Final Cut (2 page)

Bill just hoped it was soon. He had fantasies of what the life that he and Nancy could lead would be like. It could have been perfect. But he knew as Nancy did that even if she did leave Jake he would never leave her alone. A man like that had to be put away and if it came right down to it, Bill thought he could make it happen.

He turned off 339 onto 550 and began the last five miles of his journey to reach Crestwood Falls. He lived just on the outskirts of it in a medium sized house with a fairly large garage that was perfect for his work space. Bill had been renting the place for almost a year and he liked it fairly well, but he was hoping for something bigger one day. Especially if he ever had a family. He couldn’t see raising a family in a house that size. Plus he was starting to outgrow his garage and hoped that he could one day find a house with something a bit bigger.

He couldn’t wait to get to sleep soon. It had been a long day and an even longer week and he just wanted to relax with a couple of beers and possibly fall asleep in his comfy easy chair recliner. He slept more in that chair than he ever did in his bed. There was just something about how comfortable the thing was that once he was settled into it he never wanted to get out of it and get moving to go to bed.

“Don’t fucking move!”

The voice growled in his ear as the barrel of the gun simultaneously poked against the back of his neck. The gun was cold and it felt like death brushing along the base of his neck sending stabbing spikes of fear echoing up and down his spine.

Bill could not see the reflection in the rearview mirror. The voice did not sound familiar either. How had this person gotten inside of his car? He thought he had locked it at Nancy’s.

Bill licked his lips aware suddenly of just how dry they were. “Who are you—“

“DON’T FUCKING SAY A WORD!”

The voice was hissing loudly in his ear, the gun jerking hard against his neck with every syllable of rage that spewed from this man’s mouth. The man was insane and for a moment Bill had the image of an escaped lunatic who was on a killing spree and he was going to be the next victim. It was like an episode of The Hitchcock Hour that he watched on Netflix sometimes.

He wanted to communicate with this man and find out what he wanted and how he could make this whole situation be over as quickly and as easily as possible, but he knew that if he said anything he would agitate the man and the gun might go off accidentally—or not so accidentally.

“You piece of shit…” the man hissed in a low grunt that sounded almost as if he was trying to disguise his voice. The voice sounded more snake than human, like what one might imagine a talking serpent to sound like tempting the good in man in a Biblical Prophecy.

Bill gulped as he concentrated on holding his body as still as possible. He did not want to give this man any reason to think that he was going to try anything or that he did not fully intend to cooperate. The man just needed to know that they were on the same side and he wanted him to have whatever he wanted. That was what Bill wanted to communicate to this person. And since the psycho would not permit him to speak, he had to just show calm and steady movements. That’s right. They were just a couple of guys chilling out and relaxing on a nice little road trip. That was all.

“You think you are something, don’t you? You think that you can just do whatever you want in this world and not have any consequences. Well, asshole that is not the way the world works.”

This guy was really starting to freak Bill out. The man was under some sort of a conspiracy kick or was suffering some sort of delusions of righteousness where he had a vendetta to settle with the entire world and right now that entire world was Bill Russell.

Bill’s mind began to leap into overdrive as he madly thought of ways that he could end the whole situation. The man was not wearing a seatbelt and was leaning in from the back seat. It might be plausible to step on the brakes and send the moron flying through the windshield. Bill was pretty sure he had seen this in a movie somewhere at some time. But he was honestly not sure that would work and if it didn’t then the man would just become more enraged and probably shoot him where he sat in a heartbeat.

But was the man that crazy? Was he of sound enough mind to realize that if he killed Bill then the car would go out of control and they would both be killed? Did the man have enough foresight in him to realize any of this? That was the million dollar question that dictated how well Bill was going to get out of this alive and what the possibilities of the hand was that he’d been dealt.

“Well, this time you are going to pay motherfucker!” The man continued his rant from the backseat. His breath was hot and had a foul odor as it blasted into Bill’s ear and echoed forward past his face. He tried to hold back a gag.

The guy was going off the rails. He had stopped taking his medication or something. He was obviously a paranoid schizophrenic and Bill had seen enough new specials to know that these people are highly volatile and not to be reasoned with. He might just have been screwed.

“You didn’t think I’d catch on to you did you? You thought that you could run along happy as can be and fuck another man’s wife without consequences! Is that what you really thought?”

Oh shit. Everything clicked in Bill’s mind in a heartbeat. The madman with the gun to his head was Nancy’s husband Jake. He had found out about them. How? They had been so careful? He had apparently misjudged this asshole’s paranoia and psychopathy after all. Shit. Now he was going to pay for it. For a second his mind leapt at the idea that Nancy might have been hurt, but he had just left her and she was just fine. This psycho was hiding in his car waiting for him to come out of the house.

“That’s right pig. I know what you have been doing with my wife. I have eyes and ears everywhere and if that little bitch thinks she can get away with this sort of shit then she is sorely mistaken. I’ll take care of her next.”

Jake chuckled at his last remark.

“Don’t you dare lay a hand-“Bill began before being hit on the top of the head by the butt of the gun. Blinding pain soared through his head, turning his vision blurry for a few seconds as the pain subsided to a roaring ache branching out from the top of his head to the sides.

“DON’T SAY A DAMN WORD!” Jake growled.

“What do you want?” Bill replied. He expected to be hit again, but he was tired of playing games. He was coming close to his own house, but he was not going to drive that way just in case this prick did not know where he lived and did not yet know his name. There was no reason to help him out any more than he had to.

“Just drive. I will tell you where to go and all will be revealed soon enough,” Jake said in a conversational tone that was eerie as hell. When a psycho went from yelling at the top of their lungs to speaking very relaxed and almost sleepy in a matter of seconds then it was a bit unsettling to deal with for any rational person who had normal emotions.

