A Life Removed

by Jason Parent

  She was right, though. Aaron had no business being there, and what he’d done… he couldn’t have. It must have been an accident. It had to have been. Self-defense, at the least. And who could blame me? He had been Raquel’s boyfriend up until a few weeks ago, when their relationship had begun to spiral out of control. He clenched his teeth. That was her fault, too.

  “He was just a friend, Aaron.” Raquel started slapping at him.

  He grabbed her wrists to stop her. Realizing he might be bruising her arms, he let go.

  She cried out and fell to her knees. “Just a friend! Can’t you understand that? We weren’t doing anything. But you killed him anyway, all because you don’t trust me, you jealous asshole. I never did anything. He never did anything. God, he was so shy and kind, wouldn’t have hurt a fly. You didn’t even know him, you… you… monster! What could he possibly have ever done to you?”

  Aaron felt her strikes, both the physical and the mental. But each one seemed weaker, duller. He breathed in the clean air then stood a little straighter. “I did what I needed to do. For us.”

  Raquel looked up at him, wailed again, and curled into a ball.

  “You’re making a scene.” He bent over and put his arms around her. She flinched at his touch, but he was gentle. He would be gentle. He lifted her to her feet. “I love you, Raquel. I don’t want anybody to ruin what we have.”

  She beat her fists against his chest, but he just squeezed her tighter, willing her to love him again.

  “What we have?” She sobbed into his shoulder then reared her head back and glared into his eyes. “Christ! We don’t have anything. You’ve ruined that, Aaron. You did. Not him, not me, not anybody. Just you…” Raquel pushed off him and vomited violently over the edge of the cliff, into the water and rocks below, where her date had plummeted to his death only moments earlier.

  The man’s shriek, the sound of bone snapping against rock, the weak cries for help until he finally died—Aaron still heard those sounds in his ears, but he steeled himself against them. He moved to stand next to her.

  Each crashing wave battered the fresh corpse against the cliff wall. The sight was probably making Raquel’s upset stomach worse, but she deserved it. And that guy down below deserved his just rewards, too.

  When her dry heaves stopped and she managed to catch her breath, she looked up at Aaron. Fear and horror had bleached her face, and he wondered if she would keep her cheating-whore mouth shut. And something else… his mind was working. Conniving. Seeking a way out.

  Maybe I’ll have to push her. He didn’t think he could do it again. Do what? Murder? “That wasn’t murder. That wasn’t. That was a reset.”

  “You were smiling when you did it.” She glared at him, and he realized he had spoken aloud. In her eyes, he saw more than fear. He saw hatred and revulsion.

  “I was not. I’m not a murderer. That was self-defense.” And if I was smiling, it was only because I was taking out the trash.

  “You were. I’m going to the police.” Raquel stood and slowly walked away on unsteady legs.

  The Cliffwalks of Newport was a favorite spot for local lovers seeking a romantic evening. He knew why people went there. Hell, he’d taken Raquel there a few times. And each time had ended the same way: with his hands and other parts wherever he wanted them to be. Raquel had gone there with some asshole who thought he could just steal a girl he had no claim to. That asshole was the bad guy in all of this. Aaron sneered. Bet she didn’t expect this kind of excitement.

  He hurried to catch up to her. “How could you do this to me? To us?”

  Raquel stopped. “You’re sick. I hate you, Aaron—I hate you!” She started walking away again.

  “You hate me?” Aaron was shocked. “After all I’ve done for you? Can’t you see how much I care about you?”

  Tears welled in his eyes, but with every step she took away from him, they became easier to hold back. The Cliffwalks were heavily patronized in the summer, but that cold, late-fall night, only those who sought privacy were out and about. Someone might have seen what had happened. Aaron could only hope luck had been on his side in that respect. But sooner or later, a jogger or perhaps another couple would pass by. He needed to get Raquel and himself out of there.

  Aaron stomped up beside her. “Raquel!”

