Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28428152-20181024003601

Chapter XIII

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and took a drag from my cigarette. The June sun was scorching everything in sight that day as I stood outside of Lunar Skies, trying my best to enjoy my daily lunchtime smoke break. But my stuffy work clothes were doing their job of strangling me with heat.

“Hot day isn’t it, Dan?” a voice behind me commented airily. My body stiffened like the boards in a gallows, lacquered and ready for execution.

“It is, isn’t it, Hal?” I returned, my voice taught. I focused my eyes on a dying caterpillar twitching and shriveling on the sidewalk.

“So, Dave, tell me,” Hal said, closer than before.

“What?” I asked with no lightness in my tone. I took another drag in an attempt to both calm my nerves and also put off an image of coolness beyond my sweating skin.

“Well, I hear that you’ve been up to some pretty fishy business, lately. Been talking to a certain patient quite a lot the past week or two. One Janice Bakker.”

“That’s confidential.”

The caterpillar was wriggling more sporadically now.

“Is that so?” Hal laughed. “Well, I’d say not. It’s not against the rules to talk to the patients, of course, or to build connections with them—no, that would be ridiculous. But I’ve seen on the security cameras that every day during rec times, you spend the whole time with her. I hear you wait for Dr. Montgomery to leave, and that you go to a certain blind spot in the courtyard. Where I can’t see you.”

The cigarette was almost dead, and so, too, seemed to be the writhing caterpillar.

“I also hear that she’s been like a lap dog to you, Dan. All smiles and googly eyes. I’ve heard that you return those wide smiles and googly eyes. You mind telling me about that?”

Hal stepped out in front of me, blocking my view of the dying insect. His eyebrows sunk over his eyes and the corners of his mouth were cracked open, revealing glimpses of yellow crooked teeth.

“I know what you’re up to,” he spat, his saliva a brownish color that revolted my senses. “The dumb brick-heads that work here think that you’re just trying to fuck her. Can’t blame them. I’d think so myself if I didn’t know better, after that shit you pulled on Christmas.”

I tried to swallow, but my body wouldn’t let me.

“You remember that, Dan?” he grimaced. “You remember what you did to me?”

I took a last drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke into his face.

“I remember.”

He chuckled darkly to himself, a look of death in his sunken eyes.

“I used to think of you as a brother,” he said. “And I meant it. But I should’ve known you for the piece of shit that you really are. The kind of scum that fucks his best friend’s fiancé on Christmas. On their anniversary, nonetheless. The kind of human garbage that gets his fiancé pregnant with his bastard child and leaves his friend to pay for the abortion. To leave his friend hanging high and dry when his fiancé leaves him just weeks before their marriage. That’s the filth I should have known you for.”

“What do you want?” I snapped.

“I know you don’t just wanna stick your dick in Jan. I know about that seven grand. And yeah, I know that’s your prime motivation, but I’m no idiot. I’ve seen the way you look at her. Really sweet. You, a big buff badass Asian throwing looks at an emaciated woman with brain damage and schizophrenia seven years older than you. Wait, no, it’s quite disturbing, actually. But if the right words were slipped to the right people, why, then, you might just lose your job.” He thrust his hands up apologetically and retracted a few steps.

“But hey, you know what you’re doing. You’re a big boy. Or do you?”

Hal lurched forward, sticking his snarling face mere inches from mine. His breath curled up into my nose and it reeked of an awful stench, like rusted iron.

“You’re a fucking liar, Danny boy,” he growled, the stink of his breath turning my stomach. “You’re a disgrace. A goddamned whore. And you’d better let Jan be if you don’t want to lose your job. Forget she ever existed.”

He licked his teeth, snakelike as though tasting for my fear in the air.

“Tell me, Mr. Chanthavong. How’s your dear old daddy doin’? What did you say his astrology sign was? Cancer?”

I pushed Hal away and decked him in the nose, blood spewing across his face and dripping onto the concrete as he howled with laughter on the sidewalk.

“Ooh, hoo! Struck a nerve there, didn’t we?” he cackled as he stood to his feet. “Maybe I was wrong, Danny boy. Maybe you aren’t the dainty little bitch I took you for.”

He shot a bloody booger out from his nose onto the sidewalk. He stared at me for a moment.

