her lungs, but she was content with anything, because she was in the best possible condition. Her companion was with her. Inside her like the Holy Ghost.

  Eventually she saw the Shilo Hotel sign beaming from its pedestal. She realized she was close to the apartment. Then, without warning, she was there. She used the key the man had given her, only stabbing it accidentally into the wood twice, and stepped into the tiny living room. It smelled like an abandoned office. Aside from the faint light that made it through the closed blinds, the room was dark. Dark was wonderful in here; it reminded her of heroin. A weak heater headed off the cold, not that it made any difference what the temperature was. The man was in his bedroom sleeping. The girl couldn’t remember what the place looked like in the light.

  She laid her body next to his body. The sheets and springs and pillows of the bed meant as little to her as the man beside her. She must have woken him, for he said something, but now she was in it all the way, eating up the best of her high—the blank part that sometimes came when the junk was good. She almost did not know when he was penetrating her. She didn’t even remember getting out of her panties. Maybe she hadn’t been wearing them all day. She did not realize later on that he had fallen asleep again.

  When he slept his body was a dead log, infested with bugs, just like everyone else.

  She wondered if he would give her money. Sometimes he left twenty or thirty dollars on his kitchen table when he went to work. She did not know where he worked. She did not know his last name. She was not even sure how long she had been living with him.

  She fell asleep with a wish to die before waking, for if the man did not leave money in the morning she would have to go the entire next day without her friend; her heroine.

  10

  Jen, in her excitement, grabbed Paul a little too hard.

  “Ow!” he said, but laughed.

  “Sorry,” she said, but she was smiling, too.

  They were dancing nude under the sheets, exploring and trying and loving, enjoying their new nightly ritual. A bright moon hung outside. About an hour ago one of them—Jen couldn’t remember which—had opened the curtains and the blinds so Luna’s ivory light could join them and warm them in its strange way.

  Jen was happy.

  And to think: such pleasure could create. A human life could be made in such a way. It was astounding.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, clutching Paul around the shoulders. She was not fully certain if she were thanking Paul or God or herself. Of the three, Paul was the only one that replied directly. His hand, which had been expertly massaging the back of her thigh, stopped moving. In fact, his whole person seemed to still. The moonlight played a mean trick on Paul’s face, aging him, reminding Jen of a villain in a silent film. She noticed the usually pleasant green LCD of their clock said 11:50. Just now the numbers shown as if sick, not reminding Jen of sunlight shining through spring leaves like they normally did.

  “You don’t need to thank me,” Paul said. “I haven’t really done anything.”

  A quality in his voice, some distant echoing, seemed to cool Jen. She wanted to say something, wanted to assure him that he had given her much, much to be thankful for. But she couldn’t speak. Just seconds ago she’d been ready for the ultimate act of love, another consummation of their marriage, their union, but now her body was just shutting down.

  “You may never know how little you owe me,” he said, not sounding like himself, or anyone for that matter.

  He doesn’t sound human, that cautious, frightened voice told her, the voice that had a lot to say lately. He sounds like a ghost.

  A tear—the biggest single tear Jen had ever seen—painted Paul’s cheek with a shining trail. Then he didn’t look like a movie villain or a ghost, but like a model shot in grayscale, engineered for the pleasure of the eye. Despite this moment of beauty, her desire for sex did not return. Now she felt like a locked chest. An empty, locked chest.

  How could the mood have changed so quickly, so dramatically?

  Whoa.

  She was sleepy now. So so sleepy.

  Almost not able to think.

  Her eyes fluttered.

  The moonlight changed in color and tone.

  Paul began to moan, pacing the hallway outside the room.

  She heard him downstairs, outside.

  He was screaming out there.

  He said, “—can’t! I Can’t! I—” and then something else. Something Jen didn’t think she wanted to hear.

  How could he be outside? she thought. Too cold.

  The moon was gone; now the room was like a tomb.

  She heard another man talking.

  So softly… it almost wasn’t real…

  wasn’t real was it wasn’t

  She was alone no she wasn’t. Paul was beside her, sleeping—but not soundly. He turned over.

  He turned again.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and there was some light, some kind of light somewhere.

  Must have been, because she saw Paul grinning.

  He had ten thousand teeth.

  Apparently, Jen thought, I just don’t remember making love. But we must have. We did. We did make love because we are in love—we are in love like little children.

  †

  In the morning her memories had simply become dreams. She believed she had gotten herself laid by the intelligent, attractive man she loved.

  11

  Sunday
afternoon, after he’d come back from church, Miller made himself a grilled-cheese sandwich, and opened a tall glass bottle of Pepsi, the kind that comes from Mexico, where they still used real sugar. The new corn stuff just didn’t taste like the soda he’d loved as a kid. He didn’t drink sugary drinks often, but he kept a few bottles around for when he was feeling nostalgic. The bubbles mixed with the cola flavor always reminded him of high school.

  Usually he tried to stay away from those memories of the end of senior year, but he had the feeling now he was duty-bound to review them, to coax out meaning and direction from the events so present with him and yet so long-past. He sat in his chair, the one with a view of the trees, and sipped the sweet drink. A long ribbon of white clouds trailed the whole of his kitchen window. Anyone looking in would have seen the bleary eyes of a man in desperate need of happy thoughts.

  †

  Clancy, Robert, and Mary got to the end of the dirt path that was Twin Nest Lane. Robert hopped out before Clancy had even brought the car to a full stop.

  “Hey, Mickey Mouse,” Mary said to Robert with a sneer, “you forgot the food.”. Normally, she was a beautiful girl (at least in Clancy’s estimation), but the look of distain didn’t flatter her.

  Robert had already been running toward the trees where, presumably, a fire pit waited for them. He said, “I came out here earlier. I left some coolers and some ice.”

  Mary looked at Clancy with a look that said, He was your friend first.

  The slender trees seemed more imposing than they should have. None of the trees were very tall, and only a few seemed to Clancy to be very old—but they felt big and old.

  The man who would eventually inherit the legal rights to this land, Donald Harmon, would not be born for another three years.

  For whatever reason, Mary’s mood was improving. Maybe it was getting away from the cigarette smoke of the car. Maybe it was being out in nature for a change. Clancy didn’t really care what the reason was, he was just happy that it looked like they were all going to have a nice afternoon. He was still bothered by Robert’s smoking and strange attitude, but who was he to judge? Didn’t Clancy’s faith teach that each of us has our own sins? Some, like smoking, were just more visible than others.