R.M. DuChene's Blog, page 4

Eight Minutes

She sees me approaching and smiles. I want to tell her that we should go somewhere else – perhaps a nice little restaurant where we can drink and chat until the early hours of the morning. We could even go home and work on making that baby that she’d been wanting. I want to tell her these things, but I can’t. Her hair is the same as it was the last time I saw her. It’s always the same.

We embrace. We kiss. It’s torture that even though I know my lips are touching hers, I cannot feel it. I feel nothing, I control nothing. I’m just along for the ride. I fix her scarf for her and lead her to the hotdog stand where we chat about our day as the vender prepares our dinner. It would probably seem odd to most people that every year, my wife and I meet at a hot-dog stand on our anniversary – but not to us. It’s where we met. It’s our little thing.

We stay close to the stand after we get our hotdogs. It was a cold night and that grill kicked out a lot of heat. We eat in a hurry. The movie will be starting soon and we don’t want to be late. She talks about her day. I’m not listening. I’ve heard it all before. Instead, I stare at her beautiful face. Take in her beauty, every line. God, I wish I could smell her. She checks her watch and says that we have to hurry. She throws away the remaining half of her hotdog. Then she motions for me to follow her and steps off the curb onto the street. My mind screams out to her. It yells for her to come back – begs her. She rushes out from between two parked cars. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. The headlights of the bus spotlight her. The blast of its horn fills the night. She freezes – steals a quick glance at me. The expression on her face isn’t terror – it’s a mixture of love and sadness. Then she’s gone. My eyes spring open. I’m hyperventilating. The cycle is complete.

There’s a high-pitched whine as the chamber door opens. I step out. It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the brightness, but I’m not concerned. I know exactly where I am. I also know Frank is close by. He always is. Frank’s face slowly comes into focus. He appears very concerned.

“Need to sit down, Joe?”

“No, thank you, Frank.” He should know better. I’m a veteran.

 “Okay,” he says. “You got the entire eight minutes. You get the frequent trip discount at eighty percent. so that’s twelve-hundred and fifty dollars.”

I slide out my wallet and hand him my Identification card. He scans it. Hands it back to me.

“Woah, Looks like you’re almost out of credits.”

“I get paid tomorrow. Can you spot me?”

He considers for a few seconds. His eyes narrow – studying me.

“Okay.” He says. “Just this once. But you really need to slow down. You know – take a break. Maybe trip someone else’s past for a change.”

I’m still shaking my head as I enter the chamber.

“Welp, it’s your mind – and your wallet. Can’t say I didn’t try. See you in eight minutes, Buddy.” I jump when the door slams home. No matter how many times I trip, I never get used to that. The machine begins to hum. It gets louder as seconds pass. I close my eyes tight until the sound reaches its maximum level. When I open them, I see her. She’s standing on the corner by the hot-dog stand. I’m walking to her. She sees me approaching and smiles.

THE END

Dust

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Trust

rendered to dust

Nine months to make me

Eighteen years to break me, Then

twenty-eight more,

til you walked out my door

but not before

vomiting your poison

upon my floor, And

as I watched in fear

It began to swarm

around my leg

up my arm, then

into my ear

whispering

“Listen to your mother, dear”

And as the door slammed shut

your venom reached my gut

I can’t explain

the amount of pain

that toxin caused me

as it settled within me

You left me bereft, of

a love I’ve never known, of

kindness you’ve never shown, But

my anger didn’t last

As minute by minute ticked past

the toxins  you left behind

lost their hold on my mind, and

once the venom settled inside

I collected my feelings

 I could no longer hide, Then

Like lifeless bodies, I stacked them

upon each other, and side by side

I tossed on my dignity

my pride, then

duty

Respect

Affection

my trust

hatred

pity

annoyance

disgust

The pile I made grew so high

a mountain of your bullshit pierced the sky, Then

just to prove that I wasn’t weak

I climbed to the top of your monstrous peak, and

with both hands dug into the ooze

 I pulled it

I rolled it

into an umbilical fuse, then

I lit the tip

and ran like hell

I praised the lord when the mountain fell!

As watched from the distance, enjoying the show

a strong, cool breeze began to blow

pushing the glowing embers about, and

carrying all the hot ashes out

By the end of an hour

my soul was burned clean

and a heart you turned sour

pumped strong and pristine

And my plague-ridden mind

You Infected with pain

was as clean as the springtime

after a mid-morning rain

And I smiled, for I knew

I would care for you

never again

Coming Soon

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In a few months, I’ll be re-publishing my first story collection, “A Coming Storm.” The stories are being completely re-edited and in a few cases, re-imagined. I’ve even pulled out one story completely and am replacing it. I promise you, it’ll be well worth the wait. Please see below for an edited version of my very first story, “A House in the Clouds” – re-edited (and slightly re-imagined). Let me know what you think.

A HOUSE IN THE CLOUDS

Hank could hear them talking around him. They thought that he couldn’t, but he could – every word. The Illness that confined him to a hospital bed left him weak, and the struggle to move or speak had become unbearable. But his ears – they worked fine.

All this fighting and squabbling over a switch, he thought. Stupidity. Even if they left him hooked up to the dammed machines, it would only be a matter of days, maybe only hours, before the cancer finally took him. Better to get it over with. Besides, he promised to meet Anne. And it was time to go to her.

***

Hank met Anne in a coffee shop back in 1973. She had to be around twenty-five years old back then, he figured and Hank was attracted to her from the moment he saw her, sitting across the dining room, tucked into a small booth reading. Feeling his gaze, she peeked over the top of the book and smiled at him.

If someone were to ask Hank what the first thing was that caught his attention about Anne, he would have said her eyes. She had the most beautiful brown eyes he’d ever seen. The kind of eyes a man could get lost in.

He got his cup of coffee and made his way to where she was sitting. She looked up at him as he approached, smiled, and then returned her gaze to her book.

“Is there someone sitting with you?” He asked

“Do you see anyone?”

Oh! We got a smart ass here, he thought.

“Well, umm…What I meant to say was, may I join you?”

Anne glanced up at him again, saw his haggard expression and relented.

“Free country.”

Six months later, they were married.

Hank sold life insurance door to door back in those days and, even though he didn’t make a lot of money, he managed to keep food on the table and a roof over Anne’s and their three kids’ heads. Everything was perfect in their lives. Hank and Anne took care of their little family the best way they could and enjoyed the benefits that came from hard work and true love.

In 1983, Anne was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was thirty-two at the time, and the doctors had high expectations. For good reason too, since the tumors shrank and were able to be removed after only one round of chemotherapy. It was branded a miracle – full recovery.

