Riley

Prologue

March 2005

The jingling of keys and the sound of the front door unlocking brought me out of a trance. I stood with my back against the wall hidden in shadows from her view. I had been standing there for hours waiting for her to return. I could hear her moving around by the front door, the sound of keys being placed on the small table that sat to the left of the door, the rustle of a jacket as she hung it over the hook on the wall, and finally the shuffling of the paper, most likely the pile of mail that lay on the floor, pushed through the mail slot in the door hours before.

She wouldn’t be able to see the living room from the front door as she went through this nightly ritual. Anticipation quickened my heart rate, it would only be a matter of seconds now before she took the last couple of steps. The first thing she would notice is the video that I had found taped to the bottom of a drawer in her bedroom, silently playing on her TV. When I first located the DVD the images that played across the screen were so vile that they made me sick. It wasn’t until later that I had the idea to taunt her with her own trophy. What would she think as she entered her home and found it playing? Would her first thought be fear, fear at being caught? Would it be pleasure? Reminiscing at past actions?

What the hell? It was barely more than a whisper preceded by a sharp intake of breath when she first saw the bloody images on the screen. Even though I couldn’t see her face I knew it was her, the one that I had been waiting for. My heart rate jumped once again, I couldn’t let my body get out of control. I needed to remember my training steady breathing and a slow my heart rate. I closed my eyes and visualized her slowly walking into the living room unable to take her eyes off the television. How long would it be before the notion that someone was in her home entered her mind? How long before she started looking around the dark corners for the intruder? I was confident that she couldn’t see me. She would notice the other surprises that I had left for her before she would ever know that I was here.

I visualized her looking around the room with fear and panic coating her body in sweat, as the items I left for her on the coffee table catch her eye. Curiosity sweeps across her face, laid out neatly on her coffee table are her video camera that I found in her closet, her gun, a Taurus .357 revolver that I found in her night stand. A small glass vile and syringe that I acquired for this night. I snapped my eyes open at the sound of her moving slowly through the room, a loud rattle echoed through the house as she picked up the gun off the table.

Who’s there? She tried to sound forceful, but I heard the quiver in her voice.

It was time to face her, I hadn’t moved in so long I was worried that my legs wouldn’t work. I took a step and moved towards her stepping into the dim light of the living room so she could see me. She was shaking, sweat rolled down her face, her breaths uneven. She was afraid.

You. The word came out in a rushed breath.

Her eyes grew wide with fear and recognition, she pulled the trigger of her gun but the only thing that happened was a metallic clank of the hammer coming down. It was unloaded. I pulled the bullets from my pocket and let them fall through my fingers. Her shoulders jerked and her eyes lids snapped shut as each bullet struck the wood floor. We stood there staring at each other. The bullets rolled across the floor, making loud rumbling sounds before they came to rest. The sight of her brought back flashes of memories, the memories renewed my anger. I had never killed a woman before. I had some time to think about what I was doing while I waited for her to come home. I had almost changed my mind a thousand times since I had entered her home, right up until I pressed play on the DVD.

Something changed in her, as we stood there. She lowered her arm and dropped the gun before falling to her knees. I took a couple of steps towards her. Getting a closer look I noticed that she looked older then she really was. Her hair was stringy and dull, dark circles encompassed her eyes and she was far thinner then she should be for her height and frame. I briefly wondered if her past had been haunting her as much as it had been haunting me.

I’ve always wonder if you had made it out alive. She said more then asked.

We both did.

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up from the floor. She took a couple of unsteady steps and sat on the sofa. I retrieved the Taurus from the floor and removed one last bullet from my pocket and placed them on the table in front of her. Then I took a seat across from her.

I watched her as she looked over items that I had placed on the coffee table, gently touching each item with the tips of her fingers. First the piece of paper then pen, her gun, the glass vile and syringe and last the camera.

You know what’s going to happen. It’s wasn’t a question. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew. She took one more look around before she nodded.

