Chapter 36 - Mf
When Erin got to John's that Thursday morning before
school she kissed him, as she always did, and he kissed her back, and she was surprised when he kissed her harder, and picked her up, and carried her to his bedroom. Surprised, because she was the one who usually initiated sex in the mornings.
She was wearing a skirt, and he reached into it and pulled her panties down her legs, and helped her step out of them. And he opened his robe and was naked, and ready, and he laid her down in his bed and they made love urgently, and they both cried out as he came deep inside of her, minutes before her bus was due.
"Wow, what got into you?" she smiled, as she put her panties back on. "That was really nice."
He knelt before her, still naked, and hugged her, and held her. She held him back, "Wow, if you're like this now I can't wait until I get home from school."
She walked to the door and put her book bag on, and he stopped her, and held her hands, looked into her eyes and said to her, "Erin, I will love you forever."
He almost looks sad... I am going to have to tell him tonight what our plan is... he will be happier when the others are gone. "I love you too John... and I can't wait to see you
after school." She kissed him on the cheek, and walked out to catch the bus.
+++
Erin's mother and father had just finished cleaning from the lunch rush, and were prepping dough for those who would stop in after the downtown office buildings closed to get their pastries for the morning. Erin's mother asked where the new marble rolling pin was that had arrived from Amazon the day before, he said, "Oh shoot, I forgot it at home. Want me to go get it? I can be back in 25 minutes."
"Well I really wanted to try it out today, to see if it really keeps the dough from sticking without using so much flour."
But he was already taking off his apron and washing his hands, "I'll be right back."
+++
Erin's father parked the car next to his house, opposite from his neighbor John's house. He left the car running and ran in to get the rolling pin his wife had ordered.
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Erin got off the bus and ran to John's front door... weird, John is usually waiting for me.
She found an envelope in the screen with her name on it and grabbed it but didn't open
it, she'd read it inside. She knocked again, called, "John!" to the door. Maybe he's in the bathroom? She peeked in the window beside the door, with the filmy curtains... but the curtains were gone, she realized. She looked in the
window and saw his furniture was gone. She went straight past 'worried' to 'near panic.'
Why is everything gone? Where is he? Why is the house empty? She tried the door, locked. She went around the side, squeezed through a wide spot in the fence, harder now with her new
breasts. She knew where his spare patio door key was, under the fake rock. The key was gone. She looked in the big window, all his stuff from the kitchen was gone. That bookshelf in the hallway was gone. And,
what? A door? It was the first time she'd ever seen the door to the basement, where John had kept it hidden behind the bookshelf, but Erin wasn't able to focus on that right now. Right now, in Erin's mind, a little girl was standing in a dark
room. She looked exactly how Erin looked years ago when she was 8 years old, and she and John had shared their first kiss. This was how John first saw her, and loved her, and this is Erin's own self image, the way she thought of herself with him. And now, that little girl in Erin's head was starting to cry, and Erin was on the verge of panic.
+++
Crazy Ed was late, he'd been caught behind a different school bus in the
neighborhood, but he thought he still had time. He parked half way down the block, put his 357 magnum in the back of his pants, and slid into the bushes next to John's front door and waited for the little cunt's bus to drop her off. He couldn't wait. He was so close.
+++
Erin was walking back to John's front door from the back of the house, on the opposite side from where Ed was hiding. Her breathing was ragged, she was on the verge of tears, and the little girl inside her head was continuously moaning. She was muttering, "Where is he... where is he... where is John..." She suddenly remembered the envelope in her hand, and tore it open. She read the first lines,
"My dearest Erin, I'm so sorry but I need to leave you..."
The little girl inside Erin's head began to scream, a continuous wail; phantoms don't need to stop to take a breath. Real life Erin joined her in her scream, and just had a moment to wonder,
What's Crazy Ed doing here? as Ed punched her in the jaw, sending her flying backwards toward the door. Her jaw was fractured instantly and her feet were still 20 inches off the ground when the back of her head stuck the brick of
the house. John's letter slipped from her grip, a breeze caught it, and it blew away.
Ed grinned, looking down at her. "Ha, little cunt."
+++
Erin's father was walking from the door of his house to the car, rolling pin in hand, when he heard a girl scream... he heard his Erin scream. He ran around the house in the direction it had come
from and saw a man standing in front of John's house, back to him, looking down at something on the ground. Her
father ran in that direction, and he saw the man kick whatever it was. As he got closer he realized it was a person on the ground, a small person. And he saw blonde hair. Without thought he began to scream in anger, and ran at the man who was kicking his daughter, marble rolling pin raised like a club.
+++
Ed had just pulled his gun out of his waistband and was about to grab Erin by the neck and ring John's doorbell, when he heard a man shouting behind him. He turned just in time to see some crazy guy swinging something at him. Instinctively he raised his gun and fired. The rolling pin caved in the side of Ed Donner's head while his bullet hit Erin's father in the chest. Both men dropped to the ground.
