The Christmas Wish

Tick tock tick your time is almost up as did you pick.

Allen woke with a start from a sound sleep when he heard the woman’s voice coo to him in his violet hued dreams.  He scanned the room quickly; he was in his own king-sized bed, in his bedroom, alone.  He took a long drink from the clear water bottle he had placed on his night table, checking alarm click that sat beside it as he did so – eleven oh seven.  It was still evening; the dark gap between the curtains that closed his downtown penthouse’s windows from invasion from the outside world told him so.  Allen let out a groan and tossed the covers roughly aside and stepped onto the hard wood floor and walked to the washroom.  The womanly voice faintly sounded in the back of his mind as he turned on the washroom light.

Tick tock tick your time is almost up as did you pick.

At fifty one, with the highest nightly audience numbers of all the other networks combined, Allen Forrest was considered the “Chairman of the Board” of the Cable News Channel. Prime time was his playground, he was the king of the castle and everyone else was the dirty rascals.  It had been like that for over thirty years; politicians, celebrities, those wanting to be celebrities, even the Pope  called Allen first in hopes that they would get that coveted “top Story” moniker posted atop a picture of their faces on his newscast. Allen found it laughable that on the eve of the new global amalgamation of the major media corporations to provide a unified perspective on world events and his ‘coronation’ as the first president and face of The News, he would be haunted by a voice he barely remembered from his past.

Allen smiled cruelly at his reflection in the mirror as he gingerly splashed the cold water on his cheeks; it was around this time years ago as a much younger journalist that he had been waking in the night with the same symptoms as he did now though those were much darker times.  Allen patted down his face with his monogrammed towel and let his mind wander back into the past.

The year was 1986, fresh out of college and brimming with the brashness that his professors glowing remarks on his talent, when Allen had left all he knew and headed off for the journalistic big league of Edmonton with the intent of having his name carved in neon. What Allen found was that he was only one of hundreds of institutionally trained remarkable talents in the rough and that no one was willing to wield the buffer. 

By day he kept hounding the newspapers, the television and radio stations to give him a shot; by night he bussed at a lounge on 95^thstreet, the roughest part of the city.  He spent the majority of his money on professional portfolio development, living in a boarding house that had an infestation of roaches inside while outside an infestation of hookers, addicts and pushers, door after door remained closed to him. For three months he tried to keep the burning faith he had in himself from turning to dying embers, but as the cold northern winds beckoned the winter to the city Allen could see that the chute was on its last piece of coal.  What little money he had left after paying his weekly room and board he drank away in the dangerous of bars; half out of self pity and half out of the desire for someone to come behind him and slit his throat – at least in death someone would see his name printed in the media.

It was the early afternoon of December twenty fourth, Allen recalled clearly, when the last door slammed in his face, knocking his portfolio, and ego, onto the heavily slush trodden carpet of a media outlet.  He was memorized by how quickly the costly printed summary of his life’s ambitions hungrily drank up the moisture turning the pages of white and black to a mimicry of an open binder of opaque Japanese scrolls. 

Allen began to bend down to pick the portfolio up but stopped; the water logged portfolio capsulated who Allen was to Allen. It was time to let his aspirations dissolve into pulp just as the portfolio would be in a couple of hours left on the carpet.  He turned, walked away and when the first opportune door to drunken amnesia presented himself, he entered.

At four Allen was unceremoniously escorted from his bar stool with a shove and a snarled, “Merry Christmas”, out the door of the bar.  The sun began to hide itself away as Allen stumbled along the quickly quietening streets with no particular destination in mind, consoling himself every block or so with a swig from the rum and whiskey bottles he had stolen from behind the bar just after they had called for everyone to leave, muttering that it should have been his time to shine, to show the world that he was worthy of being paid attention to.

It had been hours since it seemed like the city had closed for night, his stolen liquor drunk, that Allen felt as if he were being watched.  He barely managed to remain standing as he turned around to accost his stalker, but the street was deserted.

“Tick tock tick, your time is the one you pick,” a soft sulty feminine voice whispered.

Allen turned quickly once more, this time slipping on the frozen sidewalk with his ice-lined shoes.  He fell hard onto his shoulder, his head bounced on the sidewalk.  Allen cursed, picking himself off the sidewalk but he could still see no one.  Allen knew the voice; it had awoken him from his anxiety driven dreams several times over the past month with the same words, the same seductive half whisper. He wondered if the voice was mocking him as once more it spoke up.

“Tick tock tick, your time is the one you pick.”

“When is it my time?” Allen screamed in demand as he raised his head to the night sky, his hands clenched tightly, his arms taunt into the sides of his body, “When is it my time? It should be fucking right now!”

Allen breathed heavily as he looked around then expectantly up into the falling snow. The only answer he received were those around of an active city with no concern about a drunk, hypothermic young man.  Allen dropped to his knees, his knuckles crunching harshly into the packed down snow, bursting several capillaries but Allen entertained no thought about the reddish tinge forming, he simply hung his head until his chin rested on his sternum.  

“My time is now,” Allen’s voice cracked out, “I want my time now.”

For how long Allen did not remember that he knelt in the snow sobbing, knowing only that through thick iced lashes that something had moved before him.  It took several hard blinks to clear the haze that his eyes were in but what he thought he saw did not alter in the clarity of sight. Allen knew the temperature had to be minus twenty optimistically, in front of him were two sandaled, dark toned but luminescent lithesome feet, not shivering but seemingly unaffected by the frigid winter’s kiss.

Allen’s eyes tracked up from the feet.  It was a woman, young but with an air of agelessness to her.  The first thing that filled his sight were her eyes;  they were like a pair of liquid violet pools outlined by carefully sculpted lines of black, drawing a person even more to plunge within.  He pulled himself from drowning in her eyes to her long black hair that seemed to dance down her narrow face, along her long neck and tumble joyfully along her shoulder blades.  The snow that fell seemed to bend as if not to fall upon her sun bronzed skin and what looked like a single silken fabric that hung over her right shoulder that fell to just above her ankles tied in the middle with a bright multicoloured sash.

