I can’t blame my parents. They were a saintly couple with no idea how to handle their young son’s frequent night terrors as I woke screaming from dreams of steely surgical tables and sharp, thin blades—much less any knowledge of where that had led me as I grew to manhood. They were affluent academics able to afford their own home near my mother’s teaching position at New York University, with room for my father’s studio. His paintings weren’t the most daring of his day, but they’d been popular and sold successfully for long enough to afford them an upper-class bohemian lifestyle—idyllic until I came along to cast a pall over their happiness. My poor, dear, innocent parents . . . No, what drove me to do what I did had to be in me alone, something solitary and unique, whatever the cause.
Whatever that was, I haven’t found it yet.
I turned my attention to the girl. She’d lain there quietly, facing in my direction, had watched silent as I meticulously vivisected her date throughout the long night. Making the girls watch was usually part of the fun, to let them anticipate what was to come next as I stripped flesh and muscle from their boyfriends. I’d studied anatomy over the years like a medical student, from the same textbooks—mastered where to cut to avoid veins and arteries to minimize bleeding, rinsed away what blood and fluids were released as they rose from muscle tissue. It was a remarkably slow but clean process, one designed to maximize suffering while prolonging life as the meat of the body’s extremities was sliced into layers, thinner and thinner, gradually pared to the bone. My methods had evolved over the years to what I considered to be their utmost effectiveness, and had become routine. The only variation I ever sought was in the infinitely individual responses of my subjects.
The girls usually stared in rapt horror, shrieked as best they could through their bright red ball gags, whimpered long after they’d gone hoarse, knowing that when I was done with their date, it would be their turn.
But not this one.
She had watched me calmly, quiet, almost analytical, more like a curious colleague observing a surgery than my next victim. I walked around her partner’s remains neatly arranged on the long stainless steel autopsy table next to hers, stood between them without obscuring the girl’s view.
“Hello, pretty-pretty,” I said softly, stroked her cheek with the back of my rubber-gloved hand, still wet with the boy’s blood. She didn’t flinch, locked her eyes on mine, as if able to communicate with that cool gaze alone.
Her eyes never blinked. They were a dazzling deep green, almost emerald. I touched her auburn hair, such a perfect complement to the rest of her coloring, picked up a pair of sharp shears, and cut her date-night clothing from her body with a tailor’s precision.
I felt like I could almost hear her voice in my head, low, soothing, like a lover’s whisper in my ear, encouraging me. Of course, that was just my imagination—the usual siren call of death and dismemberment, to continue until I was done, until my search was complete, until all hope I would find whatever it was I looked for was gone. Hope that only came again when a new couple posed the same eternal question anew in my mind, and provided new bodies in which to search for the answer.
When the girl was completely naked, I gathered the ruins of her wardrobe in my hands, a multicolored bouquet of fabric scraps, and stood at the foot of the table like a bridesmaid to see my handiwork. Her pale white skin was smooth as Michelangelo marble. Though my interests were more surgical than sexual, she had just the right amount of everything to satisfy me, fuller in figure than most men prefer today. Nearly too good to be true, too much what I look for when I go out trawling for prey. She was an almost-exact replica of the first girl to trigger my more violent appetites, even though no one could possibly know that but me. I’d thought so earlier when I spotted the couple at the mall. She was not a perfect woman, by any means, but she was oddly perfect for me.
Almost like bait for the catch of the day.
The thought made me shudder. My father had fished for sport and often took me with him as a treat. Fly-fishers know how to use custom-tied lures to attract what they want. Why did this one feel like it had been designed to accommodate my particular tastes? Why did I suddenly feel the hook in my mouth, a tug on the line? I looked around the room against my will, felt foolish to fear I was being watched by unseen eyes. The only cameras here were mine.
The girl still stared at me. Her eyes followed mine like those in a haunted mansion portrait, implacable as ever. Nary a blush crossed the surface of her exposed flesh. There was still no struggle against her bonds, the bright yellow nylon ropes that bound her securely to the steel table in a trident, arms bent up, tied at the wrists and elbows, at the waist, knees and ankles, legs together, one last double bond at the throat. I felt a hot flash of anger as she gazed at me calmly.
