MESSED UP
Terry Hayman
Copyright © 2011 Terry Hayman
Published by Fiero Publishing
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Messed up” is a normative term. Meaning that it will only convey to a listener or reader what you want it to if the listener/reader shares your sense of what is “normal” or “not messed up.”
Good luck with that.
Me, I’m not even going to try. Let’s just say I have my own internal measuring stick which that keeps me on the straight and narrow, but rarely seems to trouble my characters. Or at least rarely stops them from engaging in questionable behavior.
Which begs the question why I write about characters who get caught up in criminal behaviors or in the criminal behaviors of others.
Simple answer is that it’s always fun to step outside the normal rules of behavior and ask yourself what you would do if given this opportunity or faced with this set of pressures? Would you buckle and weakly submit? Would you quickly walk away and remain in your safe, carefully-governed existence? Would you bravely fight for truth, justice, and common decency?
Or would you unleash a little of your dark side? Your atavistic or desperate or greedy side?
I have a friend, Chelsea Graydon, who also writes mysteries for Fiero Publishing, but her stuff is about criminals doing usually-not-too-scary stuff and getting caught by the law, sent to jail, whatever.
These stories are not those stories.
In my crime stories, some of the bad guys are scary and don’t get caught. Or the bad guy is a normal guy who crosses a line. Or gets pushed over it. Right and wrong, moral choices – sometimes we only see them when they flash by and then we have to deal with the consequences. As a reader, we get to take that ride, shiver and think, but take a deep, safe breath when the story’s done.
Here are the geneses of these particular crime stories:
The Tides – I was hanging out with a bunch of professional writers in Lincoln City, Oregon, studying mystery writing under the inimitable Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and we were challenged to write a noir story set in Lincoln City. Now noir tends to be pretty bleak and I’m rarely bleak. (Serious often, but bleak, rarely.) So I created what I’d call a “sunny noir” story. Which is “The Tides.”
The Grocery Zoo Story – Before I had kids and took to writing fiction as a career that went well with child rearing, I did a lot of acting for the stage and screen. An early show I did for the Edmonton Fringe Festival was a little two-hander by Edward Albee called The Zoo Story. Only came to understand its brilliance many years later and, while writing about this guy in a grocery store conversing with a talking dog (just because), I tried to insert a little bit of Albee’s idea of connecting into the piece. Weirdness flourishes.
Fun with Broken Bones – This was originally going to be called “Tricks with Broken Bones”, until my wife pointed out that it would suggest a story about prostitutes. Which it’s not. In fact, it arose out of hearing someone who worked in a P.I. firm talk about the realities of the work. That, together with my knowledge of how private investigations are used to defend against personal injury claims, gave me this twisted little tale.
An Actor’s Life – What claustrophobic writer can resist writing at least one buried-alive story? This is mine. The fact the guy who’s buried alive is an actor… Hm. Wonder where that could have come from?
The Final Inch – Which brings us to this lovely little piece I’d call my road not traveled. Or maybe – Acting: why it will send you straight to Hell. The idea was to explore what could have happened in my life if I’d made a different set of choices way back when about my career path. The irony, of course, is that I’m getting back into acting even as I write this. Few choices are permanent. There should always be time for the things we love to do.
And now I turn these tales over to you to read and enjoy. Take a deep breath and jump in. See you on the other side.
-Terry Hayman
North Vancouver,BC
November 17, 2011
How’s a Midwest girl supposed to know which way it’s going?
Terry Hayman
Copyright © 2011 Terry Hayman
So Bonnie stepped out, in her hot pink bikini, onto the long strip of sunny beach that ran up the ocean side of Lincoln City, Oregon, and thought: The tide goes out. The tide comes in. It’s awful hard for a Midwest gal to tell which way it’s going most times, but that ain’t no reason to just sit there.
And with that, she sashayed out along the sand until she finally saw the man to replace her last mistake. Bingo! She slipped off the shoulder-bag which held all her worldly possessions and let it drop to the sand. Then, with her best dancer’s grace, she bent straight from the waist to pick up a smooth skipping stone. She kept her toned legs straight and waved her tight tush in the sun and ocean breeze. After a slow breath, she brought her curly head of auburn hair up one vertebra at a time until her torso stuck out horizontal to the beach. She shifted her weight to her right foot, turned her left foot out, and swept that left leg high up behind her, balancing it with an arched back and raised chin.
