Bad Games 2 - Vengeful Games (3 page)

Monica stood next to Maria Fannelli’s bed. The room was dark and quiet save for the consistent beeps of Maria’s heart that see-sawed white lines on the monitor’s black screen.

The woman’s eyes were closed, her mouth open a crack, the occasional snore flapping from her throat. An IV snaked its way out of her arm and attached itself to a free standing infusion pump on the side of the bed where Monica stood.

Monica wanted to wake her. Wanted the woman to know what was about to happen. She wanted to savor it; look deep into this woman’s eyes and watch the life drain from them. After all, this was something new—the first step in their path to vengeance. Who knew what ecstasies it might bring?

But alas, this could not be one of those times. Years of discipline extinguished such blissful thoughts, and self-preservation immediately took hold. She was not in someone’s home where she could take her time.

Monica snapped on a pair of latex gloves, hit stop on the infusion pump, withdrew a syringe from her pocket, took hold of the intravenous port, and administered an IV push: a lethal and undetectable injection of potassium into Maria Fannelli’s vein.

*

Monica was halfway down the hall when she looked over her shoulder and spotted a young woman from the nurse’s station hurry into Maria Fannelli’s room—no doubt hoping that the one of many monitors she was observing was simply incorrect, and that Mrs. Fannelli had not flat-lined. The last thing Monica heard before she exited the hospital was the commotion surrounding the Code Blue that had just been called.

Upon reaching her car, Monica paused, lit a cigarette, and blew a long satisfying plume into the dark autumn sky. “Resuscitation is futile,” she smirked. “That bitch is dead.”

She entered her car and drove off without suspicion.

*

Arty was asleep when the doctor entered the room. The officer on duty was fighting off sleep himself, periodically dropping his head into his chest before it would pop up suddenly as though someone had startled him. When the doctor entered the room, he hopped to his feet and made a subtle attempt at wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“Mr. Fannelli,” the doctor said.

Arty didn’t stir.

“Mr. Fannelli,” the doctor repeated.

Arty spoke without opening his eyes. “Don’t call me Fannelli.”

The doctor exchanged looks with the officer. The officer shrugged.

“I thought you should know,” the doctor continued, obviously deciding to forgo a second guess at an acceptable moniker, “that your mother has succumbed to her injuries. There was nothing we could do.”

The doctor left the room.

“
Bra-vo
, Fannelli,” the officer said, clapping slowly. “Your mother’s dead … and
you
killed her. I’d say that just about puts the last nail in your coffin, wouldn’t you?”

Despite the pain it caused his wounds, Arty rolled away from the officer and lay on his side.

The officer grinned and took his seat again. “What’s wrong, Fannelli? You gonna cry?”

Truth be told, Arty was trying not to laugh.

Chapter 3

The Alaskan Wilderness

One week later

John Brooks watched the homeless man devour the bowl of stew at his kitchen table. “Good?” John asked.

The homeless man lifted his head, stew dripping from his mangy beard, and smiled like a child eating ice cream.

John smiled back. “It’s one of my specialties. Snowshoe hare and fox. Can’t get along out there—” He pointed out his cabin window “—but put ’em together in a pot with some veggies and they get along just fine, don’t they?”

The man lifted his head and smiled again, wider this time. His front teeth were gone.

“More?” John asked when he noticed the man had now abandoned his spoon and begun scraping the inside of the bowl with his fingers in order to sop up every last morsel.

The man licked his fingers and handed the bowl to John. “Yes—please.”

John took the bowl to a small white stove in the corner. Simmering on one of the burners was the black pot that held his specialty. He ladled two big helpings into the man’s bowl and placed it before him again.

The man’s appetite, strong as it was, had not completely vanquished his courtesy. Even as the steaming bowl sat beneath his runny nose, he managed polite small talk before diving into his second helping. “So you live all the way out here by yourself?”

“That’s right.”

The man chewed, swallowed, burped into his fist, then dug in again. “Year long?”

