Not Like Stone

The cracks in the mirror capture the cliche of flickering fluorescent lights, distorting my face in an array dismal colors.  At least I think it’s my face. Am I forgettable even to myself? I’m shifting in and out of focus, a funhouse mirror bending and twisting me out of shape. I begin to morph into the faces of past messages. Into the stealing business partner, the suicidal investment banker, the cheating husband, the cheating husband, oh and the cheating husband. So many scorned women. Rule of thumb boys,  keep your dick out of that hot, young strange.

  I’m dreaming. Unconscious perhaps. Dead maybe. Dead would be good. Unlikely.

I recognize this place, it’s darker than before. Hellish. It’s the apartment of my first message. My first kill. Tony...Tommy...no, Todd, it was Todd, I think. I remember all of my messages, but names, they’re pointless. Tonytommytodd knew, they always know. My face, forgettable to everyone, but as recognizable as the boney reaper himself when the door opens to receive their message.  

I first put a bullet in each of his kneecaps, take the ground out from under him like he took it from me, then a bullet to each shoulder, remove the ability for him to console his pain, then one to the groin, take his manhood as he did to me, another bloody bullet to the base of his spine and I propped him up in his livingroom chair, leave him to sit and rot, to feel only the pain that pounds against the wall of his skull. Let him feel what it’s like to never move or live again.

I don’t know how long it took for Tonytommytodd to bleed out of this earth, but I’m certain that in those remaining moments he contemplated the worth of all those gin and tonics and rumpy shots the night he wrapped his car around that telephone poll, paralyzing his college buddy from the neck down.  Understanding only in those last moments that to save himself that night, placing his immobile friend behind the wheel to take the fall so he could save his own future would come back on him this way. 

The dried, dead blood of Tonytommytodd pools all around him. The pain has gone from his face. I’m floating in front of him, weightless as a helium balloon. His eyes open, pretty and opaque. Fearless. Free from the paralysis, he tilts his head to meet my gaze. 

“I’m glad it was you, Messenger.”

Every word, like a ball peen hammer knocks against my noggin, come echoing back. 

“I’m glad it was you, Messenger.” 

Louder this time. The room rocks and sways, titling on it’s axis. I’m staring down on the Judge now. His belly agape and spewing a putrid black goo. I feel dizzy and sick. I feel the tickle of vomit in my throat. 

“I’M GLAD IT WAS YOU, SOREN!”

--------------

I scream and smack my head against the passenger side window. 

“Jesus Christ man, you scared the shit out of me!” The Girl says.

“Where are we? Where are going? Whose car is this?” My jaw throbs with every word. 

“Whoa, slow down twenty questions! Relax. You took quite a pummeling back there. You just laid there and took that beating. Why didn’t you fight back?”

“I don’t know.” I mutter. 

But I do, I do know why. I lost control. I’ve missed a step. How could I have? I don’t make mistakes? I’m always careful and meticulous. No...no, something isn’t right. This isn’t on me. I need to collect my thoughts. I need to think. I desperately need...

“Pull over at the next station,” I spit, “I need cigarettes.”

“Here,” she hands me the Bodyguards smokes. It only now that I notice she is clothed, dirty jeans and a tattered Ramones t-shirt. The Judges makeover, smudged and smeared. The thought of his touches still haunting her, though she hides it well.

“They fell from your pocket, I thought I might snag one.” 

I roll down the window and toss them out. 

“Hey?”

“Not my brand. Pull off here. There’s a station up ahead.”

The gas station is lit up like an alien landing pad, E.T. didn’t get this sort of welcome.  Twenty something gas pumps, a Subway at one end and a Dunkin Donuts at the other. We pull to the far end and I start to exit the car.

“Umm, I’m not sure you wanna go in there looking like that.” The Girl says with a snotty chuckle. My shirt is covered in blood. The Judges blood. It sticks to me as I pull the shirt off. 

“No shirt, no shoes, no entrance! Pretty common policy these days.”

She’s right. I need to get my shit together. I gotta think like a killer. Right now I’m pretty much acting like a pussy. I reach in my pocket and pull out two tens and place them in her hand.

“I’m sure they have shirts in there, just grab me one.”

“I would ask for a ‘please,’ but, eh...whatever.” 

