Page 18

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AUbrY

He waltzes through the door without a care in the world. The air is still, the whole house silent. He won’t realize why until it’s too late.

Right at the kitchen threshold, he pauses. A glint of passing light catches on his face, but I don’t need the confirmation. I’ve been watching him for hours. With a bag of food in one hand, he reaches for the switch and flips it.

Nothing happens.

“Son of a bitch. Are you fu—”

The line snaps. He stumbles a step closer, right into the snare. Faster than a snake bite, the rope lassos around his neck and hoists him off the ground. Chinese food splatters to the tile.

Gasping for air, he tries to pull on the rope wrapped around his throat, but he can’t get any give. It’s hooked across a beam over his kitchen, keeping him hovering a couple feet off of the ground so he’s slowly, painfully strangling.

“He…help!” he cries out, tears evident.

I click on my flashlight, blinding him.

He winces, his eyes bulging with fear. There hasn’t been enough time for brain damage yet, but I can’t miss the wheeze rattling in his lungs. He’s running out of time.

“Derek?” I ask knowing the answer.

“Who the—?” His anger gives way as he’s fighting for air. A fear of death has a way of cutting any coward off at the knees. “Help me. Please!”

He’s fighting it too hard, pinching off the blood vessel to his brain. It won’t be long now.

I kick one of the kitchen chairs across the floor. It slides right under his feet. He strains to reach it, just his tiptoes finding purchase. Not enough to give him relief, but he won’t die.

Derek coughs, sputtering air even as the cable line digs into his throat. “Th…thank you,” he whimpers, tears running down his cheeks.

Every bully is a coward at the center. Cut them a little and yellow seeps out.

I keep the flashlight trained on him. Even if he could see me in the dark, I’ve got a hood pulled down while straddling his other dining chair. He has no idea what I look like or how tall I am.

Or how long I’ve been watching him.

“Hey, buddy. I’ll overlook your breaking into my house if you get me the fuck down,” he says like he’s the one holding all the cards.

“You’re Derek, right?”

Enough oxygen’s gotten back to his brain that the chip’s returned. “Yeah, I’m Derek, and this is my fucking house. So how about you cut me down, then get the hell out?”

The chair creaks as I sit back, but the sound sets off panic bells in Derek’s brain. He tries to glance down at the only thing keeping him from slowly choking to death.

“I’m not going to do that, Derek.”

“What?” He grows apoplectic, his face turning red as a tomato. “You fucking thug. I’ll destroy you for this. Do you have any idea who I am?” Rage shakes through him because I don’t care about some random stock broker in Sacramento. It’s so violent, the chair begins to rock.

“Careful,” I warn and look down.

He freezes in his near-noose and takes a shallow breath. Anything deeper would scissor the cable into his meaty throat.

“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you… Yet.” Sitting forward, I place my elbows to my thighs and study the man. He’s a nothing in the world—a piece of trash on a beach, a bottle cap in a quarry, a grain of sand in a bag of rice. And deep down, under all his peacocking and abuse, he knows it.

I want him to live that truth for the first time in his life.

“What. The fuck. Do you want?”

I smile, a habit from my old life. Whenever things got messy , I’d smile out of nerves, then to unnerve my prey. He can’t see it, but I really hope he feels it. I’m not frightened, I’m enjoying this. Just like he did to her.

“How’s it feel?” I ask.

Derek sneers, growing more incensed the longer I make him wait. How long did he make her wait? To suffer in terror as he stood and watched?

“What?” he pouts like a teenager instead of a grown man.

“To take a breath and have nothing come in? To feel your eyes bulge and your lungs deflate? Your head buzz and the panic of death be the only thing on your mind?”

“You’re one sick motherfucker, you know…”

I extend my leg and rest it on the edge of the chair. His chair. The only thing keeping him alive. He shuts his mouth real quick.

“Now you know how she felt.”

“She? Who the fu…?”

I expected him to not remember, but his eyes blaze with fury.

“This is about Sadie? That lying bitch. She’s crazy. It was a fucking accident. I never—”

In a rage, I kick the chair. It slams into the kitchen cabinet and bounds away as Derek’s body drops. He’s in survival mode, swinging first to attack while he cries out to kill me, then for help. When that doesn’t work, he finally smartens up enough to reach for the cable above his head.

His hands slide right off.

Of course I greased it. He wasn’t going to get away that easy.

His eyes are going bloodshot, his tongue sticking out like a fat cow’s and turning purple. Forgetting my plan, I stand.

My fist curls, wanting to treat him like a slab of meat for calling her a bitch.

I lean closer, still keeping as much of myself in the dark as I can.

