Psycho Therapy (21 page)

Under the green fixture that shone onto the pool table—the only source of light on in the entire room—was Brandon’s body. His throat had been gouged through numerous times. Brandon’s eyes were affixed on nothing, wide open. The eyes screamed terror and agony but the rest of his face was limp. He’d turned blue and pale, losing much blood. A seven-inch steak knife was laid out on the green carpet alongside Brandon’s straight razor. Strips of flesh similar to the thin slices of a carrot peeler were taken from Brandon’s naked back.

Craig curled into himself, repulsed. Tina tightened her grip on his hand to the point his bones protested. “Ah, you’re hurting me!”

Tina shrieked, triggered by his reaction, “And your father hurt me! He tore my heart out. I caught him sticking his dick in a random stranger. I was walking to the grocery store, and I noticed our car parked outside a hotel. I fought my way inside, and there was the slut spent and ready to go home. Cum and wash bitch, that whore, that slut, that fucking diseased bitch, only my husband could find something attractive about her. I acted like I’d forgiven him. I brought us home. Then I remembered what Parker said about bringing Brandon to God.” She paused, licking her dried lips. “That’s when I stabbed him in the throat.”

She looked to him for acceptance and understanding. “This was what you wanted for me, Craig. Remember?—don’t you remember? You said he didn’t deserve me. You were right. Now he can’t have me. I can be happy now.”

Tina snarled and returned to the pool table. She picked up the straight razor and began flensing strips of skin from Brandon’s spine and between his shoulder blades, the blade clicking against bone with each swipe. “He’s slept with so many women. He’s dirty. I’m sure he’s passed something on to me. He didn’t make love to me with real passion. But Parker, he’s a real man. I’m his one and only.”

She shaved down the back of Brandon's head and removed a long cut of meat. Craig abhorred the sight, internally shrinking from the sight. Tina expressed more joy than he’d ever seen, and it disgusted him. “Dr. Krone taught me this trick.”

Both his fists tightened at his name. “What did he say to you? When did he talk to you, Mom?” He closed in, grabbing her by both arms to steal her attention. “Christ, speak up—tell me right now!”

Tina’s eyes, Tina’s smile, Tina’s brow, everything about her face went crooked. The shadows gnarled the blood stains on her face. It looked like she’d been the one who was bleeding. “He said simply stabbing him in the throat wasn’t good enough. I’d regret not torturing him more—even though he’s already dead. Parting the skin, I’m shaving him clean. He’ll be a good man when there’s nothing left of him. The doctor said that’s the only way for a devious man to make a fresh start. Clean. Pure. Without sin—oh wait, the sin part was Parker’s talk, not the doctor’s.”

She glared at him, her joy suddenly draining, her smile fading into a frown. She growled, “I see your father in you. You’ll be just like him soon, Craig.” A whimper of fear, her eyes shirked from him, and then they returned, staring at him like he was stranger, someone to harm. “I can’t let you go, Craig. You’ll break another girl’s heart.” She tightened her stare. “Poor Katie. You were supposed to be a man. You let her bleed to death. It’s your fault your wife and baby died.”

She cast her head down, mourning his ineptitudes. “But your mistakes hurt others, Craig. You could potentially harm another girl that may come into your life.” The next words caused the hairs on the nape of his neck to stand. “I must save you. Cleanse you like I cleansed your daddy.”

The motherly role was distorted. She had consoled him when Katie died in real life. She was the major factor in moving on versus wallowing in self-pity and guilt, and now, she was taking back that gift.

Shick-shick-shick-shick-shick.

Brandon’s scalp was bared to the skull, Tina carving the straight razor with precision and determination. She slapped the skin onto the floor, wringing her hands of the flesh.

Unable to speak, forcing himself to act, his body weighing double what it used to, his limbs cooperating only because he demanded his nerves to respond, he launched across the basement to escape. Tina leapt over the pool table, posing like a crawling spider on all fours, and she landed onto his back, tackling him from behind. On the way down, the straight razor sliced across the back of his neck, and the skin parted audibly, punctuated by the heavy flow of warm blood.

