Life on Mars (Take Away the Saints Anthology)

Lady Killer

"Janet?"

The last person on the planet I was expecting to hold me hostage in the end room of a Motel-6 was Janet. But there she was, large as life wanted her, seated on the bed chewing a thumbnail. The coverlet slid off the mattress like half an apple peel. The lamp washed her in egg yolk light, missing the hollows in her flabby cheeks so she looked like old, breaded chicken. I was on the floor. Even sitting up, I smelled the carpet, fusty from a hundred different pairs of shoes.

My head hurt.

My neck hurt.

God, she'd hit me.

There was a phone cord wrapped around my throat. I tried to get up, my veins were on fire, but the plastic tightened around important bits of me, and I sat down again hard. My hands were tied behind my back. I couldn't touch anything except for the wood grain of the door behind me and the fusty carpet. I twisted my hands just enough to scooch them inch by inch under my backside.

"What the fuck, Janet?" I said.

She scratched at her elbow.

"Hey!"

Janet lifted herself off the bed and knelt on my level. I stopped moving my hands.

"You killed my daughter, I know you did."

The air fell out of me and I opened my mouth to protest. I'd never heard it said, not like that. Dad called it the "accident" and mom just left. I stood in the kitchen and screamed it as loud as I could because it didn't seem real.

Now it was.

"You killed Busy," she said again.

I shook my head. The cord rubbed. "No. No, Busy died in a hit and run—!"

I wasn't ready for the slap. The force shoved my head into the door with a crack. Heat rushed to my cheek, stinging my skin like tiny bees beneath the surface. I bared my teeth for lack of words and growled at her. "I didn't kill your daughter."

But I had. And I hadn't. An accident? Murder? I didn't remember which was my truth and which was my story. Reality was malleable. I wasn't the same person that went into the theater as when I came out. 

Janet reached for me. I shied, but she touched me anyway, on the eyebrow. Her thumb pulled back, red with blood.

"Did you practice?" She asked.

"Practice what?"

"Strangling. It's not easy. I had to see what it looked like first to be sure that my daughter's neck wasn't really broken. There's a difference in the bruises. Ya'll wouldn't believe it unless you saw it for yourself. The only way to compare was to do it on a person, and they had to look like Busy. They had to look like you. Or I wouldn't know how she was when she died, see. Or how you would be."

How I'd look? I had a notion I'd collect a reward if I walked out alive. I could see that headline: Cops Daughter Meets Lady Killer Face To Face.

But no, my mind was making things up again. "I, I didn't strangle anyone." I shivered. I'd never be warm again. "I hit Busy with my car, yeah, sure but how...?"

Janet smiled, sad. Sad like she pitied me for being young. "Do you wanna know where your daddy is when he ain't at home nights?"

I didn't. I shook my head and the cord tightened. When had I started crying?

"He drinks until god awful hours at Rick's, right where you sit to eat your grilled cheese. He talks how you don't, though. But he doesn't remember. He told me what you done. How you drove Busy home from a party one night and strangled her to death with your bare hands."

"I hit her with my car," I said it slowly so she'd understand she was wrong.

"He said you're sick. You didn't know what you done. That's the lie he told you. You murdered her. And since no one else is gonna prove it, we have to. We have to make sure you suffer how she did."

No. No I'd only tried to murder myself that night. But then again...I might have. It was Saturday and I thought it was Monday.

"Your daddy's a good man," Janet said. "He said he was sorry. You sorry, honey?"

I nodded. But it wasn't gonna save me even if I didn't. Thinking about death was different from meeting it. The heroes in our head aren't the same when we greet them face to face.

"Where's Lucky?" I mumbled, sitting on my hands. My fingers itched to move forward.

"Who?"

"What have you done with Lucky!"

A crash in the bathroom drew our attention. Janet hissed something through her teeth and pushed to her feet. I couldn't imagine her killing anyone. How many cream sodas had she opened for me? How many times had she stood and kept me company?

But here was she and here was I.

Janet went into the bathroom, and I slipped my legs through my tied arms. The phone cord was secured to the doorknob. I undid the noose on my neck and ran.