Falling Prey

  Falling Prey

  M.C. Norris

  Copyright 2015 by M.C. Norris

  This book is dedicated to my fantastic fans!

  You’re all invited to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter @mcnorrisauthor.

  For news, updates, “Impossible Blog” posts, and links to my other works of strange fiction, visit the online lair of M.C. Norris, at www.mcnorrisauthor.com

  Deep Devotion (2014, Severed Press)

  Krengel & the Krampusz (2014, Severed Press)

  The Dread Owba Coo-Coo (2014, Severed Press)

  God of the Dead (2015, Severed Press)

  Sincere thanks for your ongoing support,

  - Mike

  CHAPTER ONE

  28-D

  “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Trans World Airlines, flight 613. This will be a transcontinental flight with an estimated flight time of five hours and fifty-three minutes. Our time of arrival in sunny San Francisco will be approximately eleven-thirty a.m., Pacific Time. Looks like we’ve got a little fog hanging over Baltimore this morning, but the weather along our route is looking pretty clear. We’ll be taking off shortly, following some non-routine procedures by federal authorities. We apologize for the short delay, but if you would kindly take your seats, and have your boarding passes in hand, we’ll taxi out to the runway here in just a few minutes. Feel free to smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and thank you for flying Trans World Air. Up, up and away, with TWA.”

  There they were, same as always. The cast of characters seldom changed on a jumbo jet loaded to capacity for a coast-to-coast flight. Row after row of swindled fortunes and piratical ambitions all marinating in a haze of tobacco smoke, body odor, stale booze, and plenty of that noxious, spiced cologne. Up front, it was always a big shootout between the biggest mouths. Egos were drawn from their holsters, waving in faces, ready to fire at anything that moved. White collar gangsters, they never failed to exhaust the quiet ones trying their hardest to remain invisible behind their newspapers, magazines, and sprung briefcase lids. All round them, the competition touted affiliations, referenced accolades, puffing up their chests so much that they were squashing the other sardines in their can. Funny, no matter how big of a fish each one fancied himself to be, whenever one of them glanced up to find Hart looming in the center aisle, they shrank right down to a little minnow.

  It was his size, his swaggering gait, but most of all it was his scars. Hart’s face had a shriveling effect on people. Since he wasn’t born with them, he was aware of their intimidating effect, and he was also aware that if he felt like it, he could offset his startling appearance by making an extra effort to be friendly and approachable. Winks, smiles and nods … they were all steps to the old dance that he’d sometimes perform to reassure women and children that he wasn’t going to eat them, but it wasn’t a dance that he always chose to do, and he never performed it for other men. He saw no reason to make some sort of an obligatory apology for the way he looked. The truth was that he secretly enjoyed taking other guys down a notch, especially bawdy showboats like the jabbering heads on either side of the aisle. It pleased him to observe how much quieter the ambiance became with every row that he hushed into silence, as though he was a harrier of quietude that dropped the volume all around him with every step that he took along his life’s violent path.

  Hart liked quiet places, and he liked his scars. He liked scars in general. It was satisfying to stand before a mirror and admire his impressive collection. When folks stared, he had his own conception of what they were seeing, and it pleased him. Ever since he was a kid, his attention was always drawn to those healed injuries on the bodies of older men. Beneath every scar, he learned, was a darned good story waiting to be told. Whether they were funny, scary, or astonishing, those stories evidenced the better qualities of men. Each scar was a badge for taking a direct hit by life, and having the stones to stand back up again.

  Guys like these didn’t have any scars. Not the kind with good stories beneath them. Couple of paper cuts maybe, chunk of graphite from a pencil lead, but nothing like his. When one of these poofs stole a peek at his collection, they had to realize that Hart’s life experience was something entirely beyond theirs, something they lacked the background to comprehend, or the guts to appreciate. One good look at his face silenced their bragging. Hart didn’t have to brag. He wore his accolades, every damned one of them. He wore them all over his face, his neck, and across the knuckles of his sledgehammer hands. Plenty more were hidden beneath the layer of skintight denim.

