“And that’s scary.”
“Very.”
“You can’t change who you are, Emma. You can only figure it out. Don’t worry about what you think you’re supposed to be or what you think you should want. Do what makes you happy, like we all keep saying. You have a limited time. You only get this one life. Don’t waste time fighting yourself. Do what you want; the rest will come.”
Emma smiled genuinely and some of the weight lifted from her chest.
***
That night, in the glowing light of the library computer screen, she decided she wanted to be “Eva.”
Somewhat calmed and revitalized, centered with Eva’s phone securely tucked in her pocket, she decided that Eva took her time. Deidra and Jennifer had been too rash, rushed through the hunt and the kill, leaving her wanting. Eva was going to evolve; Eva was going to be patient, take her time, and savor the entire process.
Before she staged her hunt, Emma capitalized on the burner phone to Google Colorado missing persons reports. She dragged her finger along the screen to catch glimpses of all the faces that had vanished unexplained. Nate’s report was still there from when his wife had initially gone to the internet for help.
You are better off without him, honey.
Her heart seized in her chest when she saw Mark’s dumb, muted eyes slide up the tiny screen. An unnatural and inappropriate jolt of excitement captured her at the sight of him. Her first. The unmatched thrill of crossing that line, of taking her first life, pounded.
She forced herself to divorce from the nostalgic moment and kept scrolling. She found Manuel too. The wave of memory as she rolled him into her trunk was not as strong as the thought of Mark; still, the perverse fondness remained.
I should be worried that they are reported missing. I should be worried that people are looking for them. At least one of them had to tell someone about the date they were going on. At least one of them has to have a thread that leads to me. And that is why Eva is going to be calm and even more careful.
Over the passing days, Emma let the messages accumulate in Eva’s inbox. No matter what persona Emma presented, the barrage of incoming communications always seemed identical. The guys who basically told her she was hot; the guys who would send her penis pictures and try to get away with a simple hook up; the guys who sent her novels about their backstory, including the damage that brought them to the site; the guys who did not even bother to read the profile she carefully created and crafted. The guys who were a little too desperate.
Then again, the women Emma created were not entirely unique, nor were they greatly removed from her authentic profiles. How many ways could she say she wanted to find a nice guy to settle down with? Clichés were unavoidable.
Emma tried to draw a line down her mind between her authentic self and the Eva she was pretending to be. Even as she sat in Emma’s life, her mind wandered to Eva’s online dating escapades unfolding on the tiny screen in her pocket.
The phone vibrated against her hip as she sprawled across the carpet with Josiah.
“Uh oh, little man,” Emma said to the toddling child. “Sounds like we’ve snagged another one.”
Emma flipped on the screen and pulled up the message.
TNBoy80:
Hey gorgeous! Your profile really caught my eye. You look like such an interesting person. I bet we could have a lot of fun together. Message me back!
“Josiah, he’s back!” Emma cried.
Josiah looked up at her from his board book then turned back to the thick pages unenthused.
“This guy sends me the exact same message to every profile. He must just copy and paste it. Oh, buddy, don’t worry. Auntie is going to teach you to be so much better than these idiots. Not that your mother wouldn’t smother you long before you could become such a douchebag. Third time is the charm. I think we have our winner!”
Emma tapped out a reply to the lucky TNBoy80 and stowed the phone back in her pocket. She reached out and snatched Josiah up, hoisting him above her head like an airplane. He laughed and opened his gummy mouth wide, the light catching the few, small protruding teeth. A long string of viscous drool dripped from his shining lips and splattered on Emma’s cheek.
“Ahhh!” she cried, plopping Josiah giggling into her lap and wiping at her face with her sleeve. “No wonder your mother says you’re disgusting!”
Emma was still giggling when Ronnie and Terrence walked in.
“Oh no, Ems, did he puke on you?” Terrence slipped off his coat and shoes at the door.
“He’s too old for spitting up anymore,” Ronnie corrected.
“That’s why I said puke.”
“Whatever.” Ronnie rolled her eyes.
“He just drooled on me. Like nearly straight into my mouth,” Emma said.
“You were airplaning him, weren’t you?” Terrence said.
“Yeah.”
Ronnie cackled. “Amateur.”
“Good date, then?” Emma asked.
“Yeah, this deeply disturbed girl and her horror movies.” Terrence shook his head.
“Hey!” Ronnie protested. “You like horror movies too.”
“I did. It was a good one. Actually got Ronnie to squeeze my hand during the scary parts.”
“Shut your face. I was only holding your hand.”
“Sure, sure.”
“Awww, you guys are so cute,” Emma joked.
“You’re sticking around, right, Eminem?” Terrence asked. “We have an exciting night of Netflix, without the chilling, and changing diapers ahead.”
“I wouldn’t miss that for the world!”
The three fell into the abyss of Netflix, locking into a series about zombies and marathoning the episodes end to end. As the first episode flashed, Emma instantly recognized it.
“Oh shit,” she laughed.
“What?” Ronnie asked.
“This is the show I marathoned with Jamal. He had me kiss him every time a zombie killed someone. Then he took me into his room ‘where the magic happens’ and asked me to test out his mattress.”
