Domino wiggled a second finger.
“The moment that pretentious cunt said what she did on national television, I knew what I had to do. I needed to prove it to myself. No one else. Me. I needed to prove that Monica Kemp wasn’t just my peer, but that I was better. Much, much better. Because I am. Hell, when you think about it, I was the actual catalyst to her death. If it wasn’t for my setting that funhouse of hers in the Pine Barrens on fire, she never would have left and gotten herself killed by Amy.”
She traced the blade down his cheek and stopped at his throat.
“A home invasion gone awry. Two Russian men seeking vengeance against Domino Taylor for the murder of their—what the hell was he to them again? Cousin? Friend?” She shrugged uncaringly. “Anyway, Mr. Taylor, Marine and trained security specialist, thwarted their attempts, however, killing both men in a heroic act of self-defense.” She smiled and took the blade off his throat so she could give tiny little claps and applause. “Yaaay.”
Three fingers. He felt blood returning to his forearm.
Kelly placed the blade back on Domino’s neck. “Unfortunately, Mr. Taylor suffered substantial injuries during the assault—”
Twenty percent strength is all I need! Fifteen! I’ll take fifteen!!!
“—and ultimately succumbed to those injuries.”
She began a slow, deliberate cut into Domino’s neck.
MOVE, GODDAMMIT! MOVE!!!!!
Domino’s right arm sprang to life and flew toward Kelly, his hand going straight for her throat.
Kelly flinched, fell back onto her butt and quickly scooted away.
Domino continued to flail wildly with his right arm like a man groping in the dark.
Kelly hopped to her feet. Momentarily startled, she was now smiling as she regained her composure and breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Serves me right for going on and on,” she said. “I’m going to kill you, Mr. Bond,” she began in playful, sinister tones, “but first let me take considerable time in telling you the intricate details of my master plan so that you may thwart them later.” She laughed hard. “I almost became a cliché casualty!”
Kelly positioned herself just out of Domino’s reach, bent over him, and continued slitting his throat, careful to avoid the arterial spray.
Finished, she took a selfie with Domino’s cell phone—her grinning; him dying—and then pocketed it.
***
Domino’s final image of Kelly Blaine was a slanted view of her strolling down the hallway toward his front door, carrying the pillow she’d used to muffle the gun, and speaking over her shoulder as she left him to die:
“In other news, Amy Lambert, survivor of the infamous Crescent Lake Massacre, was found dead…”
***
Amy’s cell rang. The screen displayed Domino’s landline number.
She’d kind of expected this. Expected it nearly every Sunday, actually. She knew about Domino’s Sunday ritual of drinking and mourning Patrick. Knew that he often phoned her after strapping on a healthy buzz, wanting to talk, if only for a minute or two, and often about nothing at all. Amy had her support group sessions; Domino had this.
“Hey, big guy,” Amy answered. “How’s that Belvedere treating you?”
No reply.
“Domino? You there?”
No reply.
“Did you drunk dial me, mister?” she said with a smile. “Hellooo?”
Still nothing.
She hung up, tempted to phone him back. Except this was not the first time he’d called her and hung up without saying hello. It had happened a few times before, in fact. He’d later confessed that he’d been too drunk to talk, but needed to hear her voice. Needed to hear that she was safe so he could relay the message to Patrick at the time. Amy never once questioned it. Just smiled and took his hand and said, “You can hang up on me anytime,” to which Domino let loose his trademark laugh that shook the house.
Amy smiled at the memory and decided not to call him back.
***
Domino flopping, bleeding profusely, feeling as though his body belonged to someone else, found his cordless phone. He tried and failed three times at first, fingers too slick with blood, hands too weak and uncooperative with whatever drug Kelly had given him.
Please, he begged his body.
On the fourth try, he got Amy.
“Hey, big guy. How’s that Belvedere treating you?”
Domino opened his mouth to speak. Only blood escaped. He could not even manage a moan this time.
“Domino? You there?”
He tried to speak again and had even less success than before. His vision was a narrowing tunnel.
“Did you drunk dial me, mister?”
Domino started crying. No sound, just steady streams of tears down his cheeks.
“Hellooo?”
Patrick…I’m sorry…
Amy hung up.
Chapter 11
Kathy Brown, aka Kat, aka Aunt Kat, was waiting outside on the front steps of her cozy suburban home when her brother, Allan, pulled up. Her smile was bright and true, and when she stood she performed tiny jumps in place with little claps of her hands. Whether it was strictly a show for the girls in the back seat or genuine excitement at their arrival, Allan couldn’t have loved his sister any more because the girls started laughing and giggling at once, easing any misgivings he’d had about dropping them off for the night after their asking to stay home earlier that day.
