I took a trip the next afternoon to the library to do some job hunting after lying to Candy that I couldn’t find the iPad. She packed a legal pad, two pens, highlighter, and a bag lunch. “Good luck, honey,” she said, the look in her eyes filled with hope that my finding a job would ease my issues…down there.
Like the streets and shops, the library was empty save a young librarian with hair dyed pink at the tips. There was a growing tension not just in Bridgton, but it seemed everywhere. When you’re a fledgling killer with impotency issues, you tend not to pay attention to very much outside your crumbling self, but it was getting impossible to avoid.
“Do I need to reserve time on the computer?” I asked.
The librarian looked around the room with an arched eyebrow. “It’s all yours. You’re the first person that’s come in here all week. I don’t even know why I’m here. Things are getting kinda scary, you know? I just keep telling myself that nothing bad ever happens in a library.”
I wondered if she’d ever read Stephen King’s It. Of course, that was fiction.
I snagged copies of The Bridgton News, the town’s weekly, and The Portland Press Herald before settling behind the library’s computer. The monitor was big and boxy and out of date by about a century. While I waited for the desktop to boot up, I scanned The Bridgton News.
The normally idyllic town had become a nest of crime. Between the main articles and the police blotter, I counted four homicides, three suicides, and seventeen assaults. This from a place where the biggest crime was usually people speeding off from the gas station without paying. The paper said the State Police were going to assign several cops to the town to assist the locals.
The Herald was much the same thing, though it encompassed a wider swath of towns.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I muttered, fumbling through the pages.
There, on page three, was my handiwork.
MANHUNT STILL ON FOR ACCOMPLICE IN POTENTIAL SCHOOL SHOOTING
It appeared that the Saco police had come to the conclusion that the crazy ass kid I’d killed must have had a partner in crime. Said partner either had second thoughts about laying waste to the school, or wanted all the glory for himself. Police were busy interrogating every student in the high school, which was leading to some serious unrest with the kids and their parents. Who the hell were the cops to come barging in, assuming their kids were stone cold killers?
To my utter shock and surprise, I felt a world-class hard-on tenting my jeans. My groin area was stoked so hot, I could have fried an egg on the tip of my dick.
What the hell was wrong with me?
In fact, the more stories of murder and mayhem I read—and they were everywhere—the hotter and harder I got. Mixed in with police reports were more stories about a potential Ebola outbreak in Nebraska. Also, some kind of flu epidemic was sweeping through San Francisco at a time when no one should have the flu. I plopped my briefcase over my lap just in case the cute librarian walked by. The last thing I needed her to see was my erection while I was surrounded by open pages filled with nightmares.
The fever heat worked its way outward until I thought I was going to spontaneously combust. Oddly enough, I wasn’t sweating. I kept wiping my forehead, expecting my hand to come away dripping.
Setting the newspapers aside, I opened up my Facebook account without thinking why I’d check something so nonsensical when all of this insane shit was going down.
The little Facebook message box that blinked on the bottom right of the screen gave me my answer.
Even though I had no friends with the initials AO, there was his message, waiting. I enlarged the message box. The text bubble sprouted from AO’s image, which was a picture of a roaring flame.
AO: I see you’re starting to come around.
I typed: What the hell are you?
I pushed my chair back from the computer. My briefcase slipped off my lap. The sound was like a thunderclap in the silent library.
I had asked AO what it was instead of who. Why had I done that? Did a part of me know better? A what could be a tumor, the perfect alibi. A who, now that would be trouble. The tried and true mother’s lament, would you jump off a bridge if Jimmy told you to?, could not excuse me from what I’d done.
AO: Do you want to tamp out the fire?
I typed: You know I do, so why ask?
It felt as if my flesh was going to melt from my bones. In another minute, I’d start stripping and the cops would be called to haul me away. Not that they had time to waste with a nude man in a library. What other horrors were being committed behind closed doors right now?
What horror could I be doing, right now? Just thinking about it dialed up the heat. I thought I smelled roasting pork and wondered if it was me.
AO: This is bigger than the others. You have to want it.
I typed: Just tell me what it is. I’ll do it.
AO: There’s no return from this point on.
I typed: How the hell can I go back from what I’ve already done?
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I wiped some saliva from my mouth with the back of my hand. It stung like acid.
AO: The Mustang is parked behind the library. There are two cases in the backseat. You need to use what’s inside each case.
I read on as AO dictated my marching orders.
It was awful. Unthinkable. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out.
As the sun peeked through the windows behind me, I caught my reflection in the monitor’s glare.
Despite everything I was feeling, I was smiling.
Smiling like the devil on a feast day.
* * * * *
I didn’t go back home to Candy or try to call her at the town’s last remaining pay phone. The Mustang ate the road like a man whose hunger strike had just ended. My hands should have been shaking, but they were steady on the wheel.
I had two destinations today. The first was in Portland. The second would be in New Hampshire. I figured the round trip would take me four to five hours. I could be home just in time for dinner.
If I had an appetite.
The agonizing heat had subsided the moment I sat in the car, but it was still there, a humming undercurrent like the thrum of a nuclear reactor.
At a light in Raymond, I leaned back and opened the two cases. The first one had my trusty scimitar. It should have been stained with crusty blood, but the blade shone like it was newly minted.
The other case contained an Uzi along with a half dozen magazines.
If I were a real man, I would take that Uzi, press it to the side of my head, and pull the trigger.
If I were a real man. I wasn’t even sure what I was anymore. After this day, I wouldn’t qualify as the worst speck of humanity’s garbage.
So why was I so willing to go ahead with it?
It had to be more than just a Pavlovian aversion to the pain AO could inflict on me, right?
I made it to Portland, lost in my thoughts. I drove down narrow side streets that were totally unfamiliar to me. I kept expecting AO to speak to me through the car’s speakers again.
Maybe even AO wanted to distance himself, or itself, from me on this one. Generals rarely rode into battle side by side with their troops.
I stopped outside the parking lot of a blue-domed building. Just like Bridgton, the state’s largest city was a ghost town. A few people walked the streets, but with wary faces.
The sun was unencumbered by clouds and the caw of seagulls echoed down tight alleys.
Staring at the building through the windshield, I thought it was probably empty, just like everyplace else. If it was, I was going to turn around and head home. Screw New Hampshire. The silence of this place would be a sign. A sign to stop this madness. Maybe I would introduce my head to the Uzi.
There was a smattering of cars in the lot and I saw a light in one of the windows of the mosque.
I took a deep breath, removing the scimitar and Uzi from their cases.
Practically running to the front door, I offered a silent prayer for my soul, expecting zero mercy.