The Way We Burn_A Standalone Romance...With A Twist

by M. Leighton

  Screaming.

  Crying.

  Daddyyyyy!

  Then he took Carly. What he did engulfed her. Her mind couldn’t cope with what she’d witnessed, with the guilt she felt for not being able to help her child, with the memories of the fear she saw in Savannah’s eyes. With the sound of her voice, begging her mommy to help her.

  “What he did to you, baby… What he did to Savannah… No one could handle that. But you did the best you could. Your mind, though, it just couldn’t…” I take a deep breath, preparing myself to explain this, praying that it doesn’t make things worse. “Your mind just couldn’t take it. It made a way to cope by splitting your personality into other people, people who didn’t have the pain that you do. I didn’t know it until months later when I found you. Here. In Chicago. The morning you left the house, the morning you disappeared from our life, something must’ve triggered a break and you entered a fugue state. You left Carly Williamson behind. Left me, left our home, left your life. That’s the day you became Poppy Blackwell. And Simone Allen. But you’re still my Carly. The others are just parts of you, parts of the same woman. The woman I love.”

  I see her chest rise and fall. Faster, faster, faster. She shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut.

  Panting, panting, panting.

  Then she starts to shake her head more forcefully. “No. No. No. No!” she finally screams, driving the knife she’s holding into the meat of her own leg.

  “Jesus, Carly!” Wildly, I look around the room for something to staunch the flow of blood bubbling up from her thigh. I jerk a towel off the rack behind us and press it to the wound.

  “Stop calling me that!”

  Her hand is still making the stabbing motion, but the arc is narrower, higher, only meeting air and the edge of the shower curtain which is shredded.

  “You’re Carly. Carly Williamson. You’re my wife. Savannah was our daughter. I know you remember. You have to. Just try, ” I plead, trying to bring her back without causing her to split into someone else to cope with this onslaught of information.

  I watch her, try to keep her focus trained on me, all while giving half an eye to her knife hand and the man in the tub.

  “I-I won’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I assure her, making my voice as calm and soothing as I can considering that she’s bleeding and hysterical, and there’s a serial killer a foot away. “There were so many good times. So many! Right from the start. Don’t you remember our wedding day? Or our honeymoon? It was so perfect. We went to Fiji and you swam in the ocean nude for the first time.” My laugh sounds forced, but I hope she doesn’t notice. And I hope this isn’t the wrong tack to take. Talking to her about Savannah isn’t a good idea. I know that for sure.

  She frowns again.

  “That first night, at dinner, we ordered oysters and made love until the sun came up, remember? You told me you’d never be able to walk right again.”

  Her mouth works, the corners twitching, the lips thinning and straightening, as though she’s torn between laughing and crying. The good and the bad.

  Yesterday and today.

  “You’re Carly Williamson. My wife. The love of my life. Please come back to me.”

  As I watch, Simone’s lids begin to blink more slowly, like she’s getting tired. Time passes like a lifetime, each breath a hundred years, each heartbeat a thousand.

  “Noah?” she murmurs, her brow furrowing more deeply, her voice small and childlike.

  “I’m here, baby.”

  I wait, my world balanced on the head of a pin, to see which personality is here with me. Simone is tricky. This could be a ploy.

  But when her head snaps back up and her eyes meet mine, there’s an odd mixture of clarity and confusion in them that I’m not sure Simone would know how to feign. Or even that she might need to.

  “Noah?” she says again.

  “It’s me, Carly.”

  She doesn’t flinch at the name, doesn’t argue. She just continues to stare at me. Her lids flutter shut again and she sucks a sip of air through her teeth, a soft hiss absorbed by the tile all around us. “God, my head hurts.”

  I say nothing, waiting. Hopeful. Always hopeful.

  She opens her eyes and looks at me again. Then she looks around. “Where—” she begins, but stops when her gaze settles on the face of the man in the tub. She yelps as if she’d been pinched and lurches away, terror written all over her face. “Noah! Noah! What is this? What’s going on? Why is he here?”

