Psychopath Chronicles Preview

Tom Lyons

The Reunion

​

The two-hour flight from Chicago to New York? Uneventful. But Jeremy Butler felt so alive, so bristled with anticipation, that it took three small bottles of airline scotch to take the edge off.

The scotch fog allowed Jeremy a short nap; that’s when the old dream returned. It’d been years since he remembered having this dream, but now it paid him back for disappearing from his psyche for so long; it assaulted him with its clear focus, its vivid colors, and the emotions that coursed through his body.

It was always the same, even after all these years: First, his legs grew leaden; he couldn’t move them, they refused to obey his wishes. Pins and needles. Pins and needles. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He tried to run away, but his body refused his commands to move. Then came the fire, like a red hot flash; kindling exploding in a wind-driven funnel of hell. The flames overtake him.

“The Captain has ...”

They always overtake him, burn him; he feels searing pain, in his dream he screams, then he feels the familiar feelings of guilt and shame.

“ ... switched on the fasten seatbelts sign ....”

I should be able to escape the flames, if only my legs would move.

“ ... Please return to your seats as we begin our descent into JFK.”

Pins and needles.

When he was younger he experienced this dream even more frequently.

Why, after so many years, am I having this dream now?

Before deplaning, Jeremy glanced at the newspaper he had read earlier in the flight. Yesterday in Cleveland, a new world record was achieved when twenty one people simultaneously set themselves on fire, each for a period of thirty seconds, breaking the old record of seventeen people who did the same thing set three years earlier.

What would that feel like? Jeremy wondered. Feelings of Déjà vu all over again?

*****

For weeks before he had eaten less, no, basically, he had starved himself in an effort to lose weight; he existed on a diet of fruits, legumes, veggies, and water. After all? How often does one get the chance to attend their 50th reunion of graduating from grammar school? He wanted to put his best foot forward – who wouldn’t want to? He bought new clothes; a mature cut navy blue Dockers, a loose fitting country club logoed golf shirt, and new black loafers. It made sense to dye his hair, at sixty- four years of age who wouldn’t want to look younger for their school reunion? He decided, though, against his usual cover-the-bald-spot-comb-over, opting finally, after much looking-in-the-mirror-angst, in a simple number two buzz cut. With dyed brown hair. Jeremy found himself wondering what Emily would have thought about his appearance, but, of course, Emily was not around to offer her opinion. In the end, after putting in so much thought and effort, there was no hiding what he really was – an old man with a turkey jowl neck, pillsbury doughboy soft and pudgy, liver spots winning the war to populate his body and tiny broken blood vessels in his eyes and on his cheeks, evidence of many years of hard drinking.

Jeremy arrived at the reunion site early. After landing at JFK he had time to check in at a nearby Queens Motel 6 to change into his new clothes and freshen up. From the motel it was a short twenty-minute bus ride to Jamaica and Sacred Heart

Academy. Waves of nostalgia crashed inside him when he saw his former school for the first time in over thirty years. After graduating from college in ’71 he had lived in the New York area for another ten years before taking a computer sales management job in Chicago and ditching New York forever. He remembered little about the Academy he had attended, save for the entire exterior of the school was the same red brick it had been fifty years earlier. That and now all the windows had iron bars enclosing them, like Sing Sing prison; signs of the changing area ethnicity, and a burgeoning crime rate. In ’63 everyone who lived here was Caucasian; Irish, Italian, German, or Polish. The Jews lived south of Jamaica Avenue in high-rise apartments called, appropriately – The Jewish Alps. And, of course, the blacks all lived south of the railroad tracks, not one of them went to school at the Sacred Heart back then. They had their own school on their side of the railroad tracks.

Now, Jeremy thought after seeing the old neighborhood, you’d be hard pressed to find a storefront whose advertisement signs were in English; Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Mexicans, dominated the neighborhood; most of the Caucasians had long ago moved away.

At the reception desk, in the schools auditorium, a perky short woman, with red dyed hair and a heavily wrinkled face, happily chirped: “I’m Patty Devine. Remember me? I had a crush on you back then Jeremy. I’m sure you don’t remember. We sure are glad you were able to come to the reunion.” Her mouth was much too small for her face and the picture that came to mind, Jeremy thought, was that of a pig’s face smiling.

Jeremy looked around. Colorful balloons were tied to the backs of chairs, party hats, New Years Eve noise-makers, colored crepe paper adorned the tables. He eyed the DJ in the corner of the room.

