Brad crept down the hallways, his feet silent on the thick tan carpet. The sounds were strange, like slurping, and through a bedroom door he saw feet hanging over the edge of a bed. His face burned, realizing they were having sex. His hands were sweating, the knife handle feeling slippery. He gripped it tighter, and took another step. He could see part of her, too. They were on the bed together. Gritting his teeth, Brad took another step and he was in the room with them.
Dale was on his back, arms and legs spread, his clothes ripped apart and his torso a mass of blood. Janice was on top, fully clothed, blood staining her arms and clumps of it in her hair. She swung around toward him, startled, her eyes wide. She had a wild, demented look on her face. Seeing it was her husband, she relaxed, and grinned. Her mouth was full.
A large knife was sticking out of Dale’s throat. He had a shocked expression on his dead face. His eyes bulged so much it looked like a cartoon, like it wasn’t real.
Janice chewed and swallowed. “Join in!” she said. Her voice was high pitched and sounded half-hysterical. “There’s plenty!”
Brad dropped his knife and backed away. She laughed at him, and turned back to her feast. Brad turned and ran out of the house. He ran partly out of horror, and partly because he was so tempted to “join in.” Lawn and pavement passed in a blur under his feet, and he ran up to his front door and fumbled to unlock it. He couldn’t get the key in it took forever. Once the key did go in he nearly twisted it in half trying to get the door unlocked.
Inside, he heard his phone ringing. He locked and bolted the door behind him, then leaned against it for a moment, out of breath again. Was that real? he wondered. Could that have possibly been real? Or is that just the way I remember it? Could it be, he wondered, that he killed Dale and this is how his mind was dealing with it?
The phone continued to ring. Feeling numb and lost, Brad walked across the room and picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said.
“Brad, this is Randy.”
“Randy!” He took a breath, trying to calm himself. He’d expected it to be the police or worse. “I’m in so much trouble!”
“What happened?”
“I
my wife, either she killed Dale and is eating him, or I’m
or I did it. I don’t know anymore.”
“It’s not you,” Randy said. “It’s all of us. I think I have it figured out.”
“What?” Dale didn’t know what he was talking about.
“That pesticide they tested here,” Randy said. “It wasn’t supposed to affect anything but the ants. I think they’re right, it doesn’t, at least not directly. The problem is that it went up the food chain.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The pesticide. Once it got up through the food chain it, it got us. You can eat the pesticide all day and it won’t do anything, so their tests showed it to be harmless. But once it got into the food chain, and we ate the tainted food, the enzyme changed.”
“You mean
you’re telling me I’m not crazy?”
“Yes, you are. We all are. Our brain chemistry has been modified.”
Brad was silent. A chemical? A chemical had done this? It was all real? “This doesn’t make it better.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “It makes it all worse.”
“I’ve killed too, Brad,” Randy said. “In fact I’m the one”
There was a loud sound, and then loud, garbled shouting. “The police are here,” Randy told him. “I have to go.” The line went dead.
Brad dropped the phone. He dashed to the door that led to the garage, slammed it open and jumped down the three steps to the concrete. The police would probably kill Randy they knew about his gun collection. He had to get there before it happened he had to explain it to them, the police, that Randy wasn’t to blame.
It was the chemical company.
He started his car while the garage door slid open, and gunned it down the driveway and onto the street. He passed the gas station and turned left, passing the shopping center and the grocery store. The golf course was on his left, and Randy’s house was on a street on the other side of the course. There was the sound of distant gunfire, but Brad had no idea if it was the police, or other people who were affected by the enzyme.
He wondered if the police would believe him. Brad wondered if he even believed it himself. If an enzyme changed a person’s brain chemistry and caused him to commit murder, then it would be the fault of the chemical, not the person. But, he thought, if brain chemistry determines actions, then couldn’t any murder be blamed on bad brain chemistry? Who was to say what influenced it?
Anything from experimental pesticides to too many Hostess Twinkies could cause the imbalance. What if it was inherently imbalanced?
Was it still to blame?
Brad turned off the main road and sent the car flying down the street toward Randy’s house. He could see several police cars and a van out front. There were cops all around and several neighbors gathered together in groups. He skidded to a stop, jumping out of the car and running up to an officer yelling, “Don’t hurt him!”
The officer held his hand up. “Please stay back.”
“You don’t understand, it wasn’t him” Brad stopped abruptly, seeing four officers carrying Randy’s bullet-ridden body out of the house.
“It was him,” the cop said. “We found the remains.”
Brad opened his mouth, but closed it again. The question of Randy’s innocence was now moot. He watched as they carried the body into the van. The officer who’d stopped Brad walked over to the van as well, and they all crowded in and shut the door.
Minutes went by, and no one came out. The neighbors still stood in clumps, talking in low voices, and occasionally there would be an overloud voice from a police radio.
The police all remained in the van. Thinking this was odd
but knowing what they were doing Brad walked over to the back of the van and yanked the door open. The policemen glanced up from their feeding, looking guilty. None of them said anything. Brad looked down at his friend’s body, which was already mutilated, then climbed into the van with the officers and shut the door behind him.