by Aubrey Dark
Gary was screaming at me from behind the gag. His one eye was completely white and glazed over, and that side of his face was one huge scab. His other eye stared wildly at me. I swallowed as I went over to him. I couldn’t let him go if we had no way to escape. But I didn’t know how to escape. Maybe he would have an idea.
Carefully, I pulled the cotton gag from his mouth. Blood and mucus spilled from the corner of his mouth. He coughed wildly, unable to talk.
Water. He needed water. I ran over to the sink and filled a plastic sample cup from the faucet. I put it to his lips and he drank, coughing.
“Straps,” he said finally. His voice was scratchy. “Take off the straps.”
“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I—”
“You stupid little bitch!” he yelled. Spittle burst from his lips. “Take off these fucking straps!”
“I can’t yet,” I said, trying to explain my reasoning. “There’s no way—”
“You don’t trust me?!”
I stopped and stared at him. I hadn’t even thought about not trusting him until he mentioned it. What was there not to trust? We were both prisoners in here.
“Is it because of what he said? Don’t believe him! You can’t believe him!”
Gary’s voice was ragged in the air. I let him drink another sip of water. My mind was churning.
“I can’t untie you. If Rien finds you untied—”
“I didn’t kill them.” Gary shook his head back and forth wildly. “I didn’t. I swear it! It was a faulty valve in one of our factories.”
I frowned.
“But you were convicted, weren’t you? Isn’t that why you’re leaving the country?”
“You can’t listen to what that maniac says. The feds are on our side.”
I paused. He had said that the police had brought us here. But that didn’t make sense.
“If that’s true,” I said carefully, “why haven’t they come to rescue us yet?”
Gary shook his head, cracking the scabs on the side of his face. Blood began to run down his cheek.
“I don’t know. Listen. Listen. He was in here with his friend earlier. He was talking about you.”
I peered at him. I’d heard voices through the bookcase, but didn’t know that someone else had been in there.
“Who was in here?”
“Some other guy. They’re both killers. He was planning on killing you.”
A chill ran through my neck.
“What? When?”
“He didn’t say. He said that he was just using you for fun, and that when he was tired of you, he would kill you.”
I blinked. Kill me? Rien said that? The chill in my body turned to an icy dread. Despite all that I had seen, I couldn’t believe that he would kill me. Not for that reason, anyway. And yet…No. In my mind, I saw Rien’s hand around my throat, squeezing.
I shook my head and refocused on the current situation.
“We need to figure out a way to escape.”
“Let me go.”
“Once we figure out a way to escape, I can,” I said, trying to be patient. “But I can’t yet.”
“We can attack him when he comes in. Both of us against him. With knives.”
“I can’t. He’ll kill us.” He could have a gun kept away in the other side of the house. And even if he didn’t, I’d felt Rien’s power. He was strong. I didn’t think I had a shot at him. And Gary looked like he was half-dead. There was no way we could take him.
And, God save me, I didn’t want to kill him.
“He’s going to kill us anyway.”
“No. Listen to me—”
“This is our only chance! At least let me out so I can help us escape! Please, oh God, please, he’s been torturing me for over a day!”
Gary’s whine made me reconsider. I gulped. Maybe he was right.
“Okay,” I said, reaching out for the strap. “But if he comes back—”
My fingers just touched the strap when I heard Rien’s footsteps. I pulled my hand back.
Oh God. Oh dear God.
“No! Let me go! You stupid bitch, just let me go!”
I backed up toward the bookshelf. I couldn’t cover this up at all. The glass globe was broken. Gary’s gag was off, and I wasn’t about to stuff it back in. I stepped back into the library. Gary’s screams echoed across the operating room. I pushed the bookshelf, trying to close it but it wouldn’t budge.
“I got your cupcake,” Rien said, swinging the oak door open. “Lunch is—”
He stopped mid-stride and stared at me standing next to the open bookcase. His smile faded from his face.
Gary screamed from the operating room, his voice booming.
“You stupid bitch! You stupid bitch! You’re dead now, you see? You’re dead! We’re both dead!”
Rien stared at me. His eyes were unreadable, calm as a lake sheeted over with ice. I couldn’t have killed him, not while he was still looking at me. Even though I knew that he could kill me without a second thought.
He had done this. He had tortured that man. I shuddered, more at myself than at Rien. Even now, hearing the screams of his victim, I couldn’t believe that he would harm me. There he stood, silent. The air was heavy with meaning.
“You’re dead!” Gary called. “You hear me? Dead!”
Rien took one step toward me, and, like the prey cornered by the predator, I froze. Like a rabbit under an owl’s gaze, waiting to be eaten. The tortured voice rose, spiraling outward through the rooms.
“Dead! Dead! Dead!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rien
I slowly set the cupcake down, knowing I might have to kill her.
Check for weapons. Don’t let them trick you.
