Be My Valentine [CH 8!]

[Riel]

Be My Valentine

Chapter One
The Shame of Telling The Truth

My car is flying down the interstate, topping at around eighty-five and bottoming out at a flat eighty. The engine and the brakes have been complaining this whole time, squealing against the strain of going up each hill and drifting through each turn. The gas pedal is essentially glued to the floor, health of the car be damned.

I’m running away from something, but whether it’s the past or the cops that are after me, I don’t know. Adrian is in the seat next to me, his hand tapping against the window in tune with the faint music I have playing in the background. He’s watching me from the corner of his eyes, but he still thinks that I’m not aware enough to notice.

I noticed the first time he was staring at me, I noticed the second time, and this is the third. Turning my head to look him dead in the eye, I utter the words that I’m sure that he doesn’t want to hear.

“The way it happens is, you stop caring about who’s around you, and you start caring about whatever it is that you’ve lost,” I tell him, wondering whether he’ll know what I’m talking about or not. With the slightest twitch of his eyebrow, I already know; he doesn’t.

“You’re wondering how someone can end up like me,” I tell him. “and I just told you. It’s simple, actually. You stop caring about who’s around you, and then you just go from there,” I explain. This time, he gets it. Running through the emotions on his face, I see pity.

I see anger.

Above all, I see what could only be humiliation.

Taking a sharp right turn, the car tires squeal again and leave their prints against the bare blacktop of the road. The frame shifts to that side, and then settles again with a muffled bang after I’m going straight again. Adrian’s staring straight ahead this time, clearly not looking at any of the sparse plains that we’re driving through.

Casually reaching my hand out, I turn the radio off and then rest my right hand against a knife in the cup holder next to me. This gets his attention; he turns to look me straight in the face, and his right hand balls into a fist next to him. My mouth twitches into a grin, and I let the knife clatter back into the cup holder before settling at the bottom.

“There’s only a couple of them left, you know,” I say to him, trying to change the subject. I try to keep the sneer out of my voice, but old habits die hard.

“I know, Ariel,” he replies, his cloudy-sky blue eyes staring into my own paler, chlorine-filled glacier irises. “Then what happens? What happens when you finally finish what you’ve started, Ariel?”

I clench the steering wheel for a split second, my normally golden knuckles going white from the strain. The leather cracks under my grip before I regain my composure, replacing the worried look that had been on my face with my ego-centric smile.

“Who cares what happens after that, Adrian? I have an objective, and I’m going to meet it,” I reply, and this time I’m the one that’s staring straight out of the windshield. I’m not seeing the grassy brown plains, the midnight blue sky, or the twinkling of the stars above my windshield. No, I’m watching my own thoughts play out in my head.

Instead of the grass, I see the look on all of their faces. Instead of the sky, I’m seeing the countless rivers that they’ve been thrown in. Instead of the stars, I see the last twinkle in their eyes being snuffed out. This is the way that I’ve lived for the past few years, just traveling from place to place and getting rid of that last little spark that they have.

Adrian is looking out the window at the same time that I am, his hands a deathly white against the dark blue of his jeans. Opening his mouth and then closing it several times, he finally musters up the courage to utter those fateful few words, the ones that he knows I don’t want to hear.

“Are you going to, you know?” he asks me, looking sheepishly at my profile.

“Like I said, who cares?” I respond, turning to the left and running through the only red light in a small rural town that we just drove through the center of in a mere three seconds. The gas gauge is about three bars above empty; we have another forty miles to go before I’ll have to stop and fill up. Easing up on the gas a little bit, I pull over to the side of the road and look Adrian dead in the eye.

“Probably,” I told him after a couple of minutes, trying to keep my precious façade up in the face of what I’m saying. “I haven’t really decided yet,” I elaborate, hoping that he’ll finally respond. I’m waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Finally, after that long pause, he looks me in the eyes again and opens his mouth, before giving what I assume will be the lecture of a lifetime.

“That makes sense, I guess,” he says instead. What? This is the pro-life, moralistic shit that’s been traveling with me for the past few months. Here you think that you’ve got everything figured out, you think you know a person, and they drop this kind of bombshell on you.

“You know, I thought that I had you all figured out,” I tell him, pulling the car back onto the highway and flooring it again. Soon I’m back up to my customary eighty, before he gives the faintest of smiles and whispers:

“I know you did, Ariel. I think I’m finally getting to know you,” through that smile, that half sad half happy affair.

“Comprehension doesn’t look good on you, Adrian,” I tell him. Gripping the steering wheel, I throw myself through another turn before he can respond, whipping his head around and making it strike his window.

-

Standing at the gas pump, racking up thirty dollars and eighty cents in charges, I’m looking in the car when Adrian finally decides to wake up from his little nap. Rubbing the back of his head and opening his door, he shoots a glare at me before mumbling something under his breath and sprinting into the convenience store. At this time of night the parking lot’s empty, the harsh white light illuminating nothing more than the ugly brown of my car and the sparse black of the pavement.

When the gas clicks off in my hand, I put the nozzle back into the main machine and walk into the store myself, looking through the aisles before finding Adrian by the soft drinks. Reaching in and grabbing a coke, I whisper for him to hurry up and make his choice before I walk up to the register.

The cashier sitting there is black, with one golden earring and one silver earring. From the way he’s sitting and bopping his head to the music, I can only assume that he’d have to be around twenty, twenty one. The cashier’s smock is tight against his well-muscled chest, with a white shirt on under that. Glancing at his arms, I see the muscles there are marked with a design created from chain and heart and other cliché fare.

Taking the list out of my pocket, I scan it before folding it neatly back up and tucking it back in its resting place. Stepping up to the counter and grabbing a pack of gum, I set it and the Coke down while I tell him that I also got the gas outside. He shoots me a look that screams ‘no kidding, retard’, but I ignore him and dig around in the other pocket, handing him the credit card that’s stashed there.

While he’s swiping it, Adrian walks up and puts a bottled water and small bag of beef jerky on the counter as well. Rolling his eyes and ringing everything up again, the cashier goes through with the transaction and says that I should have a good night.

As if him saying that I should have a good night means that it will happen.

