Total Victim Theory

by Ian Ballard

  I open my eye and look around. I can still see with my good eye. The shapes and colors are all the same.

  Tad's body’s on the floor beside the bed. The ax still buried in his neck. He’s dead. The monster’s dead. And I’m alive. It’s almost too much to think of all at once.

  My hands and legs are free. They weren't before. A pair of frayed rope segments lies on the floor next to Tad. Soaking up the pool of blood. Luke must have cut off the ropes. And took off the handcuffs too. One loop's fastened to the bed post. The other dangles open.

  But where's Luke?

  I look all around, but see no sign of him.

  The room is full of blue-gray light. The sideways rays of morning. Its hushed, happy shadows. It was dark before. I must have been out a while.

  Where can he have gone?

  There's a window across from me. Massive blue-green trees sway in the wind. Pine-needle leaves, each with its own tiny icicle. A gust makes a muffled push against the cabin wall. A cold butterfly gets whisked out of sight.

  “Luke,” I cry out, hoping he's maybe just outside the cabin door. Having a smoke or packing up his car.

  But there's no answer.

  He saved my life. And I remember now that last thing he said to me.

  Did he leave me here after all of that?

  Where are you, Luke?

  I get slowly to my feet. Feel dizzy for a second. On the floor, an inch or two from my feet, is a set of keys. To what? I pick them up. Flecks of Tad's blood on them. Two look like car keys. One of them might go to the door of the cabin. I remember there were two cars before. Did Luke take one?

  I step over Tad’s body and peer out the window. No. They're both still parked out front.

  The wind's been gusting, but now it stops. But in its place it's not silent. There's a high-pitched noise. It's the whine of water flowing through pipes.

  The bathroom. He could be there. I glance over. The door's shut.

  My heart's beating plenty hard, and yet it still manages to quicken. The closed door scares me. It feels like it's hiding something behind it.

  The sound of the water is shrill and high. I stare at the door. Paralyzed. Dread mounting. Maybe he's in there just taking a piss. That would be funny. The door swings open and there he is.

  That would be a great ending. Almost makes me smile.

  The sound of the water seems piercing. Like a drill burrowing into my ear. Fear nails my feet down to the ground. Can't step forward and take the handle.

  Then I realize what it is that scares me. It's like the sound that day in the apartment, when I found Jessica.

  My body feels cold. Like the blood has all run out of me.

  Now I notice that under the bathroom door there’s a slit of light. A little lighted strip. I stare at it. I think I'm looking for any sign of movement, shadows. Something tiny that would show he's there—

  But wait. There is something. Not a man's shadow though. Just a tiny wavelike flutter. The rippling of water.

  Another flash of Jessica. The water on the floor that day. Flickering. Pink and cloudy.

  A tear, forming in my eye. Like it knows something it can't.

  Studying the slit of light. Wanting so badly, desperately, for there to be a shadow. Or a splash. Anything. But just not this lifeless glistening. Just now, a tiny trickle of water creeping out from under the door. Gathering so slowly you almost can't tell it's happening. You can't tell it's forming the edge of a puddle.

  Part of me wants to scream. Lunatic asylum scream, where you break with sanity and you never come back.

  I step toward the door.

  Now the pictures flashing through my mind are him. On the stairs, the first time. In my room that night. And last night when he took me in his arms. They don't feel like memories but like things that always were. Always part of me.

  I'm hypnotized by the small arc of water. I let it touch the toe of my shoe.

  I reach for the handle and turn it. Push the door open. It wades through the pooled water.

  What I see first is the knife on the floor. In the water. It's the one with the black handle Tad used on me.

  A glance to the right. Bathtub. Water streaming violently from the faucet. Water running over the edge. A flash of color and shape. An arm dangles from the side of the tub. The palm's open toward me. Long crimson lines running down his wrist. The blood is still running out of him. Trickling to his fingertips. Making little red mushroom clouds when the drops hit the water on the floor.

  He’s facing me. Knees rising above the waterline. His black hair. His white shoulders.

  I never scream when I should scream. It always seems too late. Maybe my mouth forms a word. Mutters something. But in my mind, all the world is silent. Even the sound of the water goes away.

  My eyes are dry as stone. It had to happen, just like this. The future was a sculpture sitting covered up in a room. And now it's here and we see it.

  I slosh through the water and at the closer end, turn the faucets off. The cold surrounds my feet.

  I kneel beside the tub. Beside him. Not looking at him now. Looking down. My pants and blouse are wet.

  I lean my head against his. Mouth touching wet hair.

  I unfold my arm along the length of his. His skin still warm. Follow his long, bright wounds all the way down to the wrist. Trace the lines of his palm. Then, interlacing our fingers, I take his hand in mine.

  Time passes. Hard to say how much. 'Cause it doesn't matter.

  What's happening is happening apart from time.

  When I finally lift my head from where it rests against his, my teeth are chattering. My fingertips, blue and pruned. Some of his blood is on my wrists in pink and jotty smears.

