Desperate Purging

        You throw down that final shovelful of soil into the hole and look around the fairgrounds. The tattered flags fluttering on a slight breeze, empty popcorn containers left at the entrance to the crummy roller coaster, crushed soda cups and crumpled napkins tossed carelessly all over the ground. Still no one there. It's a good thing too, you hate it when people see you cry.
         "Gwen," you say, "why in God's name couldn't you have moved faster? You knew that son of a bitch was going to come after you, I told you he would. Why didn't you pick up and move sooner?"
         The tears start to find their way back into your eyes, but you push them back and force yourself to think about something else. Not that there's much else to think about though, not aside from her. So you do. You think about how her hair would be fluttering in the breeze, how her smile would brighten up the slightly overcast day and make it seem like the sun would just never stop shining. But now there are arrangements to be made, and your life isn't over just because your father's is. You need to find a place to live now, because your father's run down shit that thought it was a business is no place to live. But you still have to go back there, because at this point in time, there's no other place for you to go.
         You shuffle back to your father's car, the old man's keys still in the ignition, because the dumb fuck thought he was only going to be there long enough to grab the rock and stick a bullet in your head; ten minutes max. Sinking into the seat, you run your hands along the worn wood of the steering wheel, the imperfections sticking out like a black man in a backwards hick town like this. The dash is cracked and covered in dust, and the back seat has more empty condom wrappers on it than you can count. You turn the key and push lightly on the pedal, testing out the car. It has been four years since you've driven a car, and you want to be sure that you get the kinks out before you get on the road.
         For some reason, you think of Mandy and her screenplay, and her main character saint person possessed by the soul of some evil-whatever. It really made no sense to think about her, she really was only slightly attractive, and you didn't lie when you told your father that she gave lousy head. That he killed her too, just like he killed George, just like he killed Gwen, that was what brought her to mind. That gutless piece of shit thought he could just go about taking out the people that gave him problems? Well he's gone now, and you aim to make sure every last trace of him is gone as well.
         You pull onto the main road, driving back the way you came, back towards True Line Efficiency Experts Corp. You think about how you really don't want to go there, it would bring back too many memories of time spent planning the con, of time spent with Gwen, but the old man did have a few things that would be worth picking up, clothes, booze, a few cartons of cigarettes, cash, things like that. Things that would be necessary for a new life were stuck in the remnants of your past life. Of course the one thing that would have made your new life more bearable didn't exist. That one picture, why didn't you take one single fucking picture of her? But there would be time for mourning later, when you're alone, late at night, waiting for sleep to come to you. Right now, there were things that had to be done.
         You park along the side of the road right by the greasy Chinese restaurant. The place still reeks of overcooked rice and slightly rotten vegetables. You get out of the car and walk up the path toward the front door and go in, your body tense, your eyes darting around, searching, making sure nobody was around. Not that you were particularly worried about running into anyone from your past, but dealing with the cops right now would turn this already hellish day into an even more unbearable evening.
         You couldn't see anyone through the glass door, and you let yourself in stepping over the letters and checks written to pay for a sample test for a position that didn't exist and walk into the back room where your father stayed. The place was a mess, typical of him. There were pictures of possible targets posted all over the walls, including one of a slightly overweight black man with a balding head and grey beard that you thought you recognized as the rent-a-cop from the grocery store. Cigarette butts and empty beer cans littered what little floor space there was, as most of the room was taken up by the mildewed, nearly destroyed queen size bed frame holding a ratty old waterbed that just oozed white trash.
      You look around the room for what you might need sifting through some of the papers and looking under the bed, finding nothing but more beer cans and more empty condom wrappers. You move on to the storage closet, and begin sifting through his shit like someone at a yard sale. You find what you needed, a couple of shirts and pairs of jeans, two cartons of Parliaments, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a bottle of Bacardi 151, and three hundred dollars in cash all nestled snugly in a number of different cardboard boxes. You pocket the cash and empty one of the boxes completely, putting the clothes, cigarettes, and booze, minus the Bacardi in there. You put the rum on a table and take your boxed up essentials out to the car and shove them in the passenger side seat. Closing the door of the car, you walk back into the office building. Then, grabbing the bottle of Bacardi from the table, you walk over to the bathroom. Grabbing a dirty old hand towel from underneath the sink, you stuff it into the bottle. You tilt the bottle up and down, making sure that there was plenty of shitty rum soaked up into the towel. You put the bottle down on the table again, and walk across the street to the convenience store.
         "Thank God for twenty four hour service," you tell the clerk as he rings you up for a small red Bic lighter. You hand him the money and take it back across the street with you.
      You walk back into the office, and grab the waiting Molotov cocktail from the table and walk back towards the front door. Turning around, you light the liquor soaked towel, and toss the flaming bottle of rum back onto the last con the old man pulled, back onto the final remnants of your old life. You're not too worried about leaving any evidence, there was enough paper there to start the fire and keep it going for a good long time. And your father had made enough enemies during his time as a con man to have merited this a hundred times over already. Quickly closing the door, you jog to the car, and drive away before anyone notices the slowly growing inferno.
         Later that night, you're sitting in the same little hotel room that you were in the previous night with Mandy, but all you can think of is how much you want Gwen. How you wanted to smell her hair, to feel her skin, to dissolve into her. But that couldn't happen, not anymore. You take a swig out of the bottle of Jim Bean that has been sitting there since last night and light a cigarette. You sit there in the nearly dark hotel room, the only light coming from the television, the woman reporting the news talking about a massive four alarm fire that was being worked on by firefighters in downtown Sumner, West Virginia, and you think about her, and how you wish she was here right now. You think about the lack of that picture, and you think about the last time you saw her those long four years ago, and the tears that had been forced back this morning returned. Your shoulders begin to heave, and your breath comes in increasingly shorter gasps. The tears cover your face like a blanket, suffocating you. You fall back onto the pillow and continue to sob. Eventually sleep comes to you, as do the dreams, the dreams of her. Dreams of the one girl that could make you happy. Dreams of the one girl who could tell you who you were. Dreams that could never ever come true.