“I remember you Patty.” Jeremy lied. “Of course I do. You look great. How have you been?”

“Super! I’ve been looking forward to seeing you!”

A young pretty woman in her early twenties, whose slim figure Jeremy gave the old up and down as he undressed her with his eyes, was helping Patty with nametags.

“This is my granddaughter Betty.” Patty put her hand on the young woman’s arm. “Betty dear, say hello to Mister Butler.”

Granddaughter?

“Here you are sir.” Betty said handing him his tag. Hi! I’m Jeremy Butler! Sacred Heart Academy, Queens New York, Class of 1963.

Sir?

He made his way over to where another ’63 classmate, old looking, pudgy and soft like Jeremy – nametag read – Hi! I’m Donald Cooper! - playing the part of a DJ. Jeremy handed him a piece of paper.

“It’s on the playlist, in about twenty minutes.” “Thanks Donald. Great to see you again!”

“I’m retired.” Jeremy heard himself saying to the group of six hovering around him, after having donned his reading glasses so he could read their nametags, butterflies in his stomach. “Live off my real estate investments, pretty much. How about you folks?” Fighting a headache from the three bottles of scotch on the plane.

“Founded a pharmaceutical company, took it public in ’99. Been retired since then, Mary and me we do a lot of traveling.” Jeremy squinted at the name tags. Hi! - Bob and Mary Rowland!

“I was a teacher, math teacher for thirty years.” Patty chirped in. “Last ten years they made me principal. Then I retired too, seven years ago.”

“How nice for you.” Mary Rowland said happily.

Bob married a girl he knew from grammar school? They are still married? Catholics. How odd.

“I worked for Intel. When they first formed the company in the ‘70’s. My father had told me that computers were going to be a really big thing.” An old

heavyset, heavy breasted, leathery faced woman. Hi! I’m Suzy Marma! Jeremy remembered her. He used to run and chase her through the schoolyard, but she was too fast, he couldn’t catch her. Jeremy’s best friend at the time, Jimmy DeLuca, nicknamed her – rabbit. “I put as much as I could into their 401K program, they matched my contribution with stock options. I’ve been retired since ‘93.”

“Wonderful Suzy, that’s great.” Chirped Jeremy. “We should all have had a chance to work for Intel back then.” That garnered a couple of chuckles. Retired already for twenty years. Jeez.

There were thirty, or so, people in the room, another forty, for a total of seventy, were expected to attend. Plus, some of the their teachers, Dominican nuns they were at the time were expected to show. Thinking of his teachers, one in particular, made Jeremy anxious, but what the hell, the die was cast. All around the mood was happy, people were talking, laughing, enjoying themselves, drinking water and soft drinks. 1960’s rock and roll music played through school speakers. People laboriously studied the faces of their school day friends, as if trying to find the youngster who had hidden away after all these years.

“Are you married Jeremy?” Patty inquired, a sparkle in her eye. Jeremy wondered where some of the other woman were, his classmates, specifically Annie Dietz, Barbara Barone, Connie Traversa. Via Facebook they commented that they’d be here: Jeremy checked out each profile, all professed to be single. He knew that Patty was single, the look in her eye told Jeremy she was chumming.

“Emily and I are taking a break.” He started, choked anxiety in his voice. “We’ve been together since ’98. Fifteen years.”

Heads bobbed knowingly. “Well, best of luck with that Jeremy.” Bob Rowland said.

“Things will work out for the best Jeremy.” His wife Mary said. “Life can be tough.”

The hell with that. Jeremy thought. Where are Annie, Barbara, or Connie? Jeremy had brought his supply of the little blue pill along on the trip just in case he got lucky.

What he didn’t want to tell his former classmates was the truth. That he was twice divorced, single now, or rather he was alone – big difference between being single and being alone.

Plus, he didn’t have any real estate investments. He didn’t own a house, about the nicest thing that he owned was a twelve-year old red Toyota with one hundred and eighty thousand miles on the odometer. He rented a room from a strange Chinese woman, who, though seventy-five years old had jet-black hair and whose home was a picture shrine to Jackie Chan. Everywhere you turned was a picture, neatly framed, of Jackie, from one of his movies. To make matters worse, when Jeremy was one day late with his five-hundred-dollars-a-month rent, the old Chinese bitch threatened to call her good friend Mister Chan so that he could “force the lent out of you lound-eyed-bastald.”

