Chapter 1: Victim 13 - The Innocent

First Chapter. Opens on the end of the story.

 

Cold Coffee

Chapter 1

:Victim 13:

-The Innocent-

 

 

            The bright sun shines down upon the world, lighting the earth in a torrent of unrelenting blissful luminance. Normally one would look around at a landscape illuminated by a midday sun and feel reassured by the beauty and majesty of life, and the power of the all-encompassing rays of the life giving heavenly body. However, no matter the brilliance, no matter the majesty, and no matter the assurance that the sun will indeed continue its course through the sky no matter what happens below it, the beauty of the day is lost upon me as I speed down the highway, struggling with my thoughts.

                The white and yellow lines of the well-kept asphalt race below me, forming a track straight to the horizon, and lined with trees that struggle in vain to reach ever closer to the sun, providing shade for everyone on the highway. Everyone aside from me it seems. The sun glares down in omnipresence, catching my eye with sprays and shafts of inescapable annoyance that I continue to struggle desperately against. No matter what way I shift in my seat, or how I move the visor, or what turn the seemingly endless stretch of highway takes, the glare is ever-present in the corner of my eye, half blinding my view of the road.

                As if the blinding light from above isn’t enough, the other half of my vision is continuously filled with the happenings of the night before. In retrospect it is probably more accurate to say this morning, since the happenings before midnight weren’t at all unpleasant. The events leading me here, to this endlessly dull drive down New Jersey’s southbound 295 interstate, were nothing more than the fulfillment of a half-a-life fantasy. Nothing, however, can prepare a young adult male’s mind for the rueful truth of a fulfilled dream.

                I’ve driven this road far too many times for me to even beginning recounting them. A former job in this part of the state left me with a thirty-minute drive to and fro work daily, and gave me an intimate knowledge of every pothole and exit on the stretch from the Delaware Twin span to the Pureland Business District. No amount of driving this highway has ever made it any less boring, and with the rerunning visuals of the night playing like a still-frame video scrapbook of hell through my mind, the drive is made more and more tedious, dreadful, and insatiably aggravating.

                The sun catches me with another glint off the windshield as I make a soft turn right, following the highway. The line of trees on the right blocks the sun for a split second before pavement straightens out again, and the sun is right there in front of me again. If I was a little more paranoid or even a little less of a realist I would say that the sun was more aware of my crimes than I was, that it was hunting me to shed light on the horror of everything that I have committed.

                A car-a fairly new red mustang-is coming up behind me at what could only be ninety miles an hour, and not a mile and hour slower. I’m going seventy-five, and by comparison he, or she, is getting closer and closer every second. Each moment the outline of blurry red becomes more and more distinct in the dusty rear-view, which now hides a small speck of the sun, allowing my only clear view to be the one behind me. Irony is something I was never keen on, now I remember why. The car is now close enough that the hood is the only part visible in the mirror, and so I adjust it, pushing the top back a bit to get a look at the driver about to be tailgating me.

                The mirror skips back, and the world visible through it jumps about before it settles into position, but the driver is out of view already as they switch lanes to pass. I catch only a glimpse of blonde hair flailing about before only the passenger’s side of the car is visible. I focus my attention back to the road ahead, towards the insufferable glare, and wait for the blur of bright red to move into my peripheral. The slightest hint of color comes into the corner of my eye, the sun reflecting off it and now catching almost all my vision in glare, and it’s only when I realize that I’m being blinded for too long that I move my eyes to the side to see why the car has not passed yet.

Setting my eyes to the driver I realize I’m staring at a blonde bombshell. If I were the mood to be even the slightest bit concerned with anything at all, I would show a small amount of emotion. Something in the back of my mind twitches at the sight of her. Her blonde hair, as long as it is, accompanied by the pale complexion of her face and the high cheek bones reminds me of someone I’ve met over the course of the morning. As the resemblance becomes more and more uncanny in my mind-either a manifestation of my own inability to remove the visions and memories, or from the truth of the resemblance-I find myself aggravated by this woman. The only thing about her that seems to shatter the similarity between her and the image of the woman in my mind is the pair of huge aviator-style sunglasses she wears.

                Her speed now settling more exact to mine, I notice that she’s eyeing the BMW I’m pushing headlong down the highway. Her eyebrows are arched above the top rim of the shades, and her head has a slight tilt to it, as if looking down at the car. Suddenly I remember the dents, dings, and scrapes that the vehicle has taken throughout the morning, and I can only imagine what her reaction would have been at the beginning of the night when this car looked like it just came off the sales lot. I still haven’t decided if it actually did or not. I would love to say that it had, but the miles on it betray the thinking.

