Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28428152-20181009025331

Chapter VIII

“Ben…?” he whispered. Charlie made a motion to lean up but saw the gun and froze.

“Ben… why do you have the gun?” he asked.

The window panes were clattering against the windows.

Helen groaned next to him.

“What, Charlie?”

“Nothing, Helen. Go back to sleep.”

“Did you say something about Ben?”

“No, just go back to sleep.”

Ben’s hands were shaking, and his breath was jagged.

“What about a gun?”

“Nothing, Helen. You were just dreaming.”

Ben swallowed, his feet heavy as lead, his eyes hot as a furnace. How could he possibly have agreed to do this? These were the two people who single-handedly pulled him out of that dark abyss that spanned from the death of Mohamed in September to his own father turning on him in December. They had done nothing but open their arms out to him, showing him the kind of parental love he’d never experienced before. And it had been wonderful.

Helen rolled over and saw the scene. She didn’t say a word, but only stared, eyes glazed in shock.

“Ben, why do you have my gun?” Charlie asked again, more forcibly this time.

Ben wanted to answer. He wanted to put down the gun, but his body wouldn’t allow it. He could feel the snot running down his face, and the silent tears trying to pry free.

“Ben….”

“He made me,” Ben blurted, his mouth acting without permission.

“What do you mean, he made you?”

The heater clicked loudly and hissed.

“I-I’m s…sorry….”

“Ben, you don’t have to do this,” Charlie said, his hands slowly moving towards his chest.

“I don’t want to. I d-don’t want to,” he gasped.

“You don’t have to, Ben. You can put the gun down, and we can forget all about this.”

That was all Ben wanted to do. But he couldn’t. His arms were completely unresponsive.

“He m-made me!” he choked, his chin quivering and his snot running into his mouth.

“Ben, just put the gun down!”

“I can’t! I can’t!”

“Why not, Ben?”

Ben blinked, two tears rolling down his cheeks and falling to the floor.

“My arms won’t let me.”

“Ben, just put the gun down!”

"I CAN’T! I CAN’T! I-I C-CAN’T!”

“Ben, just put the goddamn gun down and we can talk about thi—”

BANG!

Blood and bits of brain and skull exploded back and splattered across the wall and all over the bed. Ben was vaguely aware of the sound of his grandmother screaming, the brains of her husband on her face. But Ben couldn’t think. His brain was locked, he could only react.

BANG!

The bullet had pierced his grandmother’s chest, and she rolled onto the floor, gurgling and spitting up blood.

Ben slowly walked around the bed, keeping the gun pointed at her the whole time.

“B…Ben….” she muttered, chest twitching, blood covering her face and torso. “Ben…. Why?”

“I love you, grandma.”

She looked deep into his eyes and sobbed.

“I love you too, sweetie.”

BANG!

Her lifeless corpse slumped to the floor, leaning against the nightstand, the wind screaming outside the room, screaming when Ben couldn’t.

Ben dropped the gun and cradled the pale body of his grandmother in his hands, too shocked to cry, too shocked to feel. Nothing felt real.

Ben didn’t know how long he kneeled there, staring at the gaping hole in Helen’s head, glazed eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling, her hand cold in his. But eventually, the panels of the windows clashed against the side of the house suddenly, snapping him out of his trance. He picked up the gun, turned the safety on, and stuck it in his jacket, and walked out the back door as if he were a shambling corpse.

He shuffled out to the shed and saw that there were still two cans of gasoline left. Without thinking, he grabbed them both and went inside, not noticing that he had left the back door open, snow pouring into the house.

Ben made his way into their room and doused their bodies in gasoline. He then poured the gasoline around the bedroom, following which was the whole house. He used all of it.

He went into the kitchen and looked in one of the drawers, and found a box of matches, fresher than the ones he’d found in the shed a few nights prior. He grabbed his bag from his bedroom closet and stepped out the front door. He lit a match and threw it onto the small puddle he’d made in the doorway.

The flames grew immediately, and soon were racing around the living room. But Ben didn’t care to watch. He wanted to leave as soon as he possibly could.

Ben didn’ know how long he’d trudged through the raging snow, stumbling and slipping along the road, before he saw a pair of headlights coming from behind him, like the eyes of some kind of animal. But he had no idea what he was doing, his plan having only extended this far. And desperate to get out of the cold, he turned around and flailed his arms about, trying to catch the drivers’ attention.

After a moment, the headlights turned into a truck, the passenger window being rolled down to reveal a man in a cowboy hat yelling at him to get in. For a moment, Ben thought he saw a second figure in the truck, but there wasn’t.

Eager to escape the cold, Ben clambered into the truck, putting his bag by his feet, and made sure that the gun was secure in his jacket pocket.

“Mighty cold out to be walkin’ along the road,” the man said with a southern drawl. “You lost, or somethin’?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben gasped, sticking his hands in front of the vents, allowing the heat to thaw his flesh.

“Well, what’s your name, kid?”

“Charlie,” Ben said, thinking of the first name that popped into his head. His stomach sank, but it was too late, now. He had no choice but to stick with it.

“Where are your parents, Charlie?”

Ben scrambled around in his head trying to think of an answer.

“I… I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

The man shuffled in his seat, glancing in the rearview mirror as he grabbed a wad of dip.

“You homeless?” he asked with fingers in his mouth, the truck bouncing up and down violently.

“I guess so,” Ben replied. At this point, he was just trying to follow along with whatever the cowboy said.

“I see. Well, m’name’s Teddy.”

He stuck out his right hand, and Ben shook it tentatively.

“Where’re you headed?” Teddy asked.

Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno.”

