“Your attorney?” Melanie scoffed, and it came off as a high-pitched laugh.
The thunderous boom of the pistol deafened her for a brief moment, but she was surprised at how calm she remained. Where had he aimed the pistol?
“Now do I have your attention!”
“Lenard, you’re losing it, baby.” He was around the table and on her in a rapid movement that surprised even Amanda. She felt his sinewy arm crook around her neck and the cold steel of the Peacemaker against her temple. As he pulled her against his body, she reached into her hoodie pocket and retrieved her lighter. The movement was inconspicuous and therefore not noticed by her mother or Dagus, who were focused on one another.
“Shut your mouth, Amanda.” She felt him fumble with the pistol a bit, as if the weight of it might be tiring his arm.
“Len,” Melanie said carefully and slowly. “We can all get out of this. We can pretend nothing has happened. Just put the gun down.”
Amanda was surprised at how calm her mother seemed, though she could hear the fear in her voice. But of what was she afraid? For whom was she scared? And why would she want to pretend that nothing was happening? A madman had a gun to her head! That was what hurt most of all at that moment, that her mother appeared not to care.
“Yeah, Lenard, just give her the pistol back, you coward. You won’t use it anyway.”
“Amanda Garrett! You let me handle this, young lady.”
“Please, Mom, don’t you think it’s a bit late to be trying to discipline me?” She paused then leaned over her shoulder, separating the pistol from her temple. “You looking forward to taking it up the ass in prison, Lenard?”
She felt him clench against her. “I swear to God I will kill her, Melanie, if you try to take me down. I’ve got the goods on you two, you know.” He started to shuffle her along the pool table toward the staircase. “Now move away. I’m taking her as insurance.”
Insurance. There was that word.
“Ooh, sweet,” Amanda said. “Insurance. Make you think of anything, Mom?” She spun the wheel once on the lighter and the flame jumped out brilliantly.
“This is out of control. What in the hell are you talking about?”
“What’s with the lighter? Get rid of that!” Dagus challenged Amanda, lamely attempting to move the pistol from her head to ineffectively swat at the lighter, while retaining his grip on her neck.
She moved her arm and wrestled against Dagus as she flipped the small switch that would hold the butane aperture on the lighter open so that it would burn without the force of her thumb. Dagus had almost moved her to the top step that would lead them down the staircase.
“Wait, one second, Lenard.” She was pronouncing the name in a way that she knew would upset him, piss him off. She was mocking him. “I need to say something to my mother before you take me to your place and try to do to me what you did to Brianna and any number of other underage girls.”
She could feel him trembling against her. She sensed that he was confused, teetering on the brink of something, perhaps reaching a tipping point.
“That ought to add another twenty years to your sentence. Rape of a minor. Hey, I’ve got an idea, why don’t you just put that pistol in your mouth and end your miserable life right now? What would you say? Some Romeo and Juliet? Parting is such sweet sorrow? Or how about some Macbeth? Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death?”
Feeling the momentum, she could sense that she was inside his thoughts staring at the confusion ripping his deranged mind apart like demons. “Go ahead, just do us all a favor, you shithead, and kill yourself. Stick it in your mouth now. Isn’t that what you said to Brianna, ‘Stick it in your mouth’? Go ahead, stick it in your mouth.”
“Amanda, stop it!”
“You stop it, Mother! You show me what you love more, this house or me.” She held the lighter high over her head as if at a rock concert.
“Get rid of that lighter!” her mother screamed, swatting at her hand. She connected with Amanda’s and the lighter broke free, bounced once off the railing and then fell toward the foyer. The flame cast an eerie ball of light, which caused shadows to dance rapidly on the walls of the foyer below. Landing with a slight thud, flame erupted as the lighter fluid she had poured into the thick Persian rug accelerated the fire instantly across its twelve-foot expanse.
“Nooo!” Melanie Garrett leaned over the railing, her face a contorted death mask, haunting and pained.
“What are you thinking about, Mother?” she screamed above the roaring fire. “Did we forget to insure the house? Oh my, after years of making me go to the doctor so you can make a few bucks off Dad’s insurance, how can you forget to do something as simple as insuring the house?”
Her mother stared at her with a palpable hate. Amanda could sense the poison filling the venom sacs.
“How could you do this to me?” Melanie ran past her and the man holding a pistol to her head. Amanda watched her leap down the steps and race toward the back of the house, only to have the fire, which had already begun licking at the freshly lacquered hardwood floors, push her back toward the front door. “Call the fire department!”
“How could you do the last seventeen years of my life to me, and to my dad?” she called over the banister. “It’s your turn.”
Then Amanda turned to Dagus, still holding her, but seemingly overwhelmed by the turn of events — perhaps in awe of her manipulation; she didn’t know.
“Looks like we’re screwed, Lenard. No way out of this now, you know. Don’t worry, there’s a copy of the video at the The Observer, too.” His arm was pressed tight against her throat, causing her to thrust her words past her larynx and then gulp in air. “And Mama’s going to lose about a million bucks. What a shame. Fire department comes, the cops come, and so on. They’ll all be here, wild man.”
She was surprised as it happened. So rarely in life does anything play out almost exactly as one envisions it. Blaming Dagus for the article defaming her father, for violating her best friend, and for all of the other horrible things she had seen on his computer, Amanda felt vindicated. Payback’s a bitch.
And as far as her mother was concerned, Amanda felt little satisfaction, yet had accomplished her goal of finding out what she loved more: her or her possessions. Her mother did not love her. It was that simple. Painful, but she had needed to be sure.
“For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come…” Dagus began. He gently released her and then swiftly moved the pistol under his chin. The bullet kicked his head back with such force that his tall frame flipped against the railing and slid along the handrail until his momentum carried him over the banister and into the flame.
She stood on the balcony watching the fire lick at the steps. From this point on, everything would be hard, but also easy. Cutting against the grain of her upbringing would be hard, but her motivation would be pure. There would be no conflict. Up until now, she had been unsure, didn’t know whom she could trust.
Amanda fled into the master bedroom and raced down its deck steps into the backyard. The moon had moved overhead and cast enough light to give her some depth perception.
As she rounded the side of the house, she saw her mother running back toward the front door. Flames were now visible through the windows of the rooms adjacent to the entrance. The fire was spreading and would consume the house, she thought.
As she approached her car, she stopped and turned to see her mother reaching for the brass-handled front doorknob. Not a good idea, Mom, she wanted to say as she slid into her driver’s seat. She thought she heard the anguished wail of a damned soul above the din of her engine and the crunch of her tires as she rolled away.