  She clambers into my arms, clinging to me as if she can’t get close enough. She’s shaking, fine tremors of fear rippling through her muscles.

  I hold her close, my throat tight with the joy that my wife, my Carly, is back. “It’s a long story.”

  She expands and contracts against my chest like she’s inhaling and exhaling with her whole body. Her breaths come faster, but before I realize that she’s cycling up, she’s out of my arms, punching at the body in the tub.

  Carter Finch rouses ever so slightly, attempting to raise his arms to defend himself, but unable to do more than pump them ineffectively at his sides.

  Carly wails like a banshee, climbing into the tub before I can stop her and swinging down at him with her joined fists, pummeling away at his head and face. Blood flies, but she doesn’t stop. The muted crunch of bone and the thud of every strike are the only sounds that fill the room.

  Still she doesn’t stop. Finally, I grab her around the waist and haul her off him before she kills him. His head lolls to one side. He’s completely unconscious now.

  Carly still swings, kicking and clawing at him. “Let me go! Let me goooo !” she rails furiously.

  I know if I let her go, she’ll beat him to death with her bare hands. “Carly, I can’t do that. I can’t let you kill him.”

  I can’t let you kill him —I say that, I know that, for so many reasons. I cannot let her kill him. I can’t.

  Legal consequences, emotional consequences, psychological consequences—there’s a laundry list of reasons, but the only ones I’m really concerned about are the ones that would directly affect Carly—the emotional and psychological ones. I don’t know what killing him would do to her, but I’m not willing to find out. If it weren’t for that, though…I’d let her. He deserves it and, in a way, she deserves to be able to do it. For peace of mind.

  But I can’t be sure she’d get peace of mind. It could destroy what’s left of her and that’s a risk I just can’t take.

  If it weren’t for that, though…

  She starts to scratch at my arms where I’m holding her. “Let me go, you bastard! Why won’t you let me finish? How could you want him to live?”

  She’s thrashing, impossible to hold onto as she tries to get away from me. I let her go long enough to readjust my grip, turning her toward me. There are flames in her eyes, flames of hatred.

  And they’re turned toward me.

  “You coward! You cowardly motherfu—” The last rises into a shriek and she pounds at my chest with her fists, as hard as she can, her thin arms trembling with the effort. “How could you let him live? He killed our daughter! He killed our Savannaaaah.” She collapses against me, our baby’s name dribbling out on a moan and she begins to sob. Sob and cry and howl like exactly what she is—a mother who has lost her child. “How could you?” she moans.

  I hold my wife as she relives her greatest pain—losing her little girl.

  “You didn’t see her face. You don’t know what he did. She was my baby,” she wails. “Oh Jesus God, how could he do that to my baby? My baby! She’s gone. Out there all alone.”

  Listening to her, feeling her grief coiling around her like a squall…it’s almost more than I can bear. My chest tightens, my throat constricts, my eyes burn.

  Carly’s words dwindle off into mumbles and unintelligible groanings that tear at my soul. But finally she begins to quiet, her sobs trailing off into hiccups of pure misery. “Why would you bring me here and
then let him live, Noah? Why?”

  She raises anguished eyes to mine.

  “I can’t let you live with the burden of taking his life,” I explain, my own chin trembling with the agony of what we’ve suffered, of what our life will never be.

  “Don’t let him live, Noah. Please. Make him tell you where she is. Make him talk and then let me kill him. Please. I’m begging you.”

  My heart splits in two. I know her rage. I’ve had to live with it, too. I’ve also had to live with the worry of losing what’s left of my universe, too—my wife. Right now, there’s still a chance to get my Carly back, though. To get back a piece of what we had. But if I do as she asks, I could ruin it. I could lose her again, this time forever. And nothing is worth that. Not even the lure of giving in to her, of giving her what she thinks she needs most.

  “I can’t let you kill him, Carly.”

