Reed had taken away the only two women that Malcolm had ever loved, taken them from right under his nose, while they laughed, joked, and dreamt together every day, confided in each other, trusted each other. Reed had single-handedly made it impossible for Malcolm to ever love or trust anyone ever again, impossible for him to feel anything but his own pain, his own hate, his own sorrow, his own emptiness. Now, he would have to bring the pain to the best friend he’d ever had. He owed that to him, and he always paid what he owed with interest.
The Impala cruised into the little cul-de-sac just as night smothered the day. He parked a few houses down from Reed’s home and waited.
Malcolm had been watching the house for weeks. He’d seen Reed’s family playing in the yard, peered into the bedroom window as Reed made love to his wife in the middle of the night. He wanted to murder them both at that exact moment as Reed was pounding into her, poised on the edge of orgasm. He wanted to smash through the window and chop them to pieces, a double homicide O.J. style, but he restrained himself. He wanted the anticipation to build. He wanted Reed’s pain to be exquisite.
Malcolm Davis slid silently from the behemoth urban tank with a full-toothed grin chillingly contorting his face. In his mind, he was already in the house, already awash with blood. His body uncurled and rose to its full 6’5’’ height. He was an impressive and intimidating figure with his loose fitting Hugo Boss suit riding smoothly over his massive chest and shoulders. His onyx skin blended with the black suit and the black silk Armani shirt. He merged into the night as the shadows began to knit together, and he became just one more penumbra in the increasing darkness. He looked like the angel of death in that music video from Bone Thugs N Harmony:
Meet me at the crossroads
Crossroad, crossroooads, crossroooads.
Meet me at the crossroads.
“Hurry up, white boy,” Malcolm growled, and the slender “white boy” with the long, brown, feathered hair and baggy, pleated pants slid from the passenger side of the Impala, eager as a puppy to obey his master.
Reed’s house was small and vulnerable looking. It was brand new. A production built tract home. A crackerjack box. It was a single story with three bedrooms, two baths, one dog, one couple, two kids, and one murderous sociopath grinning on the lawn. A fifteen-pound sledgehammer and a pair of wire cutters and you could have leveled the house to its foundations.
The yard was professionally landscaped and perfectly manicured with neat little shrubs of sage and rosemary lined up by the front window, and a midget evergreen tree in the front yard. A three-foot tall wrought iron fence surrounded the entire property. It looked just like every other house on the block. Middle America.
Malcolm stepped over the gate without bothering to open it and strode across the lawn, leaving footprints in the soft, freshly watered sod. His shoes made wet squishy sounds as they pressed into the earth. The sound made Reed’s old, overweight Rottweiler go wild.
The dog dies, too, Malcolm thought, almost giddy, a predacious smile tearing across his face like the grin of a piranha. And Malcolm had fangs. His canines were capped with platinum and rose to sharp points. A diamond was embedded in each one. He looked like some kind of hip-hop vampire.
“Knock on the door, white boy.” Malcolm growled again. His longhaired accomplice slipped ahead of him and up the steps onto Reed’s porch. Malcolm followed close behind, pulling the Mossberg from his coat and jacking a round into the chamber.
III.
Paul paused for a moment at Reed’s front door, breathing heavily from an overdose of adrenaline. He was dying to finally meet the subject of Malcolm’s obsession, the author of the madness and misery that had engulfed them both. His whole arm shook as he reached out to ring the doorbell. He wanted to kill so badly his dick was hard.
IV.
Reed was having a hard day. The sci-fi novel he was working on was three months past due and he was no closer to finishing it now than he was three months ago. This was the twentieth time he had rewritten the last chapter and it still didn’t work. The characters had long ago gone stale for him. His writing seemed stiff and wooden. This was no longer a labor of love; it was just labor, pure and simple. His heart wasn’t in it anymore. He was just imitating himself. Reed was nearly paralyzed by the fear that he had become the one thing he had always detested—a hack. He had already spent the ten thousand dollar advance, and the bills were starting to roll in again, but he couldn’t let the manuscript go until it at least approached the level of talent he knew himself to be capable of. If he just turned it in as is he would truly be a hack. Reed’s perfectionism was going to drive his family to the poorhouse.
