Every Picture Tells a Story

  Chapter Four

Sidney McComb was enjoying the scenery of the rural Indiana countryside as it passed by in front of his windshield. He squirted a few streams of blue liquid up onto his windshield and watched the wipers scrub away the crusty remnants of several less than agile insects. His muffler rattled against the under body of his beat up Chrysler LeBaron, constantly reminding him of the money he had stashed away in the bank earmarked for a new car. But he was just getting used to this one.
This was the one aspect of Sid’s job that he still liked. The freedom of traveling from place to place. The anonymity of sleeping in hotels located in small towns where no one knew his name. He was free to stalk the streets at night, commit any variety of lewd and lascivious acts without the worry of being recognized. Even with DNA evidence the easiest and most comment way criminals were caught was recognition, that and greedy family members dialing up Crime Busters. Sid had to distinct traits in his favor, he was trained to blend in with the public and he had no friends or family to ever turn on him.
Sidney was nearing the fringes of the city so he began looking for signs of small, discreet roadside motels. They were always a sure sign that civilization was just a few miles down the road. Wives and husbands, bosses and secretaries, politicians and interns, these were the people whose business allowed the flea bag motels to thrive. Normally Sid enjoyed being part of that crowd. But not this trip. This trip Sid was going to enjoy some of the finer things he had been depriving himself of as of late.  
Sidney was bored. Bored beyond comprehension. Bored beyond rectification. Christ, he had never seen so much farmland before in all his life. But then again, he reminded himself, boredom can be soothing. Boredom can be a healing thing. So, he remained bored, but forced himself to enjoy it. As plot after plot of freshly plowed tracts passed by through his window he spotted something ahead of him in the distance. The object intruded upon the symmetry of the flatlands, jutting up into the serene horizon.
The more distance he closed to the object, the more he was able to see that it was a broken down panel van. A man stepped up out of the deep ditch and began waving his arms above his head. Sid began to slow down to a speed that would allow him to scrutinize the man but still be able to speed away safely if he sensed danger. He saw the hood was up and a thin plume of steam rose from the radiator and disappeared into the morning air. He braked slowly.
“Need some help?” Sid asked, leaning across the passenger seat to talk to the man through a half rolled down window.
“Damn thing over heated on me. I think the thermostat is stuck. Think I can catch a lift to town?” The young man asked.
Sidney surveyed the man for possible trouble. He was young, early twenties, thin and wiry. A little more than five and a half feet tall. He didn’t look to be more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. Feeling everything was kosher, Sid unlocked the passenger door and let the young man in. His windbreaker and parachute pants made a hissing noise as he slid across the vinyl seat. Sid thought the outfit looked comfortable, but only if you weren’t ever going to leave the house, not even to get the mail or the newspaper from the porch.
“Thanks a lot mister,” he said, slipping into the passenger seat. “My boss’s already gonna have my ass for being late. I’m sure he’ll say I broke the damned truck too,” he grinned through a mouthful of yellowed teeth. He smelled strongly of stale tobacco and sweat.
“Not a problem, son,” he said, gripping the wheel a little tighter. He was suddenly pissed at himself for letting the punk into his car before taking a really good look at him.
“Town’s only about twenty miles up ahead,” the man offered.
Sid didn’t reply. They cruised wordlessly for about two miles. The man fussed and fidgeted in his seat and Sid began to worry about him being a drug addict or something even worse. Nervously, Sid rubbed his hand across his head. His hair had finally grown back in to about an inch long. The reddish-blonde burr reminded him of how stupid he had been to shave it all off. He should have known that his scarred, lumpy skull wouldn’t have looked very good without hair. Baldness takes a certain kind of head to make it work, and it seemed that nature seemed to know how to pick those heads out the crowd elf.
“Mind if I turn on the radio?” He asked.
“As long as it’s not rap music,” Sid replied with a forced smile.
“Oh, hell no, I hate that shit.”
The new passenger flipped through the stations until he finally came to rest on a college station playing alternative and punk. Immediately the music grated on Sid’s nerves. He tried not to appear agitated, but couldn’t help himself from drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He stared at his fingers while trying to keep an eye on the road. If he focused really hard he could still see the faded blue-black lettering of old memories across his knuckles. While he was still just a young buck, Sid had gotten the words, HATE on one hand and LOVE on the other, tattooed on his fingers between the knuckles. However, once he had to enter the work force to make a living he had the tattoos removed the best he could. They weren’t discernible to most people, but he knew they were there. In fact, he still liked the fact that they were there.
