Monster: The Story Of A Maniac

by Peter Cry

  Suddenly, a honk of a huge truck interrupted his meditation about food. It seemed to be not far away. The engine thundered, and, fighting with gravity, it moved away squeaking when shifting gears. Jason rushed as best he could to where the sound came from. Some 50 yards away from him, he saw a road. It was a high-grade, two-lane, tarmac track with a marking.

  The signs of civilization delighted Jason, hoping to find a roadside cafe or a gas station. All his money had burned in the glove box, but, desperate and hungry, he was ready even to steal.

  Once on the road, Jason tried to walk as straight as possible, without limping, not to attract the unnecessary attention of passing cars, which, fortunately, were few on that winding road in the woods.

  Eventually, the fugitive noticed a gas station on the opposite side of the road next to which was a small roadside cafe. The establishment was well-maintained and looked like a wooden log house with a small summer terrace where people could sit. The gas station and the cafe itself were empty, at least so it seemed from afar. Jason, hiding among the tree trunks, discreetly approached the cafe.

  Crossing the road, looking around, he carefully looked through the window. There were only a couple of people inside. Elderly men sat at the bar and vividly explained something to the bartender, who was obviously the owner of the establishment. An intoxicating smell came from the cafe, containing everything that was cooked that day. It smelled like ham, sauce, and fried potatoes. Jason struggled to remain conscious, his legs buckling slightly from the divine scent. Holding on, he leaned against a wooden wall.

  "No. I won’t win a fight against the three of them,” he thought.

  It would be better not to be spotted now, not in his condition. Hearing from around the corner that the back door of the cafe opened, he lit up like a light bulb. After waiting for the door to close again, he went to the back entrance. Behind the building, he was pleased to see a gray-steel-colored dumpster with his eyes. Without hesitating, Jason opened it and began to snoop through the waste.

  Hallelujah! He managed to find several pieces of bread and pizza leftovers among mountains of repetitive garbage and boxes of food scraps! Eagerly eating the scraps, the fugitive forgot about the pain and all the problems that haunted him. It seemed that he was eating the most delicious food that human hands could ever create, among the pink-and-white marble walls, under the arches with elegant ruby chandeliers made of snow-white five-star Chinese porcelain. Choking, trying to shove as much as possible down his throat, he swallowed the crusts of the pizza and the half-eaten toasts from the morning practically without chewing.

  “Hey, you, get the fuck out of there!” the gray-haired but strong owner of the roadside cafe suddenly yelled, jumping out of the door. “Fucking crackhead…” Kicking the vile stranger, he pointed his shotgun at him.

  Jason fell on his back and then began to crawl backward gazing at the barrel of the hunting weapon.

  “I was just trying to eat,” he croaked softly.

  “We have nothing for your kind here. Get the fuck out!”

  “I am leaving, please, don’t shoot. I beg you…”

  Rising from the ground, holding his aching broken ribs, the fugitive ran away, limping.

  Jason was scared, he realized that he should remain in the shadows, become as discreet as possible. He needed to get to a big city, where nobody would care about the wretched ragged man. There would be everything he needed to patch himself up and then decide what to do next. It would be necessary to continue along the road but remain in the shadows, behind the trees, so that the police would not see and detain him.

  Mile by mile, a winding asphalt serpentine would bring Jason to his goal.

  Chapter 6

  Wearing a warm knitted hat and comfortably wrapped in a shearling leather coat, Helen Escamilla put on her ugg boots. Armed with a huge shovel, she went outside under the incessant snowfall. Probably only a madman would come up with the idea of removing snow before it stopped falling. But the residents of the northern states are well aware: if you don’t remove the snow when it’s falling, then as soon as everything becomes white, you won’t get rid of it with a shovel. You’ll have to call emergency services just to open your front door.

  The winter had come after an awfully long autumn and had brought a lot of snow. After the New Year, at least twice a week, huge fluffy snowflakes fell from the sky, entombing everything around – streets, trees, houses, cars and sometimes the people who ventured to walk.

  The front yard of Helen's house, covered with a snow-white blanket, looked like a Christmas card. Low juniper bushes, instead of a fence, sprinkled with snow, a perfectly flat milky white lawn and a couple of apple trees, whose branches, covered with a fluffy layer of snow, looked like a work of art. There was a huge living room window between the tree trunks where, despite the time that had elapsed, the garland still twinkled on the Christmas tree.

  37-year-old Helen lived alone. Coming home after work, she did not need to look after her family, wash the children, cook, and help to do homework. Nonetheless, her ticking biological clock was at work. Although Helen didn’t think she needed to rush, hormones and something else subconscious, regularly generated a desire to take care of someone, or something. Her Labrador Nitro was the main beneficiary. Despite his cool name, he was a good, docile dog. The one-story white house in the east of Hampton in which Helen lived always looked neat, and her faithful dog glistened and smelled like peach shampoo, as if he was about to participate in a competition.

  A short brunette, Helen was not a beauty, but there was something cute in her appearance, something attractive, compelling others to show an interest. Apparently, her mother’s Latin American roots showed themselves. She took rounded feminine shapes and delicate facial features from that southern blood.

