by Stella Noir
More than once Colin told me that he promised he wouldn’t leave me down here, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he had been left down here when he was little. But now that sweet little boy was keeping girls in this very cage and killing them in horrifying ways and I didn’t even know how to feel other than sick to my stomach.
As I laid there, trying to breathe deeply and calm myself down, I noticed something that looked like a diagram of some sort that had been scratched into the concrete. It was hard to see because the light in the basement was so dim and the wall next to the bed was obscured by the shadow of the top bunk, but the longer I stared at it the more I realize that it had to be a diagram of the tunnels outside the door.
I heard the door open and footsteps on the stairs and I sat up on the bed. I still didn’t have a weapon and I prayed I would have a little more time to figure something out. Colin unlocked the cage door and waited for me to come out.
“I fixed up a room for you. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this, anyway.”
We went up to the second floor and he took me into a room at the back of the house that looked and smelled like it had just been cleaned. It wasn’t dusty and the curtains were parted, and even though there was heavy mesh screen on all of the windows, it was actually a nice room.
“I hope this’ll be ok for you. I’m going to have to go out and get you some clothes and whatever else you think you might need. You can make a list while we’re eating dinner. I have to work tomorrow, but I can pick some things up for you on the way home tomorrow night,” he said, still barely able to look me in the eye.
I didn’t know what was going on. This wasn’t how I imagined he treated the girls that he killed. It definitely wasn’t how he treated the girl in the basement. But maybe this was part of the whole thing. He would keep them up here for a while and then when he was ready to do whatever horrible thing he did to them, he would put them down in the basement.
“I’m making dinner right now. It should be ready in about a half hour. Would you like to wait in the kitchen with me? I was just getting ready to make a salad.”
“Ok,” I said as I continued to try and make eye contact with him. I couldn’t tell if he was shy or if he was just a straight up sociopath. Everything he said to me sounded emotionless and flat, like he was just giving me the facts. But his eyes … they didn’t seem to be able to hide anything.
He gestured for me to walk ahead of him into the kitchen and he followed right behind me. It smelled like herbs and onions and garlic and crispy chicken skin and as I sat down at the table my mouth started watering.
“Smells good,” I said trying to sound as normal as possible but feeling like it was just about the weirdest thing I had ever said in my life. I was still shaking and I was trying to see if there was any way I could try and escape, but we were on the second floor and he was standing right next to the only way out of the room. I thought that maybe if I could get him to think of me as a friend, or at least a friendly person, he wouldn’t chop me up into little pieces or cut my face off.
As I watched him standing there with his back to me I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his broad shoulders as he chopped up vegetables on the cutting board. I watched his arm move up and down rhythmically at his shoulder as he continued to chop, then slowly my eyes moved down to his shoulder blades, following the lines of his back as they tapered off at his waist and then to his jeans ….
Jesus fucking Christ, Avery. What the hell???
“Thanks,” he said as he turned and looked at me with a slight smile on his face and for a second I thought I saw something in his eyes that I really wasn’t expecting. I could have sworn it looked like excitement, almost like he was trying to impress a date. He immediately turned back around to the counter and continued chopping vegetables then slid them into a bowl.
“So, how long have you lived here,” I asked, my voice still a little bit shaky. I was hoping to get a better idea of who he was and I thought if I asked questions that I already knew the answer too then maybe I could determine if he was telling me the truth or if everything was a lie.
“I’ve lived here all my life.”
“And that’s your family’s store downstairs?”
“Yeah, that store has been down there since the forties. My grandparents started it and after they both died my mother and I ran it until she died thirteen years ago.”
“How come it isn’t open anymore?”
“Oh, I kept it open for about three years but I just wasn’t into it. I got tired of people that I barely knew coming into my house and having to talk to them about things I wasn’t interested in. It’s funny now that I think about it. I basically do the same thing at the job I have now, listen to women talk all day long about themselves and their lives, but it’s different for some reason. Maybe because I love what I do.”
I couldn’t believe how normal he sounded all of a sudden. The flat intonation he’d had in his voice ever since I got here had completely disappeared and I felt like I was talking to a friend or a guy who had invited me over for dinner. I was still completely freaked out over what had happened ever since I set foot in this house, but what was starting to freak me out even more was that I was becoming a little bit less afraid of him. I was actually starting to feel a little bit relaxed watching him cook and hearing him talk, and I didn’t understand it at all.
This is so bizarre, I thought. How can I be enjoying this conversation? This guy is a psycho!
“What is your job?” I asked, even though I was a little bit afraid to find out. Maybe he was a hitman or a crime ring leader of some sort and finding out would ensure that I would have to be killed.
“I work at a salon,”
I did not see that coming, I thought as I continue to stare at his broad shoulders. He still didn’t seem to want to look at me.
“Really? Like you do women’s hair?”
“Yeah, I do their hair and makeup mostly. Sometimes nails,” he said as he turned around and glanced up at me quickly as he brought the salad bowl to the table.
