Mercy

If I cradled Phoenix in a specific manner, you couldn’t see the marred flesh. With his peaceful, outwardly slumbering countenance snuggled belly-up in my arms, tiny hands curled tightly to his bare chest post-mortem to assist in my charade, not a single patch of the burnt-sangria skin could be perceived. Instead, the random observer would assume nothing out of the ordinary occurred in the old bastard’s front lawn. All the lanky, half-naked man did was talk to himself for a fair amount of time and watch as the infant nestled in his arms drifted off into a world reigned by dreams and subconscious desires. No one had to know of my chat with the ghost or how he’d managed to simultaneously suffocate and burn the life out of Billie Joe’s gran’baby, and as long as I carefully held the child’s burns close to my own skin and out of sight, no one would know. I could easily pass him off as yet another victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome, for he had the physical attributes and neglectful parents of an infant at risk for such a violently painful end. His head was just a bit too large and swollen, his eyes were just a bit too bloodshot, and the skin of his face held a hue that was just a bit too suspiciously purple. Everything fit into place so perfectly I nearly cried at how simple it would be for me to get away with it…to get away with being an involuntary accomplice to infanticide. All I had to do was become hysterical and refuse to allow any hands but my own handle the body. All I had to do was treat the death as if it had been my own daughter’s charred corpse rotting within my arms, and the Armstrongs would be all but eating out of the palm of my guilt-ridden hand. Hook, line, and sinker.

What I didn’t account for, however, were the marks the entity left on my shoulders. My skin had been burned to a deep sangria nearly identical to that of Phoenix’s back, but as long as the ligaments in my neck made it impossible for me to see my own wounds, the problem was out of sight and out of mind. I wasn’t Frankie’s victim that way. I couldn’t accept being Frankie’s victim after all, for I’d been victimized so often in my miserable existence that being fucked over by a ghost would put the icing on my crazy cake. I also failed to consider how, despite everything that had gone wrong within the previous twenty minutes of my life, one solitary action managed to make the unsettling reservations completely disappear. It was one Billie Joe had used on me once before, and I couldn’t help but speculate that Frankie had gotten the idea from him years ago when they still shared the same bed and, undoubtedly, the same mind. Before the old bastard set it all up in smoke and flames.

I was hesitant to trust Frankie until he kissed me. He was a ghost, of course, so the kiss wasn’t nearly as powerful as Billie Joe’s had been, but it had packed enough of an emotional blow to just about send every goddamn cautious thought reeling. You ain’t a whore was what the old man’s kiss had promised me, but Frankie’s held a more profound connotation that hadn’t been primarily spoken aloud. Perhaps it made his affection more significant than Billie’s, or perhaps that made me more of a naïve little twit than I originally imagined. Unspoken implications had an alarming rate of fallacy and misinterpretation among their recipients, but Frankie’s voice refused to be silenced within my mind.

You ain’t alone, Sug.

I could still feel the ghost’s fluid lips on my cheek as I mentally prepared myself for the artificial breakdown that would ultimately convince Billie Joe and his son that the baby’s death was no cause for suspicion. I focused on the pristine empowerment Frankie’s touch had given me, the confidence he had instilled within me, and allowed for the tears to flow freely down my cheeks. I could do this, I had to do this, if any chance of getting through to the old bastard before he punched the clock was to be had. Everything would crumble around me if either of them had reason to believe that I had caused Phoenix’s premature demise, and all the progress I’d made with my twisted, dying companion would be forever obliterated.

Just pretend he’s Cady. Pretend he’s your little girl, I told myself sternly, and at once I found the simple task of walking up to the old bastard’s home to be an unimaginably daunting task. My legs were as gelatinous as Frankie’s caress had been, and the expired little boy in my arms seemed to gain a remarkable twenty pounds since I first plucked him from his makeshift bed. My arms ached, desperate to set him down somewhere, but doing so would mean for his smoldered back to be potentially exposed to his grandfather and his uncle. I cried out, not bothering to keep my semi-feigned grief silenced in the slightest, and stumbled to the front door. Seeing as both my arms were occupied with the duty of keeping Phoenix’s wounds concealed, I was reduced to knocking my head against the door to fully grasp Billie Joe’s and Jakob’s attention. Hell, the drastic method of making my urgency undeniably clear may have had the possibility of earning me sympathy points right from the beginning. Shivering, I slammed myself into the door once more and wailed more chillingly than the initial outburst. It was too simple…the deceit was far too sickeningly simple.

“Fairy! The fuck’re you doin’ out there?!” I heard Billie holler out from inside the house, but I kept pounding away at his door. The quicker they knew of Phoenix’s passing, the more rapidly his body would be buried and hidden away forever.

I was about to respond with something along the lines of, The baby…he’s…he’s…, but a last second stroke of mad genius brought a darker declaration churning out through my lips.

“She’s dead!” I shrieked. “My baby’s dead!”

Both Billie Joe and Jakob were scrambling about inside the house, attempting to claw the door open without losing their minds as they assumed I had. It was Jakob who pried the door open first, his father hobbling close behind him, and I permitted for my body to fall forward through the doorway. I was unsure of whether Jakob was still angry enough with me at that point to let me fall, but the escalating concern for his nephew compelled him to catch me at once, making damn sure not to harm the child while he braced my fall.

