Two gruesome murder cases with media attention—the Canster Times loved it. Those crimes scenes must’ve been traumatic to see and investigate, but Chad had always looked happy when he visited. He’d always looked well, and came with his shirt tucked in, and his tie straight after his shift finished. This time, something had got to him, and he couldn’t even tell the one man that understood him, the one man who knew his story.
“Did you hear about the guy that got his left side chopped off?”
Chad frowned, then tentatively answered, “No.”
“He’s all right now…”
“That’s awful.”
“I was out in the prison yard, and I wondered why this basketball was getting bigger and bigger.”
Chad’s lips twitched, he was doing his best to control his smile, but Romeo knew he had him. When it came to Chad’s body and its reactions, Romeo knew how to play him.
“Then it hit me…”
Romeo was transfixed by Chad’s smile. It filled his chest with a warm feeling. If he had to give it a color, he would’ve said yellow, soft, comforting, fuzzy around the edges. Even the monster took notice, forgetting itself for a second.
“There’s some stairs out there, but I don’t trust them. They’re always up to something…”
Chad started to laugh, and Romeo’s mission was complete. He laughed along, too, bobbing his head.
“See, now that’s what gets me through the week.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Romeo gave Chad a serious look. “No matter how hard things get out there, I’ll always be here for you. Literally, I can’t be anywhere else.”
He’d meant it to be light, a joke, but Chad’s face fell. Romeo could always sense his confliction, his guilt, he was the reason he was locked up after all, but Chad didn’t know that it was part of the reason Romeo liked him, too. He’d corrupted Chad’s mind, seduced his body, but still his moral code stayed intact. Romeo hadn’t broken it, and he wondered whether with more time, he would’ve been able to. He might have been able to turn Chad into his accomplice. The thought was interesting, alluring, dare he think it, but arousing, too.
Could he manipulate Chad completely, corrupt, and twist, and change his way of thinking?
Did he even want to push him that far?
Or would Chad change Romeo first?
He had, after all, affected Romeo enough that he couldn’t kill him. Sitting across from him, there was no sinister desires stirring, he didn’t look at his throat and wish to strangle the life out of him. The monster didn’t react to Chad, it was indifferent.
Fred and Paul on the other hand…
“Why?” Chad said softly.
“Why what?”
“Will you always be here for me.”
“I’m here because I killed four people and kidnap—
“No, that’s not what I meant…”
Romeo blinked when he understood. He hadn’t been expecting Chad to ask him why. He hadn’t been expecting his smile to fall. If anything, he thought it would get bigger, and lift his watering eyes.
“Because you’re special to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course you are, you know you are—right?”
Chad swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah, but it’s nice to hear you say it.”
The case must’ve been really bad. Romeo looked at Chad’s hands on the table, the odd scrunching, relaxing routine. He wanted to reach out and take them, squeeze them as he said his next words.
“You are the most important person in my life. The only person who saw the monster and liked me anyway. Who understood me the way I understood them. No one comes close, no one will ever come close.”
Chad looked as if he was about to speak, but Paul cleared his throat, ending their moment, and Chad closed his mouth.
Instead of replying, he smiled, a big smile that lifted his watering eyes, and rounded his cheeks. The smile Romeo had needed to see since Chad had stepped through the door.
Now that’s my magpie, he thought, but never said. Everyone knew he was a monster, but no one knew Chad was the monster’s magpie.
That was between them, their secret.
“You disgust me.”
Romeo froze at Paul’s voice, then slowly turned his head. His eyes weren’t on Romeo, but Chad. When Romeo turned back to face Chad again, his smile was gone, and the haunted look had taken over his face.
His hand scrunched and relaxed on the table in a manic manner for the rest of the visit.
****
There was nothing on the news about a gruesome murder, no clue to why Chad had looked and acted so oddly. Romeo turned off the TV, thought about re-reading his book selection, but couldn’t stomach rereading the diseases section of the A-Z medical dictionary or the endless preaching in the bible. Once he was done living in prison hell, he was destined for Hell hell, that’s all it taught him.
“Hey,” he shouted.
Will struck his bars. “Yep.”
“There been any murders lately?”
“Are you always blood thirsty?”
“I just wondered whether I’d missed anything.”
“No, no murders, some poor bloke electrocuted himself—
“Not interested.”
“I can tell you about stabbing those police officers.”
“No, thanks.”
“My murder not good enough for you?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You did it out of anger.”
“Don’t we all.”
Romeo sighed, walking away. “No, not all of us do it from anger.”
“Why did you do it then?”
“The monster in me needed it.”
“Monster.” Will smirked.
Romeo collapsed on his bunk and stared at Chad’s face on the wall. Something had upset his magpie, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He ate, he exercised in his small cell, paced around the slightly bigger cage outside, then laid back down on his bunk. The days, hours, the minutes, the seconds, slowed, and he closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.
