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––––––––
My kind don’t need to sleep, but it’s a human activity – or lack of activity – that I’ve come to appreciate through all the centuries of imitating them. Especially with a comfortable bed like the one Jennifer had, allowing my conscious mind to just turn off as I was warm and cozy under the covers, with a soft pillow under my head. I don’t exactly dream, as I understand dreams from a living point of view, but I can let my imagination go. Reliving in my head gnawing raw muscle tissue from a rib cage after a kill, or thinking about setting a house on fire, then disemboweling the people inside as they run out the door in fright. It’s a real bitch when I’m startled back into wakefulness, like I ended up being that night.
“Get the fuck out of my bed, you worthless piece of shit!”
“Wha... What?” My eyes snapped open as I sat upright in bed to Jennifer, red faced and with her fists on her hips. “What’s the matter?” My mouth hung open, completely at a loss.
“Gladys and Megan saw you picking up a male prostitute early yesterday morning!” She motioned with her head at the two scowling young women who stood behind her. Both dressed similarly to Jennifer, I took them to be her friends from work who had picked her up hours earlier.
“Hold on now, I never picked up any male prostitute! Honey... you know I’m straight!”
“That’s what I first told Gladys and Megan.” She pursed her mouth into a grimace, as her eyes teared up. “I said they had to be mistaken, because you hate gays. I told them how you and your friends used to shit on anyone back in school who you even thought was gay. But then they saw your car in the driveway, and they said there was no mistake.”
Looking at the two women who glared at me by the bedroom doorway, I suddenly recognized one of them as the Volkswagen driver who I had initially thought was just being prudish when she made a shocked, disapproving face at me. No, she had been pissed because she had recognized Nardo’s face I was wearing while she had been unexpectedly driving by when I had been hunting. And now I was going to lose part of my cover for it. Fuck.
“Sweetheart, who are you going to believe? Me, who loves you, or...”
“Loves me?” her voice, raised in anger, cut me off. “Every chance I’ve given you, you’ve fucked it up by fucking someone else. Well, no more!”
“You need to get yourself checked out, Jen,” one of her two friends – a redhead – piped up. “You don’t know what sort of diseases he’s picked up from the male prostitutes he’s been with.”
“Oh my God!” Jennifer’s hand went to her mouth, and her eyes widened fearfully. “I never even thought about that.”
“I don’t have any venereal diseases!” I yelled in exasperation. And that was absolutely true, as such ailments only afflict the living.
“Why? Did you wear a condom?” demanded Jennifer’s friend – the one with dishwater blonde hair - who I recognized as the Volks’ driver.
“No,” I blurted out, unthinking, “I didn’t wear a condom... I mean...”
Then Jennifer’s fists were hammering me, as she sobbed with anger: “Get out! Get out!”
I could have just reverted back to my natural form, and ripped apart all three of these bitches. I certainly was tempted. Instead, I just covered my head with my bare arms as she hit me. I must have been becoming a pussy.
Chapter VI
I slammed shut the hood of the Firebird after cutting the line to the master cylinder. The smell of brake fluid wafted in the night air as it spilled to the asphalt underneath. I quickly glanced around again, making sure no one had been watching me, feeling good that I had gotten back in stride with my work of spreading chaos and misfortune. Putting back into my pocket the box cutter I had used, I walked through the parking lot full of cars back to the bar, a smirk on my face. Or rather, the face of the street kid I had killed and eaten, just in case security cameras were filming me. Security cameras! Who’d have ever thought of such a thing when I was haunting the night time deserts of Arabia thousands of years ago. I switched back to Gary Nardo as I opened the bar’s door.
Inside, people relaxed around tables or in booths, laughing and talking over drinks. The band had yet to take the stage, so the noise level was tolerable.
“Hey, Nardo!”
I looked over to the corner table, where Nardo’s friend, Mike, lifted an empty pitcher in the air, his reddish eyebrows raised in faux exasperation. Tim was leaning back in a chair next to him, just finishing his glass.
I raised a hand and nodded as I approached the bartender who was mixing a drink for a plump blonde girl in a floral dress with her back to me. I kept those two idiots around while hitting the bars, as I understood the necessity of keeping to Gary Nardo’s habits. But they were already wearing on my nerves, ready to brown nose just to get Nardo’s sloppy seconds. Well, if Nardo could lose them, as he had that night when I led him into that alley, I figured I could lose them, too. Better yet, both were probably going to end up down my gullet after suffering agonizing death once I was ready to leave Gary Nardo’s life behind.
“What will it be?” The barman turned around in my direction, the light reflecting off his shaved head.
“Pitcher of Coors,” I said, resting my hands on the counter. Glancing back at Mike and Tim in the corner, I said, “Put it on the tab belonging to one of my friends.”
“Equal opportunity in assholery, I see.”
I turned to Courtney’s grinning face. I hadn’t recognized her as the blonde, as she had been turned away from me. She took a sip from her drink.
“I didn’t think you’d be disapproving.” An amused smile floated to my lips.
“I’m not, especially with those two. That’s unless you’re going to tell me they’ve grown up since high school, same as you.” She gave the two a sullen look across the bar.
I shook my head. “Can’t say that they have.” The bartender set the pitcher in front of me, foam threatening to overflow from the top. “Did you come here by yourself?” I picked up the pitcher by its handle, the frothy beer running over my hand.
“No, actually I’m here with a few friends from my writers group.”
“Well, as I’m ready to jump in front of a moving car if I have to hear one more derogatory joke about gays, women, or blacks, I’m tempted to join you.”
And that was true. Judging from the company Gary Nardo kept, it didn’t take a psychic to realize he probably had continued to live a life of stunted adolescence, even after high school had long receded in the rear view mirror.
“I don’t think my friends are your crowd.” She shook her head, then paused, as if weighing her words before speaking again. “Jennifer told me the gory details about your breakup. Is what she said true?”
I could only laugh awkwardly, not sure how to answer. Last week, when Tim and Mike called me to the mat about what they had heard from Jennifer, I went off on a tangent about how her friends had come up with that shit because they were liberal, Femi-Nazi cunts who didn’t approve of a real man like me. That seemed to put the matter to rest with those two. I doubted Courtney would be so easily swayed by it.
“Back in high school,” her voice dropped to almost a whisper, “I remember how you used to be a real piece of shit, beating up and humiliating kids who weren’t any good at sports, or who were just nerds. Calling them faggots and queers. Was that just a cover... to hide who you really are?”
As I said before, my kind have no need of sex, as we don’t have to reproduce ourselves as the living do. So, I never really understood why humans considered some sexual practices normal, while deeming others deviant, or even evil. But I thought I had an answer that would be satisfactory for her.
Waiting for the bartender to serve a couple who had been waiting patiently at the other side of the counter, I said with a shrug, “Who I am in that regard... I guess I never really got a handle on it.” Dropping my eyes, I gave her my most vulnerable frown. “I don’t know if you could call me bisexual or just bi curious; I just knew it was something I kept at all costs to myself.”
In the past, had posed as a man to prey on other men looking for sex, and as a woman to prey on other women for the same reason, so it wasn’t really a lie I had told her.
“I’m amazed to say, there’s far more to you than I ever expected,” Courtney said with a kindness in her voice that she hadn’t extended to me, before. Turning her head to Tim and Mike who exchanged smirks as they looked from her and me, then to each other, she muttered, “I think your rocket scientist friends are waiting for you.”
“I think you’re right.” As she turned to walk back to her literati group, I called after her, “It was good seeing you again.” Glancing over her shoulder at me, I thought I caught a hint of a smile on her face. I didn’t know exactly why I cared. But I did.
Returning to Nardo’s crew, I set the pitcher down on the table and pulled out an empty chair to take my seat.
