Killin Machine
By JT Pearson
copyright 2013 Joseph Pearson
I kept trying to wait the person out and stay in bed but whoever was outside my house just kept knocking on my door. It had to have gone on for five minutes. I work at night and sleep during the day, vampire hours, with the complexion to prove it. What do I do all night? I write novels. But until my agent lands me a contract with a decent publisher I’ve got to manage to keeps the lights on and the toilet flushing so I edit manuscripts. Wait. I’d like to start out on the right foot this time. I’m always trying to impress people. In other words, I lie a lot. I’m going to try to be honest this time, with this story. So here it is. I edit manuscripts. Horrible, terrible manuscripts that turn into the awful books that line the stores at the mall that sits on top of the hill in the small city where I live. My manuscripts may be just as atrocious. I’m not sure. Lately my ego has become pretty fragile. Occasionally I become convinced that everything that I write is worthless and I delete file after file from my computer until I have nothing to show for the thousands of hours of work I spent on the keyboards month after month, year after year. And then, after a couple of days, I receive a letter from some tiny magazine that opted to buy one of my stories and suddenly I’m born again, completely renewed. I do what I can to retrieve my files from the recycle bin and get back to work. Maybe eventually I’ll be able to produce my own dreadful novel that will fit right in line with all of the garbage people are reading these days. If so, I’ll take any success I can get. My pride has been crawling away. The last response I got from a publisher that reviewed a manuscript for a novel I proposed came from the reputable Thorn Publishing. I was beside myself with excitement when I saw that the letter was from Madeline Thorn herself. I yanked the paper from the envelope so fast that it partially tore. I opened it up and saw just one word in all caps: DISTURBING. I tried to follow up with Thorn Publishing but got no response until a letter arrived from the publishing house one day. It was from Madeline Thorn’s assistant, Janice Myer. It simply said, please discontinue trying to contact our office and do not submit any more queries or materials to Thorn Publishing. They were treating me like a stalker. I tore it up and decided that I would write just one last letter to them and probably no more after that. You’re probably wondering about the guy that was at my door.
The stubborn son of a gun at my door had to be someone that knew that I was home sleeping. No regular mortal could’ve exhibited such ambition without a reasonable expectation that someone would eventually appear before them. I got out of bed, pulled on my robe, fumbled around for the glasses that kept me from being legally blind, and stumbled to the door, my hair a mound that angled up and to the left, tall and leaning like the famous tower. I opened the door while the man was still knocking, causing him to nearly pound on my chest. I was wrong. I had no idea who this man was that stood with one arm braced against my house, his head pointed down as if he was studying his shoes.
“Can I help you?”
“A cat,” he said, as if that should mean something to me. “A small black kitten. Do you have it?” He was still staring at the ground, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in a year.
“I don’t care for animals.”
“Not what I asked you.” The man was thin and short, balding, probably late fifties, with that official business feel. He looked like he was under a lot of stress. Perhaps a cop. Maybe some kind of government employee. He finally looked up at me. “I’m missing a small black kitten and it is very important that I retrieve him. Do you have it or have any idea as to where it may be? Have you seen a small black kitten roaming your neighborhood? Have you seen any of the local children with a cat?”
“I haven’t seen a cat.”
“Are you sure?”
“Huh?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t have him?”
“No. I don’t have your cat.”
“Do you mind if I take a look around your house? That okay?”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean I do mind if you take a look around my house.”
“Why is that?” He tried to peer around me and I repositioned myself and drew the door tight. “You got something you need to hide?”
“I don’t have a cat.”
“It’ll just take a minute.” He tried to push me out of his way but I grabbed the door frame and braced against him.
“Just hold on a second. I’d like to see some ID.”
“And I’d like to see the inside of your house. If you haven’t got the cat there’s no reason to bring yourself any unnecessary trouble.”
“Hey, I know that some people get really attached to their pets but don’t you think that you’re going a little overboard. It’s just a cat.”
“Do you have the cat!” he screamed, and the vein on his forehead bulged.
“If I see your cat, I’ll hold on to it for you. I’ll call you if you give me a number.”
