by Sophie Jaff
As you prepare her for your true purpose, you call her the name you’ve wanted to call her all evening.
You lean over and softly call her Katherine.
She stares up at you blearily, the tears leaking down her face. Wet, wet, wet all over. Woozily she shakes her head. That is not her name, and more amusing still, it has dawned on her that maybe if you realize that you have the wrong woman, you’ll let her go.
Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve made a mistake, you’ll say.
This you can’t resist.
You ask if she means she is not Katherine Emerson. You allow your forehead to wrinkle charmingly. She violently shakes her head, making as much noise as she can through the gag. Which isn’t much. You know how to tie a gag. You ask again if she’s positive. Her head turns wildly from side to side and clammy desperate sounds come through the silken scarf. The light grows in her eyes. She might still have a chance of escaping you. You’re complete crazy, and maybe this has been the key all along.
She’s Kathleen, not Katherine. Kathleen, she tries to tell you through the gag, my name is Kathleen. Kathleeeeen! But it comes out “Eeem, eeeem!”
“Well, in that case,” you say cheerfully and move over her as if to release her bonds. The desperate look of hope and relief in her eyes is truly delightful. Really, she is a lovely woman.
Then you laugh and call her “silly puppy,” straighten up and step away. Just for the pleasure of seeing her face turn ashen. You drink it in.
Terror is the color of under the bed, it is the color of bone marrow and the color of chalk, it wails like sirens, it hums like wasps, it thuds like an MRI machine, it tastes of sweat, it tastes of metal, it tastes of rising bile, it feels like the scrape of cement against skin, it thumps like a pounding heart.
You come back to the present with a sigh. As pleasurable as this is, you have a mission.
And she is only a means to the Vessel.
Katherine, who woke you from your darkness.
Katherine, who calls you ever closer.
Katherine, your destiny.
Katherine, the perfect one.
Katherine, the only one.
You turn back to Kathleen, bound and gagged on the couch.
Kathleen, your generous provider, the first woman you will harvest from. Her glorious hues of lust and of terror, confined within her skin, cry out to be unlocked.
“Thank you,” you say. You pick up your knife.
After all, it’s rude to keep a lady waiting.
2
Right now the man wearing the cardboard box is telling me about Mexican food.
He looks me in the face as he tells me all about a restaurant called Agave that I must try. I want to look back but I’m not used to so much eye contact. I’m also not used to barely dressed men earnestly telling me about restaurants. My hindbrain is squeaking at me to look down. I want to see his penis. I do not want to see his penis. I never remember specific penises anyway. I appreciate them but I don’t remember them as individuals.
Distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted, distracted.
Right now the man wearing the cardboard box is telling me about empanadas.
“They’re the best I’ve ever had,” he says, “one hundred percent guaranteed organic.”
He looks me full in the face as he says this. This is not normal in conversations. In normal conversations the eyes tend to naturally slide away and return. No one maintains this much eye contact unless he is taming a dog, or looking at his infant or at his lover in bed. It’s unsettling.
“The place is called Agave because they don’t use any sugar, and if you’re serious about Mexican food, you have to try it.”
Currently I am at an ABC party. “ABC” stands for “Anything But Clothes.” I myself am wearing only a curtain. Although theoretically the curtain qualifies as “not clothes,” it is, in fact, material and therefore has already created a hostile environment with those who take the theme of this party seriously. The people who take this party seriously are the two plump girls and three small hairy men dancing with them. It’s been a thin and grudging spring and everyone is tired of layers.
I don’t mind the lack of clothes though I find it strangely decadent given what’s happening. They just found another girl. That makes three this month. Three girls found in their own apartments with their throats slit, intricate carvings all over their bodies. No one can talk of anything else.
They’re saying it’s a serial killer.
They can’t work out how he gets in.
Shit, it’s so scary. And she was only found after a week?
These days when I go to a party I want to get just a little tipsy on red wine. I want to talk about movies seen and unseen, and a smattering of politics, with people who mostly share my viewpoints. I want to flirt and laugh and maybe even dance to a song like “Love Machine” by the Miracles. Now I’m clutching a plastic cup of punch, wishing I were at a laid-back bar where no one is standing around in items that are anything but clothes, talking about murder victims. This party is the reason I wish I were married. I wish I were in a serious relationship, or even a not-so-serious relationship. This party makes me wish I were watching TV, eating Thai, or Chinese, or Japanese, or something ending with “-ese” takeout. Takeout and my socked feet on someone else’s lap.
I was blackmailed into attending by one of my remaining single, gay friends, Colin. “Come,” he had said, “to a divine party.” He had asked me way in advance. I had said yes. Single and gay is a windfall. I don’t have many of those left. I can’t afford to lose him.
Only after I had accepted did he tell me that it was a costume party. The bastard. The worst part is that I could be with David. But I thought it would have been rude to bail on Colin, Colin who now sits too close to the host of the party. And I thought I would play a little hard to get with David. “Don’t look too eager,” said my friends who have husbands. “Make him work,” said my friends who have steady boyfriends and long-term partners.
