The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  Heels were impractical, but he stopped at the shoe store anyway, holding his newly purchased purse by the crook of his fingers and posing with his hips jutted to the side. He enjoyed making comments about the shoes as he looked at them, sucking on his teeth in contempt of their lack of style, or whistling with delight when he saw ones he thought Ronald would like.

  He decided against wearing sandals or flats or any other kind of women’s shoe, because they looked as if they would come off too easily if he needed to run. He’d seen it happen firsthand. Women always tried to run and their shoes went flinging off, making them stumble, making them easy prey.

  Quarter-length hiking boots, he’d learned after much trial and error, were the best. Rugged enough to withstand the elements, with thick-enough soles in the event he needed to kick in a door or a car window but comfortable enough to run in.

  Boots were one of the few constants he allowed himself when choosing a new persona from the list. Sometimes his only improvement on the old formulas.

  Once he’d reached the top and there was no one left but him, his ways and methods a testament for all time to be studied by everyone who came after, they would know two things. His true name, and what boots to wear.

  * * *

  The speakers inside Club Transmission ran along the wall behind the deejay’s booth, stacked all the way to the ceiling. The deejay danced while he spun the records. He wore nothing but a sequined thong and angel’s wings, sparkling in the rotating lights above him as if he’d been showered in glitter. The man stood at the bar, looking down over the crowded dance floor. Wigs and shaved heads, long hair that whipped back and forth. Neon fingernails flashed in the lights reflected from the metal rings and bolts of leather bondage gear.

  They were like creatures of the abyss, Ronald thought. Squirming in one entangled, gelatinous mass, the intestines of a god who’s laid down in this place and ripped himself open to release a horde of brightly colored demons.

  He turned to the bar with his drink, a concoction of sweet liquors and twirling plastic sticks, barely touching it to his lips. He needed to be careful with how much he drank. It would do no good to have his senses dulled. He did not need to relax, and he did not need courage. It was merely a prop, an affectation to blend in. He swayed to the music, searching the faces of the men standing around him.

  He noticed that the other queens, the ones wearing heavy makeup, despised him the same way they despised one another. They seemed catty, making overly grand gestures and talking loudly, making sure everyone around them heard their oh-so-witty remarks and gritty cynicism. He did not like them. Ronald did not like them. He swept the long blond hair of his wig aside and kept looking.

  “You’re new here,” the muscular bartender said, taking his time wiping the counter in front of Ronald with his white cloth.

  Ronald arched his eyebrow at him and drawled, “Why yes, yes I am.”

  “Where is that accent from? Somewhere down South?”

  Ronald smiled. “Houma, Lousiana. You got an ear for accents, I reckon.”

  “Welcome to Shithole, Pennsylvania. I’m Zack.” The bartender extended his hand.

  Ronald admired the thick veins in his arms and the separation of the muscles along his forearm as he reached forward and said, “You can call me Dominique.”

  Zack continued to make small talk. Ronald said, “Oh?” as often as he could without seeming impolite, but in reality he was not interested in Zack. The bartender was far too physically strong for what Ronald had in mind. He waited for Zack to get called away by other customers and turned in his seat to continue searching, looking over the preppy-looking college types and mustached leatherboys and the heavyset, rough-looking bikers. He ignored all of them when they caught him looking. They were not what he wanted.

  He waded through the crowd, ignoring unknown hands that slid against his groin and cupped his buttocks, until he saw exactly what he wanted sitting alone at a table at the other side of the room.

  A middle-aged man with hair thin enough that his scalp showed under the lights. His glasses reflected blue and green as he turned to look at Ronald. The plain tan fabric of his jacket absorbed the flashing lights and laser pointers swirling all around them, like a plain projector screen showing a movie, every empty space filled with movement and color. Everything about the man was awkward and out of place. He wore jogging pants with a bright white stripe down the sides and old sneakers. He looked like the janitor in high school that spied on the girls’ locker room, trying to tap his hand in time to the music but failing, able to summon the courage to come to a place like this but not enough to commit to it. Ronald smiled as he made eye contact with the man. Lonely. Desperate. Filled with self-loathing.

