by B. B. Hamel
I won’t lose my fucking freedom again. I won’t rot in a cage. I won’t live my life between concrete walls waiting for the day that I finally die.
“Amelia,” he says and I suddenly realize that his arms are wrapped firmly around me. I’m struggling against him, trying to get away, but he just holds me, saying my name over and over.
I suddenly come back to myself. I feel so foolish and stupid. I can’t help it as I break down and tears flood my eyes.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay, Amelia. I have you. It’s okay.”
“They’re going to shove me in a box to rot and die,” I say to him.
He shakes his head. “No. Never. I told you, you’re free now. I won’t ever let them take you.”
“I’ll always be a captive. Always. Somehow.”
He holds me tightly, stroking my hair as I sob. It feels good to cry, even though I feel so stupid. Slowly I calm down and come back to myself.
I don’t know what the hell that was. I just started freaking out and panicking. The only thing I could think about was getting away, running away. I know Noah isn’t going to hurt me or let the cops have me, but in that moment I wanted to get the hell away from him. It scared me, frankly, the way I so violently reacted to everything.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally. “I don’t know what happened. I . . . I just freaked out.”
“I understand,” he says softly, letting me go. “This is hard.”
“It’s all just happening so fast.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He takes my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “But believe me when I say that I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “I believe you.”
“Good.” He watches me for a second, almost like he’s afraid I’m going to try to run away again. “Come on. I need your clothes. We can change back at the house.”
I nod again and let him lead me back. I hold his hand loosely, staring down at my feet and feeling like a stupid child. I’ve never freaked out like that before, and it makes me worried.
What if I really am going insane?
I let him take me upstairs and undress me. Once I’m naked, I get into the shower. He leans up against the sink and looks at the floor for a minute.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says. “I’m going to burn this stuff then ditch the van.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be fine here alone?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He nods and looks away. The concern is obvious. Maybe he thinks I’m going crazy, too.
Eventually Noah leaves, and I’m alone in the shower. I let the water wash over me and eventually I sit down on the shower floor, knees to my chest.
The police are looking for me because I’m a murderer. I murdered a man. And now I live in the house of another murderer, a serial killer with a lot of experience.
How did I end up here?
All of that is bad, But the worst part is, I’m not done killing. I know it deep down inside of me. I’m not done hurting the people that prey on the weak. People like my father. I saw his face when I killed Sheer, and I know I’ll see his face many, many more times if I keep killing.
I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. There is too much at stake, and it makes me feel too good.
I don’t know if I can risk my freedom, though. The idea of getting thrown into another cage makes me want to tear my hair out and scream. Noah is good to me, but even he can’t protect me if something truly horrible goes wrong. He’s been doing this for too long to let some idiot girl ruin it for him.
I’m just a liability. I don’t want to be, but it’s true. I have no experience and apparently I’m impulsive. I smashed that Sheer guy over the head and chased him when I should have stayed back and waited for Noah. He says it’s his fault for bringing me along when I wasn’t ready and for being the one to leave to get the van, but it’s not his fault. We both know it’s my own.
I’m going to get him caught one day. He can try his hardest to teach me how to do everything perfect and right, but maybe I’m just not cut out for this. I’m not learning fast enough and I already nearly got him caught once. We’ll be lucky to get through this.
I finish showering and step out onto the mat. I wrap a towel around my body and wipe the fog from the mirror. My long brown hair hangs wet over my shoulder and I fold it in half, wondering what I’ll look like with a shorter hair cut.
I can’t be sure. But it’s the least I can do for him. If it helps correct my stupid mistake, I’ll cut my hair. My hair doesn’t matter to me.
The problem is, I’m not sure what really does matter to me. On the one hand, I’m obsessed with my freedom.
But on the other, I need what Noah has to offer me. It’s the chance to be something, to matter to someone. If I stay with Noah, I know I won’t really be free. I’ll be a slave to the need inside of me, to my own blossoming darkness.
And I’ll be his. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad, but I know it’ll be true. I can see myself getting more and more addicted to him until I can’t see anything else.
As I stand there staring at myself in the mirror, I know I have to decide, and soon.
21
Noah
I drive an hour before I find a decent spot to dump the van. I pull over into a bramble thicket, climb out, and leave it there. Eventually it’ll run out of gas and sit there until someone finds it. Or it’ll sit there forever.
I get out my phone and call an Uber. The guy that comes to pick me up isn’t happy about how far I want to go, but he feels better when I offer to pay him double, once through the app and again in cash. We drive in silence, and that’s how I like it.
It gives me time to reflect on my problems.
I don’t want to think of Amelia as a problem, but I think it’s fair to say that she’s at least a liability. She’s not trained and used to this, and I threw her right into the deep end. I’m as much to blame as she is, and I can’t hold it entirely against her.
