Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Jar Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE JAR

For the first six months, her speech sounded like mockery, but she persisted; had to. Submerged in an alternative cadence or not, it wasn’t easy taking on a new accent. The Australian lilt came out often, but most folks thought Amelia Lambert’s lineage began in England, and that was fine. Eventually, the hometown hue was hardly there at all, and only those with an ear for Aussie picked it up. These people might mention it and Amelia would lie or simply nod patiently.

At least it was impolite to ask about the scar on her cheek. Only drunks and old men asked about that, and rarely.

“Top up your coffee?” She stood next to the rear table where two regulars sat with cups of chocolate pudding under slopes of whipped cream in little bowls.

Spoons entered the desserts—one side swirled the mess together and the other attempted equal measures of white and brown in the cradle of the spoon. Both heads nodded and coffee entered cups.

It was a half-hour from close and the restaurant was empty of patrons aside from these two middle-aged men. The cook, Dan Francis, was in the kitchen, clanging pans in the evening’s cleaning ritual. Amelia took the coffee pot back behind the counter and started onto the silverware and napkins.

When she was a child, she wanted to be a Spice Girl, sang five overlapping solos in front of the mirror. When she was twelve, she wanted to be Erika Heynatz, showed invisible competitors how to strut the walkway. When she was fifteen, she wanted to work in movies, something, anything, wanted to bask in that big screen glow. When she was fifteen, she hadn’t wanted to be a mother, but she was pregnant. For the sum of those first years on the planet, she certainly hadn’t considered running away to Canada.

Life is a pitcher addicted to her curveball.

The window of the entrance door filled with a dark silhouette. Amelia looked up. Two plainclothes cops pushed into the restaurant, their gun belts a giveaway of their occupation. She waited a tick before picking up silverware. She’d been at the restaurant for close to a decade and enough times local cops had come in to talk to someone, almost as often as they came in to eat.

Not these two. These two were men she’d never seen before: thick and frumpy, one balding with straggling hair climbing over a shiny hump, the other had a cowlick and an alfalfa sprout. They both wore loose pants as if attempting to obscure just how overweight they were—which wasn’t outlandish, but middle-aged soft.

They sat. Amelia let out a pent breath and crossed the room.

“What can I get ya?”

“Ain’t you pretty,” the bald one said.

“I’d say.” Cowlick and alfalfa took the silverware from Amelia and spread out the contents. “Nice hands for a waitress.”

“Thanks, what can I get ya?”

“All business, I like that.” The bald one snatched a menu from the condiment grouping at the center of the table. “Ooh, they have apple crumble. I’ll get some of that.”

“Ice cream?” Amelia said.

The bald one feigned an expression of offense. “Is there any other way to eat it?”

Cowlick and alfalfa said, “Get me a brownie explosion.”

“Any drinks?”

“Coffee,” both said.

“Coming up.” Amelia spun on her heels. The noise of the kitchen loudened tenfold when she pushed the swinging door. She breathed deeply to let her senses adjust. The kitchen was much brighter than the dining area.

Clumsy and slow, being a cook was likely the best job Dan Francis would get. Following orders was easy for him and every meal tasted the same as the meal preceding it. His biggest worry was staying out of trouble. People messed with him and he always fought back. Always.

“Cleared out?”

Amelia shook her head. “Two cops just came in, they only want dessert.”

Dan’s face still soured. Every night, aside from buffet nights, the cook was also the dishwasher.

“What, you have a hot date?”

Dan blushed to his ears. “No. I never had a date.”

Amelia immediately felt bad. Dan had asked her out a week after he started at the restaurant. Assuming he was like most cooks—coming only to go in a few months—Amelia had told him she had a boyfriend. She did not. Hadn’t had a steady boyfriend in her life.

Dan continued, “I asked a girl on the bus to the movies and she called me a retard. I’m not retarded. I told her that and then the bus driver told me to sit down. I said it again and she yelled at me and the driver stopped the bus and made me get off.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Amelia was in the dessert fridge. “Did the driver say you could come back on the bus again?”

“What?”

Amelia straightened, she could feel Dan’s eyes on her. Her aunt Loretta owned the restaurant and gave Amelia two choices in unofficial uniform. Although it caused aggravation, sexy clothes brought in tips, and Amelia agreed with her aunt: the tighter the better.

“The driver didn’t ban you from the bus or anything, right? Just made you walk today.”

“Oh geez, I hope.” Dan’s jaw gaped and his eyes widened. “I wish I could drive.”

Tests were right behind social understanding in topping the list of situations that baffled Dan. It was best to avoid the conversation altogether. Dan was not above forcing attendees to join him for a pity party.

“If he didn’t say anything, you’re probably okay.” With that, Amelia took the desserts out of the kitchen. The regulars were at the door and waved. They always left money on the table beneath the Heinz bottle. She crossed the room to the cops. “Here we are. I’ll be back in a jif’ with your coffee.”

The bald one grinned with a mouth full of tiny teeth and pale gums.

Police made her nervous, though less so than when she first moved over. Sometimes she didn’t even think about what happened. Seeing that cop’s grin made her remember, put her on alert.

Mugs flipped right side up, coffee poured, Amelia forced a business smile and said, “Anything else.”

“Just a question. That accent you’re trying to hide, it’s Australian, correct? See my partner there said it sounds more like a British accent, but I’ve got a good ear. It’s Australian, yeah?” The bald one forked apple crumble into his mouth. “My wife and her people are Australian, so I should know.”

Amelia sucked her upper lip for a heartbeat before answering, “Nope. British as the ghost of Princess Diana.”

The bald one’s grin lifted at the side into a Paul Newman-like expression, something like Paul Newman’s chunky evil twin might’ve worn.

Cowlick and alfalfa scrunched his face. “Listening to her more, I’d guess you’re right. But she says English, who am I to argue?”

“Anything else?” Amelia said this with an accent not her own and not the one she’d adopted.

The bald one laughed at her attempt, and she waited five seconds and spun away, toward the table where the regulars had sat. Holding a steady pace was not easy, panic was on her, in her, screaming that the big it had finally come around.

Not really hiding, but hiding, Amelia busied herself in the kitchen for as long as she could before mustering the courage to revisit the cops’ table. They were gone. They hadn’t paid. The bald one ate his apple crumble but did not touch his ice cream.

Dan finished up and waited for Amelia to close her till. They left together, locked up, and went their separate ways. Thankfully, the bus headed east on 33^rd Street came quickly. Amelia climbed aboard and stared at the two plainclothes cops riding in the back seat. The bald one waved, robotic with a slightly cupped hand, a Queen Elizabeth special. Amelia sat in the first front facing seat and closed her eyes, unable to imagine a natural reason for the cops to be on her bus.

—

The quiet of the following days made the visit from the cops almost seem imagined. If only it was so easy to write off. She’d packed bags and peeked out from behind the blinds, thinking of the best person to call when trouble came around. She’d talked to her aunt—and defacto landlord—and her aunt told her to chill, if skipping town was the answer, then she needed a plan. Hopping on a bus did no good without a plan. The order to wait it out seemed a good one, and don’t call Nan, not yet.

Her aunt was right, bringing Nan into trouble was a last resort.

So Amelia went to work. Everything was fine. The cops didn’t come on the first or second shift, not on the third or fourth shift. A day off, she was feeling so good that she agreed to go on a friends’ date with Dan.

A text landed in her phone asking if they were still on. It was the third such text and Amelia questioned if it was right to toss Dan even this little crumb. Did he think he’d win her over? Did he think the atmosphere of the date would bring her heart to boil? Was he going to try something?

