No Way Out

You may have thwarted my plan, but there is a price to be paid for doing so. I am now going to kill Andi. Her blood is on your hands.

Lannosea.

She had finished keying in the text message to her cell phone and was now keying in the number to the intended recipient. That recipient was Alex Sedaka. But then she had second thoughts. Why Alex? Was it really Alex that she wanted to hurt?

Alex Sedaka was insignificant. He meant nothing to anyone. There was some one else who deserved to be hurt much more. And he had a weak spot: his conscience.

She had read somewhere that it was wrong to punish a person using their own conscience as the means of punishment, because conscience was a virtue. To punish a person through his own conscience was to punish him for his virtues and not for his vices.

And yet it made perfect sense. You punish a wrongdoer by attacking his weaknesses. If his weakness is his conscience, then so be it. If he has no conscience then maybe you have to use other means. But why use more force than necessary?

And if Claymore did have a conscience, then how did it make him a better person if he protected that conscience through denial. That conscience was only worth something to his victims if it was pricked by self-awareness. Absent that awareness, his conscience was a disembodied attachment — a conscience without a consciousness.

So she deleted Alex Sedaka’s cell phone number and replaced it with that of Elias Claymore.

But as she was about to press SEND, she hesitated again.

Wednesday, 2 September 2009 — 17:30

“Do you know how painful it is to bottle it all up inside like that?” asked Gene, still holding the gun close to her side, aimed squarely at Claymore’s torso. She had ordered him to sit down on the couch, from which it would have been hard for him to take any hostile action. That meant that he was facing the TV on the wall, with his side to her, forcing him to turn his head to give her his full attention.

“That’s what I don’t understand. Why didn’t the anger come out sooner? Why only now?”

“I guess it’s because we have a duty to ourselves go on living. That’s how I got through the pregnancy.”

He was confused again.

“What pregnancy?”

“You don’t know do you?” She looked at him for a few seconds, alternately angry and then contemptuous at the blank look on his face. “When you raped me you got me pregnant.”

For a few seconds he was dumbstruck. But he had to know.

“And did you…”

“Have an abortion? I couldn’t”

“Why not? It was after Roe versus Wade.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“No one could have blamed you.”

“Not even born-again fundamentalists like you?”

“The Bible says ‘judge not that ye shall not be judged’.” he said, lowering his eyes in shame. “And I’d be the last person to sit in judgment… Why didn’t you? Couldn’t you afford the costs?”

“Oh I could afford it. There are always organizations ready to come forward and help in those circumstances. I could barely afford not to considering my lack of job skills at the time and the fact that I couldn’t provide for the baby. It’s just that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Even though it was… mine?”

“You mean even though it was the fruit of an act of violation?”

“Yes,” he gulped, barely able to speak.

“But don’t you see that didn’t matter. Because it was mine too. And when I felt it inside me I didn’t think of you. I saw it as…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill it. It was life.. and if I was going to go on living, as I resolved to do, I guess I had to let the baby live too. I didn’t know how I’d feel when it was born, but I couldn’t destroy it when it was inside me. And when I held him my arms, he was so weak and vulnerable and I knew that I was there to protect him.”

“Where is he now?”

“I got rid of him.”

“But you said…”

“I said I couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion. And I tried to bring him up on my own. But it was hard. Everyone told me I should try and find a man. They said forget the looks. Just find yourself an ugly, lonely guy with a full wallet and a lonely heart. ‘At least he’ll provide for you both and he won’t leave you.’ That’s what my friends said. Maybe they were right. But I wasn’t ready to deliver myself into the hands of another man. I was looking for some one gentle to share my life with, even before that.”

“You mean because of your sexual preference.”

“If that’s what you care to call it.”

“But what about… getting rid of him?”

“I gave him up for adoption.”

“But you said you wanted to keep him.”

“Of course I wanted to keep him. I wanted to love him. He was my child. And when he was a baby, weak and helpless, I could do that. I didn’t think of him as part of you, I thought of him as part of me. But when he got towards two, things started to change. His facial features started to develop and he began reminding me of you. Also he was stubborn. He was developing a mind of his own. Instead of being the baby who responded with a smile when I scooped him up in my arms, he became this strong-willed brat who wanted his own way every time. And then it all started coming back: all the memories of another overgrown little boy who wanted things all his own way and didn’t care who he hurt to get it!”

There were tears in the eyes of both of them. If Claymore’s pain failed to equal that of Gene, it was offset by the knife of guilt that twisted in his gut.

“So you gave him up after you’d already bonded with him?” asked Claymore tensely.

“Yes!” said Andi, choked up with tears.

“But you still loved him?”

“Of course I still loved him!” By now she was crying more hysterically than she had been in court. But she still held on to the gun aimed squarely at Claymore.

“And that’s what you’ve had to live with all these years?”

“Yes!”

He leaned forward.

“I can help you… if you’ll let me.”

He started to get up, but stopped in his tracks when she raised the gun and aimed it at his face.

“I don’t need your help! I can handle my own pain.”

“Look… I know it’s an impertinence for me to offer my help. But like you said you’ve been bottling it up all these years. You’re entitled to some relief… some rest.. some inner peace.”

“I wasn’t talking about me!” she screamed. “When I said how hard it was to keep it all bottled up, I didn’t mean me!”

“Then who?” he stuttered, helplessly

“I was talking about your other victim — the fourteen-year-old girl who didn’t come forward at the time you raped her!”

Claymore could barely find the breath to speak. But he forced himself to say the name: “Andi.”