Obsessed

by Rick R. Reed

  Anne sat down on the floor, her legs no longer strong enough to support her. His eyes . . . his eyes. She bit her lip once more and put her hand to her eyes to stop her tears.

  "Whatsa matter? Your hubby not the handsome boy you married?" He laughed again, throwing back his head and laughing until he was gasping, until he gripped his stomach and fell to the floor. Anne noticed he hit the floor with a lot of impact. When he lifted his head she noticed, on one side of his face, the skin had ripped away and the jaw was swelling. He smiled at her.

  "My cock's still the same, Annie. You always loved that." He flipped over on his back and unzipped his pants, pulled them down.

  "No," Anne whispered, scooting away from him. "No, Joe, please. That woman who called me, she said you needed money. Why did you trick me?"

  He laughed again. "My, I suppose my manners have slipped." He waited. "Getting you here under false pretenses."

  He latched onto her ankle. She screamed.

  "Don't scream, idiot. No one can hear you." He reached up further on her leg and used her leg to pull himself up and on top of her. "Now," he said, "now." His long nails scratched her as he reached under her skirt and ripped her panties off.

  "No!" she said, and kicked him, bit his ear. She started to crawl away from him, but felt a crushing blow to her lower back. She collapsed, wincing in pain. He rolled her over and punched her face. "Such a pretty, pretty face . . ." he said, as his fist slammed into her face over and over again. She felt something give way in her nose, then felt a warm rush of blood above her lips. Joe bent down and sucked away the stream of blood coming out of her nose. He knelt above her, her blood ringing his lips, and laughed at her once more.

  She was too numb to feel fear or anything else. He pried her legs apart and forced himself between them. "This will make you remember. Then everything will be all right again."

  Anne turned her head as he thrust into her. His words were those of the old Joe. He sounded sad and pathetic. Crying out at the pain of his penis in her dry opening, she groped for the purse she knew was on the floor, somewhere in the shadows. She peered into the darkness and finally saw the purse, close enough for her left hand to reach. She caught her breath and grasped.

  She had the handle in her hand.

  She pulled the purse toward her, reached inside.

  Above her, Joe stopped suddenly. He pulled his penis out of her. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" His voice boomed, echoed through the empty warehouse. She gripped the wooden handle of the knife, but didn't bring it out. She watched as Joe groped in his trench-coat pocket. What was he doing? Then, even in candlelight, she saw him bring out his old X-Acto knife, and before she had a chance to think or become afraid, the razor was plunging toward her throat, Joe laughing.

  She pulled the knife out and swung it at him. He dropped the X-Acto and reached up to grab the knife from her. The blade sliced his palm and left a sharp gash down his arm as they struggled. He tore the knife from her grasp and flung it into the shadows.

  Joe looked at the blood on himself and his eyes grew wide. He blew out a breath of fetid air. "You little bitch. You hurt me." Before Anne knew what was happening, he had picked up the X-Acto again.

  Joe swung the X-Acto in a wide arc, slashing Anne's face open. It didn't hurt; oh, God, Anne first thought, it didn't even hurt. At last she found her voice to scream as the pain and horror connected in one line of white-hot heat. The blood gushed from her face, rolling into her eyes and blinding her.

  They both stiffened as they heard a cry from the shadows. "Yes! Yes!" The woman's voice was high, almost tittering with excitement.

  As Joe turned to find the source of the voice in the darkness, Anne slid out from under him and ran. Please, she thought, please, let me get away from him. She ran blindly through the darkness, ignoring the scurrying feet of rats and the footsteps now coming heavily behind her. "Annie, wait!" Joe shouted, and she ran, her lungs aching, the blood flowing, thick, onto her face. Good God, good God, let me out of here. Please . . .

  Anne gasped as she ran into the protruding metal edge of something that looked formless and black in the darkness. Ahead she could see a gray rectangle of light. The door. She sprinted, feeling his hands on her back, scratching, ripping at the fabric of her blouse. Pushing on the metal release, she swung the door out and the evening opened up to her. She turned just once, to put all her weight and strength into slamming the door on him. When she heard him grunt with pain, she turned to run. She would make it, she had to make it to her car.

