The Monster Within (11 page)

Then why did it take me so long to ask her out?

In fact, why did it take me so long to even notice her?

I furrow my brow at the thoughts and make my way toward Mom’s trailer. I can hear Mom hacking and gagging on her phlegm out on the asphalt that’s still boiling hot, even after the sun’s been down for two hours. I look at my watch. It’s almost midnight. She’s never awake this late. Ascending the steps, I pull open the screen door and step into the putrid smelling house that reeks of death, cigarettes, and phlegm. I wave my hand, trying to get a breath of fresh air before coughing. Mom is seated at the sofa, looking out the window. She’s been watching me approach since I entered the trailer park. She looks at me, over her disused and forgotten oxygen tank.

“You fucking Perkins’ daughter?” Mom’s voice is as hard as rocks scraping against one another, jagged, rough, ancient rocks. Her hair is falling out thanks to her medication and her skin is yellow enough to make her look like a lizard, especially in the pale glow of the television screen. I shudder at the sight of her. Why is she still alive?

“No,” I tell her.

“You like jailbait?” Mom growls before taking a half-assed drag off of her cigarette. She immediately begins to hack and cough before she spits a long, ropey line of phlegm into the bowl she keeps near the couch. That bowl is full of rancid, decaying phlegm. This is what I dropped out of college for. This is what I’ve been working my ass off with double shifts for over a year to save?

Save, that’s a funny word. I’m not saving her with buying her the pills and medication she needs. To save her, she’d have to want to live. She would have to go to the radiation treatments and the regular doctor appointments. She would have to give a fuck, rather than laying around in this trailer, smoking her cigarettes near an oxygen tank that could ignite and kill us both at any second. I look at her with a glare on my face. There were people looking at me before all of this. There were serious people interested in my talents. I could have gone somewhere. I could have made something of myself, but I decided to do the honorable thing. I decided to come back.

Honor is good for nothing.

The voice in my head burns. Why am I doing this to myself? Why torture myself with regrets from the past. The first day I came home from college, I wallowed in depression, hating myself, hating Mom, hating life. But after that week was up, I vowed to look ahead and forge onward. I wasn’t going to let this fucking trailer park be the death of me. That’s what I need to do now. I need to keep looking forward. I need to keep conquering. I am Julius Caesar. I am Genghis Khan.

“I’m taking her out on a date tonight,” I tell her as I grab the oxygen tank and shut it off. I put it on the cluttered kitchen counter where her Mac-n-Cheese boxes and Spaghettios are sitting empty and rotting.

“You’re going to end up in jail for fucking a teenager,” Mom hacks as she tries to laugh at me. “You know what they do to your kind in jail, Teddy?”

“Yeah, I know,” I tell her. I think everyone in this place knows what happens to pedophiles in jail. Thankfully, I’m close enough to Courtney’s age that I don’t think anyone here is going to bat an eyelash. Besides, this time will be different. This time I’ll be romantic. I’ll take care of her.

The moment anyone has ever found out that I work in a gas station or that I live in a trailer park, they immediately flee. They run far away and as hard as they can. That’s why I lie to girls at the club. That’s why I go to their houses or rent a hotel room that charges by the hour. The girl last night hadn’t known who I was and we had a fantastic time. But I guarantee that the moment I would have told her that I lived in a trailer park, she would have pushed away from the bar and gone looking for someone who wasn’t repulsive to her. I turn away from Mom and head for my room. I want to punch her in the face. No, maybe I want to punch myself in the face.

My room is dedicated to my limited wardrobe of nice clothes that I save for the club and interviews. One day, I might be lucky to get out of this place, and if that day comes, I need to look the part. Besides, girls like a guy in a three-piece suit. My clothes are the mask I wear to tell the world that I’m not as much of a failure as I truly am. No one gives a shit about a starving artist, living in a shitty trailer park with his dying mother. I live a lie and the world pretends to tolerate me. In fact, that’s the best I can hope to receive from the world. The most I can hope to get is tolerance. I feel the sting of the words as I think them.

