by J. Bengtsson
“Yeah sorry,” Jake finally texted back. “Still here.”
“I thought you ditched me.”
“No. I’m in the middle of recording a song. And yes there might be one or two about Casey.”
“Can’t wait to hear them. Sorry to interrupt while you’re recording.”
“No worries.”
“Okay...just one more question…what’s the name of the song you’re recording?”
“Random Attack.”
“I’ll remember that. I’ll give Casey back her phone now. Thanks for being a good sport Jake. Hope we get to meet you soon.”
“Yeah. For sure.”
After Brandon dropped the bomb, word spread across the campus like wildfire. Within a twelve-hour period, it seemed, everyone knew who my boyfriend was. There was a lot of staring and whispering going on. Luckily my friends didn’t seem different. They still treated me the same way but I did get some good-hearted teasing. Because I showed up alone to everything, it had become the running joke among my friends that I was delusional and that I really wasn’t dating Jake at all. According to my friends, Jake was just my phantom boyfriend. It was pretty funny but not entirely without merit. Even I was not seeing as much of Jake as I would have liked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Casey
The weeks leading up to Jake’s surgery were hectic. Not only was he putting in the long hours in the studio but he was also recording an original song for a soundtrack. In addition, he had a couple of videos to film and a handful of press appearances. I didn’t understand why he was trying to cram everything in all at once and became visibly annoyed with him on more than one occasion. In fact, his workload had actually caused us to have some of our first real fights. After each argument, Jake would promise me that he was almost done and, when everything had been completed, he would devote all his time to me.
But that didn’t happen. The album ran longer than expected and by the time it was complete, Jake only had five days to spare. And he didn’t spend them relaxing…or with me. He holed himself up in his townhouse and became quiet and withdrawn. I assumed his behavior was related to the impending surgery but he would not talk to me about it at all. I tried to be supportive and encouraging, I really did, but my patience was wearing thin.
Three days before his scheduled surgery, I came home from school to find Jake sleeping in the middle of the day, something totally out of character for him.
I nudged him awake and asked if he was okay.
“Yeah.” He said groggily.
“Are you sick?” I asked in concern. If he was would they cancel the surgery?
“No,” Jake said harshly. “I just want to sleep, okay?”
I was taken back by his brash attitude so I turned and walked out of the bedroom. Annoyed, I opened my book and tried to focus on studying. A few minutes passed before Jake came out of the bedroom. I ignored him. He went into the fridge and made himself a sandwich. The tension in the air was strong. He sat down in the chair opposite me and ate his sandwich in silence. He seemed out of it. He wasn’t looking me in the eye. Instantly I got a bad feeling.
“What’s your problem?” I asked him, annoyed.
Jake looked up at me then shook his head and went back to eating.
I pretended to lose myself in my studies but I couldn’t concentrate. I was getting madder by the second. Finally I slammed my book closed and stood up. “You know what Jake….I’m not going to play this game with you. If you feel like filling me in on why you’re being such a frickin’ dick, I’ll be at my apartment.” I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door.
“Casey stop!”
“You know, I don’t think I will,” I spat out and opened the front door.
“Casey, please, stop,” Jake sounded a bit worried now.
“Why? I came here so we could spend time together before your surgery and you’re acting like such a jerk.”
Jake just stared at me.
“What Jake? You got nothing for me?”
“Give me a break. I’ve had a rough day.”
I turned to him and said, irritably, “Are you going to talk to me about your rough day or am I going to have to guess?”
Jake put down his sandwich and shook his head. Finally he said the words that made my body tremble in fear.
“I…I don’t think…” Jake sighed. “The surgery. I have a bad feeling.”
It felt like I’d been slapped. “What do you mean? What kind of feeling?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Like I’m not going to survive.”
I stared back at him in shock.
“That is why I’ve been acting weird all week. I’m scared I’m about to lose everything.”
I shook my head. “No…that’s…no.”