“
I know what you did
,” she accused, shrieking at alarming octaves. “Of the things you’d do in your mind, you slept with Susan. Wouldn’t you rather sleep with your wife?—or no, that’s right. You’re just like your father. Can’t keep his dick to himself. And soon you’ll be just like him.”

Craig whipped around, turning from his side, and seizing the arm poised to slice him again, he shoved her backwards by the jaw, her body flopping onto the floor. “Dr. Krone’s putting you up to this. It’s not you, Mom!”

“Your mind is the greatest place to venture,” she said, her words spittle-heavy, her eyes slanted and flickering with unreal emotion. “You want to throw this opportunity away on bullshit fantasies. You don’t really want to cure yourself of your anger.”

“You’re the one who’s deciding the outcomes, not me. You put me in those situations.” Craig clenched his fists, bent to fight off his mother at the first indication of another attack. “I want out of my mind and back into my body. I’m done, you hear me, Doctor,
I’m finished!
”

The Browning shotgun materialized in his hands. He gripped it tight so as not to drop it, the weapon heavy and real. He was an adult again too, all in a blink’s time. She admired him with distaste, her desire to cut him up realized once again. “All I see is your father in you. You’re not my child. Not if his blood is in your veins.”

She raised the straight razor, posed to swipe it across his throat.

He raised the gun, reminding himself this wasn’t his real mother. She was alive somewhere else and out of harm’s way. “Stay back or I’ll shoot!”

Inching closer, her legs became springs, ejecting her forward, a wild
shaleeeeeh
escaping her lungs as her voice matched her animal mentality to maim.

Ba-boom!

Knowing he wasn’t harming a real person, pulling the trigger was easy, but the effect was too real. The impact rendered her face inside out, the bullet spray chewing away any familiarity of his mother.

She wasn’t deterred from the attack. Tina had one eye she could view him through beneath a blackened and bleeding pulp for a face. The other eye was pink socket tissue and smashed retina and orb. Her lips had disintegrated, both rows of teeth shattered or fractured and bared. She swallowed the remains of her tongue in a thick gulp. Pointing the straight razor at him again, Craig picked up his feet and bounded up the stairs, knowing if the shotgun blast didn’t deter her, nothing could.

Tina chased him down, her steps thundering behind him in pursuit. The words about Katie still burned him, and true or not, his mother had spoken them, and he’d taken them in. There wasn’t time to think about it, his neck bleeding down his shirt and turning cold. Afternoon sunlight poured through the windows of his childhood home. The beacon of safety, his haven, was demurred. His guts churned at the noises coming from outside. Screams and unrelenting rounds of torture played out in the front yard. He couldn’t stop now, despite his reservations. Tina charged behind him, forcing him to retreat into the living room, still at his heels, slashing the air, spilling blood onto the floor with each effort, Craig had no choice but to throw open the front door and flee outside.

Sinner

Craig unlocked the bolt and launched through the front door. He hopped over the three front steps and landed into the yard, but the sight ahead halted him. Parker Stevens wore a white ceremonial robe the likes of the Pope’s. A blood cross was painted on his forehead. It bled down his face to his chin, gelling at the apex. Life-sized crosses were erected as tall as nine feet, each carved out of an unknown wood. Brandon was impaled on one. He was stripped to only a loincloth. His hands and legs were nailed to the cross by four nails—nails the size of railroad spikes. Willis and Joey were hanging from the other two beside his father. Down the street, his neighbors were impaled on the crosses, even Margaret and Ray Highland, who were in their mid-eighties. The sun was baking them, turning them red. They’d die of exposure, but they’d surely bleed to death first. The persons on the cross chanted, “
For I have sinned, for I have sinned, for I have sinned…
”

Parker closed his Bible at the sight of Craig. “Erect another cross. We have another sinner. He can be saved, if he’s willing. I tried to bless him, but, Lord, I failed. He needs divine intervention. Let him bear the weight of your sacrifices to mankind, and then we’ll see if he’s ready to live a life in your image.”

