"I know fine well what it's capable of! It's you who doesn't know a damn thing! That man out there is insane. He'll do something abominable with it. I can't let that happen."
"Honey," her voice softened. "Don't you see this man is a genius?"
"He's a lunatic."
"A genius."
"A madman."
"He can do what no other person can do."
"You mean he does what no other person would do. He has no sense of decorum. No sense of right or wrong. He's just... He's..."
He lowered his voice and I imagine him leaning down toward Cynthia like a bird of prey coaxing a mouse.
"He's evil," he whispered through clenched teeth but I could hear every single syllable.
Evil, I thought. Is that what I was? No, of course not. It didn't exist, did it? Good and evil were not black and white concepts but instead were an endless spectrum of gray with as many tones as there were people and opinions in the world.
What did feel wrong was pressing my ear up to the door listening to the couple argue. It was peculiar she was fighting my corner and I couldn't help but feel that I had somehow torn apart their marriage. But at the same time, Cynthia clearly wanted it torn apart regardless. If it wasn't me. It would have been someone else. Some other killer she would have sought out.
From behind the door, the words drifted away. There was the sound of a chair falling to the floor then nothing else. Not a single sound permeated the solid oak door. I wondered if they'd made up after all and he'd handed over the case. Maybe if I opened the door, I'd find them embracing each other and the Tricepthial would be sat on the table waiting to be picked up by my eager hand.
I rattled the doorknob but found it wouldn't budge.
"What the hell?"
I must be getting weaker than I realized, I thought. I must be exhausted. Pressing my shoulder into the door, I waited for it to give way it still wouldn't move an inch.
"Cynthia."
She didn't say a thing.
"Cynthia!"
Frustrated, I threw all my weight against the door but nothing happened. Enraged, I kicked at it but all that did was hurt my foot. When did I become so pathetic? I asked myself. A year ago I would have barged in their like the Incredible Hulk. But a year ago I still had my wits about me, still almost resembled a man. A year ago I hadn't met Etta.
I kicked the door one last time and when it failed to open, I gave up and walked away, striding right out to the front of the house where the sun bleached the tiles. It burned the top of my head and my neck as I ambled around the side of the house to the pool. Kneeling down on the patio, I squinted as I tried to see into the kitchen, my face and hands pressed up to the glass like a kid trying to spy on their parents on Christmas Eve.
But I couldn't see a thing except one of the chairs pressed up beneath the door handle to lock the door. Cynthia and Schiele must have been behind the counter on the floor but what were they doing? Rapping my knuckles on the glass, I yelled for them one more time but expected nothing. I bet they’re fucking down there behind the counter, I thought. The crazy, old, wrinkled up bastards.
Making my way back round to the front of the house, I sat on the long staircase that led me up to the main hall. The marblewas cool against my body in stark contrast to the heat of the sun. A small fountain was trickling tepid water out from the wall and I reached over, splashed my hands and ran them over my forehead. I licked the moisture from my fingers then rested back on my elbows.
This was the life, I thought. This would have been a gorgeous day if it wasn't for what was behind me in the house. Looking down at my arms, I noticed I'd shaken off the pale, deathly, Normont pallor and had become a deep, peach toned brown. I looked good with a tan, pretty damn sexy.
Lifting up my shirt, I saw that my abs, though shrunken,were still defined. Yep, I've still got it, I thought. When Etta comes back she'll love my tan. I'll need to beef up of course. She doesn't want to make love to a skeletal weasel like me but I can bulk up. I can be the man she loved once again.
A click sounded behind me. I looked around and saw Cynthia in the doorway to the kitchen. Her feet were bare and they were making a strange squelching sound on the tiled floor.
"It's all sorted," she said, in a daze. "And I got it for you."
"That's fantastic, Cynthia."
Through the shadows of the house, I could see something big and bulky beneath her arm. The case. It would be mine any second. I jumped up in anticipation of finally possessing it.
"I can't thank you enough…"
The squelching sounded again. I looked down and saw red between her toes like syrup. It was so dark it was almost black but it was unmistakable. It was blood.
"What...What did you do?"
"I did what I always wanted to do," she said, still staring straight ahead in a daze. "I did what I had to do."
As she emerged from the shadows, the soles of her feet sticking to the ground, I saw that what she held under her arm wasn't the case. It was Schiele's head.
~
I didn't know how much time had passed. I wasn't even sure what the meaning of time was anymore. We were sat at the kitchen table. The case of Tricepthial on one side of me and Schiele's head on the other. It was starting to attract flies already. They were buzzing up inside his nostrils and sticking to his gums where his lips sat open. They stuck to his teeth and his tongue and buzzed with the delight of newly deceased flesh.
Cynthia was regarding what was left of her husband with a quiet sense of what I could only imagine was relief. Her fist was pressed up against her chin as she thought, her tiny body hunched over the table. From a distance, she probably looked like a schoolkid pondering the difficulties of their math homework, but I was seeing her up close. She was ugly, uglier than anything I'd ever seen. Her skin appeared both leathery and powdery like an elephant hide that had lain in the dirt below a blazing sun. Her makeup was smudged across her face while her eyes were enjoying every second of watching her husband's head.
