CHAPTER 22
When I wake up, I feel as if days have passed by, and maybe they have, because I can’t open my eyes. I also can’t feel my legs and arms. I feel suspended and numb. But I hear footsteps, constant footsteps coming to and from where I am.
“Good, you’re awake.” Cold water is splashed in my face and my eyes open, and the numbness I felt disappears. I look down and I’m strapped to a piece of wooden block by leather straps around my ankles and my legs, and my forearms and wrists. I’m completely naked, and have no idea where I am, but where I am is cold, and dark, and smells like mildew.
“Where the fuck am I?” I say, barely being able to get the words out of my mouth.
“You’re at my home. Well, let me correct myself. You’re in the basement of my home, far below the surface. You’re probably wondering why I have you tied up like you are. That’s a question I’ll have to answer myself. But know that everything’s okay. That I’m not going to hurt you. I simply want answers from you, and then you’ll be set free. Like a bird.” He says, wiping my face with a cold washcloth.
“Where’s Ashley?” I look down and my body is perfectly clean, no cuts or bruises. But I’m shaven. My pubic hair is gone, my chest hair, and my leg hair is all gone.
“Ashley is resting for now. She’ll wake up soon, and then you two will leave. First question. Why were you following me?”
“I told you, we were just fooling around. We saw you there and we thought it’d be fun. I had done something like it in college. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Second question. When you heard me in the bar, what did you hear me say?”
“What bar?” I ask.
“The bar in England. Where I met the girl. The one with the waitress who sweats too much. You know which one I’m talking about.”
“We heard somebody looking at photos of her. Saying that she would be perfect. That’s all we fucking heard. I didn’t know it was you until you just told me now.” I spit down, but my mouth is dry and I miss the floor and the spit is running down my thigh.
“Third question. What would you have done if you had followed me in the city?”
“I don’t know. We lost you when you went down that street. We gave up then, and just went into a bar.”
“You’re telling me the God honest truth now, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m not lying. I have no reason to fucking lie. Now will you get me off of this goddamn piece of wood?”
“Like I said, all in good time. You worry too much. Like you’ll never leave this place. I told you that you would, and I’m always a man of my word.” He picks up a metal box that he has sitting on a desk behind him and opens it. There are knives in the box, of all shapes and sizes, and they all look sharp, and I try to wriggle my way out of the leather straps, but no matter how hard I try, they won’t let go.
“I got these knives off of an infomercial. Would you believe that? I was up late one night and saw this commercial come on, and I thought, why not buy these knives? That’s how they trick you. In your sleep deprived state, you think anything is worth buying. But in all honesty, these have come in handy. I like the part at the end when the woman asks if it can cut through bone, and they pick up the knife and it slices through the turkey bone like it’s nothing. So I started to wonder, how well can it cut through human bone?” He picks up the short knife, with the wide blade and starts looking at it. It’s covered in blood, but it looks dried, days, maybe weeks old.
“I didn’t want to try it out on myself, so I first thought, what’s the difference between human bone and dog bone? Wouldn’t they cut the same? So I went to a kennel and got the oldest looking dog I could find. I’ve always been an animal lover, and this one was happy to get out of the cage. I took him home and then I shot him in the back of the head. I’m not so cruel as to torture an innocent dog, because, dogs are innocent. They don’t know that what they do is wrong or right. They just know what to do by instinct. People know what they do has consequences. But this dog didn’t. After I shot him, I took his leg and I used this knife to cut through it. It took a little more effort than I thought, but it went through surprisingly easy. After that, I took the dog and cooked it, and fed it some of the rats that were in the alley. That way, I wasn’t going against nature’s wish. I was turning flesh into food, and then I fed it to what would eat it. That dog would’ve died in the cage, or been put down. So what I was doing wasn’t wrong, you see?” He puts the knife down, and I breathe a little, but at the moment, I’m really just worried about Ashley and where she is. But my throat is too dry to speak, and I can’t get a word out.
“Are you thirsty? Would you like something to drink?” I nod my head.
“That will have to wait. In this state, where you can’t talk, you mean more to me than if you could. Very rarely do I get people who can’t talk, unless I’ve cut out their tongues. The party you were at, in Oxford, did you have fun there?” I start thinking, and I know he wasn’t there. I never saw him there.
