The Law of Nines

Alex had for so long been holding back his rage, his need to strike out and fight back, that it felt exhilarating to finally be able to let that fury loose.

He didn’t know how long she had been dead before he even realized it.

He finally sat back on his heels, catching his breath. With the back of his wrist he wiped sweat from his brow.

She was purple. Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. Her tongue bulged from her mouth, lying over to the side. Saliva and blood trickled out.

Alex raked his fingers back though his hair. He thought he might be sick.

He finally got up off the corpse. He saw the syringe and picked it up. The cap was missing. He realized that she must have popped it off with a thumb. He cast about and finally found the cap under the bed. He replaced it and put the syringe in his pocket.

In the eerie silence, the bed squeaked as Alex leaned back against it. He stared at the dead woman sprawled in the middle of the floor.

He’d had no choice, of course, but this complicated things. He had to figure out what he was going to do with her now. He considered stuffing her in the wardrobe, but when he opened the door to check its size, he realized that there was no way she would fit. He could push her under the bed, but the bedcovers didn’t hang down far enough to hide anything under such a high hospital bed.

He paced, trying to think. Soon, someone was going to come in and they would see her. If nothing else they would come that night to get him and take him over to their private torture session in the women’s shower.

He considered putting Alice against the wall, behind where the door opened, cleaning up the mess, and then going down to the sunroom to wait. It would probably be Henry who came looking for him. If Alex only left on the reading lamp over the bed, Henry might pop his head in, not see Alex, and go to the sunroom.

He realized that that was a lousy plan. Any number of things were likely to go wrong. People were soon going to wonder where Alice was and start searching for her. The orderlies were quick to pick up on such things. Some of the patients could be dangerous and they didn’t allow staff to go unaccounted for. They knew that she was doing med rounds. It was probably only a matter of minutes before they came looking for her to make sure she was all right.

Alex paced, frantically trying to think of what he could do, glancing over at the corpse every time he turned to pace in the other direction. He needed to somehow make Alice disappear.

He stopped suddenly and stared down at the woman. She was a mess. Blood from when he had struck her and broken her jaw lay in a long string halfway across the floor. Alice had lost control of herself as he had strangled her. There was a spreading puddle of urine under her sprawled legs.

He needed her to disappear.

Alex wondered if it was possible.

He could try. At this point he had no other ideas and nothing to lose.

He ran to the bed. It was old and squeaked whenever someone leaned against it. When things squeaked like that it usually meant that screws had worked loose. He ran his fingers along the metal bars and quickly found a self-tapping metal screw sticking up at the end of the side rail. He used his thumb and the side of his first finger to loosen it. He gritted his teeth with the effort. Had he not been so frantic he might not have been able to unscrew it with his bare hands.

The screw wasn’t long—certainly not long enough to be an effective weapon—but it had a relatively sharp point and was long enough for his purpose. He hurried over to Alice and squatted down beside her purple face.

He held the screw over the dead woman’s forehead as he thought. He closed his eyes as he worked to remember. He had seen Jax activate a lifeline several times. The first time it had been shocking to see her carving in Bethany’s forehead. Such surprise helped indelibly fix the picture in his mind.

More than that, though, he was an artist. Designs stuck in his head. He remembered forms, spatial relationships. He clearly recalled that every time Jax had drawn the design it looked the same. He was pretty sure that he remembered the way Jax had cut that design into foreheads. He let himself see it in his mind.

He could hear orderlies talking as they walked along the hallway outside his room. He had no choice but to try.

With the point of the screw Alex started carving the lines into Alice’s forehead. He made the arc that Jax had done first, then added two angled lines on the right and one on the left. He cut each line in turn, concentrating on the mental picture he had of the lines in Bethany’s forehead, making them precisely the same angles he remembered.

Alex lost himself in the task, just as he lost himself in painting. He made each stroke with confidence, the way Jax had. The point of the screw dragged against bone as he pulled it across the skin of Alice’s forehead. He finished with the pattern that overlaid the beginning arc, just as Jax had done.