Work Text:
For the life of him, Clint Bowers did not know what an avocado was.
He stood behind his grocery cart and held the odd, wrinkled and grenade shaped…..food in his grizzled hands, turning it over in his palm and frowning at the sight. It was malleable to the point he was sufficiently scared of it cracking in his firm grip but apart from that all Clint felt was disgust at the sight of such spicery in the local market.
Clint dropped the odd foodstuff back into the pile of its comrades and sighed at the sight. This California insert into Derry made him scoff and sigh and shake his head, remembering his boyhood, back when the oddest thing you could find at Derry Grocery was “Handsome” Harry Dunning; those fat black pools he called eyes paired with those massive, herculean arms that would butcher that poor family so many Halloweens ago.
”……times achanging.”
He spoke to no one, no one in particular. Oscar was out on patrol and Merrilee, his beautiful, precious, wonderful Merrilee was dead four years now, so Clint committing such a domestic and feminine act as grocery shopping drew no remarks around town.
No one would even think about talking to Chief Bowers in such a manner; not after his services, and especially not after The Situation that led to his swift retirement a couple months ago.
The Situation made him frown just thinking about it, his face darkening like it had happened not two minutes ago.
He’d pulled some out of town colored family from Ludlow-fucking Ludlow-for driving without a back plate. Standard, boring, simple police work, beyond even a trainee’s roles, much more than a chief should ever do.
He wouldn’t have done shit if the fucks hadn’t cut him off square infront of traffic.
When he walked up to the car window the black daddy driver had been nearly cross eyed, and he could smell the Hennessy through the window. It was a no brainer to ask him to stop and exit the vehicle, and yet the dumb fuck had protested like Martin Cooner King for five minutes before wobbling out.
Clint had barely gotten his cuffs off before the man swung-fuck what they said about diabetes, he swung. He swung at missed with his fists but Clint did not miss the first time or the fourth time or the time when that old coons nose turned into a fine pink mist.
Ten years ago, he would’ve gotten a letter of admiration and respect.
Five years ago, he would’ve been given a good drinking story.
This year, he got “retired” because Charlotte goddamn Hanlon had cried to her civil rights friends down in Boston or New York, some liberal shithole with faggy kids and big lipped bastards running wild, some place that Derry would’ve turned into so much sooner had Clint not been the man he was, the man his father had raised him to be and his father before him had echoed the same.
Yes, the times were a changing.
Clint grabbed his cart again and pushed it through the produce section once again, grabbing a small bushel of apples off of the shelf to inspect. They were bright enough and smooth enough to where Clint was fine with tossing the bushel into his basket without inspecting the price. He simply tossed the apples into the cart and surveyed his items with a calculated glance, already supposing the cost of today’s visit.
When he lifted his head back up to turn out of the isle was when he saw the boy that made him pause.
He was a tiny little tyke, short and fat like everyone was in that stage of adolescence. He had big, poofy black curls the color of the ocean at night and the coarseness of barbed wire, with an almost woppish look to it. But the rest of his face; the button tipped nose, the honey hazel eyes, the big buck tooth he was sporting, the full pink lips and the thick, hefty pair of prescription glasses the boy had pressed to his face already gave off a true blooded look that made Clint echo the young boys smile.
Never the best with kids, Clint was presently surprised that the boy waved his way then giggled afterwards, and smirked softly from the tiny ego boost the attention gave him. He echoed the same, and grinned even more when the young boys burbbled with laughter, waving his hands around in excitement. Clint coughed out a happy little noise that made him shocked as much as it made him happy, and he grinned wider at the sight of the elated baby boy.
His grin froze as the woman rounded the corner.
She was gorgeous, there was no mistaking that, and it genuinely did take away Clint’s breathe for a moment. She was a tall, thin, dirty blonde headed woman with a smoky golden nest of curls, along with a pair of ocean breeze blue eyes and a familiar button nose and buck tooth pairing. Though not out of perversion, Clint noted her slim frame, her long legs and a small bust she was currently holding in a grey sweater with the navy blue words “BEARS” on the front and a tight pair of blue jeans. Her button nose and tiny bucktooth made it clear who this was; the boys mother, and Clint smiled ever so gently down at her as he nodded his head.