“Step aside. I’m coming into the house.” He pushed harder and we slid back and forth until he was panting and seemed to give up.
“Get off of my porch or I’m calling the cops.”
“That right?”
“Yeah.”
He reached behind his back for something in the waistline of his pants but his hand came back empty.
“Son of a bitch! What else could possibly go wrong today?”
We stared at each other for nearly a minute before he turned and walked off.
“You’d better hope that I find my cat and that I don’t need to come back here,” he called over his shoulder as he disappeared.
I closed the door and did this shivery shoulder thing that happens to me whenever I’m really repulsed by something or get creeped out by someone. I locked the door. I almost went back to bed but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again so I went to the bathroom and ran cold water, splashing it into my eyes. I returned to the manuscript that I had been working on the night before. It was written by an author named Kwan Na from China that Cloverfield Publishing wanted to introduce to America. He had translated his own manuscript from Mandarin to English and he was insistent that the manuscript needed very little revision. It was a war novel about a man that goes AWOL and leaves the rest of his troop to be with the local girl that he has fallen in love with. The constant smell of napalm nags at his conscience and forces him to return to his platoon, breaking her heart. The title of his work was The Smell of Duty. When Mrs. Ashton had assigned me the manuscript she told me that I should be happy. It was a war story. All of those people dying. She figured that I’d like that. She had also told me that I was to do whatever it took to make Mr. Na happy and that he had already informed her that the title The Smell of Duty was not negotiable. Every time I opened up the manuscript I smelled duty. I had given my manuscript to Mrs. Ashton when I first went to work at Cloverfield Publishing. She didn’t get around to looking at it for over a year. Then one day she called me into her office.
“Listen, Mr. Barnes. I’ve been fortunate enough to have quite a few gifted writers leave their manuscripts in my hands. I was born blessed with an eye for talent. I discovered Sean Paxton and his Wubble Wubzies series. I was the person to give the green light to I Werewoman: Queen of the Wolfen Tribe. I have an eye for talent. And you, Mr. Barnes, unfortunately, do not have any talent. I read your manuscript. Most of it. Admittedly I skimmed the first four chapters and skipped a few in the middle but I read much of the last few chapters. Your main character, James, strangles Margaret and lays her in a pond at the end of the book. What the hell kind of story is that? Those two should have been your love interest. There’s a formula for writing successful novels these days. Boy meets girl. Boy turns out to be a mythical beast.
Girl still loves boy and they live happily ever after. Boy doesn’t kill girl. Nobody wants to read that.
“You see, Mrs. Ashton, James did love Margaret even though she was tremendously vain. He was just never able to tell her. And he knew she couldn’t handle having her beauty fade with age. He loved her enough to keep her from growing old and miserable so he strangled her at the height of her beauty. It was a tremendous feat for him to be able to do it. It destroyed any shot he’d ever have at happiness.”
“That’s just sick and weird. I’m sorry but it is.” She shook her head in disgust. “It’s like you’re out of touch with humanity. You’re a young man but you seem like you’re ninety years old. Have some fun. Get out there to the clubs and dance to some Madonna. Hell, I’m nearly sixty and I still do that. And when it comes to literature, you’re just not with it. Vampire girls and boys are frolicking under the moonlight romantically and people love it, but you write like you just stepped out of a time machine. You’re a very talented editor, great with shaping other writers’ work. An idiot savant of some sort, I would say. Please, don’t ask me to look at another one of your manuscripts. Too depressing. Nobody likes a sad ending.” The vision of Mrs. Ashton walking away was still fresh in my mind even though it had been years. I realized that she was just giving me her professional opinion and that I had to respect her honesty. No. I’m sorry. That’s not true. I hated her taste in literature and I thought that she was a complete idiot. I wanted to strangle her. And it sure wasn’t because I wanted to preserve anything good about her.
The hurtful memory faded from my mind as I sighed and closed my computer.
