Jaspierre's Last Chance (Jaspierre Trilogy Book 3)

by Mixi J Applebottom

  Jaspierre watched, the rage somehow dissipating within her. She just wanted the kid to talk! She just...

  He was right. She was fucking it all up. How could she do better?

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  The phone rang several times before finally his message beeped.

  "This is Detective Darbonne, please leave a message." Beep.

  "Edward, I think I might need to see a therapist. I have all the stuff from my mom and now that Lucille's here, I can't seem to be normal. I don't know, maybe prison just changed me more than I thought. We should be sitting together reading a book, doing mom and daughter stuff. Getting ice cream, but instead, instead, we're having all sorts of trouble. She won't talk to me. I don't mean, like she won't talk personally to me. She won't talk to anyone. I'm starting to wonder if she's gone mute." Jaspierre stood with the phone pressed to her ear, pacing back and forth around her room.

  "I just, I just don't know how to help her. I keep getting angry, and I didn't think I would be so angry. But every time she looks at me with those mute sobbing eyes, I keep thinking about all these years and how she's been ruined. I was locked up and somebody ruined her. It makes me so angry. I don't know what they did to her, but I can't reverse it. I wish you would call me back." She hung up the phone. She paced quickly, back and forth in her room. Edward hadn't called her in a few days. Maybe he didn't enjoy their kiss.

  She stepped into the hallway and turned to Lucille's room, but hesitated. Her heart hurt. How could she be a good mother when she was full of so much anger? Her whole world was ruined. She thought she'd die avenging her daughter. But now... now Lucille was alive. Why was it so hard to connect?

  Jaspierre could do better. She would do better. She walked away from Lucille's door and went out. She came back an hour later, arms full of parenting books, and sat in her room, sniffling and reading.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  Arnold, Jaspierre, and Lucille sat together at the long, winding table. Jaspierre was hoping a family meal together would really inspire the child. She'd find something brilliant to say, like "Thank you for this frozen lasagna." Jaspierre still wondered if the child was a vegetarian. She picked at her food, but it never seemed clear if she was picking out meat or just picking away like a child did. If she would talk, then they would know, wouldn't they?

  "Ma'am, what would you like me to do with the people?" Arnold said, carefully eating his food in order. He had sorted lasagna into sauce, cheese, noodles, meat. He was eating them one category at a time. Jaspierre suddenly remembered about his fetish of sorting people by organ size. He was a very odd one.

  "What do you think we should do with them?" she replied, crunching through the crisp garlic bread. "I would kind of like to release them..." She chewed thoughtfully. "I mean, I don't have a beef with them or anything. I just can't figure out what to do with them. I don't want any of this reflecting badly upon us."

  Lucille sat quietly four chairs away. The table snaked around the room like a long coil. It had tiny little planks like a little tiny railroad track running down the center of the table. Jaspierre set the basket of garlic bread on the tiny little planks and pressed the button. The little conveyor belts chugged forward, sliding around the table, bringing the basket to Lucille.

  "If you want more bread, take it." Jaspierre looked at the child. All the anger of the years being locked up, all the anger of the years that she missed with her own flesh and blood. Wasn't she supposed to feel loved? Wasn't she supposed to feel happy? She took a deep breath and tried to remember the book about positive parenting. "I hope you enjoy it." She tried to smile at the girl.

  "I can see the dilemma. But either way, they need to be dealt with. People live too long to just keep them in your basement indefinitely." Arnold carefully ate the cheese. He was just about to start in on the noodles. "I don't think you should let them live. I don't know if anyone is looking for this particular set of people, but I do know that these people are going to tell if you let them out. They aren't going to complacently go back to their sorry little lives with an elephant nose attached to them. They can't." He lifted his fork and pointed it at Jaspierre.

  "I know, but I get tired of senselessly killing people. Besides, the corpses burning in the fireplace are so potent. It would be weeks of burning flesh, maybe even months, there so many of them. I just don't want to smell that gagging wretched scent day in and day out." Jaspierre took another bite of the steaming lasagna.