“You looked like you were having fun. It’s a shame you left when you did, otherwise, you might’ve received the same quick treatment Elizabeth and the husband of the household did.” Two people were shot in an Oxford home, and the neighbor said there was a party there.
“You see, I’m just an observer. That’s all I do. I observe and I take in what I see. I used to be like you all were. I used to do drugs and drink, but I did them all in the privacy of my own goddamn home. Unlike you dumb fucks who go out in public and do them, and let your inhibitions go. Then you end up dead, overdosed on some drug you just started taking. And then the ambulance comes and takes them away in little black bags.” He gets a chair from behind the desk and puts it in front of me.
“I liked you at first. You didn’t take the drugs, you just worried about your girlfriend. I thought that maybe you were different, that you weren’t interested in doing the drugs, but that you just wanted to keep watch over her. I thought that was very noble of you. I liked that about you. But then you disappointed me at the house in Oxford. You were doing lines, and then you ended up fucking the wrong girl. If you’re wondering how I know all this, it’s not because I was there. It’s because your friend, Rachel, talks a lot. She’s got a big mouth. She blabbered on and on about how you were fucking her instead of your girlfriend, and how good you were. And how she wished she could’ve fucked you again. I almost threw up thinking about it. Because I thought, how could this guy, the guy I met the night before, the guy who’d turned down drugs and looked for his girlfriend become this fuck up so quickly? Then I realized that you were always a fuck up. You had just put on a mask for the night I met you. Then you took it off when I wasn’t around. You’re the first person that’s done that to me. Disappointed me like that. I got so upset that I went and put a bullet in Elizabeth’s head because she was the one who gave you the drugs in the first place. I thought, how could she do that? How could she ruin you like that? Then I realized that it wasn’t her that ruined you, but you that ruined you. And you’ve been ruined for some time.” I try to break free of the leather straps but he’s got them tied so tight around my arms and legs I can’t move them and I can’t move my fingers or my toes.
“So here I am, just thinking of what I can do to rectify this mistake. What can I do to turn around what I did in killing Elizabeth? She was a whore in the first place. A whore and a pusher, and she would’ve died on the streets at some point any way. Or some guy would’ve killed her. But luckily, that guy was me. Still, I felt bad about what I did, so I met with Rachel later that week, and we talked on and on about you. I told her that I knew you from America, which was a lie, but she was dumb enough to believe it. She asked if I knew some girl named Rebecca, and I told her I did, but that I never really spoke to her. Then she asked if I knew someone named Patrick, and I said no. That’s when she said he was your best friend. That he killed himself after he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him. I felt so bad for him. I truly did. Because that’s what happens when you put your trust in people. You should only put your trust in yourself. Because people will fuck you over and let you down. She said he blew his brains out all over the mattress. When she was telling me this, I knew I should’ve felt sorry for you, somewhat, but for the life of me, I couldn’t. You had fucked me over so badly a couple nights before that I had no pity for you. So Rachel drank the cream soda, like you and Ashley did, and she’s around here. Sleeping. With the rest of them.” I’m starting to feel dizzy, and he pours something into my mouth, and tells me to rest some more.
Cold water is shot at me through a hose and I wake up, and now I’m in a cell, or what looks like a cell. It’s got bars and concrete, but it looks more comfortable. There are bloodstains all over the ground and there’s a bed there that looks brand new, and even a toilet and a shower.
“Wake up, dumb fuck.” Daniel says, and I’m lying in the middle of the floor, still naked, still shaven, but now I have shackles around my arms and legs, so I can’t move at all.
“We’re going to take a tour. A tour of my basement. How would you like that? Nod once for yes, nod twice for you have no choice.” I don’t nod at all.
“Very good then, let’s get you moving.” He opens the cell door and hooks something around my neck that feels like a collar, and he keeps his hands on my arms, even though they’re shackled up.
“On this tour, you are not allowed to speak. Only I am allowed to speak. You will follow where I tell you to go, and if you do not listen, you get shocked. If you speak, you get shocked. It’s very simple. See.” He presses a button and I feel an electric wave shoot through my neck and down my spine.
