What Lies Within

by Clare de Lune

  She took out her old key and inhaled dampness and mold even before she opened the apartment. At least this place was familiar to her. She held her breath and opened the door. It was just as it was, but someone had covered the furniture in white ghostly sheets. But she did not make herself comfortable there. No. She pulled open the balcony French doors.

  It was here she'd sit.

  She’d wait for him.

  Sometimes she wanted to vanish into thin air and live and be in a place just like this. Leave her apartment and her life and the business and walk right out the door. But she felt chained. Claude was right. She was untamable.

  She hugged her knees close and stared up at the sky, which looked painted in the polluted Louisiana sunset. Birds dipped in and out of the airstream, and she thought about how much she envied them: prisoners of only the wind, free to go as they pleased. She wanted to disappear into the sky or the ocean and let the vastness swallow her. She wanted to leave behind memories of Claude, of him telling her what to do all her life. That was why she came here: to get away from it all, to carve a new path for herself. Now Claude was sneaking around, threatening to destroy things for her. He could not let the business be co-owned like that with her independence. It wasn't working for him anymore.

  She hoped the fire would bring him out, make him admit his mistakes, teach him a lesson.

  Speaking of lessons, she thought to herself. Paul is trying to teach me one right now. He wants to see what I'll do. He's jealous. That's good. She smiled to herself. She was getting to be like her mother now.

  She went for a walk to a pay phone (it turned out to be a long walk. Pay phones were scarce these days) and pulled out a card. She dialed Ti's number so she could check on the cat. And not look suspicious. It was good to check in on things, just in case that rat Black was keeping tabs on her. She was sure he was.

  The line rang and rang and Sophia almost hung up, but Ti's voice caught her in time. Voicemail. She left a short one and said she'd call back later that evening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ti: Erase It All

  Ti heard her phone ringing in her jacket pocket, but all she could do was stare at the man in front of her. Who the hell is this? Sophia didn't say anything about someone else being here.

  "Who are you?" she asked, her voice barely a squeak.

  "I should ask you the same thing," said the man. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an impressive Glock 9. Ti had seen them carried around New Orleans many times, especially after Hurricane Katrina. "And I'll tell you more about myself, just as soon as you hand over that cell phone, sugar."

  Ti recognized him then. It was the guy who always came into the coffee shop. He looked a little bit different now: blond hair slicked back, stubble growing out a little bit, but those intense blue eyes burned back at her, devoid of any hints of emotion and sanity. This was the guy who wanted to videotape Tamara and her friend. Hard, stinging icicles jabbed into Ti's spine and the hair on her arms stood straight up. This guy was bad news. Why the fuck didn’t I say anything to Black? She decided to keep her mouth shut as long as possible. She did as he instructed and slowly removed the phone out of her pocket and placed it on the coffee table in front of the man. Jo hissed from inside her carrier.

  The man nodded toward the carrier. "So, who are you and what do you have in there? Anything that's going to kick my ass?"

  "No. Just a friend's cat. The person who lives here has one, too. I was coming by here to pick him up and drop them both off at a friend’s place."

  "Oh yeah? The friend thinks you’re coming by, huh? Why’d you bring the cat up here? Planning to stay awhile?”

  “No, I—I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

  “What are you, some kind of cat sitter?"

  Ti knitted her brow. "No. I just got stuck with them." She carefully eyed the man. What is going on here? If he was some kind of robber, he wouldn’t have been sitting right there on the couch. It seemed as though he was waiting for someone. The boyfriend, she thought with a strange, sinking feeling. She had never seen Sophia with this man, so how were they connected? Or were they?

  "Ha! So Sophia sends you to do her dirty work. Manipulative little bitch." The guy shook his head and considered Ti. He smirked. "I recognize you. You work for Tamara."

  "Yes," was all she could say. The thought of fleeing the apartment crossed her mind, but this guy would shoot her in the back. What did Tamara say his name was?

  "Paul," she said without thinking. Paul casually pointed the gun at her.

  "How did you know my name?"

  "Uh, well," she stammered, trying to think of a way to flatter him. "Everyone at the coffee shop thinks you're cute."

  "And you?" He was teasing her. She wondered if she'd die here on the carpet tonight. Paul smiled at her. "Tell you what. You don't have to answer. Just start by taking your shirt off."

  Ti felt her bottom lip tremble as she recalled the things Tamara had told her. She did not know how this man was involved with Sophia, but he had a gun and there was no way out. If she whirled on her feet and scrambled out the door, she would be shot in the back. Someone will hear me scream, she thought, but it would be too late. Something told her that this guy was at his wit’s end and was racking up the evil points before someone caught him.

  "Girl, if you do not take that shirt off right now, I'll blow a hole in your head and take it off myself. Now." The angry clip in his voice made her jump.

  Ti had been crying and she could barely see Paul now through the cloak of wetness. There was nowhere to turn now, and she could think of absolutely no solution since this asshole had a gun pointed at her. The only thing she could think of was to play along and hope she'd get a fair shot at his balls or an opportunity to bite his dick off. She took off her shirt, shaking all the while.