Twenty minutes after I’d gotten showered and dressed, I was looking through CDs at the used music store. I held up an old Pink Floyd CD that I didn’t have. I had stolen all of the MP3s on that album off of the Internet long before but I still loved the feeling of holding the real thing. The physical disc and the glossy artwork in the case. It transported me back decades to another time as well as any time machine ever could have. I popped the little white earphones that I always had hanging around my neck into my ears. I never left home without my music. I found a Pink Floyd track and played it. With my eyes closed I smelled the CD case. Then I just stood with it against my cheek.
“You work at Cloverfield, don’t you? I saw you at one of the meetings.”
I had barely heard her. It was a brunette with thick rimmed glasses. Smart hot. I was generally pretty good with girls and I decided to charm her. I mean, I was always terrible with girls and she scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t exactly eye candy, standing five eleven and rarely over a hundred and thirty pounds. My glasses were magnifier thick and I had hair that was constantly breaking free from the gel I used to keep it tamed. It generally pointed straight up at the sky like it was trying to escape my head. I was so busy studying her since I’d opened my eyes that I failed to answer her.
“Cloverfield Publishing?” she asked again.
I pulled the earphones from my head. “Right. I mean I’m not there at their offices very often. I mostly work from home. But yeah. I work there-for them- for Mrs. Ashton.”
“Twenty gaga.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I said twenty gaga. It means totally cool. It’s an expression I’m trying to create. Everyone needs to have their own catch phrases. When I get famous I’d like my own pop language already in place. I’m a struggling writer.”
“Aren’t we all these days?”
She looked at the CD that was still against my cheek.
“A little before your time, aren’t they?”
“No. Not at all. They transcend. They’re a timeless talent. Have you ever listened to them?”
“I like what’s trending.”
I nodded and stared long enough to make her uncomfortable before I realized it. I stuck out my hand. “Jake Barnes.”
“Anna Krumb,” she answered and shook my hand. “Are you going to Mrs. Ashton’s house tonight? The party for launching Tracey Wellman’s new book. The three Tentacled Love Machine.”
My expression must’ve been blank because then she asked me, “You knew about the party, right?”
I was sort of an outsider at Cloverfield. Mrs. Ashton had told me to my face when she had hired me that even though I had come with extraordinary credentials she thought that I was weird and that she hoped that she didn’t regret hiring me one day when I walked through the building with an automatic weapon and filled the place with bullet holes and cadavers. I laughed when she said it. She didn’t. I had never received an invitation to one of her company parties.
“Oh, right. The Three Tentacled Love Machine. That’s really good. It’s twenty gag me.”
“Twenty gaga.”
“Right. Twenty gaga. Sorry.”
“You’ve read The Three Tentacled Love Machine? Did Mrs. Ashton have you work on the project or did she just give you an advanced copy?”
“Twenty gaga.”
“No. That expression doesn’t work there.”
“Sorry.”
“You read it?”
“Yeah. I liked the part where he hugged the girl with all of his tentacles at the same time.”
“Shanoo the sea goddess was the one with the tentacles.”
“Yeah, she was.”
“Okay.”She smiled. “Are you going to be there tonight?”
“Yeah, I’m going.”
“That’s twenty gaga. See how I used the expression there?”
“I got it now, Anna. When are you going to be there, at the party?”
She looked at me strangely. “Sevenish, I guess.”
“That’s what time I’m going too. I guess I’ll be seeing you there, Anna Krumb.”
“Okay, Jake.” She nodded uneasily and walked away.
When I got home, I headed up my sidewalk to my house but stopped when I saw that my neighbor Mr. Druckerman was out on his porch. He was ninety one and had Alzheimer’s. His sixty five year old daughter would sometimes roll his wheelchair out on the porch so that he could watch the squirrels and get a little sun. I always stopped to say hello to him. Before his Alzheimer’s had gotten so bad we used to sit out on the porch and play chess. Now he was in such a condition that he rarely recognized me. Today he was somewhere else. Somewhere lost in his mind. I watched him having his daily one-sided conversation.