“Afternoon ma’am.”
His words were ever so respectful, enough to make the woman grin up at him and smile in his face.
”You got a sweet little boy.”
The woman laughed softly, looking over at the baby boy who cooed, kicking his feet out. She leaned over to pinch his cheek, and both of the adults laughed at his little squeal.
“He’s a handful. Always trying to get your attention. Yes YOU, bug!”
Clint smirked at this, nodding along to the woman as she stroked his hair and babbled some baby talk his way.
”You just loooove talking, don’t you, Richie? Can’t keep from talking and talking and talking to anyone.”
Richie now, Richie giggled and tossed his hands around and made both adults laugh once again. Clint sighed softly, looking over at the woman as his mind wandered.
He’d seen her before, he knew he had. It wouldn’t have shocked him if she had been a Miss Derry, but now she was too domestic to remind him of that, so he had no idea where he’d seen that face before.
Asking was out of the question, so he was content with letting his gaze wander over the sight of the woman touching and playing and caressing her Richie for a moment before he motioned at the two of them.
”You’re doing the right thing.”
He did not notice that her hands had stopped moving and her head had spun around and her eyes had bulged nearly out of her sockets as he kept on.
”Boys best friend in his early years is his mother. Always good to spend a little time together.”
The woman suddenly shoved the cart away as her mouth dropped open, eyes wide and terrified as they stared at Clint as if he was some sort of masked intruder breaking into her home. She was shivering violently, and for a moment it looked as if she might go down. Clint blinked twice, not getting the look no matter how many times his wrinkled brain ran through it. He shook his head and tilted his head and opened his mouth and looked at the boy and traced his glasses and put them on her face and THERE-
”You’re doing the right thing” he’d said, his words muffled from behind the plastic mask.
Handing that fucking ape Grogan over.
He hadn’t said that. But he’s thought it.
Thought a lot worse.
He’d looked at the crowd of black and brown, the pollution crowding up on his town. The shitstains and greaseballs and asphalt colored and dirt colored apes running loose now packed into their little fucking cage.
And then he looked at the face of some tiny white girl with a thick pair of glasses and wondered why on earth she’d gone and dropped down to the animals level.
There it was.
They knew, they both knew, and they both knew that the other knew.
He smiled now, a boastful little smirk at her horrible tremors and at the gasp she let out.
“……you really do have a nice little boy, Mrs. Tozier.”
Clint turned around and left Marge shivering and shaking the produce section, whistling Dixie as he approached the register. He nodded at the blonde haired and blue eyed boy behind the counter, his heart filling at the sight.
——————————————————————
She’d held her chest until her heart stopped screaming and her lungs uncrumpled. Her legs dragged her to the counters and she dropped the money to the boy at the register and left the store and put Richie in his seat and turned around and bent over and vomited into the parking lot.
The asphalt swam in the heat, the blackness of the concrete blazing up and smacking her across the face. For a second she thought she was back there; the smoke thick as wool and jammed in her throat, her ears ringing, someone she loved screaming her name. Rich’s hands burned on her shoulders as she thought of the way he’d pushed her down into that fridge. The way he’d smiled like it was nothing, like it was just another dumb joke he’d cracked and not the worst thing she’d ever seen.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up.
Across the lot, through the wavering shimmer of June heat, she saw him again, strolling through the parking lot ever so casually, his cart rattling the pebbles in the asphalt. The man with the tight mouth and shock of ivory colored hair and the white-knuckle grip on righteousness. The same fuck who’d have himself away with something almost gentle just now. You’re doing the right thing.
They were wrong. They were all wrong. Time does not heal any wounds.
She remembered it.
ALL of it.
Her stomach folded again, warping and wobbling and rolling around even at that night, that night she didn’t catch a single wink of sleep.
She lay in bed beside Went in her silken nightgown, listening to the old house tick and settle, and every creak became a footstep outside the Black Spot’s door. Every rush of plumbing became fire catching wood. When she did drift, she dreamed in orange and crimson and golden bursts of flames.
In the dream-no. The moment she even closed her eyes, like a vaudeville show, she was instantly back inside. The air was syrup, coating and smearing her lungs with a blackness not unlike tar. Rich was laughing boyishly at something she couldn’t hear. Then the laugh warped and stretched too long, turned into a furious bout screaming.
