Grinning Cracks

by K W Taylor

  “Just come on down.” The bank manager’s voice was tinny and muffled on the other end. “You got the I.D. made up?”

  A.J. heard him but pretended the call had been disconnected and snapped the flip phone shut before grinding it into pieces. No use getting his voice on a tape somewhere admitting to anything.

  Part III: Epiphany

  They’d been sitting in the Starlight Coffee Café for nearly an hour making small talk before Allison finally got to the real reason she’d wanted to see her ex-husband. After the initial story spilled out, she exhaled with relief and waited for Dave to make the connection. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at her and leaned a hand wearily in his palm. “I’m really sorry,” he finally said.

  “You’re not seeing what I’m seeing here?” she asked.

  Dave calmly took a sip of his coffee.

  Allison took a quick glance around the near-empty café before leaning in. “You give me a bunch of money,” she stage-whispered, “then I talk to my aunt the cop about you, and then days later she turns up dead, not to mention your dead neighbor!”

  “Bernie’d been super depressed.”

  “My aunt hadn’t.”

  Dave sighed. “She didn’t off herself, did she? Plus, hello, policewoman! High-risk job!” He flailed his arms about shook his head almost mockingly at her. “Also? Why so suspicious of some extra money in your alimony? I was a shit husband. You deserve it. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “What? No!”

  “Well then what’s the point of giving me money now?”

  A heavy sigh, removal of glasses, and the pinching-of-the-bridge-of-the-nose that Allison recognized from all the polite arguments they’d had over the years. “You’re looking for reasons to be suspicious,” Dave said. “I don’t get why. I’m nobody. I do a desk job. I’m not a...a...what, a hoodlum? A gangster? A mafioso? What, exactly, do you think I’m up to?”

  “Gambling,” Allison blurted out. She paused and leaned back in her chair. “Huh, I hadn’t really put it together before, but yeah, gambling.” She tilted her head to one side. “Maaaaybe drugs. You did do a lot of blow in the early ‘90s, didn’t you?”

  “Fuck off.” Dave shook a finger at Allison. “I seem to recall meeting you in a haze of blue smoke at a rave, young lady.”

  Suddenly, in spite of herself, Allison barked out a laugh.

  “See? It’s still me, baby,” Dave said. His expression softened. “Everything’s fine.”

  The café door swung open, its entrance bells sent jingling. At the counter, the barista chirped a pleasant greeting to the customers. “So what can I get you?”

  This question was answered with a shuffling sound, a hollow thump, and then the smack of a meaty fist against flesh. The barista shrieked. Dave shot down to the floor under the table and yanked Allison down beside him.

  Three pairs of snakeskin boots stalked to their table. “Mr. Mark, we know you’re down there.”

  Allison froze. That voice. She knew that voice. Oh, holy shit! “A.J.?” she called.

  Dave thwapped her on the arm, hard. “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  Allison poked her head out from under the table. “It is you. Oh, my God, what the hell are you doing?”

  The shortest of the three men looked nervous. “There wasn’t supposed to be other collateral,” he whimpered.

  Allison raised an eyebrow and looked off toward the counter. The barista was sliding down the menu board, leaving blood-stained streaks across the iced drink listings. He was alive, but missing several teeth. His beaten face was swiftly turning from peach to purple. “Little late for that, I think,” she said. She turned to her aunt’s partner. “Dude, did I just blow your cover?”

  One of the larger men poked A.J. in the ribs. “Heh. The cop thing is his cover, lady.” He chuckled and gave Allison a dim smile. “Ain’t he clever?”

  The third man seemed merely annoyed and impatient. “Guys, we came here for one thing.” He pointed his gun at Dave. “There it is. Let’s get it and go.”

  “Oh, I’m an it now?!” Dave demanded. He stood and held up his hands in surrender. “Aw, man, not you again.” He sighed and turned to Allison. “This is the second fucking time in a week that this asshole’s had a gun on me.”

  The man cringed. “To be fair, the first time was totally a mistake.”

