Three and Out

by C.G. Banks

Fucking Mardi Gras and all its hedonism. And of course it was always Darrin down there on his knees in front of me. His eyes looking up, locked on mine, just then beginning to register surprise, my dick in his mouth. And of course, Sandra, the pretty little office aid from school, the one I would have never expected to see in a gay New Orleans’ club’s Men’s Room.

  I recognized her at the exact instant the photograph had always provided, the experience catapulting me along some explosive physical stream until I came then and there. Down his throat staring straight into her eyes.

  Then, swaying there for a moment in the cold, hard knowledge and release, the moan already receding far down within me. Watching her apologetically stumble away out the door. The acid I’d taken ramped up a notch, matching my pounding heart. For a moment I pictured my fate, illogically I realize now, distanced from the LSD, whispered and laughed over in the staff room, sidelong glances and stifled laughter for the rest of my working days.

  And then the fatal error of judgment. I think now, almost two weeks later, about that poor girl and I can’t imagine the evil that carried me beyond the pale. And I think about that face at the bottom of the stairs that day, splitting the flood of people with the sheer power of his indifference. I wonder if it was always my fate, or whether I was just a random choice on the razor-line to Hell.

  Because I killed her. Followed her out of the bar (she was surprisingly drunk and probably wouldn’t have remembered anything in the first place), down the street, into a dark spot near Esplanade and killed her with a brick. Very quick. One swing. I don’t fucking believe it but there it is. Even used her car to ferry her dead body the short distance to the Warehouse District where we dumped her off the end of a pier.

  The work of a fucking ghoul. Nonetheless, all those different lives, motivations, situations coming together at that precise moment. Unfuckingbelieveable. All the way back to grammar school I’ve only been in three fistfights. But when I recall those terrible moments of stalking and killing that poor girl, I am speechless. Damned. Never in my life did I consider myself capable of such a thing. Never. Which brings me to the point of this confession.

  I got the fourth picture yesterday.

  In the mail. No return address, no nothing. And this time there’s no doubt it’s me. That’s right, there I am, hanging from one of the exposed beams in my apartment. I bought the shoes in the picture almost two weeks ago and that really seems the worst. I got em because a neighbor’s dog had dragged off one of my other ones the night before.

  I’ve already thrown the rope over the rafter and I guess I’ll stand on the chair I’m sitting in now. The photo was unclear on that part so I’ll just have to wing it. But I wonder still, even after all this time, knowing I can’t change a thing. Were those pictures always meant for me, or did I just happen to be in the wrong place at the right time?