Birds of Paradise

by Anne Malcom

  It lasted so long, and he didn’t give any signs of hearing me speak, just continued to eat his own steak and sip at his red wine, I began to think I’d imagined it. That I’d said it in my head. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but I suspected not.

  I took another bite of my steak before putting my knife down and trying again.

  “Are you a sadist?”

  Again he didn’t stutter for a moment while eating. Again silence yawned on.

  I waited.

  He looked up. “Your generation and the latest literature of your generation have come to the conclusion that sadism doesn’t exist as a clinical term. It helps to popularize pain as a form of sexual release if enjoyment of aforementioned pain isn’t stuck to a label most frequently tattooed upon serial killers,” he responded.

  I glanced down at my half-eaten meal, positioning my knife and fork parallel to each other to signify I was done, as one of my many etiquette teachers had taught me.

  When I glanced up again, he hadn’t moved. It was something you didn’t get used to, seeing someone totally lack any form of human twitch, of impatience, someone content in being as still and as hard as marble. People with enough discipline over their bodies were people to avoid, because if they could control such basic instincts within themselves, it stood to reason that they could do it with anyone.

  “Serial killers,” I repeated.

  He didn’t answer.

  I rolled the term over my tongue, like I had the steak moments before. “You said you’re a serial killer, the night we… met,” I said.

  He nodded once.

  “But not in my society’s sense of the word,” I continued.

  This time there was no nod. He didn’t seem to see the need to continue to placate my hashing over the night he came to kill me.

  “So, are you a sadist? In any sense of the word? I’m part of the section of my generation that knows sadism as a clinical term and a character trait does exist.”

  I swallowed because I didn’t want to sound like the poor defenseless victim of an aforementioned sadist—but that’s exactly what I was, so that was exactly what I sounded like.

  This man had a way of making sure all my ugly truths were laid in front of me—of him—like pieces of a puzzle. Like pieces of twelve different puzzles, none of them ever going to be solved, to be put together, because they were missing corners, chunks.

  He put down his knife and fork like I had mine. But his were splayed like a triangle—there was still half a steak on his plate, after all. He cleaned his plate. Every meal. To keep as muscled as he was, I guessed he needed the protein. Or maybe he was trying to lead by example. It didn’t exactly matter.

  “Do I derive pleasure, more specifically sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others?” he asked.

  I nodded once, though I didn’t exactly need to.

  “No,” he said. “Violence is a part of my life, an inescapable part. And yes, I do enjoy killing. I do it quickly and cleanly. Torture is not enticing to me.”

  I reached for my water. There was always a glass of wine in front of me, one I never touched. I didn’t drink, not when I had enough shit inside my brain altering my state of mind, messing with my state of comprehension. Same reason I didn’t take pills. Sure, they might help, might soften the edges of it all, but it wasn’t real. It was a temporary escape from an inevitable future.

  “Well, that’s reassuring. My death will be quick and painless.”

  Quite unlike my life.

  He moved his knife and fork beside each other, like mine, and then pushed his plate away. Giving me his full attention.

  This was a man who couldn’t even go through the menial task of eating and have it interrupt his focus… his focus on me. When he did something, concentrated on something—someone—he did it with everything. With a fatal intensity that unnerved me. Terrified me. Because that intense speculation meant he’d see through whatever I had left on the surface right down to my broken parts. My ugly and warped parts. The true me.

  Why did I care what a self-professed serial killer thought of my ugliness?

  Maybe because he wasn’t just forcing himself to inspect my hideousness, but I had no choice but to do the same.

  I hated him for that.

  Violently.

  I had the strange and passionate urge to snatch up my steak knife, round the table and slam it into his neck. I saw myself doing it. Watched the blood spurt out from the artery, felt it spray onto my face, witnessed the darkness and evil and whatever else lay inside him leave and seep into the expensive fabric of his suit.

  But then I was sitting back in my seat, clutching my water glass, staring at him staring at me.

  “If I am forced to kill you, I assure you that you will not even know it’s happening.”

  “Forced,” I repeated. “Murder isn’t an obligatory necessity in life. It’s a choice.”

  “Not in my life.” He paused. “Not in yours either. I suspect you’ve just hidden from obligations that might’ve stopped you from being here in the first place.”

  I blinked. My anger stayed, grew, warmed every inch of my body that I’d been so sure was going to stay frozen as long as I was in his presence. It was this anger that pushed me out of my chair, that had me rounding the table much like I had in my imagination moments ago, but I didn’t have a steak knife in my hand. Which disappointed me, and my anger that had become a separate, stronger being inside me, sharing my skin.

  Because all his attention was on me and my movements—however unpredictable they were—he was already standing when I got close.

  I momentarily took the reins off my anger to stop a couple of feet away from him, despite my fury yearning to get close enough to burn him with its heat. Some self-preservation, or weakness, remained in me.

  “You think you know me,” I hissed, pointing my finger at the air, wishing I could jam it into his chest. Wishing it was sharp enough to puncture the skin, crush his rib cage and tear through whatever beat inside there to keep his blood flowing.

