Chapter 21: Score one for the Dead
Chapter 20
Score one for the Dead
For a number of weeks, he had been getting voice mails from the new district director. It seemed that one of his former clients was suing the department for not approving her benefits. After Nom had visited the Manor and settled his old accounts, it was time to settle the old business he had left over from his time as a state employee. He might not be able to fix such a broken system, but he could take out some of the trash.
The director claimed that since Nom was a former state employee, he could compel him to actively assist the state in its defense. Personally, Nom hoped that the state went down in flames. The client, Mrs. Winters, had been denied her application for state emergency relief funds. As a result, her heat had been cut off. Normally this would only be an inconvenience, but when temperatures plunged below minus twenty, it became a disaster.
Mrs. Winters left to go to work one of her four jobs in an effort to feed her three kids. The eldest, a sixteen-year-old, was left in charge while she was gone. The teen wrapped everyone up in extra coats and blankets, and they sat huddled for warmth over the night. When Mrs. Winters arrived the next morning, her three-year-old son was dead. Her five-year-old needed most of one foot amputated. Her teenage daughter had to have her ears and nose partially removed, all due to frost bite.
There were other emergency services available such as warming centers, but one could hardly expect a minor to know such things. The facts of the case were plain. Mrs. Cobb had personally denied the case under her executive management authority, despite the fact that the clients were eligible for relief.
Nom had told the new director, a Mr. Tomas, this over the phone twice. His response was that Nom would have to come in and give a formal deposition or face a subpoena. Nom gave the director his address. Without a subpoena he would rather spontaneously combust than set foot in District A ever again. He wasn't really worried about it; in all probability he would be out on the road when the process server or sheriff's deputy came by. Unless they served him in person, the subpoena would be meaningless.
That was before he had the ability to restore some justice to the world. At first, Nom had decided that maintaining a low profile would be the best idea for avoiding an end of days style intervention with the police. But, after neutralizing his soon to be dead relatives, Nom was exceedingly interested in righting a few more wrongs.
His family would never report his presence to the police, but he would have to officially go on the record if he was to return to District A. With that price to pay, there was no reason to avoid his own apartment anymore. If the police came, well, he would deal with them as quietly as he could. He was a man with a mission now.
After leaving the Manor, he stopped by his hotel room, gathered his possessions, and headed north to his apartment. Forty-five minutes later he was back in the familiar ambiance of home. A quick check of the timed growth lamp and watering system showed that his tree was doing fine. The old bugger had been in his charge since his mother had lent it to him thirty years before for a school project. Careful trimming had left him with a six-foot bonsai. A few moments with the shears insured it would stay in that state.
His mail would, unfortunately, have to wait. The post office opened in the morning, and he could remove the hold then. In the meantime, there was a fifth of Tanqueray in the freezer with his name on it.
The first three-finger tumbler went down smoothly. Pouring another, Nom headed to the living room, bottle in hand. A few moments on his laptop had him connected to his spam email account. It was the garbage address he gave out and rarely ever checked. A search of the inbox gave him what he wanted, the last message from the new director of District A.
It was a pleading, yet threatening message, saying he had only six days to come in for his deposition, or the state would seek to have him cited for contempt of court. The message was five days old, but it would serve Nom's purposes quite nicely. Since he could hardly come in on a Saturday the next weekday would have to do. He tapped off a quick reply. He would be willing to come in on Monday at eleven. He would be setting the time, not the director.
Nom sat back, and drained the second tumbler of gin. It was followed by three more. As the warm syrupy feeling poured over his head, Nom streamed a random comedy and settled in for the evening.
Monday morning came. He rose early and went for a walk along his favorite route. It took him on a great six-and-a-half-mile circle around his home. If he left in the hours before the twilight, he could watch the first glows of dawn over a local swamp. The painted steam and sudden silence from the frogs was a vision of perfection.
When he finished, a shower and breakfast saw his morning concluded. A few minutes of rummaging in his junk drawer produced his old state employee ID. The top shelf of his closet provided his attaché case, which he stocked with the needs of the day. Ten minutes with his steamer and iron saw his best suit looking its finest. Nom settled in on the sofa. He whiled away the rest of the morning on his favorite online sport, trolling.
