Birds of Paradise

by Anne Malcom

  “Reverting to old behavior in times of trauma, it’s textbook. Your body’s emotional muscle memory.”

  One therapist said that. Once. I couldn’t remember her name. She didn’t last long enough to remember her name. None of them did. I gave up on therapy like I gave up on life.

  So I didn’t trust myself to say it was minutes, but it sure seemed like it. But in my world, nothing was as it seemed. It never was.

  My eyes went to those ice blue eyes here in the present, in the cruel, harsh and unbearable reality. Again, they were empty. This soul hadn’t just taken a holiday—this soul was dead. If it even existed in the first place.

  I’d done research on evil. And on good. Because now I had the time. Books were my companions, as was the internet. My gateway to why. Why did this happen to me? Why did my family sell me to a psychopath without blinking? Why did he get off on hurting me? Why did he kill our daughter? Why didn’t he kill me after?

  Things like that.

  During my browsing and reading, I discovered all religions seemed to believe in souls. The theory was different, but the core idea was always the same. Every human was born with one. No one was born evil. That’s what the scripture said, at least. Then again, they needed numbers, and by telling everyone—even the most evil—that they could be saved, well, that was good for numbers. Because here’s a secret: evil populated and controlled the world.

  So yes, according to the self-appointed experts on the matter, everyone had a soul.

  But I disagreed. Because some types of evil can never be learned. Earned. Sometimes they just were. No person came into this world good—just neutral either way. The blank canvas. Their experiences wouldn’t make them good or evil either, they’d just practice one quality more than the other. They would practice one or the other, and their souls would either flourish or wither, depending on what they practiced and what was practiced on them.

  Good or evil would be created.

  But sometimes people just were. There was no soul to tarnish, or polish. They weren’t born with one. There was nothing but a big black hole that sucked up the humanity in their DNA and sucked up anything else lingering as an accident of evolution. And then they were empty.

  Just like these eyes.

  No soul.

  I could be imagining this, of course. If you wanted to get down to brass tacks, I was crazy. Then again, crazy people usually had the best perception of the human race, because they didn’t have to worry about explaining things within the barriers of sanity. Of logic.

  The man in front of me was not logic.

  Not sane, either.

  But like I said, I wasn’t one to be doling out diagnoses.

  “Why aren’t you screaming? Crying?” he demanded.

  I looked at him. “It would make no difference.” It wasn’t a question. I knew from those empty eyes. I’d experienced a variation of that. Been married to it. I’d screamed. Cried. Pleaded. It did nothing.

  “But you’re a coward.” The tone of the cruel words was not unkind. Not a question either. It was a statement that came from knowledge.

  My breathing quickened. “You’ve been watching me.” Again, this was not a question. A statement. Because a quick run-through of my actions tonight told me, for once in my life, I was not acting weak. I seemed almost strong. An ironic subversion, since a lot of ‘strong’ people showed their weakness in times such as these, and weak people usually just devolved even more.

  I was somewhat of an exception.

  And for once, it was a good thing.

  But a strange man wearing a mask, with piercing beautifully cruel eyes, holding a gun and obviously meaning me harm shouldn’t technically know my actions were the exception to the norm.

  He shouldn’t know this if he was a stranger happening upon my house with a hankering for murder.

  Unless he’d been watching me.

  Learning me.

  With a hankering for… something that chilled my blood, but also didn’t increase the steady beats of my heat.

  He’d tied me to the chair. He had the gun. My control over this situation was gone. And like it or not, I was at his mercy. I didn’t want to die. There were plenty of times in the not-so-distant past I would’ve said different, but I wanted to live. Not because I had a lot to live for, but because most human beings not in the throes of mental illness or despair, they had an intrinsic survival instinct.

  And I had that once more.

  Plus, I’d told myself I wasn’t allowed the solace of death. It was too easy. I didn’t deserve easy after what I’d done.

  So I’d fight, look out for a chance to do that. But panicking until a chance presented itself would do me no good.

  He continued watching me, the mask on his face still sinister and disturbing, but I wondered if seeing the entirety of his cruel detachment without the mask might’ve been terrifying beyond belief.

  “Yes,” he said in response to my statement.

  He had been watching me.

  He’d therefore noticed that there wasn’t a lot to watch. He might see the lights go on at precisely 5:15 a.m. He might watch me do yoga in front of my fireplace, and then he’d see me drink tea. Not coffee. Stimulants of any kind weren’t good for me.

  Then he’d see me make breakfast. Same thing every morning. Oatmeal. Milk, honey, whatever fruit was in season. I’d wash up immediately.

  Have another tea.

  Shower.

  Then I’d sit in front of my computer for a number of hours—sometimes I’d stop to make lunch, or I’d work straight through—and then he’d see me shut it down. Stare at my closed french doors to the paddocks yawning into nothingness. He’d watch me stare for a long time. He might even see the longing, the agony, if he looked real close.

  But maybe not.

  Then he’d see me make dinner. I rotated on the menu but mostly had about six staple dinners.

  It was easier that way.

  Routine.