I’m going to die for what I did. I would beg for mercy but I don’t believe you have it in you. That would have been beaten out of you some time ago. I don’t deserve it anyways. She took a deep breath and a couple of tears made their way down her cheeks. I guess this, she picked up the pen and pointed to the paper. Is for my suicide note? And these are my choices? she asked after setting the pen back down and picking up the gun and vile. The Camera?

To record your confession.

Ahh, so my father can’t cover up what I did. Again. What’s in the vile?

A toxin that’s quick and painless. If that’s what you choose.

Maybe all your compassion hasn’t been lost after all. I’m sure you don’t believe I deserve it though.

She took a deep breath but said nothing further as she started to write on the paper. I could see her tears splashing on the paper as she wrote her confession. It took her a few sheets of paper and more than an hour to write it all down. The more she wrote the more she seemed to be free of some unseen burden that had been weighing her down. Once she finished she looked to me to see what I wanted her to do next.

Turn the camera on and read it.

She leaned forward and turned on the camera it took a few tries to get the words to come out. Before long she was confessing. For the most part she didn’t seem to be reading as she spoke, she stared blankly at the camera, with the exception of a few tears that streaked down her cheeks she showed little to no emotion on her face.

"Father, I can no longer live with what I have done, the awful things that I participated in while I was in South America haunt me. Even now as I write this, I can feel the ghosts of my past watching me, their torment no longer just a bad dream I can ignore. I’m not sorry for the embarrassment this will cause you. It is something that I must do, something that I should have done a long time ago. I have to expose the horrors that I committed, and how you covered it up because you had the right connections to make it all go away; believing that the truth would never see the light of day, to spear yourself from the embarrassment of what I have become. That is why this confession will be sent to a friend who will release it to the press a couple of days from now. There is nothing that you can do to keep my shameful secret from being exposed.

First I want everyone to know that I went there with the intention to help people. I had never imagined that I would be capable of doing the things that I have done." She paused briefly taking a couple of deep breaths.

"Shortly after I arrived in South America I met a man, Cristos. He was beautiful, and in the beginning he treated me like a queen. I fell in love quickly and was blinded to what he really was, a monster. I can’t begin to explain what happened or how or when I started to change. The oath I took as a doctor to harm none was pushed aside, discarded. I haven’t any intention of even trying, as it would all just sound like a pitiful rationalization.

By the time I realized what he was and what I had done it was too late. I had already corrupted my beliefs. I participated in the torture of men and women. More than just participated in it, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed their pain. I enjoyed helping him torture them longer by keeping them alive, tending to them after they could no longer withstand any more pain or trauma, using my knowledge as a doctor to heal them so they could endure it all over again later.

I went so far as to demonstrate different ways of inflicting the most pain with little damage on prisoners… showing his men how to do it. To make sure that they would do it the right way I would watch as he, Christos or his men would slice into the skin of the captives with knives heated to keep blood loss to a minimum. If a prisoner tried to escape I showed them how to cut the backs of their ankles so they couldn’t try again.

I supplied them with drugs so they could kidnap women to be sold as slaves or used by his men in the camp. I am ashamed to admit that I even participated in the rape of women. I told myself it was to keep him happy. But by then it brought me pleasure as well." She stopped again, her face blank as she stared at the video that still played on her TV. After a few seconds she resumed as if the interruptions hadn’t occurred.

"A favorite sport of the men in the camp, when Cristos no longer had a use for a prisoner, would be to throw them into a cage with hungry dogs or other wild animals. Unable to walk or run they would drag themselves across the dirt trying in vain to get away only to be ripped apart and eaten as the men in the camp would cheer. They would even place bets on how long it would take the animals to kill them.

