Electric Jungle Read online

  Copyright © 2018 James K. Pratt

  Kindle Version 1.0 –July 2018

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Murderabilia

  Our Ride is Out There

  Breaking Timmy

  Doll’s House

  Hacker’s Divorce

  …Also by Me

  Murderabilia

  Murderabilia

  When I smiled at the devil he smiled back. For him, business was good. And he had shown me that his work was done by my own hands.

  Shortly after finishing my prison sentence, I got a job as a gas station attendant. Nearly everyone who entered the station convenience store came in and left within three minutes. It was a lonely job, but the gas station proved far better than the clank of metal bars and endless echoes of men's voices that made up my old world.

  On my fourth day on the job, my shift had nearly ended when a man came in and did a double take.

  “Sorry,” the stranger said, “I thought I recognized you.” His face curved into a smile, the expression stiff like a wooden mask. He wore pressed khakis and a milky blue polo shirt.

  “Maybe you did. Have you ever been to Pe Ell?”

  “No sorry, haven’t been there,” he said, grabbing a drink from the cold case.

  “I noticed writing on your car door, do you have a business?” I asked.

  “No. Actually, I’m the county coroner.”

  “You heading home after a day of work?”

  “Nah,” he plunked the energy drink on the counter, “I’m just getting home from a convention.”

  “Coroners have conventions?” I asked.

  “Yes, but that’s not what it was.” He pulled out his phone, “I was at a murderabilia convention.”

  He showed me his phone screen displaying what would have been a normal collectible card, except for the caption that read: ‘Serial Killer, Jacob Blain, Prisoner: #8.’ Jacob, the solitary subject of the card, wore an orange jumpsuit. His face had a few days of stubble, a mustache that touched the edge of his lips and a smallish, almost feminine nose. I rubbed my larger nose looking at the picture. His dark brown hair was combed neatly considering his bristled face.

  “The cool part is,” the stranger said, “someone actually had Jacob Blain sign his own serial killer card while he was on trial. You can barely see it, but Jacob wrote, ‘I’m not guilty’ right there on the card.” He pointed to some faint writing.

  “Interesting.” Not really.

  “I bought that card at the convention.” As he turned the phone around, the burst of the camera flash half-blinded me. “Sorry.”

  “That’s, okay,” I said.

  He paid for the energy drink and I gave him his change.

  “My name’s Blake,” he said, then paused by the door waiting for something. I realized he wanted my name.

  “Liam,” I said.

  “By the way Liam, later at the convention I sold that card for a nice profit.” With that, he left.

  But little did I realize the picture he’d taken of me was a hook to drag me into his world.

  For stealing aluminum gutters I had spent a long time in prison, though it might have been worse. I had early release. My parole was under a special program that required me to meet with a psychologist who monitored my progress since starting my life outside of prison. I thought it strange that a psychologist traveled 45 minutes just to talk with me, but it was part of early release, so why they cared didn’t matter. I was free. We met at the police station in an empty meeting room.

  “Have you made any friends yet?” My psychologist asked.

  “No.”

  “But you’ve surely talked with someone,” he paused, “Someone interesting. It’s important to overcome your fears and establish a new life on the outside.”

  “Then should I go home to Pe Ell?” I didn’t know why I asked.

  He looked at me funny, “How does the thought of going home make you feel?”

  The words burst out. “I committed a crime there. I just can’t stand everyone knowing what I’ve done.”

  “Is that how you really feel?”

  I felt silly for the outburst and was eager to change the topic so I said only, “Yes.”

  “It’s fine to be afraid Liam. You have a new life. There is nothing for you to see in Pe Ell.”

  One second the psychologist wanted me to overcome my fears, and the next to heed them. I might be a bit paranoid, but still found that odd.

  No one ever said I was smart. But I’d learned something by watching people in prison. Sometimes if you’re careful you can notice something going on.

  When Blake, the coroner, came back to the convenience store the next day, he averted his eyes the moment they met mine. I wondered what he was up to. First, he went for an energy drink, but paused to get a bottle of tea instead. Oddly, he took the bottle by its neck. In the four weeks I’d worked here, no one had held a bottle like that. He plunked it on the counter and asked, “Have you been back to Pe Ell?”

  “No. I committed a crime there. I can’t stand people knowing what I’ve done.” The words just tumbled out, just like with the psychologist. I hated that.

  Blake gave me a ‘gotcha’ smile. The kind that told me the question was a trap, and I’d just stepped in it.

  Covering my mouth, I realized how silly I must have looked. Now he knows I’ve got a record.

  Grabbing the tea I scanned it. He paid, and taking it by its neck, he left. First, he’d taken my picture, and now this weird thing with the question and the tea bottle. Strange.

  Later that day, I’d sat in my car in the gas station parking lot when he parked beside me on the passenger side.