  "Well, if you don't care how I do it..." He struggled to hold back a grim smile. "It would be nice to have some order back in the world." His voice trembled on the word "order." She knew that he was itching to start counting one two three four, tapping his fingers to thumb to finger over and over in a repetitive motion.

  "Are you going to torture them? Or will it be a comfortable end to their pitiful lives?" Jaspierre could feel the coldness in the room as she said it. It was like the air was being sucked out of her lungs. She could hardly stand it. Just slaughter those ten or so people. Because they were inconvenient. She pushed away her plate of food and kept staring at Arnold's perfectly organized lasagna.

  "Lucille? Do you have anything to say about the matter?" Jaspierre turned to her daughter, who was sitting several chairs away. The child did not look up. "Should we release or kill the people in the basement? Should they live? Or should they die? Pay attention. If you say nothing, ten people that Dru attached parts of animals to will die. If you tell us to let them live, I'll release them in a desert or something. Just say something." Her voice had a soft pleading to it. One of the parenting books she had read said the importance of giving children a choice. Two options, and let them choose to avoid conflict. One example was two shirt, so they'd still put a shirt on, but they got to pick which shirt.

  Arnold and Jaspierre turned and stared at the girl sitting down the table. The four-year-old's curly blond hair hung in front of her face, almost dipped in the lasagna. She pushed her plate away from her and started to sob, her face pressed on the wooden table and her arms curled around it.

  "I am not sure she knows what you are talking about. After dinner, let's go down and show her, and then she will decide. If she speaks, they live. If she is silent, they die." Jaspierre stood from the table and shoved her chair in. "Arnold, clean this up. I'll be back in fifteen minutes." She could feel the rage burning inside her. She was angry there were people in her basement to deal with at all, she was angry her daughter wouldn't speak, she was angry that all these years had gone by and she had been betrayed in so many ways. But somehow, Lucille represented every ounce of that anger. Lucille's pretty blond hair looked like Lucas's. Lucas, the only person who had ever given her love. And now she was fucking it up for the kid and fucking it up for herself. She couldn't seem to stop.

  She ran upstairs and tried to collect herself, splashing water on her face and flipping through her parenting book. It definitely said that giving her two choices would help.

  Maybe, in a moment, Lucille would say something to her. Maybe she would tell her to stop. "Stop being so angry, Mommy." Maybe that was what she was waiting for. Well, they would sure see in a moment.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Four

  Edward woke up, lying in an alleyway. How did I get here? He was wrapped in a green military-style blanket. It was scratchy; his first sensation was the scratchy blanket. Gradually, as he awoke more fully, he became aware of the pounding in his skull.

  He could hear cars. Slowly, they came into focus. He sat up gingerly, looking around. He was next to a green dumpster with the paint peeling. The stench of something rotting slowly curled up his nose. He wasn't sure what was happening.

  He heard another car pass by. As he looked, the light at the end of the alley went dark and then bright again. The road was right there. His whole body was shaking, trembling from-- cold? Was it adrenaline? He wasn't sure. He felt bad. There was a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. There was that odd emptiness in his throa
t, deep in his throat. The same feeling you get after you have been vomiting profusely. He looked vacantly at the blanket, but he didn't see any vomit.

  His brain was sludgy through muck and mud. All of his thoughts were blurred together, and another car passed by. Dark, then light. His mind latched on to one thing, the one thing he needed to remember. He needed help. Instinctively, he didn't try to get up. He was hurt, somewhere. He hadn't quite figured out where yet. Maybe his kidneys were gone. Something was gone.

  He scooted slowly towards the light. Dark, then light. This was a busy alley. No, the street was busy. The alley was quiet; it was just him. He wondered briefly if he should just throw himself in front of the car. Either they would help him and he would live, or they would crush him and he would die. Both options seemed equal. They were somehow the same option.

