"Hunter, does Maya give good head? I mean, is it up to your standards? I always found it pretty good, except that she could never really go all the way with it. You know, she could never get it all the way in without gagging."
Hunter stared dazedly ahead. "She"s good," he said through clenched teeth.
"That"s pretty vague there, Hunter. I mean, if you"re nine inches then you have something on me so I know she wasn"t able to get it all the way in."
"She tried."
"Well, sometimes that"s the best you can ask for, I guess. Did you like the taste of her p.u.s.s.y? I ask this because I noticed you kind of feasting on it when I came home today."
"Yes."
"On a scale of one to ten?"
"Eight."
"Have you tasted a lot of p.u.s.s.y?"
"A few."
"So have you ever tasted a ten?"
"Yes."
"Who was she?"
"Lorna Brett. My soph.o.m.ore year."
"So you like the young p.u.s.s.y?"
"I guess."
"Maya, did you let him f.u.c.k you in the a.s.s? Did you f.u.c.k her in the a.s.s, Hunter?"
"Once."
"How was it?"
"Good."
"Not great?"
"It was good."
"She never let me f.u.c.k her in the a.s.s. Not that I really tried all that much but variety"s the spice of life, you know. It would have been something different, in between all those affairs with girls from the office. Right, Maya?"
"I"m sorry." She was crying, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"Doesn"t feel good to have your life, your secret life all exposed like this, does it? I mean, my secret life, h.e.l.l, it only involved me but yours was a little, I don"t know, destructive maybe. Is that the right word for it?"
No one answered Elijah, there were a few seconds of silence, the car flapping along the ill-maintained road.
"So, did you ever come in her face, Hunter?" Elijah quickly pointed off to his right and said, "You"re about to miss the turn, hon." Maya whipped the car onto Salton Lane. Elijah lost his balance momentarily but quickly found it again. "Because, you know, I always kind of wanted to but I could never really muster up the courage to ask her. I guess it"s just one of those things you either have to be asked to do or you just gotta do at the spur of the moment. So, what about it, Hunt?"
"No."
"Same reasons? I mean, you wanted to, right? When she"s having an o.r.g.a.s.m, you can"t look at those perfect little lips and not have the thought of coming onto them cross your mind."
"Yes, I wanted to."
"Okay, slow down a little bit. Stop at this bend."
But she didn"t stop at the bend. She didn"t even make it to the bend. Just before the road broke swiftly to the left, Maya cut the wheel to her right and the car rolled off the road and into a ditch. She wasn"t going very fast and there wasn"t really any damage, but everyone in the car was thrown around.
Elijah could tell what her intention was. Her intention was to wreck the car in such a way that he would not be able to open his door. Instead, all the doors were free to be opened. The front of the car had merely run into some small trees at the edge of the woods. Before Elijah could get his bearings, Maya had already opened her door and took off limping into the woods on the other side of the road. But Maya wasn"t really his main concern. Elijah"s main concern was the man in the front seat struggling with his door, trying to a.s.semble some kind of propulsive rhythm with the one side of his body that worked.
Elijah beat him out of the car, baseball bat in hand.
Hunter opened his door, oblivious to Elijah standing outside of the car, and slid his legs out until they found the ground. Elijah, looking at Hunter"s stretched out legs, swung the heavy bat across the man"s knees. He was pretty sure at least one of them shattered. Elijah swung the bat three more times, the sound of connection becoming a little pulpier with each swing. Once he was certain Hunter was no longer mobile, he grabbed him and dragged him outside of the car.
Elijah was pleased to see Hunter was now suffering from hysterics. With his good arm, the man groped for Elijah"s pants leg.
"Please," he sobbed. "I"ll do anything you want me to do. Just let me go. Please."
Elijah squatted down next to Hunter.
"There is something you could do for me."
"Anything." Tears streamed down Hunter"s straining face.
"Okay. I want you to look at that big sycamore. You can see how large it is. How it sticks up a little bit higher than the rest of the trees. Do you see it over there?"
Hunter nodded his head.
"Two years ago. Two years ago today, actually, my wife was driving a car that smashed into that tree. My daughter was also in the car. Did you know that sometimes G.o.d kills people?"