  Blake’s head poked out his car window. “Listen, you have a scar on your shoulder, correct?” Before I could speak, he shot another question. “On your left ankle you’ve a mark from a removed tattoo, right?”

  I nodded, this was getting very weird. “So you’ve read my criminal record online.”

  “No, that’s not it. Your description matches another man.”

  “I’m not your man, Blake.” I set the car in reverse.

  “That’s just it, you’re not Liam Woodward. If I’m right, your name is Jacob Blaine. You’ve been expunged.”

  Prisoners on death row were eligible to be expunged. Though voluntary, the convict lost their old memories via, ‘therapy.’ The old memories were replaced with ones the government social workers and doctors believed to be best. With memories removed, they often fixed the brain’s amygdala, where emotion is controlled. The end result was simple, the often violent murderer was now a tame man, with no memory of his former self.

  Blake reached over to his passenger seat, then tossed a manila envelope through my car window, where it landed on the seat beside me. “Call me if you want to know more.”

  I held a morbid hope that I was someone more than an ex-convict and gas station attendant. But why couldn’t I just be a man who lived in a small town and never left until I was taken to prison? Though I didn’t believe I was Jacob Blaine, I had little else to do that night. I couldn’t find any TV I wanted to stream.

  The manila envelope provided by Blake held documents and a thumb drive. I snapped in the thumb drive, and found one video file labeled DeathCon.

  The video showed a skinny man with a horseshoe patch of hair standing before a stage siz
e pea-green curtain.

  “Now, as you all know Jacob Blain has disappeared,” said the man. A murmur echoed from the audience. “He’s probably taken the ‘expunged’ route out of prison. No doubt they don’t want him to be found and wish for him to start a new life. If that’s the case, we’ve made several facial composites of what he might look like today.”

  He walked over to three stands covered by cream-colored curtains. He unveiled one, with a picture that sort of looked like Blain.

  “First, with fine blonde hair and smaller ears, surgically altered, of course,” the speaker said.

  The picture wasn’t me.

  Then he unveiled another. “Second, less hair, but longer in the back. Plus the hair is wavy and a lighter brown.”

  Not me either.

  Pulling back the cover from the last stand, he spoke again. “The third one shows a bigger nose, not bald and some surgery to make him younger.”

  Me.

  The truth can often be cruel. There have been moments in my life when I wished denial to be a real option. To be nobody. There is a certain peace in that. Not today. Today I was someone, someone alien even to myself. Normally, I reached into the past to cope, but now that was something alien too. My past was something created in a lab by people who had every right to hate me. Or at least hate who I was.

  I tried to clear my head.

  Blake had given me a double take when he’d first stepped into the store. How weird it must have felt to find someone you were looking for returning home from the murderabilia convention. Some call it fate that he found me. If so, fate was something to fear.

  I didn’t want this to be true. My thoughts were a jumbled storm of wishing to cling to my ignorance, yet other feelings pulled me toward understanding what I was. Or had been.

  There are points in time when every person ponders their life. That night I wished I could do that because I wasn’t sure who I had been. My thoughts swung between Blake’s story and my own recollections.

  I looked for answers in what Blake had given me. The packet included the picture of me he’d taken the first time we met and my fingerprints. But how did he manage to get my fingerprints, I wondered?

  Oh, the bottle of tea.

  Over several hours, I verified Blake’s information by surfing government websites. His files revealed something else. Jacob Blain was almost ten years older than me. That came as a shock. Although I thought I was thirty-two, apparently I was really in my forties. I had fewer years left to live than I’d believed. Having me think I was younger would be fine for the government, and no one would blink at an ex-convict dying young. But for me, not only had I ten years of false prison memories—ten years filled with boredom and hate. But those years were not even lived—they were only implanted memories. And worse, if Liam Woodward never existed, then no one loved me. No one would come to see me. If I had no real family and the therapy had removed Blain from my mind then. Then I had to face the truth—I was really no one.

  * * *

  When I called Blake later that night, he asked me a question. “You’ve had a chance to think about it, right?”

  “About what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Do you want to know more?”

  “Hold it, what more is there?”

  “You wanna see my collection?”

  “Collection?”

  “Yeah, my murderabilia collection.”

  “Ugh.”

  Blake laughed, but I didn’t see the humor. “Come on. As long as you’re tame you may as well enjoy it. Look, I’ll pick you up after work at four.”

  “I get off at five.”

  “Alright, see you then.” He hung up. I guessed there was no crime in knowing, but a voice deep in the back of my head objected. There is strength in ignorance.

  ‘I may as well enjoy it?’ Enjoy what? My little world consisted of an apartment building full of strangers and a country gas station. Those who expunged me did a poor job a giving me a new life. Perhaps, I’m ungrateful, but who were they trying to punish when they released me? Liam or Jacob?

  True to his word, after my shift the next day, Blake waited in his car outside the convenience store. As planned, I followed his car. With his taillights ahead of me, I realized Blake was the closest thing I had to a friend. Yet there was nothing about him that made him a friend, but still, I followed his taillights.