  Then I’d read. All night. Until I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open and stumble to bed. Or I’d pass out on the sofa, a book in my face.

  If he’d been watching for a really long time, he might notice delivery men. Bringing groceries. Medical supplies. House supplies. He might notice a lot of people coming.

  But one particular person never going.

  And that’s why I thought he’d been watching for a long time, in order to give me the appropriate label of coward.

  The medical term was agoraphobia.

  I was so terrified of the world that I couldn’t step a foot outside my own house without an overwhelming sense of doom settling over my shoulders, my throat closing up and my heart constricting.

  I was working my way up to my letterbox.

  I’d only gotten two steps down my porch so far.

  But it was progress. For me at least. For a man with a gun and empty eyes, I’d think I would be a nice target. The girl who physically can’t run.

  “Why?” I said, voice even.

  But I didn’t feel even. In that moment, I had an all-encompassing hatred toward this cold and imposing masked man. Before, there had been terror, of course. But a kind of indifference toward him in particular. I’d been too focused on what might happen to me that I wasn’t focusing on who was doing it.

  Now I did, and it hit me hard.

  This man, this stranger who I’d never met and surely never wronged, had come into the one place on this earth that was left for me, my one last sanctuary. And he’d just torn it to shreds.

  For no fucking reason that I could see.

  He continued to watch me, unmoving. That in itself was unnerving. People moved. Paced. Fidgeted. In normal situations. In a situation where you’d broken into a woman’s house with murder on the brain, there should be some kind of tick.

  But there was nothing. He was a statue. One that blinked.

  “Because it’s my job,” he said.

  I stared. “Your job to watch me?” I clarified.


  He nodded once.

  I thought about that statement. In order for it to be his job to watch me, it must’ve also been his job to come in here. Someone hired him. Presumably to murder me. Or at the very least shatter whatever I had left that resembled sanity. Peace.

  The fact I didn’t have friends kind of meant I didn’t have enemies. I didn’t have the social capacity to interact with someone on a level that was classed as personal.

  Well, before, I had. I might’ve even had friends.

  It was hard to remember now. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  And even in that lifetime, I’d been shy, timid, barely allowed to leave the house, so the friends were few. And when the shy, timid girl, unremarkable in every way, somehow caught the eye of one of the most remarkably evil men in the underworld, the friends became fewer still.

  Nonexistent.

  Because friends were a lifeline. People to help keep a woman sane. Hold on to her self-worth. Make her feel like she wasn’t alone.

  And of course, I needed to be alone. Insane. My self-worth needed to be filed down, shaved from the bone.

  There was one person on this earth who could’ve done this.

  “Christopher,” I said, the word tasting bitter on my tongue, bringing my once steady heartbeat up.

  Merely saying his name had more of an effect on me than the obvious psychopath standing in front of me with a gun.

  He was like Voldemort.

  But worse.

  Something moved in his eye: surprise, recognition. Maybe.

  “Christopher hired you to kill me, didn’t he?” I asked, my anger and fear melting together, the cells of each emotion fighting each other for dominance.

  Again, no answer.

  “You’re a hit man,” I said. I went with a statement instead of a question; they seemed more likely to get an answer.

  “I’m a freelancer,” he said.

  I pursed my lips. “Freelance killer is still a hit man.”

  He nodded.

  I racked my brain as to why Christopher, after all this time, would want to kill me. He had plenty of chances.

  Plenty.

  But he hadn’t taken them.

  Then again, he hadn’t needed to. He’d already killed me in all the most important ways.

  So maybe it wasn’t Christopher.

  My mind worked through my short personal contact list.

  But it had to be him. There was no one else.

  I met the eyes, those empty ones. It was hard, terrifying, but also somehow confronting. Confronting me with my own empty life. Because he was coming to drain whatever was left of it, which was precious little. He was the grim reaper, who took credit cards. That meant he brought death, but first he brought with him the accusation of life. Targets forced to relive it, dissect it.

  Mine, when taken from its skin, was nothing but crumbling bones.

  “Why would someone want to kill me?” I asked, whether to him or to myself I wasn’t sure. “I’m not interesting.”

  “Don’t have to be interesting,” he answered, surprising both of us. “Just need to be inconvenient.”

  I seethed at this, my anger blossoming from a place I thought was long gone. Anger was the first casualty of the destruction of a human being. Because anger was what saved most people. Anger was what fueled them to get up, get out, save themselves.

  I obviously didn’t save myself.

  Or my daughter.

  And I was so weak I didn’t even have enough anger to muster up at the person who most deserved it.

  Me.

  But then it came, out of nowhere.

  I glared at the masked man. “So because I, a human being, am inconvenient to another human—one with lots of money but no morals—my life is forfeit? It gives you the right to make it so?” I spat.

  He regarded me for a long moment. “Yes,” he said simply.

  As if it was that simple.

  And the worst thing was it was that simple.

  The silence in the room swung like a pendulum.

  “So you’re going to kill me now?” I said flatly, my anger once more gone. Why was I fighting to live? Would dying really be so bad? I’d get the respite I’d been too cowardly to give myself. I’d find peace. Maybe see her again. Smell her head. Touch her curls.