+++
One of the neighbors had heard the gunshot and looked out the window, and saw people lying in front of the police man's house, and she called 911. The ambulance arrived in 7 minutes and the paramedics quickly determined that the scene consisted of two dead men and one young girl,
unconscious, non responsive, with massive facial contusions, possibly a broken mandible, and severe bleeding from the back of her head,
which was turning her golden hair to red.
+++
At the hospital the E.R. doctors shaved the back of her head so they could examine the extent of her wound, and later the nurses shaved the rest because it was so matted with
dried blood. She was fitted with wiring and metal to keep her broken jaw immobile. Under the bandages and tubing and hardware, you'd never guess a 10 year old girl was in the bed,
unconscious, but continuously screaming into her own head.
+++
Erin's mother was visited by two policemen in the bakery, and she fell to the ground when she was told her husband was dead, and her daughter hospitalized.
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Erin was in a coma and the MRI revealed that she had a fractured skull and that her brain was swollen, but they were hopeful the swelling would ease within 48 hours, and she would probably regain
consciousness.
+++
By late afternoon the first envelope was delivered to the first newspaper, and it was routed to the editor's desk.
A little later another had been delivered to the city's other newspaper, and the third had been placed on the desk of an Internal Affairs detective at police
headquarters, who promptly opened it and found a sheet of paper and a thumb drive. He read the paper, and immediately plugged the drive in to his computer, in spite of what the IT guy said about computer security.
+++
The Chief of Police had the day off, he was working from his home office but he had personal staffing issues, that day. Both his housekeeper and Lucy's
home school instructor called in sick, and he felt that afternoon was as good as any to work from home to keep an eye on things. He had a police scanner next to his desk while he worked. It was usually quiet, but he'd know immediately of any shootings or major robberies, and could respond. He was answering routine
work emails at his desk while he heard Lucy take the afternoon syringe up the stairs to her mother, and grunted to himself.
At least something runs smoothly around here. That's when he heard the call over the scanner, the SWAT team was being dispatched to...
here? What's going on? Why are they... and then he heard it over the scanner, suspected child sex
trafficking, children present at the scene, move in with caution, try to take the Chief of Police without gunfire, he would have hostages.
The chief sat back in his chair, stunned. How do they know? The Circle was air tight, no one would talk without fear of getting caught themselves. Everything has always been fine, the girls are scared into silence... except. Except one. Erin. Erin.
The Chief could now hear sirens. Sirens, in this neighborhood, unthinkable. The neighbors are going to love this. He reached into his top right desk drawer and pulled out a revolver. He put it into his mouth, and the last thought he ever had was to wonder why Erin had done this to
him, he had always been so nice to her.
Lucy heard the gunshot come from downstairs, and it startled her, she almost dropped the needle that had her Mommy's medicine in it. Her mother also heard the gunshot, followed by silence, and the growing sounds of sirens from outside. She didn't know, but she had a feeling. She smiled. "Just wait one second with my medicine, sweetie," she said to her daughter. "Stay with me a while. Let's see what happens." Lucy was very happy to listen to her Mommy.
+++
Crazy Ed was on a slab in the morgue, next to the covered body of Erin's father. The doctor in charge was speaking notes in a little recorder, "Subject is male, early 50's,
approximately 5'6", and 250 pounds. He appears to be in good health, aside from major trauma on the right side of his cranium with exposed brain tissue. Subject was struck by a blunt object with high force, cause of death likely instantaneous." And then the doctor paused, and took out a probe, removing a crushed shard of skull from Crazy Ed's head. "Subject... appears... there appears to be a large mass visible in his brain tissue, shape and coloring suggestive of a tumor, and it appears to be a large one."
Crazy Ed's brain was riddled with tumors. Four of them the size of grapes were found in his left lobe, and one the size of a walnut was found in his right. By their location doctors estimated he would have had
problems with controlling his rage.
No one yet knew what he was doing in that neighborhood, or why he'd attacked the girl. His boot print was on her sternum, and the imprint of his ring was found in the flesh near the break in her jaw. It was fairly obvious her father had died saving her life, and was mourned as a hero.
+++
The other girls kept their promise when they were suddenly rescued on Thursday, a day ahead of their schedule. Nora was called to her principal's office at the end of the day after her uncle was arrested in his office. Lucy was found by a SWAT team hugging her mother, upstairs from her
grandfather's corpse. And Mary was found naked in the attic of Ed Donner's house with a collar around her neck. Her parents were found in the guest house, high on the meth they regularly received from one of the mechanics of one of Crazy Ed's car
lots, where Ed had put them to work washing cars every day. They were arrested immediately and charged with possession of narcotics, and complicity in a child sex ring. Mary was taken by Child Protective Services but before she could be placed with a temporary guardian,she was determined to need special care. She was taken to a very nice facility for children with severe emotional problems.