Walking to the car, I turn to Adrian as I’m getting in and decide to fill him in. “The only thing that saved him was that other earring. One little piece of metal just changed that man’s life,” I tell him, starting the car and speeding up to a hundred miles per hour. I need to make up for the fact that I just used my own personal credit card to purchase something.

It’s a little game I play with the ones following me. I buy something, they come running after me, except they’re trying to make it through in the sun and within the speed limit, while I have the whole road to myself and not a single law that I need to follow, anymore. They never get anywhere close, and the poor cashier has his entire day ruined.

Sure, it’s a dangerous game to play, when the cops are after you. Sure, it’s stupid. Sure, it’s not going to benefit me at all in the long run, but I need to have a little fun every once in a while. It’s how I stay sane. The plains are sprinting by, and the few animals that we happen to see look like they’re standing still.

We sit in silence like that for about twenty minutes before Adrian starts talking again, in a supposed to be casual tone. “Do you think that we’re going to go to Hell?” he asks me, and I can tell that he’s completely serious.

“Does it really matter, Adrian?” I respond immediately. “When you think about it, I kind of hope that I go to Hell instead of Heaven,” I continue.

“Why would you prefer to go to Hell?” he asks, his tone completely incredulous. Risking a glance over at him, I see that he’s a little bit paler than he was before.

“Because, everyone that you’ve ever cared about is in Hell. Your teachers, your parents, your family, even the Father at your church is guilty of some form of sin. I would rather be surrounded by a bunch of people I know in Hell than by a bunch of angels that don’t give a damn about me in Heaven,” I say, my voice never losing its characteristic sneer. I’ve thought this through.

“Because, when it boils down to it, we all want to be punished for something. It’s what we’re going to be punished for that matters,” I tell him.

[Enchanted Rose]

Very nice,

All your protagonists seem to have a complex psychology, but I think this one is the most appealing and witty. So I definitely like hearing it from his perspective. He's cynical and dark, but fun too - he's playing a game, after all.

I also like the relationship between Adrian and Ariel, it creates a very interesting dynamic.

It's a great opening. The structure is spot on, you're retaining a certain mystery but letting the facts seep out at an appropriate pace, and the ending hits hard too. Of course, you can never go wrong with the classic road trip running from the police...

I hope you keep going with this one.

[Riel]

Actually, only three of the twenty-one chapters are first person. That could change, dunno yet.

[Enchanted Rose]

Like I've said before (probably), variety is good. Switching perspectives gives the reader a bit of a break.

An increasing amount of books seem to be employing this technique these days.

[Riel]

Chapter Two
Hunting After Cranes and Crows

Pushing the button of his camera and concealing the flash as best as possible, Ambrose takes a few candid shots of the repairman and the businessman meeting secretly in the bedroom, between the sheets. Snapping a couple more for good measure, he puts the camera down in the seat beside him when
his cell phone rings.

Flipping it open, he gives a questioning ‘hello’ before being answered with a quick: “I want to hire you. How much would it cost me?” by a female voice, one that sounded as if it were used to getting what it wanted.

Looking down at his watch, Ambrose thinks carefully before he answers. Deciding to go with the tactful approach, he suggests that they meet in person to discuss the job type and the amount of hours that would be put in before they settle on a set rate.

“Fine. Come over to the house by six, it’s on the corner of Water and Davids street. Don’t be late,” she responds, using that same commanding tone before she hangs up on Ambrose.

Pulling his car away from the curb, Ambrose is almost side-swiped by an ice cream trunk. Honking his horn at the offender, Ambrose is shocked when the truck stops and the man steps out of it, coming towards Ambrose’s own car with a baseball bat. Knocking on the driver’s side window, the man motions for Ambrose to roll the window down.

When he does, Ambrose fingers the pepper spray in his right pocket, hoping that he won’t have to use it. The man opens his mouth to speak, and Ambrose feels his hand twitch and lift the spray a little bit out of his pocket. His face red, the man begins shouting at Ambrose from his position outside of the car, holding the bat menacingly at his side.

“Did you just honk your horn at me, asshole?” he asks, shifting to the side enough for Ambrose to see that the uniform has the man’s name-Martin- over the left breast. Raising his hands in a ‘peace’ motion, Ambrose responds:

“Of course not, not on purpose. I’ve been having trouble with this damn thing lately, and I had just finished trying to start the damn thing when you passed, and I honked the horn because I was mad at this junker,” he says.

Looking down at him, Martin appears to think about something before he speaks again. “If you’ve been having trouble start it…why don’t you try to now? I may be able to help,” he tells Ambrose, looking at him in a way that suggests that this wasn’t a request, it was a command.

Praying under his breath and turning the key, Ambrose finds himself hoping that the car makes a loud, painful, squealing sound when he tries to start it. Maybe, just maybe, he can make it out of this mess without having to fix anything up. Turning the key, Ambrose’s wishes went unanswered. The engine started off immediately, with a little rumble and a couple of shakes that went through the whole car.

Lifting his bat, Martin smiles grimly before swinging down on the windshield, hard. The shatterproof glass forms spider-web cracks from the top left all the way to the bottom right, fracturing Ambrose’s vision like a fly’s. Pulling the pepper spray from his pocket, Ambrose sprays it at the man before he can take another swing at the car. The spray forms a direct line from the can to Martin’s eyes, and he drops the bat in pain.

Clutching at his head, Martin falls to the pavement in agony just as a patrol car pulls around the corner. Stepping out of the car, the cop walks over to Martin and inspects him, before declaring that he’ll be fine. Walking up to Ambrose’s car, he leans against the open driver’s window sill before opening his strawberry gum filled mouth.

“What seems to be the problem here, sir?” he asks Ambrose, as if he had never seen anything like this before. Ambrose handed the cop the pepper spray and then pointed to Martin, who was still rolling around down on the ground, rubbing at his eyes and saying something about how much it is that he hates Ambrose at this moment.

“The guy almost hit me with his truck, so I honked at him and he got out of the truck and took a baseball bat to my window,” Ambrose tells the officer, whom he identifies as Sergeant Leary by the man’s badge.