“If you ever lie about her again…” I flash my knife in his eyes.

It’s nothing more than a Leatherman, but he freaks out at the new threat.

The wild jerking only tightens the snare around his throat.

I thrust my knife toward him.

He moans, his voice little more than a gurgle, then he starts to wail. Huge, panicking tears tumble down his cheeks as he screams in pain.

I open my hand, revealing I’d only pressed the butt of my knife into his side.

“You’re pathetic.” I grab the chair and put it back under him.

He leaps onto his tiptoes, damn near blubbering gratitude for it. Me he respects, but a woman who cared for him, who loved him… She was the one he treated like a starving dog in the street.

If I wasn’t worried about it reflecting back on her, I’d leave him to hang.

“A tiny man, a nothing man, who tries to wring a modicum of masculinity from the world by terrifying women. By torturing them and leaving them for dead.”

“I did not—”

I stare at the chair, and he shuts up. With my point made, I pick up the chair I sat in and put it back by the table.

“What? Are you her new boyfriend?”

“Nope. Just a man who doesn’t like those who soil the rest of us.”

“Yeah, right. You had your fun. Ha ha. Now cut me down, already.”

He really doesn’t get it. I click off the flashlight, leaving him in darkness.

“Hey!” he cries out like a child after a bad dream.

“Good evening, Derek.” I give a little bow and walk toward the door.

“What? Get back here! Cut me down! This is attempted murder.”

I pause in the doorway, aware of the meager light revealing my silhouette. As I turn, his panicking pleas turn back to threats.

“That’s fucking right. You’re trying to kill me.”

A chuckle slips out, my smile back, but this one’s genuine. “I assure you, if I was attempting murder.” My hand wraps around the back of his chair. “They’d never find you.”

I yank it.

He yelps, crying for his mommy, for the police, for anyone to help save him.

The chair swings across the floor, sliding out from under his right foot. But I leave it just so that he has to balance on his left toes for the rest of the night.

“That’s for calling her a bitch. Enjoy your evening.”

With a calm whistle, I walk over my tripwire and leave him to hang by his throat until someone cares enough to check. Maybe he’ll slip and improve the world’s lot. But a leech like that has a habit of surviving even the worst tragedies while the best burn.

“You fucking bastard! Scum sucking cunt!” he screams. On a dime, the curses switch to a sputtering panic. I told him to not rock the chair.

Once out of his house, I lock the door with his keys and stroll down the sidewalk. The rest of the neighborhood is quiet. Perhaps someone will hear him crying out and come to the rescue. Or they’ll turn up their TVs and phones to drown out the man who left a woman gasping on the floor.

I don’t bother to glance at the cameras hanging off their posts, the wires cut.

I follow the road littered with mysteriously broken cameras.

But as I take a turn into a blind alley, the snipped surveillance continues in a new direction.

Not that I expect the police to care enough to check the footage.

We relied more on their incompetence to cover our tracks than bribes, though they certainly took those too.

This was my last job. My last time in this country.

If they think I’m heading north, then it’s time I try south. There are worse things to do than winter in Mexico.

I slide into my car and shut the door. After pulling off my right glove, I tap on my phone.

“Meow?”

“I know, Astin,” I tell my back seat. My little orange gremlin glares at me from his cage, his eyes glowing with familiar rage. “We’ll be going soon. Let me just check my…”

A message pops up.

It’s from her.

I shouldn’t read it. If anything, I should smash this phone and get a new burner. But my eyes scan down.

Breasts.

Luscious, golden tits override my nervous system, and I open the text.

My instant erection hardens as I find her smiling wide with a jar of something by her cheek. I can’t make it out, but I don’t really care. Fuck me. My body wants me to drive right back to Loomis, take both of those shining tits in my palms, and bend her over the first thing I find.

My brain knows how fucking stupid that is. Staying is a death sentence. If I don’t get out of here, they will find me, and then this eggplant will be pulped.

“Huh?”

I finally tear my eyes away enough to read her text.

You can banana my sauce any day.

What does that mean? I almost reach out to ask her when she starts typing.

Sorry sorry sorry!

My friend sent that. She got my phone. I didn’t want to.

I’m trying to be chill.

I am chill. As s cucumber.

On Sunday morning.

I’ll stop now.

Sorry again.

I can hear all of that in my head, her pretty face scrunching up with every sorry, her cheeks burning. I’d silently take her chin, tip her head back, then kiss her so hard she forgets her reasons for apologizing.

Fuck. I can’t do this. I can’t drag someone else into my mess.

No.

It’s best if I leave. Now. Rip that Band-Aid off and hit the road.

I start my truck up, but click on her picture and make it my wallpaper.