by Mike Wehner
“Alex?” she said. I thought it was a hallucination. I held my breath and was still, the numb from the cold began to spread.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
“Please.”
“Talk to me.”
“I hear you breathing.”
“Alex.”
“Say something,” Erin said, “anything.”
Thirty-one
Stalks of celery cracked behind me when I jerked my head off the cold floor. The notches and bumps on the ground designed to prevent a fall, tore and pricked at my back. The cold hurt, I didn’t know if I was bleeding or if the temperature was working its way inside me. Erin stabbed away with her voice in the night but I couldn’t answer. I tried to see her, squint hard enough to get an outline of her body and what weapon she might be holding.
I don’t know how long we sat there. Seconds. Hours. Days. The dark makes everything feel like forever. It’s an aching fight for light and certainty. Erin kept calling my name as if she were sorry.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked.
“Why would I hurt you?”
I heard shuffles and jerks.
“So how did you figure it out, the journal?” I asked. Erin cried deep, buckled sobs.
“I know I deserve this Alex, but help me understand.”
“Deserve what?”
“Judgment.”
Smashed and bound was the best way to hear this news. Her cries now made me feel better instead of worse. She thought she was beating me to the punch, that I was a bad guy. It was going to be hard to argue with what she’d read.
“It’s the other way around,” I said, anger building in my voice.
“How dare you, after all you’ve done to me. Like I wasn’t broken enough already.”
It went silent for a long spell. I imagined she was sitting in the corner with her back against the wall and paring knife in her hand, nothing too fancy. She wanted to be as close as possible when she carved me up. She was waiting for me to say something awful enough to motivate her to finish the job. I tried to stop loving her, I tried to say something hateful so she could get it over with but the words didn’t come. If she’s beautiful and charming I can’t help but fall in love. Get to know any one of these creatures long enough and you’ll see her beauty and her charm.
“Is it hard to kill someone?” I asked.
“It’s easy right up to the moment that you do it,” she fought to regain composure. “A while back someone came to hurt me, I knew this day would come but not you, why you?”
I thought she was going to kill me right then, Erin seized and hissed. Words weren’t coming out of her mouth only fitful chirps.
After her body tired and I could understand what she was saying I couldn’t make any sense of it. “This can’t be real—what kind of demented fuck are you?” She called me names, screamed, shivered. Then she kept yelling, “turn on the fucking lights!” Over and over. Over and over. Screaming. I never felt closer to anyone. She was insane and it felt so good to hear someone hurt the way I had. I knew it would be over soon.
“Erin,” I said. “Erin.” She stopped convulsing. “I’m ready.”
“Fine Alex, if that’s even your name, don’t tell me anything. Make it quick you piece of shit, that’s the least you can do.”
“I know this is overwhelming but I’m the one who’s tied up.” This is when I should have figured it out. Erin had the body of an outback ostrich, she couldn’t have drug me into the cooler.
She sucked up air, “fuck you.”
I kicked at the melons and the squash. “You don’t remember doing that?”
“Alex, you did this.” Just like the kiss, I did this. It was the only thing she said that made sense.
The fan shut off, the silence got louder. The dark got darker. I got more confused.
“I don’t know how we got here,” she said.
“I do, you killed my best friend.” She stammered like it was information she was unable to process. The fan kicked on and off three times before she spoke again.
“I’m so sorry. I loved him so much.”
She sobbed for a long time and I sat wondering if she was too crazed to kill me now, like she’d forgotten that’s what we were doing there. Erin took deep painful gasps that I could hear as if she were inside my head. Tears ran down the sides of her face and pinged off the ground. The way she fought to take in air, I could hear her will to live wane. Some embedded code in her DNA squeezed her lungs and diaphragm so that she got just enough air to stay alive even though she didn’t want to. I languished in her grief, I became it. I didn’t know what hurt was, I was unprepared to hear a living soul be torn apart. I began to cry with her, another instrument in the orchestra of misery and sickness and agony and every single horrible feeling a person can have and still be alive.
“I killed your friend, I didn’t want to. He made me. God, I wish I could see you while I say this. I killed him, if you think hurting me will right that then do your worst, but I didn’t pretend to care about you the way you did to me. It was real for me, if this was all some game so you could tear me apart then just get it over with you fucking asshole, I am tired of suffering.”
I was starting to think I wasn’t the only one tied up.
“Why the fuck would I hurt you, I love you.” I romped my body up and down like a worm. “Also, it would be really hard to hurt you covered in a thousand feet of duct tape and a truckload of produce.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“You don’t believe that I’m tied up or you don’t believe that I love you?”
“Both, you tied me up.”
I jiggled up and down again so she could hear the bolts of the shelf squeak and pop.
“I knocked over one of the shelves, it’s on top of me.”
“Did it hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“As for the other thing, I love you, that one is harder to prove from here.”
“Stop saying that, we don’t love each other, you’re evil.”
“I love you.”