She tried to grab him, but her hands went through him like smoke.
She woke choking on nothing and was not surprised when Went didn’t even roll over to look.
By the third night she stopped trying to sleep.
She poured a drink instead.
One Air Force Coke became three. Three became the bottle of Smirnoff straight. The burn steadied her hands long enough to sit at the kitchen table and stare at nothing.
In drink, she’d lied, told herself she was remembering wrong. That she’d been hysterical, that the heat had worn her out, that she hadn’t seen faces that clearly, that Mr. Bowers was a grumpy old man, sure but not-.
But then the sentence would come back.
You’re doing the right thing.
She remembered each and every fucking word that thing in the Frankenstein mask had spit out at her, the script bouncing off of the inside of her skull.
like a bullet.
On the fourth day, animatronically, her hands and feet navigated the station wagon she steered into the old lot where the Black Spot had stood. Nothing there now, and it didn’t shock her, but she stared at the scrub grass and blooming weeds for what must have been hours. No one bothered her, so she sat firm behind the wheel while Richie chattered and babbled and cooed and murmured and giggled and did babyish things so loudly and proudly.
At one point, when he had his foot in his mouth, he’d caught her attention in the rear view window.
His dark, jet black hair caught the light the same way Rich’s had when it had been damp with sweat and smoke. Her baby boy wore the same toothy and crooked grin. The same way he leaned forward when he was excited, like the world was something to meet head-on was so goddamn familiar her throat closed and she choked on nothing again.
That night she dreamed of the fire of course, but the freezer overtook her mind.
She could feel the metal biting her palms, slicing and cutting as she screamed over Rich shoving her inside. His voice mellowed out over the noise of the flames and through the ceramic of the fridge, steady, so strong for such a young age.
We don’t just pee in pots.
We also save fair maidens.
She heard the words, then she heard the gasps, then she heard the squeaks, then she heard the scratches on the front of the fridge because no matter what the fucking firefighters had said he had not “gone to sleep”.
He’d been fucking murdered.
On the sixth day, she stopped eating.
Food tasted like ash and molten paste and water tasted like metal; more metallic that Derry’s usual water.
She walked through the house like a ghost, moving from room to room without purpose, catching herself staring at baby Richie too long with a confused little glance, as if it was the first time she’d ever seen him. Every time he laughed, she flinched, every time she cooked him a meal on the stove she shook, and every time a car backfired down the street, she dropped whatever she was holding.
Went asked if she was feeling sick, his eyes blinking from behind that pair of obscenely thick goggle glasses.
She said yes. She said she had the flu. He did not investigate further, simply nodding his head and going back to the comic section in the paper.
It was easier than saying I just saw the man who murdered my first love, my true love, the man who should be the father of my son buying avacados.
On the seventh day, the advent, the day of the lords rest, Marge found herself sprawled on the couch. A Capitan Kangaroo rerun was playing on an oldies show and she let the light of the TV flicker across her face to try to sooth her soul because the drinking didn’t dull it anymore, any of it. In the dim light of the old cartoon, it came back.
Rich’s hair flowing in the wind as she clung to his skinny yet sturdy frame whilst they biked together. Rich arguing about baseball with anyone who’d listen. Rich with his nose buried in some book about wind resistance, taking Will’s advice to use science to land that damn plane on Main.
Rich insisting that Derry could be better if people just tried.
Rich standing in front of her with his back straight while men with rifles shouted slurs and promises of violence.
And Clint Bowers standing infront of that smoke.
Faceless.
Abstract.
But not now.
Not anymore.
He was a man who could grow old, a man who could buy groceries, a man who could look her in the eye and repeat his script and tell her she was doing the right thing.
With the low flicker of the television set reflecting Mr. Green Jeans bouncing around on the screen, something inside Marge shifted then, her mouth falling open and her eyes widening.
All week, all her life since that night the grief had been a tide, dragging her under and spitting her back out. All her life she had been drowning in what had been done to her.
But this….this was different.
This was direction, an order, a cause plain and simple.
He had lived.
Rich had not.
She laid still on the couch for the entirety of the day, and long after the house went quiet, her hands lays flat against the cushions, her pulse finally steady for the first time in days.