Would he lose his temper? The thought landed as she painted her nails, Victor LaValle’s voice coming through her cellphone speakers as he read The Changeling. She lifted her eyes and gawked across the room to the spot where the carpet fluffed against the baseboard. The place was about as nice as it got for zero updates in three decades. For six months a couple years earlier, she’d had an apartment, but moved back into her aunt’s home when her cousin went off to school. Her aunt’s idea. She had almost eight grand in her savings account because of it.

Suddenly, that money seemed destined for something else. Everyone was a threat and the clocked rolled back to her early days in Canada. She’d gone weeks without going outside, certain someone would see her, recognize her from a person of interest poster, one from across the globe.

Deep breaths, she reminded herself that Dan was a friendly and whatever those cops wanted, it had been short-lived. “If they were even real cops.” This had come to mind a few times, and saying it aloud made her feel better.

Psyching herself out did no good.

Though it was tough to imagine the audacity of non-cops wearing guns out in the open, she guessed the charges for something like that would not be small.

—

Dan’s brother pulled up to the front of the theater, the pale blue of his early nineties Ford Thunderbird bubbled and swelled at every edge and rust took orange bites from around the wheel wells. Cheap cigarette smoke oozed as the car door opened and Dan stood in black jeans and a graphic tee with a gaudy gold lion huge on the front. He smiled wide, revealing yellowed teeth. He tossed a cigarette to the asphalt and his brother drove off without a word. It was a ridiculous image, the kind someone of dimmed mental capacity missed.

“You look very pretty.”

Amelia looked pretty average she guessed. She hadn’t done anything different, but he’d only ever seen her in her work uniform and maybe any change was for the good. “Thanks.” Blue shorts and a grey tank under a stretched tee tied in a knot over her hip to keep it from draping down to her thighs like a nightie. “What are we seeing?”

Dan shrugged, goofy smile still wide as his cheeks allowed. “I was thinking maybe we could see The Predator.”

Amelia agreed to the hopeless man-child. He knew enough to pay, offered to pay for snacks too. She accepted. He ordered nachos, popcorn, rosebuds, and an enormous Coke for himself. Amelia ordered popcorn and a small Diet Coke.

“That fake sugar gives people cancer,” Dan said, and then took a handful of popcorn as the boy manning the till processed the order on Dan’s credit card.

“Everything gives you cancer,” Amelia said, biting back the urge to go into the little she knew about heart disease and what she imagined might exist in the fake cheese and fake butter, not to mention that Dan smoked. “Is this a remake? There was a Predator movie before, wasn’t there?”

Dan’s jaw dropped. He pocketed the receipt and scooped his items. “You never saw the originals?”

The aghast expression made Amelia laugh and they stepped through the gate and headed for Theater C. The place was newish by theater standards, built in the early two-thousands, the carpet was soft and vibrant, definitely not original. The hall up into Theater C was dark. Amelia followed Dan toward the middle. There were kids running in the aisle down by the screen.

Amelia withdrew her phone and checked the time against the time on the ticket. The movie didn’t start for forty-five minutes. That’s a lot of small talk, too much.

Luckily, the waters were safe as Dan rambled about how Schwarzenegger was better than Glover, but only by a little bit. The movies that came after were mediocre by comparison. Nine minutes into the explanation, people had begun filing into the best seats. Four minutes later, Dan explaining the crossing of alien universes, the seats directly behind them filled.

“What are we doing here?” one of the voices said, loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to be heard by everyone.

“Why do you ask?” the other said, both voices male.

“I don’t know. Seems like the kind of movies only retards like.”

“How so.”

The one man made explosion noises and pew-pew bullet sounds and closed it out with a gagging faux-barf. The other laughed.

“See my point? Only retards like this fuck in front of us get down on movies with big aliens and big explosions. Imagine how fucking stupid you have to be to take a woman to a movie like this.” The man kicked Dan’s seatback.

“Hey, what the hell?” Dan put his food on the floor next to him. He hadn’t been listening or did not connect that these men were calling him out. On his feet, he turned to face the pair.

As did Amelia and her heart and lungs began shrinking, cutting off her breath and sending a quaver through her arms. Her jaw clenched and her eyes darted from bald to cowlick and alfalfa.

“Sit down or I’ll take that bitch next to you to the bathroom and introduce her to some intellect.” The bald one grinned wide.

“What?” Dan’s hands were fists.

“He said—” Cowlick and alfalfa got no further as Dan leapt over the seat, flailing arms into the bald man’s face. Cowlick and alfalfa flung out a telescopic baton and began smashing Dan. “Get off, you fucking retard!”

Dan was tough and mad. He got five punches in before the baton was too much and he had to cover himself. The bald one withdrew handcuffs from his pocket and then began dragging Dan out into the aisle.

“See ya ‘round, Amelia.” The emphasis cowlick and alfalfa put on her name was all too telling.

Amelia took out her phone and sent a text to her aunt. The crowd broke into a heavy murmur, but none seemed overly concerned about Dan’s extraction. Amelia sank into her seat, too terrified to leave, smacking popcorn.

When her aunt finally got back to her, it was with a message that had been left at the restaurant:

Dear Amelia,

We know and it makes us hard as rocks.

With love, your neighborhood boys in blue.

—

Loretta had a laptop open on the kitchen table and the portable phone pressed to her ear. Amelia stood in wait. She’d come home straight from the theater, fourteen minutes before the credits rolled.

“Yes, all right. Fine.” Loretta tossed the phone onto the table. She looked at Amelia. “Dan’s in the hospital with a fractured skull and something about fluids in his lungs. They don’t know if he’ll make it.”

Amelia lifted her hands to her face. “This is my fault.”

“No. It’s their fault.” Loretta pointed to the laptop screen. “We go to the local cops and tell them. No way they get away with this.”

Amelia scrunched her face and rounded the table. She hadn’t told her aunt anything about the men, it was impossible that she knew. Turned out, she took the two most pertinent elements and added them together. In the internet age, anyone could play Sherlock Holmes.

COP SWAP

For two weeks, the Lougheed Police Department welcomed fourteen Canadian detectives from nine departments of the Southern Interior. The idea was one part vacation, one part trade-secret exchange, and one part seeing a different playing field from an in-depth angle according to…

Below the first paragraph was a group photo of twenty police officers. Three from the right was the bald cop, to his right was cowlick and alfalfa. Amelia swallowed, scanning the list of names. The bald one was Mark Finch and cowlick and alfalfa was Paul Matthews.

“We traded a lot of war stories. They brought out a handful of cold crimes with Canadian connections. We have enough on our end with Aussie connections too. It was fun…”

Amelia closed her eyes and stumbled sideways, falling into a chair.

“It’s time you told me the whole story.” Loretta took Amelia’s hand.

Loretta knew some of it. Loretta’s sister Moira had moved to Australia with her boyfriend in 1993. In 2008, Loretta and her daughter, Sarah, took a trip to visit Moira who had something important to tell them. While visiting, an emergency arose and Moira’s wayward daughter needed out of the country. Looking close enough like Sarah, though a few years older, she borrowed a passport and took a trip to Canada on a late-night flight. Loretta and Sarah ended up staying a week longer than planned until the passport returned via carrier mail.

Moira had died later that year—the something important being busy cancer. It took some effort and money, but Lacy-Jay became Amelia and life went on.

“I’ve been understanding and patient, but it’s time. Tell me.”

Amelia lifted her gaze and opened her mouth to inhale a great breath.

—

On her fifteenth birthday, a youngish man named Steven Saffron gave her a gift. She’d never seen Steven before, and her parents refused to talk about anything involving the man. The gift was a designer purse with a silver charm bracelet tucked inside.

Steven came by two weeks later to talk to her parents. Amelia’s father argued with Steven. They stepped into the garage and Steven came back into the house after four minutes of discussion and told Amelia they were going mini putting.

The following day, Steven showed up and took Amelia for burgers. The day after that, they went to the beach. Three weeks passed and Amelia was in love with this older man that her parents didn’t object to, though seemed to dislike.

