by Evans, J R
She tossed the bullet casings in the trash and sat down in front of her laptop. Maybe she would just check in on her news feed before giving Dani a call. She was procrastinating, but that didn’t stop her from logging in. When she heard the knock at the door she felt a rush of guilt and embarrassment, like she had just been caught masturbating. It was probably Christy. Erica looked around for something she might have forgotten. After a quick glance, she didn’t see anything so she pulled out her phone. She could pretend that she was just about to give Dani a call.
She held the phone up in front of her as she opened the door. “Did you forget something? I was just about to—”
It wasn’t Christy.
The man in the hallway looked familiar, but Erica couldn’t quite put a name to the face. The wine might have something to do with that. She didn’t think he was a client. That was good. She never worked out of her apartment so if he was a client, that would make him a stalker, too. And she was in no condition to deal with a stalker. Maybe he was a lost delivery guy.
“Oh,” said Erica. “I didn’t order anything.”
“Good,” said the man.
He held something out to her. Was he selling something? She looked down in time to see a spark crackle between two bright metal studs.
She felt her body jerk on its own. Then darkness.
* * *
When she opened her eyes again, everything was blurry. As things started to come into focus, she realized she was on the floor. She must have passed out or something. Someone was standing over her. He looked concerned. He held something in his hand. When she recognized what it was, everything came rushing back to her. She wanted to move but all her muscles seized up. She managed to lift her hand off the ground, and she got her foot to move a few inches.
The man looked down at her and smiled. “Hi. I’m really sorry. It’s just that, with the news story, it’s hard to meet girls.”
That was where she had seen him—on TV at the Golden Delicious. The police were looking for him. She didn’t remember his first name, but his last name stuck out. Foster.
“N-guhhh,” said Erica. Things were starting to get blurry again.
“You and Candice were friends. I was friends with her, too.” He turned and closed the door with this free hand. “She mentioned you. Well, her phone did anyway.”
“B-bastard!”
Her eyes weren’t refocusing. Foster seemed to be drifting farther away, but she could feel him grab one of her arms.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be with her soon.”
She slipped back into darkness.
* * *
The floor felt impossibly soft. Her foot slid across satin. She wasn’t moving it, though. Four glowing white lights merged into two as her eyes strained to make sense of what she was looking at. They were recessed lights. She was in her bedroom, and she was lying in her own bed looking up at the ceiling. Then her other foot moved. She looked down at it and saw him there. He was tightening a black strap around her ankle. Her other ankle was already restrained.
“There you are,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind. I borrowed some of your things.”
Her body was sore, but it wasn’t clenched up anymore. Panic and adrenaline flooded her, and she tried to sit up. A tugging at her wrists held her firmly in place. They were restrained, too. Instead of black straps, her wrists were held by chrome handcuffs. Two pairs, lined with hot pink faux fur. They were hers. The opposite ends were locked to the headboard.
Foster looked strange. Then she realized why. He seemed a little embarrassed. “I found that box under your bed,” he said. “You know the one I mean. I just want you to know, I was real respectful of your private . . . things.”
He held something up in front of him. She knew what it was before the blade clicked into place. A box cutter.
“I am going to need to undress you, though,” he said.
Fuck that. Erica drew in a breath to scream and realized he had used something else from her collection. A ball gag. She screamed anyway. And thrashed and kicked.
“No,” he said. “Don’t struggle. I don’t want to accidentally cut you.”
She thrashed harder. The handcuffs bit into her wrists, and she tried to yank a knee up as he leaned over her.
He pulled back and sighed. “Fine.”
He put the knife down on her nightstand and pulled something out of his back pocket. It sparked and crackled.
Darkness.
* * *
This time she woke up to voices. She didn’t know what they were saying. One voice sounded like it could be a woman’s, but her ears must have been struggling to work as much as her eyes were. She slowly forced her eyes to open. Foster was the only one there, and it looked like he was talking to himself.
“I saw him on the trail. I don’t know who he was,” he said.
He was sitting in her makeup chair, staring down at a flat red box of some sort. It had white knobs on top and some sort of screen. He turned the knobs and seemed to be listening to something. It looked too big to be a radio, and it wasn’t making any sounds, anyway. He wasn’t paying attention to her, so she decided to lie still and give herself time to think.
Her next thought was, I’m naked.
“I don’t know. What’s a Grigori?”
An Etch A Sketch. That’s what he was staring at. She couldn’t see what he was drawing, but he was concentrating very hard on it.
“No, he didn’t look like that. He was a boy. Not even a teenager yet. He said something about God armor, and strongholds, and rainstorms. It didn’t sound good.”
Erica tried to look around with just her eyes. She was naked, but he hadn’t done anything else to her. Yet. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor. She was still cuffed and strapped to the bed. He had used her cuffs. He hadn’t brought any with him. Why not? Wasn’t this his plan? He couldn’t have known she had handcuffs or leg straps. Or did he? Panic started to flood in. She didn’t want to freak out again. It wouldn’t do any good. There was something about the cuffs she knew she was forgetting. What was it?
