When Walt came back, it was like he brought the winter with him. It grew even colder and sometime near the end of November there was a massive snowfall. This prevented Walt from going out to hunt. There were now four large deep freezers in the nursery, all of them full, and he ate from them constantly. Sometimes he would be hunkered over the dining room table – he no longer even bothered with plates – eating a mountain of meat and saying, “Nom nom nom,” under his breath. Some days he would go out and vomit off the balcony into the freshly fallen snow and go back to eating it again. He no longer seemed to bother cooking it fully. He would put it in the sink and let it thaw and then maybe throw it in the microwave to bring it up to room temperature. The smell of it seemed to stay in Erica’s nose yet she never got used to it. It started to make her kind of nauseous. Once the snow lifted, the winter continued to grind on. Walt would go out during the day to hunt and then go to the Shop ’n’ Save to buy a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and come back to the apartment and eat human meat and drink the case of beer. Erica would have one or two to help her sleep and smoked from the time she got up until she went to bed, coming in from the balcony to get warm. Walt had forbidden her to smoke in the apartment and she didn’t argue. They never argued. They talked but they didn’t really talk to each other. They took turns talking. Sometimes. Sometimes they just talked over each other. Every day was so similar it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like an exchange of information or anything. And whatever internal landscape they shared was mostly pure fiction. Erica didn’t really feel anything, just a cavernous numbness, and she didn’t think Walt even felt that.
They didn’t bother celebrating any of the holidays. On New Year’s Eve, she sat on the balcony and watched the parking lot of the clubs fill up and then empty out and she wondered what it was all for. She felt a certain amount of cynicism toward these people, like they were just living their lives one night at a time but she inevitably turned that cynicism inward. It wasn’t that she wanted to be just like them. She just wanted to do something. Walt had again stopped having sex with her and, with his voracious appetite and beer consumption, had put on a lot more weight. She no longer even felt physically attracted to him. And while she had previously seen his seeming lack of emotion and self-awareness as some kind of puzzle to be figured out, she gradually just assumed there was nothing there, would never be anything there, and that any direction her life was going to go from this point forward would have to be governed by her.
In February, Walt finally did something that interested her. He stopped eating people. Well, he stopped hunting people. He no longer brought them home. There were still the freezers and he continued to eat from them but he didn’t eat such a large quantity and she even thought he might be losing a little weight. He had said he did things until he got tired of doing them and then he did something else. She couldn’t help but think he was transitioning, moving on to something else. She thought about asking him about it but it made her nervous at the same time. They had their routine. She didn’t even know if he was aware of it. Also, she didn’t really know how to approach him and, possibly most of all, she was afraid of whatever answer he would give her. If it were unspoken, maybe, the change didn’t exist. To put it into words made it too real.
By March she realized she had mostly just been lying around the apartment and smoking for about three months. She listened to a lot of music and that comprised a sort of soundtrack to her depression. She found one of those online music sites where you pick a song you like and then it just plays forever, building off that one song. She just let it go. Most of the songs seemed gray. She thought a little but realized how creepy, obsessive, and circular her thought patterns were. She would think about what she was going to say to Walt all day and then by the evening, after she’d had a few beers and smoked a lot of cigarettes, it all seemed ridiculous and she would start thinking about other things, like what she was going to do when she left here, and then she would go to bed and think about caves and figures jumping off parking garages, and then it would start all over again the next morning until she realized she had been doing exactly the same thing for the past few months and it made her think of exactly the way she had felt while watching Granny die and she wondered how long it would last and knew the answer to that question was that she didn’t really know because, had it been up to her, she would have stayed in that sad tiny house and watched Granny die day after day for who knew how long. Walt had been there to break that cycle. She wondered what would have to happen to break this cycle.
On what she thought of as the first night of spring, she decided she had to get out of the apartment. It was warm and breezy and for the first time in a long time she actually felt good. When she left, Walt was wandering around the apartment, naked and dazed, a beer in hand. She went to the Epoch and was surprised to see Dawn sitting at the bar.
Dawn
Besides Dawn and the bartender, there were only about five other people in the bar. Erica went behind the bar, grabbed a glass, and poured a beer for herself from the tap. She glanced at Dawn but the other girl was fumbling with a pack of cigarettes. Another reason to like the Epoch, Erica thought. Unless it was really busy, no one really cared if you smoked inside. Erica took her beer and sat next to Dawn at the bar. The door was propped open and she could smell the damp spring air mingling with the cigarette smoke and other bar smells. It was a pleasing mélange. Dawn got her cigarette lit and stared blankly at one of the televisions suspended in the corner. Erica thought about saying something to her but, if Dawn didn’t recognize her, she thought it would be really embarrassing. It occurred to her that Dawn was quite possibly thinking the same exact thing. Erica lit a cigarette of her own.
