Deviation Page 4

  “Answer my fucking question!” Cliff slapped her across the face again. “What, are you stoned, too? Fucking bitch! You were probably fucking around behind my back, too!”

  Dianne's fingers closed over the handle of the paring knife and she drew it out, brandishing it at the man she hated more than anyone else in the world. He stood there, a fat imbecile, gawking at the tiny blade in her fist. “Touch me again and you're going to be sorry,” she said quietly.

  Cliff laughed. “What are you going to do, clean the dirt out from under my fingernails? Drop that fucking thing, you dumb cunt!”

  She dropped her purse but held the knife out before her. It felt right in her hand, almost like a talisman. She knew it was going to work. It had to work. “I want you to leave,” she said. “I want you out of here, right now. Just take your stuff and go.”

  “You're totally fucking drunk, aren't you?” He moved fast, faster than she could compensate for. He struck her hand and wrist with one meaty fist, sending the little knife flying across the room where it landed on the carpet near the radiator. “Are you looking to spend the next few days in the hospital? Is that it?”

  Dianne stared across the room at the ineffectual little paring knife. What had she been thinking? Her hand and wrist throbbed with a sickening pain. “You can't... do this again...”

  He grabbed her hair and swung her into the wall, her forehead cracking the plaster. When she came away from it she slumped to her knees, blood trickling from one nostril.

  “You're going to be really fucking sorry this time. This is a new low for you, Dianne.” He reached down and picked up her purse from the floor. He began pulling things out of it and tossing them haphazardly into the air until he found her wallet. Then he threw the purse at her and busied himself examining the wallet's contents.

  Dianne was crying. She closed her eyes against the new pain and tried to think of what she could do. Maybe she could kill herself. If she killed herself, it would be almost as good. It would be a way out, and no one could ever force her to come back.

  “Fucking liar,” Cliff spat. He pulled out a thin sheaf of bills and held them up. “You've got over fifty bucks here!” He threw the wallet at her and kicked her over so that she was on her stomach, her face resting on the carpet. “I'll deal with you in a minute.”

  She lay there for almost a full minute, listening to him call the pizza place and get put on hold. She was trying to ignore him. She was thinking of Father Frank and how she'd let him down. She'd had little fantasies of returning to the church to inform him of how she'd managed to overpower the big sack of shit and chase him from her life. Now the big sack of shit was calling to order pizza for himself, which he'd pay for using money he stole from her after beating her up again. Rage surged through her veins and she lifted her head, peering at him through a curtain of her bloody hair.

  He was on the couch, his little welfare phone pressed to his fat face. He'd pulled out a copy of the pizza menu and was studying it while waiting to place his order. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “I want to order a couple of large pizzas.”

  Dianne pushed herself up a bit and slunk forward. Cliff didn't seem to be paying any attention to her. The knife was still there, at the base of the radiator on the far side of the room. She was fairly certain she'd be able to get to it, but then what? He'd already knocked it out of her hand once.

  “For delivery,” Cliff said into the phone. “Yes. Well, I'm looking at the menu right now. Is there any way I can get the meat-eater special but without sausage? Yeah, the rest of the meat is fine, I just don't want the sausage. It's too greasy.”

  “I can do it, Father,” Dianne whispered. “You have faith in me.” She began to crawl, very slowly. She tried to remain inconspicuous, but there was no way to tell what Cliff was thinking or what he'd do if he sensed she was going for the knife again. Then again, he hadn't seemed to take the tiny weapon very seriously.

  “I want two of them. Both large.”

  Dianne crept closer, reaching the coffee table and sensing that Cliff was watching her. He had to see what she was doing. She tried to ignore him, thinking only of Father Frank and how pleased he'd be when she waltzed in to see him tomorrow and told him all about her success. He'd be thrilled! They'd go into the kitchen again and knock back a few cans of Pabst. Maybe she'd have some potato chips this time. Maybe they'd even finish off that bottle of Wild Turkey. Maybe --

  “Yeah, apartment 304. Cash.”

  Dianne took a chance and glanced up at Cliff. He was staring directly at her. His eyes moved momentarily to the knife and then he looked back at her, frowning. She looked away and crawled faster, intent upon reaching it while she still had the chance.

  “Okay, thanks,” Cliff said. Then Dianne felt the phone hit her in the back. “Get up! Don't touch that fucking knife!”

  Reaching out, Dianne grasped the handle of the little knife. The little knife that Father Frank had blessed for her. How could it not work? How could this big dumb slob be too much for it?

  Cliff was on his feet. “I said, don't touch it!”

  Dianne sat up, holding the knife. She looked at Cliff. She hated him so much she could barely stand it. She was going to slice him up. Frank told her to slice him until he thought he was going to die. “Make every gash count,” she said.

  Cliff stood there, towering over her. “What?”

  “Make every gash count,” she repeated.

  “Give me that fucking thing.” He bent over, his big body casting her in its shadow. “You have no fucking idea how sorry you're going to be.”

