I awoke a couple hours later and I could tell it was past midnight. The house was black and silent but for the muffled dialogue and canned laughter coming up from the television still tuned to the channel we'd been watching earlier.
There was a knock at the door. Perhaps that's what had interrupted my sleep, because this set of knocks sounded like an emboldened sequel. Still unable to see, I cautiously felt-stepped across my room and pulled my drapes open to let the crimson night (the moon on snow bleeding up to the sky) through my window. My mouth was disturbingly dry, so I pulled a chance piece of gum from my pocket and worked it around the dust of my mouth until the wet did rush. Now able to see outlines and slightly more awake, I waddled down the stairs and to the front door.
She was wearing a long black coat. Her eyes were not visible but for wet reflections of some far-off arc light. There was a dark blue sedan parked diagonally across the driveway.
Her mouth was on mine. We were dancing backwards through the door and down into the living room. Her mouth stayed on mine -- and mine on hers -- as we scrambled for the living room floor. Her jacket flung across the room; a slippery red dress swished for a moment in a delicate twirl before it was pulled over her head and discarded on my father's old recliner. My clothes came off. We panted.
And panted.
The midnight crimson night sky pressed against the large window above us and watched.
A massive heave, a rhythmic rush, and two bodies laying side-by-side in a sighing hush. An ill-timed eruption of canned laughter from an unfortunately syndicated show followed.
"I hate this show," she said finally.
I pulled on some clothes, turned off the TV and re-lit the blunt while she dressed and pulled herself up onto the couch, where she sat cross-legged wearing nothing but her panties and bra. She watched as the lighter's light flickered on my face and then distinguished, replaced by the fiery wink of the blunt dangling from my lips.
I sat down next to her and she took it from me. I put on some music ("The Fragile" -- hardcore humping music). The only light in the room the face of the receiver, the snowy sky, and a light reflection lightly shimmering off of a circular silver medallion decorating the vase of her neck (inside of which a triangle, inside of which an open eye).
"Is it okay if I sleep here tonight?" she asked.
I leaned down to her face and we went at it again.
"So what are you going to do?" she asked the side of my face afterward.
"I don't know."
"Well is there anything you want to do?" she asked.
I looked over at her, down the length of her body, back up, and smiled.
She laughed.
"Not right now," I said honestly. "I have to leave by the 4th of January -- some people are coming to clear out the house, auction the stuff I don't want to keep, give me the money they make and then put the house up for sale formally."
"Where are you going after that happens?"
"I don't know," I said. "I have some family out West. They didn't come to the funeral or anything, but a few years ago an aunt from out there had pulled me aside at a family reunion and told me I could stay with them if I ever wanted to visit."
"You gonna go back to school?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"It's not for everyone."
"I don't think I want to go, either."
"It all depends on what you're looking to get out of it. It can be useful if you know why you're there. I didn't know why I was there, and I can't think of a good reason to go back."
"So what are you going to do for a living?"
"I'm good at everything; I'll find work."
"Do you miss them?"
I didn't answer, and we both fell asleep.
When I awoke, Vanessa was gone. The living room had been cleaned, and so had the kitchen and even my room upstairs. A note had been left upside-down on the refrigerator:
"I'll be back eventually. Yours, K.G."
Kitchen Girl. At the bottom a cute, curly-haired smiley face.
I downed a granola bar, brushed my teeth, flipped on the television, sucked a spirit from the bottle (vodka and toothpaste arguing orally), and began rolling another blunt. The windows were ablaze with absolute white illumination -- sun on snow crashing into glass and long white drapes. (My mother kept a white house.) The banner headline of the newspaper screamed: "Search Continues."
This was the morning of December 20th. In less than one day, I would be wanted by the police.
I'd spent the day gathering some things together (favorite items culled simply because they wouldn't fit in my car on the drive out). Among the survivors: clothes, the laptop computer on which I'm exorcizing my story, some books, a handful of movies, toiletries, etc. That took care of the morning; the afternoon was spent going through the items in my parents' room.
I'll spare you the heavy sobs I dripped to the indifferent carpet while going through boxes of old photographs, correspondence, birthday cards, get well cards and old home movies. My father really liked obscure jazz, and I'd found a record that didn't even have a copyright date on it, called "Torn Ivory," that sounded like a man, a candle, a piano and red wine, mourning, night. The whole house echoed the unnamed artist's heart of tar: all black, suffocating, thick, vaporous, yet reflective.
