Fury

They say innocent men don't run. They aren't supposed to run.

I wanted this to be reassuring for the people who care about me and know what I am and am not capable of, and what I can and cannot control anymore. But when I put this pen to this paper it occurred to me that this looks even worse. R. Budd Dwyer, innocent or not, insisted he was. He said it right up to the point he shoved that magnum between his teeth for the whole world to watch live, making sure to water the seed of doubt one last time before sticking a magnum in between his teeth.

Remember that innocent men don't run and the world is simpler. Remember that innocent men don't run and justice is easier to serve.

Remember that innocent men can never be run out of town and you don't have to worry about the weight of guilt on your conscience. Afterall, you're innocent and you have nothing to run from. Except me.

But I'm about to tell you the story. After I do, I'll plant my seed of doubt. I'll leave it hanging from the ceiling fixture.

Remember that innocent men run all the fucking time, and maybe you'll learn a thing or two.

 

* * *

 

Like all massacres, this begins with one person's childhood.

In the summer of 1989, I was 10-years-old. The retractable blue leash I had bought for my Cocker Spaniel, Reilly, earlier that day was connected to his collar as he both walked down the road.

In our neighborhood, it wasn't unusual for children to walk unaccompanied down the street. Our town had a population of a thousand or so and blood had yet to be spilled on any of the streets. In our own way, we all knew that danger was off-limits to us. The ones who want to cause trouble don't much like the quiet. And that street was quiet. Not a sound other than the birds, his panting and the clack of his claws on the street.

Stopping in the shade of a tree, I unscrewed the squirt bottle and poured a stream in my mouth. Riley looked at me with his tongue hanging out the side of his muzzle, panting and almost begging for a drink as well. I knelt down and let him lap up the stream.

When we resumed the walk and started traveling uphill, down the street without a sidewalk, a shadow peeked over the horizon and blotted out the sun in a square. They say there's always a fight or flight response to fear. People had always called me a fighter. I guess that's true because I didn't run. Remember, innocent men don't run. I held my fist forward out in front of me like a crossing guard. They could see the boy holding his hand out, but not the dog.

A swerve, a squeal, a thud, a yelp, and a blood-soaked leash severed and hanging from my hand weren't enough to get me to run anywhere but toward the crushed body of Riley. Riley. Who was yelping with his hind leg kicking, eyes shut tight, soaked in blood spilled from the gaping, red, sinewy gash on his neck. His front paws were flattened and torn to nothing. It was grizzly, but I didn't run to get help. I stayed. Remember, good boys don't run. And big boys don't cry. I cried.

A middle-aged bald man got out of the driver's side seat and grabbed his head when he saw the mangled, twitching, whining carcass of a boy's dog. Tears poured from his eyes, "Oh, no… Oh, God." He said.

Behind me, a woman gasped and suppressed a scream. "Don't look, baby. Don't look," she said as she touched my shoulder. She was middle-aged, black and had make-up cascading down her face, carried by her tears. She reached for me and I flailed my arms with a scream. Recoiling, she stepped backward, hand twitching toward me as I knelt down in his blood, his piss and his shit then ran my hand across his head and stopped on the gash in a half-hearted attempt to staunch the bleeding.

Riley panted and whined and bled on my leg and I held my hand against the fleshy chasm on his neck. The adults there knew the score and didn't know how to tell a kid they just damaged beyond repair that home team is about to give up the ghost.

Blood sneaked in between my fingers and the sound of the man drowned out as I felt everything in me getting angrier. A low hum rattled my eardrums. My hands and face felt hot and sweaty. My crossed legs vibrated and their muscles contracted. The blood and everything else started soaking through to my skin, I thought I had pissed myself. My eyes watered and my mouth twitched into a teeth-baring grimace. I felt a pulse in my forehead and my throat was on fire. At that moment, I wanted blood. Just not my dog's. I didn't want my dog's blood.