Steven was a nephew on the job. His uncle’s reach had expanded into Lougheed and if Amelia’s parents knew what was good for them, they’d pay any fees that might be demanded of them or face consequences—be terrible to see the store shut down, terrible to see the wifey scarred, be terrible to see them bite it in a house fire… House fires were rampant and catching.

Amelia quit school and moved into an apartment Steven had provided. He’d show up for a few hours every day, fuck the girl, watch some TV, and head out. Nine months after meeting and three months since her last period, Amelia felt the butterflies of love in her womb and knew Steven would marry her.

“Come on, baby, we’re going somewhere special tonight.” They got into Steven’s Land Rover and drove out of town.

Australia isn’t so different from the Canadian prairies after sundown. The sky becomes everything and night sucks civilization from the universe. Trees and dirt. Dirt and trees.

The trees parted and a small building sat beneath a dull yard light. “What’s this?” Amelia looked around, still excited about possibilities—were they eloping?

The building was not a church.

The building was, in fact, a veterinary clinic.

They stepped inside and a skinny woman looked at Steven and then Amelia. She was sweaty and pale.

“Hey, there. You want to get up on the table?” The woman forced a smile.

Amelia did, but this was not a surprise wedding and tears began spilling. The woman shot Amelia with a fat needle.

In and out on a cloud, she heard an electric engine, felt the bareness of her lower half, felt something inside. She didn’t feel the blood running. Didn’t feel the hectic trip back to Lougheed. Didn’t know who had dropped her off but awoke momentarily on the asphalt outside the emergency room before nurses gathered her up.

A week following, still in the hospital, Amelia looked into the eyes of a woman she’d only seen in photographs. Nan was big, dressed in soft leather and rough cotton: pants and a tenting shirt. She had a sun hat in her hands.

“Piss for me,” she said.

Amelia began crying again. The world was unfair and nothing made sense.

“Do it. Get up and piss in this.” She pulled Amelia to the edge of the bed. Outside it was still dark, and visiting hours happened in the daylight. “Come now. Toughen up.”

Amelia was sore all over, but did as told. Nan lifted Amelia’s gown and positioned the big glass jar between the skinny legs. Pink piss streamed. Amelia moaned at the burn of it. Once finished, Nan set the jar aside and helped Amelia to steady against the bed.

“Put your clothes on.” Nan tossed a sundress and jean jacket. Bloodstains marred both like huge birthmarks. “We need to get moving before the nurses come back.”

Nan took the jar and began sprinkling dust and crusty crumbs from a leather pouch into the piss. Amelia was awestruck.

“Get dressed!”

Nan brought over a wheelchair and let Amelia fall into the seat. A big black van waited with its rear doors open and a small ramp leading up like a tongue into a mouth. In minutes, they were in the driveway of a bungalow.

“This one’ll be easiest. You ready?”

Amelia finally spoke. “For what?” She had the piss jar in her lap.

“Kiss the man, then spit in the jar. Easy.”

Nan wheeled Amelia out the backdoors and positioned her before the front stoop. She then pressed the doorbell and skittered away much faster than seemed possible given her size. A light came on in the bedroom and then the hallway. The door opened and Steven stood in his boxer shorts, behind him were a woman and two children. The scene solidified Amelia.

“Lacy-Jay?”

She struggled to stiffen her lower lip.

“Lacy-Jay, what are you doing here?”

“I have to tell you something.” He voice like tree bark.

Steven turned and said something to his family before closing the door and stepping out. “Serious, what are you doing here?”

Amelia waved him closer and he thought nothing of it. He approached. “Closer.” He got closer. She grabbed his arm and pulled him in to kiss his mouth. He cooperated for a second before jerking back, their lips never touching.

Nan broke from the periphery then and forced the man close to Amelia. “Kiss him, anywhere.”

“Fuck is this?” Steven shouted, struggling.

Amelia kissed him.

Steven swung and sent Nan sprawling.

“Spit in the jar!” She looked up with expectant eyes, Steven towering over her.

Amelia spat. Steven’s revolt ceased. He straightened, turned, and started into his home.

“That’s one. Four more to go.”

“Four more?” Amelia clutched the sloshing jar as Nan pulled back onto the dark, dark street. “Who?”

“The Sins.”

“Who are—?”

Nan turned in her seat. “What world you living in, girl?”

Rain had begun spitting down onto the van as Nan rolled on. Quickly, they were out of the city and into the hills. There were four houses in a sparse cluster—cluster by comparison to the vacancy surrounding them. These were not mansions, but they were significantly bigger than most homes below, especially of those also built in the ‘seventies. Chic in a way that would probably impress the Curtis Mayfield fan club. Wrought iron gates barred a short driveway that rose in a steep incline up to a lighted yard and garage.

Nan got out and unlatched the gate, pushed it open, separating an L and an F in the steel, and returned to the driver’s seat. “Soon.” She pulled through and began turning around. Right arm draped over the seat to look out the distant back windows. The rear bumper stopped a few feet short of a tan colored garage.

The driver’s door kicked open, the engine still running. The interior lamp lit. The rear doors swung wide next and Amelia watched, terrified, a hanging seatbelt wrapped around her arm. The wheelchair’s brakes were engaged, but it still felt like she’d roll backward and keep rolling, through the van, into oblivion.

“When you hear a door open, say help me. Sound pathetic. Help me, please.”

“What is this?” There were tears in Amelia’s words.

“Lenny Freeman’s next. Now, do as you’re told. Listen to your gran.” Nan reached into the back and pulled a cricket bat from the shadows.

Amelia watched, thinking she’d heard of Lenny Freeman, but the context defeated her. Then a bang landed and shook her thoughts. Another and another followed. Nan slammed the bat against the steel garage door. A light came on in the home. Wood connected again with steel.

Amelia wanted to warn Nan, but a door opened and her mouth kicked in. “Help me. Help me. Please, I’m hurt.”

The overhead light was dim and left Amelia in a swatch of shadow.

“You got a death wish?” A gruff, mannish voice approached the van. “Looking to turn red?”

Amelia saw the barrel of a rifle before she saw the man. “Please, help me. Please, I’m hurt so bad.”

A face appeared behind the pointed barrel, a body followed into the light. An older man in a wife-beater tank and blue boxer shorts. He lowered the rifle.

“Help me,” Amelia said through sobs that she didn’t have to fake. She was terrified. “Please. I’m hurt so bad.”

“How’d you get here?” Lenny Freeman asked.

A pinky ring with a chunk of red ruby flashed under the yellow interior light and Amelia put the name to a face. Lenny Freeman was a man so slimy and slick that when he went to court, nothing stuck. So morbidly lucky, every witness set to stand against him took ill or disappeared altogether. Lenny Freeman was into everything from loans, to drugs, to endangered species trafficking.

“I don’t know. I just woke up and I hurt so bad.”

“What’s that you got?” Lenny Freeman stepped a foot up into the van. The rifle pointed to the floor.

“It’s…it’s…my piss!” Amelia wailed then.

“Shit, like one of those fucking bags? Some fucking feather footer get you? Ngangkari?” He crossed the short space and put a hand on Amelia shoulder. “Someone bring you from the hills?” Amelia kissed the man’s hand. “Fuckers still out there? How many,” she spat into the jar, “of you—?”

Lenny Freeman made not another sound, dropped the rifle, and backed out of the van. He was barely beyond sight when Nan reappeared and tossed the bat to the floor next to the rifle.

“Good job.”

Amelia continued crying as the van rolled down the hill through the gates. She closed her eyes to the world beyond the window as they travelled west, above the city, into the wilds until the neon lights of a roadhouse came into view. Motorcycles lined in rows, a handful of cars, and a dozen lifted trucks with racked spotlights and more dents than smooth spots.

