"Yes, the tapes."
A flash-fire races through Randa"The Reporter isn"t supposed to steal the limelight! Rand is The Prisoner. The-Juvenile-Sentenced-To-Death. The one who has agreed to this 3-way exclusive. Theonly one the camera should be focused on!
Rand knows he should say nothing but he needs to regain control. "The only urges I have are to get rid of The Evil."
The Lawyer jumps in. "Don"t say another worda""
"What is The Evil?" The Psychiatrist asks, leaning far forward, until Rand can smell her perfume.
"You mean evil, like you?" The Reporter says sharply.
The Videographer turns the lens back to stare at Rand. Rand smiles slightly and gazes seductively into the impa.s.sive camera eye. For effect, he fingers the white ribbon he always wears on his prison shirt, over his name. "I just mean, the world is full of violence. I wish it wasn"t, but it is."
"That"s enough, Rand! My client isa""
"Men are the violent ones. Everybody says so. The TV, the newspapers. So men have got to stop the violence. *A man"s gotta do what a man"s got to do." John Wayne said that, you know. My mother used to quote him."
"Rand, have you heard of the psychiatric term *projection"? It"sa""
"If men don"t do it, who will? The good guys have to stop the bad guys, or there"s gonna be violence."
"Listen, kid, I"ve been a reporter for twenty years, and I know BS when I smell ita""
"My mother didn"t raise me to be violent. She didn"t want me to be like my father."
"As your counsel, Rand, I must advise youa""
"Most men are violent, don"t you think so doctor? You"re a woman."
"Rand, people can project feelings they have onto someone elsea"the way a camera projects an image. Angry feelings, or feelings of wanting to harm someone we fear will harm usa""
But Rand tunes her out. He directs his remarks exclusively toward The Videographer, to her cold, precise eye, studying him, controlling him, never letting him slide out of her objective sight. "If there were no men in the world, there wouldn"t be any violence. Isn"t that right?"
Silence cuts the air for barely a second.
"I"m sorry, people, but as Rand"s attorney, I must protect my client"s interests. This interview isa""
"Deny it! Go ahead and deny it!" Rand shouts at the retreating camera, using emotional charge to lure it back. "You say it all the time, all of you. How can you say something different now? You"re phonies!"
"Rand, do you feel attacked? No one here is attacking youa""
"All of you! You want all males dead!"
"Turn off the camera, or I"ll file a civil actiona""
"So do I! Then there won"t be any more violence."
"Listen, you little s.h.i.thead,you"re the violent male!"
Rand lunges. He is aware of the camera zooming in on his hands. The chain from the wrist cuffs is hooked to a waist chain and his reach stops inches from his grasp.
Silence clutches the air. The Videographer has captured all. The shocked looks. The gasp from The Lawyer. The cry of "No!" from The Psychiatrist. The Guard drawing his gun. The Reporter, struggling to protect his genitals, what would have been seconds too late, but for The Prisoner"s restraints.
Rand stares down at his hands. They are bony and thin, *sensitive", his mother always said. The fingers stretch like talons, ready to claw The Evil from its roots. Ready to deposit it into his hungry mouth, where powerful jaws can pulverize and razor teeth rend. Where what should not exist, by being devoured, can be eliminated forever.
That would have made a great shot. His mom would have loved it. Rand sits back and smiles into the camera"s eye. He just hopes that The Videographer had the lens in sharp focus when she captured him.
Requiem in Bluegra.s.sby Steven Lee Climer Steven Lee Climer is the author of two novels, "Dream Thieves," and "Blood Red: Book One," both published electronically by Hard Sh.e.l.l Word Factory. His short works have appeared in several publications including; "Dread: Tales of the uncanny and grotesque," "Into the Darkness," and "FrightNet" among others. His short story, "By Any Name A Devil" was recently published in the "Monsters From Memphis" anthology for which he subsequently won a Darrell Award.
HE RIDES IN a large, monster-wheeled truck along Interstate 40 near Nashville. He prefers the quiet rural roads, uncluttered with cars and travelers. On the radio, he listens to bluegra.s.s. He enjoys songs with mandolins. The roads hum to him; they do the singing.
He loves the roads, especially at night. Sometimes an animal steps onto the hot, southern pavement, its eyes glowing iridescent yellow in the truck"s high beams. The animal freezes. He targets the eyes like an eagle. Using the truck as a gun, he swoops down to splatter the animal across the road. Sometimes he turns around and goes back to the spot. He likes to see the pavement turn red.