This was her “gypsy ballerina” move. Or her “wild child” kick. Not that it mattered. The way her it made her butt clench and her boobs try to pop out of her bikini, the target never noticed the finer points.
She turned her face left, caught the guy’s stare through her wild curls, and smiled.
He sat on a towel a little further up from the surf. Maybe thirty-four? Clean cut. Fair haired. A little beak-nosed with a short scar over his left eyebrow, but handsome in a skinny, sun-starved kind of way. New-looking beach bag. New-looking bathing suit, bright green tee-shirt, towel, sunglasses. And all alone on this stretch of beach.
Bonnie guessed he’d driven out to Lincoln City spur of the moment. Work was shitty. Needed a break. Only realized after he checked into, like, the only unbooked hotel room in all of Lincoln City, that he’d better equip himself. Never knew what hot babe you might meet down on the beach, right?
So right.
“Hi!” she called. She swung down her foot, shook back her curls and arched her back a little.
“Hey,” the guy said.
“I’m Bonnie!” she called to him, not moving closer. Not yet. Never scare off your dinner ticket.
“Norm,” he answered, then touched his mouth. “Um...uh...Norman.”
She gave her musical laugh and stretched out her hand that held the stone towards him. She knew the swivel of her body, the light swing of her tits would keep his focus. “Wanna see a stone I just found?”
Make him come to you.
There was hesitation. Lot of guys were like that – stuck watching life, never committing. Norman nervously brushed his hand on his towel. “Uh...”
“Come on,” Bonnie said. “It’s a once upon a time kind of thing ‘cause I’m going to skip it!”
It broke his pattern. He blinked at her, looked past her to the steadily rolling waves of the pacific, and allowed himself a lopsided smile. He pushed himself up and scuffled towards her.
Something inside Bonnie sighed with a rush of pleasure when he stopped a foot away and it was all she could do not to throw her suntanned little body at him, wrap herself around his pale skin like a child round her mamma’s leg. But that eagerness was what had freaked her last mark. The guy had started looking around more, checking his Blackberry for messages all the time. He’d been about to declare his “business” trip over and drop her. Bonnie knew the signs.
So she’d dropped him first. Fucked him so hard last night that he slept like a corn truck hit him. That let her get up early and scoop all the cash from his wallet. She almost took the credit cards, Blackberry, watch, and wedding ring too, but she’d almost gone to jail once for pawning a watch and using stolen cards. And those Blackberries, iPhones and stuff—a guy told her how you could track them anywhere. Like they had homing beacons inside them and shit, and they caused cancer in your brain.
So she usually left with just cash, and not so much of that because the guys she picked mostly used plastic.
But cash had kept her going so far. Surfing the tides of life. That’s what she’d read in a magazine once that a girl could do. That’s what got her moving west. Of course she’d wanted Hollywood and said so, but the long-haul trucker who picked her up in a bar outside Omaha must have got his directions wrong.
Just so’s she got moving south before fall, she guessed it was okay. The tides, right? Like Norman here.
“So you want to throw it for me?” she asked him now, reaching out her hand, needing to make contact.
“Um. Uh.” He finally took the stone from her and flushed a little when he their fingers touched.
Bonnie quickly wrapped her arms under breasts, plumping them up for him, seeing his eyes receive the invite, the pupils dilate. She didn’t have to even look down to know his body got her, even if his mind was overthinking.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
“No.” Quick tinkling laugh. “Just got a couple days off. I’m with a dance troupe in Portland.”
“Oh? Which one? I live in Portland. I go to dance performances all the time.”
“You wouldn’t know us. We travel. A traveling dance troupe. Modern dance, you know?” She obviously couldn’t do the ballerina thing with him. He’d ask her what ballet piece? What role do you play? Or maybe – you’re not skinny like a real ballerina! But the modern dance thing, that was like an instant inspiration because she’d actually studied some modern dance back in Nebraska before her family went kaboom and she had to leave. Why hadn’t she used that before?
“Ah,” he said, looking at her funny.
“What about you?”
“I don’t dance.”
She snorted and pushed him gently with her finger. They walked together down to the water where the sand was wet and smooth and the waves ran across it in slow, long licks. Bonnie stood at his left side and felt her toes dig deep into the sand, the waves lick her ankles. Then, so suddenly it took her breath away, Um Uh Norman bent and snapped the skipping stone out across the water at a perfect angle.