I assembled a collection of my favorite family photographs and placed the book with my "outgoing" affairs. The rest I left to the auction and the seagulls.
She never showed, though. I plowed further and further through my family's remnants: the kitchen, the basement, the attic, and the day just got away from me. By the time the sun went down, I was roaring drunk, super baked, and alone. Vanessa had never showed.
The only thing left to go through was the garage, and I figured that I was drunk enough to keep warm out there in the bastard cold of that uninsulated Winter cave. I found some bungee cords that would be useful for the move, a spare tire set with all the trimmings, a bunch of old baseball cards in a box under the workbench (I later sold these on the road for $1000, even though they were probably worth triple that) and the pistol with which my father had shot himself.
At one point I put the gun to my temple, but it was just a piece of metal.
I pocketed a pair of wire-cutters and made my way back into the house. It had been a long time since I'd ventured out into my neighborhood, and after going through the effects of my dead family's life, Vanessa's prank idea was starting to make more and more sense.
So I put on my father's old army boots, which were a bit too large, a black pair of snow pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, black leather gloves and a black knitted hat; the ideal uniform for nighttime Winter stalking.
I decided to walk (stumble) the streets of my block and see just how feasible her idea was. I noticed quickly just how easy it would be. Nobody leaves windows or drapes open in the winter, and my neighborhood was full of long backyards that tapered into darkness: an ideal veil for me and my wire-cutters.
I thought I would simply scope the location and return another night with Vanessa, but that didn't add up. I didn't want her involved in this. The more I thought about it, the more I realized both how easy and wrong it was. Hoo-ha. The snow began falling with blinding intensity.
So snip went the Jeffersons, snip went the Wilsons, snip snip snip went the Andersons (a mighty wealthy family). It kept getting darker and darker around the neighborhood, and running around in that darkness; guilty of some sort of crime certainly, I started to feel something. The adrenaline, the cold, that sickly feeling when you know you're doing something wrong and the exciting feeling of being unsure whether you'll get away with it. I tell you, readers: I felt something.
I felt something!
And then it happened.
In the long row of houses on a certain block quite distant from my own, there was a single window alight with life. By this time it was nearly 2 or 3 in the morning on a school/work night, and most people were down, down, down. But there was one light about a half-mile away, and I just had to see who could be stirring at such a lonely winter hour.
Having by now sobered up to some extent, I was expertly silent as I approached the window. Now seated just below it, I could hear muffled groans coming from inside, along with the steady squeak of certain copulation and muffled music. Excited to snoop in on someone's fun, I pulled my hat over my face, used the wire cutters to make two eyeholes, brought my black gloves up to the sill and pulled myself up slowly.
First I saw a motionless ceiling fan affixed to three cones bearing lightbulbs, only one of which was on. Next I saw the top of a door along the far wall, next to which was a mediocre oil painting of a dark bowl of fruit. The wall was wood-panel, dark and warped from time (this house was ugly, old and dilapidated -- one of the worst on the street). Next I saw a sharp parted hair (think Inspector Clouseu), a thick, unkempt moustache, and a face terribly concentrating on the business at hand.
And then I saw a 5-year-old black child named Christopher Haze with his pants around his ankles bent over a bed with bits of what looked like vomit still dangling from his mouth. He was completely unconscious, and I couldn't be sure whether he was dead or not. The man was above him, and was still grinding his evil into the helpless child.
The music I heard: Nat King Cole singing "Silent Night."
I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God, or church communities, or any sort of illuminated spiritual aftermath. I believe that when we die, the ground will have us. We will whimper into decomposition, and we will spend centuries flaking our secrets into a pile in a big wooden box, which too will flake its secrets into the Earth -- from whence we both were born, and to which we will return in infinite, indifferent, inevitable silence.
Which makes it hard for me to act with any sort of remorse. If what I believe is true -- that life is the inevitable yet remarkable offspring of the aging cosmos, and that alone -- then no matter what I do in this life, no matter how atrocious, despicable or pitiable... there will be no redemption. The gearwork of the universe will spiral on, and none shall grieve but the living. My life will not be judged by anything other than you, and who are you to judge?