  “I take it this one isn’t,” Dave said.

  “Not so much.”

  Warehouse. Nighttime. Ropes. Chairs. Thugs in the next room. A bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Water dripping. Rats squeaking.

  “Could this place get any more fucking cliché?” Dave asked.

  Allison glared at him. “I still don’t get why you let yourself get mixed up in all this. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “That I like eating and I couldn’t afford to do that for much longer,” he replied. “Jesus, and I can’t fucking believe how pissed you are about your wedding ring. You gave it back to me!”

  “That doesn’t mean I wanted you to pawn it!” She struggled against her restraints. “I bet you’re loving this. You always did want to try—”

  “Don’t make me look creepy on a sexual level, too!” Dave yelled. “I know I got problems. Let’s keep ‘em on one subject at a time.”

  “Fine. Let’s.” Allison struggled again, grunting in frustration. “Let’s focus on how you got involved in some totally ridiculous Ponzi scheme or whatever the hell...what the hell was the plan, anyway?”

  Dave sighed. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m fucked. The cops are dirty. The bank manager is in there with the hit man. The head guy wants to either mentor me or kill me or both, and my neighbor is dead.” He laughed bitterly. “I think the house might still be in my name, though, so there’s that.”

  “House.” Allison stopped trying to pull her hands free of their ropes. “Was there insurance on it?”

  Dave squinted. “I signed so much crap in the last few days,” he said. “I think so. I think one of those things was the insurance stuff.”

  Allison grinned.

  It turned out A.J. was crap at tying knots.

  Gasoline-fueled flames smelled like so much sickly perfume as they licked the tree-limbs surrounding the house. The homeowner’s insurance form was pressed safely inside Dave’s front pocket, its surface covered with sweaty palm prints. “They’ll probably know it was arson,” he’d warned Allison.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she’d agreed. “Or maybe somebody can be paid off.”

  As she smiled at him, the gleam of her teeth matching the whites of her eyes, her hair all golden strawberries in the dancing firelight, Dave felt like he’d gotten a belated holiday gift, that the smoke pouring out of the prefab construction rapidly turning to cinders was heady incense, something mystical smouldering inside coffers swung by acolytes in a ritual whose significance and symbolism had long been forgotten.

  “We could run away,” he suggested, sidling up closer to Allison. He reached a thumb to her face, trying to wipe away a soot smudge from her cheek but only managing to make it darken and smear across her flesh.

  “We could.” Her voice was soft, dreamy.

  He didn’t hear the shot when it came, only felt himself stagger backward and didn’t know why. The second one, he did hear, though, and the third. Metal burned through his side, just beneath the ribs. When he looked at his bloodied hands reaching out for Allison, he thought wildly that it looked like he’d spilled wine all over her. “I’m...sorry,” he choked out.

  She ran to him, caught him, and eased him to the dewy grass. She was sobbing, wailing, her fingers raking through his hair as everything grew dim.

  Across the street, he could just see the glint of chrome, a man with a moustache lifting an index finger to a wide-brimmed Stetson.

  The last thing he remembered as he died was the night before New Year’s Eve. Dave had asked Edgar Lord if he’d ever be told who the patsy was. Lord had fired up his motorcycle, the very
same motorcycle now speeding from the conflagration.

  “I expect you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Colleagues

  April dimmed the lights and crossed to the front gate of the store. She pulled out her phone and glanced at the time displayed on the screen.

  Come on, nobody needs an engagement ring at this hour!

  The digits changed. April plucked the pole from behind the front display case, fitted the hook into the hole in the ceiling, and yanked. The gate rolled down with a rushing sound.

  April picked up the sales log, powered down the cash register, and, with a spring in her step, exited to the back office, leaving the log on the manager’s desk. She turned her phone’s ringer on and opened up her messaging app. “DONE!” she texted. “Meet you at Jimmy’s in ten.”

  She was halfway down the service corridor between the shops and the parking lot when she stopped.

  Shit.

