IENDE Read online

  IENDE

  A. MORNING GICE

  First Edition: October 2018

  Copyright © 2018 A. Morning Gice

  All rights reserved. This includes the right to reproduce any portion of this book in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Anperception® Books, PO BOX 792, Littleton, CO 80160

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9973636-6-1

  Cover design by A. Morning Gice

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m very grateful to Keely Boeving, Jen Duran, Dave King, Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, and all the talented local Denver writers I’ve met and continue to workshop with.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PART 1

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  PART 2

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART 1

  A SIMPLE LIFE GONE BAD

  ONE

  VICTOR HARRIS TOUCHED the hot iron to the solder. Flux bubbled and a thin ribbon of smoke curled into his nostrils—a familiar and comforting smell like the fragrance of good bourbon. It brought memories of research and experiment, the art and craft of a scientist. The university lab had been a place he knew well, where he could hide in his work. A place where those around him looked his way with respect.

  The memories were there even though he sat hunched over a scarred kitchen table in a narrow, dingy apartment, his plastic chair leaving his lower back a knot. As he soldered the final component to the thin circuit board, he whispered a familiar song.

  A sugary prize my Sally’s eyes

  The touch of her skin my sweet demise

  To the waters of life, she is my gate

  My purpose, my end, my inexorable fate

  It was done. He swung the magnifying lamp over and examined the canals of circuitry for defects. There were none.

  Victor noticed his fingers tapping a familiar pattern. The cycle of the Dames attempting to connect to his brain and take control. Fortunately for him, he had been born with an unlikely condition that blocked the little bastards. And he felt especially lucky after he discovered they’d been subtly controlling the majority of humanity for at least a millennium—a suggestive whisper to the ear, a dulling of passion at the moment of a first kiss, a spasm to the calf while descending the stairs, a sour twang to the gut before a decision.

  At least that was how he thought they worked. But he was certain that humanity’s billions of unique individuals formed a single entity under the influence of the Dames, their collective whispers, twangs, and spasms gradually inching the cruise ship of mankind toward some grand destination.

  He was one of the few people in the world still free to fight back.

  Victor balled his fist, disrupting the pattern. It was 5:25 p.m. He dropped his tools into an old tackle box and slipped the circuit board into a static-free bag, then packed them into a backpack alongside his police radio. With a prepaid cell phone he dialed the Ravdale police. “Listen, there’s a drug sale going down at the apartment of a guy called Kyle Toewidch. Divine Estates. It’s happening in about an hour. Don’t ask how I know; just get there.”

  As Victor hung up, he felt a prickle in his gut, the realization that he had finally crossed the line from planning to action. What if it all went awry? He’d just lied to the cops. And he was uncertain how Kyle would react. From what Victor had seen while observing Kyle over the last few weeks, he had a rough guess, but there were still too many variables for him to feel entirely comfortable. What if the cops showed up early? What if Kyle was out?

  But Victor knew where every active police cruiser was currently located. He had tracked Kyle’s schedule, and it was as repetitive as a sine wave. All would go to plan.

  He went to the bathroom to check his hair in the mirror. But why did it matter? He rubbed his index finger over new wrinkles that had sprouted from the corner of his eye. Time was unforgiving . . .

  TWO

  THE CRUNCH OF dry sugar puffs drowned out the sounds of Lara Stilltrot, Special Agent, the most popular show on television for the single twenty-something.

  Kyle grabbed the remote to turn up the volume, but something was blocking the signal. Perhaps it was yesterday’s socks, which hung over the edge of the TV. But he didn’t want to have to get up and move them. He shook the remote like an aerosol can, searching for the right angle, but the volume never rose. Finally he stood, forgetting the sugar puffs, which tumbled to the floor and scattered like bowling pins.

  Now he would have to pull out the vacuum. He switched off the TV and batted the socks to the floor. Sugar puffs crackled under his new designer sneakers. He would have preferred the black stripes to the red ones, but his mom had bought them.

  He kicked his work clothes aside as he approached the hall closet. There was a snap under his foot—his name tag. It was broken into pie slices. That was his third name tag since he’d started cooking hot dogs in front of Smitty’s Hards and Wares four weeks ago.

  The vacuum was a four-hundred-dollar Dyson Kyle had taken from his mom’s house. It inhaled the sugar puffs, uncovering a carpet stained by juice, beer, and vomit that wouldn’t be out of place in a frat house. The juice stains were Kyle’s. The beer and vomit stains had come with the apartment.

  At twenty-two, he was living on his own for the first time. Five hundred square feet of independence. Smitty’s paid minimum wage, but that wasn’t bad with the State raising the minimum wage and all. His mom usually had new clothes for him when he visited, and she still cut his dirty-blond hair, so he was making more than enough to get by. And he was friends with most of his neighbors who would often congregate across the hall at Anthony Brewhauser’s place. Anthony was a friendly guy, and a hound with the women.