If Derry would not remember the truth.
If Derry would not punish its monsters.
Then someone had to.
And she knew, with a clarity that scared her more than the fire ever had, exactly what that someone should do.
There was still a need for knights in this world, and there was still a need for crusades.
——————————————————————
He made time for her every day, but Sundays earned her a new bushel of red roses.
Merrilee Wynn Bowers lay inside the marble tomb of Derry’s Mausoleum with as much grace as she had enjoyed in life, and with as much care as Clint could now offer her that she had left this mortal coil four years ago due to a widowmaker; widowermaker more like it.
He kept some peace in the face that she’d simply keeled over in her garden, the sun shining faintly on her pearly white curls, and kept the rest of his peace in the peace he’d purchased for her, a grand tomb that Ceaser would’ve blushed at.
They’d been good together, raising Oscar, raising Paul. They’d raised both of his sons well and good and strong, that was the most important, strong and capable boys who they grew into strong and powerful men. But Merrilee had ensured that they felt the warmth of a woman in their adolescence, that they’d taken a small, manageable sliver of affection and comfort to their heart.
She’d been a good wife as well, subservient and kind, the type who’d always have a dinner ready for him after his day, the house cleaned and car washed. She knew her role in femininity, and Clint appreciated the loathing she felt for bitches like Charlotte Hanlon, with their pantsuits and protests and all that shit.
Loyal, too, and he had remained the same. Other boys on the force stuck their dick into anything that moved, but he’d stayed loyal all seventeen years. She provided that as well; in spades, even as the years progressed she took him fully like it ‘twas their wedding night once again.
Yes, she’d been perfect, so yes, it hurt badly seeing her name, her gorgeous, beautiful name plastered into the marble of the tomb, and Clint sighed as he looked at the plaque he’d embedded.
MERRILEE WYNN BOWERS
1923-1971
MOTHER, WIFE, DAUGHTER; A CHERISHED WOMAN IN ALL RESPECTS
BELOVED IN LIFE AND ADORED IN DEATH
Indeed she had.
He laid the bushel of roses down at the base of the crypt, scooping up the old bouquet and grunting softly as he did so, his back twitching in protest. He came back up rubbing the spot on the small of his back, huffing out to Merrilee softly.
”……glad to see you liked the flowers, Meri.”
He scoffed softly at the joke, shaking his head as he toed the rotten and withered petals away from the new bushel.
”Them boys out here know not to f……to mess with your arrangements, Meri. Made sure of it. But I wouldn’t wind a bit of…..”
He took a step back and shook his head, looking for that word for-
“Maintenance.”
Clint shook his head at the word the minute it came out of his mouth; maintenance brought up ideas like some spic or spook or retard like Al Marsh scrubbing Merrilee down with Lysol. No, no maintenance wasn’t it, it was-
“Conservation.”
He smiled softly at this, nodding his head at his own words before he went and knocked a tiny speck off of the M in Merrilee before he spoke once again.
”I read that somewhere, Meri. One of these books about Montana, or Idaho. Cowboy country, like good ol’ Eastwood. You re-“
The squeak of sneakers cut Clint’s train of thought off like Jesse James, and he paused a moment to look at the new intruder into such a sacred crypt. He scoffed out from both bemusement and shock, his hands falling to his side as he saw Maggie Tozier standing before him.
She really was gorgeous.
Clint observed her slim, perky, feminine figure captured well in a nostalgic little piece perfect for a housewives outfit; a brightly golden puffy blouse tucked neatly into a pair of blue jeans, with a canary yellow hoodie draped over her shoulders. She wore an odd brand running shoes, some all black thing with AVIA stamped across the front in white. That, and the foggy, faded pair of thick glasses she had on made Clint semi-suspicious as she took a step forward and spoke.
”Hello.”
”Hello.”
Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper, startling Clint somewhat. This was nothing like the woman at the grocery store, neither version of her, and it made him pause to size her and her mask of grief up.
Clint noted her bushel of ivory colored Mariposa flowers she clutched tightly to her chest, a slight frown working across his cheek.
”Who are those for?”
She shrugged softly, blinking hard behind those glasses as her ghostly town floated out once again.
