“You know you been getting even more screwed up,” Sidney said. “As if that was even possible.” He pushed past Brian. “Now get the hell out of my way.”
* * *
Brian arrived home that night to a surprise on his doorstep. Daniela. A day early.
Brian had a ground-floor apartment in this two-story set of six. Picking one had been trying, as he had to balance his anxieties about being trapped by a fire on the second floor with having something from an upper floor crash or seep down into a first-floor apartment. The benefit of another layer of building between his place and hurricane wind damage gave a first-floor unit the win.
His apartment entrance had a small covered porch. A light illuminated the concrete pad into an amber oasis in the darkness. Daniela sat there, back against the door, knees tucked up to her chin. The light highlighted the sprinkle of freckles that graced her cheeks. Brian loved those freckles. She looked out into the darkness of the parking lot, searching.
He really wasn’t sure how to feel. He teetered on the edge between happiness that she was back, and fear that she was still pissed off that he’d been out of touch. He approached the doorway, leery. She saw him and jumped to her feet. She ran out from under the porch light with a big smile on her face. She wasn’t on the warpath. Brian relaxed.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss. “So glad to be back and see you.”
“I’m glad you’re home,” he said.
He was glad. He didn’t feel the panicked urge to recoil at her touch, a gift only she had ever been able to give him. He’d spent his life feeling uneasy around everyone; the closer people got, the more he felt like he had insects crawling under his skin, the more he wanted to bolt and find a place to be by himself. She was the first person he’d ever known who didn’t make him want to run away.
But, though she’d never done anything to earn it, he could never shake a lingering feeling of apprehension, an undercurrent of fear that she would eventually flee. Everyone always did. Even before he could push most people away, they took off on their own, repelled by that anxiety-driven side of his personality, a side he barely understood to be so off-putting. Every moment with Daniela, no matter how calm and comforting, felt like a cautious step across a frozen pond, where the ice might crack at any time and send him into the freezing water beneath.
Brian led her back to the apartment door. As he fumbled with his keys, the look on her face went from joy to concern.
“Damn, Bri, you look spent.”
“Well, really busy at work, worried about you up at your mother’s. I guess it all adds up.”
Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a closer inspection. He opened the door and they stepped inside.
He flipped on the light and realized the place was a shambles. Dirty clothes lay around like they’d been arranged by a windstorm. A greasy pizza box gaped open on the kitchen table, leftover crescents of crust lying like little tattling smirks about his temporary full-bachelor lifestyle. A spray of opened and unopened mail spread out across the coffee table.
Ah, crap, he thought as he closed the front door behind them.
“What happened in here?” Daniela said. Her face fell. “You’re off your meds, aren’t you?”
The easy way out of this accusation seemed like the best option. “No,” he lied. “The place just got a little out of hand knowing you weren’t going to be over. You are home a day early.”
She looked like she was mulling over whether to buy his line of bull. She sighed. “Well, I’m not spending a minute here with the place looking like a frat house. Get to work on this mess out here and I’ll take care of the kitchen.” She poked him in the chest to emphasize each of the next words. “This. One. Time.”
“Absolutely!” He hoped he didn’t sound as relieved as he felt.
Daniela went into the kitchen and he attacked the rest of the living area like a sirocco. “You really ordered a pizza?” she called from the kitchen.
“Vegetable Delight. All organic from the place down the street. Pretty good, actually.”
She popped her head out from around the corner. “Look at you, living a little, trying someplace new. We’re going to add that to our things-to-do list.”
She was perfect for him, the little push and support to put his anxiety behind him. No need to resort to drugs. He just needed to get past the last bit of withdrawal symptoms unnoticed, and everything would be fine.
He scooped the mail off the table and arranged it in a neat stack. In a week or so, he’d tell her the truth. Once they experienced an excellent week, a normal week. She’d see he was a better person unmedicated, and then maybe they could both agree that this relationship should be something more permanent.
Chapter Seven
The red velvet caresses his hand. Though his vision is black and white, the rope has that same shade of black that red always had in old movies. He lays one, then two turns of the rope across his left palm and over his knuckles.
He grasps the rope’s other end with his right hand. Two twists of the wrist bind the rope about his hand. Ten fingers close and clamp this beloved instrument, this ticket to paradise, this blessed release. Thin rubber covers shield the feeling from his fingertips, but the rest of his hands can catch the sensations. The surface is soft, like a rabbit he remembers petting in his childhood. The fibers tickle his skin.
He wraps his thumbs across his fingers, and locks them in place, as if barring them from a change of heart. He senses that such an about-face is completely unlikely.
He wishes it was. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be a voyeur again in another killer’s point-of-view nightmare.
The cold of the car’s leather backseat penetrates his shirt and sends chill bumps across his back. The parking lot floodlights add little illumination to the vehicle’s charcoal interior. He makes himself as small as possible, and tucks himself into the shadows. He stares up at the fuzzy headliner. The memory flashes by of replacing the dome light lens after removing the bulb, and it is as if he can access an earlier nightmare within this one. The possibility of admittance to infinite rooms of horror turns his blood to ice.
