The Stem Court
In
his basement he paced, his anger smoldering. It was the third night this week.
She seemed to care less and less. She was getting a little more careless by the
day. Her sister was the problem; always
encouraging her.
Thirteen
steps from one side of the basement to the other. The others were in on it,
too. Ernie at work. Why else would he crack a joke about her looking tired at
work?
“Had
a little too much fun time last night?” Fun time? What did that mean? And why
did he wink? He’s in on it. And Carl too, that little jerk. He would get them
all.
His
vision was going dark around the edges. The headache was coming on, worse this
time. He could see his pulse through his eyes, little rapid flashes matching
his heart rate. The gun and ammo were in the back of the cabinet and he could
feel their warmth. Their heat would cool his anger.
Tonight
he would not sit home and wait. Tonight he would put an end to this once and
for all.
He
arrived at Carl Portelli’s house and rang the doorbell. Carl’s wife, Karen, opened
the door. He shot her in the face. Then
he marched in and searched for Carl. In an upstairs bedroom he found their
seven year old daughter. He shot her in
the head. He found Carl hiding in the garage, calling 911. The operator
listened as he shot Carl nine times.
His
next stop was the residence of Ernest Freely. He knocked on the door and though
lights were on inside, there was no answer. He walked through the gate on the
side of the house and found Ernest and his wife relaxing on the back porch. Before
either of them opened their eyes they were dead. A neighbor came outside,
responding to the sound of gunshots, and was also killed.
For
weeks he had been following his wife Doreen to a certain house. He made his way
there. Having parked down the street, he walked to the house and began looking
into the windows. Several neighbors watched him, but he was oblivious. He
walked to the back of the house and found the rear door locked. He kicked the
door three times and it caved in, wood splintering and glass shattering. He
found them in the upstairs bedroom. The man had a towel wrapped around his
waist and was standing with a baseball bat like he was on home plate. Doreen
was in the bed with the sheets drawn up to her face, peeking out over her
fingers.
He
shot the man and he collapsed to the floor.
He stood over the man and shot him five more times as Doreen watched. He
turned the gun on her and could feel his anger turning to humor as he watched
her cry.
When
the sirens were close, he shot her, reloaded, and emptied the gun into her
again. He walked back to his car and drove off as the first of the police
arrived. Looking at his watch he saw it was still early.
Over
the course of the next three hours he shot and killed twenty-one more people
including two police officers. Several times he left his vehicle and chased
down wounded victims. Shortly after midnight, six squad cars had him boxed in
on the interstate. He had been riding on flattened tires for twenty miles and
the car was falling apart. He was forced to stop.
He
sat and waited. Around him, the flashing red and blue lights beaming through
the dust were almost soothing. They were yelling at him, but he didn’t care.
They had their guns pointed. He smiled. In the mirror he saw one of the figures
approaching from the back of his car. The rear window shattered in and tear gas
filled the vehicle.
He’d
never experienced tear gas before, though he had wondered if it was as bad as
people described it. It was. A hand reached through the shattered back window
and unlocked his door. As the door was pulled open, he was blind and ready to
pass out, but he managed to raise his gun to his temple and fire. The hands
retreated. There was a tense quiet as
they waited.
Slowly
the officers made their way back to the driver’s side, guns drawn and nerves
tight. The first officer to reach him kicked his gun away, turned him over and
cuffed him, although he knew it wasn’t really necessary. There was a large hole
in the side of his head and blood was pouring out as if from a pitcher.
“He’s
dead,” the first officer said. Their adrenaline was running and they felt
frustration as the situation stabilized.
Then
the long night ahead, hundreds of man-hours spent gathering information.
As
the sun came up, new officers and staff arrived. The suspect’s car was being
scoured for forensic evidence as a tow truck idled nearby.
Two
of the first responding officers were drinking coffee by the side of the road,
getting ready to wrap up their shifts and go home.
“Where
did they take his body, morgue or county hospital?”
“I
don’t know. Some guys in a black van pulled up and said they were taking it.
Sarge said no way; he didn’t know who they were. We’d never seen a body taken
away in an unmarked van. But he got on the phone and after a while someone said
it was okay, so they took him.”
“You
don’t know where? Are you sure it wasn’t just another type of ambulance?”
“No.
No, it was an unmarked black cargo van. I got a glimpse inside. There was no
medical equipment, just an empty van. They put him inside on the floor and
drove off. I’ve never seen that happen
before.”
“That
is strange,” the officer mused. “Oh well, I gotta get home, the wife’s getting
ready to leave for work”
***
The
soft blue light swam in and out, and it was keeping the pain away. His head
hurt, but somehow he was able to insulate himself from it. He imagined himself
curled up, floating, up and down gently in soft bubbling noises. He didn’t know
exactly who he was or why he was here, but for the moment it seemed he was
safe.
