The Subtle Art of Brutality

Women scream. The cacophony goes from cooking tips and gossip to lives being shattered. A berserk nympholepsy swarms through the crowd. Frenzied, violent emotion for the one thing they can’t have: safety.

Derne turns. Blood soaking his pant leg but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Gun in a shaky hand. Determined to ruin everything on his own terms. I make a target of myself. Keep away from the innocents. This is my doing. He fires. Miss me, miss me, miss me.

He sinks those rounds deep into the crowd.

The first woman Derne accidently plugs collapses beside me and I trip on her. Swerve. Eat concrete and dirty slush. The second woman screams on and on forever and while she is filling the world with her sufferings I take a shot and miss and Derne tries to throw a woman out of her open driver’s side door and h

e is trying to get into an idling car but she gnashes her teeth at him and hammers down on the gas and he throws himself onto the sidewalk to avoid her squealing tires. He gets up in a mad dash and empties his gun and chunks of the road kick up and I can feel my face bleeding but no lead in my body I hear the dry click of an empty weapon trying to cough out more than what its belly was full of and I fire one more time and a street lamp goes out I assume I did that now I’m up and I slip I’m not sure if it is slush or blood feels tacky no time he’s running limping but making good distance the bastard he’s running like a fucking dog who knows what is behind it will set it straight and I don’t think I can track him by any blood droplets because the night has settled down and blood looks black at night and the night is black too so it doesn’t matter I am running and that woman is still screaming as if as long as she holds that note she will somehow stay on this side of the big white curtain and I know that’s not true I’ve heard that note before and I almost want her to just die because that note is in my head caterwauling now I run past Delilah Boothe and she is just a white female black and blue thin and busty missing her beauty because it’s sprayed all over the sidewalk and we’re going down the street Derne turns a corner and crosses over into a parking lot and fuck me this is the Starlight Theatre he runs and is swallowed by rows of snow the trucks have plowed up into hedges and before I can gather my thoughts and reload and find where he is in this maze of night and ruined promises I hear metal clink so hollow and cavernous and I know what he’s done.

He’s gone into the underground runoff system.

I leap to the same manhole and I’ll be damned but the first runner of smearing color traces itself down my vision. I scream, “NO,” to the Heavens but that call of indignation just spills ten more runners one hundred more runners a thousand a billion down over me and all I see is defiled traces of snow white and death black and Delilah’s red mixing as they race through my ruined brain and streamers of my seething rabidity soak the runners in volcano crimson. Snow white gives way to a shiny black and the black gives way to another shiny black and the red of Delilah’s poor ending gives way to the shiny black but my tempest stays.

I fall over onto the parking lot. Guns clatters away. Stomach turns, from the smear or the outcome I don’t know. I cough, vomit. Grab my head, shake it out. At some point the smear goes. On my feet. Armed.

The manhole cover is hastily put back in place. Askew. I move it, drop in. No hesitation, no fear. On the ladder, three rungs at a time, flying down. If he’s lying in wait at the bottom he’ll realize it is the biggest mistake of his life. I get on solid ground, scan while moving. He’s not waiting. He’s running. I’ll find him.

This is what fury leading up to brutal revenge tastes like.

67

First leg of the hunt is a feeder line to the main artery.

Inky black darkness layers this place. Sac cloth draped over these brick and concrete burrows. Every edge of brick, every crack in the concrete, every imperfect corner interrupts the solid caliginous surface. This tunnel is bone-dry except for the thin trickle of moisture running down the center. Round concrete conduits, eight-foot diameter, around one hundred years old.

The place is a labyrinth. Any sound is a ghost, playing with echoes. I stand silent. Listen. Spectres run their fingers through the liquid shadows down here, pooling in the corners and giving off faint susurrations. I hear something: heavy breathing distorted by the plumbing we are inside. Maybe something bigger has already eaten him.

Come spring the mountain runoff will flash flood these tunnels and the water will be scraping the ceiling. These eight-foot feeder tunnels lead into the twelve-foot diameter arteries, pour out into the river somewhere.

Here and there a body will wash up miles away. Homeless, mostly. Vagrants camping out because the place is better than a cardboard hovel in the snow. Kids playing down here will sometimes get lost. It’s sad when they wash out.

But this spring it will be an incestual child molester.

Teasers of arc sodium light spill down through the manhole covers; next to nothing. Something moves. Quick. Scratching noises. Feet hammering down. I fire, twice. Double tap. Deafening. Move. Gun empty. Spent brass in my palm then to my pocket. Speed loader on the move. New rounds in. Ready to perforate. Flashes of manhole light almost make things worse. I stop. Hold my breath. Hear someone groaning through clenched teeth. Movement. Metal crashes to the ground. Dropped gun. His. I run to the sound, open fire. Boom boomboomBOOMBOOMBOOM! Muzzle flash gives me glimpses like the flash of a camera in a haunted house. Each expulsion and Derne is still, caught in flight. The next he is positioned differently. Chunks of the tunnel exploding from the wall. Even after the gun blasts stop echoing the sound of pebbled concrete settling continue. Reload again. Stop. Listen for anything louder than the ringing in my ears. Like being in the war all over again. Shadows get deeper and then thin out, formless objects crawling on the walls and floor and ceiling all around us. The trickle of water thickens, widens, no light from a manhole. My heart has stopped beating. My lungs do not work. All I smell is gun powder. No blood. All I see are shades of night hiding my prey. My skin buzzes with electricity. I stalk. One hand on the wall. I lean down, hand to the floor, palm out. I find the trickle, move away from it. Feel for splashes. This goes on. I find one. I explore, find warm and tacky splatterings. He’s losing blood. I follow it, one hand with the gun forward but tucked in close, one palm reading his bleak future on the tunnel. Small tunnel, six-foot diameter. We go. Him not too far ahead, a game of silence and distance now. He must not know I am following but he must think I am close. He’s moving. He slips. I almost shoot. Somewhere in the absolute darkness ahead of us he is faltering. I creep closer. He regains his feet, moves ahead. Straight lines. We go. Ahead, light filters in from above like spears of angels coming down from the heavens. He pauses. So do I. Bathed in the gloom, my eyes adjust enough and I squat down into the black embrace. Umbrage, a camouflage in this cavernous hunting ground. I can start to make out the weak, watery light playing small twinkles on his glasses. He is afraid to move even though every instinct in his bones and muscles and heart are screaming run motherfucker run up that ladder and back onto the street run but he stays still. See if I am on his tail. Make a mistake. We wait so long, measuring each inhale and exhale to hide them from the other that by the time he makes his move I am calm as a clam in clear blue water. He cautiously rises and limps to the ladder.

Climbs it painfully.

Reaches for the manhole.

“Derne,” I say.

So startled, he falls. Regains his feet and starts to bolt away deeper in the runoff system.

My cylinder has six fresh shots. All I need is one. Raise the gun. Deep breath. Hold it. Let half out. Relax the grip. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, surprise. The barrel barks.

Direct hit.

Derne goes down, his right foot missing at the ankle.

I never said it would be a headshot. Not this one.

68

I don’t think I hear the gun fall from my clenching fists and strike the bone-dry concrete because of the shot echoing in here.

“I don’t remember the first time I had sex with my father.” Playing over and over in my mind. The tear falling to the table.

Every bad decision has a birthplace. This man coils and slithers around in the sewer, writhing. Grabbing. Soiled in blood. Squealing through clenched teeth.