by David Beers
Christian closed his eyes and for a moment saw the canvas above him. He could go there. He knew it. Just as he had with Charles Twaller. He stared at the hues of orange and red for only a second though, feeling that peace again, and then looked into the eyes of a madman.
Christian breathed in and out slowly, trying to regain control of his breath before anything else. That would allow him to think, because the madman wanted answers.
“There you are,” Luke said. “You’re back. Don’t go away again, Christian. If you do, when you come back, your mother will be missing a breast.”
“I’ll tell you,” Christian said. His voice was harsh and the pain great, but his mind was still working. Acrobatics were happening inside his skull, the likes of which even Luke may have never seen.
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s all bullshit, Luke,” Christian said and smiled. He chuckled next, causing his shoulder to scrape against the blade inside it. That hurt, but he couldn’t stop the laughter. “It’s always been bullshit. That’s what happened.” The smile died. “I woke the fuck up.”
Luke stared back. Christian saw the same rage he had back in the Canonine’s hospital. The rage that would end worlds. Universes, even.
“Is it so hard to believe?” Christian asked. “That I simply don’t believe you anymore?”
“We were …,” Luke started to say but his words failed him.
“Nothing. We were nothing. We were only an idea in your head, the same as the ideas I had in mine. The dead came for me and, what? I came for you? You and I were going to attack some God that doesn’t even fucking exist? We were going to rage against the world, in tandem?” Christian chuckled again, tears in his eyes now. Tears of pure joy. “You’re mad, Luke. A lunatic. All the intelligence in the world can’t change that, and for a while, you passed your insanity to me. I’m cured now, though. You … You never will be.”
Luke closed his eyes, his hand still holding the knife in Christian’s shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter what you do, Luke. I won’t kill them. I won’t come with you,” Christian whispered.
“Shut up,” Luke said.
And there it was. Christian understood with a finality that Luke’s God could not have mustered. There was most likely no way out of this—besides death—but Christian’s mind placed the only possible path in front of him.
“How long did you hide from it?” Christian asked.
Luke let out a long, deep breath. His head was lowered and he was quiet. Christian saw the rage in him; it was growing as if someone was feeding a furnace.
“There’s no mathematical proof of God, Luke. Not even you can accomplish that feat. All of this, the whole thing … It’s just a boy who lost his family. A boy smarter than the rest of the world, but still a boy.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Luke said.
“You sat in the mind of God? That’s what you thought happened back at that hospital? That you looked at God and demanded he save your brother? Luke, you deserve the Nobel Prize for literature, because that’s the greatest story I’ve ever heard. I mean, to think I actually believed it?”
Luke stood and backed away, his eyes open. Christian saw no tears in them, but it wasn’t the man that had crossed the floor minutes earlier. Hot anger was inside him, but Christian saw …
What is it? What are you seeing right now?
Reflection.
He was remembering.
“You know it, Luke. You’ve always fucking known it. There isn’t any God to chase. There’s only the memory of your dead family. You and Lucy Speckle, both after something that doesn’t exist, but at least she didn’t have to fool herself. You did. At some point, you let his death and your hallucination possess your life. And now, Luke, look around you. See where your mind has brought you. Stuck in a desert with two women and me. But I’m not following you, and you’ve got no where else to go once I’m dead.”
The time was coming. Christian knew it based on the temperature inside Luke. He was reaching a point of no return; emotions were welling in him that he’d never allowed himself to feel before … and he didn’t know how to control them.
“A wasted life, Luke. Just like the ants that walk around you all the time.”
Luke’s speed was incredible. He grabbed the gun from the floor and was back in Christian’s face in a matter of seconds.
Please. Please let them see. Let them see and act. It’s the only chance.
Luke straddled Christian’s legs and shoved the pistol under his chin, closing his mouth with it.
“You think you can see inside of me now. Is that it? You think your mansion holds the key to me? What do you know of God? What do you know of anything besides what I’ve given you?”
Christian didn’t take his eyes from Luke’s, and he could see nothing else. Their faces were an inch apart at the most.
“He is as real as you and I, and now Christian, you can meet him.”
He saw Luke’s eyes widen a split second before he moved. Christian hadn’t even heard the movement, he’d been so focused on the madman in front of him. Luke, though. Luke heard—his physical superiority never in question.
He spun to his left, the gun whipping around with him.
Two shots rang out, deafening in the small room. Christian saw a woman standing, both hands holding a chair, but he didn’t pause to know who. His right hand was already on the knife’s handle, and he yanked on it without thought. Bright pain lit through his shoulder, but Luke was already turning around, ready to attack the next threat.
Christian lunged, shoving the knife forward. Something hard hit him across the ear, causing more stars to blaze across his vision. He kept stabbing. Another hard hit, and still his hand plunged forward. Blackness was mixing with the stars now. He could barely see anything, only a shape in front of him that he kept stabbing at.
Die, he thought. Just goddamn die.
