Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (15 page)

Not three days out from Florida, the story finally made the six o’clock news under the caption,
BREAKING NEWS:

“Have you seen this man?” a lady newscaster said in a tone marginally more serious than the one she’d used in her last story. A picture blew up of Kevin from a previous mug shot, his eyes wild and his hair, unkempt. “His name is Kevin Richards. Police are looking for him in connection to a violent assault and four murders in Bradenton Beach, Florida …”

I had no idea how they’d identified Kevin, but with the jig clearly up, I left the motel and went looking for a good place to dispose of the money.

Christmas came early to three houses that night. If the owners knew it was the toys and bikes left out in the yard that prompted their nocturnal benefactor to leave a tub full of cash on their front porches, they’d never scold their children for being messy again. A scrawled note reading “Please accept this gift” and signed “Secret Santa” was all the explanation I left them. Hopefully they’d do the wrong thing and not report the money to the police.

Back at the hotel, I prepared a full syringe of Pavulon. Jerry’s suffocating paralysis filled me with more than a little anxiety, so when it happened I wanted to be thoroughly soused in Percocet. After taking five pills, I waited in the bathtub in my underwear, briefly reflecting on my near obsession with not leaving a mess for whoever found me. It was the same impulse that prompted me to dismantle Jerry’s disgusting “calling card.” The old man and his ho each got one of the two bathtubs. I’d pulled Jerry into the kitchen and laid him out on the tiles beneath several trash bags. Mr. York had been trickier. I didn’t want him depreciating his own RV with his stink, so I took a gamble and snuck him outside and below, into the storage bay.

When the Percocet high reached a point where I could barely think straight, I used the last of my fading consciousness to stab my forearm with the syringe and push down on the plunger. I didn’t feel a thing when it went in, and a minute later I barely registered my suffocation as I caught the last train out.

Chapter 18

Dan has been to church a handful of times in his thirteen and a half years. Each of them in the same one room building during summer trips to his uncle’s farm. The inside smells of old, dry wood overlaid by the heavy perfume of a weekly procession of women dressed for church. On this occasion, Dan and his family have gathered to mourn his uncle Rick, snatched away in fewer than five months from cancer.

Rick’s coffin stands open so everyone can see him. From Dan’s seat on the second pew, the thing in the coffin looks like Uncle Rick: appallingly so. Some go up to look, but Dan could never do that. He doesn’t like being in that place. He wants to run outside and look under rocks. He wants to get away from the compassion and reassurance—away from the dress clothes and echoing church sounds.

The reverend stands solemnly before them and speaks in a voice that carries as clear and pure as a brass horn.

“Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in truth and love, be with you all. Amen.”

“Amen,” replies the congregation.

Dan has never seen the man before. In all his summers visiting the farm, never once has the reverend come for dinner or stopped by to talk. Nor does he recognize him from any of his trips to the church. Yet for all that, the man seems to care about his uncle, and as he speaks that familiarity moves through Dan on a current of sorrow unlike anything he has experienced in his short life.

“Today we come together in time of need to lay to rest our brother in Christ, Richard Earnest Jenkins, devoted husband, loving son and doting father of Brian and Melissa Jenkins.”

The rest is a Christ-peppered testimony of Uncle Rick’s life as a Christian, which the reverend knows to be a good one, followed by the more personal testimonies of friends and family. There are songs everyone sings together, all about Jesus and his Grace.

Dan hears the tone of Rick’s neighbors and friends, how they loved him and knew his ways. How after the biggest snowstorm in twenty years, Uncle Rick didn’t need to be asked to plow the way for the little children’s school bus. How he was the first to offer to finish poor Mrs. Miller’s fence when Ira threw his shoulder out and the herd threatened the yield. How he waved when he saw you and how you wanted to wave when you saw him.

When they start to close the coffin—that’s when it hits him. That’s when he realizes this awful thing could happen to him. As they lower the lid, Dan’s tears come unbidden, and he fights them down in shame. Other people are crying—even his dad—but for some reason he tries to appear unconcerned. He feels shamed by his tears and angry as hell that Uncle Rick could be taken away like that and scared he was going to die one day too.