“That is its lowest setting. It’s actually a shock collar for bears in the circus. I got it from a guy who was selling them after one of his circus bears had died. It was very sad. The middle setting will paralyze you for life, so let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. All you have to do is listen and follow. Listen and follow. Easy, right? Nod once for yes.” I nod. “Good. On with the tour.”
He pushes me forward through a door that has about eight different locks on them, and he has the key for each lock. It’s a steel door, and it looks bulletproof, sound proof, life proof. When he finally gets the last key in, he opens it up and pushes me inside where it is pitch dark and I can’t see anything, but I can smell flowers, or potpourri, and it’s a heavy smell. Behind me, he shuts and locks the door, and flicks a switch. In the room, there are about eight bodies, all lying on the floor, all very neatly kept and all well dressed, and taken care of. They actually look like they’re sleeping.
“This is my collection. I hope you like it. I bathe each girl every day, and shave and put her in new clothes each day. So in a sense, she never really dies. It’s more or less like she’s just taking a break from life. Take for example, my last addition to the collection. Her name, as you know it, is Rachel. But down here, her name is Samantha.” I look at her, and her eyelids are shut and she’s dressed in a very nice summer dress, one with floral patterns that she would never wear. The only thing that makes her not look like her is the long scar along her neck, which has since been sewn up.
“Samantha was a girl who was beaten by her father. So she escaped from home and ended up in Germany, and she became a waitress, working eighty hours a week to make it by, living in an apartment by herself. She had one boyfriend, who ended up leaving her, and then her cat also left. So she was all alone. You’re probably asking yourself at this point, why her name is no longer Rachel. Why she has transformed into Samantha. It is because in her original state, being the whore she was, I feel no pity for her. I feel nothing but hate, and once I’ve killed her, I’ve taken that part of her away. She can no longer be a whore or a druggie; she can only be what I make her.” I feel like I’m about to throw up, but I haven’t had anything to drink or eat in what feels like forever, but he keeps pushing me along. “Samantha and I have dined together twice this week. She likes her steaks cooked medium, which bothers me a little, but what can you do? She’s a very sweet girl. Really nice. Very well mannered.” We move on and the next girl is a blonde, and she’s wearing a skirt and a t-shirt, and she looks a little worse off than Rachel does. Her body is decomposing a little, but you can’t smell it because of the bleach he has in the room.
“This, my friend, is Alex. Alex is a church going type of girl, she loves her parents, and she’s a very nice girl as well. Only, sometimes she’ll rebel against her parents and stay up later than she’s supposed to. But she rectifies this by cutting herself. That is the way she repents for her sins. I told her she didn’t have to do it anymore, now that she’s living down here with me. Alex prefers flounder, and always requests we listen to Miles Davis when we’re eating. Which doesn’t bother me, and it doesn’t do anything for me either. I think the man is a very good jazz musician, and I have a lot of respect for him, but outside of that, I wouldn’t listen to him unless I’m eating dinner with her.” I look down at her neck and it’s slit the same way Rachel’s was, sewn up neatly. If you didn’t know they were dead, you would just assume they were sleeping. I start shaking, and my body can’t stop. I’m going to pass out if I don’t eat something soon, but then if I eat something, chances are, I’ll throw it up.
“I see you’re feeling a bit queasy. This is understandable. You’re the only person I’ve ever taken on this tour, so you’ll have to excuse my rude behavior in not caring for your well-being. I have spent a long time taking care of these women, and I would like to say they are my trophies. But like all awards, eventually, they become worthless, once they start to decompose to the point where they can’t keep it together anymore. It’s then that they take a visit to the incinerator, and are left in for five days, until all of the skin is melted off of their bones and they no longer have a face, or any distinguishable features. Except the bones that once kept them together.”
I’m beginning to get dizzier and dizzier and the faces of all the women in the room are starting to blend together, and he picks me up, and sends a shock through my body that wakes me up and I fall to my knees.
“Get up. I’ll let you rest in a moment. I want to show you my first part of the collection. This is my proudest accomplishment.” He walks me to a room in the back of the big room, and he turns on the light, where a woman is encased in glass, like Sleeping Beauty, only this woman is grotesque. Her features are distorted, and she’s very unattractive, and that’s saying a lot, seeing as she’s been dead for a while.
