Read The Absence of Mercy Online
Authors: John Burley
The Absence of Mercy
For LG and MNGB
There is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.
âBret Easton Ellis,
American Psycho
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
âFriedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil
Part 1 The Young Man in the Black T-Shirt
Advance Praise for
The Absence of Mercy
This is not the beginning.
Up ahead, a young man sporting jeans and a black T-shirt walks casually down the concrete sidewalk. He hums softly to himself as he ambles along, Nike-bound feet slapping rhythmically on the serpentine path he weaves through the late afternoon foot traffic. He is perhaps fifteenânot truly a young man yet, but certainly well on his wayâand he walks with the energy and indifference of one who possesses the luxury of youth but not yet the experience to appreciate its value, or its evanescence.
The predator watches the young man turn a corner, disappearing temporarily from view behind the brick exterior of an adjacent building. Still, he maintains a respectable distance, for although he has an
instinct
for how to proceed, he now relinquishes control to something else entirely. For as long as he can remember he has sensed its presence, lurking behind the translucent curtain of the insignificant daily activities of his life. The thing waits for him to join it, to embrace itâobserves him with its dark and faithful eyes. But there are timesâtimes like thisâwhen it waits no longer, when the curtain is drawn aside and it emerges, demanding to be dealt with.
The young man in the black T-shirt reaches the end of the street and proceeds across a small clearing. On the other side of the clearing is a modest thatch of woods through which a dirt trail, overgrown with the foliage of an early spring, meanders for about two hundred yards until it reaches the neighborhood just beyond.
The predator picks up his pace, closing the distance between them. He can feel the staccato of his heart kick into third gear, where power wrestles fleetingly with speed. The thing that lives behind the curtain is with him nowâhas
become
him. Its breath, wet and heavy and gritty with dirt, slides in and out of his lungs, mixing with his own quick respirations. The incessant march of its pulse thrums along eagerly behind his temples, blanching his vision slightly with each beat. Ahead of him is the boy, his slender frame swinging slightly as he walks, almost dancing, as if his long muscles dangled delicately from a metal hanger. For a moment, watching from behind as he completes the remaining steps between them, the predator is struck by the sheer beauty of that movement, and an unconscious smile falls across his face.
The sound of his footsteps causes the boy to turn, to face him now, arms hanging limply at his sides. As he does, the predator's left hand swings quickly upward from where it had remained hidden behind his leg a moment before. His hand is curled tightly around an object, its handle connected to a thin metal shaft, long and narrow and tapered at the end to a fine point. It reaches the pinnacle of its arcing swing and enters the boy's neck, dead center, just below the jaw. A slight jolt reverberates through the predator's arm as the tip of the rod strikes the underside of the boy's skull. He can feel the warmth of the boy's skin pressing up against the flesh of his own hand as the instrument comes to rest. The boy opens his mouth to scream, but the sound is choked off by the blood filling the back of his throat. The predator pulls his arm down and away, feeling the ease with which the instrument exits the neck.
He pauses a moment, watching the boy struggle, studying the shocked confusion in his eyes. The mouth in front of him opens and closes silently. The head shakes slowly back and forth in negation. He leans in closer now, holding the boy's gaze. The hand gripping the instrument draws back slightly in preparation for the next blow; then he pistons it upward, the long metal tip punching its way through the boy's diaphragm and into his chest. He watches the body go rigid, watches the lips form the circle of a silent scream, the eyes wide and distant.
The boy crumples to the ground, and the predator goes with him, cradling a shoulder with his right hand, his eyes fixed on that bewildered, pallid face. He can see that the boy's consciousness is waning now, can feel the muscles going limp in his grasp. Still, he tries to connect with those eyes, wonders what they are seeing in these final moments. He imagines what it might feel like for the world to slide away at the end, to feel the stage go dark and to step blindly into that void between this world and the next, naked and alone, waiting for what comes after . . . if anything at all.
The cool earth shifts slightly beneath his fingers, and in the space of a second the boy is gone, leaving behind his useless, broken frame. “No,” the predator whispers to himself, for the moment has passed too quickly. He shakes the body, looking for signs of life. But there is nothing. He is alone now in the woods. The realization sends him into a rage. The instrument in his hand rises and falls again and again, wanting to punish, to admonish, to hurt. When the instrument no longer satisfies him, he casts it aside, using his hands, nails, and teeth to widen the wounds. The body yields impassively to the assault, the macerated flesh falling away without conviction, the pooling blood already a lifeless thing. Eventually, the ferocity of the attack begins to taper. He rests on his hands and knees, drawing in quick, ragged breaths.
Next time, I will do better,
he promises the thing that lives behind the curtain. But when he turns to look the thing is gone, the curtain drawn closed once again.
The Young Man in the Black T-Shirt
Although it was Friday evening, Ben Stevenson found traffic along Sunset Boulevard heading west out of Steubenville particularly heavy during his commute home. Dr. Coleman's case had finished earlier than expected, and the last specimen of Mrs. Granch's partial thyroidectomy had been sent to the lab at 4:40
P.M.
The surgically resected margins had been clear of cancer cells, and he'd placed a call to the OR.
“OR Three,” the circulating nurse's voice answered at the other end.
“Marsha, this is Dr. Stevenson. Can I speak with Dr. Coleman, please?”
“Oh, hello, Dr. Stevenson,” she replied. “One momentâI'll put you on speaker.”
There was a brief pause, then Coleman's voice, sounding slightly distant and metallic over the speakerphone. “How does it look, Ben?”
“Margins are clear, Todd,” he replied. “Looks good from my end.”
“All right,” the surgeon responded. “That's all I've got for you today. I'm closing now.”
Closing. That was welcome news on any day, but particularly on a Friday when your eldest son's high school baseball team was scheduled for a game. Thomas had started the season as a center fielder, but the strength of his arm had drawn the coach's attention and Thomas had quickly proven to be an even greater asset on the mound. Tonight was his turn in the pitching rotation. The game was scheduled for a 6
P.M.
start time, and Ben did not intend to miss it.
He spent the next ten minutes closing up the lab. When he was satisfied that everything was in order, Ben grabbed his jacket, locked the door behind him, and headed for his car. Pulling out of Trinity Medical Center's parking lot, he flipped on the XM radio and began to hum along with the Beatles as John Lennon proclaimed, “Nothing's gonna change my world.”
He passed John Scott Highway, and now the traffic began to slow as he approached Wintersville. Ben had moved his family to this small town from Pittsburgh thirteen years ago. He'd met Susan during medical school at Loyola University in Chicago. They'd graduated together, and had both managed to secure residency positions at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He'd trained in pathology, while Susan had pursued a program in family practice. At the end of their first year, they marriedâa small ceremony attended by immediate family and a few friends. They'd spent the following week hiking and kayaking through a good portion of upstate New YorkâSusan's idea, actuallyâbefore returning to the exhausting, gut-wrenching grind of medical residency. The week had suited their needs perfectly, providing unhurried time to spend exclusively with one another, far removed from the constant demands and commotion of residency. It had felt good to exercise their bodies, which had already started to become soft with neglect. The fresh air and vibrant green foliage had rejuvenated their senses, and they'd talked with excitement about their plans for the future. Nights had been mostly cloudless, as he recalled, and they'd made love under the stars nearly every evening before retiring to the thin, nylon shelter of their tent. Ben had finished the week with more than a few mosquito bites on compromising areas of his body. Susan had come away from the week pregnant, although they would not realize it for another six weeks. Thomas was born nine months later.
That had been a difficult time for them, so early in their marriage. Medical residency was not the ideal time to try to raise a newborn, of course, and the hospital didn't lighten the already exhausting work hours simply because there was a crying three-month-old infant at home to attend to. Neither of them had family in the area, and Susan simply couldn't bring herself to turn Thomas over to day care after her very brief maternity allowance had ended. Ultimately, she'd decided to take a year off to spend with the baby, which, in retrospect, had turned out to be the right choice for all of them.
Canton Road slipped by on his right, and Ben realized just a little too late that he probably should've turned there to detour around some of this congestion. Sunset Boulevard, which had now become Main Street, was the primary connector between the towns of Steubenville and Wintersville, small midwestern flecks on the map, lying just west of the Ohio River. Fifty miles to the east was Pittsburgh, and approximately 150 miles to the west was Columbus. Aside from a parade of small towns with equal or lesser populations, there wasn't much else in between. Certainly not enough to warrant traffic like thisâone of the reasons they'd decided to leave such cities as Chicago and Pittsburgh behind them in the first place.
