Life Rage Read online

  Life Rage

  Copyright © 2012 by L.L. Soares

  This edition of Life Rage

  Copyright © 2012 by Nightscape Press, LLP

  Cover illustration and design by William Cook

  Cover lettering by Robert S. Wilson

  Interior layout and design by Robert S. Wilson

  Interior illustration by William Cook

  Edited by Robert S. Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  First ebook Edition

  Nightscape Press, LLP

  http://www.nightscapepress.com

  For Laura

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once you write a novel, the path from that point to actual publication can sometimes be longer and more convoluted than you expect. But I am overjoyed to finally see LIFE RAGE, the book. I want to thank all those who helped this become a reality, especially:

  To Gregory Lamberson, who read the book early on and constantly encouraged me to keep sending it out and not lose faith.

  To my wife, Laura Cooney, for her constant support, patience and love.

  To my buddy Peter Dudar for his encouragement, advice, and for those late night pep talks. You were a big part of why things happened the way they did, and I appreciate that.

  To William Cook, an excellent artist who provided an amazing image for the cover for this novel.

  And to my publishers and editors at Nightscape Press, Robert Shane Wilson and Mark Scioneaux, two terrific guys who have made the entire process a positive one, and kept things exciting throughout.

  Thanks.

  Prologue

  It sounded like the deep, raw cough of an old woman, but when Sam turned to look back, he saw a young, attractive girl, covering her mouth.

  She noticed his stare and took her hand away. Forced a smile.

  Sam realized he was staring right at her, right into her eyes, and the sudden consciousness made him tear his gaze away. He looked up, above her head, at an advertisement for a local community college. Some acne-scarred student smiling next to a quotation in big, white letters, about how wonderful education was.

  There are stairs. That go upstairs. Only, there’s nobody there.

  A tune was playing in his head that he just couldn’t shake, and the lyrics made no sense. He tried to empty his mind.

  When he turned to look at the young woman again, she was standing up, moving toward the train doors, getting off at the next stop.

  It couldn’t have been her who made that noise, who coughed like that, Sam thought. Must have been someone else.

  He tried to concentrate on the newspaper, but there was nothing in it that interested him. He watched the woman’s back, her ass, as she disappeared from view, and the subway doors closed, and the train began to move again.

  And there’s nobody there. No matter how long I wait. Nobody at all.

  The next stop was his. He got out and tossed the unread paper into the nearest trash receptacle. He let the other people around him provide the current, and swam along with them, letting their movements dictate his own.

  He thought of the pretty woman with the cough. Wondered what her cunt felt like. What noises she made during sex. What her mouth would feel like wrapped around his cock. What her asshole felt like.

  Another day.

  Nobody at all. There are stairs. That go upstairs.

  PART ONE

  THIS SHARED RAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Back when she was fourteen years old, Colleen used to carve words into her arms with razor blades.

  Funny she should think about that now, riding the subway.

  It wasn’t something she did all the time, but it occurred often enough for her mother to get very concerned and make her see a psychiatrist. An odd, mostly emotionless woman with her hair tied in a severe bun behind her head.

  Colleen had tried to make it very clear that she was not suicidal. That the razor was her way of dealing with being alive. It wasn’t always clear what she was feeling, or what she was trying to say, and the razor helped her to focus sometimes.

  The psychiatrist had promptly put her on anti-depressant drugs, and urged her to express what she was feeling.

  Colleen decided she would rather not talk, and the sessions consisted of hours of silence. Her mother did not seem to mind that she was wasting her money. Colleen had stopped cutting herself. She eventually stopped going to the psychiatrist’s office and stopped taking the drugs.

  That was because Colleen had found boys. They focused her in ways that the razor just couldn’t compete with.

  But that didn’t mean that sometimes she didn’t miss the feel of the razor cutting into her flesh. Spelling out feelings she just couldn’t articulate.

  Maybe I’ll take this stop, she wondered as the train slowed down. Then again, maybe not. I have a lot of time to kill.

  On the days when she didn’t sleep late, she often rode the subway for hours at a time. Today, she wasn’t sure if there was anywhere she really wanted to go. But she didn’t want to spend time in her claustrophobic apartment, either.

  Maybe I should look for a job, she thought. A real job.

  But she knew she wouldn’t. Not today, at least. She wondered if she would ever get motivated enough to try. How much longer would she just scrape along?

  She thought about the man who had been staring at her earlier, on that other train. He was attractive enough, but something about the way he looked at her scared her. In different circumstances, she might have tried to talk to him, and see where things led.

  Then again, maybe not. She did follow her instincts after all. That’s how she was able to survive this long. By her wits.

  She felt a tickle at the back of her throat. She hoped she wouldn’t start coughing again.

  Maybe I should quit smoking, she thought.

  * * *

  “Calm down,” Sam found himself shouting.