  He finally made it to the sidewalk. He hadn't stood up, just scooted slowly. A grown man in a suit and tie paused when he saw Edward lying on the sidewalk. He didn't say anything; he didn't say, "Can I help you?" He didn't say, "Do you need a hospital?" He said nothing; in fact, he crossed the street.

  Edward suddenly burst into frightened tears. What if no one would help him? What if they would all leave him behind, like Jaspierre did.

  Jaspierre left him.

  "Help." His voice was foreign, and his throat scratchy, like he been screaming. For a flicker of a moment, he remembered screaming. But he tried to forget it.

  "Help. Call 911. Attacked." It was so hard to breathe. Were his lungs working? He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, then pushed the air out slowly. It burned. He could feel a little rattle in his lungs. Frightened tears slowly turned back to anger. Jaspierre left him. Why did she do that? She knew what Chance was. She knew what would happen to him! If he had known, he would've never gone after her.

  He took another deep breath and tried to get to his feet. But the pain started screaming up his body. The pain stole every thought from his head. It was so severe, he left his body for a full minute before he came crashing back down from the clouds. A man standing on the streets in a red hoodie looked over at Edward while he screamed and fell back to the ground. "You okay, man?"

  With a gasping sob, Edward cried out, remembering. "He took my toes."

  Chapter

  Thirty-Five

  The walk through the office was silent. Jaspierre reached up and clicked the ear of the still broken serval statue. Arnold didn't say anything; he was staring at the small girl standing between them.

  The fireplace swung open, and dark dungeon stairs were smoothly revealed. Jaspierre clicked the light. There was one long window on the left near a huge control center. On the right there were three smaller windows. She looked into the maze, the white panels were still in funny shaped boxes to serve as rooms or houses or whatever for these people. In the rooms on the right, there were still the occupants: Dru, the angry man, and the girl with the wings.

  "Can you see?" Jaspierre looked at the little girl. She reached down and picked her up, holding her in front, sitting on the rail like an exhibit at the zoo. Lucille's eyes grew wide as she took in the scene. The white floors, the white walls, the white boxes. That man with an elephant nose stitched where his human one should've been. She stared at the snake breasts of the lady dragging on the ground around her. She started breathing hard, little hands trembling, scared little four-year-old. Her head started shaking , the curls flipping back and forth across her now tightly shut eyes.

  "These are people. They probably have children, definitely have mothers and fathers who love them. These are regular people that Dru has attached body parts to. Do you understand? That man," Jaspierre tapped the glass," with that long elephant nose; he is a person. He's been tortured. Dru printed up that crazy-ass nose and sewed it to his face. It's not his real nose; he didn't grow it. It's glued on, let's say."

  Lucille said nothing. Her eyes were wide, and she had tears again. Again, with the tears. Had she figured out that Jaspierre wasn't the kind of mother to cow to her little tiny leaking face?

  "The problem is that people who have been tortured and left in your basement to rot are hard to get rid of. You have two choices: you can execute them, kill them, or you can release them and risk that you will go to prison. So which to choose? Should I execute--kill, just to be clear, I mean kill them--or release them? If you say nothing, they die. All of them. Arnold will take them apart like he did the lasagna. Sort them, then we will burn and bury and whatever the hell we have to do. And you will help. I helped burned bodies when I was your age, and it's never too young to learn. You never know when you're going to need to learn how to burn a corpse. And if you are in some sort of terrible rush and don't know how to do it, then that's a failing on my part. You aren't prepared for this world, Lucille. When your grandmother was your age, she had already killed and disposed of the bodies herself. You struggle just with talking. Talking." Jaspierre tapped the glass again frantically with her fingertips. "You are helplessly behind because I was in prison. So you, you are going to make your first grown-up decision, Lucille. Say nothing, they die. Say anything, and I will set them free and take that risk for you."

  Lucille's wide eyes stared back through the window at the man with the elephant nose, the women, the men. She didn't say anything, but her tears finally stopped.

  "I will count to three. And then, you choose. Do you understand me?" Jaspierre said. Her anger had finally faded into that calm, collected feeling, the feeling she got right before she ran a blade through the gut of an angry man. This is what those parenting books suggested, two choices.

