Blood Shadow swung his golf club. The ball cut a hard right and careened into a mesh fence. It tumbled to the ground into a group of other golf balls he already hit there, "I have no idea how to straighten my swing out."
"Have you tried lessons?" I asked. I swung my club. Pain shot up my arms as the club head smacked the ground before I hit the ball. The result was that I hit the top of the ball and it dribbled onto the driving range. It didn't go very far. I could actually go pick it up and put it back on the tee if I cared to.
Blood Shadow teed up another ball, "I've taken dozens of lessons from pros all over the world. Nothing they have me do seems to work. I can't seem to make it stick. My body doesn't want to remember the motions needed to drive a ball straight," he swung again, this time his ball shot left and bounced off the other mesh fence, "It's really frustrating. I never have any clue where the ball is going to go."
I swung again and got lucky. Full contact and it didn't feel like I hit anything at all. My ball sailed straight down the driving range. I sheepishly grinned. This was the first time I'd ever actually swung a golf club. Blood Shadow was decked out in top of the line gear. He told me he played all the time. I was wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt, my clubs were rented from the clubhouse. So far I hadn't seen him hit one straight drive. It felt like I was being set up for some practical joke, but I could tell his agitation was real.
"Why do you keep playing if you don't get any better?" I asked.
"I am getting better. Which is embarrassing to say, considering how many balls I've shanked today. It's fun."
"Fun?"
"Yeah, fun. Everything else I do in my life has come naturally to me. It's nice to have good skills, but I can't honestly say that I've had to work for them. One day I'm hired to assassinate this guy. I pick Thursday since he's guaranteed to be playing golf that day. Same time every Thursday, never misses it. So I set up on a hill on one of the far holes. I let him tee off. The moment I took my shot he was smiling at this perfect stroke he had."
"Jesus Christ," I whispered.
"That look of happiness on his face stuck with me. Since then I tried to find it myself. I can see the appeal of golf: It's a nice walk, you get some exercise. Find a good course and they're absolutely beautiful. Groundskeepers on the better courses earn more a year than your average office drone, sorry, and I think they deserve every penny and more. I wish I didn't hack up their fairways so much. They probably all hate me. What's the matter? You look sick."
"Kind of freaking out."
"Because of golf?" he asked.
"No, you just told me a story about killing a guy. I'm still...still not really used to shit like that. Like it's nothing. And the whole thing about a guy getting shot brings back unpleasant memories. We've still never really talked about that night when you checked in on me at the hospital."
"When I checked in on...Oh, that. Sorry about that. Guess I really freaked you out. Dana told me about that. It wasn't really my intention. Not really. I mean, yes, I wanted you to keep quiet, but I did actually want to make sure that you were okay. At the time you were still considered a person of interest. I wasn't family so I had no other way of seeing you."
"I thought you were there to kill me."
For the first time ever I saw Blood Shadow without a smile on his face. He actually looked hurt that I would suggest it.
"No, man, I wouldn't do that."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. I, Christ, I knew this would happen eventually. That you would find my lifestyle distasteful."
"It's not that. Well, it's kind of that. Except I'd already come to terms with stuff like that with Beth. I was really scared at the time. I'd just been shot and I didn't know what was happening with Beth. Then you popped out of the shadows, armed like a commando. I wasn't afraid for long; since you didn't shoot me immediately I realized that you weren't going to. Why were you armed like that if you were just visiting?"
"I never go anywhere unarmed. Look." To demonstrate he turned around and lifted his shirt. Poking up from his waistband was the grip of a pistol. He pulled his shirt down then he reached into one of the pockets of his golf bag and pulled out a giant revolver just enough for me to see, "This is only my every day carry. When I'm wearing my costume I go heavily armed. You never know when you'll find yourself in a firefight. Hell, the MP5 was me being lightly armed, considering the urban nature of the hospital. Normally I prefer to carry something with armor-piercing capabilities."
"You mean that my hospital gown didn't warrant a Gatling gun?"
"A lot of people I deal with have very dense skin. 9MM is a great round for most people, but I'm not dealing with them a lot of the time. At the hospital it was all doctors and nurses and cops, so it would've been fine. Look, I am sorry for scaring you. Sometime I get a bit...protective of my freedom. Seeing a friend of mine get arrested that day was jarring for everyone. I hope you don't start getting weird around me because I talked about killing people. I'm comfortable around you and sometimes it slips my mind that you're not in the business."
"Would rather be in that business than mine, " I muttered as I took another shot. It popped straight into the air. I had to duck with my hands over my head until it dropped to the ground a foot away from me.
