FALSE FRONT (5 page)

Moment 1:

Close Your Eyes

“
N
ine-one-one operator
. What is your
emergency?”

“Help
me.”

            “Ma’am?”

            “I
don’t see him anywhere,” a shaken woman says through searing gasps. Her panic
whistles through her cell phone into the operator’s ear.

            “Ma’am,
are you hurt?”

            The
disturbed caller scuttles her jiffy grip slipper soles down the center of a
quiet neighborhood street, leaving streaks of blood behind her.

            “Ma’am?”

            “My
son is missing,” she says. Trauma beats her trembling voice.

            “Okay,
Ma’am. State your name please.”

            A
faint evening wind hisses around her as she scrambles through the neighborhood,
blowing her cardigan back so it trails behind her, exposing a white v-neck
soaked in red.  Her face is a mask of blood. She scans every direction with one
wild weeping eye, the other collapsed by flowery disfigured skin scarring the
outside socket. She tussles onward. Her clear tears wash one side of her ruby
veiled face.

Even
though the woman is distraught, it seems her feather-blue eyes possess a jot of
hope, a hope carrying her against the something horrible collapsing her.

            “Ma’am?”

            “I
don’t see him anywhere.”

            “Let
us help you find him. Can I know your name, Ma’am?”

            “You’re
not listening to me are you? Someone took my son.”

            “I
did hear you, Ma’am. And we want to help your son.”

            “I’ve
never seen so much blood,” she says, clenching her shaking hand around the
phone, causing her aged pale skin to stretch around her worn jagged knuckles.
She presses the phone hard into her cheek so her worn flesh bulges around the
device.

“Blood?
Is your son hurt, Ma’am?”

“Hurt?”

“Missing
or hurt, Ma’am?”

“I
tried to put him back together.”

“What,
Ma’am?”

She
raises her other hand. Under her two center knuckles, the tattooed numbers 82
glisten in gold. She grips a blood-splattered alloy .38 Special Snubby.

“Ma’am?”

No
visible wounds mark the aged lady, and the mayhem of blood drenching her long
grey cardigan looks like someone eviscerated a body over the top of her,
turning a person inside out with her under them.

She
ascends a set of wooden porch steps and thumps the handle of the gun against a
white front door, stamping it red.

“Open
up.” She keeps thumping against the door. “Brees? Are you in there?" She
pounds on the door a few more times, denting the clean wood with the handle of
the gun. She places her ear next to the door and listens. Her breathing beats
loud against the wood, met with silence from the other side. She attempts to
wipe smudges of blood from her wrinkled rosy cheeks with the back of her hand
but only further smears her appearance, giving her the look of an extinct
painted warrior.

“Have
you seen Brees? I know someone is in there. Answer this damn door.”

An
iron lamp above the door lights up the porch. She stares up at it, tapping her
foot against the wooden slats. But before anyone can answer her crazed demands,
she takes off, cutting over the front yard and across the sidewalk back into
the road. Red footprints trail her.

            “Ma’am,
you need to calm down and answer some questions so we can help you,” the
dispatcher says.

            “Where
is he?”

“Ma’am?”

“My
son.”

“Is
your son Brees?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Find
him.”

            “Ma’am,
I’m going to help you through this. We will help you find Brees,” the
dispatcher says.

            “It’s
Fredrick’s blood.”

            “Who’s
Fredrick, Ma’am?"

            She
stalls for a moment, slowing down, blinking several times, and adjusting her
eyes to a goopy darkness advancing over the neighborhood. Odd opaque clouds
creep in around the edges of Vivacity, Washington and ebonize the sky,
swallowing the city.

            “Fredrick?”

            “Yes,
Ma’am. Who’s Fredrick?”

            “Fredrick
wasn’t breathing. I put my hands over the wounds, but it kept pouring out,” she
says.

“Is
Fredrick dead?”

            She
presses her cell phone against her small circular ear, breathing loud and hard
into the speaker.

“Dead?”

“Your
son, Ma’am? Is he dead?”

Ignoring
the dispatcher’s questioning, she screams out the name Brees.

“Ma’am,
are Brees and Fredrick your sons?”

She
continues to hustle down the street, shouting the same name.

            “Ma’am?”

            “Faye.”

            “Faye
is your name?”

            “Faye
Knightly.”

            “Good,
Faye. Where are you located?”

            “I’m
running.”

            “Where?”

            “The
street.”

            “Did
this happen nearby?”

            “The
front yard.”

            “Where
is your yard, Faye?”

            “I’m
Faye Knightly. I run the 1982 foster home at 3293 NE Capote Court. In
Vivacity,” she says, short on breath as she continues to run frantic through
the neighborhood.

            “That’s
good, Faye. Thank you.”

            Faye
trips over a sidewalk curb and collapses hard into another neighbor’s front
yard. Her fall launches her cell phone across the lawn. Her wet palm slides,
spreading red across the grass. She darts a single eye around the natural
floor, scanning the area. She spins around in frenzied circles. Searching on
her hands and knees, she swipes around at the ground beneath her and collects
grass and dirt on the knees of her jeans.

“Faye?”
The voice calls from the glow of a screen shining bright in the dark. Faye
springs upright on her knees and aims the gun at the voice.

