by P. J. Vernon
“I said I understand.”
Detective Henning nods and rejoins the others in the drawing room. She still hasn’t told Nathan the truth, but how could I feel any better? Tilly’s missing and my insides retch at the thought that Kristian took her. What he’s planning if he did.
I slam my fist on the counter, try to swallow another wave of tears that come anyway. I’m a rope. A rapidly fraying, unraveling rope. How much is left? What happens when it runs out?
“Oliver?” The front door locks behind the police, and Nathan makes his way to the kitchen. His heavy steps hardly register as I chew over everything. “We need to take inventory.”
What are the chances? Detective Henning asked. Coincidences like assaults and break-ins back to back. But what about Kristian and Hector coming into my life in rapid succession? That’s crazy, but what isn’t about any of this? Is the timing intentional or am I simply losing my goddamn mind?
“We need to let the police know if anything’s missing.” Nathan pauses, swallowing. “Besides Tilly.”
Hector tricked me into telling him where I live. Not an address, but enough to find me. He stalked me in a way Kristian might.
“Did you hear me, Oliver?”
But Kristian has a reason to hide too. To obscure and muddle. To keep his identity masked. Or his location secret, at the very least. Kristian followed me out of Haus’s darkness. He followed me into daylight, snaked into my life like an asp. Taunted and terrorized. Maybe fucked with Nathan’s dog.
“Hey?”
A thought strikes, an inkling, tiny and amorphous. But the way my heartbeat, already quick, races faster says there might be something to it.
“Yeah.” I cough. “Yes, Nat.”
“You wanna start on the third floor?”
The inkling grows, hardens. The app—MeetLockr. It’s where Kristian found me once. A way forward takes shape like molten iron cooling in a mold.
It’s where I’ve decided Kristian will find me again.
26
TYRE, IN
When something bad has sharp teeth in your heart, you’ve got a choice. Let those canines sink deeper and deeper until they kill you. Or tear free—and hurt like hell when pieces of flesh are left behind.
Hector struck my face, squeezed my cheeks as though trying to collapse my skull. But his betrayal was the catalyst for what came next. I used to underestimate how much blood abrupt change can draw. How slippery the slope is from transition to trauma.
Somewhere along an empty Indiana highway, I ran out of breath. On the thinnest of fumes, I slowed to a staggering stumble. One foot on the asphalt. One foot in the dirt.
That’s when I saw it. A young deer—knobby velvet nubs starting to protrude from its skull. Perfectly intact, pristine, beautiful. Save a neat rupture of the belly. A knot of intestine peeked from inside. Steam breezing out marked the carcass as fresh.
Vehicles whirled by every now and again. High beams burning into early morning mist, and I knelt close to vacant eyes. How quick was it? If I step out before a semi can stop, would my insides look the same?
Brakes squealed from behind. I spun to find an old pickup flashing its hazards. A shadow leaned out the driver-side window.
“Got somewhere to be, son?” The shadow drawled like emphysema and sandpaper.
“Yeah,” I called back, not thinking. “Tyre.”
“That’s a long walk.” A featureless face, but his chin gesture was unmistakable: an invitation.
A parade of horrors flickered by in black and white. Rape. Murder. Cannibalism. All of the above and in god knows what order.
“Go on. Get in,” he rasped. I saw no choice. Behind me was pain, and before me was a dead deer and an endless road. I drew a long breath and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Which street?” The truck reeked like raw chicken gone bad as it gathered speed. Something about the way air whistled through his teeth said he didn’t have all of them. Whatever was left, the color of corn.
“Vidalia Avenue.” Highway signs ticked by as though my life depended on it.
“Bad side of the tracks.”
He chuckles. I don’t.
As the distance to town indicated by road signs dwindled from twenty miles to ten to single digits, the vise in my chest began to unwind. He was, in fact, driving me home. Or closer to home. I recast him from Jeffrey Dahmer, eager to stab me, bury me, eat me, and whatever else in some shit cornfield. But what does he want then?