  She cringed when he put his arm around her, but he held on. “Hey, babe, shhh. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m sorry I yelled. I’m not going to hurt you.” He kissed her temple. “I still love you. I always will. Let’s just keep walking and pretend this never happened. Soon, it’ll be like it never actually did.”

  “They’ll catch you.”

  “Me? What did I do? The way I see it, you caused this. And I swear to you, Raquel, if you rat me out to the cops, I’ll tell them you did it. That it was all planned—your idea, in fact. You’re a sadistic killer who wanted to see if you could get away with it. You talked me into coming with you. I tried to stop you, but I was too late. There was nothing I could do.” He smiled. “But I don’t want that, babe, and you don’t want that. Let’s just chalk this up to the accident it was and move on. Can we do that, honey?”

  “They’ll never believe you.” She tried to push away from him.

  He didn’t let her go. He would never let her go. “Maybe not, but I’d say the odds are in my favor.” His confidence was growing despite the fact that the evidence of his crime still lay open for all to see a mere seventy feet below. “I have no history of violence. I’m the good, wholesome, all-American kid. Can you say the same? Do you want to take the chance?”

  “I should’ve known you’d just keep getting worse. I should have left you a long time ago. If you didn’t always threaten to kill yourself, I’d have left you a year ago. But I stayed because I felt bad, and I prayed you’d get better. You’re not getting better, Aaron. You’re worse, so much worse.” She shuddered. “I should have let you kill yourself! Oh God, why did I ever have to meet you? I can’t believe I fell in love with you.”

  “So you do love me!” Aaron smiled. That was all he wanted to hear. That made everything worthwhile. Things would be good again between them. He just had to be patient.

  He walked her back to his car and drove her home.

  When he pulled into her driveway, she jumped out before he could stop her. He reached for the handle to open his door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “What the fuck?” He rattled the handle then pushed against the door, thinking it was jammed.

  Raquel was climbing her front steps. Don’t let her get away. If she gets away, she’s gone forever. He dove into the passenger seat, but when he reached to open that door, he saw and heard the lock click into place.

  “No…” He tried the handle then pounded his palms against the door. “No, no, no!”

  Raquel was at her front door. When the door opened, her body blurred then dissipated as if she were no more than a wisp of smoke blown away by a breeze.

  “Raquel, no. Don’t—”

  Aaron’s eyes popped open. Tears were running down his cheeks. The words “leave me” haunted his mind then faded.

  Frantic delusions and obsessive behavior had ruled his seventeen-year-old mind. Aaron had followed Raquel to the Cliffwalks, knowing full well he would find her with someone else. He remembered lunging forward, pushing Raquel’s replacement for him off the long drop onto the rocks below. He could picture the guy’s spine snapping on impact. But he couldn’t remember making his body act, his mind giving his muscles the order to move and commit murder.

  Afterward, the world seemed to spin a little faster on its axis. Aaron felt as though he were having an out-of-body experience. All he could do was watch from a distance as some force took control of his body. His first instinct had been to run, then his survival mindset kicked in. The only evidence of his crime were two witnesses: one alive and one dead or dying. Aaron could do littl
e more to the latter, but the living needed extensive consideration. After all, he hadn’t meant to kill the guy, and part of him truly believed it had been Raquel’s fault. He’d never intended the guy to fall over the edge. At least, he couldn’t remember forming that intent. He wasn’t a murderer. He just wanted Raquel.

  Later that night, Aaron hadn’t been able to sleep. He kept envisioning the cops knocking down his door to take him away. But they didn’t come for him that night. They didn’t come the next night, either.

  A few days later, a body washed up on First Beach. Aaron had never found out the guy’s name, and the initial news report excluded it, perhaps because the police were unsure if the teenager had been a minor. Officers had found the boy’s car nearby, a bottle of antidepressants in its glove compartment. They found no sign of a struggle, the paper said. No witnesses were interviewed. The death was written off as a suicide.

  As the nights went by, Aaron still couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Raquel kept him restless. Didn’t she love him? Where did she go? For a long time, he looked for her. Eventually, he gave up, but when he did, he gave up on life, too. He went into the bathroom and slashed his wrists.

