Deranged

by Jacob Stone

  “What is wrong with you?” she cried.

  While Henry preferred Sheila talking to staying silent, it was always a weird effect when she did talk due to her paralysis on her right side, and after over five years Henry still hadn’t gotten used to it. With only the left side of her mouth moving, it left her voice both hollow and heavy, and it left her speaking as slowly as she ate, like it was a great effort on her part to push out each word.

  Henry felt his cheeks reddening as he looked at his wife. “I’m doing the best I can,” he stated stubbornly.

  “That is not who we agreed on!”

  “I had to improvise,” Henry explained. “That one saw me with Susan, so I had to switch things up. What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s not the one I wanted! You are botching everything up!”

  Sheila was furious with him. He could see that with the way the left part of her mouth twisted into a pinched, spiteful grimace. It always made him feel awful when she was furious with him.

  “I had no choice so you’ll just have to be satisfied with her,” he said.

  “What about that girl? Why didn’t you record killing that girl?”

  He wasn’t about to tell her about the reality show. If he did, Sheila would find a way to blame that on him! “She was too old,” he said. “At least forty, maybe older.”

  “You can’t do anything right! You’re useless!”

  Henry could’ve argued that she had approved of Madame Asteria when he had showed her the psychic’s website, and later the pictures he had taken of her, but he knew he couldn’t argue with his wife when she got like this. He showed her on his iPhone a picture he had taken of the blonde waitress from earlier.

  “I can grab her tomorrow night,” he said.

  “Before then.”

  “I can’t do it before then. It’s impossible.”

  “I said before then!”

  “I’ll find someone else tomorrow morning, okay? Someone who looks like her. They’re a dime a dozen here in LA. Okay?”

  Henry found himself holding his breath as he waited for Sheila to say something. She could be so damn unreasonable when she wanted to be.

  “Kill that Susan first! Like you were supposed to!”

  If he told her how he had snuck up on Susan and broke her neck in a quick attack, it would infuriate her. She would never forgive him for not breaking open Susan’s skull with a chisel and hammer right there in the parking lot and digging out her brains.

  “I’m not doing that. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the one I killed for you.”

  “If you don’t, I won’t eat again! You will have to watch me die. Then you will be all alone!”

  Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “Unless you accept the one I killed, I won’t kill a girl for you tomorrow.”

  He was playing a game of chicken with his wife, but it was one that he knew he had the upper hand in, and he could see in her eyes the exact moment when she gave in.

  “We have a deal?” he asked.

  She gave him that angry pinched look again that made him feel so small, but she reluctantly agreed that they had a deal as long as he didn’t screw this next one up also.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Brooklyn, 2011

  “I’m telling’ ya, Henry, you gotta let me set you up with my wife’s cousin. She’s a doll. A real sweetheart, and I just know you two would hit it off.”

  Henry reached for one of the meaty chicken wing drumsticks and took a bite of it, savoring it. “These are the best chicken wings you can get anywhere in Brooklyn,” he said. “Forget Brooklyn. Anywhere in the city. They don’t cook these on a grill or in an oven. They’ve got an open pit barbecue out back, and they use mesquite wood to give it that smoky flavor.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Just talking about the best darn wings I’ve ever had. You got to admit, it was worth the trip to Bushwick for them.”

  His buddy Joe took a long sip of his ale while he gave Henry a hard eye. “You’ve done too much work to throw in the towel after a few bad dates. How much did you drop? Fifty pounds?”

  “Sixty-five,” Henry corrected him. “I’m now a svelte two twenty. I might look like some sort of balding lumpy ogre out of a fairy tale, but at least I’m no longer a fatso.”

  Joe shook his head as if he were disappointed in his friend. “That’s defeatist talk. You’re a nice guy, Henry, and you’re not that bad looking. At a certain age it’s more important for women to meet a nice guy.”

