They sure as hell aren’t speaking English. Maybe they’re Greek, or Korean. The other four stools are empty.
Shane and his friends walk over to our table. “I remember you,” he says. “We were looking for you.”
Tom looks up from his beer. “I hope it didn’t take you long to find us, since you’re the one who brought us here.”
“Can you guys score us some pot?” I ask.
Shane and his friends laugh. I should have saved my Fatima joke for them, instead of wasting it on Tom.
“What do you want?” Tom asks none of the three in particular.
“We want your bag, mate.”
Did he say, mate? I thought they only talked like that in movies.
“You’re not getting shit, so fuck off,” Tom replies.
Tom’s on a roll. I’m trying to think of a derogatory word for Australians, but am coming up blank. I can’t keep up with Tom. He’s a pistol.
Shane leans over. His friends are trying to look intimidating, but are mostly looking queer. “Give us the bag, or I turn you in for the airport robbery. Let’s go to your room.”
“Sorry. Not in the mood to watch your friends kiss. They can do that here, anyway. Don’t need to go to my room for that.”
That Tom. He’s on fire. I can tell that it’s my turn, now. I kick our cash bag out from under our table, toward Shane and his friends. They startle, snapping their heads down toward the bag. I freeze time.
Standing up, I pull Tom out of time with me. He gets up and walks behind Shane. I stand in front of Shane and take off my belt, which I wrap around his throat.
“Ready?” I ask. Tom braces himself, then nods.
I pull Shane out of time with us. Tom grapples him from behind, pinning Shane’s arms to his sides. I then pull as hard as I can on the ends of the belt. Strangling a man is hard, and Shane is squirming like a son of a bitch. It takes minutes to kill him. Tom and I are sweating and panting by the time it’s over.
We lie Shane down and then murder his friends similarly. Once done with all three, we rest, finishing our drinks. We grab our bag and straighten our table, leaving a nice tip. Tom heads out front for a few minutes.
“His cab’s parked about a block away,” he says when he returns.
Good idea. I thought we’d have to haul them across town on foot and put them in dumpsters.
I search the corpses’ pockets and take all of their cash and Shane’s keys. Tom brings the taxi, parking right in front of the hotel. We drag the corpses out, one at a time, and throw them in the trunk. After driving about a half mile, we leave the vehicle in a nice dark alley. Flames envelope the car as we walk away, which is convenient if a little dangerous. Tom doesn’t notice, but he never does.
Back at the hotel, we walk up the two flights of creaky, wooden steps to our floor. We don’t say much and just go to bed. We're becoming professionally good at this, I think as I try to fall asleep.
It’s dark and quiet when I wake up to piss. I forgot to restart time before going to bed. Tom’s asleep. I relieve myself, start time, and go back to bed. My footsteps cinder, then ash. When's the Baptist going to let me know where to find him?
* * * *
Our wedding was a high hillbilly affair. Our preacher was kind, and didn’t judge as our two year old son toddled down the aisle in the strip mall church we rented, carrying our rings.
The drinking had started before the ceremony for some members of both of our families, so there were a few high celebrants trying to outshine the bride and groom with periodic, clever outbursts. My bride took it in stride. Resignation is a powerful salve.
My brother was my best man. The vows were quick, the deal struck.
My new wife’s parents took our son home from the reception at my parent’s house. The buffet was spread out on four card tables, and my cousin fell down and passed out under the one closest to the back door. Guests were forced to step over her legs when they went outside to piss.
After getting pretty drunk myself, I went upstairs to my old bedroom to change out of my cracker jacks. I was so proud of myself and my new uniform, fresh out of boot camp. I was on leave and a week from reporting to the submarine. I was excited, full of potential. Having not been there yet, I hadn’t yet failed. It would be different, this time. I would do well.
My new wife came in while I was changing, gloriously drunk herself. We fooled around, giggling that maybe we were making a little sister or brother for our son.
Screaming and wailing interrupted us, so we ran downstairs. The front door was open. Everyone not passed out was in the living room. Time froze, not literally but maybe as a precursor to such.