Less than two years later, Anne went to her doctor for a check-up and came home with a death sentence. The cancer had spread unchecked through her body. The Docs gave her six months, but added with some of the newer treatments, she could last a year. Anne declined. She said that a better quality of a short life was more important to her than an agonizing longer one. Reluctantly, Hank supported her decision. With nothing left they could do, the doctors prescribed Anne pain killers and sent her home to die.

Hank and Anne didn’t take what little time they had together for granted. They lived every day as if it were their last. Often, during the months that followed, Hank would wake up and find Anne staring at him.

“You okay Hun?” He’d ask

“Just enjoying the moment,” she’d reply.

One night – towards the end, she shook Him awake.

“What’s wrong Baby, are you okay?” Hank asked.

“I was wondering something, “she said. But I don’t know exactly how to word it.”

“What is it Hun?”

“Do you plan on getting remarried?”

“Hell no!” When she raised an eyebrow at him, Hank continued. “Seriously, Babe. I look forward to eternity with you. Hell, If they have weddings in the afterlife, we’ll do it all again, okay?”

She snuggled him a little tighter. Hank noticed tears beginning to run down her cheeks and gently wiped them away with his hand.

“Truly?” she asked.

“Truly,” he replied. “And don’t go thinking that you’re off the hook either. I better not show up and see you smooching James Dean.”

“Ooh James Dean – he’s hot.”

That got them both laughing, then kissing, then…

The next evening, they talked and laughed like they did when they’d first met. Nothing was sacred. Politics, the neighbors, the kids. Mostly though, they talked about heaven and what they planned to do there when they were together again.

“What do you think it’s like?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “Whatever you want it to be like, I guess.”

“Do you think you can really do anything – be anything?”

Sitting close together on the sofa, flames snapping in the fireplace, Hank pulled his wife close to him and squeezed her tight. “I do, Baby,” he said, staring into the fire. “I really do.”

“Well then,” she said. “I know what I’m going to do until you get there.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to build us a house. We’ll have a special place just for us. Our own little house tucked back in the clouds. We’ll have a large porch where we can just sit and drink cold tea, and look down on the kids.”

“A house in the clouds?”

“Yep.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“You’ll really meet me there?”

“You know I will.”

“Promise?”

“I Promise.”

A few months later, she was gone. Hank figured he would follow her within the next few years. He’d already been having heart problems by then. But as more and more years passed, he realized that God wasn’t going to let him go so easily. If it hadn’t been for their children, he may have sped things a little. But he couldn’t do that. He promised Anne that he would look after them. He brought them up the best he could, never really knowing what to do, but always figuring it out. One by one, they became adults and left the nest. After the last of the children moved out, he retired from his job and spent most of his days at home – waiting to die. Once and a while, a visiting son or his daughter would stop by the house and find where they always found him – sitting on the back porch, glass of tea in hand, staring up at the sky. He’d spend hours like that, imagining what eternity was going to be like, just him and Anne, sitting on their heavenly porch, surrounded by clouds. When it came time for his own bit of bad news from the doctor (congestive heart failure), Hank thanked the sullen doctor, assured him that he’d be okay, and then whistled a joyful hymn while driving home. He was happy his turn had finally come.

***

They were in his room again – the quacks and the kids. Again – talking about him like he wasn’t there.

“The court made a ruling on the matter. The do not resuscitate order stands.” The doctor said.

“He’s our father,” Ricky, Hank’s oldest son said. “We think that we know what he wants better than some stupid court.”

Hank had heard enough. He gathered what little strength he had and called his oldest son’s name.

“Ricky, come here.”

All three of his kids gathered around his bed, but it was Ricky who spoke to his dying father.

“Papa?” He said. “Papa, can you hear me?”

Hank managed to lift his hand and Ricky grabbed it in his own and held it tight.

“Papa,” Ricky said. “They want to let you die. Tell them that’s not what you want.”

“Come…Closer…,” Hank said, “all of you.”

Ricky, James, and Jessica leaned closer to their father. Jessica, his only daughter, gently pulled his long, unkempt grey bangs away from his fading green eyes.

“What is it, Papa?” Jessica said.

Tears welled up in Hank’s eyes as he looked up at his children. We did a great job, Baby, he thought. They’ve grown up good and right.

“What can we do for you Papa?” James asked. He leaned down and kissed his father’s pale forehead. Before Hank surprised all of them by grabbing James’s head and looking into his eyes.

“Let me go.” He said

The machines were switched off soon after. As Hank’s life faded, he saw visions in his mind that he hadn’t been able to recall for many years. Snapshots of his childhood and the rest of his life played out before him. He re-lived his wedding and drank in the happiness that he saw on Anne’s face. He saw all his children being born and experienced again the awesome feeling of becoming a father. And when the last of his life-force left his body, he was smiling.

***

“Welcome home, son.”

“It’s so bright,” Hank said. “I can’t see you.”

From out of all that brightness, a form emerged. It was his mother – looking like she did when Hank was a child. She approached him with a warm, welcoming smile.

“Mom?”

“I’ve missed you so much, Henry.”

“Is this heaven?”

“Not quite” She said. “Not yet. This is the place where you determine your fate. All you have to do is choose.”

“Choose?” Hank said, confused.

“You can choose to stay here and create your own paradise – any world you can imagine. Or, you can choose to be reborn. The choice is yours. But understand, once you make your choice, there’s no turning back.

“No choice at all,” Hank said. “I promised Anne that I would meet her here. She’s waiting for me.”

His mother placed her hands on his shoulders. Her expression turned from joy to sorrow. Sorrow for him.

“What is it?” Hank asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh Henry,” she said. “Anne chose to be reborn.”

Hanks mouth hung open.

“No,” he said. “That’s not possible. She promised me. We had a plan.”

“She couldn’t wait. She had to try and find you. She said if fate brought you together once, then it will bring you together again.”

Fresh tears welled up in Hank’s eyes. He’s waited so very long to see his Anne. How could she? He wondered. Why couldn’t she have just waited?

“Are you ready to choose, Henry?” His mother asked.

Hank considered, but just for a moment. Then he leaned in and hugged his mother tight, gave her a small kiss on her cheek, and said, “No choice at all.”

***

“Don’t run off too far, Yvette!” Mother called out. We’re going to be having the cake and ice-cream soon.”