“So, did you catch up to that chick you followed out the door?” Mike asked, tipping the beer pitcher to fill his glass back up. He had a bony face with a weak chin and slopping back forehead that made his nose jut out like a beak, and a head of reddish blond hair that was always shaggy, no matter how much he combed it.
“Huh? No... no, I didn’t.” I shook my head, almost having forgotten my excuse for going outside to have some privacy while fucking with a random stranger’s car. “Lost her in the parking lot, I guess.”
“You weren’t getting that desperate for tail just now, were you?” Tim’s corny laugh was always irritating.
I turned my face to Tim, who had slid his glass over to Mike to refill. A mean spirited expression seemed to be perpetually on his handsome face. He had managed to keep the muscular physique he had built up as a jock back in high school. “Excuse me?” I asked, pouring my own beer, next.
“Just that we saw you a minute ago, talking to... what’s her name... That fat blonde chick from high school,” his annoying laugh dying away after apparently seeing something in my face that I wasn’t even aware of.
“Courtney? I was Just saying hi.” I took a swallow of beer, then looked across the room to see her with four other people of various ages seated around a table, all looking genuinely happy as they laughed and talked. I seriously doubted they were mocking someone else’ misfortune like the real Gary Nardo and these two regularly did.
“Of course Gary wasn’t trying to pick up that cow, dummy!” Mike guffawed. “Or did you forget how the only action she gets is with her own right hand?”
“Don’t call me dummy.” Tim slugged Mike in the arm, causing beer to splash from the rim of his glass. “Of course I remember! Remember, I was the one who got her to rub her muff on camera.”
I took another drink without even registering the presence of these two cretins any longer. Why was I feeling a dull anger with the realization that bullies like these, their heyday having already passed them by, had made the formative years of people like Courtney miserable? Why was I caring at all?
“You ever try to find her video on Pornhub, Gary?”
“No,” I said without even bothering to look at Mike as I drank my beer. “I don’t remember what it is you’re talking about.” And that was true, as that memory was Gary Nardo’s, not mine.
“What...?” Mike shook his head in disbelief. “It was maybe the greatest prank of our lives, man! How can you not remember it?” His mouth hung open stupidly.
“Hey, we got a nice crowd, tonight!” the skinny man with glasses, and long, graying hair said into the microphone, having taken the stage while I was distracted by such stimulating conversation. Behind him were a young, dark haired woman dressed in a leather jacket despite the heat, the guitar in her hands ready to make music, and a heavy set black man seated behind the drums. “We’re The Murder Hornets,” the long haired front man continued, eliciting cheers from the bar patrons, “and we’re ready to rock!”
The band was mercifully loud enough to drown out Nardo’s buddies.
––––––––
“It really wasn’t fair sticking us with the bill for the beer you got,” Mike muttered sullenly from the backseat. Like he had anything to bitch about, as his parents have been giving him an allowance, despite him being well into adulthood.
“I told you, my unemployment hasn’t kicked in yet.” I steered the Viper out of the bar’s parking lot onto the road. “Besides, I’m the one doing all the driving.” The truth was, I had already gotten my first check, but neither of them had to know that.
It was after one in the morning when we left the bar, and the streets of downtown Spokane were largely empty as I drove the three of us home, when I slowed as the accident on the other side of an intersection came into view. The emergency lights of two fire engines, the ambulance, and three police cars flashed in the night air. Yellow police tape was strung around a metal light pole leaning dangerously over the street, which had cut throw the crumpled front end of the car that had driven halfway up on the sidewalk. Both car doors hung limply open. I immediately recognized it as the Firebird I had fucked with earlier that night. First responders were loading a body on a gurney draped in a blood stained sheet into the back of an ambulance.
“Holeee shit,” Mike exclaimed in awe as we drove past. The wreck’s windshield was shattered into a stain glass mosaic of red. Vapors still floated out from the demolished radiator, which must have been gushing steam from under what was left of the hood on the initial impact.
Tim whistled beside me in the front passenger seat. “Looks like the engine block had to have been shoved into the front seat!”
“Sure looks like it. Now, both of you get your seatbelts on.” Neither of those two idiots believed in wearing a seatbelt; it’s an affront to their freedom, they said, just like getting the Covid vaccine. I heard two clicks as Tim and Mike obediently buckled themselves in, only because Gary Nardo told them to. The last thing I needed was one of these cops pulling me over to ticket those two beltless cretins, only for the cop to get a whiff of alcohol, followed by an order to step out of the car.
I came to a stop and rolled down my window only part way to avoid any scent of beer escaping from inside. “Excuse me!” I called to a fireman dressed in his heavy canvas coat and pants. He turned his helmeted head to me. “Can you tell if I can get through here?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding as he approached. “Just stay in the far outside lane, and you should be okay.”
“What happened?”
“Probably drunk.” The fireman leaned down to my open window, and shook his head. “The only survivor out of the three in the car said the driver couldn’t stop, even though he was stomping on the brake.” Shrugging, he said, “My money’s still on too much alcohol.”
Or a cut brake line, I let the thought go unspoken. “Thank you sir.” He wished me a goodnight as I rolled up the window and drove slowly away. Debris on the street crunched beneath the tires.
Taking the far outside lane, I thought about the driver’s eyes wide with fright as he slammed his foot over and over on the brake pedal, with no response, and probably swerving out of the way in desperation to avoid traffic crossing the intersection, only to see that metal pole rushing at him and his passengers. Sometimes terrible calamities happen out of the blue, while other times, it’s all the fault of some godless monster like me.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Hm?” I turned my head to Tim, his brow furrowed and his mouth frowning in a rarely seen expression of disapproval for Gary Nardo. “Just thought about something funny,” I said tonelessly. As if this piece of shit had any business judging me.
“Hey, look out!” Mike shouted from the backseat, his finger pointing at the windshield. I slammed on the brakes just as I turned my head back around. The man in the road angrily slammed his hands on the hood of my Viper.
Shit! I thought. The notion that this was somebody who must have seen me cut the Firebird’s master cylinder line was the first thought in my head, before I recognized the greasy hair and acne scars of the other street kid from outside the bus station a couple weeks ago. The one I hadn’t ended up eating. Walking around to the driver’s side, he wrapped his knuckles hard against my window.
“Hey, hey, watch the glass!” I rolled down the window.
“Just what did you do with my friend, faggot? I haven’t seen him since he went with you last week!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I started rolling the window back up.
“You’re a liar besides being queer!” His voice could still be heard through the glass as I accelerated past him down the street.
Should’ve killed that little shit, I thought, as the figure waving his arms as he ranted receded in the back window. I still probably can.
“Just what was that about?” Tim asked coolly as I could feel him staring holes into me.
“Don’t have a clue.” I kept my eyes straight ahead on the road.
Chapter VII
I sat in the recliner in front of the TV, sipping coffee as I watched the local news report the next morning. The familiar scene of the Firebird wrapped around the bent over light pole early this morning filled the screen.
The reporter on the scene, a black woman with straightened hair spoke into the microphone in her hand: “The driver and his passenger in the front seat had been killed on impact, while the young woman in the backseat was rushed to Sacred Heart Medical Center with life threatening injuries. Sadly, she died in transit. The names of all three are being withheld till next of kin can be notified.”
The picture switched to the bar’s parking lot, where a grainy figure of the teenage street hustler I had worn last night worked beneath the Firebird’s raised hood before slamming it shut, and walked away. The reporter’s voice over continued: “Police are searching for the man seen on security footage from a popular downtown Spokane nightspot as a material witness, and would appreciate any tips on his identity.” The camera returned to the reporter, as first responders milled about behind her: “This is Georgia Bates, reporting from Downtown Spokane.”