Riley coughed and vomitted onto my jeans and into the street. His eyes shot open and rolled around in their sockets and blood began to pour from his mouth like water from a faucet. With a final groan, his rattled breath escaped his throat with the blood and he stopped panting. His face was covered with red, his eyes glassed over and a bloody tongue hanged out of his mouth. I didn't feel as angry anymore.

That was the first time I saw something die. That was the first time I knew what fury really was. What it is for me.

Dad dug the grave later that day. He also laid Riley in there, wrapped in the blanket the shelter gave to us on the day of his adoption. Dad let me lay the broken leash on top of Riley's body and allowed me to sit and watch while he poured the dirt back into the hole.

Two years later, my Father and I walked down a sidewalk in downtown Liberty, Missouri on our way to the dentist's office. The street was so busy and so packed with cars we decided it would be faster and safer to park down the block and go the rest of the way by foot.

Earlier that day, he had given me one of his world-famous whoopings for stealing money from his wallet. The money we needed for gas so we could make it to the dreaded dentist. If you're smart, you can see what exactly his mindset was. He stormed up the stairs while I was playing on my PC. Even hearing those stomps, I stood still and calm with my eyes focused on my video game. Remember, innocent men don't run. When the door flew open and he grabbed me by the arm, smacked me upside the head and demanded the location of the money, I sobbed, but I didn't try to run. It only took a slap on the ass for him to realize that I wasn't giving up that easily.

He stormed through my room, flipped over my mattress and emptied my drawers. Up went the rug and the clothes in the closet and back down crumpled onto the floor. Somewhere in between his petty swears and another hole punched through my door, it occurred to him that maybe I wasn't the thief he had always pegged me for becoming. When Mom got home and said that she filled the tank earlier that morning… I can picture his face now even though I didn't see it. When the truth was revealed, I felt I had absorbed every single bit of the anger he felt on top of my own.

Whether it makes me a good son or just an average son, I remember him best for the things he did after his tantrums. Mom told me that a lot of Vietnam vets came back like this. She told me to think of it as his alter-ego. A soldier that didn't have the good fortune to die on the battlefield and occasionally wants to check up on the world he helped damage against his will. When Dad came back there would be a "sorry". This time there were apologies and promises for ice cream and a video game after the dentist appointment.

Despite these promises, my blood still boiled. It continued to do so even while we were walking down the sidewalk later that day. I refused to let him hold my hand and he obliged as long as I walked in front of him.

I tried to calm down when I finally noticed the old woman in a large, blue, floral-patterned muumuu at the crosswalk. The crosswalk we were going to use. Chivalrous "gentleman" that he was, he tapped the back of my shoulder and I knew what he wanted me to do. When the light switched and the little green man gave us the example, I placed a hand under the old woman's elbow and she laughed. That little old lady laugh that indicates amusement at something adorable. We hear it from our aunts, moms, grandmas and elementary school teachers. Only sometimes from strangers. Most know not to laugh at other people.

As embarrassing as it was every single time I did these Chaucer deeds as a kid, this one particularly got to me. I didn't let go of her bare, wrinkled elbow. And I certainly didn't give into my temptations to start running with my hand still wrapped around her frail arms to see how fast she could run before falling flat on her face. Remember, innocent men don't run and don't drag others with them.

I gripped ever-so-slightly tighter, clenched my jaw ever-so-slightly stronger, and ground my teeth ever-so-slightly shorter. As we inched ever-so-slightly closer to the other side, just outside of the dentist office, just as we took the first step onto the sidewalk; that's when my life gets ever-so-slightly different.

The difference between watching a human die and watching a dog die is different, dammit. I loved my dog and didn't know the old lady. Some say it's their soul passing through you on their way up to heaven. Some say that it's an instinctual part of human nature adopted over years of evolution. Whatever the case, it's not the same!

I stepped up to the sidewalk and stood waiting for her to place her frail foot on the grey pavement. She would turn to me give me a smile and begin a "Thank you."