  Henry had slipped up earlier. He’d learned long ago that people don’t like negativity, or defeatist talk, as Joe called it. It was better to be a cheerful loser than someone who was always moaning woe is me. He knew his friend was wrong, though. As he had learned during his forty-four years on this planet, well, really thirty-one years starting that first time he was rejected (and so rudely) by a member of the fairer sex, women might find him a nice guy, and they might want him as a friend, but they certainly had no romantic interest in him, and that wasn’t about to change. But he had nothing to gain by spelling that out to Joe, other than looking like a complainer, so he simply agreed with his friend.

  “Okay, then,” Joe continued, nodding, a dull glaze in his eyes from the three beers that he’d had. Joe was one of those tall, thin guys who showed the effects of his drinking after only a couple of beers. “I’ll talk to my wife and get it set up.” He gave a quick glance at his watch and pushed himself out of the booth. “And speaking of the wife, I gotta be heading home.” He dug twenty dollars out of his wallet and dropped it on the table to cover his share, then pointed a bony index finger at Henry. “Don’t ever forget, there’s someone for everybody. See you at work tomorrow.”

  Henry watched as Joe tottered toward the exit. A good guy, but couldn’t hold his liquor. Unsteady on his feet after only a few beers. Henry lifted up his glass and drained the pilsner he’d been drinking, and nearly snorted it out of his nose when a woman took Joe’s place across from him, a big teasing grin stretching across her face. Not just any woman, but his dream woman. Sparkling blue eyes, wavy blonde hair, gorgeous face, and from what he imagined (since he could only see her from the waist up), a perfect hourglass figure.

  “Trust me, you wouldn’t be making a very good first impression if beer came out of your nose right now,” she said, her grin turning impish.

  Henry choked on the beer a bit, and coughed several times as it went down the wrong pipe, but he somehow kept it from blowing out his nose. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, and half expected this vision of beauty to be gone when he looked back up, but she was still sitting across from him. Still grinning.

  “That would’ve been very gauche,” he agreed. “Care for a wing?”

  “Wouldn’t mind one,” she said. “I’m Sheila.”

  “Henry.”

  This had all happened so suddenly that Henry started thinking it had to be a setup on Joe’s part. Women just don’t approach him out of the blue like this. Maybe other guys, but not him.

  “Did Joe set this up?” he asked.

  “Joe?” she asked in between gnawing on the wing that she’d picked up. “Is that the tall skinny guy who was sitting in the booth with you?”

  Henry nodded.

  “I don’t know him from Adam. But I’ve been waiting for him to get his ass in gear so I could meet you. You seem like a nice guy, Henry, and I really want to meet a nice guy.”

  Henry blushed at her compliment. “I don’t want to appear ungentlemanly. Normally I’d offer to buy you a drink,” he said, stretching the truth, since he’d never been in this situation before, “but it seems as if you already have one. Unless you’d like something else?”

  Her eyes sparkled a tad brighter as she took a sip from the glass of wine that she had brought with her.

  “You certainly are a gallant one,” she said. “But this Chardonnay is fine for now. So Henry, what do you do for work?”

  Henry couldn’t help flinching at the qu
estion. With little enthusiasm, he said, “Word processing.”

  “Really? That’s a thing?”

  “Yep. I work for a law firm in Manhattan typing up briefs and other forms. It might not be glamorous work, but I do okay.”

  “Did you go to school for that?”

  He could’ve told her that he’d gone to NYU for a bachelor’s in political science thinking that he’d go to law school afterward, but that his grades weren’t up to snuff, and that the word-processing job was just something that fell into his lap, but instead he shrugged and told her it was a job he got after college. “I never thought I’d be doing it for twenty years, but it got comfortable,” he added.

  “So I take it this wasn’t something you’ve had a burning desire to do since childhood?”

  Henry’s cheeks burned redder as he saw the way she grinned, as if she were struggling to keep from laughing. He shook his head. “I’ll show you what I wanted to do once upon a time when I was a teenager.”