She was replaced by up male and female co-anchors who were seated behind a studio news desk bearing the station’s logo. The anchorman thanked Georgia for the story, then went on with some inane report of some pumpkin farm that might not be able to open this Halloween for school kids to visit.
Somebody’s figured out the brake line was cut, I thought, yanking the recliner’s side lever to lower the foot rest. I knew it had been only a matter of time as I stood up and walked over to the coffee maker on the buddy bar, and poured myself another cup. As Spokane’s finest were looking for a dead kid for my crime, it was a safe assumption I was in the clear. Raising my cup with satisfaction, I toasted myself: “Here’s to another well-orchestrated calamity.” I took a drink of steaming black coffee, when the cell phone I had left on the counter behind me sounded off with Nardo’s annoying musical ringtone.
“Hello?” I held the phone up to my ear.
“Uh, yeah... This is Courtney. Courtney Schultz,” came the familiar voice, sounding unsure of herself. “If you were wondering, I got your number from Jennifer.”
“Well, this is an unexpected call.” And it sincerely was, as I recalled this woman hating Nardo’s guts, for good reason.
“I was on the phone with Jennifer about half-an-hour ago, when she told me how Tim had been around. He told her how some street kid stepped in front of your car last night, accusing you of having picked up his friend for sex weeks ago. The, um... language she repeated to me of what Tim called you... and what he thinks you did to that kid... got pretty obscene.”
From there, I told her what had transpired next. After I had dropped off Mike at his parent’s house early yesterday morning, Tim sat quietly next to me as I drove to him back to his apartment, his face turned away to the window the rest of the way. When I dropped him off, he climbed out of the passenger seat, then turned around to lean back into the open car door. “Is it true?” he had demanded. “That you’re a fucking ass bandit, just like Jennifer said?”
Again with this obsession humans have with what’s normal about sex, and what’s supposed to be shunned! “Me?” I laughed. “Are you serious? I was the guy who used to knock around homos back in school!”
Tim’s eyes narrowed. “I heard what that butt boy said about you tonight. Jennifer deserves better than you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t at all surprising that a cur like Tim wanted the leader of the pack’s bitch. It might have even been possible he had been carrying a torch for her all this time. Now, he had a pretext for moving in on her. Not that I could not have cared less.
“You’re welcome to her.” I raised my hands with a shrug. “You’ve always been sniffing around for my sloppy seconds, anyhow.”
“Fuck you, faggot!” he yelled at me, slamming the car door shut before he stormed inside the apartment house. As I drove away, I felt an unexpected sense of relief that that jackass was now gone.
“Well, thanks for the heads up,” I said offhandedly as I sipped coffee. “Though honestly, I’m not sure why you’re interested in calling me.”
“Hm?”
“Because I’m a fucking asshole, and all?”
“Oh, yeah,” Courtney chuckled. “I guess I’m a sucker for giving second chances.” The voice on the phone fell silent for a moment, when she spoke again. “Listen, I’ll come clean,” she sighed. “I didn’t just happen to call Jennifer. I called to ask her specifically for your number. I just... wanted to know if you’d like to get a cup of coffee sometime. Or maybe something to eat?”
Now this was interesting. Right out of the blue, I had a new social cover, and I wouldn’t have to worry about those two dumb-fucks, Tim and Mike, ever again.
“I think that sounds great.”
Chapter VIII
The Summer eventually passed into Fall, and the blazing temperatures dropped. During those weeks and months, the friendship I had struck up with Courtney, which involved laughing and talking together over drinks or food, or meeting her friends who accepted me solely on her word, or just spending alone time together, turned into something more. After the first occasion I went to bed with her, when we laid beside one another on the bedsheets, sweaty and breathing heavily after sex, she told me she thought she was falling in love with me. Rolling over to her, I kissed her gently, and whispered, “I love you, too.”
But what did I know of that human emotion that was so incomprehensible to me? The only things I ever felt was hunger, the desperation or glee I experienced in the search to sate it, and a triumphal sense of accomplishment in causing misery among humans. I never really understood any of these feelings humans had – love, hate, happiness, sadness. But if it was love that I needed to mimic, then so be it. After all, for a creature like me that impersonated humans through the countless ages that I’ve existed among them, lying and deception was second nature.
One evening as the sun sank below the horizon, when we were sitting on a park bench, eating ice cream before it got too cold for such a thing, she asked me to move into her studio apartment with her.
“I know it’s not much compared to your place.” She bit into the cone of rocky road with a crunch. “But it has to be rough keeping up with the rent with just unemployment...” Her hand went to her mouth with a contrite look. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t going to work again, or...”
“No offense taken.” I smiled, between bites of the black licorice ice cream, a flavor almost impossible to find.
Truthfully, she was right, to a degree. She didn’t need to know I was able to cut corners financially by not having to buy food humans needed to eat in order to live. In that moment, I weighed her proposition against how I had been occupying Gary Nardo’s life much longer than I had intended, without any immediate plans to move onto some other identity. And could I seriously go on the hunt for human flesh, let alone cause the rain of death and despair around me, if I surrendered my privacy?
“It’s doable,” I said with a nod. The words from my mouth almost took me by surprise. I playfully poked the tip of her nose with my ice cream. She laughed, and wiped off the black licorice, before putting her arms around me in a hug.
Why did I do it? I told myself it was just another social cover my kind used all the time when hiding among the humans. Nothing more.
––––––––
The studio was small, and I had to get rid of a lot of things for the sake of space. Not that I cared, as they were Gary Nardo’s things and not mine, after all. But Courtney was happy, and that made it that much easier on me. But what was this... contentment I was feeling? When she returned home from work at the bookstore in the evening, I felt something unexpectedly good having dinner waiting for her. But why shouldn’t I enjoy a life I was hiding in?
And then, one night as she and I sat on the couch, each of us with a beer in hand and laughing as we watched an episode of Californication, it returned: the hunger. My spine went rigid, and each breath I took seemed to rattle in and out my nose as all I wanted then was too rip chunks of human meat from bone to gulp down my throat. No, it didn’t just return. I had been feeling it creeping up on me for a while now, but I ignored it.
“Honey? Are you alright?” She looked at me as concern bordering on fright flashed across her face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She put the palm of her hand on my forehead, then quickly moved it away, as if not understanding what her sense of touch had revealed.
Turning slowly to face her, I felt the urge to drop the Gary Nardo face, when she shrank back from me.
No! Not her! Not her! I screamed inside my skull.
“I need some air,” I said hoarsely, springing to my feet, and out the door. I heard Courtney calling my name - - Nardo’s name - - from behind as I ran down the stairs, my feet skipping two, maybe three steps at a time. Besides the hunger threatening to overwhelm me, there was the inexplicable thought that I didn’t want to hurt her.
––––––––
The Viper was one of the few things belonging to Nardo I kept. I passed other cars as my eyes swept one side of the street to another, searching for the meal that would make my hunger... not disappear... but be manageable for a time. Maybe.
And then there he was; that street hustler. I couldn’t believe it! He was still wearing the same red shorts that Summer night I had eaten his friend, despite the Autumn chill. He was walking down an empty sidewalk beneath the street lights, head down and arms wrapped around his chest against the Autumn night chill. As I had observed earlier; sex workers never keep regular work hours. He’d be on duty whenever he needed money, and jonesing for whatever he was hooked on that kept him awake and looking for anyone willing to pay for a sexual encounter.
Slowing to a stop mere feet in front of him, I rolled down my window, and shouted, “Hey, you! I’ve been looking for you for days.” When the street kid walked up to peer inside the car, it wasn’t Gary Nardo he saw this time, but his blond friend I had chowed down on several weeks prior.
