The August 2009 Featured Story

Please feel free to contact Brian J. Smith at twentyandtall@yahoo.com

FOR RACHEL

(with a special thanks to Ed Gorman)
by Brian J. Smith

                                         
Two months and horrific amounts of money later, I finally found him: the bastard who killed Rachel.

I’d spent the past ten minutes hiding in the bushes beside his house, trying to blend in with the darkness. The section of neighborhood where he lived was a long strip of rundown homes, unkempt lawns and careless parents who allowed their children to roam free at all hours of the day and night as they pumped drugs without a care in the world. Nelly thumped from an open window two houses down, talking about his Air Force Ones. Crickets and all manner of night creatures chirped and sang in the darkness. Tall street lamps spread flat, golden discs of light across the curbs and sidewalks. A seedy-green mailbox stood at the far left corner of the driveway, the word WYATT painted on the side in bold-white lettering.

But I knew better. His name wasn’t Wyatt, it was John Sixx, and he pulled into his driveway just now, in a spanking new white Corvette. He was a regular at The Blue Buzzard, a southern redneck bar just outside of Shallow Rock, Ohio. I’d been there once before—of course, how would I have known he was regular if I hadn’t?

My entire body burned with pain, but I managed to hold back the urge to cry out. Earlier today, I had caught up with one of Johnny’s friends and literally beat him to death before he gave up the guy’s address. I hunkered down behind the bushes, much further than before, letting the darkness swallow me whole. I could hear the loud thud of a car door slamming shut and a muddle of drunken gibberish. I peered over the top of the bushes, careful as to not let him see me, and watched him pad up the porch stairs. He stepped through the front door of the stucco shoebox he called a home and disappeared.

From what I’d learned of him, he had no girlfriend to come home to and that pleased me in a way. However, he was surrounded with more friends than a guy could ever ask for. I wondered how I could manage to take them all.

I kept myself crouched down in the darkness, watching and waiting for the right time. If Lady Luck kissed me on the lips, then his friends would go inside and leave him out here to stumble inside the house on his own.

But I had to settle for what I was seeing.

*****      

What can I say about Rachel?

She was everything to me and beyond. She had the prettiest face, stunning dark hair that set heavily across her shoulders, an exquisite set of doe-brown eyes and a smile that could warm your heart from a mile away.

And a voice.

My God, that voice of hers could make the strongest of men fall to their knees, weep like little babies and surrender themselves to her in return for unconditional love.

In my eyes, we were more than soul mates. She was the princess condemned to a castle tower in a fairy tale and I was the knight in shining armor galloping to her aid on a magical white horse. She was my heart, my core; the source of energy that kept me alive. She was loyal, honest, giving and respectful to others around her and to me. And I did the same, vice versa.

You see, Rachel had been my wife.

And now, after all the adventures, after all those beautiful days and nights spent together in bed, Rachel was dead. She may have been beautifully carved from God’s expert hands, but she could become a stick of dynamite when she needed to be. Obviously, John Stixx thought he was Superman and did her in.

Two days after her death, angry but focused, I dropped dollar after dollar into a convenience store pay phone, promising—in some cases, bribing—anyone who could help bring me closer to the man who had caused Rachel the horror that she had faced.

During the next week or so, I traveled the country; through rain-soaked roads that brought tears to my eyes the more I stared at them. Each turn, each toll road, each mile, took me one step closer to hope. Either little or great, but always hopeful; for eventually the roads would take me to wherever he was.

Once I had slapped down two hundred dollars to one of his sources in Columbus. I was filled in on John’s life as soon as I told him the name. Jonathan Thomas Sixx was a thirty-year old man with dark hair, gaunt features and beady black eyes. From the looks of him, I wasn’t the least bit surprised he’d been divorced twice. He looked like a piece of day old rutabaga had been set out in the sun for too long. But what did surprise me though was that he had a daughter from one of his recent marriages. He paid child support but wanted nothing to do with her. Over the years, he was busted on two counts of public intoxication, one count of sexual contact with a minor and three DUIs. That’s all.

No charges were filed against him for the murder of Rachel Brown. Rumors were that he had made an air-tight alibi and snuck his way out. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl and my blood boil.

You never forget the face of the man who ruined your life. I was there when he killed Rachel, and that night, I had learned a secret about him.

Because of that secret, I knew how John could be rendered defenseless. And the less anyone else knew about him, the better.

Besides, I didn’t ask for the law to stick their doughnut-filled asses in it anyway.

It was my job to take care of it.

*****

And now here I was, crouched down behind the bushes, watching Johnny.