The rest of my room is dedicated to my dying craft. Art demands time and it demands constant attention that I can’t give it. I haven’t been able to enter myself into a competition, apply for jobs, or even send in a submission since I’ve moved back to Whispering Hills. Fuck, I’m a nobody again and this world is quickly turning its back on me. I’m going to have to go get another job immediately tomorrow, probably at a MacDonalds or a Burger Kings. I’m going to need something to keep on paying for Mom’s medication that keeps her puttering along, drowning my hopes and dreams.

Who am I kidding? My ship has sailed.

What am I doing with Courtney? Forget all the shit about romancing her and treating her like the girl she deserves to be treated as. There’s someone out there better for her. After this next year, Courtney is going to go off to college, just like I did. She’s done well in school, I know that much. She can climb out of this place, unlike me. But while she’s there, she’s going to find some guy that actually treats her like she deserves to be treated. He’s going to see how beautiful she is and he’s going to give her the life that she deserves. Who am I to take such a beautiful flower given to this dark, harsh, and horrid world and keep it for myself? I’m just a greedy pervert looking to grab onto her before she goes screaming off into the night, bursting into a glorious, beautiful display that the entire world will relish and admire.

I look at my table full of half-finished drawings, doodles, sketches, and projects. There were several comic book companies looking at me. They weren’t big, but they would have been a foothold into the business. I would have been great at it. Any position, really. But that was a future that was gone. That was a future that had vanished the moment I agreed to come home to Mom. My future, my hope, my world is gone now. I’m just left holding the empty sack like a sucker on Halloween, expecting there to be more. The world owes me nothing and I was a fool to think that I was good enough or privileged enough to be worthy of anything more than Whispering Hills.

In the next room, I can hear Mom hacking as I drop down into my swivel chair at the drafting table that I had purchased with my first paycheck in high school. I had always wanted to draw. I had always wanted to be great at something and once upon a time, I was. Opportunities come knocking once in a lifetime, but I was too stupid to grab on and ride the bull. I close my eyes and reach for the jar of pencils. Courtney will find someone better than me. They always do. Mom will be dead soon enough. What’s the point of all of it? What’s the fucking point?

I need a new hobby. Hell, I need
a
hobby. I sit on a couch that I’ve owned since I lived in my first apartment with Katherine, before we were even married. It’s definitely seen better days. Looking at the old, worn coffee table covered in empty bottles, empty cups, and files upon files. This is my life now. I can’t help but wonder if I should get a dog or something. Maybe a bird. A bird can be kept in a cage or something. But that’s still too much work. Maybe I should just let mice come into the house. We could be roommates and they can distract me from all of this death and insanity.

I look over at the clock. It’s only four in the morning. I didn’t sleep at all last night. How could I? I’m rapidly losing all the ground on this case and I’m going to be dead in the water soon. Mendez isn’t going to be happy with me. He’s actually going to be pissed when he finally gets ahold of me. I hope that I can keep on the move for a while longer, just until I actually get something substantial. I need something for him to sink his teeth into, to give me a little more slack on this one. I know that it’s asking a lot, given the current circumstances and I won’t hold any of it against him when it doesn’t pan out and he gives me his kid-brained version of an ass chewing of a lifetime.

Soon the sun is going to be up and I’m going to have to go back out there, looking for something to keep me busy while I avoid Mendez. So far, all I can hope for is chasing down Jenny Martinez’s timeline. We know next to nothing about where she’s been. The only thing the nerds in their lab coats could give me about her phone was that she’d received multiple texts from a Kendall Stein asking where she was late into the night. My main hope for later on in the morning was getting ahold of Kendall and finding out what she could tell me about Jenny’s life. Until then, I’m left with a house full of ghosts to keep me company. Looking up at the old grandfather clock Katherine had bought at a flea market, I’m reminded that the morning is not coming fast. Time is never on my side.

Laying out on the couch, I close my eyes and drift for a few minutes. I don’t like staying up all night drinking and looking at dead bodies, but that’s what the job demands of me most of the time. I imagine all of their faces, lingering before me like phantoms, calling out for my help, calling out for me to avenge them. They don’t say anything to me. They don’t even look at me. They lie where they’ve fallen and I’m left listening to the ghosts rattling through this house, asking me to come to their aid. But they’re not alone. There’s already enough demons saturating these walls to fill all of hell and I can’t help but feel like my life has gotten too crowded for my own good. No. I don’t like the bodies, but piecing together what happened to them… well, that has an allure all its own.

