The Rest Will Come

by Christina Bergling

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. I walked out on him.”

  “Good for you!”

  “One guy was awesome. I thought he was the one. We just clicked, and I was into him, and he didn’t poof or become some douchebag. Then he had to move for work, and he couldn’t get his head around trying a long distance relationship so early on, so we ended it. He even ended it well. He was completely honest with me, no bullshit.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Very much so. You would have liked him, Gladys.”

  “I’m sure.”

  "So he was gone. I told myself that he should give me hope because I found a decent guy. Though it didn’t work out for other reasons, I knew they existed and were still out there. So I kept trying. I got burned out and decided I would try the last few dates I had lined up then call it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “My last date was horrible.”

  Emma wanted to tell Gladys what had actually happened to Mark. Exactly like she wanted to scream murder into the phone when Ronnie interrupted her cleanup. Her crime isolated her from her support system. Confessing to the women she told everything was too risky for her. And for them. Ronnie might have been able to understand. She probably would have shouldered a backpack and helped Emma dig, but Gladys would never be able to look at Emma the same with murder painted across her face. She would probably contribute an anonymous tip to the cops, for Emma’s own good.

  “Tell me, sugar,” Gladys encouraged.

  “We met at this shitty little bar. We decided the place was awful and spent a beer finding a new restaurant to go to. I went to the bathroom, and we headed to the parking lot to drive to the new place. In the parking lot, he told me his heart was not in it and left.”

  Left this world.

  “What? What happened while you were in the bathroom?”

  “I have no idea. Ronnie thinks he got a text from an ex or a booty call.”

  “Ah, yes, that would make sense.”

  “It was awful. ‘My heart’s not in this.’ That one might have been worse than ‘you’re awesome but.’ It’s hard to tell.”

  “I’m so sorry, Em.”

  “I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that this keeps happening. I mean, I’m the common denominator, right? Something has to be wrong with me, right?”

  Hot tears burned at her eyelashes, the rage climbing her chest and knocking against her breastbone.

  “No, honey, no.” Gladys’s tone fell smooth and thick. “This is just people. This is just dating. None of us know what we’re doing. None of us really know what we want and would not know it if it walked up and introduced itself. If we do end up with the right one, it’s ultimately the luck of unknowingly making the right decisions. Your life will go its way. You have to enjoy the ride.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Emma, you need to find things that make you happy, and accept that those things might not be being in a relationship or having a family. I’m not saying those things won’t happen, but they might not happen now. There is no reason to stay miserable while you wait.”

  “So you want me to just let it go.”

  “Yes, honey. Let it go. Find yourself and be you. The rest will fall into place.”

  But I’m a murderer…

  “I’m starting to feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Like maybe I never did.”

  “That’s okay, sugar. Most of us spend our whole lives figuring that out. You’re still only a baby. Trust me. Like I said, the rest will come.”

  ***

  The night had begun to reach up into the fading day when Gladys and Emma hugged outside the restaurant. Again, Emma did not want to let go. She wanted to embed herself into the comforting warmth of Gladys’s embrace. The air felt all the colder when she did release and walked back to her car clutching her own arms.

  She could not go home. She could not face the dark and the silence and the strange allure that now radiated from the garage. The ancient enticement of the fluorescent signs in the bar window beckoned from the road and she turned into the parking lot instead.

  The alcohol paraded onto her taste buds with crushing intensity, causing her to squint one eye as she sipped from the straw. She highly doubted there was any soda in her drink. If there was, the ratio was terribly miscalculated, or she had lost her talent and practice for drinking strong drinks fast. That was why people came to a place like this: strong, cheap drinks. Because it was on her way home, that was why Emma was here too.

  She forsook her normal practiced posture and collapsed onto her elbows on the wooden bar top, allowing her spine to hunch, and gathered herself closer into a ball around her poignant beverage. A couple of sips in, she already felt the hazing sweep of alcoholic fingers along the back of her forehead. Her nose tingled faintly, alerting her of a foreign substance dancing through her veins. She drank wine with Ronnie plenty, but it had been a long time since she had imbibed with liquor.

  She hadn’t even bothered to case the bar, not even wasted her time evaluating any prospects in attendance. She fixated on her purpose and kept her eyes trained on the diminishing drink in front of her and her sad, warbled reflection in the mirror behind the liquor bottles. Her reflection’s eyes took on their own air, crawling into their own separate being.

  The murderer.

  Emma felt a strange fracture of consciousness, her nerves grounding her in the barstool, her ears placing her in the tavern. She recognized the reflection in the smeared mirror as her own, yet she saw something divergent in the eyes, something different from the self she defined, yet something she also recognized.

  The murderer.

  She’s a murderer.

  I’m a murderer.

  Emma ripped her eyes away from the other’s and sipped hard until air swirled at the end of her straw.

  “It looks like you could use another drink,” a voice said from beside her.

  Emma hesitantly looked up into hopeful and expectant eyes, which were probably equally intoxicated. The man who had crept onto the barstool beside her appeared to be in her demographic. Plain but clean and neat clothes draped from his shoulders. His symmetrical face registered as attractive enough in the back of Emma’s brain. She turned her head and struggled to not roll her eyes. Her reflection failed to control herself.