My hand was still on her elbow when she gave me that condescending look that only an old lady can give you. The elderly always think they're better because they've managed to put up with life longer than you. Maybe they are. There's something admirable about that. Remember that thing about feeling a special something when someone dies next to you.

She coughed blood out of her mouth and onto my face. I flinched and let go of that wrinkled elbow and my Dad grabbed me and made me back up from her. He approached her and the whites of her eyes flushed blood-red and rolled into her sockets. A hideous gasp for breath and a series of gurgles emanated from her as dark red blood bubbled out of her mouth. It washed into her powder white hair and strands dangled from her head like bloodied nerve endings. Dad caught her on the way down and set her down on the ground for me to gawk at. Everything clotting, the look of pain, the hair like Medusa's serpent-covered head. Her blue muumuu had soaked through and her old wrinkled breasts became visible through the soaked cloth. The appearance of the lady herself was a hell of a lot more terrifying than the thought of watching her die. It all happened so quickly. Her soul gave me a tip of its hat and I shuddered when I looked at her black pupils engulf the hazel of her eyes as a rattled breath escaped from a dead throat.

My Dad looked back at me and told me to run to the car. Remember, innocent men don't run. I ran to the car. He threw himself through the door into the dentist's office and called 911. He left the old woman on the ground for me to observe until the crowd of people shut out the sight. I didn't hear any more about it.

I didn't get my video game or ice cream that day. What I got was confirmation. Not then, mind you. That took a bit longer. I got that the day of "The Red Carpet."

 

 

* * *

 

 

They say serial killers are often shy as children. I'd say I fit the mold. I didn't like sitting up in front of the class with everyone's eyes on the back of my head. I didn't like having someone inches behind me for 90 minutes straight. I didn't like having to pretend I was paying attention. And I didn't like the idea of teach' getting a whiff of the vodka I put in my water bottle.

The thing about vodka is this: Dad's love it and it smells a lot like their Rogaine. Kids love it and it looks just like water.

Just like my Dad, I was one of the fortunate few who was as docile as a kitten when they had a drink in their hand. That was step one.

What else do they say about them? There's that old term that everyone can figure out the definition of. The thing so deplorable fate itself seemed to give it a title that sounds unpleasant: Zoosadism. They cannot get enough of that as kids. There's a certain allure to picking on something that can't tattle. In the case of a pet turtle, it forgets it ever happened relatively soon. A cat: It just wants nothing to do with you and nobody really notices. A dog: Well, it just thinks it did something to deserve it. I'm glad I never got another dog.

A baby: They forget. But never truly forget. There's that lingering instinct. That air that stagnates around the person. The air of a certain someone who did a certain thing to a certain cousin that resulted in a certain pacemaker being implanted at eight-years-old.

One pre-packaged heart attack, a few dead wild birds, a "missing" hamster, and one blinded cat later and there was no going back. Sooner or later. It's like an addiction. Every single hit makes the next more imminent. They talk all the time about slippery slopes and it doesn't hit you that you're on one until you're already tumbling down. Putting forth that effort suddenly takes more energy than inaction.

That's where the drink comes in. As long as I stayed docile as a kitten, nobody got hurt. Not when the jocks decided to rip me a new one. Not when the teachers gave me an F. Not when that blind cat scratches me. Not when I'm rejected for the dozenth time when I ask a girl to the prom. Not on the day I graduated and was booed when I walked up the aisle. Not when my first girlfriend cheats on me. Not when she comes back later, pregnant. Not when I quit college to work in the basement of some corporate building, sorting mail for people who make twice as much as me. Not when I'm almost immediately transferred to New York after. Not when we get married. Not when blood pours out of her when she's five months along. Not when we scream and panic and cry. Not when we hear the word "miscarriage". Not when I see the body. And certainly not when I realize exactly where my life was at. 30-years-old with a wife of questionable fidelity at a job I hate with the only staple of the relationship being hauled off to the crematorium.

And that's when I'm at my job. That day. The 13th. One month ago.

