She grabbed one of Dawn’s dangling hands and whispered in her ear. “Do you mind taking me home with you?”
“I wasn’t lying.”
So she followed Dawn a block in the other direction from her apartment. Dawn unlocked the glass front door to the building, the lobby looking like something from a David Lynch film. She unlocked another door to the smaller elevator lobby. The elevator didn’t work so they had to walk up six flights of stairs in a cinderblock stairwell that smelled like bleach, trash, and ass. Erica followed Dawn into a narrow, inadequately lit hallway and into perhaps the smallest apartment she’d ever seen. Erica turned to watch Dawn lock the door, taking this opportunity to again drink the girl in. Shiny black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. The fine bones in her neck. Pale, soft skin contrasting with her black clothes. A smell like beer, cigarettes, clean night air, and flowers.
Erica knew she wouldn’t make the first move. Dawn turned around from locking the door and seemed momentarily surprised to see Erica still standing there so close. Dawn, possibly as drunk as Erica, took a step toward her and put her hands on Erica’s hips. She leaned in and kissed her softly, slowly, and for a long time.
“Do you want to try?” Dawn asked.
Erica bit her lower lip and nodded.
“It doesn’t have to hurt.” Dawn unfastened the button of Erica’s jeans and pulled Erica’s hand beneath her skirt.
Erica lay in bed a couple of hours later listening to birds chirp outside the cracked window and thinking it felt like taking a warm bath that ended with the strongest orgasm of her life.
She fell asleep thinking of ways to kill Walt.
New Hobby
When she left Dawn’s the next afternoon, Dawn asked if she wanted her to come with her. Even though Erica had seen the way Dawn lived with the Boys she didn’t want her stepping into that apartment. She didn’t want her knowing how she lived. She still didn’t know exactly where Dawn stood. She said she had killed the Boys and had given Erica reasons for that so she didn’t think she could show the apartment off as some kind of trophy. Before running into Dawn, the apartment, Walt, everything just was. Now it seemed like something to escape.
She stepped into the apartment. Not surprisingly, Walt wasn’t there. It was in a state of complete disarray. The glass dining room table was shattered. The coffee table was a broken heap on the balcony. There were piles of bloody shit everywhere. The reek was terrible. The mattress from the bed was in the hall, along with the two nightstands and lamps. Erica guessed the frame was probably on the balcony along with the coffee table. She needed clothes for her shower but stopped before turning the knob to the bedroom.
It wasn’t a knob anymore. The door had been replaced. It now looked like something she imagined securing a solitary confinement room in a prison. Thick and metal, possibly iron. Instead of the knob, there was a handle with a very industrial looking lock built into the door. She already knew she wasn’t going to go in there. Probably couldn’t even get in there and she certainly wasn’t going to try right now. She would have to go steal some clothes. She could probably just borrow some from Dawn but that would involve some kind of explanation as to why she needed to do so and she wasn’t prepared for that yet. As she began stepping away from the door, it clanged with an impact. Erica leapt back until she hit the mattress propped against the opposite wall. Someone had thrown herself against the door.
“Hello! Is someone out there! Can you help us!”
Us.
She wondered how many people he had in there. No, ‘people’ was too general. She wondered how many girls he had in there. She wondered if one of them was her replacement.
Why didn’t she just let them out?
Don’t have the key.
That wasn’t the only reason. She still didn’t have Walt’s faith in the gift of being unseen. Or she had a more realistic view. She knew those girls could stay in that room forever and no police, no vigilante tribes were going to come knocking on the door to find them. It was like Walt had dragged them into some cave of nonexistence along with him. But, the way Erica saw it, if she were to let them go, and the girls were to go to someone, then she and Walt would be exposed. It was like a falling tree in a forest not really existing unless someone was there to see it fall. If there wasn’t a person who was going to tell anyone what Walt was doing, he would continue to get away with it, even if he did those things right in front of people. A person had to be sucked into it, had to bathe in the fetid waters of his cave, and then emerge with that sick moisture and damp air still clinging to her to prove she’d been there. To shed light on the inside of the cave.
She went to sit on the balcony and smoke.
She could be that person. She could go to someone and tell everything Walt had done. She could convince them Walt had forced her to do things she didn’t want to do and they’d probably believe her . . . if she was able to get their attention in the first place.
She knew she wouldn’t do that. There were just too many steps involved.
She wanted to stop Walt but she would do it herself.
And it wasn’t even that she wanted to stop Walt. She just wanted to be away from him and didn’t feel like he needed to exist if she wasn’t with him, especially if he planned on replacing her.
She finished her cigarette and went back into the apartment. She was going to take a nap on the couch but the only thing left from it was the frame. She didn’t know where the cushions were. She wanted to run back to Dawn’s but felt like that was too easy. The longer she was away from Walt, the easier it would be to just forget about him and she didn’t want to do that. She decided she would follow him tomorrow. It was a plan, at least. The closest thing she had to one in what felt like a really long time.