  I stand. Water dripping from my soaked pants. A glance at the knife beneath the rose-colored water. For a moment I hesitate. But only for a moment.

  And then I reach down and I pick it up.

  *

  Driving back now. Driving down the winding mountain road.

  My ears pop. My pale knuckles are tight on the steering wheel.

  On the seat beside me there’s a paper bag. The one Tad had with him. That held the rope and knife. The bag’s damp at the bottom, like it's full of greasy French fries that are soaking through.

  Next to the bag is the black-handled knife.

  I just needed to have something of his forever.

  I thought of using the knife on myself. The way he did. Would have been sort of Romeo and Juliet style. If I died in his arms. Our blood mingling.

  Who's to say? Maybe that would have been better. Nobler. Maybe that would have shown a greater commitment to him. To a destiny that ended here.

  But now I know the more beautiful, more terrible thing is to push forward. Live out the consequences. To feel all of it over and over again a million times. To sift out the parts that were perfect and keep them and remember them. And burn or bury or laugh off all the rest. That’s the real dedication. That’s my choice.

  The truth is that Luke never could have killed me, and he never could have let me die. I think we both knew that, even in that first moment.

  If his aim was to make me hate him, to make me one day forget and one day move on and one day cease to love, then no one has ever failed at anything more completely than him.

  Now I know he loved me. When he spoke those words, it might have been the one true thing he ever said. For reasons I’ll never understand, yet understand completely, his death was for me. A sacrifice to make possible forever, something that could never be.

  And now I know there’s another reason I didn’t end my life today. A second consideration.

  I place my hand on my abdomen. Think about a future.

  An image, like a revelation, appears in my mind. A face, blurry as a prophecy, with eyes closed, floating in water.

  It had already crossed my mind that perhaps another part of him is with me.

  But now I know.

  64

  El Paso

 
The guard says someone’s here to see me. I give him a questioning glance—since I wasn't expecting any visitors. But his response is only a blank stare.

  I get up from my bunk and slide on my white canvas shoes.

  Don’t get many visitors. Fewer and fewer as time goes by—my few friends apparently having discharged their sympathetic obligations on prior visits, and my attorney having largely resolved the pending legal matters in my case. The guard ushers me out of my cell and through a pair of metal sliding doors and down a long blue corridor with cinderblock walls till we come to the visitor area.

  The room is a big rectangle with a line of green booths where the inmates sit opposite their visitors, separated by a long, bulletproof window. About half the booths are filled with jailbirds in orange jumpsuits talking to their abused spouses, disappointed family members, or unconvicted accomplices. In one of the booths, the first of the line running from left to right, sits a girl, unpaired with any inmate.

  To my surprise, the guard directs me to her booth. After a perplexed wrinkling of my brow, I step forward and take a skeptical gander at my supposed visitor—a woman with black hair and sunglasses who I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before.

  “She’s here for me?” I turn to the guard and whisper.

  The guard double-checks something on his clipboard and nods.

  I approach the girl and give a shrug, as if to suggest she should explain herself. Does she have me confused with an incarcerated uncle of the same name? Or did the guard slip up, intending to bring out someone else?

  The girl—who’s about twenty-two and wears a pink T-shirt that falls flatteringly on an attractive figure—either has poor vision and doesn't realize the mistake or is so laid-back she accepts me as a substitute for whomever she’d intended to meet. She smiles, takes off her glasses, and looks at me. It’s a look that’s inexplicably fraught with emotion, as if she’d just laid eyes on her long lost soul mate.

  She gestures for me to pick up the phone.

  The features of her face are basically perfect—though something’s off about one of her eyes. Or perhaps it's the tissue around her eye. It doesn't seem to move properly. Maybe she's had nerve damage or a stroke or something. I remember there was a girl in my law school class whose face got half-paralyzed—either because of stress or because she fell asleep with her face on a desk—I can't remember exactly. Anyway, this girl's face reminds me of that.

  But there’s something more. In her demeanor—a haunted, damaged quality. The gun-shy look of someone who's endured a beatings or two. It's a look that lingers in the eyes of a lot of the victims I've interviewed. I've talked to other agents about it. There's a debate about whether they just always have it or whether it shows up after—about whether it’s the cause or the effect of whatever really bad thing happened to them.

  “Hey,” she says, once I've got the receiver to my ear. The pleasantness of her voice surprises me. It’s melodic. Somehow it conveys a hopefulness I wasn't expecting.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do we know one another?” I try not to smile, though I find myself immediately wanting to do so.

  “I’m Nicole,” she says.

  As soon as she says her name, it clicks.

  Holy shit. I feel my heart accelerate a bit. “Oh, wow,” I mutter. It's Nicole Copeland. I recognize her now from pictures in the news.

  She gives a nervous laugh and draws her hair back from her face. “I've wanted to meet you for a long time,” she says. “You know, because of what we have in common.”

  “How did you even know—”

  “About you? From the FBI. After everything happened. Your name came up quite a few times when the agents were interviewing me.”