So she’d gotten out of the library. I eyed Sara cautiously as I walked toward the bookcase. She didn’t have a scalpel in her hands; in fact, she didn’t seem armed at all. She wasn’t going to fight. That was good. And from the look of it, Mr. Steadhill was still securely fastened to the table. From his screams, she hadn’t let him escape.
“I—I pulled out this book,” she stammered. “I didn’t know what would happen.”
Her eyes were bright with fear as I moved towards her. What surprised me was my reaction to her fear: I felt bad. I wanted to comfort her. I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her that it was alright, that she had nothing to worry about.
Where did this sudden concern come from? She was a toy, a hostage. She was nothing to me. But her fear made me feel… awful.
I nodded through the doorway into the operating room where Mr. Steadhill was thrashing his head from side to side and screaming a bloody storm.
“You went in there?”
“Yes.” Her voice trembled. I longed to steady it, but I held back.
“Did you try to escape?”
She nodded, frozen in fear. Her hands clutched the bookcase as I came close. Her fingers were white. Poor girl.
“Well, at least you’re honest,” I said calmly. She must not even have broken the lock if my alarms hadn’t gone off. “Did you take anything?”
“No. I tried to get out through the waiting room.”
“Alright.” I stood next to her, arms calmly at my side. No sudden movements. She was such a scared creature.
“I broke… I broke…”
“What is it?” She couldn’t have broken the window; it was double paned and bulletproof.
“The globe.”
My mind went dark. She didn’t mean…
I walked into the operating room. Mr. Steadhill let out a torrent of shouting when he saw me.
“Killer! Fuck! Stupid bitch! You see what you did! You could have saved me! You fucking idiot piece of shit! Now he’s going to kill us all!”
I stopped at the medical cabinet, taking out a syringe from the drawer. Without saying a word, I went to Mr. Steadhill and injected him with the sedative. His screams died down instantly.
Now the room was quiet, so quiet that I swear I
could hear Sara’s heart beating in fright. She followed me as I walked slowly to the waiting room.
The light I’d installed to spotlight my sculpture was shining on nothing. The globe had fallen to the floor. It had shattered. The plasticized claustrums were scattered across the floor. Some of them looked to be broken.
Gone. All my work of the past few years. In pieces.
I fell to my knees and began to pick up the shards. My little trophies. I could save them, I was sure of it. It would take some time. But I could do it. I had destroyed so much to create this one piece of art. It seemed impossible that it too should be destroyed. I brushed the pieces into my hands, collected them in my cupped palms. Yes. Only a few were broken. I could fix them. I would.
A piece of glass cut my finger as I reached for one of the claustrums. I only realized it when I saw the blood dripping onto the pieces I’d already collected.
“No,” I whispered. I used my shirt to try to wipe off the blood, but it only smeared the red deeper in.
“No, no, no,” I said. I tried to put down all that I had gathered up, but my hands shook too badly. Another piece fell and broke in two. I jolted back on my knees.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said. I turned to see her in the doorway. I had not seen her come there. Careless. I was so careless. Her green eyes shimmered in the dim light. I shook my head as I reached to pick up the broken claustrum.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and then she was kneeling, her arms around me. “Don’t cry. I didn’t know—I was only trying to break the door handle. Please don’t cry.”
Don’t cry? Was I crying? I touched my cheek and felt wetness. I stared at Sara in mute disbelief. Silhouetted from the light behind, she was a dark shadow in the doorway. And the tears blurred the world, made her hazy like a Hollywood star in the 1950s.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it was yours. I’ll help fix it. Look, go put a bandage on your cut. We’ll fix it together.”
“Go back to the library,” I said.
“But—”
“GO!”
I shouldn’t have screamed. I never scream. Anger, sadness—these are not emotions that cross my heart often. But I screamed at her, and let out all of the emotion at once. The sound echoed through the rooms as Sara fled, scrambling away from the monster who was bleeding on the floor.
Sara
It was an hour before Rien came back. Or minutes, I don’t know which. Time didn’t work properly anymore, and my heart was beating so fast that I was sure I’d die of a heart attack before he came back to hurt me.
The look in his eyes… my God. I had no idea that anyone could have so much pain and anger. It was like a door had opened up to show me all of the horrible things inside of him, then swung back shut as quickly as he had opened. The grief on his face when he saw the globe broken… I would have done anything to take it back. I didn’t know what he would do to me, but I knew that I had done something worse than I could understand.
When finally he came back into the library, I was sitting on the couch with the book in my lap–Man’s Search for Meaning. I was trying to read it. Rather, my eyes moved back and forth over the same line again and again.
He looked haggard when he came back in. He slumped down in the corner near the end table, his eyes deadened. His hand was wrapped in cotton gauze, and the finger that he had cut blossomed red through the cotton.
He wasn’t mad. That was the important thing. He didn’t look like he was going to kill me. He just looked empty.
It was stupid to feel bad for him. I knew that. Gary had said that he was planning to kill me. He was a killer, a torturer. I knew that. I knew that, but it didn’t matter right then, because of the emptiness that was in his face. The emptiness that I created.
