Lovely Death Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LOVELY DEATH.

  Copyright © 2014 by Brandon Meyers.

  Lovely Death

  A novel

  By

  Brandon Meyers

  Copyright © 2014 by Brandon Meyers

  I need a rival. I need a rival, I found my soul, let’s set it on fire.

  I’m not the righteous. I’m not the innocent. I’m just a sign it’s all gone wrong.

  -BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB

  First time I shot her, I shot her in the side.

  Hard to watch her suffer but with the second shot she died.

  Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone.

  -JOHNNY CASH

  One

  Laura Scranton earned her bullet.

  She had deserved to die. Lunacy and ill-will had paved the path to her demise and in the end her death was not only inevitable, but justified.

  At least that’s what they said.

  And everyone seemed to be in agreement. Well, almost everyone. Nick Aragon was beginning to have his doubts. The police, the coroner, even the tabloids were on his side. She’d had a gun, after all. But Nick, the man who’d pulled the trigger, wasn’t so sure anymore. Two weeks had passed since that bloody night in the stairwell of his home, and the sense of relief Nick had initially felt had begun to creep away from him, slithering off to leave him alone with his thoughts. And, as they always had been, his thoughts were troubling.

  Nick wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead and stared at the grass. Her body had been in the ground only a few days and already they had patched over her rectangular resting place with little squares of too-green sod. There was no grave marker yet, but Nick knew this was the right one. He’d received vague directions from the caretaker at the attached funeral home. They proved to be unnecessary. Hers was the only freshly opened plot in the vicinity.

  Even without that evidence, Nick knew. He could feel it in his bones. It was an unexplainable thing. Once he’d entered the grounds the grave had drawn him nearer, had almost called to his soul. He crossed half an acre of neatly trimmed grass to arrive at Laura’s unmarked resting place. And he had been standing there, staring, ever since.

  Time stood still as he surveyed the plot. Maybe it had only been a minute. Maybe it had been an hour. Memories drifted through his head as he imagined Laura, planted six feet beneath his shoes, staring up at him in eternal darkness. He pictured their first meeting, remembered how she’d smiled. He recalled their brief intimacy. Then, after discovering her true nature, he recalled the police station. And the phone calls. And the restraining order. Finally, he remembered the way she had crumpled atop his Turkish rug, like a beautiful doll sputtering to a peaceful rest in a pool of crimson. The little revolver hung limp in her hand, its barrel coming to rest on the sleek tile with an audible crack.

  Nick’s stomach twisted at that one. He dragged a hand across his brow again and drew himself out of his head. In the trees skirting the gated property crows cawed at one another in the cool humidity. The sounds of rolling rubber drifted from the road, carrying passengers safely past the garden of the dead. In his peripheral vision, Nick saw a handful of other visitors standing or kneeling at gravestones. He blinked his eyes and realized for the first time that they were wet with tears. He brushed them away.

  “Dead and gone, Laura,” he said, mostly to the deceased woman.

  The thirty-year-old film director raised the leather jacket that had been hanging at his side and flung it over his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry you had to die.”

  Nick swallowed hard, looked around. He saw an elderly couple setting flowers at the foot of a marble slab, twenty yards away. He looked back to Laura’s grave, took a deep breath, and felt his heart harden.

  “You made my life hell, bitch. You don’t know how many times I wished for you to be worm food, how many times I wished you were down there dead in the dirt. But, I’m sorry anyway. Sorry you had to die just to end all this stupid shit. I guess that’s why I drove all the way out here. I’ve been having…dreams about you ever since it happened. Lewis said he thought I needed closure.” He paused. “I guess that’s just another way of saying I needed to make sure you were really dead. Needed to see it with my own eyes.”

  The dead woman said nothing in return, which Nick supposed was the only real answer he was looking for.