In the kitchen, his wife was creating one of her experimental, gourmet, vegetarian dishes from a recipe book she bought at one of those over-priced cooking stores. The kind that sold dried peppers, pickled mushrooms, and spices he’d never heard of. Whatever she was cooking, it smelled delicious. His growling stomach was one more distraction he didn’t need. The kids were another. They were getting on his fucking nerves. Slamming his hands down on the desk so hard the keyboard flipped over, he turned toward the living room and did what all fathers do when urgent, effective, communication with their children becomes necessary. He clenched his fists and yelled.
“That’s it! That is it! If you two can’t play that damned thing together without arguing I’m gonna turn it off and give it to the Goodwill! If you can’t appreciate it maybe they can find some kids that will.”
“But Daddy, Mark keeps playing that stupid hedgehog game over and over and he won’t let me play Gears of War!” Jennie’s sweet, innocent voice came sailing out of the living room.
Reed’s seven-year-old daughter Jennie looked every bit like her mother. She had her mother’s long blonde hair, fiery emerald eyes, and long legs. Too bad she had her father’s disposition. The face of an angel with the mouth and temper of a drunken sailor.
“That Sonic the Hedgehog is a faggot game!” she taunted, scowling at her little brother with disdain as if she’d caught him wearing his mother’s panties.
“Hey, hey, young lady! You watch your goddamned mouth! Now both of you turn that crap off and get ready for dinner. I’ve got to finish working goddamn it!”
“But daddy, I’ve almost got the high scoooore!” Mark whined in a high-pitched squeal that made his father cringe.
Mark looked exactly like Reed did at that age, the same crooked pointy nose and Dick Van Dyke chin, except Reed’s pants never hung off his ass like his son’s over-sized black denims, and Mark had a better haircut. Reed’s hair had hung down his back until he was a junior in college, while Mark wore a short neat crew cut. That’s the first thing Linda changed about him. They had been flirting with each other in literature class for weeks before Reed had gotten up the nerve to ask her out. She had given him her phone number and before their first date they had nearly fallen in love over the phone. They were getting intimate for the first time when she told him, “Look, I think you’re great but I can’t go out with a guy who looks like a damned hippie. If we’re going to date, you’ve got to cut that hair.”
He did, and in exchange she had agreed to another date. Then another, and another, and then she agreed to marry him, and then she gave him two beautiful children. But sometimes, like when Mark did that annoying whining thing, Reed wondered if he should have kept the long hair.
“Stop whining and turn it off like I said!”
“Fuck! Man, this is bullshit,” Mark whined.
Reed snapped.
“Damn it, that’s enough! Both of you get in here now!”
“Damn it, Mark. See what the fuck you did? You got Daddy mad, you little punk!”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, too, faggot!”
“I said get in here NOW and close your mouths!”
Jennie and Mark walked slowly into the bedroom where Reed had been banging away at his Mac, trying to wrestle out an opus. Now he stood in the middle of the room, glaring
down at his two little brats with his hands on his hips. Jennie crossed her arms over her chest and huffed defiantly, rolling her eyes and stamping her foot the way she’d seen the black girls at school do. Mark imitated his big sister, crossing his arms and huffing his own annoyance. Reed fought the urge to slap the shit out of both of them. He took a deep breath and mustered up the calmest, most diplomatic voice he could manage. He still sounded pissed.
“Now, both of you listen. It is absolutely NOT okay to curse in this house. You are children! You do not use that type of foul language around your parents! Now, I am trying to finish this novel so that maybe we can get some bills paid and perhaps have some money to live off. But, if you think your stupid little video game is more important than food, clothing, and shelter, then go ahead and keep this shit up.”
“Oh, but it’s okay for YOU to curse.” Jennie grumbled under her breath.
“What did you say, little girl!”
“The doorbell is ringing.”
She turned and ran for the door, cutting short her father’s lecture. Mark looked sympathetically at his father, shrugged his shoulders, and chased after his sister. Reed threw up his hands and shook his head in exasperation.
