by Mia Thompson
The crowd between them dissipated as they met half way. They looked at each other for a long time and Julia smiled sadly. Tears built in her eyes and she hugged Sapphire tightly. “I’ve been looking for you all day,” she said in a low voice then grabbed Sapphire by the shoulders. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she looked at Sapphire worried, like a mother. “Es okay now?”
“Yeah, es okay now,” Sapphire said honestly, smiling.
Julia took a deep breath then they hugged again, one last time. She grabbed Antonio’s hand and they waved the rest of the crowd off as they climbed into the limo. Sapphire watched them as they took off toward their honeymoon in Hawaii.
Soon after, the crowd dropped out one by one.
* * * * *
He watched her out there from the shadow of his car. On the deck, she looked up at the bright stars in the sky and even though he was far away, he could tell she was smiling. Then, like at the toll of the bell, the smile faded.
She stood there at the top of the mansion surrounded by things other people could only dream of, and it seemed to be her prison. She was the fairy tale princess locked up in a tower. Though she wasn’t just a princess waiting to be rescued, she was something more.
Aston took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke play in his lungs before he blew out a cloud of his favorite poison. He went over it all one more time. He had accused her of being something she wasn’t and she had confessed. Later, her friend reveled that he had been her first, and the image had crumbled.
A flood of images from that night and the morning after hit him. The look on her face. The blushing cheeks after the awkward kiss. When the scenes played in his head it was as if the man in there, that was such an ass to Sapphire, was someone else. Someone Aston wanted to beat the crap out of.
He couldn’t understand why she had pretended to be something she wasn’t. Once again, she remained an unsolved mystery.
He should leave her be, let her do whatever it was she did and move on with his life. It would be for the best, all his time and focus should go into finding the Serial Catcher, not fucking dilly-dallying around with Sapphire Dubois.
He tried to shoot away thoughts of the engagement, a wedding, and her body in another man’s arms. However, they persisted on staying. He knew right then, no matter how much he tried, his feet would lead him back to her.
He would be there. Watching her, guarding her, whether she knew it or not.
Aston got in his car and took off towards Thousand Oaks. After he was done there, he knew he would finally sleep. Not because he felt at peace or had resolved whatever issue he had, but because he was really fucking tired.
* * * * *
Sapphire stood on the deck with her beer in hand, staring up at the stars in the night. Behind her, the sliding glass door opened, sending a rough squeak into the open space. Sapphire didn’t even have to turn to know who it was.
Suddenly and without any sort of warning, the now familiar and painful guilt tore through Sapphire’s body, and she was forced to shut her eyes.
In the few weeks that followed Shelly’s release from the hospital, Sapphire was told several times, from both doctors and police, about Shelly’s speedy recovery. She knew Shelly was okay, but in order to get true closure Sapphire took a drive to San Diego, dying to get a glimpse of Shelly back in her normal life, back to the smiling college girl in the photographs on her bedroom wall.
However, when Sapphire parked outside the McCormick’s house and raised her eyes to Shelly’s bedroom, Sapphire’s heart dropped so far, it felt as though it momentarily vanished from her body.
Shelly McCormick was sitting by her open window, her upper body completely covered by a hoodie, tightly drawn in around her face. She had this stare, this horrible empty gaze which was locked out on the street below her. Except her eyes didn’t move even the slightest when a car drove by or when the playing children ran past her house, but stayed somewhere beyond the street where there was nothing.
For hours Sapphire stayed, hoping that she’d see something from Shelly: some sort of sign of life. Despite the fact that the numbers on Sapphire’s dashboard clock kept changing, Shelly remained the same—immovable and frozen in time.