”-“
”Excuse me?”
”I don’t know. I felt……”
Maggie stopped three pages away from Clint, shrugging her shoulders and sighing hard. The bundle of flowers in her grasp quivered, drooping forward somewhat and seemingly wilting from the conversation.
”……I felt mournful.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, but Clint paid it no mind as he took a step towards Maggie, his voice polite yet firm, the service pistol he still wore by his side glinting in the dusky shade the crypt offered.
”I appreciate that, Maggie. But this is a private tomb.”
She nodded at this, blinking even harder (somehow) behind those foggy spectacles. Her tongue jutted out to lick at her lips, and her eyes dropped as she whispered.
”-“
”Huh??”
”Sorry. I-I didn’t know.”
”…..it says Bowers at the front, Maggie. I paid for that. I paid a lot.”
”…….”
She nodded at this, but said nothing in return. A singular fat blob of a tear rolled down her pretty cheek, and she nodded it away at his words. Clint spoke slower to her as he took yet another step, like a farmer coaxing a mare out in order to send it off to pasture; smooth, calm, without a care in the world and a caring hand.
”…..what’s going on, Maggie.”
She said nothing at first, and Clint closed the distance, face to face with her and her beauty. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, and of this squeeze her words came out. They came out the same moment she stepped back from him and his grasp, a bolt of hurt crossing both of their faces at the touch.
”Ah-“
She paused for a moment, then lifted her up bushel, her words a shiver rolling off of her tongue.
“Do you want this?”
This sounded enough like these to where Clint nodded without thinking, knowing that the instant he’d wrangled her under control they’d be trashed. Merrilee only took roses, and that was that. But the cream colored flowers seemingly perked up at her words, and it was enough to Clint to step closer and nod, his arms outstretched.
”Sure, M-“
He was looking into her eyes with the eruption of sound occurred, the detonation of sound crashing through the marble tomb with Satan’s fury. She looked as shocked as he was at the sound, and jumped back like a startled mouse from such a noise, her eyes enormous behind such a thick pair of glasses.
And then that fine pink mist had coated her entire face, blocking those gorgeous blue eyes in a storm of bonemeal, blood, and whatever barbaric beliefs made up Clint Bowers heart.
She pushed him away and stumbled about like a drunkard, preforming an odd little dance that Clint observed whilst he pawed at the dime sized hole she’d blown through his chest.
His knees suddenly faded into dust, and he felt his heart twist in agony, and he felt some unknown hand pitching his body backwards, and he felt his head slam against the marble tile of the mausoleum, and he lifted his chin and worked his neck against enough pressure to form a diamond to see his creamsicle colored shirt flooding with a brand new crimson degree, Clint lifted his eyes up and looked at Marge Truman, and all he saw on her face was a confused little stare that made him sob out a crimson tower of blood back up onto his face.
”Hará calor allí.”
She’d wobbled her way back over to his current position, swaying back and forth by his side. Her voice was a whisper no longer; it was a cold, cruel, yet soft little spit from clenched teeth, like a mother cooing to the child she’d abandoned.
Clint’s head began to bob back and forth against the marble of the tomb, and through his clouding eyes, could not tell if it was a trick of the light or her golden curls or the last light he’d ever see but Clint saw the Mariposa bushel sparkle with flames still pressed to her bussom.
His legs kicked out pitifully slow, like a baby sow looking to nurse, and try as he might, he could not get his hand to move for the pistol he kept by his belt. It felt as if the entire earth had been shoved into his chest, and was crushing him with no regard. His fingers stiffened by his sides in the last kind of erection he’d ever experience, and as he stared up at Marge, spitting whatever words he could out in bubbles and bursts of blood, he watched her walk away from him, watched her beauty fade into the warm evening light of a Derry August.
Clint Bowers died with his eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling of the tomb he’d be buried in not too far from now.
——————————————————————
She’d hit the outside and felt the blazing hot rays of the sun scorch across her face. Their intensity and rage made her drop to a knee, but she slammed both hands over her mouth before she got a chance to vomit.
