Total Victim Theory (49 page)

Things feel numb inside. Short-circuited. Whatever suffering he wrings out of me from now on will show diminishing returns.

My vocal chords are shredded from the screams. The sounds came out of my throat, but I could have sworn they were someone else's. Like when you listen to yourself on a voice-mail. I pitied that person, and yet it made my skin crawl.

He held my eyelid open with his fingers. My eye darted all around, as if it could dodge the blade. And until the very last second there was this disbelief. This hope that it couldn't happen. It's like your brain's not designed to process things like this. Part of me denied it could happen till the instant when the tip slid in.

There's no point dwelling on what it felt like. The sensation as the knife plunged into the center of me. As sight wrapped itself around the blade like a sheath. My screams just seemed to go away. And I couldn't feel the straining sinews in my arms and neck. It was just this perfect corona of pain that enveloped me. Fiery, like a wreath around the sun. And I vanished within it.

It's all so foreign. The idea of your body being destroyed while you're still inside it. The brain works so hard just to keep up with what's happening, as each second forces it to confront some new outrage, to swallow some new impossibility.

And he pushed the blade farther in. And then, on that side, it all went black. Like unplugging a cable from a TV.

The whole time Luke did nothing. Like Tad said and like I refused to believe. Right after it happened, I looked over and saw him. His eyes were closed.

At the moment, I'm looking down. I don't want to ever glimpse his face again. Just want to get this over with. I can hear Tad's breathing. I can feel his eyes on me.

Tad clears his throat. “Should we get on with this?”

I told myself that after the first part, I could handle anything. Not let the pain seep inside. Because if I was strong enough, I could keep it out. But when I hear his voice, terror shoots through me again. “I’m not ready . . . I’m not ready,” I hear myself say. “Let's wait just a little longer. Can we wait just a little longer?” My voice is the whine of a wounded animal, so far removed from the person I was just a few hours ago.

Tad's hand touches my hair. “Got to stick to the schedule, kiddo. Got miles to go before we sleep.” He strokes my face. “Hey, I know . . . we'll do the countdown again. That way you can savor every last second.”

“Please, please no . . .” I plead, the words, no more than whispers.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .”

God. Oh, God. I can't do this again. I can't take it. Please.

I'd written Luke off. Wished for him a spot next to his brother in the vilest pit of hell. But whatever I might have said, as Tad reaches the number six—and without knowing I'm doing it—I look over at Luke.

This time his eyes aren't closed. He's looking right at me. And, God, it's there again. In his eyes. The part of him he let me see last night.

“Five, four—” Tad continues, his voice quavering with anticipation.

“Are you going to let this happen?” I say, my voice so soft that Luke couldn’t hear unless he was reading my lips. Don't know why
I say it. I'm speaking to a part of him, a goodness I know isn’t there. Begging favors of a monster, casting wishful pennies into an abyss.

My attention goes back to the blade. Hovering before me. So close it's blurry.

I can't do this. Can't make it through. Just let me out. Just let me go.

"Three, two—”

In the background, color shifting. The shuffle of a footstep.

“One, zero—”

A terrible sound fills the room. Metal sinking into flesh. Grating against bone. But not from me. Around me. Not sure what it is. But there's no new pain. No new blackness.

Now a sound I recognize. A deep and ghastly groan.

Suddenly, the form leaning over me just goes away.

A heavy thud.

My eye shifts toward the sound.

Tad's lying face down in front of me. His long limbs sprawled across the floor. The ax—the one he was holding in the doorway—is buried in the back of his neck. All the way to the hilt. Blood gushes out of him like water from a broken sprinkler head. It pools on the floor.

Jesus. What more can happen here? Feeling faint.

Luke is close by, leaning over Tad. He grips the handle of the ax and wrenches it free. Parts of Tad, the hands and legs, are still spasming. Luke puts his left foot down on Tad's back, like he’s steadying a log he intends to cut in half. He gives a grunt and brings the ax down hard. I hear the metal edge scrape the cabin's concrete floor.

Tad’s not moving anymore.