He pulls the rope tight. The braids bite into his palms, compress his knuckles together. The power of what he is about to do surges through his hands, up his forearms, into his shoulders. He takes a deep breath and exhales, savoring the anticipation, as a connoisseur does when sampling a glass of wine’s bouquet before sipping.
The emotions repel him, as if he’s touching something cold, rank and slimy. But it is worse than that, for the contact he’s making is not external, but internal. This evil touches not his fingers, but his heart, his soul.
An approaching figure blocks and unblocks the light entering the car. His pulse quickens. He slides sideways and into the passenger foot well behind the driver’s seat. He crosses his forearms so the velvet rope makes a loop. The door locks pop open, the headlights cast their beams across the empty parking lot. He imagines the car chirping its happy greeting, the only one it knows.
The door opens. A purse sails in and flutters a bright feather hanging from the rearview mirror. The purse lands dead center in the passenger seat. A woman plops into the driver’s seat and closes the door. She hits the locks, and seals her fate.
His pulse hammers hard and fast, like a drumroll before the cymbals’ crash.
He springs up from the back seat and loops the rope around her neck. He pulls hard and leans back, knees dug into the seatback.
The vision is silent, but the rope vibrates as the victim chokes out a gurgled scream of surprise. Her hands grasp at the velvet, but her manicured nails find no purchase against the constricting braids. Her body shudders. Her arms reach back in a panicked flail and claw at the air above his head.
His heart pounds. His manhood swells in expectancy of the night ahead. He looks up into the rearview m
irror, angle pre-positioned for just this moment to see the woman’s face. The feather hangs still. Terror and confusion fill the woman’s wide eyes. Her mouth opens in a silent, final scream.
* * *
Brian snapped straight up in bed. He shivered, though whether from the cold sweat on his face and chest, or from the afterimages of his nightmare, he couldn’t tell. His stomach seemed to turn itself inside out. He threw back the bedcovers. They landed in a heap on top of Daniela. He bounded out of bed, and straight for the bathroom.
He hit the grungy tile floor on his knees and slid the last two feet to the toilet bowl. He grasped the sticky sides with his hands. Like a striking cobra, his spine snapped up and back, then his head plummeted forward across the bowl’s rim. His heart stopped as he projectile vomited what felt like his entire set of internal organs. It arced into the toilet with a splash. A second, then third attempt delivered only painful dry heaves. He awaited a fourth. When it didn’t arrive, Brian slumped to the floor beside the bowl, where the pungent stench of new vomit and old urine wasn’t quite as overwhelming.
The bathroom light snapped on. He squinted against the blinding sixty-watt bulb.
“You liar!” Daniela said. “You’re off your damn meds, aren’t you?”
She stood in the doorway, short, auburn hair a tangled mess. A tight, gray muscle shirt strained across her small, perky breasts. Lithe, freckled legs stretched up into dark blue hip-hugger panties. Brian thought this was her sexiest look, now thoroughly negated by the fury in her eyes.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. His voice sounded about ninety years old through his ravaged throat.
“You promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“Baby, I don’t need them anymore. I’m better.”
She looked down at him, curled on the bathroom floor, with disgust. “Yeah, look at you, all goddamn better.”
“Look, you don’t know how they make me feel. All fuzzy, disconnected.”
“I don’t want to hear that line of crap again. I’ve had enough.”
She stormed out of the bathroom. The bedroom light clicked on. Brian rose to pursue her. His head spun like a Chinese acrobat’s plate on a stick. He swooned, reached for the bowl for support, missed the rim, and plunged his hand in the morass of his own sick. He cursed.
A zipper closed in the bedroom. A very bad sound. He jumped up, toweled his hand clean, and exited the bathroom.
The red numbers on the clock radio read 4:12. Daniela already had on her jeans and shoes. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and gave her hair a frustrated ruffle with her fingertips.
“Baby, I can do this,” Brian pleaded.
“No, Brian, you can’t!” Daniela pulled open her purse and rummaged for her keys. “This is so typical of me. Pick up the stray, sign up for the project man, set out on the impossible quest. I want to kick myself for being so stupid.”
She yanked her keys free of her purse, snapped it shut and marched for the front door. Brian followed a step behind.
“Don’t leave,” he begged.
She held up a hand at him, like a traffic cop ordering a halt. “Enough. You have too many issues. Anxiety, intimacy, attention span of a puppy. I can’t fix all that, especially if you aren’t going to do your half and take your meds. I warned you.”
She walked straight through his apartment’s living room and out the front door. She nearly crushed him in it when she slammed the door closed behind her.
What little physical and mental energy he had spiraled down into some black vortex. Another wave of dizziness washed over him. He dropped onto the couch and closed his eyes.
Damn it. She’d all but told him it was the meds or her. It was going to take a lot of time and effort to untangle this mess now. If he even could.
The nightmare this withdrawal had just given birth to still gave him a case of the shakes. Not that he hadn’t had nightmares before, but the first-person point of view was a new development he hoped that his subconscious wasn’t going to get used to. He vaguely remembered one from a few days before, similar to this one, but nowhere near as intense, or as visceral.
