Pressure - By Jeff Strand Page 0,80
him the whole story. Jeremy’s face turned redder and redder as he listened. By the time I finished, I thought he might start ripping chunks out of the couch.
“So it’s simple. We kill him.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious. You need closure on this. That rotten little psychopath has had power over you…over us…for more than half of our lives. It’s time to take it back.”
“I don’t even know where he is. For all I know, he’s dead.”
“And for all you know, he’s watching through the window right now. Sorry, Peter, but it’s true. Alex, if you want to move on with your life, you need to end this. You’re young, you’ve got more time ahead of you than behind you, and you can’t waste it by always wondering when that son of a rascal is going to show up next.”
“Well, if he’d be considerate enough to show up at my doorstep, I’d be more than happy to end this.”
“So flush him out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Put out a big sign that says ‘Free Beer for Lunatics.’”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“Ho ho,” Peter chimed in.
We looked at Jeremy expectantly.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s your line,” Peter said.
“I have no idea what you guys are talking about. But I’m serious; we’ve got to flush him out.”
“Whoa, hold on,” said Peter. “I don’t want him flushed out around me.”
“Of course not. You’ve got a lot to lose. I don’t have squat except for three alimony payments.”
“Three?”
“Three as of last month, yeah. I’d kind of hoped for an annulment of that last one, but it didn’t work out.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens. I mean poop happens. Anyway, we can get this guy. He wants you to be his partner in homicide, right? Why not go on a killing spree of your own?”
“Oh, sure, that’ll ease my mental torment.”
“Not a real one. Fake him out.”
“Sure. I’ll just walk down the sidewalk, pretend to kill a few people, and wait for him to show up.”
“You know, you’re very sarcastic for a suicidal. Didn’t you use to do magic?”
“Yeah. I gave it up when I spent those months locked in the pit. Too hard to see the cards.”
“Well then, smart-ass, it’s possible that you’re familiar with the concept of illusion. You see, an illusion is something that appears to be there, but really isn’t. For example, in the fabled floating woman trick, audience members will see a floating woman up onstage. And yet the magician possesses no supernatural powers with which to float this woman. Most magicians give up by this point, but others, the really clever ones, they think to themselves, ‘I know, instead of trying to call upon paranormal forces to float this woman, I’ll just do an illusion that makes it look like the woman is floating, and then I can still get my paycheck.’ Yes, the concept of illusions has been very popular with magicians across the world, which is why it’s so surprising to me that you’ve never heard of it.”
“So you’re saying that I should fake a murder?”
“No, I’m saying that you should float a woman.” He looked at Peter. “Was he this slow when we were roommates?”
“Actually, I think you were the slow one.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not trying to be sarcastic, but this idea sounds a little preposterous.”
“Why?”
“Because…I don’t know why, actually.” Maybe it wasn’t that preposterous. “We’d have to find somebody good with special effects.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Let’s think about this. I could go on a fake killing spree, it could get captured on tape, and Darren would see it on the news and think that his whacko plan worked. And we’d be ready for him.”
“Sure!” said Jeremy. “We’d hire some actors, put some blood packs on them, have you walk into a restaurant or something with a gun, open fire, and have somebody tape it. All the media would cover it.”
“You’re right, they would,” I said, starting to get excited.
Peter rolled his eyes. “Scale it back, you guys.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d have to find actors who could die in a believable enough manner that when experts reviewed the tape for the umpteenth time they wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, look at the shoddy performance of victim number three.’ Also, where are all of these people going to hide out while you wait for Darren to show up? You’d have to find actors willing to vanish for a while and let their families believe that they were dead. And I’m pretty sure authorities will be able to tell a squib hit from