Tina was running late, and when she arrived at the bar, Lexi was already waiting for her. She felt a pang of jealousy at how relaxed and worry free her friend looked. She was reading a magazine and was dressed in an oversized Ramones t-shirt that hung off one shoulder, revealing a singular, pink bra strap. As Tina approached, revelling in the smell of fresh coffee and cooked bacon, Lexi looked up and smiled. For the next hour, Tina told her all about Monde and her suspicions that he might have had something to do with the bar fire. Lexi listened intently, barely speaking and allowing Tina to tell the story in full. When she had had finished, Lexi took a second to consider, then pronounced her verdict.
“I think you should stop worrying about coincidental shit and go out with him.”
Tina blushed, and despite her concerns, managed a smile
“I don’t know, Lexi. There’s something about him, and I’m not sure what it is.”
“Can I be honest with you, T?”
“Always.”
“I think you’re scared to commit and looking for an excuse not to. Give him a call. Meet up with him. See how it goes. It can’t be any worse than spending your nights alone.”
Or fucked up on drugs she thought to herself. She went on to make idle small talk with Lexi for a while, but she felt distant somehow. A restlessness had overcome her, an uneasy feeling of something being slightly off balance, or more off balance than normal at least. She finished her drink and made up an excuse to leave, telling Lexi that she would call her later. Almost immediately after she left the bar, she took out her pink Samsung and punched in Monde’s number. She had half convinced herself that he wouldn’t answer; or if he did, he wouldn’t even remember who she was.
Four
Rhodes looked up from his notepad, ignoring the pain in his wrist from writing for so long. Their conversation was being recorded of course. All interviews were, as per standard police procedure, but he always made his own notes to refer to later, when he was home and able to think more clearly.
“You think Monde started the fire at the bar?” he asked, watching closely for her reaction. Tina paused, considering carefully, then looked him in the eye.
“I don’t think so. Not seriously anyway. I’d considered it at the time, but knowing him as I do now, it doesn’t really seem his style.”
“I’ve seen some pretty crazy things over the years. You would be surprised what some people are capable of.”
She only nodded in response, and he couldn’t shake off his uneasiness.
“You said you didn’t think he was capable of starting the fire. Has that changed now, Tina?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t think it was his style,” she said, offering a slight smile.
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
“Eventually I did, but he didn’t really want to talk about it... and Monde isn’t the kind of man you’d want press... His temper is… bad.”
“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here. What happened after you tried to call Monde?”
“He answered on the second ring. He wasn’t even surprised to hear my voice. It was as if he had been waiting for me to call—and maybe he was. I was nervous of course, but he took over as he does with everything and guided me through the conversation. He wanted to pick me up from my place, but I was embarrassed about how it looked, so I convinced him to meet me at the restaurant he had booked. That was the night I began to suspect that there was more to him, not as a person, but... I don’t know...” She trailed off and shrugged.
“Tina, please. I need you to focus. What happened next?”
“Well I went out and I met him. I thought that I would be more in control of myself the second time around, but as soon as our eyes met, I immediately fell under his spell again. That’s exactly what it was: a spell. An enchantment. Something he does with his eyes that makes you lose free will. It wasn’t just me either. Everyone seemed to be in awe of him. Now I know why, but I’ll get to that eventually if you don’t mind, as it would just derail things, and I’m feeling better about everything now.”
“That’s good. Please continue.”
“So the meal was fine. Actually, that’s an understatement. It was amazing, unlike anything I had ever experienced. High class, rich snob stuff. Way more expensive than anything I would ever be able to afford. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the meal cost more than a month’s rent for my shit-box apartment. Lexi was right, Monde had money. He picked me up in a limousine for God’s sake! It was crazy! I thought it might be awkward at first, you know how it is when nobody can think of anything to say to plug the silences, but I needn’t have worried. The conversation came easily. I couldn’t stop looking into his eyes, those beautiful, brown eyes. I could stare into them forever.”
Five
When they arrived, she had felt awkward and underdressed, but Monde had relaxed her, taking the lead, exuding the confidence she severely lacked. They made small talk during the course of the meal, mostly about her and her life. She found that whenever she asked a question about him, he would evade it, and smoothly divert the attention back to her.
She normally wasn’t the type to talk about her childhood, but it seemed whatever question Monde asked, she felt compelled to answer. He took her hands across the table, and she gasped at the heat that seemed to radiate from his skin.
“Let me take you away from all of this. Let me give you the life you deserve.”
“Away from what?” she said, feeling the heaviness of her own voice. The world felt distant—faraway. All she could think about were his eyes, and how easy it was to lose herself in them.
“I can give you everything, Tina. More than you could ever imagine. All you need to do is give yourself to me.”
