Paul Cleave - Joe Victim

“Third time’s the charm,” Raphael says, though he doesn’t know if she can hear him. It turns out third time isn’t the charm. Nor is the fourth. Nor fifth. She lays the gun down on the blanket and rolls off to the side and takes off her earmuffs. She gives him a small I tried my best shrug, and he gives her a small Don’t worry about it smile.

“See what you think,” she says.

Raphael nods. He feels like a kid at Christmas.

He squats down, his knees hurting a little, the left one popping, and he feels a little embarrassed, he feels old. Stella puts her earmuffs back into place. He lies in the same position she was in. The gun feels like a natural extension of his arms. It makes him feel powerful. He likes feeling that way. He puts his eye up to the scope. It’s incredibly clear. So clear he doesn’t see how anybody could miss with something like this. Of course people miss because the conditions change. Wind. Rain. Glare from the sun. Other people around. All sorts of stuff. Shooting a tin can is different from shooting a man. The cans are still. There is no sense of urgency, no sense of panic, no sense of hitting the wrong can and ruining the lives of other cans who loved it.

He squeezes the trigger. The tin can takes flight, landing and skidding to a stop five yards away, where it lies on its side, half dented with a hole going through one side and out the opposite. He eyes up one of the tins half-hidden by a thick tree root. That one goes flying too. He’s two for two. He’s a natural.

He looks back through the scope. He thinks about his daughter. He knows how she died. He knows Joe broke into her house. He killed her cat before dragging her from her bathroom. He knows exactly what he did to her. The way he tied her to the bed, the way he pushed an egg into her mouth, the way he pushed himself into her. .

This third shot misses. Wild right. He pulls his face away from the scope. Stares at the ground beneath his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Stella asks.

He looks up at her. “Nothing,” he says. “Just. . just nothing. Give me a second,” he says, and he sucks in a few deep breaths and he wants to scream. He wants to drive to the prison right now and take this gun into the cells and shoot Joe where he stands, shoot the fucker in the knees, stomp on them, punch him in the face over and over. He wants to cut his eyelids off, rip his organs out, drown him, revive him, set fire to him. There isn’t a single bad thing he doesn’t want to do. The Red Rage wants to keep the fucker alive for as long as he can, and just keep cutting and stomping, cutting and hurting.

And Stella-sweet, sweet Stella is going to give him that chance.

He puts his eye back up to the scope. He takes another shot and misses by just as much as the last one. Damn it. He closes his eyes. This isn’t working. Not when he’s angry.

“Raphael?”

He gets onto his knee. “Give me a minute,” he says, and gets to his feet, the other knee popping this time, only this time he’s too angry to feel embarrassed. He stares out at the foundations of the cabin, and in those long blades of grass hidden from view are parts of the walls too. If he’s missing now, he’s going to miss when the shot presents itself.

Stella puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. “You just need to focus.”

“I am focusing,” he says, but he’s focusing on the wrong damn things. He has to stop thinking of his daughter, of her naked beneath Joe, of the fear racing in her head, of Joe being the last thing she would see and of her knowing that. He can’t think about how there were many people who loved her and how none of them were there to help her. He has to think about Joe. Joe with a bullet in his head. Joe with his head in a cardboard box. Joe with a lot of bad shit happening to him.

None of it will bring Angela back.

He lies back down, his knee popping again. He looks through the scope. He stares at the tin can hanging from the tree. That tin can is Joe’s head. That’s what he thinks. He has to let go of the anger. Not for good, just for now, just when he’s behind the barrel of the gun. Breathe in. Breathe out. Stay calm. Empty his mind. He’s doing a good thing here. Focus on that. Stay calm and fantastic things are going to happen. Not closure, he can never have that, but he can have revenge. It’s there waiting for him. He just has to take it.

He squeezes the trigger. The tin can doesn’t disappear, but he does wing it. He takes another shot. This time it flies out of sight. He shoots another one. And another. His heart rate is slowing. He could probably shoot a thousand tins now if he wanted to.

He’s calm now. Calm and this is easy. He uses up the rest of the clip. All the tin cans are gone. Stella shows him how to take the magazine out. He reloads it himself. He shoots more tins, shooting the ones now that have already been shot. He goes through the magazine once again.

Then he rolls onto his side and looks up at Stella. He thinks about the Red Rage. The Red Rage is happy. “We’re really doing this,” he says.

“We really are,” she says, and he loads the magazine back up and carries on shooting.

Twelve months ago I couldn’t even remember it had happened to me. Twelve months ago there were more important things on my mind, wonderful distractions-the kind of distractions that had an entire police force hunting me down. Since being locked away I’ve had time to think about things-in fact time is the only thing I have had. My past is a blend of memories so distant they feel like they belong to somebody else, or perhaps they’re TV moments I’ve seen and somehow claimed as my own.

I was sixteen years old and I had never done a single illegal thing except for breaking into a few homes, shoplifting, and once burning down a barn that had goats inside that I didn’t know were there. I used to sneak out of my room at night and walk around the streets, not looking for anything, but just walking, being one with my neighborhood and thinking of those that were in it. I could always hear the ocean only a few blocks away. Sometimes I’d walk down the beach and stare out at the water as the moon hung over it. On calm nights when the moon was full it’d reflect off the wet ripples in the sand that were formed by the leaving tide. I’d think about swimming, but then I’d think about how cold that water would be, about the things out there swimming beneath the surface. Hungry things.

I shift on my seat and look at Ali, at her soft skin, at her face. She’s taking notes even though the recorder is capturing everything. I tell her all about it, my remaining testicle throbbing as the memory stirs up more than just some emotions.

I used to break into people’s homes. It wasn’t about money. I couldn’t buy things without my parents noticing. I couldn’t steal a TV and bring that home because back then TVs were almost as heavy as dishwashers. I broke in for a different reason. I used to pick out girls at school I liked, and during summer holidays when I knew their families were away I’d sneak into their bedrooms. When the house was empty like that, you could spend all day long in those rooms, lying on the bed and really getting to know somebody. You could really make yourself at home. The fridge and pantry would provide sustenance, the bed somewhere to relax, the underwear I’d find in the girl’s drawers would provide texture to the fantasy. When school was back the girls would never know what I’d touched while they were away, and that gave me a feeling of superiority. They’d be walking around wearing panties that I’d spent time with. That’s the truth, and it’s a truth that I can’t tell the woman opposite me.

When I broke into my auntie’s house, it was purely about money. I wasn’t breaking in to spend time eating her food and cuddling her underwear. I was being beaten at school by a pair of brothers-twins, actually, who told me the solution to making those beatings go away was for me to pay them. So in a way all of this started from those two. Simple, really. Two bullies who were older than me created a serial killer. I had no money. But I knew I had to get some. Up until my auntie’s house I’d only broken into homes where I knew the people were away on holiday. Nobody holidayed during the school term.