“Martin here has been having some issues lately. I’ll take him away, and make sure that everything’s all taken care of. Would you like to file a complaint?”

Ambrose considers this, and then decides that in order to make his appointment with the prospective client, he would have to skip the police interview and filing of papers. “No, thanks, I’ve got somewhere that I have to be,” he says to Sergeant Leary.

The officer nods his head and tells Ambrose to have a good day, moving Martin and the ice cream truck out of the way for Ambrose to leave the street. Re-starting his car and pulling out into the road, Ambrose gets about ten feet out before he hears a siren and Sergeant Leary cuts him off. Stepping out of the car, he walks back towards Ambrose. Ambrose stops his car and rolls down his window, waiting for the Sergeant to talk to him.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asks.

“No, I don’t. Why did you pull me over, Sir?” Ambrose responds, resigning himself to having to live with the consequences of showing his anger this one goddamned mother fucking time. A life full of numbness and ignoring the world, and the one time Ambrose shows some anger he gets attacked by a
homicidal ice cream truck driver and a police officer that seems, to all appearances, to be an idiot.

“It’s because your windshield’s all cracked up, Son. Did you think it would be legal to drive with your vehicle in this condition?” the sergeant says, poking his head slightly into Ambrose’s open window. Balling his fists, Ambrose controls the anger in his voice as he responds.

“You know how this happened. I’m just going to drive to get this fixed, and then I’ll be all set,” he says calmly, keeping his voice level even as his heart began pumping faster.

“Sure, a likely story. Why don’t you step out of the car, son?” Sergeant Leary says, the look on his face completely serious. As Ambrose leaves his vehicle, the Sergeant asks that he get on the ground and keep his hands away from his hips. “For my own protection, son,” he explains, the drawl that had been indiscernible before showing through.

Completely shocked, Ambrose does what the man asks. Laying on the blacktop, he keeps his hands on his head the whole time that the officer is talking to him.

-

Half an hour later, Ambrose is knocking on the front door of a large Victorian style house, white and prominent on the otherwise boring street. The shutters are a sort of bright red, in stark contrast with the green plant life growing along the edge of the house. As the door opens, Ambrose’s first impression is that whoever lives here has way too much money.

His second impression is holy crap, this woman is hot. She’s wearing a pale margarine colored dress that comes down to about mid thigh, and covers her shoulders completely. Her chestnut brown hair runs to about the middle of her back, but none of this gives Ambrose the warm impression that it should. The woman looks cold and calculating, instead of like a kind, rural housewife.

“Hello, you, you called about a job for me,” Ambrose introduces himself with, hoping that this will allow him to enter the vastly over-decorated home.

“You’re late,” the woman responds, her voice carrying the harshness of the classical upper class, a voice that is used to getting exactly what it wants when it wants it.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was…held up by something. But I’m here now, so can we please talk business?” Ambrose says, trying to keep the tone of the conversation neutral. Opening his hands as a peace offering again, Ambrose is thinking that he may not have this job after all. Just as he’s about to apologize and give up, the woman pushes the door open a little farther and invites Ambrose in.

Looking through the house, Ambrose sees several works of art, and photographs of all sizes, most of them of the woman that he’s following. Reading the caption of one of the works, he discovers that her last name is O’Kane. Some of them, though, appear to be of a little girl, tracing her life throughout the years. In one photo she’s a baby in a red dress, in another she’s about eleven and with braces, and in another she’s wearing the varsity uniform for cheerleading.

“So, Ms. O’Kane, what exactly do you need to talk to me about?” Ambrose asks as they’re entering the kitchen, where a coffee cup and a bottle of vodka sit. Pouring some of the vodka into the barely half full coffee cup, Ms. O’Kane waits a second before she responds.

“Three weeks ago, my daughter was kidnapped. The police haven’t made any leads, and…and I’m hoping that you’ll be able to find something that they couldn’t, since you’re, well, independent. I was hoping that you could get me my little girl back,” the woman says, gulping her vodka n’ coffee down in between words. Refilling her glass, her hands are shaking as she pulls a folder from the counter behind
her. Throwing it down on the table in front of Ambrose, she motions for him to look through it.

“They’re all there. Some of her most recent photos, her favorite places to go, her favorite foods, everything. Can you find her?” she asks, and Ambrose gets the feeling that the woman in front of him is a caring mother, despite all of her airs of superiority. Yet, Ambrose still gets the feeling that she’s not saying everything.

Leafing through the folder, Ambrose comes across a particularly odd piece of information. “Her favorite food was lollipops?” he asks Ms. O’Kane, wondering how anyone could have lollipops as their favorite food. Favorite candy maybe, but not favorite food.

“She loved the things. They were the reason that she got the braces so young; while she was having her cavities filled, I figured that it would be cheaper to get the braces done at the same time. You can look at her room too, it’s got a drawer full of the things,” she says, holding her cup with both hands in front of her lips, staring at a spot on the linoleum floor.

Glancing past the remaining information and photographs, Ambrose asks if he can go up and look in her room. When the mother nods her head yes, Ambrose takes the stairs two at a time and throws the first door that he sees open. Inside he finds a room not with the stereotypical pastel pink or other bright colors, but with a calm and professional blue. The bed has a crisp bedspread over it, and there doesn’t seem to be much out of place, excepting a couple things of makeup.

Searching the nightstand by the bed, Ambrose tries to see if he can find a diary or something, as if that will give him a clue about who may have taken the girl. He finds it, but there isn’t any useful information within its spiral heart and polka dot pages. Instead, Ambrose learns that Timothy is a player, James is a flirt, and Michael is kind of dorky but also kind of cute.

So yeah, nothing important.

Heading back down into the kitchen, Ambrose finds Ms. O’Kane lying down with a wash cloth pressed to her forehead, and her eyes closed. Removing the vodka bottle from her hand and setting it down on the counter above her, Ambrose finds his own way out of the house.

-

Walking down the street and into the high school’s main parking lot, Ambrose looks at the huge billboard like sign directly in front of the building. It reads: Welcome to Palehnk High School, Home of the Panthers. Directly beneath that is a stylized rendition of a panther slicing through the sign, a trick that had been used by countless high schools across the country.

