A savage instinct to wrap her hands around the girl’s throat filled Erica. She scooted forward until her knees were on the girl’s arms. She clenched her hands around the girl’s neck. They locked eyes. Erica felt the girl’s pulse against her palm. All the girl’s muscles were tense beneath her. She bucked against Erica, a last ditch effort to throw her off. The girl’s pulse hammered in her throat. Erica didn’t want to feel her life ebb out. She thought about taking her out to the balcony, throwing her off. She decided against it. If she was going to kill this girl, she felt like she deserved to experience this. She deserved to go to sleep at night seeing this girl’s eyes, feeling her sweaty skin dying against her own. Spit foamed at the girl’s mouth as she fought desperately to take in air. Drool and blood poured from Erica’s mouth as she squeezed with everything she had and rocked all of her weight against this poor girl. She watched the eyes bulge, the skin turn purple, the veins standing out in the temple.
Erica had started crying. She didn’t know when. It felt like every hole in her face leaked some kind of warm fluid and she kept pressing her hands into this girl’s throat long after she had stopped feeling a pulse, long after the girl had stopped breathing.
She heard her own pulse pounding in her ears and a rhythmic slapping sound that almost seemed to match it. She turned away from the girl and saw Walt off to the right. His pants were down around his ankles and he masturbated his thick cock until a rope of milky come shot out onto the floor.
He came to her side and Erica threw her arms around his neck and snottily mumbled against his chest, “You’re all I have. You’re all I have now.”
Plans
Erica awoke with every muscle screaming. Completely naked, she climbed out of bed on shaky legs. Now all of her injuries sustained while battling the other girl announced themselves in her bones and, more visibly, across the surface of her skin. The apartment was redolent with the smell of cooking meat. She didn’t think she could deal with Walt right now. She was sure he was happy. Today at least. She slid into the shower, unsure if Walt was ever actually happy or if the happiness was more of a mask he wore. If that were the case, what was it hiding? She thought she had seen the darkest part of his insides and wasn’t sure he could be hiding any worse. She guessed, much like her, it was just hiding a great absence.
She wrapped the woman’s robe around her and went out into the apartment. She supposed she could stop thinking of it as ‘the woman’s robe.’ Everything here belonged to her and Walt now. It was her robe. Her apartment. Her bed. It felt good to finally have things. Nice things. She had always had things but there had never been very many of them and most of them had previously belonged to someone else. So, no difference really, right? Thinking about it that way kind of burned her. She’d have to go to a store. Maybe she could get Walt to steal a moving truck and they could go get some new furniture.
Walt sat at the table, scarfing down some eggs and some other meat she guessed was human.
He’d made her eggs and an English muffin.
He sat at the head of the table and she sat to his left so she could see the sky through the balcony doors. They were open and the morning breeze smelled wet and good. The city sounds flooded in but she could also hear the wind gusting and birds chirping.
“Soon you’ll develop a craving for it.”
“We’ll see. Did you make any coffee?”
“I couldn’t figure it out.”
She glanced into the kitchen. Around the coffee maker was a brownish puddle of water.
“I need coffee,” she said. She didn’t feel like cleaning up the mess. Luckily, none of the coffee had actually made it into the carafe. The basket didn’t contain a filter or grounds or anything. She would have to remember to ask Walt to make coffee again so she could watch. She was having trouble imagining how it went down at this point. She leaned against the counter while it brewed, staring at the back of Walt’s head while he scarfed down his food.
Last night she dreamt about the man she saw on the top level of the parking garage. This time he wasn’t on the top level. He was a couple levels down. It wasn’t foggy in the dream and she strained to get a better look at him, to see if she could make out any features at all, but couldn’t do it. There was always something obscuring him or something in her eyes, always something preventing her from focusing on him. This time, the alarming thing was not the man but the shadow moving behind him. She watched it spill out from the elevator doors and slowly grow and gain mass, moving toward the man the entire time. But just when it got almost close enough to touch her she had awoken.
The coffee finished. As she poured it into her cup, she noticed Walt had a whole skillet filled with meat. She wondered if he had originally intended to try and get her to eat more of it or if he had just cooked the abundance for himself. Why wouldn’t he if it was now an unlimited resource?
She took her cup to the table, the residue of the dream still clinging to her. It almost made her think the time she had actually seen the figure on the parking garage had really been a dream. She had to convince herself that had been real. She’d watch for it again. Her mind reeled as she began to think of ways to carve out time for this observation period. How many hours a day should she spend doing it? How long should she do it before she gave up? Deep breath. She tried to rationalize things. She hadn’t established any real kind of routine yet. Wasn’t sure she wanted to. She guessed she still wasn’t too sure about much of anything.
Walt got up and went into the kitchen. Came back with a heaping plate of meat.
“We’re not eating the girl I . . . killed last night, are we?”
“No way. I told you we wouldn’t do that.”
“Did you get rid of her?”
“Yes. Just like I said I would.”
“What did you do with her?”
“I threw her off the balcony.”
