Glass Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective

Chapter 36

The crunch of broken glass under footsteps wakes Zandra from her sleep. Judging from the smell of burning dew, she figures it's sometime in the late morning. She reaches in her pocket for cigarettes by way of habit. Finding an empty pack in her hand brings her up to full alertness. She sits upright in the chair, lawnmower knife at the ready, as the footsteps approach her hiding spot.

"I can hear you in there," comes a man's voice. It's thick and surly. He follows it with a knock on the poster concealing the entrance to Zandra's room.

There's no way for Zandra to see outside. That's by design. It's supposed to be cut off from the outside world, although she could never get the soundproofing right.

The man repeats the knock.

"I heard you snoring from the street," the voice says. He sounds irritated. Zandra listens to his hands test the strength of the flimsy panel hiding her. It bends with the pressure. "You can either come out or I can go in. Your choice."

Zandra could wait him out and hope he goes away, but her intuition tells her it's a waste of time. Might as well figure out the source of the voice and go from there.

"Who's there?" Zandra says.

She can almost hear the man's lips part against his teeth into a grin.

"I knew you were in there," the voice says. "Come on out."

"Tell me who you are first," Zandra says, readying her defenses. With the knife, she cuts the top half of the water bottle she drained last night. Squatting down, she relieves herself into the wide bottom of the container.

"I'm here to help you," the voice says.

"With what?"

"We need to pay someone a little visit," the voice says.

Zandra can guess the name of that someone else, but she asks the question anyway. "And whom would I be little visiting?"

"You'll have to wait and see," the voice says. His hands tear down the poster in a single, violent tug. "I'm giving you 10 seconds to come out. Ten...nine...eight..."

Zandra hears the man's fingers run along the seams of the panel, probing for a solid grip.

"To hell with you," Zandra says.

The fingers stop searching and dig in. The voice cuts the countdown short. With a sharp crack, the panel pops off. The man throws it to the ground and takes a step backward.

Zandra recognizes him as the drunken lumberjack-type that came in not long ago. He'd asked if Sneak Peek is a "peep show." In the light of morning, he looks even more like the vein-popping oaf she'd taken him for earlier.

The man opens his mouth to say something, but his words are drowned in half a water bottle's worth of Zandra's urine. It takes him a second to realize what just emptied into his throat.

"What the fuck?" the man says and spits onto the ground.

It's precious time he should've spent on Zandra. She braces herself against the edge of the wall and plants the lawnmower knife into the meat of his thigh with an underhanded jab. Even in her panic, Zandra's careful to avoid the inner thigh, where a severed femoral could kill him. That's not her intention. The man stumbles just enough for Zandra to slip around him.

Spinning on her good ankle to face him, she grabs the man's hair from behind and yanks it backward so his chin salutes the ceiling. Her other hand holds the lawnmower knife to his throat.

"Your boots. Your socks. Take them off," Zandra says into his ear with a virulent hiss. She teases the metal fuzz of the knife's jagged edge against the taut skin of his throat.

The man complies, keeping his head frozen as he removes his footwear. Blood from his thigh shivers off his jeans.

Using his shoulders to prop herself up, Zandra slips the socks and boots onto her own feet. Her bad ankle's gone numb from abuse. All the better.

"I take it you broke my window, hmm?" Zandra says in the man's ear when she's done.

"Y-yeah," the man says. His macho image is failing him.

"Trying to encourage people, are you? Trying to tell them how to think about me? That I'm some sort of killer?" she says.

"You sure look like it to me," the man says.

Touché.

"I'll bet someone told you to follow me around. Got a name for me?" Zandra says.

"Go to hell," the man says.

"I'm halfway there. I could take you with me."

"Then do it. You'd only be hurting yourself," the man says.

"Let's see how far you get in this glass with bare feet," Zandra says.

She gives the man a push onto a pile of debris in the middle of broken glass near her desk. He catches himself before slipping on the bloody floor into the shards. It gives Zandra time to clear the distance to the door.

Outside, a couple pedestrians outside shoot Zandra an odd look.

"What are you looking at?" she says. Her reflection in the window of a parked car shows her the scuffle isn't the only thing drawing attention. Between her dirty, tattered purple gown and the man's blood, she looks like she crawled out of a grave.

One of the pedestrians closes his gaping mouth and pulls out a cell phone.

"You don't want to do that," Zandra says. She wags the lawnmower knife. The pedestrians take off at a fast walk.

No different than any other day in this town.

Zandra sheaths the knife up her sleeve. Thinks about where to go, what to do. She's out of hiding places and could really go for a cigarette. The latter wins out.

The oversized boots go clop-clop-drag on the sidewalk as Zandra points her weary body toward the gas station down the street. The clerk inside wrinkles a nose at Zandra's soiled condition, but sells her a pack of cigarettes and a copy of the Stevens Point Journal all the same.

Zandra hurries behind the gas station to the cover of a few Dumpsters. She lights up and unfolds the newspaper. Her eyes can barely believe what's on the front page.