Month: August 2014

The Master’s Voice

Jeff yawned at Allison through the storm door and scrubbed a hand over his shaggy salt and pepper locks. A mahogany bathrobe draped around his ex-jock physique, a body she adored and anticipated great delight in watching him whip back into its former glory.

“Am I bothering you?”

“Never,” he muttered, letting her in.

With the front door sealing off prying eyes, Allison tasted his stale mouth and gummy lips. “Have I ever mentioned how utterly dashing you are in the morning?”

“Sorry.” He yawned again. “Boudica kept going out all night. Driving me nuts. This is a nice wake-up call though.”

“Normally I wouldn’t risk dropping by. Today is extra special. I knew you’d be particularly happy to see me.”

“I’m already way past happy.” He drew her up against him.

A woman’s voice droned from the kitchen. “In. In. In.”

“‘Scuse me,” Jeff mumbled, sliding from her embrace.

Seconds later the back door squealed.

“Eat. Eat,” came the woman’s voice again, followed shortly by the can opener’s dutiful grind. “Eat. Eat,” the voice repeated in lifeless monotone as blobs of wetness sucked loose and splattered.

Allison strolled into the living room to wait, senses tingling from this, her first time inside the Lang residence, though her second actual visit. Six months ago, she’d dropped off contract originals for Jeff’s records–a cordial, professional, totally innocuous appointment, at least to any prying eyes watching at the time. Now the house wove an enticing tale through her casual observations. She absorbed impressions like a thirsty sponge slurping up a puddle.

Dust and dirt accumulated on every available surface–the sign of a mind too preoccupied with matters far beyond mundane concerns like basic house cleaning. Books, magazines and papers lay sprawled, several of the latter bearing the logo of her company and some of those were adorned with hasty scribbles and crossed-out notes. Unopened mail peeked like Easter eggs nestled in stray places: between empty beer bottles, atop grease-stained pizza boxes, on the marble coffee table, beside the Sony plasma, amidst scattered throw pillows and the occasional sock. Allison drank in the trappings of a life she knew to be normally quite tidy and efficient, now screeched to a crawl in a tight holding pattern.

And she approved.

“Sorry I didn’t clean up.” Jeff shuffled in, this time bearing a cheery grin for her instead of a yawn.

“Your maid needs a pep talk.”

“Or maybe a pink slip–wait a minute–I guess that would be me. Anyway, where were–”

The phone whistled, snatching away his smile.

Jeff palmed the handset. “Hello? Who? Lieutenant Fischer…” Twin furrows gouged into his brow. “It’s Saturday, right? You’ve got either really good news or very bad. So which is it?”

A fly’s pesky buzz escaped the handset, the only part of the detective’s report Allison overheard. Behind the whine lurked a paunchy middle-aged cop, a man that, five seconds upon meeting, she’d dismissed in summary order as seasoned but moronic; just another stereotypical male unable to break eye contact off a high-dollar pair of sculpted boobs. Unfortunately her one true dream–not to mention she, herself–remained unfulfilled until Fischer managed to just do his job. No more or less.

Which was really odd.

Here she stood silently cheering on the oafish turd that could actually stink up her whole life forever, should divine intervention somehow inspire the cop to overachieve. Not likely though. Fischer was that stupid.

“Oh my God!” Jeff choked.

Could it be? Heart thudding, Allison drifted over to him, mentally crossing her fingers as she did before every traumatic moment she faced.

“B-burned? Where?” A pause. “No… not where was the car burned. Where was it found? In Brownsville? But no sign of her. Uhhhmm… uhhh. Well, w-what do you think it means?”

The Transceiver

A cold shudder runs through me as I look through the one-way mirror at the psycho in the orange jumpsuit who’s handcuffed to the table. What I’ll see in his head, what I’ll feel and experience first hand will be like living nightmares. I don’t know if I can handle them. I’ve seen some terrible things, but nothing like what he’s done.

The psycho raises a styrofoam cup of hot coffee to his mouth, but the chain connecting his handcuffs to the table is too short, so when he gets the cup halfway up, his arm jerks to a stop and the coffee spills onto the lap of his bright orange coveralls. He swears and frantically squirms in his seat to stop the coffee from scalding him. The pained look on his face tells me that he isn’t succeeding.

Good, I think. He deserves that. That’s fitting for a guy like him. That’s perfect.

He plunks the cup down in front of him and shakes the hot brown liquid from his hands, which sends his chains rattling and clanking over the table’s black metal top.

He doesn’t look like much sitting there, coke-bottle glasses, short salt and pepper hair, and so skinny he seems lost in those orange overalls. With what they told me about him, I imagined some beefy guy with tattoos of little spiders at the corner of his eyes and pipes the size of my head–not somebody who could have been my grade 9 science teacher.

Let someone else do this, my inner voice tells me. Don’t they have people trained to do stuff this? Why the hell does it have to be me?
Then I remind myself of the deal I made, a deal I’ll find nowhere else: get what the authorities need from this lunatic and then the agency goes back to working out how to shut off this mechanism in my head.

Life will be worth living again without it.

Magic Hands

Ritha unfolded a square piece of red cloth on the table, caressing it with her palm to get rid of the wrinkles. She pulled a candle closer and lit another one to brighten the room.

Today she couldn’t hate Mr. Pierre more even if the bastard were to walk in through the door right now and spit in her face. One day, she thought, one day

“Good for nothin’,” she mumbled under her breath and picked a needle from the sewing kit.