Chapter Four
Romeo waited obediently with his hands through the bars. Fred snapped the cuffs on, then he stepped forward, waiting for the gate to his cell to open.
His one-hour allowance of exercise in the yard. Fred and Paul led him the opposite way to the visiting the room through more doors and gates until finally he was outside, in the cage. A cage each of them stalked around at different points of the day. Romeo had the cage when the sun was high above his head, beating down on him with no shade to soften the heat. He paced, and the monster paced around his head. Hands finally free, but no chance of getting hold of someone, ending his countdown with the vital number one.
Paul and Fred watched him walk in silence.
He froze when a black glint caught his eye. He looked down at the ground, studying the beetle. Its mad dash across the cage with the monster. It was over halfway, only a meter from freedom, then it stopped, and they were caught in an odd standoff.
Romeo’s mind drifted to the past.
It had started with the spiders, but the bug brutality took on a new level when he began school. Romeo squashed beetles, woodlice, ants, ladybirds, anything he could under his shoes. He enjoyed it, but learned quickly that he shouldn’t have.
He’d been stamping on earwigs in the school playground. Alice Bell pushed him, told him to stop, it wasn’t nice, but he ignored her. How could something satisfying be not nice?
Then she told the teacher.
The teacher had come towards him, face twisted in disappointment, ready to tell him off. Romeo finally looked up from his art and saw the reaction of the other pupils and teachers, the disapproval, and in some, even fear.
What he was doing was wrong.
He started wailing, claimed it was an accident, and he felt sad for killing them. Despite Alice repeating it hadn’t been an accident, he’d killed them on purpose, h
e did every day, the teacher bought his wobbling bottom lip and the tears streaming down his cheeks.
The tears, after all, had been real, not for the earwigs, but for himself. He cried because something that felt good to him was wrong. He was wrong, and even at six years old, he knew it. At that age, he cared that he was different, didn’t want to be, and he tried his absolute best to stop squishing bugs.
But the monster, although only a pup, or a cub, or whatever it was at that point, would not be ignored.
“Romeo?”
He tore his gaze from the beetle. “huh?”
Fred was at the bars, looking concerned. “What is it?”
“A beetle.”
Paul smirked. “You never seen a beetle before?”
“Not for a long time.” Romeo said.
The beetle with its jet-black body. It’s perfectly symmetrical shape, not a blemish or a distinguishing feature that separated it from all the other beetles of its kind.
Romeo stepped on it.
“Why the hell did you do that?” Fred asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I had to.”
“You could’ve let it go free.”
Romeo shook his head. “No, I couldn’t have…”
The monster growled, a warning growl that said that wasn’t enough, nowhere near enough to keep him quiet. It would continue to gnaw at his mind until he did something about it.
Until he worked out how to escape.
****
Three days after Chad’s visit, there was still no murder being reported on the news. Romeo kept the TV on until he was threatened with its removal if he didn’t turn it off at night. Instead of smirking in Paul’s face, he listened, and switched it off. He couldn’t risk losing his TV privilege, especially when he knew something would eventually come up that would explain Chad’s mood.
“It’s 2:00.”
Romeo thought about not going to see Holly, but the alternative was staring into the corner of his cell and willing each slow second to pass. At least with Holly, the time went quickly.
The buttons of her shirt were open again, and the bra she wore held her breasts higher, making them bounce when she moved. Paul was transfixed each time she leaned to pick something off the floor. Romeo glanced back and caught him watching.
“Hello.” Holly said.
“Another meeting.”
“You said yes. I think you need to see me as much as I need to see you.”
“You need to see me?”
“Yeah.”
“For the article?”
Holly splayed her papers over her table. “Of course, the article.”
“I like the bra, looks expensive.”
She made an aborted attempt to cover herself. “You shouldn’t be looking.”
“I’m only human … well, part human.” He winked, and she averted her gaze, cheeks as red as ripe apples.
Paul muttered something under his breath, but Romeo didn’t quite catch it.
“What did you want to ask me today?” He said. “More about my neglectful parents, my tragic school life, or my over worked job history.”
“Relationships.”
“What a surprise.” Romeo mumbled. “As I’ve told you before, I’ve not been in a relationship.”
“Do your interests lie in men or women?”
“Neither. My interest lies in murder.”
“I bet you’ve had a lot of interest over the years.”
Romeo lifted his eyebrow. “I get a lot of looks. I bet you do, too.”
He could feel Paul’s gaze on the back of his head.
Holly blushed, then a plotting smile lit up her face.
“I get my fair share of interest, always used it to my advantage. Always get what I want in the end.”
Romeo tilted his head, studying her. “You use your good looks to get what you want.”
“As my ex says, I have an easy face to fall in love with, and a hard one to forget.”
“Poor bloke.”
Holly shrugged. “I didn’t love him the same way he loved me. It happens.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Anyway, let’s get back on topic … about you and the reasons you snapped.”
Romeo sighed.