Circling around the back of the school, Ambrose finds that the bleachers are filled for the football game. The Panthers were leading by two touchdowns, in the fourth quarter. Approaching a group of teenage girls, Ambrose pulls a headshot of Maria out of his breast pocket. “Excuse me, have you seen this girl,” he starts, but one of the girls tells him to move out of the way while two others just look around him.

Going around them, Ambrose sits behind the group and waits for the game to finish. When it does, the girls turn around and ask him what he wanted.

“I was wondering if you’d seen this girl, at any point,” he said, handing the girl in the middle the picture.

Popping her gum, she nods her head in the affirmative. “Maria. She was one of my friends, but she went missing almost a month ago. Why do you care?” she says, handing the picture back to Ambrose.

“I’m a private investigator, hired by Maria’s mother,” he starts. “I’m trying to look into where she might be, or who might have taken her. Do any of you have a clue about where she might be?” Ambrose asks, hoping that he may be lucky enough to score a big break this early on in the chase.

“Yeah, there was this one kid…he followed her around for a bit, but he never introduced himself to any of us,” she said. Turning to the girl on her right, she directs her next question to her. “Do you remember what he looked like, Sara?”

Shaking her head, the girl-Sara- says: “Not really. He had black hair and blue eyes, kind of average height, but that’s about it. None of us really got close enough to pay too much attention to him,” she said, to Ambrose instead of her friend.

After a couple more minutes of general questioning, Ambrose leaves the football game and heads to find the local diner, where he walks in and orders the strongest cup of coffee in the place. Thinking through the case in his head, Ambrose has a slice of banana cream pie before leaving, heading back to his car.

-

Pulling the laptop out of his briefcase, Ambrose pulls up the default search engine and enters the keywords: O’Kane, Maria, Palehnk. Clicking on the first hit that comes up, Ambrose discovers that Maria’s father was killed seven years ago, and that the murderer was never caught. Reading on in the paper, Ambrose isn’t all that surprised when he discovers that Ms. O’Kane made a million dollars off of her husband’s death, and that Maria was forced to go into therapy for years.

Using his guest pass on the police network, Ambrose reads through the husband’s file and tries to peace the facts together as well as possible. He was killed with a guitar string to the throat, the thin string crushing his airways as he was getting some chocolate cake for a snack. The wife was interviewed once, but it wasn’t conclusive; they never found any concrete evidence against her.

An idea coming to him, Ambrose shuts the laptop down and puts it back in the briefcase, leaving the hotspot and stowing the briefcase in his rental locker. Walking to the police station half a mile outside of town, Ambrose is wondering how it is that he isn’t in the best shape of his life, with all the walking that he does.

Entering the station, he tells the receptionist that he would like to discuss an old case with an officer, and he’s directed to a desk that is, at the moment, empty. Sitting in one of the available chairs in front of it, Ambrose starts to get uncomfortable after eight minutes of waiting for the officer to show up. Two minutes later, Ambrose feels his heart drop into his stomach.

“Well, hey there Ambrose. How are you doing?”

Turning around to see the voice, Ambrose looks Sergeant Leary dead in the eye. While the police officer is sitting down, Ambrose gets up and leaves the police district in a flash. Fifteen minutes later, he’s at Ms. O’Kane’s front door, banging on it until she wakes up and opens the door for him.

“What do you want?” she asks, slurring her words and holding a whole new bottle of vodka in her hands. Ambrose pushes his way through the door and down the hallway, with Ms. O’Kane yelling at him the entire way. Sitting her down in the kitchen, Ambrose takes the picture of Maria out of his pocket, and then places a new picture of Ms. O’Kane’s husband down next to it.

“What I want, Ms. O’Kane, is to find out how exactly your husband died,” Ambrose tells her. She pales a little bit at his words, and Ambrose folds his hands over the pictures and looks her dead in the eye.

“I want you to tell me everything”.

[Enchanted Rose]

Your observations are so...acute. I love how you manage to convey mundane things in such a poetic way, whilst also being funny as hell.
I think the humour is the selling point of your writing, so don't ever loose that.

This chapter took a while to get going, but once it did, it was very riveting. Perhaps more so than the last, and it's good to form a few speculations myself about how the 2 chapters interrelate, though I'm guessing it's pretty premature at this stage.

Please don't end chapters with "I want you to tell me everything". It's the stuff of low budget melodramatic detective films.

Also, the flow was a little awkward at the beginning:

"Flipping it open, he gives a questioning ‘hello’ before being answered with a quick: “I want to hire you. How much would it cost me?” by a female voice, one that sounded as if it were used to getting what it wanted."

Be careful not to compress things as it doesn't allow the story to move at the correct pace. And don't be too matter of fact otherwise your writing will get dry - not that it often does.

Cool. You'd better do Chapter 3 soon!

[Riel]

I'm not a big fan of the beginning part of the chapter either, it'll probably be the first thing that's fixed in the editing stage.

[Enchanted Rose]

Oh yea, this was (unintentionally?) hilarious:

“Her favorite food was lollipops?” he asks Ms. O’Kane, wondering how anyone could have lollipops as their favorite food. Favorite candy maybe, but not favorite food.

-Does this have anything to do with the lollipop novel you told me about before?

[Riel]

Yup. The lollipops come into play later too.

___________________________________
getting to the bottom

It’s been three months since the ‘accident’, but Ambrose still hasn’t quite gotten over it. His brother was killed by a drunk driver, and he was never found by the police. Pulling his camera out, Ambrose snaps a couple of pictures of vans as they drive by, trying to find the best way to get a license plate and still get some details about the car.

As the third van drives by, Ambrose forgets to cover the flash and the van comes to a screaming stop, before the driver reverses and pulls up to the bench that Ambrose is sitting on. Hopping out of the vehicle but leaving the engine running, the driver walks up to Ambrose and points his finger directly down at him.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks, his finger coming to within three inches of Ambrose’s nose. From this distance, Ambrose can smell the alcohol on the man’s breath, and he immediately feels a surge of adrenaline. Keeping his cool, Ambrose stands up and tells the driver that he was just taking some pictures.

