Dead Beginnings (Vol. 1) (3 page)

She knew it wouldn’t be like that forever. Eventually things would change. They had to. This was her chance to prove to Ralph and herself that she was OK with that change. She looked over the counter at her husband, her green eyes turned upward, her lips parted in defeated silence.

“I’ll talk to him,” Ralph said. He walked over to Sally and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “He doesn’t know when he’s being a dick.” He smiled down at her and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back later. Call me if you need me.”

In the depths of Sally’s conscience she had hoped Ralph would cancel his night out with Lonnie and stay home with her. “Where are you guys going?” she asked with a feeble attempt to hide her growing bitterness.

“He wants to go downtown or something, some club. I can’t remember the name. I’ll text it to you when I know.”

“OK, love you,” she called after him. She couldn’t help wondering if he really would text her when he knew the name or if once he was out that door he would forget about her all together.

“Love you too!”

              Lonnie scrambled away from the door and leaned against the opposite wall next to apartment 624 just as Ralph appeared.

              “Ready?” he asked as he placed a camo baseball hat over his unruly sandy hair.

              “Let’s do this!”

Lonnie Lands clapped his hands together and let a widespread grin take over his entire face, crinkling the corners of his piercing blue eyes. He could already feel the pain of Amy fading away—her brilliant brown eyes that caught the glint of the sun when she smiled, her thick, beautiful hair that fell over her shoulders when she leaned forward and laughed with her entire body, her soft voice that whispered in his ear as her hand ran up his inner thigh.

              Dammit. There was no escaping her. Not while her lips were the last to touch his, her hands the last to tug his hair, her body the last warmth he felt from another human being.

              “So, we just going to chill at some bar, watch the game or something? Cubs versus Sox. Should be a good one.”

              “I’ve got a better idea,” Lonnie said as he hopped into his father’s truck. “You’re gonna be my wingman.”

              Ralph looked across the bench seat as the engine roared to life, his heavy brow furrowed.

              “Let’s get me some tonight!” Lonnie bellowed.

              “What about Amy, man?” Ralph shifted in his seat, but didn’t look any less confused. “Look, if you two had a fight or something, don’t go doing something you’ll regret later. You love each other, I know you do.” The look in Ralph’s doe eyes pleaded with Lonnie, not wanting to hear that the couple he’d idolized all throughout high school had finally parted ways.

“Things change, brother.” Lonnie gripped the steering wheel as one last vision of Amy’s face flashed through his mind. “Things change.”

IV.

              Lonnie Lands returned to consciousness with his face pressed down into a flat pillow. He groaned as he turned over. His entire body ached, his mouth felt like it was full of mothballs, and his hearing was muffled. His eyelids unclenched, allowing one eye to peek out at the annoyingly bright world around him.

He reached over and patted next to him, feeling nothing but wrinkled sheets and a wadded up blanket. He was in his own bed, alone. The memories of the night before were locked away somewhere in the recesses of his still drunken mind.

              He sat up slowly and rubbed his face with both his hands. The sounds of someone throwing things outside his door reached his temporarily defective ears.

He shook his head and winced when a wave of pain built up in his right temple, his cranium on the verge of explosion. As he squeezed his eyes shut he thought death would be a sweet release from the Hell he was stuck in. He slapped himself as hard as he could across the face. The sting across his cheek scattered the suicidal inklings in his brain until they were nowhere to be found.

A crash echoed throughout the small house and penetrated the thin wooden door to Lonnie’s room. It didn’t startled him in the least. He was used to his father getting drunk at all hours of the day. Those benders usually ended in one of three ways—with Buddy passed out in his chair quietly, with a physical challenge from the old man over something stupid and trivial, or if his dad felt like his odds against Lonnie weren’t good but the alcoholic rage was burning too high to contain, Buddy would throw things around until sufficient damage was done to the shit hole they begrudgingly called home. With the sounds that penetrated Lonnie’s ears and went straight to his aching brain, he bet it was the latter of the three. The last thing he wanted to deal with hung over was a drunken asshole.

He laid back down with his back to the wall. His face landed on something small, rough, and wrinkled. He propped himself up on one elbow and snatched up a crumbled bar napkin from his pillow. Scribbled across it in black ink was the name Rowan Brady with a phone number underneath.

The flood gates opened and Lonnie began to remember the last half of his night out with Ralph Sherman, the beginning of the night lost forever, a black smudge on his memories. He remembered going to a pool hall with Ralph after the first bar they went to turned out to be a gay bar. The two were barely talking and when they did it was forced and awkward, mostly about the good old days of high school.

Fed up with working so hard to rekindle their friendship, Lonnie invited some other guys to play a round of pool with them. One of those men was a construction worker in his early thirties named Rowan Brady. Lonnie remembered his train of thought as
with a guy that good looking as my wingman, I’m bound to gather enough hot pussy to last me a lifetime.
Obviously he’d been wrong.

He squeezed the napkin in his hand until it was a crumpled mess.

The door to his bedroom burst open and slammed against the wall, interrupting his self-loathing. Lonnie jumped and the bed springs squeaked under the pressure.

“Get your shit and let’s go, boy!” Buddy Lands yelled. His eyes were wide with panic as his hands tugged at what thinning hair he had left.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Get out of my room.”

“Shit’s hit the fan! People are going crazy and we need to get out of here now!”

Lonnie didn’t move from his bed. His narrow blue eyes scrutinized his father as he tried to figure out just how drunk he was.

Buddy was frozen in the doorway as his chest heaved with deep, wheezing breaths. Aside from the messed up hair, there were no other familiar signs of drunken disarray—his shirt wasn’t stained, there was no alcohol on his chin, his eyes weren’t glassed over, he didn’t sway or lose his balance.