The ground will have you, too.
Yet despite my grim fascination with an uncaring universe, I am all too capable of feeling wronged. Of feeling that there IS justice to be had in this life, and that it goes well beyond where we go or don't go when we die. There are a number of sources to which I could ascribe this odd atheist trait of mine -- most notably the tattered cordage of my Catholic upbringing, which probably holds strong roots that my conscious thoughts had not yet entirely vanished -- but I prefer not to think of them. Thoughts like that inevitably crumble to a metaphysical core -- and all metaphysics are wanting, even atheist metaphysics.
So whether it was right of me or not is for your God to decide. I have taken the issue from our courts, because I have taken every precaution necessary to ensure that I am untraceable. This manuscript was submitted to ________ by my aforementioned family lawyer, who besides the real Vanessa is the only person in the world who can be certain I did what I did, and all communications and monetary transactions went through him.
I circled around to the front of the house, fashioned an ice ball using snow and spit, and fired it through his front window. Then I picked up a metal rod that had been shoved into the ground right next to the driveway as a guide for the plowers, which was about 4 feet long, hid in the bushes just to the right of his front door, and waited.
I heard the front door open, followed by a moment's hesitation, then the screen door opened and the man, wearing a long pink bathrobe, stepped out.
My first swing took out his knee. He immediately yelped in pain, but with my next swing across his cheekbone I smashed him silent. I knocked him on his back and slammed the rod across his ribs, listening for the crack. I tried to break them all. By now he was a bloody mess, but he was still conscious. He was looking at me with his one eye that was still capable of being opened. I held the rod over him like oil paintings of Ahab, and I used the blunted end to knock out his front teeth. He tried to say something, but the only words that came out of his mouth were blood.
I stood back up over him, pulled my foot back, and kicked him in the crotch as hard as I could. Over and over. I mashed his genitals to jelly. To absolute fucking jelly. I just kept kicking him and kicking him.
Then I dragged him inside, checked on Christopher (still breathing!), and dialed 9-1-1.
"He's still alive," I said to the woman who answered, and set the phone down next to the receiver. I'm still not sure whether I was talking about the man or the boy.
I quickly wiped down everything that I thought could possibly trace back to me and then sprinted home. The snow was falling so hard I was certain all my footsteps would be covered by the time an official investigation could begin.
When I got home, Vanessa's car (Erick's mother's car, actually) was there, and she had already made her way inside (I'd told her about a spare key I'd hidden).
She helped me burn the clothes and dispose of the wire-cutters. Then we spent the rest of the night together, crying over many beautiful and tragic things.
It was the first time I'd cried in a year. At some point in the night I realized I was crying for my father. I was crying over crumbled granite that had once been a towering statue. An angel made human and granite made man: I had buried them both.
I spent Christmas day with Vanessa's and Erick's family, who were none the wiser. In fact, Vanessa hadn't even told Erick about what I'd done. Then on the 26th she flew back to Florida with her parents. Shortly after that I headed west, where I now have my own place and life. Last I heard, the man I beat spent three months in the hospital, and is now spending twenty years in a state penitentiary.
In case you're wondering, I didn't publish this because I feel my Christmas Angel of Death story has something all that profound to say. I published it for three reasons: 1) because I thought people might find it a compelling read; 2) as I mentioned before, I needed to exorcize it once and for all in the hopes that I can move on; and 3) because I really need the money.
It's hard to get a job without a college degree.
It's true that I'm good at everything; now like poor Sylvia in the peach tree, I need to pick a path and live with the fact that all the rest will fall away and rot.
I just hope I choose correctly.
The investigation into my
crime is ongoing, but according to Vanessa, with whom I've kept
in contact, it isn't very high on their list of priorities, and it's been
over a year now, so I don't listen for heavy footsteps and loud knocks
at my door like I used to. The police seem to have willfully given up trying to find the Mysterious Odd who would do something horrible to a horrible person. She told me about a news conference where the captain of the police from my hometown was talking about how even though my crime was against a criminal, it was still itself a crime, and that justice would have to be served.
Justice. Punishment. Payback.
But that was long ago, and bored local police would rather sit at speed traps and write tickets than conduct a trans-continental investigation against someone like me.
The most dangerous girl in the world.