  At the slam of the door, Joe felt himself go over backward. He lay on the floor for a moment, dazed, feeling a tightness in the back of his head where he had struck the floor. Next time, you bitch. Next time, I'll be sure. He stiffened with fright as he heard a whirring, mechanical sound in the darkness. He looked over to see a wheelchair tire next to him. He turned to look up.

  Pat's face, even in the darkness, was seething with rage. "Why didn't you finish the bitch off? Why didn't you? We could have been free, Joe. We could have been free."

  Joe looked at her, getting to his knees. Her face, covered with tears yet hard with rage, looked through him.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The dumb bitch brought money. We could have taken it if you hadn't bungled killing her, asshole. Could have taken it and gone somewhere." Pat lowered her head and sobbed, cursing herself for displaying these emotions in front of him.

  "I didn't know," Joe whispered, feeling numb and confused.

  "I just wanted to make you happy, Joe. I just wanted us to get away from here . . . together."

  Joe wondered if he should get rid of her right

  now. He pictured sinking his X-Acto into that

  scrawny little throat, tickling her esophagus with

  it. How would her blood taste? Bitter. Besides,

  Anne still lived and Pat could help him. Pat could

  still help him in a lot of ways. He put his arms

  around her. "I'm sorry. Next time, I'll make tt ^

  sure.

  He felt, then, Pat prying the X-Acto out of his hand. She held her own hand up in the gray shadows and, with a quickness that surprised Joe, made a cut across the back of her hand. She stared into his eyes, offering him her hand. "Take it, Joe. Take it."

  He took her hand, bringing it to his mouth.

  Pat leaned back in her wheelchair and closed her eyes. "This will bond us," she whispered, but Joe didn't stop sucking. He probably didn't even hear, she thought, but he knows.

  28

  Nick watched as Anne came into the waiting room of Sheridan Road Hospital. She looked better, but not much. They had cleaned away the dried blood that had caked her face. Nick looked for other good signs, but found none. The entire left side of Anne's face was swollen. Her upper lip had grown to twice the size of her lower lip, pulling up to expose her front teeth. The broken nose had left a dent in its ridge, and Nick wondered if the doctors had made any promises about how it would finally look and if Anne would ever be able to model again. Her right eye was a mass of black, yellow, blue, and purple bruised tissue, open just a slit. Nick thought the worst part was the deep razor gash that divided her face in two right below her nose. Nick shook his head and covered his face with his hands. He wanted more than anything to break down and cry. Instead, realizing that if he wasn't strong for her no one would be, he took a deep breath and pushed his anguish somewhere deep inside him. He stood and put his arms around her, giving her support. Her steps were so tentative and weak, Nick feared she would collapse.

  "Are you feeling any better?" he asked as they stepped outside. Across the street, behind some high rises, was the lake. The sun was just coming up and its fire peeked between the buildings.

  'They gave me a shot of Demerol." Her words were mushy from her swollen lip and she looked up at him, a silent plea on her face asking that he not make her speak. *

  "Okay," Nick said, guiding her to his car. "Don't worry about anything. What you n
eed now is rest. I'm gonna take you home and put you to bed."

  Anne looked up at him and nodded, her eyes welling with tears. He stopped just before the car and hugged her, feeling the fierceness of her grip at his back and the spasms going through her as she sobbed into the dark wool of his coat.

  After a while she calmed herself and glanced at the sun coming up over the buildings. She turned and opened the car door. Nick helped her in.

  "Just get a lot of sleep," he said, sliding into the driver's side, "and you'll feel a whole lot better." Nick started the ignition, looking over at Anne. She was staring out the window as if she were beyond feeling or thought.

  She still hadn't told him what had happened.

  When they got to his apartment he led her to his bedroom. There he lifted her and placed her on the bed. She felt limp as he undressed her and put her torn clothing into his hamper. He tucked her in, then lay down beside her, stroking her hair and whispering that he loved her.

