Faces in Time (28 page)
Authors: Lewis E. Aleman
Tags: #Thrillers, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“Would you have listened? Would you have given up on talking to him, or would you have tried to go there again?”
“Chester, would you have listened to me if things were reversed? Could I have talked you out of trying to protect me from someone who was trying to kill me?”
“No, nothing you could’ve said would’ve stopped me,” he pauses holding her arms at her elbows, “That’s why I had to do it. I knew you wouldn’t stop until you at least gave it a shot—I knew that’s what I would do too. But, I couldn’t let you be alone with him. You saw how he was for just a few minutes. All this hate for me is making him nasty.”
She drops her head to the side, her chin hitting the top of her chest, her eyes taking in a glossy crooked view of her shoulder, upper arm, and the ground past it.
“Rhonda, I’m so sorry. I hated every second of it. Please forgive me.”
“I’m not mad at you, Chester. I’m just sad that it didn’t work.”
With one hand he knocks on the door; experience has taught him to use force or risk having to do it again.
The noise from the TV is loud even as it works its way to his ears in the night air just outside the locked door. The noise is the one thing he feels thankful for. It might create just enough distraction for him to do his dreaded deed and escape unnoticed.
With the trepidation building up inside him, one might conclude this is his first time, despite having done this hundreds of times before. While he’s never been comfortable intruding into people’s homes, he knows there’s no way out of it now. It’s not the act that makes him anxious, or the fear of the hot, primal work, but the recipient.
The names of those on his list have never held much interest to him as long as the money was good. But, ths name sparks the image of a high school princess, and the heat, which he hasn’t felt this intensely since his first job a little over two years ago, seeps into his fingertips, nearly scorching them and threatening to make them useless, possibly botching the job and leaving him vulnerable.
Besides the burning in his digits, he feels the image of her burning in his head.
The flame of his memory materializes in two brown eyes as the door jerks open before him. Her eyes flash a moment of panic, and her ponytail bounces as she quickly looks away.
Just as in his memory, she’s still in her red and black cheerleader uniform.
“Four large pizzas and a diet two liter?”
“Yeah,” she says extending her hands to take the boxes.
“Careful, they’re hot,” he warns trying to sound no different than on any of his other jobs or any other delivery person that’s been on her doorstep.
“Okay, thanks,” she pauses, “Hey, you go to school with me, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says looking at his feet while she takes the two liter from him and sits it just inside her opened door.
“Brian, right?” her voice cracking slightly.
“Br
e
ndan.”
“Br
a
ndon?” she asks.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Did you go to the game tonight?”
“No,” pointing to the logo on the left breast of his shirt, “Been working all night.”
“O-h-h,” she says in the pitch that makes him tingle, “It was fantastic. We were down by thirteen before the fourth quarter, and we won. Can you believe it?”
“That’s great, Brandy. I’m glad you guys won.”
“We won; the school wn.”
“Yeah.”
They both start to fidget with their feet.
“Look, I’d ask you in to tell everyone hi and hang out, but it’s girls’ night tonight, and some of them are already in their sleepy clothes.”
“S’okay, I gotta get to my next job anyway.”
“’Kay,” she says handing him a thin wad of bills folded over twice, “Well, see ya ‘round school.”
“Yeah, see ya. Thanks.”
The door closes behind him, and the laughter that he expects to come bellowing through it doesn’t. The sounds of action movie bombardment continue to pump out the speakers.
As soon as that order came through thirty-two minutes ago, he knew it was going to be trouble. A large order on a game night with the last name of Melancon: he knew he wasn’t lucky enough for it not to be her, and worse, he knew it was a party.
Pondering his fate pacing around the oven, he wasn’t sure if he would prefer it to be an all-girl sleepover where he’d definitely be seen by at least one of the girls from school or if he’d rather it be a sans supervision co-ed bash. At least then, it might have been a guy from school to answer the door, and if Brendan was very lucky, it might have been someone with no interest in embarrassing him.
His father owns the store, which is part of a franchise, and is constantly scolding him for being ashamed of delivering pizzas, reminding him that delivering pizzas is what has provided his car and will take care of his college expenses.
“It’s no different than being a sales clerk in one of the fancy stores in the mall,” his father would say, “They wait on a customer, get what they want, and take their money. You do the same. They want the pizza; you deliver the pizza—you get the money. You’re not out there trying to hawk pizza to people who don’t want it.”
