How many was that? How many were left?
Something told him he could stop at ten, but…then, if he stopped, wouldn’t he be him again? Wouldn’t Anthony Peterson have to face his pain again? The pain. So much pain.
Who was that poor bastard bleeding on the floor there?
When his vision cleared again, he saw a hideous little bloody circle of ten freshly-pulled back teeth.
He cocked his head to the side. Whose teeth were these? Why were they here? Was it a gift? Should he try to put them back? Some were broken.
The blood. The teeth. His vision blurred again, and he watched as these bloody teeth turned into another one of those mocking, accusatory skulls that continually invaded his mind all that day. Something about South America? He couldn’t remember. All he knew now was pain and weakness. Whose skull was this? Whose teeth were those?
Then, he felt the gory pliers slip from his red, wet hand, and he looked over at them drunkenly. He focused on the pliers as his head swam, then looked up a little to the hand.
That was his own hand was it not? If so, that meant…probably…that was his own blood his hand…and putting those facts together…those must have been his own teeth.
His eyes widened, and he looked back to that hideous circle. The skull faded away, as if back through the invisible wound in the center of his forehead, and he saw clearly again the circle consisted, in fact, of blood and teeth.
His own blood. His own teeth.
He had done this to himself…because they had made him. He shook with tears, clenching his eyes closed as tight as he possibly could to hold them back. Nobody did this to Anthony Peterson.
Did they not know who they were fucking with?
But that very thought brought the skulls floating back up to gape at him in the darkness of his closed eyes. Not his skulls, but his responsibility.
His swimming head slowly tuned back in to reality.
No. Not his responsibility. Someone was doing this to him, and nobody fucked with Anthony Peterson.
That was true.
He was not the raggedy man. He was real.
He was Anthony Peterson, and nobody made him do anything. He was doing this to survive. He was a survivor, and playing the game was his only way to make sure he lived to make them pay. He spat a mouthful of blood sideways, then began to clean himself up.
Tears and blood. They would get no more of either from Anthony Peterson, goddamn it.
He held his pocket handkerchief up to his mouth to soak up the gore as he slowly took control of the pain. He would win. He always won.
Pain was just a feeling. Pain could be controlled. It wouldn’t control him.
Peterson breathed and shook as he suffered. His nerve endings felt like they were on fire. He was terrified. So, he let himself feel it all for a few seconds and deliberately began to compartmentalize.
Pain was just an emotion, right? It’s the way we react to the physical feelings that matters. Change the reaction and the pain goes away.
Fear is just a state of mind. Control it. Put it away.
It worked. It had to work. Peterson was all business. Peterson was going to stay alive. He swallowed his blood. It was the closest thing to nourishment he had had all day. He wondered darkly how long he could feed on himself until he was gone.
He shook his head and fought back the pain again. He was not going to bleed to death from his mouth.
Compartmentalize. The positive? He was drinking something. His parched mouth and throat were appreciating the drink he was getting now, as disgusting and self-destructive as that was. Ironically, he now needed to dry his once parched mouth to stay alive.
He had to stop the bleeding. He glanced at the phone and shrugged his shoulders. Let them wait.
The toothless wonder carefully untied his tie and began to unravel the tail.
This was why he was going to win. He was smarter than they were.
He tore the slip stitch, which allowed him to separate the fine silk all the way down to the blade of the necktie.
Then, he retrieved the interlining. The interlining of his tie, like many ties, was a woven wool-like material that managed to simulate a gauze pad pretty damn well. It was an expensive designer tie, but it was not worth his life. He needed what it could provide.
He tore the interlining into equal segments and rolled four of them to make pads for his erupting sockets. He placed them in his mouth and bit down for the pressure. It hurt, but he was controlling the pain. He was not about to bleed to death. He was going to use his brain to stay alive and get his precious payback.
This was why he was going to win. He was smarter than they were.
He was surviving.
And when he was done, Anthony Peterson picked up the phone, still on speaker and noticed blood spatters across its screen. “Harrumph!” was the noise he made into the phone to let them know he was there.
“Can you talk, Mr. Peterson?” the kidnapper asked after a pause. He sounded almost concerned. Almost.
It took him great effort and he slurred his words at first. It was as if he was retraining himself to talk with a new mouth. “Yeth…yeth.” He swallowed a mouthful of blood, painfully cleared his throat, and forced himself into the calmness he had just created. But it wasn’t easy.
“Yes,” he said finally.
“Ten teeth. Ten million,” the kidnapper said as if to make official the completion of the deal.
“Ngo…nnnnngo…” Peterson steadied himself again, then defiantly said, “Go…fuck…yourself.”
And as the kidnapper laughed that horrible laugh again, Anthony Peterson lost the battle he had been fighting and finally passed out from the pain.
18
Smoke and Reflection 8:06 AM
Anthony Peterson was possibly the farthest thing from Calderon’s mind at that particular moment.