“Almost done. Might get all three here, but we’re going to have to wait.”

Amelia leaned down, unthinking, took a big whiff of the piss smell seeping up from the mouth of the jar. It jerked her head back and she moaned, “I wanna go home.”

“This has to end tonight or we’re both done. This is a real good thing, too bad it had to be you. That baby would’ve been a strong one. I know it.”

At the mention of it, Amelia flashed on the vacuum motor, the feeling deep inside, and the too big needle that pierced the flesh of her leg. There was no baby, the drug fog had let her head stay off that topic, but in this painful clearing, she was an understanding un-mother. A fresh bout of moaning and tears broke.

“Let it out.”

Bikes and trucks began leaving. After three hours, only four vehicles remained: two Cadillac sedans and two Harley Davidson motorcycles.

“It’s time.”

Nan’s voice woke Amelia. Her cheek leaned against her shoulder, the top of her head against the steel wall of the van. In seconds, the rear doors were again open and the ramp came down. Nan climbed inside, released the lock and pushed Amelia forward.

“Listen good, you got to do this by yourself again, but I’ll be close, you’ll only see me if you need to see me.”

“What?”

“Be strong. This ends tonight and everything will be good forever, I promise. These men will pay, but we can’t go halfway. There is only all the way. Be strong. They steal and break good people. They steal from your parents. They stole from you.”

Amelia swiped her wrist under her nose. A motorcycle roared to life and peeled away from much closer to the building.

“We got to hurry. You roll over there and say you need to see George McPherson or Perc Trimbole, if they aren’t there, say you need to see Mr. China. Got it?”

“What?”

“Go, now. Hurry.” Nan grabbed the bat, but after a second’s thought, tossed it down in favor of the rifle.

The van’s rear remained yawning and Nan disappeared in her fleet-footed way, into the shadows cast by tall trees. Amelia, without options, took a breath and put her hands on the wheels of the chair, balancing the piss on her thighs. She thought she probably could’ve walked, but the chair filled too many easy leaps to forego. She looked more helpless than she was.

The clouds had thinned, though a gentle spittle continued over the lot. Amelia’s heart bounced as if getting a double treatment of blood, but her arms moved steadily. Mostly because it was work to maneuver the loose gravel lot.

Despite the strain, that door was at her all too quickly. It swung outward and she had trouble balancing the jar and spinning her frame upon the chair. She got it and The Rolling Stones or maybe The Guess Who or maybe Bachman Turner Overdrive, some dad music, poured out. Through the dim space were pool tables, numerous benches and tables, two bars, and beer bottles and shot glasses, hundreds of them, littered every available flat surface.

At the furthermost bar, two men sat on stools, a man stood as tender, and Amelia didn’t see them until it was too late, but two men grabbed her arms. One was gentle, the other dug fingers into her armpit. She shrieked and the pressure relented.

“Some little chick.” The one who’d had her too tightly turned from her to face the men at the other end of the bar. “Yo, some little chick. She got a jar with her.” He looked down at Amelia. “Yo, what’s in the jar?”

Amelia tried to offer a brave front but broke down again. “My-eye-eye piss!”

“Shit,” the other man said. “She’s sick and wet from the rain. Think the jar is a colostomy setup of some sort. Unfortunate, that.”

One of the men waved them over and the softer grip stepped behind the chair and began pushing. The volume on the music lessened. Amelia had never been in a bar. The stink surprised her the most. She kept her eyes on the shadows, scanning for Nan. She saw nothing of the woman, but her faith remained.

The chair stopped short of the men at about five feet. One wore a dishevelled suit, collar unbuttoned, tie open and dangling, and hair puffy and uneven. The other wore a Western Bulldogs tee, pale blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a horseshoe-patterned bald spot that shined the blue glow from a neon Fosters sign behind the bar.

“You need us to call your father or something?” the suit asked.

“How’d you even get here?” t-shirt asked.

Amelia had her face pointed toward the jar. “I’m ‘sposed to see Mr. Perc and George or China.”

“Just what in the fuck is going on here?” T-shirt stood and then leaned on the arms of Amelia’s chair. “Now what you want to do with a fella named Perc?”

“Are you him?”

“Fuck is this?” The suit remained seated.

“Are you him?” Amelia lifted her chin.

“Maybe I am.”

Amelia leaned forward to kiss the man’s arm but couldn’t reach. Instead, she grabbed onto the jar and hopped up, tongue out. The man’s chin was stubbly and tasted like alcohol.

“The bitch lick—” T-shirt’s words cut off, as if changing the station, when Amelia spat into the jar. He then sat back down on his stool.

“What was that?” said one of the men who’d grabbed her at the entrance.

“Perc? Perc?” Suit shook the man next to him. “What you do to him, you little freak?” The suit reached into his jacket and withdrew a butterfly knife, flicking his wrist, letting the steel dance into a weapon. The blade was a safe enough distance from her face, but she still broke down anew.

“I don’t know. I need to see China and George McDonald or Mac… I don’t know.”

Hands came down on Amelia’s shoulders and the suit reached out. “Open your mouth. I don’t like how you’s saying my name.”

She did. The knife entered.

“You a good girl? You sucky sucky?”

“Whoa, she’s just a kid. What the hell you doing?” The voice belonged to the gentler of the men from the door. He grabbed onto suit’s arm and yanked the knife away from her face.

“Fuck you think you doing?”

The rough man grabbed onto the gentler man and the wheelchair rolled toward the suit. Amelia had the jar’s neck in her left hand and grabbed for a suit cuff with her right. Her mouth planted on the back of a hand and that hand slashed sideways, drawing the blade across her cheek.

She grabbed at the wound.

“Fuck is you doing? You got poison saliva?” He wiped at his hand, frantic, as if she’d touched him with acid.

She spat into the jar and the man ceased moving.

The men from the door wrestled behind the chair. Beer bottles fell from a table, smashing. There were grunts and punches, wet smacking. A click drowned it all out.

The bartender had a huge silver revolver, a Dirty Harry special. “We all going to behave now. You hear me? You two, quit it and stand up. You don’t move neither.” The hole in the barrel seemed to gape into a void.

Amelia shook, clinging to the jar.

“Nice and eas—”

A boom erased the bartender’s words and blood misted down when his head partially exploded. Amelia screamed then.

“You motherfuckers move a goddamned inch and I’ll spill you all over this nice floor.”

The rougher one said, “You old cunt, you’ll pay for this.” He made to reach into his pocket, maybe. His arm didn’t get far. It’s possible he wasn’t really reaching at all. He spun as he dropped and thumped into a puddle after the rifle crack, big hole through his face below the right eye.

The round had drafted heat over Amelia’s shoulder and she clamped her eyes closed to the scene. Who was this woman? She was always smiling in photographs, arms full of huge bowls of macaroni salad, or babies, or her knitting. Was this Nan the same as that other Nan?

“You gonna behave?”

“I’m not even one of them. Please. I’m a reporter, doing a piece. They use my brother-in-law’s driving service. He got me a job, hates these assholes. I’m from way down in Melbourne. Please.”

“Okay. Wheel the girl out to the van in the parking lot. You try anything and I’ll put you down, believe me?”

“Sure.”

“All right, move.”

He did.

“How you doing, girl?”

Amelia only nodded. Nan couldn’t see and asked again. Amelia told her she was okay.

Outside, the so-called reporter did nothing funny, even pushed Amelia into the van and locked her wheels without argument.

“Now, you go in there and light a fire.”

“What?”

Nan lifted the rifle higher and the man moved. In only seconds, Amelia heard the initial crackles, but saw nothing, facing the back of the van and the road they’d come from. One of the doors opened and the crackling sounds increased. The van shifted as Nan climbed in, leaning the vehicle slightly to the driver’s side.

“How you doing?”