This one would be a challenge.
* * * *
I sat in front of my big flat-screen TV with dinner on a freestanding tray in front of me, looking forward to a night of CSI on my DVR. The girl and her date’s bloodless body were secured downstairs in the basement behind my hidden room’s secret door. Their car was in the garage in front until I drove it to a predetermined spot in New Jersey. There, a fence I contact only by burner phone would pick it up and strip it down to parts for sale across the country, the garage left empty for my next guests’ car.
When my parents’ Greenwich Village townhouse had been willed to me, I quickly decided to modify it to suit my own purposes, far darker than their famed Sunday brunches and Christmas parties. It had taken years after their completely natural deaths for me to finish my soundproof little slaughterhouse, equipped with spray hoses and drains to clean blood and other waste from my clinically correct work space, acid baths, and a crematorium for disposal of remains. It had taken patience, but that had only increased my anticipation of how perfectly the concealed chamber would suit my needs when done. My playroom had been perfected with discreet but regular use over the last decade. The latest addition I’d made was installing wireless cameras to keep an eye on it.
The girl’s image was crystal clear on the retina screen of an iPad Air that sat next to me. I flipped through DVR choices displayed on my TV with the remote. There was a new CSI now, set in New Orleans. My own experiences gave the lie to most of their cases, but I enjoyed outsmarting them in my living room. It was what I did instead of Sudoku or other puzzle games, a cheap way to stay sharp.
I glanced at the iPad screen again.
She was still firmly bound, the flayed male body on the table next to her left to keep her on edge, all fluids washed neatly down the drains of the stainless steel table. Except for that, I never cleaned up the remains until I was done, preferred to work in a room that looked like the abattoir it was. Usually, the girl was in shock by now, either staring at the corpse beside her in mute horror or weeping quietly, eyes squeezed shut against the sight. This one seemed to see the camera I used to observe her, stared directly into the lens as if into my own eyes.
I clicked a control on the screen to select another view. A scant second after the image on my screen changed, so did her gaze, as it moved to the new camera to meet mine. I repeated the experiment, went through all five cameras I had hidden in the room, and each time, her eyes moved with mine. I had covered all the lights on the cameras, the lenses were concealed, there was no way she could know where they were or which was active, and yet she seemed to. I was tempted to go down and try to figure out how but resisted, certain the explanation was not in my equipment.
I finished my dinner, washed the dishes, then dried and put them away, as I thought all the while about the mystery downstairs. Could she be telepathic enough to know what I’m doing? I’d read of stranger things. There were enough ESP studies on record to indicate the possibility. I smiled. If she could get into my head, she’d find no solace there.
As I dried my hands and rubbed them with moisturizing lotion, I considered going downstairs to continue, but I usually waited twenty-four hours. No need to vary my routine on her acco
unt. That would only give back some of the power I’d gained since abducting her. Can’t have that, now. I changed into soft fleece pajamas and retired, iPad propped on my bedside table, the gentle glow of the girl’s pallid skin as my nightlight. I hesitated before I closed my eyes, knew that she only looked at the camera, not into my room, but still felt an odd tingle of observation, as if I was really the one being watched.
* * * *
Work was mildly distracting; the usual run of students and professors kept me busy enough to take my mind off the peculiarities of the guest in my basement. I work as a reference assistant at the science desk of New York University’s Bobst Library. There’s no real financial need, but once I was of college age, I had been expected to satisfy my parents that they weren’t leaving their modest but still substantial estate to a ne’er-do-well. My inquiring methodical mind lent itself to library research. My chosen field also gave me every opportunity to pursue odd explorations undetected, including all I needed to build my playroom. Over the years, my position had the added advantage of making me a familiar fixture in the neighborhood, another invisible cog in the machinery of the university, convenient for a killer.
