"If you take me back," said Kline, "they'll kill me."
"No," said Gous. "We won't."
"Then why the gun? Why would Paul insist on me reporting in person? Why would that matter?"
Gous shrugged. "How should I know?"
Kline sighed. "All right," he said. "What else can I do?" he asked. He started to turn away and then half-turned back. "One other thing," he said. "That gun won't do you any good."
"Why not?" asked Gous.
"Haven't you heard?" said Kline. "I can't be killed." And this time when the gun wavered, Kline's hand was already on it, tearing it out of Gous' grasp.
He made Gous turn around and raise his hands and then struck him on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol. He left him lying there in a heap on the floor while he slipped out of his pants. Wiping his chest and legs best he could with a dry towel, he found a clean shirt and a new pair of pants, put them on.
In the kitchen he washed his face. Suddenly he felt very tired.
There was a bucket under the sink and he took this. The sink had a spray nozzle at the end of a piece of retractable tubing and he tore this tubing out and then broke the spray nozzle off, leaving water gouting up in the sink. He coiled the tubing, dropping it into the bucket.
Gous was awake now in the bedroom, groggy, rubbing his head.
"You shouldn't do this," he said.
"Nothing personal," said Kline. "You'll thank me for it later," he said, and then struck Gous again, this time on the side of his head.
He searched Gous, taking his cigarette lighter. Gous' car keys and wallet he threw out the window, and then he left.
V
He stayed there, leaning his head against the steering wheel. Is there any other choice? he was wondering. The plastic of the steering wheel was slick and cold.
Of course there's another choice, he thought. There is always another choice. I'm just not going to take it.
He lifted his head. On the seat beside him, a collection of objects, disjecta: a bucket, a coil of tubing, a cigarette lighter, a cleaver, a pistol, a man's head.
He lifted the head by the hair and dumped it into the bucket, the tubing as well. The cigarette lighter he forced into a pocket. The gun he slid into his belt, the cleaver as well.
He got out carrying the bucket, then set it down on the curb, taking the head and the tubing out.
He snaked one end of the tubing into the car's gas tank and sucked on the other end, feeling the rough plastic of the broken nozzle with his tongue until gas poured first into his mouth and then onto the sidewalk and then into the bucket. He let the bucket fill about three quarters full, then pulled the tube free, threw it under the car.
He carried the sloshing bucket a few dozen meters down the sidewalk. He stopped just shy of the revolving door, and left it there against the building wall.
It's not too late, he thought on his way back for the head, but knew it was-even before he'd picked up the head, even before he'd carried it through the revolving doors and into the lobby.
The doorman Paul was there, or a doorman Paul anyway. How had the sequence gone?
"Well met, Paul," said Kline.
"Well met, Paul," said the Paul. "Friend Kline, I mean."
"Just have to report," said Kline.
"Of course," said the Paul. "Might I ask what you have in your hand?"
"This?" said Kline. "Borchert's head."
"Ah, I see," said the Paul.
"I'm going to put him down," said Kline. "I left something outside."
The Paul nodded, started toward the desk and the telephone. Kline hurried outside, took the bucket by the handle, carried it sloshing back in.
By the time he returned, the Paul was already unlocking the heavy door. Kline came closer and put down the bucket and waited.
"You know where to find him," the Paul said. "He'll be waiting for you," he said, and reached out to open the door. Whereupon Kline killed him with the cleaver.
There was a Paul on the other side of the door and Kline greeted him and killed him as well. This Paul was a little harder to kill, having caught a glimpse of the first guard prone on the floor just before Kline swung the cleaver, but in the end he was dead too.
He dragged in the bucket of gasoline, sliding Borchert's head along with his foot.
From there it was just a matter of dousing the parquet and the walls. He spread some in the entryway and then up the stairs and down the hall at the top of the stairs as well. Then he went back down, lighting it as he went.
By the time he reached the bottom, Borchert's head was a ball of fire and there were blue flames licking the floor and walls and Kline's hand was blistering. His shoes and legs and shirt were aflame. He tried to beat himself out and when it kept up he pushed his way out the door and rolled in the doorman's blood. And then, still smoking, his hands starting to shake, he took the doorman's keys and stood at the door, watching. Once he heard shouts, he closed the door, and locked it.
He stood beside the door, listening to what might be screams, what might be merely the crackle and roar of the flames. When it grew too hot and the door itself began to smoke he moved back and slowly away until finally he was standing alone in the street, watching the entire building catch fire. He listened to the sound of the sirens, distant but coming closer.
Where now? he wondered, at first walking, then loping, then breaking into a run. What next?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to Paul Miller for first publishing "The Brotherhood of Mutilation" and Paul DiFilippo for writing an introduction to that volume. I'd also like to thank Paul Maliszewski and Paul Tobin Anderson for advice concerning one-handed piano performances and for putting me on the trail of Paul Wittgenstein, the one-armed pianist (and brother of Ludwig Wittgenstein), and Paul LaFarge and Forrest Paul Gander for general encouragement. And to my girlfriend, Paul, and to my two daughters, Paul and Paul.
And the greatest thanks to three honorary Pauls-my publisher Victoria Blake, my agent Matt McGowan, my French editor Claro-and to the ever-generous and ever-brilliant Peter Straub.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brian Evenson is the author of nine books of fiction, including The Open Curtain (2006), which was a finalist for the International Horror Guild Award and the Edgar Award and was named one of the ten best books of the year by Time Out New York. Evenson's most recent collection of stories, The Wavering Knife (2004), won the International Horror Guild Award. Among his other books are Altmann's Tongue (1994), which was the cause of a great deal of controversy, leading to his leaving a teaching job at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University and to his eventual break with the Mormon Church. In 2008 he published Aliens: No Exit, an Alien movie tie-in novel, from DH Press. A new story collection, Fugue State, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2009. He has also published a critical study of novelist Robert Coover and several book-length translations from French, and he is an occasional collaborator with graphic novelist Zak Sally. Evenson's work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. He directs Brown University's Creative Writing Program and lives in Providence, Rhode Island with writer Joanna Howard and their dog Ruby. You can find out more about his work at www.brianevenson.com.