Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

‘Do you need to pee or anything?’

‘What?’

‘Do you have to use the toilet?’

‘No.’

He nods. ‘Good.’

He slips a pair of leather gloves onto his hands, grabs the roll of tape from the table, gets to his feet. He picks up her panties from the floor and walks toward her. He shoves them into her mouth. They taste of laundry soap and of her sex. He shoves them down her throat, making her want to gag. She tries to spit them out, but it’s difficult, the dry fabric clings to the walls of her mouth, and before she can do anything more than ineffectively cough Eugene is wrapping tape around her head. She coughs a few more times, tears streaming down her face, before she gets the fabric out of her throat. She wants to rub the moisture from her eyes but her hands are still taped behind her back. Eugene must sense it. He wipes the tears away from her cheeks himself, smearing them away with his gloved thumb.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to choke you. I have to take care of some business. I’ll be back soon. With breakfast.’

He collects his own gun and hers, then walks to the door, grabs the doorknob, and pulls. He steps over the threshold. He closes the door behind him, leaving her alone.

Her first thought is to start banging against the walls, to get someone’s attention, but she needs to think of something better than that. That will result in the police being called, which is the last thing she wants. The police will ask questions.

What are you going to do, Evelyn? Think.

She falls back in bed and kicks her legs up. Starts working her taped-together hands around her naked backside, up toward the backs of her knees, squirming through the tight loop of her arms. If she can get her legs through, if she can get her hands in front of her, well, she isn’t sure what she’ll do, but it’ll be a start. And that’s what she needs: a start. A beginning.

She’ll think of something.

But first she needs to get her hands free.

4

He puts the Berretta into his motorcycle’s saddlebag and his own pistol down the front of his pants, then rides to a diner. He parks at the curb and steps into the place. It smells good, of coffee and bacon. The chatter of the patrons is pleasant. He walks across the black-and-white-checkered floor to the payphone in the corner and drops a dime. He listens for a moment to the tone, then dials. It rings several times. If this call remains unanswered Eugene doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

‘Hello?’

He exhales, relieved.

‘Fingers.’

‘Eugene?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’s up, man?’

‘Last time we spoke you offered to help.’

A long pause, then, finally: ‘I did.’

5

Evelyn lies on her back with her feet in the air. Her right shoulder is screaming with pain. She curses into the fabric shoved down her throat. Her breathing is jagged and short. If her feet weren’t taped together she could get her legs through one at a time, that would be far less painful, but her feet are taped together. That makes her task, as well as painful, nearly impossible. This is her third attempt. With her wrists at the backs of her ankles she draws her knees to her chest and tries, with a grunt, to force her hands over her heels. She feels a great tearing pain in her shoulder and screams into the wet fabric in her mouth. She rolls to her side. She closes her eyes and tears stream down her hot, sweaty face. She opens her eyes and finds herself looking, through a kaleidoscope of tears, at her hands. They’re held together as if in prayer.

She laughs through her pain. She did it.

She did it.

She sits up in bed, a wet clump of hair falling into her face, and reaches to the tape covering her mouth. She pulls down, pulls the tape down over her chin, and reaches into her mouth with her searching fingers. She removes the now-sopping panties, gags, almost vomits, and throws them to the floor. She allows herself to sit motionless and catch her breath. She can’t sit here doing nothing indefinitely — Eugene will return at some point, and she needs to figure out what she’s going to do about him — but she allows herself a moment.

She sniffles, brings her taped-together hands to her nose, wipes at it.

Okay. What next?

She turns her wrists in opposite directions to see how much movement is available, how much give the tape has. Not much. But, with luck, enough. With pain in her wrists she picks at the end of the tape with a fingernail, picks at the tape until almost a third of an inch has been pulled away. She brings her wrists to her mouth and bites down on the tape end, then pulls her hands away, unwinding it.

In less than five minutes her hands are free.

A minute after that her feet are free as well.

She stands and walks to her purse. She finds her cigarette case, removes a filtered Kent, and lights it. She inhales deeply, coughs, looks around the room. She has no idea how long it’s been. Eugene could return at any moment. She needs to figure what she’s going to do when he does.

Her first thought is to call Lou, but there’s no telephone here. And anyway, she’d have a hard time explaining to him what she was doing in this room.

She could simply leave, find a phone, make an anonymous call to the police. Except she doesn’t want Eugene in police custody.

He can tell them far too much, and he would.

She takes another drag from her cigarette.

He has to die. That’s what Daddy would say, and Daddy’d be right. She has to kill him and get rid of the body. Drive it out to the desert, bury it. The police will still think he did the murders for which he’s been framed; they’ll just also think he got away with it, made it down to Tijuana where they’ll never catch up with him.

Why didn’t he go down to Mexico when she suggested it? She would’ve gotten money to him. Maybe they could have made a small life together down there. If he’d listened maybe the two of them would still have some small chance at something.

No more childish thoughts, Evelyn.

You would have gotten bored. It never could have worked out.

You have to kill him and you know it, so figure out how you’re going to do it and get ready. He might show up at any moment.

She nods at that.

You’re right. Of course.

It has to be something simple and brutal.

But first she has to get some clothes on. She picks her dress up from the floor and steps into it, reaching behind her to zip it up. She looks toward the panties on the floor, but refuses to put them on. This wrinkled, sweat-stinking dress alone will have to suffice.

She looks around the room for a weapon.

She has to be ready for him.

6

Eugene rides his motorcycle into the motel parking lot, steps off the bike, knocks the kickstand into place. He reaches into the saddlebag and removes a brown paper bag and, with the paper bag gripped in his fist, walks to his motel room. He keys open the door, steps inside.

First thing he notices is that the bed is empty. A wad of duct tape lies on the mattress, another wad on the floor by the foot of the bed.

His mouth goes dry. His heart knocks in his chest like a bad car engine. He reaches for the Baby Browning in his waistband, gets his hand around the cool grip, and is about to pull it out when he feels a dull thud at the back of his head and falls to his knees. He touches the back of his head and feels pain. He looks at his fingers and sees blood. He looks over his shoulder.

Evelyn stands behind him in the doorway, her red hair a wild mess, her brow furrowed, her eyes glistening. She holds in her hands a large stone with this motel room’s number painted on it, a white 13. She must have been waiting outside for his return, hiding around the corner or behind a car.