Where the Monsters Live
Date: 2016-12-02 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Short Stories
Description: How far would you go for revenge? When a six-year-old girl is abused and left for dead by a pedophile known only as the "Rabbit Man" due to the claw marks left on her body, police follow every lead but reach only dead ends. Hungry for justice, her grieving father abandons wife and child on a harrowing journey deep undercover into Miami's sex offender colony under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. His purpose is simple: to find the "Rabbit Man" among them, and put him in the ground. Months later, with no one to trust and the pedophiles he lives among growing suspicious of his actions, he learns nothin

WHERE The

MONSTERS

LIVE

Duncan Ralston

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

SHADOW WORK PUBLISHING

Copyright © 2016 by Duncan Ralston

All rights reserved.

Also by Duncan Ralston

SALVAGE (novel)

GRISTLE & BONE (collection)

WILDFIRE (novella)

WOOM (novella)

THE METHOD (novel)

For more, visit
duncanralston.com
shadowworkpublishing.com

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IT WAS RAINING the day I brought my daughter's CD player back to the sex offenders under the bridge, and everyone was in a crummy mood.

Miami's weather is a blessing to those of us living on the street—at least until the rainy season, those summer months when you've got to get a roof over your head that isn't just a doorway alcove or the underside of a bridge, or you'll be soaked to the skin in seconds. The day I'd decided to go back home for the first time in months, it had already been raining three days, and most of us were sure the sun would never come out again.

By then I'd narrowed my search for the Rabbit Man down to three suspects: Tony Walker, Alejandro Gonzalez, and Orville "Popcorn" Perry, the convicted pedophiles I'd been living with for the last three months. Not everyone in Bookville had committed the sort of vile crimes these men had. Some were rapists, others were molesters, but most had been stuck there for petty sexual assaults, hadn't even spent a day in jail but had been forced to register anyhow. Forced out of their homes, into the shadows, and under the bridge.

Statutory cases, groping, sodomy. Some drunk guy caught pissing in public near a school yard. You could almost laugh at a creep who's exposed himself to old ladies, so long as one of them wasn't your grandmother or your great-aunt. It's sick, sure, but it doesn't physically hurt anyone.

Regardless of their crime's severity, lobbyist Ron Book's ordinance forced these men and women to live 2,500 feet from any school, park, or bus stop. Without violating parole or removing their ankle monitor and skipping town, the Tuttle Causeway and the Everglades were the only places left for a sex offender to live.

Ron Book's folly had pushed them underground and off the grid. Instead of making Miami safer, he'd made the city a thousand times more dangerous.

Walker, Gonzalez, and Popcorn Perry—these monsters had done hard time. Gonzalez liked little girls. Popcorn preferred boys, but he'd gotten arrested for trying to diddle one of the girls on his school bus route. He told us she had a short haircut and had yet to hit puberty, so it was easy enough to imagine her as a boy despite not having the parts. From my understanding, Walker was a pinch hitter.

None of these men had ever killed anyone as far as I knew, but together they'd strangled the souls of at least half a dozen children. What had sent me rushing home that morning was Gonzalez had told a story the night before about the rabbit he'd had as a boy, reminiscing about how soft its fur had been. I could easily imagine it reminding him of the silken hair of his victims.

To ingratiate myself to them early on, I'd told a lie about how I'd done two years in Alamosa County for assaulting my niece. Popcorn and Walker had wanted details, so I fed them details: said I'd been grooming her for years before I actually got up the courage to go through with it. That I'd babysat for my brother and his wife—in truth, I have no siblings, only in-laws—for months just working up the nerve to touch her.

With my theater background, I've played everything from Hamlet's oedipal interests to Titus's cannibalism, but the part of pedophile was by far the most loathsome—particularly in light of why I was there. Popcorn had wanted to know about her underwear, if it had "decals," which I took to mean prints. Walker hadn't even bothered to conceal the erection in his frayed jeans. But Gonzalez had just stared, open-mouthed.

Afterward, I'd excused myself for a piss and ended up being sick in the shadows behind one of the big pillars.

One of those men had raped my six-year-old baby girl.

One of them was going to pay.

I left camp early the day I returned home, walking a little over three hours to the house where I used to live. My feet hurt and my clothes ran with a hundred rivers of dirt, but I hoped it would be worth the trek. There was a method to the madness, as they say. Or so I'd thought then.

Marnie was just pulling out of the drive when I arrived, our little girl Nola in the backseat playing with a doll I didn't recognize, making it dance. Neither of my girls saw me hiding behind the sprawling gumbo limbo in the Garrisons' front yard as they drove past, the two of them smiling and singing. Tears clawed out from my eyes, seeing the both of them looking forward instead of back, the way I thought they ought to be looking, toward a life when all three of us were still together. Toward the past I'd left behind in pursuit of my singular goal, this burning obsession. I'd been gone a little over four months by then, and it wasn't as though I'd expected life to stay in a sort of freeze-frame with me out of the picture. Still, seeing them singing along to one of Nola's CDs, seemingly as happy as you please… it was a blow.

Once the car disappeared around the corner, I did what I could to smother the pain. I drew the hoodie up over my head and crossed to the house, looking both ways, skirting the garbage cans lined both sides of the street, glad the municipality hadn't changed trash pickup to another day while I was gone. If Marnie had re-keyed the locks, God forbid, I figured I could wait around and break a window when the truck came rumbling up the street. But I didn't need to wait. My key slid in effortlessly. Twisting it in the lock, I let out a sigh of relief.

The house was just like I remembered it, if a little messier. It smelled nice, like the lilac shampoo both Marnie and Nola apparently still used. It smelled clean. Even the hints of last night's dinner in the garbage—a spaghetti sauce starting to turn—smelled terrific. Smelled like home. Stink permeates homelessness: the smell of trash, the smell of dirty streets, of fire bins and piss and other people's body odor, the wet dog smell that saturates your clothes and bedding, the smell of rust and dirt and decay.

It felt good being back here. Felt right. I wanted to strip off my clothes and climb into the shower, wash off the layers of grime the rain hadn't been able to make a dent on. Wash off all the hell and scum I'd had to wade through to get to where I was now, with the Rabbit Man almost within my reach, and stretch out on the fresh clean sheets. To wait for Marnie to come home and tell her I'd been stupid, that I'd give it all up if only she'd let me stay.

Our bedroom was exactly the way I'd left it. If she'd taken down the pictures of the two of us together, the trips we'd taken before we had Nola, our engagement and wedding and honeymoon photos, I might have paused to reflect on its meaning. That they were still right where they'd been when I left made me think I could still come back if I wanted, if I could just summon the courage to quit. To give up on death and allow life and love back into my heart.

Anger rushed into my veins, and I pushed these thoughts away. Useless speculation. The thoughts of a coward. I had to protect my family, and the only way I knew how to do it was by leaving them behind.

I headed for the closet.

The night before I left home, Marnie had been off at a parent-teacher conference, listening to "suggestions" from parents who seemed to believe their fourth-grade children weren't receiving an adequate learning experience. As part-time drama teacher at her school (and sometime screenwriter), I was exempt from such proceedings, and so Nola and I were home alone, which happened every so often. While Nola read her favorite book for the hundredth time, listening to her little CD player, I watched the Yankees get their asses fed to them with the sound turned off.