My wife’s teenage brother had returned to tell about an accident. My wife’s parents were broken but alive. My son, sitting on his grandmother’s lap, had succumbed to glass, plastic, and metal.
I was allowed another two weeks of leave. I only took one. It was a closed casket wake. My new bride didn’t see me to the airport. I haven’t seen her since I left her in her room at her parent’s house. No new baby was made on our wedding night. I send her a check every month.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
It’s late morning when I wake. Tom’s already up and dressed. The Baptist informed me in no uncertain terms where to find him, prompting me with only a small amount of pain. I’m still in the clothes from last night, and leave it at that.
Leaving the hotel, we pass two police officers at the front desk. One of them is talking to a lady sitting at the desk. The other turns to watch Tom and me. As always, our timing is impeccable. We ignore them.
On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, we hail a taxi. “127 Via Catullo,” I tell the driver. He replies in Italian and we drive off. At least he’s not Australian.
The place at 127 Via Catullo turns out to be a two story building with a restaurant on the ground floor and residences on the second floor. The two first-story windows facing the street are each shadowed by a dark green canvas awning. One awning advertises pizza, the other pasticceria. I look up pasticceria in my English to Italian dictionary as Tom pays the driver. It means ‘pastry.' I already know what pizza means.
I’m feeling hungry. Breakfast would be nice. Tom finishes paying the cabby and we head into the restaurant.
The inside is dimly lit by six single-bulb fixtures hanging from the ceiling, each with a circular shade roughly the same color as the awnings outside. There are six tables that seat four each. A large menu’s posted on the back wall, above a waist-high wooden counter that supports a cash register and hides the bottom half of the dago who seems to work here. Only one table is occupied, by patrons eating pizzas and pastries.
The door that will take us to the kitchen is below the menu and behind the dago. Tom and I approach the counter. The dago is a bit smaller than us.
I’m ready to stop time, but Tom’s perusing the large menu on the wall. Maybe we’ll have breakfast, first. The menu is written in Italian on one side and English on the other. Tom’s studying the English side. His lips are moving.
The man behind the counter is smiling casually at us when the Baptist reaches into my mind and scalds nerve endings throughout my body. I hunch over, rapping my forehead against the counter. Dazed, I lurch back up and grab Tom’s arm. “Come on,” I say as I pull him around the counter toward the back door.
The man startles then jumps between us and the door. Yelling, he pulls a large knife from behind the counter and lunges at us.
Tom hops back and jerks his arm from my grip, causing me, still reeling from the Baptist’s attention, to tangle my feet and fall to my back. The dago jumps on me, straddling my waist, and swings the knife toward my throat. I see Tom’s foot contact the man’s face, spraying blood. The dirty wop’s knocked backwards, legs flying up.
The back of the dago’s head cracks against the floor and he drops his knife. Tom lunges and grabs it, then sticks it deep into the man’s chest. It’s an awful, bloody mess. There’s screaming from me and
the other patrons.
Well, maybe not all of the other patrons. It turns out that only the two women are screaming. Their men pounce on Tom and me, lifting us up with hairy Italian arms around our throats and twisting our arms.
Tom’s face is turning red. “Stop time, you fucking idiot.” He gasps. So I do.
It takes some time for us to disentangle ourselves from our frozen attackers, but we finally manage it. Panting and bent over, Tom asks what took me so long. I don’t know. I didn’t have time to think. The situation degraded quickly, and I guess I wasn’t scared enough for time to stop automatically. I’m a pretty brave man. I don’t answer Tom and walk through the door into the kitchen. Tom follows.
The kitchen is about the same size as the dining area. There’s a back door leading outside, and an interior door on the right side wall. I walk to the interior door and try to open it, but it’s locked.
“Maybe that guy you stabbed has a key,” I say.
“Probably, but I don’t want to deal with that mess right now.”