“What’s real, Daniel?” he whispered with another lunge forward, closer to my face than ever, his eyes wild. “''Are you really so sure you’re the birdkeeper, and not the bird? And who am I? Am I the snake that eats the bird? Am I the snake that watches your dreams at night, lurking in the shadows of your home as you slumber peacefully? Am I the snake that watches you right now as I did last night?''”

I threw him off of me and screamed, “Stay the hell out of my house, you slimy fuck!”

He doubled over with laughter. I strode over to him and grabbed his lanky frame by the collar of his shirt.

“Oh, you’re fun!” he gagged. He licked the blood from his lips. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a real fight! Why, must be nearing ten years. I really do miss the fights.”

“You’re about to meet a killer if you don’t let well enough alone,” I growled.

“It’s you who needs to leave well enough alone, Daniel.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh, yeah!”

I slammed his back into a pillar, rage coursing through my veins.

“I’m so fuckin’ hungry, Dan” he said. “I’m starving. It’s been so damn long. I want to eat, Daniel. And you’re making me really hungry right now. Don’t make me eat. I’m not supposed to eat meat, I’m on a strict vegetarian diet right now. Doctor’s orders. And by God, I really fucking hate my doctor. He’s a lying, cheating son of a bitch. Kind of like you.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” I snarled.

“Hey, Danny boy,” he added with a grin. “You don’t want me to be in your house?”

I answered the question by slamming him face-first into the grass, putting all of my weight on his chest.

“Well, then riddle me this, Batman,” he coughed. “Am I in your house? Or are you in mine?”

I leapt off of him and backed away, afraid of what I had imagined doing further to the man. Hal stood up and wiped the dirt from his uniform.

“If you want me to leave you alone, Daniel, then forget that Jan ever existed. Ignore her. Transfer to the Children’s Unit if you have to. Just remember: it’s my job here to watch the cameras. And I’m always watching. Even when you sleep.”

He straightened his collar and strutted away, blood still covering his face. I looked over to where the caterpillar had been. It was now crawling along as though it had not been dying only a few minutes before.

*  *     *     *  *

Jan splashed cold water in her face in the ladies’ room at the Spitfire. She was not looking forward to performing. The prospect of having to fill in for Mike’s band was grim for her. Like fucking a dead body. And it had already been a long, disturbing day.

When she had come back from work the previous Saturday, the book she’d found lying on her table was gone. In the moment she’d let it weigh down on her hands that morning, she had felt an inexplicable urge to open it and peruse its contents with raw, naked eyes. It was as though the book were a living entity, telepathically grappling her mind with grime-encrusted hooks and pulling her forth. But after she had escaped its presence, she’d become overwhelmed with an aversion to the idea of opening it. She knew—knew in an animal instinctiveness—that the contents would be unsettling at best. And it was to her relief that it was gone. Good riddance, she had thought. She didn’t need whatever the wretched thing was scuttling about in her life.

But that morning, the same Tuesday in which she now found herself in the graffitied bathroom, it had presented itself again. She had awoken to it, sitting on her nightstand right before her eyes, the crimson letters on the spine glittering like blood in the morning light that streamed through the blinds. On top of it had been a much different book, though. One she had never seen before, though much less mysterious in its nature. On top of The Book of Agony was a dirty green composition book, with Mike Erikson’s name scribbled on the front of it.

She had opened the composition book first, only to find that it had been Mike’s personal journal. She hadn’t read, it—that would be too invasive, she felt—but she instead focused her attention on the black book underneath. She could feel the hooks tugging at her mind, stronger than before, reeling her in like a fish on a hook. And none of Dibby’s snarls and barks of protest in the world could stop her.

What she’d found made her nauseous and numb. The pages were grey and blotched, burned at the edges and sewn back to the binding. The first page simply read The Book of Agony in brownish-red ink and smelled of rot and metal. Turning the page greeted her eyes with a column of miniscule Spanish text on the left and a painting of a Spaniard in Renaissance-era garbs with his eyes dissected in his head and esophagus protruding from mouth splashed across the right page.

It was disturbingly realistic, and the man appeared to still be alive in the painting, screaming and writhing within the constraints of a medieval torture rack. She flipped to the middle of the book, to see a Native American woman with her skin flayed and knives stabbed throughout her body as an eagle ripped apart her flesh in a similar looking dungeon as the Spaniard.