“Yeah, well, you watch what you’re doing. I about crashed into the guy in front of me, prick!” the man says, still within Ambrose’s personal bubble. Reaching down behind him, Ambrose grabs his camera and points it at the guy, the flash sending the man’s hands up to try to stave off the temporary blindness. Ambrose flips the camera over the other way, and smashes it into the guy’s nose.

As he falls, Ambrose grabs the guy’s collar and slams his head into the side of his van. Opening the side door, Ambrose stuffs the body in the main part of the van and gets in the driver’s seat, throwing the remains of his camera into the trash bin next to him. Pulling the van into traffic, Ambrose drives the eight blocks to the police precinct and parks the van in a clear no parking zone.

Moving the man back into the driver’s seat, Ambrose puts a beer can into the guy’s hand before he opens it, and uses the man’s hand to spill it all over the interior of the van. Ambrose slams the door shut and walks away, looking back just as some policemen come out of the station to apprehend the man.

Kicking a Pepsi can across the sidewalk as he goes, Ambrose steps into a shop, where he is greeted by a clerk named Anthony. Walking quickly through the three aisles, Ambrose grabs the camera he wants and takes it to the front register, where he is greeted by Anthony.

“Another one? You sure do go through the things quick, dude,” he says, his thick red framed glasses sitting atop a too-large nose. Ringing it up, the total comes to ninety bucks and forty three cents. Reaching into his wallet, Ambrose pays the man and leaves the store without commenting.

Somewhere out there, his brother’s killer is still alive. Maybe he’s driving, maybe he’s eating his lunch, but he’s
still alive, in this world. Just the opposite of his brother, that won’t be able to enjoy a meal or a sunset ever again.

“I promise, Jared. I’ll find the bastard that did this to you,” Ambrose says under his breath.

________

I don't have enough time for whole chapters at the moment, so I took a page from Audo's book and decided to start writing little itty bitty prompts.

[Audo]

Hmm. Is the name of the high school supposed to be a reference to Palahniuk? Because I certainly got that impression from the name.

[Riel]

mic check mic check one two one two

Yes, it is a reference to Palahniuk.

For whatever reason, the forums won't let me post chapter 3. So, head on over to: the page on deviantArt

[Enchanted Rose]

O_o, intense chapter. I like the riddles that Ariel talks in - it really draws me in.

why aren't you digging it? It's gold.

couple of typos:

"“Oh, Adrian, one more thing,” Adrian continues. "

“You’re going to have to find a victim of your own, Adrian. Now, you have two choices,” Adrian said, drawing this out for the sheer pleasure of torturing Adrian. “You can choose to assault or rape a teenage girl, or…”

I'm assuming Ariel is speaking these, unless Adrian's developed some kind of schizophrenia.

also, "bark brown"? Is it meant to be "dark"?

[Riel]

Nah, I meant bark. As in, tree bark. Maybe I should make that clear.

I should/might have a chapter up some time tomorrow.

[Riel]

Chapter Four
O’Kane’s Razor

Drinking from her cup that Ambrose assumed was eighty parts alcohol to twenty parts coffee, Ms. O’Kane swallows the dark brown liquid before folding her hands flat against the table, the deep blue of her veins standing in stark contrast with the light butter of her skin. Clearing her throat with a little tch-tch-tch sound, she begins to speak.

“If you look in the papers, it’ll say that my husband died of natural causes,” she says to Ambrose, her lips pursing as she says the words. Ambrose’s own eyes twitch at the woman, impatient to get to the bottom of what happened to her husband.

“I did check the papers, Ms. O’Kane. It seemed to me that the police proved that they weren’t natural causes, what with the determination of homicide and the pending investigation,” Ambrose replied, using his right hand to cradle his head after he spoke. “So tell me, Ms. O’Kane,” he continued. “What really did happen to your husband?”

For the briefest instant, Ms. O’Kane keeps up the pretense of a grieving wife and mother. Then, as if a mask were being removed, her face settles into a carnivorous one, teeth bared and eyes dilated with the most primal of lusts; violence.

“Wouldn’t you say that homicide is a natural cause? “ she asks, setting her hands shoulder width apart on the table and digging her nails into the hard oak surface. “Back when humans first started out, violence was the most natural thing in the world,” she explained, settling back into her chair and crossing her arms.

“After all, it was a dog eat dog world. I’m just another dog, Mr. Ambrose. I did what I needed to, in order to get what I wanted.”

“And what is it that you wanted, Ms. O’Kane?” Ambrose asks, for the first time feeling a certain amount of fear. Based on the way she looked now and the way that this conversation was going, Ambrose is fairly certain that he’s in the home of some kind of homicidal psychopath.

Grabbing the body of the cup, Ms. O’Kane starts to take another drink, and then simply throws the cup against the wall, its periwinkle glass shattering into many small, dull shards. Shooting her chair back with her knees as she stands, Ms. O’Kane tells him: “I wanted this, you idiot! I wanted to have all of the money in the world, I wouldn’t to be able to buy anything that caught my eye. And I have that, and it’s all thanks to me!” She’s walking around the room and shouting, while waving her arms around in the manner of a bird’s mating dance.

“So how did you get all of this, Ms. O’Kane? What did you do to earn this, any of this?” Ambrose asks, still remaining in his seat at the table. Clutching at the cell phone in his pocket, Ambrose dials 9-1-1 but doesn’t hit the send button; he wants to be prepared, but he’s far too interested in this story to finish it so soon.

Sitting back down, Ms. O’Kane resumes her previous pose, with her teeth bared and glinting in the rusted dandelion hue of the sun coming through the window. “I killed him, Ambrose. I killed him and then collected the insurance, that’s how I did it. And you know the best part?” she asks.

“What is the best part?” Ambrose bites, taking the bait. Anything to keep this story going.

“The best part is, they never even suspected me. All of the evidence was right there in front of them, and they didn’t even think that it could have possibly been me, the loving wife. I even had the blood on my arms and dress, and they didn’t care!”

“You had the blood on you? How did they not notice that?” Ambrose asked, leaning slightly towards Ms. O’Kane. He was truly interested now, but he kept the cell phone in his hand, just in case. Ms. O’Kane leans back and grabs the vodka bottle from the counter before she continues.