“Vic!” Leaning inside the rolled down window, his acne ravaged face was bright with a relieved grin. “When you didn’t come back, I thought the worst!” Then looking about the Viper’s interior, his smile faltered. “How did you end up with that fag’s car?”
“Interesting story. Get in.”
“Really sweet!” he said, admiring the car as he climbed inside. Then we were off down the road.
“Turns out, that guy who picked me up has decided to be my new sugar daddy,” I told him as we drove. “ He’s a really cool guy! Got use of the Viper when he isn’t driving it. Easy with sharing his cash, alcohol, and drugs.”
“No shit?” He squeezed a ripe pimple on his cheek, then wiped the pus on his shorts. From the mixed scent of urine, feces, and sweat, I figured he probably hadn’t changed those shorts since I last saw him.
“No shit.” I nodded. “Just have to give him some when he’s in the mood.” Turning to him, the smile on my face having fallen away, I said pointedly, “By the way, he told me about your little tantrum, as he called it, that you threw. You talking about him and me... together.”
“Hey, man,” he said, shaking his head in confusion, “I thought the guy might have killed you or something. He...”
“It’s cool,” I interrupted him, raising a quieting hand. “It’s just that, those two guys in the car with him didn’t know he swings both ways. Well, until now. He was pretty upset when he got home that night, so I told him I’d find you and take care of everything.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, dude!”
“It’ll be okay, I think.”
“You don’t talk like you do... did... anymore.”
I shrugged. “This guy speaks like he’s educated.” I took a left to a side street where closed down storefronts were on the opposite side of the road from older looking residential homes. “I suppose he rubbed off on me.”
“He rubbed off on you,” the kid laughed stupidly. “In more ways than one! Am I right?”
I just smiled as I pulled into the parking lot of a closed down gas station.
“What are we doing here?” He glanced about the surroundings outside the car, taking in the boarded up windows, spray painted with graffiti, in front of where we parked, then at the concrete island behind us where gas pumps had once stood, all shrouded in darkness. “I thought you said this guy has money.” He eyed me suspiciously.
“He doesn’t live here, dumb-fuck!” I breathed in exasperation. “He asked me to pick up some smack his dealer left for him, inside.” The truth was, I had never been here, before, but figured I could make use of it.
“I knew he doesn’t live here,” the kid muttered, as he crossed his arms and looked away from me, his good mood having become sullen.
Finding a flashlight in the glove compartment first, I opened the driver’s side door. “Give me a hand, okay?”
He followed me out of the car, unspeaking. Walking behind the small building, I found a padlock on the backdoor. Hovering closely over it so my companion wouldn’t see, I snapped the lock apart. Discarding the broken pieces to the ground, I opened the door with a creak of rusted hinges. Blackness awaited us inside. I turned, to find him rooted as with fear to the spot where he stood.
“Well?” I clicked the flashlight on in his face.
“Fuck, get that light out of my face, man!” He quickly turned away, his face pinched as with anger, and with eyes squeezed shut.
“Sorry, sorry,” I laughed. “Here, I’ll let you hold the light.” I handed the flashlight to him, which he snatched from my hand.
“Don’t be such a dick, blinding me like that, man!” he mumbled as he followed behind me into the dark. The flashlight beam glided across the room’s bare walls. “Where the fuck is the heroin supposed to be?”
“It’s in the front, where the cash register used to be.” I pushed open the plastic double doors, and led the way. The street kid shown the light around the empty room, which reflected brightly off of the glass doors of empty refrigerated cases lining the back wall. “Shine your light over there. No, we should go behind there,” I directed, as the light beam bounced over the counter top.
Walking behind where the cash register used to sit, he shined the light under the counter. “I don’t see anything.”
“Well, I have to admit, there actually never were any drugs,” I chuckled. “No sugar daddy, nothing. Just a joke I wanted to play on you.”
“Fucking asshole! So you were... were...” His face turned red as he began retching at my true, sweet odor of rotting flesh. When he turned the flashlight on me, I heard his strangled cry of terror from behind the glaring light as he beheld the mouthful of saber sharp teeth rush at him to snap shut over his skull. Gleefully, I whipped his body about by his head, his leg bones cracking loudly each time they struck the counter, till finally his skull separated between my teeth from the rest of him. The decapitated corpse flew through the air, and smashed through one of the refrigerated display cases, where his legs hung out to the floor, while his torso was impaled on the broken glass shards remaining at the bottom of the door. Swallowing the head in one ravenous gulp, I was momentarily on the rest of the corpse, my teeth crunching broken glass embedded in flesh as I ate.
––––––––
“My God, where did you go?” Courtney immediately stood up from the couch, and rushed to me the moment I stepped through the door. Her arms were about me, holding me close even before I could shut the door. “What was wrong?” her voice cracked, close to tears.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I pressed my face against her hair. “I guess I had a moment of anxiety... a panic attack. I just needed to be alone to sort things out.”
“It’s okay,” she sniffled, wiping her eyes. “I didn’t know.”
To my total astonishment, I was genuinely sorry. What the fuck was going on with me?
Chapter IX
Autumn turned to winter, and Christmas time rolled around. The four foot tall tree in our apartment was plastic, and half the lights we had strung around it’s boughs didn’t work. But that strange sensation of contentment felt warm inside me as I helped Courtney put the ornaments on. Presents wrapped in brightly colored paper sat beneath the artificial Christmas tree on the bare, hardware floor. My unemployment had run out, and what money I had left went for a cheap DVD and book I had bought for her gifts. She told me it was okay, saying she liked having her house husband with a warm dinner ready for her after a long day’s work. One night as we huddled close beneath the covers, as we were drifting off, she whispered to me, “I can’t believe I ever hated you.”
I felt my heart soar; a sensation so alien to me, and yet so wonderful. I didn’t want to move on to someone else’ life to hide in. I would carry on this guise of Gary Nardo’s life, I hoped forever.
––––––––
Courtney and I walked, hand-in-hand, down downtown Spokane’s sidewalks swept of snow, peering into department store window displays. Animatronic elves, accompanied by cheerful Christmas music, packed the same handful of presents into Santa Claus’ sled, again and again. And there, down at the street corner, was a white bearded Santa dressed in a red suit stood next to his collection bucket, ringing his bell.
I put my arm around her shoulders and held her close. Despite her winter coat, I could feel her tremble against me in the chilly air. “Cold?” My voice puffed out of my mouth as steam. “You need to go inside?”
“I’m alright.” She returned my embrace with an arm around my waist, and tucked her head against my chest with a smile. “My parents used to take me downtown to see the Christmas sights when I was little. Those memories were pure magic. I always wanted to experience it again with somebody I loved.”
“I don’t have any happy memories like that,” My voice was small. I should have stayed with that warm sense of contentment, but instead I felt an emptiness inside me follow my words. I had to wonder if this was what humans called sadness.
Courtney looked up at me in surprise. “Really? I remember seeing you with your parents around Christmas, back when we were kids. Your family seemed really happy to me.”
Shit! I scolded myself, realizing a barren existence of thousands of years as a monster without Yule Time love was my memory, not Gary Nardo’s.
Our feet came to a stop. “My family... what happened on the outside didn’t reflect what was happening on the inside,” I lied, making my voice choke to effect emotion. I had no idea what the Nardo family life was like.
“Oh, honey!” She stood in front of me, and put her hands against the sides of my face. “I didn’t know. No wonder you never talk about your family.” Gently pulling my head down to hers, her lips met mine. “We’ll make happy memories for you, together,” she whispered.
It all sounded great, even though I felt shitty for lying to her. Where was that heartless thing spawned in the sands of ancient Arabia that I was supposed to be? Gone, I found myself hoping.
