DEADLIFT
Craig Saunders
First Edition
Deadlift © 2014 by Craig Saunders
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
www.darkfuse.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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For my wife, who understands just what I need to keep ticking.
Mostly, soup.
Acknowledgements
I think this is largely a story about our inner demons. What they make us…if we let them.
It’s about dealing with them, too, maybe, and not being swallowed up. People run, lift weights, get drunk, fight, even write stories. Some people feed their demons, some starve them.
Me? I deal with mine by writing. I never really expected an audience for the stories I make (I’m glad there is, though, otherwise I’d just be talking to myself…again). The fact that people read my stories is due to some great editors and publishers.
So, I guess in a roundabout way, I wanted to thank Dave Thomas. He’s a cracking editor, and without him, this story and many of my other DarkFuse titles wouldn’t have reached you, the reader.
Thanks, Dave, and you, for reading. Hope you enjoy the story.
The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger
I. The Deadlift/00.01.36
Deadlift is a weightlifting term that refers to the action of lifting a weight from the floor to a standing position, gripping a bar. Records for the deadlift performed in strength competitions range from 1,015lbs to 1,180lbs, depending on competition rules, the type of weight, handgrips, weight belts. The heaviest recorded deadlift, by a man named Tom Magee, was 1,180lbs (a shade over 535kg) and performed over thirty years ago.
The heaviest unrecorded deadlift, performed outside competitions rules, or any rules, was by a man named David Lowe, who held the severed cable of an elevator. David Lowe was huge and strong, but he was also tiring. He’d been holding the elevator not for the standard count at full extension, but for one minute and thirty-six seconds.
The elevator, according to the man who had severed the cables, was rated to carry 1,000lbs of human weight, though it only carried 123lbs (Lowe’s wife) plus change (the change being her lover, who weighed 227lbs). The hotel elevator weighed a mere 604lbs. The cable, one of six, was roughly three inches in diameter, steel, and around seven feet in length between the elevator and the severed end. Seven feet of steel cable times six equaled near enough 46lbs.
A total of 1,000lbs in the hands of a man who loved 123lbs of that weight just enough to hold on for a little while longer.
* * *
Three days before the man in the velour tracksuit bottoms and a Sailor Moon T-shirt blew the cables on a hotel elevator with two people inside it, a man named Lowe knocked at his door.
The Sailor Moon T-shirt-wearing man was Otaku, and though he wasn’t Japanese but Hispanic, he qualified. Middle-aged with thin sideburns and thick glasses, a slight paunch and a weak chin.
Lowe was immense. A largish gut, but anything else on him would have looked wrong. Six feet and five inches, 280lbs of bone, sinew, fat, and a lot of muscle. Not bodybuilder muscles, but strongman muscle. Business muscles. He didn’t show them off with tight T-shirts or vests. They weren’t particularly aesthetically pleasing muscles. His shoulders were rounded and he carried a fair amount of fat. He wasn’t ugly, but he was blunt in the face. And when he cried, like now, he often reminded people of a giant baby.
Sailor Moon T-shirt man knew why the big man had come. People rarely called on Otaku for anything but deliveries of rare Japanese memorabilia from various niche sites around the world.
Occasionally, though, people called on Otaku to blow things up.
“Come in,” said Otaku, wondering if the man would fit through a standard door frame.
Lowe ducked and entered, still crying, sniffing, with a little snot visible in the hairy nostril Otaku was staring at. He couldn’t take his eyes from that droplet. Waiting for it to drop.
Lowe pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose, then his eyes.
Otaku was disgusted, and a little relieved, and a little disappointed.
“I want you to kill my wife,” said Lowe, without even checking if Otaku was Otaku, without using the code they’d agreed online, without even so much as a lifted eyebrow. Just sniffles and sadness.
Otaku shrugged. People were pretty stupid when they’d been hurt, but he enjoyed blowing things up and the pay was better than his little sidelines: Schoolgirl porn and selling used ladies’ underwear to lonely businessmen, along with a naked shot of someone he found online and a short handwritten note and a lipstick kiss.
“Where and when?”
“The Regal. Can’t be exact, but she’ll be on the twentieth floor. She’s with a guest. I want them both…done.”
The man in the Sailor Moon T-shirt pretty much had everything else figured right there, but the thing was, he didn’t care, and didn’t spend any more than a couple of seconds and a slight shift of his left eyebrow thinking it through.
What he was wondering, right there, was when, why, how, and how much.
“Five grand,” he said.
“You said two.”
“You said one,” replied Otaku. “Two’s double.”
“Then four.”
“One for expenses.”