My desk was flanked by a pair of long tables in the center of the ninth floor, with a couple of phones, a computer, and a tranquil view across the central atrium through the front windows onto the trees of Washington Square Park. The building was a shining gem of seventies architecture, its interior an open area twelve stories tall, lined with soaring central stairs and stacked symmetrical floors filled with bookcases and tables, behind a gilded floor-to-ceiling aluminum lattice that made it seem like the inside of a giant cybernetic brain.
Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, for some students, the vertiginous view from the top looking down on the hypnotic stereogram pattern of the floor below had been an incentive to suicide. It started in 2003 with two in a single month. Plexiglas barriers were installed, but when a third student climbed over them to his death, the metal panels went in. I’d seen all three bodies fall past my desk. Shocking for most, but for me it had been oddly thrilling to witness deaths that weren’t my responsibility.
Inevitably, my mind wandered back to my captive and I looked for answers to her odd behavior, but research was fruitless. I had no idea what to look for, what I really needed to know. A cursory search on recent ESP research was pointless. I sighed. Whatever she was doing, however she did it, was moot. She would be dead soon, the puzzle ended.
Every now and then, I slipped off to a bathroom stall where no one could glimpse what I was doing, to see on my phone what was happening at home. With hours left on my shift, I decided to check on her again. I stood to go to the men’s restroom, put out my BACK SOON sign. A voice spoke up behind me. Only the steely nerves of a lifelong serial killer kept me from being startled.
“Are you okay, Neal? Been hitting the . . . break sign a lot today.” Kathy stood behind me, a reference assistant from another department, overly perky with lush blond hair and glasses. I knew she paid too much attention to me but also knew it was prompted by affection, not suspicion. Still, I’d let her little crush go on too long; the flames had recently fanned into an uncomfortably warm blaze. I shrugged and grinned back wanly.
“Got takeout Thai last night, but I fear their rating may not have been accurate. I must check those things before I order delivery.” Agreeing with people made them feel perceptive and avoided further questions. Though I lack any real empathy, psychopathic charm and research on how regular people react to stimuli helps me seem plausibly normal. She patted me on the shoulder, sympathetic, and went on her way with a stack of books. I fled to the bathroom before I could be interrupted again.
The restrooms were public, for staff and patrons of the library. Inside, I had to wait, impatiently, for an empty stall. Once one was vacated, I entered and latched the door, flipped open the cover on my phone, and unlocked the screen. I opened my secured basement feed to see the girl standing over the body of her dead boyfriend as she gazed down in silent contemplation, red ball gag still in her mouth.
My jaw dropped open as she lifted a scalpel from its tray, used it to probe the depths of one of my more complex cuts. She stopped and looked up at me, gazed into the lens as I stared back, frozen. The girl replaced the scalpel as smoothly as she had raised it, walked to her table, and lay back down, slipped her feet and legs, head, hands, and arms into her bonds.
Her body parts seemed to elongate to accommodate the tightness of the rope loops so that she slipped into them easily and then reformed her flesh to fit. She maintained eye contact through all of this, even after she was securely tied in place again. The arms and legs I could explain away by stage magic tricks, but her head . . . ! The rope had been tied tightly around her neck, less than half the diameter of her skull, and was again.
I almost dropped the phone.
My skin was suddenly covered by a thin sheen of cold sweat as my stomach heaved. The image I saw now was the same as that I’d seen all day, all last night. Had I imagined it? Could I really have just seen her free of her bonds and exploring my handiwork like a curious tourist at a hands-on science museum? Her eyes were as unblinking as always. When I switched cameras, they still followed my electronic gaze.
Enough. It’s time to end this. If that stunt was staged to get me home early, it worked. I flushed the toilet and washed my hands after I left the stall to avoid suspicion, then walked out to ask my supervisor if I could leave early, pleading food poisoning. Kathy chimed in enthusiastically when she overheard us, backing up my claim. I know I looked green enough, sick for entirely different reasons, so my level of distress was apparent enough for me to be excused immediately.