“Well, let’s see…”

-

For the months before I killed him, I had been sleeping with another man. He was stubbly, dark, and strong in all the right ways. I would sneak out of the house whenever I could, claiming that I was on some heroic errand or another. The sad part is, he must have gotten suspicious; one day I caught him following me to the man’s place, and I had to come up with some sort of excuse that he would believe.

‘I’m just touring around, honey. I’ve never been to this part of town’ is the line I used. The worst part? He actually bought it. We went home together and had a mediocre night of, well, you know. He never was any good at it.

So, the next time I go, I find out that he never actually had believed me. He was still following me, but he was smarter about it this time. This time, I didn’t notice until my dress was already hiked up and my mouth was engaged with another man’s. He stormed in through the front door, busting it with his shoulder and running into the house, screaming at me, calling me all kinds of horrible names.

We get home, and he doesn’t hit me. Not once. Maybe, if he had, I wouldn’t have killed him. Who knows? I don’t. Anyway, we’re upstairs in the bedroom screaming.

‘I never loved you’ ‘I’ve always hated you’ ‘You’re a filthy whore’ ‘I wouldn’t say filthy’, those were our arguments and rebuttals. The way that I spoke must have made him even angrier, because he just left the house and drove off, his tires squealing the entire way. I didn’t see him for a week, and then, well.

I was wearing my bright lime green dress, flowing and low cut- perfect for the summer. On my feet, flip-flops that I bought secondhand, because we couldn’t afford to get new shoes, not ever. I walked down the stairs into the kitchen, and I saw that he was walking around with a bit of Devil’s Chocolate cake on a small paper plate, eating little bites at a time so that he wouldn’t drop any pieces.

Maria, she was sitting right there talking to him, for the first time in a week is my guess. She was talking about all of those simple little things; how his day was, how her day was, what princess she wanted to be at that hour. I’m guessing that you don’t know how it is.

Anyway, sitting right there was the piece of metal string, the kind that you use to cut cheese before you’re going to shred it. I picked it up and walked behind him, and he must have heard my flip-flops because he started to turn at the last second. I wound the wire around his neck and then pulled, pushing my knee into the small of his back at the same time.

It must have hurt, because his face turned all red and swollen, and he looked like he was crying. Maybe, if he had broken free, I would have respected him a little more. But he didn’t; no, he just gave the tiniest bit of a fight before falling to the ground, the sheer weight of him driving my hands and head down to the floor with him. Miraculously, the cake managed to not get dumped onto the floor, so I picked it up and grabbed the fork that was in his right hand. I wondered why he hadn’t stabbed me with it for a second, but then decided that it didn’t really matter. Slicing off a dainty portion of the cake, I took a bite and closed my eyes to revel in the ecstasy of the chocolate.

Of course, Maria wasn’t quite right after that. Part of the money I made from his insurance and the charity from friends and family went to counseling. Poor Maria; she told them every day that I was the one that killed her daddy, but everyone kept saying that she must have just dreamed that, or that she didn’t remember it quite right.

Eventually, she was functional. I sent her into school and she did well, but she’s never been all that happy with me. She works now because she doesn’t want to use my money; I’ve made more from the stock markets of course, but she still doesn’t want me to buy her anything.

-

“That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?” Ms. O’Kane finishes, after she’s finished recounting her tale to Ambrose.

Ambrose, who had been sitting there the whole time, just realizes that he has managed to lose his grip on the cell phone in his pocket; if she decided to kill him now, he was totally at her mercy. Acting as if nothing is wrong, he says: “Yes, that is what I wanted to know. Unless you have more to say,” he says, hoping that if she is homicidal, she’s also as egomaniacal as she seems.

“I didn’t kill my daughter, Ambrose. She actually is missing, and I expect that what I’ve just told you won’t change your efforts to find her,” Ms. O’Kane says, back to her business face. Standing from her chair, she walks behind Ambrose and massages his shoulders. “Unless, of course, it will make you work faster. In which case, by all means, continue,” she says, whispering it directly into his ear.

Too afraid to flinch away, Ambrose waits for her to finish speaking before he responds. “This changes nothing, Ms. O’Kane. I’ll still try my hardest to find your daughter, just like before,” he assures her, hoping that this will do the trick.

It does. Ms. O’Kane walks across the kitchen, grabbing the vodka bottle on her way to the sink. Corking the bottle and putting it on the counter, she doesn’t look back at Ambrose or even give any indication that she cares whether or not he is still there. Taking this as his cue, Ambrose stands from the table, collects his things, and walks out the front door into the deserted street in front of the house that seems to take on some of the malevolence of its owner.

-

Stepping into the police precinct again, Ambrose searches for Sergeant Leary again. Finding him seated at the disorderly desk covered with papers and coffee stains and god knows what else, Ambrose crosses the few remaining feet between them and seats himself.

“What do you know about Maria’s disappearance?” he asks the sergeant, not expecting much of an answer.

“And a good day to you too, Mr. Ambrose. Now, why don’t you sit back and wait a minute while I go and get a cup of Joe,” Leary responds, starting to push his chair back. Pulling a couple sheets of paper out of the bag at his side, Ambrose directs Leary’s attention to one in particular.

“Why don’t you just sit back down and tell me what you know, Sergeant?” Ambrose says, his voice conversational and yet still commanding. Trying his hardest to not look down at the sheet any more than necessary, Leary agrees.

“All we know is that the girls saw her talking to a strange boy, and the same day she went missing. If I had to guess, I would say that he took her, but we don’t know anything about him.” Leary tells Ambrose, trying to keep his tottering voice even. “So, unofficially we’re at a road block. We’ve put up signs, posted her description, but that’s about all we can do. Officially, the search is still ongoing,” he divulges, glancing at the picture periodically.

“Anything else?” Ambrose prompts, hoping that he may squeeze a bit more out of this seemingly dry source.

“Nothing else,” Leary says. “How did you get that picture?” he asks, finally admitting that what Ambrose has frightens him.

