Collecting Cooper

chapter forty-two

Adrian feels better. The itching has gone, his skin feels cool, he feels relaxed and at peace. Digging up the dead girl was a new experience, and he has to admit, an even more rewarding one than he was used to. He could have done without the mess and the smell of her, but ultimately digging up cats is child’s play compared to digging up and hanging the dead girl.

Like using an ATM at a drive-through, it’s character building. One brought about by a need he never thought he would have. Seeing those people at Grover Hills triggered something inside of him, something Cooper would label as rage, and he knew digging up the girl and hanging her from Tate’s roof would make the rage disappear.

All those times he was locked in the Scream Room with blood running down his thighs and the skin on his face scuffed from the cinder blocks, he would drift away from the cold room and take himself back to the boys who hurt him, and in his thoughts he would kill them, he would kill them the way his friends at the institution had killed others. When he was a boy, digging up the animals was a waste of time. He knows that now, he’s experienced it now. All those years ago he should have been killing the boys who had hurt him and stringing them up for their parents to find.

He’s back in Tate’s neighborhood, and he’s nervous being back. During the drive here he looked at every car as a potential police car. He was beginning to regret taking her car. He should have kept the car he started with-the police wouldn’t be looking for it. In this weather it wasn’t that odd walking the streets without a shirt on, but it was odd carrying a dead girl, so he parked outside the house and carried the dead girl through the side gate into the backyard. The other girl, the alive one, was still asleep.

Then he went and moved his car to the end of the block and around the corner and came back. Since stringing up the girl he’s been waiting behind Tate’s garage, waiting for the reaction. From his vantage point he isn’t able to see it, but he certainly hears it. He can hear him talking on his phone, then silence, then gagging as the ex-policeman starts throwing up on his lawn. The sound of it makes Adrian feel sick too, and for a frightening moment he thinks he’s also going to throw up. He sucks in a deep breath and holds it and the feeling disappears.

He moves around the garage and down the back of the house, staying against it. Light is coming out of the dining room and kitchen windows and hitting the lawn to the side of him. He can see the grave where the cat was buried, dug up, and it looks like buried again. He reaches the end of the house. Tate is crouched off the side of the deck, the phone is still in his hand. He can hear the person on the other end of it, a tinny voice asking Tate over and over “What’s wrong?”

He’s positive he hasn’t made a sound, yet he senses that Tate knows he’s there. There’s a pause, no longer than a second, but it feels like a minute in which both of them hold their breath. Tate has vomit on his chin and his face is covered in sweat, the living room light reflecting off it, the phone is hanging down in one hand and in the other. .

“No,” Adrian says, barely getting the word out before the gun comes up toward him. Adrian has never seen one in real life. He thought Cooper would have owned one, or the Twins, but the closest he’s ever come to seeing one is on a TV screen. Adrian pulls the trigger on his own gun, which isn’t a gun at all but only shaped like one, and the twin darts are propelled from the Taser and hit Tate in the chest and his body contracts and the gun goes off, an explosion of sound followed quickly by the impact of a bullet splintering into the wooden fence behind him.

The Taser does the same job it’s been doing on everybody else and gives him the same result. He keeps his finger on the trigger, thousands of volts pouring from the Taser down the wires into the barbs embedded into Tate’s body until his eyes roll up and he flops onto his back, four limbs all useless and laying in a heap. Adrian rushes forward and holds the rag over Tate’s face. He isn’t able to struggle. A moment later he’s unconscious.

There was a small fright with the gun, but other than that none of this could have gone any better, plus now he has a gun to add to his collection!

“Welcome to my collection,” he says, and can’t hear the words over the ringing in his ears. He tugs at the barbs in Tate’s chest and they’re caught in there pretty deep but he manages to get them out by tugging harder. He winds them around the weapon and jams it into his pocket. He picks up the gun.

The cell phone is on the ground next to Tate’s hand. It’s still on, and whoever is on the other end is still listening. He stomps on it, a sharp stab of pain shooting up his leg on impact. It doesn’t break on the first hit, rather it sinks slightly into the ground. He stomps on it a second time, this time it breaks into two pieces and the pain in his leg is more intense.

The ringing in his ears is starting to die down, and he can hear voices. He looks around at the houses next to him and lights that weren’t on before are on now. There are people staring at him from one of the windows. He points the gun at them and they duck away. They’ve heard the gunshot and they’ve called the police. He crouches down and gets Tate over his shoulder, but manages only one step before his right leg gives out and he falls over, Tate landing on top of him. He rolls the deadweight off him and when he tries to stand the pain returns, the same pain as when he broke the cell phone. He reaches down and touches his leg and his hand comes away with blood. He rolls up his pants leg. There’s a groove of flesh missing across the side of his outer thigh where the bullet Tate fired chewed through him. Blood is flowing from it steadily. He never even felt it happen, and now that he’s seen it it’s starting to hurt bad. There’s no way he can carry Tate and get to the car quickly now, and the police are on their way because the damn nosy neighbors would have called them.

“This isn’t fair,” he says, reaching the side gate. “Fairness is only for winners,” his mother used to say, not his real mother, but the one he set on fire. He guesses that wasn’t fair on her being set ablaze like that, and guesses that means she wasn’t a winner. He moves over the front yard onto the street, gritting his teeth as he covers the distance to his car. He holds one hand firmly against the wound as he drives, and is several blocks away before he hears the first of the sirens.