  Raquel was the first girl he’d loved, and like many foolish first lovers, Aaron thought it would last forever. It took three years to cope with the separation, three years to force the memories of her into the farthest reaches of his psyche. The guilt still remained, not for his crime but for driving her away.

  The murder was much easier for him to deny, first through alcohol and later through prolonged indifference. He told himself over and over again that it was self-defense, until he believed it.

  That ugly night in Newport was so long ago. He’d convinced himself it was part of another life, a former Aaron. He’d gotten better, the passions of youth having burned out with all his hopes and dreams. But the beast had only hibernated.

  Lying in the pitch-black darkness, so utterly lost in the memory, he took a moment to realize he had no idea where he was. He tried to raise his hand to his face and found that he couldn’t. They had been handcuffed behind his back. He opened his mouth to scream, but he’d been gagged. The smell of motor oil tinged with gasoline, along with a sense of motion, told him he was in the trunk of a car.

  The carpet beneath his face was damp and chafing. He squirmed, looking for a means to escape, but he was trapped. He rolled onto his back. Someone was lying beside him. Brian? Is he dead?

  Where are they taking us? Without knowing how long he’d been out, he couldn’t guess how far they’d traveled.

  Damn it, Rick! He brought his knee up quickly, underestimating the distance between it and the trunk lid. He squealed as his kneecap jarred against unyielding metal. How could you do this to me? He never expected loyalty from his other friends—not even from Arianna—but Ricardo wasn’t like his other friends.

  Aaron’s fear left him. Anger filled the hole. He rolled back onto his belly. Inching his knees underneath his torso, he used all the power his legs could muster to push himself up against the lid. He slammed his back into the lid over and over again.

  The trunk refused to open. Aaron rolled onto his side and drove his heels into the side panel as he yelled around the gag. After thirty seconds of his banging and muffled screaming, the vehicle stopped. He froze and listened. A door opened. Footsteps came toward him.

  The trunk popped open, revealing the clear night sky. Driven by rage, he struggled to rise onto his knees, not to run away but to confront Ricardo. Doug swung a fist into Aaron’s temple.

  When Aaron came to again, his wrists and ankles were still bound, but duct tape had replaced the cuffs. He was no longer in a trunk. Someone had carried him inside. But inside where?

  The nerve endings in the left side of his face awakened with brutal intensity, feeling as though he’d been blindsided with a baseball bat. Aaron couldn’t imagine that much power in one punch. Pain shot along his collarbone like a colony of fire ants burrowing beneath the skin. He could only see a sliver out of his left eye, and he could feel the squishy, watery puffiness of swollen flesh each time he tried to open it more.

  That motherfucker! Please tell me he didn’t shatter my eye socket or detach a retina. I’ll kill him.

  Aaron worried about his eye, though he realized he should be more worried about his life. The prospect of death didn’t faze him much. He’d craved death for so long, it was hard to get worked up when the reaper came knocking. All the painful parts that might precede it, those Aaron dreaded.

  And at the hands of a friend? He chuckled then winced. Only those you love can truly hurt you. I’ve done everything for him. I was always there when he needed me. And this is how the piece of shit repays me.

  The wall he faced was about six feet away. Patches of wallpaper had peeled back and curled like sunbaked worms dying on the pavement. He guessed he was in one of Fall River’s countless old mills, long since abandoned except by vagrants, junkies, and the occasional serial killer.

  He tried to turn his head to look around, but something barred his movement. Whoever had gagged him had been creative. Duct tape not only held in the gag, which tasted like a sweaty gym sock, but circled his head. His hands had been pulled through the back of the folding chair he sat on and bound to something he couldn’t see. His neck offered little range of motion. With his left eye mostly useless, that side of the room was a blur.

  Still, Aaron could tell he wasn’t alone. He saw the hazy outline of a human leg a few feet to his left, covered in a standard-issue police uniform. Brian. He’s alive. Quiet sobbing came from farther away.

  “Aaron?” Brian whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Mmmph!”

