“I want to be with you all the time.” Dawn stared at the ceiling. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. Erica turned to her and licked the tear away.
“We’ll leave. As soon as it’s over, we’ll leave.”
“Good. Where are we going to go?”
“We can go anywhere you want.”
“Anywhere we want.”
“Sounds good.”
They fell into a comfortable silence, the creaking apartment and buzzing city the only sounds.
“Are we dead?” Erica asked.
“No,” Dawn said, not even thinking about it. “Not dead. Something else.”
“Is it some kind of punishment?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t want to believe that.”
“If not dead then what?”
“Insubstantial.”
“But you would think even if an insubstantial person inflicts enough damage they’d be noticed.”
“You would think a lot of things. I’ve tried to grasp it for a while too. I’m not sure it makes any more sense now than it did the first time I found out about it.”
“The Boys showed you?”
“I used to think that but, the more I thought about it, I think it was probably my mom. I think she was insubstantial. I think she could have done anything she wanted to do and chose not to. She chose to be my dad’s servant or live-in maid or something. And then, I don’t know, maybe it gains in intensity over time. Thinking about it too much will drive you crazy. If you want to know why there aren’t more people like us, it’s because the suicide rate is high. Even before the Boys I’d done some . . . pretty terrible things. Things I don’t want to repeat.”
“And things you don’t want to die for. I think, possibly, I’d done some things before meeting Walt. I don’t want to think about them.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I keep seeing a cave. And these gray figures . . . They’re like ghosts but I think they want to say something to me. They might even want to see me suffer.”
Dawn reached down and took her hand. “You don’t have to think about any of that anymore.”
An hour later Erica sighed and said she guessed she’d better get back to the apartment. Dawn told her to be careful, watched her put on her clothes, and gave her a long, slow kiss at the front door.
The apartment looked much like it had when they’d first come there, minus the furniture. Walt lay naked and face down in the middle of the living room floor. Erica smirked and went to go sleep in the bathtub.
She decided if he was still sleeping when she woke up then she would grab a knife from the kitchen and stab him in the back repeatedly.
Domestic Violence
At first she thought her alarm was going off and then realized it was Walt standing above her with a chainsaw. Thinking she was in bed, she slid to the other side but was met with the resistance of the tiled bathroom wall. He brought the chainsaw close to her face. She could smell the gas and the oil on the chain. She brought her knees into her chest and closed her eyes, completely passive. It occurred to her that, other than during intercourse when she had maybe kind of sometimes asked for it, Walt had never hit or even threatened to hit her. She waited for the bite of the chainsaw. Waited for it to ruin her face. Maybe she would stop being invisible then. He pulled the chainsaw away. She opened her eyes to see it sitting on the toilet next to the tub. Walt sat on the edge of the tub like a parent giving a child a bath. He had his face in his hands and appeared to be crying. She doubted he was actually crying. She wasn’t going to comfort him.
“What went wrong?” he blubbered.
“Are you . . . serious?”
The chainsaw vibrated frenetically. It was only a matter of time before it slid off the toilet. Possibly into Walt but possibly into the tub where it would gnaw her legs that, since she’d stopped fucking Walt, were remarkably bruise free.
“I’ve done everything for you. I took you away from that place. I brought you here. Let you do anything you want. I showed you things. Showed you parts of myself I haven’t let anyone see.”
You brought me here to be closer to her, Erica wanted to say.
Now he seemed to be bawling hysterically. Like a kid who acts apologetic or wounded to get out of trouble. He brought his head from his hands and bellowed toward the ceiling. “Why are doing this to me!”
Erica almost laughed.
The chainsaw vibrated and touched him and she waited for him to jump up and squeal. She was going to try and dart around the other side of him. There must have been some kind of trigger you pressed to set the blade in motion because it didn’t cut him. He calmly swiveled around and turned it off. He reached into the tub, between her legs, and massaged her vagina.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
He didn’t make eye contact with her and she didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if she should play his game in the time she had left or resist him completely.
She pulled his large hand from between her legs and said, “Don’t.”
“I understand,” he said. “I really do. I’ve . . . hurt you somehow. I’ll find a way to make it better. Just give me some time.”
She took his hand in both of hers and said, “We’ve got all the time in the world. I love you so much, Walt.”
“Let’s go watch the girls, huh.”
He stood up and she followed him. He slid the eye slot on the door open and motioned for her to get close. The girls were sleeping in the far right corner. One of them lay on her back, the other’s head resting on her stomach.
“What I can’t figure out,” Walt said, “is why they haven’t tried to eat each other yet. They have to be starving but they don’t even fight.”
Erica swallowed hard and hoped it wasn’t audible. “Were they . . . friends? Before?”
“I told you they were sisters. But there are no friends or relatives when it comes to survival. You know that.”