Jennie flung open the front door and her jaw dropped as her mind slammed on the brakes. She couldn’t make any sense of what she was seeing. Mark came running up alongside her and his eyes grew large with surprise as he found himself staring at his father’s face on another man. His eyes drifted to the darkness behind the daddy-clone. Something out there in the night was grinning at him with long silver fangs. Fear raked its icy talons across his spine even as the darkness reached for him. He tried to grab his sister and pull her from the doorway but it was too late. The darkness swept into the room and scooped him and his sister off the floor in arms that felt like what it must be like to be hugged by a granite statue.
“Reed!” the darkness yelled as it hurled the two terrified children into the living room. Their small, helpless bodies slammed headlong into the far wall, knocking the wind from their lungs. Dazed and frightened, they huddled together, crying for their father. The long- haired guy who looked like their daddy charged into the kitchen and attacked their mother, smacking her to the floor and dragging her across the linoleum by her hair. A huge, curved knife with a spiked knuckle guard was pressed against her throat, and as she thrashed to free herself, it cut into her skin drawing blood. That’s when Reed charged in looking like he was ready to kill.
“Daddy!” the kids yelled, confidant that he would be able to save them. They were confidant until the huge black vampire turned to greet Reed and their father’s face drained of all color. He looked small and helpless next to the tremendous black man with the shotgun.
“What the fuck is—”
Reed’s protest died in his throat as his eyes widened with recognition and he came face-to-face with all his guilt and fear.
“Malcolm?”
“Reed. I’m so glad you remember me after all these years. I never forgot you. I almost didn’t recognize you with the haircut but I never forgot . . .”
Malcolm leered at Reed, his face mere inches away as if he were about to embrace him, that malevolent grin spreading even wider, splitting his face like a jack-o-lantern.
“. . . Not for a second.”
“What the hell do you want, Mal—.” Again Reed found his words choked off in midstream. This time it was due to Malcolm thrusting his thumb into Reed’s Adam’s apple. He fell to his knees, gagging and coughing, his eyes wide and teary.
“Do you know what I was doing while you were going to college and getting married and writing your cheap little books? Well, I’m going to show you. ” Malcolm’s eyes flashed with an almost unbearable hatred. They burned into Reed as if he were trying to immolate him where he stood.
“See, your death had to be perfect because I can only kill you once, Reed. What a pity that is. I wish I could keep killing you over and over again. There are so many ways I could make you suffer. I have dreamed about it so many times. But I can only do it once. I have to choose one death for you. One perfect death. It has to make up for the pain you caused me all these years. So I’ve been practicing.”
Reed swallowed hard. He looked from his son to his daughter, and then back to Malcolm.
“W-what do you mean, practicing?”
Malcolm smiled again.
“I cruised the little back-alley bars on Pine Street, picking up pretty little long-haired white boys, taking them home and cutting them up . . . practicing.” He spoke calmly and evenly as if he were giving a lecture, but that searing hatred and madness still burned in his eyes and his smile kept curling up on one side making it look more like a snarl.
Reed looked over at the man who was threatening his wife and noticed for the first time that the man looked exactly like him. He wondered why Malcolm hadn’t killed him? If what Malcolm said was true and he was the slasher who had been killing homosexual men plucked from the seedy little gay bars on Pine Street, then surely that’s where he had found this guy. So why hadn’t he killed him too? The Malcolm Davis he remembered certainly didn’t need this anemic looking queer to pull off something like this, but then again he had no idea what it was they were trying to pull off. At least that’s what he told himself. The terrible thing, the horrible god-awful thing, was that he knew . . . and he knew he couldn’t stop it from happening.
“That kept me amused for a while. Their fear was like yours now, lush and pungent. It was a delicacy. Their deaths were pure ecstasy. But soon it wasn’t enough. I started doing couples and then . . . entire families. Then . . . .”
He stared off into space, lost for a second in some distant memory.
“. . . nothing helped . . . it . . . it was never enough. I needed you. I needed to taste your fear, to drink your pain like hard liquor. I was in agony, hating the world, trying to understand how the people I loved, the people I trusted, could have done this to me. I could have had a lovely family like this.” He gestured broadly at Reed’s terrified wife and kids.