 “I am the Maiden of Sepphoris”, the woman explained in an over stuffed pillowy voice. “A multitude of life time upon lifetimes ago I was chosen to bestow upon the world a gift – I continue this mission to this day, and on this day, to you, Allen Christopher Forrest.” 

Allen tried to stand but the frozen ground had numbed his knees; he fell backwards.  He began to laugh.

“A gift for me?” he said with a harsh tone in his voice, “Why me?  I have done nothing that merits nothing but...nothing.”

The Maiden of Sepphoris bent down and gingerly touched Allen’s cheek with the tips of her fingernails.

“When I received my gift I thought very much the same as you do,” she comforted.  “When the angel spoke to me, I too tried to show that I was not worthy of the Lord’s fondness.”  The Maiden stood back up and offered her hand to Allen.

“But who was I to question His wisdom?  The Lord can see within us what we ourselves cannot.  I had no right to deny but to accept that he knew that I could give the world something that it was in need of.  I see this in you.” 

Allen laughed.

“What can I offer the world?” he barked, “The only thing I want to do is show the world themselves – that’s nothing.” Softer he repeated, “Nothing.”

“Is that not His way, to make something from nothing?” The Maiden asked, Allen could have sworn he caught a hint of bitterness in her words, but the Maiden’s demureness quickly returned. “I was nothing but a mother yet from that ordinary womanly task did I deliver to the world...something.  It is not yours to ask why me but to ask why not me?”

Allen took the woman’s hand and slowly rose to his feet.  He looked into those violet eyes and told her that then he too would accept her wisdom that and give the world what he could.

“And so you shall,” the Maiden said then dissipated into the night’s snow leaving Allen standing alone. The cold that had bored into his bones had disappeared, his mind was sharp and clear without a hint of the whiskey or rum; Allen felt alive and burning with renewed energy standing on sidewalk with a layer of snow already covering where he had been kneeling moments before.

Tick tock tick, began has the time you did pick....

By noon Christmas Day Allen was standing in the local television’s newsroom breaking a story of the city police’s ‘golden boy’ – that Allen had discovered to be a serial killer, complete with records that backed up those allegations.  Within three years he had been promoted to the national press’s reporter at large, travelling around the world reporting major events.  By the time he was forty Allen became the face of the national news broadcast then two years later he became the spokesman for the international broadcast with the American networks and BBC courting him to work for them.  Six months ago the United Nations had approached him on the global news pipeline and he accepted.  It was not lost to Allen that the premiere broadcast of the new super news station was set for noon Mountian time Christmas day, thirty three years to the day that his life had changed.

Allen chuckled at himself; perhaps he should have taken some time off before the change over.  Imagine, he chided himself, attributing his success to someone who wasn’t real.  He got back into bed, rolled onto his side and grasped tightly onto the pillow, still nervously guffawing as his eyes quickly called for the end of consciousness, the back of his mind cautioned him, still.....

Tick tock tick, your time is up as did you pick.

It was ten in the morning; Allen had been at news central since five that morning preparing for the broadcast set to begin in a matter of hours.  The rehearsals had gone off without a hitch; all the graphics and cues had worked without fault.  Allen felt confident and told the crew to go out for a well deserved meal at the commissary – his treat- leaving him alone on the set. 

Allen stood in the middle of the set, looked around, taking in the majestic looking wall of green behind the business like looking desk, the lights, cables and cameras; this was his world.  He became lost in how he thought the newscast would play out – who should he ordain as the VIP of the world by having their faces up on that green screen?  Should it be the American President?  The Dalai Lama?  Allen did not realize he was not alone until the semi-forgotten voice of his dreams penetrated his thoughts.

“It was thirty three years ago I came to you to bestow a gift,” said the woman that stood metres from Allen.

  Allen nodded, numbed by the sense of familiarity clashing with the physicality of the unexpected.  If it had not been for the memory of those very vivid violet eyes piercing deeply into his psyche years before, Allen would not have been convinced that the woman was being truthful of whom she claimed to be. The remembered silken smooth lustre of eterne filled flesh had deflated to pull taunt against vein, artery, tendon and bone of a barren mesa parched by an unwavering dry season.  The cascade of black tresses that poured down her shoulders now hung as frozen trickles of dirtied water; the woman’s frame that Allen recalled as powerfully straight had curled over as if a steel girder hung tightly around her neck threatening to crush her larynx at a moment’s time.  The memoried  mint with a hint of honey that had swirled invitingly along his nasal passages upon their first meeting  sloughed away at the reek that she now presented – one of urine, feces, and rotted linen.

“What do you want?” Allen asked in a smallish voice.

“I have come to collect payment for the gift of giving you to the world,” the Maiden answered.

Allen pulled out his chequebook from his inside breast pocket along with his monogrammed pen and asked, “How much? Ten, twenty, fifty grand?” 

The Maiden’s head slowly turned once to the side and then to the other side.

“What do you want then?” Allen asked, clicking the pen back and forth.  Allen forced himself not to jump back in revulsion when the Maiden’s snake scaled fingers gently scraped against his left cheek.

“For you to step from the blinding light of recognition and return into the unassuming mass of humanity once more,” she replied.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Allen snapped out at the woman.  “You think that I’ll walk away from this –“ Allen waved his hands around the set, “This is what I worked my ass off for, this is what gives meaning to my life....hell, not just me, but how many millions are expecting to see me tell them how it was, is and will be in the world?”

“Once I allowed the folly of pride forestall what should have been done,” the Maiden in a threatening tone, “Eternity is not praised immortality but punishment so hollowed thinly upon what is humanity.  To end I must suture the tear that I let render itself.”

