Free Spotted Lily by Anna Tambour Page A

eyes. I thought he might make a noise through his gag, some primal scream, but he made no sound at all.
    Brett perched on a part of the gym's extensive anatomy. 'You have the choice,' he said to me. 'Draw and quarter, difficult in this space. Though for you...' And he bowed gallantly. 'Or boiling in oil, or impaling, or crucifixion of course, or the old intestine wrap, or a turn of the screw here...' And he reached to demonstrate, bringing on another display of eyeball exposure and lash-fluttering, but no noise.
    I threw my hand up, which stopped Brett.
    'Or,' he continued, 'there's always a simple hanging, though I wouldn't choose hanging as the ceiling here is a trifle inconveniently low.'
    He looked to me, but Jim there was quite a gobstopper. I simply couldn't answer. I could only goggle.
    'Well then, though we might be troubled afterwards by a gritty residue between the floorboards, you might prefer the currently popular burial in sand with only his head sticking out, and stoning him till he's dead. Or—'
    I tore my eyes from Jim, whose eyes were now shut though his eyelashes trembled like leaves under rain. 'You're pathological!' I whispered at Brett with all my might.
    He winced, I think.
    'Where did you get him?' I asked, not that it mattered.
    'Why, you were so upset, I grabbed him before he left, just in case.' And he smiled winningly.
    'You mean he was here all along when we were discussing...' I couldn't continue. But I had to, so I forced myself. ' Listening to us?'
    'If he could hear through my bedroom door. Is there a problem?'
    I sat on an unoccupied limb of the cold chrome body of the gym. 'That was very considerate, Brett.' I leaned closer to Jim. He looked both exhausted and attentive to the drift of our conversation. It annoyed me that during his painful death being discussed and this discussion occurring after his night on a rack, he still controlled himself to a ridiculous degree. Not a quiver of muscle nor a dribble through the anal outlet.
    He'd stay right where he was, I decided, until we decided what to do.
    'Brett,' I said. 'Let's go to your room.'
    His room was as bare as before, except for his bag and trunk at the head of his rice-cracker mattress.
    I sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed and he stretched out at the head, leaning back against his trunk.
    He waited for me to talk, so I did.
    'Thank you, Brett, for thinking of me. No one else has ever been as thoughtful of my feelings. But you can't just kill someone because he's in the wrong place at the wrong time.'
    'I don't.' Vertical lines appeared between his brows. 'You do.'
    'I don't do anything of the sort!'
    'Angela! Desirée. You. You people. You always have.'
    He could infuriate . 'What are you talking about? Are you insane ?' Why, indeed, was I asking?
    Probably better if I hadn't asked.
    'I hate false accusations,' he murmured. The room fogged with that choking smell I had tasted once before.
    I struggled to breathe. To understand.
    'Justice!' he yelled.
    'Gawhhhh.'
    'Justice,' he repeated in a conversational timbre, as he waved the fug away. 'Angela,' he said. 'Most of the people you condemn and kill were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And whether I meet them or the others do, or they disappear as if they never were ... is all a continuation of the same. The state of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like Jim.'
    He sensed that I was not with him. 'Do you know anything about the Inquisition?'
    I nodded. 'A bit. They killed a lot of people who didn't believe in Jesus, and killed more to make them believe. And there were a lot of people killed for reasons I never got down.' (History 101. I passed, barely.)
    'Did the Grand Inquisitor,' he quiz-showed, 'when he died, come to hell or heaven's gate?'
    It depended, didn't it, on what people thought of him? Mean old cuss, but then he was the Grand Inquisitor. Did he suffer his fall in respect before, or after death? I didn't know, so couldn't answer.
    'And did,' Brett