I figure I should keep talking, whether it is to distract him or myself, I’m not exactly sure. “So what do women want?”
“I don’t know. I never figured it out. It was mentally exhausting. And I pride myself on being smart. My sisters were vicious toward each other. But I learned something else. All you women have one thing in common. You don’t want to die.”
“You...kill?” I know the answer.
“Yes. I have to.” He shows no remorse. “Murder is the ultimate form of ownership. Permanent possession. The last girl almost lived to tell the tale...but didn’t.”
I cringe at him saying that.
“Oh, don’t look so glum,” he says. “Humans are so afraid to die. I find it amusing how they do everything they can to prevent it. You see, I try to fix people who don’t even know they have to be fixed. And most of my patients come in with specific pains or mental conditions to be treated. Sooner or later, we’ll get to talking about death. I tell them death isn’t as horrible as what they may believe. Isn’t it true that we see all who have ceased to live as happy and content, having found peace? What’s so terrifying about that? If nothing else, death is attractive.”
“Not for the people who are headed straight to hell.”
“Oh, I’ve been to hell. It’s a quaint little village in Norway.” He grins a sly smile, licking his lips. “You best believe hell is here among us, inside us. We are the demons.”
I’m going to die, stuck in this cold room, a victim of his fantasy...dead at the hands of his insanity.
“Why did you kill the last girl?” I ask like we’re having a typical conversation on a delightful afternoon at a coffee shop. I can’t believe myself.
“Because she kept talking.” He leans over and says the answer into my face. “And talking, like she and I were friends, like I wasn’t going to bludgeon her to death and she could easily talk me out of killing her. Don’t think I don’t notice that’s what you’re doing right now. Trying to talk to me.”
“If I talk, or if I don’t, you’re still going to kill me.” The words just pop out. “Why don’t you get this over with already?”
He laughs. “Look at you, thinking you’re something special, calling all the shots around here.” He stays silent for a moment. Then he says, “Tell me how you want to die.”
Fear throbs in my veins. “What?”
“You can tell much about a person by how they wish to die.”
“I don’t know.”
“Surely you must have an ideal death.”
What I do know is I’m heading straight to the slaughterhouse, but I tell myself that at least while he’s talking to me, he’s not hurting me yet.
“I guess a point-blank shot to the head.”
His brows raise, and his brown eyes widen. “Interesting. Most people want to die quietly, in their sleep.”
“I’m not most people. When I go, I want to go out like a firework—with a bang.”
Looking intrigued, he reaches out and slowly releases my damp hair from the ponytail it was in. He doesn’t take his eyes off of it as he strokes it gently. “You are truly something else,” he murmurs, still running his fingers through my hair. “Question is what, exactly?”
I have to keep it together, stay calm, because as long as I do that, I can beat him. I read somewhere that it helps to understand the reasons why animals become so aggressive. John is just a different kind of animal, a different kind of monster, and like the sick animal that he is, he might pick up my frightful energy and attack me on the spot.
“What was her name?” I insist. “The last girl?”
His jaw tightens and he grits his teeth before answering. “Johanna.”
“Did you rape her?”
“Are you accusing me of something?” he says, crossing his arms. “No. I didn’t rape her. I didn’t have to. We had sex, yes. But she fucked me, actually.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It simply does not matter what you believe.” He says it flat out. I’m clearly nervous and shaken and praying, despite my tough-as-nails exterior demeanor.
“What was she like?”
He shakes his head as if the question is ridiculous. “She was tall like you. Wouldn’t shut up like you.” He examines his nails. “She was smart, that one. Smart or just crazy. She was tedious all the way to the end. Never screamed. Never cried. Police don’t know what happened to her. Never will. It’s evident that I’m very good at what I do. I plan my crimes. I remain undetected, and none have lived to speak of it...except for one.” He looks at Sarah. “That bitch you see right there? She convinced me. Said she understood me. Said she wanted to help me get my way. And then that fucking rat sells me out to the police. I should’ve killed her when I had the chance. Like I did anybody that ever rejected me.”
