by Diann Merit
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
NADIA SIDDIQUI
Anonymous
Painted Corpses
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Nadia Siddiqui – All rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
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and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used
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Table of Contents
Prologue
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Prologue
diots.
He is surrounded by blithering idiots that wouldn’t know taste if it hit them.
I He has picked up the evening paper, as usual, bringing it home with the butcher’s meat
for dinner. His latest gallery opening has been a huge success and he is very much
looking forward to reading the reviews with the background sounds of meat sizzling away
on the stove. He wanted to smell the flesh burning as he reveled in his success. That is how
it should have gone. Instead, he has been met by a critic that he didn’t even remember. He
described the beautiful, perfectly crafted works of his soul that had been poured onto canvas
with the words “over the top” and “confused.” What is confusing about it? The critic thinks it
is Malcolm Glass’s soul.
Souls can’t be confusing!
He would have to show him. He would have to show them all how moving his pieces
really are. There is no purer form of expression than what he did, what he got away with, and
all right under the blind noses of the masses. He is renowned; he is revered and in high
demand. Dammit! He is wanted.
Those are words that he had muttered to himself as he researched the name of the critic,
Alphonse. Sounded like a brainless hipster to him. Glass had muttered more words of vitriol
the whole way to the address he had found and he smiled when the man opened the door. He
had beamed at the look of surprise on Alphonse’s face, and it gave him satisfaction when that
smile melted to fear, to concern, to downright worry as he tried to shut the door in Glass’s
face. It is highly unorthodox, he knows, and normally he doesn’t like to take victims that can
in any way be traced back to him, but Alphonse is an exception. Alphonse is going to be his
very special friend. He would understand in time; he is going to make sure of it. Once
Alphonse sees how the art is made, once he is allowed to be a part of it, then he will feel it.
They were going to make great things together. As he loops the rope over Alphonse’s wrists
and up over his head, he almost tells him as much. The fear is so strong that he can drink it.
Back to his own apartment and the audience. He has always worked best with an
audience, but nobody knew that. He preferred the sort that was mewling about on the
ground, their lips sewn shut and their eyes forced wide open. Those in despair helped fuel
his vision. It was his creative process and Alphonse—Glass was going to teach him. Perhaps
he had woken up this morning thinking that he was only meant in this life to write garbage
for a two-bit paper that nobody of importance was ever going to read or believe, but now he
was being gifted with something greater. Something that would take him from his own body
and turn him into something else.
The smell was always the hardest to contain. Soundproofing was easy. His neighbors
never heard a thing. Never the screaming or the banging on the walls. Never complained
about his music being turned up as loud as it could go. Perhaps they were just secretly
thrilled to have a celebrity living so close. Everything had been carefully planned. The
building chosen with a purpose, the rooms and the floor. Easy escape routes. He has one in
almost every state now. He likes having the freedom to move around as he pleases.
Sometimes he likes to leave the bodies to rot for months and come back to them as a
whole new color of paint he couldn’t even have imagined. He wonders how long it is going to
take for Alphonse to come around. Would the horrors in store for him be too much? Would
he break first? Would he be able to push Alphonse fully off the brink of sanity? He certainly
hopes so.
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ou have to leave sometime.”
“No, I really don’t. You would miss me too much.” Alyssa’s voice chimes from the
“Y direction of the small kitchen. The smell of burnt onions fills the apartment much
to Brandt’s chagrin. He told her not to make anything. He had told her that she
can’t cook, but she insists. Everything about her being here is annoying to him. She had never
been invited, but she had somehow come to live here. Brandt isn’t even entirely certain how
she followed him back to his apartment in the first place.
“Do you want one egg or two?”
Brandt grumbles an obscenity, “I told you, I’m not hungry.”
“How are you supposed to realize that you’re in love with me, and that I’m totally
invaluable if you don’t even let me feed you?”
“None of those things is even remotely true.” In fact, having her here is more difficult
than her being somewhere else. He had even offered to pay for an apartment for both her
and her mother, but Alyssa had declined. The girl has stopped attempting to hit on him at
least. He can’t pinpoint the exact day that she stopped trying for something more when she
climbed into bed with him, but it is a fairly comfortable routine that they have managed to
settle into. Despite how he would never admit to such out loud.
