Page 2 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

It takes only seconds for Rory to see the hard-edged cruelty that lives in his heart. Certainly, there are circumstances that have planted that cruelty there and there are some small hints of possible redemption, deep down in the fissure of his soul. But it is so submerged, so hidden, that Rory isn’t sure Kid would ever be able to find it, even with a century of soul-searching.

Should he give him a century to try, at least? Does he deserve that gift?

No, Rory thinks, his mind full of crude and violent thoughts from the Kid. It leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat. He’s known men like that; with the luxury of time, they don’t improve. They almost always become rotting, monstrous things. As he flickers through Kid’s life, a thin mist of red seems to crowd his vision. There is a high-pitched ringing in his ears, echoes of past lives, the phantom heartbeats against his tongue haunting him still, centuries later.

The red mist is an old friend, unwelcome though it may be. He hasn’t been around this much spilled blood in at least three decades and his restraint is hard-pressed to stay intact. He can feel it fraying at the edges, unraveling by the second.

Later, he will tell himself that his body made the decision for him—that he barely knew his own mind when his left hand joined his right in a painfully familiar movement. A soft twist made with barely any effort.

The thought will do little to comfort him, but now, with blood in his nostrils and his teeth aching to feel flesh, it provides him the absolution he needs to do what he, regrettably, is quite good at.

2

Ophelia in Water

Rory

Kid’s lifeless body falls to the ground, his head lolling to the side in a sickeningly unnatural way. The gun rests innocently beside him and, belatedly, Rory realizes he’s lucky it didn’t go off again when it was dropped. Not that it would hurt him. The bullet hole in his stomach is already healed, the spent metal falling to the ground as his muscles knit themselves back together again.

The only real consequence is the destruction of the once pristine white t-shirt he is wearing. He grabs his flannel shirt from his cubby hole underneath the register and buttons it up. One problem solved.

The Go-Go hasn’t come out of this altercation unscathed, though. The blood from him and the woman will be a pain to clean up. He’s not sure the supplycloset will have enough bleach to completely erase the traces of it.It’ll smell like blood in here for a week, he thinks. At least the security camera in the corner broke a while back and hasn’t been fixed yet.One less thing to worry about.

With a resigned shake of his head, he kneels and picks Kid up, maneuvering the body over his shoulder as he stands. He pauses before stepping outside, but his pupils dilate quickly.

The darkness hides nothing. The lot is still vacant, as it almost always is at this hour. The road is equally deserted. The diner next door closes at nine o’clock and its neon sign sits silent, a blue indistinct shape against the night sky. The sign for the motel down the road is lit, casting an orange shadow across the inky black snake of the road as it stretches beyond into the nothingness of the horizon. The rooms are dark, motel guests snug in their dirty beds.

There’s not a soul outside or awake at this hour. Rory can hear the silence even before he opens the door, can hear the lack of breath and heartbeat. It’s one of the reasons he likes working the night shift; he appreciates the complete and utter lack oflife.

Rory makes his way out of the store, digging his keys out of his pocket. The air is sticky-sweet with summer. The worst time of the year. But at least it’s still just him. It’s almost picturesque, actually: the soft darkness, the sparkling sky, the bulging white moon above. He supposes that the dead body slung over hisshoulder ruins any beauty in the view, though.

He unceremoniously drops it into the open trunk of his beat-up Oldsmobile and it lands with a heavy thunk that rattles the shoddy suspension. The smell of copper hits the back of his throat again. He considers what to do next. His teeth sharpen even more, the gnawing hollowness returning and spreading to his veins. His muscles ache with tension.Just a bit longer,he tells himself.Then, drink.

There aren’t many places to bury a body around here. The wetlands to the east are an obvious choice, which is why he decides against them immediately. Much too popular with campers and birders. There is another wooded area, Willow Lake Park, that is only a few miles from the Go-Go. The forest itself is rather small, especially compared to the wetlands. Skirting the edge of the trees is a man-made body of water called Graeme Lake, besides which sits the house he lives in.It’s uncomfortably close,he thinks.

But the trees there are dense and the trails undeveloped. The land is protected jointly by Willow Lake Town Council and the Glenn County Preservation Society. Camping permits are rarely approved or even requested.

It isn’t a very scenic bit of land. The perimeter of Willow Lake Park ends about a hundred feet from the edge of his lake-side property, and if he buried the body even farther than that, deep into the trees, perhaps it would remain undiscovered. Certainly, itwould stay hidden during the freeze in December, maybe even until next spring when the ground opens up with mushrooms and worms.

By then, any forensic evidence on the body would surely be tainted and he, a random bystander, would have no connection with the unidentified human remains. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.

He checks his watch. He has an hour and forty-five minutes left of his shift but wonders if he can get away with leaving a few minutes early, if his replacement arrives before five as they sometimes do. He can smell the body already, cells breaking down—imperceptibly, really, but not for him—in the late summer heat rising from the asphalt.

He runs a tired hand through his hair as he makes his way back into the store, swapping the buzz of cicadas with the sizzle of electric lights. The red mist and the high-pitched echo in his head have receded back into the past where they belong. He is feeling pretty good about his plan when he almost stumbles over the woman by the soda fountain—the woman he had completely forgotten about in the wake of his own altercation with Kid. There is a grotesque trail where she flopped over on her side.

He muses idly about what led Kid to shoot her in the first place. Did he know her? Did she offend him in some way? He remembers the cruelty in the boy’s heart. It’s entirely possible that he just felt like shooting someone.

Rory thinks back to before the gun first went off. He hadn’t been paying much attention, but he recalls her walking in, smiling distractedly at him, her boots clicking as she made her way down the aisle. He clocked the sway of her hips in time to the clicking of her shoes, but didn’t look otherwise, her face obscured by a bushy mane of brown curls.

What was she doing when she was shot?

Right—she was making her way up to the counter to purchase a bottle of water when Kid turned and the gun went off. The bottle rolled to the sales counter, wedged in the corner next to a forgotten lottery ticket and some bits of broken glass.

If Kid had waited another minute or two, the woman would have been gone—and maybe things would have happened differently.

Maybe Rory wouldn’t have already been annoyed and hungry with the scent of blood against his tongue when Kid turned toward him.

Maybe, even if Rory had been shot, he wouldn’t have killed him with so little thought. Maybe he would have quelled his instincts long enough to scare him a bit and send him on his way. But to do what, exactly? Shoot someone else? Beat up a girlfriend?

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