Jeremy Butler presently worked as an eleven-dollar-per-hour-rent-a-cop for a Chicago mall security firm. He drove an electric car (so the security company could save on gas money) around the mall perimeter for ten hours a day, four days a week, five days a week when he could waggle the overtime, mostly looking for teenagers creating mischief and mayhem or smoking dope. Between his mall cop paycheck and early social security checks he almost made ends meet. His life was littered with jobs that just didn’t work out. The computer job that he took to move to Chicago lasted three years before he got canned for consistently missing quota. He could still hear his fellow salespeople, thirty years later, laughing at him, behind his back. He just knew that they were laughing at him. He felt the same humiliation that he had felt back then, raw, like a sword run through his gut, as if it happened an hour ago. The art portfolio sales job that he secured next was neatly buried in his same emotional graveyard. That job lasted two years. He bombed out as a realtor; that proved too difficult, as commissioned sales proved not to be his forte; he’d rather drink beer in a bar rather than work; real hard to earn a commission from a barstool, but at least the alcohol drowned the jeers and snide cutting remarks of his peers. He almost found his niche as a car salesman, for a Chevrolet dealership in Elk Grove, a Chicago suburb. “There’s a butt for every seat.” Jeremy liked to say. That job had lasted almost twenty years and ended, unceremoniously, when Chevy dealers around the

country boarded their doors during the Great Recession. After abusing the system for as long as allowed collecting unemployment and disability checks (for a bad knee, a gift from the extra weight he carried around) he had to return to work with Ajax mall security, the only job option open to him.

“I hear the Chicago real estate market is starting to turn around.” His tag read Hi! I’m Bob LaBianca! But Jeremy did not remember him, had no idea who he was. “Have you been able to flip any properties there recently Jeremy?” Bob asked.

“Several.” Jeremy lied, straight faced. “Though inventory is tight, you gotta have all your ducks in a row in order to turn a profit. Maybe fifteen percent annualized return on investment, if you’re lucky. Tops” Jeremy continued.

Heads nodded in agreement.

Jeremy looked around. Where were Annie, Barbara, or Connie? People were milling about, talking, sipping water or soft drinks. All Jeremy saw was a bunch of old people.

His scotch headache worsened, plus he felt his anxiety building, he shifted his weight from foot to foot; he wondered if, and when, the opportunity presented itself, would he jump through that door?

And for Christ sake, where can a guy get a beer around here?

*****

“Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay, Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly .... I’m not half the man I used to be, There’s a shadow hanging over me...”

The Beatles classic song played; the outdated auditorium speakers tried their hardest to do McCartney lyrics justice, but couldn’t, as Jeremy worked his way around the room. Most of the seventy expected-to-attend people were now here. Some were swinging in rhythm together, feet moving to the beat, singing. Jeremy was enjoying himself; how often does one get the chance to go to their 50th school reunion? This was a special occasion.

Jeremy just could not get over the fact about how old everybody looked. Certainly I don’t look that old. He had to study faces to uncover a smidge of what his classmates were fifty years ago. The women, especially, looked old. Wrinkled prunes. Except for this one lady whose face was botoxed like one of the helium balloon decorations.

Jeremy sauntered over. Read her nametag. Hi! I’m Connie Traversa!

One of the women that Jeremy had hoped to meet here! But Connie had turned into a plastic surgeon’s personal playground, monkey bars and all. A boob job, definitely. And a poor one at that. Tight skin on her face, probably a couple of facelifts, at least. Looked like a new nose. Lipo and a butt tuck, for sure. Wearing her five-inch-high-red-come-fuck-me-pumps. Do they ever look stupid on a sixty four year old woman.

But when she opened her mouth to speak her facial muscles did not move. Frozen. “The eachers ar ova dere.” She seemed to say, in a nasally voice, motioning to a group of people in the corner of the room. If Jeremy had been young enough to get an unaided erection it would have instantly gone soft.

“What?” Jeremy asked, head lowered, not wanting any eye contact with her. “Teachers. Over there.” She repeated.
Jeremy looked towards the corner and saw her. Sitting with a group of older

women, more teachers. Sister Mary Madeline. His anxiety heightened, butterflies in his stomach turned into bumblebees.

The reason why I’m here.
Pins and needles. Pins and needles. Pins and needles. He started to sweat; he felt wetness in his armpits.

*****

“Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy, my guy, Nothing you can do cause I’m stuck like glue to my guy, my guy, I gave my guy my word of honor.”