                Exit eleven, almost there.

                I look quickly forward down the road as I see the exit sign in my peripheral, checking the traffic, in this case the lack-there-of, before looking back to her. She lets the sunglasses drop down to her nose, barely revealing a pair of sparkling blue eyes reflecting more sunlight than the fiery red of her car, for another glance at the car. She takes in the black, ruined, paint job on the BMW that, for all I know, isn’t even supposed to come out this year. With these kinds of dents on this kind of car, it’s more attention than I need right now with everything I’m running from.

                I have to do something about this woman. Why is she following me? I can’t let her follow me down the next exit where I’m heading. The resemblance is too close, the connection too possible. I can’t take any more chances. I wonder at what point I actually began thinking of beautiful women as more harm than good. Probably five am.

                She smiles a little as her speed continues to match mine and risks a quick glance forward to make sure that she can safely stay where she is and not rear end someone. In that smile I can see the grin, practically feel the dangerous flirtatious nature of it, and I don’t even need to think about it to know that the look I’m returning shows about as much emotion as a tree would show a chainsaw. Her half-smile, half-grin, wavers when my grim emotionless gaze doesn’t, and she appears to clear her throat and readjust herself. She puts her hands at ten and two after lifting the aviators back across her eyes, and looks forward. Though her attention is shifted, her speed hasn’t. I suppose action has to be taken.

                I take advantage of her averted attention, now focused on the road it should have been the whole time, to lean towards the passenger’s side. With my left hand on the wheel I reach down to the mat, having to weave between the ankles of the sleeping passenger, and avert my eyes from the road for a second. No one on this side of the interstate this time of day, that much I remember from the previous jobs in this area, but there’s always a random bit of debris caused by some over-turned trailer or blown out tire. I feel around the floor, patting the mat until my hand hits something solid that isn’t a shoe. I let my finger glide across the smooth steel to make sure it’s mine. Mine is no different than his, except for the small etching on the right side of the barrel.

                The tips of my fingers run along the grooves from open end to trigger side, J A C K. Checking forward one more time I wrap my fingers around the grip and trigger, checking the small slide about the trigger with my forefinger to assure myself that the safety is on. I don’t want it going off, I only need to scare her into not following me.

                Adjusting my position back to a more upright, safe driving, one, I risk the quick glance to my left to check that she’s still watching the road. Her left hand has lit a cigarette, and she’s resting her temple on the heel of her palm with her elbow resting on the open window, the cigarette blowing in the wind-held by two fingers.

                She glances over and smiles again, my hand comes up, and I flash her the first display of emotion, as malicious a grin as I can manage. A glint of light rolls slowly off the barrel and down to the hammer, a practiced effect finally put to good use. Her eye rolls along the barrel with the glint and her mouth drops open to a gape. The cigarette flies out the window into the back seat, the glasses fall, her eyes go wide, and her speed goes from seventy-five to a cloud of burnt rubber.

                I’m sure it was a beautiful red mustang; I didn’t get a good look, aside from the sun reflecting off the brilliant red. However, from the sound of bent frame and squealed tires, I don’t think the eighteen-wheeler barreling down the highway at eighty only two hundred feet behind her got a good look either.

                The sound is nothing like what you hear in a movie. There is no long, drawn out squeal of tires that makes you wonder who did that shoddy of a job on the brakes. There is no swerve and slam as the car loses control and rams, front-end-first, into a guardrail. There isn’t even the sound of a ten-car pile up like you would expect on a two lane, one direction highway that grants no innocent bystander an avenue around the danger.

                The only sounds are those of the squealing tires, and then the single, solitary smack of a speeding trailer destroying the rear end of a fiberglass casing. The only drawn out sound I can imagine is the piling up of police reports and insurance claims.

                I convince myself that it isn’t worth looking back, that none of it is my fault, and that looking back is just asking for proof that I did something wrong. I did no wrong in this case; a woman looking too attractive for her own good, driving a car too rich for her bank account, saw something startling and, in an act of irrationality, did the opposite of what you’re taught to do on a highway; stopped.

Whatever the appearance of the car, whatever the right or wrong, whatever the perception and conviction of the situation, it’s still a risk I can’t take. Her perfect looks in a car that rich is something I’ve been fooled by once tonight, and I’ve already learned that they’re not above putting high-class prostitutes on the payroll. I’ll be gone long before the police arrive anyway, and there’s no way she noticed the license plate. Now that I think about it, I don’t even remember if this car still has one.

                Exit ten, that’s mine.