  Later, when he thought she was asleep, Nick started to get up. She grabbed him, crying out, and pulled him, with strength he didn't know she had, back down beside her.

  He lay beside her throughout the entire day, while she slept.

  There was the mirror. Look at it, she told herself.

  No.

  Anne sat on the bathroom floor in Nick's apartment, the mirror from the medicine cabinet high above her. Please, I can't look, not yet.

  You must.

  Anne stood on wobbly legs, pulling herself up on the sink. She was trembling. Memories of the scene with Joe played and replayed in her mind endlessly; she had no control. She had closed her eyes, touching the bumps and scabs on her face, wincing at the pain.

  Finally she opened her eyes.

  Electricity rushed through her. She had never imagined it could be this bad. "God, God," she whimpered, staring at her ruined face, staring at her destroyed livelihood, at the mess her husband had wrought on her very perception of herself. She screamed. The scream started low, almost a growl, and raised itself up higher and higher, full of pain, loss, and anguish. Reaching up with one balled fist, she smashed the glass of the mirror, listening to its shatter and the music of the glass as it fell to the floor. She put her bleeding hand to her face, pushing hard against the bruises, making them hurt.

  A pounding at the door. Nick. "Anne? Are you okay?"

  "Go away! Just leave me alone," Anne shrieked. She dropped to the floor again, stretching prone on the broken glass. She sobbed. "Damn you, damn you to hell, you bastard."

  For a long time Anne sobbed, muttering her rage into the broken pieces of herself that lay beneath her. After a while, though, she stopped, and her rage and loss grew cold. Anne sat up at last, drawing her legs up to her chest, encircling them with her arms. She leaned against the tile of the bathroom wall.

  She sat that way, not thinking, not talking, not crying, for hours. She watched the top of the frosted glass window turn from yellow to navy, as the day wound down into dusk. Her breathing went from ragged to slow.

  She stood. Her legs were no longer weak; the trembling had stopped. She felt nothing anymore. Turning, she stooped to pick up the broken glass littering the bathroom floor. Once finished, she turned to the sink and gently washed herself. She no longer felt: the washcloth on her cuts and bruises no longer hurt.

  Nothing hurt.

  She turned toward the window, whispering. "I'll find you. I'll kill you."

  From Joe MacAree's journal (undated):

  Our love is dead. I've killed her beauty now and wish I could be satisfied with that. But I can't. There was a time when the slightest thing, a paper cut, a bump on the head, could bring tears of sympathy from me. Now I long to see that paper cut deepen into a slick gash, severing an artery. And, oh, to see that geyser of blood. I want to see that bump on the head graduate into something fuller: a consciousness-stealing blow, full of sharp pain. She did this to herself I accept no responsibility. She betrayed me.

  And the punishment for betrayal is death.

  I'm coming, Annie, I'm coming. And it'll be all over your corpse . . . soon.

  Anne stared down at the hardwood floor. Nick was beside her, his breathing ragged, unable to speak. She had just told him what had happened to her the night before. She glanced up at him again, looking for a reaction. He was so enraged, he could not yet find words that would match his fury. Finally he stood and walked over to the window and stared outside for a long time.

  When he turned to look back at her there were tears in his eyes, but his teeth were clenched in rage as he spoke. "Why? Anne, why would he do this to you? I'll never understand." Nick turned to look back out the window once more. Anne sensed he wasn't really seeing anything.

  He whirled. "That son of a bitch! That mother-fucking bastard!" He punched the wall and his hand went through the plaster.

  Anne stood. "Nick, please don't. I can't stand it. Not now." She took his hand and looked down at his bleeding knuckles. "This isn't going to solve anything."

  "How can you be so calm?" He stared at her and she felt chilled: It was almost as if he had never seen her before. It didn't matter; nothing mattered anymore.

  He jerked his hand away from her and wrapped his handkerchief around the knuckles. "I'm going to kill him," Nick said, his breathing ragged and his eyes dark. "I'm going to kill him and stop this once and for all. He won't kill anybody else. I'm going to see to that."