“This was my teacher in High School. Her name is Lisa, but I always call her Mrs. Jones, no matter what. I must respect the dead. She can no longer have dinner with me, for fear of broken bones. But sometimes I’ll come down here and sit beside her and have something to eat, and we’ll talk about the weather. You see, Mrs. Jones was my first kill, and the only person I’ve killed that I didn’t kill out of anger. She wasn’t a whore, or a drug pusher, or a prostitute. She was just a teacher, and she was one of the best teachers a boy could ask for.
After I graduated high school, we would run into each other at the grocery store, her and her boy, and we would talk about how I was doing, and how she was doing, and then move on about our day. But one time, when we ran into each other, I could tell that something was wrong. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and although she wasn’t naturally beautiful by any means, her personality definitely made up for it. We sat down and she started telling me about these horrid nightmares she had been having. Ones where her son was being killed in front of her, and one where her husband cut her open from the middle of her chest, and pulled out what he called “a better version of her.” She was so upset, and I had no idea what to do. She said she had seen therapists and psychiatrists and that she had gotten on medication, but none of it was helping. In fact, some of the medication was making it worse. She told me then that she wanted to die, that she wanted to kill herself. She said she didn’t know how, but that she was going to do it. She left, and I called her that night and invited her over to my house. I gave her a glass of cream soda, like I did you and Ashley, and she passed out. When she was out of it, I slit her throat, and she woke up in the middle of it all, trying to scream, but blood just kept pouring out of her throat. All the while this is happening, I feel as if I’m doing her a favor. I’m keeping her soul intact, and when she was finally gone, I looked down at her and she was smiling. I cried for an hour or two, and then put her in this glass case, to keep her as preserved as humanly possible, as I see that she is the only one of my collection who deserves it.”
We walk out of that room and he puts me back in the cell, and takes off only the shackles on my legs, then tells me to back up to the cell wall and he’ll undo the arms.
“I’m sure what you just saw is hard to understand. If I was you, I might find it sickening, and I might think of me as a terrible person. Going around, killing random people. But what you don’t know is that these people deserve to die. How many people would they have killed if I hadn’t killed them first? Take Rachel for example, with all of the ecstasy she gave people, somebody was bound to overdose eventually, and then their death would be on her conscience for the rest of her life. If you think of it, I’m doing them a favor. I’m stopping them from having a guilty conscience. I can let them sleep, forever and ever, without a bad thought to worry them any longer.” I stand up and I drink water from the toilet, because I assume it’s clean. Even if it’s not, it’s better than dying of thirst down here in the cell. I cough a bit, and finally get back my ability to speak.
“So what do you do to the bodies? Do you have dinner with them then fuck them? Hell, if that’s your only intention, wouldn’t it be easier to get a job at the morgue, where the dead bodies would just be rolling in, and you could fuck all of them?” He starts to look a little angry, and then he sits down in a chair in front of the cell.
“I have no sexual interest in them. None of them are less attractive or more attractive than the next. The only thing we share in common is the fact that we’re human beings. Outside of that, I have nothing in common with these women.”
“Why do you only kill women? What about the men that push drugs, or sleep around? Aren’t they as guilty?” I say, sitting down on the bed.
“Yes, and no. You see, women are very fragile. It is woman’s fault we sin, not mans. Adam didn’t take the fruit, Eve did. So as I see it, women are the fuel that make the fire of sin burn. It is their fault, and their fault alone.”
“Then why hate me? Why not kill Rachel and Elizabeth and let it be at that?”
“I hate you because you went against my image of you. Like parents do, when their children become something less than what they wanted. Like a father who wants his son to play baseball, so he buys him a bat and a mitt, and he throws the baseball with him, until the son eventually stops giving a shit, and starts playing video games, or searching for women to fuck. He disappoints his father. So in a way, you are like my son.”
“I never disappointed my father. I never had the chance to. So I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. It sounds like to me that you’re just mad that you can’t get a hard on when a girl in a tight dress walks by, you asexual fuck. You’re just upset that you can’t get your jollies off of looking at a naked woman. Why don’t you just cut your dick off and get the fuck over it, you sick fuck?” Daniel stares at me for a moment, then places something down on the desk that I can’t see from where I am.