“Pretty much,” John said. “Unless I’m working.”

The man took a mouthful bigger than he could handle, and after a few noble attempts of getting it all down at once, resorted to pulling a chewed hunk of rabbit from his mouth and placing it back in his bowl. “What do you do?”

“Hunter.”

The man kept his eyes on his food as he spoke. “So then what brought you all the way into town today? You need ammo or traps or something?”

John smiled. His black eyes sparkled. Softly, he said, “No.”

For a man as physically imposing as he was, John Brooks could play the big teddy bear when he wanted—embodying a serenity that seemed to oppose the hardened edges of his rough but handsome face; a physique that suggested he bench-pressed oak trees and dead-lifted boulders.

The homeless man finished a mouthful of stew and made eye contact with his host. “So what were you in town for then?” he asked.

John smiled again—the same accommodating smile he’d flashed for his guest when first leaning to his right and opening the passenger door back in town. “Call it an urge,” he said.

The man shrugged and went back to his stew.

John went to the window. The sun was strong, reflecting off the snow and ice covering the earth. John squinted through the glare and looked further out. He saw that even dim, congested areas of forest were pierced with light in various spots. “
Perfect,
” he whispered. The lighting was perfect. Perfect
now.

John turned back towards the man. “How you coming along?”

Smiling, the man held up and displayed his empty bowl, and once again John likened him to a child.

“Excellent,” John said. “Feel good?”

The man nodded.

“Feel strong?”

The man nodded.

“Energetic?”

The man paused, his smile now more polite than genuine, and nodded again.

“Think you can give me my money’s worth?”

No nod this time. Just a quizzical face. “What do you mean?”

John reached into his pocket and pulled out a stopwatch. He pressed a few buttons and placed it on the kitchen table in front of the man. The watch was set for ten minutes.

“That’s how much of a head start I’m going to give you,” John said. He reached forward and pushed a final button. There was a faint beep, and the stopwatch began its countdown.

The man looked up at John. “I—I don’t understand …”

John didn’t reply. He walked to his gun rack fixed next to the mounted head of a grizzly bear, considered his selection, then chose his custom-built Remington.

“Mister, what are you … what are you doing?”

John stayed quiet, but found it impossible to fend off a small smile as he began loading the rifle.

“Are you … taking me hunting with you?” the man asked, eyes fixed on the Remington.

John laughed softly and shook his head. The tranquil demeanor, despite his rough exterior, was still there, but the eyes … the eyes were different now. Intense arousal had dilated his pupils to an extreme, making them more akin to the black marble eyes of the grizzly on his wall. Akin and relevant: both were lethal predators.

John slid the bolt on the chambered round, brought the rifle to his chest and asked: “How much time you got?”

The man stuttered, producing nothing but quick, frenetic breaths. His eyes volleyed back and forth between John’s face and the Remington. Wet stew still hung from the beard surrounding his open mouth, his filthy layers of clothing unable to hide the shakes of his body.

Rifle still in both hands, John poked his chin towards the stopwatch on the table. “
How much time?
” he asked again.

The man looked fast. “Seven—says seven minutes.”

John booted the man from his chair, sending him hard to the wooden floor.

The homeless man stared up helplessly at his once-generous host. He stared at the now lustful grin that was close to leaking. He stared at the blackest of eyes that were useless windows to a soul that didn’t exist. He stared at it all, unable to look away, his face contorted, frozen—an effigy of absolute fear.

And John rejoiced. He laughed, wiped his mouth, and pointed the rifle towards the front door. “You better get a move on, sport.”

*

The homeless man darted through the Alaskan wilderness, his frantic lungs machine-gunning clouds of breath. Branches smacked and sliced his face, the dense underbrush like cruel wooden hands trying to snatch an ankle, making him stumble more than once.

Calls for help were futile in the desolate environment; he knew that, but it didn’t stop panic from shunning reason and trying all the same. So he cried out. A bullet answered just above his head. It thumped into the large spruce behind him, splintering the bark and producing a hole the size of a dime.

