A Quiet Vendetta

I reached the edge of the road. I crouched in silence. I held my breath. There was nothing out there, nothing but me and the lights, and I slipped across the surface of the highway, my feet never touching the ground, it seemed. I was perfect. More than perfect. I was somebody.

There were twelve cabins, five with lights, seven without. I was within speaking distance of the first but I said nothing. There was nothing to say.

In my hand I held a knife I had carried all the way without thinking, as if a natural appendage to my arm. Its blade was blackened with mud and filth, and wiping it clean between my fingers, I turned it beneath the light of the neon sign. It flickered beautifully, colored like gasoline on water – indigo, purple, blue, indigo once more.

I slipped through the shadows that clung to the walls of the cabin. I edged up against the back door, and crouching low beneath the window I peered over the edge.

People I did not recognize.

I moved away, once more slipping between the cabins as if I was a shadow myself.

I found them in the fourth lighted cabin.

I crept to the back of the low building, and leaned up against the wall. I slipped the edge of the knife in between the latch and the striker plate of the rear door. I heard the snick of the metal as it clicked back. The door eased open effortlessly, and I slipped into the room, gliding like air, like slow-motion fire.

The woman was asleep on the bed, her bottle-blond hair spread out over the pillow. Her hand had slipped free of the covers, dangled from the edge of the mattress as if she had forgotten its ownership.

I could smell sex in the air, and I breathed in the bitter tang of liquor mingled with the raw stench of sweat. I leaned closer as she exhaled. I could hear him. He was talking to himself, mumbling something incomprehensible as he stood in the bathroom doorway watching her. I waited until he turned out the bathroom light, slipped off his robe, and slid beneath the sheets beside her. She turned towards him, towards me, and in the flickering light of the neon sign through the thin curtains I could see her mascara was smeared, her hair tousled, dark roots creeping out from the surface of her scalp and giving it all away.

I watched these nothing people, and I thought of the man’s name, his age, where he came from, where the world believed he was. There was no-one here but people who meant nothing, said nothing of consequence, listened to themselves speaking as if they possessed the only voice in the universe. They have been watched, from the moment of their inception, by the stars. They did not understand. I understood.

I leaned back. I smiled. With my left hand I grasped my erection, with my right hand the knife, and then, sliding across the floor on all fours I approached the edge of the bed. I lay right beneath the man. He could have reached out and touched me, but he heard nothing. I rose slowly, as if I had grown from the carpet, and then I raised the knife and held it a foot above his heart. I pushed forward with all my weight, felt the knife puncture, and then with greater force than even I believed I possessed I drove that blade home. I felt it slide through flesh and cartilage and muscle. I felt it stop against the back of his ribcage.

The sound from his lips was almost nothing.

She did not wake.

I frowned, and wondered how much she had drunk before she lay down on the bed. The man was dead. Blood ran across his chest like a rivulet of black. Light like that turned blood the color of crude oil. I touched it with my fingertips. I raised my head, and then leaning gently forward I painted a cross on the woman’s forehead. She stirred and murmured. I touched my finger to her lips. She murmured again, sounded like someone’s name but I did not hear it clearly.

‘Huh?’ I whispered. ‘What was that you said, sweetheart?’

She murmured again, a breathless whisper, a distant nothingness.

From the side of the bed I rolled the man down onto the floor. I lowered him without a sound, and then I climbed in where he had lain, the sheets warm, the mattress imbued with the heat of his body. I felt the dampness, could smell the raw earthiness of what had happened here before I arrived, and moving my hand down I slid it across her stomach, over her ample heavy breasts, down across her navel and between her legs. I stroked my fingers through her pubic hair, she smiled in her sleep, her lips slightly parted, her eyelids flickering, and then when she spoke I could feel my heart thundering in my chest. I felt the emotion and power of that moment rising to my throat.

I closed up against her, aware of the filth that had dried to my skin, the smell of the everglades, the sweat I had bled in the miles I had walked to this place.

I thought of the dead man who lay on the floor beside us. I thought of the reasons why Feraud and Ducane had to have him killed. Reasons were inconsequential. Reasons were history.

Perhaps it was such thoughts that woke her. Alien thoughts. Strange sensations as she reached out her hands to touch me, to feel for my stomach, my legs, the memory of something she had found there that once had her scratching the walls, gasping for air, crying with pleasure…

She opened her eyes.

So did I.

Her eyes were rimmed with sleep, bloodshot and unfocused.

Mine were stark, brilliant white against the blackness of my face. I looked like a nightmare.

She opened her mouth to scream, and with one hand I forced her jaw closed. Gripping the base of her throat with my other hand I rolled over and on top of her. I could feel the pressure of my erection against her stomach. She struggled, she was heavy, strong almost, and it was some moments before I could push myself inside her. I thrust hard. I hurt her. Her eyes widened, and even as she felt me thrusting up inside her again, even as she struggled to breathe at all, she knew from the expression in my eyes that she was going to die. My hand tightened relentlessly around her throat. And then it was as if she resigned herself to it. She seemed to fall silent inside, and even though I knew she was still alive there was nothing left within her with which to fight. I thrust again, again, again, and then I sensed the moment that her life gave way beneath her. I released her throat. She lay still and silent. I thrust once more, and as I came I kissed her hard and full on the mouth.

I lay there for some time. There was no hurry. Where I was going would wait forever, it seemed. I teased her bleached-blond curls around in my fingers. Her eyes were open. I closed them. I kissed her lids in turn. Her mouth was open, gasping for air that would now never come. I moved against her, felt her fading warmth, felt the softness of her flesh turn cool and unyielding, and after an hour, perhaps more, I grew from the bed like some angular tree and padded barefoot into the bathroom.

I showered, scrubbed the dirt from my skin. I washed my hair with shampoo from a bottle labeled Compliments of the Shell Beach Motel. I soaped myself with a small ivory tablet that smelled of children and clean bathrooms. I stood beneath the running water, my face upturned, my eyes closed, and I sang some tune I remembered from years back.

I dried myself with clean towels, dressed slowly in the man’s garments, much as I had done after Pietro Silvino had died. The clothes were large. I turned up the cuffs of the pants, left the shirt unbuttoned at the neck and did not wear his tie. His shoes were two or three sizes too big so I stuffed the toes with the woman’s silk stockings. The jacket was cut wide at the shoulders, ample in the waist, and when I stood before the small copper-spotted mirror I looked like a child dressed in his father’s clothes.

Hell, we were all children beneath the stars.

I smiled.

Nothing mattered any more.

I spent a minute at the doorway of the cabin. I breathed in the swollen air, the raw earthy ambience, and then I inhaled again and the whole world came with it.

I took the man’s cigarette lighter from his jacket pocket. I walked to the edge of the bed. The tiny flame that started climbing from the edge of the bedsheet towards the spread-eagled form of the woman looked like a ghost. I watched until the sound of burning cotton was audible within the silence. I leaned sideways; I lit the lower edge of the curtain. The cabin was nothing more than wood and paint and felt. It would burn well on a hot airless night like this.

I closed my eyes.

The past was the past.

Now this was the future.

I dreamed my dreams, I lived my nightmares, and sometimes I chose guests to stay a little while.

I left the cabin and did not look back. I walked towards the highway, the stars above me, my ears filled with