I made the mistake of listening to people who have forgotten what it’s like, and now I’m sitting alone and furious in a curtain, wanting to go home. Scantily clad people are having earnest conversations. I watch their teeth gleaming in the dim light. Some lounge on the couches; others stand in small circles. They move as if underwater. I sit on the couch. I stare at my phone. Nothing.
I am waiting for a text. There’s no reason why he should text, but still, I want him to text. I could have been with him tonight. We met just over a week ago and now I sit and wait for a text.
Last week I was waiting at the Morgan Library to meet him. Although it was already almost seven o’clock the lobby was flooded with light. Some museums stay open late on Fridays and I thought it was a classy suggestion for a first date. The shining sweep of wooden floor and the clean architectural lines make you feel that (a) you are getting your money’s worth of “culture” and (b) you really should do something about organizing your apartment space. Although I was early I was looking at my watch, a nervous habit I’ve had since forever, when this guy walked up and asked me:
“Do you know what time the museum closes today?”
I was about to answer when I looked at him properly. He was long and lanky with light brown hair that flopped onto his forehead, round glasses, gray eyes, an oval chin.
“David?”
“Katherine?”
When he smiled he looked even better than he had online.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if you weren’t Katherine I was going to have to pretend you were anyway.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Shall we go in?” He had bought tickets already.
It was a good time to come; the tourists had largely dissipated to take in an early meal before their Broadway musical, and the evening crowd of locals was only beginning to arrive. We walked through the atrium, all acoustics magnified, past the little café in the center wi
th its small steel chairs and round white tables. A couple of waiters were glaring at two doughy women in sneakers and fanny packs who lingered, deep in conversation, over the remnants of their cooling cappuccinos. I thought that after we saw the exhibition we might come here for a drink. It was a little expensive but worth it for the people-watching.
We had wanted to see the Little Prince: A New York Story exhibition, but as we entered the second-floor gallery we heard the tour guide before we saw her. Haggard and authoritarian, with a mass of brittle red hair, she beckoned her charges closer.
“Saint-Exupéry smoked like a chimney,” she rasped at the group, who had gathered around her. She sounded judgmental. “Come closer, and you can see where he burned a page.”
They did, holding up their phones and wriggling offspring for a better view. David and I looked at each other in unspoken agreement, and we went to check out the woodcut exhibition on the third floor.
Here, in the more traditional hush, bowler-hatted figures printed in black blocky ink hung on the dark red walls. An illustrated copy of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was open under a glass display case. A stunning young black woman stood guard. She looked like she was dying to tackle anyone to the ground and break their fingers joint by joint if they so much as thought of taking a photo.
We didn’t take photos. Instead we walked slowly from print to print. David didn’t hover over me, nor did he leave me completely alone. We moved more or less in time together, making the little mmm noises in the back of our throats that one makes when looking at art. When we got to the end he asked, “So what do you think of them?”
“There’s something ominous about the 1920s woodcuts, very foreboding.”
“Agreed.”
“As for the Chaucer”—I shrugged—“they’re like fairy-tale illustrations, aren’t they? Sort of dark and inviting.”
“That is the perfect description. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
I felt absurdly pleased to have gotten it right.
Back on the second floor the tour guide was still droning on, now about fighter planes, so we moved to the permanent collection. The aesthetic abruptly changed to the lavish opulence of a nineteenth-century financier’s private rooms. Pink swirls in the marble floor yielded to rich red oriental carpets. A magnificent stone fireplace swelled out of the wood-paneled wall and bronze horses reared up by glowing paintings of sorrowing Madonnas, but the most prominent stars were the books. A symphony of volumes in their gilded and latticed casements soaring to the frescoed ceilings, where cupids and angels floated by and gods and goddesses romped on golden clouds. I stared up, drinking it all in.
“Psst!”
I walked over to him, amused. “Does anyone say ‘psst’ anymore?”
“Okay, I admit it, I’ve always wanted to say that, but look.” He motioned with his head to the corner, where a door stood ajar.
We strolled over.
Next to the door was a sign that said:
TREASURES FROM THE VAULT: THE SECULAR SPIRIT OF MEDIEVAL LIFE
I bent down to examine it further and realized the exhibition had ended two days ago.
David smiled. “Shall we go in?”
The guard was well on the other side of the hall. There was no one around. It wasn’t what I would normally do but—
The gallery was cooler than elsewhere in the museum and dark apart from the faint light of the glass display cases, although most of the objects had been removed. There was something eerie about these empty, glowing cases, as if the contents had crawled away of their own accord. Like furtive children who have snuck into a circus tent, we walked quietly, stopping to look down at what remained: a piece of jewelry, an illuminated sheet of music. I felt a strange little thrill of satisfaction with each item we encountered in our secret treasure hunt. I was so caught up in this new spirit of living on the edge that I deliberately veered away from David into another anteroom of the gallery.