“Stop it, I fucking hate you.” She screamed and I screamed over her. Spit flew from my mouth and my voice strained and cracked. When we were finished we both heaved.
“I love you. There aren’t any other words. I love you and I am sorry that I love you. I am sorry that life has taken a cataclysmic shit on you and that I am the sun it revolves around. I wanted peace and I found it in you, and we can go to hell together hand in hand but first we have to get out of here.”
I pushed my head back to crack as many stalks of celery as I could out of frustration.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Erin asked.
“You jumped down from the bar and I went to kiss you.”
“The last thing I remember was a scream, a shriek and then it was like a giant wave crashed on me.”
“Was it Mike?”
“He would never hurt me, he isn’t a piece of shit like you.”
“What do you know about him? I think it’s fishy he was stationed outside of Richmond at Fort Lee.”
“So, why again would he hurt me? Although I’d have said the same thing of you.” She was hyperventilating but calm considering what a disaster this was. Flight had overtaken fight. I wasn’t scared so much as I was heartbroken.
“I’d never hurt you.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“I was here for the truth, I know you’re not a monster.”
“But you are.”
“I wish that I wasn’t,” I said, “there isn’t anyone who hates us both enough to do this.”
“That’s not true.”
“Who?”
“Chef Jamie.”
The cooler door jerked open and a flash of light shot through the doorway. Eyes unable to focus, a dark figure kicked carrots up towards my head and batted away the flood of avocados around Erin’s feet. He grabbed
the last two rungs of tape between her legs and dragged her out. Her yelp echoed against the cold and her lagging head smashed the doorframe when her body turned the corner like a truck trailer on a wide right turn. The heavy door recoiled back with a slam that stole the light from inside the cooler.
The warm air from outside passed through the grates in the shelf and onto the end of my nose making it itch again. The fan kicked on and I was cold before the temperature had time to drop.
Thirty-two
The faint smack of unrolled duct tape reverberated through the cooler door right before it opened. The lever stuck and chirped a few times, then the latch broke free. A heavy breathing shadow stood over me, his shoulders bobbing up and down. The head was still and loomed as my eyes processed the waves of new light surrounding it.
“Imagine my surprise,” Charlie said. He swam leeks and potatoes from around my body with cupped hands, “I am sitting across the street at the bakery this morning enjoying a cup of coffee and doing some light reading and who walks out the front door of this restaurant?” At least I’d gotten him to read, her book was the first recommendation of mine he’d ever taken.
Charlie pulled the steel shelf off of me and slammed it back into position, it bounced off the wall back into his hands. He shoved it three or eight times, each one harder than the last.
“You did, my friend, with an apron around your waist.”
I didn’t respond, Charlie said not to taunt a hungry beast. Forest memes were a guiding light to save me from the shaved animal above. Charlie hiked a sweet potato behind him.
“I change seats to get an angle on what you are doing,” he ripped the celery out from behind my head and the back of my skull cracked against the metal floor.
“I was excited,” Charlie’s voice oscillated, “I expected you to shed your costume all slow and cool like a movie assassin. I expected you to get in your car and drive off with the mission complete. I expected to hear sirens in the distance. I waited and waited, thinking any moment they’d sound.”
He twisted me around and drug half my body into the hallway by my ankles. Charlie stuffed them under his armpits and charged down the hall, the backs of his legs taut as steel cables with each powerful step.
“I thought that you did it to protect me. Like you had a plan and all the lies were to cover your ass. I moved back to my seat and decided to wait it out, I wanted to see the stretcher and where the red spot was on the white sheet they covered her body with. Imagine my fucking surprise,” he said, disgusted.
I’d gone in to work extra-early to try and smooth things over with Erin after the turbulent weekend. I met her outside, to show her some affection before the rest of the staff arrived and I became another one of her minions.
Charlie talked while he towed me into the bar. “You wander back into the frame and you’re holding hands like kids at the movies with the girl who killed your best friend. And you look happy about it.”
“Charlie, stop.”
He ignored me.
“You tricky bastard I was thinking, then I figured I’d see gun muzzle flashes through the window. I was grinning so hard it hurt.”
He drug me into the bar where all the tables had been shoved into a corner. Erin was strapped to a chair facing the empty seat my ass was destined for. Her mouth was covered in green duct tape and her hands were bound behind her back.
“I waited half the day, I gave you all the chances, but when people went in to eat I started to wonder.”
Charlie rolled me onto my face and flicked each row of tape open with a pocket knife. He held the blade sideways against the back of my neck.
“Get in the chair,” he said. “Alright kids, I think we could use a drink.”
Charlie rifled through the bar cabinets tossing glassware and bottles he didn’t want onto the floor.
He straightened up with a good idea and pulled a wad of zip ties from his back pocket, then he leapt to me with three soft strides and glared with an open mouth smile—remember these. He bound my hands, the final clicks locked the tie so tight my fingers went numb. No way out. My mouth wasn’t covered but I was afraid to speak, too scared Charlie’s reaction would be swift and violent.
