THE INVALIDS
by William Pauley III
“Someone is killing all the women in our apartment building,” Samantha said, with a smirk. She was standing in a posed position, with her legs outstretched and her arms wrapped limply around the middle of her torso. “Real nasty too. Whoever it is, he’s really ripping ‘em apart.”
“What do you mean, ripping them apart?” Norm said, fumbling with his cell phone. He pointed at the ceiling. “Look up.”
Samantha lifted her head. He raised his phone and took a couple snapshots. She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know how else to say it,” she said. “The guy doesn’t just go in with a knife and make a couple jabs, he literally rips them apart. Arms, legs, head, everything. Popped right off.”
“So it’s a guy then?”
“Well, I mean I don’t know for sure, but come on, this has middle-aged white male written all over it.”
“How many have been killed?” he asked.
“Four, so far. One a night for the last four nights. Suppose he’ll be coming for me soon.”
“Four? Jesus,” he said. He took another picture. “You don’t seem too worried.”
“I can take care of myself. Always have.”
He chuckled.
“Yeah, but the guy lives here in the tower with us. That isn’t even a little unnerving?”
She looked at him suspiciously. The amount of arrogance in his words carried real weight, as if he knew without a doubt the killer was one of the residents and he wasn’t just making an assumption or trying to scare her into taking safety seriously.
“You know this guy or something?” she asked.
“What? No. He’s killing women in the building every night, so it’s only logical to assume he’s a resident here in Eighth Block Tower,” he said. “I can’t believe this is the first I’m hearing about it. I haven’t seen any squad cars around.”
“Oh, please. You know the police, Norm,” she said. “If people are getting killed in Eighth Block, they turn their heads. Always have. It’s almost like the killer is doing them a favor by taking us out. They can’t be bothered with saving us.”
“Well, we may be poor, but we’re still people. They should help.”
“You live here, right? It’s not because we’re poor. This place is completely fucked. All the residents are insane. We should be put out of our goddamn misery. I mean, really, what good would it do to save any of us here in Eighth Block? What good are we doing? How do we contribute to society? Well, in a positive way, that is…”
“So you and me, we’re the only sane ones, huh?” he said, and then laughed. He tugged at his collar, trying to signal for her to pull her shirt down, but she didn’t respond to it.
“If you say so,” she said.
“Take out your tits,” he said, tugging at his collar again. She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“You’re a fucking pig,” she said, and then started after her purse.
“Wait, where are you going? You’re not leaving are you?” he asked.
“That’s a stupid question,” she said. “You know that’s exactly what I’m doing, and you know why too.”
He held his hands up in front of her, desperately trying to think of a decent way to apologize before she made her way to the door. He was never too good at thinking while under pressure. She pushed past him.
“I told you I didn’t mind you taking photographs of me for your little project as long as things didn’t get weird,” she said. “I thought I made it clear I wasn’t into doing nudes or porn or whatever it is you’re trying to get me to do right now. Gross. No thanks, man.”
“But wait,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”
She laughed.
“Norm, you told me to take out my tits. How else am I supposed to interpret that?”
“I, uh,” he stammered. “I just meant show a little cleavage. Not for you to take all your tits out. Two tits, I mean. I didn’t mean to say all your tits, you clearly have only two. Not that I was looking… at them?”
He trailed off into insanity.
“Not only are you a pig, you’re also an idiot. We’re done here,” she said, and walked to the door.
As she was leaving, he caught sight of something he had never seen before. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it all those years living inside his apartment, because now that he was seeing it, it seemed to stick out, as plain as a bullet hole in a sheet of glass. Just above the front doorway, there was a black mesh pyramid, about the size of a fifty cent piece, and it stuck out at least a full inch from the sheetrock.
“What the hell is that?” he said to no one in particular.
She had just made it to the door as he muttered the question. She traced his line of vision to the pyramid jutting out from the wall just above her head and studied it.
“It’s probably a smoke detector or something,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Don’t you live here in the tower?” he said, mirroring her comment from earlier. “Do you really think we have smoke detectors here? No way.”
He studied the design of the object from about a foot away, as close as he could get in a standing position.
“How have I never noticed this before?” he asked, pulling up a chair to stand on so he could get a closer look. The object was not sealed or fastened to the wall in any manner, from what he could tell anyway. It looked to be resting there limply inside a hole cut into the sheetrock. He pinched the pyramid between his fingers and pulled. It seemed to be anchored inside the wall somehow, even though it was loose to the touch, so he pulled again, harder this time. It worked. He removed the object from the wall completely.
“I’ll tell you what it looks like to me,” she said. “But if it is what I think it is, then this is creepy as fuck.”
He continued his study of the object’s design. There was a black cylinder, about an inch thick, that was attached at the base of the pyramid, previously hidden inside the wall. At the opposite end of the cylinder, there was a wire, about the same thickness of coaxial cable, and it was split, exposing smaller wires on the inside. This must have been what was anchoring it to the wall, he thought.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
“Well, it looks to be a microphone of some sort,” she said.
He screwed up his face.
“A microphone? Really? But why would there be a microphone in my apartment?”
“Beats me,” she said. “But if you want my thoughts on who the perpetrator might be, I’d put my money on that chimp you hang out with all the time.”
He thought for a second.
“You mean Dale?” he asked.
“If that’s what you call him,” she said. “You two have a weird obsessive thing going on with each other. I’m honestly surprised he’s not here with you right now.”
“You think he’s obsessed with me?” he asked. “We don’t hang out that much… do we?”
“Oh, come on, Norm,” she said. “You two are basically Siamese twins. But whatever, it’s none of my business. I was just making an observation. Well, I’ll be seeing you around, I’m sure. Later.”
“Wait,” he said. “You’re still leaving, even after finding the, uh, the thing?”
He held up the microphone and then tossed it onto the couch. She looked at him in a confused manner.
“Yes, I’m still leaving. You’re still a pig,” she said. “Why would you think finding that thing would make me stay?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I dunno. It’s kind of like a mystery now. I thought we’d, like, try to solve it or something.”
She shook her head.
“Let’s not,” she said, then smiled sarcastically and opened the door. Standing on the other side, with a surprised look on his face and his fist up in the air in a knocking position, was Dale.
“Ha! Perfect,” she said. “Later, Dale!”
She pushed past him and made her way down the hall, headed to her apartment. Dale looked at Norm and smiled awkwardly.
“So… what was that, huh?” Dale asked.
“What do you mean? I was only taking pictures. Trying to build a portfolio so I can one day get out of this fucking tower.”
“Who was that? Is that the girl from the cafeteria?” Dale asked.
“No, her name is Samantha. We hang out sometimes. She’s just helping me with this project.”
“Sure, okay,” Dale said, then smiled. He tried pushing his way into Norm’s apartment, just as he had done every day for the last year or so, but Norm stopped him from coming inside. He thought about what Samantha had said, about how the two of them seemed obsessed with each other. That didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t really care so much about what other people in the building thought of him, but he couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable at the realization that he was in an unhealthy relationship with one of his mates. He enjoyed Dale’s company, of course, but he certainly didn’t want Dale to get the wrong idea regarding their relationship. A little space is necessary, he thought, and pushed Dale away.
“Hey, I’m not really feeling too well at the moment,” Norm said. “You mind if we do this another day?”
Dale looked hurt, but recovered almost immediately.
“Sure thing, man,” he said. “Hope you feel better.”
Norm nodded. Dale stood there awkwardly for a few moments.
“So…I’m going to shut the door now.”
“Wait,” Dale said. “Are you really sick or are you just not wanting to hang out with me?”
“That’s a weird question. No, I’m really sick.”
“Yeah, you say that, but…” Dale looked down the hallway, in the direction Samantha headed only moments before. “You were just hanging out with Samantha, so, uh, I was just wondering if something is up with you and me?”
