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  A Proper Revenge Takes Time

  By Steven Ramirez

  Copyright © 2009 Steven Ramirez

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Steven Ramirez

  Los Angeles CA

  http://twitter.com/grimblazer

  A Proper Revenge Takes Time

  It must’ve happened when my head hit the bar. I was sure one of my teeth was loose now. I rolled my tongue over and around it, pushing it—prodding it—like it was an unwilling dog. In one sickening submissive sigh, it shifted. There was a small sucking noise. Then the salty taste of blood. I could feel with the tip of my tongue the sharp-edged bottom of the crown. The tooth was bad.

  I had tried to brace myself with my forearms but I slipped on a puddle of beer and reeled forward. He was right on me again too. I had no choice but to fall.

  The whole side of my face ached now. I looked in the rear view mirror. My lips were purple and swollen. My right eye looked like a raisin surrounded by morbid purple plaster. I don’t even remember how I made it out of that dive after I cut him, it all happened so fast. I hope he dies.

  It was late. I hadn’t seen any cars for a long time as I flew up Interstate 15 through Barstow—the opposite direction of where I needed to go. My head hurt worse now and all I could think about was getting a drink and some sleep. But I had to get out of there—far away—from that sleaze bar I had had the bad luck of walking into. Was that the CHP up ahead?

  It was no use, I had to stop. I couldn’t even see out of my good eye anymore. Tasting vomit, I slowed the car down to sixty and started looking for a place to hide out until morning. Sleeping in the car was out. What if somebody from that bar was looking for me? My classes! They would have to be cancelled. I needed to find a motel.

  Okay, a light.

  I veered off the road into a sandy driveway and coasted toward the weak red neon beacon. It said “Maria’s,” that was it. The driveway curved around way off the main highway and led me down toward a two-storey house set among cactus and Joshua trees. It was old and quaint, a Midwestern house. One of those places where toothless old ma and pa would invite you in for a piece of pie. Where you could set a spell.

  I stopped the car and got out. An old black hunting dog with arthritis hobbled toward me, peering through weak eyes and making a faint woofing noise way in the back of his throat like he didn’t care one way or the other. I waited to see if he would charge. He just sniffed me, turned and wandered back to where he had been sleeping.

  The house had a porch. On it were big potted cactuses of all kinds as well as an ancient porch swing. I approached the front door. A sign read “Rooms for Rent by the Week or Month.” I could see a light in the parlor so I knocked.

  Some weird kid answered the door. Only I wasn’t sure if he was a child at all. He was short and dark and had long straight black hair that fell into his eyes. He was dressed in a brown robe and barefoot. I got the feeling he was slow.

  “I need a place to sleep,” I croaked.

  He left me standing in the foyer. The house looked plain. I could see lamps with chintz shades, classic American furniture and Oriental carpets. The wallpaper was old and dark.

  I had a strong urge to get out but someone was coming and my head felt like it was in a vise.

  “Close the door, please.”

  The voice came from somewhere, I couldn’t tell where. It had a French sound. A woman’s voice. I did as I was told and waited. Then I saw her.

  She was young and not very tall, maybe four eleven or five feet. Dressed in a simple yellow kimono. She had long straight black hair like the boy and large dark eyes. Her lips were full. She had the look of an early painting, possibly from the Middle Ages. She smiled.

  “I need a room,” I said more loudly than I should have.

  “Shh. The other guests,” she whispered. “Come into the parlor.”

  I peered through the stained glass in the front door.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “Some cretin might be following me.”

  It was starting to get really cold. I saw a huge fireplace. But there was a brass pot with a fern in front of it.

  “It’s cold,” I said for no particularly reason.

  “What happened to your face? Were you in a fight?”

  “I need a room. Can I have one or not?”

  “The room is already yours. Would you like some coffee?”

  “What I’d like is a drink. Ms…”

  “Call me Maria. Take a seat and I’ll have the boy bring you something.”

  I sat on a red settee. There were white doilies all over the place. She sat in a stiff heavy wooden chair and, folding her arms, stared at me. I thought she would send for the boy when he appeared suddenly with a wooden tray. There were three or four bottles and two glasses.

  “What would you like to drink?” my hostess offered, still staring through coal black eyes.

  “Just straight whiskey.”

  “Whiskey makes men fight. You should try something more soothing. Like wine.”

  “I’ll stick with whiskey, thanks. Is this going on my bill?”

  She nodded to the boy who set the tray down on a cocktail table and prepared the drinks. He gave me a tumbler with a healthy portion of bourbon. I don’t think he knew the difference. He handed a delicate crystal glass of dark wine to Maria.

  “Well, here’s to hospitality,” I toasted. She merely nodded. “And, by the way, it wasn’t whiskey that started this fight. It was some stupid—”

  My blood turned cold. She was looking up at the ceiling, the veins in her neck sticking out like crabgrass. Her back was arched. It must’ve been about sixty-five in the room but she was sweating. Her breathing was shallow and her skin seemed to be on fire.

  “Hey, what’s wrong! Sh-should I call a doctor?”

  The boy looked on disinterestedly as her seizure passed. Finally she relaxed her body and finished the wine greedily. Licking her lips delicately and rubbing her arms, she smiled faintly.

  “Forgive me. I have psoriasis. Sometimes it is too much for me.”

  “You just about gave me a heart attack.” I finished my drink and signaled to the boy to give me another. “Have you seen a doctor about it?”

  “I am under a doctor’s care. I’m afraid this is the best they can do. I will take you to your room. Then we’ll fix up your face.”