She was going to back away, bolt to the front door, toss a lame excuse at him, and get out of the apartment, but his hand was already around the back of her neck. He laughed shortly and slammed her head against the door. The pain was tremendous and shot from the top of her head to the arches of her feet. Then he did it again. And again until she lost consciousness.
Breaking Up
When she finally came to Erica felt like she was falling and her heart skipped crazily, the blood rushing to her head threatening to send her back into unconsciousness. A few quick seconds and she figured out what had happened to her. It made her wish she were falling to her death.
She was suspended upside down from the balcony. She tightened her stomach muscles enough to raise her torso and look at her feet, her body shaking with the effort. Walt wasn’t the only one who’d fallen out of shape the past few months. A yellow rope was bound around her ankles. If she were meatier, the rope would dig in. Given her relatively low body fat, the greatest risk she faced, aside from falling, was severe rope burn. And that was only if she struggled too much. She would probably fall first. If she knew Walt as well as she thought she did, the rope probably wasn’t tied very well. She could only know Walt’s actions. She didn’t think she could ever know Walt. Or, rather, she thought she knew him pretty well and there just wasn’t much to know. In that way, they were a lot alike. Could two people be attracted to each other based on a mutual lack of empathy and conscience? Well, she thought her current predicament probably answered that question. And given the fact she had seemingly faded from humanity’s radar, she didn’t see anyone coming along to save her any time soon. Maybe Dawn. Maybe.
She let herself go limp. It felt better that way. She stared at the sidewalk beneath her and the people walking to and from wherever. Focusing on things made her feel less likely to pass out.
She heard Walt laughing and once again strained to look toward her feet, toward the balcony. She immediately wished she hadn’t. He stood at the railing, cock in hand, and she braced herself for the rancid torrent o
f piss that hit her in the face.
A naked woman dangling from a balcony in the downtown of a city and no one even stopped to gawk. She wondered if she had really been doing everything she wanted. Maybe all she wanted was for people to notice her. But how did that sound? How would that have sounded when Walt asked her what she wanted to do and she replied that she wanted to be noticed by as many people as possible?
She thought about pleading with him, promising things, but he was already gone.
She continued to hang and wait, watching normal people go to their normal jobs and live their normal lives. Was that what she wanted? She didn’t think so.
There was a moment when the streets and sidewalks were oddly empty and she had the sensation she’d gone under, passed out, or ruptured something in her brain. She imagined everyone slowly disappearing from the surface of the earth until it was just her, dangling in a breeze that, under the circumstances, would seem spectral. Then she watched a homeless guy sift through a blooming pot of plants and figured it must just be some kind of afternoon lull.
Walt came back out to the balcony and shook the rope as if to rouse her from sleep. Maybe it was to scare her. She didn’t know if she thought of it as frightening. How could falling a few stories to the concrete be any worse than what awaited her if Walt decided to drag her back up and take her into the apartment?
He looked over the railing at her until she made eye contact with him.
“How could you do this to me?”
She wasn’t going to argue with him. She wouldn’t like the sound of her voice and would therefore be powerless from the outset.
“I’m a sick man.”
To say the least, she thought.
But he didn’t mean sick in the head. He braced himself on the railing and vomited. Most of it passed in front of her face in a stinking cloud, but some of it landed on her and she wiped it away with balloon arms.
“I keep doing that!”
He didn’t need to shout to be heard and it didn’t exactly sound like he was mad.
He heaved again.
“I’ve been sick for a while. Maybe that’s why I’ve done the things I’ve done. Just trying to get it all in. I don’t think I’m going to get any better.”
As much as she didn’t want to, she decided to talk.
“Do you need someone to take care of you? I’m . . . I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“I’ve already found someone else to take care of me. That’s what I wanted to tell you. This is really hard for me.”
“You’re . . . you’re leaving me?” She tried to sound surprised.
“I think it would be better for both of us. You’re not very nurturing.” He vomited over the side again.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Walt. You could bring me up. Let me live. I won’t bother you. I promise. I’ll pack my stuff and be on my way.”
“I don’t like the thought of anyone else having you.”
“Then what do you want? Do you want me to stay with you and this new person? Is she okay with it? Is it even a she?”
He roughly shook the rope again. “Of course it’s a she! I’m not a fucking faggot.”
“Okay okay. I’m just . . . like I said, I’m just not sure what you want.”
He lit a cigarette, leaned over, and blew smoke toward her. “I’m going to pull you up now and put you in the room with the girls.”
He began pulling on the rope. It dug into her ankles and it felt like she was being stretched to the breaking point. When he got her close enough, he grabbed her calves with his hands and pulled her up. She felt like it could all be a joke. That he could bring her up this far and untie the rope before dropping her again, this time unfettered.