But the cops looking for her is very, very bad. She’s not going to like it, but she’s going to have to lay low for a while if she wants to stay with me.
That brings up another issue. She freaked out earlier when I told her about the cops. I expected her to be worried, but not to have a minor meltdown. It took me a few minutes to realize that she’s afraid of going to jail, probably more afraid of that than she is of getting caught or getting killed.
She’d rather die than become a prisoner again. She’s so obsessed with her freedom, since she’s never had any. I don’t want to take that away from her, and so she’s going to be very unhappy when I tell her that she needs to stay indoors.
It’s going to feel like a prison again. I don’t know how well she’ll take it or how long she’ll last.
Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe since it’s her choice to stay and lay low it’ll be fine. It is her choice, too. I won’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, not anymore. Not after what I saw.
To be honest, that scared me. I didn’t expect her to react that way, and it makes me question her ability to hold it together through all this. I know she’s strong and tough, but she has her darkness and her demons to deal with, just like I do. Her demons might make her a liability, though, because this job takes serious dedication and steadiness.
I want to bring her along. I realized that the day I let her out of the basement. Maybe I didn’t know I missed something in my life, but I know it now. I need a partner, or honestly, I need her.
There’s something about her that I can’t look away from. I don’t want to be worried about her ability to hold it together, but I have to be honest with myself. I have to think of my purpose.
I have to think of all the very bad, very dead men I’ve left in my wake. Can I even be with someone if I’m just a killer at heart?
The drive goes by quickly and eventually the Uber guy drops me within a ten-minute walk of my property. I pay him, as pro
mised, and head back home, head down and hands in my pockets. No cars pass me on the street, which is good, and it’s dark by the time I make it back to the house.
“Hello?” I call out as I walk into the kitchen. “Amelia?”
There’s silence for a second. I grab a glass and pour myself a glass of whisky before going to the foot of the stairs.
“Amelia?” I call out again.
“Up here,” she answers.
I walk upstairs, glass in hand. She’s standing in front of the mirror in her bathroom wearing only a thin black t-shirt and a pair of pink panties. She has a pair of scissors in her hand and she’s giving herself a haircut.
I can’t help but smile as I lean up against the doorjamb. “Looks good,” I say.
She looks back at me. “Really? I’ve only ever done this once before.”
“Really. I can help clean it up.”
Her hair was down to about the middle of her back before, but she cut it up to her shoulders. I’m glad she didn’t go shorter. She has beautiful, thick hair, and it’s part of what I like about her.
I walk up to her and take the scissors from her hand. She lets me, watching me cautiously as I gently even out her hair.
“We can dye it lighter too,” I say. “I’ll cut mine shorter and dye it darker.”
“Okay,” she says. “That sounds good.”
I finish after a few minutes and step back. “What do you think?”
She smiles at me. “You’re pretty good at that.”
“It’s easy when you start off with something attractive.”
She grins at me in an easy and affectionate way. “Are you calling me attractive?”
“You know I am.” I put the scissors back down on the counter then grab her hips.
She kisses me lightly on the mouth. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“This is all just new to me.”
“I get it.” I pause and release her waist. “I should tell you something, though.”
“What is it?”
“I need you to stay inside for a little while.” I pause, waiting for her reaction.
There isn’t one.
“Oh?” she asks.
“Just for a little bit. If you want to stay, and I want you to, but if you do you’ll have to lay low until the heat blows over.”
She nods, her face expressionless. “If that’s what you want.”
I pick up my glass and sip it. “It’s what we have to do.”
“Fine.” She turns back to the mirror and inspects her hair.
I can tell she just went a bit cold, but at least she didn’t blow up. “I’ll start dinner.”
“Then we can give you a trim.” She forces herself to smile at me.
I smile back. “Sure. Sounds good.”
I leave the bathroom, drink in hand, not sure what to think.
We can’t keep going like this. The whorehouse is still out there, and I can’t wait on it. I have to start doing my research on them or else risk letting them get away. And I suspect she isn’t going to be happy about me leaving her alone in the house.
It’ll have to do. I go down into the kitchen, gather together some ingredients, and start to cook. I’ll feed her and we’ll go one step at a time.
22
Amelia
At first, I completely understand why Noah needs me to stay inside.
It’s obvious to me. The cops are looking for a woman that matches my description, and so it’s best if I stay hidden until they’re not actively searching for me anymore. Anybody can see that it’s the best course of action.
And it’s not like I’m some prisoner on his property. I have free reign of everything, from his gorgeous house to the grounds all around his buildings. I can ride bikes, dirt bikes, go hiking, play videogames, watch movies, whatever I want. Everything he owns is completely at my disposal.
But as a few days pass, I can’t help but feel like I’m still in a prison. It’s a nice prison, one that most people would be pretty happy with, but it’s still a prison. My choices are there, but they’re greatly restricted. I can’t just do whatever I want whenever I want because in the end I can’t leave the confines of his land.
