Dimly, Through Glass

by Knight, Dirk

  Dennis slides the blade between her face and the muzzle, then severs the band and peels it away. Her eyes betray her fear when the cold steel touches her skin and she cringes.

  “Who are you, what do you want?” she pleads.

  “You can call me Dennis, but what I want is hard to describe in a few words, so let’s just say . . . to teach you a lesson.”

  “Listen, mister. Just let me go. I am sorry for being a bitch to you; please I learned my lesson—”

  “Maybe you have,” he interjects, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I am not done teaching it, so class is not dismissed.”

  “My uncle is with the police, he will be looking for me, and he will find you, but I swear to God, mister, if you just let me go I will never tell him. Please!” she says with a faltering voice.

  “Has someone come down here to help you?” he asks in a firm voice, pressing the edge of his straight razor into the corner of her eye, hard enough to bring forth a tiny droplet.

  She screams abruptly before she has the composure to stop herself mid cry, and tells him, “No! Just you. No one else has been down here.”

  She begs again for release. The begging arouses Dennis. He wishes he had more time for her just now.

  Jiménez gives him a nod from the top of the stairs. The nod seems to say, “Teach her a lesson, and show her you mean business.”

  Dennis pockets the blade, no longer concerned with his mother’s interference, and no longer does he care if Libby walks in on him.

  He grabs her jaw and pries it open, spitting deep into her mouth. His spit lands in the back of her hoarse throat; he closes the mouth and holds it with both hands until he is confident that she has swallowed it, the same way you would give a sick dog his pills. Her struggles and screams only add fuel to his engine. He begins to run his hands up her sweatshirt, feeling her tight skin stretching and bulging around her abdomen. He can trace the outline of her ribs and feels her abdominals—no fat whatsoever—flexing as she tries to squirm away from his touch. Her tiny breasts barely fill his palm as he squeezes her nipples hard enough to make her scream. He wonders if she is screaming from the pain, or because she is mad at herself for enjoying his touch.

  What a perfect specimen to begin his collection—superior to Libby in every way—far more innocent and alluring.

  He flicks her other nipple, gently and with tenderness he’s been withholding thus far. Her body betrays her mind as she feels pleasure from such a repulsive source.

  He rips her urine—and blood—stained underwear from her slender hips in quick rough jerks, the elastic band digging into her flesh and leaving marks in their absence. He also reaches up her backside and pulls out the matting material that has soaked up the majority of her urine, and tosses it to the cement floor.

  Taking to his knees, he works her with his mouth. She bucks and writhes as much as she can while straining against the restraints and fearing another touch from the honed razor. She tries to clamp her legs together, but he is too strong and her ankles are bound, preventing her from gaining any leverage or advantage.

  Her castle is unguarded.

  He grinds into her with his mouth and jaw, biting her labia and clit until she is wracked with shudders of fear, repulsion, and passion. He grinds her lips raw with his stubble as he swirls his face, lapping up what precious little moisture she has left. He works her completely until her breathing and pulsing hips confirm that she has orgasmed in spite of her deepest desires not to. Her angry screams turn into sobs of resignation and shame, and Dennis takes his feet again.

  He knows that what he has just done to the young girl has harmed her far more than the edge of his blade ever could.

  Her shivering body exposed before him, he feels something akin to remorse.

  He covers her torso with the hooded sweatshirt again and calls her name.

  “Look at me Evalyn,” he says.

  He pulls the cliff bar out of his jeans, tears open the thin plastic wrapper, and waves the sweet-smelling food under her nose. She instinctively reaches for it with her chapped and blistered lips.

  He pulls away the food and pours a drink of the water into her mouth. She swallows greedily, before coughing, her throat so dry she is unable to handle the water in copious amounts.

  “I am only going to ask you one more time. Did she come down here?”

  Before she can answer, he tears off a chunk from the gooey protein bar and plops it into her anxious mouth. She gobbles it down like a baby bird avaricious for regurgitated worms. Once she’s swallowed the bite down, he drizzles more of the water into her mouth, slowly and generously until she coughs again.

  She doesn’t know why she lies, perhaps she thinks that the woman will still save her, perhaps she just wants to lie to her captor because that is the only thing she can do to potentially harm him; the only variable still within her realm of control.

  “I swear, mister—”

  “Please, call me Dennis.”

  “Dennis, I promise no one else has come down here, and I won’t tell anyone either. Just, please Dennis, you gotta let me go. I swear I won’t tell anyone. I will just go home and forget all about it. I swear.”

  He silences her by cramming another, larger, chunk of the food into her mouth and saying “eh, eh, eh,” as if he were correcting a toddler.

  While she chews he says, “Listen, we have an understanding now. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, I’d rather have fun like we just did, but if you keep trying to get away and making all that noise, I am going to have to finish what I started. You remember what I told you about the machete, don’t you?”

  She nods furiously as he points to the rusty blade. He rubs the spot of blood high on her cheekbone and brings his fingertips to her eye to show her the blood he’s just stolen from her.

  “This isn’t good. I don’t wanna make you bleed, so let’s just cooperate, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says and motions towards the water with her eyes.