  "One."

  Lucille stared into the glass.

  "Two."

  A single tear rolled down her cheek.

  "Three."

  Lucille turned and looked at her mother. She said nothing. She didn't even try.

  Instead of feeling angry at the perpetual silence of her only child, Jaspierre found herself grinning. She made her choice; she could have said no. She could have shook her head, she could have screamed. The child knew how to scream. No, this was her decision. She had made a good one. She didn't want Jaspierre in prison; she wanted to stay here. She wanted to learn how to bury a body, how to cover it with wood, and how to bear the stench of burning flesh.

  "Welcome to the family, Lucille."

  Chapter

  Thirty-Six

  Jaspierre sat quietly in Dru's cell. She sat on the floor, staring up at him. He was still chained to the wall, although Arnold had fed him and watered him recently. He still dangled like a puppet.

  "Tell me about Mother," Jaspierre said. "How did you convince her to marry you?"

  "I was young. She was young," he said slowly. "It would be much easier to tell you these things if you let me off this goddamn wall!" His voice took on a sharp pitch, and he was angry.

  "Why?" Her eyes grew slanted and irritated. "What would be the point? Either I'm going to kill you now, or you are going to tell me the goddamn story. Then I will kill you later."

  She wanted to know. But she didn't want to deal with Dru any longer than necessary, and if he was going to tell her, so be it. She never knew Mother was married. She never knew Mother. But she had Lucille and her job back, and there really wasn't anything left. Besides a story. Just a story.

  Then why did she want it so bad?

  "Just tell me."

  "Why should I tell you when you are going to kill me either way?"

  "I kept Lucas down here for what, ten years? You can have time left if you choose."

  He let out a cackling laugh. "You sure didn't fall far from the tree. Was Lucas your brother? Your uncle? Let me guess. You two fucked."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  His chains rattled as he laughed harder. "She never told you? She never told you! Jasper was your uncle. Don't you know that? You incestuous creation. You sick little bastard." Jaspierre's face grew pale as he continued. "I married Severina when we were very young, and she didn't tell me that she had him
in the basement. Much less that she was fucking him. It kind of pissed me off when I found out. I missed out on all the goddamn fun!" His chains were rattling as he was laughing and shaking and thrashing in them. "I helped her build this empire! Viscardine was mine. I helped her hire the people, the right kind of people." He twisted his tongue in his mouth, biting it. He was gloriously furious. "Everything you have is because of me. You deserved nothing, you incestuous bastard." He tried to spit on her, but she left the room.

  He howled with fury, completely unable to contain his rage. "You owe me! She owes me! You fucking Kyller. You dirty bitches! I should have killed you when I had the chance. Severina sent me to prison, goddamn prison. After everything I did for her!" His screams echoed in the empty room, bouncing back against the white walls.

  Jaspierre opened the door again, and she stood there with a long sword. She stepped forward and the tip of the blade rattled against the ground behind her. She didn't move, staring at him with a hateful glare. "He was not my fucking uncle." And the blade sang through the air as it ripped off Dru's head. She left it rolling on the ground, and she went back up the spiral staircase. He was a fucking liar.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Seven

  Jaspierre stood outside Lucille's room. She wanted to talk to the child, but she found herself hesitant. Finally, she threw open the bedroom door and poked her head inside. Lucille was under a blanket, curled in the ball.

  Fuck. She was crying again. Jaspierre stepped into the room and sat awkwardly on the very edge of the bed "Lucille? I-I wanted to apologize for throwing you in the pool. I don't know what I was thinking."

  The little blond curls lay out from under the blanket and her tiny blue eyes looked up at Jaspierre. The blue eyes looked just like Lucas's.

  "Honey, I don't know how to be a mom. Severina, your grandmother was..." Jaspierre paused. What was Severina? Tough. She was powerful, she was... She was really bad. "Mother didn't show me love. She didn't show me anything. Mostly, she just... was very bad. She hit me, she killed lots of people."