  “I’m Geoffrey,” he said, leaning in slightly closer.

  “Sarah,” she said curtly. She did not know why she spit out a fake name; it seemed like the right decision.

  Geoffrey reached out his hand. Emma recoiled, then caught the eyes of the murderer in the mirror again, the eyes with which she did not want to be left alone. She closed her own eyes for an unnoticeable instant and shook Geoffrey’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you.” He smiled. “How about that drink?”

  “Sure. I would love a refill.”

  Geoffrey signaled the bartender and ordered Emma and himself a matching round. Given the look in Geoffrey’s eyes, he had been enjoying the bar for a while before coming over to her. He probably had taken some preemptive shots for bravery. His eyelids drooped gently at the edges, and his wide grin hung sloppy at his cheeks. Emma picked up her drink to catch up with him.

  “So what brings you into this fine establishment tonight, Sarah?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Trying to unwind after a long day.”

  “You’re too pretty to be having a rough day.”

  Emma noticed her reflection gagging and heaving in the mirror. She cast her gaze down flirtatiously and said, “Thank you.”

  What was she doing? She could not even fake an orgasm for a guy as wonderful as Tim, yet she was feigning flirtation with some pathetic barfly.

  This is called self-destructive behavior. Her reflection laughed in her face. Why don’t you have sex with him then turn yourself in? Murderer.

  She could not drink fast enough. She needed a numbing layer on top of her senses. She needed to see Geoffrey through clouded lenses
. Geoffrey was talking about something. She could scarcely hear him over her lack of interest and her straw suckling at the empty base of her glass.

  “Wow, you were thirsty!” Geoffrey exclaimed.

  “Like I said, long day.”

  “Would you like another one?” Geoffrey raised his hand to the bartender, who responded with a fresh round.

  “You got this one since I bought the last?” Geoffrey asked without making eye contact.

  Are you fucking kidding me? Emma’s reflection yelled from the mirror. What a cheap bastard! Won’t even pay to get laid. Her reflection slapped the bar dramatically and spun around on the stool, howling with laughter.

  Giggling, she set her cash on the bar top while her reflection rolled her eyes hard enough to sway her hair.

  Geoffrey had conveniently not driven himself to the bar, instead taking a preemptive cab. He happily offered to drive Emma home in her car. She noted that he was probably too intoxicated to drive, but she was not going to do it. The world tilted and rocked sideways with each step. She was too drunk. Might as well let this frugal moron take the DUI.

  Emma did not know why she was taking him home with her. Though physically acceptable, she found him wholly unenticing. She looked at him through warbled eyes in her driver seat and tried not to wrinkle her nose.

  Why am I doing this? Why am I bringing him home with me? This is what self-destruction looks like. What a wonderful victim he would make.

  Her thoughts were as drunk as she was, slurring randomly and disjointed through the alcohol in her head.

  Then the thought of her empty house and her devious reflection in every mirror swelled up over her brain. She could not look into those eyes and see the version of herself that terrified her. She could not listen to the echoing thoughts of the murderer inside her head. Geoffrey may have been inane and irritating, but such sensations kept her outside of her own head. She could concentrate on not liking him; she could sleep with him to not think about anything.

  Geoffrey groped her before the front door was even locked behind them. He grabbed at her sloppily, his drunk kisses coating her lips in his saliva. He tasted like the drinks they had shared at the bar. Her head sloshed too violently for her to care. They wobbled and swayed in their embrace, tripping their tangled way up the stairs. He fumbled her clothes off and tossed her down on the mattress.

  ***

  Hours later, Geoffrey snored naked beside Emma in her bed, greedily wrapping her blanket around himself and leaving her with only the trailing edge of the fabric. Emma lay flat on her back, staring through the blackness to imagine the texture of the ceiling. Her eyes snapped wide as the deafening roar of her brain crowded the empty darkness above her.

  She drummed her fingers on her breastbone, trying to ground herself through the sensation, attempting to keep her churning mind contained within her flesh. Sobriety edged on her nerves, carving itself out of the sedation and back to the surface of her skin. With the disorienting weight waning from her brain, the chorus of accusations and doubts only became more deafening.

  She felt nothing about the sex, unchanged by his uninspired, clumsy performance. He was cheap even in bed, fumbling over her until he seized for an instant then collapsed. He was satisfied by his own rapid orgasm and clearly gave no thought to her experience. Emma thought this lack of reciprocity should have enraged her, but he did not matter. He did not matter at the bar; he did not matter moving inside her; he did not matter snoring annoyingly beside her.

  What mattered was the terrifying detachment blossoming inside her chest and how welcoming and comforting it felt. Emma knew exactly what she wanted, more clearly than she had ever discovered herself before. The clarity resonated from the black base of the hole below her stomach and rang through her entire skeleton like a tuning fork. She recognized what she needed more than when she had foolishly and wholeheartedly thought Justin was her forever.