  And Kyle was fit. Anthony would bring Kyle along to the gym at least once a week, and he took walks around the lake next door. One hundred forty pounds at five foot seven was pretty healthy according
to IsMyWeightOK.net.

  Kyle took a deep breath. The smell of hot dogs and bratwurst lingered, even hours later. That was the one thing he didn’t like about his job; the grease would cake itself onto his clothes, hair, and skin. But he didn’t want to deal with taking a shower at that moment. Sugar puffs weren’t cutting it, and the aroma of greasy food was making his stomach rumble.

  He opened the fridge and grabbed a container of leftover instant noodles and a Thrifty Light beer. He didn’t bother to warm up the noodles but returned to the couch, where he propped his tired feet on the coffee table and switched the TV back on. The hiss of compressed gas escaping as he opened his brew was a trumpet of success. He took a generous sip of its chilled refreshment. Salty broth dribbled onto his T-shirt as he slurped a few noodles from the bowl.

  A commercial came on with lovers hand in hand, heavenly joy painting their faces. He placed his noodle bowl on the table, appetite gone. Maybe a walk around the complex was in order. He switched off the TV and guzzled his beer.

  He was startled by a knock at the door and Anthony’s bullhorn voice. “Kyle, man!” Kyle opened the door and looked up—Anthony was six feet.

  “Hey, monkey glans. Wanna hang out?” Anthony smelled like a vodka and motor oil cocktail. “Jeff and Hugo are celebrating their three-week anniversary. I’m making mac and cheese, but you gotta pitch in if you want some.”

  Anthony seemed in a perpetual stasis between exhaustion and intoxication. He always wore a few days of growth on his face, generic once-white white sneakers, and loose, faded blue jeans with a coating of filth like he’d just crawled out from under a ’76 Dodge pickup. Yet he always had a pristine white T-shirt, like a fresh blanket of snow over muck. And Kyle could never figure out how old Anthony was. His face seemed to fluctuate between old and young depending on the time of day and day of week. Anthony reminded Kyle of those movies where a character would feed off other people’s life forces to stay young, leaving them corpses with only skin and bones. At that particular moment Anthony appeared as though he’d just fed on a youth choir.

  “I got a couple bucks,” Kyle said. “I’ll be over in a few.”

  “Bet your ass you will,” Anthony said. “The new girl from Building Four will be there, the one with the Lexus. She’s been eyeing me since she moved in.”

  “Right. So will her husband be there?”

  “Nah, she’ll probably tell him she’s working late or something.”

  Anthony lumbered back to his apartment with the gait of an alpha baboon. Anthony wasn’t smart or anything, and he had that beer gut. How could he get so many women when Kyle couldn’t score a single date with one mediocre girl? And Kyle was certain that if he did, Anthony would take her, too.

  Kyle no longer wanted to go to Anthony’s. Sudden stomach discomfort, bad hot dogs, that would be Kyle’s excuse.

  As his bum was falling back to the couch, there was another knock at the door. He looked through the peephole. It was the new guy from upstairs, the African American guy Anthony said had been hauling in weird electronic shit. Anthony thought the guy was a DJ or something.

  “You’re on the other side of the door, looking at me,” the guy said.

  Well, it was true enough. Kyle opened the door a sliver and peeked out.

  The man was tall, broad, with just a smattering of tummy pudge protruding against his gray sweatshirt. Black jeans hugged his muscular legs, which jutted from weathered black Nikes. His salt-and-pepper hair and serious manner made him seem older, forties maybe.

  “I’m Victor, your upstairs neighbor,” he said, almost at a whisper. “You have a moment to talk?”

  Kyle’s first instinct was to say no. Maybe Victor was mad about something Kyle had done. Or maybe Victor was crazy. But he was certainly better dressed than the average guy in the complex.

  Victor raised an impatient eyebrow. “May I come in?”

  Kyle’s chest thumped like the subwoofer in Anthony’s ’89 Plymouth Gran Fury. But Kyle remembered that he had friends in the building, lots of them. Just a cry for help away.

  “I have to be across the hall in a couple of minutes,” he said, “—friends and all. They’re expecting me.”

  “This is important.” Victor now spoke in a full baritone voice, his eyes shifting left to right. Without warning, he grabbed Kyle’s shoulders and forced him inside, almost lifting him from his feet, then kicked the door shut behind them.

  Victor’s breaths were short, straightjacket eyes, beads of sweat forming below his hairline. He let go of Kyle, who stood paralyzed, feeling like he’d just been given a story problem in math class and had to figure it out in a hurry. Then he realized he’d just gotten pushed into his own apartment. It was a home invasion!

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” Victor held out his open hands. “Just relax. I only need to talk to you.”

  “Say what you have to say.” Kyle’s voice was shaky. Seeing Victor in the full light of the living room made his gut feel like it was swarming with ants, and his noodles rose into his throat. He swallowed.