When we returned to the Viper parked next to a snowbound meter, we slowed to a stop, both our mouths hanging open in disbelief. The windshield was smashed in, with a spiderweb of fractured glass spread out from the cinder block hurled through its cratered center. Faggot, and cocksucker, and die homo die, were spraypainted on the car’s hood and doors in bright red. All four tires had been slashed, the rims resting on the street.
“My God!” Courtney’s hands covered her lower face. “Who would do this?”
“I’m pretty sure I know who did this,” I mumbled, feeling my jaw tighten. Rage was one human emotion that wasn’t so alien to me. Someone had to have seen who had done this, I thought, as my eyes searched the street, but seeing nothing more than empty cars parked along the curb.
“Those hateful bastards,” her voice trembled with tearful rage. “They just couldn’t leave you... us alone!” She wiped her eyes. It was obvious she knew who my prime suspects were.
“They can explain that to the police,” I said, as I punched 911 into the cell phone, realizing I was myself trembling with a fury I knew I had to suppress, unless the demon of the Arabian wastes that I was really would explode out in broad daylight.
Chapter X
The front door opened a few moments after I knocked. “Gary! It’s been ages,” the older woman’s raw boned, somber face brightened. “Come in out of the cold!” She stepped aside for me to enter the house, after I stomped the snow off my boots on the porch.
“Thanks, Mrs. Holly.” I smiled. A Christmas tree stood at the other end of the living room, an angel at its top that flashed garishly with bright lights, almost touching the high ceiling. A pile of gift wrapped presents on the floor hid the tree stand. Green and red garlands were stapled above the windows. “Is Mike around?”
“He’s down in his room in the basement.” She folded her hands over the front of her blouse, a troubled look coming over her. “Gary... I know what Mike admitted to the police, but I just can’t believe he’d do such a thing, especially to a friend. It’s just that... things have changed with Tim for a while now...,” she trailed off.
“I know,” I said gently, with a nod of my head. “I’d really like to talk to Mike about it.”
It hadn’t taken the police long to round up Mike and Tim, after I was asked who I thought might have vandalized my car. Tim had an alibi, as he was at an office Christmas party with Jennifer, whereas Mike did not. Brought to the Public Safety Building, it didn’t take long for Mike to fess up when the cops braced him. Almost a week had passed since then.
Heading down the carpeted stairs into the basement, I found the door to Mike’s room open. Some heavy metal instrumental blared from within. Peering in on Mike laying on his bed, I rapped my knuckles against the door, and called out, “Knock, knock,” over the music.
Turning his head to me with a look of surprise on his odd looking face, he sat up and turned off his stereo. “Gary!”
Cheesecake posters of models from almost ten years before were tacked to the walls. Airplane and tank models filled the shelves. I had no idea how much this man’s maturation had been stunted, even in comparison to Nardo and Tim.
“Hey, mind if I come in?”
“Yeah, sure.” An uncomfortable smile flickered on his face.
“Mind if I shut the door?” I pulled it shut before waiting for his response. “I’d like a little privacy.”
“Uh... sure...,” Mike said, warily. He tensed, as if preparing to make a run for it.
“Just here to talk,” I assured him, taking a seat on the mattress beside him.
Relaxing, his shoulders drooped, and he stared down at his stockinged feet. “I want to thank you for not pressing charges,” he mumbled. “If it’s about money for repairs...”
“Don’t worry about it.” I waived him off. “My insurance has it covered. The reason why I’m here is to ask why you did it.”
“I don’t know man.” He shook his head, unable to look at me.
“Bullshit. Tell me why.”
Mike took a deep, sad sigh before he spoke. “Tim pressured me to do it.’
“And he wanted you to do this, why?” I shifted my weight on the mattress to face him.
“It was Jennifer. They became a couple after you were out of the picture,” he explained, gesturing with his hands as he spoke softly. “When she found out you moved in with her friend Courtney, she started going psycho. He told me unless he did something to get back at you for her, she was going to leave him. She was all he wanted since high school. I tried telling him she was making herself fucked up in the head by obsessing over you. He didn’t like that much, and I guess she liked it even less when he told her.” He shook his head, dumbfounded.
“Jennifer put you guys up to fucking up my car?” I asked, incredulously. I could barely believe that sheepishly needy woman was capable of such vindictiveness, let alone able to twist someone else around her finger. This woman seemed to have genuinely cared for Gary Nardo, who kept thoughtlessly hurting her, and I finally sealed the deal by causing more pain than she could stand.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “From the things he told me, it was obvious she was just using him out of jealousy, because another woman... her friend... wanted you. But he’s so crazy about her that he’d do anything to keep her.” He managed a laugh. “Who’d have thought she was one of the crazy ones.”
“Alright, I understand the whole Mike/Jennifer dynamic. I just don’t get why it was you who vandalized my car.”
He leaned over and shut his eyes tight. “Because... because... I don’t have a friend in the world other than Mike, anymore.” Choking back a sob, he wiped his eyes. “After Mike hooked up with Jennifer, I got cut out of the picture. She made him stop talking to me. But then a few weeks ago, he showed up, and we hung out again. That’s when he told me what he needed me to do, and that he’d pay me. I told him I’d do it for free, just as long as we could be friends again.”
“And did he hang out with you again, after that?”
Shaking his head, he squeezed his eyes tight against the tears. I placed a gentle hand on his slouched shoulder. At one time, such a gesture from me would hardly have been sincere, but it was now. Realization struck me. Gary Nardo made use of the needy and the weak. And now it all came back to bite him in the ass. Except, it was my ass getting bitten.
Taking in a couple deep breaths to regain his composure, he continued: “I mean, back in school, I was Mr. Popular jock and all, and I had plenty of friends and girls climbing all over me. Then it all somehow disappeared, and it was just Mike and you. Now, I got no one... no girlfriend... I still live with my parents, for fuck’s sake.” He shook his head, sadly.
“You still had me for a friend. You could have come around, anytime.”
Mike’s laughter was sorrowful. “I didn’t want to lose you as a friend, but Tim kept harping on how you’re a fa... how you’re gay. How anyone who wanted anything to do with you had to be gay, too.” He shook his head, as the idiocy of it all seemed to dawn on him. “It’s like back in high school.” He shrugged. “I was scared people would think I was, too, if I didn’t join in on picking on somebody we called a fag, I guess.”
“Well, I appreciate you being forthcoming with all this. I’m actually sorry things have to end this way, but I’m thinking I might have use for your face.”
His brow furrowed with confusion. “What?” He turned his head to face me.
I reached across his lap and turned his stereo back on full blast, before my body became hulking and hunchbacked, and my flesh became putrid before his eyes. His face turned ashen, and his widening eyes looked as if they’d roll out of his sockets, as he thrashed and kicked at me. But his screams were lost in the deafening music as my bear trap mouth clamped on his neck and upper chest. Mike’s hot blood spurted in my mouth and down my throat, and soon he stopped moving.
––––––––
I climbed back up the stairs after I had finished rending apart and swallowing chunks of Mike’s body. Taking great care, I had licked up what blood I could, and ate the bed covers soaked in red.
“My, you two had a long talk together,” Mrs. Holly said as I came through the basement door. “It was still light out when you came over! I hope you’re getting on better, now.” She smiled, having turned around in the computer chair to speak to me. I saw a line of priced clothing on the laptop’s screen she was looking at.
I pursed my lips and nodded. “I think we settled things. He said he just wants to be left alone and sleep, now.”
Saying my goodbyes, I opened the door to the cold, winter dark that had since fallen, and walked out.