“Okay, mommy,” little Yvette said. With all the kids at her sixth birthday party, the swings at the playground were constantly being used. So, when she saw one finally empty, she ran for it. After a few attempts, she managed to lift herself onto the thick, black, rubber strap suspended in the air by old rusty chains. Grunting and twisting, she tried with all her might to make the swing work, but she just couldn’t get it going. She managed (a few times) to get the swing to move forward (just a little), but then it would bob left and right in a herky-jerky motion.

“Daddy,” she yelled. “Daddy, come push me!”

“I’ll be right there, sweetie!” 

But before her father could come, half-way across the playground, Yvette saw a boy about her age. He was squatting down on his bare knees, shoveling sand into a red plastic bucket with his hands. Swing forgotten, Yvette hopped off it and went to where the small boy was playing.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Making a house,” the boy answered without looking up. “I wanna make houses when I grow up.”

“Can I help?”

The boy let out a long sigh.

“I guess. Do you know how to make houses?”

“Sure,” Yvette said, “I love houses!”

The boy finished packing sand into the bucket, flipped it over, and then gently lifted it, leaving a perfectly smooth tower of sand. He stood, brushed sand off his knees, then handed the bucket it to Yvette.

“You get the sand and I’ll make the house, okay? Next time, you can make the house and I’ll get the sand. Deal?”

“Deal,” Yvette said, smiling. As she reached for the bucket, both children locked eyes. Yvette forgot all about making sand houses.  She just stood there, staring at him.

“What?” The boy said.

“Your eyes,” Yvette said.

“What about them?”

“So pretty.”

The End

Boy in the Box

R.M. DuChene:

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Jungle-Land, Part II

 

Throughout the two years that followed Uncle Mark’s suicide, Randy drew inward. He didn’t go outside as much, I remember thinking during those times when I’d become frustrated with Randy about his silence something that our mother would say, “Time heals all wounds.” The truth of that statement cannot be disputed, but she left out the part about what happens after deep wounds heal – they tend to leave one hell of a scar.

Randy didn’t come out of his protective shell all at once. It was a very slow process, but I found moments to rejoice in as his old personality seemed to come back. I didn’t know the extent of emotional damage that he had taken and I was the only person who seemed to care enough to wonder. After the Brian Ross incident, I knew Randy would never be the same again.

I believe that I was in the sixth grade when the Brian Ross incident happened. Brian Ross was the local school bully and everyone was scared shitless of him. He wasn’t the, give me your milk money kind of bully – he was more of the, walk up and sock you in the face kind. Brian Ross was the undisputed king of the middle-school playground and he ruled the school yard with an iron fist, at least he did until Randy dethroned him.

On the day in question, Brian Ross walked along the line-up of kids who were standing against the gym wall during recess. He was throwing mock-punches and laughing his ass off when the kids flinched. When he came to me, he didn’t pull his punch. His fist connected with the right side of my face. When the initial shock of the blow wore off, I decided that it was time for me to stop taking shit from him. I came off of the wall and gave him a fierce push backward. He reeled back a few steps, smiled at me, and then balled his fist into a tight little wad. That was as far as he got. Seemingly from nowhere, Randy’s small body flew upward into the air, arm cocked back in mid-flight and then his fist swung down and connected with Brian’s nose. There was a sick crunching sound like dry twigs as the bigger boy’s nose exploded. Brian Ross held his nose and let out a scream of pain. He looked at the little boy who hit him through half-closed watery eyes.

“You’re dead,” he said and he began to advance on Randy.

He lunged at Randy, probably meaning to tear his head off or something like that, but Randy side-stepped, keeping his leg out-stretched and tripped him. Brian sprawled face-down on the black asphalt and cried out again when his broken nose hit the black, tarred surface. Randy didn’t hesitate – he jumped onto the larger kid’s back, grabbed him by the hair, and began to repeatedly bounce the bully’s head off of the ground. To this day, I truly believe that if I hadn’t have pulled Randy off of Brian Ross, he would’ve continued bouncing the bully’s head off of the ground until it killed him. Randy didn’t get into the bully business himself after the Brian Ross incident – he didn’t have to. The whole school heard about the beating that he gave the larger kid and he became a school celebrity of sorts.

***

Randy didn’t grow very much by the time he hit middle school and was still a good foot shorter than most of the other kids in his class. My grandfather would give him shit all the time, calling him midget-boy and short-stop, but Randy never acted like it bothered him – Randy really only reacted to what he perceived as physical threats or somebody encroaching on his personal space. Then, he’d solve the problem quick and brutally.

One day I was called to the principal’s office out of my second period biology class. When I arrived at the office, I saw Randy sitting on a bench just outside the principal’s door. I asked him what happened, but he just stared at the floor, ignoring me. The principal’s door opened and Mr. Pringle poked his head out.

“Eric Johnson?” he asked.

I nodded and he opened the door wider and motioned me into his office. When I walked in, he shut the door behind me and told me to have a seat.

“I tried to call your mother,” Mr. Pringle said, “but it seems that she doesn’t like to pick up the phone during the day.”

“She works at night,” I said. “She sleeps during the day and unplugs the phone.”

Mr. Pringle considered what I said for a moment and then picked up a pencil off of his desk and began to chew on the back end of it. I could see thousands of teeth marks all over the yellow number two.

“We have a problem,” he said. “Your mother needs to come in and talk to me about your brother. We can’t have this kind of behavior at our school.”

“Sir,” I said, “If you just let me handle it, I’m sure that I…”

“You are a student here, Mr. Johnson, not a parent. Your brother stabbed another student with a pen. He’ll have to be suspended.”

I threw a sharp look at the office widow and caught Randy looking back in at me. When he saw that I was looking at him, he turned his face toward the floor again.

“I’ll have my mother call you, Sir,” I said. “If you let me take him home, I’ll make sure that he doesn’t do it again.”

Mr. Pringle picked his pencil back up and began to add more bite marks to it. He looked at me … considering.

“I’ll make an exception just this once,” he said. “You have your mother call me and set up a meeting. In the meantime, your brother is suspended for a week. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Randy said as we walked out of the front entrance of the school.

“No, I guess not,”

When we got to the sidewalk in front of the school, I stopped. It was too early to go home and I wasn’t about to wake my mother up and tell her that Randy got suspended.

“Whatcha wanna do?” I asked.

“We could go crawdadding.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s go!”

My mother never did call the principal and the school never mentioned it. The rest of the school-year flew by without incident.

 

***

Life was almost completely back to normal by the time summer rolled around. One night, we happened to be home earlier than usual, so we checked the television to see if anything good was on. The A-Team didn’t come on that night, but we did find an old black and white war movie to watch. I was completely drawn in by all of the shooting, bombing, and hand to hand combat. The rest of the night flew by in a flurry of bullets, and scattered popcorn.