After a while I headed out to the garage, fed up with the lousy game and Nola's repetitive pop music. She'd always been curious about the music Marnie and I used to listen to when we were young, and so I hunted down a handful of mixed CDs I'd made in college, most of them for when we'd turned the overhead lights off and the Christmas lights strung up around her dorm room twinkled over the bed like stars.

I came back to the living room with the box and hunkered down in front of Nola. She scowled when I turned off her music, but when I showed her the words I'd written on that first CD, her eyes lit up and she tented her fingers in a devious manner reminiscent of her mother hamming it up over some cunning plan she'd devised to rope me into something I didn't want to do.

The first song was "Sweet Child O' Mine." Nola seemed to enjoy it, even though she said Axl Rose's voice was funny. After that were a couple of songs I don't recall—one-hit wonders, most likely. Then came "Sympathy for the Devil," and it wasn't long before Nola and I got to howling along with Mick Jagger—"Hoo hoooo! Hoo hoooo!" I skipped the Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" since it's about suicide or heroin—or both—and even though Nola had already been through more than most kids had by sixteen, she was still only six.

Near the end of the CD, Nola and I had nestled down on the rug with the ball game flickering unwatched on the TV. I'd been staring up at the ceiling with my arms behind my head while Nola talked about what she liked and disliked about each song, a running commentary that was amusing at first but then sort of droned on as I began to daydream about grabbing the Rabbit Man by the throat and feeling his trachea splinter between my fingers. The image made me smile.

The cops still hadn't caught him, the man who'd assaulted my child, my little Nola, and I'd been spending most of my waking hours daydreaming about choking a man in a bunny suit to death as if the whole thing was a joke when the truth was far more sinister. Even then, I'm sure some dark part of me knew I could never move beyond the blind hatred, beyond thoughts of bloody revenge. That the wound he'd opened in me would turn gangrenous. Deadly.

I'd found myself sympathizing with those hovering parents Marnie and I used to berate. I heard the truth in meaningless catchphrases like "stranger danger." Buffer zones like Ron Book's sex offender ordinances, barring perverts and pedophiles from living within a short distance of any place children gather, seemed to make some kind of logical sense to me. I was deluding myself, because I couldn't live with the truth: that I would never feel Nola was safe again without my constant supervision.

When I snapped out of it, a song I hadn't heard since Marnie and I were in grade school had come on, and I realized Nola had grown silent. I rolled over onto my stomach to see she sat frozen, her face, framed under the little brown bangs Marnie cut with scissors on a kitchen stool, twisted into a rictus of fear.

"Nola," I said. She didn't respond, didn't take her eyes off the CD player we'd gotten for her fourth birthday, the little pink one with Dora the Explorer stickers plastered all over it. I snapped my fingers in front of her face and she didn't flinch. A runner of drool spilled from her lip and pattered on the carpet.

Was she having a seizure?

The chorus kicked in then, the choir singing of tiny hands in larger ones, of a love that could be seen as a crime. The words struck me like a hammer in the chest. Wanting to be her daddy. Her preacher. Suddenly the love song seemed sinister. When I reached to turn it off, an odd creeping sensation like when you're about to crush a particularly large and wriggly insect crawled up my spine.

The song stopped. Nola snapped out of her trance.

"Nola," I said. "Sweetheart, have you heard that song before?"

Nola shook her head violently, wide blue eyes obscured by her bangs as she looked down in curiosity at the drool spots on the floor. Though she'd never spoken a word about the monster who'd assaulted her, the trauma still far too pervasive, I felt certain he would have told her never to tell, that if she told on him he'd come to her house and murder her family or something equally abhorrent. I understood that fear, but rage overcame me, and I grabbed her arm, much rougher than I'd meant. "Nola, don't lie to Daddy."

I didn't realize Marnie had come home until I looked up in that awful moment to find her standing in the doorway. My hand fell away from Nola's tiny arm, the skin red in the shape of my fingers. Tears stood in Nola's eyes, though the look on her face was not pain but surprise. I'd never laid a finger on her for discipline until just then. Quite frankly, the look on my face in that moment probably mirrored hers.

There was no argument that night or ever. Marnie simply looked at me, straight into my heart where the poison had been festering. She took Nola by the hand, who'd run to her crying as the shock of what had happened finally struck her, and the two of them went upstairs to bed. I spent a few sleepless hours twisting back and forth on the couch under a small throw blanket. Eventually, I crept upstairs to my office and picked up the journal the family therapist had suggested I use to jot down what she'd called "irrational thoughts and/or behavior." I'd had neither the time nor inclination to use it, just left it on my desk to gather dust. What good would writing about it do? I needed action, not words.

When I opened it that night, I realized I'd been wrong about that. Marnie had been filling in the journal for me, and her words were exactly what I needed in that moment. Reading it made me sick, looking at my transformation through Marnie's eyes. In her words, it was like I'd been holding the family underwater, drowning us in my grief, determined to make Nola relive what that monster did to her over and over so she'd remember something, anything, about him: a smell, his voice, something about the place he took her, something about the rabbits. Dr. Ambrose might have held similar suspicions, but Marnie had known it in her bones I would never get past it, that I'd never wanted to. She'd known before I fully understood myself just how badly I'd wanted to hurt him, even kill him—to make the Rabbit Man suffer for what he'd done to our little girl. Our sweet Nola.

The next day I told Marnie my plan. All she did was sigh. As if it had been inevitable, like she'd been waiting for me to admit it. Finally she'd asked me, "Do you really think it's going to help her? Nola needs a father, not a vigilante." She'd told me if I went through with it to never come back.

That was just about a third of a year ago. This rain-soaked morning was the first time I'd been home since.

I FOUND THE little pink CD player right where I'd hidden it that night, under the musty old sleeping bag we'd used at the Grand Canyon the summer before Nola was born. I took that, too, and returned to Bookville shortly after one, dog-tired but eager to share my "find" with the others. The battery had died in Walker's RV a few weeks back, and our little area of the camp hadn't had music since. I was sure they would be pleased.

As I trudged down the concrete shoulder toward camp, I was reminded of a phrase from one of Nola's favorite picture books: Under the bridge, where the Monsters live… A story about a family of nice, cuddly monsters. Here is that fabled place, I thought. Only the monsters down here were most definitely not nice, and trying to cuddle one would be dangerous, like kissing a piranha.

"Look what I found," I said, holding up Nola's CD player.

The three of them looked up from their game of Rummy on a table made of plywood and wooden cable spools. Gonzalez's eyes lit up like a kid who'd just found the bra of his best friend's mom on their shower rod (though I suppose that wouldn't have interested him much even as a child). I plastered on a smile to cover for the sneer I felt trying to creep its way onto my face, having placed all bets on him.

He was my Rabbit Man. I was sure of it.

"Got batteries?" Walker asked.

"These ones still work," I said, and put it on the table by the discards.

"What's all this pink shit?" Popcorn wondered, eyeing me with suspicion. "You break your parole, or what?"

