It took another half hour of scrubbing the soap over her skin before she was satisfied. All the grime and dirt had been transferred to the water and she could no longer sit in it without feeling sick. She wiggled out of her old dress and left it floating in the bath as she stood. She turned the shower on for a second to let the dirty water run off and then she grabbed for the robe, pulling it on and tying off the waist. She picked up the towel and put it to her nose. It didn't smell like her towels because her towels smelled like Martin and these didn't smell like Martin.
Martin. Where was Martin? Why wasn't he here? Why wasn't he in their home? She dropped the towel and hurried to the bathroom door. She pulled it out and called out "Martin!" Betty hurried down the hall, eyes wide.
"Did you say something dear? What did you say?"
"Martin," she gasped. "Where . . . where is . . . Martin Pearson?"
Betty blinked. "Martin Pearson? Why, he's the man that sold me this house."
"Where is he?" She held onto the door as though it were a shield. Her face, now sans dirt, was so pale it might as well have had no pigment.
"Well, I think I heard he moved to Indian Village. I see him on the news sometimes. I hope he wins his election to City Council. He seems like a good man."
She stared at the woman and for a while didn't say anything and Betty was looking worried. Then she cleared her throat. "When did he sell this house to you? When?"
"When? Oh, about five years ago. He didn't ask much for it or I couldn't have afforded it. I guess he just wanted to get out. He moved a few months after his poor wife died. He probably couldn't stand being in the same house without her . . . are you alright, child?"
Betty only had a moment to see the woman shaking bodily before the door was closed in her face. She frowned and sighed, moving back down the hall. She should probably call the police and ask about missing people.
The woman in the robe sat down heavily on the toilet. She stared off at nothing, her mind refusing to comprehend. Eventually she stood and opened the mirror for something to do. Something to distract her mind. She saw many orange medication bottles, a few cotton swabs, and a bag of makeup. She took the make up down and closed the mirror, sitting back on the toilet to go through it. Five years? Most of it was stuff that wouldn't work. The foundation was not her color and the color of the eye shadows and lip sticks weren't her favorites. There was eyeliner though, and she had always been a fan of eyeliner. Dead wife? She put the rest of the bag aside and stood, leaning over the sink as she began to carefully trace her eyes with the eye liner. She blinked and stood back to see how it looked. Decent. She leaned in and drew the line thicker and thicker.
It was more than she usually wore, but putting it on felt normal, like a soothing ritual that could help her forget for a few moments. Five years ago? She finally put the pencil in the pocket of the robe with a content sigh and stared at her eyes. She looked down the nose to the lips below. Lips that Martin loved to kiss. She looked down her neck . . . and her eyes froze. She stared at her chest where the V of the robe fell away from her. She stood back and her hands slowly untied the robe. She opened it and stared at her reflection.
The incisions had been started just below her collar bones and angled down the inside of her breasts until they met between them. From there, the thick cut continued down the middle of her torso to stop just above her naval. The incision was free of blood or infection, but it hadn't healed either. It was held together by stitches of thick black plastic and it looked like it had been a fast sewing job. Like someone in a hurry finish and move on.
And all around this massive Y incision were thin deep cuts, each one about an inch long. None of them were healed over either, just open slashes in her pale skin–
–The knock that came to the door didn't set off her cop instincts. It shouldn't have. People knock on front doors all the time. She had only been home from the supermarket twenty minutes and hadn't even put half of her groceries away when she got distracted by the sound. For a moment she thought she would ignore it and the person would go away, but the knocking became rather insistent. She sighed in annoyance, put two more cans of tomato soup in the cupboard, and turned out of the kitchen to the front door.
It could have been either her cop training or her military training that made her lift both her forearms up in a double block a second before the fence post had the chance to crack her head open. As it was, it cracked itself in half against her raised forearms and sent her reeling back into her house, one elbow smashing a picture as her back slammed into the hallway wall. The pain in her arms made her want to drop them and curse, but the two men rushing into her home usurped her desire to wonder how injured she really was.
