Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

He raked his knuckles across the rough skin of the boulder. The pain felt good, an echo of the Monkey House where it had saved his life.

Pain is your friend.

And, in the deepest truth of existence, pain was the dominant story. It was the core truth, maybe even the entire point, of life.

Suffering.

When people invented God, they invented suffering. And God was the relief from suffering.

Death was deliverance.

But on this Earth, God was pain.

Or pain was God.

Scagnelli’s bullets wouldn’t hurt him. They would just be part of what already was, the story of Mark Morgan’s pain.

His wife’s words came to him as if through a fog on a hidden lake full of slithering leviathans.

“You can do better,” she said, and Mark wasn’t sure if the words were meant for him.

“I’ve considered it,” Scagnelli said. “But the way I look at it, six people know what this stuff is. Two of you are here, Wendy and Roland will probably be coming out of the cabin any minute now, and Darrell Silver is probably on the run to New York or San Francisco or wherever else the drug culture will give him a home.”

“You forgot Wallace Forsyth,” Alexis said.

Scagnelli took the vial from a pocket of his cargo pants and held it to the light. He gave it a little shake, and the rattle reverberated in Mark’s head like a stone bounced down an elevator shaft. Mark ground his fist against the boulder, drawing blood until the sound went away.

“Your fundamentalist friend took the express elevator,” Scagnelli said. “Guess he couldn’t wait to get his wings and harp. But I’ll bet God has a special floor for former politicians, don’t you?”

“That vial was nearly full,” Alexis said.

“Yeah, and I can’t waste another pill. And I can’t waste one drop of Halcyon. So your dear, sweet husband will just have to ride it out.”

Scagnelli was talking as if there would be a future, and Alexis was playing along. No way could Scagnelli let them live.

No way Burchfield would let them live.

Mark scraped his knuckles back and forth, rasping his flesh open, and the pain was like fire, but it was also ice. He narrowed his focus to the expanding pain and allowed it to fill his skull.

The monkey brain says, “Ease the pain.”

He took it up like a chant, his own personal mantra as he danced around the bonfire of war, the bonfire of harvest, the bonfire of the kill. His muscles coiled as he soaked in its macabre heat.

The monkey brain says ease the pain, the monkey brain says ease the pain, the monkey brain says ease the pain…

Voices came from the cabin door below, calling his name, and when Scagnelli turned toward them, Mark exploded off the rock.

He was half-right.

Scagnelli hit him with only two rounds.

Alexis froze when Mark leaped at Scagnelli, but the shots from the AR-15 broke her daze before the chill had a chance to settle deep.

Mark grunted in pain, and the groan rolled up into a roar of animalistic ferocity as he slammed into Scagnelli, knocking him down the embankment. The AR-15 flew away and skittered across the leafy ground before thumping into a gnarled root.

Scagnelli cursed, fishing into his cargo pants for his pistol, but Mark was on him, clawing, wallowing, and snarling.

Mark fought with desperation, but Scagnelli was ruthless and experienced, punching Mark twice in the neck and causing his head to snap to one side. Alexis resisted the urge to join the battle, knowing she’d be no good in close combat anyway.

Get the gun.

She slipped on the damp leaves, tumbling into the ferns and low tangles of doghobble and Virginia creeper vines. She dragged herself forward, clawing in the dark mud, the flesh of the ancient mountain giving way beneath her fingers.

Kill or be killed.

The Monkey House flashed in her mind, only a moment-the bloody metal tool in my hand-and then she reached the rifle. Mark said it contained thirty rounds, which meant it had plenty more to go.

She heaved the thing to her shoulder but couldn’t get a clean shot. The barrel swayed back and forth before her as she wilted from exhaustion and anxiety.

“Shoot!” Mark bellowed, a plaintive note in his cracked voice.

That was when she saw the two crimson blossoms on his back, spreading fast through his tan shirt.

Scagnelli bucked and kicked, nearly throwing Mark from atop him, but Mark curled his fingers like claws and jammed them into the killer’s collarbone, sinking in to grip the man’s meat.

Mark moved his face near Scagnelli’s, and Alexis aimed at the man’s torso. Mark drove his mouth forward and sank his teeth into Scagnelli’s cheek, ripping away a chunk of flesh.

Mark turned toward Alexis, eyes gleaming and crazed, a strip of pale gristle linking him to Scagnelli, who screamed and stopped fighting long enough to reach for the wound.

“Shoot!” Mark shouted again, and this time it wasn’t a request, it was a decree from hell, issuing from that bloody, grinning mouth that had kissed her so often.

Oh, my God, he’s ENJOYING it.

And this was Seethe, condensed to its purest essence.

The thing she’d fought to preserve.

The secret she wanted to possess.

From the bottom of Pandora’s blackest, bitchingest box.

“Do it,” Mark snarled, and she wondered if she meant him, if he was begging for an end to his suffering.

Scagnelli’s hand made it into a side pocket and she saw the metal target guide of his pistol.

“Druh-drop it,” Alexis said, but she didn’t even convince herself.

Mark thrust an elbow into Scagnelli’s kidney, slowing the draw, but more of the gun slid into view. Then she saw the bulge of the barrel tilting up in his pants, and then came a muffled explosion.

Mark rolled away at the sound. The bullet had struck a tree three feet to the right of her, head high, and Scagnelli could shoot plenty more.

If she didn’t shoot first.

She wasn’t sure if she kept her eyes open or not, but she remembered Mark’s words-squeeze once for every shot-and before she stopped, her finger was numb.

Scagnelli lay on the ground, moaning, his limp fingers still dug into his pocket, although they’d gone slack around the gun’s grip. She didn’t know how many bullets he’d taken, but the one that mattered most was just below his heart, the stain on his green T-shirt growing larger with every weakening surge of his pulse.

“Finish him,” Mark wheezed, and now she could see the two wet blotches in his own abdominal cavity, creases of meat below his ribs.

“No,” she said. “That’s murder.”

“You can do it. Just like in the Monkey House.”

“I didn’t kill anybody in the Monkey House, goddamn it.” Her rage shifted from Scagnelli to her husband.

Even in his pale, depleted state, a vicious sneer twisted Mark’s lips. “Do you want Seethe or not? If he lives, then it’s Burchfield’s. Sooner or later, it’s Burchfield’s.”

Scagnelli’s eyelids fluttered, and he seemed to come around long enough to focus on her face. He smiled, and it was the arrogant benevolence of Sebastian Briggs, the populist solicitude of Senator Daniel Burchfield, the false piety of Wallace Forsyth.

All mirrors, all the things that she’d become.

Seethe had made her just like them.

Mark was right.

Not only could she kill Scagnelli, but she would love it.

The next best thing to suicide.

The only question was whether her husband should be next.

She staggered to Scagnelli and stood over him, his blood seeping down to feed the organisms in the soil. His arm gave one final spasm as he tried to make it operate the pistol, but he finally sagged in acceptance.