He wanted so badly to get back to sleep. Today was his day off, but he would have rather gone to work than do dinner with the family. He’d need every ounce of energy to maintain a semblance of self-control. Dinner was at five. He crawled back into bed and hoped that he could sleep through until then.
* * *
He found he couldn’t. He gave up about thirty minutes later and started some coffee. He headed for the bathroom medicine cabinet and had to stop himself, again. Even without doing it for so long, the decade-old morning med cycle was a tough habit to break. He went back to the kitchen and pulled cheese and eggs from the refrigerator.
A drop of water pinged into the metal sink beside him. Without looking, he reached over and pulled the faucet handle down tighter. Another drop pinged.
He turned to the sink. A third drop hit, nowhere near the faucet. He looked up. A dark, damp stain the size of a basketball spread across the ceiling. In the center hung a bead of water. It dropped in what appeared like slow motion and splatted into the sink. Another drop coalesced to take its place.
“Damn it.”
This was the moment he loved to share with others, when real-life events unfolded to validate his anxieties. The vindication usually took the edge off the actual awful incident.
The drip was over his sink, which meant that with the duplicate floor plan of the apartment above, the leak was coming from the upstairs apartment’s sink. He wondered if the guy upstairs was even awake.
He turned to go outside and bang on the door to 2B upstairs. He entered the living room. A second leak stopped him cold. Another stain on the ceiling, softball-sized and growing, over his television. Drops of water already drizzled down the front of the screen.
“Son of a—!”
He ran over, grabbed the TV and moved it out of the leak’s line of fire. Before he could start back for the kitchen to grab a bowl to catch the water, a third leak sprouted near the door, then a fourth over the couch. The four stains spread like overhead oil spills.
What the hell was the guy doing up there? His neighbor had to have water backed up all across the floor.
The dripping from each stain accelerated into a drizzle. A steady stream of water began to drain from the tip of the living room’s overhead light. The rank smell of sewage filled the room. Brian burst out in goose bumps and shivered in disgust.
The ceiling stains darkened to black. The gypsum board sagged at each circle as the waterlogged fibers threatened to dissolve. Whatever disgusting brew the second floor harbored was coming his way.
Brian ran for the front door. He grabbed the knob. It would not turn. He yanked and shook it. Frozen tight. He reached for the deadbolt butterfly. Stuck. Hard. The ceiling around the living room overhead light drooped down a foot, like it was made of taffy. Brian’s pulse went into overdrive.
He gave the door one more futile yank. Then the ceiling burst.
An inverted volcanic eruption of fetid, gray water blasted into the room. The impact lifted furniture from the floor. The surging water sent it hurtling toward the walls. Brian dodged a lamp and it smashed against the wall behind him. The water lapped his knees in an instant. Toilet paper and human waste swirled in the maelstrom.
He shuffled to the window against the rushing water’s current and tried to throw the latch. It wouldn’t budge. He pounded against the glass with his fist. His blows made soft, muted thuds. The window merely flexed, as if the glass had been replaced with something shatterproof. The water’s roar made him want to scream.
The water rose past his waist. The pressure forced him up against the wall. He struck the window with both fists in rapid succession, like he was hitting a speed bag. The rising water made each blow sound softer, more distant, more useless.
Panic cre
pt into his every neuron, overloaded every synapse. Rational thought evaporated and all he wanted to do was somehow claw his way to the other side of this glass, to the wide-open outside world he could see so clearly.
Water crested his chin. The acidic stench of human waste crawled up his nose and set his sinuses on fire. Soft objects swirled around his neck, bumped the side of his face. He clamped shut his mouth, held his breath. His lips submerged, then his nose. The water compressed his chest against the window. His searing lungs screamed for him to exhale, no matter what disgusting mix he ingested in return. He stared straight across the rising water and out the window to a world indifferent to his imminent death. He closed his eyes and the water consumed him.
The pressure vanished.
He opened his eyes. His nose pressed against the window. A quick whirl revealed the room was completely dry. He exhaled so hard the effort doubled him over. He dropped to the floor and rolled on his back. The ceiling stretched out above him, unblemished and dry. His pulse coasted down to something closer to normal.
Another goddamn hallucination. The potential ramifications sent his anxiety spiking again.
What if he’d actually shattered the glass and sliced open his hands and arms? What if he’d made it outside, ranting to strangers about sewage filling his house? He’d be in full-time psychiatric care before he knew what hit him.
That excursion into hell was way worse than the guard shack incident. What would the next one be like? Where would he be when it hit him? Getting himself killed wasn’t the result he was shooting for by getting off meds. Nightmare-filled sleep and hallucination-filled days were a one-way ticket to real-life crazy.
Utter exhaustion dropped on him like a set of weights. He rose and staggered back to bed.
His phone on the nightstand flashed that he had a message. It had arrived hours ago. He called it up.
An improved you gets closer every day! Be ready for change!
He deleted the latest Totally You Institute spam. He dropped on top of the sheets, and fell fast asleep until late in the afternoon.
The Playing Card Killer Page 3
