Fury From Hell (13 page)

***

Saturday, November 10
^th
, 3:30 A.M.

Jennifer stirred.  There was something hard under her ribcage.  She moved again trying to find a comfortable position but the effort woke her up even more.  With a groan she opened her eyes and saw the ceiling.  It was not her ceiling.  Growing alarmed she bolted upright and looked to her left and screamed.

There was a disemboweled man on the bed and she was lying across his very cold legs.  Jennifer sat up and clamped her hand over her mouth but something smeared her lips.  She froze and moved only her eyes until she saw the back of her hand.  It was crimson colored.  Whimpering, she pulled her hand away from her mouth and saw that the palm of her hand was covered in dried blood as were the rest of her limbs.  Strangling a scream, she leapt off the bed and ran into the bathroom, frantic to get into the shower.  Slipping and smearing blood on the tiles, Jennifer banged her knee while clambering into the tub.  She glanced down and pulled off her empty ankle holster.  She tossed it on the floor onto the cheap tile floor and turned on the water.  Jennifer turned it as hot as she could stand it and cried freely as she scrubbed herself watching the pink water run down the drain.  She had cried herself out by the time the water ran clear.

Standing up, Jennifer pulled the flimsy plastic shower curtain and started the shower up.  She stood under the pulsating jet spray while she stifled yet another whimper.  Trying to think coherently, Jennifer forced her brain into action.  As the water cascaded all over her body a plan began taking shape.  Several minutes later, Jennifer turned the water off.  Toweling dry, Jennifer ventured into the bedroom but refused to look at the bed.

She went over to the closet, grabbed the cheap hotel robe and shrugged it on.  Taking a deep breath, she turned and surveyed the body.  What was left of Derrick was mauled and chewed.  His intestines were nowhere to be seen.  She bent down to look under the bed.  It was clean; no mess anywhere under there.

She walked to the other side of the bed and there was nothing there, either.  The mess was on the right side where the blood spray was evident on everything even on the nondescript tan lampshade.  The white sheets on that side were now a dark reddish-brown.  The pristine white they once were was long gone.

Mustering her nerve, Jennifer walked closer to the bed and looked into what was left of Derrick’s face.  Forcing herself not to react she wondered where his eyes went.  As the cop in her inspected his bloodless eye sockets, she noticed that his face was quite clean.  His empty stomach cavity was relatively clean as well.  The amount of blood that should have been in the room, in his stomach and around the bed just
wasn’t
there.

Where the hell is all of his blood?

An unthinkable notion came to her unbidden.  She pushed it away knowing she’d be sick if the thought ever fully formed.  Jennifer stepped back and tried to recall the last time she ate.  She remembered the coffee and the leftovers she ate when she awoke this afternoon.  She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand on the left.  It was 3:43 A.M.  Technically, she should be hungry.  She did a mental check of her body and realized she was full.  She wasn’t even a tiny bit thirsty.  Dread crept into her spine.

I should be hungry by now.  Why aren’t I hungry?  Where are his eyes and his blood?  Wouldn’t I want water if I drank his blood?  Isn’t blood salty?  What the hell am I thinking?  Am I a freakin’ cannibal!  What did I do?!

Jennifer slid down to the floor as bits of her sanity began unraveling.  Trepidation tried to descend but the cop in her took over and pushed the panic away.  Her head snapped up and she ran into the bathroom looking for cleaners.  She pulled open the cabinet under the sink — nothing in there.  The mirrored medicine cabinet held no cleaning agents either.  It only yielded an inexpensive plastic wrapped bright pink toothbrush.  Slamming the small door shut, Jennifer went back out into the main room and checked her clothes.  She found them, thankfully untouched by blood or gore.

Dressing quickly, she searched around for the gun and found it under the nightstand on the left.  Slipping it back into its holster she grabbed her keycard then dashed out the door.  Walking with purpose, she found an all night bodega a couple blocks away on the fairly well-lit Atlantic Avenue.  She bought two pairs of yellow plastic cleaning gloves, bleach, sponges, Ajax, Lysol and window cleaner.  As an afterthought, she also bought some incense, a lighter and a pack of Marlboros.  In a functional semi-catatonic state, Jennifer fervently wished her makeshift plan would work.