  Richard Croix was standing up now, waving his arms, and shouting as well. In fact, he had started it all. His anger filled the room, and Sam was afraid that Carla would call the police this time. But he’d told her not to do that, ever. He could handle it.

  “Sit down!” Sam said, getting up from his own chair.

  “The fucking asshole,” Croix was saying. “He just sat there in his car, grinning at me, like it was some kind of a fucking joke. He sped away before I could pull him out of his car and tear his fucking head right off.”

  “Richard,” Sam said, loud enough to get through to him, but trying to stay calm. “Richard, get a hold of yourself.”

  Croix was practically foaming at the mouth. He wasn’t just telling the story, he was clearly reliving it, as angry now as when the incident originally occurred.

  “Smirking at me, like some fucking retard, daring me to do something! I wanted to just rip his car door off and cut him in half with it.”

  Sam put his hands on Richard Croix’s shoulders, like some kind of healing priest, and stared right into Croix’s eyes. Trying to take control of the situation, trying to exert some kind of dominance over Croix’s anger. Something a lot like electricity tingled in Sam’s hands and arms. It traveled. He could feel it in the back of his neck, and then reaching the circumference of his skull.

  “Sit down,” Sam said, quietly. “Sit down and get a hold of yourself. It’s over now. It’s not happening anymore. It’s all in the past.”

  Croix stopped shouting. The silence happened so quickly that Sam swore he could hear a faint hiss and crackle of electricity in the air around them, in place of the shouting. Filling the void.

  “You’re losing it, Richard,” Sam said. “You’re letting it run away with you. Don’t let that happen. Don’t let it control you. Control it. You’re the master here.”

  He pressed down on Croix’s
shoulders, and the larger man did not resist as he dropped back into his seat, staring up into Sam’s eyes.

  “That’s better,” Sam said. “You’re yourself again.”

  “I was shouting again,” Croix said after a few minutes.

  “Yes, you were,” Sam said. “And I had to stop you.”

  “Thank you,” Croix said softly, noticeably shamed by this news. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s over now, Richard. You’re back in control again.”

  “It’s just that the whole thing got me so angry.”

  “And isn’t that why you’re here, Richard? The anger? You can’t let go of the anger, even days after it’s ignited. You can’t break its hold on you. Even talking about it makes you lose control.”

  “I’m sorry,” Croix said, fumbling for words. He seemed so helpless, so child-like now. So unlike the roaring Vesuvius of a man who had just been shouting at the top of his lungs. “I can’t help myself.”

  “No, you can’t. Not yet. But you will, Richard. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here. To help you.”

  “Help me,” Croix said, not so much pleading as repeating Sam’s words. His head wasn’t clear enough yet to plead.

  “You’ve come to the right place, Richard. You know you have. This is my specialty, after all. I am a rage specialist.”

  “It was so real,” Croix said. “Just telling you what happened, made it so real again.”

  “Sounds to me like it was lucky that guy drove away before you could reach him. Who knows what you would have done if you had gotten your hands on him.”

  “I would have killed him,” Croix said, softly but confidently. There was no question in it.

  “Yes, you probably would have. I find it remarkable that you haven’t killed anyone yet, Richard. It’s amazing that you have any control at all.”

  “It wasn’t always this bad,” Croix said, then thought about it. “But it’s always been bad. I don’t know how I haven’t killed anyone, either. I came close a few times.”

  “I bet you have,” Sam said.

  “Are you going to prescribe something for me?” Croix asked. “Like the other doctors?”

  “No, Richard. That’s why you came to me. Because you need a different kind of treatment. Drugs don’t change anything, they just mask the anger. The behavior. And that doesn’t solve anything. You came to me because you really wanted to change. You wanted to alter your behavior.”

  “The drugs I’ve taken before, they affected me badly. Made it hard to think. I couldn’t do my job right.”

  “I know. You’ve had bad side effects from all of the medications you’ve been prescribed. That’s why I can help you. There will be no medication in this therapy.”

  Croix looked at him, holding his hands out. He didn’t even realize he was doing it. “I’ve been like this for so long. I almost can’t imagine it any other way.”

  “I know,” Sam told him. “But don’t lose hope.”

  Richard Croix sat there, quietly, seeming lost and alone.

  Sam Wayne glanced at his watch and then looked into Croix’s eyes. And smiled.

  “Our session is done for today,” he said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

  Croix got to his feet. For a moment, he almost stumbled, as if the act of getting up had made him light-headed. A sudden light-headedness almost overcoming him.

  “Tomorrow is fine,” Croix said. “If you can fit me in.”

  “I insist on it,” Sam said. “Tomorrow, same time. I look forward to seeing you again, Richard.”

  “Thank you,” Croix said, and left the room.

  Sam watched the door close. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.

  The air in the room was oppressive. He found he was having a hard time breathing.

  What the fuck am I doing here? Sam wondered.