After a few minutes, from her right, she heard Dawn say, “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Erica finally turned to look at her. She looked good. Erica thought there was a brightness in her eyes that had been missing the last time she saw her but thought that could possibly just have been because she hadn’t seen her when it wasn’t night. But it was night now, and the bar was dimly lit. Maybe she just imagined it.
“Dawn,” she said. “How are you?”
Dawn smiled crookedly, exhaling smoke. “It’s hard to say. How are you?”
“Well . . .”
“Hard to say?”
“I guess I’m just not sure how things are supposed to be. That’s all.”
“It could be good. It could be a waking nightmare.”
“That’s about right.”
“Try living with three of them.”
“But I thought we were just like them.”
“Similar. No one’s just alike and we’re even less alike than they are because we have vaginas.”
“That does explain a lot.”
“So much for the sexes not being different, huh?”
“I still don’t think that explains everything.”
Dawn took a long drink of beer. Erica asked if she’d gotten waited on or if she’d had to help herself.
“Guess.”
“Had to help yourself, huh?”
“For the first one but, after that . . .”
“The bartender saw an empty glass and knew it needed refilled.”
“Yep. Do you even know the bartender’s name?”
“No.”
“Come here a lot?”
“I’ve been here a few times.” Erica paused to take a drink of her own beer and asked, “Why are you here?”
“I’ve been here for about a month. I have an apartment nearby.”
“So do we.”
“I know. Mine’s in a different building though.” She named one down the street and Erica felt momentarily sorry for her before remembering that Dawn could probably live wherever she wanted to, also.
“So why Dayton?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Dawn looked at her and said, “You.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. It’s . . . hard to explai
n. I met Blake a couple of years ago. I was into it at first, I guess, getting anything I wanted. But things started . . . I started feeling like I didn’t really connect with any of them. And then you and Walt came that one night and, for a few hours, it felt like I had a friend.”
Erica had felt that way a little but put it out of her mind because she assumed she would never see Dawn again. And it was in the first few days of meeting Walt and she’d convinced herself she could love him.
“Anyway,” Dawn said, “I thought I’d come up here and give it a shot.”
Erica was quiet for a moment, taking a deep drag from her cigarette and a long drink from her glass. “I would love to have someone to talk to.”
“So what’s bothering you?”
“I think I’m depressed. Or feel cooped up or something. I know I could get out and go anywhere I want to relatively easily but I feel like I should try and make things work with Walt and then we can go together.”
“But the truth is that you’re probably just terrified to go anywhere alone.”
Erica thought about this. Dawn was probably right. She’d never really been alone. She’d had moments when she felt alone. Living with her dad after her mom died for a few short months. He was never really there and when he was there he either had a girlfriend with him or was too drunk and involved with whatever was happing on the TV to fool with her. Then he’d taken her and dropped her off with Granny before running away and when Granny was up and about she was a lot of fun to be around and a great companion but as soon as she became bed ridden, Erica was pretty much alone again. But she’d stayed close by those people and would have probably done anything either one of them asked her to. And, realistically, she’d been too young to do anything on her own. And, in school, the only time she went anywhere or did anything that wasn’t required was when one of her friends had asked her to. Still, Dawn had stated it bluntly and it stung. She thought it made her sound weak. She supposed any admission of weakness would sting. It didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“You’re probably right,” Erica said finally.
“Do you care about Walt?”
“Not specifically. I guess I care for what we are together.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“Like, I don’t know, he does his things and I do my things and at the end of the day we’re around each other and, sometimes, do our things.”
“I’d love to know what those things are.” Erica thought this was clever of Dawn. By not asking what those specific things were, it made Erica actually have to think about them. Basically, the only thing they did together was have sex. He frequently abused and degraded her, but that was just part of the sex. At first, it had been very pleasurable for Erica. She hadn’t even minded the roughness. But it had deteriorated. The last few months, they didn’t even really have sex. Erica felt like Walt had become more into the degradation than the sex. He had, more or less, humiliated her. That, she supposed, was the one thing he couldn’t get from a dead girl. He could shit on a dead girl’s chest, but he wouldn’t get the look of disgust he drew from Erica. And there was an element of the humiliation Erica enjoyed provided it was part of mindblowing sex. She needed her degradation to have a payoff. But she couldn’t even think of the last time they’d touched each other.
“So what about you and the Boys?”
Dawn smirked as she crushed her cigarette out against the top of a beer can and immediately lit another. “I burned them alive in their sleep. So I guess you could say I am alive and they are . . . not.”
Erica knew a look of surprise crossed her face but she didn’t know what to say.
“The thing is,” Dawn said, “is that when no one knows you’re alive, no one really misses you when you’re dead.”
“Why?”
