An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Six

by Leon Manna

The following story is a work of fiction.

I have dark circles around my eyes.

Leon holds up...  I know that.  I don't know why though.  They still think that's who I am and apparently haven't even considered the fantastic possibility, or the reality, that I'm not Leon.  I just can't figure out how.  It doesn't make sense.  Did I really fine tune him to be that believable?  They didn't get my DNA before I "died."  Maybe some bureaucratic error f*cked it up?  Paperwork got shuffled wrong, or placed into the wrong file cabinet, or a shredder, or an evidence room that caught on fire?  But why question a good thing?

They had Moe take an MMPI test - Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - and he matched the personality type I had after they did a profile.  So close, in fact, that I see them as morons for not considering if we knew each other beforehand, because we did.  Moe was one of my best friends in high school.  He did me one last favor: he didn't tell the FBI that I was actually named August, I faked my own death when I was 19, and I've been living under a synthetic identity since then.  He didn't lie; he just neglected to tell the truth.

...

Pierre was a tall guy Lenny knew down at the bottom of the U.S., the Atlantic southeast.  They were friends when he was there, I believe.  He had black hair and a smile on his face.  You're in good company.  He insisted that he wasn't French, despite his name.  I think he was Irish.

And now we had Georgia's best compulsive boat thief.  It was his specialty, his art.  Usually he disables the GPS on the boat, drives it around, and then puts it back where he found it.  He never keeps the boat.  I guess he's just a nice guy.  He's also a math genius, which I think helped his navigation skills.  I watched him hash a string by hand with a pencil and paper.  It took him seven minutes and the hash was correct.  And he could get us to Cuba.  Somewhere else from there, maybe...

We were driving through this tropical jungle in Savannah, Georgia when Lenny suddenly started shouting to pull over.  I did, and we were outside of this construction site for an almost finished house.  Lenny reaches over and honks the horn for me.  Thirty seconds later I see Pierre shamble to the doorway with a gasoline can, leaving a trail behind him.  Holy shit, I thought, I think I know what's about to happen.  He tossed the cigarette on the trail, and walked up to the car with that smile.

"Who the hell is this?" I asked Lenny.

"Drive!  Drive, motherf*cker, drive!"  I knew better than to stay.  As I floor it and the car bursts forward, the great red bang of the house's final breath went into the air, shattering my ear drums and any sense of peace.  I took two hydroxyzine tablets.  He filled the basement with gasoline.

"I used my lucky cigarette.  Last one I'm ever smoking," he said.  "Ever."

They got us in Miami.  There we were, standing on this dock, the three of us, drinking some rum because we had just made our grand escape and now we were off to start a new life as we had a ride to Cuba.  And we were just ready to get on our way when I saw someone walking down the pier towards us.  Me and my attorney squint to see who it was, and it's some guy around my age wearing some joggers and a hoodie.  He comes up to me and shakes my hand, says, "Leon?"

And so I said, "Who might you be, you... F*ck?

"Are you Leon?"  I look at this hoodlum who can be no older than me, thinking, what harm could it do?  He doesn't look like a cop, he's just some dude.  Maybe Lenny knows him.

So I look at Lenny, who stares at me silently, and I look back and say, "Yeah.  That's me."

From behind me, I hear Lenny say, "Idiot."

And then, all these years later, it hits me that this is Moe.  This is Segev, that many years older, with a sharper jaw and a beard, and now he was wearing his glasses.  It's been so long, I didn't recognize him.  You know, I wasn't even mad I was getting arrested.  I saw my old friend again, even if he's taking me to prison.

And so he throws some cuffs on me and says he finally got my ass when it hits me, and as I look behind me I notice he's taken his badge out.  I'm pretty drunk at that point.  Immediately my attorney jumps towards him, screaming about probable cause and demanding that he take the cuffs off me at once.

"They have someone coming for you too, don't worry."

Lenny cusses at him and cites some legal code that I didn't know.  Moe made a weird face, and said, "Whatever.  But you're not going in the same car."  I turned around to see what Pierre thought, but there was nobody behind us.  Just an empty harbor, the waves churning peacefully.

In the back of the unmarked car, we drove towards a police station somewhere...  I don't remember.  Me and Moe made eye contact for a second through the rearview, and both chuckled.  We had been making frequent phone calls, which started out as him trying to convince me to turn myself in but turned into friendly conversations and then a verbal backhand from me at the end before I abruptly hung up.

"I finally got your ass."

I said, "You know, I shouldn't have doubted you."

"You should have seen the office after what you did.  First our computers stopped working... heh... and then, when the evidence room caught on fire, the front desk guy... he...  Hahaha...  He shat himself!"

I'm starting to see a pattern.  It's like my presence, or even the very ghost of my presence makes people shit themselves.  Or maybe I'm just schizophrenic.  "That wasn't me.  It was Luke.  Luke Lemon."

He smirked.  "You're so f*cking dumb.  Hehehehe..."

"I lied, his name was Nash Nashville.  He was from Memphis, Tennessee."

Moe chuckled.

"No, actually, it was a man named Austin.  Austin Texas."

When the unmarked car got to the station they had both - this time deviating from the pattern - vomited from laughing so hard.  But the taxes paid for the car to be cleaned.  I don't think they ever really got it all out, and there was a little ketamine in my vomit so the car is forever tainted when it comes to evidence.

Our story is almost over.  There's one more part I have to tell you before I say goodbye.

Are we going to prison?  Maybe!  Find out next time!