“Similar in appearance but a world apart in quality. Similar but very different. We could never compete.” He leaned forward in his chair and gestured with his hands. “Feingold’s offered the very finest in quality men’s briefs. And their ladies’ undergarments were second to none in comfort and durability. Capable of hundreds of turns through the washing machine before being retired. Feingold’s was truly the best and we were a pale imposter. Feingold’s underpants were made of the softest Egyptian cotton. Heavenly to wear. Who could compete with them?”
“Hello, Mr. Druckerman. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”
“Women would stand in line all the way around the corner from his store when a new shipment of French braziers arrived. Even my Aunt Florence would take a spot in line and she was not a patient woman, I’ll tell you.”
“Nice to see you, Mr. Druckerman.” I never knew what else to say to him. “You look well rested and happy. That’s good.”
“The men’s silk briefs were so luxurious that a man would forfeit half a week’s pay for just one pair. And that man would have a very comfortable bottom, indeed. He would not go unsatisfied.”
“They sound like they were very nice underwear, Mr. Druckerman.”
I headed inside and listened to Comfortably Numb off of The Wall album over and over again until I was sick of it and then I decided to take a nap until Mrs. Ashton’s party.
The phone rang. I picked it up on the fifteenth ring.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” came the voice from the receiver. “Hello, Jake?”
“Hi, Frank.” It was my brother. He was always checking up on me because he worried ab
out me.
“Hey, are you busy? It’s good to hear your voice. You’ve been keeping yourself hidden in that big house. Did I interrupt anything important?”
“Well, sort of, but that’s okay.”
“Okay. Good. How’s work going?”
“I met a girl. She wants to go out with me.”
“That’s great. What’s she like?”
“She has long hair and stuff.”
“That sounds good. Long hair is nice.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“What else about her besides the hair?”
“I really don’t know yet.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I’m excited to learn more about her as you do. Maybe we could-”
“Me too. Okay. Good bye, Frank.” I hung up the phone. I really liked Frank.
When I arrived at Mrs. Ashton’s estate there was music blaring so loud that I’d heard it while I was still a block away. It wasn’t good music at all. It was mostly top forty dance tunes laced with drum machines and altered robot voices doing all of the vocals. Mrs. Ashton’s taste in music was obviously no better than what she chose to publish. I looked at my watch. It was eight minutes after seven. I figured that was probably sevenish. I decided to go in.
A man wearing nothing but gold body paint and a black Speedo greeted me as I entered. Then a green woman dressed as the sea goddess lashed me with her tentacles as I walked past her. Mrs. Ashton’s mansion was both gaudy and amazing. Half of the people at the party were dancing and the other half were just mingling. I saw Mrs. Ashton. She had two men that were dressed like slaves holding her above the crowd on a chair that they bounced up and down to the rhythm of the music. The Wubble Wubzies must have netted her a fortune. I saw Anna across the room. She was talking with another woman that I recognized from Cloverfield. I walked up and stood behind them. I wanted to say hello to Anna but I didn’t know how to interject myself smoothly into their conversation so I just stood behind them silently and waited. Anna was laughing at something the other woman had said when she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and startled, spilling some of her drink on her dress.
“Oh, Jake!” she caught her breath. “You startled me.”
“Sorry.”
“No. It’s alright. It’s me, not you.” She turned to her friend. “Mia works at Cloverfield. Do you two know each other?”
We both shook our heads.
“Nice to meet you, Jake.” Mia extended her hand and I shook it. “I think I’m going to go over and say hi to Raymond. I haven’t talked to him in weeks and I don’t want to seem rude.”
“Okay, Mia,” said Anna.
Mia snaked through the crowd while she waved at a man in a well cut navy suit with long blond hair on one side of his head, the other side shaved.
“You made it,” Anna said.
“Yes.”
“I mentioned to some of our coworkers that I had met you. Not too many of them were familiar with you.”
“No. Not too many.” I tried to keep myself from staring. Frank always reminded me that it made people uncomfortable.
She looked at my empty hands. “Aren’t you going to get yourself a drink?”
“I don’t drink. Is that weird?”
“No. Not at all. I don’t think so. Sometimes I wish that I’d never started.” She laughed and showed me that her glass was empty. “Sometimes I drink a little too much. I’m afraid I’ll turn into a lush. Maybe I already am.”