I pretended to be shocked. "Nah," I answered Popcorn. "Just found it. It's amazing what people will throw out on the street these days."

I popped the top open, revealing the mixed CD. The words FOR MARNIE had long faded, printed in block letters eleven or twelve years ago, the same words that had made Nola's eyes light up the night before I left her and her mother to live under the bridge with these animals.

"Still got a disc," Walker said. "Wonder who the fuck Marnie is?"

Again, I held back an unconscious sneer.

"That's the kind of question could get your ass in a whole lot of trouble," Popcorn said, before turning to me. "A'ight. Play that fuckin' music, white boy."

I sat down beside Gonzalez, who continued to eyeball the CD player the way Nola had that night in the living room, albeit somehow managing not to drool. One of the benefits of camping out close to the Bay, we could rinse our clothes out regularly or use laundry soap when we could find some. Hell, we could even give ourselves a good wash once in a while. Gonzalez wasn't most of us. He reeked of cigarettes and an omnipresent aroma of unwashed asshole. He hadn't brushed his teeth in months, maybe years. Sitting next to him you could imagine stink lines rising from his body, like that kid from Peanuts. It was difficult to sit so close to him, but I wanted him close when it happened.

This mound of dirt and repurposed trash under the Julia Tuttle Causeway was our living room. Graffiti on the pillars was the art on our walls. I pushed PLAY.

"Sympathy for the Devil" came on, over the shouts and laughter and music from the other encampments. Popcorn bit his lower lip and began to bob his head to the music.

Walker—who fucked girls, boys, adult women and once, according to his own account, a sedated gator—grew a sick smile. "I used to fuck to this song," he said, and stood up from the broken sofa to demonstrate, gyrating his hips with one hand at his side and the other holding down his imagined victim, be it human or animal.

"Sit your ass down," Popcorn said.

"You want some of this?" Walker said, thrusting his crotch toward the larger man.

"You best be gettin' your skinny dick outta my face." Popcorn picked up the discard pile from their Rummy game and threw the cards at Walker, who giggled and flopped back down on the couch.

"Man, you're pickin' those up!"

"Bullshit."

Popcorn and Walker left the cards scattered on the ground and the ratty old sofa. I let the song play out, then skipped the next two. Still couldn't remember them, even if I tried.

"Hey, I like that song," Walker groaned about the second, but the next song had already started, the haunting chords on a keyboard, the tss-tss-tss of a hi-hat.

When George Michael began to sing in his raspy whisper, Gonzalez turned to me. He met my eyes for only a moment, but the shock was palpable, the guilt evident. He returned his gaze to the CD player, and as the song played out my eyes never left him. I felt them tearing up, thinking about what he must have done to my Nola, but I blinked it away. I couldn't let my grief, my anger, and a sudden disturbing rush of exhilaration from being so close after searching for so long come between me and my revenge. I studied Gonzalez with glistening eyes: this bland monster, this mild-mannered beast. I watched him and pictured my knife slipping into the hot meat between his ribs.

"The fuck is that shit?" someone called over, tearing me from my fantasy. I allowed my gaze to move beyond Gonzalez to the black '80s Chevy Impala resting beside a spray-painted entreaty that had once made the papers: WE ARE NOT MONSTERS. A guy I'd seen around a few times sat hanging out the driver door. He had a little mustache and silky blond hair like a man on a box of hair dye, except the circles under his eyes were so dark they could have been bruises.

"It's called music," Popcorn shouted back. "The fuck you think it is?"

The blond dude got out of his car and approached, snapping bubblegum. "Why you listenin' to that faggot, huh?"

"Actually, he's bisexual," Walker answered. "Not that it makes any goddamn difference."

"You listen to that shit, you're no better'n a faggot yourself." Blondie came right up to the table and reached for the CD player.

Popcorn swatted his hand away.

"Don't you fuckin touch me, nigger."

Popcorn's eyes narrowed. He grabbed the blond guy's arm and jerked it up behind his back, the kind of move a cop or someone who'd been trained in military might use, and I found myself suddenly glad to be up against Gonzalez instead of Popcorn.

"That's uncalled for," a woman I knew only as Pip shouted over to us.

Others crowded around. A man with a lisp and cargo shorts cinched high on his waist by a frayed piece of rope asked why we couldn't all just get along.

In the fracas, the blond dude stomped down on Popcorn's foot, chewing his gum with a gleeful. The heels of his cowboy boots sounded hard, and Popcorn's sneakers had seen better days. They were bound together by duct tape and falling apart at the seams, his tube socks so dirty they were black in places visible at the sides. Popcorn's howl of pain just about matched Mick Jagger's, and he let go of the blond dude's arm.

Blondie shook his hair as if Popcorn had just ruffled it instead of nearly breaking his arm, and then locked eyes with Gonzalez. The wretched little smelly man looked behind himself, shrinking from the cold gaze. Blondie had found his prey, a victim to reclaim his dominance. Before Gonzalez could scramble over the back of the couch, Blondie had yanked him back by his filthy jeans and began raining down on his back with balled-up fists, calling him queer and runt and pussy.

Whatever he was, Gonzalez was mine.

A surge of frenetic energy ran through me as I grabbed a fistful of Blondie's hair and yanked him away from Gonzalez, who used the distraction to squirm away. I threw a punch before Blondie could swing at me, clipping him in the jaw. Having never been in a fight before, only ever using my fists against inanimate objects, it stunned me how much of a rush I got from the feel of his jaw against my knuckles. The feeling was short-lived as Blondie slugged me hard in the gut. I staggered back, the breath knocked out of me, while Popcorn and Walker jumped in to pull Blondie back from doing me some real damage.

In all the commotion, Gonzalez had gotten up and was slinking off. I gathered up my strength and followed him. The ruckus of the other three men struggling and the crowd either egging them on or jeering them grew quieter the further Gonzalez and I ran.

This is it, I thought, feeling stronger and almost hyperaware the closer I got to my quarry. I didn't think about going back home. I didn't think about Nola. All I could think of was blood and blood and blood…

I SUPPOSE I should tell you about the rabbits.

The day Nola ran away, Marnie and I had been fighting. Silly argument. She'd caught me smoking, something I hadn't done since she was pregnant—as far as she knew—and we'd gotten into it. She accused me of not caring to live long enough to see Nola graduate from college, and I accused her of not letting me relieve my stress the way I wanted. Nola heard us. She'd packed up some things in her knapsack: her stuffed lion Julio, which she spelled with a W-H-O, her favorite book about the elephant king, a bag of marshmallows (mushmellows, she called them), and a flashlight. I suspect she was going to camp out and roast her mushmellows over a fire, but how she'd planned to light one, I don't know. I suppose the thought might never have crossed a six-year-old's mind.

Whatever she'd gotten in her head, Nola sneaked out the back door while Marnie and I argued in raised whispers, knowing full well she could hear us despite the closed bedroom door. Somewhere after the corner of Day and Matilda, where a crossing guard told police she'd scolded Nola about crossing the street without looking both ways, our little girl disappeared.

