Oh, plus one other thing. A brand-new shotgun.
Walter, as a bona fide genius in the field of multiple sciences, tended to be an objective thinker. Philosophy wasn’t his bag, in other words, but math and the hard sciences were. He believed in good and evil, as concrete ideas, and he believed that people should strive to be good. He also believed that
he
had strived to be good during his eighteen-year life. But that’s pretty much where his belief systems stopped. He didn’t believe in God, nor in the Devil. He didn’t believe there was a Heaven or Hell, and to him, the concept of sin was an abstraction founded in cultural mythology. It wasn’t science, therefore it wasn’t real.
He knew, though, that suicide was universally considered a sin, a grievous sin, and for some reason—perhaps a subconscious instinct of self-preservation—which was actually a biological, not a spiritual, activity—he wondered ... He just wondered.
What if I’m wrong? What if I kill myself and I go to Hell?
Then his eyes drifted back up to Candice’s picture and he realized,
I’m already there.
Walter got up. He took his last iron supplement, and his multi-vitamin. He might as well have all his RDA’s, right? He went to the radio, to switch on some music. There should be something in the background as he ended his frustrated, unfulfilled failure of a life. Being the smartest person on campus meant nothing. What good was knowledge when all it got him was exploitation?
The radio fizzed on. He didn’t fiddle with the diat—anything would do ... or so he thought. A pulsating drum-beat and a squawky voice. What was this?
The singer was saying, over and over again: “This is what you want, this is what you get...” Over and over again.
He must’ve accidently put on the campus alternative station. Walter frowned and sat back down on the bed. He wasn’t even inspired enough—minutes from his death—to go back over and change it. It was easier to just complain.
“This is what you want, this is what you get,” the singer warbled on.
What IS this?
he thought. Didn’t people listen to hip good music anymore? Walter typically grooved to Abba, Air Supply, and Neil Diamond—the truly classic examples of music as an art form. His favorite album, of all time, was the
Baywatch
soundtrack. But then he remembered, as the discordant voice and rhythms nagged on: “This is what you want, this is what you get...”
Weren’t those same words on the guy’s t-shirt?
The guy who got killed on the circle yesterday ...
The dead man with the broken neck, who’d also said “Embrace your destiny”?
Walter uttered a very rare profanity: “This is fucked up.”
I want to kill myself, but hallucinations and a dead guy don’t...
Yes. It was fucked up.
Now he got up and walked to the corner. He picked up the shotgun. It was an attractive weapon—if weapons could
be
attractive—in its black anodized finish and shiny stock. But Walter knew plasma physics and mathematical theory, he didn’t know shotguns. At least Florida was an easy state to buy guns in; it was as easy as buying a candy bar. He’d taken a cab into Tampa because they had the most gun shops in the phone book. And the tall handsome bearded guy in the shop had been all too happy to not only sell Walter a serviceable shotgun but he’d also explained everything Walter would need to know. Showed him how to load the magazine, how to rack a round into the chamber, how to deactivate the safety. What a nice man. But then a pertinent question was raised: “What kind of ammunition will you be needing?”
Walter had read in a novel once something about “pumpkin-balls” or “deer-slugs”—essentially just a single, large steel ball inside the cartridge. It just seemed the logical choice.
“Pumpkin-balls!” Walter cheerily replied.
The shop keeper popped a questioning brow, then chuckled : “Whatever turns you on, but about the only thing those are good for are shooting bears and committing suicide.”
“Gimme a box!” Walter cheerily requested.
The shop keeper hefted the shotgun. “Yes sir, say a scum-bag breaks into your place, you drop hammer on him with
this
—loaded with
pumpkin-balls?”
“Yeah?” Walter asked.
“One round in the head and he won’t
have
a head.”
“I’ll take it!” Walter cheerfully announced.
And here he was now, in his dorm room, at midnight, holding the self-same shotgun that the nice man in Tampa had sold him. Was he having some last-minute doubts? Walter wasn’t sure. He was sure he didn’t want to live any more, so at least he was sure of something. An inept geek? In love with a girl he had
nothing
in common with? A girl who would never love him? What would he have to look forward to if he chose to stay alive? It didn’t matter how smart he was, or how much money he would one day make in the private sector. Without Candice, he would never be happy.
It was time to make up his mind ...
The annoying song on the radio beat on: “This is what you want, this is what you get...”
Walter picked up the framed picture of Candice and looked at it—
“—this is what you want—”
Then he looked at the shotgun—
“—this is what you get—”
That said it all.
Walter sat back down with the gun. He jacked a round. He turned off the safety by pushing the pin from left to right through the housing behind the trigger. He placed the end of the barrel against his forehead, leaned over, and put his thumb against the trigger.
“—this is what you want—”
I love you, Candice...
“—this is what you get—”
BAM!
Chapter Seven
(I)
Cassie brushed strands of lemon hair off her forehead. She felt agitated but mostly uncomfortable, squirmy in the hard chair opposite R.J.’s office desk. His Notre Dame hat was pulled lower over his eyes, which gave him a stern cast.
“You know what you look like?” he finally said, arms crossed behind the desk.
“Like a crazy whacked-out Goth chick sitting in a psych ward?”
“No, like a mousy little girl sitting in the principal’s office because she was bad at school.”
She wished it were that simple. Take a note home to her parents and get grounded for a week. What could she say?