  I'm silent for a moment, unsure what I want to say to her. When I look down, I notice I'm scratching my scar. Thought I'd stopped doing that a while back.

  Feeling anxious now. Don’t like talking about what happened, and if she's here just to rehash things or commiserate with me, don't think I'm up for that. But I'm not going to be rude either. “And how are you doing?” are the words that finally come out of my mouth.

  “Doing good. Doing as best I can,” she says. “How about you?”

  I give a shrug. “I'm here.”

  “They say you might be getting out soon,” she says.

  “Maybe in a couple of months,” I say. Evidence from the Morrison cabin proves that Silva was Tad. It also largely clears me of the crimes with which I’m charged. Nonetheless, it may take several months to get my case before a judge. But I’m not bitter about still being here. Not with all the more pressing things there are to be bitter about.

  “It must be nice that all this is ending. To put it behind you,” she says.

  I bite my upper lip, thinking how I want to respond. I was intending to just be cordial and humor her, but I feel this flourish of emotion and regret sweep over me. I just can’t bring myself to pretend or to profess something I don’t feel. “To be honest, Nicole, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put what happened behind me.”

  She takes off her sunglasses and folds them up. “Well maybe not put it behind you . . .” Her face flushes. “But at least move on.”

  I'm silent for a while. “Have you moved on?” I ask.

  “I accept that it happened . . . that's about all I can claim.”

  Already, I'm rattled. Should just tell her to get lost, whatever she looks like. “Well, I don’t accept what happened.” There's a deep bitterness in my voice. “Everything that ever meant anything to me . . . that man took away.”

  She looks away for a moment. She probably expected me to react very differently than this. She probably thought it would be some kind of relief because in some narrow, shallow sense we went through the same things.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn't mean I'd accepted the things Tad did. I just meant I've acknowledged that it happened so I can start trying to pick up the pieces.”

  A tiny huff of laughter. “I wish you could teach me how to pick up the pieces. Tell me how you do that, Nicole.”

  She looks away. “You just do it. Because what’s the other option?”

  “There are always other options,” I mutter, and it strikes me how hateful this sounds.

  She looks into my eyes. She wants to say something hopeful. That will inspire me. But she doesn't get how far gone I am—how many circles of hell I am beneath the reach of self-help books. It's not her fault, but that's just the way it is.

  And yet, I don't need to upset her. I don't need to show her the place where I'm at or pull her down with me. “Look, Nicole, I'm really glad you came out here. I think you're a strong person for all you've been though. I really admire that. But there are things we have in common and there are other things we don’t.”

  She just nods, but in an uncomprehending way. I really wish things wouldn't have gotten off on the wrong foot like this. Trying to think of something that will undo this. Because there's something about her, I don't know what it is—

  “Well, I appreciate you taking the time to meet me. I really wish you the best of luck with everything.” She flashes a smile, but it’s just a polite smile. Not like the real one when she first appeared. “I guess I had better be going.”

  She’s hung up her phone before I've had time to respond. I was tempted to saying something slightly encouraging, but the moment’s passed.

  As she stands, we share a look. There's a hesitation. On both sides. I see my face in the glass. Inscribed right on top of hers. I look so full of despair. It's almost ghastly. What I'm becoming. What I am.

  She turns away. But the second after she does, I realize there's something I want to say to her. Not want, but need to say. “Nicole,” I shout, but, of course she can’t hear me because of the glass. She’s almost out the door.

  Turn back. Turn back and look at me—as if I had some telepathy that would go to her.

  But no, she’s already receding through the doorway.

  Disappearing.<
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  I pick up the phone and bang it against the glass. But she's gone. Rounded the corner.

  A sudden and unbearable sadness overcomes me. It’s almost as intense as those other two worst times. Like I might shatter a mirror and stab a shard of glass into my throat just to make it stop.

  Why am I feeling this?

  Staring forlornly after her, I realize the guard on the other side of the glass has perceived my plight. He sticks his head through the doorway where she just vanished and calls to her. Makes a beckoning gesture to the other side.

  My heart does a strange flip-flop.

  And a moment later, she reappears in the doorway. We just look at each other through the window. Awkwardly . . . of course it's awkwardly. She doesn't know what I want.

  She’s still holding her sunglasses in her hand. That's the moment I realize that one of her eyes isn’t real. It looks different than the other one. The way it sparkles. Like it's glass.

  She picks up her phone first, and then I pick up mine.

  “What’s up?” she asks, skeptically.

  Neither of us sits down. We just stare at each other like two gunfighters, poised with their hands on their weapons.

  Her face is inscribed within mine in the glass. It’s like we’re fused together or like she’s snuck herself inside me and is staring out through my eyes—or, maybe, vice versa.

  I hesitate for a moment, biting my lip. My mind's gone blank. “That's weird,” I say, feeling a pink blush come into my face. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

  She smiles. Her third smile, this one the best of the three.

  “Well, do you want me to just stand here and wait for you to remember?” she asks.

  I see my face in the glass.

  And I realize that I'm smiling too.