She walks inside the store and I want  to run. I am better than this or at least I was. Now, I’m trapped in this Ford Focus, bloody and beaten. Exposed...found out. Where did I screw up? The dream? What was the first message trying to say to me? Was it significant or just my blathering subconscious trying to rub it in. Was it leading me back to something or am I just hoping it will?

I’m startled by the car door opening. The Girl tosses the shirt at me. I put it on. It’s black with bold white lettering, “You Need Jesus Bro, Just Saying.” 

“You’re kidding me, right?” 

“What?” She says, all innocent and shit. Like women do when they know they’ve pulled a fast one by you and you can’t do a damn thing about it. 

“You said...”

“Yeah, I know what I said.” A near death experience can cause a person to act in different ways. I’m grumpy and she’s being a giddy bitch. To each their own. 

I’m back in front of a mirror. This one’s real. This one’s ME. My left eye is all but swollen shut. My jaw looks Iike spring at sunrise, beautiful pink and purple hues. Cuts and scrapes. There’s no other way around it. I got my ass kicked. Plain and simple. My blood, the Judges blood, my attackers blood (probably not though) all of it disappears down the drain in one, slow slug like trail. Someone enters the bathroom. They seemingly float between my reflection and myself. My senses are heightened. My imagination and self are in conflict, battling it out for supreme ruler of my extinction. I need to regroup. I need a cigarette between my fingers. 

A line? Of course a fucking, mother fucking line. I’m six deep, at least, and some old bag is picking out her scratcher tickets one by one. Her frail voice makes me what to strangle what pathetic piece of shit life she has left. Just as I’m Imagining her vocal folds crushing into a soft, pulpy mass, a hand grabs my arm. I jump and coil my fist. 

“We HAVE to go! Like NOW!” The Girl says.

“Leave me be. I need my smokes.” She takes her soft fingers to my chin and slow turns my head sideways and slightly aloft. It takes a few seconds. I’ve been knocked down a peg or three. I am so far out of my game, there’s no one even in the grandstands anymore. A familiar little neon Indian flashes on the screen behind the cashier. BREAKING NEWS: Judge Timothy Marcus found dead. Authorities are on the lookout for this individual. 

There I am, for the world to see. Once a ghost among the living...now, a wanted fugitive. I stare at myself staring back at me. 

“How did you fuck this up? How did you fuck us both?” I know he’s really not speaking to me, I know my lips aren’t really moving from this age old picture, but he does have a point. We have a point. A serious problem. 

She’s leads me out the door, pulling me like a little kid fixated on the candybar he really wanted.

“Come on! Get in the fucking car.” she snarls at me. 

I do so. Zombified, I collapse into the front seat of the Focus. The Girl puts it into drive and speeds away. We hit the highway and all the headlights are a blur. Little bits and pieces are crumbling all around me. 

“I need to think. I need my cigarettes.” 

“Here,” she shoves a pack into my lap. “They’re Reds, take one and shut the fuck up for a second.”

Reds? Marlboro Reds? I open the pack without hesitation. I pull one out and give it a slow drag across my nose. That familiar smell jump starts my brain and my receptors open wide, like mother's loving hug. 

She flicks to the life the BiC lighter in her hand and leans it across to me. I push it away.

“What the fuck, man?” 

“I don’t smoke. Not anymore that is.” 

I need them to think. A habit is a habit. I twirl the Red between my thumb, index and middle fingers. Back and forth and back and forth again, the rotation seduces and relaxes me. Distractions slowly dissipate and my mind is already partly cloudy. Moses with his crooked staff couldn’t part the seas of oblivion with this kind of ease. Then it hits me. 

“Richard!!” I yell out loud. “Fucking dick, how could I be so dumb?” 

“Huh?” The Girl says

“I need to find Richard! Do you have access to a computer?”

“Huh...yeah, I know a guy, but he’s sorta...umm, out there. He’s not gonna like us just showing up unannounced.”

“Just get me there and I will take care of that.”

“Look,” she says and then lets out a sigh, “If we are in this, then we are in this together. I’m most likely as fucked as you are. They didn’t find my body in that Motel, so whomever is doing this, my picture is next to get its fifteen minutes of fame. If I’m gonna vanish from this world like Amelia Earhart, then I like to at least know the name of the last person I’m possibly ever gonna know! My name is Stone.”

Names...I hate names. To name something either gives it power or it can take that power away. I don’t see that I have much choice here. 

“My name is Soren. Now get us somewhere safe!”