  Victor began to take a seat on the couch, but then his nostrils flared and he passed on its comfort. He turned his battlefield gaze back to Kyle. “The police will be paying you a visit within the hour. They’ll ask to take a look around the place, as if a crime has been committed.” Victor’s eyes scanned the room.

  This had to be a joke—Anthony’s doing. Kyle wasn’t gonna fall for it. “Ha ha. Screw you, big scary man.” Kyle shot his middle finger up and smiled.

  Victor slapped his large hand over Kyle’s mouth. “I need you to take this seriously. We don’t have much time.”

  Kyle tried to shake loose, but Victor’s grip was unbreakable. Kyle’s scalp tingled, his legs weak. Only a short time ago, he’d been enjoying a beer and a relaxed evening. How had this happened? He should be at Anthony’s. No, he should be at home, safe, his parents’ home. The apartment was supposed to be his freedom, but now somebody had taken that away. Probably because somebody else had taken away Victor’s freedom—maybe the police—and Victor was taking Kyle’s in exchange. It was like one of those pyramid schemes, and Kyle was the guy at the bottom.

  “Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you,” Victor repeated. “I’m going to let you go, and then you’re going to sit on that nasty couch and let me finish.”

  Kyle nodded his head and Victor let go. Kyle took a seat on the couch, his mind trying to grasp what might happen. But his only frame of reference was dozens of horror flicks and Lara Stilltrot, and this situation rarely ended well in either of those.

  Victor grabbed a plastic chair, looked it over, and sat, his body slouching. He suddenly appeared less threatening, his face looking like he was about to go over the first drop in a roller coaster. He tapped his fingers on his knee. “The cops are going to find something in your room, an excuse to arrest you.”

  “What?” Kyle stood defensively, thinking of an episode of Lara Stilltrot where Lara had been framed by some foreign guy. “Did you plant something in there?” He took a step toward his room.

  Victor lurched into his path. “You said you’d behave yourself.”

  Kyle’s body sunk back to the couch.

  “There’s nothing in there,” Victor said. “What they’ll find is what they bring with them. You understand?”

  “What if I showed them—”

  “Just hear me out, please.”

  “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “If they get hold of you, you’ll disappear. I need you to take a walk to 7-Eleven on the corner. Grab some candy or a soda, whatever. Take your time. Keep an eye out, and you’ll see them arrive. They’ll come to this apartment. Then they’ll check with your buddy Anthony. Then they’ll wait, watch. I want you to see them, so you’ll be convinced.” Victor pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to Kyle. “I drive the black Caddy SUV. You know the one? It’s always parked on the west side of the building. Once you’re convinced, take it. Drive to this address.” He handed Kyle a piece of pape
r. “Trust me, Kyle, I’m on your side on this. We’re almost out of time. Now I’ve got to go.”

  “How do you know all of this? What’s going on here?”

  “If I had time, I’d tell you more, but I don’t. And neither do you.” Victor’s face now reminded Kyle of his mom’s the first time she sent him off to summer camp. “I’m sorry, Kyle, but you have a choice to make. Make the right one. I know this seems crazy. But you’re unique, and we’re more alike than you realize.”

  Victor turned and left.

  Kyle looked at the key and the note, his hands trembling. Who would give a stranger a key to a Caddy? Maybe Victor was crazy, multiple personality, a criminal. But a part of Kyle wondered if Victor was telling the truth. He might as well face it; a part of him wanted it to be true. He wasn’t exactly living a rock star life. And he still wondered if the whole thing was a joke. But he could grab a Slurpee, and a public place like 7-Eleven would be safe enough. Besides, he hadn’t had a Slurpee for at least a couple of days. And it would give him time to decide what to do.

  He grabbed a windbreaker and began the walk to 7-Eleven. In the courtyard, he saw Anthony talking to Lexus Girl and her husband. The husband was a big guy, looking pissed and pointing his finger between Anthony’s eyes. Sounded like the Lexus Girl wasn’t interested after all. Her seeming loyalty to her man gave Kyle some hope for himself if he ever met someone.

  He hurried to grab a refreshing cherry cola Slurpee, and then snuck the long way around the complex. He took a seat on the grass beside the building north of his, which provided a narrow view of the courtyard. He could watch at a safe distance to see if the cops really showed up.

  As twilight approached, Kyle tapped his fingers against his knee and watched the shadows gradually moving across the courtyard. He imagined they were buildings, or giants, or gods maybe. The grass could be a forest, and the walkway a large river with barges slowly making their way to places where they would be greeted with hopeful cheers. Kyle wished he were driving one of those barges, or that he was one of those giants, among his giant brethren doing giant things. But he wasn’t. He was the guy who supplied the beer, who was included in Anthony’s crowd out of pity, or the butt of a joke. Like he was now, maybe. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if Anthony was joking with him or about him.