The door slowly opened.
The two beautiful red-heads paused their terrible session and turned
their attention upon Kris as he entered.
He came in quietly and looked around the old house. He remembered coming here a few times as a
kid. Kris picked up a picture the Old
Man from a side table. Old Man Kennedy
intimidated him, but Kris thought highly of him. “Always liked your Old Man, Maggie.” He placed the picture back where he found it.
“It really is uncanny, you know. How
much you two look alike, that is.
Uncanny. Almost like looking into
a mirror.”
Kris had shaved his head with Maggie’s disposable
razor. But the end result was not a
high-and-tight masterpiece such as any self-respecting local barber would have
prided himself on. Kris’ hair was
generally gone, but his skull still had great lawn-mower strokes of uneven
stubble. The blade had been dull to
begin with, so his head was also scraped raw in places; patches of
half-congealed blood glistened dully in the dim living room light. His sutures were inflamed as well; one half
of his face was a scab and dark circles ringed eyes which were windows to a
darkened interior. This once-beautiful
soul was clearly worn threadbare.
Maggie had one arm fully outstretched with her sidearm
pointed squarely at Mary’s third eye.
“You look like absolute hell, Kris.”
She attempted a joke, “If you were going for shabby-chic, you’re exactly
half-way there, man.” Maggie’s own fair
Irish face was pink from crying and her hair wild from combat.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” Kris retorted
darkly. “So,” he nodded towards Mary,
“Whatcha got there?”
“She’s Alpha, Kris.
She’s the one who killed those girls.”
Kris laughed. He
laughed not because he should have figured out that Mary was Alpha, but more
because of the sheer absurdity of it all.
“Of course,” he said, “it had to be Mary.” He was sure that the Universe would have not
had it any other way. There was nothing
left to surprise him.
Mary accused Kris, “This is your fault, Kris. If you would have called Maggie off, none of
us would be in this room right now. Why
couldn’t you get rid of her so that we could get back to the way things
were. Everything was working so
perfectly. Innocent people got hurt and
I blame you, Kris. I blame you. We
are a family and we could have taken care of our own problems, if you just
would have let it be. We could have
fixed everything.”
Maggie asked Kris, “So, did you ever find your Truth?”
“I finally figured out what Donnie’s crime scene was
about. The essence of it, you know, all that.
Punishment. That’s what it
was. Punishment.” And then Kris asked Maggie a most serious
question, “You killed Donnie Gomez.
Right, Maggie? You . . . You’re Omega.”
“No, Kris, “she choked through her tears, “Think about what
you’re saying. Omega raped and killed Anastasia
Demopaulos. Clearly that is something I
couldn’t have done. No Kris, I am not
Omega, I am something completely different.
I am Justice. That is what Donnie
was about. Not Punishment, Justice. Donnie
was Omega. Donnie Gomez was the
copycat. And yes, I killed him. I killed Donnie Gomez in that exact seat
where Mary is seated right now. Donnie
followed me home, and I killed him.”
“What?! You killed my Donnie?!” Mary
wailed. “No! No, baby, no!
Maggie what have you done? How
could you do that? You had no right,
Maggie. How can you be the judge? You
had no right!” Mary was hysterical. “You had no right to do that!”
“He came in here uninvited, and I killed him in
self-defense. I just happened to be . .
. better prepared than most.”
Mary fumed, “Don’t you get it, Kris? This is her little spider’s web! She lures people in here and she has this
placed rigged up with traps all over, and then she executes ‘em, baby. That is not justice. She executes them.”
Kris, with a look, asked if this was true. Maggie, with a look, confirmed that it was.
“How long?” Kris
asked.
“Since I realized that the system doesn’t always work. Since I realized that I was really good at
it. Maybe eight years.”
“Jimmy told me that you used to be a legend.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need fame, Kris. My job is to protect the people. That’s it.
My purpose in life.” Maggie was
the only one in the room crying.
Kris felt like he had vertigo. His perspective was all wrong, like he had
someone else’s glasses on. Distances
seemed impossibly close and far away at the same time. Something about a sword and a leather band
kept knocking at the back door of his mind.
Something about an angel and truth.
Something about a roller rink.
Kris reached out for Maggie’s wrist. She did not pull away, but offered herself
with the shy hesitation of a new bride.
He took her wide leather watch off.
Exposed beneath, a gnarled purplish scar ran like a bad weld for an inch
and a half along both faces of Maggie’s wrist.
He touched the wound and it embarrassed Maggie. He touched the tattoo and said, “Protection?”
“How did you know that?”
“Three semesters of Hebrew.”
“Did you always know what it said?”
A thought was trying to take shape in Kris’ mind. Something Maggie had said to him a while ago,
something about a path to enlightenment:
“A good ass-kicking is the first step on the road to
enlightenment, my friend.”
But this could be said more poetically. He thought:
Step
1: A good shepherd must be willing to
suffer injury to protect his flock.
Kris noticed the red-red blood on Mary’s white-white fleece,
and it made his equilibrium swoon. “Are
you going to kill her?” he asked.
“She is Alpha! It’s
not a matter of choice. I have to kill her.”
“But she can’t,” Mary said, “because she knows that I am her
and she is me.”
“Shut up, Mary. This
is not a freakin’ Beatles song,” Maggie reared back as if to pistol-whip her
older twin, but she couldn’t do it. “We
are nothing alike. I kill bad-guys. You kill good-guys. We’re nothing alike, Mary, and make no
mistake, you will die.”
Step
2: A good shepherd must be willing to inflict injury to protect his flock.
Kris lunged for Maggie, lunged for the gun. He tried to hit her, shove her back and grab
the weapon out of her hand. But Maggie
did some counterattack that was so graceful and quick that Kris didn’t really
even see it. He felt the melee of
punches and the butt of the gun crashing against the back of his neck, though.
Kris had a sort of déjà vu as he found himself in the exact
same position that he had been in moments before, only now with an evil
tingling radiating up from his third vertebrae into the base of his skull.
“Give me the gun, Maggie.”
Kris reached out with an open hand.
“I know this is hard for you to understand,” Maggie wept, “I
know you must think this is the most savage thing you’ve ever seen, that things
like this don’t happen. But things like
this do happen, Kris – all the time. You just pull back the thinnest veneer of
this world and “man’s inhumanity to man” is all around us. Kick over any stone and you’ll see the vermin
run from the daylight. This is not your
little bubble, Kris, with summer camps and chubby-bunny and feet-washing. This is the real world, Kris!”
“I know. And I know
you. I know your secret name. I – know – you.” Kris moved cautiously
closer to her, as if towards a feral animal, “You are Lauralei. Give me the gun,
Lauralei.”
Lauralei’s defenses reluctantly withered. “I haven’t heard that name in half a
lifetime.” Against her own will she gave
the gun to him. She looked down at the
ground as she held the weapon out, ashamed – ashamed that she was not strong
enough to do the thing for which she was made – ashamed that she couldn’t shoot
Mary, the Alpha.
Kris took the gun, took Lauralei in his arms, and kissed
her. She did not kiss back. “Oh well,” he thought. “I tried.”
Blam!
A gun blast.
Lauralei’s body rocked from the concussion. She looked in horror into Kris’ dead
eyes. “No,” she breathed.
Blam! Another blast from the gun.
Blood splashed both of their faces.
“To hell with it,” Kris said, “might as well empty the clip
now.”
Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-click-clikclickclick.
Blood pooled silently about their feet.
Lauralei collapsed into Kris’ arms. “No no no no.”
Step
3: A good shepherd must be willing to slay
one of his own sheep to protect his flock.
Enlightenment
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