Part 7

I didn’t stay long after that, I guess that we really didn’t have all that much else to say to each other about the subject. Well, maybe we had plenty to say; we just didn’t know how to say it yet. I think it was mostly me needing to leave, Mike has always been better at controlling himself.

I think talking about Sheryl out loud was the biggest issue. We’d never really talked about what happens after I drop Mike off at one of these things. I mean, I knew exactly what was going on, but knowing about it and saying it out loud are too different things. It was just and idea, a thought that could float away. Nothing was real about it.

This made it real.

Here’s the thing, once I said that I was going to be the one… taking care of Sheryl. Well, that’s when it became a promise. I had thought about it, sure. I had thought about the other three people too because they deserved to die too. Mike was pretty careful about picking these people out. I’m still surprised how many people out there are just pure monstrosities. But Mike was the one who needed to do this, almost as a therapy. It helped him stay normal, if that makes any sense.

But I am normal, so I shouldn’t need to do any of this. And if I feel this way about this person just by reading a file, you’d think that someone else closer to the whole thing would have taken care of it by now. Sometimes people need to step up and nobody is around willing to take the plunge. But they don’t, and then there are those like Mike who’ve been pushed so far that all they can do is push back. I don’t know how I became one of those people, or if I really am one of those people. I don’t know if I can do this.

So I stopped by the liquor store to pick up a pack of cigarettes, I hadn’t smoked much in years and it had been even longer since I’d actually bought a whole pack of cigarettes. But I felt justified. Sometimes you just feel like you want to die, just a little bit. Having a smoke is a great way to indulge that feeling. I figured Ella was going to kill me when she found out, so I’ll have to come up with a good story. Fuck it, I needed them.

Mike was right about Ella though; at least now that I think about it I think he’s right. She’s a nurse for chrissakes; her job is to help save lives. My new hobby involves taking them away. I wonder if she’ll believe it was all for the right reasons when she finds out. Does that make a difference? I don’t know how long I can keep this all a secret, or how long before Mike and I get caught. But I’m pretty damn sure that it’s not going to be forever. I wonder if I’ll be more mortified or embarrassed?

These aren’t good thoughts, and they’re going to make me as sloppy as Mike’s hate makes him. I get the hate, hell it’s my motivating factor as much as anything else is. But I wish that he believed that we were doing all this for a good reason, that we were on the right side of something. Making it all hate and vengeance is too dirty. There should be some justice and honor in there. It doesn’t have to be true.

I packed the cigarettes slowly, forgetting why I felt the compulsion to engage in this silly ritual. I don’t know that it’s ever actually made a difference in the quality of the smoke. Oh well, old habits die hard, and stupid ones last forever. I took off the cellophane and pulled off the foil end liner. I threw the trash away as I walked to the car, pulling out a cigarette and putting it in my mouth as I went. Then I realized that I didn’t have a lighter, I thought they used to be standard in cars?

I didn’t want to go back inside and feel like an idiot getting a box of matches, so I decided to just drive home and get matches there. Ella wouldn’t be home for a couple hours anyway, and if I took a shower and scrubbed my gums with steel wool she might not even notice.

As I drove home I thought about the night before with Ella, how she acted almost childish. She seemed really happy about something, but I don’t know what. I guess that sometimes we just need to be happy, and it’s especially important to try when you have no good reason. She did have those strawberries and that champagne ready though, and I should probably figure out why. In my experience, women don’t always have a good reason to celebrate but they always come up with some kind of reason. Was it an anniversary of something I forgot? Wouldn’t she have told me if it was? Wouldn’t she have been decidedly not happy?

I decided to stop thinking about anything for the rest of the drive, and concentrated firmly on that concept. It didn’t really work; I couldn’t stop fixating on something. The song playing on the radio, why the digital clock’s numbers were white when it would make more sense for them to be red. All the instruments in a car should glow red so it doesn’t hurt your night vision. How can I, the frickin accountant, know this but the engineers in multi-billion dollar companies can’t? It just doesn’t make any sense. Get your shit together boys.

When I got home I discovered that the cigarette was still hanging stupidly from my mouth. The paper had gotten stuck to my lips, and when I pulled took it out of my mouth it tore around the filter. I peeled the rest of the paper off the filter until it fell off the tobacco end. I smelled the tobacco and all it really smelled like was paper, which just seemed ridiculous. I rolled it firmly between my fingers until the tobacco shards floated softly to the patio.

This is stupid, I don’t want to kill myself one smoke at a time. I want to kill Sheryl Bowman for what she’s done and I want to know that I’m going to be able to do it. Mike would.