* * * *
The basement room was exactly the same as I’d left it but now looked new to me. I entered with a high-powered Taser in hand, saw it all as if for the first time, searching for any trace of anything out of place, some trap laid—some sign of danger. The girl was still in place, naked as ever, green eyes wide. I was suddenly afraid for the first time since I was a child, when I woke screaming from bad dreams very much like this. There was some small excitement at feeling fear instead of inducing it for a change. Was this what I had lacked lately, the thrill of the hunt? Had I become so proficient that I’d lost any real enjoyment in my work, going through the motions like a bored civil servant on the job too long to care? If so, what I’d seen on the screen had destroyed all sense of complacency.
The girl’s eyes followed me as I crossed to her side and checked the ropes.
“How did you do that, eh? My little Houdini?” I yanked at her freckled arms, still solidly in place. I wheeled my surgical tools into place beside her. No reason to waste time. Do what the Inquisition did with the inexplicable.
Destroy it.
I lifted a slender knife with a short, thin blade. Her eyes didn’t leave me as I raised it over her forearm and slid the razor-sharp tip along the surface of the skin, slipped it beneath.
She didn’t even flinch.
I ended the long cut, returned to its top with another, shorter blade to slide under the skin and separate it from the muscle. The edge seemed to move too easily, as if there was no real resistance. I was used to severing a few tendons or hitting gristle, but her flesh parted from the meat of the arm like skin on a pudding. There was no blood; just glistening amber tissue underneath that looked like fat, only tougher. I frowned, tried to pull more skin away without success, and then used the knife to worry it free to reveal more. The elastic substance I’d seen was where muscle should be, surrounding what looked like a more traditional skeletal structure, though made of something that wasn’t bone. There were dark lines beneath the surface of the tissue, not red or blue, but golden brown, dully pulsing.
“What the fuck is that?” I breathed. “What the fuck are you?” Whatever it was shouldn’t exist inside someone who had been walking and talking earlier. Whatever this was shouldn’t look so convincingly human on the surface, when w
hat was underneath was so completely not. I held the scalpel still in my hand. Why hadn’t the thing stopped me? I looked back into her eyes.
She looked significantly down to the ball gag in her mouth. I almost dropped the scalpel as I rushed to take it off, but kept my blade at the ready in case she slipped her bonds again.
“Don’t stop, Neal McConnell,” the girl—if I could still call her that—said. “You want to see what I am. How I work. Feel free.”
“It doesn’t hurt?” I examined my incision, peeled back more skin. “I admit that makes it less interesting.”
“This body needs to feel, but pain to warn of damage is unnecessary, as this unit repairs itself.”
“What are you?” I asked.
“A remote biological drone. What your stories of UFO abduction called ‘grays’ were more primitive models, developed before we gained interest in your world. They looked good enough back then.”
Alien drones? That explained what I was cutting up. . . . Any ordinary man would have been paralyzed with shock at this new development, but not me. There were some advantages to my difference from others, my lack of empathy or most other human emotions. I picked up a new tool, sliced a little deeper, and watched the way the thick tissue seemed to flow back together after I removed the blade. Was it self-healing? If I closed the wound, would it automatically seal itself?
“Good enough for what?”
“Research and development.”
“Of what?” I pulled up my stool and sat, slit open the girl’s abdomen and found interesting organs of a number and kind I’d never seen before. It was all quite incredible. She talked on, oblivious to my investigation of her body.
“You. You’re the culmination of a decades-long series of experiments to develop a prototype. One that can do what you do for us, without getting caught or cracking up.”
The girl retained the casual conversational tone I’d eavesdropped on earlier in the evening when sizing up the couple—sounded like a more seductive Siri, bemused, with a trace of first-date coyness. It was strange to hear her speaking with a full personality while acting as a smartphone for extraterrestrial invaders. I called it an invasion, even if they hadn’t. They were here and busy killing us, had been for years.
What the #@&% Is That? Page 28