Tom takes his utility knife out of his pocket and joins me at the door. With the screwdriver bit, he starts removing the door’s hinge screws. This is going to take some time, so I rummage around the kitchen for food. I find pastries and pizza, then some milk in the refrigerator. I sit on the floor and have a nice breakfast.
Tom and I finish our chores at about the same time. I’m drinking the last of my milk as Tom pries the door from its jam and rests it against the wall.
The doorway opens to a small room with a stairway at its far end. “Why isn’t it kept under Saint Peter’s or someplace like that?” Tom asks.
“If you had a stolen car, would you park it in your garage?”
“No. I’d park it in your garage, but only when I was over to tap your mom.”
Oh, Tom. I see through your wit. You're afraid. Me too. I don’t believe the Holy See is guarding John the Baptist’s living head with only a medium sized wop. We walk to the end of the room and take the stairs down. Fluorescent lights line the ceiling.
The stairs continue for what seems a quarter mile. Maybe less, but it’s a long way down, regardless. They end at another small room containing only a desk with an armed man sitting behind it. A door is on the far wall. It’s unlocked.
We enter a much larger and grander, but almost as barren, room. Our eyes play across staggered white, green, and blue tile floors, ornately trimmed red walls, and a ceiling painted to show John the Baptist having his head chopped off by someone. Incandescent lamps line all four walls.
There’s a pedestal against the opposite wall, about forty feet away, with a shriveled, desiccated head resting on it. Also, in the middle of the room, two monsters are sitting on the floor playing cards. It looks like one just played a trump card with some zeal, which was caught in mid air when I stopped time. I watch them both for some time, making sure they’re frozen, too. They seem to be.
The monsters look like they’d be about nine feet tall if they were standing. They appear almost human, except for their hooves and the dark fur covering their entire bodies. Their faces are disasters, implying hard living. They also look very strong, although one has a belly extending over the waistline of his skirt. They both wear skirts. An attempt at modesty, I guess. Each is riddled with scars of varying shapes and lengths that their fur can’t conceal.
“God damn.” Tom whispers. I agree. We give the monsters a wide berth as we walk carefully and quietly to the dried up old head. I hate the son of a bitch and can’t wait to send him to hell. He’s been riding me hard for some time, and recompense makes my mouth water. This is going to be fantastic.
He’s in my head, trying to distract me. He’s having second thoughts. Something desired for so long can be a terrible thing when I’m its vessel. Finality can be terrifying.
Tom whispers again, once we’ve reached the pedestal. “God damn.” Repetitive bastard. “Ask him if he really knew Jesus.”
The Baptist is more than happy to reply, stalling. Fucking coward. “He says of course he did. They were cousins. Jesus had no time for him, though. He knew John’s falseness, and mocked him for it during the baptism. He also says his real name isn’t John.”
“What is it, then?”
“He doesn’t remember. He’s insane. Also, he's just decided that he wants to live. I think he's going to try to stop me.”
I take the head in my hands. Enough prattle. The Baptist understands this and sends fire ripping through my skull. I fall down, seizing, and drop the head. The twisted consciousness trapped in that desiccated head starts time again while I’m incapacitated, releasing his grip on me in the process. It was a last gasp effort, and the Baptist’s exhausted. It’s not easy starting another man’s stopped time.
A few beats pass while John’s monster-guards orient themselves to the circumstances around them. As they do so, I vomit and realize that I’m no longer in agonizing pain.
The monsters stand, uttering skull splitting shrieks. The pair separate, stalking us from each flank. They’re roaring continuously, trying to distract us while they determine how dangerous we are. They’re horrible creatures.
"Stop time! Stop time!" Tom screams. I comply and the immediate silence is comforting. The monsters have stopped mid-stride. I stand back up, step over to where the Baptist’s head has rolled, and pick it up. He doesn’t communicate with my brain or try to hurt me. He’s spent, for the moment.
My fingers from both hands push through dried skin and fragile head bone. They find dust underneath. He starts screaming in my head. His nerves have long since withered, so this doesn’t hurt him. He’s just a coward, confirming that the reality of Cranston-assisted suicide is not as desirable as he imagined.
