Among the Living (4 page)

He had been there, the old man, crazier than ever. He had been tearing into her flesh with a belt this time. She tried to hide her face behind her forearms, but the leather struck everywhere. Blows fell over the rest of her naked body, and she screamed in agony until she was hoarse. Almost as bad as the beating was the smell of whiskey as he leaned over to scream profanities at her. He called her things she didn’t understand, a word she had heard referred to as the C word. Bitch, over and over, always bitch and she didn’t even know what it meant. She was eleven years old, and she wanted to die. She wanted to find a real father who treated her like a father should. She was too young to fight back, so she just curled up and hoped it would end soon.

Fucking pathetic!

That was the ‘her’ of fifteen years ago, the ‘her’ who gave in to the old alcoholic. He had been insane when he drank, which was most of the time. If it was noon and he hadn’t tipped the bottle into a glass yet, it was going to be a good day. Then he would stare at the marks on her arms and legs and look away as if shamed, but it didn’t stop him from doing it again.

Every once in a while, he was her best friend. He would take her to the drug store and let her buy anything she wanted from the toy rack, cheap little things in crinkling plastic containers that she would open in the car as he beamed at her. He would do this to make up for the bad times. But nothing made up for them. He could have bought her a pony and it wouldn’t put a dent in his quota. Truth was she hated the toys, hated how cheap they were, but didn’t want to risk angering him even if he was sober.

She takes a deep breath as she lies half off the bed, feet on the floor, upper body resting while she shifts her head to the side and studies the man’s thigh drenched in crimson. With a gasp, she is on her feet and away from the blood. The room was familiar when she opened her eyes, but that was owed to her view of nothing but white ceiling.

It was the smell that should have given it away, should have clued her in to the fact that she was not in her usual reality.

Last night, she had been the other, and it had been wonderful.

The imagined smell of bacon is the body. Blood is congealed all over the bed, on the man, on the headboard, on the wall. She glances down at her naked body and sees drops there as well. In her hair, she is sure of it, and she is also sure that it is completely fucked up to pass out on a bed with a butchered man.

He is bound to the bed by his wrists, which are pressed tightly together and wrapped in white nylon rope. She picked the stuff because she knew from experience that it would chafe. After he had his fun, was beside himself with need, only then had he consented to having his hands tied so she could straddle his chest and take his enraged cock in her mouth—or so she had promised. She promised him she wanted to tease him, draw out his pleasure, all the while her striped back and ass presented to his hungry eyes.

They always complied. They always gave in. Tying his legs together had been a different matter. Lucky for her, he was in terrible shape and didn’t have the energy to put up much of a struggle. Not with her fondling his cock and whispering words of devotion to his livid eyes.

Even though he made her call him master, had taken a belt to her, then a flogger while she straddled a straight-back chair so that her ass hung off the end, even as the pain started, built, overwhelmed her then turned to pure undeniable bliss, even then she had still been the other. The cold, calculating bitch who would have the ultimate climax.

He started on her thighs, whipping them red while she bent over, belt lashing across them over and over until she cried out for—more. Then the chair and the flogger, on her back, across her ass cheeks as they hung over the edge of the seat. Delicious agony that was nothing like the beatings of old. She was a masochist in the truest sense of the word. She found great pleasure in pain, in submitting to the men she would later truss up like pigs.

“Was it good for you?” she asks the corpse. She studies the bloody wounds and remembers each one like a snapshot in an old photo album. The first cut had been on his leg, the next on his chest. Not deep, just enough to bleed. The next had been on his neck, each side but not close to his carotid artery. His eyes had nearly burst from their sockets when she started slicing.

The blade was razor sharp, honed by her hand the night before. She sat on her couch and ran it over a stone until it was sharp enough to lift the downy hair of her forearms. Then she ran it over the stone again.