                Veering to the off-ramp lane I let the BMW slow to thirty before hitting the off-ramp and making my left through the red light. Its 12:45, I’m sure there was someone coming. I’m also sure they like their car more than I like mine. Then again, this isn’t my car.

                Only fifty feet leads to the entrance to the Wawa. I don’t recognize this one; I believe they built a ‘Super Wawa’ in replacement of the one down the street. Just as well, there was never any parking there anyway. I park, closer to the front, just in case, and let the engine die.

                The damn sun is still in my eye. How it is that the eye of the sky manages to find me wherever I go I can’t decipher, but now I’m pretty sure that’s its following me. I close my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest of the driver’s side seat. At least that’s still there. Thank God for that.

                I laugh to myself as a young couple, obviously on their way to work holding a 20 oz coffee each look at me like I’m crazy. Maybe they’re right. God wouldn’t accept me now, not after this morning. I want to think about how I got myself into this crazy mess, but if I start thinking I won’t stop. And all I want is a hot cup of coffee. It’s just about all I’ve wanted all night and all morning long. I’ve taken for granted far too long the simple pleasure of a hot cup of coffee to keep me going.

                I let a long sigh slip out and let my hat fall over my eyes. In the half-light, half dark, of my vision I can see the tan suit pants of my passenger move, knees coming up, as I hear him sitting up in his seat and clearing his throat.

                “You up, Fox?” I ask.

                He breathes out a bit exasperated, more of a sigh than a breath, and replies, “I was never really down. Not down and out at least.” His voice is drifted, off somewhere else along with his thoughts. I can feel the gruffness of his voice, too many cigarettes last night I’m sure, and the stress of everything probably doesn’t help with the smoking.

                He reaches down and fumbles at a pack of Camel Wides, flicking it up to pull a single smoke out, and gets nothing. In scrutiny he shakes the pack and looks into it with one eye, his hat still pulled half way down across his eyes as he does. I swear, sometimes he reminds me of an old black grandpa. A grunt comes a second before the sound of the empty pack hitting the pavement outside.

                “Let’s get some coffee,” I suggest.

                “Gooood idea,” he offers. And then adds, “How long HAS it been since we’ve had a cup of coffee?”

                While I think I reach down and tuck the gun just behind my hip in my belt on the right, moving the torn and ripped flap of the suit jacket over it to button it. Looking over I can see Fox has done much the same, though he keeps his behind his left. “We had a cup of coffee almost every hour this morning.” Then, feeling the longing and despair in my voice. “Though, they were all colder than hell. Let’s go.”

                I open the door and let it hang for a second, nearly hitting the car door half opened next to me, only caring enough to give a single raised eyebrow in her direction as she scoffs and makes a sound of disgust. At least I’m courteous enough to wait until she’s gotten in the car, half spilled her coffee, and closed the door before I get out and stand up. I hear the small grunt coming from Fox as he lowers the fifties styled hat over one eyebrow to block the sun with two fingers. As my hand gets halfway through running through my greasy matted and dried blood encrusted hair I realize we must have grunted at the same time as we got out.

                My wounds were killing me, nothing fatal, and nothing that hadn’t managed to scabbed over with the make-shift bandages we applied, but I could feel the scabs breaking in my side and it felt like the knot on my head and the bruise against my sternum would never heal right.

                A few shaky steps and we we’re halfway to the door, eyeing everyone suspiciously even as we held the door for them and tried to fake a genuine smile. After the night we had it wasn’t hard, but this was so late in the game that it wouldn’t even matter if we failed anymore. What was there to fail, where was there to go wrong? One more body found on the trail to track us down wouldn’t change much, the people hunting us couldn’t go to the police to get the report, and even if they got a local newspaper we would be a day or two away before anyone even managed to find out and start searching.

                As we head in through the doors I notice the looks we receive from the “standards.” The “Standards” are a name for people that serve no purpose in anything except to make money and spend money. No matter how good, or bad, a person, they still serve no purpose until they’re thrown into a police or syndicate event unwillingly. I used to be a “standard.”              

                Just like every Wawa, there are over twenty pots of coffee brewing or brewed to serve the steady stream of customers looking for it. 15 million served the sides of the cup say. I don’t know if I believe that much.

                I get my coffee from the rack, hazelnut with irish cream creamer and a single sugar packet. I stare down at the now pale brown coffee and something about it seems amiss, but I’m too tired to think about anything except a single overwhelming thought. Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. I let the black lid with the sipper slit in it click onto the top of the cup and walk over to stand in line, nodding at Fox as he walks by with a donut bag toward the coffee racks.