The next morning we woke up early, and headed to the railroad tracks. We had come up with the idea the night before, and I was excited to put our plan into action. Once we arrived at the tracks we collected all of the tumbleweeds we could find, and each made a barrier. Our barriers faced each other, but weren’t that far apart. It would take a while before we realized that the potential for injury during our game was greatly multiplied the closer we were to each other. After our barriers were constructed we set out to collect as many of the white rocks surrounding the tracks as we were able to carry. I used the front of my shirt to carry them. I must’ve made a dozen trips back and forth from the tracks to the outer area where I set up my fort. When I finally finished, Randy was already positioned behind his wall of weeds. I gave him the thumbs up and we began the assault.

The object of the game was to throw the rocks at each other’s fort, as hard as we could, and try to knock down the individual pieces of tumbleweed, therefore rendering the fort useless. In reality Randy would launch a rock, and I’d duck down behind my wall of weeds essentially blinding myself. Randy had long hair for a boy. It was shaggy, unkempt, and hung just below his shoulders. On the top part of his head, right before where the bangs began, was a line that was about three inches long. The hair refused to grow there. This nasty scar was from when he cracked his head open on my mother’s bed a few years before. He was extremely self-conscious about the scar on his head, so I didn’t mess with him about it. A few weeks after we began playing rock wars, I got one of my own.

Normally, the forts were completely destroyed during a game, but that day, they were still pretty much intact when we showed up to play. We made some minor adjustments, and collected our ammunition. Usually, before we began firing at each other, one of us would count down from five. That day it was Randy’s turn to be the counter. He started at five and began the backward count to zero, but he didn’t go that far. On number three he launched a rather large rock as hard as he could. I realized his deception too late and the rock struck me on the side of the head before I could duck out of its path. The world disappeared in a bright flash of light. I fell to the ground, gaining more injuries from scraping up my elbows and forearms on the rocky earth. I would’ve tried to block my fall with my hands, but they were busy holding the side of my head. Randy was at my side in seconds. He took one look at the side of my blood covered face and froze in a way that looked extremely familiar. He was in shock.

The walk home usually took a while, but the day that I broke my head open it took a little longer. The injury left me kind of dizzy. My eyes found it hard to focus and every time the world blurred I became sick to my stomach. Looking back, the most horrifying memory of that day was that not a single person pulled over to see if the young man who was walking on the side of the road with the right side of his face covered in blood, was alright.

They’re Coming

Twelve gloomy faces stared at me expectantly.  What do they want, I thought; the truth? They’ll never believe it.  I have to tell them something though. I listened to all of their horrifying stories. My mind turned over many different lies that I could tell them, but I knew that each was no good as soon as the ideas ran through my mind.  They’ve surely heard of my story to the police and papers.  They all think I’m insane already, so what do I have to lose? I looked at each of their eager faces. They were tired faces, full of self-loathing and dark secrets.  They look like me, I thought.  Why not tell them the truth? What harm could it do? I raised the small Styrofoam cup to my lips, drained the gritty remnants of decaf at the bottom, and then began to speak.

“My name is Brian Chambers, and I’m an alcoholic. I was ordered to come to these meetings by a judge after I plead guilty for filing a false police report.”

I looked around the circle at their faces again, nobody said a word.

“I’m not going to say that on the night that I’m about to tell you about I wasn’t drunk – I was, very drunk. But I believed then and still believe today that what occurred actually happened.”

I paused again and looked at their faces. None of them were about to breathe a word. I had their undivided attention.

“Okay, so, I crawled into bed that night around two a.m. I think that I remember that right. Normally I would crash around that time and not wake up until the following morning when my alarm went off, but that night, something woke me up much earlier. It was if someone let off a camera flash right in front of my face. Anyways, when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything in my room. It was too dark, you see? So, I hear this growling sound coming from the end of my bed and I grab my lighter off of my night-stand and turn on the flame. There, inside my bedroom, staring down at me hungrily with drool hanging from its large jaws was what I could only describe as a werewolf.”

“What you do?” Ted Martini asked. He was the guy who killed his neighbor’s dog in a fit of drunken rage.

“Whatcha think I did?” I said. “I got the hell out of there! I launched myself out of bed and actually felt the thing’s claws swiping at me as I ran – just the air from them I mean, but boy did it scare the shit out of me. I hit the door, closed it behind me, and then ran straight for the guest room across the hall. When I opened the guest room door, you know what happened?”

In perfect unison, the group that I often referred to as the circle-jerk shook their heads.

“At least four sets of zombie arms poked out from behind the door. Those suckers were trying their damndest to claw me good.”

“How did you know that they were zombies,” Mark Phillips, the guy who set his mother on fire while hopped outta his mind on meth asked. He thought that he was freeing her captive spirit or something. I dunno, the guy’s a real loose-screw. Ya know?

“Gee, I dunno,” I said, “maybe because the arms were all grey and dead looking and shit. You think I dunno what a fucking zombie arm looks like, buddy? So, anyways, I try to fight the undead bastards back into the room so I can close the door, but they were just too strong for me. So, I let go of the door and made a bee-line down stairs. I’m not sure if they followed me, I guess they must’ve, but it didn’t matter because when I reached the bottom of the stairs, that’s when I ran into the vampires.”

“Vampires?” Hilda Moreno, the lady who sold her baby for a hit of crack said, gasping.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, ain’t it? There were three of them. They were big fuckers too – two blocking the kitchen and one in front of the front door. I thought about turning around and taking my ass back upstairs, but I already knew what was up there. So, I did what little bit I could do – yes, I cowered at the bottom of the stairs and started to cry. Some man I am, right?”

“So, what did you do?” Tom Kendal, the guy who gave up his homosexual virginity for a night of drunken fun asked.

“What?” I asked. “Aren’t you listening? I fucking cowered from them. I cowered and cried as they moved towards me with their large fangs and pinched-up, bat-like faces. I’ve seen tons of vampire movies in my life, believe me, but I’ve never seen anything like that. They were covered in short, black hair and almost looked like the werewolf upstairs, but not quite as ugly, you know? The only reason I knew that they were vampires is because of those large, gawdawful fangs. Jeez, they were long. Oh, and sharp as all hell too. So, they creep up on me all sinister and shit and I can’t think of anything else to do, so I close my eyes and wait for them to attack me. You know, to suck out my blood and stuff, but they don’t. Through my closed eyes, I begin to see a flickering bright light. I opened my eyes, against my better judgment and there standing right in front of me is a small dude with a big, enormous head. I mean, that thing was huge. He had the big, bug-eyes and everything. Anyway, the alien dude, he has this crazy-looking machine-thing in his hands. It kind of looked like one of those remote controls from the eighties and shit. He scans it over my body and stops right over my heart. He must’ve found what he was looking for cause after a couple of seconds; he gives me this fucked-up little wink and disappears in another one of those bright flashes. I flinched away and when I looked back, he was gone – they all were. I called the cops and well, you know the rest. I ended up here with you guys.