The mercenary had stopped listening in right around the time he caused the pliers to drop and got up to stretch his legs as the self-mutilation continued. He didn’t need to listen while the boss was on the line. Besides, this was going to take forever. Calderon had pulled a few teeth in his day, both for safety in the field and for torture. The fastest a tooth was ever pulled was probably around three minutes. The slowest took around fifteen. Ten teeth? Calderon had some time, so he put Anthony Peterson out of his mind.
Instead, he thought a good bit about Susan Peterson. Why was she here? The reason she was here was very different from the reason her husband was in such a predicament. It was the difference of why, the difference between these two whys that exercised Calderon’s brain.
Calderon still wished he didn’t care.
He opened the door to the room where they were keeping her, but didn’t talk to her this time. Instead, he squatted down to his backpack, next to his oversized duffle bag and fumbled around for some cigarettes.
“Hello?” Susan Peterson said. “Is that you?”
He shook his head. Silly question, wasn’t it?
He looked around the clean floor of the organized storeroom for a moment, not wanting to actually look at the woman. He thought about reminding her that she had no friends here and not to start thinking that she did, but decided not to respond. She either got the message or did not.
She wouldn’t be there all that much longer, come what may.
Calderon exited the room and trod his way down the stairs, feeling wistful. It was his past that kept coming back to him.
This was still his kind of place. Off the grid. Hole in the map.
He carefully opened the door, waited for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and walked in the preordained path under the shadows to his tree and lit a cigarette.
In this modern world, everyone was watching everyone. Calderon would know. He was one of those watchers. He was recording all the calls on this particular mission without Peterson or that Pocase guy or anybody else knowing about it, just as he had a thousand other times.
But this place…nobody was watching this place.
And he liked that because it was so rare.
A man could get lost out here, he thought, then frowned because the thought had surprised him.
That was true. Places like this were the very kinds of places where people could easily get lost. Maybe never found.
For a guy thinking about leaving it all behind, that thought, perhaps, should have given him comfort, but it didn’t.
Instead, it gave him a chill.
Knock-knock…that was the sound Mrs. Peterson had made as she kicked the inside of the coffin. He saw how one of her feet was bloodied, injured as she knock-knocked on that coffin. Why? Did she think they didn’t know she was in there? As if they had made one stupid mistake by grabbing the wrong box? Did she think that she could kick her way out?
Calderon shrugged and puffed.
No.
She was doing that because it was better than doing nothing.
Calderon was sure that was the reason. Not because he had the greatest insight into human nature, but because he had reasoned out such a thought over the months.
Since that day…
He hadn’t lied to the woman when he told her the last person he cared about had died a few months before.
It was his nephew.
He didn’t like to think about it, but that is what happened, and that was what was still haunting him.
His brother had made a son with a beautiful wife and, well, that had let Calderon off the hook as it were. To the extent that Calderon could care about family tradition, he no longer had to worry about it. The name would now continue. He didn’t need to have a kid of his own now.
That was good because Calderon knew he was not a very good man. He would surely make a terrible father. He would be absent all of the time, and when he was home, he could scarcely imagine being terribly loving. He might even have been abusive.
But that was only a concern if he had a kid at all, which was never in the cards for those same reasons.
But then, he had this nephew, and maybe that kid was the very thing he needed. It wasn’t just that he was off the hook.
No. This was perfect for him. Justin was perfect for him.
Calderon was gone all of the time on missions. With Justin, he always had someone excited to see him when he visited. And visit he did. They spent camping trips together, went to batting cages. Target shot. Hunted.
His brother turned out to be an excellent father, but it was Calderon, the ‘awesome uncle,’ who taught Justin how to shoot and fish. Man stuff.
Of course, that was when Calderon visited, which was not always terribly often. Thus, Justin grew up quick as Calderon missed a summer here, a year there.
Justin was a teenager. He would be fifteen now…had he lived.
His brother had asked for a loan, and Calderon had come through. Why not? He always got paid, and what else mattered?
Thus, his brother had surprised the family by buying a nice homestead on the outskirts of the suburbs of Houston, Texas. Far enough away from the city to be affordable. Close enough to still offer anything they needed.
Plus, there was a big forest behind the place. Everything a boy could dream of.
He was an adventurous kid. Maybe that had something to do with his uncle, Calderon himself. Though Calderon discouraged Justin from military pursuits, he clearly craved the adventures they had shared.
Justin rode his bike, scouted the area, climbed trees, and blazed new trails with his machete. He asked for a dirt bike for his birthday but Calderon had said he might send him a hunting rifle instead. He didn’t think much of it at the time. That was the last time they spoke.
Months ago…
Justin had gone out exploring like any other day. He was late for dinner. Not that strange for an adventurous boy.