“What is this?” Amelia asked, fresh out of tears, staring into the piss jar. The pinkish hue had darkened, and in the shadows of the van’s cargo space, seemed almost black.

“Retribution. Only one more to go.”

Returned to Lougheed, they pulled up to one of Mr. China’s buildings. Like many men before him and many since, he used inflated real estate holdings to launder illegal monies. One of those things that everybody knows, but anyone concerned lacks the necessary access to act upon.

“Who are we looking for?” Amelia gazed beyond the rivulets of water dripping down the rear window of the van.

“A big guy, flabby, golden hair, puckered face, and beady eyes. Probably in a suit. Always wears a suit in the papers.”

They’d been to two different buildings, even spoke to a rundown wife appearing to be on a mid-life bender. She was obviously once beautiful, but Botox and lifts left her looking like a humorless cat. Her eyes dark and soulless.

“What if we don’t find him?”

“I make do and you go away.”

Amelia looked over her shoulder, but couldn’t see Nan from her angle. “What do you mean, go away?”

“You disappear.” Nan’s voice was even and smooth and unwavering.

“What does that mean? I don’t want to—Hey! There’s a guy. I’ve seen him on TV.”

Through the back window, a man climbed out of a Lincoln Town Car with two women on his arms. The trio seemed to lean together for strength, like the frame of a teepee. They were loud and slow, and moving along the sidewalk right behind the van.

“That’s him.” Nan got out, slammed her door, and rushed to the back. She opened the rear. From the floor, she grabbed the cricket bat. Amelia saw a tiredness in Nan’s face that hadn’t been there before. “Get ready.” With her free hand, she pulled Amelia’s chair to the lip where the ramp would latch, locked rubber squeaking on steel.

“Okay. Okay.” Amelia’s heart began rattling afresh as she watched the scene.

Nan said nothing. One of the women said, “Hey!” but only at the last possible second before the cricket bat connected with Mr. China’s face.

Nan hadn’t attempted to hide it; she’d run, swung like a splitting axe, and slammed.

The girls said nothing, both taking steps in reverse. The cricket bat came down once more as Mr. China tried to rise. And again, this smack was wet. The girls turned, suddenly steady on their feet, and began hurrying away, though not running. A few backward glances were it.

Nan dragged the limp man to the van; his hair was a toupee, flapping above a pale scalp.

“You gotta come down.” Nan leaned against the van, tossed the bat into the gutter, murky rainwater rolling over it.

For the first time since the hospital, Amelia set the big jar aside. There was no reason she couldn’t stand, but it felt like she’d never done it before. Her knees shook and her weakened hands grabbed for the steel edges within the shell of the van’s body.

“Toughen up. Hurry.”

Amelia wanted to shout. This wasn’t her choice. This was crazy. This wasn’t…was, in part, her fault. Steven was trouble and she saw how her parents cowered, and in some ways, kowtowed to him. Gifts and the intrigue of an interested man, and she could only pretend being with a man above her parents didn’t make her smile.

Maybe the situation was not all her fault, but it was time that she owned what she’d done; if Nan’s eyes truly said anything at all from where she leaned on the bumper of the van.

Her voice was much less up for discussion. “Hurry, dammit.”

Amelia suddenly felt no fault once again. A victim of a crime and then of a night at the whims of a crazy relative.

“Hurry!”

Amelia lifted her gaze from her feet to protest when she saw the cop car down the street coming toward them. Her legs stiffened and steadied. Her knees bent. Pain tendrils coursed upwards from her vagina. She felt dampness down there, maybe a burst stitch, maybe something worse from the fleshy depths.

As if praying to Allah, Amelia folded her body and reached for Mr. China. Her lips connected with his bald head. It tasted like chemicals. She jerked sideways and spat into the jar, her motion nearly sending the fluid free of its glass confines.

The cop car was only forty feet away, rolling slowly, no doubt seeing something off about the situation. Nan had hurried over Mr. China, making it to the driver’s door. The police were twenty feet away when the battered man climbed to his feet, his hairpiece flipped sideways. Amelia reached with her right, her left hand on the heavy jar, and pulled one door closed.

The cops were ten feet away. She pulled the other door closed. Mr. China was on the sidewalk, moving steadily toward his gaudy apartment building. The cops carried on by and the van engine came to life.

“Now what?” Amelia had stretched out on the cool, hard, cargo space floor.

“Now, you disappear and I do what I gotta do.”

“But you said if we…” Amelia trailed.

“No, I didn’t say nothing about ifs. I’m too old to start new, but you’re not gonna live under this shadow one minute longer than you need to.”

“But—”

“But nothing.”

—

“Wait, I don’t understand.”

Amelia met Loretta’s gaze and offered only a gentle shake of the head. There was nothing to say. It was undoubtedly odd and what happened after was a mystery, nobody had come for her and nobody had come for Nan. It’s as if they gave up.

“Mr. China, you said?” Loretta typed as she spoke. Google offered a helping of useless links to books and blogs. She added the year and Australia. Pertinent information appeared then and she read a newspaper obituary explaining that five high-society men had died on the same night. “They’re dead, all of them.” Loretta popped off the names in the order listed. “Plus two others burned in a biker bar. The police withheld means of death. That’s insane. There’s a reporter who described a girl and an old woman… You said the men walked away like zombies after you spit in the jar.”

“Yeah.”

“So how’d they die?”

Amelia shook her head again. She’d always assumed they were dead since she was alive, but couldn’t connect A to B.

“So what did Nan do with the jar?” Loretta asked, enthralled, voice high and excited.

“I don’t know. She dropped me off and I saw you in your robe at the house and then Mom and Dad took me to the airport. They kept saying sorry. But it was my fault.” Amelia was teary again, and sniffling. There was a half-emptied coffee cup before her on the table.

“That’s some story. I guess we ought to call Nan.”

“You call her Nan too?”

“Everybody does, your father’s mother did.”

Amelia swallowed a cool mouthful and then said, “How old is she?”

“My guess, well into triple digits. Has to be.” Loretta rose and walked to the old telephone seat. She withdrew the small drawer and brought it back to the kitchen. The portable landline was on the table already. “I haven’t been through this in years.”

Scraps and little address book pages, endangered species in the times of email and social media. She opened one small black book, tossed it, and opened a second. She found Nan’s number and dialed.

“Hello, Nan. It’s—yeah, call display is great. It’s Amel...Lacy-Jay. She’s got trouble and needs—” Loretta looked at Amelia as she listened to the ancient voice. “Okay, yeah.” More listening, more waiting. “She’ll do it exactly, I’ll help—” More silence. “Okay, I’ll help where I can, but not with the—” A short silence. “Okay. Love you too. Here she is.”

Loretta handed over the phone.

“Hello.”

 “You’re a woman now. You’re tough, my bet. You do as it says and you do it all the way through and won’t nobody connect you. Maybe we should’a done something ‘bout that reporter, bet that’s how you link in, that and the hospital. Using the jar fixes most the trails, but not all… I love you, but I’m too old to take on any more of this.”

The line went dead.

Amelia held the phone away and for what felt the hundredth time that night, looked at Loretta in distressed confusion.

—

“See, you missed one of your links before jetting off for the land of winter and maple syrup.” Officer Mark Finch dipped a fry in ketchup.

“One itty-bitty link.” Officer Paul Matthews absently brushed a hand over his alfalfa—something he’d likely done his entire life—as he grinned up at Amelia.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Come now, Amelia, Lacy-Jay. Anyway, ask me who you missed.” Mark snapped the fry into his mouth.

“Do it. Ask him.”

Defeating her urge to deny deny deny until the end of time, she asked.

“The vet. See she had a stab of guilt, or paranoia, probably paranoia. She went to the cops asking for a trade: a chat for a deal. She had some bad debts, but was mostly a good girl, a bit of a substance problem. Taking her deal also cut off one of this Mr. China’s easy prescription pads.”