Who picks up young men crawling the highway alone? In the dark? He’d have seen no broken-down car. And folks traveling the shoulder by foot were never in a good place. I needed to decide what this ride was worth and fast.
If he asked me to jerk him off, I’d do it. I’d probably suck his dick too. I wouldn’t let him cum in my mouth. And nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.
“All right.” He pulled over on the corner of Vidalia and Anderson. A block away from home, but I kept my eyes from revealing that to the stranger breathing heavy beside me. I hesitated, still unsure how this was going to play out. Please don’t ask to come inside.
He angled his body toward me, and my heart caught fire.
“I don’t want you to touch me or anything like that.” A streetlamp lit up cheeks as pocked as the road, and for a flash those crooked teeth were filed into fangs. “Just pull your drawers down and let me see.”
Fear tickled my neck with curled fingernails, and I unbuckled with trembling hands, pulled my zipper. The vinegar odor of urine still clung to my jeans as they fell to my thighs. The man began to grope himself through worn coveralls.
“Pull ’em down too.” He nodded to the oversize boxers that joined my pants around my legs. The cold shrank everything, but the man just kept breathing heavy. Mouth clamped shut, air pushing in and out of wide nostrils.
His eyes on my exposed crotch, I fixed mine to the door handle. So close, and so soon, I’d grab it and leave this—all of it—behind. The moment he held his breath was the moment I released mine.
“Get out,” he spat. I scrambled to pull my pants up, my right hand on the sweet coolness of the handle. The longer I dawdled, the longer this stranger steeped in the shame of what he’d just done. “I said get on out!”
I pushed open the door and nearly fell to the pavement.
“Thank you,” I whispered as if gratefulness were still warranted. He sped off the instant the door slammed, and I gathered my footing, shook my head. No doubt I was in shock. What Hector did in the woods dulled what I’d just done in that truck. One of which was not being eaten by corn-colored teeth.
No lights on in our place. Hector was so fucked up; he was undoubtedly passed out by Blaire’s firepit. Come morning, the lucky bastard would have no recollection of this night.
Unlocking the door was a challenge. I was wound so tight any wrong move might snap me in two. On the way to our room, I flipped every switch, cold light exposing our loving home for the rat’s nest it was. Most people would go straight for their clothes. Their toiletries and whatever meaningful items life would be unimaginable without.
I couldn’t imagine life without the contents of a sock drawer in the dresser we shared. When I yanked it open, it rattled like a diamondback. Bottles and bottles and bottles of pills rolled like spinning tops. Oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone. A blister pack of emergency Ativan—to chill the fuck out when we couldn’t scratch the itch with anything better.
I gathered them all into a gym bag. Not really a suitcase, but the only luggage I’d ever owned. I swiped the pad too. Hector wouldn’t say how he’d stolen a prescription pad, and we’d only ever used it with utmost caution.
I put on fresh jeans and shoved a fistful of cotton tees into my bag. Pairs of socks and underwear. My winter coat was already on, and as I started to flip off the lights—to shut t
he door behind me and never look back—I stopped.
Not to reconsider, of course. Or to wistfully take a last flaccid look at the shit home we shared. No, I hesitated because cough syrup with codeine sat on the bottom shelf in the fridge.
I decided not to take it. Hector would need it when he came to, and I’d leave him that much. Not that he deserved it. And maybe I’d leave him something else too. A token so there’d be no mistaking it; Hector would know he’d lost me. No debate. No questions. Case fucking closed.
I shoved the cough syrup aside and left my piss-soaked jeans on that very same shelf.
WASHINGTON, DC
I hold my breath and listen for Nathan downstairs. When the fridge door opens and shuts in the kitchen, I grab my phone and make for the third-floor study.
I scroll for MeetLockr in the app store. In place of a download arrow is a stylized cloud—my data was stored and still easily retrievable. A reminder that nothing deleted is ever gone.
An anticipatory anxiety fills me top to bottom as it loads. My heartbeat grows swift. My palms, a sticky damp.