Mary Wells’s melodic voice now carried over the auditorium’s loudspeakers as Jeremy walked towards Sister Mary Madeline sitting with a group of older

women. They didn’t look like nuns, none wore the black and white penguin suits that they had worn fifty years earlier. Now they dressed like any women in their late seventies or early eighties would. Long skirts or dark pants, plain white blouses with sleeves, wool sweaters to stay warm. And, Jeremy had read on the reunion groups Facebook page that many of the nuns and priests had left their religious orders and had become ordinary lay people. Some had even married. To each other.

“To be faithful, and I’m gonna
You best be believing I won’t be deceiving my guy.”

Sister Mary Madeline was a little old white haired lady in her early eighties, spine bent over like a question mark with age. She had a nasty mole on her right cheek. Sitting in a chair with her hands folded, primly, in her lap.

“Left the order in ‘80.” she said.

Patty Divine had tagged along with him.(like she had a ring in her nose and Jeremy was leading her around)

“Remember Father Richard Kuhn?” she asked.

Jeremy nodded. He seemed like a nice man, a good priest. Jeremy remembered him taking off his priest’s robe to play handball with the boys at the local playground. Unusual behavior for a New York City Catholic priest in the late 1950’s.

“Well, he left the priesthood at the same time. Richard and Dawn married.”

“We had twenty-five wonderful years together before he passed nine years ago. He had a weak heart.” Sister Mary Madeline added.

So much for all those lonely nights in the convent and rectory, Jeremy thought. Threw those celibacy vows right down the toilet, didn’t you?

“I was in your homeroom class in seventh and eighth grade.” Jeremy offered. Trying not to look at her facial mole.

A blank stare.
“I sat in the first row, nearest the window.”
Eyes wide open, the size of F.W. Woolworth five-cent-lollipops.

She doesn’t remember me.

A shooting pain hit him like a ball-peen hammer inside his brain, square behind his right eye.

“Of course, Jeremy. I remember you. How nice it is to see you again. How have you been all these years? And please, call me Dawn.”

Of course she remembers. How could she forget? I bet that deep down, she’s laughing at me right now.

Jeremy’s mind drifted off to an event that happened fifty years ago. The vision was crystal clear, as if it had happened yesterday. More importantly, he remembered what it felt like when it happened.

*****

Jeremy was twelve, he was in 7th grade, still small, impressionable, hairless armpits; the high-pitched voice of a child; he would not start puberty until his sophomore year in high school. Sister Mary Madeline stood at the head of the class; she was short, squat, in her Dominican nuns garb she looked like a white bowling ball in a black headdress. He felt scared; he had just stood up and answered a math question in front of the class. He got the answer wrong.

“Perhaps if you had done your homework, like you were supposed to,” Sister Mary Madeline admonished. “You would know the correct answer.” Talking down at him.

In the back of the room a boy laughed. Charlie D’Anna.
Jeremy felt his face grow red hot with shame.
“When I return,” the nun continued. “You’re going to come up to the front of

the class and write the correct answer, on the blackboard, fifty times. Do you understand Jeremy?”

“Yes, Sister.”

Abruptly, Sister Mary Madeline left the room. Where did she go? Perhaps to tinkle?

“Dumbass.” Charlie D’Anna again. Laughing at Jeremy’s expense. Now the shame Jeremy felt grew into a white-hot rage.

He grabbed his metal ruler, walked purposely towards the rear of the classroom and confronted Charlie. Charlie wasn’t laughing now that he saw the look on Jeremy’s face. Jeremy grabbed Charlie’s wooden ruler and raising his metal one high above his head, like the chimpanzee gleefully smashing heads with a thigh- bone in - 2001, A Space Odyssey - and he began to chop Charlie’s ruler to pieces.

At that moment Sister Mary Madeline walked back into the room. “Jeremy Butler! You stop that this very instant!”
Again he felt the shame, this time from being caught.
“You come up here, to the front of the class, right now!”

Jeremy sheepishly complied.
“We do not destroy other student’s property!”
The small nun grabbed Jeremy by the arm. She was surprisingly strong. She

led him, forcefully, towards the corner of the classroom.
“See that garbage pail?” She commanded.
Jeremy spotted a small black plastic garbage pail, perhaps eighteen inches

wide at its diameter, maybe sixteen inches tall.
“In you go.” She forced Jeremy into the pail. His tiny butt sank to the bottom,

both his legs shot straight up into the air.
Now the kids in his class who had been snickering at him became deathly

quiet. Everyone watched; nobody dared to blink.
“Exactly where you belong.” Sister Mary Madeline said. “What a horrible boy

you are!”
Jeremy started to cry, but damn! He would not let his 7th grade classmates

see. He turned his head towards the blackboard at the front of the room. He felt the blood drain from his legs; they started to fall asleep.