But I am. Or the world is. Swaying. Wanting to topple. What I'm asked to comprehend is just too much.

Luke leans close to me, his hand touching my face. His fingertips so light on my face.

He looks into my eyes. My eye.

All of it is there. All of it.

“I love you,” he says.

My lips move, but I don’t know if I say the words. Don’t know if he hears the words. Can only pray he hears the words.

I think he wants to kiss me. But instead, my head swoons to
one side, as the room, and Luke, and everything swirls and slips away.

63

Colorado

I come to. For a few seconds, I can’t remember anything. But then the horrors of the last few hours come rushing back into my mind. A stabbing pain on the left side of my head. Feels like razor-sharp fingernails, clawing their way down my face. Shooting through me like lightning bolts that are so much larger than the grape-size part of me that's gone.

I'm lying down somewhere. Must be the bed. My eyelids are shut. On the right side, through the curtain of translucent skin, a pink hue of light. On the left, in the space of that new vacancy, only blackness. Outside, the sound of chirping birds. Pulling me back into the world.

I open my eye and look around. I can still see with my good eye. The shapes and colors are all the same.

Tad's body’s on the floor beside the bed. The ax still buried in his neck. He’s dead. The monster’s dead. And I’m alive. It’s almost too much to think of all at once.

My hands and legs are free. They weren't before. A pair of frayed rope segments lies on the floor next to Tad. Soaking up the pool of blood. Luke must have cut off the ropes. And took off the handcuffs too. One loop's fastened to the bed post. The other dangles open.

But where's Luke?

I look all around, but see no sign of him.

The room is full of blue-gray light. The sideways rays of morning. Its hushed, happy shadows. It was dark before. I must have been out a while.

Where can he have gone?

There's a window across from me. Massive blue-green trees sway in the wind. Pine-needle leaves, each with its own tiny icicle. A gust makes a muffled push against the cabin wall. A cold butterfly gets whisked out of sight.

“Luke,” I cry out, hoping he's maybe just outside the cabin door. Having a smoke or packing up his car.

But there's no answer.

He saved my life. And I remember now that last thing he said to me.

Did he leave me here after all of that?

Where are you, Luke?

I get slowly to my feet. Feel dizzy for a second. On the floor, an inch or two from my feet, is a set of keys. To what? I pick them up. Flecks of Tad's blood on them. Two look like car keys. One of them might go to the door of the cabin. I remember there were two cars before. Did Luke take one?

I step over Tad’s body and peer out the window. No. They're both still parked out front.

The wind's been gusting, but now it stops. But in its place it's not silent. There's a high-pitched noise. It's the whine of water flowing through pipes.

The bathroom. He could be there. I glance over. The door's shut.

My heart's beating plenty hard, and yet it still manages to quicken. The closed door scares me. It feels like it's hiding something behind it.

The sound of the water is shrill and high. I stare at the door. Paralyzed. Dread mounting. Maybe he's in there just taking a piss. That would be funny. The door swings open and there he is.

That would be a great ending. Almost makes me smile.

The sound of the water seems piercing. Like a drill burrowing into my ear. Fear nails my feet down to the ground. Can't step forward and take the handle.

Then I realize what it is that scares me. It's like the sound that day in the apartment, when I found Jessica.

My body feels cold. Like the blood has all run out of me.

Now I notice that under the bathroom door there’s a slit of light. A little lighted strip. I stare at it. I think I'm looking for any
sign of movement, shadows. Something tiny that would show he's there—

But wait. There is something. Not a man's shadow though. Just a tiny wavelike flutter. The rippling of water.

Another flash of Jessica. The water on the floor that day. Flickering. Pink and cloudy.

A tear, forming in my eye. Like it knows something it can't.

Studying the slit of light. Wanting so badly, desperately, for there to be a shadow. Or a splash. Anything. But just not this lifeless glistening. Just now, a tiny trickle of water creeping out from under the door. Gathering so slowly you almost can't tell it's happening. You can't tell it's forming the edge of a puddle.

Part of me wants to scream. Lunatic asylum scream, where you break with sanity and you never come back.