At nine-thirty he polished his boots. Ten came, and he dressed. Ten minutes later Nom was back in his personal car for the first time in three months. He left the Miata in a guest spot in case he needed it again. Ten-forty-five found him pulling into the guest parking section of the state complex in downtown Pontiac, Michigan. Five-to-eleven saw him signing in with security and presenting his credentials to the waiting guard. Elven o'clock came, and for the first time in almost a year, Nom was setting foot in Oakland County District A of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Bile rose in his throat, and the long suppressed rage began to boil in his gut. The guard had made a call when Nom presented himself in the first floor lobby. She had been instructed by whoever was on the other side to see him to the secured lobby on the seventh floor. There Nom had once again presented his ID and had been asked to sign in. After being given a visitors pass, Nom was asked to wait.
The lobby was far larger than the one on the first floor. It was designed to sit almost a hundred people. The back half was subdivided into interview cubicles, a pleasant new addition since Nom's time with the state. A quick glance showed him that workers could come, log into a terminal, and deal with clients in this controlled environment. Had Nom still worked here, it would no longer be necessary to disinfect his cube after every visit. Though he would lose some of the power dragging a client through the cube farm had given him, this was a vast improvement.
Nom's wait was not a long one. No more than five minutes had passed when the door to the security air lock opened. The face of Mrs. Santiago showed its usual Cheshire cat smile. With a finger she beckoned Nom to follow her. Pushing his rage down a bit, he complied.
The security air lock was a simple idea. One set of doors to the secured lobby led into a ten by ten-foot room. There was nothing in the room other than the usual fake office plant or two. On the far side there was a duplicate to the lobby door. Both doors were opened with an electronic key card, and neither would open unless the other was closed.
Saying nothing, Nom followed Mrs. Santiago into the bowels of the cube farm. She led him to the far side of the building to the executive conference room. Nom would have preferred to take a few moments to stop and speak with his old friends, but Santiago led him on without offering.
The executive conference room was a windowless tomb. Stuffy and packed with ancient surplus chairs, it was the place hopes and dreams went to die. The table down the middle could fit at most fifteen people, the chairs around the periphery perhaps another thirty. Nom had spent countless seminar hours in this room, and he was loathed to enter it again.
His only solace was the pleasant sight of a familiar face sitting alone across the table from the door. Mrs. Cobb stood and extended her hand in greeting. The circle was now complete.
Nom set his attaché case down on the table and took Mrs. Cobb's offered hand.
"Ma'am." He said. "I won't say that it is good to see you but am certainly intrigued by your presence." Nom turned to Mrs. Santiago who was coming around the table. "I was under the impression that this was to be a deposition. I don't see a stenographer, or other recording device. I haven't been introduced to any lawyers. What exactly is going on?" He asked.
"We'll get right to that Mr. Deplume." She said.
Won't you take a seat please?" Mrs. Cobb said, gesturing at the chair opposite her's.
"I'll consider it." Nom said. "That is, once a witness is present, or some means for recording this session is turned on. Otherwise I'm walking right out that door."
Mrs. Santiago began leafing through some of the papers on her side of the table. "We didn't think you would want this meeting recorded, Mr. Deplume. But you may if you wish." She said without raising her head.
Mrs. Cobb nodded in agreement. "I wouldn't object if you record this session of ours."
"Sure." Mrs. Santiago said. "I'm sure he has a smart phone."
"Alright." Nom said, wondering when they would spring the trap they clearly were baiting.
It was the work of only a moment to unlock the home screen to his phone and open the camera app. Turning on the selfie camera, he propped it on the marker tray for the white board at the head of the room. Checking the view and red dot to be sure it was working, he began.
"I am Nom DePlume." He glanced at his watch. "It is September eighth, at eleven-sixteen AM. With me are Mrs. Cobb, my former supervisor at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and her immediate supervisor, the deputy district director, Mrs. Santiago. We are in the executive conference room of Oakland County District A. I was informed, that I was to give a deposition." Nom turned from the camera to face his foes. "Mrs. Santiago, or Mrs. Cobb, would either of you please be kind enough to explain to me why there are neither attorneys, nor recording personnel for the state present?"
Mrs. Santiago looked up with her left eye and offered a small shrug. "We wanted to first make sure, that you wanted to be deposed."
Nom felt his old rage boil at a more vigorous pace. He was having trouble keeping it down.
"Ma'am, I was told that if I did not come, even though I no longer work for you or the state, that I would be subpoenaed. Furthermore, I would be subject to a deposition or full testimony before a court."
"That won't be necessary." Mrs. Santiago said, sliding the top paper from her stack over to Nom.
"What is this?" He asked not bothering to read it.
"It's a statement for you to sign." She replied.
"And it states?" He asked.
"That you recommended to me that I reject Mrs. Winters application for aid." Mrs. Cobb said.
"Why would I sign that?" Nom said, his voice growing cold.
"Because you are a former employee." She said.