She emerges from the kitchen with the food still in the skillet, fully intending to eat it
straight off the burner and she will want him to do the same. Clad in his boxers and a tank
top, they would have appeared to anybody as a vision of domestic bliss.
It is harder to think that only a handful of months ago he had been pulling her deranged
father off of her battered body and saving her mother from a cage in the attic. Hayley
(Alyssa’s mother) still is reluctant to discuss what all had happened to her up there. The
imagination ran wild with the horrors that could have been inflicted on a person over th
e
course of ten years. Her daughter inherited the same coping mechanisms when it came to
that. She didn’t want to talk about what had nearly happened to her, but he could see it
wearing on her.
Each day that passes she stares out into space a little bit longer; she stays in the shower
with the water just a little hotter. Her spiral isn’t his concern.
Alyssa is easy enough. He can read what she is thinking without her having to say it;
unfortunately she is learning to read his mind as well.
“If you don’t eat, you’re not going to get all big and strong when you grow up.” Alyssa
pushes the skillet toward him, taking nothing for herself. She winks at him as she wraps her
arms around her leg.
“You look like a vulture when you sit like that.”
“Maybe I want to be a vulture. Then I could come up with some super cool sidekick name
for myself.”
“You are not my sidekick.”
“Okay Mr. Dark and Broody, you’ll admit eventually that you need me.”
Brandt rolls his eyes and flips to the next page in the paper, but Alyssa never takes her
eyes from him.
“You still haven’t heard anything from them?” she probes.
She is referring to Scarlet, the company that he works for. For as long as he could
remember, he was required to check in every few hours with his handler, Bailey. As far back
as his memory went that was his point of contact and before Alyssa, it was almost the only
person in his life. She is the closest thing to a friend that he has been given. Brandt shakes his
head, poking about the skillet in front of him.
“Nothing at all?”
“No.” In fact the phone that is saved specifically for his calls from Bailey has been totally
silent for the last two weeks. In truth, he is getting a little itchy to get out of this house. The
only times he has ventured out were with Hayley, who promised to help him search into his
past, to use what she knows about him to help him piece together what is missing from his
mind.
In fact, Bailey promised to help him with the same. After he completed the last contract,
she was supposed to have given him something, anything at all. She had promised him . . . but
it had turned out to be a lie. It was supposed to be motivation for him, and if he was being
honest, he was certain that one of the reasons nothing was given was because they were less
than thrilled that Hayley (actually named ------- the once infamous Scarlet training captain)
was back and sniffing around for a job.
Alyssa looks like she is about to ask another question when the phone rings. Her glossed
lips clamp shut again as she watches the flip phone slowly sliding around the table top. It is
like the caller must know that Brandt is thinking about them.
It rings twice and Brandt answers.
“Anonymous?” Bailey’s voice sounds strained, almost like she’s too far from the
microphone.
“Yes.”
“How have you been, Anonymous?” It is almost strange to him now, being called the
name that he was given. The name that, as far as the government is concerned, is his actual
name. To most agencies, he doesn’t exist. Now that he knows his real name, however, it
strikes something inside him.
“Anxious to get working, Bailey. I hope that you’re not calling just to catch up?” His voice
is gruff as he presses the issue.
“Well you certainly sound like you’re doing much better; no more visions then?”
“Is that why you haven’t given me any contracts?”
“In truth, Anonymous, there is some debate as to whether you are in the right state of
mind to be working in the first place.” Where her tone used to be the same--detached and
sarcastic--that he was used to, now her tone is almost accusatory.
“That’s bullshit, Bailey, and you know it. I’m the best agent you’ve got!”
“You were.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” His voice rises in anger.
“It means that you were,” Bailey speaks dryly, almost like she is having to watch her
words. “Luckily for you, I have convinced them to give you one last chance. If you fuck this
up Anonymous, then I’m going to have to report you to the doctors. So, right now tell me if
there have been any visions that we need to be aware of.”
“No, there have been no fucking visions,” Brandt spits at the phone. It is of course, a lie.