An undeniable curiosity rises. Through everything, in the face of all that’s unfolded since last Saturday, I’m still interested to learn if I have new messages. Not from Kristian, but from other guys. I hate myself for it, but I’m counting this as a silver lining. I get to have another look.
Have another look? I shake my head. Tilly’s gone, maybe dead. The price of my second look. Silver lining? Fuck you, Oliver. Maybe Kristian’s nothing but an instrument of karmic justice. And the fact that I escaped him once already? Another universal mark against me because the wicked are undeserving. Whatever I’ve lost and whatever I’ve yet to lose are all undeserved.
MeetLockr appears, no longer hidden inside a fake vault app. Instead, the orange-and-black icon sits pretty between Gmail and the weather. Like it appears on millions of phones. Gays with nothing to hide and full of pride.
I swipe it open but haven’t truly gamed this out yet. I have a plan, sure, but it’s more like the talking points of a plan rather than detailed machinations. A vague outline. I know what I want, but little else. I have a beginning and a desired end. The middle? An uncertainty. A foggy bog laden with quicksand and razor traps and venomous mist. I’m navigating it blindfolded.
My profile appears just as it had before. As if nothing had changed.
A ping chimes for my unread messages. Dozens of them and all collected since I last swept the app into my phone’s dust bin. I open one after another, and the knot in my chest comes undone one sinewy thread at a time. They’re all strangers. Some faces. Some headless torsos. Some crotch shots. Nothing from Kristian or the ! he masquerades as.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Do this. Confront.”
I tap Account Settings, then Name. Currently it reads O. Not terribly creative, but it did the trick of both hiding my name and providing a double entendre. O is for Oliver, O is for orgasm.
I type the rest: Oliver. I even add a P for good measure. Oliver P.
Next, I thumb over the profile pic slot. The camera activates, and my face stares back. I draw in breath, deep and hot.
Confront. Hollow eyes. Bagged and dark against the pallor of my face. I angle the camera until my bruises, still painfully evident, vanish out of frame. And then I glower, boring into the tiny lens as if to make eyes with each and every gay man on MeetLockr, one most of all.
I unclench my jaw, smirk, and snap the photo.
Just like that, Oliver P joins the sea of faces and torsos and landscapes and bulges. All thirsty to have and be had. Likewise, I’ve skewered myself, braided my writhing body through a razor-sharp hook, and cast the line. Now I wait for Kristian to find me. To feel peckish. To take a bite.
When he does, steel will sink into his flesh for a second time.
The shower stops, and the ensuing silence suggests Nathan’s toweling off. I flip to Privacy Settings.
The PIN for “Oliver’s iPhone” has been successfully reset.
From here on, I need to be even more careful about where and when I leave this. Nothing’s more damning than a password change.
So much of Kristian remains unknown, but at the same time he’s predictable. Patterns work both ways. Kristian can’t resist because he plays with his food. He’s a cruel cat pawing at a wounded sparrow. He’s been toying with me for a week now. It’s why he let it go so far in his rented room at Haus. The kissing, the fondling. Skin contact, the perspiration on our bodies mixing and melding. But Kristian’s about to discover he crossed a line with Tilly. My teeth grind.
Kristian’s food is about to bite back.
27
Early evening, I sit uncomfortably in the breakfast nook. A square of cardboard covers the missing door pane perfectly. Cut by an X-Acto knife with a surgeon’s precision. Just outside it rests a lawn bag, filled with sharp glass and waiting to be taken to the alley bin. Nathan—who never leaves garbage—has left it for me. Your crucifixion, I imagine he thought. Carry your own goddamn cross.
A gulp of beer and Nathan appears as I set a sweaty bottle on the table.
“Coaster?”
“Sorry.” I walk to a kitchen drawer. One cork coaster later, I reclaim my chair.
Nathan’s fixed his eyes on me since entering the kitchen. They bear down; I sense them in the same way all creatures know when they’re being watched. The same sensation that tap-danced down my spine in the Metro station. On the train. At Trance. The feeling I’d chalked up to paranoia until Kristian materialized inside our home.