“The court believed that you were too far under the influence to be a viable witness, right?” Doctor Evans said. “You actually admitted that you could’ve dreamed it all, right?”

“Yeah, doc, I said that – but only so I could beat the false report rap. I know what I saw, and I stand by my report to this day. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t belong here. I am an alcoholic, trust me – after listening to these other whiny bastards for the last few months, I know that one for sure. But I know what I saw. It was a fucking alien. I think that it was trying to figure out what I am afraid of or something.”

“So,” The doctor said, “You’re saying that you think that what you experienced actually happened?”

“Are all of you fucking stupid?” I said. “Of course it happened. They’re coming. They’re coming and you better be ready for them. They pick on the weak because they know that nobody will believe them. You better be ready when they do come though. I’m telling you all. You just better be ready for that shit.”

With that, I got up and left. I don’t have time for closed-minded mutherfuckers. I have too much to do, too much to prepare for. When the end does come, I hope all of you out there are ready. I know that I will be.

Jungle-Land, Part I

1

My earliest memory of Randy is from when I was about eight years old. He was my younger brother by only one year, but people would often mistake me for being much older. At eight, I was already a good two to three inches taller than the next tallest kid in my class. The evening that I remember so vividly occurred sometime in the mid-1970s. I woke up in the middle of the night and found that my brother, who should have been sleeping next to me, wasn’t there. From the dark gloom of my bedroom, I could hear my mother’s wails drifting down the hallway. The sound sent goose bumps marching down my spine. I knew that there was something terribly wrong. I jumped out of bed and ran down the long hallway to my mother’s room. When I burst inside, my little brother was laying on the floor of my mother’s room, blood gushing from an opening above his eye. My mother was hovering over him, alternately screaming and talking to someone on the phone. She gave the person on the other end of the phone our address and begged them to hurry before hanging up.

Randy wasn’t moving. I remember that well. I also remember thinking that it couldn’t be real. I’d seen many scary movies in my life, and that was not what a cut should look like. There was blood of, course and lots of it, but the wound was all wrong. In the movies wounds were always neat round holes or razor-edged slits in the skin. The wound on my brother’s head was jagged. Not only was the shape of the cut wrong, the appearance of whitish stuff poking out from inside it also made me believe, for an instant, that they were playing some kind of cruel joke on me.

Even though I half-thought that they were trying to mess with my head, I still couldn’t move. It wasn’t until the ambulance arrived and I was shuffled aside by the paramedics that I was finally able to look away from him. I remember one of the paramedics gently easing my mother out of the way while his partner worked on my little brother, bandaging his head and starting an I.V. Soon after the ambulance, the police came. A lump magically appeared in my throat when I saw the two uniformed officers enter the room. After the paramedics put Randy on a gurney and shuffled him out of the house, one of the cops asked my mother what happened.

“I’m not sure,” she said, pulling one of her Winston 100s from a half-empty pack and lighting it. “I was sleeping and felt the bed jolt. When I got up to check it out, I saw him on the floor. He must’ve tripped and hit his head on the bed-frame.” The cop – seemingly satisfied that my mother didn’t clunk my brother over the head with a hammer or something, handed her a business card, told her that she could follow the ambulance to the hospital, and then rushed out after the paramedics.

Mom drove like a crazy woman to the hospital. We waited in the reception area for what seemed to my eight year old mind like forever, until a nurse finally came out to talk to us. The Nurse said that Randy was going to be “just fine” and that he only “required a few stitches.” She also advised that he stay in the hospital for another twenty-four hours for observation. He actually stayed in the hospital for another three days.

Those three days, my mother and I went to the movies, ate out at a restaurant, and she even let me stay up late and watch television. My nights were filled to bursting with old reruns of The Fugitive, Ironside, Dragnet, and the Untouchables. I had a blast – staying up late with my mom. It was the first time since Randy was born that I got my mother all to myself. Yes, it was good times for me, good and brief. When Randy came home, it was back to the same routine. I kind of resented him a little for spoiling all of my fun, but it was a minor resentment at best. In the end, I was happy to have my best friend back home.

The day he came home my mother tried to make Randy stay inside the house, but he refused. We decided to celebrate by going down to the railroad crossing a few blocks away, and play war. We made a fort out of tumble-weeds and then protected it with our lives from an invisible horde of oncoming monsters who were trying to break through our position. It was dreadfully hot that day, but we didn’t care. We had our best friends back, and that was all that mattered.

My grandparents were rarely seen around the house. They worked every night at a country-western bar and would usually still be sound asleep when my brother and I came home from school. To get my mother out of their house at some point, they got her a job as a waitress. After that, it was mostly just my brother and me at home during the day. I was fine with that. We had already grown accustom to taking care of ourselves by that time.

Randy’s grades in school were one of the few things that my mother liked to brag about. Twice during that time he came home with straight-A report cards. My grades, on the other hand, were pitiful. After helping Randy with his homework every night, I found it hard to concentrate on my own studies. I would try to hammer out a couple of subjects before bed but would usually leave most of it undone – sometimes falling asleep at the kitchen table in the middle of trying to work out a tough math equation. My failing grades were a tremendous source of guilt for me. Still, I felt proud of myself for making sure that Randy got good grades.

Sometime around my tenth birthday, my mom brought Uncle Bill home. He wasn’t our real Uncle, just some dude that she met at the bar. Over the next few months, Uncle Bill hung around more and more. We didn’t complain. He took my brother and me to the movies, to the park, and even began to stay at the house with us while our mother and grandparents worked at night. One night, my mom asked him to go to work with her, but Uncle Bill refused to leave us alone. A big fight broke out between them and in a storm of hot air and spittle; Uncle Bill told our mom that she was the worst mother he had ever seen. That was the end of the line for Uncle Bill. We never saw him again.

Uncle Bill was the first in a long line of ex-boyfriends, and ex-husbands that my mother ran through. There was Uncle Mark, Uncle John, Uncle Jason, Daddy Rich, Daddy Neil, and Daddy Jared. Uncle Mark was the next one up to bat.

