by Synne Christian
"We're not going to the supermarket, Billy, I say, dropping Sgt. Pepper into my coat. I felt a pop in my head, but nothing else."What are you talking about? asks Billy, carefully now, The Gen X is-
"You've got it wrong, Billy, I say, I don't care about the Gen X. Another pop in my head, but still nothing else. No pain. The buffer was working.
"There is no time for this, starts Billy, but I cut him off.
"You don't understand, Billy, I say. You've got all wrong, Billy-boy. It's you I want. I'm coming for you. I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch.
"And that's that," I tell the guy. "I know that the Head Office is somewhere past the Yucca Salt Flats, but that's about it."
"And you think you're gonna find him?" asks the guy.
"Oh, I know I will," I say. "It's just a matter of time. Billy tries to talk me out of it every now and then, but he knows that eventually, I'll find him." I smile, even though I'm positive by now, that this guy can't help me. "The way I see it, I'm in no real hurry..."
Nothing but sand now, as far as I can see, and I'm starting to worry. I've got just over an hour of night left, and then up comes the Sun. It'll hit a hundred and twelve within the first twenty minutes of morning, and after that if I'm not inside, I'm dead.
I scrape the frost from my shades, and blink to switch on my infras. Nothing. Endless miles of black-blue flatland. The stars shine down, icy twilight and still air. No clouds in the sky, all burned away during the day, and what little moisture the desert could ever muster has long been sucked down into the sand. I tug on my collar and pick up my pace.
Forty minutes under hot, fiery old Sol, and you start to see things, to think crazy thoughts. I think to bury myself. Deep down under the sand, cool and away from the blinding ultraviolet glare. I'm burning up, roasting in a steaming bath of sweat, trapped in the scorched shell of a dried, burnt trenchcoat. I look around and see that I'm in hell.
I see fire all around, the air burns my lungs. I see sand clinging hotly, grabbingly to the melted rubber fabric of my boots. I see the sun reflecting dangerously from mile long sheets of cracked and broken glass. Dangerously redirected and magnified, not to be looked at, shimmering in the rising heat, like such a rolling, welcoming ocean, calling my name.
I look to the distance and I see a house.
A rusted old shack of a house, really. Little more than a loose structure of corrugated, melted plasti-wood and tin, a mirrored roof throwing the desert's heat back up into the sky.
Alone in the desert, the shimmering heat and the unnatural reflection from the ocean of melted, broken glass in the distance gives it a tilted feel. As I stagger another step forward, it's as if the tiny structure is actually clinging to the desert, holding on for dear life. As if at any moments notice it might lose it's fragile grip and plummet from the ground, up into the sky.
I take another awkward step forward, and reach toward it with a smoldering, gloved hand.
New York---
"I'm smarter than he is..." I tell myself, over and over again until I almost believe it. "I'm smarter than that rat-fuck"
Sure. Tell that one to little Brian Murphy. I'm sure that's just what he wants to hear. Little Brian Murphy. Little dead Brian Murphy. And Allison Price. And Shannon Donaldson. And Nancy Burns. And Steve Jackman. And all the fucking rest. I'm sure that they're all terribly interested in how much more intelligent I am, than--
Nix that thought right now, soldier. That kind of thinking's self defeating and pointless. The only kind of thinking that's any good right now, is the killing kind. Dirty, messy low down killing. Mutilation, rape and torture. Murder. Blood and guts, messy hands...
I'm smarter than that rat-fuck.
I know he's in here, somewhere, I can feel it. He's in here all right, I know it. And what's more, he knows that I know it.
An old warehouse on Canal Street. It's colder in here than outside, but not as wet. And there's something dead in here, I can smell it. That rotten smell of decay, obscenely masked beneath the volatile chemical odor of the warehouse. Damp and cloying, ripe, but not all the way rotten. Speaking from experience, I'd say that whatever it is hasn't been dead very long. Three days, tops. Jesus it's dark in here. Funny how certain things seem to always go together, to belong together, hand in hand. Dead things and the dark, for example. And that smell, I'd say that the mood is pretty much set, here. Yeah, I can smell it, I just can't find it.
It's dark, alright. I can't see much more than a few feet in front of me.
Then there's a noise. A dry sort of rustle, too loud to be the cockroaches, not quite loud enough for rats. A sneaky, impatient sort of sound. Corduroy rubbing on metal.
There's a strained, muffled click to my left, and all the hair bristles on the back of my neck. I hit the floor just as the room explodes in a rapid burst of gun-fire. My own piece is out and I'm blasting into the darkness, not hitting anything but plaster and plumbing. An old pipe explodes, drenching me in it's spray of decrepit rust-water.
There's a dull thud of something being dropped, like meat hitting the floor, and then the sound his footsteps, running. But not in a panic, not in a hurry. In the strobe of my gunfire I can see him casually jogging towards the door. Just another stroll in the park, just another day in the office. I get up to chase and slip on the slick chemical slime that the water's creating on the floor, and landing hard on a soft mound of... something. Whatever it is that the lunatic dropped. I'm afraid to even guess. Not that I have to, the smell gives it all away.
He stops running, and a rectangle of light appears at the far end of the warehouse, and I can see him in silhouette, laughing. In the light of the Sun pouring through the open door I can just make out what it is that I landed on. The torso of his latest victim. Headless, dismembered. Just like all the rest. Naked, with the killers handiwork wet and clotted, neatly carved across the chest, a single word.
Nix.
Then the warehouse fills with fire.
| "Synne Christian believes that editors hate him--or at the very least, that they hate The 1,000-Year Nixon. "I've sent this story everywhere," he tells us. "To everyone. No one would publish it. One editor, after reading it, even went so far as to suggest that I burn my television... God, I wish that there was a show like Nixon on TV! I'd like to see Kevin Bacon play him..."" |