“I don’t think so. I think you’re just fine the way you are.”
“Well, that’s certainly nice of you to say but you don’t really know me.”
“I feel like I do.”
“Okay,” she said uneasily. She studied my eyes and I could tell that something was going through her mind. “You know, I really need to say hello to Raymond, too. I’m going to go over and talk to him and I’ll probably bump into you again later.”
“Can I have a picture of you?”
“Sure. Sometime I’ll have to get one for you.”
“I guess I could just take a picture of you. It’d probably be a better picture than the ones you have. I’m a really good photographer. Here,” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a photo of myself in a locket that had belonged to my mother. “This is for you.” I held it out and she stared at my hand for a moment before she took it.
“Okay, thanks.” She examined the locket, opened it and saw the picture of me inside. “This looks really old and expensive. Are you sure that you want to give it to me?”
“Yes. You should have it.”
“Okay then. I guess I’ll go talk to Raymond now.”
“I’m good friends with Raymond. I helped him with The Wrath of Scorpion Fingers.”
“Really? I wish that I could say that I was good friends with him. He’s a shooting star that I think many of us would like to catch a ride with. Good to know people like him. He could really help you further your career.”
“If you’d like to get to know him he’s always asking me to meet him for dinner so that we can discuss whatever book he’s working on. He tells me that he despises me but he respects me and that I’m a detestable genius. I always say no when he asks me to meet him and give him advice. But I’d say yes if you wanted to go along.”
“Yes. Please. That would be so great. You could do that for me? You would do that for me?”
“Sure.”
“Alright. It’s a date then.”
“A date.” I smiled and nodded.
“I’ll talk to you later. Thanks for the locket.”
“Okay.”
She wandered away through the commotion of the party.
When I got home, waiting on my door step was a tiny black kitten, looking sad and vulnerable. I put the CDs in my pocket and scooped the little feline up so that I could look at it.
“You must be the cat that strange little man was looking for.”
“Mao,” it said in return.
“I thought that cat’s said meow. That’s what it always says in children’s books. I know because I edit them sometimes.”
“Mao,” it said again.
I scratched the top of its head behind the ears and it purred. “You sure like that, huh?” I turned it upside down and examined its undercarriage. “No little wiener under here. You’re a girl cat.”
“Mao.”
I put her against my chest and stroked her back. “It’s real important to that little guy to get you back so I guess you can stay with me for a while until he comes around again and then I’ll give you back to him.” I held her out so that I could look at her face. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“Mao,” She answered.
“We’d better get you inside and warm you up.” I took the cat inside and set her on the table. I walked to the fridge while she watched me rummage for something she could eat. I held out a couple of carrots. “You like carrots. I eat carrots all the time.” She stared at me. “Probably not, huh?” I looked at the half of a roast that I still had from the night before. “Maybe this.” I grabbed the plate with the roast on it and held it out.
“Mao.” The cat licked her lips.
“Now, we’re in business.” I walked back to the table and set the plate next to her. I ripped a chunk of meat from the roast about the size of my thumb and put it to her little mouth. She ate it immediately. “Wow, that was impressive for somebody so small.” I tore another piece free that was several times larger and it was met with the same conclusion. I just stared at her. “Where does it all go?” I pushed the plate toward her and watched her devour the entire roast. “I didn’t know that cats ate so much.”
For the next few days I worked on The Smell of Duty while the cat watched on. I took a break to feed her once in a while and pet her. The little man still hadn’t come by. I did a Google search of Anna Krumb and read everything about her that I could find. I even found her address so I drove over to her house and watched it for a while.
When I got home, Mrs. Hanko
witz spotted me as I got out of my car and called out. I waved back. She was the biggest gossip in town. I had no doubt that I was often the subject of one of her rumors. Whenever visiting with her it was best to say as little as possible. She hurried to my porch with quick little steps carrying a newspaper.
“Mr. Barnes, did you see this yet?”
“I’m afraid that I don’t read newspapers, Mrs. Hankowitz. I detest them.”