Images of Richie-her Richie, the one she’d carried for nine months-growing up without a mother, knowing she’d done such violence in the name of a boy who was supposed to be a man and having to live with that cut through her head. Then images of her being pumped full of electricity popped behind her eyelids, and Marge mustered up all her moral strength and powers not to vomit into the crabgrass of the cemetery and spill her DNA at the front of the crypt.
She leaned back on her knees, one hand rubbing her left cheek as the other near unconsciously flexed and unflexed around the butt of the gun. It took about four seconds for her to realize that she still held the gun, before she dropped it softly into the sod of the cemetery.
She sat back fully now, the back of her thighs smacking her heels. Her hands floated up slowly to cover her face, and Marge let herself rub and smear her temples with the tips of her fingers. She breathed slowly and carefully in and out of her nose until she felt that her mouth was not sizzling with bile any longer, and then she opened her mouth, coughing out a pathetic little curse as she did so.
”……fuck.”
Her hands and fingers trembled gently as they pressed into her skin, but soon, shocking to even Marge, they stilled, and dropped to her side. The stop of her overall body trembling followed shortly after, and she came to realize that she had not even dropped a tear after pulling the trigger and putting a .38 into that rotten spot where Clint Bowers had kept his hate. Like a nuclear bomb, it had wasted it all away, turned such a beacon of hatred and utter contempt into……
nothing.
There was no anger any longer.
There was no sadness any longer.
There was no rage any longer.
There was no disgust any longer.
There was no fear any longer.
And, as Marge sat infront of the tomb, listening to the last gasps of the man who’d ruined her life, she did not feel any love any longer.
She felt nothing.
And then she felt the warmth once again, the brilliant warmth she had rejected for so long. The warmth that had claimed her first love and now claimed his killer and now she got it, got how wonderful the warmth could be.
She dropped back fully in the crabgrass, legs splayed out and arms thrown open to reach to the heavens, her eyes flickering back and forth as they gazed bleakly into Derry’s dusk.
——————————————————————
When Maggie woke up, she shot up like a rocket in the middle of the grass, her brain going a million different directions at once.
She nearly smacked herself in the face with how hard she pulled up her watch, gasping hard as she saw the time.
7:18.
Thank. Fuck.
She’d parked at the back entrance of the cemetery at 7:09, taken to that bottle of Smirnoff until 7:12, and done what she had to do and lived with the fallout until now. 7:18.
She stood on firm feet, throwing her head around to look at the graciously empty and barren cemetery.
No one. No bystanders, no Good Samaritans, no kids, no lovers out for a quite spot, no stoners off their rocker, no…….
no one.
No one at all.
She tossed her head back and forth again, scooping the gun back up in her hands and cradling it by her chest. But she dropped it again, drawing the flask she kept by her side in an instant.
The vodka burned a good little line of flame down her throat that chilled at the same time it burned, and for the first time, she did not think of That Night when she felt heat.
With steady hands, Maggie slipped the flask back into its pocket, using her straightened and steady hands to stroke down her curls and flick out any trace of leaves nestled inside her hair. She then picked up the pistol again, clutching it loosely by her side for a moment before jamming it down the back of her jeans.
Looking over the rest of the space she had crashed down onto, Maggie noted nothing of note, nothing for any sort of detective or policeman or investigator to uncover and uncurl and abuse her with. She still kicked around the grass after a moment, making sure it looked as natural as possible before she turned on her heel to stride into the tomb.
He lay still in the pool of blood, which had now spread out like a fungus, massive enough to swallow up his bony and brittle frame. His jaw was open, tongue swollen lavender and sticking out out his wrinkled dogs ass of a mouth, and his eyes still bugged from the shock a .38 to an old man’s heart delivered.
Maggie sauntered over to Clint to bend over, reaching a gloved out hand to close both of his eyes. His face turned semi-peacefully, his jaw twitching at the caress of death. She stopped for a moment, ensuring he was indeed dead with a sharp smack to the cheek, and huffed out as he made no more noise.
Then she dropped into a crouch by his side and got to it.
She first removed Bowers revolver from his belt, opening the chamber and removing a singular bullet. Maggie placed the bullet into the pocket of her hoodie, tucking the ammunition snugly against her hip. Then, she slid the gun back into place, wrapping the firm leather around the cool steel of the gun and pausing to survey her work.
