He starts crying. “What did you do to my arm?” he says between sobs. “I think I need to go to a hospital.”
“You’ll be fine. Which of the screens look familiar?”
“I don’t know!”
I push his head into the editing equipment. “All right. Let’s try something different. I want you to think of Lana.”
He can barely keep his head upright. “I’m bleeding out. I need water.”
“Just think of a single image of her for me.”
“Will you get this shit out of me?”
“Sure. Just think of Lana.”
He brings his free arm up and rests his head on it. His sobs begin to diminish. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
The frequencies begin to pick up on Tom’s mental image until all of the monitors carry the same picture. I’m free. As long as he stays on that machine, whatever I’m thinking will stay off the airwaves.
“Don’t stop, Tom.”
I pack up my journals and throw them into the trunk of Tom’s car. I figure I’ve got a few hours before he’s fully functional again. Once he sobers up, he’ll rip those wires out, find Bill, and God knows what. Maybe he’ll think he blacked out. Maybe he’ll blame himself for Bill.
Whatever happens, I figure I have four hours to get out of the one-hundred-mile transmission radius. I’ll start clean.
Tom’s still bleeding heavily when I go back into the kitchen, so I start filling the mop bucket under Bill’s sink with water, thinking maybe I can get him to drink some before I go.
As the bucket fills I hear that all-too-familiar white noise. I run out, leaving the bucket in the sink. Tom’s trying to lift himself off the table top, slipping in the pool of blood accumulating near the control panel. His head sways back and forth across the dials, mopping up the small puddles his arm leaves from exertion. He’s got that same vacuous expression he had in his fantasies.
I run back to the kitchen and grab the bucket. I cup the water with my hands and try to pour it into his mouth. It streams down his cheek, clouding the deep red slowly coating the corner of the room. I cup more into his mouth, hoping it’ll slide down his throat like the ass-black coffee he drinks, but it just runs out of his mouth like all the bullshit he spews about fucking Lana. Still, all things considered, I wouldn’t want to see him die.
I shake his shoulders and try to prop him upright. “Come on, Tom.”
I get him a few feet off the table and he collapses onto the floor. The wiring holds his arm outstretched like a marionette strung to play dead. Finally, flesh gives way to the pull of machine, and his arm drops to the floor, leaving behind a mesh of dreadlocked cable and vein.
My first instinct is to get into the car and go. I look down and notice for the first time that my shirt is covered in blood. I run back upstairs to grab the first rag I can find, then scramble for Tom’s car in the garage. I’m back on the televisions already. Ten channels and I’m dead on every one except 12, where there’s a young, dark-haired woman running a cash register. She’s distorted by the fish-eye lens of a security camera. This is nothing from my memory, nor fantasy. Like the prophetic images depicting my inevitable murders and death, this is coming from somewhere else. There’s a signal somewhere out there overriding mine, someone or something fucking with me.
If their signal is strong enough, I might be able to stay under the radar if I get close to them. So, I grab Bill’s portable and a set of rabbit ears, and set out to follow the signal until I start picking up more.
Channel 8
During the early days of radio in the United States, prior to the time when a license was required to broadcast, radio stations would compete for frequencies. Listeners would be greeted by a cacophony of voice and song. Battles among the small broadcasters boiled down to who had the best and strongest equipment. Since then, licensing requirements have changed the playing field. But the principle that emerged during those early years has always remained: get rid of the competition, by any means necessary.
I stop at a Kwik Mart to pick up another set of AA batteries. These little televisions burn through juice like crazy. When I walk in, I hope I’ve already found my mark. But it’s not the store from channel twelve.
The girl at the counter—Tammi, her nametag reads—is sketched out by me. I can’t blame her. My clothes are disheveled and I haven’t shaved in nearly a week. I’m starting to look suspicious.
Who the fuck am I kidding? I’ve looked suspicious ever since I torched Jim and his partner.
Tammi scans the batteries and glances up at me nervously, trying to avoid eye contact. “Three dollars,” she says, still looking down.
I hand her the money and she slides the batteries across the counter.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“On YouTube or something, or TV?”
I shake my head, fumble the batteries in my hands. “No.”
She smiles like she’s got me figured out. I’ve seen that smile too many times in the last few days. “Okay.”
I turn to walk toward the door.
She calls out to me. “Have a good one!”
“You too.”
In the car, I stuff the batteries into the television set, let the old ones roll across the parking lot. I start to worry about a kid picking them up and getting chemical burns, but I don’t have time to chase the fuckers down.
I pull out of the parking lot and I’m back on the road. Beside me, a little television with rabbit ears jutting out of the passenger-side window whispers sweet nothings into my ear. The farther west I go, the more scrambled the transmissions become. An image of a dead cat flickers on channel 3 for a few miles in Northern New York. Closer to the state’s capital, someone’s dead set on reproducing CBS programming from 1997. I remember the soaps from summers off with my mother.
Fucking soaps. Mimosa-sipping bitches with inflated self-employment titles. Fucking millionaire interior designer-adulterer-alcoholic with amnesia, and bi-polar disorder fucks.
By the time I get outside of Albany, there’s someone hitching every ten miles. There have been almost one thousand cases of murder and rape as a result of picking up hitchhikers in the United States. I don’t plan on becoming a part of that statistic. But when The Bold and the Beautiful, circa 1997, gives way to a transmission of one of the hitchers I pass, I have to stop.
I pull over at the exit lane where he stands. He picks up his bag and walks toward the car. I look him over, gauge his shadiness quotient. Guy’s got sleek sunglasses, a dark, almost-shaved-to-the-scalp head of hair. He’s wearing one of those thick winter jackets with heavy stitching. It’s a little warm outside for that, so either this guy’s been on the road for a while or he’s covering up his stink. Or blood stains. Shadiness quotient: no higher than mine. Fuck it. I’ll give him a ride.
He steps into the vehicle and picks up my television. The minute he lays his hands on it, the signal dies. He holds it in front of me and stares at me. I take it out of his hands, turn it off, and set it on the backseat.
“Where you headed?” I ask.
“I’ll go as far as you’re willing to take me.”
I pull back onto the interstate, heading south.
He fishes through his pockets for something.
This is it, I think. Time to push that body count over the one thousand mark.
“I haven’t seen you around before.” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“I’m just passing through.”