There was a part of me that always knew what I was doing was wrong. This part wanted to get out, to put an end to all the suffering that was taking place. But it was over shadowed by some evil that I guess has always been in me. When I was on my way home I thought that I would be able to move on with my life and put it all behind me, to forget the atrocities I committed. But the faces of the men and women that I helped put through hell before finally ending their lives no longer just haunted my dreams, I saw their faces every day in every stranger I passed. So I came to you, father, to confess and face my punishment, but you decided that that was unacceptable. I could see the shame in your eyes at the thought of anyone every finding out what your daughter had become. You told me that I could never tell anyone my story that I needed to find a way to deal with it and move on with my life. To redeem myself through charity work here in the states, my penance you called it. To spend the rest of my life striving to make up for what I had done, in silence.

I have come to understand two things since that time, no amount of good deeds can erase what I have done and once you have a taste for killing and torture it is not that easy to walk away from it. I have killed since I’ve been home, took pleasure in the release that it offered me. Only later to feel shame at what I had done. These lives could have been saved if you had just let me turn myself in. I have included the names and the location of the bodies in my letter. I… I recorded their deaths so I could watch them later hoping that I could keep from doing it again. You will be able to see firsthand what kind of monster I turned out to be. The whole world will see what I have become and what you allowed me to do by not letting me be punished for my crimes!" She stopped this time to control the anger that filled her voice.

I cannot change back to who I use to be and I cannot live with who I have become, the only thing left for me to do, is end my life and suffer the consequences that the afterlife has for me. I will not ask for forgiveness, I am not foolish enough to believe I deserve it. But I am sorry for all the pain that I have caused, for the lives that I have ended.

Once she was finished reading her letter she turned off the camera and sat back on the sofa. She picked up the gun weighing it in her hand.

I know that I deserve more pain then this but the idea of it scares me and I don’t think that I could go through with it.

She laid the gun back on the coffee table and picked up the tourniquet and tied it around her arm before filling the syringe. With her hands shaking and tears blurring her vision it took her a couple of tries to find a vein. She didn’t speak again until after she had injected the poison into her arm. She laid there silent for several seconds before a soft voice flowed from her lips.

Will you stay with me until the end?

Chapter 1

Present Day

Running away and trying to change into a new person in theory sounds like fun, but it’s not. I don’t go out. I have no real friends because I don’t trust anyone and have to watch what I say all the time. I hate my hair style, picked out by someone that I have never met. I am constantly looking over my shoulder, and asking the same question every time I walk out the door. Will they find me today?

This last year has been the hardest of my life. After six months I couldn’t take the stress of driving. The thought of getting pulled over was pushing the boundaries of my sanity. I sold the car to a shady used car lot for cash deciding to just walk or take public transportation when I could.

I wasn’t really cut out for this kind of life. I didn’t make it very far from home. A few months after I fled I found myself only as far as Texas. Low on cash because the one thing that no one tells you when you start a life on the run is that it’s expensive. I had no place to stay, I missed my family and friends, in short I was completely miserable. I had been thinking about it for days, heading back home to turn myself in. But that all changed the night I came across the Dusty Saddle Saloon.

Unsure about what I was going to do, weighing my options. I came across this cute little hole in the wall bar. It sounded like everyone was having a good time, and I so desperately wanted to be one of them. To put all of my problems out of my mind, relax and have some fun, just for one night. The idea was so appealing that I decided to use a few of my precious dollars on a drink and damn the consequences.

With a name like the Dusty Saddle Saloon I was expecting to enter some kind of western themed bar. I was surprised what I encountered when I opened the door. It was like most typical bars, with dim lighting, decorations of holidays from years past still adorning the walls. The smell of sweat, old beer, and various perfumes and colognes assaulted my nose as soon as I took my first breath inside the door. Nothing about this place said western, especially the clientele, it only took me a moment to realize that this, was a gay bar. Two things occurred to me at this time, one I was less likely to have to deal with drunken men hitting on me and two, what were the chances of finding a gay bar called The Dusty Saddle Saloon in the middle of a small city in Texas? The silliness of my thoughts pushed the sadness aside along with all the worry. Seating myself at the bar next to a couple that was very much into each other, I ordered a drink from a very tired looking, yet still adorable man.