Bill was aware that he had never been this frightened before in his life. He tried to keep his breathing as slow and deep as he could to just allow the oxygen to do its work and relax him. That was all he wanted. He just needed to chill out a bit and to not think of all the possible ways that this right here could go very badly.

There had to be a way out of this. Crazy people did crazy things. They never did rational things. He was sure that this crazy person would drop his guard or make a mistake and when he did Bill would assume the role of decision maker and he would find a way out of it all. He just had to keep his eyes open and wait for the perfect moment to pounce on it all.

Jake did not say anything for a while. It seemed that his rant was about over and now he was just staring at the back of Bill’s head. This was actually more unsettling and creepy. Bill could still feel the cool breath on the back of his neck adding weight to the nozzle of the gun that was still there pressing firmer still into his soft flesh.

Bill was no stranger to guns and he was certain that if he got ahold of the gun away from Jake he could do whatever he had to do with it. He had never killed anyone before but he was sure that if he had no choice then he would pull that trigger and never think twice about it. That was the law of the world whether anyone else wanted to believe it or not.

Bill knew that to survive this he had to play along. He had to continue to pretend to be prey when he was really going to be the predator soon. He was going to wait for the chance to turn the tables and he was certain that it was going to come along. There was no way that he was not going to make it out of this alive. He kept repeating those words in his mind. He had to stay positive and he had to continue to be relaxed. If Jake sensed that he was not relaxed then it would only trigger his predatory instincts. This would make him want to hurt Bill even more than he already did. Jake wanted to think that he was being rational and was in control. He wanted revenge on the guy who was banging his wife; this was understandable. Any man would want revenge on the person who was sticking it to his woman, but of course Jake was not just any man; he was a complete paranoid psycho. Therefore the rules were magnified by what he was actually capable of doing.

“Turn left here,” Jake grunted.

Bill did as he was instructed. He had passed his own house about two miles past and he was relieved that Jake did not seem to notice this fact. If the man knew as much about Bill as he knew about Jake then that would have made this whole experience even scarier. Somehow the fact that they were both strangers made it a little more passable.

Bill could tell where they were going. They were heading off on Lake Road that ended up lapping around Veto Lake. It was a local swimming hole and fisherman’s paradise where Bill had spent lots of time as a boy. It was a good place to get away from things and to really think. If you went in the middle of the day when most people were at work then it was pretty peaceful. Bill often skipped school and as a kid and rode his bike back around to hang out there. Sometimes he would even go home and hang out when his mom was at work. She worked part time and was only gone three days a week. Bill had gotten pretty good at faking the phone call from his parents to call him off school for the day. And then it was simply a matter of making sure his parents did not see the number of days he was absent on his report card.

Bill had no intention of letting Jake force him out there in the cover of darkness to shoot him and toss his body in the lake. It was easy to come to that conclusion that this was Jake’s master plan. It was pretty basic and pretty sure to land Jake in prison, which made Bill mildly happy but he did not think it was worth him dying to make this happen. He had to make a move and he had to do so soon. In just a couple of miles they would be past all of the houses on this road until you got to the other side of the lake. It was all wilderness surrounding the area with the lake thrown in the middle.

“Whatever you are planning to do, I’m sure we can talk about this,” Bill said. He was still trying to sound like a whiny victim. He had to let Jake know that he was scared and that Jake was in control. He had no idea if Jake had enough humanity in him to respond to that. The man reeked of alcohol and that was not helping matters at all. Bill was shocked he had not smelled the alcohol when he first got in the car, but his head had been too wrapped up in the clouds of love with Nancy.

“There is nothing to talk about. You soiled the sanctity of my marriage. I know it isn’t all of your fault; my wife is a total whore. I know that. I’ve tried to fix her and show her the error of her ways, but no matter how much punishment I inflict she responds with impunity. I will just have to send her to Jesus. That is all that can be done with that whore now.”

“You would kill your wife? Really?” Bill asked.

“Damn right. She isn’t my wife anymore; as far as I can tell as soon as she made the decision to accept you inside of her than she became a free agent. She is no good. She is a whore as I’ve always known. Now it’s time for me to make everything right.”

“This is wrong. You will never get away with this!” Bill said. His voice was getting loud. He couldn’t help it. This man had to see how crazy he was and how this was not going to accomplish anything for him in the long run. If he killed Bill and Nancy then he was just going to rot in a prison cell. There was no way he was ever getting away with it. Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see how messed up his own logic and thinking was?

The answer was no. Bill could tell that the rage had taken him far too far. He was gone now. Maybe he would sober up eventually and come to some common sense and reasoning, but it was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“I will get away with it. You better believe it. I have it all worked out. I’m going to make it look like you killed the bitch and then you couldn’t live with yourself after what you did and you drove yourself into the lake here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Shut up and drive.”

Up ahead a deer in the road. Bill barely glimpsed it for a second as it ran across the road only a few feet in front of him. He had no time to stop and no time to think as instinct took over and before he realized what was happening his hands jerked the wheel hard to the right to miss the large deer and the car swerved off the embankment.

Jake’s body flew forward and to the right as the car hit the steep ditch of the side of the road and the unthinkable happened. The car flipped repeatedly rolling over and over down the hill. Bill held on to the wheel as tightly as he could, his fingers growing numb as the blood froze inside his hands from the pressure.

In a glimpse from the corner of his eye he saw Jake’s body fly through the passenger side window and hit the ground a split second before the car rolled on top of him. Bill winced as the crunching sound of bone and the last breaths of agony echoed throughout the car.

When would the rolling car stop he wondered? Would it roll all the way to the bottom of the hill only to be stopped by the grove of trees that lined the edge of the woods? That had to be over two hundred feet. Could he survive that far?