Dead Echo

  Chapter 30: Formal Introduction

  Tomas Lorca had been up for three hours already and the hands of the clock hadn’t even reached seven. This was it. Today, right now, this very minute. Everything in his life had been leading up to now and he wasn’t gonna fuck it up. He was going over there, hell or high water; he was gonna say his piece, and then he was gonna stand there and see how she took it. If his dreams were anywhere near the truth the outcome was already done. If not, he planned on pulling the .32 Beretta and shooting her once in the eye. If that didn’t kill her he’d put one in the other. Then he’d drag her inside and sit down on her couch in the living room. And then, why then he’d blow his own brains out.

  This was that important. This was that NOW.

  He’d only slept two hours the night before. It had been the same dream for going on four straight nights. A dream, hah, he smirked; a fucking script. A training ground. This was weightier stuff than anything he’d experienced before, and that had been quite a lot out in California. Quite a lot. But all that was fluff compared to this.

  He looked sadistically at his image in the mirror. He’d been watching it minutely for the past three hours, just to see if there was any physical change brought on by this new discovery, something you could actually see, but so far, nothing. Of course, he had to remind himself, the best approach would be one of calmness, to simply…surrender. He smiled again at the mirror and his face was a grimace. He looked back at the clock by his bed, steeled himself with the knowledge that only another eight minutes had creep-stepped by. He closed his eyes and tried to bring the image back; it was almost like a painting in his head now, so close he could practically feel its texture. He saw her surprise as she opened the door (a black curl of hair lying flat across her forehead), the T-shirt and faded jeans, her hand already coming up in a great big emphatic fucking question mark.

  The first thing the image did was produce a high raging hard on. He’d always loved those looks: the psuedo-surprise of the inevitable, although he felt deep down most had always known something like this was coming, that their life somehow had unerringly led them to this one inescapable moment. Some would scream, others beg, and still others, surrender. That’s how it’d always been. Sometimes he did think about California, the group he’d took up with there. It’d been the full, flushing hell of war without the worry of dying or repercussions. He’d seen big names, openly, at these clandestine meetings. Politicians, celebrities. They’d sat and watched right alongside him the executions, the slow tortures. It’d been a long time but these things never went away. When it got dug in so very good and low there was no way it was ever coming out again. Never. The second thing the image did was blanket his body in a gossamer mesh of pleasure. Like dropping four or five Valium without the disorienting sleepiness. Because, now, alive with the humming of electricity, he felt every fiber of his being tuning up, getting into synchronicity with the coming Moment.

  He looked down at himself, hard against his belly. Then over toward the closet where the clothes hung. And with that he left the mirror and went to get dressed.