"Is it because of that girl you were talking about earlier? Kylie?"
"Yeah. I led her on and now she won't leave me alone."
"I've had some experience with that," Blood Shadow said.
"Really? How did you handle it?"
"I married her."
He took another shot before I could respond. For once he got a good one. The ball sailed straight down the range beyond where my earlier shot was. I started to say something, ask him to explain himself, but he motioned with his hand for me to be quiet. It wasn't until his ball finished rolling that he said, "Okay."
"Dana is the girl who wouldn't leave you alone?"
"Yep. We fooled around once and she decided that I was the man for her. So even though I wasn't really interested she pursued me. Hard."
"I find it hard to believe that you weren't interested in a woman like that. Especially now. I've seen the way you two act around each other. It’s like two teenagers. You guys are worse than Beth and me."
"Sure, now. But, like everybody, I was a different person when I was younger. I was raised Catholic. My family wasn't ultra-conservative, but it was still Mass every Sunday, no meat on Fridays, and prayers before meals and bedtime. As a result I wasn't that good with girls growing up. I liked them, like every guy does, but I could never get close to them because of these conflicting feelings of lust and guilt. So I didn't get laid in high school. Then I joined the Marines right after graduation, completely skipping college.
"I spent nearly the next decade in the sand, surrounded mostly by dudes, getting shot at. The few times I got leave it was so short and disorienting that I couldn't focus on anything. By the time I got acclimated and feeling like I could meet a girl I'd get called back for something else."
My shot went wide again, as I teed up another I said, "I thought military had rules for deployments. Like six months there, two years off."
"That's how it's supposed to run. In theory. So we got called back a lot more than we should have. Me, especially. The Marines is where I discovered my power. The higher-ups suspected I was more than normal, but never expressly said so because of legal obligations. All I know was that I was used a lot more than normal since it was better for the war effort if I was in the dirt than trying to get laid stateside."
"Okay, I can't stand it anymore. I don't care what happens. Tell me what you do. I've been driving myself crazy thinking of every possibility. With all the other villains I've met it's been self-evident because you can see their muscles or literally their brains. With you...I have no fucking clue. Are...are we good enough friends for that?"
"Hell, yeah. I would've told you if you'd asked. I thought you already knew. Figured Black Hat would've clued you in so you wouldn't be surprised."
"Beth didn't even warn me about Sarah and her uncontrollable fear powers. She's not the best at explanations."
"I have the power of perfect aim. Simple as that," Blood Shadow said.
"That's it."
"You sound disappointed. What powers do you have?"
"It's kind of hard to believe you, after all, since I've only seen you hit one straight ball this entire time."
Blood Shadow examined his club like it was defective, "That has always eluded me. Clubs always feel awkward in my hand, which is why I take all the lessons. Put any gun in my hand and I can make the shot as long as it's physically possible. Which is why the Corps loved me. I did a lot of black ops which won't be revealed until long after everyone involved in them who matters is dead. Sorry, I got lost in a tangent. What were we talking about?"
"You and Dana, really, but I did want to know what you did."
"Now you know, but it's really just background. With Dana and I it was different. When I finally mustered out of the Corps I started my own business as a hired killer. I kind of let myself go during that period. The residual guilt from my childhood was gone because of what I did. Touching a tit didn't seem so much of a sin after you've popped the grapefruit of a Middle Eastern Sheik or two. I met a lot of girls, life was fun.
"Then I met Dana. She came to the bar a few times and caught my eye. Hell, she caught everybody's eye. She was new on the scene, too. A few guys had already tried and been shot down by her. Hard. Gigglefist found himself with a broken arm.
"I was intrigued, but it seemed like a lot of effort. I had new confidence and there were plenty of villain groupies. To be honest, I don't know how it happened. It was the night after a huge job, my first big payday, the hit that solidified my cred in the community. I hit the bar flush with cash, I was very popular with everyone since I was buying rounds left and right. Stupid in retrospect, maybe.
"It ended up with me getting blackout drunk. First time ever in my life. I woke up the next morning with a killer hangover and a giant arm pinning me down across my chest. I was too weak to push her off. Every time I tried I got dizzy and nauseous. My entire body ached. Later, when I got home, I saw that I was almost completely covered in bruises. So I had to lay there, listening to her snore for an hour before she finally rolled over on her side and freed me. Then I was able to get up, take a piss, get dressed and sneak out of her place."
"Wow," I said, "That's probably the least romantic story I've ever heard."
"They can't all be about being molested during a bank robbery," he replied.
