by Billy Wells
“What are you going to do with Mandy?” she choked, groping for something to hang on to before she went under.
“I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”
“I hope you rot in Hell,” she choked, gagging on a mouthful of black slime.
Harold swung the shovel like a baseball bat into the crown of her head, leaving a gaping wound with blood pouring from it. He placed the bloody implement in the wheelbarrow and drove it in on top of her. In minutes, there was no sign of anything, but the relentless, sucking mire.
When Harold returned to the house, he heard the TV in Mandy’s room. He thought about rushing in and strangling the annoying brat when it dawned on him, he had stupidly dumped the wheelbarrow into the muck on his last outing. The act of carrying the miserable prima donna to her murky grave seemed too much of a chore for him to undertake at that moment. He thought he might have some fun with her first now that Marie was out of the picture.
Creeping inside the house through the side door, he silently climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. Mud and blood splatter peppered his clothes. He didn’t want the kid to see him with her mother’s blood all over him.
After taking a shower and putting on a clean shirt and blue jeans, Harold placed the dirty clothes in a garbage bag and crept downstairs. After stowing the bag in the trunk of the car with the briefcase, he moved stealthily toward Mandy’s room. The little monster had the volume on the TV much too loud. He pushed open the door and burst into the bedroom. To his utter surprise, the room was empty.
“Mandy,” he called out. “I’ve got a big surprise for you. Where are you?” He turned off the television and listened to the dead silence of what seemed to be an empty house.
“Mandy, I know you’re here. You don’t need to hide from me. Mommie had to go away for a few days. Aunt Mollie is sick. We’re going to have a lot of fun, just you and me.”
He listened, but heard nothing. “To prove how much I care about you, I got you something you always wanted.”
The house remained eerily silent. Through the window, he saw the sun fading through the trees. Turning on a light, he noticed a note on Mandy’s pillow. Picking it up, he read the following words written in rudimentary block letters:
IF YOU WANT YOUR MONEY, MEET ME IN THE SWAMP. YOU KNOW WHERE. CHARLEY.
Harold dropped the note and ran into the garage. Opening the trunk of the car, he discovered the briefcase with the money was gone. He slammed the trunk lid down and returned to the kitchen for Marie’s gun. Finding it missing, he grabbed the largest butcher knife he could find, a flashlight, and several other things he thought he might need, and placed them in a burlap sack. In a mad frenzy, he stormed out the side door and headed toward the swamp.
Shadows were falling, and a full moon was beginning to rise in the distance. He could still see the tracks of the wheelbarrow in the soggy ground.
Reaching the clearing where Marie and Quint lie beneath the mire, he saw Mandy sitting on a log with the briefcase on her lap. As soon as she saw him, she stood and hurled the case into the unforgiving ooze. Immediately, it began to sink in the hungry bog.
Harold screamed, “You little cunt. Wait until I get my hands on you.” Placing the flashlight, the knife, and the rest of the items in the sack on the ground, he took the rope and tied one end around a tree and the other end around his waist, and dove into the muck. Just as the case completely vanished, Harold found the handle below the surface, and prying it out, hurled it back onto to the dry ground at the lip of the mire. With both hands, he started reeling himself back to dry land.
Mandy spotted the butcher knife he had dropped on the ground, and started cutting the rope. When Harold lunged forward to stop her, he felt a powerful, invisible force grip his wrist. He heard a snap and felt an excruciating pain. Looking down in horror, he saw the blood spewing from the stump of his severed hand.
Screaming like a man on fire, he clawed at the roots at the edge of the pit for purchase with his left hand. His eyes flitted back and forth searching for the invisible thing he knew loomed above him.
He heard Mandy say coldly, “You said you wanted to meet Charley. Well, he’s standing right next to you, and he looks extremely pissed. I’m sorry you can’t see him, but you believe me now, don’t you?”
Harold looked at her wide-eyed with terror and pleaded, “Mandy, tell Charley to stop. Please have mercy on me. I beg you.”
Mandy extended her tiny fist toward him, and shaking her head, turned her thumb downward like a spectator in the Roman coliseum.
Harold immediately felt two massive hands surround his temples like a golf ball, and in another effortless motion, Charley ripped his head from his shoulders like tender pork from a baby back rib. Suspended in midair, Harold’s round face seemed to fragment like sections of a personal pan pizza, one slice at a time. After the bloodbath, his bloody torso slid backward into the muck.
Ten minutes later, the bog had sucked away whatever Charley had failed to snack on.
Mandy stood at the edge of the mire and thought about how happy her life had been when her father was alive. She remembered the good times before Harold had come along that she would always treasure. No matter how bad her mother had become, Mandy knew she had never stopped loving her. But when Mandy found out from Charley that she was responsible for killing her dad, she could no longer return her love. She would miss her mother, but she could never forgive her.
The moon was high above now, and the swamp seemed more menacing as the wind moaned among the trees. All around her, the sounds of something moving closer pricked her ears. She had never heard these sounds before. In the moonlight, she could see long, dark shapes slithering from the blackness toward her. Their cold, reptilian eyes ogled her hungrily, but she was not afraid.