She didn’t nap long and when she woke up she went immediately back out to the balcony. It was a little cooler than it had been but spring was still in the air and the promise of warmer weather was somehow fortifying. The smell in the apartment was just too bad to endure for any long period of time. She heard the front door slam and saw Walt enter the apartment. He straddled one of the piles of shit, unzipped his pants, and urinated on it. An expression of ecstatic glee was plastered on his face. Erica had to look away before she gagged. He zipped up, slid open the balcony door, and stepped out.
“Where were you last night?” he said.
She looked at him. It seemed like it had been a long time since she really looked at him. She remembered when his eyes had made her think of lightning or something electrical but now they just looked clouded and dead. His hair was messed up and uncut. His clothes were dirty and no longer fit very well, he’d gained so much weight.
“That’s not really any of your business.”
“I know you weren’t alone. You don’t do anything alone unless it’s moping around this apartment.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
“Neither was I.”
“I figured.”
“Want to see what I got?”
She didn’t but he’d already wrapped his hand around her wrist and dragged her into the stinking apartment. She knew exactly where he was taking her and had a pretty good idea of what he was going to show her.
He walked her to the new security door and slid open a slot at eye level. She hadn’t even noticed the slot upon her previous inspection.
“Look in there,” he said.
It was actually more at his eye level than hers and she had to stand on her tiptoes. The girls, probably recognizing the sound of his voice, were no longer at the door begging for help. They were on the far side of what had been the bedroom. The balcony doors had been covered with plywood and probably screwed in the wall so securely there wouldn’t be any removing them. She couldn’t see anything else in the room except for the two naked girls.
“I’m going to see how long it takes one of them to kill and eat the other one. I got a couple night vision cameras in there so I can watch them from a laptop virtually anywhere. Oh, and they’
re sisters.” He clasped his hands together and she imagined his nipples hardening with excitement.
This had become his idea of a good time. That thought made Erica realize how much things had changed. In the days prior to coming to Dayton, there had been an impending sense of adventure. Since being in Dayton, there was only this – hunt and kill, hunt and kill. And now he’d entered into the next logical phase of that. He was simply playing with his prey like a sadistic cat. It wasn’t just nourishment. It wasn’t even the thrill of eating something unique, something no one else would ever get the chance to eat. It was just mindless amusement. Let’s not just kill them to eat them. Let’s destroy them before they die.
Erica wished she didn’t understand it but she did. She told herself it was revolting because it was Walt doing it. And while it wasn’t something she would have done herself, she didn’t really feel sorry for the girls in the room. They depressed her. The whole situation with Walt depressed her.
“We need to look at getting another apartment,” Erica said. She had stepped away from the door and turned to walk back toward the living room that no one in her right mind would want to live in.
“This place is fine.”
“It stinks. There’s nowhere to lie down –”
“Sure there is!” Walt cut her off. He dragged the mattress from the hallway into the living room and threw it down on the floor. It landed on at least three piles of bloody shit. He flopped down on it, some shit oozing out from underneath, pulled a hunk of what may have been skin from his pocket, and began eating it. His tight t-shirt slid halfway up his belly.
Erica went to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, and took it out to the balcony.
She repeated this trip to the refrigerator a few more times. Every time she passed the hallway, she glanced to her left and saw Walt standing there, staring into the room. Once he was naked and stroking himself.
Another fog had come up outside. She looked toward the parking garage.
The figure was back and now she really thought it was just some trick of the fog. She had periodically looked for the figure nearly every night and hadn’t seen it since that last night of fog. Behind him, she saw the swelling black shadow. But, wait, she hadn’t seen that the last time, had she? She had seen that with the figure in a dream, right? She couldn’t remember. She had felt so much like she’d been moving through some kind of alternating dream/ nightmare the past several months that when it came to something as relatively miniscule as this detail, she couldn’t remember if it had actually happened or not and wondered how important it was.
She stood up and moved to the balcony railing, continued staring at the figure, not knowing what she wanted. Did she want some sort of acknowledgement? Did she want the figure to wave to her or something? What purpose would that serve?
She threw her empty can of beer off the balcony and waited to hear it hit the asphalt. It never did. Or she never heard it. Or she was really drunk. Or the fog was the cave and it was solidifying around her. She lit a cigarette and went back into the apartment. Walt stood in front of the door, naked, eating from what looked to be the lower part of a human leg. She also noticed, for the first time, flesh colored rings encircling a number his fingers. She thought about asking what they were but felt like she already knew: assholes. Walt was using human assholes as body jewelry. He didn’t acknowledge her. She grabbed two more cans of beer and left the apartment. She didn’t bother locking or even shutting the door.
She went down through the gleaming lobby, light classical music tinkling all around her, the front desk clerk’s head gently bobbing up and down as he fought off sleep. She stepped out into the fog and nearly stepped on the beer can she’d thrown off the balcony.
A homeless guy came at her through the fog. “I need a couple bucks for the bus, lady.”
“Suck my dick,” she said.
The man dropped to his knees and started howling up at the sky. It was the first time she’d seen this approach. She continued across the street, listening to the man’s insane howls. She heard another voice, possibly the front desk clerk. Maybe he was more of a security guard than a desk clerk. Maybe he was both. He was probably asking the man to move it along but she couldn’t make out anything he said.