The bluegra.s.s plays and the highway sings. He drives and drives. In the distance, he sees a pair of hazard lights flashing, and wonders if it is a person changing their tire. The hazards are tilted, one flashing slightly higher than its partner, as if the car was up on a jack. His high beams. .h.i.t the reflectors of the disabled car ahead, and its hot strobes, a man kneels facing the road, working feverishly on the rear tire.
The man shows no signs of getting up. He accelerates, pushing the gas pedal to the floor. In the car ahead, two children look out the rear window. They see the monster-wheeled truck, but their father discounts them with a wave of his hand. Screaming, they pound the back gla.s.s, and the truck howls like a charging bull.
The truck slams into the car without mercy, gouging the paint with teeth and bone. The children scream as their father"s blood splatters across the steaming asphalt. The momentum of the accident slings his body across the middle of the road.
He doesn"t realize what he"s done until it is over. He brings the monster-wheeled truck to a screaming, rubber-burning halt, and makes a U-turn on the deserted highway as heat lightning reaches like fingers in the distant sky, and the highway sings in low baritone.
He returns to the car, which still sits on the jack. The hazards slice into the humid night. A night bird calls, singing harmony with the highway. The truck slows before a lump of clothing strewn about fifteen feet from the disabled car. The high beams reflect off the clothing, beige with shocks of fresh red. He steps down from the monster-wheeled truck, proceeds to the fallen man, and kneels. The man"s body was horribly ripped by the chrome b.u.mpers of the monster-wheeled truck. The truck had struck him in the shoulders, hooking and dragging him fifteen feet or more. The pavement acts like sandpaper against naked skin.
From a pocket in his blue work shirt, he pulls out a pair of latex gloves. With digits thinly wrapped in clear rubber, he fingers through the corpse"s wallet, carefully removing the driver"s license.
The pavement is red in the high beamsa"he likes that. As he walks back to the truck, he remembers the children. Back in the truck the bluegra.s.s plays, and soon the highway sings again. He turns the enormous truck around, aiming at the car on the jack. Throttling the beast, a chorus joins the bluegra.s.s. The truck bolts forward, and he zeroes in on the driver"s side door.
The car is nothing but a mouse in the bull"s path. The truck rams the car, sending it teetering on the edge of a deep, vertical ditch. It hesitates for a moment, long enough for the children to scream. Then, the car tumbles over the ditch"s edge, the top instantly collapses under the weight of the vehicle.
He turns the truck from the carnage, and listens to the hum of his lonely songstress.
HE IS ALONE in his small, narrow mobile home. A puppy plays at his feet. He likes the dog, to some it could be called love. He almost never hurts the puppy; he calls him Jessie. Jessie looks like a fireman"s dog, and has black and white spots and funny floppy ears. Sometimes, Jessie misbehaves and he punishes the dog with a coat hanger.
He remembers when he first found Jessie. He was working on the telephone lines near the Forked Deer River bridge. A car came speeding over the hill and as it pa.s.sed, the driver pitched a cloth laundry bag over the concrete railing. He watched the sack plummet into the muddy river. He saw the bag squirm before sinking. He scrambled to the sh.o.r.e, and with a long stick, snagged the sack before it disappeared entirely. He pulled it to sh.o.r.e. Upon opening it, he found five puppies; four were already dead and the last one was quickly fading. He rescued the pup and buried the others.
He watches television and waits for the morning paper. It is almost time to sleep. Soon, he sees what he"s waiting for. The reporter is with a camera crew at the site of last night"s. .h.i.t-and-run. The newsman reports that police suspect the dead man is another victim of the Interstate killer, the fifth discovered along local highways in the past two weeks. Police say they have evidence linking all five killings. They say two children were crushed to death in the accident.
He looks at the driver"s license before putting it in a shoe box. He treasures the ident.i.ty of the victims, he has them all. Suddenly, he hears the newspaper slam into the side of the trailer. He places the shoe box inside an exposed heating vent, secures the cover, and goes to the door.
"C"mon, Jessie," he says. "Time to go potty."
As he opens the metal storm door into the bright light, the screen squeaks. Jessie scoots past his legs and starts to sniff around the lilac bushes up near the trailer.
He looks across to the next lot over. Down the length of the neighbors" double-wide to the gra.s.sy patch in the back, clothes hang on the line to dry, and wasps flirt with blooming vines.
A boy, maybe five or six, plays with Jessie who has crossed into the neighbors" lot. He kneels by the puppy who is licking him feverishly. They both fall over in the yard. His attention turns to the young woman coming around the corner of the trailer. The first thing he notices is the bruise on her forearm.
