Colin: A Serial Killer Romance

by Stella Noir

  “Happy Anniversary, Abby,” he whispered in my ear as he buried his face in my hair.

  No! No! Don’t do this to me, Jake! I thought as I forced the tears back and clutched my tightening throat. Everything in my peripheral vision started to turn to black as it narrowed down to a small tunnel in front of me.

  “Anniversary?” I asked with a shaky voice. This wasn’t going as smoothly as I had pictured last night when I cooked up that silly fantasy about us hugging and parting as good friends.

  “Yeah, I know it’s not a real anniversary, but we’ve been together six whole months. Maybe I’m a total sap, or maybe I just wanted an excuse to celebrate…with you,” he said as his lips met the inner curve of my neck and shoulder. Tears were streaming down my cheeks now, but I didn’t want Jake to see that I was crying. The thing is, though, the tears were falling for more than one reason. I knew that I loved him and I knew that he was the most wonderful man I had ever known, but I also knew that I was terrified and the only thing that made sense to my crazy brain at that moment was to get out of there as quickly as possible. I wiped the tears off my cheeks and wheeled around, pushing Jake away from me.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Jake.”

  ONE OF THE doors in the room opened and a nurse walked in carrying a metal tray.

  “Good morning, Ms. Scott. How are you feeling?” She set the tray down on a side table near the head of the bed and took a thermometer off the tray. I hadn’t been in a hospital since I broke my ankle playing soccer in grade school, so I didn’t really know what nurses were wearing these days, but I was a bit startled at how archaic this woman’s uniform looked. Like something out of an old movie…Like my dream about that movie last night in that old hospital mansion place, I thought as I stared at her white dress and the little winged hat perched on top of her head.

  “I’m just going to get a few vitals right now, dear. I’ll bring in some breakfast in a little while, but you’ll be needing a lot of rest after your accident,” she said as she plunged the thermometer into my mouth. I tried to ask her what happened to me, but she shushed me and proceeded to wrap a blood pressure cuff around my arm. I was still in a fog and was still contemplating, and cringing over, everything that happened the last time I saw Jake, so by the time I remembered to ask any questions the nurse was already out the door. I looked around my bed and found nothing to call her back with.

  “What the hell kind of hospital is this?” I said out loud as I tried to sit up and look around, hoping to find a cord with a call button somewhere near the bed. My head was pounding and the room started to spin a little so even though I had barely lifted my head off the pillow, I sank back down into the soothing softness and closed my eyes.

  I’ll ask her where I am when she brings my breakfast, I thought as I drifted back into a fitful sleep where dreams were interspersed with half-awake memories that all blurred together. I vaguely remembered a conversation on the telephone. One of those old telephones shaped like a handle with the big round parts you listen to and talk into, and a long dark hall. There was a voice on the phone and it was talking to me. At first, the voice was very far away, and every time I strained to hear what it was saying it slipped further and further away into the darkness.

  When I finally opened my eyes and looked around the room again it was completely dark except for the faint slatted shadow and light pattern on the opposite wall that the moonlight cast through the venetian blinds. I must have slept all day, or maybe even longer. I had no way of knowing since there was no clock in the room or any way for me to tell how many days I had been there. I wondered if the nurse would be back in anytime soon. I wasn’t hungry yet, but my throat and mouth were incredibly dry and I remembered the pitcher of water I had seen the last time I was awake. The water was still there on the table next to the head of the bed, thank God, but the machine that was measuring my pulse was gone. I guess that meant I was doing ok, but how long ago had they taken it away? I also noticed that the bandages I’d had on my head were gone too, and I didn’t know if I had been in here longer than I realized or if my injuries were not as bad as I had imagined. I just wished someone would tell me where the hell I was, and how I got there.

  I closed my eyes and let the cool water rush down my throat as I thought about Jake again, about the way he held me in his arms right before I pushed him away and walked out on him. He was always so incredibly gentle and patient with me and I felt terrible for doing what I had done. Tears fell from my eyes again as I felt a crushing sense of doom sweep over me; that familiar feeling that would always come in the middle of the night and was impossible to shake. The feeling that I had done something terribly wrong and there was no way it would ever be made right again. I wondered for a moment what would have happened if I had decided to stay with him. I wondered if Jake would have been patient enough to deal with my ridiculous insecurities, or if he would have gotten as fed up with me as I was with myself at that moment. But it was no use wondering because I had left him and I doubted he would even want me back.