                I stand in line for only a few moments before I’m the next in line. The woman in front of me, small and pudgy, but I suppose if I were looking hard enough and my vision wasn’t as tired and blurry as it was she would be fairly attractive in the face. I can’t wait to drink this coffee. Coffee.

                I set the cup down as she walks away and slide it over to the young kid behind the counter, the only one working at the registers. The rest of the employment either walked out or is all in the back room on break or in the deli, I just now remember he’s the only one I’ve seen wearing a Wawa shirt.

                The kid has shaggy red-blonde hair and looks to be only about in tenth grade, probably working on the weekends for some young girl he will never earn the attentions of. He asks me how I’m doing and I can’t even force a grunt, I just stare him in the eye as I’ve grown so used to doing to everyone in the last few hours. Maybe I’m jaded, but I don’t care. He just nods and says, “O.K.” forcing a small smile and a nervous laugh. It’s never a good thing to laugh at someone directly, the laugh was for the situation, or his own comfort, I’m sure.

                I reach down into my pocket and pull out a one-dollar bill and a nickel, putting the nickel on the counter and letting the metal ring loudly without concern. As I reach my hand out holding the bill I hear Fox’s voice, loud and thoroughly annoyed, behind me, “What the F**K!?”

                Not an explanative I’m used to hearing from him, but the emotion was standard for the last three hours we’ve have.

                 Turning slowly around, he’s holding a pot of coffee in his hand and looking down at a cup indignantly. He catches my eye, his face still twisted into an angry scowl. “Yo, Jack. Taste that coffee.”

                By this time the entire store is staring at the two of us, all eyes switching their gaze from one to the other, my hand still outstretched holding a dollar bill to this shaggy haired youth, and the rest of the store either arching their eyebrows in irritation or scowling and glancing down at their watches or cell phones to see if they’ll be late for work.

                With an exasperated sigh I glance down and lift the cup, sipping it lightly, waiting for it to burn my tongue. I take off the lid and sip a bit more, disconcerted with the annoyed gazes of the people waiting in line behind me. I drink in half the cup, so used to it that it takes me a moment to realize what exactly is wrong with it. Suddenly it hits me. It’s cold. Ice cold.

                I sigh lightly and set the cup, half empty, down on the counter and slowly reach into the suit jacket and behind my belt. With shocked gasps shattering the silence behind me ever so lightly, as if the overture into a symphony I watch myself lift the barrel and focus my attention to the look on my face, letting my muscles naturally settle into a visage of an emotionless void. The symphony begins to gain instruments as Fox’s click of shoes steps closer to me casually like a snare drum keeping time and rhythm, plastic bottles and wrapped deli sandwiches hitting the floor like a bass drum, glass bottles hitting the floor and shattering adding cymbals to the cacophony, signaling the end of the overture and the beginning of the chorus.

                My cold blue eyes meet the dull brown luster of the now shivering ginger behind the counter. I have an icy, emotionless stare, stirring with the cold, patient anger of a glacier, meeting the fear-inspired, quaking gaze of the teenager, as he shivers uncontrollably.

                The chorus swells as the timed clicks of footsteps moves towards the door, and a wave of bodies hit the floor in preparation of a robbery that will never come. Fox appears in my peripheral with a grin, and time floats endlessly by into nothingness as the third hand of the clock on the wall glides slowly along the face.

                His eyes dart to the sides, down to the half empty coffee cup, back to the gun, up to my eyes, down to the barrel. Silence settles around, and I realize my shock that I can’t hear the chiming of cell phone numbers dialing 9-1-1. My eyes glance to the clock in curiosity and in the moment of realization I feel fate settling down upon my shoulders like a funeral shroud. 12:57 and some seconds: too perfect. This is destiny, this is hated irony, and this is just another thing to fuel my anger.

                The symphony ends, fading to nothing more than mere whimpers. My voice shatters the silence like a bullet through glass. “All I’ve wanted all night, and all morning, was a hot cup of coffee.”

                Confusion erupts in the minds of everyone at the sheer absurdity of reasoning behind the bullet within the barrel. The absurdity of a murder threat over 12 oz. of caffeine. If they weren’t so scared, I would swear that everyone lying on the floor or crouched down, as if a bullet would miss them if they were two feet lower to the ground, would be looking at the stranger next to them in arrogant scoffing.

                “This was my last chance before oblivion, and it’s ruined now. Someone has to pay.” He darts his eyes down the barrel and back to my eyes, trying to will himself somewhere else.

                The clock reads 12:58. How time flies.

                “You can’t do it, Jack.” Fox says as he leans against the vertical bar near the exit.

                “There’s always a scapegoat, Fox. What’s one more in the pile?” I respond.