But then, he missed dinner altogether. His parents discussed grounding him. Then, swore he would never leave the fence surrounding their house again. Then, they called the police and started bargaining, hoping somehow Justin would be found.
Justin was found…about a week later.
Calderon had been away on a mission. He couldn’t be reached. When he called in for a visit, his brother had relayed the story to him.
Justin was dead.
He had been out exploring, and apparently had come across an abandoned well. He probably hadn’t even seen it. It was no wider than a large pizza. More of a vertical pipeline than a full well and nothing above ground. Just a hole.
Goddamn whoever had left that death trap out there.
Justin was just skinny enough to slide all the way in to the bottom once he fell in. The well was just tight enough that, doctors said, he probably was unable to shout for help. Not enough breath.
It took him days to die.
Calderon was sure Justin had fought as hard as possible. He was a tough boy, Justin. He could imagine him fighting for life, fighting to be heard.
The search parties must have missed him. Couldn’t hear him. Didn’t go near that particular spot. Simple bad luck.
That tight prison where he died. It must have been horrible. In Calderon’s nightmares, he imagined Justin screaming and fighting to get out. Terrified. Hoping to be heard. Slowly giving up hope as he slowly gave up life.
They had not buried him yet when Calderon learned what had happened.
He flew to Texas as quickly as possible in a state of disbelief.
He asked to see the body, and the request was granted. The coroner was just about to transfer Justin’s remains to the funeral home when he arrived.
The investigation was complete. It was nobody’s fault. No man’s land. Whoever the hell had left that vertical pipe in the ground like that, they were long gone. It was just an accident.
Calderon had approached the dead body, still in shock. He had seen dead bodies before. Hell, he had long ago lost count of how many people he himself had killed. Those he had tortured were an even larger number. Those he had hurt constituted an even greater number. Calderon was not a good person at all, and he knew that.
But Justin had been…Justin had been very good. And Calderon had never before seen the dead body of someone he had loved.
Justin was so pale. So cut up. So…wrong. He was fucked up beyond belief.
Calderon, the tough soldier, never once cried. He just looked at his nephew and wished he had not been somewhere else when Justin had needed him.
He had reached for the white sheet, the shroud that covered Justin, and although the morgue attendant objected, he threw it aside.
There was Justin, naked, skinny, and dead.
Calderon looked down at the kid’s presumably still unused penis. He was sure Justin would have told him if he had lost his virginity. It didn’t matter, of course. That was just sex, but…somehow that penis, at least as a metaphor, was exactly what took over Calderon’s mind. As he stared down at the small thing, he couldn’t help thinking of all Justin would never experience. His first time with a girl, working hot summers for low wages, finishing high school, seeing his favorite team win the Super Bowl, watching classic movies rereleased on the big screen, finding a wife, buying a peaceful home, having kids of his own.
Calderon looked away abruptly. He would never have many of those things either. Just as his brother had gotten him off the hook for continuing the name, Justin himself was going to live the calm life Calderon himself never had. And Justin would have done just that… had he lived.
When his eyes refocused, he found himself staring at Justin’s right foot. It was bloodied. The nails torn off, the toes broken.
He had cuts and scratches in many places, including his face, but that foot was absolutely mangled.
Once he had sadly left the morgue, Calderon talked to his brother about the foot, and he got the story.
Apparently at the bottom, due to rainfall or an animal burrowing or rust or something, there was just enough room for Justin to move his leg, just a little, and kick the wall of the well.
And that’s what he did…for days and days on end.
>
Justin couldn’t scream and couldn’t climb out so he kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked, hoping to be heard.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Calderon had thought about that desperate, futile move for these months. That had probably stuck in his mind more than anything else had. Kicking with broken bones.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Justin must have been so sure someone would come. They would rescue them. They would hear. They would save him. It was worth kicking like that. That was his way of signaling so he could be saved.
But no one ever came. No one fixed his foot. No one found him. Not before he died. Not even his favorite uncle.
At some point, he had to have given up. Surrendered to death.
Calderon had seen that surrender in the eyes of many people he had killed over the years. He never thought his nephew Justin would have to surrender like that.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Calderon never had cried, he just moved on while the thoughts ate away at him from the inside.
He could have gotten past it, eventually and, in fact, he hadn’t been obsessing over it during this job, but…
But then, he heard Susan Peterson’s desperate kicks.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
He had seen the shape of her foot afterward.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
She was doing what she could.
Maybe they would hear her and release her.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Just like her “Is that you?” It was all she could do at that time. It was better than nothing, even if that something was…nothing.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
No, lady. I’m sorry, he thought. Nobody was listening for him. Nobody is listening to you now.
Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.
Calderon dropped the cigarette, crushed it, and started to walk inside.
The knock-knock sound was so strong in his head, he almost knocked on the door before shaking his head and laughing it off.
Cargo: an edge of your seat thriller Page 12