You and me… ugh, Sam was right, Norm thought. Space was definitely necessary. Lots and lots of space.
“Why do you think she left? I’m sick. I need to lie down. Plus, it’s pretty late,” Norm said, slowly pushing the door closer to the frame.
Dale nodded.
“Okay then,” he said. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, or something. Get better! We’ve got humans to kill!”
They both laughed. Dale was referring to Destroy All Humans!, a video game Norm had picked up recently at the used game shop for five bucks where the main character was an alien visiting earth who destroys every human it sees. It was easily the best five bucks he’d ever spent. The amount of entertainment contained within that little game was worth ten times the price. It had basically consumed their lives for the last two weeks. Serving now as yet another reminder as to why they needed to pull away for a bit. Jesus, we really do spend pretty much all of our time together, Norm thought.
“Later!” Norm said, waving Dale off. He shut the door.
Seeing Dale felt awkward now. He hoped the feeling would eventually pass, because he truly enjoyed hanging out with him, he just wanted…well, less of him. He shrugged off the thought and turned on Destroy All Humans! Dale’s visit had gotten him in the mood for it.
As he picked up the controller, his phone dinged. It was a text from Samantha. It read: “Guess what I just found at my place?”
Following her text was a picture of a small black pyramid protruding out from her wall, along with another text that read: “Get your ass over here right now, and don’t say a single word when you get here.”
It only took a couple minutes to get over to her apartment, as it was just down the hall, but already Samantha had busted up most of the sheetrock that once made up the inside of the front wall. When he walked in, she immediately held a finger up to her lips, reminding him not to say a word. She pointed to the microphone. It wasn’t in the same place as it was in his apartment. This microphone was right in the middle of her front wall.
Samantha pulled out her phone.
“When I got home from your place, I was curious to see if there was something similar in my place too,” she texted Norm. It took him a second to realize why she was texting him when the two of them were standing in the same room, but once he remembered the microphone, the one reason he was called over and was now standing in her apartment, he felt dumb. “I looked all over and couldn’t find anything. I was relieved, well, until I looked behind the mirror.”
Norm looked at the large decorative mirror now sitting on the floor, leaning against the battered wall. It looked expensive, with a wooden frame stained in such a way the rings inside the wood appeared dark, looking more like brushstrokes than true nature. It was an impressive piece. Something he wouldn’t mind having inside his own apartment.
“The microphone wasn’t there when I first hung the mirror,” she continued. “I’m sure of it. So, whoever put these microphones here, they’ve done it since I put up that mirror. That was two months ago.”
“That’s comforting,” he texted back. “So why are you destroying your apartment?”
“I’m tracing the wire to its origin,” she texted. “I want to know who’s behind this.”
“Oh, so now you want to solve the mystery?” he texted.
“Yes,” she responded. “Because now it involves me. D’uh. Problem is, the source of the wire is somewhere below my apartment, down on the next floor, or possibly even farther. As much as I’d love to, I can’t exactly destroy the entire building tracing the source of the wire. We have to come up with a plan.”
The two brainstormed for a minute before Norm began typing.
“Do you have any sort of twine or string?” he texted.
She nodded and walked into one of the back rooms. He stood still, unsure if she wanted him to follow or not. He thought it best to play it safe and stay put. He’d already blown it with her earlier by being an idiot, and he’d be damned if he was going to do it again. She returned with a large ball of yarn, and shrugged her shoulders, silently asking him if he thought the yarn would suffice. He gave her a thumbs up and she tossed the ball to him.
He activated the flashlight on his phone, unraveled about a foot of yarn, and wrapped it generously around the phone, careful not to block the eye of the camera or the light. Once he felt the phone was secure, he tied a knot at the top and lowered it to the floor, on a single braid of yarn, testing its strength. He jerked the yarn repeatedly and the phone bounced like a yo-yo. It seemed strong enough. He picked up his phone and video-called Samantha. Her phone buzzed and she answered.
He dropped his phone into the space between the two layers of sheetrock that made up the wall, slowly feeding it down by unraveling the ball of yarn, following the microphone wire down below her apartment. She watched its progress on her phone, seeing everything his camera was seeing in real time. He looked up at Samantha and she looked impressed. He was pleased with himself.
“Very nice,” she said aloud. He laughed and held a finger to his lips, reminding her to stay quiet. She looked embarrassed.
Almost immediately the flaw in his plan became apparent to them both: while they were able to trace the wire down through many flights, they weren’t exactly sure where inside the building the phone was, so the entire process was essentially pointless. Regardless, the suspense of following the wire, and the hope that eventually they’d see its source, was enough to keep them going. They continued feeding the phone down the wall until they finally spotted a point where the wire exited the sheetrock.
Norm shrugged his shoulders, as if to ask what it was they were to do next. She thought for a moment, then eagerly typed up a message on her phone and showed it to him.
“Secure it somehow so it doesn’t move, then follow me,” the message on the bright screen read.
He nodded and looked for a place to tie off the yarn, finding the leg of nearest piece of furniture, an ottoman, did just fine. He followed her out into the hallway.
“I’m going to call your phone. Surely we’ll be able to hear it ringing through the wall,” she said in a whisper, just in case there were any microphones in the hall as well. Norm nodded and they made their way downstairs.
The plan worked without a hitch, even if it did take a while to pace every floor.
Upon entering the basement of the great Eighth Block Tower, Norm’s ringtone resounded throughout the entire floor, clear as a bell. He found it odd at first that they could hear it so plainly, and that they were able to see the flashlight feature shining brightly, illuminating the dark room, considering it was buried somewhere behind a layer of sheetrock. However, once they found it, things made a little more sense.
There was a hole cut in the wall, quite haphazardly, that was roughly the size of a basketball. Through this hole, a woven serpent of electrical wires spilled out, along with the lights and sounds of the suspended cell phone. Norm reached into the hole, which easily fit his entire hand, even with the many wires running through, and removed the yarn harness from his phone.
“Shut that thing off, will ya?” Samantha said. “We definitely don’t want anyone knowing we’re down here. I mean, I don’t want to sound paranoid right now, but I have a feeling all this ‘Big Brother’ tech isn’t here to keep the people in the tower safe.”
Norm looked around the room. The entire back wall was lined with tables, all holding stacks of electrical equipment. Some of it he was able to identify the function of right away, such as the computer, printer, and audio mixing board, but most of it looked foreign to him. In a way, it kind of looked like a homemade NASA ground control station, or maybe a tech repair office, or something similar. He started to examine the equipment a little more closely when a troubling thought suddenly occurred to him.
“You don’t suppose all of this is somehow connected to the murders that have been happening lately, do you?” Norm asked.
“I didn’t want to say it, but yeah, how could it not be?” she asked.
“I mean, technically the two things could be happening simultaneously and not be connected at all, but—” he was cut short.
“It has to be connected,” she interrupted. “It makes too much sense not to be connected. Women are randomly killed in our apartment building by some unknown killer. Then we discover these hidden microphones and suddenly the killings don’t seem so random anymore. Perhaps the killer is picking off all those who know something…something the killer is trying to keep quiet.”
Norm’s eyes lit up with both fear and excitement. The mystery had him feeling exhilarated.
“Sam, do you know what this means?” he asked, unable to hide his excitement. He did not wait for her to answer. “It means we can save these people! The ones he’s targeting, maybe we can get to them before he does.”
He’d never felt as if he mattered all that much before, but now he had a chance to be a hero, a true hero. For a moment he wondered if all this hero business was just selfish thinking. Was his excitement only surfacing over this sudden realization of his purpose in life? Did the thought of saving people actually bring him joy, or was he only relieved to finally find a reason for his own existence? A shudder of anxiety swept through his body, faster and colder than the rush of blood, as a million self-loathing thoughts flickered inside his head. He shook them off and decided his excitement was justified. He was genuinely excited to help these people.