Pins and needles. Pins and needles. Pins and needles.

At that very instant the classroom door opened and old Father Malloy, the small framed, seventy-year-old pastor of the parish walked in. Parish priests frequently walked into classrooms unannounced - to preach the Catechism.

Each student was instantly stood. “Good morning Father Malloy.” In unison.

The old priest motioned for them to sit. He did not notice Jeremy Butler sitting in a garbage pail in the corner of the room. The priest turned towards the class, opened his bible and began to speak. Sister Mary Madeline quickly moved her bowling ball girth directly between the old priest and Jeremy, so that the priest could not see the small boy flopping like a flounder in the garbage pail.

She doesn’t want him to see me.

For a moment Jeremy considered crying out, but then realized that if the priest saw him, then asked Sister Mary Madeline why he was sitting in a plastic garbage pail, that the old stodgy priest might then punish him further. So he zipped his lips.

"And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." The old priest was reading word for word from his bible.

Original thinking.

"And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Abruptly the priest stopped reading, closed his bible, removed his reading glasses and looked up. “Now, can anyone here tell me what this passage means?”

A sea of blank faces. Nothing but silence.

In the corner of the room, sitting in the garbage pail Jeremy’s legs were asleep. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He tried to run away, but his body refused his commands to move. Then came the fire in his head, like a red hot flash; kindling

exploding in a wind-driven funnel of hell. The flames overtake him. They always did.

Fire and brimstone. Pins and needles. Fire and brimstone. Pins and needles.

Finally, the nun broke the silence. “I think what Father Malloy is saying, class, is that if you commit a mortal sin, and if you are not forgiven for your sins, you may go to Hell when you die.”

“Yes. That’s it exactly.” chimed in the old priest.

“That in order to get to heaven you need to ask God for forgiveness for your sins.”

“Right again, Sister. Straight from the New Testament.”

“Now, we all know that with all that fire, Hell is not where you want to go when you die. Do we children?”

Fifty voices in unison: “No Sister Mary Madeline.”

“These passages tell the story of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, children. The people who lived in these cities lived in a perpetual state of mortal sin. Murderers, adulterers, and whoremongers. Unrepentant for the sins they committed. One day God said – “Enough is enough.” He asked if there were ten people who lived in the city who were without sin. No one stepped forward. So God burned both cities to the ground. Fire and brimstone. In those times justice was swift. If you did evil deeds the punishment was quick and harsh. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, was the law of the land.”

“So,” continued Father Malloy. “I expect to see all of you fine young children at the confessional this Saturday afternoon. I’ll be there promptly at four.” With that final decree, he blessed them and then he moved towards the door. Not once did he look back and see poor little Jeremy sitting, legs straight up in the air, in the garbage pail.

Instantly all the students stood. “Good morning Father Malloy.” They said as he left, closing the door behind him.

Jeremy tried to lift himself out of the garbage pail, but couldn’t. Pins and needles. Pins and needles. Sister Mary Madeline had to help him out. He stood, on paralyzed leaden legs for several minutes. He staggered; almost fell, with his first step. Sister Mary took him by the arm and led him back to his seat. She didn’t talk. Humiliated beyond words, Jeremy kept his head bowed, eyes on the floor. But he knew that silently, behind his back, they were all laughing at him.

In the classroom you could hear a pin drop. *****

“Of course, Jeremy. I remember you. How nice it is to see you again. How have you been all these years? And please, call me Dawn.”

Like a rubber band around your wrist Jeremy’s mind snapped back, fifty years, to the present. What to say to her?

For example, should he tell her that seven months before he went on that rampage with his metal ruler that his father had packed his bags and left his mother? That for months leading to their separation his father had spent every night at the corner bar, the one with sawdust on the wood floor, John Flood’s Korner, drinking himself senseless with Scotch? Then, most mornings, his mother had extra rouge on to cover facial bruises?

Just like Emily and Melissa hid their bruises.

After dad left mom raised Jeremy by herself, using her own peculiar brand of discipline, punishment, and parenting.