She could barely breathe and her pulse pounded thickly in her temples. The chatter of the restaurant seemed muted and distant, and she knew then that she would do anything he asked her without question. She recalled her dream of making love to him and stirred in her seat.
I’m yours, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come, and she just looked at him in breathless need.
He smiled at her, acknowledging the unspoken agreement.
“Then we should go.”
“Where?”
“To my apartment. Come.”
Heart racing, she allowed him to lead her out and into his car, which was waiting with the engine running, the driver holding the door open for them. It was as if he knew the exact time they were leaving. They climbed into the car, and immediately fell upon each other.
When she awoke in the morning, she could barely move. Being with Monde had been very different from her dreams, and instead of the gentle lovemaking she had imagined, it had been a frenzied and violent affair. She had been afraid at first as he ravaged her, his hands clutched around her throat as he glared at her with a terrifying intensity. Unable to breathe, she had feared for her life, but it only served to intensify the pleasure, and six more times that night they had engaged in their violent coupling. Scratching, biting, and tearing at each other in an animalistic savagery she didn’t even know she was capable of.
She stirred under the tangled mass of sheets on the huge bed and looked around, her bruised and beaten body throbbing in agony. She looked at her skinny reflection in the mirrored ceiling and winced at the ugly, purple finger marks around her throat, the bite marks on her breasts and stomach. Monde was nowhere to be seen. She climbed gingerly from the bed, hissing in pain, but somehow completely satisfied. This was her first real look at his apartment, and she thought it suited him well. It was on the seventeenth floor of a large, recently constructed apartment building deep within the city. The building was modern—all steel and glass, with deep red, gold-trimmed carpets in the hallways. Monde’s apartment was the penthouse of the building, and was sparsely but tastefully decorated with clean lines and plush furnishings. Apart from the bathroom, which housed a huge and ornate marble bathtub, it was a large open space with expensive white carpets an
d lavish gold furnishings.
She walked to the window and looked out over the city, which looked beautiful in the blue-purple hues of the early morning. It was wonderfully picturesque, and for the first time in a while, she felt at peace. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window.
The harsh vibration of her mobile phone broke the silence, demanding her attention. She couldn’t locate it at first, eventually finding it in the pocket of her jeans, which were still discarded on the floor. She retrieved the phone and answered the call, expecting it to be Lexi.
“Hello?”
“Tina, it’s me.”
Shit.
It was Paul. She cursed herself for not checking the caller ID before she answered.
“I told you not to call me anymore,” she said irritably.
“I heard about the fire. I just wanted make sure you were ok,” came the slightly hurt reply.
“Look, I already told you to leave me alone. Stop calling me.”
“I want us to be together again. We were good together.”
Monde walked into the room from the bathroom. He was wearing a towel around his waist, and the sight of him standing there dripping wet made Tina ache with desire, despite her ravaged body. He looked at her as she spoke, but said nothing, sitting down on the bed and watching the conversation unfold. She turned to the window, but could still feel his dark eyes crawling over her.
“No, Paul, we weren’t... Jesus, just stop bothering me. I’m trying to get on with my life.”
Tina felt awkward conducting this conversation with her ex-boyfriend in front of Monde. Paul had that sarcastic, mocking tone in his voice that she hated.
“Look, you can’t blame everything on me all the time, Tina. You had a part to play too.”
“Fuck you. I’m not going through this again. Just stop calling me.”
“You don’t control me, you little bitch. I’ll call if I want to, you got that?”
She was upset now and old memories began to surface, bringing fear with them. She had learned the hard way that Paul had a temper. At first he blamed the drink for the times he had beaten her, but over time, he stopped trying to make excuses all together, only grunting reasons for his actions between gritted teeth. She remembered them all. She looked at another man. She was flirting with his friends. She made him do it—that was his favourite. He had introduced her to the drugs, and because she was afraid to say no, she had started to use with him—anything to keep his fists from connecting with her body. The end came when he tried to force her into prostitution. He had called it something else, accompaniment…no—escorting. That’s what he had called it. He said he had good friends who would look after her, and they would make a ton of money. She told him she wouldn’t do it. His response was to punch her in the face and throw her down the steps of his apartment, where she had been living at the time.
All of this was conducted in secrecy of course. Lexi had told Tina she was lucky to have found such a good-looking guy, and wanted to know if he had a brother to introduce her to. That was the problem: in public he treated her well. Hugging her close, holding her hand, but she could always sense it. The anger simmering below the surface. Fearing that the next beating might be the one she wouldn’t wake up from, and desperate to avoid becoming a whore to his circle of friends, she finally plucked up the courage to leave him, doing it whilst he was out at work. She was terrified that he would find her, so she left a letter warning that if he didn’t leave her alone she would go to the police about some of his less than savoury dealings. That kept him at bay for a while, but recently he had started calling her, usually when he was drunk, which frightened her even though he didn’t know where she lived. If she had been alone when he called, she would have been terrified to stand up to him, but she felt strong with Monde in the room with her.