  My heart panged with a longing so painful, so visceral, that if I had his gun right then, I would’ve used it. On myself. All promises I’d made to myself disappearing into the darkness.

  Because I’d done something I shouldn’t have. I thought about her.

  And the pain was paralyzing.

  “Yes,” he said again, unaware of the knives puncturing every inch of my skin.

  I waited. Watched. Hoped for him to raise his gun and end it all. The pain. The suffering.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  Funny, that would be the last word I said on earth. Should it have been more profound? No. Because there was no one there to hear it. Just a black hole shaped like a person who’d swallowed other profound goodbyes and silenced them like the people who uttered them.

  Glaciers bored into me. “Da svidaniya.” He lifted his arm so I no longer stared into ice blue—I saw black, the abyss of the barrel of a gun.

  The thunder of the bullet drowned out everything.

  Even my pain.

  2

  “I’m not dead,” I observed in the seconds that followed the roar of the gunshot.

  He slipped the weapon into the back of his slacks. “You are not,” he agreed.

  Dust flickered peacefully from the ceiling, evidence of the chaotic bullet that had torn through it.

  “Why?” I asked.

  I couldn’t decide whether I was disappointed or relieved. I was empty. Feeling utterly hollow at my lack of emotion, of any kind of joy to be alive. Whatever this whole experience was, or was going to be, I was quickly learning what a cardboard cutout of a person I had become.

  Or was I always like this?

  No. Before, when I had her, my little angel to focus on in the middle of hell, I’d been something more than cardboard. I gave her the last of my life, my joy. It had died with her too.

  “Because,” he said, tasting his words, choosing them slowly, as if he wasn’t sure of the actions behind them. “Because it would be pathetic,” he continued finally, his face blank and as empty as his voice—and, as it happened, my soul.

  He strode over to me in quick, purposeful steps. No hesitation. He reached into his jacket and unearthed a knife.

  I didn’t flinch.

  I knew I should’ve. That’s what people did when masked men tied them up, talked about killing them and then came at them with a knife. That might’ve been what people did. Not what I did.

  I might’ve imagined his pause at my lack of reaction, the flickering of emotion that crossed his eyes, the curiosity. But then he leaned over me and cut my bonds, and I decided I most certainly did imagine it.

  I must’ve been imagining things, because that was the only explanation for his clean linen and ocean scent floating through the air, for his proximity becoming pleasing to me. I knew I had psychological issues, but I wasn’t certifiably insane. Which was characterized by finding the smell of your would-be murderer pleasing. Or his eyes magnetic.

  “Pathetic,” he repeated, standing in front of me, perusing me. “You’re already pathetic enough on your own. Killing you would be more so. I don’t do pathetic,” he continued, voice cold and unkind. He turned, as if to walk out. I watched him cross the room, reach my doorway, haunt it with his shadow, and then turn. “You should consider the fact that it is not going to remain a secret, your continued survival.” He glanced around. “If that’s what you call it.” Then his eyes focused on me. “Then consider the fact that if you want to continue surviving, existing, you might have to take steps to become invisible to people like me.”

  And then he was gone.

  Only his scent and stare remained.

  Him

  “Is it done?�
� the disembodied voice on the phone asked.

  He slammed the door to his house, surprising himself with the violence behind it. He was a violent man by profession, by necessity. Not by nature.

  “It’s done,” he lied. Another necessity in his profession, lies. They, like blood and bullets, were his bread and butter. Though he only lied to targets. Or people he had to go through to get to targets. It was as easy as killing at this point. And killing was as easy as breathing.

  But not to the people who paid him. There was no need to lie to them. It would not be fiscally responsible. It was unnecessary. And dangerous. Especially considering this particular client.

  A life of lies was easier to unravel than a life of truth.

  That’s why he lived invisible. No truth. As few lies as possible.

  But here he was, breaking whatever passed for rules in his life.

  For her.

  “Good,” the voice said.

  He poured himself a vodka.

  “The money will be in your account. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Brat.”

  He took this as goodbye and then hung up. He didn’t do pleasantries.

  Especially not with this particular client.

  He had majorly fucked up.

  He’d never done that before.

  Never.

  And now it was because of her. The pathetic, broken and weak woman who was devoid of terror, of self-preservation, of dignity.

  He sipped his vodka.

  No, not quite devoid of dignity, he thought as he wandered to the black oak door off his personal library. The one hidden away at the end of the house, not the one boasting grandeur and wealth, something the original owners of the estate had been overtly preoccupied with.

  There had been a quiet dignity about her. In her acceptance of her death.

  He walked through the room, opening the door hidden in the bookcases. The light went on, dimly illuminating the frames that cluttered the intimate space.

  He made his way to his favorite specimen, running his fingers over the glass thoughtfully.

  She wasn’t beautiful. No, something stopped her from being simply beautiful. Her dull hair, sallow skin, dry lips. The lingering scent of death and sorrow that followed her. That was attached to her. That had whittled her down to the nerve, making her almost painful to look at. But her eyes, violent against her gray skin. They kept him from finishing her.