A Dead Man Walking

Despite many things changing in the past two years, one thing always remained the same; Liam’s breakfast.

Tina’s Toast & Treats was his wife’s favorite place to eat.  Tina’s was a quaint little diner that Tina also ran a bakery out of.  This made it perfect for any time of day.  When Liam finally got the balls to ask Gina out on a date, he picked a random place in town to get some breakfast.  It just so happened that he picked right.  Gina would tease him that he must’ve been a stalker to know that was her favorite place to eat.

The two of them went there many times over their years of dating, even after they got married.  Once baby Rose came along to add to the family tree, she got her first introduction to Tina’s.  

It had been two years since they were murdered and Liam still couldn’t pull himself away from the place.  It was because of Tina’s that he had been able to call Gina his wife.  If it weren’t for this diner, his baby Rose would’ve never come into his life.  He couldn’t break his attachment from the place. 

As Liam made the short walk from his apartment that he shared with his best friend Mittens the cat, his mind couldn’t leave his work.  It was the weekend but these little breaks just served as time for him to overthink about the work that would be coming the following week.  

As he pulled the door to Tina’s open, the little bell above the door ringing as he stepped in, his mind was still stuck on whether or not the company could afford to publish this new guy’s first book.  Was it worth the risk of publishing some guy who no one knew?  Liam thought so.  It was just a matter of how to get the others on board.

His mind was on autopilot; he went straight for the line to the left of the retro styled circular counter that surrounded the center of the diner, where the kitchen was.  There used to be only one line but now that you could place your order and pay online, they added a second line for the online pickup folks.  Liam was among these folks today.

The familiar scents of cinnamon and eggs battled for real estate in Liam’s nose.  The soft chatter of customers at their tables was always pleasant to hear.  He was reminded once again, as happened every time he entered, as to why he loved this place.

His mind returned to his pitch for only a moment.  As he became the second person in the left-hand line, he heard a call from behind the counter; “Order 217, Bill.”  The man named Bill grabbed the bag of food to go, paid, and turned around to leave.

Liam’s heart stopped.

He had seen this man before.  That face.  The one with the vertical line of a scar running through his top lip.  He’d seen him countless times when Liam slept over the past two years.  

Bill was the one who murdered his wife and daughter.

His gaze followed the man, picking up on visuals other than the face that he already knew.  His hair was a thick black, pushed back but ultimately falling off to the sides of his head, creating a middle part.  His attire looked as though he was ready to go to work at a position similar to Liam’s; dress pants and shirt with a blue blazer over it.  He looked well kept.  Though, no clothing could offset the evil in that face.

“Liammmm.  Liam.  You not get enough sleep last night or something?” came a voice from behind him.

Liam turned around to see Tina holding his pickup bag.  She glanced down at the bag and remarked: “Apple jelly donut with a cinnamon topping?  Feeling adventurous today are we?”

Liam grabbed the bag from Tina and turned his head to watch the man known as Bill walking on the sidewalk outside.  “Thanks, Tina.  Yeah, I feel like it’s going to be a good day.”

*****

Bill seemed to be a hard man to follow.

Liam had been waiting for this day for two years.  He had thought through so many scenarios in which he could meet his family’s killer and he had never come up with an exact plan for what he would do if he ever did come face to face with this man.  None of those scenarios had assumed that he would find him this soon.  None of them considered the fact that it would take place only a short walk from the apartment Bill had slaughtered his family in; the apartment Liam still lived in to this day.

So, when the time came to make a decision, he had to do it on the fly.  He had his pocket knife with him and the man who had haunted his dreams for two years in his sights.  He couldn’t just let the man walk away without knowing where he came from.

Liam wasn’t sure if Bill was a difficult man to follow or if it was just his inexperience with following someone secretly that was talking.  Both were reasonable explanations.  This bastard had found a way to evade detection from the police despite still being in town.  How this was possible, he was unsure.  

At first, Liam had been following close behind the man.  However, he quickly came to the consensus that no good spy that he’d seen in the movies would follow their target so close up.  They all lurked in the shadows.  Liam decided to follow suit.  

Bill walked at a leisurely enough pace but the path he took was bizarre.  He would turn on almost every block, even turning down random alleyways that Liam didn’t even know existed.  After following the man through one of these alleys, Liam lost him.

His breath quickened, along with his pace.  As he came out on the other side of the alley, the man was gone.  The alley opened up to a singular road.  He could’ve either gone left or right.  He hesitated for a minute in the exit to the alley.  The hesitation was just long enough to see the man emerge from a shop with a paper bag of what Liam assumed was groceries.  He decided, from here, to keep his distance from the man a little shorter.  

As the turns continued, the vision in the dreams he had been having came back to him.  For two years, the same dream.  In this dream, Liam had come home early from work.  He picked up a nice dinner from Tina’s for the family.  He would open the door to their apartment and only get out; “I’m home e--” before he saw the end result of Bill’s work.  