  Geoffrey drew in a sinus rattling breath beside her. She wanted to kill him.

  Each time Geoffrey inhaled, Emma saw another way to kill him.

  Pillow over his face.

  Belt around his neck.

  Shoved face first down the stairs.

  Hammer to the back of the skull.

  Kitchen knife across his throat.

  Each morbid vision excited Emma more than any of Geoffrey’s fumblings had failed to do. When he had touched her, she felt nothing, only vague annoyance. Yet when she imagined the feeling of forcing his life out of his body, her entire nervous system tingled.

  She rolled her head on the pillow to look at the back of his head.

  She wanted to kill him.

  The mere realization calmed her entire body, silenced her entire mind. Now the only thing she could conceptualize was murdering him.

  Geoffrey stirred beside her. Emma slammed her eyes shut and deepened her breath to feign sleep. He did not even look toward her. He sloppily dragged himself from the mattress and lumbered across the dark room toward the bathroom. With his back to her, Emma opened her eyes and sat up. His path meandered and strayed across the carpet, his pale buttocks glowing against the darkness. He was clearly still drunk.

  Emma’s mind went silent. She was done thinking. She rose noiselessly from the sheets and trailed him stealthily.

  Without turning on the light, Geoffrey was unloading his bladder into her toilet.

  She hesitated, hidden behind the open door, for a moment. Every fiber, hair, and cell in her body stood on complete edge. She was honed, focused. A strange blend of calm and excitement centered her. It felt natural.

  Emma took a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes, feeling the singularity of her intent draw to a focus in the center of her sight. She burst around the door in one fluid movement, shoving her palms and all her momentum into his bare shoulders. He toppled from his precarious balance at the impact and went cascading into the bathtub. He managed to crane his neck in the arc of his careen, and Emma looked into his wild and disbelieving eyes before his skull collided with the tile then bounced down into the faucet.

  His head made a sickening and satisfying squash with each impact. The tile produced a heavy thud that reverberated through the dark room, while the faucet edged the sound with the crack of the bones in his face. Geoffrey’s body instantly went limp, his entire weight pooled chaotically in the porcelain basin.

  Emma stared blankly at her new victim, feeling a placidity radiate through her chest. Placing her bare toes on the tile floor, she carefully stepped toward the bathtub, leaning forward toward the body. Then the wet sound bubbled through his demolished nasal cavity.

  He was still breathing.

  She took a moment to scan her eyes over the room. Then she reached her hands out to cradle the cold porcelain. The lid scraped as she removed it from the toilet tank. She wrapped her fingers around the cool material, comparing the smoothness of the painted top to the roughness of the unfinished underbelly.

  She shifted the long rectangle in her hands until the short side stared down at Geoffrey’s crumpled form. She lifted the lid high above her head, exhaled, and brought it down with all her force onto what remained of his face. All hints of breath stopped. Geoffrey’s body adopted the deflated immobility like Mark when she had introduced him to the hammer.

  Just like Mark with keys impaled into his face, Geoffrey was no longer recognizable. He was reduced to a bloody pile of unanimated flesh.

  Emma reached over and flipped on the light, enlightening the blood-splattered scene. Although she nearly gasped at the sight of so much Geoffrey on the walls, her surprise quickly gave way to an inventory of future cleaning.

  Holy shit. There’s blood all the way up on the ceiling. I’m going to have to bleach this entire bathroom. And burn the sheets. I don’t want a single cell of Geoffrey left in this place. I don’t want to get rid of this much blood again. I should drain him right here before I chop him up this time.

  Emma pulled a towel from the rack and wet it, swiping over her entir
e naked body to clear any droplets prior to stepping onto her carpet. She strutted nude through her dark house and retrieved a knife from the kitchen, then padded gently back up the stairs and opened his throat.

  A waterfall of blood poured from the wound and over Geoffrey, slowly disappearing down the drain. Emma kept the knife toying at her fingertips while the body emptied. She spun and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.

  Hello, murderer. Her reflection smiled at her.

  The look felt at home on her face. Something about the reflection she now saw staring back at her, naked in the bloodied bathroom, appeared more authentic, more her than she had ever seen before. When she looked into those bold eyes in the mirror, she occupied her own flesh, swelling out to the edges of her skin. She was in harmony with her body, rather than an awkward occupant of it.

  “So this is what I really am,” she said aloud, her voice sounding haggard and dehydrated, bouncing off the bathroom walls. “This is what I want. This is what makes me happy.”

  The truth resonated through Emma as the blood dripped off the walls, and she felt some semblance of peace spread through the gaping black below her stomach.

  Chapter 18

  Emma basked in the soft glow of public, free internet at a library across town from her house. The screen in front of her reflected the painfully familiar colorful dating page with ads dancing along the sidebars. The sight of such a page used to make Emma’s skin crawl, used to coil her chest in tense knots. Now she lounged placidly in the uncomfortable plastic chair, a strange and subtle smirk playing on her lips.

  She sat in front of a blank profile, vague forms and ideas shifting beneath her scalp, teeming along her nerves. Name, the field asked.