Next, she carefully unfolded a tiny scrap of paper from the opposite pocket of her hoodie, unfurling Clint’s grim grasp of death to slide the forged note she’d spent so many hours sweated over into his cold palm.
She didn’t need to look twice at the words; she knew them all by heart already.
”Merrilee. My beloved Merrilee.
A man can only go so long alone.
I’m coming back to you. I’ve done more than enough here.
Hello again, sweet Merrilee.”
Maggie stood up and brushed down her bloodied jeans with her gloved hands, standing above the death before her and sighing with some sort of contentment.
It all felt like some sort of dream crossed with a movie, some viewing experience not meant to be shown to anyone, much less the host it was engaging with. She moved wordlessly and mindlessly, letting the plan she had cooked up and carved out a special little space for in her head to take over her body and preform out at the highest degree.
The fact she was preforming such madness, such criminality was a shock, yes, but still not one so massive as she would have expected from herself.
It was all just so…….
easy.
All she had done, she had really done herself was drive down to Dover, tell the fat and bald man behind the counter of the first pawn shop she saw how scared and worried she was about everything on the news, listen to him blame it all on a minority, pay him $100, and go back to her car and drive back to Derry.
All she had really done was ask Mrs. Taylor down at the lobby to browse the checkout lists and borrow Clint Bowers list and copy it and place the old behind and keep the new and memorize that neat little scribble and note it just the exact same before burning all traces of the new over the kitchen stove.
All she had really done was the bare minimum, but looking over the sight of Clint, she knew it had been more than enough.
Without another glance, Maggie Tozier turned her back on the corpse named Clint Bowers and strolled out of the mausoleum.
———————————————————
It hadn’t all been easy.
The hole was at least ten feet deep, a tall order for a 5’9 165 pound woman, and there was little respite in the fact it was only two feet wide. She remembered the search for the perfect, off the grid but memorable location, the backbreaking labor it had taken to create such a divot, the sleepless nights she had spent out in this little patch of green hell Derry called a forest.
But it was worth it.
It all was.
Like she was cracking a breadstick, Maggie popped the revolver in half, and, with a small effort and a large heft of strength, broke the weapon best she could. The chamber hung low and the butt shivered, but the hammer stayed firmly and solely in place, halting any more of her movements.
It was tossed into the pit all the same, as it would not matter too much in the end. Derry would take back what it wanted. The bullets; all six of them, she wouldn’t forget the one in her pocket, went in after, before a faint dusting of dirt about a foot deep covered up the weapon.
Her clothes went next, and Maggie did feel awful about it. Nothing in there she loved, no. Everything she’d worn was thrifted in Portland from some yuppie clinic, so sentimentality wasn’t the reason.
It was the possibility of someone finding her in the woods with a shovel, a tank top, a pair of boxers and nothing else.
She worked faster now out of sheer necessity, leaning down and to her left to pick up another flask she’d taken. But this one held no liquor at all; instead, a light dusting of gasoline was poured down over the clothes, and a match was tossed in alongside it.
The fire couldn’t reach her now, Maggie stared down at her oh so familiar creation for a moment with faint admiration before turning back to the small paper bushel with a pink juice dripping out of it, hoisting it up and revealing out the contents.
A puree of chicken and beef hearts and liver meat alike, along with some blended fish guts looked back up at her, and Maggie planted them firmly by her side, her final step in the plan.
The rest of the dirt fell atop the flames slow enough not to peter them out, and when the fire did die the clothes were little more than burnt rags.
So the mixture of meat was tossed two feet deep, and Maggie finished up with the last of the soil, panting hard as her shovel laid the rest of the earth down.
She stood fully, wiping the sweat from her brow and gasping from the pure exertion, her brain setting on exhaustion now that it no longer had a task to perform and complete.
So, Maggie wearily stumbled back from the hole, taking a moment to grab a small black garbage bag from her left and dump ITS contents to the ground.
New blue t-shirt, new blue jeans, new blue hoodie, new black sneakers. Clean, all of it.
She hastily reequipped her wardrobe looking around for anything who noticed, and when she slipped the laces of her shoes together and saw nothing, Maggie Tozier turned and ran from the secret in the woods and back into her life.