  "You kind of look like a little boy, you know that? And you're too skinny. Sickens me, actually. Look at those ribs."

  Ti shut her eyes as she took off the rest of her clothes. She did this because it dawned on her: to her right, near the door, was an old sewing machine. It had a door and a space where the foot pedal was, and that’s where the knife with the impressive blade was stashed away. Ti remembered straining her eyes because she wasn’t sure if that dried brown crust was blood or some sort of food. It was one of many things she found that disturbed her: the weird autopsy book, the files she’d found on Sophia’s computer. But the large hunting knife would come in pretty handy right now. If only she could get the gun away from Paul.

  And if only she knew more about him. The only things she could think of: narcissistic, masochistic, probably Sophia’s boyfriend or some other jealous fuck. And that his house smelled funny and he wanted to videotape Tamara and her friend. This is why I’m glad I’m gay. That was pretty much the only thing that made doing what she was about to do a little bit better. Robert Black popped into her mind and she kept him there. Stupid, but not a bad person. I can do this.

  She stepped out of her jeans and waiting for him to make the next move. He put the gun on the couch in close reach. Ti would have to wait until he was in a more precarious situation (inside me-she almost vomited at the prospect and almost wished she’d been drugged first). He came to her and she glanced up at him momentarily. It was like looking into an animal’s eyes: no empathy, only out for blood. She was his prey. He was going to kill her. He outweighed her by at least one hundred pounds and was all muscle and callused hands. I am going to fucking die in this bitch’s apartment.

  He pushed her down on the carpet and pinned her shoulders. She felt spiky tendrils of carpet edging into her skin. He was like a dead weight and Ti thought this was what it was probably like being buried alive. She began to hyperventilate and panic under the sheer weight and heat of him. She inhaled his powerful, musky (deathly) scent and she hated it, wanted to vomit it up back at him. Whoever this really was, she was ready to make him stop. She felt him pierce her between her legs, his penis like a knife, and hoped it wo
uld be quick. She would probably have to see this all the way through before she ever had an opportunity to do anything. She knew she shouldn’t struggle just yet but wondered if he would kill her in the process of all this.

  She watched him carefully through her eyelashes as she slowly bent her elbow. Now her hand was just underneath the bottom of the door of the old sewing cabinet. If she moved in slow motion she could ease the door open. Getting the knife without him noticing and crushing her neck would be the hardest part.

  Paul thrust away and Ti bit her tongue against the raw pain between her legs, but she kept thinking about Robert Black. Her hand dusted the bottom of the cabinet door and her fingers pulled, pulled. She suppressed a sob and grabbed. She felt the hard, cool handle of the knife and grasped it as firmly as she could. She stabbed down.

  Then she really did shriek—she wasn’t sure if she’d actually hit him or if he stopped thrusting because he knew what she was up to and was explosively pissed off. She opened her eyes and saw red. It cascaded over her fingers and down her right arm, pooling around her armpit. She screamed again when she saw Paul’s eyes bulging out of his head. His face was crimson and he gurgled. The hunting knife had pierced him in the side of the neck.

  Ti wriggled and pushed to get out from underneath him. As absurd as it was, she was reminded of the time she’d helped John move a giant antique rug—she fell and got caught underneath it. She supposed she had some kind of claustrophobic nightmares about that and would sure as hell continue to have them. Ti pushed herself up. Paul couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to grab for her or pull the thing out of his neck, so he tried to do both. But the couch was close. And so was the gun.

  In that instant as she grabbed the gun, time moved through ectoplasm. She sensed him stand up behind her as she swung the gun around.

  In that very moment, he seemed poised like a mannequin, his joints locked up: one arm reaching towards her, one bent and pulling at the knife in his neck. Then, his head divided. She never remembered actually hearing the shot. She felt heat, smelled smoke. But he still stood there.

  She swore it was five minutes before he finally fell over.

  The rest seemed easier, almost as if she was having a lucid dream, watching everything like a bug on the ceiling. She ran to the kitchen. She wiped some of the blood off, but not too much. God, I want a shower. No. She would not look in the living room, either. Blood pooled all over the carpet, forming a dark halo around Paul’s head. It also stuck to her like some weird sticky concoction of melted ice cream. She could feel jism trickling down her legs and imagined it still in there, swimming around, trying to connect with her egg. She could taste blood in her mouth, coppery and thick like some kind of warm sludge left in a broken refrigerator.

  She stared at his body, his innocent-seeming face, now calm with death’s touch. Innocent, sure. He most certainly killed his fair share of women.

  She didn’t feel bad for what she’d done.

  I hate being a woman, she thought. It was a ridiculous thought and she was ashamed for having it. Was Tamara so valuable to her because she was the “other” gender? Tamara was neither a judging straight woman nor a misogynistic gay male, not a lusting lesbian or straight man. Tamara was somewhere on another world, and safe. Not like the demon spread out on Sophia’s living room floor.

  The hard reality hit her, like swallowing a bitter pill sideways: I fucking killed someone. By now, someone has probably heard the shot and called the cops. Yet she stalked into Sophia’s office with the green disc, careful not to get blood all over the computer. She waited until it finished its duties before she called Black.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sophia: Do You Love Me?