Back in the room, she checked the time.  It was 4:21 A.M.  Putting on the plastic gloves, she started cleaning the bedroom first averting her eyes from the cooling corpse.  Using straight bleach, she wiped down everything in sight.  She took the one clear drinking glass she found in the bathroom and half-filled it with water then topped it off with bleach.  Using one of the sponges, she soaked both of the lampshades with the bleach mixture to befuddle the investigators.  She knew the Forensics team would be looking for any specks of blood no matter how minute.

She finally recalled that she should check herself for cuts or nicks; finding none, she breathed a sigh of relief.  With a sharp intake of breath, she touched her hair then began looking around for any stray strands.  She found two on the bed.  Jennifer took her time and searched diligently for any other strands on the floor, beside the bed, in the bathroom and by the closet.  She couldn’t afford to be lazy.  Finding nothing, she flushed the hairs she found down the toilet and remembered to look down the shower drain but she didn’t see anything.  As a precaution, she poured straight bleach down the drain and ran the hot water for ten minutes.

With all the stray specks of blood on the furniture and rugs gone, or greatly diminished, Jennifer lit the incense and a cigarette and blew smoke all around the room.  After having lit five cigarettes and two more sticks of incense she went into phase two of her plan.

She poured window cleaner all over Derrick’s body emptying the bottle over him.  Next up was the can of Lysol.  She sprayed it away from herself putting the lighter into the highly flammable stream.  With the plastic gloves still on, her makeshift torch was hard to get going.  It caught on the fifth try.  In seconds, Derrick’s body was on fire.  Stepping back to assess her work she glanced up and noticed the white round ubiquitous object.

“Shit!” 

Jennifer had forgotten to take the batteries out of the fire detector.  She raced to the front door and dragged the chair from the desk.  She gained a couple more inches by pushing up onto the tips of her toes while on the chair.   Jennifer wrenched off the fire detector face plate and saw it was the hardwired kind without batteries.  Cursing, she covered it back just as it began to shriek.  Within moments, a loud blaring fog horn sounding alert assaulted her ears.

“Please evacuate!  Fire detected in the building.  Use staircases only.  Please evacuate!”

Surveying the room quickly knowing she only had a few precious minutes left, Jennifer decided to set fire to both of the lampshades and spray torched Derrick’s blistering body one more time.  She wanted to ensure that any possible trace of her would burn away.  The fire needed to be hot to make sure that happened but she needed to move quickly.  The fire was getting out of control.  Coughing, she lit the two lampshades and darted out with her bags of cleaning supplies and other paraphernalia.

She kept her head down and joined the dazed half-dressed people in the hall heading for the nearest staircase.  Jennifer hoped that she had dodged the security cameras well enough.  To make sure she made sure to stare at the ground and only used her peripheral vision.  Even in all of the confusion of the mass evacuation she refused to pass through the front lobby for a third time.  Jennifer veered off from the bulk of the crowd and went out the back entrance through the small parking lot.  She walked with sure steps belying the fifty pound butterflies flitting around in her tummy and made her way up Atlantic Avenue at a brisk pace passing the bodega she frequented just over an hour ago without giving it a second glance.  Her mind was awhirl.  However, she know she’d deal with what the hell happened to Derrick later…
much later
.

Four blocks away, Jennifer heard the first whine of the expected sirens.  Within moments, the first fire truck sped by.  All of its lights were flashing and the decibel defying siren made Jennifer cringe.  In case anyone was watching her, she pulled on her one semester of acting in high school and put a look of disgust on her face and flipped the truck a bird.

Darting around to see if anyone was paying attention to her she spied a half-open garbage bin in front of one of the shabby looking shingled homes on the busy avenue.  Seeing no one at all, Jennifer dumped the two plastic bags into the half empty bin.

With an affected saunter, she moved off towards the Broadway Junction train station which was too many blocks away for her comfort.  While she could have waited for the bus, or tried to hail the speeding cabs that passed by rather infrequently, Jennifer was not willing to put herself in a position where someone could recognize her and pin her to the vicinity.  She knew that sometimes proximity was more than enough to haul someone in for questioning.

Walking as swiftly as she could in her studded boots, Jennifer noticed a few people walking past her as she got closer to the train station which was in the East New York section of Brooklyn.  An area she knew better than to travel on foot alone at night.  Sighing, she shrugged off a sudden tingly sensation but knew enough to heighten her awareness of her surroundings.  In this environment, Jennifer’s gun was beginning to feel like her friend again.