A Big Gulp of Powerade with a splash of Everclear was closed in my hand. I was sitting at my desk, looking for the recipient contact and having trouble focusing. I could tell one more sip would keep me from being able to read the font. It would also keep me from seeing the corpse again. Eight years and I still see it on the slab. Its bones and joints that were sharp and jagged as they pressed against his thin crimson skin. With a tilted head, it gave me eye contact; with one black eye open and the other closed in a wink as the towel flew over its head and it was dragged out.

I took a big, fat swig.

Later in the day, after losing an entire batch of mail in a hallway and witnessing the subsequent search of my basement when I stumbled into the big wig's office slurring that the cart is gone, I removed my nametag and held it in my hand. For once I knew the score when they didn't. Home team was about to give up the moonshine. The bottle gave me a tip of its hat as it flew into the trashcan and splashed a bit onto the tile.

For the first time in 13 years, I didn't feel so docile. The bigwig asked the other employees to leave while she talked to me privately. Eyeing me down in that condescending fucking look that the old lady gave me. She sat down in my chair, crossed her legs and massaged her temple.

"You've been good to us," she said in that rare voice only a woman who's been smoking for the past 40 years can make. "But I can't say that I'm surprised and now I have my proof."

I came in the day after my baby died.

"I can't let you handle our mail like this."

I came in when I couldn't handle it anymore.

"And I can't let you stay on, knowing that this is what you've been doing."

The sweat pooled in my closed fist around my nametag and I wobbled against the closed door. Fighting back my tears and fighting back my grimace. Fighting back the urge. The absolute urge to turn around and run out the door because remember, innocent men don't run.

The card cut into my hand and alcohol-thinned blood dripped into the sweat that soaked the cracks of my curled fingers. I held it out without her asking and she grabbed without looking. Looking at the sweaty, bloody, now useless card covered in a particular mark. She stuffed it in her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and a half-empty pack of cigarettes. She put one in her mouth and lit up. She knew I smoked down there, and now it was her turn. Inhaling sharply and pulling the cigarette - now stained with her red lipstick - out of her mouth and held it in between her bony fingers.

"You're a good man."

Why can't anybody…

"And I like you."

Leave me the fuck alone?

"So I'm not going to have you dragged out of here."

Let me leave.

"Just gather your things,"

I want to leave.

"And leave the premises, please."

I stood with my heart still racing. The embarrassment and anger of a life upended. Not in an instant, but over time. That slippery slope, as they call it.

She took another drag and held the cigarette close to her face. Green mucous trailed from the cigarette and back into her red lips.

With a sharp inhale, a labored wheeze and cough sprang from her throat and she hunched over while grabbing her chest. Her phlegmy voice wavered with each exhale and wheeze, the cigarette fell from her fingers and I saw that the lipstick on it, wasn't lipstick at all. She fell to the floor with a thud and the chair was thrown the opposite direction. Hearing the thud, the two employees ran in and held her head to the side in what seemed to be pre-planned.

Come to find out later she had lung cancer and was supposed to have a year left. The industrious woman that she was, she was happiest at work and didn't seek pity from her staff. It was a shame that I was the last person she saw.

Seeing someone die for the second time wouldn't be the most eventful part of the day either. Because this was the day of "The Red Carpet."

They say serial killers get caught because something sets them over the edge. I'd say I fit that mold as well.

 

* * *

 

I went to the bar as most drunks do. I still had five hours left in the day and I wasn't prepared to explain myself just yet. I sat with a five dollar glass of beer foaming in front of me, longing to have my bottle of Everclear back. But it was just evidence now. Evidence of two wrongdoings.

I sat with the mug and let the foam pop out of the rim and fall onto my fist. There wasn't much else to ponder about other than shotgunning that, whoofing down a burger and going home to put my very own .44 magnum in between my very own teeth. There was that ever-growing bitter taint that spread throughout the facets of my life like the nasty-as-hell Everclear in that Big Gulp filled with Sprite. Riley rattled and whined and bled into my hands again. That old lady halted her smile for a chance to hack her blood onto my face before keeling over. My child gave me a wink before having the tarp pulled over its head. Because it was one big joke. And every joke needs a punchline. And a punchline only works if it's unexpected. I shoved the drink away, put a ten on the counter and took a cab home.