“I know what that’s like.”
“What?” He chuckles. “Rejection? I’d say the exact opposite.”
“Trusting someone and having that person betray you. Betrayal takes something away from you. Something that you once thought was beautiful and unique. And you can’t change what happened or make the pain go away.”
John seems to think about this. “Well, like I always say: don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.”
For some reason I ask an incredibly pitiless question, but my desire to keep him talking is far superior to any compassion I feel for Sarah. “So why didn’t you kill Sarah?”
Sarah babbles something behind the cloth in her mouth. Johnny’s eyes twinkle with sadistic glee. “You haven’t figured it out?” This gives him such thrill. “You. I didn’t kill her because she promised me you.”
I look at Sarah with an unblinking stare and John goes on about how this (whatever this is) is going to be the pièce de résistance of his entire life’s work. I go stiff all over, then steadily breathe. He pushes to his feet, and points his gun at Sarah’s head. I hear a click go off. I lose my calm entirely.
I struggle in the chair as I shout, “Get your hands off of her, you sick son of a bitch!”
He draws back slightly. “That’s my girl.” With a smirk on his pale face, he triumphantly puts the gun back into his waist, stretches, and cracks his neck. “Defiance,” he says as he begins lifting the roll-up door behind me. A ray of daylight streams through and I immediately think, how long have we been in here?
“What?”
“Defiance,” John repeats. I suddenly feel his breath on my ear. He whispers, “That’s my thing. That’s what does it for me. I find no pleasure in a simple death. It’s more enjoyable when they put up a fight, when they squirm, when they yell...” About to leave, he turns and says, “Oh, by the way, I don’t use a gun to kill. It’s very unemotional. When I kill, I make it all grisly, baby.”
He tells Billy to get up and tie my mouth again. The music goes off; all this time we were listening to Elton John.
The lights go off.
***
IT TAKES AWHILE for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I feel exhausted, too tired to do anything. A blue screen makes the music player light up, casting a silhouette of the glass of wine. It’s quiet, making me assume that Sarah and I are alone.
If I want Sarah and I to make it out of here untouched and alive, I don’t have to understand John—I might not get the answers, or I might not like them, and that’s okay—I just have be smarter than him, faster than him, tougher than him. Do what all the other girls didn’t do—not play this sad, twisted game of his.
I try to free myself from the tape, but it’s too tight. I jump in the chair and drag it so I can reach the table in front of me. I hear the crack of cheap wood squeaking. Side-to-side, I begin rocking the chair to see if I can break it. I hear another crack and I feel it beginning to tumble. I rock and rock, causing it to tip over. I’m on the floor, twisting like a fish on dry land, pushing away the split bits of wood.
I stand up—my ankles still taped to the legs of the chair, my hands still taped together behind my bac
k—and call out for Sarah, ask her if she can hear me. She muffles out a yes. “I’m going to get us out of here,” I say, but don’t think she can understand me through the cloth in my mouth. It takes me about a minute to grab the music box and use it to crush the glass on the table with just the tips of my fingers. I sift through the broken glass—careful not to cut myself—grab one of the pieces, and cut through the duct tape around my hands. The glass catches my skin. I can feel blood trickle down from my wrist. I free my mouth, then my ankles. I go at the walls to find the light switch. In the dark, I pat my hands around, trying to get a feel for a switch. Light comes on. I run to Sarah and pull her cloth down.
She immediately cries out, “Sophie, you don’t know what Johnny can do, what he’s done, what he’s capable of! What do you think you were doing back there, talking to him? Don’t be stupid! He’s a rapist and a killer! I know him better than anybody else. Don’t piss him off. I want to live. I want you to live.”
“We will,” I say dryly as I hurry to cut the tape around her arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Anna Summers.”
“What?”