It hit and sank.
Bonnie laughed without thinking and Norman shot her a black look. In desperation, she grabbed his face with both her hands and kissed him hard until his mouth opened and his body stepped into hers and relief flooded through her.
The tide was coming in.
~~~~
Four nights later, in the bedroom of a deluxe suite of Lincoln’s City’s best hotel, Bonnie lay nude on top of the tangle of sweaty sheets with Norman sleeping in the dark beside her, and wondered whether it was time to try to get him to take her south with him.
He had a good paying job in Portland, sure. Computer stuff. Smart analyzing of cisterns or something. Which Bonnie thought meant wine vats, but that would be in San Francisco, right? Which was California. So he could work there. And he liked movies and parties, he said. Which meant Hollywood.
But what mattered most was he was drunk with her now. Damn, for an older guy, he was doing her like three times a day. So much she’d started holding him off so he didn’t get tired of her too soon.
And she’d got him buying her things. And asking all about her dance troupe and her family, all the made-up stuff she’d used so often now it almost felt real to her. For her part, she’d learned not to touch him suddenly or ever ever make fun of him because he was real sensitive. Probably why he’d never settled down with a wife and kids. He hadn’t found a girl as good as Bonnie at reading men, who could give him what he needed so that she could get what she needed.
“On the news today,” Norman said suddenly and Bonnie almost jumped off the bed with a shriek, “there was a story about a serial killer who they think’s working his way down the Oregon coast.”
He rolled over to face her. The room curtains were open just enough so the moonlight made him look like a vampire. But not the sexy kind. More like the kind who’d rip her to pieces.
“You still awake?” she squeaked.
“They say the killer takes on different disguises and personas, making up entire backgrounds which he can share with others to fool them and put them at their ease.”
Was he really talking about her? Had she said something stupid that didn’t fit with something else she said? She racked her brains as she lay there with her breath stopped in her throat. She’d never done great in school. Never been good at much of anything but fucking and dancing, but she always thought she told a good story. Maybe it was only good when the guys she chose weren’t too smart. Norman was smart.
“You ever tell a falsehood to put people at their ease, Bonnie?”
He knew. Oh God, he knew...he knew...something. She was glad her back was to the window so he couldn’t see how her face was burning hot. Her lips were trembling.
“I...sometimes lie a little,” she said and she hated how high and tiny her voice sounded. She was usually so smooth. The way he’d acted totally in lust with her had knocked her off guard.
“How old are you?”
Twenty-one. “Eighteen.”
“That’s pretty young to be traveling with a professional dance troupe.”
“Um...no. Dancers are young.”
“And do you think they’ve fixed the venue problem you said your troupe ran into when they arrived in Portland?”
“Hunh?”
“Because you haven’t even called them once in the last four days, have you? Just how long of a break did they say you should take before returning to dance?”
“They, um... They...” Her tiny voice broke for real and she sniffed. “I...you’re right...I lied about that. When we got to Portland the troupe broke up. They canceled our show and...well, honestly we sucked. So, like, everyone just kind of said ‘See ya’ and took off for wherever.”
“You to Lincoln City.”
She sniffed again and wiped her nose with a stretch of crumpled sheet. “I like the ocean. I want to go to Los Angeles.”
He stared at her a long time in the semi-darkness, his eyes unreadable.
Finally he just rolled over without saying a word and soon she heard the sound of his gentle snoring again.
She just didn’t know if it was real.
~~~~
The next few days passed in a blur. Still lots of shopping and fucking, but the talking had stopped, the weather had turned towards rain showers, and Norman was getting scary.
Bonnie snapped closed the little white purse he’d bought her yesterday to match this white dress she wore and chewed on her lips. Norman had stopped them at a dingy little roadside store set in the wilderness between the built-up parts of town. The store said it sold fishing tackle, worms, and guns. Norman was inside bargaining hard while Bonnie waited just outside. The clouds overhead grew darker by the second.
Should she just leave him?
Because even getting too close to him now, except when he wanted sex, set him off. He’d whirl on her with his pale face so tight with rage it looked like his skin was going to peel off his bones. And once, in a knife-making shop down the hill from the hotel where they were staying Norman spun around at her with a little fish-gutting knife in his hand and he looked like he want to use it on her.