“I could have had an over-priced pre-fab house. I could have written novels, better than the shit you write!”
Reed flinched, wounded by that remark despite himself.
Malcolm continued, “But you took all that away from me, Reed!”
Despite his cartoonishly fiendish dress, the silver fangs, and melodramatic little soliloquy that Reed was almost certain the man had rehearsed, the emotions appeared genuine, and that in itself was disturbing. Malcolm almost looked sad, on the verge of tears, as he glowered at Reed. His eyes were full of questions, full of pain. He almost looked vulnerable in a one-missing-plate-on-the-armored-belly-of-a-dragon sort of way. Then the darkness and the madness and the flames came back into his eyes and his face turned to carbonized steel. He bared his fangs in what passed for a smile. He was through talking. It was time to bring the pain.
Too late, Reed allowed himself to fully comprehend what Malcolm was planning.
”I’ve killed you in my mind more times than I can count, yet still you remain. So what is a brotha to do but cut off the problem at its source?” When Malcolm smiled this time, it resembled the slavering grimace worn by the alien in that movie before it tried to thrust its secondary mandibles through Sigourney Weaver’s skull. Reed could vividly remember that moment in the movie theater when everyone shuddered in horror, imagining what it must be like to face such a relentless murdering creature. Then he had been confident that he would never find out. Now he was.
“No . . . no . . . no. You can’t! Malcolm, we were just kids! I made a mistake! I’m sorry! What do you want from me?!” Reed croaked, still clutching his throat and gasping for air.
The smile left Malcolm’s face completely and his eyes pinned Reed down like the twin barrels of the Mossberg he was leveling at the children.
“I want you to watch your family die.”
The shotgun ripped the night in half and blew little Mark’s chest open. Jennie’s screams fi
lled the silence before the thunder of the shotgun left the air. She recoiled in horror from the bleeding corpse that seconds ago had been her brother. Linda reached out for her dead son but was again smacked to the ground by her husband’s doppelganger. Reed seized the shotgun and tried to wrench it free from the maniac who had murdered his only son. A look of amusement crossed Malcolm’s face as he looked down at Reed.
“Now, now, don’t make me kill you so early in the game.”
Malcolm let go of the shotgun with his right hand, just long enough to crush Reed’s nose with an elbow that once more deposited Reed’s ass onto the carpet. Barely conscious, Reed still tried to hold onto the Mossberg and delay for a second the carnage he knew was about to take place. Malcolm jerked it free from his weakening grasp and kicked him savagely in the chin with his mud encrusted Karl Kani boot.
“Don’t go to sleep, Reed. The show’s not over.”
Malcolm reached under the coffee table and seized little Jennie by her ankle. She kicked and fought as she was dragged out of her hiding place.
“Take the shotgun, white boy!”
Reed’s look-a-like dragged Linda across the room, the knife still cutting into her skin as she struggled, giving her a wet ruby necklace that hung down between her pale breasts in gory contrast. Malcolm handed the Mossberg over to Paul and took the knife. When he stood, he had Jennie in one hand, dangling by her ankle, and the wicked looking knife, her mother’s blood dripping off the blade, in the other.
“Are you watching, Reed? Are you watching?”
The blade went straight through Jennie, cracking through her ribcage and out through her back. Pulling it out nearly ripped her in half. Blood erupted from the wound, sending a bright red arterial spray across the room. Malcolm’s eyes gleamed with a kind of ecstasy, an almost religious fervor, as he drove the knife in again and again, hacking her tiny body to pieces. Her screams were deafening but mercifully short, settling into a gurgle and rattling wheeze, bubbling up from her ruptured lungs. Reed made one more effort to save his daughter. He staggered to his feet and charged at Malcolm who smiled and promptly deposited the heel of his designer boot into Reed’s solar plexus, forcing all the wind from his lungs and sending him crashing over the stained glass coffee table. Malcolm stepped over him, still carrying the little mutilated corpse of Reed’s daughter dripping blood all over the new carpet.
Pure Hate Page 2