“It doesn’t matter, right? This is the last one. Three daughters. Then I can be with you. Right?”
Three daughters? This guy was bug nuts insane. But she already knew that.
“Oh, she is?”
Foster sounded surprised. He turned to look at her and stood up. She saw what he had been drawing with the Etch A Sketch: a stick figure woman stood under a blocky tree. It was crude, but there might have been a bird perched up in the tree. The needle in the toy was still moving, but he wasn’t turning the knobs anymore. A line carved its way through the silvery-gray dust on its own. As she watched, the line grew blocky leaves and then a blocky flower. When she glanced back at Foster, he was reaching into his back pocket.
This time Foster placed the stun gun deliberately on her thigh, right over her skull tattoo.
“Sorry, we’re not ready yet.”
Darkness.
* * *
Something tickled. It felt like a bug crawling slowly across her stomach. She went to scratch it away, but her hand was stopped by a tiny rattle of chain links. This time she jerked her eyes open, already breathing hard around the ball filling up her mouth.
Foster was straddling her. He was fully clothed, but his sleeves were rolled up. He was bent over, staring at her belly. One hand was pressing down on her rib cage while the other dragged something across her skin. She almost screamed but then realized she wasn’t in pain. Instead of a knife, he held an orange felt-tip marker.
He looked up at her when she moved, but his hands never left her body. There was a strange smell in the room. Citrus of some sort.
“It’s called Orangealicious,” he said. “It smells more like tangelo to me.”
He was drawing on her. She couldn’t see what it was, but it looked like it started on her left foot. His body was covering the rest.
Her hands were starting to get numb. The faux fur helped prevent cuts, but the cuffs were st
ill tight against her wrists. She lifted a finger and felt it bump along the length of chain back to the base of the cuff.
Foster went back to his drawing. “These pens always make me hungry. I brought a pudding cup. Vanilla. But I’m usually less hungry after.”
She wanted to say, I get it. You’re creepy, but that would definitely get her shocked again.
He moved his hand from her rib cage to her breast. He didn’t grope it, but simply lifted it up to make room for his pen. The line swirled around her breast, and then he moved his hand again so he could draw up toward her nipple.
“My hands are getting all glittery. Is that from your lotion?” His hand shook a little as the pen made a tiny circle. “Sorry. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.”
She moved her finger along the edge of the cuff and then down to the keyhole. The keys were in the box that Foster must have dug through to find the leg straps. She actually kept the handcuffs attached to her headboard all the time. She thought they looked cute. She had other restraints she could use if she was in the mood for something more authentic. The cuffs on her wrists were more for show. So were the keys, if you knew about the tiny lever just to the right of the keyhole.
Erica spoke slowly and deliberately, but the ball gag reduced it to a mumble.
Foster scooted up along her body, and his pen reached her collarbone. He was now straddling her stomach and leaning close to her face to keep an eye on what he was doing.
He paused and said, “I’m sorry. What?”
Erica mumbled again. She tried to make up for her lack of words by using her eyes. She looked from Foster to her right hand and then back at Foster.
“What was that?” He leaned in closer.
A popping sound snapped the air when her forehead connected with his nose. It reminded her of the sound a drumstick makes when it’s pulled off a raw chicken. He must have sucked in a breath as he flew backward because when he hit the ground he coughed and blood came bubbling out of his nose. She moved quickly and had one hand free before he even lifted his head. The next thing she did was pull that damn ball out of her mouth.
“I said this isn’t the first time I’ve been tied up, asshole!”
By the time she had her other hand free, Foster had rolled over and was up on his hands and knees. Instead of lunging at her, he coughed again, gagged, and then threw up a puddle of blood. That gave her time to get one leg free. Then he was up on his feet. He didn’t look too stable, though.
“Stop!” It came out nasally, like he had a bad cold. “You’re ruining it!”
He took a couple of shuffling steps toward the bed. He must have lost his pen when he went sprawling. Instead, he yanked the stun gun out of his pocket. As he came toward her, Erica threw herself back onto the bed to brace herself, then she whipped out with her free leg. It connected beautifully with his groin.
“I guess we’re both having a bad day,” she said.
The stun gun rattled when it hit the ground. It dropped much faster than Foster, who slowly sank to one knee. Erica rolled forward and clawed at the last strap. The pressure of the strap had caused her foot to fall asleep. Pins and needles fired up and down her skin as she finally loosened the strap and pulled her leg free. She lunged off the bed and immediately had to stagger back as her foot tried to wake itself up.
Foster was still kneeling. He was breathing hard, but instead of trying to stand, his other knee faltered and dropped to the floor. He looked broken and defeated. Erica reached down and grabbed the stun gun.
“My turn,” she said.
She waited a second for the feeling in her foot to return, then gripped the trigger and stepped toward him.
There was a clicking sound, and Foster’s arm shot out in a wide arc.
Erica’s thigh burned as she stepped forward. Her foot twisted, and she slipped on something wet. She looked down and saw a pulse of crimson blood gush down her leg, then another. The slice in her thigh didn’t seem like it should be bleeding that much. She immediately felt like somebody had plunged her into a bath of ice water.