“On that note, let me go get your prized possession.” Ashley. This is all a nightmare, soon I’ll wake up and this will all be over. There is no Daniel, and I’m not here. I can’t be here, because being here isn’t where I want to be. I just want to be back at the hotel with Ashley, holding her in my arms and kissing her. I don’t want to believe I’m here, but for the fucking life of me, I can’t shake it. I can’t pretend I’m not here, because I am here. I’m in this cell, with this fucking lunatic on the outside of it, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do.
I hear the sound of rusty wheels being pushed on concrete, and they start getting closer and closer, until they reach the front of the cell, where a stretcher is being pushed by Daniel, with a tarp over what looks like a body.
“Here she is, your pride and joy. Your loving, adoring, perfect Ashley.” He removes the tarp and there’s a body, lying there, naked, still breathing, but asleep. It doesn’t look like Ashley, but the lighting is so dim that I can’t tell. She’s got blonde hair, but her body doesn’t look the same.
“I told you, I was going to save the best for last. You see, in this case, I feel at fault. Because she’s dying for your sins. So in a way, I will have to repent for this sin in some way, shape or form. Or better yet, you can repent for my sin for me. Seeing as it’s your fault she’s here in the first place.”
I start getting dizzy again, and I go to the mattress and sit down.
“Are you okay? Do you need something to eat? I have cake in the other room. Granted, it’s a bit stale as it’s been sitting there for some time. But still, stale cake and an empty stomach is better than no cake and an empty stomach.” I nod at the thought of the cake, and he disappears into the other room and I just stare at the body on the stretcher. What the hell did I do to get us in this mess? I start praying that everything will be okay. That he’ll kill me instead of her. That he’ll let her go.
He comes back in the room with a large slice of cake and a plastic fork, and slides it under the cell. I go for it, and start eating it like a lion would eat a gazelle. Tearing it apart with my teeth and swallowing huge bites of it whole. It is stale, but even stale cake is better than nothing.
“How do you like it? Is it good? Black forest cake. One of my favorites. I had bought it to celebrate Alex last week, but I forgot to cover it up. Silly me. Oh well, at least you’re enjoying it. Now, on to the main event.” He starts pulling straps of leather out of the desk drawers and tying them around her body, in all of the places that she can’t get to. She’s still asleep though, even though he’s tightening the straps pretty tight, and I can see her hands and feet become a light purple.
“Kill me instead. Please. Kill me and let her go. I’ll do anything you want. Just spare her, please.”
“How very noble of you. Wanting to sacrifice yourself for her. Very chivalrous I must say. But sadly, you have nothing to give me. You have nothing in the world I want, but she will pay for your sins, and she’ll pay well.” He picks up a knife and lays it across her throat, and the second he starts cutting, her eyes jolt open and her body starts contorting, and she’s trying to break free, but nothing in the world is going to stop her from dying. And I’m lying there on floor, screaming at the top of my lungs, and she can’t look at me, or know that I’m screaming, but when he gets to the other end of her throat, the contortions slow down a little, and her body goes limp.
“See, easy as that. Nothing bad happened. Just a little bit of blood.” He says, and he smiles at me as he says it. “She won’t remember a thing. And off she goes into the afterlife. Whichever one she goes to is up to her. I don’t know how great of a person she was. That would have to be your call.”
“If I ever get out of here, I’m going to stab you a thousand times in your fucking back, you sick fuck.” I’m screaming at him.
“If you ever get out of here? That’s a bold statement, seeing as I have the only key to the cell.”
I start to get dizzy again, and look down at the cake, and realize that he probably poisoned it. Before I know it, I black out again.
When I come to, I’m lying on the mattress, fully clothed, in different clothes than the ones I was wearing before. The lifeless body is no longer in front of the cell, and for that matter, neither is Daniel, and I can’t hear anything outside of the cell except the occasional movement of a bug or a mouse. Whichever one it is, I don’t care. I just lie there in the bed, and I start crying. I start crying my fucking eyes out, and it’s a build-up of crying. It’s a
build-up from when my parents died, from when my grandparents lost their minds, from when Patrick died, and now, from when Ashley died, right in front of me. It didn’t look like her. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. I’m crying so much that the pillow feels like it was dipped in water, and rung out, then dipped in water again. I feel all of my emotions finally come out, all of the ones I had been hiding since my parents died, all of them just flush out of me, and I start to feel empty. Like the lock on me that had kept all of those bad thoughts and bad feelings had finally been picked, and I’m just a worthless shell of what I once was. I start to punch the wall beside me, but it does nothing but hurt, but the pain feels nice for once, because it lets me know that I can still feel something. That I’m still human. That even in this weakened state, I am still able to do things. I’m still able to feel pain, and sadness, and that’s something I haven’t felt in a long fucking time.