I blushed at the memory. I forgot that Beth told everyone about that. "So, you wanted a hit-it-and-quit-it and she didn't."
"It was more than that. What I didn't realize, what nobody could've realized, is that her people consider sex a marriage ritual. So, in her eyes, we were married. Not something I remember signing up for."
"Except you were blackout drunk and couldn't remember anything."
He hit his ball and watched it crash against the net, "Exactly. I could've said anything, agreed to anything, to sleep with her. So I do empathize with your plight in some ways. I couldn't get away from Dana. I didn't want to date anyone, let alone be 'married' to her. She wouldn't let it alone. I tried to go on like nothing had changed. Except wherever I went she found me. If I had sex with anyone else she knew. She would track the girls down and put the fear of Dana into them."
"So you're saying the solution to my problem is to accept that I will never be free of Kylie, " I said.
"Except Kylie can't kill you. I always tell this story wrong. I love Dana. It was annoying at first, no doubt about that. She was always tracking me down to my new apartments and blowing my cover. I'd call a girl up for a booty call and find out that they were in the hospital. With no other options I kept hanging out with her. It turned out that Dana was really cool. We had a lot of things in common, despite our outward differences.
"The thing was, she knew we were supposed to be together right from the start. She smelled something about me. All that was left was for me to figure it out myself. Back then I was thickheaded and selfish. Had the girls I'd been seeing not suffered a series of increasingly violent accidents I probably would've continued like I had been forever and not had someone as awesome as Dana in my life."
"That's nice and all," I said, "but I still don't have a solution to my problem. I don't want to fall in love with Kylie through Stockholm Syndrome."
"No, Kylie isn't your Dana. Kylie sounds crazy. You absolutely should want her out of your life. This is your maturation moment if you want it. If I were you, and I wanted to keep Black Hat in my life, I would grow up."
"That's absolutely what I want. Beth is all I think about. Sleeping with Kylie was a mistake. I was lonely and depressed and sad. I just wanted some human contact."
"Understandable. You don't have to justify it to me. It's going to be an awkward as hell conversation with Black Hat when she's out of prison."
"I am dreading that. How much shit am I in? Do you know how Beth is going to react?" I asked.
"You know her better than I do," Blood Shadow replied.
"I know she's killed at least two boyfriends."
"Hardcore."
"Except they were major assholes. I'm holding out hope for a light maiming."
"Want a gun to protect yourself?"
Blood Shadow was absolutely serious, not joking around about loaning me a gun. He was about ready to reach into his golf bag and hand me the giant revolver.
"I don't think I could ever bring myself to shoot Beth," I said.
"You'll be surprised to find out what you're capable of when people are shooting at you. Even if you don't have the balls to shoot your girlfriend you should probably look into getting a gun and learning how to fire it anyway. You may not want to shoot Black Hat, but you may have to shoot that Kylie chick."
"I don't think I'll need to shoot anyone."
"Nobody ever thinks they will."
"Maybe I accidentally oversold it. I don't think Kylie is crazy. I know I am because I'm thinking about going to go into therapy, but I don't think she's dangerous. Only a little too attached for what I thought was going on."
"You told her what you thought, you told her to leave you alone, but she keeps acting like she's going to get you back. Sounds like a bunny-boiler to me."
"She's really not like that," I said.
"You didn't sleep with her again, right? Maybe lead her on some more?"
"No. Ever since that night when the stalker started texting me I haven't gone back to Kylie's. I even stopped hanging out with my co-workers. I just show up to work, pop my headphones on, then go home. I'm not going to let anything tempt me. I don't answer her calls, I delete all her texts. Fuck, I even deleted her phone number from my phone so I can't get drunk and call her."
"Sounds like you've taken some pretty good precautions."
"She did show up to my apartment drunk one night. I didn't answer the door. I pretended I wasn't home until she finally went away."
"Are you sure you don't want to borrow a gun?"
"I'm not going to kill Kylie!"
"Then I don't have any advice for you," Blood Shadow said, "From what I can tell you've done everything you can on your own. Since you're not willing to do what needs to be done you could go to your H.R. department and file a formal complaint. You could try a restraining order, but since there's been no violence it's unlikely that you'll get one."
Both of us were done with the driving range, our buckets were empty. Enough of my balls were close enough to pick up and hit again, but my shoulders and back were killing me so I left them. We carried our clubs back to the clubhouse. I returned my rentals while Blood Shadow stowed his safely in the trunk of his car. He told me to meet him in the bar for a beer. I went into the lounge, ordered two drinks, and picked a booth near the back.
