Haunted Honeymoon (15 page)

My life had been endangered before, but nothing had terrified me like the water filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs. The worst of it was the feeling of helplessness. The deep water rendered me voiceless, the heavy chains rendered me powerless.

The men only let up when they got bored, but then they’d come back and start again.

I didn’t think they would kill me on purpose, but I thought they might do it by accident, so I held on. I held on as fiercely as I have ever since I was an embryo in my mother Regina’s hostile womb.

They injected me with drugs, hoping that I would talk. I pretended to be under the influence and was able to get a cherry fruit juice box before they figured out that I wasn’t Billie Jean, an unwed mother.

No further juice boxes followed despite my confessions that I was Jane, who’d spent too many years at the Lowood school for girls, or Maggie May, keeping my young lover from school, or Brandy, who worked at a waterfront bar, or sexy Sharona. I wasn’t
clever Lizzy, in love with a snob, or impetuous Bridget, needing a cigarette and a drink.

So who was I? What was I?

I smelled terrible. I know because the men cringed when they came to get me. I shrieked, “Attica! Attica!”

“Stop talking shit,” Average Joe said, jabbing me with a baton.

“Attiga? What’s that mean?” said the other guard.

“It means that you know nothing about social history or Al Pacino’s best films!” I said while trying to protect myself from the blow that I knew would follow.

“Don’t engage,” Average Joe told his associate as he delivered a whack.

They took blood and skin samples, but the only unusual thing was my elevated white blood cell count. Even the vampire researchers didn’t know why my blood didn’t indicate any mutation.

In addition to the usual questions, my interrogators sometimes asked, “Who made you?”

“Mother, father, the usual. I believe they’re supposed to teach this in fourth grade, but the school system is tragically underfunded, and some states aren’t even teaching proper science anymore.”

“Vampire mother and father? Or is ‘mother’ what you call the person who changed you? What were you before?”

“I was and am a normal human girl. I have the same needs and wants as any girl. A home. A family. Friends. The occasional night out. A worthwhile career. Lively conversation. Guys who aren’t Satan’s minions.”

I don’t know how long I could have gone on this way, but I remember exactly the moment I broke.

nine
Dance with the She-Devil

We’re gonna have us a little fun tonight,” said Average Joe as he yanked me up from the floor of my cell. “First you got to get the stink off you.”

I looked for his partner, but the guard was alone for once.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut the fuck up.” He pushed me out of the room, my leg shackles clanging on the cement floor, and out into the hall. I could smell the booze on him and he swayed a little as he walked. “Not that it matters since no one will hear you, but I hear you and I’m sick of all the shit you talk.”

I looked up and down the hall. It was empty except for a cat licking his privates. “Where are you taking me? Do you have your supervisor’s approval?”

Average Joe bashed a giant flashlight into my ribs. “You’re gonna see what happens to whores who don’t shut the fuck up,” he said, pushing me to the elevator.

He put his eye in front of a biometric scanner, a small light flashed green, and he pressed the call button. When the
elevator came, Average Joe shoved me inside, then got in and punched the B button. The doors closed with a
ping
and we descended.

With another
ping
, the doors opened. Another hall led to another door that Average Joe opened with an eye scan.

This room was a bright and shiny state-of-the-art laboratory. There were long, black lab tables with mysterious equipment and stainless steel exam tables. There were two slanted aluminum tables with faucets and drains—autopsy tables. One wall was lined with small doors, like drawers in a morgue. The acrid smell of chemicals came from drains set into the floor.

One wall seemed to display aquariums, but when I looked closer, I saw human organs and limbs suspended in a viscous neon yellow solution that slowly bubbled.

A fuzzy striped tail hung out from a red biohazard bin.

A man in a lab coat was watching a stock market report on a small television by his computer station.

“Wassup?” the lab guy said to Average Joe, and then he stared at me and grimaced in disgust.

“Can you give me a couple of hours?” Average Joe said.

“Wouldn’t you rather have a clean body? I can give you a good deal on some intact ones.” He waved to a giant metal door and said, “That blonde is still in the chill room, nice and fresh.”