There was something about the look in his eyes that made Lonnie reconsider. It was the same look he had when they found Loretta Lands in a bathtub full of her own blood, wrists slashed beyond repair. Buddy wasn’t drunk—he was terrified.

“Where are we going? What’s happening?” Lonnie asked as he shot up from the bed and snatched up his Army bag. Fortunately, he hadn’t taken the time to unpack.

“It’s all over the news. People attackin’ each other, killin’ each other, eatin’ each other. It’s a goddamn fucking mess! We need to get to the Michigan cabin before we’re stuck here.” With that, Buddy Lands turned, walked away, and swiped his truck keys from the kitchen counter.

Lonnie had to jog to reach the truck before Buddy took off without him. He’d never seen his father move so fast before. He snatched the keys from the frantic man’s hand and hopped into the driver’s side.

Before Buddy could say anything, Lonnie said, “Get in and let’s go. I can get us there faster!”

It was only a fraction of a second that Buddy Lands stood there, internally debating whether he should drag the boy out of the truck or ride along as a passenger. With a sigh he walked around the front end and climbed in.

The rusty Ford came to a roaring start. Dirt and gravel kicked up behind it as it putted from the driveway and onto the road.

“I just have to make a quick stop first.”

“What the hell do you mean you have to make a stop? You better keep this truck movin’, boy, or so help me God—”

“I have to go get Amy, you miserable son of a bitch!” Lonnie’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were pure white. His entire face had turned a deep shade of red and his blue eyes pierced through Buddy’s like sharpened icicles.

“Thought you two were finito,” Buddy grumbled as the immediate panic died down in him. He steadied his shaky legs with his arthritic hands.

“We are, but if things are as bat-shit crazy as you say they are, then that doesn’t matter. I don’t want her to get hurt or die just because we broke up.” Lonnie’s face returned to its naturally tanned pallor. He gave his hands two quick shakes before returning them to the wheel.

“I’d say good riddance to the bitch, but you’re drivin’.”

Lonnie took a deep, slow breath and counted to ten in his head. It was best not to respond. If he did, Buddy would sting him again and then there’d be no controlling himself. Instead, he focused on the winding road ahead of him as he pulled into the trailer park where he last saw Amy Harding.

He parked and then took off with the keys to leave Buddy sitting with his hands in his lap. He took her porch steps two at a time. The door was cracked open. Inside it was dark and silent.

V.

              The house smelled like stale sweat, sex, and something else, something underlying and pungent. It made Lonnie sick to his stomach as he imagined Amy humping guy after guy, not giving their relationship a second thought as she desecrated what they once had. Would he find her in there, naked and twisted together with someone else?

The blinds were drawn crooked in the living room. The pink wallpapered walls were void of any photographic memories they’d shared together. On the floor there were several frames with their backs open and pictures of Amy with her girlfriends scattered around.

Lonnie walked further into the trailer, stepping on a frame and breaking the glass with a soft crack as he headed to the bedroom in the back. It was like they’d never dated at all, never shared with each other, never even knew each other—at least that was what it would look like to anyone else. There was no evidence of him anywhere, like he meant absolutely nothing to her.

              When he got close enough to her bedroom door, which was left halfway open, he heard the undeniable faint groan of a man. Lonnie’s hands started to shake in fists at his side. His shoulder muscles tensed upward, threatening to swallow his neck entirely.

He had to do it. He had to go in there and face whatever Amy was doing behind that door and tell her that whatever was happening outside was bigger than them and she needed to come with him.

              He shook out his hands and bounced on the balls of his feet. He heard the muffled honk of the truck horn outside as Buddy laid into it. It was now or never. The door was thrown back as Lonnie burst through it, but he didn’t make it far. The sight of what lay in the bed in front of him stopped him cold.

              A man lay on the Queen bed with his eyes closed and mouth open. With everything but her head covered by a silky black sheet, Amy sat between his legs with her hands on either side of his hips. Her head was lowered to his groin. The wet, smacking sounds that filled the room made Lonnie’s stomach lurch upward.

              “How could you, Ame? How? Why?”

              Slowly her head stopped its repetitive motion and raised up from the man’s lower half. All Lonnie could see was a waterfall of chestnut brown hair and bare shoulders. There were fingernail scratches across the middle of her back, the deep red blood dried on her pale white skin.

              She turned to face the man she had once promised to spend eternity with and looked at him with empty marbleized eyes. Thick blood covered her mouth and dripped down her chin. Her hands and knees were smeared with it from the pool she sat in.

              Lonnie’s mouth opened, but no sound dared to escape. His eyes flickered from Amy, covered in gore, to the man on the bed. There was a bloody gaping hole where his pelvis and inner thighs used to be, his manhood obliterated beyond belief. Amy turned her exposed, red body slowly as she moved her legs awkwardly to the ground.

              “Amy?” Lonnie spoke reassuringly. “Amy, it’s OK. I’m going to help you, babe. I can help you…please…let me help you.”

              She snarled as she stood up, her entire front drenched in the blood of the deceased man on the bed. It was the same body Lonnie had caressed with his own hands countless times, but something was different, aside from the carnage it was covered in. Her shoulders slumped forward and sagged, her legs stood akimbo like a newborn deer attempting to walk, and her skin looked sickly and gray.

              Lonnie raised a hand to cover his mouth and his eyes welled with tears. Amy drew closer. She reached an arm out to Lonnie. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall down his rounded cheeks. He felt the cold, soft brush of fingers on his face.