Charley swept her off her feet and carried her in his arms toward home. The gators parted like spooked cattle and made a path as they headed out of the swamp. Not one of them dared confront her invisible friend
* * *
Mandy found a happy home with adopted parents who loved her. The authorities never found the remains of Marie and Harold. They assumed like so many others in that neck of the woods, they ventured into the swamp and got swallowed up. Mandy told the police they weren’t there one day when she came home from school, and she didn’t know what happened to them. No one ever mentioned the insurance money Charley had hidden for her in a secret place in the backyard. It became a welcome nest egg for her bright future.
Mandy never saw Charley again after she moved 500 miles away, but she always sensed he was still there to protect her.
* * *
One special night when Mandy was eighteen years old and a freshman at a prestigious university, she went on her third date with a handsome young man named Roger Miller. He had parked high on the hill overlooking the beautiful lake at one of the college’s favorite make-out spots. A breathtaking full moon cast its golden glow on the water. They noticed only one other car parked in the shadows a short distance away.
After two hours of swapping spit, Mandy grew disappointed that Roger had not tried to cop a feel. She assumed his fear of moving too quickly or not moving quickly enough was making him crazy. She knew he wanted to do the right thing and did not want to take a chance on losing her. To make matters worse, she sensed that each time he started to make his move, he had the overpowering sensation they were not alone.
Mandy lowered the window, and thrusting her fist outside, gave the silent woods a thumbs-up sign. When she heard a plaintive sigh on the wind, she whispered to the beautiful, moonlit night, “It’s okay, Charley, I’m in love.”
Mandy turned back to her puzzled date, planted a sloppy kiss on his lips, and placed his hand on her breast.
* * *
Mandy and Roger were married right after graduation.
WORLD DOMINATION
Returning to his aisle seat to the right in the last row of first class, Barry noticed the words “World Domination�
� scroll up on the laptop of the young man seated at the window in the opposite corner. He saw the monitor explode into hundreds of virtual pieces. Then, the words “Mission Accomplished!” twirled end over end from the right and blinked several times while skyrockets and confetti filled the screen.
Barry was seated next to an elderly woman who had been reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo since they boarded. The aisle seat next to the gamer was vacant. According to the desk clerk at check in, their flight from Orlando to Philadelphia was sold out, and Barry wondered why the seat was empty.
When the flight attendant stopped to ask for a second drink order, Barry couldn’t resist inquiring about it.
The attendant turned her body to block the view from behind her and whispered, “The young man purchased both seats and left strict instructions he did not want to be disturbed.”
“Two first class tickets. That’s impressive.”
“It’s unusual, but not unheard of,” she said and scurried off.
Barry picked up a magazine from the seat pocket and started browsing to kill some time. He continued to glance over at the gamer now and then. It was obvious he was in his own virtual world, oblivious to everything around him. About every fifteen minutes, the young man, who Barry estimated to be in his late twenties, jotted something down on a clipboard he kept on the empty seat next to him. Barry could see two groups of four vertical lines with a diagonal line across both of them and a third group with four vertical lines. He guessed this meant fourteen items of some kind.
When his second gin and tonic arrived with a bag of peanuts, Barry noticed the flight attendant place a bucket full of ice with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne chilling inside on the tray table in front of the empty seat across the aisle. It was apparent by the way the gamer moved his shoulders and manipulated a strange looking joystick, he was still consumed by whatever game he was playing and chose to ignore the champagne. Despite what looked to be expensive headphones covering his ears, Barry could hear occasional bursts of explosions, followed by the tumultuous sound byte, “Ta Da!”
The gamer took a pen from his shirt pocket and drew a diagonal line across the third grouping on his pad. Reaching for the bottle of champagne, he removed the cork, poured a crystal goblet of the bubbly, and took a satisfying sip.
When the flight attendant came by for a third drink order, Barry said, “If I wanted a bottle of whatever he’s drinking, how much would it set me back?”
“Eleven hundred.”
“Really. Do you stock thousand dollar bottles of wine as a matter of course?”
“No, you have to request it in advance.”
“Should I know this guy? Is he Eminem or Usher? You know… Some famous rapper.”
The flight attendant smiled and said, “Would you like another gin and tonic?”
Suddenly, the fasten-seat-belt light came on with its familiar chime, and the speaker above his head crackled to life. Barry recognized the voice as the pilot from his earlier announcements, but this time, it had an emotional overtone, “What I’m about to tell you is beyond comprehension. I have received triple confirmation that the world we have known will never be the same again. During the last thirty minutes, the fifteen largest U.S. cities, Washington DC, and the state of Israel have been incinerated by nuclear bombs. The President, his Cabinet, and all the member of congress were killed in a session at the US Capitol. All the people in a fifty-mile radius of ground zero in each of the targeted cities are presumed dead. Iran has taken credit for the terrorist attack, and as a consequence, our government has retaliated with nuclear warheads, which have eradicated the entirety of the Middle East countries.”
The passengers in front of him along with the flight attendants started weeping uncontrollably as the pilot continued his unfathomable report; “Our country is under military rule until some form of government can be restored.”
