Ch 4
Life has a weird way of surprising you, and just when you think you've got it all figured out, things change completely, becoming dark and confused all over again. Here I was in police custody again, waiting for people to just settle down and leave me alone. I knew they wouldn't. You can't just walk away from the things I had done. I had crossed that invisible threshold, that point at which you can't turn back, yesterday when I had killed the cop. Hell, I crossed it when I broke the TV. Now, every journalist and TV reporter in the State was trying to get a few comments from me, and from the police chief. I was already in for it as it was. I had killed a police officer. Automatic capital punishment. Still, I had gotten out of worse jams. The problem was that those jams weren't with the police, weren't with people who had been on my side of the fence.
Still, they had told me that there was a woman here to see me. She wasn't a journalist, and the guard hadn't even bothered to ask her name. I almost said no, but the memory of a disappearing Mona lingered in my mind. It wouldn't be the first time she'd surprised me. I agreed to see the woman, and the guard joylessly unlocked my cell and led me down the chilly tile corridors. I decided to hazard a word or two. "How long've you been on the force?" I said, just trying to make small talk. Very, very small talk. "Six years." he replied curtly. A moment or two passed. Except for the echoing taps of his shoes, utter silence filled our ears. He broke the silence. "You know," he said, "Mitchell's been here for twenty years. He was getting ready to retire." It stung my ears to hear. Of course, I wouldn't have expected him to be all chummy, so I had no real right to complain. The worst part about guilt is knowing that no matter how bad someone else makes you feel, it's still your own damn fault. I wanted to say something, but I had nothing to say. The man died doing his job, and I was the criminal. I just followed in silence.
He took me to a room with some wooden stools and a thick glass wall. On the other side of the wall, sitting in a small booth with a phone and wooden panels at the sides, was a woman. Not Mona. Still, this woman looked familiar. Whoever she was, she had dolled herself up to look her best. And her most seductive.
I sat down nervously on the stool. There was a phone on my side of the glass. The whole thing was too strange. I wanted to get this the hell over with. I picked up the phone and put it to my ear. The woman just looked at me for a moment. I motioned with my hands toward her phone. She picked it up and put it to her ear. I decided to get straight to the point. "Who are you?" I asked. As the words left my mouth, she closed her eyes and breathed in and out with a heavy sigh, her chest rising and falling, shivering with a smile on her face. Her eyes snapped back open with a start, and fixed themselves on mine. There was something about her eyes. Emerald green, intense, beautiful, and intimidating. "My name is Mary" she said, low, breathy and sly. She propped her elbows on the table in front of her and leaned forward eagerly, the v-neck of her blouse drifting low. At that moment, I was treated to the sight of two of the most amazing boobs I had ever seen.
Without a moment's hesitation, I ripped my eyes from her chest and back into her laser-beam eyes. Her smile widened subtly. She had planned that. This was more than bizarre. "Mary, huh?" I said. I asked her what she wanted from me. Why she had came here. Why she wanted to talk to me. The answer she gave me was disturbing. She said she admired me. I was no hero. I don't need or want admiration from anyone. I tried to gently dismiss her, worm my way out of the conversation, but she wouldn't let me. She told me she knew where I was coming from. Her smile faded away, her expression grew serious, as she leaned in closer to the glass. "I don't want you to tell this to anyone" she said, her voice just above a whisper. I leaned toward her, trying to take full advantage of whatever privacy the small booth and bulletproof glass would afford us.
She began her story, telling how she had killed her best friend Kristen at her wedding. Now I was sure of where I had seen her face: On the news. She went on. No man had ever loved her. According to her, it wasn't her fault. It was a problem with men. It was the men's fault that she was alone. My stomach began to tense up. She was moving towards a revelation that I didn't think I wanted to know. After her best friend's murder, she had been put away in Blackfield asylum, about three or four miles outside town. I recalled passing it on the way here. At once, I knew who she was. I was talking to the infamous Bloody Mary, the escaped mental patient. There was a widely known death competition that happened every year, hosted by a shadowy man who calls himself Calypso. A dozen or so combatants in heavily modified vehicles, armed to the teeth. The sole survivor would win the prize. The competition lasted until every single other contestant was killed, and it was on the news for a couple days every year. A few years ago, the competition bled into the city, and more than sixty innocent city residents had been killed in the crossfire. My arm was tensing, like a bat before the swing, getting ready to hang up the phone. The news crews had gotten some footage of the ordeal, and had identified some of the killers. She was one of them. There was a streak of killings in Midtown that made national headlines. It was believed that she had survived, had won the contest, and had become a serial killer. Here she was now, on the other side of the glass.
The fear crept up my skin inch by inch, making my hair stand on end. She started telling me how alike we both are, unfettered, free, and powerful, paving the roads to our dreams with bodies. How at the end of the road, there was nothing for us. She fought for a man, the love of her childhood. Calypso delivered her prize, complete with alterations to the brain to make her man subservient, but he still did not love her. She told me that she killed him, and then, killed any man that refused her. But eventually she stopped. She settled down, mended her ways. And then she saw me.
If her story was over, I was getting the hell back to my cell. "Don't hang up!" I heard her yell as I slammed the phone onto the hook. I walked nervously over to the phone and heard her yell, muffled by the bulletproof glass. "I'll wait for you, Max!" she cried. It was too damn much. The guard walked me back to the cell. He had a few jabs to make about her and me, but I ignored them.
For a moment, I wanted to tell him who that woman was, but the urge was strangled by a subtler, more implacable impulse. I told the guard not to bother me with any more visitors. "Yes, master" he sneered back. I sat down in my cell and prepared to face the idea of death. I sat there for a half an hour and hadn't made much progress before my good friend the cyclops decided to show up for a talk.