The Maiden advanced towards Allen.  Allen retreated step for step with the woman’s until the back of his legs were against the oak veneered metal desk that he used during his broadcasts.  The Maiden did not stop.  The rubber stops on the bottom of the desk screeched along the tiled floor as Allen forced it to move to keep a space between him and the woman.  When the desk came to a halt against the cement wall concealed behind a large sheet of blue screen, Allen climbed backwards atop the desk never breaking eye contact with the woman.  He pressed himself firmly against the wall seemingly to attempt to will himself to dissolve into the thin material.  The Maiden stopped a metre from the desk.

The Maiden smiled cruelly, the darkness of her pupils dilating as if a nova had burst within them.  She gave both of her wrists a quick twist sending ripples up her sleeves.  From the material a wooden mallet shook free from one arm into her hand, from the other sleeve slipped four long crudely fashioned and rusted iron spikes.  Allen looked incredulously at the woman; he could feel his heart slamming violently against his rib cage. He went to step back but found that the desk and blue screen that had been for so long his proclamation of authority had become the shackles of immobility.

“Back in the time past it took me year after year to build up the courage to atone for the sin of entitlement that I unleashed upon the world.  I sought and found one close to what I had made, manipulating him to find those who would erase what should never have been drawn so poorly,” the Maiden said, never taking her eyes off Allen’s. “The original sin never washed itself from the mortal world, leaving me still stained ere more – so I thought.” Allen wrestled with emotions of disbelief and awe as the woman rose from the ground until she hovered just above the height of the desk.

There was a rush of wind by Allen’s left ear, a flash of dirty red, of wood, a rough jerk of his shoulder then a searing pain that streaked from his left hand, laying siege to his brain with catapult fires of synaptic firings.  There was warmth tickling the center of his left palm and though Allen didn’t want to break away from the Maiden’s glare, he could not help but steal a quick peek at her hands.  Only three of the spikes remained.  Allen closed his eyes as the Maiden giggled. Taking a deep gulp of the spittle that was building up around his tongue, Allen turned his head and opened his eyes.

The missing spike was embedded to its head into the wall behind the blue screen, a hand acting as if it were a washer to cushion it. It took a moment longer for Allen to realize that his left arm was outstretched and connected to that hand. Blood seeped from the edges of where flesh and metal met, collecting at the bottom of the spike’s head then loftily dripping to the floor.  He could not muster enough breath to scream but instead a small moan crawled out of his mouth.   The Maiden’s voice bade to him to turn his attention to her once more.

“Sin is naught but a stain,” she stated, “Stains are not gone after a single wash – especially ones that so deeply seep – but if one patiently takes layer after layer of the damage away it will eventually become as if it were new once more.” This time Allen saw, as if she wished for him to witness her power, as the wooden mallet swung up, knocking his arm straight up.   He had not been given the time to react to the assault before her other hand shot up with one of the spikes jutting out of her fingers stabbed into his hand stopping its upward motion or the mallet swinging once more to drive it effortlessly through the flesh and into the blue screen’s wall.

Watching the Maiden’s action unravel brought Allen out of the state of shock that had padded the majority of the pain leaving him bare to the full onslaught of the visual and other sensory information frantically bouncing from both his arms.  Allen lost control of his bodily functions; warm fluid ran freely down his leg into his sock, bile that had lay dormant within his stomach erupted through both his nose and mouth along with the coffees and sandwiches he had had only a few hours before.  The Maiden made no motion to move, letting Allen’s stomach contents spatter and slide down her as if the multi-coloured sludge were nothing more than the rays of sunlight bronzing her sallow skin. Between forced gulps of air Allen whimpered a single word, “Monster”.

  The Maiden let Allen’s loud sputtery heaves subside before she continued to speak, for the first time that night letting slip her conciliatory tone to one of a harsh rasp.

“Monster?  What do you know of monsters?” the Maiden snarled. She brought her face within inches of Allen’s own dirtied one.  “I was told that I was chosen – not given the choice!  The privilege of divine rape! Bah!”  The Maiden flew back and above Allen, looking down upon him with a venomous glare.

“A gift! To whom? For a lifetime of suspicious glare from a husband accepting yet denied the promise that had been arranged? To bear children who feasted, slept and grew within a womb graced by all powerful seed yet only to be graced with a touch of which came before?”  The Maiden’s body shook with rage. “To see that touch bring to bear untold suffering upon them after their predecessor was found fouled to the mortal notions?”

The Maiden threw her head back, her back arched with her fists as if bound with leather pulled taut by a pair of pachyderms as if to crush the mallet and spikes, and let out a wail that assailed Allen’s ears with such intensity that he thought that his eardrums may burst.  The Maiden’s form dropped back to where her face was to Allen’s once more.

“Do you know what it is to be touched by that which cannot truly die – or perhaps truly live?” she asked hardly above a hushed whimper.   Allen saw not a glimmer of the vile woman but in her violet eyes swam that of untold hurt.

 “When told that the second foretelling had not been eradicated, the first of the foretold took revenge upon those who intimately had been held by that gift.  To have those arms that wrapped lovingly taken, the eyes that had gazed upon without preconception pulled away from their body...the tongues that had spoken of intent nonsensical and of dreams, to be plucked...yet without the ability to drift to the endless sleep easily?”  The Maiden lifted her hands to her breasts.  “To hold those that you had given to the world freely and strum across their throats deep to hum their coda when for day upon day, night upon night, they lay drained of all that is human to a withered shell but to able to harken a yonder foul that travels by?”

The Maiden rose once more, just high enough that her pelvis’s skull-like form mirrored Allen’s fleshed one.  She pulled the end of her robe up to her waist; the wall held Allen fast though he wrestled to recoil at the sight:  greyish flaps of skin feathered down to half cover where once the woman’s sex had been – the remnants of it former appearance carved and removed to leave gouged, pockets of plump flesh and broken curled hair.

