A curtain.
The man took another loud breath, arms milling down as he exhaled. A look of intense concentration, angry furrows of focus, gripped his face.
“Wait! Let me see it! That’s why I came here, because I wanted to see it! At least grant me that!”
He stopped in mid-motion. He opened his eyes. For a long moment, he simply stared.
“I would advise you to keep quiet. It will be over more quickly that way. Ploys like this are simply a waste of time.”
“It’s not a ploy! I’ve been following your... your work. I was drawn here to find you. I knew when I read the stories, when I read about all those missing women, that someone was doing God’s work.”
“Stop talking. You are only going to make it harder on yourself.”
“I’ll tell you how I found you! Just... just show me it. Please. I want to see it.”
His eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, weighing the bargain. Then he took a step to his rear and stretched an arm back. He held his gaze on her for several seconds, still deciding, before grabbing a section of material and yanking.
The thick black cloth dropped to the floor, bunching and bundling in a heap. Marlie squinted, letting her eyes adjust. Even though this had all been a bid to buy time, she couldn’t help but look, couldn’t not try to make out what she was seeing.
The dim light reached into a sizable recess the curtain had been hiding. Her eyes adjusted enough to make out the shape, its details springing into focus. Her breath caught in her throat.
It was a woman. No, she thought, looking away, then forcing herself to look again. A grotesque caricature of a woman. She – it– was standing, naked. White arms, not quite matching the tan hands, neither of which matched the long, olive legs, which were several shades darker than the trim torso. Sitting on top was a head, blonde hair draping parenthetically to each side. The eyes were milked and vacant.
You have to play it out, she told herself. Your life depends on it.
“I’m not gifted with the vision you have,” she said, each word blistering her tongue as it left her mouth. “But I can tell it’s an achievement.”
He watched her, expressionless. She could tell he wasn’t buying it. But she could also tell he couldn’t resist the platform. She could see it in his posture, in the way each breath hesitated, a wave rising to its crest, a wave he wanted so badly to see crash on the shore of his audience.
“Women have been corrupted by this world,” he said. “And they have become the corruptors of men.”
Just turn around! Turn and look at the damn thing, you sick fuck! Give me that three or four seconds I need.
“In order to purge this world of such corruption, a sacrifice must be made. The greater the corruption, the greater the sacrifice. And this corruption is of the soul, the foul defilement of the body, the original sin that even the blood of the Lamb could not wash clean.”
Marlie swallowed. “Yes.”
“So, now you see. What I do is for the betterment of all.”
“Yes. I see that.”
He studied her, his gaze boring into her eyes. Then he lowered his head, swinging it from side to side, and started laughing. He threw his head back and let out a howl of amusement.
“You stupid bitch.” He laughed a few more times, his eyes glistening with tears. “You really think I’m that much of a moron? Or that I give a flying fuck about God?”
Her ears felt boxed by the words. Her head started to swim.
“When the police find this – and they will, when I decide to let them – they’ll find all the signs of a religious whack-job. They’ll piece together that whole story, and they’ll spend years looking for someone who fits the bill.”
Marlie tried to pull the reins on her thoughts, fought to tamp down the panic rising in her gut. Her breaths were coming in pants. She could feel herself starting to hyperventilate.
“But you know why I tell them that?” He gestured to the amalgam of body parts. “Why I let them think that’s what this is about? Because they freak out, that’s why. That look they get in their eyes, wide, round eyes. When I say it’s a demon taking over, you should see how they react. Some of them even believe it. But either way, the fear drives them out of their minds. And, oh, does that feel good, watching them, feeling them.”
He stepped toward her, leaning forward. “Because that fear, that absolute terror, makes it clear that I own them. I fucking own them. I own them and take them and do what I want with them and they exist for no other reason than to serve my every whim.”
Oh God, Marlie thought. I’m going to die. I’m really going to die. How could I have been so sure, and so wrong?
“There’s that fear! Damn. Took long enough. I knew there was something different about you, different than the others. Besides the fact your fat, I mean. The Programmers have given me an Easter Egg.”
Think, girl! Maybe he’s not the type of nutcase you thought he was, but nothing’s changed. He’s still just a man. There’s got to be a play. There’s got to be.
“You know, I’m actually looking forward to this. More cushion for the pushin’, and the demon you get is going to be all me. Fake or not, this is the only reality we have. Might as well enjoy it, I say.”
“Hold on!” Her breaths were almost gasps now, air being swallowed more than inhaled. “Don’t you want to know how I found you?”
His mouth stretched into a wide smile. “Of course I do. And right around the time I’m just getting started, you’re going to be begging to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you now! Just do me one favor first. Explain to me why. Why you do it. It’s got to mean something, you going through all this trouble. There’s got to be a reason for it. It can’t all just be about misleading the police.”
He let his gaze linger over her face for a long moment then tossed a glance over his shoulder. “You mean, why did I make her? Maybe I just like the way it creeps the hell out of them.”
“If you’re scared to tell me, I understand.”