“I make women beautiful. It’s what I love to do,” he said setting the large bowl down in between the two place settings on the table. He opened the oven and took out a crispy-skinned roast chicken then set the roast pan down on a potholder in the middle of the table as well.
“What would you like to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having is fine with me,” I said, hoping it wasn’t a ploy to drug me again. I kept having to remind myself that this guy was terrifying and I wasn’t sure why. Why was I starting to feel comfortable with him all of a sudden? Why was I chatting with him like we had just met in a totally normal way instead of me being dragged into his house kicking and screaming?
He loves to make women beautiful? Did I hear that right?
He set two glasses of wine down on the table and I watched him carve the chicken with what appeared to be the same knife I tried to stab him with yesterday.
“When did you realize that you like to do that? Style women’s hair and do their make-up? Did you go to school for it?”
“Are you really interested?” he asked, finally looking into my eyes as he took a bite of the chicken.
“Sure, I mean yes … I really am. I’ve never met a guy that liked to do that sort of thing and it actually sounds kind of cool,” I said with a faint smile on my face. I wasn’t lying. I was trying to get on his good side, but it actually did sound kind of neat. I sure as hell wouldn’t mind having a hot guy do my hair.
“Um … no I didn’t go to beauty school. It’s just something I’ve always liked to do. Make things beautiful. I guess maybe I felt like … since I couldn’t really do it for myself … that I could maybe help someone else feel that way,” he said in between mouthfuls of food. He still seemed so much more relaxed, but only occasionally looked up at me, mostly keeping his eyes on the food on his plate.
It felt odd that he was opening up to me like this. I realized that I was the one a
sking him questions about himself, but the way he answered, it seemed so personal and sort of touching. As I watched him eat I couldn’t help thinking about him as a little boy, and that note I found on the floor of the cage. But after a while he glanced up at me and I quickly looked back down at my own plate and started to eat.
“Oh my God, this chicken is incredible,” I said as I crammed a second piece into my mouth, completely forgetting that I was sitting at the table with a complete psycho.
“Thank you.” He looked at me for a few seconds with an incredibly cute smile on his face then looked down again. But I could see that the corners of his mouth were still turned up a little. “It’s been a long time since I’ve cooked for anyone.”
So, I guess he didn’t have all of his victims up to dinner. I wondered what made me so special. I ate quietly for a while because I was confused about how I was feeling but also because what I really wanted to ask him about was his childhood. About the piece of paper I had found downstairs.
“So … what did you mean when you said you couldn’t make yourself beautiful?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t too personal of a question that might send him into a rage. Although, I was starting to have a hard time picturing Colin flying into a rage. He didn’t seem like every stereotypical serial killer I’d seen in the movies and on TV. There was something very different about him for sure. But he didn’t really seem like a loose cannon or a totally unstable nutjob. Not yet, anyway.
You barely know this guy, Avery. He could snap at any second.
He looked at me for a second then sat back in his chair and I thought he was going to get up and leave the table. Instead, he thought for a moment, then talked to me in a sincere and earnest way. Like he really respected my question.
“Well, I suppose, like a lot of people, I was bullied when I was a kid and it didn’t do much for my self-esteem. Plus, my mom was a little bit … religious … so I basically felt like everything I did from the minute I was born was somehow shameful or wrong.” He looked so sad all of a sudden, like he was remembering an old memory that he hadn’t talked about for a long time. “Plus, I’m a guy, and guys can’t be beautiful.”
He said that last part so definitively it totally took me off guard.
“That’s not true at all. I think men can be beautiful.” I almost said something about his eyes but it felt odd telling the guy who was holding me captive that I thought he had beautiful eyes, so I just switched gears to the other part of what he had said. “Yeah, I know you mean. When I started to develop before the other girls in my class in grade school I got called all kinds of names. Lard ass, bubble butt, thunder thighs, etc. I don’t understand why kids are so cruel, especially once they get trapped in a room together. It’s like they think it makes more sense to turn on each other than help each other out, and I don’t think they realize how much the stuff they say hurts and how long that pain can last. I still have a hard time looking in the mirror sometimes.”
Colin looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I was saying.
“Are you being serious?” he asked as his eyebrows slowly scrunched together in the center of his forehead.
“Yeah, well, I mean, of course there are things about me that I like, who I am as a person, and some parts of my body that aren’t bad. My feet for example. They’re kind of nice. But, for some reason, no matter how hard I try to appreciate myself, I’ve always sort of wished that I was someone else.”
He looked at me like he had just seen a ghost. His eyes got big and his mouth opened up a little bit like he wanted to say something but had no idea how. As I sat there watching his reaction I started to realize how ridiculous I probably sounded and I was totally embarrassed that I had just spilled my guts to this guy.
Why would he even be remotely interested about how much I liked my freaking body?