  “I am glad we were able to come to an understanding, Evalyn. I like you now that you’ve calmed down and are starting to learn your place.”

  He slowly and lovingly pours the rest of the doped water into her awaiting jaws. She is already starting to fade out, he can see it in her pupils, as he ascends the stairs to pack up Libby’s Suburban and get on the road.

  Part VIII:

  “I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, without question, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography.”

  - Ted Bundy

  “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.”

  - 1 Timothy 2:9

  Eleman’s Faux Paw

  Though Eleman doesn’t exactly trust Staley’s gut, he can tell the guy isn’t giving up anytime soon, and now it’s become personal. He knows that Staley is about to cross the line, and he has not had the opportunity in the past eight months or so to really earn his partner’s trust or respect, so he takes the call very seriously. He weighs the options and decides that this will be one of those do or die, make or break, shit or get off the pot moments in their partnership. He chooses to do, rather than to betray the confidence of the detective he has admired for so long. Besides, he’s not in Internal Affairs anymore.

  Eleman meets Staley at the building they visited the day before, 44 Monroe. The towering hulk is even more breathtaking under the moon’s glow than it had been the previous morning. The pillar shines light out into the near-vacant city below and serves as a beacon.

  I will live here one day, Rodriguez thinks, as he slams the door to his Impala.

  “Thanks for meeting me here, Eleman. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “What are partners for?” He steps around the sedan to meet him with a fist bump.

  “Okay, so what�
�s the plan?”

  “I’m gonna ghost ride the elevator up and take a peek around his joint for any sign of where he might be. All I want from you is to post up in the lobby and keep tabs on who comes in and out of the door. You’ve had eyes on him, and the girl from yesterday—”

  “Wish I had a lot more than eyes on her.”

  “—so just chirp me on the two-way if you make either of ‘em. Easy peasy, Japanesey.”

  “Dirty knees, look at these,” Eleman replies with a chuckle.

  “But first I want you to watch my six while I pick the lock. I took note of it when we popped in yesterday and it looks like a beast.”

  “You looked at the lock and thought about picking it yesterday, while I was making eyes with the little fuck-doll?”

  “I was. Call it hazards of the job, or remnants from another life.”

  “You know, one day you are going to have to tell me about this other life of yours.”

  “No, actually, I’m not. Let’s get a move on.”

  The tumblers fall, the knob twists, and Carron tells his partner to make tracks down to the lobby.

  Follow Eleman as he gets into the magnificent elevator and rides in silence down to the lobby. Before the door ding signifies he’s reached his destination, he offers a quick tap on the walkie-talkie function of their touch-to-talk cell phones.

  “Do you read, Carr?”

  “Loud and clear, copy.” he replies, and the motorized doors open to the marble floors and a pair of uncomfortable looking retro sofas.

  They are little modular units in perfect square formation. The top half appears to be brown patent leather and the base is a rectangular bar made of some metal, probably cheap aluminum, coated in a blusterous chrome finish. The tower is bewilderingly opulent, but the sofas are nothing short of pretentious knock off crap, purchased more for the cheesy look than for the comfort of the guests.

  Eleman settles into his character first by settling, best he can, into the atrocious armchair, which matches the patent leather faux pas across the table in its modular partner. He hides his face behind one of the dated magazines he finds fanned out on the equally distasteful console table; he chooses a Sports Illustrated magazine that appears to have been left there from sometime last decade, and thumbs through looking at pictures of nothing.

  He glances at his watch, feeling as though an eternity has passed.

  Three minutes, that’s it.

  Fuck, he thinks and thumbs ever the more furious through the shitty magazine.

  The front desk attendant, noticing his impatience, asks if there is anything he can do to serve. Eleman politely dismisses him, “Just waiting on . . . my date to finish getting ready,” he improvises. He and Carron had sneaked in behind a couple they followed in from the street. Evidently, the concierge hadn’t even noticed.

  The clang of the elevator bell captures his attention, just before a cacophony of infinitesimal yapping dogs fills the lobby and reverberates off the marble floors and vaulted ceilings to the brink of causing disorientation.

  Peering over the edge of the glossy printed pages, his eyes land on a stellar young blonde woman and her three tiny, noisy mutts.

  Her hair is buoyant and extremely curly, her bug-eye glasses dwarf the remaining elfin features on her face and she is wearing a faux fur little shoulder-shrug-thingy over her elegant coat. He assumes the fur is fake, because if not she could have done a spot better had she skinned those fucking dogs to make matching moccasins.

  Just in the same instant that her loud clickety-clacking heels start echoing off the stone floors, the lobby telephone begins to ring as well, and the noise level and confusion mounts an all-out assault on Eleman. It’s like military training where you have to assemble a rifle, under a table, blindfolded, with pots and pans clanging over the shrieks of your drill sergeant.

  Eleman feels as though he must be bleeding from his ears by this point.

  The young blonde doesn’t seem to notice the infuriating ruckus, nor does she notice the doorman, who has a grip of tiny dog biscuits in his leather hand. Instead, she’s noticed Eleman, sitting all alone, with an out of date magazine he is clearly not reading, and an open jaw from staring at her form-fitting dress. She approaches him while her little yappers continue to yap and scratch uselessly against the polished floors, with their well-manicured claws, in an attempt to earn a treat from the oblivious door attendant.