Neither one of us spoke for at least a minute. Finally I whispered, “It’s normal to be apprehensive before a surgery Jake.”
“I know. I’ve had 14 surgeries over my lifetime Casey. I know what to expect.”
“Jesus Jake, if you have a bad feeling about the surgery, call it off. It isn’t too late.” I said trying to control the fear in my voice.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, Jake. Yes you can. Pick up the phone and tell them it’s off.”
Jake shook his head.
“You’re telling me you think you’re going to die but you refuse to call off the surgery? I’m not sure I understand your motivation here.”
“Well, when am I going to do it Casey?”
“I…I don’t know…but not now…not when you feel like this,” tears pooled in my eyes.
“I can’t just ignore the pain and hope it goes away. It won’t. I know. I’ve tried. My knee is a fucking mess and putting the surgery off won’t make it any easier for me later on.”
I stared at Jake for a while before whispering, “I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say, Case. It’s just a shitty situation and there is nothing I can do but take the risk.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. “You’re basically telling me that you think you’re going to die, Jake. How am I supposed to respond to that?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything but…I…I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“You won’t be,” I said as I hugged him. “You just have to talk to me. I hate when you shut me out.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I get lost in my head sometimes.”
I led him to the couch and we sat down. He wrapped me in his arms as we sat in silence. So much was going through my mind. Jake had suffered immeasurably in his life and now he believed that the surgery to repair some of that suffering could actually kill him. Life was so unfair sometimes. I leaned my head against his shoulder, overcome with worry.
“You’re going to be okay, Jake.” I finally said.
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because you survived a serial killer. No way is surgery going to be the thing that takes you down.”
“It was a fluke that I survived, Casey. There was no skill or bravery involved.”
“Hold on…I’m not finished. You’re also going to survive because you’re going to have babies with me someday.”
“I am?” Jake asked smiling. “I’d like that.”
“And they will be the cutest little nerdy, rocker babies you ever saw. They are going to be beautiful and funny and smart and talented.”
“Hold on… I thought you said they were going to be mine,” Jake joked.
“Right but you forget, they will be half mine too,” I played along.
“Oh right,” Jake smiled.
“And the third reason why I know you’re going to survive is because if you don’t, I will kick your ass!”
“That might be a little hard to do, if I’m dead and all,” Jake joked.
“Oh, I’d find a way. There is nothing more dangerous than a woman scorned.”
We sat quiet for a f
ew minutes holding hands then Jake bent down and kissed me.
“I love you,” he said, and then added, “so much. I hope you know that.”
“I do. Of course I do. And I love you too.”
“No matter what happens, don’t ever forget that.”
“Nothing’s going to happen Jake. You’re going to go into that surgery and come out with a new knee. Then you’re going to wake up and see my dorky face smiling back at you. That is all that is going to happen…because, goddammit…the universe owes you that much.”
“Damn right it does,” he smiled. “You know what else it owes me?”
“No, what?”
“Last minute surgery sex.”
“Jesus Christ Jake, if all that was a show to get me to open my legs for you, all you needed to do was give me that sexy little head tilt of yours and you’d have had me.”
Jake laughed. “What can I say, I’m dramatic.”
He reached down and cupped my ass, pulling me down. He climbed on top of me and started nibbling on my neck as I giggled.
“On the couch?” I questioned. “What are we, sixteen?”
“Would you prefer a wall?” Jake joked, referencing our first encounter.
“Oh God, don’t remind me. I was such a slut.”
“No, you were the hottest chick EVER!”
“Was?” I teased.
“Well, I mean, you still are but that night, sliding down that wall,” Jake shook his head and smirked, “it was so damn hot.”
“I have a deal for you.”
“Okay,” Jake said looking hopeful for another wall encounter.
“Yeah, no, buddy, not what I was offering. You can’t even get on your knees at this point. The deal is…you recover from your surgery and then you’ll fly me back to that hotel, and get us that exact room, and we will have a repeat.”
