Page 58 of Last Breath

“Good afternoon, Officer. Is there something I can help you with?” Trying to seem confused and yet accommodating, I stand relaxed and at ease.

Straightening his hat and leaning his one hand on his gun, he doesn’t smile back. “I hear you checked in just the other night. Might I ask where you came from?”

I make it up as I go along. “We’re just on our way back to El Paso. We decided to make it a fun trip from his mother’s house to ours, you know, picking spots on a map and letting the road take us. That sort of thing.”

Reaching into his shirt pocket, flicking open his note pad, he clicks the top to his pen. “And where is it that your mother lives, son?”

“She—”

Cutting me off, the officer looks at Salem. “Oh, I wasn’t asking you. I was asking the young man in the back. Where’s your mother’s house, son, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Shit. Calling me son is okay, but calling Salem son sets off a ton of triggers in that warped mind of his. Turning to look at Salem, I open the door slightly more than it was. Almost like an invitation, the policeman walks right in. That’s when I see that things are going to go wrong, but there’s not a damn thing I can do.

“Won’t you come in, Officer,” Salem says, smirking in that devious, dark and dangerous way.

“Don’t mind if I do, son.” Seeing the red boiling up in Salem’s eyes, I keep a watchful eye on the officer.

His eyes track the contents of our room, grazing over the empty bags, strewn bedding, and the bloodstained clothing that rests on the chairs by the kitchenette. If he doesn’t see it, he’s the worst cop I’ve ever met.

Looking to me, hoping I give him the cue to let loose, I shake my head. Salem knows I want him to keep his cool a bit longer. Grabbing up a bag of his candies off the table, Salem pops them in his mouth. Chomping through them, he offers, “My mother lives in Indiana. We were there for her fifty-fifth birthday.”

“I’m guessing you two are what, mid-twenties?”

And that’s when the barbeque fork goes sailing through the air. I never even saw it in his hand, and neither did the officer.

Landing in the shoulder of the officer, Salem smiles proudly. Striking right in the middle of the officer’s dominant arm, it’s left him with no way to draw his gun with any accuracy.

Tossing his notebook to the floor, he yanks on the metal fork until it slides out of his skin. The cop not only screams, but draws his gun with a precision I didn’t think he still held.

“Jesus Christ!” Holding the gun and aiming it right at Salem, I stand stunned as he swings it toward me. “Over there! Move the fuck over there and sit down in those chairs!” As I shift, doing as instructed, Salem doesn’t budge. He looks sinister, and eerily calm. I know what that means. Joy knows what that means. The cop has no understanding of the trouble he’s wrought. So I slowly close the door until it clicks. Turning to me, he glares. I’m calm, and he’s a nervous wreck.

Pointing it at me, then back to Salem, the cop is shocked by the two of us, seemingly relaxed after attacking an officer. Reaching with his sore arm, pulling on his shoulder mounted walkie, the cop winces as he depresses the button. “Officer down! I repeat, officer down at—”

Before the policeman can finish the distress call, Salem rushes across the room. Firing as Salem gets close, I swear I see my dream of us living happily ever after melting before my eyes. The bullet takes off with malice, striking Salem exactly where the cop had had a barbeque fork sticking from his arm.

A matching set.

With the two of them bleeding on the newly renovated room, everything from that point on goes downhill fast. Knowing that if I don’t do something to stop Salem, Joy will be out here, the cop will call in reinforcements, and we’d be on our way to jail. With no intention of sitting on death row until I’m handed a sentence of lethal injection, I do what I have to do.

I need to protect what is mine.

With his attention on Salem and the blood seeping from the wound in his own arm, I step closer to the officer. Yes, he’d asked me to take a seat, but with the fork and ensuing gunshot, I was still only a few feet from the cop.

Grasping a chair nearby, I swing it with all my strength. Striking him in the head, the gun tumbles from his hand as he falls to the floor, face-first.

Bending down and making sure he’s still breathing, I grab up his cuffs. As I link them around his wrists, I ask, “You okay, Sal?”

“Same fucking spot as Joy’s gran.” Leaning back on his heels and poking the hole, Salem’s more upset that he wouldn’t have a new wound to play with than being worried about a cop on the floor and shots fired.

I never said he was sane.

As I’m clicking the last bracelet in place, the bathroom door opens. Jumping out with shock lighting her features, Joy yells, “Holy fuck! Are you okay, Salem?”

Checking his leaking shoulder, Joy inspects the hole. That’s when I see the switch flick in her. Hello, Joker, goodbye sweet and innocent Joy.

It’s funny. Joy was the kind of person who wouldn’t harm a bunny that was eating her vegetable garden, who couldn’t find a way out of the life she was locked into with a dependent grandmother, and was afraid to end up in a body bag when she met us. Oddly enough, when she learned that Salem was content to kill, maim, and destroy innocent lives, she fell right in line. She only needed a shove in the right direction to tip her murderous villainy.

“I’m fine, love. Really, it’s lovely.” Dragging his fingers through the blood as it streams down his chest, Salem licks his lips. “Want a taste?” he asks Joy.

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