Paul piped in, “Always nice to axe an access point for dealers.”

“That’s right. Can you guess what she said she’d recently done to a helpless girl, same girl who ended up at the hospital according to a photo lineup? I can see by your face you can guess. Bet you can’t guess what she brought to the station.”

“No way you’ll guess.” Paul had a mouthful of burger as he spoke.

“Nah, I’ll just tell you. It was a shop vacuum. Goddamned barbarian.”

“At least she’d cleaned it before using it.”

Mark nodded. “Yes, you might’ve caught hoof and mouth or something if she hadn’t. The detectives were onto you before you snuck out of the hospital. Assumed you weren’t going anywhere, but at that point, you were a witness, not a murderer. Guess whose blood matched.”

“Do it. Guess.”

Amelia shook internally like a leaf caught beneath a wiper blade. Outwardly, she trembled, though only slightly. “What do you want?”

Mark and Paul both grinned.

“We have different tastes, but we decided to be gentlemen on our first date.” Mark pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Nine, tonight. You might want to bring mouthwash.”

Amelia kept her eyes on the paper as the two out-of-town cops rose from their seats. In her periphery, she saw bills falling to the table—at least they paid this time. The note had three words and a number on it: THE DELUXE #9 HARRIS.

A customer snapped his fingers and called out, “Miss, miss.” Amelia grabbed the piece of paper, stuffed it in her pocket, collected the cash, and rushed it over to the till. For the next three hours she thought of nothing but those disgusting men and the things she hadn’t done in years, not with a partner anyhow. She wasn’t a prude, had the internet and a device that ran on two double-A batteries.

Once home, she asked Loretta if Nan’s package had come. It was her only hope to get out of the night, short of blunt force murder or facing what had happened a lifetime ago.

—

Harris was twenty minutes from the Lemley household where Amelia lived with her divorcee aunt and, in the summer, student cousin Sarah. The Deluxe was a rundown motel on the highway. The signage boasted cut-rate prices and free Wi-Fi. The white siding had gone yellow and around the office doorway, spray foam bubbled in orange blobs. There were six cars in the dusty parking lot, none pricier than basic, none newer than a decade old; aside from the black Dodge Charger with heavy charcoal rims.

As she passed it, walking the strip of uneven cement slabs between the building and an on again off again wrought iron railing in need of a fresh coat of Tremclad, Amelia imagined knowing cars and break lines. She’d save herself all the trouble and mystery, just kill them in an accident. That might trace and it might not.

Too quickly, #9 was right there. She took three long breaths and knocked. The door opened. Both men wore bathrobes. They didn’t match, meaning, insanely, they’d brought them from home. Mark had answered the door and Paul was on the bed. On the TV, Ice-T rattled off stats about new homebrew drugs to Kelli Giddish—some ironic pre-assault entertainment.

Amelia entered, emptyhanded, purse slung over her shoulder. She’d actually taken the advice and brought a travel Scope, because they were joking but not joking.

Mark took her purse and rooted through it, kicked the door shut. Paul switched the station with the remote, landed on a cable radio channel. It was old rock—dad rock.

“Strip, slow,” Paul said.

“But keep on your bra and panties. We need to save some mystery for next week.”

“And the week after.”

Amelia was numb, defeated. She pulled her t-shirt over her head.

“Slow, to the music. Jesus, only going to be worse later if I’m not ready to go.” Mark rubbed his cock gently, through the thick blue robe.

Doing as told, Amelia swayed and tugged. It was no better than novice, and she was far from perfect physically. Paul ordered her to her knees. Then Paul ordered her to crawl over to the bed. The carpet was filthy with miscolored fluff balls and grains of gravel. She closed her eyes and moved until she felt the heat of the man. She looked up and Paul grinned at her.

“Open my robe.”

She reached up, did. A voice screamed for help within and she looked back to the door, as if Nan might appear once again, fix this situation. The door remained closed while Mark’s robe had opened as well. He stroked himself slowly.

“Put me in your mouth.” Paul held his erection forward.

Amelia paused for three erratic heartbeats and then did as she was told.

—

Off and on, Amelia pounded her fist on the steering wheel. Off and on, Amelia cried as she drove through the dark streets, hours longer than necessary. Off and on, Amelia screamed wordless shrieks. At home, her aunt greeted her with a hug. Amelia struggled away and ran to her room.

—

She checked the mail six times for the third morning in a row before work. On the fourth day, a call came. It was a lawyer with an Australian accent.

“Nan?”

“I suppose, yes. She’s been charged with trafficking illegal narcotics through the postal service. She’s adamant there’s nothing illegal in the package, but a dog sniffed it out and until the—”

“The package isn’t coming?” Amelia heard the desperation in her voice but could not control it. The world began unravelling. She had another meeting at The Deluxe that night, and what could she do? She wasn’t a killer, couldn’t stab or poison, didn’t know where you’d even buy a gun. She wasn’t the Dragon Tattoo girl, couldn’t manipulate and mine for information. All she had was faith in an old magic that saved her once before. “It has to come.”

“I’m sorry. What is it?” The woman on the distant end of the line sounded youngish, had said her name was Naomi Fine, was a public defender. “She’s crazy about getting it to you.”

“It’s a…remedy. A cancer cure.”

The woman laughed, then said, “Sorry.”

“I need it.”

“Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

The conversation fell into an elongated silence. Amelia hung up, recognizing hopelessness. She had to get ready for work anyway.

—

She bussed the dishes from the final table of stragglers nine minutes after the open sign went dark. The grease scent on the air felt especially suffocating. The pressure of meeting the cops again, in that crummy goddamned motel, made it difficult to walk.

She had those eight thousand dollars in her savings account. Surely enough to reboot once again. She wouldn’t lose her identity with that little bit, but what might those men do to Loretta?

She slammed the four plates down next to the new dishwasher and cook. He was French, rarely spoke, and did his job diligently, but with attitude. “Bitch,” he whispered.

She looked at the knives on the magnetic strip on the wall and imagined sliding a knife into the asshole’s back. She imagined trying to do that against two trained and armed cops. It made her body rack until tears spilled.

The Frenchman stared at her until she left the kitchen. She wasn’t quite in hysterics but understood that the reality of the wholly irritating adage wasn’t far off. Through the hallway, past the washrooms, Amelia grabbed her purse and jacket from the office. She texted her aunt as she walked, stating she wouldn’t be doing the till, couldn’t.

K

Motel again??

Amelia didn’t answer with her fingers and shouted fuck as she crossed through the doorway out into the parking lot. The yard light banked off the silver paint of her Toyota, made flat matte with dust.

Another painful idea popped into her head and she imagined wrapping that Tercel around a hydro pole or taking it off a cliff. Some things were worse than death, maybe.

She stopped at a late-night liquor store on her way to the motel. The boy at the counter asked for her ID, then asked if she needed any weed, and then asked if she wanted to party. It might’ve been flattering if he wasn’t a twenty-something stoner that likely got a hard-on for every single woman that came through the door.

“Come on, Amelia.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head gently, he’d asked for identification so he could say her name. Fucking every man wanted the same goddamned thing.

“Fuck you.”

The young man was suddenly pissed. “I was just being nice, you fucking dyke.”

Amelia Climbed into the car, drank a third back of the bottle of cranberry juice she’d plucked from the checkout fridge, and then topped it off with Smirnoff. It tasted like poison though numbed her flesh exactly as she had anticipated.

She hadn’t been drunk since Christmas Eve, seven months earlier. 

The motel lights came into view and Amelia’s heart rattled. She parked next to the car in front of #9. It was not the Dodge.