  When Dianne was a child, she'd been chased around the back room of her foster parent's house by a big lumbering bee. The bee had kept buzzing in her face, scaring her almost to the point of fainting. When she'd tried to move away from it, it had followed her. It went on and on, and she'd gotten more and more frightened. And angry. She'd hated that big dumb bee. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of being terrorized by it, it zoomed away from her and landed on one of the windows. She'd sensed her chance then. She'd picked up one of her foster father's shoes and walked right up to the bee. She'd stared at it, hating it. When she'd swung the shoe, she did it with at least ten times more force than was necessary. The force had been driven by her anger and her fear and her desperation to make certain that the bee wouldn't survive and come chasing after her again. She'd swung that shoe so hard that the window exploded into hundreds of tiny shards, showering down all over the floor. Miraculously, she hadn't gotten cut. And the bee had been reduced to nothing but a series of smears.

  Dianne swung like that now. She was gripping the small handle of the knife so fiercely that her fist was white with exertion. There was no way in hell it was going to flip out of her hand this time. She watched the blade, almost feeling detached from it as it sketched a red line along the length of Cliff's forearm. The assault caused him to yelp in surprise, and he stood up suddenly. When he did, the sketch opened up and began leaking blood.

  He held it up, staring at it in shock. It was dripping blood all over the carpet. “What the fuck? Oh, you fucking cunt! This is going to be the end of you!”

  His words terrified her. Before he had a chance to do anything, she slashed out again, hard enough to hurt her shoulder. This time the little blade opened up the flesh of Cliff's thigh, blood spilling out instantly and running down his leg.

  He was too stunned to comment. He jumped back, horrified, and began to look around for something to hit her with.

  Dianne was overcome with a sense of urgency. She was doing it! But she had to finish. If he got his hands on a weapon now he'd kill her for sure. She leaped to her feet, the adrenaline rushing through her blood and fueling her rage.

  Cliff had his back to her, trying to pull a flo
or lamp out from between the couch and the wall. The base of it was partially wedged beneath the couch and was giving him some trouble. He sensed her approach and turned his head to look at her. She'd never seen him look scared, but he certainly looked scared now. “Stay the fuck away from me!”

  She swung the knife again, this time opening up his lower back. It was soft and flabby and parted like gelatin around Father Frank's beautiful little blade. Blood gurgled out and ran in rivulets down Cliff's leg as he screamed and jerked at the base of the lamp.

  “Get away! Get the fuck away from me!”

  “Just keep cutting,” Dianne said. Her eyes looked wild as she swung the knife again, and again, slicing open Cliff's shoulder and his belly, just above the elastic of his underwear. She was astonished to see a bloody coil of his intestines poke partially out as if it were attempting to flee.

  He twisted and fell on the couch, holding up his arms and legs to protect himself. “Stop it! Jesus Christ, you're going to fucking kill me!” He was covered in blood, as was the floor and much of the furniture. Even the walls were splattered with blood .

  Dianne had never seen him look so weak, and so helpless. It was really working! She held the knife to her mouth and kissed the blade. Then she lunged out with it again, slicing open Cliff's hands as he tried to ward her off.

  He screamed, obviously scared for his life now. He tried to curl up into a ball on the couch to avoid her onslaught. “Enough! Jesus Christ, that's enough!”

  She stepped closer to him, her face and hands and clothing red with his blood. “Go for the face,” she said. She slashed at him again, putting a gash in his cheek and another above his ear. Blood sprayed out at her, some of it getting in her mouth. She didn't care. She slashed at him again, cutting open the side of his neck as he screamed in terror.

  “No more! No more!” His screams were muffled now, his head buried in the cushions as he struggled desperately to escape her fury. There was very little he could do. He was bleeding profusely, from more wounds than he could keep track of, and there were more of them being inflicted all the time.

  “No more!” Dianne agreed. She appeared insane as she stood over him, brandishing the tiny knife. Her heart was thundering in her chest, so hard she could feel it in her ears. She slashed at him again, and again, no longer even aiming but only trying to do more damage. “It's fucking over! Do you hear me? It's fucking over!”

  Cliff lay still, no longer trying to protect himself. He didn't utter a sound as the knife tore through his flesh again, spraying blood onto the couch and the wall and the bookshelves. It didn't occur to Dianne until later that he was already dead. She stood there stabbing his corpse with the paring knife until her muscles ached and she could no longer stand up. Then she backed away, still half convinced that Cliff was going to leap from the couch and attack her.

  Cliff didn't move. The apartment was silent.

  She sat down on the chair in the corner, her body splattered with gore. The whole room was covered in it. It looked like a slaughterhouse.

  It took a moment or two for it all to sink in. Then she began shaking. She shook hard, her entire body quaking with involuntary spasms. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her breathing. It was difficult, but she was a very capable woman.

  Father Frank had said so.

  * * *

  When the pizza delivery man rang the buzzer twenty minutes later, Dianne didn't even hear it. She was curled up in the chair, sleeping, the knife still clenched in her fist.