“And what of the bearer of the gift?” the Maiden said, her voice rising with each word she spoke.  “To remove all evidence in the field of a second foretold coming only to leave plowed carnage of unresult?”  The edge of the robe dropped back down to the Maiden’s ankles.

The Maiden’s hands slipped to her side, her face dropped for a moment as the memory of actions before swept themselves back into the corner where they had collected before.  When her head returned to look straight at Allen, the harshness had returned, the quiver of un-understanding of her lower lip had been stilled.  The maiden sunk down until her feet rested on the desk.

“Do not speak of monsters to me, Allen Christopher Forrest – Those who would take a gift and bastardize its meaning to rationalize torture...enslavement...death... as righteous, that is what makes a monster,” The Maiden spat.

The Maiden’s furrowed brows relaxed, the sternness of her features softened as she took a step back from the desk and gave the faux-wood and metal structure a small tap with the wooden mallet.  The desk shuddered momentarily then shattered to ashes as if it had been thrown into an incinerator at high heat.

“It needs to end –I raised you ahigh to be akin in what gift I originally gave wrought today...I should have stopped it before the height of martyristic acclaim brought in the sunless dawn.  Now I make my repent.”

The strobe lights that hung above Allen swayed in response to the force of his scream as the spikes in both his hands did not yield to the weight of Allen’s body.  His blood gurgled and spat as the flesh of his hands stretched from their tight seal against the spikes to present a gap the size to support a second spike within.    Allen’s screams became half-choked sputters of agony from the blood that drizzled furiously down from his hairline and into his open maw.  Allen tried to stop his body from instinctual convulsions but he failed, with every flail came the sound of slight yet thick sounding tearing and a doubling of pain that he thought a man could endure. Though it threatened to, the flesh of Allen’s hands did not tear apart to release him from the wall.

The Maiden of Sepphoris knelt before Allen, laying the mallet and spikes on the floor in front of her.  She raised her arms up, and then brought them down with a slow swoop until the rested at her sides.  She bowed her head down, closing her eyes as Allen’s hoarse sputters and cries of agony became nothing more than faint echoes that mixed with the ones she had heard so long ago.

“Forgive me my little Yeshua, forgive,” The Maiden whispered.  “You will hurt too many...”

When her eyes opened once more she was no longer in the news room but knelt upon a sun parched hill surrounded by strangers in merchant, peasant, and Roman garb as the shadows crowned the sixth hour in front of her son upon the instrument of his penalty.  His features were darkened by the eclipsing of the sun above his head but she could see the whites of his eyes; they whispered, “Thank you, Mother, thank you”.

 Tears rolled from the Maiden’s violet eyes as her hands took hold of the mallet and spikes and moved closer to Allen’s feet...

6:05

I looked around the empty stagnant smelling bar and asked the bartender, “Hey, where the hell is everybody?”  It was an honest question – it was three o clock and not even the ever present Eddie was a no-show.

For years it was a work day ritual:  from 3 to 5 the five of us would drink our faces off on the cheap draft for happy hour.  To most people it would have sounded like a hollow and shallow existence, but to the five of us it was the chance to say we weren’t anti social recluses – we were just alcoholics, which in this day and age was a disease and much more socially acceptable than saying we were all loners.  Loners are looked upon as potential sociopaths that will end up shooting up a school – drunks just are too be looked on and pitied.  Pity meant around these parts being left alone, and that’s how me and my four compatriots preferred the majority of our days spent, so it all worked out well in the end.

 A week ago, there was the five of us sitting around and bullshitting the happy hour away, but four days ago, our number started to decrease by one each day.

The bartender didn’t look up from wiping the mug that was in his hands as he replied, “I imagine he got the call last night.”

Fuck.  That’s all I had heard for the past few days when I asked where someone hadn’t shown up.  The first day was Frank, the second day was Perry, the third day it was Larry and now it was Eddie.  Each day it had become harder to joke about the disappearances.

It had all started with Larry last week.  He had come in talking about a web site a co worker had gone to – one that the co worker had said once you put your name on the list, you’d get a phone call and...

And what we had asked, more to placate Larry than take him seriously.  Larry shook his head – he didn’t know, the co worker never showed up for work that day.  The rest of us mocked Larry for the rest of the night about taking such an obvious prank so serious.  After all, with a website with the name of “R.U.S8?.Com”, how serious could putting your name and phone number on some list be dangerous?

“You think it’s bullshit?” Larry challenged all of us, “Why don’t I put our names on the fucking list then and see, then?”

“Go right ahead,” I answered and the other three followed suit. 

The following day Larry informed us that he put our names on the web site that morning.  In what order he was asked and he said that he put Frank’s name, then Perry’s, his own, Eddie’s and then mine.  Then the following day, Frank never came into the bar.  The rest of us didn’t think much of it, every one was allowed to miss a day now and then – we just didn’t expect anyone to make a bad habit of still being sober by 5:30 each night; that could lead to forming a stable relationship with a member of the opposite sex and forever leaving the dwindling barfly sub-species of the small town hick population.

The next day, neither Frank nor Perry appeared at the scheduled time – Eddie, Larry and I began to joke nervously that night about Larry being next.  I had tried to phone both our missing companions but all I got in the ear was a busy signal.  What made matters worse was when Sheriff Lantrans came in after we had bugged him to get off his ass from his complimentary coffee to go check on the two of them.  He looked grim as he sat down at our shrinking table.

“Boys,” he said curtly, slightly tipping his hat over his pudgy aging face to us.  He licked his lips and contrary to the usual coffee he ordered a double scotch.  He waited until the waitress had brought his drink and had quickly gulped the entire contents of the glass until he spoke to us again. 

He said with a scotch scorched voice, “They’re gone.  Looks like the answered a phone call and died.  Damnest thing..both had the call being answered at 6:05” He said no more but just left the three of us to sit and drink to our fallen comrades in beer.