  Anne swallowed. She didn't want to encourage him, at least not so obviously.

  "Why aren't you saying anything? You're not telling me you still care about this asshole, are you?"

  "I hate him." Now it was Anne's turn to speak with intensity.

  He looked up at her and realized he was venting his rage at her husband on her. He came over and put his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Anne. I'm not mad at you, it's just that I'm so furious at him for what he's done to you and those other people. . . ."

  "I know. But we have to be careful. Cool-edged, sharp."

  "What do you mean?"

  Anne thought: If we're going to kill him, we have to keep calm, keep our wits about us. I want this done right. What she said was: "He's a dangerous man, Nick. He's shrewd and he'll kill us both if he gets half a chance. We have to be sure he doesn't even get half." She thought: We have to be sure he dies slowly, painfully.

  "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

  "I think you know."

  Nick shook his head. "I'm going to get him and make sure he doesn't hurt anybody again."

  "Will you just calm down? The last thing we need here is some macho heroics."

  "Sure." Nick picked up his coat and started toward the door. "I'll be back in a little while."

  Anne stood. "Nick, what's wrong? Please don't leave me here alone."

  But he went out the door without looking back at her. He had gotten to the vestibule of his building when he realized what an ass he was being. Anne was in his apartment, being strong and brave after being raped and brutally beaten by someone she once loved, and he, instead of giving her the support she needed and deserved, was about to leave her alone to go out and nurse a bruised ego. Pete McGrew was the person who should be handling this; if Nick was so jealous of McGrew he should see about getting into law enforcement. He turned and went back up the stairs.

  Anne was sitting on the couch, curled into a little ball. She looked up at him when he came in, then went back to staring at her knees.

  He sat down beside her. "Hey, I'm sorry. I guess I was just so upset about what happened to you I didn't know how to let it out. I'm really sorry."

  She covered his hand with hers. "It's all right."

  "Maybe I should try to call McGrew."

  What she said surprised him. "No. McGrew wouldn't know how to handle this."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean we have to. I've got a plan."

  "Anne, I don't think we should get involved."

  "We're already involved. And I think we're the only people who can
stop him."

  "So what is it you want to do?"

  "I think I should meet Joe one more time."

  "Forget it." Nick got up from the couch.

  "Nick, I think this would work."

  "You have to be kidding. Come on, Anne, tell me you're kidding."

  "I'm not kidding." *

  "Then you're out of your mind. Go look in the mirror."

  "I know. But you'd be there to protect me."

  "I'm sure he's going to meet the two of us."

  "He wouldn't know you were with me. We could trap him. See, I would go to this woman Pat Young and tell her how afraid I am for Joe. That even though he beat me, I still don't hate him, because I understand how sick he is. And I would tell her I'm willing to see him again. I know he'd do it because he wants to kill me."

  "It's too risky."

  "It is. But somebody has to stop him and I think this is the best way."

  "Absolutely not."

  Anne leaned back and stared up at the ceiling in exasperation. While they were silent, the phone rang. Nick went into the kitchen to answer it. Anne listened as he spoke, his voice too

  low to distinguish any of the words he was saying.

  When Nick came back into the room his face was white.

  "What's wrong?" Anne stood and went over to him, searching his eyes for a clue.

  "There's been another murder. Early this morning. Cicero. A fifteen-year-old girl was out walking her dog before school. The same method as the others. Fifteen years old."

  For a long time neither of them spoke. They just stood, staring at each other.

  Finally Nick said, "I'll try your plan. Something has to be done."

  Pat Young did not recognize the woman coming up the walkway to her building, but she stared at her with interest. Her face had been beaten and her walk was halting, as if she was afraid. "What the hell happened to her?" Pat whispered to herself, and moved away from the window as the woman stopped and looked in her direction.

  Pat soon heard her buzzer sounding and wondered why the woman would be coming to see her. Another cop? If this bitch was a cop she certainly couldn't handle herself very well. Out of curiosity, Pat admitted her.