Two more shots thumped into the girth of the spruce, one on each side of his head—a perfect triangle if one connected the dots.

He screeched like a wild bird and dropped to his stomach, eyes closed tight, cheek and body pressed hard to the earth in hopes of somehow sinking into it for cover.

The evil man had missed him on purpose; he knew this fact to be as sure as the ice and snow that was now biting into his cheek and ear. He was being toyed with. The stopwatch, the head start, it was for the evil man’s own amusement, not some race against the clock where life was the prize should he outlast his pursuer. Death was not a possibility; it was a certainty. It was all just a matter of when.

And so there, pressed flat on his belly in the freezing underbrush, he gave up and began to cry.

*

One hundred yards away, through the custom scope of his Remington, John Brooks watched the man resign and begin to sob. The image was satisfying, but at the same time disappointing. Tears of dread were always nice—but giving up? Accepting fate? What the fuck kind of pussy shit was this? Perhaps some pain would inspire his prey and resume the chase.

John steadied the Remington, peered through the scope, held his breath.

*

A distant boom. The instantaneous whistle of a bullet slicing air. And then a wet thump that carried an explosion of searing pain into the homeless man’s leg. He rolled to one side and gripped the wound, his hands coming away a mess of wet red.

Yes, the evil man was toying with him. Yes, he intended to kill him. But apparently he had no intention of doing it quickly.

The homeless man struggled to his feet, his leg producing a wave of agony unparalleled to that of anything he had ever encountered during his hardships as a transient. He hobbled through the snow, leaving a thick dotted trail of blood behind him. His tears had stopped for now; the pain of the wound had ironically stemmed them.

The man’s destination was unknown. He was simply buying himself minutes before he was ultimately murdered, and he knew that. Was that a purchase he really wanted? Yes. He had accepted fate earlier and had paid an excruciating price—his leg was now a throbbing log of useless meat.

Inevitable fate be damned, he was going to try. Try and
succeed.
Disappear in the forest. Lay low until it was safe, no matter how long it took. He was a homeless man living in
Alaska
for Christ’s sake; he could endure the elements. And when it was safe he would find a way back to town. Go to the police. Tell them about the evil man. Beg them to listen for once. Yes—he would go to the police, and the evil man would be punished. Yes … yes, that’s what he’d do.

The homeless man hobbled with a purpose towards a thick mass of pines.

*

John was pleased. His shot to the man’s leg had done its job and restarted the game—sort of. Likely, the shot had hit the femoral artery on the man’s leg, and if he managed to hide for the remainder, the man would slowly bleed to death somewhere—
the equivalent of fucking for hours without coming,
John thought. He could never allow such a thing. He would rather come quick and accept
some
joy than cope with such an excruciating disappointment.

So let’s just go for the headshot and call it a day, shall we?
After all, the man’s terrified expression in the cabin would sustain him for a little while. And the girlish screech followed by the cowardly sobbing
was
kind of funny the more he thought about it. Nothing great, but it was something.

John waited patiently for the man to finally stop and catch his breath. He was deep into a mess of pines, almost assuredly invisible to anyone looking from afar, but from the custom scope on his Remington, John felt he could reach out and tickle the man’s chin.

John smiled. Zeroed in on the man’s head. Aimed between the eyes. Held his breath. And then watched the homeless man’s head snap backwards, spraying the pines behind with red chunks before his body crumbled to the ground.

Except John never pulled the trigger.

He turned fast over his shoulder, the echo of the mystery bullet still reverberating throughout the forest. Monica Kemp stood ten yards away, her own custom-built Remington gripped tight in both hands.

“Hi, Dad,” she said with a smirk.

John grinned and placed his rifle on the ground. He went in for the hug. “How’s my baby girl?”

*

Monica sat at her father’s kitchen table. She kept her heavy wool coat on. “It’s
freezing
in here, Dad. How do you stand it?”

John placed a hot bowl of stew in front of his daughter. “Getting soft on me are you?”