The rush of adrenaline had obviously exhausted Victor because he fell asleep soon after getting Stanley’s phone set up and messaging CamaroChick19. Around dark he woke up in Stanley’s recliner feeling extremely well-rested. In fact, he couldn’t remember sleeping that well in a long time.
He stood and stretched. Despite the relaxation a good nap brought, he was aware he was naked in a strange house with no dry clothes to wear, no money, and no plan. He also needed to do something about his mother. She talked to Stanley every day, usually several times. She would be expecting to hear from him. She was probably sitting at the kitchen table right now with a cigarette and a cup of Sanka waiting on the call.
He didn’t know what to do. If he called her on behalf of Stanley, she might ask to speak to him and then Victor would have to lie. She might detect the lie and come over. Maybe what he needed to do was text her something from Stanley’s phone. Maybe that would put her mind at ease for one more day.
Victor whipped out a quick text, his naked bulk luminous in the glare of the screen:
Stanley: It’s been a long day trying to whip this shit bird into shape but I think we’re making progress. Probably best you give us a few days to work this out. If he sees you I’m afraid he’ll come sniveling at your ankles like a little bitch and we’ll lose what progress we’ve made. I’m hoping in a couple of days I can graduate the little booger-eater from man school and send him home with his first set of training testicles.
Victor laughed hard and long at his impression of Stanley. Clara responded before his eyes even quit watering.
Clara: Whatever you think is best, Stanley.
Victor scrolled back through Stanley’s texts, looking for some indication of any pet names or endearments they used with each other, something that would assure Clara it was Stanley on the other end of the communication. He found what he was looking for, though it nearly made him throw up in his mouth.
Stanley: It is for the best. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, my little butter biscuit.
While Victor had the phone open, he checked the social media apps to see if he had any messages. CamaroChick19 had sent him another message while he was asleep. He hoped she wouldn’t be out of touch for very long. He’d come to look forward to her messages. Maybe it was related to the death in her family?
Victor put the phone back on the counter. He looked around the darkening house and realized he had immediate needs that needed taking care of. He needed to find some clothes that fit and he needed to find some money. Surely an old crow like Stanley would have some cash hidden around the house.
There was a narrow hallway leading from the living room into the bowels of the house and it was logical Stanley’s bedroom was down that way. He flipped on a switch and found himself venturing down a gauntlet of portraits. There was Stanley and his wife, their dog, and all possible combinations of the three of them. Some of the pictures had Stanley in a leisure suit and others had him with dark hair. It was a lifetime being played out in reverse. There were also pictures of a young, stout Stanley in his navy uniform with a woman who must have been his wife. Others were taken on the deck of various ships and in ports around the world.
There were three rooms off the hallway. One was a bathroom surprisingly similar to his mother’s bathroom at home. There were fuzzy rugs, fuzzy toilet tank covers, and fuzzy Kleenex box covers. No wonder Stanley liked Clara, they had the same taste in bathrooms.
Another of the rooms was obviously a spare room. There was a bed and some furniture, a sewing machine in the corner, but otherwise empty. The last room was Stanley’s bedroom and Victor was taken aback at the order of it. It was the epitome of ship-shape. There was no dust and everything was as tidy and orderly as it could be.
There was a picture of his wife on the nightstand, cocked at a precise angle. There was a digital alarm clock beside it that had to be from the sixties. Instead of the digits being electronic LCD images they were printed on thin plastic cards that flipped like a Rolodex when each minute passed.
“Damn, Stanley, buy some new shit,” Victor mumbled, then caught himself. “Oh yeah, forgot. You can’t. You’re dead.”
Victor opened the closet door and frowned. One half of the closet was just jumpsuits. Tan was grouped together, navy grouped together beside it. The other side of the closet was suits and other casual clothing. Fucking lot of good any of it did Victor. Stanley had been half his weight and over a foot shorter.
He sat down naked on Stanley’s bed, knowing the angry little gnome was probably rolling over in the freezer if he had any idea this was taking place. He opened the nightstand and let out a low whistle. He’d found a gun.
From his hours playing shooter games, Victor could identify dozens of common weapons though he’d never shot one in real life. This was an older Colt 1911. Victor picked it up, surprised at the actual heft of the thing. That was something the game didn’t portray, the weight and handling of the weapons. Operation was different in the game too; real guns didn’t fire or reload by hitting a key on the keyboard.
He understood the trigger was the dangerous part so he kept a finger away from it. He would have to study the weapon some more and make certain he could operate it if he needed to. While in his old life he had no need for a weapon, in his new life he might. He was in unknown territory and had no idea where the road led.
There were several spare magazines and a box of ammo in the nightstand so he laid those out on the bed with the gun. There was also a very worn leather holster and he took that too. There wasn’t any money.
He went to the dresser and started at the top drawer. Like many folks, the top drawer was where Stanley kept an assortment of junk. It was probably important junk to the old man but none of it meant shit to Victor. There were wartime relics, medals, old watches that didn’t appear to work, spare eyeglasses, and old worn out wallets.
Why the hell did he keep old wallets?