Marnie noticed she'd slipped away just when we'd gotten to the root of the argument. At first, we thought she'd been playing. Nola had always loved hide and seek. So we looked in all the usual spots we might find her: behind the curtains, crouched behind the big ficus in my office, in the basement shower, or in her closet, under a pile of stuffed animals.

Nowhere. Anxiety grew to full-blown fear. She knew enough not to run away, but if she'd heard us arguing...

We searched outside, in the front and back yards, Marnie running out into the street and calling out her name. We phoned her friends, spoke to baffled, concerned parents. Finally, we called the police. Fifteen minutes later, officers showed up at our door. Marnie kept tugging at her shirt sleeves, pacing the room while the two officers took down what we had to tell them: what she was wearing, how old, hair color, about how tall, could she have gone to a relative's? I'd been watching Marnie unravel the whole time until she finally exploded, screaming at the officers, "Somebody's taken my baby and you're wasting our fucking time!" They'd looked at each other, offered their apologies, and then put out an AMBER alert.

While Marnie waited at the house for Nola to return, the both of us sick with the absolute certainty that at any moment they would call back to tell us they'd found her body in a ditch somewhere, I drove up and down the neighborhood. I scoured the grounds at Liz Virrick Park, where we often took her when neither of us were busy on the weekend. I even went to Nola's school, where Marnie taught the fourth grade, and I taught drama part-time to finance a failing career in screenwriting. Being there filled me with the dreadful certainty Nola would never have her mother as a teacher because some monster had taken her life.

Lost. Gone. Dead. My little girl is dead. These thoughts circled my mind as I drove through the neighborhood, once, twice, three times, certain I'd missed somewhere, hoping to return home to find her eating peanut butter out of the jar with her fingers, laughing at cartoons with her mother. But each time I returned, Marnie had been pacing the porch, or sitting, tugging at her shirt sleeves, and the house had been empty. I feared—we feared—there would never be laughter in that house again. So, back into the car, driving down the same streets, shouting her name as the neighborhood darkened.

It was just after 8 p.m. when the police called. My sweaty hand shook so badly the phone slipped into my lap. I pulled the car over and listened to the officer speak, holding the cell in a trembling hand as my heart pounded in my throat.

Imagination can be a terrible curse. I never saw it with my own eyes, but the image still haunts every waking moment of my life. It drove me to live among the sex offenders. It compelled me to find the monster who did it, the Rabbit Man, and to put him six feet in the fucking ground.

The sick fuck had left Nola naked beside a trash bin on the bare asphalt in an alley in Little Haiti. Eventually a busboy from a nearby restaurant had come out to dump his mop bucket and saw her shivering there. He'd called the police without going to her—worried, perhaps, that even attempting to help a naked child might be misconstrued as sexual abuse.

When Officer Sam Higgins arrived, he found a feral child huddled with her arms around her bruised knees, matted hair tangled in her face. Bleeding not just from the places she'd been violated, but from dozens of raised marks forensics later determined to be tiny scratches. Higgins wrapped the emergency blanket from his trunk around Nola, told her everything was going to be okay, that he was going to bring her to her mom and dad. At these words she leapt into his arms, latching around his neck, smearing his uniform with her blood.

The police were taking photographs of her injuries when I burst through the door, demanding to see her. Officer Higgins got in the way. Three officers had to hold me back from punching him, and if not for Sam's interference, I might have been charged with assaulting an officer. Sam and I hashed it out later. With two daughters himself, he keenly understood my rage. The Special Victims Bureau had taken over the case, but he'd promised to update me personally.

Marnie, Nola, and I went to the family therapist together. Dr. Ambrose had us explore our emotions in excruciating detail. She wanted us to open up, to work through our feelings, but each Thursday at 2 p.m. I begrudgingly entered her office and sat on that plush sofa entirely numb while Marnie droned and Nola played with toys in the corner. I saw no point to those visits; we were picking at scabs. While their meaningless words filled the terrifying silence, I sat alongside my wife, brewing hatred. My most violent fantasies were born in that room: gruesome acts I suspected I'd never be able to stomach even if the opportunity arose—thoughts which belonged to the monster growing inside me.

Eventually Dr. Ambrose accused me of stalling progress. I questioned her methods, her motives, called her a sadist. She asked me to leave. I apologized and she'd allowed me to return to the room. I'd lose myself in fantasy again. Several sessions passed this way, until our time was up.

Detective Rosario called a few weeks into this routine to inform us the lab had analyzed the white hairs they'd found on Nola's skin. Turned out to be animal fur, not human hair. They suspected the rapist kept rabbits, which kicked off a wide search for rabbit hutches in backyards and on rooftops.

Rosario didn't seem hopeful. By then, most registered sex offenders were living under the Tuttle Causeway, many of them already wearing ankle monitors.

I found myself driving several miles out of my way after work, slowing down over the water, catching a look at their tents and vehicles before driving ponderously back home. I'd seen them gathered down there, huddled from the rain, sharing food they'd scrounged, arguing, laughing. It all seemed normal and yet so alien to me. I wondered how they lived.

I wondered how they'd bleed.

Since I couldn't deal with the injuries to Nola's privates, I'd saddled Marnie with the unenviable task of applying ointment for several weeks before they healed. We spoke to each other less and less. We ate in front of the TV. I spent hours each night in the garage, pretending to work on the car. Mostly I would read my dad's old hunting magazines, fantasizing.

Late one night, Marnie entered the garage where I'd been sitting on a stool reading an old magazine, not even bothering to cover for the work I wasn't doing, and handed me the portable phone with no discernable expression in her gaze. I took it, listened to Sam Higgins apologize while feeling the floor drop out from beneath me, and mechanically thanked him for his help. Special Victims had made no progress in their search, and Nola had been unable to remember any details despite my coaching and our increasingly acrimonious sessions with Dr. Ambrose. Barring anything new, the case had effectively fizzled out. Went cold, like the darkened corners of my heart. After that, we never heard from him again. The Rabbit Man had gotten away.

That night I aimed to make sure it never happened again.

BREATHING HEAVILY, I caught up to Gonzalez near the fence at the base of the bridge and jerked him around roughly to face me.

"Hey! What gives?"

My vision was on a dimmer, timed to the unsteady beat of my heart. After that sucker punch from the blond dude and chasing after Gonzalez, I was on the verge of blacking out. But I would make sure he looked me in the eyes as the life drained out of him. I would make sure he knew what he'd done.

"Nola," I said. I shook him by his lumberjack jacket, raising a cloud of dust. "Nola, Nola," I blubbered, "my fucking daughter, you sick fuck!"

Mortified, Gonzalez threw his filthy hands in the air, a gesture of innocence. "Hey, no wait, man, I haven't—done that—for ten years! I slipped up once. I would never—I've never—I…"

I saw it dawn on him: first disgust, then fear, shock… and then confusion, suspicion. He looked over my shoulder, where the altercation had died down and Blondie was walking backwards to his car, shouting curses and kicking the dirt. "You have a daughter?"

My grip on him lessened. I grabbed him harder, attempting to embolden myself. "Bullshit!"

