Confrontations

A very dark fantasy, derived in part from people and situations I have known, but mostly fiction.

*

The phone rang.

Fuck, I thought to myself.

I'd just finished dinner, started the dishwasher, and settled in for a couple hours reading the latest thriller in a series I enjoyed, made all the better because of the Kindle.

I'd finished the first thirty pages, as the Kindle counts them, and that was when my cell bleeped at me.

I wear my cell in the V of my polo shirts, in a holster that makes the phone easy to extract and examine. I pulled it out of the holster, glancing at the front display.

The area code was meaningless; the number, even more so.

I opened the phone.

"Hello?" I answered as cheerfully as I could, hoping against hope it was a telemarketer I could ream out for calling a private cell number on the do-not-call registry. I love to abuse those assholes.

"They found bones," said the voice, a woman's voice, a voice familiar to me if not entirely recognizable.

A moment later, the full effect of the words slammed into me.

"Oh, hi, Linda, nice to hear from you. Doing fine, thanks, and you?"

Silence; then, "They found bones."

"So Doctor McCoy is for sure dead?" I asked.

"Don't play cute," said the voice.

"I'm not in the mood for this," I snapped, suddenly tired of the game. "Will you talk to me, or is the conversation over?"

Another silence. "They found his fucking bones." The voice was fiery, angry, full of self-congratulatory self-righteousness.

"Good-bye, Linda. Go to hell," I said, and snapped the phone closed.

+++++

I've always hated bullies.

I was bullied as a child, and I reached the end of my tether around seventh grade.

My family moved to a new city, my father having been transferred. We joined the local Baptist church, as we were wont to do.

There I met my salvation, a bully named Gerald C.

Gerald was piece of shit of the first order, a bully and sociopath and general candidate for the state pen. He worked his hatred on those smaller and younger and less able to resist.

Too bad he ran across me.

He gave me some shit at church. At first it wasn't too bad; but I fought back in little ways, infuriating him into acts he knew he couldn't perform in front of witnesses.

Oh, yeah, he hated me.

One day he really pissed me off. I can't remember the circumstances, but he pinched me and called me a pussy regularly, even in church, and one day I'd just flat fucking had enough.

After the services were over, and everyone was milling about in the church foreyard, I sucked up all my courage and walked to where Gerald stood with his parents. His father was Grady, a deacon in the church, and particularly susceptible to scandal.

I walked past Gerald, who gave me stink-eye the whole time, and strolled up to his father. I held out a hand, and said, "Mr C___, why do you allow Gerald to abuse people the way he does?"

There was a collective gasp from virtually everyone in the church yard.

After some fumbling, Mr C said, "I don't understand, Gerald has never..."

I cut him off. "Gerald raped Sally H___ last fall. That's why she left school. He just got through trying to choke me, just an hour ago. How can a deacon tolerate a son who does those things?"

I had no idea why Sally had left school, nor did I have any evidence against Gerald regarding any other offenses. Too bad about the Ninth Commandment.

Still, my little show ha its intended effect. Other kids came up and recited Gerald's abuses.

Mr C's face grew a florid shade; and after a moment he shepherded his family into a station wagon and drove away.

Oh, sure, Gerald gave me more than stink-eye; but he couldn't do anything about it.

Monday came, of course, and Gerald had failed to calculate our school principal's presence at my outburst. Did I mention he was a member of the same church?

Gerald and some of his friends ganged up on me, with the intent to do grave bodily harm. Oh, trust me, they were going to put me in a bad way.

Mr S (the principal) had ordered a few underlings to monitor my whereabouts. As soon as Gerald and the Ball-less Wonders attacked me, the adults were all over them. They were arrested, herded into police cars, and most faced jail time, ultimately. Juvie, sure, but that's jail when you're a kid.

Gerald's family were shamed into leaving town.

Bottom line: I was never again intimidated by bullies. I worked out, studied Tae-Kwon Do, and vowed I'd never accept maltreatment again.

++++++

I was always sort of a nerd, a numbers freak.