  She was not a lonely woman. Helen regularly surrounded herself with friends, work colleagues, and relatives who came to stay at her place. Occasionally, men appeared in her life with whom she was close, sometimes even too close, burning them with her misunderstanding and sometimes even burning herself. Not being irresponsible, she used to have serious relationships with men, which sometimes lasted for years. She got almost everything she wanted from life, sometimes not understanding why people got married, created families, had children, and then secretly complained to their close friends that they were missing the former freedom and opportunities. Helen was single not because she was bad or selfish – she simply didn’t want to make the same mistakes with a smile on her face, then later curse herself for those decisions. Sooner or later, any affection always becomes tiring or, even worse, it turns into pain, sometimes wild and unbearable.

  The off-duty cop shoveled the snow to the sides of the driveway. She wondered why such a beautiful sight did not happen at Christmas when it was so needed. It always happened before or after, but never exactly on the most important day of the year, December 24th.

  Through the wall of white falling snow, Helen saw the headlights of an approaching car. She straightened up, squinted, and looked again. An unfamiliar black pickup was slowly wading through her city. Passing by her house, the vehicle turned and headed to the center of Hampton. In the line of her duty, Helen knew almost all the vehicles of the town’s residents. As a guardian of law and order, she was always curious about strangers.

  Observing the pickup, she did not see a stranger in it. Inside that fresh, brand new black Toyota Tacoma sat the man with whom Helen had already communicated. It was Howard, a cousin-uncle of the slob drunkard who had forgotten his credit card in the store and then tried to escape from the police patrol.

  Watching the vehicle, Helen froze, peering after the red headlights disappearing into the snow.

  “How could I forget that.” Helen heard a voice from behind.

  She turned around and saw Samantha standing a dozen feet away. Wrapped in a red down jacket, she had a child's colorful knitted hat on her head. Her neighbor had also equipped herself with a huge shovel and gone out into the street t
o clean up her yard.

  “Forget what?” Helen asked Samantha.

  “Howard's phone-call. He said he would drop in to buy some food. I’ve prepared everything and forgot... What a fool...”

  “So, you know him?”

  “Yes, he’s Jason's cousin.”

  “You mean his cousin-uncle?” Helen corrected her confused neighbor.

  “No, a cousin... I know both very well.”

  “Hmm... I was told that he was his uncle.”

  Samantha reached out with her hand into the left pocket of her wide sweatpants, then, not finding what she needed there, checked her right pocket. Perplexed, she looked at her neighbor.

  “I'll go home and call, tell Howard to wait for me at the store.”

  Helen smiled and nodded her head approvingly and continued to shovel the snow. The inconsistency that had surfaced during the dialogue with Samantha puzzled her. She clearly remembered that while talking to Howard on the farm, he had introduced himself as the cousin-uncle of Jason Frost.

  The door of the house next door swung open and her neighbor ran out, clutching a handbag with the shop keys under her arm.

  Opening the car parked near the house, Samantha heard Helen call out to her.

  “Listen... How long have you known those guys, Jason and Howard?”

  “Well... a couple of years Howard, and twenty-five years Jason,” she answered, brushing off the snow from her hair.

  “And what do you think about that Jason?”

  Playful suspiciousness appeared on Samantha's face.

  “Did he do something wrong, or did you like him?”

  “No,” Helen said awkwardly. “We had an incident with him a few months ago. Simply curious.”

  “He’s just an ordinary guy, a farmer. Like many others here,” Samantha thought for a moment. “I haven’t seen him for a long time though. He used to drive over two or three times a month, but now he’s sitting at home and sending Howard to me.”

  “I see, thanks,” Helen smiled, and let Samantha go.

  But a few seconds later Samantha called out to her, still not getting into the car.

  The expression on her face had changed, she lowered her head a little and hesitated.

  “Helen, maybe you’ll drop by sometime, in a week or two, in the evening, when there will be more free time. We can have a chat and some mulled wine.”

  Helen knew all about the horrible tragedy of Samantha, as did the whole town. She was also aware that her neighbor had no one. Except for the store, she had little contact with people. At the same time, nobody really wanted that communication. Few could stand the gray look, full of pain and despair, which never left her even when she smiled. Her house looked like a temple, created in honor of the beloved, abducted, daughter, Lily. The house was full of her photographs, awards, and certificates, which her little and very pretty girl had got at school. Her toys and even some of her clothes were everywhere.

  Helen, looking into those bottomless eyes, full of fierce longing and anticipation of a blurry negative response, smiled. Trying to respond as warmly as possible and making it clear that she all in favor, Helen suggested – “Why do we have to wait a week or two? Hurry up with your customer, and I’ll finish here with the snow. I think Nitro is fed up with me, so I shall come bother you today.”

  Samantha, concealing how happy she was that this evening would be just a bit less terrible than all the previous ones, spread her arms and said with a smile, “Well. Then I’ll take everything we need, and I’ll be right back.”

  She hopped into her car and, having hit the horn twice, drove after Howard to her store.