In 1962 very few Catholic families were torn apart by divorce. Husbands and wives, though miserable together, pulled up their britches and gutted the marriage out. God forbid if husbands and wives were having problems. Not many marriage counselors back then, no one talked about their problems. But to this day Jeremy blamed himself for his parent’s divorce. If I were a better kid they would have fought less; maybe they would’ve stayed together.

Should he tell Dawn, that at the time she forced him to sit in that small plastic garbage pail that he was living with his father’s mom, who was drunk most nights

herself, that he didn’t have a bed to sleep in, he slept in a sleeping bag on the dining room floor, and that last night, and this morning, he had nothing to eat?

No, I think not.

“I’ve been fine Dawn. I’m retired now. Live off my investments.” The shame that he felt was as real as it had been fifty years ago. He could feel his rage boiling to the surface. He felt wetness drip down his armpits; he could smell his own body odor. He took half-a-step back.

“It’s so wonderful to see how all of our students have done so well for themselves over the years.” Looking at Patty. “We always prided ourselves on the quality of the education the students received here at Sacred Heart.” Heads nodded among the older women sitting nearby. They’re patting themselves on the back for a job well done?

“Oh. How nice, Jeremy, to see all that you’ve accomplished.” Dawn said smiling. “Do you have children? Grandchildren maybe?”

Jeremy couldn’t take his eye off of that mole. That smile. She remembers alright. He started to sweat more profusely; he felt his face flush beet red. She’s laughing at me again.

Frankie Valli’s multi octave falsetto voice began to blare throughout the school auditorium.

“Dawn go away I'm no good for you
Oh Dawn, stay with him he'll be good to you.”

“My daughter, Elizabeth, is almost thirty-three. She lives in California.”

I think she lives in California. Never mind that she hasn’t spoken to me in ten years.

“My granddaughter, Killian, is nine.”

Never mind that I’ve never spoken to my granddaughter. Or have ever seen her.

His daughter Liz would never allow it. If Jeremy would bump into her at a grandparent’s convention, she would have no idea who he was. For years Jeremy blamed his first wife, Melissa, for all of the problems that he had with his daughter

and granddaughter. Bitch! Yet lately, a little voice inside his head, perhaps the angel that sometimes sat on his shoulder whispered in his ear lyrics from Jimmy Buffet’s famous song.

“Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville,
Searching for my lost shaker of salt,
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, But I know it's my own damn fault.”

Yes, perhaps his drinking and serial philandering, at the time, with both men and women, may have contributed to Melissa packing her bags. Maybe it was his fault; maybe, just maybe, he might be responsible for what had happened. Quickly, though, he dismissed that thought.

Then Frankie Valli singing again:

“Dawn go away, please go away. Although I know I want you to stay.”

Someone told a joke; the older teachers shared a laugh. As she laughed Dawn cast a knowing look right at Jeremy.

She remembers what she did to me. She’s laughing at me right now.

Jeremy reaches into his pants pocket and removes a thin metal can of lighter fluid. Pulls off the red stop-top. Points the nozzle at Sister Mary Madeline. Then sprays her with half the can.

“Jeremy, what are you doing?” Patty Devine, alarm in her voice.
Sister Mary Madeline’s face contorts.
Oh, oh, oh, Dawn go away back where you belong.....
Jeremy takes out a matchbook from his shirt pocket, lights one, and casually

tosses it into Sister Mary Madeline’s lap.

Fire and brimstone. Fire and brimstone.

Her wool dress flames like an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.

WHOOSH!

“Somebody do something!” Patty screams. The fire is so hot that her lungs can’t take a breath, the air around her sucked of oxygen; she has to move away from the flaming nun.

She hears Jeremy singing???

Oh, oh, oh, Dawn go to hell back where you belong ...
“Fire! Fire!”
“Somebody grab a extinguisher!”
The old nun crumbles to the floor with nary a whimper as fire consumes her.

A ball of flame in a fetal position.
Jeremy Butler, his face expressionless watches carefully, he allows himself a

smirk.

Lips pursed, the edges of his mouth move imperceptibly upwards. His inward smile almost reaches his eyes. With chaos churning around him he calmly walks the opposite way to a nearby bench and sits – Forrest Gump like – on the comfortable seat. Feeling good. Waiting for whatever opportunity life would bring him next.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Next to him an old, half bald, heavy legged man with rheumy eyes looks his way; Jeremy Butler doesn’t recognize him; he reads his nametag.

Hi! I’m Charlie D’Anna!

Laugh at me now, bitch!