She flipped towards the back of the book and came across an Arabic child being crushed between rocks as his organs were squeezed out, his eyes open and screaming. The next page revealed a surprisingly less-gruesome detail of another boy chained to a wall behind iron bars with an eye missing and broken bones. On the other side of the bars were what appeared to be two corpses, the backs of their heads towards the viewer, their faces pointed towards the child.

With a breath of hesitation, Jan flipped the page once more. This time there was a man writhing on the floor with pigs gnashing at his innards, guts and fleshy residue lining the cobblestone floor.

Janice didn’t know why she turned the page that last time. She wanted nothing more than to throw the book into a lake, to never see it again, to scrub her eyes away and unsee the horrors it contained. But the book silently commanded her to take a last look. Just one for good measure, one to really spice up her nightmares.

The last page was Mike. He was staring wide at the ceiling, his hands and his feet tied to two wooden poles on either side of him. He was naked, and his chest had been sawed open to reveal blackened, heaving lungs with the ribs like blood-buttered wings on either side. A strange device was attached in his mouth, as well, with what appeared to be hot coals funneled into it. Hooks had spliced open his nostrils and pinned them to his face with tiny needles jutting out.

That was the point when the hooks released from her own mind, and she unleashed a scream as she closed the book and let it fall to the floor. She considered calling out of work that day, but she had already been late three days earlier. Even if her boss, Jim Bobshed, was a grueling troll of a man instead of the patient soft-spoken one he was, she wouldn’t feel right doing so.

But her mind had suffered. She kept catching glimpses of him at work that day, though he was never really there. Even the obese man named Howie who went to Dingle Burger every day of the week had appeared at first to be her missing friend.

She thought she might find rest during her break. Sneaking away to her car and opening her first pack of cigarettes, she fell into a doze in the warmness of spring. She dreamt of their trip to the zoo they had taken not long before everything had taken such a nose-dive. When they were all happy. When they were all free. But in the dream, they’d been t-boned by a semi-truck (in reality a minor bump into another car) and Mike had been sent headfirst out of the window. When Jan had raced out to check on him, his chest had been ripped open, and his eyes were glazed and cold. But right before she was jostled awake by Jim’s tap on the window, he had looked to her and grinned a leer of hunger.

“Hey, Jan,” Rosa greeted as she came out of the bathroom stall.

Jan was knocked back to the present, the grimy bathroom feeling unnaturally clear. The past several days had felt so hazy to her.

“You okay?” Rosa asked.

Jan splashed more water on her face and nodded. It wasn’t true, but Rosa had enough to worry about. She didn’t need to know. Not yet, at least.

“Hey, you want a drink or something to calm your nerves?”

“Think it might come out the wrong end,” Jan chuckled with her eyes cast down.

“Stage fright, huh?”

Jan again nodded her head, and again she didn’t mean it. She’d played on stage her fair share of times. But she had never seen anything like that book before.

“Hey, let’s go outside,” Rosa invited. “Still got forty-five minutes before we’re up.”

“Alright.”

They left the bathroom, and Jan warily scanned the bar. It was a crowded night, that was for sure. But her fright soon was to return, as she caught a glimpse of Mike at the bar, downing a shot of whiskey and chatting with the bartender.

“Mike!” she gasped.

“What’d you say, Jan?”

“I see M… never mind, I was just seeing things.”

The man she thought was Mike gone, the seat empty.

She kept seeing him all that night before the show, appearing and reappearing inexplicably. Sometimes he would be turned away, and at others he would be leering at her with a wolfish grin, as though he were going to… to…. Jan didn’t want to know what he would do.

But when she went on stage, Mike showed himself once more, now at the front of the crowd right by Rosa. She never seemed to notice as she sang the lyrics, her voice scratchy and emotional, full of sadness, anger, and fear. It was for this reason that Jan never did anything about Mike’s appearance. That, and his gaze felt predatory, never leaving her.

The show dragged on, and Jan’s fright made her guitar sound all the more energetic, though it masked fear with anger. But eventually, the show finally came to an end, tears streaming down Rosa’s face as they ended the last song. Jan quickly brought her things out back and put her guitar and amp into the trunk of her car, eager to escape the stifling bar and Mike’s piercing gaze. Having left before the others had a chance to come outside, Jan went into an alleyway around the corner, on the other side of a dumpster and lit a cigarette. She didn’t want Rosa to see her smoking.