So...go?
She could handle scary men; she had before. But...that story of the serial killer going down the Oregon coast. Of course it wasn’t Norman, but it could be, in the way all men could go that little bit over the edge.
So...
The door of the worms-and-guns shop banged open and Norman stomped out. He gestured with his chin for her to follow him to the car, a blue Audi with leather seats that she’d loved riding around in this past week-plus. Like the off-and-on gentleman he was, he grabbed the passenger door and held it open for her.
“Just stay here,” he said after she slid in. “I can’t buy a gun in there without waiting for a background check, but the guy told me about a guy lives up a trail back there who wants to sell privately. Probably there’s a kick-back involved, but there’s no waiting.”
“Sweetie, why do want a gun?” Bonnie asked.
“If we’re taking the highway south to L.A., I’m damn well going to be packing,” he said. He gave her a lopsided grin which was the closest he ever got to a smile. “Less rain down south.”
Bonnie’s heart flipped over. Her blood rushed up to her face in tingles of excitement and she almost reached out to grab his face and kiss him. But he’d already pulled back was swinging the door closed.
Then he was gone and Bonnie’s mind raced. The tide was definitely in. Things were happening at last. And whatever else Norman might be....
She stopped there, mouth hanging loose, as she realized what she was doing – hoping so hard she’d stopped thinking. Because now that she thought about what knew about Norman, she realized it wasn’t good. Not just the moodiness. It was his wallet and cards. They all said Norman Tackas, which sounded kind of Greek. Norman didn’t look Greek. And the driver’s license picture in his wallet was really too dark and scratched up to see the picture, like he’d dropped it in the mud and run over it on purpose.
And this car he drove?
Bonnie’s heart began to pound and she suddenly pounded on the glove compartment, searching through the documents there when it opened. Ownership papers! And they proved... They proved...
The owner was Alina Tackas.
Bonnie dropped the papers. Then frantically collected them up off her lap and stuffed them back into the glove compartment.
Was Alina Norman’s wife? His mother? Did it matter? If he’d killed her... Or maybe killed her and her husband, Norman Tackas...
There was a loud crack of thunder and Bonnie startled, banging her right elbow. Raindrops started splatting the windshield and it just set her off even more. The air was too close. She had to get outside. She had to get out.
But as she scrambled out of the car, the full downpour hit and it was like even the weather was under Norman’s command, ordering her to Stay here! Drenching her all-white outfit in seconds. Making it hard to see. She didn’t have a key to their room. Her bag with all her stuff was there. But maybe the desk manager would let her in. He knew her. She and Norman had been in and out of there for over a week now.
She just had to go. Now.
Call it the weather freaking her out. Call it her intuition finally kicking in. But little Bonnie Bluell hadn’t made it halfway across the country mostly unscathed without obeying her gut when it said move.
Squinting against the downpour, she oriented herself by the front of the worm/gun shop and walked about twenty steps out of the gravel parking lot until she hit the road and turned left. She made sure she stayed on the gravel lining the side of the road as she walked because the rain was almost sheeting now and a stupid driver who didn’t slow down wouldn’t even see her.
Eight steps. A hundred. Two hundred maybe. And the rain finally died down enough that she could see where she was going. The cottages on either side of the road ahead. The businesses. Getting back to the civilized part of this chopped-up city.
She was clutching herself as she walked, she realized. Not because of the rain, but out of nerves. She was leaving another man and this one might get real upset about it. She had to walk faster. Maybe she could cross the road and hitch her way the rest of the way. How much further? Ten? Fifteen minute walk? Norman would be at least that long, wouldn’t he? He liked to bargain. He’d want to spend some time examining the gun he was going to buy. He’d want to wait for the rain to stop before heading back to the car.
Blinking through the rain, across the road she saw the glass craft store she’d gone to with Norman a couple days ago. Floor-to-ceiling with glass sculptures and Japanese ball floats and wind chimes and stained glass. She remembered the owner was a woman who knew everyone in town. Jean something.
Instinct ran Bonnie across the road and into the store. The door jingled so loud and different from the roaring rain outside that she almost jumped back.
“Shut the door! Shut the door!” laughed the big, round white-haired woman who wound her way out from the back where she’d been arranging some sort of display.
Jean.
