Torn

 "I ride the dirt, I ride the tide for you..."

Metallica's "The Outlaw Torn" plays quietly on the radio, accompanied in bouts by the sound of strong winds rocking the car. She doesn't stop to consider the irony in that, given what she's here to do. Of course, the term "outlaw" implies some criminal element. If one's target isn't alive, but not dead either, is changing that detente really a crime? Not a murder, at least. The cans of gas in the trunk might argue for arson. To fall back upon a popular internet meme, one does not simply plead "purification by fire" as a court defense.

She hasn't really thought that far ahead, when there is no guarantee that she'll survive the night. Legal quandaries aside, if she were to stop and debate the situation with herself, she'd claim the high ground. If a coyote is in your yard, eating your cat, you don't wrestle with the morality of the situation, you pull the trigger. That doesn't change if the coyote passes for human.

She watches the generic neon "bar" sign flicker, the dying light of a flame that has drawn more than its fair share of moths, from two buildings over. Midtown hasn't seen much in the way of popularity, with the continued westward expansion of Union City, but even for those with low standards, Philly's is a last resort, hole-in-the-wall kind of place. Her "coyote" tends bar here several nights a week, and preys on the drunks in their spare time. Police have been contacted to investigate the bar numerous times, but it never goes anywhere. Why would it? How can you arrest a corpse? So she sits, and she waits, and she stares intently, letting her mind drift.

++++

Philly's was a favorite of her ex girlfriend. That's what started bringing her here. Dive bars had never really been her thing, but Jamie had a way of convincing her to do pretty much whatever. Plus, it wasn't a cliche "gay bar." Dive or not, it was just a bar. Two people going out for drinks, without needing any type of special place, where no one bothered them. Not at first, anyway.

They had been regulars for a couple of months when the new girl was hired on. She seemed an okay sort. Learned the names of regulars fairly quickly, always knew what you liked to order, personable if a little cold, somehow brought in increased business. Even invited people to keep drinking after hours in her apartment above the bar. But it was during one of those invites that she noticed something wasn't quite right with the bartender. They were all smoking, just cigarettes, and when she offered Jamie a light too close to the bartender, the new girl hissed at her and jumped back. Of course no one else had noticed, thanks to their drinking, but she was sober enough that her jaw dropped open in amazement.

Things fell apart from there. She started paying more attention to everything at Philly's, nursing any booze she ordered rather than getting drunk like before. She observed how certain regulars had stopped coming in, while others looked even more washed out and unhealthy. And the new girl never took a drink, regardless of how many patrons ordered one for her, not even water. The observing didn't go unnoticed by the bartender, who began making passive aggressive statements and veiled threats. She ignored them, until the new girl made a play for Jamie. Worse than the action itself was the response: Jamie actually went for it. True, they weren't married, but two years of dating wasn't a lightly-discarded commitment for most people. And not only was she tossed aside easily, but cruelly as well, subjected to insults and physical force from someone that she had loved, as if she were suddenly, and passionately, hated.

Moving on would have been the smart play. Were it just the relationship failing, she probably would have. It was the wrongness of the new girl that kept her calling and texting, trying to pull Jamie back, even going so far as to get law enforcement involved. But when confronted, the bartender did... something... to the police officers each time until finally, they arrested her instead, leaving Jamie and the new girl to their own devices. She was released, and resolved to just walk away.

Then she found out through former mutual friends that Jamie had died. Suicide, they said. Cremation, no funeral, no cemetery plot, no closure or place to even say goodbye.

++++

She inhales slowly, deeply, to choke back the tears. She focuses on the anger, not the sadness, to give her the strength to do what she came to do. The others that she had met in the past few months told her what the new girl was, what she needed to do to put it to rest. She pats the borrowed Taurus .40 caliber pistol sitting on her lap for reassurance. They warned that the gun would only slow it down, that she needed the fire. She hopes she brought enough gasoline, but reasons that a bar full of liquor will go up in flames without too much of a starter.

The last customer car leaves the parking lot, and she knows that she doesn't have much time to prepare her assault. Leaving the keys in the ignition, she pops her trunk and retrieves her cans. Sprinting as best she is able with the load, she runs to the back side employee entrance of Philly's, and splashes half a gallon of petrochemical goodness all over the door, trailing the remainder of the container to the apartment stairs. She covers them, as well as an old rag, as much as she is able with a second can, before striking several matches and throwing them into the liquid. With time running out, she takes her last can, stuffs the rag into the opening, and bounds for the front of the bar, and its large-paned windows. She can vaguely make out movement inside as she sparks the rag, twists her body backwards, and heaves the gasoline molotov through the glass. The shattering sound of bottles and yelling following is like music to her ears and she pulls the Taurus, waiting for her predator to run from the front entrance.

Her target isn't behind the bar this evening, however. Instead, someone she has never seen before frantically tries to put out the flames as they grow rapidly out of control. She screams as she realizes what she has done, as she knows she can't save the innocent and all her moral posturing won't change the fact that she is a killer. She only has moments to spend hating herself before she hears the tearing crash of someone breaking through the upstairs apartment's door.

Dashing around the building heedless of the smoke and flames, she sees the new girl on the ground, rolling to extinguish embers in its clothing, pieces of wood from the door stuck in its smoldering flesh. With a shout of rage, she aims the gun and squeezes the trigger multiple times in quick succession. Unused to recoil, she misses half of the shots, but the rounds that do hit cause the bartender to flinch and spasm. That isn't enough, as it staggers to its feet, equal parts fear and anger, fight or flight warring across its smoke-streaked face.

"What? You? You bitch!" It shrieks through a fang-filled mouth, charging her like a wild animal.

She is hit like a three hundred pound linebacker sacking a one hundred pound quarterback, driven back and down onto the unyielding, flaming-debris covered concrete. Dazed, she lay almost entirely helpless as it rakes razor claws across her chest, shredding clothes and flesh like paper. Guttural curses, more a cacophony of sound than actual words, escape its throat as it thrashes wildly. Through the pain, she tries to push it off of her with one hand, bucking her hips for leverage as her other hand feels around for her gun. Her fingertips find a solid portion of the upstairs door. She grips the wood as tightly as she can, feeling the tell-tale heat of fire upon it, and thrusts it towards the bartender. It screeches and pushes itself off and away from her, moving as swiftly away from the fire as it can given their relative positions. Her fingers blistering from the temperature, she throws the fiery piece at it, and dives for her gun.

The parking lot takes its toll in flesh from her as she skids across the cement, but she manages to come up with the Taurus. No hesitation as she empties the remainder of the magazine into the bartender's torso. The impact of the rounds and the flaming board are too much for it to continue fighting against her. Injured and spent, it gives up any pretense to humanity and flees from her with an inhuman speed. She tries to give chase but her own wounds bring her to her knees.

Pressing her burned hand to her chest to staunch as much of her bleeding as she can, she half runs, half stumbles back to her car, with the sounds of sirens coming closer. A small grace that the area is otherwise deserted at this time of night, she struggles to start the vehicle and put it into drive, knowing she only needs to get a few blocks away to be clear of the carnage. She hopes, more than anything, that the bartender won't survive the attack, that it will be worth the death of the innocent, and of Jamie, if it can be stopped permanently, taking at least some small comfort in knowing that there won't be any more victims at Philly's.

It never occurs to her that she left so much of herself in the parking lot, and that the past encounters with law enforcement will be remembered...