“But you need to see this.” She opened the paper and searched for a minute before folding it open to page A4. There was a picture of a man with a gun in his mouth. I recognized him as the man that had come to my door searching for the cat. The title above him read. Unidentified Man Commits Suicide Outside News Station. “I was there, Mr. Barnes. I was right there when it happened. It was terrible. This poor man had his gun out and he was pointing it at himself and saying the strangest things. And people were trying to talk him into putting the gun down but he wasn’t having it. He just kept going on and on.”
“What kind of things was he saying?”
“He kept saying that it was too much. That it wasn’t his fault that one got away or something like that. That he tried, he really tried. And that he wasn’t taking the blame for this one. Stuff like that. And then he stuck the gun back in his mouth and blew his brains out, all over the sidewalk outside the Telegram office. Part of his brain actually landed on my shoe.”
“Right on your shoe? That’s awful. Was it hard to clean?”
“Not too bad.”
“I’m glad to hear that your shoe cleaned up alright.” I smiled politely. “I really do need to get into the house.” I held up an old Clash CD Combat Rock. “I’ve got some music that I need to listen to.”
“Right.” Mrs. Hankowitz nodded and then she watched me as I entered my house. When I entered the living room the cat was sitting in my favorite chair. She perked up when she saw me.
“I’m afraid that I have some bad news for you.” I scooped her up and sat down in the chair with her. I held her up so that we were looking at each other face to face.
“Are you ready for this?”
“Mao,” she answered.
“Your friend, the little guy that was looking for you, he blew his brains out all over the sidewalk outside the news station. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.”
“Mao.”
“I know.” I stroked her back. “If you want to you can stay with me until you figure out what you want to do. Okay?” She purred. “I’ll build you a little house like mine outside so that you’ll have your independence but you’re always welcome to stay inside with me, too.”
“Mao.”
“We’ll be alright.” I sat in the chair for nearly an hour and stroked her head and did my best to console her.
The next day I took the cat to the Builder Supply to pick up lumber and other materials for her house. I had drawn up blueprints for a house that would look identical to my own yet tiny-cat-sized. It would have blankets and a low watt bulb placed strategically inside to keep it warm enough for her. I skipped replicating my mailbox because it might’ve just confused the mailman. The cat sat on the steps of the porch and watched me build. A guy that I went to high school with pulled up outside my house while I worked.
“What’ya got there? A cat?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a pile of hair that I ripped off of my back. It sprouted eyes and started walking around so I decided to keep it.”
“It’s a cat.”
“It’s a whole lot of none of your business.”
“You’re still as weird as I remembered, Barnes. You got a cat, then just say you got a cat,” he said, accusingly. “But you really don’t seem the type. I can’t imagine anything not withering up and dying after being around you for very long.”
“Well, unfortunately, you’re still breathing.”
He rolled up his window and drove away. I got back to work on the tiny house. Kids from the neighborhood walked up and watched for a spell. They tried to pet the cat and she tried to scratch them. I didn’t interfere. She got a couple of them pretty good. I considered my position on petting. Who am I to tell her that she has to let people rub her head? I wouldn’t appreciate that arrangement if it was the other way around. A couple of teenage girls stopped and watched as I was just finishing her house and asked what her name was. I told them that she didn’t have a name and they smirked at each other as they left, like I had brain damage or something.
For the next few weeks the cat ate so much food that I had to work out a deal with the local butcher to get a bulk discount. Regardless of how much she was eating she remained quite small but she was getting ridiculously strong. One day I took her aside to explain a few things to her about cats, what I understood anyway. “Listen, you’ve got to listen to me closely and learn. You may look all cute and helpless right now but buried deep inside you is the key to your salvation. You are an animal. You have the potential to be wild, to be vicious, powerful and dangerous, ferocious, and in that wildness inside you is the ability to take care of yourself. Deep at the center of your core there is a killing machine. It is both natural and good. And all of those other things that roam around outside or fly past you, they are yours to eat if you can catch them. Are you listening? Pay attention to what I’m telling you. Your survival may depend on it if something ever happens to me. Anything that you can find out there is yours to eat. Especially mice. Got it?”
“Mao.”