Like a medical student learning on a cadaver, she had punctured his body at various points, but none that would cause him to die. In his thighs, calves, feet, arms, and hands. She avoided his chest for now, because she wanted him to bleed. She had straddled his chest as she said she would, and lined his eyes with black lipstick so he looked like a raccoon.

Those eyes had pleaded, no longer looking on her body with lust, his cock flaccid like an old sausage. She turned to play with it, fondle it, tease it, but she couldn’t get him up, not anymore. When he failed to get excited, she put the cold knife under it, which stopped his struggling. He moaned, begging her to stop.

“If you can get it up, I will let you go.” She smiled as she applied his blood to her cheeks. She rubbed it around in a circle like the world’s reddest blush.

He strained, tried to beg for her to let him go, begged with his eyes, which were filled with tears.

She would have none of that. In fact, she was just getting warmed up.

“You don’t want me anymore, baby? You don’t want me to beg for more pain?” she asked as she drew around her little nipples with the lipstick. And of course the pig didn’t answer her; he couldn’t with a washcloth stuffed in his mouth then taped up with silver duct tape. She drew a tongue where his lips were, wagging to the side with drool marks. He watched her with giant eyes shifting back and forth in silent reproach, begging her to let him go.

“Bet you would promise me the world right now. Bet you would promise me money, maybe a car, anything just so I would let you go. But I’m not going to. I’m going to kill you tonight, Fred or whatever your loser name was.” She smiled.

“Did you enjoy beating me, you bastard? Did you enjoy using your belt on me? Fucking asshole. I bet you thought I liked it, that I came for you.” He shook his head, eyes as big as saucers.

“I saw the mark on your finger where the wedding ring should be. Does Mrs. Asshole know you answer ads on Craigslist? That you like to meet girls and hurt them? Maybe I should have taken pictures to share with her.”

She ran the knife over his chest, and it was razor sharp still, judging by the way it lifted the hair right off his sweaty skin. Puffs of the stuff, gray and wiry made tiny mounds. She blew on them and then cut a letter into his flesh, a big A.

He thrashed as she dug in, his eyes squinting in pain. He screamed against the cloth, but it sounded mute, so she cut a second outline around the letter. She moved the blade around the triangle in the A, then slid it under the skin. She slipped a finger against the broad part of the upper layer, and then she tore it off.

She spent the next five minutes finishing her artwork, making the letter more or less square. Blood welled around the angry wound, skin puckered like a pair of lips.

“Wakey wakey, time to meet a painful end.” She grinned and cut his penis off. As the blood poured out, she opened his nut sac and removed both of his balls. The knife cut them cleanly, quickly, so she could show him her handiwork before he bled out. She slapped him, hard, because he might have passed out.

His eyes popped open, and he bellowed against the gag.

She placed his member on his chest inside the A and put his still-warm balls over his eyes. She held his head tightly so he couldn’t shake them loose. Blood and body fluid leaked into his eyes, and he went crazy, but it didn’t last for long as the bed soaked up his life fluid.

She moved the severed penis aside and listened to his chest as his heartbeat staggered to a slow crawl and then stopped. She retreated from his body as he died, just before he let go of his control.

A sickening sound as his bowels released, leaving a river of shit around his legs. The smell of blood and crap made her want to puke, but she stood over him and maintained control.

She took the gag out and put his severed dick in his mouth, then his balls back in his eye sockets, which were wide open and locked in pain.

She made it to the bathroom, calmly lifted the lid, leaned over and tugged her black hair back behind her neck just before a furious stream of vomit erupted from her mouth. She gagged around the burning fluid, then vomited again. The shakes set in, so she sat on the edge of the tub and waited for them to pass.

* * *

Showered, she cranks up the heat in the little room so she can move around naked. She takes the bag out of the closet and lays out her tools. She sorts his clothes and folds them neatly. She checks his wallet, which informs her that his name is Walter Smith and not Master M as he so blithely told her before he flogged the shit out of her.