In
an instant the soft blue was gone, replaced by jarring bright lights. He
suddenly remembered who he was.
Someone
slapped his face hard, stars flew into his vision. Now fear was taking hold as
he could see he was in danger. The room was well lit and people were standing
over him, looking down. The light was obscuring the details of their
faces. He first thought, “I’m in a
hospital”. His attempt at suicide hadn’t worked. The shot hadn’t done enough damage. This was
not what he’d planned.
His
face was slapped again and one of the figures standing over him, a man, asked
him a question.
“Are
you David Wayne Rames? Do you know who you are?”
He
was quiet, afraid to answer, not even sure if he could speak if he wanted to.
His face was slapped again so hard that his ears rang.
“Yes,
yes, yes! That’s me!” He wanted so badly to put his hands to his face to shield
it, but his arms were restrained somehow.
“Do
you remember killing your wife?”
“Yes,”
he said resignedly. “But I was insane. I want to see my lawyer.” His face was
slapped again hard. Tears filled his eyes, burning, but he couldn’t rub them.
“You
have no lawyer, Mr. Rames. You are dead. You have nothing.”
Horror
flooded in. He was in Hell. He’d never believed in the Bible (said he did, but
didn’t). Now he saw that it was all true. For a brief second he wondered if
maybe this could be Heaven, but he knew it couldn’t be. That wasn’t the place for him.
The
man standing over him spoke again.
“You
don’t know where you are. Sometimes people think they’ve gone to an afterlife.
Sometimes they think they have gone to heaven or somewhere else. Let me tell
you, you are definitely not in heaven.” There was a soft shuffling in the
background and he thought he heard people laughing softly.
“Oh,
God” he screamed. “I’m sorry! I didn’t believe!” He broke down into
unintelligible mumbling.
“Stop
it!” the man said sharply. “God isn’t here and you are not in Hell.” He could
hear more chuckling.
“You
are in our lab. You are our fifth patient.
Our techniques are becoming more refined each time.” The man looked up at the others in the room
and smiled. Again, there was soft laughter from the shadows.
“You
look puzzled, Mr. Rames.” More chuckling.
“You
shot yourself in the head. You put a hole in your brain. You killed yourself.”
The man looked around at the others as if they were all in on a joke, from
which he was excluded.
“You
see, Mr. Rames, we here at this facility have the ability to do amazing things
with the human body. I won’t bore you with details such as the migration of
hematopoietic cells through the blood, but basically, with stem cells,
nano-healers and a steroid bath we can rebuild that part of your brain which
you destroyed.”
“Why?”
he muttered.
“Well
to tell you the truth,” the man rolled his eyes up and then looked back down,
shaking his head slowly.
“We
got sick of seeing people like you. You kill a bunch of innocent people and
then escape justice by killing yourselves. If you’re going to kill yourself,
that’s fine by us, but don’t take other people with you.”
The
words seemed surreal to him; he knew what they meant, but it couldn’t be real.
He couldn’t be here, strapped to a gurney.
“But
we are just doctors and scientists,” the man continued. “We don’t have the
ability to go out and arrest people even if we think they may be capable of
doing something like what you’ve done.”
His
mind was racing. He still didn’t quite understand who they were and what their
intentions were. The fear of the unknown was making him feel sick.
“We
see it happen every year or so, sometimes multiple times a year. Several of us
were of a like mind and decided to do something about it. For years we’ve had
the ability to do it. Ethical issues
clouded us out of using our techniques in the mainstream but we’ve known we
could for some time. Unfortunately, at this stage of our research, the results
only last a few hours and then your damage returns. So that is why we have to
get on with it, quickly.” The man smiled and Rames felt a rushing in his ears
as his pulse raced.
“We
can rebuild a hole in the brain like yours, it’s not that difficult, and as a
bonus, usually all of your memories return, probably because we use the base
cells from your own body. Because you
have a lot of cells, well, we can do this over and over as many times as we
like. And do you know how many times we like, Mr. Rames?”
He
was silent, looking up at them.
“How
about if we kill you once for each of your victims? Does that sound fair? Oh,
also, they tell me it gets worse each time, probably a mental thing. You see,
each time we rebuild your brain, it decays a little bit more. They tell me that
by the time you’re finished, you’ll be in such a deep psychosis that you’ll
wish you were dead. And you will be, eventually. It isn’t going to be a fun
ride, Mr. Rames. But you can have a little bit of solace, maybe a last grasp at
redemption. You see, we’re going to use the last of your cells to kick start
our next patient!”
The
man smiled and removed a list from his jacket pocket. He unfolded the paper,
removed a pistol from another pocket, and placed the barrel of the gun to
Rames’ head.
“Item
number one,” he said in a clear, somber voice. “This is for Carl Portelli’s
wife, Karen.”
He
pulled the trigger.
© 2014 Shock Armstrong