She saw a flash of gunmetal and rolled out of the way, along the wall, before the picture she had broken exploded. The silencer was loud in its own right, but kept its noise captured in the house. She rolled free of the wall and took a step back into the kitchen with the thought of finding a knife. She didn't get time to so much as glance for a weapon before a hand grabbed her by her hair and yanked her backward.
They must have been waiting since before she'd come home from the supermarket. Two men across the street, one man inside her home. Surely she would have heard them break the lock on the back door had she been home at the time. She would have gotten up to her bedroom and unlocked her gun by the time they could find her and then they would have been really sorry that they had broken her lock in the first place.
Her hands instinctively went to her hair, to try to break the hold of the thick fingers tangled there, but she was off balance from her backward momentum and could do nothing but take a brutal knee to the solar plexus that forced the air from her body before she could even cry out. She gasped as her knees buckled and her vision darkened. She didn't hear the men speaking to each other or communicating in anyway. Surely they had planned enough ahead that they wouldn't need to speak.
When she felt the end of a hot silencer pushed under her jaw, she stood up as straight as possible, trying to get away from it. Her head was locked between the hand in her hair and the gun beneath her chin. Her fuzzy vision was of her ceiling. Some of the paint was peeling and a piece was gone. She hadn't noticed that before.
"Emirene Mendoza?"
It was hard to swallow with the gun pushed so tightly against her throat. "That bitch don' live here no more." She hadn't seen one face yet. It had all happened so fast and here she was, trapped staring at her own damn ceiling.
"Sure," was the response.
She felt the gun leave her throat, but a moment later she was lifted bodily and thrown through the air. She flew through the open door that lead from the kitchen down to the cellar. She was thrown so forcefully that her body didn't even connect with the wooden stairs until she was half way to the basement floor.
She couldn't even be sure what parts of her hit the angles of the stairs as she crashed down them but she heard something snap. It could have been her leg, or it could have just been one of the steps. She was in too much sudden pain to tell. She very suddenly found herself laying face up on her cellar floor, looking at yet another ceiling. This one was a maze of uncovered pipes and ducts. She stared up at them in shock, her brain just beginning to comprehend what had happened.
When she heard the creaking of footsteps coming down the steps, she painfully turned her back to the steps, rolling onto her side and curling up, using every inch of her to surround her mid-section. No . . . no . . . did I hit my stomach on the way down? Did I? Did I!
She felt the men move around her even as she kept her body curled up and eyes tightly shut. They might have been talking now but she couldn't hear much through her shock. She moved from her position only when a shoe touched her shoulder and pushed her onto her back.
The men standing above her wore dark coats, ties and gloves. Their shirts were different colors, details not really important enough to remember. Their shoes were expensive and polished brightly. Not junkies breaking in, looking for money to buy drugs. Not robbers, looking for a DVD player or even her locked away gun. She knew hitmen when she saw them.
"Wow, that fucked her up good, didn't it?" The only bald guy in the room said, frowning down at her curiously. He was a bit heavy set but had stylish black frame glasses. He flexed his hand and brushed it down his leg and she saw dark strands of hair drift to the ground beside her.
"Yeah. Geez. I wish the door had been closed. I bet you could have sent her through it without a problem," the second man had curly blond hair cut short. She noticed he was wearing saddle shoes. How can you not notice when they were parked right beside your head?
"Can you hear me? You still got some brains left in your head after that tumble?" The third man had a perfectly trimmed goatee and used a hair treatment that smelled strangely of pine. It might be interesting to note that HIS shirt was worth mentioning, seeing as it was pink. Which she thought was ridiculous. It might almost be noteworthy that he was the one with the silenced gun in his hand.
She couldn't move much, but she found there was some blood in her mouth, so she used it to spit in his general direction.
"Fair enough," Goatee pushed back his coat and holstered his gun in a docker's clutch. "You're not screaming for help. What's your reasoning behind this? Surely you don't think you can take us all on by yourself after the accident you just had."
She blinked to clear the stars of pain from her eyes. "I . . .never was one for screaming. This was not a smart idea on your part, by the way. I'm a cop."
