Forgive Me

The Familiar Scream

In concealed quarters, they met for the first time: the Beast and the Detective.

-2/16/1920

The fat, brass knocker swung as the horrible door screamed. The thing shrieked like a child struck with an iron whip. A shadow with the smell of the disheveled detective beckoned to my knock. The edges of his posture seemed, if not gone, blurred. His figure was dark and vague; no defining features marked him anymore. He was no different than the chopped shadow cast by the neighboring lamp posts.

If three weeks earlier he would have opened the door and sported the same groggy appearance, I might have been shocked. But after witnessing the unlocked mind of a man half-drunk, nothing as mad as a fatigued face could sway me.

He blinked. His eyes were barren of recognition; only the overgrown bushes of deprivation infected that foggy gaze and no external force could wrench him from their thorned brambles.

"What are you?" he slurred, breath spewing smoke and flame.

"Who?" I suggested.

But he only shook his head, and then I understood.

"If you are busy, I can-"

"No, no." He waved my hesitation away with a cigar, setting the only marks of my hesitation on fire. It smoked in his fingers, spitting green and yellow paint over my morality. "We do not close for another hour. It would be my paycheck to turn you away."

I smiled-- a real, genuine smile, not the twisted one on my mask. This one was kind, like a woman I knew so long ago. What was her name? The detective had said it-- spoken the name with such worldliness I was opt to believe he knew it better than I. But how could he? I knew her from top to bottom, both inside and out. Now, she was a ghoul to me: a s***h of red seeping into the street, just a wound. What had replaced her? Red nails, pale face. A pistol. Yes. A pistol had replaced her.

I had no intention of entering David's office; the cold outside masked my devilish intent with wicked white. I sat on the porch instead, ignoring the bite of Winter's climactic heave on my exposed shoulders, and gestured for him to join me. The civilized manner in which he stood vanished for a moment as his bewilderment showed, but was gone once he took his place beside me.

He spoke first, to my dismay.

"Whatever happened to the fellow at your apartment?" he wondered aloud, sounding as if he spoke to himself rather than me. It was eerily similar to the intoxicated tone I had heard not too long ago.

"Gone," I uttered, surprised at the indifference plaguing the word. "Haven't seen him since that night. Haven't seen myself, for that matter."

"Yourself?"

I nodded, speaking words my heart begged to be rid of.

"With him, too did I leave."

"Who was he?"

This question caught me by surprise and I found it difficult to give an adequate answer. Who was he? Who was he?

"A friend," I finally said. "A friend who looked upon a mask and that mask's daughter with interest. He saw, more than anyone else, the dying eyes behind it and the hope beating from behind prison bars. And he took those eyes-- that hope-- in his palms, stroked it with a gentle thumb until my defenses fell. And I melted in his arms."

"Compassionate," the detective muttered, unable to control the sudden tremor in his knees. "And he left you? Without a word? Why?"

"I cannot say."

But I could. Oh, I could.

"Maybe I scared him off," he laughed, though with knowledge of extremity; he made certain not to laugh too long, lest it become my harassment. I have learned with excessive amounts of his company that, if nothing else, he knows when to stop.

"David, what you said the other night." Suddenly I found it difficult to keep my mind on my pocketed firearm. Something had been bothering me for over a week, and not just my concern for Lars.

"What did I say?" he asked.

I became aware how close we were. If he were to reach his palm out, it would have touched my sore thigh. The question was: would I let him?

"I don't suppose it matters. What you blabber at the stool is not my concern."

"You brought it up," he snorted, leaning against the weight of his arm to stare out into the street. "But, if it's any consolation, I remember every word out of my mouth."

"Then you'll recognize your peculiar, if not barbaric, behavior?"

"I wouldn't go so far as barbaric but surely peculiar."

"Then you know why I show concern?"

"What did I say?"

I paused here; clearly, there was nothing to be gained. Whether he answered my question or not, I had a job to do. After his skull was leaking on his porch, dripping chunks of brain down the stairs like a sacrificial pyramid, there would be no more distraction. His mystery would not be mine to solve any longer; he would be only Winter's problem now.

"Tell me about that girl."

He gave me a curious look, one soon replaced by the blood of embarrassment. "What girl?" he stuttered. I was surprised at how well he kept his composition when faced with a prodding pitchfork to the belly.

"I have seen you two around the streets, speaking to each other from behind a wall you create. You never allow yourself to get close. Why?"

"Her name's Becky." I caught annoyance hanging onto the last syllable.

"Then Becky."

"What makes you think I don't want to get close?"

"I never said want."

"You said I create a wall."

"Yes. Your point?"

"Forget it."

"You still have not answered my question."

"Damn it."

We sat in silence, breathing the intensity.

"Dammit," he said again, and I flinched. "If you think it, not long before all of Boston does."

"What?"

"People can't be satisfied with normal. They need entertainment. An affair is just that."

"I don't understand."

"I am entertainment to many; I am a recognizable face. I can't just be left alone."

"You do not have to be recognizable to be bothered."

"And you would know?"

