Did I say three parts? No, you must have misread me! I distinctly said FOUR parts! “No Good Deed” will absolutely, positively, without question conclude tomorrow. Really. Until then, let’s break some stuff! —Jordy
Elaine stood in front of a brick building on a narrow tree-lined street and blinked against the brightness of the streetlights. “Yikes,” she said, “I guess I had gotten pretty used to being in the dark out there. Where am I?”
“We, Signora Elaine, we.”
“Oh, Saint Andrew! I was hoping I didn’t make this journey alone. Speaking of which, where exactly are we?” she scanned the building and spotted a name. “Quince?! Saint Andrew, you do have great taste! I haven’t been here since Steven and my last anniversary. But, you know, I’m not terribly hungry. Actually, I haven’t been hungry since I died. Do I get hungry any more?” She looked up at Andrew who arched an eyebrow. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?” His eyes tracked over her shoulder into the restaurant and she turned to follow his gaze.
“Son of a bitch!” she swore, then walked to the door and reached for the handle. Her hand closed right through it. Rolling her eyes, she stepped through the closed glass door, around the maître d’, around the white chairs with their diners straight back to a table for two along the back exposed brick wall. “You asshole!” she swore at Steven who swirled his wine glass smiling at the brunette opposite him who returned the smile with dark red lips. “You think you can fucking kill your wife and get away with it? Oh, and with Anne!” She looked at the woman, “I fucking knew it! And here you are! It hasn’t even been, what? A week?”
“It’s been a month,” Steven said. “And no one has any idea where she’s gone.”
“A month!” She looked at the hand holding the wine glass, “And you’ve already taken off your wedding ring?! You asshole!”
“You don’t think the police are going to decide you’re not the grieving husband?” Anne asked with a wicked smile.
“Oh, they’ve tried,” he said. “The forensics people were all over the house… my cleaner has just now managed to get all that fingerprint dust and luminol cleaned up! They left the place filthy!”
“And you didn’t?” Anne asked.
“What? No. I told you, when she said she’d found out about our little… tryst,” he waggled his eyebrows, “I decided it was the right time to put our plan into action – to get her out of the way for good. One hit over the head and she went down right on the carpet that I disposed of her with.”
“Yes, about that, Steven,” she interrupted. “That rug really tied that room together…”
They both laughed.
Elaine boiled with furious rage.
“To our first month together in peace!” Steven raised his glass. They clinked and drank.
Elaine focused on the bottle of wine in the middle of the table, channeled all her fulminating rage and swirling fury at it. Nothing happened for a moment, then the bottle began to vibrate. Steven noticed it first and tilted his head at the bottle. Anne followed his glance and stared wide eyed. Elaine’s face had turned beet red as she stared intently at the bottle. Without warning she sent it smashing against the wall with a ferocity that sprayed glass and scarlet Cabernet Sauvignon all over the two at the table as well as anyone in a ten-foot radius.
Bedlam erupted in the restaurant as the wait staff hurried in to see what happened and to attend to the wine-stained guests. The bottle hit the wall so had that the glass pieces weren’t large enough to do any real damage, though one piece did open a cut on Steven’s cheek and blood mixed with wine down his cheek and onto his jacket. Steven and Anne stared at each other in utter shock.
Paramedics were called. Steven and Anne followed the advice to go to the hospital as a precaution. Elaine sat at a vacated chair nearby staring at the empty table covered in wine and glass. She was too tired to think about anything in particular, too tired to be angry right now, too tired to cry. She just stared with half-opened eyelids.
After a long time, after the scene had been cleared, after the restaurant had been closed for the night and the dining room sat empty, Saint Andrew quietly took a seat next to Elaine. “I mentioned I am the angel of sudden death when we met,” he started softly without looking at her. “When I encounter a spirit, they are new and scared and it is my job to help them across to the other side.” Elaine turned to regard him with exhaustion plain on her face. “While I know that such a thing as you did tonight – with that much energy – is theoretically possible…” he trailed off. “But… I have never seen it done.” He regarded her, “You surprised me. You impressed me. You scared me.”
Elaine could barely muster the energy to nod.
“You were not my charge,” he said. “By all rights, I should walk away. There are others who may need my services. You are not a recent death, so I should not be involved.”
Elaine mumbled something inaudible.
“Scusami?
“I said, I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
Andrew smiled at her, “Corretta. But…” he gave her a nod which she sleepily returned, “you intrigue me, Signora Elaine. And you remind me of someone else who intrigued me enough to stay around when I should have gone.”
“A’ight,” she slurred with a smile. “Le’s give ’em hell!” She tried to stand, but her legs instantly gave out and she collapsed back onto the chair.
“Yes, that is going to be a problem. I have not seen such focus before…”
“I learned it in the woods. I didn’t have anything else to do. You should have seen the look on the little beady squirrel faces when I threw pinecones at them!”
“…But you don’t have the energy to keep that up,” he finished.
She nodded with a jerk. “Yeah, you may have a point.”
“I may have a better idea…” he said.
“Oh, Saint Andrew, please tell! How are we going to get that asshole?”
“Mmm,” he shook his head with a furrowed brow and a frown, “I do not think that is the right way to go about it…”
Elaine squinted at him trying desperately to focus through her exhaustion. Like a jolt of adrenaline, the answer lit her up, “through her! Saint Andrew, make sure I don’t fall on your bad side!”
***
Still shaken after they were released from the hospital, Anne declined Steven’s offer to stay at their house. She wearily took the elevator to the forty-eighth floor of the north tower of Rincon One, locked her door behind her, stripped out of her stained clothes and collapsed into bed. While sleep came quickly, it was far from peaceful.
She found herself in a dark forest somewhere – she didn’t recognize anything but could make out the trees and bushes bathed in the silver light of a full moon. Crickets chirped and she heard the croak of a bullfrog in a pond nearby somewhere. She spun as a branch in the underbrush snapped loudly behind her. She didn’t see anything moving. She turned back slowly stood inches from the bloody face of Elaine. Anne hopped back with shock. Elaine fixed her with a stare, then reached out and took Anne’s hands in hers. Anne became aware of something wet on her hands and looked down to see her hands streaked dark with blood from Elaine’s hands.
“You have my blood on your hands,” Elaine said sadly.
“No! No!” Anne screamed, turned and started to run blindly deeper into the forest. Branches whipped at her face as blackberry bushes tore at her bare ankles and nettles stung her knees, but she sprinted ignoring the pain. She slowed, feeling she certainly had outrun the bloody Elaine. She stopped when her lungs hurt too much and panted, trying to listen to the forest around her. Everything had gone quiet. No crickets. No frog. She started to catch her breath when a voice warm and quiet spoke directly into her ear, “How safe do you feel, Anne?”
She screamed out loud and sat bolt upright in bed, panting. She stared around the dark bedroom. “Just a dream,” she said. “Just a dream…” she folder her arms around herself. She found herself damp with a cold sweat and decided she needed a hot shower to steady her nerves.
She padded to the bathroom and turned the faucet in the shower to just below scalding, closed the glass door behind her and sighed as the rain showerhead sluiced the last remnants of the dream away down the drain. She felt the hot water and steam take away the shock from the restaurant and the hospital and by the time she turned the water off and emerged into the bathroom, she felt human again and ready to try sleep again. Then she screamed and sprinted naked and dripping from the bathroom.
On the steamed mirror someone had traced the words “He will get you next.”
Elaine and Saint Andrew stood in the doorway of the bathroom, arms crossed with satisfied looks on their faces. “That went very well, Saint Andrew.”
“I agree, Signora,” he agreed. “And, I will note, with much less energy.”
“You are very right!”
Anne didn’t sleep the rest of the night and the first rays of dawn poured through the window to find her curled in a corner of her living room, every light in the room on full. She did manage to get dressed when her alarm startled her, though she shouldn’t have bothered as she jumped at everything at work. She gave a little shriek when her phone rang. The caller ID indicated Steven.
“Hey baby,” he said warmly.
“What?”
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
“No, I had a shitty night.”
“The restaurant? Jesus, I called my lawyer and he’s seeing what we can do to sue them…”
“No, not that. I had a nightmare last night. Elaine was in it.”
“Jesus, Anne, she’s gone…”
“Is she, Steven?” Elaine laughed standing behind Anne.
“Is she, Steven?” Anne asked.
“Yes, Anne, she’s gone. I can say that with absolute certainty.”
Elaine laughed as a violent shiver ran through Anne. “I’m… not so sure,” she said.
“For fuck’s sake, Anne, you’ve had one bad dream… Now’s a shitty time to get squeamish.”
“Yeah, and it’s a shitty time to be your airtight alibi,” she said and hung up the phone.
She avoided his texts the rest of the day. When night came she returned home and stared warily at the bed. The fifth Philz coffee of the day wearing off, she realized she would have to give sleep another try. She drifted off almost as soon as she lay her head on the pillow.
She also immediately found herself in a dream. “At least I know this place,” she sighed as she walked up the stairs of Steven’s Pacific Heights house.
“Sweetie? Is that you?” his voice called from the bedroom ahead.
“It’s me, darling,” she replied.
“I can’t wait to see you!” his voice carried warmth. She stepped into the bedroom surprised not to see him in bed.
“Steven?” she said, looking around.
“Right here,” he said quietly right behind her.
She jumped and turned, her eyes drawn to the bloody hammer in his hand as he violently swung it down on her and everything went black.
She leapt out of bed, tangled a leg in the sheets and landed on the floor bodily. She lay there for a few moments, happy to have woken from that nightmare. A rap on the front door caused her to jump. She realized it was just a real knock on her real door and nothing more. She stood up unsteadily, put on her robe and crossed to the door. “Who is it?” she called.
“Me,” Steven’s voice came muffled from behind the door.
She unlocked the door and opened it with her best angry look on her face. “What do you want?” she said. Her face softened immediately when she saw the long stemmed roses he held.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said.
“Aww, thank you!”
Steven stepped into the doorway and embraced her in a kiss. She released and caught something in the hallway behind him. On the wall opposite her door was smeared “He’s gonna get you” in blood.
Anne shrieked and staggered backwards into her apartment, collapsing on the floor.
“Honey, what?!” Steven asked moving towards her.
She pointed past him, eyes closed, crying. “Look! The wall!” she said.
He turned around and stared at the wall. “What about it?”
She tentatively opened one eye and then the other. “What?! There was blood…. A message… it said… it said…”
“Anne, there’s nothing there.” He moved towards her and she reflexively flinched back. He moved in anyway and knelt to pick her up in his arms. As he lifted her and took her back to the bedroom her body convulsed in sobs.
Elaine waited until the sobs receded to the bedroom. “This might be easier than I thought.”
“I told you that one would be the easier one to get to.”
“You’re a devious one, Saint Andrew…”
