Forgive Me, Alex
Authors: Lane Diamond
FORGIVE ME, ALEX
A novel by
Lane Diamond
Published by Evolved Publishing
Copyright 2011 Lane Diamond
Cover Art Copyright 2011 Joshua Evans
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to my comrades at Evolved Publishing, including D.T. Conklin for his critical eye and exacting edit, and Josh Evans for his splendid concept and cover art.
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Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
PARENTAL WARNING: Please note that this is not a kids' book. It is intended for mature audiences.
You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.
Dedication:
For Darren & Rhonda Lane, and for Steven Zerkel:
They walk the walk, and they saved me.
PART 1 – JUSTICE SERVED, JUSTICE DENIED
Chapter 1 – June 6, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 2 – June 6, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 3 – April 20, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 4 – April 22, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 5 – May 3, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 6 – May 12, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 7 – May 12, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 8 – May 12, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 9 – June 6, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 10 – May 19, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 11 – May 20, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 12 – June 7, 1995: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 13 – May 20, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 14 – May 20, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 15 – June 7, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 16 – June 7, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 17 – June 7, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 18 – May 21, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 19 – May 21, 1978: Reports, Rumors and Re-Enactments
Chapter 20 – May 20, 1978 (One Day Earlier): Reports, Rumors and Re-Enactments
Chapter 21 – May 21, 1978: Reports, Rumors and Re-Enactments
Chapter 22 – May 21, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 23 – May 22, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 24 – May 22, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 25 – June 7, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 26 – May 27, 1978: Frank Willow
Chapter 27 – May 27, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 28 – May 27, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 29 – May 27, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 30 – May 27, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 31 – May 27, 1978: Mitchell Norton
PART 6 – PLANS FORMED, FATES TESTED
Chapter 32 – June 8, 1995: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 33 – June 8, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 34 – May 28, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 35 – June 11, 1995: Reports, Rumors and Re-Enactments
Chapter 36 – May 28, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 37 – May 27, 1978 (The Night Before): Mitchell Norton
Chapter 38 – May 28, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 39 – May 29, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 40 – May 29, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 41 – June 13, 1995: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 42 – June 13, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 43 – May 29, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 44 – May 29, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 45 – June 15, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 46 – June 16, 1995: Reports, Rumors and Re-Enactments
Chapter 47 – June 16, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 48 – May 30, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 49 – May 31, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 50 – May 31, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 51 – May 31, 1978: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 52 – May 31, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 53 – May 31, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 54 – June 19, 1995: Mitchell Norton
Chapter 55 – June 19, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 56 – May 31, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 57 – June 2, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 58 – June 19, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 59 – June 20, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 60 – July 4, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 61 – August 10, 1978: Tony Hooper
Chapter 62 – June 28, 1995: Tony Hooper
Chapter 63 – August 12, 1995: Tony Hooper
EPILOGUE – August 13, 1995: Mitchell Norton
"...that is the soul, and whether you are a soldier, a scholar, a cook, or an apprentice in a factory, your life and your work will eventually teach you that it exists. The difference between your flesh and the animate power within, which can feel, understand, and love, in that very descending order, will be clear to you in ten thousand ways, ten thousand times over." – Mark Helprin,
A Soldier of the Great War
~~~~~
I never expected to be a killer.
Who does?
I don't
hate
myself. Not really. It's not as if I don't recognize the face in the mirror every morning; I just don't always recognize the man to whom it belongs.
Mitchell Norton, the man responsible for making me who I am, will skip out of his final court hearing today—a mere formality according to the news. They're set to release him from the psychiatric prison after seventeen years, the thought of which has spun my mind into a whirlwind of memories I've long struggled to bury.
I killed my first man in 1975, at the age of fifteen.
Norton's actions three years later would push me deeper into my transformation, and aim me toward this place. The life I now lead. The me who isn't me.
Some things I've lost forever. Other things... well, other things I'd like to lose, but can't.
The memory refuses to drift into the eternal ether. If only I could erase the sound and the image, press a button and—
poof
—it's gone. Yet it forever haunts me, the first of far too many ghosts....
***
August 16, 1975
Crash!
The distinctive crushing of metal assaulted our Saturday afternoon, as Alex and I watched television and waited for Mom to return from the store. I jumped from the chair and looked out the living room window, but couldn't see enough of the street. I darted into the kitchen for a better angle.
Dear God, no!
I yelled to Alex while bolting to the back door. "Stay put, Hoopster! You hear me? Do
not
come outside!"
Mom was back. Almost. Our Chevy Bel Air sat right in front of our house, crushed into an impossibly condensed version of itself. A half-ton pick-up truck, its front end curled forward in a crescent moon, loomed over the windshield of our car.
I ran through the glass and the debris to the twisted wreckage, tripping over a chunk of something unknown. I fell to my knees and banged my head against the side of the car.
Shit! Oh God. Mom!
I snapped up and peered through the envelope-sized gap where the driver-side window had once been. The back of Mom's head sagged at a bizarre angle, barely visible above the crushed compartment.
"Mom, are you okay? Mom!"
I pulled my head back, reached through the gap with my left hand, and walked my fingers along the wreckage to reach her. I found her wet, sticky hair, and stretched out... farther... farther. Unable to turn her face toward me, I moved my fingers from her chin and up the far side of her face, and—
I snatched my hand back and bolted upright.
I stared at my left hand even as I used my right one to wipe away the blood and the gray matter. Everything began to spin and close in. My chest hammered with every breath, as though God had reached down and clutched the air from the world. I leaned against the car, and my hands painted two red streaks down the metal as my legs folded beneath me.
I collapsed against the jagged wreck in a dark heap—blank—and vanished for untold moments.