The next day came and Eddie and I found ourselves watching the clock on the bar wall as it slowly ticked past three.  Then four, there was no Larry.

At five, Eddie and I decided to head over to Larry’s apartment – we had tried phoning but as with Frank and Perry, the line was busy.  We decided not to call Lantrans, he wasn’t much help the day before and in our alcoholic sharpness we figured we could handle just about anything. 

We got to the apartment complex and Eddie remembered where Larry hid his extra key and we let ourselves in, calling out his name softly.  Eddie made it to the kitchen first and he half called my name before he had to run over to the sink and regurgitate.  I smiled at first and was about to make a crack about not being able to hold his liquor but when I saw Larry’s corpse laying on the kitchen floor I joined Eddie at the sink. 

His phone was still tight against Larry’s ear, his eardrum must have exploded and the puss, ear wax and blood had cemented it there because both of his hands held what must have been Larry’s tongue – which it looked like he had pulled out of his mouth himself.

Eddie and I looked at each other; I knew what had to be done.  Eddie wasn’t about to grab the gore caked phone so I slowly reached down and with a large cracking sound pulled the phone from Larry’s ear.  Maggots had already started their feasting, so I knocked the few that were dining on the ear piece away and looked at the display: unknown name unknown number at 6:05.  I held the phone up to Eddie’s face so he could see the display for himself.  I threw the phone down and started to wipe my hands repeatedly on my pants, trying to get the sludge that had been all over the handset off my skin.

We exited Larry’s apartment quickly, locking the door and then phoning in an anonymous report to Sheriff Lantrans, which afterward we both thought was stupid in light of the fact that the sink was full of our DNA as well my fingerprints would be on the phone.  We parted ways, with Eddie saying he wouldn’t be answering any fucking phone calls, I said that I’d be doing the same.

That was yesterday, but when I tried calling at 3:23, Eddie’s line was busy.  I was alone.  There was a table of the semi-barflies, the people who drank but had a family to go home to so they only drank reasonably – they weren’t as fun as my crew, but I resigned myself to the fact that I no longer was part of the old group.  I’d have to force myself to sit with the half asses and I had to remember not to answer my phone – ever.  I sat with them until 5 and as they hailed themselves a cab, I even joined them in the communal ride, making jokes and rude comments the entire ten minute cab ride. 

First stop was my place.  I got out, and walked to my door, shouting rude comments back at my new drinking companions.  I took out my keys.  I waved good bye and entered my little abode, the mirth that I had just seconds ago dissipated as I closed the door leaving me in the darkness.  I glanced at the clock on the wall; it said 5:30.  I forced myself to chuckle at my foolishness – after all, just because my name was on the list as the others, it didn’t mean that I would be next.  Tomorrow, in fact, I chided myself; everyone would be around laughing that they had gotten me with a foolish and childish practical joke.

I went up and made myself a plate of pork and beans and sat down at my small glass kitchen table to eat.  I was hungry, but I could not get myself to do anything but push the beans around the sauce on the plate with my fork.  The thought of actually putting anything to my lips soured my stomach – the acid boiled furiously at the thought of the digestion of anything.  I had to do something though, so I moved the beans around to make a picture and let my mind wander as I did so.  I focused once more to see that I pushed the beans around to that of a screaming skull, the white colour of the plate had been freed of the thick bean sauce to emphasize the horror in the eye sockets of the bean skull.

The clock on my wall chimed mockingly six times; I dropped my fork, and pushed myself from the table in quiet resignation.  Tonight would be the night – my night.  I felt the certainty of it deep within my very core. 

Fear mixed with the testosterone that pumped wildly through my body: the only way I would survive is if I believed that I was stronger than the others before...But was I?  My close felt as if they were constricting against my skin, trying to bind me down and offer my body and soul to the horror that was coming.  I had to break free – I couldn’t go down without a fight.

I quickly began to remove the sweat soaked apparel before it could imprison me.  I kicked the pile of discarded clothes for their attempt at treachery; the sweat cooled the heat from within.  I didn’t want to look at the clock – honestly – I tried not to look but my will power failed and I saw the time: 6:05.  My scrotum curled itself up tight, while my penis hardened as if to shout out its defiance at the coming storm – I would go down as a man, not as a helpless baby.   I looked at my hands to see why they suddenly ached only to see that my nails had pierced my palms and blood now dripped away from the self induced slits: even the essence of my life wanted to flee. 

The phone rang once.  I did not move, not wanting to answer though it would never be over for good or bad until I did.

It rang once more.  I had bitten down on the inside of my cheek that I could taste the flow of salty fluid sliding along the back of my throat and seeping out of the corner of my mouth.

The phone rang a third time; my hand reached slowly and grabbed it from its base.  I stared at the glowing announcement: unknown name unknown number.  My stomach curled.

The phone harkened a fourth time; my thumb slid to the talk button and pushed down.  I put the phone to my head.  I felt the blood drain from my hands, turning them icy to match the voice that I knew would be on the line.  I took a deep breath, a lone bead of sweat slid down from my brow to my chin as I slowly lifted the receiver to my ear.  I felt my mouth become dry as if a hundred cotton balls had been shoved in as I quietly resolved not to let my voice betray my fear.

“Hello?” I said meekly.

I could not help the instinctive gulp as I waited for the voice...the bile welled into the middle of my throat with full intention to be released as a bodily reaction; my bowels began to howl, I clenched my butt cheeks to stop myself from evacuating its contents into my pants.  The trembling became more pronounced, each millisecond of silence compounding the terror a hundred fold.  Then what I feared the most violently thrust itself through my ear drum into my brain.

As I heard the voice, my knees buckled and I fell to the floor, phone still to my ear as if I instinctively knew that I couldn’t stop what was coming even if I wanted to.  The sound of my heart beating thundered through my head as those dreaded words razored themselves through the synaptic nerves of my brain:

“Good evening, sir!  I’m a representative of “Are You Sate” with your phone service.  Could I talk to you about your satisfaction with your long distance provider?”