“Hey, there, Jan,” a haunted voice spoke from around the wall.

Jan’s fingers froze, and her eyes widened as she saw the person step into the light.

“Long time, no see,” he said. “How you been?”

She opened her mouth, but words couldn’t find their way to her trembling lips.

“I know, I get it,” he said softly. “I was a bit nuts the other night. Sorry about that. I don’t know what was in that coke, but I’m done with that stuff now.”

“Is… is it really you?” she whispered.

Mike smiled at her softly.

“Yes, Jan. It’s me.”

He slowly made his way around the dumpster, and she could see that he looked sparkling clean, his skin clear and glowing.

“Jan, I’ve missed you.”

“I-I’ve missed you too,” she returned, still too numb to move.

He approached closer, and she could see clearly into his earthy brown eyes. He reached out his fingers and gently plucked the cigarette away from her.

“Don’t start. Trust me, not worth it.” His words, though they came from his mouth, somehow didn’t sound like his.

Mike took her hand in his, and put his other hand to her hair, gently stroking it. The touch was ice cold.

“I’ve always wanted you, Jan,” he said, his breath smelling faintly of copper. “I’ve wanted to feel you for a long time.”

The hand on her hair slowly lowered to her hip and began reaching up her shirt.

“Mike!” she yelped with a swat. “What has gotten into you? No!”

His eyes grew dark, and his face hardened.

“Do you not love me, Jan?”

“Not like that!” she cried. “God, no, not like that! Just as a friend, Mike! What’s gotten into you?”

He glowered at her, dull anger brewing in his eyes.

“I want to feel you, Jan. And you’re going to let me.”

He grabbed her shoulders and threw her to the ground. The bar was out of their line of sight.

“HELP!” she screamed.

Mike grabbed her hair and pulled her head back and put his other hand over her mouth.

“One more peep out of those pretty little lips of yours and I’ll rip out your goddamn throat!”

He dragged her deeper into the alleyway, into the shadows and away from the amber light, her screams blocked by his hand.

He released his grip and put his hands on the hem of her shirt.

“P-please stop!” she cried, too numb to cry. Everything was crashing around her, her world had collapsed, everything she knew about her friend dead wrong. The alleyway felt far and distant, despite herself being in it.

“Please, Mike!”

He drove his fist into her cheek, pinpricks of pain exploding across her face.

“What’d I say about those fucking lips of yours. What’d I say?” he spat. He picked up a dirty rag from the ground and pried her mouth open, stuffing the foul cloth inside, bugs squirming and scuttling from out of it and scratching at her teeth and biting her tongue.

“Scream now, bitch,” he snarled. “Scream! I said, SCREAM”

She tried to scream, but all that came out was a muffled sob.

“Yeah, I like the way you scream now, Jan. Keep fuckin’ screamin’,” he growled, the stink of his metallic breath tainting her nose. “You know, I liked that little show you put on back there. I liked what I heard. Hell, you’re better than Greg. But you know what? I’m curious. Do you feel as good as you play?”

Mike ripped off her shirt and pried open her bra. He didn’t smile, not even a leer of self-indulgent pleasure. He unbuttoned her pants, his arms brushing aside Jan’s protests with ease.

And as he took his pleasure, Jan stared at the amber lamp on the far side of the alleyway, her mind numb, her tears cold. She pulled herself away from reality, forcing her mind to escape into the glow, watching the scene from afar.

She sobbed into the ground, her body sore and her pants still around her ankles. She spat out the rag, mold and slime making her mouth slick and the bug bites stinging. Mike’s footsteps were distant, echoing across continents before they made their way to Jan’s ears. She raised a trembling hand to her eyes and brushed away the pain, glancing at the back of the man she’d once called friend. Deep within, she felt rage brewing. Fear began to slowly melt away as she came back from her haze, back to the moist alleyway. She had never felt this much anger, this much hatred. She was betrayed, filthy and defiled. There was nothing she wanted more than to avenge the broken body she now possessed. To take the life of a rapist.

Janice looked around her and spied a piece of rebar by the dumpster. Pulling up her pants, she slowly made her way over to it, gaining on the confident lulling stroll Mike had adopted. She grasped the warm metal in her sweaty hands, and slowly she stood, hardly aware of the man’s cheerful whistling. Janice charged, relishing the crack of metal on bone.