Blood Shadow walked into the lounge a minute later. He looked around the room, nodding and smiling at the other golfers sitting at the tables. He saw me and where I was sitting. He pointed to a booth behind me. I got up with the beers and moved over. He sat down at the same time I did.
"I'm not as exposed here," he said as he slid into the booth. Behind him was a wall with a big black and white picture of an old man putting.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"No worries. Probably nothing will happen, but I'll feel like an asshole if I die because of getting shot in the back while sitting in a golf course lounge. Thanks for the drink. I'll get the next round," he held his glass out. I touched my rim to his then took a drink. Blood Shadow kept talking, "So, from what I gather, you've got a known stalker in Kylie and then an unknown stalker with whoever is texting you. Whom you claim is not Kylie."
"It's not her number. It's not programmed into my phone. I've asked them to stop and they won't. I talked to my carrier and they say that there is nothing they can do to stop the messages."
Blood Shadow sipped at his beer, "What are the messages like? Threatening, I assume, otherwise you'd just assume someone was fucking with you."
I told him the whole story. From the moment I left Kylie's apartment that night to all the texts I received after. I told him I could never see who said that they were watching me. The ones that most concerned me, I told him, were the ones which threatened to tell Beth about the whole thing. I knew I would eventually tell her, but I wanted her to hear it from me. I didn't want her to find out from her lawyer or a note slipped into her cell.
I could possibly mend things if she could see my face while I admitted my sins. She could see the regret in my eyes and hear the sincerity in my voice. Otherwise she would just see the cold, hard facts with zero context and build up a level of hate towards me for my actions.
"If this person was going to tell Black Hat about your indiscretions they already would have," Blood Shadow said.
"You think so?"
"Have they asked for anything? Money in exchange for not telling Black Hat?"
"No. They just keep threatening me."
"Then they aren't going to tell."
"How can you be so sure?"
"If they had asked for money then they would have an end goal. Since they only keep threatening to, but never following through, they are getting a thrill out of taunting you. The moment they tell Black Hat about your affair their fun is over. They used their magic bullet and there is nothing else chambered."
It took me a moment to process what Blood Shadow said. It made a lot of sense, which comforted me and calmed me down. All my stalker was doing was holding something over my head which I was going to reveal to Beth anyway. All they were going to do, really, was do it first and impersonal.
Again, like they knew we were talking about them, my phone buzzed.
-Are you with your little whore?
"Lemme' see that," Blood Shadow took the phone out of my hand before I could protest. "You didn't tell me it was the Fearleader sending you texts"
"I didn't know. I suspected, but when I accused them of sending me texts they denied being Sarah."
"Take this in the spirit in which it is intended, but, for being a really bright guy, you can be the stupidest fucking person sometimes. She's harassing you. It's not like she's going to admit it the first time you call her out on it. The only bigger admission of guilt would be not responding the first time you said it was her."
"I still don't know what to do about it. She keeps texting me. I've told her to stop, commanded her, begged her. Nothing works."
"You should've told me. I would've stopped this immediately."
"I don't want her dead. Even if I could afford it."
"I don't solve ALL my problems with bullets. Just...most of them. I meant that I would have Dana talk to the Fearleader and get her to stop this. Black Hat is the Fearleader's best friend and Dana will make her see that by stalking you she's risking everything. And for what? She's not going to have you. It's not like you're going to start dating her. Right?"
"Fuck no," I said.
"Then there is no good end game. Unless she wants everyone to be as miserable as her. That won't be fun for anyone."
"You really think Sarah would do something like that?"
"It's possible. She's one of the more screwed up people we have in this business."
I hadn't considered that possibility before. She could be trying to ruin my life just to ruin it. Maybe there was no real reason behind this at all. She was doing it for the fun of it, a sick little thrill. It could still be about revenge because I turned her down. It could also be because she wanted to do it to someone and I was available and defenseless.
It wasn't all doom and gloom. Blood Shadow would get Dana to talk to her and that would straighten things out. I couldn't imagine Dana letting this whole mess continue on. I knew she kind of thought of me as a baby bird who needed protection. She was looking out for me because her friend, Beth, asked her to. Now I really needed the help and Dana would step up for me. Nobody I'd been friends with at the bank would have done something like that for me. If I went to one of them and told them I had someone stalking me they would have commiserated with me to my face, then would have gleefully gone and spread the gossip to the other bankers. Problem not solved.
For being somewhat amoral killers, Blood Shadow and Dana were actually decent human beings.