Half the small jug had emptied and Amelia stumbled slightly, legs like rubber, toward the door. She tried the handle. The latch had locked automatically. She knocked and three seconds later, the door flung open and she looked at Paul Matthews in his bathrobe. The room was empty otherwise.

“You smell like French fries.”

Amelia lifted the bottle to her lips.

“You drunk and driving?”

Amelia swallowed. “Fuck you. Let’s get this done with.”

“Not with you stinking like that. Take a shower.”

The shower not being an unwanted cock in her mouth—if that’s all he meant to do again—made it a positive turn. The door had a button lock and she pressed it. She’d still stink when she put the clothes back on. She scanned the little bottles on the counter. They’d do nothing for her. She bent and checked the sink cupboard.

Dusty with a label bubbling and stiffened from moisture, she withdrew an ancient Windex bottle. It would have to do. She stripped and lined her shorts and shirt out on the floor, began misting, flipped the items and did the other side like she was making pancakes.

The shower got steamy quickly and the head had great pressure. Standing there was actually nice, relaxing. Her mind drifted as she massaged shampoo into her hair. Life had gone sour quickly, but this moment was good and okay.

She never considered that little interior locks popped easily and quietly. Maybe it was the vodka and maybe it was the patter over her head, but she didn’t hear Paul Matthews enter and didn’t register the momentary chilling of the hot washroom.

The curtain moved silently. Amelia turned up into the stream, water landing and running over her tired face. Hands touched first and then something prodded her ass.

She jumped, attempted turning, couldn’t. A hand pressed her back, arching her into a downward dog pose.

“You’re too dry inside.” Paul said. He hadn’t gotten beyond the tip and withdrew, coated himself in shampoo.

He stabbed and Amelia gasped.

—

Paul was singing Summer of 69 in the shower while Amelia towelled off. Sinking into despair was a notion that no longer fit; she was sunken. The mental numbness met splashed lava—the image of Nan in a holding cell. She’d pulled her underwear on, then shorts, and finally shirt after she kicked them out of the washroom. It all stank of chemicals.

The sum of the elements sent her over and she rushed to the bedside—the TV was on low, a boxing match and one man took jab after jab, the announcer said something about having to move his head, about not keeping the target down the center line. She yanked one of the cords from the socket, the room dimmed, but the TV remained running. The six-foot standing lamp was old and hefty. The shade had clamped over a yellowed bulb, but came away easily.

Paul continued singing.

Amelia slammed the bulb against the wall. White flakes of glass went brown the half-second before raining to the dirty carpet.

Moving, quickly. Back in the washroom.

Paul howled, “…of the summer, the summer of sixty-nine.” The drawing out of the nine met the squeak of one of the taps turning.

Amelia plugged the lamp into the socket. The second squeak was right on the tail of the first. Then the curtain rings clattered. Amelia had planned to toss the lamp into the shower and run. Water gurgled down the drain with big gulping swallows.

The original plan was for shit.

“Hey, wha—?”

Amelia stabbed the lamp like a pitchfork. The jagged glass of the bulb planted into the hollow of the cop’s throat. Flesh made the conductive connection between currents and Paul went rigid. Three flashes jumped in the back of his throat before the power died and Paul dropped.

The bathroom was dark.

Paul gasped.

Amelia let go of the lamp to bring her hands to her face, as if she’d been sleepwalking and only now understood there were consequences in the world.

The hot bulb pressed into the crunchy one-ply on the roll. Smoke rose and met Amelia’s nose. A tiny flame lit and died. An idea landed amid the desperation and she made quick work of unravelling the two extra rolls of toilet paper. Paul moaned on the floor.

“Shut up,” she said as she slipped her feet into her shoes.

Laces tied, room key grabbed from the nightstand, she ran to her car. The center console was a mess, like a mobile everything drawer. She felt the green Bic she knew to be there and broke back to the room’s door.

The lock tumblers clicked and the handle turned. It was much darker within the room than the parking lot. In a nearly blind shuffle, Amelia leaned down to the knee-high mound of toilet paper. It lit. Light washed over the room and she saw the mostly empty bottle of Windex. She snatched it and poured the liquid on the floor near the toilet paper flames. The fire caught on it and spread with surprising slowness.

Then she saw that Paul was gone.

There was a sound from the main room. Amelia’s feet thumped on the hard carpet. Light splashed over Paul’s face from his cellphone. Slobber ran from his lips. The hole in his neck was charred black.

Amelia ran and tried to punt the phone from his hands but missed and nailed his chin. In his already unstable state, he crumbled, lights out.

Huffing wildly, her thoughts spun a million bad what ifs per second. One thing at a time. The fire crackled, promising that it had found something firmer than toilet paper. The smoke detector remained silent. Amelia cast a look over her shoulder and the coated wallpaper had begun peeling down from one wall, green flames parading over the ancient glue on its backside.

The smoke was acrid and unnatural. Amelia grabbed Paul’s arm and dragged.

—

Loretta answered the telephone to shouting. Amelia had driven three hours north, without a destination, she simply had to get away. Loretta told the scared girl to come home, she had to get her clothes first, and it would be better to take out cash from a local ATM and…she had to see her.

—

Amelia pulled in the lane. The sun was only an hour away. She was dead tired and had nearly parked on the shoulder of the highway multiple times for a nap. The urge rose again there in the driveway, but she decided she couldn’t be caught sleeping.

Besides, that door was a yawning hug.

To her surprise, two lights were on. A smoky scent floated on the air, one that emboldened the reek on her clothing.

“Loretta?”

“In here, sweetie,” said a voice that was very far from Loretta’s voice.

Amelia stopped walking and considered turning, bolting through the door, getting into her car, and never looking back. Instead, she inhaled and stepped into the kitchen.

“Hey, you,” Mark Finch said, his badge was open on the table, likely to verify to Loretta that the trouble was real. “Seems like you’ve proven me right. Pauly-boy’s idea to have you one at a time was a bad one. I told him, but I can be flexible. His kids are heartbroken.”

Exhausted, Amelia fell to the floor and leaned against the wall below the telephone charger. She didn’t mean to kill anybody’s father, no matter what they’d done. In movies, people moved on so easily when they kill with righteous intent, but that asshole’s face kept jumping from the back of her mind, sparks in his throat.

“Been a long night for me too. So get up.”

Amelia rolled forward onto her hands and knees. She closed her eyes and envisioned the linoleum opening into a black hole, she’d fall, and fall, and fall, never reaching the bottom. Fall long enough that she forgot everything and nothing mattered.

“I said up, you murderous cunt.”

The telephone rang. Amelia lifted her head to see the bald cop looking at Loretta with curiosity in his eyes. Loretta stood.

“No, let Lacy-Jay answer it.”

Amelia crawled, a second cosmic and ridiculous thought landed: maybe it’s god. She straightened and snatched the phone from the base.

“Hello?”

“Girl.”

“Nan?”

“I can’t get the package to ya. They let me come home, but I can’t mail nothing. Not ‘sposed to leave the county neither.”

“What does that mean?”

Nan let out a heavy breath. “You’re on your own. Sorry.”

The line went dead. Amelia held the phone to her face as she climbed to her feet. She then turned and fired the receiver at the cop.

It missed and smashed against the refrigerator.

“’Fuck you think you’re doing?”

“Eat shit.”

Mark got to his feet, withdrew his pistol, crossed the kitchen, flung an arm back, cocking it for a strike. Amelia steadied her chin and closed her eyes.

The thud was wet. Chair legs squeaked on the floor.

Amelia opened her eyes and Loretta was down, her blood traversing the designed grooves in the linoleum. “You pig!” Amelia charged and the pistol swung back around.

It banked off the top of her head, an imperfect strike. The power of her follow through surprised the cop, taking him from his feet. The gun skittered and clanged against the drawer beneath the oven. Amelia scrambled off the cop, not toward the gun, but toward the knife block on the counter.