“So now you agree that the killer is a man, huh?” Samantha asked, laughing.
“Well, you do have a point. Like you said, this certainly has middle-aged white male written all over it.”
“Yeah, probably so, but if we’re really going to figure this out, we have to keep an open mind here. We don’t know all that much just yet,” she said. “Do you know anything about the equipment over there?”
“Not much, but enough that I should be able to play back some of the audio. Trevor, a buddy of mine, records demos in his apartment. Some of this stuff looks like the hardware he uses, only on a much larger scale.”
“Try it,” she said, and nudged him toward the shrine of electronics.
Norm pulled out his phone and again activated the flashlight feature. Upon first glance, he immediately realized why he was unable to recognize most of the equipment.
“Wow. This stuff is ancient,” he said. “Some of these machines are decades old. I’m talking 70s, maybe even 60s.”
“Can you work with it?” Samantha asked.
“I’ll give it a go. No promises, though.”
He shined the flashlight at the back wall and took a closer look at the many wires running in through the large hole, from which only minutes ago he’d located his phone. Most of the audio cables seemed to be feeding into old analog reel-to-reel tape recorders. There were eleven of these machines in total: five on top of the table and six smaller ones underneath. Three of the larger ones were powered on, reels turning, and each contained four illuminated microphone level displays, the first of which showed a needle bouncing back and forth rapidly on each machine. He assumed the four displays meant the recorders were four-track, and the bouncing needles indicated the machines were currently in session.
“I could be wrong, but I think these three right here are recording as we speak,” he said, shining his flashlight on the whirring reels.
He spotted a pair of large, over-the-ear headphones resting on the table by one of the computer monitors, and motioned for Samantha to come close. He grabbed the headphones and pushed its plug into the jack of one of the recorders. A tinny voice bathed in a low hum of static crept out of the cans.
“Holy shit! Listen,” he said, and held the headphones between them so they both could hear the voice.
“Who is this?”
“Do I know you?”
“Do I?”
“I’ve been to Al’s, yeah.”
Norm looked at Samantha, unsure of what to make of the disjointed conversation. She was staring off into darkness, entranced. She held up her finger, as if to say ‘wait.’
“He’s on the phone. That’s why we’re only hearing one side of the conversation,” Samantha said, then returned to her trance.
The voice continued:
“Wait, you don’t know me.”
“So why did you call me?”
“Is this some sort of prank?”
“What’s happening here?”
Samantha looked at Norm. A look of fear glazed over each of their eyes.
“Do you recognize the voice? Anyone we know?” she asked.
It didn’t sound familiar to Norm, but he thought he’d give it another go.
He continued to listen:
“Yeah, yeah, the good stuff. I read your messages.”
“I don’t even know who you are or what you look like.”
“Yeah, okay. Yes.”
“No, I don’t know him. At least I don’t think I do. Maybe we can trace each of these wires back to their sources?” he said, knowing it wasn’t the best plan, but unsure of any other suggestion.
Samantha spotted something odd in the corner of the room. There were multiple shelves lining the wall, all containing tall stacks of plastic wheels. More audiotape reels. Hundreds of them, possibly even a thousand or more.
“Look at that,” she said, walking over to the shelves. She picked one of the reels up and read the label, a line of masking tape, two inches long. The words, crudely scribbled in black Sharpie, read: Lynda, 5/2/16, evening. Norm placed the headphones on the table and joined her at the line of shelves.
“What is that?” he asked.
Samantha pulled a few more reels off the shelf and read the labels. Written on each of them was a girl’s name, date, and time of day.
“Looks like a collection of conversations, sorted by whatever female he’s targeting. Fucking sicko,” she said, pulling more reels off the shelf to examine them.
“Shit. This is heavy,” he said. “Anyone we know?”
Samantha’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She held up one of the spindles labeled: Samantha, 7/29/16, morning.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, then ran to a dark corner of the room.
“What the fuck?” Norm muttered to himself, shuffling through the stacks of reels, looking for more with her name. There were easily twenty or more, and he had only gone through a couple of stacks. He could hear Samantha vomiting from across the room.
“Are you okay?” he asked, standing still, respecting her privacy. He was pretty sure she didn’t want him watching her empty her stomach onto the floor.
“No, I’m not fucking okay. How could I be?” she said, almost in a scolding tone. She briskly walked back to the shelves with fire in her eyes.
“I’m taking them. That fuck isn’t going to sit here and masturbate to me, or whatever the fuck he does with these things,” she said, scooping a stack into her arms. Seeing this troubled Norm.
“Hey, I know this is fucked up. It is,” Norm said, placing his hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “But look at the reels on those machines over there.”
He pointed at the three recorders humming with life.
“The tape on all three of those reels are nearly spent,” he continued. “Which means that sicko is probably going to be down here to replace them soon. We can’t be here when he returns. We also can’t leave any evidence showing we were down here at all. If he knows someone is onto his twisted little game, it’s going to make it harder on us to catch the bastard.”
Samantha exhaled, seething in anger, but knew Norm was right.
“Let’s put everything back where it belongs, like we were never here, and go and get help, some weapons, or something. Right now we’re powerless,” he said.
She nodded and returned the reels to their place on the shelf.
“I will get those tapes, Norm. Even if it’s the last thing I do,” Samantha said. “And if I see that fucker, I will tear out his throat.”
Norm understood her anger, but never did he dream that she was capable of such violence. Seeing her now, rage in full swing, he believed what she was saying was actual truth. She wasn’t just ballooning some mild frustration, not at all. She really would kill this man, or die trying.
They cleaned the place up, ridding every trace of their presence. They straightened the stacks of reels and removed the headphones, placing them back in the spot he found them.
“Are we good, here?” Norm asked, looking around the room, checking everything twice.
“I think so,” she said. “I mean, I puked over there, but I don’t know what to do about that. Maybe he won’t notice?”
“Christ. I hope not,” he said. Sweat formed in bullets at his forehead.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
She nodded in agreement.
The two of them raced up the stairs, anxious to get back to the safety of their apartments. At least they’d have some sort of protection there: kitchen knives and a baseball bat. Right now, they felt as if they were both naked and bleeding inside a shark tank. Upon reaching their floor, Samantha turned away from Norm, starting to run in the direction of her apartment. He grabbed her arm and she stopped.
“Don’t you—” he started to say, but she pushed her finger to his lips. She pulled out her cell phone, pointing to it, reminding him it wasn’t safe to have an audible conversation anymore. He nodded and pulled out his cell. As he was typing, Samantha impatiently waved her hands, motioning for him to hurry.
“Don’t you think we should stay together? Better our chances in case something happens?” he texted. He was trying to sound like a hero, some great protector, though secretly he knew he was probably more scared than she was.
“He’s not after you. He targets women, and I don’t need a savior. I kind of hope that sicko does show up at my place tonight. I’ll fuck him up,” she texted. Norm looked horrified as he read her response. Samantha smiled at him, kissed his cheek, and ran down the hall. She turned around briefly to give him a thumbs up, then disappeared around the corner.
His stomach dropped. He was all alone.
He unlocked his apartment door, slipped inside as quickly as possible, and locked it again.
Sleep didn’t come easily.
Norm was rudely awakened by a stirring hiss and the sharp end of a blade pushed up against his throat. Samantha was standing over him, her face an inch away from his.
“I’ve got you now, fucker!” she said, pushing the blade hard enough to sever a couple layers of skin.
“Samantha? What the fuck are you doing?” Norm yelled.
“Remember what I told you in the basement?” she asked. He wasn’t sure where she was going with it. “If I ever saw that bastard, I would tear out his throat!”
He was confused.
“Yeah, so?” he said.
“So… I’ve come to rip out your throat, you… you… lady killer!”
She pulled the knife away and held it high in the air, as if preparing to swing the blade with such force it would likely decapitate him.