“I am a private investigator, Sergeant Leary. I got the picture by being good at my job,” Ambrose responds, letting a bit of superiority slip into his tone. In actuality, he got the picture by waiting in a dumpster for a fish restaurant for three hours, sitting, being covered by, and being almost knocked out by the fish oil and garlic that was swimming in the dumpster. Originally, Ambrose had feared that the picture would be worthless, but now he can see that he made the right choice.

Smiling a little bit, Ambrose gathers up the other papers on the desk, leaving the picture that has so frightened the sergeant. Walking away with a little nod and a wave, Ambrose only makes it a few steps before Leary stops him.

“Don’t you want to take this with you?” he asks, his voice daring to be hopeful. Surely this must be incriminating evidence that he doesn’t want anyone else to see.

Turning back to the sergeant for half a second, Ambrose just flashes an even bigger smile and shakes his head no. “I made copies, Sergeant. You can do whatever you want with that one, but I still have the other copies,” he warns, before leaving the precinct behind him and walking out to the sidewalk.

Sergeant Leary grabs the black and white photo and glances at it one more time, before he shreds it into pieces with his hands and throws it in the trash.

-

Sitting in his car, Ambrose is completely exhausted. He’s just finished walking around the entire town, knocking on doors and stopping joggers to try and get the information that he needs. He stopped at fifteen houses and made conversation with eight joggers before he got to the sixteenth house and received the information that he had been trying to find.

Starting the engine, Ambrose turns on to the road and heads toward East Springhaven, where the state’s largest shopping mall is. Turning the radio on to his favorite oldies station, Ambrose settles in for the two hour drive and looks at the photo of Maria in the passenger’s seat, vowing to find her no matter what it costs.

[Riel]

Chapter Five
Paradox of Being a Double Agent

Walking along the cracked and worn sidewalk, Adrian marvels at how old the pieces of rock must be. They were moved here and placed specifically, just to give him something to walk on; it brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘walking the beaten path’. Passing the light blue and crème de la crème one floor houses, Adrian is searching for Ariel’s next victim.

Pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and looking at it, Adrian checks Ariel’s criteria for his victims. In the neat, almost cursive script of Ariel’s, the paper reads: 1. A woman with no scars, 2. A man with one earring and a tattoo, preferably prison-style. While Adrian has his doubts about why these two criteria were formed, the stakes are too high for him to waste any time. If he doesn’t find one of these two people, Ariel has made it a requirement that Adrian either rapes a teenage girl, or kills a mother of two.

His mind racing, Adrian tries to peer through the windows and opened doors of the homes surreptitiously, staring at the people inside to see if there’s any match. In one house he finds a woman that didn’t appear to have any scars, until Adrian sees her face; she has a tiny little mark along her cheek, probably a birth mark. Not knowing whether to be relieved or more anxious, Adrian walks down and peers through twenty three more houses.

He’s seen three clowns, two maids, and a group of mothers pushing their children along in strollers. One of them has a double stroller; as she passes, Adrian tenses up and stares at the ground until they are gone, his heart racing with dread. The mother had had auburn hair, curly and framing her face; her eyes, there were crinkles from laughing so much, and the hazel was warm and welcoming. Rubbing his brow with his hand, Adrian continues to walk along the sidewalk, hoping that he can find the victim.

Some five minutes later, he’s startled by the appearance of a man with one earring; but no tattoo. At this point, the sun is more than halfway through the sky, and Adrian knows that his time is about to run out. Having a sudden inspiration upon noticing the tallest building in the town for the first time, Adrian climbs the side of a white house and jumps across to the building, his fingertips barely grabbing the ledge and hoisting the rest of his body up.

Lying down against the hard, slate-grey roof, Adrian peers over the edge of the building. From his new vantage point, Adrian reaches into his pants and pulls a camera that he’s been keeping hidden from Ariel out; using the zoom function, he looks at the citizens of the town and hopes that he can find someone that will meet Ariel’s criteria.

He doesn’t.

After over two hours of looking at people, some more than once, Adrian jumps from his building to the lower one, before jumping to the ground again. Walking along, Adrian finds a little diner and walks into it, sitting himself down and opening the proffered menu. When his waitress returns, Adrian looks the middle-aged woman in the eyes as he orders a hamburger and French fries, sans the ketchup.

She walks away, her Clementine-orange dress swaying in the slight breeze coming through the barely opened windows. Glancing around the place, Adrian finds that there is an elderly man with a baseball cap on, a young couple that is sharing the clichéd chocolate milkshake, and a twenty-something that just gives Adrian a bad vibe. His food is served while he’s staring at this woman, her red high-heeled shoes complementing her daffodil-yellow skirt and amber blouse. She’s holding a cigarette between her index and middle fingers, flicking the ashes away with a casual movement of the wrist.

Noticing that he was staring at her, the girl gets up and walks towards him, sitting herself down in the seat across from Adrian with a couple of easy, fluid motions. “Is there anything that I can do for you?” she asks, her otherwise smooth voice ruined by the harshness that the cigarettes have left in her throat and lungs.

“No, I was just…thinking,” Adrian responds, his cheeks taking on a red tint from his embarrassment. He picks his hamburger up and takes a bite out of it, relishing the taste of the beef and ketchup, before he thinks that maybe the lettuce is about a day away from going bad. Deciding that he doesn’t care, Adrian takes another bite and looks away, hoping that the woman will take the hint.

“My name is Erica,” she says, taking another long drag off of her cigarette. “And I want to know why you were staring at me,” she finished, her cerulean eyes boring a hole into Adrian’s own cloudy-sky blue. Adrian finishes the bite that he has already taken before setting the hamburger down again, and this time his voice takes on a more serious tone.

“I was thinking of a way that I could get out of doing something. I was wondering if you may be the right person, but I haven’t decided yet,” he admits, meeting Erica’s gaze and holding his chin with his hand.

“Get out of doing what, exactly?” Erica asks, flicking away the ash of her cigarette before taking another long drag, the embers at the tip of the stick glowing a bright reddish orange. Adrian pauses before he answers, wondering whether or not this woman will actually believe him.

“Well, let’s just say that I’m traveling with a…friend. And my friend does bad things, and wants me to do bad things too,” Adrian says, keeping his voice light and conversational. Hearing the door of the diner open, he whips his head around to see that it was just someone leaving.