I shred through the skull with my fingers. Brain dust sifts out. I find a small, hard cyst, the shell that’s apparently housing what’s left of him. I let it drop to the floor and crush it with my heel. The screaming, threats, and pleading stop. I wonder what I destroyed. Had his soul fled long ago so that I only silenced an automaton? Or am I damned as never before?
I don’t believe in degrees of damnation. Besides, that bridge has already been crossed. Anyway, Jesus didn’t like him either.
I hate this pile of dust. It’s best to hate something you’ve destroyed. Remorse is too deep a hole to start exploring now. I wipe off my hands on my pants.
Tom and I walk out of the grand room. We skirt around the armed guard. With weapon drawn, he had risen and sprinted to the doorway when time had temporarily restarted. That was a bit of luck because we’d forgotten all about him. We take the stairs back up to the kitchen, and shuffle into the restaurant, still shaking from our ordeal.
The dining area’s a mess. Two tables are overturned. The stabbed man is still lying on the floor. In their few seconds of regained time, our two assailants reoriented themselves from grappling stances to postures of bewilderment.
Outside, two women are frozen in terrified, screaming panic. Passers-by have stopped to gawk. We weave around these people and walk back to the Hotel Ciste Sacro, which is quite a hike.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
The hotel’s front doors are locked and all of the window blinds are drawn, so Tom heaves a trashcan through the glass. We crawl through the broken window into the lobby, which is an odd, static scene.
Two well-armed men, each wearing some kind of black paramilitary uniform, are standing in front of the reception desk. Several employees, two guests, and two police officers are lying prostrate on the floor.
On the second floor, the open doors we pass reveal more armed men and submissive guests. It looks like the hotel’s pretty well locked down. The door to our room is also open, and Commander Doyla waits for us inside. Tom and I stop a little more than arm’s length from her.
“So what do we do now?” I ask.
“Pull her out of time with us, so she can’t call her soldiers. I’ll kill her, if she threatens you. We should go take some guns from her soldiers,
first.”
“What if she has a bomb, like Princess Leia? I don’t think I can freeze time inside of frozen time.”
“Why the fuck not? Nothing about what you can do makes any sense, anyway. Why start making rules now?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think it would work.”
“Fuck it. Start time, then.”
The commander doesn’t flinch at all upon seeing us where no one was standing an eye blink before. She starts talking, of course.
“Okay. Listen. John the Baptist's guards will be here any moment. When they arrive, you need to stop time and pull me out along with the two men standing behind you.”
Behind us. Shit. Tom and I jerk around and see two soldiers against the wall. A large satchel lies on the floor next to the one farthest from the doorway. They look middle-aged and somewhat soft, but still demand the respect you’d show anyone pointing a gun at you.
Commander Doyla looks prepared to offer more advice when a large, black void opens in the air in front of her. The two monster-guards charge out, roaring. This close, they are the foulest, most hideous things I have ever seen. They're going to destroy us. The commander drops to the floor. Tom and I do the same. I hide my head behind my arms, peeking out beneath them. Machine guns discharge. The dark hole in the air closes behind the monsters.
Doyla yells. “Stop time!”
Blessed silence. I’ve pissed myself, again. I roll over to my back and look up at the twisted creatures reaching down for Tom and me. Black claws, which I hadn’t noticed before, curve from their hands. Their faces show no concern for the fresh bullet wounds on their chests.
I pull Tom, Commander Doyla, and her two stooges out of time. The soldiers immediately start unpacking their satchel while the commander walks over to inspect four bullets that have halted in their path to the monsters. I have a passing thought to unfreezing the bullets while she's standing there. I don't because I'd most likely mess up and unfreeze the monsters, instead.
Commander Doyla plucks the bullets from the air and drops them in a trash can. She sees me staring. “It would be stupid to leave them there,” she says. Tom walks over to the bed and sits down.
Tall Tales of Felony and Failure Page 7