  She looked at her phone again. Wednesday, deposit day. April rummaged through her tote to make sure she didn’t already have the small cloth sack of cash, but all she found besides her wallet and keys were empty gum wrappers and a lint-filled hairbrush. She dashed off another text—“Make it twenty. Gotta hit the bank”—as she returned to the back door.

  April made a beeline for the safe, and, sure enough, the deposit sack waited. She shoved it in her tote and started to turn when she noticed a strip of light spilling from under the door to the sales floor.

  Can’t I remember anything? Wait, no, I already dimmed those. I’m sure I did.

  She stared at the light as two shadows drew closer, then farther away, accompanied by the sound of footsteps.

  April put her tote down and scanned the manager’s desk for the phone list. Security, security—shit! The footsteps drew closer again. April’s phone flew out of her hands and skittered under the desk.

  She stared at the thin layer of pressed particle board separating her from whoever wandered on the other side. The cheap steel-and-nickel doorknob was smooth at the center with no lock, and April knew the latch was flimsy.

  She reached out for the knob and—quietly as she could—pulled it against the latch and held on tight.

  Early spring meant potholes, deep wells gouged out of the asphalt by salt and snow and ice for long, dark weeks. As Harry ran, he splashed through the water pooling in these small wells, scattered throughout the mall parking lot and reflecting the sodium lights and full moon back at themselves.

  The lot was almost empty. Even if people still milled about, they would be more startled by Harry’s furtive speed than the subtle fact that he himself cast no reflection in the puddles.

  He was sweaty, and his dampness and pallor rivaled the shine of the moon, skin silvery and smooth like a shark. His breath was ragged, his heartbeat like repeating gunfire. His arms and legs pumped faster until his body blurred to invisibility. Now it no longer mattered that he cast no reflection, that he looked uncanny and dead. For he was the wind itself, the air, a whoosh of breeze.

  When he reached the mall’s north corridor, he paused just long enough to cease his breath and heartbeat. Not slow them down, not catch them. But cease them. One second Harry sprinted, all bodily functions on overdrive, and the next he was motionless, silent. A statue, once again visible but still reflectionless in the panes of display windows. Perfume, hats, shoes, posters...Harry strode past all of them, past the Java Spot and the Object of My Confection, past mannequins in various stages of undress. These were places where weeks earlier he’d waved to people and engaged in chitchat.

  But that was Before, and now everything was forever split into Before and After—very different places on the reality continuum.

  Harry knew which place he preferred.

  He slid a key in the closed gate at the end of the corridor—Good girl, out right at nine. You can set your watch by April O’Keefe—and lifted it just enough to enter the store.

  The register was empty, but Harry didn’t care about the register anymore. Tonight was about rings and watches, anything with decently-sized stones, gaudy and unsold for years.

  Behind him came a noise. He stared at the door leading to the office and the service hall beyond. Oh, God, no, don’t pick tonight to be slow finishing up. Please!

  Harry bit back a groan of pain as two razor-sharp fangs split the tender gums in front of his incisors and slid down over them. The doorknob rattled.

  I can make her forget.

  And yet a dark hunger gnawed at him as Harry opened the door.

  “Think she’ll be an asset?”

  “She’ll be fine. She could keep our access. She’s good.”

  A chuckle. “Good’s not what we’re goin’ for around here, boy.”

  A sigh. “You know what I mean.”

  April blinked against pain. Dark, blurry figures moved. Dim light shone from behind corners, indirect and flickering. From somewhere near but not in the same room—What is this room?—doors opened and shut, and an engine thrummed to life.

  Far away: “Hey, you get this one out? Guy just paid, we can put it out with this...” The voice got softer before gradually fading to silence.

  She sat up, head throbbing. Beside her on a low table was a paper cup emblazoned with the Java Spot logo. A Post-It instructed her to drink it. The handwriting looked familiar. April sniffed at the tiny rectangle punched out of the lid.