R.J. sighed now, leaning over the blotter on his desk. “All right. Why beat around the bush? I’ll just ask and you can answer. Why did you break all the lights in the shower room?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I’m your doctor. Why can’t you tell me?”
“ ’Cos you wouldn’t believe it. You’d think I was crazy and put me on meds.”
“Cassie, I might put you on meds anyway, given that outburst. Now why did you do it?”
“I ... have a fear of fluorescent lights?”
“Funny. You scared Sadie half to death. She thought you were in there killing yourself.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill myself,” Cassie said, “at least not before the next Rob Zombie tour.”
R.J. maintained the stern gaze.
“Jeez, it’s a joke!” Cassie complained. “Can’t anyone in this place take a joke?”
“It’s no place for joking. We don’t know what’s wrong with you, Cassie, and that puts us in a very precarious situation. Your father’s executors are paying us a lot of money to see to your well-being and to keep you away from the state prosecutor’s office while they prepare for your trial.”
“The trial doesn’t mean squat. There’s no evidence.”
“No, there isn’t, and so far your tests and your behavior have indicated a stable, social person who isn’t capable of arson and murder. That’s what I’ve been putting in your psychiatric profile. But you tell me. What am I supposed to think now? What am I supposed to put in the remarks column of your daily report today? After what you did in the shower room, how can I possibly continue to claim that there’s nothing wrong with you?”
“Maybe there
is
nothing wrong with me.”
R.J. opened his hands in a clear frustration. “Then help me out here. Why did you trash the shower room?”
For the briefest moment, she considered actually telling him; she considered saying,
An Umbra-Specter was torturing my guardian angel, so I broke all the lights because I thought less light would decrease the Specter’s power. The reason she was being tortured is because she was divulging forbidden information to me, and whenever she does that, she gets punished.
Instead, she lied: “I freaked out. I have weird dreams that freak me out and sometimes I get too high-strung. Plus I’m having my period. Plus, I’m a real bitch in the morning before I have my coffee.”
R.J. betrayed a smile. “Really? You’re not B.S.-ing me?”
“Nope.”
“That was quite an outburst.”
“Sure. You ever had one? Ever had a day when nothing’s going right and you just want to bust stuff?”
“Yeah, everybody has days like that.”
“It’s normal, right?”
“Yes, I suppose it is, to an extent. You get mad, you get road rage in rush-hour, stuff like that, and sometimes, yeah, you just want to snap and bust stuff. You
want
to, but you don’t actually do it.”
“Hey, until you have PMS like I do, I don’t think you can make a judgement like that.”
Another smile. “Your point is taken. Sadie said she heard you talking to someone? Who? Are you hearing voices?”
“Just yours.”
“So Sadie was lying?”
“I talk to myself sometimes! Big deal!” she almost shouted. “You want to pump me up with Thorazine and straitjacket me ’cos I got a case of PMS and I talk to myself?”
R.J. laxed back in his chair, pushed the visor of his hat up a little. “Finally! We’re communicating. So let me ask you something else. A minute ago you said you’re still having bad dreams. Are they dreams about your sister’s suicide?”
“No, those stopped a while ago. Just nightmares.”
“About what?”
“About Hell.”
“You mean the place you talk about during your polygraphs and narco-analysis? This big city, in Hell. The Mephistopolis.”
“Yeah. They’re just dreams, screwed up dreams. Me being an Etheress and all that.”
“So now you’re telling me that you’re not really an Etheress, that was just a dream?”
“Yeah. Take some of that—what is it? Sodium—”
“The hypnotic? Sodium amitol?”
“Yeah, take some of that stuff yourself, doc. See if it doesn’t put a little bit of a whack on you. See if you don’t spout some wild shit with an armful of that. I have weird dreams to begin with and that stuff makes them weirder, and, yeah, maybe I confused the dreams with reality for a little while. I’m still trying to get over my father’s death and the fact that I’m stuck in this looney bin—no offense. You ever have weird dreams? You ever been confused, ever in your life?”
A sharper smile this time. “You always try to defend yourself by challenging me.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Sometimes I have screwy dreams. Everybody does. So how come everybody isn’t in this joint?”
“Because
everybody
isn’t being charged with arson and premeditated murder. Because
everybody
isn’t suicidal, and
everybody
didn’t break all the lights in the shower room.”
“I’ll pay for the friggin’ lights.”
“No, but your father’s lawyers will,” R.J. corrected. “Let me ask you something else.”
Cassie was getting bored, bending her flip-flops under her heels. “Shoot.”
“Who burned your house down with your father in it?”
“I don’t know. I only know it wasn’t me. I loved my father.” She shot him a frown. “You already know I didn’t do it. You don’t believe for a minute that I did it.”
“No, Cassie, I don’t. But who did? Who do you think did it?”
“Probably some stoner from town, some redneck all jigged up on PCP or something.”
“I like that answer. But I just keep getting this feeling that you’re only saying it.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you’re saying what you think I want to hear.”
“I never do that,” Cassie countered. “You’re my shrink, you should know that. And what does Dr. Morse think? Does he think I had a psycho outburst? Does he think I’m a head-case?”
“No, but he’s very confused about your case. So am I.”
“Hey, I’m just a bitchy Goth girl from D.C. There’s not much to be confused about.” She did feel a bit foolish now. “I’m sorry I busted your dumb shower lights. Does it help to say it won’t happen again?”