Chapter XI
I could tell from the look on Tim’s face he hadn’t expected to see me – or rather Mike Holly – sitting on the couch with a bag of potato chips, and with my feet crossed at the ankles resting on his coffee table, when he unlocked the door to his apartment and walked in.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” he demanded, shutting the door behind him.
“You gave me a key a while back,” I answered simply, putting another handful of chips into my mouth. That was a lie, but I figured it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. He’d probably would’ve taken it worse if I had admitted to having picking the lock to get in.
“Like shit I did!” With a glare, he walked past me to the phone set on a small table next to a lamp. “I told you, Jennifer doesn’t want you around, anymore,” he said, picking up the phone from its cradle, and with his hand poised, was about to punch in numbers. “Now, if you’re smart, you’ll leave before I have to call the police.”
“Well, in that case, “ I sputtering chewed bits of potato chips as I spoke, “I’d be forced to tell the cops how I was acting on your behalf when I vandalized Gary’s car.”
The phone in his hand hung suspended in the air as he stared at me. “You already confessed to the police how it was just you who did it.”
“Yeah, but Gary was kind enough not to press charges, as long as I conveyed this message.” I smiled before I took another handful of chips. “So I told him how it was you and Jennifer who put me up to it. He’s actually a lot more interested in why you two dreamed up that stupid stunt of yours in the first place,” I talked with my mouth full. “So, yeah, of the two guys in this room, right this minute, I’d say I’ve got the least reason to fear talking to the cops.”
He set the phone back into its cradle. “It’s your word against mine.” His voice was wary, unsure of himself.
“Gary believes me. And trust me, he’s ready to press charges against both you and Jennifer.” I dropped my feet to the floor, and leaned forward on the couch. “Say, do you have anything to drink? I need something to wash this down.”
“Goddamn it! What is it he wants? Money? An apology?” Pausing for a heartbeat or two, a pained frown drifted over his face, before he asked: “Does he want Jennifer back?”
I laughed out loud, spraying more chewed potato chip refuse on his carpet and the polished coffee table top in front of me. “That psycho bitch? Are you insane?” I managed to get out as I continued to laugh hysterically. It was actually me - the man eating ghoul from ancient Arabia - not Mike who I was pretending to be, when I burst out laughing at the sheer idiocy of that question.
“I told you never to call her that, again!” Tim’s hands rolled into fists, and his face reddened with anger.
“Okay, okay, chill,” I giggled as I struggled to regain my composure, holding up a hand in a peace making gesture. I didn’t want to kill him, yet. Not here. “Gary wants to meet with you. Talk to you two about the whole idea of vandalizing his car.”
“I’ll talk to him, but I want Jennifer kept out of this.”
“This is no time to play the dashing hero. It’s either both of you talk to him, or both of you can go to trial and have me as the star witness testify against you.”
“Alright.” He shut his eyes and let his head droop. “Where and when?”
“Jennifer probably remembers the basement in the bookstore where Cortney works...,” I began.
Chapter XII
The first time Courtney showed me around Reading Dorks bookstore, where she worked as a cashier, I had asked about a door in the back of the building. I was always... ALWAYS... looking for another potential hideaway where I could sate my reoccurring hunger.
“We have a stuffed alligator in the middle of the room, and shelf after shelf of out-of-print books, and obscure stuff published by small presses,” she said, eyeing me quizzically with one eyebrow raised and a half-serious smile on her face. “But you’re most interested in the basement.”
“Yes.” I nodded.
Breathing a faux sigh of exasperation, she called over to her boss who had just finished ringing up a customer on the other side of a combination counter/glass display case, “Len, my very strange boyfriend wants to inspect the basement.”
“Knock yourselves out,” he yelled back, bagging up a couple paperbacks and a hardcover. The customer looked over at us with an amused chuckle.
“You’re really weird.” She turned and led the way to the basement door.
“I am. Isn’t that why you love me?”
“You know it.” The ring of keys she took from her pocket jingle-jangled as she slid one into the door’s lock. I took note that key was the only one without a number written on masking tape wrapped around the top. Pushing the door open she flipped on a light switch on the other side, and said, “Well, there it is... for whatever reason why you want to see it.”
Following her down the steps to the room’s bare, concrete walls and floor, I immediately caught the stink of mildew.
“Smell that?” she asked, turning to me, as if she could read my mind. “When we first moved into the building, we figured we could use this as a second storeroom, so we put some extra shelves down here. Thank God we didn’t use it to store any books, because we ended up having to toss those shelves out after we smelled the mold on them.”
I listened to her talk as I scanned the windowless space with just one yellowing bulb above to provide light, and thought, What an amazing kill room! I could feel excitement building where I should have had a heart.
“Satisfied?” she asked, both her eyebrows raised, before turning to go.
“Absolutely,” I said with a pleased smile, as I followed her back upstairs.
––––––––
I made sure Courtney was fast asleep before I filched her keyring for work, then was out the door. The Viper handled the icy roads like shit, but I made it to Reading Dorks bookstore. Thankfully, few cars were on the road in the dark hours of the morning for me to collide with. Letting myself in, I left the front door unlocked, as I had promised Tim that evening.
“Why the basement?” Tim had asked before I had left his apartment hours earlier, a look of fear creeping along his handsome face. “Are you and Nardo going to be waiting down there with baseball bats or something?”
“Get real! I seriously doubt Gary’s going to commit homicide, even over a sick car like his Viper,” I had answered. “As for me, I was just asked to convey Gary’s message. My part is done.” I walked to the door, then looked over my shoulder as I turned the handle. “This is between you two, and him.”
“You know what, Mike?” Tim followed behind me with bared teeth that only had served to make him look stupid rather than fearsome. “I bet that queer, Nardo, dropped the charges against you because you went down on him!”
“For fuck’s sake, Tim,” I had laughed as I went out the door. “You’ve got such a hang up for gays, somebody would think you’ve got something hidden in your closet!”
Unlocking the basement door and leaving it open, I flipped the switch for the light downstairs on, providing the only light inside the otherwise dark store; a thing I also had assured Tim I would do. Heading down the steps, I hoped some odd passerby wouldn’t see the glow inside the store’s darkened interior through the front windows, and call the police. Unlikely, considering the hour and freezing temperature outside, but a slight risk, just the same.
Pulling back my coat sleeve, I looked at my watch. I told Tim to be here with Jennifer at twelve thirty. They still had almost a half hour left, I figured, before I went to my prearranged hiding place beneath the stairwell. Sitting on the cold cement floor, I drew my knees up to my chin, and hugged my lower legs, and waited for them.
In that time, my mind wandered. I remembered the empty wastes of Arabia thousands of years ago, where I had led a seemingly endless existence of murder in order to eat, but also to take joy in the suffering and terror I caused among the pitifully frightened humans. But that jubilation I had once felt, that I would salivate over... I didn’t think I felt it anymore. No, the reason why I was waiting down here was for rage, and for the only way I knew how to release it. But it wasn’t rage for what had been done to me.
That night after the Viper had been vandalized, Courtney had clung to me beneath the covers, heartsick that someone she loved could be targeted with such hatred. For days after, she would become startled at any sudden noise, especially by angry voices. She had been fearful to go out, even for work. But she had been frightened for me, especially when it became apparent those who had committed the vandalism knew where to find me. It had been seeing her hurting and afraid for my welfare that had made that fury grow, till I had decided I would do something to sate that emotion. And it was also for the pain and humiliation she had been carrying around since high school, caused by the prank the real Gary Nardo and his friends had played on her. Was I finally understanding love?
I heard the bells on the front door jingle, followed by the sound of footsteps walking across the floor above. Soon, the wooden basement steps creaked over me with feet heading downstairs.