“Why did I do it?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I got tired of being around them. I got tired of being used by them. They passed me around, fucked me at the same time, made me do a lot of really bad things. I thought it was fun at first and then . . . I don’t know. It just wasn’t anymore and I woke up every day hating them and wishing they were dead. Okay, I’m not a really good person and I’m certainly not the type of person who thinks she can make the world a better place and, quite frankly, I still don’t really give a fuck about any of that shit and probably just used this as an excuse to kill them and get away from them without leaving any record of the atrocious things I’ve done save for what’s in my head. But I thought by killing them I was avenging, in a small part, all of the lives they’d taken, all the misery they brought into people’s lives. More than that, think of how many future deaths I eliminated. The last time I killed someone, before the Boys, was terrible and I vowed never to do it again. Do you ever feel that way?”
“Sometimes. But, like I said, I can’t just leave Walt. Definitely don’t think I could kill him. Also, he might be sick.”
“You might hate me for saying this but Walt probably doesn’t love you. Probably doesn’t have many feelings for you at all. In fact, he’s probably planning on killing you. He will probably even make you think that’s what you want.”
“Why would he do that?”
Dawn rolled her eyes and snorted a laugh. “I don’t know, because he’s a fucking sociopath.”
“I don’t really know what to do.”
“Do you love him?”
“I’m not sure I know what love feels like. Like I said, there’s something there. I think I felt something like love when we first met but I definitely don’t feel that strongly about him now.”
They talked a little more. Dawn listened to her. Erica didn’t think anyone had listened to her like that since she would sit by Granny’s bedside and ramble aimlessly for what felt like hours. As Erica grew drunker, she became even more honest. Eventually she told Dawn that she and Walt hadn’t been having sex much lately.
“That’s probably because he’s already picked out your replacement.”
“Replacement?”
“Some people just hate to be alone. All the reasons you’ve given me for not leaving and striking out on your own? Walt has his version of all those same reasons. He will not get rid of you until he has someone who can take your place. He’s probably been scouting her for a while.”
When Erica thought about this, it made sense. She was about ready to ask Dawn if she had any suggestions for getting out of it when Dawn said she had to go to the bathroom. She went toward the back of the bar and Erica grabbed her glass of beer and stepped out onto the sidewalk. A soft rain was coming down so she stepped under the awning of the abandoned shop next door. A woman crossed the street from the bus hub and reached the curb before squatting, pulling up her dress, and urinating onto the street. Gunfire erupted in a parking lot down the street and by the time she finished her cigarette the night was alive with the sound and strobing lights of sirens. A man came out of the bar, vomited onto the sidewalk, and went walking toward all the sirens. Three helicopters circled overhead and Erica wasn’t sure if they were emergency or news choppers. She went back into the bar. Dawn had returned. Now, from a distance and with the other girl unaware of her presence, Erica let her eyes run up and down her. Tight black, long sleeve shirt. Loose black skirt falling to just above the knees. Low top black Converse with no visible socks. She had a tattoo on her left calf but Erica didn’t know what it was. Some kind of symbol or just a random design. She made a note to ask about it later.
Dawn had another beer in front of her. Erica went behind the bar and topped off her glass even though she was already slightly drunk. Over the past several months, she had experienced every stage of drunkenness and recognized this one as the one she liked the most. She would say the first things that popped into her head and, if Dawn were at the same stage of drunkenness, she wouldn’t take anything too hard and would respond with truths of her own. Essentially, it was the stage where everything was kind of funny. Head spinning and skin tingly, it was why people sta
rted drinking in the first place. Erica hadn’t done enough drugs to know of one that could make you feel like this all the time but, if such a drug existed, it would probably be her drug of choice. She was still at a stage where she would remember everything with perfect clarity. It made the world seem decent and agreeable. She just had to make it a point to not think about what she was going home to.
When she reached the bar, she placed a hand on Dawn’s back, between her shoulder blades, and didn’t bother taking it away. Erica said, “I’m not looking forward to going home at all.”
Dawn turned slightly toward her and looped an arm around her waist and said, “You don’t have to.”
“I probably do.”
“Well, my place is always open.”
For the next hour or so they sat and talked about things in a not very serious way although the things they were talking about probably involved crimes that would put most people in prison for several lifetimes.
The touching became more frequent. A hand on Dawn’s knee. A comment like, “Oh, your skin’s so soft . . .”
Dawn reached out to rub Erica’s collarbones and said, “These are really nice.”
And by the time they left the bar Erica had entered a stage of drunkenness she thought of as the total need stage. There was a weight in her lower stomach and between her legs. She knew she was slightly wet. She knew if she went home she would wake Walt up and, if his cock actually managed to get hard, she would ride him until she either came or threw up. It hit her how much she really didn’t want him inside her. Especially if what Dawn had said about him finding a replacement was true. For some reason, she could live with him fucking the dead girls. She didn’t like it but she could deal with it. But to think he wanted to replace her completely – physically as well as mentally – made her feel not so much mad as completely unwanted and rejected.
Sociopaths In Love Page 15