"Who do you think?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Boston must be a lot different from wherever you come from, then."

"Italy."

"Really?" David closed his eyes and bobbed his head up and down, as if to say Ah, now I understand why you left. "In what ways is Boston different?"

"Boston doesn't have a destroyed government, recovery from a world war, or constant terrorist attacks."

"But there were only a few attacks. Can it really be said the government is destroyed?"

"Experience it firsthand and then tell me it is stable."

Another whisper in the wind prevented him from continuing the subject matter. "But you were asking about me and Becky."

"Yes."

"There's this ring."

"A ring?"

But he stopped before he could continue, instead deciding to sniff the air. He looked very much like a curious bulldog with his fat nose in the air and I marveled at how one man could be so many things. He was a shark, a book, a song, a yearning, and now a puppy. Whatever he was-- whatever angelic satyr with a pretty face-- there was no better word for him than jumbled.

My brain guided my hand to the grasp of the pistol and my heart screamed for his life. But its ropes would not relent, nor the putrid Guardsman's barking lips. He meant to see the deed through, even if it cost him his prisoner.

The gnarled fingers of a storm cloud stretched over the battle in my subconscious, stroking the course of the uneven terrain with confusion. On one side of the battlefield, face drenched with remorse, was the Winter Wind basking in the thunder cries around it. On the other side, searching the violet scars flashing through the sky, stood Innocence and her corroded, rotting body. They stared each other down, the Winter Wind with a mocking snarl and Innocence with hands of pity. An adult and a child: so very different, and yet, so very similar. If you were to strip them of their mangled flesh and drape their mind underneath the cloudy sky, there would be no difference at all.

The Winter Wind took my inching hand and slapped Innocence's pleads across the cheek. But she was not swayed. She took that very hand and cradled it in her arms, like she herself wished to be, and urged me to abandon the firearm in the ocean. You have torn me down to bone, she whispered. Don't let me die in vain.

Ha! the Winter Wind snarled. If you are to die while June lives, then so be it!

You have not considered the future, old friend. If we kill once more, then it is done: we win. But she will grow, like it or not, and she will know. She will know her mother as a murderer, nothing more. Will it matter then why it was done?

You're a coward! it shrieked, and, for only a moment, there was no discernible features between him and the child. Pull the trigger! Steal his life! Destroy him! Destroy him!

If you really love June, Innocence begged, you will leave him be!

But before my finger could even graze the trigger or gain the courage to pull it, a gash cut through the sky and bled black horror where the battle had been: a scream. Nothing, not even the terror of Innocence's loss, could come close to the sheer horror in the stranger's shriek. Without pinpointing its location or predicting the cause, it was already clear what had happened next.

David started to his feet and I slipped the pistol behind my coat once more. My heart hadn't won over; rather, my curiosity did.

"What was that?" I gasped, though I already knew. The way he reacted-- the bulging eyes and drowning frown-- was enough to see the recognition.

"Stay here, Missy," he shouted, shoving his coat over his body and leaping off the porch down the street.

Without giving it a second thought, I tore down Lewis after him. "Never!" I yelled, catching up to his side.

He gave me a split second's confused stare before it was replaced by his frantic one. This look I did not like; it was a clash between his struggle to keep a calm state and his quick terror. We'll never make it in time, we'll never make it in time, it shrieked. She's gone, she's gone, she's gone.

Another scream-- this one sending a rattlesnake of shivers up my spine-- split through the calm stars. David slammed to a halt in the middle of Richmond Street (the Ghost Street, it was often called) and I almost toppled onto his back. He swerved East, around an alley corner, and stopped short. When I filled the space behind him and gazed into the confined space of the alleyway, it was not difficult to explain the horror carved into his face.

Writhing in the shadows of the surrounding buildings was the gut-spilling figure of what once was a timid woman. Strung about her waist, hands, throat, and thighs was a thick, metal wire wrapped so tight they were digging deep into her skin. Red, like jelly filling from a doughnut, dribbled from gashes dug into her bare stomach and exposed two jutting ribs. Her doll-eyes popped from her hollow face and her mouth was in a perpetual state of gape, where her cheeks had been cut like a puppet.

The iron stench leaking from her mutilated body engulfed my nostrils and I vomited it into the dirt. I fell to my knees and heaved, clutching my belly with two elbows, and expelled the rest of my stomach. Even when there was nothing left to hack up, I gagged and gagged and gagged.

David's boots were glued to the puddle of blood gathering around her. Silver ran down his cheeks and he gripped the pain in his gritted teeth. He did not fall as I did, but stumbled to her figure and held the back of her head in his palms. Her walnut hair was sprawled out beneath her like ropes and her delicate fingers twitching beneath his weight. The eyes-- those dazzling, gruesome eyes-- scanned his face and spilled over with bloody tears.

She reached a trembling, wired hand inside his coat pocket and withdrew the visible handle of a pistol.

"Becky," he sobbed, pressing his forehead against her crimson lips, "I-"

"Please," she gurgled, a bubble of blood popping where her jaw was leaking into her cheeks.