Sinners Circle (14 page)

I’m
closing. I’m counting the coins and
bills,
I’m writing
down the numbers and dividing the figures of the amount of cash in the till.
Somewhere between the digits and their decimals something rings. I look up from
the sheet of paper and towards the direction the sound is coming from. It’s the
telephone in
Harry’s
empty office.

I just sit there staring at a
wall of pornography,
then
I drop the pencil and follow
the noise. I stand outside his door and after the fifth ring I try the knob.
The door is unlocked. I watch the little red light on the phone turn on while
the machine takes the message in silence. The waste bin, it’s been emptied. All that’s in there now are a few
small balls of black tape rolled into BBs.

I sit down in his wasted looking
swivel chair, fit my fingers together and close my eyes. I can still see the
flames from last night, rising and roaring. Sophie’s precious little feet
slapping down the drive towards me. The echo of the children burning alive in
their beds, tucked into their own death, moves through me in excruciating
chills. I see their little faces turn black, melt into themselves, I think of
the children who tortured my mother, I see them dancing around her while she
prayed to be saved. I see their little baby faces spit and scream at her while
she cried, their little chubby fingers punching her in the mouth and filling it
with knives. My mother’s screams pass through me in waves too dark to touch or
see, but they smash and boil in all parts of me. My entire body trembles, it
trembles and goes numb because the waves of my mother and the chill of those
children I set to burn alive in their beds
freezes
me
completely.
Entirely.
I am
unable
to move.

The detonation of heat and
screaming that burned at my back as I stood on the porch, all comes back to me
in icy recall. But as I sit here, frozen in the memory of fire and pain, I
remember Sophie sprinting towards me with that big paper bag full of her
childhood, and I’m able to breathe with ease. I think of lying with her last
night and the smell of her home, the warmth of her blankets, her body all
around me. I can start to feel my fingertips again and that howling dissipates
into fog and then nothing.

I open my eyes and rest my elbows
on the desk and sigh. I pick up the telephone, red light blinking on
New Message
. I dial Sophie, she doesn’t
pick up at home. I call her at work. Switch board connects me with the
psychiatric unit.

“Hello,
Psych
,
this is Mrs. Karen speaking.”

“Hi, this is Amanda
Troy,
I’d like to talk to Sophie Harris, please.”

“Who?”

“
Sophia
Harris.”

“Just one moment, may I ask who I
am speaking with?”

“Amanda.”

“Who?”

“Amanda Troy.”

“Ok, so an Amanda Troy wants to
speak with Sophia Harris, I can pass on the message and who can I say is
leaving the message?”

“No, this
is
Amanda Troy.”

“Oh, sorry, that was a little
confusing. And who do you want to speak with?”

I tap my finger over the flashing
new
message,
covering and uncovering the light,
watching it glow through my finger. “I want to speak with Sophia Harris,
please.”

“Oh sure, one second please.
Sophia is just on her break. I’ll put you through to the lunch room.”

I hear Mrs. Karen put the
receiver down and say to one of the other nurses, “How do you transfer a call
to the staff room again? I keep forgetting.”

A distant voice says, “I can’t
remember either, let me ask Michelle.”

I shake my head and wiggle the
mouse on
Harry’s
computer to see if he’s got
solitaire. His computer desktop, its total chaos, he’s got files and folders
scattered everywhere over a swastika background. I start clicking random
folders seeing if anyone of them will pop up with a games menu or something.

Whoever Michelle is, she comes
into the room on the other end of the phone and I hear her say to Mrs. Karen,
“Oh, here I’ll show you, just push...” then my phone beeps and I hear it ring
onto another line.

I keep clicking folders, opening
and closing them, dozens of porno JPEGS popping up all over the place. The line
keeps ringing, the pictures start turning into animals fucking and being
fucked, women roped up and bleeding, old people strapped to torture devices.
He’s got pictures of pigs being stabbed, burned and beheaded and I stop
clicking them closed when I recognize the shoes at the feet of the person
holding the shank. These pictures all have dates on the side. These pictures
didn’t come off the internet. I click back onto the photos of women, bound and
bawling, whipped and weeping, the same set of shoes as the others. I go to
close the folder but wind up clicking on another one.

The phone picks up on the other
end and Sophie says, “Amanda?” as I’m staring at hundred of pictures of myself
in thumbnail size. Sophie says, “Amanda
is that you?”

I click on one at random; I’m
drinking a coffee walking to my car after work.

“Amanda?”

I click on another
one,
I’m outside Pinks hailing a cab.

“Amanda, are you there?”

I’m in the window, washing
Marcy’s dishes.

“Amanda, are you OK?”

I bite my lip and my heart stops
beating because, I’m holding Sophie’s hand in the park.

“Sophie... is Carl there?”

“What?”

I’m stabbing that grocery girl in
the throat with a screw driver.

“Sophie, I need you to listen to
me
very
carefully. I need you...”

Telephoto lens, I’m fucking
Alison.

“Amanda, what’s going on?”

Achromatic lens, I’m dusting dirt
off my hands onto my pants as I look down at a grave I’ve dumped a body
into.

“I need you to tell me if Carl is
there.”

“What? Why would you call me and
ask that why didn’t you ask if he was...”

Sophie and I, last night, kissing
on the steps of her house.

“I’m coming to get you. Meet me
in the parking lot.”

“What? No I have three hours of
my shift left! What’s this all about, are you cheating on...”

“
Sophie!
Parking
lot
!”