  As I lay there in a foggy haze, thoughts about Jake kept creeping back into my brain, and one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was his amazing ability to taking things slow. His patience was something that had always struck me and was something that had made its way into my head every time I’d thought about running away. He almost seemed inhuman in his ability to wait for sex. And I don’t mean fooling around, I’m talking about full-on intercourse. He always seemed fine, more than fine really, with just touching me, or looking at me, or watching me. In fact, he really seemed to love watching me. He would ask me to undress in front of him and pleasure myself in front of him and most of the time he never even touched himself. He said he was happy to just watch me, or to take things into his own hands and give me pleasure himself. I had never been with a man like that before, someone so forcefully giving. He always put my needs and desires before his and made sure that I was beyond satisfied. But eventually, what I wanted more than anything was for our naked, sweating bodies to be pressed against each other after whatever had gone on. And I don’t know why, but he never seemed comfortable with that. The two times we did wind up with our clothes all the way off and with him inside me, it was…different. It was still very good, but it wasn’t quite what I had expected. I’m sure sex between us would have continued to get more and more amazing, but I was just too scared to stick around and find out.

  Many of the nights we would spend together consisted of dinner alone at his house where we would talk and kiss and eventually get worked up to the point where he would bury his face in my hair and whisper incredibly sexy things into my ear. Sometimes he would be laying on top of me when we were on the couch together, all sweaty and out of breath, and he would hold my wrists down and graze his lips across the sensitive skin of my ear, then slowly go over each and every one of my body parts, one at a time, and describe what he liked about them and what he wanted to do to them. His descriptions always involved his tongue and his lips and always drove me to the brink of insanity, leaving me soaking wet.

  Other times he would stand behind me, just like the last time I saw him, and as I would lean back against him, his arms wrapped around me and my head resting on his shoulder, he would tell me what he wanted me to do to him. He would whisper everything in detail into my ear. The way he wanted to look at me across the room and watch me remove my clothes, turning around when I removed my panties so that he could watch as my ass cheeks spread in front of him when I touched my hands to the ground, revealing everything that was hidden between my legs to him. He would tell me that he wanted to watch me get on my knees in front of him and look up into his eyes as I removed his hard cock from his pants, then slowly slide it into my mouth. And every time he would tell me these things it would send wave after wave of intense tingling through my entire body. Then he would watch me make myself come with those deep dark eyes that looked like they could never get enough of me. Everything he did made my head spin, even when he wasn’t e
ven touching me.

  I shook my head and snapped out of the memory trance that I had just drifted off into. I sullenly looked around the room slowly remembering where I was. In a dark hospital that was dead silent and very creepy at night. I realized as I set the glass back down on the side table that I hadn’t recalled hearing a single sound the entire time I’d been there, other than the nurse talking to me briefly while she took my blood pressure, and the infernal beep of the heart rate machine that was now gone. I got up out of the bed and shuffled over to the door I had seen the nurse come in. I was still very shaky and had to hold onto the bed and the table under the TV as I made my way the short distance across the room, and when I opened the door enough to poke my head out all I saw was a long dark hall. I shivered as I shut the door again and groped my way back to the bed, sinking in and pulling the covers up over my head as quickly as possible to recapture some warmth.

  This place is more like a mausoleum than a hospital, I thought as I rubbed my feet together under the covers, willing them to stop resembling ice cubes. As I lay there I thought about the dream with the phone call and Jake whispering into my ear and was surprised by how similar the two events felt when I thought about them together. I suppose the memory of Jake’s overwhelming effect on me was just really strong in my subconscious right now and that’s probably what caused the dream. But for some reason, the dream reminded me of something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something from a long time ago.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness with thoughts, or dreams, of Jake whispering in my ear, that then turned into Jake calling me on an old fashioned phone and telling me all the things he would do to me when I got better and got out of the hospital. He told me he liked to watch me walk around the big dark house in my nightgown and that he was always watching me, even when he was talking to me on the phone.

  I woke up the next day to the sound of the nurse setting a domed tray down on a rolling table next to the bed. It was one of those hospital tables with legs on only one side that pushed across the bed in front of me so that I could eat where I was sitting. She used a button on the side of the bed to move the head up, then moved my pillows around behind me so that I straightened up.

  “Where am I?” I asked, taking the cover off the tray in front of me and revealing a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, scrambled eggs and toast.

  “You’re in the hospital, young lady. You were involved in a bad accident and you’ve been asleep for days.” She still had the old fashioned nurses uniform on and wore an old lady scowl with it.

  “I’ve been asleep for days? How many? What happened to me? In the accident, I mean?”

  “You were brought here in the middle of the night, oh it’s been 5…no, 6 days now. I can’t tell you anything about what happened before you got here, though. That would be something to talk to the doctor about.”

  “The doctor? When will I see him?”

  “Oh, he’s very busy. You’ll be seeing him soon, I’m sure. But what you need to do right now is rest. Go ahead and eat your breakfast and when you’re done I’ll be back in to get the tray.”

  “But how will I let you know that I’m done? I can’t find a call button.”

  “I’ll know,” she said as she slipped back out into the hallway. I sat there for a moment staring at the door. I had asked her all the questions I had intended to, but I still didn’t know a goddamned thing about where I was or how I got there. I pushed the rolling table away from the bed and tried, once again, to go out into the hall and find out where I was. I got myself into a sitting position, but after a few seconds of woozy swaying and a feeble attempt at standing, I got back under the covers.