In the vast night sky, the stars shone like bubbles in a champagne glass. A calm, summer breeze rolled quietly over the peaceful district, bending stalks of grass under the full moon. The night not only brought a certain appeal, but presented a certain eagerness and immunity. Kids could dream under these conditions and not fear the impending storm of nightmares or sudden gunshots.

A pair of headlights suddenly shot across the driveway and shoved me deeper into the darkness. There was a car door slamming, followed by my prey stepping onto the driveway.

This was just what I needed.

Really.

But then, I guess, in the game of revenge there are always obstacles. Suddenly a big, blue Toyota stopped behind John’s Corvette, blasting Kid Rock. The song, the engine and the headlights died all at the same time. The front door to John’s house opened and the asshole padded across the lawn. John seemed alert and vigorous. He was a skilled drunk, so his strengths would be at full use, despite the alcohol.

The people inside the truck leaped out one at a time. There was a skinny looking kid with a bright orange Mohawk and liquid green eyes shutting the driver’s side door. The other was a blonde guy in jeans and a blue-jean vest. Two dark-haired girls jumped over the back of the truck, their scantily-clad apparel giving off the assumption they were prostitutes.

I counted five people in all and reached into the waistband of my jeans. I popped out the chamber of my .357 Magnum to make sure I had a full load, popped it back in and thumbed back the hammer.

One of the five hollered happily, “Let’s get this party started!”

I snuck out from the bushes, gun held out at arm’s length, breath coming in short gulps of enthusiasm and anger, and my eyes were wide and my lips twisted. I whispered to myself, “Why the hell not? Let’s get this party started, all right.”

I slipped through the small section of space between the truck and the Corvette, keeping my eyes focused on them at all times. I waited to see if one of them was stupid enough to make a move.

It was time to let them know I was there.

“Get your hands up!” I shouted. “Get them up or you’ll all die.”

Mohawk dropped his gigantic pack of beer on the ground, but not one bottle broke.

“John stays. The other four of you can leave right now,” I told them. “It don’t mean shit to me. But John’s mine. When I get through with him, he’ll beg me for a bullet before he can even call his mother!”

“Who the hell are you?” Johnny demanded. “And what do you want with me?”

“You know damn well what you did!” I hissed, my eyes burning holes through him. “You killed Rachel Brown.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“She was my wife, you prick.”

John’s eyes widened with a mix of fear and knowledge as he suddenly realized who I was. He shouted, “Fox, kill this son of a bitch!”

At that instant, everything happened so fast. I had made the mistake of taking my attention away from the others. But now I looked and I saw Mohawk reaching into his pocket.

Giving Mohawk no advantage, I leveled the Magnum and fired twice. The impact sent him from the edge of the driveway and rolled him across the front yard, legs and arms flailing wildly. I could see him illuminated in the moonlight. His face was glued to the crimson grass, and the two holes in his chest soaked his clothes in blood.

The blonde man was reaching for something under his vest, but he had already flicked his other wrist, allowing a small Derringer to slide into his hand. His first shot whizzed by my ear and struck John’s Corvette, but the blonde’s busy hand had come out from under his vest, holding what looked like a .44 Magnum, bigger than my .357. After ducking his first shot, I came back and fired, blowing the blonde guy over onto his back.

I saw Johnny running around the house toward the back yard and darted after him. The two girls moved through the driveway and down the street so I dismissed them. Holding the Magnum in one hand, I ran down the pathway between the garage and the house, my feet pounding mercilessly through tall grass and discarded litter. The wind threw itself at my face, moving strands of dark hair which I shook away from my eyes.

When I arrived at the back yard, Johnny attempted to scale a large wooden fence, his feet and hands scratching for a good grip. I ran up to him, grabbed his ankles and pulled him back over the fence. He began to fight me with stubborn willpower, lashing at me with his feet until I finally let go to avoid being kicked.

He’d gotten over the fence, but fell hard onto the adjoining yard, ass-first. He got to his feet when I pulled the hammer back on the Magnum and fired, blowing a big hole through the fence. Sections of wood cracked and splintered, throwing wood flakes across the air. I stepped through it, watching Johnny run recklessly.

The smell of gunpowder and sweat curled up my nostrils, bringing bile to the back of my throat. I held back the urge to vomit and continued my way toward Johnny. My gun sang sweetly across the sky, echoing off the decrepit colony. I knew, as much as Johnny knew, the cops would be screeching down the street at some point. I was surprised they hadn’t shown up already. But like my running prey, I could care less about the cops.

Johnny dashed through another yard and burst into the street. His eyes, glistening like giant dark pools, reflected the light of the street lamps as he looked warily up and down the neighborhood like he were expecting a whole SWAT team to jump from the bushes and take me out with automatic weapons. I followed him relentlessly, not intending to stop or breathe for that matter. My revenge was more or less a need I couldn’t escape. It felt as if a thousand pounds of hatred and sadness would forever stay strapped to my chest if I couldn’t kill him.

The closer I got to him, the more he tried to confuse me by zigzagging all over the place. I expected that from someone like him, because they fool you by wearing you down, and then they try to beat you while you’re struggling for air.

On the third try, I was three inches away from him when he seemed to float away from me into the air. I fired the Magnum and struck him in the leg. He fell from the air onto the sidewalk like a sack of flour and writhed in pain.

The urge to fill his body with the remaining two bullets left in my gun quickly dissolved. It would do no good because mere bullets wouldn’t kill him, so I stuck the Magnum in the waistband of my jeans and walked over to him. Like a hawk snatching a fish out of a lake, I grabbed the back of John’s jacket, pulled him up to me, turned him around and clutched his chin in my right hand.

Suddenly I realized that my feet weren’t on solid ground any more. I looked down to see that we were suspended above the neighborhood. The sinful city below me shined like rubies on black silk. Dark windows filled with light while meddlesome neighbors poured onto the street from intricately-carved homes. I looked back up at John and almost froze at what I saw.

His eyes glowed the color of a thousand campfires. Ominous orange pupils nearly burned holes into my chest, frying my insides like bacon on a hot griddle. But I had to finish what I came here to do.

I screamed the secret that I knew, finding the strength to overcome his vibrant sight. “You’re a fucking vampire! I had to kill my wife myself the second time. She wouldn’t stay dead. I had to stab her in the chest with a stake.”

“Then it’s not my fault she’s dead,” Johnny said, the heat in his eyes growing much brighter.

“You killed her the minute you bit her, when you waited for us to come out of that restaurant that night. You knocked me out and before I could even say or do anything, you’d already done your job. It’s your fault she’s dead, all right. And it’s your fault for making me finish her off.”

And then I realized that we were drifting back down until we were on the ground once again. We had wound up in someone’s back yard. Why had we fallen out of the sky? Was John losing his powers? 

But then on the ground, he surprised me. He swung his fist, knocking my hand from his chin and grabbed me by the throat. His fingers closed tightly, cutting off the air supply to my brain. I swung at him, but it was useless. My eyes were getting heavy and a slow unconsciousness was blanketing my brain. But still I wouldn’t give up. My right hand clamped onto the object in my jacket and I opened my eyes. I kicked him in the groin and he let go.

When he released my throat, we broke apart in the back yard, our agonizing screams and vulgar speech trailing behind us. I tumbled head first into a swimming pool and sent geysers of water into the air. I swam to the surface, my feet and legs kicking like an Olympic swimmer and climbed onto the patio. My shoes squished each time I walked around the ring of concrete surrounding the pool and while I stepped through the main gate.

John was perched upon the black-iron gate framing the perimeter of the yard, gritting his sharp teeth in pain. His hands were bleeding because the points in the fence had gone completely through them. His razor-sharp teeth glinted in the frail stare of a streetlight as I stood before him. Water dripped from my clothes and drifted gently down the bank along the street.

“You doomed yourself the second you bit her,” I told him. “I know killing you won’t bring her back and it won’t save me. But either way, I can’t let you go free. I have two bullets left in my Magnum. The last bullet is tipped with a paralyzing sedative. When it hits you, your muscles will lock up and your body won’t move.”

John hopped down from the fence. I took the Magnum from the waistband of my jeans and shot both of his feet. He screamed as his muscles froze, making him unable to get up.

I said, “Eventually, someone who is just like you will hunt me down and kill me in your honor. And that’s fine with me, because I’ve been embracing death ever since I had to drive a stake into my wife’s chest. And now, I’ll take my leave before the cops come.”

As I walked away, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. Soon John would burn up like firewood. Too bad I wouldn’t be here to see it. But knowing his death was approaching along with the sun was good enough to satisfy my taste for vengeance.

And right before his mouth froze with paralysis, John cursed at me in a strange dialect, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. That was something else I’d have to work on, so I’d be ready for when the others came for me. 

The August 2009 Featured Writer

BRIAN J. SMITH

Brian J. Smith has been featured in the e-zines: Crooked, Darkest Before The Dawn, The Forbidden Zone, and New Voices In Fiction. His short story "A Day With Daddy" was published as a podcast through Drabblecast.