“That was his first kill. Johnny was obsessed with her. He killed her because she rejected his invitation to prom. The girl already had a date. Johnny didn’t understand why she wouldn’t rather go with him. I mean just look at his freaking face! He’s a beautiful man and he has the money to get any girl’s panties to drop. But that didn’t happen for him. So he sliced her throat and stabbed her multiple times before Anna was even able to make it to prom.”
The roll-up door begins to lift. John and Billy rush inside.
Sarah whispers. “Don’t fight him off. It will just make things worse. Look him in the eye and tell him nice things...it takes his power away.”
The kid shuts Sarah’s mouth again, and she seems to willingly comply. “You know where to take her,” John tells the kid.
“What if my grams sees her, man?” Billy mumbles with something of the air of a nervous schoolboy. “What if someone notices me pulling up in my gram’s drive? What if a cop stops me for no reason?”
“What if I put a bullet through your skull and your life ceased to exist?” John looks at Billy, making a point. “Would you keep giving me shit about everything? No. You’d be fucking dead. You don’t want that, do you? Do you?”
“You’re scaring me, Johnny...the look on your face.”
“I’m sorry. Don’t you worry. Everything is going to be just fine. Remember you’re my Billy man, okay?”
Billy smiles and nods, keeping Sarah in his grip. I stand motionless, John moving toward me, but in my head there’s a little cartoon version of me running so fast I leave a cloud of dust behind.
He moves closer. I can feel my heart in my throat. My body breaks out in a cold sweat. I desperately try to hide how incapacitated with fear I am. But I can’t. At that moment, I recognize John Bridges for what he truly is—a sick, perverted man who will inflict me with so much physical and emotional pain I will beg him to kill me. I’m terrified of him. I can’t pretend anymore.
After some frenzied looking around, I rush for the table and overturn it. John moves seconds before the table hits him and laughs. It’s a game of cat and mouse. I run the other way and he’s quickly behind me, grabbing my waist and spinning me around. I take a sloppy punch at him, but he easily dodges it and slaps me with such force blood dribbles from my mouth. The strike sends my vision spinning and my ears ringing. My vision comes back just in time to see his fist coming at me again; it stabs my jaw with sharp pain. My knees give out and I collapse to the floor face first. He kicks me in the stomach knocking the breath right out of me.
For the first time, I scream; it’s a long, loud screech. Famished and defeated, I try to move away from him. He forces me up and puts his hand to my neck, squeezing so tightly around it that oxygen little by little stops flowing. He pushes me to the wall where I feel the corrugated metal press into my back. I hit the wall hard; it fazes me for a moment.
“Please,” I struggle to speak. “Sarah...”
Sarah fusses and kicks in the corner, trying to free herself. John is making her watch. “No! Please, don’t! I’m sorry about everything! Don’t hurt her! Please! You don’t want to do this, John! I’m sorry!”
This is what death feels like runs through my head the entire time before my eyes fully shut.
TWENTY-SIX
I LOOK UP from concentrating on a sad, lifeless cockroach lying on the cement floor next to me.
The roach has been dead for at least three days. Not that I can tell time being locked up in this windowless freezer of a deathtrap, but I’ve counted three “good mornings” from John so far since it died.
The other day, when John walked in, he smacked it with a newspaper. The roach never stood a chance. John shared his expertise on roaches. “You know, cockroaches are tough little critters. Fascinating. They’ve been here since before the dinosaurs. They can survive on very little. Eat almost anything. More impervious to radiation than humans. They cling to life, it seems.” He looked at the bug. “Not so tough now are you, little guy?”
I’ve never liked bugs—they are foul, foul pests—and this disgusting creature is no exception. But as I look at it, half-squished, on its back, with its tiny legs up, I pity it. I can’t help but reflect upon the roach. In doing so, I realize something: John Bridges isn’t the man who jumped out of a van and tried to grab me. John is strong and agile and big, and there is simply no way a woman of my limited physical power could have stood against a man like him. I tell myself it’s a universal truth. Big fish eat up the smaller fish.