“The Professor’d have you whacked if he knew you touched her,” Average Joe said. “I’ll hose this bitch down first.”

His smile scared me more than all of his shouting ever had. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag with blue pills. “For your weekend jollies. I just had mine.”

The lab guy took the bag and said, “I’ll be back later. Put her out of sight when tonight’s meat shipment gets delivered and don’t leave a mess.” He picked up a pack of cigarettes from his desk and left the room.

The doors closed, leaving me alone with Average Joe. I shuffled back against one of the steel tables.

“Scream if you want,” Average Joe said with a laugh. “Hell, it’s always more fun when they scream.”

In that second I imagined all the victims in his past and all the victims in his future, and I knew that Ian had been right about me all along. “You’re not going to hurt me and you’re not going to hurt anyone else ever again.”

“Whaddaya gonna do about it?” He smiled and raised the big flashlight as he came toward me, leaving his face vulnerable.

I swiftly brought my cuffed fists up against his jaw. As he staggered back, I smashed my fists as hard as I could into his belly.

He fell on the floor, and I bent over him and grabbed his head and twisted until I heard a crack, the most horrible sound that I’d ever heard.

I couldn’t look at Average Joe’s slack face as I reached for the ring of keys on his belt. I sorted through them quickly and found the cuff key and then the key that released my leg shackles.

His wallet was in his back pocket. I didn’t want to look through it because I didn’t want to know his name, or see a photo of his family, or learn his address, but I took his cash. I put the money and keys in my pocket, and my stomach cramped with hunger as I thought of the warm blood in him.

I opened the huge metal door that they’d called the meat locker, releasing a blast of frigid air. Ford and Cricket’s pale, bluish bodies were lying on gurneys, hooked up to medical equipment and IVs. A striped cat was on a much smaller gurney, also attached to equipment and twitching a leg, but otherwise still.

The Professor was going to try to bring them back.

I left the chill room and closed the door. Now I noticed a set of double doors on the far wall. There was a simple steel push
button to open them. This room was designed to prevent people from getting in easily, not from leaving.

I pushed the button and the doors slid open to reveal a dark parking garage. Beyond a row of black vans, I saw the entrance to the garage with a metal gate that was open wide enough for me to get through.

Don’t panic
, I thought.

I dragged Average Joe’s body into the garage and rolled the lifeless bulk under a van. As I ran to the open gate, I saw a car with “Prophetsor” on the license plate, but if I took the car, I might attract notice.

I peered around the wall of the garage. A chain-link fence topped with viciously barbed concertina wire surrounded the lot. Cameras were mounted on posts by the gate. Beyond was a street.

When the cameras were turned away, I ran out of the garage to a pocket of dark shadow by the fence.

As I was searching for the best place to climb, and hoping that an electric jolt wouldn’t knock me out, a black van turned into the drive.

I stayed hidden as the gates slid open automatically. And as the van drove in, I slipped out, and then I was out on the street, moving swiftly from one shadow to another.

When I reached the end of the block, I broke into a run, racing past desolate lots and abandoned warehouses, having no idea where I was. Speed was more important than care, and I felt broken glass on the asphalt slice my bare soles.

Average Joe’s keys jangled in my pocket, and I paused to hide them in a sewer pipe beside the road.

I reached a two-lane street and followed it for several minutes. Then the briny, seaweed scent of the bay came on the wind. Another half mile led me to a narrow bridge marked with a small black-and-white sign.

I was in a barren industrial area of the City, familiar because some friends had once liberated an abandoned warehouse nearby for a party. Which proved how very, very important it is to attend every party you get invited to because they provide invaluable knowledge.

I stopped running and reached into my pocket for the money I’d taken from Average Joe. I counted out almost three hundred dollars. I was a few miles from a scuzzy urban motel, nicknamed Motel Smells Like Hell, where Mercedes housed particularly problematic bands. It was the sort of place where decent, respectable, upstanding citizens were treated with suspicion and hostility, i.e., exactly the place I needed.