She moved diagonally through the intersection, toward the parking garage. She thought about Dawn, possibly in her apartment just a block away. What was the other girl doing? Erica wondered if she had gone to the Epoch tonight and, if she had, Erica wondered if she had gone home alone. And if she had gone home with someone else, had it been a man or a woman? Erica realized the thought of Dawn bringing anyone back to her apartment infuriated her. She felt the anger in her cheeks, pushing through the drunkenness, pushing through her current sense of spacy alienation, pushing through everything.
Walt, jerking off in front of two naked girls while he waited for one of them to get hungry enough to kill and eat the other one.
A figure on a parking garage staring out into the fog.
Dawn on her bed, some young guy who has something Erica can never have smiling lecherously up at her while he slides her jeans down her pale thighs.
A homeless man rolling around on the street behind her.
The whole world milked over and gone mad.
She entered the parking garage and took the elevator up to the roof. She crossed the asphalt not knowing what she wanted. Then she stopped.
She watched the dark place in the fog. Inky black and swirling toward the figure standing on the very edge of the parking garage. It dawned on her that that was what had been weird about watching the figure from across the street. If it had been standing on the asphalt, it would have seemed shorter and less precarious. But it stood on the ledge. Its toes were probably hanging off into the fog. The shadow came for the figure. Moved over the figure, cloaking it in black, making it disappear. Erica continued toward the figure, hoping to catch a glimpse of it before it was gone completely. She moved into the shadow and everything went dark. Everything went away.
She sat cross-legged and assumed her ass rested on the asphalt of the top level of the parking garage. She couldn’t see. Could only feel the parking lot’s solidity. She thought of something else and stood up and looked back toward the apartment, wondering what it looked like from over here but she couldn’t see it. And maybe the shadow did something to the inside of her too because she didn’t even know what she expected to see and whatever anger she had been feeling only moments before was now completely gone. She sat back down in that space or that absence of space and smoked cigarettes and drank beer until it was like her consciousness melted into that black fog.
Growing Apart
A black, heavy hum settled into her bones. She stood up with difficulty. The fog was still very thick. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her. She took a deep breath, expecting the fog to feel clean and moist in her mouth, nasal passages, and lungs. But it was acrid. Like breathing a cloud of toxic waste. As if hypnotized, she got on the elevator. The lighting in the car was the color of infected pus. When the elevator stopped she got off and had the feeling the elevator hadn’t just taken her to ground level but somewhere much deeper. Not Hell. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe in that sort of thing. Maybe the cave that had been plaguing her. And even when she stepped out from the parking garage and onto the sidewalk she felt the gray weight of the fog on her.
And it was dark. Like all of the lights had gone out downtown. The fog should have given everything more of the milky quality it had earlier. Instead it was just black.
She stopped and looked down, still feeling dazed, nothing quite registering. On the sidewalk two feet to her left lay a bloody hunk of meat. She was pretty sure it was a kidney. A year ago she never would have known what that looked like.
All the sounds had gone away too. Not just muted by the fog. Gone.
If she turned to her left she could go back to the apartment. She didn’t want to go back to the apartment. Didn’t want to see Walt. And s
he was slightly afraid. If what Dawn said was true, if Walt had found a replacement, Erica’s days were numbered.
If she turned to her left and then to her right, she could go to Dawn’s, but she was pretty sure she’d already been over that. She had things to straighten out. She wanted to get them straightened out before sinking any time into Dawn.
She turned to her left, deciding to go to the Epoch. She had no idea what time it was and didn’t know if they would be open or not. It was only a short block but, with nothing to gauge time or distance with, it seemed to take forever. She crossed the street without checking to see if any cars were coming. The thought of cars and buses didn’t even really occur to her. This felt like a foreign landscape, something prehistoric or even lunar. She was glad the Epoch had the name of the bar stenciled on the door. Otherwise, she didn’t know if she would be able to even recognize it. From street level, all the buildings looked the same, and she couldn’t see to the tops of anything. It didn’t look like any lights were on beyond the door but she grabbed the handle and pulled anyway. It opened.
The only light coming from inside the bar was the clean, gray light she recognized from the people sleeping in the cave, never mind that that was a dream. She had thought of the figure that way too, even though she was pretty sure that was a dream, as well.
The figure was the sole person in the bar. This close, she stopped thinking of the figure as an it and began thinking of it as a male. He sat on a stool and turned to look at her when she entered farther. She looked at the floor. An inky blackness ran from the door to beneath the figure. It seemed to be dripping off him, over top of that weird gray luminescence like black water running down a windowpane. It was like he had dragged the shadow here with him. She wondered if she had been following him the whole way without realizing it. A full glass of beer sat on the bar. He motioned toward it. She sat on the stool next to him. She lifted it to her mouth, stopping at the halfway point. A heart was shoved into the glass and she didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed it before lifting it up. She gagged slightly but before she could set the glass back down, the figure nudged it toward her mouth.
Sociopaths In Love Page 16