Calamity

many images crowded his mind. So many ways he could manipulate the female body. So many positions. He had to keep those images in check. If he let his excitement get control, he would lose the upper hand. He had planned this for far too long to let it get away because he was desperate for a woman’s touch.

After the cleansing, there would be plenty of women for men like him. Plenty of touching.

Mercy Higgins could be saved. It would be her choice.

Victor almost missed the writing on the mirror. He started to turn away, shaking his hands dry, and wondering if using their water had been such a good idea; it might permeate his skin, infect him.

In the lower right corner, scratched into the mirror’s surface, it said: Cleanse the World.

Victor traced the three words with his finger. The indentations they made in the mirror were like slices in skin, knife tracks about to spout blood.

It didn’t matter who put it there, Hugo or someone before him. It was another sign.

Victor left the bathroom. His smile must have looked so peculiar.

FOUR

While Mercy and her father gobbled eggs and pancakes and toast, the teens in the booth across from them discussed the recent shooting in which a crazy guy named Hugo killed five people in this very diner.

“Fucking guy came in with a shotgun or some shit and bam! bam! bam!” The teenage boy in the skinny jeans and body-tight hoodie made a child-like gun gesture with his thumb and forefinger.

His equally tight-dressed friend laughed like the kid was talking about some movie.

The first kid glanced around, like scoping out the place. “Can you imagine? Must of been sick to see it go down. Blood hitting the walls and shit.”

“You’re sick, man,” his friend said.

The first boy glanced at Mercy and her father. His gaze lingered briefly. What was he seeing in his head? Was he imagining fucking her in some degrading way? “Can’t be prude about it,” he said to his friend. “Most people live in a bubble.”

That’s what Joel had said: Mercy, you live in a bubble. And he’d told her to use fabric softener. Such a weird thing to say. You’re clothes always smell stale. So, she’d used dryer sheets and went around in a cloud of lemon. Then he’d told her she had clammy hands and that he’d found someone else. She tried to elicit a smile from him but he stared at her like she was some beggar on the street.

In a way she had been. She’d begged to have sex with him, told him she was a virgin and that she really wanted him, even though she wasn’t sure that was the case but she was almost out of college and nobody graduated college still a virgin. Only losers. Then he said her hands were clammy and he’d met someone else.

“Can you imagine how fucked up it must have been?” the first boy asked.

“I’m glad I wasn’t here,” his friend said.

“Fuck that. I would have taken that guy down. Would have shot him between his eyes. Watch the blood splatter. Been a hero.”

Mercy’s eyes started to water. A minute ago she had been fine. Her only feeling was one of slight dread about hiking up a mountain on a chilly spring day and then having to sleep on the ground at some campsite. Then those two boys started talking about the killing and she was remembering Joel for some reason and how he said she smelled stale and had clammy hands and wouldn’t have sex with her and then she had graduated a virgin. Now, she was crying. Sometimes she hated being a woman.

Her father put down his fork and touched her arm. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

She took several napkins out of the dispenser on the table and dried her eyes. When she looked at her father, he had that sweet face he always got when things didn’t turn out right for her. When she’d fallen off her bike as a little kid. When her violin audition for Juilliard fell through and she studied literature at the State University in Pleasantville instead. When Mom died.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed this whole camping thing on you. I just thought it would be fun. Thought we could have some time to bond.”

Tears began to reemerge. “It’s not that. I want to go camping. It’s just … Just …” She paused, breathed deeply. “I have to use the bathroom.”

When she slid out of the booth, the first boy said, “You think the guy wanted to have sex with any of the bodies? Shoot his load and then shoot his head off.”

If Mercy were a different sort of woman, she would tell them to stop being such stupid pricks and grow up and then she’d throw a cup of coffee on each of them.

She started to get her tears under control. A skinny guy with several-day’s worth of stubble on his face was staring at her. He was walking past the counter while she was on the opposite side of a dividing row of booths. He wore jeans and a black jacket. He was cute, too, aside from an undernourished face.

She knew him from somewhere.

Their eyes met and the man looked away. A moment later he was at the front door and Mercy was in the bathroom.

She knew him. She had spoken with him.

FIVE

Victor held the girl’s gaze for no more than a second or two. He would have loved to stare at her for hours. Loved to hold her close and stare into her eyes, caress the fragility of her soul.

There would be time for that later. If she caught on too soon, there was a risk the whole thing might collapse. He had pressed his luck, no doubt about that, and if he pressed it any further he would be, as his father used to say, S.O.L.

No dinner tonight, son. Sorry.

But I’m hungry.

S.O.L.

Shit out of luck.

Victor’s father hadn’t been a bad man or even a bad father. He was the kind of father who never understood what fatherhood was really about. He saw Victor as a roommate, maybe even an acquaintance. He didn’t belief in tender consolation. Life dealt you a bad hand? Well, looks like you’re S.O.L.

Victor didn’t want to be S.O.L. Luck had been with him for a while now. It would continue to be with him. He only had to trust the greater powers manipulating his future.

He turned from the girl’s soft white skin and innocent blue eyes. They would be his in time. Then he could chew on that flesh and suck those eyes right from her skull if he wanted. Maybe she’d even like that, get off on it. Her body would convulse in a spasmodic orgasm as her eye slid past his lips and onto his tongue.

He walked quickly outside to his car. The friction of his jeans only encouraged his arousal. His underwear, always a size too small on purpose, was doing little to stymie the growing bulge.

He had parked at the far end of the parking lot. His car was a beater from the late eighties he had bought for one-hundred dollars. It had two-hundred-eighty thousand miles. The steering wheel shook violently at speeds over forty and the exhaust stank of rotting eggs. But it was all he needed.

There were no cars near his.

He dropped into the drivers’ seat. It groaned like it might finally give out. He yanked down his jeans and took his cell phone from his jacket. He caressed himself faster and faster as he scrolled through the fifty pictures he had taken of Mercy Higgins.

He managed to get the box of tissues out of the glove compartment in time.

SIX