The second Allan rolled the SUV to a stop out front, Jamie and Janine darted from the car and raced toward an open-armed Aunt Kat. Any other woman might have toppled from the impact of the twins’ charging embrace, but Kathy Brown was no stranger to fitness. Long brown hair eternally in a ponytail (Allan could not, for the life of him, recall the last time he’d seen her with it down) and always donning some sort of attire that would do in a pinch if a workout fix beckoned (tonight’s was black sweats and a black tee that showed off her sinewy arms), Kathy clearly had made exercise her stress-buster of choice. And although Allan was grateful it was something healthy, unlike his preferred method of scotch and saturated fats, such a thing could be overdone. And judging by the increasing vascularity and weight loss he noticed every subsequent time he saw his sister, his concerns were not without merit. Not so much for the fact that she may injure herself, but for the underlining cause of such excessiveness.
Never one to discuss her problems (depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and an ugly divorce from a douchebag of the highest order), Kathy was always the type to smile, pat your arm a little too hard, and insist “I’m fine, I’m fine” whenever you tried to get too deep. She was a world-class shrink when it came to talking about Allan, but when it came to herself, not a chance. It simply wasn’t her way. The gym was her way. And Allan had noticed once again, as he had each successive time prior, that she looked even thinner than before, more veiny than before. Ironically, unhealthy. He would file this away for another time. Although he supposed he might as well file it in the trash for all the success he would likely end up having in getting anywhere with her when the time came.
Aunt Kat held and squeezed her “Kittens,” firing off a million things at once: Tell me about school. How was your sleepover? You’re getting taller every day. Any boyfriends yet? And so on.
Allan, whose chauffeur duties apparently now extended to those of bellhop, reached into the back seat and pulled out both girls’ overnight bags, slinging them over one shoulder with a grunt.
“Yeah, no worries, girls; I’ve got everything,” he called to them.
The twins spun and ran to their father to retrieve their things. Kathy laughed her raspy laugh.
“Go on inside, there’s a surprise waiting for you,” Kathy said to her nieces when they returned with their overnight bags.
“What is it?” Janine asked.
“Go in and see,” Kathy replied.
The girls started to bolt for the front door.
“WAIT!” Allan
called. Christ, how many times had he said that to them today? He marveled at the resiliency of children. Every emotion he’d experienced today still clung to him like something sticky he couldn’t quite wash off. The girls had had their share of emotion too—the talk of their mother and cancer in the car; the wanting to attend tonight; watching their father lose it when getting a ticket—but right now their whole world resided in the mystery surprise from Aunt Kat lying in wait behind her front door. Nothing else existed. Allan wanted to bottle this resiliency for use with his girls at a later date. For when that moment he was ruminating over earlier, about discussing the death of their mother, finally hit. The one that would make “The Talk” seem like a cakewalk.
And for himself.
Allan would love to bottle the stuff for himself. Hell, he’d walk around with it in a paper bag, taking pulls from it every ten minutes like some kind of drunk.
The girls, hearing their father’s cry, turned and froze a few feet from their aunt Kat’s front door.
“There is no way you are going inside that house without saying goodbye to your father,” he said to them.
Kathy smiled at the scene.
The girls immediately spun and ran back toward their father, hugging him simultaneously. Allan’s throat tightened. His heart swelled.
“I love my Deejays,” he said.
“We love you too,” they returned somewhat robotically, though Allan took zero offense. Nothing else existed except for the mystery surprise waiting for them behind Aunt Kat’s door, he reminded himself. And he would sacrifice a thousand love you too’s to give them this moment time and time again. A moment free of everything and anything but the here and now.
He then wondered about himself. What would it take for him to be momentarily free of everything and anything? To bask in the here and now? A hell of a lot more than a little surprise from his sister; that was for damn sure.
“Gimme a kiss,” he said, bending and kissing his girls one at a time. He then patted them on their butts and said: “Okay, go.”
They dashed for their aunt Kat’s front door once again, not to be denied by their father’s increasingly habitual wait! this time.
Kathy turned to Allan after watching the girls disappear through her front door and said: “So how’s things, ding-a-ling?”
Allan smiled. “Like I said on the phone, one day at a time. What’s the surprise you got them?”
Kathy waved a hand at her brother. “Just junk. Candy, toys. So, what’s happening tonight?”
Allan shrugged. “The usual. Grief-stricken people sharing grief. Catharsis has a weird sense of humor.”
He expected a chuckle from his sister, but got a concerned face in return. “You look tired,” she said.
“I am tired. I just had half the girls from my daughters’ elementary school stay the night at my house.”
Still no chuckle, but she did smile. “What kind of turnout are you expecting tonight?” she asked.
He shrugged again. “It fluctuates. Some people go once and can’t handle it, never show up again. Others show and get hooked, become regulars.”
He paused there for a moment, thought about telling his sister the conversation he’d had with the girls earlier that day, but decided against it. The devil in him was all too keen to let the filterless mouths of his daughters bombard his sister with such queries about the content of the evening’s meeting and why they weren’t allowed to attend, see whether she could exercise her way out of that one. But of course he knew she’d be just fine. It was about someone else, after all, not her.
“Aaannnd…?” Kathy crooned, waiting on her brother like the dog-eared paperback he was to her.
“And nothing,” he said, wanting to punch her in the gut like they were kids again for her knowing him so well, although truth be told, she had delivered most of the gut-punching growing up.
“Well, it’s good that you’re a regular,” she said. “It must help.”
