Pavel Kravchenko: Project Antichrist

Maybe they did it on purpose. To ruin me. To have me locked up. Maybe Jennifer left so that she and Jimbo could…

The surroundings were becoming blurry. I imagined it felt like the cabin of a plane that’s losing pressure.

Suddenly, I was mortally afraid of passing out there. If this is inside my brain, a thought came, then it doesn’t matter whether I stay or go, but if it is, in fact, somehow, real…

I rushed to the bedroom closet and pulled out my cash cards. Stuffing them in my pocket, I changed into a brown fur-lined bomber jacket, slapped on the ski hat and rushed back out. Then, remembering that it wasn’t the cash or the hat I had meant to search for, I, gripped by another fit of panic, moaned and ran back to the closet again, rummaging through boxes on the top shelf.

Finally I found it.

I ripped out a small wooden chest and threw it on the bed, kneeling in front of it. I opened the lid. I saw the shape, stamped into red velvet, but the shape only. The gun was gone.

I tried to break the chest with my forehead. When that failed, I, with a titanic push, rose to my feet. The door to my beautiful condo closed behind me with a profound hiss.

Not the front lobby, I thought, keeping the elevator button pressed until it arrived. Not the car. The marina exit, then.

With the boating season over, the long, red-carpeted tunnel to the marina was empty and sparingly illuminated. Inside the hangar-like, steel-roofed structure the water was black. A lone sailboat swayed anchored on the far right. I turned my back to it, mounted two flights of stairs up to the ground level and climbed over a locked gate. Another minute, and I emerged on the lakeshore path.

When steady, cold breeze from the brown lake hit me in the face, I pretty much gave up the hope of waking up. The beach lay clean and desolate; the lakeshore path crawled with people. A few remaining boats, every single one with an American flag and some with ribbons, jumped up and down on the waves. Turning north, I tried to recall where I was going and failed, but went anyway.

The image of the staring dead man would not let me go. Images, actually. I discovered that the corpse wasn’t as deeply and permanently imprinted in my memory as I’d expected. Even though mere minutes had passed, I wasn’t sure now whether he slumped to the left or to the right, whether one of his legs was bent at the knee or both, what color his tie was and so on, so the scene in my mind shifted constantly around the immovable holes in the man’s chest.

The fact that I couldn’t remember something so shocking and so recent unnerved me. Fingers spread, I snapped my hands up to my face, terrified and half-expecting to find them covered with blood. They were clean, and I stuffed them back in my pockets. An instant later they were out again, and I frisked myself, pretending to smooth the clothes. Nothing. Embarrassment. Relief.

My phone began to ring. Without thinking, I pitched it in the water, attracting more glances from potential witnesses, most of whom were doubtlessly already finding my hunched figure familiar. I hastened my step, grumbling.

“What are you doing?” I muttered. “You should have stayed home and called the police and called Jimbo. Running is admitting guilt. And throwing the phone out is just stupid. Stupid, stupid. You should have called Jeffrey who would confirm you weren’t home until the last moment. There’s no gun; you had no time to get rid of it…”

Exactly. No time to get rid of it. The gun is there. It might be in the kitchen drawer, or under my mattress, or somewhere else I would not be able to find it before the cops showed up. Or it could be on top of the desk, begging to be grabbed…

My feet kept moving.

The next thought hit me like a lightning bolt. I missed a step and almost knocked over some mustached fellow on a bicycle. I apologized and forgot him. There were two marshals, the thought was. Jeffrey said there were two.

Cops were going to think I either took the other one hostage, or killed him too and hid the body, or, better yet, that I cut him into little pieces and fed those to my Auto-Vac for incineration or something.

But I didn’t. And if that other marshal was alive, he knew it. All I had to do now was find him in a city of fifteen million people.

In a study with oddly slanted walls a tall, black-haired man stood facing a two-story-high triangular window. In his left hand the man held a vintage black revolver. With a thick cloth in his right he polished the gun’s barrel.

“Did he run?” the man suddenly asked, drawing a smirk from a woman who had just then walked in, very quietly, into the room.

“He ran.”

“Of course he did.”

“He will run back any minute now.”

“It has already been taken care of.” At that the woman bit her lip. The man turned around.

“What? Are you a big fan?”

“Shut the hell up,” the woman said and left. Grinning, the man returned to polishing the gun.

It hadn’t rained in two months. The surf was rising, although the clouds would not appear for another hour or so. Watching the storm coming, the man was amused by the excitement growing steadily within him. Finally, it is beginning, he thought, conscious of his usage of a meaningless adverb.

“At last!” He said pompously and laughed.

I walked until my legs began to hurt, which did not take long, in terms of distance at least. I kept fit for the suits, but treadmills were never my thing.

I found myself on a bench on the edge of a concrete circle, where behind the erect and gallant Hamilton, subtle Goethe crouched, glancing across the avenue at an antique domed construction with columns. There were less people than cars there, and cars were anonymous, but the desired peace never came.

While I had trudged along the cold lake, I was focusing on moving my feet and avoiding eye contact. A simple task I could cope with. Now though, my solitude and immobility allowed my mind the opportunity to fully grasp the events of that day. The result was rather predictable.

Shortly, I was mumbling “I am Revenge; sent from th’infernal kingdom/To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind/By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes” over and over again. Something cheerful I remembered from my student days. I also might have had some saliva dripping out of the corner of my mouth. So when I heard the sounds of hoofs on the pavement, I imagined they belonged to horseback police, and my heart rejoiced at this chance to confess, repent and give myself over to the authorities, who would provide necessary medical attention. Smiling, I removed my hands from my eyes.

First there was nothing but bright, painful light. The sun, which had lingered on top of the dome across the street in order to blind me, was slowly withering away. Shielding myself from it, I turned this way and that, searching for the horses. Then I shrank back in surprise. Not ten feet away, right in front of me, stood a young woman. Short black hair framed her face, which, I thought, possessed the tiniest hint of Asian descent. She was skinny, dressed in jeans, a short black cashmere jacket with big buttons, beginning of the century style, and high-heeled boots. My gaze hung dumbly over those heels.

“Were you here all this time?” I asked her.

“How long is that?” Her voice had a coarse note in it and I looked up at her face, reevaluating her age. Twenty-five, maybe older. She continued to stare at me. I could not remember the last time anyone had looked at me for that long without recognition. Either she did not watch the TV, which was a ridiculous idea, or my ski hat and beard disguised me better than I had hoped. Regardless, I knew what was going to happen next. Sitting with hands over eyes in a public place is basically asking for a 911 call. But it didn’t really matter. There was nowhere I could go, and I was tired.