—————————————————————-
The house was dark when she let herself in back in, Wentworth still cooped up in his office looking over root canals instead of noticing his wife had been plotting a killing.
It was not quiet, it was never quiet, but it was the soft, breathing kind of dark not unlike a funhouse out of commission. The refrigerator hummed gently, the pipes ticked, and wind brushing the siding like fingertips testing the walls.
She locked the door behind her, checked it twice before bowing her head.
Her hands were clean.
She had made sure of that. The car was wiped down with ammonia, the clothes and gun buried deep in the bowels of Derry, the shoes resting at the bottom of a murky stretch of Kenduskeag where the current would do its patient work. She had watched the fire take the fabric without flinching.
In the home she’d made, she felt hollow now. But there was no shaking, and she was disappointed to admit there was no triumph. Just…..
nothing.
From down the hall came a small, restless whimper, a little coo of curiosity.
That sound undid her.
She moved toward it automatically, her body remembering what her mind couldn’t quite hold yet. She pushed open the nursery door with a flat palm, wincing at the creak of the door. The nightlight cast everything in a soft amber glow; the crib rails, the mobile of bright plastic animals, the heap of stuffed toys slumped like witnesses.
Richie stood in his crib, fists tangled in the bars, curls mashed to one side from sleep. His eyes were wet but not fully awake, as if he’d sensed something missing in the house and called for it.
For her.
“Hey, bug,” she whispered, her voice lighter than she expected.
Her voice sounded steady. She was grateful for that.
She lifted him from his crib and laughed as he giggled. He came easily, warm and heavy and alive. He pressed his damp cheek against her collarbone and sighed, the small sound of relief children make when the world snaps back into the familiar place they knew and understood.
She maneuvered her way into the rocker and pulled him close, humming a tune she did not know the origin of into his flat little ear.
The rhythm she rocked him to started on its own.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Nice and slow. Nice and slow.
His breath hitched once, and she froze, then both of their breathes evened out. His fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt like he was anchoring himself to shore, and Maggie paused to look down at him. She studied his face in the low light like she was looking into a gold mine.
The slope of his nose, the determined set of his little mouth even in the protest of sleep, the way he leaned into her without hesitation, without fear.
You get to grow up.
You get birthdays and scraped knees and bad jokes and braces and heartbreaks that don’t involve flame.
You get to be loud in grocery stores. You get to run your mouth and make teachers tired and fall in love and maybe leave this town one day if you’re smart enough.
You get to live.
Her throat tightened, and she gasped out a tiny little croak of a sob.
Another face pressed into her memory, this one older, smoke-smeared, grinning even with the sky burning behind him.
Rich.
She hadn’t saved him.
She had screamed for him in the freezer until her voice gave out. She had clawed at the metal door until her nails split. And when it had finally been quiet enough to crawl out, he had been still.
She had failed that life.
Maggie bent her head and kissed Richie’s hair, breathing in pine soap and sleep and something sweetly, painfully innocent.
Tonight she had not failed.
The thought, loathe as she would to admit it, did not come with pride. It came like a stone set carefully on a grave and a burial site never to be found.
The man who had arrived and demanded a soul. The man who had locked those doors. The man who had aimed and fired and told himself he was cleansing something. The man who had looked at her across fluorescent aisles and spoken like he’d been her shepherd instead of her executioner.
He would not grow older.
He would not stand in the way of anything.
He would not say another word to her or to anyone else.
The world had shifted by one cruel, necessary inch.
Richie stirred, blinking up at her with confused, trusting eyes.
She smiled at him like she was high; her grin was soft, almost dazed, and pressed her forehead to his.
“I did it.”
Maggie murmured against his chubby cheek, though he couldn’t understand language yet.
“I fixed it.”
The rocker creaked with both of their weight, and for what must be the last time, the house settled around them.
Outside, the wind moved through Derry like it always had, like it always would.
She tightened her arms around her son, as if she could build a wall of bone and will around him, as if nothing terrible would ever reach him so long as she kept breathing.
His small hand patted her cheek in thanks, and she swallowed, remembering the cold of his hand in death.
She let herself forget that best she could now, and with the warmth of her son pressed to her face, let her knightish acts ring true with words.
“Mommy killed a dragon today for you, my little knight.”