When I open my eyes, it’s light outside. It’s not bright, but it’s getting there. I must have slept for maybe a few hours, not much more than two. I look over at the grandfather clock and it tells me that it’s just after six. Already it feels like it’s hot outside and I hate this city a little. I wonder what it’s like waking up and being absolutely frozen, utterly miserable because of the cold, instead of the heat. I suppose that I could go to Alaska once I retire, but I doubt there will be as many scantily clad women there as in Miami.

Getting off the couch, I grab a frozen breakfast sandwich and toss it into the microwave. My mouth feels like a broken, forgotten brewery. Holding my head under the sink, I fill my mouth with lukewarm water, swishing it around and spitting it back out before the microwave beeps. Taking out the scalding sandwich, I toss it onto a used plate and head for the bathroom. Before I step through the doorway, I turn around and head back to the fridge. I pull out a bottle of beer and kick the fridge door closed. The greatest invention I ever heard was the shower beer. I don’t know how to explain it properly or what to put my thumb on, but there’s something about a beer and the steam and the heat. Turning on the shower, I eat my breakfast sandwich and glare at myself in the mirror.

Considering my diet, I’ve taken pretty good care of myself. You can’t chase down a runner or beat someone at a fight if you’re not willing to put in some time and effort on yourself. I try my best to remain healthy, but there’s nothing to do about aging. I can say as much as this, I look better than other men my age. I need to shave and I need to get a haircut, but I’m looking pretty good for all the years I’ve put in behind the shield. Maybe Miami will be nicer to me than this damned place.

I drink my beer slowly as I shower, letting the relief from a long night wash away with the shampoo and soap. There’s nothing in this world that makes me feel like I should pull myself out of the shower, but I figure that if I’m going to find whoever is doing this, then I have to start somewhere. Stepping out of the shower, I barely dry off and make my way out into my bedroom and stand naked in the already sweltering heat. I swear, the water feels like it’s evaporating off of my skin as I stand there.

Dressing, I take a moment to think about what I should do next. There’s the sound of traffic outside that makes me remember that the day is already moving and I’m playing catch up. I wonder if anyone has tried to call me from the precinct or if Mendez is there with a trap, ready to spring the second I walk through the door and sit down at my desk. I can picture him there in his Elmer Fudd attire. I finish tying my tie and make my way back to the office, or study, or whatever Katherine had called it when we were married. Now it’s just a haven for mountains of books about pathology, psychology, and criminology. I’ve got volumes of law books that have been gathering dust over the years. I’m more interested in the forensics books. The less I need the nerds in their lab coats, the better I feel. I don’t like being dependent upon people who don’t have any stake in the cases I’m a part of. Sometimes, I feel like a walking encyclopedia that has never needed to be used.

I sit down at the desk, moving the files that I’ve stuffed in this room off the keyboard so I can pull up the computer. The screen turns on as the old machine begins to hum. I wait a moment while it boots up and click on the internet. I don’t use this machine much. I haven’t had a real reason to use it since it was given to me as a gift. All I know about the internet is that it’s a trail for techs to follow and discover all of your dirty little secrets. I try as often as I can to avoid such trails. But I’m hoping Kendall Stein doesn’t.

I pull up all of the social network fads that plague the world this day and age. What I discover on one of them is that Kendall Stein is rather well-to-do. She isn’t on any of the older ones and she’s only registered on two others. One of them offers me little to no information about her, while the other one is absolutely littered with information. None of her settings are private, so I get a full account of her—practically a welcome mat.

I search for any signs of Jenny Martinez and find multiple pictures of Kendall at the gym with Jenny where she worked. This is enough to convince me that they’re friends. In fact, Jenny is constantly leaving messages and commenting on things that Kendall posts randomly and happily. While I’m looking through her pictures, I see that Kendall, like Jenny, is a girl that gets out quite a bit. She has plenty of pictures of her at parties and other various events where she’s dressed to the nines and plays the part of beautiful, rich woman rather perfectly. I pause on an older picture from when she was in college. She’s dressed as a slutty schoolgirl and I can’t help but feel aroused. I follow her long, perfected legs up to her very short skirt and feel a darkness growing inside of me. There’s a fine line between investigating and stalking, so I shut the computer off and head for the door.