"I swear, I haven't—" Gonzalez couldn't say the words, as if his own crime disgusted him. "Not since, you know, back then. I served my time. She's forgiven me. I swear to Jesus, man, I haven't done it again since!"

I felt the monster inside me step back from its cage. Gradually, I let Gonzalez go. He brushed his jacket off as if I was the one who'd made him dirty. "I'm sorry," I said as a cloud of dust rose around us.

"It's okay. I'm fine." With another look over my shoulder his eyes narrowed, and he returned his gaze to me. "You know, I knew there was something not right about you when you first came down here. Something about the way you moved. Not quite Walker's swagger, more like you were looking down your nose at us." He shook his head. "And that story about your niece? The things you said you did to her…" Gonzalez trailed off, swallowing hard, avoiding the unpleasant terminology.

I'd noticed him wincing as we listened to Walker describe his escapades in nasty detail. All this time I thought Gonzalez had just been putting on a show, the way some of the most vile politicians and religious figures act sanctimonious when inside they were repugnant.

"I didn't buy that for a second," he finished.

"You didn't?"

Gonzalez shook his head.

"Why not?"

"It's like there was nothing there," Gonzalez said, and gestured toward his own face. "In your eyes. No regret. No pride. No lusting, like the way how Walker talks about his…" Another hard swallow. "Just this blank look. A dead look."

I regarded him silently.

"So you think somebody here—what? They—did something—to your little girl?"

I nodded, feeling like a fool. All this time it had been so plain to Gonzalez I was a fraud, it must have been obvious to the others. Fear crept into my nerves, setting the monster back on edge. I would have to be more careful.

"Why did you think it was me?"

It took a moment for me to realize what he was asking. "The song," I told him. "The way you reacted to it, I just figured..." I didn't need to mention the rabbit. It didn't seem smart to reveal such evidence.

"Which song? That '80s one?"

I'd nearly blown it all because of that song. Again, I nodded.

"It wasn't the song," Gonzalez said. "It's the tape player. It's the exact same…" He shook his head, his eyes downcast, and with that look I understood. His own victim must have had the same CD player. He hadn't been reacting to the song at all. "Anyway," he said, "I wasn't the one acting strange. Popcorn and Telly, those guys started a fight over it."

"Telly? He the blond guy?"

Gonzalez was about to speak when the blip of a siren startled us both. We turned to look as a police cruiser crawled into the center of camp, parting the crowd. Miami P.D. swinging by for a routine check, although just as often they came through to harass the residents. Some of these men and women had parole terms stating no alcohol or illicit drugs. Others weren't allowed to be within a certain distance of other offenders, which didn't make much sense under the bridge, where everyone was here for the same basic reason. Most of the cops who came through here were just looking for a reason to use unacceptable force. For the most part, I wouldn't say I could blame them.

Gonzalez shifted nervously in the dirt. The cop got out of the car and headed over to a huddled group of sex offenders. As he turned in the direction of the scuffle, fear struck me and I hid my face, muttering, "Shit!"

Officer Sam Higgins' bald head gleamed as he patted a woman in boxer shorts and galoshes on the shoulder and passed a bottle of water to an elderly man I didn't recognize. New people wandered in here every day, as more and more were forced to sign the registry, many for petty offences. Higgins checked on a guy's ankle monitor. The guy—Dolph, I think—offered his hand, and Higgins shook it without hesitation.

It amazed me to see how humanely he treated these people, knowing some of them could easily have victimized his own children. It was clear he believed in basic human decency, though if he'd caught these same people in a crime I was certain he wouldn't hesitate to tackle the prick and put him in the back of his cruiser, maybe put a little more elbow into the bust than was necessary. He was a cop after all, not Gandhi. But the fact that a man who dealt with the absolute worst of humanity every single day could still find a moment to be charitable gave me a glimmer of hope.

As I watched him smile and shake hands, I felt like I could forget about the Rabbit Man. I could leave here and never come back. I could return to my long-suffering wife, to my courageous little girl who had somehow managed to put her assault in the past while her father continued to grieve.

Sam laughed at something one of the men said and got back in his cruiser. I watched him drive back to the topside of the Tuttle, watched everyone return to whatever they'd been doing. I felt myself relax.

"You know, if it's anyone here, I'd put money on Telly," Gonzalez said, dragging me right back down.

"Why him?" I snapped.

"I just overheard him bragging once, about all the stuff he'd gotten away with. He said he—"

It was clear he couldn't repeat the actual words Telly had used. "You don't have to say it."

Gonzalez gave a brief smile. "Thanks. He did it to a little girl, and all they got him on was grooming some cop on the 'net posing as an eight-year-old."

Down there among the others, the blond guy, Telly, chucked a stone in the direction the cop car had gone, having since recaptured his bravado. I watched him swagger back to his own car, chewing his gum with his mouth open. He climbed in and slammed the squeaky door behind himself.

"You're gonna kill him, aren't you?"

I thought about the scratches, the rabbits. My mind ran through all the gruesome scenarios I'd dreamed up during our sessions with Dr. Ambrose. "What if I said yes?"

Gonzalez followed my gaze. Telly had his dirty work boots rested on the driver's window. Behind the windshield, the orange ember of his cigarette burned.

"I won't tell," Gonzalez said. "He'll just do it again, the second he gets a chance. You can tell just by looking at him. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what he does at night, driving off all by himself."

I considered this in silence, knowing the decision had already been made for me.

EXCEPT FOR THOSE times he left camp well after sundown, I didn't let Telly leave my sight again for over a week. He'd recline the driver's seat and nod off as the sun began to sink beyond the skyline, well before anyone else had even considered sleep. Later, when most of us had been out for a few hours, I'd watch him light up a smoke in the dark behind the windshield. Then he'd creep out with the running lights off. A few hours later, he'd pull back into his spot. I'd watch him fire up a butt with his Zippo, lighting a dark smile on his face. The little orange ember of his cigarette would wax and wane. After a few minutes, he'd flick it out the window in a shower of sparks, put his booted feet out the window, and go back to sleep. Once, he'd gone directly to the water and washed his hands. To wash off what, I don't know.

But I can guess.

About a week into this routine, Telly left the car to go down to the water to fish. (We caught a fair bit down in that part of Biscayne Bay. Going hungry was never a worry, though I lost the taste for fish quickly.) I wandered over to the car, curiosity getting the best of me, and peeked in the dusty window. The passenger seat was covered in cassette tapes, mostly metal and hard rock bands: AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer. With a collection like that, it wasn't likely he'd have ever listened to George Michael, but I considered it might be a part of his pathology, like maybe he'd been abused to it when he was younger. Or maybe it reminded him of a junior school crush. Parking tickets were scattered on the floor like the bottom of a birdcage.

I spotted what I'd been hoping to find hanging from the rearview mirror. Due to the fine layer of dust on the windshield, I hadn't been able to see it before. A little white rabbit's foot swayed gently on a bathtub chain, a few spots of something dark on its fur. I shaded my eyes against the glass for a closer look, thinking it might just be blood.

"Lookin' for somethin', asshole?"

I stepped away, caught. Telly sauntered back with the fishing pole over his shoulder and no fish. I stammered something about looking for cigarettes, and Telly narrowed his eyes.

