The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FORTY

Agitated. He knows he’s agitated, and the phone call hasn’t helped. His stomach hurts, but so does his head and he wants to lash out, wants to strike out at everything and anything. He grips his stomach and wonders why he ever threw away those painkillers. He contemplates smashing the phone against the edge of the desk, but that would accomplish nothing.

At least he sure as shit feels better today than he did yesterday.

The last few days have been hell. He was taught in the army that there would be days like this. Weeks. Months. He never saw combat, but he was trained for it. He knew how to kill people. His wife knew how to kill people too. It’s where he met her. They trained together. They socialized. They fell in love. That was ten years ago. Then five years ago they got married. Then four and a half years ago there was a training accident and now his wife is a former shell of the person she used to be. It was a helicopter accident. The thing about helicopters is that at the best of times they fly, and at any other time they don’t. They’re not like planes. Planes can get into trouble and they can glide. Planes have a chance of landing. They can stay level enough to jump out of with a chute. Helicopters don’t glide. They fall. They crash. The pilot was killed. Two corporals were killed. Macy, his wife, ended up losing both of her legs, her left one just above the knee, her right one just below.

So she was given a medical discharge. It was going to be a new life. She went through multiple surgeries. She spent weeks where she would just cry. It was three months until he could bring her home. Things got better. They got worse. They got better again. She got counseling. She was going great. Then she tried to kill herself. He had gone to work. She tied a rope around a beam in the garage and tied the other end around her neck. She got out of her wheelchair and sat herself up on a workbench. Then she jumped. The wheelchair fell over. Then Cyris came home. He’d forgotten his sunglasses. He found her in the garage. Her jaw had clamped. She’d bitten off a chunk of her tongue and blood was running down her neck. He cut her down. He called an ambulance. He got her jaw open, but her mouth kept filling with blood from her severed tongue. He tried to resuscitate her, but there was too much blood. The ambulance arrived. They were lucky-there had been a false call two blocks away so there was an ambulance at his house within ninety seconds of him calling. The paramedics took over.

Everybody thought she was going to die. The doctors guessed she must have been hanging between two and three minutes. Her brain had been starved of oxygen. They resuscitated her, but there was brain damage. She would never be functional. That was the word the doctor used. Functional. Like she was the remote control to his TV. There were payments from the army to help with her rehabilitation from her severed legs, but there was nothing extra for the brain damage. Insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. She had tried to kill herself. They weren’t in the business of helping people who had tried to die. She needed full-time care. The army helped for four years because of her legs, then a year ago they stopped paying. It was cutbacks. Everywhere had cutbacks. The economy was in the toilet.

He walks through to his wife. She’s lying in bed watching the TV. She likes cartoons. She’s seen this particular one well over a thousand times. It’s on a DVD and it’s on repeat and he knows every word, every sound effect, and at night he leaves the TV running for her and the volume off. She looks up at him and smiles. “Side Russ,” she says. That’s his name now, thanks to about a quarter of her tongue hitting the garage floor.

“Hey, babe,” he says. Sometimes, when he’s feeling at his worst, he likes to tell her.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“I’ll get you something in a minute,” he says, knowing that if he doesn’t, she’ll forget that she’s hungry anyway.

“Ooo have a beard,” she says.

He reaches up and tugs on his beard. He’s had it for a few weeks now, and he hates it. When this is all over he’ll shave it off.

“Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

“My stomach hurts,” he tells her. “I was stabbed.” He lifts up his T-shirt and shows her his stomach. There’s duct tape holding the wound closed.

“What ha-hend?”

“A bad man stabbed me,” he says, and then he tells her about it.

She starts to cry. And then she gets distracted by the cartoon on the TV. Then she starts to laugh. And then she looks over at him. “Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

“I’m fine,” he tells her. “Let me get you something to eat.”

He goes through to the bathroom. He soaks his hands in water, then raises them to his face. He wipes at it, wipes and wipes and his skin is sore, yeah, and he’s careful to avoid his broken nose. It’s swollen and raw and there’s bruising around it. Then he wipes those same hands at the mirror. The image remains and he can’t get rid of the pain. From nowhere one of the headaches strikes, and he has to lower himself and sit on the edge of the bath. Christ. When it passes he opens the medicine cabinet, but nothing lives in there except aspirin, so he grabs hold of a few, even though they will do little to help. Clenching his fists, he sits back on the side of the bath and lifts his shirt. He’s going to need to get some more stuff from his buddy, Derek, the guy that fixed him up years ago with the good shit. His buddy is the same guy that fixed him up with this gig. Derek is one of those guys who knows people. He’s one of those guys who introduces people to people who need things done. He’s also Macy’s brother. Derek has hooked him up with other people in the past. Others that needed to die. Not many. Just a few. He’s not proud of what he does, but he needs the money. He needs it to look after Macy.

The duct tape across his stomach is covered in dried blood. He chews the aspirin and the taste makes his head spin, but at least he’s focused now on the job at hand, and from his back pocket he takes out the piece of paper with his instructions, with his goals, and the piece of paper helps to remind him that tonight he’s going to be a wealthy man. A wealthy man. Oh yeah.

He tugs at the edge of the duct tape, but it’s fastened down, and he wishes he had put some padding beneath it first because now the wound will smile open when he pulls the tape away. He squeezes his hands across his ears. Never in his life has he suffered from headaches, not until Monday. Feldman will have to pay. He’s going to pay in more ways than one.

Cyris pushes himself up from the bath and moves down the hallway. He wonders how Macy would react if he were to take her into the basement and show her his investment. He wonders how both women would react. Of course Macy would forget all about it after a little while. He reaches the doorway to the basement. He’s light-headed and the walls and the door are spinning in time with his mind, but in the opposite direction. He reaches out and balances himself. The room starts to spin faster. He holds his breath and the need to vomit slowly fades.

He thinks of Charlie. He thinks of Charlie plunging the knife into him, and at the same time the pain in his stomach flares up as though the knife is back in there, twisting around and around. He doubles over and collapses to his knees. No amount of money is worth this. When he gets back to his feet he unlocks the basement door and heads downstairs. The woman looks up at him and he can see she’s been crying. He hates it when women cry. It’s their way of making men feel guilty. It’s a weapon they use to make men feel like crap. Macy never did that to him. Macy was an army chick. She was tough.

He hates Charlie Feldman for being such an asshole.

He hates the world for being the way it is.

From the bench nearby he picks up a knife and moves toward Feldman’s wife.