He’d respond, “But, dad, I go to school with these people.”
“So what? We saw that cute girl from your class waiting on us at the Italian restaurant a few weeks ago. And, didn’t you say she was a cheerleader?”
“It’s honest work—no different than a waitress—or a waiter. People order the food, and you bring it. You get tips just like them. The world’s a sad place when you have to be ashamed of your work; you should only be ashamed if you can work and don’t.”
He can still hear his father’s words as he turns on the ignition. He agrees with his father on one thing though; the tips are good. As if to prove it to himself, he turns up the sound system in his car that he’s recently purchased. And, it is an enticing prospect to not have burdensome student loans like his older brother who refused to work in the pizza shop. He just wishes the logo shirt and khaki pants that he hates wearing would come with a mask when he had to knock on the door of his classmates.
Pulling up to the curb in front of his next delivery, he smiles a little when he thinks that it didn’t go as badly as he had anticipated at Brandy’s house, and nothing like a few incidents with other classmates who made sure everyone else at school the next week heard about him being a delivery boy, including elaborate descriptions of his uniform and impressions of him walking up the sidewalk and knocking on the front door.
“Boy” is the part of the title that he can’t stand. Delivery person would make him feel so much better. The titles of pizza technician or delivery engineer would be running the gamut; he knows that. Nevertheless, as he steps out the door to get the pizzas out the backseat, he thinks that being called a boy at eighteen makes him feel like a—but his thoughts are interrupted by a hand grabbing his throat and slamming him against the car.
His body makes a thud similar to when his father backs into the dumpster in the pizza shop parking lot. His shoulders and upper back feel as though they’re crumbling.
The large man choking and pinning him against his car has a clump of mud stuck to his right earlobe. As Brendan looks over the lumbering attacker, straining to find a way out of this predicament, he sees another small glop of mud stuck to the right side of his shaved head, and the man is damp, clothes clinging to his body and seeping muddy water from his sloshy shoes.
As the pizza delivery engineer tries in vain to scream, he notices his attacker is not even looking at him, but into the backseat.
Pulling the young man’s face close to his, Edmund says, “The pizza and the money right now,” releasing his throat and tossing him back against the car with the last spoken word.
“Pizza first,” demands Edmund, grabbing the boy’s shoulder and turning him toward the backseat.
The heat shield container that holds the boxes is blurry, and Brendan’s vision bounces back and forth as he raises his stinging shoulders to get the pizzas. Feeling like he’s moving in slow motion, he straightens himself up and hands the boxes to Edmund.
“The other ones too,” he orders.
As two larges and an order of cheesy bread are apparently not enough, he leans into the backseat to grab his next delivery. Bringing them out of the car, they are quickly grabbed by one giant paw of a hand with the thumb at the bottom and the four sausage-link fingers on top of the three boxes. The other hand drops the previous order on top of the new one, leaving the smaller cheesy bread box on top.
Sticking out his free hand, Edmund says, “Now the money.”
Reaching into his pocket, Brendan pulls out the money that just recently came from Brandy’s gentle hand. Something in his head screams for him not to let the attacker take that money from him. The pizza he doesn’t care about, but the money from Brandy awakens a fighting spirit.
Edmund slaps him across the face, “Faster—let’s go; let’s go.”
Bringing his hand out, Edmund takes the money from him, and feeling how thin it feels between his thumb and finger, he gives the delivery person an annoyed look.
“Only had one stop before this one,” offers a scared voice.
Hard stare.
“I swear it.”
Headlights flicker in their direction as a car turns from an all-way stop three blocks down.
“Get in your car and drive off. No cops, or I’ll come back for you.”
Those words sting through the driver’s face, but he says nothing outside of defiant but defeated eyes.
Edmund grumbles, “I swear it; don’t be stupid,” as he turns and walks quickly down the sidewalk away from the headlights that are slowly coming down the street.
A house door opens, and a voice asks, “Hey, what the hell is taking so long to get our pizza to the door?”
No response.
It comes again, “Hey, I said, ‘What is going on out there?’”
“Uh, got the wrong order; I’ll have to go ba…”
The voices trail off as Edmund’s feet move faster, turning the corner onto a side street, and his eyes scope out a place where he could eat the food in secrecy.