Didn't help, I suppose, that my parents were number people, too. My mother was a bookkeeper, my dad a meter engineer for the power company.

So I came by it honestly.

I took accounting classes in high school, and then in college, becoming an Accounting major with degree in hand in three and a half years.

I got a job and settled into what I assumed would be the American Dream.

Didn't work out that way, not exactly.

I met a young woman named Linda, and I thought we had a connection. We spent time together, and, I thought we might have a serious future together.

Not so much.

Turned out she had a boyfriend, Jerry by name, trucker by profession, asshole by avocation. Real piece of work.

(I later worked out she hadn't told me about him because we were so comfortable together, and while he was on long hauls, she retreated into our oasis. The evening I found out was unpleasant for me, but I digress.)

Linda began showing signs of being abused after a while. Little things, you know, like a black eye or a scratch, some lame-assed excuse where they came from. I asked her, and she always blew it off as if she'd been the one to cause the problem.

One evening there was a terrible pounding on my dorm door. I opened it, and there stood Linda, bleeding, clearly the victim of abuse.

"C'n I c'min?" she muttered; and without further explanation, she pushed past me, heading straight for the sink.

I guided her to a chair, where she worked on her injuries for a while. I assisted as best I could, holding a cloth to the various swelling places I could see. God knew what I couldn't, wouldn't see.

After a bit, I asked, "So you gonna press charges this time?"

She sat upright and looked at me, debating internally, by the look of things. At length she said, "No, just a squabble. It's nothing, really."

"Doesn't look like nothing," I opined.

She glared at me for a moment; then, "I knew it was a mistake coming here. You're thinking the worst of him."

"Linda," I said softly, "he just beat the hell out of you. What am I supposed to think?"

She rose suddenly, pitching backward from the sudden change of blood pressure. I caught her; she fought me off, saying, "I'm outta here."

She stalked out the door, slamming it behind her.

I sighed and resumed whatever it was I was doing. It gave me time to think about what I needed to do.

++++++

Three evenings later, I parked myself outside Jerry's door. I'd done a little surveillance, and I knew his schedule pretty well.

I was dressed in dark clothes, and I hid in the shadows. He never saw me as he opened his door. I shoved him through, from the back, stepped in after him, locked the door behind me as he scrambled to his feet.

I pointed a Desert Eagle at him. If you don't know what that is, it makes a 44 Magnum look like a peashooter. Well, maybe not, but it's an impressive piece of work. Israeli design. The sort of thing you don't fuck with.

He had opened his mouth as if to begin yelling at me; he went silent as soon as the barrel pointed his way.

"You beat up Linda the other night." It was a statement, not a question.

He started to deny it. "Who's Linda?" he blustered. "What the fu..."

I had cocked the hammer. He noticed and shut up. Probably shit up, from the smell.

I fastened hard eyes on him. "Touch her again," I said, "and dental records will be of no value."

I raised the barrel toward the ceiling, lowered the hammer softly into place; I slid the weapon into my jeans, turned and exited silently.

Message received.

++++++

The next evening I was in my living room, bemoaning the simplicity of the questions on Jeopardy!, a program I knew from the time before Alexxxxx Treeeeebekkkkkkkk! had hosted it. Art Fleming was great, wasn't he?

There came a knocking on my door so fierce, I thought the Raven had brought reinforcements.

I walked over and opened the front door, and in stormed Hurricane Linda.

She got six feet into the entrance when she whirled and pointed at me, and bellowed, "You MOTHERFUCKER!"

"Hi, Linda," I said, calmly. "What brings you here?"

She all but exploded. "You threatened Jerry! You put a gun to his head!"

"I did no such thing," I replied. I hadn't had the gun to his head.

She got in my face. "You EVER interfere in my life again, and I'll have you arrested!"

I opened the door. "Get out," I said.

She gave me a parting glare, and whooshed out the door.

++++++

I tried to put her out of my mind.

Truth was, I was sort of in love with Linda, and I nursed that love even after I knew it was a hopeless case.