                “You can’t physically do it, I mean.” He says as he folds his arms.

                “Check the clock. It’s about time.” I tell him.

                He doesn’t even bother looking up, he’s already checked.

                “Oh I know it’s time. But you still can’t do it.”

                It’s 12:59 exactly.

                I pause before saying, “Trust me, I can.”

                “Twelve since midnight, starting at one.” He says.

                “And?”

                “Twelve to a clip.”

                12:59 and 20 seconds, 40 seconds left. I pull back the hammer, letting the metal slide ring. The kid puts his hands on the center cigarette hub behind him, as if trying to hold onto reality, and possibly, life.

                “Your math is flawed, Fox. He knew what he was getting us into. We know that now.” The conversation flows slowly, smoothly, as if over coffee in a diner.

                “How so. Twelve and Twelve, equals one any way I add it up. You don’t need a college degree to see your one bullet short of the intent reaching the deed.” He mentions it as if we’re sitting in a classroom working out a statistic. Now I’m annoyed and angry.

                I turn my head slowly and c**k my head, letting the brim of my hat fall over my vision the clerk, and hiding the peripheral of the bystanders and witnesses. I now realize there are far, far too many witnesses. He looks me back in the eye and we both arch a single eyebrow simultaneously, questioning one another.

                12:59 and 50 seconds, so close.

“Oh yea?” I ask

                “Yea” he says.

                The red hand denominating seconds slides past the 11 and climbs up towards the 12.

                “And one in the chamber.”

                The red hand hits the twelve, and the blast tears the seams of sanity still left in the situation. The hope of this all being over soon is made a wish granted by the devil as the moment ends in murder. The boy’s eyes widen and the window behind him shatters before his head even finishes the whipping motion backwards.

                As if a practiced scenario on stage, Fox and I both rush towards the victim. I jump the rounded off counter in the center of the store from my angle as soon as he launches over from another. He grabs a carton of camel wides he’s probably been eyeing since the start as I grab the carton of Marlboro Menthols from a crouching customer at the opposite end.

                The sound of dead weight hitting the floor triggers a scream, the crowd so shocked by what they’d seen that it took the disappearance of a bloody head behind a counter to give truth to the reality of the single incident they’ll all be telling their therapists about for the next five years. I could almost laugh; I’m the one that had to do it! And this is my thirteenth time in twelve hours!

                I run for the glass double doors, Fox close behind. We reach the car running the short four feet and Fox clears the hood as I open my door, starting the engine as he opens his door. As I put the car in reverse and hit the gas without looking back I can see people beginning to stand and tears flooding the women’s faces as men’s eyes become so wide they look like the only feature on their face. Every face is pale, and a grin.

                A woman sees it and the pain in her eyes crushes my soul with its weight. Not pain for the her having to see it, not pain for being the one right behind me in line, not pain for the corpse behind the counter staining the linoleum, pain for me, pain for a soul that has been forced to think this ok, pain for an irretrievable soul damned to the darkest circle of hell. In her gaze, under the weight of her pain, my heart skips a beat, and I return a pained look of understanding straight back to her eyes through the frame of shattered glass. She’s the first one to pity, the first one to care. I hate her. I want to thank her.

                I pull the shift down to drive and head out towards the traffic light outside the gas station side of the Wawa complex and through the red light, nearly missing a Mercedes and heading into a direction anywhere but the main highway. The car heads straight and the ride is silent, just like it had been on the way there.

                Suddenly there is a click to my right. Fox hands me a cigarette, he must have opened both packs, and snaps his zippo shut with a flick of the wrist. In the corner of my eye I see the burnished gold on black with the logo on both sides: a gold circle on a black field, two vertical lines running so that their center is the center of the diameter, the right line breaking the perimeter at the top, the left breaking it on the bottom. I sigh as I reach into my pocket and look at mine as I drive. A beautiful symbol of how trapped we are, and how far we can run, and only be doing our job.

                “It doesn’t matter where we go. They aren’t even trying to find us. We work for them, we’ll have to go back.” I mention in final defeat, destroying the reflective silence.

                “Yea,” Fox replies, pausing before adding, “How did we get into this mess? When did that become O.K? I know I’ve said this before, but when did that stop bothering me?”

                I sigh and run my fingers over the hair above my ears, under the slanted hat. “About 6 am.” I tell him.

                The drive continues in silence, no direction except forward, and I think back to the first time I killed a person. Only 12 hours ago. At least that one deserved it.

 

                *              *              *              *              *              *              *              *              *              *              *

 

Author's Note

Try not to butcher it. It's my one and only love.