There in that little church, feeling alone yet in the company of every human who’s ever lived, Dan becomes acquainted with the inevitability of death and the possibility of oblivion.

***

Here’s a free one: my stay in the Great Wherever passed uneventfully. There were no hitherto missing harp players, pearly gates, winged fat kids or fluffy white clouds. To be fair, all of this was offset by the lack of fire, brimstone, lakes of boiling blood and/or the Macarana playing eternally on infinite loop.

After an unknowable amount of time going through old memories like Uncle Rick’s funeral, I sensed that my ride had finally arrived. Like so many times before, it felt as if one minute I was alone in a quiet room and then someone opened a door. Despite wanting to get back into the world, I found myself holding off. For the first time ever, I experienced this vague feeling that going through this portal would be… not necessarily wrong, but limited. More like being a guest than an intruder.

Like all the other portals I’d gone through, this one waited, patient as ever. If I stopped thinking about it, I knew it’d vanish as completely as an abandoned stream of consciousness. Honestly, I couldn’t have stopped thinking about it anymore than a desert-island castaway could ignore the arrival of four, blond-haired, blue-eyed, tattooed Super Vixens.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter what waited for me on the other side. Secretly I hoped for the Asian Super Vixen scenario (that’s right,
Asian
), but with my luck I’d get stuck baking in the sun with a volleyball named Wilson.

I reached.

***

Soft
…

I woke up lying on my back in a dark room surrounded by the snug weight of quilted comfort. The steady turn of a ceiling fan hummed a soothing lullaby. Unchallenged, my eyes drifted shut, and like the world’s laziest kitten, I remained at rest. The bed pressed so soft and pleasant around me that, despite my new circumstances, I soon fell hard into a bottomless slumber.

The next time I awoke, I found myself staring sideways at a section of swirly-patterned curtain in the morning light, thinking it looked a little like an octopus with a human head. The bed felt as comfortable as ever. I would have tried to go back to sleep but Someone’s bladder demanded relief.

The room was huge. I lay in the middle of a king-sized bed, my eyes gazing naturally upward at a wide, coffered ceiling. The thick quilt pressed around me like a dentist’s lead apron, itself overlaid with a soft, red and blue satin comforter. No wonder I’d slept so hard. A large, cherry-wood dresser lined one wall, and directly across from the bed hung an enormous plasma television. I eyeballed it at sixty inches. If the architect designed the house in proportion to the master bedroom then my new ride was a wealthy person, indeed.

Cautiously, I eased off the bed and stepped onto a rich, deep carpet that hugged my toes. I cocked my head, listening. For all I knew, this ride had a wife and kids. I hoped not—too complicated, and always cruel.

Except for my breathing, the house remained quiet. A quick brush of my thumb along my ring finger added to the evidence I’d returned in the body of an unmarried man. Off to the right, large double doors opened wide, leading to the rest of the house. To the left of that, the master bathroom. Along the way, I had to stop to appreciate the Olympic-sized Jacuzzi bathtub nestled in a corner between floor to ceiling windows. Golden light streamed down on the white porcelain tiles, dazzling in its beauty.

“I don’t care what he’s done,” I whispered. “I’m never leaving this house.”

I found the toilet hidden off in a little room all by itself.

“Not too shabby,” I said, before flushing, taking an unselfconscious peek down below.

When I went to wash my hands, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

“Holy cow
.
”

The cliché goes, “If you could only see your face.” Well I could see my face, and the look on that face read,
dumbstruck astonishment
.

“I’m… Fabio,” I said, in awe.

Well no, not
the
Fabio. More like a younger, darker haired equivalent. Six feet and maybe an inch taller. Dark, wavy hair. Evenly muscled head to toe. Ripped abs. Greek God pecs. A face so perfect it was almost pretty, maybe twenty-eight years old, with a jawline you could use for a straight edge. That was me. Leaning forward, I pulled my lips back to see my teeth. It was like looking at a mouth full of shiny white Chiclets, evenly spaced, secured by healthy pink gums and no fillings in the molars.

“Who the hell is this guy …?”

I reached to my stomach and felt around, then sighed with relief when I discovered that, indeed, I did have a bellybutton.