  I had forgotten my own pain. Now as I struggled to get up it came rushing back like a vicious red tide. The boy helped steady me. He was incredibly strong. I felt something rolling around in my mouth and spat it out.

  “My tooth,” I said sheepishly. The boy picked it up and handed it to me.

  Maria gave me a room overlooking the front yard. I could see my car and the lights of the highway in the distance. As I waited on the bed she brought a white metal bowl with warm water, some gauze, an unfamiliar salve and generic aspirin. Pulling up a chair she proceeded to treat me.

  “What is it you do?” she asked.

  “I teach French at the university.”

  “A college professor. And you favor out-of-the-way places to drink?”

  “It’s a tic,” I said defensively.

  “Was it about a girl?”

  “What, the fight? No. It was over nothing. Some drunk just decided he didn’t l
ike my type and started shoving me.”

  “Do men fight so easily?”

  “I guess. Look, I’d really rather not discuss it. Ow!”

  “Hold still, or I can’t clean you up properly. It sounds to me as if it wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s right. I just came in for a drink. The next thing I know, this cretin starts pushing me around.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve used that word. It’s French, I believe. Why didn’t you just leave?”

  “I wanted to. But then he starts in on my family.”

  “Does he know your family?”

  “No, he— It’s really weird. Somehow he knew that my family is French. You know, way back when.”

  “Perhaps you look French to him. What is your family’s name?”

  “Gui.”

  “That sounds French to me.”

  “Anyway, he starts in about me being a lousy garbage-eating frog. You know what I’m talking about. And I’ve heard this kind of crap before. Not where I teach, of course—”

  “But in the places you like to frequent.”

  “Whatever. And somehow coming out of the mouth of this, this genetic experiment, it just got to me. So I hit him.”

  “And then he hit you,” she said. “I take it he was large.”

  “At first everybody just kind of cleared out. I could see the bartender looking around in the back for a baseball bat. I’m not a fighter. But I learned a long time ago that some people just don’t understand anything else. So now we’re really going at it and there are all these new people cheering us on.”

  Maybe it was the whiskey but I wanted to tell it all now. I wanted to show Maria that I didn’t start this thing, that it wasn’t my fault what happened. It’s never my fault. It just happens.

  “You’re right about his size. He probably had forty pounds on me. And he was strong. For a while it looked like I’d had it. Especially after my head hit the bar. But something just kind of took over. It’s like I went into automatic and the rest happened pretty much on its own.”

  Though she continued to listen I could tell she was in a lot of pain. Every once in awhile she would flinch as if being gently stroked with a hot poker.

  “He was winning but that wasn’t enough. He had to pull a knife. I’m not sure what happened next. All I remember is sliding off the bar and hitting a stool. I could hear the blade ripping the leather right next to my ear. Somebody shouted ‘Look out!’ I must’ve grabbed his arm and dislodged the knife. We both hit the ground.

  “When I got up I had the knife in my hand and he was lying on the floor staring at me. I knew if I waited another second, he’d get up again. So I tore the blade once across his throat and got up. He grabbed his neck and held it tight, grimacing and kind of yelping. The place got quiet as we all just stood there and watched. Blood was squirting out from between his fingers. Somebody yelled at me to get out of there. So I did.”

  “What happened to the knife?”

  “I left it there. It’s got my fingerprints on it. There are probably cops looking all over the desert for me by now.”

  “Do you think you killed him?”

  “I can’t see how he could’ve made it. His throat was sliced from one end to the other.”

  She finished cleaning me up and stood painfully. As she opened the door to leave, a hulking figure emerged from the darkness. It was the man from the bar. He grinned at me and tilted his head back. The gash in his neck smiled as hundreds of squirming maggots dropped to the floor.

  I screamed and passed out.

  I found myself in the basement. I was tied to the wooden chair. I looked around frantically for my attacker but only saw Maria standing across the room. She looked pale and just stood there as if waiting for something.

  The boy entered and went to her. She seemed to be having another attack. I wanted to scream but thought about who would even hear me.

  “Why are you doing this?” She didn’t seem to notice me. “Hey! Is this some kind of setup? Tell me, dammit!”

  “No time,” she whispered heavily and started to fade into the shadows.

  As I stared in disbelief, the back wall of the basement became alive with faces. Strange dark faces from another time. She now seemed to be much higher up on a pile of wood. Her hands were bound behind her and the medieval faces in the crowd leered as flames licked their way up her frail body.

  “Bernard Gui!” she screamed with the mouth of fire itself. “I have gotten my revenge! I have killed your descendant! He was the last!”

  I saw a man step forward from the crowd. He was an official-looking person with a long black robe with white fur sleeves, a monk’s haircut and trim beard. He watched with the rest of us as Maria’s tunic now caught fire and engulfed her. Her skin turned red then black. But she seemed to be laughing.

  “He was the last! And I have killed him, seven hundred years in the future!”

  Now the searing of the fire silenced her and her body became a single ember swirling delicately upward in the heat. The crowd was jeering but the man named Bernard Gui had a look of terror in his eyes. I now saw the burning through his eyes. I now knew why I had been lured to the house.

  As the crowd began to disperse, the images faded until there was only the cold grey wall of the basement. The boy came toward me and gently undid my ropes. I stood shakily and faced the door. The man was waiting, the knife gleaming in one hand.

  He whispered my last name then he was on me.

  ###

  Steven Ramirez is a writer of poetry, short stories, novels and screenplays with one produced feature film, ‘Killers.’ You can connect with Steven on Twitter and Facebook.

 

 

  Steven Ramirez, A Proper Revenge Takes Time

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