Life resumed when a man fell from the pick-up truck, coughed and spat on the street. He looked at me, inched forward on his hands and knees, and vomited. It took him a moment to recover, but he....
What in hell is he doing?
The rotten sonuvabitch laughed and whooped it up, as though he'd perpetrated some ingenious practical joke. His bloodshot eyes looked as if they would burst at any moment. He spewed a garbled, incoherent mush that I struggled to translate.
"Shit! I think I fucked up my truck, buddy. Can you give a fella a hand?"
He faded in and out as my last image of Mom—what was left of her—overpowered me. Everything grayed again, but as the spinning stopped and my breath returned, the full tragedy came into focus. The wicked bastard who'd crushed my mom... was drunk.
My legs had deserted me, turned to dust. I could only look around in a daze at our neighbors, who'd emerged from their houses to investigate.
What should I—
The asshole's staccato bursts of drunken laughter again pulled me back. The very air I breathed stifled me—gas, oil, burnt rubber and a vague metallic tinge, all mingled with the sour contents of the killer's stomach poured onto the street. I raised my hands, bathed in crimson and wafting copper, before my face.
A disembodied voice spoke from the void—
my
voice. "Where did the blood come from? Did I cut myself?"
"What's that, buddy?" The murderous drunk laughed again. "Shit! You think
you
got it bad? Look at my fucking truck!"
I floated still, adrift in an endless gray ocean of broken thought, struggling to make sense of the fluid that drenched my hands.
It's... it's.... Oh, God, it's Mom's blood and brains.
The maddening, driveling voice, like a spear in my gut, stabbed me again. "For Christ's sake, kid, stop fucking around and give me a hand, will you!"
Rage burned a red sheath over my eyes.
I stood and marched to the killer, who looked up with drunken eyes that meant nothing to me. They were evil. I focused instead on his neck, called up all that I'd learned in Master Komura's martial arts classes over the previous ten years, and struck.
Though strong for a fifteen-year-old, my success rested on the fragile physiology of that small patch of neck. To crush his trachea required more precision than strength.
The slobbering murderer collapsed, clutched his ruined throat, and gasped for air that would not come. His eyes blazed in one final, sobering realization. They pleaded for mercy and begged an answer to the simplest question:
Why?
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
Yet I had to make sure he understood. "You rotten fuck! Did you think you could murder my mom and get away with it?"
I shook under a roiling tremor, an earthquake of anger. I should have been crying for Mom. Why wasn't I crying? Never had such fury engulfed me. I wanted to pummel him, again and again and again and again, as he lay helpless on the street.
"What do you think now, you murdering sonuvabitch? Still feel like laughing it up? How about another drink, you miserable—"
His empty eyes, free of remorse or guilt, unburdened in death, stared back at me.
I'd meted out justice—simple, swift, final.
Now I needed to... to.... I shook off the cobwebs as my neighbors gaped in stunned silence, turned to the right, and—
Oh God. Oh God.
My little brother, Alex, knelt at the edge of our driveway with a face painted in tears, confusion and terror. Just seven years old, he wept alone on the worst of all possible days. My feet were as tree stumps sprouting from the bottoms of my legs, as I shuffled over and crouched before him. All the while, his gaze shifted between Mom's car and me, and he blinked through the tears no dam could contain.
He choked and sputtered, "I... want my... mommy. Where's Mommy? I... I... I want my mommy!"
I could barely whisper, "Me too. I want her too."
I wrapped my arms around him, and he hugged my neck as though he would fall to his death if he let go. Together we unleashed a tsunami of sorrow.
Another thought arrived through the haze:
I killed a man
. I'd thought nothing of it; I'd merely reacted. After witnessing the devastation of that horrible wreckage, the destruction of flesh and bone and tender love, I didn't even care. Yet wrapped in my arms was someone for whom I cared deeply, someone who needed me more than ever.
I stared at my bloodstained hands and clenched my fists to still the shaking.
Oh shit! I killed a man.
It occurred to me that jail would likely be my next stop. Where would my little brother be then? What would be left of his family, his life? He'd witnessed—
Oh God. Hoopster watched me kill a man.
I clutched him to my chest. "Forgive me, Alex. I'm sorry."
***
Return to June 6, 1995
Frozen forever in time at the age of thirty-six, Mom had given us light and wisdom, warmth and love, a path to guide our way. Who would be our rock now?
My childhood ended with her. What choice did I have? Was I ready?
It hardly mattered.
Law enforcement took rather a cursory glance at me, given both my young age and the circumstances of the event. A state-appointed psychiatrist determined that, in that moment of anguish, and in accordance with strict legal definitions, I was simply insane. Temporary insanity? Sure. Why not?
The psychiatrist thought so, and that was good enough for the judge. They declared me healthy and normal, and sent me home.
Ah yes, home.
Dad floundered and withdrew from Alex and me over the next few months. Our first holiday season without Mom, regrettably, left an indelible scar. The elephant, as they say, was not in the room; only its ghost remained. Mom's absence nearly suffocated us.
Alex's vacant brown eyes and perpetual frown, his continuous soft sigh and the musty smell of sweat and tears on his Scooby-Doo pajamas, the way his chin rested continually on his chest—these left me utterly heartbroken.
I could only pray that the dark Christmas of 1975 would slip into history as the worst I would ever experience. Surely, Dad, Alex and I would recover our happiness, our optimism, as our futures unfolded according to a new plan, albeit a motherless one.
That little executioner's waltz I'd performed on the street in front of our house in August would no doubt be my last dance.
Little did I know: more monsters roamed the world than I'd ever imagined.
They weren't finished with me.