“It doesn’t hurt. Commiserating doesn’t have to be a one-way street, you know,” he said, bracing himself after such a passive-aggressive dig, memories of childhood gut-punches being mere moments ago and all.
“There’s that humor again, little brother,” she said, patting his face gently, each pat becoming increasingly harder until she whacked him a good, albeit harmless, one. “Remember to never lose it.”
Allan laughed and rubbed his cheek. “Make sure they do their homework. You sure you don’t mind taking them tomorrow?”
“Would you shut up?”
He smiled and started for his car. “Take care of my girls.”
“My Kittens are always safe with me,” she said. Then: “I hope tonight goes well. I hope you get some new faces.”
“We’ll see.”
Chapter 12
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Kensington Avenue
Only Jennifer paced the room of the apartment. Tim and Michael were far too sick, lying back to back in fetal balls on the room’s solitary mattress, sweating, shivering, moaning. No less sick, Jennifer’s violent tendencies did not allow her to just lie and moan, waiting for their fix to arrive. She was more apt to stomp around the decrepit apartment, kicking and smashing what few items they had. Or what few items the true residents had. No one knew who the house truly belonged to. They’d managed to squat here for over a week now, undisturbed. The small girl with the long dark hair had found it for them. Told them to hole up there and wait for her arrival each day as opposed to going on the street for it.
Except now she was late. She was late, and Jennifer, periodically pulling long swaths of black hair from the self-inflicted thinning patch on the side of her head, was not pleased.
“Fuck this. Fuck this, man. She said three. Didn’t she say three? She said three, right?”
“What time is it?” Tim said in a weak voice from the mattress.
“I don’t know. Do you know? I don’t fucking know. It’s gotta be close to three though, right?” She kicked the mattress. Both men moaned in protest. “Right?”
Michael rolled his head over the side of the mattress and vomited. Rolled back and assumed the same fetal position as though he’d done nothing. Neither Jennifer nor Tim seemed to care.
“If she wants us to do this thing for her tonight, no fucking way am I doing it sick,” Jennifer said. “No fucking way. She can’t expect us to do it sick. She can’t. She wants us to be right for this? She wants us to be right? We can’t be sick. She can’t expect us to be sick. No way. No fucking way.” She pulled more hair from the side of her head and then absently flicked her fingers back and forth, the long strands falling to the floor.
An agonizing moment passed. Shivering, sweating, vomiting.
Jennifer picked up one of their only two chairs and threw it across the room. “She’s got five minutes,” she said. “Five minutes or I’m going on the street for it.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Michael said. He had vomit on his cheek. “Any shit you get out there will pale to what she’s been bringing us.”
Jennifer approached the mattress. “I’m saying for now. Just for now. Until she arrives. We get something just for now to hold us over. Just for now.”
Neither guy responded. Jennifer kicked the mattress again. Both men moaned in protest again.
“Look at you two, laying there like a couple of pussies. Big tough guys when you’re all fixed up, aren’t you? Look at you now.” She kicked the mattress. “Look at you now.” Kick. “Look at you now.” Kick.
“Fucking stop!” Tim yelled.
There was a knock at the door. Tim and Michael sat up.
Jennifer rushed for the door and opened it.
Kelly Blaine walked in. She was not alone.
“Who’s this?” Jennifer demanded, gesturing to the disheveled man standing beside Kelly. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, eaten in weeks, bathed in months.
Kelly said nothing, just stepped deeper into the apartment with the disheveled man at her hee
ls like a puppy.
“Boys,” Kelly said, gesturing to Tim and Michael on the mattress. “You’re looking well.”
“Fuck you, man,” Tim said. “We’ve been waiting forever.”
Kelly’s eyebrows bounced. “Fuck me? Maybe I should come back when you’re feeling more polite.”
“No!” Michael rolled off the mattress and found his feet. He stood hunched over, clutching his stomach, his dark hair soaked with sweat, complexion a ghostly white. He spun toward Tim. “Tim, shut the fuck up!” Spun back to Kelly. “He didn’t mean it. Seriously, we just need a little something, is all. He didn’t mean it, right, Tim?”
Tim was on his feet now, his sickly posture and appearance identical to that of Michael’s minus the dark hair. Tim’s hair was blond and thinning, the abundance of sweat accentuating the diffuse loss throughout his scalp. He began nodding vehemently, forcing a smile that appeared like a grimace.
“Yeah, totally,” Tim said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Kelly pulled a cigarette from her long black overcoat and lit it with a black Zippo. She kept the tiny lid of the lighter open for a moment and exhaled a long, thin stream of smoke into the Zippo’s trademark windproof flame, watching it flicker and shrink before it stood tall again. She finally glanced back at the two men before her. “You guys really don’t look so hot,” she said. “I’m beginning to have doubts about tonight.”
“We’ll be fine,” Michael said. “Hook us up and we’ll be fine.”
“Guaranteed,” Tim added.
Jennifer stepped in front of Tim and Michael and faced Kelly. “You’ve seen us when we’re fixed up. We’re good as gold, and you know it. You just gotta keep us fixed up is all. Just keep us fixed up.”
Bad Games: Malevolent Page 6