  Pain in her mouth, her gut, her everything. The smell sang to her, like water after exertion, like food after a fast. She devoured the contents greedily, completely.

  Afterward, the cup was nothing more than blood-soaked shreds.

  “What did you do to me?”

  Harry almost dropped the box he carried. April was awake, her color better, probably due to the blood streaked across her face. He put the box down and approached her, one hand on the stake tucked into the waistband of his khakis.

  “April, hang on—”

  “What did you do to me?” Tendons stood out on her neck, and she flew across the room, arms outstretched.

  Harry brandished his stake. “If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to kill you.” He kept his voice neutral and soft.

  April clenched her fists and backed up a step. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “You didn’t tell us you quit. Your phone was turned off. It’s been two months!”

  Where’ve I been? Harry blinked at her. “Wait, you know what happened, right?” he asked. “To both of us? And your first question is about...work?”

  April cringed. “I guess,” she replied. “You really left us in the lurch. I had to do double shifts for a whole—”

  “I just drained all the blood out of your body!” Harry shouted. “Let’s get some fucking perspective here!”

  April crossed the room back to the couch and sat down. “I’m not into thinking about that part yet.”

  Harry pulled a folding chair away from a cluttered card table and set it next to the couch. “I’m sorry,” he said, slumping down onto the chair. “I should’ve called one of you guys.”

  “Two weeks’ notice in writing,” April muttered. “That’s what the manual says.”

  Harry allowed one corner of his lip to quirk up. “You can write me a bad reference.”

  April stared at Harry. Her eyesight and hearing were sharpened, allowing her to pick out small details of him she’d never noticed before—pores, a scar on his chin, his hairline receding slightly at the temples. He wasn’t attractive to her, not before and not now, even silvery and lithe, features turned gaunt and ghostly. Not her type. She hadn’t hated him, though. They’d joked about reality television and annoying customers. He was older, a family guy, the kind of guy she’d have trusted to walk her to her car late at night. A big brother type, that was all.

  And now she was the thing she’d have been scared of in that dark, empty parking lot. All because of the harmless family guy.

  “Where’s your wife in all this?” April spat the words out, wrapping her lips up into a sneer. “Your kids? Do
they know?” A dark thought occurred to her. “Did you kill them?”

  “Oh, my God, no!” Harry was across the room in a blur, knocking his chair over in his wake. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “This isn’t what I thought of you, either. I thought the worst thing you ever did was show up late and hungover the day after a football game.”

  He paced. “April, I’m sorry, okay? I hadn’t eaten, I thought you were gone.” He paused. “I’ve been stealing from the store since they turned me. You and Jon and that new girl, you’re always gone by the time I get there. Except tonight.”

  “Yeah, that new girl replaced you,” April said. “She’s responsible. And alive.”

  And I’m not, either. April tensed as the realization finally set in.

  “I’m not alive,” she said aloud. She growled, and the sound coming from her own throat was foreign, feral, and animalistic. April’s vision blurred, a hazy patina of red swirling before her.

  She rose, slowly, keeping her legs bent before springing across the room—flying, nearly—at Harry. He sidestepped, throwing himself against a wall and up several feet, clinging like a spider to the grime-coated cinderblocks. April landed on the concrete floor with a loud crack. Her arms took the brunt of the force, and they were filled with pain for an instant. April scrambled up, gasping as she put too much weight on one wrist before looking down at her arms.

  Broken. Clearly. But as she watched, the bones began knitting themselves back together, a compound fracture sliding back between gashes in her skin and moving inside her body to meet the rest of its shattered remains. With every tug and shift, she cried out in agony, but she was also fascinated, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of lumps moving, skin welding itself back together, gashes disappearing. Then she was whole again, with only the dullest ache in each arm and streaks of sticky blood as a reminder of what just happened.

  “You’re not alive, no,” Harry said. He sprang off the wall into a crouch beside her. “But, honestly, doesn’t that prove you’re not exactly dead, either? Do dead bodies do that? Do they walk and talk and run and fly and heal? Do they feel?”