I was starting to wish he had just left me down in the basement. At least down there I wasn’t making a fool out of myself and who knows, maybe if I asked him nicely he would be a thoughtful killer and whack me off while I was asleep. Put me out of my pathetic misery.
After a minute he cleared his throat and looked back down at his plate. He pushed his food around with his fork for a second then looked back up at me.
“You’re one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said with a completely straight face.
I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t seen how serious he was, but the sincerity in his eyes almost took my breath away.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“I told you, Avery, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not lying.”
“Then why am I here?”
He pushed his food around on his plate a couple more times, but didn’t look back up at me.
“I don’t know.”
15
COLIN
I almost felt like Avery was playing some kind of game with me. In the first place, it didn’t seem like she could possibly be this calm about being kidnapped. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and that the idea of her falling in love with someone who was holding her prisoner in their house was preposterous. And maybe I was more delusional that I realized, but she almost seemed like she was enjoying talking to me at dinner. Like she was actually interested in me. But I knew that wasn’t possible.
And in the second place, I couldn’t believe what she said to me about wishing she were someone else. All my life I had wished that I would magically turn into a completely different person. Someone taller or smarter or someone that my mother didn’t seem to be so angry with all the time. I would sit at the table after I had made breakfast and stare at the clock on the wall and think and wish really hard If God really loved me he would turn me into someone else at nine o’clock. But when nine a.m. rolled around I would always still be me.
Or I would wish that my real parents would show up at the store one day and take me away to a house where I never had to constantly look over my shoulder to see if someone was standing behind me, watching me and telling me that they knew what a bad boy I was even when I was washing the dishes or cleaning the house or something else that I had been told to do.
It made me angry to hear her say something like that. It made me angry that anyone would feel that way about themselves, but especially Avery. She was just so incredibly beautiful and so sweet and the more I was around her the more I felt like we were truly meant for each other. That just maybe she was someone else in the world who could understand exactly how I felt, and exactly what I was afraid of.
I HAD SET Avery up in her room and so far it seemed like it was going to work out on the days I had to be gone all day. All I had to do was install a lock on her bedroom door and another one on the door that led out of the bathroom to the adjoining room and then put industrial metal mesh over the windows to make sure she didn’t break the glass and call out to someone who might be able to hear her from the street. I also bought her a small fridge and stocked it with the things she liked to eat and after that I felt pretty secure leaving her alone in the house while I was at work.
I knew I was treating her like an animal but I still didn’t know what to do. I was so used to being alone, so used to ten years of complete silence in my house other than the occasional screams I heard when I would go down to the basement to take care of a girl down there, that it was really different having someone in the house with me, but it was a difference I couldn’t imagine living without now.
Each day that I would be at the salon we would eat breakfast together in the kitchen, and then, even though she had her mini fridge filled with food, I would pack her a little lunch. Ok, maybe it wasn’t so little, but I didn’t want her to go hungry while I was gone. I would make her a sandwich and put in some fruit and chips and other snacks and I would even use some colorful little bento containers and forks with cute animal heads on them because I thought she might like that. I’d had that stuff around for a long time and had wanted to use them to make someone a cute little bento lunch for yea
rs, but I hadn’t ever had anyone to make one for, until now.
AS I WALKED home from the salon in the rain, I tried to figure out how any of what I was doing could possibly play out the way I imagined. I fantasized that somehow through my cooking and bento making skills and my willingness to bring her anything she asked for, she would somehow forgive me for everything I had done and would crawl into my bed with me and we would fall asleep in each others arms. But I knew deep down that I was being ridiculous. It had been a week since I found Avery in my house and I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing with her.
I stopped by a couple stores on the way back to my house and picked up some things that Avery needed, then stopped and got some groceries and headed home.
As I approached my house I noticed that someone was on the porch and I hoped that if I just kept walking they wouldn’t notice me, but just as I passed the stairway they called out to me.
“Hey, aren’t you the guy that lives in this house?” The girl on the porch asked.
I knew who she was and I just wanted to keep walking and pretend that I hadn’t heard her, but I was carrying a bunch of bags and didn’t want to have to circle the block with them, so I stopped and looked up. She had that same dog with her, the one that wrapped its leash around Avery and I that first night we met. And it went from whining and scratching on the door to barking at me when the girl pulled on it’s leash. I was starting to wish I just kept walking because the closer it got to me the louder it was barking.
“Joey! Hey, stop it! Sorry about that, he’s all worked up after being trapped inside all day. Anyway, I’m your neighbor, Barbara. I’m the apartment manager for the house right there. And one of my tenants, well, she’s actually my friend too, she’s been missing for about a week. This is a picture of the two of us. Does she look familiar to you? Have you seen her at all?”
I looked at the girl’s phone and there was Avery, smiling at me with every inch of her face. It was so amazing to see her like that, her eyes sparkling and pointed down on both sides in half moons, and the corners of her lips curled up so delicately, but it also made me incredibly sad to think that she would never smile up at me like that. That picture was the closest I would ever get.