Jake smiled. “I’m down for that. Does that mean I’m not getting any tonight?”
“I didn’t say that,” I teased then stood up and offered my hand to him. “But I’m not doing you on the couch.”
The evening before the surgery, I lay in Jake’ arms on the bed, my finger traced lazy lines on his chest. I kept circling one of the deep scars surrounded by a tattoo.
“It’s a stab wound,” Jake offered up, completely out of the blue.
Stunned by his admission, I figured I would try my luck for a second time and ran my fingers lower and pointed at another deep gash encased under ink.
“Stab wound.”
I touched a third, similar scar.
“Another stab wound,” he confirmed.
I ran my finger over a long, thin scar running the length of his arm.
“Knife.”
“And the two deep ones on your back…are those stab wounds too?”
Jake nodded.
“So five in all?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Jesus. What the hell? Although I’d assumed as much just by looking at his scars, the confirmation of such horrible violence shocked me. Neither of us said anything for a minute.
Finally I asked the question I’d wondered since first hearing his story all those years ago on the news, “How…I just…I can’t figure out how you did it? How did you escape…especially after getting stabbed five times?”
Jake looked away. He didn’t answer me. Maybe he couldn’t.
“Sorry, you don’t have to tell me.”
It was quiet for a long time. I figured we were done talking. Then Jake surprised me.
“I’ve been offered millions of dollars to answer that question.”
“I’m sure. Have you ever told anyone?”
Jake hesitated then said, “Lassen.”
“Lassen?” I asked in surprise. Wow. They were closer than I ever suspected. “He knows a lot…you’d never guess.”
Jake nodded. “Lassen knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
“So do I,” I offered.
Jake looked at me. “I know.”
I looked at his face. He was stressed. I didn’t want to upset him the night before his surgery. I rose up and kissed his cheek. “Never mind. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay,” Jake agreed, seemingly relieved.
We lay there silently as I tried to come up with another topic to discuss.
Finally he sighed and opened up, “he thought I was dead.”
“What…what does that mean?” I asked.
“Ray…he thought I was dead.”
“After he stabbed you?”
“No, before he stabbed me, he…,” Jake hesitated, “he strangled me.”
I didn’t know what to say so I remained quiet.
“Maybe when he’d checked my heartbeat or pulse or whatever…maybe I’d actually stopped breathing, I don’t know…but I woke up on a piece of plastic on the floor of the basement, still very much alive.”
“What happened? Why did he strangle you?”
“I…that’s a story for another day. The point is, he strangled me and he thought I was dead and he laid me on a piece of plastic that he planned to wrap my body in when he buried me. When I woke up, he was outside digging my grave.”
“Jesus,” I mumbled. My heart was racing. Was this really happening? Was Jake really telling me this?
“When I was…uh…there…he always kept restraints on me but when I woke up, they were off.”
“Because he thought you were dead.”
“Yes. I understood pretty quickly what was happening. I tried to come up with some kind of a plan.”
“To escape?”
Jake hesitated. “No. Not to escape…to die.”
I gaped at him in shock. “Why would you want to die?”
“I didn’t want to die, Casey. All I ever wanted every minute of every day was to live but the kind of living Ray was offering wasn’t living…it was just slow dying.”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe he was telling me all this.
“The thing is…I’d given up long before Ray strangled me. When he took out my knee about a week before the escape…that’s when my hope died.”
I stroked his arm, speechless.
“Anyway, I was trying to come up with a plan to be dead before he got back down into the basement and found me alive. Ray had used a knife on me plenty of times, as you can see,” Jake said as he pointed to his body. “So I got it and sat back down on my plastic and prepared to cut my wrists.”
“I…I don’t understand. If you had the knife, why didn’t you use it on Ray?”
“Because…I’d already tried that, Casey. That’s why I’m having surgery tomorrow.”
“Oh,” I answered, numbed by the horror of what I was hearing.