“What the fuck, Samantha? I haven’t killed anyone! Stop!” he yelled, trying to push her away, but he was unable. It was then he noticed his arms and legs were fastened together with rope, in a forward-facing hogtie position.
“Samantha! What’s going on here?” he yelled.
She paused. Something changed. Suddenly she looked scared.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Where is what? Samantha, what’s happening?” He continued to panic.
“Where’s the cut on your arm?” she asked, pulling at his clothing, trying to get a better look at his right shoulder.
She slapped him in the face.
“Where the fuck is it?” she screamed.
“I honestly don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” he yelled. “Get me out of this!”
“No. I saw you. You walked past my door. I saw you. I saw you through my peephole. I watched all night,” she said, almost in a daze.
“What? I’ve been here all night,” he said. “In all honesty, I’ve been too scared to leave!”
She continued, ignoring him.
“You went right past my door and headed down the hall. You had a knife in your hand. A big Bowie knife. You were looking to kill someone. I could see it in your eyes. Your eyes, they were vacant. Full of madness. Norm, you were out to kill. To end a life.”
Norm laid on his couch, horrified and helpless. He could tell she wasn’t fooling around. She saw someone, and she truly believed that person was him.
“I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, I did,” she continued. “I wanted to believe you were out hunting for the killer, that lunatic holed up in the basement of the tower, but I followed you anyway, just in case. I had a knife too, Norm. It wasn’t as big as yours, but you never saw it coming. I waited to see what you were going to do. If you would’ve headed downstairs, I would have said something to you. I would have known where you were going and I would have helped you… but you didn’t go downstairs. You went right past the stairwell and kept walking.”
His heart was racing so fast he felt it might kill him before her knife had the chance.
“Then you stopped, Norm,” she said, still staring into nothingness. “You stopped right in front of Carrie Longman’s door. You dug your knife between the lock and the doorjamb, trying to pry it open. You were going to kill her, Norm. And you would have if I hadn’t stopped you.”
“Samantha, you know that’s not true. I’m no killer! You’ve known me for years! You know I’m not capable of fucking murder!” he yelled.
She shook off the daze and dug into her pocket. She pulled out her cell phone and held it up in front of his face. What he saw sent a cold shiver right through his core.
“That can’t be. Samantha, who is that?” he asked, already knowing the answer, just unable to believe it.
“It’s you, Norm,” she said. “It’s. You.”
“It can’t be,” he said, trembling.
She slid her finger across the screen and showed him five more pictures, all backing her wild story. It was him, in the hall, holding the biggest hunting knife he’d ever seen. She was right about the eyes, too.
Something wasn’t right. There was an emptiness there that screamed evil. The way they stared, glossed over and full of smoke, it didn’t seem human.
“Samantha, that can’t be me. It just can’t,” he said. “I’ve been here the entire night. There must be some other explanation.”
She turned away from him and returned the phone to her pocket.
“You know, Norm, I thought the same thing,” she said. “Even though you were right there in front of me, right in front of my goddamn face, I still questioned if it was really you or not. Something just didn’t feel right. That’s why I took the pictures. I thought maybe it was this fucking tower again, getting inside my head the way it does, the way it gets inside us all. I thought maybe I’d take a few pictures, look at ‘em again a little later, sometime when the tower didn’t have hold of me, and see a whole new face, one that wasn’t yours. It’s still your face, Norm. Maybe the tower wants me to kill you. Maybe it wants you dead, Norm. You ever get that feeling? Like the tower has made its way inside you? Christ, I can feel its electric fingers digging deep inside my brain as we speak.”
She paused and turned back to face him.
“After taking those pictures though, I thought maybe it had done the same to you. Maybe the tower got inside of you and was forcing you to kill all those women. Maybe you didn’t know any better. I thought of a million things all at once, Norm. I wasn’t sure what to do. All I knew was I wasn’t going to stand by and let you or anyone else kill another person here in Eighth Block. It wasn’t going to fucking happen. When you dug that blade into Carrie’s door, I couldn’t stop myself from pouncing. I tried to get to your neck, straight off. I didn’t want a fight. I wasn’t sure if I could even take you if there was a fight. I wanted to end it with one clean cut across the neck. In and out. Over. Done. But I missed. I don’t know how it happened, everything from that point on is a blur now, a memory consumed and buried by rage, but somehow I missed. Instead, my blade dug deep inside your arm, right there at the shoulder, and you immediately threw me off. I fell back and banged my head on the wall. It almost knocked me out, I hit so hard. You took off down the hall in a sprint and disappeared down the stairwell. I looked for you everywhere, on every floor, except the basement, but you weren’t there. I looked for a trail of blood, something that would lead me to you, but I found nothing. It was like you just vanished.”
“What about the basement? Whatever it was, it probably ran into the basement,” Norm said, still convinced it couldn’t have been him in the photographs.
“I wasn’t about to go into the basement alone. It would have been like walking into a hornets nest. I’m smarter than that,” she said. “I came up here, to your apartment, in hopes I could dig through your things, try to find some sort of evidence, something to pin you to the crimes so I could know for sure who and what I was dealing with. You can imagine my surprise when I saw you here, asleep on the couch. Rage boiled within me. Fuck evidence, I had you. I was going to get you to confess, then rip out your throat, just like I promised.”
“Samantha, I swear on everything I love, I did not murder those women. You have to believe me,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know if I believe you, Norm,” she said. “But that cut on your arm… it’s not there. I cut you deep too. What the fuck is happening here, Norm?”
“Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with me. You said it yourself, the killer has a gash in his arm. I don’t. I’m not the killer, Samantha. You have to cut these ropes off of me. Let me go!” he said, letting fear and frustration get the best of him.
She let out a blood-curdling scream.
“Will you shut up! I’m trying to think!” she yelled.
“Let me go, Samantha! Cut these fucking ropes off of me!” he yelled back.
She walked to the closet, where he kept his tools, and pulled out a roll of silver duct tape. It was then he discovered the rope tied at his wrists and ankles was his own, right out of his toolbox.
“Samantha, you better not! I won’t be able to breathe!” he pleaded, but she ignored him. She pulled on the end of the roll and cut off about six inches of tape with her teeth, slapping it hard against his mouth. He was silent now.
“If it turns out it wasn’t you, I’m sorry, but I need to think right now. This tape is your savior, Norm. If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll end up killing you anyway. I’m just in that kind of mood.”
He exhaled loudly through his nostrils. She tossed the roll of tape to the floor and walked towards the back of his apartment.
Samantha never liked using Norm’s bathroom, or the bathroom of any single guy she knew. It always felt dirty, even though most of the time it didn’t necessarily look dirty. She’d find herself focusing on microbes, things that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. As far as she knew, all single guys were chronic masturbators, and based on the contents found in the cabinet beneath Norm’s bathroom sink, he didn’t seem to own any cleaning chemicals besides a single tube of disinfectant wipes. It was better than nothing, she supposed, but still not enough to really get the job done. There must be semen everywhere, she thought, and reached behind her to flush the commode.
She laid the knife on the edge of the sink so she could wash her hands. It rocked and light danced across it as it did. These small Eighth Block bathrooms annoyed her. She gave up getting ready in her bathroom long ago, which was why half her bedroom was dominated by her dresser vanity. She pushed a healthy amount of antibacterial soap into her hands from the container on the back of the sink, and twisted the knob on the faucet. Brown water spat out for a few seconds before running clear. She lathered the soap in her hands.
Although she didn’t know for sure, through the splashing and high-pitched squeal of water running through the faucet, she thought she heard a faint sound of something kicking about inside the apartment, somewhere just beyond the bathroom door. She twisted the knob to turn off the water, wrapped her soapy fingers around the handle of the blade, and listened in total silence for the sound to resurface. Her breath quickened to fuel her wildly-beating heart and she found herself concentrating more on maintaining her composure than on whatever it was creeping about outside the door.
