Demon, Interrupted

1

1

They found me.

New place, new name, new life.

A routine began, born out of five previous relocations. I scanned over beloved objects: my favorite shirt, the coffee mug from Claire, a book of matches from Trattoria. Everything that could be linked back to this life or used to identify me must remain. Complacency would kill me.

I hustled to the bedroom and pulled a screwdriver from the dresser.

“Facts: Name, Christina Marie Chapman.”

I unscrewed the large intake air vent beside my bedroom door and crawled inside.

“Birth date, March 3rd, 1984.” Not my exact age, but close.

Inside the first branch of the air vents I grabbed my bug-out bag and hauled it out.

“Social security number, 276-18-4432.”

Outside the vent, I knelt in the hall to check the contents. Five hundred dollars. A change of clothes. Protein bars. Two forged driver’s licenses, one for Christina Chapman and another for Karen Walters.

“Parents’ names, Theresa and Ed Chapman. Street I grew up on, Rocky Ridge. Name of first pet, Maggie.”

I closed the largest compartment on the backpack and unzipped the smaller front pocket. Inside, a stack of Polaroid pictures was held together by a decrepit rubber band. Each picture was something valuable. All compiled by my mother and grandmother, my real mother and grandmother. Hurt stabbed at my chest and I swallowed the pointless pain. With the pack slung over my shoulder, I replaced the vent cover and headed for the front door.

In another life, my escape plan brought me a sense of calm. It served as a verbal touchstone. If a stranger watched me too intently, or followed me too closely, I would recite a new life and strategy to disappear, and the panic would recede. Until now, the paranoia always turned out to be nothing more than a momentary mind f**k.

My traitorous hand trembled so hard I couldn’t open the door. I shook my fingers out hard and glared at the knob. It was time to disappear.

The phone rang at the exact moment my hand touched the cold metal, jolting me into the stratosphere. Bye bye breath. Infantile whimpers trickled out of my mouth. My brain screamed at me to get it together and go. My body wasn’t having it.

I should have ignored it, opened the door, kept walking, and never looked back. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. It could’ve been anyone calling…work, or one of my new friends.

But I knew it wasn’t. It was Them.

Voices from my past rushed into my head. Watch out for Them. Run from Them. They will use you. They will kill you. They killed my mother. They killed my grandmother. They killed my father, my aunts, my uncles, cousins…everyone was dead. I was the last. They were to blame for my lonely, nomadic existence, for the births and deaths of all my identities.

The phone reached my ear before my brain registered walking across the room. My hands choked the receiver.

“Evangeline.” The male voice slithered into my ear, all cold confidence, telling me he held the strings and I’d be dancing at any moment.

I wanted to speak, I really did, but the confirmation that one word gave me my birth name. They knew me. They knew everything I spent a lifetime concealing.

“One million dollars.” Each syllable of the voice squeezed my lungs. “That is what we will pay you to locate a single object for us.”

No my mind screamed, but I was still mute.

“One million dollars buys security. You could finally be free. No one would be able to touch you.”

No one except you. Bastards. Anger loosened the hold on my lungs and air seeped into my chest.

“You could work for us. We could protect you and guarantee your safety in exchange for your continued services. You could have the life you have always dreamt of.” The voice leaned on me, saturated with certainty that I would comply.

Through the jumble of a million thoughts and questions one rose and fired out of my mouth like a slingshot fueled by a lifetime of pain.

“Who! Are! You?”

The voice was undaunted by my obvious distress, his words trampling what little courage I scraped together. “You have one hour to meet us at the address pinned on your refrigerator.”

The kitchen blurred while I scanned for the invading piece of paper. A few blinks and I was clear again.

“If you fail to show, we will take that as a refusal and it will result in…” A slow chuckle barely registered over the deafening ring in my ears.

“Well, the rest of your family can speak to the consequences of refusing us.” He laughed, full and loud. “Or I guess I should say they can’t speak of it any longer.”

A eulogy of images flashed in my mind, synced to my heartbeat, each one faster and harder than the one before. I wanted a chance to confront the people who slaughtered my family. I wanted vengeance and retribution. But how could I defeat the people who were responsible for the systematic destruction of an entire family? I was one person. They could be hundreds. Common sense and the power of my emotions threatened to tear me in half.

I let the phone slide from my ear, dimly aware of the voice saying “one hour.” The receiver clanged onto the table as I walked away.

Outside the cool night air prickled against my flushed skin. I could breathe again and forced a deep breath every few steps. This time of year the weather had a split personality, the days like June, the nights like January. The moisture in the air during the day condensed and draped the night in a thick blanket of fog. Any other time I would’ve been thankful for the fog, helping to hide me during my escape, but tonight the moon was full. Each suspended water droplet reflected and amplified the moon’s light, making the evening air luminesce like a thousand tiny flashlights…all pointed at me.

I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt from beneath my jacket and covered my head. Scanning the area for any sign of Them, I headed down the alley that ran between the back of my apartment building and a row of houses. It was still early enough that the noises of cars on the streets, dogs barking, and people coming in and out of their homes filled the air.