Whenever I see Cheech and Chong movies, or the movie Hair, I think of Uncle Mark. Everything he wore was denim. Blue-jeans, Jean jacket, even a denim soft cap to cover his long, shaggy hair when he didn’t feel like combing it. Our mother had a history of heavy drinking and meth use, but Uncle Mark was the first person we had ever seen who smoked marijuana. I couldn’t see the greatness of the weed that he seemed to enjoy smoking so much. It smelled like burned rope, and the stink would follow him everywhere he went. Uncle Mark didn’t work. He would often say that he was saving his energy for a true emergency – that way he would be useful when everyone else was exhausted. He would just sit at home all day smoking his pot and playing his guitar. It was as if the guy looked up the definition of hippie and followed it to the letter.

Not surprisingly, Uncle Mark didn’t last long. Our mother didn’t throw him out like she did Uncle Bill- he sort of threw himself out. One morning, I woke up for school, spent the accustomed twenty minutes shaking Randy out of bed and then another five minutes rushing him to get dressed. Once he was dressed, we went downstairs, tiptoeing the whole way. We kept our book-bags by the front door so we wouldn’t have to waste time looking for them and end up being late for school. I pulled my backpack on and then turned around to help Randy put on his … then I froze. Uncle Mark was hanging half-way down the wall with a long white sheet tied around his neck. The other end of the sheet was tied to the wrought-iron railing at the top of the stairs. His mouth was closed, but I could see the tip of his purple-pink tongue poking out through his bluish colored lips. A slight trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were open and staring.

“Don’t look at him Randy,” I said. “I’m going to get grandpa.”

Randy didn’t reply. As I ascended the stairs, taking care to avoid the section that Uncle Mark was hanging off of, I peered back down at Randy and froze again. He was sitting next to the door with his thumb in his mouth and rocking back and forth.

 

 

Dark Matter

 

Intrinsic values have never burdened my conscience. I don’t feel remorse; I don’t feel pity, not even for myself. From a very young age, I’ve known the truth of my existence, of everyone’s existence – we are meaningless, almost nothing, a grain of matter that doesn’t matter in the slightest.

All life on earth is made of the same ingredients that make up the rest of the universe. The idea that people are somehow special, that we’ve been somehow chosen to rule over all other life-forms by an omnipotent being that has no beginning or end is laughable to me. Everything has an alpha and an omega. The energy that flows through the universe flows through us. Not the fire and light that we can see, but the other, more important stuff, the dark matter. As with most religious people, I don’t have any way to prove my theories other than what my mind can piece together into answers that make sense. I guess I have to take it all on faith.

There’s been a lot of speculation when it comes to dark matter. Some scientists believe that they know what it is, while others are diligently searching for better, more provable answers. Myself, I believe that dark matter is consciousness. It flows through the entire universe and powers our minds. All living things receive a small piece of that consciousness, and when we die, our consciousness mixes back with the rest. I love the idea that when our bodies perish, our minds meld together with the universe. In that moment, all things become known. Memories flow and mix with others. One may have the recollections of their life in one instant and the memories of a butterfly the next. This is the basic foundation of my belief system that powers my core values.

My philosophy on life is this; it’s a trap for the mind. This world is a prison that holds billions of life forms captive in cells made out of flesh and bone. Life is an illusion of freedom, a cosmic prison. The animals on this planet are programmed to believe that life is the most important thing in the universe. They cling to it, fight for it with every fiber of their being. To them, I am a monster, an evil person who robs others of a precious gift from god. They are lost and ignorant. I’m no more than a bail bondsman, releasing my brothers and sisters from their prisons so that they can be truly free.

I’m pretty sure that most people would wonder why I don’t just kill myself if death is so wonderful. The answer is that I have too much work to do. I have decided long ago to sacrifice my freedom in order to free others. This altruistic act is for the betterment of the universe and the consciousness that must be sent home. There are so few people like me in the world. I couldn’t, in good conscience, deny my responsibilities. Okay, it’s not completely altruistic. I do tend to enjoy my work a little more than I should.

As I’ve stated, people fight for survival – sometimes injuring me in the process, but at the glorious end when they are standing in the doorway of the cosmos, the look in their eyes turns from terror, to relief. I’ve seen this look at least a hundred times and it never fails to make me smile. Wherever all of the souls I’ve freed are in the endless pools of black matter, I know that when they actually have a flash of me, it is a positive memory. I can’t wait to join them. I know that I someday will.

My line of work has some inherent dangers – the police for instance. One day, I may die at a ripe old age in a hospital bed with a young nurse sponging my forehead, but most likely, I will be shot by an officer, or put to death by the state. It’s not too farfetched to believe that one of the people that I’m attempting to free might kill me while fighting to stay in bondage. It would be so much easier if I could make them understand that I am trying to help them, but they will never truly understand until the end – then they will know what wonderful gift I have bestowed upon them.

To be deemed worthy of my gift is not something one should take lightly. I do my research and choose only those clean souls that should be set free. I do not wish to pollute the universe’s consciousness with vile energy. Some deserve to rot inside their meat suits than others, for sure.  My weapon of choice is a pistol and a garrote. I used to only use the garrote, but found that I sustained too many personal injuries at the hands the people I was trying to free. The pistol allows me to injure them to the point of certain death. It weakens them so they cannot fight back. Once it appears that death is imminent, I loop my garrote around their necks and pull the handles tight. Some try to fight me off with their limited and decreasing strength, but most just give in and allow me to free them.  I enjoy watching the awareness slowly disappear from their eyes. I stare into them and take in the color and shape. I try to mentally record every twitch. When the body goes slack and the final death rattle comes, it almost feels like their souls pass through me on their way to the heavens above. The sensation at that moment is more pleasurable to me than any orgasm I’ve ever experienced.

I tend to keep my activities to a minimum. I try not to free any more than one soul a month – any more than that and I risk being caught. I try my best to not develop a pattern, except for my pistol and garrote, that is. When it comes to the lucky few I end up selecting, they are not chosen at random, but are carefully selected and vetted from a pool of possible candidates. Any person with a link to any others that I’ve freed in the past are immediately discarded as a candidate. I know, it’s not very fair, but I have to be careful of patterns. After vetting personal connections, I scrub the list to find out who has been naughty or nice. I discard the bad people and narrow my list down to only those individuals who are truly deserving of my gift. I want the good people, the ones who will not tarnish my cosmic reputation by spreading filth among the universe. They’re getting harder and harder to find – believe me on that one.