There it was again. The sound of splitting wood, or someone snapping off a table leg, perhaps to use as a weapon, or maybe it was the sound of Norm breaking free from his restraints...
Her mind raced. There were so many possibilities, and what was even more important than trying to figure out which of those possibilities was reality was the fact that all possible realities resulted with someone running loose inside the apartment while she was trapped inside the bathroom. A rat in a cage. She knew she had to do something, but was unsure where to begin.
She threw out her hand and flipped down the light switch. Although standing in pitch darkness, waiting for her hunter to make his rounds, sent her rushing anxiety to nearly uncontrollable levels, she figured her only chance of survival would be the element of surprise. Before, if someone came in through the door, they had her—but with the lights off, she had a small, however crucial, advantage. In the time the killer was moving through each room, moving every piece of furniture, looking for her, her eyes would become adjusted to the darkness. In those first few seconds of blindness he’d experience upon opening that door, she’d have perfect vision. She couldn’t hesitate. Whatever was standing on the other side of that door once it opened would have to die. If she stopped to assess the situation, even to just get a glance at the intruder’s face, she could very well be killed, and she wasn’t about to risk that.
She waited in silence for the doorknob to turn.
Her eyes focused.
Water and soap foam pulsed between her fingers and ran down her blade with every beat of her heart, her grip on the handle was so tight.
As the creaking of footsteps came closer, a thought looped inside her mind: Please don’t be Norm. Please don’t be Norm. Please don’t be Norm.
The knob turned and the bathroom door flew open.
She took a breath.
The next thing she remembered was standing over a body. If there was a struggle, a fight, for the life of her, she couldn’t recall. She seemed unharmed, at least she wasn’t feeling any physical pain, but the pumping adrenaline coursing through her veins could have been masking it. She ran her hands over her body, checking for open wounds. There weren’t any. Her hands were trembling, and for a split second she thought of tossing the knife to the floor, but knew better than to make a stupid mistake like that. If she learned anything from horror films, it was that the killer can, and often does, strike again, even if they appear totally lifeless.
She took a step back and turned on the bathroom light, sure to have a good grip on her knife. The body was flat on the floor, face up, bottom half in the bathroom and top half in the hallway. She was right in her assumption that the killer was a man. He wore a pair of tattered jeans, a black v-neck t-shirt, and a camouflage jacket. A large Bowie knife rested at his feet.
Samantha stepped over the body and moved out into the hallway. Just above the four-inch gash in the killer’s neck was the motionless face of her friend, Norm Davis.
She turned and vomited on the carpet.
“What the fuck, Norm?” She threw back her leg and kicked him hard in the ribcage. “You sick fucking bastard!”
Her hair fell down on her face and stuck to her lips, attaching to the vomit she never bothered to wipe away.
She fell into a trance, of sorts, thinking of all the women in Eighth Block Norm had slaughtered, and the manner in which they were killed. He butchered them. Chopped them into pieces. Norm wasn’t just a madman, he was a complete sicko. In all the years she’d known him, there wasn’t a single clue, not one red flag, that gave her any inkling that Norm was living with such a troubled mind. He seemed so normal, especially for a resident of the tower. She supposed it was just like she’d always heard: it’s always the ones you least expect.
Still, seeing his face there, speckled in red from the blood gurgling gash running through his neck, things didn’t sit well with her. Something didn’t feel right. There were too many questions, too many pieces missing from the puzzle.
Unconsciously, she wiped the vomit from her lips on the sleeve of her hoodie, and immediately regretted it. Her lips suddenly tasted metallic, as if her sleeve was soaked in some sort of chemical. She examined it and found her once grey hoodie was now dark purple. Norm’s blood, about a gallon of it in total, had absorbed into every piece of clothing she was wearing.
“Seriously?” she muttered to herself, then spit several times on the floor. It didn’t seem to help. She could still taste his presence as small traces of gore moved around inside her mouth. Leaping over the body, she rushed to the bathroom sink.
As hot water rushed out of the spigot, Samantha failed to notice she had made two vital mistakes: she turned her back on the body and let go of the knife.
A blade pierced the skin of her right shoulder from the back, and pushed its way through skin of her chest, feeling more like flame than steel. By the time she looked down at her wound, the knife was no longer inside her. Slowly, the pain began to set in. Before she even had time to process what was happening, the killer brought the knife down on her again. Completely by chance, she managed to avoid it, as she spun around and pushed herself against the wall.
It was Norm. Somehow he’d survived his near decapitation and was again trying his damnedest to end her life.
“Stop it, Norm! Why are you doing this?” she shouted, the words sounding more like a plea than an actual question. The way he stared, unaffected and without sympathy, shook her to the core. This was not Norm. Norm was affectionate, playful, passionate…warm. Every last one of those qualities were absent now. Standing before her was some broken version of him. An invalid. Null and void.
The killer didn’t respond to her question. Instead, he reared his arm back to swing the blade at her a third time. She ducked and grabbed desperately for her knife as it teetered on the edge of the sink. The killer’s blade dug deep into the door frame, cutting through with such force it tore a chunk away and sent splinters of wood raining down on Samantha. Her fingers fumbled along the edge of the sink as she tried locating the handle of the knife without taking her eyes off Norm’s hands. The knife tumbled to the floor.
Norm swung his blade at her again, but she threw her body flat against the floor, banging her head on the toilet bowl, so again he missed. The blade dug deep into the wood of the cabinet below the sink and remained lodged there. Samantha grabbed her knife and jammed it into Norm’s wrist, pinning him to the cabinet as well. Oddly, this didn’t cause Norm to yelp or even wince in pain.
Something was wrong.
Samantha pulled herself to her feet, removed the knife from Norm’s wrist, and pushed his head down into the bowl of the sink. She stabbed him in the neck as many times as necessary for his head to become completely detached from his body. By the time it had, there was more blood on her and the walls of the bathroom than there was left in Norm’s body.
He fell to the floor, lifeless.
Right then, she would have taken the body and chopped it up into so many pieces the bastard wouldn’t have had a chance to spring up on her again, but right at that moment she discovered the Norm from the second attack was not the same Norm from the first attack, as both the bodies were now there on the floor, next to each other.
The tower.
This fucking tower is in my head, she thought.
I can’t let it get to me.
Those things, they aren’t Norm.
They’re nobodies.
Invalids.
Whatever they are, they’ll keep coming.
I have to move.
If I’m going to live, I have to go straight to the source.
Straight to the basement.
Kill the killer.
If I’m going to live, it’s the only way.
She pulled off her blood-soaked hoodie and tossed it to the floor. For a moment she thought of rinsing the blood from her face and hands, but there didn’t seem to be any point. There was plenty more blood to be shed, and more importantly, she wanted the killers to know as soon as they looked at her that she was going to be the one to spill it. It was bad enough these things were killing all the women in Eighth Block, but now that they were attacking her, it was personal. She didn’t have a moment to spare.
She walked into the living room and cut away the rope wrapped around Norm’s hands. He removed the duct tape from his mouth.
“Jesus, Sam. I saw them come in. You oka—,” Norm started, but was interrupted.
“Shhh. We don’t have much time. They could be back any minute,” she said. “I’m going down there. I’m ending this. You don’t have to come with me, but I do need you to do one thing.”
“Sure. Whatever you need,” he said.
“Can you get me a pillowcase or something and fasten it around my neck to use as a sling? One of them got me in the shoulder. Just the weight of my arm alone is killing me.”
Norm took a look at the blood-soaked hole in her shirt and nodded.
“Sure, I can do that,” he said. “Can you cut my feet loose?”
She bent down and cut the rope away from his ankles.
“Just a sec,” he said, then ran into the hallway to the linen closet. He grabbed a fresh pillowcase from one of the shelves and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Holy shit, Sam! You cut this guy’s head clean off! Fucking hell!” he yelled.