Ritha stuck the thread through the needle’s ear in one shot, just like her mama taught her. She chuckled. Mama… If she were here, all those bastards would be screaming in pain right now.

But mama was dead and Ritha was out of job and short on rent.

Where is that picture? She rummaged through her pocket and took out a pack of photographs kept together by a rubber band. She shuffled through the stack, pulled one photo out, and leaned it against her teacup.

Pierre–you dirty piece of–. Ritha slapped herself over the mouth. ‘We don’t use those words,’ mama used to say. ‘If we do, we ain’t better than the rest o’them.’

Ritha grabbed a handful of yarn and arranged it in a ball over the red cloth.

She glanced at the photo– not that she had to, but that’s how mama had taught her. ‘Always look,’ she used to say. ‘Through your eyes the power flows. Let the image seep inside your head, Ritha, and the energy will come through. From your eyes it will flow into your fingers and into the needle.’

She grabbed the corners of the cloth and pulled them together over the yarn. She held them tight with her fingertips and stuck the needle through.

Ritha used to make one in about twenty minutes, but today there wasn’t a lot of time. She glimpsed at the crib, hidden in the darkest corner of the room. She needed this one, she needed it badly. Nobody gave a damn about the little one, especially Mr. Pierre.

Ritha clenched her teeth and continued to sew.

At the end of fifteen minutes she put the red doll next to Mr. Pierre’s picture and smiled. Mama would’ve been so proud.

The clock ticked louder, signaling the top of the hour. 8PM. Only fifteen minutes left.

She grabbed the doll and the photo and ran into the enchanting room. She put them both gently in the center of a circle made from colored salts, on top of a metallic tray. She dropped a few locks of hair on the sides and lit the sands from a match.

As the salts burned slowly, releasing a sweet smell of burned sugar, Ritha closed her eyes and recited the magic poem, the one passed to her by her mama. She waved her hand through the smoke and sprinkled drops of oil through the air.

Ten minutes later, Ritha was exhausted. Her chest was heavy and her breath bitter. The salts had burned completely and the doll lay there unmoving, like a dead man in the middle of a forest fire.

She took the doll and ran back. 8:15.

The phone rang and she grabbed it after the first chime. She glanced at the crib, biting her lip. The baby was still sleeping.

“Hello?” a voice said in the receiver.

“Yes, I am here.”

“Ready?”

“Yes, Mr. Pierre, I am. How much today?”

Her heart thudded in her chest. How much humiliation today, she wondered. Enough for milk, at least?

“Ten dollars,” the man said.

She lifted her brows. That wasn’t half bad.

“Oh, thank you–”

“Cut it out, Ritha. I’m in a good mood. Don’t ruin it.”

She bowed, instinctively. “I understand, sir.”

“Did you fix it? Last time–”

“It’s brand new, sir, brand new.”

Silence on the other side.

“Okay, then. Go ahead, the usual. Shoulders, neck and lower back.”

Ritha pressed the speaker button and put the receiver on the table. She grabbed the red doll and turned it face down. With her fingers, she began to massage the doll’s shoulders and lower back.

Pleasure grunts came out of the phone. “Oh, that’s good, Ritha, keep going.”

She continued to massage the doll, her eyes fixated on the kitchen knife, only ten inches away from the doll’s head.

Her heart pounded a few times, pumping hot blood through her temples. She extended one hand toward the knife…

The baby giggled in the crib and turned on one side, his sleepy face pressed against the crib’s bars. Ritha looked at him, startled, her hand suspended in the air.

“What’s going on there?” Mr. Pierre screamed. “I am paying for two hands, dammit!”

Ritha grabbed the knife and threw it far away from her reach.

She gestured a kiss toward the crib and put both her hands on the doll.

“I am here, Mr. Pierre, I am here,” she said, tears dripping down her cheeks.

Mr. Pierre responded with a long moan.

The baby giggled gently in his sleep, and Ritha continued to cry in silence. ‘Be happy when there’s reason to be happy,’ her mama once said.

And Ritha was happy because tomorrow the baby gets to eat the good milk.

Truth Banks

I stare at the gap between the mountain peaks of data. There’s been a break-in.

“Backups?” I say. Fresh snow crunches under our steps.

“Checked. Same gap everywhere.”

I picture the satellites containing the data of the Truth Banks, the supercomputers buried deep underground with backups and revision history, the top-secret security systems. If there’s one heist impossible to pull it’s this one, and yet the fifteen millisecond gap is right before me like a splinter in the holograms.

“Have you sent agents to verify?”

He flips the holo-generator’s lid back on and pockets the device. “Of course, Marcus.”

We turn right in a side-street. As a warning, he’s brought Lilly. She rushes ahead of us, spinning in the falling snow.

He says, “There’s a timer in the code, counting down. To what, we don’t know, but it’s unstoppable. You have until sunrise to find them.”

Lilly gathers snow with her purple gloves, throws the snowball at me.

“And after this?” I say.

Toothy grin. “You do this right, Marcus, and you get her back.”

Fists in my pockets. I nod.

Crouching to give Lilly a kiss on the cheek. “I am your daddy and I will always love you,” I say.

She giggles. “You are funny,” she says.

The agent pats her on the head, still grinning. “I think you’re right, Lilly. He is funny.”

I wipe my tears off with a sleeve, and fixing him a look of utter contempt, start my stopwatch.