"Meaning what?" Nom asked. "Specifically."
"Meaning… That this would end the matter here and now. At the time, you were a state employee. Individual state workers cannot be sued in the federal courts; they have qualified immunity. They also cannot be sued in state courts. Now the office can be sued, the state can be sued, but not us employees." Mrs. Cobb replied.
"So I can't be sued." Nom said. "You can't be sued. Why in the world, would I want to shut down a lawsuit for a woman I believe was wronged? Mrs. Winters lost a child. There was bodily harm to two more children. She deserves justice. If she can't drag your boney Irish ass through the mud, then she can at least get paid by the state that employs you."
Mrs. Cobb's eyes bulged "She will get justice."
Mrs. Santiago finally looked up with both eyes and met Nom's. Crossing her hands on the table, she said: "Mr. Deplume, this case is costing the department hundreds of thousands in legal fees…"
"Good." Nom replied.
Mrs. Santiago seemed taken aback. "Mr. Deplume, surely a moral minded liberal person, such as yourself, does not wish to waste tax payer dollars. That's valuable state resources being thrown away on a law suit. One that will inevitably end in only one possible way."
"Ma'am, I'm not being sued, I'm only here as a witness under threat of subpoena. I'm fairly sure, that what you two are doing will count as both witness tampering and obstruction of justice. You here," Nom said, gesturing at Mrs. Cobb. "Refused to certify a legitimate client of this agency. Not for just cause, but because doing so would torture me. Well, finally a client is rising up and trying to get justice. I only wish the dozens of others who suffered the same fate would join her in a class action!"
"Mr. Deplume…" Mrs. Cobb said with a condescending voice. "You have no real way of knowing, what motivations I may, or may not, have had. I gave reasons, ones firmly based in policy for every denial I issued to one of your clients."
"I think that will have to be decided by a jury of your peers. I won't obstruct that process by perjuring myself. Why the hell would you think I would? Why would you let me tape you trying? What the HELL is your real game here?" He exclaimed.
Mrs. Santiago shook her head. "Should this case go to trial, you will undoubtedly be forced onto the witness stand. Mrs. Cobb, myself, and your former director Mrs. Camp as well. There, it will be your word against the three of us. Notice that we haven't said, or even hinted at, any agreement with your assertion that we are pressuring you to sign this statement. For the record, your statement that we are is false. Your little tape over there will only show that we offered you a prepared statement. We suggested, without any apparent pressure that you sign it. After your tape is ruled immaterial, we will go on to inform the court of your mental break down last year. We will add in your clear unreliability as a witness. Mrs. Winter's case will be tossed. She will get nothing. On the other hand, if you sign? We can convince her attorney to withdraw her suit in exchange for some mutually agreeable settlement and a non-disclosure agreement. You get to go back to your new life. Life here at District A goes on. Mrs. Winter's gets some agreed upon amount for her justice. Everybody wins."
Nom's rage evaporated. His mind was clear and back in the moment. Leaning back in his chair, he convulsed with wave after wave of laughter. He laughed until his ribs hurt. He laughed until his eyes ran, first with a flood of tears, and finally dry.
"Mrs. Santiago, you never will change will you?" He said still shaking from his mirth. "Mrs. Cobb, I see that you are in support of this little plot, but then why wouldn't you be? If the state is found to be liable, then the governor's office would order an inquiry. Then you might get that pink slip you've been deserving for all these years. I have no intention of granting you such an easy way out."
"So, you'll sign?" Callie said, extending him a pen.
"I might." He replied. "But I have something to show you first."
With a bit of trepidation, she withdrew the pen. "What might that be?"
Nom reached into his attaché case. Seeing the widening of her eyes he scoffed. "Please! I had to go through a metal detector, and this went through an x-ray machine before I even left the first floor lobby. Do you really think I'd try to smuggle a weapon in?"
He pulled out his lap top, opened it, and unlocked the screen. Spinning it around to face the pair of them, he gestured at the device. The pair looked at the contents in confusion.
"An article on peristalsis?" Mrs. Santiago finally said after reading for a moment.
"That's right." Nom said. "Peristalsis. See, I've gone through a few changes since you last saw me. Like how right now the two of you are going through a change, though, you don't know it yet."
Mrs. Cobb cleared her throat. "Mr. Deplume, we are very busy and have little time to spare for this meeting. I'm sure your article is fascinating, but what does it have to—"
Mrs. Cobb gasped and made a choking sound, clutching at her throat.
"What was that? I couldn't make out the conclusion of your statement." Nom asked.
