Help me, Cage had begged on the phone. As if I was the Church. As if I could spare him from anything. As if I’d want to.
“Sit.” I gestured with the gun. My voice snapped off of the cinderblocks, echoed through the open door and down the empty corridor, growing more distorted as it traveled. Eerie, the way things come back on you.
The seat in the room I’d walked him into was an old high-backed dentist’s chair, the leather cracked, the fabric beneath the leather ragged and filthy. Cage sat. A puff of dust rose around him, and he coughed.
“C’mon, Benny.” His eyes were wild, the sclera red with dust and panic and lack of sleep. His voice was high, nervous. “What’s going on, man? You don’t need a gun.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Seriously, bro. I came to you for help, I’m not about to hurt you. These fuckers are chasing me, like I told you—”
“Mm.” I didn’t tell him that I’d hired the fuckers in question. Or why. That wasn’t important. Only that he’d finally caved in. Finally come to me. Finally sat where I wanted him. The past, echoing forward. “Take a breath.”
A big semicircular glass lamp hung from the ceiling to his left, almost a spotlight. Whatever tooth-yanker had used this long ago had had a very clear field of view. But now the bulbs were long dead, dust coating the metal frame. I’d cleaned the glass enough to show reflections, though. It was important that they see themselves.
Cage bit his lip as he looked into it. I could see why. He was a mess. His filthy hair was shaggy and uncombable. His face was broken out with pimples from not washing it. He’d cracked the top off of his lower left incisor. And the smell. Dear God. You could almost see the smell coming off him. Being on the run for six months will do that to a man. Shame it wasn’t longer.
“I didn’t do a thing to them,” he said again. “I don’t know who they are, or why they’re chasing me. I don’t know why you have a gun. Where did you even get that?”
“Dangerous times.” The gun steady in my hands, aimed center mass. Headshots were for video games.
“So why are we back here? We haven’t been here in—Jesus. Twenty years? Not since Zara killed herself.”
Here was the old sanatorium in Hunter’s Glen, just a short bike ride from the house where Zara and I had grown up together. Green paint peeling from the brick walls, cracked linoleum, shattered windows, the smells of bird shit and mold and ancient crazy. Here was the old bughouse. Where they’d left her.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, bro. I don’t remember. All I know is these guys following me. Every time I find a place to settle down to catch my breath, they find me. I have no idea why. Or how.”
“You don’t remember being here, before?” I cocked my head. Studied him. He was lying, I knew. But he genuinely seemed perplexed.
“Course I remember that. We used to bike over here here all the time.” He fidgeted in the ancient dentist’s chair and dust rose around him again. “We’ve known each other since we were five, Benny. When have I ever lied to you?”
What a question.
“You don’t remember.” I circled around to the window behind him, looked out. “Being here before.” Slid the gun into my waistband, slid the belt over Cage’s head, around his neck. “With Zara.” Cinched it tight against the headrest before he could react. The gun clattered to the floor as I braced my knee against the high back of the dentist's chair. And pulled. “With Mouse. And Jerry.”
“Gack.” Cage’s hands went to his throat. Clawed at the belt. I cinched it tighter. He squirmed, thrashed. Gasped. Purpled. Stilled. The rank brown smell of his shit filled the room as his bowels loosened.
“You don’t remember.”
I remembered.
I remembered coming back, wondering what was taking Zara so long. I remembered Zara, alone, strapped down to this very chair. Head lolling, tears on her cheeks, breathing so hard. So hard. Arms bound to the armrests. Legs bound apart. Blood on the cracked leather seat between them.
“Thank you, big bubba,” Zara said from the corner.
Cage’s chest stopped moving. His hands fell to his sides.
I looked at Zara. She was finally showing me that smile, that crooked grin that I somehow couldn’t quite remember. Until right that moment, when she was kind enough to show it to me again. So much more than I deserved.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” I told her. “I miss you, Zarry.”
She moved toward me. I could see the peeling green paint behind her. Through her. The air was growing cold. I shivered.
“Almost done,” she said softly. “So close, big bubba.”
“Almost?” I stared at Cage’s body in the chair. “That was it, Zarry. The last of them.”
She shook her head. “No.”
The room grew colder still as she stood before me. Beneath the smell of Cage’s shit, her frigid rot.
“Not the last, bubba. One more.”
“Jerry. Mouse. Cage.” I counted them off on my fingers.
My cheek blistered with the cold where she kissed me softly.
“One more, bubba,” she said softly.
They had been my friends, but I had known how skeevy they were. They had been my friends, but I had biked away after telling them to let her go, the game was over, she'd learned her lesson about following us. They had been my friends, and I had left them here alone with her. Despite their jokes about how she was growing up. Despite the way those jokes had roiled in my stomach. They had been my friends. I had known exactly how skeevy they were. But there were three of them and one of me and as I'd pedaled away I tried to convince myself they were just scaring her. Oh, how I'd tried.
Oh, how long I'd tried to convince myself that I had believed that.
“One more,” I told her, the gun back in my hand. How had it gotten there? “One more. And then it’s done.”
“One more,” she whispered. “And then it’s done.”
“I’m so sorry,” I told her.
And lifted the pistol to my head.
This one kind of came out of nowhere. A picture of an abandoned asylum and a dentist's chair quite like this photo (but not this exact one, because I can't find the source for the original again) and I was off.
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