“What kind of bad things? Is the itty bitty boy scared of doing some partying?” Erica taunts, leaning in and giving Adrian a very condescending smile. Her teeth are yellowed from the tobacco, but it’s evident that she at least attempts to keep them clean.

“Bad things, like go to prison for more than a few years, bad things,” Adrian tells her, getting right in her face and saying it in a low voice so that no one else can hear. Erica sits back, her expression bemused; she still doesn’t believe him, but she’s going to let him finish with his little story. “And, today I was supposed to help him find someone, so that he can do those bad things. Unfortunately for the both of us, I didn’t manage to find that person,” Adrian says, still leaned in across the table.

“And what does any of this have to do with me?” Erica asks, taking the last drag from her cigarette before stamping it out on Adrian’s plate. Barely glancing to see what kind of damage the ashes had done, Adrian begins to outline his plan for her.

-

Looking around the abandoned house, Adrian wonders for the third time whether or not he’s making the right choice, trusting Erica with this. Turning to where she’s standing in the kitchen doorframe, he looks down at his hands and prepares himself for what they’re about to do.

“You’re not going to chicken out, are you?” Erica asks, lighting a new cigarette with the lighter in her purse, the once lustrous silver metal now faded with age and the grease of a thousand clicks from those oil covered hands.

“Of course not,” Adrian responds, trying to make his voice sound totally flat and calm. “How are we going to do this? Do you actually want me to…” he starts, before she interrupts him.

“You’re going to hit me, kid. You’re going to hit me right in the face, and then we’re going to make it seem like you raped me. Is that really hard to understand?” Erica asks, walking across the room and grabbing Adrian’s shirt with her hands. “Don’t chicken out now; we’re saving lives, remember?”

That did the trick. Adrian balls his hand into a fist and launches it at her face, connecting with her jaw and sending her flying backwards. Spitting the blood from her mouth and picking her cigarette up from where it had landed on the floor, Erica got right back up and into Adrian’s face again.

“You’re going to have to do more than that, buddy boy. This just looks like I fell down the stairs,” she taunts, even extending her lit cigarette near Adrian’s arm. Grabbing her shirt, Adrian gives a quick yank and rips it off, the fabric leaving her chest and stomach barely covered, while her sleeve is completely gone.

“That’s better. Now just a couple of more punches, and we’ll be all set,” she says, bracing herself as Adrian complies. At one point she is knocked to the floor, but she stands back up immediately. “Here, use my cell phone to call the police,” she says, pulling the phone out of her purse and handing it to him.

Dialing quickly, Adrian explains that he heard someone screaming, and he found a woman in this house, with a guy standing over her. Adrian then goes into detail concerning how he got rid of the guy, and that they need an ambulance. Flipping the phone closed while they wait, Adrian looks down at Erica and extends his hand, this time in kindness.

“How are you feeling?” he asks her, his eyes conveying the sympathy that his voice can’t. Inside, he feels horrible, but he’s attempting to reconcile with himself, using the ‘we were saving lives’ cop-out. Erica smiles up at him, her teeth a little bit bloody from the last punch, that had sent her to the floor again.

“Like I’m a martyr. Is this what it’s like to be a saint?” she asks, the gleam in her eyes showing that maybe, just maybe, she’s a little bit insane. Crawling to a corner of the room, she rests her head against the peeling Disney-themed wallpaper and kicks her feet out, relaxing a bit before they hear the ambulance in the driveway.

When they get into the house itself, Adrian helps Erica into the ambulance and then talks to the police, answering all their questions to the best of his ability. He essentially outlines what he told the 9-1-1 operator again, but this time he includes more details and throws in a couple of pleading facial expressions.

Being with Ariel so long, Adrian’s good at acting.

-

Finding a quarter behind the vending machine, Adrian picks it up and shoves it into the slot of the payphone, his total now being enough to make a three minute phone call. Dialing the number to the police precinct, Adrian asks if he can speak to a specific deputy, Deputy Connells. While he’s waiting to be patched through, Adrian kicks at some of the dirt on the ground with his sneaker.

“Hello?” a voice crackles through the phone, male. Standing up straight and holding the phone close to this mouth, Adrian responds.

“Deputy Connells. Did you get what I sent you?” he asks, trying to keep the conversation within the three-minute span.

“This is the mysterious informant, I’m guessing?” Connells says, not realizing that Adrian is urgent to get off the phone before he’s spotted. “We got the photos that you sent; they’re in a case file, just like everything else,” he finished, and Adrian could hear the shuffling of papers and something else in the background.

“Good. I hope that you know what has to be done with it,” Adrian says, glancing around in the phone booth. It’s starting to rain, the little bits of water pattering against the roof of the little booth that he’s in.

“Of course we do. It would be more helpful if you could give us a name, though,” Connells replies, trying-as always- to get just a little bit more information out of Adrian than he was willing to give. “Or if not a name, a place, a direction, anything,” he adds, and Adrian can hear the desperation growing in the man’s voice.

“You want a name? His name is Ar…” Adrian manages, before the phone drops dead and a robotic voice asks that he deposits another dollar for another three minutes. Slamming the receiver down, Adrian jogs into the rain. His sneakers slide against the slippery sidewalk, but he doesn’t care; he needs to find a place to stay while he waits for Ariel to come with him.

“I hope that she did what she was supposed to,” he mutters to himself, before stopping in the little park in the center of the town and crawling into the covered tube, to keep dry. “If she didn’t…” he drifts off, knowing that there is nothing that he can do about it.

-

Pulling the phone out of her pocket, Erica goes through her contacts and then hits send, standing still while she waits for the call to be placed.

“Yes, Erica?” a male voice inquires, in lieu of the normal ‘hello’.

“He did it, just the way you thought he would,” she says, huddling in a doorstep so she can light another cigarette. “Of course, he doesn’t know anything about it,” she adds, the tiniest bit of fear creeping into her voice.

“Of course not. Adrian isn’t anywhere near smart enough-or jaded enough- to think that someone would double cross him,” the voice says, before hanging up the phone. Listening to the crackle in her ear for a second, Erica ends the call and then goes through her contacts, deleting ‘Ariel’ from the list.