Squeeze

Dennis Latham

After the court hearing, Gina seemed on edge during the ride to dinner. She had changed during our six-month separation. The gray streaks had been dyed black, and she wore bright red lipstick. A green dress, cinched tight at the waist by a thin green belt, accented her weight loss and made her eyes bright emeralds.

“You look a lot younger.”

She stared out the passenger window. “So do you, Michael.”

“Younger?”

“Full of yourself.” She glanced at me before turning away.

“Thanks. I guess your new lover bends to your every need.”

I realized then how much she had wanted out. The hurt punched my chest. It would be easy to hate her, but I keep such emotion locked up, especially now.

“Can we just drop it?” she said.

“Just making conversation.” “I thought we were still going to be friends.”

“We are.”

“Then drop it.” She looked straight at me for the first time, brow pointed down. She had power since I was the one still in love.

“Okay.”

I had picked the restaurant for our final dinner as a couple. A place called Richard’s in rural Dover, Indiana, a town with a church, a funeral home, several large Victorian houses, and one main road. We didn’t know anyone there.

That’s why I was surprised to see our insurance man, Terry Jenkins, in the restaurant parking lot pushing a guitar amplifier.

“Hey, Terry, what’s up?” I said. “You play music here?”

Short and chunky, Terry had curly brown hair and Coke bottle glasses that magnified his blue eyes and made his narrow chin appear pointed. He wore tight jeans and tan cowboy boots.

“How you doing, Mike?” He shook my hand and nodded at Gina. “I play country ballads and some original music.”

“I don’t remember you telling me you were a musician.”

Terry shrugged. “I keep it separate from the business. What you all doing up this way?”

“Our divorce was final today and we decided to eat dinner in some place we’ve never been before.”

Gina checked her lipstick and clicked a small compact closed. “Sort of a celebration,” she said.

“On your part maybe,” I said.

Gina’s eyes darted sideways and her red lips curled like she bit a lemon.

Terry shrugged and seemed uncomfortable.

“We’re still friends,” I said.

“That’s great.” He wiped a dirt smudge off the amp. “Uh, how are things at your house?”

“Fine. I kept the house, and it’s still standing.” I smiled at Gina. “I even rearranged the furniture.”

Gina rolled her eyes. She had told friends how the house would collapse without her. I had picked Richard’s because I figured we wouldn’t know anyone and have to answer questions. The world is too small, I guess.

Terry ignored or didn’t catch my slam at Gina. He pushed up his glasses. “I meant do things in the house still move around?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“Maybe your ghost left.”

Gina got fidgety. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said, walking away.

At my dining room table one night just before dinner, Terry waited while I signed insurance papers. All the silverware suddenly turned to point at me.

“How did you do that?” he said.

“Do what?”

He didn’t mention it again, but he left quickly and I hadn’t seen him since.

That was about a month before Gina admitted having an affair, and the Christmas tree branches bent down and jerked so bad ten ornaments flew off and broke. And while this happened we heard a sparking wire noise and the television turned off and on twice.

She turned pale. “Jesus, you did that.”

I had looked at the tree, but I was on the couch several feet away. “That’s crazy. I did not.”

“You scare me,” she said.

One excuse is as good as another when a relationship ends. She moved to her sister’s during the night, leaving me alone. At the time, this was not a good thing.

“Everything is fine now,” I told Terry.

“That’s good. You seem different.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re more relaxed.”

“You could be right.”

Since I now slept better, I noticed my dull blue eyes had turned sky colored and had lost the red lightning strikes across the whites. My brown hair was even losing the gray streaks, except around the temples. But I had also lost all fear, of anything, except for Gina’s hold on my heart. For once, I felt good about myself because I wasn’t constantly being told what was wrong with me.

Terry grabbed his amp. “I need to get my show on the road. Stick around after you eat.”

“We will. How’s the food here?”

“Great.”

I had noticed several motorcycles in the parking lot. “And the people?”

“Good old boys, but friendly.”

“Redneck?”

“Just farm people mostly.”

“I’m glad I wore jeans then.”

Terry smiled. “There’s never any trouble here. You’ll fit in.”

“Right.”

It was a cool June Friday night so the side door was propped open. About ten feet along a blistered dark wood panel hall, across from the men’s room, another open door on the left led to the restaurant.