I feel silly, chafing at these relatively minor constraints, but I can’t help it. All my life I’ve lived with constraints, and now for the first time I feel like I’m finally getting close to living the way that I really want to. I know it isn’t his fault, it’s nobody’s fault, but it still stinks.
After I cut my hair that first night, he bought some hair dye. In the end, I went from a rich, deep brown to a lighter shade of brown with subtle blonde highlights. I actually did a decent job of dying my hair, and in the end I could barely recognize myself.
At first it was weird, having totally different hair. But soon I began to like it. I felt like a totally different person, and that was appropriate.
I am a different person. It’s obvious. I killed a man and now I live with my father’s murderer. I’m learning to stalk people, to hurt them, to hunt them and kill them. I’m learning to identify a bad person so that I don’t accidentally hurt someone that doesn’t deserve it.
Noah still wants to teach me, and I still want to learn. Our practice sessions last all morning and then he leaves me to go research the whorehouse. He doesn’t tell me much about it when he gets home, just that he has Ryan and the rest of that group watching it all day and night. He hasn’t been able to find much solid information yet, or at least that’s what he says.
I don’t know if I trust him. He’s still gorgeous, sexual, and intense, and every time we’re together I’m on the tip of my toes waiting for whatever we’re doing to turn into something much more incredible. But as the days pass, we don’t go much beyond kissing, which confuses me.
I don’t know if he’s angry with me or what. He says he isn’t, but there’s no telling with Noah. There are so many layers to him, stories within stories and lies woven within lies that I can’t tell where the real version of him starts and all the fakes end. I want to unravel him so badly, but he keeps me at a distance and backs away as soon as I get close to tugging a thread.
But I get a glimpse of the real him one night about five days after I was confined to his property.
It’s around ten at night and he’s still not home. I’m sitting in his living room, restless and bored, watching some reruns on television. I don’t feel like doing this for what feels like the hundredth time, and so I decide to go for a walk.
It’s dark, so I put on some warmer gear and grab a flashlight. I know his property pretty well, and there’s a stream that runs through the woods to the south of the house. It’s far from the road and nowhere near his closest neighbor, so I know it’s a safe spot. I decide to take a walk out there and explore.
I like his property at night. It’s calm and the wind blows through the tall grass with a gentle ruffle. I move down across the field and toward the trees, letting my mind wander.
He should have been back a half hour ago, but he’s been staying out later and later lately. He says that he’s not finding much interesting information, but I suspect he’s lying to me. Or at least I think he’s holding things back. I’m not sure why, but my guess would be that he doesn’t want me pushing to get involved.
I understand that. This is a big deal to him. Noah seems very motivated to destroy pedophiles and he believes they’re the scum of the earth. I agree with him, but it’s an entirely new level of hatred with Noah. Taking down a whorehouse that carries young girls is a big deal for him, and he can’t risk screwing it up.
Letting me in on that would be a liability. We both know it, and although I’m getting pretty good at his training, I know I have a long way to go. He told me once that he spent years preparing for his first kill, and another year before his second. He has so much practice that it’s hard for me to imagine. Just a few days of practice isn’t going to do much.
I reach the tree line and step in
to the forest area. It gets darker as the stars are blotted out by the leaves and so I turn on my flashlight. Even just a week or two ago, this would have scared me. I grew up in the city and never walked through the woods, let alone at night. But even by myself, I don’t feel any fear.
It’s like I’ve conquered something inside of me. The moment I plunged that knife into Mark Sheer’s chest, I also killed whatever fear of the night I had left inside of me.
I’m the night now. I’m the killer.
I breathe deeply, smiling, as I find my way to the stream. I hear it before I see it, and soon I’m standing on its bank. I can hear animals crawling in the brush around me, but I just ignore them as I find rocks and skip them along the surface.
After maybe five minutes of skipping stones absently, I suddenly hear something. I pause, straining to listen, and the sound of a dirt bike comes into clear focus. It’s not far away and coming closer, probably coming from the direction of the house.
I walk back toward it, shining my flashlight. I can see the bike in the distance, and so I flash my light a few times. The bike turns and comes toward me, picking up speed.
Noah skids to a stop in front of me and drops the bike on the ground as he jumps off it. He strides over to me and grabs me by the shoulders, scaring the hell out of me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, breathless.
“I’m fine, what’s happening?”
He stares at me for a second then pulls me against him, hugging me tight. “I came back to the house and you were gone.”
“I went for a walk.”
“It’s late. I . . . I didn’t know you went for walks at night.”
“I’m sorry I worried you. I don’t normally.”
“Don’t do that again.” He moves me away, staring me in the eyes. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I’m allowed to go for a walk whenever I want, aren’t I?”
“What if someone saw you?”