  The French Quarter buzzed with a bit of light activity, fairly busy for a Wednesday night. A guy with long hair parallel parked his Camaro across the street. A couple walked by and peeked in the occult shop window down below. Someone hollered over on Decatur and a lone saxophone could be heard somewhere in the distance. Sophia spent a lot of time out here as a kid. The balcony was a calm, warm retreat from the cool confines of the interior of the house. This was the only house they'd return to on occasion. The rest of the places they inhabited had been burned down or completely vacated, and she never saw them again. This was the house she grew up in, her mother’s house. Nothing about it had changed. Like her mother, frozen in time, so was this place. The same paintings hung on the walls, the same furniture, never rearranged.

  Sophia's mind whirled through the house, almost like an out of body experience, back in time, to her bed. How she wished she could just sink down into that bed, into some kind of time/space oblivion where she did not have to think about life after mother died. Everything had changed then. Well, before then. When he came and ruined everything. Claude. He had come back because he loved Mother so much, hadn't he?

  But she just died. How? She never figured it out. They said heart failure. She'd died in bed.

  That bed. Sophia slept in it, thinking her mother would be there in the morning when she woke up. But she would not sleep there tonight. Once when she had, she woke up in a sweaty fit, her heart galloping: she thought they were coming, a whole herd of them, the filth and the bad. They came in a mad rush, their mouths twisted in agonizing disgust at her cumulative actions of murder, vanity, and her macabre version of revenge on humankind. It was all those she'd killed. They were there with knives, ready to torture her. She was comfortable with death—that was the end of it all, the big sleep. She was not so comfortable with torture. You really felt pain when you were alive and she already knew that from the experiences of her victims. That was why she hated the bed so much. Seeing it was like torture. Bad things happened there.

  She tensed. The memory always came to her before he did.

  “Bad girl,” she heard him say. He seemed so close and she could feel his warm breath on her neck. Warm and wet like the humidity. It was like this down here after a good rain.

  “You always run away from what you really are. And you're not supposed to play with fire. Tsk tsk.”

  “And what is it you think I'm running away from?”

  She could barely make out his silhouette lounging in the frame of the French doors.

  She knew what he would say before he even said it. "Our business. Everything we've worked so hard for, darling." And now she felt that cold leather glove, its dead-like texture against her skin. The glove caressed her ear where the breath was earlier, tracing the cords in her neck.

  “We always have to start over like this,” he murmured.

  “Not this time. I want out. You're all burned out, Claude," she snapped. The cold dead leather gripped her neck and she imagined that rigid hand as a scythe, slicing all the delicate tendons there. She put her hand around his wrist and coughed.

  "I know why. I've been following you, as you've probably gathered. You stopped returning my phone calls. What else could I do?”

  "The cops know you're responsible for everything,” she strained to answer. “You're going to get caught, just as I said you would. You kill me, the cops will still be looking for you. I told them everything, about how you made me do all this."

  Just then, the vice did grip her, and she gagged.

  I could try to scream. This is the French Quarter. Someone will hear me.

  “I…have…a…journal…” she stammered carefully through Claude’s grip. “I've written down everything you've done. The cops have it.” A lie, but worth a shot. Her mind flashed over to Paul snagging the journal after he sliced the prostitute’s neck. Where are you now, Paul?

  “You burned down my warehouse. How is that going to help you, darling?”

  I wish he'd stop calling me darling.

  She tightened her jaw at that. She twisted her face as much as she could and opened her mouth wide. It was hard to bite through the leather, but she managed to chomp down enough as Claude hollered and yanked his hand away. Sophia immediately reached down and withdrew the .25 from her boot. Thank God f
or strippers with stalkers, Sophia thought.

  Claude held up his hands. They stood like this for what seemed like hours, and Sophia could feel the hard handle of the .25, which was now soaked by her sweaty palms.

  I have to do this. It's the only way.

  "Now, open your mouth for the last time, shithead," Sophia ordered. "You're going to kill yourself tonight."

  "So. You're going to kill your own father."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Oh yes, darling. Everything you do and know, it comes from me. What are you going to do without that connection?”

  My father?

  It came crashing down in some kind of morbid blend of reality and nightmare, too obvious to wake up from, too horrific to believe. It made sense though: their similarities in appearance, that inborn trait to kill, the haunting, emotionless eyes…these were all things Sophia shared with Claude. Claude laughed softly as if he could read her thoughts.

  "That's right," he cooed. “Still want to kill me? Or shall we continue our little family reunion?"

  Everything stood still for a moment, but Sophia still clung to the gun. She could feel a droplet of sweat crawl down her back. She could smell her own body odor mingled with Claude's, like days before, and could smell a snot-yellow sickness still brewing inside his skull. The ache in her belly rolled again, taking on a new life, and Sophia imagined it eating every bit of pulpy tissue inside her, relishing her twisted nerves and savoring the blood. She swallowed hard. A common house gecko caught her eye and she felt distracted by its presence. She'd always hated the things, their transparent skins displaying obvious organs, so fragile. Sophia felt a strange connection to it now. Its vulnerable black-coal eyes rolled up at her, knowing.