She folds her clothes carefully and placed them in a plastic bag, then she combs the room, picking up anything that looks out of the ordinary. She puts the flogger in a separate bag, and the belt joins it. Her lipstick goes into the same bag, then she takes the binding off his wrists and ankles. She bought the rope at Home Depot and uses several sizes so that none is from the same manufacturer as any other. Let the CSI guys figure that one out.

She extracts the small vacuum and plugs in the AC adapter. Transferring the tiny device from outlet to outlet as she runs out of slack on the short cord, she cleans every inch of the tiny room, the chair, the bed, the couch. She slips to the ground and runs the cleaner under the furnishings.

She packs everything away and then pours a bottle of hydrogen peroxide over his entire body to confuse the scene. She does something different every time because she knows from reading books about serial killers that the way they get caught is by using the same MO, or modus operandi. She takes a lint-free polishing cloth and goes over the entire room with it. Then she does it again.

She showers one more time in scalding hot water and then dries off with the already wet towel, which she folds and puts in the bag. She dresses in a pair of gray slacks that burn as they slide over her thighs and ass. Then she slips on a pair of dark red pumps. A bra cups her tender breasts, covering the welts that still stand out from the night before. A blue silk blouse whispers over her bruised back. She buttons it up demurely and then goes into the bathroom to put on a blond wig. She applies a tint of pink lipstick to her full lips and studies her face in the mirror. Pretty, not beautiful, maybe a bit too long in the chin. Eyes ever so slightly upswept, possibly from an Asian relative a few generations ago. Brown eyes shine without the thick layer of eyeliner she wore when she came in. The half dozen clip-on earrings she wore last night are gone, and it looks odd to leave that side of her head bare.

Who are you? she asks silently. The one you couldn’t be all those years ago, she answers just as silently.

“Jim needs to see you,” Erin says before I have a chance to sit down. She studies me for a moment but doesn’t say a word. I suppose she is waiting for me to offer up a hint about my conversation with Rita. She has always been a good listener in the past, offering advice on my ex-wife and my feelings for her. But today I’m not in a sharing mood. I feel stifled, depressed, like I need to be two people at once, and I don’t have the energy for it. I think about how many times I have been the sounding board for Rita, how many times I have listened to her rant and rave in the middle of the night while offering nothing but lame sounds like ‘oh’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ The truth is I’m not sorry, not anymore.

Erin’s eyes meet mine again, and I feel it, like an electric current passes through me. I feel like I should do something, say something, but I end it with a lame “Cool, thanks.” And walk away.

Jim’s little slice of heaven is the epitome of an editor’s office. Stacks of old papers skulk in every corner. Piles of printouts obscure the surface of his desk. He has layouts plastered to the walls, hiding the handful of journalist awards on his ‘me wall.’ An old ceiling fan hangs over the desk like a decrepit set of arms complete with dust and detritus trailing from the blades. I’m sure it hasn’t been turned on in years; in fact, if it came on, we might have to evacuate the office to avoid a massive allergy attack.

Jim perches on a four-legged wicker stool, leaning over so his forearms rest on his desk. He is peering at an old computer monitor that is as big as a tube television. It’s bulky and supported on a small stack of telephone books. His room smells of old paper and smoke. When he isn’t in the office, he puts away at least a pack a day.

“I’ve been thinking about this gas leak. I called 911 and acted like I lived up on the hill, asked them when I could go home. She put me on hold for a minute, and then some guy comes on the line, smooth as butter. He assures me the neighborhood is still too dangerous, that the leak could explode with little provocation. He is calm, and when I try to ask questions, he just deflects them and talks about my safety, concern for my well-being. And the whole time, you know what I’m thinking?” He takes a breath and keeps going before I can get a word in. “I’m thinking that these chuckleheads need to spend a little more time being straight with us and a little less time making up a bunch of bullshit, ‘cause we both know there is no way a gas leak caused them to evacuate an entire neighborhood for two days. No way.”