All of my senses screamed for quiet. I wanted to be able to hear if someone lurked behind me or smell for a stranger’s cologne. Though the urge to look behind me was overwhelming, it would only give me away, so I faced forward and focused on the plan. This escape route accounted for several scenarios. I could handle this.

Four blocks from my apartment, it was all post-war tract housing. Every house looked the same. I navigated the sprawling suburban nightmare until I found my way to a busier section of town where there would be crowds of people to get lost in.

I tugged the straps on the pack, trying and failing not to think about the voice on the phone. Nothing like what I would have expected a murderer to sound like. No hoarse whispers or harsh guttural rasp, no passionate outrage or anger. Even now the calm, cold, confidence made goosebumps break out on my skin.

How many people in my family talked to that man before they were killed? I would never, under any circumstances, let myself be used to help anyone gain more money or power. Thinking of the consequences of that decision made me speed up.

My grandmother’s voice schooled and scolded me while I jogged.

Don’t stay in one place too long, you can’t afford roots no matter how small. Don’t make friends; they will want to know about your past, they could be used against you. Find employment where no one will notice you and they will pay in cash. Be the bar back, not the bartender, be the janitor not the secretary, be the cook not the waitress.

My latest incarnation had been as a kennel worker in a veterinarian’s office. No one paid me any attention except the animals. I loved their furry little faces. One day the tech Claire needed help. I should have gotten someone else.

She was the domino that caused everyone to be a little nicer to me, and eventually they all fell. They smiled at me, said hello, and turned small talk into medium talk. It made me belong, and I looked forward to going into the clinic every single day because of it.

My selfish behavior endangered them all. If They found out about any of my relationships with my co-workers…a sudden wave of nausea cut that thought off from its conclusion.

I slowed to a walk when downtown came into view. The cars managed to burn off the fog on the main street. Even though it was a weeknight, people were still out in force, eating or shopping. Doing all the mundane things I had never and would never be able to do. I pulled my hood closer to my face and merged onto the busy sidewalk. I meandered in and out of stores, up one side of the street and down the other, scanning the crowd for any potential tails.

Satisfied I wasn’t being followed, I ducked inside a convenience store, found the restroom and changed out my jacket and shirt for ones in my pack. Finished, I tucked my hair into a ball cap and exited out the rear door.

I doubled back through the residential neighborhood. Six blocks over and four blocks up from my apartment building was a small, white house with a detached garage. An older man let me rent his garage space for fifty dollars a month. I paid two years upfront in cash. He gave me a key and didn’t ask any questions.

A shock of white hair in the window turned my eyes toward the house. The pint-sized man nodded at me, and I let myself into the garage. The light from the moon illuminated the cramped garage enough for me to see the tattered brown tarp draped over my small motorcycle. The bastard offspring of a motocross and a street bike, I’d gotten it from a pawn shop when I first moved to town. A mechanic tuned it up, showed me how to coax it into starting and then I left it here. Two years was flirting with the end of the fuel stabilizer’s reliability. I uncovered the bike and hooked the battery to a charger on the wall.

I hated motorcycles, but a motorcycle fit my purpose tonight threefold. One: Motorcycles could go places cars couldn’t. Two: No one knew I owned, or could even drive a motorcycle. Three: The helmet would hide my face and the leathers would obscure my body.

The more indeterminate the better. I already had a headstart. When my mother’s and father’s DNA combined, neither would make a decision. My hair wasn’t really black or brown. It wasn’t curly or straight. It settled in the middle somewhere around dark mess. Freckles spattered my face, but too few to be known for having freckles, and too many to say I had a flawless complexion. My angular jaw conflicted with the softness of my cheeks.

The one thing about me that could give me away? My eyes. Nothing pretty about them, they were blue. Very, very, electric blue. I had never met anyone else with eyes as freakishly blue as my own. When I could wear contact lenses, I did. Most people would report my eyes to be brown or at least dark.

I slipped into a leather jacket and helmet then readjusted my backpack. I unhooked the charger, needing the short time to be enough to revive the battery. The dead weight of the bike rolled easily out into the foggy night. At the end of the road, I straddled the seat. Ignition on, I stood up on the pedals then jumped down with all my weight to start the engine. Nothing.

“Damn you.”

Just as I was resetting my weight for another attempt, headlights whipped around the corner heading straight for me. I jumped down again. Nothing. And again, and again. The car sped up. Faster and faster. The bike sputtered again.

Why couldn’t I be descended from the Patron Saint of Motorcycles?

Finally the engine caught and roared to life. The noise sent a sweet rush of victory and adrenaline through my body, super-charging my arms and legs. A turn of my ankle put the bike in gear, and I sped off. In my side view mirror, the car turned into a driveway and pulled up to a garage. I exhaled a huge breath I didn’t even know I was holding and accelerated into the night, letting the fog swallow up yet another life.