  “No one truly knows anyone,” he said placidly. “Not even themselves. Humans don’t have enough self-preservation to spend time getting to know themselves. Otherwise they’ll see themselves for the monsters they really are. Not many people are strong enough to survive after meeting their monsters.”

  I wanted to scream. “And you met your monster, right?” I yelled. “Because you’re more evolved than all these humans you remove yourself from? You’re better, the one with dead birds in some secret room and with a body count that doesn’t line up against your soul because you don’t fucking have one. Because you’re above that. Because you’re almighty and dangerous and ready to kill anything or anyone who provides complications.”

  “Yes,” he agreed simply.

  I stared at him, the acid on my tongue melting away the capacity for me to spit something else at him. To scream at the top of my lungs like I urged to. To scratch his fucking eyes out.

  He did nothing as I simmered, as I seethed. Not a thing. Just stood there. Calm. Collected. Cool. Fucking robotic.

  I didn’t know if that infuriated me more than the fact every single part of my being, my anger included, wanted to be closer to him, wanted to rip him apart, dissect him, just so I could know him better than everyone else did. Better than all his victims.

  The urge was so strong, I had to bite my lip hard enough that warm metallic blood rushed into my mouth. I liked it, the taste of blood. The pain.

  It was a good thing too, because I was in for a lot more of it. Both the latter and the former.

  Oliver

  She was doing it again. Biting the inside of her lip. More violently this time. Violently enough to draw blood. Oliver’s toes twitched inside his loafers, urging him forward so he could snatch her sparrow-like arms in his grip, yank her to him and claim her mouth, taste her blood on his tongue.

  Taste her pain, devour it.

  But he didn’t move. He knew bette
r than to let his baser instincts dictate his behavior. He’d spent his life making sure they didn’t. But never had it been so hard to fight against.

  He instead forced himself to think of the clinical reasons for her biting her lip. It was an extremely common tic in those with anxiety disorders. One of the many behavioral habits used by the body to provide a coping strategy. She did it often, because her brain was desperate for outlets to direct her anxiety toward.

  Most of the time, things like this were done out of fear. Right then, he knew it was because of anger. Fury. He’d not experienced such a feeling in years.

  Decades.

  It was useless and was the base for bad decisions.

  He observed her body language, the taut way she held herself, the wildness and light in her previously drab brown eyes. She wanted to spring. Attack. He found himself anxious too. For her to give in to that.

  Another unfamiliar feeling.

  Everything was unfamiliar with her.

  He hated her for it.

  But that didn’t stop the urge for her to give in to whatever was trying to force her to him.

  She didn’t. The woman fought, for once. And he found himself immensely disappointed.

  Instead, she spoke, picking up a thread from their conversation before.

  “You like killing,” she said, question absent from the words. As was the disgust that was expected with such a statement.

  He didn’t lower his eyes, forcing himself to stand still, the posture that used to be comfortable—before her. “Yes,” he said.

  She didn’t lower hers, embers still flickering within them. He found himself liking her anger, her fire. He found himself planning to make her angry, furious, as often as he could. Even if it made her hate him. Especially if it made her hate him. Because hate and anger would mean she was living. Passionately living.

  Hate would always be more passionate than love. It would always force someone to go on living. Love taunted a person with death daily. He didn’t want that for her. He realized that. He didn’t want her death at his hands. At anyone’s.

  “Some people think you can go to hell for murder,” she continued.

  “Some people don’t know that hell isn’t a place that exists after death. It’s something that exists in life,” he replied, keeping his voice even. “Hell exists for the living. The dead know nothing because the dead are nothing.”

  Her eyes flickered, an emotional flinch from his words.

  His hand twitched, itching to stroke her cheekbone, soften the sharp edges of her memory. Of her soul. But that wasn’t up to him. Or even her. That’s what she was now, full of sharp edges that would cut at her insides as long as they stayed soft.

  So he didn’t comfort her. So she could harden, so she wouldn’t be in such pain all the time. So he wouldn’t be in such fucking pain all the time. Because he was all hard edges, and they couldn’t cut him because there was nothing to cut. Nothing soft. He’d made sure of that. But she’d chiseled some of that away, without knowing it, and he couldn’t repair it.

  He cared about this, about her, for purely selfish reasons. Or at least that was what he told himself.

  “Yeah,” she agreed, watching his hand as if she knew the magnitude of the small movement of his forefinger.

  “That’s where you are now,” he said, voice harsh. “In hell, with the devil, who enjoys killing.” He eyed her, hoping to invite more hatred, disgust, something that would fight against whatever in her brain was keeping her prisoner. That might make her angry enough to step outside.

  He expected a lot from this woman. Had seen a lot to learn what to expect. He learned people. That was his job, before killing them. Which meant he was rarely surprised by people.

  But her, she wasn’t merely people.

  She was something else.

  So she laughed.

  Rhythmic and melodious. Pleasant. Not cold, harsh, bouncing off the walls of this harsh and cold house. No, the pleasing sound broke through the disquiet that had settled into the walls the second he began inhabiting them.