That twenty-story monument to nonstop mistakes was down the street when I told the cabby to stop so I could walk the rest of the way. When he asked why I told him that I needed the air. I plopped $10.00 in his hand and walked a straight line down home. Pushing past strangers on that crowded street in New York.

There was that aura when I got to the door with my keys in hand. That stagnant air of betrayal. Of cruelty. It stank just like last time.

I opened the door and lifted it up off its hinges to be as quiet as possible. And I knew I wasn't noticed when I heard those moans coming from the bedroom. The real joke. The real topper. The switcheroo, as they call it.

There's that everlasting trope of the man coming home early from work to find his wife in bed with another man. A fight ensues and everybody is on the man's side. Just so long as he kicks the guy's ass and leaves the girl unharmed. But what if there was something different. What if one variable changed? Afterall, the punchlines need to be unexpected.

Who exactly isn't going to be giggling like that old fucking lady that I helped across the street when the man swings open the door and sees them still engaged in their leg lock. Both gasping with pleasure as their long hair floats in front of their faces. And both of their breasts heave up and down with each thrust. And the entire house is filled with the scent of two cunts rubbed fucking raw. And the punchline: That's why I didn't need a DNA test the first time she slept around!

My wife's eyes shot open and she gasped one last time before I stomped over to the closet and grabbed my gun. It was empty, but I needed the feel of it in my hand. The brunette bitch next to her let out a scream and I pointed the gun at her and told her to shut her fucking mouth.

Then it finally went quiet. High-pitched labored breaths came from them both as I paced the room. My eyelids twitched and I felt the handle of the gun grow slippery with my perspiration as I whipped it around and screamed. When the brunette bitch touched my wife's shoulder in comfort, I felt it all coming to the top yet again. There was a fury that I hadn't experienced before. They say innocent men don't run. I stood right there. Loud breaths came from my nose and burned my lips. The six-chamber of the revolver rattled in its place, producing that unique click of metal on metal. My legs shook and I was thankful I kept the gun unloaded. It slid out of my slick hand and onto the floor along with my tears.

"I'm sorry for everything I did to you," she said, sitting there naked with the brunette bitch's hand twitching for her shoulder like the middle-aged black woman who saw me half-heartedly attempt to save my dying dog. Back when I first saw something die.

I marched over and back-handed the brunette bitch across the face and she recoiled so much that she fell off the bed. My wife didn't even scream. She didn't object. The brunette bitch was getting off lighter than any man would. Locking eyes, I felt my hands lifting against my will. I really, really needed a bit more catharsis and the brunette bitch still hadn't gotten off the floor.

When I grabbed her throat and tightened my grip everything emptied out of me and into my fingers as they dug deeper and deeper into her flesh. I felt the air trap in her throat and I felt my spine shiver with adrenaline.

Her tongue shot out and her eyes bulged out of her skull. Sharp wheezes infiltrated into her throat through my grasp and she gave me that horrid wink as she tried to wrap her eyelids around her protruding eyeballs that grew more and more bloodshot with each second. That baby, that one thing that might keep this thing together. That one thing that we could be proud of. That one thing that might not be one big waste of time. That one thing that winked at me with its alien eyes before they carted it off. That tiny corpse that only looked vaguely human. That little copy of me.

As soon as my grip eased, she went into a coughing fit and rolled over to her side. I fell off the bed and huddled into the corner. In her coughing hysterics, she crawled across the bed and to the side where the brunette bitch had been laying silent for so long. Her scream came out muffled past her partially crushed larynx but it was enough for me to hear beyond my sobs.