  Perfect.

  “Hello,” Ronald said as he sat down, positioning his hands on his drink and pursing his pink lips to take a true, real sip.

  The man swallowed hard, staring down into his pint of beer.

  “Can’t you say hello to me?” Ronald asked.

  The man still had not looked up. “Hi. How are you.”

  “I’m fine,” Ronald purred. “You don’t see that very often in a place like this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A real man like you, drinking a real drink like a beer.” Ronald smirked. “All I see is a bunch of fake bitches with foo-foo drinks, how about you?”

  “Actually, I don’t come to places like this that often. Ever, really.”

  Ronald looked down at the worn wedding ring on the man’s finger, and he leaned close to say, “Places like this are among the very few in the world where you can be whoever you are in the small, tiny space of this one particular moment.” He raised his glass and took another drink, feeling the slow, warming rush down his throat as it settled him deep within. “I once heard that each of us has three selves. There’s our public self that we show to the world. Our private self that we show only to the people close to us. And our secret self.” He turned and looked at the man seated next to him. “Do you know what I’m talking about, by any chance?”

  The man took another slight sip of his beer, barely touching it with his lips.

  Ronald moved to offer his hand, and brushed the beer glass as he turned. It was warm to the touch. Whoever he was, he’d been nursing the beer longer than Ronald had been holding his own drink. He turned his hand over as he offered it, holding his fingers straight, and said, “I’m Dominique.”

  The man took Ronald’s hand as if he were unsure of what to do. He grasped it as if he meant to shake it, but then lowered his mouth to the back of Ronald’s knuckles and kissed them. “Jim,” he said.

  Ronald leaned back on his stool and dropped his hand over Jim’s thigh, pulling it beside his own leg. He squeezed it through the thin nylon material and worked upward until he brushed the soft nuggets between Jim’s legs with the tips of his fingers. Jim inhaled as Ronald found the length of his penis and stroked it through his pants.

  “Do you want to take a little walk with me?” Ronald whispered in his ear.

  Jim shivered and said, “Yes. Very much so.”

  Ronald picked up his glass and swallowed the rest down. Jim left his almost-full beer on the bar and threw down several bills, turning on his stool to leave. His erect penis stood out beneath the nylon fabric, but it did not matter. He grabbed Ronald’s hand and pulled him from the stool, leading him through the crowd. The thing in his pants had taken over, and now that little general was leading them both into battle. Ronald threw back his head and laughed as he ran after Jim, raising his free hand high into the air and waving it in time to the jungle rhythm and emergency siren wailing along with it.

  Outside, they raced through the parking lot. Jim was like a child, eager to get away from the club. Ronald had to run with one hand holding on to him and the other clamped down on his right pocket. The knife’s clip slid back and forth against his palm, holding down the coil of steel wire and folded bandana packed beneath it. He kept a backup knife on the inside of
his right boot, but there was no way to check if that was still there.

  It was cheap anyway, as were all his knives—five-dollar Chinese blades that were perfectly suitable but easily broken apart and tossed down sewer drains and into trash bins. Anyway, he doubted he would need it. Everything was going according to Ronald’s plan, as he knew it would. As it always did. That was the benefit of using the methods and templates of the old masters. All one had to do was commit.

  “There’s my van,” Jim said, pulling him toward the large Ford parked at the very rear of the lot. It was backed into a spot, with nothing but dark woods behind it.

  Ronald turned and saw his own vehicle—a white construction van—parked nearby, but he decided he did not need it. There would be nothing to clean up this way. No worry about getting stopped on the way home by some cop asking about the suspicious stains on his seats. All he needed was a large-enough work space and the time and privacy required. If anything, Jim’s van was parked even farther back than his own, and so long as it wasn’t filled with tools and crates, it would work just as well. He already had all that he needed in his pocket.