Even though her body felt weird from being suspended like that for such a long time, she had every intention of trying to get away from him. She didn’t know exactly what he had planned but it seemed to be some kind of end game. If he was going to bring the girl from the cafe back any time soon, she knew he would probably want some level of normalcy in the apartment, which meant he would construct some grand finale for those remaining people. Erica felt stupid for getting the apartment cleaned. That might have involved organizational skills beyond his control and it might have been just that one hang up that prevented him from ever having the girl from the cafe back to the apartment. But she knew that was faulty logic. Walt did not put down any roots. If he was afraid to bring her back to the apartment he would have probably just insinuated himself into her life before dragging her along on some kind of trail of destruction like he had with Erica.
Her feet came down on the concrete of the balcony and before she could move an inch toward the doors, Walt wrapped the rope around her, pinioning her arms to her sides and binding her feet together. He punched her in the stomach hard enough to take all the fight from her and dragged her toward the room with the girls in it. She could have tried to scream but didn’t see the point in it.
Support Group
The first thing that struck her about the room was the stench. She guessed, maybe, because the stench hadn’t wafted out into the rest of the apartment, she just hadn’t thought about it. But the simple logistics of the girls’ situation warranted it. She wouldn’t have had to think about it very long to know it would stink in there. Still, the intensity of it was eye watering – rotten meat and piss and shit and blood and sweat and some all-pervading stench Erica thought of as girl stink, something unique to poorly cleaned girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms, something like menstruation and BO.
The next thing that struck her was how dark it was. She had looked into this room before and didn’t know why it hadn’t struck her until now. There weren’t any lights in it and the rest of the apartment was kept laboratory bright. Once the slot in the door was shut, it was completely black. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d experienced this utter blackness. Possibly never. How is that possible, she thought, that people born into this modern world could go their entire lives and never experience total darkness? It made her think of the cave. And that made her think Walt should be in here. But Walt didn’t really dwell in a cave. Not even the cave she had in her head. Walt dwelled in a more metaphorical cave. It didn’t matter how bright his surroundings were, he would put out the light. Wherever he went he established a perimeter of total darkness.
Erica had forgotten what the two girls in the room looked like, if she had ever known. She had thrown them food and looked at them with Walt, but she hadn’t let her gaze linger, hadn’t taken the pleasure of looking upon them as Walt did. She also didn’t know how long they’d been in here.
“Hello?” Erica said into the darkness.
There were grunts from the far corner.
Had they been in here long enough to lose their minds from fear and hunger?
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Erica said.
More grunts.
Erica meant what she said. She had no intention of hurting either one of them unless they attempted to hurt her. At this point, she was certainly the strongest of the three. She could kill one or both of them and not worry about starving for a while, at least. Even thinking about her situation imbued her with an overwhelming sense of defeat. There didn’t seem to be a point to anything. Well, she guessed the point to everything about this room was Walt’s entertainment. She knew whatever she did would only delay the inevitable – her death. She could kill them and eat them or just kill them because they threatened her but she knew the end result would be her dying alone in this room. If she didn’t kill them, they would surely die before she would. Then she would be stuck in the room with two rotting corpses. She wondered how long it would take for her to break down and start eating them. She knew, at the moment, being still somewhat sane, she could rationalize that eating them would only delay the inevitable. But how would she feel in days when she was starving and she was immune to the passage of time and three days felt like three weeks and she had herself convinced Walt was just
keeping her in here to watch her suffer, teach her a lesson, and would one day let her go?
One of the girls started to whimper. Maybe it was both of them. The only thing she had seen before Walt shut the door was that they were against the back wall. She didn’t think they were huddled together or anything but they could have been.
“I . . . I’ll try to get us out of here,” Erica said.
This was met with one girl grunting and the other one laughing hysterically.
“Can you guys talk?”
She wondered if she should go over to them, if that would display some sort of solidarity. Then she thought of the way they smelled and didn’t want to get too close.
“Yes,” one of them said in a barely audible whisper. “But it takes too much energy.”
“I see.”
“You shouldn’t talk anymore. There’s nothing to say anyway.”
So Erica stopped talking. She found a wall and sat against it, pulling her legs up to her chest. This was going to be the saddest possible way to die. But what could she do? The simplest answer screaming at her was to kill the other two girls and see what happened after that. She’d already killed at least two people, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have blood on her hands. Plus, it was the only outcome that wasn’t certain. While there was any more than one girl alive in this room, she knew Walt was just going to sit around and watch them, waiting for something to happen. But what would he do after that something happened? Would he let her go? She knew he wouldn’t let either of the other two girls go, which was all the more reason to kill them anyway. They knew too much. She knew too much too but she was also an accomplice.
She could wait but . . . wait for what? Wait for one of the feeble girls to finally get so hungry she came at Erica? Erica would certainly defend herself at that point. Yet another result ending in the death of the girls.
Sociopaths In Love Page 18