"Hi." She says. "I"m sorry if my son got in your way."
Her Southern accent is very rich, thicker than his own.
"He didn"t do anything wrong, it"s all right."
She introduces herself, but he doesn"t pay attention. Instead he notices the wicker basket full of white linen.
"I love the smell of sheets dried on the line," he says.
"Me too. I hate the smell of a dryer."
He looks at the bruise on her arm then at her son playing with Jessie. His eyes wander to the clothes in the basket. Then, he looks at the wasps flirting with the blooming vines. Their wings sound like the highway when it sings. Suddenly, the woman"s husband yells out the window. He yells to come take care of the baby. Fearfully, she hides her arm with the clothes basket.
"I"d better go get that baby," she says.
He calls Jessie and walks over to his own trailer. Just as he is going inside her husband yells again, accompanied by the sound of something crashing, maybe pots and pans. He closes the door.
He unfolds the morning paper and scans the headlines. He smiles as he reads the first paragraph. He"s made the paper again.
HE IS USED to sleeping during the day. Even though the trailer park is full of kids, he"s learned to ignore all of ita"all of it except the neighbors. They are new to the trailer park. As he awakens, he sees the evening sun through the blinds. He dreamt about her baby, though he"d never laid eyes on the child.
He crawls from the bed. He has been on vacation for two weeks, and it"s almost time to return to work. He thinks about the new people in the lot next door. They have been there about two weeks. They bought the trailer and moved in just as his vacation started, just as everything started.
By the window facing the neighbors" lot, he sits at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Even though the air conditioner is on, the window is cranked open and he hears them across the lawn. Jessie scratches to go out. Angrily, he gets up to let the dog outside. Scratching on the door is the only bad thing Jessie does, but a whipping will fix that. He vows to spank Jessie later.
He opens the trailer door for the dog and catches parts of their argument. Her husband curses her for the baby, then gets in his car and leaves. She cries like bluegra.s.s.
Her husband"s voice sounds so much like his father"s. The anger swells in him, helpless to memory. His eyes wash red like the highway. Before he realizes it, he is in the monster-wheeled truck.
The bluegra.s.s music plays and the highway sings. Night has fallen and bugs commit suicide on his high beams. Tonight, he picks a different highway. Tonight he travels far from I-40 near Jackson; to highway 412 that goes to Dyersburg.
He remembers things about his neighbors. She has yellow hair, not blonde. Her husband yells so much it makes his head burn. She has blue eyes, but they are also usually pink and swollen from crying. Her husband"s knuckles are bruised and discolored from hitting her. He can"t recall her name, but does remember that she hangs clothes on the line.
Highway 412 is deserted. Everyone thinks he will be cruising I-40, that is where everything else has taken place. I-40 is a long, long stretch of black top. He drives for hours until he feels it is safe to hunt. Along the road, he sees something moving. It could be a deer, but he notices as he gets closer it is a human. He can"t see if it is a woman or man. He accelerates and his high beams catch the form.
With an outstretched thumb, the form turns and he sees it is a woman. The high beams mesmerize her like a deer. She freezes in the light. He accelerates until the tires wail like craven hags. Like a bullet, the monster-wheeled truck slams into her mercilessly. Her head crashes into the truck"s hood and the metal buckles from the impact. She falls away while the truck drives past. It is many moments before he consciously slows down. He U-turns and searches for the fallen woman on the highway. It is oppressively hot and the bugs fly in curtains.
The woman is strewn across the pavement. He stops and slips from behind the wheel. His linesman"s boots walk toward her. She is laying on the hot black top. Her yellow hair is splattered, stained red. He takes the latex gloves from his pocket, puts them on, and kneels beside her.
Her large backpack has been ripped open by the hard surface. He pulls at her shoulder in an attempt to turn her over. Suddenly, she extends a hand to him, her voice too weak to make an audible plea. She is able to turn herself over, and she stares at him. He looks down at her face, part of it is missing. The bones exposed and shattered, and blood soaking the pavement. She must have been dragged over the black top and the backpack prevented her death.
He leaps away from her outstretched hand and runs back to the monster-wheeled truck. He didn"t expect her to be alive. The bluegra.s.s is playing. He throws the truck into low gear and creeps up on the fallen hitchhiker. He knows she is trying to crawl away. He can see parts of the purple canvas backpack littering the highway from the impact point to where she now crawls.