I step toward the door.

Now the pictures flashing through my mind are him. On the stairs, the first time. In my room that night. And last night when he took me in his arms. They don't feel like memories but like things that always were. Always part of me.

I'm hypnotized by the small arc of water. I let it touch the toe of my shoe.

I reach for the handle and turn it. Push the door open. It wades through the pooled water.

What I see first is the knife on the floor. In the water. It's the one with the black handle Tad used on me.

A glance to the right. Bathtub. Water streaming violently from the faucet. Water running over the edge. A flash of color and shape. An arm dangles from the side of the tub. The palm's open toward me. Long crimson lines running down his wrist. The blood is still running out of him. Trickling to his fingertips. Making little red mushroom clouds when the drops hit the water on the floor.

He’s facing me. Knees rising above the waterline. His black hair. His white shoulders.

I never scream when I should scream. It always seems too late. Maybe my mouth forms a word. Mutters something. But in my mind, all the world is silent. Even the sound of the water goes away.

My eyes are dry as stone. It had to happen, just like this. The future was a sculpture sitting covered up in a room. And now it's
here and we see it.

I slosh through the water and at the closer end, turn the faucets off. The cold surrounds my feet.

I kneel beside the tub. Beside him. Not looking at him now. Looking down. My pants and blouse are wet.

I lean my head against his. Mouth touching wet hair.

I unfold my arm along the length of his. His skin still warm. Follow his long, bright wounds all the way down to the wrist. Trace the lines of his palm. Then, interlacing our fingers, I take his hand in mine.

Time passes. Hard to say how much. 'Cause it doesn't matter.

What's happening is happening apart from time.

When I finally lift my head from where it rests against his, my teeth are chattering. My fingertips, blue and pruned. Some of his blood is on my wrists in pink and jotty smears.

I stand. Water dripping from my soaked pants. A glance at the knife beneath the rose-colored water. For a moment I hesitate. But only for a moment.

And then I reach down and I pick it up.

*

Driving back now. Driving down the winding mountain road.

My ears pop. My pale knuckles are tight on the steering wheel.

On the seat beside me there’s a paper bag. The one Tad had with him. That held the rope and knife. The bag’s damp at the bottom, like it's full of greasy French fries that are soaking through.

Next to the bag is the black-handled knife.

I just needed to have something of his forever.

I thought of using the knife on myself. The way he did. Would have been sort of Romeo and Juliet style. If I died in his arms. Our blood mingling.

Who's to say? Maybe that would have been better. Nobler. Maybe that would have shown a greater commitment to him. To a destiny that ended here.

But now I know the more beautiful, more terrible thing is to push forward. Live out the consequences. To feel all of it over and over again a million times. To sift out the parts that were perfect and keep them and remember them. And burn or bury or laugh off
all the rest. That’s the real dedication. That’s my choice.

The truth is that Luke never could have killed me, and he never could have let me die. I think we both knew that, even in that first moment.

If his aim was to make me hate him, to make me one day forget and one day move on and one day cease to love, then no one has ever failed at anything more completely than him.

Now I know he loved me. When he spoke those words, it might have been the one true thing he ever said. For reasons I’ll never understand, yet understand completely, his death was for me. A sacrifice to make possible forever, something that could never be.

And now I know there’s another reason I didn’t end my life today. A second consideration.

I place my hand on my abdomen. Think about a future.

An image, like a revelation, appears in my mind. A face, blurry as a prophecy, with eyes closed, floating in water.

It had already crossed my mind that perhaps another part of him is with me.

But now
I know
.

64

El Paso

The guard says someone’s here to see me. I give him a questioning glance—since I wasn't expecting any visitors. But his response is only a blank stare.

I get up from my bunk and slide on my white canvas shoes.

Don’t get many visitors. Fewer and fewer as time goes by—my few friends apparently having discharged their sympathetic obligations on prior visits, and my attorney having largely resolved the pending legal matters in my case. The guard ushers me out of my cell and through a pair of metal sliding doors and down a long blue corridor with cinderblock walls till we come to the visitor area.