“Tim... I don’t want to be here. Let’s go,” I heard Jennifer’s frightened whisper.
“It’s alright. I said I’d keep you safe,” Tim assured her as he led the way to the bottom of the stairs. Walking into the middle of the room, he looked around. “Where the fuck is that ass bandit, anyhow? If he’s hiding upstairs...”
Going dim – that is, becoming virtually invisible – I stepped out from my hiding place, and brushed past Jennifer, who gasped as I went up the stairs.
Tim whirled around, startled. “What is it?”
“I felt a really draft of cold. I mean... It almost felt like something touched me.” She hugged herself with an uneasy look.
“Ghosts.” Tim laughed, and turned away.
They both shrieked when I pulled the door shut. Tim pulled a hand gun from his waistband. I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t come with the weapon. By that time, I was visible again, standing at the top of the stairs.
“Jumpy, are we?” I observed as I walked down the steps with a contemptuous grin.
“Open that Goddamn door,” Tim demanded, pointing the gun at me. I could hear the fright in his voice he tried concealing beneath anger.
“Insistent, too!” I stepped to the floor, and sauntered casually toward him with no regard to the gun aiming for my face. “Hi ya, Jennifer,” I said, turning to her with a dirty grin and raised eyebrows.
“Fuck off.” She turned away with a look of disgust.
I turned back Tim. “You know why I asked you here?”
“Yeah.” He nodded with a sneer. “That piece of shit, Mike Holly, said you wanted to know why I put him up to fucking with your car.”
“No. Actually I could care less why you did it.” I shook my head. “I want to settle things for what you did to Courtney. For how you traumatized her with what you did to our car, and for what you did to her way back in school.”
“Back in school? You were just as guilty for... That’s not what Mike told me this was about!” he yelled at me, waving the gun in my face.
“No?” I made a surprised face with my eyes widening, and making my mouth an O shape. “You sure he didn’t? I know!” I held my finger up as if I came up with a brilliant idea. “Let’s ask him! So Mike, did you not tell these two wastes of working organs why I wanted to see them tonight?”
Jennifer Screamed, with hands on her mouth when I turned into Mike, with his reddish hair ratty and a grin on his homely face. That was when the gunshot exploded deafeningly in the tiny space. I fell to the hard floor, a chunk of my head at the hairline blown away in a spray of blood, shattered bone, and brains across the room. My eyes stared emptily up at the ceiling.
Tim stepped forward slowly, eyes wide and unbelieving, the muzzle of his gun hot. “How the fuck did he do that?” he said hoarsely to himself, ignoring Jennifer who had dropped to the floor, and was holding her ears throbbing from the gun shot as she sobbed.
“About that message I gave you... I guess I bullshitted you buddy!” Mike’s dead eyes – my dead eyes – rolled to life in Tim’s direction. “But otherwise, you two wouldn’t have come, would you?”
“Shit... How... how...”
“Oh that?” Leaping to my feet, I became Gary Nardo again in an instant, causing Tim to quickly retreat backwards, his face white with shock. “That’s just one of my minor tricks.” I nodded excitedly with a wide mouthed grin as I followed after him. “But I bet nothing can top this!” That was when I grabbed a fistful of hair with either hand, and ripped Nardo’s head down the middle in a splatter of blood to my misshapen skull that should’ve been too big to hide inside a human cranium.
Tim’s eyes bulged as he screamed when I pulled Nardo’s torn skin and clothes halfway off my gloriously putrid flesh. The muzzle of his gun flashed with more reverberating shots. I only laughed, my voice like a landslide of gravel, when I grabbed hold of his gun arm, and heard fabric rip with muscle and cartilage as I yanked and twisted it. He kept firing wildly with a frenzied whine, till I tore his arm off, and the gun flew from the dead fingers to clatter on the concrete floor.
Tossing the severed limb aside, I stood over Tim where he had fallen to the floor, watching him spasm in his death throes as his lifeblood poured out from the empty arm socket. His eyes were open and alive, but stared unknowingly from his ashen face, and foam ran from either side of his mouth. I figured somebody probably heard the gun shots and called the police, but at the moment, I couldn’t have cared...
I heard shoes running noisily up the wooden steps. Turning, I saw Jennifer, crying hysterically, throw the door open, then rush out of sight. Glancing about the floor, I saw the gun was gone. It didn’t take a genius to know she had grabbed it before fleeing. Silly girl, I thought with a chuckle. As if that could accomplish anything.
Once more I was Gary Nardo when I ran up the stairs, and past shelves heavy with books, to the front door that stood open. Outside, I followed her tracks in the snow, till I saw her scrambling into the driver’s side seat of the pickup parked at the curb.
“Jennifer!” My voice carried in the cold stillness.
She turned her face to me, the tears on her face glistening in the cab’s interior light. “I don’t know what you are, but you think any of this means you’ve won?” she snarled at me with bared teeth. “Maybe a gun can’t hurt you, but I know what can!” Slamming the door, the engine fired up. Slush and snow sprayed from under the tires as her pickup sped away from the curb, and down the icy street.
“She knows what can hurt me...,” I muttered to myself. “Courtney!” I rushed to the Viper parked down the street, as I searched my pockets for my cell phone. Fuck, I had left it at home! Fumbling with the keys, I cursed under my breath, “C’mon, get the fuck in there,” till I got the car door unlocked. Once inside, I cranked the engine, and turned the wheel into the street. Instead, the car slid sideways into the road, despite the weight in the trunk and the snow tires. Fucking rear wheel drive!
XIII
I knew time might as well have been sand slipping through my fingers, even as I sped through red lights to get back home. Desperately, I wanted to pray. For Courtney. For being able to reach her in time, and stop that crazy bitch. But what does a thing of evil like me pray too?
A horn blared as I sped through the red light in the intersection. I turned my head just in time to see the glare of headlights rushing at me. The passenger side caved in with a loud crash as the other car rammed into the Viper. And then the lighted intersection and the blackness beyond spun around me, sending the Viper into a roll. The windshield shattered as the car’s roof, now under me, caved in on impact, when the airbag exploded in my face.
Suspended upside down in the front seat, I heard a man’s worried voice call out if I was okay. I saw his feet sliding about on the icy street through the door’s smashed out window, as he attempted to hurry across the intersection to me. Unbuckling myself, I managed to crawl through the glassless driver’s side window to the icy road strewn with broken glass and debris. I suddenly felt for the people in the Firebird I had killed last summer by cutting the lines to the master cylinder, whose last thoughts were filled with terror as they crashed. Was this how guilt felt like?
It was a young black man with medical scrubs beneath his winter coat who had been driving the other car. “No, no, sir, you may be seriously injured,” he said with a hand extended. “Lay still, and I’ll call emergency.” He began punching a number into his cell phone.
Ignoring him, I stood up from the pavement. “I need to use your phone.” I brushed snow off my coat.
“Sir, trust me, I work as a nurse in an ER. You need medical help before...”
I struck him under the jaw, sending him backward to the ground. At one time, I wouldn’t have thought twice about ripping his head from his shoulders. But now, as I quickly pulled his unconscious body out of the street to the sidewalk, I figured I’d let him live since he had tried helping me.
Picking up the phone from the ground, I heard a voice on the other line: “Hello? Are you there? This is the 911 operator.”
“Yes, there’s been an accident on...” I looked up at the street signs above me. “On Ruby and Mission. There’s a man lying unconscious on the sidewalk.” I hung up. Next, I punched in the number for our landline. The phone rang and rang in my ear. The voice mail would pick up after six rings...
“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up, Gary.” It was Jennifer’s voice, but now all the submissiveness I had come to associate with her was gone. “I was beginning to think you were going to just let me kill Courtney.”
“No. I was in a car accident.”