The man couldn’t, wouldn’t, argue, and Otaku knew it. The man was big, but he was broken, too, and he wasn’t in the least imposing to Otaku. Maybe on the street, yes. But here, begging?
Otaku smiled as the big man nodded.
“Half now,” said Otaku. “Half when it’s done. You know how.”
“It’ll be there in an hour,” said David Lowe, who left, then, within the hour deposited £2,500 in credit into Otaku’s online game account.
Otaku bought his avatar a new hat and a schoolgirl outfit.
The rest he filtered here, there, online auctions, online transactions. It took the best part of three hours of shifting money through various sites, until finally it was clean and clear and entirely his.
And, at £2,500, was precisely what he’d wanted in the first place, plus a little extra for insurance. Otaku never, ever, did a job without insurance.
* * *
The cables were the easiest part of the problem. The timing wasn’t all that difficult, either.
The “governor”—the system that would engage the copper shoes that would clamp down on the elevator in the event of failure—that was the problem.
The governor functioned on a sensor system, which Otaku couldn’t get to. He couldn’t get to the shoes themselves, nor the systems to override them.
So he decided on a twin assault.
The first explosion would be a bomb loaded with ball bearing, on a simple trigger, like a kind of homemade Claymore mine. This would take out the six cables that raised and lowered the elevator.
Second, rather than just blowing the copper shoes of the backup safety s
ystem, which he couldn’t do without overly complicating everything and thus making the risk of discovery that much higher, he designed a small, powerful device that would be triggered with the first detonation.
The second explosion wouldn’t just take out the copper shoes that would halt the elevator’s descent. It would pretty much vaporize everything inside the elevator instead.
* * *
Forty-five seconds in, holding the cable, the first little slip happened. Sweat, skin, blood was lubricating the cable. Roughly an hour and half since Lowe figured he’d made a terrible mistake (the precise moment had been lost on David Lowe, because he shifted from inaction, tears, angry and heart-deep hurt to action at that moment).
Forty-five seconds in was also, coincidently, the moment when a man placed the muzzle of a short revolver against the struggling, sweating man’s temple.
“You really are fucked, buddy,” said the man with the short gun and a dirty smile.
II. The Other Man
The Other Man liked a challenge. The hard-to-get, the beautiful, the high-maintenance. But mostly, he liked married women. The more married, the better.
He didn’t fuck them. Never had. He listened, flirted, befriended. He paid the bill on so many fancy dinners and pretty drinks he’d lost count of the expense.
It wasn’t about sex. Never was. Fact was, he couldn’t bear the sight of naked flesh. He always wore a heavy sackcloth mask on his head and face when he killed.
He’d killed a lot of women. His sackcloth mask was bloodied and torn and repaired so many times, soaked, at times, in women’s blood, that it was no longer beige but more maroon, with multihued stitching. It wasn’t a heavy thing, but it was a little too bulky to fit in a jacket pocket (women tended to like him in a suit). He carried a smart briefcase instead, and kept the mask in there.
He’d never seen the actual act of murder, but he knew he was culpable. He allowed the mask to see, to feel. He allowed it to exist. He put it on.
And when he did, he wasn’t quite himself anymore.
* * *
Three days before David Lowe discovered his wife’s adultery, the mask was in a briefcase at the foot of a glass table on a sun-bathed terrace in London’s business district. The mask could not see. Not yet.
The man who belonged to the mask smiled. He showed perfect teeth, poured a little lunchtime wine (chilled, white) for his date.
“You look happy,” she said, smiling, too.
“I’m happy enough,” he said. “I’m with you, I’m happy. I’m a simple man.”
He didn’t wink, because he didn’t want to overdo things, not on a first date. But it didn’t matter much. She wanted him. He could smell it. Like some kind of pheromone in the warm summer air, or a hint of pussy, wet.
He didn’t push it, though. Now, later, next week. Didn’t matter to him or the mask.
“I don’t usually do this,” she said, leaning forward across the glass, her cleavage showing, sickeningly. “But…”
He leaned forward, too. Engaged, not overly eager.
Take charge, or be led?
He decided she wanted to lead.
He let her.
Later, in her apartment, he stabbed her in the foot, clean through to her heated floorboards, with her own narrow-bladed carving knife. While she was pinned and screaming a piteous scream, he spun the combination on his briefcase. Then he put on his blood-caked mask and didn’t see or hear anything else until he woke in the morning, clean and unsullied, in his own bed. Same as always.
He took care of the mask and the mask took care of him.
* * *
Two days before, David Lowe discovered that the only woman he’d ever loved, and loved to his own destruction, was having an affair.
The man who belonged to the mask met her at a station, offered her a drink. Mrs. Lowe smiled politely but declined.