“Oh no.” Terrence shook his head. “That is not smooth.”
“Yeah, babe, you have more game than that,” Ronnie said.
“And that is how babies are made,” Terrence replied.
Terrence started the next episode before the credits from the previous could even begin rolling, and the hours were swallowed up by the shambling horde. Josiah collapsed on Ronnie’s chest where she snored open-mouthed on the couch.
“Whoa, when did we lose Ronnie?” Emma said between zombie attacks.
“She’s sharking it,” Terrence answered.
“What did you just say?”
“Sharking it.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“When a shark stops swimming, it dies. Since Josiah, if Ronnie stops moving, she sleeps. Especially if Josiah is sleeping on her. So I call it sharking it.”
“Ah, I follow now.”
“She’s going to be pissed she missed all this zombie action.”
“You know she’s going to watch them over again while she’s working with Josiah.”
“Oh I know. Man, I’m going to have a dark and troubled little boy.”
“You were going to have that either way.”
“True.”
“So are you tapping out, or do we press on?”
“Are you kidding? We press on! I have to know if they get out of that warehouse alive.”
Terrence and Emma remained locked in front of the screen until they watched the entire season of episodes. The zombies moaned while Ronnie and Josiah snored in concert. When the season finale cliffhanger graced the screen, Emma gave Terrence a hug and retreated home.
In her car, in the dark, she could not get the trick line to her face fast enough. TNBoy80 had the hook clearly embedded in his cheek, sending an array of messages he may have even composed exclusively for her.
She took the next step, providing him with her burner phone numbe
r, and went to bed. When she woke up in the morning, she had a text message waiting for her on Eva’s phone.
Cory: Good morning, beautiful Eva! This is Cory. Thank you for giving me your number. When can I take you out?
Emma cuddled down in her bed and curled the phone in close to her, debating how to respond. She wanted to say, Tonight. I am going to murder you tonight. She needed to pace herself, to ration Cory’s demise, to pull his strings to tame the beast inside her.
Eva: Good morning, Cory. I would love to go out. What do you like to do?
Cory: Whatever you like. We could always go to dinner or meet for coffee.
Emma gagged. She could not even think about sitting down for another excruciating meal, another first date trapped at a table.
Eva: How do you feel about hiking?
Emma texted Cory conversationally in the days leading up to their hike. Seeing the text notification on Eva’s phone caused her heart to flutter the same way it once did at a romantic prospect. Each message brought her one step closer, drew him in a fraction more.
Cory: How was work today?
Eva: Good. Nice and easy day.
Cory: What are you up to tonight?
Eva: I might go have dinner with my friends. I might pass out on my couch. Life choices.
Cory: LOL
Eva: What about you? How was your day?
Cory: It was good. I worked hard. Now I’m enjoying a nice beer and a steak.
Eva: Simple things.
Cory: I’m easy to please.
Eva: Don’t tease ;)
Cory: I won’t. I’ll show you after our date. Assuming I don’t cough up a lung on this hike.
***
Cory eased himself into the car beside Eva in the early morning light. Eva immediately found him simply plain. He embodied what she would imagine for a generic white guy. He had close cut blond hair over flat blue eyes. His features were passable, wholly unremarkable. He had tight cowboy jeans shoved down into cowboy boots with a tattered t-shirt.
Eva took him in from under her sunglasses.
“Good morning, girl. You are far prettier than your profile,” he said as he settled in beside her.
“Thank you. Nice to meet you, Cory, after all our messaging. Thanks for coming hiking with me.”
“Of course. This is actually my first hiking date. Are you a big hiker?”
“I’ve gotten into it recently.”
“Let’s see if I can get into it too.”
“Have you hiked much before?”
“A little bit since moving to Colorado but nothing major.”
“Where are you from originally?”
“Tennessee.”
“Wow, how did you end up here?”
“My dad was military.”
Eva pulled her car into the trailhead parking lot. She fetched her walking stick and hiking pack from the trunk and led Cory toward the mountain.
Walking up the trail, Cory’s steps crunched behind her. Eva kept the pace slow and steady, swinging her stick forward and allowing it to bump against the gravel then swooping it in line with her stride and repeating. The sun crept up into the sky, casting sharp rays over the mountainside. The light broke among the trees and glared from the horizon. The air still maintained the hint of extra moisture, the fading cool edge of the night.
Eva evaporated momentarily in the mountain, dissolving in the thin air, until Cory spoke behind her.
“How far are we going?” he asked.
“We’ll hike up about a mile. There’s kind of a cool place off the trail I thought we could go to.”
“That sounds good.”
With each step upwards in altitude, Eva felt her anticipation building. The excitement swelled against her ribcage. The mile dragged on so long with Cory trailing behind her. She could hear him talking, but the words did not register in her brain. She was relatively certain she was even responding, but her mind sprinted ahead to the destination.
By the time Eva put her boots in the rough off the trail, her heartbeat was tingling in her entire body. She led Cory over the stringy clumps of green grass, around the protruding orange rocks, through the towering pine trees.
“Wow, you’re really taking me out here,” Cory panted. “This is like legit hiking. Just walking up the side of a mountain off the trail.”
