She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,25

SUV in our path.

White SUV blocking the road.

Awful squeal of tires.

I woke in an alley.

When my eyes first opened, I didn’t know where I was.

My head ached. A throbbing pain behind both eyes wrapped around to the sides like a vice squeezing at my temples. I squinted at the dull, orange light seeping in from above. The sun was gone, the light came from a high-pressure sodium streetlight mounted to the brick wall of the building at my back. The light shown down toward the back corner, illuminating a Dumpster, some wooden crates, and discarded boxes. The light hummed like a thousand bees trapped within the glow.

I tried to stand, fell back down, my legs wobbly.

Something in my hand.

I brought my closed fist into the light and forced my fingers to uncoil, my body working on a delay. A small piece of paper sat at the center of my palm, folded into a tiny square.

I shook my head in an attempt to fight off the sleepiness and immediately regretted it, the headache intensifying.

With my free hand, I unfolded the paper.

In neat script, five words:

Your little girlfriend did this.

I had been in the cemetery with Stella. She left around seven.

Glancing up into the sky, between the buildings, there was nothing but black. This time of year, the sun set around 8:30 p.m. I had been out for at least an hour and a half, maybe more.

I remembered the voice at my ear then, the man’s voice from behind me, The pressure you feel at the small of your back is a rather sharp knife. I strongly suggest you don’t struggle.

This time, I did stand up. I shot to my feet and turned in both directions, looking first up, then down the opposite direction. I was alone.

The rest came back to me, fuzzy images slowly coming into focus. The cloth at my mouth, the world quickly fading away, the words carved into the bench—

Help me

Had I imagined that?

I looked back down at the note in my hand.

Your little girlfriend did this.

That’s when I saw the foot.

I hadn’t noticed it at first because it was tucked around the other side of the Dumpster, only the tip of a black loafer visible, just the toe.

Run, Jack.

My mind screamed at me.

Get out of here.

Instead, I crept toward that shoe. I shuffled slowly closer, deeper into the alley, toward the Dumpster.

I suppose I expected to find a bum, some drunk sleeping it off in this quiet spot rocked to bed by the sound of the sodium streetlight buzzing above as he found blissful slumber.

The body looked burned.

The skin all dry and black.

The hair on the top of the man’s head was a wiry white, brittle. Clumps had fallen off around his head, these tufts of hair twisted in the light breeze stirring the ground, fluttering on the filthy blacktop.

His eyes were open, what was left of them. Where his eyes should have been there were only dry, yellowish-white orbs sunken into his skull. He stared up at me blankly, his mouth slightly agape.

He looked old.

He looked older than any man I had ever seen. A thousand-year-old mummy missing his bandages.

The body looked burned, but oddly his clothing did not. He wore blue denim jeans, a Styx tee-shirt, and a Pittsburgh Pirates fleece jacket. The clothes were filthy but not burned, not like him, as if he had been dressed after whatever horrible fate had found him. Soaked in gasoline, lit aflame, and dressed when the last bit of fire finally ran out of food.

Your little girlfriend did this.

He smelled horrible.

I tried not to think about that.

I knelt down beside him.

In my comics, when a superhero (or a Ninja Turtle) found a body, the first thing they did was try to figure out who it was.

He probably had a wallet.

I didn’t want to touch him, I knew I shouldn’t, but that didn’t stop my fingers from reaching around to the back of his jeans in search of that wallet. It didn’t stop me from turning him over just enough to pull the wallet out.

His driver’s license said his name was Andy Flack from Bethel Park. He was thirty-three years old. He looked nothing like the photo.

Andy Flack coughed.

That’s when I ran.

I bolted from the alley and out the mouth, nearly slipping on some wet cardboard boxes stacked near the opening. It wasn’t until I was on the sidewalk that I realized I was across the street from Krendal’s Diner, less than a block away from home.

I raced