In some ways she was right. There was a moment he’d snapped completely, and that had been when he killed the magpie without meaning to. Whatever he’d been holding onto to keep him good, human, had completely fallen away. If the monster was chained up in his mind, that moment did the equivalent of letting it loose in the cage.
“What about you? Have you almost snapped?”
Holly snorted. “When I got given this article to write I almost did. I was happy, it felt like a triumph—
“A triumph?”
Holly twisted a strand of her hair. “I wanted to write it, and I made sure I was the only option, but I’m under a lot of pressure. I didn’t know for sure if I could handle it.”
“So you killed some people?”
“No.” Holly laughed, then grimaced. “I leaned on the people around me. I have that luxury, you didn’t. And when I started writing the article, and met you … well, you put me at ease, and I knew it was going to be okay. We work well together.”
“We do, we’re a good partnership.”
Holly beamed, seemed to remember herself, then looked down at her notes.
“Maybe you saw your parents and your bullies in the people you killed. The ultimate revenge for being treated so poorly.”
“Some advice,” Romeo said. “Don’t open the article with that, it’s awful.”
Holly laughed. “I’m still finding my feet, my style.”
“Terror sells.”
“An interesting story sells, too. I want to make my own mark on the Canster Times, no pun intended.”
Romeo frowned, then lifted his shoulders.
He didn’t get her joke.
“Never mind. There’s something we haven’t touched on yet.”
“What?”
“I wanted to talk about if you had completed your countdown.”
“But I didn’t.”
“But if you had. What would you have done?”
“No idea.”
“Come on, you were counting down from five for a reason, what would’ve happened when you got to number one?”
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He allowed himself five. Five times he could satisfy his craving. He wasn’t counting down to anything, no grand finale. It was his allowance, nothing more. Even as a monster he knew he had to keep himself in check. They had a deal, and he hadn’t fulfilled it.
“Let’s say, the police didn’t stop you from killing Chad. He was your last, you’re number one. What would you have done next?”
“If I’d have killed Chad…”
“Yeah.”
“I would’ve joined him.”
Holly leaned back in her chair aghast. “You would’ve ended it. You would’ve killed yourself?”
“Yes. There would’ve been nothing else for me if I’d have killed Chad.”
“You were gonna end it all when you got to number one. That was the grand plan, the final victim … you would’ve been zero.”
Romeo rolled his eyes. “Or blast off depending on how you want to look at it.”
“It’s not funny, you’re talking about suicide, telling me that if you completed the countdown you would’ve ended your life.”
Romeo snorted. Holly heard what she wanted to hear, if he’d got his number one, he would’ve vanished, moved on. He didn’t have a clue what he would’ve done, or where he would’ve gone, but suicide wasn’t an option, but Chad … if, when Chad offered, Romeo had killed him, he never would’ve forgiven himself, he would’ve wanted to join him, and fast.
“It’s common.”
“What is?” Romeo asked.
“Killers taking their own lives, insuring they don’t get caught … they’re always untouchable.”
“I’m a standard serial killer then.�
��
“There’s nothing standard about you.” Holly grinned, then looked down at her notes. “I’m glad you didn’t finish your countdown.”
“Because you wouldn’t have met me, or because there’d be no article?”
“The article.” Holly said. “Without you, it wouldn’t be as interesting, I’d never get to the root cause of why it happened.”
Romeos sighed. “And there was me hoping you enjoyed seeing my face every week.”
Holly ducked her head, gathering her papers. She paused, and her badly hidden smile started to droop.
“What is it?” Romeo asked.
“How do you feel about Chad?”
“Chad…”
Romeo flexed his jaw. For weeks she’d been trying to get him to talk about Chad, and the two months in the farmhouse. He’d given her nothing, but she made her own assumptions. Holly was staring at him, seemingly intrigued by his reaction.
“You’ve never talked about him.”
Romeo shrugged.
“He’s the reason you didn’t finish your countdown … don’t you hate him?”
“Hate him?”
“For stopping you.”
Romeo flexed his hands. They were cuffed behind his back, but he could still curl his fingers. The desire to conclude his countdown hadn’t gone away. He still looked at everyone through the monster’s eyes, needing his next fix, knowing they could be it, they could set him free.
He still wanted his number one, as much as he wanted to escape.
“Chad’s complicated.”
Holly widened her eyes and scribbled more down on her sheets of paper. He didn’t bother trying to read it, he stared at the light behind Holly’s head, it looked hazy from his side of the barrier.
“So you still have this need to complete the countdown, to finish it so you can end your life.”
Romeo didn’t answer, but he saw her pen moving fast, scribbling down more rubbish.
“The police arrived just as you were strangling Chad.”
That’s what it had looked like, Chad helpless on the mattress, Romeo pinning him, squeezing him, killing him. But in that moment, he had been the helpless one, Chad had flipped the situation on its head and had been the one in control.
Two for Joy Page 3