by Joy Fielding
“Sean’s doing research on aberrant behavior,” Paul explained, following her eyes. “For a script he’s writing.”
Cindy nodded, remembering Julia had once boasted that Sean was writing a script especially for her. As far as Cindy knew, Sean had yet to find a producer for any of his efforts. He supported himself by bartending at Fluid, a popular downtown club. “Has Julia been around lately?” she asked, straining to sound casual.
“Haven’t seen her since …” There was an uncomfortable pause. “You should probably talk to Sean.”
“Do you have any idea when he’s coming back?”
“No. I wasn’t here when he went out.”
“Do you mind if we wait?” Cindy immediately plopped herself down on the sofa, moving a well-thumbed copy of a paperback book to the cushion beside her. The book was called Mortal Prey.
Paul hesitated. “The thing is … I have to be somewhere by noon, and I was just gonna hop in the shower.…”
“Oh, you go right ahead,” Cindy instructed. “We’ll be fine.”
“Sean could be a while.”
“If he’s not back by the time you’re ready to leave, we’ll go.”
“All right. I guess it’s all right,” the young man muttered under his breath, perhaps sensing Cindy’s determination, and not wanting to make a scene. “I won’t be long.”
“Take your time.”
As soon as Cindy heard the shower running, she was on her feet.
“What are you doing?” Neil asked. “Where are you going?”
The second question was by far the easier of the two to answer. “To Sean’s room,” she said, trying to decide which of the two rooms at the back of the apartment was his, opening the first door she came to, grateful when she saw a row of high school football trophies bearing Sean’s name lined up in front of the open window.
Posters from popular movies covered the walls: Spider-Man; Invasion of the Body Snatchers; From Hell; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Cindy winced at the image of a horrifying, leather-faced figure brandishing a chainsaw in front of him like a giant phallus, a helpless young woman secured to the wall behind him. She remembered that movie, hated herself now for enjoying it. What was the matter with her that she liked such things?
“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Neil said, his voice a strained whisper as he followed her inside the tiny bedroom.
“Probably not,” Cindy admitted, looking from the unmade bed to the water-stained desk on the opposite wall. An empty picture frame sat to one side of a bright blue iMac in the middle of the desk; a neat stack of blank paper was piled on the other.
“What is it you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Cindy took a step back, her ankle brushing up against the wastepaper basket on the floor. Her attention was immediately captured by the torn and crumpled remains of an eight-by-ten glossy. She bent down and scooped the battered picture of her daughter into her shaking hands. “It’s Julia’s most recent head shot. She just had it taken a few weeks ago.” Cindy tried vainly to iron out the creases of the black-and-white photograph, piece together the smile on her daughter’s face. Obviously Sean had torn it from its frame in a fit of fury. Was it possible he’d attacked her daughter in a similar rage?
“Maybe you should just leave it,” Neil advised, removing the picture from her trembling hands.
“What else is in here?” Cindy asked, ignoring Neil’s warning, turning the wastepaper basket upside down, and watching as scrap pieces of paper, used tissues, pencil shavings, and a browning apple core tumbled toward the floor. “Garbage, garbage, garbage,” She muttered, her fingers loosening their grip on the white plastic container, allowing it to slip from her hand. She began pulling open the desk drawers, poking around inside them. There was nothing of consequence in the first drawer, and she was just about to close the second when her fingers located something at the very back. An envelope, she realized, pulling it out, and opening it, a small gasp escaping her lips.
“What is it?”
Cindy’s mouth opened, but no words emerged, as her fingers flipped through a succession of small color photographs, all of Julia, all in various stages of undress: Julia in a see-through lavender bra and thong set; Julia wearing only the bottom half of a black string bikini, her hands playfully covering obviously bare breasts; Julia in profile, the curve of one naked breast visible beneath the crook of her elbow, the top of her bare bottom rounding out of the frame; Julia wrapped provocatively in a bedsheet; Julia wearing high heels and a man’s unbuttoned shirt and crooked tie.
“Why would she do this?” Cindy wondered out loud, showing the pictures to Neil before tucking them into the pocket of her khaki cotton pants. What was the matter with Julia? Had she no common sense whatsoever?
Cindy rifled through a few more items, and was about to close the drawer when her eyes fell across a sheet of densely typed paper.
The Dead Girl, she read.
By Sean Banack.
Cindy pulled the piece of paper from the drawer and carried it over to the bed, where she sank down, her lips moving silently across the page as she read.
The Dead Girl
by Sean Banack
Chapter One
She stares up at him defiantly, despite the fact her hands and feet are bound behind her naked body and she knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is going to kill her. He should have taped her eyes shut as well as her mouth, he thinks, then he wouldn’t have to see the look of contempt he knows so well. But he wants her to see him. He wants her to know what’s coming, to see the knives and other medieval instruments of torture spread out across the floor, and understand what hell he has prepared for her. He lifts the smallest, yet sharpest of the knives into his hands, cradles it delicately between his fingers, fingers she claims are hopelessly inept. Fairy fingers, she calls them to his face. A faggot’s hands.
He draws a fine line down the taut flesh of her inner arm. Her eyes widen as she watches a thin red streak wind its way across the whiteness of her skin. Slowly he lifts a second knife into the air in a graceful arc, then plunges it into her side, careful to keep the blade a safe distance from her vital organs, making sure the thrust isn’t hard enough to kill her, because what would be the fun in that? Over so soon, so quick, before he’s had a chance to really enjoy himself, before she’s had a chance to fully suffer for her sins. And she must suffer. As he has suffered for so long.
What are you doing? Let go of me, she’d yelled when he pulled up beside her, then bundled her into the trunk of his car. She, this spoiled child of privilege, who claimed nosebleeds anywhere north of Highway 401, is about to bleed to death in an abandoned shed just south of the King Sideroad, in the middle of bloody nowhere. Serves you right, bitch, he says, slicing at her legs before throwing her on her back, pushing the largest of the knives between her thighs.
Green eyes widen in alarm as the knife slides higher, cuts deeper. Not laughing now, are you, bitch? Where’s all that defiance now? With his free hand he grabs another knife, slashes at her breasts. Her blood is everywhere: on her, on him, on the floor, on his clothes, in his eyes, beneath his fingernails. His faggot fingernails, he thinks, rejoicing as he plunges the knife deep inside her, then savagely rips the duct tape away from her mouth so that he can hear her final screams.
“Oh, dear God,” Cindy cried, rocking back and forth.
Neil extricated the paper from Cindy’s hands. “What is it?”
“No, please no.”
It was then she heard the noise from somewhere beside them. “What’s going on in here?” Paul asked from the doorway. “Mrs. Carver? What are you doing in here?”
Cindy scrambled to her feet, lunged at the startled young man, naked except for the white towel wrapped around his waist. “Where’s my daughter? What have you done with her?”
Paul took a step back, clutching the towel at his hips. “I don’t know. Honestly, I have no idea where she is.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I speak to Sean.”
“I already told you I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“Is he with Julia?”
“No way. Julia ripped his guts out, man. Look, I’m gonna have to call the police if you don’t clear out of here right now.”
Neil looked up from the pages he was reading and yanked the phone from the small table beside Sean’s bed, thrust it toward Paul. “Call them,” he said.