  His house had a manufactured look and oddly was painted purple. Through the window, I saw his wife and son seated on a couch, streaming television.

  Approaching the porch, he said in a low voice, “Hey, don’t mention who you are. You don’t have to lie, but if my wife asks your name tell her the one the government gave you, okay? All right? And if they ask, just say you’ve come to see my collection.”

  I agreed.

  We passed the living room without his son or wife giving more than a ‘hi’.

  Blake led me down the basement steps. Without light, my hand held the rail all the way down the stairs.

  Click.

  A naked light bulb hanging at the center of the basement lit up his museum. It looked impressive because it looked like an art exhibit. The walls farthest from the steps were rippled so his collection might be seen one part at a time.

  The first display that caught my eye was John Wayne Gacy, a killer from the 1970’s wearing a clown costume. His picture was in the center of the display, with all his young victims as flower petals. Maybe it was the government therapy talking, but seeing this made me question why celebrate this depravity?

  The only emotion I felt was a bland disgust at this pointless art.

  Blake said, “No one has ever found an expunged before. You’re due for a homecoming. I can get my collector friends over. They’d love to see you.”

  What kind of man proposes a homecoming for a serial killer? Blake wanted to stick my nose into the past.

  A picture of Jacob Blaine caught my eye. An oval painting of the sun showed each portion of the day starting with morning, where it hung the lowest on the left, and then several more until the sun sunk into parallax. With each phase of the sun, hung a photo of Blaine in various stages of his life. Starting with early childhood in the morning, and leading up to his arrest on the sunset. Morning held a baby picture of my real childhood. It didn’t tell me anything, but it flooded me with questions. Did Jacob Blaine’s parents love him? Did I ever fall in love while I was Jacob Blaine?

  Below, another painting showed the phases of the moon over a graveyard. The faces in each moon were paintings of Jacob Blain. His face hovered over the graveyard with a menacing grin. Tombstone shaped mug shots of people I didn’t know filled the headstones, no doubt my victims. Had Jacob Blain known them?

  “Yes, I thought you’d like it,” Blake said.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. In that moment, my mind was confused. This man didn’t do me any favors bringing me here, but I wanted to be polite.

  I hurried toward the basement steps.

  “You’re not going to just go, are you?” Blake asked.

  Why hadn’t the people who worked on erasing the old me let me know who I was? Did I really need to be completely ignorant? The motive to kill is alien to me.

  “I’ll follow you,” Blake said, walking quickly behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder. Blake’s face had the shine of sweat. Maybe it was because he had invited a former serial killer over and now feared said killer might act out his past on his family. Or maybe he was just afraid of losing his biggest piece of murderabilia. Perhaps both. In any case, he stayed on my heels to the door. As he walked out he pulled the door shut behind him.

  Sitting in my car, I wished Blake’s family well, they deserved better than him. But that was what they had. What occupied my mind the most was my new name. Jacob was evil, and Liam? Liam was a good man, but that wasn’t enough. There is little anyone can do about who we are, but then I had to do something. I had no intention of returning to my apartment. Once I was Jacob, and then I w
as Liam. Liam was what others wanted, but I had to be someone else.

  Having no name will be fine. I have won a sort of victory over myself. No longer, Liam or Blaine, I’ll keep driving until I discover who the new person is.

  Our Ride is Out There

  Our Ride is Out There

  “I thought the three lights were helicopters that night,” Tammy said, leaning back in her rocking chair, “but then without making a sound, the lights floated over me. It was a spaceship, shaped like a horseshoe. Ya’ know what I said when I saw it? I said, ‘not in a million years.’”

  Alec nodded sitting next to Richard. Their black suits clashed with the faded sand colored sofa.

  One credible story could be out there—they hoped.

  Richard leaned forward and smiled, “Did you go inside the ship?”

  Tammy nodded, her wrinkled forehead furrowed and her hands fidgeted on her lap. Her eyes didn’t leave the floor as she spoke slowly, “I know this sounds crazy, but there was coffee spilt all over the control panel. The alien on the ship drank coffee! It was just like those bug-eyed grays, but it talked like a little girl, a rather ugly little girl. She said she wanted to get away from her dad.”

  Richard gave him a look that said, ‘I told you so.’

  Alec sighed with his hands cradling his head. “Did she mention where she might go next?”

  “No,” Tammy said.

  They thanked Tammy for her time, and before they left, Richard offered her their business card, “Just in case you’re abducted again.” He flicked the card out toward her, but his aim was off. It landed on the sofa before the old lady could snatch it.

  Tammy accepted the card, a bit perplexed.

  Richard broke the silence after they crossed Tammy’s yard and were standing by their car, “I told you not to let her drink coffee.”

  “My daughter isn’t ugly.”

  “Yeah, but she left us stranded on this planet—”

  “I had to bring her, it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day.”