Our table faced the hall and the bathroom door. We saw everyone coming and going. A hefty blonde took our order and told us we had arrived just in time because a wedding party would arrive soon and things would get hectic. Terry worked at setting up his equipment about five feet to our front right in a corner.

Behind us, noisy drunks, maybe fifteen people, most in faded jeans and dirty t-shirts laughed, cussed, and talked loud from tables and the bar. Video games dinged, playing music. The smoky room had a roving unwashed armpit stench. Everybody knew each other. A drunk in a Mack Truck hat sat at the table to our left, beer bottles surrounding him. I saw his narrow brown eyes move up and down Gina’s body.

Gina looked as if she wanted to run away as we waited for our food. She kept glancing at her watch. I tried to bring up the affair. I still couldn’t imagine her with another man.

“Do you have a date tonight?”

“I’m beginning to think this was a bad idea,” she said.

“I have a right to know after five years of marriage.”

“Maybe I should try to call a cab.”

“Come on, we’re out in God’s country. Just forget I said anything.”

The waitress brought our fish logs. Terry tuned his guitar. A cigarette dangled from the right side of his mouth, and he laughed at a joke someone told at the bar.

I heard several quick thumps against the wall out in the hall. A bald guy with a bright red beard and wild brown eyes staggered into the restaurant.

He was naked from the waist up, with fat bulging over the belt loops on his muddy jeans. He had a tattoo of Jesus, complete with a halo, on his right breast. I smelled whiskey.

“Cindy,” he yelled. “Where are you, bitch?”

Terry turned. “Can I help you?”

The man snarled, exposing tobacco stained teeth splayed like tilted cemetery stones. He pulled a silver twenty-two-caliber revolver from his back pocket and shot Terry in the head.

It was one of those things, like a combat ambush, that happens quickly, without obvious warning. An incident that changes your life forever from that point forward.

A woman screamed. The bar went morgue quiet except for a video game running electronic music scales. Gina stiffened and her right foot bumped my leg.

I had witnessed headshots in Vietnam, but I didn’t expect to see one here. The bullet struck Terry above the left eye. Had it been a bigger caliber, we might have had brains on our fish logs. A twenty-two can’t blast through a skull, so it bounces around inside and scrambles the brain.

Terry was dead when he fell on top of his guitar. Pooling blood formed a puddle three feet wide. Acrid smoke drifted from the gun barrel. My tongue tasted coppery like the scent of fresh blood. The shooter stared. Spit ran down his chin.

“Earl, what the hell did you do?”

It was the drunk in the Mack Truck hat.

Earl spun and fired twice. The first shot hit the man in the chin, the second between the eyes. He toppled backwards, scattering beer bottles.

Chairs rumbled. I heard people jump over the bar, breaking glass. Our table was a few feet from the shooter, his next obvious target, so I froze. I do have a gun permit for personal protection, and I normally carry a Beretta twenty-five caliber. I left it home because I was going to court. I guess I should have kept it in the car and put it in my pocket, but Gina hated guns.

The shooter fired over us, hitting glass.

“Get away from that damn phone, Debbie.”

I heard the phone hit the floor.

“Where’s Cindy?”

“She’s not here,” a voice said, from behind the bar.

“You’re a liar, Richard. Where’s Les Campbell?”

“They’re not here, Earl.”

Gina whimpered, and I gripped her right wrist under the table.

“Don’t move,” I whispered.

Earl looked at me. “What did you say, boy?”

“Your wife or girlfriend is cheating on you. I can relate to that, but what you’re doing isn’t the answer.”

Earl’s brown eyes opened wide, staring into space, but I could read nothing in them. Saliva leaked from the right corner of his mouth.

Gina trembled. Her pulse raced against my fingers.

“The police are coming, Earl,” Richard said.

Someone, probably half the people back there, had cell phones.

“Let my wife walk out the door, Earl.”

“I’m not your wife,” Gina said.

I released her wrist and my heart dropped. I had offered myself to save her, and she let this redneck psycho know she hated me.

On the floor, Terry’s corpse gurgled, shutting down. For a moment, Earl’s eyes displayed sudden panic. He glanced at the bar and back at me. A familiar pricking needle sensation started at my feet and moved up my torso. It’s the same feeling a person gets when a leg or arm falls asleep and circulation returns.