In the middle of the living room, his wife, the love of his life, had a pool of blood below her limp body.  Her unseeing eyes seemed to stare into the ceiling.  Her white house dress was covered in blood, with the supply coming from an ungodly amount of stab wounds on her torso. She had been chopped up, her body almost unrecognizable.  Her head seemed to be the only thing left unscathed by the blade.

To the right of Gina was a pair of small legs.  The rest of the body wasn’t visible; the man sitting over top of her blocked the view.  Liam would look up to see the man holding a butcher knife above his head, between both hands.  Every time, Liam would say nothing, only managing an ear-piercing scream.  Before delivering the final blow to Rose, the man would turn his head to Liam with a crazed look on his face, blood streaking his face.  He gives a maniacal smile before plunging the knife into his daughter’s chest.

The same nightmare for two years.  The same face permanently engraved in his mind.  No one had seen this man other than Liam and he had only see him in his dreams.  He had never seen the man before in his life, the man who he saw in the dream was never even a suspect in the investigation.  Finally seeing this face in person gave him a sense of satisfaction but also made his anger rise.  He had gone to the sketch artist at the police station but when he told them that the only time he’d seen this man’s face was in a dream, they dismissed it immediately.  Now, he knew he was right.

Liam’s anger grew as he recalled the dream.  He wanted to kill the man, he couldn’t lie to himself.  This man took the two loves of his life from him.  He thought it was a reasonable thing to wish for the man who took their lives to suffer the same fate.  

Can I actually do it, though?  Can I actually kill a man?  he thought to himself.

The thought bounced around his head for the duration of the trip.  In the forefront of the scenarios he had thought up, this had always been the plan.  Now that he had his chance, though, he was unsure of whether or not he could actually take a man’s life.  

His thoughts were interrupted briefly when Bill took a turn into the heavily wooded part of town.  This was the end of the civilian portion of it, everything from here on was just woods and grass.  Nothing was out there, Liam was unsure of any reason the man might head into there.

Regardless, he couldn’t let him go.  He paused for a moment to put more distance between them; it would definitely raise suspicion if he were to be seen walking into the woods after him. 

After enough distance was put between them, but not too much where the man was no longer in sight, Liam followed once again.  He took every precaution not to snap any twigs or trip over any roots.  He remained as silent as he was capable of.  The man never turned around to look at him, so he figured he was doing a good job of staying hidden.  

His path was not nearly as twisty now.  The woods offered no real turns to make other than dodging pine trees in his way.  As the trekking continued at an exhausting pace, the scenery began to change.  It was still wooded, that much was left unchanged.  However, the mostly empty floor of the woods was becoming covered in heavy shrubbery, bushes taller than any man bagan creating the turns that Bill seemed to love taking.  

Liam gained on the man a tad, making sure that he did not lose him in this new terrain.  When he entered Liam’s view again, he was in a clearing filled with tall stalks of grain.  He paused and caught his breath in his throat when he saw where Bill was headed.  

Off to the right of the slightly beaten path in the grass stood a very weathered church.  It looked as though it had been abandoned for many years.

Liam knelt down, hiding himself behind the trunk of a pine.  He peeked out and watched on as Bill approached the church.  When he reached the large, darkly stained double doors, he drew a key from his back pocket.  He unlocked the door and walked into the church.  Just like that, he was gone.

Maybe he doesn’t have any friends and likes to spend his breakfast with Jesus, he thought.  Serves him right that he has no friends, that fucker.

He made the decision to make his way to the church.  There was no way that there was anyone else in there; it would just be the two of them.  If he got the courage to kill the man, well, lucky for him, Liam didn’t believe in God.  

He rose to his feet and ambled his way to the ramp that led up to the front doors of the church.  He remained quiet in his approach, figuring that he couldn’t be too careful.  His heart was pounding; his moment had finally come.  

He finally reached the doors.  Before he could open the door, which the man had conveniently left unlocked, Liam closed his eyes and drew a big breath.

You can do this.  He deserves it.  Do it for Gina.  Do it for Rose.  

He reached for his pocket and brandished his pocket knife, flicking the blade out.  He approached the door and pressed his ear against it, just to make sure.

Liam’s eyes widened.  There was a voice.  This voice wasn’t familiar, however.  It wasn’t Bill.  He heard laughing from the other side before he could make out the words.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see the look on this guy’s face.  Two years of waiting and we can finally kill him too.”

Liam didn’t even have time to react.  His gaze shot to the side, where he had come from.  Standing there, at the bottom of the ramp, was the man he had seen in his nightmares for two years.  He didn’t just see Bill.  What he saw was the same crazed look in his eyes, the pupils dilated as if he were an animal locking onto his prey.  That same maniacal smile that always led to his daughter being stabbed appeared on his face.  

In his right hand, he held the same butcher’s knife that he used in the nightmares.  The blade was already covered in blood.  

“I’ve been waiting two years for this, Liam.  You were supposed to be there, too.”

Before another word could be said, his nightmare lunged at him.