"You want a smoke, you coulda just ast." Chewing absently on a wad of pink gum, he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of Camels, shifting the pole to his other shoulder. He shook one out and flicked it at me.

I caught it, fumbled it into the dirt. I picked it up and blew on it, then nestled it between my lips. The sweet smell of tobacco filled my nostrils. Marnie and I had quit when we found out she was pregnant. I'd sneaked a few puffs here and there after Nola was born, but after Marnie caught me lighting up the day of the argument, the day Nola ran away, I hadn't smoked since.

"Got a light?"

He threw a Zippo at me, and I caught it deftly. Lit the smoke. Inhaled. The first drag felt like pins jabbing my lungs. After that, the drags were smoother. "Thanks," I said, holding the cigarette between my teeth as I handed the Rabbit Man his lighter.

"No problem." A buzz had him reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. He opened the flip phone and studied the message. "Gotta split," he said. He opened the car door, then squinted at me. "Hey, no hard feelings about that love tap last week. I woulda hit me, too, if they'da been my buddies you was messin' with."

"They're not my buddies. Thanks again for the smoke," I added, walking away.

"Any time, amigo. Just stay the fuck away from my car next time."

I lied and said I would.

IT WAS TWO nights later when I dared approach his car again. He was asleep inside, his boots on the dash. I crept up to the driver door and listened to his slow, deep breathing for a while, maybe too long. I needed to be sure he was sleeping. I wanted to catch him off guard. He looked at peace. Like he'd slept well. It enraged me to see that, when my own sleep was so fitful because of him.

I wondered how many other children he might have abused since the police sent him down here, how many childhoods he'd taken away. How many families he'd destroyed. How many fathers he'd poisoned, the way he poisoned me. I still knew nothing about him, but none of that mattered. I could have called in with Officer Higgins' badge number, got them to run Telly's plates. I could have found a previous address. I could have rented a car—unless Marnie had cancelled my credit cards, which was possible—and followed him the next time he left camp. I didn't do any of these things. I didn't want to know about his life. All I wanted was for it to be him, and for it to end tonight.

I rounded the dirty front of the car to the passenger side. Ever so gently, I pulled up the handle. The door came open an inch with a click that seemed to rebound off the cement pillars and the underside of the bridge. Telly snored and shifted in his sleep. I froze, blood hammering. We were mere feet from each other, but his car was far enough away from the rest of Bookville, a pariah among pariahs, that I thought I'd be safe from potential witnesses. Despite the distance, if he woke up and saw me looming over him, no doubt he'd shout, and my whole stupid reckless plan, the months of research and preparation and time away from the girls, all of it would have been for nothing.

I held my breath.

He didn't wake.

Slowly, I pulled the door open. The amount of times I'd watched him open it to get one thing or another, I knew it wouldn't creak, not like the driver door. I knew the dome light wouldn't come on, either; it had burned out or didn't work. I slipped in cautiously beside him and pulled the door closed.

Telly slept with his seat reclined, his knees curled up to his chest. He breathed deeply, a sure sign he was either asleep or faking it, ready to gut me like he gutted fish with the jagged hunting knife attached to his belt.

His eyes suddenly snapped open and he scrambled up against the door, sucking in a breath with childlike terror before squinting at me coolly. His breath smelled like cinnamon when he said, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Roll up your window."

"Why the fuck should I?" He looked in the direction I indicated: the tip of my father's old buck knife aimed at the faded crotch of his tight jeans. "Jesus, man," he said on exhale and rolled up the window, not taking his eyes off me. "You mind tellin' me what the fuck you're doin' in my car? And don't say you're lookin' for a cigarette, amigo, 'cause I know you ain't a smoker."

For a long while, I said nothing. All the time I'd spent dreaming about this moment, it felt like he should know why I was here before I took his life away. It felt like I should make him aware, for Nola's sake if not mine. But everything I started to say seemed wrong. Like I'd be offering him an explanation he surely didn't deserve. Like I'd be allowing him the opportunity for forgiveness when forgiveness had never been an option.

"Take out the tape," I said finally.

"What?"

"The tape. Take out the fucking tape."

"All right, man. Shit." Eyeing me the whole time, Telly reached for the cassette player in the dash. His dirty fingers found the eject button and he pushed it. The tape popped out with a satisfying clunk. Telly fumbled it into his hand, then held it up for me to see. "All right?"

"All right," I said, and thrust the knife at his crotch.

Telly's eyes opened wider than I'd thought humanly possible, like something you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon. He made to cry out, but I pressed a hand over his mouth, his mustache prickling against my palm, his tongue flicking out, probably involuntarily, as I mashed his head against the doorjamb.

Relishing the agonized terror in his eyes, I missed the sight of his hand scrabbling for the knife at his hip. He had it pulled out and pain tore up my chest before I could react. Smashing his head back against the door, I thrust my elbow against his wrist, pushing it back. I shoved my knee down hard against his legs, yanking on the knife in his groin. It came free with a jet of blood that splashed my wrist, his jeans already dark with it.

The wet blade gleamed in the arc lights as I pulled it back to strike again, and I shoved it straight into his throat, to the hilt. The monster's tongue flicked against my palm as his life spurted out from the hole in his neck, soaking my shirt. His legs kicked weakly, like a dying insect's. A gout of blood poured from the hole as he gagged. His fingers relaxed, dropping his knife. The life left his eyes.

I sat there a moment longer, watching his body leak blood, listening for his breath. I couldn't believe he was dead, that it was finally over and I could leave this godforsaken place and return to my family.

His cell phone buzzed.

I wondered who would be texting so late. I couldn't imagine it being a booty call, although I supposed like Walker he could have had a thing for women and men as well as children.

I told myself it was over. But the cell phone buzzed again, and I couldn't resist opening the glovebox, from which I'd located the sound on the second buzz.

Two items fell from the glovebox on a landslide of junk paper and Big Red chewing gum wrappers: Telly's crappy flip phone, and a heavy black revolver.

I picked up the phone, giving the gun a wary look, as if it was a dangerous animal.

Two new messages awaited, both from Unknown Number.

The second message was an address. I knew the area. Somewhere in Coconut Grove, where the rich folk live.

The first message said:ARE U IN?

Was I in? Hell, I didn't even know what I was in for—but I'd already come this far.

What if Telly had an accomplice? I thought. Someone with the resources to keep him from falling under the scrutiny of the Miami-Dade P.D. Someone rich enough to live in Coconut Grove.

I had to find out.

I scrolled through prior messages phone, looking at his responses. They were curt replies, mostly written in text-speak. No wonder, with the ancient buttons on the thing. Heart hammering, I thumbed the buttons, clicking ponderously through numbers and letters to type out: B THERE IN 1 HR

I wasn't sure how soon they'd be expecting him, but I wanted to give myself enough time to get cleaned up first.

The phone buzzed again in my hand.

MAKE IT TWO, BACK DOOR'S OPEN

Even better, I thought.

Telly's body slid another few inches toward the floor. In the dim light beyond the space he'd left, I spotted Gonzalez huddled against a pillar, watching us with wide eyes. I wondered how long he'd been standing there. Long enough, I guessed.