I slipped into a mental state I had used to survive Vietnam: a loss of morality and remorse, making an enemy become an inhuman object.

Earl pulled back the silver hammer, pointed the gun at my face, and pulled the trigger.

It stuck.

He shook the pistol, confused, and I could have stood and knocked him down. But I had willed the gun to jam, and was amazed, as always, that such things worked. I was full of myself, Gina would say.

Earl grabbed the pistol barrel; raised the butt to strike me. I imagined two big hands wrapped around his chest.

Squeeze, I thought.

Earl suddenly jerked and flailed at his chest. The gun slipped from his hand, banging the floor. The fat at his sides rippled and compressed, making his waist appear thinner. His face went scarlet.

Then, he stiffened and released an airy, high pitch squawk, his face going blue. He gagged. I heard a sickening crunch when bones snapped. Earl’s brown eyes bulged and ruptured. He spat bloody gristle down his flattened upper torso. When he toppled, I saw busted ribs sticking from his back like slick white spikes.

I turned toward the love of my life. Gina’s face went ash gray and her upper lip trembled.

“Did you-u do that?” she said.

“I forgot to tell you I rearranged the furniture without touching it.”

“Oh, my God.”

One word slid through my mind. I couldn’t stop it.

Squeeze.

Gina jerked as if grabbed by a predator. She reached out to me, wide-eyed, before her breath hissed out and a spasm put her under the table.

“No.” I jumped up and moved backwards, bumping Terry’s corpse. I stepped over him and slid in blood before I caught myself. The table shook, scraping the floor. A loud wailing started from terrified patrons behind the bar. Gina babbled and gasped and the sharp crack of her bones made her scream. I was in a trance, vaguely conscious of figures moving past me. Gina’s blood sprayed a red fountain across Earl’s twisted torso. The table stopped moving.

A tingle rolled up and down my body, addictive, like an endless orgasm. I could control the power during those months alone after Gina left, when my ability to move objects expanded. I had grandeur thoughts of good deeds. Gina would want me back. I know now I could never control my rage. I had murdered the one person I loved.

I glanced toward the bar. The place was empty. They had all fled out the door. I turned when I heard footsteps behind me. A man wearing a tuxedo stood in the doorway.

“Jesus,” he said, and then ran back outside.

The wedding party, I thought. Sirens approached, whooping. The troops were coming. Soon, the sirens stopped. I heard doors open and slam. Other sirens wailed in the distance.

I stepped into the blistered panel corridor and saw them outside, framed in the propped open door ten feet in front of me: a blue Indiana State Police car and a white County Sheriff jeep. The officers crouched behind their vehicles, guns pointed toward the door. Behind them, bar patrons and a wedding party waited in groups.

I closed my eyes. It didn’t matter who was out there. I had a visual, and that was enough. A wedding and a divorce: great irony. I tucked in my shirt, took three deep breaths, and ran my fingers through my hair.

Squeeze.

It would be an all around bad night for the mere mortals in Dover, Indiana.

The screams began seconds before I opened my eyes and ambled toward the exit.

About the Author: Dennis Latham has published stories inThe Palmer Writer ,Live Writers ,VietNow ,Byline ,Far Sector SFFH , andDeep Outside SFFH . His novelsThe Bad Season andMichael In Hell are now available from Clocktower Books through http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/DennisLathameBooks.htm.. A U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran of the Vietnam War, he writes a bi-monthly newsletter for combat veterans, The S-2 Report, dealing with VA benefits and the psychological affect of war. He is working on a third novel,Something Evil . He has been, among other things, an ironworker, a bar bouncer, and a lead singer in a professional road band. Entering the University of Cincinnati at age forty, he graduated as an English Major in 1992. He lives in Guilford, Indiana. E-mail at Dennis dlatham@suscom.net.

More Stories From The Publisher: We hope you’ll want to enjoy other entertaining and imaginative stories from Far Sector SFFH. You can visit the Clocktower Books page at Fictionwise.com (http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/ClocktowerBookseBooks.htm). You can visit our magazine’s home page at http://www.farsector.com/. If you are on line, check http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/ClocktowerBookseBooks.htm or http://www.farsector.com. We are the world’s oldest web-only professional magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror without print antecedents, publishing continuously since April 15, 1998. Clocktower Books has been publishing online since May 1996.

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