The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  “Makes no difference to me. I’d do it even if her little coloring books told me he was Saint whatever his name is. The one with the arrows.”

  “Saint Sebastian.”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “His name is Donald and he stakes out parking garages, pretending he has a dead battery and needs a jump.”

  “Yeah? Well, even if he does do all that bullshit, how do you know your rapist din din is even home?”

  “He’s home. He’s in there right now, all alone, lying on the couch in lingerie, watching Wheel of Fortune.”

  “Those squiggles say all of that?”

  “Apparently they say a lot of things.”

  “Fucking art.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Yelena said and opened her door and stepped out. “Told you. I can hear the wheel spinning inside.”

  “Big whoop. I can hear it myself.”

  Yelena walked toward Donald’s house with a determined, even gait. Hisato was slower getting out of the car and by the time he slammed the door shut, Yelena had already crossed the street.

  At the front door, Yelena rang the doorbell and waited. There was no immediate answer and Hisato caught up and waited beside her.

  Yelena rang the bell again and then knocked loudly.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Hold your goddamn horses,” a man’s voice said from within.

  Yelena heard the deadbolt turn. The door opened and there stood a man barefoot in his bathrobe. Yelena knew he was Donald as he appeared in his fifties, was balding and overweight, just like it said on the back of his scribble. It looked like he hadn’t shaved for a few days. The television could be heard more clearly with the door open. Yelena looked beyond Donald into the living room. Vanna White was clapping her hands together as the wheel spun around and around again.

  Donald eyed Yelena and Hisato curiously. “Yeah? Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’d like to buy a vowel,” Yelena said before punching Donald in the face, the force behind her punch sending him ten feet back into the living room and leveling him to the hardwood floor.

  “Whoa!” Hisato said. He was surprised by the power of Yelena’s bloodlust. It was stronger than he was accustomed to seeing from her.

  Yelena stepped inside. That was something else I learned later about being a vampire—you’re able to invite yourself in. Hisato followed Yelena inside and shut the door behind them.

  “Get up,” Yelena said calmly.

  Donald ignored the pain of the punch and rose to his feet as if following a command.

  “Take off your robe.”

  Donald obeyed—his resistance to Yelena’s commands as a mortal was futile. He undid the terry cloth belt knotted around his waist, removed the robe and let it fall to the floor. Donald wore red lacy women’s lingerie over his hairy ape-like body.

  “Damn. You need to wax that shit!” Hisato exclaimed, but neither Donald nor Yelena paid any attention to him.

  “Sit down, Donald.”

  Donald sat on the couch he had been lying on before Yelena’s violent and then hypnotic intrusion. His eyes fixed themselves on Yelena as she dragged a wooden chair from the nearby dining room table and sat herself opposite him. Hisato hopped up on the kitchen counter and let his legs dangle.

  “I’m going to kill you tonight, Donald. But before I do that we’re going to talk.”

  Donald tensed when he heard her say she was going to kill him, but he didn’t flee. He didn’t have the will to.

  “You will tell me the truth, Donald,” Yelena said.

  Donald sat motionless.

  “How many times have you done it? You will tell me now.”

  “Seven.”

  “That’s two more since Orly drew you.”

  The look of confusion on Donald’s face made it clear he did not understand what she meant, who I was or what drawings she referred to. Yelena continued.

  “I park in a garage late at night when I see my psychiatrist. You’d like it. The lighting is inadequate,” Yelena said and Donald began to flush.

  “Do you even own jumper cables? Answer me now.”

  “Yes.”

  “You pick women wearing nylons. You must like that. Do the nylons turn you on?”

  “Yes.”

  Yelena rose from the chair and began to raise her skirt, showing her own black silk stockings. Donald stared at her legs and became mesmerized as Yelena lifted her skirt higher, showing the bare skin where her stockings ended and were held up by garters. “And if they’re wearing garters, you keep them as a souvenir.”

  By the look on Donald’s face, the sight of the garters on her shapely dancer’s legs drowned out the sound of his favorite game show. He was spellbound.

  “You are your own again,” Yelena said. “I release you now.” She slipped a finger beneath one of the garters. “Do you want to touch them?”

  Donald bit the inside of his lower lip.

  “Do you want to touch me?”

  Donald inhaled heavily.

  “Go ahead,” Yelena said. “Do what you do.”

  But Donald hesitated. “You’re not cops.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “I didn’t rape you.”

  “No, you didn’t. But I’m going to kill you anyway. It’s your choice if you want to run or fight.”

  Donald rose to his feet. Behind him a contestant on the television said, “Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle” and then paused before exclaiming “PENSACOLA, FLORIDA.” Vanna and the audience clapped loudly.

  “This is taking too long,” Hisato said to Yelena. “Can we skip to the bonus round?”

  Suddenly, Donald stepped forward and threw a quick and hard punch, but with Yelena’s heightened reflexes it was far too slow to connect, and Yelena merely moved her head to the side to avoid it.

  “I’m glad you chose to fight,” Yelena said.

  “Me too,” Hisato said.