  She feels the need to tell Eleman, a total stranger, that she is sorry for all the noise. The boldest of the three noisemakers snatches a well-tossed biscuit from the air and high-tails it back to stand between the woman and Eleman.

  The dog drops the treat and begins to growl, disapproving of his owner’s sudden interest in the lounge-chair Latin.

  The woman with the explosion of hair then feels the need to explain that, “Mister Peanut is very protective of Mommy,” and introduces herself as Allie.

  Rodriguez immediately thinks of three things he would like to do to her in an alley, the most pressing of which is to kill her dogs.

  Presently he abandons his attempts to stay focused and stands to her attention, offering a hand, risking some severely nipped ankles to do so, and introduces himself.

  “Hi, my name’s Eleman.”

  “Did you say L-Man?” she asks coyly, then, “Is that your super hero name? I bet I can guess what the ‘L’ stands for.”

  To this, Eleman blushes, offers a chuckle and quickly follows it up with a halfcocked smile.

  He is just getting warmed up when the elevator bell rings once more, and he spins on his heels just in time to see the posterior half of a man and woman getting in. The doors close behind them before he can get even the foggiest of glimpses of their faces.

  Allie is staring at him with a steel curtain of indignation behind her eyes; he’s just dismissed her mid-sentence and offered no manners. He quickly apologizes, but does so dimly—going through the motions the way an elderly man will apologize to his wife of fifty years for leaving the commode seat up again, no doubt muttering something under his breath as she does the same—and trails off as his hands find the phone swirling around in his coat pocket. He backs away again, rudely, and barks into the phone, “You got someone coming up, didn’t get a good look.”

  “Wow, you really do think you’re a super hero, huh?” she asks flirtingly, trying to salvage the interesting volley they had started just moments ago.

  Hungry to entertain her, he smiles back and just as he starts to spin up a witty comeback, his instincts take over. He says nothing; he simply turns and bolts for the elevator bay.

  Aware that his partner hasn’t responded to the last chirp, and even more concerned that he has missed his mark because he couldn’t keep his dick from taking over, even for just a slim minute. Now his partner might be in the crosshairs.

  He looks back to her while he waits for the doors to open, and offers her an apologetic face, which she ignores and walks into the winter night so that her dogs can shit on the sidewalk.

  He gets in the elevator and tries to reach Staley again.

  Staley, Hung Out To Dry

  The tumblers fall, the knob twists, and Carron tells his partner to make tracks down to the lobby.

  Follow Carron as he goes into the den of the devil and pokes around in his shit.

  With Eleman marching away, Carron twists the knob slowly, until he feels the give signifying that the bolt is no longer getting friction from the striker plate. He enters the darkness silently and eases the door back into its home with the knob still torqued.

  He is sure that no one is home, but he doesn’t know about any pets. He is prepared to kill a dog if it gets in his way—a cat wouldn’t give a shit one way or t’other; he knew Molly wouldn’t.

  He places the heel of his steel-toed boot against the door without thinking, much the way a snake needn’t concentrate on how to slither, and leans into the frame as he lets his eyes begin to adjust. He reaches into his pocket and produces a pair of standard issue non
-latex gloves. His training is just as much a part of him as is his checkered past. He instinctively tucks the pinky of one of the gloves inside the palm, and then he does the same for the middle finger.

  He does this in the dark without any hesitation.

  Looking back to his discussion with Eleman, he thinks that although he is placing a great deal of trust in his partner, the ladies’ man, he was not yet, nor would he ever, be ready to discuss the man he used to be.

  There are things about him that no one can ever know.

  His misspent youth still haunts him. Perhaps the reason he can never find happiness in marriage and why he burns through wives is not the job of police work, and the strain of being a cop, as he has tried so frequently to convince himself. More likely, it’s Jenny Massey, the one he still longs for, the one who drives him to do the work; her and Karl.

  He loved Abigail, he really did. And he missed her, but his haunting memories of his past are the reason he can never fully love again. He might as well sign their death warrants. For Carron to love, was for them to die, and he wasn’t fooled by promises and lies. He knows he was meant to be alone, so he tries to push away those he loves; the stronger his feeling to hold them near, the more urgently he forces them away from his cancerous heart. His memories will have to be the loaves to sustain his hunger for companionship, for his memories are malleable when he needs them to be such, but never wavering in their resolve.

  He alone must suffer his past, no one else; especially not his awestruck partner.

  And while The Kid is annoying, sometimes without even speaking a word, sometimes just because he’s so damn handsome, he is proving his loyalty tonight.

  Though Staley was a habitual offender, he had never been arrested for anything more than a misdemeanor, he had been brought in for questioning more than plenty, and the FBI had vetted each of his inquiries. McKenna, the director he’d been courted by, and eventually served his short-lived stint under, had put him through the ringer. With Carron’s political connections through the Webb family, Karl’s family, especially with the intoxicating Elaina Webb at the helm, he was steered past the probationary warnings and finally admitted to the program at Quantico.