Directly ahead of her, two dark-skinned men in sagging jeans loitered on the corner.  They came out of their slouches against wall and lamp post respectively to peer down towards the Riviera where the fire trucks had stopped. 

“Yo ‘Ma!  What’s goin’ down?  You see anyting?”

Flinching back as the taller one came near enough for her to smell his personalized scent of sweat mixed with musky cologne and the ubiquitous smell of cannabis.

“Why would I see anything?”

“Cause you jus came from down der…” said the other, shorter one.

The short one came over to join the younger taller one crowding around her and looking her up and down in a manner that did not convey trust. 

The shorter one had a head full of long ropey hair that smelled sweet and exotic but the look on his face was anything but comforting.  He leered in her face as the flickering street light glinted off of his gold fronts.

Jennifer pulled her leather jacket together and fixed them both with a stony glare.

The short sweet-haired one grabbed her arm and jerked her against the lamp post.  His baggy jeans and open Shearling jacket were no hindrance in his movements.

“Look, I just left a friend’s house and I’m going to the train.  Why you gotta bother me?  I didn’t do nothing to you.”

She knew she had to keep her voice down or else panic would shine through her words.  The younger guy was tall; around 6’ 2”.  He was a clean shaven well-groomed man in his late twenties.  She watched as he turned his back on them and watched the immediate area.  He didn’t to say a word to the shorter guy.  Clearly, they had done this type of thing before.

“Look at me!”

Bringing her dark brown eyes to stare into the older man’s eyes in front of her, Jennifer gave him a good once over.

He was about 5’9” and 185 pounds.  He was sturdy without being fat.  His teeth were straight but stained a deep yellow in some spots and his breath was not sour; it wasn’t as pleasant smelling as his hair though.  His skin was the color of roasted coffee beans and was smooth and unlined.  He had a scraggly mustache and a silly goatee that someone with his intensity just didn’t need.  But, she was in no position to share that with him.

Jennifer looked into his yellowing eyes and wondered how many years more he had before the herb robbed him of his brain power.

“Yeah, I’m looking.  What?”

He smiled at her sassiness.  “I like you, Cocoa Girl.  So, give me you money and we leht chu go.  Nice and simple, heh?”

“That simple huh?”

He nodded his head smiling while stroking her arm through the thin leather.  His smile was becoming very suggestive.

She noticed that his other hand began reaching towards her lapel.  In that moment, Jennifer flashed back to the first day her Uncle touched her.

She was twelve.  It was a few days after Halloween and she was wearing her favorite pumpkin-colored coat with the floppy lapels and the pumpkin-shaped buttons her mother had sewn on to make her little angel happy.  Pre-teen Jennifer had come home a bit early because her best friend had walked home with Janey Kellinor instead of with her.  Bursting into the house, Jennifer called for her mother but only a very drunk Uncle Tommy answered.

Her uncle grabbed her lapels and pulled laughing at her tears the whole time.  He watched the pumpkin buttons scatter all over the pristine parquet floors.  He continued to laugh as he held her down while pushing her coat and knees open…

Jennifer screamed and kicked up and out at the short ropey-haired guy.

As if in a dream, she watched herself crouch down and grab the Smith and Wesson semi-automatic from her ankle holster.  In her mind, a keening wail could be heard as an image of the twelve-year-old Jennifer was penetrated by the large man above her.

At point blank range, adult Jennifer screamed and protected her inner child once more.  She shot both men while shouting, “No, Uncle Tommy!  Don’t! Please!”

Blinking back the tears, she shuddered.  Jennifer stuffed the memory back down and inspected this new bloody scene.  There was no movement from either man. With sickening dread, she knew she needed to move from the bodies with a good bit of speed…
now
.  With trembling fingers, Jennifer replaced the gun in her holster and backed away from the bodies.  She crossed the street without looking back and continued to walk up Atlantic with the fervent wish that no one stopped her.  The aftershock from her brush with death made walking difficult.  Jennifer’s couldn’t stop her legs from wobbling nor the tears from streaming down her face as she woodenly walked the last block and a half to the train station.  She hardly noticed that the station’s bright lights were making unusually creepy shadows on the broken sidewalk as the light passed through the leafless skeletal tree branches.