I prayed that the fates had mercy on my soul; the dance with the demon had begun in earnest, I was wearing shoes with a broken heel and the bell for thee tolled nigh....

A Stalk in the Park

The grey sinewy tendrils of winter’s claws scratched through the late October billowing blue sky causing goose bumps atop Leanne’s exposed legs and along the plunging neckline of her cotton blouse.  Others who passed through the small tree lined park in the middle of the bustling city were bundled warmly, tucking their faces into their upturned collars.  Leanne steadfast refused to succumb to the chill; she wore light clothing that draped her body rather than blanket it. Leanne could have dressed for the cooler breezes of autumn, but Leanne felt overly claustrophobic being tightly bound within the fabric.  Twelve years of judicial confinement had left her loathe of being restricted in even the smallest of distinction. It was for this reason that she had chose to eat her lunch in the openness of the park across from the office building she worked in over the warmth of the lunchroom, that the whispers that burned through the protective layer of long dull blonde hair that covered her ears of those who tried to place where they had seen her before; it would not be long until she would change jobs when too many of those whispers of uncertainty became adamant in the identification.  No matter how often she could point to her service representative pin with the name “Tracy” on it, Leanne would be discovered.

She would never admit it but Leanne relished in gradual awakening of the public’s consciousness of her notoriety. She could have altered her looks to but a shade of what had been splashed over the media all those years ago. A dye job, coloured contact lenses, a frumpier clothing style and there had been offers of cosmetic surgery, and most of all discarding the locket with her real name inscribed on the back of it.  There had to be thousands of images in the news archives with that silver locket that still hung around her lithe neckline to nestle in her cleavage. Leanne just could not do it: it had been a gift from her sister that had been four years her junior.  It was not an expensive cameo locket, in the thin flower etches of the oval border Leanne could see the silver paint flaking on the day she had gotten it.  Leanne remembered her sister’s face scrunching up as she carefully picked and cut her picture to fit inside its shallow innards.

It was not as if it was much of a hassle to her when the embers of her past would flare from the ashes, it was the justice department that paid for the change of all the legal documents and identification. Such a benevolent court had it been, twelve years in minimum security to point her finger at her husband for the drugging, rape and murder of three girls, plus protection when she was released.  All the court required was for her to play the battered spouse card; that she had no choice but aid and abet her psychopathic husband lest it would have been her that ended up under the loose dirt.

Leanne had not been aware that she had clasped her hand around the locket, warming its cold shell.  She let it go to fall back onto her cleavage, the warmth of her palm pulsated from the area of skin to form an oasis of smoothness over the desert of goose bumps.  Her mediation on the locket’s warmth was broken as the sound of shrilly giggling rushed past.  Leanne looked up just as a girl, perhaps twelve, Leanne thought, breezed past her.

“Mandy!” a young woman, around her late teens yelled half running, half walking.  

Leanne smiled.

The woman noticed Leanne watching her.  “Ugh, little sisters can be such pains.”

“For sure,” Leanne said. “From one big sister to another, take a load off and let some of the breeze leave her sails.”

The teen shrugged and sat down beside Leanne. The two sat in silence watching the twelve year old run around the trees close by erratically, occasionally stopping to catch her breath and taunt her sister to get off the bench.  Leanne remembered similar silly confrontations with her sister.  The last confrontation they had just over thirteen years ago had been anything but silly; it had shown Leanne the true nature of little sisters.

Mom would have a shit fit if she found out about this, Leanne giggled to herself as she finished off the last bottle of her six pack of beer, Her eyes dancing along her husband’s strong sweat bathed form through the brown glass, but damn is he ever fucking hot. It memorizing for her to watch his shoulder blades move rhythmically, her hands matching his tempo as her hands plunged in her wetness as he in another.   Leanne watched as her husband’s motions became more hurried and erratic and she matched it; when his back arched and locked, his buttocks dimpling with deep release Leanne could feel her own warming the skin past her wrist.  The satisfied chuckle that Ken gave as he withdrew took Leanne back to the first time she had seen the man who would become her husband.

It had been a warm spring night four years ago, half drunk stumbling home from a high school party Leanne had opted to cut through the small trail that ran along the river bank that paralleled the windy road.  The spruce trees that lined either side of the trail looked thin in the light of day yet in the backdrop of the night did not permit the street lights revealing bulbs to permeate the moss covered rocks.  She heard noises ahead of her, branches snapping, grunts.  Leanne slowed her stumble as the noises grew, quietly moving herself behind one of the spruce’s when she could make out the moonlight outlines of two people, a man and a woman just ahead of her in one of the many grassy knolls that polka dotted the river bank side of the trail. At first Leanne had thought she had almost gotten herself in the middle of a lover’s quarrel, but she quickly realized as the man took out a knife and held it to the woman’s throat it was something far more sinister.

Leanne thought that maybe she should back track to one of the entrances to the trail to the road, to tell someone what was going on behind the tree line – just as she had been taught to by her parents, teachers and community safety announcements – but her seventeen year old eyes could not take her eyes off the scene before her.  She let a whispered moan escape; she had not been aware that her hand had slipped down the front of her jeans as she watched the man violate the woman.  She knew she had fallen in love the moment the moonlight cast a shadow that outlined the buttock dimples of excitement released.  Leanne watched the man pull his pants back up, give one final warning to the sobbing half naked girl on the grass then walk briskly toward her hiding spot.  She followed him, she found where he lived and proceeded over the next few days to find out as much information about the man as possible.  Ken was a year senior in her school and for two months afterward Leanne would hide in the shadows during the weekend following his every move, and another rape, before she arranged to bump into Ken in the school cafeteria.  They had dated for almost a year and a half that Leanne would inform Ken that she knew about his little hobby.  She told him that if wanted their relationship to be serious then he had better start taking his perversion serious; he was far too careless and spontaneous, he would be caught sooner than later.  They had married the same year Leanne graduated from high school and enrolled in a collage course for animal sciences that quickly changed to pharmaceutical assistant when the concession Ken had made of having sex with a willing in front of her lacked the excitement both he and Leanne craved.  The night that Leanne received her certificate was the first night that she joined Ken in the hunt.  It would not be long before long that her passive action of observing Ken’s sex plays with the drugged – her drugged victims – would not be enough.  She made it clear to Ken that she would have first dibs on their human toys.