“Well, I’m visitin’ up from Texas for a few days, stayin’ at a buddy’s house. I reckon you can stay there with us for the night until the blizzard passes through. Shoot, ain’t this somethin’ though. I ain’t never seen anything like it. Hell, did you see that house back there? Thing was up in flames. Good thing somebody called 911, ‘cause the firefighters were already there, tryin’ to put it out.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Ben answered, staring at the sea of white in front of them. He’d never noticed the sirens.

“You from ’round here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, I lived up here for a few years, a while back. But I got homesick, so I went back home.” He pointed at a wooden crucifix that hung from the rearview. “See that there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That was my old man’s. He was a pastor down at our church. And so was his dad, and his dad before him. But I never really cared much for preachin’.”

“What do you do instead?” Ben inquired, trying to keep his mind away from darker prospects.

“Oh, I work with cattle,” he sighed. “I work for my cousin over at a slaughterhouse. But don’t let that make you turn your head, we’re kind as can be to those cows. I mostly run ‘em through the dip. Oh hey, I think this is the turn right here.”

They turned right onto a gravelly path that went deep into the woods. About five minutes passed according to the clock before they arrived at a run-down looking shack. Ben was observing the dilapidated building when he heard a faint click and felt something cold pressed against his head.

“You say a goddamn word, or try to run, and I blow your goddamned brains out, kid. You got it?” Teddy snarled in his ear.

Ben didn’t answer.

“I said, you got it?”

“Yes, sir,” he gulped.

“Alright,” he hissed. “Now unbuckle your seat belt and climb out of the truck on my side. Slowly.”

Ben nodded his head a fraction of an inch and did as he was told, Teddy climbing out of the truck, keeping the pistol pointed at Ben’s head as he grabbed a lantern from under the seat and lit it. Ben thought about using his own gun, but Ben knew Teddy would kill him before he even got his hand around the handle.

“See?” Teddy said after Ben’s feet hit the ground. “That wasn’t too bad, was it? Now get the fuck inside, boy.”

Ben defeatedly shuffled his feet towards the door, every warning about strangers who wanted to hurt him he’d heard as a kid firing off like alarm bells in his head. How could he have been so stupid? If he’d just kept moving, if he’d never tried to get the driver’s attention—

“Move it!”

Ben hurried inside, painfully aware of the gun pointed at the back of his head. His feet tripped over strewn debris. Looking down, trash and rubble covered the floor like a rug.

“Alright,” Teddy leered as he closed the door behind them. For a second, Ben had an opportunity to shoot the man, but he missed it.

“Now take off your clothes, boy.”

“W-what?”

“I said take ‘em off.”

Ben didn’t dare question the man, but instead began to unzip his coat, tossing it aside, the lonely thunk of the gun landing far away from arm’s reach. Ben’s legs gave out, and his knees bashed into the concrete floor, but he didn’t feel it. The cold was enough to make him numb.

“Hurry up, boy, I haven’t got all night.”

Ben looked towards Teddy as he put his fingers on the hem of his shirt. He was impatiently unbuckling his pants, the large belt buckle swinging wildly from his hips.

A scraping noise sounded from the corner of the shack, and they both turned their heads to look.

“Just a mouse,” Teddy growled as he dropped his pants and began to grab at his underwear.

A growl then issued from the same corner. Teddy bent down to grab his gun, but as he did so, a large brindle pitbull charged from the corner and lunged at the man, slamming into his chest. Teddy’s fingers found his pistol, but he couldn’t seem to aim as the dog was viciously ripping out the man’s throat. Teddy’s bullet fired off into the air.

“Get off o’ me, you fuckin’ mutt!”

But the pitbull refused to let the man be, and it snarled and gnashed at the man until his body was finally limp. The dog turned its bloody face towards Ben, and he saw that he recognized the dog, though he wasn’t sure how. Ben suddenly became aware of something warm sliding down his chest. He stuck his hands under his shirt, warm liquid trickling down his skin.

The bullet had gone through Ben’s heart.

He pulled out his fingers to look at the blood and thought of his grandparents. He thought of the good times they’d had, like that wonderful day spent at the Frist, admiring the beauty of man. And then Ben thought of Penny and wished that he could see her now. He wished that she could be there to hold him, to tell him that everything was alright. But he knew that the last time he would ever see her was when she had told him to call her before driving away. But he never had.

So much potential… gone. He would never laugh with Thomas or Jay again. He would never get to befriend his cousin Michael Erikson. He would never share another moment with anybody. And here he lay, dying…. Just as Mohamed had in that ancient relic of September.

But Ben then heard a soft mewing, like a cat’s cry. He turned his head, and to his surprise, the pitbull was carrying over to him a little black cat. The sight of the pitiful creature was what ultimately made him cry. Her eyes were missing, her ears were mangled, and her hind legs had been sawed off at the heel. Ben reached out his hands and cradled the small cat against his face, crying into the cat’s purring body as she licked his face with her warm sandpaper tongue.

He suddenly felt a weight leaning against him and saw that the pitbull was lying on his lap, trying to clean the blood from his shirt.

And as Ben lay there, dying, he was happy to at least feel this last, unexpected love before he went. And slowly, the purring and licking faded away into nothingness.

*  *     *     *  *

Ben awoke in cold darkness. There was just enough light to see the silhouette of the figure beyond the bars.

“You’re all mine, now, Ben,” the familiar voice said.

He felt the cold metal around his wrists and ankles. He blinked, his single eye adjusting to the darkness. On the floor, beyond the bars, lied the dead bodies of Charlie and Helen Ross, their glassy eyes staring right at him, just out of reach.

“All mine.” 