  “They put your picture in the magazines,” Nick said. “Hell, you’re even more famous than me now, more famous than Sandy. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

  A piece of candy wrapper gave a golden shimmer in the sunlight, wedged between two jigsaw pieces of emerald grass.

  “I don’t care much for it, just so you know. The producers are shitting themselves at the publicity draw for the next movie, but it makes me sick to think your death is going to make the studio a whole lot of money. And me too. Funny when you stop to think about it, I guess. That killing you is the worst thing, and the best thing, that’s ever happened to me. How fucked up is that?”

  Nick gave his chin a nervous scratch, felt the bristles of a week-old beard poke his fingers.

  “I don’t know what else to say, Laura. I’m sorry. I wish I’d never met you.”

  Again the shiny wrapper twinkled and Nick kicked at it with his Doc Martens. But when his toe dug at the earth he saw that the sparkling piece of litter was not really a candy wrapper. He bent down, slowly, and plucked the thing from the ground. He furrowed his brow. In his fingertips he held the cool, hollow casing of a bullet. Its brass was immaculately polished, but the shell itself was empty. Its round had been fired. He twirled it in his fingers, examined it with terrible fascination. Upon inspection he found that it was not entirely pristine. The words Lovely Death were carved horizontally into one side in crude little letters. Perplexed, he turned the bullet case further and found, stamped on the base, in a circular pattern around the firing pin, the words: WINCHESTER * 45 AUTO.

  Nick felt his lungs tighten, forcing out the air. He made a fist around the spent casing, lifted his eyes to survey the area more closely. Again he saw only silent mourners visiting the people of their pasts, moving slowly about the cemetery. There were no cameras pointed his direction, no photographers hidden in the trees.

  “What the fuck?” Nick said, feeling the metal cylinder pressed against the inside of his palm. It was an exact brand match for the bullets that were loaded in the magazine of his Glock: a twin of the slug that had ruptured Laura’s lower intestine and kidney.

  It was a filthy joke, an obscene gesture in acknowledgement of Laura’s passing. Nick shook his head. Someone had left it there as a tasteless homage to the recently dead woman’s brief notoriety. People were disgusting.

  “So long, Laura,” Nick said. And then, without knowing exactly why he said it, he added, “stay dead.”

  With that, Nick slipped on his sunglasses, gave one last look at the occupied plot, and jammed his hands into his pockets. He started walking to the car, feeling no better about himself or the world.

  There was a long drive ahead of him. Even longer than he knew.

  ***

  Nick punched the radio button so he wouldn’t have to stew in the sound of his own thoughts. The satellite radio kicked out a haunting ballad by Damien Jurado, which successfully managed to clear his head. He steered the car along block after block of storefronts and lush greenery. Nick had never been to Seattle before, and he had no interest in stopping to play tourist. He’d come for one reason only, and now that it had been fulfilled, he wan
ted nothing more than to get back on the road, to get away from Laura.

  It was late afternoon and Nick felt like he had at least another two good hours of driving left in him. If he could put a couple hundred miles between him and Seattle that was for the better. He could catch a few Z’s at a rest stop and then continue on toward Chicago. It was a two day drive, going at his usual pace, boosted by coffee and the half-full case of energy drinks in the back seat.

  For now, Los Angeles was out of the picture. Nick wouldn’t be going back there anytime soon, wanted to wait until the craziness died down a bit. No, Chicago was the place for him to ride out this storm. No one would be expecting him there. No cameras. Sandra would keep him safe when he got there.

  She hadn’t answered his calls for months, but she wouldn’t have a choice when he showed up on her doorstep.

  Nick depressed the gas pedal as he hit the on-ramp for I-90. The 1970 Mercury Cougar’s wheels bit the road and propelled him onto the highway just as the sun disappeared once more behind Washington’s perpetual shell of gray. The car rolled along smoothly, devoured the highway with willing hunger, much unlike it would have just three years ago.