“It was Billy, wasn’t it?” I said to John. “He’s the one who tried to kidnap me.”
John just looked at me and smiled, as if pleased with himself. “Ah, yes. Billy’s botched attempt at a kidnapping.”
“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“There’s an order to things, Sophie, a way of doing them...an order,” he echoed.
“More like chaos.”
“Chaos is not but a higher order of the universe. Chaos is why we’re here on this planet. In the words of Nietzsche, ‘you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.’”
I just stared at him, wondering if he was so lost in his mind...or was I?
“Why...why are you doing this?” I whispered tiredly, as he softly rubbed an ointment on my forehead and taped a Band-Aid on an open wound.
“Doing what?”
“The exact opposite of killing me. What are you trying to prove?”
“It’s all part of a plan.”
“What plan? What kind of sick plan is this?”
“It will all add up and make sense in the end.”
The memory fades away. I sit on a chair, tied up, tired-eyed, energy constantly leaking from me. A tear escapes from the corner of my eye. I have spent the last hour crying, as I have never cried before.
“Am I going to get out of here?” I ask the cockroach, as if it’s alive, as if it can understand me.
“Yeah, I don’t know either,” I tell it.
I’ve learned to tell daytime from nighttime. It isn’t as cold when the sun is shining, then too, John leaves a small lamp on at night. I don’t know where Sarah is, what he’s done with her, or what his plan is, but he hasn’t laid a hand on me after the gruesome beating he gave me. If anything, he’s been polite and gentle, bringing me food, healing my bruises...explaining the philosophical viewpoints of Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Socrates. It’s like he doesn’t want to hurt me.
John hasn’t been around for a couple of hours, which is more than usual. He received a call on his phone, and minutes later he was gone. Maybe the police caught him. Maybe he got run over by a truck. Maybe he’s dead. I can only hope.
The thought of him is soon dashed as I suddenly hear a booming voice ring out and police sirens. They are faint at first, but then they start getting louder, coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Frantic, I r
ock the chair to the side and tumble to the floor. I crawl along the concrete—the chair strapped to my back—headed for the roll-up door. My arms give out. My legs give out. I try to keep going but a wave of pain hits my body. A whimper breaks free from my lungs. I’m in a drowsy haze when I feel a pull, a tense jerk that puts me on my feet.
The moment my mouth is freed I cough and gasp for air. “Oliver?” I manage to say weakly, my voice strained. My eyes are wet, probably with cold sweat, and one eye I can’t really open. But it’s him. I know it’s him. Oliver is here. He came for me. He must be so overwhelmed and stunned that he doesn’t say anything. He merely holds me tight as I dive into his arms and cry into his chest.
“Ow,” I quietly groan, pain permeating every cell, every pore in my body.
Oliver loosens his grip and carefully helps me take steps forward. It hurts so badly I walk slouched over, with one of my hands pressing into the wound in my stomach, and the other wrapped around Oliver’s waist for support. He lifts me off the ground with ease and carries me in his arms. I can hear so many voices calling out my name, voices in the distance. The heat of the day is on my face when we go out of the room. At this point, I can’t see anything, not even what’s right in front of me.
One second, Oliver and I are walking, getting into a car. The next, I’m waking up in a clean, white hospital bed, and a doctor is saying I have two fractured ribs, a perforated liver, some vision loss, a busted lip, and a partially bruised face.
My body aches everywhere and my vision is still blurry, especially around the edges of everything. I know I should have questions for the doctor. I want to know what the damage is and why my eyes won’t quite focus, but I can’t seem to form the words in my still hazy mind.
Oliver, Sarah, Aunt Peg, and Uncle Pete are all there, congregated around the bed. They begin to say things all at once. It’s all too quick for me to process, and I’m drained from so many bad days. Who knows what they said.
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