I put all my discipline into shutting her out of my heart, my mind, my consciousness.

It worked, for a while.

Another evening, three months later, and there came another fierce banging on the door. It was after nine, and so a JW or Mormon was about to get his / her ass reamed.

I flung open the door, and Linda toppled in.

Oh, he'd done a number on her, alright.

A couple teeth missing, eyes blacked, blood all over her blouse and even onto her pants.

I picked her up and hustled her to my car.

Along the way she began to object. "No, juss tae me insye and lemme freshnup a lill..." She lapsed in unconsciousness.

I delivered her to the ER at a hospital a mile away. I explained the situation sketchily to an orderly, who yelled at me to wait for a nurse as I drove away.

I couldn't wait around; I had to be somewhere.

++++++

It was just before dawn, fourteen hours later. I was driving through a part of North Carolina I knew well. It was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a fine place if you like mountains, a place to get away, a place to hide secrets you didn't want to come to light.

I turned off where the old, faded sign indicated the Bowen lumber mill, if one turned onto Billie Road outside Bat Cave, NC (I shit you not).

I drove three miles up among the long-leaf pines and other evergreens. I loved the scent, the view, the remoteness.

Oh, yeah, the remoteness. Why I'd come in the first place.

I parked the car in the middle of the disused road, killed the engine, exited the car.

I walked around to the trunk and opened it, recoiling from the odor of feces and urine, and most likely vomit.

Jerry had, it seemed, not waited for me to help him shuffle off the mortal coil. He'd done it himself. Most likely Hendrixed himself.

Too bad.

I hoisted the body out of the trunk, dragged it a few dozen yards off the road; I covered it with leaves and branches and detritus from the surrounding woods, and, making sure it was not plainly visible from the road, I made my way back to the car.

I piled more leaves into the trunk, an attempt to soak up the nasty odors.

Satisfied with my efforts, I turned, drove back to the main road, and, undetected by anyone, wandered back to the interstate.

++++++

Along the way back home, I paused at a couple of truck stops. I vacuumed out the leaves and twigs, and, sniffing as objectively as possible, determined the odors were pretty much gone.

I accidentally spilled some gasoline in the trunk. Damn the luck.

++++++

It was three months later when there was yet a third banging on my door.

Again, Linda.

She roared in. "What the FUCK did you do?" she screamed, crying and blowing snot all over my newly cleaned carpet.

"Linda," I said calmly, "I've been watching TV and reading, and why is this any of your business?"

"You killed Jerry!" she howled.

I looked at her calmly. "Do you have proof?"

She launched herself at me, nails aiming for my eyes.

I grabbed her wrists, to keep from being blinded

As I did, three uniformed officers burst in with the whole "Freeze!" thing happening.

They didn't just take me down, though. They made a right mess of the place. They toppled my entertainment center, destroyed most of my electronics, stomped on the books that fell from my overturned bookcases.

After they got through making it look like I put up a fight, I was informed I was under arrest for assault on the woman.

I grinned at them. I looked at the camera on the wall up and behind us.

Their eyes followed mine; then, one of them pressed a radio device attached to his shoulder, and said, "Detective? We have a problem."

A plainclothes cop burst in and surveyed the scene.

He knew it was a bad thing.

I was uncuffed immediately.

Long story short, Linda had convinced the police I'd done away with her boyfriend, and they'd tried to take me down.

They hadn't known I'd installed a security camera.

++++++

They still had questions. Too many coincidences, and cops HATE coincidences.

They couldn't make anything of the actual, whattaya call 'em, facts.

The charges were dropped, of course. I went to the press with the evidence, the tapes that showed them demolishing my domicile. Pissed off the DA to no end. The mayor and city manager as well.

The TV stations? Oh, man, they LOVED showing those scenes, over and over, for the next week. Even hit Fox.

I got a nice settlement. Very high six figures, tax free.

++++++

Linda's call, thirteen years later, prompted another round of police questioning.

I didn't sweat it. They had no forensics.

I've given up helping people. Too much trouble.