Mind Games

Then he picked up the watch that had started it all. Turning it over again, he read the engraving.

“‘For All Time.’ Well, your time ran out, asshole.”

His now, until he sold it. Then the money would be his. And that’s how it was done.

If he worked at it, and held it, he could see it in its fancy box, watch her hands opening it. Even hear her gasp, her voice, though that sounded like she spoke in a tunnel under a river.

Oh my God, John! It’s beautiful. Are you crazy?

We made our first decade, the man said. This is for that, and all the ones to come. Read the back.

Now her voice sounded all teary, amusing him.

Oh, John. Now you’re making me cry. I love you, too. For all time.

The pushing to see brought on a headache, right behind his eyes. Not a bad one, but enough to have him dropping the watch onto the bed and getting up to dig out the bottle of Advil he kept handy for just this reason.

He flopped back on the mattress to give the tablets a few minutes to start working. Blanked his mind, closed his eyes.

He drifted off for another twenty minutes.

Shouldn’t’ve pushed it, he admitted. He still had to get where he wanted to go, and stop somewhere to load some food into the place.

But the twenty minutes out took care of the headache.

He yawned, stretched, idly scratched his balls, and headed to the shower.

Cheap-ass soap for a cheap-ass motel, but the water ran hot.

He’d pick up some good soap when he got supplies for his vacation.

Some fancy-man soap.

And he’d find someone over twenty-one he could bribe to buy him a case of beer. He pictured himself sitting on the deck of the house he’d found and booked online. Drinking a beer, soaking up some sun, watching people.

He wouldn’t kill anybody then and there—he wasn’t an idiot—but he could watch, push a little, and take his pick.

Get the license plate number and state off the car in their driveway, the make, the model. Or if they left it unlocked, just get an address off the registration.

He knew from experience people got careless on vacations, and an unlocked car wasn’t hard to find.

But he’d take a couple days, oh yeah, to sit out, drink some beer, and relax. Too much pushing brought on those headaches, and sometimes a nosebleed or a dribble of blood from his ear.

So he needed some downtime. Goddamn, he’d worked for it!

He rubbed the cheap soap on his balls, considered taking a few more minutes to jerk off. But that could wait for the beach, too.

The soap spurted out of his hand when he heard something crash.

Before he could think what to do next, the shower curtain skidded back, and he had a gun in his face.

“Hey, Ray, you’re under arrest.”

“What the hell is this!”

“It’s the police, Ray, and let me repeat and expand. You’re under arrest for Murder One, two counts. Then there’s related charges like nighttime breaking and entering, burglary, grand theft auto. You’re going to want to step out of the tub, really carefully.”

“Lawyer.”