“Faye,
are you okay?”

She
crawls towards the voice.

“Faye?”

She
gathers the phone. Wiping her hands over her cardigan, she blends fresh earth
with the previous stains of lost life.

“Faye?”

 “Are
you coming?”

            “Help
is already on the way.”

            “Tell
them to hurry.”

            “They
are, Faye.”

“Tell
them I’m going to kill whoever did this if I find them first,” she says, and
climbs back to her feet.

A
patchy grey bearded man, scratching at a bulging woolly belly, opens his front
door and peers out into the darkness.

“Faye,
what’s going on out here?”

Faye
spins toward him, aiming the gun at the man’s shaggy round face, and yells,
“Brees? Have you seen Brees? My son?”

The
man holds his hands up next to his large ears and shakes his head. She keeps
the gun on him for a moment, stepping back before darting down the street.

            “Help
is on the way, Faye. Just calm down, okay? You don’t want to do anything you
regret,” the dispatcher says.

            Faye
drops the phone from her ear and squeezes it in her shivering palms, like she’s
trying to crumple paper into a ball. She mumbles silent hopes and pleas to
herself as she pumps her aging, reduced arms and legs, yelling the missing
boy’s name over and over as she sprints down the neighborhood road.

            “Faye,
breathe. Just breathe. Wait for help.”

            Several
porch and bedroom lights flick on, brightening the bizarre evening darkness
eating at the suburban neighborhood. Vivacity had a rare hot first day of
summer, but now the beauty of the day is lost to something bleak and lurid.

Faye
places the cell phone back against her ear and through her severe wheezing
says, “I’m losing him. I can feel it. He’s getting farther away.”

“Faye,
we’ll do everything we can. Now try and remember everything that happened.
Every detail can help the police when they get there. I promise.”

“Remember?”

“Yes.
Don’t forget anything.”

Her
wobbling legs slow her and she stumbles to a stop, almost falling over. 

“I
won’t ever forget.”

“Faye?”

Her
lips pull inward around aged coffee-stained teeth. Her chin pulls up. Her eyes
slam closed. Gleaming grey brows drop over her closed eyelids, and her forehead
wrinkles like palms of hands in water too long. Everything on her face squishes
in around her nose in aching anguish, aging her by several years in just a
moment. Her abusive breathing bends her over. She clutches at a slim row of
ribs, as several violent gasps punish her aged body. Opening her scar-free eye,
she observes the area round her, and sweat rolls down the sides of her face,
carrying with it specs of blood that drip to the asphalt below.

“Faye?”

            “Why
would someone do this?”

            “The
police are close, Faye.”

            “Fredrick
was a good man. Brees is just a boy.”

            “Any
minute they’ll be there.”

            She
lifts her t-shirt, kneading at her hurting sides and exposing flesh not roasted
by the sun in years.

            “He
was outside. Just outside on the front lawn with Fredrick for a minute.”

            “Are
Fredrick and Brees your sons?”

            “Fredrick.”
And when she says that name again she bends farther, and her head drops
downward to her waist.

“See
them, Faye?”

“Fredrick’s
stomach was opened up.”

“What?”

“Parts
of him are all over the fucking place.”

“I’m
so sorry, Faye.

Faye
stands looking down the street from where she ran. Red footprints, lines of
blood, and drops of Fredrick follow her path to where she stands.

“Any
second the police will be there, Faye.”

“Fredrick’s
dead. Brees is gone. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Faye?”

She
spins in slow delirious circles, raising the gun above her head. She claws at
her thick, lustrous, grey hair. Hair that looks like a luminous full moon. Hope
fades from her brilliant blue eyes. The sparkle found there dissipates. What
would normally be a strong, athletic, but heartwarming face twists into a
droopy, weak, helpless look of misery. She screams, tossing the blood soaked
phone away, and it shatters against the ground.

She
imitates her phone by collapsing to the street. When she lands on the ground,
she erupts into cruel screams.

            “They
will do everything they can to find him, Faye,” the dispatcher’s voice echoes
from the fallen phone.

            Faye
digs nails into her face and thumps the handle of the gun against the side of
her head.

            “Faye?”

            Her
screaming shifts to chaotic incomprehensible whispers of nonsense from a
wounded soul.

            “Faye?”

            “He’s
gone forever.”

            “Faye?”

            “We’re
too late.”

            “Faye?”

            “Gone.”

            A
car’s headlights shine on Faye as it drives toward the grounded woman. Faye’s
smudged, strained expression illuminates under the glow of the car as she turns
and faces off with it, aiming the revolver at the windshield. She stands and charges
the vehicle.

“Where
is Brees?”

The
car comes to a rolling stop. The driver presses on the horn with both hands,
but he watches Faye slam a dirty palm down on the hood of his white sedan. Her
ordinary eye bulges and her mouth drops. She shrieks until she overcomes the
blasts from his car. He places the back of his hand against his mouth, as if
he’s going to be sick.

Faye
points the gun at the man, letting it sit on him for a bit, and then lifts it
above her head, aiming it at the blackness above. She squeezes the trigger and
deafening bursts erupt, five in a row. The cracking of the .38 dulls every
other noise throughout the neighborhood except for Faye’s screams.