Level Zero by Dan McDowell (debian ebook reader .txt) 📗

“Creepy Nights? Don’t get me started. That’s why I’m over here drowning my sorrows with you — my husband, my soon to be ex, Chris, is to blame for the awful purple. That jerk ruined my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was a good guy, and for a long while, we had an enjoyable life together. One night, something inside him just flipped. He never lost his temper or went manic. He just became a different person set on scaring everyone. I watched it become an unhealthy fixation — frightening people, I mean. The clown petrified my poor mother so many times, he might as well have killed her. I mean, he practically did. Chris was all about the jump scares. He’d just go around the corner and pop out in front of her like he was twelve years old all over again, picking on the girls at recess. Mom’s health wasn’t that great. Her constant anxiety left her blood pressure sky high around the clock. Chris got a rise from that. He’d do little things to get on her nerves before his… transformation. I never thought much about it. Eventually, the little things kept getting bigger and bigger.”

I might get along better with him than I should. Stop it, Todd. You’re not that way anymore.

“Sounds about like a psychopath to me,” Todd said. “You into that kind of man or what? There’s plenty of ‘em. Think it’s that Y chromosome. Sometimes has an extra hint of evil just behind it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no feminist. The X chromosome isn’t much better off.”

Katrina laughed and said, “Point well made. Point well made… He bothered mom all the way up until the day he killed a deer and smeared its blood all over the inside of her Mercedes. This idiot told her he killed a deplorable man and used her vehicle to transport and dispose of a body as some sort of sick joke. For the record, he killed no one. Unfortunately, my crazy but well-intentioned mother was such a clean freak she couldn’t stand the thought of her vehicles being used for such a despicable act. Don’t misunderstand. She wasn’t a humanitarian, not by any stretch of the means. She was much more concerned about the overall cleanliness of her vehicle than any victim. When she spotted the car and the shape it was in, she collapsed to the ground and fainted. Damned jagged rock on the edge of the driveway did her in when she slipped and hit her head as she passed out from the rush of overwhelming panic. The autopsy report showed the trauma to the head did her in. Poor, lonely old bag.”

Katrina’s emotions peaked, and she teared up, scratching at her scalp. ”Must be the alcohol talking. I don’t know. I miss her.”

She raked her fingers through her well-kept and dyed auburn hair in its radiance. Her beautiful almond eyes enchanted and entranced Todd. His mind drifted a moment. He returned, following a moment of shameless desire for her.

“Well, I’m sorry about all that. Guess there ain’t no easy way to bring momma back. I can’t blame you for considering a divorce,” he said. “What’s really working on you, though? That can’t be it. I’ve got an intuition for reading beautiful women.”

“Well, what do you think?” she asked, rubbing her brow with her nail-bitten left hand and shaking her head. “Can’t you see my struggle? My mother’s death. Wouldn’t you think that would have caused some tensions? My stupid… idiot… knucklehead for a husband basically killed her. He didn’t give a care, though. Mother was worth a lot. A whole damn lot. He was always wasting money on horror movie props, posters, anything like that. I bet our garage had $60,000 of that shit… pardon my French… before my accident. It just gets me worked up thinking about it! And now…” Katrina slammed her fist on the bar and scoffed. “We own a damn building that’s Riverton’s biggest eyesore — in the scourge of the Oak Hollow District. The jackass did the whole thing while I was in a coma and just goes and buys the place on a damn whim.”

Coma? I guess I’m not the only one. Maybe I’ll tell her. Maybe I won’t. Tucked in my back pocket for safekeeping.

“I still don’t really know how or why. It’s just been too much for me… for us.” Katrina stopped to sip on her Old-Fashioned. “I couldn’t stand thinking about the terrible thing he did to mom and to me. Even if it was a second or third-degree sort of thing. Yeah. I’ll admit her death wouldn’t have bothered me as much had it happened differently, but Chris’s juvenile antics just drove me up the wall. I can’t trust him. We escaped a while to cope with the loss, and I worked on an art therapy project. I never expected Chris to be so reckless, but he was, and now, he is… more than I could have ever imagined.” She pinched at her wrist as if her nerves and frustration overwhelmed her. “As you could guess, I’m completely against the purchase of the property, but he signed whatever papers there were while I was comatose and won’t even show them to me. I don’t know whether to resent him for it or not. I may be better off not knowing how much he paid for it. It was too much.”

“I’m sorry. It sounds like it’s been quite a ride dealing with a complicated guy like that. We’re all a little that way, aren’t we?”

Katrina took a deep breath as Todd stared into her eyes. “Whatever. Do you actually know anything about Oak Hollow?” she asked. “Chris just turned a blind eye to the history of the block. So much blood shed in the area for many generations—no point in talking any reason with him, though. Chris can really fixate. In fact, he can be flat-out obsessive