  Donald took another swing, but again he was too slow. “Fucking cunt! Come here!” and he rushed at her, but only crashed into the wall as Yelena simply stepped out of his way and in an instant was behind him. Donald turned to her, frustrated and out of ideas. In contrast, an idea was born in Yelena. She could endanger herself. She could become his victim. She didn’t know how far she would take it. The idea was too new for her to allow it to go as far as rape. She knew she wouldn’t feel guilty for killing Donald, because of what my scribble told her, but she hoped her efforts to be abused by him would make the experience of bleeding him dry more purposeful and thereby more satisfying.

  Yelena stepped toward him. “I’m going to allow you to hit me now. You’ve hit women before. I want you to hit me like you hit them.”

  Donald didn’t hesitate. He threw a punch and it hit Yelena in the face. There was a loud crack and a great deal of force behind the blow, and Yelena staggered backwards but didn’t fall as most others would have. Her head was burning from the punch and she saw sparklers, but she shook them out of her head and stepped toward Donald again.

  “As hard as you can,” Yelena said, and she allowed his fist to connect with her beautiful face. She stepped back unsteadily, recovered, and approached him.

  “Again,” she said, and Donald hit her again.

  “Harder,” she said.

  He swung again, and this time Yelena fell to the floor. Hisato hopped off the counter but Yelena motioned him away as she struggled to her feet and regained her footing. Yelena could see the surprise in Donald’s face. She should have been out cold. With blood leaking from her busted lip, she looked again at her best friend. Hisato backed off and resumed his seat on the counter.

  Yelena looked Donald in the face and plainly asked, “Don’t you want my garters?”

  Donald lunged at Yelena and forced her up against the wall, her feet coming off the floor. Donald held her there and punched and punched again, each time to Yelena’s face—her jaw, her cheek, her eyes, and soon her skin, which was already a darkened red from the previous blows, began to bruise. He let
go and Yelena slid down the wall onto the floor. Yelena, although dizzy, was able to maintain her faculties and rose to her feet by pushing her back up against the wall. It was a pounding that should have subdued her and truly made her his victim, but there she was, standing again and staring at him. And now Donald, far from being in shape, was out of breath. He sank to his knees, panting.

  “Are you done?” Yelena asked him, but he didn’t answer. He continued to kneel and struggled to breathe.

  Yelena wiped her own blood from her lip and looked at it. She stepped away from the wall and up onto the wooden chair, her legs before his face as he knelt beneath her. Donald gathered his strength and threw his arms around her legs and held them tightly as if to restrain her from doing anything to him, now that it was her turn, but finally, when Yelena did not react, he whimpered, “Don’t kill me. Please.”

  Yelena bent forward and placed her thin fingers through his thinning hair and effortlessly lifted Donald off of the ground, forcing him to release his grip around her legs. She held him up at eye level, bared her teeth, and by the look in Donald’s eyes, she knew he understood what she was.

  Donald began to kick futilely, attempting to free himself from her grip, but with inhuman speed, Yelena sunk her teeth deep into his throat. With his legs still dangling as he sat on the counter, Hisato mimicked Donald’s legs as they kicked in the space of air above the floor, the way a condemned man kicks when his fall from the gallows doesn’t break his neck.

  Donald’s kicks grew more faint, and Hisato’s did the same in playful mimicry. Yelena fed and then released the clench of her teeth from his throat and turned to her best friend.

  “You want?” she asked.

  Hisato shook his head. “Too fucking hairy.”

  Yelena dropped Donald to the floor and stared down at him. He lay still, but his wide eyes were still blinking in horrified disbelief. Blood pumped out of the two holes in his neck. Yelena stepped off the chair and squatted beside him and stuck two of her fingers into the bloody holes like a bowling ball, plugging the blood from pouring out so quickly. Her fingers wiggling inside his neck caused Donald’s body to thrash, and with little effort, Yelena used those two fingers to pry Donald’s head from his body. The head rolled and blood washed over the floor from the decapitated body and Yelena licked her two fingers clean.

  “Berthold is gonna love driving all the way up here to mop up Victoria’s secret.”

  “Berthold was chosen correctly. He understands our relationship. He never complains,” Yelena answered.

  “Maybe I’ll just have a taste.” Hisato hopped off the counter, approached Yelena, leaned forward, and took a long lick of blood off of her face. It tickled and she smiled. Hisato stepped back and looked at his best friend and smiled back. “You look good. Rapist blood suits you.”

  Yelena went into the kitchen and washed her face and used paper towels to dry off and dropped them into the sink. She didn’t have to worry about leaving evidence of her identity. She had no DNA. None of the vampires did. She walked back into the living room where Hisato waited.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Yelena and Hisato avoided the blood spill on the floor and stepped over Donald’s lingerie-clad headless body and headed to the front door.

  They drove back down the coast with the moon’s watchful eye following them, only resting when the occasional tuft of clouds passed dreamily over it.

  “I really enjoyed that,” Hisato said.

  “What?”

  “Watching you toy with him. Making it torturous. It felt good, didn’t it?”

  Yelena didn’t answer.

  “There’s hope for you yet, my dearest Yelena.”