Another blow to his head and he felt his arm falter. He slumped back against the wall. He looked at his right hand and saw blood almost up to his elbow. His head was dazed and his own blood loss escalating by the moment, but Christian believed what he saw on his arm was a good thing. He thought it was probably Luke’s blood.
His eyes scanned up, trying to find who had stood up and swung at Luke. His mother lay on the floor. She was on her back and her shirt soaked through with red.
“No,” Christian whispered.
Luke was on the ground next to him. His eyes were open and he was staring at Christian. He held the gun in his right hand, but it lay unmoving on the floor. Luke’s mouth was bloody and his own gut looked as though Christian had finally been able to hurt him.
Luke groaned and slowly pulled himself to the wall. He groaned again as he pulled himself up, sitting so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Christian.
He smiled and blood poured out of his mouth, falling down his chin. “You finally did it. You killed her.”
Christian could see his mother still breathed, though slowly.
“It’s not what I wanted for you, but I guess it’ll do,” Luke said and laughed. More dark blood ran from his mouth like a cursed river.
Christian looked over at him and both geniuses locked eyes.
Luke raised the gun. “You first? Then me?”
Christian raised his right hand, still holding the knife. Luke made no effort to stop him.
Christian put the tip of the knife to the gun barrel’s side and tried to push it down.
Luke shook his head. “In the end, we both lose.”
Christian was quiet for a few seconds, the knife still touching the gun. Blackness was folding in on his vision, the blood loss becoming too much. “No,” he whispered. “I won.”
He dropped the knife and then his arm, leaning back against the wall. He closed his eyes and welcomed the dark.
Veronica saw his eyes fall on her. The gun still pointed at Christian, but his eyes no longer did. Luke’s eyes.
He blinked twice.
He’s dying, she thought. He’s finally going to die.
Luke moved the gun, turning it to her. Veronica wasn’t hurt, but she was frozen. She’d watched it all happen, the blood spurting from Luke’s stomach. Christian’s hand hammering in and out like some human piston. She’d seen Luke bash him over and over with the gun, refusing to simply pull the trigger and paint the wall with Christian’s blood as he’d done with Waverly’s.
She saw the bullets rip into Patricia. She saw the older woman drop to the floor.
Veronica saw it all and did nothing, because she couldn’t move. She’d been right about Christian. Something had changed near the end.
But at the end, Luke was going to win.
She saw him pull the trigger.
The bang filled the room and the wall to her right exploded, cement flying into the air around her.
Luke smiled, his teeth red with blood. “My aim isn’t what it used to be.”
He pulled the trigger again. The left side of the wall burst. Closer, though.
Luke shut his eyes tight for a second. Veronica didn’t move, nothing besides her trembling hands. Luke opened one eye and brought the gun close to it, taking careful aim.
She saw his hand flex and knew that death had finally arrived.
Luke’s one open eye rolled to the back of his head. He still pulled the trigger, but the gun was already dropping, and the shot fired into the floor. The ricochet bounced up into the ceiling and tiny bits of cement floated down like fairy dust.
He slumped slightly to his left, and then Veronica was alone.
She didn’t move, sure that he would get back up. Sure that he wasn’t nearly done, but only pretending to be. The moment she got up, he’d be upon her.
Minutes passed, her hands still shaking uncontrollably.
No one stood. No one rolled over. No one moved at all.
Veronica looked around the room. Two people were dead and three close it. She was the only one unharmed.
And what’s that mean?
Veronica thought about it for a few minutes, and then she understood with a clarity she hadn’t known in a long, long time.
Epilogue
The television was on 24 hours a day.
No matter the time, the station was programmed to the news. If it needed to be changed to find another news channel, then it was.
A pretty woman with blonde hair filled up half of the screen now, and an older, wrinkled man was on the other side. The split screen, a genius invention that allowed the viewer to watch both speakers, looking at facial expressions and other tics.
Right now, the older man was clearly doing his absolute best to look tough.
“Senator Corlyle, what assurances can we have? I mean that sincerely. This man … ” the young reporter was doing a damned good job of looking exasperated, as if she just couldn’t believe the things she’d heard, “ … how are you going to contain him? That’s what Americans want to know. That’s what I want to know. For my child’s sake, as well as mine.”
“I understand your concern. Believe me, I do. Robert Franklin was a dear friend of mine. A dear friend to everyone in the Senate. What I can promise you is, both houses of congress are taking the problem of Luke Titan very seriously. Right now, he’s locked up in a maximum security wing at the most secure mental hospital in the entire country. I’ll go on record right now, Tabitha, and say that it is impossible for him to escape. Absolutely impossible.”
The man that watched the television hadn’t known who he was for a long time. He had gone by Christian Windsor, but he hadn’t truly known that person. He wasn’t sure he knew him now, but at least he understood that.
He thought of himself as Christian and others called him that, but the person that went by that name … had he ever actually existed? The man didn’t know. First his fears had driven him, then killers, then the dead, and finally a madman. None of it had allowed him, the essence that resided inside, to drive.
Christian didn’t know if his essence was driving now or if something else was in charge. His mother perhaps.