  Nick had driven the hunk of crap to Los Angeles, stopping every forty miles to fill her overheating radiator with water and watching it steam. He’d slept in her every night, there in the backseat, which had been more duct tape and exposed springs than it had been vinyl. But still, it was his only real home since leaving Denver. Hell, it had practically been his only home when he was in Denver. He rode her as hard as she would allow it all the way to L.A., spending nights drinking his supper from Budweiser cans on her hood, beneath the desert stars. The car had been his father’s, one that he’d always intended to restore, ever since Nick was a kid. But time slipped away, as it had a knack for doing, and before the old man knew it, he was dying of lung cancer and the car still sat in the carport, drivable, but far from reliable. Still, it had survived the journey, with only Nick and a single suitcase as its load. In the suitcase had been a change of clothes, a couple of truly awful movie scripts, and a Canon digital camera that had been bought in a Colfax Avenue pawn shop that smelled like pee.

  And a few months later he’d made the movie, that one little indie-horror project that had polished his crappy life into gold.

  Now, the Cougar was a thing of beauty. Her restoration was the first thing Nick had spent money on. The car was in the shop before he even thought about paying off his old credit card bills.

  As Nick guided the vintage muscle car down the highway, her midnight purple paint shed droplets of rainwater like a raven’s gliding feathers. Usually, even if driving the car didn’t make him feel completely better, it at least helped to shut off the chattering in his mind.

  But after seventeen hours on the road, his mind was pretty well wiped. It was exhausted. And so was the rest of his body. He needed sleep. Instead, Nick reached into the back seat, let his hand grope across the white leather bench until he found an unopened energy drink can. He brought it forward and pulled the tab as the car coasted into and out of the shade of a covered bridge.

  If he could just make it a couple more hours on the road, he promised his body he’d find a rest stop and knock off for a while. Now that he’d gotten his closure, he hoped the dreams would stop, that his sleep would be restful once again. Lewis may not have been a licensed psychologist—he was, in fact, Nick’s Assistant Director—but he was a damn smart guy. And he was the closest thing to a best friend that Nick had ever had, so he really did want to believe the man was right.

  Despite the road weariness, Nick supposed that he did feel somewhat better after seeing the grave. Reality felt more concrete around him. His head was slightly clearer after witnessing the finality of it all. He was turning a new page in his life. Even if it wasn’t easy, it was a good first step. Maybe he’d even try calling Sandra again to let her know he was on the way. He knew she’d be pissed. She would probably yell. But she’d get over it. He hoped.

  Nick grinned at that, took a swig of his fake strawberry drink, and glanced in the rearview mirror. What he saw was the desiccated, leathery face of a dead woman staring back at him from the rear seat. Her skin was pale and waxen, lips too red with makeup. Her eyes were stitched closed with thick black thread, and her mouth opened in a silent, agonized scream. It was Laura Scranton. Through all of the foul features of her wasted face he still recognized her.

  The drink can fell from Nick’s hand to land on the floorboard in a foaming pink geyser of carbonation. His other hand slipped on the wheel and the Cougar lurched dangerously to the right shoulder of the highway. The car began to vibrate and jostle as the tires bounced over the man-made rumble strips at the edge of the road.

  Nick seized the wheel with both hands, reacting barely in time to keep himself and his vehicle from careening into the ditch. He overcorrected a bit, nearly sideswiped a minivan at sixty miles an hour, and managed to straighten back out again. The tires chirped briefly in protest but he had successfully kept from charging off road.

  Another look at the mirror showed that the ghastly passenger had disappeared.

  Once he had the vehicle under control, Nick pulled the thing over at the shoulder and skidded to a halt. His heart hammered in his chest and his hands were shaking. He spun around, saw that the rear compartment was indeed empty. He thought of the dead, filthy thing that he’d seen there only a moment before, and shuddered.

  Nick put a hand to his chest, where his blue tee shirt was wet with lukewarm, sugary liquid. He shut off the motor, then leaned his head forward against the wheel and took deep breaths.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he said. “Get a hold of yourself, man.”