There were a few coins in the drawer but they were nothing that would take care of his immediate cash needs. They were old foreign coins and silver dollars. Most of it was probably had more sentimental value. In another drawer, Stanley’s underwear was neatly folded and stacked. As much as Victor wanted clothes, there was no circumstance under which he would put on the old man’s underwear. He would go commando first.
He did rifle around through the bottom of the drawer before closing it and uncovered a cash envelope from the bank. He tore it open and found nearly a thousand dollars in assorted bills.
“Bingo!” Victor said. “Got it, you old bastard.”
Victor wondered if the old man thought there was something sacred about his underwear drawer that would provide more protection for the money than putting it in any other drawer. He went to the next drawer and found neatly rolled socks. In the one below, he found a stack of gray old-school sweat suits with drawstring waists. They were troll-sized but maybe they had a little stretch to them.
He pulled on a pair and the elastic ankles were up around his calves. That was okay. He could tolerate them for now. There was no getting the sweatshirt on though. It was a medium and he wore a 5x in shirts. He was just lucky the old fucker liked baggy pants.
He decided to dig through the rest of the closet before he gave up on the room. He found a couple of old rifles in the closet but they were nothing he recognized from his games. One may have been a vintage military rifle, the rest hunting rifles or shotguns. He did find a cool knife on the top shelf of the closet, and it was one he had seen before. A vintage Ka-Bar.
Before he left the room, Victor caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and realized there was no way the pants were passable in public even though he’d managed to get them on. He went through the rest of the house and found a washer and dryer in the closet of the bathroom. He retrieved his soaked clothes from the porch and threw them in.
He went back to the living room and sat in the recliner again. He wanted to play a video game but did not have access to his equipment. Because of jail, he’d been away from his machines for days and felt an undercurrent of anxiety at not being able to log in and play. He’d accepted that his dreams of viral video stardom had probably slipped away.
He couldn’t tell that to CamaroChick19. He was afraid she’d cut him off after her reaction to his knockout game idea. She’d been adamant that she didn’t want him doing it. Maybe she was scared for him? Cared about him? Certainly she was the only friendly face in his world right now. While it was a stretch to call her a friend, they definitely had a connection and it was probably his only connection aside from the dudes on the gaming server.
He would have to continue playing along with her. Maybe they could disappear together and start life over again. It wasn’t the same as being a viral video celebrity, but he would be free and he could still play games all the time. They could play games and watch videos together. And maybe, just maybe, people would leave them the hell alone.
He picked up his phone and opened Amanda Castle’s profile again. He looked at the pictures. Knowing now that she’d lost her mother, he could see the tinge of sadness she still carried in her eyes. Yes, she was a friend. He understood that now. She’d reached out to him out of the void of blackness and pain.
He clicked on her profile again and read the details, wanting to commit them to memory. She went to high school in Northern Virginia. Her birthday was in November. For the first time, he noticed there was a phone number. He wanted to reach out to her, to hear her voice. He wanted to experience the real person on the other end. They would be connected then.
He went to Stanley’s home phone and stared at it. It was an olive green wall-mount that had probably been there for forty years. There was perfect cell reception at the house so he wasn’t even sure why Stanley insisted on having a home phone. It was probably one of those old people things. They trusted the phone company like they trusted the power company and the nightly news.
Victor picked up the phone and dialed Amanda’s number. He didn’t want to think about it too much or he was afraid he’d talk himself out of it. It rang.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice. Victor had hoped the number was a cell number. He would hear Amanda’s voice and then hang up, claiming he had the wrong number. This threw him into a panic. He hadn’t planned for this possibility.
“Uh, I was trying to reach Amanda?” He hadn’t planned on saying anything. He wasn’t sure why his voice was acting of its own accord and speaking without him. It was yet another thing he felt like he was losing control of.
“Who is this?” the voice asked.
“This is …Mike,” Victor said, picking a name that should be generic enough it would be vaguely recognizable. “We went to school together.”
“Oh, I seem to recall her mentioning a Mike. I’m Fox. Her step-dad.”
“I was just checking in on her. I knew she’d experienced a loss. I thought this was her cell number. I apologize for bothering you.”
“No, this is the home phone,” Fox said. “And she’s moved to North Carolina with her dad so you won’t be able to reach her at this number.”
“North Carolina?” Victor blurted. “Where?”
Fox hesitated, his radar apparently triggered. “Say, Mike, I didn’t get your last name.”
Victor panicked and hung up. He couldn’t decide what approach to take so he stole a play from his mother’s playbook. Avoidance.
He examined Amanda’s social media profile again. He looked the recent pictures. Aside from many of them being taken in the woods, there was nothing about them that indicated they were taken in North Carolina. Of course he hadn’t read any of the descriptions. Had he opened the descriptions and read them, as he did now, he would have seen that many of them were tagged with #WesternNC. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t caught that detail.
He examined the pictures closer. Only one showed anything that could be tracked to a particular location, a lumber yard where she took a selfie out front. He opened the internet browser on the phone and typed in the name of the lumber yard. The results indicated there was only one business with that name. It was in Boone, North Carolina.
Only a few hours away.
Victor’s mind reeled with the implications. If CamaroChick19 aka Amanda Castle was that close, he could find her and put eyes on her. They could even talk. Their online friendship could become real friendship.
Perhaps it could even become love.