Three Lives of Jury - Chapter 33
Jealousy, murder and a town called Jury. A 40-year saga of life and the afterlife
See the forest, see the trees:
Three Lives of Jury - table of contents
Check out related bonus material at The Underworld Vents.
The Underworld Vents - table of contents.
I am delivering only one chapter this week, and probably for the next three or four weeks because I’m taking time off. I have edited chapters ahead of schedule but since I’ll be away, I don’t have enough chapters ready to release two per week.The posts are scheduled, as usual, for every Thursday at 5:05 PST while I am away. I’ll be checking in every once in a while, if you want to drop me a line.
You’ve really done it this time, Frank.
Chapter 33
I better stay, Whit decided after getting Frank into his room at the lodge. At least until Frank gets some colour into his face and can string a coherent sentence together.
Whit poked through a few bags and boxes on the table, noticing chocolate bars, packets of dried fruit, a large plastic bag of mixed nuts and a few cans of meal replacement drinks.
The shower turned off. Little Prince Shitty was finally done. He’s been in there a half an hour.
Whit had lugged Frank back to the lodge, little prick fought him the whole way, till Whit bashed him in the mouth. Once back in the room, Whit held him down and persuaded him to take his medication.
After, Frank lay on the bed groggy and silent for 15 minutes. Then he dragged out a nebulizer from the closet and inhaled more medications to loosen the mucus that had cemented into this chest, while Whit watched from a chair in the corner.
Frank hadn’t said a word since they got back, other than to mumble, “Fuck you,” as he stepped into the bathroom looking for a shower to ease his clogged chest.
Finally finished, Frank strutted into the room wearing T-shirt and loose sweatpants.
“You still here?” he asked Whit and grabbed a Coke. He poured the drink down his throat and ripped open a chocolate bar wrapper and gobbled it in three bites.
“I’d like a bit of privacy please,” he said. “Time for you to go.”
Frank was tired, but had much to do before he could give in to sleep.
Whit was sitting up on one of the beds, his legs stretched out in front of him. “I need to make sure you’re good before I leave. And you’re a long way from OK right now. Trust me, I don’t want to be here either.”
“What are going to do? Are you planning to stay the night?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Fuck off. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Do you remember anything about what happened at Lucy’s place? Because going off that, I’d say you do.”
Frank strapped on his vest and sat in silence as it worked. He ran it through the phases, huffing and coughing between cycles, while Whit stretched back on the bed and closed his eyes, near to nodding off himself.
Frank pulled off the vest after a half-hour and fit it back into its case.
“Ta-dah. Next is my enema. You want to watch that too?”
Whit kept his eyes closed. “Do you always need to be the asshole?”
Frank studied the pictures on the wall above one of the two queen beds. A single horse and rider in deep snow, slogging forward.
“I don’t know what happened down at Lucy’s place. I took some pills and stuff,” he said finally. “Hey, let’s not think about it. I have a better idea.”
He rustled in his coat pocket and came up with a plastic bag of blue pills. “Take one, let’s get this party started.” He held one out toward Whit.
Whit accepted it and studied it under the light. No wonder he’s nuts. He’s burned out his wiring. He’s packing more pills than just his medication.
Frank dropped one of the blue pills into his throat and fell back onto the other bed.
He mumbled incoherently. Whit didn’t hear, wasn’t listening, so Frank raised his voice.
“She had a fucking abortion, Whit. She had a fucking abortion and couldn’t even tell me about it.”
“Grow up.” Whit sat up, pressed his back against the wall with his feet up on the bed.
“Fuck you,” Frank said. “I couldn’t help it. What am I supposed to do?”
“How about giving a shit for somebody else.”
“Easy for you to say. How would you feel if she cut you out of her life and left you high and dry? She didn’t even try to talk to me, Whit. She hates me so much, that she couldn’t even try.”
“Are you being serious right now? Because you ain’t getting sympathy from me. Lucy was put through an abortion, that’s horrible. Then you attacked her for it. You actually physically assaulted her. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I remember there was a time when you were grateful for what I did for you,” Frank mewed. He was slurring his words and would crash before long, Whit thought.
He let Frank ramble and Frank laid out his schemes.
Frank retold their Mud Valley adventure at least twice over. He remembered many things differently than Whit.
Frank completed his second retelling of the night and was circling back to the beginning. He wandered off topic, explaining how he stowed secrets in the boiler room, down in the second subbasement of their house. Then he was back talking about Mud Valley again and Whit swung his feet around to the floor unable to sit still for Frank’s third telling of the tale.
“Thank you, Frank.” Whit said. “We’re grateful you stepped up and saved us, but you know what else? We’re not those kids anymore. That night was a blip, an aberration and nothing more. It wasn’t the best time of our lives, Frank. It was horrific and tragic. Now shut the fuck up about it.”
Frank sunk into the bed, sullen, unresponsive.
“Frank? Do you hear me, Frank?” Whit waved his hand in front of Frank’s face. “Fine,” he said, “here’s how it is going to be. I’m leaving, but I’m going to phone you every hour and if you don’t answer, if I don’t hear your voice, I’ll get the front desk to come up here and pound on your door until you answer.
“Do you hear me, Frank?”
“Fine,” Frank said.