His eyes met mine, and he nodded. Somehow, I managed to nod back.

I dragged Telly's lifeless body out of the seat and climbed over him, then sat him up in the passenger seat. Reaching over him, I half-expected him to snap awake and grab me around the throat. Of course he didn't. And when I yanked on the seat adjuster, he dropped back along with the seat.

I flicked the dome light to its off position, and started the engine. The Impala purred like a panther. The running lights already off, I backed up, and drove out up the embankment, leaving behind Bookville for good.

As I drove west on I95, the rabbit's foot jingled on its chain from the mirror. In all the commotion, I'd forgotten about it. I tore it down to get a better look. The dark stains were no doubt blood. Whether it was old blood or new I couldn't tell, not when I'd just smeared Telly's blood onto its dirty off-white fur.

I tucked the totem into my pocket and looked at myself in the rearview. A few streaks of blood had spattered my face, and I wiped them off with the back of my hand. I didn't plan to go home looking like I did, anyway.

At my old 24-hour gym, I parked the car at the far corner of the lot, under a broken streetlamp. There was a blanket in the backseat, which I threw over Telly's body. When I got out, it felt like I'd given my whole body a workout, every muscle aching.

I staggered to the brightly lit gym. The doors slid open for me.

The attendant, a young kid with clear, tanned skin, gave me a funny look. When I got into the showers, I understood why. I hadn't been into the city for a week, hadn't shaved, hadn't slept. My shirt was gouged open at the chest, matted to my skin with blood. I looked like a man who'd gotten lost in the jungle, fought a wild animal, and narrowly escaped with his life. I left the showers clean and shaven, my wound—Telly's blade had cut my left nipple in half—washed and dressed with paper towels, surprised that the kid wiping down the equipment hadn't called the cops. Far enough away from the mess I'd left under the Tuttle, I had no worries they would finger me for the crime even if the kid called in my appearance and had them pull the security video. For all they knew, I'd taken time off work to deal with the aftermath of what had happened to Nola.

Back at the Impala, I rooted through a duffel bag of clean-smelling clothes in the trunk. Telly was about my size, and always seemed to be dressed in a t-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans. I assumed on some of his excursions he'd been to use a laundromat, but I suppose his friend in the Grove could have easily gotten them washed for him.

I found black jeans a t-shirt and as worn Miami Heat cap, and put them on in the dark below the burnt-out streetlamp. The jeans were snug and a little short, but the t-shirt fit well enough. Though they were clean, they felt slimy on my skin and scalp. To be wearing the clothes of the man who'd assaulted my little girl… but it was a necessary evil.

Walk a mile in a man's shoes, I thought. When I got back in the car, I gave Telly's pale, dead face a long hard look.

This was somebody's son. Someone had given birth to this monster. Had raised it.

Not wanting to give him another moment of my time, I started the car, and headed toward the Grove. He was fertilizer now. Worm food.

The streets out here were bright even in the dead of night. Palms in front of multimillion-dollar homes swayed in a breeze from the bay. I read house numbers on pillars and porticos and wrought iron arches until finally I found the house.

I parked the Impala on the next block, left it there, and headed back on foot.

The whole neighborhood felt eerily quiet, aside from the gentle swish of the tide, and the palm fronds above. I imagined the people who lived here, in their Xanax-induced slumbers, some maybe burning the midnight oil to keep the creditors at bay. Was it possible a predator lived among them? I was certain there were tax-evaders. Philanderers. Pill addicts. Spouse abusers. Investment swindlers. Perpetrators of criminal negligence—even potential vehicular homicides.

I wondered how many sex offenders had once lived on my own street.

The house stood silent before me, the moon casting a diamond glint trail on the bay beyond. A security camera watched over the gate, the stone wall around the perimeter lined with bushes. Spotlights lit the glass house's exterior, but inside the only room that appeared lit was the kitchen.

As I headed along a red clay path toward the beach in the darkness below the wall, the sound of the ocean grew louder. My feet more sore than they'd been the day I'd walked home, I longed to take off my shoes and walk in the sand. But more pressing business was at hand.

The gun felt heavy against my spine, tucked into the back of Telly's jeans.

On the beach, I crept close to the wall, looking for a point of egress, certain the owner had access to the docks dotting a strip of white sand. Finally, I reached a small gate where the wall dipped down on either side. No camera in sight. The gate locked, I climbed over the wall and jumped down on the other side, praying they didn't have dogs.

The water beat against the shore, almost as loud as my heart thrumming in my ears.

The house, a series of stacked white stucco-and-glass rectangles, stood quiet and stark against the moonlit sky. I could see a camera above the back door, and I slowed my approach, pulling the peak of the Heat cap down to hide my face. I rounded the pool, spotting children's pool toys floating in the blue-green water, lit from below. Stepped over a damp towel left bunched on the concrete, and a small pair of sopping wet board shorts with little flamingos printed on them left halfway to the door, as if they'd been cast off on the way to the house.

I stood under the camera, and jiggled the handle. No luck.

Out of options, short of smashing one of the window walls and announcing the presence of an intruder, I thumbed the doorbell.

As I waited for a response, I felt sick creeping into my throat, and swallowed it down, hard.

"That you, Tell?"

A male voice over the intercom. Deep. He sounded drunk.

I nodded, not wanting to show my face but desperate to make the man believe I was Telly. Inspiration struck, and I dug into the jeans, thankful I'd thought to transfer it from my pants when I'd changed out of them.

I held up the rabbit's foot. Jingled it on the chain.

The door buzzed.

"C'mon downstairs," the man said. "The party's started."

I stepped inside.

The darkened house smelled of burning incense. Beer. Lit dimly by the moon over the bay, the living room looked as though someone had been having a party. From deeper inside the house, music thumped. Just the bass, but I recognized the song. I'd heard it in nightmares so often the beat was seared into my brain. I swallowed bile, and continued toward a brightened doorway.

Stairs led down. Basements were rare in Miami—hell, in most of South Florida. Near the beach, you'd have to drill through several feet of coral rock before you hit water. It was difficult to dig, and even more to keep them dry.

I drew the revolver from the back of Telly's jeans. I'd already checked to see that it was loaded. I wasn't sure what I would find down there, but with the boy's swim trunks at the pool, and whoever lived in this house being a friend of Telly's, I felt it best to err on the side of caution.

Creeping down, I held the gun pointed at the doorway, expecting someone to step out at the foot of the stairs with every step down, the song so loud it felt like the music penetrated every pore in my body. I realized halfway down the stairs that I'd been crying.

As I descended further, a room came into view below, oddly incongruous to the modern style of the house above, as if someone had torn it straight from a magazine from the '80s. Faux wood paneling. A brown tartan sofa with colorful afghan throw pillows. An ancient game system resting on the floor, hooked up to a large tube television with knobs instead of buttons above the brown speaker panel. The smell of beer was even stronger. Several empty bottles stood on the coffee table, some with the labels peeled off.

I reached the clean concrete floor, and turned.