Though the girls did not yet know that John was gone and Erin hospitalized, they stuck to their plan and never mentioned Laura or her father, or Erin and John, and in the days that followed they kept themselves logged into Skype as often as they could, waiting for Erin to contact them. The media did very little reporting about The Circle. Due to the
girls being minors nothing could be said that would not reveal their identities, so under court order nothing of the child sex ring in the middle of Florida was reported. Nora's uncle Serenity offered to make a deal and name names, but he was the last one left alive, and there was already so much evidence against him that the FBI didn't care. At best he'd be reducing three life sentences down to two.
He kept his silence and they punished him to the fullest extent of the law.
+++
Erin slept through her father's funeral. The little girl screamed in her unconscious
head continuously, never stopping. The doctor's noted that her EKG showed elevated
brainwave activity, they knew something was going on in her head, but couldn't know what. It was the continuous wail of a lost little girl, the wailing drowning out her thoughts of being abandoned by the only person who she knew really loved her. The man who practically raised her as a daughter, as a lover, as a friend. He had been the major
component of her emotional makeup. He was the first person she thought of in the morning, and the last person she thought of at night. For years she stopped being able to
conceive of a life without him, such things just couldn't happen. Almost all of her memories of her entire life included him. All of her plans for the future included him. She almost had a piece of him, once, with the baby she lost, and the grief of that loss returned to her. And the little girl
inside her head still screamed, making her unable to process any of this information. The doctors and nurses, and her mother, tried to talk to her, but all she knew was the
continuous screaming.
+++
Her mother sold the bakery. She couldn't run it alone, and it had been there so long, the city growing up around it, that it was now prime real estate. They'd been declining multi million dollar offers for the location for years. But now she'd sold it, and having the money was bitter. She'd rather have her husband back.
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Days turned to weeks, and still Erin slept. Her mother stayed at her side as often as she could, and was upset one night to find Erin masturbating in her sleep. As a defense mechanism, Erin's
subconscious was building elaborate fantasies to muffle the maddening screams of The Little Girl. In her fantasies she and John were together, making love every day, and in her sleep she'd pleasure herself, as John always had. The doctors said it was normal, coma patients were often sexually aroused in their sleep. They told Erin's mother it was a good sign, her brain was active, but privately they were worried, her brainwaves were getting weaker, slowly, over time. They were afraid that little Erin was slipping away.
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After a month a doctor sat with Erin's mother, and handed her a brochure for a clinic that catered to long term coma patients. "It is much nicer than here, she'll have a private room, and for half the cost. The staff is excellent and very good at caring for them, the patients are monitored 24 hours a day and doctors are always on hand, and I think she'd be more comfortable there."
Erin's mother signed the forms, and Erin was transferred the next day. "At least her hair is growing back," her mother thought, stroking her head as she was prepped for transfer. The last thing they did before she was moved was remove the wire frame holding her jaw shut. She wasn't eating solid food anyway, there was no need to keep
her jaw immobile any longer, and the doctor wanted to see it done personally before she left for the long term care facility.
Doctor Mike Turner was a little sentimental over Erin, it seemed to her mother.
He's sweet.
+++
With The Circle broken, "Whatever" felt really damned lucky to not have been swept up in the rest of it, and he stayed as clean as he could, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for one of the survivors to turn him in. He hadn't heard of John getting scooped up, but he knew that
it could also happen at any second. He gave all of his attention to his daughter, which she was thrilled with, and she made him promise her he'd never make her be with anyone else again, against her will. He didn't want to bring up any aspect of The Circle with her, over time he was feeling more and more shame for
having been a part of it. He didn't know his daughter and Erin were such good friends, and in keeping his anxiety
of it away from her, he never mentioned to her that Erin was in a coma. He never wanted to cause Laura any worry, ever again.
+++
Every night Lucy sat by her mother's side with her smart phone, checking Skype, Googling, but could never find any mention of Erin.
She didn't know where John or Erin had lived, to get there her grandfather drove
on highways and city streets and neighborhoods, and it took like 30 minutes, and
Lucy didn't even know which side of the city Erin and John had lived
on. Crazy Ed's death was part of the court's gag order, so news of Erin never hit the papers,
either. She was just seen as a random victim to the violence of The Circle, not a participant.
Where is she?
+++
John's mailed letter of resignation hit his boss's desk the day after the shocking events with the Chief of Police, and his wasn't the only
resignation received, that day, under the increased scrutiny of Internal
Affairs. Other cops afraid of getting caught for their comparatively minor transgressions were also quitting, and without a second thought his supervisor accepted John's resignation and his final check sent to his home address. John never received it.
John also never received word of any of the fallout from his actions, due to the court order. He wondered if
anything had happened at all, until he found the obituary of "The Master," the one who'd started it all so many years ago, who had "Died suddenly."
That always means suicide. You're welcome, fucker. He continued to drive west. He had a law enforcement job lined up in Arizona, near the Mexican border, under his new identity.