He looked over to her hospital bed. She was asleep and had been that way for much of the day. His own arm was in a sling and the bruising on his face had faded significantly—all of it barely surface wounds, compared to what he’d dealt with before.
Christian kept the television on and the sound up as long as his mother was asleep, which was most of the time. The noise didn’t wake her up, but if it had, he would have shut it off. When she came to, he turned the sound down, but kept the visuals running.
Luke had lived.
Somehow.
His mother, too.
Somehow.
And him? Christian? He was still here, though unsure what that actually meant. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He kept the television on because he knew Luke Titan better than anyone on this planet, and knew that as long as Luke was alive, no one was ever truly safe. The blowhards on the television could talk about maximum lockdown and redesigned security strategies all day long. It didn’t matter. Luke was alive and that meant he always had a chance.
They made it out of the desert two weeks ago. Veronica had carried all three to the truck, started it, and drove 100 miles to the nearest town. Out of the three, only Christian should have lived. Luke’s survival, he supposed, was somewhat understandable. The man was a damn tank. His mother, though?
Christian stared at her, her face pale but her breathing regular. They’d performed two surgeries, but the doctors said she was going to make it. They didn’t venture so far as to call it a miracle, but Christian thought the word might have been on their minds.
Miracle.
Christian didn’t feel like many miracles had happened in his life … except perhaps this. His mother lying in the bed next to him, alive. Christian now able to do for her, what she had done for him so many times.
Veronica was back at her hospital. He’d gone to see her two nights ago, unsure if she’d want him there.
“It’s okay?” he had asked.
“Yes,” she said.
They had sat in the common area. “That’s where Waverly took me,” she said, pointing to two chairs on their left. “When you two came.” A second passed and then she asked, “How is that going by the way?”
Christian almost chuckled and then caught himself. He didn’t want to laugh. He didn’t want any reason for her to ask him to leave. “I’m out on bond. I’ve got an ankle monitor.” He lifted up his right pant leg. “I’m not a flight risk, but they still want to make sure, I guess. I’ll probably do some jail time. A year maybe.”
“Are you scared?”
He shook his head. “It’ll be good, to be honest. I think a year away from all of this might be exactly what I need.”
She smiled, the beauty of her past radiating out for a moment. “Getting book deal offers, I bet?”
“I actually am.”
“How much are they offering?” Her smile disappeared and Christian saw she was actually interested. It would be a slow process, but Christian thought she could make it back. Maybe even all the way.
“Ten million is the top,” he said.
Veronica breathed out. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
The two were quiet for a minute or so.
“Why did you bring him out, Veronica?” he asked. “Why didn’t you just carry my mom and me out?”
She smiled, but it looked sad. “The doctors here think he programmed me to do it. They think that it was some of the old hypnosis coming out … Do you think that?”
“It’s possible, I guess.”
“I haven’t told them they’re wrong, but they are,” she said.
“Then why?”
A long time passed. Christian wasn’t sure if she was going to answer, but he wouldn’t push. He wanted to keep coming here again, at least until they put him in a cell.
She did answer, though.
“He wasn’t going to win. I wasn’t going to let him die anymore than I was
going to let you two. I don’t know for sure if he wanted you dead, but I know he wanted your mom and I to die. So, I loaded both of you up and then I came back and looked at him for what felt like hours. He wanted to die in the end. That’s why he didn’t try to go back upstairs. If Luke had wanted to live, he would have moved Heaven and Earth for it to be so. He didn’t, though. He sat there next to you and let his life seep out.”
Veronica looked Christian straight in the face.
“So I made sure he didn’t win. I made sure that he’ll sit in a cell forever.”
Christian held her gaze and he saw the woman that he’d known years ago. The one he loved.
“Do you mind if I come visit?” he asked. “You know, more than today?”
“No,” she said. “I could use the company.”
They both leaned back in their seats, and Christian felt peace as he looked out at the small garden. No ‘other’ was there tending it. No mouth floating around the flowers. Just her and him.
“Plus,” Veronica had said. “You’re going to need a co-writer when you start on the ten mill publishing deal.”
He looked over and she was grinning broadly.
Letters from a Killer
Dearest Christian,
Veronica saved my life. If you see her, please give her my gratitude. I’m sure she must feel like a true saint, having saved someone who minutes before tried to kill her. Did she tell you that, Christian? I fired two shots, but missed with both. I was ready to fire a final one, but my body finally gave out. What a nice woman. You should think about marrying her, if she is ever able to leave that asylum.
Which leads me to my next point, Christian.
Have you asked yourself why I didn’t kill you? You had the upper hand for a few seconds, but I quickly regained it. Even when your mother came at me and you shoved your knife into my guts, I still could have pulled the trigger. Why didn’t I?
I know the answer.
I wonder if you do.
I wonder that a lot, Christian, in my new home. It seems that the state is finally taking the necessary precautions with me, which I must commend them on. All of my letters are read thoroughly now, though my lawyers have ensured that I’m still able to write.