“And, honestly, I really didn’t think he could be killed. He was like a real life monster. No matter how hard I tried, I just could never get the upper hand with him. I knew if I tried to stab him he would just wrestle the knife out of my hand and start stabbing me. I could never win with him…ever. So I decided I only had three choices. Number one was to let him find me alive and be forced to continue living the hell I was in. Number two was to stab him and get stabbed back and hope to God he killed me. And Number three was I could take my own life.”
Jake inhaled roughly then turned his head and grimaced like the memory physically hurt him. “Number three was the safest bet and involved the least amount of pain and suffering.”
“I just…God…I don’t know what to say.”
“I started cutting,” Jake pointed to the faded marks on his wrists, “but killing myself when I didn’t want to die, proved more difficult than I thought. I was struggling to make that final cut to sever my artery. And while I was gathering my courage, the worst thing that could possibly have happened, happened.”
“What?” I asked all wide-eyed and horrified.
“He opened the basement door. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I just laid back down on the plastic, hid my bloody wrist with the knife behind my back and played dead. Ray came down the stai
rs and I listened as he was doing things around the basement.
“He never came over to check on you?”
“No. And thank God he didn’t. It would have been obvious that I was alive. I had sweat and tears on my face, smeared blood up my arms and my heart was pounding so loud I could feel it vibrating in my throat. I was paralyzed with fear.”
“What did you plan to do?”
Jake shrugged. “I had no plan. I had no idea what was about to happen. At that point, things were just going to have to play themselves out.”
“Were you prepared to use the knife to defend yourself?
“I don’t know if I was thinking of anything at that point. It was just indescribable terror. It was kind of like that car ride after Ray kidnapped me. I knew something bad was going to happen but I didn’t know what. It was like I was in a horror movie and had come to the finale. I was just scared out of my mind. I’m surprised I managed to keep myself from crying out because I was just emotionally destroyed at that point. My body was shaking. I think that is what finally caught Ray’s eye. I could hear him walk over to me. He nudged me with his shoe and said, “Are you still alive?” He then got down on one knee and put his finger against my neck to feel for my pulse.
I gulped back my horror.
“That moment…it’s something that still haunts me today…it was like everything was happening in slow motion. I knew Ray was about to discover the truth and I couldn’t let that happen. I pulled the knife out from behind my back and thrust it into the side of his neck. Ray’s eyes widened and he jerked back screaming. I could tell he was shocked. I mean, he thought, up till that point, that I was dead, so he definitely was not expecting me to suddenly come back to life…and with a knife in my hand. As for me, the moment that I thrust the knife into him I knew I’d just started a war that I couldn’t win. There was no turning back. I pulled the knife out of his neck and aimed for his chest. This time Ray reacted more quickly. He grabbed for the knife, but the blade sliced through his hands and plunged directly into his chest. Ray screamed and his eyes were wild with rage. He grabbed my hand, which was griped on the knife, and we wrestled for it while it was still lodged in his chest. He punched me in the face, and I lost control of the knife. Ray actually yanked it out of his own chest. God. The look on his face…I was going to pay for what I did.” Jake stopped talking and took a long deep breath in. “Anyway, I tried to scramble away then, knowing that I was about to get stabbed but Ray grabbed my ankle and yanked me back. He then thrust the knife into my back. Before I had a chance to even react, he stabbed me again. Using my trapped ankle, he flipped me over onto my back. I was still squirming fiercely. He stabbed me in my side. I could see the blood pouring off the blade as he raised it up again. I think he was aiming for my heart but I made a last second attempt to fight him off and Ray got my stomach instead. The blade went straight through my body and hit the concrete under me. It made this horrible wet clanking sound. I’ll never forget it. Then Ray jerked the knife up, back through my body. I just collapsed back to the floor. I was done. I remember looking him in the eyes as he raised the knife again. I knew it was over and this feeling of relief flooded through me…if only for a split second because at that moment Ray gasped, grabbed his chest and screamed.