I was numb. I never liked Schiele but I didn't want him dead. All he had to do was hand over that case and none of this would have ever happened. All he had to do was not be afraid of me. But I couldn't blame him for being scared. Everyone was. They had reason to be.
"Is it true what you said about the forums?" I asked Cynthia.
She had disappeared into a dream world and was staring into her husband's gummy eyes like he was the love of her life. He looked like meat now. His eyes reminding me of a school trip I took to an abattoir. We saw the discarded cow heads lined up and their eyes looked the same, like watery jelly, like you could prod them and they'd burst like an abscess.
"Cynthia!"
She jumped and turned to me like she just noticed I was sitting there.
"Did you hear me?"
Despite what was beside us, she smiled. She actually smiled like we were just two regular folks having coffee and I'd made some boring passing remark that deserved nothing more than a vague, insipid smile.
"Sorry, dear I didn't hear you."
"I asked if it was true about the forums."
"Hmmm..."
She entwined her fingers together and hummed to herself.
"A lot has been said on those things. Of course, a lot of things were said by me!"
She erupted into a fit of giggles and slapped the table. It made Schiele's head jump and his tongue rolled out of his mouth. He looked fucking ridiculous.
"Erm, but yeah. The forums," she continued, straightening herself up and clearing her throat. "Girls had been talking for a long time."
"What girls?"
"How should I know? Just... girls. Everyone has a fake name on these things anyway."
"What did they say?"
"That there was some boarding house for runaway girls and miscreants, drug addicts, prostitutes, that kinda thing. They said the girls from there were disappearing but nobody cared because they were transients. It was like they were expected to go missing."
; "And you knew that... that I..."
"There was mention that it happened to be where you volunteered. Some people thought you were an angel. A rich boy like you with all your genius projects wanting to help these poor, hopeless souls. But one person suggested you were there for a reason."
"I was."
"That you were using the place like a candy shop. Only it wasn't candy wrappers you were discarding. It was bodies."
I leaned forward and grabbed her hand, pulling it toward me. It was so bony it felt like a crumpled bird between my fingers.
"Who said that?"
"Just one person at first. People thought it was madness but it started getting them thinking."
"Who?"
"I don't know who it really was. Their profile name was Childofgod 666 if you could ever believe that."
The name, it meant nothing to me.
"And you spoke on these forums too?"
"At the beginning, I just lurked. I guess you could say I was looking for adventure, something to get my teeth into. The crime novels weren't doing shit for me anymore. I needed the real thing."
"Like a porn addict who starts treading the streets for hookers?"
"Ha! You got it. Anyway, I started to get a real interest in you and these Broadwood girls and well, I knew who you were from Gustav and I couldn't believe it."
"But then you started to."
"I started to want to believe it," she said. "It was just wild. So, of course, I started doing my own digging, talking to this Childofgod 666 and other people."
"What other people?"
"I don't know. They were just names on a screen but they had so much to say. There were other rumors too. Like how there was a pedophile ring in the city, with powerful men and somehow Broadwood was connected to all of it, that the Waters' House was some kinda hotspot."
Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. This weird old lady had done the work of the entire police department on her own and I had no idea.
"Listen, Cynthia. You're clearly very talented at, erm, research. You really know what you're doing but you will never know everything that happened there."
"Maybe one day you could tell me."
"Maybe..."
I'd make sure that day never came.
"But I want you to know one thing. I started off with good intentions. I didn't kill for fun. I killed because it needed to be done. Think of me as an avenging angel."
She squeezed my hand and pursed her lips.
"Aw, you're an angel alright."
Beside us, the flies buzzed louder but the call of the Tricepthial was louder still. I needed to get to work.
"Cynthia. Thank you."
Picking up the case, I gave it a slap of appreciation.
"There are things I need to do now. Things that will bring life back for once instead of taking it away."
"Wait. Let me help you."
"I don't need help."
"Think of me as avenging apprentice," she said, tugging onto my shirt sleeve. "I'll do whatever you want."
Chapter Five
Berger
"Okay, listen. I'm not gay like you but…"
"Usually when people say I'm not gay but... it means they're pretty gay."
I didn't know what to make of that and so just looked at me shoes. To my right, Mercy was resting his giant head into Cooper's arms with his eyes closed. A picture of pure serenity. I patted his head and felt the softness of his mane and suddenly I was overcome with the urge to own a horse.
"So you have a story," said Cooper with his eyebrows raised so high there were deep wrinkles in his forehead.
"Yeah, like... Erm..."
I didn't want to tell him because I'd never spoken a word of it to anyone before, had barely even acknowledged it to myself but at the same time, it was burning to get out. It was doing things to my body just remembering it and hearing Cooper's own lustful tale had set the mood of divulging secrets and hidden desires."
"Just spit it out, boy."
"That's what he said."
Cooper narrowed his eyes and watched me in silence for a second. Then he burst out laughing and I joined him until my stomach ached. It felt good to have that pain again, the pain of happiness. It had been so long since I'd laughed so hard my insides burned. Once I regained my breath and dabbed at my watery eyes, I turned back to Mercy as though I was talking to him rather than Cooper. Although the old man would accept everything I said, I was still embarrassed. I wondered what the words would sound like coming out of my mouth. I'd never heard them before.