Mrs. Cobb and Santiago sat in their chairs, eyes bulging, unable to utter a sound.
"Well, let me fill you in. It seems that, despite being a militant atheist, I have somehow come into possession of supernatural powers. I've been experimenting, doing a little here, a little there. A fortnight ago, I took out an entire mega church in Texas. A few days ago, I cleaned out some of the crap that had built up in my family tree. How have I been doing this, you might ask. Well, you might, if you had functioning laryngeal nerves."
"I can do that. Kill a part, or the whole of you any way I want, whenever I want, just by wishing for what I want. Right now the two of you are an excellent example. There is a condition called hypertonia. It's a rather sad state. The victims develop lesions on their motor neurons, the part of the nervous system that tells individual muscles when to fire and when to relax. Normally, only part of the body would be affected. But wouldn't you just know it, both of you have it for everything below your necks."
"Right now, every voluntary muscle you have down there is being screamed at: FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! DON'T LET GO! That's why you sit there stiff as a board. Your voices? Well, I had to add in the extra step of killing the laryngeal nerve, so that your vocal cords would finally be silent."
For a moment he stood pondering. He drank in the sound of the florescent lights pulsing above him, without the cursed sound of those two hades-spawned voices. He pulled out his chair and sat relaxing. Mrs. Santiago and Cobb, stiff as forged iron below the neck, twitched their faces in desperation.
Nom, smiling in utter relaxed ecstasy, looked from one to the other, drinking in their suffering. It was a nectar straight from the teat of god. It had been his due for more than a year. With that sweet taste filling him, Nom set the stage for their final scene.
"Ladies, normally I would prefer to have an exchange of words with you two. Give you a chance to explain yourselves. But, I find that I am simply too overjoyed with your suffering, to ever permit you spoil it with your self-justifications and evil. So here we are. MRS. COBB, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP THAT!" He shouted at the end.
Mrs. Cobb, frustrated at her predicament, had begun to surrender to an old nervous tick. Her left eye bulged and the muscle around it ticked like hands on a watch. It was not the first time Nom had been forced to witness this dystonia. Whenever Mrs. Cobb had been her most vile, that eye had twitched in exactly this way. It continued despite Nom's command.
"Well, perhaps another interlude before your final act." He said.
"Mrs. Cobb. A few years ago, a famous atheist that I'm rather fond of, had a verbal sparring match with a Christian cleric. Since, like you, that cleric was Catholic, this seems apropos."
"The cleric asked him if he died, and found out that he was wrong, that god was real, what would he say to that god? After a bit of building up, Steven landed a beautiful blow. He said that he would ask that god, why he created a worm called Lo Loa. This worm lives in Africa and is the bane of children there. They are bit by the carrier of the worm called a mango fly. The worm then travels through the child's body till it reaches the head. There it burrows into the eyes, and begins to grow. The end result? A terrified child, in agony loses the infected eye ,eaten by the growing worm. Steven wanted to ask that god: How any being could be so evil as to create so vile a creature as the Lo Loa worm."
"Now, what I love about your current condition, is that you can still feel just about everything. You just lack the ability to control most of it. So, I wish for you to have an accelerated case of those worms."
Mrs. Cobb's face flinched. Sweat pooled at every pore as she clenched her jaw.
"Funny, isn't it? How you think you can feel them in you? In reality they are so small that you won't feel much at first. Part of my little ability, is that I can actually look into you and see them. They want to follow their normal life cycle, but I can't let them do that. They want to go to your lungs and breed, but we're not interested in that are we? Let's fast forward their little lives and have them migrate up your circulatory system to your head. Ah! There, the first one has reached your left eye."
Mrs. Cobb chomped, as if trying to remove an invisible gag. Her face and scalp writhed in her desperate attempts to control her own body. Turning red then scarlet, her face widened in first shock and then pain.
"So you feel them in there?" Nom asked. "Can't say I'm surprised. From what I've read, when they eat through the whites of your eyes, it is supposed to be particularly agonizing."
The eye began to leak clear fluid and blood, as the hyper accelerated nematode worms did their assigned task. Slowly, over the course of five minutes, Cobb's left eye broke down from a luster of life to a yellow and blackened goo that dribbled down her face.
When the task was finished Nom nodded.
"Don't worry. I won't let them do the other eye. I want you to see your fate coming." He said.
Nom wished the worms dead and their corpses joined the slime on Cobb's face.
"Now, you both seemed confused when I showed you my article on peristalsis. So let me enlighten you."