She stood there for a second trying to regain her balance. It didn’t come. Instead, everything started to feel numb. She heard the stun gun hit the ground but didn’t remember letting go of it. The floor almost felt comfortable as she crumbled down to meet it.
Foster looked over at her. He looked sad. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. It’s ruined. It won’t work now.”
When he stood, she saw the box cutter in his hand. It didn’t even look like it had any blood on it.
From somewhere up above he said, “You won’t be able to go home.”
Erica didn’t know what he was talking about, but she could see her clothes beside her on the floor—and the smooth white and sliver curves of her phone poking out of one pants pocket. It felt like she was using somebody else’s hand to reach for it. She just wanted to hear her voice one last time.
“Dani . . .”
Her hand almost made it before Foster picked up the phone.
“Oh. I’m gonna need that,” he said.
31
Matt was thinking hard about spoons. His coffee steamed in its mug as he sat at his desk, and he gave the spoon a swirl, watching the coffee mix with creamer as they spun together in a tiny whirlpool. He was supposed to be doing paperwork. Using real paper. He still didn’t have a laptop so he’d borrowed some graph paper from Adam. It was actually a lot easier than the financial software he had been using. He didn’t have to scan receipts or print out reports. Instead, he just shoved the receipts into a folder and added up the numbers with the calculator on his phone. It’s not like they were ever going to get audited. He’d never really liked paperwork, though, and his mind was constantly wandering off. Right now it was wandering around in his past, remembering the theory he had learned about spoons.
A spoon was basically a handle with a scoopy-thing at the end. Of course, that description fit lots of objects—spoons, ice cream scoops, shovels, oars. The idea of a “scoopy-thing” with a handle was pretty useful. And that idea was just two other ideas stuck together. His father had called that concept a monad, a pattern of ideas. That was the crazy shit he’d started learning when he was Adam’s age. That and Latin.
Actually, he had learned snippets of Latin when he was even younger. He just hadn’t known what they meant. One day, Aunt Rose took all the kids out to the garden. Matt had probably been about three, one of the youngest kids on the estate. She showed them a snail and told them how snails were bad for a garden. They ate the plants before they had a chance to grow into fruits and vegetables. If a snail ate just a couple of leaves off a new plant, that plant might die. Then it would never be able to produce ripe, yummy strawberries. She used strawberries to really drive the point home. Then she said a little rhyme in Latin after that and crunched the snail under her foot: Contra vim mortis. Non crescit in hortis.
Matt had thought it was funny. So had all the other kids. That was before he knew what killing was. Tiny feet pounded legions of snails into paste. And from that point on, there had always been strawberries growing in the garden.
That was the beginning of another pattern of ideas: sacrifice a thing to gain a thing. As more lessons were taught, that pattern became known as the Primary Monad. It was taught over and over again. Each time, there was a little more blood involved.
It started off slow. Lessons any kid would learn growing up on a farm.
Chicks were cute. You might even name one. But eventually you were going to have to kill it if you wanted to eat. Even if its name was Big Bird.
Goats would eat right out of your hand. That made it easier to slit their throats. They sounded like scared children as they sank down onto their knees to die.
Even a faithful companion would have to be put down if it cost too much to keep it alive.
Matt had always been presented with a choice, and his father had always been very careful to explain the consequences for each decision. Death was a necessary part of life. It was necessary
to achieve your goals.
Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.
He had learned what that one meant: This is the place where death delights in helping life. It was actually a pretty common motto . . . in morgues.
Matt had learned these lessons with seven other children. Technically, they were his brothers and sisters; however, each of them had been adopted, including Matt. It was the same for his father, Uncle Quent, and Aunt Rose. They were related on paper and bound together by purpose. That was how the Scholars recruited. It didn’t always work out, though. Matt’s father used to have three other brothers and sisters. Two of them were dead, and the other was quietly locked away.
They weren’t the only family like this. The Scholars had estates scattered across the globe. Each was structured the same way and was run according to “the Traditions.” Matt didn’t know where the other estates were. You had to graduate before you learned that. Graduation was the one Tradition that Matt hadn’t been able to go through with. The sacrifice that cost too much. He was the only one, though; everyone else paid the price. Some more than others.
While he was a kid, Matt hadn’t gotten off the estate much. All the children there were homeschooled, and the property was isolated enough so that visiting town required a car, unless you wanted to walk all day. They didn’t live like the Amish, though. Matt hadn’t known it at the time, but the estate always had cutting-edge technology when it came to research and communication. Matt had an e-mail account before spam existed.
They also had satellite TV. Matt watched a lot of movies, though that wasn’t encouraged on the estate. As part of their studies, the children were given freedom to pursue almost any topic they liked in their spare time. The estate was better equipped than most colleges so a motivated student could dig into any subject as deeply as they wanted. If they were limited by the facilities on hand, new equipment would show up within days. And it wasn’t just limited to the sciences. Art and music were fully supported, as well.