The man stiffened, straightening up. He took two sudden steps forward and grabbed a clutch of her hair, twisting her head sideways. “I’m not scared of anything. Don’t you understand, you fat, stupid bitch? There’s literally nothing to be scared of!”
“Then tell me,” she said, coughing out the words.
He pushed her against the wall and pulled away. “You really want to know? Fine. Those legs, there? I saw them walk by one Saturday morning as I was making a delivery. Tight shorts, bare feet in these little shoes with wedge heels. I looked at them strut by and told myself, now that’s a fine pair stilts. So I had what you might call an epiphany. I decided I would own them. Them, and what they rose up to. I followed her, took down her plate number, learned her routine. Then I took her. Took her, and everything she was, made her completely mine. And when I was done playing with my new toy, I kept the part about her I liked the best. A few weeks later, I saw these tits bouncing along beneath some little t-shirt. And I had that same thought. Fine pair of tits. Decided to make them mine.”
She saw him glance at the collection of body parts again. She shifted her balance to the balls of her feet.
“Ya’ see, I read a lot. History, especially. Been reading at least two or three books of history a month for years.”
She noticed a change in his speech. Lapses in his pronunciation. His speech was becoming less formal. It occurred to her this was the real him, slipping through. Crude, unrefined. Self-educated. Smart, but with only raw intellect, never one to learn anything he didn’t teach himself. And someone likely to only teach himself what he wanted to know.
“You know what I discovered?” he said, continuing. “That the history of mankind is nothing but a repeating story of rape, pillage and plunder. That’s the natural state of man, not this bullshit suit-and-tie, go-to-the-office work-till-you-die crap. Not a life of slaving away driving a truck where the most exciting thing that will ever happen in a given week is a football game on TV with maybe a
beer to dull your senses. That – that isn’t natural. The natural state of man is predatory. It’s fighting wars, conquering new territories. The natural state of man is taking what he wants. And the natural state of women is to be taken. All I’m doing is restoring the natural order of things.”
He paused, taking a moment to admire his handiwork. “You know what else I learned? What the big reveal in all this was? It’s all fake.”
The words hung out there, a resonant silence filling the gap.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Haven’t you heard? It – this, the world, the fucking universe – it’s all just one big computer simulation. Like that movie, only worse. Scientists, they’re on the verge of proving it. Once I read that, it was like, damn! That explains it! Explains why everything’s so fucked up.”
“You think we’re all playing a video game?”
“Hey, it’s not my theory! Every day there’s more and more proof. These are scientists saying this. This universe around us? A giant hologram! Once you realize we’re nothing but little computer bytes running around, allowed to believe we’re alive, some program letting us think, or letting us think we’re thinking, it all makes sense. Once I read that, I knew, I just knew.”
Marlie swallowed, sucked in a breath that tasted like vomit. “Knew what?”
“That I could do anything. Anything I wanted to. None of it matters, nothing matters. We’re not real! None of this is real! I can’t die, I’ve never been alive. I can do what I want, when I want. All I have to do is keep in mind that this simulation or whatever the fuck is it will try to make it challenging, try to make it seem real. Almost like it wants me to have fun with it. It hit me all at once, reading that. The more I researched it, the more I realized they wanted me to figure it out. I’m not some bit player, I’m a main character. These eyes of mine, this brain… they made me different, programmed me to solve the puzzle. Wanted to see what I’d do, how I’d handle it. Whether I could outwit the Game. So, I figured, why the hell not?”
He lowered himself. “There’s your answer. Why did I do it?” He leveled his gaze at her, those white eyes unblinking. “Because I wanted to.”
It’s not going to work, she thought. He’s got all the focus of a complete psycho. He’s not going to look away, not going to give me a chance to get to it. Her heart started racing again, her pulse pounding in her ears. Her eyes felt like they were going to explode as she fought back tears. She didn’t want to die, certainly not like this. She would fight him, punch and kick and bite. But she knew it wouldn’t change the outcome. He would be stronger. And at the most she would have only one arm free.
Tasha. Her thoughts returned to Tasha. Scared, panicking, waiting for her to return. Her time running out. God, why wouldn’t he just turn around or something? She sagged against the wall, her energy draining into the ground like she’d sprung a leak.
His words started to echo faintly in her head. None of this is real. Could he be right? That would certainly explain some things, like her gift.
No, she thought. No, no, no. You can’t let his psychosis get to you. Crazy thoughts can be contagious. Ask all those dead people in Nikes waiting for spaceships behind a comet to carry them to Heaven.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, slowly reaching to undo his pants. “When you know, and seem to be the only one who really understands, you’re like a god. Like the God. Everything exists for no other reason than for you to enjoy it.” He slipped off his shoes, each foot stepping down on the back of the other in turn, then started to push his trousers down, revealing a clean new pair of tighty-whities.
As the pants slid below his knees, she saw that it might be her opportunity, or the closest thing to one she was going to get. But she knew she’d have only this one shot. He would be watching while she did it, and he’d react. She had to try something ridiculous.
She launched herself straight up, grabbing the chain with her free hand high up near where it was secured to the wall. Hanging on with all she had, she threw her legs over her head, cartwheeling her body, her feet scrabbling along the wall to get herself vertical.