  And then, as if in answer, an adrenaline rush washed over him. It was then that he felt the most alive. He felt like he could do anything, heal anyone. This sensation filled up something inside him that remained empty most of the time. Unfortunately, he knew this quickening would be fleeting. It never lasted long enough, and always left him wanting more.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hot pink murmuring.

  Colleen woke up to the neon sign that said, “Open All Night,” in big pink letters on the wall of her bedroom. A joke gift that had long since lost its humor. But for some reason she hadn’t taken it down.

  There was someone in bed with her. Someone she didn’t recognize. Not that it was such a shock. It happened too often these days to offer any surprise.

  Her life was turning into a really bad joke.

  She got out of bed, holding back the beginnings of a cough, to go to the bathroom. She kicked an empty whiskey bottle along the way, and it went spinning under the bed. Where it would no doubt find companions.

  She tried to pull the sheet off the bed, it was cold in the apartment, but her new “companion” was too wrapped up in it and wouldn’t budge. She shivered as she made her way through the humming pink light to the door of the bathroom.

  Once inside, she covered her mouth as a coughing fit broke free from her mouth. It seemed to get worse when she stopped smoking, so she lit up a cigarette and took a drag. That seemed to quiet her down a bit. Sitting on the toilet, listening to her piss rain into the bowl, she tried to think of who the stranger was. Surely they’d been introduced before they got down to the whole fucking business.

  There was a window in the bathroom, aglow from a streetlight just outside. She didn’t need to turn on the bathroom light because of this, and she stared out the window while she pissed and smoked. She had a view of the roof across the way, and the top of a lighted sign that read, “Martin’s,” flashing on and off.

  There’s too much neon in my life, she thought, as she wiped herself. Wondering how much alcohol content there was in her urine these days.

  The slow-motion roar of snoring cut through the air then, and she knew, at least, that her friend for the night was alive. Which she almost regretted.

  Colleen resisted the urge to turn on the shower and step inside. Instead, she finished her cigarette and threw the stub in the toilet. Then she went back out to her bedroom and got back into bed.

  She turned her back on the snorer. Somehow, her coughing hadn’t woken him. She was not even curious to see his face. It didn’t matter.

  Knowledge wouldn’t change anything. Not now.

  * * *

  The subway train stopped and the lights flickered, then went out. Sam was wedged between a squat, round woman who looked to be wearing two sets of clothing over her already substantial bulk, and a large man in a suit who must have had an equal amount of body fat, if not more. To make matters worse, the car was full of people. They covered every available square foot of floor. He couldn’t get up right then, even if he had to.

  That hadn’t stopped the old woman in front of him from glaring at him since the last stop, no doubt pissed off at men in general, and men who didn’t get up and offer their seats to old women in particular. Not that the idea of offering his seat hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind. It was almost a reflex, drilled into him since he was a little boy by his mother. Always give a lady your seat, and that goes double for the elderly. But Sam had been feeling a little nauseous, and he never got a seat on the subway. He might be selfish in his refusal get up, but that was tough shit. Sometimes you had to look out for your own well-being and comfort.

  Besides, the woman’s reaction had been so obnoxious, so blatantly hostile, that he wouldn’t have accommodated her anyway. She turned to the woman next to her and said, “Men today have no manners at all,” and then made it a point to turn her eyes to Sam and glare.

  Well, fuck her! He wasn’t her fucking lap dog, to jump up to attention just because she had been on the Earth a few decades more than he had. And if men like him, middle-aged white men specifically, because there was no fucking way she would have made that comment if he had been a diffe
rent color or if he didn’t look so goddamned safe, lacked manners, then what about old women with snide comments and glares, and the expectation that the world owed them something for being alive? Where were her fucking manners?

  And then the train had slowed down and come to a halt between stops. And the lights went out.

  He could hear the old bitch breathing. And he closed his eyes, imagined hitting her repeatedly in the face, until her wrinkled head was the color of plums. And that would just be the beginning....

  Before he could take his fantasy further, the lights came back on. The unscheduled stop wasn’t going to last an hour after all. The train rattled and hissed and then started moving again.

  Sam felt like a steer in a slaughterhouse, shoulder to shoulder with other doomed souls, pushing forward, ever forward, to certain death.

  But then he reminded himself, it wasn’t as grim as all that. He was going home after a long day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Colleen woke, it was early afternoon, and her latest visitor was long gone. There wasn’t much sign he’d been there at all. Just a half-smoked cigarette stubbed out in one of her cheap metal ashtrays. And two rolled-up twenties on the nightstand.

  She hadn’t asked him for money. She never asked any of them. But most of them left some behind, anyway. She was grateful for small tokens of gratitude.

  The clock radio on the nightstand said it was exactly 2:07 in glowing pink letters. The shades were all down and the room was still dark, with just a line of light coming in from the slit of space above the shades. She wrapped the sheet around her and walked to the bathroom again, then dropped her covering on the bathroom floor and took a seat on the porcelain.