Blood spilled from so many bodies, it trickled in a stream into the streets and gutters. Robed individuals paraded up and down the block, each from Parker’s congregation. Tina threatened to take him down again, and angling after him, she was bent on her haunches and about to jump onto his back, but he turned, aimed, prayed to God—the real God, not who Parker Stevens’ congregation was praying to—and unloaded another barrage of shells. Blasting through her stomach, the pieces firing out between her shoulder blades, she kept resisting her damage, and then he blew out her legs beneath her with another shot, the dismantled body finally collapsing onto the lawn.

His mother was alive, but immobilized. He aimed the gun at Parker next, anticipating a new round of pursuit. “You stay away from me. Nobody else gets hurt. You’re not hanging me on a cross.” He cocked the shotgun. “You can shove your fire-and-brimstone bullshit up your ass.”

The pulpit self-righteousness tone resonated in Parker’s words. “You’ve gunned down your own mother. She created you. Now two of God’s creations are ruined…
mother and son
.”

His mother coughed up more blood and looked on at Parker in admiration, disturbing because she had only a fraction of her face.

“Did you see what she did to my father? She was shaving his skin.”

He peered up at Brandon writhing on the cross. “How, how did he get up there?” Craig studied the lawns and the twitching bodies on the crosses. “Where are you, Dr. Krone? Show yourself. You coward, where are you?”

Parker paid no attention to what he said and focused on his mission. “Come willingly to God, Craig.”

Brandon’s hands slipped through the spikes, splitting two fingers apart. The spikes through his ankles did the same, and he flopped onto the ground. Willis and Joey slithered free next. The entire block, one by one, was released from the crosses, breaking their flesh and breaking bone to do so. They teetered in place, difficult to walk with torn ankles.

“
Come willingly to God
,” they chanted. “
Come to Him
.”

Craig was cornered, and from every angle, they approached. He dashed forward to the Corolla parked in Mr. Davidson’s lawn. The car door was unlocked, but he didn’t have the keys.

“
Come willingly to God…come to Him
.”

He locked the doors once he hunkered in. Parker Stevens leapt on top of the Corolla’s hood with an aluminum pop. “Bring him to the cross. Salvation is his if we can bring him to the cross!”

They chanted, “
Come willingly to God…come to Him
.”

The back window was smashed. Fists pounded the driver and passenger side windows in unison. Sweat smears turned to blood as faces pressed up against glass and fists continued to mash the breakable barrier. Tina worked up to the hood as a torso with arms. The skin on her face slipped down and stuck to the hood, the slick muscle-tissue face speaking nonsense without a tongue.

“
Come willingly to God…come to Him
.”

The passenger side window was shattered next. Tina and the others turned the front windshield into a spider web of fractures with their blows. Brian Gwinn, a neighbor, crawled through the broken window and reached for his neck. “Come willing to God—come to Him!”

Craig slammed Brian’s face into the dashboard. The man wasn’t fazed, reaching up, hands squeezing his neck, fingers bending in deep. He couldn’t breathe. He had no leverage to batter the man aside, the space too small to fight back. He closed his eyes, taking desperate measures.

Picture the keys.

This is your mind.

Make it happen.

The driver’s side window shattered, the shards raining upon him as several fists performed the job at once.

“
Come willing to God…come to Him
.”

Picture it!

White blotches ruined his vision. He was growing dizzy. He’d been without air for nearly two minutes. Bodies worked their way into the backseat through the windshield. New hands would serve to snuff him dead in moments. The stomping above him was rekindled. Brian’s fingers squeezed tighter. “
Gaack!
” He thought the man’s grip would collapse his trachea.

Picture it.

His hair was tugged backwards. Two different hands spread blood into his eyes, and he was blinded.

“
Come willing to God…come to Him
.”

His lungs tightened and convulsed, the organ trying to force him to breathe, but it was impossible.

Picture it before you die!