  The line came to a halt. Center aisle was clogged. Looked like a problem up ahead, where an older gentleman with a pipe clenched between yellowed teeth swapped seats with a ponytailed hippy in an apparent effort to quell some confrontation with a homecoming Marine. These days, that conflict was flaring up everywhere you turned. Hart didn’t keep a dog in that fight. The war in Vietnam didn’t really interest him. He guessed he’d have gone overseas without much of a fuss if they’d called him, but his age was just north of the cutoff. So, he’d just continued living his same life uninterrupted, cheating death from one side of the globe to another.

  “Baby killer! Ain’t sitting next to no damn baby k—”

  Hart swaggered past the bellyaching protester, and glanced at his boarding pass. He’d already checked it twenty times, but he still needed the reassurance that nothing had changed. 28-F was his seat. He refused to sit anywhere else, so he always booked his special seat well in advance. It was familiar and comfortable. Nice window seat near the restroom, all the way at the back of the plane. That was where Hart liked it. Right up until he’d dropped out of school, and laid tracks of burning rubber down a new path in life, the back of the classroom was where he preferred to sit. The same went for subway cars, restaurants, and church, on those rare occasions when he’d attended a wedding or a funeral. At the back of a room, he could see everyone, but no one could see him glowering like a surly gargoyle with his eyes on the backs of all their heads.

  A man with tanned skin and crinkled eyes lowered his copy of Skin Diver magazine. His eyes narrowed as he examined Hart with the measured interest of a physician. Fear and loathing Hart could handle, but scientific scrutiny made him feel a little uncomfortable. He didn’t enjoy feeling like a freak of nature. The tanned man’s murmuring wife gave a moment’s pause, following her husband’s gaze with a visage of pity. Hart didn’t care for that sort of reaction, either. His skin began to crawl, and he sped up his pace. He was ready to disappear into the privacy of his favorite seat.

  “So, she was the tenth caller, and we never win anything! Can you believe that?” A couple of sports fans wearing matching blaze-orange jerseys waved their tickets in the air. They grinned maniacally across the aisle at a man also wearing an Oriole’s baseball cap, who just nodded and smiled. “Oak-town, here we come, baby! Game three, for the sweep.” The man in the orange jersey kissed his wife, and squeezed her in close for a ferocious hug. “I told her, we ought’er pick up a couple of brooms when we get to Oakland, right sweetie? We ought’er take a couple of brooms into the Coliseum—for the sweep, you know? Get it?”

  The sports fans didn’t seem to notice Hart. They didn’t even look up. Without breaking their conversation, or their embrace, they exchanged happy kisses as Hart lumbered by.

  A teenager popped-up over the back of his seat. With an impish grin, he zinged a wad of paper at the head of another boy, three rows behind him, and then dropped back down into his hole like an ornery gopher. There were a bunch of kids on this flight. That was strange. All teens. Noisy, dramatic, ramped-up on caffeine, sugar, and who knew what else, they lurched over the backs of their seats to communicate with scattered friends throughout the plane with raised voices
and exaggerated gestures. They shouted the same names over and over. Their faces were all aglow with excitement. Probably their first time on a plane. Some sort of a school trip, it looked like, but they didn’t appear to be athletes. Maybe band members, debate team, or any one of those youth clubs that Hart had always been too intimidated to join. Hart never fit in. All his life, he’d never really had a friend. The truth was that people scared him. That was kind of his dirty, little secret.

  “… she thinks I’ve got a meeting in San Francisco,” an executive in the next row murmured, winking at the man seated next to him. “Truth is, she doesn’t even bother to ask where I’m going anymore.”