"Really? That's odd because I was told you WERE a cop. You quit, remember? Not that I would shy away from killing a cop," he took the moment to smile at his friends who chuckled amongst themselves.
"So who the fuck sent you?" She tried to move but nothing wanted to respond to her mental commands. She was feeling tired. Probably a closed head injury.
"Who do you think sent me?" He asked calmly with a smile.
"That bitch, Biondo. I only asked because I was hoping it would be someone more impressive and scary."
The backhand was so fast that she didn't understand the sudden pain in her face or why she had turned her head so quickly to the side for a moment. She felt blood flooding into her mouth and had to spit it out or choke on it. A tooth came out with it and made a small tap on the concrete floor. Goatee was crouched just above her. She hadn't even seen him begin to move. God, he was fast.
"That's not nice. Don't say that again. You wouldn't want me to have to defend Mr. Biondo's honor by having my associate here toss your husband down the stairs next to you."
The blood soaked words in her mouth immediately vanished. She just glared up at him and wished for his immediate death.
"Hey, Nico, can I do her first?" Saddles Shoes asked, grabbing his crotch,"I can make her scream for you."
"Put your dick back in your pants, Vic. This is a hit and we don't want her friends at the precinct thinking it could possibly be anything else. This has to be a clear cut lesson." Goatee pulled out a long, thin knife, perhaps to prove his resolve.
"Come on, Nico," Saddle Shoes moved around the victim and nudged the tip of his shoe into her crotch. She couldn't find the energy to shift away. "I'll be gentle then. Maybe they won't even notice I did it--"
Goatee was on his feet again like a bolt of lightning. He pushed Saddle Shoes' foot away with his own and followed it up with a solid smack to the back of the guy's head. "Shut the fuck up. These are orders direct from Biondo. Do I have to cut off your dick to make sure you're going to behave yourself?"
Saddle Shoes shook his head violently and backed away a few steps, keeping his mouth shut. Goatee looked back down at her and a fake smile splashed across his face. "Biondo had real strict instructions about you. He said you were the one who got him arrested."
"Fuck yeah I did. He even pissed himself when he saw me," she growled through the ache in her mouth.
"You know, there's something about a strong woman that confuses my sensibilities." Goatee flipped the knife in his hand until he grasped the blade, then held it over his shoulder for Saddle Shoes to take. When his hands were free, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a zippo. "On the one hand, I find it extremely hot to see a woman step up to a man and actually take him down. On the other, It makes me want to beat the shit out of her and put her in her place. You know what I mean?"
"Look, you don't have to kill me." She gritted her teeth against the pain and rage of having to take what the man had just said and still beg. "You can tell him you did and he won't know. He's gonna be in prison until he dies," she tried to speak calmly, even as she saw Saddle Shoes moving closer to her, swinging the knife from hand to hand.
"I suppose he will be. He is getting rather old. But if I decided to go back on a business deal made with a very good friend, what would you give me?"
"I . . ." she couldn't think of a damn thing she could offer that would be worth enough to keep him from doing his job.
"Yeah, I thought so. Nothing personal, you understand." Goatee snapped his fingers and Saddle Shoes flipped the knife handle against his palm, tightened his hand and went to a knee, bringing the knife down with him. She felt it slide into her chest all the way to the hilt. She screamed. The knife came back out with a wet sucking sound and came down again with a thud into her right breast–
–She threw her arms around her body, hugging her destroyed chest tightly as the memory smashed through her brain. She stumbled away from the mirror and nearly tripped backwards over the toilet. She held herself tight and gasped. The pain of her memory was just as fresh as if had been happening right now. She stared at her image in the mirror and didn't recognize the face. It was a twisted mask of horror and pain. She gasped and moaned, clutching at the robe.
She remembered the sound the knife made each time it hit her. Sometimes it was a solid thunk into muscle, but sometimes there was a grinding sound that she knew had to have been the knife scraping against bone. She remembered feeling her breath suddenly halved as the knife punctured and deflated a lung.
"God . . . you bastards, you . . ."