The grating sounds of the singer on the radio was accompanied by the young passenger’s nasally accompaniment as he belted out tune after tune in unison with the talent less vocalists. Sid had finally had enough and reached over and turned the radio station to something more agreeable before he exploded.
“Hey!” The young man cried out.
“Sorry, I just couldn’t stand any more of that crap.”
“Crap. That’s the best thing going, man,” he said, reaching for the tuner knob.
“Don’t,” Sid issued a one word order.
“Screw you, man,” he said, pulling a gun from the pocket of his jacket and shoving it into Sid’s face.
Sid froze.
“I’m the one in charge, fat man,” he said, pushing the barrel up into his nostril.
“Alright, you’re the HMFIC, take it easy. I get it. What do you want?” He asked calmly.
“What the fuck do you think I want?”
“Money?”
“Bingo, mother fucker.”
“All I have is twenty bucks. I can give you that and give you a ride back to your truck back there,” he tried to negotiate.
“My truck,” he laughed. “Man, that thing’s been in that ditch for three days.”
“But it had over-heated, I saw the steam.”
“Man, it’s cold out. I pissed on the radiator. Now, shut the fuck up and let’s get you to an ATM..”
“ATM, what for?” Sid asked.
“To get your money out, what else you fat fuck?”
“What money? I told you. I’ve got twenty bucks.”
“Don’t bullshit me man.”
“I’m not. Look around you, you moron. Am I driving a Caddie? Did you see my custom paint job on this classic car, gray primer and everything?”
“So, that don’t mean nothing.”
“Do you hear that muffler clanging against the bottom of the car?”
“Yeah, so, what of it?” He had lowered the gun significantly and Sid was just waiting for the right moment.
“Irritating isn’t it?”
“I don’t see your point. Now take me to an ATM, damn you,” he shoved the gun into Sid’s face once more.
“The point, you jerk, is that I would never listen to that rattling muffler if I had the money to fix it. And if I don’t have the money to get it fixed, I sure as hell don’t have any money to give to you.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m dumb.”
“Then quit thinking dumb. Listen, we can work something out. I can take you back there to the truck and you can wait for some other poor shmuck to come along. I’ll be happy, you’ll be happy,” he continued to negotiate.
“You can make me happy by shutting the hell up so I can think,” he said, lowering the gun once again.
“You know, I just remembered, there’s something else about this damned car that gets on my fucking nerves,” Sid smiled.
“What?” He said disgustedly.
“The brakes keep sticking,” with that, Sidney slammed on the brakes.
The young man was caught totally by surprise. His head flung forward, slamming his face into the dash. In one surprisingly quick move, Sidney chopped the wrist holding the gun. He heard the weapon hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud. Then he grabbed the man’s collar and flung him back into the upright position. Blood from his face sprayed up the dash, the inside of the windshield and spotted the fabric of the car’s roof. Sid then viciously chopped the man across the throat. The entire altercation took less than thirty seconds start to finish.
Sid got out of the car and drug the young man across the driver’s seat and out of the car onto the asphalt.
“Fat man!” He said, kicking the man in the ribs.
“Please, mister, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said through bloody lips. Immediately upon using his damaged larynx he began hacking up phlegm and blood.
“Going to fucking rob me, huh?” He said, dropping a large, over-sized knee into the man’s scrawny stomach. Sid relished the loud, agonized grunt the young man released as Sid ground his knee down into the his stomach until he swore he could feel his spine.
In a wild, blind rage he began pummeling the man with his massive fists. First, he hit him with HATE and then he showed him what real LOVE felt like. Sidney felt the man’s jaw give way on one of the punches. His nose on yet another. The young man tried to roll away from the beating, exposing a tender, undamaged area of his back.
Sidney continued his LOVE, HATE relationship with the man, concentrating on the area of his kidneys and spleen. He would remember this beating every time he pissed for the next three months. Finally, Sidney collapsed, completely exhausted. He rolled off the man and sat, cross-legged in front of the punk. He gave him a good looking over and realized just how much damage he had done.
“Damn, boy, it looks like I fucked you up pretty good,” he said, leaning over close enough for the man to smell his stale breath.
The man just moaned.
“I guess this day is just going to keep getting shittier for you.”