Up to her feet, she pulled from top-right: the longest and slimmest of the bunch. It was an under used knife and therefore had the best edge. Weighty in her grip, she turned, ready to fight, adrenaline outweighing all else—as it was apt to do.

The gun was in Mark’s hand and the muzzle flashed. Amelia dove. The bullet cut the sleeve of her uniform and tore, then burnt the flesh of her upper arm. The knife slid from her hand and she was scrambling again. This time away.

The hallway from the kitchen branched deeper into the smallish home or, alternatively, outside. Her purse was right where she’d left it by the door and through the door was her car. To her right was the obvious bet and she took it.

The rubber soles of her sneakers squeaked when she changed route. She scooped her purse at a lucky moment and a bullet splintered wood from the doorframe, showering it down into her hair. She barrelled into the door in order to keep low.

Another shot blew and this one went through the slight love handle she carried. Hot and painful. Her body fell into the door again and bounced back, her spine flattened on the cool floor, the door creaked open next to her head.

“You’re fucked now.” Mark stood over her and aimed.

Amelia saw his eyes had hardened and knew what to expect. A shot was coming. Time was up. The past finally had her.

Instead, she saw her aunt’s arms wrap around the cop’s neck and swing him backward. It gave Amelia the necessary time to rise. It also gave her time to see her aunt’s demise from a bird’s eye view.

Mark had shaken the woman and put three shots into her chest and one into her throat. A cry crept from behind Amelia’s teeth, but there was no time to be sad or broken. She scooped up her purse again and whipped open the door. The hinges creaked. The door clattered behind her when she let go, and she was the ten feet to her car when a bullet thwupt through the windshield. She spun and broke for the side yard.

A small patch of forest separated her aunt’s place from a hayfield behind an under-construction sub-division. The sun had risen far enough to blast the landscape in orange-red light. The shadows were long and weak. The wisps clinging to the trees were ratty like wet dog fur. Underfoot, twigs and bark chips crunched.

Two shots echoed. Amelia neither saw nor felt them. Another shot banged, this time she felt the terrifying backwash of parted air as it tore by her cheek. Another shot zipped and scattered the mess of her suddenly sweaty hair.

Keeping the target right down the center, said the voice of a boxing color commentator in her head. She crouched and took a left. She’d never gone far in the woods, didn’t know how long the forest continued before it met the town again, not out the back anyway. Loretta’s property was already behind her.

Ahead, the forest thinned. This was troublesome. Amelia looked over her shoulder as she ran. Mark had continued on in the wrong direction. A half thought formed maybe I’ll ma—the world fell away beneath her and she thumped into a stony gulley. A cry left her mouth as her leg snapped.

Her hand hovered an inch above the torn flesh where the bones at the bottom of her calf jutted. She swooned and whined. The break hurt in a way that sucked the air from her lungs and she gulped for oxygen.

“Lacy-Jay! Where’d you go?”

Panting, bleary-eyed, Amelia wrapped her hands around her leg, inches from the injury. She scanned the gulley looking for a place to hide. She saw a walking path that, had she come down knowingly, she could’ve easily traversed. It did her no good the way she was.

“Lacy-Jay!”

Mark was closer and she needed to hide, but where? The gulley was grey emptiness that stretched about five hundred feet in either direction.

“Laaay-ceee-Jaaay.”

He was right there. Amelia pulled her body backward and leaned against the natural wall. The purse was on the ground next to her. The strap looked like a snake or a…

“Laaay-ceee-Jaaay.”

The path was a couple yards to her right. She grabbed her purse and forced her weight onto her good leg. The pain of shifting blood pressure was some kind of awful.

“Laaay-ceee-Jaaay.”

She whined and drag-hopped.

“Laaay-ceee-Jaaay. What’s this?”

Mark spoke with what Amelia’s mother used to call an indoor voice. He was too close. Too damned close. She struggled for the path.

“I hear you.”

Stones and dust crumbled onto Amelia and she stopped moving, posted in place. She choked down on the purse, the leather of the strap went from snake to noose the moment Mark stepped into view, he was too concerned with his feet to see her until the strap had wrapped around his throat, the bag left her grip momentarily, flipping and twisting the strap tighter, Mark’s fingers pulled to free his airway, Amelia yanked the bag back, inadvertently shifting weight onto her bad leg, the bones crunched and squirmed beneath the flesh where they hadn’t broken through, a scream left her throat, but she held tight, even as Mark’s weight thumped the oxygen from her lungs when he landed against her chest, he pawed and she twisted, his cheeks turned red, his arms swatted, his fingers scratched, and still she held on, spinning and yanking, his arms began flailing and still she held.

His body moved not at all anymore and still she held.

Minutes passed and still she held.

—

The hospital room was nice thanks to the dope in her veins. The doctors had reset her leg and the local cops came to get her statement. Mark Finch had been suspended from his post for drug abuse and sexual assault claims once before, so nobody had trouble buying Amelia’s tale of an obsessed customer. She admitted that Paul Matthews, according to the picture the cop showed her, had also been in the restaurant. She fabricated an argument and seeing one man threaten the other with a steak knife.

“They’d been drinking. The one that showed up at the house had ordered whisky and the guy in the picture only drank beer.”

The cops left and Sarah came to see her, tears streaming. They’d both lost Loretta, but Sarah lost her mother too. Amelia tried to be a shoulder. Sarah departed after explaining the upcoming funeral and that the doctors said Amelia would be fine with a cast on crutches, or at very least in a wheelchair. The idea of sitting in a wheelchair chilled her.

Later, the sky dim through the window, Amelia awoke in a fog to the sound of a door closing. There was a woman she’d never seen, in jeans and a white shirt tucked into her waistline. She had a plain face, looked rough, like a rancher. Her hair was flat and boring, dirty blonde. Her eyes peered into Amelia, as she withdrew a mostly empty Starbucks Frappuccino bottle and set it on the nightstand next to the bed.

“He had his troubles. Was a good man, not perfect, but he was mine.”

Amelia smacked her lips, cottony with morphine. The voice sounded familiar, in a way.

“My guess, you had it coming. You young sluts always do.”

No, not the voice. The accent. This woman was Australian.

“He was mine, wasn’t yours to kill.”

My wife and her people are Australian, that’s what that crazy asshole had said.

“He killed my aunt.” Amelia barely got the words out. They burned in her throat at the effort. She was wildly exhausted, but understood that no matter what the drugs wanted her to do, she had to be awake.

“Don’t give you the right.”

This confrontation was absurd. “He tried to kill me. He…assaulted me, made me…” She couldn’t say it.

“Bullshit.”

The woman leaned over Amelia and planted lips on her mouth. She then uncapped the Frappuccino bottle. The act rang a warning that seemed impossible to fathom.

Amelia then saw the milky color in the bottle was yellowy and wrong. The woman spat into the mix.

Amelia opened her mouth to say something...but nothing came out. When the saliva met the fluid, Amelia felt separated from her body. She watched the woman cap and shake the bottle, eyes locked. The cap came away and the bottle tipped to the woman’s lips.

Kissed and spat.

Yellowy in color, but cloudy.

A glass bottle.

Seemingly impossible or not, it was like Nan’s answer. The jar was different, but the method was the same. Nan had told her the second half on the phone. She’d dreaded drinking her piss mixed with who knew what, but it had been more appetizing than the alternative.

The woman emptied the bottle, grimaced, and Amelia felt a fire at her core. It was incredible. She wanted to run, scream, anything, but her body no longer belonged to her.

—

During her 3:00 AM rounds, Janice Weller opened the door and began shouting for help. On the bed where a woman had been was a soupy mess of brown fluid, bumpy as stew, and next to the mess was a hollow leg cast. The nurse ran, thought nothing of the empty Starbucks bottle on the bedside table.

XX