And without even thinking it through, Bonnie blurted, “There’s a serial killer coming down the Oregon coast, isn’t there?”
Jean stopped between two display shelves of clear and colored glass sculptures and lowered her double chin to study Bonnie. Drowned field rat. That’s what she looked like, she bet. So drenched her curls flopped limp around her shoulders. Lips quivering. White dress splashed with road mud. Hands clutching the silliest little white purse.
Bonnie didn’t care. “A serial killer,” she repeated. “Did you read a story about him? They have any pictures? Anyone say what he looked like?”
“Now dear,” Jean said at last like she was speaking to a child. “The papers told a story, yes. About a serial killer. But not coming down the coast. Heavens. You don’t think the police could find him if he stuck to the 101? I think there was a report of a woman murdered in Seaside and one in Willamina. A couple women in Portland. You see? He’s moving inland, if anything, not towards us.”
But Norman had come from Portland. “Any pictures? When was the last killing?”
“There are no pictures,” Jean said with exaggerated care. “The only description is of a thin man, average height, probably blond, into role playing. And the last murder was...I’m not sure I remember...maybe eight days ago? Would you like some tea? And a towel, of course.”
Eight days. Eight days. That was the day she met Norman. Blond. Wearing all new clothes. Like maybe he had to burn all his old clothes. Because of blood stains or gun powder or...
Jean had a towel around her shoulders now. She was murmuring something about the tea in just a minute when the front door of the shop burst open with a burst of jingling and Norman stood there, the pupils of his eyes shrunk to black dots, his clothes and fair hair soaked and wild.
“Where the hell did you think you were going to go?” he snarled at her.
“B-back,” Bonnie said, her speech slipping. “B-back to the hotel. The rain. The thunder. You wasn’t there. I got scared.”
“Liar!”
“No. I didn’t know how long you was going to be! And it was so hot in the car! I got claustrophobiac!”
“You’re lying! Lying!” He lunged towards her and grabbed her by the arm.
“No!”
“You were leaving me!” He shook her. “You were going to go back, take all my money and just leave! Even after I said I’d take you south! Even then!”
“No! I just... I just...”
There was a clicking sound like you always heard in movies and Bonnie spun as far as she could, knocking a shelf and hearing something fall and smash, to see Jean standing about three feet back with a shotgun raised up to her shoulder, aimed square at Norman.
He glared at the fat woman, breathing hard so his skinny chest looked like a rickety billows. He didn’t let go of Bonnie’s arm but it was almost like she wasn’t there anymore. It was all Norman and Jean.
“You don’t want to do that,” he said.
“Oh, don’t I?” the store owner said.
“No. Because if you shot me, you’d probably half miss and take out a whole bundle of your nice glass pieces here. Then I would undoubtedly stumble and fall over, dragging Bonnie here with me. I suspect the two of us could probably take out another forty percent of your inventory on the way down. So you’d be left with a dead body to explain to the police and an incredible amount of damage which I suspect you’d have trouble explaining to your insurance company. Assuming you’ve even been able to find an insurance company that would cover an imminent disaster like this collection of breakables.”
All those words was like a spell, Bonnie saw. Like a cobra or something. Because while he talked and Jean’s eyes followed with horror the picture Norman painted for her, Norman kept sidling closer to her.
Now he grabbed her gun away from her and faked a baseball swing of it at the shelf near the wall that held the probably the most expensive sculptures in the store. Jean gasped and stepped backwards with her hands raised up, shaking her head, wordlessly saying over and over, Just go. Go.
Norman laughed harshly and backed out of the store into the rain, toting the shotgun in one hand and pulling Bonnie after him with the other.
Outside, he threw the shotgun along the wet pavement. Bonnie winced as the gun hit and skittered but it didn’t go off. Why didn’t he take it? Too traceable? Or he already had one!
Then Norman was shoving Bonnie into the passenger side of the Audi. He slammed the door after her.
A second later he was in the driver’s seat and roaring the Audi back onto the road, driving south past their hotel and onward until they were out of the town altogether. Out into the rainy nothing. He was trying to find a place to kill her and dump her body. Her luck had run out. Her instincts, her “surfing the tides” had failed her. This was the end of the line.
And because it was, she could feel a pipeline of something very deep and strong snap inside her, gush out hot in her chest, then drain away cold and empty.