Enter Blake. Right from the start he was a charmer. We started talking when he had the chance, since it was a pretty busy night. It turned out that he was one of the owners and to his chagrin their bartender unexpectedly quit on them that afternoon. A diva that told him in a text message that he had found his calling as a kept man and no longer needed the job. His partner was out of town for the weekend so he was left working the bar on his own. The only other employee was a cook that didn’t leave the kitchen, often. I found out later why.

By the end of that night I had a friend, a job and a place to live. Blake eventually introduced me to his partner Cameron or Cam, and for the first time in months I felt like I had a friend. Things were starting to look up.

In fact because of them I have been able to live a relatively normal life for the last five months two weeks and three days. Yes, I’ve been counting the days. I count the good days, the bad days, and the days since I last saw anyone that I love, eleven months, three weeks and six days. That’s how long ago I left behind everything and everyone that I know.

Chapter 2

Every day for the last year it’s the same routine, get up stumble to the kitchen to make coffee. From there I make my way to the bathroom to pee, lose the pajamas, brush my hair and teeth and the whole time I repeat my new name over and over again.

Hello, my name is Riley Carter. Hi I’m Riley. Hey, I’m Riley. Carter, Riley Carter.

I have said my new name out loud to my reflection about a million times trying to get used to it. You would think that after a year I would be able to respond to that name, but no you would be wrong I still have a hard time. I often get the cook in the bar angry when he has to call out my name a half dozen times to get my attention. Sometimes I can blame it on loud music, but I am not always that lucky. Tonight was the start of the weekend so loud and crazy was usually the theme.

Friday night means that the bar is going to be packed. We’re full most nights with a lot of regulars, Monday thru Thursday those are my favorite nights, with just the regulars. Some are great like Kitty, a very convincing and beautiful transgender with the personality of Mother Theresa, always kind, gentle and loving; and Tiny, a very large and impressive gay man that has a voice like a mouse and the personality of a cat. We have some weekenders like this guy Phil, who come in every Friday and Saturday night for the past few months. I think he’s a George, curious but not ready to admit why he is really here. But that’s fine with me he keeps me company through the weekend madness.

The weekend brings in several groups of people, the first group usually consists of people that are just curious, and like Phil I call them all George. Give it some thought and you’ll get it. The second group, I like to call them The Wives & Mommies Club, usually married women or mothers that get just one night a week to hang out with the girls and don’t want the night spoiled by aggressive drunk men that can’t take no for an answer. The third group, are the ones that have traveled here from another town because they don’t want anyone in their home town to know that they’re gay. I call them The Skeletons. Every once in a while we get a fourth group, this group I call S.O.S or Squirm of Snakes, here’s why, they were usually a group of drunk straight men that come in here either by mistake not realizing it’s a gay bar, forgetting it is or with the intention to cause problems. However it was because of this group that I found that I had a friend in Bruno the cook.

See, the thing about Bruno is when you first meet him your initial reaction is to just not make any sudden movements and to back away slowly. I imagine it’s how most people would react if they ran into a bear in the woods. However if you take the time to get to know him you will find, as I have, that he is nothing more than an old grumpy papa bear type, rough and loud on the surface, but underneath the most protective person you have ever met. His brother is similar but I’ll get to Bamn later.

Bruno doesn’t talk much about his past, one thing that we have in common, but I get the feeling that he used to be a biker in his past life before he became the cook at the local gay bar. He looks like he is in his fifties or sixty’s but with all the long scraggly gray hair on his head and face it’s really hard to tell. He says he is six foot two but I don’t think that’s true. I am five eleven without shoes and I’m quite a bit taller than him. He’s a very hefty man, some days I wonder how he moves around so easily in the tiny kitchen. Bruno also has a tendency to growl at people, which has led to many complaints from customers to Blake and Cameron.

One night after closing the bar, not long after I got here, Blake and Cameron invited me to have a drink with them. I asked them about the complaints they got because of Bruno, they said that in the beginning it was fear that kept them from firing him but over time they grew to love him and the regulars just became accustomed to his unusual personality. While new comers would still complain, mostly tourists during lunch time