  He steeled himself against the foreign urge to smile watching her. Instead, he marveled inwardly. The previously asinine human trait of laughter—the trait he used to hate more than the act of sobbing—was one of the most important things to him right then.

  She changed with that laugher. All those hard edges that had seemed so permanent molded into something else. Her face lightened, the demons etched into it disappearing. Her eyes glowed with something other than sorrow or fear or even the anger he’d considered so enticing.

  He found himself desperate to find more reasons to make this creature appear from inside the broken woman he’d first carried in here. He promised himself he would just as her chuckles petered off. The determination to make her hate him, so steely and definite moments ago, became transparent.

  “Hell?” she repeated, voice still light.

  She moved forward. Not a lot—millimeters, perhaps. But it wasn’t the distance that was important, it was the gesture itself. She was consciously moving herself closer to him, with soft eyes inviting, lips slightly parted in a way that made him desperate to claim them.

  Claim her.

  “You, the Devil?” she whispered, her face once more settling into the hard lines, demons settling back into their homes inside her. She shook her head and her waterfall of hair moved with her. “No, you’re not the Devil you pretend to be,” she murmured.

  He stiffened with her dismissal of him. Her inspection beneath the iron façade he’d been sure he’d perfected. It all settled back into place, the cold and unfeeling heart he’d created out of the ruins of whatever he was born with. She was certain of who he was after a week when he didn’t know what kind of creature she was after almost six months of watching her.

  That wouldn’t do, not at all.

  He found himself desperate to wrap his fingers around her neck, to wring the life out of her, so he didn’t have to look at himself through her eyes for a moment longer.

  He almost did it too. It was close. Less than a hair. He could taste her death in the air, feel her life decaying in his hands.

  But he spoke instead. He wasn’t even sure why. “No, I’m much worse than him,” he shot back.

  Then he turned on his heel and left, leaving her in the middle of the room, alone with the shadows and the truth she’d uncovered.

  He brought his truth with him, attached like a barnacle. The sound of her laugh, the softness of her voice speaking to him. The flicker of something—longing, maybe desire?—in her eyes.

  Something he needed to squash. Something he needed to replace with hatred. For the survival of both of them.

  8

  Elizabeth

  Two Days Later

  I hadn’t seen him in two days.

  Something had changed in the dining room.

  Something big.

  I knew that because something inside me felt torn. Hanging off my insides painfully, like a Band-Aid not quite ripped off but too painful to remove completely. It was him. He was tearing at parts of me I’d haphazardly covered up, performed battlefield surgery on and left it like that because I couldn’t revisit the wounds of my past without them festering, spreading and destroying me.

  Something else had awakened when he did that. Anger that was so strange yet so natural, so welcome at the same time. And the bloodlust, the need for blood and pain, the need to inflict blood and pain.

  I walked around with those changes rattling inside me, moving my skin around so it didn’t quite fit me anymore.

  Which was why I was standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at myself, really looking. Years had gone past since the last time I’d properly looked in a mirror. Had I even properly looked in the mirror, wanted to see the person staring back at me?

  Probably not.

  But that was a bucket of issues for another day.

  The light was harsh, brutal and honest. It showed the scars scattered all over my skin, mos
tly courtesy of my husband.

  The scattering on my upper forearm, puckered, slightly pink and perfectly round. He used to put his cigars out there.

  A jagged and raised line running from the top of my knee to the middle of my shin—where I’d torn it on a jagged rock when he’d pushed me in our backyard. I’d needed stitches. Of course I didn’t get them.

  And many more. A road map of terror. Of pain. Of eventual numbness.

  Because when a person got hurt enough, really and truly hurt, there was a point when it all stopped being painful. It stopped mattering. They, as a human being, stopped mattering.

  My fingers brushed the skin on my belly, low, just before the place where my hip bone was jutting out at a sharp angle. Not as sharp as it had been a week ago, mind you.

  It was small. Tiny now. Strange, because I hadn’t done anything to diminish it. It was the only one of my scars I wanted to remain. I needed it to remain, to remind me, to make me feel closer to the tiny being that was pulled out of there.

  My fingers trailed over the raised skin. How could something so small be the biggest thing in my life?

  I ran my hand upward to my belly, flat now. The skin somehow tight and free of stretch marks that women all over the world lamented. How I wished for them. Prayed for them. For more evidence that my daughter had grown in there. Lived in there. Been something important, been everything before she was taken.

  But she was just a ghost now. Only I remembered her.

  My eyes and hands moved up to my breasts. Lackluster and small thanks to malnutrition. Sagging because of my age and most likely my lack of exercise. The sharp edges of my visible ribs cut into the soft skin, making them look borderline grotesque. I liked that, the hideousness of them. Because that’s what I was.

  My gaze went upward to my face. To my displeasure, it wasn’t hideous. It wasn’t anything, really. Forgettable. Plain. Just another ghost.

  The skin was pale and lineless. Not thanks to an expensive skincare routine but because I never exposed it to the sunshine. Nothing to break away at the cells, make them shrivel up. On the outside, at least.