Now I feel it again as Nathan glares from across the room.
“What?” I finally ask. The edge in my voice surprises even me. If Nathan’s taken aback, his stoic face betrays nothing. He’s the person I’m closest to. He’s seen every part of me inside and out, and he’s the person I can never seem to read.
A heavy stack of paper falls to the counter with a thud. “Missing posters. For Tilly. Phone number, her info, a reward.” Something in his voice raises my hackles. An unsettling little thought pricks. He didn’t come down here to talk about Tilly.
Quiet drops like a thick curtain, then: “Question for you.”
I cringe, clench my gut. I don’t like questions. Questions are frightening. I gulp my beer, stiffen my spine, and brace.
Nathan reaches into the back pocket of his jeans. As he retrieves whatever the something is, seconds stretch into seemingly endless expanses of time. I have no idea what he’s fishing for, but it’s a threat.
And then I see it.
Pinched between his thumb and forefinger is the wallet-sized picture of Mom. My heart sinks. Blood falls from my face, down my body, pools in the soles of my feet. I’ve made another mistake.
Nathan delicately rests it atop the stack of Tilly posters. He knows how much the photo means to me. He’s careful with it. He treats it with the deference of a religious relic.
“Your wallet was stolen.” Succinct. To the point. I’m grateful for this because each word impales me on spiked vowels and razor consonants. One after another.
A frightening silence creeps through the air, blooming poisonous black flowers. I have nothing to say. Watching Nathan produce the photo from his pocket grinds thinking to a hard stop. Even I, good, swift liar that I am, can’t conjure an explanation. Nothing I say will keep my lies intact. To refute what he knows. What he thinks he knows.
“Your wallet was stolen,” he repeats for good measure, “and you won’t believe where I found this.”
I edge forward in my seat, attempt to stall. “I took it out when I went—”
“You’ve never taken it out. Never. Not once.”
“What are you saying? That my wallet wasn’t stolen?” Self-preservation kicks in. I grow defensive, accusatory. I wrap myself in a shroud of offense. “That I lied about being mugged? Have you seen my
throat lately?”
“Went down to the cellar to account for anything a burglar might’ve taken,” Nathan says. He grazes the tiny photo with his finger, then taps the counter. “Realized I forgot to shut down the furnace for summer, so I did. Checked the flue by making sure our vents weren’t sooty.”
Fuck.
“I know you keep this in your wallet, which you said was stolen when, strangely, you went jogging with it. And on second thought, maybe you would believe where I found this.”
“You calling me a liar?” The question sours like curdled milk, and Nathan undoubtedly sees me wince.
“Whether or not you lied about the wallet, you did lie.”
“Yeah? How so?” Still couched in defensiveness, I bite the inside of my cheek and taste wet iron. My cigarettes too. The pack was almost empty, I think, but did I finish it off? Was it still in there?
Nathan’s thumbs dance across his phone, and the whole kitchen draws dark.
I swallow. Has he found out about MeetLockr? Already? Jesus, my face has been posted for a matter of hours! Well, if he has, Nathan—stalwart, well-adjusted, always-makes-the-right-decision Nathan—was on the app too. Like Mormons bumping carts in the liquor store, to challenge me on this implies a stunning confession on his part as well.
Unless he was only lurking.
“The cigarettes,” he starts, and I’m confused again. I have no idea where this is going, and there’s an element of relief in this. “You told me you bought a pack of cigarettes after the attack. You told me you smoked one and tossed the rest.”
“Yes.” My jaw clenches so tight its hinges might snap. “I did.”
He flips the screen of his phone my way. It’s a bank statement of some kind. He’s standing too far away for me to discern any of the numbers, but it’s not our bank’s mobile app. That screen is wreathed in neon blue and hot orange. The app on Nathan’s iPhone is lime green. I squint and make out a logo at the top: Wealth Wallet.
“You didn’t charge any cigarettes this month.”