"First, what is peristalsis? Well it's the proper term for one of your involuntary functions. Your alimentary canal, also called your gastral intestinal tract, is largely outside of your conscious control. Yes, if you are stressed, you can induce acid or nausea. But, to a large part, it does its business without consulting your conscious mind. Peristalsis is the wave motion in the smooth muscles that the tract generates. By first opening to make room and then closing they can push what you eat through your guts while it is processed."
"Its rather like a conveyer-belt on an assembly line. Like a conveyer-belt, when running normally, peristalsis takes what you eat, down your esophagus to the stomach. There it sits, getting digested, and then it is moved on. First to your small intestine and then the large one. After your body has taken what it needs, and has dumped the garbage produced by your liver, it tells you to find a rest room and evacuate the resulting waste."
"Funny thing is that this process can be run in reverse. You do it every time you vomit. Your stomach and esophagus reverse course and fire out their contents backwards. Well, that is what I have in mind, only a bit more slowly."
"That unsettling feeling you both have right now is not only your stomachs and esophagi reversing but the entire system. Now I'm locking your mouths and lips shut with a muscle spasm."
Mrs. Cobb and Santiago's cheeks slowly began to swell. Three eyes bulged in fear and disgust.
"For years, you two have spewed nothing but verbal shit from your mouths, crushing the hopes of the starving, the freezing, and the homeless. You crushed the souls of workers who wanted nothing more of their lives than to help the most needy people in their communities. You filed false disciplinary charges and generally drove them insane. All with the shit that spewed forth from your nasty little mouths. Tell me how does it feel to have real shit in there?"
Mrs. Cobb and Santiago were clearly having a hard time breathing, and were choking with the effort to bring in just a bit of fresh air.
"Some people are unaware of just how interconnected their mouths and noses are. The back of the mouth, just behind the soft pallet, leads up into the nasal cavity, the sinuses, and the nose. With your mouths full of shit, your sinus, nasal cavities, and noses are starting to take the overflow."
Their cheeks bulging with the torrent, small dribbles of fluid began to trickle from their noses.
"Now." Nom said. "I'm going to relax your reflexes, and let you breathe easier. I'm going to shut off your body's natural gagging reflex and carbon dioxide detector."
The look of relief on their faces was palpable. The flushed skin began to relax, as the blood rush lessened. In synchronized actions their chests rose and fell, the fluid in their noses gurgled as bits of air were pushed out.
After a few moments the air stopped, and the fluid slowly continued its trickle.
"Thank you for relaxing ladies. Did either of you know that when you feel the need for oxygen, that you are only telling yourself that is what you are feeling?" From the looks in their eyes, Nom took the answer to be 'No.'
"Well, your body is actually detecting the presence of carbon dioxide in your blood. CO 2 is naturally acidic, and so your body need only look for a drop in the pH of your blood to do this. When you breathe, you permit that CO 2 to leave your blood, and the pH rises. That feeling of fresh air, is really just the feeling of less acid in you."
"While I've been talking here, you two have still been breathing. But, your mouths are closed aren't they? Your noses are literally filled with shit, not air aren't they? So where has the air you two have been breathing coming from?"
The horror on their faces, was the pièce de résistance Nom had been craving for more than a year.
"That is right, ladies. Your nasty shit spewing mouths have finally spewed their shit, not onto another innocent victim, but into your lungs." He said.
As he looked into them, Nom saw that virtually all of the air in both sets of lungs had been replaced with the contents of their guts. The true shit was only just now making its way up the esophagus, but that mattered little to Nom.
"Ladies, assuming you have a normal blood oxygen reserve, you have at most another two minutes of consciousness. After that, your brains will begin to slowly shut down and die. Death, true death, is still ten or more minutes away. But your brains will begin dying about now." He said looking at the wall clock.
"Your vision will soon grow spotty, then brown, then dark, and finally black. It will seem as if the world is turning down the volume. Then you will never know this reality again."
Thin brown ooze began to slither from their nostrils as the three eyes flickered. When they closed for the final time, Nom stood. He collected his phone and left the room. Closing the door behind him, he was pleased to see that one of his old friends was in a cube not too far away. Pausing a moment to exchange pleasantries and news, Nom left five minutes after he felt the life fires of his two tormenters extinguish. As he left, he mentioned to the district secretary that the deputy director had mentioned feeling ill as he left. She might want to check on the pair.
As he stepped through the airlock towards the elevators, the resulting scream bathed him in shivers of delight. No known poison or assault could have caused the deaths he had inflicted. It would be a medical mystery, but one that could not be tied in any way to him. With a smile, Nom watched the elevator doors close for a final time.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone