– She wasn't.
He rocks the girl from side to side.
– Yes, love, she was. She was plucked from the streets by this man. This man who you then hired to find her.
– I?
– Strange coincidence that. Except that it was no coincidence.
Was it, love?
– Dale, what are you?
– Very clever of you. Hire the same man you paid to abduct your daughter to then find her.
– No.
He's putting on a show for her now, rehearsing a story for more official recitations at later dates. I'm happy for the distraction. Anything is better than the thing with teeth inside me.
– Yes, I assure you that is exactly how it happened. How naive of me not to have seen it when I met with him to discuss the case.
– Kill you.
Something crashes.
– Gentlemen, if you would please keep my wife from hurting herself.
There is a rush of movement and the slightest of scuffles.
– Don't harm her, please.
– Fuck you, Dale, fucking fuck you!
– If one of you could simply inject her with a half cc from the vial I used to calm my daughter? You'll find a clean syringe in the case there. Intramuscular will suffice.
– No! Fucking no!
She shrieks. Horde passes the time cooing at his daughter. I pass the time dying in horrible agony. Then Marilee is quiet.
– Better, yes? In any case, the humorous part of the whole tale is that I simply suspected you of cuckolding me with your hired hand. It was only when the men I had following you witnessed your visit to Chester Dobbs's office that I suspected the truth. I can only assume that you originally paid him off the case to make room for your own man. But as to what happened next? Did Dobbs threaten blackmail or some such?
A slight moan from the couch.
– No, do not answer, just relax. I will assume blackmail. Why else would you feel so compelled to kill him?
I'm listening to the frame Horde is building around us, around his wife and me, trying to stay a step ahead of it, trying to figure out what picture the frame will surround. His wife and I in cahoots in the kidnapping of the girl, his wife as Dobbs's murderer. I'm trying to imagine the picture such a frame would suit. It's a good problem, complex and detailed. It distracts me. But not enough.
Pain is becoming.
– The tragedy. The real tragedy of it all is that I couldn't save you from yourself. The tragedy is that, despite what you had done, trying to take my daughter from me, I still loved you and wished to save you from your own weakness. But I was too late. Too late to save you from a brutal murder at the hands of your hired thug turned lover.
Pain is eclipsing.
– How fortunate that I should remember Amanda's little hiding place from last summer. And how clever of your partner to have used the site of a recent massacre as his hideaway. Who would ever have thought to look there? Too bad, though.
Pain is not what I thought it was.
– Too bad we were not in time to spare you from your fate. But thank God.
I have never before felt pain.
– Thank God we were in time to save Amanda. Save her before he could abuse her, more than he already had. Was that it?
Pain is a new thing.
– Was that why you quarreled? Because you saw how he had misused her? I like to think so. I like to think that at the very end, your mother's instincts took over and you tried desperately to save our little girl. How brave you were to fight him. How awful it must have been when he slid the needle into your skin and left you helpless. Pain lives.
– Helpless to do anything for your daughter as he touched her again, right in front of your eyes. Helpless as he turned his attentions to you. What a terrible end you had. If only we had arrived a few moments earlier, we might have been able to do more than to simply avenge your demise.
Pain breathes.
– But it's all over now. All over. Perhaps you'll have peace knowing that your daughter is safe now. Safe at home in her father's loving arms.
Pain has a home inside my body.
A grunt, and tumble of clumsy footsteps as Marilee stumbles into view clawing at her husband's face. The enforcer materializes, pulls her away and throws her to the floor. Horde nods as if she is reacting as he knew she would, reacting childishly to his story.
– Turn her over.
The enforcer flips Marilee to her stomach as Horde sets his daughter gently in a chair.
– Bare her neck.
The enforcer sweeps Marilee's hair from the back of her neck and pulls the collar of her blouse down. Horde steps out of view, and then back, now holding a small black cube with rounded corners. He kneels next to his wife and holds the cube in front of her face. It splits opens like a jewelry case. He shows her the contents.
– I finished.
She moans. He takes something white and pink from the case.
– I've even tried it out already.
He sets the case aside.
– Twice.
He holds the white and pink object, pinched between his thumb and middle finger.
– First on Whitney. Which was, naturally, somewhat by design. He shifts the white and pink object to the palm of his hand, letting it rest there.
– And later, in a spontaneous moment, on a downtown ragamuffin.
The white and pink object springs open slightly, like a clamshell.
– And now it is time for another trial. With a considerably larger dose I think.
He lifts the white and pink object to his face, opens his mouth wide and slides it inside. He bites down hard on the dentures, setting them in place. Marilee begins to thrash her head from side to side.
– Hold her still.
The enforcer pins Marilee's head to the floor. Horde leans over the back of his wife's neck, his mouth stretched open, muscles I and tendons popping from his own neck, and he bites her.
I have found my carrier. But it is too late to do anything about it. I am pain. And a black shroud drops mercifully over my life.
I am dead.
And so I am free to remember my life.
I remember being small and helpless in the house of my parents. How they took advantage of that helplessness, my mother and father. Hands in dark rooms, probing me. Belts like whips, lashing me.
I remember the marks on my body that would be healed years later when the Vyrus took up residence and cleaned house. The marks discovered by sympathetic schoolteachers.
I remember my mother and father struggling in the arms of the police. The last memory of them. And then the others.
New sets of parents, none for more than a year, none a particular improvement over biology. And I remember the street where I taught other children the lessons I had learned at home. The grasping hands, the lash. I remember seeing fear in someone else's eyes, and that it made me feel larger.
I remember running the streets, warlord of my tiny tribe. And then being found and being poisoned. And fear and helplessness returned. And then Terry and the Society and something new. A reason. And years of work and learning, as I am taught how to be in the world. Then the discovery that I have become Terry's favorite tool. His sharpest instrument when it is time to apply fear. When it is time for the lash. Then not wanting any longer to be the whip.
I remember being alone and doing the job.
The Coalition and the Society and their dirty little errands. The job that is just survival. And then Evie. And I remember her whispering to me in the dark of my room while the day was bright outside, telling me what she felt. And having nothing to say to her in return except lies about who and what I am, but telling them all the same. To keep from being alone. And then the years since, years close to the edge. Balancing between Evie and the job. Every step closer to the edge of… something. I remember Whitney Vale. The almost human look in her eyes when I took the knife from her, the cough when the blade went in. And Leprosy, the bite in the back of his neck reeking of rotting. And the picture of the girl, alone somewhere, helpless. And her mother's breast pressed against me as she kissed the edge of my mouth. And Philip babbling over Dobbs's strangled corpse. And Daniel asking for my help as Jorge vomited his life into the room. And Dale Edward Horde, arrogant and cruel, experienced in the use of the hands and the lash. And Amanda's hand chained to mine, close by one another, covered by cloth. And the scouring acid in my veins. And a smell that isn't there, describing something that cannot exist. And the basement of the school, scene of a crime no one has defined, but one I can too easily imagine.