“I see you’re using... Devon James’ phone. Did you kill him?” she purred.
“No. Listen, don’t hurt her. You know what I can do to you.”
“But at least I’d be hurting you.”
“Let me talk to her so I know she’s alright.”
I heard Jennifer say, “Tell him I haven’t hurt you... yet, you fat cow.”
“Gary?” It was Courtney, sounding strained trying to control the fear in her voice. “I’m okay. Jennifer showed up at the door with a gun.” She dropped to a whisper: “She’s been saying crazy things about you, and...”
I heard the smack against flesh, and Courtney wail in pain.
“Don’t you dare hurt her!”
“Oh, nothing that a band aid can’t take care of.” It was Jennifer’s voice again. “Now, if you want to say goodbye to her, get over here. Or I’ll kill her without you.”
The phone went dead. I heard sirens coming down the street. Tossing the cell back to Devon James who moaned on the sidewalk as he slowly came to, I started running home.
––––––––
I knew I had let too much time pass when I finally arrived back at the apartment over an hour later. The worry I felt was overwhelming. Finally, I knew what anxiety felt like, as I opened the door. Courtney slumped groggily on the couch in a tee shirt and panties. Dried blood caked her hair and streaked down the side of her face from the wound where Jennifer had pistol whipped her. “Honey?” she said, as if her eyes had to adjust to see me.
“Sweetheart!” I stepped toward her, my hands extended.
“That’s just fine where you are.” It was Jennifer seated in the recliner, the gun in her hand resting on her lap. She smiled cruelly. “Now that you’re here, we can get down to business.”
“Courtney hasn’t done anything to you.”
“No, but you have. You used me and broke my heart, I don’t know how many times,” her voice choked as her eyes teared up, but that hardhearted smile remained. “But every time I took you back. Then what do you do?” her voice rose with anger, and her lower lip drooped down in a frown to reveal clenched teeth. “You take up with this traitor!” She motioned to Courtney with the gun. “My friend! I should have seen why she didn’t want me getting back with you,” she laughed humorlessly.
“It wasn’t like that,” Courtney moaned.
“You shut up!” Jennifer turned to point the gun at her.
“Stop pointing that gun at her!” I took a step toward Jennifer.
“You stop coming toward me, or I’ll blow her head off.” She kept the gun trained on Courtney. “Just tell me one thing, Gary. Were you always able to turn into that monster I saw tonight?”
“I am that monster you saw tonight.”
“I think I’m entitled to an explanation. Don’t forget, I’m the one with the gun pointed at your girlfriend,” she threatened, perhaps seeing the reluctance in my face.
I nodded. “Gary Nardo died last summer. I killed and ate him. I’ve been hiding behind his face and in his life ever since,” I said tonelessly. “I should have went on to someone else to hide as, like I normally would have, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?” It was Courtney who had spoken. She sat up on the couch.
I turned to her and smiled. “Because, I fell in love with you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered, smiling back. We both turned our heads at Jennifer’s howl of anguish, followed by the gunshot accompanied by the flashing gun muzzle.
Courtney fell back on the couch, red oozing between her fingers grasping her chest.
I had never gone insane before then – not as humans know it. Gary Nardo’s lower jaw spread wide open with a scream of torment - - and kept spreading till it reached the floor. And from that open mouth spread impossibly wide, I leaped out across the room with arms outstretched, and slammed into Jennifer. She tumbled from the recliner, it’s wooden frame under its upholstery cracking loudly with impact beneath me. Her gun slid away across the hardwood floor.
All sanity seemed to drain from her face, screaming as my hands, pale and discolored with blackish blotches, took hold of her, and lifted her into the air and into my open mouth. There was no reason, no rational thought as I gulped her down, head first, her legs thrashing and kicking frenziedly. My stomach was grotesquely distended with a whole human body inside me, her fists and kicking feet visibly pushing my flesh outward with each blow. I knew my body would hold. She’d run out of air and die hard, wheezing for the oxygen that wasn’t there, long before my flesh gave out.
My brush with madness was brief, when I saw Courtney stirring about on the couch. I was Gary Nardo again when I dropped to my knees beside the sofa to hold her in my arms.
“No... I want to see the real you,” she whispered weakly.
“I’m too hideous... You wouldn’t...” my voice trembled.
“You could never be hideous to me.”
Her hand reached up, touching the putrefying skin of my huge, malformed head.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be human enough for you,” I choked out.
“You did just fine.” She smiled weakly, when the light went out of her eyes, and her hand fell away.
I held her for a long time after that. I realized I had never cried before, as tears streamed down my face.
Epilogue
I had learned from a scrap of newspaper I had found, that the wind must have been blown into the cemetery, that Jennifer Perdue and Gary Nardo – now missing and presumed to be on the run - were persons of interest in the murder of Courtney Schultz. Found shot to death in the apartment she shared with Nardo, the police and prosecutors suspected Nardo and Perdue, an off-and-on girlfriend, of being the perpetrators. Both were also suspects in the gruesome murder-mutilation of Perdue’s then boyfriend, Tim Reed, in the basement of Reading Dorks bookstore, as well as the disappearance of their mutual friend, Mike Holly.
Crumpling the paper, I tossed it away. I had long since lost track of how much time had passed since I had tried being human for the love of a woman. Since, I have been lurking among the graves, tunneling beneath the grounds to feed on the corpses. The world of living humans had taken too high of a toll for me to bear it, again. Now it’s only the audient dead who I whisper my story to. Sometimes I laugh at the black humor of my past existence, other times, I find myself swooning, even happy, at memories I have of Courtney. But always, my tale ends with despair and loss. Sometimes I wish I had never lured Gary Nardo, that emotionally stunted bubble of vanity, to his death. Courtney would be alive and happy, and I’d be carrying on my soulless existence preying on humanity as I had since forever. But something – maybe some spark of the humanity I had naively thought I could attain – makes me remember I was loved, and that I had loved. And how that memory is worth the world to me.
CONTRIBUTORS
Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar—Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.
Kurt Newton's short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies over the years, including Weird Tales, Dark Discoveries, Weirdbook, Vastarien, Nightscript and Cosmic Horror Monthly. His collection of short stories, The Music of Murder, was recently published by Unnerving Books. Another collection, Bruises, is scheduled to be published later this year by Lycan Valley Press. Also, a collection of the macabre, Songs of the Underland & Other Macabre Machinations, will be published by Ravens Quoth Press in the coming months. Kurt is a lifelong resident of Connecticut.
A transplanted native in a city full of them, James Harper is a bestselling horror writer working in Washington DC. He has several stories in a variety of publications that can be found on his Amazon page at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0792RQSZR. A single father, he lives with his brilliant teenaged daughter in Gaithersburg Maryland, a suburb just north of the District. His love of music is only rivaled by his passion for film but both take a backseat when a Phillies game's on.
Alistair Rey is an author of fiction and parafiction. His work has appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Weird Book, and Juked magazine among other publications and anthologies. He currently resides in Cardiff, Wales.
Born in 1966, Bill Link is a lifelong resident of Spokane/Spokane Valley, Washington, where most of his fiction takes place. Though having earned a History degree from Eastern Washington University, it had been his lifelong love of horror and weird fiction that had led him onto the life of a starving artist (he says not to let his waist size fool you). He has published an anthology of extreme short horror stories called, Creeping Shadows, as well as a horror novella entitled Skin Like Tanned Leather. His short fiction has also appeared in anthologies such as, A Roll Of The Dice, volumes I, II, and III, as well as in Dark Horses. He hopes to publish another novella, accompanied with short stories. He lives with his wife and best friend, Christa, their daughter, Hayley, and their cat, Lovecraft.