  When they reached LA, the moon had lost its glow, overshadowed by the multitude of street lamps and brightly lit billboards. Yelena finally put the car in park outside the Clover Gallery. The street was dead. The gallery was closed and the lights were turned off. They got out of the car and approached the gallery and stood outside its plate glass window, peering in. Yelena placed her fingertips on the glass, wishing it wasn’t there so she could get a closer look. She stared to the back of the gallery at the three remaining scribbles. She wouldn’t have stolen them, but she may have read the backs of them.

  “Your teeth are showing,” Hisato said, snapping Yelena out of her reverie.

  She pressed her lips together, hiding her teeth, and removed her fingertips from the glass and watched as her fingerprints, like all her fingerprints, evaporated.

  “Three left,” Hisato said. “Even on your scanty diet that won’t last you two months. What are you gonna do then?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll commission more pieces.”

  “You said she’s getting better from the chemo?”

  “She said that. She was either lying or doesn’t know the truth. I could smell the sickness in her blood.”

  “So even her commissions won’t last for very long.”

  “I know.”

  “The kid’s a dead end.”

  “Yes, but a cure for cancer would be the commission of a lifetime.”

  “Don’t even go there. It’s against tradition and plus, we hate kids.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was dark outside. Again only the light through a window on the fourth floor of the office building was shining through the darkness.

  Yelena appeared livelier as she sat in her usual place on the sofa opposite Dr. Sloane. Her black overcoat lay on the sofa beside her. She wore a black dress with thick black tights and clunky but stylish black shoes. Her energy level was a welcome relief to Dr. Sloane.

  “And so, with this new diet, you no longer have feelings of guilt associated with food?”

  “I just don’t think about it so much anymore. I guess because I’m eating healthier.”

  “Yet you won’t tell me in what way it is healthier.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “But you are eating regularly?”

  “I’m starting to, so I’ll say yes.”

  “I see. Well, you certainly do seem happier today.”

  “Thank you. So I guess all I have to do is maintain this diet and I won’t need to come here any longer.”

  Dr. Sloane appeared surprised at this assertion. Yelena was testing him. She didn’t expect him to approve.

  “I don’t believe that’s the safest choice for you right now, Yelena. Rather, I think now that you say you’re no longer overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, it would be a good time for us to explore the root causes of those guilty feelings that occurred in the first place.”

  Yelena sat in silence. “We’ve talked about it before.”

  “Yes. I recall. But that was over a year ago. I’d like to talk about it again. Are you comfortable with that?”

  “I’m thinking,” she replied.

  “We don’t have to.”

  Yelena shook her head. “No. It’s fine.” She cleared her throat. “Like I told you, it started a long time ago. I might not have even been twelve. I was already dancing for years by then.”

  “Unfortunately, the pressures regarding weight are all too common with dancers, even when they are already underweight, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Are you saying I’m underweight?”

  “You are quite thin, Yelena.”

  “I can’t gain weight.”

  “But since you’re no longer dancing, perhaps you can consider giving yourself a break in maintaining such a svelte figure?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Our bodies are meant to change as we age, and that usually includes adding a bit of weight. You can’t hold on to your youth forever. It’s part of life.”

  Yelena didn’t say anything although it was clear she had a response on the tip of her tongue, and Dr. Sloane said no more. He was unsure if he had already said too much, too soon, and too fast. They sat in silence, the minutes of the therapy session ticking away.

  Finally, Yelena spoke. “You want to know something
? I’m exactly the same weight I was the night Marcel saw me for the first time, and I’m going to stay that way.”

  “That’s the first time in a long time you introduced the subject of Marcel without me soliciting.”

  “I wasn’t introducing. It’s just a fact about my weight.”

  “Are you willing to talk about him today?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s talk about the day he left.”

  “I thought it was customary to start at the beginning rather than the end.”

  “We can start at the beginning.”

  “One night, when we still lived in Malibu, he went for a jog on the beach and he never came back.” After those words there was a pause. That was all Yelena offered.

  “Go on,” Dr. Sloane encouraged.

  “And I never got over it.”

  “Yet you’ve loved since. You’ve said so.”

  “And you said that was a good thing.”

  “It is. But even though you’ve found love, you haven’t found the intimacy again, not the kind of closeness you said you experienced with Marcel.”

  “So what?”

  “The men in your life who came after Marcel, they’ve loved you, haven’t they?”

  Yelena nodded.

  “But you cut them loose when things get too close.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “How is it then?”

  “I can’t say. But I just can’t lose someone like that again.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Have you considered the possibility that your feelings of guilt stem from these relationships instead?”

  Yelena was surprised by this insight.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “You’ve said they truly love you and so perhaps you feel guilty for leaving them. Perhaps you feel guilty for hurting them.”

  Yelena didn’t answer.

  “I believe you cope with your feelings of guilt by not eating.”

  Again, she said nothing.

  “What do you think, Yelena?”

  “How many more minutes do we have? I’m hungry.”

  Dr. Sloane glanced at the clock that sat on the floor, out of his patient’s sight, beside the sofa Yelena sat on. “We still have time.”