Fiction: JANE DOE

The final part of the trilogy

She stank of death. Days since she last showered, days holed up in this gutted house where the pipes only spurted out air and the wind howled through the rotted beams.

Peeking through the mangled blinds of the lone window that hadn’t been smashed out and boarded over, she saw the charred exteriors of the other houses on the block. A fire had once torn down this street.

No sign at all of her fuckhead brother. They were escaping tonight, whether he liked it or not. Leaving this warzone behind and lighting out for the ends of the world. Kevin gave off a lot of bluster and hot air, but she knew he was scared to death. Always had been. When they were kids, she urged him to hide it, warning him that people like their father would feed off his fear the way plants consumed light and warmth.

But the terror in the center of her brother’s heart was too great, even after Jane gutted their father with a kitchen knife mid-beating. Then Kev’s time in St. Mary’s took that fear in him and nurtured it, cultivated unspeakable impulses within him.

Finally. Kev’s ridiculous neon orange car pulled up to the curb. He killed the headlights. She crossed the living room to the front door, tucking the pistol in the rear waistband of her pants.

“About goddamn time,” she said when she opened the door. But Kevin wasn’t there. Instead, an old man stood on the porch, dressed in a black suit and wide-brimmed black hat like some Wild West mortician. With both hands, he held onto a large duffel bag, smiling at her through the door screen.

“Oh, I agree,” he said. “Finally. I’ve been dying to meet you.”

“The fuck are you?”

“Time is short, my sweet, and we won’t have the opportunity to talk long. When all is said and done, is that truly the question you wish to ask?”

The longer she looked at the man, the less she thought he was old after all. His face was ghost white, his flesh soft and sagging like a rotting pumpkin, but he wore a face that was more false than aged, as if he was covered with prosthetics that were slowly melting away.

“What are you doing with my brother’s car?”

“That’s a better question. Would you believe it if I said he gave it to me?”

“The fuck is he?”

“Yes, gave it to me. Willed it to me with his dying words, in fact.” He lifted up the duffel bag. “I have something for you.”

She snatched the gun out of her waistband and pointed it at the man’s head.

“Get your ass in here right now.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She opened the screen door with one hand, keeping the gun trained on him as he stepped through the doorway, then let the screen hit his backside as he came into the house.

“I’ve been looking for you for some time, you know,” he said. “You must have felt it. I heard a lot about you. I’ve become quite an admirer of yours, in fact. I feel like I’ve known you for a long, long time, Jane.”

“Where is he?” she said, closing the door. “You tell me right now or I put a bullet in your head.”

“He talked a lot at the end. Told me everything I wanted to hear and then some. How everyone thought you were long gone, but you were staying right here under their noses. Smart girl. He told me how you double-crossed your benefactor, then triple-crossed her betrayer. He told me about this all-out war that you sparked, but that’s obvious to any observer. It’s there in the streets to see. Last of all, he told me about what you stole.”

Despite herself, Jane glanced at her bag in the corner, which contained the videotapes she stole from the sisters, the unspeakable things recorded on those tapes, how they would bring the whole house of cards down.

“I’ll say it one more time, then I end this. Where’s Kevin?”

“But he’s here, Jane. Do you want to see him?”

“Don’t move,” she said, but he dropped the bag on the floor with a thud and unzipped the length of it. Then he tipped the bag over, letting a half dozen human heads tumble one by one across the floor.

“Fuck,” she yelled as they rolled towards her, raising her feet like a swarm of rats were rushing under her feet.

In the moonlight, she recognized them. All of them. Rolling across the charred wooden floor, pinging off one another like oversized, horrible billiard balls. Miss Florsheim. The poor, stupid private eye, burned nearly beyond recognition. Others who had both aided and crossed her alike. Then, finally, Kevin—his swollen tongue hanging from one corner of his mouth, his eyes wide with a final moment of terror, etched into his face and too terrible to ever be witnessed again.

“You… you...” she whispered, her blood churning in her. It fizzed and seethed.

“Wait,” he said as she raised the gun and pulled back the hammer. “A final word.”

“You think you can talk your way out of this? You’re not going to add me to this pile. I won’t let you.”

“I’m disappointed, Jane. You, of all people, should know. I wish no harm to you.”

“Then…” she said through hot, choking tears, looking the man in the eye but feeling the heads rolling at her feet. “Why?”

“Like I said, we don’t have long. Me, especially. Cancer, you see. Quite advanced. Quite lethal. And like I also said, I’ve become an admirer of yours. Heard tales of your deeds. Seen your brutal handiwork up close. And as the conclusion to this story came into view, as it become apparent you would beat all odds and roll off into the sunset with your brother, I thought how boring, how sad is the happy ending. I feared the complacency your success would breed in you. This is much better. Something to haunt your mind. Something to remember me by. What are you looking at, dear girl? You know this is not my true face. Do you want to see what’s underneath?”

***

After some time, he opened his eyes. He could not recall when she struck him or what with. Nor did he think, with the amount of blood pooling at his feet, he would ever remember.

But when he came to, he was bound to a chair and the house was burning quite spectacularly. It had been burning for some time, it seemed, growing around him into a wild and uncontained thing. A vortex of flames and unbearable heat that spread across the bubbling walls, crawling now across the floorboards towards him. It was a thing to behold. The sheer shape and vehemence of it.

As black smoke spewed and blotted out the world, as the house crackled and began to fall around him, he said, “Oh, yes. How fitting, Jane. How lovely indeed.”

Read the full trilogy, and other flash crime shorts, in my story collection BLOOD SPATTER - free when you subscribe to NIGHTWAVES.