 

The End of All Roads

She waits for me at the end of all roads

Delilah, who brings me peace

She taunts me, beckons me to come

Evelin, who is just out of reach

She offers the promise of salvation

Alyssa, whose kiss I crave

She is everything and nothing

Tiffany, who watches and waits

She is everything I long for

Helen, who comes for me at last

The Serial Commission

 

Emptiness… That’s what fills my head when I do my little hobby. I’m sure that people will wonder what kind of sick, twisted, thoughts I must have had while in the throes of murderous ecstasy. The truth is that there is nothing there. It all goes blank. I revert back to my most primitive senses. Everything about me becomes survival, kill or be killed – which is kind of funny considering that I am the hunter. This is a tale about how the hunter became the hunted. If you are reading this, chances are that I am incarcerated or dead, either by the state or the commission. What is the commission? We’ll get to that.

Last spring, I was still residing in a small shit stain on the California map called Tracy. Tracy California was a unique place for me to ply my trade because it hasn’t changed too much in the past fifty or so years. Sure, the town grew as all towns seem to do, but most of the historic stuff was still around, stuff that I used to my advantage. Say, for instance – the old train station, the train depot, and tons of fields and farmland. These are all places that allowed me to move unseen, get a little privacy, and provided lots of great places for disposal of annoying evidence. On one particular Saturday night in April, I found my mark and was waiting for her to get off work at a coffee-shop so that we could get acquainted.

Anyone in my line of work learns a lot of interesting things – how long the average person takes to lose consciousness after being deprived of air, for instance. I would have to say that the greatest lesson that we learned is patience. I say we, because I’m sure that the same is true for any person who gives in to their basic desires and begins to hunt the weak. There are loads of us out there to be sure.

It was a little after ten at night when she finally walked out of the coffee-shop alone, another reason that I love to work in small towns, and locked the door. I was parked across the street from the coffee-shop, about half a block away when I saw her. Excited, I threw my worn-out copy of The Long Walk, by Stephen King into the glove-box, started the white 1987 Dodge van that I’d been using for years, and drove a couple of blocks up the street before making a u-turn and heading back the other way.

When I first began my little hobby, I would creep up slowly behind my candidates, trying to be as stealthily as possible. About eighty percent of them picked up on my creepiness and took off running and screaming. I figured out over time that cool and normal was the effective way to approach them. I drove at normal speed past the woman, then hit the break and backed up to where she was walking along the sidewalk to her car. I rolled down the window and called out to her.

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” I said. They like it when you call them that. “Can you tell me how to get back to the freeway?” At first, it looked like she was going to continue along her way. I didn’t really blame her. She was toting a large, red purse that seemed large enough to fit her skinny, dead corpse into. “Ma’am,” I said again. “Can you please help me out? I’m a little lost here.”

Finally, she turned and looked at me and I knew that I had her. I’m not the ugliest person in town for sure and when they look at me, they seem to trust my face for some reason. She appeared to relax instantly when she saw my clean face and fake smile. She stopped walking and played with her dark, brown hair for a second before talking to me. I knew that she was attracted to me. They always play with their hair a little when they’re attracted to you. Try it out sometime.

“It’s on the other side of town,” she said, smiling. “How’d you get all the way over on this side?”

I pulled out the map that I always used on these occasions and acted like I was trying to figure something out.

“Damn GPS always gets me lost,” I said. “It said that there’s a quicker route to the interstate if I come through town. Thank God I keep this map handy. So, it’s kind of dark. What street am I on right now?”

She took a couple steps closer to the van as I pretended to be searching for my location on the map. Before long, she was at the passenger-side window. I laid the map down on the passenger seat and pointed my finger at a random road at the top.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“No, silly,” she said and let out a small giggle. “It’s more toward the center a bit; Central Street. See it?”

“Central Street?” I squinted at the map and moved my finger along the various, multicolored lines. “Shit, well I don’t see any Central Street.” The door was unlocked as it always was in these special occasions. She opened the passenger side door and leaned over the map until our heads were almost touching. She looked at the map for a few seconds and then poked her finger down on the paper.

“There,” she said, victorious. “You see? Central Street.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Thank you so much!” Then, I hit her with the taser. The prongs caught her on the side of the neck and, even though it didn’t knock her out, she did lose control of her body for a few seconds. Just long enough for me to pull her into the passenger side of the van and take off. The sudden jolt forward closed the van door for me. Practice makes perfect.

As always, I had already made arrangements regarding the kill location and the drop location. Prudency always dictated that one never leaves a body in the same place where it is killed. That’s just asking to get caught. Imagine all of the evidence that is readily available for the cops at the kill site. When you move the body, you make it harder for them to know what happened. I prefer to kill on a loose surface, such as gravel or small rocks. That way, when I’m finished, I can simply cover up the bloody areas. When the blood dries out, it turns a dark brownish color. Most people wouldn’t think twice if they see dark brown stuff in the rocks. They just wouldn’t. None of my kill sites have ever been processed. So, I figure that my procedure works, at least so far.

Anyway, so I get the girl out to the depot. It was late and there were no lights around the place, so was the safest bet for privacy. The ride there wasn’t too bad. She got a bit crazy at first, trying to jump out of the car once and then trying to scream her head off. When she saw my gun pointed at her, she stopped goofing around. So, we get out there and I yank her out of the van and pull her to the round building. The building kinda looked like a wheel of cheese in the daytime and still had a few old, rusty box cars poking out of some of the holes, but there were a few empty slots. I pushed her into one of the vacant slots, poking the barrel of the gun into her back. Somewhere around the center, I grabbed a big handful of her hair and threw her down on top of the bed of white rocks. My flashlight had a red lens piece in it. I would’ve preferred white light, but that could be seen from outside of the depot. With the red light, I saw enough to enjoy myself without adding to the overall risk of being captured. I pointed the red beam of the flashlight at her face and just sorta watched her cry and beg for a few minutes. I like to really get my time’s worth out of these occasions.

When I figured that she’s whined enough, I dug into my back pocket, pulled out my grandfather’s old buck-knife, and flipped the blade open. The sight of the blade made the girl scream, which was kinda the effect that I was going for. So, when I figured that my ears would burst from her yodeling if I didn’t kill her soon, I stood above her, grabbed her long hair, and put the blade of the knife against the left side of her throat. A deep breath and I was ready. I went to open up her throat and the last thing I remember before waking up tied to a chair and looking at six grim faces staring at me, was a bright flash of light.