“It’s not a guy, Norm. It’s nothing, nobody. An invalid. See for yourself,” she yelled back at him so he could hear her.
“I’ll pass. Thanks,” he said. “What do you suppose they are? And why the fuck do they look like me?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m fixing to find out. Those things are working for someone. It’s the only explanation I can come up with. Whoever, whatever, is behind this, it’s stopping tonight. Even if it turns out it’s this goddamn tower making us crazy, it’s coming down. Someone or something has to pay for all the lives that have been lost.”
Norm returned to the living room carrying the pillowcase and a small leather bag. He was jogging, careful not to waste any time, or to anger Samantha. The image of the murder scene, of the two slain killers gurgling blood on his bathroom floor, was permanently burned into his retinas. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her.
“You cut his head clean off,” he repeated. “Holy shit, Sam.”
He unzipped the black leather bag and shuffled through its contents.
“Well, what else was I supposed to do? The thing was coming at me with a fucking Bowie knife! It was either me or him,” she said. “It damn sure wasn’t going to be me.”
“Still. That’s pretty fucking violent. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“That makes two of us,” she said. “I guess you really don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re pushed against a wall.”
“I guess so,” he said, focusing more on the contents of the bag than their conversation.
“What’s all that?” she asked.
“A med kit. You’re hurt pretty bad. I’m at least going to clean you up before you head down there,” he said.
“No, Norm, I don’t have time for this,” she said, moving toward the door.
“If you plan on dying, I guess you’re right, but if you plan on living after all this is said and done, then surely you’ll still want to be able to use that arm. Am I right?”
She sighed.
“I suppose so,” she said. “But please be quick.”
“Sure thing,” he said, waving for her to come sit down on the couch next to him. He took a closer look at her wound.
“Now, don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m going to tear part of your shirt away from the wound so I can clean and bandage it properly. Alright?”
She nodded.
He ripped the material of the shirt from her shoulder and tucked the frayed ends into her bra strap, as to not expose her any further.
“Sorry, I’m not trying to be weird,” he said, feeling awkward.
She smiled.
“You’ve always been weird,” she said, laughing. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
He laughed and cleaned the area around the wound with a wet wipe. She winced in pain.
“Sorry. I’m trying my best not to hurt you,” he said.
“You’re fine. I’m just dreading when you get to the one on my back. It feels like fire.”
He moved to look at the wound in her back. It was easily twice as long as the one in the front.
“Shit, Sam. It’s worse than I thought. I didn’t know he cut right through you,” he said, getting up off the couch and moving toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’ll be right back. I just need to get something to close you up.”
“Please hurry, Norm,” she said, tapping her knees together nervously.
“Ah, here we go.”
Norm ran back to the couch, holding a small tube of super glue in his hand. He finished wiping each wound clean before removing the cap from the tube.
“What do you think you’re doing with that?” she asked.
“Relax. It’s just to seal the wound until we have time to sew it properly. It’ll be fine,” he said.
She took a deep breath.
“You know, this will probably sting a bit, so why don’t you talk to me…. say anything at all. Just to keep your mind off it,” he said.
“Okay. What should I talk about?” she asked.
“Whatever. Hurry. I’m about to start.”
She looked around the room, looking for something to spark a conversation, noticing the splintered wood of the front door.
“So that’s what it was,” she said. “When I was in the bathroom, I heard a cracking sound. It’s how I knew something was running loose inside the apartment. The door. Guess they broke in, and by the looks of it, using the same method the other one used to try and break into Carrie Longman’s place. Just thinking of those creeps gets my skin crawling.”
“You think you were scared?” Norm asked, applying the first coat of glue over her chest wound. “I watched the knife dig in and out of the door, all while helplessly hogtied and gagged on the couch. I nearly soiled myself when I saw it was me breaking in!”
She hissed and pulled away from him.
“Damn, that smarts,” she said, blowing on her wound. “Getting stabbed fucking sucks.”
He laughed, but his smile quickly faded.
“Can I ask you something, Sam?” he asked. She looked at him curiously and nodded her head. “When you killed them, did you know they weren’t really me?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Come on, you know what I’m getting at,” he said, getting frustrated. “Did you cut that thing’s head off thinking it was me, or did you know it was something else?”
She turned away from him.
“Well, I guess that answers it,” he said, returning to dressing her wounds. “Right… okay then.”
He taped a large square of gauze over the wound on her chest, then started to work on her back.
“Norm, are you serious right now?” she asked. “Think of the position I was in. If someone, anyone, even if it was me, came charging at you with a knife, you would have done the same thing. You wouldn’t have thought twice.”
He shook his head.
“No, see, that’s where you and I differ,” he said. “I know you. I know you’re not capable of such horrendous crimes. There never would have been any doubt.”
“That’s just not realistic,” she said. “These things, they seem otherworldly. It’s truly some bizarre, fucked up, science fiction shit happening here. It’s only human nature to suspect the most logical and easiest explanation before anything else. I don’t think you’re being fair about this.”
“Okay, so you see the killer coming at you, and in defense you attack and kill the killer. That’s not what I have an issue with,” he said. “It’s that you took it ten steps further and decapitated who you thought was me.”
“You’re acting like a child,” she said. “This is a ridiculous conversation.”
“If you feel that way, fine, but it still hurts me. I guess I always thought I meant something to you. I don’t. It’s fine. I’ll get over it.”
She stayed silent.
He fastened another square of gauze over the wound on her back with tape, slid the pillowcase under her arm and fastened it around her neck.
“You’re good to go,” he said, not making direct eye contact with her. “First chance you get, have someone who knows what they’re doing stitch you up. You’ve got a nasty wound there.”
She nodded and pulled herself to her feet.
“You know, Norm, you annoy the hell out of me,” she said. His eyes widened in shock. “You text me all hours of the night, never invite me over to play video games, and you stare at my tits more than you look into my eyes.”
“Oh, come on, that’s an exaggeration,” he said. “I don’t stare at your tits… that much.”
“My point is that even though you annoy me sometimes, it doesn’t mean I think you’re a bad person. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever suspected the killer was you. In fact, it wasn’t until seeing it for myself that the thought even occurred to me that it could have been you. I don’t know what the fuck is happening with those things, those killers out there. I don’t know if it’s something supernatural, or if it’s this goddamn tower working our minds the way it does, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it. And you’re here to see me do it because I didn’t kill you. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. And that’s a hell of a thing to do after seeing the things I saw. You have to agree with that, right?”
Norm felt embarrassed. She was right and he knew it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I’m acting childish. It just kind of fucked with me emotionally to see my head get cut off by one of my closest friends in such a violent rage.”
She laughed.
“I can imagine,” she said, smiling. “I should go.”
She walked toward the door.
“Wait,” he said. “I’m not about to just sit here while you go down there alone. I’m coming with you.”
“You sure? Don’t feel like you have to,” she said.
“I’m sure. One thing though: what about weapons? We need something more than a couple of knives.”
“No worries,” she said. “I’ve got us covered. Follow me.”
Samantha reached into the trash chute and removed a blue gym bag that was hanging on a magnetic hook. She tossed the bag to the floor.
“What’s that,” Norm asked.
“It’s what’s going to get us out of that basement alive,” she said. “Go ahead, open it up.”
He bent down and unzipped the bag. Inside were three fully loaded handguns.
“Holy shit! Where’d you get these?” he said.
“When we came up from the basement and went our separate ways, I called up an old acquaintance. Buzz. He lives up on The Cliff, so he’s as bonkers as they come, but the guy has an arsenal.”
“Nice,” he said. “How much did it cost you?”
“Just an old inflatable mattress,” she said.
“A mattress? Seriously?”
“Told you he’s as bonkers as they come. I tried giving him cash, but he didn’t want it. I listed a million things I was willing to trade with him, but the air mattress was all he was interested in.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Good deal,” he said, and handed her two of the guns. “Figured since they’re your guns, you’d want the extra one too.”