  He turned to look for the waitress so he could signal for her. When he caught her eye and she came over, he asked for a paper napkin and to borrow a pen. With napkin and pen in hand he turned back to Sheila, except she was gone. Must’ve slipped out of the booth when his back was turned. Disappointing, but not a surprise. She had come over only to make sport of the ugly guy. His initial impulse was to crumple up the napkin and toss it to the floor, but instead he set about drawing Sheila from memory. This was the first drawing he’d worked on since his parents found his skull cracker comic books and made him see a psychiatrist, which was ridiculous since years later he discovered Japanese anime and found stuff more violent and gorier than what he had done. He could’ve blamed his losing interest in drawing on the way his parents had overreacted, but the truth was his interest had begun to wane before then. Maybe it was losing his Shrieker books, which he knew were the best things he’d ever do. Maybe it was because Nancy had promised him he’d be famous someday, and after that fateful day when she refused ever to talk to him again, he more than anything wanted to prove her wrong.

  “Wowser, that’s really good. Like what you’d see in a graphic novel, and not like one of those ten-dollar Central Park caricatures.”

  Startled, Henry looked up to see that Sheila was once again sitting across from him. “Where’d you go?” he asked.

  Her grin turned mischievous. “You didn’t think I ditched you?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “Nope. Just something I had to do.” She took the napkin that Henry had been drawing on and gave it a closer look. “Do you mind if I keep this?”

  “It’s yours.”

  She carefully placed the napkin in her pocketbook. It was one of those big bulky numbers. Something that could hold a kitchen sink. Henry wasn’t sure, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a hypodermic needle.

  “A big favor, Henry. With the Skull Cracker Killer prowling the streets a girl doesn’t feel safe walking alone to the subway. Would you escort me?”

  “Of course. Let me settle the bill.”

  She winked at him. “I’m going to use the little girl’s room. How about I meet you outside?”

  Henry felt like he’d suffered emotional whiplash, rapidly alternating between hopefulness to crushing despair to something close to euphoric bliss all in a matter of a few minutes, although after Sheila left the booth for the second time, he mostly felt confused. Dread began to creep in as he had a sinking feeling that Sheila really had ditched him this second time and he wouldn’t be seeing her again. But he settled the bill, and trudged outside and stood waiting for her. When he saw her exit the front door (and now that he could see the whole package, he’d been right about her perfect hourglass figure!) and search for him, his heart somersaulted in his chest. He could’ve wept from joy, but controlled himself and instead gave her a small wave. She hurried over to him.

  “My knight in shining armor,” she said, teasingly. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  They’d walked only half a block when Sheila stopped suddenly in front of an alley, her body tensing. “Did you see that?” she asked in a hushed tone.

  “What?”

  “There’s someone down there who needs help.”

  Henry peered down the alley. It was too dark to see anything. “I don’t think there’s anyone there,” he said, cautiously.

  “I know what I saw.”

  “I’ll call the police if you want.”

  “I’m not leaving some poor soul to possibly bleed to death down there.”

  She took off down the alley, which shocked Henry. This was crazy, but what was he going to do? Stay behind and let this woman who weighed at least eighty pounds less than him walk into possible danger? How gallant would that be?

  He trudged into the alley after Sheila, pushing past her so that he led the way. It didn’t take him long to reach the end of the alley, and aside from some garbage cans and a cat that scared the bejesus out of him when it darted past him, there was nothing else there. He turned to tell Sheila that, and caught a glimpse of what he thought was her holding a hypodermic needle, but before he could be sure of that she hid her hand behind her back.

  “I could’ve sworn I saw someone.” She said with this odd smile that Henry couldn’t place. “I guess my eyes must’ve been playing tricks on me, huh?”

  “It happens,” Henry muttered, still confused about that hypodermic needle, because he was sure he had seen it. Did she want to come into this alley to shoot up? Was she a heroin addict? How could that be possible given how robust she looked?