"I sucked dick once," I said.
"Oh? And?"
"And... It was nice."
"That's it? It was nice."
"It was rather nice."
He laughed again.
"Rather nice. Well, ain't that a revelation?"
I turned away from Mercy and looked up at the old man's face.
"Okay, it was bordering on being fucking magical!"
"That's it."
"I've kinda always wanted to do it again but..."
"But..."
"I got married to a girl instead and well, you know how it goes."
He let go of Mercy, fed him a carrot then came over to sit beside me on the hay bale. There was a slight warm breeze filtering in through the wooden slats of the wall and the sun was streaming in like threads of gold. It highlighted the muck on the floor but I wasn't noticing the smell of it anymore because I was smelling him. He was as earthy as the farm but there was a human quality to his scent too, masculine sweat and musk. And something else, something almost herbal.
"So, you gonna tell me this story or was that it?"
I paused, breathed, fidgeted with a loose thread on my jeans and shifted my bottom.
"His name was Jason and he was my sister's boyfriend."
"Ooft!"
"And we were all at this family party. Can't even remember what it was now. Think it may have been one of my cousin's graduations. It doesn't matter. Anyway, we were all getting stoned and-"
"A cop getting stoned?"
"It happens," I said. "Besides. I wasn't even a cop yet. I was nineteen and working at Target at the time. Living the dream I was. Anyway, it was getting to that point in the night when people were starting to disappear off home and there was noone but a few stragglers hanging around. My sister had gone to bed with a headache earlier that night. Well, that's what she said but I think she was just having one of her moods. She was prone to them. So anyway, after a while I find that it's just me and Jason out in the garden sharing a joint and a beer and looking up at the stars.”
“My uncle collected old cars and there was this shell of a BMW in the garden. A total wreck of a thing that he insisted he was always going to renovate but never did. Think it's still there. Anyway! We were sat on the hood of this thing with the rust sticking to our jeans to the point I remember babbling about how we were gonna need tetanus shots. It was then that he turned to me and totally casually asked if I wanted to hop in the hot tub."
"Nice," grinned Cooper.
"Yeah kinda smooth now that I think back on it. So I just said yeah because why the hell not? It was a warm summer night and I was a little buzzed. Seemed like a nice thing to do. We headed over and I'm scrambling about nervously dropping my jeans and kicking off my boots. I wasn't a stranger to getting undressed in front of other guys, you know, I played football in high school, but I was still weirdly nervous. I think it was because he was an older guy. Like a proper adult and not just some kid in my class."
"An older guy?" asked Cooper, his eyebrows raised to the heavens once again. "How old?"
"Twenty eight."
"Oh, ancient," he chuckled.
"That felt ancient then! He had a proper job in a bank and everything and a mortgage on a house. I was still trying to save up to buy a freakin' Nintendo. So yeah, I'm shuffling about in my boxer shorts, all skinny and gawky and he's this big dude. Before he met my sister he'd been in the army and fitness was his life. It was something that
kept up his machismo after having to come home and get a normal job. I remember seeing these huge rippling muscles in his back and thinking he looked like a dinosaur."
Cooper scrunched up his face and recoiled back.
"What? Like dinosaurs are sexy?"
"Well no but like, he was just so big and I remember thinking he was like some beast, okay? So I'm all nervous and just about to climb in the water when without a care in the world, he just gets butt naked. Just drops his boxers to the ground and stands there with his cock just looking at me."
"Was it big?"
Cooper was getting some color in his cheeks now and his forehead was all shiny. He was coming out of his shell, becoming his real, happy self as he could actually have the conversation he always wanted to have but couldn't with anyone else.
"It wasn't long but it was real fat," I said.
"Those are my favorite," he replied with a lick of his lips that made my stomach flip.
I was suddenly very acutely aware that he had done things with that tongue that had brought immense pleasure to someone and I found myself, against my inner conflict, wondering what that pleasure would feel like.
"So you get naked too?" asked Cooper.
"No. I just slid into the water and carried on drinking my beer."
"Aaw, spoil sport."
"Shut up."
I shoved him playfully and to my surprise, he giggled. Real weird seeing an old man giggle.
"So he's just watching me and I remember his eyes getting real intense like he was trying to tell me something telepathically. It was that strange and intense. It was then that I saw his cock floating in the water. I say floating because it was hard and it was just sticking out the bubbles like a periscope. He asked me if I'd ever seen a hard dick in real life before and I shook my head. My head was all over the place at this point and my cheeks were on the brink of catching fire but I couldn't look away from this fat as fuck penis that was pointing right at me.”
“Then he started asking me other questions like how often I masturbated and how much I watched porn. He asked me if I ever liked to watch guys fuck each other and I told him I'd never thought of that before. He told me he'd fucked loads of guys when he was in the army and that he still wanted to now. There were butterflies in my stomach pretty much breakdancing at that moment and it was then, when I couldn't get any redder, that he took in a gulp of air and sank beneath the water."
Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series Page 73