When I saw the brunette bitch laying on the floor, my heart sank. Her freshly wall-eyed face shot a glance at both sides of the room and her face was coated with strands of blood that stood juxtaposed against her flesh like grotesque veins. The thick coat of blood on her chin and chest shined like oil off of the fading sunlight that poked through the blinds. When my wife shook her and tried to stir her to life, I felt that tip of the hat that the soul gives on its way to wherever yet again.

My wife's hysterics were interrupted more and more by her coughs and more and more by spurts of blood coming from her screaming mouth. They splashed down like crimson rain on the corpse in the room and I could do nothing but stand in shock. I couldn't run to help. What do they say about that?

A final wail came from her mouth and she slumped down onto the brunette bitch. Both covered in tears and sweat and snot and spit and blood, they laid naked and intertwined in a necrophilic union.

Repressing my vomit, I stormed out of the apartment and into the crowded streets. Those people walked right on past me. Some got out of the way and others didn't. I didn't pick and choose what happened to whom. My hands burned and my throat opened to let out a scream as I shoved my way past the rabble. I laid my hand on too many people to count as I pushed my way through the perpetual crowd of New York. With sweat dripping down into every part of my body. With every tendon on fire. With every single fucking molecule of carbon in me desperate to crank out an objective laugh but a desperate cry, I moved and fiddled and fondled through that crowd. I told the cab driver I needed air, but I had yet to get any. Those fucking people crowded around me almost intentionally. I could worm my way out of the rabble, the first cough came from a person down the street, near the door I just exited.

His voice didn't carry, but the screams of the people next to him did. Bloody vomit ejected from his mouth and onto the crowd like mist. He collapsed and others fell like dominoes. A large cacophony of hacks and gags emanated from a larger and larger span of the crowd.

A sea of pained faces looked up towards the sky for a last look for answers before more fell, covered in scarlet vomit. They spat and screamed and collapsed into each other with panic and pain. A woman screamed past me with her eyes rolling in their sockets like Riley. A torrent of blood spit out into the sky in a sequential line leading up to me. The warm and sticky liquid stuck to my face like syrup would and filled the void of my vision with a red filter. Through that filter, I saw them all collapse one by one and slump over each other in a big wave like one at a baseball game. Their limbs twitched and arms shot up desperately towards the pile behind me grew bigger.

Screams echoed over the beeps of traffic and eventually drowned them out completely as drivers exited their cars to see the pile grow bigger and bigger. They coated the sidewalk and each other in the blood that shot from their mouths like hoses. A humid air grew around as each and every facet of their life filled the air and splattered on the buildings and cars and pavement. They say the total body count was 35. Only one man stood amidst the corpses. That man ran. He ran as fast as he could.

Coated in vomit, that man retreated into an alleyway and shed the outer layer of his clothing. His jacket was ruined by the gore it was covered in. The hat had soaked through and dyed his hair red. His skin was hot and sticky with everyone's blood. He panted and cried and questioned and the answer came to him.

When he was a boy, that dog finally died when he cradled him. That old lady croaked when the angry young boy grabbed her elbow. Those animals died when they got too close. His boss succumbed when she touched his blood and sweat. Now that man's wife and her lover laid dead in a now abandoned apartment that stood over a sea of corpses. There's a certain fury that doesn't die with one person. It doesn't die with several. It dies with the person who carries it. And that fury can kill whoever that person touches.

Now the man sits in a hotel room several cities over. Wanted by the police. Known by everyone. A face on every corner. And a pair of eyes that can only be seen in someone who's guilty. Because that man ran and innocent men don't run.

Fury is in that man's touch. There's fury in his fingertips that carries over into everything. It spills over like the foam in the beer he almost drank hours before he unveiled the red carpet outside his home.

Now that particular man is anxious and angry. That particular man is tired of running from everything. That particular man wants to embrace the world and see who comes out the victor.

When that man leaves his motel room, he'll see if the world can match his fury. That man will just leave the rope he was about to hang himself with dangling above this paper.

Afterall, if we deny our own nature, then we deny the aspects of ourselves that we can't help.

They say innocent men don't run. I'm done running.