“Dave is going to be here any second. If I were you, I’d start cooperating before he walks through that door. See, I don’t think he cares about getting answers. I think he just wants to see you bleed. I think he gets off on it.”
Undeterred, Nymph said, “Did you know that you can do a simple test to detect if a child has a soul? They did the experiment in the 1960s—you simply set an Oreo cookie on the table in front of them, tell them not to eat it, then leave the room. Some will resist until you return, the rest will reach out and eat it within minutes, or seconds. Follow up with that latter group decades later and you’ll find they’re all drug addicts, or in jail, or bankrupt. Because they are maggots, you see. Tell me, John, would you have passed this test?”
John could barely hear the man—the storm was now an enormous animal frantically gnawing away at the wooden shell of the church to get to the soft meat inside. John edged toward Nymph. He would only get one shot at this—meaning his weapon literally only had one shot.
Nymph said, “We know the answer to that, don’t we? You undergo that test every single day. But I’ve wasted enough of your time. Why don’t we go somewhere and talk this over like reasonable men? We’re both reasonable men, aren’t we?”
Nymph stepped out from behind the podium. He was wearing nothing except for a tiny pair of little girls’ panties, which did nothing to conceal his massive erection.
The wind made the exact sound you hear when a freight train runs over your face.
John ran at Nymph.
With a hellish noise, the roof was ripped from the building.
Me
I wrestled with the decision for a few blocks but eventually decided to swing around and head for the apartment to get Amy. The wind was picking up and the storm was kind of getting scary—other cars had pulled off the road completely, the drivers such pussies that they refused to drive unless they could actually see the road. When I made it home and climbed to the top of the dildo store, I noticed that the neon sign had gone dark—the power must have gone out. I entered quietly and thought I’d find Amy asleep, but a quick search revealed she wasn’t home.
This wasn’t too alarming. She couldn’t drive, but she still had lots of options. She could have hung back at work so as not to get out into the storm, or the dude giving her a ride may have had to run an errand on the way. She could have walked over to the convenience store across the street to get some junk food …
I noticed there were dishes in the sink. Used and then washed. A mixing bowl, a whisk, two plates. Had she invited that guy from work in for breakfast? If you don’t know Amy, let me catch you up: that is absolutely not the kind of thing she does. Maybe the guy insisted? A box of Bisquick and a plastic bottle of pancake syrup were sitting on the counter. I tried to picture this dude insisting he come in—to our apartment—to make Amy pancakes, in our kitchen, and her agreeing to that …
My brain just froze up. I mean, if they had just succumbed to passion and banged in my bed, I could understand that. I wouldn’t even be mad, as long as Amy was happy and they cleaned up afterward. But coming into another man’s house and making breakfast for his girl in his own kitchen? That’s some serial killer shit. Maybe somebody else stopped by? That’s probably all it was. Hell, it’s the sort of thing that on a different day, wouldn’t have triggered a second thought.
I looked around for a note—Amy is big on leaving notes—and checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed a message. Nothing.
I just stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, rain and wind crashing against the windows. I wasn’t worried, necessarily. What, like the bad guys came for her and made her breakfast first?
I pulled out my phone and tried to call.
I got a voice telling me the network was down.
John
John flinched at the cacophony overhead, then looked up to see only sky. The entire roof of the church had been raggedly peeled off like the top on a box of macaroni and cheese mix. The storm washed in and it was like he’d stuck his head into the water going seventy miles an hour on a Jet Ski.
Half blind, John stumbled forward and reached the pulpit, trying to shield his eyes. Nymph wasn’t there, but there was a door in the wall beyond. John reached it and found himself in a small break room. Another door to the outside was standing open. John pushed through, into the storm, in time to see taillights swimming into the distance.
John sprinted around to the Jeep and tore through the storm in pursuit. The visibility was so poor he had no idea if they were even on a road—all he could see were those blurry taillights on Nymph’s car, a tiny black convertible. John didn’t even consider backing off.
He didn’t know who or what Nymph was and didn’t particularly care. What John had learned was that anything and everything in this universe feels pain. It’s the universal constant, it’s what keeps us in check. In his time doing this job, John had learned how to inflict all types of pain, on all types of creatures. For some it was a blade, for others sunlight, or the sound of a wind chime on a summer day.
John would catch Nymph, and he would find out what caused Nymph pain.
The taillights swerved and jerked in John’s windshield and each time, John followed them. The car ran off the road and back on again, tires briefly spinning for traction on the muddy shoulder. Whatever Nymph was, John knew this: the guy had chosen the wrong vehicle for this pursuit. His little sports car lost speed in the muck and nearly hydroplaned when it hit standing water on the pavement, while John’s Jeep plowed ever forward.
Finally, Nymph made the mistake John had been waiting for. On a long stretch of clear road, Nymph had floored it, racing off into the distance for a few seconds before he hit a large puddle and lost traction completely—John just saw a wild spray of white water, the taillights whipping left and then right—
The crash was over before John’s brain could even register what was happening. First, the little black sports car swerved right into a utility pole head-on, the taillights bouncing on impact. A split second later, John smashed into the sports car, compressing it into the pole like a beer can. Between the two vehicles, it was no contest—the Jeep had crushed the fragile little convertible to half its size. It didn’t even bend the Jeep’s bumper guards.
For a moment, all was still. John’s fingers were locked in a death grip around his steering wheel. Steam hissed from an exploded radiator—Nymph’s, not his. The wind had calmed and once again it was just the steady rain, as if the gods’ lust for violence had been appeased with a sacrifice. John gathered himself, yanked off his seat belt, and stumbled up to the driver’s side door of the sports car. He reared back with an elbow and smashed the window.
Empty.
No Nymph in the driver’s side, or passenger side, or the floorboard. No break in the windshield where he could have flown through on impact. Nothing.
John stomped back toward the Jeep—
Blood.
Dripping from the rear bumper.
No.
A little sports car like that wouldn’t have much of a trunk in the best of times, but now it had been crumpled into a mangled space no more than a foot wide. The lid sat loosely on top, and under it John could see …
the little girl looking mangled and bloody
… something, but it was impossible to know, in the rain. If he never lifted the lid and got a closer look, maybe he could go the rest of his life never knowing what was in there. Like Schrödinger’s cat, only by seeing what was in the trunk would it become real.
John slowly lifted the lid and he saw bloody little hands bound at the wrists by duct tape and a round little face with its mouth taped shut. A tangle of blond hair. Terrified eyes, wide open.