  “He can’t live. He can’t live, Noah.”

  Her eyes… Even obscured by her colored contacts, they’re the eyes I’ve known and loved for a lot of years. And seeing this look in them… I’m not sure I can live with this either.

  Unless…

  I set my wife away from me, bending to pick up the knife that got tossed to the floor in the scuffle. “Then I’ll do it. If it’s the only way I can give you peace, I’ll do it. I’ll kill him.”

  I step toward the tub. I hear the squeak of my shoes on the tile, the gurgle of Finch’s breathing, the telltale pound of my heart.

  I’m nervous.

  I’m exhilarated.

  I’m afraid.

  I’m enraged.

  I stop and look down at the bloody face of the man we’ve sought for so long, the man who has wreaked so much havoc on so many lives. The man who kills and destroys and takes such great pleasure in inflicting such great pain.

  The man who has taken so much from me.

  From Carly.

  I’ve thought of this, dreamed of it, fantasized about it hundreds and hundreds of times over the last two years. I’ve imagined how I’d do it, how it would feel, what I’d do after. I’ve done everything except actually plan it out, and that’s only because I’ve been so focused on finding Carly and then on getting her help, that I haven’t really applied myself.

  Turns out I didn’t need to. My wife was making a plan of her own. And now I have a chance to live out my fantasy so that she doesn’t live out hers.

  The time is at hand. The opportunity is right in front of me. Some would even say the moral obligation is mine—to do it for Savannah, for Carly, for all the families who live in constant pain now because of him. For all the ones who might yet live in constant pain if he ever sets his sights on them.

  I should do it.

  The world needs to be rid of this man.

  I curl my fingers around the hilt of the knife. The weight of it…it’s like a feather in my hand—light, guilt-free. But it’s heavy elsewhere—on my chest, my lungs, my heart, like the weight of it against my palm is magnified in my soul.

  This is a game changer.

  I’m a man of the law. I realize what this means. I realize what this makes me. I realize that my life won’t ever be the same if I do this. I’ll be a killer. And I’ll be on the run.

  A killer on the run.

  For the rest of my days.

  It’s a game changer for Carly, too. She’s complicit. She’ll have to live with that forever. She probably won’t be punished, though. Her fragile mental state will warrant little more than a slap on the wrist.

  But me…

  Taking this man’s life will forever change me. My life. My future.

  It will imprison me, one way or another.

  But it will forever free me, too.

  It will free both of us.

  That’s the difference between Carly and me. Savannah’s mother, who saw every detail, and Savannah’s father who was at home in bed. I could go on if Finch were imprisoned and sodomized every day for the rest of his existence. I could live my life happily, knowing that he was being treated worse than any kind of animal. Because he will be.

  But not Carly. She can’t find peace that way.

  She was there. She saw.

  So this is what I can do for her. This is all I can do for her.

  For my wife, my soulmate, the love of my entire life—this is what she needs, so this is what I’ll give her.

  I bend forward, my movements slow, like I’m reaching through molasses to fist my fingers in the front of Finch’s shirt and shake him awake. It takes three times and a slap across the face, but he finally rouses.

  His lids are at half-mast, his pupils sluggish, but at least he can hear me. I lean into his face and speak clearly, concisely.

  “Tell me where my daughter’s body is and I’ll make this quick.”

  He mutters something unintelligible.

  “Tell me!” I roar, shaking him so hard his head bangs against the rim of the tub.

  I listen closely for an answer, but this time I only hear a noise that sounds like a laugh.

  A laugh.

  Adrenaline and fury flood my blood.

  I slam his head back and it cracks as it meets porcelain. “Where?” I yell. “Where is her body?”

  Still he says nothing, but the edges of his split upper lip draw into a smug grin. He likes this. Thinks it’s funny.

  I see red.

  I reach down and take his hand, dragging the tip of the knife across the pads of three fingers on his left hand. He gives a short bark of startled pain and jerks away. “Where?”