I hang up the phone and click on
the last picture in the folder. It’s dated same as the one of me and Sophie
kissing on the stairs. It’s dated from last night except one hour later. It’s
Marcy, hogtied on the floor of my cellar, her eyes scooped out of her head, her
neck cut completely open.

Everything goes blurry, the whole
room spins so bad I fall off the chair, bang my head on the desk and throw up
in the waste basket. My guts clench hard and deep into themselves but no matter
how hard I shut my eyes or pull them open I can’t get the picture of Marcy out
of my head. Something falls off the desk and smashes me on the head. It’s a
camera, black tape over the flash, little pieces of tape over the little orange
light that blinks every time you take a picture. I wipe a strand of vomit off
my lip. I pick up the camera, peel off the tape, hold it close to my face and
slowly roll it into a tiny ball. Drop it into the garbage.

I breathe, I stand, I go to walk
out of the room, but that little red light flashing
message
catches my eye. I pick up the phone again, press play. A
man’s voice says, “How many tapes do you have? We’ll pick them up in the
morning; if these are fakes we’re taking your balls and our money back.”

I don’t notice I’ve run a red
light until someone plows into the back of my car. I stumble out, my forehead
bleeding, the driver in the other car yelling after me, “Stop!
Stop!
”
But I don’t, I don’t stop until I’ve run the
last five blocks to the hospital and my lungs are burning acid inside my chest.

Sophie rushes over to me as I
fall to my knees panting in the parking lot. “Amanda! Holy Christ! What
happened to your head? Come in the ER, I...”

I swallow air in gulps so fast I
have to fight to keep from passing out, “Sophie, where’s your car?”

“What?”

“Where’s your car, come on.” I
wave, totally winded, away from the hospital. “We
gotta
go.”

“What? No! We’re going in here to
get you some help, you’re bleeding all over the place it’s—”

I shake my
head,
wipe blood out of my eyes. “No, you don’t understand, I…”

“Did you take something?”

I stand up, reach in her pocket
and snatch her keys. She tries taking them away from
me,
I grab her arm and twist it. “You’re coming with me. This place, it isn’t
safe.”

“What the fuck? Let go of my
arm!”

“No, listen, you don’t...” I take
a deep breath and pull her towards her car.

She screams “Help!”

I let go of her arm and cover her
hand with her mouth, drag her in between two ambulances. “I’m
not
going to
hurt
you!” I check around to see if anyone is looking, there’s not
a soul in sight. “Just listen to
me,
you have to get
out of here
now
. Someone is going to
hurt you, really
bad
.”

Her little arms go
limp,
she looks at me like I’m crazy.
Like
I’ve just broken her heart.
She looks at me like she’s actually seeing
me. I throw my arms around her, “Sophie, please just trust me, OK? I’m not
going to hurt you, I would never hurt you. But I’ve done some things and I’m
scared. I’m fucking scared that these things are going to take you away from
me. Please, just trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I pull away from her, kiss the
lips that pressed themselves all over my body in the shade of her bedroom last
night. But my heart it breaks completely when I look into her eyes, brimming
with
tears,
and the whole side of her face is covered
with my blood, rolling in big drops off her chin, staining her white shoes.
“Sophie, I love you.”

“I love you, too. Please, come
inside, I don’t care what you’ve done, let me help...” Her words are warm, but
her eyes tell me she lies.

I grab her arm, push her towards
her car and she screams help, I cover her mouth and drag her. I open the door
and push her into the car, climbing into the
drivers
side. “You’re coming with me Sophie. You
don’t get it
do
you? Do you think I’m
fucking
joking
? Do you think I’d come
here bleeding and screaming because I’m in love with some dumb fucking bitch
and I can’t control myself? Like I’m so fucking crazy about some dumb cunt I
just met and
I
just
haaave
to see you because you’re
just
sooo
incredible and ...” She huddles into the window, I lean over and shout in her
face, “...
blah
blah
blah
?”

I shake my head, start the car
and light a cigarette. “Get your
fuckin
’ head out of
your ass.” I
wag
a finger between us. “All
this
, I’m fucking saving your life.”

She doesn’t say anything and
neither do I until we pass my car, all smashed on the side of the road, police
cars and fire trucks blocking one of the opposite lanes. Sophie points, “Hey,
isn’t that
your
...”

I blow a mouthful of smoke out
the window, shake my head and sigh. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Hey!
Don’t
fucking act like that! You don’t get to show up and act like a fucking psycho
without any explanation and not at least tell me where the
fuck
we are going!” She looks around out the window. “Hey, where
are
we headed anyway?”

“My house.”

“Why?”

We stop at a traffic light, I
slump my shoulders and rest my head on the steering wheel. “We have to go to my
house for a couple minutes. I have to get some things.” I reach for the
cigarettes,
tap the pack around in my hands. “Then we’re
going out of town to a motel.”

“A
motel
?
Are you crazy? I have work in the morning.”

I sigh, rub my head, it’s still
bleeding, but not as bad. I can tell because it’s not getting in my eyes
anymore. “I’ll explain everything.
Everything
,
I swear.” I pop a smoke between my lips, unlock the doors. “I don’t want to force
you or anything, you’re free to...”

She snaps the door
open,
I grab the back of her shirt, yank her back in the car
just as the light turns green and drive off. She slaps my arm away from her,
“Hey! You said I could
go
!”

“Yeah, well, you’re not supposed
to.”

“What?”