She buried one into the waistband of her jeans and took the other into her only functional hand.
“Hopefully we won’t need ‘em anyway,” she said.
He tossed the empty gym bag down into the trash chute.
“You ready?” she asked, taking a deep breath.
“As I’ll ever be,” he said.
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks for coming with me, Norm.”
He blushed and nodded at her.
As they headed down the long, dark stairwell, he couldn’t help but wonder if those words would be the last thing he’d ever hear her say.
Upon reaching the basement staircase, they were surprised to be greeted with the faint smell of smoke. Samantha’s pace quickened.
“Oh, no he doesn’t,” she muttered to herself, and jogged down the stairs.
“What? What is it?” Norm asked.
“That bastard is burning the evidence,” she said. “He’s on to us. He’s probably heard everything. I’m not about to let him get away.”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “You’re probably right.”
He ran down the stairs and caught up with her. Samantha was already primed for attack, with her arm outstretched, gun in hand, and finger on the trigger, as if she couldn’t wait to pull. Her eyes squinted and she looked around the darkened room in an even line, appearing more like some trained soldier than a nobody weirdo from Eighth Block. Norm, on the other hand, removed the gun from the waistband of his jeans and shifted it clumsily in his hands. He’d never really held a gun before, and now that he was, it just didn’t feel right, like his hands were committing some unforgiveable sin. He knew it was senseless, thinking such nonsense, but he couldn’t shake it. He found that holding the weapon in both hands helped to keep his quaking hands steady, even though he was sure he looked ridiculous. He felt like Don Knotts in The Shakiest Gun in the West. A complete idiot.
“Told you,” Samantha whispered, pointing over at the tables that once held the reel-to-reel recorders they inspected earlier. She was right, somebody was destroying the evidence. Equipment had been smashed and wiped clean from the tables, scattered now in pieces across the floor. The twisted serpent of microphone wires that once spilled out of the wall had since either been removed or pushed back inside so that now only the gaping hole was visible. The many stacks of tape reels previously resting on the shelves had also disappeared.
“We can’t let him get away, Norm. We just can’t,” she whispered. Norm nodded in agreement. She held the gun up in front of her face. “Whatever it takes.”
A faint orange glow flickered along the edges of a closed door across the room, illuminating the pillows of smoke wafting out of the room like dragon’s breath. Norm felt as if they were preparing to walk into the pits of Hell. He gripped the gun tighter, fearing his sweaty palms would cause him to drop it in a moment of panic. If it weren’t for Samantha’s ceaseless determination to serve justice, he would have ran back to his apartment the second he smelled smoke. He found being a hero didn’t come naturally to him. In fact, just the thought of what it took to be a hero in that moment not only overwhelmed him, but it felt downright impossible. I will probably die tonight, he thought, and dread swirled around inside his brain until he couldn’t think straight. It wasn’t until he heard the sickening crack of a bone being snapped in two that he was able to snap out of his trance.
“We have to do this now. You ready?” Samantha asked, moving closer to the door before Norm even had the chance to respond.
Another sickening crack resounded from behind the closed door. The closer they got to the room, the more sounds they noticed. Something was moving about on the inside, but could only be heard between each of the loud cracks, which seemed to be happening every few seconds. Every sound was muffled slightly by a constant low hum that seemed to be emanating from the entire expanse of the wall, as they could hear it on either side of them as they approached the door.
Samantha placed her hand on the door and immediately pulled it away.
“It’s warm. The fire is close. Be careful,” she said, pulling the collar of her shirt up over her nose. “You might want a take a breath before I open this door.”
Norm took her advice and also pulled the collar of his shirt up over his face. Samantha lifted her leg and kicked the door, as close to the handle as she could get, and it flew open after only three kicks.
They were immediately swallowed by the gnashing maw of smoke.
In the few seconds he was able to see, before the smoke stung his eyeballs and blinded him with tears, Norm spotted the source of the smoke, a small blaze barely bigger than a campfire, burning just before a stairwell. The stairs ran up to a set of doors, an exit leading to the outside world. Both doors were propped open with scrap pieces of wood. The low humming sound, he found, was emanating from several large fans set up across the room, all facing in the direction of the open doors, in an attempt to blow the smoke out of the building. The short glimpse was enough to see the room was filled with several mysterious figures, all standing around, and from what he could tell, curiously unmoving, but the smoke got to him before he could make out any other details.
The two of them fled the room almost as quickly as they had infiltrated, gasping for air between bouts of deep guttural coughs.
All at once, the dense veil of smoke swelling out the room split in two and a dark figure came barreling through, charging straight towards them. The figure wore a black rubber apron, a gas mask, and held a crowbar high above its head, ready to swing. Norm threw up his hand, an attempt to alert Samantha of the brooding threat looming over her shoulder, but quickly realized it was too late for warning. Norm dove into her, tackling Samantha to the ground. The crowbar swung just above their heads. Their brains remained tightly contained within their skullcaps, courtesy of a few milliseconds and quick thinking on Norm’s part.
“Norm?” the mysterious figure said, sounding shocked to see him. It was a man’s voice.
Samantha quickly pulled herself to her feet and aimed the gun at him.
“Sam, wait!” Norm yelled. “Don’t shoot just yet.”
Her finger just slid over the trigger before Norm stopped her.
“What? Why?” she asked. “This fuck is the one we came for. No doubt.”
Norm studied the stranger’s body, looking for any indicator that would give away his identity. His body size and shape was average, that of half of everyone in the entire building, and most of his clothing and skin was covered by the apron and gas mask, which made it impossible for Norm to reveal his identity.
“Take off the mask,” Norm said.
The man shook his head.
“You don’t want to know. Just walk away and leave me be,” he said, still gripping the crowbar in both fists.
“You’ve got three fucking seconds to drop the crowbar and pull off that mask before I send so many bullets hurdling through you that not even your mother will be able to identify your corpse.”
“Go ahead,” the man said, standing motionless. “Maybe it would be for the best.”
Samantha’s eyes squinted. Norm touched her arm.
“Hold up, Sam,” Norm said.
“What the fuck, Norm? You in with this guy or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not,” he said. “I think I know who it is though. That voice…”
“Norm, please, just walk away,” the man said. “I never meant for it to go this far. I’ve done some terrible things. Leave me be and I’ll get rid of everything. You won’t hear from me again.”
“Dale?” Norm asked, hoping his assumption was wrong.
“Jesus fucking Christ. I told you he was a weirdo,” Samantha said, still with a tight grip on her gun.
“Norm, I’m begging you,” Dale said. “Just go.”
“Take off the mask,” Norm repeated.
“I can’t let you see me like this. Please, go,” Dale said.
“What are we waiting on, Norm?” Samantha asked. “If you don’t want me to kill him because you two share jerk off sessions with each other, I’ve got news for you. I’m pulling this trigger.”
“Jerk off sessions?” Norm asked.
“Well, whatever it is you guys do for hours on end when you’re together. I really don’t want to know.”
“You jealous, bitch?” Dale asked, seeming angry now.
Samantha laughed.
“I told you he has the hots for you,” Samantha said. “I bet that’s why he mutilated all those girls, to get closer to you.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any sense,” Norm said.
“Sure it does,” Samantha said. “He’s in love with you. He knows you well enough to know you’re straight and could never love him the way he loves you. He figures his only shot is to eliminate all the competition. The women. He’s killing them to pressure you into homosexuality.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! You can’t be serious!” Norm said.
“Hey, I agree with you,” Samantha said. “There isn’t any logic in it, but that’s where my money is. How right am I, Dale? Bull’s-eye?”
Norm looked at Dale. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Dale said.
“Bullshit!” Samantha yelled.
“What do you mean you didn’t kill anyone?” Norm asked. “What happened to those girls? Someone ripped ‘em apart. If not you, then who?”