As her robe fell completely open, she saw what lay below her waist. A long crescent incision beneath her naval, sewn up like the one on her chest, huge and curving like a demented grin–
–There was so much blood. So much she couldn't even see her clothes anymore. She didn't know how many times she had been stabbed. Saddles Shoes was good. He knew where to stab to inflict damage and pain and yet be sure she didn't die too quickly.
She had seen plenty of stab wounds in her day. She had seen a woman survive an assault by her husband with forty stab wounds in her chest. She looked like hamburger, but she had lived. The human body was a curiously resilient thing. But still, there was so much blood . . .
Lie still. Let them think you're dead. They'll leave and you'll wait for Martin to come home. Maybe he'll come home early today. Maybe he'll find you in time. Maybe he can save your . . .
Goatee placed his foot unceremoniously on her chest and applied pressure. No acting school in the world would have kept her eyes from flaring open, her single lung of air from being forced out in a scream. With it came blood that spattered across her face and ran down her neck into her hair.
Goatee kindly waited for her small supply of air to run out before he took his foot back. "So you are aware, this was all specifically requested by our client. He really doesn't like you and didn't want this to go too swiftly. You understand of course."
She opened her mouth again. Her voice was nearly nonexistent beneath the constant supply of blood seeping into her mouth. ". . .P. . . lease. . ." she gurgled.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Goatee crouched above her and lowered his ear over her mouth.
"Pl . . .e. . . I'm . . . my . . ."
"Oh, is this the part where you ask me to spare your life for the sake of your unborn child?"
Her voice gave up on her. She stared up at his face, only inches from hers, in horror. How? How had he known she was pregnant? She had only told one or two people aside from her husband. The precinct didn't know why she had retired. No one did. How?
"Mrs. Mendoza, I don't think you quite understand who I am," Goatee raised his hand and received the bloody knife. "I am a hit man. I kill mobsters. I kill wise guys. I kill civilians." He shifted and began to run the tip of the knife down the mutilated remains of her chest, " I kill cops," the blade trailed down her stomach, past her naval, and stopped, "and I clearly kill women. Why would I stop short at a fetus that's no larger then a peanut? What is it to me?" The tip of the knife poked into the curve of her belly that had only recently begun to round out with the first signs of pregnancy.
What air she could force through her vocal cords was small and strained. Her words came out softer then a whisper, ". . . no. . . God . . . please . . ."
The stabs, five in total, came so suddenly that she almost didn't feel them. He left the knife in her belly after the final one, protruding a little below and to the right of her belly button, obliterating her birthmark.
Her voice was gone. She would speak no more. She would no longer hope that they would leave her alive and her husband would find her in time. She no longer cared if she died. She had failed to protect the most important thing that had ever come into her life. Fuck living. Fuck these men. And fuck her.
She heard them say that she had snapped. That there was no fun left to be had. She vaguely saw Goatee pull his gun from his docker's clutch and cock it. She saw his finger tightening on the trigger, but she never heard the gunshot.
–Emirene Mendoza, the dead wife of Martin Pearson, Esq., fell to her knees hard enough to crack three of the small bathroom floor tiles. Her fingers curled up, the nails pushing through the thick fabric of the robe to draw blood from her arms. The sound that emanated from her throat and filled the entire house was excruciating, agonizing and complete inhuman.
Her first tears in this non-life washed down her face and seemed to burn like acid. They dripped off her chin and onto the tiles below and showed no signs of stopping. She shrieked over and over again, taking full breathes each time and filling her lung to capacity. She only had one working lung after all, assuming it was even in her chest.
She screamed until her throat was raw and then she coughed until a small spatter of blood marked the white tiles. Her body was spent, weak and shaking. She used the sink to pull herself to her feet. When she saw her reflection, she moaned in fear. The eyeliner. The eyeliner she had put on so carefully to make herself feel like a person again. It had been devastated by the tears and ran in long dark lines down from her eyes to her chin. Black tears stained into her pale skin. The sight of it terrified her.
She spun around in a flurry of wet hair and bathrobe and yanked the bathroom door open. She didn't see Betty huddling in her kitchen, scared to death, as she ran down the hall. She plucked the crow out of its shoe-box bed and fled the house, disappearing into the night.