''“God! You bitch! You fucking bitch! You broke my goddamned knee—''”

She swung again, smashing the rebar into his ribs, bone cracking under the force.

He screamed in pain and attempted to grab at the weapon, but Jan yanked it out of the way and the metal met skull with a sickening crunch.

Mike cried out again, but Jan did not hesitate. She struck again, and again and again, until Mike was twitching and foaming at the mouth on the ground, blood escaping from every orifice. Even then, she could not stop. Janice kept smashing, stabbing, and smashing some more until Mike’s head resembled little more than a gory pile of flesh on the ground. She stopped to catch her breath, her skin cold with sweat and her breath high and raspy.

“Jan?” she heard from the distance.

She saw a small figure coming in the shadows.

“Jan?” Rosa called. “What are you doing down the—”

Jan put her fingers to her lips, and Rosa, emerging in the lamp light, put her mouth to her face, stifling a shriek of horror. Jan couldn’t feel her body.

“Is that—is that Mike?” she gasped hoarsely, staring at the clothes. “Why—why did you—”

Rosa’s eyes turned to Jan and she froze, her expression growing stony as she took in Jan’s unbuttoned pants and naked torso covered in blood and grime.

“He… he didn’t—”

Jan nodded, her head heavy as lead and tears welled up as she did so.

Rosa looked back to the body, appalled. With no warning, she strode over and snatched the rebar from Jan’s hand and began to stab it into the fleshy mush, the slippery meat only sucking and sloshing on the metal.

''“Fucker! Fucker! Fucker! Fucker! ''FUCKER! FUCKER! FU-CKER!”

“Quit!” Jan snapped as she snatched the metal from Rosa’s hands and let it drop to the ground with an echoing clang.

“Somebody’ll hear us.”

Music was playing inside, but Jan didn’t want to risk the stray bystander hearing them. They stared at the remains of Mike’s head for a moment.

“What do we do now?” Jan whispered, her voice prickling in her throat. “Call the cops?”

Rosa breathed through her hand sharply and shook her head, eyes watery.

“No,” she answered. “They won’t care. They’ll just say you shouldn’t have been back here. That you shouldn’t have killed him. They’ll lock us away.”

The night was heavy with those words, and Jan couldn’t protest.

“Th-then do we… do we hide the body?”

Rosa shrugged and nodded her head.

“Guess so.”

“Where’ll we hide it?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe one of those abandoned barns at the edge of town? We can put it in a barrel of Drain-O. Cut off the toes and fingers. Get all the hair off. Clean the body.”

“How do you know all that?” Jan asked.

“TV,” Rosa replied. “We’ll have to wash his… you know… dick, too. Get… any traces of you off of him. I can do that, though. Hell, I can do all of it.”

Jan didn’t reply.

“I’ll go get my car. Grab that bucket over there, and we’ll put the head in that. Can put the rest in the trunk. You also need a shirt or something.”

“I don’t have another one with me.”

“Well, we can’t have you running around with your tits hanging out, can we?”

Rosa tried to laugh to lighten the mood, but it had no effect on Jan. She suddenly felt very aware of herself, and instinctively covered her breasts with her hands.

“I might have an extra hoodie in the car. You can wear that.”

Jan looked down at her body and felt suddenly disgusted. She’d used to feel self-conscious about her body when she was younger, often purposely overeating to punish herself and then making herself puke it back up. She’d overcome this since dropping out of college, and had thought little of her body since, sometimes even feeling proud of her curves and full figure. But now she saw only repulsive flesh. Flesh that almost deserved the rape she had endured.

“I’m too fat,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I’m too fat. You’re skinny, I won’t fit.”

“Jan, you have to wear something. Just… keep it on until we can get you more clothes.”

Jan nodded her head abjectly, trying not to cry as Rosa made her way back to the parking lot. She was quick to pull back around, but not so quick as to arouse suspicion.

She managed to get herself into Rosa’s hoodie, though it required additional help and didn’t cover everything. Tears silently slid down her face as she put it on and as the two scooped up the bloody remains into the bucket and stuffed it and the body into the trunk of the car. They drove off into the night towards the countryside. Neither spoke a word the whole ride, and Jan sat curled up in the passenger seat, tears falling down her blank face as the scene from the alleyway played in her mind over and over again.

But when they’d found an adequately decayed barn, the body was gone, and the bucket was empty. 