  Before he could spend more than a second or two pondering these thoughts, she asked him if he lived in the area.

  He nodded. “A couple of blocks from here.”

  She took hold of his arm and leaned in close against him. “You really are a nice guy, Henry. How about we go to your place?”

  Henry was still puzzled about a number of things, including what it was that she still held in her left hand. He decided he didn’t care. Same with whether she was planning to shoot up at his apartment. He didn’t care.

  Arm in arm, Henry walked her out of the alley.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Brooklyn, 2011

  “Henry, my man, welcome back! How was the honeymoon cruise?”

  Henry and Joe shook hands, and then embraced. Joe’s lips momentarily quivered into a look of disapproval as he glanced at Henry’s paunch, but whatever comment he wanted to make regarding Henry’s obvious weight gain he kept to himself. Henry and Sheila had gone on a cruise to the Bahamas for their honeymoon, and the cruise had been one of those all-you-can-eat affairs. Henry had been planning on depriving himself and maintaining his diet, but Sheila, bless her, told him to go nuts; that she wouldn’t mind it at all if he packed on thirty or so pounds, which he ended up doing.

  “The cruise was a dream,” Henry said. “One of the best weeks of my life.”

  That was certainly true. Henry might have even been willing to say it was the best week of his life, except he’d be hard pressed to pick any one particular week since he’d met Sheila as better than any of the others.

  “It’s definitely been a whirlwind,” Joe said, shaking his head in amazement. “Amazing how life works. A month ago we’re eating wings and drinking beer, and you’re all down on yourself about how no woman is ever going to fall in love with you. Do you remember what I told you that day?”

  Henry couldn’t help grinning. “That’s there someone for everyone,” he said.

  “And then what happened that night?”

  Henry’s grin stretched wider. “I met that someone.”

  Joe gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “I’m really happy for you, Henry. Sheila is definitely a looker, no question about that, and married life is definitely agreeing with you.”

  “Agreed on both fronts,” Henry said, although it was a massive understatement.

  His marriage certainly wasn’t perfect. Sheila got moody at times (to put it mildly)
, and he would’ve liked more sex. They’d only made love three times so far—the night they met, one week later (and that night Sheila was completely wild, uninhibited, and insatiable, and had left Henry a quivering mess by the time they finished), and one evening during their cruise after Sheila had gotten sloshed on tequila shots. But even with those issues, which he considered minor, he was happier than he could ever have imagined. Before he met Sheila, his had been a lonely and unhappy existence, and he had resigned himself to it always being that way. So she gets moody, so they don’t hump like rabbits, so they sleep in separate beds. So what? He had a beautiful woman to share his life with, and there were genuine moments of tenderness between them. Maybe not a lot, but there were definite moments. An unexpected caress, the times he’d catch her looking at him a certain way, her playful teasing of him, and just last night the way she surprised him by sitting on his lap when he was watching TV. No, it might not be perfect, but for Henry it was still close to paradise, and far better than the alternative hellish life he thought had been in the cards for him. And as far as the sex went, Sheila asked him to be patient, promising him that there’d be more nights where she’d be that crazed, insatiable sex goddess again (although she didn’t put it in those words).

  One of the law firm’s partners came into the breakroom, eyeing Henry and Joe suspiciously, so they finished pouring their coffee, stirred in some cream and sugar, and headed back to their desks so that they could perform a full day of typing up briefs, contracts, and other legal documents.

  The rest of the day Henry could barely concentrate on his work as he kept drifting into thoughts about how dramatically his life had changed. About how lucky he had gotten.

  Like he had won the super lottery of life.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Brooklyn, 2011

  Joe hustled through the crowd to bring two beers to the table; a pilsner for Henry and an IPA for himself. Henry, his face folded into a hangdog expression, barely looked up as he sat like a lump.