Hunter nodded his head again.
"Have you ever lost somebody that you loved more than anything?"
"My mother," Hunter blurted out, sticky spit stretching between his lips as he spoke.
"I"m sorry to hear that," Elijah said. "So what did she die of?"
"Cancer."
"Oh, so you knew she was going to die?"
Hunter nodded.
"Do you know what it"s like to lose someone suddenly? You wake up one morning and you"re this person and before you go to sleep that night, supposing you can actually go to sleep, you find out you"re someone else entirely. And sometimes, you find you don"t really like the person you"ve become."
Elijah paused, looking at the sycamore, how it seemed to stretch toward the road, looking for victims. Below him, Hunter continued to whimper.
"Do you believe in G.o.d?" Elijah asked him.
"Yes," Hunter said without delay.
"That"s good," Elijah said. "Now I"m going to give you a reason why you really shouldn"t."
Elijah stood back up and stooped into the car, leaning across the front seats to pluck the keys from the ignition. He walked up the small but steep slope of the ditch until he got to the trunk of the car. He put the key into the lock and pulled the trunk up. Looking at the a.s.sorted contents of the trunk, Elijah crazily thought all trunks must look like they belonged to a serial killera"ropes, tarps, a flashlight, the tire iron, the jack and other random debris, all of which could be construed as sinister.
He grabbed a few of the bungee ropes, with each end being a steel s-shaped hook, a pair of pliers and a length of chain. He didn"t even know why the chain was in there.
He carefully but quickly descended the slope until he reached Hunter.
"I thought you said you were going to let me go!" Hunter screamed.
Elijah furiously kicked at the man"s head. "I never said any such thing."
As he went to Hunter"s feet, the man thrashed around, screaming frantically, but it did no use. His legs were shattered and immovable from the knees down. Elijah took the bungee cords and wrapped them tightly around his legs, just below his swollen knees, taking the rope around and then through the circle created by doing that. He took the pliers and squeezed each of the s-hooks shut so they couldn"t dislodge themselves from one another, leaving one of them open.
With the chain slung over his shoulder, he grabbed the cords like a handle and pulled Hunter behind him. Going up the slope was the roughest part and Hunter screamed exceptionally loud as the asphalt sc.r.a.ped at his back when they reached the road.
Elijah remembered what the length of chain was from. It was from the dog he and Eileen and Cynthia had had. Before he sold the house and got rid of it. The dog"s name was Night. The chain was used in the backyard, part of the dog"s runner that gave him free range of the yard while still being restrained.
Hunter fingered the clamp at the end of the chain, opening it and closing it around the end link of the chain so that it made a giant loop. He was oblivious to Hunter"s panicked screams. Or maybe the screams were fuel.
He eyed one of the sycamore"s thick branches hanging low over the road. Elijah threw one half of the looped chain over the branch, bringing it down and through the other half he held in his hand. Releasing that end, he pulled on the other side until the chain was secure around the branch. The ellipse of the chain now dangled just above his head.
Elijah went back to Hunter and dragged him toward the branch. Hunter screamed and twisted, trying to get away from Elijah, his fingers clawing at the asphalt until the ends of them were turned into b.l.o.o.d.y rags.
Elijah hoisted him up from the bungee cord bundle around his knees and raised him above his head. He was glad Hunter was not a fat man. Hunter swung his one good arm fiercely, raising it up and ramming Elijah in the groin. Elijah winced and briefly let go of the cords, sending Hunter to the asphalt on the top of his head. Hunter tried to slither away in some kind of hideously modified Army crawl. Elijah took a deep breath and kicked at Hunter"s good elbow until his torso was flush against the asphalt.
s.n.a.t.c.hing the heavy pliers from his back pocket, Elijah brought them down continuously on Hunter"s arm until he was pretty sure he wouldn"t be able to move it anymore.
Elijah dragged Hunter back over to the tree, again hoisting him up, happy and disappointed at the same time that some of the fight seemed to have left Hunter. Elijah pulled Hunter up until his head was even with Elijah"s knees and stuck the open s-hook through one of the links in the chain, fastening the hook shut with the pliers.