The pilot’s voice broke into sobs, and then he painfully continued, “New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Austin, & Columbus, Ohio no longer exist.” The announcement ended abruptly.
Barry was an only child, and his parents lived in Satsuma, Alabama, which was in a location not affected by the attack. He started thinking of the many people he had befriended in his life who lived in the cities the pilot had mentioned. He was thankful he could not think of anyone close to him who might be a casualty unless they had stopped in one of the targeted cities that day.
The final destination of this flight had been Philadelphia. He wondered where they would land in light of what had happened. Would his apartment in Princeton still be there? What would life be like under military rule? Would his parents still receive their social security checks each month? Would there still be television programs to watch? Everything about the future was a mystery.
Looking around, he saw that most of the passengers had their heads in their hands with tears streaming down their faces. The flight attendants had stopped responding to passenger requests. An assortment of shrieks and wails emanated from the coach section behind him.
The young man, who continued to play his video game on his laptop, was the only passenger in first class who remained indifferent to the pilot’s announcement. The gamer continued to pound on his armrest with his eyes riveted to the screen. Not once did Barry see him lift his head to survey his surroundings.
Barry looked at his watch. The plane was scheduled to land in fifteen minutes.
“Shit!” the gamer cried out in disgust, apparently disturbed by something that had happened in the game. Looking over at him, Barry saw the following words scroll up on the computer screen, “You have been nuked and have only one life to live. Prepare to kiss your ass goodbye….”
Barry unstrapped his seatbelt, and standing, reached over from the aisle and tapped the young man on the shoulder. The gamer looked at him with disgust, obviously incensed by the interruption, and without removing his headphones, said belligerently, “What is it? I’m right in the middle of a life and death situation, and I can’t afford to lose my concentration without dire consequences.”
Barry wondered how he would react when he heard the catastrophic news. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought you should know that fifteen of the largest US cities, Washington DC and Israel have been nuked by Iran and no longer exist. Everyone who lived there is dead. The US response to the terrorist attack was to blow away the Middle Eastern countries. Does this rank as an acceptable reason to interrupt your mindless game?”
The gamer looked at Barry like a turd on the bottom of his Gucci shoes and said in his most pompous tone, “I have no time for small talk. You are not equipped to understand all the forces in play in World Domination. Please stop distracting me. I have only one life remaining and need my full concentration.”
The gamer turned away from Barry and resumed play on his laptop. Barry saw a cityscape light up and a mushroom cloud form above it, followed by the rushing force of liquid fire that obliterated every building on his computer screen.
The words, “Word Domination” scrolled vertically across the screen, and then, “Fort Worth Nuked” flashed in front of the incinerated cityscape. Then came the muffled musical interlude, “Ta Da!” in the headphones. The gamer turned and looked at Barry with venomous disgust; perturbed he was still standing in the aisle watching his game.
“What an idiot,” Barry said, returning to his seat. Pulling a blank piece of paper from his pad, he wrote a heavy handed message in a black felt tipped marker and placed it on the gamer’s empty seat. It read, “I’m not joking, asshole.”
The gamer ignored the message and continued playing.
A minute later, when the pilot announced Fort Worth had been added to the list of cities nuked; Barry looked at the gamer in an entirely different light. He imagined the devil himself sitting across the aisle from him as he reviewed the order of events.
He had just seen Fort
Worth disintegrate on the creep’s laptop. Looking across at the notepad on the empty seat, he saw three groups of five plus one vertical line, which meant the total of something the geek was tracking was sixteen. Was it a coincidence sixteen of the largest US cities had been blown off the face of the earth? Was it also a coincidence the same city he had just seen being incinerated on the laptop was the same one the pilot had just added to the list? Could the obnoxious asshole sitting across from him be personally responsible for the death and destruction of millions of innocent people all over the world?
In Barry’s mind’s eye, the gamer’s face seemed to morph into something diabolically evil. What he saw was no longer human. He batted his eyes, and the devilish thing he thought he saw was again just the young man playing a game on his laptop.
Suddenly the gamer pounded on his armrest, knocked the bucket of champagne off the tray table, and cheered like he had just won the power ball lotto. He grabbed his notepad and added two more vertical lines to a second set of groupings Barry had not noticed below the first set of sixteen.
“One last sector and it will all be over,” he said with sweat rolling down his face. His split computer screen showed two more cities disintegrating as fireworks and confetti replaced the fire and smoke of the destroyed cities. The loudest “Ta Da!” yet burst from the headphones, and the words “Mission Accomplished” pulsed on and off in rainbow colors.
A robotic voice in the computer said, “One life left, and one sector remaining to win “World Domination”.
Barry looked into the feverish, soulless eyes and cringed at the insidious grin on the face across from him. In that moment, he was convinced the gamer was the instigator of the world’s destruction. He believed without any reservation that the fate of humankind was in his hands. No one around him knew this maniac was only one step away from finalizing his insidious plot.
Barry jumped from his seat, grabbed the gamer’s laptop, and smashed it against every surface he could see around him. Afterward, he threw it on the floor and stomped on it several times. He heard a robotic voice croak, ”Game over” as the screen flickered and went out.