“Look, Paul, I won’t let you do this to me again. Just leave me alone.” Her voice was shaking, but she managed to blink back the tears.
“You better watch yourself, Tina. You had better remember who you are fuckin’ talking to, you little cunt. I might just drop by your place one day and remind you,” he spat down the line before hanging up.
“Problem?” Monde asked her, watching carefully.
Apart from being absolutely fucking terrified of my psycho ex? Nope, not a thing.
“No, no problem,” she said as she tried to still her heart, which pounded in her chest.
Something in his expression changed. Maybe it was no more than a trick of the light, but his eyes seemed to darken.
“Tina, I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.”
For the next few weeks, the routine was the same. Tina and Monde’s nights would consist of several bouts of frenzied and increasingly violent sex, then in the mornings Monde would dress and leave to conduct his business. She had asked him what he did for a living, but he would always evade the question, telling her simply that he owned an import-export business and worked long hours in the city. Her obsession with Monde grew, and the less he revealed about himself, the more she wanted to know. He had given her a key to his apartment and a credit card, and spoiled her with expensive gifts and clothes.
Also curious was her drug addiction. She no longer craved the heroin that had been such a huge part of her life in recent months, and as she spent more time in Monde’s world, she found she no longer desired it at all. Unlike the last time she tried to clean up, there was no painful drying out or sickness whilst the drug flushed itself out of her system. This time, stopping was as easy as breathing. Her need for the drug had been replaced by her obsession with Monde. It was one addiction in place of another. He had become her life, her existence. She forgot the Tina of old and devoted everything to him.
It was a Friday afternoon when she received the voicemail from Lexi. The usual bubbly exuberance in her voice was absent, replaced by a tension Tina had never heard before. The message asked Tina to call her back to arrange to meet up, as there was something they needed to talk about. The thought of being away from Monde filled her with dread. She begrudgingly called back and arranged to meet her at the same bar as before.
It was the first time since their last meeting here that Tina had seen Lexi. In what seemed to Tina as something of an irony, there had been a role reversal; now it was Lexi who appeared distracted and carrying a world of worry on her shoulders. In contrast Tina felt good, ecstatic with happiness even despite the painful bites and bruises, which she wore like trophies.
“Hey there, stranger.”
Tina detected a bitter tone to Lexi’s voice, which she tried her best to ignore. She was already missing Monde and wanted to get back to him.
“Hey, Lexi. How are you? You sounded strange on the phone. Is everything alright?”
Lexi swallowed, as if trying to select the right words. Tina noticed that her friend couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Look, Tina, I need to tell you something, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Her stomach vaulted, but she masked it by sipping her drink.
“What is it?”
“It’s about that guy you’re seeing.”
Rage. Jealousy. Panic.
She smiled and sipped her drink. “What about him?”
“He’s not what you think, Tina. He’s bad. Really bad.”
“How would you know?”
Tina had the impression there was some kind of bombshell coming—a revelation, a plot twist. Remain in your seats, folks. Remain calm.
“He… He went to see Paul.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t even know Paul,” she argued, but knew inside that it didn’t matter. He’d overheard their argument on the phone and had gone to see Paul. She knew it as well as she knew that the sky was blue and that she hated the taste of mushrooms. Monde had said he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again.
“Tina, you know me. You know I wouldn’t just say shit for the sake of it. But this guy is bad.”
“I know because I was there with Paul when your man knocked on the door.”
There it was. She imagined it unfolding like a play: plot twist enters stage left.
“What do you mean you were there?” Tina asked sharply.
But Lexi didn’t need to answer. The look on her face said it for her.
“You were sleeping with him?”
“I know I shouldn’t have, especially after what he did to you, but you know me—I’m attracted to men like him. You know… I always go for the wrong kind of guy.”
“Wrong doesn’t begin to cover it. You don’t even know half of the things that bastard did to me. You think you know everything, Lexi, but you don’t. How could you do this? Why him?”
“Hey, you’re the one who just disappeared off the face of the earth with this new man of yours. Think about that before you judge me.”
People were looking at them now, casting disapproving looks at the two women who were spoiling their quiet, mid-afternoon lunches.
“So that’s it—you’re jealous. Well fine, you keep Paul. I don’t care. Just don’t come running to me when he gets loose with those fists of his.”
“He would never hit me.”
“I thought that once too.”
“Yeah, but I’m not as...” Lexi trailed off.
“Go ahead, Lexi, say it: you aren’t as weak as I am. Is that what you were about to say?”
There was a tense silence between them. Lexi shuffled awkwardly and continued.
“Look, that’s not the real issue here. That man Monde…He hurt Paul.”
Tina leaned forward to listen, now interested.
Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror Page 9