They are worse than he can recall. It is like the closer that he gets to his past, the worse they
are. Like they are attempting to force him to see something that he isn’t capable of seeing.
“Good.” Bailey’s tone is final. “We will send your contract to the usual place; we expect
prompt delivery Anonymous.”
“Don’t you always?”
It isn’t possible, but he could swear that he could hear her smirking through the phone
right as the line goes dead in his hands.
“Speak of the devil?” Alyssa whispers, pulling a coffee mug toward her for comfort. She
likes to seem smaller when she is uncomfortable.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why didn’t you tell them about the visions?”
Brandt ignores her question, turning to leave the room instead. Perhaps it is a brush off,
but it isn’t a conversation that he is ready to have with her yet. He didn’t think that he could
put into words that the only fear that he has left on this earth, is being sent back to those
doctors. He couldn’t run the risk of having them do again what they did before. He doesn’t
want to lose the very few memories that he has been given so far.
Brandt closes the door to the bedroom behind him and slips the lock on the doorknob
into place; the room in front of him goes cold.
He’s sucked into a vision that colors the room in a white haze. He no longer sees the
bare, stained mattress in front of him. He doesn’t see the shoddy framework or the pile of
laundry in the corner. Instead, he is standing in a loft. All sharp angles, and plastic tarp
draped over almost every surface. It is almost as if he can reach out and touch it. In front of
him a man is poised on his knees, his arms lashed behind his head and a scarf over his mouth.
Something silk, fancy.
The man’s eyes are unblinking though Brandt can’t see how that would be possible.
Brandt is staring in wide-eyed horror at a man whose arms sway above his head. It seems
that he is doing a dance with some kind of thin feather boa . . . or a rope . . . or, none of those.
Brandt moves closer to the vision, focusing his eyes on the scene before him. It is an intestine!
Wrapped around the man’s neck and held around him like a decoration. It seems that the
entrails are for some sort of fashion show intended only for the restrained man . . .
Then it is gone.
Just as quickly as it has come, the sad sight of his bedroom appears around him once
more.
What the hell was that?
“Brandt!” Alyssa’s voice carries in from the other room, snapping him out of the trance.
The headache that always follows his visions is back already. He can feel it throbbing behind
his left eyeball. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he moves back to the kitchenette where
Alyssa is holding his cell phone with two fingers. She’s eyeing the thing in disdain like it’s
&n
bsp; about to bite her.
“It never made that sound before.”
The phone is vibrating repeatedly. Over and over in her fingers with incoming file after
file. Whatever the information on this new target—it is excessive.
Brandt takes the phone and starts to quickly peruse the files. So many murders link to
the same person. Redacted files and bits of information are missing, but the files span the
country. How could one person have had so much reach without anybody noticing? It seems
that he is going to have his work cut out for him.
“Looks like I have a flight to catch.”
“I’m coming with you,” Alyssa nearly stomps. Since the incident with her father, she has
imprinted on Brandt, like a small puppy.
“Like hell you are.” Not just because she would be in the way; she would be once again
putting herself in harm’s way. Her mother is still here, and who is going to be his go between
if Alyssa comes along? “I need you to stay here.” Brandt brings himself up short, staring at
the ceiling, bracing himself for the argument about to come. Only it doesn’t. Instead, Alyssa
stands there with her arms wrapped around her body. She doesn’t have to say that she is
scared to be alone; he can see it written all over her. She might as well scream it.
You’ll just be in the way, he thinks, knowing it wouldn’t help to say that. “Just stay in the
apartment then; you’ll be safe here.”
Alyssa barely keeps from pouting. There isn’t a way to express that he can’t stand the
idea of her being put into the line of fire again. Most of all since the case files are so vast. The
killer doesn’t even seem to have a type. Nothing to stop her from being the next on his list
and he can’t afford the distractions.
“Stay. Here.”
“Ug! Fine! Whatever!”
It is the closest thing to a goodbye that he is going to get, and he isn’t in the mood to
argue. Better that she might be a little hurt than dead. Now, he needs to check in with Hayley
and catch that flight.
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