Curve of the Earth

© 2004 Jess Butcher
All rights reserved.

A relentless wind pounded the Kansas farm house. The bright white enamel that had once adorned the old place had long since surrendered to the elements; only a sparse covering of peeling paint remained, twisted, yellowing—claws curled toward a dull winter sun. In the basement of the house, the ceaseless wind was present only as pulsing thunder.

The pages of the dictionary were open and the old man extended them toward Michael Maloney, Esquire, and read, "'Earth: the sphere of mortal life as distinguished from spheres of spirit life—compare heaven, hell."

Maloney's eyes were open, staring into space; those of the younger man lying next to him were not. For an instant, the attorney's lips moved as if he were repeating the text. He'd bitten his tongue earlier and dried blood had formed at the corners of his mouth.

Maloney's companion stirred, a low moan escaping his lips. Their host was standing at the head of the makeshift pallet that held his two captives. Reacting to the moan, the old man moved a step closer its source.

"You can rest easy now, son," he whispered, bending over the younger man. "We're all alike, we three. How did Conrad put it? 'The old with the young, the decrepit with the lusty—all equal before sleep, death's brother ...'"

Vacant black eyes suddenly opened and the old man hesitated, expressionless as he held the open dictionary and gazed down upon his handiwork. "All equal ... all monsters we three, destined to leave this earth soon for the fires of hell," he said. The young man's eyelids fluttered, then closed.

"Isn't it simply a matter of one's perspective?" Michael Maloney, Esq., smiled, his full, pink lips stretched tight over teeth too perfect for his nearly sixty years. His companion sat, one elbow on the edge of the restaurant table. The younger man held a freshly lit cigarette; he balanced it delicately between thumb and index finger and watched the smoke as it trailed away above the heads of nearby patrons.

"Perspective, Rex," Maloney continued, his comment punctuated with an audible smack. "Perspective is the key to happiness, wouldn't you agree?" As he pushed his plate away; pink, bloody grease spilled over the rim and stained the white table linen before him. Maloney frowned, awkwardly dabbing at the spill with a napkin before reaching for his wine glass.

Rex smiled at the attorney's momentary discomfort but continued to ignore the baiting. At thirty-three Rex, T-Rex to his friends, was skilled at using silence to conceal a starkly limited range. Once the conversation strayed beyond the latest trend in men's clothing, music, or tattoo art, T-Rex quickly lost interest. Besides, Rex knew what Maloney wanted from him, and it had nothing to do with polite conversation.

"Rex, you really should—"

"You really should lighten up, Michael," Rex interrupted. Affecting a semi-convincing Cockney accent, he flicked cigarette ash on the table and continued, "You know, old man, you can be such a terrible bore."

Though the emphasis on 'old' annoyed him, Maloney, Esq., knew further attempts at civilized dialogue would be futile. He waved a pale hand dismissively and reached for a dessert menu.

Outside the restaurant, the other waited silently. Human in form but no longer fettered by the constraints of humanity, he studied the dark parking lot and the black lake beyond. The crumbling asphalt arced away toward the frigid waters. The other breathed softly and listened as the low, wind-driven waves lapped the muck at the edge of the mossy shoreline. Dinner would be over soon and the reckoning would begin.

In bright sunlight, the careful observer might have wondered at the nearby barn's odd, sparkling appearance. Time and a relentless north wind had slowly removed specks of peeling white paint from the farm house and embedded them as tiny projectiles in the barn's rough-textured covering. Like its owner, the barn had shriveled beneath the weight of time.

Over the course of the previous twelve months, the old man had spent little time in the crumbling barn. Instead he'd invested endless hours in the basement of the farm house. There he had honed the skills he would need for the grim work ahead: the capture, the binding, the drilling, just the correct combination of technique and hardware.

The other leaned close to Maloney again and spoke. "Coconuts proved to be the best templates," he said nodding earnestly.

Maloney, Esquire, coughed and a low hiss escaped his lips before he spoke in a whisper. "Co ... coconuts?"

The old man gazed down at his prey. "Yes. Coconuts, duct-tape, and drill bits; after so much experimentation, the solution proved so simple. Of course, finding the coconuts around here was a bit difficult. I had to drive all the way to Liberal to buy them at the Piggly-Wiggly."

As he spoke, he reached toward the other captive and tapped the end of the thin, eight-inch drill-bit that had pierced the pedophile's kneecap before embedding itself in a double layer of plywood. T-Rex moaned softly in response to the slight vibration of the steel, but his closed eyes remained motionless beneath nearly translucent lids.

Moving a few steps away, the old man sat heavily on an ancient kitchen chair, the split yellow vinyl groaning in protest. His hands gripped the ancient chrome arms, tiny rust barbs snagging at the pads of his fingertips as he watched his prey for a long moment. They lay quiet now, two science-project butterflies, loathsome wings motionless, pinned to plywood by dozens of black, cobalt-steel spirals.

Suddenly exhausted, the old man slowly leaned forward and began to weep. No one listened as he sobbed, not his slowly dying victims, certainly not the God he had once worshipped. His only grandson had taken his own life in this very basement. Only eleven years old when these two had stolen his innocence and drained him of the will to live. The old man had found the boy here, hanging from a rafter. Though he hated himself for it, the twisted agony of the child's face had transformed the grandfather into something other than a man.

"I've given up everything, surrendered my soul for this?" The old man's whispered question drifted away into the damp basement-abyss as he raised his eyes toward his dying victims.

Blood had run from the edges of the plywood platform and pooled, black and cold on the coarse concrete floor. The dictionary the old man had quoted from earlier rested face-down on the edge of the platform, its pages a blood-wick growing ever darker. A relentless winter wind pounded the Kansas farm house, but in the basement the northerly gusts were muted, a pulsing thunder calling from beyond the curve of the earth.

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