I start to think back about the story I had told Ashley, about the big frog I had seen. And I start to wonder whatever happened to that big frog. Any minute now, I feel like it’s just going to go hopping by the cell, and then it will look at me, and hop away. And then I will finally feel whole again. And my parents will walk by the cell and say they’ll see me in a minute, and then my grandparents will walk by, and they’ll actually know my fucking name, and then Patrick will walk by and make a joke, and I’ll laugh for a minute, and then Ashley will walk by and beckon me to come to the cell so she can kiss me through the gaps. But none of that happens. None of it.
As much as I want it to, as much as I want to will my mind to believe that’s what will happen, I can’t, because you can’t make dreams into reality. You can only dream that your dream is a reality, and then wake up and realize it’s not. And that you’re stuck in the shit life you were before you were dreaming. It seems like hours pass before Daniel arrives back down in front of my cell again, and he has a meal on a plate, and a glass of water in the other hand.
“I see you’ve come to again. You keep on falling to pieces. Then I have to come and put you back together. It’s really vexing to me why this keeps happening. I didn’t poison the cake. I don’t know why you passed out. Maybe it was the sight of all the blood. But either way, that’s over now, so come and eat the food I made. It’s rather delicious. Turkey breast, green beans and mashed potatoes. It’s what you Americans would call an early Thanksgiving, am I right? Only, I don’t have any cranberry in a can, or stuffing, or gravy, so maybe it’s an early light Thanksgiving. Yes, that sounds better.” I look up at him, holding the plate up in front of the cell, then go back to lying my head down.
“Okay, well I see that you’re not hungry just yet. So I’ll just slide it under the cell and you can eat it later. When you’re feeling better. You won’t be here much longer, I promise you. You’ll be free to go in good time. So, no worries. You’re not going to die here. Unless that’s what you want to do. To die in a cell in the basement of a stranger. That is, if you consider me a stranger anymore. But I don’t think you would, seeing as you know everything there is to know about me, and I know exactly how much I need to know about you.”
“I only know that you’re a psychopath who kills and feels good about it. Outside of that, I don’t know anything about you. So you’re still a stranger to me, whether you like it or not.”
He doesn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, and then he sits down in the chair.
“What would you like to know about me?” He says, very inquisitively.
“I don’t want to know anything about you. I just want to know how the fuck to get out of this cell, and get into the room with your collection and slit open all of their stomachs and let their organs pile out onto the floor.”
“You really know how to piss someone off, don’t you? You had me worried there for a moment. I actually imagined you doing that and how upset it made me. It wasn’t until I realized that I still have all the keys to everything, including this cell which is keeping you locked up. So please, don’t make false threats. They’re a waste of energy. In fact, don’t make any threats, because no matter how much you might dream of them coming true, they won’t.” He stands up, and kicks the plate into the cell and the turkey and the mashed potatoes go all over the floor.
“Eat up. You’ll need your strength.” He closes the door and walks back upstairs. Daniel comes back downstairs and he’s got a stereo in his hands.
“I thought you might like some music to go along with your suffering. It’s The Beatles Revolver, and it’s one of my favorite albums. I don’t know if you like it, but to be brutally honest, I don’t really give a shit.” He plugs it up and it starts playing.
It’s loud as hell, and the quality is good, but I feel like I’m listening to the songs for the first time, even though I had heard the album a hundred times before. It goes through “Taxman” and then “Eleanor Rigby” makes me cry a little, and then it goes through a couple more songs, until it gets to “She Said, She Said” and I fucking lose it, because I’m thinking of the ride to Patrick’s funeral, where I had the first line playing in my head on repeat, and I realize how much it would suck if the CD started skipping. “She said, I know what it’s like to be dead. I know what it is