  Every row provided a snapshot into another life, another world, a fleeting glimpse into the mind of another human being. Whenever he boarded a plane, those snippets passed like frames of film falling to the cutting room floor. His little game was to fill in the blanks, to imagine the rest of the story, and then, to wonder for hours on end if the imaginary lives that he backfilled were normal or not. He didn’t know, having lived his whole life in a vacuum.

  “ … spit it. You’re not supposed to drink it.”

  “ … sitting at three-and-a-quarter, so I bought a hundred shares …”

  “ … procedures by authorities? Far out! Maybe the girls will get strip searched …”

  “… a maple sugar glaze, and Keith’s sister always brings a …”

  “ … saw a couple of secret servicemen back there in the terminal …”

  “ … had no choice but to cut him loose, you know …”

  “… new agent is a godsend. I couldn’t function without Brad …”

  “ … nine hijackings in the last year alone. What is wrong with…”

  Hart passed the last block of rows ahead of the restrooms and galley, and he came to a halt at row twenty-eight. Uh-oh. There was about to be a big problem. He glowered down at the young mother and the boy, who’d not yet noticed him towering over them. She was leaned across an empty middle seat, wiping something brownish from the corners of the kid’s mouth. Hart glanced down at his usual window seat assignment that was clearly printed on his boarding pass, and he scowled.

  “He’s in my seat,” Hart said.

  “Excuse me?” The young mother peered over her shoulder.

  Hart flipped his boarding pass around, and held it level with the woman’s face. “28-F. That’s my seat. He’s in it.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s his first time ever on a plane,” she stammered, smiling hopefully. “He really wanted to look out the window during takeoff. I told him he could have the window seat if no one else was sitting there, but it’s no big deal. He can move. Honey?” The woman reached across the empty middle seat, and tapped the boy on his leg. A black crescent of stitches grinned from his kneecap.

  Hart stared at the boy’s healing wound, and something wound tightly at his core suddenly began to relax. “Never mind. It’s cool,” he said.

  “Hmm?”

  She was attractive in a natural sort of way. Dark sheaves of hair fell from a perfect part to frame her pixie face. As Hart found himself reflected on the surface of her innocent eyes, and detected no trace of fear in them, his stony exterior softened. “Don’t worry about it.” Hart stuffed his leather satchel into the overhead compartment.

  “You sure?”

  “If you don’t mind me sitting in between you two.”

  “No, of course not.”

  The woman swiveled her knees toward the middle seat, allowing him access to the center. As she did so, her tweed skirt slid partway up her thigh. Hart pretended not to notice, but only a blind man would’ve missed it. His wallet chain clattered against the back of the chair ahead of him as he attempted to squeeze past her into his tight, new quarters. He hesitated. There was no way he was going to fit. It wasn’t happening.

  “How about I just hop over one,” she said, “and you can sit right here in the aisle seat.”

  “Thank you.” Hart collapsed into 28-D with a sigh. His right leg began to bounce almost immediately. People made him anxious, but flying was a true terror. Waiting for the take-off was pure torture, all smashed into a little nook with strangers. He stared across the woman at the young boy, who was probably around the age of nine. The kid hadn’t yet bothered to glance up from his comic book, transfixed by the lurid panels of roaring dinosaurs that snatched screaming natives from tangles of jungle vines.

  “What’cha reading?”

  The boy gawped up at the sound of his gravelly voice. His eyes seemed to gradually clear, as the epic fantasy that had so recently enraptured his mind dissolved before an even stranger reality. He blinked, studying Hart’s face with a stunned expression that Hart had encountered more than a few times.

  “He asked what you’re reading, honey.”

  The kid swallowed. He glanced down at his comic book, and then flipped the pages back to reveal the cover. There, a shirtless man with a dagger clenched between his teeth pried at the maw of some gigantic reptile with his bare hands.

  “Tarzan, huh?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Any good?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “What happened to your knee?”

  Frowning, the boy lifted the comic book to inspect his leg, as though he’d forgotten all about the injury. He extended his leg, studying the injury. “Crashed my bike,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “Yeah?”