Erin was more relaxed, a seasoned professional at attending a holocaust.
Charlie popped the spout out of a cheap bottle of American bourbon and cast it aside. He put three glasses in a line and slopped half a glass of drink into each one. He whipped his glass down-down and walked towards me, napkin underneath the cup like I’d paid for it.
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t like whiskey,” he said pouring it onto my head. The empty glass shattered against the brick wall in a violent snap. Charlie threw it inches above Erin’s head but her eyes stayed locked with mine.
I blinked to squeeze the sting from my eyes, Morse code to Erin, we are fuck-ed. Charlie sauntered the third drink over to Erin and tore the tape off her mouth. I tightened my lips at her, don’t speak.
We hadn’t been together long enough to use glances like commands. That’s when you know you’re actually in love, when you can tell someone exactly what to do with your eyes. We weren’t there but she seemed to understand what my expression meant.
Charlie tipped the glass up to her lips and she sucked it up without comment. When Charlie set the glass on the floor she spit the booze on the crown of his head.
Charlie stayed calm, “I read that you like games.” He dabbed himself with bar napkins. “How about truth or dare? Let’s get silly. The game will end when someone dies, could be you,” he motioned at me with his knife, “could be you, could be both of you. It’s up to you guys.”
I shook with panic. Charlie’s voice took on the happy snark of a daytime game show host full of amphetamines, “one question per turn or there will be a penalty.” He tossed his pocket knife into the space between us and jumped around the room with frantic points and pivots.
“How’s it feel Alex,” Erin said, “to be betrayed by someone you care about?” Her voice was tight and scolding. I shook more.
“Tisk, tisk. Only speak when spoken to or there will be a penalty.” Charlie tossed the microplaner and a bunch of other tools from behind the bar between us. He danced over to Erin by the beat of his own madness and open hand slapped her with such force her chair fell over. I surged and grunted, my chair moved an inch, maybe less.
“If you lie or I think you’re lying, guess what?” He yelled from the kitchen and ran back with his arms full of metal. Kitchen shears, a cleaver, a cast iron pan and more all went into his pile of torment. “The game ends when I kill someone, or you dare me to kill someone. I don’t know about you guys, but I feel great. Simple games can be very therapeutic.”
Charlie grabbed a barstool and sat between us forming a golden triangle. Erin and my eyes the distinct side, Charlie’s the duplicated when he looked at either one of us.
“May truth set you free.”
“Charlie, listen to me,” I said.
He rushed me, turtled me backwards and closed my throat with his forearm, “this is the last time I tell you, speak only when spoken to.” He picked up a large cast iron pan and flipped it long ways, like the head of a hatchet and smashed my chest with the rim. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My heart was already broken, now the rest of my chest was too.
He got up and tugged at his collar to get back level.
“Pretty miss Erin,” he began, “do you know why you are here?” I was still on my back, looking up at the ceiling and choking. I hoped she’d ask him to kill me.
“Yes, I killed your friend,” she said with a face of stone.
“Wow. Do you know who the man is across from you, not what he told you because he’s a fucking liar, but who he really is?”
“Yes, he was John’s best friend.” The certainty in her voice, that John had a best friend and not best friends packed Charlie with more potential energy.
“Really, how interesting. Let’s move on to Alex.”
“Stop th
is,” I interrupted. His mouth buzzed and he kicked around the pile to find a tool for my punishment. He took up a metal spaetzle machine that looked like a cheese grater and raked the spiked side across the top of my arm. It sliced in perfect, corporate-farmed rows until my skin pinched and forced Charlie to jerk it through at the edge. The wound wasn’t deep, thin lines of blood came to the surface which made my arm look like a red window screen. He set my chair upright.
“Now Alex,” Charlie said like he’d just finished doing the dishes, “how long has this shit been going on?” Charlie’s index finger wagged between our heads—eeny meeny miny.
“I’ve worked here a few weeks, but if you mean us, it hasn’t been long,” I replied. Charlie looked over to Erin for disapproval, a head swivel so he could scrape more flesh off my body.
“How long have you been in California?”
“Almost a year.”
“And why did you come here?”
“To kill Erin Rhodes.”
“Did you try?” I figured we were dead but this was the one thing I didn’t want her to hear.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Right after I arrived, I hid in the back of her car and tried to strangle her with a plastic tie like the one you put around my hands.” Erin’s face went from stone to salt, she would have collapsed but the tape held her up.
“And what happened?”
“I tried to kill the person who got in the car, but it wasn’t her.”
“Do you know who it was?
“Yes, it was her sister.”
Erin’s lips became violent.
Charlie golf-clapped his hands together and yipped, the proud host that he was to our pain. Every new detail didn’t enrage him, it excited him, affirmed what he was doing was right. He paraded around on a track of confirmation bias surrounding a lake of weaponry.