Leanne had made an exception for this young girl; she had let Ken have her first, after all, she reasoned this was his anniversary present from her.  Leanne had experienced powerful orgasms watching Ken have his with the girls they had grabbed off the streets, but this time the waves of electricity sending waves of pleasure to her mind were more intense, more personal – Ken was in the process of consuming Dawn’s, her little sister, virginity.  Ken had mentioned a couple of times how Leanne’s little sister had started to show the woman she would be then joking that wasn’t it one of those sisterly things to share?

Leanne had sent Ken out to the grocery store just before the time she had asked Dawn to come over to help prepare a special dinner for Ken. To show how appreciative she was that her little sister had been willing to assist in her wifely duties, Leanne pour a large glass of wine to drink while she cut vegetables for a salad that would later turn brown, forgotten on the kitchen table.  Leanne had laced the wine with a generous dose of diazepam so she was easily able to manoeuvre the stumbling girl towards the bedroom and undress the barely conscious girl before Ken arrived back. 

Leanne leaned against the kitchen table wearing only a thin lacy apron with a tipped bottle opener and cold beer in her hand.  She popped the cap off the beer and handed it to her husband.

“Happy anniversary, babe, I hope you’re hungry because I have a delicious treat for you,” Leanne said.

Ken smiled as he took the beer and with the tips of his fingers brushed back the apron hem.

“Uh uh,” Leanne said, grabbing the remainder of the six pack on the table.  She motioned for Ken to follow her to the bedroom. The look on Ken’s face had made the effort worth it for Leanne, the look of love, the glare of lust as he looked on the bed to find Dawn’s nude body with the exception for the Dollar Store bow sitting atop the thin curls of her blossoming womanhood.  Leanne beamed as she popped the cap off one of the beers and sat on the edge of the bed as Dawn began to whimper in her sleep from the weight of Ken’s body atop of her. It would not be until Ken’s second time mounting Dawn that the girl would regain consciousness and began to resist.  Leanne, who had moved from the edge of the bed to the padded chair just off center of the bed so that she could enjoy her husband in action, opened another beer as her sister cried out for her to help her.

“C’mon Dawn, you know this is what you want, baby, you know it,” Ken said after he removed himself from the girl.  He looked over at the dresser, frowning for a second as he saw that Leanne had drunk the last beer.  Leanne shrugged her shoulders and stuck her tongue out playfully at her husband. If there had been a beer Ken perhaps would not have heard, or cared, when through thick sobs Dawn gave a counter statement of her desires than he had just smugly assured the girl.

Ken’s blue eyes had turned to steel; he grabbed the bottle opener that had been sitting on the dresser.   He bounced on the sobbing and coughing girl, puncturing the thin flesh of her cheek with the bottle opener’s sharp tip.  Leanne slammed her hands against her ears hard to shield herself from becoming deaf from the piercing scream that hurricaned from her sister’s vocal chords. With his other arm bracing the head from moving, Ken forced the can opener to slice through the tender skin, carving a crude quarter sized heart.  The meaty cheek flesh fell into Dawn’s mouth to the base of throat, causing the shrill cries to become choked gasps for air.

Ken jammed his fingers into the gaping hole, tearing the outline he had done to unrecognizable shreds of meat and pulled out the pinkish-red cheek heart.  He stood up, commanding the girl to look at him with a callous bunt of her chin with his foot.

“Listen closely, bitch, real close,” Ken hissed from clenched teeth.  “See this? This is a piece of you - and wouldn’t you fucking know it, it’s a heart – your fucking heart, got it!?!” 

Ken tossed the piece of flesh onto the floor beside the bed then grabbed Dawn by the hair and flung her off the covers to the floor.

“Now give me your heart,” Ken bade in a soft voice, “Give me your heart.”

Leanne had taken her hands from her ears and observed with keen interest at the gaping wound in her sister’s face; there was something hypnotic about how the whiteness of the teeth would disappear for a moment in a deluge of blood only to reappear as the motions of her sobbing sister’s tongue would force a miniature geyser of red spittle from the wound.

“Give your heart,” Ken demanded impatiently.

Dawn pulled herself into a foetal position and began to rock back and forth, sobbing.

“BITCH” Ken screamed at the woman on the floor before stomping into the adjoining washroom, slamming the door behind him. He came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, washed and smelling heavily of cologne and began getting dressed.  Leanne stood up and walked over to him.

“I’m going to go get some more beer – want anything?” he said gruffly.

“Uhm.....let me think,” Leanne said with a predatory gleam in her glazed eyes as she put her arms around his neck and ground her pelvis into his.  Ken pushed her away.  Leanne scowled for a moment then put on her widest smile.  “I guess a Big Mac would be nice.”  Ken grunted with a nod, told Leanne to clean her sister up and walked out of the bedroom, leaving Leanne standing in the spot that he had pushed her to.  She stood there staring at the doorway until she had heard the door of the condo unit open and close. 

Did he just reject her? 

Leanne turned her head at her shivering and moaning sister on the floor. 

For her?