The man tried to lift his head.
“Let me introduce myself, I am Federal Agent Sidney McComb. Oops, guess I shouldn’t have done that, now you can go to the authorities and tell them who I am.”
He tried to shake his head in refutation.
“Oh, come on now, I gave you a pretty good thrashing, one quite unbecoming of an officer sworn to uphold the law. I couldn’t very well have an incident like this on my record, now could I?”
The man shook his head even harder. His eyes were bloodied from the beating, yet, his fear shone through quite clearly. Sid grinned, showing what he felt was his best facial feature, a golden eye tooth. He grabbed the man by his collar and drug him off the road and down into the ditch.
The ditch was a deep one and the tree line was only a couple feet beyond that. Sidney drug the man into the forest until he was shrouded by the massive pines. He was still able to see the road well enough to be able to head off anyone venturing into the forest looking for a stranded motorist.
"So, tell me, what caused you to choose a life of crime?" He asked, lifting the man's head up by his hair to face him. He punched him in the mouth when the answer didn't come.
The air was suddenly thick with stench. The man had evacuated himself out of fear.
"Damn, son, what'd you have for lunch?" Sid laughed and left the man lying there in his own excrement. He cautiously left the comfort of the forest, climbed up out of the ditch and walked over to the trunk of his car. Sid unfolded his Indiana/Illinois state map and placed it on the dashboard so it covered the windshield. If anyone drove by they would just think someone was getting their bearings straight and wouldn’t even bother to stop.
The young man just groaned and tried to get to his feet. Michael Smithers was no longer thinking coherently. In fact, he really wasn't even Michael Smithers any more. His brain ached. His lungs ached with every blood-frothed, labored breath. His stomach convulsed violently. And his soul screamed out for mercy. Although Michael wasn't able to discern too many coherent thoughts, there was one thing he was certain of, he had to run. He had to escape this madman before he killed him.
Michael leaned against a tree and tried to get his bearings straight. Once he had figured out which way home was, he started staggering off into the forest as fast as he could. He had tried running at first, but he was neither stable nor pain free enough for that. His body stiffened when he heard the crunching of dried leaves closing in behind him.
"Where you going boy?" Sid called out after him.
Michael staggered faster.
"How far do you think you're going to get? You think you can outrun this fat bastard?"
He clutched his broken ribcage with one arm and dragged himself from tree to tree with the other. From the sounds of the leaves, the man was only walking. Maybe the lunatic couldn’t find him.
"You screwed up, son. I was going to let you chose how you wanted to die, but now I think I will just have some fun. In fact, I think I am feeling a little horny," his laughter echoed through the woods.
Michael leaned against a tree with his hand. He wiped the sweat away from his forehead with his other arm. He tried to keep his breathing shallow so that he could hear what was going on around him. There was nothing. No more footsteps coming up from behind him. Michael smiled when he realized he had lost the bastard.
Sid grinned just before pulling the trigger. Michael's hand exploded in a shower of blood and fragmented bone. He screamed and fell to the pine-carpeted floor. Sid was upon him in seconds flat. The man flew into a frenzy. He kicked at the man’s groin with the viciousness of a rabid dog who hadn't eaten for weeks. He was kicking Michael’s manhood as if he were trying to kick the man’s package through the uprights in an overtime super bowl game.
The man vomited relentlessly. The pain was so severe it no longer hurt in any one place. His entire body screamed out from the assault. And yet, the man kept kicking him over and over again. At some point Michael felt himself pop, rupture with a detonation of uncharted pain. His mind had gone completely white. He tried to put his hands in the way, but the shattered hand was of no use and the man stood on the other. The man’s family heirlooms were unprotected against the full frontal assault. Michael felt himself murmuring the words, please, just kill me, over and over again.
Sid watched the young man's body thrash and twitch wildly in the throes of death's passion. He had stopped kicking the man's groin after he had broken his big toe. That was when he had started using his knees.
Sid checked the man's pulse and waited fifteen minutes before checking it again. Once the body started to cool he covered it with a menagerie of forest droppings. He wasn't too concerned with concealing the body too much, it was months away from any hunting season and Sid figured no one but hungry animals would be passing through this neck of the woods for quite sometime. And when the hunter’s finally did migrate into the forest, Mr. Smartass would have long since become one with nature. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Sid took one last look around at the crime scene before leaving, completely satisfied.