They were all wearing black suits with white shirts underneath, even the two middle-aged women who sat at the center of the long table. If they had sun-glasses on, I would have thought that I’d been kidnapped by the men in black. They were all staring at me like they found me stuck to the bottom of their shoes. After a few minutes of extreme awkwardness, the woman on the right, the one that looked like she could be my mother, began to speak to me. She was the only one at the table who would speak to me at all, in fact.

“Mr. Bradley Chambers; born, eleven, sixteen, nineteen-seventy-eight, high school education, no arrests, no credit to speak of. I assume that you must live out of your vehicle since we didn’t find a current address or employment.”

What the fuck is going on here? I thought.

“Do you have any questions for the commission before we begin, Mr. Chambers?” The woman asked. The woman next to her opened up a legal note-pad and began to jot down notes. She didn’t look nearly as old as the woman on the right, but she still had that pinched up look on her face – perhaps her hair was pulled back a little too tight and it gave her a tremendous headache.

“Who the fuck are you people?” I asked. I watched their expressions closely to see what effect my use of profanity would have on them. At each end of the tables, the large, ape-like builds of the four slack-faced men tightened up just a bit, but the motherly looking woman only smiled.

“Are you trying to offend us?” She asked, amused. “That may work against you as we proceed, so I strongly caution against it.”

“Just tell me what you want?” I said. My heart was doing about one-twenty in my chest.

“For now,” the woman said, “we would just like to introduce ourselves to you and welcome you to our organization.”

“Organization?”

“Oh yes. You see, Mr. Chambers, we know who and what you are. Your sloppiness is well documented here and we’ve been following your progress.”

Her boldness at calling me sloppy certainly caught my attention.

“What do you mean sloppiness?” I said

“Just what I said. You leave corpses out in the open, floating them down rivers and expect that no one will ever find them. You cover up evidence at your kill locations instead of removing it. You are very sloppy, Mr. Chambers. If we didn’t have a few of our agents watching you around the clock, you would’ve taken a lethal injection a long time ago.”

“You people have been following me? For how long?”

She ignored my question.

“Mr. Chambers, I am the head of a group that brings like-minded individuals together and offers protection for our members. That said, we’ve given you plenty of protection already at no cost to you, but from this moment forward, you will have to become a full member of our organization.”

And….what if I don’t,” I said, a little more boldly than I felt. She pulled a small, black phone and pressed a single key. After a second or two, she spoke into the receiver.

“Go ahead and bring him in.”

A door opened on one side of the room and two more suited gorillas wheeled in a large, metal gurney with a man strapped down to it. They wheeled it between me and the long table and then stood at both ends, facing the panel.

“If you do not wish to be a part of our organization, Mr. Chambers, then you will cease and desist all killing in this country. You will now kill only with our authorization and we will vet all candidates as well as your plan of action, along with contingencies before you are allowed to proceed. We are the alphas, the strong, and we will not let you make us look like fools. Your actions reflect on everyone who has ever picked up a blade or an ax in sport.” She nodded to the two men and they produced knives in their hands. The first man pushed the blade of his knife into the victim’s belly and pulled it crossways, opening up a large, red gash. He reached inside the victim, pulled out a large handful of entrails, cut them free with the blade, and then shoved them into the victim’s screaming mouth. When that part was done, the second man in black opened the victim’s throat. The victim was still convulsing and twitching on the gurney when the woman at the table began to speak to me again.

“Now, Mr. Chambers…would you like to join our organization, or not? Bear in mind, that once you are a member, you may never leave.”

I looked from her to the haggard face of the man on the gurney with his entrails protruding from his mouth and then back at her again. I nodded. Hell yes I want to join! Where do I sign up for this shit?

“Good,” she said. “You are not alone anymore, Mr. Chambers. We expect you to get a job, of course, but we won’t be expecting any monetary payments from you. Your dues are to be paid in work. Every once and a while, we will contact you with a name and an address – you will kill that person for us and we’ll consider you paid up until the next job. Do you understand the provisions of our agreement?”

“I’m a hit man?” I said. “You’re turning me into your hit man?”

“Not exactly,” she said, clasping her wrinkled hands together. “You’re a serial killer, Mr. Chambers. You enjoy killing. We do too as it so happens, but seldom find the time in our busy schedules to get out on our own. We’ll be using you as our blade, our instrument of death. The same rules apply and you can kill in your own, unique style, with one exception. We want video of the kills we assign to you. Will this be a problem?”

“Hell, no.” I said. I was more than ready to get the hell out of there – away from those monsters. I know, pot-kettle, but seriously, you have to be a special kind of creepy to give a serial killer the willies.

They transported me back to the depot with a bag over my head. When the two gorillas pulled the bag off, I found myself staring down at the same spot where I had the woman on her knees earlier in the night. The two men turned around began to walk back to their car.

“The girl,” I called after them. Where’d she go?”

One of the men glanced over at me while they were getting into their long, black sedan.

“We took care of her,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” He climbed into the sedan and they pulled away from the depot, leaving me standing in the dark, cool, nighttime air.

I did my best to stick to all of the rules that the commission had laid out for me, I really did. When it comes down to it, I’m more of a lone-wolf than a team player, at least that’s what I told myself when I killed the Gessip woman. Not only didn’t I follow the commission’s rules, I completely disregarded my own, killing her in an alleyway and leaving her body there to be discovered. Hell, I even used my finger to write come get me on the wall next to the body. It made all of the papers, even the national ones. The reporters all speculated that I was taunting the police and maybe I was a little, but the message was actually for the commission. Nobody was going to tell me who and how to kill. Some things are still a man’s decision in this country and how to kill is one of those decisions. They may as well have tried to force me into Catholicism, dammit.

It wasn’t until about a month after killing the Gessip woman that I began to randomly spot black suited gorillas in every corner of Tracy. I’m sure that they weren’t all part of the commission, and maybe none of them were, but still… I left and have been moving around the country ever since. I haven’t seen any black suits in a while, but I know that they’re out there, looking for me. They know how I kill, so I changed things up a bit. Could it be that while I’m looking over my shoulder for black suits wielding machetes that the commission simply handed off killing me to another regular Joe like myself? Perhaps… Either way, I know that at some point I will become another victim. The police will find my rotting corpse in the woods or inside my van. Maybe they’ll never find me. It is the commission after all. Perhaps I’ll just disappear like Jimmy Hoffa, never to be seen again. I’ll just vanish off the face of the earth like a fart in the wind. If so, I hope that someone will find this letter and give it to the press or police, or something. I’m no angel, believe me, but it would sure be nice to really stick it into those stuffy commission bastards and break it off.