I struggled to find something to say to him. I’m sorry wouldn’t cut it.
“That was your sculpture?” I asked finally.
“It was… yes. Yes.” He snapped to attention, his eyes refocusing on me.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “Can I do anything to help?”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze turning to the bookshelves. He frowned.
“How did you know which book opened the secret door? I never let you see.”
“I didn’t.”
“You tried them all to see which one would open it?”
“I just wanted something to read,” I said. My hands cradled the book.
“Out of all the thousands of books on these shelves, you picked the one book that opened the doorway?” I shrugged helplessly.
His burst of laughter startled me. He leaned his head back against the bookshelves, rubbing his eyes with one hand.
“She just wanted something to read. That’s… oh, Sara. I knew there was something about you.”
Something about me? I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he looked over at me my skin grew hot. There was that predatorial look in his eyes again. That look that made me think he wanted to claim me. I touched my fingers to the page I was on.
“Why did you pick this book?” I asked.
“No reason.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You’re telling me you picked a random book to cover the secret switch to your murder room?”
“No. I—” He stopped mid-sentence and peered curiously at me. “Have you read it?”
“A long time ago,” I said, thinking of my mother in the shelter. She’d turned the well-worn pages slowly. When I’d gotten the chance to read it, I’d flown through. Maybe I’d read it too quickly. I was too young to understand most of it.
Rien was staring ahead of him, his eyes becoming unfocused.
“There has to be a reason,” I prodded. I wanted him back with me. Back in the present.
“You’re right. Of course. There’s a reason. There’s a part… wait…”
He stood up slowly, being careful not to hurt his already-damaged hand. The few steps between us disappeared and his body sank into the cushions. Again, his shoulder brushed mine.
I shivered. He had been on the couch with me once before, and now my body reacted to his closeness as hotly as if he had put his hands on me. My pulse quickened and I swallowed back the sudden clench of desire that had wrapped itself around my throat.
Reaching over, he turned the pages of the book in my lap. His fingers were long, his hands strong. I thought of how he had touched me and closed my eyes. The smell of his cologne and the faint musk of his own body made me quicken with want. Desperate, I must be desperate to want this man. To want someone who plotted to murder me.
That’s what Gary said. Now, sitting next to Rien, I couldn’t believe that he’d been telling the truth. Not after I had seen Rien on the ground, shedding tears for a piece of art that I didn’t understand. My whole body ached to comfort him. Yes, him, the murderer. He might be a killer, but he wasn’t heartless.
“There,” Rien said, and I caught myself from my thoughts. He was pointing to a line in the middle of the page. He began to read it, and I watched his lips move as he spoke softly.
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
I realized as he finished speaking that I had been holding my breath. I let it out and tried to breathe normally.
“Do you believe in fate?” he asked. He looked into my eyes, and his nearness made me dizzy.
I thought of my mother and sister, and of how many times we had ended up sleeping in a shelter. Was I supposed to think that it was all for a good reason? I couldn’t believe that.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Do you?”
“Maybe. Sometimes I think things fall together for a reason. Even if it seems random.”
“Like a desperate actress ending up locked in the library of a serial killer?”
“It must be for a reason. Fate must have a
reason.”
“Fate’s kind of an asshole, then,” I said.
“I don’t consider myself a serial killer, anyway.”
“Really? You kill people. That’s kind of the definition of a serial killer, isn’t it?”
“I’m more of an assassin.”
“An assassin?”
“I work for the government. I’m not like some of my friends. I’m not a vigilante. They bring them to me. I know that they’re bad people if they get to me.”
“Are you going to assassinate me?”
I tried to ask it lightly, but he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him.
“Sara, I am trying very hard to get you out of this. It’s difficult. I’m not sure what I can do with you.”
He didn’t seem like he was lying. But then again, he did this for a living. He lied to people and made them feel safe, and then he tortured them and killed them. He could sense my uncertainty and he brushed my cheek with his hand. His palm was warm against my skin. I struggled to keep my distance, to not fall forward to him. I felt like a complete idiot for trusting him but at the same time, I wanted to trust him with all my heart.
I gulped back the feeling. This was pretend. All pretend. But the walls were falling apart between the pretense and the reality, and I was falling for him, despite every rational thought that told me not to. Not the killer, but this man. The man who sat in front of me, tortured by his decisions. The man who could not kill me.
“I’m sorry that we met like this. I am. I want to see the real you. Not the actress. The real Sara.”
He took my hands in his. I was tumbling forward into something I couldn’t understand, something I couldn’t accept, not with the logical part of my mind. I needed to pull back. I needed to distance myself from him.
I drew my hands back, out of his, and closed the book. I looked down at the cover.
“If there’s a meaning in suffering, is that the meaning of your life? Causing people to suffer?”
“It’s a steady gig.”
A sudden jolt of anger pierced me. I didn’t want this. The smooth-talking, cynical Rien. The Rien who killed and didn’t care. I knew there was more to him than that, and now that I had seen it, I hated to have him close himself off to me again.