  Chapter 7

  Jessica walked clumsily along the white and beige corridors of the hospital where she worked, trying not to look around. She hurried to the staff break room. Just a couple of years ago, she was a nurse fussing around patients, mechanically doing not the most pleasant job, but also not assuming any responsibility. Having obtained a diploma of higher medical education, qualified as gastroenterologist, she had returned to her native St. George's hospital in the equally native Seattle.

  With her specific medical profile and a huge number of obese people in the country, someone always needed her. Someone had a stomachache, others had problems with their pancreas or liver. She had enough work and she loved it. Not the physical part of it, but her ability to help people. To be honest, it did not always work out. Sometimes people drove themselves into such a condition that the best thing for them would be to get a painless deadly injection in the office of a smiling doctor, rather than prolong the suffering of someone who was unable to stop eating.

  Jessica herself could not boast of an elegant appearance or discernment in food. But thanks to her knowledge of all the details of drug treatments, nothing ever creaked, hurt, or bulged anywhere. Plumpness did not bother the young black woman. On the contrary, sometimes she found allure in it.

  That day, more patients than usual came to Jessica. They were suffering and asked her to help them, not tomorrow, nor the day after but immediately. When too much responsibility fell upon her, the inexperienced doctor panicked and escaped from her office. She headed to the staff break room, where she could relax and drink some coffee.

  Entering the room, Jessica went to the window. She sighed with relief and put her hands on the windowsill.

  A colleague sitting at the desk and hiding behind his glasses sullenly glanced at her and turned into a caustic, but not so evil, old dog.

  “What is it, soldier? Experiencing difficulties with the wounded?”

  Jessica turned around and, helplessly throwing her head back, leaned against the transparent window.

  “Tell me, does it ever get easier?”

  “Already. Damn you’re fast... Easier?” her colleague replied, rubbing his hands.

  Adjusting his glasses and moving them closer to his eyes, the gray-haired man, rising from the table and throwing a stack of folders with medical files under his armpit, went over to Jessica.

  “Twenty years ago, it wasn’t like this. There was not so much diabetes, cancer and obesity. Easier?” he smiled sadly. “It will only get worse. So, get used to it, soldier Jane.”

  “Oh my god, I can’t stand it... Can I have some drugs?” Jessica joked ironically.

  “You could,” the doctor approved his colleague's choice. “But you don’t want to. I’ve told you. You shouldn’t have become a gastroenterologist. It would be wiser to be a plastic surgeon. Patients there also have problems, but only with their brains.”

  Patting Jessica on the shoulders in a paternal way, and singing something to himself, her senior colleague went out to make his evening round and examine his patients.

  Looking at the clock, the young woman sighed. There were still a few hours left until the end of the working day, and apparently, she had only a couple of minutes for coffee. By pressing the button on a coffee machine, she tried to relax as much as possible and not to think about anything. She took in the evening silence of the empty staff room.

  “Hi,” curly-haired Jordan burst in.

  He was a doctor as young as Jessica, with one exception though. Jordan was way more cynical and indifferent to the suffering of his patients. He understood that being a doctor was about earning good money.

  “Are you running away from your patients again? Don’t let them complain.” Smiling slyly, Jordan worried about his colleague.

  “You think they could?” Jessica was alarmed.

  “No, I'm joking. What would those fatsos do without you?”

  “Don't say it like that,” the girl scolded him in a friendly way. “I'm not a model either.”

  Jordan sat at the table and, raising one eyebrow, looked into the eyes of the dusky woman.

  “You are beautiful, and you know that. If you just knew what you and I do together in my dreams, you would have sued me for harassment long ago.”

  Jessica struggled to hold back a laugh.

  “Stop it! Just look at that Harvey Wein
stein!” she began to pour coffee into her cup. “And by the way, everything is still ahead. I could still sue you any time.”

  Grabbing her coffee, she came back to the window. Gazing at the outskirts of Seattle at night, she began to sip it.

  “You won’t do it,” he playfully purred from behind. “Everyone knows, I'm a good guy with the right outlook on life. And I'm a great doctor as well.”

  “Fuck yeah, that was all about you,” Jessica thought with a grin.

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Taking his smartphone out of his pocket, Jordan brazenly melted in his chair.

  “And by the way... Yesterday…”

  “Call 911.”

  “What?” he was confused.

  “I said, call the police right now!” Jessica repeated worriedly, staring intently out of the window.

  Jumping out of his chair, her colleague came over and tried to see with his own eyes what was disturbing his young colleague.

  “Are you deaf?” putting her cup on the windowsill, Jessica yelled, looking at Jordan, as at an idiot. “I left my phone in the office!”

  Having spotted among the dark alleys what was worrying his colleague, Jordan suddenly wilted.

  “A couple of punks are beating a homeless guy. Why are you losing your cool? They’ll finish, and he’ll move on. That’s how they get a kick. It’s almost normal for them.”

  Jessica never understood how people like Jordan could become doctors. She suddenly wildly wanted to tell that spineless selfish fool what she really thought of him. But there was no time for that. With her peripheral vision she saw how two bullies were mercilessly beating up a defenseless poor fellow who was lying on the cold winter tarmac, curled up, struggling to cover himself with his arms to block the kicks. Grabbing the phone from the hands of her colleague, Jessica dialed 911.