Slowly, some part deep inside Sapphire changed. Shelly was gone; left behind was this empty being whose body was free, but whose mind was still trapped in that basement. Ultimately, there was no rewrite, no way to change what had been, and no way for Sapphire to make it right. Shelly’s life was forever altered by something Sapphire had caused and from that moment on, her punishment was clear. In the future whenever her mind would wander to Shelly—intentionally or not—she would always feel the way she felt at that very moment looking up at Shelly’s disturbingly vacant gaze. In those moments, which would come and go for the rest of her life, she would feel such intense remorse and guilt that it would make her physically ill. Other times, she also knew, the pain would push her, make her stronger, more focused.
There were other things as well—some conscious, some not—similar to the Shelly-guilt that always tumbled around in Sapphire’s cluttered mind; things which she didn’t speak of and tried fiercely not to think of. Somehow, all those elusive and sometimes seemingly insubstantial things summed up to one solid force that ruled Sapphire’s life: serial killers.
Though lately, one of those things—a very prominent one—had been pushing at her ever since Julia took the first step out of her life. Now, with Shelly in there too, it was as if there was too much stuff roaming around in the already tight quarters and it had become way too crowded. To make room for the space Shelly deserved in there, something needed to go—to be set free.
When the deck’s sliding glass door squeaked closed behind her, Sapphire opened her eyes again then drew a long breath in an attempt to regain some composure.
“Mom,” she said. The guests were gone. Charles was watching TV. Chrissy was sleeping it off in her bedroom and John had left before she had a chance to talk to him. There was only the two of them left.
“Yes?” Vivienne said and took a sip of her cocktail as she walked up to the railing.
“I’m going to ask you something and I expect you to tell me the truth,” Sapphire said looking out over the distant lights. “This little game we’ve been playing for the past twenty-two years, where you don’t tell and I don’t ask needs to stop. I can’t pretend anymore.”
When Sapphire finally looked at her mother, Vivienne’s face had turned pale. Pain. Deep down to the gut emotional pain showed through her mother’s eyes. With a shaking hand Vivienne sat her cocktail down and braced herself for what she seemed to know was coming.
“Who is my father?”
Epilogue
Richard Martin stood looking up at the glistering stars of the night. The scent of burning flesh filled his nostrils and dove down to his lungs as he could feel the heat on his neck from the fire.
In the past months, he had been captured, brought to jail, gone to trial and found guilty for the murders of six young women. His greatest regret had not been that he would never feel freedom again or that he would spend the rest of his life inside a prison, but that he would never get to do the one thing that had made him feel alive. It saddened him so deeply that he would never again touch their bare necks and feel their life run out by the power of his knife. Until now, he had been depressed and thought of nothing but ending his life on the way over to San Quentin State Prison.
Two security guards and a cop had been sent to escort him from L.A. to Marin County. When he strangled the first security guard with his shackles he did it out of need, not want. He took no personal delight in ending a man’s life. It was just out of pure necessity. When the cop had raised his gun at Richard, the guard driving turned his head and missed a roadblock.
The cop fired three rounds pointlessly and the security van tipped over on its side and crashed onto plain desert.
They had been on a deserted road miles away from any city. The cop and the guard where knocked out from the
blow of the crash and Richard had taken his time to pour the spare gasoline tank over, inside, and around the van. He stole the keys to his shackles and used them to bind the cop and the guard to the van. He found a set of matches in the glove compartment just as the cop was slowly waking.
Richard Martin lit the match and dropped it onto the van and soon the screams of two men being burned alive spread through the evening in the vacant desert.
He was forced to a new beginning. His life was renewed and revenge was to be given to the person who had stolen his old life away from him. Whoever she was. However she did it. He would find her and make her suffer. He would kill until there was nothing or no one left to kill on the road back to her. He would lure her out of her secret hiding place and trap her as she had trapped him.
He no longer had anything to hide. He no longer had to pretend to live a normal life. No longer would he be able to be Richard Martin. From this day forth he would be nameless like Death himself.
He took his first steps towards his new life and found his mouth to be dry. He was thirsting. Thirsting in a stronger way than ever before. As uncertain as his life would be from that point on, he knew one thing, he would not stop. Not fear. Not be satisfied until her body lay dead in his arms.
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