Now, I’ve been in all kinds of bodies before. Most of them were fat, scrawny, or unhealthy from drugs, booze, cigarettes and all the other self-destructive pastimes. Some of them looked decent enough if you threw in a dash of personality, dressed to impress or asked the right person. But this guy—he was the complete package. He was James Dean, well fed. He was Montgomery Clift if you added four inches.

Experimentally, I raised my arms and flexed my biceps. Yep, they were amazing. Not steroid big. These muscles were hard work big and well-toned, like someone who not only works out but does the exercises right.

A feeling of sadness fell over me as I gazed at my new reflection. He had the body I never had in life. He lived in a house I knew had to be every bit as super as the bedroom and bathroom. Out of nowhere, I started to cry. I hadn’t cried in a very long time—not since my troubled days with Sandra. But I did now. Standing there bawling my eyes out, arms flexed ridiculously in a bodybuilder pose—flexing them still harder in sudden rage at the gifts wasted on this latest scumbag. If I didn’t know it before, I did now. The universe wasn’t fair.

I lowered my arms, gripped the countertop and stood looking beyond the mirror into a stranger’s eyes. I’ve never been good with mirrors. I can never help remembering the pudgy twenty-year-old who used to look back and wonder what he’d look like today if I hadn’t killed him.

I turned the faucet on and splashed my face. It felt good. I’d needed a good cry. But you can’t force it. It has to come naturally, and always through loss. I fit that model perfectly: a person without a body, without a home, with no friends or family to talk to, living a life I could hardly explain or justify. I’d betrayed Sandra and everyone I ever loved. I knew my parents were still out there, grieving for their dead son, telling themselves it wasn’t anyone’s fault, yet, deep down, blaming themselves anyway. Or worse, each other.

Well, that did it. The waterworks came back in force, shaking my body in fresh, racking sobs of cataclysmic self-pity. Later, having pumped my emotional wells so dry my washboard-perfect abs ached, I washed my face, found the walk-in closet and threw on a pair of sweats, a T-shirt and some comfortable sneakers that didn’t have any little air pumps on the side. Then I set out to explore.

The house had everything a person could want, in gigantic supply, with enough rooms for
A Very Brady Reunion
. The basement was huge. Mostly empty, except for some gym equipment in the middle of the floor and some boxes in the corner. Other than the master bedroom the house was unfurnished. Walking around felt a little like being in a small house tucked inside a mansion. Deeper still, with my mind tucked inside an Adonis tucked inside the house tucked inside the mansion, nested like Russian Matryoshka dolls afflicted with multiple personalities.

Somewhere between the pouting and the confusion and the ghostly wandering from room to room, I stopped being pouty, confused and ghostly and instead became intrigued. What could he possibly have done to get a visit from me? Did the weird, one-off vibe I’d gotten from the portal mean anything? Eschewing my normal method of operation—willful procrastination—I set about finding out.

Mindful of my hellish experience back at the bungalow, I thought it both prudent and practical to start my search in the kitchen. Also, being sex on a stick really works up an appetite. I grew concerned about what I’d find there. I suspected tofu, wheat germ, fat-free apples and whey protein powder. Ed Gein used to keep body parts in his refrigerator. And a biker I’d heard about in Tennessee got off on stuffing
his
victims in freezers. It occurred to me that things were just a little too perfect here.
Too
too perfect…

Cautiously, I reached for the door. Then, mustering a courage I hardly suspected was there, I opened the door wide and looked, prepared for anything but what I actually found.

Chapter 19

“Mother of God,” I whispered in disgust. “How the hell can he look like
this
eating all
that?
”

Chocolate whole milk, vanilla pudding cups and lemon meringue pie. Half-smokes, 80/20 hamburger meat and a box of pizza with two slices left. And a whole lotta Coca-Cola. And that only covered the refrigerator portion. Stocked in the freezer were steaks and ribs and Neapolitan ice cream cartons. If that didn’t beat all, I found a neatly stacked row of microwavable turkey, chicken, and beef pot pies.

Grabbing a tall glass of chocolate milk and the last two slices of pizza, I ate standing up by the sink and looked out the window. This was so much better than my last trip.