Seldom Seen in August by Kealan Patrick Burke Read Free Book Online

asked
Cochran.
    “We’ve already run through the first
stage. Exposure to select memories to gauge your
reaction.”
    “Which was disappointing if the reviews
are to be believed.”
    “Yes, but as I said, hardly
surprising.”
    A thought occurred to him then. “You
said you weren’t able to isolate individual memories, didn’t
you?”
    Cochran seemed pleased. “So you were
listening after all?”
    “Can’t help it,” Wade said. “My ears
don’t listen to reason.”
    “Well, you’re correct. We weren’t able to isolate individual memories. But we figured
it out. Now, not only can we pick and choose the memory, we can transfer them.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “ It means,” Cochran told
him. “That the memories you experienced upstairs didn’t
significantly affect you for a good reason.”
    “Which is?”
    “Not all of them were
yours.”
    “Hardly a shock,” Wade said. “I wasn’t
there to see the kid die. I’ve never even seen the old w…your wife
before. And…”
    “Correct, but the last one, the hooker,
couldn’t have come from anybody’s brain but yours.”
    For the first time since meeting the
old man, Wade felt a pinch of anger in his belly. There was no
denying that Gail, a girl he had loved, if only for a short time,
had been a prostitute. God knows she’d turned him away enough times
or asked him to wait in the diner downstairs because she was
“entertaining” but then as now, he hated hearing her called a
‘hooker’. It was, he knew, the typical reaction of the blind, those
people who judged her based on how she looked and what she did
rather than who she was. And if they’d known, they might have been
surprised to find that she had a college degree (though in what, he
no longer recalled), and a six-year old child she’d adored (but who
lived with her mother for obvious reasons), and that she’d played
piano like a virtuoso. She hooked to make enough money to buy a
house for herself and her son, and she’d been pretty close to
realizing that goal when she’d decided she’d had enough of Wade. A
violent man by nature, he nevertheless managed to rein in his
temper for her. Hurting her wasn’t the way to secure her love, to
persuade her that her life would be better with him in it, even if
it only served as a constant reminder of what she’d done in the
years before she made a clean break. So instead of beating her,
he’d introduced her to drugs, and that had worked like a charm.
She’d grown to depend on him again, to appreciate him, and that had
lasted until the night she threatened him with his own gun. By that
time, the drugs had completely taken hold of her, leaving her
delusional, unreachable. When she’d pleaded with him to let her go,
he knew she was talking to the cocaine in her system, in her brain,
so that when he killed her, it was a mercy.
    “Did I strike a nerve at last?” Cochran
asked.
    “Nope.”
    “Ah well,” Cochran said, sounding not
at all disappointed, “There’s plenty of time.”
    Wade sighed. “Okay, let’s quit fucking
around. What am I doing here?” As he spoke, he tugged his arm up as
much as the restraint would allow. The zip tie caught on his
wrist-bone and moved no further. It would though, he was sure of
it.
    Cochran smiled broadly and gestured at
the room around them. “It’s actually quite clever. I shifted the
focus of the project as needed to keep its validity in the eyes of
those who might be swayed to pull the plug.”
    Wade closed his eyes, exasperated.
“Good for you.”
    “I proposed, instead of concentrating
solely on mental patients, that we expand our scope to include
violent criminals. Not that I believe there’s much of a difference,
mind you. I suggested we build a fully functional neighborhood
right in the middle of Harperville’s black zone, where recidivism
is out of control.”
    “Black zone?”
    “The area worst affected by
crime.”
    “Careful Reverend Sharpton doesn’t get
wind of that.”
    “It