Sex and Murder Magazine

By Eugene Gramelis

The convenience store clerk is just a boy. He’s all pimples and smiles until I raise my handgun to the level of his nose. He couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen years old. The clerk’s youth catches me a little by surprise, and I momentarily lower the pistol before steeling myself again. This time our eyes meet, and I am sure I have the right man—woman, whatever. Oh, the boy’s eyes are full of fear and alarm, as one might expect them to be. But that is because he can’t remember. He can’t, but I can. That is my curse, a fitting punishment for past sins.

This isn’t what I had expected. Then again, had I really known what to expect? In this life I am a man. In the last I was a child—an innocent girl who was forced to watch a crazed housekeeper murder my entire family. But that was a long time ago. Back when people still made their way around town by horse-and-carriage instead of the speeding metal coffins they use today.

The housekeeper’s name was Lauren. In the three months she had worked for us she had developed an unhealthy obsession with my father—the Lord of the manor, and all that. It was an infatuation that was unrequited. And for that he, together with my mother and infant sister, paid the ultimate price. I didn’t know why I had been spared as I sat whimpering in the corner of the living room. Perhaps Lauren had seen something in me that had repelled her or perhaps she had already quenched her bloodlust. Whatever had been the cause, it could not have been sympathy. A creature as vile as Lauren is not capable of such emotion. And she had shown none to the other members of my household when she had disemboweled them with her bare nails.

I swore then that I would have my revenge—in this life or the next. And I lived the remaining years of that life with hate at the core of my heart.

In this life, that low creature has taken the form of a young boy—one who is yet to experience his first shave or a kiss from his date on prom night. I have often speculated about why the Designer of All Things allows the wicked to pass seamlessly from one life to the next, endlessly deferring judgment upon them. I think I have my answer: the chance of redemption. As I stare into the clerk’s wide, green eyes I wonder if I see the same thing in them that Lauren saw when she had stared into my eyes on that life-changing night. Could she have been doing no more than I am doing now? What forgotten sins of the ages did she behold when she had gazed deep into the bottomless pit of my soul?

Perhaps in this world the boy has lived a just and moral life so far. Or perhaps behind those blameless eyes Lauren still lurks somewhere. After all, a leopard never changes its spots.

What of me? What will happen to my soul once I pull this trigger? Is redemption only for the wicked? Or will Lauren’s last triumph be the final corruption of the innocent spirit she had spared all those years ago? I lower the gun. It is not my place to render judgment when One far greater than me has seen fit to postpone not only this poor wretch’s day of reckoning but my own. A dark patch blooms around the clerk’s crotch as his bladder lets go. He collapses to his knees, a blubbering mess, just as I had when he/she—Lauren—had acted out his/her grisly fantasy in my former life.

I lean down and whisper into his ear, “I’ll be watching, Lauren. I’ll follow you from one life to the next. I’ll be watching and waiting.”

The boy turns his face up at me, snot crusting up his cheeks. “Mister, I have no idea what you’re talking about. My name’s Mike. I just want to go home.”

I nod slowly and walk away. Before I step through the sliding doors and disappear into the crisp night, I turn and give him one last stern look. “Watching and waiting,” I warn, “until you rear your ugly head again Lauren.”

A hint of a smile creeps into the edges of the boy’s lips. Or is it a grimace? I can’t be sure. Monsters like Lauren can only hide their true nature for so long before their impulses strip them of their flimsy guise. When the tatters of Lauren’s current costume fall off I will be there. One way or another—in this life or the next—I will reap my vengeance. Only then, perhaps, will I find the blissful amnesia that comes with peace.