  Okay, fine. Enough was enough. Dreams or no dreams, he needed to get some sleep. His lack of rest during the drive north, plus the stress of the past couple weeks, had nearly just killed him. Nick lifted his head, nodded in agreement with himself, and with the keys in his pocket, crawled into the backseat. Dreams be damned.

  As soon as his body got horizontal, he found that he could hardly keep his eyes open. Nick pushed the case of remaining energy drink cans onto the floor and pressed his head against the plush leather of the seat cushion. Above him, the roof of the car played a soft, steady lullaby of raindrops massaging steel. Nick blinked a few times, watching rivulets of water run down the windshield. And then he was asleep.

  Two

  Nick did dream. It was very much like the others.

  Nick found himself seated at a bar. Of the ten stools that lined its polished, L-shaped top, only Nick’s was occupied. The room was empty and still. An oblong, oval mirror framed the bar back, overseeing the three tiers of booze bottles below, and reflecting the squalid splendor of the place back at any seated patrons. It was a dive, of the flashing neon and stale-beer-reeking variety.

  Nick had been here before. He recognized the shape of the oak bar back, and its tarnished brass filigrees. The polyurethane was worn away in patches from the mahogany beneath his fingers, where it had upheld the elbows of thousands of departed drunks. How did he know this place?

  “Hello?” Nick said. The word came out a blunt muffle. “Hey, anybody home?” It was the lack of an echo that stunted his voice, as if the room were a vacuum and his words nothing more than unfortunate dust motes being sucked from the air.

  He spun around in his chair. The room rolled by in the stilted, slow-motion movement of dreaming, an effect he sometimes liked to implement back in Hollywood with the help of the guys in the digital effects department.

  A dozen or so barren tables and vacant booths stared back at him, dimly lit by a few antique iron chandeliers. In the corner, an old-fashioned jukebox sat, darkly mute. There were no windows or doors to be seen. It was a place that was real because of its clunky detail, its unremarkable shabbiness. And, yet, it lacked any warmth of age or use. The bar was a construct, as much a falsehood as any film set he’d ever worked on.

  All of a sudden, Nick felt thirsty. He spun in
the seat again to face the bar. Where no one had been before, now the curvy backside of an attractive bartender was turned away from him. The red-haired woman slowly polished a stein with a tea towel. A crimson skirt showed off long, fit legs. Her shoulders were square and strong. There was something imposing in her stance, an essence of power. It too, was familiar to him. Nick could not take his eyes from her legs, and the way her calves flexed above black stilettos. Beneath the surface of the bar, he felt his dick begin to stir. He wanted very badly to see her, knowing that her face too would be a thing of beauty.

  “Care for a drink, lover?” The words were crisp. Unlike Nick’s, which faded the moment they crossed his lips.

  “Yes,” he heard himself say.

  “The usual?” Still she polished the glass without a glance back at him.

  But, before he could respond, he looked down to see that a beer was already sitting between his hands. He felt himself smile and say something nonsensical, before lifting the glass of amber vitality to his lips. God, how he needed a drink. It was imperative that he remedy his dry body, and give the old liver a workout. The urge came to him then as it sometimes did in the waking world: a need to soften his nerves and dull the harshness of reality. When the glass touched his mouth, however, it was empty.

  “Hey, what gives?”

  But, when he looked to the bartender again, she was gone. Nick panicked. He needed a drink, and needed it badly. Because a seed of discomfort had taken root in his stomach. An unsettling panic pulled at his intestines as he began to recognize the place for what it was: a butchered half-memory. With a will not his own, he put a hand over the bar and pulled one of the unmarked beer taps. It hissed, but forfeited no liquid. He was about to try its neighbors when a ratcheting noise drifted upward behind him. Small mechanical parts were at work, and Nick looked over his shoulder in surprise.