It was a move I regretted almost immediately. All of the cases in this room seemed empty and there was a feeling about the space that unsettled me. It felt like it was waiting. I was about to leave when something in a lit case in the far corner caught my eye.
An illuminated manuscript lay open.
I walked up and leaned in closer to look.
The illustration was an arresting one. It was sunset in the picture, the sky a deep crimson hatched with golden lines. In the last of the dying sun a woman stood in the center and stared back out at her viewer. Her skin was eggshell white, her eyes tiny black ovals, her red mouth neither frowning nor smiling. She wore a deep-green dress, the dark folds of her skirt pooled around her feet. Her chestnut hair lay thick upon her shoulders. In her right palm she cupped an apple; in her left she gripped an ornate silver dagger, four red tears dripping from the blade. Behind her, a forest of densely twisted trunks, pale leaves, and yellow ferns crowded together. A little steam drifted up from a squat iron cauldron set off to one side. I could just make out a slim gray tower of a castle in the distance. But my gaze was drawn again to the woman, in one hand an apple, in the other a dagger. Make your choice, her tiny black oval eyes seemed to say. Make your choice.
“That’s an Ouroboros.”
I gave a little “oh” of surprise. It was David. He had come up behind me, and as I laughed, he did too.
“Sorry I startled you.” He looked down.
“What did you say?”
“I was pointing out the Ouroboros, the snake devouring its own tail, there.”
He pointed to the facing page of the text, Latin executed in curved black strokes. The first letter, an O, was indeed in the shape of a huge curled serpent swallowing itself. I marveled at the intricate brushstrokes, the rows upon rows of miniscule scales, a line of red, then blue, then red again, at its golden underbelly. The serpent’s eyes were dots of venomous green, and the gleaming white fangs emerging from its scaly lower lip engulfing its own tail with a savage ferocity.
David looked at me. “Not every man’s going to be able to use the word ‘Ouroboros’ so comfortably in a sentence. I hope I get points.”
“I assume that’s why we’re here sneaking around, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much. I’ve been trying to use that word ever since I met you, that and ‘psst.’” He peered down at the tag containing the description of the work. “‘The Maiden of Morwyn Castle.’” He spoke softly enough but his voice carried, emphasizing the silence around us. It made me uneasy. “‘From the private collection of’—” He broke off, then continued, “‘Matthew de Villias.’ I’ll be damned.”
“What is it?”
“That’s the same last name as my friend.”
“Weird.”
“I guess it’s not completely weird. The guy comes from an old family, makes the Mayflower folk look like gentrifiers.” He squinted down again.
We heard the hollow tones of a bell, then:
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.”
The voice was harsh and loud. We both jumped, and then laughed.
“The museum will be closing in approximately fifteen minutes.”
“Guess we need to get going.”
“I guess so.” I tried to sound reluctant but I was glad. I knew we shouldn’t be here.
David started off toward the main door out of the gallery, but despite my growing unease I decided to have one more peek at the manuscript. Chances were I’d never see it again, and there was something about the illustration that both fascinated and unnerved me. It had the creepy allure of a jack-in-the-box. You know that if you turn the handle long enough while the tinky-dinky melody plays, eventually a horrible little jack with a grinning face will pop out at you, but you do it anyway.
Just to see if you can.
The woman still held an apple in her right hand and the dagger in her left. Behind her lay the twisted forest and the tall gray tower. Only something seemed different. I leaned forward. Were the waving grasses bent in the same direction? Was steam rising from the cauldron?
It was the woman. She was smiling. She wasn’t before, I thought. I bent down, as close as I could go, my nose now nearly pressed against the glass. Yes, she was smiling, and was there someone, or something, standing just behind her in the trees?
“Katherine!” David’s voice held a note of urgency.
“David?”
He didn’t reply.
“David?” I called again, a little louder this time, as I wound my way back between the endless empty display cases. I turned a corner and found myself in a room I’d never been in before, the wrong room. My stomach tightened. “David, where are you?”
“Here.”
Get a grip, Katherine. I made my way to the sound of his voice. He stood at the door through which we first came in, his back to me.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s locked.” He kept trying to turn the handle, first one way and then the other.
My stomach clenched further. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” The words were flat.
I fought down a wave of panic. It wasn’t just that we would get into trouble, which we would; it was that I realized then I was locked in the darkness with a stranger. I knew nothing about David.
Samantha Rodriguez.
“I guess we could call out and get someone’s attention.” I fought for a casual tone but my voice sounded shaky and shrill.
David had stopped twisting the handle. Now he stood completely still, his shoulders slumped. Oddly emotionless, without raising his head, he said, stating a simple fact, “They’re not going to hear you.”
Oh God. Oh God. My body tensed, either to run or to scream. The name Samantha had come to me because—
Then he laughed and opened the door. “Gotcha!”
I walked out. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t look at him. My heart was pounding through my ears. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist it.” He was still grinning a little, pleased that his stunt had worked so well. When I still didn’t respond he grew defensive. “Hey, why so uptight?”
