Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

--Sarah wailing in the delivery room and he couldn't breathe and his knees were weak and he was filled with such triumph --

--Sarah rushing toward him, hair in the wind, arms wide, laughing at the world, Linda rushing toward him, hair in the wind, arms wide, laughing at the world--

OliveJuiceOliveJuiceOliveJuice--

The last flash, and Sam Langstrom died.

He was smiling.

22

LINDA'S MIND WAS EMPTY.

Sam slumped forward in the chair. She'd felt his pulse speed up underneath her fingers, then she'd felt it go faint, and then she'd felt it stop altogether.

She felt Sam's blood on her hands. It wasn't really there, but she felt it. One word ran through her mind, over and over and over, a huge black bat that blotted out the stars: Horror, horror, horror, horror . . .

"That was very well done, Linda."

Why doesn't his voice ever change? she wondered. It always sounds the same. Calm and happy, while terrible, terrible, terrible things . . . She shuddered once and fought back a sob.

Maybe he's not really there, inside. He's like a golem, clay made to walk without a soul to guide it.

Linda looked over at her daughter. She felt her heart sag inside her. Sarah's eyes were open, but they weren't seeing. They were staring. A "not there" kind of stare. She was rocking back and forth. Her lips were clenched together so tightly that they'd gone white. I know how you feel, babe, Linda thought in despair.

"I know that you are hurting," The Stranger said. His tone became soothing. "We're going to end that now, all that terrible, awful pain, forever."

He looked at Sarah, watched her rock back and forth. A string of drool had collected at one corner of her mouth and was falling, falling, falling.

"I'll keep my word, you know. So long as you do what I ask, and don't deviate, I won't hurt her."

You've already hurt her forever, Linda thought. But maybe she'd have a chance if she didn't die. You could recover from emotional trauma; there was no coming back from death.

The Stranger walked over behind Sam. He pulled keys from a jacket pocket, knelt down, and removed the cuffs from around Sam's ankles, then he removed the cuffs from around Sam's wrists. Sam toppled forward, thudding to the floor like a bag of sand.

"Here's what's going to happen," The Stranger said to Linda. "I'm going to give you these keys." He did. "Please remove the cuffs from your ankles." Linda did so. He reached behind him with his left hand, pulling a weapon from his waistband. "I'm going to place this handgun on the floor, here." He did so. He moved behind Sarah and put his own gun to the back of her head.

"In a moment I will begin counting. When I reach five, if you haven't used that gun to blow your own brains out, then I will shoot Sarah in the back of the head. Following that, I'll rape you for hours and torture you for days. Do you understand?"

Linda nodded, listless.

"Good. Now, handguns are powerful things. You could touch that weapon, something could spark, and you might feel that it's transferred its power to you. You might decide to do something brave and insane. Don't. The moment its barrel starts moving toward me, I kill Sarah. The moment that it points away from your head, I kill Sarah. Do you follow?"

Linda stared at him, not speaking.

"Linda," he said, patient. "Did you hear what I said?"

She managed a nod. It took all her strength. She was so tired. Sam I Am is gone, she thought. I feel dead already. She looked down at the weapon on the rug. The one she'd be holding soon. The one that would end this, that would let her join Sam, that would save Sarah (she hoped).

Handgun, handgun, burning bright . . .

"I'm going to give you the same gift that I gave your husband. One sentence only. This is your last chance to say something to Sarah."

Linda looked at her white-lipped, shivering, oh-so-beautiful daughter.

Will she even remember what I say?

Linda would have to hope so. She'd have to hope that her words would drill down somewhere into Sarah's consciousness, that they'd surface later and be a comfort.

Maybe they'll come to her in her dreams.

"I'm in the clouds watching you, Sarah, always."

Sarah continued to rock back and forth and drool.

"That was very nice," The Stranger said. "Thank you for complying."

There it was again, that rage. Linda felt white-hot and blue-flame, rolling lava, exploding suns.

"Someday, you'll die," she whispered, her voice quavering. "And it'll be a bad death. Because of this. Because of the things you do."

The Stranger stared at Linda, then smiled.

"Karma. An interesting concept." He shrugs. "Perhaps you're right. But if you are are, that will be then. We are in the now. In the now, I start counting." He paused. "It's going to be a measured count. Slow heartbeats. You have until I get to five."

"The last thing I'll be thinking of is going to be you. You dying a bad death."

The words were worthless, they'd change nothing, but they were the last resistance she could offer. The Stranger didn't even appear to have heard her.

"One," he counted.

Linda forced herself to turn away from her rage. To look at the gun he'd placed on the floor.

So this is it.

Extraneous things began to fade. It was if someone had turned down the volume on life. She could hear the beating of her heart and The Stranger's slow count.

One was over. Then would come Two. Then Three. Then Four. And then . . . ? Should she let herself hear Five? Or should she pull the trigger just before Five?

Why wait, don't hesitate . . .

One was still echoing in her brain as she moved toward the gun. She could hear it vibrating in the air. She found herself in an elongation of time, as if each second was filled with a lifetime of sharp edges and she was rubbing up against all of them at once. There's more pain in life than pleasure. It was something she knew as an artist, a secret ingredient she added to the potpourri of her paintings or sculptures.

The sharp edges, that's how we know we're still in the game. She knelt down on the carpet and picked up the weapon. She made sure not to point the barrel at The Stranger.

"Two."

It shocked her as he said it, like a slap in the face. The sting passed.

Linda marveled at the coldness of the steel. Its smooth polish. The heavy, brutal promise of the thing.

This end toward enemy, she thought, looking at the barrel. Someone invented this. They dreamed it, sketched it, tossed and turned about it. Let's take a hunk of steel and fill it with steel-jacketed birds, and let's send them exploding outward into other human beings.

"Three."

Her awareness of the number was more clinical this time. This weapon had a silencer on it. It was a gun that spoke of assassins and hit men and secret death. It was just a piece of metal, though. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't human. You didn't anthropomorphize a gun; you pointed it and fired.

What was it the marines said? This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine . . .

"Four."

Time stopped. It didn't just slow--it froze. She was covered in ice. Trapped in amber.

And then, a strobe-flash.

Sam on the floor.

Strobe-flash.

Sam in her arms.

Strobe-flash.

Sam hanging up the phone. His face white. Looking at her. "My grandfather died." Tears, and Sam in her arms again. Strobe-flash.

Sam above her, eyes clouded with a mix of love and lust, face contorted with pleasure. She urged him to hold on, just another second, just another second, just another second . . . This was that moment, she realized in wonder. That feeling you got as you hung on to the knife-edge precipice of near-orgasm, straining, trying to fend off the beckoning detonation and blinding light. The place where you stopped breathing, where your heart stopped beating, a moment of life and death.