By that point, Hunter had stopped struggling. Suspended there, his eyes rolled back in his head, drool came out of his mouth, running over his cheeks and pooling in his eye sockets before melding with his sweat-matted hair. Elijah retreated to the car, shutting the trunk and the other doors before sliding into the driver"s seat.
The car started without a problem. Elijah gunned the ignition until the tires found traction and allowed him to strainingly back out of the ditch. He continued to back the car up the road, to allow for acceleration. He checked the rearview mirror to make sure another car wasn"t coming along to ruin everything.
Suddenly, his breathing got caught up in his throat. His stiff, adrenaline-filled body was reduced to a shivering ma.s.s.
His face.
His face was the color of a bruise, dark blue swirling into black.
He gunned the accelerator, ripping his eyes from the mirror and watching the speedometer as it climbed.
The car hit the swinging Hunter and continued off the other side of the road, into the woods, crashing into a number of the trees.
Elijah sat in the car, all too quiet after the deafening crash, listening to the hissing of the engine, the quiet tinkling of gla.s.s dripping from the windshield and onto the dash. He felt blood running down his face. There were many other parts of his body he couldn"t feel at all.
Slowly, he slid out of the door, dragging a b.l.o.o.d.y arm across his face to stop the blood running into his eyes. Walking toward the road, he kept his eyes on Hunter. Or what was left of Hunter. The car had ripped him in half and what hung from the branch looked like a pair of pants spilling some type of intestinal gore. Below Hunter, the road was covered in a pool of dark blood.
Elijah stood there, not knowing what to do.
Something hit him in the head and knocked him to the ground.
He stared up at the darkening sky.
Then he saw Maya, standing over top of him.
She was crying. She held a large rock with two hands.
"My G.o.d, look at you," she said. "What"s wrong with your face?"
"He found me, Maya."
"Who found you, Elijah?"
"He did."
"I never knew you were so f.u.c.king miserable."
"Sometimes it happens, Maya. It happens."
Elijah closed his eyes.
Maya sat down on his torso and looked at him, her tears dripping down onto his face like a bruise. She raised the rock up above her head and brought it down on that face until it went away, becoming something else.
The Photographer.
Verner stood on the balcony of his 23 floor penthouse suite. The city, with all of her glittering lights, still seemed cold to him. Despite the warm breeze coming in off the Pacific, the city was still cold. Was the feeling one of physical cold or was it one of isolation? That wasn"t a question Verner asked a lot. Truthfully, he didn"t really give a d.a.m.n. It didn"t really matter the city held all the grandeur and mystery of a corpse laid out on an autopsy table. What mattered to Verner was the power he held over the city. Like the woman in the other room, the city was something he would demolish.
Only, the woman in the other room wasn"t really a woman at all, was she? No, Verner admitted to himself, she was probably just a girl. He doubted if she was more than fifteen or sixteen. Didn"t matter now, did it? His business with her was done. How many others like her had there been? Countless, like the cold cities he moved through. Countless. Worthless.
Verner pulled his silk robe around his freshly bathed body and lit a Dunhill. He sighed, blowing out a stream of smoke. Tomorrow, he had to go into the Santo Corporation and tell the company president which people to terminate. It would be roughly half the corporation. Santo was the largest employer in the city. The move would be devastating. Tomorrow, as he had been so many days in the past, Verner would be G.o.d. As mysterious as G.o.d, too. The people who would find themselves without a job would never see him, would never know his name.
Verner went back into the expansive penthouse, figuring he"d have a scotch before retiring for the evening. He reminded himself to call a cab for the mess in the bedroom before completely retiring. Bringing the cigarette up to his mouth, he noticed a speck of dried blood under his thumbnail. Must have missed it in the shower, he thought. He sat down on the couch and took the top off a large, ornate wooden box sitting slightly crooked on the gla.s.s coffee table. That"s where he kept all the random things like fingernail clippers, lighters, batteriesa"all the stuff there wasn"t much of another place to put. Instead of the miscellany he usually saw, there rested a letter-sized envelope.
That"s odd, he thought. He couldn"t quite remember tossing it in there. Before eagerly tearing into the envelope, he noticed it hadn"t come through the postal network. No return address. No postmark. Maybe it was something he"d carried home from one of the corporations.