  The kid nodded vigorously.

  “Did it hurt?”

  The boy lowered his leg. “I jumped two whole trashcans, almost three.”

  “Playing Evel Knievel, weren’t you?”

  “Oh, God,” his mother whispered.

  The boy eyed her contemptuously, and then managed a wry grin.

  “Did you see his last jump? Over all them Pepsi trucks?”

  The boy nodded, grinning a little wider.

  “Might not ever jump a bike again after that one. That’s what all the doctors on the news keep saying.”

  “Bet he will,” the kid said.

  “Think?”

  The boy nodded, extending his wounded leg again. He pressed the pad of his thumb against the stitches. The inflamed flesh flashed white, then slowly reignited again. “I know he will.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lonny.”

  “Hart Perkins.”

  “Well, shake his hand.” The woman leaned back in her seat. “Say, pleased to meet you, Mr. Perkins.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Perkins.”

  “Once them stitches come out, you’ll have a good scar, and a good story to go with it.”

  The boy looked up, squinting at Hart through one eye. “What happened to your face?”

  “Lonny! That was rude.”

  “No. I asked him about his scar, so he asked me about mine. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “Well, I don’t think that it came out quite right.”

  Hart raised his right hand, and he stroked his fingertips down the path of destruction that rumpled the skin beneath his right eye to his crooked jawline. He liked the feel of it. Pebbly, yet softer than all of the other skin around it. Like a newborn baby’s skin. “Got this from being dragged through Rome behind a sixty-five Triumph Bonneville.” His fingertips slid up to a wide gash above his right eyebrow. It felt like a slot for inserting coins. “Switchblade got me here.” Tracing the disjointed bridge of his nose, he dabbed at a cleft in his lip that swept upward to meet the flare of his nostril. “Handlebars of a Ducati Scrambler, and a little bit of sixty-eight Mustang.”

  Hart’s fingertips crept over his battered face, exploring every ridge and valley. He browsed through the volumes of permanent records from a hard and violent life, as if each glyph encoded portents that he alone discerned. Hart could lose himself in his scars sometimes, just as one could become lost in an old photo album. Severed nerve endings left whole patches forever numbed. It was strange. He could feel the contours beneath his fingertips, but
never their caress upon his deadened face. “But the worst one of all,” Hart said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “the one that hurt the very most,” he reached down to shuck up a pant leg, revealing a small crescent on his kneecap, “is the one I got trying to jump my bike over a bunch of trashcans when I was nine.”

  The kid stared. “Are you like—Evel Knievel?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  The plane lurched. There was that queasy feeling in the pit of Hart’s stomach caused by motion felt, but not observed. They were moving. His leg began to bounce again.

  “I’m a stuntman.”

  “Like, in movies?”

  “And TV shows.”

  “Whoa.” The kids face lit up. “Did you hear that, Mom? This guy’s a movie stuntman.”

  “I heard. Wow. You can tell your dad that you met a real stuntman once we get to California. He’ll probably think that’s really neat-o.”

  Hart glanced down at the woman’s lap, where her hands were casually folded. He hadn’t noticed any rings on her fingers. There weren’t any.

  “I’m Heather.”

  Turning back to her, he took her offered fingers into his own. They were soft and warm. When their eyes reconnected, a current of funny energy buzzed right up from their hands, through his chest, and into his brain, switching things on like a bunch of Christmas lights out of season. It was an emotion that he’d never really learned quite how to process, because it made him feel out of control, and losing control made him feel anxious. Releasing her fingers, he gave a sullen nod.

  Her smile fell, just a little. She cleared her throat. “Lonny’s dad is something of a screenwriter, aspiring actor … all sorts of those Hollywood kinds of things.” She nodded, biting her lip, and shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not sure what he does, really. Lonny hasn’t seen him in two years. That’s why we’re—”