It happened, from time to time. Sometimes the mask was silent, and the man moved right along to the next and the next and the next.
This time, though, the mask spoke.
I want her, it said.
The man heard it speak through the briefcase.
He followed her home from the station. Watched her house for three hours, searched her bins, pieced together a few bills, went home.
He hit the computer, and the following day, one day before David Lowe found out his wife was cheating on him, the man with the mask turned up at Mrs Lowe’s office.
“Don’t I know you?” he said, twenty minutes into the meeting, head cocked a little to the right.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“I’m sure…you look…maybe…”
“I’m sure I’d remember, Mr. Harmon,” she said, and he knew he was in with a shot.
* * *
Mr. Harmon, trader in the city of London, made mistakes. He often made mistakes.
Like requesting Mrs. Lowe’s number for an afterhours assignation to discuss a possible investment that would mean a very large bonus for her, should she bring in his business. Of course, she could not decline, though the request might be unusual.
So, he made mistakes. Like sending a text message to Mrs. Lowe, which she left on her phone. A message her insanely jealous and immensely loving husband could misconstrue in minutes.
Mr. Harmon made many simple mistakes.
The mask did not, and the mask owned Mr. Harmon, soul and body both.
III. The Woman in Red
A red dress spread across the quilt, tidily, waiting to be worn. It was summer, and Mrs. Lowe, Freya Lowe, liked the dress. She’d wear a cardigan over the top. Nice, but not too nice. She liked to keep the really nice for David. Like a little cleavage when they went to dinner, or maybe a hint of leg. She wasn’t as confident about her legs as her breasts, which she knew were good. People looked at them often enough, even when she was in a blouse and jacket for work.
She wanted to look nice, because Mr. Harmon could mean a lot for her and David, should she reel him and his money in.
But not too nice.
She nodded, happy enough with her choices, didn’t wear matching underwear but did shave her legs, her armpits, as she showered in the en suite. She dabbed on perfume, put on makeup, but not much.
Dressed, she fluffed her hair and blotted her lipstick on a piece of tissue, which she left on the pillow for David.
Freya didn’t enjoy going out at night. She enjoyed her husband’s arms around her when she got home from work. When the workday was done, she felt dirty. His arms felt clean.
He could be overbearing sometimes, but she’d always felt protected with him. He was like a bear in many ways. Fierce, warm, huge. He’d knocked a man down and out once for squeezing her tit in a pub in central London.
She still didn’t know if she liked that. But David was just what he was—simple, honest, and he loved her to distraction.
As she left the house, with her keys in a clutch bag and a taxi waiting at the curb outside, she thought about maybe telling him about the extra money, should it come to that. Thought about maybe opening her red dress for him later.
Thinking about how to play the evening, and leaving her mobile phone on the kitchen table.
* * *
Mr. Harmon, she knew, was an extremely wealthy man. The rich and the very rich were often hard to please, sometimes eccentric, and as demanding as children.
Mr. Harmon was, maybe, more personable than some she’d met in her time, but his request that she meet him in his suite on the upper floors of the Regal Hotel was somewhat unusual, and somewhat uncomfortable.
She didn’t like it, but her boss bade her go, people knew where she was, and it was a hotel. It wasn’t as though she was meeting a drug dealer in a dark alley. He was well-known, filthy rich, and seemed nice enough. Kind of like a normal person, even, despite being more rich than she could ever wish to be.
The Regal was a nice hotel. Wainscoting on the lobby walls, ornate ceiling roses, crystal twinkling in chandeliers. Quiet, a kind of
professional hush among the staff. A few people in the lobby. They sat in high chairs before dark wood tables and drank coffee she could smell ten feet away.
“Mr. Harmon’s room, please? I’m Freya Lowe. He’s expecting me.”
“Room 2001, Ms. Lowe,” said a well-presented man at the counter. “Go right on up.”
“Thank you,” she said, and took the elevator, because no one in their right mind walks twenty flights of stairs in black high heel shoes.
* * *
As Freya stepped from the elevator onto the top floor of the hotel, a man was waiting for the elevator. A small man, with a hint of stale tobacco on his clothing.
He smiled and stood back to let her pass, which was polite enough. But for some reason, she found herself giving him a wider birth than necessary, and she returned the smile, but only narrowly.
Suddenly she was uncomfortable and her confidence drained. The man stepped into the elevator and when the doors closed, she took a few steady breaths before continuing down the hall.
“You can do this,” she said to the empty hall, and walked on quiet carpet to Mr. Harmon’s door.
She knocked gently, and when he opened the door in his suit, she was inexplicably relieved, like she’d half-imagined he’d be there naked.
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