Leanne began to think back, the innocent talks she and Dawn had when Leanne had just started dating Ken, the shy admission by her little sister that she really liked her man.  She thought of how Dawn was always so willing to come over and help out around the house – all those times that Leanne had foolishly thought that Dawn was doing it for her...but it was for him.  The little bitch was trying to show that Ken that she was far more useful than Leanne, that she could...that fucking manipulative little bitch – she planned all of this.  She was going to take Ken away from her, and dumb ol Leanne had been her dull accomplice! To think that she was going to show Dawn how much Leanne loved her in the most intimate way that only lover’s could...

  Leanne walked over to the where Dawn and the mutilated piece of her flesh lay. Leanne grabbed the bloodied piece of cheek from the floor, opened the snap on her locket and squished it against Dawn’s picture, closing the locket with the making of a fist. 

“Your heart should belong to me, you filthy slut,” she said through tears, “Isn’t that what being sisters is about?” Leanne pushed Dawn onto her back with her foot and straddled the girl, her hands pushing against Dawn’s shoulders.  “Well, guess what, BITCH? YOU AIN’T GONNA TAKE MY MAN!!!” 

Leanne stretched her bottom downward until her own womanly curls could have been woven like a pubic blanket into Dawn’s.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY OF MY MAN, GOT THAT, BITCH,” Leanne hissed as she began to grind her pelvis roughly against the other woman’s. Leanne could feel Ken’s stickiness, still warm, coating her sexual plumpness.  “NONE...” Leanne growled when she thought she could feel the last of her husband’s seminal tracings being absorbed then moved herself and brought her knee up forcibly between Dawn’s legs, causing the girl’s eye’s to roll as the pain arced from her pelvis up her spinal cord, “...OF HIM!!”  Four more times Leanne would grind herself into Dawn. Four more times she would bring her knee to Dawn’s sexual center, each time increasing the amount of pressure she exerted.  She would not have stopped even then if the blood spurting from her sister’s coughs through her mouth, nose and the savagely shredded cheek began to drip from Leanne’s hair as if she had been caught in a cloud burst.  She had to look good for her man. 

Leanne got off her sister, walked over to the dresser, took out a pair of handcuffs, attaching one cuff to Dawn’s wrist and the other to the bed post. She then went to the washroom to shower, brusquely tossing a wet towel at Dawn, ordering her to clean herself up, she was a disgrace. Leanne let Ken have one last moment with Dawn, but as he lay beside her sister napping, Leanne slipped Dawn enough diazepam that after that night, the only thing slipping anything into her would be worms and maggots. Leanne was brought back to park by the woman shouting.

“Mandy! Stick close, you little shit!”  She then lowered her voice and said conspiratorially to Leanne, “You can’t let them see that you actually love them, can you?”

“Oh, I think it’s never a bad thing to show them love,” Leanne answered which was rewarded by the teenager rolling her eyes with her cheeks momentarily turning a tinge of rose.

This poor girl, Leanne thought to herself, she really does love her sister. The newspapers had called Leanne and Ken’s story “The Beauty and the Beast”.  The shy pretty girl with the purest of hearts had gotten mixed up with a monster. It had not been until the papers of her plea bargain had been inked and set in judicial stone that investigators would realize in this version of Beauty and the Beast, perhaps it had not been Beauty that they had made the deal with. The damning video tapes that the public would never see taken by her husband as Leanne talked to the camera about the drugs she used on the unconscious girls that she sat on bed with, naked, undressing the girls, taking draughts of the forced passion before taking the camera away to film Ken having his turn after she had been sated. It amused Leanne that considering she had used her knowledge of pharmaceuticals in the commissions of the crimes that sent her husband to prison until the day he would die that the jobs the courts would arrange, while low level entry positions, still gave her access to those same drugs.   Leanne’s interment had changed her though; she had seen the error in abusing her knowledge for her own means. As the police observations of her activities had dwindled she came to realize that it was within her power to save others who could be hurt by their younger siblings. She had the strength to handle the onus of crushing disappointment that haunts a person for the span of their lifetime so that others would not have to.

Leanne knew that she had to save this girl. She slipped her hand into the beige carry-all that sat on the ground beside the park bench, pulling out the small syringe that she kept primed for just these kinds of emergencies.  She leaned over, putting her hand on the teenager’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry, honey, I used to have a little sister to,” she told the teenager as the syringe plunged through the teenager’s jacket and shirt just underneath the rib cage.

“You’re welcome,” whispered Leanne as she looked into the teenager’s eyes as she gripped her shoulder to ensure the teenager could not squirm too quickly away before the plunger had exhausted the contents of the vial.

There was not the slightest hint of the sudden cessation of life; the little curls of warm exhale that slightly shadowed in the autumn air simply dissipated.  Leanne propped the slumping teenager so that her head rested on the edge of back of the bench, the bench’s metal arm against the girl’s side resisted gravity’s insistence that the earth should reclaim the basic molecular components immediately.

Leanne stood up, straightening her skirt, looking at the girl kicking at the rumpled piles of leaves that littered the park under its trees.  She strode over to the girl and introduced herself, telling the girl that her sister had asked her to take the girl home so she could go hang out with some friends and held out her hand.  The little girl was confused for a moment, hesitant, but after peeking at her sister sitting on the bench and saw no movement to stop or hinder the woman, chose to accept the outstretched hand.  After all, what kind of person would let anything bad happen to their little sister?

 It would be hours before day would turn to night when in the crispness the trickle of urine that had vacated the teenager’s bladder would freeze the bottom of her thighs to the wooden slats of the park bench.  Hours more when a street social worker would gently shake the corpse thinking it was another unfortunate soul who had become a victim of today’s economy and ended up without a warm place to lay their head. It would take over half a day before the police would be called, identifying who the woman and notifying her family.  It would be over half a day before the question would be asked where the woman’s little sister was. It would be over half a day that “Tracy” would suddenly become ill and call the office up to tell them that she was going home.  It would be over half a day that Leanne would have a little sister. It would be two days before the blackened shrivelled heart within the locket would be replaced by another heart once more being pink and vibrant in tribute to the betrayal of a sister.