  Like he felt nothing, he recovers quickly, huffing a pleased cackle before he begins to cough, blood spewing from his mouth. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Heart racing, anger surging, I take the tip of the knife and slip it under the nail of his left index finger. His howl of pain is pure satisfaction to my ears. “Tell me where she is, or I swear to God, you will know the very definition of anguish. I will do things to you that you’ve never even considered doing to the women and children you’ve tortured and killed.”

  He coughs and sputters, this time chuckling discernibly. “You only know what I’ve allowed you to find. You only ever will know what I allow you to find.”

  In the back of my mind is the realization that this man gets off on pain, that there is nothing I can do to make him talk if he doesn’t want to.

  Finch starts to laugh outright, a big belly laugh. He has us backed into a corner. For the moment, he wins.

  I raise my foot and smash it as hard as I can into his face. He quiets instantly.

  I turn to find Carly standing behind me, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide with an unfathomable expression.

  “He’s not going to talk. You know the psychology of someone like this,” I tell her, resigned yet still jacked up on the hormones racing through my veins.

  My hands are trembling. Not with fear, but with rage.

  I run the fingers of my free hand through my hair, tightening my grip on the knife with the other. What now? What now? What now?

  “You-you’d kill him? For me?” The question is tentative.

  I stop and stare at her, my eyes boring into hers, wishing I could make her see what she means to me. “Yes. If it brought you peace, I’d do it in a heartbeat. When will you see, when will you believe that I’d do anything for you. Anything. ”

  “And the consequences?” Her words are muffled behind her hands.

  I don’t know where this is coming from, and why now, but I can’t think about it. I’m in fight mode, protection mode. This is the man who hurt my family. This is the man who is still hurting my family. He must be stopped for my family to stop hurting. End of story.

  “I don’t care about that. I care about you.”

  “That much? That you’d burn your life to the ground for me?”

  There is no hesitation as I answer. “Without flinching. This is the way we burn, baby. We burn together, or not at all. I’m in this forever.”

  “We�
�ll probably both go to prison.”

  I know we won’t. I likely will, but not Carly. I wouldn’t risk her that way. I’ll make sure she’s okay, safe and free. “No, not you.”

  She pauses. “So you’ve got this all worked out? How you’ll do this and pay for it and I’ll go free?”

  I nod, jittery with the need to act.

  “And I’m supposed to live with that?”

  I don’t know how to answer that. I’m doing it for her . She can’t have it both ways.

  I shrug, at a loss.

  Carly closes her eyes and drops her face the rest of the way into her palms. I hear the hushed mewl of her sobs as she considers where we are, in life .

  “A-and if we turn him in?”

  That question… It speaks volumes.

  I feel my straining muscles relax. For the first time in almost two years, I know everything is going to be okay.

  This is my Carly. This is my beautiful, intelligent, pragmatic wife working through things. This is her strategizing and coping.

  The healthy way.

  “We can talk to the AG, have her offer him something for information about Savannah’s body. She can offer him a better facility, more outside time, something. ”

  “You think she’ll be willing to give him anything ?”

  “I do. And so do you. They’ll make a deal. They’ll want everything he knows, about all his victims.”

  “And you think he’ll take a deal?”

  “I do. He’s looking at life in prison. He’ll want every comfort and convenience he can bargain for.”

  Carly raises her head, glassy golden eyes meeting mine. Irrationally, I wish she’d take out the contacts so that I could see the green of her irises. The same color of Savannah’s. It would almost be like the three of us deciding this together.

  As a family.

  A family who won’t ever be whole again.

  “Is that what you think we should do?”

  I feel trapped by her question. I do think turning him in would be the best thing. Would it feel the best? No. Would it give Carly peace? I don’t know. The problem is, I don’t think either of us is thinking very rationally right now. I’m contemplating murder, for Christ’s sake. With one of my wife’s three personalities looking on. It doesn’t get much crazier than this.