Whit grabbed his belongings to leave. “Here.” He grabbed the bag of pills on the table and held one out for Frank. “Take another. It’ll help you sleep.”
Frank grabbed it and swallowed without hesitation. “I think, though, I’m within my rights to insist you check only every two hours. That ought to be enough.”
Whit walked to the door and stood in the open doorway, thinking.
“Yeah, fine. Whatever.” He was done dealing with Frank. “This evening, what you did, it doesn’t matter at all to you, does it?”
Receiving no reply, Whit knocked twice on the door as he let it swing closed and marched away.
Frank fumed for a long time. I planned this trip and this is the thanks I get? That fucking Whit. Who the fuck is he, anyway? Fuck that guy. My eyes are open. I see him now. He’s turned Lucy against me. It’s fucking obvious, they’ve been talking about me and he’s turned her against me.
He rubbed his cheeks until they felt warm and started to redden. The abortion was probably Whit’s idea, too. He’s at the centre of everything, he thought. He talked Lucy into it. I’ll bet dollars to shit stains it was Whit the whole time.
He should have told the world how Whit bawled like a baby that night in Mud Valley. When evil came, Whit wet himself and ran away. I got them out of it. I did that. I beat the monster Reams.
He swept his compression vest and chocolate bars off the table. Fuck those guys. If they don’t care, I don’t care either. He knew the truth of what happened that night.
He held the knife in one hand while death loomed in front of him. He grew hard as memories solidified and bent into tangible shapes. Strange details came to him: the dime-sized red antler logo on the back of the dead guy’s gloves, Reams’ Salmon Drop Co-op ball cap and his own black Buck hunting knife, which the police never returned.
He flung open his arms and visualized the shadow of Lawrence Reams moving toward him and relived his moment of triumph when he jumped straight onto the horns of the beast.
He smiled, recalling Reams’ surprised expression when the knife went in. Reams exhaled, folded into the ground and died.
Somewhere an alarm blared, making it difficult to think. The sprinklers on the ceiling came on and drenched him in a cold spray.
Frank opened his eyes. That was all there was to it.
He sighed. He wished now he hadn’t taken his anger out on Lucy, but he probably got the worst of their tussle. He could feel a fat lip coming on.
Out of the corner of his eye, a shape blurred above him. Startled and alert, Frank sat up. Whit? Whit was back?
Nobody was there. Getting too ripped on the pills, he told himself.
He’d leave Lucy a note, he decided, and apologize for tonight’s shit. It meant he’d have to get up, though. Are you sure? He nodded. Yes, he was sure.
OK, laptop? He saw it on the dresser a short distance away.
Frank sank deeper into his muddled thoughts with each passing second. He sat down to write. It’s easy. His hands moved easily. He couldn’t think straight, but he felt he was getting it done.
He spun the chair, another shadow in the corner. Nobody. Wait, the note. Yes, he remembered now. No bullshit. To the point. It’s all there. Everything I need to say to Lucy. To Whit, too.
Was that today? He felt like it was a long time ago but he decided after some internal debate, only a few minutes had passed. Shhhhh, he said to the guy inside his head who never shuts up.
He sent the note to Lucy in an email.
Now, the rest of the plan. Got to carry that shit down to the kitchen.
It’s already done, a voice told him.
Shhhh, he told the voice. Wait? What’s already done?
The plan, it’s looked after it. You already did it.
Did he? Frank couldn’t remember, but he must have. Good, he thought. He needed sleep.
Good, good. Sleep. More pills to help sleep.
He laid on the bed, or tried but his head struck the hard floor. He attempted to stand using the bed to steady himself, but he pulled the mattress halfway off one bed and slipped back down.
It was getting hot. The heat, someone must have turned the heat way up, he was burning up. His nostrils seared from acrid fumes, his eyes watered, his head throbbed.
Somewhere an alarm blared, making it difficult to think. The sprinklers on the ceiling came on and drenched him in a cold spray.
He laid back on the floor at the foot of the beds. The heat was nearly burning one side of his face. He grasped the bag of pills and choked them down, one by one.
It dawned on Frank what was happening. He’d been searching for death for a long time and finally it was here. He was ready.
He had led many others down this path, yet learned nothing from it. Now he would find out for himself.
He thought about Lucy, his mother, his brothers Jorge and Marco, and Whit. Fucking Whit. They’ll never find me, he thought. I’ll be nothing but a black pile of embers.
Then, he started to doubt. Fear crept in, and fibre by fibre his entire body clenched. He felt his toes, legs and buttocks tighten. His shoulders and neck burned and he felt like the top of his head would explode.
He roared in agony, but he wasn’t sure if he was making any sound at all.
He screamed again.
Why am I screaming? he wondered vaguely. The people he’d watched die just nodded away quietly. Please God, let me nod away quietly. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know what is happening.
His mind slid into a jagged gash of horror and revulsion as he spiraled deeper toward death. He became incapable of linking thoughts.
Creatures clawed at his eyes, grabbed his lips and drove their gnarled digits into his mouth. They tore at this skin and his nether regions and Frank could do nothing but watch in silent horror as they picked him apart, filament by filament.
You’ve really done it this time, Frank, he thought. And that was all.
excellent, great read, down and dirty, vulnerable characters, nice interplay between Frank and Whit, I'm gonna catch up on the rest of chapters, good stuff.