  6. Father Stevens

  In the morning, Frank sat in his room nursing a brutal hangover by sipping from a bottle of Carlsberg. He swore to himself almost every morning that he would lighten up on his alcohol consumption, but by late afternoon or early evening the idea seemed absurd to him. He knew that when he started drinking heavier again later on he'd feel terrific. Also, without the alcohol in his system, the meth wouldn't allow him to fall asleep. It was a balancing act, one he was still working on calibrating.

  In the meantime he needed to figure out where he was going to go.

  He was sitting at his small desk, paging through a book of road maps of the Untied States. Each two-page spread was another state, and he looked them over thoughtfully, waiting to see if any of them called out to him. He took a mouthful of beer and turned the page. He'd never spent much time outside Wisconsin before, and the prospect of it was really starting to intrigue him.

  “I still need to stock up on supplies, my lord,” he muttered. Lester had promised to gather as much as he possibly could the night before. “He'd better call soon. If I'm unable to figure out what's become of McKenzie, I'm going to want to get moving. I can't put it off much longer.”

  He opened the drawer to have another peek at his meth, thinking he'd smoke just a tiny bit of it. It would really help to improve his outlook, not to mention his hangover. As he was reaching into the drawer to retrieve the bag, a sudden knock on the door caused him to retract his hand and slam the drawer shut.

  “Ah, shit. Here we go.” He stood up, taking another quick drink of beer. Then he crossed the room and stood directly beside the door. “Who's there?”

  “It's me,” came the voice of Edgar Stevens. “I just wanted to speak with you for a moment.”

  Frank relaxed. It was probably nothing. Stevens was a harmless old drunk and usually had no clue what was going on around him. Frank unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  Father Stevens stood there gazing in at him, looking both weary and tense. He was a few years older than Frank, and mostly bald. He was also fat, his cassock bulging out in front and hanging down like a maternity dress.

  “What's the good word, Father Stevens?”

  Stevens chewed his lip for a moment, his eyes taking in the bottle of Carlsberg in Frank's hand. “I'm not sure there is one. That's what I wanted to discuss with you.”

  Frank felt a twinge of apprehension. It was rare that he and Stevens discussed anything at all. “Is this about McKenzie?”

  “More or less.”

  Frank nodded, holding the door open wider. “Would you like to come in?”

  Father Stevens looked past him momentarily, his eyes surveying the small, cluttered room. “I'd prefer to speak with you somewhere else, if you don't mind.”

  “Somewhere else would be fine.”

  “It won't take long. It shouldn't, anyway.”

  Frank made sure he had his keys with him and then stepped outside the room, shutting the door behind him. They walked down the hall to the sanctuary, their footsteps echoing hollowly in the dusty silence of the church. When they reached a row of pews Stevens sat down, motioning for Frank to do the same.

  “Quiet in here today,” Frank observed, taking a seat. Long shadows stretched across them from the high windows; their faces reflected blue and green light from the stained glass. “Not many of our faithful congregation have managed to find the time to join us for spiritual enlightenment yet this morning.”

  Stevens stared at him blankly. He was obviously not amused.

  “It was a joke.”

  “I realize that. A funny one, too.”

  “Maybe not so funny,” Frank admitted. He lifted his bottle of beer and took a sip. “Anyway, what did you wish to discuss?”

  A sparrow had gotten into the church somehow, possibly through one of the broken windows; it flew across the room and disappeared behind one of the curtains up near the altar. Stevens watched it and then yawned, at the last moment covering his mouth with a fat hand. “Basically, Frank, I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving.”

  Alarms went off in Frank's mind. “Leaving?”

  “Yes.” Stevens settled back and regarded him soberly. “As soon as we're through speaking here, I'm going to
go clear out my room. I've got a rental car outside. I'm leaving.”

  “You mean running off?”

  “I'm not running off. I've put a lot of thought into this. We both know...” He glanced around the massive room suspiciously, as if he feared someone might be hiding, crouched down behind one of the pews. “We both know McKenzie is out of control. Out of his mind, too. I've been trying for quite some time to secure a position elsewhere, and I just recently managed to do so.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. If I were you, I'd be doing the same thing.”

  “I'm considering it,” Frank admitted. He took another drink. “Where are you going?”

  “Tampa.”

  “Tampa. Nice weather down there.”

  “Yes. If you like it hot and muggy. Personally, I don't. But that's not why I'm going.”

  Frank waited. He and Stevens had never been close, and never would be. But they shared an unlikely association with Pastor McKenzie, and they were both intelligent enough to realize that if the law ever caught up with the Pastor and there was a trial, and there most certainly would be a trial, they would both be seen as conspirators even though they had never taken part in any of McKenzie's little games. They didn't even know for certain what McKenzie had been doing in his spare time for the past ten years, although they both had a fairly good idea.

  “What have you heard?”

  Stevens sighed, looking older and more tired than Frank had ever seen him. “It's not so much what I've heard. It's more of what I've deduced.” He looked Frank in the eyes, licking his big lips. “As well as a little something I've seen.”

  Frank braced himself. He'd begun keeping his distance from McKenzie over the course of the past several years, sensing it was a wise thing to do. The deterioration of the crazy pastor had been impossible to miss. “Yes?”

  Stevens looked away. “I don't want to go into details. Hell, I don't know any details, not really.”