  Maybe I’m worse off than I realized, I thought as I inched my way back into bed and covered myself up. I pulled the rolling food table back over the bed and decided to give the eggs a try. They weren’t bad, especially when shoveled onto the buttered toast, and the coffee was actually pretty decent. I ate everything in the eerie silence I was getting used to, then put the cover back on the tray and pushed the table away from the bed. My eyes started to get heavy and my head fell back and to the side. I closed my eyes, thinking it would just be a few minutes until the nurse came back and that I would just rest them a bit. I wanted to ask her more questions and see if I could, at least, turn the TV on and break the overbearing silence for a little while.

  The next thing I knew I was laying on my back again and the nurse was standing over me.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Scott. How are you feeling today?”

  “Today?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and trying to get the face in front of me to come into focus.

  “But I saw you this morning. I ate breakfast and…”

  “That was yesterday, dear. You fell asleep after breakfast and haven’t been up since.”

  “What? I slept for a whole day? What time is it?”

  “It’s just after one o’clock, dear. You must be hungry by now. I’ll bring in a tray of lunch for you.”

  “Wait. When can I see the doctor?”

  “Oh, he’s already been in to see you today, dear. He was in yesterday afternoon as well. He took all your vitals and said you’re recovering very well. You just need your rest and you’ll be fine,” she said with an awkward smile that looked like it took a bit more effort than it was worth.

  “Can’t he come back in so I can talk to him? I’d really like to know what happened and when I can expect to leave here.”

  “I’ll put a call in to him and let him know that you’d like to see him. I can’t promise anything, though. He’s a very busy man. And I wouldn’t be worrying too much about leaving here anytime soon if I were you. What you need to be concerning yourself with right now is eating and resting and getting yourself good and healthy. I’ll be back with your lunch in a bit.”

  And before I could get another question out she was gone. I just lay there, staring at the thousands of holes in the ceiling and wondering how it was that an old lady like that could get in and out of this room so goddamned fast. Maybe she has roller skates on that I can’t see, I thought as I fought the foggy feeling in my brain.

  I had drifted off again but woke to the sound of the metal food tray being set down next to me. The nurse elevated my head and pushed the food table in front of me like before, and managed to make it out the door again before I even had a chance to collect my thoughts and find out what hospital I was at.

  I picked up the domed lid and set it to the side of the tray. The shiny metal lid somehow felt heavier today than it had yesterday on the breakfast tray. I didn’t see how I could be weaker today though and thought I really should talk to the doctor and find out what, if anything, was wrong with me. But I also figured I should probably just eat and rest like the nurse had suggested, even though I wasn’t very hungry. Lunch was a brothy soup and a ground meat sandwich of some kind, which seemed like tuna, but didn’t have any kind of tuna flavor. I ate slower than usual partly because I wasn’t very hungry, and partly because I wasn’t particularly excited to put the unidentifiable sandwich meat in my mouth. About halfway through lunch, I started to feel extremely tired again. I was even having a hard time getting my hand up to my mouth and that’s when I started to wonder if my food was being drugged. It wasn’t even a normal tired feeling where you think maybe you’ll close your eyes for a minute or two and rest. It was a full on, room-tilting, eyes-closing-against-my-will tired that I had only ever felt since I had been in this crazy hospital.

  But that’s preposterous, I thought as my eyes started to close. Why on earth would my food be drugged…

  3

  ABBY

  The dream came after I drifted into what felt like a drugged stupor. The telephone was there again, ringing that weird old ring that for some reason always sent chills down my spine. I guess because the only place I’d ever heard that kind of shrill ring was in old black and white movies, and mostly horror movies. Usually, in those old movies, the phone seemed to ring forever, probabl
y because everyone knew that there was some creepy killer on the other end. And when they did finally answer the phone it was in a creepy voice with some strange old-fashioned accent.

  I was in the same hospital bed in the same dark room I’d woken up in that first day, only the room was much bigger. For some reason I was afraid to move, but when I finally got up the courage to look to the left and then to the right, I realized that the room was enormous. It stretched on and on in each direction and became two long, dark hallways, each narrowing down on both sides until they came to an inky, blacked-out end. I turned my head to the nightstand and saw the big, black, old-fashioned phone that had been ringing for at least a full minute, then took the receiver off the hook. It was almost too heavy for me to pick up, but I dragged it to my ear and let it lay next to me on the pillow my head rested on.

  “Hello?” I asked, but my mouth hadn’t moved. My eyes were opening and closing very slowly as I waited with dread to hear who was on the other end. It had been ringing for a very long time so I hoped that whoever was calling had decided to hang up because I didn’t feel strong enough to hang the receiver back up myself.

  “Hello, Abby. This is your doctor. I need you to perform some tests for me.”

  The voice was dark and far away and almost had a sing-song quality to it. Like the person attached to it was smiling.

  “Tests?” I said…or thought. I’m still not entirely sure which.