“Dignified.”
He either didn’t catch the sarcasm or didn’t know what the word meant because he said, “I did. You can go look if you want. She was still out there the last time I checked.”
Erica believed he’d done what he said but wanted to see this for herself. She took her plate and cup out to the table on the balcony. She glanced over the railing and saw the girl, still clothed but very red, lying askew on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Walt stood at the threshold, raising his shirt and rubbing his hairy stomach. “Sometimes the things we do . . . It takes them a while to resonate. It’s like our insubstantiality rubs off on other people or something. Sometimes. Once they finally scrape her off the streets they’ll just be doing some physical kind of job and won’t really put much thought into how the girl actually got there. In a day or two, when her family or loved ones or whatever start trying to track her down, if they try to track her down, the path will be muddied and the authorities will be mostly embarrassed so they’ll provide an answer that is clear cut enough to keep the family from questioning them any further and provide enough evidence, whether true or not, to back themselves up. So, in a way, they’re working for us.”
Why was he telling her this? Why was he even talking? She responded with a “huh” and went back to eating her breakfast and drinking her coffee.
“So what were you planning on doing today?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I might go see if there’s a store somewhere around here. I need some more makeup. I might steal a car that isn’t a manual.” She thought about that. It seemed like a lot of work. “Nah. I probably won’t do that. What about you?”
“I was thinking I’d probably go to Home Depot and get a wheelbarrow and a freezer.”
“Where are we going to put another freezer?”
“In that baby’s room.”
She almost wished she hadn’t asked.
Exploring
Erica decided she didn’t want to be cooped up in the apartment but didn’t really have any idea of what she wanted to do. If she hadn’t grown up in the mountains, the idea of
walking would have hit her sooner. To live in the mountains and walk required being a certain type of outdoor person, possibly even a nature person, one equipped to and possibly even look forward to dealing with snakes, bugs, the elements and other outdoor occurring things. When she finally realized there probably wasn’t going to be much of that here and that, actually, what she would mostly find would be stores containing things mostly free for her taking, she decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea. She wondered if she was getting tired of Walt. It didn’t really bother her if she was. They weren’t married or anything. Sure they loved each other but she didn’t really know what that meant and wasn’t sure Walt did either. For her, it was something she said but felt like it was supposed to correspond with something inside her. She imagined something like fireworks. Or maybe the emotional equivalent. That made her think about fireworks going off inside someone and how the person would probably explode and rain down some sort of gore confetti. She could get another apartment if things didn’t work out between them. Possibly make new friends or even just be alone. She didn’t mind being alone so much. She had been alone for a while, if you didn’t count Granny, and thought maybe she even kind of preferred it. She just didn’t want to be there when Walt came back. She didn’t understand what he was doing, not that she really tried. It just seemed like they could be doing so much more. If he wanted to eat people, like if he had to have a thing and that had to be eating people, she didn’t see why he couldn’t do it anywhere. They could have been in New York by now. They could have been well on their way to Los Angeles, which seemed a lot nicer, a lot warmer. The Midwest was okay in the summer but once Halloween was over and she was hit with the cold every time she walked out of the house, she would be ready to move to a warmer climate. Again, she guessed it didn’t really matter if Walt wanted to come with her or not. She could always go by herself. But she couldn’t help thinking there was some reason he was here. In Dayton, specifically. She hadn’t been to a lot of places. She knew places mentioned on TV and maybe a few books she’d had to read for school. It didn’t seem Dayton was often mentioned on TV or in books and, after being here only a few days, she couldn’t imagine anyone who had the chance and ability to go anywhere she wanted to go choosing to come to and stay in Dayton, Ohio.
Walt had left about a half hour ago without saying goodbye. Erica went out to the balcony, smoked a cigarette, and loosely plotted a walking path. She didn’t see any place that looked that exciting. Most of it was pretty nondescript. There was the dark tower she imagined housed a bunch of boring businesses. Next to that was the parking garage where she had seen the figure. She thought about looking for him but now, in the glare of daylight, that notion seemed absurd. To her left was a library with a bunch of seedy looking people milling about in front. That didn’t look like a lot of fun. She supposed she could have grabbed one of the laptops they’d found and searched for points of interest but that felt like too much work and rather than admit she was lazy, she convinced herself it would remove a lot of the fun of exploring. She finished her cigarette, changed in to some of the clothes she had stolen, made sure she had her key fob, and hit the street.
She looked toward the front desk as she passed through the tiled lobby. The clerk did not even look at her. She stepped outside and breathed in the damp air. To her right, a fat bearded man had dismantled a cigarette butt depository, looking for something smokeable.
“Hey,” he said. “Got a smoke?”
She fished into her pack and handed him one.
“Thanks so much, lady. Can I get a couple dollars for the bus?”
She looked at him, smiled, and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
She began walking away and he called after her, “That’s real nice. Why don’t you suck my dick you uppity cunt?”
