Jack it

Jack it


The box had arrived on the first day of the previous week. Affixed to its top with several wide strips of clear packing tape was an address label. Greg`s address was scrawled in thick black marker across white loose leaf paper.

G. Goldrich
2211 Parkway Court
Apartment 204
Boston, Mass.
12631


There was no return address, Davenport was the only shipper information listed. Greg snickered; his family had moved to Boston from Davenport in the summer of ‘74. He hadn’t been back there since. The sentiment lasted less than a second.
He sliced through the transparent tape with one half of his pair of scissors and plunged into the white packing foam like a fox digging for prey in the snow. His heart tripped. It had finally arrived, the jacket he had won on the internet swap meet EBay. Nestled within the Styrofoam popcorn was a vintage 1970s café racer motorcycle jacket. Slightly worn, with two small holes that had been stitched over in the back, the heavy brown leather jacket was otherwise in impressive shape. No one else had even bid on it; Greg had gotten it for a steal.



He tore it from the cardboard box and held it out in front of him. It was perfect. He had lost his old leather jacket over a year ago, drunk at the bar one night. It had taken him this long to find one even remotely like it. Exceedingly pleased with his prize, Greg immediately pulled it on and basked in the old familiar weight of the leather.
It felt just right.
He shrugged the jacket comfortably over his shoulders and turned to admire his reflection in the mirror.  It was almost perfect, definitely an amazing find for what he had paid. He moved about, savoring the feeling of the soft lining against his arms, reaching for the zippers of the pockets on either side. They didn’t make good zippers like these anymore it occurred to him. These were thick and heavy; he couldn’t remember a zipper of this durability on any other clothing he could think of.



Greg unzipped each of the two side pockets and plunged his hands inside. Glancing to his left, he once again relished in his reflected image. The jacket looked great on him. He pivoted at various angles and admired his new possession, hands in, and out of pockets. His fingers brushed lightly against something soft, jammed far into the corner of the pocket of the left hand side. With some considerable effort, Greg managed to retrieve the object and liberate it from its dark confines.



  Crumpled and beaten within the jacket’s pocket for who knew how long, the tiny shred of white paper he pulled free was febrile - almost cottony. He uncrumpled it. No bigger than half a match book, the words - ‘operty of Clyde Robins – Do Not Touch!’ - were scribbled in blue ink across the small tattered piece of material. Greg realized what he was holding was the tag, long since torn from the stitching of the pocket’s lining. A small portion was missing, the jagged edge cut off part of the first word, but it was easy enough to decipher. He rolled the tissue-soft scrap of material back into a ball and tossed it back into the box full of packing foam without another thought.



He removed the jacket, cleared a few of the many empty beer cans from the dilapidated excuse for a dining table framing one side of his dank bachelor apartment, and laid his new acquisition in their place. The corners of his lips crested in to a subtle grin, Greg strolled from the living room and into the small kitchenette, the counter littered with still more empties and an assortment of filthy dishes. Water sputtered and then ran freely from the faucet of the kitchen sink. As he waited for the water to run cold, Greg pulled a cigarette from his pack. Dried tobacco crackled as the flame met its end and a purplish plume of smoke rose into the musty air.
Then it hit him.
The name on the piece of paper, it had echoed a tone of familiarity to him that until a moment ago he hadn’t even realized. Leaving the sink still running, he sprang back to the living room. Styrofoam popcorn flew in every direction as Greg tore through the box the jacket had arrived in, frantically searching for the piece of its tag that he had discarded. The small shred of material wasn’t easy to spot in amongst the white pieces of Styrofoam.
It ceased to matter in an instant.



The flesh at the sides of Greg’s neck began to constrict as two cold hands wrapped tightly about it in a purposeful embrace. Panic washed over his face as he struggled for breath. Eyes bulging, the microscopic capillaries within each began to burst under increasing pressure. Small trickles of blood flowed beneath the thin layers of skin covering his eyeballs. For a brief second he thought he heard the unmistakable sounds of leather creasing and crinkling as he fought for his life. His left leg jutted out, knocking over a weathered coffee table. Shreds of rolling tobacco, porno magazines and empty beer cans showered to the floor around him. He grabbed for the assailant’s hands; his grasp met with only the skin of his own neck. Greg’s body convulsed, starving for oxygen as he continued to fight against his unseen attacker. Just as the haze began to filter in from the periphery of his vision, flashes of memories long forgotten came flooding back to him in a raging torrent.



A thousand different images, burned into his mind as a child, flickered behind his bulging eyes like a film reel. He had been so young, but how could he have forgotten?


Headline: Satanic Child Killer Shot to Death in Davenport – March 16, 1974



It was the only thing the news had talked about for six weeks, the bodies of all those young girls; the terrible things that had been done to them. Things so horrible he must have subconsciously buried them deep within his psyche. His older sister’s boyfriend had seemed like such a swell guy, Greg was enamored with him. His motorcycle, his boots,…..his leather jacket. He used to get so pissed off whenever Greg touched his leather jacket. The family never had a clue about him. They were all left in a state of mournful shock the night the police put a stop to the Demon of Davenport. So many bodies came out of that basement, that basement with the blood soaked chalk pentagram crudely etched into the concrete floor.
He vowed revenge.



Intermittent flashes of blue and red cut through the dark, rain filled night. As he lay bleeding-out in the street, courtesy of the two bullets that had ripped into his chest and through his back, with his last breath Clyde Robins promised it wasn’t the last time he’d leave his mark. The pounding rain diluted his blood, soaking the asphalt beneath his body, and led it trickling to the sides of the road and down into the sewers below.
At the morgue the body had been stripped clean and all of the killer’s belongings packed into a box and sent off for disposal. The hospital’s young janitor never returned to work after that night. Instead of disposing of the belongings as he was instructed, he decided to salvage the valuable leather jacket.
He was never heard from again. Neither was the jacket - until Greg happened upon it, surfing the web late that night, all these many years later.



As the pieces started to come together, Panic’s twin sister Horror introduced herself to Greg - in less than subtle fashion. His body, quickly giving out in its battle to survive, lashed one last time against its attacker, this time knocking the small television set adjacent the couch to the floor. In the reflection cast by the light of the kitchen, Greg saw behind him a leather jacket, suspended as if worn by an invisible man, it’s arms outstretched toward his neck.
Then everything faded to black.



Police beat down the door of apartment 204, responding to complaints of a strange odour emanating from within. Inside they find signs of a struggle. Amongst scattered debris sits an empty box filled with packing foam and a dead body, a crumpled leather jacket lying on the floor beside it. 






©M. Kizer 2009