A clubhouse roof sticks out over a wooden fence. He’s found his place; thinking of sharp teeth and his wounded calves, he hopes the yard is vacant of canine resistance.
Fourteen ravenous minutes later, Edmund kneels down, drinking from a hose on the side of a standard suburban one-story house, uncaptured water running down his chin and neck.
It took him seven tries before he found a house with a hose between it and its neighbor. The goal was a hose and not just a spout, out of the way on the side of a house, but not in a backyard where he could be cornered easier.
A large gulp goes down his throat, and then he turns the stream of water to his head, arms, and clothing. He’s been following this same pattern for nearly two minutes now. A tremendous amount of poorly chewed pizza demands a lot of water from his already dehydrated body.
Earlier this evening, he tried to rinse himself off in a park bathroom before obtaining his pizza. The park backs up to the river and has bathrooms opened all night long. It was the first restroom he could find, but the wall had no mirror, only the broken brackets that used to press the mirror against the wall.
Surprisingly, it didn’t occur to him to try the women’s side next door. Had he thought of it, he would’ve enjoyed trespassing into the taboo region.
He splashed water all over his body, scrubbing at the dried mud spots that he could see and frantically rubbing everywhere that he couldn’t view. Swallowing a few deep gulps in the process, he helped relieve his water deficiency somewhat, but his hunger demanded action before fully satisfying the former.
oom he >
The whole time a clock was ticking in his mind, counting down the seconds until someone would find him. Although his calves burned with pain, he didn’t lift his pants legs to look at them, deciding there was nothing he could do about their injuries right then anyway and that he’s better off not knowing how bad of shape he’s in until he has the time to deal with it.
A similar theory with his finances left him with an overdrawn bank account and turned off utilities in the only apartment he’s ever had on his own. The bills sat unopened until he felt like he had the time and resources to deal with them. When one would become urgent enough to interfere with his television and video games, he’d write a check from a book with no records.
Perhaps it’s that apartment and the dingy ones he lived in during his years of bouncing foster care that leave him full of awe and hatred for the warmth of the suburbs, the freshly cut lawns instead of a trash-laden parking lot, the flowering gardens in place of decaying dreams, and the backyard clubhouses instead of corners of closets where one could hide during a violent episode involving this month’s caregivers.
In the shadow of the alleyway where the streetlight is blocked out at a sharp angle by the rooftop, a familiar deep sound rakes over his brain, triggering a slew of uncomfortable impulses.
“Uhruff! Raoo! Roo!” bellows from behind a wooden gate that meets the side of the house just a few feet from where he crouches with the running hose.
“I can’t f…” his sentence is cut short as the creature slams its head into the gate, ripping the screws that hold the latch in place out of the wood.
The gate juts open a few inches, and a furry, pointy-eared head can be seen in its gap. With another cranial slam into the gate, the latch falls atop the ramming beast as the gate flings open.
Snarl and blur are upon him before he can get from his squat to his feet.
The dog rages at him. Without thought, Edmund’s hand clasps the dog’s throat just as his paw smacks Edmund’s left eye. Clasping his wounded eye closed and bringing his other hand to the dog’s throat, he gets a strong grip, and rising to his feet, he holds the dog at arm’s length from his body and level with his head, fur wrapping around the edges of his hands as he squeezes.
A creak and a slam break through the night alley air.
“Mister, don’t kill my dog!” shouts a small voice.
With a face contortewith the irritation of restraint, Edmund looks down at the small body, “Where are your parents, kid?”
“Out. That’s why Kirsten’s outside,” pointing at the dog dangling in the air, “and Toby’s inside.”
For the first time, Edmund hears a muffled dog bark coming from behind the side garage door to the alley which the boy has shut behind him.
“Please, mister, let her go.”
Gritting teeth and groaning, “An animal like this needs to be chained up. Never let him loose.”
The boy looks to the fence at the opened gate and the mangled latch on the ground. The dog’s body flies through the air into the fence. The dog whimpers, but jumps back to her feet, lunging at the convict again. The boy grabs the dog in a hug, wrapping his arms tightly around her torso, and looks up past the dog’s barking snout, but the man is gone.
Running, the convict throws curses over his shoulder though he knows he desperately needs to be silent, “…cursed. Freakin’ dogs everywhere I go. Rotten luck my whole life.”