The boy was stretched out naked on the red fabric of a pool table, his frail limbs spread wide, hands and feet pointing toward the corner holes. He looked about nine or ten, the conspicuous lack of pubic hair at his groin and under his armpits evidence of his young age. He appeared asleep, but was more likely passed out or drugged. If so, he was lucky not to be subjected to the sight of the two men watching him.

On either side of the boy, two deeply tanned men stood stripped down to the waist. One wore boxer shorts, the other tight blue briefs, his erect penis sprung from the y-front. The man in boxers, his hair slicked back like Gordon Gecko, stroked himself with one hand while leering down at the boy, taking a swig of beer with the other.

"Father Figure," blasting from a large wood cabinet stereo, ended.

The man in the briefs kneaded the foreskin-hooded end of his penis as if he were chalking a pool cue. In the silence, he groaned. Neither man had seen me—yet.

I snapped back the hammer.

The man in boxers turned to me, the bottle dropping from his hand as he realized I wasn't Telly.

"What the—?"

The pistol silenced him before the bottle hit even the floor, the bullet tearing into his shoulder and spinning him around on his bare feet with a spray of blood, DayGlo under the fluorescent track lights. He fell back against the pool table, his arm squeaking as he slid down to the floor on his butt in a puddle of beer and broken glass.

The song started up again, on repeat: Tss-tss-tss…

Briefs had reached into one of the pockets and grabbed a pool ball while I'd watched the Boxer Shorts fall. As he threw it at me, his hard-on bounced in an almost comical way, making me think of those Follow the Bouncing Ball singalongs from old cartoons.

I ducked, but not before it struck me in the chest, just above the nipple Telly had slashed open. I fired again. The shot went wild, striking the wall a foot from his face, taking a chunk out of the wood wallpaper.

He tore a pool cue off the rack and gripped it in both hands, holding the felt-tipped end pointed at the boy's scrawny chest.

"Don't fucking shoot, man, I swear to God—"

This time, my aim was true.

I approached Boxer Shorts as he tried to pull himself to his feet, his blood-streaked hand constantly slipping on the wood of the pool table so he kept falling back on his ass in the spilled beer.

"Please, don't kill me, man," he wept. "I'm sick." He blubbered, lips quivering, tears streaming down his face. "I'm just sick!"

"I know," I said, and shot him in the head.

THE WALK BACK to Telly's Impala was excruciating. I kept thinking somebody must have heard the shots. Someone must have called the police. But the cops never showed. The streets remained empty and silent, just the sound of the breaks hitting the sand accompanying me to where Telly's body awaited disposal.

I filled the small gas can from the tank with a syphon I found in the trunk, and splashed the gas around the front and back seats, drenching Telly. I tossed the gun in through the passenger window, followed by the gas tank.

Telly's Zippo lit on the first strike. I stepped back, and threw it in.

The fire caught fast. I was already on my way back to the beach when the gas can exploded, and I turned back to see the Impala shoot into the air, flames spewing from shattered glass as it crashed back down on burst tires.

The boy was sitting where I'd left him. I'd carried him upstairs and dressed him in the living room, where they'd left his clothes. He didn't weigh much, maybe sixty pounds soaking wet. His eyes fluttered as I carried him down through the darkened residential streets. Police sirens blared by on the block opposite, heading toward the fire, but somehow we remained unseen.

I carried the boy as far as Mercy Hospital. With the cap peak still obscuring my face, I brought him into Emerg, which seemed eerily empty. As I laid him out on a gurney, a night nurse came down the hall with a clipboard. She called after me as I rushed off, ignoring her, glad the boy would be safe in her care.

As I walked home, I thought about what Marnie had said to me the day I left. Nola may not have needed a vigilante. She would certainly have preferred I'd never left, that I'd stayed home to be a father to her and watch over her. But I'm certain the boy, had he known how close he'd come to being violated and most likely murdered that night, might not feel the same.

It broke my heart to know things between Marnie and I would never be the same, no matter how hard I tried. Even if she'd have me back, our time apart would always be between us. The Rabbit Man's death, and those nameless men whose lives I'd taken in a basement in Coconut Grove, would seep into every seemingly pleasant conversation, every social engagement, every one of Nola's milestones. In the back of my mind and hers, the Rabbit Man would still be running.

Back at the house in Coral Gables, I used my key in the door, pleased for a second time to find it still worked. I crept up to our bedroom, saw Marnie sleeping with legs stretched over my side of the bed. It had been four months since we'd slept in that bed together, and she still slept mostly on her side.

I slipped by into Nola's room. The moon illuminated her head against the pillow. Nola had a thumb in her mouth, a habit she'd grown out of at age four but had taken up again in the wake of her experience with the Rabbit Man.

My sweet little girl's eyes opened wide as she drew the covers up to her chin, and for a terrible moment I flashed back to the eerily similar look Telly had given me when I woke him with the knife. Nola relaxed, seeing it was me.

"I thought you were a monster," she said.

I wondered, Am I?

Could I tell her there was nothing to be afraid of, that there were three less monsters in the world because of what I'd done that night? I flashed on the tape in Telly's hand, completely unreadable in the dark. It could have been a polka album for all I'd cared. That splotch on the rabbit's foot could have been dirt or paint or just about anything.

Could I tell her I'd taken pleasure in killing those two men?

There was no doubt in my mind what they'd intended to do with that boy. But what was Telly's role in it? Had he in fact been the Rabbit Man I'd so wanted him to be? I'd needed him to be, so I could come home to my wife? To our daughter?

Marnie had been right after all: Nola didn't need a vigilante. I'd needed to be one.

I'd fooled myself into believing that killing the Rabbit Man was about seeking justice for my little girl, but it had never been for her. I'd needed to take him out of the world to feel strong again. I needed to erase him from our family history to cover for my own shame. So I wouldn't feel like a coward anymore. So I would feel safe.

It had never been about justice. And the fear, the shame—that would never end.

There were more of them, you see. I'd forgotten about Telly's cell phone tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. And as I crossed the South Dixie Highway on my way back home, it buzzed against my pelvis.

TOMORROW NIGHT, the text said.U IN?

Was I in? No question.

But first I'd need to buy a gun.

I smiled down at Nola, her face half in darkness, my shadow drawn long over her bed. "No, honey," I told her, faking a reassuring smile. "It's me. Daddy's home."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Duncan Ralston was born in Toronto and spent his teens in small-town Ontario. As a "grown-up," Duncan lives with his girlfriend and their dog in Toronto, where he writes dark fiction about the things that frighten, sicken, and delight him. In addition to his twisted short stories found in Gristle & Bone, the anthologies Easter Eggs & Bunny Boilers, What Goes Around, Death By Chocolate, Flash Fear, and the charity anthologies The Black Room Manuscripts, VS: US vs UK Horror, Bah Humbug!, and Burger Van, he is the author of the novels Salvage, Wildfire and Woom, an extreme horror Black Cover book from Matt Shaw Publications.

For more from Duncan Ralston, including exclusive updates, contests, and a FREE book, please join him at his official website, The Fold (duncanralston.com), or follow him on his Amazon Author Page, BookBub, Facebook, and Twitter.

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