“It’s a long story,” Dale said. “All that matters is that it’s all over now. I’m destroying everything. I’ll be leaving Eighth Block afterwards. You’ll never hear from me again.”
“If it was that easy, we’d all eighty-six this place. You know the tower will never let you leave,” Samantha said.
“Then I’ll kill myself,” Dale said. “There’s nothing for me here. If I can’t leave, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“I’ll help you out with that,” Samantha said, smiling.
“Cool it, Sam,” Norm said. He looked at Dale, still in disbelief this was actually happening. Was his best friend really a serial killer? He needed to know for sure. He had to look into his eyes.
“Take off the mask, Dale,” Norm said. Dale started to respond, but before a word could escape his lips, Norm became enraged. “Goddamn it! Take off the mask!”
Dale nodded and raised his hands to pull off the gas mask. It fell to the floor.
Norm tried to make eye contact with him, but Dale hung his head in shame, sobbing violently.
“Don’t believe this bullshit, Norm,” Samantha said. “Sociopaths don’t feel anything. He fucking murdered four women, and attempted two more tonight. This is all a show to get you to feel pity.”
“I told you I didn’t murder anybody, you cunt!” Dale screamed. Tears leaked down each side of his face.
“Maybe not you specifically, but those clones you’ve got roaming around here,” Samantha said. “What are they anyway?”
“Burn in hell, bitch,” Dale said, spitting at Samantha. It didn’t come close to hitting her.
“Norm, I’m gonna give you about thirty seconds to say goodbye to your friend before I shatter that fucking skull of his,” Samantha said.
Norm thought of the clones that attacked Samantha not even an hour earlier. They were modeled in his image. He wasn’t sure if she was right about Dale, but he had to admit the evidence certainly supported her theory.
“Those clones, Dale, what are they?” Norm asked.
Dale looked up at him, making eye contact for the first time since taking off the gas mask. Every time he attempted to speak, sobs overwhelmed him.
“I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what’s going on,” Norm said, hoping this warm approach would be enough for Dale to finally come clean.
“It’s the tower, Norm,” Dale said, choking back tears. “I would never do anything like this. You have to believe me.”
“Did you build those things to kill the women of Eighth Block?” Norm asked.
“I guess so,” Dale said. “I mean, it didn’t start out that way.”
“What do you mean?” Norm asked.
“That wasn’t the original purpose of the clones,” he said.
Norm was still confused.
“He fucked them, Norm,” Samantha said. “He couldn’t have you, so building his own fuck toys was the next best thing.”
“Fucking hell, Samantha,” Norm said.
“What?” she asked. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Norm looked at Dale, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he just hung his head, embarrassed.
“This is too much,” Norm said. He took a deep breath. “How did you even know how to build those things? You’d have to be a fucking genius to create something like that. They have blood and everything.”
“I told you, it’s this fucking tower,” Dale said. “It wanted me to do this. At first I was okay with it, but when it had me send them off to kill, I felt sick.”
“Did the tower send them off to kill, or you?” Norm asked.
“I mean, technically it was me, I guess,” Dale said. “But I would never do something like that. It had to be this fucking tower. I could never kill another person. Never. Norm, you have to believe me. If I get out of this tower, the problem will be solved. I’ll destroy everything I’ve created and free myself of this fucking disease.”
“Your thirty seconds are up, Norm. Say goodbye,” Samantha said.
“Wait! Can’t we just call the police?” Norm asked. “Let the law decide what they want to do with him.”
“I keep telling you the cops won’t come here, Norm,” Samantha said. “I don’t know what world you’ve been living in all this time, but everyone here knows the residents of Eighth Block are on their own when it comes to the law.”
“He needs to be institutionalized, Sam,” Norm said. “He’s not a bad person. He’s just confused and clearly psychotic. He needs help.”
Samantha shook her gun.
“I am helping him,” she said. “It’s a cure all.”
“She’s right, Norm. The cops won’t come here,” Dale said, somehow blubbing even harder now. “And truth be told, she’s also right about the tower. Who am I kidding? If leaving was really an option, I would have done it long ago. The tower has its claws in me. The only way out is death.”
Dale reached into his pocket and removed a cell phone.
Samantha lost her patience and finally pulled the trigger, but Norm pushed her hand away just before she did. The bullet chipped away a spot in the cement floor of the basement.
“You’re really pissing me off,” she said.
“What are you doing, Dale?” Norm said, ignoring Samantha. Dale tapped away at his cell phone.
“There’s a box over there in the corner. See it?” Dale asked.
Norm spotted the cardboard box sitting in the corner of the room and nodded.
“If you fill it with meat and leave it right here in the middle of the basement, it will vanish within hours. The tower. It will take care of it. Always does. Sorry for leaving such a mess,” Dale said.
“What the fuck does that even mean, Dale?” Norm asked.
“I love you, Norm,” he said. Wiping the tears from his face. He dropped his cell phone to the floor. “I always have.”
“What the fuck, Dale?” Norm asked, terrified of what was about to happen.
Samantha screamed, looking in the direction of the smoke-filled room. Norm turned and spotted one of the clones charging forward. A barrage of bullets went hurdling through the air around him as Samantha pumped her finger down on the trigger, emptying every last bullet into the invalid. Norm dropped to the floor and covered his ears.
“Fuck, it’s not stopping, Norm!” she screamed. “Move!”
Norm pushed himself to his feet, but as he looked back at the clone, he realized it wasn’t coming after him, or even Samantha. The thing was headed straight for Dale. Just when Norm realized what it was that was happening, the clone pulled out a Bowie knife and proceeded to chop up his best friend, pulling every limb clean from his body, right in front of him. All in just a few seconds, life had been stripped from his body, and his existence became nothing but a pile of mutilated meat.
The clone stood motionless now. Blood leaked from its many bullet wounds. Norm and Samantha kept distance between it and them until enough time had passed that they were certain the thing was finished. Norm moved closer to it, gun in hand, ready to shoot at the slightest sign of movement. It didn’t move. It didn’t even blink. With Dale gone, life would never return to the invalid. Any of them.
Samantha let out a deep sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath the entire time. Norm took it as a sigh of relief. Not wasting a moment, she slipped the gas mask over her head and walked to the doorway of the smoking room.
“I’ll clean up what’s left in there if you take care of the mess in here,” Samantha said, sounding tired and ready to get this part of the night over with. Norm nodded. She disappeared behind a wall of smoke.
Norm felt elated. They were alive. The shock of losing his best friend hadn’t really sunk in yet, or maybe it had. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling in those moments other than pure joy that he and Samantha were still alive. It certainly felt like a victory, albeit a small one. Even though they were able to stop at least some of the weirdness happening in Eighth Block, the two of them still lived inside the tower, and that meant the battle was far from over.
Norm removed the Bowie knife from the invalid’s hand and proceeded to hack away at it, tossing the surprisingly realistic meat onto the pile of Dale’s remains. As weird as it was to dismember a body that looked damn near identical to his own, he tried not to think about it much. After a night like the one they’d just experienced, all he could really think about was the comfort of his bed. That, and a hot shower. The way he saw it, butchering the clone was the last obstacle standing between him and those comforts.
When he was finished, he transferred the meat from the pile into the cardboard box Dale had pointed out, and slid it over to the center of the room. The walls of the box swelled as the cardboard became engorged with blood, now resembling the hanging end of a morbidly obese torso, more so than an actual box.
Walking towards the smoking room, Norm thought there was no way the box was sturdy enough to hold the meat any longer than just a few minutes. He scanned around the room, looking for a more suitable container, but could find nothing.
That’s when he saw it.
The cardboard box, and the hundreds of pounds of meat contained inside, had inexplicably vanished.
How curious is this home, our tower?
The Invalids
© William Pauley III, 2016
All rights reserved.
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