The room turned upside down. She could see his inverted figure standing there, a mere six feet or so away, pants around his ankles, a bemused look on his face. But all she could think of was how her shoulder was on fire. The muscles were stretched to their limit, the joint and ligaments straining, popping, about to come undone.
She clawed at her leg with her manacled hand, the chain containing barely enough slack for it to move. Her fingers scraped for the opening to the pocket, finding the cloth edge, digging to get in. The pain in her shoulder was enough to make her scream.
And he was on her, slamming her against the wall. She lost her grip on the chain, and her body dropped, legs windmilling down and slamming into the concrete. He clamped his hand on her throat and rammed her head against the wall. She was barely aware of what she was doing, arms flailing, feet kicking blindly. She felt a fist hammer her face, stunning her, a vague recollection swimming through her brain of seeing him cock an arm and throw a punch before things exploded in her head.
He let go of her and she sank to the floor, one arm suspended above her head by the chain. Knives were shooting through her skull, a fork twisting in her head, shoved through her eye, scrambling her brain. Each time she blinked she saw tiny pins of light pop and swirl.
She held her face with her free hand, fluttering her eyes, trying to get them to focus. He was standing in front of her, maybe four feet away. Blurry from the tearing in her eyes, twin images of him, one overlapping the other. She shut her lids tight and rubbed them, trying to get her vision straight. It looked to her like he was staring at his arm.
He reached his other hand over to where he was looking and pulled something. Then she saw it. The syringe. He held it in front of him, eyeing it intently. If she could only get her eyes to stop watering, get her vision to focus.
But before they did he shifted his gaze to her and she knew. Blurry vision and all, she knew. She could sense it in the way he didn’t move, the way he looked like someone uncertain of what to do. The syringe had injected.
One step toward her and he stumbled. Another step, and he was on her again, only this time his grip didn’t hold. He tried to grab her hair, ended up only clawing at a handful. Her head was still somersaulting, but she was able to throw a punch, then another, battering his face. He dropped to his knees and she brought one of her own up, clocking him in the jaw. It was enough to snap his head and turn him over. He fell on his back, eyes thin slits, a slice of white orb looking up at her from each.
When he spoke, his voice struggled to carry the distance between. “You’re still not real. Think you are all you want.” His last words trailed off. “Fat bitch... fat, stupid…”
Marlie stayed in the same position, unmoving, not even breathing. Seconds passed. Something in her brain finally clicked and she started gulping air, breaths coming as fast as she could make them. She crumbled to the cement floor again, her arm dangling from the chain above her head.
Once her chest calmed, she looked at the man. He lay barely a foot away or so, his body unnaturally still, his eyes closed but only just. One leg of his pants was bunched around an ankle, the other inside out and trailing along the floor away from him.
She pushed herself up, wincing as each movement of her head seemed to bounce a weight around inside her skull.
Oh, Sweet Jesus, she thought, a surge of adrenaline lifting her the rest of the way. She would have to ignore the pain, since she didn’t have the luxury of giving in to it. She had more important things to worry about.
I sure as hell hope he’s got the key in one of those pockets.
* * *
“It’s you! Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God! I didn’t think you were coming back!”
The light bathing Tasha was dim, much dimmer than earlier. Marlie settled her gaze gently on the young woman’s eyes. “I’m here, Tasha. I wasn’t going to leave you
like this.”
“Will the police be here soon? Did you tell them about me?”
“No, Tasha. No police.”
The woman’s eyes widened beneath a deeply-furrowed brow as she pulled back. Her voice cracked as she spoke, like she was fighting back a sob. “I don’t... I don’t understand. I want to get out of here! Please, can’t you just get me out of here?”
None of this is real...
“There are things I have to tell you, Tasha. Things I want you to know. One is, I killed him. I killed the man who did this to you. With the details you gave me, I was able to track him down. It was enough, given what I already knew.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. I drugged him and chained him, the same way he did to you. Then I wrapped duct tape over his mouth and nose, several layers. I watched his unconscious body shudder and spasm a few times. And I made sure he suffered. The drug I gave him was a special concoction. A highly potent opioid combined with a heavy dose of l-dopa.”
“Will you please get me out of here?”
“Listen. I want you to hear this. The dosage I gave him is likely to put his brain into a vivid, nightmarish dream state. It’s a common side effect of people who’ve been administered the drug, and the higher the dose, the more common. I wanted to make sure he suffered, Tasha. Suffered just like you.”
“But he’s dead, right? So what does it matter? Wait! Are you worried I’ll tell the police? I won’t! I promise! I just want to get out of here!”
Marlie closed her eyes. “There’s something else you need to know. I used to be an ER nurse. I worked in a trauma center. One night, about three years ago, EMTs brought in woman who was showing no vitals. Hispanic female, mid-to-late thirties or early forties, dressed like she’d recently been smuggled across the border. The EMTs said she had been found on the side of the road. They wheeled her in Code Blue. I rushed in to assist the attending with a crash cart. He cleared everyone out, it was just me and him. And her.”
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