“You can’t be serious, Mike! He was screaming his ass off not too long ago!” Jakob gasped, hands darting out to paw his nephew back to life. I shrugged away from his hold and clutched the child even closer to my chest.

“Well, she’s dead now! You let them kill her!” I screamed, lobbing my best hateful glower in Jakob’s direction. “They were right here in this house, and you let them get away with it!”

I was grabbing at straws, blindly grappling for some sort of calamitous phrase that would strike a nerve deep within either Jakob or the old bastard, but judging by the way in which Jakob’s face instantly clouded over with pallor so alarmingly ashen I believed he would pass out if he didn’t get off his feet. Billie Joe noticed without delay and led him back into the kitchen to sit at the table once more, all the while throwing me anxious and frightened glances over his shoulder. Something was askew about the whole situation, but he simply couldn’t grasp with any certainty exactly what was wrong. For the first time since I’d begrudgingly made his acquaintance, the old bastard looked utterly terrified of me.

“What’s the Fairy hollerin’ ‘bout now, Jake?” Billie Joe questioned apprehensively, eyes flitting up to gawk at me every few seconds. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the fear in his eyes, the dread, was his initial reaction to the silence he felt straight down to his very core when he tried to read what was on my mind. Whatever had been previously broadcasted from the radio waves of my brain directly into his psychic aura was no longer being received, and it was the silence, the uncertainty, that was gnawing at him as I stood before him and Jakob with his dead grandchild cradled in my arms.

“Joe’s girl, Maggie. He’s…Mike’s talking about her,” Jakob squeaked, voice not much more than a ghost of a whisper.

“Miss Mary Magdalene, the jailbait junkie. What’s she got to do with this?” Billie Joe growled, features darkening at the mere mention of the girl.

“She was pissed at the baby when I first got here. He wouldn’t stop crying, and she was at her wits end. Joe was yelling at her to shut the kid up, so she…she, uh…” Unable to iterate what she had done to her own child in words, Jakob made a crude gesture with his hands to simulate a baby being forcefully shaken.

“Ragdoll Syndrome?” the old man spluttered, absolutely horrified. “I thought that was…a fuckin’ myth…”

“It’s called Shaken Baby Syndrome, Dad, and it’s real. Shaking a baby that hard’s like turning its brains into scrambled eggs.”

With a trembling hand running through his hair, Billie Joe swallowed hard before murmuring, “Y’sure that’s how he died, Fairy? My son let his junkie slut scramble their baby’s brains?”

“It all fits. The diagnosis is legitimate…now please, Peach, help my bury her,” I sniffled, planting a kiss on my daughter’s forehead.

The old bastard stopped cold, frozen by one solitary word. I marveled at how effortlessly I was able to gain psychological control regardless of how emotionally crippled I was. All it took was the supernatural link between the pair of us to be broken and an old, formerly dormant pet name to catch him wholly off-guard the way he had done to me countless times before. From somewhere at the opposite end of the house, I could hear a teenage spirit giggling.

“Where’d you hear that nickname?” he spat, fists clenching.

“It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is putting my daughter to rest. You people killed her.”

“He ain’t your daughter!” Billie Joe roared, rising from his chair with such force that the damn thing toppled over, sending a deafening clamor reverberating ominously about the kitchen.

“And I’m not Frankie, but that didn’t seem to stop you from treating me like him,” I snapped, not exactly sure where the accusation had originated from seeing as I hadn’t the slightest inkling pertaining to the old bastard’s treatment of his former lover. I then felt my mouth opening again to speak, making to articulate words that felt foreign within my mouth and tasted absolutely vile, but I could do nothing to stop them. “You gonna let me burn too, Peach?”

At once, we were psychosomatic equals. With the help of a ghost and a dead infant, I was able to level the clairvoyant playing field to one where I wouldn’t be so constantly trampled, and the defeated way in which Billie Joe’s face was contorted made my victory taste that much sweeter. He was trying to break through the plasmatic wall Frankie had built around me, trying to live vicariously through my thoughts and emotions as he had done so shamelessly before, but his abilities were suddenly inept.

“Go get Fairy a box from the basement. He needs somethin’ to put my gran’baby in ‘fore we bury ‘im,” the old man ordered, yet Jakob was hesitant.

“But what’s he talking about, Dad? Who’s Frankie?” he demanded, eyes wide and concerned at the events drawing out before him.

“Never you mind, boy, just get the fuckin’ box!”

“F-f-fine!” Jakob blubbered, darting away from the table and down the hallway towards the door which led to what I presumed to be the basement. Once his son was safely out of earshot, the old bastard began to laugh. I failed to find any humor in our situation, and the blatant, guttural way in which he cackled had me squirming in a matter of seconds. From wherever he was hiding, Frankie giggled yet again.

“I was wonderin’ how long it’d take you,” Billie choked out once his laughter subsided, voice reduced to a pitiable wheeze.

“How long it’d take me to what?” I interrogated, face flushing in anger. This was, without a doubt, not how I foresaw the success of my fraudulent little arrangement taking place. I imagined myself having the upper hand at all times because Frankie had found a way of cutting off his access to my mind, yet the omnipresent psychic somehow recovered from the psychological blow the second it’d been administered due to his abilities of reading everyone else still being not only intact, but thriving.

With a crafty grin, the old man chuckled, “I was wonderin’ how long it’d take b’fore you finally grew the balls to make me your bitch.”