Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit: That Which Destroys Me with The Alternate Ending (26 page)

Monster in the Shadow

Do you have any conceivable concept of the difficulty, messiness, and wretched taste involved in resuscitating someone
who’s facial bones mimic mush? In case you were wondering, it’s almost impossible, it’s a bloody mess, and quite possibly, the vilest thing to ever coat my tongue.

I told you I would kill her. I warned you that I would.

My question is, where have you fucking been? You could’ve stopped this. You saw the trajectory of my madness. So why? What caused you to idly sit aside? What caused you to do nothing to save my Beauty?

I hope you’re happy.

I hope you sleep well knowing that you fucking killed her.

For the last hour, I’ve been following every CPR algorithm by the American Heart Association I’ve learned, studied and memorized. Alternating from breather to chest compressions back and forth, over and over.

I stop to assess my gallant interventions, and instead of finding a weak thready pulse and hear her labored breath twice a minute, I feel no pulse at all - radial or carotid - while watching for two whole minutes, and not once observing her lifeless body attempt to breath.

Without even fully understanding, my role as spectator is stripped. And without any
self preservation or rational thought, I dial 911.

As the dispatcher’s tone remains somewhere between assertive, calm, and disciplined, telling me to continue CPR, I hear the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) of the paramedics is less than three minutes.

I disconnect the phone line by ripping its cord from the wall as my eyes search and locate the shadows to hide amongst before continuing CPR in vain.

There isn’t anything anyone can do. I’ve killed my Beauty,
then resurrected her to only kill her again.

Breathe. Breathe. Link fingers, one hand on top of the other, palm to back, at nipple line,
then shove the heel of your hand between. Thirty compressions, then two breaths. Breathe. Breathe. Link fingers. One hand on top the other, and at middle of her sternum, I resume chest compressions.

When someone hurries me, by…let’s say, dying, it causes my temper to shorten and my reaction to sharpen.

This is why Beauty’s sternum cracks under the heel of my hand. I lie. I tell myself that isn’t what I heard or felt. However when my second and third compression create the same crack along her sternum, I concede.

I concede that you’ve not only allowed this to occur,
but facilitated it.

And now, thanks to you, I’m left leaving my Beauty alone with the paramedics as I slink to hide in the shadows.

Where I can comfortably do what I have always done best…Watch.

Ghosts

I get the call that night. Derrick heard the first few pieces of information over the police scanner and called me. I’m at my house on speaker phone listening to Derrick go over what he calls ‘ironic non conclusive evidence’ while the police scanner repeats in the background. ‘911 dispatcher states caller was an adult male. Sounded panicked. 10-14C, Possible 187.’

“Okay, Wes, in the Sims foster home, there were two other kids living there with Stella.” I hear shuffling paper in the background. “Jeffery Price. I looked this kid up and he checks out. Married, two kids, he’s an accountant for some huge storage company in Baton Rouge. Now, the other kid, Preston Stone, this kids like a fucking ghost, man. An extremely well educated ghost. He has his master’s in almost every damn degree imaginable. And his doctorate in Physiology, Anatomy, and Physics. But, the thing is, he just vanishes after that. Gone. No record of a Preston Stone that I could find.”

You see
, this is why Derrick is the best. Even with his head buried in information about Stella’s past, he still hears and processes other shit going on around him. Things you and I would either not even pay attention to, or brush it off as nothing, he notes and investigates.

“What does that have to do with anything, D? Put a star on the kid’s name and go to the next.”

“I said that ‘I
could
’, as in past tense. You see, where Preston Stone falls off the face of the earth in Newark, New Jersey; your boy, Jude Preston lands.”

As his words register in my mind, then begin to
process, I hear the police scanner in the background.

‘Police arrived at the residence of Preston Stone after a call was placed to 911 from residence requesting help. After initial knocks, police officer Lieutenant Jones requested backup and entered residence. Finding no immediate cause for alarm during a brief walkthrough, Lt. Jones awaits for backup.’

“Wesley?” Derrick’s voice sternly asks.

“Jude fucking Preston drugged me. I don’t know what the hell for, but after that…”

“I’ll call you back.”

The line goes dead.

“
FUCK
!”

I’ve tried calling Derrick, the police, Jude, Trina and every fucking hospital in New York City over the last hour.

I still have no answers. No angel, and no answers.

I swear to Christ, I’m five seconds from losing my goddamn mind. I pour a glass of scotch and toss it back before pouring another when someone starts beating at my door.

I drop the bottle of scotch and haul ass to the door. When I open it and see Derrick, I start pelting him with questions. “The fuck, man? Shit! I’ve been losing my mind. What the hell did you find out? Is Stella with Preston, or Jude? What did the cops find? Did the scanner say?”

He won’t look me in the eye. Hell, he won’t look me in the face. “D?” I shout trying to get something out of him. Anything.

When his eyes look up at mine dread to swallows me whole and ice courses through my veins. “Wes, you’re gonna want to sit down for this. Where’s your bottle of scotch at, man?”

“NO! Fuck that shit! Tell me where Stella is! Now goddammit!”