“Nearly there,” Eva replied.
Eva fought the urge to sprint the final jaunt around a concealing clump of trees and reached back to ensnare Cory’s fingers when they reached the spot. Sweat was beginning to break her scalp under her brunette wig. Cory wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled her closer to him, encircling her waist and bumping his hand into her pack. He pressed his body into hers and shoved his mouth against her lips.
“So what did you bring me all the way out here for? You a bit of a voyeur, girl?” he said with lazy eyelids and long syllables.
“Maybe,” she teased. “Do you want a snack or some water first?”
“Yeah, definitely the water. I’ll need to be hydrated for you.”
“Awesome,” Eva giggled coyly. “Check out that view.”
Cory dropped his arms from around her and turned his back to her to glimpse the sprawling city spread out below them. He put his hands on his hips and leaned his pelvis forward, ogling the scenery. Eva slipped the pack from her shoulders and set it on the dirt in front of her. She reached into the main pocket and pulled out the spade to the shovel. Quietly, she reattached it to her walking stick handle.
Cory grew tired of waiting for her and looked toward her. As his eyes eased around in her direction, she heaved the shovel over her shoulder like a baseball bat. His unimpressive blue eyes met hers for the briefest instant. Then she swung the blade of the shovel around and slammed it into his head.
The impact sent Cory’s body toppling to the dirt. His limbs landed haphazardly around his collapsed torso, his head nearly obscured by his shoulders. He lay frozen and crumpled for a second. Eva heard that familiar struggling breath pushing against the injury. Cory floundered in the dirt like a beached fish.
Eva walked slowly over to his jerking body. She pressed her foot into his shoulder until she flipped him flat on his back. She stepped over his body, placing a foot on either side of his torso. She raised the shovel directly above his head and swung it down into his skull until it cracked. His body fell still, his breath disappearing into the mountain air.
With Cory’s corpse beneath her feet, Eva looked down at the unsuspecting city below. She stepped back and walked a few feet toward a large and wilting pine. She reached down and pulled a large, dead branch aside to reveal a hole, a perfectly dug grave she had hiked up and carved out days before.
No garage, no Sawz-All. She took Cory’s body by the floppy ankles and dragged him over the dirt and rocks, dumping him into the hole. Cory’s body folded on itself facedown, the dust settling on top of him.
Eva hopped down into the hole to tug his phone out of his pocket and remove the battery, dropping the pieces in the dirt beside him. Then she climbed back out to look down at him.
She changed her shirt into a spare from her bag, using the dirty one to swipe the blood from the shovel spade before tossing the shirt in after him. She popped the battery from the latest trick line phone and chucked it all into the pit with Cory. Then she fetched the shovel and heaped the earth back over him, swirling the dirt and rearranging the pine needles to obscure the struggle. As she hiked away, she looked back to evaluate her work. The swatch of mountain looked indistinguishable from the surrounding patches.
Emma returned to the trail but did not head down toward the car. Instead, she continued to ascend the mountain, winding back and forth across the face along the gravel path. Without Cory echoing her steps, she could concentrate on the Zen of her hike, the rhythm in her climb. The sun rose higher in the sky, and the warmth poured down the mountainside.
Emma melted into the hike. Her body hummed with the kill. In her mind, the shovel demolished Cory’s face again a
nd again, and the memory tranquilized her. She was not Eva anymore. Or Jennifer. Or Deidra. She was not even Emma. She was only the steps that dragged her up the side of this mountain, the one she felt like she owned with her kill hidden beneath its skin.
A large rock emerged on the hillside above her, dangling over her path. Its summit beckoned to her, jutting out of the mountain. Emma heeded and placed her hands on the rough surface to guide her legs on top of it. The pointed surface of the rock jabbed into the backs of her thighs. She still found it to be a most comfortable perch.
She pulled her pack up beside her and fished out a water bottle and granola bar. Breathing deeply and bathed in the crisp sunlight, she took leisurely sips of the water, chewing bites of her granola bar slowly and deliberately. She did not think; she did not analyze. She simply sat in the sun and ate.
Peace was what Emma felt. If she did not think about it, if she did not question it, if she only permitted herself to wallow in the echo of her murder, she experienced peace.
Maybe there never was an Emma. Maybe I was always Deidra, Jennifer, Eva. Maybe Emma was the persona and the lie all along.
This is who I am, she thought again, plain and simple. The thought flowed over her in waves as she lingered on the rock while the sun traced its arc in the sky.
Chapter 21
The months passed, and the men of the internet continued to fall. Brad, another man obsessed with photographing his own genitalia; Joe, the security guard who was unnervingly possessive before he even touched her; Alex, the twice divorced and obviously looking to use and abuse number three; and her favorite, Roland, the overpaid engineer who talked to her like she was a stupid child and seemed to think she should thank him for it.
Emma was surprised at how many men were willing to brave a hike for the hinted possibility of sex. Digging a hole in advance was infinitely simpler than dissecting a body and bleaching the bloody evidence out of her garage and trunk each time. Killing out in the open amplified the murder with a jagged thrill.
The Rest Will Come Page 25