He envisions her head crushing like an overripe pumpkin as he thrusts the monster-wheeled truck into a chorus of death angels. The tires squeal and burn as they grip the pavement. He drives and doesn"t look back.
HIS SLEEP IS restlessa"he can"t get the woman out of his mind. Did she see him, and is she still alive? He was almost certain he crushed her to death. He"s frustrated because she still has her ID, he was unable to take it. He looks at the digital clock, then at the afternoon sun as it turns soft and orange. He hears a crackling noise like a CB radio.
He gets out of bed and peeps through the blinds, and outside sees a parked police car. Their radio crackles. She must have lived.
He calls Jessie to the door. Jessie doesn"t have to potty, but he makes the dog go into the yard anyway. As he opens the door, he realizes the cops are in the neighbors" lot. His neighbor holds her baby while her little boy stands at her side. Her husband is against the cruisera"hands in cuffs. One officer is talking to him, however; they are not reading him his rights. He watches as they remove the cuffs. He notices the wife has a large red mark across her face. They ask her if she wants to press charges. She hangs her head and shakes it from side to side.
He doesn"t notice the little boy has pulled away from her and come into his yard. He plays with Jessie by the monster-wheeled truck. The little boy and the dog run around the vehicle in dizzying circles. He notices a large dent in the front fender of the truck, and a piece of the purple backpack wedged in the front b.u.mper.
He walks to the boy and smiles. "Do you like my puppy?"
"I love *im. My daddy won"t let me have one." The boy leans close to Jessie who licks his face.
He walks over to the dent in the truck and swiftly works the piece of cloth from the b.u.mper.
"Hi." He is startled as he hears her voice from behind. He turns to look at the little boy"s mother. "I"m sorry about my little boy comin" over and botherin" you."
He looks at her face and realizes her shame as she looks down. He knows she can"t hide the red mark and that makes it worse.
"Don"t worry about it, he"s a nice boy." He smiles.
They both look at the police who are getting in their car. "This is the hardest part; when the cops leave." she says.
He looks at her; she hasn"t noticed the dent in the truck. He looks down at the boy and comments how much he was like him at that age.
Suddenly, she cringes at the sound of her husband calling her. He has only seen that degree of fear on one other person: his mother. Mamma feared daddy just like she fears her husband. He looks at her sympathetically.
"You know," He says, suddenly remembering her name, "It will all be over someday, Alicia."
Without a goodbye, she grabs the boy and heads home.
HE WAITS FOR the newscast. The morning newspaper didn"t mention the girl at all. Perhaps no one found her yet. Or maybe she"s still alive, in the hospital, in protective custody? In a live mini-cam report, he watches as the newsman comes onto the screen. The reporter says just over an hour ago, a motorist discovered the body of a young woman from Dyersburg, Tennessee, killed on highway 412, another victim of the Interstate killer.
He smiles; she died. He hears yelling coming from the neighbors" trailer and turns off the television. He calls Jessie and goes to the trailer door. As he opens it, Jessie flops outside. He walks out on the small porch and looks across the lawn.
He hears her shouting back and the sound of crashing dishes. Then, there is silence. He watches intently as she rushes out of the trailer with her baby, the little boy clinging to her torn dress. She makes it into the yard, but her husband follows her out. Her husband is drunk. His words slur and he tries to grab the little baby, cursing the child.
THE BLUEGRa.s.s PLAYS and the highway sings as he sits in the back seat, so small against the maroon leather seats of the enormous 1966 Buick Electra. Every time his father hits a b.u.mp, he flies around uncontrollably.
His mother sits in the pa.s.senger seat, clinging to a baby wrapped in a blanket. She cries and talks to the child in her arms. His father is angry and blames her for the baby. He slaps her with his right hand as he drives along the dark, deserted highway.
From the back seat, he cries too, and is answered by his father"s hand. He has a large, nugget ring on his finger that leaves a mark every time he strikes him.
The night is so hot, heat lightning scrawls in the sky. He leans up over the pa.s.senger seat to look at the baby. His father calls it a freak, a curse. He likes to look at his little brother, the freak with no arms. That isn"t the only thing "freaky" about the baby, he thinks. His baby brother"s face is disfigured, too. Dad calls it "the elephant baby."
His mother cries, begging. His father accelerates along the deserted highway, his window rolled down. Lightning licks the night sky. His mother cries and screams as his father wrenches the baby away from her. She tries to pull the baby back, but he punches her hard in the mouth to silence her. She cringes as the highway sings. He helplessly watches his father hold his mother back, and as he drops the baby out the window. They drive on.