Another mile took me to a seedy block where one could score drugs or visit the “Does It Itch?” free clinic. I glanced at the newsstands of weeklies. Wilcox, Ford, and Cricket had been dead for only eight days.

I gave a street person five dollars for all his coins, and he told me about a working pay phone nearby. I dialed Mercedes’s office landline and left a message, saying, “Miracles can be found at places that smell like hell, no doubt; don’t say a word,” and hung up.

Half an hour later I reached the motel. I hid in the parking lot, which stunk of urine, rotting garbage, and pine-scented disinfectant. I contributed substantially to the stench.

An unfamiliar green car pulled up and I saw Mercedes inside. She got out and looked around. When I called out quietly,
“Hermana,”
she turned toward me.

“¡Dios mio!”
Her eyes were wide behind her glasses and her mouth fell open.

“You don’t have to give me an
abrazo
until I get clean. Does anyone know you’re here, meeting me?”

“No one. I knew you wouldn’t reference Gwen Stefani except in an emergency,” she said. “You look …”

“I need a room and a change of clothes. Something red to drink and eat would be great.” I put the money in her hands. “Keep it off the books and I’ll tell you everything once we’re in the room.” I stepped back behind the Dumpster.

She returned ten minutes later, carrying a cardboard box, and whispered, “Where are you?”

“Here,” I answered, and came out. She led me to an end unit and unlocked the door. The room had a king-sized bed covered in a shiny leopard-print polyester bedspread and mustard yellow shag carpeting.

Mercedes closed and locked the door and wedged a chair under the doorknob. She reached into the box and took out a bottle of V8, a package of Red Vines licorice, and teriyaki-flavored beef jerky. As I scarfed down my food, I saw her looking at my feet, with their mud of blood and filth, my bloodstained shirt, my jeans hanging from my hips.

I put down the empty bottle and smiled at my friend. “This is the first time that I’ve been here that I’m more scabrous than the room. Let me take a shower before I do anything else.”

“These clothes were in the lost and found,” she said, and handed me the cardboard box.

“Thanks, honey.” I took the box and went into the tiny bathroom. When I saw myself in the mirror, I understood why Mercedes had been horrified. I looked like something a cat had dug up, chewed, and spit out.

As I showered, I thought about how marvelous preformed plastic shower stalls were, and how fabulous tiny bars of soap were, and how incredible lukewarm water was. Then I dried myself with a fantastic rough terry towel and picked through the amazing collection of clothes in the lost and found box.

There were several pairs of thong and bikini underwear, each far cleaner than the disgusting
chones
I’d taken off. I picked a pair
that looked as if they hadn’t been worn, purple glittery leggings, and a black sweatshirt with the collar ripped off.

I found a pair of pink socks, shiny black demi boots that were only a size too big, and a really fabulous pink plastic jacket with epaulets and gold buttons. I found one gold hoop earring that I put on, feeling quite piratical.

I took the plastic liner out of the trash bin and put my own clothes in it. I tied the top of the bag to contain the noxious fumes and walked out into the bedroom.

“I feel better now. How’s Rosemary?”

“He’s happy as the bar mascot. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Mercedes walked back and forth in the narrow space between the bed and a fake marble counter with a cheap coffee machine. “I knew something was wrong when you didn’t answer my calls.”

“More wrong than abridged versions of the classics.” I dropped onto the bed and stretched out. “This mattress is divine. It’s like I’m floating on a cloud. Do you have some quarters for the Magic Fingers?”

Mercedes fished into her pocket, pulled out coins, and put them in the Magic Fingers slot. As the bed began jiggling, she said, “I had Los Hackeros check police and hospital reports, just in case, and nothing came up.”

“I was kept off the grid.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I knew you weren’t with Ian …”

“Because you knew he was in Oslo with his model-bitch-lover Ilena. He didn’t tell me he’d gone. We officially broke up.”

“Where
is
Wilcox?”

“Dead. Someone stabbed him and left his body at my place on the night I was supposed to meet him. I thought Ian did it,” I said. “Poor, beautiful, wonderful Wil.”

“Oh, Milagro,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”