Cry Baby by David Jackson Read Free Book Online

have to implements of pain and death?
    Unless, of course, your baby is snatched violently from you and hurt. Hurt so bad it screams for you to intervene.
    Oh, yes, she thinks. Put me in a room with that guy, and give me a weapon. In fact, no weapon needed. I will tear him apart with my bare hands. I will gouge out his eyes and bite off his ears and stamp my heels into his—
    ‘ERIN! Get with the program. Are you signed up for this or not?’
    ‘Yes. Yes. A weapon. Uhm…’ She looks helplessly around her.
    ‘The kitchen,’ he says in despair. ‘Something sharp maybe?’
    She goes where she is told. Slides a huge carving knife out of the wood block on the counter.
    ‘That’s a bad-ass knife, all right. But a little impractical, don’t you think? What are you going to do, walk around the city looking like you’re Norman Bates’s mother?’
    She returns the knife to the block. Takes out a smaller one. Black plastic handle, five inch blade, sharp serrated edge.
    ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry, it’s more than capable of doing the job. Now put it in your pocket and let’s get out of here.’
    Again she’s slow to respond. She stares down at the knife. The last time she held it, she was cutting into tomatoes. It’s hard to imagine herself thrusting it into the flesh of a human being. And is thrusting best, or do you slash? Or chop? How much force is required for such an act? Do you have to be strong? Or does it part flesh easily, like slicing through a soft peach? Do you hold the knife in the usual way, with its blade upward, or do you hold it the other way round, ready to plunge it downward into your victim, again à la Norman Bates’s mother?
    ‘ ERIN!’
    She jumps. ‘All right, all right.’ She’s nowhere near ready for this. She doesn’t know how to kill, has no inclination to kill.
    She hurries to the door. Hurries because she senses she has pushed her baby’s kidnapper to his limit, and not because she is eager to carry out his bidding.
    She slips the knife into her pocket. Pulls open the door to her apartment.
    She lets out a small cry when she sees the man standing in the hallway, staring right at her.

Wednesday, January 5
    12.05 AM
     
    Says Doyle, ‘You eaten recently? You want something to eat? A drink, maybe? You want a soda?’
    ‘Do you have Seven-Up?’ says the man.
    ‘Uhm, I’m not sure. I could go take a look if you like.’
    ‘I like Seven-Up. Especially from the Seven-Eleven. Seven is prime. Eleven is also prime.’
    ‘They are, huh?’ says Doyle, trying to hold the attention of this man by feigning interest on a topic he knows nothing about.
    ‘Yeah. Seven is also a lucky number. Thirteen is unlucky, but it’s also prime. Thirteen is made up from four plus nine, both unlucky in Japan. In Japanese, the word for four sounds like the word for death, and the word for nine sounds like the word for pain. Very unlucky. Very bad numbers.’
    ‘And let me guess,’ says Doyle with mock enthusiasm. ‘Four and nine are both prime, right?’
    Doyle thinks he’s hit on something when the man actually lets his eyes alight on Doyle’s face for more than one second. At last, he thinks, I’ve made a connection.
    But then the man turns his head aside, as if turning to an invisible companion next to him. He jerks a thumb in Doyle’s direction and says to his imaginary friend, ‘You hear that? He thinks four and nine are primes. You believe that? Ha!’
    Doyle feels instantly ridiculed. Jesus, how am I letting a guy like this make me feel two inches tall?
    He says, ‘So … they’re not primes?’
    ‘Ha! Not primes. Of course not. They’re squares. No number can be both a square and a prime, but it can be a square of a prime. Four and nine are squares of primes.’
    Doyle’s head is whirling now, and he’s starting to feel like this is going really off-topic. That in addition to making him feel like the class dunce.
    ‘Tell you what,’ he says. ‘I’ll make you a deal. You tell me