A DARKNESS PALE

PRETENDER

…Husker was stalking a lady in order to determine if he wanted to kill her…

Pretender

On the kill night Husker dipped into the side entrance of her building, dressed in a coverall and toolbelt. He kept his head down as he ascended the empty stairwell to the third floor. Her door opened with a credit card. His dad had told a million stories about opening doors this way. It really was that easy. 

He was right, she did live in a studio. There was a rickety fold-out futon couch. A card table with a candle and some text books and notebooks. A TV table against the wall with a hot plate and a sealed bag of freeze dried crickets and several plastic pouches of Tasti and a container of synthetic olive oil. Husker investigated the text books. Real estate. Lots of underlined passages and dog ears. She was studying, hard. He’d been watching her for a month and now he understood why she never went out.

A dusty Target milk crate on the floor by the futon held a little boombox and a collection of tapes and CDs and a diaphragm and a diary. Husker thought, a diaphragm? How extremely old school. He smelled it. What did she need birth control for? Husker thumbed through the diary. Her name was Trixie. Seemed to be her actual name. She was from Estacada, a redneck village out in the woods he’d driven through once. She was twenty-two. She didn’t want to end up back in Estacada. She was trying to better herself.

The glowing digital clock in the boombox said five-fifteen PM. Trixie would be buying her overpriced mud right about now. In twenty minutes she’d come through the door. Husker crammed himself into her closet and removed the hammer from his tool belt. He’d catch her unaware before she had a chance to scream or make noise. Whack her in the head until he was sure she was dead. Make no attempt to take her off into nature. No, he wanted her to be found here. his grand accomplishment was only real if other people knew. His grand accomplishment, the culmination of the journey that began with getting busted for fraud and sent up to Lompoc. He’d been so scared he’d shaved his head and started telling his dad’s stories so the other prisoners would think he was some sort of crazy badass and leave him alone. Yes and yes, he achieved a level of success that utterly surprised him, both in prison and the RRC house he’d been moved into after early release. Then, the opportunity to move back into the family house. His mother, along with the rest of the neighborhood had been taken out in a death quake and he’d gotten that kid Jacob to move up with him because the stories were no good without an audience. Back in the old house, holding court in the living room just like his dad, feeling even more powerful, and then thinking all he needed to do was actually kill someone and then he’d crossover for good.

His dad was a psychopath, pure and simple. Husker had done the research and there was no doubt about it. He was a psychopath too, according to the criteria. He didn’t care about other people, or rules and laws, or the truth. He was only interested in pleasing himself and found most things boring. But unlike his dad, he was a chickenshit. Always. According to the research, there were a lot of unsuccessful psychopaths out there who couldn’t fully actualize because they were afraid. Go figure.

The way to get over fear was you faced it. Prove you’re stronger.

Tense and alive in the closet he thought about Trixie’s diaphragm and fantasized about doing horrible things to her. Killing her was the first step in making those fantasies real, but for this first one the deal was keep it simple, just get it done, just prove he wasn’t afraid to kill. Just face it. The next time would be easier, and then killing, raping, torturing, where ever whatever suited his fancy.

Her door opened. Husker felt an icy thrill ignite his pelvis and race up his spine. He listened to the cluttery clanking of the her skies. He smelled her, a sharp perfume that cut through the stale air. He tensed up, squeezing the rubber grip of the hammer, ready for her to open the closet.

Trixie didn’t open the closet. Husker was sweating and his mouth was dry. He heard The Strokes come on. His dick got hard. He thought about jumping out, but became worried she might be heating the oil to fry up some Tasti. If she threw hot oil on him -that would fucking suck.

The music was turned off and there was the clattering of skies again and Husker thought, she never goes anywhere – where is she going? He thought, now, you have to do it now, while her arms are full. But then he saw her throwing her skies at him and making lots of noise and getting away.

The door opened and closed. He was alone again.

Two hours later, Husker sat in his mother’s study making calls, trying to pretend like none of it had happened and feeling like the complete chickenshit he truly was. A sucker got wise and hung up on him and Husker looked around and thought, these are the lives we make, you make the house and that’s where you live.

That was certainly the case with his mother. A classic WASP beauty and the daughter of Lloyd Hare, who’d owned the sprawling Toyota dealership off the five, she could have married anyone she wanted. She chose his dad because she saw him for exactly what he was, an what he was excited her in some twisted way. When he’d disappeared for good she never talked about it. No emotions were displayed. And she stopped throwing stuff away. The house filled up, just like the hoarder houses on those old TV shows. The last year of her life she’d started trying to get some of it cleaned up, but too little too late.  He’d literally had to excavate her study with a shovel. There were piles of papers and mounds of folders and files and mail and flyers and books and junk food containers and you name it on either side of the desk.

He worked the phone, feeling like he was in one of those trenches in WW1. Committing phone fraud almost always relaxed him. It was the only kind of fraud he’d ever gotten into – being too chickenshit for anything more intense. His current scam involved alleging to be part of a death quake relief organization, looking for donations. He only accepted Western unions orders, no credit cards. He worked his call list energetically, trying to purge the poisoned adrenaline of the kill fail from of his system, until it was time for court.

Jacob was already the living room, in position on the chair his mother’s knitting chair. The fire in the wood-burning stove behind the glass panel, giving off plenty of light, which was good because the power was out again.

Jacob accepted a Hootche pounder, which he’d peck at while Husker talked. Husker settled. There were so many stories. He let them choose him. He drank and grimaced against the rotten aftertaste.

“I ever tell you the one about Sharky? Sharky was this dude I knew in New Jersey. Way back. Hardcore punk dude. He had this thing he liked to do. Sharkey wore combat boots. He was a real goth motherfucker and he didn’t get in your face or anything but he used to wear his combat boots with razorblades glued to the tips, the tips of the toe. Yeah…”

Jacob wasn’t listening. He was checked out and not even pretending otherwise. Husker felt a stab of panic. What if Jacob was done with him and his bullshit? What if he was moving on? He’d been too chickenshit to actualize tonight and Jacob was now checking out and he’d have no one to tell the stories to and then he’d really be too chickenshit to actualize and then what was he to do? The world was literarily falling apart. It was going be over sooner than later. There was no time.

Husker finished the tale and gulped down the rest of his pounder pretending all was fine. The most important thing was not show any vulnerability. Being vulnerable was the scariest thing of all.

…Jacob, becomes more involved with his mark, who might be more than he can handle…