It was probably the first time she’d ever been described as uppity. Steal some nicer clothes, infiltrate a posh building and murder the people who live there, and apparently people’s perception began to change. At least he noticed her. She walked a block to the south and it didn’t take her long to notice all of the street level storefronts were vacant and closed. Some of them had broken windows but most of them had large banners announcing the space was for lease only partially hiding the ripped apart insides from the last business’s hasty retreat. A few held promises of great things to come.
For the first block, the only thing she passed that seemed to have anyone around it was a bus hub. She thought about getting on a bus. Taking one bus to a distant bus stop and then getting on another bus there and then maybe getting on a Greyhound bus and taking it as far as it would go. She wasn’t going to do it now but she would keep it in the back of her mind. She could drive but didn’t really like to and felt like riding a bus would give her a greater chance to observe people.
She was looking for a clothing store but didn’t see many of them. One looked like it catered to young black men and another seemed to specialize in formal wear and cater to older black men. She moved another block over and came to a CVS. She went in, grabbed a water from the refrigerator, and stole as much makeup as she could get into her purse. It wasn’t the great stuff but she thought it would do. Besides, the corpse paint had kind of grown on her. She supposed she could do something similar that would probably last a lot longer with what she grabbed.
She passed a theater that didn’t open until later and wasn’t showing anything she’d ever heard of anyway. Finally she found something close to what she was looking for. It seemed to be called the Oregon District. It only took her about five minutes to walk from one side of it to the other but it allowed her to make a quick inventory. It was mostly comprised of bars and restaurants. There was a bookstore that didn’t hold much interest to her. Ditto the record store. There was a sex shop that would be fine to kill a few minutes in if she wanted a laugh. But there were a few small clothing stores she could probably spend a couple of hours in.
By the time she left the Oregon District, she had enough clothes to last her a couple of weeks. On the way back to the building she passed a bar called the Epoch. She made a note of it. It seemed to be the closest bar to the building. Although she had done it to drop the baby off with the homeless guy, she didn’t think she wanted to wander around this area after dark very much. And she didn’t really see Walt wanting to go a lot of places with her. She felt like there was still a little more to explore but she wanted to get back to the building to drop off her bags. She was tired of carrying them. She made a note to look for one of the former residents’ credit cards so she could just order things online and have them delivered. That seemed like it would be a lot easier.
In front of the building she saw Walt. He had apparently swapped the Bug out for an enormous truck. There wasn’t a freezer in the back so he must have already taken that up. Or had it delivered. That seemed more likely. Just when she thought they were falling apart, it was the little things that reminded her how much they had in common. She wondered if he killed the delivery guy. Wondered if it would be considered ironic for the guy who delivered the freezer to be murdered and then stored in said freezer. She didn’t really know what irony meant but knew it was a cool word to use.
She stood, bags in hand, and watched as Walt reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a shiny red wheelbarrow. He set the wheelbarrow on the sidewalk, reached back into the bed of the truck, wrapped his hand around the ankle of a corpse, and slid it toward him. He spotted her and said, “Could you help me with this?”
She shook her head and was pretty sure she heard him mutter “bitch” under his breath.
He pulled the corpse out, slung it over his shoulder, dumped it into the wheelbarrow and wheeled it toward the doors. “Would you at least get the door for me?” he said.
She swiped her key fob and pulled the door open, holding it for him as he wheeled the body inside. She followed him to the elevators. He pressed up and they waited a few seconds, neither one of them saying anything. Erica looked down at the body in the wheelbarrow.<
br />
“Another girl, huh?”
“Yep. It’s my thing. Don’t you think it would be a little faggoty if I got off on killing dudes?”
“I don’t know. More faggoty than sharing two girls with a bunch of your guy friends?”
“You’re a cunt.”
“Thanks.”
The elevator doors finally opened. A well-dressed man stepped out and around them, glancing down at the wheelbarrow and the corpse but Erica thought it was probably the wheelbarrow that caught his attention more than the corpse. He glanced at Walt and Walt said, “Dinner.”
The man continued into the lobby. Erica knew nothing would come of it.
They took the elevator up and Walt pushed the wheelbarrow to the apartment. Erica held the door for him. She shut the door behind them.
“I don’t like it when you talk to me like that,” Walt said.
“I don’t particularly like to be called a cunt.”
“Really?”
“Not really. No. I don’t like to be called that, I mean.” She didn’t know if that was true or not. Already, she could feel Walt’s anger rising and it made her tingle somewhere deep inside.
“Stupid little whore,” he said.
“Psychopathic cannibal. Corpse fucker.”
She walked toward the balcony. He followed her. She lit a cigarette and leaned against the railing. Walt leaned against her. The railing dug into her hipbones and she could feel his cock pressing into her lower back. He could lift her and toss her off the balcony in a second, she thought. She moved back against him. The sky was darkening to the southeast and the street lamps and lights from the buildings winked on. Walt’s hands were on her hips, beneath her skirt, sliding her underwear down. She continued smoking while he slid into her. She smiled as she came thinking maybe it was her indifference that made him work harder.
Sociopaths In Love Page 11