As he walks from my foyer into the living room, he begins speaking, “Preston Stone kept diaries. You remember that movie with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow? Seven? Remember all those diaries they found in Kevin Spacey’s apartment? Preston Stone kept diaries like that. NYPD found over eighteen hundred diaries. They have an entire group of officers dedicated to reading them. From what they’ve learned so far, Preston was morbidly obsessed with his foster sister. He calls her his Beauty. Used to sleep under her bed when they were kids, hide in the shadows and watch her all the fucking time. She knew nothing of it. In this Preston kid’s eleven year old handwriting, you read as he gloats, calling himself the master of being unseen. Apparently while he was ‘being unseen’ one night under Stella’s bed, he woke to the sounds of Mr. Sims raping young Stella.”

After walking over to the bar and pouring us
each a scotch, I hand one to Derrick and we both sit.

“Now, Preston, being the sick little fucker he was, blamed Stella for being raped. Then…he plotted for over a year. And the results of his plotting were the incident which
had Stella removed from the Sims residence.”

“Well, there’s my motherfucking ghost.” Those words are the only ones I can manage as I try to process what Derrick is telling me.

“Only, little boy Preston thought he’d accidently killed her. For damn near twenty years. Now they haven’t gotten any further into the diaries, so I don’t know when he came to the realization that she wasn’t dead.”

“His book, ‘Twisted Obsession’, the synopsis alone. Derrick, it parallels what’s in his diary. I haven’t read either, but I swear to Christ, it parallels.”

“Mmmm…” I see him nod from the corner of my eye. “Probably does. They didn’t find him though. They will, they have the whole goddamn state police task force looking for him now.” He sips his scotch before motioning to my glass. “I’ll pour you another,” After standing, he grabs my glass in his other hand and heads to the bar. “We’re not quite through talking.”

“They did find her though, right?” When I see him nod it feels like a million tons of weight have lifted from me. “Thank fuck.”

He shakes his head before turning and walks back towards where we’re sitting. “No, Wesley. Don’t thank fuck.” He slides a piece of paper across the mahogany table between us. “Stole a copy of her ER admit assessment.”

My eyes don’t move from his. “What does it say?”

“Drink your scotch and read it, man.”

After draining my glass I slam it on the table, shattering it. “
WHAT THE FUCK DOES IT SAY
?!”

“It says that at 8:32 pm, Lt. Jones and his backup team entered Preston Stone’s residence. They searched the first and second floors finding nothing out of place
- no sign of occupancy, no sign of struggle - nothing. Several of the officers in the office area of his residence came across a bookshelf of diaries, while another officer stumbled upon a trick door slightly opened in a closet inside the office - that led to a concrete walled basement. Inside that basement, there was a cell made of two basement concrete walls, and two walls lined in steel bars, four inches between each bar.” He clears his throat and drains his glass then sets it on the table next to my shattered one.

“They found a Caucasian female, dark brown hair, possibly mid to late twenties. Other than that, there were no other discernible features useful to identify her.”

I shoot from my chair and I’m in the foyer grabbing my keys and shit off the table and shoving them in my pockets. “Come on! What hospital is she at?” When I look over my shoulder at him expecting an answer, my hands stop as my mind processes. Not only has he not moved, but he’s shaking his head. His eyes alone tell me what I’ve known but denied since he walked through my door.

He goes to speak, but gets choked up and coughs before finally speaking, “Wesley, the reason there was no other identifying characteristics the officers were able to discern,” Leaning forward and sighing, he says, “She barely had a thread of skin left on her entire body. The soles of her feet, her palms, those are the only way they were able to determine her race.” His eyes narrow on mine. “There are nine bones from a human’s waist to their ankles. Nine. The Jane Doe they found in Preston Stone’s basement, directly beside the blood covered sledgehammer whose head mold castings match the impressions covering the victim, she had seven of her nine bones from waist to ankle shattered; consisting of a fractured pelvis, two shattered
patellas, or knee caps, an open compounded fracture of the left femur, and an impacted fracture to the right. Both of the victim’s tibias were hit repeatedly. From the medical documentation, it appears the initial impact to both tibias caused open compounded fractures. Meaning, when the bones split, they pierced her already shredded skin. In most cases, even though it looks horrid, those types of breaks are easier to set. However, not in this case. Stella was pummeled repeatedly from her knee caps to her ankles. When he finished on the lower half of her body, he sledgehammered both her clavicles, as well as the inside of her elbows, effectively breaking all six bones of her arms.”

Derrick stands heading towards the bar, grasps the bottle and while walking back to his chair, he takes long pulls of scotch before sinking back into his seat. Lolling his head back and looking at the ceiling, he whispers tortured words that resonate through the room, “Wesley, what I’m trying to say is, Jude Preston, or Preston Stone shredded Stella’s skin with chains and barbwire for six days straight; and on the seventh day, after there was no more skin to shred, he broke her bones, crushing them, one by one. And after Jude was done breaking her skin and bones, he bashed her face in.”

His head comes up and our eyes lock before he delivers the final blow, “Stella Jolie Reese was pronounced D.O.A., by not only paramedics, but the ER admitting RN.”