DIRECT STRIKE
LORELEI BUCKLEY
LYRICAL PRESS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/
For Tom, and for those who inhabit the hereafter.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lyrical Press for getting this story in the hands of readers, with special thanks to Dianne. I’m forever grateful to the incomparable Ralph Merlino for taking the time to discuss the view through a photographer’s lens. To my husband, my mother, Sandra LaPointe, Simone Dodds, Terry Kush, Yvonne Hendricks–the novel and the writer are better because of you. And to my compassionate critique partner Debra-Jupe Haney, it’s always a pleasure.
Chapter 1
Zoey gasped and sprang upright, her comfortable indifference jeopardized by nightmares. She recalled vividly concession stands doused in halting yellows, Caribbean blues and circus reds, pink cotton candy and the sickening contrails of pure cane sugar.
She remembered the man in overalls, an obese guy who’d held a small white bag stuffed with popcorn. He’d tossed a kernel skyward and caught it in his mouth, and then it happened. Laughter, rickety rides and brave cackles unsparingly mutated into horrified shrills—her son’s, his friend’s and the muffled howls of two other people who had died that day.
Despite the madness, she’d heard the pings and tings of her camera smashing against pavement. Common with objects, not people. Not children.
The bedroom air thickened with humidity, and rolls of blue fog swelled against the windows, adding an icy hue to the row of pharmaceuticals positioned next to a deer-antler lamp on the nightstand. She’d arrived earlier and had hoped the long drive would exhaust her enough to sleep. Good fortune hated Zoey.
Her new environment exacerbated her confusion. She hadn’t chosen the furniture, and the bed was too big.
Her eyes burned. She wiped wetness from her face and wished for amnesia, but the poisonous memory persisted.
From the pits of their souls, the crowd shrieked, forced to watch the tragedy like some kind of karmic punishment for collective wrongdoing or thinking. Hinges squeaked and the innocent teetered between life and death for seven minutes and two seconds.
She’d made a lucrative living as a photographer. When emotionally moved, she’d snap the picture. She’d had an impeccable sense of timing and extraordinary compassion. Her descriptive imagination and unyielding empathy were traitors. Haunted by the tiniest of details, they’d ripped her heart from her chest and ate it.
Helpless, she stood below in a mass of human shockwaves stunned by the creaking Ferris wheel bending and moaning, a destructive robot twisting its rusty wrist.
Her son’s healthy flesh grew pale, his eyes bulged and his boyish fingers reached for her to save him, and she couldn’t, and her mind wouldn’t let go.
She would have murdered the mechanic. She’d almost murdered the machinist. Had the bolt been inserted inside the cart rather than outside, it wouldn’t have gotten stuck between the exit door and the wheel, and the swinging cart would have swung back in place instead of overturning, and her son Milo and his friend Yaphet and the elderly couple from Idaho wouldn’t have plunged seventy feet to their deaths.
“Stop! Why do I have to go through this?” She massaged her pulsing temples. Before bed she’d taken enough meds to anesthetize a whale. If she increased her dosage, she may not wake up. She’d often thought about the ultimate way to find peace.
Imitating a brush fire, hellish and damaging, the memory continued.
The whites of her son’s eyes glowed. He grasped at invisible rope frantically trying to escape. Everything blurred. Not Milo. His fear was palpable. Back and forth the buggy swung, back and forth, back and dumped the bellowing souls like waste.
Milo’s arms and legs flailed, thrashing gravity all the way down.
“Enough! I can’t take anymore. Do you understand?” She grabbed the bottle of sedatives, distinguishable by height. She tossed two in her mouth and swallowed.
Milo hit a manhole cover. The thud echoed in her head. A nauseating bull’s-eye, his lifeless body centered on a sewer lid. Blood outlined his hair and filled the metal grooves.
Zoey wiped tears and took a deep breath.
“Come on,” she begged the drugs. “Please. Knock me out.”
She hadn’t said goodbye to her own child, yet everyone expected her to comfort Yaphet’s parents. Didn’t happen, and it wouldn’t. They’d escaped gruesome imagery. As far as she was concerned, they’d won the lottery.
Milo resided within her being. He drove with her to Colorado and accompanied her when she entered their new home, an inheritance she’d claimed on his behalf. She’d do anything to bring him back. Sometimes she’d pretend he was at school or camp or sleeping at a friend’s house. She’d call herself from his phone to see his number. No more radical than curing depression with a smile, tricking the brain into a state of happiness. By believing he was somehow with her, she’d deceive the universe and revive him. Illogical? Maybe not. Thoughts became things. A time existed when airplanes were outrageous, and going to the moon outright insane. She could alter reality, couldn’t she?
Unreasonable mental chatter caused bouts of anxiety. She needed to be grounded.
“Where the hell is my phone?”
She scanned the night table, floor, dresser and bed for her cell in vain. Shadows consumed the room. She’d unpacked pictures of Milo but not much else. On the opposite wall, a mounted deer head studied her movements.
“What are you looking at?”
Lightning flashed. Deer eyes glistened. Her heart galloped.
Zoey flung the blankets aside and rolled out of bed. Her feet slammed against the cool hardwood, and she trimmed the furniture, patting for her phone.
Another flash illuminated a photo of Milo feeding squirrels at Lincoln Park Zoo.
His fall replayed in her mind.
“Son of a bitch! Why Milo? Why?”
She banged the stomach of a vase and knocked it to the floor along with pictures of her son. Startled by the clatter, she paused. Objects faded in and out of distinction. In a moment of clarity, she walked toward the rustic armoire. Something hard crunched underfoot. She glanced down. The frame Milo had made for Mother’s Day lay snapped in half.
“Shit.” She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand to relieve the pressure of earning the title for most wicked mother in the universe.
“One thing is all I ask. One damn thing.”
She spun and bashed her knuckles on the wood. Her fingers ached. She cradled her hand, exhausted and equally frustrated. Unable to stand, she slipped into the nook between the dresser and armoire. Pressing her back to the plaster, she slid down until her ass hit bottom. A slight sailboat effect made her queasy.
Lightning cut through the darkness, allowing her to see obscure silhouettes. She closed her eyes and tilted her head against solidity, trying to remember Mitch’s voice. She spoke to him almost every night, why couldn’t she find his voice? Panic whirled in her stomach. She breathed in and out, slowly, inhaling, exhaling, a calming technique she’d learned the one time she had agreed