  “Is there enough room in the back?” Ronald huffed. “I have something special for you.”

  “Plenty,” Jim said, laughing as they both fell against the back doors. He draped his arm across the spare tire casing and tried to catch his breath. “So,” he said, eyes fixing on Ronald. “What do we do now?”

  Ronald pulled open the van’s back doors and looked in, checking to make sure they’d have enough room. It was perfect. Nothing but a few tools, a thin layer of shag carpet, and a black curtain drawn across the width of the cabin, behind the two front seats. Total privacy. The wrench and pliers in the van would even come in handy. “Now,” Ronald said, “you’re mine.”

  Jim growled softly as Ronald pulled him close, and their lips crushed together. Ronald felt Jim’s stubble scrape his face and the soft, wet intrusion of his tongue, and he pushed Jim back so that he was sitting on the floor of the van. His erection was sticking out beneath his loose pants, and Ronald grabbed it with his left hand, jerking it up and down.

  “Suck it,” Jim hissed. “I want to feel your mouth.”

  Ronald lowered himself to his knees on the parking lot pavement, feeling the cool metal of the van’s bumper against his chest as he leaned forward. He tugged down the front of Jim’s waistband and unveiled his rigid, purple penis. He took its thickness in his hand.

  “Suck it,” Jim demanded.

  The man calling himself Ronald knew that he must. That was part of the scenario. That was what Ronald did, he knew it, and there was no turning back now. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, feeling Jim’s warm penis entering past his lips. It was like sucking on a large thumb. A small trickle of salty fluid spilled out across his tongue as he squeezed his lips.

  “That’s good,” Jim moaned, grabbing a handful of Ronald’s wig and squeezing. “Deeper.”

  Ronald reached up with his left hand to stretch out the dangling sack between Jim’s legs. This would be the first to go. One swift slice and it would fall free into his fingers.

  With his right hand, he reached for his pocket, moving back his purple shirt and working his fingers around the hilt of his knife.

  It was time.

  Jim’s grip around his hair tightened, and he snarled, “I said suck it deeper, faggot.”

  Ronald looked up in time to see the wrench in Jim’s hand whistling through the air toward the side of his head. He felt the impact of metal against his skull, knocking him backward against the pavement. The last thing he saw was Jim standing over him, still holding the wrench, exposed penis glistening in the moonlight.

  * * *

  He became aware of the voice speaking to him inside the van and the bright, pulsing pain on the side of his face. He could see only from one eye as he looked up, spotting his wrists bound together with rope, which was lassoed around the front seat of the van. He was bent forward, and he realized, to his horror, that his pants were pulled down to his ankles. Something was stuffed in his mouth. It tasted and smelled like an old sock.

  Jim’s hand patted him on the small of the back. “Now, what were you planning on doing with these, faggot?”

  Ronald turned his head enough to see Jim flick his knife open with an expert twirl of the wrist. The steel coil and bandana were scattered on the floor behind them, too far out of reach for his bound hands. “You planned on using these on me?” Jim sneered. “You wanted to tie me up and rob me, huh?”

  “No!” Ronald spat through the cloth in his mouth.

  Jim lunged with the knife, stopping the tip of the blade just inches from Ronald’s face. “You know what lying little faggots get, don’t you? Coming around to where decent folks live, making them do all sorts of disgusting things. You couldn’t wait to get on your knees for me, could you?”

  Ronald felt Jim’s rough hands peel apart his buttocks and spread him wide. A warm trickle of saliva spilled down across his exposed anus, and Ronald’s eyes widened. “I’m going to give you what all faggots get.”

  Ronald grunted at the first intrusion bored through his body, being burned and stretched and split deep within until he could not help but scream. Tears of shock and outrage spilled down the sides of his face as he struggled against the rope holding him, but it was no use. Jim slammed into him again and again, like an animal, shouting, “Take it, you fucking homo! Take it!”