  “Oh, right,” Brian said. “Still gagged. Well, my right eye is pretty messed up. You’re coming in blurry. Your left eye looks pretty messed up, too. That Fournier packs a mean punch. Anyway, duct tape may be the all-purpose fixer-upper, but it doesn’t stick too well to a pole that’s rusty and chipping. Move around enough, and you’ll peel the paint right off the pole and the tape with it. My head’s almost free. Not to make you sick or anything, but they gagged me with a sock, and it didn’t look all that clean. I’m assuming you got its mate.”

  Why did he have to tell me that? Aaron winced as his saliva dampened the cloth against his tongue.

  “I’m trying to get my hands loose. I’m making progress.” Brian’s words were strained, his breathing heavy. “If I can just get it peeled a little more, I could wriggle free.”

  Aaron writhed and twisted. Searing pain, like a gazillion needles being stabbed through every pore in his body, met every movement. Tape stretched and peeled from his skin.

  “Yes!” Brian hissed. “My arm is free.”

  A couple of minutes later, Aaron saw the leg move. When Brian next came into view, he was on his way to falling face-first onto the moldy floor. As he landed, black specks scurried away. Aaron shuffled his feet to scare the roaches away from him.

  Brian climbed to his knees. Black grime smeared his cheek and covered his shirt. He must have forgotten to free his ankles before charging like the Light Brigade. “Jesus, Aaron, this must be where your boy Doug and company do it. There’s dried blood everywhere! And look over there.” Brian pointed.

  Aaron turned his head as far to the right as he could and saw the end of a gurney. He let out a breath when he didn’t see anyone lying on it.

  “Oh God, this is blood!” Brian frantically wiped his hands on his pant legs. “There’s someone else here. She’s tied up over there.”

  Aaron tried to hop his seat around. To his surprise, it worked, and he saw a woman sitting in the back corner. Her hair was disheveled, and mascara streaked her face, but despite all that, she was striking.

  “She’s beautiful,” Brian said, echoing Aaron’s thought. “How could someone do that to her?”

  Aaron rolled his good eye. If he could have spoken, he wo
uld have yelled at Brian to move his ass.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Brian whispered to the woman. “I’m a cop. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  Aaron spotted an operating table across the room. On the tray below the table, something metallic shimmered in the flickering light of a lone candle. Grunting and nose-pointing, he alerted Brian to it.

  Brian covered his mouth with one hand, his complexion turning pale. Limited by his bonds, he shuffled his knees back and forth two inches at a time. Inching through blood and grime, he moved steadily toward the table. He hesitated when he got close. “I could be corrupting evidence if I touch it. Should I leave it alone?”

  Again, Brian was lucky Aaron couldn’t speak. If we live, we’re all the evidence we need. Aaron groaned. Just pick the fucking thing up.

  Brian seemed to understand the meaning behind the groan. He grabbed a knife with a serrated blade and severed the duct tape around his ankles. Getting to his feet, knife in hand, Brian headed for the woman. He cut the tape from around her hands and calves then removed the ball gag from her mouth.

  She stood and put her arms around him, resting her head on his chest. She didn’t seem to mind the filth.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Maura.”

  “I’m Brian, and that’s Aaron,” he said, pointing. “Wait right here.” He pulled away from her. “I’m going to cut him free, then we’ll all sneak out of here.”

  Maura nodded, and Brian headed toward Aaron. He circled behind the chair, out of Aaron’s line of sight. Aaron felt a tug, then his head lurched forward, free from the tape. He could turn his head, but the movement sent pain shooting up his neck.

  “Hold still,” Brian said. “This may hurt a bit.”

  Aaron growled as the tape was torn from his face. Blood and stubble blotted its sticky side. “Thanks,” he said, half serious and half sarcastic. “Now, get my arms and legs.”

  “Wait!” Brian froze, his head cocked toward the door. “Someone’s coming.” He picked up the stained sock, shoved it back into his mouth, and covered it with tape before Aaron could protest. Then he ran toward the doorway, standing off to the left so that when the door swung open, he would be behind it.