  They were sliding back and forth on the carpet under the force of Jim’s thrusts, until the black curtain was only a few feet away. His wrists burned and dripped blood, but there was no way for him to snap the rope binding them or to lift the lasso free from around the driver’s seat.

  The pounding grew faster and more frenzied, and Ronald’s head dropped against the carpet. Using all of his might to pull himself forward, he managed to create enough slack in the rope to get his hands down between his knees. He grabbed at where his pants were pooled at his ankles. It still wasn’t enough.

  He strained with all his might to pull himself forward, feeling the rope cutting through the flesh of his wrists, and Jim said, “Get back here!”

  The hands on his waist gripped tight as Jim slammed against him, tearing him open. His eyes rolled back into his head and he tried to focus. Everything was becoming blurry. Darkness swirled around the edges of his vision, threatening to swallow him whole. “No!” he shouted through the gag. He wiggled his hands down far enough to reach the top of his boot, feeling the warm metal clip of the knife hidden there.

  “I’m cumming,” Jim gasped, bucking against him a final time before slithering out. “Oh my God. You filthy . . . trash,” Jim huffed, slumping back against the door of his van and wiping his face. “Look what you made me do.” As he panted and tried to catch his breath, he looked up in time to see Ronald spin around with a ferocious snarl and the knife coming directly at him.

  * * *

  The man emerged from the van two hours later, when it became pointless to continue. The mass of flesh and organs scattered all around him was no longer even quivering. He popped the back door open and slid out into the parking lot, stopping to make sure no one was watching. Music still pumped through the walls of the club, echoing toward the woods. He was covered with blood and pieces of flesh and hair, but it was still dark, and no one noticed as he hurried across the lot to his own van. He got in and started it, spinning around the lot to back up into the spot beside Jim’s. Blood spilled out of the van’s open back doors, onto the pavement.

  There was no hiding the body, or the vehicle, at that point. Still, precautions must be taken. He looked at his face in the rearview mirror and winced at the massive lump over his ear where he’d been struck with the wrench.

  He opened the back doors of his van and looked over the crates and toolboxes stacked along the side. He slid on a pair or rubber gloves and grabbed one of the two-gallon pump sprayers strapped there, filled with two parts bleach and one part water, then walked around the back o
f Jim’s van, spraying every surface that he’d come in contact with. He sprayed the exterior and interior of the van, even the ceiling, until it was dripping with bleach and blood.

  The next item he needed was a small glass jar located on the bottom shelf in his stack. It had small holes poked in the lid, and he rattled it, stirring the dozens of black flies within. He checked Jim’s van to make sure all of the windows were up as he walked around the back and closed the first rear door. He set the jar on the sopping wet rug and quickly unscrewed the lid, then closed the second rear door as the small cloud of flies rose into the air. He could hear them buzzing around inside as he stripped out of his soaking wet clothes and stuffed them into a large trash bag. Inside his shelves he found a complete change of clothes and packages of baby wipes, which he ran all over his body to clean himself as much as he could.

  He threw the towels and gloves into the trash bag and tied it, then slid into the front seat of his van. He grabbed the baseball cap sitting on his passenger seat and pulled it on as low as he could stand, wincing at the pain spreading across his face, as he drove out of the parking lot and entered the dark freeway. He rolled down the windows and let the cool air wash over him. Desiccated raccoons and deer and rancid-smelling skunks littered the highway on either side, filling the night with the scent of copper and carrion. He inhaled deeply.

  6

  CARRIE’S SUNDAY RITUAL WAS TO BUY A NEWSPAPER AND PARK SOMEWHERE remote flipping through it, looking at all the coupons of things she wanted to buy but couldn’t afford yet. It would not be long, though. She was coming into her fourth year on the job and would soon be at top pay. She’d eked out a living on the pittance they paid rookies, then made do with the only slightly less pitiful salary they paid second-year officers, and started being able to pay her bills each month on time with her third-year salary. But the fourth year was when it all became worth it. Top salary, and an extra week’s vacation, just for sticking with it long enough.